Tomorrow, I’m speaking with a group of rising entrepreneurs about my experience founding CCAW. They’re all very early-stage, don’t have established customer bases, and may not have a product–market fit yet. I’ve been pondering what will be most helpful considering the allotted time (it’s hard to condense more than ten years of insights into twenty minutes) and the reality of the pandemic. I decided to prepare by mapping my CCAW journey in a lifeline (a diagram of the major highs and lows of something, such as a life or a career).

Doing this exercise recalled to my mind lots of great (and not so great) times. I decided to focus on sharing the lows of my journey. My goal isn’t to be negative or pessimistic—quite the opposite. I’m assuming things have gotten very difficult, very fast for this group. By sharing my low points, I hope to communicate these points:

• Take advantage – Negative experiences mark us the most, and they shape entrepreneurs. Appreciate this time as a learning opportunity.
• Change – People are forced to embrace change when times are tough. Make wise changes.
• Cycles – They’re inevitable. Those who survive downturns ride the wave up and do well. Focus on keeping your business alive.
• You’re not alone – Every entrepreneur (and every business, for that matter) is dealing with the same pandemic. Find a peer group. Their experiences—if you pay attention to them and apply them—will help you navigate this difficult time.
• No comfort zone – When you’re uncomfortable, you’re usually growing. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.
  

Today I read the weekend paper (yep, I still read a physical paper), and it was pretty scary. The pandemic has everyone worried, and rightly so. We haven’t experienced anything of this magnitude in our lifetimes. Most of the constant updates are not positive. As I digested all of this, I thought about something else—gratitude.

Things are never perfect. I don’t have X, Y didn’t go as planned, Z was unfair, and so on. In the current environment, the list is longer than ever and that’s totally understandable. But there’s always something to be thankful for as well. I’ve been stuck in my house . . . not so great. I have a home to be stuck in . . . many people aren’t so fortunate.

Today I made a list of three things I’m grateful for (actually, I do this every day). The simple act of thinking about this and writing the list is powerful. It forces me to think about all the wonderful people and things in my life. Some days, I list things that are deep and weighty. Other times, it’s three of life’s little joys. Regardless, I take the time to notice and appreciate the good things in my life.

What are you grateful for?

Yesterday I spoke with a close friend about the current business landscape. He’s an avid investor and regularly trades his own stocks. Throughout the day, he checks the market’s performance, and he always knows how each of his positions is performing. The conversation turned to the market downturn and all the negative economic news. I asked him how his portfolio was doing, and to my surprise he said he didn’t know. I probed a little more and he admitted being too scared to look.

Reflecting on this, I realized I had once done something similar. Every morning at CCAW I was provided with and reviewed a series of reports and metrics. They detailed our current state (MTD revenue, cash position, A/P balance, etc.) and projected our future revenue and profitability. These reports were critical to my understanding of our current performance and where we would probably end up. If I didn’t like our trajectory, I could be proactive and initiate actions to change it.

We had a rough patch when we were constantly being hit with bad news. Week after week, macro things were happening that affected us negatively. After a while, I stopped reviewing the daily metrics and reports. I told myself I was too busy and tired, but the truth was that I didn’t want to see the data quantifying how bad things were.

I realized that I didn’t have the experience to navigate these rough waters on my own. I owed it to the team to do better, so I hired an advisor with experience in grappling with challenging business environments. One of the first things he asked me was how bad it was. I told him it was bad, but I didn’t have exact numbers because I hadn’t looked at the data. I expected him to chastise me, but he told me that was normal. (In fact, he had done something similar when one of his companies struggled.) It’s human nature, he said, to avoid bad news during difficult times. He encouraged me to start looking at the data regularly and discuss it with him. I did.

Takeaways:

• Don’t avoid – A bad situation doesn’t get better because you avoid it. Look at important information regularly so you can make better decisions.
• Data availability – If you don’t consistently have access to critical information, you can’t plot a course. Consider taking time to put processes in place to make that information available.
• Communication – Whether your numbers are good or bad, share the news. People will appreciate not being kept in the dark. You never know—someone may have an idea that could change things.

Have you ever found yourself avoiding during a difficult time? If so, what did you learn?

Today I participated in a conversation among successful entrepreneurs in a variety of industries about COVID-19’s impact on businesses. COVID-19 is bringing crisis to most companies.

As we talked, I reflected on a perfect storm in my past. Macro political changes were negatively affecting my business, a member of my immediate family had an unexpected life-threatening medical situation, and I was facing personal headwinds with the potential to upend my private life. It was not a fun time. The stakes were incredibly high across the board. One bad decision and life could spiral out of control quickly. I was stressed, to say the least.

I learned things then that I shared today:

• 80-year-old’s lens – Fifty years from now, when I’m in a rocking chair telling my story, what will matter most? Relationships, not accolades or wealth. I needed to align my current actions with this future perspective.
• Priorities – I’m only human. My time and energy are limited, and I can’t be effective in every domain at once. Viewing things through the lens of my elderly self, I prioritized the headwinds pushing at me and put family first. I got comfortable with the idea that other balls would drop and things would get ugly before they would get better.
• Communication – I couldn’t immediately focus on lower-priority headwinds, and there were people I cared about who would be affected by that. I clearly explained my thoughts to them. Some agreed with my priorities and appreciated my honesty. Others were extremely upset. I made sure they all knew what my top priority was, how I would be allocating my energy, and how I came to that decision.
• Focus on the light – I focused on the light at the end of the tunnel, not the darkness of the tunnel I was in. I figured that once I was out of the tunnel, I’d have plenty of time to reflect on why I’d been in it.
• Experienced advisors – I pulled together an informal group of people I respected who had experience in areas in which I was inexperienced (I even sought out and paid one person). I asked them to share their experiences with me and incorporated them into my decision making.
• Emotional control – Emotionally, I was riding a rollercoaster. But I was purposeful and made sure my emotions didn’t dictate my decision-making, my actions, or my words. I took time to talk through my decisions with people I trusted and asked them about my blind spots before I took action.

Did everything turn out perfect? No. Was the process painful? Yup. Could I have done some things better? Absolutely.

In the end, it all worked out. It took a while, but looking back, I’m happy I addressed each headwind separately. The passage of time with no action on some of these problems made them worse in the short-term. But what I would have gained from trying to solve them all simultaneously would have been outweighed by the toll it would have taken on me and the people around me. I don’t think this approach would work for everyone or every situation, but it worked for me in that perfect storm.

If you find yourself buffeted by a perfect storm (and you will if you’re an entrepreneur long enough), take time to think. Navigate it your way—not someone else’s way—consistently with your ethics and morals.

I wrote a post about why I wasn’t scared to leave corporate America. In that post, I committed to providing a detailed list of all the factors that allowed me to transition without fear. Here’s the list:

• What could go right – I focused on this, not what could go wrong.
• Superman syndrome – I hadn’t yet experienced any serious professional failures and basically thought I was invincible (typical early 20’s mentality). Note: I experienced many failures and was humbled many times over while building CCAW.
• Experience – This would be my second “official” company. My prior startup experience, my education, and my corporate experience made me “feel” much more prepared this time around.
• No career path – There was a clear path to being an EY partner in 15-20 years. The downside is that it is (or was back then) an up or out career path. You progress, yearly, towards partner, or you’re out. I didn’t want to be a partner, so I knew my days were numbered.
• Can’t hit what you can’t see - Working in a large company and with other large publicly traded clients gave me a clear idea of what well-run companies looked like. I knew what I was aiming for and felt confident I could replicate it. Side note: They look like well-oiled machines from the outside, but they’re not. There’s always a fire drill, crisis or some critical system failure when you peek behind the curtains.  
• Financially de-risked – I was traveling a ton, so a large percentage of my expenses were paid by EY. I also had two roommates. This allowed me to save a sizeable cushion. Feedback from others heavily influenced how I came up with this plan.
• Business de-risked – I actually started working on CCAW while still employed and using EY resources (which was probably against company policy). I was able to build relationships with suppliers and gain traction with customers before quitting.
• Reputation – I made sure I did a stellar job on all projects and got along with all team members. I never wanted to burn bridges or have a bad reputation. I wanted to leave on great terms.

Looking at this list now, it gives the impression that I was this well-thought-out young person. I wish that was true. In reality, I wasn’t. I was actually stretched super thin and all over the place (literally, too, since I was traveling every single week). What I was actually doing was staying true to my passions (entrepreneurship and personal finance), staying true to the values instilled in me by my family (do your best, treat people well and never burn bridges) and throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck. Mix in a little luck and good timing and I found myself in a position to take a leap of faith.

Takeaways:

• Venture capitalists like betting on people with entrepreneurial experience. I now understand why. If you have an idea, give it a shot (even if you keep your job). You never know what could happen. Worst-case, you’ll learn a lot that can be applied to the next idea.
• My approach was the product of my young age and lack of responsibilities. However, I do think some (maybe not all) of the things I did might be applicable to others at different life stages thinking about entrepreneurship.
• Making the people who cared about me proud by taking a corporate job was nice, but my heart wasn’t in it. I’m an entrepreneur at heart. I like building things or helping people who are building things.
• Stay true to your passions and values. You never know where they’ll take you.

In a previous post, I shared what I learned from my first company. It taught me a ton, but I never figured out how to transition it from a hustle to something sustainable. That realization, my desire to make my parents proud, and an urge to keep up with my classmates resulted in my happily agreeing to work for EY in Atlanta. To be totally transparent, I also wanted to move to a big city and travel on someone else’s dime. (Side note: I almost accepted a job in San Francisco —until they casually mentioned I’d probably need four roommates.)

Personal finance has been a hobby since adolescence; that was a big part of the reason I majored in finance. The summer after college, I was curious what my financial life would look like with a real job in a big city. I’d never lived outside Louisiana, earned a salary, or had benefits before. I decided to create a budget for my new corporate life in Atlanta. My forecast was crude, but the exercise was helpful. Even though I’d studied finance and read avidly about personal finance, my knowledge gap was HUGE. I decided to fill that gap and get perspective from others. My hope was that I could avoid financial pitfalls.

I decided to try to get my forecast posted on a personal finance blog and ask for feedback from its readers. Getting any response from bloggers was a 50/50 proposition, I figured, and I expected a demand for compensation if they did reply. There was no downside, though. From my previous experience, I had learned the value in simply trying.

I emailed my forecast to a popular personal finance blogger. To my surprise, he agreed to post it and didn’t ask for payment. You can see the post, my forecast (don’t laugh), and the feedback here. The feedback came in quickly and was pretty diverse. There were financial suggestions, as expected, but also advice on how to live life. All these years later, I’m still surprised and thankful that this blogger and so many of his readers were willing to help me out by sharing their experiences and perspectives. Their feedback helped me prepare for life in a new city and transition smoothly to corporate America.

Here are my takeaways from the experience:

• ‍Perspectives – Everyone views life through a unique lens. For a variety of reasons, we don’t all see things the same way. There is value in trying to understand other perspectives (even if you don’t agree with them). Listen with an open mind.‍
• Knowledge gaps – Nobody knows everything. Seek knowledge from credible sources and people. It will help you make good decisions.‍
• Right answer – The right thing to do may be something suggested by someone else. Getting to the right answer is more important than being right. This is from Ray Dalio’s book, and I agree 100%.‍
• Ask for help – People are often willing to help. Think carefully about what you’d like them to do for you. A specific ask will make it easier for them to help, so they’ll be more likely to say yes.

After building a company for over a decade, I’ve recently become more intentional about mentoring new entrepreneurs (I’ll explain this decision in another post). They often want to know the story of how I started CCAW Automotive Group. Like most people, they usually don’t realize that CCAW was my second “official” company (the fourth or fifth if you count all my childhood hustles). I’ve never shared this before, but here’s the story of how I started my first company.

In high school, my dad’s close friend (I’ll call him Joe) was visiting for Thanksgiving. He saw me heads down, intensely researching, and asked what I was up to. Joe was an entrepreneur. He was super-curious about new things, and it showed. He always engaged with me differently than other adults. At the time, I was into cars and had been trying to figure out how aftermarket auto shops source their products. I figured I could cut out the middleman and get better deals for my friends and me. Keep in mind that this was 1998—information wasn’t as readily available as it is today. I learned about retail and wholesale relationships but hit a wall when wholesalers asked for my business license.

Armed with my research, I proudly told Joe, “When I become an adult, I want to start my own company selling auto accessories.”

He interrupted me. “Why wait until you’re an adult?”

The question caught me off guard. I was speechless. I assumed there was some age barrier to overcome, but I’d never taken steps to find out if that was true. Joe encouraged me to apply for a business license and see what happened. I took his advice, and two weeks later my first company was registered with the Louisiana Department of Revenue. I officially had a business (well . . . kind of).

My takeaways:‍

• ‍Take action. Take the first step. Confirm your assumptions.‍
• Stay curious. Never stop learning.‍
• Give back. Take the time to talk with anyone interested in entrepreneurship. Encourage them. You could change someone’s life!

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