From BCG to CEO forum to entrepreneur and investor, what have I learnt?
Reflections after one year of founder life.
On my way to Friday morning yoga with Sage Hall today, I had a new insight to the question: how do I measure my success?
A year ago, I did an interview with Ashmeet Sidana, Founder and Chief Engineer of Engineering Capital, and asked him how he defines success of life. He gave a brilliant answer here, emphasizing alignment—aligning thoughts, words, and actions.
I’ve been thinking about how “I” measure my success, especially after becoming a founder. The new insight I had was:
Success should be defined by both traditional and non-traditional metrics. And the non-traditional metrics are personal and should be defined only by you.
For example, as an entrepreneur, traditional metrics include revenue and number of customers, to keep things simple. But if I only look at these two numbers, whenever they are not going up, I feel miserable since it feels that I am failing and I am making no progress.
But, when I look at the non-traditional metrics which are important to me personally, the picture shifted. These personal metrics are:
· Am I learning new things?
· Am I growing and expanding personally and professionally? (You feel it in such a strong way if you are constantly being pushed to the edges)
· Am I doing meaningful work?
· Am I loyal to myself, in the words I speak, actions I take and decisions I make?
· Am I centered (fully engaged in whatever I am doing rather than constantly thinking about the next thing)?
· Am I brave enough to say no? (I used to become very uncomfortable when saying no to people, but entrepreneurship cured this disease in a big way because I can’t afford not to.)
There are ups and downs for my performance of these personal metrics. But overall, I score way higher on the non-traditional metrics defined by my personal value compass as a founder than when I work in corporates. Partly because now I have FULL control of my life, my time, my energy, who I talk to, when I talk to them, via what channels, when to work out vs work. And I have noticed that when I focus on the personal defined metrics, those traditional metrics also tend to show up with better results.
I have noticed myself often having intense bursts of extremely high energy to perform at beyond-my-peak level at predictable times (usually around 10am-11am after a workout). I also need to plan alone time relax time to do absolutely nothing (literally nothing, like staring at the wall) to recharge and operate sustainably. Both times require not to be disturbed, not to worry about getting back to someone, free of meetings, and usually need big open space or at least the feeling of expansiveness. Hard to achieve in the corporate world, but easily achievable as an entrepreneur.
Therefore, another insight:
Productivity flourishes to its peak only when one has full control of his life, including the ability to become fully aware of one’s energy, strength and weakness, and how to operate most efficiently. Don’t talk about your team not having ownership or agency when you do not give them real ownership or ample freedom that allows agency.
Just as in good fictional writing, the protagonist needs to realize that he or she needs not to be acted upon by the ups and downs of daily lives. Instead, they have the full agency to ACT no matter what circumstances life throws at them. That agency is what captures our attention and makes us care as readers.
So that was the first insight.
As I progressed during Friday morning yoga with Sage - by the way, Friday 9am yoga with Sage was a big reason why I left my corporate job because I found myself having the VERY BEST ideas after the session during my maternity leave; it feels like utter clarity and lightness – I had another a-ha moment.
Which was:
What I care about the most in life is, and has always been, the art of creation.
I am the happiest, most satisfied, most ME, when I create. By create, it simply means building something new. A new article. A new product. A new event series. A new educational program. A new platform connecting global VCs and startup founders.
This is partially why I identify myself as an artist, in addition to business woman, entrepreneur and investor. I know Ray Dalio may disagree as he recently posted that “Good managers are not artists or scientists. They are engineers. They do management systemically and not randomly.”
I believe, that anyone has the opportunity to become exceptional entrepreneurs. We tend to view the world through the lens in which we had the most experience in. The world we ending up seeing and the life we end up living are closely related to what we believe is possible.
Maybe Ray Dalio doesn’t have much experience in the practice of arts. For any serious artists, the so-called “inspiration,” often comes based on a solid foundation of hard work which is systemic and often very boring to the outsiders but exhilarating to the artists.
Without persistent dedication devoting to their passion, constantly dealing with failures and getting back up and trying again striving for success, the artist couldn’t even recognize the “inspiration”. Nor would they have the capacity to materialize and manifest the inspiration through their familiar methods or the craft they spent years mastering. The end result, such as a sudden shoot to fame art piece, may seem effortless. But little is known how much non-randomness underlies the seeming randomness.
Another reason why I identify myself as an artist is that I believe any good artists have only one goal: to achieve mastery. They may sacrifice social time, or even feel guilty for not spending enough time with family as they are absolutely focused on creating their very best life’s work. For example, when I write, it feels like being captured by the demons (some higher spiritual figures) that I could not possibly perform any other tasks.
Another belief I share is that exceptional arts have no rules, just as a good life has no rules. The artists need to define their own rules based on taste, experience, values, views on the world, and a lot of practice to see and feel what works and what doesn’t for them.
Similar to entrepreneurship - it’s never about listening to someone’s advice and following others’ well trotted paths. It is about doing. Experiencing things for yourself. Getting first-hand information.
There is not cheating out of it whereas in the corporate world, there are some (lots of) ways to cheat. For example, creating a certain “perception” to get promoted is the biggest waste of time in my view. Any single minute you spend on “perception” is distracting you from doing real work, creating real value, and is more detrimental than you think.
On building LHLovingLife
When I first embarked on my journey of entrepreneurship, I started doing a lot of interviews, predominantly with investors and founders. It was my childhood dream coming true. Check them out here.
After having done 40+ interviews and publishing the majority of them in various forms, I had several insights:
ONE: It takes an awful long time to edit the interviews, so you have to make sure the conversation itself is worth the efforts.
I usually spent at least 10-20 hours editing an in-person interview, since it was shot with 3 cameras. Simply getting all the footages in, deciding what content to keep vs cut, when to shift camera, getting the color schemes match from 3 cameras is a lot of work.
And in addition to full length conversation, we usually create highlights (best parts of the conversation), trailer (30-60s with some b-rolls to keep it visually stimulating) for easier consumption.
On top of that, I usually write a Fei Bo reflection piece, adding my own personal views on what are some valuable insights and how I view the conversation, which requires a lot of watching and rewatching the conversation to come up with something meaningful to say.
As I progress in interview series shooting, I started to make adjustments, mainly
1 – Be more selective of who I invite to be on my show. The guest speaker must possess enough “content” to make all the post production worthwhile.
2 – Relentlessly remain editorial independence. I tell all my guests. We can shoot this interview but I do not guarantee publishing. Also, I do not need to show speakers my clips and writings (final products) before publishing.
TWO: A second insight is that every single time, the off-the-record conversations are better than the on-camera conversations, often by a lot.
Maybe because people feel much free without the camera to say what they REALLY think. Or maybe because we have warmed up throughout our 1-2 hour interviews, and then the guest has developed more trust with me so that we can now speak about more “secret” “real” stuff.
Therefore, I always make sure I leave some buffer time for off-the-record conversations.
THREE: Increasingly, I find the best way to know a person is not through conversation but from working together. There’s limitation to the power of media.
The single most important reason I started Loving Life Conversation Series is that I wanted to bring more authenticity to the world, to show the world in real terms more ways to live, think, work, create and BE. I increasingly find the means of “media” to be limited, in that words are a very singular and particular dimension to communicate. A lot is already lost when translating from actions or values to spoken or written words.
Gradually, the media show has become a way to make friends for me. And today, if I really want to get to know someone, I just tell him why and usually we ended up having coffee or lunch, and in some lucky cases become collaborators on passion projects which opens up a lot of possibilities.
LHLovingLife in 2024
With all the reasons mentioned above, I am updating the positioning of LHLovingLife.
Original positioning was:
A media and education company that empowers everyone to be the best version of themselves.
The updated positioning is:
An education company that empowers everyone to be the best version of themselves through curated content and network.
The change is on defining the role of media to LHLovingLife. Media now is more seen as marketing (build brand, generate sales leads and support company culture), and the curation of content serves the purpose of education.
The reason is that: when you are a media company, the traditional metrics are views and likes and engagements. More often than not, one has to “sacrifice” the authenticity or quality of content to serve the goal of increasing views and likes. No matter what platform you publish on, you need to decode how to drive more traffic and execute accordingly (sometimes you have to publish content just for the sake of publishing, not because you have anything meaningful to say).
For me, I am only interested in creating serious work, not to entertain, but to inspire and influence and to have real impact on people’s lives. I find it meaningless to sacrifice the quality of content in exchange for more traffic. I did an interview with a well-respected photographer Thomas Roma, and he said, “Beyoncé has tens of thousands of people come to her concert in a gigantic stadium. Toko Taylor sings ‘I’d rather go blind’ and breaks your heart in a small blues bar in New York. Can you say Beyoncé is more exceptional as an artist?’
In 2024, LHLovingLife will continue building more high quality educational content and programming centered around careers, entrepreneurship and VC investing.
The focus will be on ever-green content that rings true across sectors on accelerating your careers while living a fulfilled life.
We are expanding our offerings to companies who care about giving employees more power to not only contribute to firms’ bottom line but also living a fulfilled life (the two should be aligned).
Finally, we are building a platform to connect founders and investors across the globe, especially for early stage tech founders. So, if you are fundraising for your startup or fund, or if you have capital and would like to have access to high quality early stage global deals, come and talk to us!
My yoga class with Sage is coming to the end. Everytime after Shavasana, we will rise and Sage will say something. Today’s message was:
“As we celebrate the holidays and approach the new year, don’t forget that the world needs you. The world needs you not just to be here, but to shine, to contribute, to show everyone who you are and what you do. Remember that.”
I believe it is so important to participate, to contribute, to BE in a BIG BIG way in this world to make your existence in humanity the most beautiful wonderful marvelous creation that nature has ever made.
With love and gratitude,
Fei Bo
Founder, LHLovingLife