This page is meant to communicate who I am and how I work for current and prospective colleagues. I first learned of this concept from Claire Hughes Johnson, Stripe’s former COO, and have heard it used by multiple podcast guests on my show, Good Work.
I hope this page helps us decide whether it makes sense to work together, and if so, to work together well. I’d love to read yours as well.
Who I am As a Human Being
I live in a beautiful multi-generational household in Portland, OR with my wife of 15 years, my two sons (4.5 and 2), and in-laws. I was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, but was raised in Atlanta, Georgia on sports, hip-hop, and entrepreneurship.
From a young age I was a nerd in a community that didn’t particularly value being a nerd and in a school system that wasn’t set up to allow me to run free with my curiosity, so I pivoted to other interests before returning to my rabbit holing ways as an adult.
I think of myself as:
- A dedicated father and husband
- A servant leader
- Insatiably curious
- Earnest and optimistic
- An effective verbal and written communicator
- A skilled and experienced operator
- A data-informed decision maker
- An architect of company culture
- A brand visionary
- A committed environmentalist and conservationist
When I’m not working, with my family, or outside, I love cooking delicious food and sparking deep conversations with friends. I’m an avid hiker, skier, camper, and fly fisherman. You can read my writing here on this blog or my short form thoughts on Twitter.
Who I am as a Professional
What you can expect from me, based on feedback from past colleagues:
- A calming, steady presence
- Pace and quality
- Willingness to go first / create the first draft, even if that means looking stupid
- Ability to set and maintain our standards
- Zero tolerance for jerks and going behind each other’s backs
- Radical candor as an inner expectation – I don’t enjoy conflict, but I do value it when it helps us get a better outcome
- Detailed written communication that helps us move faster
- I want to connect with you as a human being
- I love a good pep talk – I can get fired up and fire others up when called on
Here are my high level career highlights:
- As an executive coach, I have worked with more than 25 creator-founders and their executive teams to help them grow into the leaders their teams and audiences need. My clients are typically the founder or CEO of a creator-led business doing at least $1M per year in revenue. I have trained or studied in depth in Presence Based Coaching, somatic awareness, IFS, and the Highlands Ability Battery.
- As a writer and podcast host, my essays and interviews have reached hundreds of thousands of people over the past 10 years. Good Work, my latest show, has done 50,000 d0wnloads in the first 30 episodes as I’ve interviewed authors, founders, scientists, and adventurers like James Clear, Julia DeWahl, Matt Mullenweg, Polina Pompliano, and Josh Kaufman about what it takes to make an impact and change the world with your career.
- As COO at ConvertKit, we grew the company from $3.5M ARR to $28.5M ARR in the five years I was there. We raised no funding and grew revenue while growing the team from 20 when I joined to 70 at the point of my departure. I was responsible for engineering, operations, data, marketing, sales, and customer success — everything but product — with a total of more than 50 people reporting in to me.
- As director of growth at Fizzle, led 34% revenue growth in 2015. Fizzle was an early stage company educating creators — think early Lynda for creators.
- As a strategist working for Seth Godin in 2013, I helped architect course content that led us to launch (and shutter) Krypton Community College. This became the precursor and jumping off point for Seth to launch the altMBA.
- As founder at Living for Monday, I earned a real-world MBA in entrepreneurship. I learned how hard it is to grow a company from scratch, how important it is to have clarity of vision and the hardship of being a solo founder.
- As a new college grad, I started my career as a management consultant at Ernst & Young. There I got a glimpse into the world of big business, organizational politics, and navigating existing systems to create positive change.
- You can read more about my professional experience on LinkedIn.
My strengths
I’m a deep generalist. I know enough to effectively manage across every major function of a growth stage organization. Here are some of the strengths I use to rally teams to achieve great things together. I:
- Am an Altruist – I’m driven by my desire to create a positive impact with my life. I have a strong moral compass. And I believe the future will be much better than the past.
- Set the bar high – I’m ambitious in the sense that I’m always trying to reach my highest potential and use that potential to create progress for my company and society at large. As a leader and manager, I see it as my job to help people do the best work of their lives.
- Love deep research and analysis – I am insatiably curious. When there is a problem or opportunity, my instinct is to learn everything I can about how to solve for it. I read widely, speak to people with more experience than me, and crunch numbers to help me better understand the world around me.
- Take decisive, informed action – I’m comfortable making big decisions and being held accountable for the results. Running a company means making important decisions quickly – I combine vision, data, research, and perspective from my team to arrive at the best path forward given what we know. I regularly build quick financial projections to help me understand how different decisions might play out.
- Maintain a high pace of execution – Speed matters to me. I want to do big things, to a consistent standard of excellence, as fast as possible. When we’re working to solve important problems in the world, speed means lives saved or improved.
- Am a culture creator – Of all the things we did well at ConvertKit, I believe our culture was the most magical element and I was a core architect of that culture.
- Like to have fun – when it comes to making an impact, I’m dead serious and intense. But when it comes to building relationships, culture, and understanding that life is a long journey best enjoyed along the way — I’m a goofball on a mission to help everyone have fun. Part of that fun is in building deep, meaningful relationships along the way.
My weaknesses
Every person has weaknesses. I’ve learned it’s more important to be aware of what they are than to act like they don’t exist. Here are mine:
- Either/or thinking – at times, I fall into the trap of seeing only options a and b rather than seeing a and b as either end of a full spectrum of options. Over time I’ve been able to mitigate this challenge by creating a mental model of a spectrum anytime I feel myself being pulled towards either/or decision making.
- Inner critic – in holding myself to a high standard, I often end up beating myself up before anyone else can get around to offering feedback. This can make it hard for me to process critical feedback when it lacks personal care. On the flip side, I’ve learned to proactively communicate how I best receive feedback to create the most productive working relationships.
- Impatience and frustration – because I like to move fast and make an impact, I can be impatient with a lack of progress. If I feel we’re losing time due to bureaucracy, lack of commitment, or lack of trust I can get frustrated. When this happens, it’s helpful for me to simply say it out loud in a conversation with my team to disarm it.
- Intensity – I’m a passionate and structured communicator. I’m also an ambivert who hates small talk and surface level interactions, which means I typically prefer to dig in on deep/meaningful conversations. The combination of these things means I can sometimes come across as intense or intolerant before people get to know me fully.
I work very hard to be aware of my weaknesses and put myself (and my teams) in situations to avoid the negative effects of those weaknesses. My teammates consistently tell me I’m open and receptive to critical feedback in a way that makes them feel safe delivering that feedback on an ongoing basis.
On my best days
On my best days, I’ve gotten a full night of sleep, I’m up early to spend time with the family and write before my full day starts, and I’m excited to get to work.
You’ll know I’m at my best when I’m eager to:
- Say hello and have a pep in my tone, body language, outlook
- Collaborate on a project together to move it forward
- Hit the ground running with feedback on anything that’s waiting on me
- Have the hard conversations you want/need to have so we can have a breakthrough
- Facilitate meetings with great prep and a kind coaching mindset
- Produce my own creative work
I’m likely to ask you how you’re doing, want to support you in your role, and willing to do whatever’s needed to help us keep our pace. These are probably 80-90% of my days.
On my worst days
Like anyone, I have my bad days too. These days are often related to a lack of good sleep, diet or exercise, or they come after an extended period in which I’m traveling. Bad days can sometimes get triggered by non-work life when my family is sick or in conflict, or when someone I love is not doing well. The commonality is that the burdens I’m carrying begin to get backed up and I often take on burdens that aren’t mine for others.
You’ll know I’m not at my best if:
- I’m short or snippy in my responses online or in meetings
- I seem low energy or downtrodden in my body language, tone, or outlook
- I’m having a hard time handling conversations that involve critical feedback or conflict
- I’m being asked to take on more work or emotional labor and don’t respond with clear eagerness or boundaries
- I’m consistently running late to meetings and there’s not a clear and pre-communicated reason
These days are 10-15% of my days and they often come in clumps. If you notice I’ve had a few bad days in a row, I want you to tell me. It’s quite possible you’ve caught it before I have and I can correct for whatever’s at the root of it or at least share what’s going on so I can begin to let go of burdens that aren’t mine.
It’s my responsibility to solve for this, but I appreciate it when I work with people willing to gently ask “Are you doing ok? I noticed some of the signs that you might be having a few bad days right now.” That’s usually enough to help me get back on track.
Qualities I look for in people I get to work with
Here are the general qualities I’m looking for when considering working together. This is true whether we’re partnering up on a project, you might come to work at my organization, or I might come to work at yours. I want to work with people who are:
- Mission-driven – I want to work with people who want to solve an important problem in the world and improve the lives of others. Money is not a sufficient motivator for me — impact is my number one goal.
- Culture creators – companies take years to make an impact. It’s important to me to work with a team that has depth, which means working together for years to come. That means we need to create a culture that respects people as individuals, supports joy and balance in life, and strives to take care of one another.
- Ambitious – I want to work with people who define ambition as competing with ourselves to get better everyday and make a bigger impact with every passing year. Fast pace with high standards in service of others is my goal.
- Thoughtful – I thrive alongside other self-aware, caring human beings. You probably apologize when you’ve caused hurt or harm. You probably value building inclusive environments, creating space for deep conversations to understand each other better, and/or giving individualized gifts or recognition to show appreciation.
- Committed to a standard of excellence & have great taste – I once heard the term “LGTM culture,” which refers to the idea of “Looks good to me” as the most common piece of feedback that’s given in response to a near-finished project. This is the antithesis of the kind of place I want to work. I seek out people and teams that want to collectively become exceptional at what we do. We hold a mirror up to one another that reflects our fullest potential and keep the bar high on everything we produce. Taste matters. We exercise taste as a virtue.
- Builders > talkers – I’m interested in building more than talking about building. Let’s get to the point of failure as fast as possible and then learn from our mistakes to get closer to solving the problem at hand.
Assessments and Shorthand for Understanding Me
I don’t believe any given assessment is the answer to who a person is. But I do believe that assessments and personality frameworks are useful tools for building a profile of someone, especially when the data is spread across a number of tools. So here are my results from a few different personality and cognitive abilities tests from over the years:
Highlands
The Highlands Ability Battery is a set of 16 work samples that evaluate cognitive abilities across a number of dimensions. Here are my results:
I am both certified in administering the assessment and have seen strong evidence of its validity in my client base beyond its rigorously researched data validation.
HBDI
My friend Mo Bunnell administered the HBDI to a small group of entrepreneurs at a retreat several years ago. It is designed to evaluate your brain’s preferred information processing and communication methods. Here are two screenshots describing my results, which are uncommonly balanced across the four dimensions:
Big5
The Big 5 Personality Factors are the most accepted research-backed personality model in academia as of 2024. I used UnderstandMyself.com to assess myself on the five factors and ten sub-factors.
Here are my scores, which are percentiles as compared to the general population:
Agreeableness: 77
- Compassion: 93
- Politeness: 38
Extraversion: 88
- Enthusiasm: 70
- Assertiveness: 92
Conscientiousness: 88
- Industriousness: 85
- Orderliness: 84
Openness: 87
- Intellect: 86
- Aesthetics: 80
Neuroticism: 50
- Withdrawal: 36
- Volatility: 63
You can learn more about the personality factors and their descriptions on the site above.
16Personalities
16 Personalities is a popular online personality assessment based at the intersection of Myers-Briggs and the five factor personality model. Myers Briggs has been largely disproven as valid, but the assessment does a good job of incorporating the research-backed big five factors to add useful data.
My results were:
The Protagonist – ENFJ-T
This is a somewhat uncommon personality type, at 2.5% of the population.
Here are a couple of quotes from the report:
“People with the Protagonist personality type tend to be very influential, often without making any conscious efforts to increase their influence. Protagonists are genuinely interested in other people and radiate authenticity, concern and altruism”
“Protagonist personalities usually have many strong opinions, especially when it comes to issues they consider really important in life. If a Protagonist is fighting for something, this is because they believe in the idea itself, not because of some selfish reasons. People with this personality type tend to be very kind, loyal and altruistic – they put others first and are always eager to contribute to a worthy cause. From the Protagonists’ perspective, authenticity and self-realization are far more important than materialistic rewards, and people should not be afraid to commit to something they truly believe in.”
“Protagonists are usually very charismatic and eloquent, finding it natural and easy to communicate their ideas and opinions, especially in person. It does not really matter whether they are presenting cold facts or expressing raging emotions, the Protagonist will not be afraid to stand up and speak, regardless of the audience.”
Enneagram
I am an Enneagram One.
I asked Chat GPT to give me a summary of what that means in language someone with no understanding of the Enneagram would understand. Here’s what it said:
“An Enneagram One is often called “The Reformer” or “The Perfectionist.” People with this personality type are driven by a strong sense of right and wrong and a desire to improve the world around them. They hold themselves and others to high standards and have a natural ability to see what could be made better or more efficient.
At their core, Ones are motivated by a need to be good, ethical, and aligned with their values. They often focus on self-control and discipline, striving for excellence in whatever they do. When healthy, they can be principled, wise, and inspiring leaders. But when stressed, they might become overly critical, rigid, or prone to frustration if things don’t meet their expectations.
Ultimately, Ones want to live a life of integrity and purpose, making positive contributions to their environments. They bring a keen eye for detail, a commitment to fairness, and a desire to leave things better than they found them.”
Strengthsfinder
The Clifton Strengthsfinder is a commonly used tool in business and academic settings due to its accessibility, affordability, and ease of use.
Here are my top 10:
- Strategic
- Achiever
- Activator
- Relator
- Responsibility
- Belief
- Focus
- Individualization
- Input
- Competition
Four of these are in the “Executing” domain. Two are in “Influencing.” Two in “Relationship Building.” Two are in “Strategic Thinking.” If I expand to my top 20 strengths, those four domains even out. This is common in assessments for me (a balanced profile).
I’ve taken this assessment twice, and the results (ten years apart in 2010 and 2020) varied to a moderate degree. Consistency of results over time is an important element of evaluating the validity of an assessment, so I downgrade the importance of this one based on my anecdata.
One of my gripes about Strengthsfinder is that it forces you to choose between options that you could conceivably use in equal amounts that are context-dependent. Your mileage may vary.