Book: Give First
This morning I picked up this book off my bookshelf and quickly blew through in a couple hours which I’ve been meaning to read for a long while. It’s by one of my favorite people, Brad Feld, who I was lucky enough to work for briefly while I was in college.
One principle that’s been a guide for me over the past ~2 years is to find people who have what you want and ask them how they got there (and don’t care what anyone else thinks). Brad has what I want; he’s very successful, but continues to be kind, generous with his time and energy, and thoughtful beyond required even in the toughest situations I’ve seen him in. I’m very grateful to have Brad as someone in my world to look at as an example of someone who can be both a good person and successful. When Brad publishes a book that talk about how he got there it seemed smart to read it. He’s also blogged about this stuff for a couple of decades which if you’re ever interested is a treasure trove of wisdom.
A few of the biggest take-aways I had:
The universe expands your opportunities proportional your willingness to accept randomness
When I was in college both Brad and David Cohen did these days called “random days.“ I doubt Cohen knows who I am, but I actually met him first at one of these random days during Boulder Startup Week in 2016. It was interesting to me to learn that this is actually how Brad and David met and how Techstars got started.
Your lucky break lives in the tail of the distribution on a random Tuesday from someone you’ve never met before. Your ability to see it is having the willingness to consider that these opportunities that you might have never seen as an option.
2. The energy you give comes back in multiples, you just don’t know from where
The central tenant of this book is giving without expectation. The nuance is that the goal is to not be transactional, but to still expect something to come back you, just without being prescriptive from where. It’s the virtuous cycle of giving time and energy that brings unique opportunities that you wouldn’t find anywhere else.
Respond to every email
This is tied to the first two, but Brad includes some great strategies for scaling yourself even when you don’t have time through loaning out your network. It’s the opposite of being stingy with intros — instead he always finds small bits of time and ways to be helpful even when he can’t engage fully.
The book has too much insight to summarize in a post and these are just a snippet, so I encourage you to read it! Huge thank you to Brad for continuing to live by these values.