Living In-Between Doubt and Optimism. // PROPAGANDA 15
This is an email sent out to the internal team at Death to Stock, but it’s been made public for those who are curious to follow our ideas and culture.
Hey Team,
We’re in a space of awesome possibility and serious risk — what a fun place to hang out, right?
It’s a space of maintaining an optimism for the opportunity that you can see in your mind, balanced by the realities of the doubts around you.
Truthfully, it’s a hard place to live. But, cultivating our ability to hang out here without crumbling or leaning too far in one direction or the other will serve us well in any venture we pursue.
As Marc and Angel put it,
“Living means taking chances that are worth taking, and making mistakes worth making”
My goal for now is to ensure that we are focusing on “shots worth taking,” because all we can do is pick the right shots to take and take them.
The way I’d define a good “shot” is this: How many things need to go right or wrong to make it?
Each shot should have only one major “if → then” statement. For example,
“If x type of customer likes ___ then we’ll add it to production”
“If we can increase revenue by ___ then we’ll hit break even.”
If our sentences are looking like.. “If college kids use it, and then we get enough restaurants to buy in, and we install x in every store, then we’ll be in a great spot..” I’m a bit more skeptical. It’s either unrealistic or it needs to be broken down into a small shot.
The “space in the middle” means there are no guarantees. Your future vision is just that, a vision of how the world could work. But remind yourself; your vision of the potential pitfalls or failures is also just that, a vision of how things could go.
How many times in the past has it worked out for you? How many times in the past did you think something bad would happen, only to have something totally unexpected occur?
I can’t guarantee much for you. I can’t guarantee your job safety. I can’t guarantee the comfort of a safe long term salary. I can’t guarantee a big cash payout.
I can’t guarantee you that we’ll have success.
What I can guarantee is this: It’s going to be an adventure.
We’ll take some shots, and they will be shots worth taking. We’ll make mistakes, and they will be mistakes worth making.
We’ll have fun. We’ll learn from each other. We’ll make up some rules along the way. We’ll change people and make a dent, however big or small.
I am committed for the long haul to serving this demographic to the best of my abilities. And that’s how I maintain vision and optimism. Every day we can help push forward the cause and the community.
I feel a responsibility to our tribe. We succeed because there are people, real people, out there that we can make a difference for and they count on us to help their change happen.
I keep that in mind when I fall into a scarcity mindset.
I am optimistic for our adventure.
I am excited to take some shots with you.
// David @deathtostock
