Love it.

An email exchange with a dear friend

On July 1st I received this email from my friend Evan with the title “love it.” What follows below is our exchange back and forth about success and social media and sharing ourselves. I found Evan’s words to be spot on and asked if I could share them here:

From Evan:

“When we last caught-up in NYC, I enjoyed asking you tons of questions about the challenges of balancing your work with your family, and enjoyed hearing about the joy you got from having a full-time job and being able to give away your other work for free. It’s really fun to see that come around full circle again — where now that work you gave away for free has become a product, and you’ve clearly found a voice, an audience, and a way to have such a powerful impact on the people around you.

Thank you for being an inspiration, Mathias. You’re awesome.

Best,

Evan”

My response:

“Thank you Evan

It means a lot to hear. Especially from you.

I still plan to find another full time job actually. As exciting as it is right now, it is emotionally too volatile. The ups are high for sure. But the lows are also more frequent. The world tour is designed to fundamentally incorporate lots of little failures as a way to be efficient with resources and time. But they still feel like failures even if they are planned for and part of the system. The emotional toll is felt.

Even as Think Clearly is currently carrying our entire family financially (which I am incredibly proud to say that it does) I think I am still more interested in being part of something that is bigger than me and learning from that.

I try to share the success of the bootcamps and cards because I am proud of it and partly because I want to keep selling stuff (now that we are fully dependent on it) but I would also like to convey the more nuanced picture of how it actually feels.

From your vantage point, does it look like all success and happiness?

Also, would you mind if I publish this email thread?

Mathias”

Evan responded:

“Thank you for your candor. What you shared does not sound like success and happiness, at least not the euphoric, glossy, hollywood version that we’re made to believe is possible. Rather, you convey a more realistic version of (hard won, commendable) success that brings with it certain conditions.

First, there are the conditions of sustaining that success and the relative stability: you work, every day, for the next ticket sold, deck of cards shipped, or subscriber earned (or donation given). If I were in that position I would be anxious about that suddenly stopping … since suddenly that would mean zero income. This is why a subscription service is indispensable in situations like this … and other diverse sources of income that balance each other out (and complement each other).

Second, there is the fact that your work engages individual people. This means that they have what they experience to be a personal relationship with you, and yet you have a quasi-personal relationship with them (bounded by the limits of your human memory). If I were in this position, I would wince every time someone unsubscribed from the email list, or be silently saddened by each empty seat at a bootcamp, even if I knew that I only needed 50% attendance for it to financially work.

Third, your work is very much tied up with your individual self — Think Clearly is a brand, and yet you are its primary ambassador. If I were in this position, I would feel a kind of pressure to consistently live up to the expectations of that brand … in effect, to be able to perpetually think clearly about my own life as well as be able at a moment’s notice to create that space for someone else. That takes a superhuman amount of effort, focus, and presence, and a degree of perfection that is not possible.

Finally, there is the fact that each step along the way was well-considered and well executed, they were successful experiments in growing your income, influence, and building your brand. If I were in this position, I would feel pressure to be happy and satisfied, to be able to set aside the anxiety and embrace the “dream” of having built a successful project from scratch. My own discontent with the reality of that success would lead me to question my own values, ambition and motives.

My emphasis on “I” statements in this response stems from my desire to empathize through imagination without putting words in your mouth. It’s possible that some of these feelings resonate with you, it’s also probable that many of my imagined feelings are not relevant. Either way, I wanted to share an honest response.

Save travels,

Evan

[I don’t mind you publishing this email thread]”

I forgot to ever respond to this generous email but Evan checked in 2 months later:

“Hey Mathias,

I just noticed your post that you recently joined SYPartners. Congratulations! I’m excited for this new step in your personal and professional journey.

I’m a bit curious — this prior response that I sent, how did that land for you? If it was completely off base, don’t worry about mincing words. :-)

Best,

Evan”

My most recent response:

“Thank you Evan

I’m not sure why I didn’t manage to reply. But your response landed perfectly. You articulated very beautifully through your gifts of empathy very much how I feel in all these situations. You catch the details so well. Ok, I have long stopped looking at whoever unsubscribes (because that is, as you imagined, just negative energy) but recently I had to clear out a lot of fake signups by looking for suspicious addresses/patterns incl people who never ever open a single email. I saw names of several people I know on that list. People whom I thought were subscribed (technically they are) but who actually never opened just a single one of my emails. Ouch.

And on the relationship asymmetry you also perfectly point out, I also have anxiety around forgetting someone’s name or our past exchanges and thus inadvertently breaking the illusion of a personal relationship. Because of course I can’t keep track of everyone. I can have an intimate presence with people in a room. I can listen. See them. Even have deep exchanges on Whatsapp in the moment. But just this summer I have had 100+ new people who participated in a bootcamp and probably another 50 who were interested and with whom I corresponded.

It’s a mess. And every day I live with the fact that some of these people might experience me as a total dick who never responds properly (I mean, I don’t even know what you might have felt given that I didn’t respond to your most generous email) and who can’t remember what we already talked about. And I won’t even know about it. They might even tell someone else about me and say “yeah I tried talking to him but he seemed to be totally …. and I think he is a ….. so don’t waste your energy on him”

I try my best. To treat everyone kindly. And to live with the fact that at the speed I have been running I will not succeed always.

I still have two more confirmed classes to do in Brazil later in September and I’m hoping to sell at least one or two more before the end of the year. But it’s completely out of my control really. It takes a Mike (the guy who pretty much single handedly made three classes happen in Australia) a Sara (who basically sold out the London class) or a Lars (who convinced enough friends to join the Zurich class so it tilted in 48 hours) to make it happen. But they come to me. I have tried to ask others for help. And many people say they want to. But it’s been the Mikes and Saras and Larses who had decided for themselves that they wanted to make it happen, who did.

That’s also why I am so happy and grateful that I now have a stable project with SYP. I’m hired for 4 months on half time contract to create this new Learning & Development role and then most likely we can hire me full time in January.

I’ll publish this thread on medium now.

Mathias”