S1W9: Social to the rescue!
This last week the pendulum has well and truly shifted towards the social part of my life as I’ve been been in a bit of a funk after all the drama in the group projects in Wade. I’ve also been a bit overwhelmed with the volume of work we need to catch up on for the Garage Project and Business Acumen assignments. So I really took it upon myself to re-connect with ‘the good things’ in life and in particular with things outside of Wade just to get some perspective and separation to recharge.
So with that I’ve had a lot of social events and activities in the last week starting with a picnic at De Bortoli winery on ANZAC day which was absolutely glorious. The day was absolutely picture perfect, mid-20’s sunny and with good company I spent the whole afternoon with some old friends from school eating amazing food and just catching up. It was also the first time in a while that I was catching up with my old business partner and his wife and son who has grown up so much in that time and is getting better looking with each passing day.
I was designated driver but as it turned out no one felt the need to drink despite being at a winery and we all really enjoyed each others company and the luxury that comes with having a public holiday to really just enjoy ourselves with no commitments to rush around for. Saying that later that evening I had to rush back to Ormond to help out with The Thread and we spent a good few hours hashing out what outcomes and program(s) we were looking to deliver for that project.
The next day I had dinner at my sister’s place just down the road from me with her family and my folks, my mum just having arrived back from a girls trip to Amsterdam and the UK for my aunty’s 50th birthday. This was possible the best part of my week. I don’t ever get invited to my sister’s place just for a casual dinner and as it happened it all kind of happened last minute — like the invite came through an hour before…
But it was lovely, my relationship with my sister has improved over the years as she’s mellowed out, got married, had a kid — which is not to say that she’s always easy (she’s not) but I think there are a few more buffers in place between us and more maturation as well. I get along really well with her husband and of course I always enjoy hanging out with my folks who dote over me and my sister and especially my niece. A relaxed civil dinner at home with my family is rarer than it should be and I really appreciated being invited and enjoying the company and food.
Last week I was also scheduling to try and put together a friend of mine (a old college mate of my old business partner) in touch with Val from Relectrify. This guy is based in China and a total boss working in the Electric Vehicle space through NextEV and where I failed to be of any use to Val I was hoping that this guy would be able to be someone who may be useful to Val from a connections and discussion point of view. After a few rescheduled meetings eventually we were able to chat over a whatsapp phone call and I put them in touch via email afterwards. As it turned out the timing was fortuitous as Val was already heading out to Shanghai and had some tentative meetings with NextEV and it seemed like there was a good chance to meet up. Hopefully something good can come of that.
I had a few good chats with various Wader’s throughout the week and also managed to squeeze in a Catan game (I’ve been talking a big game about how good I am at it) when I should have otherwise been at a lecture. This led to a very very late ‘school night’ drinking session with some Ormondians which meant that I woke up nursing a very sore head and lack of sleep the next day for class and the back to back meetings I had the next day for the MCRC and also interviews for our Garage Project. Thankfully I had a good afternoon nap before I got on the horse again and caught up with another friend for dinner that night for Pho. Catching up with my friend Lily was great as always — talking about all things Wade, life, work, social, footy etc is always good.
Next day we had a chat with Stevan Permutico from Dimmi who told us his story around how he built up Dimmi. This was really interesting — mostly for how the story was told and what was conveniently left out of the story entirely. I had already seen this before with Greg Roebuck from Carsales who came in the week before where he told his story with a fair degree for folksy charm — when in reality he’s a competitive beast and takes no prisoners. This chat was similar but in a different way and I took great interest in it because Stevan started a online business as a non-technical guy (background in marketing and hotels) with no technical co-founder (or co-founder at all) but grew the business and sold it to Tripadvisor last year.
Many of his stories revolved around ‘being lucky’ which of course is a crock of shit, what I was able to find out was that he was able to get a board of advisors together pretty much from day dot that included a Google executive, Facebook executive and LinkedIn executive who I later found out basically drove the decision-making and quality assurance for the product. Needless to say it was hardly ‘luck’ that these kinds of people just joined a web startup with no technical lead but I did gain a real insight into what I did wrong at Rozibaby. It wasn’t until the wheels were falling off that we even thought about getting a board of advisors into the business and in hindsight that was a grave mistake. Choosing the right kind of advisors has so many advantages bringing in a network, set of expertise and perspectives that you otherwise don’t get from your team or your own personal experience. Next time I’ll definitely be doing this for the next startup!
Later that night we also had the MCR Cocktail night which was great. Obviously it was another night which I was hosting and this time I took the liberties to have a few drinks and just my social butterfly on. I didn’t really go that hard because I was planning to do a fair bit of work the Business Acumen assignment which I hadn’t really started yet. It was fun though just getting around everyone, taking lots of photos and meeting and spending time with new people. I met some friends of one of the Wader’s as well who are absolute babes as well, that definitely doesn’t hurt either!
Rounding out the week of social last week I then had a friends 30th birthday dinner at The Smith which was amazing. Again getting the chance to catch up with a different long time friendship group was amazing. I really enjoy catching up with this group and this will be one of a few events (more 30ths) where we’ll catch up in the next few weeks. The food at the Smith was amazing, the company always spectacular and I got roped into going out to Bond Bar afterwards which was not what I was planning for being tired from a whole week of socialising.
It was good though, we finished up our night at 3/4am in the morning at a Chinese restaurant eating noodles after a whole night of champagne and Belvedeere being hosted in one of the booths. It was all a bit extravagant but being hosted again by one of the gorgeous hostesses there (26, 2 properties, working at Telstra and doing this stuff for fun) certainly doesn’t hurt either.
