Dan Cullum

Later this week, I’m going to share a song: one of my own.

Back in April, during the middle of the UK’s lockdown, I set myself a goal of learning how to write and record a song at home.

I was nervous. I had piano lessons when I was young, and was in a number of cheeky pop-punk bands during high-school, but it had almost been 10 years since I seriously tried to write a song. Why the urge to do it now? Would I be able to do it? And of course, would it be total garbage?

So I made a commitment to myself: just have fun with the process, and find joy in experimenting with different sounds, beats, tones, and grooves.

I started with YouTube tutorials, and then added weekly lessons from producer, Jaye Locke, via his Patreon.

6 months on, and I’m finally feeling ready to share something.

Although the song still has many imperfections, it’s a reflection of where I’m at in my journey. And sharing my journey, blemishes and all, is what I do with this blog, so I’m going to do the same with my music.

Stay tuned!

If you stare at something forever, there’s no way to see it differently.

Distance from our work, from our problems, and from our own thoughts, can be the necessary to find a breakthrough.

Bamboo spends 5 years developing a strong set of roots, and then shoot 25 metres into the air in 6 weeks.

“Overnight success” is almost always preceded by years of deliberate, painstaking, and patient work.

Chocolate helped me understand debt.

When I was a kid, Cadbury Chocolates had a programme to help children fundraise for sport, music, and art extracurriculars.

You’d get a box of 20 chocolate bars, and you’d sell them to friends for $2 each.

No money had to be paid upfront. With the $40 earned, you’d have to give $20 back to school to cover the cost of the chocolates.

On those long, hot summer afternoons, the box of chocolate bars sitting beside my school bag were too much of a temptation.

I’d think to myself, “One bar, it can’t hurt, it’s only $2.”

But by the end of the week, I’d be 5 bars down, and $10 in debt to my own fundraising goal.

Mum wasn’t pleased when she found out, and the $10-sized hold in my pocket money allowance was my lesson in taking responsibility for my actions.

It’s a simple example, and not reflective of debt-in-the-real-world, but the lesson has stuck with me. Debt may be easy to take on, but there’s always a price down the line.

So unless the debt helps acquire something that will appreciate in value—such as a house or education—it’s usually something to avoid.

Today I’m re-sharing a well known metaphor—the origin of which is often attributed to author, Nora Roberts.

Everything you’re juggling right now—job, kids, health, finances, friends, mental health—is either a glass ball or a rubber ball.

Inevitably, when life get hectic, some of these balls will drop. The rubber ones, they’ll bounce back up. But the glass balls, they’ll break, scuff, or scratch.

Knowing the difference between the rubber and glass balls helps us focus on what’s most important.

“Gimme a second, let me write that idea down before I forget it.”

Is this necessary?

If it’s a great idea, it’ll come back.

If it doesn’t, it probably wasn’t a great idea.

What are the small, unimportant things you do that compound into incredible results after many years of dedication?

Brushing your teeth. Eating your veggies. Stretching. Reading. Telling your loved ones how much they mean to you every day.

Each of us have our own recipe of actions where their immediate impact is imperceptible, but their cumulative impact is undeniable over time.

All improvements in human history have been a result of someone saying, “This is stupid. We can do better.”

The critic with a willingness to act is a powerful force.

A friend of mine had a problem: her flatmates would come home every day and place their winter coats on the back of the dining room chairs.

Their dinner, study, and work table was a coat rack.

So one afternoon, she placed 3 hooks along the wall next to the front door.

The coats now had a new home, and the dining table was decluttered.

3 hooks were able to change a habit.

Small changes—or well placed nudges—can have a significant impact on the way we work and the way we live.

In startup circles, investors often talk about investing in founders, not just ideas.

Why?

Well, in a world where ideas are cheap, execution is everything.

Excellent founders can take a “paper idea”, and make it a reality.

Founders face a challenge in the fundraising process: building trust with potential investors.

With initial pitch meetings sometimes only lasting for 20-30 minutes, it can be hard to give investors the confidence required to invest. And with most of the time spent discussing the idea, the market, the opportunities, and the risks, there is little time left to talk about the founder’s philosophy, approach, and values.

So following on from yesterday’s post about my aspiration to start a company in the future, I realised something: this blog is a good representation of how I’d approach running a company.

Through my posts, I document how I solve problems, I use it to explore my own values, and I also use it to confront my own shortcomings and insecurities.

A potential investor won’t read every post, but my hope is 10-15 minutes spent with these posts will give them an insight they may not get via a more formal meeting.

When I eventually send this blog post to a potential investor, who knows how many years I’ll have been daily writing. And who knows what I will have learnt between now and then.

What I do know, however, is those learnings will have been shared here, and I’ll have turned up each day with a dedication to keep getting better.

One of my goals is to start and run my own company.

There’s not timeline mapping out when this will happen; and for good reason.

90% of companies fail.

So unless there is 1) a clear problem, 2) a huge market, and 3) I’ve got an idea that solves that problem for a sizeable chunk of that market, I’m not willing to bet the farm.

I should also mention that based on the above odds, and my pre-requisites, I’m willing to admit that this goal may not eventuate—and that’s okay, too.

Given this blog is a big part of my life, I realised it was odd to hold this goal in secret and not talk about it here.

So, here I am, sharing it.

Do you have any long term career aspirations you’ve been keeping to yourself? Perhaps there is magic in letting the someone else in on it?

When I turned to Maru after watching Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 2018 biopic, On the Basis of Sex, she had tears in her eyes.

I asked if she was crying because she was happy we’d come so far. Surprised, she looked at me and said, “No, I’m crying because even after all of her effort and hard work, we still deal with so many of the same issues half a century later.”

When I paused to think, I realised the evidence was all around me.

At one of Maru’s former companies, a senior male member of staff ridiculed the #MeToo movement. He then went on to “jokingly” tell Maru that she wasn’t allowed to get pregnant.

I’ve worked for, and seen, many companies who are proud of their zero gender pay gap, yet their leadership teams are still stacked with men.

And looking on a macro scale, a 2018 World Economic Forum report estimates it will take more than 100 years to truly close the gender inequality gap across economic, health, political, and educational dimensions.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a titan. I’m grateful I got to witness a part of her life, work, and influence, but we must continue her work.

We’re a long way from true gender equality, and it’s on all of us to make day-to-day decisions that slowly move the world to a more equitable place.

“When I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, ‘When there are nine,’ people are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg

I’m a fan of Australian cartoonist, Michael Leunig. He blends together philosophy, politics, humour, and broader social commentary into his disarming cartoons.

His recent hymn got me thinking, and smiling.

Think back to where you were 5 years ago.

Think of all the challenges you’ve faced, obstacles you’ve overcome, laughter you’ve shared, joys you’ve experienced, and love you’ve given.

If the version of you from 5 years ago could see you now, I’m sure they’d be proud.

Perfume may hide the smell.

It may even work for some time.

But even the strongest perfume won’t mask a bad odour for long.

I’m grateful to have always worked with honest people. Their lives, their work, and their ethics never needed perfume.

Their example has given me a roadmap for who I want to be, and how I want to work.