Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By Richard Luck
Eric Fogel, the CEO of Emergent Detection, took all mymoney.
In all fairness, it wasn’t all of my money. Butit was a significant pile. And tomake matters worse, I honestly didn’t think he had it in him. In hindsight, I really thought I hadthe upper hand. It was an honestbet. I believed he wasbluffing. Or, more importantly, Itruly believed he wouldn’t realize that Iwas bluffing. As it was, the cardswere in his favor … so to speak. He was the one who knocked me out of the running at last Tuesday’s Poker2.0 match.
Eric went on to place 6th overall for theevening. I, in turn, simply had agreat night playing cards with a fantastic bunch of folks from the localstartup community. I mayhave ended the evening ten bucks poorer but the connections made that nightmay, I believe, ultimately pay back in spades.
So what does playing poker on a Tuesday night have to dowith running a startup?
Nothing, really. And everything.
To begin with, I did not want to go that night. It had been a trying day at theoffice. I had a headache. I was a little sketchy on some of therules of the game. I had work toget done. Parking can be abear at that time of night. Insertsome other BS excuse here. You getthe point: it had nothing to do with the event or the day of the week or myworkload, and had everything to do with me just whining about dealing with thestuff that every other person out there has to deal with on a daily basis.
As I was going through the many reasons I had for not going,and the precious few I could muster on why I should attend, something DerekJohnson said a while ago popped into my head: “Always Answer the Phone.”
Always Answer thePhone
It seems trite at first. Always answer thephone. Really? Shouldn’t we be giving newly mintedCEOs more heroic calls to action, like: ConstantlyStrive to be a Leader in your Industry! Or, The buck startsand stops with you! Or, Ask not what your company can do for you,but what you can do for your company!
Wouldn’t it be more honest if we were to tell our dearreaders that even we, at times, have no freaking clue how to turn a down marketaround, or that what we so often mistake for success is really just a miraculouscombination of timing, presence and luck? That even in the best of times, otherwise competent leaders can makereally, really bad decisions? Or that if we could grant you, aspiring entrepreneur, a glimpse intoyour start up future you would, more likely than not, abort the venture beforeit was conceived?
No.
Instead we say something admittedly forgetful like always answer the phone. And there’s a reason for this.
If eightypercent of success is simply showing up – and still the majority ofbusinesses don’t succeed – doesn’t it stand to reason that an unfortunatenumber of business leaders are simply failing to make an appearance? That they are failing to answer themetaphorical phone when it rings?
All businesses at their core are fundamentally aboutrelationships. Relationshipsbetween the business and its customers, its employees, the press, otherbusinesses, et al. Successfulbusinesses have honed the craft of establishing and nurturing thoserelationships. Unsuccessfulbusinesses will tell you that the market, or an immature product, or thecurrency exchange rate in Hong Kong was to blame.
Answering the phone can mean a variety of things. It can be as simple as – yes – answeringthe phone when you know there is an irate and bothersome customer on the otherend. Or it can be agreeing to dosomething without any direct or seemingly beneficial impact on your ownbusiness, like vetting an associate’s CTO candidate, or meeting for coffee with a new entrepreneur, or simplyfollowing through on a previously made commitment to play poker with a bunch ofentrepreneurs in the basement of building on Boren.
In the end you don’t know what opportunity will presentitself until you actually answer that phone call. And if yourexperience is anything like mine, you’ll find that the relationships createdand nurtured in the process pay dividends far in excess of the ten bucks or soyou may lose along the way.
Richard Luck is not a great poker player. He is, however, the founder and CEO ofLoudlever, a company which builds tools for writers and publishers. He’s betting big on bringing order tothe chaos that is rights management, and in this game you shouldknow that he doesn’t bluff.
