I have spent nearly 70 percent of my professional career, and 30 percent of my entire life, as the founder and CEO of N6A. It has become more than just a job and career endeavor for me.

When I first started our business, it was just before my 27^th birthday. My wife was pregnant with our first child. We had just moved into a new house and had a mortgage to pay. My wife just left her job as a schoolteacher at PS 205 in Brooklyn to go on maternity leave. I had the crazy idea of starting a business despite all the life changes that were happening around us.

For the past 11 years, N6A has become an extension of my life and the most important source of pride and self-accomplishment outside of my wife and three daughters. This captures the essence of a founder’s connection, the connection that a founder has to his or her company. This is the reason it’s often difficult for founders to pass the torch to new operators as their businesses grow and scale.

Luckily for me, it was one of the easiest decisions in the world. Why, you ask? Because we get to keep it all in the family.

I have had the privilege of working alongside some amazing people over the past 11 years. Our new CEO Daniela Mancinelli is a world-class executive and an even better human being. We have been in the trenches together for more than a half-decade now, and she will bring an incredible humility, work-ethic and vision for continued growth that is so vital in today’s business climate. She will also bring a unique connection to our brand that is so rare to find in founder-owned businesses. I cannot wait for clients and employees to see her operate as a CEO.

We also have so many other people supporting us in new leadership roles, many of whom are longtime N6A-ers who truly deserve the opportunity to shine at the next level. There is no better feeling than seeing other people earn promotions from within as a result of their hard work, dedication and appetite for learning.

As for me, I am excited about what the next chapter holds, both inside and outside of N6A.

For starters, we have set up a family office holding company called North Sixth Group, which will own interests in N6A. This will be used as a platform to continue building the N6A brand, expanding our reach and capabilities to better service our clients, and to pursue strategic opportunities.

I will be staying on as Chairman of N6A so I can spend time working with our clients on entrepreneurial and business challenges, and to help our employees through culture and innovation programs.

Outside of N6A, most of my time will go to pursuing other passions, including strategic opportunities and investments aligned with the mission and vision of North Sixth Group, which is to invest in “Passion, Purpose and Progress.” Through North Sixth Group, I also am going to be dedicating time and resources to give back to the people who have supported me and played an important role in my journey over the past 11 years.

I can’t wait to share some of our plans in the weeks and months ahead. Until then, I couldn’t be happier to welcome our new CEO, and to keep things all in the family.

#EmbraceThePace

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When we first introduced Outcome Relations, it was the result of many years of sitting in front of business leaders and CMOs and listening to the same common challenge that all of them were struggling with: They wanted their PR spend to align with specific business outcomes. Outcome Relations addressed this by creating a PR service model which combined earned media, amplification and KPI alignment to support clients’ specific business outcomes across six critical categories: revenue, recruiting, M&A, capital raise, enterprise value and competitive.   

We’re now excited to take the next step in our vision for Outcome Relations with the launch of N6A Enterprise Value Services. 

Traditionally, public relations has never been accountable at a board level for achieving specific financial outcomes. Our vision is to change that, and that’s exactly what our newly formed Enterprise Value Services group is here to do. 

N6A Enterprise Value Services was born out of a strategic partnership with the Berlin Group, which is led by world-class investor relations and financial industry veteran Lawrence Delaney, Jr. Larry has served as an embedded investor relations advisor for public, pre-IPO, and earlier-stage companies for the past three decades.

Our Enterprise Value Services group will enhance and expand our Outcome Relations offering by giving clients a financial extension to their marketing function in order to help them achieve specific financial and shareholder outcomes, including defining and reaching valuation targets, IPO preparation, public company investor relations consulting, shareholder communications, and outcome-driven liquidity events. 

Our Enterprise Value Services group will be hard at work with our clients’ C-level management and boards to align the marketing and finance function in order to add value to their enterprises. Larry and his team will work with early-stage, pre-exit and enterprise-level clients with a range of services customized according to the needs of each. Here’s a look at the group’s full range of services:

• Investor Relations and Strategic Services: Investor relations planning and strategy; IPO preparation; public company investor relations consulting services; valuation analysis; quarterly shareholder video conferences; and additional stakeholder communication needs assessment.
• Investor Marketing and Production Services: Investor presentation refinement and assumptions-testing; online investor portal development, email-linked multimedia investor updates; point of contact for investor queries; and physical and virtual investor events.
• Analyst and Investor Outreach: Investment community relationship cultivation and management; shareholder analysis and targeting; analyst and investor call preparation and management; and deal and non-deal roadshow support.
• Financial Communications Services: Investor-driven disclosure policy guidance; PPM and other registration statement drafting support; earnings and other financial press release consulting; investment profile and fact sheet creation; annual and quarterly reports; and proxy statement and other shareholder communications.

We’re thrilled to welcome Larry into the N6A family, and to introduce N6A Enterprise Value Services. It is another important step in our vision for Outcome Relations, where marketing and business outcomes are in full alignment. 

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My three daughters Viviana, Valentina and Simona were born in March 2010, July 2011 and June 2013, respectively. All three of them have essentially grown up with my business. They know me as dad around the house, but professionally they know me only as the founder of my business. For their entire lives I’ve been the founder and CEO of N6A, and that’s the only professional title with which they associate me. They have been surrounded by my business every day in some way, shape or form, since they were born. Perhaps none of them are as inextricably linked to my business as my eldest daughter Viviana, who was born just a few short months after I started the company.

On March 25, 2010, I sat in the delivery room at Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, NY, when my wife gave birth to Viviana. I was brand new to entrepreneurship and I was brand new to fatherhood at that time. I look at my daughter now and she is a beautiful, confident young girl who is entering her pre-teen years. As our business has grown, so has she. Just like I’ve learned valuable lessons about entrepreneurship over the past decade, I’ve learned infinitely more lessons about fatherhood. Those are the lessons that are most important to me, not the ones that I’ve learned about being a better professional. Ironically, through my professional work, she taught me an important lesson about fatherhood.

Viviana at 1 week!

As anyone who has started a new job, career or business during the same period in which their child was born can attest to, the relationship between children and careers are inextricably linked. When children and careers grow up on parallel tracks, you often remember life events and associate them with career milestones. People have a way of remembering specific life events and associating them with new jobs, new career beginnings, and new professional milestones.

For example, the morning before my daughter was born, I remember hiring our first employee. The day after her Baptism I remember we signed our first office lease, and the day of her first birthday coincided with a major milestone industry award that we won. I remember her taking her first steps not in my living room, but on my office floor. I remember her picking up the phones for our employees once she learned to talk, taking the train into the office with me every summer, and sitting in a moving box when we moved into our first office.

I used to be ashamed and disappointed in myself that I was unable to simply remember my daughter’s life events without any association whatsoever with my business. I used to feel like Viviana got the short end of the stick because her father was always thinking about work in some capacity, and it was difficult for me to disassociate my business in its entirety whenever we were sharing a life event.

I used to feel guilty about these things until Viviana taught me an important lesson in 2018. At that time, I was debating whether to sell our company to an interested party. I decided to disclose the news to Viviana.

“Daddy might sell the company,” I said.

Of course, my daughter didn’t understand the economics or any of the professional consequences that would come along with the decision to sell the firm, but she immediately understood the lifeconsequences. She went on to tell me how content she was with her life, and she remembered so many of the same life moments that we shared in my workplace.

In that moment, it was clear to me how much she associated my business with her childhood. The most gratifying part as a father was that, all her memories were positive and demonstrated that she had learned important life lessons through her exposure to my work. She looked at my business, and in her own eight-year old mind, it was clear that she associated it with life lessons that build the character and values that all parents want their children to have. Values like female empowerment and equality in the workforce, financial risk taking, and the power of self-belief and self-confidence.

These were values that were important not just on a professional level, but on a personal level. In that moment, it was clear to me that through my work, I had impacted my daughter in a meaningful way. From that point forward, I stopped feeling so guilty about taking my work home with me.

My daughter taught me a valuable lesson about the relationship of children and careers. She taught me that your career can be one of the most powerful platforms to teach your kids the most important lessons that a parent could teach.

Thank you, Viviana for teaching me this lesson. I love you. Happy 10^th birthday.  

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When we launched Outcome Relations (OR) in 2019, it was the product of sitting in front of thousands of CMOs, CEOs, founders and brand marketers over the past decade and hearing the same concern: how can PR align with specific business outcomes? When we defined the OR model, we knew it directly tackles this pain point by assigning PR the same level of accountability as other components of the marketing stack. 

We’ve loved spreading the OR gospel whenever possible, so we recently launched a monthly webinar series to give business leaders some key insights straight from us. 

In our first session, we covered how businesses can define desired outcomes in order to link PR to ROI, how to clearly define target personas aligned to your desired outcomes, how to drive credibility assets to support desired business outcomes, and how to create an inherent level of accountability and attribution for normally imprecise PR metrics with Outcome Relations.

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Unsplash

We covered a ton of ground on our first webinar, and we’ll get to cover even more in the subsequent sessions. But you can only get to so much in 20 minutes! Below are a few of the questions that we didn’t get to that we felt will illuminate our OR model even further. 

Can you elaborate more on how you can connect credibility assets to ROI?

• The first place to look is the ROI relationship between each credibility asset and amplification asset. For example, take a credibility asset such as a contributed article that is published for your brand in a trade publication. Let’s say you amplify that credibility asset through two different channels; one is a LinkedIn campaign that promotes the asset and another is an email newsletter that showcases the asset. You can measure the impact of leads generated from both channels, and then, ultimately, the conversions of those leads to sales. That will help guide you on ROI metrics that resulted from the credibility asset. 

Can you elaborate more on the process behind clearly defining targeted personas within the OR model?

• You need to get as specific as possible with creating personas in order to properly select the credibility assets and amplification assets that will drive outcomes for each campaign. For example, let’s take a revenue campaign. Get as specific as you can with creating the target buyer persona; i.e. what is their job title, are there any geographic locations where they operate, what is the size of the company, etc. The more specific you can get with defining the personas the more effective the ROI will be on the outcome campaign.

How can OR address the quantity over quality problem when it comes to measuring what success looks like in PR?

• Ultimately, it’s all about outcomes with OR. Therefore, some campaigns might be measured on a qualitative basis, where there are fewer results but the results are more impactful once they are secured; while other campaigns might be measured on a quantitative basis, where there are a high-volume of results but they are less comprehensive in nature. The ROI on the outcomes will determine if a qualitative, quantitative or combination approach, will be the most effective.

Why is recruiting the most unheralded outcome?

• The talent function is typically one of the most expensive lines on a company’s P&L, regardless of size and industry. Between internal and external recruiters, rewards programs, culture initiatives, training and more, brands spend a significant amount of money to recruit and retain talent, and understandably so. The role of PR, and the relationship between credibility assets and amplification assets, can be one of the most effective channels to attract talent to your organization. In many cases, this can be an easy offset to expenditure in other areas of your talent function that are not driving anywhere near the same value as PR could drive if it’s practiced properly with the outcome approach.

How do you suggest approaching OR if you have a small marketing team without a demand gen function?

• Be smart, scrappy and resourceful. Even small marketing teams can effectively amplify PR results to drive outcomes in the absence of big budgets or extensive resources. If you don’t have the luxury of big budgets for paid media, look at channels to amplify credibility assets such as email newsletters, organic social and landing page creation.

If you didn’t get to join us live the first time around, be on the lookout for next month’s session!

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Below is an excerpt from my book, #EmbracethePace: The 100 Most Exhilarating Lessons Learned in a Decade of Entrepreneurship that is now available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. This book was an opportunity for me to reflect on 10 years of being an entrepreneur and business leader- navigating through the good times and the difficult. As we currently face uncertainty amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, we will be donating all proceeds from my book sales for the next three months to the CPD COVID-19 Rapid Response Fund – a fund that will support the most vulnerable populations to help build their capacity for response. These will include social service organizations focused on supporting hourly wage earners, workers in the gig economy, immigrant/New American populations, older adults, people with disabilities and other communities vulnerable to the physical health, mental health and economic impacts of the pandemic.

Throughout your career, your back is going to be against the wall many times. So much of your career will be defined by how you handle this adversity. I can think of many regrets in my career that came as a result of handling adversity poorly. 

Panicking, thinking of myself before others, taking myself too seriously. These are examples of some of my failures in dealing with adversity.

In time, I’ve learned that humility and humor are the most effective qualities to lean on when you’re faced with adversity. 

In the spring of 2019, we had to close one of our offices in Canada. We did everything we could to make the office a success for years, but eventually we ran out of options. The office was burning a hole through our P&L and restricting us from making important decisions to invest in our core business. We had no choice but to shut it down. 

This was a pretty devastating moment for me. As a result of poor decisions that I made as the leader of our company we were forced to shut down an office, resulting in other people’s jobs being eliminated, relocated or reduced. Several of them had been with our company for a long time. They were all exemplary employees and were nothing more than innocent victims of poor decisions that I made that led us to that point. 

Any time you’re dealing with adversity like this, the most important thing to realize is that you are there to make otherpeople’s lives comfortable, not yourself. With the office being shut down, some people would lose their jobs while I got to return to New York the following day and resume my duties as CEO of the company. 

Humility will guide you through adversity like this and help you get through it as best as possible. All of the aspects of humility – accepting responsibility, putting other people’s interests before your own, helping others leave with dignity – proved to be an important lesson that I learned during this time of adversity. 

Similarly, I’ve found that having a sense of humor during times of adversity is also important. 

Beyond the Canadian office closure, we’ve been faced with many other moments of adversity over the years. Just like any business, we’ve had to confront scary issues such as sales droughts, budget challenges, personnel problems and disruptive economic events. Just like humility is important, I’ve found that leaning on your sense of humor will help you get through times of adversity. 

Humor will help you keep things in perspective and remind you that everything will be all right. When you’re in the midst of a moment of adversity it seems like it’s going to last forever and you’re never going to make it out alive. In moments like this your sense of humor will guide you through it just like your humility will. Your sense of humor will remind you that you’ll get through everything, and you’re not going to lose your career or business over it. And guess what? Your problems are probably insignificant compared to real problems in this world in the grand scheme of things.

Humility and humor. These are the best allies you can have when you’re faced with adversity in your career. 

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In January 2011, I was putting the finishing touches on our inaugural year in business. I was introduced to an older, well-respected gentleman who ran a successful consulting firm that had scaled considerably since he founded the business. I was looking for some advice on how to scale to the “next level”, and he was kind enough to take me out to dinner.

He said that out of 100 entrepreneurs who tried to do what I did in their first year, maybe 20 of them would have succeeded. “Congratulations, you are one of 20,” he said. I immediately asked him what it would take to get to the “next level”, and he said that of those 20 entrepreneurs, only about 10 would get there.

He offered me advice on what it would take to be successful at the “next level” – hiring, infrastructure, delegation and cost structure – things that weren’t even a blip on my radar that would suddenly become a necessity to scale to the “one of 10” stage. I spent the next year listening to his advice, and our company became “one of 10.”

The following year, he told me what it would take to get to the “one of five” stage – innovation, risk assessment, financial discipline and P&L management.

More than a decade later, we still meet for dinner each year and discuss surpassing each stage and what it will take to scale to the “next level”.

The one common thread is that, there always seems to be a “next level” no matter how good you are at your job, no matter how big your business is, and no matter what your aspirations might be.

My ultimate career goal is to one day build N6A into a large global company, and to run the organization alongside all the other people who helped get us there. The level of impact, stimulation and complexities that come with running a large company are the ultimate test for an executive. My goal is to one day put my management and leadership skills to the test at that level. Many people say founders and entrepreneurs are not effective CEO’s of large companies, but I’m determined to defy that notion. I am motivated by the challenge of proving myself at the “next level”. 

To this day, I still hear doubters and naysayers tell me, “Matt, you are a great entrepreneur, but you are unproven at the next level.” This drives me to keep getting better and working on my skills so that one day I can successfully manage a business of that scale. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this over the years, and here’s the lesson that I’ve learned.

We are all unproven at the “next level”.

Photo by Ran Berkovich on Unsplash

If you’re an entry-level employee who just broke into the workforce, guess what? You’re unproven at the “next level”.

If you’re a first-time manager, guess what? You are unproven at the “next level”.

If you’re a recently promoted Chief Financial Officer after spending the past several years in different mid-level financial management roles, guess what? You’re unproven at the “next level”.  

If you’re an office administrator who now has responsibility to handle inventory for a second office, guess what? You’re unproven at the “next level”.

If you’re the CEO of a publicly traded company who’s dealing with an external crisis for the first time, guess what? You’re unproven at the “next level”.

The truth is, there’s always a “next level” and it means different things to each of us. No matter who you are and what you’re looking to accomplish in your career, you will always have a “next level” at which you’re unproven.

Being unproven at the “next level” has become a great source of motivation for me. I hope there is always a “next level” for me, and I always get the chance to prove that I belong there, just like I hope you can prove that you belong at the “next level”, too.

Here’s to the thrill of being unproven at the “next level”.   

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The lesson about how I learned to always pay it forward in my career goes back a half century. Like most good things that my career has produced, I have other people to thank for this lesson. It is a story of harmony and friendship that breaks through racial and socioeconomic barriers, and captures the true essence of what it means to help each other out.

In the early 1970s my mother was a first-year second grade schoolteacher on the south side of Mount Vernon, NY. The city was racially divided at that time, with the majority of the north side being working-class Irish and Italian families, and the south side being predominantly black and Hispanic families. There was my mother, in her early twenties, the daughter of Italian immigrants, choosing to get her career kickstarted on the south side of Mount Vernon as one of the only white teachers in a school whose students and teachers were over 90 percent black and Hispanic. That took a great deal of courage and self-confidence during this era.

In her class was a young black student named Dawn Short. Dawn immediately took a liking to my mother and looked up to her as a role model. Dawn continued to visit my mother as she went through elementary school. The two stayed in touch for many years. Dawn would approach my mother for advice and conversation, and my mother and her developed a close bond that would last for years to come.

Even though my mother never told me this, I’m convinced that Dawn helped her get adjusted to life as a teacher just as much as my mother helped Dawn develop into a confident and intelligent young woman. That is a beautiful lesson in itself.

Years later, Dawn would go on to achieve great things in her career. Eventually she rose to become one of the most powerful human resource executives at Sony BMG, and one of the most successful female executives of a Fortune 500 company.

Fast forward to 2005. Yours truly had just graduated from college and was in desperate need of a job. I searched far and wide, but couldn’t get an offer anywhere. I went on job interview after job interview only to keep receiving template style rejection letters in the mail and in my email inbox.

After much lamenting to my mother, she decided to put in a call into Dawn. It didn’t take much convincing at all. Being the selfless person that she is, Dawn arranged for me to interview with the marketing department at Sony BMG. Soon after, I received an offer which I gladly accepted. This became my first full-time job and marked the beginning of my career in marketing services. A year later, I parlayed the Sony BMG job into an agency job, and then a few years later I started my own business.

I have Dawn to thank for helping me get my start in business. She used to call me her little brother and she would look over me as if she were a big sister, which I desperately needed when I was working at Sony BMG, as I had just lost my older sister a year earlier. I’ll never forget the many late night calls I would get from Dawn to check on me and see how I was doing, or all the times she would swing by with a smile and put her arm around me when I needed one.

N6A CEO Matt Rizzetta (middle) on a mentorship panel for high school students to “pay it forward.”

This is really a lesson in harmony and the importance of always paying it forward. My mother helped Dawn by serving as a maternal presence for her during her formative years, and Dawn paid it forward by helping me get my career started decades later. I’ve always tried to remember this lesson and pay it forward myself whenever I’ve encountered a young person in their career who is in need of a favor.

We all have people in our careers who have paid it forward to us and have put us in the position that we are in today.

Thank you Dawn, for being someone who paid it forward to me. You gave me my start in business, and really are a big sister to me.

Embrace the Pace: The 100 Most Exhilarating Lessons Learned in a Decade of Entrepreneurship, from N6A CEO Matt Rizzetta, is available for pre-order before its official release on March 14, 2020.

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Growing up Italian-American in New York, it’s impossible for your life not to revolve around food.

Turkey was merely window dressing on Thanksgiving. The real Thanksgiving meal was a continuous flow of antipasto, lasagna and cheesecake until eventually you exploded. Christmas Day was just a continuation of the prior night’s feast of fish, and the words “I’m full” were actually translated as “you need another plate” in the dialect of old-school New York Italians. Meals were never over until zippers popped, and a fresh jar of Brioschi (the Italian version of Alka-Seltzer) was always served to wash down the contents of the meal.

Even if I gained 10 pounds over the summer, my grandmother would tell me I was “losing weight.” And God forbid I didn’t put on a few pounds before the school year started — that was immediate grounds for a psychological evaluation and a head examination.

This was my life growing up. My greatest childhood memories are over food, typically in a family setting, all of us sitting at one table.

When I started our business in 2010, I wanted to establish many of these family-style traditions at the company. I saw firsthand the galvanizing impact food could have on family and other loved ones, so I figured it could serve the same purpose in the workplace.

Even though budgets were tight in the early days, we found a way to scrape together enough money to pay for everyone’s lunch on Thursday. The staff got to choose from any local restaurant. There was only one rule: We had to eat together.

I learned quickly that, just like with family, food brought our team closer together in the workplace. Correction: It wasn’t food that brought us together — it was meals that brought us together.

I learned that food is nourishing, but meals are galvanizing.

Food itself doesn’t do anything to bring people closer. It’s sharing meals, interacting and exchanging stories that inspire unity among people. Our lunch tradition was a great way to create bonds and team chemistry in the early days. We were just a few people nestled into a shared office in midtown Manhattan, but through our weekly meal together, we were able to learn about one another, discuss goals for the company and develop the chemistry that is so essential during the start-up phase.

Our weekly lunch is still happening, and it continues to be a source of excitement among our employees. Everybody wants to see what’s on the menu each week and looks forward to interacting with their teammates over food. In fact, I can’t recall any week we ever skipped our Thursday lunch.

Beyond our Thursday lunch, we’ve grown our meals budget considerably over the years. Now we also have pizza Fridays, monthly custom omelette stations, Thanksgiving team meals and my personal favorite, our Seis de Mayo celebration, our own version of Cinco de Mayo, complete with a mariachi band, margaritas and Mexican specialties.

In our earlier days, when our team was much smaller, my mother-in-law Teresa used to come into the office a few times a year and cook for the staff. The meals were extravagant and everybody loved them. They usually consisted of homemade wine and sausage, fresh pasta, eggplant parmesan and pastries from the legendary Villabate Alba on 18th Avenue in Brooklyn. The staff got a real kick out of it, and some of our most galvanizing moments came during these meals.

Even in one-on-one settings, I’ve always preferred to conduct my most important meetings over meals. Quarterly budget meetings, monthly executive off-sites with my chief operating officer, annual performance reviews with my direct reports, management retreats and goal-setting sessions — each of these is conducted over a meal. I’ve found it brings my direct reports and me closer together and creates a relatability and a connection between us that is difficult to replicate in an office environment.

I’m sure if you look back on your career, you’ll find that some of your most memorable moments with co-workers have happened over meals. Not over food, but over meals.

Food is nourishing, but meals are galvanizing. That’s a lesson I’ve learned since childhood and that has served me well in the workplace.

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When I first started our business, I was an impatient and naive twentysomething with a misguided sense of what success was all about. I’ve kept the initial business plan that I built for N6A when I was 26 years old, and from time to time I’ll look at it and laugh. It’s funny to me, because these were the superlatives that I used to define success in our business plan back then: “immediate,” “instant,” “sprint.”

Back then, success to me was nothing more than a sprint to see how fast I could make it, how big I could build it, and how disruptive I could be in the shortest amount of time.

In reality, elements of this probably contributed to our early success and survival during our formative years as a business. However, I’ve learned that these are hollow, shortsighted and unfulfilling principles that are the furthest thing from making you a success in your career.

When I evaluate myself today as a business leader and when I meet with people of all walks, including entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, prospective employees and entry-level youngsters, I am no longer interested in overnight success stories. I am no longer interested in instant gratification or fast-tracking the road to success. I am much more interested in two words:

Consistency and longevity.

These are perhaps the two most overlooked qualities in one’s career.

Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash

Anyone can be a one-hit wonder — just ask Milli Vanilli or Fountains of Wayne (I’m dating myself now!). I’m no longer impressed by one-hit wonders who boast of quick success or have achieved overnight stardom. But find me someone who can churn out Top 40 hits consistently, year after year, and now we’re talking.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve seen many people in my network strike gold. Some of these people remain close friends of mine to this day. Many of them were in the right place at the right time, riding the waves of tech booms, perfectly timed venture capital windows and bull markets. I would never take anything away from their accomplishments. In fact, many of them have an innate ability and vision which I could never dream of having. However, while they’ve had successful outcomes, I wouldn’t necessarily call their careers a success.

As I’ve gotten deeper into my business and career journey, I have seen that the true success stories are the ones whose careers are defined by consistency and longevity. These are people who have achieved sustained success over long periods of time, oftentimes reinventing themselves in order to constantly churn out winning outcomes year after year. They might not have experienced some of the big wins over the short term that others have, but over the long term they’ve achieved consistent success without many blips. 

Case in point: I can name hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in my network who have had successful financial exits in a relatively short horizon. These are people who have struck gold quickly and got out at the right time.

However, I can name only a handful of people in my network who have achieved consistent winning outcomes, year after year. By winning outcomes, I don’t necessarily mean financial outcomes, although that is one metric for determining success. Beyond financial outcomes such as profitability, shareholder returns or valuation increases, winning outcomes in your career could mean other things, such as employment creation, promotion rates, product innovation, customer success track record and impact on others. To me, those are the true “one-percenters,” and the ones who embody what it means to have a successful career.

As I look back at the decade we’ve been in business, I wouldn’t say we’ve ever had one grand-slam year. However, we’ve had 10 consecutive winning years of consistent profitability, innovation, job creation, improvement and growth. I don’t think that I appreciated this as much as I should have in the early days, but nowadays I’m very proud of our track record when it comes to consistency and longevity.

When all is said and done, I want my career and business journey to be remembered for consistency and longevity, and I’m fine with it even if it comes at the expense of short-term gratification.

My ideology around success has changed quite a bit since I was an impatient and naive twenty something.

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In the early 2000s, when I was still in college, I competed as an amateur boxer. This culminated in March 2005 when I found myself in the Copacabana on the west side of Manhattan, competing in the quarterfinals of the New York Golden Gloves, the most prestigious amateur boxing competition in the state.

Photo by Ashutosh Sonwani from Pexels.

I was just two fights away from making it to Madison Square Garden, the most legendary arena in the world, for a chance to win the Golden Gloves title in my weight class. I had a sizable cheering section of family and friends, all of whom traveled far and wide to watch me fight. I had trained so hard for the fight: an intense, six-month regimen of daily jogging sessions at 5 o’clock in the morning, ring training and sparring battles at Morris Park Boxing Gym in the Bronx, and a maniacally strict diet of egg whites, fruit and water. All of the sacrifices from the prior six months were finally going to pay off for me on that night. I was convinced that I was going to win and I would go onto Madison Square Garden for a chance to win it all.

Then it all ended in one minute and 47 seconds. I had been knocked out, ruled out by a standing eight count from the referee. My dream of competing at Madison Square Garden was over in less than the amount of time it took to listen to a Missy Elliott song (she was at the top of charts that year). So was my boxing career.

That was the last time I ever stepped foot inside of a boxing ring. Three months later, I graduated from college, started my career and left behind my boxing dreams for good.

It’s been almost 20 years since that knockout loss in the Golden Gloves, but some of the most valuable lessons that I’ve carried with me in my career to this day come from my experience in a boxing ring.

The most important one? Never stop fighting.

Just like in boxing, in your career the outcome is never in your control, but the effort always is. As disappointed as I was that I lost the fight that night — I still think about it to this day — I am proud that I never gave up. I made the sacrifices, put in the daily effort and work required, and fought until the bitter end when the referee ruled me out.

I’ve had much bigger and more significant losses in my business career than I did in my boxing career. Through it all, I’ve learned to never stop fighting. I will always get up for the next round. So far, unlike in my boxing career, there has yet to be a referee who has counted me out in business and told me the fight was over.

I’m not proud of all the outcomes that I’ve produced in my career, and I’ve been far from a perfect person at times, but I am proud that I have never stopped fighting through it all. I know for a fact that, if I had stopped fighting at times, my entire career trajectory would have turned out differently. I probably would have given up on business much sooner. I likely would have stopped trying to scale when it became painfully stressful. I also have the same commitment to my direct reports. I will never let them stop fighting, no matter how difficult it gets at times.

Who would’ve thought that one of the most valuable lessons I would learn in my business career would come from a minute-and-47-second knockout punch in a boxing ring? But in fact, it did.

Maybe that punch didn’t hurt so much after all. Never stop fighting.

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