Inspiration & Change

Originally published on Tumblr.

Sometimes inspiration and change come from unexpected places.

I decided to start this blog because of a fellow entrepreneur I barely know. He and I have had lunch, once. If we have a lot in common, we don’t know it, because we spent the entire lunch explaining our companies to each other.

That wasn’t so easy. We have different backgrounds, different products, and different customers. We managed, but we didn’t have time for chit chat. I still don’t know where he’s from, and I don’t think he knows anything about me.

His name is Kyle Samani. He’s the founder of Pristine, an Austin-based startup working from the same co-working space as OP3Nvoice.

A few days before our lunch, one of my co-founders sent me a link to a blog post about recruiting. I read it and thought: “This guy must be a recruiting pro.” When I asked Kyle why he hadn’t used recruiters, he told me he’d tried. The results were so poor that he decided he had to figure out how to be better at their job than they were.

Two days before New Year’s Day, I got an email from Pristine, with the content of Kyle’s latest blog post.

I was annoyed to be on his mailing list. He hadn’t asked. I don’t know why I read the email, but I did.

By the time I’d finished reading, I was surprised to have learned that Kyle wasn’t a natural blogger. For all I know, he wasn’t even a terribly good writer when he started. But he thought he should blog, and he came up with a strategy to make himself do it.

By the time I’d finished reading, I was surprised that I wasn’t annoyed anymore. I was impressed. I was impressed because Kyle had managed to do something that most marketing professionals fail to do. He got through my filters and made me pay attention.

By the time I’d finished reading, I was surprised to realize that I had to start blogging too. In his post, Kyle said: “I can say that blogging was among the top five decisions I made in my life; Pristine probably would’ve already failed had I not blogged.” He didn’t explain why Pristine would have failed, but I think I understood.

Public introspection is an odd idea. I’m pretty sure it’s going to affect me. I’m not sure it matters if it affects anyone else, but I’ll be happy if it does.