quarterly meetings in Austin, NYC and Las Vegas, drinking amazing wine and eating incredible food, having great conversations, and all helping each other improve personally and professionally. I LOVED all that. I just hated the work I had to do for the actual job. But admitting that might mean jeopardising my place in the team — and it’s a hard problem to face, and I don’t like confrontation, and I just wanted to please them, and it’s always easier to avoid issues when your co-workers are thousands of miles away. So I ignored it.The Culmination You see how these all add up? There’s a lollapalooza effect of multiple issues here, creating a perfect storm that led to chronic procrastination, and a general inability to actually do work beyond that which is immediately necessary to prevent getting fired (in the short-term at least) But it wasn’t enough. I actually recognised and started to face a lot of these issues in mid-December, when I started having daily and weekly check-in calls with one of my co-workers, Kevin. I started to tackle them and make progress, but it was too little, too late. By that point, I’d been underperforming for months, and Tucker and Zach had to take the decision to let me go, to protect the rest of the company. That was 100% the right decision — and like I said, they probably should have done it 2–3 months sooner than that. I don’t begrudge them at all. I still had a lot of fun times working for Book In A Box, and learned a ton about writing, publishing, marketing, running a small business, customer service, project management, process improvement and about 6 other things. But here are the main lessons I take from this experience. What I learned from my time at Book In A Box 1. I need to take extreme ownership. Ironically I got this from a book that Tucker recommended to me, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. You can listen to a podcast he did with Tim Ferriss here too. The idea is this: everything, absolutely everything, is down to you. Willink uses the example of a platoon commander. Obviously things like his orders to his men, and the tactics he uses on the battlefield, are the responsibility of the platoon commander. But if his CO doesn’t give him the equipment he needs, then what can he do? That’s outside of his control, right? Wrong. It’s the platoon commander’s responsibility to effectively communicate to his CO what he needs, why he needs it, and what the consequences are if he doesn’t get it. And if he still doesn’t get it, then that’s his fault, because he didn’t sufficiently communicate that need. It was my job to do my job — but it was also my job to tell everyone else what I needed, how I was doing, what problems I was having, and ask for help to solve them. So if I was struggling to keep up, I needed to own it and make that clear. If I thought a process needed to be changed, even if I couldn’t do it myself, I needed to speak up. That was all my responsibility, and I didn’t do it. And that’s especially true in a startup, where you need to be able to operate under uncertainty, and iterate your way towards solving problems. Ignoring it and hoping that someone else will tell you what to do is a recipe for failure. 2. I need to be around people who will challenge me. I actually spent the first three months of my time at Book In A Box living with Zach in Austin, on the same street as Tucker. We spent a lot of time together, and I drastically improved professionally and personally — I picked up the job quickly, I became a lot more effective, and I also lost 20 lbs and got in great shape. It’s not a coincidence that all that happened at once (while NOT working remotely). That’s the power of being around people who challenge you. Not just associating with them, or talking to them via email, Skype, or Slack, but PHYSICALLY being around them. Eating dinner with them. Going to meetings. Sat at a desk across from them. I know I should not work remotely (at least not full-time). I know for a fact that my next job needs to be in an environment where I am around other great people: role models, mentors, friends, and people who will challenge me and push me to be better. Not that they’ll do the hard