Blake Johnson

March 2021 marks a full year since the COVID-19 pandemic upended our world. For twelve months now, infection and death rates have dominated the news, anxiety has influenced our social interactions, and both our work and social lives have suffered immeasurably. At the beginning of the crisis, leadership was all about agility. The businesses that survived were the ones that could make quick and decisive changes. At the time, we thought we were implementing solutions that would last for a few weeks...months at the most. But now that a year has passed, it is time to examine the long-term impact of the pandemic.

I have been starting and operating businesses for about two decades now. I am experienced, so believe me when I tell you that the current confluence of a global pandemic, the upcoming election, and the dramatic shift in public perception is….complicated. The solutions people are calling for are not going to be simple to achieve.

Fred Rogers (of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood fame) once shared this pearl of wisdom with his fans:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

The COVID-19 crisis has fundamentally changed the way society and businesses are run. Restaurants and social gatherings are shut down, furloughs are happening left and right, and anyone who can work at home is working at home. We are being fed the narrative that this is all temporary, but it would be naive to think that this crisis won’t change the world in some lasting and impactful ways. A great divide is coming and it is time to ask yourself, are you a linchpin?

Have you ever thrown a pebble into a lake and watched the ripples expand? The pebble you begin with can be tiny, but eventually, the ripples will amplify to reach every corner of the standing water. That is how I look at the relationships I have enjoyed throughout my life. The relationships you maintain will ripple into every corner of your life. They will affect your health, your happiness, your decision-making, and your career. I have spoken about it before in my piece on how the people you chose to spend time within high school can be used as a predictor of success, but the older I get the more I find that this principle remains true well into adulthood.

January 1st 2020 marked not only a new year, but also a new decade. The 2010s are over and all we have got are the ‘20s to look forward to (jury is still out on whether they will roar or not). I am anxious to see what type of technology, politics, and culture will emerge in the coming years, but while we wait for the time to tick by it is worth reflecting on what the past decade meant to all of us. Personally, I learned a lot.

The holiday season is always a blur. It is busy at work, busy at home…busy everywhere. But as the last few days of 2019 passed me by, I couldn’t help but reflect on what I experienced this year and the lessons I will be taking with me into 2020.

This year was a busy one for me. I launched byte, a direct-to-consumer invisible aligner company. It has taken a lot of hard work, long hours, and course correcting but the business is doing well. Most of what I learned this year is related to growing that business. I have launched several businesses throughout my career, and so the lessons detailed below are not groundbreaking or newly discovered. Instead, they are fundamental life lessons that deserve to be repeated, and are reinforced for me year after year after year. 

I recently heard a story from a friend about his grandmother. She is a WWII refugee from Eastern Europe, who had known a lot of struggle in her early life. Now, she was old and living comfortably in the United States as she had been for more than 60 years. A friend of hers recently developed Alzheimer’s, which I think we can all agree is a horrible disease that is incredibly difficult on the family and friends of the victim. But when that friend’s wife complained about how difficult the illness was to deal with, that little old refugee responded to her with a blank stare, saying, “I don’t get it. You are warm. You have a home. You have clothes to wear and food to eat…what is so hard?”

When I was 25 years old, I was working in sales. It was exciting and stressful, and I often had no idea where my next deal was coming from. I was new to the industry. It was competitive, and the pressure to perform well was ever present. Instead of panicking, I decided to keep my head down and move forward. I would start looking for a new deal before I had even closed out the last one and in that way I kept myself busy and the stress at bay. Months later, when I finally picked up my gaze and looked around; I was surprised to find that I was the head sales rep by leaps and bounds. The journey had been nerve-wracking and unpredictable, but through that forward momentum I was able to go farther than I ever anticipated.

Different people, and the life experiences they bring to the table fascinate me. They always have. I love learning about someone’s accomplishments, how he or she achieved them, and what they learned along the way. Throughout my life, I have spoken to hundreds if not thousands of people, and I have been passively learning through their experiences.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “defense wins championships”? This nugget of sports wisdom asserts that offense, while glorified and exciting, will not actually determine who comes out on top. If your team wants to win they are better off laying a foundation and protecting the home turf. But defense-heavy strategy is often frustrating to fans and players alike. Defense is the smart way to play, but offense is more fun. Charging the line, racking up points, and playing aggressively is exciting. It gets the adrenaline pumping and makes the players feel like champions, but it will never yield great results by itself.

I was recently interviewed by a major publication on my entrepreneurial experience and the importance of tenacity and perspective.

Here are a few sound bites pulled directly from the piece:

“I start every deal from scratch – from the scouting (i.e. what business to get into next) to the financing. We only do one thing at a time, so we have no distractions and only two options – to fail or succeed.

Congratulations! You are a winner. If you have landed on this blog post and are reading these words, then I can immediately deduce a few important things about you, and I am happy to inform you that you are jackpot winner. For example, I can instantly tell that you are literate, that you have electricity, and that you are enjoying an Internet connection. Those three simple things automatically make you one of the luckiest people alive.  

At the risk of sounding like a jerk, I have a confession to make. My confession is that when I encounter someone with emotionally thin skin, I don’t coddle them. I pick on them. I pick on them until they either get stronger, or get out. So far, the results have been pretty evenly split.   

What leads to happiness? When asked that question, a lot of people list off pleasant, aspirational things. Things like loving relationships and financial security. Some people have a sum of money in their head that they think will unlock happiness forever. Other people bank on finding their “soul mate”, as if one single connection will solve all of their problems. Those things are definitely nice, but they are not what happiness is made of. Incredibly, happiness is born of struggle.

In business, hubris can serve you extremely well. Confidence in your mission, your capabilities, and your opportunities can separate you from the pack. A healthy ego can make or break a businessman, and I often encourage the people I work with to move through their career with self-assurance. But while hubris and ego can help get a project started, I have seen it become a liability more times than I can count.

When it comes to building and selling a company, the path to success is pretty direct. In order to enjoy a successful exit, business owners need to keep cost down, revenue high, and growth promising. That may sound simple enough, but just because the path is direct does not mean that it is easy.

When someone refers to the “season of giving”, most people conjure up images of roaring fires, volunteers in Santa hats ringing donation bells, and ample amounts of family time. The holiday season calls generosity forward in a way that helps unite communities in a beautiful way. I know that I personally, always find myself in a giving spirit around that time of the year.  

A few weeks ago I came across an article that completely transformed my thinking. The piece is titled This One Question Will Make Every Decision In Your Life Easier, and you can find it on Medium.com. The article profiles the British rowing team at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. They started out as a mediocre team, but once they started asking themselves “Will it make the boat go faster?” they completely turned themselves around and wound up taking home the gold.

Have you ever donated money and thought, “I wonder where that’s really going?”  It is a sad reality that donated funds do not always wind up where we think they will. In fact, you can actually find entire charitable organizations whose sole mission is to help you find other charitable organizations worth giving your money to. This phenomenon of your money not going where you think it will happens at every level. Some organizations spend most of your donation on operational expenses, some are outright scams – even the guy asking for change on the corner probably won’t be spending that money on food.

The trick is finding reputable organizations that will use your money responsibly. You want a charity that is transparent.

When people hear that I am an entrepreneur, images of power suits and beautiful office suites often pop into their heads. After all, when we see entrepreneurial success on network television, it almost always takes the form of someone in designer clothing dashing across a busy city street in order to make it to their swanky office in time for the big meeting. All decisions are made mid-stride and everyone you see is confident and successful. You know what they don’t show you? Someone crouched over a computer 12 hours a day drinking cheap coffee and pouring over spreadsheets, relying on cold hard facts rather than their gut.

Have you ever heard the phrase, Jack of all trades, master of none? What it implies is that someone who tries to be sort of good at everything, will never be incredibly good at anything. Basically, anyone looking for a diverse set of skills and a wide breadth of knowledge will never be an expert.

That describes entrepreneurs exactly.

A few months ago, I spoke with a writer at Inc. about how entrepreneurs can stay open to new opportunities, both in business and in philanthropy. You can read the full piece here. In the article, we discuss how good entrepreneurs look for openings and needs within different markets, and how working harder and longer than your competition is what will ultimately get you across the finish line. The piece more than covers why it is important to look for new opportunities, but it falls short of what a good entrepreneur does when an opportunity arrives. Here’s the big secret; that opportunity is going to change.

I am an entrepreneur. At least, that is how most people see me. I launch, grow, and sell businesses, and I have been lucky enough to enjoy some success. But while I love what I do – there really is nothing like the thrill of getting a new business off of the ground – if I am ever asked do define myself, I prefer to call myself a philanthropist. I have been focused on giving back for my entire life. Ever since the Boy Scouts taught me to value generosity, I have looked for ways to bolster others. It is the reason I seek financial success so aggressively, and why I began The Blake Johnson Alliance.

Every single person on this planet is unique. Everyone develops their own skill sets, takes different things from their educations, experiences childhood differently, and values things their own way. It is true that if you are smart and dedicated, you can turn your uniqueness into a super power, but the sad reality is that your individuality can just as easily lead to your demise.  

I am often asked what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. What skills or qualities are prerequisites for successfully launching a business? In my opinion, the most important ability in any successful businessperson is the ability to prioritize. 

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Let’s say there are four wildfires raging at one time. Three are relatively minor, but one is large, and is getting closer to civilization. What should the firefighters do? Should they attack the smaller ones first and claim easy victories? Or should they go after the largest, most life threatening blaze first? The answer here should be obvious.

Murphy’s Law states that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. This may strike you as pessimistic, but when it comes to launching a business, it is incredibly pragmatic. Throughout my career I have started a half a dozen businesses, and I noticed the same phenomenon with every single one of them. Everything I did took twice as long as I thought it would, cost twice as much, and was twice as hard to accomplish. That lesson was hard learned the first time around. It lead to a lot of frustration and sleepless nights, but ever since then the journey has become incrementally easier.  

When does a company cease to be an idea and instead becomes a real business? Is it when you get your tax ID? When you hire employees? When you accept investment? To me, the ultimate measure of a business is whether or not it can provide a product that people will buy.  

Years ago, in the midst of a heated argument, I heard someone stop the discussion and say of their opponent, “I want to hear their side of the story before I respond.” Now, I mentioned this little piece of wisdom in my previous post, “Moderation is Key,” but it bears repeating here. Instead of immediately launching into his take of the events at the crux of the disagreement, this man stopped in order to entertain the opportunity of discovering more information. He wanted to make sure he had a solid understanding of his opponent’s position before he responded with is own thoughts and feelings on the matter. This may seem like a simple thing, but for something as simple and fundamental as having all of the information before choosing a side, it is incredibly difficult, and incredibly rare.

We live in an age of automation. Jobs are being taken over by machines. I have discussed this before in my blogs, The American Dream is Quickly Dying, and The Problem with Automation, but it bears addressing again. It is shocking to me to see how drastically certain industries have changed. When I was growing up, reporters controlled the flow of news. Today, the only space left for them seems to be in deep investigative journalism, since anyone and everyone with a twitter account now covers breaking news. I used to have to book family vacations through travel agents. Now, sophisticated searching databases like Kayak and Google Flights have all but eliminated the need for one. I am sure that reporters in the 80s and travel agents in the 90s thought that they had job security, and yet where are they today? 

Today is Theodore Roosevelt’s 160th birthday. Here is my favorite thing that he ever said.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out where the strong man stumbled, nor where the doer of good deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who knows the great devotions, the great enthusiasms and who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best wins, knowing the thrills of high achievement but who if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Negotiation is an unavoidable part of life.  Whether you are negotiating a starting salary at a new job, the purchase of a home or car, or whether you or your spouse are going to go pick up your sick child from school, negotiation simply cannot be avoided.

Over the past few years, I have noticed a trend taking hold at an alarming pace – the trend of technology weeding out people’s jobs. This will not seem like a revelation to many of you.  After all, we have all seen the self-checkout lines at grocery stores and watch with bated breath as Tesla attempts to perfect a self-driving Uber. I just flew from LAX to Toronto to visit the Bombardier factory where the plane we took completely flew itself from takeoff to landing without a human being.  The pilots were there only to make us feel safe and actually fly the plane in the event something went terribly wrong – but of course, it did not. Once in Canada, I visited a McDonalds that was all but automated except for the cooks. Half of the jobs in the restaurant that traditionally had been needed were flat out cut.  It’s all fascinating but what really keeps me on edge is the slow boil of it all. Today, tasks have already been automated. Automated skills are coming next. What happens when technology replaces management, medical care (doctors) or even legal representation (lawyers)?  It may seem far-fetched but pay attention.  It’s already happening and will only continue to evolve at a more rapid pace now that the foundation has been laid.

Imagine a world in which professional sports were not transparent – a world in which the general public didn’t pay attention to games or matches.  Instead, every few days we would get news on wins, loses, rankings, and team value.  We would have no context for what a win meant, because we would not have seen the blood, sweat, and tears that went into the victory.

Growing up, the mother of a close friend of mine worked as a teacher. She always used to say that people looked at the wrong indicators to predict success. Grades, standardized testing, and essay writing almost never determined someone’s value. Instead, she could tell how someone was going to do in life based on the friends they kept in high school. If an individual spent time with people less intelligent than themselves, they were unlikely to ever reach their potential, having learned to aim lower than they could reasonably achieve. Similarly, if someone who was struggling decided to hang out with a more driven crowd, good habits were likely to wear off. Those are lifelong and largely subconscious lessons.

Last year I joined the acquisition and collection committee for the Museum for Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. As a result, I have been exposed to many different artistic styles, periods, and creators. The entire experience has led me to wonder, “what makes one piece of art better than another?” I eventually came to a conclusion after hours upon hours after considering countless pieces, genres, and artists.  The conclusion: one genre isn’t necessarily better or worse than the next but there are artists within each genre that are clearly better than the others.  

Have you ever been backed into a corner? I am speaking literally here. When you are backed into a corner, it means your options are limited. If you want to move, you only have one, maybe two directions you can go. If given the choice, I am willing to bet that a lot of people would prefer to have more freedom than that, which is why it always perplexes me when I watch people back themselves into corners with their decision making.

I once chose to go into a business with a man who had no long-lasting friendships. He had an abundance of nearly everything: energy, drama, wealth….but he lacked in one specific and vitally important area; relationships. When I looked at his personal and professional network, I noticed that everyone around him had only been present for a few years at most. He was like a billionaire Jason Bourne.

They say there are only two certainties in life, death and taxes.  I’d argue there is a third: change. Life always turns out different than we expect.  Sometimes our dreams and aspirations fade and disappear into the sunset.  Sometimes we manage to feel the joys of high achievement…but it never happens along the exact path we envisioned at the start. This realization is uncomfortable to some. The idea that we can never really execute our plans... But there is a secret very few people know. The best path, and subsequent result is SUPPOSED to be completely different than you initially planned on. 

Have you ever met someone who had a lot of passion? It is inspiring. A person with an ardent belief that things will work out possesses a magnetism that is intoxicating and contagious. A lot of people like this become business owners, and it is understandable. If you are good at XYZ, you will want to found a company that is the best at XYZ – like a chef wanting to open her own restaurant. But while these incredibly heartfelt and adrenalized people are great to get a drink with, I am always wary of them as business owners. In my experience, people like this are not successful.

We’ve all heard that time is relative, right? An hour spent watching your favorite movie passes much faster than an hour spent in traffic. Well, the same basic principles apply to personal productivity. Something you are excited to work on is likely to go much faster than the annoying tasks that you would rather not do. Unfortunately, sometimes the fate of our passion projects rely on those menial tasks that are the mental equivalent of staring at the bumper in front of you for 60 minutes.