Good evening to everyone in the network and good life after a really nice Portugal vacation (God, I love that country). But back to our notes now, cause I'm sure you missed them!
People ask me quite often why I go to so many events.
They wonder why I get involved in so many projects and why I am constantly on the move.
I'd say that at least for me leadership does not just fall into my lap while I sit comfortably at home. Isolation is a single point of failure in leadership architecture. If you try to scale purely on your own processing power, you are stuck in the Localhost Trap (throwback to what I teach the people in my team). You are running complex code in a vacuum where it cannot be stress-tested or corrected.
To survive the fuzzy zones of your career, I always work on architecting a Personal Board of Directors (PBOD).
If you are walking into Mordor, you do not do it alone. You assemble a fellowship. You build an RPG party with very specific, complementary stats.
Here is how I structure mine:
⚔️ Challengers
Friends who are relentlessly pushy. They ruthlessly stress-test my limits, question my assumptions, and constantly ask if I am using my time effectively. They ensure I never get complacent (quite frustrating sometimes).
🛡️ Supporters
My lifelong close friends who act as my operational voice of reason. They check my psychological safety, ask if I am pushing myself too close to burnout, and pull me back from thermal shutdown (or at least they try to).
🧙♂️ Experts & Connectors
This is why I go to events. These are the industry gurus and high-bandwidth routers.
Going to meetups is exactly like investing in your base stats in a classic RPG. Initially, you spend hours at these events and it feels like there is zero immediate ROI. But slowly and steadily, you build a roster of experts.
Then, one day, you hit a massive operational roadblock. Instead of panicking, you realize you have someone in your network who has already survived that exact sticky situation. That is the moment you get a massive, compounded multiplier on your base value.
It took me almost 8+ years to build this network.
It is an absolute cornerstone of how I navigate the market.
If you are just sitting at home, I'm sorry to say, but you are a ticking time bomb. You will eventually hit a systemic failure (and wonder why), and you will not have the external connections to help you debug it.
The Leadership Reality Check
Continuous investment in your network yields compounded results over time.
Take a moment to think right now as you read this: Who is currently sitting on your Personal Board of Directors? 🤔