Middlerock is now Five Years Old!
It’s hard to believe five years have flown by already. Nicci and I started Middlerock as an entity to bill our initial clients. We had some overlap with clients, but also each had our own. We’ve taken on both big and small projects over the years, and some caused us setbacks as we fought to steer clients in the right direction and push for accountability from top to bottom. The best way to describe it is that striving for excellence is like training for a marathon and not everyone wants to participate in the sacrifices to win or even finish the race. It’s great to say all the right stuff, but character comes from doing, and doing it right, even when it’s the more challenging path.
This is a very hard topic to write about without sounding like we’re virtue signaling, but it’s a subject that comes up so often, I thought it would be worth tacking here. I get a lot of questions on Quora about starting with nothing. People will tell me that they have no money and no place to start. My response is you have your character, and that’s a great place to start. It’s how we started Middlerock. It began with clients who already trusted us.
I live under the basic premise that opportunity is what others give us. It’s all but impossible to become successful without someone else’s help and the most important help is often someone placing a big bet on us somehow. It could be a seller agreeing to finance your purchase of their company, or an investor willing to bet on you, or your fellow starving entrepreneurs who are willing to stick by your side. All of it, requires that someone else bet on you. So what can you do to increase your likelihood of support? It starts with strong character and personal qualities that others admire. If you’re smarmy by nature, don’t expect to get very far.
Everyone claims to have great character no matter who you ask. Even criminals step out of prison usually think they are the victim somehow. We rarely are aware of our blindside. I know of some companies who claim to hold high ethical standards, but their ethics are entirely situational based on the wind that day. They will only do the right thing when it’s the easy thing to do. They rip off an employee and call it an unfortunate set of circumstances because they “didn’t have the votes” to do the right thing. Never mind that nobody argued the case.
We’ve all heard the saying, go by what people do, rather than what they say. It’s true as ever! Someone can heap lots of praise on you, but if it doesn’t show in actions, it’s meaningless. I think about that a lot when we’ve advised clients. The real strength of our character as we provide a service is when we tell clients things they don’t want to hear. It often damages us financially to say the right thing, but in the end, my goal is to be proud of what we’ve accomplished these last five years.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how we represent our clients and the care we put into the success of each one. No, we’re not the firm to tell you what you want to hear. It’s not us. We will lose an occasional client who doesn’t want to hear what we have to say, but when we think of the alternative, it doesn’t leave us feeling like we’ve done our clients any favors. We didn’t build Middlerock to bullshit clients. We built it around a core believe that we have hands-on experience we want to share for a fee. It’s that basic. If a startup can’t afford us, we still do what we can to offer some help. We think of that as being a great community-minded company.
We’re grateful for the clients who place their trust in us and we will continue to build our very best company. Thank you all for considering us and placing your faith in our work. Thanks not just to Nicci, but also Keith, Joe, Jeff, Vlad, Vanessa and Kim for helping us build the perfect company.