I'm going long face to face
Day 8 of building in public
Today was a good day. I had a one-on-one with a former peer, caught up with a college friend, and reconnected with a close colleague. All three are high-slope professionals aiming to leave the tech rat race and establish or buy a meaningful local business to run long-term.
An idea that stuck with me from my own dialogue: I want to build something that my boys can take over. I want to build something they can point to and say, "That's where my dad works."
I want to build something that my boys can take over. I want to build something they can point to and say, “That’s where my dad works.”
I know this sounds ridiculous in our world of remote work and AI, but I want that, and I’m not even sure why.
I want the physicality of work, the physicality of human experience. I want to see and feel the people I work with interact in the real world, watch them grow and flourish, and build a community.
That's what we were made to do here: build community and build a life. Work was how we supported that life. For me, at least, I've gotten that upside down and tried to fit my life into the work.
As I continue on this path of building, creating, and doing it locally, I'm leaning toward businesses I can run without venture capital, businesses I can run locally, businesses I can build and that impact the community, and businesses my boys can take over.
The crazy thing is, I hear the same desire from almost everyone I know who has a high-powered job at a VC-backed tech company. We're all looking for something, and not everybody can put their finger on it, but it looks a lot more like tribe and a lot less like chatbots, Slack, travel, and async.
I'm long on sync, long on face-to-face interaction, and long on 3D.
brick by brick,
Foley