Commitment

What’s up, crew.

Been a hot minute since I told you why I was heads down and “going dark.”

Thought I’d give you an update and maybe some inspiration.

Give you a quick little timeline:

• Ran a Fractional VP of Sales company called Apex Revenue that was scaling super fast

• Acquired a tech enabled services company last August

• Took it off market because I thought the “smart” thing to do was leverage that asset to make my services company defensible and take it off market from competition

• About 6 months post acquisition I realized that the tech enabled service company we acquired WAS the true “magic”

• Knew that it would not make sense to trade a scaling mid-7-figures services company for a nearly $0 tech enabled services company

• Made the decision to invest in engineering and turn it into a software where there is far more leverage

• Started the process of shutting down substantial revenue with Apex Revenue with the aim to get to zero in order to focus on what my intuition told me was the more strategic move

• Mind you… I’ve got $1m of debt on the balance sheet, am shutting down hundreds of thousands a month in revenue, I can’t got to $0 in expenses (still about $120,000 in expenses a month to keep strategic people), and do all of that inside of a company that had $0 in revenue, basically

• Took our first dollar in May of this year on the software platform we built (www.titanx.io) whilst hemorrhaging cash

• We’re now sitting in October (5 months later) with a valuation of ~$15m and a trajectory to be at a $40-60m valuation by mid Q2 according to our M&A Advisor

And here is the few points I want to make.

I did this while not sacrificing who I am as a husband, father, and follower of Jesus.

I did this by following the Pendulum philosophy in Memo #002

Margin is a choice. I had to make other sacrifices in order to fit my focus into my finite time.

And most importantly… “commitment creates.”

I am a firm believer that we are all committed to something, whether we verbally affirm that or not.

If you are broke… you are committed to that.

If you are a bad father… you are committed to that.

If you are lonely… you are committed to that.

From your commitment comes your creation.

I was committed to building a software company with extreme value. From that commitment it was created.

I was simultaneously committed to building my family. From that commitment that has been created.

So…

What are you committed to?

Cheers,

Joey Gilkey