Welcome to my Public Journal. Here, I share the journey of building a company, my thoughts on life, and the random things I find useful.
Why are you getting this? Because at some point, our paths crossed. This is my way of staying in touch.
So, here’s a confession: this weekend, I signed a ghostwriter.
I’ve realized I need to put myself out there on LinkedIn, but with limited time and resources, I’m bringing in a content guy to help keep me engaged and pumping out content (I also internally cringe a bit when I think about writing LinkedIn posts three times per week).
You might be wondering: “Wait, is Gabe going to stop writing this newsletter himself?”
Of course not! Writing this public journal is cathartic for me.
Anyway, enough about my content strategy. Let’s get to the real updates.
For my Healthcare Readers:
I’m at HLTH this week! If you know any providers attending, I’d love an intro. And if you’re here yourself, I’d love to say hi :)
Flowline Health:
If you read my last update, you might have thought, “Wow, Gabe’s getting pretty big for his britches. Three customers and he’s already celebrating!”
Well, let me be clear: these britches are too big for me. In fact, I’m practically swimming in them!
The last two weeks have been a reminder of just how humbling sales cycles in healthcare can be. Deals I thought were at the finish line stalled, potential customers got busy, and I did a poor job keeping up the momentum.
My big lesson? The most important thing to optimize for is speed. After a demo, when the ROI is clear, I need to be better at keeping people focused and excited.
According to my little sister (a rockstar saleswoman at AWS), I need to build relationships outside of my champion so I can have multiple ways to drive deals down the field. Else, I might get stuffed at the goal line.
Story of the Week:
Exactly a year ago, I was staring at the ceiling of a hotel room at 2 a.m.
I was jetlagged, a bit hungover, and suffering from a horrid bout of insomnia. It was an odd moment to discover an internal truth: “I need to quit my job.”
For the last year and a half, my life was on a train I had never meant to board. I was on the tracks of big tech. Each stop meant working with kind and smart people, solving interesting problems, and racing to win one of the biggest infrastructure races in all of humanity (building AI data centers).
It was suffocating.
This feeling didn’t come from the job. It didn’t come from the people or the work-life balance (all of which were actually pretty great). It came from the truth that had just bubbled up to the surface.
If I never took the shot on myself, I would die a regretful man.
At this point, you might be thinking, “Wait, didn’t you quit 10 months later?” And in that, you’re right. What people don’t tell you is that knowing that truth doesn’t solve one central problem: it’s still really scary to quit.
But knowing that truth sparked action. I started setting goals. I began looking for ideas. I started offering to do side work. And most of all, I met my cofounder (shout out Andrew). So when I had my shot at Flowline, I took it.
Thought Bugs
“Your goals are a contract with yourself.“
This was something I heard from My First Million (terrible name, great podcast).
This hit home, especially when my daily habit tracker looks like this
It’s a reminder of two things:
I probably don’t need to track whether I took creatine every day.
If I don’t believe that I’m consistent and dependable, how can I expect others to?
Very hard to tell if you or your ghostwriter wrote this update… but the britches meme gives me some faith