Yesterday was Armed Forces Day, which I guess makes this my annual Armed Forces Day reflection post.
As I write this, it’s 0540hrs on a Saturday and I’m awake because I literally cannot go back to sleep. The crushing anxiety that stalks my dreams somehow caused some acid reflux earlier this morning and my throat still stings from whatever I regurgitated in bed.
Charming, I know.
It’s been a while since we’ve spoken. About 4-and-something months. I’ve been busy crushing it with my company, Charter.
When I told a dear friend and mentor about all the insane commercial development we’ve enjoyed recently, he asked me “how the fuck are you doing all this”?
It’s a good question. How am I doing this? The simple answer is that I’m not really sure. Every day I push and sometimes, oftentimes, that effort pays out. Mostly, I send a lot of emails, get on calls, and sound like an insane person as I try to paint a verbal picture of the vision in my head to my team, potential investors, customers - anyone who’s listening, really.
It sometimes strikes me, usually as my words fail and I stammer and the person on the other end gives me a quizzical look, that I’m really better off as a writer and not an orator. Which is ironic because I’m usually most compelling in short, 3-minute bursts in front of large crowds, drawing them in with a rehearsed version of my vision for the future of space. I should’ve been an actor.
I certainly enjoy playing pretend.
But today, lying on my couch in the early morning, I will tell you about how I do it, with the help of an angry, imaginary man on my shoulder who I picked up in the Service and who constantly yells at me to stop being a little bitch.
Motivation comes in small packages
He takes on different forms, though he’s always small and perched on my shoulder. I call him Mini-Me, even though I’m not that big a fan of Austin Powers. He usually appears as a generalised caricature of a past version of myself, hair shorn close to the skull, gaunt cheeks, crazed and severe eyes. He wears a frame built to walk long distances carrying heavy things and endure pain. He is possessed of an unflappable confidence of the sort you can only get by having no experience of the ‘real’ world, that is to say, the world outside of the adult day care centre of the military. He has not yet realised the value of the oft-quoted conventional wisdom that you cannot simply yell, shoot, charge, march, or fight your way through all of life’s challenges.
Terminal Lance has a good approximation of what I envision. Mini-Me doesn’t draw dicks on my forehead though.
He screams at me to suck it up, push harder, be stronger. He reminds me that things could be worse - things have been worse, and I survived even that - so whatever challenge du jour I’m facing is nothing. I have the luxury of living an incredible and rewarding life, filled with light, doing things that are always entertaining and likely life-altering, at the cost of…what? Some minor inconveniences like unanswered emails and silly questions from those who lack my conviction?
These trivialities are inconsequential to him. Worse, they are excuses for not getting the job done. As per his urging, it is imperative that I extract my head from the warm and dark comfort of my ass tout suite, and unfuck myself in a suitably expedient fashion before he comes over and does it for me.
He is mortified at the bitching, moaning, and whining he hears from me - and he needs me to immediately cease making all these wonderfully nice trees outside my window work so hard to supply oxygen just for me to waste my breath on complaining.
As you can tell, he’s an all-round great guy. Super well-adjusted. And more eloquent than someone in his position has any right to be.
Mini-Me inspires me. Not because he’s tough or strong, and certainly not because he knows his way around the world. He inspires me because he has not yet learned to listen to doubt, accept limitations, or otherwise ‘know better’.
I once wrote a short story about a society that possessed the technology to voluntarily wipe their own memories to unburden themselves from knowledge. Soldiers did it to remove empathy and reduce hesitation on the battlefield. Teachers did it to remove inherent biases from their classroom lessons, and kids did it to clear out mental clutter like the definition for what is an igneous rock. But the crux of the story focused on writers who wiped their minds to free their imaginations.
They became unburdened by the limits they imposed on themselves by knowing.
Ray Bradbury wrote about Martian canals before we knew they weren’t possible. We are frequently the first ones to teach ourselves our limits, and we are the ones we listen to most religiously - at least, we are when the advice pertains to what we cannot do.
One cannot help but think of rats trapped in cycles of learned helplessness.
Play that hope fucking loud
In contrast, Mini-Me embodies the ideal that there are no barriers, only excuses. That conventional wisdom is just bitch-talk. He represents the dream that you can, in fact, yell, shoot, charge, march, or fight your way through all of life’s challenges.
There is a common refrain that the world is filled with structural or institutional obstacles that are unbreakable, insurmountable, and that cannot be dismantled without some massive movement comprising the unwashed and overeducated masses of the internet. The common theme is that individuals are powerless, both in terms of trying to defeat it as well as succeeding in spite of it.
Mini-Me says that this is bullshit.
The part of me that hopes for impossible things, that dreams of my dog living forever and discovering latent force powers and that I could one day look up at a sky illuminated by a star isn’t Sol, wants to believe that Mini-Me is right. That when I look at something and see all the reasons why it won’t work, I’m simply giving myself excuses not to try. That there is, in fact, a solution for every problem, and that I can find it.
That victory is always within grasp - I have merely forgotten.
I listen to Mini-Me because I want him to be right. I don’t think he is, but God do I hope I’m wrong. Because if he is right, and that all things are possible if only we press the advantage with sufficient energy and vigour, then all manner of other implications come that much closer to being true as well - that I am master of my fate; that nothing is beyond my reach and I’m not just some side-character in someone else’s plot; and that my best years are not behind me if I choose for them not to be.
But most of all, it means that my actions matter. It boils down the first-line litmus test for the success of any given venture to this simple calculus: is sufficient action is taken?
Far and away from any consideration of merit, talent, skill, privilege, and luck, it means that nothing is a foregone conclusion from the start.
There is always a chance of victory.
That is what Mini-Me means when he yells at me to stop being a pussy. To stand up and fucking go again. He’s telling me that victory is there for the taking. And because he believes it, I believe it too.
Siri, play ‘The Only Thing They Fear is You’
VCs sometimes talk about backing founders who have an ‘unfair advantage’. Often this comes in the form of some external edge - a world-class education, a killer network, or unique skills and experience that are shared with maybe a handful of other people on the planet.
And I have these things too, sure. But what advantage could be more unfair than having a tiny imaginary lunatic constantly yelling at you, and who inspires you to be more like him?
He is a man who is too angry to die. And he’s certainly too angry to let me lay down and die.
Mini-Me, and I suppose by some extension you can count me in too, is a man possessed. He, unlike me these days, is never nervous in the service. He always knows exactly what needs to be done, even if he doesn’t know how we can (practically) go about doing it. Practicality is not a consideration for him. He would scale up a 75˚ sheer cliff face wearing 70lbs of gear if the mission called for it, and he reminds me that I too once did that.
I too was once a soldier like him.
And maybe this isn’t healthy for the long-run. Who knows. But Mini-Me gets me up in the mornings. He gets me to the gym. He slaps me in the face and pours coffee down my gullet so I can go into meetings with the knowledge that it doesn’t matter what happens here because it’s just a matter of time before we win. It feels like playing with a pair of loaded dice.
I included this gif in my most recent monthly investor update:
First, I did it because I love Starship Troopers. Paul Verhoven is easily one of my favourite directors of all time, and Starship Troopers was one of the first science fiction movies I remember watching. I think we still have it on laserdisc somewhere in my parents’ house. It works well as both a parodic indictment of the unifying potential of fascistic jingoism, and a simple-minded action-filled gun-wank sci-fi romp. I regularly replay in my head the scene where Michael Ironside shouts at his platoon, “HOLD WHAT YOU GOT” and the movie’s triumphant main theme begins blaring.
But second, I did it because I hear Mini-Me repeat this at me so often that it’s seared into my mind. In fact, I would say that this one piece of information is a necessary element in understanding me, my motivations, and why I will make Charter succeed.
Years ago, as I was going through Officer Cadet School, the quote that was most often repeated to us came from Lee Kuan Yew’s 1966 speech at the opening ceremony for SAFTI, the premier military leadership institute of the Singapore Army. While describing the traits that officers must embody, he said:
“This small group of men… must be men of great quality. By that, I don’t mean just qualities of the mind because for this job, it is the character, the mettle in a person which determines whether the men you lead have that élan, that confidence, the verve, which is only possible, given dedicated and inspired leadership.”
I find myself now on the receiving end of that “dedicated and inspired leadership”, doled out by a small, angry, vulgar, and persistently optimistic sprite who spends his every waking moment exhorting me to be more than what I am. Because he, of all people, believes in me. And the great irony is that despite his size, I am in fact standing on his shoulders to reach ever higher.
And that is my secret for how I do it.
P.S. On a side note, Charter is currently hiring. Come join me and Mini-Me to build the future of satellite logistics.