Betting on the Right Horse
When Power Design chose to endorse Wyndham Clark, they certainly picked the right partner in 2023. Power Design is a design build firm for the construction industry and seen as a partner to a developer’s vision. If you’re a developer and you’re going to build a building, a design-build firm like Power Design is not a bad choice. In an industry where a developer is just the conductor of the orchestra, the design build firm might be your violinist - a significant player in a successful symphony.. Considering Power Design is a happy partner of Xeal’s, we were excited to see Clark win the US Open - it reminded me of the notion, ‘pick your partners wisely.’
While Power Design is not Nike or Goldman Sachs and therefore is unlikely to drop the top dollar on an endorsement of the #1 player, their endorsement of Clark is a ‘bet on a horse’ in a race. The better the ‘horse’ performs, the more favorable the brand becomes on the echelon of brand awareness. The higher the expectations of success and visibility of an endorsable player, the more expensive the endorsement. Needless to say, endorsing Scottie Scheffler or the iconic Tiger Woods is more expensive than endorsing Wyndham Clark. Like any bet though, it’s a risk return tradeoff, and betting on an underdog only to then watch them produce a huge success is the ultimate reward for taking the risk. This balance of talent risk reward is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Do you pay top dollar for the #1 or do you bet on the hungry horse? Do you pay for experience and expectation or do you bet on potential.
I vividly remember sitting at a bar in Chicago with my CEO a few months back and we were talking about this very paradigm. He took a bet on me when I wasn’t the CRO of a formerly sizable company because he saw the hunger in me and my willingness to figure it out - I’m eternally grateful to him for that. I also took the bet on him as my leader because I knew he had the hunger and the bulldog mentality to win at all costs. Sometimes that’s what it takes. We all can point to the people in our lives that took bets on us at various stages. Similarly, I think about this paradigm for my own team. While I’m no Billy Beane, I’m not playing moneyball, every hire is a ‘bet on a horse.’
A horse can be trained but the underlying DNA is engrained. A person can be trained but their underlying motivations, intelligence, work ethic are the uneditable DNA strains. I needed to be trained - everyone does - it’s part and parcel for any company. As we’ve grown the team, we’ve gotten smarter on how we snus out that ‘DNA.’ I was having a drink with a CEO of an early stage tech startup in Dallas last week and he said that he asks every new hire to go through a personality assessment to identify grit, mental fortitude and ambition. His rationale was the same as mine - If you’re going to welcome someone into an early stage business, make sure they have the underlying motivation to make it happen at all costs and prepared to put in the work. I was taught early on that if you wouldn’t work with them for life, don’t work with them for a day. That’s even more true at an early stage company where you rely on each other in a more impactful way and it’s likely also true for endorsements where you’re putting your name on the line for someone else’s performance.