It is 5.00AM, on a Sunday morning and I am not happiest to say that I don’t usually wake up at this hour. Hint: I wake up much much later than 5.00AM. But I have made a promise to a client, David, to run with him at 5.30AM. I certainly do not want to let him down. David is a professional consultant who’s been in the industry for years. He’s also crazy disciplined, not having missed a single day of work out since 2019.
But no, his last name is not Goggins.
So at 5AM when my alarm rings, I take the next logical step which is to snooze it and go back to sleep. Then I wake up for real at 5.20AM. I swear I am faster than Usain Bolt when I have to reach the fridge to drink some left over coffee (200ml) and I quickly don my Recompound running T-Shirt. After changing and doing speedy toilet things, I eagerly wait for David to arrive at my front door.
So David arrives on my front door and here’s a warning. This probably will sound like a major flex, please try your absolute best not to hate me.
Yes, even a flex that is even more major than showing off your Ducati Panigale, McLaren or crazy expensive wedding in Bali. I don’t know about you, but Ducatis gets old after a while.
Here is the flex:
David and I will be running for 78 minutes at 5:40 min/km pace and 12 minutes at 5:10 - 5:15 min/km as the last push.
That amounts to around 16km of running in one and a half hours.
But this run is really important because it has been advertised in Recompound IG that I will have a 5K challenge against David. He takes on the Air Force 5K on December 7th; then I will be running a Parkrun in the UK and we will see who gets the better 5K time.
At the time this post is written, we don’t know the outcome of the challenge yet. So that’s the fun part. You probably will never find out the outcome. But here are the stakes.
If David manages to beat me at a 5K, he will get a 10% off from his next invoice. Which means if his portfolio hits an all time high value and let’s say the fee is Rp 10.000.000,- then he only needs to pay Rp 9.000.000,-.
But that seems small isn’t it?
Well that’s because it is only half of the story. If I manage to beat David (which is unlikely), he will commit double the amount that he’s already committing. David has already committed a big amount. So if Toby wins, David will commit double big.
So off we go into the first 5K of the run.
David is a consultant. A smart one. The biggest job of a consultant is to ask good questions to a person who’s helping him with his investments. He also had to get his questions across, fast (ideally in the first half of the run). Because at the later half of the run… I wouldn’t be able to talk.
David: How did you start Recompound?
How did you come up with the idea?
What does it feel like running the company day to day?
The morning run session that was an active physical session quickly morph into an active running my memory session about the journey I have gone through building Recompound.
I recounted the story about the lows of a Co-Founder break up, the highs of getting our first customer, the lows of market uncertainty, the highs of getting investment from an external investor, and the highs of building a team and a solid customer base.
As I recounted the story, a part of me felt this immense sense of both pain and pleasure.
But I realised that through this roller coaster journey, I have been feeling rather lonely. My journey to lose 18kg from an overweight 93kg was lonely. Running everyday alone. Going for those long runs alone.
My journey to run Recompound also feels lonely. Going to the office alone when we were still a 2 man team. Yes, Budi is always besides me and he’s doing some coding work right now at the time I am writing this blogpost. But sometimes it feels like the journey is just me and Budi against the madness of the people in the market.
The worst part is hearing the painful story of people losing all of their hard earned money. Not just from stock market. But from crypto, from poorly managed family business, for example a Dad just gave the son a stupid amount of money. And then the son opened up some unprofitable business for the sake of “looking cool” on social media. The Dad’s money ended up down the drain. The worst part is, the Dad only got to know about the son draining his bank account when he wanted to commit and register to Recompound...
He was telling the son to use a bit of the money he gave to join Recompound. And the son was: “Tapi pa.. (But Dad...)” (the money was gone basically).
Of course, the Dad and the son do not talk about finances.
Hearing that classic example of poor capital allocation stings really badly.
So naturally I’d question my own sanity and the worthiness of going through everything. Why are we acting responsible when everybody else is trying to “game” the system. Why are we trying to be intelligent when everybody is gambling their money away?
Then it hits me
David: TOBY stay with me. Last push! Just 10 more minutes of running and we’re done.
We are at the home stretch. Come on bro. Just stick with me.
You got this.
Don’t give up on me bro.
Come on Toby!!
Haha at that point, I was almost done. My vision was a bit blurry from trying to keep up with David. I went silent and all I could focus on is keeping up with his legs being a couple of meters behind.
After a gruelling 10 minutes that felt like forever, we eventually finished that 16K run and I felt happy running with David. It was bliss + happiness that I rarely feel in my life. But after grabbing coffee, sitting down and have a nice morning chat with David, finding out that he speaks pretty darn good Spanish, I can’t help but wonder.
Toby asking himself:
Why the heck am I so happy?
Why do I feel so blessed?
The harder and the longer I paused to answer the question. The clearer the answer became. I guess the run with David is one culmination of the work that I have put in in this crazy journey. That run meant so much more to me than a “run”.
It was the exact representation and the exact outcome of being better and being more consistent in growing my business. It was a firm reminder that feelings of questioning my sanity when building my life and my business is dead wrong.
Because running with David is a living proof of how everything I have done is absolutely worth it.
Without the unseen work, the lonely journey, the tiring review of investment materials for customers, coding, answering client questions, running; I wouldn’t be physically able to run with him. Heck, he wouldn’t be a client! We won’t cross path on our lives had I stayed in my cushy job a couple of years back.
For the longest time I have always wanted a running buddy.
I’ve always thought that it is because I needed someone to challenge me to be better physically. But it turns out, David, my running buddy has given me happiness that acts as a reminder in making all the pain of going through life and business, worth going through.
Something so much more precious than a running challenge.
If you vibe with the story
It has ended for this time, but the effort of building a business and progressing to be better people is definitely ongoing. It usually requires plenty of decision making under uncertainty.
How do should we think about making our judgements better? Is there a way to optimise our decision making skills?
I believe there is! Not just in investments but in life in general. You can click the below button for us to give you ways to optimise your decision making over the next 10 days.