My Biggest Lesson: Alex Bodini

Alex Bodini currently CEO at Spin Brands as well as an e-commerce entrepreneur and investor. 

“To attract the right spouse, you need to deserve them.” 

This is a quote from Charlie Munger, who recently passed away at the age of 99. On the surface, this doesn’t directly relate to work or business, but it is one of the key lessons for anyone facing any career path. We live in a world where everyone is looking for a shortcut - a course, a piece of software, or, God forbid, a guru. Someone or something that can allow us to jump to the front of the queue and have all the success and breakthroughs that we dream of and others appear to be having. But I have come to realise that these don’t exist, and even if they do, they don’t help you in the long run. 

When we started our social agency, I wanted this too. I wanted to grow, have a huge team, amazing clients, epic work, and receive the adulation that comes with that - but it took us time to be worthy. We started at the bottom - no reputation, cornerstone clients, money, or know-how of the agency landscape. Just two people who knew how to do something very well, we knew a lot of people wanted to do that thing well and were willing to pay for it - so we kind of fell into starting an agency. We then set about proving ourselves amongst very small clients with humble ambitions - and as we built on success, we realised that every single part of the business had to level up as we worked our way through the industry. Creative ideas, execution, post-production, quality control, client servicing, strategy, training, finance, recruitment - the list goes on. Each part of the business had to improve to make us worthy of the next challenge. 

We’ve still got a long way to go - but we’re in the process of being worthy of the next calibre of client. Each time we have to step up - the step feels higher, and a degree of self-doubt kicks in - but this is the joy of it. 

Once you’ve climbed that step and you have a new vantage point, you very quickly realise a couple of things: 

- It feels great to be worthy of being at that table. 

- It feels even better knowing that you did it the right way. 

- You know it’s more likely to last as you had to learn the right lessons yourself. 

So my advice would be, no matter what endeavour you are taking on - enjoy the process of becoming worthy and deserving. You will only attract the things you want once you deserve to attract them - and shortcuts rarely work.