In my youth my father gave me what would turn out to be one of the most profound pieces of advice I have ever received. He told me, partly in jest, “Son – marry up.”
Back then I laughed at his weird comment, but I have had enough travels in my life to now have the perspective to truly appreciate the wisdom in his seemingly silly request, and I’m enjoying the benefits of heeding his advice.
What does “Marry up” mean anyway? It means to be confident and competent in your own skills, yet always be seeking to improve in areas where you are not so strong. It means to be open to exploring new ideas and to embrace others with differing skill sets and personalities. When this happens, you are better with someone than when you were without. You learn, you grow, you evolve. To quote Austin Powers, it means finding someone to whom you can genuinely say, “You complete me.”
Back then I laughed at his weird comment, but I have had enough travels in my life to now have the perspective to truly appreciate the wisdom in his seemingly silly request, and I’m enjoying the benefits of heeding his advice.
What does “Marry up” mean anyway? It means to be confident and competent in your own skills, yet always be seeking to improve in areas where you are not so strong. It means to be open to exploring new ideas and to embrace others with differing skill sets and personalities. When this happens, you are better with someone than when you were without. You learn, you grow, you evolve. To quote Austin Powers, it means finding someone to whom you can genuinely say, “You complete me.”
Successful Union
Not only did I apply this in my personal life when I “married up” by marrying the love of my life, I’ve had great success with this principle in my professional career as well. It’s this that I’d like to speak to you about today. I love being a part of the Fishbowl team. Who wouldn’t love being a part of the market leader in any space, and at that with a company that values its employees and customers alike? We’ve had unprecedented success and all signs point north that that should continue well into the future (knocking on all wood around me as I say this). Our customers shower us with praise and it is a true pleasure to be able to serve them. But even a company like Fishbowl will eventually reach a crossroads where its next best leap in growth and expansion, and ability to serve its customer base, will come by finding other relationships to “marry up.”Growing Up
For years I’ve helped small to medium size businesses (and some very large ones) get a handle on their inventory and order management needs and processes. They love that they can become more organized, cut costs and increase profits; the ROI is amazing! But as we got bigger and improved the Fishbowl Inventory product, we continued to get requests for features that our customers needed that were a bit outside of our core competency. It wasn’t that Fishbowl wasn’t working for them or that our features were lacking; it’s that our customers were identifying new features and technology products that would complement Fishbowl and help those customers make that next leap of growth and simplify their operations.
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