What 'all in' actually cost me
I told you about the 12-hour flight home from Dubai. The phone ringing before I could get in the shower. My boss saying come back, and me standing at the airport again by 6am, flying the exact trip I had just finished, in reverse.
On LinkedIn that reads like a badge. Here is the fuller, dumber, more honest version.
I never unpacked the bag. It sat by the door the whole few hours I was home. I am not sure I slept. I know I did not shower before I left again, because there was not time. I flew the same 12 hours back, landed in the same heat, walked into the same store, and got to work like the round trip home had been a coffee break. That is not a heroic image. That is a grown man treating his own body like carry-on luggage.
And I did it without blinking. That is the part I want to sit with, because at the time it felt completely normal.
That was me all in, helping build Apple stores across 20+ countries. All in has a cost, though, and nobody puts the cost in the highlight reel.
Here is one piece of mine. I am a Type 1 diabetic. Have been since I was 11. My blood sugar does not care what continent I am on or how many hours I have been awake. I have gone dangerously low on a plane at takeoff, strapped into a seat with no fast way to fix it. Every one of those turnarounds was me rolling that dice again. The schedule was brutal on anyone. On someone managing a disease every hour of every day, it was a real gamble, and I took it over and over because the job asked.
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The other cost was time. Years of it. I was on planes when I could have been home. I was in mechanical rooms in cities I can barely picture now. Washing my clothes in a hotel sink when flights got canceled. Splicing wires at 3am because a contractor got it wrong. I gave a company the best hours of a decade and I never once asked whether it was reasonable. You donāt ask. When you are all in, āreasonableā is not a question you let yourself hear.
I want to be careful here. I am not telling you this so you feel bad for me. I chose all of it, and I would not trade what it taught me. The standard I built in those years is real, and it never left me. When someone hands me their capital now, the guy who got back on the plane is the guy who shows up. That has not changed and it will not.
What changed is who I do it for.
Back then I got on the plane because a boss said come back, and saying no felt impossible. Now I get on the plane, so to speak, because I decided to. I run a debt fund. I buy buildings. I still work like the mission is real, because it is. Someoneās money is on the line. But I am not doing it for a person who owns my time anymore. I do it for people who trust me with theirs. That is a completely different thing, even when the effort looks identical from the outside.
I work for people who trust me, not people who own me. It took a decade of 6am airport turnarounds to earn the right to say that, and to mean it.
So yes, I got on the plane. I would get on it again tomorrow. The only difference now is that it is my name on the ticket, and my choice at the gate.
If you ever want to know who is really handling capital before you hand any over, that is the whole test. Watch what they do when saying no would be completely fair.
That is the standard behind Blue Eyed Private Debt Fund I. Link in profile if you want to look.
Eyes Open,
Jon