Pete Cashmore’s Secret

Nineteen year old Pete Cashmore’s parents had no idea what he did with his time, except that he was sickly, kept weird hours, and spent all his waking hours onscreen. Then one day there was a knock at the door.

It wasn’t the police, it was a tech reporter. “We’d like to talk to Peter about his amazing success with Mashable,” they said. His stunned parents called Pete down to the door and for the first time learned that their boy was not only internationally famous, he was well on his way to being a multimillionaire.

Cashmore had suffered complications from routine surgery at age thirteen that left him bedridden for years, unable to graduate from secondary school with his peers.

He spent his time on the internet and soon was absorbed in blogging. Not just using blogs, but figuring out how to make them better and more useful. He understood that they were just too “geeky” and set out to distill content in a fashion that was both more attractive and more beneficial. His following grew, he was able to sell some advertising, hire assistants, and grow out the platform.

Living in the small town of Banchory, Scotland, there was the problem of being eight hours ahead of California. When Silicon Valley was going to work it was late afternoon in Banchory, and when California’s workday was over, it was the middle of the night in Scotland. So Cashmore slept much of the day and worked most of the night, generally twenty hours a day, seven days a week, in his quiet bedroom. His parents thought he was obsessed, but since he was busy and harmless, they left him alone.

Like all highly successful individuals, Pete knew his Giftings, and he followed them. But he also understood that one’s Giftings are not a free pass. You have to understand your clients, your users, your market. “It’s all about utility, it’s all about thinking about the reader first and ‘what are they going to get out of this?’”

Pete knew that your Giftings may be the fuel, but you need to work, and work in a smart way. “Execution really shapes whether your company takes off or not. I’m very much a creative person, but you’ve got to do the follow-through. A lot of people start out with an exciting thing and they want to take over the world, but really the people who do take over the world have a good plan of how to get there and the steps along the way.”

As he built out his company, he realized that the same rules that applied to his own Giftings also applied to those of his people. “The talent that has to be learned is finding out what someone’s passion is and setting them up to realize that. You don’t get the best work from people if you’re guiding them versus them guiding themselves.”

Check out this Cashmore interview. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJg1j4zMhBI)