Hello world

The lore and mission of Nothing planned

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

— Winston Churchill

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Intro

There have been countless times when I’ve joined a call with an organization looking to engage us. Occasionally, they’ll try to extract free ideas or strategic guidance before signing a retainer. When this happens, I usually redirect the conversation subtly. If they persist, I politely end the call—and they typically never hear from us again.

There’s always been something infuriating about these interactions: a lack of professional respect coupled with the assumption that we’d toss a gold bar into the water for them to grab and swim away with, as if we were born yesterday.

But my perspective on this has evolved. Offering advice freely doesn’t mean the recipient has the capacity to fully understand or execute the idea. Assuming a prospect can take that gold bar and swim to shore presumes a level of competence that doesn’t always exist. Smart players know this, which is why they rarely engage in such tactics. That’s also why they’re the ones who ultimately choose to partner with us.

That said, we’ve decided to pull back the curtain and offer you a front-row seat. This is your chance to see and hear, play by play, what good growth strategy really looks like.

Lore

In the summer of 2016, Samuel Rasmussen and I, fresh off running a Congressional campaign, decided to embrace our insanity and start a business.

Our first idea? A complete failure. We attempted to launch a fintech startup with zero dollars and even less knowledge. What we did have, however, was a cause-driven idea: a platform to help students navigate the confusing world of student lending.

As young politicos, we saw how poorly our peers understood their options when making life-altering financial decisions. We wanted to bring transparency to the process and empower students to make informed choices.

While pitching this concept to a friend at a family office, I was introduced to a Managing Director. That introduction led to a job offer at one of the family office’s portfolio companies—delivered over coffee.

By the end of 2017, I realized that despite the allure of a stable paycheck, I was restless, and frustrated with the beaten path and working in service to a mission that wasn’t my own. The need to blaze my own trail became overwhelming.

In early 2018, Group697 was born.

We were still largely clueless, but we could write, and we could sell. Group697 began as a way to fund our first startup, but it quickly demanded more and more of our attention. Ultimately, we threw in the towel on the original idea— as it was made clear it would take a capital-intensive marathon to make it viable.

Today, Group697 has the privilege of helping build and grow some of the most relevant players in the Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) software space, from venture-backed startups to incumbent behemoths.

Over the past few years, however, we’ve spent so much time marketing for others that we neglected our own—a classic case of the cobbler’s children having no shoes.

This neglect wasn’t entirely accidental. We wanted to be deliberate about how we present our work. Rather than shill ourselves with empty corporate jargon, we wanted to start meaningful conversations—and turn those conversations into a brand.

Mission

Our work with organizations rarely fits neatly into one bucket. Some partners need corporate strategy; others demand marketing expertise. At the center of it all, however, is content and written thought.

If we’re successful in this conversation, we’ll offer a window into how we think, through our writing, and provide a glimpse into the core of our business: growth.

Nothing Planned is meant to be informal—no corporate, syntax-laden office speak or empty platitudes. We won’t write unless we have something meaningful to say. This conversation is a journey, one where we’ll cover everything:

• What we’re reading.

• What’s grabbing our attention.

• Success stories, horror stories, and lessons learned.

• What works (and doesn’t) in moving the needle to build great companies.

Even if you gain nothing practical from our ramblings, you’ll at least get some good tea, mild rants, motivational quotes, and a few laughs as we continue building our firm and helping our partners bring their products to the world.

So, without further ado, join the conversation—whenever your calendar has Nothing planned.