“We can’t measure the impact. That’s exactly why it’s our values. Our values are that we do something that nobody notices and we can’t measure. We do it because that’s what we believe.”   

In a recent interview with one of my favorite CEOs, Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, I recollected an experience I had two summers ago during my time at Rocket Mortgage. I was chatting with an executive who mentioned that the founder, Dan Gilbert, had a superpower of being able to quantify the intangibles. We know that no model can capture these large creative leaps as it influences not only the finances but the broader strategy in ways that we cannot otherwise fully understand. That executive himself was viewed as an off-the-spreadsheet finance guru. 

An example, Rocket Morgage’s move to downtown Detroit. At the time, there was a significant push back for Dan Gilbert to move his company to Detroit from Livonia, MI. The company mentioned: 

“[The move] sparked a revitalization of not just the company, but an entire city.”

The move changed the way the city is viewed and the public’s perception of what businesses can do, and how businesses can be used as a force to bring people together. The move revitalized its growth and led to the best years in its history post-recession. 

As Steve Jobs mentioned “people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” As a finance addict and quant-minded individual, I find it easy to get buried in creating additional schedules to make my models “more accurate.” However, this is a reminder for people like myself, that running a company is a balancing act between acting on your vision, which may not be as scientific, and the numbers. As I continue to scale the business, every decision is seeking out utmost quality and customer-centrism, which I realize cannot be quantified in every case. 

Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling said, “not everything that counts can be counted, not everything that can be counted counts.”