We’re looking forward to introducing you to Aaron Spence. Check out our conversation below.
Hi Aaron, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: What do you think is misunderstood about your business?
That people are still at the center of everything, despite our collective obsession with pretending they’re not.
There’s considerable handwringing over AI right now. Business leaders who haven’t actually done the work in years have gotten hold of this shiny new technology and are making panicked decisions because they’re terrified of being left behind. It’s less strategic integration and more existential dread with a budget attached.
Take Samsung versus Apple. Samsung threw caution to the wind and went all-in on AI features. Apple is taking their time, methodically figuring it out. And you know what? Apple isn’t hemorrhaging market share, which should tell us something. People actually care about the shopping experience, and that experience is delivered by, well, people.
When your Samsung breaks, good luck. You’re alone in your home, navigating customer service chat bots and Reddit forums, convinced you’re the problem. When your Apple device breaks, there’s a Genius Bar with a dozen actual humans ready to help you feel less stupid about dropping your phone in the toilet again.
We keep optimizing for technology while forgetting that humans still want to interact with humans, especially when things inevitably go wrong. It’s almost embarrassing how often we need to relearn this lesson. The people matter most. They always have. We just keep convincing ourselves otherwise because algorithms are shinier than empathy.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I spent the first decade of my career in education, which is where I learned that good systems matter almost as much as good people. I worked as an administrator innovating operations at the school level, trying to ensure educators and administrators were actually prepared for the 21st century rather than just pretending to be. Eventually, I realized I wanted to understand how to build the tools and technology that could make those systems work better, not just optimize around their limitations.
That curiosity led me into the tech startup world, where I landed in Customer Success. Over the past several years, I’ve deployed teams at scale across multiple companies, riding that particular rollercoaster from $0 ARR to $40M ARR multiple times. It’s taught me that growth without intentionality is just chaos with better funding.
I was diagnosed with ADHD late in life, which radically transformed how I look at myself and the world. Suddenly, decades of experience made sense in new ways. I finally found a community where I could articulate my worldview without constantly translating myself into neurotypical frameworks. That diagnosis didn’t change who I was, it just gave me the language to understand it.
I’ve been a leader most of my life, though I’m still figuring out what that actually means. These days, I primarily coach and mentor younger BIPOC leaders and folks navigating career transitions. We work on thinking more holistically about their lives, their experiences, and what they actually want on the other side of all this professional striving. Sometimes the best leadership move is helping someone realize they don’t have to optimize their way into someone else’s vision of success.
I’m a Philly native, now proudly living in Compton, California with my wife and two dogs. I’m a build group leader at Metropolitan Church of Christ in Carson. I collect fountain pens, practice the increasingly forgotten art of writing by hand, and spend my time traveling, reading, and thinking. Basically, I’m holding on to skills the upcoming generation is desperately trying not to lose while everyone else is convinced they’re obsolete.
I’m attempting to prove that contemplation and action aren’t opposites, just different parts of the same conversation.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. Who taught you the most about work?
Clarence Norman. He was a mentor and friend for many years, 55 years older than me but with the kind of spark and imagination for investing in others that most people never develop. He pulled me under his wing after my father died unexpectedly when I was 11, and he really leaned into encouraging my curiosity in a way that probably saved me.
He would buy me books, help fund what I dramatically called my computer building empire (which was really just assembling a few desktops for friends and family), and showed me what a life of purpose actually looked like. How to lead in a way that’s both fulfilling and worthy of being lived. He had his quirks, naturally, but he taught me the most important lesson: showing up when it matters.
Not giving up when it gets hard, but actually leaning into the challenges instead of optimizing your way around them. He taught me that the people around me were my superpower, that I didn’t get anywhere by myself no matter how much I might want to believe otherwise. He spoke often about legacy, about what we leave behind in the people we invest in. I’m grateful to be part of his.
He’s been gone almost 15 years now, and there isn’t a day I don’t think of some piece of wisdom, some quote, or some lesson he shared with me. Not just told me, but showed me. That’s the difference. Anyone can dispense advice. Clarence showed me what it looked like to actually live it.
Everything I know about work worth doing, I learned from watching him show up for people who couldn’t do anything for him in return.
If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
It gets deeper and better.
You’re confused right now, and you recognize that you’re different. That awareness feels isolating, like there’s something fundamentally wrong with how you see the world. But here’s what you don’t know yet: Mommy, Clarence, and many others are going to pour into you and nurture your creativity. They’re going to create a safe space for you to be different, even when you can’t articulate what that difference means.
People will doubt you. They’ll think you’re odd for whatever they’ve arbitrarily decided is normal. They’ll try to convince you that your way of thinking is the problem, not their narrow definitions. Let them think that. You’re going to discover what happens when you focus on developing unique skills instead of sanding down your edges to fit someone else’s expectations.
Keep investing in your self-discovery. Keep building community around you with people who see your difference as strength rather than deficiency. The confusion you feel now? It’s not a bug, it’s the feature. It’s what makes you capable of seeing things others miss, of asking questions others avoid, of connecting ideas in ways that help people make sense of their own confusion.
It gets deeper. It gets better. The difference you’re worried about now becomes the foundation for everything meaningful you’ll build later.
Trust that.
Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. What do you believe is true but cannot prove?
Hope is the only way forward.
Things will get harder and darker. I’m not naive about that. But there’s always sun shining somewhere on this planet, and I refuse to go out without a fight. It doesn’t matter how small and timid the flame burns, as long as it keeps burning. That’s the work: finding hope and protecting it, even when it feels absurd to do so.
Hope is ineffable, qualitative. We can’t measure it or prove its efficacy in any scientific sense. But we know it when we see it. We recognize it in the eyes of people who refuse to give up despite every rational reason to do so. We feel it in communities that keep showing up for each other when institutions have abandoned them.
As Dr. King reminded us, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” That infinite quality is what I’m talking about. Not optimism, which is just hope’s naive cousin. Not blind faith that everything works out in the end. But hope as an active choice, a deliberate stance against despair.
Reverend William Barber offers a more illustrative point, a way to see yourself in the darkness so you can provide the light: “Hope is the ability to hear the music of the future. Faith is the courage to dance to it in the present.” The music is real. The dancing matters. Hope isn’t just a feeling but a practice we choose daily.
The flame may be small. Let it burn anyway.
Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What will you regret not doing?
Loving everyone with everything I’ve got.
Not the sanitized, comfortable version of love that keeps appropriate distance. Not the transactional kind that calculates whether someone deserves it first. The exhausting, inconvenient, messy kind of love that shows up even when it’s not reciprocated. The kind Clarence showed me.
I’ll regret every moment I held back because I was protecting myself, every time I chose being right over being present, every person I dismissed because loving them felt too costly or complicated. I’ll regret the times I let fear or pride or exhaustion convince me that some people aren’t worth the effort.
Because here’s what I believe but can barely articulate: we’re all we’ve got. The people around us are our superpower, and love is the only thing that actually transforms anything. Not productivity hacks, not optimization strategies, not even the most brilliant ideas. Just the stubborn, relentless choice to love people with everything we’ve got.
It’s inefficient. It’s often painful. It rarely produces measurable outcomes. But it’s the only thing I know that’s actually worth doing.
So that’s what I’ll regret: every time I chose something smaller, safer, or smarter than love.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://aaronmspence.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amspence85/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@aaronmspence
