Building a Network & Betting on Yourself: Strategic Career Insights from Co-Founder Dee Murthy

In this episode of Guidance Counselor 2.0, host Taylor Desseyn spoke with Dee Murthy, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Ghost, a distribution platform for global brands. With over 20 years of experience building companies in fashion and retail, Dee offers unique insights into network building, strategic decision-making, and the mindset required for long-term entrepreneurial success.

The Evolution of a Serial Entrepreneur

Dee's journey began in 2002 as a USC senior when he co-founded his first fashion brand. Over two decades, he built multiple successful companies including Five Four, Young and Reckless, Menlo Club, and The Republic. This extensive experience across different verticals taught him "everything from manufacturing to distribution to sales to warehousing" through trial and error.

His latest venture, Ghost, emerged from a persistent problem he encountered across all his businesses: excess inventory. "It affects the profitability, sustainability, so many secondary impacts of having all this excess inventory," he explained. What started as a solution for excess inventory has evolved into a comprehensive distribution platform helping brands and retailers expand their reach globally.

The progression from fashion entrepreneur to distribution platform founder illustrates how deep industry experience can reveal opportunities that others might miss. Dee's intimate knowledge of retail pain points, developed over decades, positioned him to build a "one of its kind" solution in a space that now has many copycats.

Strategic Network Building Over Decades

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of Dee's insights concerns his approach to building an extraordinary network. His strategy began at age 18 with a counterintuitive decision: attending events alone. "I didn't want the crutch of another human being," he explained. "I didn't want my friends there because if my friends came, I wouldn't talk to anyone."

This deliberate practice of forcing himself into uncomfortable social situations built essential skills early. Walking up to strangers and introducing himself as "a freshman at USC" often resulted in dismissive responses, but the experience taught him to handle rejection and communicate confidently under pressure.

The key insight is that networking requires long-term thinking. "There's people that I would see at Coachella then at a conference then at dinner five years later I'm like what do you do? I don't even know what you do. I see them everywhere," Dee noted. Many of his strongest professional relationships developed over 15-20 years, connecting with people when they were "baristas" and maintaining those relationships as they became CEOs.

This patient approach contrasts sharply with modern networking urgency. "There's this urgency today of networking where you have to meet someone today and then tomorrow you have to add value to them and then the next day you're gonna make a million dollars together. That's not how it works," he observed.

The Rule of Propinquity and Emotional Intelligence

Central to Dee's networking philosophy is what he calls the "rule of propinquity" - being next to the people you want to become like. "When you start building incredible businesses, you want to be surrounded by other people building incredible businesses," he explained.

However, access to these circles requires significant preparation. "Everyone wants to be in the room. There's only so many rooms in the world. You don't just get to show up. There's a lot of work that goes to get to the point where you get to be in the room."

Dee predicts that as artificial intelligence advances, technical skills will become commoditized. "IQ is gonna become commoditized. Intelligence. We're all gonna get access to the same thing," he noted. "If that's the case then EQ, emotional intelligence becomes extremely important and the only way you get that is by being around a lot of people."

This prediction suggests that investing in relationship-building skills and emotional intelligence will become increasingly valuable as technical capabilities become more accessible through AI tools.

Strategic Conference Attendance

Dee's approach to conferences reflects his broader networking philosophy: strategic, diverse, and relationship-focused. He attends everything from Expo West (organic food show) to CES (consumer electronics), viewing conferences as serving multiple purposes simultaneously.

"You get to be with your peers, people in your industry, people that think like you," he explained. Beyond learning, conferences provide rapid industry pulse-taking and crucial face time with customers, vendors, and collaborators.

His conference networking strategy emphasizes efficiency and memorability: "Introduce yourself, make an impression and keep it moving. Don't get stuck in a long conversation with people because you don't know the other person well enough to have that conversation yet."

The insight is that conferences work because they serve both professional and personal needs. "A lot of people are just optimizing for fun and having a great life," Dee noted. "People want the break. These are people that are married with kids and they want to come over here and learn, talk, be with peers, but also maybe get drunk and have a nice meal."

Building in Private vs. Public Strategy

One of the most interesting aspects of Dee's approach is his strategic decision to build privately for years before embracing public content creation. Unlike many modern entrepreneurs who "build in public," Dee waited until his business was ready for public scrutiny.

"You have to be ready to explain to the world what you're doing when you decide to go public," he explained. "In many cases, we didn't know specifically what we were doing. We were in a learning phase."

His reasoning includes several practical considerations:

• Protecting focus: "I felt it was important to keep our heads down, stay focused, and actually create value for our customers"

• Avoiding premature criticism: "There's a lot of criticism that comes with building in public"

• Preventing competition: "I wasn't looking for competition" because the solution was "so special"

• Personal maturity: "If I became a public figure when I was 25, I don't know if I could handle it as I can now as a 44-year-old person"

This approach challenges the prevalent "build in public" mentality, suggesting that both strategies can be successful depending on the business, market timing, and founder personality.

Hiring for High-Growth Environments

As someone actively scaling Ghost, Dee offers practical insights into hiring for startup environments. His approach emphasizes relevant experience and cultural fit over pure credentials.

"We over-index on people that have had exposure and experience to our business," he explained. "Have you worked at a marketplace? A distribution platform? Do you understand the nuances of that type of business?"

However, timing within a company's growth matters significantly. Using Uber as an example, he noted: "It matters at what stage of that company were you there. Were you there when they were trying to figure out how to launch surge pricing and they did it for the first time that it was a manual process? Or were you there just at the point where you just 'oh instead of 3x let's do 5x' - a very different time."

For startups, he specifically seeks people who want early-stage exposure and can handle the pace and ambiguity. "We are building the plane while we're flying it. So we need true builders," he emphasized.

Cultural mismatches often occur when hiring from large companies where people are "really frustrated that their work is not being impacted right away." The startup environment requires comfort with speed and autonomy: "You want to do it? You text someone. Go do it. Figure it out."

Community Building and Customer Relationships

Ghost's approach to community building reflects Dee's broader relationship philosophy: intimate, authentic, and long-term focused. Rather than building large public communities, they focus on deep relationships with customers and partners.

"We want to intimately know our customers," he explained. "We don't want a thousand people in a room. We have very deep relationships with the people we work with." This might involve spending 12 hours together at Dodger games and dinners - a more personal approach than typical B2B relationships.

For their podcast community, success came from slow, organic growth over eight years. "Anything with community, it has to be slow. It has to be a slow burn and take its time," Dee noted. "Many of the people in there have been listening for eight years. They know the temperament of other listeners, the temperament of myself, my brother, and our other host."

This approach creates communities where people can have civil discourse on complex topics because shared values and communication styles have been established over time.

Learning from Failure and Risk Assessment

Dee's perspective on failure has evolved significantly throughout his entrepreneurial journey. Early in his career, he was "extremely fearful of failure" and often blamed external factors when things went wrong. Maturity brought accountability and learning orientation.

"Starting a business is impossible," he stated bluntly. "Having a business last its first year is impossible. Having a business have employees and pay them on time, impossible. Having a business that actually grows and makes money is virtually impossible."

This realistic assessment helps frame entrepreneurial achievements appropriately. "People who have the courage to even step and do it should be proud of yourself because you've taken a leap that most don't."

The key shift was from external blame to internal accountability: "What did I do wrong in this instance to end up in this situation? That's a hard thing to swallow, but it's very important to get to that point."

Strategic Career Advice for Long-Term Success

When asked for career advice to his younger self, Dee emphasized three critical principles:

Patience: "Your time will come. I was dying to get out of college, dying to become successful. I just had to put my head down and work and learn."

Decisive Action: "You can move fast, but when you're wrong, you gotta move on." The ability to recognize wrong situations and change course quickly prevents prolonged struggles in mismatched environments.

Focus: "If you're a really good communicator and you're around all these great people, the single worst thing that can happen is you could drown in opportunity. Too much opportunity is going to be equally as bad."

This last point is particularly relevant for well-networked professionals. The ability to say no and maintain focus becomes "the most powerful thing" for continued success.

Implications for Modern Career Development

Dee's insights offer several implications for professionals building careers in today's environment:

Long-term Relationship Investment: In an era of quick connections and immediate expectations, patient relationship building over decades creates sustainable competitive advantages.

Emotional Intelligence Premium: As AI democratizes technical skills, the ability to build trust, communicate effectively, and navigate complex human dynamics becomes more valuable.

Strategic Timing: Whether building in public or private, the timing of visibility and engagement should align with readiness to handle attention and explain value clearly.

Experience Quality over Quantity: The stage and context of your experience matters more than just having worked at prestigious companies. Early-stage, high-growth experience often provides more relevant skills for entrepreneurial environments.

Community as Competitive Advantage: Authentic community building, whether large or small, creates loyalty and differentiation that pure product features cannot replicate.

Conclusion

Dee Murthy's 20-year entrepreneurial journey demonstrates that sustainable success comes from patient relationship building, strategic decision-making, and continuous learning from both successes and failures. His approach challenges common startup narratives around building in public and rapid networking, suggesting that thoughtful, long-term strategies often produce better results.

For professionals navigating their careers, Dee's example shows the power of combining deep industry expertise with strong emotional intelligence and strategic networking. His insights remind us that while business execution matters, the relationships and reputation you build along the way often determine long-term opportunities and success.

Most importantly, his perspective on entrepreneurship as "virtually impossible" yet worthwhile provides realistic expectations for anyone considering starting their own venture. The courage to attempt something difficult, combined with the patience to build relationships and the wisdom to learn from failures, creates the foundation for sustainable entrepreneurial success.

This blog post summarizes insights from Guidance Counselor 2.0, a live streaming show hosted by Taylor Desseyn that explores career development in the tech industry. Find the full video of the episode and more here: Building a Network & Betting on Yourself w/Co-Founder Dee Murthy