“If you act like your wedding day is the greatest moment in your life, it’s all downhill from there.” –Elizabeth Johnson
What looks like a throw-away line actually packs a lot of wisdom.
Any moment you consider the greatest moment of your life sets up the same downhill scenario.
If your college graduation is greatest, what comes next?
If you consider the founding of your company, product launch, revenue or even profitability the greatest day of your life what will its acquisition or IPO be?
If the birth of your children rates as the greatest, what will their graduation, marriage, and their children’s births be?
Instead of setting up a downhill move from your life highlights, you can open the future to more just by removing the ‘est’.
If they are ‘great’ moments instead of ‘greatest’ then you are setting your self up for ‘greater’ moments.
Isn’t that a better life scenario?
It is only when you are dying that you can choose the ‘est’ in retrospect.
And I’m willing to bet that you will be hard-pressed to choose just one.
Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
Share the story of your startup today.
Send it along with your contact information and I’ll be in touch.
Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific time.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
After reading Alexander Haislip’s post, I scurried around and removed the “CEO” from as many profiles as I could find/remember.
Back in 1999 I started RampUp Solutions I called myself “founder” and I was happy with that, but I kept being told I should use ‘CEO’, so I did. (Hey, even smart people can give poor advice.)
However, I was never comfortable with the title because I’ve worked with dozens of CEOs and knew that I didn’t/couldn‘t do what they do.
Not only did not, but could not.
Now, thirteen years later, my gut reaction has been confirmed; not only the reaction, but the reasons.
Ask yourself: would you still be CEO if it were a $100 billion business or would you require what’s euphemistically called “adult supervision?”
Considering what passes for a $100 billion business these days you may want to add ‘sustainable’ to the description.
There is nothing wrong with bringing in a “real” CEO and learning the ropes—think Larry Page and Google—but assuming a title of which you aren’t really capable smacks of a five-year-old dressing up in mommy’s/daddy’s clothes.
I hope Haislip’s and my post inspires you to find the time to expunge CEO from your social profiles and other places, including your business cards.
You might also want to take a hard look at other company titles, especialy on the executive level.
Option Sanity™ reduces pretension. Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system. It’s so easy a CEO can do it.
Warning. Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.
It’s great because in addition to being oh-so-true it’s tongue-in-cheek sarcastic enough that it might even penetrate the minds of those guilty of what it says.
Zwilling writes for entrepreneurs, but most of the actions he describes apply equally well to any manager at any level, as well as parents and pretty much any human interaction.
Call it universal DEmotivation.
Here are the headings, but you should really read the article to know for sure if you are guilty of some more covert version.
Be sure your team doesn’t know what is important to you.
Never explain your actions.
Hire team members who will follow your instructions.
Keep people on their toes with a threat of consequences.
Team meetings are for delivering the latest decisions.
Agree to milestones and then accelerate them.
Thank your employees for the little extras.
Be careful not to get too involved in your employees own goals.
In the decades I worked as a recruiter and those since starting RampUp Solutions I’ve heard these or variations of them listed as reasons people left their company.
Because when you get right down to it, people quit managers, not companies, and that is especially true when a manager is also a founder.
SUBMIT YOUR STORY
(like this)
Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
Share the story of your startup today.
Send it along with your contact information and I’ll be in touch.
Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific time.
As I’m sure you’re aware I love stories. I believe that stories are the best way to excite and engage people no matter the relationship and definitely the best way to teach.
Today’s story is from Arthur Bart-Williams, a client whose startup involves a masterful story-telling platform.
Arthur’s story is proof that a great idea is worth pursuing—even when there is a six year lag between first thought and market testing.
From Arthur…
I founded Canogle in late 2010. The name—from the words, “can” and “ogle” and pronounced kan-og-uhl—means to look without restrictions; to be fully immersed in and a part of a particular world.
Canogle is a platform on which to tell a story.
People love stories; stories about the natural world and places they visit and stories about things, happenings and the brands they love.
They want curated stories, but they also want commentary from their peers and the Canogle platform provides both.
The idea first surfaced in 2004 when I was honeymooning on Maui and Jess, my wife, was using a paper map to navigate and to note interesting sites.
She said she was paying more attention to the map than to the things around her and I thought someone ought to come up with a way to know about sites as you pass them.
By the time we got home, I was excited enough to write the first version of a business plan and convince my brother to develop a prototype.
Then life happened. We had a daughter, I co-founded Combase, which was acquired by ViaNovus and then by Sword Group, fielded a few of life’s curve balls and had another daughter.
I was inspired again while watching a Silicon Valley technology show called “Press: Here” in mid-2010 and decided to find out if anybody cared about my idea.
I told one friend about the project, her eyes lit up and she introduced me to her friend who introduced me to the Executive Director of the Muir Heritage Land Trust, which became our first beta.
The good thing is that things are changing. Even mighty Google that once hired only 3.7+ GPAs has changed how they recruit using puzzles to identify talent that might fall through the cracks—assuming it even got that far.
Probably the greatest value of higher education—all education, actually—is learning how to learn.
It’s knowing where to find information and how to assimilate, tweak and synthesize it
so it becomes useful in both the short and long terms; more value comes from learning how to focus and think critically.
Skill in the actual major has value for two to four years—less in technical fields that change with radical speed.
From that point on the value of actual degree content goes down 20% or more each year, whereas real experience goes up.
That means in five years specific degrees become meaningless, while specific experience holds all the value.
Moreover, those with the ability to successfully move from industry to industry, field to field, department to department, position to position sans ego and hype truly have a price above rubies—although they rarely think so.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
You’re a founder and you have a vision.
You tell people about your vision with an eye to recruiting them as investors or employees or customers.
While it’s important that your vision be enticing it’s more important that it dazzle with its clarity.
Clarity is not easy, which is why elevator pitches and tag lines are so difficult to do.
Most people start with a highly embellished description and work to reduce/clarify it.
The reverse is often easier.
Start with a truly bare bones version, such as this description of a restaurant.
“We buy food. We fix it up. And we sell it at a profit.” – Celebrity Chef Mario Batali**
Then add embellishments slowly, one at a time and get feedback with each iteration.
But avoid getting all the feedback from the same audience.
Each time people hear it they add knowledge and reference, and context to their unconscious database, so in time they start interpolate and filling in the blanks just as you do.
Hence you need to constantly refresh your audience to achieve viable feedback, but that unconscious database is the bane of working with anything over the long haul,
The point of all this is to remind you to clarify your vision before you start to sell it.
Option Sanity™ is plain-spoken and direct. Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system. It’s so easy a CEO can do it.
Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.
**Hat tip to Wally Bock for the Mario Batali quote.
In case you haven’t read the profile of Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital, which closed a Series B investment in Instagram 72 hours before the Facebook acquisition, I’m going to share some of the smartest advice I’ve heard.
It’s just 7 words describing 3 actions, but those actions will save your company when it’s hottest or when events in the startup ecosystem serve up major distraction, like Instagram.
Like all Facebook-related news, the deal stirred up a media frenzy. Kushner was already back in his Nolita offices in Manhattan and left notes for each of his four teammates: “Heads Down”; “Stay Focused”; “Ignore the Noise.”
Sounds simple, but when stuff starts happening, whether internal or external, developers, marketers, sales people and everyone else can quickly develop severe cases of ADD.
Those seven words make a great mantra; one worth putting on the walls.
Just remember, Kushner’s advice won’t work unless it’s followed from the top down.
SUBMIT YOUR STORY (like this)
Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
Share the story of your startup today.
Send it along with your contact information and I’ll be in touch.
Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific time.
We all know that things are not always as they seem and people certainly aren’t.
Brilliant ideas can come from any individual and are not dependent on their level or even their expertise.
By the same token, investors that sound great may not be, while those who are off-putting could be your salvation.
There are no hard and fast rules for evaluating whether what you see is what you’ll get, because each case is different—but that doesn’t matter.
The important thing to remember is that most stuff and people come with multiple layers and they may not be what they seem.
So while I can’t offer a multipurpose evaluation tool I can provide you with an unforgettable visual to remind you to look past the obvious.
SUBMIT YOUR STORY
Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
Share the story of your startup today.
Send it along with your contact information and I’ll be in touch.
Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific time.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
Long-term success is as much about attitude as it is about product.
How do you rate yourself on the following?
I believe that
good information can come from nobody; bad information can come from somebody;
values verbalized must be values lived;
to be valid, a social contract can not embrace the concept of “but me;
fairness comes from applying all rules evenly and equally, no exceptions;
listening, especially when it’s something you don’t want to hear or from an unusual source; and
it’s sometimes necessary to modify or let go of an initial vision and pivot in order to succeed.
What would you add to the list?
Option Sanity™ embodies fairness.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system.
It’s so easy a CEO can do it.
Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.
As many of you know, Nick Mikhailovsky, my long-term Russian business partner, is a successful entrepreneur and active in the Russian startup community. He introduced me to his circle and working with these Russian entrepreneurs is an ongoing pleasure.
I worked with Alex and besides loving the idea of AtContent I found his story of how to get hired as an expert team when you have neither expertise nor a team creative and hilarious.
These days Alex lives in San Jose; here’s the story in his own words…
One day Alex and Nikita agreed to create one of the largest and powerful information companies in the world!
To achieve this goal they understood they had to solve a huge problem. They looked at the traditional publishing industry – publishing houses, existing Internet services, newspaper websites, etc., and current solutions of legal distribution.
They understood the publishing and content distribution market had problems with tracking content copies, copyright and legal distribution.
They decided to create a new technology service which would revolutionize publishing and content distribution.
At that moment, neither Nikita nor Alex had a job (they retired), no team, only $1500 in their pockets, fantastic idea and a coffeehouse between their homes where they met every day and ordered glasses of water.
They understood they should start with something and decided to become a partner of AnyChart (the company has a developer’s office in Irkutsk) by creating a Microsoft Silverlight based visual stock component for them.
Nikita called them and said, “Hey guys, we can do it for you because we have a great team with Silverlight experience which you don’t have.”
The AnyChart guys answered, “Deal! But please show us your team!”
The problem was that Alex and Nikita had no team and nobody in Irkutsk knew Silverlight platform…
But they found the solution; they decided to call all the programmers they knew and ask them to play the roles of members of this great Silverlight team!
After two day of phone calls Nikita and Alex found not only actors but really good programmers who wanted to learn Silverlight and work with them to build a great company!
So, during that one week of October Alex and Nikita got the contract with AnyChart, built a first team with Dmitriy and Aleksey (they still work with Alex and Nikita) and started to build future IFFace and AtContent.
SUBMIT YOUR STORY
Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
Share the story of your startup today.
Send it along with your contact information and I’ll be in touch.
Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific time.
“If you act like your wedding day is the greatest moment in your life, it’s all downhill from there.” –Elizabeth Johnson
After reading 
Marty Zwilling wrote a great essay detailing exactly 
I founded 
It’s just 7 words describing 3 actions, but those actions will save your company when it’s hottest or when events in the startup ecosystem serve up major distraction, like Instagram.
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