The Impermanence of all That Exists
Jan 13 2013

This weekend I went to the Blanton Museum of Art exhibit that showcased Tibetan monks building a sand mandala.  After spending days and hours creating this mandala out of fine, colored sand, they “dismantle the mandala, sweeping up the colored sands to symbolize the impermanence of all that exists.”

I wonder if entrepreneurs who achieve the most success, not only in dollars but also impact on the world, truly understand that everything is impermanent which results in a shift in how they perceive risk.  Steve Jobs could have floundered in his business in the early days, as most entrepreneurs do, instead of becoming a household name for founding Apple and Pixar.  I’m sure he and his team threw away many designs or product ideas that they spent countless hours on, but they kept on painstakingly placing the grains of sand on each next iteration. If a few grains of sand shifted in some of the most popular designs he had envisioned in his head, we may never have known he existed.  And now even he is gone but his company lives on…for now.

Lincoln and Dealing with Change
Nov 18 2012

I saw the movie Lincoln last night. I left this comment on Fred Wilson’s post about the movie:

“I saw the movie last night and was deeply impressed with how it was done and the actors rendition of all of their parts. Watching a movie like this gives you perspective on what we have to deal with today in most of our (very lucky) daily lives. The fear & demons Lincoln had to wrestle with must have been tremendous. One line I remember went something like “We can show people that democracy does not have to be chaos.”

As I observe start-ups and small businesses I’ve been involved with, those who have thrived attempt to manage chaos with some sensible structure, coordination among team members, & meaning. Those who don’t have that belief/skill set tend to build continuously chaotic companies with high turnover. Like with a child, the first year or so of chaos and sleepless nights are understandable, but after that healthy parents and healthy kids are expected to start “growing” up so to speak and communicate differently.”

On facebook I posted: “The movie Lincoln is a must see. So well done. Saw it last night. Definitely gives you perspective regarding what people were dealing with then vs. now. Standing up for your beliefs in a smart, intelligent, strategic way is not easy and most go the easy route because the fear of rejection is so huge in many of us.”

The amount of change in our daily lives today gives us very little time to think about our decisions.  We often make decisions hastily without taking the time to analyze what is sometimes an overwhelming amount of information.  We often don’t make decisions at all because we are too used to the the status quo, we worry what people will think of us, or we are paralyzed with the amount of information we feel we need to sift through.  In Lincoln’s time the conflicting information he was receiving was also tremendous, and in his situation there were people’s lives at stake…not just jobs, profits, losses, and Wall Street earnings that many of us deal with today here in the United States.

BiG HealthCARE Opportunities Summit
Sep 28 2012

BiGAUSTIN is excited to begin the Small Business @ Work series with our first event, BiG HealthCARE Opportunities Summit on November 1st, 2012. BiG is teaming up with The Seton Healthcare Family to educate and inform women and veterans about the advancements, changes and opportunities within the healthcare industry through panel discussions, breakout sessions, and workshops.

Participants will be able to gather information on HealthCARE and have the opportunity to network and learn about available self-employment as a CAREER within the healthcare community, have ACCESS to healthcare providers, be able to attend economic RECOVERY breakout sessions for personal needs, and learn what every ENTREPRENEUR should know about the new policies, healthcare acts and how these initiatives will affect their day to day business.

The BiG HealthCARE Opportunities Summit’s keynote speaker, author and small business person of the year 2007: Ms. Colleen J. Payne-Nabors, will share her experience and struggle as she built a multi-million dollar business in the mobile cardiac imaging business

For more Information go to: http://bigaustin.org/healthcareopportunitiessummit or email them at info@bigaustin.org

The Importance Of Being Consistent
Jun 10 2012

I’ve been observing businesses from several different perspectives for most of my career.  After I became a mom, I began observing other parents so I could learn from them.  It’s clear to me that being consistent in action whether it be disciplinary or rewarding in nature is very important….but so very hard to do “consistently.”

If you aren’t consistent as a manager/leader or as a parent, your team or your kids can easily get confused and frustrated.  They aren’t sure what behavior will result in what reaction from you. If you keep changing direction before your team or your kids understand where things are going, it can result in fatigue and rebellion.  I’ve seen this happen countless of times in business.  The entrepreneur/CEO isn’t sure where things are headed, so they shift directions before the team gels and can improve the situation or in really bad cases they don’t even tell the team, and they find out only when they are in a random meeting weeks later!  I’ve seen cases where one day the manager is happy with the way someone is doing something and the next day they act as if they have no idea what you are talking about.

I’ve seen parents (myself included) say one thing and do another because we are tired, not sure what to do, feel guilty, are under extreme emotional duress, or think because someone else is doing something a certain way we should too. It’s not easy being consistent from bed times to drop off/pick up times to homework with your kids as well as expectation setting, messaging, or rewarding your employees.  I’m sure someone somewhere has done a more scientific study than I have that would prove the value of being consistent.  If it were easy, I’m pretty sure we’d have fewer wars! 🙂

Letting Go Of Perfection And Checklists
May 17 2012

It’s hard to say if letting go of perfection and checklists are related or not, unless of course you put “be your silly self even if someone looks disapprovingly your way or feels threatened by your authenticity” on your checklist. 🙂

A friend posted a 2010 article on facebook recently called Want to be happy? Stop trying to be perfect.  It’s so true.  I don’t know where we get that intense fear to be perfect and do it all correctly based on some model someone or a group of people or some stupid TV show put in our mind.  I think part of the reason reality TV shows have done so well is because those who have time to watch them inevitably feel better about themselves when they see they aren’t as screwed up as some other people out there!  You must watch the author’s video about the topic and her years of research: TEDxHouston – Brené Brown (youtube).  She delivers her message in a very authentic/real way and that’s what we are all striving to be: authentic and accepted for who we are.  I like the slide where she equates a breakdown to an awakening.  I’ve been there, done that and got the t-shirt.  I hope I can help guide others through their awakening process because it’s painful.  I’ll be attempting to do a little of that this weekend by being on the support team for the Search Within program that I participated in over 2 years ago.  The founders of the program will be holding their last events this year after 15+ years of organizing them.

Another interesting read I found via Marc Andreeseen’s blog is called The CEO’s Weekly Checklist by Scott Weiss.  He says you should “Push the Team. Sell the Vision.  Arbitrate Disagreements. Manage by Walking Around.  Talk to Customers.”  It made sense to me since I’ve worn those first time CEO shoes before.  I might change the order, but other than that these are good guidelines.  In my opinion, the number one job of a top notch CEO/President is to find the right people and orchestrate them towards success.  It is much easier said than done.  You have to get your ego out of the way and not be threatened by the authenticity you see in those people.  If you hire them and don’t listen to them, then you might as well dig your early grave from a business as well as your employees personal health perspective.

Very Interesting And Provocative Blog Posts
May 10 2012

I wish I had more time to come up with compelling, informative posts, but one must prioritize.  So instead, I’m fortunate enough to happen upon some interesting ones

Eleven Compelling Startup Pitch Archetypes (with examples from YC companies).  A really easy to read summary of the types of pitches based on the type of company.  A must read for all entrepreneurs trying to fundraise.

Same Sex Marriage on AVC by Fred Wilson on President Obama’s support of same sex marriages.

Unforgiven: Inside America’s Student Loan Bubble about the student loan crisis.

Love And 6 Other Things Your Subconscious Mind Controls “As a result, scientists are becoming increasingly convinced that how we experience the world – our perception, behavior, memory, and social judgment – is largely driven by the mind’s subliminal processes and not by the conscious ones, as we have long believed.”

SxSW Interactive Wrap-Up and Why Most Startups are DOA
Mar 18 2012

My 2012 SXSW Interactive experience this past week was very low key.  No badge.  A few days.  A few parties.  All productive.  Great networking for my consulting business where I’m focusing on operations and partner/client management projects.  I was home by a reasonable hour every evening.

I’ve had dozens of meetings scheduled since then, met people I haven’t seen in a while, and I’m helping organize a reunion for the B2C (business-to-consumer) and Web CEO groups I was a part of when I was working on Babble Soft.  Many of us are in transition times like I am, which is par for the proverbial entrepreneurial course.  I really enjoy networking and connecting people to each other.  I even made some almost random connections for the very cool 1 Semester Startup team I’m mentoring called beDJ.  If only I could charge big bucks to do that. 🙂

I have seen so many start up companies with big dreams of launching at SXSW interactive.  Most of them make a big splash and then you don’t hear from them again.  I thought this post on TechCrunch the other day was very well timed: Why Entrepreneurs Fail And Most Startups Are DOA.  Entrepreneurship (especially in technology) is not for the feint of heart.  It’s mostly for the insane, stupid, independently wealthy, ones with extremely supportive spouses/pets/friends, ones who are calculated risk takers who can rebound quickly from mistakes and failure.

Bazaarvoice Goes IPO
Feb 25 2012

Congratulations to the Bazaarvoice team!  They are the latest Austin technology company to go public.  It happened yesterday.  I have friends who work there and I’m very happy for them.  It takes a lot to go from zero to public and for Austin’s sake, I hope they continue their growth trend and create value.  As I commented on the Austin Startup post on the topic, Bazaarvoice’s going public creates value not only for those who work there but also value in terms of dollars invested in future start-ups and experienced people to advise/mentor them.

The founding team also emphasized building a positive culture and showed that policies like having no set vacation days can work when you trust your people.  It will be nice to have people in the community who have experienced that kind of culture go seed other companies.

Their success is Austin’s success!

Leadership, Management and Unicorns
Jan 20 2012

The older I get more experience I gain working for different organizations, the more I realize that good leadership is rare and good management is even rarer.  I think we all see this played out on TV with the incompetence demonstrated by our business and political leaders.  I don’t really know why this happens and it’s sometimes a miracle that companies get built and keep going.  It’s somewhat of an enigma to me….might be a bunch of great workers covering up for the incompetence of their leaders & managers.

The reason I think good management is rarer than good leadership is that one can be a good leader by finding and getting out of the way of great talent.  They can also be a visionary leader with admittedly no management skills, but they are smart enough to find the good managers, support them, and let them do what they do best.  Great managers listen and then react to input in order to make the jobs/lives of their team easier, more interesting, and fun without being overbearing/micro managing.  To manage people on a daily basis and make things happen with so many personalities around the table is one of the most challenging things to do well while earning the respect & admiration of your team.

When you happen upon a great leader who is also a great manager, grab on to them…you’ve found a unicorn.

Motherhood Is The Necessity of Re-Invention
Jan 15 2012

Other ways to say this that might make more sense to a brain that doesn’t have little kids around the house:

• Necessity is the Mothership of Re-invention
• Necessity is the mother of invention – most popular
• Motherhood/Parenthood/Fatherhood necessitates constant reinvention
• Working Motherhood/Parenthood/Fatherhood requires you to try touching your elbow to your ear (yes, I tried it to make sure it was near impossible to do so) on more occasions than you’d like to admit

I hope in all this living around parents with an accidental (prone to earthquakes) entrepreneurial foundation, my kids are learning that they have to whine a little, adapt a lot, smile, try a bunch of different things, have faith that things will turn out as they should as long as they work hard and are kind to others…including animals and a select few insects like butterflies.

One Person’s Common Sense Is Another’s Quantum Physics
Dec 27 2011

Bullet Train - China

How many times have you wondered why someone does not see what you see or get what you get?  How many times have people questioned you when you didn’t do something the way they might do it?  Just as you’ve wondered why certain people are clueless, people have probably wondered the same about you.

I’ve had the opportunity recently to take some career assessment tests.  They are like those tests you took in high school with a career counselor that told you that you should become a nurse, a teacher or you had no worthwhile skills at all.  Well fortunately or unfortunately, I happen to have some skills/talents but some of them seem to be opposing.  In other words, I have an unusual mix of abilities that can cause internal angst (surprise!).  Most of them label me as someone who can do multiple things (Jill-Of-All-Trades) or in other words…shudder…an entrepreneur.  This means I can be a geneticist, a trial lawyer, a pharmaceutical sales rep, a recruiter, a coach/counselor, sports writer (I have no clue about professional sports) or even a barista at Starbuck’s as long as they let me rearrange the entire operations at the coffee shop.

I did the Kolbe Career Index A with business coach & friend Michelle Ewalt.  She gave me things to think about and questions to ask about potential career opportunities.  I did the Affini-T assessment with a new Austin company called Affintus, and that one tested my math problem solving skills that I’d half forgotten since taking Algebra many moons ago!  Earlier this year, I did the Strength’s Finder assessment.  All presented similar results but presented them in very different, unique ways.

I think the most important takeaway for me was that we are all so very different in how we view and approach the world, our responsibilities, and careers.  I have more understanding of someone when they don’t “get” how the things they do or say (or don’t do or say) can profoundly affect others, they don’t speak their mind, they can’t connect with people to form networks, or they get stuck and stay stuck instead of looking for alternative paths (common sense to me).  I hope to develop more patience with myself & others when I or they aren’t able to research something completely, execute to completion, or build a magnetic based bullet train (quantum physics to me – ouch that hurts my brain).  If we as parents and managers appreciated the differences and strength’s in people and let them do what they do best, we would create and build better, more sustainable businesses.

Playing The Letters You Are Dealt
Dec 18 2011

You’ve probably heard life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.  It’s true from my perspective.  People react to proverbial bad news in different ways.  I’ve been given bad news that in hindsight (or even on the spot) was actually great news!  It usually doesn’t feel that way to most of us at the time it’s delivered though.  I don’t know why some of us dust ourselves off, get back up, and re-invent ourselves while others sink deeper into the sofa.  Believe me there have been many times that I’ve wanted to sink deep into the sofa and eat tons of chocolate, but something inside me (oh, and those two kids of mine who need to eat and go to school) makes sure I get up, eat just a wee bit of chocolate, and keep going.  Fighting the demons inside your head can be the hardest thing to do, especially when your life has turned out differently than you envisioned or others envisioned for you.

A good friend of mine introduced me to Words With Friends (pretty much like Scrabble) and I’m hooked.  My kids are hooked.  I’m playing several games with several friends right now.  Each game is different.  I’ve lost most of them so far because it’s been so long since I’ve played Scrabble and the words that are OK in Scrabble/WWF are not always used in the real world.  Plus, my kids (i.e., cute and cuddly meddlers) will all of a sudden play small words that don’t have a lot of points.  Each part of your life is different.  The basic rules, from my perspective, are the same but everyone is dealt a different hand, cards, letters and playing them the best we can is what counts.  Also, I’ve found that shuffling the letters (i.e., your perspective) lets you see things you might not otherwise see.

So play the letters you are dealt.  Sometimes you’ll make tons of points and sometimes you’ll make a few.  Sometimes you’ll win and sometimes you’ll lose, but there’s always another game to be played.  I’m curious as to how often people use the word “Qi” in their daily conversations? 😀

Knowing What You Want
Dec 11 2011

Grand Canal - China

Knowing what you want is a blessing and a curse.  If you know what you want, then you know the usual paths of achieving it.  You can improvise along the way, but if you know you want to be a singer, doctor, lawyer, teacher, pro football player, screen writer, monk/nun, landscaper, etc. you follow a prescribed path for the most part.  It’s a curse because a) someone can decide you aren’t good enough, b) you actually aren’t good enough, c) you weren’t born into knowing the right people, or d) you always seem to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.  Most people do not become world famous singers, athletes, novelists, or movie directors.

Not knowing what you want is also a curse and a blessing because you can drift aimlessly wondering where you belong and in what you might be phenomenal.  You can be strong at many things but unless you know that you want to be an entrepreneur, a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Martha Stewart, Dilbert, a world class surgeon, a lawyer, etc., what you end up doing probably won’t feel like a custom made glove.  The blessing part of not knowing what you want to be when you grow up is that you never had a burning desire to be  Lady Ga Ga, so you aren’t as disappointed when you roll out of bed and you aren’t her.  The blessing is also that you can decide to like what you are doing and find ways to make a difference and change the world in your own little non Lady Ga Ga like fashion and still have people think you are pretty cool.

My son says he wants to be a soccer player and my daughter says (only recently) that she wants to be a singer.  I’ll see if I can steer them towards being a soccer playing physicist and a singing doctor.  I wonder how that will work.  Despite our best voluntary & involuntary attempts at showing them the life of an entrepreneur is not laced with candy, they might be crazy like us and commit entrepreneur-icide.

Opportunity Knocks…
Oct 23 2011

Elephants at a Buddhist Temple in China

When opportunity knocks where will you be?  I imagine I’ll be at my son’s soccer game, making sure my kid’s take baths, cooking, or I’ll be doing their laundry.  How do we recognize when opportunity knocks?  Entrepreneurs are supposed to create opportunities, right?  But really, I think we see an opportunity and we try to take advantage of it.  Ideas are a dime a dozen.  People who can validate the idea are rare but those who can execute against those ideas to profitability are even rarer.  It’s not easy to execute against most ideas or take advantage of most opportunities.

One day I want to write a novel.  I want to write a fiction novel and I’d like to write a novel about business.  But right now I’m working full time, making sure my kids take their baths, watching their soccer games, going to swim classes, making sure they do their homework, doing dishes, and folding laundry.  It’s certainly all great material for that novel I’m going to write one day which may or may not ever see the light of day.  I recall my grandfather wanted to write a book.  I think he started writing something, but he was too busy doing great entrepreneurial things, helping kids, hanging out with grand kids, dealing with a sick wife (my grandmother), and helping other people so he never finished putting down in words the wisdom that was in his head.  He died of leukemia at the age of 82.  I bet if he could have blogged, he would have tried it out.  He was a brilliant, yet flawed man like most of us humans are.

Opportunity knocked and I went to China.  Opportunity knocked and I found a guy who I used to work with, Brian Hurdle, to redesign my blog who just redesigned my twitter page.  While flying to China, I read Little Bee: A Novel (about a refugee girl who escaped from Nigeria to England) and The Secret Life of Bees (about a White girl who runs away from her abusive father to live with a bunch of Negro women in the southern US in the 1960s).  The first was written by a man, the latter by a woman.  The overarching theme of both books from my perspective was “men suck!”  Interestingly, little boys did not suck and they too needed protection from men, who ironically were at one point in their lives little boys themselves.  What happens between cute, sweet little boyhood and manhood?  I don’t know, but I hope my boy stays sweet, thoughtful, and caring.  Of course both fiction novels were written for the female audience, which is kind of distressing.  But as I was reading them, I thought these are well written novels.  Not as superbly written as others I’ve read but well written overall.  So after doing some calculations, I figured I need to be a millionaire by the age of 45 to even think of having the time, resources, and health insurance to write such a novel.  I’m not too far away from 45….

Any benefactors out there?

When In China…
Oct 15 2011

Great Wall of China - October 2011

I recently got back from a fabulous trip to China.  I signed up for a 9 day tour coordinated by the Austin Chamber of Commerce.  We had an aggressive itinerary and hit most of the major highlights in Beijing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai.  While I was there Steve Jobs passed away and pretty much everyone in China was talking about it too.  I’m not sure why I was a little surprised, but there were iPhones and iPads in China despite access to Google and facebook not being allowed.  What a profound affect Mr. Jobs had on the entire world, but in the end we still cannot avoid death.  In his life, he accomplished more and touched more lives than probably any before him.

His death with the background of ancient China was sort of appropriate in some ways.  The people who built The Great Wall, one of the 7 man made wonders of the world and visible from the moon, are not remembered but the Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who directed it’s construction is remembered.  Although 99.99% of us won’t be remembered much past our life times, hopefully we will have a positive impact on those around us so they continue to spread our wisdom to future generations.

Today I ordered an iPhone 4S at a nearby AT&T store. Rest in peace Steve and may your entrepreneurial stardust land on a few of us left here on earth.

I am going to try to find time over the next few weeks to blog about my trip  and include some photos.