We all have the same amount of time (barring unforeseen, usually dire circumstances) to do what we are meant to do or want to do while here on earth. It doesn’t really matter if we are born knowing what we are supposed to do or we aren’t. In the case of Hugo (movie), he discovered his purpose in life was to fix other people, things, automatons, and clocks. A series of unfortunate and fortunate events led him to the automaton/person he was meant to fix.
Sometimes time feels like it ticks so painfully slowly when you aren’t able to do what you want to do, be with the people you want to be with, or ironically figure out what your purpose is in life. But then all of a sudden you look up, notice that time has slipped through your fingers and you realize…you rationalize…you reason that maybe this was just all the way it was supposed to turn out. But you know there were points in the road of life where you could have gone a different seemingly easier or treacherously hard way. Would it have resulted in fame, fortune, finding your soul mate, and great health or would you have been run over by a bus?
Timing is everything, but the passing of “time” is the one thing none of us can change until my kids someone invents a time machine. Many of us spend so much time chasing something just out of our reach, so much so that it must be human nature. But when do we stop…do we stop? We can’t stop! Or can we? Well, maybe after we discover intelligent life on another planet.
Benjy Portnoy, founder of Austin-based media company, Mouthpiece Media, is producing a 2-hour, all-inclusive class for small business owners on how to build and maintain their own website.
The seminar has the business owner in mind who knows they need a great website, but don’t want to bother with confusing coding or anything difficult to update. Instead the class will focus on how to build and maintain a site in WordPress, a simple-yet-powerful and scalable system that anyone can use to create a beautiful website in no time.
The course will cover every aspect of building a basic website, including:
Picking and registering a web address
Choosing the right “hosting company” to put the files
How to install WordPress in 5 minutes or less
A custom tour of the WordPress dashboard
How to create posts, pages, and even upload photos and videos
How to change the entire look of your site in a single click
Basics on how to get your site ranked in Google
Lots more
Date: Tuesday, February 21, 2012, 1:30 pm-3:30 pm Place: Wyndham Garden Austin & Woodward Conference Center Price: $37 Only 20 spots available More info: www.mouthpiece-media.com/wpclass
Some people serve as bridges during good times and bad and others are just trolls. If you are a parent, especially of girls, you have most likely heard of Dora the Explorer and the grumpy old troll who doesn’t let anyone cross his bridge unless they do certain things, behave a certain way, or answer certain questions. He is an unhappy soul.
Some people reach out to you only when they need something, but otherwise aren’t very helpful when you reach out to them. They don’t seem to really care what’s going on with you, or even bother to notice if you are in a pickle even if you ask for help. Some people burn bridges intentionally and others aren’t aware they are doing so.
We can all be bridges and help people get to where they are trying to go. It doesn’t have to be a diamond studded bridge…even a kind word, a pat on the back, a few words of encouragement, or an introduction to someone else who can help them can go a long way to bridge someone to their destination.
I remember a saying I heard when I was in college that went something like: always be kind and generous to people who come to you for help in their time of need, because you never know when you will be in a similar situation someday. Good, caring people help us get through the challenges and even the glories of life. I’ve also heard it said in a more foreboding way “Be careful who you step on when you are climbing up the corporate ladder, for they may be in a position to help you when/if the rungs break, due to things in or out of your control, and you come falling down .”
Be kind. Be a bridge for someone during their time of need and don’t put terms and conditions on your help…just do it. Things have a way of coming around. I’ve been blessed with many wonderful “people” bridges, and I hope I am perceived as being as helpful to others as they have been to me.
Most of us know that timing has a lot to do with things turning out as desired or not. If you try to bring a product to market before it’s time (e.g., anything similar to the iPad that came out before the iPad), you often fail. If you take too long, you can miss the proverbial boat. This is true for a) your career, b) relationships/love, c) start-ups, or d) teaching your kids to ride a bike.
My daughter just started riding a bike this weekend. Her brother learned when he was 5 1/2 and she’s almost 7 (2nd child with parents who are crazy busy). I knew she had good balance given she rode her scooter around the house and on the street & sidewalks with ease. So this weekend her dad put her on the bike we got her last Christmas and on the first try she was riding easily. She was ready and the timing was right! I think it was partly because we didn’t make a big deal of it or try to make it happen before she was ready.
If you had given me chocolate mixed with salt 5 to 10 years ago, I would have probably spit it out or not even tried it, but Dark chocolate with a touch of sea salt is remarkably yummy. Timing. I’m still not fond of chocolate mixed with peanuts, but maybe in 5 more years…
I haven’t blogged too much about my career recently because the company I went to work for after I left the Austin Technology Incubator back in August 2011 prohibited employees from mentioning on their blogs that we worked there. Needless to say, I did not know that before I joined and I’m no longer there. So the timing seemed right to hang up my consulting shingle for a while. My current, not very creative name, is ASG Consulting (LinkedIn). I just completed a project for a company in the clean energy/smart grid space and may do some more work for them in the future.
So here I go again attempting to create something that didn’t exist before, but now instead of a hardware or software product, I’m selling my time & expertise. I feel fortunate to live in a time, town, and space where I’m well connected and opportunities are like hidden Easter eggs waiting to be found. Who knows…one of these consulting jobs might end up in a full time job if the fit (skill match, culture, location, etc.) is right.
If I can help your company or someone elses you know with operations, strategy, and/or business development (particularly partner/client management), please ping me and let’s talk. Next up, I have to get some business cards…
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.
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.
The Austin Songwriters Symposium that I wrote about in my previous post was amazing! It wrapped up this morning after a Sunday morning gospel jam session with the attendees and a lunchtime jam session with the pros. I don’t attend church often, but I love gospel music and hymns…they really pull at the heart strings of us sinners non perfect people. I learned a lot about a whole different industry. It’s even harder to make it in that industry than being a high tech entrepreneur. Songwriters are entrepreneurs. The main difference is that most songwriters make it on their own merit or maybe co-write with one or two other people. To build a successful high tech company requires hundreds of people moving in the same direction and buying into the same vision. The payoff can be bigger (95% of songwriters don’t make much money) in building a company but the complexity is higher. Most songwriters seemed to originally have wanted to make it big themselves as a singer singing their own songs but find themselves barely getting by playing their own songs in clubs or the more savvy ones end up writing for the great, well-known singers.
People like Joe Ely, Sonny Throckmorton, Gary Burr, Georgia Middleman (she sang a song called Dare To Dance Alone (YouTube) this morning that she co-wrote with Gary Burr that really touched me), Will Sexton, and Matthew Santos were in attendance and were either performing and/or hosting workshops. It was an eye opener. All of them wrote their own songs or wrote songs for many of the household name country singers of our time like Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Faith Hill, Reba McEntire, Martina McBride, Waylon Jennings, etc. I certainly don’t have any delusions visions that my songs will be published and adopted by great singers but it was nice to know I was not alone in wanting to create new songs. There were people of all ages and different stages of discovering songwriting. I met with a publisher and he had some great advice on a couple of the songs I had co-written…most of it I knew already, but there was a gem or two.
I didn’t realize before I attended how heavy the emphasis would be on country music, but I picked up a saying or two. One of them was the country music was nothing more than “three chords and the truth.” And that certainly seemed accurate to me by the end of the symposium…and the painful truth of us being human certainly comes out a lot in the lyrics of country music.
Attending the conference was a nice break from my daily routine and it was great to hear world class music played by people who obviously loved what they did. I was so impressed how they could get up on stage together, never played a song together, and then play off each other to produce professional sounding concerts. They way they were able to improvise and produce a joyful noise made me seriously think about finally learning to play the guitar!
I haven’t blogged too much about music or songwriting recently, but I signed up to attend the Austin Songwriters Group 8th Annual Songwriting Symposium this weekend and tonight was the first night…well it’s now past midnight as I’m writing this post. My voice teacher, Gene Raymond at Octave Higher, forwarded me a notice about it only a week ago and I figured ‘what the heck, I should go.’ So far so good. They had songwriters from Texas and Nashville singing their original music tonight. It was like having a semi-private concert given by very talented song writers in a smoke-free room where everyone was really interested in listening to the singers. In other words, people were focused on them and not talking to each other, trying to pick up dates, or drinking to excess. They were all so good and all of them said that no one goes into songwriting for the money. A guy named Jim Photoglo made a funny joke about marriage, sex, money, and songwriting but it’s probably not appropriate to write here. I’m looking forward to a guy named Sonny Throckmorton and a gal named Kimmie Rhodes talk about co-writing songs tomorrow (or shall I say later this morning).
Congressman Lloyd Doggett showed up since he’s a big supporter of the Austin music scene and gave a little speech. There were many references to some great country singers like Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, etc. because most of the music the singer/songwriters played this evening was country music. Whenever I hear country music, I remember a guy I worked with at Mr. Gatti’s pizza in high school who told me when I told him that I hated country music that it was because my heart hadn’t been really broken yet…and he was right. I get teary eyed when I hear good country music now.
I signed up to pitch my songs to one of three publishers who will be there on Sunday morning. We get 15 minutes with a publisher. I hope I’m brave enough to hum a few bars when it’s my turn because our songs are still in varying degrees of completion. I wish my songwriting partner could be there, but he’s too busy playing live gigs! We are hoping our schedules will allow us to finally record some of our stuff this year. I mean…come on…we have a facebook page for our two person band, so we have to accomplish something, right? Please go like our page: METAPHOR MANIA. I think we need 25 people to like it to remove the numbers from the URL so…do the right thing and wish me luck in pitching…I could use some positive affirmation right about now.
Here’s to a great new year! One has to be optimistic because the alternative is well not so politically correct to write about. Some people are predicting economic recovery and others doom, but no one has a crystal ball. There’s nothing new under the sun when it comes to human interactions, volcanoes, and icebergs, but it always seems so new to each of us. I suppose social networks and technologies like facebook didn’t exist in the dinosaur age, so that’s new. At any rate, I wish you peace, love and joy.
Below is the loving kindness meditation that I wish for you:
May you be happy.
May you be well in body.
May you be well in spirit.
May you be well in mind.
May you be at peace.
May you love yourself just as you are, in this moment.
May you be filled with loving kindness.
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.
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 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.
I don’t’ have time to read many blogs these days, but I read about 98% of what Seth Godin writes on his blog. I keep meaning to buy and read more of his books, but time escapes me with the many things I’m juggling right now. I’m so glad he blogs!
I subscribed to his Domino Project emails. Watch this video. If you have kids. If you have a daughter. If you are a human being who has put yourself in the face of challenge and danger. If you want to know you are not alone, you must watch this video on Ted Talk. Sarah Kay is a “spoken word poet.” She starts with a compelling poem. She then goes on to discuss her loves of poetry and theater. She is young. She is beautiful and well spoken. Given her talent now, I wonder how she will sound after she actually has kids…or a daughter. Video is embedded below:
How often can people do/experience all of the above? There are people who have changed the world (e.g., Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, etc.) who didn’t make a lot of money and we won’t ever know if they were truly happy, healthy or content. There are people who changed the world and made a lot of money (e.g., Oprah, Steve Jobs, Madonna, Lady Ga Ga, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, etc.) but we don’t know how happy or content they are or were. Oprah has been the most open about her struggles with personal satisfaction and her weight…the businessmen, not so much.
Do we have to deal with having one or two out of three? I think I can count on one hand the people who appeared to have all three but if you dig a little further… Check out a recent post on TechCrunch called 10 Things Entrepreneurs Don’t Learn in College. All very true, the second being “How To Be Betrayed,” which happens all of the time in business (and politics) whether you are a man, woman, or a duck. I clicked over to the authors (James Altucher) post on how to be lucky and it made me wonder if he had kids because he advises getting up at 4 or 5 a.m. every day and to bed by 9:30 pm with exercising and eating right in between. Maybe I’ll figure out how to do that when I’m 50 and the kids are gone. I guess that’s why some are more monetary successful than others…early bird gets the worm!
The saying “you can have it all, but just not all at the same time” must be true. So it seems the thing we have the most control over is how we feel: happy, sad, content, angry, etc. We can try to change the world but there’s no telling what numerous things will be thrown in our path. We can try to make tons of money, but a lot of shit happens (e.g., kids, health issues, the economy, marriage, divorce, love, hate, indifference, parents) trying to do that. But we will usually find ways to make enough to get by or we become comfortable with a lot of debt.
I was reminded during my recent trip to China that Buddha, who was born and originally spread his philosophy in India before his teachings were embraced by the Chinese, taught that at the root of all suffering was desire (for a person, place, thing, success, money, etc.). As I understand it, he said that if you gave up the desire for earthly things or status that would be the only way you could eventually achieve enlightenment. He certainly changed the world and was arguably content/enlightened but was not rich by American standards.
I guess it depends on what age you are, your genetic disposition, and what cards life has dealt you as to whether you believe you can achieve all three at the same time for a substantial length of time…
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….
We all have the same amount of time (barring unforeseen, usually dire circumstances) to do what we are meant to do or want to do while here on earth. It doesn’t really matter if we are born knowing what we are supposed to do or we aren’t. In the case of Hugo (movie), he discovered his purpose in life was to fix other people, things, automatons, and clocks. A series of unfortunate and fortunate events led him to the automaton/person he was meant to fix.
(about a refugee girl who escaped from Nigeria to England) and 
(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….
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