I recently completed the test in Strengths Finder 2.0 which can be bought on Amazon for around $12 (StrengthsFinder 2.0 – Link to Amazon). It was recommended to me by a long time friend who works at Texas Instruments. His team took the test at his work so I bought it for our Operations/Admin team at my work since I thought it would be a fun way for us to understand each others strengths. I really enjoyed reading the assessment it gave of me and my co-workers.
Following are my Top 5 strengths and brief description of each. I wonder if these are typical of entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs, technology entrepreneurs, or other professions. I know that I enjoy having roles that are not fully defined and where I can try new things. I thought these described me fairly well and it was nice to have a way to put in words some of my strengths. It was eye-opening for me as I didn’t fully realize there were others who thought like me or articulated themselves like me, but when I read some of the quotes from people who had the same Top 5 strengths, I recognized myself in some of the things they said.
Strategic
People who are especially talented in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues. “Chances are good that you periodically identify problems others fail to notice. You might create solutions and find the right answers. Perhaps you yearn to improve certain things about yourself, other people, or situations.”
Connectedness
People who are especially talented in the Connectedness theme have faith in the links between all things. They believe there are few coincidences and that almost every event has a reason. “Driven by your talents, you occasionally sense you are part of something bigger or more important than yourself. Maybe this conviction influences choices you make in life. By nature, you may be guided by the notion that no one can live life without some help from others.”
Woo
People who are especially talented in the Woo theme love the challenge of meeting new people and winning them over. They derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection with another person. “By nature, you may share a lot of information about yourself with certain people. You might make individuals comfortable enough to candidly talk about themselves.”
Communication
People who are especially talented in the Communication theme generally find it easy to put their thoughts into words. They are good conversationalists and presenters. “Instinctively, you occasionally feel comfortable telling certain individuals stories about your personal habits, qualities, experiences, or background. Your forthcoming nature might enable some people to share their thoughts and feelings with you. Chances are good that you may help others understand you as a person.”
Developer
People who are especially talented in the Developer theme recognize and cultivate the potential in others. They spot the signs of each small improvement and derive satisfaction from these improvements. “Instinctively, you repeatedly go out of your way to support, inspire, motivate, or embolden various individuals. You likely regard this task as worthy of your effort and time. Driven by your talents, you inspire your teammates with words that bolster their confidence. You repeatedly remind them they have the abilities needed to attain their goals.”
Following up on my Day 1 and 2 post on SXSW Interactive, I continued days 3 and 4 following my zen-like strategy. On Day 3 (Sunday), I went to the Girl + Guy party hosted by Guy Kawasaki (well known in the tech start-up world and a big supporter of women entrepreneurs) and companies like Culture Map. Last year, I got a picture with Guy at the party they hosted at Allen Boots which I think was why I was wearing a pink cowboy hat. Afterwards, I went to eat Indian food with some new friends that I met at the party and one of them emailed me the picture of her friend wearing the t-shirt that I put in this post because it’s pretty funny.
Today, I caught a panel led by my friend Thom Singer called You Can Impact Charity Without Being Rich. Eugene Sepulveda (also a friend), who runs the Entrepreneur’s Foundation of Central Texas (where our company’s at ATI donate a portion of their equity) was on the panel. I caught most of the keynote with Felica Day, a former World of Warcraft gamer who created an online TV series called The Guild, and although I had no idea who she was before I walked into the room, I was impressed with her youth and energy.
I walked the Trade Show (a whole separate blog post to come about that experience) before going to a panel run by another friend, Enrique Ortiz, on mobile development and applications. He had the founder of Rovio Mobile, which makes Angry Birds on the panel. My kids love playing Angry Birds so I asked him if he had a couple of those stuffed animals he could give away. He didn’t have the big ones, but he gave me two small ones. He was also giving away t-shirts that said “Chillin’ Like A Villian” with a St. Patrick’s Day theme. My kids thought I was awesome for a few short moments. He said they have surpassed $100 million in revenue, Angry Birds was the 52nd game they made, and it had 1.2 billion hours of played time last year. Amazing!
Then it was off to the ATI co-hosted Entrepreneur’s Lounge to network with a bunch of folks and I got a Fandor (facebook fan page) video/flip book done with one of my co-workers that is supposed to be uploaded to their facebook fan page sometime tomorrow. Then a few of us headed over to the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)/NEA party which was pretty rockin’. The CEO of Groupon was there playing the keyboards for one song that apparently had to do with some lost bet. I’m not sure who the singer was, but it wasn’t his best voice night.
Overall, this year’s SXSW has been pretty low-key for me. I think I tweeted (@aruni) more these past few days than I have all of last year. I’ve been home by 10:30 pm each night despite the lure to stay at the parties longer and go to yet another party afterward.
The second day of SXSW Interactive is still going on in downtown Austin. I called it a night early since I’m too old for this stuff it’s become too mainstream and there are too many people. I’m not a big crowd person, which is one of the reasons I have no real interest in going to Mardi Gras in New Orleans…I like a little bit of personal space. As I mentioned in my first post about the conference, I was approaching this one in a zen-like, floating manner and so far I’m succeeding and my stress level and need to stay late at events has been very much reduced.
Yesterday, I made it to the keynote by Marissa Mayer, vice president of consumer products at Google. As some of the panels/keynotes at SXSW Interactive are, her talk was pretty much a big commercial for Google. They are focusing on location based services and maps. I love Google Maps. I don’t know how I lived without it since I’m directionally challenged and having a map on my iPhone telling me where to go, despite it being wrong about 10% of the time, has saved me much angst. I have since transferred that angst to other things in my life, but still.
I then went to the Entrepreneur’s Lounge, co-hosted by the Austin Technology Incubator, where I work, (awesome new website alert!! - designed by Clutch Creative) and connected with people I hadn’t seen in a while and met some new people. After that I went to Ignite Austin, but didn’t stay long because it was very loud so my friend Karen Banteverus who founded VolunteerSpot and I went next door to a restaurant to have hot tea and tortilla soup and catch up. I did see Michael Dell and his brother Adam who were sitting a couple rows ahead of me at Ignite Austin. I had met Adam for lunch with a couple of my co-workers before, but had never seen Michael that up close and personal before. Then I went home.
I checked out the Blogger’s Lounge (sponsored by Samsung) yesterday and today and was surprised at how few people I knew there. In just a few short years, the people I know/knew either aren’t here or aren’t at the Blogger’s Lounge. Things and people move on fast in Internet time.
Today, I saw the keynote by Seth Priebatsch, chief Ninja at SCVNGR. He’s something like 21 years old and dropped out of Princeton after his first year. I was really impressed with his talk and how he delivered it especially given his age. I think he’s someone to watch who will be doing some game changing things in the future. It made me wish I was 21 again and knew what I knew now…how differently I would approach life and business. He basically spoke about ways to apply a gaming layer to the world. In other words, applying game theory to solving some of our biggest problems. It’s not the first time to hear someone talk about this, but he presented it in a unique way. The room was completely full and there were several overfill rooms where his talk was being simulcast.
Then I headed to the Entrepreneur’s Lounge again this evening and then to the uShip party at their new offices on 3rd and Brazos (sweet!). I know the uShip founders from activities around the UT Austin business school and the CEO/Founder and I used to be in a Business to Consumer (B2C) group when I was running Babble Soft. After that party, I realized my calves were killing me from all the walking around downtown in my Skechers, but my toes/feet were fine because I wasn’t wearing heels! So I headed home to write this blog post and to see if there was a new episode of Grey’s Anatomy this past week that I could watch.
It’s that time of year again. The time in Austin, Texas where South by Southwest and Spring Break combine. Thousands of people descend on Austin for SXSW Interactive, Film, & Music. I think the attendees for Interactive surpassed that for music last year.
I’m approaching the experience in a more zen like fashion this year and seeing where the tides pull me. I know I’ll be at the Entrepreneur’s Lounge, co-hosted by The Austin Technology Incubator (where I work) a few times this week and a few other events including Ignite Austin this evening thanks to the Entrepreneur’s Foundation of Central Texas. I plan to attend some panels and meet up with people I haven’t seen since last year.
Some of you may remember that I coordinated a panel a couple of years ago called Building A Web Business After Hours. My advice is don’t do it unless you have a clear path to get out of your day job, don’t have young kids, and aren’t going through personal turmoil. So this year I’m going to float and see what happens. I haven’t even uploaded my picture online for my badge so I’ll get an on site picture if I can find parking this afternoon.
Thankfully, the weather is gorgeous with high’s in the upper 70′s predicted for most of the week. I hope to see some of you (my readers) during my floating around…
It’s taken me quite some time to write about this because of a crazy busy schedule and I wasn’t really sure how to write about it. In addition to my day job, I’ve also taken on a side consulting job in order to learn about a different industry and to bring in some additional income. The last 20+ months seem like a blur to me with all the changes I’ve had to absorb and process in my life personally and professionally. A few months ago my partner at Babble Soft, Nicole Johnson, who has been running the company for over a year, told me she needed to put the company on hiatus so she could better manage her life.
Nicole also has a day job as well as another side job (baby sleep advice), and as I and a few others on the panel I coordinated called Building A Web Business After Hours at SXSW Interactive (starting here in Austin later this week) a couple of years ago have subsequently realized: it’s very hard to do. We had to pass the baton to someone else who could spend more time on our respective companies. Since I had been in her shoes juggling kids, family, day job, oh and just a handful of personal transitions not too long ago, I told her to do what she felt was best for her and her family.
They say timing is everything and it is so true and especially with businesses. So many things have to go right for an endeavor to be successful. There has to be the right balance of personal situation, market acceptance, technology working, right people, etc. that sometimes it’s a wonder any businesses survive!
So it was a bitter sweet transition that happened a few months ago and maybe someone will be interested in buying our intellectual property, the domain name, or Nicole will be able to reduce hours at one of her other jobs to re-launch fresh in a year or so! A few months ago, we moved everything (including my blog) off of a dedicated Rackspace server to a much lower cost alternative.
So goes life. If things aren’t working out, it’s better to recognize that something is about to break (whether it’s you or your business) to make changes earlier rather than later. Sometimes things don’t work out as planned, and I’m so glad I live in the US where we can learn from every business success or failure and still be respected and get another job. As an example, check out the interview by Fareed Zakaria, CNN news/TIME editor, did of the Foursquare founders.
I’ve been thinking about transitions. Some people transition quickly and some slowly or shall we say not as quickly. But those who transition quickly sometimes pay later because they act too fast which can result in suboptimal decisions. Some act too slowly which also result in suboptimal decisions where they have to pay the piper painfully in pickled peppers.
In the world of entrepreneurship, you have to make quick decisions as though you had the time to make a well thought out one, while at the same time having very limited data. In larger companies, you have more time to research, prepare, and analyze before making a decision which could end up not working anyway. Larger companies can spend millions of dollars on a bad product/idea and still survive. Entrepreneurs/small businesses can’t. They will lose people, money and time.
So how companies handle transitions depends on their culture. It has been demonstrated that some of the most successful businesses transitioned many times during their existence and their starting business plans looked very different than the one that proved successful.
Think about how you handle transitions in your personal, parenting, and professional lives. Are they similar or different? Does it depend on the people you have around you and the strengths and weaknesses they evoke? I’ve noticed that I’m strongly effected by the people around me during times of transition, and I try to move towards those who have a positive effect on me but am sometimes seemingly demonically pulled towards those who make the transition harder, but fortunately my inner core is more attracted to positive people.
Ah, transitions…one of the things in life you can always expect to happen!
These two links are interesting because I wrote the posts…well not just that, they also have some great entrepreneurial content related to my job at the Austin Technology Incubator.
IBM and ATI Announce Partnership On Novel Summer Internship Program
It took us a while to be able to talk about the above partnership that I helped coordinate, but just last week we were finally able to talk about the unique intern program we set up. It’s pretty exciting news since we helped create three internships that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. Click the link to read the full story including quotes from our executive director, Isaac Barchas, and a vice president at IBM, Manoj Saxena.
Human Resources Best Practices – Lunch & Learn
One of the many things I do at ATI is organize periodic Lunch & Learn’s with relevant topics/speakers for our companies. The last one we did was on HR and we had some fantastic speakers (see below). Check out the post for key questions asked and key takeaways from their talk as well as their full bios.
Lori Knowlton, Vice President, Human Resources at HomeAway, Inc.
Alise Mullins, Vice President of Human Resources atLifeSize
Beth Ruffing, SPHR, Team Manager, Service Operations,Administaff, Inc.
It’s been almost six months since I’ve done a post on fortune cookies but I got one recently that seemed appropriate. I was having lunch with Laura Benold, a former ATI marketing associate extraordinaire, last week and got the following fortune: “Impatience may be appropriate at this time.“ We both laughed and thought it was relevant given our conversation at the time. Although I like to get things done and get them done quickly, I have been more than patient about some things (contrary to some people’s beliefs about me) in the last few years mostly because I was dealing with a personal tsunami of my own, but my patience on certain things has about run out. So maybe I should be more visible with my impatience for a while.
Another fortune (i.e., a statement, which seem to be the trend in fortune cookies these days) I got in the last couple of months is something like “Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.” That is so true about people, products, markets, etc. I have a blog post brewing in my head about that one. I think entrepreneurs have an even greater imagination than most. I can’t imagine living life without an active imagination. Entrepreneurs (business people, scientists, writers, etc.) are sometimes crazy enough to attempt to try and make what they imagine real!
Time to write is scarce these days. My days are full with work, kids, homework supervision, music, house stuff, friends, and movies. The kids and I saw Megamind in 3D today. So that means less time for me to write on the blog, but not to worry I am still getting my creative outlet through song writing. My new music writing partner and I now have 5 prototype songs done. They are still works in progress but for the few people I have played acoustic/rough cut recordings to, they seemed to like them or they did a good job at acting they liked them! My favorite one so far is based on lyrics inspired by my daughter.
This past week, I had the chance to participate in two really neat entrepreneurial related events in Austin. One was the Entrepreneur’s Foundation of Central Texas (EF) annual fundraising Texas Hold ‘Em poker night event. The Austin Technology Incubator, where I work, partners with the EF to handle our company’s equity donations to The University of Texas at Austin. The organization was co-founded by one of my friends, Randi Shade, who is currently an Austin city council member. This was my third year to go and I always have a blast. Each time, I’ve made it past the initial table to the 2nd table. One year I think I made it past the 2nd table, but this year I was out at the 2nd. It’s a fabulous networking event with the who’s who of Austin entrepreneurs and investors in attendance. Last year, they had celebrity guests, one of whom was Heather Graham. I got a picture with her and yes she is as beautiful in person as she is in the movies! She even gave me a stick of chewing gum. The EF provides a great service to our community by helping facilitate donations when companies have a liquidating event to charities of their choice.
The other event was the Idea to Product Competition (I2P). I have judged and served as a feedback judge at I2P for several years now. I remember being part of the early formation discussions of the competition 10+ years ago. I really enjoy participating in this competition for many reasons. The student teams seem to get better every year. I’m always fascinated with the life science companies and this year is no exception. One company had invented a tiny microscope to help detect diseases in blood samples via enhanced imagery. I don’t want to go into too much detail because our advice to them was to really get a clear understanding of their intellectual property ownership. Another had an at home device for testing for certain sexually transmitted diseases. The topic makes me cringe but apparently there is a large and unfortunately growing market. The entrepreneur in me gets excited to see these students interested in commercializing technology they have either created or intend to license from a university. It also reminds me of when I was a student presenting my first company in front of a panel of judges in one business plan competition after another. I can relate to the nerves/anxiety but the thrill of selling the concept kept me going.
As I think I’ve mentioned before, there are many really neat things happening in Austin in the world of high-tech entrepreneurship, and I only wish I had time to write more about them.
As I watch my son play soccer, I think to myself how great it is that he is part of a team. I watch him and his other 7 to 8 year old buddies communicate with each other on the field and off. There’s a neat camaraderie and chemistry they have even at this young age. They can be intensely focused on winning but realize that you win some, you lose some, you get some goals, you totally choke and miss some goals, and you are still a team. The team skills are something I see him picking up organically because although I know I could try to explain to him the importance of playing certain positions, playing to your strengths, working with others on a team, etc. he would never really get it unless he experienced it. He doesn’t know that he’s already learning valuable life lessons on the field and when he hangs out with those same buddies off the field. Right now their team seems to work really well together and they win most of their games, which is good because they enjoy it and it motivates them to continue. I think those people who played team sports growing up or were in groups like the military have an advantage when starting businesses or working on teams that are creating innovative products because working with other people can be the most enjoyable and yet sometimes the most emotionally draining experience you can have. Knowing how to ride the waves of your own and others humanity can be the difference between success and failure in an endeavor or a work place.
My daughter seems to prefer swimming which is a more individual sport but if she gets good enough, she might want to join a swim team. I played team sports at various times during my elementary/junior high school years (track, bowling, basketball) and then later in junior high and college I rode horses competitively as part of a team. I also participated in some college intramural sports and company sports teams…mostly softball, but I wish I had done more. I don’t really remember most of the people on those teams, but I do remember a few that made strong impressions on me based on their personalities and talents.
As the saying goes: “There is no “I” in Team.” Even investors in the high tech entrepreneurial world will say they would rather invest in an A Team with a B idea than a B Team with an A idea because the A Team has a better chance of navigating changes that inevitably get thrust upon them.
I saw a play/musical called The Drowsy Chaperone this past Friday with some friends at a local Austin theater called Zach (if you click that link you can even see a short video) and it was very good. The narrator was hilarious. He is an obviously gay guy who was married once but now is alone in his apartment listening to old vinyl records, one of which is of the musical The Drowsy Chaperone. He intervenes during the performance with his opinions of each scene with great commentary from his life experience. He is so excited about the musical, where most of the cast end up marrying each other (i.e., 4 weddings take place at the end), but also sad and lonely about his situation about not finding the right person to be with. Actors to me seem to be entrepreneurs, selling themselves for each show in the hopes of getting cast. I’m guessing that unless you are on Broadway in New York, acting is a tough life financially.
I also discovered a new restaurant called Paggi House. The food was great (except the mussels were too small) and they had half price drinks and appetizers until 7pm so we shared a bunch of interesting things including one of my favorite things: soft shell crab! Well, my friend isn’t a big fan of soft shell crab so she let me eat 95% of it (yummy) with a really interesting sweet/sour/vinegar house made sauce. She had a really interesting salad that I took a few bites of that had vanilla in the dressing!
Saturday and Sunday consisted of meals at homeand Chuy’s as well as seeing the movie Despicable Me with the kids. They had already seen it, but since I hadn’t. I used my strong persuasion skills (not hard) to get them to see it again. It had some pretty funny, but predictable scenes. The main character strives to be the best villain in the world and gets caught by surprise when he adopts 3 little girls as part of one of his schemes to be the best villain. His mother is never pleased with his attempts at villainy as a child and later in life which motivates him but also makes him sad. In the end his mother pays him probably the best and only compliment he’s received from her when she tells him that he is a great parent to the 3 little orphan girls he adopted…”probably even better than me.” You can tell he was pleased that she finally gave him credit for something and it wasn’t for any of his attempts to be a bad guy. Us mothers can cause so much joy and sadness in our kids lives…well according to movies anyway…oh and a few psychologists. I wonder where the dads are in these animated movies?!
I had planned to post this earlier, but my Internet has been down for the last couple of days because some squirrels chewed through some of the cabling…those darn squirrels!
A long time Adviser/Mentor of mine, who also happens to be a very successful investor, sent me a link to the Venture Capital Human Capital (VCHC) report. The findings were interesting but not too surprising (except for possibly the average age of the founding team, given I founded my first company at the “didn’t know any better” age of 26) from my vantage point. I have embedded the report below so you should be able to scroll through the pages.
They say: “In part 1 of our first-ever Venture Capital Human Capital Report, we look at the race of founders, the racial composition of founding teams, age of founding teams and the # of founders of VC backed companies to see if there is any relationship between these characteristics and the VC funding received.” Some of their findings:
87% of Founders are White; All-Asian Teams Raise the Most Funding
Nationally, South Asian and East/Southeast Asians are funded to a similar extent
83% of Teams are all White. All Asian teams raise more money.
Average founding team is age 35 to 44 years old.
39% of founders were CEO/Founders before. Sales/Marketing and Product Management/Development were common previous roles.
Majority of companies have two or more founders, but a third are led by one founder.
I saw the movie Salt yesterday with a friend and it was intense. A good action/thriller with Angelina Jolie as the main character. She plays a CIA agent who is set up by Russian agents to infiltrate American intelligence, but she doesn’t know this about herself until she’s much older. Of course the bad guys always underestimate the power of true love to destroy even the most evil plots and plans. The stunts and effects were really good. However, as skinny as Angelina is, some of those stunts and fights with men twice her size are even harder to believe…but hey, it’s just a movie. My friend and I left the theater pumped with adrenaline, and we both concluded that the way the movie ended there was probably going to be a Salt II.
We decided to grab some dinner and headed over to Baby Acapulco’s which is just across the street from the theater. We were pleasantly surprised with the band who was playing that night – The Brew. They play Latin Jazz music and they were really good. She had heard of them before and I wasn’t sure if I had. We both enjoyed a margarita and the show! They even had a free group salsa lesson that I participated in despite the fact I was wearing flip flops. I’d love to take salsa or almost any kind of dance lessons some day so it was a fun experience. A bunch of us lined up in front of the stage and my practice partner ended up being another woman who was there supporting the band so she already knew how to dance salsa. She was older than me and really sweet. She just got back from Hawaii and was wearing a pretty flower in her hair. We took turns being the man in the practice sessions as did others because it was mostly women who came up to participate in the free lesson.
The Brew has a sound similar to the Gipsy Kings so beautiful and romantic. Musicians are entrepreneurs and I’m always impressed when I see a band who is able to seemingly make a living sharing their talent. To me, hearing them after watching Salt was a nice way to calm the nerves after watching an intense movie! I look forward to hearing them again sometime soon.
Yesterday after I checked out facebook and updated my profile picture to one of my daughter wearing a flamenco dress that I bought her during my recent trip to Barcelona where I got to explore a little bit of my poetic side, I began thinking about people’s images. I like facebook because I can see what is going on with friends & family who are all over the world. I check it once every couple of weeks…sometimes once per week depending on the notifications I get. I set all my privacy settings so that only the people in my network can see my pictures, comments, etc. I used to use twitter almost daily but in the last year, my usage has decreased drastically. Most of my tweets are just my automatic tweets when I publish a blog post. Even the frequency of my blog posting has decreased mostly because of lack of time, I haven’t been inspired to write, and I’m writing more offline. LinkedIn is another site that I’ve checked out periodically.
The reason I started using twitter was first because I had wanted everyone to know I had gone to a Duran Duran concert, and then more importantly to see what it could do for my business Babble Soft, that is now run by Nicole Johnson, who was my business partner and who thankfully was able to take over the company and run with it. Twitter is a valuable tool to meet people and get the word out about your business. Most of what I tweeted was pretty upbeat or business related.
As I was looking at some facebook pages (mine included), it’s clear that what we show online and often what we show people even in “real” life isn’t really what’s going on with us. We often show a rosy picture with glamorous photos of us or our kids/family smiling, and we tweet about events or fun things. There are a few crazies out there who let it all hang out, but soon they are ostracized even online. Sometimes even those closest to us in real life don’t really know what’s going on with us because we’ve been told it’s not good to share too much of the hard, ‘real’ stuff. So we stuff it inside or say to ourselves ‘who cares’ or ‘I’ll get over it.’ I agree in one sense that we should keep some stuff to ourselves if we can (but sometimes as crazy as it sounds we just can’t), but I’ve also discovered that not sharing at all, which is what I used to do, meant that people didn’t really know me and after I started sharing things like others shared with me, I realized how strange things sometimes sounded. When I started talking and writing, I and others started to hear and see me differently. Even the greatest writers of all time couldn’t tell us explicitly through their writing what they were processing because of social pressures, which is part of what makes their writing so provocative!
Social networks enabled millions of people to share things about themselves…their daily lives that in some ways validated the mundane lives we often live. I used to share things about where I was going or notes on events, etc. Thankfully not things like people joked about (i.e., going to the bathroom)! But people shared, continue to share, and make connections to individuals they might not have otherwise in a mostly safe environment. twitter is a fire hose, or as I like to describe it a river, of information sharing.
Social networks have given people a medium to be heard and you cannot argue with the fact that it has fundamentally changed the way many people interact with each other and think of each other. Tools like twitter, facebook, and LinkedIn have brought customers, job seekers, stay-at-home parents, entrepreneurs, and companies closer together and it has shown a very large side of humanity that craves attention & connection that they apparently weren’t/aren’t getting in their real, offline lives.
I think we will see and are seeing an auto-correction on the use of these tools, but I believe these kinds of human connection tools are here to stay. When you tap into an aspect of someone or a group of people that needs/wants to be heard, they can often overdo it, spin out of control and then just like in the financial and political markets there will eventually be an auto correction that when it happens seems huge and out of control in a different way. Although markets are supposed to behave rationally, just like people who drive them, they often don’t.
I still remember this guy I knew at a Southern Baptist church I went to during junior high and high school. He was older (i.e. in college), wiser, and I think he was one of our Sunday school teachers. I looked up to him and adored him. There was so much going on in my life that I wanted to share with him pieces of it and get his advice, yet I couldn’t because I felt if I did he would think differently of me. Like most teenagers, I already felt I was different enough. I remember sitting with him somewhere alone trying to tell him something that seemed so ominous at the time and now is just a fact of my life, and I think because he could sense my angst he said ‘some things are better off left unsaid.’ I suddenly felt relieved because it took off the pressure, and gave me a sense that he understood, but it still left me feeling the same, different person.
So, yes some things are better off left unsaid except for when they aren’t. If by saying them online, offline, to people you trust, to people you don’t know if you can trust, you find a kindred soul, someone who can help you figure it out, or someone who changes you or your path for the better, or even realize that you really aren’t that different because there are other people out there kind of like you, then it’s better to say it and take the risk. Unless of course you are saying & texting things like Tiger Woods. You certainly learn who you can and can’t trust when you are at your most vulnerable.
But when you consciously or unconsciously take that risk, it will have an affect on your online image and/or your real life image. The type of affect (positive or negative) will depend on what’s going on around you and how you deal with the aftermath. It’s important to manage your online and real life image/reputation but if you over manage it, no one really knows the real person like Bernie Madoff, who everyone thought was a great guy…until they didn’t.
The first year of the new Magellan International School (MIS), founded by the father of my kids (Erin Defosse), is almost over. And it was a really great year! I always believed in the vision of the school when Erin first told me he wanted to start it. It has been a phenomenal entrepreneurial success and it was wonderful to see the kids at their end of school year performance speaking in Spanish. I remember when I first met Erin how impressed I was that he was fluent in Spanish and often told him he should use the language more often since it was such an asset. I can understand about 60% of what people say in Spanish now. During my recent trip to Portugal (See post 1 and post 2) and Spain (will do a post soon) I was able to get by with my limited Spanish in Spain. Portuguese has some similar words to Spanish so I could pick up some of what people were talking about. I wish I knew other language other than English, but I don’t. My parents know two other languages but they don’t really have the opportunity to use those languages much since they aren’t commonly spoken.
I couldn’t argue with giving our kids the gift of another language and only hope they will take every opportunity to use it when they grow older. My son has already helped me on occasion communicate with someone who only speaks Spanish. It makes me so happy that he can help me translate!
Erin and the head of school, Marisa Leon, have done an amazing job getting the school off the ground. I remember meeting/interviewing Marisa in a Thai restaurant in downtown Austin, Texas and knowing immediately that she was the right person to head the school. She has a great mixture of the ability to communicate with parents and children which is so important in a school. I trust her and my kid’s other teachers completely with our kids.
MIS started the school year with about 45 students and ended with about 65. Next school year is anticipated to start with 100+ students! Plus, next year the students will start learning Mandarin! The amount of work it takes to get something like a successful, private school going is tremendous. Although I wasn’t involved in the day to day of getting the school off the ground, I did play a supporting role even if people didn’t see or know what I did, and I don’t believe it’s my place to say how and what I did as well as the sacrifices/compromises we made as a family to make it happen. All entrepreneurial endeavors require strategic resource allocations (time, money, etc.), but I can say confidently that I did gave birth to the two kids who inspired him to build the school…and I think that is a visible contribution that counts for something.
Although Erin and I are no longer married, I have always believed in his ability to make the school successful. Our kids are very happy there and the teachers are all world class and caring. They have worked with us during our family transition and have kept the kids as their number one priority which means the world to me. When my kids are happy, I’m happy or shall I say happier than I would be otherwise!
This quote was in an article that hit my in box today: “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit,” Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.” The quote was in an email that was referencing a post done by Copyblogger called Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well and is mentioned in his book Ernest Hemingway on Writing (Amazon link).
For some reason it reminded me of times when people talk about scar tissue as badges of honor in the world of technology entrepreneurship. A lot of shit happens behind the scenes of a start-up company. One in 10 make it big and most of the rest of them have some modicum of success or get to 2nd base or fail. But in those other 9, a lot of practicing, a lot of learning, a lot of scarring occurs that make the next iterations closer to masterpieces. Many successful entrepreneurs (and investors for that matter) I’ve met have a few ‘bad deals’ or shall we say deals that didn’t go as well as they would have liked under their belts. The masterpieces are created because of the ‘pages of shit.’ Without those pages, experiences, and scars the masterpiece’s wouldn’t have happened. This is true in music, writing, entrepreneurship, sports, etc.
Just think about how many baskets Michael Jordan must have missed in order to make as many as he did. Unfortunately, in the world of start-up businesses we can’t physically (time, money, etc.) get up to bat or shoot at the basket that many times. So we have to get through the pages of shit and heal fast so we can hopefully create some masterpieces.
(Amazon link).
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