June 29, 2009

How Do You Know When You’ve Made The Right Decision?

I don’t usually know if I’ve made the right decision (business, personal, kids, etc.) until after I’ve made it.  And then even after making it, I sometimes wonder if it was the right one.  But usually I feel a huge sense of relief for some time until, of course, the details have to be worked out.  But life is a series of decisions.   Some are small ones like when to do the laundry, what clothes to wear, what to eat for dinner, etc.  Some are big ones like what house to buy, whether to sell your company, who to marry, whether to have kids or not, how many kids to have, where to send those kids to school, where to go on vacation, what job to take, etc.  But I guess whether a decision is big or small depends on who you are and where you are.  Looking back, when I ignored my gut instinct the outcome was not so great.  When I voiced my opinion, knowing I was right, and was ignored only to prove myself right, I was vindicated but still it sucked.

I think we often let others make decisions for us in business and in life.  I know I’ve done this several times in business as a young entrepreneur.  We think other, older, experienced people know more, but sometimes they just don’t because they can’t see the things you see.  Sometimes we don’t even realize we are doing it.  We might politely express our opinions but not push hard for what we really want for fear of something happening (e.g., not being accepted, looking bad, not being validated, hurting other people, feeling like we don’t deserve what we want, or our outstanding innate power).  Yes, I do think many of us are afraid of our power and being our true selves.

But then we wake up one day to realize we are living a life and business decided by others and not ourselves.  I know many a mother who finds herself in that position in her life…living a life that someone else (family, society, job) dictated to her and she passively accepts it.  I know a few fathers who feel that way too.  I know far more business people who wished they had spoken up and made different decisions.  In the world of entrepreneurship, we call those learning experiences scar tissue!  A necessary rite of passage to prove yourself.

I’ve learned that knowing your boundaries up front helps you make better decisions even in times of crisis or joy.  For instance, if you know you will never lie, cheat, or steal then your decisions of course are going to be different than a thief who doesn’t have those boundaries.  But if you are not careful, you can end up like that proverbial frog in slow heating water who doesn’t realize he is in danger until it’s far too late and he’s boiled to death (e.g., Enron and other financial scandals that involved otherwise good people).  I think most of us make the decision to jump out, turn the temperature down, ask for help, or change the rules of the game of the pot we’re in and earn our scar tissue and badges of experience in the process.

Making a decision to do something, accept something, not do something, or not accept something can leave you with images of the road not taken.  Not following your gut instinct, can leave you with many more decisions to make that might have been avoided or replaced with other decisions…not to mention heartburn and anxiety.

Oh, if we only could get away with not making any decisions and end up being rich, happy, healthy, and fulfilled…

I wonder if someone has invented a pill for that?

June 28, 2009

In A Music State of Mind

The entrepreneurial journey is full of interesting twists and turns.  Even the most successful entrepreneurs I know struggle with what success means.  I was recently meeting with a two time successful (multi-million dollar exits) entrepreneur, and he said after a few months we’re all back to our miserable selves and looking for the next thing to do.  It’s funny how many people I interviewed for the Success Profiles sort of said the same thing.  They would achieve or fail in one thing and then it was on to the next with something to prove.

Are we ever content?  I’m not sure if it’s an entrepreneurial trait, a mid-life characteristic, an MBA grad fate, or something else.  But as I continue to tweet about and reach out to my contacts about finding a good home for Babble Soft, I find myself turning to music as I have often done in the past during times of transition.  There’s something about music that pulls out the emotions in me and lets me process them in a way that can’t be processed in silence or even with close friends.

Since I started taking yoga last year, I’ve seen the benefits of certain meditation and quiet times but music - the combination of words and instruments - pushes buttons in me that make it OK to to feel things that intellectually my mind tells me not to feel.  The mind just says focus on this task, get it done, and move on.  The mind doesn’t want to be bothered with stuff that affects the heart and soul.  Music reminds me that to be human is to feel because other humans are singing about their life transitions and it reminds me how kind of normal some of these feelings are.  And sometimes we need to give ourselves the space to feel and really listen to what our body is telling us instead of just our minds to make the best decisions.  Instead of feeling isolated in silence or the sometimes deafening noise of two kids incessant chatter, music brings me softly into the river of humanity.

So some of the music I’ve been listening to lately is by Billy Joel (hence the title of this post), Indigo Girls, Simon & Garfunkel, Neil Diamond, Michael Jackson (mostly because of his recent death), Sarah McLachlan, and oddly enough Book of Love.

May the music be with you…

June 22, 2009

Babble Soft Looking For A New Home

This is a hard post for me to write, but there are times in life when the best way to handle hard things is to just deal with it head on.  I had some time and space to reflect during my recent beach vacation.

Babble Soft, an idea that I started tinkering around with after my first baby was born in 2003 (our first beta web app release was in 2007 and iPhone app in 2009), has reached a point where my partner, Nicole Johnson, and I can’t do it justice and build it to the company it could be.  We just don’t have the monetary and time resources that a consumer web and mobile (iPhone) based product Baby Insights and Baby Say Cheese require to become a household name.  I’ve been working on Babble Soft part time while balancing kids, the house, etc. for most of the company’s life.  I spent a few months full time on it just before I took a day job about a year ago and now the time has come to find a new home for it.  Nicole has been working on this part time, after hours, as well.

We are both discovering that Building A Web Business After Hours is hard to do with two small kids around.  And doubly hard when two ventures are trying to get off the ground in one household: my husband is starting the pre-K to 2nd grade Magellan School that’s scheduled to open this Fall and our resources are also being tied up with that and our kids will be attending the school.

Nicole and I both believe in web applications to help make parents of newborn’s lives easier, and we want to find a good home for Babble Soft with someone who can take our vision to the next level.  We will continue to support our existing customers and any future customers so please don’t worry about that.  We have a high bar set for customer service!  We just can’t take it to the level (with all the exciting new applications we have planned) where we know it could be right now in our lives, but we know there is someone or some company who can.

If you know of someone who might be interested, please email me at blogger(at) babblesoft(dot)com to discuss further.  Please pass a link to this post to everyone you know!

Motherhood is not always peaches & cream and being a mom entrepreneur adds a little extra challenge to the process so sometimes it’s the hard calls that can make the difference in a company’s and person’s success.

Thanks to all of you readers for your continued support and sticking with me through my unusual parenting and entrepreneurial journeys!

Aruni Gunasegaram
President/Founder
(512) 961-6002

Nicole Johnson
VP Product Development
(512) 961-6002

May 25, 2009

Have You Discovered Your Passion?

Everyone has heard the word passion.  It’s written about in business books, in fiction books, in poems, in romance novels, etc..  It’s shown on TV and in the movies when people find their true loves or their calling in life.  But what is it?  In the world of entrepreneurship, people tell you in order to be successful you must be passionate about what you are doing.  I’ve run into a lot of people who appear passionate about what they are doing but they don’t always succeed in the way they expected.  Passion ebbs and flows in most everything in life.  Sometimes you are in love with your business and sometimes you aren’t, but in order to survive like Microsoft, Dell, Apple, etc. the passion must be there, the underlying love for your products, people, and company must be there and the gaps between must not be long.

They say true passion can be traced back to childhood, when everything seemed possible.  My son is passionate about soccer and hanging out with his good buddies.  If it was up to him, he’d be kicking around a soccer ball all day long.  I often have to tell him not to kick the soccer ball in the main part of the house.   If we’d let him, he’d probably sleep with his soccer ball.  If you mention one of his friend’s names, he will incessantly ask us when we are going to see him next.  He’s a bit of a socialite like his mom.

I can’t tell what my daughter is passionate about yet, but I think she has an affinity for music and lip gloss.  We have a keyboard in our house that my father gave us and she tends to gravitate to it and punch the keys from time to time.  And she likes to play the bowling game on the Wii.

My husband is passionate about starting the multi-lingual, international Magellan School here in Austin.  He is passionate about his kids learning Spanish since he is fluent in Spanish and wants them to have the gift of multiple languages that was given to him.  He is also passionate about biking and exercising.  He set a goal to do the Shiner Bash - 100 mile ride and he did it.  He exercises every day and he says he’s in the best shape he’s ever been in his life.

What a blessing it must be to discover your passion and find yourself being able to realize your goals.  It’s even better when you can make a living at it.  It seems like most people can’t turn their passion into making a living for whatever reasons whether it be timing, market acceptance, encouragement, money, health, ability, skills, etc.  Many people try to keep their passion alive on the side or after some time, we forget what it was we were passionate about.

Right now in my life, I’m most passionate about my kids.  I am passionate about helping people achieve more than they thought they could.   When I look back upon my childhood, I remember the passion I had for music.  I think my father actually started taking us to piano lessons when I was about 9 years old when we lived in Albuquerque, NM.  When we moved to Lubbock, TX , I sought out my own piano teacher who lived nearby and I would walk to her house for lessons.  It was hard to find time to practice and hard to find time to continue since it was just me, my mom, and my sister.  My grandmother studied piano in Oxford University in England so I must get some of my passion for music from her.  Sadly, I can’t play the piano today, but I can sing.

I sang in church and actually did a solo in front of the entire church in my early teens.  I sang in high school choir.  I sought out my own voice teacher and when I went to college at UT Austin, I took voice courses for two semesters.  I knew I was reasonably good, but not great.   I never envisioned myself singing in a musical or singing opera so I guess I thought what’s the point and continued on with my business degree.  In grad school I sang a few songs in a couple of bands.

I also remembered that I liked to write.  In my early teens, a few girlfriends and I would start this notebook with a story and each of us would have to write the next part until we ended up with a full story.  I hate to admit this, but I think Michael Jackson and his glove showed up a time or two in those stories. :-)  I wonder what happened to those notebooks.  I would also invariably get high grades in creativity in my English classes but very low grades in grammar.  The concept of grammar didn’t click for me until my freshman English class in college for some reason.

I also didn’t have anyone around me encouraging me, connecting me with people, giving me feedback, or showing me the way to nurture those creative right brain activities I was drawn to.  So I did what any respectable child of two doctors would do….I got an Accounting degree and then an MBA, which has served me well and odds are has resulted in a much more lucrative career than if I had pursued writing, singing or horse back riding (another younger days hobby of mine) as a career.

So now here I am in mid-life.  Too old to start up regular horse back riding again for fear of breaking my bones…well not really, but not enough time to go to a barn and take care of a horse.  It’s highly unlikely that I can make singing a financially rewarding career at this point in my life, but I am enjoying my voice lessons and relish any time I can make it to a jam session.  I do enjoy writing in my blog.

So that leaves me to figure out how best to blend my passion for working with people, with a product I’m passionate about, with a path to millions of dollars….

Any suggestions?  How did you discover your passion?

May 22, 2009

Board Management

On May 20, 2009, we held a board management Lunch & Learn at the Austin Technology Incubator.   We hold these monthly or bi-monthly.  Our next one is going to be on Building A Great Corporate Culture.  It was a very productive meeting and our companies learned a lot.   I served as moderator and the people on the panel (with the exception of Janice because she got struck by swine flu sick) were:

Richard C. Benkendorf, Co-founder/Managing Principal, Technology Impact Partners (TIP)

Dick, through his role at TIP, serves on the Board of Directors or Advisory Board of both private and public firms as well as investment partnerships including Wave Max, Open Scan, Care Data Systems, Revelation, Concentric Equity Partners, AllianceTech, Adtron, State Street, Murphree Ventures, Facilities Technology Group and CMIT Solutions as well as not for profit entities such hospital charitable or civic organizations.  Other current or very recent investees of TIP include @security, Globalscape (now public), Voxpath Networks, Pointserve, Tobin, Dwight’s Energy Data, Advent Networks, Liberty Fitness, Facilities Technology Group, American Telesource (now public), Reunion Ventures, and Affinegy.

Previously, Dick was a Senior VP of Ameritech and prior to that spent 16 years at IBM.  He founded The American Software Company (TASC) and was President of Telemed and Chairman of Execucom.  He founded T/D Technology, a private equity firm that acquired and operated software and information technology firms.  He also founded ISSS Ventures, a $155M venture capital fund.

Bob Bridge, Entrepreneur In Residence, Office of Technology Commercialization

Bob has been in management, marketing, and engineering roles at semiconductor and system companies for 33 years, including serving as founding CEO at three technology companies. One of those companies, Zilker Labs was sold to Intersil in December 2008. Bob has also served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Austin Ventures, vice president of marketing at Agere (a network processor IC startup), and vice president and general manager for communications ICs at Crystal Semiconductor/Cirrus Logic. Additionally, Bob has held engineering and management positions at Motorola, AT&T corporate headquarters and AT&T Bell Labs. Bob holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor’s degree in Mathematical Sciences from Rice University.

Janice Ryan, CEO and Chairman of Social Dynamix

Janice Ryan has a 27 year track record of growing profitable sales organizations and venture-backed startups.  She is currently CEO and Chairman of Social Dynamix, an early stage venture focused on tools for social media performance measurement.  Prior to this, she was CEO of Sigma Dynamics, a predictive analytics software company in San Mateo, which under her leadership was sold to Oracle (ORCL) in August of ‘06.  Prior to Sigma Dynamics, Ryan was the founding President/COO, of ROME Corporation, headquartered in Austin, Texas.  She was also a member of the founding executive team that launched Vignette Corporation (VIGN), an early internet enterprise software company which experienced one of the most successful IPOs of 1999.  As Vice President of Sales at Vignette, Ryan established the company’s sales infrastructure and management team, and was responsible for driving Vignette’s revenue through all channels worldwide, including direct sales, telesales and a network of systems integrators and resellers.

Ryan has served on several high tech Boards and Advisory Boards, and as an Interim Executive for multiple venture-backed companies in Texas and California.  Early in her career she held a variety of senior sales and leadership positions at IBM, Lotus Development, Filenet Corporation and ViewStar.  Active in philanthropic causes, Ryan has also served on various non-profit Boards, currently serving with the Center for Child Protection.  She earned her BBA degree from Baylor University with distinction in the fall of 1977.

Brian P. Wong, Director, Intersil Corp.

Brian was the President and CEO of D2Audio Corporation, a leading audio semiconductor and software company, which he recently sold to Intersil, a public company in August 2008.  He is currently running the D2Audio-Intersil business as part of Intersil Corp. Mr. Wong has more than 26 years experience as an executive and general manager in the sales, marketing and the development of semiconductors, firmware and software.  Market sector experience includes digital media, consumer, IT and computing, telecom, and storage.  His technology experience includes power management; digital audio, optical and wired datacom; data converters; semiconductors; optical, firmware/software.

Brian has closed over $130M from Venture Capital funds and corporate strategic partners.  He has formed Strategic Partnerships involving investment and/or licensing with AMD, Intel, Intersil, Delta Electronics, MediaTek, and Form Factor. Previously, Mr. Wong was CEO at Primarion Inc, a company focused on I/O and Power Management ICs, which was acquired by Infineon.  Prior to that, he was a senior manager at TRW and ran the Mixed Signal IC business, which included data converter, Clock/Data Recovery, PLL, and high speed digital ICs. Mr. Wong holds a BSEE from University of California, Los Angeles, a MSEE from University of Southern California, has taken graduate management classes at UCLA Anderson School of Management. He is the Chairman of The Austin Technology Council, sits on the Advisory Board for the UC Davis ECE Department, and served on the board of Integral Wave Technologies, a power management company.

The key takeaways were:

• Pick and interview your board members carefully.  Pick people with skills that complement yours.
• Make sure there are no surprises on the day of the board meeting, unless of course they are good surprises!
• Equity compensation for board members ranges from .25% to 1.00% and is granted up front or vests over time depending on the board and the company
• Sizes of the board ranges from 3 to 5 people at the very early stage.  Any more it becomes unweildy and unproductive.
• Boards in small, start-up companies usually meet at least once per month.
• After a successful board meeting, everyone should know the financial state of the company, people/equity grants, milestones achieved, and milestones to be achieved.

It was great to hear the war stories and I contributed some of my own.   They are truly battle scars.

May 14, 2009

ATI Bioscience Open House

Last night I attended the first ever Austin Technology Incubator Bioscience Open House!  I’ve been extra busy this week since the previous night I also served as a panelist at the TiE Austin Funding Forum.

The open house was a HUGE success with close to 150 people in attendance at the AT&T Conference center located on The University of Texas at Austin campus.  The event was held in an outside area and despite the wind, everyone seemed to have a great time.

The event brought together entrepreneurs, VCs, healthcare professionals, and hospital representatives.  It was was partly sponsored by Seton Family of Hospitals in Austin.

The open house was the brainchild of our fabulous Bioscience Director, Jessica Hanover, and was pulled off flawlessly by our Marketing Communications/Events guru, Melissa Rabeaux (who I mentioned in a post I did about her work pulling together the Clean Energy Venture Summit late last year) and her intern team:  Stephany Puno (@StephanyPuno) and Laura Benold (@lbita).

I was feeling a little anti-social last night for a variety of reasons including information and emotional overload, so I was more than happy to hang with Stephany and Laura eating tortilla chips, 7 layer dip, and mini-hamburgers…oh and drink a couple of glasses of vinto tinto.    They kept me entertained, and I helped with registering people and even validating parking from time to time.   Being near the check in process, I got to meet most everyone who came and went anyway.

I ventured out into the crowd to say ‘hello’ to a few people I hadn’t seen in a while, make some key connections, and to see Jessica speak.

ATI Bioscience is a fairly new program (about a year old) and is definitely building a great foundation to help grow Austin’s Bio community!

May 13, 2009

TiE Austin Funding Forum

Last night I participated in annual event put on by TiE Austin called The Funding Forum.  I participated last year as a reviewer to help teams prepare for their pitches and as a last minute panelist to review pitches.  This year I was a panelist listening to pitches but was kind of a moderator too.

The companies rotate tables and pitch their ideas via their PC or hardcopy PowerPoint slides to a few potential investors.  Many angel investors, VCs, entrepreneurs, and members from the technology startup community are present.

At my table, we had 4 different companies.  One of them had already come in to the Austin Technology Incubator to present so I was familiar with them.  Two of them had very nice, well thought out presentations and a did a good job presenting their ideas.  One of the presenters was not very well prepared.

It’s a great place for new entrepreneurial teams to practice their pitch and get advice from experienced individuals.  Some take feedback gracefully and some don’t.

One of the investors at my table had funded a company he met at a prior Funding Forum so it seems to work, on occasion, as it’s designed to!

I left just after the company pitches ended for a variety of reasons, with one of them being that I started to wonder if I was truly in the right space-time continuum.

May 5, 2009

TheFunded Now Has A Founder’s Institute

I just heard about this and it sounds pretty interesting.  You don’t have to relocate to take advantage of this program.

***

TheFunded Founder Institute is a new founder-centric incubator that trains new and seasoned entrepreneurs the best practices for building next generation companies. The unique 4-month program offers remote participation, the industry’s most founder-friendly terms, focused mentorship and training from renowned CEOs, resources from leading service partners, fundraising opportunities at fair market value, and shared equity upside among all participants in the companies formed. Passionate Founders can apply today at www.FounderInstitute.com - registration for the Summer 2009 Semester ends on May 10^th, 2009.

Why was the Founder Institute Created?

The National Venture Capital Association recently reported that VC fundraising dropped nearly 40% in Q1 of 2009. In these dire economic times, only the highest quality, most disciplined new businesses will proliferate - and The Founder Institute was created from the ground up to create such businesses. Our focus on quality is evident in our process;

-        Institute Founders receive guidance from renowned, experienced start-up CEO Mentors.

-        The Institute’s unique equity-sharing model aligns incentives and ensures maximum effort from all parties involved. When one of the Institute’s companies does well, all of the participating companies benefit - and when the Institute’s Mentors help the participating companies, they share in the upside as well.

-        The Institute focuses Founders on non-abstract, critical company-building assignments that build successful businesses in a weekly, step-by-step fashion.

-         The Institute helps Founders secure investment at market rates and under the best possible terms - instead of forcing a valuation or equity purchase at a premature stage.

-        The Institute does not require Founders to relocate or live on reduced incomes.

-        The Institute sets up regular meetings with investors and the public throughout the company-building process to increase quality and focus.

-         Institute Partners provide discounted or free services, so Founders can focus more time and resources on building the business.

Great Founders are often overlooked by the current entrepreneurial ecosystem, and innovative startups have a dramatic positive effect on the global economy. TheFunded Founder Institute aims to help the global economy by helping smart people start new, high-quality businesses.

For more information, visit www.FounderInstitute.com, or contact jonathan@thefunded.com.

May 3, 2009

A New International Multi Language School in Austin

Some of you may know that my husband, Erin Defosse, has been spearheading the formation of a new amazing private international multi-language (Spanish and Mandarin) school for the Austin community - The Magellan School.

Since we both fancy ourselves entrepreneurs, we understand each others need to try new things and hopefully make a difference.

The location was just announced (see a copy of the latest newsletter below) on Far West/Mopac and it will be the first of its kind here in Austin!

The Head of School, Marisa Leon, is fabulous!  I interviewed her and have met with her on several occasions since then.  She is remarkable with kids, brilliant, and extremely observant.  As a parent, I am so thrilled that she will be leading a school that my kids will be going to!

I will be the only one in the family who probably won’t be fluent in Spanish so I’m foreseeing a future where the kids will be saying things about me behind my back. :-)  But it’s a risk I’m willing to take for my kids to be global citizens and be able to communicate with so many more people in the world.

They are still accepting applications for the Fall.  Even if you don’t have pre-K to 2nd grade school age kids please consider donating (tax deductible) and be part of the founding financial supporters of the school to help ensure its continued success.

The early years of any start-up/entrepreneurial endeavor are so critical and any financial or volunteer support you can give will go a long way to making Austin one of the key global centers in the world!  I firmly believe that schools like this will attract companies and families to our fine city.  Giving even just a little goes a long way.  Check out the Magellan Giving page for more information.

When a child discovers that he or she can change the world for the better…the world usually changes!

Please help spread the word!

Click to view this email in a browser

April 26, 2009

Above The Fray

Is it possible to remain above the fray in times like these?  I think some of us if not most of us think we have some control over our destinies, our thoughts, or our feelings and it comes as a shock when we find ourselves in the middle of a tornado and we can’t figure out how we got there.  There are common sayings like “Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.” or “Man plans, God laughs.” or “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” but most of us still feel like we have some control over what happens to us.  Of course, we have control over what shoes we choose to wear one day, but the big things that really seem to matter just seem to all of a sudden happen to us.  Take for example the recent outbreak of swine flu (NY Times)!

When something like your company is wildly successful or a terrible failure we try to make sense of it.  If it’s wildly successful we can self importantly point to the things we did right, giving some credence to that strange phenomenon called “luck.”  When it fails we can point to a few things we did wrong but more often we point outside of ourselves to the economy, other people, the market, timing, etc.

Companies are starting right now, companies are falling apart right now, companies are doing well and growing, and others are doing their best to survive.  I know of one great success story that happened to someone in one of my networking groups, but it’s not public news yet.  The internet is littered with stories of companies failing or going bankrupt.  Fred Wilson did a long post about one of his first investments in Geocities, a company that Yahoo is planning to shut down.  I mentioned the 11 companies who recently graduated from the Austin Technology Incubator in my guest post on Austin Startup and they are at varying stages of of the start up life cycle.

We often think we are above the fray, minding our own business when the sky falls, the funding arrives, a legal battle over patent infringement ensues, or when we find that perfect person for the job, but are we really?  I think this is especially true of entrepreneurs.  We think we are different and to some extent we are.  We think differently.  We view risk differently.  We are less afraid and more afraid at the same time.  We become defined a certain way but we still have to fit into a society that is mostly designed for non risk takers, and we realize but for a few minor genetic or family of origin differences we are all deep, so deep in the fray of humanity.

It’s an exhilarating yet at the same time humbling realization.  At least I think so.

April 20, 2009

The Austin Technology Incubator is 20 years old

By day I run operations at The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) and this year it turns 20 years old.  By night I am mom to two amazing kids, work on Babble Soft, and often fail at my attempts to meditate.  I did a guest post on the Austin Startup blog called obviously enough:

20th Anniversary of the Austin Technology Incubator

I shared my story of being a founder/CEO starting my first company at ATI and how I see how it has evolved over the past several years since I first officed there on the other side of the fence back in 1998.

April 12, 2009

Shifting Agreements

One of the distinctions discussed in the Landmark Advanced Course is one of Agreements.  These aren’t agreements that you sign like contracts, these are social agreements on how the majority agrees to act around certain issues.  Some of the most notable social Agreements that have changed over time are how we as a society agree to treat women, Black, and gay people.  These shifts affect our lives, our businesses, our entrepreneurial endeavors whether we are consciously aware of them or not.

Not too long ago women did not have the right to vote or were not easily able to work outside of the home.  If they did try to work outside of the home, they were also expected to keep the home front in complete order.  If you transported a man or woman out of the 1950’s to today, they would be shocked at the amount of freedom women have thanks to the women’s movement.  They also might be surprised how day care, store hours, and business flex time schedules have changed to accommodate working women.

Same goes for Black people and gay people.  Not too long ago Black people couldn’t drink from the same water fountains, use the same bathrooms, or eat at the same restaurants as White people.  Not too long ago it was taboo to be gay.  It was considered an abomination, a sin and in many places it still is, but no one can argue that the perception has shifted.  If you watch TV or see the movies, gay people are showing up everywhere!  Mixed race couples were also frowned upon and yet now you see many more mixed couples (race, religion, ethnicity).

So much has changed and it’s because of the people (entrepreneurs, change agents) who took it upon themselves to help make the shift.  The interesting and ironic thing is that the people who tended to resist the shift the most early on are the people who were afraid of changing what they felt was the ‘right’ lifestyle.  Some of the biggest resistors to the women’s movement were women!  Women who were happy (or told they should be happy) living the stay-at-home-with-kids lifestyle looked down on the women who wanted to work and be treated as equals.  I saw an Oprah show once where a stay at home mom actually said she felt that women who chose to work loved their children less than those who chose to stay at home!

In other parts of the world, where horrible practices like foot binding in China or female circumcision in certain African tribes occurred, the older women were the ones fighting the hardest not to change the practices because in some strange way they found comfort in familiarity and felt if they had to go through it why shouldn’t the next generation?!  The psychology behind these extreme behaviors is mind boggling, but we humans are creatures of habit.

The uneducated Black people were among the many who would by their behavior hold back other Black people from a well deserved education and prosperity.  I dare say there were many closet gay people who often fought against gay rights because it might expose them.

Agreements shift in business as well.  What one generation thinks is OK in business, the other does not or they modify the agreements slightly to make things work for them.  I believe we are living in part of a shift right now in thinking on how things should operate on Wall Street and on the US Capitol Hill.

The shifters consist of entrepreneurs, politicians, and well known leaders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Gloria Steinham, Carly Fiorini, Indra Nooyi, Indira Ghandi, Sirimavo Bandaranaike (first female priminister in the world who happened to be from Sri Lanka - where I was born), the Pope, and all the change agents whose names we may never know but who have a profound affect on their businesses/communities which in turn affects cities, countries, and the world. [Yes, that sentence was way too long!]

These shifters see something in society that is missing or needs to be changed (from technology to social policy) and they begin the shift…most likely not even realizing the role they are playing at the time in making the sift.  Big shifts take time.  Some are good shifts and some are bad, but they happen nonetheless.  I’ve started thinking about the shifts we are making as a society and here is what I see:

• Parenting - shifting from the primary caregiver being the mother to shared care between mother and father.  I have a handful of women friends whose husbands stay at home while they provide financially for the family.  This is a huge change from even our parents generation where that didn’t or very rarely happened.  Most of our fathers barely changed a diaper!  Even my company Babble Soft might be contributing to a shift in how we take care of our newborns when we no longer have the same nearby family support structure and need to know more about how our baby is progressing for doctor visits.  It seems that we are still early in this shift, but it’s happening.

• Job Changing - In our parents and grandparents generation it was not uncommon for someone to hold a job with one company for 30 years!  Nowadays most people change jobs within 2 to 7 years.  I know in the technology field if you saw a resume where the person has spent more than 10 years at one place, you wonder about their ability to innovate.

• Marriage - with divorce rates averaging 50% for first marriages, 67% for second, and 73% for third marriages it seems that we as a society are more accepting of this change in lifestyle than in the past generation where it was much rarer to get a divorce but people were tolerating the situation.  People were living alternative lifestyles in private and now they are living them out loud in public.  This is despite the increase in marriage counselors!  I wonder if the marriage shift has any correlation to the job changing shift?

• Technology/Communication - It’s acceptable (for the most part) to have a gadget (cell phone) attached to you at all times.  How we all lived before cell phones and iPhones, is beyond me.  It has created a shift in how we communicate (voice, email, twitter, text messaging) that is unprecedented.  It has yet to be seen if this is good for humanity in the long run but we seem to be heading towards an ‘always connected’ society.

• Medicine - We’ve seen a shift from non-profit based medicine to for-profit based medicine which has led to some great innovations in the medical field but also to movement away from what is best for each patient/the system and towards what seems to be the best for the lawyers.

• Elder Care - Only a generation ago, it was common for aging parents to live with their children but now it’s more common for them to go to a retirement community, an assisted living place, or elder care facility in at least the American culture.

These are just some of the shifts I see.   Do you see these shifts too?  I wonder how they are going to effect business, entrepreneurship, our day to day lives 5, 10, 25, 50 years out.  I wonder how our children will react to living through these shifts.  I’d love to read your thoughts in the comment section below.

April 8, 2009

How Dooce Changed My Twitter Reputation

I went to Heather Armstrong’s (a.k.a. Dooce) book signing for It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margaritatonight only because one of the interns, Laura Benold, at my day job happened to tell me about it.  She’s been following Dooce since she was 18 years old.  She’s not much older now, but still.

Yes, I was feeling kind of pathetic since I’m sort of a mommy blogger and Dooce is the top mommy blogger on the planet making reportedly up to $500K per year from her blog.   I am grateful that Laura took an interest in what I was trying to do with Babble Soft and asked me if I knew about it.  And my lame excuse is I’m doing way too much, have two kids, thankfully no pets, and I haven’t found a way to get her blog to come to me in email form like the other blogs I read.  Believe me I have tried several times to figure out how to get her blog in email…I’m going to blame it on the proverbial ‘mommy brain syndrome.’

I almost didn’t make it because our son has been home sick the last couple of days.  I was thinking about taking him and our daughter with me and I am SO glad I didn’t.   Fortunately their dad was able to rearrange his schedule to watch them.  It would not have been fun at all because they would have lost their patience and my son would have been worn out in say 20 minutes.

Heather is an awesome and hilarious writer!  She curses profusely, swears, and talks about all the things people don’t talk about but should on the topic of motherhood and life.  So I began tweeting about some of the things she was saying and reading from her book and here are some of the more colorful tweets (corrected for iPhone typing errors):

@dooce about to talk about sex after vaginal birth.

Took 7 months after baby born before they had sex. 6 weeks is bs. Says @dooce

Her vagina was ready after she wore a tampax and her husband wrote a thank you letter to them.

Then @dooce says she got a urinary tract infection.

@dooce now talking about her dog called Satan and when they took the dog coco hunting.

All of a sudden I started getting tweets and direct messages on twitter asking what was going on with me.  A few people thought my account was hacked since the tweets were very out of character for me.  I was sure I had lost some followers, but I think I actually gained a few.

I’m so glad I went!  I met her husband Jon (@blurb on twitter) and chatting with him for a while.  He is on tour with her and manages the back end of her website.  He was so cute and funny about how he took pictures of her and then sat in the audience listening to what I assume has to be the umpteenth time she’s spoken at a book signing on this tour.  He participated a bit in the Q&A portion and then stood off to the side while she signed books.  I checked his twitter stream when I got back and saw that his two tweets were:

@dooce is lookin fine. Damn fine.

@dooce kicking ass! http://twitpic.com/30ynn

I went to chat with him for a while and gave him some gift subscriptions to Babble Soft web and mobile software (which is iPhone ready - I noticed Heather was reading something to the audience from her pink cased iPhone), and he seemed genuinely interested in checking it out.  I gave him extra ones to give to any of their friends or readers if they wanted to.

I was in the 3rd group of people to get the book signed and somewhere around 8:30 p.m., I knew I was not going to make it to 9:30 after having been most of the day with a sick kid, and I started to leave.  I was almost out the door when I said to myself, I don’t really want to leave without a signature at all do I?  So I went back up the stairs and asked Jon if he would sign it since I had to go, and he graciously did!

So I’m wondering how many people have a copy of It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margaritasigned by Dooce’s husband!  That’s got to be extremely valuable.

March 24, 2009

Small Businesses – Unite (and win up to $30K)!

The following is a guest post written by Rachel Euretig, PR Manager at Intuit (makers of Quicken, Quickbooks etc.).  Intuit first approached me to write something about a new campaign they were launching to help small business get a piece of the stimulus pie.  I responded by saying, what a great idea but I’m so strapped for time that I’d welcome a guest post instead and here it is…

Rachel Euretig is a public relations manager at Intuit Inc., a leading provider of business and financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, financial institutions, consumers and accounting professionals. She is responsible for the company’s best-selling QuickBooks small business products and services. Rachel joined Intuit from LEWIS PR, a global technology agency headquartered in London, where she was an account director in the San Francisco office. She holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Eco-friendly tees that inspire positivity with simple words such as: BREATHE DEEPLY and TODAY MATTERS. A chiropractor’s office that instituted an “honor box” system, allowing patients to pay what they can. A former Marine who survived the 9-11 attacks and then went on to fulfill his childhood dream of starting a fishing rod business. These are just three of the amazing stories you’ll find at www.smallbusinessunited.com.

We at Intuit recently launched an initiative called Small Business United in order to give entrepreneurs a much-needed boost in this tough economic climate. The campaign features a stimulus package aimed at helping America’s small businesses save money, get more customers and save time, by offering:

• Free software and services from Intuit valued at nearly $1,000 per small business to help them succeed.
• $315,000 in small business grants.
• $50,000 in donations to organizations that help budding entrepreneurs get started and advise existing businesses looking to grow.

How can you get involved? Well, first, check out the free software and services to see if there’s anything that can help your business.

Second, share your stories with us and other entrepreneurs for a chance to win up to $30,000 in business grants. We know that America’s entrepreneurial spirit is stronger – and more united – than ever. According to a recent study we conducted, nine out of 10 small business owners said they rely on peers for support and advice. Fifty-one percent of small business owners said they feel a special bond or connection with other small business owners, while 53 percent believe they can learn from their peers’ mistakes and successes. Do you agree?

How to enter:

Go to www.smallbusinessunited.com to share stories about your successes and challenges. In addition to the monetary grants and free Intuit products and services that Intuit is offering, you will also receive the Intuit Small Business Word of Mouth Marketing Toolkit and a profile page on the Intuit Community Web site to help promote your business.

Finalists will be selected based on a combination of ratings from the community, quality and creativity. The ratings will account for 40 percent of the overall score, so easy-to-use tools are available to help participants share their entries with family, friends and colleagues.

Judges will review entries and select 50 finalists to receive a $5,000 grant and a Pure Digital Flip Video camcorder. These finalists are then eligible to compete for the top grants by supplementing their story with a video that will be posted on the site for public viewing and rating.

The group will be narrowed down to four first prize winners, who will each receive $10,000 plus $2,500 worth of Intuit products in addition to their finalist grants and awards. The grand prize winner will receive an additional $25,000 and $2,500 worth of Intuit products and services.

Entries are due by April 24 and finalists will be notified by April 29. Winners will be announced in June.

The judges include a panel of independent small business experts:

• Anita Campbell, CEO of Small Business Trends, an award-winning Web site that provides information and intelligence about the small business market and business trends affecting that market. This comprehensive resource includes a blog, radio show and regularly features small business experts from a variety of industries.
• Donna Ettenson, vice president of operations of the Association of Small Business Development Centers, which represents 63 state and regional small business management and technical assistance programs. She is also a certified Franklin Covey facilitator for the “7 Habits for Managers” and “Focus” workshops.
• John Jantsch, marketing and digital technology coach, award-winning social media publisher and author of “Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide.” He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system and Duct Tape Marketing Authorized Coach Network.
• Becky McCray, publisher of Small Biz Survival, a Web site about small business and rural issues, based on her own successes and failures as an entrepreneur. She is also the co-owner of a retail store and cattle ranch, and a consultant for small businesses and city governments.

Looking forward to hearing your stories!

March 22, 2009

The Weight Of The World. The Weight Of Your Children.

So many entrepreneurs and business people are scrambling trying to figure out what to do during these interesting times.  Companies are shutting down, investors are upset, entrepreneurs are having breakdowns and wondering how they are going to make it through the next few years let alone their lives.

Large companies like AIG are literally crumbling based on decisions made based on statements surrounding the awarding of bonuses that weren’t properly scrutinized by the US Congress or internal management.  All of the actions and behaviors that should have been considered sub-par that were looked over are now coming under extra scrutiny because times are tough.  When times are good, people look the other way on many things they should not because they figure “Hey, it’s not hurting me.”  When people raise the flag like they did on Bernie Madoff during the good years (the SEC had received repeated requests to investigate Madoff and they didn’t follow through) people looked the other way.  It’s shocking to me how often people look the other way when incompetence and potential illegal activity might be going on.

Maybe I have an extra sensitivity to this because in my first job out of college I was a public accounting auditor and in my second job I was an internal auditor with training in fraud detection.  It’s often the people you least suspect who are committing fraud, holding a check or two in a drawer, moving money around in accounts thinking no one will notice because no one is really paying attention.  They think to themselves “Oh, I’ll put it back. I’m not doing anything wrong.  I’m trying to help out here.  I really need this.  They’ll understand.  Plus, I’m going to put it back.” But when it comes time to put it back or right the wrong, they don’t have it so what started out as a simple stop-gap gets more complicated.  Who’s fault is it?  Definitely the person doing it, but also the people who should be paying attention.  Most people are too distracted to pay attention…not only in business but also in their lives with their spouses, their children, their own financial situations.

Then all of a sudden, the weight of the world is on not only those who intentionally or unintentionally rob and profoundly affect innocent people, but also on those who should have done a better job at oversight.  The finger pointing starts flying, but we are all to blame.  Humans keep repeating the cycle because we get caught up in the game, in the story, in as Landmark education says “wanting to look good and being afraid to look bad.”  The “fear of looking bad” overwhelms most of us and paralyzes our ability to make the best decisions at work, at home, and in life.  I know how strongly that fear affects me despite having pushed the ‘potential for looking bad‘ envelope a time or two!

And the weight of the world is heavy when it falls.  And the weight of the world is difficult to remove.  And the weight of the world is stifling.

But the weight of your young children is different.  Today I got very upset with my kids for locking all the doors (they thought it would be a fun game) to our room because I was trying to find my keys so we could go to Home Depot and get some air filters while their dad was riding his bike.   I sent one to our living room and one to stand in the hallway while I tried to open the door with a gadget we have just for such occasions.   I was frustrated because it delayed our errand running until after lunch and it took me longer than expected to open the freaking door!

While our 6 year old son was waiting in the living room, he decided to pick up his English chapter book (Cam Jamson and the Chocolate Fudge Mystery) and start reading.  My son decides he is going to continue reading his book after lunch but that he has to do so while sitting on my lap despite there being several other places to sit.  Their dad was back by that point and the doors were all open, but they were both still getting hard stares from me.  We were all in the living room, and I was sitting on the sofa.

So he climbs on my lap and reads his book and asks me from time to time how to say a certain word, and I feel so elated (like only a mom could) that of all the places he could sit he wanted to sit on my lap to read his book.  I remember thinking “he won’t want to sit on my lap for much longer” and how the weight of him felt so right and perfect.  Our almost 4 year old daughter then decided to climb up next to me and put her head on my left shoulder and look at our son reading.  The combined warm weight of them blended with their interest in reading/learning overwhelmed me, and I kissed their heads repeatedly and dropped a few emotional tears onto their heads…just like any other sappy mother.

And the weight of young children on your lap is light.  And the weight of young kids sitting peacefully on your lap is not something you easily want to remove.  And the weight of young children is uplifting.

Now, the weight of teenagers is apparently not so glorious…