Happy Reflection Day

Since my late teens, I've always struggled with Thanksgiving. I'm simply unable to observe the holiday without thinking about the slaughter of Native Americans, and this state of mind doesn't exactly lend itself to being joyous about anything.

In the modern day of course, it seems Thanksgiving is as much about shopping as it is about anything else. The reason Thanksgiving is even on the fourth Thursday in November (instead of the last as was tradition since Lincoln) is because President Roosevelt was concerned that if the holiday shopping season was delayed by a week it would further cripple the economy during the great depression. It's as if the holiday has become one big national reminder that we're a bunch of consumers. Again, not exactly something to be joyous about.

I suppose the problem I have isn't taking time to be thankful, but doing so without reflecting on how we got what we're thankful for.

I can't help but wonder, what would be different if my ancestors tried to learn more from Native Americans instead of murder them? What would our country look like if we hadn't felt the need to conquer half a continent? What would be different if we had more respect for the land?

So this time of year, in addition to identifying what I'm thankful for, I also like to reflect so that I can determine whether I'm on the right path. I like to identify the things that went well so I can repeat them, and determine what I did incorrectly in the hope that I can avoid the same mistakes.

In addition to giving thanks, I think it's healthy to take the time to reflect.

Happy Reflection Day.

In order to win, you must be willing to lose

On Thursday I went to the best business session I've ever been to. Seth Godin presented for about an hour and then followed it up with roughly six hours of question and answer with the group of about 75 business owners, marketers, and others navigating through the challenges associated with running a business.

There was fantastic information, insight and advice. Seth talked about being remarkable, and that doing so requires the willingness to fail. He talked about focusing obsessively on a nitch, and being the best at it. He talked about how you need to be prepared for the people that will criticize you for being remarkable. That taking a stand, having opinions, and being noteworthy will win you fans, but it will also earn you some detractors. And that this is okay.

There were so many themes for the day that it may not even be appropriate to try and sum it up in one statement. I'll try anyway though by saying that the collective message I took away was that in order to win, you must be willing to lose.

The Yankees could have opted to not try and win the World Series. That would have been ridiculous though right? They were willing to lose for the glory you get when you win.

When we're sitting out, not taking the action that we know we need to take; it's not that we're losing, we're forfeiting. We're not even playing. We took our ball and went home. Isn't that terrible?

Duarlander may not be as big of a hit as I think it can be. GoFind! may never become the next must-have application. The new things I'll be doing with Ideal Project Group may not win over everyone. But I will not forfeit.

I'm trying to win; and I'm willing to risk losing in order to do so.

Naiveté is an asset

Towards the end of last week I visited one of my clients, Voxeo, to discuss a new project I'm working on. While on the trip I had the opportunity to meet with Dave Hoff, one of the co-founders of imified which was recently acquired by Voxeo. For a little background, imified makes it easy for developers to "IM enable" their applications. Essentially, it allows users to communicate with web applications by using chat clients such as AOL Instant Messenger, gtalk, and other common chat protocols.

I love talking to entrepreneurs about how their businesses got started and the challenges they encountered; I get a ton of inspiration by talking to them. While I was chatting with Dave about how imified got started, he said that had they known how difficult integrating with all the different public chat protocols was, they probably would never have gotten off the ground.

When he said this I recalled a special I watched about the Chudnovsky brothers and their work with the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. They had to merge the data from numerous high resolution digital photographs of the tapestries for a project with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These brothers are two brilliant mathematicians and when talking about the project they basically said that there was no way they would have taken it on had they known how difficult it was going to be. Once they got started of course, they had to finish.

Naiveté, it turns out, is an asset.

Have you ever had an idea and shared it with someone who knows a lot in that particular field? Likely they dismisses it, stating how difficult or complex it would be. They'll give you a host of reasons as to why the consumer won't buy it, or why it can't be built, or if it can be built and the consumer would buy it, why marketing it would be so hard that no one would find out about it anyway.

The problem is, they're burdened with the knowledge of all the difficulties that inevitably lie ahead. In their minds, the challenges dwarf any possible benefit. They don't understand the dream because they're too hung up on the effort that would be involved.

Their knowledge is a liability.

This isn't to say that expertise is bad. Becoming an expert, and working with experts, is probably an inevitability of any successful person or business. My point however, is that before you do anything, you have to get started. Anything that helps you get started is an asset.

Just imagine, how many people would have children if it weren't for a little naiveté? Who would put in thousands of hours of school and internships working to become an MD? Who would be a teacher?

If you have the opportunity to start something, don't let the fact that you don't know everything prevent you from trying. Very likely, the reason you're even willing to make the attempt is because you're "naive" enough to try. This instantly gives you a leg up on your competition.

Sometimes knowing too much can be a liability, embrace your naiveté.

Investing in yourself

After having recently hired an employee, built GoFind!, and now having started Duarlander, a few people have asked me exactly why I'm spending the money to do all this - especially given the state of the economy. I figured I'd use this as an opportunity to share a little about my perspective on a few things as it relates to investing, risk, and the overall economy.

First, the money I'm spending on these initiatives are investments in either Ideal Project Group or Duarlander. It's not like I'm spending money taking friends out to dinner or blowing it on liquor.

Second, while it's certainly not cheap to do these things, relative to the potential reward the risk is pretty small. I've said numerous times, if building GoFind! helps Ideal Project Group get into managing software projects for hand-held devices, it's paid for itself even if I don't sell a single download.

Third and probably most importantly, the stock market is now nothing more than a national casino. It is no longer a place to invest, it's a place to gamble. Some people are good at gambling; I however, am not. And just like a casino, the house always wins and they don't really care what happens to you. Giving your money to a 401(k) manager is no different than funding a poker player and sending them to Vegas. In fact, there's probably some poker players that your money would be safer with.

Fourth, a lot of companies lie about their earnings and their assets. Citibank can say they're profitable because they're now allowed to lie about how much their assets are worth. Hey, guess what, you know all those phones I had to buy for Duarlander? I've decided they're each worth $100,000. Duarlander is a $700,000 company and it hasn't even been around a month, isn't that awesome! Give me a break.

What this all means is that the money I might have otherwise used to invest in public companies (by way of a 401(k), Roth IRA, or other investment vehicle) for retirement, my children's education or general savings is now being invested in businesses that I own and control instead of companies that I own a tiny fraction of and have no control over.

The amount of money I'm investing hasn't changed. Where I'm investing it has.

We've all been sold the story that the safe and conservative thing to do with our money is to give it to someone else and let them decide what to do with it. That the risky thing to do is invest in yourself and start your own business. I believe this is complete nonsense. The safe and conservative thing to do with your money is to keep it in your possession, invest in companies that you own, and keep these companies under your control.

Sending your money into the electronic casino where computers change the value of a company by 30% in minutes is what's risky.

Invest in yourself.

Get Unconfused

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is being willing to make a decision while you're confused about something. Or worse, not even realizing that a decision has to be made because you were content with not understanding a situation. It happens in the world of project management all the time, especially with new project managers. The best advice I can give people about this is to be comfortable with what you don't know, and have enough confidence in yourself to dig for answers.

Unfortunately, many people are unwilling to do this because they fear it will make them look stupid, or afraid it will agitate people on their team. The thing to keep in mind is that for every person you may be agitating, there's probably three or four more that are thirsting for the clarity that your questions will provide. As for looking stupid, it's just simply not true.

Think of it like this; the President of the United States can't be an economist, a general, a spy, a small business owner, and a doctor. However, it's perfectly reasonable that we expect the President to make informed decisions based on a series of discussions and questions with these people who are experts in their respective areas.

The key is to understand the difference between getting the proper perspective on a situation so the right decisions can be made, and getting too deep into the details of someone's work. It's true that it can be a fine line sometimes, but generally speaking after a couple questions it'll become clear as to whether you need to back off or continue asking more questions.

A software developer probably isn't going to want to sit down and explain every detail of their work to you. However, it's fine for you to ask why one requirement is being completed before something else that you know is more important, and that another team is waiting on. Maybe there's a technical reason, and if there is, the developer should be more than happy to explain it to you. If you get an answer that doesn't make sense based on your understanding of the situation, don't just walk away confused. Get clarification.

You may end up with new information that changes your perspective of the situation, which you can then share with others and in effect become an advocate for the developer. Or, you may realize that the developer misunderstood their priorities. Either way, your project will be better off because you were willing to ask questions.

This, by the way, isn't something that applies only to project managers or business. There's a whole world of people that thrive on you not understanding something. (Think banks, credit cards, politicians, lawyers, car dealers, and realtors) And, they count on you not being confident enough in yourself to probe them with questions to get the clarity you need to make the right decision. The best example of this is to go into a car dealership, talk to them about leasing a car, and start asking them all sorts of questions about the money factor. It'll totally freak them out and I promise you, they will have no idea how to answer your questions without getting "the finance guy."