My Dog is a Genius

Somehow I get involved in these discussions from time to time, usually a local politician is doing research on what they can do to help the startups or grow the entrepreneurial community. Usually what they’re looking to do is provide some sort of access to “funding” or get office space for the entrepreneurs. But recently I found some comments by @fredwilson to be dead-on the best answer I’ve ever heard for what local governments can be doing to help grow the community. There are five main areas that Fred identifies in his talk with Andrew Ross Sorkin:

• Good schools
• Good parks
• Good transportation
• Safe streets
• Good places for people to live

Politicians, focus on those five things and that will attract talent and growing companies. There’s a lot more to it but those are the basics and those are the things that elected officials should be focusing on. I’d also add here a quote from Brad Feld, “paint a big spotlight on what’s going on in the entrepreneurial community.”  Just stay away from trying to figure out who to get funding to, who the next great companies are, just get out of the way, this isn’t where you can add value.

Still committed to helping startups raise money? Angel investment is the catalyst for any entrepreneurial community – it gets things flowing. But as you’ll hear Fred say in the video, there has to be a more “cowboy” mentality when doing this. The mindset has to become one of “not missing the next big thing” rather than “I don’t want to look like an idiot for investing in (x).” We’re probably a long way from doing that here and it will probably be very small steps at a time as we get this going. As Fred points out in the video, get the wealthy people out of investing in bonds and into investing in startups. Angel capital is THE MOST critical thing necessary to get this moving.

I recently had the great opportunity to speak at TEDx Tampa Bay and I loved it. I got to cut loose, have fun and discuss something that really matters to me. I spoke about Tom Wujec’s “Got a Wicked Problem, First, Tell Me How You Make Toast” TED talk. If you haven’t seen it then invest the next ten minutes and let Tom drop some knowledge on you. It’s one of those talks that’s not obvious at the time you watch it, it’s a talk that’s only obvious when things fall apart and you need a Gordion Knot-cutting knife in your pocket kind of talk.

For @iamagile‘s and my honeymoon we finally got to hit Italy. We’ve both travelled extensively for our careers in Asia, Europe and Australia but never got to see Italy. For almost three weeks we visited Florence, Venice and Rome. First impressions? The art history here is unbelievably deep and wide. Venice is not a place to go drinking heavily after dinner. Sidewalks end abruptly in the canals with no warning. The people? Extremely friendly and helpful. Food? The further off the main streets you get the better, and less expensive, the food gets and the chianti is plentiful everywhere. The only part that got under my skin is a little bit is when I ordered a large beer (about 2 pints.) The response I invariably got was “You want an American size beer. Ok.” After a couple of these experiences I eventually started responding with “No, I want an Irish sized beer. Thank you.” Go back again? Sure, I’d just avoid Rome. A little dirty, people were ambivalent, food was pretty marginal. But the Vatican and surrounding architecture were absolutely incredible and you could spend at least three days in line waiting to get into the Vatican Museum. If you’re up for that sort of experience, be my guest – I’ll stick with Florence, Venice, and if I can trick @iamagile into it, Modena. I’ll just say it’s on the way to Milan.

This post is a little different. It’s about earning self-respect. Respect from others comes from winning or being honest even when it runs against your best interests. Self-respect is earned from winning over yourself. It comes from honest introspection, recognizing your own dragons. And then slaying their asses.

This week my wife called me a ‘chronic procrastinator’ and in a sense, she’s right. I put off the shitty tasks and do the fun stuff. The brain challenging, can I figure this stuff out kind of work. The mundane, every day, boring, administrivia crap? Nope, not for me. But if you let the administrivia go long enough, you’ll die under the weight of the un-done. How did I beat it? I discovered a little book called One Small Step Can Change Your Life. The premise of the book is that your brain puts up defense mechanisms to protect you from pain. Ok, I can definitely relate to that. Unfortunately, there comes a time when the pain of not having it done overwhelms the pain of not doing it.  Then you have to put in the Herculean effort of putting all the fun stuff aside and knocking it out. Taxes are the obvious one. Going to the damn dentist is another. But there’s a trick to all of this that the book points out. Take the big-hairy-I-don’t-want-to-do-it-thing and break it down into the most minuscule of tasks. I’ll take an example we’re all familiar with: writing a term paper. For me, I wrote these the night before it was due. What I turned in sucked and was just enough to get me at the top of the class. But it was excruciatingly painful. Today I do a lot of systems analysis, a lot of research and detail work. Fun? Nope. So what I do is break it down into tiny, insignificant tasks. My brain doesn’t throw up the warning signs saying it’s going to be painful to pull this together and instead, does each tiny task. The result? Great work, delivered early. Essentially what I do it look at what needs to be delivered, decide f it requires A, B, or C level work and then break the deliverable into sub-tasks accordingly. The higher the grade of work, the more sub-tasks I create. If it’s C level work, I create a handful of quick, easily completed tasks and get that shit off my plate. If it’s A level work, I create a lot (a shit-ton actually) of low-level tasks and prioritize them. Understand a client’s systems? Identify the players and their roles, talk to them, get their perspective, take notes. From there you may come up with 150-200 follow up items. But the secret here is that each of those are miniscule. Make a call, talk about X, write down Y. All stuff that doesn’t trigger your brain into thinking that the thing you’re working on is a damn mountain. Before you know it, you’re at item 200 and you’re done. It’s ridiculously easy. Every time you catch yourself starting to procrastinate on a particular task, it’s because you’re working on to many itms all at once and you’re not thinking small enough. Break it down more. Spend an hour each morning making the smallest, most innocuous tasks imaginable. If you’re a “chronic procrastinator” you’ll have this dragon beaten before you know it. And well before your brain can throw up a barrier for you.

For me, this was my last real dragon to conquer.

One of the things I picked up when I worked in North Carolina was a love of barbecue. Over the past couple of months

I’ve been picking up a Boston butt when I see one with a good fat cap and putting going low and slow with it. It’s turning out so well that we no longer go out for barbecue. It’s provided a good distraction from everything else that’s been going on over the past year. Breaks are needed. New (or in this case, old) experiences are needed. And sometimes it’s just for fun. Maybe a little healthy competition now and then too. But for right now, it’s breakfast.