1. Smart Phone?

If you know me personally you’ll know that I haven’t owned a smart phone for over a year now. I make myself highly available by phone(519.489.0116). Email, twitter etc are tools I only use a few times throughout the day. When I receive what appears to have been an urgent email, I respond explaining that I don’t check email often and to please phone me if you need an urgent response. The result is I don’t get a lot of urgent emails anymore. Oh, and I don’t get very many phone calls either. My hunch is that this approach forces people to reflect on the matter at hand, which usually results in recognizing it may not be as urgent as they first thought. If it is then they phone me, we talk and deal with it immediately.

I’ve had a John’s Phone for that time. It was an experiment but we’re well over a year into it so I think we’re officially past the experiment stage. When I ditched my smart phone, I picked up a Kindle and literally last night I received my new Kindle Touch 3G. When I leave my house, I bring three things without fail. Those are my John’s Phone, kindle, and a field notes book and pen. Oh, and I haven’t received or sent a text message in over a year.

Not owning a smart phone confuses most people. The responses are typically variations on….

“How can you not own a smart phone when you work in computers?”

“I would love to not own a smart phone but there’s no way I could do it.”

“I wouldn’t ever be able to leave the office if I didn’t have my smart phone.”

They explain to me how important their smart phone is to their survival. They then explain how they have the perfect system which prevents them from turning into all those other people who are addicted to their smart phones. I listen, having not once suggested that they should ditch their smart phone. I’m not asking anyone to make the same choices I’ve made. It’s always interesting how people feel the need to defend their choices to people who’ve made ones different than theirs.

Some people get around to asking me about what it’s like not to have a smart phone. My answer is simple in that it slowly gave me back the ability to daydream. I’ve learned over time that my ability to daydream is core to my personal and business success. I have more time to stare at the wall. When I wait in line at the bank, I look at people’s faces and watch the tellers. When I’m at my son’s hockey game and there’s a break in the action, I watch the refs and how they interact with the coaches. I don’t solve big problems by working on them directly. They’re solved by my subconscious, often while “wasting my time” daydreaming. Owning a smart phone slowly reduced my ability to do this.

Part of the inspiration for this experiment was to be more present with the people physically around me. If you’ve made the effort to join me for a coffee or a pint then I want to be as present for that as possible, not wasting your time while I interact with my lazy friend sitting on his couch at home watching the hockey game instead of joining us.

The combination of no smart phone and always having a Kindle means I read a ton now. I now read books again. When I have 10 minutes to spare in a waiting room, I jump into my current book. I believe I’ve read more books in the past year than the previous 5 years combined. I love paper-based books and had a lot of reservations about ereaders in general. I eventually realized I’m a fan of reading and writing not the Gutenberg press.

Smart phones can do incredible things and I certainly miss some of those. For me personally, the negative impact far outweighs any benefits they offered me.

2. No More Grains

July of last year, while at the cottage, I read The Primal Blueprint (on my kindle of course). Mark’s book inspired me to experiment with removing grains from my diet altogether and moving to a high fat diet. Literally within days I noticed a huge difference in my daily energy levels. It was as if a mental fog had been lifted. My daily energy levels became far more stable. I no longer had those moments where I felt like I was melting physically. I really do feel better than I ever have in my life.

I also lost weight, which I wasn’t hoping for. In fact, heading into hockey season last fall I was hoping to put some on. That means I consume a lot more food daily than I used to and it’s a high fat diet. I don’t know all the science but I can tell you from experience that grains, not fat, cause me personally to put fat on my body.

Something else I’ve been watching is my overall health. Since I stopped eating grains last July, I have had one cold which I have as I type this. It’s a small cold and I’ve only had it a few days and my guess is it’ll be gone in a day or two. That’s almost a full year without getting sick once, which is unusual based on my history.

As with the smart phone, I still consider no grains to be an experiment. At this point I have no reason to turn back when you consider my increased, and more stable, energy levels along with my overall good health. Not being wiped out a few times a year by colds and flus almost justifies it alone. Oh, and if it’s the placebo effect, I could care less because it’s working!

PS, I’m not suggesting you stop eating grains or ditch your smart phone. I just figured I’d share some of my experiences.

I wanted to pile onto Daniel, Jevon, and Ken’s thoughts around this. For me, part of this is about the risks in confusing cause and effect.

Cause: RIM, OpenText, Descartes, Maplesoft and a group of companies built successful technology based businesses in Kitchener Waterloo, Ontario.

Effect: A thriving technology community including strong universities and organizations like Communitech.

Cause: Joe Blow worked his ass off learning to play guitar growing up. He started playing friends basements with other friends. He went on to play gigs anywhere and everywhere he could. He drove around in a glued together van for years playing gigs in other cities.

Effect: Joe’s a rock star, literally, living the rock star life.

Cause: Your friend spends his early childhood playing AAA hockey, finishing with a ‘cup of coffee’ with an OHL team.

Effect: Your friend is a great hockey player with really nice equipment.

Here’s the point. Mix cause and effect at your own risk. Rarely, if ever, can they be reversed. Buying $700 skates won’t make you a great hockey player. Partying until the sun comes up every night of the week won’t make you a rock star. Building a U of W and a communitech in your city won’t get you successful technology companies(or will it?).

This mixing of cause and effect plays a massive role in product and business development. The obvious challenge is that cause and effect are often distant in time and space, and that only increases with the complexity of the particular system. It happens all too often that we latch onto the effects and build products around those, instead of digging deeper until we uncover the real causes. Focusing on replicating and scaling the causes, not the effects, in your product development strategy is key.

Oh, and back to community, as Jevon and the other founders suggested, focus on building a great company(cause) and the community(effect) will handle itself. While we are building an amazing community at ThreeFortyNine, it isn’t the focus, it’s the side effect. Our focus is making our member’s projects and companies the best they can be. The community just happens.

“Success requires no apologies, failure permits no alibis”

You can pitch to me all you want, it really doesn’t matter what I think. The only value I can offer is blunt, harsh feedback. I can’t validate your idea. I can’t prove you right, wrong, scared or confused. You’re either on your way to having a business or you aren’t. I don’t decide that and neither do you. In this world, all that matters is your customer and your end user.

In corporations, academia, politics, etc it’s about winning favours. It’s about what the people above you think. Your main goal is to please them. Do that and you’re good. Do you like me? Did I do good? Step out into the real world and no one cares if your boss likes your idea. That gets you nothing.

It’s what I love about working in this world. I can sit with a group of entrepreneurs and we all beat the crap out of each other and our projects. The difference is that we all know it really doesn’t matter. It makes us stronger and pushes us to the real success we’re after. When that success comes, a large part of the reward is no longer having to explain and justify what you’re doing. I don’t really care if you ‘get it’, I have customers, revenue, a business.

A musician friend of mine was playing a show a few weeks back. I asked him if some of our common friends would be there. His response was “no idea. We don’t need friends, we have fans now”. Sounds arrogant but that’s not him. They have success, that’s it.

You need feedback from mentors, advisors, peers but it’s worthless unless you can reframe what criticism is. You do need critical feedback from peers. Seek it out. Cherish it. Celebrate it. Thank people for it. Pay them for it. Reward them for it. It’s constructive suggestion and you will be better for it. If you treat it like feedback at a job, ie my goal is to eliminate the bad feedback and attain purely good feedback, then you’re dead. Well you’re project is dead…

If you can craft a compelling pitch in 10 minutes for something called  Banana Tax, imagine what you can pull off for something you’re passionate about? Here’s how we worked it.

1. We all wrote some random words on pieces of paper.
2. We formed into partners and drew two random words for each team.
3. We then had 10 minutes to brainstorm the first pitch.
4. One partner then pitched to everyone. You have 2 minutes.
5. Once each team had pitched once, we all gave feedback on the pitches.
6. We broke into teams again for 10 minutes to brainstorm the second partners pitch, incorporating the feedback.
7. Your partner then pitches.
8. More feedback, done.

This was our first time running this event and IMHO it was great. The feedback in the room was massively valuable and we just don’t get enough chance to actually practice pitching day to day.

I’d love to hear what others who attended thought. Please comment below if you were there.

Goal #1 at Startupify.Me is launching new technology businesses. A close #2 is building up our developers networks and getting them working directly with the people leading our industry. We’re combining those goals with our mentor program. Our mentors have committed to spending time here at ThreeFortyNine working directly with our developers on our projects.

Today, we listed a glimpse of some of the people our developers and clients will be working with. If you’re a developer who feels you have the chops to get into the world of building software based businesses, then let us know. We’re hiring, like right now!

“You have to understand, we’re a really simple band. We think we suck and we try really hard to make good records and we practice.”

His sentiments reminded me of the startup scene. First time entrepreneurs often believe their path to success is a beauty contest. We’re immersed in pitch contests, incubator application processes etc that’s it’s hard not to get caught up in it. There is a lot of ‘putting lipstick on pigs’ going on in the startup world. That lipstick line isn’t mine, I stole that from a local tech investor lamenting the beauty contest atmosphere we’ve cultivated. Back to Grohl..

“Something’s got to give. It can’t be song contests on television for the rest of our lives. It can’t be the same playlists on every radio station for the rest of our lives. It can’t be music made entirely by computers with people talking over it the rest of our lives. It can’t go that way, it just won’t.

I feel like as a musician and a part of this rock’n'roll scene, I have a responsibility to make shit real, to not think about all of that other bullshit, not think about making music for money or promoting music for fashion, the contests. My responsibility is to make shit that’s real. Once you start doing the right thing, it will get better.”

Startups are businesses at the end of the day. Creating a new business is not a contest. I’m not suggesting you don’t apply for an incubator, pitch to investors, or try to win a local pitch contest. Just realize none of that has anything to do with building your business. If you decide to go those routes, make sure that you’re solving a problem *you* actually have! Think about what Grohl says, don’t let all that other bullshit distract you. Focus on your product, your market, your customer. Make shit real, deliver.

When Grohl talked about how they keep their focus, it reminded me of what we’re doing here at ThreeFortyNine…

“we don’t pay attention to any of that. We have our own studio, our own label, and we do everything on our own terms”

We’re working hard to build ThreeFortyNine into our clubhouse. A place where people work hard together to build new tech businesses on their own terms. We’ll earn that freedom only through hard work and practice not by winning beauty contests. Focus on your customer and your product, product, product! Did I mention your product?

The format would likely involve an invited speaker who handles the bulk of the material for that evening followed by an intimate Q&A. We’d host it at ThreeFortyNine, which means we may be able to fit a pint in after we wrap up.

Do we need something like this locally?

Would you consider attending?

What topics need to be covered?

Can you offer up a better name?

I spoke at Guelph web maker meetup recently about how to quit your crappy job. The talk was a tongue in cheek way to talk about what a real business is. I used Josh Kaufman’s definition, which is this:

“Every successful business (1) creates or provides something of value that (2) other people want or need (3) at a price they’re willing to pay, in a way that (4) satisfies the purchaser’s needs and expectations and (5) provides the business sufficient revenue to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operation”

Most startup folks think they need Fred Wilson, Guy Kawasaki and Clay Shirkey as advisors. While I’m sure those guys would be great to chat with, you don’t need them. I’m not suggesting you turn them down but what you need are folks who have experience building real businesses, ie those 5 points above. Chasing rock star advisors is a massive waste of time with questionable returns. To continue that metaphor, most rock stars are so far removed from the required grunt work of an early stage touring band that they can hardly relate. Can they write a cheque, make some intros? Sure but that’s likely not what you need today.

For someone who has yet to start and run a successful business, your available pool of mentors includes everyone who has done just that. For me, my mentors include the woman who owns my local coffee shop, the guy who cuts my hair, my bookkeeper, the hot dog cart guy downtown, etc.

At their roots, even sexy tech startups are still just plain old businesses. Yes those folks can’t help you decide whether to build native mobile apps or html5 but those are the easy parts. Stop chasing or waiting for the rock stars. Trust me, they will be lined up at your door once you have your thriving business alive and growing. Go out now and buy a coffee for a new mentor, share with them and most importantly, listen!

Every great sitcom eventually needs a Robert Downey Jr but he’ll gladly sign up for season two. No one wants him for their pilot.

Every year when we’d start selling tickets, people would offer to contribute to the party. We were offered bands, sponsors, larger venues etc. We were offered some tasty party favours.

What’s this have to do with anything? Given some measure of success with your project or startup, you will attract a crowd. That crowd will want to be involved. You’ll meet some great folks who are interested in seeing your project flourish. You’ll meet some folks who are only interested in riding your coattails. Success and commitment are huge magnets.

In all cases, you cannot let external forces drive your project. You have to stay focused. Decisions and actions have to be explicit and justifiable. Don’t hire people because they offer to work for you. Don’t accept investment because people offer you cheques. Don’t take on mentors and advisors because they offer you help. Building successful businesses isn’t an additive, the more the merrier process. It’s about focus and making difficult decisions. It’s often more about what you choose not to do rather than what you choose to do. Stick to your path, don’t let the noise of success distract you from what got you there.

(PS. These are problems I dream of having someday!)

• We all agree to uninstall all distraction applications from our individual machines, ie email clients, twitter, facebook, linked in etc.
• We setup a single computer in a public location in our office where we all have an account. That account has all our previously mentioned accounts.
• We all commit to only interacting with the selected distractions when we’re on that single computer. So you need to go to that computer and use it to check your email, twitter etc.

The obvious idea is the public phonebooth, ie introduce some basic peer pressure into your usage of these apps. “Hey Brydon, you’ve been on the email a lot today, busy day or not?” Work when you’re working, play when you’re playing.

The context was driven by us as individuals as we are all struggling with these distractions. The conversation wasn’t driven by how ‘the man’ can get everyone off facebook. Now, we didn’t ever actually try this but I intend to in the context of Startupify.Me.

It will be volunteer only. We may write a basic app that allows you to sign in. Once signed in, the app will troll your various distraction apps and humiliate you in some fashion if you break the rules, ie use them while NOT using the public machine.

Thoughts? Would you and your team try this?