Get High at Work!

Tag: leadership

  • Experienced Entrepreneurs Should Blog More

    Earlier today, Allen Nance tweeted his “new strategy” for engaging in social media:

    I replied to Allen, “you left out #blog: where you teach others.” Around the end of the day, I had a conversation with KP Reddy about his latest torrent of blog posts, which are pure no-BS, entrepreneurial gold.

    Turns out, KP and Charlie Paparelli have a little unspoken gamesmanship going on. KP had urged Charlie to begin regularly sharing his experiential wisdom, lessons, advice, and general “been there, done that” talks on paparelli.com. Charlie has done just that, and I, for one, cannot get enough of it. It’s real. It’s Charlie’s story, not just about startup-land and happy happy joy joy, but his battle with alcohol, successes, failures, and struggles.

    What if you could regularly soak up all the stuff they’ve seen, done, experienced, and been through…all the challenges they’ve faced, all the mountains they’ve climbed, all the obstacles they’ve overcome, and all the lessons they’ve learned through their journeys?

    You can. We can. It just takes a little encouragement. KP urged Charlie to blog. Charlie did, and then elbowed KP with a kind nudge that he should do the same. And, voila! You have two of Atlanta’s most successful, experienced, respected, and connected entrepreneurs sharing their wisdom. That’s how we learn. First by being willing to learn from others, and second by actively seeking out their wisdom.

    So, if you get a chance, thank Charlie and KP for sharing their wisdom, and ping Allen (and maybe Paul Judge, too!) and remind them that they have TONS to share and teach the Atlanta entrepreneurial community.

    Who else do you know who has untold sums of entrepreneurial and life wisdom? Encourage and challenge them to share that wisdom. It’s cathartic for them, and pure gold for the rest of us. 

    And to those who do regularly share their wisdom, thank you for doing so.

  • What’s your zone?

    Yup, another Michael Jordan post. Way back in 1992, the Bulls played the TrailBlazers in the NBA Finals. In game 1 of the series, Jordan decided to start shooting three-pointers. He hit six threes in the first half, and ended up scoring 35 points just in the first half. After he hit number 6, he was running back down the court, and looked over at the scoring table to the announcers and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “beats me!” Jordan was not known at all for being a 3-point shooter, so the Blazers had no answer for this brand new threat from the player that nobody could guard anyway.

    After the NBA Finals were over (Bulls won), Jordan was asked in an interview why he was not regarded as a great three-point shooter. His reply was epic: “I’ve never shot the three before.” In other words, Jordan wasn’t known to be great at it because he hadn’t yet tried it.

    In that same interview, Jordan said he was “in the zone.” He said the basket looked like a swimming pool and he just couldn’t miss and he knew it. I can recall a half dozen times or so when I was playing competitive soccer when I was in the zone. I couldn’t see anything around me. No distractions. Like I was wearing blinders, and yet I couldn’t miss.

    Have you ever been in the zone? You’d know if you had. Well, that’s a really long intro to a meeting I had today. Thanks for sticking with me here. :-)

    I met with an experienced entrepreneur today to talk about his business. The business is very much product centered at the moment, and they have several add-on products that they are planning to launch very soon. That’s what he was very excited about as he described the great experiences their customers are having using their product. As he talked about his products what they have built and are building, he was in his zone.

    Throughout the discussion, we talked again and again about how they’d like to engage in content marketing, but they didn’t know where to start, and their entire team is made up of engineers. Creating code for them is child’s play, but blogging and creating a content strategy? Nah. They could do it, if they were horse-whipped daily, but they would never get near “the zone.”

    But when he’d ask me questions and get me talking about content and strategy and telling your story…that’s when he looked at me and said, “You’re really excited about this stuff.” I didn’t even realize it. That’s a great feeling: loving what you’re doing and being able to evangelize about it without even knowing you’re doing it.

    What’s your zone? What are you really excited about? That’s what you should be doing. Go do it.

  • Nothing Hurts Like a Date

    A wise friend and business partner many years ago said something to me when we were planning a project with our team. We had the what, the where, the why, and the how. We were all in agreement, and then he asked “when?” We all kinda mumbled and didn’t really give it any credence. Then he said with a little more emphasis, “When are we pulling the trigger? Nothing hurts like a date.”

    Nothing hurts like a date. Now I say that all the time, because it’s just so true.

    It’s easy to say you’re going to do this or that, but when you put a date on it, it becomes real. Put it on your calendar, and you’ll do it. You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their checkbook register (or nowadays their debit card charges) and their calendar. What do they do with their time and what do they do with their money?

    Yesterday, in preparation for their final projects, I was providing feedback for several Digital Marketing students, and the most common two pieces of feedback were (1) that their strategy documents were too long and (2) that there were no dates & times to anything. When we create goals, those goals should be “S.M.A.R.T.”: strategic, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time sensitive. Scripture us to  “number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” When you put it on the calendar, it becomes a real thing.

    One of the things that I notice about people on a daily basis is whether or not they have any sense of urgency about what they’re doing. Does “when” even matter to them? Yes, we live in a microwave super-size society, so we have come to expect things immediately, but when you’re building something, shouldn’t there be a sense of urgency in building it? That doesn’t mean to hurry and do a poor job. Rather, it means to count the days in which you have to do the thing you’re setting out to do.

    How do you number the days? You put a date on the calendar, make it real, and get some sense or urgency behind your action. Then go do it. Nothing hurts like a date written down on a calendar shared with your team.