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Premature

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My friend recently met with a tech startup in the area. During the meeting, he asked the founder how the business was doing. The founder enthusiastically replied by telling my friend how many people he had on staff: 12. Not too long ago they had two. They’ve been busy raising capital over the past few months.

Another business I’ve been watching is renovating an office. A nice office with a bunch of custom stuff. The owner is doing a lot of the work himself.  Their social media stream used to be full of interesting updates about their products. Now they incessantly post pictures of the new office. I’m sure it will be a very nice office when it’s finished, complete with a slick automatic espresso machine.

And a young couple we know is building a big fancy house. They want to build big because this is where they will live happily ever after, which of course they know for certain after being married for a whole two years. No kids yet, both working full time, living the D.I.N.K. life (Dual Income No Kids).

Don’t get me wrong, hiring people is exciting, big new offices are often necessary, and buying a home makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

But unfortunately, these and other big decisions are often acted on prematurely.

Doing them is fun. Undoing them sucks.

I’ve experienced the not-so-fun flip side of undoing them. I’d like to tell you about it so that hopefully you don’t make the same mistakes.

Early in my career I helped a company raise capital to expand. We had tons of borrowed cash and a big idea. We just needed people. So we started hiring. It was really exciting. Our team nearly doubled in a matter of months. $2 million and a failed business model later, the money ran out and people had to be let go. Guess who got that job?

I’ll never forget looking across our big conference room table at a mother of three, sole income provider, and telling her she no longer had a job or insurance because of the stupid decisions we had made. The pain in her eyes made me physically sick. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

One thing that sidetracked the company during this growth phase was the renovation of a bigger office. It was a huge project, and it took the owner’s full attention nearly everyday until it was finished. We really didn’t need a bigger office, but the mindset was that someday we will, and we have the money now, so why not go ahead and build it?

When Mandy and I were looking to buy our first home, we almost bought a modest house in an affordable neighborhood. The deal ending up falling through which gave us the chance to reevaluate and start looking at other houses. We quickly found a nicer house in a more upscale neighborhood. It was nearly finished and we had to act fast if we wanted it (i.e The Scarcity Principle. Makes people do all kinds of crazy things.). I remember vividly one conversation we had in the car, realtor in the back seat, contract in hand, about the monthly mortgage payment. We could just barely swing it, and I remember justifying all kinds of ridiculous things in my head. A year later, we got a nice little letter from the bank stating that our payment was going up $300 per month to cover the taxes on the house (apparently, you only pay taxes on the lot the first year). Gas prices had also spiked, and we were commuting 60 miles everyday. I was so defeated when I had to tell the bank we couldn’t make our payment. The day we sold that house was one of the best days of our lives, despite losing our life’s savings and $30,000 in equity.

For me, these experiences have been painful, disappointing, stressful, and most of all invaluable.

They taught me the importance of waiting until the time is right. It’s so easy to get caught up in the excitement of now. We want things now. But getting ahead of yourself can make you do things that are really hard (or impossible) to undo.

Doing things prematurely taught me some important lessons that, if you’re still reading, I leave with you:

1. Debt is a cruel master. Stay as far away from it as you possibly can. It’s so easy to convince yourself you need it. And people will tell you that you can’t grow a business without it, can’t get a degree without it, can’t buy a car without it, and on and on. Don’t believe them.

2. Create margin in your life. It might be painful getting there, like it was for us to sell the nice big house, but it was worth losing all that money and equity to reset and start living below our means. Having margin insulates you from the unexpected and empowers you to make sound decisions and try new things.

3. Always ask yourself, “Do I really need this right now?” If you’re honest with yourself, the answer is usually no.

4. In business, I’m now fiercely opposed to buying anything that does not directly impact the quality of our work. Only when the time is right (and the cash has been saved) will we have a nice office, hire support staff, or buy a fancy espresso machine.

Until then, I’ll wait.

Blog

On finding contentment in your work

This is one of the most difficult posts I’ve ever written. I have been writing it and rewriting it for days. I can’t seem to finish it. I’m still not sure I should have posted it. But in the spirit of vulnerability and authenticity, here we go.

If you are like me, you find great satisfaction and value in your work. That’s a good thing. That’s the way it’s suppose to be.

But as much as I enjoy being productive and getting things done, there is a reality I am coming to grips with: My worth as a person has nothing to do with the amount or quality of stuff I can accomplish. I am not defined by what I do. And doing more will never make me more content.

This might sound arrogant and I don’t mean for it to, but when it comes to my job, I think I’m a pretty productive guy. I’ve worked tirelessly to figure out ways to get a lot done in a short amount of time with very few resources. For instance, in the first quarter of 2013 we shipped 45 finished videos. The “we” in that sentence is me and a few freelancers that almost add up to one full-time person. That’s more than the company I used to worked for produced with an entire staff of full-time employees. To say I run a high-performance scrappy little outfit would be an understatement.

That should be something to celebrate. But here’s the unfortunate truth: I’m a workaholic. Productivity is my drug of choice.

When the afterglow of a job well done fades too quickly, I’m out looking for my next fix.

The harder I push, the faster we move, the bigger the invoices get.

But when will it be enough? That’s the crux of this post.

We have been indoctrinated to believe that progress will eventually lead us to some ideal state. It will not.

We learn this from a culture obsessed with success. Some go so far as to say finding your life’s work is worth losing your marriage and your sanity for. There are thousands of books, blogs, websites, and consultants dedicated to helping you get more done. Brands tap into it too. With that next cup of Starbucks, you’ll be able to send twice as many emails in half the time. And that Pinterest project will make you look like Supermom to all your friends.

Just push a little harder. Do a little bit more. Find a hack to make you slightly more productive than the rest. These things are not inherently evil, but our over-worked, over-caffeinated, over-achieving culture glorifies them ad nauseam. And yet, at the same time, we’re inundated with more ways to stay distracted than we’ve ever had. Interesting.

Think I’m being too dramatic? Have you looked around lately? Probably not. You’ve been staring down at your phone checking “important” emails and Facebook all day. Why? Because you get a tiny thrill each time that little red notification appears. You do. I do.

When was the last time you went more than an hour without checking your phone? When was the last time you spent more than an hour working on one big idea, something meaningful?

I started writing this post at an empty bar, with pen and paper, iPhone off at 3:30 on a Monday afternoon. Normally I would be writing on my iPad in a coffee shop, sipping something with too much caffeine, watching people come in and leave, flipping back and forth between Facebook, email, Twitter, and Instagram, and expecting something substantive to flow effortlessly forth. Sound familiar?

Please hear me, I’m not necessarily recommending the bar as an ideal place to do meaningful work. It’s just that for me, writing at the bar punctuates a shift I want to make. It’s a shift away from forcing progress, away from the status quo, and away from my addiction to technology. Don’t worry Pour Jon’s, it’s not a shift away from coffee.

It is a shift toward finding contentment in the moment, and as I wrote about in my last post, allowing my natural rhythm to lead me into productive zones.

Yesterday I needed to get out of the office for a walk and find a quiet place to think and write. So that’s what I did. And I made progress on something much more important than emails and projects.

I made progress on my wellbeing.

There are a thousand more “productive” things I could have done. And in a corporate job, I would have pushed through the day and probably just sent a few more emails that would be forgotten as soon as they were received.

I’m not saying we should give up or stop trying. I’m not saying we shouldn’t work really hard at things we love. Not at all.

What I’m saying is that when those things start to define us, we’re walking a dangerous line. We each have a primal longing to be accepted, celebrated, and validated for the value we bring. Our Maker gave us a desire to be productive and creative. But that’s not our sole reason for existing. I think it’s easy to forget that because for a lot of us, work consumes most of our waking hours.

And it’s not that I love working more than other things in my life. I really don’t. I love my wife exponentially more than I love my work. But it’s easy to get out of balance because of the ratio of time and the pressure we feel from ourselves and the societal expectation to achieve.

To keep myself in check, it’s important for me to think about holding my work loosely. To remind myself that it is only one aspect of my life, not even the most important aspect. And to force myself to stop long enough to realize what I’m obsessing about.

Not to get all new age on you, but meditation is one thing that helps keep me centered. Even five minutes of stillness is enough to clear my head for most of the day. Try it once. Sit still, breathe deeply, and try not to think about anything for five minutes. It feels like an eternity. Yet, five minutes is less than one half of one percent of your day. You start to realize how incredibly noisy, busy, and frantic our world is. And you realize how empowering a clear mind can be.

Just don’t confuse being productive with producing meaningful work. There’s a big difference.

How’s that for a disjointed pile of words on a screen?

To put a nice bow on it, I leave you with some words from Macklemore, one of the great philosophers of our day:

And I had to find out who I really was
Who I really wasn’t
So sick of who I was becoming
Yeah, tired of running
Time to look at the man in the mirror until I can learn to love him

Make the money, don’t let the money make you
Change the game, don’t let the game change you
I’ll forever remain faithful
All my people stay true

Blog

New LeaderSkilz Episode – “Playing Favorites”

Here is the latest episode in a series called LeaderSkilz that I help produce (and act in) for The Soderquist Center.

In this episode, the boss plays favorites by lightening the load for his flag football teammate at the expense of someone else. The lesson: Great leaders don’t favor their friends over others in the organization.

Special thanks to Walmart for sponsoring this episode!

We’ve produced 18 episodes so far. I still chuckle at the original pilot:

©2012 The Soderquist Center

Blog

In the Jaws of constraints

Steven Spielberg sitting on the mechanical shark from Jaws (Louis Goldman/AMPAS)

Jaws is one of my favorite films. It scared the living daylights out of me as a kid. The music, that little boat that crumbles to pieces, Captain Quint. Epic.

Jaws was also the first film to surge past the $100-million box-office mark.

Yet for a movie about a shark, you really don’t see the shark that much. Director Steven Spielberg didn’t intend for it to be that way.

During the making of the film, the crew couldn’t get the mechanical shark to work. It was wrought with technical problems and never worked the way Spielberg wanted it to.

This was a huge disappointment to the young Spielberg. After all, how the heck can you make a movie about a shark without a shark?

They had to figure out how to tell the story without their main character.

To hide the mechanical shark, Spielberg and company took the approach of “what you don’’t see is scarier than what you do see”. This approach made all the difference. And as they say, the rest is history.

Today I heard Andy Murray talk about how constraints lead to breakthroughs in creativity. The Jaws example is a powerful testament to this idea. The constraint was not obvious or intentional at first. Had the shark worked, the film may very well have flopped. Yet because of this challenging constraint, they figured out a way to tell the story in a much richer way.

When we think about being “creative,” we often think of half-day brainstorming sessions where there are no bad ideas and every idea under the sun is up for consideration. The counterintuitive truth here is that the most creative ideas come as a result of having constraints, not from an absence of them.

So the next time you’re trying to solve a problem, try putting a constraint around it. Maybe it’s a time constraint: “I must come up with a solution in the next 30 minutes.” Or a people constraint: “We’re going to solve this with only two people.” Or maybe it’s a resource constraint: “Using only the tools we currently have, we’re going to figure out a creative solution.”

“Where resources are plentiful (i.e. no constraints), you will find very little creativity. Where resources are scarce (i.e. many constraints), you will find an abundance of creativity.” – Andy Murray

Blog

Great advice – Have a bias for action

A wise person once told me that it is always good to have a bias for action.

When we are presented with an opportunity, a challenge or a decision, it is almost always better to lean toward doing something rather than sitting around thinking about it or analyzing it to death.

This also applies to plain ‘ol everyday life (although a life full of action is anything but plain). Do something constructive with your time. Teach people, help people, build stuff, design stuff. We were created to create.

People sometimes ask how I can be so productive. I think it has a lot to do with my bias for action. I try to keep this mantra top of mind.

Do you have a bias for action?

Blog

Social media is not enough

Don’t be fooled into thinking social media is the answer to your marketing problems.

Social media is a communication tool. That’s it.

Communication is nothing new. People have been communicating since the beginning of time. Only now instead of drawing pictures on rock walls, we type words into Twitter or Facebook.

Remarkable stuff is what matters.

If you don’t make or provide great stuff, no one will care about you. It doesn’t matter how much or how often you tweet, facebook, or spam, if you don’t have something remarkable to point people to, you are wasting your time.

I had coffee with a friend the other day who is a brilliant strategist and marketer. He’s doing a lot of social media consulting these days. He said that if a client wants to get into social media and they don’t have a truly remarkable product, the conversation about social media ends there. It’s futile. Social media doesn’t matter because no one is going to talk about your product or service if it’s not truly REmarkable (worthy of making a remark about).

So just make great stuff, or as Nick Campbell would say, “Make Cool Shit“

Blog

Paranoid about blogging? Just slap a big LEGAL button on it. Problem solved.

legalI recently discovered the blog of a business leader I respect very much.

I was excited. His blog has great content and great insight. It felt very authentic. It felt authentic until I clicked on the huge protruding “LEGAL” button at the top.

Come to find out, the site was “created” by this leader but it is “maintained” by the company. The legal notice goes on and on…and on about how you can and cannot use the site.

I’m not accusing this person of misleading his readers or anything like that. The point I’m making is that authenticity is critical. If you want me to believe that it’s really your thoughts I’m reading on your blog, don’t slap a huge corporate legal notice at the top. At the very least, tuck in down at the bottom.

Blog

New LeaderSkilz Episode!

This one is about keeping things simple. Much harder than making things complicated. Enjoy.

Blog

Covered in flour

I have a friend whose husband works for the famous Little Debbie snack cakes. He used to work on the factory floor diagnosing and repairing equipment. He loved it. He was so good at it that they promoted him to Management.

My friend was saying that she knows how good her husband’s day has been by how much flour is on his clothes when he gets home. If his clothes are clean, she knows he’s mostly been doing administrative work in his office all day. If he’s covered in flour, she knows he’s been on the floor doing what he really loves.

If you are someone who loves designing, creating, or fixing things, I think it’s really important to keep doing those things even if you’ve worked your way in a “better” position.

For me, it’s making great videos. Sometimes I can use those videos in my marketing efforts. Sometimes I can’t.

What is it for you? Are you happier when you come home “covered in flour?”

Blog

Social media: removing the barrier

Lately I’ve been thinking about where social media is leading us. Some people think we are going to end up with a society full of crazy narcissists. I think that’s already happened.

It’s really not even worth arguing whether social media is good or bad. It’s just a communication medium enabled by technology. And technology is amoral, it’s neither good or bad. It’s what we do with it that makes it good or bad.

I think social media is leading us to a world with absolutely no barrier in communication from one person to another. Throughout history, this barrier has always existed. Be it proximity, time, technology, whatever. The buffer between you and another person has always been there. Until now.

We are rapidly nearing a day when it is absolutely conceivable for two or more people to be inseparably linked via technology. The most imminent reality of this is live streaming video delivered via smartphones. It’s already happening.

This is an amazing time in history. We are on the cusp of a monumental shift in the way we communicate that will forever change the course of human interaction.

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