There are 6+ billion human frogs and untold number of other species in this pot we call earth and it is literally boiling – slowly but surely.
Yet, some are noticing it and raising the alarm, others notice and wish it would go away and , by simple reason, there must be some who genuinely don’t think there is a problem – they are happily doing backstrokes while the temperature rises.
There are some who think that maybe something is happening and it’s all natural – part of a rather long cycle that our current data doesn’t cover and there really is nothing to worry about. Personally I don’t buy this – even if this were true, the outcomes of those ‘natural’ long cyclic events have not been experienced in mankind’s time on Earth and from what we can observe so far, it will be catastrophic for us – all of us.
Personally, I think we are huge contributors to either the pace of the adverse changes or the intensity or both. Frankly, to think we played *no* role in it would be an enormous case of willful blindness. Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether we did – aside from figuring out what we are doing and reducing it – what matters now is that these changes are happening and we need to figure out how to cope with their effects in terms of avoiding mass destruction and loss of lives.
I’m really worried about this and feel pretty powerless mostly because it seems to me to be an all or nothing deal – either we all work to reduce the effects or we do nothing. Scary.
Are you worried by adverse climate change? Share them and let’s see what we can do together. Tweet or comment below.
My TED talks today are all about the future and how recent discoveries make that future every exciting indeed. They are also about discovering something new about some things that are very old. Here they are:
#1 – Carolyn Porco: Could a Saturn moon harbor life?
[ted id=551]
I love that we are exploring our solar system and that beyond the politics and scientific glory hunting there is serious exploration fueled by wide-eyed curiosity.
In this talk, Carolyn comes back to update TED viewers about some new and exciting discoveries her team – a joint effort by NASA and ESA – are making about Saturn. They have found elements that they believe encourage their hypothesis that Enceladus – one of Saturn’s moons – could sustain life. They found pretty complex chemical compositions when they analysed the material in what turns out to be geysers blowing from the surface of Enceladus. Benzene and formaldehyde are just some of the compounds they found. Even the ice crystals have been analysed – salt water!
Personally I believe it is wholly arrogant of human kind to believe we are the only ones out there. Life is more likely to exist than not (given that we exist) and this kind of research helps us get closer to realising what is out there.
What I really loved about this short talk was just how googoo seasoned scientists – who no doubt have to fight for funding from the bureaucrats – go for discoveries. It is reassuring for me to see that curiosity and deep passion for something still drive immense discovery.
My Key Learning: That I must remain curious about things and commit more time to understanding things – even those that are old and seemingly familiar – in deep detail.
#2 – Fiorenzo Omenetto: Silk, the ancient material of the future
[ted id=1142]
In this talk Fiorenzo shares some of the discoveries he and his research team have made from one of the oldest materials that mankind has been using – silk. This talk is simply breathtaking and I have found huge new respect both for the material and the people who study it.
Humans have been using silk in some form or other for over 5000 years and you might be forgiven for thinking that we had figured out all of its uses. But new tech allows us to dig further and rethink what we know about silk and find new and exciting ways to use it.
Silk is biodegradable, incredibly strong – like bullet stopping Kevlar – and biocompatible (meaning the body won’t reject it). Now with new tech – 3d printing – silk can form the basis for a new generation of medicines and medicine carriers. It can be printing into replacement bone without rejection. So many new uses of this ancient material.
I loved this talk because Fiorenzo was clearly passionate about his work and the life-changing potential (ok – not the styrofoam cup) that silk with new tech can offer us.
My Key Learning: Aside from a whole new and fascinating subject area for me to explore and gain some knowledge in, the big learning for me is there is plenty of innovation in old materials – especially when we have new means of exploring that old material. This is a huge lesson for me because it changes how I think of new capabilities. We might develop new innovation that helps us look farther into the future, but we should also be using it to look clearer into the past and explore existing materials better.
What did you learn from these talks? I’d love to hear your opinions, comment below or tweet!
Over the last few months that I’ve been building my startup (ServiceChat – a platform to help businesses have better conversations with their customers on Twitter) – this topic has been my constant companion. I am continuously discovering what it means to me to be a founder. There is no job description, no employee manual to tell you what to do or not do and actually no other experience to compare it to.
When I think back to all the jobs I’ve had – postman, video-tab-remover-guy, programmer, consulting coach, ‘startup founder’ is, by far, the hardest, most unrelenting, supremely challenging work I have ever done. It is also, without a shadow of a doubt, the most satisfying endeavor I have ever undertaken.
I have distilled my current feelings about being a startup founder and this is what I think it means so far, for me at least:
Incredibly hard work, emotionally exhausting
When I took my indefinite sabbatical from my really lucrative and pretty fulfilling job of being a consultant agile coach, I knew enough of the startup world to know it was pretty hard work. I knew also it is unglamorous work that demands you do what you know and often what you don’t, to make progress. Often for very little or no pay!
I easily put in sixty hours or more a week, work weekends and unsociable hours (the sky at 3am is beautiful!). All this whilst trying to be a half decent husband to a lovely wife and an attentive dad to four lovely people. Every spare minute I have is devoted to ServiceChat – building it, finding customers, crafting experiments to find customers, talking to customers, learning how to talk to customers, designing, developing , redesigning, strategizing, financializing (hey, that’s my word!). You name it, I do it because I’m a founder and it is what needs to be done.
And when I’m not working on my startup – I’m thinking about working on my startup!
Every success, every failure, every hope dashed, every dream realised is felt 100% by the founder. Praise does come, so does criticism – mostly from myself!
In any given day I go through the entire spectrum of emotions – fear, delight, sadness, anger and love. And that is just before lunch!
By the end of the day, I am not only physically tired, I’m also emotionally drained.
Requires focus, demands discipline
By nature, I’m easily distracted. This startup experience has shown me that starting is easy for me, I approach all new ideas with deep passion, huge excitement but I mostly suck at execution.
This is itself is great learning, because I now know what I need to improve on or buy in. Given that I’m building ServiceChat on a small budget, buying in an ace executioner is not really an option right now and besides, I need to get better at focusing and the discipline to focus.
Over the next few posts, I will share how I try and sustain my focus and train my discipline. Finding a focus is important because you bring all that you are to the challenge. You are present, some call it bringing your ‘A’ game, whatever you call it, you need it to be effective. What has helped me hugely is creating a routine that I can stick to and form a habit around. The discipline to stick to it becomes easier as it becomes habitual.
Without focus, time will pass and nothing would have been done. I would be no closer to my vision, remaining ignorant of the learning I need to more forward.
And time is money – whether you are spending it or not! ServiceChat is self funded, I moved to Spain (from England via Ireland) to extend my runway for a few more months, so every moment I am distracted, is cold hard cash that is burning away, inches of runway being lost to Father Time. But that is another story.
Deeply satisfying, hugely liberating
Being a founder is so deeply satisfying, I cannot find the words to articulate it as deeply as I feel it. Sure there are risks – it might not be viable, customers might not emerge from all the experiments. Finding those risks, facing up to them reaffirms my courage and encourages me to square up to the next scary thing. What a brilliant feeling!
Sure, there are dark undiscovered jungles in my map, big question marks about ‘what next? , ‘what if?’ and ‘how bad is it?’ . But discovering them, finding ways to answer the questions, learning what problems my startup could help solve and solving them are all satisfying things, at least for the curious mind.
Whether my startup succeeds as a sustainable business or not, I have learnt what professional liberation truly means. The freedom to learn and to explore. The freedom to take risks safely and to adjust the direction I take based on what I discover, the freedom to fail without the harsh judgements and condemnation of most traditional jobs.
As a founder, it will be damn near impossible for me to work ‘for’ someone else and be subject to their rules of how I work, when I work, what I do and how I do it. A wild bird is hard to cage, but an imprisoned bird that has experienced the freedom to soar unrestrained is almost impossible to re-imprison.
Feeling part of something
What I continue to love about being in the startup community is that there is one – and it is rich in learning and support. As a developer for nearly twenty years, I am used to the open source community, where ideas are freely shared and welcomed and I feel the same with the startup communities I have participated in.
I especially love the LeanStartup movement. Eric Ries (and to a large extent others like Steve Blank and Alex Osterwalder) has provided a manual that we can learn from and a common language that immediately connects us. Around it has grown a beautiful ecosystem to be part of, full of meetups, mashups, startup weekends, hackathons and so many community activities to help the starry eyed dreamers. They do help and support, but ultimately, as a founder, you have to go back and build your vision. As a startup founder, I feel part of something revolutionary, almost like we are redefining the future of work as something driven by passion and is deeply humanised.
What does being a startup founder mean to other founders?
I was really interested to hear what other founders thought, so I asked around and here a few responses from my twitter shout out:
Hass Chapman (@hasschapman) from @TORCH_sh – “A very steep learning curve. Daily tests of commitment. Sacrifice. But also; Achievement. Pride. Enthusiasm.”
Marc Cooper (@auxbuss) from fndout.com – “freedom, destiny, change I want to see, daily confronting daemons, sacrifice, awesome. Not for everyone.”
Enovia Bedford (@accessoryremix) from mixieManagement.com – “Being start-up founder allows me to improve systems of the past and produce similiar products in a sustainable way.”
What does being a startup founder mean to you?
It does not matter whether you are contemplating starting a startup or just starting up or whether you are a tried and tested founder, we each bring a unique perspective to this gig and I would love to hear and share what you think?
Do you find it exhausting?
What are the sacrifices you are making to be a startup founder?
What are you learning?
Are you enjoying it?
Comment here, on the FounderSync forums or holler at me on @mhsutton. I also share my daily startup experiences on my personal blog at http://mhsutton.me
After almost a year of having my road bike – that I fondly call Monsieur Defy – I have started exploring the great rides around where we live.
I had done 2 earlier rides, a 3km down and up the mountain road to my village and an 8km down and up the other side of the mountain (towards Restabal).
I feel so proud of myself – my determination and my fitness – which I wasn’t too sure I had! So many times I wanted to stop and walk my bike and I didn’t – progress!
Here are the pics.
I don’t mean to preach – but please if you aren’t currently doing any regular exercise, consider starting. It doesn’t need to be major – just something that keeps you sweaty and out of breath for 20 minutes every other day. Life is more beautiful when you are fitter.
Do you ride a road bike, what was your first ride. I’d love to hear about it – tweet or comment below. Happy trails.
I watched only one TED talk today and it was everything a great talk should be – insightful, impassioned, well delivered, humorous and deeply engaging. To say it has inspired me is an understatement. As a result of this talk I have some new and exciting learning to make and perhaps a new movement to join. Would love to hear what you think about this talk.
#1 Benjamin Barber: Why mayors should rule the world
[ted id=1825]
The challenges that face our modern world are increasingly trans-national – they traverse borders and airspace. From terrorism to pandemics to climate change – the modern challenges facing humanity require, perhaps more than ever, that human beings work better together.
Benjamin’s suggestion that our political systems that have hardly changed in 400 years are not up to the task of addressing our modern challenges is a strong and reasonable point.
The main thrust of this talk is that cities is where people live their lives, they are the coalface of civic life. With 50+ percent of the world’s population living in cities (70% in the western countries), he may be right. And government of cities requires a much more pragmatic leadership than countries. The feedback from things not working right in a city are almost immediate and mayors do not have the luxury of delay or aloofness that presidents and prime ministers have.
Benjamin clearly knows his stuff, he has studied the policies and government of many prominent mayors and many others I hadn’t even heard of.
I really liked this talk because Benjamin’s central points made total sense to me. The business of national government has become so far removed from everyday life, there is very little connection with people anymore. Mayors – the embodiment of local connections – need a deep understanding of the community they govern. Although he didn’t mention a single drawback of any mayors’ policies or any problems that cities have,as a result of having a mayor – there are undoubtedly many.
There were some aspects that I am still puzzled about, namely:
There are far more cities than countries and some cities are bigger than some countries.
At what point does population make city governance as disconnected as national governance?
There are still borders, if not jurisdictions. Even if these are only ‘city limits’. What extends beyond them in terms of mayoral responsibility.
What form do the relationships between cities take – treaties?
Actually I don’t think mayors should rule the world. I think that more needs to be done to overhaul our national political structures to reconnect it with communities. Communities are not part of the countries – they are the country.
I think there is much to learn about how cities work – and how they don’t – and how mayors work and the nature of decentralisation. So rather than swap one set of political structures for another, I am leaning towards re-imagining a new structure that is community centered, with institutions that have representation at their very core.
My key learning: I learned that we must question the suitability of old tools to new problems. Infact I think that we are best advised to understand whether our problem is new or not as a first step to trying to solve it. I do not believe this is talked about enough – especially with regard to political structures, democracy and the power of the people.
What questions is this talk inspiring in you? Have nation states outlived their usefulness, is there a need for more localised and pragmatic city leadership? I’d love to hear your opinions, comment below or tweet!
Today I watched 4 talks totalling just under 30 minutes. The first was direct and the other three where on a 15 minute playlist of ‘inspiring’ talks. Here they are:
#1 Chrystia Freeland: The rise of the new global super-rich
[ted id=1791]
Since the 1950’s the rise of the super-rich (the top 1%) has been rising more than steadily. Chrystia’s observation the gap between the top 0.1% and the next group along (the next 0.9%) is even more interesting. She goes on to provide some numbers to back this up.
She offers some reasons for the rise – the internet, crony capitalism and globalisation. The main problems with this skewed distribution is the misuse of political power and the influence of established and emerging plutocrats.
Though I knew of this topic already, it was interesting to hear Chrystia’s perspective and supporting data.Really interesting was the education of the rich and how it is designed deliberately to capitalise and grow their wealth – through the Stanfords and Harvards of the world.
My key learning: There is not just the ‘rich’ anymore. There is also now the ‘super-rich’. The rich and super-rich intend on staying so and approach the education of their progeny accordingly. How will the scales ever be be balanced – should they?
#2 Kartick Satyanarayan: How we rescued the “dancing” bears”
[ted id=734]
This talk was incredible! The story of how a small group of dedicated and passionate conservationists focused on the problem of bears baited and captured, their spirit broken by a desperately poor and mostly illiterate tribe in India.
Some of the captured bears are sold to be made into traditional medicines in the far east. Others are kept as performing animals – dancing bears – to earn their captor and owner much needed money.
What I really loved hearing about in this talk was the holistic approach the conservationists took. The bears were essentially economic objects – versus food or entertainment – for their captors and the conservationists designed alternative forms of economic activities for each of the bear captors in exchange for the imprisoned bears.
Astounded to hear that they succeeded in their mission to find, free and rehome all 1200 dancing bears in India – wow!
My key learning: For best results – equitable to all concerned, least confrontational – work to understand and address the causes of the problem you are trying to fix, as well as trying to address the main problem. By offering seed capital to previous bear owners, the conservationists address the primary cause of the bear capturing.
Also, it brought home to me that there are often more stakeholders in a problem than we are conditioned to see.
When I first watched the talk, I considered the villagers cruel and undeserving of any help. Yet they are stakeholders in the solution – it has to work for them to work for the bears. I felt deeply humbled and grateful to Kartick’s talk that I was able to challenge my thinking.
#3 Hannah Brencher: Love letters to strangers
[ted id=1603]
I’m all for unrequited love for humanity but I struggled to get beyond Hannah’s overlyrical waxing. I love the idea of writing people letters and generally anything that one human being can do to help another through a desperate time.
Why desperate? Because I think I would have to be emotionally desperate to fully appreciate and receive the love that a complete stranger expresses in an unsolicited letter.
Maybe that says more about me than it does the world.
Also I think that love, even if unrequited, must still connect with a need the receiver has – otherwise it is a noble waste. For example, if I have a need for a friend to listen and I receive a letter that does not address that need (letters by definition do not) then it really is pointless. This may be a utilitarian view of love but one that resonates deeply with me.
My key learning: Nevertheless I learnt something from Hannah’s talk, more a reaffirmation of something I already knew – that the world is full of amazing stories and even in this age of super fast digital communications, there is still a place for analog that communicates love through the time and care someone takes to do something like write a letter.
#4 Laura Trice: Remember to say thank you
[ted id=349]
Saying ‘thank you’ has become so blaise now that it might as well be meaningless. Laura’s talk explores what it means to say ‘thank you’ and to display/demonstrate genuine appreciation. I found the stories from her work with mental illness fascinating about how some of the problems she hears about have , at the their core, the person not feeling appreciated.
Very interesting for me was Laura’s suggestion that people own their need for appreciation. This resonates deeply with me and my journey in Non Violent Communication. By communicating this need, we make it easier for others to have the permission to say ‘thank you’ to us.
My key learning: Laura’s talk really brought it home to me that people still fundamentally value appreciation and regardless of the words, sincerity is the key. Also I learnt that who is saying the ‘thank you’ is often as important as what it is being said for.
I make a point to say thank you to my sons every night as I put them to bed and to praise them for trying their best today. This talk reminded me to expand that to my wife and others who make my life happier everyday.
What did you learn from these talks? How did they move you? I’d love to hear your opinions, comment below or tweet!
For my TED talks today, I used the nifty tool on ted.com to pick 3 persuasive talks that made up 30 minutes in total. I love this part of ted because it creates my own playlist – no faffing. Each talk is not necessarily on the same theme and this is another thing that delights me – the diversity. The talks can challenge and stimulate different parts of my brain and emotions.
#1 Jonathan Foley: The other inconvenient truth
[ted id=1412]
This talk was loong! I discovered it could have been shorter because Jonathan gave his really compelling talk with strong supporting statistics and imagery and then halfway through, showed an ‘explainer’ video that basically said the same thing again. I thought this was a little overkill.
The talk was on the threat of our current pace and scale of global agricultural production to the world’s climate and water sources. It had some really startling statistics – more than 40% of the best land on Earth is used for agriculture and most of the world’s fresh water – 70% – is used to grow stuff. Alot of the agriculture is grow food for livestock – a lot for beef production. This is not farm land waiting to be cultivated, a lot of it is pristine rainforest that is deforested to create farm land. Basically the land mass used to plant stuff or keep animals is basically the size South America and Africa – combined!
Food is a huge part of this agriculture, but there is also a growing amount for bio-fuels. And population growth is creating a pressure for more food. Increasingly wealth is changing diets – veggies are out, meats are in.
With the problem well defined – Jonathan’s call to action is that there must now be collaboration between seemingly competing approaches – organic farming, industrial agriculture and environment conservation – to come up with a way that we can feed the world without destroying it. Ideas around improving yields, do better with less, but sustainably (so not GMO!).
This talk also inspired me to look into another aspect of the problem – food waste. Whilst we seek efficiency in production, there is still a fundamental problem with how much food that is produced is wasted. My gut tells me that there are huge problems with waste due to ineffective distribution of the food and this is something I would like to explore more.
My key learning: there is power in showing the big picture – for connecting ‘localised’ problems and showing the global picture. Also, ultimately our complex problems need collaboration between competing models to come up with something sustainable. There are no silver bullets and no single answer.
#2 Graham Hill: Less stuff, more happiness
[ted id=1238]
Graham’s talk was about having less stuff because it’s cheaper, takes up less space and generally less stressful. All great reasons in my opinion. As someone who has moved country I definitely value the ‘less stuff’ mantra. Also there is something very liberating from not having stuff. What do they really give us. Do they make us happier?
I really loved the focus on design – this is, I think, the plug that Graham was pushing. His website – Lifeedited.com – is all about seeking more from less. More money, space, time and ultimately, happiness from having less stuff. He showed off a render of his apartment (in Manhattan!) with elements from a design competition. Fold-into-the-wall beds, moving walls and a coffee table that grew into a dinner table that seats 10! All very impressive.
My key learning – less is more. Actually the previous talk really connects with this too. I think that seeking to make smaller things is a only part of the message. Many small things are almost as bad as a few big things. Design is awesome, but we must first break this addiction to shiny stuff.
#3 Jake Wood: A new mission for veterans — disaster relief
[ted id=1608]
This talk really gave me an ‘ah-ha’ moment. It is very America focused in its tone and perhaps in the severity of the problem – that young veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan not being successfully reintegrated into society after they have left the military.
Jake, as a veteran himself, offers a persuasive account of the challenges that veterans face in dealing with a return to civilian life. Even as military loving as America is, once you’re back, you are pretty much left to fend for yourself, the support systems and camaraderie is often absent and veterans face emotional problems as a result.
The really interesting thing is what Jake and others in his organisation are doing. Deploying ex service personnel to help in disaster areas like Haiti, Chilé and Pakistan for example. This very common-sense pairing of problems presents brilliant solution to both. Veterans often have the skills and the attitudes to make a difference in disasters. Their need to be of service and to derive some self worth from being in service are also met.
This talk really connected two personal experiences for me. First, my brother Peter who has served in humanitarian relief in Haiti and other places. The challenges and devastation he has witnessed, yet still driven to help. The second is the son of a client – who was deployed as a Marine to Afghanistan and , at 22, is emotionally damaged by his experienced and struggled to reintegrate into civilian life.
My key learning: some problems are their own solution when combined. The sense of service and the need for self worth are powerful human factors and we disregard them at our peril.
What did you learn from these talks? What have any of the talks persuaded you to do or explore? I’d love to hear your opinions, comment below or tweet!
For a while now I have developed the ritual of TEDTuesday – taking time each Tuesday to watch and learn something on TED.com.
If you are new to TED.com – it is a platform for some of the most amazing explorers of knowledge and witnesses of humanity to share their knowledge, insights and experiences. Based on themed conferences and an annual general conference, TEDTalks are videos of public talks. I love TED for its purpose and for its diversity. If you have never watched a TEDTalk, I beg you – please – do so now!
So today I decided – over breakfast – to watch as many TEDTalks as I could during my breakfast time (about 30 minutes). I got out my Galaxy Note and launched the TED app and off I went. Without much thought about what I wanted to watch I just picked topics that vaguely interested me and something from Malcolm Gladwell – an author I really like learning from. So here goes…
#1 -Onora O’Neill: What we don’t understand about trust
[ted id=1829]
This talk seemed a little laboured, however Onora brought a lot of focus to the issue of trust and the misguided populism of some of the soundbytes that are regularly banded about by buzzwordists and politicians, for example ‘Gain trust’, ‘Rebuild trust’.
Trust is a big deal for me in my life and being worthy of the trust of people I am interested in having mutually positive relationships with is something I spend a lot of time and thought exploring. How do I communicate my trustworthiness to my wife, my kids , friends and my clients? Truth is, they each have their own set of operating rules to determine whether I have earned it.
I think Onora falls into the same trap of offering simple templates and more – though different – sound bytes. For example, she proposes that establishing trustworthiness is based on 3 things – ‘Competence, honesty and reliability’. It may do for certain people in certain contexts but not as a general rule. They are reasonable examples but not absolutes. My son who is nearly 5 years old might consider me trustworthy because I demonstrate sacrifice – that I forego other things to make time for him.
I enjoyed the talk but it was perfectly timed at 7 minutes – any more and I think she may have totally lost me. It left me with a lingering learning that asking people how you might earn their trust i.e. how you might be worthy of their trust – is the first activity one might do and then go from there.
My key learning: Trustworthiness is a more effective goal than trust. It is subjective and trying to understand what constitutes it in every relationship is a great place to start from.
#2 -Elizabeth Loftus: The fiction of memory
[ted id=1826]
This impassioned and fascinating talk really opened my eyes and mind to the power of suggestibility – especially in when it is sustained and deliberate. The lessons Elizabeth shares and glimpses of what is possible throws up huge questions in my mind about the quality of our legal systems.
My imagination is pretty vivid and I often find myself questioning a memory that flashes in my head – did I dream it, imagine it or did it really happen? This is a conscious act. So far I have deliberately developed mental tools to cross validate my memories with other things to rule out whether that event was real or imagined. For example, I often ‘remember’ that I replied to someone’s email when in fact I haven’t. Typically I retrospect on this and find that I mentally composed the reply and did so visually – as though I typed it out. At some level, my brain registers this as a memory. Then I seek evidence (like checking my ‘Sent’ box to see whether it was right.
As a student of NLP and very keen on the way the mind works, I know how easy it is to affect someone’s behaviour through some pretty easy ‘tricks’ and although it is not something I do for ethical reasons, I know of practitioners that use these techniques in personal coaching work. The insight that the use of some of these techniques, like hypnosis and subliminal messaging, could tamper with people’s memories and unleash a chain of events that have lifelong consequences was very interesting.
It raises other questions in my mind – about film and fantasy work and advertising. Do they really understand the long term effects of such realism in film. I know there is research now into the effects of pornography on the brain and behaviour – how much of this effect is on memory? Perhaps certain content needs regulation – like dosage!
My key learning: Memory is far too open to suggestion to be reliable on its own. Even collectively it is dangerously unreliable (due to anchoring and suggestion). So finding evidence based thinking tools to cross validate it is both essential and offers a whole new world of potential innovation.
I like Malcolm – he is a fantastic story teller and I value his ability to get to the essence of something. Usually it is an essence no one else sees! Many ah-ha moments with his books.
Anyway, Malcolm retells the story of David vs Goliath really beautifully, taking us through the geography of the times and the geopolitical forces at play.
Then he shares his opinions – some backed up by various bits of research – about how David was really not an underdog and simply fought Goliath on his own terms. In the end all of it was circumstantial and personally I thought it was reasonable. For example, Goliath could have been suffering from acromegaly – which many people suffering from gigantism also tend to suffer. This could have caused him to be visually impaired and may have contributed to David’s victory.
My key learning: Aside from all the biblical blah blah, I took from the subtexts some really powerful messages about adversity and some of the challenges of competition and some lessons that I can directly apply to my startup journey. For example – focus on my strengths. Also to play by my rules – not the rules of my opponent or competition. Also, weirdly, in place of competition, collaborate. Work with the weakness of my partner for my gain. This is also something that resonates really strongly from my Aikido practice.
What have you learnt from these TED talks? I really would love to know and share. Go ahead, drop me a comment or tweet me your thoughts.
I have been blogging off and on for about nine or ten years and I seem to have accumulated quite a few posts in that time.
In the early days, I focused on human rights issues, military interventions and the games governments play. In recent times – with the Syrian crisis – I wondered how I might get some of my older but still very relevant posts out on my twitter timeline for my followers to read. More importantly, how to do this without flooding my timeline or creating more work for myself. More work is bad, mmmkay. I have 3 tools I want to share with you that made this problem go away and best of all are easy to use and free!
Tweetily – something to tweet old posts
So I searched the WordPress plugin world and found Tweetily by Flavio Martins (who you may know as the totally awesome customer experience guru). I don’t know whether Flavio actually wrote the plugin but it has his name on it. Anyway, I installed it and it worked great. With very little effort – less than 10 minutes – I was able to get all my old posts tweeted on a basic schedule – yay!
Basically you tell Tweetily which posts to exclude by category, the minimum age of posts to include and how often to tweet and away you go. It also has a nifty little feature that lets you prefix the tweets with some free flow text. This is the critical feature that makes this whole setup work.
Buffer – something to spread out your tweeting
But hang on – I also use the super-easy Buffer app to schedule my tweets, this could pose a problem. Buffer – for those not in the know – is a super-easy app that lets you schedule your tweets so that you don’t flood your timeline, but more importantly , you can optimise when you send tweets for maximum reach. Buffer also does Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and app.net.
I don’t really want another thing posting to Twitter – that might flood my timeline or need more management!
BufferDM – the bridge between Buffer and Tweetily
Then I remembered BufferDM – a happy little utility app I wrote to help me add to my buffer account by a twitter DM. Let me explain.
My ideas for tweets come to me in floods, before Buffer I just let that flood flow – not good! I pissed a few people off and they unfollowed me. That sort of tweet-diarrhea stinks.
Buffer made a huge difference for me, but it was still tedious to go to the website or even the mobile app. Typically I just use the Twitter for Mac client. So I wrote a little app that I could tweet a DM to and it would put it into my buffer on BufferApp. I didn’t need to use any other clients and the only decision I have to make was whether to prefix my tweet with a ‘d bufferdm’ or not – I could keep my flow without the flooding. Happy!!
Back to Tweetily. After a few days of using Tweetily I was a little dissatisfied with the timing conflicts of old blog posts and my other tweets from Buffer, but by getting Tweetily to tweet my post as a DM to BufferDM which then puts it nicely into my Buffer queue.
I did this simply by setting my prefix text to ‘d bufferdm’ in the Tweetily config.
Now Tweetily handles the figuring out of which old posts to tweet and Buffer does what it does best and sends them out in a very optimised way. BufferDM is the pipe that makes it all sing.
I am also noticing a generally increasing readership and a lot more conversations (that I love) on Twitter. When I have the data to prove this, I’ll share.
So if you have some old posts you want to tweet without killing your timeline, try this setup and let me know how it goes.
I meet many people who struggle with ideas for a startup – at least for one they would be ready to take a risk to explore.
Thankfully this is not a problem I have. There is no shortage of ideas nor of the capability to generate ideas. Neither do I have a huge aversion to risk – I try to fail cheaply and try to learn as fast as I can.
My biggest problem is finding customers. Not customers to buy a finished product that I have spent thousands of pounds and countless hours building – I don’t often get that far. What I struggle to find are early adopters to test the ideas on for real – meaning that they actually have the problem I am trying to solve and would be willing to pay for the solution.
Early customers may not stick with your product all the way through, but the early feedback they can give is invaluable – at least this is what I hope. Without early customers helping to validate my assumptions, my real risk aversion kicks in and I will stop working on the idea. The lack of feedback may, itself, be valuable feedback!
There may be lots of reasons why early customers are hard to find, but some reasons are more reasonable indicators of the viability of the idea than others. My main reason is fear of what I perceive selling to be, crossed with impatience.
My Definition of Selling (and marketing)
My operating definition of ‘selling’ is this:
Selling is the art of persuading someone to exchange something they have – that you want – for something you have.
Interestingly, my definition of ‘marketing’ is:
Marketing is the art of persuading someone to want what you have to sell.
In my mind, selling and marketing share the same process – persuasion- and differ only by goal.
To me customer development is a form of selling. One where I’m trying to persuade someone with valuable insight into how their business works and real world needs to exchange their insight, time and money with me for the chance to have those needs met through my development of a product/service. Once I ‘sell’ them on the idea – then I can do surveys, usability testing, A/B testing blah, blah, blah. But if they don’t ‘buy’ – I got nothing!
My Name is Mike and I’m Afraid of Selling
I love people, I love talking with people and listening. I love hearing about the problems they have and I have learnt to not jump in with solutions. However, when I think that what I need to do is ‘sell’, my brain goes into lockdown. I find every possible reason not to ‘sell’. I procrastinate, dive into distractions and otherwise avoid this activity.
My perception is that selling is a black art that I am unqualified to do and this ‘inferiority’ complex haunts me. This means I constantly second guess myself in a way I don’t do when I code or when I coach. It also means I over-analyse what possible response to my approaches will be (and overwhelmingly I conclude they will be negative, hostile or both). Inevitably I never do anything.
To make matters worse, the people I want to contact are busy people. They aren’t sitting around waiting for my call. So, often their responses are delayed and this plays into my fears.
Frankly I’m stuck at this point. I think I understand where my current problem lies. Once I can get to speak with a potential early customer, I’m fine. All my skills kick in and mostly I can persuade them to try what I am offering – if they have a glimmer of the problem I am trying to solve.
My problem – when I zoom into it, is in generating leads. Getting folk interested enough to get to speak with them. This is where the art is the blackest for me. This is where I need help.
Do I have to be good at the approach?
My gut answer is that early customers are key to building businesses – at least using a lean startup/customer development approach. So generating leads would seem a fundamental skill that every founder should have. So now, I am operating on the basis that I have to go from ‘crap’ to ‘good enough’.
When I have wanted to improve at things in the past, I have often hired someone with the skills I wanted to improve and I then paired with them doing some real work. It was slow for me and them, but the learning was incredible. It cut out a lot of the noise and the outcome was awesome.
That is what I intend to do this time. This worked for understanding SEO and learning Ruby on Rails. So I am exploring hiring someone to help with customer development who I can pair with. More on this soon – in the meantime if you know someone I should be talking to , ping me!
Do you have a fear of selling? I’d love to hear your experiences – maybe something you have learnt can help me, maybe vice versa. Either way – let’s not suffer in alone.
