Innoveering Nebraska

My bookclub recently read The Lady and the Panda by Vicki Constantine Croke.  It’s a biography of Ruth Harkness and subtitled: The true adventures of the first American explorer to bring back China’s most exotic animal.  It’s a great read for so many reasons: there’s adventure, intrigue, romance, science and I even learned some Chinese history.   It’s also well written, although some of the transitions feel abrupt.

Most importantly though, it gives you a sense of what it was like to launch an exploration into the unknown when the world still had blank spaces on its maps.  And guess what, it didn’t seem all that different than launching a new business today.  There’s the idea (let’s bring a panda out of China!) the insight  (Harkin’s decision to aim for a baby panda which would be easier to feed and transport), the audaciousness of the endeavor (a 1930′s New York dress designer venturing into the wilds of China), putting together a team, the money concerns (Harkness did the impossible twice on a shoestring budget), the intrigue with competitors, the camraderie, the doubt, the excitement, the fear, the joy of success and the continual quest to repeat the experience.    

What I’m saying is that I believe entrepreneurs are the adventurers of the twenty first century.  Yes, I know you thought it was the extreme sport people or the astro/cosmonauts or maybe even the reality tv exhibitionists.  But really it’s the entrepreneurs.  They’re pushing back the boundaries of the known and unknown every day in ways big and small.  They’re risking it all on a gut feeling, careful research and tons of hard work.  They’re exploring new ideas and business models.  Entrepreneurs expand our world today, just like the explorers of yesterday.

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My friend Mary Kay and I have been walking at the local zoo (the Henry Doorly Zoo) every Sunday.  Lately it’s been cooler and we’ve been visiting the butterfly pavilion to warm up.  I’ve enjoyed it immensely.  The multitude of beautiful, varied, delicate, fluttering butterflies remind me greatly of entrepreneurial dreams.  Think about it, they’re both unique, erratic, ephemeral and yet hardier than they seem.   

Three weeks ago we saw a terrible site at the exit of the pavilion.  A boy crushed the body of a beautiful butterfly when his parents told him he couldn’t take it with him.   They seemed ashamed of his behavior, but didn’t reprimand him as he threw the dying butterfly down on the path where it fluttered its wings a bit before lying still. 

This disturbing image has stuck with me the last few weeks, popping into my head at unexpected moments.  It’s a powerful image and reminds me greatly of how alarmingly common it is for childish people to squash other people’s entrepreneurial dreams like that little boy crushed the butterfly.  It’s also common for the people around them to not like what they’re doing, but to not call them on their behavior. 

The moral of the tale?  The next time you see someone squashing someone else’s dream, speak up.  And if you’re ever tempted to squash a dream yourself, please pause and remember that little boy and the butterfly.  Is it really your place to kill that particular butterfly dream?

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P.S. The Henry Doorly Zoo is one of the many reasons I love living in Nebraska.

I have something to confess.  I have become fascinated with other people’s business stories.  The seeds were planted when I saw “Julie and Julia“ while still in the midst of running my first business.  I am a big Julia Child fan and was surprised (and yet comforted) to realize she and her two co-authors argued over royalty distributions.  If the great Julia Child couldn’t create without encountering bumps in the road, how could I expect to do so?

However, my fascination fully bloomed when I recovered from my meeting with the successful (and really very kind) Lincoln businessman who quizzed me unrelentingly about my first business and then explained that everyone has at least one bad business experience in their life (click here if your memory needs refreshing).    

So you can imagine how I anticipated seeing “The Social Network.”  My bookclub had even read “The Facebook Effect” the month before so I had an inkling of what to expect.  However, I was still surprised.  Not by the movie so much, but by how my fascination shifted afterwards. 

It may not seem amazingly insightful to you, but then you may not have yet experienced the hazy fog that can envelope you when you start a businesses.  There are so many unknowns and so many wrong steps that can be taken.  So many decisions to be made and so many people saying so many different things (and even the same expert saying absolutely opposite things in the same breath).  Most of all, there is so much work (physical, mental, emotional) that needs to get done at the right time – and the right time can be one of the unknowns.   And there is so little restful sleep or time to think… 

As I sat in the dark after the movie, not really seeing the credits or hearing the chatter around me, all I could think was that everyone had a little bit of the truth, but that every one of them believed they had all of the truth.  No one was completely right or completely wrong.

I have been trying to completely avoid all the noise associated with the start-up fog, but I think the real trick is to make and take and brutally defend the time to be quiet so you can better discern and piece together the bits of true and useful information for moving the business forward.  In other words you remove yourself from the start-up fog so that you can make more sense of it and discern the bits of truth when you return to the fog.  How you do this I’m still uncertain. 

Like I said, you probably won’t think this is very insightful if you’ve never experienced startup fog.  When you do experience it though, I hope you remember this idea.

Looking back, I don’t know how I could have demanded the time in some situations to think before taking action.  I do suspect that it would have been easier to make the demand if I’d had more sleep and more confidence. 

Which gives me hope. 

Here’s an image from my last experience with physical fog.  Traffic was reduced to 20MPH on a 55MPH state highway. 

For the record, my new fascination is strategies for coping with start-up fog.  Let me know if you have any thoughts…

We’ve struggled with the flu at my house during the last week.  The dog got sick and then the cat and I got stressed.  It’s been unpleasant and I’ve had enough of cleaning floors. 

On the positive side, it’s led to a lot of thinking about how all sorts of things are contagious – including ideas and skills such as entrepreneurship. 

Seriously, I think people might catch entrepreneurship.  Well maybe not catch it in a viral sense, but in the sense of “Hey, if my silly neighbor and idiot brother-in-law can both have an idea and sell a product or service, then I bet I can too!”  Or “Hey, I think I can do what my friend is doing in her basement only with this other product that I know more about!”

And when enough people start thinking this way, a whole physical region might get a reputation for being entrepreneurial.  Which would draw more infected or want to be infected people to the area. 

The question is how do you intentionally spread the infection?  And how do you spread the infection most effectively?  How many typhoid Marys do you need and what exactly do they look like?

I suppose the real question is whether you’re contagious enough to spread the ideas and skills to transform others into entrepreneurs.  In other words, are you an inspiring innoveer?

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Last night I took my beloved dog, Eleanor, to a fundraiser swim being held by the Omaha Humane Society at one of the closing city public pools.  We met our neighbors John, Norma and Bailey there - much to everyone’s enjoyment. 

The pool was one of the new kinds - with two water slides, a lake-like ramp in the shallow end and water fountains that shoot up and down in various locations.  Two little diving boards, but no high dives. 

Eleanor loves water and dogs and it was a lot of fun to watch her with the two together.  So I did a lot of watching.  It was fascinating.  The people interacting with each other, the dogs interacting with each other, people and dogs interacting together.  There was a lot of risk taking happening in all these interactions.  Lots of trust all around and occasionally some panic. 

The most fascinating was the two water slides.  It was impossible to predict which dogs would make it up the steps and down the slide. 

Which reminds me of people.  I think it’s difficult, if not impossible, to predict who will rise to the occasion, take the right series of risks and succeed in business.  This means we can continue to guess wrongly or we can choose not to pass any judgment and to maybe even offer a little encouragment to everyone we interact with to persevere with their ventures.  For me, the second option seems by far the more productive and compassionate.  I suspect your dog would agree. 

Below is Eleanor venturing forth to enjoy the water and other dogs.

I’ve been contemplating what I love most about my self-employed status.  There’s an addictive feeling of contentment which arises from a sense that there is a direct correlation between the work I do and the rewards (financial, satisfaction of helping others, building something worthwhile, etc.) I receive.  I’m not saying that a formula runs this correlation (at least not any simple formula).  Instead I’m confident that, if I’m creative and work hard, eventually there will be positive results. 

But contentment doesn’t explain it all.  Which is why I’ve found myself contemplating this issue so often lately. 

I’ve decided the big explanation has more to do with chickens.  Specifically free range versus cooped up chickens. 

Have you ever seen Food Inc.?  It’s a documentary about the food industry and where our food comes from today.  In it there are images of these chickens with chest muscles so large that they can only take a few steps before they fall down.  They can’t fly at all and don’t even try.  They’re cooped up together in this large one story structure where they mingle like drunks at a bad party in a too small ballroom.  They’ve been bred for large chest muscles because of our great fondness for chicken breasts.

The big breasted cooped up chickens are well fed, they get to socialize a lot and nothing much is expected of them.  They’re probably happy – mostly because they don’t know anything different from their current circumstances. 

But if you put a free range chicken in that place the free range chicken would be miserable because it is accustomed to the freedom and thrill of dodging predators, hunting down a juicy insect, flapping it’s wings and all other types of chicken joys and trials large and small.  Milling about in a room waiting for dinner or the time to become dinner would be a bore for the free range chicken. 

Which doesn’t mean that it’s evil to be cooped up.  The chicken coop has it’s advantages.  Even a free range chicken might want to rest in a coop every now and then. 

But once you’ve been free range, you know when you’re cooped up. 

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On the Fourth of July the History Channel ran an America the Story of Us marathon and I DVRed every single episode.  I love the series and have never been able to see all of it. I’m slowly watching them one by one now and savoring every little bit.  Yesterday I learned that NASA has used (and may or may not continue to use) whale oil in space.  Apparently it’s the perfect lubricant for space exploration because it doesn’t freeze at the low temperatures found there.  Imagine that, an 1800′s relict enabling the exploration of space.   

Today my favorite quote came from a guidebook that was given to new immigrants at Ellis Island.

Forget your customs and ideals.  Select a goal and pursue it with all your might.  You will experience bad times.  But sooner or later you will achieve your goal.  Don’t take a moments rest.  Run. 

Wow!  How amazing is that?  Can you imagine showing up to a new job and being handed that pamphlet?  What would you think?  How great a company would that be to work for?  How great a country is that to live in?  Oh I hope we still hand out similar pamphlets to new immigrants.  I also wish that we’d hand out similar pamphlets to our existing citizens. 

Had you forgotten how wonderful a place we live for encouraging and enabling entrepreneurship?  I had until I listened to that quote.  I wish I had that pamphlet to sprinkle all over town – at the library and the post office and the coffee shop where all the entrepreneurs hang out like exotic safari animals at a watering hole. 

Your country needs you.  Select a goal.  Get to work.  Don’t take a moments rest.  Run.  Sooner or later you will achieve your goal.

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This weekend’s Wall Street Journal includes an opinion piece on page A13 by Peggy Noonan entitled “Road to the Nut House.”  It contains a call-out quote which reads “You have to be crazy to run for president. Seriously, you do.”  The quote caught my eye and got me thinking.

To a lot of society, entrepreneurs are a little bit crazy.  We’ve given up the warmth and safety of receiving a guaranteed paycheck.  Instead, to quote Mike Frecks (my serial entrepreneur uncle), as an entrepreneur you “eat what you kill.”  Hmm guaranteed paycheck for showing up and doing what your boss says vs. eating what you kill.  We must be crazy.

That is, we must be crazy unless that guaranteed paycheck isn’t as guaranteed as it used to be.  Unless you’re more creative and can do your work better outside of 8am-5pm and the physical box your boss wants you to work in.  Unless the U.S. economy is shifting away from outsource-able algorithmic (legal research, medical diagnostic, software coding, etc.) work.  Unless you can kill and eat more than your guaranteed paycheck.  Unless you believe you have more to contribute to the world through your work than your job description or boss permits.

In his latest book, Drive, Daniel Pink writes “…submerging part of our nature in the name of economic survival can be a sensible move. My ancestors did it; so did yours.  And there are times, even now when we have no other choice.”  There are times when we have no other choice.  Which means that there are also times when we do have other choices.

It’s important to recognize the times when we do and don’t have choices.  It’s also important that we make the right decisions for ourselves and our loved ones at these times.  Not recognizing these moments or opting not to make a deliberate decision can cause you a lot of future heartache – especially near the end of your life.

Maybe your choice isn’t to step outside of the box entirely (perhaps that seems a little too crazy).  For you it might be time to find a better box, better boss, better organization or a better job description.  For others, your circumstances may have led you to the point where it seems crazy to cling to the soul shredding guaranteed paycheck.  For me, I realized I was at a point where my life could go two directions.  One had a “guaranteed” paycheck, but only promised variations of the same work for the rest of my working life.  The other was much less certain, with the only guarantees being that there would be adventure, discovery and growth.  I chose the crazy option – it was the only sane thing to do.

Check out the documentary Lemonade if you’re struggling with either making this decision or having it made for you.  If you’re considering making the leap, but aren’t yet certain, check out Gary Vaynerchuk ‘s Web 2.0 Expo talk for some inspiration (warning Mom, he uses some four letter words).   

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Yesterday I spent the afternoon helping a friend with some manual labor related to a business endeavor she has next week. The work didn’t require much thought – we were describing and pricing items. But I had a lot of fun. We giggled, we laughed and we talked, talked, talked as we worked through the stack of items.

Afterwards, sitting in my favorite coffee shop waiting for my next appointment of the day, I found myself reflecting on how important people are to business. And I’m not just talking about the various business experts needed at each stage of development in a business’s life. Those people are important too – and are worth another blog entry someday in the future.

But today I’m focused on the friends, family members and acquaintances that help out at some point with your business simply because they love you and/or they like being a part of building something new.

I’ve been on both sides of this equation and, when it’s my business, I’ve felt incredibly grateful, lucky and honored.  When I’m helping with someone else’s entrepreneurial venture, I’ve also felt these same three things – but in a different way.

I’ve given it some thought and I think the most similar feeling I’ve had is when a friend’s small child or teenager asks me to do to something with them. What the child, teenager and new venture have in common is that they’re all still in their early stages of development when the foundation of their characters is still being developed. It is an honor to be asked to be involved at this stage. You do feel lucky and grateful for the opportunity.

At least I think you do feel honored, lucky and grateful to be involved in the business venture if you are a developing entrepreneur yourself.  That‘s right, I said it.  I think an individual’s willingness to devote time and energy to the entrepreneurial endeavors of others is a useful and fairly reliable indicator of whether that person is going to grow into a entrepreneur themselves sometime in the future.  I concede that it might just be an indicator that you love someone enough to devote hours to a cause you think is futile and doomed.  Which means you really love that person.

So how to tell the difference?  Well blood and marriage for starters.  But other than that:

• Are you interested in hearing about other’s business adventures (even people not related to you)?
• Do you jump at the opportunity to help out with other‘s new ideas and ventures (whether for-profit or non-profit)?
• Do you follow through and actually show up when it’s time to do the work?
• Do you wish you could be as creative as the person with the new venture?

Congratulations, I think you’re a future entrepreneur!

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Yesterday I wrote about my belief that there are universal factors to waken entrepreneurs much like Sleeping Beauty was waken with a kiss.  I suspect the degree of intensity for each factor is unique to each potential entrepreneur.

Today I’d like to discuss what these factors may include.  Be assured, I don’t assert that this list is complete.  In fact, I’m very curious about what key factors I’ve forgotten – or which factors you don’t believe should be included on the list. 

In no particular order, here are the factors I think contribute to Sleeping Beauties waking up and becoming entrepreneurs. 

• A willingness to take risks (personal, financial, professional…).  This isn’t just big risks, but also a lowering of your internal threshold for taking small risks. 
• Believing so strongly in something (an idea, product, service, business model) that you’re willing to look silly or be belittled by others
• A dissatisfaction with the status quo in your current organization, situation, environment.  This dissatisfaction needs to rise to the level where you’re willing to take risks and venture out on your own. 
• An openness to and active interest in creativity and new thoughts, processes, ideas, strategies, etc. 
• Resolve to see the business through to its end - whatever that may be.  Entrepreneurs aren’t easy quitters, but they are smart quitters. 
• Flexibility to shift gears or change direction as needed.  This might be rephrased as an ability to roll with the punches – and the successes.

Is the man below a sleeping businessman or an entrepreneur waiting to be waken?  I suspect he’s an entrepreneur if his external environment and internal thought processes have increased the above factors to a level where he’s ready to take action.  Watch out world, the entrepreneurs are awakening!

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