Last week I attended a course on Attracting, Hiring and Retaining the Best People. It was session 1 of 3 organized by StartupDigest University, the insider’s guide to the startup world. This week was session 2 and the topic was Top 5 HR Mistakes & Compensation 101.

“Right now there is a war on talent. The entire technology sector is hiring, virtually every startup (alive) is hiring, and VC’s are even creating newsletters to help their startups hire. Hiring is the most important function of a startup founder/CEO. With the talent war raging, it is clear that finding and hiring the best people is one of the most challenging aspects of an entrepreneur’s job. Developers are elusive and expensive, and it’s hard to find a business or marketing person among the noise.” ~ StartupDigest

This evening had 2 great speakers which filled the event with tactical knowledge and inspiration rather than just inspirational rhetoric. There was no bullshit. The folks in the room were A-players, smart and were thirsty for education which would serve as the arsenal of hiring tips and tricks.

Here’s what happened.

Brian Helmick, Founder & Managing Partner at Algentis

Brian Helmick, Founder & Managing Partner at Algentis

About Brian:

• Brian Helmick is the founder of Algentis, an HR Software & Services firm that simplifies operations for small and medium-sized businesses by assuming the burden of HR administration.
• Algentis provides a technology-enabled service offering which seamlessly integrates HR compliance, payroll, benefits, and insurance.
• Algentis helps startup clients with all the headaches associated with HR, so entrepreneurs can focus on the core aspects of their business.
• Website: http://algentis.com/

The presentation notes covered 5 HR mistakes:

1. Misclassification of Workers

• There are strict IRS guidelines and the choice isnt yours. Learn those guidelines or speak to a specialist.
• Most startups break this law.
• If an employee is made to work strict 9-5 hours on a computer provided by the employer then they are labelled as an “employee”. Else, a contractor. Some employers get around this label by adding computer expense into employee’s salary vs providing them the tool/s.

2. Errors in Hiring

• Improper interview questions – personal type like age, race, state etc. this can lead to being sued should the unsuccessful candidate believe it was due to these personal questions they were not hired.
• Hiring for skills and not fit. Companies change so hire for fit to make sure to retain great employees.
• Ask for candidate references and then ask the references for another degree of references. You need to really know how this person is and not what their friend (reference) scripted.

3. Improper Documentation

• Don’t use your friends legal documents. They are not fit for your purpose.
• Average cost to defend against an employee claim is $150K.
• On average, most HR issues are not seen until the company hits the magic 20 employees.
• Poor documentation of performance, attendance & misconduct. When you document make sure it is stored in a safe & secure place.
• Wrongful termination award is $125K.
• Do quarterly reviews – to speed up the process get the employee to do self reviews and no more than 3 questions with a scale.

4. Errors with Employee Terminations

• Too slow to fire – always. Nobody ever complains about firing somebody too quickly.
• An under-performer is incredibly costly financially, your time and morale.
• A lot of this is due to the “termination discussion” which is not fin and mostly emotional.
  • Start with the conclusion and keep it short.
  • Make it clear that the decision has already been made.
  • Be sensitive of the other person’s feeling – do not let it get personal.
  • Severance is highly recommended to minimize getting sued especially if the employee is volatile. But do not make this a policy since it can be used against you.
  • If the employee threatens to sue you. End the conversation and contact your lawyer.
  • Finally, always give the final paycheck on the employee’s last day.

5. Unsuitable Benefits & Insurance

• Workers compensation insurance of at least $100K is legally required.
• Choosing benefits:
  • Basic = Medical only
  • Basic plus = Dental, Vision and FSA
  • Premium = Medical, Vision, FSA, Transportation, Unexpected life events and 401K.
• Having a good plan helps with recruiting.

Compensation 101

Before you begin, always work out your strategy e.g. low cash and high equity reward or high cash and low equity. Don’t shy away on spending if you find the perfect person.

There are 3 components:

1. Cash
   • Easiest for both to value.
   • Cash bonuses have mixed review – they are not properly valued by employees if at 10-15% of their base salary. Best to give this as merit instead.
   • Studies have shown that behavior changes at 25%+ of base salary. Which is why it works so well in Sales and Financial Services industry.
2. Benefits & Rewards
   • Small personal incentives like a restaurant / theater voucher or a letter to spouse are most powerful.
   • They help build the company culture and show that the employer cares. Yet are cheaper to implement then a 10K bonus.
3. Equity
   • Common terms:
     

     Vesting	3-5 years
     Cliff	1 year
     Expiration	90 days after employee leaves
     Buy back	Company to buy back the options

   • Equity split for non-founders:
     

     COO	2-5%
     Cxx	1-3%
     VP of Eng.	2-4%
     Other VPs	1-3%
     Directors	2-5%
     COO	0.75-1.5%
     Key Eng. Roles	0.25-1.5%

Taso Du Val, Co-Founder and CEO of TopTal

Taso Du Val, Co-Founder and CEO of TopTal

About Taso:

• As an early and lead engineer at Fotolog (Acquired by Hi-Media for $100m), Slide (Acquired by Google for $224m), and his own companies, Taso brings unprecedented top management and engineering experience to TopTal.
• While running a small consulting firm, he recognized that while many of his co-workers overseas were just as good as his friends and colleagues at Google, Facebook, and other companies with notable top engineering talent, it was simply impossible to find them.
• TopTal was created as a solution to the sky-rocketing demand for top engineers in Silicon Valley, US, and Europe despite the shrinking local graduate rates of such engineers.
• Website: http://toptal.com/

The presentation notes:

• There are 4 types of labor outsourcing:

1. Traditional outsourcing – using consulting firms.
2. Democratized outsourcing – providers of a virtual marketplace for freelancers and freelance agencies to negotiate work contracts with businesses that hire independent professionals and agencies.
   • Companies in this space include: elance, odesk etc.
3. Crowdsourcing - Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.
   • Companies in this space include: crowdflower, mechturk etc.
4. Top sourcing – sourcing company full of expertise and knowledge to help businesses cut procurement costs.
   • Companies in this space include: toptal etc.

• Managing remote labor:
  • Learn to manage your local staff well before managing remote staff.
  • Communication is VERY important.
  • Product is the most important thing. Period.
  • When your remote talent is better than your best developer, you know you’re doing it right.
  • Use Skype excessively (24/7).
  • If 2 days go by without communication, fire instantly.
  • Expose them to Silicon Valley (TechCrunch, Quora etc).
  • Use PivotalTracker or similar Project Management tools.
  • Daily Scrum (development) works very well.
• A note on communication with foreign hires:
  • Proper English != Communication
  • Bad English != Bad Communication

Isnt this educational and inspirational! Great content from great founders that know what it takes to hire the best people. So this was part 2 of 3 and I will be posting links to full videos of the event later in the week – so come back to check this blog for more updates.

Happy hiring!

This post is also posted on my other blog “The Road to Silicon Valley”.
URL: http://www.theroadtosiliconvalley.com/jobs/attracting-hiring-retaining-best-people/

~ Ernest

Linked mentioned in this post

• StartupDigest: http://startupdigest.com/
• Algentis | HR Outsourcing | Payroll | PEO: http://algentis.com/
• TopTal – Direct access to the top developers: http://toptal.com/

So recently I was invited to a 3 evening course at StartupDigest University via Hacker Dojo on Attracting, Hiring, and Retaining the Best People. Today was day 1. More to come over the next 2 weeks. StartupDigest is the insider’s guide to the startup world and the evening was hosted by Gagan Biyani, Co-Founder of Udemy, where all the videos of the presentations will be hosted later on.

Gagan Biyani, Co-Founder of Udemy

“Right now there is a war on talent. The entire technology sector is hiring, virtually every startup (alive) is hiring, and VC’s are even creating newsletters to help their startups hire. Hiring is the most important function of a startup founder/CEO. With the talent war raging, it is clear that finding and hiring the best people is one of the most challenging aspects of an entrepreneur’s job. Developers are elusive and expensive, and it’s hard to find a business or marketing person among the noise.” ~ StartupDigest

This evening had 2 great speakers which filled the event with tactical knowledge and inspiration rather than just inspirational rhetoric. There was no bullshit. The folks in the room were A-players, smart and were thirsty for education which would serve as the arsenal of hiring tips and tricks.

Here’s what happened.

Immad Akhund, Co-Founder and CEO of HeyZap

Immad Akhund ~ Co-Founder and CEO of HeyZap

About Immad:

• Immad Akhund is the CEO of HeyZap and an engineer.
• Having studied Computer Science at Cambridge University and co-founded 3 successful start-ups.
• He was previously a co-founder and the CTO of Clickpass.com (acquired by Yola.com).
• Clickpass partnered with Plaxo, Scribd, Disqus and others to power their sign-on through OpenID.

The presentation notes:

• Recruitment is a Marketing Exercise. You must market yourself and your company over and over so it gets into people’s head that you are a good company.
• Ask yourself “Why should this hire give several years of their life to your vision?”. Remember that you aren’t the only making favors here.
• Hire Generalists over Specialists.
• Spend time on your jobs page to make it Marketable. It should lure talent in. See http://www.heyzap.com/jobs
• Use all the available channels to get talent. Being: Internal, Online, Offline, Campus and New clever ways like running random competitions for others in the social space to re-tweet your job ads.
• Give employees a hiring bonus $2-10K to show you care.
• Good people have at least 5 friends that are like them. If you find an A-player tap into their social grid since there is a high chance their 5 close friends will also be A-players.
• Add “We are hiring” to all your blog posts.
• Online communities like HackerNews, Reddit, StackOverflow, GitHub et al are one of the best sources of A-players.
• Organize ”open house” like Startup Crawl to allow A-players to come and have an open chat with you.

Auren Hoffman, Founder and CEO of Rapleaf

Auren Hoffman ~ Auren Hoffman, Founder and CEO of Rapleaf

About Auren:

• Auren Hoffman is the CEO of Rapleaf and an angel investor.
• Rapleaf helps B2C companies give their consumers a better experience by providing automated search services for each consumer.
• Auren is also a non-employee cofounder of BrightRoll and a co-founder of AdRocket.
• From 2003-2006, Auren served as Chairman of Stonebrick Group and Chairman of the Connector Group (Silicon Valley 100).
• Previously, he founded and sold three Internet companies before age 30: BridgePath (sold in 2002), Kyber Systems (sold in 1997), and GetRelevant (sold in 2002).
• He writes a blog called Summation ~ http://blog.summation.net/

The presentation notes:

• 3 ways to find an A-player:
  1. Having worked with them,
  2. Knowing someone who vouches for them and
  3. Reflective interview process.
• Resumes are bad since they are nothing more than marketing and act as a selling document.
• As the interviewee, you should always show up on time. Be respectful of the candidates time too.
• Once you get comfortable about their specific skill there is no need to further drill it. Move onto other questions.
• Get the candidate to teach you something. If you see they have a specific interest / hobby like chess, ask them to teach it to you (crash course) in the interview. Few people can “simply” explain complex concepts. Yet being able to explain a complex concept in simple understandable terms by breaking it down and even drawing it on the board is an important quality of an A-player. Every complex concept can be explained easily by an A-player.
• Ask insightful and hard questions which are interesting for the candidate. Ask about:
  • Their thesis,
  • Current events like WikiLeaks and the ethical dilemmas created,
  • Drill into something they stipulated they are good at and see if their depth of knowledge reflects it,
  • Ask curious questions like: “How do you think LinkedIn generates the n-th degree contact/s?” Even if you don’t have the answer observe how they tackle the problem.
• Don’t ask typical questions most interviewees ask. Come up with something clever that is specific to the candidate and see the fire it ignites in their desire to get to the answer. If you get a call or email after the interview with the answer then this is a great indication of the desire and fire that burns in A-players.
• Don’t talk more than 25% of the interview. You want them to do the talking since you need to get the answers to your single question – “is this an A-player”.
• Try to determine how Smart the person is by accessing:
  • Are they curious?
  • Do they ask the right questions?
  • Do they engage in further deeper discussions?
  • How well do they take feedback?
  • Are they unsatisfied with mediocre answers?
• You can even get the candidate to do a presentation on their topic of choice and see how they can explain and simplify it enough so it’s crystal clear and educational. Make sure the topic is hard so you can see their thought processes. Then ask yourself the questions above whether this candidate is smart.
• Overall, you need to determine whether you would enjoy working with this person. At the beginning stages of your company you are the company culture and bringing in a new employee may change or enhance it.
• You get to choose the people at your company. Therefore choose wisely.
• Choose 3 key criteria you want in the people you hire and stick to them.
  • Rapleaf has the following:
    

    A. Scary smart B. Gets things done C. Nice & friendly

  • Notice how there is no technical skills listed. Remember, top 3 only since in a Venn diagram too many circles creates too many overlaps which are too small. You want a nice chunky even spread.

• Finding a Co-founder is always hard. So when you think you found one do something together to determine “compatibility” - something like a blog post together or running an event. This will help you see whether this person is trustworthy, follows up with their word and has passion for their work. The try before you buy approach. But always remember, that no matter what, even the 1st employee should be called a “co-founder”, looked after with good equity and be treated as such to help your vision come to life and ultimately success.

Isnt this educational and inspirational! Great content from great founders that know what it takes to hire the best people.
So this was part 1 of 3 and I will be posting links to full videos of the event later in the week – so come back to check this blog for more updates.

Happy hiring!

This post is also posted on my other blog “The Road to Silicon Valley”.
URL: http://www.theroadtosiliconvalley.com/jobs/attracting-hiring-retaining-best-people/

~ Ernest

Linked mentioned in this post

• StartupDigest: http://startupdigest.com/
• Heyzap › Powered Up Products for Game Developers and Publishers: http://www.heyzap.com/
• Immad Akhund’s blog: http://www.immadsnewworld.com/
• Rapleaf – Personalizing the consumer experience: http://www.rapleaf.com/
• Auren Hoffman’s blog: http://blog.summation.net/

So you want to tweak your wakeup time to feel better and ultimately sleep less and have more energy. Education and a system are ultimately what you will need to achieve this. Here’s both, the education and a system to get you started and feeling better each morning.

The Education

A good night’s sleep always starts with “deep sleep” for around 2-3 hours when more blood moves to your muscles to repair them and you “do not dream”. Your body is like jelly in this state – motionless. Post each deep sleep cycle you move into the REM state which is a state close to being awake. This is the time “you dream” as your brain “organizes” all your memories. It is also the state where you are moving and tossing a lot in bed and is also known as the lightest sleep phase. This means in REM you are the closest to being awake both mentally and physically. Therefore it stands to reason that waking up in this state, REM, will be of most value to feeling better. More about this here.

If you have ever woken up in the morning feeling groggy then this is because you woke up in deep sleep or should I say “were” woken up since this is a tougher phase to wake up from. The reverse applies for REM. The mornings where you felt great upon waking up and were fully refreshed was REM. So now that we know the state you need to wake up in, let’s explore how to wake up in REM.

The System

There are 2 ways to find your REM cycles:

1. Experiment with different wake up times

I did this at the very start when mapping my sleep patterns. This is the cheapest form and also the most draining since you need to experiment with different wakeup times like 6am, 6:15am, 6:30am etc. until you latch onto one that is superior to the rest in how you feel when you wakeup. It it time-consuming and requires a lot of persistence. And even then, you may find that 5:55am is better than 6am. Arggg the old manual days of doing this.

2. Use a device to monitor your sleep patterns

Few months back I found this great iPhone app called Sleep Cycle which is a bio-alarm clock that analyzes your sleep patterns and wakes you when you are in the lightest sleep phase, REM. The app knows that we move differently in bed during the different phases, Sleep Cycle uses the accelerometer in your iPhone to monitor your movement to determine which sleep phase you are in. Sleep Cycle then uses a 30 minute alarm window that ends at your set alarm time and wakes you in your lightest sleep phase, REM. More here how it works.

Sleep Cycle is super cheap at 99c one time investment.
Grab it from iTunes by clicking here or clicking the black “App Store” button below to open up iTunes.

Using Sleep Cycle iPhone app

Sleep Cycle is simple and easy to use. Here’s how it’s done:

Starting Sleep Cycle	Selecting your wakeup time
FYI guide	Device placement
Sleep time	Your sleep data

Notice my sleep data for 07-08 Dec (Tue). At the start of the night I was mainly in deep sleep and then around 5ish back into full REM (nearly awake state). The app woke me up in an asleep state which is a lot better than deep asleep. This way I woke up feeling refreshed. However notice the sine wave / cycles our sleeping pattern goes through. You always want to wake up in REM – or as is known in the Sleep Cycle app the “Awake” state.

Easy, intuitive and it works!

Click: to get this 99c app.

What I like about Sleep Cycle

• Sleep Cycle is super cheap at 99c one time purchase. Grab it from iTunes by clicking here.
• It works. I feel better waking up at the time Sleep Cycle tells me using its internal alarm vs. waking up by the time I believe is best.
• Easy to use. As you saw above a few clicks and away you go.
• Built in statistics. You do not need to go to a website to view your stats. Everything is on your phone and ready for viewing as soon as you wake up.
• Drains little battery. Unplugged from the main power source and with airplane mode on it drains around 20-30% of the phones power at the end of the night. Therefore no messy cables running from the power supply to keep it humming.

Where Sleep Cycle can improve

• An interface to tap into 3rd party products for monitoring movement. The problem is that Sleep Cycle needs to be on your bed and if your partner makes dramatic movements the app will register those and think it’s you and make a decision to potentially wake you up if within your selected wakeup time zone.
• Ability to export the statistics data into a common format. This way I could analyze the data myself in Excel and run some graphs / pivots over it.
• Better control over the statistics. Like being able to select start and end date (grouping data) vs using the arrows to navigate around.

So there you have it. A cheap and easy to use app that will help you get on your way to understanding your sleep patterns better.

~ Ernest

Links mentioned in the post

• iTunes: Sleep Cycle alarm clock – Maciek Drejak Labs
• How to sleep less and have more energy
• Sleep Cycle website – How it works

Body language is a fascinating topic. It has always been on my top topics of interest when reading books. Body language is a form of non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. Us humans send and interpret such signals subconsciously. And thus is where the power of being able to correctly decipher and make sense of body language come in.

In the past I talked about eye movements and how to read them. Today I will delve into facial expressions. But why this interest in body language? Because as John Borg attested that human communication consists of 93 percent body language and paralinguistic cues, while only 7% of communication consists of words themselves. This means something extraordinary is happening under the layers of communication. Today, in our society we are primed with speaking skills and educated on the importance of good communication. Yet most of the magic happens beneath the spoken world.

Dr Paul Ekman’s research

Every person has 43 facial muscles that create the same expressions says my favourite pioneering researcher Dr. Paul Ekman. After 30 years of research in the field in Papua New Guinea with stone age tribes Dr. Paul Ekman proved facial expressions of emotion are not culturally determined, but universal across human cultures and thus biological in origin. Further, he summarized these 43 facials muscle types into 7 universal emotions. These 7 are scientifically proven to trigger the “same” muscles in each of our faces, backing up Charles Darwin’s theory that the facial expression of emotion was intrinsic.

The 7 key emotions

Ekman determined that all humans share the following 7 emotions: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, Surprise and Contempt. According to Ekman, emotions developed through evolution as a sign of letting others know we sensed danger.

What best way to demonstrate each of these emotions but to use me as the subject.

Emotion	How it looks	Signs to watch out for
Emotion: Anger	Anger	Signs to watch out for: Narrowed lips. Lower & upper eyelids pulled up. Eyebrows pulled down. Teeth can be showing like a growling animal before it attacks.
Emotion: Disgust	Disgust	Signs to watch out for: Upper lip pulled up with teeth showing. Nose wrinkled. Brows pulled down.
Emotion: Fear	Fear	Signs to watch out for: Mouth corners stretched back. Eyelids open with the whites of the eyes clearly visible. Eyebrows up and together.
Emotion: Happiness	Happiness	Signs to watch out for: Both lip corners pulled up and towards the each – think Batman Joker smile. Crow’s-feet showing around the eyes. Eye’s narrowed.
Emotion: Sadness	Sadness	Signs to watch out for: Mouth & lip corners hang down. Eyelids heavy. Inner corner eyebrows turned up. Note: Faking the turning of the inner eyebrows is next to difficult so pay attention to liars here.
Emotion: Surprise	Surprise	Signs to watch out for: Mouth hands open. Eyebrows up and eyelids open wide. Note: Surprise is the quickest of the 7 emotions and within 3 seconds turns into one of the other 6 emotions.
Emotion: Contempt	Contempt	Signs to watch out for: Lip corner pulled in and back on one side of the face. Note: This is the only emotion happening on one side of the face.

Now you know the 7 most common emotions.

The power of this knowledge & application

What you can do with this knowledge is limitless. Once you get good at recognising these emotions you will be in a position to:

• Identify when you should back off from a dangerous conversation before it turns nasty/violent.
• Change topics when the other party gets irritated and/or out of patience.
• Bring peace and safety to people who are afraid or scared.
• Immerse yourself with people who feel true love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy towards you.
• Help those that are have feelings of disadvantage, loss, and helplessness.
• Catch a liar at work or in a social environment.
• See whether that smile is truly genuine or fake.
• Understand whether the other person has a lack of respect accompanied by a feeling of intense dislike towards you.
• Be in a better control of situations within your environment and adjust accordingly to best meet satisfying objectives.

It’s amazing how learning 7 simple emotions can drastically alter your lifestyle and bring clarity.

General tips

• A fake smile is usually shorter than two-thirds of a second or longer than four seconds.
• Innocent people flash the most genuine surprise.
• Guilty people flash an emotion of fear.
• Fear held for longer is a sign of something being hidden.
• To catch someone responsible watch how their brows and mouth move, and for how long. Prolonged surprise gives you a cue for further probing.
• Be cautious of people who give you half-smile or smirk since this is an unmistakable expression of contempt and moral superiority – aka Killer Contempt.

What you can do with this knowledge is limitless. Enjoy your new-found knowledge!

~ Ernest

Links mentioned in this post:

• Dr. Paul Ekman’s website: http://www.paulekman.com/
• Reading Eye Movements: http://blog.ernestsemerda.com/2009/09/12/understanding-each-other-primary-human-modes/

Last weekend I attended another awesome Bay Area seminar organised by Jeff and Kane to discover the distinct models and techniques to exponentially increase my tangible results.

Who are Jeff and Kane

For over a decade now, Jeff and Kane have been dedicated to modeling the most successful executives, service professionals and independent contractors to discover the difference that causes professional excellence, financial success and accelerated results. Obsessed with the question of how to achieve true and sustainable business and life success, they have filtered out the most effective, lucrative and powerful techniques for consultants, authors, coaches and professionals to quickly build a six and seven-figure income.

What was covered

In a nutshell, this:

The Industry Rockstar Formula

Your mentality creates your reality ~ Sean Stephenson

Look at something in the room and focus on it carefully. Now close your eyes and recall what you were looking at. Notice its shape, color, location in space and any detail. You can now open your eyes. Did you realise that your mind did not distinguish any difference between the reality when your eyes were open and closed. The word reality is all in your head. Not outside. How you create the experience in your life, whether it’s financial, business or personal, is all in your head. To start changing the outside you need to change the inside. As Sean Stephenson said, Your mentality creates your reality.

Some gems:

• People don’t buy process, they buy results.
• Everyone experiences fear, even successful people. What matters is who are you when that fear surfaces.
• Emotions are a barometer. What is your barometer telling you?
• There is never a perfect time to get started. Start today so you can start learning earlier in life rather than later.
• Can’t get to great without good.
• Be obsessed with results since people pay for it.
• Identify where are the rockstars in your industry and follow them to understand their framework.
• Benjamin Zander talks about our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections. Click here to watch video.
• Anchor your name with possibility – see below.
• Stay to the right of your clients since this is the “future” and it’s where you want to position yourself in.
• Buying is an emotional experience. People go through the following steps when buying: Curiosity, Empowerment, Value + Hope, Urgency and Being Right.
• Frameworks show “attributes one is to have. That way you can get those results.

An exercise - what is your perfect day?

The following is a great exercise to get you thinking about where you are today and where you can be tomorrow with some effort.

1. Separate a page into 2 columns and in the left column label it “My average day” and in the right column “My perfect day”.
2. Starting with your average day answer the questions in the photo below.
3. Now answer the same questions under your perfect day.
4. Look over your answers. Notice something that can be made better. If so, great!
5. Now ask yourself this: What is the structure you need to get to your perfect day.

What is the structure to get you to your perfect day?

Anchor your name with possibility

To leave an impact on the people you meet and be in a position to introduce yourself and what you do to add value in the first 30 seconds is pure gold and worth every penny. Many people associate them self to their job or some other unrelated identify which adds little value to the person they are speaking to. Start your introductions in this format:

Typically I work with PERFECT CUSTOMER who have challenge of PAIN. I help them get RESULTS.

Fill in the uppercased words with your value add. For example, mine is:

“Typically I work with hackers, thinkers and tinkers who are full of ideas but fail to capture them, face anxiety and planning challenges. I teach them how to offload this weight using technology for future processing & action. Hi, my name is Ernest Semerda.”

Pretty powerful right?

We covered plenty of content

Building rapport – leadership at it’s best

Rapport is one of the most important features or characteristics of subconscious communication. It is commonality of perspective: being “in sync” with, or being “on the same wavelength” as the person with whom you are talking.

We practised Jeff+Kane teachings on how to achieve good rapport with your fellow peers to build good relationships at work and in personal life.

• Mirror the person you are speaking to, since on a subconscious level you will connect and build trust (rapport) faster. We naturally mirror those that we like so this is just a way to speed it up.
• Mirroring is simply matching the vocal, physical, gestures and breathing of the party you are conversing with to build trust.
• Back track keywords of the individual you are speaking to. This is actually an easier approach to trying to identify their primary mode (visual, auditory or kinesthetic) and then using those appropriate words.
• Building a connection with the other party leads to trust. This is rapport.
• Anthony Robbins uses all 3 primary modes in his introductions to grab the attention of the wider audience.

A photo opportunity with the industry rockstars Jeff+Kane.

From left: Jeff, Ernest (me) and Kane

Book recommendations by Jeff & Kane

• It’s Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be: The World’s Best Selling Book
• Great Motivation Secrets of Great Leaders
• Rules for Renegades: How to Make More Money, Rock Your Career, and Revel in Your Individuality
• Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth

Watch out Australia! These boys are coming your way

2011 is the year Jeff+Kane are set to tour across Australia running 10 seminars.
So if you are interested attending a seminar ran by Jeff+Kane visit their website: http://jeffandkane.com/
If you have attended any of Jeff+Kane seminars please share your feedback in the comments section below.

So in the end of all of this what did I walked away with… that time is now to start making a difference in my life!

Ernest

Looking back at my childhood I see I was afraid to fail. And I shouldn’t have. I wish I failed more. I wish I took more risk and failed more often. I wish I was wiser back then to see that failure isn’t about looking or feeling bad. Who cares what other people think. Who cares about the labels. It’s just noise, someone else’s noise. All that matters is that the more I Failed the more Feedback I would have received earlier in life. And here lays the root of the discussion on Failure and Success. Now when I say Success I don’t mean rolling in a treasure of money, rather being in a position to handle events that accomplish its intended purpose with more ease and grace.

That gut feeling

Few days ago I was speaking with a friend about the traits successful people have and their drivers. What is it that distinguishes these minorities from the rest and their guides to success.

In the business world, it is said that those successful have a gut feeling about business direction. This is extremely so with exceptional leaders who are known to drag companies out of holes and into success. Their gut feeling didn’t come from the sky, it came from experience. This leader spent early days failing, getting feedback, and learning from this feedback.

Let’s examine another example, the last time you drove your car. You probably listened to the radio while having a chat with your passenger/s and still managed to operate a vehicle that is travelling faster than the fastest land animal. All while avoiding collision with other vehicles & pedestrians. How is it that you traveled from point A to point B so autonomously.

This is due to a learning process you went through which started at the conscious level and with enough emotional experience got recorded into the subconscious (automatic) mind. That’s where the gut feeling comes from. That consciously unknown territory sending you a signal on direction.

Failure is important, early!

Both cases outlined above, the leader and a vehicle driver required early experience, early feedback.

The leader would have moved through the management ranks of a business over the years learning from the experience. The driver from the early days bunny hopping the vehicle or stalling it a few times. The reinforcements of these experiences today make you an exceptional successful person in that field. An accumulation of data (experiences) to make lightning fast decisions based on prior feedback. The power of the subconscious mind.

It is our human nature to want instant gratification. Everything today and now with minimal effort. But nature doesn’t work like that. Look at how your body consumes energy. We eat (a lot), pushing calories into our bodies and expect to not gain weight. If your body burned everything really quickly (so you wouldn’t gain weight) you’d be stuck eating all your life. A bit like the beautiful humming-bird. Your body takes time to extract the energy from food so you can live longer without needing to constantly feed yourself. Ok so you understand this simple concept.

Looking at how things work in nature it’s also important to realise that in order for you to encode (automate) something into your subconscious mind it will also take time. Learning is nothing more than feedback from a set of experiences. The most effective experiences are those where you make mistakes, you fail. Because they involve emotion. Read Think And Grow Rich (1938) to understand the power of emotion in encoding the subconscious memory.

Failure is punished

But hold on, failure is mostly punished. In our society failure is not looked positively upon. We only focus on and reward the successes. We get punished for failure. Hmm… and so the paradox begins. We see this in the corporate world (with the exception of some startups) too often it could cost our job, we see this especially in early childhood and the humility it brings to children when their peers laugh and tease them. Not to mention parents punishing failure.

So if we fear failure how can we learn. How can we change a life long fear of failure into a positive.

Who cares what they think

One solution is not giving a damn about what people say. It’s not going to be easy but you need to realize that failure is just feedback and the stuff in between is just noise. Noise that you can safely ignore and treat as just crappy noise. If this noise doesn’t agree with your feedback then it doesn’t deserve your attention because you are experiencing in order to get feedback to grow stronger and build that gut instinct which will help you drive your world (not theirs) into success.

If you think this is all nonsense then read a few biographies of great man. Man like Richard Branson in Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way. Branson explains how he built the Virgin Empire. One of the world largest brands behind everything from music, air travel (commercial and space), merchandise, entertainment etc… He did all of this because he chose to experience, fail early and learn from the feedback he received. He didn’t care what people thought of him (that noise) . One thing you will learn from Branson is that his story is littered with failures (feedback). But overall, he did bloody well and therefore is living the dream. His dream. Not someone else’s.

Start today

Ok so it’s never too late to start. Yes starting early in life would have meant that today you would have been in a different position. But starting today is better than not starting at all and then wishing on your death-bed you did more with your life. Regret hurts more than fear of failure. If you want to remember what a great life you had, start today. Make small incremental changes in shaping this new habit so that it becomes a part of the new you. Never forget that failure is just feedback, there will always be noise – who cares about it, and that each day you are only getting better to ultimately start making successful gut decisions. That is success right there.

Here’s to feedback!

Ernest

I have been very busy over the last few months building up the content of my 2nd blog. It is called “The Road to Silicon Valley“. The Road to Silicon Valley chronicles my early days of arriving in California (from Australia) with nothing more than a suitcase of clothes & gadgets. The Road to Silicon Valley’s aim is to help newbies to Silicon Valley find everything they need to know about getting here, settling in both financially & personally, the psychology of such a big move including the daily experiences of being in a rapidly changing & face paced high-tech environment.

Since high school (back in Sydney, Australia), I have always dreamt of one day working in Silicon Valley. A region in California to the south of San Francisco that is noted for its concentration of high-technology industries like Google, Apple, Microsoft et al. Silicon Valley is the place made from dreams, where people change the world and bring life into innovative ideas. Here, failure is called education, change is called progress and the employee is truly no.1. It is also the place where one can connect with amazing talent and have plenty of experiences like no other. This is Silicon Valley. It’s all here, and so am I.

Drop by and let me know what you think. I’m sure you will find plenty of useful & insightful articles.

The website is located here: http://www.theroadtosiliconvalley.com/

2010 wrap up

Check out what’s lined up for the rest of the year on my experiments in Personal Development, Productivity & Inner Peace.

Stuff on:

• How failure and success meet,
• How to spot common human emotions,
• What causes professional excellence, financial success and accelerated results,
• How to change your state by changing your thoughts,
• and many more…

Stay tuned. Plenty of great content!

~ Ernest

I just finished reading a New York Times business best seller which geeked me out big time. It’s called Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss what Matters Most. The book is based on 15 years of research at the Harvard Negotiation Project. The content walks the reader through a step-by-step approach with examples demonstrating how to have approach and handle these conversations with less stress and more success. Let’s face it, no matter how competent we are, we all have conversations that cause anxiety and frustrations. This book is the golden goose that helps us tackle these issues at home, on the job, or out in the world.

The core of difficult conversations

Difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right. They are about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values. They are not about what a contract states, they are about what a contract means. They are not about being hurt by an action or word they are about how that action or word was interpreted and the impact on our values, what it meant to me. These are not question of right or wrong, but questions of interpretation and judgement.

If your time poor then you can now stop reading because I just told you the holy grail of difficult conversations. If you want to learn more, keep on reading.

Don’t assume their intentions

It’s important to never assume the intentions of the person you are dealing with because your thinking how you feel about them will be affected by it and ultimately, how the conversation goes. So never assume we know the intentions of others when we don’t. The truth is, intentions are invisible. We assume them from other people’s behavior. In other words, we make them up, we invent them.

Because our view of others’ intentions (and their views of ours) are so important in difficult conversations, leaping to unfounded assumptions can be a disaster.

This shadows what I learnt back in May 2010 at Jeff Slayter’s seminar on the best kept secrets of modern day heroes and leaders. Jeff shared with us this same concept to never judge a person without first separating their “Behavior” from their “Intentions”. Separating these two allows you to delve open-minded and find that their intentions are not as bad as their behavior may be making us think. This is also the trait of a successful leader to be able to see past the behavior of their followers and understand their true intentions – only then is a leader capable of truly understanding their followers.

Best approach to take when communicating

If you need to deal with faults in your difficult conversation, instead of talking about those faults which automatically put people into defense & denial mode, figure out:

1. 1. What kept them from seeing it coming and
2. 2. How to prevent the problem from happening again.

What we are trying to do here is explore why things went wrong and how we might correct them going forward since talking about blame distracts us from a resolution.

So, instead of trying to persuade and get your way, you want to understand what has happened from the other person’s point of view, explain your viewpoint of view, share and understand feelings, and work together to figure out a way to manage the problem going forward.

“Life is just one damn thing after another.” ~ Stone, Patton, and Heen

A difficult conversations checklist

Here is a checklist to follow when having a difficult discussion:

Source: Difficult Conversations, by Stone, Patton, and Heen; p 232-233

Three Conversations

Use the following with the checklist above in Step 1: Prepare by Walking Through the Three Conversations.

Source: Difficult Conversations, by Stone, Patton, and Heen; p 18-19

It’s always best to assume that you will encounter difficult discussions, even when you have mastered the ins and our of discussing what matters most. The difference now is that having this knowledge on how to handle difficult discussions allows you to know that it’s okay to talk about them, so the misunderstandings may not be as emotionally draining and are less likely to threaten the relationship.

Here’s to discussing what matters most!
Ernest

Ernest

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Few of us are natural-born leaders, according to John C. Maxwell, the author of Developing the Leader Within You. Fortunately though Maxwell teaches us that the traits that are the raw material of leadership can be acquired. As Maxwell explains “You supply desire and I will show you how to be a leader”. So I immersed myself in this book on developing the leader within me after setting my desire to become an amazing leader in 2010.

Maxwell speaks of Bruce Larson whom describes a leader as the one to take a place at the front and be able to handle the turbulence while the rest (those that are lead) are honking affirmations.

This draws similarity to how a flock of birds with a pack leader at the front breaking the air while the rest of the birds follow in sync. Nature it seems has engraved a form of leadership into all species on this planet. We just need to develop a desire to grow into those shoes.

He who thinketh he leadeth and has no one following him is only taking a walk. ~ John C. Maxwell

Leadership is defined as “ability to get followers”. If you work backwards from this you can figure out how to lead. It’s not a position (status / title), but to get followers. Status leaders exhibit frustration as they try to get followers.

This shadows the fact that leadership and the ability to influence others is vital to have successful relationships, a successful job or business and your overall satisfaction with life. The question you need to ask yourself is “What kind of an influencer will you be”.

The very essence of all power to influence is getting the other person to participate. ~ Harry A. Overstreet

The Lego blocks

Here are a few pieces of knowledge you might want to consider when building your influence and ultimately leadership:

• Leadership is built like a set of lego blocks, from the bottom up.
• Leadership begins with the heart not head.
• You cannot lead people without loving them.
• We want people to be results orientated.
• Integrity keeps people. Charismatic personality draws people.
• You gotta love em before you lead em.
• Problems never stop but people can stop problems.
• Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it!
• A leader is great due to the way they empower others.

5 levels of leadership

The following are John Maxwell’s five stages of influence that individuals move through when building their leadership quality. Advancement to the next level can only happen once an individual has excelled in the present level.

1. Position - you start with a title and a level of authority it gives you.

2. Permission - people begin to follow you because they see something within you. This is the true beginning of influence with your followers.

3. Production - people inspire to become like you and thus try to produce at a higher level based on what they see you doing for the organization.

4. People Development - you have followers because of value you brought into their life.

5. Personhood - people follow you based on who you are and what you represent or stand for. This is the pinnacle of leadership here and a small amount of leaders reach this point.

Excellent leaders:

• Great leaders-the truly successful ones who are in the top 1 percent-all have one thing in common. They know that acquiring and keeping good people is a leader’s most important task.
• Create an excellent environment & believe in their team.
• Know human needs. Being able to separate a behavior from intention is key in understanding people.
• Control big 3:
  • finance,
  • personnel, and
  • planning.
• Avoid 7 deadly sins:
  • try to be liked not respected,
  • not asking team for advise and help,
  • taunting personal talent,
  • not keeping criticism constructive,
  • not developing a sense of responsibility in team members,
  • not treating everyone same way and failing to keep everyone well informed.

Maxwell reminds us that to always make yourself available to your people.

What motivates people:

• Significant contribution by allowing people to purse a cause that will have lasting impact.
• Goal participation by giving ownership to your people.
• Positive dissatisfaction by inspiriting positive effective change.

What demotivates people:

• Public criticism.
• Manipulations tearing down the walls in a relationship.
• Insensitivity by not listening to your people.
• Discouraging personal growth by feeling threatened by the success of others.

Developing the Leader within you

Becoming a great leader only happens once you set your goal and fuel it with a strong desire. There are great qualities of a leader one can always mirror from leadership stories, mentors, people we aspire et al and practice those qualities which ultimately can become your new habits. I highly encourage you to read leadership stories of other great leaders like my all time favorite Richard Branson’s Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way. If you want a place to start then John C. Maxwell’s Developing the Leader Within You is ideal to understanding what Leadership is all about. Enjoy your journey and please share your experiences in the comment section below. Here’s to becoming an Amazing Leader!

Ernest

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. ~ Teilhard de Chardin 1881 – 1955

While having an amazing time in NYC mid August with my beautiful friends, it dawned on me that life is all about having experiences. Let me explain.

Weeks before this amazing weekend I had a number of challenges come into my life. All of varying degrees on the stressometer. What did I do. Why me. Why now. Where all the too common thoughts running through my mind. Maybe there is something to learn from it all. And there were, a number of learnings. Very interesting ones. But that can be left for another blog post discussion.

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift that’s why they call it the present.

So then came this amazing weekend with friends in NYC celebrating my wife’s birthday. So much amazing that it allowed me to put everything that has been happening to me in the last 2 months into perspective.

Our friends Elbra & Chris whom we spent time in NYC summed up the weekend well “Five rockin parties in 4 nights, bonding after parties, NYC’s best rooftop penthouses, bottle service, best NYC restaurants, dinner at Daniel…the.entourage, the paparazzi, the sexy censored photo shoot at the most exclusive venue in all of NYC right now…the jacuzzi room…our secret…the shopping sprees, also jam sessions with wall street traders, sushi cheers and drunken convos about past lives and trying to figure out if it was all a dream because we actually never went to sleep…….INCEPTION……..is ur top still spinning cuz mine is!”

“You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

We did this by embracing each day as though it was our last. Living to the fullest in the present moment. Nothing else mattered around us, just that moment together experiencing everything life has to offer. We saw the beauty and life in every moment, we partied together like it was our last day on this beautiful earth, we embraced each others presence and connected on an emotional level. We opened up our hearts and found our true self.

“Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves” ~ Teilhard de Chardin

So what does all of this narrow down to? – An experience. Both events were experiences but the NYC one allowed me to see everything in clear perspective. It was like night and day. Getting this level of perspective is like waking up and saying… wow, I now understand. I gained a level of understanding why the bad and the good experiences happen in life. It’s there for us to experience, to give us perspective and to make us realise how beautiful life is once we push through a bad experience. The experience was the take away. I learnt to never lose myself in a bad experience again. I realized that life is full of amazing experiences like the ones in NYC. What we take away from each day is an amazing experience.

Never stop asking for more experience

You may be asking, but Ernest some of these experiences you mentioned require money. The answer is yes and no. Our world revolves around exchange of paper carrying a promise of value, money. Yes we need money to eat, have shelter and transport. It’s a given. However money is available to everyone & can always be made when the need is there. Some people just don’t know how to ask. Jesus once said “ask and you shall receive”. So if you ask for an experience you shall receive it. If your experience requires money to get you there a way will always be found for you to have this experience, even if it involves money. Money isn’t the key here, rather the experience.

Few years back in Sydney (Australia) while doing my undergraduate Computer Science degree I always dreamed of working in Silicon Valley (California). I wanted to work amongst the elite in my industry. I wanted to experience. Experience working in a leading edge company. Experience the culture, lifestyle, people and everything else it has to offer. Today, I live in Mountain View, the heart of Silicon Valley, working at a leading edge company with the elite in my industry. Wow! I wanted an experience and the universe found a way for me to get there. There was no talk of how much money I needed just that I wanted to experience more. The bits in between, the money and how to get there all got sorted out as the dream became a reality.

Never stop asking for more experiences. There is no such thing as greed when it comes to experiencing more and being more. Greed is just a word, nothing more. Every experience makes you grow bolder, stronger, smarter and in turn enriches your spirit. The true you. Just never get lost in a bad experience.

Be open to change

If you haven’t already read my short blog post about a short story on how obstacles are conditions to success then please take this time to do it. You will see that change is at the heart of every experience. Being open to experience is all about being open to change. Know that change is what must occur in order for new experience to come into your life.

Aha moment

Change is that thing that rocks your status quo and makes you feel uncomfortable and can be perceived as a bad event. Wow, a label! Do you understand this now? Bad sometimes is a perception of change coming into your life. For me in the 2 stories above it gave me perspective to see the world from 2 different sides and experience something wonderful. We must embrace every experience else we can get lost in the one which lays the foundation of change heading your way for deeper spiritual growth. Remember, that the only boundaries are in form.

Your human experience

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Many believe that we need to be on a path, a spiritual journey, in order to find our self. I do not believe there is a path one has to be on / follow, I believe there is just being. Experiencing your human experience. We are not a human being having a spiritual experience, we are more, a spiritual being having a human experience.

The moment we stop or resist an experience.. we are stopping ourself from being more and our true self the spiritual being from having a human experience. This is why it is so important to embrace experience whether good or bad. The words good or bad are nothing more than words with a human meaning attached to them. Look underneath and between the words and you will see the true meaning of an experience. It has the power for spiritual growth in ways you never expected!

So what does it all mean?

It means many different things to many different people. To me it means that to have an experience is part of having a human experience. Spiritually fulfilling. It has the power to fill your cup with peace & love and make you see the world differently. Trying to think about how an experience can change you is not enough. Consciously we are bad at predicting how we will feel. I will talk about this in another post. But for now remember that there is no substitute to “just being” and letting yourself be bathed in the human experience.

Ernest