After landing I disembarked the plane so quickly you would think I had been ejected. Then I begin a slow relaxing fight with the Auckland rush hour traffic back to Hamilton.

Did you catch that?

My drive home, that was in rush hour traffic, that took twice as long as normal, and even took twice as long as the flight from Palmerston, was relaxing, all because my state of mind was different. Which is bizarre because on any other day it would have been annoying.

Isn’t it scary how my ‘state of mind’ has more effect on my enjoyment of something, than the activity itself.

And my state of mind is formed by my self-talk, or what I tell myself in my brain. If I tell myself I am dreading a one hour flight, I will hate it.

∴

Today I turn 43, and whether I feel old or young will depend on my self talk. Will depend on my state of mind.

It doesn’t matter if its age, or kids, or family, or friendship, or sickness, or sport, or work. You get to choose your self-talk. You get to choose your state of mind.

Will you choose to have a positive a state of mind today?

Go ahead. It can be your birthday gift to me.

The best mark I received was an internally assessed A1 in School Cert science. It belonged to another student called Andrew Nichol and was whisked away as quickly as it arrived.

I left school at 17 barely able to read, average at the more complex forms of maths, but strangely very good at accounting. Despite being a “failure”, I have discovered I am actually not as dumb as the school system lead me to believe. In my adult years I taught myself to read (by reading more and more books I actually enjoy).

I have also been given incredible opportunities to lead.

To learn.

To succeed.

Why?

Because throughout my life, many incredibly courageous people have believed in me despite my failures. They were courageous because I could have crashed, failed again and tarnished their good name.

I would not be who I am today without their generosity.

∴

All of us have people who’ve believed in us against the odds. Therefore the implication is simple.

Who are we investing our time into, who might just succeed if we just see past their failure?

Who are you believing in against the odds?

Maybe its time you found someone.

Finally a shout out to just a few of the names I have randomly thought of as I wrote this post. Mum & Dad, Craig Jamieson, Dale Henderson, Bob Addison, Matt Ruys , Neville Stevenson, Ian Hogan, Colin Shotter, Dave Medhurst, Geoff LeCren, Glyn Gray, Jeff Smith, Bruce Thomson, Mark Thompson, Iain Hill, Jim Quinn,, Rowland Forman, Ken Frost, Campbell Forlong, Jim Grafas and of course Karina Nicol. Thank you for believing in me at various stages in my life. I am more grateful than words can express.

There is also perhaps no better example of experiential learning, than learning to be safe in the surf. You could read up on beach safety, but until you have been tumbled by a huge wave and felt the current ripping along the beach, the theory means little. Unfortunately many people in New Zealand get into trouble on our beaches because the rely solely on their own, very limited, experience and don’t learn from the knowledge of others.

Our best learning comes in two ways, through a blend of our own experience and from the experiences, struggles, skills and wisdom of others.

If you really want to learn quickly, constantly seek both.

∴

Lately I have had the opportunity to lean in and glean insight from a few very talented people, many of them younger than me. Their stories, their background and their actions form unique lessons that have portability across many areas of my life.

I have been reminded that it is important to learn from my own experiences, but it is equally important to learn from the experience of others.

I think we forget to do the later all too often.

Her words reminded me how striving to be the best is difficult and I was challenged about how often I settle for less. What follows are a blend of her words and mine as I contemplated what it means to be the best.
Being the best means failure, as you struggle to live up to your own expectations

Being the best means embarrassment, as you publicly stumble along the way

Being the best means getting it wrong, as you learning new ways

∴

Being the best takes risk

Being the best takes courage

Being the best takes sacrifice

Being the best takes faith

Being the best takes diligence

And the best of the best do all that … with humility and love.

Be the best!

Moments earlier we had been given five minutes to prepare our business idea and now I found myself pitching, to one of the 126 entrepreneurs gathered from around the world. They’d pitch their idea, I’d pitch mine and we would agree how we would split 7 points. You take 2, I’ll take 5 (not that easy with A type personalities).

After 7 pitches to complete randoms, we had a score out of 49. Bill Aulet, Managing Director in the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, humorously states that higher scores (I was 6th highest) meant you either had a really good idea (mine was created in 5 mins on my flight to the US), or you were really pushy (StrengthsFinder calls it “competitive”).

The top 26 of us pitch to the remaining 100 and then they walked up and choose a team, leaving only 16 ideas. Through this ad hoc process team reCollect was formed.

They say that attending MIT is like drinking from a fire hydrant, and over the next week we were saturated with ideas, discussion, teams sessions and coaching. So much so that it is only now I am narrowing down key lessons.

#1 Team is everything. The team that chose the reCollect idea was smart and diverse. Neil and Mark from Scotland, Rafael from Spain, Saeed from UAB, with Tanmay, Jax and myself from NZ. We all had radically different backgrounds and skills, which meant we ended up working incredibly effectively as a team.

I was reminded at MIT that having a cross functional team with a complimentary skill set is critically important when starting anything new. Startups with co-founders are more likely to succeed, however founding with friends you have never worked with before is more likely to fail.

∴ Build a great team with a common vision, but different skills and networks.

#2 Narrow your focus. Many startups spend huge portions of their precious resources on trying to be all things to everyone. Successful startups spend a lot of time talking with a narrow market of customers before they even build a product to make sure it is something they will actually use, and more importantly pay for. Test an idea and pivot constantly.

∴ Narrow your target market right down and talk constantly to you potential customers.

#3 GSD: Get S(tuff) Done: Just make stuff happen. You can talk about it, have meetings, create really great plans and strategies, but if you don’t GSD and get a product delivered then it is worthless. Herb Kelleher of Southwest said “We have a strategy plan. It’s call doing things!”

∴ everyone needs to GSD, and add real value to the customer. Everything else is worthless.

#4 Cash: Capitalism in America is NOT dead. To be honest if a Kiwi has a great idea and someone in the States has the same idea. They will be funded about 10x more than you. Thats the reality. It doesn’t mean you can’t win, just that you need more resolve around the first 3 points. The downside risk to not having cash, is we fail to rapidly build Innovation Based Enterprises at a speed quick enough to compete.

∴ Charge your customers as soon as possible, export and seek funding. Run out of cash and all your hard work means nothing.

Attending MIT was a fantastic learning experience, which I liken to reading 12 books in a week. Thanks to MSI / MBIE,  now Callaghan Innovation for the incredible opportunity.

Watch this space for a new business to spin out of Agoge this year.

To say I love being near the water is an understatement. I love running by the water. Love talking with friends as we slowly meander along the water’s edge. Love sitting alone by water, disconnected from the complexities of life.

When I am angry, frustrated and speechless, being near water somehow brings perspective. If I’m contemplative, strategic and lost in my thoughts the presence of water often provides clarity.

I was reminded the other day as I walked that it is ‘good to be by the water’.

Water…

By drinking it, we gain life.

Being near it, refreshes us.

And Living Water, heals our souls.

∴

This Christmas … may you be drawn to water.

I know I’m weird because the other day I was cooking a BBQ, fooling around and using strange voices. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a neighbourhood kid in the yard steering at me with a look of part bewilderment and part horror. I asked if I was being a bit weird and she nodded slowly. “I bet your dad does weird and crazy things at home?” I inquired hoping for a favourable response.

Her face lit up as she replied “he sure does”.

“We are all weird Marama,” I replied with a smile,  ”we are all weird.” And with that she nodded and carried on playing with my kids.

∴

Funny isn’t it how we can behave weirdly at home, but we conform in public and at work. For some strange reason we don’t want people to know we’re weird, even though we know that everyone is a little weird.

I wonder if life wouldn’t be a little more fun and vibrant if we weren’t weird when we’re out more often. I wonder if that wouldn’t help us break down more barriers, laugh more, and enable us to not take ourselves so seriously.

We are all weird.

Therefore… do something weird today!

I dare you!

At first we described it as ‘Organised Chaos’ and soon realised that it was best described as “Disorganised Order”. Everyone headed were they needed to go, in an orderly yet apparently disorganised way.

The drivers themselves were probably the most fascinating part of the driving experience. They’re a paradox of determination and grace. They wanted to get there first and fast, but were gracious as others pushed and squeezed their Tuk Tuk’s into gaps that moments before didn’t exist.

Disorganised Order,

and

Determination with Grace.

∴

Disorganised Order, you don’t see that much in business or law in New Zealand. I wonder if it isn’t the essence of being truly entrepreneurial.

and

I have met plenty of determined people, and I have the privilege of knowing a lot of gracious people. Sadly, most often the determined people are not characterised by grace.

Determined with Grace, describes the leader I would like to be.

Looking intently at a single skull I am repulsed by humanity. This skull is just one of thousands lining the shelves, that represent up to 1.4 million murder victims in Cambodia. At the height of the killing in Cambodia I was 8 years old and I heard of how boys as young as 11 were conscripted to the Khmer Rouge to become killers. Boys then, who are now men in their forties, murderers.

It is easy to stand divorced from the moment and think we would have behaved differently.

But we all have deceived others. All been deceived.

When faced with the choice of kill, or be killed, few of us really have the strength and courage to choose anything but life.

Humanity at its core is desperately dark.

We are all horrendous.

Yet…

As I traveled Cambodia every person I saw or spoke with was beautiful.

Some had bodies disfigured in ways I have never before seen, but they are beautiful.

Our Tuk Tuk drivers, beautiful.

The beggar and her child, beautiful.

Poor children playing in the water from a good well, beautiful.

Often the stories and circumstances were heart breaking, but the people …

Beautiful.

∴

Only senior officials of the Khmer Rouge will be brought to justice, which means tens of thousands of murderers now live ordinary lives in Cambodia. Is it possible I met some of these killers and thought they were beautiful? Yes, and I now understand that in the right circumstance we are all capable of the horror of the Khmer Rouge. (That doesn’t make it right.)

You are capable of these things.

You are horrendous.

Yet I just think … you are beautiful.

Lesson 4 from Cambodia visit 2012: We are all capable of horrendous things and we are all beautiful people.

Consider how little they really know in mathematics and english.

Their drawing is good, but they are no designer.

They have creativity but their cognitive skills are lacking.

Now, imagine the 10-year-old finishing school for good. Then you discover they have no access to books or libraries or the internet and you realise the child’s lifetime intellectual learning is over.

Gone is the opportunity to learn more about science or maths or design or art. Gone is the opportunity to seek a University degree.

I have just described the average student in Cambodia. Most rural children have access to a basic primary education, at which point the distance and cost increase to attend high school is so great, that the children finish school and start working on the family rice fields.

If most people you knew finished school at 10, how much opportunity to develop, invent and improve would your community have?

How much opportunity would exist to improve the efficiency and productivity of your family land?

At a very basic level, how much opportunity would you have to improve water quality, sanitation and health, if your education finished at 10?

The unfortunate answer is at best, ‘very little!‘

∴

As I toured rural Cambodia recently and heard that most children finish school at the age of 10, all I could think about was my 10-year-old daughter finishing school at the end of this year. She is smart and has learnt heaps, but hasn’t yet learnt anywhere near enough for a lifetime. And if her access to books and teachers and even the internet disappeared, her future learning would be unthinkably limited.

As I thought of the implication of finishing school at 10, I realised how incredibly blessed we are to have the education and resources on offer in New Zealand.

It offers our children a lifetime of learning.

It means our children’s children will learn even more, and develop more cure’s and create more truly great things.

Education offers hope for our future!

Oh, and the one reason I think education in NZ is fantastic? Because my children continue in school until at least 16 and even then their opportunities aren’t limited. Too often we forget that.

Lesson 3 from Cambodia visit 2012: Education is pivotal for the future of communities