Do it when you’ve never done it before: Passion.

Do it when you know you can: Consistency.

Do it when you don’t want to: Committment.

Do it when you’re not sure you can: Faith.

Do it when you know, in your heart of heart you can’t, but you do it anyway: Pure Inspiration!

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Five levels of Nike…

Well, I am a runner and this book inspired me like few others have throughout my life.  After reading it, I immediately set a personal goal to run an ultra-marathon within two years.  2010 I focused on rapidly increasing my weekly running miles.  In retrospect, I know now I greatly over-trained, but was lucky enough to escape the year with only a couple minor injuries.

2011 then became the target year to accomplish my goal.  My first try was in late March, running the Green Jewel 50K.  (An “ultra-marathon” is defined as any race longer than a marathon.  A 50K race, at just over 31 miles, is the introductory ultra length).  I was in fantastic physical shape, having trained especially hard over the winter.  I failed to finish that event, dropping at mile 20.   At the time, I blamed it on back problems, but the fact is while I was prepared physically, I wasn’t prepared mentally.

Training throughout the Spring/Summer then became a mix of continuing to develop my physical foundation, while specifically exercising my mental and spiritual discipline.

I took another “run” at my goal in September at the Youngstown Ultra Trail Classic, another 50K run on the gorgeous trails of Mill Creek Park just outside Youngstown, Ohio.  I was nervous but excited about the event – while I didn’t feel I was quite as physically prepared as I was in March, I knew I was much tougher mentally and spiritually.  I told my friends “even if I have to crawl over the finish line bloody and broken, I will finish this race.”

Alas, it was not to be.  While I made it to mile 24 this race, muscle spasms forced me to largely walk, not run, from mile 19 on.  At the mile 24 aid station, the start/finish area, I decided while I could walk the last seven miles, that wasn’t what I considered finishing.

I have one more shot before the end of the year to accomplish my goal, and whatever that event brings, I’ve learned a lot over the past two years on this quest: about myself, about limits, and with my first two unsuccessful attempts, at dealing with defeat.  After a few weeks of reflection after the latest effort, this post sums up some of my thoughts on how to deal with defeat.

It may be trite, but one way to deal with defeat is to ask yourself if you learned anything.  That last handful of miles spent walking provided plenty of time for reflection, and I do feel I came away from this second ultra attempt with a couple important lessons learned.

Lessons Learned

To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. ― Robert M. Pirsig

It’s the journey, stupid…

The training I’ve undergone and the sacrifices I’ve made over the past couple of years were all focused on, and internally justified by, the pursuit of this one goal.  Well, nothing like pain and defeat to put things in perspective.  When you are limping along with one foot in a constant toe cramp and the opposite leg threatening to return to spasm at every step, “why the hell am I doing this?” is a fair question.  If finishing a race is all you have to answer that question, it can be pretty hard to keep moving forward.  My answers to that question don’t matter here, everyone has to come up with their own answers, but suffice it to say that I had a number of revelations out on the trail that day that had nothing to do with checking a goal off a list.

Uncovering my real goal

I also learned, or at least got closer to, my real goal.  My journey started with telling myself I wanted to finish an ultra-marathon.  When I dropped out of the race at mile 24, I only had 7 or so miles to go.  While I had enough mental and spiritual reserves to push forward, physically I knew I would be walking those seven miles, not running them.  What I found out is that wasn’t how I wanted to finish.  Virtually no one runs an entire ultra event, but I didn’t want the satisfaction of my original goal to come after walking a third+ of the event.  This of course also meant that in that moment, I was willing to risk failure in order to finish the way I wanted.

Justifications or not, pulling out of the race still meant it felt like a defeat.  Okay, let’s not mince words – it was a defeat.  In the week or two following the race, I found a number of strategies that helped me integrate the disappointment and move on.

How I dealt with this (second) defeat

We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit. — Aristotle

Let it flow, let it go

Defeat is many things, but it is always disappointing.  Depending on what you had invested in the activity or goal, a defeat can mean anything from a minor setback to a devastating emotional crisis.  I think many of us have a tendency to not completely acknowledge the impact the defeat had on us.  Right from the start I think it’s important to articulate this impact, whether to your partner, a trusted friend, or simply to yourself.  Nothing good grows in damp, dark spaces; don’t relegate your disappointment there.

While giving voice to your defeat helps with the intellectual acceptance, it does little for the emotional.  For me, nothing helps here like simply giving in.  Let your emotions flow.  Throw that towel, wallow in that self pity.  People will say that nothing good comes from such actions, but from my perspective, the outcomes are even worse keeping those emotions bottled up inside.  Two guiding principles help here.  First – do nothing that would harm others or yourself.  Second – whatever you do, allow yourself to do it completely, but after a day or two, it’s done.  Putting a limit on these emotional mini-tantrums really helps me allow myself to get rid of everything.

Call it what it is – A Defeat

I also think it’s important to call a defeat a defeat.  No mincing words here; you set yourself a goal, you gave it a try and you didn’t succeed.  To call the effort anything else limits your further development in two significant ways:

• First, not acknowledging your defeat is lying to yourself.  “Let it flow, let it go” allowed us to empty our psyches of all that negative baggage and not feel bad about it.  Lying about the defeat is counterproductive and only serves to let that baggage back in.
• Second, if you can’t or won’t acknowledge your defeat, most likely you are also making excuses for why your effort fell short or why is wasn’t really a defeat.  Until you can accept and proclaim your defeat, you will never be able to understand what limited you.  It is only with this understanding that you can overcome and move forward.

Celebrate

It may sound a bit counter-intuitive, but a celebration may be in order.  Grand aspirational goals go down in flames in spectacular fashion.  Celebrate the effort; celebrate the failure.  There is nothing like a celebration to hit the restart button and refresh you mentally and spiritually.  After this latest unsuccessful ultra attempt, and after I “let it flow”, I treated myself to a decadent steak dinner with the unhealthiest chipotle cheddar mac & cheese (but most delicious) you’ve ever seen.  Go ahead – you deserve it.

Schedule a confirmation

Unfortunately, a common side effect of defeat is to make us question our abilities.  More to the point a defeat can make us wonder if we really have what it takes to get where we want to be.  If you are “running on the edge” – pushing boundaries and aiming high, then it may be time to re-affirm how far you have come.  Schedule something that is still a challenge, but with a high probability of success.

For me, I registered at the last minute for a trail marathon a couple weeks after this defeat.  For all my talk and training for ultras, I had never officially run a marathon and at just five short miles shy of the 50K I had just attempted, it is not an insignificant challenge.  Add in that I would be running this marathon on just two weeks rest and I didn’t interrupt my training to taper for it, and I knew it would be a good test for me.  I’m happy to say I was able to finish the marathon.  It wasn’t fast, and it certainly wasn’t pretty, but it was confirmation that my latest defeat didn’t define me.

What about you?

So there are four ways I personally deal with defeat, along with some lessons learned along the way.  While my context is that of a physical pursuit, these lessons certainly extend to our personal and professional lives and experiences as well.

Certainly there are lots of ways to deal with defeat and I’m interested in hearing yours as well.  What has defeat taught you?  How have you dealt with it and stayed on your path?  I look forward to hearing from all of you.

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Dealing with Defeat

Not only did I remember tonight’s inspiration, but it seemed worthy of sharing:

“The true measure of a man’s effort is not that he has reached his destination, nor even how long it took him to get there, but rather how many times he wanted to give up along the way.”

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A measure of effort

My team asked me to run the final, 8 mile leg of the relay, and I was happy to have some miles to run.  Having not run the entire week as rest after the previous weekend’s 50K attempt, I was restless to get back out.

The Aspiration

It ended up being a perfect day for an event.  Some early morning cloudiness gave way to sunshine, blue skies and temperatures in the high 60s / low 70s.  While I was absolutely at the event just to have fun, I have to admit in the back of my mind there was some competitive aspiration bubbling up.  Having failed again at my second ultra-marathon attempt, I think I was subconsciously looking at this race to somehow “make up” for not finishing my race the week before.  As part of a relay team, I’m not sure exactly what kind of performance I was looking for to feel better about the previous week, but for eight miles I was interested to see both how fast and how comfortable the run was.  Of course, neither of those (fast and comfortable) have anything to do with ultra-marathons!

After standing around my relay station for a couple of hours, finally my transfer was made and I was off.

A week off from running shouldn’t affect your performance greatly, unless of course you fall off your athletic diet.  I didn’t completely fall off the wagon, but I definitely indulged more than I had planned on.  Sometimes it’s just nice to take a break.  Anyway – the run went okay, but I never really felt like I feel into a running groove; something I was expecting for only eight miles after a week’s worth of rest.  While I never felt overwhelmed by the effort, I did feel like here and there I had to push myself to keep going at what felt like nothing more than an average pace.  So if I was seeking vindication for the previous week’s failure, as the race ended, I didn’t feel like I got it.

The Irony

I ended up running those eight miles in 1:08 – certainly not an overly competitive pace but not too bad considering the port-o-potty break I was forced to take and the two aid stations I sauntered through drinking some water.  Factor those stops out of my time and I ran my eight miles in right around an hour, which is a pretty good pace for me.

I had in my mind that I wanted an “easy” run to prove to myself that I “had it” (whatever that means), to make up for my disappointment the week before.  When the run ended up challenging me a bit, I immediately began to feel like it was just reinforcing that disappointment.  The irony of course is that I ended up with a pretty good run, especially considering the casual way I approached the effort.

My Takeaway

If you live aspirationally, then you will continually be pushing boundaries.  Yet, I think it’s fair to say that most of us are raised to believe that doing well is aligned with feeling comfortable.  So the bit aha moment for me thinking back on this race is to not confuse discomfort with lack of ability or progress.

Just because something requires effort, even considerable effort, does not mean it’s beyond your capacity or that you are not “good” at it.   But when you almost constantly press to get better, to go just a little faster or longer, to finish that project a week ahead of schedule – the stress and pressure can all too easily be internalized as a failure or lack of ability.

“The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work.  The professional knows that fear can never be overcome.”  ~Steven Pressfield

For those of us committed to excellence, committed to pushing boundaries, the “fear” can be replaced by “lack of knowledge” or “discomfort“.  Accept that you can never know everything; you will not always feel comfortable.

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The Irony of Aspiration

While I prefer more primitive, and therefore more remote trails, I often run a more popular trail called the Towpath: there is a trail head literally two minutes from my house and is perfect for those nights when I just want to get some miles in quickly.  The Towpath is quite popular and is heavily used by hikers, runners and bikers.

Early this year, I started my own little “movement”.  Without really much thought or reason why, I started acknowledging fellow runners on the Towpath.  Kind of a cross between a thumbs up and that low wave motorcyclists give to each other, it was just a simple “hey, how ya doing?  Good job, hang in there…”.  The trail regulars caught on quickly and it wasn’t long before I found some of them waving to me before I did to them.  Most everybody else also responded, and with the few exceptions of the people that simple didn’t see me, almost everyone waved back.

Here it is the end of Summer and I’m pleasantly surprised that I see runners waving to each other all over the Towpath, and more and more runners are waving to me before I can even get my hand up.  I often wonder if it was really me that started this “movement”; it could just as easily be the same phenomenon where once you buy a new car you suddenly seem to see your model everywhere you go.

Does it matter?

No, of course it doesn’t.  Whether I simply started participating in something positive already happening, or did have a hand in creating something new, it was still new and positive to me.  Whether I created the awareness inside myself, or created awareness within my running “tribe”, I added positive energy to that trail.

So – go create a positive movement.  Whether it’s something brand new, or just new to you, our lives, our jobs and our world can use all the positive energy they can get these days.

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Start a (positive) movement

Passion is the blanket that keeps you warm against the cold winds of uncertainty and chaos.

Why is it then, that many of us end up defending passion in our personal or professional lives?  Put too much time and energy in at the office and you’re a workaholic.  Commit to a healthy lifestyle including plenty of strenuous, consistent exercise and you’re addicted to fitness.  The list goes on and I’m sure you could share your stories with me in comments.

Passion is just as important to us in our daily lives and jobs as it is to entrepreneurs.  Yet every once in a while I catch myself apologizing for my passion (with me, I’m one of those fitness fanatics).   For me personally though, I’ve apologized less and less over the years.  Partly this has come with the wisdom of accepting myself, but there have also been some conscious thought process I’ve gone through.  With this short post I want to share that thinking with you and solicit your ideas as well.

1. Personal / Professional growth IS Entrepreneurship.  Entrepreneurship is one of those funny words; it means something different to everyone.  That said, I think people tend to think of entrepreneurship in a strict sense focused around the creation of a money-making business.  I tend to view entrepreneurship more broadly around concepts like risk/reward and growth.  If you are trying to create something bigger or better and there is risk involved – I say you’re an entrepreneur.  Passion is therefore indispensable for growth.
2. Identify and accept your sacrifices.  Sometimes those comments about being too passionate can ring true in our inner selves if we are struggling with what we have given up in our quest for growth.  Stay vigilant as to what you are sacrificing and come to terms with the sacrifice.  Be especially wary of sacrifices involving other important to you who may not have bought into your passion as completely as you have.
3. Draw a line in the sand.  Once you’ve identified your sacrifices, draw a line in the sand where you won’t let your passion take you past.  This may be a certain number of hours a week working, or childrens school plays, or dinner out once a month with your significant other.  For me, it’s social time with my friends – I try very hard not to miss time with my circle of close friends for no other reason than having to get a training run in.  I have all kinds of contingencies to get my training in via alternate means, but my deal with myself is that I have to stay willing to miss a run every once in a while if that’s the only way to spend time with someone important to me.  It becomes about staying in balance.

So those are three ways I’ve made sense of my personal passion and accepted the single-minded focus and sacrifices I have made in the quest for extraordinary growth.  What is your passion?  More importantly – what tricks have you employed to integrate it into your life?

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Stop defending your Passion

flickr: rpongsaj

There isn’t a whole lot of mystery as to what should go into a basic investor pitch, yet the entrepreneurs I coach have a habit of getting in their own way.  I’m not sure if it’s because I deal mainly with early stage, high-tech start-ups and scientists/engineers love details, or whether people just want to do a good job and think that more information is better.

It’s not (generally).

What most entrepreneurs don’t know (or forget), is they are the thousandth+  person to pitch that particular investor / funder / reviewer.  They’ve heard and seen it all before.  Overselling and under-informing, not to mention presentation errors, go a long way to explain why those Blackberry’s start getting checked.

If you’re pitching as part of a competitive funding process, then if you’re not the first presentation of the day, you’re fighting information overload (not to mention post-lunch hypoglycemic-induced fatigue!).

So what are the basics?While great presentations are few and far between, simply providing the basic information that funders and review committees want to see, in an easy to understand format, will set you apart from your peers.  That information generally looks like:

• What is your business / technology?
• What problem are you solving for what market?
• How do you make money?
• How experienced is your management team?
• What is your current status and what are your next steps?

Believe me, if you can simply convey that information in 15 minutes or so in an understandable and easily digestible presentation, you are way ahead of much of your competition.  This of course doesn’t mean you will get funded, but at least you won’t get denied for lack of understanding.

I’m lucky to work as part of a regional, entrepreneurial support ecosystem and almost all my peers convey roughly the same message.  However, I recently heard about a pitch metaphor one of my colleagues uses and I think it can be really helpful in understanding the process of going through a presentation.  I’m not sure if he calls it anything, but I call it the Pitch Staircase.

How the Staircase works

Everyone knows how a staircase works, you take one step at a time and pretty soon you’ve arrived at your destination.  The Pitch Staircase isn’t special because it’s different, it’s special because of who you are walking the staircase with: a frail, helpless individual who needs lots of help getting down the stairs (e.g. the investor).

Imagine you’re standing on the top of the staircase with your 90 year old investor grandma.  To get grandma down the stairs, you’ll walk her to the top of the stairs, then take some time to make sure she’s got solid footing before taking a step.  Once she’s ready, you’d then carefully guide her down to the next step, and again take some time to make sure she’s stable before moving on.  Repeat this process, and pretty soon grandma has made it down the stairs with your help.

Using this metaphor for your pitches can help focus your presentation and keep you on track.  Imagine the person you are pitching to as grandma, and your presentation as the staircase.  You want to guide the investor through your presentation in a logical manner, not rushing into a new topic until you’ve got them on solid footing where they currently are.

What do the steps look like?

As mentioned above, most early stage coaches you talk to will tell you pretty much the same story as to what goes into a pitch, much like I outlined above.  As presented to me by my colleague, the “steps” he takes grandma down during a pitch are:

• Problem
• Solution
• Market
• Team
• Process

A little different flavor than mine and I like it.  Very basic buckets of information that are all important.  I also like the sequence as it builds a logical story, also a very effective approach to early stage pitches.

Bonus – 5 quick, practical tips for effective pitches

I recently stumbled across the Instigator Blog.  Written by a former entrepreneur who exited and now is a founding partner at an early stage accelerator, I love the blog for it’s practical, real world take on entrepreneurship, pitching, marketing and all those other fun things that go with early stage start-ups.  Ben’s five tips on pitching investors boil down to this:

1. Tell you story quick
2. Change the pace throughout
3. Sexy slides work
4. Don’t over-emphasize the product
5. End strong

While all of these are good tips, #3 and 5 stick out for me in particular.  Sexy slides definitely work on many levels.  I read a while back about a psychological “test” that started with an examination of your car trunk.  The premise was your trunk represented your brain and a messy, uncared for trunk indicated the same tendencies within your human nature.  A stretch perhaps, but a professional, yes – sexy presentation always reflects well on the presenter.

Likewise with ending strong.  Too many entrepreneurs end their presentation with boring financials, or next steps milestones.  Fight that urge.  End on a strong note with something that is going to help those funders remember YOU out of the 15 other entrepreneurs they saw that day.   I really like Ben’s suggestion on how to do this – that’s a teaser to get you to actually click over to his post and read through all five tips.  If you’re an entrepreneur getting ready to pitch or in the midst of constant pitching, it’s some great advice.

Good Luck!

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The Pitch Staircase

As I read it, the article set out two important points:

1. A relationship that has had a problem, and the problem was handled well, is a stronger relationship.
2. When problems aren’t handled well, it’s management’s fault.

I found these two suggestions to be intriguing, just as applicable to personal relationships as business ones.  The article was fairly short and didn’t go into much depth on either one, but did suggest a “magic phrase” that should be part of every business’ customer problem resolution toolkit:

I’m sorry.

I couldn’t agree more with the author.  In today’s world of lawsuits, plausible denial, and abdication of responsibility, actually stepping up and taking direct responsibility for your customer’s negative experience will almost immediately set you apart.  I’d love to hear your thoughts (via comments below) on this topic.  Here are some of the ones I had:

• Be Genuine.  Not saying you’re sorry may not fix the problem, but as all married couples know, eventually the issue fades and both parties move on (okay – humor me).  A disingenuous apology however, only serves to make the situation worse.  If you can’t figure out how to effectively and honestly apologize for your error, better to not apologize at all.
• Saying “I’m Sorry” isn’t admitting you screwed up.  Our litigious environment has us all a bit on edge when it comes to “fessing up”.  As pointed out in the article that Lauren forwarded to me, saying you’re sorry is not admitting fault.  While admitting fault is also important in any relationship, it can only be done after a thorough examination of the facts.
• Clearly establish a process.  If you’re going to say you’re sorry, then be clear with your employees what happens next.  What is the business process should the customer want to escalate?  What latitude does each employee have to attempt to repair the relationship?
• Show a little love.  You know those surveys that come out every once in a while that say employees value a simple “thank you” over pay raises?  Your customers are no different – all they want to know is you appreciate them and understand that they are the reason you get to stay in business.  Past a sincere apology, is there some other small, special way you could show that customer you are truly sorry?
• Apologize, then move on.  Apologizing isn’t a panacea, and we all know there are some customers that live for the fight.  While I am suggesting that an honest, sincere apology can go a long way to repairing many of the negative experiences your customers have, it won’t fix all of them.  Likewise, even for those it can fix, I’m not a fan of grovelling either.  Make your apology, make it sincere, then move on.

Those are my initial thoughts.  What about you?  How do you approach repairing a customer relationship that has been damaged by a negative experience?  As a customer, what have you seen that you responded to, either favorably or not?

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A Simple Trick for Strengthening Customer Relationships

The guy replied with a simple “Actually, no”, which seemed to catch the cashier off guard a little.  She quickly recovered and asked what he was looking for.  I’m not a plumber, but it sounded like he was looking for some sort of copper coupler, although he quickly followed up to say that they were getting harder and harder to find.

My ears kind of perked up at this point.  We hear the obligatory customer satisfaction questions all the time when shopping, from sales clerks to cashiers to roving “helpers”.   Finally a customer that took someone up on their implicit offer to be helpful.  I was very curious to see what happened next.

The cashier said she was sorry they didn’t have the part and something like it was odd they didn’t since they carried so many products.

No offense Lowe’s – but if this is your response, you’d be better off not asking the question.  I’m not posting this to pick on Lowe’s, it just happened to be where I was at the time, but too many companies try to appear as providing great customer engagement and simply fall short at best.  It seems to me the customer’s comments could have been the springboard for all kinds of genuine customer satisfaction outcomes:

• Give the guy a small discount on his purchase, or a store credit for his next visit.
• Call over a manager to capture the product he couldn’t find; if it’s that hard to find might it make sense to carry it?
• Enter him into some sort of monthly drawing.

You get the picture.

Instead, I was left wondering what went wrong.  Does Lowe’s really ask the question without a valid response?  Or is there a genuine response that the cashier either wasn’t trained on or didn’t execute?

Where does your company interact with customers directly or indirectly?  What questions do they ask?  Better yet – what do they do with the answers?

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Do your Customer Satisfaction questions have meaning?

Personally, I generally find that I end up with three goals for any particular race.  If I’m running a relatively short race, then all three goals will most likely revolve around finish times or average overall pace.  If it’s a much more challenging event, like the first ultramarathon I attempted earlier in the year, then it might be a mixture of various goals.  There’s nothing magical about the number three, it just feels right for me.

My three goals usually fall into three broad buckets: basic accomplishments, probable outcomes, and challenging targets.  Again, depending on the particular race, how I’m feeling about my training, the weather and a host of other miscellaneous factors, I may mix and match those “buckets”.  For example I may have two stretch goals and a reasonable goal for one race, but three basic accomplishments for another.

While I’m using competitive athletic events as my introductory contexts, it’s the same in business.  We deal with goals all the time, whether it’s personal goals for our career or business goals for a project.

Whatever the context you’re talking about for your goal setting, what I’ve found is two very different types of goals lists: Aspirational and Pragmatic.

Aspirational Goal Lists

Aspirational Goal Lists exhibit the following qualities:

• They are mostly, if not completely, comprised of challenging target goals
• The hardest goal to attain is at the top of the list
• Don’t contain any basic accomplishment goals
• Achievement of any goal would represent significant growth

You tend to find Aspirational Goal Lists being created by extremely driven, Type A folks and extreme, all-or-nothing competitors.  The great thing about this kind of list is it’s ability to inspire and motivate us to achieve what we maybe thought wasn’t possible.  The major downside occurs when your self-worth is tied to tightly to achieving a specific goal, or it is hard for you to handle “defeat”.  When you populate a list of goals completely with those that are hard to attain, it is almost a given that eventually you will fall short.  If you are not wired to handle such situations, the Aspirational Goal List can be counter-productive.

Pragmatic Goals Lists

I tend to lean more toward Pragmatic Goals Lists:

• Then contain more basic accomplishments and probably outcomes
• The top goals is the most likely to be attained
• There is no more than one challenging target goal on the list, if any
• It is very probably that at least one goal on the list will be met

I’m not sure how to characterize those that create Pragmatic Goal Lists.  I find that I’m one that does and it can be hard to think objectively about your own actions.  I certainly identify with Type A’s, especially when it comes to athletic endeavors.  Whatever drives someone to focus more on pragmatic goals I don’t know, but I am certain of the major disadvantage of Pragmatic Goal Lists: they can be an off-ramp to mediocrity.  It’s nice to be able to check off your top goal project after project, but if each of those goals advanced your growth incrementally wouldn’t just one aspirational success be even better?

How Do You Create Goal Lists?

So – are you Pragmatic or Aspirational?  Do you a different approach?  What’s your approach to goal lists and what’s good and what’s bad about your particular method?

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Two Types of Goal Lists

The office where I work is very close to Cleveland’s Chinatown district and one restaurant in particular is so close it might as well be called our company cafeteria.  I go there when I’m in a rush for lunch, I go there with co-workers for lunch meetings, and it’s a very convenient location for introductory business meetings.  I was having a chat with one of the owners the other day who had asked where I work.  When I told him, he said “Huh, I thought you were an attorney.”

You can’t control initial impressions

Well, I am neither an artist nor an attorney, although for a variety of reasons both these initial impressions make a lot of sense.  The fact that I sometimes ate alone and sometimes had an intense business conversation was perceived by the restaurant owner as how attorneys acted.  At the wine bar, I usually visited over the weekend when my attire was much less business and more on the eclectic side; so pegging me as an artist type also made perfect sense.

The fact of the matter is we are all lots of “nouns” rolled up into one.  While it isn’t hard to see how one person saw me as an artist while another saw me as an attorney, I’m sure there are plenty other people who see me as an athlete, an executive, a tourist, a techie, their old friend and everything in between.  Initial impressions are an intersection between your actions and appearance with the observer’s background and biases.  That’s a roundabout way of saying it’s all about perception in an isolated situation.

So what CAN we control?

I was reminded of these two stories after the same comment was made to me by two different people over the last couple of weeks.  On two separate occasions, once by someone I knew and the other by someone I just met, a reference was made to this blog and the person asked if I had stopped writing.  While the comments on the blog were both flattering, it was the question on whether I was still maintaining the blog that really stuck with me, especially by the person I had just met.

Here was someone I didn’t know, but knew me – at least through my writings.  What I found interesting, and what made me think of the two stories I started this post with, was that through this blog I had influenced this person’s perception of me without even meeting him.  In fact, the influence probably extended well beyond what we might call an initial impression.

This is the concept of Personal Brand, one which I’ve written often on before and still greatly interests me.  We may not be able to control what someone thinks of our suit, but we can become our own Chief Marketing Officer and control to a large degree the information others use to form their initial (and ongoing) impressions of us.  With the advent of the Internet and the number of applications and tools available these days, it is easier than ever to establish your own personal brand.

The importance of consistency

While taking control of our personal brand and greatly influencing those initial impressions was the general observation I made, there was also an important lesson to learn – that once you take control of your personal brand, it’s yours to maintain.  I remember an article I read years ago when I was doing research on opening a restaurant.  The article touched on all aspects of restaurant operations.  When it got to talking about hours of operation, the message was simple; it matters less which days/hours you are open and more on always being open at those times.  People want consistency; if they get used to stopping by at 2:30 for a slice of pie, but sometimes your open and sometimes you’re not, eventually they are going to stop coming.

It’s the same with your personal branding efforts, whether they be twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogging, or any combination of those platforms and others.  Once folks get comfortable hearing from you now and then, even stopping by to visit, pulling a vanishing act only leaves them to wonder where you went, and what might have happened.  If life or business priorities change to the extent you no longer will be maintaining one or more of your branding efforts, then share that message with the community you have targeted.  They will appreciate knowing why you are “signing off”, and you have an opportunity to not only thank them for staying engaged, but possibly to bring them along with you to your next endeavor.

My next steps

I didn’t start this blog as a personal branding effort.  While this is not my first blog, it certainly is the most personal.  I enjoy writing, and when new career opportunities combined with a view on life and business I felt was under-represented, it seemed time to hang out a shingle.  I’ve had a great time writing on the blog, made some “internet friends”, and established some new connections with old contacts.

When my passion for running blossomed last year into a journey to transform into an endurance athlete, this blog suffered.  The initial effort of that journey, while a lot of fun, took most of my excess time and energy over the past year.  Things have begun to normalize and I’m looking forward to resuming my writing on this blog, in addition to the running blog I’ve linked to above.  There are many shared themes between the two blogs and I’m looking forward to continue to write about personal excellence, positive leadership and entrepreneurship here on DCO.

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A Personal Brand lesson worth sharing

Flickr: ghewgill

Lists of entrepreneurial qualities abound on the web.  Heck, I even ran a couple surveys when I first started this blog.   After a couple years of working with entrepreneurs and start-ups, I’ve come to the conclusion that while entrepreneurs in aggregate do exhibit many similar personal qualities, the success of their start-up is a different issue altogether and tied to a much more subtle and extensive set of factors.

That observation combined with my natural orientation to practical, real-world information, and I’ve personally grown very tired of talking about entrepreneurial qualities.  I’ve met plenty of passionate, committed, tireless, social, driven, etc., etc., etc. entrepreneurs whose start-up didn’t succeed.  I’ve also met a handful of very successful entrepreneurs.  While it is true that they exhibit quite a lot of the qualities generally subscribed to entrepreneurs, I personally think that success requires much broader support than simply the personal qualities of the entrepreneur.  (Not to mention that any tight cohort most likely exhibits similar qualities.  That’s why they are a cohort.  Let’s not confuse shared experience with success.  While most squirrels in my neighborhood are brown, simply being a brown animal doesn’t make you a squirrel.)

So my personal “scorecard” for initial evaluation or entrepreneurs includes both personal factors and opportunity factors.  I typically look at four factors in each category.  What follows is a quick overview of my though process in an initial meeting with an entrepreneur.

Personal factors

There’s an old cliche in the investment community that they would rather invest in “an A team with a B product, then a B team with an A product.”  This speaks to the importance of the people involved in any start-up, and truly I tend to judge the entrepreneur before I judge the idea.  Following are the four factors that weigh heavily in my evaluation of the personal side of the entrepreneurship equation.

Passion and Commitment

Just about every article you read on entrepreneurial qualities talks about passion and commitment being critical for success and I couldn’t agree more.  Building a successful business is hard enough with passion fueling complete focus and commitment to keep going when the going gets tough.  Whenever I meet a new entrepreneur I’m constantly looking for signals that tell me their force is strong.   Things like working evenings and weekends on their startup while they work a full time job speak to passion; and investing personal money or not being dismayed by a couple failures tells me a lot about their commitment.

“Inner Circle” support

The first few years of a startup tend to require almost exclusive focus and commitment.  This can be very hard on family and friends.  Many an entrepreneur I’ve talked to has spoken of past divorces due to their focus on the business.  Work/life balance is hard enough when you’re an early stage entrepreneur.  If you try to do it without having a real-world conversation with your spouse, family and close friends, you’re asking for trouble.  I will specifically ask questions of entrepreneurs in this area – not only have they had the conversation, but is their family behind them.  Having the most important people in your life in full support of the crazy ride you’re embarking on can be a tremendous help.  Just remember, it IS possible to be successful and stay married.

Realism

I’m also on the lookout in those first meetings to get a sense of the entrepreneur’s sense of reality when it comes to starting a new business.  Are they aware of their risks and chance of success?  Have they overestimated the potential of the business?  Have they underestimated their capital and resource needs?  An entrepreneur with a clear head and sense of the risks, and rewards, of their start-up shows me they’ve done their homework.  The entrepreneur’s realistic approach helps shield them from disappointment and provides a sound basis for business planning.

Ownership

Finally, on my scorecard, it’s highly important that the entrepreneur demonstrates ownership for their own success.  Too often I have entrepreneurs in my office that think it’s my job to find them money or get them started.  Any entrepreneur who demonstrates in any way a mindset that their success is dependent on the actions of other presents a huge red flag and is a topic I will immediately address.  If I challenge an entrepreneur on this topic and they become defensive or angry, and I don’t believe they can be coached out of their beliefs, I wish them well and send them on their way.  In my corner of the world there are all kinds of support resources for entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes to tap into, but your start-up’s success is no one’s responsibility but your own.

Opportunity factors

Even an A team needs something to sell, and when I say “opportunity” I mean the product, service or concept the entrepreneur has at the core of the start-up.   Opportunity factors, for me at least, get weighted differently than personal factors.  First – as I said above, the personal factors are always important and almost always where I started asking questions first.  Second – the nature of the opportunity impacts how deep I need to dive and how critical it is to success; the discussion is much different if I’m talking to someone opening a pizza shop versus a medical device start-up.  The questions below speak primarily to the bulk of my current clients: high-growth potential start-ups in the technology space.

Something that’s real

I talk to lots of technologists with plenty of exciting ideas.  However, there is a big difference between an idea and showing that idea works.  Whether it’s a prototype, or a pilot, or lab research, the entrepreneur that can prove, even if it’s on a small scale, that the technology works is light years ahead of anyone with simply an idea or research.  Of course, the challenges don’t end there and the next hurdle is to show the technology can scale into commercialization, but if you are technology start-up and you have a meeting with a potential investor, be prepared to answer this simple question: “Does the technology work?”

Market need, and a way to get there

We all have our personal cliches and one of mine is “not every good idea is a great business.”  A crucial part of any evaluation I have with an entrepreneur is understanding why someone will take a dollar out of their wallet and give it to the entrepreneur for their product/service.  This is critical and I can’t count the number of entrepreneurs that either aren’t focused on sales or underestimate the effort involved in selling.  You simply must be able to tell me (and more importantly your future customers) why they should buy your product.  The more compelling the argument, the better.

The “way to get there” is equally important and speaks to how the entrepreneur intends to get the word out.  Almost as hard as getting a customer to take a dollar out of their wallet, is getting the opportunity to try to convince them to take that dollar out.  So I look for what the entrepreneur’s plan is to get in front of potential customers.

Team that can deliver

Team, team, team – I can’t say it enough.  Once I’m done evaluating the founding entrepreneur(s), the other team element is to look at their support team.  The basic service team (legal, financial, etc) is not so important in my mind as their advisory board, if they have put one in place.  Most people think of the value of an advisory board as the coaching and mentoring they can provide and certainly that is invaluable, but more so to first time entrepreneurs.  The real value in my eyes though of the advisory board (or “real” Board, if they are that far along) are the technical and sales contacts they can provide.  To an investor, this lowers risk by providing not only high-level introductions, but an accompanying “instant credibility” that helps make those early sales more likely.

That said – I don’t want to overplay the board of advisor, nor understate the founders.  The people running the company on a day to day basis still have the greatest impact on it’s chances for success and a high level of scrutiny is given to that person or team.  I’ve had many a “tough love” conversation challenging an entrepreneur to convince me they have what it takes to start, run and grow a company.

Profitability

You would be amazed at the number of pitches I hear where the entrepreneur doesn’t tell me how they are going to make money.  Not how much money, or how big the company will be in five years – simply no information on where revenue comes from.  Sometimes these are presentations to reviews committees I sit on for 5 – 6 figure loan/grant funds.  So before I go any further, entrepreneurs please get out your checklists and add “Tell them how my company makes money” to your pitch list.

When you do tell me how you are going to make money, I’m looking for a well-reasoned approach that fits your market and your sector.  If you are proposing a revenue model new to the market, then walk me through why you are passionate about the new approach and convince me that your customers will positively respond.

Hand in hand with how you make money is how much of you get to keep as profit, so a basic understanding of your financials and operational costs is part of this analysis.  Investors will probably be categorizing your business model and I admit I’m no different (high-value; commodity; up-sell potential, etc.).  This leads into what most folks call “scalability”, or now that you have a handful of customers and you’re hopefully making money, how do you make a lot of money?  So for profitability, you need to tell me two things: first, how you make money then second, how you intend to make a lot of money.

Your thoughts?

So that’s my scorecard, what do you think?  It’s not intended to be anything other than an initial vetting tool as obviously deeper information is needed to truly judge the potential of any start-up.  However, as a tool to evaluate early stage entrepreneurs and their businesses it has served me well and I can tell you that many of these areas are also important to my peers.

Entrepreneurs – how do you fare against this scorecard?

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My entrepreneurial scorecard

Physically, running can be a funny sport.  Some days you feel terrible, then go out and have a great run.  Other days you’re on top of the world, and fight just to keep going.  Unfortunately tonight, the run quickly devolved into the second category.  I greatly suspect my lunch (late and heavy on the pasta) was a prime culprit.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

It didn’t take long before I started thinking about only running one loop.  It’s funny how it creeps up on you, isn’t it?  Sure you’re struggling, but you came out with a goal regardless.  Then out of the blue comes the first unbidden thought: “what would be so bad about just running one loop?”  From there it’s like a good cop, bad cop scene where you literally argue with yourself; one side taking the position that there’s no shame in quitting if you don’t “have your stuff” (and you can always do extra in the coming days), the other side sticking to toughing it out and saving some self-esteem.

The issue, as we all know, is that history tells us that we don’t make up for it in the coming days.  While we may struggle to get through the task we’ve set before ourselves from time to time and not complete it as quickly or as eloquently as we had hoped, the fact that we did complete it greatly helps balance out that minor disappointment.

So this back and forth in my mind went on for the better part of the first run, and I still didn’t know what I was going to do as I rounded the final turn and headed up the last hill toward the parking lot.

But I kept going

I’ll jump to the end of the story and tell you that I kept going and did my second loop.  The satisfaction in doing what I said I was going to do absolutely made up for the crappy, sub-par run.  And you know what?  The second loop was far better than the first.  Sometimes if you just stick with it long enough, things work themselves out.

So what trick did I employ to talk myself into running the second loop?  What incentive did I use?  What logical argument won out over the bad cop?  Actually, I don’t really feel like I did anything, it all kind of took care of itself.  What I can tell you is that it was really the opposite of all those questions I just asked:

I simply stopped trying to talk myself out of it.

That’s right – as I rounded that last corner and headed up the hill toward the trailhead, without even thinking of it I just kind of stopped trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t continue.  I let the goal of running two loops settle back into my subconscious, and my active mind just re-occupied with random thoughts of the trail and the day.  After that everything took care of itself.  As I came up on the trailhead, I just kept running without thinking and continued on to my second loop.

Sure, it’s not always that simple, but…

…then again, maybe it is.  We spend so much time and effort trying to look for ways to do what we say we are going to do, that sometimes I think we end up spending more effort than if we would just keep running in the first place.  Plus, we all know what it feels like when we don’t do what we say we’re going to.  It feels pretty crappy, right?  But following through and staying true to our goals feels pretty awesome right?  So even though my run tonight didn’t satisfy my evening goal I stayed true to my long term goal and I did what I said I was going to do.  On balance, I’ll take that any night.

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Do what you say you’re going to do

The particulars aren’t important, although it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t quick.  But I can tell you I’m looking at a hot, steaming pile of freshly slain EXCUSE on my living room floor, and I moved one day closer to my personal goals.

Why it’s hard

It’s hard because it’s so much easier to come up with reasons not to do something versus reasons why you should:

• I’m tired
• I’ll do double tomorrow
• I don’t have enough time
• I’d rather do this other thing
• I have so many other things to do
• etc., etc.

Even more nefarious is the reasons not to do something always somehow seem to make more sense than the one or two reasons you should.  “I’m really tired today and maybe getting sick” seems like a really good reason to not do your workout compared to “I know I should”.

So, how to make it easier?

Sorry, kids, I don’t have an answer for this one.  If there was a secret, someone would be making millions off it, and if it was easy everyone would be doing it.  But there isn’t, and it’s not.  It’s a one day at a time affair; you against The Beast.  All I can say is that when it comes right down to it, right now this second, you can either decide to DO what you’ve said/promised you will do, or you can decide to NOT do what you said/promised you will do.  And making that decision, really, is pretty easy either way.

What’s the payoff for slaying the Beast?

Ah, that one I can tell you and it’s pretty sweet.  You know that feeling when you decide not to do something you’ve promised yourself you would do?  Feels pretty crappy, right?  And it doesn’t feel any better tomorrow.  Well the feeling you get when you slay that Beast, and you follow through on your promise, and you do what you promised yourself you would do, is a thousand times better.

And, as an added bonus, it may be tomorrow, it may be next week or next month, but the next time The Beast thinks about sniffing around your rodeo, I can guarantee you it will think twice.

Good hunting, my friends…

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Why it’s hard

In my first review post, I wrote on a central theme of the book, the “secret to their success”, which is bringing a sense of joy to your life.  This sense of joy is what the author largely credits to the Tarahumara Indian’s ability to run 100 miles or more, all with a smile on their face.

With this post, I’d like to focus on a short segment in the book that I found particularly inspiring.  It’s about The Beasts the ultra-distance runners in the book encounter and how they respond to them. While the stories in the book are told by these runners, they nonetheless have just as much relevance for all of us.  Even as most of these runners do what they do because they love it, a point that really stuck out for me is that when they race, they are challenging themselves by not only attempting something most rational people would think verges on the insane, but doing it while pitted against some of the best in the world that do the same thing.  It dawned on me while reading the book that this is an apt metaphor for our own most aggressive, visionary and challenging goals, whether business or personal.  Some use the term BHAG to stand for Big Hairy Audacious Goals.  Those goals that will truly stretch us, where there is a good chance if not high probability of failure, and which (unfortunately) we are usually up against some world-class naysayers.

So, whether you’re running 135 miles through 130F heat, or tackling your own personal or professional BHAG, eventually you’ll bump up against The Beast.

What Beast?

For ultra-distance runners, The Beast is often fatigue related to pushing the fringes of human physical endurance.  For you and I, The Beast is usually more personal.  For some it may be self-confidence, for others, it may be competing priorities.  Even more nefarious are subtle Beasts like impatience and unrealistic expectations.

You don’t confront The Beast by joining Toastmaster to work on your fear of public speaking; you confront The Beast by agreeing to be the keynote speaker for a conference of your peers to work on your fear of public speaking before joining Toastmasters.

So what lessons did Born to Run teach me on how to fight The Beast?  I took two lessons out of the book.

Lesson #1: Learn to love The Beast

Lisa Smith-Batchen, who trained through blizzards to win a six day race in the Sahara, gave me the most direct lesson is dealing with The Beast: learn to love it.  In her own words:

I love the Beast.  I actually look forward to the Beast showing up, because every time he does, I handle him better.  I get him more under control.

The author adds his own commentary:

Once the Beast arrives, Lisa knows what she has to deal with and can get down to work.  And isn’t that the reason she’s running through the desert in the first place – to put her training to work?  To have a friendly little tussle with the Beast and show it who’s boss?  You can’t hate the Beast and expect to beat it; the only way to truly conquer something, as ever great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it.

Lesson #2: Believe Know the Impossible is Possible

Lisa’s comments came within the broader context of a story about Scott Jurek, an elite ultra-distance runner who was looking for a new challenge.  He found that challenge in the Badwater Ultramarathon – 135 miles through some of the most brutal conditions in North America, perhaps the world.  Having conquered virtually every ultramarathon available, Scott was nonetheless humbled by Badwater 60 miles in, and collapsed to the ground:

…Scott was vomiting and shaky.  His hands dropped to his knees, then his knees dropped to the pavement.  He collapsed by the side of the road, lying in his own sweat…his friends didn’t bother trying to help him up; they knew there was no voice in the world more persuasive than the one inside Scott’s own mind.

Call it fatigue, call it exhaustion, call it the limits of human endurance, The Beast had arrived.  His thought process to pick himself up off the ground went like this:

There’s no way, you’re done.

You’d have to do something totally sick to win this thing now.

Sick like what?

Like starting all over again.  Like pretending you just woke up from a great night’s sleep and the race hasn’t even started yet.  You’d have to run the next eighty miles as fast as you’ve ever run eighty miles in your life.

No chance.

Yeah.  I know.

When The Beast arrives, there can be no doubt as to the goal and whether it will be reached; the only question can be what needs to change to get there.  The result of this race?  Scott not only finished the race, but with a new record time.

Change in perspective

The real message in this particular chapter though I found in Lisa’s comments about The Beast.  Literature abounds that prepares us to fight The Beast.  Whether it’s Nietzsche’s concept of the overman always fighting, always struggling; or your annual performance appraisal identifying “areas for improvement” – we seem to be programmed to view challenge as something to overcome.

The important change in perspective here is to view challenge as something to look forward to and welcome.  What a change in perspective – not to view overwhelming challenges as a battle, but something to be welcomed, even looked forward to.  The Beast then becomes a real-life laboratory to put into practice all that self-development you’ve been working on.  The Beast becomes an opportunity to grow and develop even further.

More importantly perhaps, learning to welcome The Beast puts YOU in control, not The Beast.  Oh, you may lose a battle here and there, but welcoming The Beast means you have already won the war.

This change in perspective also helps me put words to describing my concept of “personal excellence” I reference here on this blog but have never felt like I could adequately describe.  Learning how to do things better, even becoming an expert, is personal development.  Welcoming The Beast is personal excellence.

Your thoughts?

Does this resonate with you?  What Beasts do you encounter?  Do you welcome them or fight them?  Does the distinction between development and excellence ring true with your experience?

This is a post from: DaveCrainOnline.com. If you liked this post, and haven't done so already, you can sign up to receive future posts via E-Mail. If you prefer RSS, here's my feed.

Welcoming “The Beast”