The Naive Optimist

Full-time Dad vs Working

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:07:00 -0700

I’m taking a week off work to look after my kids while my beautiful wife visits the UK to see her family. I’ve looked after the boys (2yrs and 5yrs old) for a full day before, but I’ve never done solo-parenting.

It’s both hard and wonderful.

Hard

No mental breaks: My kids are little and require a lot of attention. Their safety and well-being rests entirely in my hands, so even if I’m not with them, I’m thinking about what happens next and preparing. It’s like running a little military camp.
It’s lonely: I miss Gill. She’s my best friend and at the end of the day, there’s no one to chat to, laugh with and bounce ideas around.
I have less control: At Treehouse, I can think and immediately act. I can take a walk to clear my head. I can ask someone to do something and they’re helpful and hard-working. Kids just don’t give a shit. It’s not intentional, they’re just not developmentally ready to care about anyone other than themselves.
It’s repetitive: Young kids don’t do well with crazy schedules that are always changing. Therefore there’s a similar schedule every day. It can get boring pretty fast.
It requires huge amounts of energy: To be a good parent, I need to be consistently applying discipline, thinking of new creative things to do and physically moving/playing. I’m 35 so I have decent amounts of energy, but this is still a challenge. It’s amazing how much physical and mental energy it takes to be a good parent. I think this is the biggest differentiator between good and bad parents. The good parents get off their ass and expend the energy. It’s hard.

Wonderful

It’s just me and them: They give me lots of cuddles and attention because I’m their only carer. It’s selfish, but I like it :)
It’s empowering: I feel like I’m proving I can take care of the kids. I’m a man and I can take care of my kids. I love it. I don’t have any patience for Dads who act like they can’t figure out how to look after their children.
It’s hilarious: Kids say the most insane things. When you’re around them all day, you get to hear all the hilarious things they say. I love it.
It’s valuable: What could be more fulfilling than shaping the minds and lives of these amazing humans that I created?
It’s fleeting: They’re going to grow up and become men. They won’t want me to snuggle them and kiss them. Argh. I’m getting teary just typing this.

So there you have it. Full-time parenting is fucking hard but it’s amazing. I have even more respect now for my wife, and I’m only four days into the week!

Profit is good

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:09:33 -0700

I just backed a new blogging platform on Kickstarter, called Ghost. I love the idea of a really simple blogging platform that’s open source.

The Creator John O’Nolan makes a big deal out them being not-for-profit in the promotion video for Ghost:

“Made for love and not for profit”
“Do we want to make millions and sell to Facebook or do we want to make something that’s genuinely good and serves its users and not its investors and shareholders?”
They’re not-for-profit which “affects their motivation”

This just pisses me off. Making money and profit is good and powerful. John seems to believe it’s a binary choice:

Profit or Passion
Profit or Quality
Profit or Integrity

This is naive. Profit is an enabler. It’s usually (not always) an indicator that you’re doing something that your customers really need, at a price point that makes sense. Profit gives an organization the ability to iterate faster, reach more people and beat subpar competitors. And most importantly, stay in business.

We’re working hard at reaching profitability at Treehouse because we want to build a lasting and impactful business that’s still changing lives in 100 years. This takes money and lots of it.

It’s bizarre that John says it’s wrong to serve investors, while simultaneously soliciting investors on Kickstarter. A healthy relationship between companies and investors is one where the investors want an amazing experience for customers, because it changes the world and makes them wealthy.

That’s what I love about our investors at Treehouse. They want us to be wildly profitable because it means that we are changing millions of people’s lives around the world, which in turn will make them money.

If you have shitty investors, then of course they’ll try to maximize the return on their investment and then discard you. Good investors though, can be truly empowering.

Entrepreneurs: Don’t listen to the “must be not-for-profit if you want to change the World” bullshit. The folks who figure out how to build a truly profitable and lasting company will be the ones that really change the World.

How to use a Reddit-clone to boost company culture

Thu, 02 May 2013 22:15:22 -0700

Recently we tried something new at Treehouse and it’s working wonderfully well, so I thought I’d share the secret with you.

We recently crossed the invisible it’s-impossible-to-communicate-effectively line. The strange place where it feels like you’re small enough as a company not to have ‘communication procedures’ but large enough that somehow everyone is no longer on the same page (and misinformation spreads like wildfire). For us, that number was around 30 employees. We’re at 53 now, so it was time for a new strategy.

Previously, we used Campfire as our ‘water cooler’. The place we’d hang out and chat about stupid stuff, random news, celebrations, etc. This was really important because we have a distributed team across the World, so we couldn’t rely on physical interactions to boost morale and communication.

The problem is that if you miss a conversation in Campfire, it can be difficult to go back and figure out what happened. The lack of threading, comments and up/down votes makes it very difficult to decipher what’s worth reading and what’s just random banter. Everything has the same importance in a chatroom.

Internal Reddit-clones

In an email thread about this issue, Jim brought up the idea of building an internal Reddit-clone. He cranked it out in a couple days, called in Convoy (because the movie is full of awesome) and here’s what it looks like …

The idea is simple: If it’s not actionable or urgent, post it to Convoy. Here’s the general guidelines:

Phone or Google Hangout: Need an answer immediately
IM: Need an answer in the next hour
Email: Need an answer in next day or two
Convoy: No answer required

Jim even built in a bit of gamification with points and user activity streams …

We still use Campfire for quick banter that’s too transient for Convoy. The Developers and Designers live in Campfire and really use it as a hive-mind. The rest of us though tend to abuse Hubot a bit in Campfire but leave the real discussions and random posts for Convoy.

We don’t have any rules about having to check Convoy or Campfire. It’s all about how much each person wants to stay connected. If they’re feeling out of the loop or disconnected, Convoy is a fun and easy way to jump back in.

Now that we’ve been using Convoy for a couple weeks, I definitely feel a palpable difference in the company culture. We’re more connected and everyone is having a chance to weigh in on discussions. Previously, you’d see these huge email threads about topics that may or may not interest you. Now email is less noisy and a lot of the discussions are happening in Convoy. Email is preserved for actionable items, which is great.

In conclusion, I’d highly recommend using an internal Reddit-clone so that your Team has a chance to discuss non-urgent/non-actionable topics or just offer encouragement or distraction. We love it.

1-on-1 meetings with your Team

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 06:31:00 -0700

As we scale Treehouse, I’ve been getting an on-the-job-MBA. It’s both stressful and really fun at the same time. One new tactic I’m trying is a bi-weekly 30 minute 1-on-1 meeting with each person I lead, with a very specific agenda.

I have a 30 minute meeting (Google Hangout or in-person), every other Monday, with the following folks:

Chief Content Officer - Nick Pettit
Chief Operating Officer / Chief Financial Officer - Mike Watson
Chief Marketing Officer - Alan Johnson (He’s my Co-Founder but he’s running the Marketing Team for a year)
Chief Commercial Officer - Chris Zabaleta
Head of Design - Jeremy Jantz
Head of Web Development - Tommy Morgan
Head of Mobile Development - Marshall Huss
Head of Treehouse Labs - Jim Hoskins

Managing eight people is about right. Probably a little on the high side for a CEO, but it’s a good structure for us right now.

The agenda

What are the top five things you’ve been working on the last two weeks?
Do those match to the items you’re accountable for in the 90 Day Plan?
What are you doing to advance the careers of the people you lead?

I use a Trello Board with a list for each person. Each 1-on-1 I ask them to pre-populate a card with those three items as lists. I’ve made an example public board for you to see.

Don’t manage People, manage Activities

I got the idea of this 1-on-1 meeting structure from Rod Rice, an all-star executive who I met recently. He was key in taking Bowflex from $2m in revenue to $600m. Not bad :)

Our leadership team is currently reading Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and I got the idea of managing activities, not people. No one wants to be ‘managed’. However, they do want to be guided on whether they’re working on the right thing, at the right time.

The 1-on-1 meeting structure above really focuses your Team on what actions they’re taking to advance the company’s goals. I’m not delegating things to my Leaders. I’m asking them what they’re doing to advance the goals of the company. They have freedom to attack our top priorities however they see fit, and then I hold them accountable to that.

Startups, you don't need to be in Silicon Valley

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 06:40:55 -0700

We just announced that Treehouse has raised $7m in funding, led by Kaplan with S+C participating.

I think this is a great place to take a stand and say you don’t need to be in Silicon Valley (or a “startup hub”) in order to raise money for your startup or be successful.

Paul Graham and I had a disagreement about this when he did a talk titled The Future of Web Startups at our conference in 2007. Afterwards, he summarized his thoughts on our interaction in his post Why to Move to a Startup Hub. That post is 5.5 years old now so I’m not sure what his current thoughts are. Paul and I are frienemies because we respect each other, but have different opinions on a few key issues. This post isn’t meant to be disparaging to him.

I hope that the following facts will be one counterpoint to the “You’ve got to move to a Startup Hub” message. Treehouse has …

Raised over $12,000,000 in capital from some of the World’s best investors (Chamath Palihapitiya, Kevin Rose, Reid Hoffman, David Sze, Greylock, Mark Suster and Kaplan)
Acquired 25,000+ active and paying Treehouse Students
Grown to a $5m yearly revenue run rate and growing fast (18% top line growth last month alone)
Hired 55+ employees distributed across Orlando, Portland and the rest of the USA (and one in the UK)
Established a 4-day work week
Received coverage from national news media

One of our core values at Treehouse is “We do it our way” and this fits nicely in with that.

Startup Founders: Don’t be afraid to do it your own way.

I'm leaving Apple

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:27:00 -0700

I tweeted this last night and it drew a lot of replies, both interested and mocking …

I’m leaving Apple. Bought a Nexus 4 and I’ll be swapping my MacBook Air for a Chrome Pixel soon.

April 4, 2013

Our entire infrastructure at Treehouse is built on Google Apps: Contacts, Calendar, Hangouts, Mail and Docs. The poor support for Google is driving me mad and I’m sick of it.

Daniel Lewis, one of our designers, showed me his Nexus 4 and and I was instantly convinced. It was a pure-Android experience, without all the carrier crap added on top.

I currently have an iPhone 4s and the power button is jammed, so I’m ditching it and making the switch. I’m also excited about moving over to a Chromebook or the Chrome Pixel (and yes, I’ve heard the terrible reviews).

I live my whole life on the web. Besides Skitch, I use zero native desktop apps. I need an operating system on both my phone and my desktop that’s designed for that.

I’m hearing from a lot of people, who really value design, that they’re making the switch. It feels very much like the underground movement of the web design/dev community to OSX back in 2001-2002. I have a feeling that we’re starting to see the slow decline of Apple. Only time will tell.

How I gained 8.7 lbs of lean mass in 28 days

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:25:54 -0700

I worked my ass off to lose 10% body fat. My weight dropped to 175 lbs but at 6’4” tall, that was too thin. So my next challenge was to gain lean mass and get that weight up to 185 lbs (and ideally closer to 195 lbs).

I was working out hard, eating right and staying active, but just could not put on lean mass and break that 175 lb barrier. I had been sticking to a Paleo-like diet for over 1.5 years (which my wife kindly supported me through) when I came across a post by Tim Ferriss called The Diet of UFC Champion Georges St-Pierre: How He Transformed Himself. It documents how St-Pierre gained 12 lbs of lean mass in eight weeks.

I had never heard of the three body types:

Ectomorph – Thin build, challenging to put on weight (muscle or fat); Example: long-distance runner.
Mesomorph – Muscular build, can lose or gain muscle easily (fat gain minimal); Example: sprinter or gymnast.
Endomorph – Large build, easy to put on weight (both good and bad); Example: shotputter or football lineman.

I didn’t realize I was an Ectomorph and I needed to be eating healthy carbs. No wonder I wasn’t gaining any mass!

I changed my diet to something very similar to Georges St-Pierre in this post and continued doing the 5x5 Strong Lifts.

Bam. I’ve gone from 175.9 lbs to 184.6 lbs in just 28 days, while simultaneously decreasing my body fat % from 13.7 to 13.6%. That’s a gain of 8.7 lbs of lean mass.

Why didn’t I do this sooner?

I’m kicking myself for not taking control of this earlier in my life. I had this capability my whole life and I didn’t understand how my body worked and how to affect it. I lived a lot of years not feeling happy with my body which seems stupid now.

Regardless, now that I’m in control of my body I’m gaining a huge amount of confidence and enjoyment out of the process. It’s actually fun, which is still shocking to me.

Further info

The tool I use to measure my body fat percentage is a BodyMetrix Personal.

Here is where I’ve started with StrongLifts and where I’m currently at:

Squat: Started at 75 lbs, now at 160 lbs
Overhead Press: Started at 45 lbs, now at 85 lbs
Deadlift: Started at 95 lbs, now at 175 lbs
Bench Press: Started at 65 lbs, now at 105 lbs
Barbell Row: Started at 65 lbs, now at 105 lbs

Two simple tips for using email effectively

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 06:07:38 -0700

Now that we’ve got 50+ people at Treehouse, my main role is communicating - mostly over email. Here are some tips I’ve learned to make email efficient and effective …

#1 - Reply Inline

When you reply to someone, say hello at the top, and then reply to their points “inline”. You can see examples below. Three big reasons for doing this:

You don’t have to re-state their questions or points. You simply reply below them.
You don’t have to add weird formatting like bold, colors or underlines, in order for the recipient to see your comments
It’s easier to see the conversations history

Examples …

Email #1

Hi Enrique,

What doe you think we should do on Issue Number One?

Also, I’d like your thought son Issue Number Two. Thanks.

All the Best,
Wanda

Email #2

Hi Wanda,

Answers below …

Hi Enrique,

What doe you think we should do on Issue Number One?

I think we should move forward on this issue.

Also, I’d like your thought son Issue Number Two. Thanks.

Please go ahead and do this today, thanks.

All the Best,
Wanda

Thanks!
Enrique

Email #3

Hi Enrique, answers below …

Hi Wanda,

Answers below …

Hi Enrique,

What doe you think we should do on Issue Number One?

I think we should move forward on this issue.

What’s the budget?

Also, I’d like your thought son Issue Number Two. Thanks.

Please go ahead and do this today, thanks.

Will do! I’ll let you know when it’s complete

All the Best,
Wanda

Thanks!
Enrique

All the best,
Wanda

#2 - Use BCC

When someone introduces you to someone, the best thing to do is remove them with BCC. This keeps them from getting stuck in reply-back-and-forth-purgatory. For example, if someone named Jim introduced me to someone named Michelle, then I’d do the following …

Thanks Jim, moving you to BCC.

Michelle,

Great to meet you! I’d like to give you a call, if you have time, to discuss …

Your tips …

So those are a couple of my simple tips. Please share yours below!

Everybody wanna be a Bodybuilder

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 06:38:32 -0800

“Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder but nobody wanna lift heavy ass weights” - Ronnie Coleman, Eight times Mr Olympian winner

I’ve noticed a recurring theme in the lives of successful people:

They’re naively optimistic about what’s possible
They work hard and smart to get there

That’s why I love that quote by Ronnie Coleman. Everyone wants to be successful but few are willing to do what it takes.

Work longer?

What I’m not promoting is working longer hours. As you probably know, we work a 4-day week at Treehouse. What I am promoting is being willing to go through pain and fear. Not just willing, but expecting and welcoming these things.

I see a lot of similarities with working out at the gym and succeeding in the rest of your life. There’s no way around the fact that if I want to get stronger and healthier, I have to cause my body to ‘hurt’. Fatigue, exhaustion, aches, feeling sick. It’s all necessary.

The same is true with success in the rest of my life. I’ll never get to where I want to go without experiencing fear, doubt and exhaustion.

It’s normal and it’s good. Not always and not forever, but it’s definitely been a part of my journey.

Why I'm joining EO

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 05:48:09 -0800

I’ve written about doing it alone but I’m also learning the importance of surrounding yourself with people who’ve already achieved your goals and push you really hard.

That’s why I joined Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) this year. To join you have to be the CEO or own a controlling share of the company, and be doing $1m+ in yearly revenue.

They have a complete list of the benefits on their site but the primary reason I’m joining is for something called Forum. A Forum is a smaller group (8-12 people) within your local EO chapter that meets once a month.

Forum members take part in growth-oriented meetings, employing special protocols to support a trusting environment in which they can safely explore business and personal issues. The idea is that everything you share at the meeting is completely confidential (you can’t even tell your Partner about it) so you can reveal your biggest and scariest challenges. The ones you can’t talk to your Team/Partner/Kids/etc about because you’re supposed to have the answers.

Before you can join a Forum you have to go through Forum Training, which is a full day immersion course in how to listen and give feedback to others. EO Forums use the Gestalt Protocol which basically means you can only speak from experience, instead of giving advice. I’ve actually been using this in other areas of my life and it works really well.

Speaking from experience removes the pressure for the listener to take your advice and it also has real factual value, as you’re sharing real-life stories and what did or didn’t work for you. The listener can listen to your experience and then translate it into action however they see fit.

I’m really excited about EO. I can tell I’ve been thrashing around as an entrepreneur for the last seven years and it’s time to get freaking serious about growing, learning and kicking ass. Bring it on!

The 90 Day Plan

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 06:36:12 -0800

As many of you know, I don’t have a business degree, so I’m learning as I go. At 50+ employees, Treehouse is now at the phase where I have to build out the management structure and operations to allow it to become a big company.

The reason why I want the company to be large is because that will allow us to achieve our Mission of bringing affordable Technology education to people everywhere, in order to help them achieve their dreams and change the world. We can’t help millions of people unless the company is big and operating efficiently.

As I said, I never went to Business school so I’m now hiring folks who know how to scale companies and build out operations. One of our newer Team Members is Mike Watson and he’s helping us do this.

The 90 Day Plan

One of the first things that Mike did is help us create a 90 Day Plan. This is a Google Spreadsheet that is shared among the Leadership Team. It’s a simple list of actions with priorities and the person responsible. Here’s how we created it:

We wrote down our most important actions in the near term and gave them a priority of 1, 2 or 3.
We assigned a point-person for each action.
We grouped the actions by business area (B2B, Content, Growth, etc).
We shared the doc with all the Leadership Team and asked for feedback.
We refined the document
We shared the document with the whole company

The key thing to note is that everything on the 90DP is an action. No goals or fuzzy items. Everything has to be an atomic action point. Several of them are “Research XYZ and then make decision” as you often don’t know which action should be taken until you investigate.

Running the 90DP

Now that we’ve finalized the 90DP, it won’t change for the next 90 days. That’s the power: The whole company can stay focused for 90 days and execute. Unless there’s a red-alert-emergency, we can all focus and get things done.

We meet once a month as a Leadership Team and review the 90DP. The person who was assigned to an action will report on progress and everyone is held accountable. We take minutes so that everyone is held accountable for the next monthly Leadership meeting.

A key to the monthly Leadership Meeting is that everyone is required to prepare materials and circulate them a full week before the meeting. This allows all the raw information exchange to happen before the meeting, thus allowing us to discuss (argue) the data and then decide on next actions.

Before we implemented the 90DP, the Leadership Meetings I ran where fairly useless. We just regurgitated facts on what each Team was doing instead of discussing strategy, holding each other accountable and then deciding on next steps.

Letting Go …

One big goal of mine this year is to let go and let my Management Team run the company. Like most Founder CEOs I have a tendency to meddle and micro-manage.

Thankfully my Leadership Team was honest with me and told me this was becoming a problem, so I’m being proactive about fixing it and stepping back so they can make decisions and act without me being the bottleneck.

This is the awkward moment in every Founder’s life where they realize that they can’t directly affect anything the company does - it’s down to the smart people they hired to take the company and really make it fly.

I’m excited because I know we have the right people on the Team to kick ass and conquer the world :)

Not waiting to live

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:26:00 -0800

Since we moved to Portland we’ve made a conscious decision to not wait to live.

What I mean by this is proactively planning experiences and not letting the busyness of life dominate.

All of you with kids will especially be able to relate to this. It feels like you have zero personal time and any romance you once had with your Partner has been squeezed out by the tyranny of the urgent.

Gill and I have been spontaneously grabbing opportunities to hang out and it’s amazing because it feels like we’re dating again.

We grabbed last minute tickets to see Lady Gaga and then on Wed we just drove to Timberline (1.5 hrs away) and snowboarded for 3 hours. It’s been freaking awesome.

I know these things are harder to do if you don’t control your work schedule or cash is tight. However I believe it’s a frame of mind - I’m not going to wait to live until “everything is under control” or I’ve hit my personal goals.

Installing my Rogue home gym

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:54:39 -0800

As you all know, I decided to finally get my ass in gear and get in shape back in 2011. (Here’s the proof.)

Since I moved to the States I’ve been working out at LA Fitness, which is a 10 minute walk from my house. However, the article Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie inspired me to quit my gym and buy my own equipment and work out at home. Five reasons:

I’ve already proven I have the willpower to work out consistently (thus not needing the ‘gym experience’ to keep me going).
I waste 30 minutes walking to/from the gym. I could be spending this time with my family or working.
I know how to lift barbells properly because I was trained by a great gym in the UK.
I’m throwing my money way on my gym membership. Hopefully I have 40 years left to work out, so at $30 x 12 months x 40 years = $14,400. A great setup from Rogue costs around $1500, shipping included, and it’s got a lifetime guarantee. (It’s basically a bunch of steel bars so it’ll last forever.)
It was a good excuse to buy some nice gear

It arrived in a bunch of boxes and I finished assembling it this week (only took 30 minutes). I put it down in my creepy basement.

I’m going to use a simple iPhone app called StrongLifts to track my progress. I’m doing really simple lifts: Deadlifts, Bench Press, Overhead Press and Squats. I’m also reading Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training.

The attachment is called a Matador and it’s for dips.

Where I'm investing my money

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 10:01:39 -0800

We moved from England to Portland, USA in 2012 and we decided to liquidate our savings in the UK stock market and bring them over to the US. There’s all sorts of tax complications if you hold foreign investment accounts and I didn’t want to deal with it.

Ever since we’ve moved, I’ve been on the hunt for where to invest our savings and I finally decided on two options:

Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Investor Shares (VTSMX)
Vanguard 500 Index Fund Investor Shares (VFINX)

The reason is because of this simple book: The Little Book of Common Sense Investing. Here’s a quick overview:

Investing is all about common sense. Owning a diversified portfolio of stocks and holding it for the long term is a winner’s game. Trying to beat the stock market is theoretically a zero-sum game (for every winner, there must be a loser), but after the substantial costs of investing are deducted, it becomes a loser’s game. Common sense tells us—and history confirms—that the simplest and most efficient investment strategy is to buy and hold all of the nation’s publicly held businesses at very low cost. The classic index fund that owns this market portfolio is the only investment that guarantees you with your fair share of stock market returns.

If you are investing any money, anywhere, you have to read this book. I blazed through it in one day.

How I chose the funds

Cost, cost, cost. On Index Funds, it’s all that really matters and it’s insane how cheap the fees are on these two funds.

Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Investor Shares (VTSMX): 0.18% per year
Vanguard 500 Index Fund Investor Shares (VFINX): 0.17% per year

What’s crazier is that if you can invest $10,000+ you get even cheaper fees by going with these two funds (which are identical to the above two):

Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTSAX): 0.06% per year
Vanguard 500 Index Fund Admiral Shares (VFIAX): 0.05% per year

I’ve decided to go with the Vanguard 500 Index Fund Admiral Shares for now for one main reason: The fees on typical index tracker mutual funds (1.12%) are 2,140% more than the Vanguard fund (0.05%).

Please read that again: 2,140% cheaper. This has a ridiculous impact on the amount of money you end up making over time.

I’d like to thank MMM for the Vanguard recommendations and my buddy Chris Zervis for lending me Bogle’s book.

FYI, I have no financial stake in recommending these funds.

Sing While Washing Your Hands

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 05:39:56 -0800

I was visiting the Portland Children’s Museum yesterday and saw this sign in the bathroom. I love how it transforms something super boring for kids into a game.

I think this is a great example of how changing your perspective on things is a powerful way to make you happier. Most of life’s tasks can seem boring/required/uninteresting, but taking 30 seconds to step out of your situation to view things differently, makes all the difference.

My New Year's Resolutions

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 06:38:01 -0800

I figured a good way to help keep me accountable on my 2013 New Year’s Resolutions would be to publicly blog about them.

Personal Life

Get to 10% body fat. I’m currently at 12.5%. This means I’m going to need to be more strict about what I eat. I’m starting to ‘cheat’ a bit too much (French Toast, high-calorie ‘coffee’ from Starbucks, etc).
Gain 10 pounds of lean muscle (185 lbs total). I transformed my body last year, but I’d like to go a bit further. I was really inspired by this post in Men’s Journal. I’m going to use StrongLifts and a new Rogue S-2 + Bench setup I just purchased (I cancelled my membership to LA Fitness). I’d like to thank Klaus, Casey, Dave and Stefan for the suggestions on those things. My Twitter followers are an amazing bunch :D. I’m also going to use BioTrust Low Carb protein to help gain lean mass faster. (Thanks for the suggestion Tim!)
Blog more often - aiming for three times a week. I’m going to transition this blog into more of a journal instead of always trying to write business posts.
Sort out my shoulders - I have Rotator Cuff problems in both.
Start snowboarding more with my wife.
Consistently spend time with my neighbors and close friends.

Professional Life

Get Treehouse to profitability.
Increase Treehouse yearly revenue from $3.2m to $13m (300% increase). It’s going to be tough but we think we can do it.
Start consistently placing Treehouse Students into good tech jobs, at scale.

I’d love to hear your New Year’s resolutions! Please share in the comments below :)

Things I want to do before I die

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 21:15:24 -0800

I was watching The Buried Life and it made me think about what I want to accomplish before I die.

I’m at a friend’s beach house with Gill and the kids are asleep right now so I have some quiet time to think. Here’s my initial stab …

Pay off my mortgage
Save enough money to live off the interest (I’m a big MMM fan)
Grow Treehouse to $100m in yearly revenue
Remove the need for people to go to university in order to get jobs in the Web Tech industry - Successfully place 12,000+ people per year without university degrees into good jobs ($50k+ salary)
Create a show like Extreme Makeover Home Edition but with the goal of helping charities overhaul their tech so they can save more lives
Weigh 190lbs with 12% body fat (I’m 6’4” and currently weigh 173lbs with 12.3% body fat)
Live in our house for 25+ years
Play Yann Tiersen’s piano soundtrack to Amelie, with ease
Stay married and in love with Gill till the day I die
Travel to Russia, China, Japan, Israel, Egypt, Brazil and South Asia
Take a trip on The Orient Express
Produce a film that makes it into large theaters
Start a school/incubator for entrepreneurs

That’s probably a pretty good list to be cracking on with so I’ll stop there :)

Please share some of your goals below in the comments, thanks!

You can do it alone

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 14:25:52 -0800

The current popular belief among the startup community is that it’s necessary to have a co-founder in order to succeed. In my experience, this has not been true.

Paul Graham, the Co-Founder of Y Combinator, said you need a co-founder in his 2006 essay, The 18 Mistakes that Kill Startups

Have you ever noticed how few successful startups were founded by just one person? Even companies you think of as having one founder, like Oracle, usually turn out to have more. It seems unlikely this is a coincidence.

What’s wrong with having one founder? To start with, it’s a vote of no confidence. It probably means the founder couldn’t talk any of his friends into starting the company with him. That’s pretty alarming, because his friends are the ones who know him best.

But even if the founder’s friends were all wrong and the company is a good bet, he’s still at a disadvantage. Starting a startup is too hard for one person. Even if you could do all the work yourself, you need colleagues to brainstorm with, to talk you out of stupid decisions, and to cheer you up when things go wrong.

The last one might be the most important. The low points in a startup are so low that few could bear them alone. When you have multiple founders, esprit de corps binds them together in a way that seems to violate conservation laws. Each thinks “I can’t let my friends down.” This is one of the most powerful forces in human nature, and it’s missing when there’s just one founder.

Paul re-iterates this in this HackerNews post and this essay.

David Cohen, who runs TechStars (another tech incubator) had this to say in response to this question in 2010: “What are the chances of a single founder getting accepted in the TechStars Program?”

Low. We’ve done it two or three times out of 70 companies we’ve selected. If there’s a strong team around the single founder, it’s much more likely. If it’s really just one person, TechStars is probably not the place for that person - there’s too much to do for one person in a short period of time. [link]

Why?

I believe Paul and David are stressing the importance of co-founders because they’re talking about young founders with no previous business experience. It’s important to remember, however, that they are investors, who are maximizing their returns. Just because they say it’s unlikely that you’ll get into Y Combinator or TechStars as a single founder, doesn’t mean you need a Co-Founder to succeed.

My Experience

I have thankfully had good success with Treehouse, as a single founder. We’ve grown from three people to 54, and $0 revenue to $3.4m+, all in just two years. I funded the business with cash from my previous business and grew it to profitability and then decided to raise a seed round of $600,000 so we could hire faster. I didn’t ask any of my friends or contacts to be Co-Founders.

Here are the reasons why being a single founder worked well for me …

1. More Equity and Control

We’ve raised over $5,000,000 for Treehouse so far and I still own close to 70% of the company. I also control the Board. If I had a co-founder, I would likely own half that equity and I wouldn’t have complete control of the Board. Equity and control are two extremely important issues and starting with co-founders immediately diminishes your personal control and equity stake.

2. Strong Leadership

I’m a big believer in CEO Founders who maintain control over their companies. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are great examples.

As long as the CEO Founder can adapt to the changing needs of his team as the company grows, they are definitely the best to steer the ship towards their goal. Once they lose control of the Board, I believe the ship can veer off course.

This is also why I don’t ever want to take Treehouse public. I hate the idea of having to answer to outside investors who don’t have day-to-day knowledge of the challenges and opportunities we face. They also don’t share the insane passion that I have for the business.

3. Single Life Goal

I’ve personally seen two startups disintegrate because of different life goals between Co-Founders. Each Co-Founder has their own agenda and picture of what success is. The following issues can be very divisive between Co-Founders:

Pay - When do we start paying ourselves and how much?
Work Schedule - How many hours do we work per week? What if someone is working harder/longer than the other Founders?
Liquidity - What if a buyer comes along and offers you $1m for the company, but one of Co-Founders wants to hold out for $10m in a couple more years?
Power - Who is seen as the driving leader in the company? What if there’s a clash among Co-Founders?
Location - What if one of the Co-Founders is getting pressure from his or her partner to move or change their living situation?

Running a company with Co-Founders is like getting married. It’s an insanely serious commitment yet folks just blindly wander in and believe it’ll all work out.

4. Promote from Within

I promoted Alan Johnson, our first Developer, to a powerful position where we effectively lead the company together. His role is similar to a CTO.

If I’m so gung-ho about not needing a Co-Founder, then why have I done this? Well, because it is hard to run the company alone, long term. It’s very valuable to have day-to-day feedback from a trusted and knowledgable colleague. That person needs to know everything about the business so that you can share your worst fears about the business and what’s stressing you out. This person needs to feel completely comfortable disagreeing with you, and telling you about it.

I promoted Alan to this role after working together for over a year. This gave me time to watch him work and make sure our styles, life goals and personalties matched up. He got an increased amount of stock options when he was promoted, so it’s a big win for him as well.

In Closing …

So based on my experience, it can be optimal to be a Single-Founder. Don’t blindly accept the rhetoric of industry leaders about needing a Co-Founder.

Please share your opinions and experiences in the comments - thanks!

3 mistakes I made as a young entrepreneur

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:36:15 -0800

I started my first business eight years ago in 2004. I’ve managed teams as small as two (from our top bedroom), all the way to my current 54-person team at Treehouse. I’ve had some wins and plenty of losses and learned a lot of things the hard way. Hopefully other business owners can avoid these un-fun mistakes …

1. Treating employees like friends

In the early days I tried to be the Buddy-Goodtime-Boss. I would treat employees like friends by talking a lot about their emotions, friending them up on Twitter and Facebook, going drinking with them after work, etc.

The problem is that I needed to be objective about their performance and sometimes ask them to move on to another job.

I found that it was almost impossible to switch from friend to objective, business owner. It’s confusing and unfair to employees to make it appear that you’re friends and then have to potentially fire them for performance issues.

Currently, I treat my employees with respect and kindness but make it clear that we have a professional relationship. Both of us have to hold up our side of the bargain and hit our targets, or tough decisions will have to be made.

Ben Horowitz wrote a great post on this issue which I’d recommend reading.

2. Not keeping track of delegated tasks

I undermined my own authority by asking employees to do a task by a certain date, and then not following up with them when it was due. The unofficial message was that I wasn’t really serious when I set a deadline.

I now keep track of every task I delegate by using Trello. I’ve got a board called ‘Delegated’ and each person has their own list. Every time I ask someone to complete a task, I create a new card and add it to their list. I’ll write a few notes and occasionally add a checklist to the card.

When I do my weekly 1-on-1 meetings with my Leadership Team (those who report to me directly) I go through their list and ask for updates on every card.

3. Not understanding our P&L and Balance Sheet

I met with our accountant quarterly to sign off the accounts and it always felt like a nuisance. I thought all that mattered was the cash-flow. The problem is that the P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash-Flow were all working together to give me a complete picture of the business. However, I was just focusing on how much cash we had and whether we had enough to make it through the next three months.

When it came time to sell my events business, it turned out our Balance Sheet was in bad shape because we had collected a lot of revenue that we couldn’t recognize because it was for a future event. That means it was a liability, not an asset. Ouch.

That mistake cost me around $175,000 personally as the buyer knocked that amount off the purchase price. When someone buys your company, the transaction is done on a ‘zero balance sheet’ meaning they pay extra for assets or take away cash for liabilities.

This was a timing issue and if I had understood it, I could’ve timed the sale of the business more effectively to maximize the purchase price.

Your turn …

Please share any mistakes you’ve made, in the comments. It’d be great to get a discussion going where we all learn more from each other.

The Problem with our Transient Generation

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 06:15:07 -0700

I believe we have a problem. A lot of the people I know or meet have substituted online community for neighborhood community.

We chat to our ‘friends’ on Facebook but we don’t know the people next door.
We read Tweets from someone we’ve never met, but can’t remember the last time we chatted to the family across the street.
We frantically clear our inbox but fail to sit on our porch so we have can have serendipitous chats with people walking by

Knowing and relying on your physical neighbors is essential to a healthy and happy life.

I speak from first-hand experience because for the first time in my life, I’ve made a huge effort to really get to know our neighbors and it’s been amazing. In fact, in 40 minutes I’m meeting a group of guys in the neighborhood and we’re all walking to a breakfast cafe to catch up. We do this every other Wednesday.

The reason why I’m investing my time in getting to know our neighbors is because we don’t plan on moving. We want to stay in our current house for the rest of our lives. I think this is key to building a real, quality local community. You’ve got to plan on staying around for the long haul.

This is the reason why less and less people are investing in their neighborhoods. They’ll have to move because of their job or they want to move to a bigger or better house. Why invest all the time and effort in getting to know your neighbors if you going to move in the next few years?

One of the reasons we moved to Portland Oregon was so we could have a walkable lifestyle. We chose a neighborhood that was flat and had a doctor, veterinarian, grocer, gym, dentist, restaurant, coffee shop and pub all within a 10-15 minute walk.

This walkable lifestyle has made it much easier start building a local community. That’s why it’s so important to support local businesses - if you’re always jumping in your car to pick up milk and bread, how will local businesses survive?

We’ve all got to choose our local communities and invest in building them. When we die, we won’t wish we had a few more friends on Facebook, but we all will wish we shared a few more laughs with our neighbors over a beer or coffee.