Advice for young entrepreneurs dealing with older experienced business people. 

Walk a Mile in their shoes

The single most crucial step to networking and meeting with new people is doing your research. Going into a meeting with a solid background on who you are meeting with, their accomplishments, their failures, and their goals is your most powerful weapon for leaving an impression. You need to do your research with the intention of seeing through their perspective.

• Why did they agree to meet with you? 
• How do they view you?
• What do they ultimately want to achieve?
• What can you do to help them get there?

If you know the answers to these questions your meeting is that much more likely to be a success. 

Friendship First, Business Second.

If you are a 20 year old entrepreneur speaking with a 55 year old business advisor you might feel like the two of you are on different planets, but the fact is he was 20 years old once, and most likely he’s already been in your shoes. If you’ve done your research it shouldn’t be too hard to find some thread of commonality. Once you find something you have in common, explore it. But make sure to listen first, and speak second. People love the sound of their own voice and would rather hear their own than yours.

Here’s an example:

A few months ago I met with a 50 something business advisor and financier. My ultimate goal was to interest him in our business enough to raise potential funding. However during the 40 minutes we spent together, we spent 30 minutes discussing surfing and different breaks we had surfed in California, and only 10 minutes discussing my business. The end result? A friendship was forged, and the advisor left the meeting with the intention of “helping a friend”, instead of “raising funds for a local startup company”. The difference is astronomical. No matter who you are, what age you are, or what your experience is, you are more likely to help a friend than a stranger.

That said I’m not saying you should babble at the expense of pitching your project, but crafting a friendship can be just as, if not more, important than your pitch. 

Body Language

The second you walk into a meeting with experienced business people, the first thing they’re going to do is make a first impression based off the way you present yourself. To most of these old-timers your body language is everything and they’ll decide whether or not your someone they are interested in working with within seconds. Here are a few tips to help improve your body language:

1. Dress appropriate to the scenario. So don’t show up at a lawyers office wearing jeans, and don’t show up for a saturday lunch meeting at Starbucks in a suit.
2. Walk tall and confidently, don’t slouch or drag your feet.
3. Make sure you firmly shake their hand while looking them in the eye. Show them you mean business and you’re not here to waste their time. 
4. Speak clearly and concisely, do NOT mumble. It is quite possibly the quickest deal breaker for a lot of older generations.
5. Smile! Dale Carnegie often comically blamed the entirety of his success on his smile. There is nothing more inviting than a warm smile. 

FYI, I do not consider plagiarism a form of cheating, it is stealing and an entirely different conversation.

The Problem

The American Education system has frowned upon cheating and deemed it nothing short of despicable. The unfortunate few who get caught face stiff punishments and expulsions, while a good chunk of student population cheats and lies their way through school unscathed. 

According to a report made in 2005 by Rutgers University professor Donald McCabe for The Center for Academic Integrity 70% of public high school students admit to serious test cheating. 

If you Can’t Stop Them, Embrace Them

I propose that cheating in all forms be encouraged. Talk during tests, bring in cheat sheets for exams, collaborate on homework and projects, use your cell phone during a test. Your ability to locate information that you don’t know is far more valuable then your ability to retain that information. 

When asked the speed of light, Einstein replied, “Why bother carrying information about the speed of light around in my head, when I can just look it up in a book?” 

Imagine how much better you could grasp a subject if your teacher had to design their lessons and tests around the expectation of cheating in the forms of collaboration, sharing, and access to the Internet. This would not only force teachers to create more intuitive and unique lesson plans and exams, but will encourage collaboration and sharing between students. My colleague, Chris Alfano, put it well,

“True mastery of an idea comes only when one is tasked with conveying it to another. Bit-torrent provides a perfect model. We must reform our schools to tap the upstream capacity of their students to fill the demand. The strongest networks, however, are the ones with dedicated seeds. Teachers must become seeds as students work together to pull their collective weight.” 

Let us cheat, Let us help teach ourselves!

You can get in twice as effective a workout in half the time if you just fine tune your workouts. Check out these quick tips to help you get more from your workouts.

Weight-Lifting

A proper weight training session should be cardio-intensive. You can maximize the cardio and intensity of your weigh-lifting regimen by using these 2 techniques.

1. Multi-Joint Exercises

Incorporate as many “multi-joint” exercises in your work-out as possible. For instance, instead of doing a bicep curl by itself, try doing a bicep curl followed by an overhead shoulder press in two stable movements. Or instead of doing a standing shoulder press try doing a squat press. Combining the movements maximizes the muscles you use in a single workout while promoting stabilization and core strength. It should be more intensive, so don’t be afraid to lower the weights. Check out CorePerformance.com for more examples.

2. SuperSets

Supersets are key. Instead of going through your workouts 1 at a time (for instance doing 10 reps on a bench press, resting for a minute, and then doing 10 more reps and repeating), you can group multiple workouts in a superset by doing them one after another before resting. For example: Do 10 bench press reps, followed by 10 split-legged squats, followed by 10 reverse sit-ups, then take a few minutes rest, and repeat. Be sure to choose workouts that utilize different muscles in each superset. You’ll find that your workouts feel a lot shorter when you use supersets.

Cardio

Forget “jogging”! When you run for long distances your body does everything possible to minimize energy spent, which means your body attempts to find a rhythm and a pace at which it uses the least amount of energy possible to keep going. That’s fine when you’re a marathon runner, but when your trying to use your cardio workout to burn fat, it is the exact opposite of what you’re trying to accomplish.

Instead of running for 40 minutes at a medium pace, try running for 12 to 20 minutes while sprinting for 30 seconds and resting for a minute the entire time. By using this technique your body never gets a chance to settle into a rhythm, and is constantly using as much energy as it can (same goes for bikes, elliptical, row-machines). You can burn twice the fat in a quarter of the time, so why not try it?  Combing an intensive cardio workout with your weight lifting regiment is a fat burning cocktail.

Alternatively, if you have the space, sprints are your most effective fat burning cardio workouts. Try running 10-20 minutes of 10 meter shuttles at 1 minute intervals, or 100 yard sprints followed by 1 minute rests. I’ll post more advanced workouts in the near future.

1.     Act Big But Embrace your size

The first rule of business is that if you want to sit down with the players you have got to act like a player. Do your research. You need to be as fluent in your industry as you possibly can be.

While admitting that you run your company out of your dorm room may not be the best play, don’t be afraid to show the more humble side of your company. Being a small fish has its advantages too. Figure out what they are and present them proudly.

2.     Never Eat Alone

Networking, Networking, Networking. Business is just the culmination of a series of conversations between human beings and the financial transactions that proceed. Master the art of conversation and you’re a step closer to mastering the art of business.

Include others in your business operations as much as possible. You may be more valuable than you think, when you meet people you need to constantly be thinking  “who can this person benefit from knowing in my network, or who can benefit from knowing this person” not “how can I benefit from this person”.

3.     Embrace your elders

They’ve already done it. They’ve been there, and no matter how smart you are or how solid your plans are you can’t predict the future but you can always learn from the past.

The older you get the more you loving reminiscing, and the older you get the more time you have to do it. Pay your dues and give an ear to an elder whenever you can, I guarantee you’ll learn something. At the very least, if you’re kind and respectful with an open ear they won’t forget you.

4.     Make Mistakes!

Entrepreneur by its French definition means “risk taker”.  Your not here to play it safe, or you’d be working for someone else. Don’t be afraid to follow your gut and take the chance you want to take. It’s the people who take the chances other people won’t who reap the rewards other people can’t.

If you make a mistake and you screw up big time, oh well, keep moving, learn from your mistake and find a way to fix it. Own up for your mistake and deal with the consequences, that’s how you learn.

5.     The Secret

The secret ingredients are perseverance and faith in your self. The combination of those two qualities is the most potent cocktail for success. If you want to run your own company and you want to do your own thing than you have to be able to continue on no matter the obstacle or the mistakes you’ve made.

Along your path to success you are going to find that the more successful you get, the more haters you have. Mo Money Mo Problems. Use them as your fuel. If you truly believe you can and will accomplish your goals and meet your dreams, then you CANNOT be stopped.

Artician.com Launches!

Artician.com just “officially” launched, a long awaited sigh of relief for the community founder and close friend, Eric Zhivalyuk. Eric has been developing and redeveloping Artician for whats felt like years now. He’s on a mission to get the word out, you can see his press release here. Last night I asked him if I could interview him and he said yes. I think its a good chance to get to know Artician so I’ve pasted the highlights:

——————————————–

Faz: How long have you been developing Artician?
Eric: It’s been a long journey, 2 and half years since we started.

Faz: What was your greatest development hurdle?
Eric: Our greatest hurdle was keeping up with the ever changing web. Since we started web 2.0 was a pretty fresh concept. As we were developing we were forced to continually keep the standards up to date with current web demands and technologies, sometimes causing us to have to complete revamp certain parts of the website

Faz: What was the biggest mistake that you learned from?
Eric: By far the biggest mistake we’ve made and were forced to learn from was trying to make things perfect the first time around. Releasing Artician 2+ years since we started was the result of this mistake. We should have started simple and gradually built ourselves up with a community. Until this time, we have refrained from promotion because we wanted to wow the world with a first impression. Web applications take time to develop, and doing things right doesn’t necessarily mean no bugs. Build yourself up with community, and digest their feedback all the way through.

Faz: How were you able to attract a community while the site was still in the development phases?
Eric: Good question, back in 2004 we had a site dedicated to Artists and Designers. This was more a resource based website, which we had a small community of dedicated users, however many of them joined us on this new quest. A large factor was that we as the developers of Artician were active. When we were active, we had a great response from users. They felt like they were a part of something new, something fresh…There was always something to look forward to, and everyone enjoyed helping out to continually make Artician a better place. We always made it very personal, people could talk to us on the same level as a friend. Community is what it’s all about.

Faz: How did you know when it was time to launch?
Eric: The hardest thing was drawing the line of what could wait until after we launch… About 6 months ago we had a team meeting and decided to draw that line. We decided after we finished our Groups system we must begin promoting Artician. I don’t think our to do list will ever be complete because there are always new features in the planning.

Faz: Tell me about Artician Groups.
Eric: Artician Groups was developed to empower users to create their own communities within the Artician network. We provide numerous tools and features in the form of a content management system that will help any Art / Design group to manage their teams.

Faz: Tell me about team Artician.
Eric: The Artician team is comprised of four individuals including myself. We all play very important roles in the development of Artician. Chris Alfano, who manages our backend infrastructure as well as server administration. Henry Paradiz, who develops much of the PHP/MySQL and logical programming that goes into the Artician Platform. Brandon Lis, who I like to call our “data freak”, also does a wide variety of backend programming, but  specializes in much of the optimization that will help the Artician Plaform scale under heavy traffic. And myself, who does all of the front-end development and design work, but always working in, out, and around Henry’s and Brandon’s code.

Faz: Does Artician have a business model?
Eric: Our business model revolves around three avenues of revenue: Artician Pro, our Advertising Platform, and Artician Job Oppurtunities.

The advertising plaform front-end is not done yet, but we have our ad-server setup and distributing ads on artician. We have full control over all the ads on the site, so we can create an ad campaign, control the duration, how many clicks / impressions it should get per day, and in which ad zones they should be displayed. We hope these tools will attract potential advertisers for Articians demographic.

Artician Job Oppurtunities is currently in development, but it will be a job board that will give companies access to our Artician’s talented professionals.

Faz: What are your greatest ambitions for Artician.com.
Eric: Our greatest ambition is to server as home base for every creative professional in the world.

Faz: Parting words for fellow entrepreneurs and web developers?
Eric: Someday is not a day of the week. Set out for your goals, because the time starts now. Talent is something that can be found in everyone, but it’s up to you to show the world. Artician will help the creative community do just that.

Original Link:
http://bit.ly/4cTL23

So this guy Russel Tice, a former NSA analyst, the same guy who came out in 2005 with the NSA’s illegal wiretapping ordeal is back. Tice told Keith Olbermann on MSNBC Countdown that not only has the NSA still been conducting warrant-less wire tapping, but that its bigger than we thought. Here’s the video:

6 minutes in Tice says “I don’t know what was done with the data”, which I’m sure is the truth, but can you imagine the possibilities of this sort of operation? Imagine if politicians were spied on and all of their conversations and interactions recorded. The type of dirt that could and would be dug up would be easy leverage to support virtually any sort of legislation the leverager wants.

No one should have that sort of power. I’m seriously blown away by this, its every one of our wildest paranoia about big brother coming TRUE. For years we’ve seen Hollywood run wild with the whole “big brother is watching” idea, and I always laughed it off… you know its just Hollywood. But now, if Tice’s information is correct, its all real.

I’m glad he stepped up, I can’t wait to see where this goes, especially with Obama in control now. This could and should be a defining moment in the earliest stage of his presidency. His reaction to this matter will be the first crucial to step to setting the tone for his presidency.

As I started planning this post, I read over my notes from the last day of the expo, expecting to write a similar summary to the one I wrote on day 2. But I started boring myself, and I don’t do bored. Instead I decided to take a step back and look at Web2Expo from a more generalized position, forget the specifics. If you want to see the keynotes check out http://web2expo.blip.tv/.

So what did I notice when I took a step back? I noticed a massive progression towards exactly the type of localization of web communities and software that I wrote about in my post “When Bigger Isn’t Better“. Anyone who walked the floor of Web2Expo was overwhelmed with salesmen pitching their platform as a service model. At first all I could think was market dilution but then it hit me. With the growth in numbers of platforms for cloud software, comes massive if not exponential growth of the communities and applications that can be developed and deployed. The more communities and the more applications we see on these platforms, the more localized and niche-specific all of these applications become.

I made the prediction in previous posts that as the internet revolutionizes itself for what some are already deeming “Web 3.0″, we will see an influx of personalized applications tailored for more and more specific needs of the customer. The days of gargantuan all-encompassing web communities and applications are over, and I couldn’t help but feel this was the theme of Web2Expo.

Booth after booth that I visited on the show room displayed how their product met the specific needs of a specific client, and they were never shy on displaying their minute differences from the booth 5 feet down the isle. The sponsored sessions I sat in on constantly brought up concepts like bootstrapping, failing cheap, finding your niche, and simplifying your business model. All of these concepts lead to smaller more specific applications that are able to meet the needs of a customer far more efficiently than previous all-encompassing applications.

The web 3.0 wave if you will, is just gathering its force, and I cannot wait to see its crest. Expect higher quality more useful and efficient software than we have ever seen before. Now the question is, who will surf the wave and who will get lost to the undertow.

The Devnuts team invaded Web2Expo in NYC yesterday. We got a chance to meet a lot of cool people and see a ton of really cool products. We registered for the “Expo Hall Only” pass, aka the free one, which we were reminded of quite harshly as we tried to enter a conference by 37 signals that was outside our track.

After our rejection we headed down to the “Sponsored Sessions”. The sponsored sessions are conferences offered by various sponsoring companies open to anyone. When I first read about the sessions I figured they would just be bloated advertisements disguised as conferences with free giveaways. Boy was I wrong. We’ve been able to catch 2 sponsored sessions thus far and I was overwhelmed with the amount of great ideas and information we’ve received.

Seven Habbits of a Successful SaaS company

The first session we attended yesterday morning was Seven Habbits of a Succesful SaaS company hosted by Mark Trang and Kirk Krappe. Mark is with Sales Force and Kirk with Apttus. They both have a ton of experience in traditional software development so hearing their perspective on the switch to software as a service and everything related was very fulfilling.

Their talk covered topics such as developing your software as a service business model, customer success (customer satisfaction), customer retention, and growth. I have requested the slide show from Mark and I will share it when I get my hands on it.

Measuring ROI around Web 2.0

The second talk we heard this morning was Measuring ROI around Web 2.0. This was the session I was really looking forward to hearing because I’ve always tended to have my hands more in the business side of our operations than the development side, and the idea of accurately valuating our communities and applications is baffling to me. The talk was held by Dave Carter of Awareness Networks. Dave was really accurate and detailed with his concepts and lessons so I learned a ton. I plan on writing a followup post on this topic so I’ll be brief with my summary. Dave covered a variety of topics including Measurement Tactics for your web 2.0 company, knowledge management, and acting on the data you collect.

Overall the conference was extremely educational. His points were backed by years of experience and painted with real life examples. Check back for more on what he spoke about shortly.

The Expo Hall

Entrance to the Expo Hall

After spending the morning attending the sponsored sessions we hit the Expo Floor. The expo floor is full of a ton of booths showcasing everything from new development platforms, social communities, collaboration applications, to Microsoft Surface and O’Reilly reading materials.

Platform as a Service seems to be the running theme, talk about a bloated market… more than half of the booths here must be showing off their new platform. One company in particular caught my eye, http://www.octopz.com/. I got a chance to interview the guy running the booth, I’ll post the video as soon as I get a chance to edit through it.

The Mobile Business Expo is also being held here in the Javits Convention Center, which is really cool because we’ve got to see a ton of cool mobile technology. I even got a chance to play with the BlackBerry Bold and the new BlackBerry flip phone. Can you say AJAX Enabled mobile-browsing??

Ajax Enabled Mobile Browsing!

The Keynotes

Well we accidentally overslept the Keynotes today, oops. So no update on Thursday’s keynotes, but yesterday we got a chance to sit in on the keynote and it was a great time. We got there a bit late and missed the history of New York’s web industry. In all honestly we were really only looking forward to hearing Jason Fried from 37 Signals speak.

We arrived just in time for Deborah Schultz’s keynote on the “Death of the Grand Gesture”. Her speech was long and drawn out, and it took her forever to get to the point, which was very evidently turning the people around me off. But once she got to her point I was very intrigued, her concept was very interesting. The concept is that from a marketing standpoint the “Grand Gesture” has become a tool most often used ineffectively. Too often businesses use the grand gesture of something like SuperBowl Ads but forget the ongoing small personal efforts required to maintain customer base. She made it clear that one gets lost without the other, and one without the other is ineffective.

Deborah Schultz during the Keynotes

Once Deborah finished Jason Fried made an “interesting” appearance. You had to be there to understand, but don’t worry you didn’t miss much, just an F bomb or too. Jason’s theme for his keynote was “saying no to the customer”. He stated, “Your product isn’t good because it has everything, you need to learn to say no, be a curator, keep things simple”. He went on about how you need to curate your piece of software and keep specific regulation on the growth of your software to avoid becoming bloated or losing your specialty.

He also suggested that you attach cost to as many things within your company as possible. Costs beyond just monetary such as time and things that aren’t getting done. So when your employee comes to you and says “We gotta have text message alerts”, assign a value to that task. How much time is it going to take, what aren’t you going to be working on because you’re working on the alerts, and how much is it going to cost? Assigning these values allows you to prioritize more efficiently. This is something we at Devnuts have been implementing at every corner. It is really a great tool for properly organizing your efforts.

After Jason finished I bounced out of the keynotes early, but as I went to leave the conference hall I made eye contact with a familiar face. A tall slender, almost celebrity like appearance with a face I knew I recognized. After a second’s glance I realized it was Jay Adelson. He was just chilling in the back of the hall watching the keynotes like any of us. Its odd to me how I know he’s just another nerd just like me and yet I can’t help but look at him as a celebrity. Regardless I thought it was pretty cool that I got to see him in person.

Ok back to the expo floor for a bit, I’ll have another update shortly.

In the past year I have undergone a massive lifestyle change from the immature habits developed over 4 years of high school to a much more stable and healthy lifestyle. At the center of this change is my physical health. This past January I decided I wasn’t gonna fall into the abyss of averageness in America by continuing my unhealthy living habits. I decided I want to live long, as long as i possibly can. 52 pounds less fat and 8% less bodyfat and I realized I couldn’t have made a more important decision for myself.

What began as a quest for physical fitness has led me to the most productive, content position of my entire life. Let me begin by giving you a brief rundown of what led me to my decision. Throughout high school I played a lot of sports, and trained for college soccer since middle school. My athleticism covered up my unhealthy living decisions so it was hard for me to see the consequences of my decisions. It was not until my sophomore year of college that the consequences caught up.

I played 1 year of division 1 soccer after high school and then left the team to follow by passion for entrepreneurship. During that year of training in a D1 environment I learned more about fitness and healthy eating than I could have ever imagined, but when I left the team I was left with a wealth of knowledge and a lack of ambition and commitment to use that knowledge. It took 5 months of doing nothing and putting on weight to realize I needed a change.

From March 08 to August 08
210lbs and 18% body fat to 165lbs and 10% body fat

Eating

The first change I made was the way I was eating. This may be the hardest change for most people, but for whatever reason I found the change easy. After a period of meditation on the types of food I was actually putting in my body the change seemed mandatory. The thought of all the chemicals and unnatural concoctions I had been ingesting disgusted me. It was very easy for me to replace the bag of chips with a bowl of fruit, the eggos and pancakes for granola, yogurt, and fruit, the pizza and french fries for a steak, whole grain rice, and grilled veggies. I understand that this shift might not be so easy for most people, but give it a try for a week or two and just try and tell me you don’t feel wonders better.

1. Eat as natural as possible. Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup and any ingredients you can barely read/pronounce. The closer to the ground your food, the better. Stick to fruits, veggies, and organic meats as much as possible.

2. Limit the size of your portions by increasing the number of portions. I keep hearing that this is very difficult for most people, but if you can try to increase the number of portions you eat throughout the day in exchange for the portion size. 6 small meals throughout the day is far better for your metabolism than 3 large meals. Think of your metabolism like a fire, you need to keep feeding it small portions, if you give it to big a portion it’ll go out.

3. Try to maintain a protein:carb ratio of 3 or 4:1. I stick to about 160 grams of protein and 60 grams of carb per day.

4. CHEAT! Give yourself weekends off at the beginning of your diet. Move to 1 day a week off as soon as you can. When I say off I mean off, eat whatever you want and however much you want. Sunday is my off day, and you’ll see me grabbing every Snickers ice cream bar, ChocoTaco, and bag of Doritos I can find. By the end of the day I’m disgusted and for the rest of the week I can’t even think about junk food. (I’ve heard rumors that it is good training for your metabolism as well.)

Fitness

Fitness came considerably easy for me because previous to my weight-gain I had always been active and athletic. My “muscle memory” let me get back into workouts and training techniques that may not work for someone else in a similar position, so I’ll avoid the specifics of my workouts for now. The important part is that I did SOMETHING. My first few weeks of working out were simple 3 day-a-week workouts in the gym. Nothing too intense, nothing that I dreaded going to, just enough to get me back into the mindset of being in shape.

The crucial element to all of my workouts is the Core Workout. I first learned about proper core development tactics while training in college soccer when a trainer introduced me to “Core Performance“.

Core Performance is a must-have for ANYONE interested in being more fit and/or healthy. A strong core is what distinguishes a good athlete from a phenomenal athlete. A strong core will help you to overcome aches and pains caused by muscle compensation such as back pains from sitting at a desk or in a car all day.

1. DO SOMETHING. Find something active that you can actually enjoy and do it often, beit running, jogging, walking, or playing a sport.

2. Get yourself to a level where you can increase your fitness level. Once you are at a point where true training isn’t so bad, its easy to get yourself fit.

3. Embrace CORE Fitness. Core training will make life better. Visit www.coreperformance.com for more information.

What is your goal?

Do you wish to simply be healthier and live longer? Do you wish to be more athletic? Do you wish to compete in an athletic event? Do you want to lose weight and/or build muscle?

The answer to these questions will each take you down a unique road to change, but the core values will remain consistent throughout.

- Fitness is a lifestyle decision, not a temporary solution
- Healthy eating is a lifestyle decision, not a temporary solution
- A lot of wrong fitness training is worse than very little correct fitness training
- Maintaining a healthy lifestyle does not require a lot of time
- Healthy living is not limited to physical fitness or eating habbit, healthy living is just as much about mental health as it is physical health, though often physical health brings with it a healthy mind

I know this post is a bit jumbled, and may not be the most useful, but its a start. I plan on continuing to write about my fitness and lifestyle lessons so stay tuned for more.

This really got me working this morning, this could lead to some seriously useful apps.