A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.
Charles Horton Cooley

I pride myself in being exceptionally un-exceptional in just about everything I do. I’m a passable dancer, I’m not particularly clever,  I wouldn’t be your first-pick on any sport you know, I have a third-grader understanding of physics…the list goes on.

There’s nothing I can point to and say “hey, I’m really good at THAT!”  I’m actually grateful for my lack of skills.

Here’s why….

Talented people can get into a rut

 I’ve met a lot of people who were VERY exceptional at a few things, and they made those few things the “reason for living.” So what happens to the dancer who can no longer get on heels? Or the doctor who becomes bored at her work? Just because you’re good at your profession, doesn’t mean you’ll love it (although there’s a high correlation between the two). But if you’re not very good at any ONE thing, you can average your way through a bunch of weird and interesting jobs. Plus, there’s a segment of jobs that it’s hard to tell the difference between “mediocre” and “great”, which make for good jobs for people with mediocre skills e.g –  Librarians, dolphin-trainers, and most administrative positions in any industry, ever.

Life make most skills obsolete eventually

If you’re an professional athlete, you have a set time-limit on your skillset. After age 40 you’re probably going to need a new career (sports anchor anyone?) That sucks. How are your awesome guitar skills going to help you when you’re raising a family? Better to pick up new skills as quickly as old ones become irrelevant. Mediocre-ly talented people such as myself are used to this: we just accept that we’ll need to learn more stuff, and aren’t sentimental on not being able to do the old stuff (we weren’t very good in the first place, ya know)?

Most stored knowledge is wonderful but unnecessary. 

I have a strong basis that it’s more important to “learn to learn” and to be able to aggregate most information  rather than memorize information in an attempt to become a biomass library. You’re just not able to store the info, and recall it better, than a computer. No worries. In life you need to know different things as you get older.  While you can read and debate Nicomachean Ethics for several years with your peers, and yes it’ll definitely make you a better person, it probably doesn’t solve 90% of the issues that crop up in the course of Life. Being mediocre-ly skilled means being willing to be practical on the learning, get what you “need to know” and move forward.

Notice this: you can be an awesome person, but still have mediocre skills. Mediocre skills does not make you mediocre. Also, just because you’re not skillful doesn’t mean you need to be disdainful of those superbeings. Finally, just because you don’t know a lot, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be constantly learning. Read/discuss/see as much as you can! As P-Diddy says….

It’s funny how ideas long thought dead come back, blinking awake again. One of the challenges I find in StartUpLand is trying to kick habits that produce tangible results short-term at the expense of long-term growth. Tendencies like making an employee multi-task on various roles – i.e my developer answering the phones, helping pitch projects, as well as coding. This was “necessary” when we were lean and tight-knit and in the early stages of getting it done, son!  These days, the budgets are bigger, the roles are more specialized, but I still find this zombie-idea rise up again in the conference room.

Let's keep up these Scrum sprints! Yo, that sh*t works for EVERYTHING!

It’s hard to put to rest old habits like these because they’re part of the recipe of what made the company a success today. But sticking these old methods will only lead to disaster. I’m making a concerted effort to think how the company should be six months from now, and laying the groundwork for that structure TODAY. It’s the only way I can think to kick these zombie habits. As FakeGrimlock says BUILD FOR TODAY GUARANTEE YOU OBSOLETE BY TOMORROW.

Here’s my hookah-liquor induced epiphany:

A startup is a chance for people to clear the air and work together in a new way.

Think about it! Matrix-model businesses, scrum methodology, agile-management: these are (relatively) new ways of getting things done. These ways of working didn’t exist 50 years ago. We don’t have to work the same way everyone’s worked for centuries. And if we don’t work the same way, then maybe how power is structured, and thereby how compensation is structured, don’t have to work the same way.

I’m not talking a Marxist movement of the workers seize ownership of the means of productions, or that we rule by committee.

Brilliant idea of the week:

Alka-seltzer soft drinks.

Alka-seltzer has caffeine, pain-relievers, and carbonation. But it tastes horrible. Why not make a soft drink with caffeine + pain-relievers that tastes good? It’ll be the Four-Loko of pain-killers! Have a hangover? Pound a six-pack and you’re good to go. Feeling a stomach-ache coming on? Head over to the vending machine for relief.  This would go great for the elderly, who get prescribed Ibuprofen to thin their blood. This will do that and give’em the pep to get a move on.

Of course, if someone drinks too much of this soft drink, they might overdose and cause serious damage to their body.  And the litigious society will bury anyone who tried this endeavor. Consumer advocates would demand the boycott of this product before it even got to the shelves.  In fact, this’ll never fly as a viable product.

But c’mon – i definitely had you convinced for a second there, right?

Most great and disastrous ideas start off that way: they sound great, but when you dig deeper you find a whole host of reasons why they won’t work. Usually these ideas are solving a problem. The problem solved by Alka-selter Soft Drinks is this: the present-day medicine is effective but tastes horrible.

Most entrepreneurs will tell you in order for a new business to succeed, your new service/product/business is supposed to solve a problem exists.  That’s a good place to go, but I don’t think it’s 100% true. I don’t know if Twitter*, 24/7 news channels, most video games or Oreo Cookies “solve a problem that exists”. So I’d qualify that presumption with “build something that solves a problem or hits someone’s pleasure button.”

We call these “luxury items/services”. In theory, since they’re non-essential they should be victims to fickleness of the crowd’s attention-span or to the economics of the world. But here’s the thing: luxury items and services actually hold up well in the marketplace. You don’t actually need to do something useful to make money! That means my Alka-seltzer Soft drink, which is potentially useful, may get beat by something completely useless but is entertaining (or luxurious)….like Pinterest.com. Of course, is’s probably better to be both.

So good luck with your next brilliant/disastrous idea: hopefully it’ll be both useful AND entertaining (and let’s face it – most new products/services are….)

*if you think Twitter is useful, then please substitute the example with the following: Stuffed monkeys, Yogurt-covered raisins, or buttons….any kind of buttons.

Sorry I ranted about employees being screwed.

One thing I hate to do is rail against the injustice of something and then not follow-up with a proposed solution or course of action. I prefer to act as if I have agency in the situation, mainly because I think people feel better when they “think” they have control over their lives and slightly because I’m a control-freak.

Here’s some follow-up thoughts:

1.) How employees at startups are screwed

Job security’s an illusion in any company. FedEx, Home Depot, all the big brands are doing layoffs, and you can lose your job quickly there as you could in any startup.  In this day and age, the only guarantee for jobs is that your skills are relevant and you’re not a creep.  And sometimes, the latter doesn’t matter. The great thing about startups is that you MEET A LOT OF PEOPLE and you’ll find your network expands tremendously. One day your client becomes your next business partner, or your new source for freelancer talent, or an angel investor, or referrer of new biz. It’s pretty great.

2.) The company’s health.

I firmly believe that your health, the health of your co-workers, and management will dictate 90% of the results of your company. Companies are not people, as Romney will tell you; but without people there are no companies. There have been plenty of times when I didn’t know the future of my company clearly, but I KNEW that if I kept the morale of the people in the company high we could weather most downturns. It’s a tribal mentality.

3.) How I’m taking advantage of employees

It’s still my opinion that the game is rigged. It’s true that managers/Founders take most of the risk, the burden of management (there’s a LOT), and reap the bulk of rewards for the risk and pressure.  But it’s also true that employees are doing tremendous work, and they are RISKING as well. They’re taking a risk to be working with you. Founders can’t get fired, employees can. Founders can give themselves a bonus, or shut down operations, or re-structure benefits….but employees can’t.  Here’s my advice for employees – have frank and frequent conversations on how to get stock options/equity/or compensated fairly for your efforts. And do those conversations when you, the employee, is ready. Don’t let the employer make the first consideration – the framework of negotiation is pre-set at that stage then.  Better to be pushed down from a high number than claw up from a low.

So hopefully that puts a better perspective regarding The Whole Story.

“Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”
― Siddhārtha Gautama

I went on a Herman Hesse kick when I was 19 years old. I read Narcissus and Goldmund, Siddhartha, and etc. All great stuff for some young guy desperately trying to figure out what’s the purpose for himself and how to be deep.

That quote up top was lifted, paraphrased, or recycled in a bunch of entrepreneurial/startup books I’ve read since. It sounds like a platitude. Which doesn’t invalidate it: a phrase set in our viewpoint as conventional wisdom means that it proved itself out through the centuries and the mass of people reflecting on it.

But back to the matter at hand: people need to really work to figure out what they want to do.

Most people I know don’t know what they’re doing.

And I mean that. I have friends, family, and colleagues who stumble from gig to gig, job to job. They’re not doing what they love, but there’s love in what they do, so they pass on making hard choices. Someday, someday they’ll figure out what they want or they’ll just….give up trying and hope wherever they landed has good benefits and isn’t a pain.

I urge those people to make some serious choices and pick a direction. Here’s some things I learned when making difficult choices.

1. It’s better to be running TO something than AWAY from something
2. The grass is not always greener, even when you get your dream jobs
3. Dream jobs don’t exist. You are ever-changing; your job either needs to be ever-changing with you or you will have to seek out a new career every time you grow out of the old one. Expect this.
4. Always negotiate, haggle, barter, fight

It’s better to be running TO something than AWAY from something

Before D&T I took jobs based on if I could make more money. And not surprisely, every next job was worst than the last. I had more responsibility, more money, and I was in demand for my skills. Job offers were coming weekly. To this day I STILL get job offers for Revenue Management positions. D&T was the only thing I actually worked to get, rather than have job offers thrown at me and take whatever paid the best.

The grass is not always greener, even when you get your dream jobs

Working at D&T was/is the hardest job I’ve ever done. The last two years were the most stressful I’ve ever lived. Whenever I hear entrepreneurs talk about the times back when their company was 2-5 people, and everyone’s pulling together, and no one’s making money, and they actually GLORIFY that lifestyle, I want to take a flamethrower and torch a building. There is nothing, nothing, nothing, I repeat nothing great about that time in your life. I met Julie those years, and I almost lost her during those years. I gained 35 pounds, lost close friends, and I drank constantly.  And this is my dream job, people. This is what I ran TO, not from.

Dream jobs don’t exist. You are ever-changing; your job either needs to be ever-changing with you or you will have to seek out a new career every time you grow out of the old one. Expect this.

This kills me. People think there’s a magical dream job out there that will be 100% fulfilling in all ways and they’ll never have to worry about another job. That job doesn’t exist. Here’s why: People take on different roles in their lives. You start as a child, then a student, a young professional, become a parent, retire….and all along the way your role changes. Moreover, you’re constantly learning new skills, knowledge, and experiences. To say that you just want to do exactly what you’re doing today, for the rest of your life is akin to saying “I just want to be a parent for the rest of my life”. Someday kids grow up. What are you going to do then? As you get older, hopefully you’re also going to keep learning and growing. Otherwise you’re going to be fated as a boring conversationalist at the party.

Always negotiate, haggle, barter, fight.

Only you can know your own best interests and properly defend them. I do not have my employees’ best interest in mind. I do not have my brothers’ best interest in mind. I only have my best interests, because I know me and what I want. People don’t take the time to make up their mind on where they stand (yes, I said this before but it bears repeating). And we’re not talking about skills or work anymore: this is about life. I once dated someone who always made the plans for us. I just sort of…tagged along. I got pretty upset until I realized “you know, she’s the only one bothering to put a plan together…” Me just saying “naw, let’s not” isn’t a plan – it’s a reaction. Be ready, willing, and knowledgable to fight for whatever it is you want to do. One caveat – fighting does not mean being aggressive all the time. Fighting for a decision can be the difference of an emotional argument and a principled debate. One tries to defeat the opponent, the other seeks to create new knowledge from which a decision by both sides can be made.

In summation: good luck and sorry for the wordiness this time.

I’m a firm believer in telling people in the organization “The Whole Story”. Truth begets trust. The more honest you are with the people you work with on how the company’s doing, how they’re doing, what the future looks like, the better everyone feels. And feeling good, roughly translated, means higher morale and a better life. That’s why I like telling “The Whole Story”

From what I’ve seen in companies I worked with previously, and how other start-ups work, talking about anything which could admit weakness or misjudgment, or allow criticism  just isn’t in vogue.

“yo, Entrepreneurs totally value honesty!”

Check this out:

FROM ENTREPRENUER.ORG

Honesty. An entrepreneur must be honest in financing the company and managing the assets of the firm. Honesty, which emanates from decisiveness in taking risks and making choices, lets the entrepreneur avoid false security and stay calm amid confusing situations.

http://www.entrepreneurship.org/en/resource-center/the-values-that-sustain-entrepreneurs.aspx

Honesty IS valued by entrepreneurs….with their partners or investors. The thought of treating employees as peers isn’t a consideration. This jack-ass mentality permeates the startup community.

Here’s stuff that entreprenuers/managers shy away from discussing:

1.) How employees at startups are screwed

The people who work at a startup have it raw – it’s highly stressful, disorganized, lower pay and benefits, and there’s NO job security. Equity, if it’s worth anything, is miserly horded between management and investors. So employees are taking a lot of risk, low pay, and hopefully will see some sort of upside. If the company doesn’t bomb (and most do.) they might. Or they might get fired before that all happens.  Don’t talk to me about the upside – we know them already. It’s a pittance in comparison to the risks and stresses of the gig.

What’s the excuse of entrepreneurs/managers not doing better? Honestly, I think it’s just expected custom that management gets the horde of upside since they’re taking the “bulk” of the risk. And there is a lot of risk for those people. I’m not downplaying them. But c’mon – your people are probably not doing lunchbreaks or charging overtime…

2.)  How’s the company not doing well

There are up’s and down’s with all companies, but nothing like the first few years of startups. Most mortal wounds are self-inflicted by the founders. If you’re an employee and you’re getting fired, its 90% of the time because there wasn’t a job for you in the first place, or the business isn’t viable to sustain your job. Clue in – the company’s not going to rocket off to success for the first few years. It’s going to blow, and even if you, your bosses, everyone did EVERYTHING right, you still likely to fail as a company.

So…..why not just be upfront about it? You’ll build an underdog mentality and that actually fosters the will to win.

3.) How you, the employee, are doing

Entrepreneurs and a lot of management shy from confrontation. I’ve seen first-hand startups where employees go for weeks thinking they’re doing a-okay and wind up fired because, untold to them, they were blowing it. Feedback to employees should be frank and frequent. There should be discussion on how they’re doing great and where they’re failing, and what’s the plan for them tomorrow. Also, they want to know you as management HAVE a plan for employees. Most entrepreneurs have a plan for their company (you know, a 6-month, 12-month, 3 year forecast….) but they don’t have one for their employees. Way to be a jackass, jackass. You don’t need to have it all mapped out, but it’s a good idea to have a series of goals that the employee and you can work out.

There’s a lot more honest things to say, but in the end here’s what I mean: if you’re honest you’re going to engender goodwill from your employees. You’re going to need that: you will fuck up a lot and you’re going to need a lot of goodwill for you to succeed.  That’s The Whole Story.