Like a Ton of Bricks

Category : Personal Thoughts
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What makes a person change for the better or for the worse?  What makes someone realize they were wrong? Or that they acted poorly?  How do you realize that you need to make a change?  Is it gradual, or does it hit you like a ton of bricks, creating an instantaneous change?  For me, most of my big changes in my life have happened in an instant.  One second, I’ll be rolling along through life, then something happens and everything changes.  Sometimes these changes are good, sometimes they are bad.

The first time I remember instant change was in 2nd grade.  My soccer team was in the intramural championship game, which was during our lunchtime recess.  In music class in the morning, I tripped a friend of mine, just for fun.  He tumbled down, knocking down a ton of chairs in the process.  I got a detention, my first ever.  It was during recess.  I was going to miss my soccer game.  In my 2nd grade head, I said “screw it, I’m skipping detention and playing.”  It took three quarters of the game before a teacher came out, grabbed me off the field and gave me detention for the rest of the week.  I didn’t care.  I had scored a goal and we won the game.  Detention didn’t matter.  In that instant, I became a terror.  I realized that teachers and school authority couldn’t really hurt me.  Everything changed, probably for the worse.

It took 8 years before an instant snap changed my behavior again.  It was freshman year of high school.  I was bored in class and pretty much made teachers’ lives miserable.  I was in a class and I was goofing around with one of my best friends.  I’m pretty sure we were trying to draw on each other with pens.  The teacher had tried to get us to stop for a few weeks, but we just didn’t care.  Finally, the person sitting in front of us turned back, looked me in the eye and simply said “stop.”  I don’t know why it clicked then, but in that instant, I realized how poorly I’d treated some of my middle school teachers and realized it had to stop.  I had one of those “rapid fire montages” of all the bad things I’d done and felt horrible.  From then on, I never disrupted a class ever again.

I got self confidence in an instant on the soccer field as a 12 year old referee.  In my first game, a coach ran onto the field and cursed me out, with just about every name in the book.  I’d gotten the call right, but he thought I should have given the 10 year old a yellow card.  I was scarred.  I called my referee assignor and he told me I had to stick with my calls and that if anyone did it ever again, I had all the power and should throw them out.  Two weeks later, another coach swore at me over a call he didn’t like.  I threw him out and stood my ground as he threatened me.  In that instant, everything changed.  I knew I could handle pretty much any situation.

Another example came from business.  When I was selling my first company, the final six weeks of the deal were incredibly stressful.  The deal almost fell through multiple times, there were tough negotiations and there was a bunch of shady stuff that happened that caused a ton of stress.  I got more and more involved in the deal and started to turn inward, become less involved with my friends and let my business spill over into other aspects of my life.  I was spending more time on the phone, in front of the computer and let it affect my life.  I was angry at the buyer and I started to take it out on other people.  I didn’t realize it any of this at the time, but looking back, everything was obvious.

I went on a business trip and enlisted one of my friends to help.  We drove to Michigan and I was on horrible phone call after phone call.  We were eating lunch at a diner and I got another phone call.  My friend started to playfully mess with me, just like he had for all of our friendship.  This time, I took my anger at how the deal was going out on him.  I hit him really hard in the leg (sorry Ken).  In that instant, I snapped back to reality.  I was disgusted with myself.  I instantly knew I’d acted like an idiot for the past six weeks and vowed to never let my business affect my friendships.

For me, realization and change comes in an instant.  I don’t realize I’m acting poorly (being mean to teachers, acting without confidence, taking my business frustrations out on friends), until something hits me like a ton of bricks and causes me to realize all of the things I’d done wrong or need to change.  I look back and can’t even imagine how I acted that way in the first place.  I look at my prechange self and see someone else.

I’ve had at least 9 of these in my life so far, 2 for the worse,  7 for the better.  I’d love to be able to find a way to accelerate the changes for the good at the expense of the bad, but I think that’s probably asking too much.  I think it’s human nature to have both.  At the very least, I’m hoping as I learn lessons from these ton of bricks moments, I’ll need to have fewer of them.  I’m just glad that so far my changes for the better outweight the changes for the worse.

Forward Technology Festival 2011

Category : Entrepreneurship
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I’m excited to be working with Matt Younkle and Bryan Chan again this year to help put on Forward Technology Festival for the second year in a row.  Last year was a huge success, and I’m really excited for this years version, which runs from August 18th-27th.  The Forward Technology Festival is a ten day long series of events that showcases Madison’s entrepreneurship and creative community.  It starts with the 10th anniversary of High Tech Happy Hour and includes Madison Ruby Conference, Barcamp, a Capital Entrepreneurs meeting, an open networking event at Sector67, business pitches from Spreenkler Talent Labs seed accelerator participants and is headlined by the 2nd annual Forward Technology Conference (register here).

I’m most excited for the Forward Technology Conference, which is slated for August 26th at the Memorial Union.  Last year’s inaugural conference had more than 125 attendees and Fred Foster’s keynote was the highlight of the festival and I can’t wait for the 2011 version.  We’ll kick off the day with breakfast at 9am, followed by Madison Failcon, a session dedicated to lessons that founders learned when their businesses did not actually succeed.  I love this session, especially since I see the fear of failure as one of the biggest obstacles to Madison’s success as an entrepreneurial center.

Next, three successful Madison entrepreneurs will share their experiences starting and running a startup in Madison.  Justin Beck will talk about how he started and grew PerBlue and the lessons he learned doing it.  Greg Tracy of Asthmapolis will share his story as well.  I love hearing founders tell their stories, so it should be a great session.  After a lunch break, five up and coming Madison startups will share what they’ve been up to and ask the community for feedback and ideas on how to improve their business.  Last year’s pitch your biz participant Heidi Allstop of Student Spill ended up in Techstars and has since been featured in hundreds of publications, so this is your chance to hear about up and coming businesses before they make it big.

In the afternoon, Silicon Valley expert Brant Cooper will talk about customer development and the lean startup method and how startups can use it get started more quickly, while spending less money.  The customer development method is one of the hottest topics in the startup world right now and Madison hasn’t seen any of the top experts until now, so Cooper’s session is a can’t miss.

Laurie Benson will give our FTC 2011 keynote address, during which she’ll tell her story about how she started technology services business Inacom and grew it to one of the largest companies in her industry, leading to its acquisition.  Laurie has been extremely active in mentoring young founders and served on my MERLIN Mentor team with Entrustet (she’s awesome!).  She’s got a great story and I can’t wait to hear here tell it at the conference.  After the keynote, we’ll have a reception above the Union Terrace with snacks and drinks.

I’m really looking forward to the entire week of events and it’s been great to see Madison’s tech community come together to make the Festival a success.  If you’d like more information on any of the events, visit the Forward Technology Festival website or the Forward Technology Conference registration page.  While most of the events are free, the conference costs $50, but we have 50% off discounted tickets available until August 1st.  These events really showcase Madison as an up and coming technology and innovation center in the Midwest and I’m excited to be a part of it.

An Ode to My Car at 100,000 Miles

Category : Personal Thoughts
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a few years after my Grandpa died, my Grandma moved to Milwaukee from Madison to be closer to our family.  As part of her move, she wanted to downsize her car.  It was about 1994 and I was about 10 and remember when she brought her new car home.  I remember going all over town in her little red car.  We’d go to the food store, the mall (to buy me baseball cards and sporting goods), movies (like Seven Years in Tibet and Wag the Dog using the senior matinee discount of course) and out to eat (Chinese was a favorite).

She loved to spend time with me and I could do no wrong and the smallest successes made me a “genius.”  We always drove around in her little red car.  It was impeccably clean and even had a little trash can on the floor in the middle of the back seat.  She used to bring it over to our house and pay me $1-5 to wash the car.  She’d watch, but get distracted when she wanted to see me shoot baskets or show off some new soccer skill.

One day when I was probably 11 or 12 we were driving down Silver Spring and her windows started to fog up.  She couldn’t figure out how to get them clear and I flipped two dials and they cleared up really quickly.  I think I heard that story about 100 times the rest of my life.  As she started to get older, she drove less, but still loved her car.  She took shorter trips or we’d meet at her apartment and one of my parents would drive.  She equated her car with her independence and loved to go to the mall or the food store.  As she moved into her mid 80s, we started to notice that the car would have random dings and scratches, so we got red paint so that I could fix it.

As she neared her 84th birthday, her driving was getting worse.  Her night vision wasn’t what it used to be and my parents decided to talk to her about potentially selling her car.  Asking someone to give up their car is incredibly difficult, especially when they love to drive.  For a year, my grandma said no.  As I got closer to turning 16 and her driving got worse, my parents tried another tactic.  I sometimes practiced learning how to drive on her car, since it was an automatic and we only had manuals.  My parents told her that she could give the car to me and that I would take her around whenever she needed a ride.  She agreed.  The 7 year old car had 21,000 miles on it.

When I passed my drivers test on my 16th birthday, my life changed.  I could go out to friends houses, drive to soccer practice, go to brewers games.  I drove to reffing instead of biking.  My friends and I drove all over in my little red car and some of my best memories happened because of that car. Whenever we drove over to visit my Grandma in her apartment, she always wanted to come down and see her “little red car.”  As she got older, our movies and Chinese lunches turned more to doctors appointments and lunches at her apartment.  She loved that I drove her car and took good care of it, even though it was no longer impeccably clean (the trash can had been replaced by my soccer stuff).  One time I took one of our other family cars to pick her up for a doctors appointment and she wanted to know what had happened.  She really loved that car.

It was the perfect college car.  It took me to spring break in Florida, countless road football games, tons of NCAA basketball tournaments, the 2006 National Championship hockey game, two trips to Tennessee for “man weekend” with my friends, three of my best friends friends weddings and tons of random road trips.  It let me work on consulting projects in other states and continue to ref soccer.  It took me to all of my ExchangeHut and Entrustet meetings in Madison and in other states.

Unfortunately, it also took me to my Grandma’s funeral.  She died in 2009, just short of her 91st birthday.  I know she would have wanted me to be in the procession driving her car, so I made sure it was there.  I’ve kept driving her “little red car” ever since.  Even though its now has a few dents and the inside isn’t impecibly clean, I love my car.  Every time I get in, I remember my Grandma and some of our adventures together.  People sometimes ask me why I don’t get a new car, but I don’t even think about it.  It runs perfectly and it’s never given me any problems.  I bet it’ll run for another 10 years.

 

Gratitude

Category : Personal Thoughts
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Yesterday, I wrote about apologizing.  Today, I want to write about saying thanks.  We’ve all had someone do something nice for us or make our lives easier.  We’ve all done something for someone else, whether it was for a simple favor, to further a business relationship or to simply just help someone out.  But are there times when you forget to say thank you?  Or give a halfhearted thanks, rather than a real one?  The answer is obviously yes.  Just like me, you’re human.

I think in the Internet age, we’re losing the art of the real thank you.  While a simple tweet is better than saying nothing, you can do so much better than 140 characters and 30 seconds.  If someone does something nice for you or was a huge help, you’ll really stand out if you send a real thank you, either by email or by phone.  I know some people advocate handwritten thank you notes, but in my opinion, an email or a phone call is more than sufficient.  Not only will saying thanks make you stand out, it’s just the right thing to do.  Just like taking responsibility when you do something wrong, sharing the praise when someone does something to help you out earns their respect.

You also never know how your small thank you will affect someone else.  It might be just what they needed to get them through the day.  It might be what sets you apart and makes someone want to work with or hang out again.  Saying thanks and meaning it just makes the world a better place.  But overusing thank yous is annoying.  Send real thank yous when people deserve them, not because you want people to like or respect you more.  It’s never too late to thank someone who did you a favor or helped you out.  Is there anyone who you haven’t thanked lately who deserves it?  If so, write them an email, pick up the phone and give them the thanks they deserve.