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Moving On From Failure is An Exercise in Humility

Last week’s post about the hiatus of Body Boss received a lot of good, supportive feedback – 21 Lessons from Failure. That was interesting to me because it wasn’t a letter to the world about the close of Body Boss as much as it was about a learning opportunity. Instead, I wanted to follow up the lessons learned with a personal letter, but I didn’t know really how to begin. However, I believe a serial entrepreneur has just given me the spark with his one simple question:

Does humility factor anywhere in terms of your lessons learned from Body Boss?

Absolutely!
Body Boss has been incredibly humbling for not just myself, but for the whole team. Body Boss has helped me realize the hardwork needed to build a successful business and what it means to build a brand you can be proud of. We started Body Boss full of confidence, energy, and lofty goals, but we have to balance that with a healthy dose of humility. Yet, in a lot of ways, confidence and humility aren’t necessarily on opposite ends of the spectrum, but they work closer together. It’s been an incredible experience learning more about our strengths and our weaknesses. It’s not lost on me how much there is still for me to learn and grow, and that will never end. 
For me, personally, I’m disappointed I didn’t lead the team to success. Body Boss was the creation of everyone around us, not just the Body Boss team. I’m a product of my family, my friends, Georgia Tech, Emory, and so much more. It’s why we kept our family and friends up-to-date on our progress in addition to our customers and partners. We have had amazing support from everyone around us, and we are so grateful. It’s incredibly sad to let everyone around me down now. Sales make or break a company, and as such, I shoulder much of the blame. I’ve been learning from my mistakes, and I have to now take those lessons learned and improve them.
I’m saddened for the incredible Body Boss community that we couldn’t create a vast nation of like-minded coaches, trainers, and athletes to share their achievements to motivate each other for greater. Body Boss was built on a premise of “Motivation through Team Competition”. In a word – inspiration. Inspiration to achieve greater.
In the afterglow of Body Boss, I can relish being a part of an amazing team. The mastermind behind Body Boss’s inception was none other than Darren Pottinger – a true Brains meets Brawn entrepreneur. His tenacity and thirst to learn and dream big is second to none. Don Pottinger was the glue that brought us all together and the man who really made Body Boss come to life and hum. He labored so many hours late at night trouble-shooting and refining Body Boss into a better product for our customer-partners. And of course, all the amazing graphics, the sleek designs that landed us on so many creative sites… credit that to the revered Andrew Reifman. There wasn’t a soul around who wasn’t impressed with his amazing work. These are THE BEST guys in their fields – I know that.
People ask me what my Next Move is. I’m not entirely sure. It’s funny, but after my little Personal Renaissance during grad school, I’m now at this intersection where I’m firmly devout in what I want to do, but I don’t know where that means I should go next.
In any event, I do know I need to keep building off the lessons learned and to keep growing. Am I eager to start a new venture? Absolutely. I reflect plenty, and I’ll continue to write about entrepreneurial ideas including Body Boss, and share my thoughts with the World. I hope my writing inspires others to pursue their passions – startups, painting, pursuing European soccer glory (I can still do that, maybe?), or anything else others are scared to chase and grab right now. For me, I’m reaching for the opportunity to build companies to provide jobs, to build a smarter, healthier future, and to leave a legacy of my family, my friends, and my communities.
I’ve always wanted to be a Great Leader for others, and with that, I do have to constantly find the balance and inter-play between confidence and self-belief with humility. Body Boss was a great experience for all of us in becoming more humble. It’s allowed us to learn and develop for the next chapters in our lives. For the last 2.5 years, I’ve been fortunate to be a part of this Dream Team. As we may sunset this endeavor, I’m excited for where each of us goes from here. I firmly believe we’re all destined for great things.
So to all of you, our supporters, I say this with every ounce of my being and with eternal gratification: THANK YOU.
“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger
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At The End of My 2.5-Year Startup Roller Coaster: 21 Rough Lessons Learned from Failure

Yowza, starting a startup from nothing is wicked hard. After 2.5 years at Body Boss, my team and I have been riding the startup roller coaster with high highs and low lows. Our ride has been one of the most frustrating, stressful, challenging, and rewarding experiences of our lives. A ride that sadly stops here.
We aimed at curing time-consuming spreadsheet madness and bringing intelligence into a world where technology feared to go before – the gyms of high schools, colleges, and the like. We made pivots to our dream, but sadly, we won’t be continuing further. Our market is incredibly young, and though growing, does not provide a sustainable operation for the foreseeable future. So as it stands, we’ll be supporting Body Boss as it is today, but unless/ until the market matures, we won’t be building out new features or spending heavy resources on marketing at this time. 
As they say, you learn more from failure than success. And boy have we learned… If you’re looking to start your own venture, the below list of 21 lessons we’ve learned should help plot out your course and watch out for traps. Or in the least, these lessons can save you from punching helpless pillows or picking up all the papers you threw in the air from frustration:
  1. Have customer-PARTNERS at the beginning. Partners at the beginning give you momentum coming out of the gate to not only build the product, but also to sell the product. Social motivation is a powerful tool.
  2. Research should weigh heavily on building your product/ service WITH your customer-PARTNERS. Engaging your customer-partners early and often (in an effective way) will mitigate risks you’re building something that they don’t want, need, or it’s just too far outside the process. The first versions of your product/ service will need refining, and communicative partners will tell you how to improve.
  3. Dedication to the startup is clutch to iterate. I’ve said it in a post before that speed is one of the critical elements of a winning startup strategy. With speed, you can iterate through ideas and test them with your customers. The best way to do this is to work full-time on the startup and have high quality engineers/ developers. Quality builders can implement changes quickly and mitigate against the risks of glaring bugs.
  4. For a tech startup these days, design is the second part of the winning strategy.If it isn’t quick to understand and navigate, users will likely not give you the time of day to figure it out.
  5. Quick set-up is the catalyst for early success. Apps these days that sign up and login with Facebook, or have API implementation with big platforms like Salesforce.com can help customers get set up quick. It turns out to be a turn-key solution. Most people don’t want to take precious time to learn or set up a program, especially when they have an existing, albeit weaker, solution.
  6. Establish an effective method and rhythm to reach prospects. With social media, many people believe it’s the best way to reach new customers. But it’s not necessarily. You should know how your target market absorbs new ideas/ products. Do they read magazines? Do they read blogs? Are they social media users? Your marketing strategy may not make sense.
  7. Don’t believe you’ve made a sale till days after a check clears. Can’t tell you how many prospects said they’d buy only to go cold a day later. And even when someone gives you his/ her credit card information, wait for the amount to clear your bank account before you celebrate that new signing.
  8. Establish roles be it with titles or equity. It’s amazing what happens when everyone is equal and everyone has different ideas – wheels spin but you’re going nowhere. I applaud those avant-garde companies trying out flat orgs with “no titles”, but that’s not for me. In Body Boss, we had 4 Co-Founders — equal shares, no hierarchy… just friends. To have a single, clear vision to fall back on when consensus isn’t there is a beautiful thing.
  9. Treat your startup like a real company. Your startup is not a hobby. It can’t be a “project” if you want it to be something greater. It’s a company. Take it seriously. Everyday you aren’t improving your company, everyday you’re not making your product or service better, you’re wasting your company’s talent and resources. Sadly and ironically, that happens to be your own.
  10. Market like a king with a blacksmith’s earnings. If you’re going to spend any money on marketing like attending trade shows, make sure you standout. We once sponsored a dinner for an event thinking it’d be a great way for us to reach prospects, except it didn’t. Everyone just ate and barely heard our message. That’s a good bit of money down the drain. If your hard-earned dollar isn’t going to WOW and prompt your prospect to the call to action (CTA), don’t bother.
  11. Be ready to pitch anytime and everytime you walk outside. It’s an amazingly small world, and you will run into potential customers, investors, or just everyday people who can connect you. Be ready to pitch.
  12. All about the team. To have diversity in a team is incredibly frustrating. However, it’s beautiful. It’s needed. For success, you need people to debate productively. If you don’t debate new, fresh ideas from your team (not just customers), you may be potentially paddling down a waterfall in unison. Diversity forces you to sometimes build only what’s necessary, and cut out the fat unless there’s true value. That, or you may never get those new, fresh ideas at all.
  13. New sales are good, but recurring sales are better. One issue that we found at Body Boss was many customers subscribed and bought in, but then, didn’t re-subscribe. After talking to many, there were various reasons why it didn’t work out including glaring product-related issues that we weren’t aware of. If they don’t sign back up, find out why because marketing a product that loses customers later can crush your business. Existing customers can be powerful advocates, and word-of-mouth marketing is the best type of marketing.
  14. Solve a real problem. Definitely don’t introduce a new one. So much of the above can also be addressed if you solve a real problem. With a real problem, you’ll get the buy-in from prospects to buy what you’re selling, or work with you because in the end, IT’S A PROBLEM!
  15. Pick an industry where you have LOADS of experience can go a really long way. Not only to give yourself and your startup credibility, but it’s a great way to network and find your initial customer-partners. I think one of our struggles at Body Boss has been because we approached professional strength and conditioning within an institutional setting – a setting none of us have had much experience. Thus, we didn’t understand our customers as well as we should’ve to build and sell our product.
  16. Know your limitations, and when to break them. Not all of your customers will buy into what you’re selling. Not all of your team members can work full-time. You might not have the skills to pick up the keyboard and start coding. However, all of these challenges end up being opportunities to build a greater startup, a better product, and a better service. If you pay attention to those limitations, you may be able to find creative solutions around (or through) them.
  17. Know when to stay rigid, when to flex, and when to break on your ideals. We start companies with the confidence that we can do things better. By that very nature, we enter with ideals. Know when your ideals should stick or when they should take a back seat for the growth of your company.
  18. Don’t make excuses. Just sell. My main role in Body Boss is to sell. I catch myself sometimes saying, “oh, it’s hard because of timing” or “they’re not answering their phones, so… yeah”. It’s admittedly poor. If you feel an inkling like you didn’t bust your @$$, then you probably didn’t. Find the value. Convert.
  19. Measure everything you can within reason. Use Google Analytics to track your website traffic. Analyze user engagement data (effectively, not analysis paralysis). Track by device, by user, what is your customer doing? With data comes the ability to draw patterns and make actionable changes. “What gets measured gets improved.” (That’s actually a Trademark we have.)
  20. It’s your company so choose who to hear and who to listen to. Everyone has ideas. Everyone will give you advice whether you want it or not. Know which ones make sense. It’s your company. You have to make the calls.
  21. SALES IS HARD! At the end of the day, companies, teams, etc. are made of people. And because you’re selling to people, it only makes sense that not everyone will be seeking the same values out of your product. It’s best to learn quickly about your prospect when selling, and catering your value prop accordingly. A couple tips: (1) the international language and what everyone wants more of: money. Help them pull and push the lever to add revenue and/ or cut costs. (2) You have two ears and one mouth. Let your prospects do the talking so you can assess what he/ she needs, and they’ll be bought in. (3) In-person goes farther than phone or email. Also, emails suck. Too easy for customers to delete/ not read.

Are you ready for the ride? Have you perhaps fallen victim to any of these hard lessons? What advice would you give to entrepreneurs?

(Also, how fitting is it that I’m petrified of roller coasters? They freak me out.)
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Wow! Your Free Trial Is TERRIBLE! (Did I say that out loud?)

Source: http://www.leadformix.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/free-trial-green.jpg

How many free trials have you ever started and then never used again outside that first sign-up? How many free trials did you use, and then you were just floored by the value or what you could do that you signed up as a paid user? Or maybe you just continued your free account?

David Cummings just posted a post “Time to Wow” on his blog touching on free trials, and implicitly, their true purpose. In it, Cummings actually references another article by a blogger named David Skok — “Growth Hacking Free Trials: Time to Wow! is the key to success“.

So let me touch on this little subject with some anecdotal evidence:

  • “Wow” can be facilitated with ease of set-up. I touched on the ability to quickly get set-up in “Who’s poised to profit in this fragmented, online dating world of startups?” But if you can get set up quick on  a free trial, the easier and faster users can use and love your app. You can use things like social media sign-ins (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.), or being able to import pictures (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, etc.).
  • Engaging, high quality, fun media can be Wowing. If you can bake into your free trial some engaging content like a tutorial that steps through your app to show some value, it can be engaging in showing high quality content while also helping your customers learn to use your product.
  • Not all Wow is good. “Wow, this app is really big!” or “Wow, this product is confusing!” are obviously not good Wow moments. Simplicity in design can be a Wow in itself, or at least hedge the negative Wows.
  • Is your free trial demonstrating your value? Free trials are tricky because the user(s) usually doesn’t have any skin in the game. Hence, free trials don’t always convert well. It’s implied in Cummings and Skok’s advice to potentially narrow down the Wow values sometimes to the core of your product/ service to get the buy-in quickly and explicitly.
  • Track what you can effectively with free trials. Since users oftentimes have little skin in the game and can quickly end or switch to another competing product/ service, you should aim to capture as much detail as effectively possible, and make the trial better to up conversions. Track who signed up for the free trial, what did he/ she do within the free trial? Was there a hiccup? How can you reach out to help him/ her?
    Source: http://thesprogblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Amazed-Face-300×300.jpg

    Converting prospects to free trials can be tough, and then converting from free trials to paid subscribers can be even tougher. Add to that, free trials are oftentimes the only chances you get with those prospects with today’s plethora of options in the market. Thus, you need to weigh the strategy of the free trial heavily. Get your Wow factor apparent to the user to engage them quickly. You’ll know ineffective trials when you aren’t converting to sales or if the users aren’t using the product more than a couple times during the free trial.

    What are your thoughts of the free trial? Where or how else could you make Wow moments in a free trial or even beyond? 
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    Getting Through Dark Moments and the Most Vulnerable Story I’ve Ever Told Publicly

    In light of troughs and darkness, the smallest things can be inspirational. I know what it’s like to be in that trough, and I know what it’s like to feel a bit lost. If you’re an entrepreneur, this can be an hourly thing. Where do you go for inspiration? For motivation when you feel a tinge of failure? Sometimes, you have to dig deep to find the greater goal that reignites the fire within. And sometimes, you need someone to pour a little gas on the spark to get you fired up.

    I wanted to provide you with a few sites, quotes, pictures that has kept me fighting over my entrepreneurial endeavor, too. Hopefully, one of these will inspire you to dig deep and to keep pursuing greater things for you and for those around you.

    • You’re Never Too Old To Start A New Venture, Look At These Famous Entrepreneurs – Digital Synopsis. Like Gordon Gecko in Wall Street 2 said, “[…] the one thing I learned in jail is that money is not the prime asset in life. Time is.” Don’t waste your time, but also, don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to start something. This article has some great graphics of how old different entrepreneurs were when they started their ventures as well as a depiction of various entrepreneurs with their different ideas both successful and failed ones.
    There are TON of inspirational stuff, but I just can’t seem to find them right now. I’ve gotten a mental block. I think in the end, the below graphic is so great, and so true. 
    I’m going to go ahead and make a stop right here like a bus. I’m going to share a somewhat long story below, so you can quit reading here, if you’d like. If so, perhaps you can share some inspirational quotes, stories, articles, or videos of your own? How do you keep motivated?
    ——————————————————————————-
    Here’s One of the Most Vulnerable Stories I’ve Ever Shared Publicly
    I’m sharing one of the worst kept personal secrets so maybe you can draw some inspiration from there…

    I love soccer. It’s the greatest passion in the world for me. Heck, I ran away from home once because my dad told me I wouldn’t be a pro when I was young. Up until high school, I hadn’t played in a competitive league — just rec ball. My freshman year in high school, I was given little chance to make it onto either the JV or Varsity team competing against some really great players who had played at the top level of competitive leagues (Classic, Premier…). I practiced and practiced… a lot on my own. And freshman year, I made the JV team. It was one of the greatest moments in my life. We went undefeated — something like 11-0-1 or 10-0-1 scoring 39 goals for with only 1 against.

    Sophomore year, I tried out again. I made the JV squad again, and a few of my peers got pulled up into Varsity. That year, I also earned the Coach’s Award.
    Junior year… this was it. This was my year to shine! My year to break into the Varsity squad. I played pretty well, and was confident to get in, even riding the wave of the Coach’s Award from the year earlier. Come time to check the board for my name… NOPE. I didn’t make it. In fact, I wasn’t even allowed to play on the JV team. It was the HARDEST day of my life. Having to traverse the halls with all my peers knowing that I didn’t make the team was extremely difficult. It was probably the hardest day of my life holding back tears throughout the day. That day, I went to the park on my own, and just practiced. I did that just about everyday after school to get ready for senior year tryouts vowing to make the team then. 
    Come senior year, I was stoked. I had joined some competition teams since freshman year, and I’d been practicing day in, day out ever since last year’s debacle. Rain or shine, I was out there. I practiced with friends, and if they couldn’t, I practiced and worked on drills on my own. Heck, I even quit orchestra to devote more time after-school to soccer. Come tryouts I was ready. I played pretty solid, so I was ready for my time to shine this time… I didn’t make it again. To know that I failed AGAIN at something that meant so much to me was just… awful. I didn’t know how I was supposed to keep going with the one thing that I loved. At the start of French classes, we used to always start things off going around the room saying what we did yesterday in French. I was a broken record — “J’ ai joué au foot” (I played soccer). What a flop! What a loser to fail AGAIN at his own passion! Well, that day, just like the 365 days before, I went out to the park with a ball and played on my own. 
    Fast forward, and when I entered Tech as a freshman, I found out they had a club team. PERFECT! Yet another chance for me to break into the squad. And without much suspense for (since I’m writing too much), I made the Tech Team. It was an amazing feeling. It wasn’t a varsity team, but it was a team that represented the school. My best friends these days are from that Tech team. We were good. And right now, I play every once in a while on some different leagues throughout Atlanta with the expectations to win the game, the league, whatever. Now, I’m playing WITH those amazing athletes that I had always looked up to.
    I’m definitely not the best, but I’ve come to enjoy soccer that much more. I’ve made some great relationships, and it’s still probably my greatest passion. However, I don’t think I’ll be playing the English Premier League anytime soon. I’m okay with that.
    The moral of the story: If you work hard at your passions, you may still fail. However, you can’t keep your head down because you don’t know what great opportunities may lay in wait. 

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    Who’s poised to profit in this fragmented, online dating world of startups?

    If you’re single and ready to mingle, chances are good you have a number of “online dating” apps on your phone. They’re everywhere — the usual suspects of Match.com, eHarmony, OkCupid (a Match company now actually), Plenty of Fish, etc. are joined by the swipe-addicting Tinder, Hinge, Twine, and so many more. Most of those apps and companies didn’t exist three years ago. However, this post isn’t about dating apps.

    Looking across different industries, you see the same explosive growth in companies. From travel, you’ve got Travelocity, Expedia, Hotwire, Kayak, and Booking.com with more recent newcomers including Airbnb, Hipmunk, SafelyStay, etc. Even in the CRM space you had SAP, Oracle, etc. with their own solutions and then Salesforce has pretty much taken over, but you have to add in the SugarCRM, Zoho, and so many more. Now, let’s also add in the explosion of wearable technologies to be spearheaded by Google’s announcement of a designated OS called Android Wear. Yowza.
    A couple posts ago, I shared some recent trends I had been seeing and perhaps not explicitly said, it’s apparent the suppliers of markets are growing — refer to “Trends for Startups and Ideas to Build the Future“. Each company with its own take on how to do “it” better. So what does this all mean? Where are we headed with all this fragmentation?
    • APIs are a great way for especially software and hardware players to integrate into existing platforms, and enable customers to get set up quickly.
    • The big players are establishing themselves as the common integration point creating another sustainability point with added revenue-stream implications — you can definitely see this in Apple’s App Store, SalesForce’s App Exchange, Facebook‘s ubiquitous login option, and even NCR’s Cloud Services.
    • Smaller startup players will have a frantic fight over the next years to stay in the game and relevant. Switching costs for customers are becoming much lower meaning the power is virtually all in the customers’ hands.
    • Hardware manufacturers are getting in on the exact with APIs such as Thalmic Labs’ Myo Band, Atlas Wearables, Jawbone Up, Logitech peripherals, etc.
    • There will likely be much consolidation in the markets over the next few years as the smaller players get gobbled up by other startups or by the big platform companies themselves. And of course, there will be the natural attrition of startups who just peter out.
    • There’s still significant opportunity for markets where there isn’t an established platform whereby large swaths of companies plug into. Or, you can be an integrator/ middleware connector by which startups connector through you to platforms
    In the end, the the power lays largely with the buyers/ customers in many of these markets as suppliers are so vast. However, it also creates some stumbling blocks for customers to pick the right cloud platform. In the B2C market, for example, fragmentation creates an annoyance for many users where there may be, especially, a social aspect and communities are split. But in the end, customers do win with more innovative solutions in a competitive market. This time of market frenzy will last a few years, I believe, before the consolidations really take place. And at that time, the cycle will restart where startups will sprout up again creating opportunity.
    What are your thoughts on today’s growth of companies and solutions? How do you think the markets will play out? 
    And perhaps more for fun, what dating app are you on? 😉
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    Eating your own dogfood and imitating the late Steve Irwin — Why would you do that?

    Woo! Another article brought to me by a connection on LinkedIn. Or, maybe it was LinkedIn’s own algorithm. Either way, the source is on point! This article is written by Sahar Hashemi (a LinkedIn Influencer, entrepreneur and author) – “Are They Customers or Aliens?”
    Hashemi writes how she started her companies Coffee Republic and Skinny Candy out of her own “selfish” needs. She took the approach to work backwards from a customer’s perspective and needs, and growing up to building a business. Indeed, this is a pretty common approach of many entrepreneurs – personal headaches. However, what she really hones in on in her article is the need for her own team to consistently put themselves in the shoes of the customers. Market research, focus groups, mystery shoppers, and other means can be expensive propositions. Only getting in the face, in a positive way, of customers did they learn. However, putting themselves in their customers’ positions was a key ingredient to Hashemi’s success.
    Hashemi noted how once upon a time, her customers were viewed more as “market segments” rather than living, breathing people. Customers were “behavioural patterns” versus humans. This is where she realized the bridge to her customers had been lost.
    Putting yourself in your customers’ shoes is not a novel idea, but sometimes, it’s a concept startups (okay, general companies) fail to employ. I’ve noticed this to great effect in many ways, and I believe some of the below can be good advice as you’re building your startup…
    (Source: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/business/2013/02/8512907643_3573889703_b1.jpg)
    • “Eating your own dogfood”. This is a term endeared to many where company employees from the top down (CEO to… everyone below) use the company’s product or service as means for testing. You can see this all the time like Google’s Sergey Brin wearing Google Glass everywhere prior to launch (yes, partly as marketing, too).
    (Source: http://images.usatoday.com/life/_photos/2006/09/05/irwin-topper.jpg)
    • Observe like you’re on an episode of National Geographic. The late Steve Irwin and this crazy guy hugging lionstaught us to really understand the focus of our attention, we have to get out there in our subjects’ elements. Hashemi also noted that the key to understanding customer insight is to be out in the field observing customers, not behind a desk.
    (Source: http://customerlensconsulting.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/j0431794.jpg)
    • Step into your Customers’ shoes. Hashemi’s article and the notion of a customer as an alien is funnily familiar to me. With Body Boss, none of us are Strength Coaches. We’ve had light experience training others, but that’s about it. Sadly, that was a big problem. When we started out, we originally built the app how we saw would be best. Watching our customers interact with it, though, we quickly learned we failed in building an app that engaged them appropriately – everything from look and feel, down to the how to track.
    (Source: http://www.optimizebusinessgrowth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/devlopmentpartners.jpg)
    • The importance of communicative customer-partners. I think I’ve said this before where I truly look at our customers at Body Boss as partners. This is because for our success, they must be successful, too. And to do that, you need that feedback loop from your partners on what they like and don’t like to make iterations. Not all customers will be the partners you’re looking for, but if you’re going to really reach a mass audience, you need to get buy-in from your customers to help you with iterations (be okay with some hiccups), and you should be able to reach out at some frequency that doesn’t make you a stalker.
    I just want to hammer this home – even pretending to be your customers and using your product or service is a huge step towards building the right product/ service. In my prior life in consulting, putting myself as an audience member to a presentation made me think about how to perfect my slides. In Body Boss, it’s critical to pretend I’m a coach who may not be as tech savvy and with limited time to work with athletes. As such, design is so critical to get buy-in and engagement. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes, and eat your own dogfood. Your customers (and your company) will thank you for it.

    What are your thoughts on the concept of dogfooding and looking at your product/ service through the lens of your customers? How else could you observe and get valuable feedback from customers? 
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    Trends for Startups and Ideas to Build the Future

    Back in November, I wanted to wrap my head around what was going on in the world. The world has been moving so fast, and if you’re looking to build a successful venture that can withstand some sense of time, I believe you have to either recognize where the world is going, or play a role in building the future.

    At this time, I also read about how many brick and mortar retailers were employing new technology and ideas to combat online retailers, especially Amazon. Retailers will (some already are) tracking your every movement once you’ve walked into the store to understand customer behaviors. Heck, even gas stations such as Tesco are looking to install screens at gas pumps to target advertisements vis-a-vis facial recognition.

    This got me thinking that to build a startup, you can also look at ways to help those who are on the brink of… death. Think about it. With the rise and quicker deaths (or barely living) of companies such as RIM (Blackberry), Kodak, Nokia, etc., it’s imperative for large companies who are far from agile to plant defenses for their own mortality. Perhaps, then, even dying companies when shown a grim future can be a hot market to address. I can’t help but think of also how companies like NCR and IBM pulling at their collars over the shifts from large antiquated point-of-sale (POS) systems to more agile mobile payment cloud solutions.

    So, without further ado, I put together a spreadsheet (woo, spreadsheets) back in November trying to plot out some different trends I’ve been seeing. I’ve included the following fields to try to put some context on the trends in hopes of finding a good position to situate a startup.

    • Trending Towards. What’s the trend?
    • What is it? What is the trend?  What’s happening?
    • Key examples. Who’s involved in this movement?
    • Trending Away From (replacing). What are we moving away from?
    • Who’s Getting Shunned. Who is getting hurt?  Who’s losing market share?
    • Challenges. What are the hurdles of this trend?
    • Opportunities. How can this trend be further cultivated?  How can those getting hurt and losing turn the corner?
    • Opportunists. Who is capitalizing on this trend to not only be involved, but who is establishing themselves as a key winner from this trend?
    My list is just as far as my eye can see, and so it’s apparent I’m not in the details of every industry, nor do I know of all the great startups already around. So, this list is definitely not exhaustive. If you’re looking for a copy of the above, just shoot me a message on LinkedIn and I’ll be happy to send it to you.
    So what are your thoughts of the trends? What are some other trends you see we’re going?
    /by
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    Neo Moments: Seeing the world in a new way… not necessarily in green numbers

    I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned my Neo Moment with you, my blog readers, but I wanted to talk about it and perhaps you’ll have your own. The Neo Moment, to me, is this enlightenment and awakening of Neo, the protagonist in The Matrix. In the Matrix, there was a time when he was resurrected in the first movie, and he woke seeing the world for what it really was. At that moment, he stopped hoping and thinking he was The One, and just firmly knew he was The One. As he awakened to the world around him, he saw the Matrix in all its green numeric beauty.

    My Neo Moment lasted a bit longer than a few seconds, but it was a moment where I started seeing the world much differently. It was when I started living life how I wanted to while also looking for ways to improve the world. To me, it was a moment where I started questioning normal, old-school conventions in favor of more… shall we say, “disruptive” ways of doing things. In many ways, it was my moment where I started coming up with ideas (potentially for different startups) in everyday things. I started just asking random people questions including flight attendants on Southwest on how to improve their provisioning, call center interactions with customers, etc.

    I’m not the only one with a Neo Moment, of course. In fact, I’ve heard of a few Neo Moments recently that have and will continue to have a significant change in my friends’ lives.

    • GiveLiveExplore.com – Matt Trinetti is a friend from Georgia Tech who up and decided that he needed to take a break from the consulting life. He kept hearing this little voice in his head to quit — you can read a recent article he wrote about this in the Huffington Post. In fact, he ended up taking a 7-month sabbatical (spearheaded with a one-way ticket) from a cushy consulting gig to travel to Iceland. The things he learned and experienced taught him so much that he quit his job immediately after his sabbatical, and is now a traveler and writer. 
    • TheWhole-Hearted.com – My new friend from Starbucks Ayan ventured to Brazil as part of her MBA program. Exploring the favellas and watching how technology has proliferated even into these neighborhoods has brought incredible life and opportunity to its people. She’s also been hearing more about how companies need to find purpose and impact the world in a positive way to really thrive — lessons she’s learning in her MBA program. When I met her in December last year, she was confused and unsure of her direction. But since then with all these new experiences, she’s been more and more sure of her direction, and she’s thrilled to be paving the way to finding that intersection of business and purposeful spirituality. She aims to travel the world, and bring that intersection vis-a-vis corporate social responsibility and social enterprise.
    • TitinTech.com – Unsure if I can really say Patrick Whaley’s (CEO) Neo Moment was what really inspired him to push Titin Tech further, but I think it’s definitely lit a particular fire. Patrick had an idea to having weight compression clothing that would fit more naturally on athletes rather than bulky weighted vests. He had this idea early in his life and started working on it in 2006, I believe. In May of 2009, Patrick was mugged and shot and left for dead. He, luckily, survived, and utilized the very-near-death experience to work on his Titin Tech product that much harder, while also using his story to reach audiences as he used his product as part of his recovery. Today, the company is thriving, and he even posted a picture of Titin Tech at the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals practice facility yesterday. The World’s Only Weight Compression Gear. Patented. Boom.
    • My Neo Moment came during my time at Emory getting my MBA. After Georgia Tech, I was always traveling doing consulting. It wasn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, I absolutely loved it. However, I also knew that I wanted to build my own company. I just didn’t think it’d be so soon with Body Boss. I entered the MBA program to be better prepared for business obstacles in the future (a lesson taken from Scouting — “Be Prepared”). What I didn’t realize was the greatest take-away from the MBA program was the time I would get to focus on myself, focus on building Body Boss, workout and play soccer more consistently because I wasn’t traveling. 
    Neo Moments happen all the time to people. They’re watershed events that spur sometimes drastic changes in approaches in life. Many people will have several Neo Moments in their lives. What’s common, I think, is some underlying voice as Matt Trinetti puts it in his article that starts creeping in and whispering to you that something else is calling. That voice eggs you on, and oftentimes, taking a leap into some foreign territory be it traveling, educational experiences, or some near-death experience, that’s where Neo Moments seem to crystallize for people. It’s where people get out of their comfort zones (sometimes unintentionally), and push themselves into places where that little inner voice encourages them.

    For me, I’m thrilled to have found my calling and where I’m heading. It’s incredibly frustrating at times, and forces me to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. However, I’m happy where it’s putting me, and the steps I’m taking.

    What’s a Neo Moment you’ve had? Where/ how do you think your own Neo Moment is taking you?

    /by
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    Four Ways People Think. Know Yours to Be Boss

    You ever see someone who is just wildly successful at whatever YOU’RE trying to be, and then you want to just emulate everything that person does? However, you’re not able to keep up, or you aren’t able to make it work the way you were hoping? Yeah, so that happens to me, too. And so now, this brings me to Inc.com’s article by Geil Browning “The Brain-Based Secret to Getting More Done”.
    I’ve been told I’m like a machine sometimes when I work, but I know others who are just absolute freaks when it comes to productivity. As much as I want to be as successful or more, I know that I have to carve my own path. I want to change the world, sure. But for me to be able to do something as simple as, say, blog everyday like I know David Cummings can do, I know it’s just not something I can (or will) keep up with. Just like working out, I’ve gotta find what’s sustainable for me.
    Browning writes how there are four major ways people think that can shape and impact how they are productive:
    • Structural.As you can imagine, this is the person who formalizes a game plan. It’s got rigidity. It’s got form and structure.
    • Analytical.Every decision is scrutinized to find and implement the best ROI.
    • Social.This type of person is democratic in his/ her approach. This is especially great to create a sense of accountability to the table for everyone.
    • Conceptual.Stuff is just done. There’s a notion that things are WIP (work-in-progress), but productivity here is measured in completion.

    Okay, now that I’m done summarizing the article by Browning, here are my personal thoughts:
    • Team play. In a startup team (or really any team), it’s best to have people with different thinking and different backgrounds. The natural yin-yang and complementing will help your startup find holes in products and strategies. It’s like a good trivia team… you want people who can answer questions for any subject thrown at you.
    • Sustainability.The article mentions New Year’s resolutions (8% actually follow through?!) especially with exercise. Reminds me of an article I read from a trainer who was asked what was the best exercise to lose weight? The trainer responded with, “whichever exercise you enjoy”. You’ve gotta find what works for you, and what you enjoy to really implement anything that will be sustainable.
    • Switch it up! The article (and this very awesome post) is all about finding your natural state of thinking for productivity and just general mind set. However, I think it’s also good to switch it up every once in a while, and spend a day (okay, a few) trying to put a little more structure to your day, if you’re more conceptual. Or perhaps being more social. Not looking for the sustainable part, but spending a little time on the other side of the walls can help you consider other alternatives that can make your process and thinking that much more holistic and perhaps even stronger.
    • Respect.To the point above about team play, this article readily highlights the differences in how others may think. It’s easy to try to push others to your style of thinking, and then getting mad when it doesn’t stick or isn’t considered. This is why those personality profile tests like Myers-Briggs, DISC Profile, etc. are so good for managers to see. It’s important to consider others as individuals and promote their own growth.
    • Consider yourself. The article, at its core, is about knowing yourself. In today’s high-speed, text-a-minute, Facebook-slap-in-the-face society, it’s easy to forget to consider who we are. I’m a big proponent of taking a few minutes every night before bed in reflecting on the day, and think about yourself. What you like, what didn’t you like, what you did well, what made you bored…

    What are your thoughts about what makes you more or less productive than one of your friends or idols? How have you capitalized on one of your strengths to be more productive and effective?
    /by

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