Book: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
You’re Not Your Job Title
“You’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank. You’re not your job. You’re not your family, and you’re not who you tell yourself.”
– C. Palahniuk
– C. Palahniuk
Tired of being a peon? Looking to get a promotion or more responsibilities? Or something bigger and better in your career?
The first step is to realize that you are not your job title.
That’s right, you’re not. Don’t let it define you and what you can do.
So your title says you’re a “developer,” yet you really want to be a bigger part of your team? Then don’t just write code all day long. Offer product suggestions, marketing ideas, and UI design feedback.
But don’t just spew out any ole’ thing that comes to your mouth. Having a lot of poorly thought out suggestions doesn’t help anymore. “We should make the navigation blue.” “Why?” “Because I want to be a bigger part of the team, and I really like blue.”
Nope. You’ve got to offer helpful suggestions. The best way to do this is to learn more about the product and understand the business.
A product director once gave me this advice: “Think of yourself as the CEO.”
That’s good advice. You start to see things differently when you think of yourself as the top person in charge. Now you have to worry about your customers, your competitors, the market, your expenses, your balance sheet, your team dynamics, etc.
This helps frame your suggestions. It’s not about making the navigation blue anymore, it’s about doing what’s best for the customer, while weighed against the strengths of your company vs your competitors and the market trends.
It’s not easy to do this. There are all sorts of barriers, from insecure colleagues who’ll feel threatened by your initiative, to the fear of making big mistakes with decisions with which you have little experience.
It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible. Go ahead and take the initiative anyways. If others feel threatened by you and try to sabotage your progress, what’s the worst that could happen? They fire you? Then I’d argue that your team had the wrong dynamic for you anyways, and that you should have just quit.
Frightened? Think of your mistakes as learning lessons. They’ll be much more valuable than what you can get out of a book, you know. You can also hedge your bets by soaking up knowledge and advice from more experienced people that you admire, like role models.
But make sure you realize that not all of your suggestions will be taken. You’re thinking like the CEO, but you’re not the CEO. At the end of the day, the actual CEO is the person entrusted to make the right decisions for the business. You’re at the company because you trust the CEO to do that.
Decisions shouldn’t be made by consensus; there will be many decisions with which you don’t agree. And you’ll make many suggestions that which others will not agree. At the end of the day, it’s more important to make some decision and move forward all together. That’s part of thinking like a CEO.
If you don’t like it, quit and join another company. Or start your own!
Until then, remember: You are not your job title. Think of yourself as the CEO. And soon you’ll be moving on to bigger and better places in your career!
Stupid in America
The education field is one that is near and dear to my heart. Ideally, I’d love to create a business in the education (or environmental) fields. While my first business may not be education-related, that’s my ultimate goal.
So from time to time, I collect information and research on America’s education system. Here’s an interesting video from ABC news show 20/20: “Stupid in America” by Josh Stossel. It’s a 40+ minute segment that covers some frightening (though potentially biased & sensationalized) issues about American public schools.
It doesn’t just cover unruly classrooms and low grades; it also covers the difficulties of school budgets, public schools vs private learning centers, the shocking number of bad teachers, the harm of teacher’s unions, the school system as a monopoly, the politics of the education system, and charter vs non-charter schools.
(Thanks for the link, Sandy!)
Choosing the Right Business Cards
Here’s an interesting new problem. Without a full-time employer with a brand and existing stationary, I now find myself needing business cards for when I’m meeting new people and making new business contacts.
But what to use, what to use. Hmm. There are two that particularly caught my eye: MOO’s MiniCards and gapingvoid’s Streetcards. Many friends tell me to get VistaPrint’s Business Cards too, since they’re free.
MOO’s MiniCards
For $19.99 US, plus shipping, you get 100 MOO MiniCards. They are smaller than normal business cards (28mm x 70mm) and printed on thicker stock. You can customize the back of your card with your own photos or ready-made photos. For your own photos, you can choose from your Flickr, Fotolog, Vox, Bebo, LiveJournal, Second Life, or Habbo accounts, or upload them from your desktop. These cards are especially popular among designers, artists, photographers, etc.
I must admit, I like MOO’s MiniCards. It’s a really neat idea. I did find it tough choosing which photos to use, however. So I experimented a bit: like photos of myself (I dunno, I thought people might want that to remember who I was?) to photos of funny scenes & inanimate objects. So far, the most popular one is a photo of a whiteboard sketch a friend made of me once.
The size of the MiniCards aren’t the easiest to deal with either. Since they’re on thicker stock, they don’t fit in my wallet or business card case easily. Since they’re smaller, I don’t know if other people will have an easy time holding on to them. But they’re still pretty neat and memorable.
gapingvoid’s Streetcards
For $29.95 US, plus shipping, you get 50 gapingvoid Streetcards. They are the same size as normal business cards (89mm x 53mm) and you can order them matt laminated for about $44.75 US. The backs of the cards feature cartoons (some hilarious, some odd, some irreverent) from Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid.com. According to the web site, these cards are popular among bloggers like Joichi Ito and Jeff Jarvis.
I like lots of Hugh’s cartoons, but most of the cartoons available to the Streetcards don’t seem to make great business cards for me. Some just seem… I dunno… weird. I haven’t gotten any yet; I haven’t decided which cartoon I want.
VistaPrint’s Business Cards
For just the cost of shipping, you get 250 VistaPrint Business Cards. They are the same size as normal business cards (89mm x 53mm) and you can order their Premium Business Cards for $19.99 US (also for a pack of 250). There are 42 ready-made designs, though you can only customize one side of the card. Since these are free, I’m guessing these are popular among scrappy entrepreneurs and money-tight freelancers.
There’s a reason why they’re free though. Their ready-made designs, well, are kinda “eh.” To their credit, you do get a lot more design flexibility and choices when you pay for them—including the ability to add your own logo (but not background image), print the text horizontally or vertically, and choosing from hundreds of other designs. But after a quick browse through those other premium designs, I’m still left with an “eh.”
BTW, I noticed that after jumping back and forth from the VistaPrint web site and going through part of an order flow, I noticed that all of the prices have suddenly been discounted. The Premium Business Cards are now $5.99. Clever marketing move on their part!
Which of these business card printers do you like or use? Know of any other good ones?
Don’t Be a Cafe Wifi Moocher
Know the term “moocher”? A moocher is, according to Urban Dictionary:
some one who uses you [for] there own good but never returns the favor.
Yesterday, I wrote about working in cafes. When I first started doing it, I admit I might have, well, sort of, you know, lingered over a table while nursing one small cup of iced tea the whole day. Yea.
Then one of my favorite cafes, Canvas in San Francisco, closed down. That place was frequented by cafe workers like me. Dozens of us would squat there for hours, while consuming a total of three and a half cups throughout the entire day.
“We were never able to make a decent profit” said one of the sad signs posted around the cafe. “So we’re sorry to announce that we’ll be shutting our doors. Thank you for your patronage.”
I don’t know what caused their shortfall exactly. High rent? Expensive supplies? Lots of debt? Or maybe… cafe wifi moochers?
The article “Free WiFi spawns cafe backlash” by Nate Anderson of Ars Technica sure seems to indicate cafe wifi mooching as a profit drain.
It was this problem that led one Seattle coffee shop to start shutting off the WiFi on weekends last year. Not only did revenue go up, but the atmosphere in the cafe changed as well.
The article also relates how cafe workers tend to make other patrons feel less inclined to talk, thus decreasing the sociability of the cafe. Personally, I go to cafes so there’s a healthy and lively level of chatter all around me. I try not to eavesdrop (though sometimes, it just sort of happens), but as a former New Yorker, I like the energy of being around lots of people.
But from now on, I’ll resolve to be less of a cafe wifi moocher and more of a consumer. I’ll still work in cafes, but I’ll make frequent purchases and chalk it up as my cafe wifi rent.
I’d encourage all other cafe workers to do the same too. C’mon, let’s pay our cafe wifi rent with more than just a small latte!
My Office: The Cafe
Friends keep asking me, “What exactly do you do nowadays?”
“Drink lots of coffee,” I tell them. Which—back in my roles as an engineering manager and later, a product manager—was what I mostly did then anyways.
Except now, my office is whichever cafe I go to.
It’s a great lifestyle. Sometimes I’m meeting with a friend to talk about business ideas. Sometimes I’m meeting with an ex-coworker to catch up on old times, plus talk about business ideas. And other times, I’m on my laptop, researching business ideas.
Some people quit their full-time jobs and jump into entrepreneurship only after they’ve come up with The Great Idea. A few of them even start The Great Idea while still employed.
Me, I took a riskier route. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So I took my savings, calculated out how long I could survive on them, and made the leap.
I have a bunch of ideas too. Some could be great, some are mediocre, some totally suck ass. Not all are web-based either, though web-based businesses are much easier to start, because of their low capital costs (free software rules). So I’ll probably aim for a web-based business first.
But I’ve learned that ideas are the easy part. Planning and executing is the tough part. The relatively low barriers to entry for web-based businesses mean lots of competition. If you have a great idea, chances are, a competitor will sprout up a few months later. Being first-to-market doesn’t necessarily give you an edge. It’s more about having a great product, great marketing, and a sound business model.
That’s where all the chatting with friends and market research comes in. Who knows when a random news story, market report, friend, or ex-coworker could ignite an idea spark that leads to The Great Idea? Or more finely tune one of my existing ideas?
And that’s why I’m here, working in a cafe. My new office.
Is It Better to Start a Company at 25 or 45?
An entry that Fred Wilson wrote back in May has been stuck in my mind. What’s the optimal age of being an entrepreneur?
It’s a bit of a contentious question. He started by asking innocently, “Do you know any 45 year old entrepreneurs?” Or rather, one of his friends asked him that.
Then Nick Denton of Valleywag picked it up and asked, “Is 30 too old to start a company?“, adding more fuel to the fire. Denton also selected some media darlings and compared the ages at which they founded their companies:
Finally, Clay Shirky weighed in with what he referred to as the (Bayesian) Advantage of Youth:
I’m old enough to know a lot of things, just from life experience. I know that music comes from stores. I know that you have to try on pants before you buy them. I know that newspapers are where you get your political news and how you look for a job. …
In the last 15 years or so, I’ve had to unlearn every one of those things and a million others. This makes me a not-bad analyst, because I have to explain new technology to myself first — I’m too old to understand it natively. But it makes me a lousy entrepreneur.
So is 25 really a better age to start a company than 45?
Personally, I agree with Wilson’s conclusion: “I don’t totally buy that age matters. I think, as I said in my original post, that age is a mind set.”
Shirky has a point about inexperienced minds being able to make connections that more experienced minds wouldn’t see. Age can usually offer that, but not always. I know some really dumb young people.
One can also train one’s mind to think more creatively. IDEO is a famous example of a company that’s done just that. Then there’s also the Conceptual Innovator vs Experimental Innovator effect as well. So if you’re not 25 anymore, don’t lose heart!
What I believe to be more of a factor is not making mental connections and creativity — but risk. Creative thinking can strike at almost any age. But being able to take grand risks doesn’t; at least, not really.
In our society, the older we become, the more likely we’re in a situation where we have to care for a house & mortgage, an immediate & extended family, and a host of other responsibilities.
Compare that to a fresh college graduate with only him/herself and some school loans, and what do you see? A younger adult who’s realistically able to take greater risks.
That’s just an assumption, of course. But when Entrepreneur magazine recently published their “2007 Hot 500 Fastest-Growing Businesses in America” results, I thought: Ah!
What did they find was the average age of the entrepreneurs in their Hot 500? Forty-four! 44 years of age, for the average entrepreneur of one of America’s fastest growing businesses. Food for thought!
Their survey cover all sorts of businesses, tech and non-tech. Wilson, Denton, and Shirky, I believe, were thinking mainly about technology businesses. So it’s possible I’m comparing red apples to green apples here – same topic, but slightly different versions of that topic.
Still, I’m hopeful. It’s not the age that matters, it’s the mindset, the creativity, and the courage to take a big risk that matters.
Annoyancetech
Over the weekend, a friend told me about a device that scrambles mobile phone signals. That means that no calls can be picked up by the mobile phones within this device’s range.
He knows a guy who regularly carries such a device into movie theaters and restaurants, so that he can enjoy a nice, quiet, mobile-phone-less evening.
Before you rush out to buy one, I should let you know that this device is illegal in the United States (sorry).
But don’t lose heart. There’s a new trend of devices called “annoyancetech” that basically provide relief from annoyances, according to Trend Hunter Magazine.
A slew of gadgets have been invented recently with a range of social applications, from a jacket that zaps gropers on the subway to a harmless device that gets dogs to stop barking, to the Xcuse box, a contraption that produces background noise for phone conversations to let you fool other (sic) about your actual whereabouts.
Think of all the great social applications! The next time someone tailgates you on the highway, there’ll be a device that starts flashing bright red warning lights saying “Back Off!” Or, the next time someone farts, there’ll be a device that emits the gentle counter-balancing scent of flowers. Or, gosh, the possibilities are endless!