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I’m a big fan of successful entrepreneurs who visit schools and play a big role in the entrepreneurship classes. I recently watched this video of Josh James going back to Brigham Young and sharing some insights. Here are some of the tidbits I took out of it:

Josh dropped out of school, but took the most out of his classes. The only reason he dropped out was that he had learnt so much from his economics, statistics, and entrepreneurship classes, and applied them so well, that it didn’t make sense for him to stay in class when he was bringing in $125 an hour building websites for companies.

As a 4^th year student, him and his buddy turned a $12,000 investment in a CGI script business into a $200,000 sale of the company, which he describes as being “really cool. Like really cool. It beat selling out billable hours by a longshot, even at $125 per hour.”

In their next business, they had 50 employees, and in February 2000, they were sure they were going to fail. They moved to a paid model, and converted 0.05% (that’s not a typo) of customers. They were losing 800 customers a month, mainly small businesses. Of the 50 employees they had, 48 were working on retaining small business users, and just two were working on building the enterprise side. Then, they got calls from eBay and CNet encouraging them to keep doing what they were doing, at which point they took 46 people off of the small business side and put them on the enterprise side. That’s when it really took off, almost exponentially, ultimately leading to the $1.8 billion dollar sale of Omniture to Adobe last October.

Things he did personally that helped make it work:

1)      Reads a ton. Was reading books and magazines by the truckload. He used to read between 30–40 magazines a month, cover to cover.

1. Books and Magazines helped him shape his mentorship. He would read 15 books on a topic, and find the 5 best ones and just really absorb them. He did it on all the stuff he wasn’t familiar with, and when he was done, he would have 5 different opinions by experts, helping him formulate very strong opinions, and gave him more confidence as a young entrepreneur.

2)      Take alot of vacation time. Never work Saturday and Sundays, but work like a dog during the week. And when he vacations, he makes sure he vacations really, REALLY well, not just for himself, but for his kids and his family too.

3)      Puts the same passion at home as he does at the office. There are responsibilities at home that need to be paid attention to (i.e kids, family) that will help fuel you even more at the office.

4)      Get an Assistant as soon as you can afford one.

On where he got his ideas for business:

“They say necessity is the father of invention. Things that annoy me end up fuelling my ideas. Then I heard someone in an entrepreneurial lecture series tell us to make ideabooks. The idea is you write an idea down, you write the marketing plan, the sales plan, the employees you’re gonna get, the profile you want, your competitive advantages, and you just keep writing and writing and writing, and the next day, you move on to the next idea, unless you’re still so drawn to the last idea, in which case keep writing. And when you find one that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.”

On starting a business:

“First of all, you have to make sure you have the right profile. If you’re too averse to risk, just don’t start a business. The number one problem people have is that they have ideas and they talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, but never do anything about it. And then they go to some professors, and the professors tell them “well you have to think about this this and that”… NO YOU DON’T.  Just start it, and I promise you, when you’re spending your own money on it, you’re going to pay a lot of attention on it!”

On getting your first sale:

“Do anything .. ANYTHING.. you can to win your first customers. As long as it’s not … (long awkward pause)… immoral… it might be borderline not legal, but as long as it’s not immoral, then whatever it takes. You gotta win those first customers. We had a customer come visit us, and i had all my friends come visit us wearing suits like they’re working on who-knows-what, pretending like they were working on stuff! Do whatever it takes to get those sales”

More on the first customers:

“Never give anything away for nothing. You may find you need to discount your price, but never give stuff away for nothing. If someone wants to pay less, you have to come back and ask them what they’re going to do to make up that difference. What kind of press release are you going to get? What kind of events are you going to speak and tout us at? What else are you going to do to make up the price difference? Never give away stuff for nothing”

On First-Time Entrepreneurs:

“It boggles my mind that people aren’t focussing more on revenue, revenue, revenue. Who cares if the desk isn’t put together, or some guy sent you an email you haven’t replied to, or some other guy wants you to attend some chamber of commerce meeting? Go after revenues. Sales is all that matters in the beginning. And if you can’t get a sale, THEN you go back and fix the product. But as soon as it is barely good enough to sell it, you sell it!”

On Business Ideas:

“For the most part, I don’t want a unique ideas There’s maybe a couple unique ideas that have turned into big businesses. But if there’s alot of people in the space, it’s vindication that people are willing to pay for it, it means there’s a market, it means you can make some money, it means you can compete, and it means you can be better faster stronger, especially if there’s only small players in the field.”

There’s a ton of good stuff in this video, and this is already a way longer blog post than I like to write, so I strongly suggest you check it out.

As a creative person with an embarrassing set of art and design skills, let me be the first to say that I was very excited as well as quite intimidated by this morning’s talk at Social Media Breakfast. The word “Design” is usually something I stiffen up at… It makes me a liiiittle nervous, despite my attempts to be better at it, so I usually rely upon the people in my circle who know the stuff in and out. So “Design Thinking”, by extension, is no easier for me to swallow.

Luckily, I put that mindset aside and made my way to SMBOttawa this morning at the Gowlings Ottawa offices. It was my first time there, and the setup is great. Outside of a bit of feedback in the speakers, it was a well executed event. It’s always nice to meet people again, and I’ve been a bit AWOL from the Ottawa Scene as I’ve been travelling alot and trying to launch a targetted social media practice.

I showed up slightly behind schedule by about 15 minutes, and the room was already packed. I was talking to a partner at Gowlings this morning, and I agree with his perspective: The people that come out to events like these have a distinct colour and energy to them, and it’s a pleasure to be a part of it.

Okay, that aside, Dom Saul from Akendi captured my mind today. This was my first ever SMBOttawa event, and his input on things expanded my mind a bit. He talked alot about psychological and behavioural things that technical and social media folks tend to forget. The point is to engage your user base and make it easier for them to communicate with you and with first-degree peers, and then to give them the option to push out content to their next levels of their networks

I think we use these words often — “user-centred” or “user-centric” or “user-friendly” — but Dom brought in Bailey’s Performance Model and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to help explain why every product (whether social media initiative or not) needs to be user-centred, and that users need to be thoroughly understood. It’s more than just ease of use, it’s about ease of integration and ease of accessibility, and building the product to fit the end-users’ online profile and thought patterns.

For us, on top of using our innovative product offering to maximize existing SocMed platforms, we are conoisseurs of building out proprietary platforms for our clients, should that need be deemed appropriate for the organization’s goals. I caught myself nodding my head in agreement to Dom’s insights with respect to understanding context of use, and the behaviours and standards by which users guide their activities, both online, and in real life. Ultimately, solutions need to meet needs; and users have both recognized AND unrecognized needs. Our goal is to meet as many (and preferably all) of those as possible.

So to recap, here are my key takeaways from this morning’s event.

• Social Media is changing how people are living, and changing people’s worlds. Using it to push civil liberties in Iran and Kenya show the ultimate human rights side of the type of impact social media can have.
• People’s optimal performance considers both the tasks which they need to accomplish, as well as their context. This means that people may accomplish their tasks more effectively based upon their environment, their technical literacy, their goals, and even something as small as the temperature their room is set to.
• Good Products fulfill expectations. Great Products fulfill desires. Remarkable Products fulfill unrecognized needs.
• Social Media is not just about people becoming content creators. Creation is just the beginning of the process. The pleasure of owning a camera does not end once the picture or video has been taken; In fact, that’s the beginning of the process. On top of creating that content, there is editing, saving, sharing, and propagating that takes place. We need to understand the process that people go through with their content.
• Products must be integratable (Across platforms and devices) and scalable (across hardware and software platforms).

Needless to say, I’ll be at the next one!

Okay Okay, not trying to be morbid. Just trying to get everyone to reflect a tiny bit. You know that day’s gonna come anyways. We’ve probably heard of the phenomenon of people having death parties before they actually die, in order to be a part of the celebration of their life.

Why don’t we try somthing a bit similar?

Deliver your own 3 minute eulogy. Tell us what you want to be remembered by, and how you’d like to be spoken about after your own passing.

How do you want to be remembered? If you died tomorrow (which I don’t wish on anyone!), would people think about you the way you wish to be thought of when you DO actually pass on? What example/examples do you think the speaker would touch on to show that you were kind to everyone, or that you never betrayed another human being.

And if you’re not there, then as long as the power of the breath flows through your lungs, then it’s not too late. Our time is limited. Definitely I encourage you to be who you want to be, but also be who you want to be remembered as. And if those are two different things, maybe it‘s time to reflect on your life.

You may know that for the past few years, I’ve been participating in the Stroll for Liver, an event by the Canadian Liver Foundation that began in Ottawa after the unexpected death of a close friend’s cousin in 2005.

At the time, Trisha Nagpal was 18 years old — not to mention, a popular youth leader and exceptional student  — and had developed liver disease, and no one could figure out why. Many of the symptoms of Liver Disease are so primitive (i.e swollen feet), that the signs often go ignored or unnoticed. In Trisha’s case, it took just 11 days from the day she was admitted till she eventually succumbed to the disease. Read her full story here.

Furthermore, Liver Disease patients are commonly sterotyped as drug or alcohol abusers. In reality, these are just two of the over 100 causes of liver disease.

I understand that in these tough financial times, we are picking the charities we support with greater scrutiny. If you are unable to support financially, send me a quick email or note with a nice message, and I’ll be sure to share it with the family. Emotional support is often just as important as financial support.

Please click here to make your donation. If you wish to donate in cash as opposed to credit card, send me a note on my contact form, and I’ll see if there’s a way we can facilitate that! My goal is $1000.00, though I’m hoping to far surpass that. Feel free to pass on this link to anyone you think might be interested. And of course, if you want to take part yourself, you can do that as well!

Thank you so much for your time.

It was a long time coming, but #GenYOTT got back on track with a fantastic evening of fun, networking, and education last night!

Once again, #GenYOTT had over 100 registered attendees, a now common occurrence for the events. But what was remarkable about last night was the large amount of first-time-attendees! I have never seen that many new faces at a #GenYOTT, and it shows that there’s significant traction being made in the community when more than half of yesterday’s attendees were first-timers.

Among the first timers I was privileged to meet were Ben Myers, from Napkyn, Travis Boisvenue from MediaStyle (which is the brainchild of #GenYOTT’s first ever guest speaker, Ian Capstick), Esha Abrol, from EDC, as well as owner of at least two of her own small companies, Nimit Malavia and Sabrina Persaud, Anny Le, Dylan Blanchard, Gordon Smith, a member of the Canadian National Cycling team, and others!

The event began with my breaking two royal rules. I showed up late, despite being an organizer, and, possibly even worse… I wore a blazer! Yes, I wore a blazer to formalize myself up, and I fully blame David Hicks for this. Not because I’m trying to impress him or anything, but because this blog post last month about dressing well has resonated with me, and I’m attempting to make the effort.

Brian Alkerton, one of the founders of the #GenYOTT movement, delivered the presentation today, and I thought he did a great job at mixing humour and content to keep the crowd engaged. He talked about making mistakes early (or for the entrepreneurial nerds in the audience, the “fail hard, fail fast” rule), and learning their associated lessons to make you stronger. His unique sense of humour had everyone laughing and learning all at once.

This month, #GenYOTT focussed in on a part of our community, Isabelle Rivard, aka @Spoonsie, who will be biking from Vancouver to Austin, TX, to raise money for Cancer research. She’s aiming for a $10,000 goal, so if you want to help her reach her goal, check out http://www.isaonabike.com

Once again, we were at Foundation, which provides us a fantastic venue with a large open area, as well as access to the bar. It’s a great place to hold an event, but as a community movement, we’re always looking for suggestions for other venues. So, as it is with any aspect of #GenYOTT, if you have any suggestions or concerns for future events, or the future of the community, leave a comment or give one of us a shout!

Gold

Geek Meditation from www.geekculture.com

I’m kinda annoyed!

So I’m hanging out on Slashdot right now, and I saw this headline: BlackBerry Predicted a Century Ago By Nikola Tesla

Okay. A century ago? So basically, the guy shared some psychotic ideas, and now we’re in marvel at his “prophetic abilities”? Not a CHANCE. I woulda been impressed if he said it would emerge from the southeastern tip of a province in Canada, or that it would be named after fruit. But just the description he gave doesn’t impress me.

But since the dude got on the front page of Slashdot, he clearly had the right idea… So… let me go on the record now, so that the world can name bridges and continents after me in 200 years:
In some time in the future, home automation will include food. So when you’re done with your apple and all that’s left is the core, you just have to throw it in the air, and it’ll automatically find its way to the garbage.

There. I said it.

We officially live in a world where prophecizing the next 5 years is more difficult than prophecizing the next century. Things are changing so fast that having a specific idea about the near-future is an ability that a handful of awesome people have.

But prophecizing. Now THAT’S the legacy builder, for sure! If we all just filled out notebooks with the most off-the-wall, crazy ideas we could think of, and then published it online somewhere, left a copy in our will for our great great grandkids… I’m sure we’d be bound to be right on one thing or another. After all, Nostradamus prophecized the end of the world in 2000, but he’s still a legend even though he was wrong.

Every year, I make a pact at playoff time — providing, of course, that the Sens make it — that I will wear a piece of Ottawa Senators clothing each and every day that the Senators remain in the playoffs. My car is consistently decorated with flags, and I wear my passion on my sleeve when it comes to the Senators.

But this past week sure has been a tough week as a Sens fan! We win game 1 of this first round series, and then get beat down 3 times in a row to go down 3–1 in the series.

On Wednesday, I wore my Sens jersey to a meeting, and one of the senior executives of the company I was visiting commented on my wearing a Sens jersey, even though we had just been spanked 7–4 the night before. I told him “just because things don’t look so good, it doesn’t mean you give up.”

It happens to the best of us. We’ll go weeks or even months at a time living on cloud 9, and all of a sudden, one day, we’ll wake up and find ourself doubting our passions, or doubting our abilities. Those are some of the worst days for an entrepreneur. It’s never a good day when you doubt yourself, your abilities, or your discipline.

But it’s important to keep the conviction. To put it in hockey terms, it’s important to “leave it all on the ice”. Coincidentally, that’s exactly what the Sens did tonight. I just finished watching the 6-period marathon, and there definitely were times where I’ll admit that I thought we were done tonight.

But that’s why it’s the guys on the ice who get it done. Sometimes, even your closest friends and supporters will doubt your abilities. But when it comes down to performing, you have to have full belief in yourself and your choices and your situation. Even when things look down, don’t give up on yourself. There’s a whole world of people out there who have the option of giving up on you. As an entrepreneur, you do NOT have that option. You must never give up on yourself.

Go Sens Go! An inspiration for the community, and now, an inspiration for my entrepreneurial initiatives!

I had the great pleasure, with the gracious help of Jen Butson and Brian Alkerton, to host Scott Stratten, aka UnMarketing this past Friday.

The event brought together Ottawa’s Twitter community to meet Scott, one of Twitter’s most influential tweeters, and a social media conoisseur who speaks at events all around the continent. Most recently, Scott keynoted at PubCon, which, surprisingly, doesn’t actually stand for “Puberty Convention”.

Interesting fact: Scott was in fact an Ottawa boy until Grade 3. He was immediately poisoned into becoming a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, but the Leafs’ sheer horribleness served as the antidote to that disease, prompting Scott to make this difficult decision.

For me, it was a nice opportunity to meet the guy who helped me the most in my early twitter days, and who gave me the advice to follow people like Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki, and Elizabeth Potts Weinstein.

For those who missed it, or those who have yet to meet him, Scott’s as funny and down to earth as he comes across on Twitter, and is one of the easiest people to talk to, second only to Alison Kramer, aka NummiesBras, who also joined us at the event.

I went out of my way to make Scott feel as welcomed as possible, by exposing an embarrassing picture of him from his younger days, as well as introducing him with constant little digs. Scott took it all in stride, though… at least I think he did. If I get any mysterious packages delivered to my house, I’ll assume it’s him getting his revenge.

A huge thank you to Scott for coming up with the idea of doing a tweetup in the first place. Big thanks to the #GenYOTT supporters, the Yummy Mummy Clubbers and all of the other people in the Twitter community that supported the event. Scott thanks you, I thank you, and Foundation thanks you! Hope to see you at the next #GenYOTT on May 20th, 2010!

Dear Microsoft Hotmail,

I typically do live off the virtue that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all, but I feel the nicest thing I can do for you is to tell you just how much you suck. You suck so badly. The one good thing I can say about your suckiness is that it is so utterly consistent that I question why I would have ever thought that you didn’t suck. You have sucked for years, and you continue to suck to this day. I only hope your sucking streak ceases in the near future.

Before I continue, let’s remember the Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. A life-changing video, a great book, with tons of great life lessons. One of them was that when people stop criticizing you, that’s when they’ve stopped caring. You suck, Hotmail. I mean that in the most caring way possible. You suck. Please do something about your suckiness.

When I made my move over to Gmail in 2005, the single biggest reason was interface. You’re ugly. Gmail’s not. In those superficial love blogs and magazine articles, the theory is that in men, success is the attraction factor for women, and this typically increases with age for men.

On the flip side, the attraction factor that works for men when they look at a woman (according to these theories) is beauty, and supposedly, this decreases with age. Let me just say, that if that theory is actually true, then GMail is that younger, funner, more exciting, enthralling woman for me. (Yes, this is how you know I’ve officially committed to a life of Web 2.0, where my email account is my primary love interest) Does Gmail have flaws? Definitely! Can I work around them really really really really easily? YES! You?… not so much.

But all hope is not lost! For one, you’re not a person! That’s a HUGE plus! Second, you’ve got tons of money supporting you for all the plastic surgery you could possibly want!! And if you want some suggestions on what to fix first, the Twitter community will have PLENTY of those. Let me just give you four of my own.

1) I know this is supposedly bad business practice, but please stop trying to come up with that next big thing idea for email. Please. You’ve missed so many steps along the way, it’d be like building a third floor on a one-story bungalow. Please just effectively CATCH UP to the standard instead of trying to outdo it.

2) I know you’re a free service, which probably makes it hard for your multibillion dollar sugar daddy to spend much money on you, but as gmail and others have shown, it’s a beautiful way to deliver targeted ads, if done properly. IF DONE PROPERLY.

3) You need some serious help on functionality. If I can’t use you easily at a high level, you’re wasting my time. How come it’s so difficult to only see my unread emails in one view? In Gmail, all i have to do is type “is: unread” in the search bar, and BAM, all my unread emails are automatically brought to the forefront. Why cant you be that easy?!?!?

4) You still hold a special place in my heart, but that place’s walls are caving in. That whole “integrate msn into email” thing was a nice attempt to catch up to Gmail, but i find it SO buggy and so detrimental to the rest of my email experience, that I think it actually makes the experience worse. So when I say catch up to the standards, either fix that, or just scratch it. To thine own self be true, Hotmail. To thine own self. You are the turkey ham of Mitch Hedberg’s comedy routine.

But all is not lost!!! Let me leave you with two things you do for me that GMail doesn’t.

1) I like that you have folders. I mean the whole labels thing is cool, but I’m a bit of a neat freak in email, and I see value in folders.  I can live without it, but it does make life easier. It’s nowhere near a good enough reason to leave GMail altogether.  But i like that you do that

2) I like that you let me insert contacts from my contact list right into my emails. GMail still struggles with that one. In fact, this is one major plus you have over Gmail.

All in all, I still like you. But really just as a friend. And as your friend, you need to know what the deal is. Ramp up your game, Hotmail. You’ve still got some beauty in you. I mean you’ve stil got a whole lotta ugly, don’t get me wrong. But let’s work on making you beter. Please.

Love,

Japman