on suicide and entrepreneurship

Because entreneurship is so misunderstood and suicide is such a sensitive subject I felt the need for a few disclaimers when I did this blog post on Governor Rick Perry’s business tax increases in Texas. I was very careful with my wording to be as respectful as possible, yet be honest about the visceral reaction I had when I read about the tragedy in Austin. I will let that post stand for itself and add nothing further.

Yet in the process of writing that post I did a bunch of research on entrepreneurship and suicide and those notes turned into this post. It is not particularly well organized. Sorry, they were just notes so here goes…

First – I don’t agree with suicide. And nobody can make the case for murder. But we have all heard the stories about business men jumping out of windows after the crash of 1929. And more recently the son who had the courage to testify against his father the crook took his own life. So you can’t argue it’s just the “guilty capitalists” who lose.

And there is apparently a correlation between entrepreneurship and suicide as well. You have to be crazy to start a business to begin with (only partially kidding) so this isn’t surprising. The book For Entrepreneurs Who Considered Suicide When Business Got Tough! tells a story to prevent business owners from making that mistake.

The anchorwoman says, “like many of the three million entrepreneurs who have committed suicide, John Dough was depressed by failed business alliances and naysayers who criticized him for quitting his corporate job to pursue his dream.”

This article on the collateral damage of economic recessions clarifies the statistics.

Unknown to many, people who commits suicide in the wake of economic recessions and financial crises are not individuals with pre-existing mental illnesses.  They are commonly middle-aged men on the verge of debt and bankruptcy.

Add to that most entrepreneurs are men. And (sadly) men are four times more likely to commit suicide. This was news to me as I thought the stereotype was of a young woman. From wikipedia on the epidemiology of suicide regarding gender.

In the United States, males are four times more likely to die by suicide than females.

And then lets throw in race and add another bit of trivia I was unaware of:

In 2003, in the United States, whites were nearly 2.5 times more likely to kill themselves than were blacks or Hispanics.

Oh that’s just great. Sheesh, nobody mentioned THAT when we were in college being told that white males had it easy. e.g. “The Pinto is a great economical car that you can afford and we should mention IT HAS A HIGHER LIKELIHOOD OF BLOWING UP!”

And the correlation between failed businesses and suicide isn’t specific to the United States. In fact apparently we do a better job of accepting failure than other countries like Japan. From this post called “Japan: To Fix Your Economy, Honor Your Failed Entrepreneurs” by Vivek Wadhwa

In any country, innovation and economic growth come from startup ventures.  But most Japanese don’t want to take the risk of starting a business.  Indeed, the social stigma and financial repercussion of failure are so great that the founders of failed businesses become social outcasts; no one will work with them again or fund them; and all too often they end up committing suicide.

Entrepreneurs are crazy enough to think that “sure, 90+ percent of start-ups fail, but I’ll be in that minority that makes it!”

As a young man I remember talking to a friend and my point was “if you are considering suicide, why not just up and go on an adventure? If you are working the fishing boats in Alaska you are alive and enjoying life, right? If things are so bad, just leave?” That logic worked for me in my formative years. As I have gotten older I have learned to be more sympathetic on a very complex subject. This recent post by Jenny really highlights the correlation between mental illness and suicide. You can watch the coming out video here.

Money problems are common for entrepreneurs. We are like that. If we have a nest egg we risk it again and keep attacking. This isn’t rational, I get that. But the country need us. We create jobs. We create the economic growth that generates the wealth that pays the taxes so we can educate the kids. If you want public sector employees you need private sector jobs to pay for them.

Entrepreneurs are risk takers. I don’t know why. Me? Well, 13 years ago I had two investors lined up for 10k each (sounds funny in hind sight) and one client doing 1200/month. The client fired me, he was also one of the investors so I lost one investor. Ethically I had to tell the other investor and they backed out. Three young kids at home, the youngest 2 years old, my spouse was not working and I had 7k. And I quit to start a company. That’s not “business minded entrepreneurship.” That is just PLAIN STUPID. I have NO idea what I was thinking or why my wife put up with it. She got a job and it eventually worked out. Miraculously I am still married. My point is that just isn’t rational behavior. It isn’t. And I am the one that did it. Why? I really don’t know. And I was 100% positive that I would be successful. And for the record, “I” did NOT do it, but with a TON of help from family and friends and the Houston community WE did do it. We are still here and proud to serve our clients. THANK YOU!

See what I did there? I told the creation story (all true) and the success story (where we are now) but I left off the part about being screwed over by a former business partner, losing a best friend, finding a trusted employee stealing from you and having to fire them. I left off being sued because a water pipe broke in our building and we flooded another suite (no fault of ours, but we got sued anyway). I left off the part about former sales-people stealing leads for billion dollar companies and feeding them to their friends for a kick back. I left off the part about the second mortgages. I left off the part about almost going out of business in 2001. I left off the part about oil companies and financial companies stealing employees right after you get them trained. I left off the heart wrenching loss you feel when you lose a major client. I left all of that off that last paragraph.

I left all of that off because that is what mother culture tells you. If you listen to the stories it goes “Jeff Bezos rode across the country, wrote a business plan while his wife drove, and is now worth billions.” – I don’t know Jeff but I bet if you KNEW Jeff he would tell you it wasn’t that easy. I may not know Jeff, but I bet he worked his ass off and has earned everything he has. (side note- I have met him several times and he was very nice and gracious every time.)

So if you are an entrepreneur reading this, realize a few things. You are different. Not better nor worse than other people. But different. The biggest audience that has to accept it when you fail, as we mostly do, is you. Let it go. Just let it go. You didn’t care when everyone told you that you couldn’t start a business so please don’t care what they think now. If you accept it, it will be OK. Accept the failure and embrace the lessons you learned. Get help and get back on the bike. The rest of the country and the planet needs you to go back to risk taking and creating jobs! Seriously – we need you.

OK, now quit with the negative thinking and go make some jobs. Yes. You. You may be feeling down but I’m pretty darn sure you aren’t out of ideas for great products. Go. Go invent something amazing. Go!

 

 

 

radiation + north pacific gyre = bad

I don’t think we are even close to fully understanding the Nuclear crisis unfolding in Japan. Just read this on CNN:

Radiation in water rushing into sea tests millions of times over limit
Tokyo (CNN) — Another attempt by Japanese officials to stop the leaking of highly radioactive water from a nuclear reactor into the ocean failed Tuesday, the country’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.
…
Both the utility and Japan’s nuclear safety agency say they don’t know how much water is leaking into the sea from reactor No. 2. But engineers have had to pour nearly 200 tons of water a day into the No. 2 reactor vessel to keep it cool, and regulators say they believe the leak originates there
…
Earlier Tuesday, Edano apologized for the decision to intentionally dump 11,500 tons of radioactive water into the sea — all part of the effort to curb the flow of the more toxic liquid spotted days ago rushing from outside the No. 2 unit.

Yup, they don’t know how much water is going into the ocean. Although I’d guess it is about the same amount as has been dumped into the reactor from helicopters and fire hoses.

Here is the problem for those of us in the states. The North Pacific Gyre is the largest ecosystem in the world and it circles between Asia and the West Coast of the US of A. So when you hear “don’t know how much water is leaking into the sea” and “had to pour nearly 200 tons of water a day into the No. 2 reactor vessel” and “intentionally dump 11,500 tons of radioactive water into the sea” it starts to become our problem very quickly.

We have some experience recently on trying to take the pee out of the pool. The use of chemical dispersant apparently helped. As did microbes that eat oil (who knew?). The problem with Radiation in the water is a bit different for a number of reasons.

1. Currents. The Deepwater Horizon was in the Gulf of Mexico which has a loop current, but for the most part the oil didn’t make it even to Florida. The Pacific also has a loop current but the loop goes between Asia and the United States quite efficiently.
2. You can’t see radiation in the water. You can’t fly a plane over the ocean and see a sheen like you can with oil. You can detect radiation, but only people with the right equipment. Thus citizen journalism and distributed responses aren’t possible from civilians.
3. You can’t control fish. They swim where they want to swim. And many swim all over the world. So beyond the currents dispersing the radiation, you have radioactive fish. Does Pike’s Place Market put in a Geiger counter? How long till Amazon is sold out?
4. Japan makes a lot of stuff. We like to buy stuff. But we prefer if it is radiation free. Not sure how the economics on this play out.
5. Japan makes a lot of pharmaceuticals. Will consumers continue to trust these products? From wikipedia:
   1. In 2006, the Japanese pharmaceutical market was the second largest individual market in the world. With sales of $60 billion it constitutes approximately 11% of the world market.^[2]
6. China makes a lot of steel. We buy it. They unfortunately share an ocean with Japan. And even more unfortunately a tremendous amount of water is used in the steel manufacturing process. Is the source freshwater or ocean water? And if ocean water then how does this play out in the steel market.
7. Culture. In Japan shame is handled quietly according to everything I have read. As Gladwell explains, a culture of deference can be deadly in a crisis. So what little we know coming out of the crisis right now is suspect. It is not that the facts they are telling the world aren’t true. It is the “what are they not telling us” that scares me.

And now I guess we should all check the WSJ to see when Berkshire Hathaway buys the leading non-Japanese manufacturer of Geiger counters. Because sadly the ones from Japan might be detecting themselves.

What do I think will happen?

I don’t really know. What I hope is that given the majority of the planet is ocean, that the amazing creature that is our living ocean will be able to absorb the radiation and disperse it to safe levels. What I hope is despite the folly of man, nature will once again protect us. That is what I hope. And I continue to pray for Japan. Both for the victims of the Tsunami and now as victims of a nuclear disaster.

 

Texas to reduce public education funding by $8.8 billion in 2012-13

The vote took under 20 minutes, without any debate among members, and resulted in 18-7 in favor. The (Texas) House budget proposes reductions in two major areas: public education funding by $8.8 billion and health care by $16 billion. For the 2010-11 biennium, public education received $50 billion and health care received $65 billion.

Appropriations committee chairman and author of the bill Rep. Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, said budget writers tried to minimize cuts, but they were inevitable because education and health care comprise a large portion of the budget.

Former House member and LBJ School (UT Austin) lecturer Sherri Greenberg said the cuts of both areas are so high because they make up more than half of the budget combined.

“If the desire of the leadership is to have a bill with no new revenue, you need to [cut] where the big dollars are,” Greenberg said. “Forty percent of that is public education and another 30 percent is health and human services, and a bulk of that is Medicaid. That’s the math.”

- March 27, 2011, 82nd Texas Legislature from the Daily Texan

If I did my math right, we are reducing education funding from 50 Billion to 41.2B. The author of the bill, Rep Jim Pitts, Republican-Waxahachie describes it as “the right thing to do for our economy and for the people of Texas.”

I was going to get a pull-quote from little Johnny, but apparently he still can’t read.

 

Managing The Fire-Hose of Ideas

As the company has grown over the years, I have hit a number of tipping points that were unexpected and hurt the company. Unfortunately I have been unable to find a book that predicts these moments accurately and I know few people who have organically grown a 30+ employee 13 year old technology and marketing firm. We’re a bit odd. So while there are many sage leaders in the city of Houston, few have ever been “in my shoes” so to speak and most aren’t really sure what we do. In other words, sometimes I am flying blind and changes are clear only in hind sight. I am having one of those moments now and it involves ideas and a very motivated, skilled, enthusiastic and hard working group of employees.

The problem is ideas. Too many of them.

My management philosophy has always been the same. “Hire good people. Train the hell out of them. Let them run.” There can be problems with this. If you train them and they run off to a field to pick daisies, you fire them. But my experience has been that people are a LOT more motivated when they are given the tools and the freedom to do their jobs.

I once worked at a large corporation where I needed a Vice President’s sign off to get a $30 book I needed to do my job. And I had to write up a justification about why I needed the book. I called it a “pre-book-report” at the time. Anyway, I come from a family that consumes books like other people consume Doritos so this blew my mind. My manager, her boss, the VP and I spent way more than $30 in salaries debating the merits of said book. Most of which was made up because none of us had read it. So while the CEO said we were there to “maximize shareholder values” the rest of us didn’t get the memo. So I kept reading books and just paid for everything I needed out of my own pocket.

And I vowed I wouldn’t cripple my employees that way when years later I started a company.

Back to ideas. Thanks to our clients we get to eat. And we help them make a profit using our technology and processes. Everything is thanks to our clients. They expect and deserve the best possible service at the best possible value that we can deliver. That takes training. And I am committed to training. So far this year we sent 11 people to SXSWi, 2 people to SMX, 2 people to DrupalCon, 2 people to NTEN’s NTC, 2 people to the TSG Summit, 2 people to PyCon, we have 4 scheduled to attend Tufte, etc….  And it’s only March 19! Perhaps I shouldn’t share this because my competitors can see that the secret sauce over here is training. But I’m not that worried as investor led companies tend to maximize profits for the quarter and therefore lack the discipline and will to invest so heavily in training. Particularly if all of those expenses hit you in the same quarter.

Now, all of those employees are back from cities all across the United States and they are walking in to my office with idea after idea. After idea. After idea. And ideas are good. But it’s too much.

This is compounded because ideas are pretty cliche. You can’t patent an idea, you can only patent an implementation of an idea. Ideas only have value when you take action on them. It is results that create value, not ideas. Yet all of us in life want to provide the ideas and have them get done, usually by someone else. And we take it personal when someone shoots our idea down, and people know that, so the more ideas you throw out there the more people nod their heads in agreement. “Why yes, that is a good idea.” And it might be. But we’ll never know unless someone prioritizes it and commits the resources to implement the idea and then evaluates the results.

And some ideas are just bad. For example Ethan Watters expressed these emotions about one idea:

The idea of going to a Shriners meeting and listening to some high school student read her award-winning essay on the value of democracy seemed like an activity that I might encounter in the first ring of hell.

Nothing against the Shriners, but that is an idea that if you told me you were doing that I would say “hmmm, sounds interesting.” Yet I would be thinking: “No, that does NOT sound like a good idea for me and NO I do not want to test that idea.” But I wouldn’t say that.

A few years ago I judged a Tech-Transfer event for MBA students who presented a case on if an academic patent should be commercialized for the university where the research was done. I kid you not – this one patent was for a nanotech etching machine that was less than half the size and more expensive than one that was commercialized and in use in industry. It is hard not to look at that idea, shake your head, and think “was that just some dude who wanted to frame a patent for his wall?” I guess it’s academia so they have more wiggle room, but sheesh. This is an example of a bad idea that wasted time and money.

Testing ideas is expensive.

As a CEO your dream is someone walks up and says

“I had this idea so I prototyped it and the initial results look promising. Can we schedule a time to go over the results?”

And sometimes that happens. It really does. And those people get promoted at our company much faster than others. But more often than not you are presented with an idea like it is a sacred object and expected to immediately commit resources to test it. And there are simply too many ideas. And never enough resources.

(Sidebar: You actually get a LOT of innovation from the sales team (yes really) because they talk to prospects and see actual needs before people who only work with products we already support. Because no one within the company already knows X new product, a sales person with initiative will self install (read: prototype). That is how we started offering WordPress and Drupal as new product lines and THEY ARE GREAT!)

I was pondering the expense of organizing and testing all of these ideas while on a long walk with the dog this morning. A few possible solutions came to mind:

1. Set up a DIGG type ranking system for idea submission and have employees vote the ideas up or down.
   1. They talk about this a little in Groundswell. But Idunno, I rarely see committees find the best possible idea. They usually blend everything until you get a compromised version of mush. Or whoever can write the best python script wins the vote. I love Amazon reviews, but I rarely write one. Does that mean my ideas don’t have value because I won’t use that particular tool?
2. Require employees to write-up the idea and present it in an organized fashion at a scheduled time.
   1. This would stop the revolving door in my office of people presenting great ideas. Yet as I recently blogged about visionaries, it is the Eureka moments that lead to big discoveries. I am not sure a global “you must write it up” filter is in the best interest of the company.
3. Schedule office hours.
   1. This is probably something I should do as a CEO as I am a little too accessible at times which prevents me from getting my work done. But again, will I miss a Eureka moment? What is it that I do that could possibly be more important than working with our employees?
4. Say “no” to everything.
   1. Saying “no” to everything has actually worked well for me in the past. If the employee  isn’t motivated enough to overcome the first “no” then they aren’t that committed to the idea. Or so goes the thinking. But people are very different culturally. Extroverts ask me the same question 10 times while introverts won’t ask at all! Won’t this method bubble the “squeaky wheel” ideas up to the top? I doubt those are the best ones.
5. Make them run it by their manager first.
   1. Otherwise known as the “hide behind hierarchy” method. Would this not break the spirit of an employee if they felt the CEO was inaccessible? What if they had an issue with their manager at a personal level, but had a good working relationship, but didn’t want to share? And do I really want to be the type of founder who is unwilling to talk to any employee? The answer to that is a resounding “no!” I spend more time with employees than I do with clients because I know developing our employees is what it takes to get to great customer satisfaction!

I’m at a loss here. I see we have hit this point. I feel like I am drinking from a firehose and I can’t keep up. While ideas alone are worthless, the implementation of a good idea has definite value!

My question to anyone who has made it this far in the post is “do you know of a system that has been tested and works for a CEO of a high growth company to handle employee ideas?” And I specifically do not want ideas. What I need is knowledge of a system that has been tested and works. Even if that system is a behavior modification on my part.

 

 

no capital in the bank

“This young lady does not realize that she has no capital in the bank to finance this request.”

- Buchanan PR

a 12 year old kid will never buy art from us

Got a story for ya Ags!

A long time ago when I was working at Circuit City as an Operations Manager I had days off during the week because I worked all weekend. Rachel, my wife, worked a normal job and the kids were in school with after school care so I’d get an occasional day off in the middle of the week.

I am not one to sit still so for years I drove around Houston. Hit the museums. Explored the antique stores on lower Westheimer. Wandered around parks. Read books. (ahem, there was no Internet in this fable kids. ‘cause I am old like that.) But I wasn’t just going to sit in an apartment and watch TV. Eventually I ran out of things to do so I decided since I liked Art to see if I could work at an art gallery on my two days off. Or at night after getting off work at my first job. Thus in short order I found a part-time job at an art gallery in the Galleria.

I had some sales experience from working at Structure (now Express for Men) in college and briefly out of college. And I had sold a few things at Circuit City although this wasn’t my primary job in Operations. I’d also worked with some of those travelling art auctions as muscle to load and unload the trucks occasionally while in college (hint – lots of fake bidders in the audience people). And for the record I still love the work of Yaacov Agam.

In my limited time working at the Art Gallery (they went out of business about six months later.) I found that our sales came from:

1. Gallery openings – you have to get the buyers into the gallery. Make them feel special.
2. The house list – “warm” calling past buyers/collectors and telling them about new art on the wall. Asking if we could set up an appointment with them, etc. Depending on the collector you might even load your car up with art and drive out there to show it.
3. Weekend floor traffic. With enough traffic you could move some pieces. We rotated “ups” between the sales team. Mary gets the first one. Don the next. Ed the one after that. Repeat the cycle.

What didn’t work in sales was middle of the day on a Tuesday. This was dead time. You had to be at work, but you were doing your calls, dusting off the art, hanging or unhanging, packing or unpacking new work, etc. We still rotated the “ups” in theory but if it was your up and you were busy you might just say “hey Mary can you get that one.”

So this 12 year old kid walks into our art gallery shortly after I started working there in the middle of the day on a weekday. My coworkers completely ignored him. Glances were exchanged between us, or should I say I gave a quizzical look and was greeted with eye rolls and raised eyebrows. Think of how they portray a snobby gallery employee in the movies and you will know exactly what I was looking at.

Now, as for me, if you are in my place of business you will be treated with respect. I am sure I have made mistakes and done something wrong, but my intent is definitely to treat every client with respect. And if you spend enough time in sales you know not to judge a book by it’s cover. So I asked the young man if I could help. He was a quiet kid, but knew what he wanted. He was looking at a list $500 original film cell from an animated movie.

At the time in this gallery everything was really about double priced. So a $500 piece could be sold for $250 without talking to the gallery owner. More than that and you needed special permission. The kid busts out a small cell phone (This was the early 90s. Few had cell phones and even fewer had those tiny Nokia ones.) So he gets Dad on the phone. Hands it to me. We talk briefly and I sold my first piece of art for the gallery for $250.

He left very happy and I had my first sale. And my coworkers were dumbfounded. Because a 12 year old kid will never buy art from us. But he did. Thank you kid.

CREDITS: Thank you to flickr userpterjan for the Yaacov Agam Creative Commons photo.