Curious Jimbeau

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If you can imagine it, then first imagine it a success.

As I learn more about things I am interested in their mysteries fade and paradoxes arise.

I am most drawn to the infancy of my ideas, the uncertain period prior to true understanding, when innocent pontifications portend anything to be possible.  Imagining their success and applying unfettered capacity to my ideas have brought enlightenment and established  benchmarks to smash with future diligence.

I suggest that you first seek out the best result of your ideas.  Imagine them succeeding at every turn, and only then, embrace your practiced, pragmatic self to find, or pierce, its holes.

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The origins of any original idea, if traced would lead its originator on a twisted trail of discovery, most of which they didn’t blaze themselves.  At the crux of any substantive idea are the offal of thousands of discoveries made by many more before us.  The computer can trace its roots from a seventeenth century binary theorem enabling all numbers to be expressed as either a one or zero.  In the early 19^th century it was applied to a calculating machine, then in late 1890 to a punch card machine that converted numbers into “instructions”.   This French inspiration fueled American inventor Lee De Forest who with the Audion Tube invented modern day electronics.  The expression of all logical concepts as numbers, which was encapsulated in Russell/Whitehead’s  Principia Mathematica in 1913, lead to the earliest concepts of programming and feedback.  Even though all of this knowledge to invent the computer was available to world by 1915 it wasn’t until 1946 that the first operational computer was released.

Progress and perseverance are entwined like the sinews in the muscles of those that stay the course.

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1. Hire the best talent. Surround yourself with smarter people who have complementary skills and who challenge the status quo.
2. Think big. Develop BHAGs: big hairy audacious goals. Imagine the impossible and you will be surprised how much you can accomplish.
3. Aim to make a difference. Make the world a better place.
4.  Say what you mean and do what you say. Execution and follow-through are critical. Thomas Edison said “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” My father used to always remind me of this.
5. Competition makes you stronger. It also makes you serve your customers better.
6. Always put the customer first. And remember, you have to have a great product or service that is differentiated to win.
7. Take on the hardest challenges. Get out of your comfort zone. If you have not failed at something, you are probably not innovating.
8. Truth-seeking is half the battle in winning. You need to know where you stand in the war.
9.  Move fast in a land-grab. Get network effects first. Remember, you need both popularity and profitability.
10.  You can be an entrepreneur in a big company.
11.  Pay it forward. Be a mentor.
12.  If you make a mistake or fail, it’s OK. Fix it fast and move forward. But make sure to take the lessons away so you do not repeat them. Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Truly wish I could credit the author of these wise words but I don’t have that information.

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Entrepreneurs utilize innovation to exploit, change or to create a new business or opportunity.  The word Entrepreneur was coined by French economist J.B. Say around 1800 who said, “the entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.”  The tool most often wielded by these champions of bold and new is Innovation.

Innovation can be experienced, learned; it is not a trait but a behavior.  The resources to challenge, question, or otherwise disavow contemporary thoughts or patterns and implement them into change are readily available to most.  The practice of entrepreneurship is about doing something differently, rather than doing something better.  Therein lies the essence of what Say meant, 200 years ago when he stated that, “the entrepreneur upsets and disorganizes,” his task is, “creative destruction.”

In a down turning economy, innovation is required to arrest the equilibrium and optimize the present into new, and economically stimulating practices.  McDonald’s, Bell Labs, IBM, Procter & Gamble represent some of America’s best entrepreneurs who practiced both technical and managerial entrepreneurship and still maintain a near-perfect track record of innovative products.

Like these successful firms, you and I have the same analytical tools needed to identify opportunity irrespective if it lies in our own failure or within the mistake of another.  How can I improve, alter, or exploit it?  What would result if I did?  How could I engineer the result into positive change?  What would I do then?

Give yourself the time you need to investigate, to ponder and go through all the possibilities, make a plan then treat its positive results as probabilities.  Therein lies the epitome of innovation and risk.  When we ask ourselves a question, we are starting at the very beginning of innovative practice.  Yes, it is risky to be an entrepreneur, especially in the technology sphere, as most technical genesis begins with a lack of knowing what is to come.  But a methodology of purposeful innovation will increase the likelihood of success and should be more than enough to justify your risk.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  And even failure can be the spectacle another will use to ask, Why?

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In the book “How to Remember Names.” Harper Collins. 1992 it is stated that one needs eight seconds to completely focus your attention on something to effectively transfer it from short to long-term memory.

My ability to stay atop a single thought for eight seconds is not unlike the challenge faced by a pro bull rider astride a bucking bronco.   My brains’ encoding, storage and retrieval skills are being revamped after a successful hip surgery that relieved it of the constant strain of pain control.  Now, as I begin to test dormant leg muscles to become the uber fit mid-lifer, I am also taxing my hippocampus to dredge up memories required to help with my kid’s homework.

I was encouraged to read that there are some things one can do to prevent memory loss and maintain healthy brain functions.  One study I read showed that rats living in enriched environments with lots of toys and challenges have larger outer brains with larger, healthier brain cells; and subsequently much better memories.  Note to self, Buy more toys.

Small Business

Our firm’s primary task these days is articulating the vision of HotClick Video to large groups of savvy investors.  These presentations almost always include a Powerpoint Presentation and require that we get our points across in a short period of time.  I have found that if I lose my audience for even a moment it is almost impossible to get their full attention again.

Three key things lessons I have learned recently:

Firstly, Your Presentation’s Objective is simple:  To Show…

1. Who has a Problem
2. How big a Problem is it?
3. How you are solving this Problem.

Secondly, Your PowerPoint Must Be Simple: More Points, Less Bullets

1. Prepare slides that evoke emotions not bullet points
2. Prepare speaking points for each slide that tell a story
3. Add motion – Video moves your audience

Lastly, Presentations Should Change every time: Relate to “this” Audience

1. Know your audience
2. Include meaningful problems and solutions of your audience
3. Practice each time – even

One of my personal mistakes has been not to practice for each presentation.  My innate knowledge of our company and the problems we solve hasn’t been enough.   Getting to know each audience or individual has proven to change my presentation every time.  By adding relevant and meaningful problems with a tailored solution to a specific audience, has improved their cognizance and our success rate.

Great Entrepreneur Blogger Mark Suster has some great advice from a 2 time entrepreneur who has joined the VC dark side.

Small Business

At the heart of Social Media are Communities (SMC’s) that facilitate B2B communication in unique ways.  B2B marketers that tap into powerful SMC groups can enhance their brand marketing objectives, establish Word of Mouth brand rapport and facilitate the resale of their client products.  Social Media embodies the very spirit of B2B marketing by utilizing partner platforms to proliferate the use of their own products and in the process establishing a new virtual retail frontier.

When Digg , a site for people to discover and share content from the web, announced the addition of a new Trending tool, they built a special Twitter account to make it easy for users to follow the action.  Twitter, a micro blogger community has utilized relative and meaningful business partners to make itself indispensable.  Last month, Twitter and Microsoft struck a search deal to integrate Twitter within Bing and the same day they struck a similar deal with Google.  More than likely if you hear about a top story these days it will come in the form of a feed from your favorite SMC instead of the front page of your daily newspaper.

We are living in a connected world where digital wrecking balls are tearing down communication barriers enabling cross-platform billing and universal data feeds to devices that can trans-code multi-media on the fly.  This clear path of information exchange is giving rise to close relationships between brands that target likeminded consumers and the SMC platforms that support them.  A B2B marketers’ challenge is to anticipate the unique needs each SMC and provide tools customized to these niche groups and their needs.

The spirit of B2B partnerships can be seen on LinkedIn a popular business network that now enables users to sync their status updates with Twitter so your updated LinkedIn status will also appear as a tweet on Twitter.  Reddit a site that enables users to vote on what is most popular on the web is composed of  hundreds of sub-communities, each focused on a specific topic. There’s a Reddit for Music and probably a Reddit for your nearest city.  Note that when you access Reddit Science content that has been uploaded by users and often times from companies such as The New York Times, Wired Magazine and the tech division at Yahoo.

One of the highest grossing films of all time, Paranormal, used the business platforms of Delicious, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon and Eventfull to promote, market and enhance their film.  The User Groups that evolved from these SMC’s helped ensure the film was released by submitting over 1 million votes on the website Eventful.com.  The viral nature of this program spawned hundreds of niche groups including a Paranormal Dating group on the dating site Geek 2 Geek.

According to ChannelAdvisor, Social media sites are now among the top 10 referring Web sites for most online retailers.  With Monetization at the heart of every business enterprise, a virtual store within a niche SMC creates a direct connection to a targeted consumer.  As more and more businesses seek to expand their identity and relevance on the WorldWideWeb, they are increasingly turning to SMC’s to establish storefronts.

While some SMC’s like Digg focus on advertising platforms and branded soft-goods a few SMC’s are providing commercial applications that will drive partner sales.  On Facebook 1-800-FLOWERS was the first retailer to launch a full-service online storefront so users leave birthday wishes for friends, and then order them a bouquet of flowers without ever navigating away from the home page.

Paving the way for cross-billing platforms are payment options from companies such as Amazon’s Flexible Payments and PayPal’s Payvment API’s that give developers full access to billing systems for SMC’s.  The ability to accept and distribute payments within SMC’s establishes a new commercial platform ripe for B2B marketers.  Companies like Alvenda have taken newsfeed purchasing to the next level with plug and play shopping platforms that enable shoppable advertisements that can be embedded into any blog or SMC site.

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While sitting on a beach side bench with my daughter I was enlightened by a pigeon. Lily and I had been having breakfast when we noticed an elderly man feeding the birds. He had the rapt attention of large Western Seagulls with bright orange tips on yellow beaks that were either shrieking, or biting at rivals. There were a host of smaller California Gulls, smaller in stature, but more agile and constantly on the moving. Then there were a few pigeons…

Each time the man threw a wad of bread crumbs before him a flock of birds responded. The Westerns were all over the place, flapping their wings, punching out their chests and generally scaring all other birds away from the largest pieces of bread. The California Gulls were flitting in between the Westerns, avoiding their beak thrusts and darting in to grab any scraps they could.

The Western Gulls spent the entire time squawking challenges, rushing to and fro with wings spread to discourage any birds from getting in their way. The California Gulls were constantly on the move to avoid their aggressive cousins and focused on retrieving the mid-sized chunks that were uncontested or perfectly thrown.

Meanwhile, the pigeons worked. They kept their head down pecking at the earth, dancing around the squabbles and seeking out uncontested crumbs. The Western’s disregarded them as a threat to their big chunks and would only pause for seconds to intimidate them. The California Gulls all but ignored these puny pigeons that moved throughout the melee, continuously picking up perfect bites, unmolested by their posturing counterparts.

What I drew from this experience is that in business it pays to cover your bets. Make sure you are going after those large accounts with the big upsides but don’t forget to keep the smaller, consistent business coming in because they keep the bills paid.

Small Business

I have a (false) sense of confidence in myself that believes that I will work harder, longer and more diligently than anyone around me. I also stand at work. For those of you, who like me, insist upon overcoming our problems ourselves it can be tough to find objective feedback that you can accept, let alone listen to. A few years ago I sustained a back injury that made it very painful to sit down, so I started standing. I built a stand-up work station and nearly 5 years later my back feels great, but then my hip began to hurt. I saw a chiropractor and then a doctor but nothing worked until I found…my mirror…

In the late 1800’s, F. Matthias Alexander was a Tasmania actor specializing in one-man Shakespearean shows of tragedy and comedy. Unfortunately, Alexander was repeatedly sidelined by the loss of his voice and sought out advice from the leading doctors and speech therapists of his time. Nothing seemed to help and he looked inward for another solution. What he hit upon was a technique, now called the Alexander Technique, which to me is the essence of self dependence…Self Observation.

What Alexander did was set up a series of mirrors to observe the patterns of his recitals. He noted that whenever he attempted to recite his neck muscles constricted and compressed his larynx which caused him to gasp for breaths. He noted other tendencies and consistencies and then sought ways to change them. By acknowledging his own actions he was able to modify his behavior and unlearn the patterns that had contributed to loosing his voice.

The Alexander Technique is an ideal exercise for Americans in general. We are brought up believing in our superior intellect and innate knowledge of everything from driving instructions, technical manuals and global policing. No-one is supposed to tell us what to do, how to feel except ourselves and maybe a doctor or two.

What I do know, is that we listen to ourselves. We respect our own opinion, act on our own input and will generally fight for our beliefs. Therein lies what I believe to be the value of the Alexander Technique of self observation because we are more likely to believe, and act on, our own findings. Self Observation is the essence of objective feedback and more likely to provide life-changing value for us.

So, what I did was observe my own actions and noted that throughout a long day I spent and exorbitant amount of time posting on my right leg. Unconsciously, I had developed a standing pattern that placed a lot of stress on my right hip. I set about modifying my posture and have noticed the hip pain diminish.

In Alexander’s case, his recital skills improved so much he found sponsors to send him England, but these funds were short by several hundred pounds. Alexander had a passion for horses and after detailed horse observations at the local race track, he won the balance on a day at the races.

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