Things I've Learned This Year

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Insomniac

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Mar 3, 2007
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Take it all as random late night dribble for all I care, we all have opinions, but if it makes you think then it's done it's job.

Motivation

Everyone has different motivation, however typically techs have a total opposite motivation to sales people. Techs typically have the curse of intelligence, which although sounds good on paper, is almost worthless in business. You see the typical tech is not motivated by money or acheivement, but grass is greaner syndrome and just want to be social - they don't care about money, or at least they don't care enough to be motivated by it or have a strong grasp of it's true value. Stop trying to motivate your techs by giving them bonuses.

Sales people are quite the opposite, show them a bit of green and they will chase it. A good salesman typically believes in the product they are selling, regardless of how little they understand it - this combination of ignorance and greed makes taking a 'no' much easier to stomach.

Ego

Intelligence eventually breeds ego. The younger you are the less ego you have, but once you become an 'expert' the ego streams right in. The more intelligent people you have in a room the more ego you will find. You can't build an organisation on a high ratio of intelligence to stupid or you'll end up either with an unprofitable pile of VC funded crap, or the organisation will simply spend more time arguing than making money. If you find someone with a big ego wanting to partner with you, they more than likely will end up leaving the partnership prematurely due to the same reason they joined it in the first place - opportunity.

Failure

It's important, people need to fail to improve. Let them. The more intelligent you are the more you will get frustrated with employees. If you can't afford failure then you aren't running the right business model, adjust your projects to accomodate a high failure rate and learn to live with and accept failure as a part of life. If you ask someone to do something for you in very specific terms they will still do it their own way 99% of the time, trying to make someone do exactly what you want is a form of cloning, and quite frankly you cannot clone yourself so stop trying.

Goals

Ask anyone what it would be like to be rich and they will more than likely tell you how happy they would be. Getting rich is merely a goal. In reality it's not the goal that makes you happy, it's the journey to get there. Make your goals, but focus on the now rather than the future and enjoy the moment.

Security

A lot of people will refuse to invest what little they do have because of the security that may be associated with it. The older you get the more you feel you have to lose. In reality all you are doing is putting your journey on hold, you have less to lose than you truly realize.

Women

I'm sure there are exceptions here, but for the most part they is no one that is perfect for you unless you clone yourself and put some tits on it. Kids are great and all, but being a male you've got the excellent advantage of being able to produce swimmers for the better part of your life. Focusing on one particular woman at an early age is going to waste more time and money than it's truly worth. Couples used to get married at 20 and die by the age of 30, which means marriage was never intended to last 40+ years. If you plan on getting married wait till you are both old enough to be doing it for the right reasons, not just because of hormones.

Kids

Yes I know the saying, you can't love a kid the same unless it's your own. In reality wanting a kid of your own blood is nothing but selfishness. If you don't think of adoption as a viable solution to have kids then you are way too selfish and shouldn't be considering them in the first place.

Organization

Everyone has different methods that work for them, but nearly all techniques come down to some form of preparation. Start forcing yourself to devote 10% of your time to preparation rather than work and you'll find you complete your overall task much much faster.

Habit

Men are typically creatures of habit. If you get in a habit to play video games all day it becomes very easy to continue this habit. If your goal is to be productive you need to build a habit for yourself and follow it strictly. Your mind associates time and location with different moods, if you find yourself slacking adjust your surrounding and build a new habit for your mind to associate your location with.

Learning

Don't stop. You may as well be dead if you do. Listen to audio books, attend lectures, read the paper, whatever it takes devote at least some of your time every day to learning something new.
 
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I feel like we are soul mates. This is everything I feel and believe but am too stupid or drunk to type out. +rep
 
Plus Mutha Fucking Rep! I'm going to print this out. Like Ferris said this falls in line with a lot of my ideals.
 
johnysc430 said:
In reality wanting a kid of your own blood is nothing but selfishness. If you don't think of adoption as a viable solution to have kids then you are way too selfish and shouldn't be considering them in the first place.

lol
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I'd want a kid that has a lot of traits similar to me if possible, plus the bond would be closer knowing you actually produced it. Adopting a kid is going to create a strong bond and you're going to love it, but it's really no different than adopting a dog, where as creating one there's a little more to it.
 
+rep

There is so much opportunity in this business. Perhaps too much, so that it makes it easy to get chase too many goals and get distracted.

Success is all about focus and execution.
 
Mostly good stuff, some slight disagreement. The one I've wondered about is what you think when you get someone who is say, a tech with sales ability. Intelligence + drive for money.
 
papajohn56 said:
Mostly good stuff, some slight disagreement. The one I've wondered about is what you think when you get someone who is say, a tech with sales ability. Intelligence + drive for money.
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From my experience, such people have a constant struggle to get out of their own head. They get frustrated with having employees because they know they can do a better job, which if not altered will mean they never work well in a team and will never be able to lead a team of any major size as they will be too busy getting involved with the nitty gritty. Lower intelligence can be a blessing as it allows people to be far less tunnel visioned on the minor details.
 
Insomniac said:
From my experience, such people have a constant struggle to get out of their own head. They get frustrated with having employees because they know they can do a better job, which if not altered will mean they never work well in a team and will never be able to lead a team of any major size as they will be too busy getting involved with the nitty gritty. Lower intelligence can be a blessing as it allows people to be far less tunnel visioned on the minor details.
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What would you recommend for someone who looks in the mirror, sees this problem and is determined to fix it :)
 
Learning how to delegate is very hard, but a MUST if you want to succeed.

What helped me was this sentence:

"He/she might do it differently than you would have done it, but that does not mean it is done badly."

We are often caught in our ego bubble, we won't even know genius when it sits right in front of us. Just humble yourself down a bit.

::emp::
 
DKPMO said:
What would you recommend for someone who looks in the mirror, sees this problem and is determined to fix it :)
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In short. When dealing with a project make these your goals.

Design projects for failure, don't expect anyone to do their job right, but allow them to make mistakes. People get mad when you put them down for screwing up what they should have never screwed up in the first place, but without those people you'll never get much farther than being a sole trader.

Do as little technical work as possible. Intelligence is good for identifying possible future problems, but is almost useless for usability. The more you get involved with the little details the more you will lose focus of the bigger picture.

Stop trying to automate absolutely everything, employees are cheap and can be made to handle support and keep other people happy. Lots of employees creates a false sense of security.

Remember that whatever you do, you're going to market to a vast majority of people less intelligent and driven than you are. This means that features which you think are cool, or advanced options of any kind are more than likely a bad idea. The ultimate product is a giant button which anyone can press and it does everything for them.

Employee morale is not logical. No matter how many times you tell everyone their job is safe they will always think twice any time someone is fired or you take away something you already gave them.

Getting new customers is about low friction and burning your product into their brain for long enough that they remember to return to you. For example a short form signup is not always as effective as a long series of simple steps that artificially inflates the time your lead/client/user sticks around.

Though the stats are always stated differently, roughly 80% of the reason the average person goes to work is not for accomplishment or money, but rather to socialize. People want to socialize and feel slightly challenged at the same time. Just because you may think someone is asking you a question because they want to know the answer, could really mean they just want someone to talk to about anything.

There are more big deals signed over beer/strippers/dinner than there are over conference tables. I have it on good authority one of the largest oil companies got most of it's initial contracts in bars, and that there was a deal between apple and american airlines that was decided at mitchell brothers strip club.

Don't be afraid to tell a client/partner to go elsewhere. If you feel you need someone more than they need you then you've probably messed up your business plan somewhere.
 
I can't agree on the kids/adoption part. Get married and tell your wife that you want kids but would prefer to adopt vs having your own and then you might have some insight on this, until then.. STFU.
 
33mo23 said:
I can't agree on the kids/adoption part. Get married and tell your wife that you want kids but would prefer to adopt vs having your own and then you might have some insight on this, until then.. STFU.
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Needing your own blood kids is all ego and selfishness. If your wife thinks she needs kids or they need to be of your own blood then she is quite frankly selfish. I'm not saying kids are bad, I'm saying most people have kids or the wrong reasons, eg.. they knocked the chick up, want to clone themselves a little, think it's the next step of the relationship, or simply can't break from their primal instinct. If your your wife is 50 and finally decides it's time to have kids then you shouldn't be getting even remotely upset that they are probably adopted. Evolve or GTFO.
 
Good stuff Insomniac. My favorite was the "Habit" section.

Pretty sure the one part about cloning myself and putting tits on it is going to give me bad dreams though.
 
idk about other techs but I for one can say money motivates the fuck outta me!

+rep great thread
 
I wish I had more rep to give to you! Here are my observations so far:

Insomniac said:
Design projects for failure, don't expect anyone to do their job right, but allow them to make mistakes. People get mad when you put them down for screwing up what they should have never screwed up in the first place, but without those people you'll never get much farther than being a sole trader.
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I think I am way past expecting perfection from anyone or screaming at people for messing up. The challenge I see in "designing projects for failure" is managing time & cost investment. In some ways perhaps this should be viewed like a PPC test budget with the desirable / measurable outcome in training employee / contractor to do the job. Which brings another interesting question of how much this investment is worth if they decide to leave.

Insomniac said:
Do as little technical work as possible. Intelligence is good for identifying possible future problems, but is almost useless for usability. The more you get involved with the little details the more you will lose focus of the bigger picture.
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I agree about usability, but not so sure about design / architecture. If the technical aspect of your business is limited to ripping some LP code, sure. But if you are trying to design a web product of any sophistication hiring contractors and not watching them carefully could mean total waste of time and money. I realize there has to be the right balance, but this is the area I am having the most trouble letting go.

Insomniac said:
Stop trying to automate absolutely everything, employees are cheap and can be made to handle support and keep other people happy. Lots of employees creates a false sense of security.
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When I see lots of employees in any company my first thought is how much they cost and what ROI is the company getting :) You can often tell an overstaffed company heading for trainwreck just by a cursory look. But no doubt support, human-interface and copywriting tasks is where you cannot replace employees with "software that does all that".

Insomniac said:
Remember that whatever you do, you're going to market to a vast majority of people less intelligent and driven than you are. This means that features which you think are cool, or advanced options of any kind are more than likely a bad idea. The ultimate product is a giant button which anyone can press and it does everything for them.
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I can trace past failures of several major projects to not understanding and practicing this. I think I got that down by now. School of hard knocks.

Insomniac said:
Employee morale is not logical. No matter how many times you tell everyone their job is safe they will always think twice any time someone is fired or you take away something you already gave them.
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Yes, yes, yes. I think the key is picking the right employees from the get go and then communicating with them well.

Insomniac said:
Getting new customers is about low friction and burning your product into their brain for long enough that they remember to return to you. For example a short form signup is not always as effective as a long series of simple steps that artificially inflates the time your lead/client/user sticks around.
Click to expand...

Yes, though I suppose this depends on your market and you have to test, test, test!

Insomniac said:
Though the stats are always stated differently, roughly 80% of the reason the average person goes to work is not for accomplishment or money, but rather to socialize. People want to socialize and feel slightly challenged at the same time. Just because you may think someone is asking you a question because they want to know the answer, could really mean they just want someone to talk to about anything.
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No doubt. Generally I think the big challenge in building your organization is working with people who have different motivation than you, the business owner. You have to get productivity out of them to get your ROI, but you cannot push them too far. I still believe that who you recruit ultimately determines how well they work out for you.

Insomniac said:
There are more big deals signed over beer/strippers/dinner than there are over conference tables. I have it on good authority one of the largest oil companies got most of it's initial contracts in bars, and that there was a deal between apple and american airlines that was decided at mitchell brothers strip club.
Click to expand...

No doubt about it.

Insomniac said:
Don't be afraid to tell a client/partner to go elsewhere. If you feel you need someone more than they need you then you've probably messed up your business plan somewhere.
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That is something I have never been shy about. Perhaps this is the flip side of ego / self-confidence / arrogance. Taken too far this is not a good thing, you have to be more discerning in your choice of projects, clients and partners to minimize the risks of having to incur the cost of dropping them.
 
So, basically, to sum up, you are against cloning of any kind?!

Some valid points up there tho, with couple slight disagreements +rep.
 
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