Here's a good 2 minute video explaining exactly what CommuniClique does. I think this is very informative. CEO Andy Powers does a great job explaining things clearly and concisely
ICELW 2009: The International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace
I have been honored with an invitation to speak at ICELW 2009: The International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace, to be held on June 10th - 12th at Columbia University in New York.
I will be discussing CommuniClique and its E-Learning application.
On the eve of watching history made I can't help but feel a sense of overwhelming joy watching our nation come together on a positive note for once.
Scenes of black, white, and every color in between, celebrating on the streets in unity for the first time in my lifetime flashing across the TV screen gives instant evidence of America's correct decision.
One scene strikes me more than the others - U Street last night after the election was called.
U Street in DC is an area historically dominated by highs and lows. It is only fitting that one of the highest points in our nation's history is epitomized there. U Street was decimated by the riots following Martin Luther King's assassination only to be rebuilt and decimated all over again in the early 90's by a combination of condo development and gentrification. It's quite serendipitous that on this great day scenes of all people, of all colors, embracing and celebrating - together - in the streets dominate the local morning news. U Street can epitomize the hope and positive change that the next 4 years COULD bring to America. Let's hope it bears fruit.
In watching these joyous scenes and great celebrations I cannot help find the irony surrounding the chain of events which led to America electing its first Black President. You see, the very man who is responsible for the War in Iraq, the Global Recession, the Housing Crisis and several other catastrophic failures, may be the very man who inadvertently created the perfect storm which setup America to elect Obama. That man is George W Bush.
This is a bum who all but stumbled from rehab into the White House and may very well be remembered as the evilest American president since Nixon. If it weren't for his utter ineptness, America would not have been so desperately hungry for change. It is weren't for his utter incompetence, the Republican party may not be crumbling. Once again, Bush has accidentally stumbled into history. Again.
Luckily for us, this time, it is someone else's history. And this history will have the potential for great things and positive change.
With a seemingly Democratic Senate and Congress the stage should be set for Obama to effect structural change across America. I hope he capitalizes on this responsibility.
From 1993 to 1997 I played Varsity Baseball at DeMatha Catholic High School which was ranked #2 by Sports Illustrated as one of the Top High School Athletic Programs. We travelled up and down the East Coast playing some of the best teams in the US - heck, in the world! We won the Conference Championship every single year that I played baseball at DeMatha without fail.
Every day I made the 40 mile commute from Centreville, VA to Hyattsville, MD which involved waking up before 5 AM to fight Beltway rush hour. Before I could drive I took the Train from Manassas to Union Station and then the Metro from Union Station to PG Plaza and then walked the mile or so from there to school. My class schedule was customized so that I could finish by 2PM each day and be the first one at the baseball field to do some tee work or take some extra grounders at 3rd base.
My sophomore year I not only made the Varsity team but broke into the starting lineup partially through the season.
By the time I was a Senior I figured I was a shoe-in to start at 3rd, bat cleanup and go to whatever D-1 college I chose.
Boy was I wrong.
It must have been late Winter or early Spring of 2007 when Ol' Charlie Sullivan, by then a coaching legend in the DC area - probably the US, called me over and told me that not only was I not guaranteed a starting position but he couldn't even guarantee playing time!
I didn't get it! I had done everything right! I was in the best shape of my life - I lifted weights every single day. I worked harder than anyone on the team - I was the first one on the field and the last off. And I commuted the farthest just to attend DeMatha!
I had made a fatal mistake.
I confused effort with achievement.
You see, it didn't matter that I worked the hardest and longest of anyone on the team. There were guys that were just better than me and thus got better results on the field. That is all that matters.
I learned a very tough lesson that year that absolutely devastated me. Hard work doesn't mean dick. Results are all that matter.
Whenever one of my employees complain to me about working hard or staying late at the office I always tell that story. You see - nobody cares who the hardest working guy in the office is. Heck, most people will never even notice. All that people will notice is the guy who gets the results. Life is not fair and hard work, without actual achievement, is simply not enough.
I have officially isolated the single trait which seperates an Entrepreneur from the rest of the world.
It is the willingness to fall flat on your face.
There are two types of people in this world - those who play it safe, and those who roll the dice and risk looking like idiots, no matter what the consequences.
You see, being an Entrepreneur is all about the willingness to walk the tight rope which hovers above the unforgiving landscape of failure while providing the sole bridge connecting ideas to freedom.
One false step will surely lead to unimaginable pain, while completion of the walk will lead to unimaginable reward.
It is the ultimate Dichotomy. A division among humanity which determines allegiance and objective intrinsically.
Who will play the game and who will own the teams saturating the field?
He who is willing to fall down, pick himself up, dust himself off and take off running is an Entrepreneur. The rest are simply going through the motions of lift waiting for the Entrepreneurs to give them a shot.
Real Estate investing is always something I have been very interested in. To that point, we currently own a few condo's and townhouses that we bought and rented out with little to no work needed to make them "renter" ready.
In the spirit of jumping in feet first, we recently bought a house in Arlington that was a new construction project gone awry. The seller had torn down the original home, starting building a custom home and ran out of money (probably due to the sub-prime mortgage crisis). We were able to get a great deal on the house, bought it last Thursday and started construction by Sunday.
I will be sure to take picture periodically to document our progress but here are pictures of the house the day we started construction to finish it! Click here to view them.
10 years ago a very close friend of mine, Brian Kenney, had one of the first heart transplant operations in the world. The doctors were not sure he would make it more than a couple of years so we all vowed that when he made it 10 we would take him to Vegas to celebrate. Well, he more than just made it, he is going stronger than ever so here we are!
I have pictures to upload in a bit so I'll add the link in my next post.
We have had an absolute blast and although I miss Joanne and Nolan (my baby boy) it was a one of the best vegas trips I have ever had.
Speaking of Joanne, this is a testament to my luck in having the coolest wife in the world - when this trip was first being organized, we knew that Nolan was going be born a month or two prior so I told everyone that I didn't feel right going away so close to our baby being born. Joanne got wind of this and replied to all my friends telling that there is no way in hell I was going to miss this and no matter what I said I was going. How many people would have done that? She realized how important my friends are to me and I am the luckiest man in the world to have her.
Comprised of a strange blend of a nonchalant “just wing it” attitude while being an anal retentive task master, I find myself pondering the future parenting decisions and approach that I will take with my soon-to-be-born son. As I write this my wife is having contractions.
As of late, the impact and effect that the aforementioned decisions have started to set in. As a parent, you hold the strange responsibility and power to direct the view, thoughts and future actions of another human being over years of nurturing and education on life.
What approach do you take with your child throughout their life? Do you instill the “you can’t win every time” attitude with the hope of raising a happy child at the risk of producing a lackadaisical human being? Conversely, do you take the tougher stance of “You either win or you lose, there is no in-between” with the hope of raising a successful child at the risk of creating a sociopath?
This brings me to a much broader question – what does “successful” even mean (in parenting, or in life)? Is it how much money you make in your life? Is it how much money you give away in your lift? Does money even enter the equation? Is it how happy you are throughout your life (whatever that means)? How do we define a successful life?
This is the root question which must be answered in determining the goal in which you parent towards. What determines a “successful” human being?
Once you answer this question, your job as a parent is really to try and raise a “successful” person. It’s that simple.
Or is it?
Determining what a “successful” life is may be the hardest decision I have ever had to make in my life. That is the process we must go through a first-time parents.
Do I share with him my views on religion, which is that organized religion is not necessary or accurate and is for the most part corrupt? Do I keep quiet and let him make his own decision and only give my opinion when asked? Or do I introduce him to one of the major religions as a turnkey way to instill some moral compass early on in life? Is there a perfect combination of all 3 paths?
What about school and grades? Do I set goals for grade point average and reward/punish based on how his report cards size up? Do I wait for his first “real” report card, maybe in middle school, and use that as a baseline and reward him whenever he surpasses his potential or chastise when he fails to reach it? How do you push without creating “learned helplessness” or pushback to the point of hatred?
What about sports? How do I establish and maintain an interest in sports without becoming one of those monsters that you see stalking the sidelines of any youth football or baseball game and without making my son hate sports by the time he is 15 and rebel?
What about college? I don’t think it is necessary unless you want to enter the work force as an employee rather than own the workforce as an entrepreneur. Do I share that controversial opinion with my son? When?
These core decisions force an introspective approach to really determine what your outlook and beliefs are. These core beliefs are what you will pass on to your child. One way or another, they will have an effect on his or her life forever. This is the most responsibility you have ever had. This is the biggest challenge you have ever accepted. Are you up for it? I am.
Recently, a friend of mine who is starting his first company asked me for advice. As I was writing my (long) reply to him via email, it occurred to me that my response would make a great blog post and some parts of it would be very helpful to ANY first time entreprenuer, so here it is:
1. Become an accountant (not literally) – I know, you hate bookkeeping and accounting sucks. You’re an entrepreneur not a bean counter, right? However, this is intrinsically the heart of your business and unless you know, on a daily basis, what your YTD/MTD EBITDA and Profit Margin is as well as what you tracking to hit by month’s end from an EBITDA and Profit Margin perspective you WILL fail. If you want to outsource to a bookkeeper that is fine, but I strongly recommend you first learn how to do it yourself. Also, make sure your bookkeeper is keeping your books up to date on a regular basis. If you have relatively fixed expenses each month he/she can do it less frequently as long as you know what your revenue is track as. If your expenses change frequently your books needs to be done daily. The #1 mistake I have made and that I continue to see other entrepreneurs make is not staying on top of their financials. Data should drive all decisions and what more data is more important and core to a business than financial data?
2. Capitalization - The administrative side of fundraising is easier than people think and you do not need anything beyond a law firm to do it. For CommuniClique we raised $1mm using nothing more than a good lawyer. Our counsel form a Delaware C-Corp for us, got approval for us to issue as much as 10mm shares (we ended up only doing 3.5), wrote the subscription agreement that all investors sign when they cut us a check, and handled issuing stock certs. You do not need VC. You do not need any of those wacky 3rd party companies that claim they can handle the private placement for you (they usually screw you royally and show no results). All you need is a good lawyer that knows how to handle a small private placement, and you need to hustle your ass off to close $10k a pop (which adds up fast) and take advantage of the $100k to $200k folks when you come across them. I can tell you a good place to find investors and how we found ours if you'd like. I can also refer you to my legal counsel who specialized in private placement/vc deals. they have free resources on staff that will help you find capital too.
3. Development - I know you will have a limited budget, but it is key that you have a quality app dev vendor if you are a web/software company. You need someone who will understand your business, not just be an order taker and expect you to know exactly what you want and how it is to be implemented. Jaxara was unique in that, we were the aforementioned app dev vendor, but CommuniClique is apples to apples with your idea. CommuniClique is a web-based business. When I started CommuniClique I immediately engaged Pantheon to develop the app.
4. Marketing - Online marketing is key for you and it goes beyond SEO. You want an actual Online Marketing Firm, not an SEO. an Online Marketing Firm will understand your business as well as you do and will "own" their online campaigns. They will be held accountable for actual ROI, not just where you show up on google search results. Online Marketing Firms will do SEO as part of the campaign but they will also do online media buys, SEM (Paid Search Engine results like Google AdWords), Link Exchange partnerships w/ sites that already get a ton of hits and will therefore improve your google ranking, blog/forum seeding (they have employees who will nonchalantly post blogs, comments to blogs and forum postings on 1,000's of related websites talking about your site and its benefits). We use Market Maker Interactive (MMi) for CommuniClique. They are top notch. Build in about 30 days of lead time to get someone like that ramped up.
5. Business Plan - business plans mean dick so don't spend a ton of time on this and do not let this delay you doing anything, even raising money. It is one of those things that you should have as some people will ask for it, but it is not nearly as important as people will make you think. Here is a good article on writing a nice, short, succinct plan by Guy Kawasaki (a guru in analyzing companies for investment) - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the ... _busi.html
6. Choose your partners wisely! I cannot preface this enough. Assume that there is going to be a problem as some point down the road and plan for how it will be handled. A business partner is arguably going to have a larger impact on your life than a wife or husband (i.e. life partner). More times than not there will be an issue either with a partner not pulling his/her weight, losing interest, not being effective, simply personality clashes or worse - fraud/embezzlement or something else illegal. You need to plan now for the possibility of a falling-out. Make an out clause in your partnership/operating agreements and clearly set expectations based on measurable results. If you do not do this you WILL get stuck with someone who owns a significant portion of your business that may or may not be dead weight providing absolutely no results.
7. Stock for Services from Vendors does not work - pay your vendors, do not trade them stock for services. I do not care what they say, they will not work hard for you in exchange for stock. they do not equate stock to real value the way you do. If you have to, give some stock in exchange for discounted pricing. but always make sure you are paying them something. if you do give some stock in exchange for discounted pricing then make the stock vests over a set period and tie it to actual results.
Anyway, that's it for now, I am sure there will be more to come..
Call it "Web 2.0". Call it "Wikinomics". Call it "User Generated Content. Whatever buzz word you want to use, we have to admit that a corner has been turned when YouTube users were able to submit their questions (via YouTube) directly to the Democratic Presidential Candidates and actually have them answered on live TV during last night's debate!
Watching a cancer patient ask the candidates about their stance on health care, a veteran ask about the plan for Iraq, and so on was a huge step in technology and the way politics operate.
This was huge!
I applaud YouTube for the idea and I applaud all of the candidates for agreeing to participate.
If you think about it, what really occurred was a virtual town meeting with nobody but the candidates actually having to travel or even leave their homes.
CommuniClique(tm) Announces Its "Go Green" Campaign
Business Wire (press release) - San Francisco,CA,USA CommuniClique announced today that it will be giving away a Hybrid Saturn Aura-Green in late September to its 3000th customer in order to ...
CommuniClique Go Green Campaign and Hybrid Car Giveaway!
We put out a press release this week formally announcing our Go Green! campaign and Hybrid Car Giveaway.
The news has already been picked up by some key publications with many more to come!
Here is what I have seen so far:
CommuniClique Launches Green Campaign
Environmental Leader - Fort Collins,CO,USA CommuniClique, which provides a web-based collaboration tool, will give away a Hybrid Saturn Aura-Green in late September to its 3000th customer in order to ... See all stories on this topic
"Sicko", Healthcare, and the Inefficiencies of Government
Let me start by saying that I am actually a big fan of Michael Moore. I think that over the past decade or so he has been the much needed ying to the conservative right-wing yang in America. His book "Stupid White Men" was right on and his films "Roger and Me", "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 911" were inspiring.
Having said that, I have to say that I disagree with the overall message and underlying theme of his latest file "Sicko".
I agree that the Healthcare system in America needs work. However, I disagree that having the US Government take over and provide Healthcare to all Americans is the answer.
It is a well-known fact that government services are usually twice as expensive and half as efficient as private services - not to mention the corruption that can be hidden in layers of inefficient bureaucracies.
In his film, Moore travels to Canada, England and France and is "overwhelmed" by how much better everything is over there. His European travels culminate in a dinner with American expatriates in Paris, during which he gets an earful not only about the wonders of nationalized health care, but also about the French 35-hour work week, their 5-week vacation schedule, and unlimited sick time.
Moore fails to mention France's last elections, in which the socialist candidate was trounced by a conservative, who wants to reduce if not eliminate many of the "free lunches." One is left to wonder why the French would vote overwhelmingly to change what Moore describes as the perfect system?
Again, I agree that America's Healthcare system needs A LOT of work. My point is that making it a government service is NOT the answer. I think an answer is out there and needs to be explored.
In writing this, I can't help but be troubled by a more high level problem in Government - the fact that government services are so incredibly inefficient. To me this supersedes Healthcare or any specific, granular concern but is a much larger problem.
Why is government so inefficient? How can we solve this problem?
It saddens me that we all simply shrug our shoulders and accept as fact that Government is an inefficient bureaucracy that cannot be fixed.
Every problem has a solution and I am not willing to accept as fact that government cannot be made efficient. It won't be easy and it probably won't happen quickly, but it can be done.
To me, this should be a major topic in the upcoming elections. I would not mind seeing an efficiency expert of someone like Bloomberg who has experience in effectively running a large, private company (private as in not government, not related to stock exchange) have a go at it and focus on running the government in a more "business-like" fashion in which every single person is held accountable for results and every sector/department is held fiscally responsible. Quantitative Analysis should be utilized within the Government just like it is starting to become widespread in business to measure expectations and ensure efficiency.
Efficient Results, like profits in business, should become the ultimate driver in Government and I am not sure a presidential candidate without significant business leadership experience can effect this change.
I was thinking about the direction that digital media is heading, whether it be the ability to download television shows on demand via iTV, or the ability to download music, movies, tv shows vis applications like iTunes and synchronize them to your iPod or other devices and it seems obvious to me that the demise of physical CD's and DVD's is on the horizon.
What impact will this demise have?
The benefits of this demise are no secret but the benefit to consumers has always been touted as convenience - you don't have to leave your home or office to download a song, tv show or movie that you just have to hear or watch RIGHT NOW - Or Financial - you can preview each song from that new album from your favorite artist and just purchase and download the songs you like rather than having to skip through half the CD to bypass the "filler" music the record label threw in to get to 11 tracks or 62.5 minutes.
Noone, to my knowledge, has acknowledged the obvious environmental benefits to a world where all media is digital!
Imagine the waste and environmental damage that can be avoided if CD's and DVD's go the way of the Dodo. Every CD or DVD consists of an annoying (and impossible to open) clear plastic wrapper, a security device of some sort (some larger than others), a hard plastic or paper case, a plastic bag that the retailer puts your purchase in and finally the paper receipt/s you recieve upon purchase. Not to mention the disks themselves which eventually end up in the trash sooner rather than later.
In additional to the waste that comes with your physical purchase there is also the adverse effects of the transportation it takes to facilitate your purchase. That ozone-destroying, oil-based fuel burnng car/truck/suv that you drive to and from the brick and mortar retailer in order to make your purchase in the first place has effects on the environment that have been discussed ad nauseum.
I would love to see metrics regarding the effect the average trip to Best Buy in the most commonly driven vehicle to make an average cd/dvd purchase has on the environment.
Downloading digital media avoids all of this waste.
With the advent and maturity of devices like iTV, the way we watch television will not only be changed in that rather than waiting for a specific date and time to watch our favorite show we simply download it when we want to watch if from an iTunes like service, but waste will be minimized.
These little changes will not only make our lives easier and more efficient but can become one more little thing each of us change in our lives to help save the environment and in some respect reduce America's relience on foriegn oil.
CommuniClique is looking for fun, creative, extroverts for their summer internship program!
CommuniClique is a Funded Software Startup headquartered in Arlington, VA that is looking for Marketing/Communications Interns to help execute "feet on the street" marketing campaigns, blog campaigns, and other creative marketing campaigns that will help drive visitors to CommuniClique.com and ideally convince them to sign up online for a free trial of our product.
Flexible work schedule with potential for travel. Work days will be Monday through Thursday. Will need to spend mornings and early afternoon out and about with the rest of the day spent working at your own leisure from home or our office - your choice. Intern programs starts ASAP and runs throughout the summer.
Top performing intern/s receive a very generous bonus/reward!!!
Andy Powers (CEO) and Myself took a trip to NYC last week to do some interviews with various reporters and were especially impressed by our visit to Ziff Davis and Mike Vizard.
Mike definitely "gets it" and understands the changing environment of Desktop vs. SaaS applications and why "blended computing" is where things are headed.
Here is a great exerpt from the article:
"Everywhere you go these days, everybody in I.T. is talking about the need to provide better collaboration tools to their end users as part of a general drive to increase the productivity of employees. But when you start to examine the options available to boost collaboration among users, you quickly discover that youre about to take a trip down a very expensive rabbit hole.
The core problem, of course, stems from the very nature of the applications we use today; they were designed as personal productivity tools, not as components of a meaningful collaboration infrastructure. To get around that issue, most companies have been using shared drives to store documents that are then typically shipped around the organization sequentially. This approach creates management headaches because more often than not, there are multiple versions of the same file floating around the enterprise, which in turn leads to version-control problems and increased storage expense.
To try to solve this problem, many organizations have turned to offerings such as Microsofts SharePoint Services, Lotus Notes and EMCs Documentum because they all offer some sort of document management capability. However, setting up these solutions takes a fair amount of time, energy and cost when most users simply want a relatively easy way to collaborate. And even when you do set up these programs successfully, they still have shortcomings such as a lack of offline client support; in this regard, SharePoint needs to be augmented by a third-party product such as Colligo Networks Reader or Contributor tools.
Because of these issues, you are also starting to see a growing interest in a number of software-as-a-service offerings such as Google Docs and CommuniClique. The difference in these services boils down to an offering from Google that by its very Web nature is a collaborative application versus CommuniClique, a program that makes it easier to track and share existing Microsoft Office documents. The CommuniClique service is similar in concept to Microsofts Office Live offering, which is simply a Web-based implementation of SharePoint. But unlike Office Live, CommuniClique provides a higher level of fidelity between documents that exist on your systems and the documents stored in the service, which is something that Microsoft can only promise to deliver with a future iteration of SharePoint."
On my recent trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh I had the opportunity to meet and hold some long conversations with Kazi Islam the CEO of Grameen Software. The Chairman of Grameen Software (who Kazi reports directly to) is Professor Yunus, recent winner of the the Nobel Peace Price for creating the now famous Micro Loan program (through Grameen Bank).
In my many stimulating conversations we inevitably honed in on the topic of the Bangladeshi people and how to help them participate further in the Global Economy.
This topic is one example of what has been coined "Social Entrepreneurism" and is a large part of Professor Yunus' mission these days.
As a 3rd world, yet emerging, economy Bangladesh is blessed with an overabundance of one of the world's most valuable natural resources - people.
Although its adult literacy rate is quite low, the country is making great strides and most of its youth population are enrolled in primary education and currently learning the basics like reading, writing and arithmetic.
So I ask - as an entrepreneur myself as well as a technologist - don't I have a responsibility to help this country?
I started my first development center in 2002. It's location was Dhaka, Bangladesh.
I feel a strong calling and urgency to leave the state of the Bangladeshi people better than when I began. This goes beyond the cop-out most business leaders by saying "I created jobs so I have already done a great service to this country". "Bullshit" I say. That is not enough. Still others feel that simply donating money without waiting around long enough to ensure its proper utilization, effectiveness or impact and even further holding the folks they gave the money to accountable for how it is actually used.
As the volume of global outsourcing continues to grow there should be an inherint obligation of the entrepreneurs to expend their two most value assets to the very people who have helped ensure the entrepreneurs success - time and innovative ideas.
With a self-imposed obligation of entrepreneurs world wide to help create knowlege workers, innovators, entrepreneurs in the developing nations whose people they use to create their own wealth - call it social entrepreneurism or compassionate capitalism or paying it forward - the entrepeneur accomplishes something that can never be rivaled by an IPO or any other exit event. They help make the world a better place for the very people who helped them succeed.
About 2 weeks ago I was working at home and looked up to see my dad on ABC News!
My father is a Retired Army Veteran who now teaches Veterans wounded in Iraq. ABC ran a special on two soldiers wounded in Iraq who now take college classes in the DC area. My father teaches one of them.
Book - The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything - James Boice
A book called "The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything" has just come out that is a collection of contributions from multiple authors. My brother, James Boice, is one of the contributors.
The authors who organized the book were on the Today Show this morning to talk about it.
My brother's contribution is "Innovations in Sports".
It's a very interesting concept for a book. Here is one description of the book found online:
Book Description
"Introducing the ingenious, addictive tool for judging everything under the sun: ENLIGHTENED BRACKETOLOGY, the new science that makes opinion a sport.
Political battles are won and lost by popular vote. Great movies are nominated and chosen by committee. The rest of the world is more or less up for grabs. As a cure for the resulting confusion, Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir have organized the world's most haunting and maddeningly subjective questions into a scheme of binary pairings that finally reveal what is truly the best in its class: What's the greatest
American beer? The best Elmore Leonard novel? The most reliable economic indicator? In each bracket five Darwinian rounds of binary matchups leave a lone survivor; textual notes explain the details.
Experts and subjects include: Ken Jennings on Game Show Catchphrases; Roz Chast on Animation Characters; Mo Rocca on Political Hot-Button Issues; Stefan Fatsis on Scrabble Words; Kurt Andersen on Conspiracy Theories; Jeff MacGregor on NASCAR Phrases; Will Blythe on Sports Rivalries; Henry Beard on Latin grammar; the editors of The Bark on Dogs for the Ages; Jesse Sheidlower on Punctuation; Rick Meyerowitz on Dodosaurs; and many more - 101 in all.
Go forth and adjudicate!"
Sports Illustrated recently carried an article on the book which can be found online here.
I got a great Theodore Roosevelt quote from Tom Ponton at DeMatha today:
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt
There are so many things in life that this quote can be applied to. Since I am an entrepreneur first, I can clearly see its application to starting a new venture.
Most notably in the early stages of starting a business where cash is alwyas going to be tight no matter how many times you have done it and when you are likely pre-revenue not to even mention break even or profitable. At these points it is of the utmost importance to remember that most people remain in the "gray twilight" of life rather than "dare mightly things" in an attempt to "win glorious triumphs" at the risk of ending up "checkered by failure".
I will roll the proverbial dice any day of the week and lose rather than stand by and watch. For that I am proud.
The other night I had the pleasure of seeing Cal Ripken, Jr. give a talk at DeMatha which was hosted by James Brown (Fox Sports, CBS, HBO) and had NBA Hall of Fame Coach Morgan Wooten, NFL Hall of Fame Player JB Brown, Future NFL Hall of Famer and Philadelphia Eagles' running back Brian Westbrook in attendance among many more DeMatha alumni.
Cal's speech was quite impressive (and not just because he used Power Point!) but because he did a great job of applying the traits that it took for him to successfully break Lou Gehrig's record of consecutive games played to traits that it takes to be successful in business.
I thought this was an extremely effective and applicable presentation by Cal and made a lot of sense.
He started off by talking about a particular incident where a reporter asked Cal what traits a current player would have to possess in order to break the record he set for consecutive games played. At the time Cal gave a pretty standard answer, but later on, after retirement he really thought about it and made a list which he shared with us the other night.
Coincidentally, Cal had been making the transition from Playing Professional Baseball to Business at the time of writing this list and the fact that many of these traits he listed had real-world, business application was not missed.
I am going to try and get a hold of a copy of the power point presentation he used but in a nutshell these traits include tenacity, resilience, will to win/competitiveness, sacrifice, focus, preparation (both physical and mental) and so on.
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