Misc

Think about this: it is so hot outside that your cat, in the house, is pleading for some cold air. Unfortunately, there’s no one home, what do yo do? Well, you setup an IFTTT recipe so that if the temperature is too high, it turns on the fan in your home. Oh, the things we do for our cats!

Obviously, though, I am not writing this to help you keep your cat in shape. Or not only for this (note to myself: write a blogpost about our cat!).

So, did you know about ifttt? Or, the longer name, If This Then That? It’s an automation service: it takes specific actions and executes them on specific triggers. I started using it recently (about 6 months ago) and here are some tasks that happen currently over some of my accounts:

1. If I post a link on my Facebook account, it automatically goes to my Twitter account
2. If I upload an image on Facebook, it uploads it automatically on my Dropbox account
3. If I send self emails which usually means something I want to remember, it saves it in Evernote
4. If I publish a new blog post on this blog, it saves the content on Evernote

There are several more, usually to save things to my Evernote or Dropbox accounts.

Among the things you could do, though, if you want to:

1. Update profile photo on Twitter when you change it on Facebook
2. If it’s going to rain tomorrow, send me an email! (or an SMS)
3. Text to IFTTT to fake a Phone Call
4. If Hell freezes over then email me

There are lots and lots of “recipes” (this is how they call the automations), you can see a list of the most popular here. There is a list of funny ones on Mashable, also.

The “channels” you can use to create recipes with include, among others: Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Dropbox, Evernote, 500px, iPhone Photo Stream, WordPress blogs, New York Times, ESPN, Pocket aso. The full list of “channels” is here.

P.S.: they recently launched their iPhone App, which I didn’t have time to test yet.

Or, as they call it, “Stand-up meeting” or “daily SCRUM”. Which, for a product manager and team leader shouldn’t be new at all. But if you were not either, it might come as something new and, I might say, interesting.

As a freelancer and, afterwards, owner of a business, I got pretty good at scheduling and prioritizing my own tasks. I needed to, since there is no one looking over your shoulder to force me work or do anything other than wandering around aimlessly on Facebook (or Digg, if you take into consideration the time frame: 2008-2009).

Still, since starting MavenHut, one of my co-founders, Cristi, “forced” the entire team into 10 minutes stand-up meetings every morning. And while it didn’t necessarily improve my own productivity (my own “to do” list is more detailed than the one I present at a stand-up meeting), it helped me understand better what my team is working on, what their issues are.

Because this is what SCRUM basically does (in my experience):
– it forces you to be really to the point in explaining what you are working on;
– it allows everyone in the team to understand what you are working on. It’s really helpful, because they can also pitch in with suggestions;
– it allows you to see what the others are working on and understand if their work impact you directly in that specific cycle.

So, if you don’t do it, try it. Read here the basics and try it with your team, your co-founders. Heck, even with your cat, if you have no one else available. It creates a great habit, that will surely help you, in time.

P.S.: do not, I repeat, do not ask the cat for her SCRUM report. You might get something like “sleep. human petting. eat. sleep. sand. eat. sleep. human petting. sleep. wake up human in the middle of the night”. And this will really get you down :))

Up until two years ago my job meant, among other things, participating in a lot of events, meeting lots of people, talking to lots of people and, generally, consuming lots of energy by entertaining people around me. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it, but the thing is, from time to time, I would get completely burnt out.

So I needed to accept, at some point, that you can’t do everything, all the time, at the highest energy level. That you would need, from time to time, to recharge.

This is how I came over the “me” time. “Me time” is defined as a specific period of time (it can be from an hour to several days) when I am being as selfish as I can be, when I don’t care what happens in the outside world. Business or personal (family, friends, whatever). Unless something REALLY, REALLY bad happens, I will not be available for anything besides what I REALLY want to do.

And what is that, you might ask? Well, mostly playing computer games, go to movies, go on short trips (I’m more interested in the driving, not the destination). I also read books I postponed reading – SF books, mostly (btw, did you read The City and the city? great, entertaining book). Or I just walk around, thinking of stuff.

Up until two years ago (before MavenHut), I would have those moments whenever I felt like it, now I try to “schedule” them every other weekend, at least. And the thing is, my productivity goes through the roof after these “me moments”. Moreover, the best ideas I’ve had (business or otherwise) come as a result of these reflection times.

So, what’s the conclusion to an otherwise incoherent Saturday blog post?

Take some “me time”. You’ll love it :)

Photo credit

In the recent years I’ve found myself pitching a lot of times: many different projects to a lot of different people. Some pitches worked, most of them didn’t (which is not bad, it’s just the way it is, not everyone is interested in your project at the specific moment).

Some time ago, a good friend suggested I read Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal, by Oren Klaff. Thanks to a short, but long overdue and needed vacation, I started to read it. Some of the quotes I found interesting in the first 50 pages are below. They explain some of those moments when I felt I lost the control of discussion while I was pitching. Basically, my frame lost the collision :)

“A frame is the instrument you use to package your power, authority, strength, information and status.”

“When you are responding ineffectively to things the other person is saying and doing, that person owns the frame, and you are being frame controlled.”

“Every social interaction is a collision of frames, and the stronger frame always wins. Frame collisions are primal.”

If you have a chance to read the book, do it (You can find it on Amazon here, for Kindle or hardcover). After all, you’re always pitching, right? :)

Also, below there’s a video of the author talking about his method (it’s an hour and 30 minutes video, just so you know):

Several years ago I was talking to a friend and he said that he is more interested in a lifestyle business than in “high risk, high reward” type of business. I was interested in the second one (which is, usually, about the VC backed startups – like MavenHut), while he was interested in the first type, which means growing slow, bootstrapping and taking a longer time to see either success or failure.

Most of the time, you don’t really hear too much about the lifestyle business. The most obvious that I know of is Evernote (which is more of a hybrid), but today I’ve found an interesting article on Hacker News about a lifestyle business that generates revenues of about $15 million per year from Malaysia.

I like the article, I think it underlines the most important thing about a lifestyle business: being really passionate and enjoying what you are building. Otherwise, how will you be there for the next 10-15 years?

This is important to me. I’m a lifestyle entrepreneur. Mindvalley was built around my passions – meditation, personal growth, play, culture, travel and epic interior design (our offices are magical). Having total ownership means I’m not pressured by partners, boards or investors to deliver something that I’m not passionate about.

Link to 7 Lessons from Building a Lifestyle Business

If you could choose, would you choose a lifestyle business that generates steady income, grows slow and takes a longer time to reach the valuation you want (but it might be less risky), or the VC backed business?

The panic was creeping on me little by little. I was breathing through my mouth, as told, but the water was going from above my eyes back to under my neck and back again and I would feel compelled to breathe through my nose every time my head was above the water.

This is how my first ever scuba dive experience began. Sheer panic, no matter how much I tried to control it: WHY CAN’T I BREATHE THROUGH MY NOSE? After all, in my 15 years of competitive sports (handball), all I was told and forced into was to breathe-in through my nose and breathe-out through my mouth.

Looking back to that first day of diving I can compare the feeling to that of building a startup. Its life is like a sinusoid, with ups and downs and feelings of drowning and terrifying panic for the person crazy enough to try and start one.

Fortunately, though, 10 minutes later you control your the breath, even if you swallow some Mediterranean salty water from time to time. And 25 minutes later you are really surprised that you need to go back to the boat, because the lesson it’s over (Oh, so soooooon???). Of course, this is just the beginning, because dangers are close by, you are just blissfully unaware of them.

And that’s how you feel for exactly 5 minutes in startups: you have everything under control. Yeah, right!

Still, I wouldn’t trade that panic for anything else. Or, frankly, I could live with less of it…

Photo credit

We’ve been the subject of two articles in the business press in Romania in the last 2 weeks (Biz and Business Magazin). Below are the photos that illustrated both articles (the press links are here, unfortunately Romanian only).

I am part of a really great team :D