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Daily Nehemiah 4. Startup Pitching Rant

It amazes me watching pitch nights how many entrepreneurs and founders have trouble with some very simple things.

A lot of them give no call to action. They are asked to speak in front of a room of 100 people and they don’t have a way for me to signup for your service. If your service is not out, how do I follow you on Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest, or whatever the hell it is? Even better than that, is there an email list I can join so you’ll reach out when the product is ready. If you sell a physical product. Where the fuck is it. I go to a speech about a fashion product, and the founder was not wearing the product, and did not bring the product along. This was for a group of 30-40 people. If you got product. Bring the damn product. Even better, have a trunk full of the product out in the trunk of your car you can sell to me after the talk. Daymond John sold hats out front of the New York Collesium for $10, get your head out of your ass and hustle.

They don’t have a five minute pitch and can’t speak about their business. If you have been working on a thing for 2 years, then if I hand you a microphone, you should be able to get up and just pitch it in some coherent fashion.

Follow the fuck up. Send a damn email. I am a developer, you say you need code done and can’t proceed until you have more code. And when I talk to you and hand you my card, you never call me. I wanted to build your startup for fucking free but nope, you don’t care. I offered through a Tech group I was part of $15,000 to $30,000 worth of services to a nonprofit that had a list of needs it advertised at the end of its presentation. I said we could handle every one of those needs. No call. This group was having a profound impact on people in the community. They were passionate people really changing lives, but they were not business managers, didn’t understand accounting, financial stuff, web design, social media. We offered to take care of all that so they could scale and help more people. But nope they just never called.

Have some damn energy about you product/business. If you don’t want to be up in front of 100 random strangers pitching your shit in the early stage. Get the fuck out. 100 people came to hear about your damn unicorn. Fucking tell us all about its magic powers and it’s horn of bloody death. Hell if you’re bored about your thing, then we will probably be too.

If you are pitching your business, you are selling. Either to investors, potential partners, or customers. So sell.

Daily Nehemiah 3: Am I Bi-Winning?

I gave him all the answers, how to get strong, how to hit the weights. I offered all sorts of help, all he had to do was show up. Anything I could do I offered. He won’t do any of it. I gave him all the answers and he will choose to fail. I hope I am wrong. He doesn’t want it, he wants to look like he wants it.

How many times have I been offered and given the same degree of help by others? Do I have all the answers? Do I know how to do the things I am trying to do? Have people helped me and given me all the answers? Do I have everything I need for massive success served to me on a silver platter? Do I choose not to do anything about it? Do I not want it? Do I want to lose?

Recognizing help when it is presented is a skill. Giving up things like pride and just taking help is a skill too. Loving things like pride more than winning, well that is just stupid.

Do I want to win? Or do I want to look like I want to win?

Daily Nehemiah 2

Thoughts on obsessions and balance…

So I have managed to take my enthusiasm for lifting weights and turn it into a product. I am now working to turn that app and product into an actual business. As a result I spend 90% of my waking time thinking in some way about lifting weights.

I am spending a large amount of time either lifting weights, writing code to make a weightlifting app, or learning more about lifting weights. Most of the time this is pretty cool.

I have moments of feeling unbalanced. I do have some contract work I am doing, so that is an escape from the world of lifting weights. I watch some tv too. These things help. But other than that, pretty much everything is about lifting weights.

My entire life revolves around the concept of lifting progressively heavier objects. The question I constantly ask myself is “How does this thing I am doing help me or others bench press 400 pounds?” Passion has moved into obsession.

I can live with being obsessed. In general I am very happy with working on these things. I do see how this obsession can turn sour fast if I’m not careful.

The other night I started to write out a 4 year powerlifting training cycle do see where I might be able to take my lifting. I’m not sure what that says about my mindset, but it happened. It is getting harder for me to focus and talk about anything other than lifting or building this business up. I have no true hobbies at the moment, I workout, and I work.

More worrisome than all the super focus weirdness is that fact that I am starting to suffer real life performance issues. I am progressively getting more tired. My code and writing is more sloppy and not wanting to flow at all. In the gym I am having to put in a lot more effort and energy into hitting big weights. I feel like I am stuck in an infinite loop here. I think this narrow focus and obsession has got to be a contributing factor to my performance issues. Obsession has taken hold, luckily I am seeing that, because that means I can attempt to manage it.

This whole path has turned my outlets and hobbies and turned them into work, or something work related. I got nothing else. I wouldn’t really advise this path to anyone else. If you’re going to turn hobbies or passions into a business, you got to have something else going on long term. Short term obsession probably can work. Making your life all about one thing though, well that wakes up the crazy.

Being so single minded is just not good, and I have been learning that the last few weeks. I suspect in the coming days I need to try and branch out and experience a bit more of life and not be so obsessed. I’ll figure something out, things are in motion. My best advice is that this obsession can sneak up on you fast. Part of pushing yourself seems to be that you got to make sure you don’t push yourself off the cliff.

Daily Nehemiah No. 1: Savage Impulses

“I can’t explain it to you if you’ve never felt it.” I was trying to explain to someone the addictive quality of weightlifting. They couldn’t understand why bench pressing more mattered, even if no one ever finds out how much I bench press. They couldn’t understand why after injury after injury, I find myself back in the gym, grabbing a bar, and doing physical feats of stupidity. Yes I know it’s stupid to keep going back under that bar, but I am going to keep doing it. There is some savage impulse that leads me back to the gym. This savage impulse can manifest itself in different ways. Some have it with business, some with their art, some have it in a competitive sport.

This impulse is what they didn’t understand, it wasn’t so much that I like to lift heavy things. Their mind was wired for balance, for maturity, for calm. Something is broken in my brain, I have trouble doing balance. This trait shows itself all through my life, not just in the gym. When I am into something, I become a maniac, dabbling is hard, I want in deep. My impulse is to go overboard. My impulse is to ignore the rest of life when I’m dialed in. It’s hard to choose where I’m dialed in. When I ignore the impulses it never works out well for me. Seeking balance for me, is just seeking failure, I can’t do balance.

I have found indulging these impulses and mindsets leads to happiness and success. This indulgence can feel like a super power. It’s not normal, it has no balance, and is not fun all the time. I have learned how to embrace it. There is some savage weird stuff in my brain, and I’m going to run with that for a while.

Getting Back Under the Bar

I broke my body, my mind, pretty much everything in 2016. The body part was a bit rough. I suffered a hernia and then had to have surgery. This left me weak, fat, and recovering very slowly. There is something about an injury, it can light a fire. That little psychopathic voice in my head is starting to get louder, telling me to come back from this better than ever. This voice is probably best to be ignored, but this time I am not doing a good job of it.

Before the injury, I was starting to get in shape again and getting some nice strength levels. Then everything crashed and burned. It has been years since I hit a PR in any lift. I miss that feeling, of working hard and of the accomplishment. I want to be a weightlifter one more time, just have a good run for a while and walk away in a good state. The gym is home in ways so many other places cannot be.

My time with the iron has been a grab bag of success, failures, misadventures and laughs. I have never actually gotten into shape to a level I was proud of. Almost 20 years in the gym under the bar, and I never actually went all the way. I have never dialed in my strength, nutrition, weight, and endurance at the same time. There has never been a point where anyone would really have looked at me and said that dude is killing it. I have all the tools to get there, I may not have them much longer. There was never an end point, never an end goal, just the pursuit of more.

4/17/17 it all started, I started training to get into the best shape of my life. I want to be strong as ever, lean as ever, and have some semblance of endurance. The goals are fluid and still developing. I know I want to squat big, get lean, and run like I used to be able to. The big goal though is to be in great shape by my 34^th birthday, so that is 58 weeks of time. Great things are possible with that kind of runway. Succeed or fail, once it’s done I’ll just happily be one of those old dudes that fuck around in the gym and just do it for laughs.

I am a week into this process and loving what is happening. My workouts have a new purpose and intensity. The workouts themselves are a lot more fun. Physically I feel great since I am doing recovery work, my body seems to be holding up to everything so I just have to sit back and enjoy the process. It looks like for the next several weeks more weight will get added to everything and when that stalls, the real work and programming will start.

Beyond the physical changes that are starting to happen, the mental changes I am seeing are fantastic. I seem to be happier in general now that I am getting to work out hard again. It just feels so good to get to attack the weight like I want to. I seem to be a bit more driven and fired up with my work projects as well. I think the mental shift to one of attacking and focus is bleeding over into other places, and that cannot be a bad thing.

I cannot say where this whole dive back into the gym is going to go. I might break myself. I might get in great shape. Everything in between the extremes is possible. If I am not choosing to be awesome, I am choosing to suck.

The Empty Page

An empty page, that is a dangerous thing. Literally anything can manifest. This could be the next great work of American fiction. A self-help book that saves a bunch of people’s life from the brink of peril, well that is possible too. All that potential makes it hard to start. Just to start writing that is so hard, and this is just a page. What about really big things? What about a career? What about a life? Those empty pages are almost too daunting to fathom.

An abundance of choice, I can’t handle that stuff. I think I spin my wheels. I am a smart and clever enough guy to do a lot of things. I don’t really eliminate the options either. I just think I can do a bit of everything. Well that’s a path to where I am at, I am just sort of here. I never really built a career or a business, mostly because I bounced about a lot. Exploring too many options and too much freedom, that was my downfall.

Restrictions force creativity. Becoming better at embracing restrictions, well that can create a bit of focus that might allow something to happen. Too much freedom, it is probably the rare person that can handle that. I have lived a lot of years with a lot of professional freedom, and I am through with that. Focus, is the path forward. One job, one project, one blog, that’s about all I need in my life. Great ambitions, I don’t have those anymore. I am going to fill this page, and that’s enough.

photo credit: Antti Kyllönen Great minds only need simple tools via photopin (license)

So I’m a Problem Solver?

My craft is software development, this means I am a problem solver. In theory I am supposed to be good at finding and executing solutions. I tend to do a decent job on work projects, and people seem fairly happy with my work. I can program, I have a decent understanding of math and physics, there are times I think I might be a master of the universe.

Having a touch of ambition I try and think ahead and do a bit of life planning. I have yearly goals and try and track some things on a daily basis. I am a problem solver, and metrics, tracking, and goals are part of problem solving. I look at my log sheets and monthly and then I start to realize I am not a very good problem solver. Like so many people I let the same things continue to hinder me. Yes it is stupid, and yes I continue to do it.

Solving the real problems, that seems to be the trick. Somewhere deep in my brain, there is some broken stuff. I pride myself in being able to solve problems, but of course I don’t solve the really hard ones. In so many areas of my life I cannot do the thing that people pay me to do for them. I am the fat personal trainer. I am the broke financial consultant. I am the blind painter. Code is easy, life is hard, and change, change is a mystery.

photo credit: Head in Hands via photopin (license)

Frankenstein’s Code Monster

A long time ago, a developer starting coding up a new project. His name was Frankenstein. He was a clever developer, but not that clever. He wanted to prove how clever he was, that was the first sign he was not all that clever.

He journeyed the vast reaches of the internet. Through StackOverflow, and even the dark reaches of Reddit he journeyed. Cleverer JavaScript he would need for this project. He wanted to impress the others in his Meetup group after all. He found some libraries, he watched a YouTube video, he repeated the lines from the potion that the master had uttered. His Bower.Json file grew larger, he was powerful, the greater his potion, the more drunk with power he became. He could bend JavaScript to his will and he did, the DOM be damned, he was a developer, he could manage this.

As the code grew, he was lead further down the stack, soon he was on the server. The server was easy, he had programmed before. In his journeys he had heard the languages of the foreign masters, their languages with different grammar, different incantations, seemed mysterious, alluring, he could not help himself. Into his text editor, he uttered these languages, mixing them with his own. A Shakespeare of coding he was, he could bend language to his will. His project grew larger, more complex, he stopped understanding all of it, but that was ok, it was on a development server. Nothing bad can happen on the development server, it had served as a mighty cage for his abominations in the past.

Soon his project started doing things that others would call unnatural, the clients however were happy. They did not have a debugger, error reporting was turned off. A true developer never shows his error logs to the clients, lest they ask the mighty code knight to abandon his quest. The beast was contained, it was at home in a dungeon. There was still time to train it, to break it to his will.

Alas a courier arrives to the might developer Frankenstein. The clients for home he began this quest have new requirements, while reasonable, the code monster is not ready for these challenges. The message from his clients show their confidence, they are ready to launch soon. Time is no longer Frankenstein’s friend. He must move faster.

Faster and faster Frankenstein codes. He adds packages, he cowboy codes, not a unit test to be found. His code works, but he is not sure why, the client’s won’t catch on, there is no time. The abomination of code is out of control. He utters the phrase in muted breath as he types “Git Push Origin Master” his monster is now “Master.” All that remains is to deploy, and deploy he does, the clients cheer, the day is saved. His code monster is in production, and his database grows.

Frankenstein is a lazy hero however. Resting on his laurels, he does not nurture the code beast, he allows it to be neglected. Over time this warps the monster, he is subject to outside forces, a version behind, a year behind. Soon Frankenstein’s monster is not his, it belongs to the hackers, to the past. He returns to retrain his monster, but it is too late, the monster no longer answers his call, he forgets the commands to bend it to his will. Frankenstein’s code is on the loose, there is no longer any hope.

He cannot fix the code, for he has not Perl Scripted in 2 years. His shiny JavaScript Framework has lost its luster, abandoned for the new framework du jour. His patrons are angry, their champion has failed them, they now must rely on a monster, that over which no mortal man can reign. Frankenstein retreats, it is not his fault, there was not time, there was not budget. Frankenstein moves to another project, another monster, this time it will be better he tells himself. I am Frankenstein, you are Frankenstein. This time, it will be no different.

photo credit: Frankenstein via photopin (license)

The Coder’s Creed

This is my code. There is much other code, but this code is mine.

Code is my best friend. I must master the code as I must master myself.

My code is useless without me. Without my code I am useless. My code must be clean it must be bug-less. It is an instrument of good, capable of doing great things for the betterment of my life and the lives of others.

My code and I know that the language and framework matter not. My code and I know that the problems my code solves is what matters.

My code is alive; my code is life. I will learn my code; I will learn the subtleties of the languages, the frameworks, and designs it contains. I will navigate along the stack, I will not fear its components, and with my code by my side we shall master the solutions we create.

With each commit, stronger we shall grow. In times of despair, we shall push to master, we will not fear our version history, for we master our own destiny.

This is my pledge, my creed, stated before God and man alike. With this code, we shall spread hope and love, never despair. We are masters of data, it will be bent to our will.

So be it until all the things are fixed, all the data is secure, and the age of code has passed.

Coworking Has Failed Us

Membership is up, the coffee is flowing, the television and paper covers the press releases, but something is missing. There has been a lot of spin, a lot of hope, a lot of dreaming, but the delivery has been less than stellar. Before we had coworking in the form of MatchBox here in town, we heard a lot of words like “tech, art, innovation, collaboration, entrepreneurialism, revitalization, vision.” Before there was a building, we were buying into an idea, a bit of vision, and what we hoped to be fun. We knew there would be two things being built, one was a building, the second and the much more important part was the community. Over a year later, I get the feeling I am still waiting for the community. I will be the first to admit I am a delusional maniac, so maybe I was hoping for things that were just not going to happen.

We knew there was a lot of community building to do. There also was a lot of ambiguity about what this community would be. Everyone thought and hoped it would be something cool. I feel like we are still waiting on the cool. Yes there are some cool things happening around here. We are having Verge events, Startup Weekends, tech meetups, writer’s nights, and there are some really cool people coming through this place. There still feels like there needs to be more. The conversations, the energy, the ambition in this community are just mediocre. In fact at this point coworking is a failure.

I see very little happening in this place that was not happening before. My approach and viewpoint is definitely from the tech side of things. From that perspective there is nothing happening here in this building that we were not making happen elsewhere. In fact our attendance was similar if not more for events we were holding elsewhere. We have a multi-million dollar facility and have turned it into zero momentum. In fact the spark in these circles is fading fast, and the community weakening. This is a failure on my part, and a failure on the part of Lafayettech leadership, we should have done better. The opportunity really exists for a great tech community, a great coworking community, but someone has to do the work, someone has to create the community we wanted.

I hear there is a vision, I hear things are moving forward, I don’t really know. Hell if it is in a coherent format, I don’t know what it is, send me a paper copy if there is one. I don’t know that I much care at this point. This community is not visionary stuff, anyone that says it is, is probably a charlatan or a dumbass. We really need to stop waiting for something to happen and create the community we want. I have been apathetic, so I am to blame as much as anyone. We really just have a great opportunity here to build a really cool community. I see this MatchBox and coworking thing going one of two ways, we can build something cool, or let this community be a droll amalgamation of freelancing drones, sales training, “synergy”, “teamwork”, and all those other buzzwords that don’t mean a thing and exude lameness. So I guess we all need to up our efforts a little bit, and make this place into what we want to see. So here is what Nehemiah is going to make happen in here, or he will get ran out, one or the other.

Startup Weekends are coming back, bigger and better than ever. We are just waiting for the right time to ramp these back up.
There will be more technology specific meetings on the way. We want to go deep into iOS, PHP, C#, more announcements are on the way.
Reigniting the hacker culture around here. Coders are wizards, masters of the universe, and Jedi masters, it is time for us to act accordingly and build for the love of building.
More tech talks and workshops, on everything from social media to legal issues.

Hey if you’re into tech, come hunt me down, and help out, there is tons of work to do, and it’s going to be a lot of fun. If you are not into coding, entrepreneurship, tech, or anything that I am, that’s fantastic too. To make this community really awesome, we need artists, filmmakers, singers, writers, dog enthusiasts, food truck drivers, gluten-free vegans, the NRA…. There are all sorts of nerds, not just tech nerds, and really fun things happen when you get them together. So all sorts of people need to make MatchBox their playground, because that is what this place is. Or we can all just not do anything and within a year MatchBox will be a meeting room for GLC and a cheap office for a bunch of service professionals exchanging business cards. So do whatever the fuck you want around here, that’s what I am going to do.