FeedBurner Won’t Publish to Twitter?

A few suggestions on how I syndicate content and the tools I use. Continue reading…

DIY Google Apps Migration Workshop

I’ve put together a step-by-step guide on how to migrate to Google Apps. Continue reading…

What’s Missing From Google Apps

A look at what isn’t included in Google Apps and how to close the gap. Continue reading…

What is The Cloud

A simple translation of what the cloud is and how it is a significant shift in technology. Continue reading…

Text Messaging in Gmail Makes Life Easier

A quick how to guide describing how to use Google Apps GChat. Continue reading…

(Photo via Mike Lewis)

Gutters, Neglect and Beer

After a few too many drinks and feverishly jockeying for Gowalla check-ins at the venues we were trolling, I awoke the next morning with a wicked…umm…idea. Later that day, over more drinks and Gowalla check-ins, I mentioned to partners in crime that based on the previous days discussion and late night escapades, I had a fun idea for an iPhone app. I’m not much of a ‘creative’ person in a traditional brushes and paints sorta way but I love creative brainstorms when it comes to cooking up applications and business ideas. But coming up with a good idea isn’t as difficult as figuring out which ones to invest time and energy into, so after a few minutes of batting it around with my crew it fell into the gutter, more a victim of neglect and beer than anything else.

In the days that followed, I busied myself with jump starting the new year but one morning last week over coffee the same app idea bobbed to the surface. “What if…?” On any given day asking myself this question typically leads to mental gymnastics in order to figure out whether the idea has merit.  This idea was no different. I slid in front of my computer, disconnected the internet connection and started piecing together this iPhone app. After 35 minutes (I’m big into time boxing) I realized I had hit on something that was inherently simple to a user yet had potential to generate multiple revenue streams. Understandably, there were an infinite number of influential real world variables that could topple my pretty little model but conceptually it had some teeth to it which meant it was time to phone a friend.

Shout Outs & Phone a Friend

The more I thought about the app, the more I realized that while I thought it was a good idea, I didn’t really feel like learning iPhone development just to develop it, so instead I tweeted. At that point, I would have gladly collaborated on it with someone or given them the whole thing to run with…it was and is a solid idea but I wasn’t exactly passionate about building it from scratch. Unsurprisingly, my random tweet didn’t gain much traction, then again, I didn’t really expect it would but @BonitaSmokeShop did pass it along (check out their cigars here).

Nonetheless, after my shout out fell on deaf ears, I decided to phone a friend. First, I sense checked the idea with a couple friends that have varying non-technical-business and iPhone experiences. Their responses were similar to mine, “sounds like it would be fun”. They also took pop shots at the cobbled together revenue streams but generally liked the idea enough to strongly point out that if I were to build it, I most certainly should not give it away away for free. My second move, was to reach out to a friend that’s building an app that uses some of the same technical elements and would be able to run with it or pass it along. He was intrigued and agreed to bait a few people to get a feel for it’s potential. A day later, I had an answer…

Similar to learning Chinese, as my vocabulary grew, so did my appetite. I didn’t just want to understand the language, I wanted to DO something with it. When I get an idea in my head I tend to beat the life out of it and then jump head first into the deepest part of the pool – a bona fide INTJ. Whether it’s software, Chinese, juggling, business, triathlons or rock climbing…

1. Deep thought.
2. Right now.
3. Head first.
4. Don’t look back.

When I went back to work in China I promptly changed my Chinese to Ma Shang which is a legit Chinese name but sounds like “right now or immediately”. Business Case Example: Hi Mr. Yang, I’m Ma Shang a.k.a. Mr. Right Now, as in lets get this thing done – right now!

Out’ing Ruby on Rails

After a bit of wrangling with Rails books and learning the basics of building a web app with Rails, I had a basic understanding of the benefits that Ruby on Rails offered. I wasn’t, however, bold enough to try building my own app. Instead, I started dabbling with open source apps by learning to install and tweak them on my local machine. To be totally honest, it wasn’t very fun…in fact, it was down right frustrating because I wasn’t (in my opinion) learning fast enough or going far enough. What made matters worse was that I came up with an idea for an app that I felt really strongly about but my learning curve just wasn’t working in my favor…or at least I didn’t think so. So instead of learning to code and building my own app, I decided to leverage my background in outsourcing development and commissioned a team to build the app I had dreamed up.

I wont bore you with the details of outsourcing something like this because quite frankly, I could write volumes. I will say this though…if you’re a non-technical entrepreneur, small business or dude with an idea…don’t go down the freelance/outsourcing path without having someone on your side to guide you through it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big proponent of the freelance, outsourcing and contracted scenarios. Hell, my entire professional career revolves around outsourcing in some form or another. But if you’re going to do it, take my advice and make sure you have someone that knows the industry, technology and your idea.

However, last fall I decided that it was time to get a better handle on Rails because I wanted to play a more prominent role in developing my application…i.e. I want to build it. So I enrolled in a ‘learning ruby on rails’ class taught by Sarah Allen in order to get the hands-on guidance that I had been. Sarah and her team of assistants produced a great class and gave me just enough of a nudge to get me to the next step.

I Got Next

Well earlier this week, I passed an important milestone in my Ruby on Rails experience and launched the beta version of the app I’ve been working on. In it’s current state it’s a snippet of what I envision but for now that’s all I need to drive me forward. While the user front-end website and user interface are rather drab that can be remedied with a little time and effort. Functionally it consists of a baseline that will serve it’s purpose for the time-being but I’m excited to get moving on some of the more enticing features. If you know of anyone in the fitness industry, feel free to have them take a look at MyFitHub.com where they can sign up for a free beta account.

There are two types of motorcyclists, those who have been down and those who are going down.

I heard this saying repeatedly after buying my third bike, a 2006 Harley Davidson Road King Classic and I count myself fortunate for never having felt the unforgiving impact of pavement (close only counts with hand grenades and boccie ball).  Today, I wondered aloud to my partner in crime whether being a motorcyclist is similar to being an entrepreneur. It was pretty easy to come up with all sorts of similarities; freedom, responsibility, risk, protection, speed, strategy, navigation, balance, vision, execution. Off we went to do a little research…

Stop the presses…statistically motorcyclists are NOTHING like entrepreneurs! Mainly because in 2007 over 5,000 people died in motorcycle accidents and I can’t recall the last time I heard of an entrepreneur dieing as a result of being an entrepreneur. Perhaps we had conjured up a poor comparison to begin with but after a bit of research the similarities were down right disturbing.

Statistics Leaving Bugs in My Teeth

1. Only 21 states have universal helmet laws requiring all riders to done lids
2. 31% of motorcycle fatalities are related to alcohol impairment, 27% of which were over the .08 blood alcohol content legal limit
3. $230.6 billion a year – impact on US health care system

Thinking that perhaps I was being a little too literal, I decided to see how many small businesses “go down” each year since my search for “entrepreneur+fatalities” wasn’t giving me much info. Sadly, those numbers aren’t much better;

1. Two-thirds of SMB’s survive at least two years – Translation: 33% go down
2. 44 percent survive at least four years – Translation: 56% go down
3. 31 percent survive at least seven years – Translation: 69% go down

On second thought, maybe our idea of comparing motorcyclists and entrepreneurs wasn’t as far off track as I originally thought. Granted, I couldn’t find an entrepreneur that died as a result of being an entrepreneur but entrepreneurs typically have a significant personal investment in a business, so for argument sake we could say that an entrepreneur ‘is the business’ and vice versa. The track record for motorcyclists and entrepreneurs may not align as nicely as we might have liked but we managed to draw a couple comparisons worth mentioning.

Motorcyclists & Entrepreneurs Take Heed

1. Enjoy the freedom of the ride and take responsibility for your actions
2. Accept the risk while getting as much protection as possible without limiting your ability to operate
3. Speed is crucial but fast is not always better, you have to have a strategy
4. Sharpen your navigation skills and learn to balance distractions
5. Have a vision of where you want to go and execute on it

Lingering questions: How can we reduce the increasing fatality rate of motorcyclists? Likewise, can the number of businesses/entrepreneurs going down be remedied?

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“Are You an Inventor or an Entrepreneur?”

- Harvard Business Publishing

I am most definitely not an inventor but an entrepreneur…

Over the past couple years I’ve given a lot of thought to whether I consider myself an entrepreneur. Sure, I’ve started a handful of businesses but is that indicative of being an entrepreneur? To some perhaps but it takes a lot more than “starting” a company to be considered an entrepreneur. So I decided to see what the world has to say about the characteristics of an entrepreneur; vision, tenacity, sensibility, progressive, calculating, individualist, planner and the list goes on and on. I did, however, learn a bit about the history of the entrepreneur and how the view of an entrepreneur has changed over time.

History At A Glance

Jean-Babtiste Say, a 19th century economis, is believed to have been the first to coin the term “entrepreneur” around 1800. The definition of entrepreneur stems from the French word entreprendre to undertake and when broken down; entre “to enter” and prendre “to take”.

To summarize, over the past 20 years or so there has been a lot of research on the characteristics of an entrepreneur. Generally speaking there was a fixation with predicting whether an individual would be a successful entrepreneur based on their personality characteristics, cultural influences and life experiences. What I found particularly interesting is the fact that recent research has shown results that counter the “person-centric-cowboy characteristics”, instead research is shedding light on the fact that entrepreneurs don’t work in soloist silo’s but in collaborative social environments. As I mulled it over it seemed quite obvious; while individual personality characteristics certainly play a role in defining entrepreneurship, equally important are the social aspects that are oftentimes overlooked (For more info Read Characteristics of the Entrepreneur: Social Creatures, Not Solo Heroes). Why that wasn’t readily apparent from the start is beyond me because I’ve grown up and was educated in the “there is no ‘I’ in team” system. That said, culturally the U.S. is one of , if not the, most individualistic environments in the world, so it makes me wonder what characteristics of entrepreneurship exist in a place like China.

Common Definition of Entrepreneurship

“Entrepreneurship is the process of creating or seizing an opportunity and pursuing it regardless of the resources currently controlled”      — Timmons, J.A. 1994. New Venture Creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century.

Despite what you may have heard or think about China or Communism in general, I think China as a country is hyper-entrepreneurial. If the essence of entrepreneurship, as Timmons points out, really is about creating or seizing opportunity regardless of resources controlled, then China is the entrepreneur poster child. Oddly what is striking about Chinese entrepreneurs isn’t that they’re soloists, on the contrary, the fabric of their society revolves around relationships, far beyond anything we have here in the U.S. Due to China’s sociopolitical and legal environment Chinese entrepreneurs are anything but individualistic. Sure, there some soloist characteristics but at the root Chinese entrepreneurs understand that being well networked is an absolute requirement for success. My intent isn’t to drag you into a scholarly examination of Chinese entrepreneurship (Read Liao and Sohmen’s “The Development of Modern Entrepreneurship in China”) but simply to draw the parallel to the concept of ‘social creatures‘.

After a couple hours of research and a lot of thought, I was still contemplating whether I’m an entrepreneur. If popular opinion was any indication there would be a resounding “yes, Shawn is an entrepreneur”. I guess the issue I see is on a broader spectrum, I’ve always taken issue with categorizations regardless of how accurate or far flung they appear to be. Categorization to me is akin to wearing a wool sweater, comfortingly warm but boy does it itch, so with the phrase “If the shoe fits kid” ringing in my ears, I’ll submit albeit with some trepidation, yes I am an entrepreneur and most definitely not an inventor.

1. idea formalized
2. conceptual documentation
3. build prototype
4. business plan drafted
5. company & url’s registered
6. team established
7. phase I kick-off