sparkcity

[sparkcity]

Distracted Drinking: Bartending and Bar-Sitting in the Age of the Smart Phone There are two kinds of people: those who are bar-eaters, people who like to sit and chat it up with the bartender and those who are not. You can be converted from being someone who doesn’t eat at the bar into someone who does but it doesn’t really work the other way around. I’m a bar-eater. I like to sit at the bar and read the newspaper or chat with the bartender and maybe one or two of the other bar-eaters. I believe bar-eating is one of the higher social engagements that we still can have with strangers in the physical world. Breaking bread with those who you haven’t come explicitly to meet and then chit chatting about the news of the day can lead to new insights and understanding of others—easier when the libations hasten a sense of wellbeing and relaxation that to paraphrase Jimi Hendrix makes you feel “not necessarily stoned but beautiful.” Heading up the party is the neighborhood bartender—trusted confidant, mixologist and the Keeper of the Buzz—the bartender is the ringleader of the conversation—deep and philosophical or nonsensical. Either way, the bartender sets the tone and the mood of the bar and by extension—the bar-eaters. I find these digital days are changing how we engage the bar-eating/bar-tending relationship. The smart phone has begun to interrupt the relationship we have with our Keeper of the Buzz by distracting us with people who aren’t at the bar and by news that’s published virtually without the gravitas of ink and paper. Last night I went to my favorite bar at my favorite restaurant—it’s my favorite because my friends own the place and because I’m really fond of them, this place is my favorite place. It’s my husband’s favorite place too. We wrote our business plan for our company over bottles of Cote du Rhone and San Pelligrino water—I found my seat and the bartender came out from behind the bar to hug and kiss me (on both cheeks) and some of the waitstaff came and hugged and kissed me too. Even the busboys came to take my coat and say hello. After the fanfare, I took a seat at the bar. There were a few patrons having dinner—some chatting, others not. I sat near a gentleman who had a meal like one I would order—healthy within reason. He obviously had been there before because he ordered a salad and a side of French fries and anyone who has had the fries know they are not to be missed. Over his salad, fries and Malbec, he is fitfully texting. Reading, texting, smiling, illuminating his face with the little screen, he is absorbed into the virtual relationship of that event and doesn’t make notice that I’ve sat down. He doesn’t make notice of the eye contact that the bartender is trying to establish with him. He only makes notice of the missing—the virtual friends that have no place in the right now. They can’t share in the way that the hot French fries seemingly melt on his tongue or the way that the Malbec gives him his Jimi Hendrix moment. He doesn’t savor the moment IRL, rather he is seeing what kinds of dogs are underrepresented in the US and stabbing at his food thoughtlessly. This way of bar-sitting and bar-eating is a problem. It is a problem for people who make their living by helping others improve their mood and their lot in life by having a satisfying meal and conversation and it’s a problem for societal understanding that comes from breaking bread with strangers. There’s a saying “sometimes wine is the answer to life’s questions,” and although I can agree with the statement, what’s missing is the subsequent sentiment—“when you can ponder the questions with your fellow sojourners.” The lament is the missing bar community that solves the world’s problems over some varietal that makes their heart sing and stops the constant din of the urban experience ringing alarms in your head. You should stop and take note: I’m one of the digital strategists from the one dot oh era who helped usher in the Internet Age as fast as I could knowing that it would upend the industrial economy. What I didn’t count on is the disruption at our local bar. Time and experience has tempered my view of where technology should be and where it shouldn’t be. I still believe deeply in what’s possible with technology but have many deep concerns about what people do with it. Back to the bar where I have my salad, French fries and Malbec chatting quietly with the bartender about the events of the day and wondering out loud with a waiter about the chance that Punxsutawney Phil will see his shadow, I settle into the comfort of chit chat and the calm space between thoughts. Deep down satisfaction from a simple nod of understanding and being understood replaces striving for position and the day to day struggles of the city. A few moments without LOLs and emojis or the ding ding ding of the iPhone pulling attention away to people and things far away brings focus back to that very very old faint imprint of the stardust that we all came from and Prometheus’ fire where we told each other stories. In this moment, we are oblivious to the miracle of technology and awake to the miracle of now and somewhere deep in our ancient innate, there’s a recognition of really seeing each other. Between the mains and the dessert, the bar becomes the human salve to the ennui of the everyday. The Keeper of the Buzz uses his shaker as his baton and moves the conversation from a crisp reserved clip to a slippery loquaciousness that ends with sincere good night with the promise of seeing each other again soon. Getting into a cab, I look at my phone to see what tomorrow’s work will bring, who started following me on twitter while I was at dinner, and see that Wednesday is double points day at the Starbucks if I use my app. The bar’s spell is broken and I am double screening it looking at my email as the cab’s taxi tv shows me clips of last night’s Tonight Show. I glance up and catch the eye of the cab driver as he looks at me in his rearview. “How was your night?” he asks me as we careened down the cobblestone street.

[sparkcity]

VR—I’m swiping right. So, here’s the thing about me and technology—I’ve had a love affair with tech for over 20 years and this includes the budding love, the fights, the break-up, the getting back together… all of it. And as with any other kind of love affair, once you get passed the initial attraction and crazy love, then you can settle down into the deeper more fulfilling kind of love. And so it goes with me and tech. I broke up with tech when it seemed that everything was about MarTech and to me, that was just a shallow relationship (except for the very few who were true blue brands in love with their MarTech platforms). Shallow in the kind of “Mr. Right Now” kind of relationship. You don’t like him that much but he’s ok—if you had a better choice right now, you’d swipe this guy left. Today I am announcing that we’re getting back together. I’ve been inside of a virtual reality experience and it made my heart beat faster…. Ooh la la! I’ve found my new love --which looks a lot like my old flame and I’ll tell you why. When I got into tech (during the tech 1 dot oh period) I did so because tech supercharged the vision of the future of community and togetherness inside of work because I found the old hierarchal structure of big companies too hard to endure. Tech was a meritocracy and a tech organization measured you on the value you provided to your team and the outcome that you were producing. Tech upended the way that lots of old school systems worked: where you went to school and who your parents were. Tech looked to the individual and what you brought to the table. That seemed to me an embodiment of the American Dream and I loved that you could imagine ideas like entitlement and birthright erased and just get down to work. Working in an organization that was flat where you were working together to make something collaborative and life-changing was the Kool-Aid. It didn’t matter if you were 25 years old or 125 years old. We were making it together to bring something beautifully disruptive to the world. My thought about the tech sector’s purpose was to disrupt all the things that didn’t work with the world and then making them human-centric with an egalitarian bent to it. Well, as all good dreams go, we have the exuberance of the promise of technology and the peak of inflated expectations and then there’s the inevitable fall into the trough of disillusionment …and I hit the bottom hard. (Thank you, Gartner, for your Hype Cycle work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle). I’ve been putting my toes in the tech 2 dot oh water for a while now and looking to find that special sauce of consciousness thinking, strategy, tech platform, and people who’ve got the earnestness and dedication to changing the world by the way we see things and ultimately sowing another digital revolution where we change how we’re doing things. So, I looked. I’ve toyed with 3D printing and the automation of making things. I’ve played with the tech of the “Smart Home,” I’ve looked at the digital organization and teaching the mindset of digitization. And I’m still not in love with MarTech. All of these are great technologies, don’t get me wrong, I can see why they’re the heartbeat for so many people…but love is love and you can’t fake it. I didn’t run to embrace automated marketing, not because it doesn’t work (because it works well) but because it doesn’t make my heart skip a beat. VR is something else entirely and entirely exciting. Yes, I’m warning myself of my own Hype Cycle but at the risk of seeming half-cocked and fool hearted, I remind myself that the New York Times has fully embraced VR storytelling with their VR app. So, they seem level-headed (#notfakenews) and the kind of people who do their homework so I’m thinking that there’s a good case for me to put on my wetsuit and really get into the water (because it’s still an early market and the water is still cold—wetsuit is needed). VR is the gamechanger that I’ve been dreaming of. I’ve been asking what will replace the browser since 2000 and now that the technology is more developed, the answer to that is VR. I love Augmented Reality too because it shows the blending of what’s real now with a digital reality (who is to say which is more real? But this conundrum is for another day). The freedom that both of these technologies shows is the unburdening of the self from the viewpoint of technology as a tool (efficiencies) and moves us toward technology as access to our own creativity and imagination. This unburdening is the promise of technology—whether it powers the undercutting of the organization’s infantilization of the individual through Dilbert processes or short circuiting our desire to bring our brains to work with us—technology’s promise is removing the shackles of the industrial age and freeing our minds and bodies to create in a free zone that is wide open to the depths of the imagination’s possibilities. Ah, I love the early love stage—it’s where your boyfriend can do no wrong and every time your phone vibrates that you’ve gotten a text you hope it’s from him. Me and VR—we’re having that fresh love now. *Thank you, Michael Ferraro, Exec Dir of FIT’s Information Design and Technology Lab for putting together an amazing VR Day, Frank Botdorf, EON Reality, Ben C Solomon of the NY Times, and Justin Bolognino of Meta.is for sharing your viewpoints, wisdom and work with conference goers and thank you FIT’s IT Dept for setting up the VR Lab for experimentation. It was amazing to use the technology and find myself inside of a world that I can create. #mindblown

[sparkcity]

At the Audacity review in June, all of the Audacity participants had made amazing progress in so many areas--One that was most notable for the group was how much closer the group became because they now had the common language of Audacity. Audacity's tool suite had moved from unfamiliar, difficult to navigate and challenging to becoming everyday and pedestrian. What we could hardly fit into two days was nicely reviewed in one and everyone was dialed into their accomplishments of the first six months. I'd like to think we all had a kumbiya moment. So what's next? You all looked at your successes and the things that you felt were less so and now you're in the middle of July...have you taken the action step that's required to build your business? What's the one thing that you can do that will make your business successful for this quarter? Have you been working on that? Maybe its making sales calls, maybe its building a new product suite--whatever it is, my question to you is "what are you waiting for?" What is the thing that you tell yourself about your business? Is it that your new product isn't ready for sale yet? Is it that you don't know how to find the people who need your services? Is it that you know how its supposed to look and it doesn't look that way yet? Your homework is to identify what that thing is that you're waiting for and create an action plan that catapults you into the next level of your business. When you're sitting at your desk wondering what you should do, ask yourself "what am I waiting for" and then get a move on it.

[sparkcity]

June is an awesome month. Not because it's the predominant month for graduations, the start of summer blockbuster movie season or the fact that in most areas, its warm enough to eat out on the patio for both brunch and dinner. It's also the half way mark in your "Year of Living Audaciously." You're the trailblazers in the New Mexico small business community. You're making the plans and working the plans. You're playing full out like you're out like you've got nothing to lose and everything to gain. You're making those KPI's sing the song that has you move to the beat of your own drummer. Being half way there means that if you're hitting your goals now, you're able to hit a new level of achievement this year. If you're not hitting your goals, the half way point means you can still make the pivet and accomplish a whole lot. Half way is a hopeful place because you've got the half-way mark under your belt and the damn the torpedos, full speed ahead potential of kicking over the goal post of life. Get out there an make June smashingly fabulous filled with the possibility of what could be and the gratitude of what already was.

[sparkcity]

First Product Value Declines Then Stock Price Drops Overheard in Brooklyn: “Yeah, I saw that Michael Kors thing in Saks but I’m so over him. Like I even care about his brand anymore.” This is exactly what happens to brands that don’t have their product managers engaging with marketing and pricing experts. In Michael Kors’ case, the problem was ubiquity– overexposure of the brand makes it less exclusive and less desirable. Once the company fractured the brand into three price points and moved the brand from exclusive to downmarket his client base which included Sofia Coppola swiftly exited stage left and Michael Kors was left with selling into an unproven marketplace for his brand. he lost his market. This is so apparent given that Business Insider has taken his downward slide into lower end sales and highlighted it as a case study of a business in decline. Watch here to see what Business Insider is saying about Michael Kors …. Michael Kors is so over . I don’t like watching businesses get into trouble, I’ve got no schadenfreude involved here. Why I highlight such a high profile story is that the learning for this brand is no different than any other brand no matter the size of the business. Ready, I’m going to topnote the educational takeaways for your business. 1. Spending your time building business value and building business relationships translates into brand positioning. The higher up the food chain, the more desireable your product or item becomes. 2. Brands move from upmarket to downmarket–never to return upmarket. Once something goes on sale, it erodes the product value which ultimately recalibrate customer expectations. 3. Recalibrating customer expectations means you will reduce their confidence in the product and thereby having their focus move from beauty, quality, exclusivity, along with other traits around customer desire and replace them a focus on price. 4. Price customers aren’t loyal customers. They’re not doing business with you, they’re doing business with the low cost that they’re engaging with. So Michael Kors wanted to occupy a few too many brand positions and didn’t take the time to align brand, customer, pricing and product and the market showed him how they felt with a 37% decline in stock value. Ouch. You don’t have to make the same mistake. Learn from Michael Kors. #pricing entrepreneurship smallbusiness smallbiz growco15 strategy

[sparkcity]

First Product Value Declines Then Stock Price Drops

Overheard in Brooklyn: "Yeah, I saw that Michael Kors thing in Saks but I'm so over him. Like I even care about his brand anymore." This is exactly what happens to brands that don't have their product managers engaging with marketing and pricing experts. In Michael Kors' case, the problem was ubiquity-- overexposure of the brand makes it less exclusive and less desirable. Once the company fractured the brand into three price points and moved the brand from exclusive to downmarket his client base which included Sofia Coppola swiftly exited stage left and Michael Kors was left with selling into an unproven marketplace for his brand. he lost his market. This is so apparent given that Business Insider has taken his downward slide into lower end sales and highlighted it as a case study of a business in decline. Watch here to see what Business Insider is saying about Michael Kors .... Michael Kors is so over . I don't like watching businesses get into trouble, I've got no schadenfreude involved here. Why I highlight such a high profile story is that the learning for this brand is no different than any other brand no matter the size of the business. Ready, I'm going to topnote the educational takeaways for your business. 1. Spending your time building business value and building business relationships translates into brand positioning. The higher up the food chain, the more desireable your product or item becomes. 2. Brands move from upmarket to downmarket--never to return upmarket. Once something goes on sale, it erodes the product value which ultimately recalibrate customer expectations. 3. Recalibrating customer expectations means you will reduce their confidence in the product and thereby having their focus move from beauty, quality, exclusivity, along with other traits around customer desire and replace them a focus on price. 4. Price customers aren't loyal customers. They're not doing business with you, they're doing business with the low cost that they're engaging with. So Michael Kors wanted to occupy a few too many brand positions and didn't take the time to align brand, customer, pricing and product and the market showed him how they felt with a 37% decline in stock value. Ouch. You don't have to make the same mistake. Learn from Michael Kors.

[sparkcity]

Change happens in every moment in the natural world. We are changing unbeknownst to us--we are sloughing off old skin for new skin, we get a new liver every six weeks yet we believe ourselves to be static or think "I'm just this way." The abnormal occurrence is stagnation-- or thinking that stability is equal to no change. Wanting things to be easy and stay the same is a wholly human quality.

[sparkcity]

Checklists and KPI's We make checklists everyday as a means to measuring our accomplishments. Consumer advocates report that creating and using a grocery list helps shoppers make better choices at the grocery store and save money by purchasing only what's on their list. That's one way that checklists help us achieve larger goals--they connect big picture ideas (like saving money on purchases so that families can save for the future) with the everyday action steps like budgeting (so we can save money for the future) and achieve the long term goal using a short term method. What happens when you just have checklists with no big picture driving the actions and the outcomes? Does your life become filled with tasks that you do because other people need or want something? Do you end up just working in the business instead of on the business? How do you avoid the hamster wheel of doing, doing and more doing without getting anywhere? Answer: You define what your long term goals are and then attach ways to measure how those long term goals are being implemented. So how do we know if they are being implemented? Your Key Performance Index. You put in place a system to measure what's most important and they start measuring the tasks and activities that are driving your KPI's. So you might want to achieve a certain financial performance. You can set up key measures that will tell you whether you are achieving the goals and outcomes you seek to achieve or if you need to make adjustments. KPI's are powerful tools that connect the big picture outcomes with the day to day activities. KPI's also can drive behavior change--if you know what the goal line is and your current actions aren't producing the result, can't you see the opportunity to create new plans and tactics so that you can reach the goal line? So KPI's are the high level connectors between your audacious goals and the day to day actions that you take. And like so many before me have said, "You can't improve that which you do not measure." What are your KPI's and how are you measuring them?

[sparkcity]

Best received news is a little like getting the award for attendance in kindergarten. You were there but were you present? What does the good news about your business that people share with you actually mean? Well, sometimes it depends upon the stars or the alignment of the planets--of course, that's only if you believe in astrology. It might mean that you're kickin' *ss and that you're doing a great job of being you-- but again, what does that mean? If you're in Audacity, it means that it's time to get down to work. Accolades are great, don't get me wrong but hearing them doesn't mean you stop and smell the roses, it means you put your foot on the peddle of your gas guzzler and you don't look back. An overnight success just means you've been working undercover for a long time--It's the intersection of preparedness and opportunity. With acknowldgement comes even more work. Get down to it.

[sparkcity]

Waiting for the "muses" to take inspired action is like waiting for the perfect wave in surfing. It's really not how the tide takes you back towards the shore that's hard or noteworthy. It's how you paddle out to get to the place where you see the wave of opportunity. Taking the inspired action takes courage and faith--like paddling out away from the shore when you don't know how you're going to come back in.

[sparkcity]

Inspiration vs Advice. This sums it up. Take a look at my tumblr post and see what i'm talking about.

[sparkcity]

Advice or Inspiration?

"Make certain that you wear a light jacket because it will be cold later on tonight." That's what advice sounds like. It might also sound like "you need a social media plan" or "you need to get your operations in order" or maybe even like "you should have videos on your website." All of this might be sound advice at one time or another and at one time or another you might want to listen to this. Mostly, however, advice is unwarranted and unwelcomed even if it is sent via "the best intentions." You remember which road is paved with good intentions? Yeah, well that's the one the advice-giver is on while telling you what to do-- because logic says what's great advice for them "must be great advice for you." That's why advice is mostly ineffective. If you don't take or give advice, then how does one learn and grow? Inspired action. People are experiential learners--learning by doing. Inspiring action means people feel the need to step out of safety and take a risk on action--the risk that something might not work, the risk that if it does work, you will have to step into the unknown to operate something that you don't know how to do yet-- Inspired actions are the ones that count, the ones that move you to share the experience with your team or the people who are close to you. Inspired action makes memories, changes tradjectories and moves the ball down the field. Advice, well, it's just that--advice.

[sparkcity]

Creating work that best suites your nature and the expectations that you've set for customers is a hallmark of your commitment to excellence. I know this phrase is as overused as innovation or pivot so I want you to dial into the idea of what genuine excellence is....do you have a picture in your mind? Great! So know you also know that there's a trap called good--good is the enemy of great (a shout out to Jim Collins for the phrase). Here's the deal with good--if you're ok with good, great isn't accessible. Good is ordinary. Good only gets you more of the same. Those of us who are committed to being great, invest more in the work and engage in a conversation called great. Paul Coehlo wrote " The reward of our work is not what we get, but what we become. What are you getting from your work? Are you committed to good? How do you know? What have you become?

[sparkcity]

Remember when you were young enough to love hearing the rattling of the ice cream truck coming down your street--the worn out shocks creaking from the weight of the truck and the refrigeration units that kept your Nutty Buddys and ice cream sandwiches frosty in their metal hiding places in the back of the truck-- the carnival music blasting from the rickety speaker told you it was time for "you kids" to come running down the street with your ice cream money crumpled up in your child-size hands sticky with dirt and sweat.Your wanting-ness of the ice cream driven by the last time memory of the creamy sweet treat in the forefront of your mind--you are crazy to get that ice cream. Let me know the last time you felt that way about something in your business.

[sparkcity]

Monday Morning Audaciousness is gone. It sounded like a good idea but when I looked at the stats, I realized that I had to make a change. My original intention was to send out Monday Morning Audaciousness to give a boost to Audacity participants as we headed into the week. In looking at the stats, I saw that what I planned on happening wasn't happening. Time to make a pivot. Pivoting sounds so hip now. Some people confuse this with failing and I want to tell you how I see the difference. A pivot happens to a business model when assumptions that you made about your product, sales, audience and finances don't line up. If you don't pivot, the business is over. You still have the same mission, the same commitment you did initially, the means in which you seek to achieve it have changed. That's a pivot. Failing, I think, means that you've exhausted all of your options and you still didn't come up with the outcomes that you're looking for. Please don't mistake the impetus of this as sugarcoating a truth so that "the medicine goes down" rather, I think we lack distinctions in business and in life that give us different ways to relate to the nature of what isn't working. So my pivot around sending out Monday Morning Audaciousness includes not only a new day to deliver the newsletter but a new Monday Morning Audacious practice: sending out a Monday morning tweet to those who might want to gain some inspiration and like a good Monday morning read. I saw that only a few participants were taking the time on Monday to look at the email and spend some time being inspired (at least I hope that's what's been happening!). So I'm making a change and starting to send out the newsletter on Thursday. I think that more of you will be able to make some time and engage with the content so that it helps you with achieving your goals.

[sparkcity]

The argument inside Mr. Spock was between logic and his emotional intelligence. Doesn't that make him a spectacular example of what we all do as humans--engage with our logical brain and our emotional brain? Think about popular culture's impact on entrepreneurship and you can see how we all struggle with logic and emotions in building our companies. There's sayings like "it's business, its not personal" or " do what you love and the money will follow." These two kinds of popular phrasing I think needs a little qualifying when we hear them in the moment. "It's just business" seems like a phrase that's used when we are at a loss for telling someone else that there's a lack of alignment or another outcome that just doesn't take into account one of the person's feelings. I'm not saying that the emotions that are not acknowledged in this example should have more weight than the logical argument for "its just business" what I am pointing out is the dilemna of logic and emotions. Same goes true for the "do what you love and the money will follow..." I''ve always thought to myself "well, then what?" The phrase has more to do with emotions than logic. Yes, coming up with emotional phrasing is more inspirational than the logical phrasing. This doesn't make it more important or more correct, inspiration just feels better to us than the alternative (no inspiration). Mr. Spock I'm certain would have a great logical explanation for all of this. RIP Mr. Spock A little Star Trek Tribute: Star Trek gave me the idea that the future is always better than the past and that humanities better angels had already won the fight for the soul of mankind (and the good people won!). At the risk of sounding like a cliche, I think my career in technology was directly connected to the ideas of Star Trek and that technology will work to help us be on the side of good. Star Trek gave me a future that was much brighter than the present and helped shape my expectations that the future, indeed, will be brighter than our past.

[sparkcity]

According to Steve Blank, the Stanford Professor who pioneered the work called “The Lean Start-Up” that the difference between start up companies and large companies is that start ups are in search of their business models while large companies have a business model that is constantly under review to increase efficiencies. Now, I’m paraphrasing this so you can’t quote me on the words but you can quote me on the intent—the skills that are needed to be successful in start up versus the skills needed to be successful in corporate are very different.

Searching for a business model can feel really uncomfortable. Trying to explain your business when you’re actually not certain about what you’re selling because the business model hasn’t quite sorted itself out yet, can make you feel like a failure right out of the gate—You see your corporate friends working in a business that is already set and you think to yourself, “my business should already look like this,” or worse, you see companies that are like Twitter or Facebook and think that your start up should already have conquered the world. Have faith friends, there’s genius in the flexibility of the start up model and it gives you the opportunity to make corrections and then conquer the world.

Our first mistake as entrepreneurs is thinking that “this is that” that in essence our corporate expertise has made us prepared for what’s happening in start up. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Start up is a different animal in the sense that the skills that you need don’t come from the mindset of “how can I make this better” rather it comes from the mindset of “how can I make this?”

I would never bet against any entrepreneur who has at least turned a certain amount of ideas into products and then sold something. This is the test of having some real skils in belief—belief that what you can make is better or different than what’s out there, belief in the system that supports entrepreneurship and belief in yourself and the future you see for yourself from bringing this idea to life.