www.James-Strocel.com

Last night’s leader’s debate made for some mildly entertaining background noise. Sources say Jack Layton was the winner, though I think that was just because he was able to modulate his voice to sound vaguely human. Gilles Duceppe is once again permanently surprised by everything. It’s the same old set of issues they should have been settling in parliament instead of having to get us out of bed to say anything about it. Harper’s a criminal. Ignatieff’s an immigrant. Jack wants all your money. Gilles wants all your money for Quebec. Where are we going exactly, as a country? What purpose does parliament have beyond maintaining the status quo? You can’t make healthcare more free than it is this second. Cold War’s over. Sub-prime mortgage has all but taken care of the US. We’ve already had the Winter Olympics and won Gold for Hockey. Why not do something crazy, like go to Mars, or make Canada carbon neutral? We have a country that can make all of our dreams come true, and we’re entrusting it to an aristocracy of middle managers.

There’s not much point to an election in my riding anyways. Abbotsford isn’t conservative stronghold so much as we elect our officials based on two factors: One, their advanced age. Two, their ability to fend off large predators. I’m serious, the other candidates in the riding are trying to get votes based on “issues” and “reason”. It’s kind of pathetic to watch. Abbotsford respects strength! No amount of kissing babies is going to change that. If Madeleine Hardin decides to drop a dead coyote over her podium or something, then we might have an interesting election.

This video caught my eye over at Hacker News. It’s a clip from an interview with Steve Blank, one of Silicon Valley’s premier entrepreneurs.

Risk and Culture in Silicon Valley

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According to the clip, the reason Silicon Valley produces such a high volume of innovative companies is not the people, nor the universities, nor the weather. It is the attitude to failure. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs view failure as experience. It is not the financial death sentence that it is in other parts of the world. A little while ago, Bob Ell sent me another one of Steve Blank’s article about taking a tour of Silicon Valley, so that I could gain inspiration for my next big idea. Not a bad idea for a road trip, but I do have a little problem with the last line of the post which is “NEVER LEAVE”.

I look at these love letters to California, and I think to myself, what is a Fraser Valley company? What do we do in the Lower Mainland of BC that defines our business culture? Do we have that attitude to failure? Or do we have beliefs here that hold us back, like the way we pay our workers, or the way we look at the responsibility of the government? Silicon Valley is a great place to do business, but I hardly believe that there’s some sort of magic totem there spewing forth Venture Capitalists and Computer Science PhDs. There must be some way to import that culture here. We could improve it, leave out aspects that don’t work, maybe add some of our own ideas and export them. Basically, I want to know what we are capable of right here in British Columbia. I want to know what this place is going to look like when we’re done with it.

If you are a programmer, designer, tester, or in any way tangentially related to the software industry in your job, you must read The Passionate Programmer by Chad Fowler. Don’t fooled by its bad bodice ripper title. It is the first real career management book I’ve seen for programmers, and it is absolutely essential.

The problem with programming is that it’s a really young vocation. The first large-scale generation or programmers is only just retiring. You can find volumes upon volumes of heuristic wisdom for other professions like lawyers, teachers, and even blue collar trades like carpentry. We need our own philosophies to deal with the unique challenges of our industry, like the constant threat of obsolescence and the off-shoring of our jobs. The Passionate Programmer teaches you how to deal with all these issues and more. The chapters are short, but each of them ends in a concrete action plan. You’ll learn when to be a generalist, when to specialize, how to network, why it’s a good idea to automate IN to a job and how to search for your next indispensable skill.

I’m glad for books like The Passionate Programmer, and not necessarily for the strategies inside. Uncertainty and change are a way of life in the software industry. Every decision you make affects your future. Sometimes though, it’s just enough to know other people have faced that kind of uncertainty before. You need confidence as well intelligence to properly make your mark in the world.

Here I am with Rob from Liquidus Plumbing, Manmohan from Endless Beauty, Tim Garofano from Say it with Cake and Renee Gillett from SUCCESS

There are two occasions for which a man will obsessively groom himself: When he’s going on a date, and when he’s trying to make a sale. I wore a suit to my first trade show, as you can see from the photo. Not to impress everyone with my fashion sense, mind you, but so I would feel confident myself. I still managed to feel a little bit underdressed though. After all, there were legitimate business people attending. I was just…me!

I took a few laps around the space to gather my bearings. You could tell who was clearly having fun there from those who’d much rather be back at the office. I tried out both sitting at the SUCCESS booth and working the room. Both approaches had their advantages. When you were talking to people in their own booths, there was a lot of information you could glean from their sales pitches. You found out what they were like, what some of their challenges were, and most importantly how to use their services if you needed to. While I was in the SUCCESS booth, people were more willing to break the ice. I could also offer them chocolate, so that was another plus. This was more of a getting-to-know-you event than a sales opportunity. It’s like we were all trying to replicate the closeness of main street on the convention floor.

In total, I got about 30 leads from the trade show. I have no idea if any of them will bear fruit, but it’s certainly going to keep me busy on the phone for the next few days.

Since there is a Federal election going on this May, my wife is hard at work teaching her grade 6 class all the ins and outs of the Canadian Government. She’s talking about the Senate, the House of Commons, the Prime Minister’s office, Cabinet, election ridings, all the various philosophies of the political parties. She’s about 15 minutes into the lesson when one of her ESL exchange students puts up her hand and asks, “What is voting?”

This is something that happens in the tech industry all too often. We get all excited trying to explain a product, what it can do and how it works, when the customer is still stuck on trying to figure out one key piece of information. To make matters worse, we’re talking to adults here. They don’t want to look stupid, so they are less likely to speak up when they don’t understand something. They’ll go with the guy who gave them a decorative pen instead. This why we need to have intense rapport with our customers. They need to feel comfortable asking questions. Better yet, ask THEM questions about what they understand, so you can craft your message accordingly. Remember, just because everyone in the room speaks English, it doesn’t mean you all speak the same language.

We all have skills we wish we had. When you own a business, you pretty much want all of them. Accounting skills, social skills, marketing skills, bow-hunting and computer hacking skills. But when the bills come in at the end of the month, the only skills that matter are the ones you have right now.

Last week, the SUCCESS self-employment program got me an appointment with Julia Vidacovic, a business coach from Vancouver. I would say she’s my kind of personal skills coach. She’s not so much concerned with my feelings as she is with getting me out there and making money. When you sign up to work with Julia, the emphasis is on the WORK. When I got there, she asked me where I wanted to see my business go. I told her the truth. I want to be making most of my money from high end clients that demand complicated e-commerce solutions that only I could provide. I also told her that there were a lot of other freelance programmers out there who were better than me at it.

She then asked me that question: What can you do right now?

The answer was staring right at me in my portfolio. It gave me a new perspective on my marketing. I was worrying too much about the markets that I didn’t have yet. Those clients in that portfolio represented a customer template that I could possibly replicate. If I tried to target some of the traits of those initial customers, I could see my sales increase. The more sales I made, the more permission I would have to market some more complicated services like e-commerce and Software as a Service.

I realized that this applies to every business, even every job. Everyone has something they can do. Think of it as a seed of success. It doesn’t matter how common the skill is. If you have done something for someone else, and they are happy about it, that forms a concrete basis for your marketing plan. Everything else is just guesswork.

You can find Julia and more of her wisdom at www.brightestspark.com

It’s odd that a game like Recettear is my office distraction of choice. It’s the story of an item shop owner in a high fantasy setting, the sort you meet in RPG’s like Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy. The game’s protagonist, Recette, has to pay off a large debt incurred by her estranged father. With the help of Tear, the loan officer fairy, she starts an item shop selling to the various people and adventurers about town. In this game, I get to take a break from working on products and dealing with clients so I can work with different products and deal with different clients.

Granted, business in Recettear is a lot easier than in real life. Everything is bright and cheery. Marketing is all handled for you, and people just wander in to your shop. All you have to worry about from your competition is the occasional trash talk and maniacal laughter. Your customers pay you in a sparkly tornado of coins. I wish my clients paid me in coin tornados. It would probably make a mess, though.

If you have kids, I would say Recettear is the best way to teach them how to run a business. Unlike those myriad of tycoon games, your customers aren’t simply a bunch of faceless little avatars. They react emotionally to how you treat them, all in their full-screen saucer-eyed glory. Some of them even have back-stories, and the better relationship you have with them, the more of the game you get to see.

So check out Recettear if you want a decidedly adorable introduction to the world of retail. The game can be found on Steam or other fine download services.

Aaah, April Fools. Nothing like waking up and seeing the new impossible products from ThinkGeek.

Edible Iphone cases, for those who love their gadgets just a Little too much.

Arsenic Sea Monkeys! As deadly as they are adorable!

Shirt-plate! For when you just can’t…you know…stuff…

Okay, seriously, I want me some lightsaber popsicles. And I want them delivered to my house by Darth Vader while hearing this song coming out of the truck. Which is shaped like a Star Destroyer.

Peruse these and other fine amazing products atThinkgeek.com Happy April Fool’s Day!

Bonus: A review of Wonder Woman’s Invisible Jet!

On April 6th, I’m going to the Fraser Valley Business Showcase at the Abbotsford Tradex Center. It’s got about 150 booths, and any number of them could be potential clients. I have one paper banner, 1/6 of a booth, a pack full of business cards, a smart blazer, and a winning smile. Hit it.

Trade shows can be a little intimidating to the newbie entrepreneur. Everyone there is trying to sell to everyone else, so at first blush they can sound like giant mooching conventions. But take heart, fellow merchants! Trade shows are not just places to empty out your business cards. They are opportunities to gain that permission part of permission marketing.

If you’re at a Trade Show in person, you get more options when it comes to your marketing. You’re not just competing on a list of features. Let’s face it, that’s no way to differentiate your business anyway. People can decide to do business with you based on whether you are easy to talk to or pleasant to work with. That’s something you can’t get off of a brochure.
You can also tailor your message specifically to the attendees. I’m going to go through the list of attendees, check out their websites, and make a list of ways we could help each other out.

Contests are another good way to get the permission to market. I for one plan on raffling off a website package for one lucky company (Leave a Comment at the bottom if you want in). Even if you just have one winner, the fact that you have contestants is a good way to gauge interest in your services. You can even contact the non-winners at a later date.
Remember, even if you don’t make single sale at your trade show, you get a lot of valuable information or your business. You’ll learn who needs your services, who doesn’t, and you an also scope out the competition. Most importantly, you’ll be meeting people. They are the one thing that can make your business a success.

Nicholas Nassim Taleb‘s book the Black Swan was easily my favorite read of 2010. In his own meandering, hyper-intellectual way, Taleb explores the nature of randomness and the unknowable. I held off on writing a review for months because I thought I could write the mother of all reviews that would blow minds clear across to Saturn and back. We all know that’s not going to happen. After all, Taleb wrote the mind-blowing book, not me. I’m not even sure I get it myself, to be honest. Instead, I’m going to list everything you need to know in life that you can learn from the Black Swan.

1. The known is not as important as the unknown.
This is why the book is called “Black Swan”. If you’ve only seen white swans before, you’ll have a rule in your head that all swans are white. Travel to Australia and New Zealand, where there are Black Swans, that rule is completely broken. The unknown factor of there being black swans changes the nature of what a swan is. It’s not always going to be a white creature anymore. These unknown factors are responsible for many of history’s upsets, like intentions of the hijackers on 9/11, the location of the Japanese fleet before pearl harbour, or Christopher Columbus’ voyage. The known isn’t very important when unknown existing factors can change the situation completely.

2. Heuristics are better than rules.
When dealing with the unknown, the situation can change completely based on just a few key pieces of information. You can calculate all the mathematical scenarios you like, but they aren’t going to change the fact that the Emperor just showed up to his own procession wearing only a crown and a smile. For instance, the New York Times believes that as a rule, people will pay for journalism. They aren’t going to be so self-assured when the advertising based news services eat their lunch. So-called “rules of thumb” will get you through more situations than doing things by the book.

3. All large institutions are fragile
Big government, big corporations, it doesn’t matter. They are all held together by an extremely delicate web of tense agreements between millions of individuals. They may have all the military, the money, and the lawyers, but it doesn’t take much change to rend the fabric of society. Complexity, by it’s nature, makes organizations fragile. I’m not saying we should start burying guns in our backyards, I’m saying that governments and corporations are not as powerful as we think. If you think that Harper majority is going to send jack-booted thugs kicking down our doors, remember that it only took one guy setting himself on fire in Tunisia to turn the entire Middle East upside-down, and they had more jack-booted thugs than anybody.

4. Anti-fragility matters, not size.
So large institutions are fragile because they can’t respond to change. The opposite of that should be robustness right? Not quite. The opposite of a fragile organization is one that takes advantage of Black Swan events. Something that is decentralized, adaptable, makes many mistakes and learns from them all. I’m seeing this philosophy take shape in companies like 37signals and Freshbooks. It’s new class of privately owned companies with malleable products, day-one profit goals, and no outside money. Read “Re-work” for a more detailed description of this philosophy.

5. Randomness does not equal gambling.
Casinos are terrible metaphors for randomness. All Casino games have a knowable amounts of outcomes. There are always 52 cards for a deck, and 6 sides to a die. There are no rules for a truly random event taking place, like the casino being hit by a meteorite or an Ocean’s 11 style heist.

6. The only way to deal with randomness is to expose yourself to it.

You can’t avoid randomness by buying more insurance, forming more committees or even burying guns in your yard (the powder will get wet) so what are you supposed to do with your life? The only way to deal with randomness is experience it yourself. Make it your friend. This is not the same as risk-taking. Rock-climbing and sky-diving involve taking a large number of non-random precautions. Instead, take on an endeavour where the outcome is unknown. This is similar to Google’s so-called “20% time” that has led to innovations like gmail and Google reader. For the average person, that means reading a book about an unfamiliar subject, having lunch with someone new, or perhaps even commenting on blogs from time to time.