Stormy weather

Somewhere in our nation, a little guy with a spear and magic helmet must be waving his stubby arms around and shouting “Storms! North winds bwow! South winds bwow! Typhoons! Huwwicanes! SMOG!”

Whoever that little guy is – and I could name a name – he sure has turned American life into a not-so-comic opera. In his dim quest to “kill de wabbit,” he and his cast of cartoon sidekicks have brought down disasters of every kind on the unprotected heads of those they were supposed to serve.

And that’s us.  So what have we been through? The rise of a feudal economy as the unchecked privileged grab away the few resources of the poor and middle class. An invented, pointless war with thousands of killed and maimed. The fanning of our enemies’ hatred and our friends’ anger. Our nation indentured to Big Oil.  The environment in a death spiral amid an official culture of defiant ignorance. A major city drowned and destroyed through ineptitude.  Our infrastructure disintegrating.  Our money devalued. And now, a tectonic shift in the banking industry as its own greed and foolishness dissolve the bedrock it was built on.     

Earthquakes and huwwicanes, indeed – literally and figuratively. The flick some of us way-inlanders got from Ike’s tail in the last couple of days was like a physical reminder of how vulnerable we all are to catastrophes that once seemed exotically unlikely.

So this is where we stand:  in more desperate need than ever of courageous, innovative people with the skills to think and experiment our way out of this deadly fix.  The problem with crises is that they make so many people want to just stay down and stay put. They’re terrified to try the very thing that could save them. And that thing is creative risk.

Though there’s little optimism now and less money, we have enormous opportunity - and we simply can’t waste it.  The definition of “entrepreneur” is someone willing to take risk in order to reap profits, to have the guts to reach for the glory, but it can’t be limited to business. It has to be about everything in our lives. And the ideas have to come from all of us.

We have to imagine and we have to try smart new things. And when the story about the little guy in the magic helmet concludes with the question, “Well, what didja expect in an opera? A happy ending?”,  we have to say: Yes! 

And then create one.

It means … no means

In my youth, love meant never having to say you’re sorry. I have lived long enough to recognize that for the disastrously impolitic and callous crock that it is and have moved on to wondering what entrepreneurship means. I offer a few thoughts, which are all the thoughts I can summon now that I work 19-hour days:

Entrepreneurship means … working for nothing (it seems, so far) but the sheer joy of it. I used to call this “volunteering.”

Entrepreneurship means … actually reading the business section of the newspaper. Well, some of it.

Entrepreneurship means … being able to claim to own a business without actually possessing anything but paperclips        

Entrepreneurship means … having to think about Christmas in September. And even earlier next year. This is something I would gladly have let my hyper-efficient older sister continue to be the only one in our family to do.

And entrepreneurship means … not caring if my syntax is tortured.

I’ll make more sense when I’m successful. Or at least, more people may be willing to pretend I do.

Starting at the beginning

Literature has taught me that great fiction can start in medias res, in the middle of things. It’s a device that makes an intriguing mystery of the past and a puzzle of the present, allowing the connections between them to be illuminated in tantalizing flashbacks.

It works beautifully on the page or screen. But in real life, it give me hives. Especially in business.

And that’s because it’s not orderly.

I like order. I like it a lot.

Not the kind that demands on-time trains and phalanxes of people walking and thinking in lockstep. I couldn’t care less how other people conduct their lives as long as they and their habits don’t interfere much with what I need to do.  I don’t want to have to organize and track them. I just want to manage me.

The order I need is a composed beauty – or at least a fairly tranquil neatness – of physical space and a logical chronology of task. Chaos and agents of chaos are threats (and never as brilliantly fun/scary in real life as Heath Ledger’s Joker was in “The Dark Knight”; alas, poor Ulrich, his was too short a knight’s tale), but I can live near them as long as they don’t encroach on the borders of my carefully arranged desk, room or car. (And I have. If you could SEE some of the office pods at The Plain Dealer …!)  

In fact, I’m somewhat obsessive-compulsive about my space and methods. Oddly enough, that’s likely why being artistic matters so much to me – writing and music are probably my attempts to impose some kind of meaningful emotional and intellectual structure on the world. 

Carrying the tidiness over into my life makes me a mild curiosity in the messy, expulsive, determinedly unregimented arts world.  But being O-C is indispensible in business.

When I was in the earliest thinking stages of what became The Genius Group LLC, the parent company of Geniocity.com, I was absorbed by the challenge of taking steps in the right order. I didn’t want to get to a certain point and realize that I should have done something three moves back and then have to stop and do it – and maybe three other things – before I could move forward again. I wanted to have everything in place at the right time.

Yes, sure, I knew the process couldn’t be constructed that perfectly (O-C. Not delusional. Ok?), but planning ahead certainly did help. I especially wanted to be careful not to create any legal problems for myself by failing to set up the proper framework for what I wanted to build or being fatally ignorant of things like tax obligations.

So first, I got a pretty clear idea of what kind of business I wanted to do and with whom I wanted to do it. Then I talked to a lawyer. (Most of them will give a prospective or new client a free first hour of consultation). And after thinking a lot more, based on the information I got, I and my partners signed up with a law firm and created a specific kind of company with our lawyers’ help and advice.

Getting great lawyers was the right first step. It was also the best and most important step I’ve taken as an entrepreneur, closely followed by getting a great business advisor and a great accountant. Their help, expertise and timely reminders are essential, even for someone who’s naturally orderly and especially for anyone who’s not.

I suppose there are plenty of successful businesses run by people who throw all their papers on the floor and forget appointments and jot sales orders on their hands, but I can’t imagine how that could work. I constantly plan in my head what I have to do first, second and third this day or this week so the things those steps trigger can transpire at the proper moment. Having this stuff work out (sometimes) as planned may not be as psychologically satisfying to other people as it is to me, the Felix Unger of my generation, but it does make life more productive and at a somewhat faster rate.

And when stuff doesn’t work out and nothing happens on time? I rant, droop, whine, eat, watch movies, read, sleep, take walks and try again. All in the proper order, of course.

Days need more hours

Dear entrepreneurs:

Do you nap in chairs and eat standing up?

Do you talk on your cell and your land line simultaneously?

Do you write extra appointments on napkins because your day-planner’s full?

Do you have breakfast at 7, lunch in the car at 4 and dinner at 9?

Do you finish styling your hair at stoplights?

When someone asks about business, do you black out and come to 10 minutes later to find yourself gabbling like a chipmunk on double-extra-shot lattes?

Are Saturday and Sunday just halves of Friday and Monday?

Do you notice the seasons change only because your keyboard is cold or hot?

Are you late? Are you late … for a very important date? Would a time-warp help?

This is for you. Because life in the start-up lane is plummeting down a rabbit hole.

As Dr. Frank-N-Furter would say, “Isn’t it nuts?”

The quotidian life

That’s what Harvey Pekar calls the everyday-existence stuff that he writes about in ”American Splendor,” his autobiographical comic-book chronicle. It’s kind of an anti-drama, in a way, just like most of our daily lives.

Well, some lives are more exciting than others, I guess, but I think that if you got a truly honest assessment from people – even celebrities and world leaders and astronauts – you’d find that most of their time, like ours, dribbles past them in long files of little chores and annoyances relieved by stretches of random hanging around. Once you become something, it loses a lot of its mystique. 

“Entrepreneur” still sounds like an exciting gig to me, even though being one has shown me just how much glamorless grunt work goes into it. It sounds energetic, intrepid, brainy – the next best thing to “adventurer.” It feels that way, too … every once in a while. 

So what’s in an entrepreneur’s day? Since I haven’t done any serious drawing in decades, I’ll give you a verbal version of “Entrepreneurial Splendor,” with apologies and homage to Harvey:

Panel 1.  “Uuuuuunnnngh.” (Entrepreneur Woman – or EW – rolls over in a blind, bedbound coma of fatigue from blogging until 1 or 2 in the morning. The clock reads 7 a.m.)

Panel 2. (In her pre-verbal sunrise state, with knuckles and chins scraping the floor, EW staggers to the bathroom, where a hot washcloth eventually unseals her eyes.)

Panels 3, 4,and 5.  ” ‘Morning. … ‘Bye.” (Words begin returning just as family members leave. EW consumes cereal and news on autopilot, squints slightly more enthusiastically at the funnies. Not “Mary Worth.”)

Panel 666. Click.Taptaptaptaptaptap.Click. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.” (Internet connection’s out again. EW brushes her teeth while rebooting continues … and continues.)

Panel 7. Click. taptapta… bzzzzt! ”Hello?” (Mother calls. EW surreptitiously continues answering e-mail while on the phone, typing ve-e-e-ery quietly so Mother doesn’t get bent out of shape because EW’s multitasking during her call.)

Panel 8. “Ow.” (EW has sent 583 e-mails and placed four dozen calls, trying to reach artists, writers, designers, advisors, insurance people, repairmen, school administrations, brokers, doctors, investors, kids and friends and now her lower back has fused with the frame of her ergonomic chair.)

Panel 9. “Ungh. Huuuuh. Ungh. Huuuh.” (EW resumes pre-verbaling at 10, while working out. Plenty of time to get ready for that lunch meeting, plenty of ti….)

Panel 10. “Shoot!” (This is the euphemistic panel, which gets its own workout as EW realizes she doesn’t have enough time to get ready for the lunch meeting and speed-showers dries hair checks voice mail dresses checks e-mail logs off splotches on makeup collects contracts brochures shoes purse hurls self into driver’s seat and bounces down the MLK like a coal car through a mine shaft applying lipstick at red lights which never happen when you need them to and sprints the last 100 feet from parking meter to coffeeshop arriving her usual 15 minutes late.)

Panel 11. “I’m fine, thanks. My business? We bring the power of creativity to every …plus hands-on…creative worksartssciences …writing best growing numbers up…looking for have need marketingadsproposal networkingand revolution journalism. … So … how are you?”  

Panel 12. “G’night, g’night. Love you. “ Taptaptaptaptap. (It’s midnight. EW has made it to a second meeting, chauffeured to afternoon music practice and the skate park, brought groceries to Mother, written a new executive summary, sent 583 follow-up e-mails, printed out 16 contracts, checked the site, made dinner, signed permission slips and, limp and spaghetti-stained, is concluding her next day’s blog post. … ) 

Panel 13. Taptaptaptaptap. Click …… Aaaaugh! (The bad-luck panel! Internet out again! EW tries to stab herself to death with a highlighter.)     

Panel 14. (Post rewritten. Face washed. Lights out. Eyes … open. Night-night, EWwwwwww…)

The truth about greed

I’ve been reading someone else’s blog. It’s good for me to come out on the porch once in a while for air.

The particular blog I was scanning last night is called How to Change the World. It belongs to a West Coast venture capitalist named Guy Kawasaki. You may have heard of him – he’s not only involved in outfits such as Garage Technology Ventures, but also writes a column for Entrepreneur Magazine and has come out with a number of books including “The Art of the Start.” 

He’s clearly a very smart and unspeakably successful man, from his Stanford and UCLA education to his scalpel of a wit. Just read (and weep over) his two posts from January 2006, the Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists and the Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs, to discover the truth about the game of getting funded. Like me, you may immediately be visited by an urge to lie down on – or better, under – your bed and come out long enough to put in just the few late-nightly hours as a janitor that’ll keep you in Cheetos and Netflicks for the rest of your numbed, thwarted life.

But even as I noted his creativity as a writer, I was gobsmacked by the realization that venture capitalism  – at least as practiced by the firms I’ve heard of - is actually anti-innovation.

You heard me. They all claim to be investing in and encouraging innovation, but they’re not, they can’t be  - because all they care about is making a bazillion dollars. What that means is, they really aren’t looking for the most interesting ideas, the ones that could have the farthest-reaching good effects on life, society or the planet, but only on the most lucrative ones.

And what makes something lucrative these days is imitation. Yes, imitation – the cost-effective, mass duplication of someone else’s original, creative and successful idea.

That’s why all the venture capitalists are looking for another Google. Just as all the publishers are looking for the next ”Harry Potter” series or ”Chicken Soup” franchise. And just as all the Hollywood producers are looking – and have looked every single year since moving pictures were invented -  for the next cookie-cutter version of the suburban-family sitcom.

When by some fluke, someone invents something truly new or different that seizes everyone’s imagination and becomes - often unexpectedly – a commercial phenomenon,  all the buck-hounds want to do is copy it and cash in. So no one really searches out and carefully fosters new and unique writing talent the way Max Perkins did long ago at Scribners. No one in Hollywood tries any really daring content – only the little independents have the guts and inspiration to walk on the edge where the material rewards are dubious, but the impact on minds can be huge.

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re talking about: The true “next thing” will actually come, as it almost always does, from a person or couple of people with nothing but imagination and nerve, who somehow manage to create their idea and win attention for it. And as soon as it catches on, the money-worlders will be rushing around trying to find something just like it to exploit, instead of trying to help other creative people invent another true “next thing.”

That’s not changing the world. That’s arresting its development. 

I’m not saying that those who do attract venture capital are without creativity themselves. But their ideas have to fit such a narrow definition of desirability – software tech, biotech, $50 million in four years - that only a very few of them ever win support. 

Think of all the other kinds of ideas that will be ignored or lost because the guys with all the billions have tunnel-vision. 

Please. I would, but it makes me ill.

Who follows through?

Seems like almost nobody, to me.

And if there’s anything that can stop the irresistible forces that are entrepreneurs, it’s the immovable brick walls of other people’s fecklessness and inertia. Entrepreneurs have essentially squat to rely on but our own adrenaline, so when people fail to call back or send a promised referral or provide needed materials, we tend to pile up against the barrier, like the marching band diverted down a dead-end alley in “Animal House.”

We gotta move forward, we keep trying to move forward even when there’s nowhere to go, because if we stop, we’re dead – a heap of seized-up, keeled-over Energizer Bunnies, slowly whacking our little bunny drums until the last spark of life and hope has expired.

When you’re starting a business, certain things have to happen on time. Systems have to be set up, products have to be made or acquired, improvements have to take place, markets need to be reached and satisfied. If we can’t get other people to act when we need them to, our projects are doomed.

Oh, sure, people are mostly real pleasant about not getting around to whatever it is we desperately need. They’ll warmly pledge to e-mail that stuff, introduce you to those folks, make that decision. And then  … nothing. Nothing.

We try again. Entrepreneurs are nothing if not persistent.  We get the same answers – apologetically, even guiltily expressed - and then the same … nothing.

What are these people doing? Can they really be so busy that they don’t have time to briefly answer a message? Has an epidemic of personal disaster suddenly erupted throughout all industries, prostrating everyone with ingrown toenails, missing hamsters, school soccer seasons and mold? Where exactly are they? 

Ten bucks they’re playing online solitaire. Don’t you think? Or thumbing through the latest Hammacher Schlemmer catatog, looking for motorized toilet seats. Or going for coffee. (Statistically, individual Americans go for coffee about every 4.3 minutes per day now, slightly more if they’re still working on that last piece of lemon loaf.)

And calling every single person they know on their cell phones. Except us.

We can attempt mind control all we want (Think: “Call. Me. Now. Dammit.”).  We can spin ourselves around in our ergonomic chairs, smashing all our home-office desk toys with our flailing feet in sheer frustration. We can play our one trump card, calling the people who originally suggested that we talk to these other irritatingly AWOL people and affably, business-politely hint at HOW HARD THOSE PEOPLE ARE TO GET HOLD OF.

But none of it will work. We’re stuck, left to sublimate our frustration by systematically stabbing out life-size, pointillist replicas of ”The Scream” on our blotters with a letter opener. 

Or go for coffee.

You need to know about this

If you still have moments in which you truly can’t believe that creative ideas and entrepreneurship are changing the world for the better, have a look at this: 

Then check out Ashoka.

Getting bent

“Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.” – Message on the marquee at Central Congregational Church, Madison, Ohio

Well, at least not permanently bent out of shape – I guess the goal of flexibility is to be able to spring back into good form no matter how often you get psychologically folded, spindled, mutilated or – like me yesterday -run over by a speeding semi called the business world. 

To explain in brief, I had another unfortunate encounter with a venture-capital firm that - despite some early assurances to the contrary – turned out, like all the others, to be looking only for technology-producing companies that will make $50 million in short order. 

So I feel not only pretty bent, but also deeply imprinted with tire tracks. If I were Wile E. Coyote, I’d simply peel myself off the pavement and - pop! – be fully recovered by the next frame. (And the Acme Investor Prod I’d purchase next would undoubtedly misfire and flash-roast me into stick of pure charcoal. Sic transit cartoon Sisyphus).

Entrepreneurship is Sisyphean enough without the self-immolating gadgets. So I think, now that it’s very early Thursday morning, I’ll just go to bed. Maybe while I’m asleep there, I’ll make fifth-dimensional contact with a money person someplace who sees the value of a small creative start-up that could bring about good, big and profitable social change.

Or maybe the headboard will just fall over and squash me.

Yes, you can … make yourself do those chores

In a political season, self-motivation takes on a grander tone than usual. We dream of accomplishing the rare, the fine, the monumental – maybe even the impossible, like world peace or just figuring out how to use whatever voting machine we’re lumbered with this year.

But most days – let’s admit it – successful self-motivation amounts to little more than oozing out of bed or walking past the open bag of chips. Victories, yes … but small. The big stuff, we whine about and squirm to avoid.

I find I have a lot more to whine and squirm over now that I’m an entrepreneur.  Oh, I do enjoy working for myself. But so much of what needs to be done is stuff I don’t know – or want to know - how to do.

See, when I was employed by others in a longtime job, what I had to overcome was mostly boredom and frustration. Now that I’m my own boss, what I face daily is dread. Little bits of dread, but … dread.

Like figuring out software. I loathe it. Loooooooooooathe it. Loathe. It.

It’s like math’s first cousin and math is my personal Satan. I would rather have major surgery than deal with either. At least in surgery, you’re unconscious.

So I will go to extremes of evasion – networking! writing thank-you notes! - to spare myself the worse agonies of learning online tax-filing or blog management or – haaaaaugh - bookkeeping software. They’re death by a million wrong mouse clicks.

Small wonder then, that I experience a sense of personal triumph when I force myself to cope with any of these evils.  Not just wrangling software. Giving (eek!) presentations, say, or drafting proposals (ugh) or paying bills or figuring shipping costs (noooooooooooo) or tarting up my own press releases (ick ick ick). I practically have to tie myself into a chair to get them done and even then, I’ll keep trying to spring myself by diverting the guard – me – with any tiny bribe or attraction.  The guard is particularly susceptible to e-mail and cups of hot coffee. 

But eventually, somehow, I do them. Sometimes out of pure shame, I guess, or the (if possible) even greater fear and panic brought on by the prospect of failure. Yeah, disgrace – it works for me.

Something has to. Because – and I don’t know what this says about me – my own positive incentives do no good. I can dangle big rewards in front of me and I’ll just swat them out of the way and go find a piece of chocolate or some fuzzy socks or a movie to be happy with. But if I scare me enough, the job gets done.

Note to managers: Don’t try this at work. It backfires when your staff members are people other than you.