Project: Waking Up Early…Day 1

Waking Up Early, YAWN…
My latest project, waking up early. For most people, this is a normal part of life, a part I’ve chosen to ignore unless it was necessary. In my quest for greater productivity, I have decided it was time to make this a habit. For the next 30 days, weekends included, I decided to wake up no later than 7:30 am.

Day 1 – July 20, 2010
6:00 am:
I woke up, read Mashable on my phone, then got ready to drop my daughter off at school.

7:00 am:
I went back to the house, then texted my sister to let her know I needed to wait for my parents to return from church so I could take them to breakfast for my dad’s birthday. We had breakfast at IHOP and I have to say having crepes for breakfast was a great way to start the day, plus my dad was happy we got an early start to his birthday celebration. My sister gave my dad a heartfelt card that he later scanned and posted to his Facebook wall. Yes, my dad is on Facebook and he knows how to use it, he posts pictures, sometimes updates his status, and “likes” stuff. No, I didn’t get my dad a heartfelt card, instead I posted a coffee on his wall HOURS before my sister’s to wish him a happy birthday from his favorite daughter. My sister Czarina later posted her birthday greeting, then tried to say she was the favorite daughter, followed by my baby sister Michelle who claimed she was the MOST FAVORITE daughter. They clearly copied me because I’m the favorite.

Following breakfast, we had stopped by a local farmer’s market. We got there a little after 8:30 in the morning, I was surprised at how early it was and fortunately, the owner let us shop before they opened at 9 am. We got some Rainier cherries, peaches (my favorite), kettle corn, and watermelon, then went to Blockbuster to rent movies since my dad wanted a lazy day for his birthday. When we got to Blockbuster, my mom asked my dad to check to see if it was open, it didn’t even open until 10 am. I KNEW there was a reason I never got up early! Shortly, after 9 am, we are back at the house and I was at my desk getting some work done.

11:00 am
I went to the gym, did the 11 am yoga class, followed by a 35 minute run to complete week 2 of the 5k101 podcast. The 5k101 podcast gets a beginning runner to run a 5k (3.2 miles) in 8 weeks using interval training. The podcast has a music track and a guy that tells you warm up, then walk, or run depending on the interval. He also gives reminders when there is a minute left during a running interval help with motivation. Using this podcast has helped me get back into running and still feel good the next day.

11:30 pm
I passed out at about 11:30 pm, while I was texting.

Day 2 – July 21
11:30 am Woke up (#fail). My body decided to reset to its’ normal waking time. My alarm is set for 6:00 am everyday so stay tuned.

Strength & Flexibility

Every night, I look at the LA Fitness class schedule and plan my workouts for the following day. Last night, I decided I’m going to do the bodyworks & abs class, yoga, and run for 30 minutes. The bodyworks and abs class is a full body weight training workout for one hour which has tons of squats, lunges (front, stationary, and reverse), combined with upper body exercises. Tonight was the first time in four weeks, I didn’t feel like I was going to die when doing the endless squats and lunges. What was different was this class had really good bootie-shaking music so I started singing along with the songs to power through the tough parts and stay focused on keeping the right form. What I didn’t realize until the very end of the workout was I wasn’t singing the songs in my head, I was singing them out loud. I’m the first to admit I can’t sing, it’s even worse when I’m singing breathlessly, no wonder the lady next to me kept looking at me funny.

Weight training always wipes me out but I thought yoga afterwards would be really relaxing then I’ll run so I can burn some extra calories. Mental note: not all brilliant ideas should be executed when you are wiped out and hungry. Yoga started pretty great because the instructor gave us peppermint oil to put our hands and shoulders. During some of the tougher poses, I would get tired, then get a whiff of the peppermint and it helped to refocus my thoughts on the pose instead of thinking defeating thoughts like “I’m tired” or the soreness in my arms and shoulders left over from weight training. I’m thinking I might buy some peppermint oil and put it on my hands when I’m running, maybe it will help me remember the relaxed feeling I get from yoga.

It’s really cool to see the strength I’m gaining and the flexibility I’m maintaining from these workouts. Some days I love working out because I get to do Zumba which is an hour of salsa, merengue, bacchata, mambo, cumbia and a little bit of hip hop that burns TONS of calories (600-700 calories isn’t bad). Some days, I force myself into the gym. I spent a long time looking for a magic pill which will burn calories or melt fat and the only thing that’s really worked to reshape my body is diet and exercise. Once I changed the way I ate, the pounds started coming off and the workouts have gotten easier.

Anyone have any tips on keeping with the diet when going out to eat? What is the best way to sculpt your body? Is anyone doing the P90x workouts, what do you think of it?

Like World Domination

I spent the day watching the live streams of the sold out Facebook F8 Developer Conference. It was streamed by Livestream and besides a few hiccups in the beginning it was great to consume all that information from the comfort of my own desk. The conference timing couldn’t have been better, I have been defining software requirements and drawing workflows for my business partner with specifics around integration with Facebook. Learning first hand about the changes Facebook was announcing allowed me to simplify some the requirements while I was watching the broadcast. Since our website is built on WordPress.org, I was able to quickly implement the new Like button by embedding the iframe into a text/HTML widget. The Like box links the title to the Facebook Fan Page, includes member photos, and if the user is not logged into Facebook, it will allow them to login from our website and automagically post to their Facebook stream. With just a few clicks Facebook integration was accomplished. Additionally, I was able to delete about seven different WordPress plugins we were using to create this integration. Next up, my business partner is working on getting single sign-on working without using the RPX plugin.

Key Messages

For developers some of the announcements made by Facebook simplifies the registration and login process because the single sign-on functionality asks for permission to access email and register the users Facebook account to a website. They are now using OAuth 2.0 protocol so this will play nicely with additional login options to different services such as Twitter.
Social plugins such as the Like button or box and the activity feeds help even novice bloggers get started with the Facebook platform using a single line of HTML. The code is generated by Facebook after the blogger makes some selections, which can be copied into blogs.
Insights is the Facebook analytics tool, the website says, “get detailed information about the demographics of your users and how users are sharing from your application.”

While I believe the single sign-on is a must have, what is interesting is the analytics and the server-side personalization. When launching a new website and brand, it’s important to understand who the customer really is and what they are doing on the website or the web application. Our assumption and research is tailoring the content of our website to a particular demographic, yet what if our target demographic is completely different from our actual users. We need to learn who they are and how they are using the application so we can optimize the experience for them.

The software requirements already build in a few tests to see which elements will drive viral growth and tracking to see where the users are dropping off. We will also request feedback and survey our users to see how their perception of what they are doing ties into actual usage. The goal is to launch a beta version in the coming weeks and update the software bi-weekly to refine how it works with a small group of people. More to follow on my side of the entrepreneurial journey in the coming weeks and how our Like box does in driving world domination.

Social Media Addiction: Check-in Phenomenon

I realized I blog sporadically, then whip out these epic novellas when I finally put my fingers to the keyboard. I’ve decided I would write more often in bite sized quantities. Since my last post, I’ve become addicted to “checking in” on Gowalla, Yelp, and Foursquare. It makes arriving at a destination a little spastic because I have to check in to 3 different services, Foursquare updates my Facebook status, Gowalla updates my Twitter stream, and Yelp lets any of my Yelp friends know I am still alive. You may ask yourself, why doesn’t she just pick one and have it update everything? My sister asked what is the point of check-ins? At the end of the day, there really is no point in check-ins. Personally, I like that Foursquare puts a picture on my location status update on Facebook, I like the pictures. I know I can send out a tweet about where I am and what I am doing, then have Twitter update Facebook and be done with it, then there would be no picture.

In my life of leisure, I discovered the world of social media games. For those of you who are unaware, it’s all those Mafia Wars, Farmville, Cafe World, MMA Fighter, Texas Hold’em posts you see cluttering up your news feeds. These check-in applications for the iPhone, Blackberry, Android, or WinMob phones have a social gaming component which allow you to collect items that you carry in your backpack, earn badges, or even become Mayor of a place just by checking in. I am happy to report Foursquare has named me the Mayor of LA Fitness for going 17 times this month. I never had any ambition to run for office, yet I’m the Mayor of the gym. Which means Foursquare thinks all I do is workout. I found at least the silver lining is that I will go to the gym regularly to keep my status as Mayor.

Inspiration…One Thing Leads to Another

Since January, in my efforts to get productive, I signed up for several events in San Francisco and Phoenix. The first event I attended was the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, it’s purpose was to enable women to take their next step either in their careers, launching a business, joining a startup, or building their online brand. This event was inspiring because the experts and innovators on the panel were CEOs of their own companies and they were women. There was one high school girl who got permission from her school to attend the conference instead of going to classes. I wish there were programs available where high school girls can attend events similar to the Catalyst Conference so they can see there is a path to reach the top.

I wrote about the second event I attended in my last blog, it was the Women 2.0 Will it Launch workshop. This was great because my business partner was able to go through the experience with me, I learned how to iterate through ideas to figure out which ones were viable, learned how to do a 30 sec pitch, and to network all while getting over the flu. We pitched our idea and got a thumbs up on the project from the panel of industry leaders and investors.

The last event I attended was the Society of Women Engineers Designing Women event. This event was to teach junior high school girls about engineering careers. They spent the day at different work stations doing hands on experiments or projects to learn about aeronautical, civil, computer, electrical, and mechanical engineering. Since I got so much inspiration from the last two events, it was time to give back. My friend sent me the email asking for volunteers naturally I said yes. I was at the electrical engineering station and we did experiments with LEDs, a resistor, and a 9-volt battery. The girls learned to put the LEDs in series and saw how the polarity of the LEDs either allowed the current to flow or not. I thought we were going to be creating circuits on breadboards, which in my personal opinion would have been more fun, plus we could have taught the girls more complicated circuits and measuring current with the flux meter.

After arriving back in Arizona, I asked myself what next? I’m inspired, have the thumbs up to turn the idea we pitched into a business, now how do I put it all into play? After attending a Southwest Job Network workshop on networking, I had lunch with one of my friends and she suggested I take a class on entrepreneurship through the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, she sent me an email to the Fasttrac TechVenture program. I applied for it a couple days later and the following Monday, I received the email that I could start class that evening. This is a 10-week condensed workshop which gives the entrepreneur the tools to develop the skills needed to do market research, find a customer need, start, operate, fund, monetize, and grow a technology business. The advisors also make themselves available for one-on-ones to answer specific questions about your business. Francine Hardaway was facilitating, she knows everyone in the Arizona entrepreneurs community and it seems everyone in the bay area as well, you can find her on Twitter @hardaway. I think with all the tools they’ve given us plus the speakers she’s brought into the workshop, we’ve been able to make more forward progress than if I hadn’t been attending Fasttrac.

The last thing I want to mention is a workshop I “accidentally” attended. I signed up for a workshop on how to manage your finances and creative ways to find money through the Phoenix Workforce Connection. Since they had moved the class locations around, I ended up at the “You and Your Future: It Starts Now” workshop led by Kristi Staab. She is a teaching assistant to Jack Canfield, who is known for his Chicken Soup for the Soul books. After a couple of phone calls, she found the finance class I was supposed to go to, however since I am still unfamiliar with Phoenix, I decided to stay. I learned to push outside my comfort zone in this workshop and through it was able to implement some of the success tools I’ve been using when working in a “real job” into the rest of my life. I will write more on some of the lessons I’ve learned from this workshop separately.

Here’s a quick summary of common themes in all of the workshops and conferences I attended since January.

Have a 30 second elevator pitch, use Buzzuka to help create a pubic or private elevator pitch on yourself, your business, your hobbies — this is free.

If you’re out of work, you need a pitch to sell yourself to friends and family so they can also network for you to hiring managers and recruiters. You should answer the following questions succinctly in this pitch, where were you recently, what you want to do, what skills or accomplishments do you have to qualify you for what you want to do, mention your top 3 target companies or industries, and a call to action. An example of a call to action is closing with, “Do you know anyone I can talk to in X, Y, Z companies or is in the ____________ industry?” Fill in your target companies and your specific industry.
If you are starting a business, you should have a hook on what your product is and explain the benefits or the value proposition. The goal is not to get your audience to ask you more about your business or have them tell someone else about your business so don’t worry if you don’t get to finish your pitch.

Have business cards

If you’re out of work, attending workshops or networking events requires you to give and get business cards to people you find interesting or who can help you find your next job. Business cards are inexpensive or free at Vistaprint or create your own at home with Microsoft Word and clean edged business cards you can print on your own.
If you have a business, put your Facebook Fan Page or Twitter name on it to encourage people to become fans, try to engage with the people who fan your Facebook and Twitter profiles to learn more about your customers.

People really like helping

My friends, colleagues, and people I’ve met at the workshops or conferences have been very generous about giving advice or helping link me to other people. I’m really grateful to have such great people in my life. The key to getting help is to ask for it.

Entrepreneurs & Improv

Last weekend I attended Women 2.0’s startup workshop called Will it Launch at the Microsoft office in San Francisco. The offices were located right off of Market Street which made for an easy commute from Fremont BART to the Powell Street station.

The tagline for the workshop was “Ideas are a dime a dozen, and we know talk is cheap. Execution makes you money. So how do you know which startup idea to focus on for success?” David Weekly, founder and CEO of PBworks and Poornima Vijayashankar, founding engineer for Mint.com led the workshop. I will do a separate writeup of the workshops key ideas and resources in the next couple of days. Today’s post will really go over how doing improv has a lot of parallels with being an entrepreneur.

Kasey Klemm led the improv workshop on day 1 and one of the first things we did was yell out “I failed!” As we faced our fear of failure and pretty much got it out of the way as quickly as possible, we were able to continue on our journey to being more productive, instead of wracked with fear on what could happen. Including quickly trying to get to know partners to see what we had in common with them, which is the basis of networking, even though the idea of networking for some of us is really intimidating. Since we had very little time to get to know them, we tried to establish common ground very quickly to have something to present after than particular round ended. Kasey closed his improv session by asking people for words of wisdom.

Don’t be afraid to fail, fail in the beginning so you aren’t afraid of it anymore (yelling “I failed! loudly and with full conviction gets you over fear quickly)
Network and find common ground with people so you can see how you can help them and how they can help you
Make your team look good, they in turn will make you look good (statue game)
Share your wisdom with others

Lisa Rowland led the improv session on day 2 and wrapping up our improv session was Dave McClure. During Lisa’s improv session we broke into 2 groups, group A and group B. Group A started as the group that was comfortable making extended eye contact, comfortable touching people, allow their bodies to take up more space with bigger gestures and taller carriage. Group B was the group which was uncomfortable with eye contact, was told to look, then to quickly look away, try to take up less space, and turn their toes inward. The idea behind this improv exercise was to help us learn high and low status behaviors. We milled about the room doing our assigned behaviors and realized how frustrating it was to communicate with someone who couldn’t look you in the eye. We also learned we stuttered and mumbled through our pitches when taking on the group B, low status personas.

When pitching use a high status persona, make eye contact, stand confidently, use your space and be confident with your ideas

Investors want to invest in people who are confident about their ideas

If having a high status persona is not your natural state, fake it til you make it

Dave McClure runs FF Angel which is a seed-stage investment program for Founders Fund. He had us play a game called Halfbaked.com where one side of the room yelled out a word the other side yelled out a word and 2 contestants did a pitch about the two words. One of the companies we had to pitch was shittycannibals.com, shows you how quickly you need to be creative in coming up with a problem/solution pitch.

“When pitching, the goal is not to get through all your slides. You want people to interrupt and ask questions!”–@davemcclure #willitlaunch
Your entire goal for your pitch is an emotional connection –@davemcclure (once you have that wait to build upon it) #willitlaunch

At the end of the day, to get the most out of the workshop it was best throw yourself wholeheartedly into the exercises so you can push yourself beyond any self-imposed limitations. This is also true with any startups, sometimes you have to quit your day job long before it’s comfortable, so you can really put your efforts in your startup.

The events of last weekend, led me to end the “Life of Leisure” chapter of my life to embark on the “Startup Life: Adventures in Making it Happen”, 2010 is shaping up to be an amazing and exciting year.

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