So another year has passed and again it went too fast. Walking across the kitchen, I spotted my list of 2011 goals taped to the backboard of my desk and pulled it down with a grin. It has been at least 6 months since I looked at the list and though I got off to a good start in the first two quarters of 2011, I was afraid to look back knowing my “resolve” had weakened in the waning months of the last year.
So here is my list and the results:
2011 Goals
7 Areas with 5 Traits – Specific, Measurable, Your Goals (Accountable), Time Limit, In Writing
Financial – Debt, Income and Worth
Pay Off Car #1 by March 31st – double payments for 3 months +
Pay Off Car #2 by December 31st – for 6 months Starting in April + A surprisingly large tax return from education credits due to my wife returning to the nursing program took care of the first two on my list before March had even expired. What a relief to have no car payments!
Increase side income by $5,000 a year from websites, teaching and consulting. 0 Profit from my website is up about $2500 and I made another $1000 buying and selling used hockey skates. So I am about $1600 short of my goal but progress has been made in the right direction.
Intellectual Goals – read 1 nonfiction book a month starting with:
QBQ – Question Behind the Question + Good enough book…but a rehash of how I live my life. Very little new here.
Parenting Book – Scream Free Parenting / Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World+ Scream Free Parenting was a revelation! The biggest change was not making my 11 year old clean his room. Unfortunately, he is ADHD and an electronics inventor so after about 3 months and a friendly mouse that committed suicide in our toilet after we finally made him clean his room we decided some screaming is necessary to keep things from getting out of control. One HUGE suggestion from the book that still works is asking “Will you…____?” instead of “Can you…___?” It’s strange but the kids do what I ask when I use the former but not when I ask the latter, no matter the question.
Read two relationship books. -
Boundaries – Henry Cloud.- I failed at the last two in this section. No excuses, no reasons. It will be the first thing I do in 2012.
Family – Start dating your spouse and kids again. Love is spelled TIME
Plan a winter break / vacation – Water Park before February 28th. + Indoor water park at the CanadInn in Grand Forks, ND. Thanks Grandma! We had a blast!
Have “Dad and kid” and “Mom and Dad” night one time per month with each kid and wife. 0 Not exactly steadfast on the whole once a month thing… but my wife and I had several great date nights both in and out of the house and the kids and I each spent some special time together as the moving, ice skating and ice cream. More of this to come in 2012.
Plan an week long Fall vacation with just our family for early August (not just going to the lake). + We took a trip to Valley Fair with some friends and family in Shakopee, MN. I took several Dramamine and survived some mid level roller coasters. I think this will be an annual tradition. We also managed to save 50% of our budget for a tropical vacation.
Spiritual Goals – Time and Prayer
Attend one small group meeting in 2011. Alpha meetings? -
Continue attending services during the summer. + While I didn’t make it to a small group meeting I did start teaching a 6th grade confirmation class and attended several summer church services outdoors at Hope Lutheran.
Physical Goals – Exercise and Nutrition
Loose 1/2 pound per week by June 1st 2011. - Nope. But I am down 7-8 pounds from joining a hockey league twice a week.
Stop drinking pop except one diet coke every Sunday. - Ha Ha! Not even close. I did however stop buying cases of pop and switched two a couple of two liters of diet coke per week. Maybe this will be in the cards for 2012?
Cardio 2 days per week / weights 2 days per week. - If you count hockey two days a week then I got half way there. I did however break out the weight set once we got rid of the old guest bed and the “exercise room” is set up and calling my name!
Sign up for Novice Hockey league in Fall 2011. 0 Because I offered to teach Wednesday confirmation I couldn’t sign up for this league, however I joined two other men’s hockey groups.
Career Goals – Professional Development, Applications, Contacts
Hang real estate license by end of January. - Nope. In fact I am one day away from letting that license expire. It’s like the skinny jeans in the closet. After 3-4 years you should just throw them out if you are not going to use them.
Review and revise DIYBizPlan.com – Software revisions. - Minor revisions were made. Currently in talks with a value added investor to finally do something with the software. Something significant!
Launch www.TradeTurret.com – manage product end of the site partner to manage content. - Looking back this is one of the biggest disappointments of 2011. Not only did my friend and business partner in this venture drop every ball thrown his way…a couple of months ago he informed me he was getting back into drugs. End of friendship.
Look at job openings once a week. Meet with a career consultant. - No, after looking for, interviewing and getting offers for two or three jobs I declined I just decided to refocus my efforts at my current position.
Social Goals – Dinner Parties, Gatherings, etc.
Invite Friends #1 out for Dinner/Drinks or over with kids. -
Happy hour with Neighbors one night a month. -
Weekend with Old Friends out of town twice this year. + The social life has not been a priority.
Wayne Rogers of M*A*S*H* fame discusses his entrepreneurial ventures.
Here are his five rules to “unconventional” entrepreneurial success:
Rule #1: Find people you can work with—and trust.
Rule #2: Dare to do what is not expected. Question the status quo. But keep a firm eye on reality. Creativity becomes useless when it crosses the border into fantasy.
Rule #3: To level the playing field, know what you’re up against. Make it your business to know the rules and regulations that affect your business.
Rule #4: Do your homework—and legwork. Improving standard business practices starts with understanding why they became standard in the first place.
Rule #5: Just ask the customer. It’s not rocket science. The customer has always been and will always be the best source for solutions to business problems.
Thinking of raising seed capital from an Angel Investor for your startup? There are a lot of steps between making that decision and signing a term sheet. You have to:
Attract an audience with an Angel.
Pitch your plan.
Be prepared for a litany of “No’s”
Once you get a maybe…suffer through due diligence.
Hassle and haggle over a term sheet as if you are a used car salesman.
Give away half your company for half the money you were anticipating.
Bonus – get kicked out of your own company when things go really well or really poorly.
So how do you assure you will receive an appropriate post money valuation based on the actual prospects of your company? You can’t! Well actually, you can but there is a secret.
All that B.S. about having the killer idea/app, the perfect team and the best market is a bunch of bologna. Why? Cause no one has a crystal ball. So going through the process of identifying a market, sales channel and forecasting sales and cash flow so you can complete a discounted cash flow valuation for your company is a waste of time.
Here is ultimately what every angel asks themselves.
If I invest $x dollars in this company can I expect a possible 10x return on that investment?
In otherwords, if you want $1 Million at 10% then they have to envision your company being a 100 million dollar company 5-7 years from now (100 million X .10 = 10 Million or 10x return).
So ultimately, they want to know the value at the exit which is typically in year 5 or year 7. In a lot of ways it is not important what happens between then and now but only is it ultimately possible? But, their crystal ball is as cloudy as yours. It all comes down to if you can sell them on the dollar signs at the end of the rainbow. Can a killer idea, ultimate team and global market contribute to that argument? Of course but it is more about how well you present your idea than it is about the idea it self.
Still one of my favorite startup videos all these years later.
A summary one of my students put together:
Guy presents on the top 10 pieces of advice when starting a business – The Art of the Start.
#1 – If you want to be successful the best reason to start a business is to make meaning, not make money. If you make meaning you will make money. If you just want to make money you’ll attract the wrong type of employees.
- Increase quality of life – be creative and productive
- Right a wrong – find something wrong and fix it so it is right
- Prevent the end of something good
2 – Make a mantra for your organization – mission statement.
- Mission statements should be something employees can repeat and understand.
- As an entrepreneur, create a mantra – three or four words describing what we stand for, why we work here, and why we exist.
3 – Get going – Most people first want to prove there is a market. Just get going!
- Think different – do things 10 times better than everyone else.
- Don’t be afraid of polarizing people. Great products polarize people.
- Find a few soul mates. The concept of a solo entrepreneur is overrated. You need people to balance you off – need marketing, operations, accounting, etc.
4 – Define a business model
- Be specific. Questions to ask yourself: who is my customer and how do I get my money out of her purse?
- Keep it simple. Do not innovate on business models.
- Ask women about your business model. Men want to kill things. They always say yes it’s a great idea!
5 – Weave a MAT (milestones, assumptions, tasks)
- A new company is a fresh start – pure, clear, a start from scratch. This makes it hard to prioritize.
- Come up with a handful of milestones such as finish the design, decide on the software, etc.
- Write down the assumptions of your company – customer ROI, cost to install software or product, etc. These change the business model. Important: write down and test.
- Do tasks.
6 – Niche thyself – need to know this about marketing
- Great value to customer but not doing something unique allows you to compete on price.
- No value, only person doing it (unique) makes you stupid
- No value, many other companies are doing this (not unique) makes you even more stupid.
- High value, unique product – want to be here!
7 – You must follow the 10/20/30 rule:
- You should have 10 slides in your powerpoint pitch – title, problem, solution, business model, underlying magic, marketing and sales, competition, team, projections, and status and timeline.
- These 10 slides should be able to be presented in 20 minutes.
- Smallest font you should use is 30. This forces you to actually know your presentation and just put the core of your presentation on the slide. Do not read your material! Find out who the oldest person is in the audience and divide his/her age by two and that is your optimal font size… unless you are pitching to young people!
8 – Hire infected people. Hire people who not only have work experience and an education, but also love your product. Most people only consider these two factors. You should look at if they love your product.
- Ignore the irrelevant. You can be successful just because you love the product.
- Hire better than yourself – need A players.
- Apply the shopping center test. Go to Stanford shopping center. You see the job candidate but he/she has not seen you. If you don’t have the first reaction of seeing the person and wanting to go meet him/her then do not hire the person!
9 – Lower the barriers to adoption:
- Flatten the learning curve
- Don’t ask people to do something that you yourself would not do
- Embrace your evangelists – people that carry the battle forward for you. Evangelist is based on the Greek word “bringing the good news .”
10 – Seed the clouds.
- Let a hundred flowers blossom. Let people use your products in different ways. Just take the money! Don’t let this bother you.
- Enable test drives to make sales. Let people take your product home to test it. You are telling them that they are smart for taking it home and testing it.
- Find the true influencers. The higher you go, the thinner the air. Focus on the people that do the work!
11 – Don’t let the bozos grind you down. You may be tempted to believe them but don’t!
Thinking of raising seed capital from an Angel Investor for your startup? There are a lot of steps between making that decision and signing a term sheet. You have to: 
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