Last week I was part of a panel discussion for TiE on the New York startup scene. I was invited to talk about my experience as both a TechStars Alumnus and founder of Red Rover and AlumniChoose.

Before the event officially started, everyone was casually networking around the room. At one point a lady popped into my conversation and introduced herself and asked what I did. As soon as I finished describing AlumniChoose, she tapped the shoulder of someone nearby and said we needed to talk to each other. As soon as she brought the two of us together in a handshake, she walked away without saying anything. Then a few moments later, she tapped another person I was talking with and pulled him, mid-sentence, away from our conversation and into another one. I continued to watch her work her “magic” around the room and she kept repeating the same system over and over.

In Dance Floor Theory, we teach student leaders to be spatulas of the dance floor. In other words, we teach them to be facilitators of relationships and to focus less on the event and more on the introductions that happen from the event. In doing that, we want them to connect people together around shared interests. Then, once that relationship is started, move on to another group and make more connections. By the end of the night, everyone should, in theory, know everyone else, which makes for a great, long-lasting, dance party. Hence the picture above.

In theory, that’s what the lady last week was doing, but it rubbed me the wrong way, and here’s why…

• Genuine Interest – When she asked me what I did, I thought she was genuinely interested in what I did, but in reality, she was just trying to figure out who she could connect me to as fast as possible. It felt cold, which is the opposite of a relationship. Had she asked me a couple follow up questions, it would have felt much better.

• Right Timing – Knowing when to pull someone into and out of conversations is a bit of an art. But one good rule to follow is don’t pull someone out of a conversation mid-sentence, unless they want you to. This lady not only pulled someone out of a conversation mid-sentence, but it was within a few minutes of having her just introduced us together. We were just warming up our conversation, and she cut it off. A relationship takes time to build roots.

• Make It Natural - Once you see how a magic trick is done, the magic is gone. DFT is magical when done right, but like a magic trick, if you reveal to the audience how you are doing it, it’s no longer natural and feels forced. The lady last week made her ‘introduction game’ so obvious, that I then doubted the value of the introductions she was actually trying to make happen. She was going for quantity over quality and in doing so, her magic trick was reveled.

I suspect the lady thought she was being smooth and helping connect everyone to everyone else in the room. Overall, she probably was being more helpful than harmful, because most won’t even think to make introductions like she was. But the real art is in the practice of making it seem like you aren’t even trying and that you genuinely want to connect two people together because they actually should connect, not becuase you want to make your dance floor better.

Each Spring, ACbert and I usually join two soccer leagues and one softball league. All the teams are fun groups, so not only do we enjoy playing, we also enjoy hanging out with the different groups.

I usually only join a team after I’ve looked ahead on my calendar to know for sure that I will be able to make most of the games, which is what I did this season. Even though I expected to only miss a couple games this season, I’ve found myself more often than not responding to the weekly RSVP emails saying, “I’m out.”

It’s annoying and frustrating as I truly enjoy playing and hanging with the various teams, and making a commitment I don’t keep. But the reality of making AlumniChoose successful is that all hands need to be on deck at all times, but when excatly that is, isn’t something I can plan ahead for. Startups tend to flow on a month-to-month basis, if not weekly. Long term planning and startups aren’t the best of friends.

The email is from a trusted source. There is no subject. The body is super short with just an “FYI…” and a link to a site I’ve never heard of. I just assume I’m going to click through and find a company that is doing exactly what we are doing with AlumniChoose, except they are post funding and have major traction in the market. Luckily, that wasn’t the case here, but my heart jumps a beat each time one of these type of emails come in. 

A quick note about competition, in general I tend to ignore competition and focus instead on kicking a*s on our strategy. I’ve found little value in spending too much mental bandwidth, or daily resources, worrying about what the competition is up to. Instead, I tend to do a bi-monthly scan of what everyone is up to. But don’t think that means I don’t know a lot about my competition, I just don’t obsess about it. That’s why an email, like this one, that has a site I don’t know scares me.

There’s a scene in The Sopranos where Tony, the main boss, realizes that everyone around him will laugh equally loud at all his jokes no matter how good or bad they are. His revelation is that he doesn’t have any real friends who will give him a totally honest opinion, especially if it’s against what he’s thinking. He doesn’t have someone around him who watches out for his best interests no matter how hard it is to hear. Instead, he’s surrounded by yes people.

I used to dismiss my contrarians thinking that they just didn’t understand the situation like I did, and honestly most didn’t and I’ve found most contrarians aren’t helpful. But I’ve found there’s a difference between negative people and contrarians. Not all contrarians are negative, but all negatives are contrarians. The key then, is to identify your contrarians who aren’t negative. Then, once you’ve identified that group, value them, and their advice, like you would any top advisor. They will be the ones to tell you why your joke is stupid, and how you can fix it, while the rest of the room will be laughing away.

Someone recently asked me what schools should do for students. I answered with these four goals:

1. Discover – by exposing a student to a wide variety of ideas, opinions, and professions, the school should help the student discover what they are passionate about. In the discovery phase, the school also embeds a life long thrist for learning in the student.
2. Master – Once a student has narrowed in on a specific passion, then the school should help the student master the skills related to their passion.
3. Profit – The last part of the process is to help the student create a sustainable career out of their passion. No more starving artists here.
4. Give Back – Throughout the whole process, the school should embed a sense of community and compassion in the student so they are willing to give back to those who are a few steps behind them. This keeps the cycle going generation after generation.

Four goals. That’s it. Let’s not complicate education more than it needs to.

A friend and I were discussing his option of getting a Masters degree or starting a business. Conceivably he could do both, but let’s go with the assumption that they will both require 100% of his focus, so he has to pick one.

While discussing, I compared his Masters vs Entrepreneurship decision to that of house buying vs house renting. I’m a big fan of renting over buying and have even calculated the numbers on an excel doc to determine the outcome over the long run, and I’m not alone in this opinion.

For most people, however, I would probably tell them that buying is a better investment, not because it actually is, but because they are human, and 99.99% of humans won’t have the self-discipline to make renting be a better investment. The reason that is, is because buying forces you save away a huge chunk of your income every month via your house mortgage, and the pain of not paying your mortgage is so high that most people do it every month, year after year.

Renting, on the other hand, frees up a bunch of money that would otherwise be put into a mortgage. At the end of the month, you look at your healthy bank statement, and from here have two options. The smart option, and the way renting becomes a better long term investment over owning, is to take all that money and put it directly into some kind of investment. Unfortunately, most won’t have that discipline and instead will spend some of it, or all of it, and then invest the rest. Unlike with a mortgage, investing becomes the last option, instead of the first.

Now let’s come back to the Masters vs Entrepreneurship decision. Getting a Masters degree is much like owning. You are forced to put in a bunch of time to take classes, that leads to great networking, that most likely will result in you being smarter, better well connected, and ready to take on the world. Entrepreneurship is like renting, every day you have a set period of time, but no one is forcing you to do anything and thus you might sleep in an extra 30 minutes, watch a few extra hours of T.V., or go out with friends a little later than normal. That means success, through hard work and focus, is secondary to all the other options throughout the day. Getting a Masters forces you to put your personal success first, whereas Entrepreneurship leaves that decision up to you, and in that case, 99.99% will sleep in a little extra, stay out a little later, and make their personal success secondary…because there’s always tomorrow.

When deciding between buying and renting, it comes down to what you choose to do with your money. When deciding between a Masters or Entrepreneurship, it comes down to what you choose to do with your time. If you rent or start a business and are willing to put in the same amount of money/time as you would with buying or getting a Masters, then it’s the smart decision, otherwise, stick with owning and getting a Masters.

Two months later, I finally had the chance to taste my first batch. I twisted open the bottle, took a deep chug…and spit it out. It was horrible. I mean below Miller Lite horrible. It was so bad I had to rinse my mouth out with water.

Similarly, over last summer, we bought a bread machine and I was equally excited to start baking my own bread, so I opened the directions and dug in…

Three hours later, I opened the beard machine lid, tore off a chunk of bread, stuck it in my mouth…and spit it out. It was horrible. I mean Wonder Bread horrible. It was so bad I had to rinse my mouth out with water.

Similar starts and similar ends, but here’s where the two stories split. With the beer, I needed to wait two months every time I wanted to re-test my strategy, whereas with bread, I only needed to wait three hours. That meant for every one beer batch I got to test and improve on, I tested 40+ bread batches. Which one do you think I got better at faster?

Entrepreneurship, especially in the early stages, is all about testing your hypothesis as fast as possible so you can either ramp up successes, or move past failures. The faster you get to test, the better. The longer you have to wait between each test, not only does time slip away and costs go up, but the number of possible variables that might be causing the issue becomes much higher, which makes it harder to know exactly what variable was the issue.

After my first couple batches of bread, I discovered that our machine required more water than the directions called for. Out of all the possible reasons why the first batch was bad, it was easy to pin-point exactly what was wrong within two days. Now, not only do we make great bread each week, but we also love to experiment with new types of bread because we don’t have to worry about the basics any more.

Now it’s your turn. If you have an idea, think about how you can test your idea more like a bread maker verses a beer brewer.

“Here’s the thing that makes life so interesting. The theory of evolution claims that “only the strong shall survive”. Maybe so, maybe so.

But the theory of competition says, “just because they’re the strong doesn’t mean they can’t get their asses kicked”.

That’s right. See, what every long shot, come from behind, underdog will tell ya is this: the other guy may in fact be the favorite, the odds may be stacked against you. Fair enough. But what the odds don’t know is, this isn’t a math test. This is a completely different kind of test. One where passion, has a funny way of trumping logic.

So before you step up to the starting line, before the whistle blows, and the clocks start ticking just remember: out here the results don’t always add up. No matter what the stats may say and the experts may think and the commentators may have predicted, when the race is on, all bets are off.

Don’t be surprised be if someone decides to flip the script and take a pass on yelling “Uncle”. And then suddenly as the old saying goes, “WE’VE GOT OURSELVES A GAME”.”

With Instagram selling for $1bil & Draw Something selling for $200mm, why would any innovator bother trying to solve real world problems.

April 9, 2012 1:25 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@tomkrieglstein

Tom Krieglstein

A half hour later I logged back into my account and was shocked that my tweet had been retweeted by 30 people. Then, while I was looking at the 30 retweets, another 30 came in. My tweet was going viral. By viral, I mean it was retweeted and favorited at least two times per minute for the entire day. This is the first time a tweet of mine has spread that far.

I call this a Social Media Lottery because there is almost no way for me to duplicate it. The tweet went viral because it was the right content, seen by the right people, at the right time. Essentially, it was luck, because the right content, people, and time are ever changing.

It’s April 11th today and people are still retweeting my tweet.

Between the trolls, I did gain some new followers, but for the most part I kinda treat it like a social media merit badge, kinda like when a blog post of mine went viral.

One of my very first professional speaker/facilitation trainings was almost eight years ago and the only thing I remember was our trainer telling us to “look for the limo.” To you the phrase probably means nothing beyond the literal meaning. But to me, as soon as I say it, I flashback to his story and the point he was making. He took a phrase that seemingly had no value and attached a value to it. He also picked a phrase that was short, simple, and kinda fun to say. This is what is called a Phrase That Pays…which is itself a phrase that pays .

Had the trainer said “look for what’s sitting right in front of you,” it would have made the point, but no one would remember it the next day…or even the next hour. Here I am eight years later and I still remember.

Comb through your program and pull out your key learnings. Once done, convert each learning into a Phrase That Pays using these four key attributes…

• Short,
• Simple,
• Fun to Say, and
• No Prior Values Attached.

Eight years ago, back-channelling (quoting) a speaker’s content online didn’t exist. Now it’s hard to find a conference where the content isn’t shared with hundreds of other people online who couldn’t attend. So, in addition to the four attributes above, make sure your Phrases That Pay are Tweetable (under 140 characters).

Planting Phrases That Pay into your speech will not only extend your content to a larger audience, but also ensure that your content will be remembered longer.

Look for the limo.

Like this one? Check out the rest of my speaking tips.