Borrowed this from my friend Jamison Kingfield because it speaks a lot to my views on success in business and life.

As part of ACbert’s 4-day birthday celebration, we went tonight to an open mic night at the Bowery Poetry Club. Anyone could submit to perform which means the talent was all over the place making the night a bit of a hot mess. But I appreciated that everyone was wiling to take a risk and try something new whether a joke, song, skit, or story. While I watched person after person get on stage and create something from nothing, it reminded me of a blog post my former business partner, Kevin Prentiss, wrote a while ago comparing entrepreneurs to artists…

For an entrepreneur, there is nothing that feels as good as creating something amazing from nothing. This is the hope.

Like artists, we create. But we are artists that must sell. There’s no chance to be discovered after death. Our creation lives or dies in the present.

Imagine if a crowd of museum goers could make a sculpture disappear forever with their disapproval, or far worse, their simple misunderstanding. How many artists would stop showing work? How many artists would stop creating altogether? How many would create cheap crap, that was simply a quick get?

I come from a pretty artistic family where everyone at some point was involved in a musical, play, or band. The need to be artistic is kinda engrained in me. Two things on my bucket list are to perform in a musical and rock a concert with me singing solo while playing piano. Someday I’ll get to them, but for now most of my work is outside the theater world, so when my friend Kevin Daum asked if ACbert and I wanted to help him put together a film for the 48 hour NYC Film Festival, we excitedly said yes.

Since ACbert and I have minimal professional acting experience, our role in the film involved us playing a “hollywood power couple” without any actual lines. There’s a twist to our part, but you’ll just have to wait for the release to see .

After watching the skill level of the other actors, it was probably a good thing we didn’t have any lines, because our inexperience would have easily shown through.

It only took 15 minutes to film our part, but we stuck around the entire day because it was interesting to watch the whole process of putting a film together.

Film making shares a lot of similarities to running a business…

• One person needs to have the clear vision in mind at all times.
• It takes a whole team to actually achieve the vision.
• The last 20% of perfection will kill you, and the clock.
• Consistency matters.
• Too many creative cooks is counter productive.
• Everyone has to have clear tasks.
• Free food goes a long way.
• Someone, besides just the main person, should be watching for quality control.
• Most of the hard work happens before and after.
• Success often involves long nights and early mornings.
• It’s not all creative work all the time.
• Technology levels the playing field.
• Good talent is the real competitive advantage.

If you’ve been involved in making a film or theater production, what else would you add to this list?

A common street scene in NYC is young hip guys trying to sell a signed copy of their newly released music CD to pedestrians walking by. By telling you a sob story about how hard it was to produce and how they spent their life savings to produce it, your empathy button is triggered and some people actually buy one. The trick is the CD is often blank, or the recording is one of a million copies being sold by similar people with similar stories all over NYC.

Today I watched as one peddler upped the game.

It started out as usual by him handing out his CD as if he were giving it away. Then once it was in someone’s hand, he started into his story. Then the twist. Another guy walked by, took a CD, and within a few seconds of hearing the story reached for his wallet and handed over some money. Now, not only is the first person grappling to counter her own empathy button, but now she has to also overcome social proof and go against what the other person is doing and saying. It was fascinating to watch as the CD seller intuitively rattled through the same sales themes I was taught in business school. They also do it better than most sales people I know. Makes me want to write a book titled “The Art of Street Selling.” Someone put that on my list of books to write…

Tonight I attended an EO Huddle about creating great teams featuring uber successful entrepreneur Amilya Antonetti.

Right out of the gates, Amilya’s strength and conviction around what she does and how she does it showed through. Below are some of the highlights I scribbled in my moleskine:

• Her green cleaning business arose from a personal experience with her son almost dying after birth which gave her a very clear sense of WHY her business mattered. Her company’s narrative, or backstory, is so strong, it’s impossible not to get emotionally connected as an employee or consumer.
• The team is the light, energy, and heart of a company. Treat them as such.
• Companies that are…
  • $0-5mm > can operate with just one hero
  • 5-30mm > the hero needs to die
  • 30-50mm > the team makes this happen
  • 50-100mm > all about cultivating/maintaining multiple teams
• A CEO can only go so far on their own, everything after that is up to the team.
• Key person to the CEO’s right should always be a “yeah maybe” person that can challenge the assumptions and ambitions of the CEO’s.
• Real learning and growing should hurt and each person should have someone around them (boss, board, mentor, advisor) that pushes them to a greatness they don’t know they don’t know yet. However, this person should be only a few steps ahead of you on the success wall.
• She works her team like dogs. But on the flip side, she takes care of everything outside of work for them so when they aren’t at work they are 100% dedicated to their families. Everything? Yes everything. She takes care of food shopping, laundry, car care, lawn care, house repairs, etc. 
• She doesn’t give raises but instead raises lifestyles. 
• Above each desk are two clocks, one that is the real time and one that is where they want to go on vacation next. Vacations are mandatory.
• The people on your team and around you want to be the heros in your life, you just have to let them by setting them up for success.
• The hardest thing she’s had to do in growing a business is letting go of her Round 1 hires to make way for her Round 4 hires.
• She once flew to one of her offices just to have dinner with a key executive and his wife in an attempt to save their marriage. She asked the wife for 90 more days in the marriage and in the end she saved the marriage by paying for them to go away together and re-connect outside of work. In her words, “oh hell no were they going to get divorced. Do you know how much that would have cost me to loose a key executive?”
• Employees want to be part of the business not BE the business. 
• Each department sets the salaries for the other departments and the whole company sets her salary which always ends up being more than what she would’ve paid herself.
• All her hires come from referrals from key employees from within the company
• If someone comes into your world with a great attitude and gusto, make a position for them with their name on it so you can hire and keep them.
• Everyone shares equally in bonuses. She wants the receptionist to work as hard as her sales team.

Every EO Huddle also includes an experiential component, so after Amilya was finished we were treated to tequila tasting from Gabriela’s Resturante. My two favorite take aways from the tasting were

1. Wet your month with a little tequila before you try and down the whole thing (which isn’t recommended anyways).
2. Sniffing tequila from the top of the glass vs the bottom will give you a truer sense of its ingredients instead of just the liquor smell.

USO’s vision statement is amazing because it starts with the emotional ‘why.’ It’s also powerful and clear as to its intention. 

“Average [organizations] give their people something to work on. Great [organizations] give their people something to work towards. The role of the leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen.” - Simon, Sinek. Start With Why. 99.

Today was my first full day training with EO NY. The training was focused on all the foundational knowledge needed to join and participate in an EO Forum.

Part of the ground work training was an overview of how an individual can further participate in EO because it is almost entirely a member driven community. Some are positions I could do right away based on my experience and others take several years of EO experience before I’d be allowed.

As a self motivated person, I’m excited to take it all on now and if offered, probably would open every door just so I can know what’s behind it. But by restricting my access to only a select few, while still letting me see the long term possibilities, I’m hooked for a longer term.

Video games will often do this. I’m into a ping pong iPhone app right now that tells me there are four levels of competitors, but instead of telling me any information about them, all they give me are lines of question marks that get unlocked based on my total points scored. Had they of given me all the information about every level up front, I’m not sure I’d be as hooked as I am.

I love how game theory is officially creeping into all aspects of our lives. Which got me wondering if there is a Game Theory for Business book out there?

Today I was working on an excel doc that I should have just given to Megan, but I didn't. Afterwards I felt like I do when I eat a greasy pizza or candy bar. I know I shouldn't do it, but I did it anyways and I get a 'blah' feeling in my stomach. I used to not get this feeling with such tasks, but rather would get a sense of accomplishment, so I see it as actually a good thing.

I'm learning that working at the executive level is about buffering your time as much as possible to focus on only the work that is in either the entrepreneurial level of "High Urgency, High Importance" or  "Low Urgency, High Importance" boxes. The kind of tasks that have you working on your business verses in your business. Working on the excel doc is an example of working in the business, building out a marketing strategy is an example of working on the business.

The game then is to protect your boundaries for as long as you can throughout the day because various tasks, often found in the "High Urgency, Low Importance" box, will try and squeeze time out of you that isn't in either of the boxes listed above. Even though a task may only take a moment or so to do, it still forces your mind to shift away from the really important work just long enough for you to loose focus, and that costs you.

Doing a training in the morning is always tough, doing a training in the morning on a Saturday is even tougher.  That was my set up for 100 student leaders from UMSL this morning. 

Dance Floor Theory is a well tested kick ass program, so it has a base line level of success with just about any crowd, any day, any time. But some programs just kick more ass than others, and I've realized it has to do a lot with the attitude of the participants. 

Today while setting up, I over heard one of the student leaders, Aleshia Patterson, in the front row talking to her friend. Her friend was saying how tired he was and he didn't want to do a training at 8:30am. She then stopped him and said that was his choice. She said since she has to be here she's choosing to go in with a positive attitude and make the best of it because it will be way more fun that way. 

Whoa! It warmed my heart to hear a student talking like that at 8:30 in the morning. Sure enough the training ranked as one of the better ones and Aleshia was a rock star during it. She also helped get her friend to have a great time too. 

There's a saying in business, "hire for attitude, train for skill." Aleshia's attitude alone already sets her miles ahead of the rest of the applicant pool.