NevBlog

Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

Two Things

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Two things happened recently. I lost a $0.92 notebook from Wal-Mart and I partially shattered the screen on my iPhone which I paid hundreds of dollars for.

Oddly enough, when I broke the iPhone I didn’t really care one bit. Not at all. I predicted I’d break this phone within 6 months (and that was in July 2008) so it lasted a lot longer than other electronics I regularly carry.

However when I got off the plane, got home and realized I had left my notebook in the seatback pocket….I knew the notebook was gone, but realized I had lost something 100 times more valuable to me than an easily replaceable iPhone.

I have a bunch of these little notebooks (you know, kind of like the “cow” print notebooks third graders use):

…I use them to take notes when I read. Since I read so much, I tend to forget important things, so I write them down and re-read them time to time as a refresher. If I get a random business idea, I write it out. If I have a problem which needs solving, I pull out the notebook and graph out the problem, possible outcomes and plausible solutions. I also write down good quotes or random thoughts. Anything that comes to mind often goes in here.

I filled this particular notebook about halfway full during my recent month in California, so it’s a shame to see those nearly 100 pages of notes, to-do lists and random things gone.

The iPhone can be replaced at anytime.

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A word on the iPhone:
I don’t have a case or any sort of protective covering on this iPhone. I’ve dropped it, sat on it, thrown it around, dumped it in backpacks/gym bags and got it wet a surprisingly large number of times and it hardly has a scratch or defect on it yet. The screen is still flawless. I keep it in my pocket along with keys, change or whatever gets dumped in there. That’s one surprisingly tough phone.

The cool thing is it still works just fine! When the phone is on, I can hardly tell the cracks are there….so using even this “broken” phone is still exactly the same as when it was new.

Initially when it broke there were some small shards of glass that would rub off on my hand and cut me. When my phone starts to draw blood every time I use it….THAT was a bit of a problem. However I just turned it upside down and rubbed out all the shards with a tissue and it hasn’t been a problem since.

On the bright side, this gives me an excuse to buy the new iPhone when it comes out :-)

Stopped Shaving

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Starting today (May 15th, 2009) I am going to stop shaving or cutting my hair in order to get a nice scraggly look in preparation for a “homeless experiment” I’m doing soon. Just trying to document this day with this post.

I was going to do this about 3 years ago but it got put off.

More on that later.

Random Reader Question

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A reader asked this question:

I started reading your blog years ago with my mother – I was just a kid. Fast forward to now and I am 1 year away from a business degree which was absolutely influenced by you and your start-ups.

However, I have always found it interesting that you opted to graduate with a political science degree and throughout my college career I kept it in the back of my head. I had always used it to remind myself that what I am learning in school is not necessarily going to make me successful – I have to do that on my own.

I am finally writing to you about this because I just have to know why. I have spent many sleepless nights in the past few weeks deciding what to do with my final year of school. My best friend and I are one summer away from having our own website and I am endlessly battling with myself between majoring in marketing or finance.

As far as careers go, I am much more interested in a marketing career, but with my research I find time and time again that for an entrepreneur, or really anyone attempting to become financially independent, that finance is essential knowledge. I would like your advice on the matter because I know you have developed your own projects without majoring in either of these subjects.

I would like to know your stance on a situation like this and any advice would be much appreciated.

From all the experience I’ve had with “successful” people is that the educational background wasn’t necessarily the reason for the success, but definitely helped in it’s own unique way.

We can take a familiar example like Adam McFarland who graduated with an engineering and programming background, but has ended up being part of a very successful car oriented ecommerce site. Did his engineering and programming education itself make this happen? No….but it sure helped when he created and then re-vamped the site using his coding background.

So here’s what turned me off business school:

First and foremost I just didn’t get it.
“BUSINESS”
What does that mean?
Isn’t everything technically business?

Dig a little deeper and it breaks down into things like marketing, finance or accounting. None of those seemed particularly interesting to me at the time.

Second, I took a look at what the graduates did after school and where they went to work. It just didn’t seem exciting to me (keep in mind that’s simply my opinion). Our business school at The University of Texas had a very high out-of-college job rate, but that didn’t interest me as I was more into starting a company.

Third, I was originally a computer science student (but eventually couldn’t cut it…apparently a huge percentage of computer science students are WAY better than I am at coding). I was interested in building a talent which I could build something with….something that would give me an advantage over others. I was already into computers so it seemed a natural fit. If I could do it all over again, I would have worked harder towards getting a computer science or engineering degree. That stuff takes years of education….business lessons can often be picked up in a few good books.

Perhaps this might work well for you:

  1. Piece of paper with “Marketing” vs. “Finance”
  2. Write down the names of the associated classes you must take for each major
  3. Which one appeals to you more?

If reading financial statements and learning the intricacies of banking/accounting are interesting to you, then finance might be better. And if whatever the hell it is they teach in marketing is more interesting to you…..well you get the point.

My conclusion is this:
Marketing or finance….which one appeals to you more? There’s really no one-size-fits-all answer here. I think either of them will provide you with valuable experience you can apply to other situations or businesses in your life.
You might also find my advice to a college grad an interesting read.
What might interest you even more is Steve Jobs’ commencement speech about “Connecting the dots” later on in life….how things he learned early on had a serendipitous way of helping him out later on in life:

Some of the Wonderful Things About YouTube

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For the most part, YouTube is probably more a colossal waste of time more than anything else. Take a look at the day’s most popular videos and you’ll quickly see that most of them are relatively useless or at most just mildly entertaining.

Like any big group of anything, roughly 80% will be pretty useless, but there will also be a top tier with some very helpful stuff.

Despite having an enormous TV downstairs with a killer surround sound system, I don’t watch TV at home anymore. I used to watch all the time, but kept asking myself “What the hell did I just do for 6 hours?” So more and more YouTube is becoming one of my most-visited sites. I’ve discovered a few things which make the YouTube experience educational, informative and helpful rather than just a giant distraction for bored students, people with spare time on the job and insomniacs:

USES:
Personally I like learning about interesting/successful people and how they got where they are. I find that subject fascinating. I read about this kind of stuff all the time, but sometimes it’s nice to hear and see the words being spoken. I find the stories inspiring and containing many great nuggets of information.

It’s also great stuff to listen to in the background whilst doing work.

EXAMPLES:

Inside the Actor’s Studio:
The show focuses on celebrities who are very well known, and you often get a very introspective view into the celebrity and the work and hardships they endured to get where they are.

Obviously it’s preferable listening to the celebs who had a similar upbringing to yours, but some of the others are good. Even if you weren’t brought up in a poor, broken home it’s nice to hear what it’s like for others.

I personally just watched the Conan O’Brien interview and thought it was great.
Conan Obrien Interview

Richard Feynman
On one of my library visits I randomly read “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” which I strongly recommend. I loved reading this book, and was introduced to the great physicist Richard Feynman with his very-not-so-scientist-like-antics and brilliant mind.

I think the reason he got so popular was his great layman explanations that help people understand complicated physics, he definitely communicates ideas MUCH better than most intellectual types…..and that small thing he did in the 40’s to basically help build the first nuclear bomb.
Richard Feynman Part 1
Richard Feynman: Take the Word From Another Point of View Part 1

Berkley Physics
I find it fascinating that my dad migrated to the United States from India to get his masters from Berkley….and now I can get all of those same classes online, for free!

Berkley posts many classes online, for free, for anyone to view. No enrollment fee, regardless of age….almost anyone in the world has access to higher education. You’re not going to get a helpful TA to push you along with school work, but any self-motivated person out there can participate in a top-tier college course.

I’m personally taking this Berkley Physics course right now. Getting some of the best professors and special guests in the world on any subject you like? Way better than watching 6 hours of TV.

Archive of American Television:
Sort of like Inside the Actors Studio except more in depth and un-edited. Each interview is somewhere around 4-6 hours, so you get details you normally won’t hear on edited interviews.

The AAT has posted hundreds of their interviews, many names which you will recognize. The other cool thing about these interviews is they generally only interview older people who’ve gone through a lifetime of experiences. I like that.

It’s great listening to these in the background while doing work that doesn’t require intense thought.

I very much enjoyed and learned from the Ted Turner Interview and George Carlin Interview.

Warren Buffet:
Obviously one of the richest men in the world will have some good insights, and his are remarkably simple. There’s tons of Warren Buffet stuff on YouTube but my favorite is this Warren Buffet Speech given to a class of MBA’s.

TIPS:
If you’re interested in learning about a person, simply YouTube search some simply phrases such as:

  • (Their name) speech
  • (Their name) documentary
  • (Their name) interview

Another thing is to realize right away that YouTube user comments are probably some of the most idioc things ever.

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So while YouTube can be one of the greatest time-wasters of all time, it can also be massively helpful and educational.

I’m a firm believer that most education is learned in your spare time….so why not better yourself with YouTube instead of just wasting time on it?

Ok, fine….a double motorcycle backflip from time-to-time is OK too :-)

The Opposite

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Favorite sitcom = Seinfeld.

One of my favorite episodes was “The Opposite” where the character George Costanza does everything the opposite of his instincts.

“It all became very clear sitting out there today, that every decision that I’ve ever made in my entire life – has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I wanted to be. Every instinct I have in every aspect of life…be it: something to wear, something to eat…it’s all been wrong.”

George then has a situation come up (an attractive woman looks in his direction) that he usually does nothing about, and Jerry eggs him on:

“Here’s your chance to try the opposite. If every instinct you have is wrong; then the opposite would have to be right.”

He goes and talks to the woman in a very “opposite” way and gets the girl. Then more situations arise where he does the opposite. If anything it’s at least hilarious.

Later on in the episode everything is going GREAT for George! His life turns around as he gets the dream girl and the dream job and says, “This has been the dream of my life ever since I was a child, and it’s all happening because I’m completely ignoring every urge towards common sense and good judgment I’ve ever had!”

See YouTube video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUvKE3bQlY

I remember originally seeing this episode and thinking, “What a great idea!” Recently I’ve tried slowly applying “The Opposite” mantra in any area where I don’t think I’ve been performing well:

–If a small issue comes up (in a customer order or website issue) instead of following habit and putting it on tomorrow’s to-do list I’ll do the opposite and fix it right then and there.

–When I come home late and still have something left on the to-do list, I usually postpone it till the next day. Instead I’ll do “the opposite” and finish it right there on the spot.

–Every once in a while I’ll get a difficult customer who wants something unreasonable. Instead of getting annoyed and acting snide with them I’ll do the opposite and try my humanly best to make them happy.

–If I’m on a long bike ride and hit a point I know I’ll be too tired to bike back home, instead of turning back I’ll do the opposite and keep going.

The examples go on…..I’m sure you can imagine a few for your own life.

Suggesting a life changing tip from a Seinfeld episode almost sounds ridiculous…but not really. Essentially I’ve equated “The Opposite” with motivation to do something NOW instead of waiting or hesitating. It mainly helps you push limits and break habits that were formed for no real reason. When I tell myself “Oh stop being lazy and just do it” the message sometimes isn’t that convincing.

However telling myself, “Do the opposite…this particular thing hasn’t worked out well in the past, why would it work now?”
….that works pretty well.

Here’s some of the character insights behind the episode:

So if you’re doing something you know hasn’t worked out for you in the past, try the opposite!

Learning to Backflip

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I wanted to learn how to do a backflip. Basically do a “backflip experiment.”

I’ve tried them before but like most people I had an extremely strong anti-backwards response like a cat which forces you to turn sideways when you’re upside down in mid-air.

So whilst at my rock climbing gym I decided to give these a try because they have thick crash pads I could fall on. The pads help remove the hesitation of flipping backwards (and busting your ass on the ground).

Just to see what I was doing wrong I decided to videotape myself doing these….which kind of turned into a mini-documentary on my backflip progress.

So I got comfortable with flipping backwards, and felt like I almost got the hang of it, but my flips weren’t consistent or correct. I knew there was something wrong with my flips. My head always got very close to the ground, unlike a proper backflip.

So I enlisted the help of John who knows how to do them correctly. We went with a few friends to the park and tried them on the extremely hard ground…it was a step softer than concrete.

With his help, after 3 or 4 tries I actually did a PROPER BACKFLIP!! I was very excited and eager to try another….and therefore forgetting to concentrate on the task at hand. The next flip I landed directly on my FACE.

I’m not exactly sure how I didn’t break my nose after that impact…but I did get a scar between my brow and nose….

…so after that I decided I should perhaps first learn proper technique with proper padding (FYI the scar is gone now).

Finding a place with trampolines, foam pit and other gymnastics equiqment wasn’t hard, but the max age for all these places was around 13 to 16. I’m 26 so that would be odd….kind of like that Seinfeld episode where Kramer takes a Karate class with kids. Fortunately a friend found out about a place that holds night classes for adults, so I enrolled in that.

There I had some proper instruction and equipment which was more forgiving than the park grounds.

By the second lesson I could do the backflips much better, sometimes landing them correctly. By the 3rd time I was doing them pretty consistently! Not only that but I’m now learning those roundoff-to-back-tuck flip sequences which are even more fun.

Of course my backflips still need some perfecting. I’m still jumping back quite a bit, whereas a perfect backflip starts and ends in the exact same location.

So here are all the backflip attempts I videotaped, including my face-plant!

What I learned:

  • Look straight forward
  • Jump nearly straight up, not back (it’s scary the first few times)
  • Don’t tuck right away
  • Wait till jump gets height, tuck with force, hold momentarily, release.
  • Don’t land on face.

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UPDATE: 3-6-2009
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In a comment, Aman said:
Good lesson in persistence and perseverance there Nev. For those that don’t see anything more than a few back flips really need to get out of the business world. Lessons are everywhere and not always directly put out there.

THANK YOU AMAN,
I especially like his last sentence. Couldn’t have said it better. It’s frustrating to get comments (most of which I reject) and emails that say, “What does this have to do with business?”

I personally thought it was a great life lesson (or business) video:

  1. First few shaky attempts are a little scary, amateurish and don’t look good at all.
  2. After some tries, start getting the hang of it and might even have a decent success.
  3. Even though I executed a perfect one early on, the next one I landed directly on my face (literally).
  4. A little mentoring and research goes a LONG way.
  5. After a few bumps, bruises, scrapes and a lot of mundane practice you slowly start to get the hang of it.
  6. The more you practice, the better you get.
  7. Once I got the backflip, I could start doing more complicated maneuvers.

“Lessons are everywhere and not always directly put out there.”

Burj Al Arab Plans Dashed

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I wrote this post about Dubai a long time ago and how I wanted to stay at the Burj Al Arab (Considered the best hotel in the world) for a night.

Every room is at least a 2-storey suite, and the smallest room is roughly 1,800 sq. ft.. I priced it out and found it would be between $2,000 and $2,200 per night (depending on currency fluctuations).

Well I’m officially spending New Year’s 2009-2010 in Dubai this year, so I thought whilst there I would snag a suite at the Burj Al Arab for the night and have a big party with my friends and then everyone could stay over.

I called around, and the problem is I can’t have that many guests (pretty much no guests at all)….especially to stay over. So what’s the point in getting a big room like that without the fun of throwing a big party in it? Basically it’d be me sitting in a big room….no fun.

So I think the limited guests policy they have officially nixed my plans to stay there. A little more poking around and I was told NOT to stay there. The reason I was told it’s rated the best hotel is each room is large, nice and has expensive gold finishes, art work etc….basically crap I don’t care about. The hotel I’ve been told is actually very quiet, boring and a little stuffy….it’d be great to stay at some point, but it’s definitely not a party spot nor guest friendly…deal breaker.

Friends in Dubai recommended I have breakfast or dinner there to get a taste of it, but staying might be a little much.

Still curious to see the rooms, a quick YouTube search showed several guest tours of various suites:

Who needs to travel, we have YouTube!

Adam McFarland

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Kind enough to put me on his list of people he reads, I’d like to post the list of blogs I regularly read:

His is seriously the only blog I regularly read anymore.

I admire and relate to Adam because I think he’s in a very similar industry (ecommerce) and age bracket as me. I view him with a tint of envy and admiration because of two main things:

  1. He seems to have a really solid team: The company Pure Adapt has four members which each bring their own unique talents to the table. I’m not sure if I’d like that arrangement just yet, because owning a company 100% is sometimes better than 25%. However with a solid team I have no doubt these guys can build something HUGE…..and owning 25% of something HUGE isn’t a bad gig.

  2. Programming and Engineering Background: If I had to do it all over again I would’ve rather had an engineering or computer science background in college like Adam (come to think of it I did…but I was at the bottom of all my computer science classes and got kicked out of the program). Adam’s advanced understanding of programming allowed him to build his own custom ecommerce system which I find incredibly impressive….and do all sorts of unique and highly effective promotions like Detailed Image’s auto-ads and auto-site-specials.

Me reading Adam’s site:


(Forgive the old photo and bad Photoshop job)

Ok, enough brown-nosing….go read Adam’s Blog!

Kelleher Speech – 3rd Time Seeing

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I saw Herb Kelleher the founder of Southwest Airlines speak again on the University of Texas campus, this time in front of a huge audience of around 800 people.

If you recall, Herb is the completely out-of-the-ordinary chairman of a very out-of-the-ordinary airline. The last time I saw him I pre-empted taking a funny picture with him with his favorite things: Wild Turkey Whiskey and cigarettes!

Ended up getting this picture with him last time:

He was a great sport about it, and I thought it was a hilarious and completely unique picture! This time for the photo I tried upping the ante and taking a funnier picture, but it was hard to top the last one. I tried dressing like an airline pilot (using a black suit and an old hat) but it didn’t work so well….it basically looked like I was wearing a black suit and old hat. So instead I got this picture with him:

Cigar smoking!

If you look closely at the enlarged picture you can see he kept the cigar tube on so he didn’t have to put his mouth on the cigar and waste it. He smokes like crazy, but not cigars apparently (Last time I saw him he smoked about 7 cigarettes in one sitting)!

He spoke predominately on the extreme importance of a good company culture, and unfortunately didn’t show the absolutely hilarious “Malice In Dallas” video like the last appearance I caught.

Incidentally the Southwest Airlines Archives JUST posted a short YouTube clip of the Malice In Dallas video (I’m actually quite surprised it’s not fully up on YouTube already):


(Thanks to Drew)

It’s crazy how precisely the companys attitude reflects its leader. What he seemed to be most proud of was keeping a fun company culture despite being such a large company (something most of his peers said couldn’t be done).

Vacationing and Owning A Business

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For Christmas I went on vacation to Cancun with my family and friends. There were lots of relaxing and fun activities like this:

….and this:


(Notice the House Of Rave shirt)!

…but there are some definite upsides and downsides to owning a business and taking a vacation. For the most part I prepared for my absence and there was little work to be done, so it wasn’t that bad.

While I was the only one who generated any income during the trip (good), I was also the only one who had to take time out of the day to work (bad). Fortunately I don’t see this as a bad thing because I start going crazy if I don’t stay at least slightly productive several days in a row.

On two different occasions I whipped out my laptop in the lobby of the resort (working in the room isn’t as fun) and started handling business. Each session was maybe 1-2 hours, and pretty much looked like this the whole time:

Getting the work done during vacation actually makes the vacation more enjoyable in my case because I get a feeling of accomplishment out of it. However if you want a week completely void from thoughts about work, owning a business may not always be the best thing.