If you have, did you do it? If you did, how did it work out? If you didn’t, why not?

I’m looking for feedback, questions, comments, success stories, whatever… around individuals who have taken the plunge and started a business and people who have thought about it and are not quite ready to pull the trigger yet.

It doesn’t matter what kind of business it is. Doesn’t matter whether it is full-time or on the side. I’m most curious about the thought process that goes into striking out on your own.

If you have started a business, what were some of the unexpected aspects that came up? If you’re thinking about a business, what are some of the unknowns that worry you?

I have a ton of people in my network and hopefully I can get a pretty good response from a wide variety of people.

Please leave a comment below and tell us about your experiences and dreams! I have a ton of people in my network with a very wide variety of experience and expertise. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to connect with someone here that can help your dream become a reality!

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Leadership is a funny thing. We all “know” what it is… but have a hard time explaining it. We expect it from our boss… but it’s probably not in their job description and almost certainly not in their job title. So what IS leadership, who shows us how to do it, and why is it such a hard concept to wrap our heads around?

I suppose the precepts of leadership were first impressed upon me during my stint in the army, and as any good veteran can tell you, the first place to look is to the regulation…

The Army defines leadership as influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation, while operating to accomplish the mission and improve the organization.

Army Regulation 600-100

For the non-military types out there, lets look at the complete compendum of human knowledge for a definition…

the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”

Wikipedia.org

Do you see the common element? That’s right, its influence. But its more than that, it is influence toward accomplishing a task.

Ok, great. Now we have a book knowledge of what leadership is… now for the hard part. How do we apply that knowledge to our vocation, advocation or the task at hand?

But I’m Not In Charge

Funny, I don’t remember seeing that as a requirement in any of the definitions. It didn’t say, “influence of the person in charge to accomplish a task,” did it? Too often we limit ourselves by believing that leadership is reserved for those with some sort of “leadership” position. We assume our managers, directors, or VPs will be the leaders and that we are just here to follow their instructions.

The reality is many managers simply don’t understand leadership and the ones that do can’t do it by themselves. They depend on members of the rank-and-file to “step-up” and “get the job done,” euphemisms for leadership. Think about it for a second. Think about work and who has the greatest influence over the members of your team. Truth be told, its probably not the first line supervisor. If you can’t figure out who it is, ask some of your co-workers… the answer may surprise you!

Ok, But Why Me?

So if that previous exercise pointed a finger back at you, guess what… you’re a leader. (I’ll pause here so you can complain about “not asking to be a leader” and how its “unfair”…). You are a leader if you make things happen. If people come to you for your opinion, you’re a leader. No, you never ran for the position of leader… it wasn’t pinned on you like a name tag… but everyone knows it, even you.

I think its one of the great ironies of life that most leaders don’t (or didn’t) want to be leaders. On my Kindle right now I’m reading the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant. Wow, talk about a reluctant leader. And yet, when it comes to influencing others in the accomplishment of a task, you’d be hard pressed to find an example of someone who was a greater leader than Grant. (In the interest of equal time… I’m reading Robert E. Lee next…)

You may not have asked for the role, but you have it. You have it because people respect your opinion, value your input, and most importantly, because you will make a decision. See, the vast majority of people out there are followers. They’ll be more than happy to fall in line behind anyone who is willing to lead the line. Its safer that way. You, on the other hand, are frustrated following the lead of others, feel stifled by indecisiveness or a lack of direction. You’d rather make a wrong decision than no decision at all. One of the great philosophers of all time once said

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

Roy Rogers

Embracing The Leader Within

So before you run off to change the world, excited that you’re a leader, I have one more thing for you to think about. If people value your input, respect your opinion and follow your lead, where does that leave you on the responsibility scale? Yes Spiderman, its true… with great power comes great responsibility! You’ve been a leader for some time now, you don’t have to change a thing. Accept your role, be confident, and lead.

HaHa, You’re Wrong

Ok, maybe I was. Maybe those fingers didn’t point back at you as a leader. Why not? So what if you weren’t put in charge, we already established that being in charge doesn’t matter. (BTW, you don’t have to have a single person who “works for you” to be a leader either… nice try). Who cares if you’re not the boss’ favorite, you will be if you start getting thing done! Oh, you must be afraid that your co-workers will make fun of you for being a “company man.” Remember the part about wanting to feel safe by following someone else?

The bottom line is you owe it to yourself, not your employer, to do the best you can at your job. Would you be proud to reply to your kids, nieces or nephews, or the kid next door when they ask you what you do, and you have to answer, “I do a half-hearted job at filing widgets for the Acme company… you know, the bare minimum.”? I hope not.

Step up your game. Whether you’ve accepted the role of leader or you’re putting on the mantle now, be the best you can be at what you do, encourage others to do the same, and get things done! It will put you in front of the pack, and quite possibly make you your boss’ new best friend!!

Your Turn

What do you think a leader is? Why do some people emerge from the crowd while others remain safely in it’s midst? What obstacles do you see holding you back from being a leader? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

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The Web Will Be Ubiquitous – Always connected, always on, fully integrated with the appliances that we use to manage our life. Finally!
(see more under Mobile Becomes King in my 6 Guaranteed Game Changing Predictions for 2010)

The PC Will Lose Its Dominance Over the Web – No need to rehash this one… I’ve written about it plenty! Check out Repent! Repent! The End of the Personal Computer Is Near

The Human-Computer Interface – Ben asserts that media centric interfaces will replace the good old keyboard and mouse. Things like voice to text and touch will eventually work well enough… in a decade or so! I’m not sure if you’d call that a pessimistic outlook but I think a decade is WAY too far away. I’ve said before the iPhone has changed everything and how we interact is no different. There’s an expectation for touch these days. The full court press is on and it will be a matter of months before we have usable alternatives to the keyboard and mouse… IMHO.

Finally, Social Media Will Be the Killer App – Have to say I totally agree Ben… and it always has been. Since Ray Tomlinson invented email all the way back in 1971, we’ve been using “the computer” to interact with other people. I mean after all… there are only so many recipes and checkbooks to manage, right? Sooner or later its all about interacting with others. In fact, most technological advances have derived their need by some form of human interaction. Telegraph, telephone, trains, planes… they all serve to facilitate human-to-human interaction.

Even though Ben and I disagree on a couple of the details, I think he’s right on about where we’re going over all. A lot of the things we’ve seen lately, devices like the iPhone, netbooks, and Apple’s new tablet, even applications like Twitter, Wave and fourSquare are really just enabling technologies. My frequent answer to those that don’t get Wave is that it won’t make sense until you have an application for it. Its a platform, an enabling technology that will make something else possible.

So, what do you think about these areas of tech development? Do we have it wrong? What else could be considered important?

And what about the enabling technologies? What did I miss.

Drop a comment and let us know what you think!

@jtrigsby

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It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.  
–Alan Cohen

So lets get into it… how is our world going to change in 2010? What change is going to power our near future? Here are a few of my ideas.

ONE: Mobile Become King
I’ve written a lot about the end of personal computing, especially the way we think of it. The advances in mobile platforms in just the last six months only reinforce my conviction that the days of the beige box relegated to the corner of the living room are numbered. Even the days of the laptop may be coming to a close. Look for big advances in computing power, battery life, geospatial awareness and constant, ubiquitous connectivity this year. These will be the enabling technology breakthroughs that enable more power in a smaller footprint, and THAT means…

TWO: Smaller Footprint Requires More Efficient Delivery
If you’ve ever tried to lookup a website on a smart phone, even an iPhone or Droid, you know that its not the most fulfilling experience. Lets face it, the vast majority of sites out there today are designed for the desktop monitor. Even with vast improvement in connectivity and bandwidth, users will begin to cull the download pigs from their experience. Google has even said they will begin factoring in load time of a site in their ranking formulas. In 2010, look for sleeker, faster loading, faster-to-the-content data sources. So what loads quickly and has a tiny footprint?….

THREE: Rise of the Feeds
More and more users get their daily fix through feeds and feed readers. Heck, all my daily reading now begins in the feed reader. In fact, the only reason I wind up on a destination site these days is to leave a comment or because a link (probably to a past post HINT HINT) took me there. If I’m following your blog because of the great content you create, then I can get it all right there in one place. Oh, BTW, stop already with only including the first paragraph in the feed. Unless I REALLY like you, that’s a fail and immediate un-follow from me. And with a rise in the popularity of reading feeds, we get…

FOUR: VAST Improvements in Content Aggregation
Ok, so that covers a little more than feed readers, but that’s where we’re going. In addition to reading what Chris Brogan, Rod Kirby and Jeff Jarvis have to say today, at varying times of the day I’m interested in local news, weather, sports, best gas prices, menu specials at my favorite eateries… all those play a part in my interest stream. The trick is filtering those nuggets of news based on my location, mood, activity, destination… any number of parameters. For instance, I’m not particularly concerned with traffic conditions at 10am, because I’m not driving anywhere. But at 5pm, you bet I’m interested. Look for big time improvements in filtering, maybe even learning filters during 2010. And with filters, come…

FIVE: The Need to Monetize the Stream
I’m going to adopt the word stream rather than feed because referring to the feed make me feel like I have to consume it all to get my big-boy, happy-plate sticker. A stream is constantly flowing and I can watch it, dip my toe in it, or jump in head first… then climb out again when I’m ready. Combining that flowing concept with smaller footprints and the ever present need to make money, there will have to be major improvements in how we monetize the stream in 2010. Face it, we all need to get paid and if the only way we’re doing that is with AdSense… an our visitors drop off because they’re reading us in the stream… ??? Following the Google model, it seems that an advertising supported aggregation service would work well. Thing Google Reader with Gmail type ads.

SIX: My Own Private Library
Because the stream is always moving and I still have to sleep every once in a while, I tend to miss things I may be interested in. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a way to tag, group, and store content and links so I could check them out when I’m back in the game? That is what I refer to as aggregation and it would be totally awesome! It would be even better if it learned from my actions and was able to find new content I might be interested in… kind of like Pandora does for music and Tivo does with Suggestions! Now THAT would be a newspaper I’d be interested in reading every morning… as long as I could read it on my phone or Kindle.

Ok, so there are my 6 Guaranteed Game Changing Predictions for 2010. What do you think? Like ‘em? Hate ‘em? Think I’m way too far afoot? Let us all know in the comments below.

I’m really looking forward to 2010 and I hope you are too. Have a wonderful, productive and profitable year! BTW, if you’re a programmer type… and need some product ideas… re-read this post!

@jtrigsby

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TEDx is a new program that enables local communities such as schools, businesses, libraries, neighborhoods or just groups of friends to organize, design and host their own independent, TED-like events.

It all came about in pretty short order. I think I found out about TEDxHuntsville on Wednesday night, probably through a LinkedIn post. So what did I do… I tweeted it of course!

Welcome to TEDxHuntsville

Of course, I’ve known about TED for quite a while and the opportunity to attend even a similar event here locally was enough to hook me. I checked out the TEDxHuntsville website and honestly, found it a bit vague and not really clear about what to expect. Undeterred, I registered and hoped for the best. After all, the price was right… free!

So Apparently Tweeting Pays-off
Promptly upon arriving, I was greeted at the door by Everett Alexander, our host for the afternoon. A quick stop at the registration table and a dabble on my “Hello, my name is…” name tag and I’m set!

The room was small and already pretty full when I got there but I was still able to make out a number of familiar faces. We were underway on time with an introduction by Everett. As he was wrapping up, he asked how we found out about the event. CLEARLY, the majority of the room are Twitterholics. In fact, it may have even been this tweet that got the ball rolling?

Yeah, Yeah… So What Went on?
Well, after we were all sworn into the super secret club… wait… wrong meeting, sorry! Actually, it was pretty good. With the assistance of the good folks from TED, Everett had put together a selection of seven TEDTalk videos (see links below). We watched four, discussed, took a break, watched three, discussed and wrapped it up. Several of the videos I’d seen before but it was even better watching them with a group. The discussion that ensued after the vids was GREAT!

As things were drawing to a close, Everett asked if we liked it and would like to see a larger event here soon. Of course everyone (at least it looked like everyone to me) agreed and so, I suppose, planning should begin soon for the next TEDxHuntsville event.

Which TEDTalk Videos Did You Watch?
Well, I’m glad you asked. Here’s a list complete with links. Enjoy!

Shai Agassi on electric cars.

Michael Pritchard with his Lifesaver Bottle, self-contained water purification.

Kamal Meattle on creating air with plants.

William Kamkwamba on thinking and doing… and windmills. (good one).

Rives on 4:00am (pretty funny)

Aimee Mullins on perceptions, beauty, and augmentation.

Ken Robinson on creativity and education (best of the bunch. If you only watch one, watch this one)

So What’s Next
Well, frankly, I’m not sure. I expect to hear from Everett again soon and that at some point in the future we’ll hear more about TEDxHuntsville. Perhaps they will take the form of monthly or quarterly video watching events, maybe we’ll get to have a live event. Who knows at this point.

If you’re interested in keeping up with upcoming TEDxHuntsville information, be sure to check out the website, subscribe to the RSS feed, or just keep an ear to the rail here at jtrigsby.com. I’ll have as much information available for you as I can get my hands on!

@jtrigsby

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• Some people are change agents
• The more things change the more they stay the same
• When you’re finished changing, you’re finished

The irony is that the last thing most of us want to do is change. Even the writers of the Declaration of Independence recognized that most people would rather suffer under known conditions than change into the unknown.

If you’ve read past page 14 of Seth Godin’s book Tribes, you know this title of this post is not an original, its actually a quote from the book. In addition to describing some pretty profound differences, I think it can also help us understand this fear as well.

Most people are satisfied being “led” by someone else… someone that, if they’re wrong, will take the blame for the change. Someone that can be pointed to as they claim they were just, “following his lead.” This is rooted in the fact that most people fear failure. They think its bad. They believe they’ll be fired, divorced, or tossed out on their backsides if they fail. Sometimes, that may be true but I’d submit that in most cases… not a chance. A good boss, partner or friend will recognize that they’ve just made an investment in you and will now want to see some value out of that investment. How can they do that if they get rid of you?

The leader on the other hand, has figured out that failure is more than an option, it is itself an outcome. Thomas Edison once famously stated after failing to figure out the incandescent light bulb yet again that he hadn’t failed, he just found thousands of ways NOT to do it. That’s called the freedom to fail, and its a wonderful thing.

Does that mean that failure is without consequences? Of course not, but neither is success! How many stories have we heard of recently successful people cratering in their new found popularity? The point is, both success and failure have consequences. Isn’t it better to say you failed trying rather than because you never tried? Is there a cost associated with your investment, sure. You usually have to pay extra for valuable things. Now, how are you going to extract the value from your investment?

Here’s an idea… Pick one thing to change, today… and do it! Even if you don’t succeed, you will know you tried and will also learn one way not to implement that change. So when you try again tomorrow…

Leave a comment and let us know what one thing you’re trying to change today… and how it goes. Success can be contagious and we’d all love to catch a little success… and not the flu!

@jtrigsby

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The sad thing is that we’ve all been duped into thinking that this is perfectly normal behavior. To pick out only one day to recognize the special people in our lives. Oh, and then there’s the uncomfortable squeeze these “holidays” put on those people who don’t have anything close to a good relationship with their respective honoree… what are they supposed to do?Its kinda like having the “birthday party” at work for the co-worker you really don’t get along with. Do you go? Do you sing Happy Birthday? All so Hallmark (or whomever) can sell more cards!

In reality, why aren’t we honoring those honorees every day? I mean, if they are worthy of being put up on a pedestal one day a year, does that mean they are not worthy the other 364 days of the year? And if that’s the case, why fake it one day a year?

Ok, so now that I’ve thoroughly blasted these made up days… I am going to take this opportunity to share with you folks just what I think about on Father’s Day. Just like a lot of guys my age, I’m both a son and a father and so my view of the day goes both ways, but today I’m gonna focus on my dad role.

I’ve got three of the greatest kids on the planet! Casey has finished up her second year at Texas Tech and is busy planning a wedding for this fall, uh yeah, HER wedding! Kevin is busy working two jobs and diggin it I suppose. And Carly, well she’s getting ready to start her second year of high school and that ever elusive quest for a driver’s license.

I love this picture of the kids because its one of the few that is just of the three of them and by some freak of nature, they all look happy in this one. You know how it goes… you can’t get three people (especially siblings) together for a picture and keep everybody happy till you get a good one… but somehow we managed in this one.

I think Father’s Day is a great opportunity to look back over the past year to see how well we did our job as dads. Instead of sitting around and taking advantage of the one day most dads can get by with doing just about anything (or nothing)… why not take stock of what you’ve done to build up and teach your kid, devote time to them doing what they want to do and building positive memories with them.

For me, this has been a tough job today. The past year hasn’t been the easiest for our family. With the moves, new jobs, no jobs, new schools, new friends… there’s just been a lot of life goin on in our family and frankly, I haven’t done much to make it easier for everyone else. In spite of all that, there has been one thing I’ve been able to depend on… the love and support of my family… especially my kids. Thanks guys!

Sorry if that was a little personal for you, but I wanted to throw out an example for the other dads that will get a chance to read this. No matter how old your kids are, you’re laying the groundwork today, and everyday, for the rest of your life with them. Remember, they’ll be picking out your retirement home! LOL…

All kidding aside, pour into your kids today. We’re not guaranteed our next breath and there are very few dads that have laid on their death beds wishing they could have spent more time at work. For most of us, our kids will only be home with us for a few years and it is in those years that we have the opportunity to enjoy life with them. That’s one of the things I’m thankful for on this Father’s Day and I hope you can be too. If not, take the opportunity today to make plans that will let you look back this time next year on the best year of you and your kid’s lives.

Happy Father’s Day dads!

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One of the simple truths of life is that people don’t like change, another truth is they are fascinated by it! So don’t be frightened, just read along!

It is funny how predictable people can be. Change one little thing in their otherwise stable routine and it completely derails them! Take for example, changing the template and layout for your blog. If you’ve been coming to the site to read the posts over the past week you will know that I’ve been working on changing up the blog to be a little more spacious and accommodating. (BTW, if you’ve only been reading via email or RSS, thanks for subscribing, and come to see the changes on Life In the Internet.)

And yet with the same amount of predictability we can enjoy seeing people drawn into the change…kinda like watching a train wreck (although I hope this change isn’t as bad as a train wreck!) (Actual train wreck footage below).

Change can be exciting, an opportunity to see and experience something new, not just the same old everyday thing. Some of us shrugged off the aversion to change a long time ago and look for the next thing to turn upside down. Others need to let their hair down just a bit and let go of the hand rail!

Which ever group you belong to, thanks for keeping up with Life In the Internet and pardon the mess while the deck is being shuffled. And feel free to leave a comment (good or bad) about what you think, what you like, what you’d like to see more of, and that crap you never want to see again! Come on…I know you’re out there, I look at the stats everyday!

And for those of you just dying to watch a train wreck…here ya go!

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