You no longer control the message

That’s it. That’s all you need to know. What does this mean? Well it means that if you do things that piss people off, you should expect them to complain about it on twitter, facebook, youtube. You should expect, that others will base their opinions of your business off of these posts. This is the biggest disconnect for traditional marketers, social media takes away the power for brands to control their message. The power is strictly in the hands of the consumer. That is why I love the internet. Because of this fact, businesses can no longer treat people poorly and expect no ramifications from it. The internet is a space where the bad guys are exposed and good guys finally have a shot.

Marketing is no longer about pushing a message to as much people as possible and hoping for the highest conversion rate. Marketing today consists of only one thing, consistently exceeding the expectations of your customer. If you can do this, your customers will willingly create the best marketing campaigns you could ever hopeful. When the message about your company comes from peers, you tend to become convinced much more easily. Just like when you treat your customers poorly they will shit on your brand, if you treat your customers exceptionally well, they will sing praises of you and literally become your sales force online.

How crazy is of an idea is that? Great customer service / experience = social media marketing.

Do things that delight and inspire your customers and they will spread the word for you. In days of yonder, social media marketing was called word of mouth marketing. The only difference is social media has shot word of mouth marketing with as much steroids as Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. Everybody has a platform now, everybody has a soapbox (regardless if they deserve it or not). Take care of your  customers and they will take  care of you. Treat them poorly, I will guarantee that they will treat your brand poorly online. It’s as simple as that.

Dear __________________

You may read this letter now, but you probably won’t think much of it. It’s just some piece of paper some old guy handed you at the career fair at school. Getting a job, starting a career, or any of that boring stuff may be the last thing on your mind right now and that’s cool. You’re young and should enjoy being young. All I ask is that, if you think this letter is boring, stop reading it, but please don’t throw it away. Just put it somewhere in your house where you know you will be able to find it. A year later, 2 years later, 5 years later. Whenever that time is when you have to think about starting your real life, find this letter and read it.

There’s this concept of the “right plan” that most adults will try to convince you to do. Go to school. Study Hard. Go to college. Study hard. Get a job. Work hard. Get promoted. Rinse. Repeat. Retire. Ride off into the sunset. Sound familiar? How many people do you know personally who followed this plan? Your mom, your dad? Maybe your older brother, sister or cousin is in the process of following this plan. Of those people how many of them do you think are frustrated with life? Hate their job? How many of them complain about work constantly or maybe people that they work with. How many of them wish they didn’t have to work but feel they have to? How many of them feel stuck. How many of them are waiting for retirement. This is the result of following the “right plan”. This plan is full of crap.

This plan is full of crap because it tries to make you believe that life is about reaching a destination. Get a job! Hooray you made it!

Then reality sinks in.

You realize that this is not the finish line you were hoping for. You get upset. You feel cheated. You feel lied to. You followed the plan, you did everything you were supposed to. You’ve “arrived” and yet this is nothing like what they promised. You’re frustrated but you don’t really know why. This is what causes mid-life crises. This plan was a hoax.

Now, I’m not saying the “right plan” is the worse plan. There are far worse ways to live your life than the “right plan”. I’m just saying that what it promises is a lie and nowhere near the best plan. There are much better plans available. Like the one I’ll propose in this letter.

The “right plan” is full of crap because in reality, life is NOT about the destination. Life is about the journey. The point of life is to gain experiences, make mistakes, learn from your mistakes, become a better person and try your best to make your life one that brought value to the world. When you bring value to the world, you create meaning in your life. By bringing value to the world, your life has a purpose. You’re no longer just existing, now you are living!

So how do you make your life one that brings value to the world? 

Well the first step is to get to know yourself. Try to truly understand yourself. What are your strengths, weaknesses, what brings you true joy and happiness, what pisses you off that you want to change / need to change, what brings fulfillment to your life. Self discovery is something very few people do, yet understanding yourself is the first true step in becoming an asset to the world. By understanding your strengths, your passions, what truly makes you happy deep down inside, you can focus on those things and those things alone. You can take a stance and choose a direction. Some people refer to this as “Finding your Calling”. Most people who follow the “right plan” never do this and live their whole lives without discovering what could have truly make them happy and fulfilled.

The second step is once you discover what you truly want to do, to put yourself into positions where it is possible to fail. Anything worth doing in life usually comes with the chance of failure. Success and failure are yin and yang and chances for each usually grow proportionally.  Most people are terrified of failing. So terrified, that they forfeit their opportunity to achieve true happiness in an attempt to completely avoid failure. I am not saying that failing is great. It is terrible. It sucks to fail, but you should never let the fear of failure deter you from the possibility of achieving something you truly want. You cannot hit a home run without swinging the bat. You may strike out, but living with regret that you never took a swing is much, much worse.

Step three is to persevere. Don’t give up. Trying to do anything worth while always comes with adversity. Creating anything that makes a difference in the world does not happen over night. You WILL fail. It is inevitable. The important thing is to always, always get back up.  Learn to appreciate the process of growth, this includes failure. There is tremendous value if you can learn from your mistakes.

Most people will quit after failing once. “Quit while you’re ahead…” They’ll say. Bullsh*t. How are you ahead? Did you accomplish anything by giving up so fast? Most likely not. The funny thing about life is, people tend to forget about all your failures if you end up succeeding. Do people remember the Wright brothers as those guys who crashed a bunch of times? No. They remember them as the first people who flew in an airplane. Do people remember Mark Zuckerberg’s 3 or 4 other failed projects before Facebook? Persevere. People will only remember you as a failure if you give up. Never let a failure be the last thing you do.

I hope this letter will help you in your life’s journey. We all have the choice of how we want to spend our years on earth. You have the choice to live or to exist, to bring value to the world, or take value from it. It’s up to you if you want to have a life filled with fulfillment and purpose or one that is not. It truly is up to you and don’t ever let anyone and their “right plan” tell you otherwise.

There’s no two ways about it, we’re in a tech bubble. It has cooled down a little but there is still a lot of dumb money floating around just looking for somewhere to go. What is dumb money? Dumb money is money provided by people who can bring no other value to you other than money itself. Its often the easiest type of money to get in bubbles as these people are the johnny come latelys who want to jump off the last bandwagon they were on and onto the latest and greatest thing. These types of investors do not understand your market nor do they want to, all they want is to give you money and have you do all the work and get more money back. Dumb money brings very little except high expectations and pressure for you to constantly be moving the graph up and to the right on their timetable.

Why Do People take Dumb Money?

There are many reasons why people take dumb money but I believe the two biggest reasons have to deal with the type of people who become entrepreneurs. First, as Eric Reis states, entrepreneurs operate in areas with very high uncertainty. Getting investment capital makes you feel good. It means someone believes in you or your idea enough to put their money behind you. A type of personal validation. The other reason is often entrepreneurs are arrogant enough to believe that all they need is money and they are capable of doing everything themselves. While this may be true, it is rarely the case and great angels and VCs can offer so much more than just cash.

Dumb Money does not mean dumb people

Dumb money usually never comes from dumb people. If people have that kind of money to throw behind an idea, they are usually not dumb as they got to that point somehow. What makes smart people hand out dumb money is when they try to invest in things they don’t understand. If they can’t understand your situation as an entrepreneur AND your market, chances are you may be accepting dumb money.

 What can you do as an entrepreneur?

If this is your first rodeo, I’d highly recommend bootstrapping your first business. It will allow you to wear multiple hats and find out truly how tough it is to start something and how its even harder to grow something substantial. You’ll discover what areas you’re weak in and need to outsource and what areas you excel at. It will ultimately prepare you better for success even if your first bootstrapped company flops.

If your mind is already made up that you need investment capital, I would highly recommend being extremely selective in who’s money you take. Only take money from people who can directly bring value your company, even if this means turning down money from someone you highly admire.

There are many ways investors can bring value to your company. If you are starting a consumer facing company, find investors who have deep connections with your target market that can bring instant credibility and brand awareness to your company. If you don’t know much about scaling a company bring on investors who have experience growing a team and revenues. If you are starting a B2B business, find investors who are already engaging in commerce with your target market. If its not instantly clear how this investor can benefit you and your company, DO NOT TAKE THEIR MONEY.

There’s a ton of dumb money floating, don’t take it, taking it makes you a dumb entrepreneur.

2011 New Years Goal

• Have at least one $50k month gross income – FAIL
• Have at least 10 paying customers for a new SaaS application – Kinda FAIL (UU+ doesn’t really count)
• Learn to play a new non-stringed instrument – FAIL
• Drink more water – FAIL
• Reconnect with Old Friends – FAIL
• Gain at least 5 lbs – SUCCESS
• Meditate at least once a week – FAIL

1 Success / 6 Fail

Didn’t do so good last year, but got really close on a lot.

When we started UU in 2007, both Aaron and I already had tried our hands at a few businesses, none of which had any kind of success and most lost us money. My ego was at an all time low and it definitely could not handle one more failure on the quickly growing pile of failures. So I devised what I thought was a genius way to not have another failure in UU.

“Let’s start UU with such a low amount of money, that if we make any kind of money at all, it would be a success!”

We decided to each put in $100. Actually Aaron and I put in $100 each and Aldrine bought a Kala KA-S ukulele for our first give away.  With our plan in motion we quickly became “profitable”. We pre-sold t-shirts and used the presale funds to start our merch store. I sold our first few ads on our website. We were quickly making a few hundred dollars a month, then a few thousand dollars a month. Thing were going great and we were excited to finally have something that had this kind of traction.

The problem was we never paid ourselves. Every penny that UU made went right back into the business. To buy new merch, upgrade servers, upgrade software, going on tour to meet and thank the fans of the website, buy health insurance etc. We kept a healthy balance in our business bank account but our personal bank accounts were getting drained. We were all still relatively young, I was 25, Aaron and Aldrine were 23 when we started, so we saw any money coming in as success.

To solve this problem of not paying ourselves, we all got side jobs. Aaron and I went to work for my dad doing manual labor at his business while Aldrine started teaching private lessons and playing more gigs. Where a rational person would have decided this business venture was indeed a failure, we chose to look the other way and pretend everything was great. This charade lasted for almost 3 years.

Luckily we did eventually come to our senses and luckily when we did we had done enough things right to pay ourselves but I can’t help but to think that if anyone who actually knew what they were doing was running UU, it would not have lasted this long nor even be a thing today.

If you can’t. Fuck you. You’re not an entrepreneur yet. You’re a poser, wantrepreneur.

Why do we teach ukulele on the internet? Because the vast majority of the people in this world cannot express any emotion they feel without the help of someone else. They depend on the works of art created by others to tell their story. The average person cannot express how they truly feel about someone, or how they feel when something happens. They listen to songs written and recorded by other people, they watch movies and cry because they can relate, but they themselves cannot communicate effectively.  Not only that, they don’t realize they can’t!

The value of music and therefore musicians is the fact that they can create things that help other people express how they feel. There is tremendous value in that, as we see by the millions and millions of dollars that musicians, directors, artists earn. Society has shown with their wallets just how valuable the creation of tools of expression is.

This is why Ukulele Underground is important.  Our goal is to create more new musicians.  More new people that can help others express themselves, or at the very least, we help someone express their own feelings. For those who play music, they know how much it really does feel like a gift. For a long time I couldn’t explain why it felt so powerful to me but now I understand its because as a musician, we help others feel. Feel excitement, joy, sorrow, grief, passion, the gift of music is the gift to express how you truly feel inside.

That is our Why.

During the event I got to hear all the exciting things that are developing on Oahu and Maui and I have to admit it got me a little jealous. Hackerspaces, Meetups, Conferences, just the ability to easily meet up with and hang out with like minded people, that’s something I’ve wanted since we started UU 3 years ago that Kauai really does not have. Though Hawaii as a whole is still very far away from becoming a geek hub like San Francisco, Seattle, Boulder or Austin; Oahu and Maui seem to be taking steps in the right direction while Kauai… well ignorance is part of its charm.

After exchanging some emails with Russel Cheng, I’ve decided that if no one else is going to hold the flag for Kauai, I’m going to have to so I’ve decided to start a monthly Kauai Tech group.

The mission of the group is simple. To help culture the tech (Web Ap, SaaS, mobile ap, interactive content) scene on Kauai and develop a true startup culture here on the island.

The monthly meet ups would be a way for like minded people to get together and share their projects, get feedback and help each other grow their businesses. On an island where the only thing you do with computers is IT (at least according to most here); finding people might be a little difficult but I think I can wrangle 5 or 6 people together for a test run. It might take a while to get traction but like any venture the most important thing is to start. Will keep everyone updated on the progress as we work towards our first meet up.

Our society has shown us time and time again that what we value as humans (at least in the USA) is innovation, creativity, the ability to create art or solve problems; the creation of things of value. As children, we do our best to create things of value. We draw, we paint, we build, we sing, we dance. Yet by high school graduation, few of us draw, paint, sing, or dance. This creativity is slowly discouraged and killed off in the school system. In ironic fashion, we push our children through schools that push them in the exact opposite direction of what society has shown us it rewards.

Our current educational system is set up to produce commoditized employees, which can be swapped in and out, replaced and replenished as needed. This system was create when we lived in an industrial society, but that era has long passed us by. Factories have moved overseas and now even what was once perceived as skilled labor; programming, graphic design, etc can be done overseas fully maximizing our declining dollar.

Our current leaders think the solution is to increase educational opportunities, to help the children of the future to gain better jobs. This is broken logic. At the very best, this is going to increase the gap between the poor and the rich when there is no jobs for those who do not attain degrees of higher education. What is far more likely is that it will commoditize the  high tech, highly specialized labor force creating an even more competitive job market and foster lower wages. We already see the beginning signs of this as many of my college friends have gone to take jobs which do not require a college education.

To me, as a 28 year old (soon to be 29) without any kids, the only way to fix this impending crisis is to begin to teach our children that there is real value in creating things of value. Point out the obvious that society rewards individuals who bring value to the world. Show them that those who we admire are master craftsmen. Point out the fact that by choosing to paint, Picasso added tremendous value to the world. The paintings he created are worth millions of dollars. His art added millions of dollars of value to this world.  Explain to them why we line up to purchase the latest innovations of entrepreneurs. That these are the real world manifestations of this person’s ideas. Without the entrepreneur first imagining the product, it would never have existed. Tell them the world rewards being an individual who cannot be commoditized. Tell them that the world rewards those who are brave enough to be unique and find a passion in life. Above all else, never let them stop creating.

This whole concept is completely contrary to the best way to learn anything. NOBODY is an expert when they start. The best way to learn, is to do. If you fail, you get back up, learn from your mistakes and try again. Its the process of doing, failing, and trying again that creates real world expertise.

Don’t be afraid of failure. Conquer the fear and try to fail in the most spectacular way possible. Most importantly, when you do fail, get back up and try again. The path to success is comes with scraped knees.