Attitude, Mindset, And Motivation Archives

Lady Luck

Published in Business on January 22, 2015

I often hear this phrase, It’s better to be lucky than good! and I’ve always found it a bit of an odd statement.

Do I believe in lucky? Perhaps.

I think that luck exists in a lot of forms. The guy that’s never played 21, yet blows everyone away on the first hand. The person that walks into the local 7-eleven and buys the winning ticket to state jackpot. I think there are many events like this that could be easily attributed to Lady Luck and all her glory.

When it comes to business though, I prefer to think of it more as, It’s better to be good enough to create your own luck.

A Culture of Yes

Published in Business on January 18, 2015

I have a friend, Chris Lema who loves to write about how much he says no, so much so that he has an entire tag dedicated to it. When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

Your ability to decipher the noise from the rest, is a bit of an art, and saying yes to the wrong thing could take you down a rabbit hole that will never let you see the light of day. I’ve seen a number of companies fail to this, always chasing the golden nugget.

It is however, a bit misleading to you as an entrepreneur, more importantly as a manager and leader (there is a difference).

Culture: The Journey

Published in Business on January 15, 2015

For the better part of the past 7 months, my business partner, Daniel, and I have been infatuated with our culture. All aspects of it, what it really means, what it means to us, and more importantly, how is it defined.

I think the basis of the question has really been, who and what are we about?

I think we have always known, but we never really took the time to sit back and really capture it in a way that made sense to us, and even our own team.

Interestingly enough, what we’ve come to realize is that your culture is not really something you define, it’s something you are. I know, that’s deep!

Recognizing Your Culture

I think it was at our Quarter 3 board meeting in 2014 that we really started to capture, appreciate and recognize the culture that we had set in our business. Mind you, our business first opened it’s doors January 2010.

Like most first-time entrepreneurs though, our thoughts were nowhere around the idea of a culture as much as it was, figuring out if we really had a business.

Fitting the Mold

Published in Business on January 6, 2015

As humans I think we like to over-complicate things by putting things in boxes that we can come to terms with. Boxes that we can appreciate or that might make sense. I fear that this type of thinking truly inhibits us from being transformative in the way we think and behave.

We not only define and create these boxes, these molds, we also strive to be in them.

You Don’t Fit the Mold

In a recent conversation, this statement was recently directed at me and I found it weighing on my mind. It was specific to being the CEO to the awesome company, Sucuri.

What exactly did they mean?

Chip on Your Shoulder

Published in Business on December 27, 2014

One of my few advisors recently told me, “Tony, you guys function as if you have a Chip on your Shoulder.”

I couldn’t quite figure out if this was good or bad, it almost felt as if it was a gentle way of telling us something negative. Either way, it’s weighed on me for several weeks, kept nagging at me, just couldn’t shake it.

Then yesterday I saw this Tweet from Kevin Hart, because I always go to Twitter when I’m stuck on an issue:

Why You Fail

Published in Business on December 22, 2014

You don’t fail because you don’t have enough friends. You don’t fail because your idea isn’t unique. You don’t fail for lack of ideas. You don’t fail because of funding issues. You don’t fail because you were too early or too late to market.

You fail because you can’t execute. You fail because you can’t focus. You fail because you fail to embrace the grind.

Learn To Execute

When I sit back and study those that I aspire to be like, there is always one undeniable fact that makes them successful – their ability to execute. There ability to see something from beginning to end. The understanding that whether you are a team of 1, 50, or 5,000 this one simple concept will set you apart from the rest.

There is, however, a difference between blind execution and meaningful execution.

Too often though the more common execution type employed however I see blind execution, work to do work. To those external it appears as if something awesome is happening, yet to those close it’s clear that nothing is really being done.

Mean People Fail: Do they Really?

Published in Business on December 1, 2014

This past weekend I was reading Paul Graham most recent article, Mean People Fail. If you don’t know who Paul Graham is, and you’re in the tech startup world, do some homework.

He’s one of the most influential minds in the space today, followed by every would-be and successful entrepreneur in the world. I can’t think of a single person in the space that I have engaged with, from CEO’s to investors, that have not heard of or don’t read his articles.

This notoriety actually makes his most recent article all that more interesting to me.

It’s About Perspective

I think perspective is determined by the side of the coin on which you sit. For instance, I read his article and I thought, “Who would knowingly be mean to Paul G.?”

10 Dangerous Lies Entrepreneurs Tell Themselves

Published in Business on August 20, 2013

My friend David, over at Early Growth Financial Services, put out this post on Forbes and it hit the nail on when it comes to the lies we tell ourselves.

Check Out The Article

Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action

Published in Business on July 8, 2013

Found this very good TED talk on communication and leadership by Simon Sinek…

The Ultimate Optimist: 25 years no Internet

Published in Life on April 28, 2013

Pretty awesome read, talks to how the internet blew the mind of a prisoner locked up for 25 years. More importantly what he was able to do while serving time to leverage the internet in ways that would prove beneficial when he got out.

I want you to think about that, imagine being away for 25 years and in that time the big biggest technological advancement, in terms of societal impact, is introduced. There are people today that aren’t incarcerated, and have had the luxury to see the internet blossom that are mind blown by what they see.

Pretty awesome story, more awesome to see the results and how he was able to build his online persona for 10 years without ever being able to touch a computer.

Wish him all the best.

Check Out The Article

The Social Media Dilemma for Businesses

Published in Business on October 18, 2012

As many know I am one of the owners of a tech start-up and as of late social media has been kicking my butt.

I often talk about keeping your cool and resorting to your more rational, logical, thoughts before engaging with people and engaging in debate, but I am quickly learning that its not quite that easy when it comes to social media.

What I am learning is that my more rational, logical, arguments often come off as condescending, rude or argumentative. Maybe it’s true, maybe its not, but the fact of the matter is it’s exceptionally difficult to have any rational conversations via any social mediums – i.e., Twitter, Blogs, Facebook, etc… at some point in the dialog, it all changes. And the fact is, it comes down to an individuals perception of what you’re trying to say or imply. Whether pointing out fact from fiction, or vise versa, someone undoubtedly gets upset and it all goes to crap from there.

What agitates me most is the right that people have to put out whatever they want, whenever they want, about what ever they want. Yet, you don’t have the right to respond as harshly or aggressively, oh no, now you’re being mean.