Walking away from "Good"

It's been official for a couple of weeks now, although the paper work was just put in place last Friday. The announcement was made to the team this morning, and the job posting will likely hit LinkedIn this afternoon. Let me know if you know anyone that would be a good Tektronix account manager in New Mexico because I'm quitting my job.

I'll be joining a couple of friends at Epimedia.  At this point there are four of us full time with a couple of contract programmers.  We write software to control hardware.  

I've alluded in my blog posts to the fact that

What are you working towards?

I've been enjoying Tony Hsieh's memoir Delivering Happiness about how he grew and sold LinkExchange and then grew and sold Zappos.  In the book, he describes the deal that he made with Microsoft as part of the LinkExchange sale.  His portion of the sale would be $40 million.  He received 80% at closing, but to help with the transition, he was required to stay with the company for one year to receive the remaining 20%.  At first, he dutifully went to work and sat around checking email and taking long lunch breaks as he put in his time.  After a short period of time he realized how bored he was, and realized how

Buy the book

I've read or listened to about 25 books this year.  I can't get into fiction books, so they've all been business/management/marketing/motivation/sales/entrepreneurship books.  The most influential book I've read this year, no question, has been Seth Godin's Poke the Box.  (I wrote a little summary of it here.) Amazon has cut the price of the book to

Get off the bunny hill

The temptation to stay on the bunny hill
The bunny hill is the nearly flat run closest to the parking lot at every ski resort in the world.  Bunny hills are designed for first timers to have a relatively safe place to learn how to use their bindings, control their edges and use chairlifts. 

The temptation of the bunny hill is to get stuck in an endless loop of taking one more run before moving to the advanced runs.

Catching edges forever
 The problem with waiting until you are ready to move up is that you may never be ready.  You can refine and practice and focus, and you'll still occasionally lose your balance and fall. The non-intuitive truth of snowboarding is that it is actually easier to stay in control at higher speeds.  At reaaaaally low speeds, it's tough to stay on one edge or the other. 

Learn the basics, then get to the steeps
The bunny hill has an important role.  It's good to practice getting on

Getting your money's worth out of school

The cost of going to school is tremendous.  Obviously.  The increasing cost of tuition and books regularly make headlines. Many people are deciding that college isn't worth the high cost.  Those that choose to attend are left feeling pressure to minimize costs and increase the returns on their investment.

When I was in school, I had two friends that were clearly trying to get their money's worth out of their investment.  We'll call them Stan and Miles.


Goods and Services
Stan had an approach that still makes me laugh.  When he realized how much he was paying for every day at the university, he decided to reclaim the price of his tuition in goods and services.  Every time he

Increasing Your Chance of Excelling

I believe the idea that to excel in life, you should spend as much time as practical doing the things that you are exceptionally good at.  (I was partially influenced by Marcus Buckingham's books First, Break All The Rules and Now, Discover Your Strengths.)

I’ve noticed in my own life that at the core, my talents don’t change much over time. Finesse in using talents and the applications in which talents are used may both change in time, but the very core of the things at which you excel, the types of activities that you are drawn to, will probably change very little. 

An Exercise to Identify Your Talents

Here’s a useful exercise that I came up with one evening  as I was trying to sort out

Don't wait to be asked

The kitchen was a mess and I had a justification for a celebration, so I took my wife and kids recently to one of my three favorite pizza places in Albuquerque: Mario's Pizza.

Unexpected service
The waitress was friendly and outgoing.  After the usual routine of taking drink orders and then coming back to take our food order, she reappeared again with a small plate of croutons, sliced cucumber and ranch dressing.  She didn't even ask if we wanted them.  She knew that any parents at a restaurant waiting for food with little kids would want them.


Doesn't that seem like such an obvious thing to do?  Yet that has never