We’ve seen tidal waves decimate villages, flood cities, and kill hundreds of thousands, but big wave surfers still seek to drop into these monsters for the ride of a lifetime. There is something beautiful about leaning into it. These monster waves  tower more than ten stories tall and carry the destructive punch of an eye wall. Nature in all its furry carrying millions of gallons of water draws creatures deep into the sublimity of its wake, and there are those that are daring (and stupid) enough to venture into the massive wall of the wave.

Watch as Laird Hamilton takes on monster waves.

It is terrifying and beautiful to watch this man take on the ferocity of nature. Here are a few observations:

1. It is clear that he is in the water for only one thing, to surf.
2. Despite the strength and terror of the waves, he must lean in.
3. Fear may be palpable, but he must show skill and strength.
4. When the world seems to be crashing in on itself, there is opportunity regardless of the seeming impossibility.
5. Timing is everything. Big waves appear a few days out of the year, so being in the right place at the right time is critical.
6. The goal is to make it out alive. You can’t plan for everything.
7. Surf the big waves, and people talk about you.
8. Oh yeah, have fun.

For the entrepreneur, the risk taker, I think there are lessons that we can learn from Laird. Most importantly, not all of the busy-ness is your business. When you lean into the area of opportunity you will neccesarily avoid and lose all focus on other aspects, and if you are lucky you will create something truly amazing.

photo by @zerok

The basic premise to the game/network is to opt-in by registering your mobile device and adding friends by mining your networks Twitter, Facebook, Address Books, etc. Then, when you’re on the go, you broadcast your location for points, and social capital (mayorship, eventually king of the world) by “checking in:”

People use foursquare to “check-in”, which is a way of telling us your whereabouts. When you check-in
someplace, we’ll tell your friends where they can find you and recommend places to go & things to do
nearby. People check-in at all kind of places – cafes, bars, restaurants, parks, homes, offices.

In short, you are rewarded for broadcasting to the world your location, patterns, interests, routes, routines, employment, and most other mundanity that up until now has seemed too egocentric to broadcast.

The brick and mortar retail use of Foursquare captures all the elements that retailers hoped Twitter would possess: location based service, customer identification, gratis reward structure, and incentivizing physical presence. And, quite frankly, it is fun to keep up with your friends and compete on the learderboard for the most points earned in a week.

Here are my issues:

1. Abdication of Personal Autonomy. Any old-timer would say, “what the hell is wrong with you?” For centuries we have fought to protect our information from being collected and protected by governments and churches, but under the hipster sway of technology we gladly volunteer our personal information, freely.

2. Privacy Desensitization. Related to the previous point, we are choosing to blur the lines between private and public in the name of community. Privacy policies aim to protect the users, but with continual revision, one is essentially opting in to global, unfettered broadcast of personal information.

3. Building the Machine. In a culture that was once fascinated by algorithms, we are increasingly governed by them. Even the most well intentioned people trade humanity for quanitification. As people continue to plug more of their human patterns into the machine, the machine learns to act more like them, anticipate more like them, “think” more like them. The point of singularity seems like a farce to me (for reasons that are too lengthy to engage here), but conceptually the machine is built with data.

4. Where’s the Community. Twitter has been a magical community development tool. Without fanfare and proper billing, micro communities popped up built around common interests. Conversations that occur on Twitter, although truncated, foster idea expression, commentary, emotion, location, status, ergo community but simple location updates limit that communication to data points. It is fun, but it isn’t community.

5. Criminal Minds. I have posted a tweet or two about the possibilities of burglars “friending” you on foursquare. Social networked burglars are out there; aptitude is another issue entirely. I could see a situation where a burglar follows someone on Foursquare to confidently burglarize one’s home. Of course, such concerns are fundamental to all Web 2.0 participation.

I have been using Foursquare for six months and much more actively in the past months as its coverage became ubiquitous. I am an early adopter, or as I like to say a neophiliac, but pouring through Lanier’s work provides another lens to see our technological world. Web 2.0 holds many exciting opportunities, but coupled with that, the interfaces and user compromises should not be taken lightly. How does the old addage go? “you aren’t paranoid if everyone really is out to get you” or follow you at least.

So, what’s a Bluegill you may ask? On their website you’ll see:

…Bluegill is an integrated marketing communications group serving clients in a variety of fields including healthcare, business to business, finance, real estate, and non-profit. We represent clients throughout the country with local, regional and national marketing, advertising, and branding initiatives. A small fish that thinks big.

I, however, like to think of them as a great group of friends.

This merger was not conducted in a stuffy conference room with mind numbing lawyers. Instead, the relationship between our two companies has grown over shared projects, and over beers and brainstorming. The right people have written the success stories independently, and now together the right people are going to take Bluegill to new heights.

Together, Bluegill will expand its already vibrant digital portfolio to include  internet marketing, search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, social media marketing, analytics and reporting, mobile marketing, and custom application architecture. In addition, Eluminare’s lead generation techniques will add new assets in the areas of inbound and outbound telephone center setup, customer relationship management (“CRM”) software setup and administration.

Social media strategy and social media policy creation have become important consulting areas for Eluminare. This experience and legal expertise will prove valuable to many of Bluegill’s current customers.

Bluegill’s rich branding experience and expert design skills in both print and interactive, will richly enhance Eluminare’s current client base.

This marriage of the our two companies provides the perfect consultancy for businesses looking to expand their current market share by refining core values and purpose development and applying creative roadmap creation.

I look forward to the future, and I invite you to join me. Stay up to date by joining the Facebook group or following @bluegillcreativ.

Wish me luck!

Image used under creative commons license by skycaptaintwo

Of course, I live in the south, so the soft white snow doesn’t stick around long enough to turn into the road-muck, black of northern towns. The winter storm rolls through and softens the sharp angular edges of our world into soft, white contours. Virgin white that makes even the brightest white creation of man lack luster in comparison. Then, in a few days, the memory of the snow is dotted with only a few melting snowmen. Painless.

As the day draws closer, the “believers” gush with a little childlike hope of the 3, no 6, no 12 inches of the winter white. Safely tucked in their nostalgic gaze is fireplaces, families, snowballs,  snowmen, and of course play. Sometime between our twelfth birthday and midlife, we forget what it is like to play. School becomes increasingly important, grades, college admissions, jobs, wives, kids, houses, and play that once consumed our days, thoughts, and emotions is relegated to a basement of our responsible life. But the weatherman’s forecast rattles that basement door and awakes the freedom that we had as a child and have long lost the memory. The freedom that can audaciously sled down the giant hill because falling means that old man winter can gently catch you in his soft arms that blankets the harsh, dull earth. The freedom that has no agenda or appointment because time is frozen solid and you can run for 30 minutes or 3 hours making real the line, “since we have no place to go, let it snow.”

However, often in business we toil away with so many of the tactics that the “if only” strategy is seldom considered. Especially in small business/entrepreneurial situations, we spend all of our energy acting and very little thinking, which reminds me of an anecdotal story that I was recently told:

An astronaut was asked if you only had 10 seconds of oxygen, what would he do do? After thinking for a few moments, the astronaut responded, “I would think for 8 seconds and act for 2.”

So, whether you are the coach of a team, a small business owner, or an employee seeking to make your mark, I ask you to pause and think about your “if only” statement. What series of events if perfectly executed would bring you great success?

At one point in the evening, as my sister was furiously framing the perfect photograph, he began chatting with a couple at the table immediately next to us. The youngish fella at the table was handsome, well-built, and sporting a stylish blonde doo. My dad’s uncanny ability to extract much information out of a short conversation revealed that this guy had played football at one time for the Tennessee Vols.

A while later, my dad returned to their table to satisfy his itching curiosity of whether this table neighbor played professional football for the Tennessee Titans. In a self deprecating shrug, the guy more or less said “no” with a face that said a thousand words, “too old, too slow, not strong enough, and more of like.” Like spinach to Popeye, Lewster found his strength, “have you tried out? You should try out, you would be great…you only live once.” He knew nothing of his abilities; he had not seen any footage, but in a very genuine way, he encouraged this stranger like a friend, like a son. This is the dad that raised me.

He was the East Tennessee boy who wooed all of the girls in school; played all of the sports; he was the superstar. He went on to college and ascended the ranks of the football team to become the captain. A tall feat for a 5′10″ left guard. In the army, he ascended the ranks his platoon to become the Superior Cadet as he travelled the world. In the FBI, he always sought to serve with his highest and best. Everything that he pursued he has always given his all. He brings his game.

By contrast, my brother and I didn’t play many sports, weren’t football players, didn’t go into the armed services, didn’t follow behind in the footsteps of the FBI, yet the Lewster was always proud and encouraged us (even in the impossible). He always subrogated his desires to our ambitions only gently redirecting where appropriate.

He is a farmer of hope. In fallow ground he plants the seeds of possibility–even in places where others assume drought. When I was about seven years old, the Lewster led a SWAT team to arrest a most wanted criminal. After the blue lights stopped and the guns were holstered, he spent significant time digging into the fugitive’s life and mining for hope over interrogating him.

All too often we look for hope to magically appear. We misplace goals for hope, like tactics for strategy. Hope is the fundamental belief that circumstances, no matter how dire, can change. It is the ability to look at some dirt and a little spec and see the significant harvest. Hope is not fleeting; it is a root that grows through one’s life, which built on strong foundation can weather a storm.

As I chose the picture for this post, I really searched for something that represented the living roots that both my mom and dad bring to our family. This picture, taken recently, has all the wonderful blooms of the family.

It is unlikely that the fella at the restaurant called up his agent and scheduled a tryout for the Titans, but who knows the boost that he may have received from the fun Lewster encounter. The power of hope cultivated with the encouragement that someone believes in your abilities, can help you move mountains. My dad’s encouragement is magnetic. It is something that I aspire to emulate. It has led me in some of my darkest moments and most difficult decisions.

I woke up in the middle of the night in cold sweats thinking about this one. I read a Seth Godin post over the weekend, and, as usual, his words struck a chord. This time, however, I could not just post a tweet and go on about my business. I was struck by this one line:

Employees and freelancers that produce more than they cost are worth hiring.

Too often, it seems, that we can hide behind rationalizations for what we do. We paint these pictures with huge self-congratulation, but at the end of the day, are we producing more than we are charging?

Hallerin even endorsed @jfloyd for the East Tennessee’s Best Tweeter award.

For your convenience, you can vote for East Tennessee’s Best Tweeter here.

In particular, I remember one event where my dad had created a raised bed in front of their house. My job was to create a “custom” edging around the mulch bed out of small timbers that he had cut. My job included:

1. Digging a small ditch around the bed.
2. Soaking the logs in a preservative.
3. “Planting” the logs in the ditch.
4. Use Bailing wire to tie the logs together.

For this bed that was about 150 square feet I had probably 150 logs to place, but it felt like 1500 trees that I had to debark and chop. I had a process. I understood the objective. I improved the process with scientific efficiency. Yet, I had no “vision” for the end result. I saw one log after another with no concept for the completed project; I invested my sweat to adhere to my paternal directive–and not for the vision of the beautiful work product.

All to often we issue commands to fulfill our own vision without taking the time to “plant” vision in the actors. In turn, they work hard to toil away and placing logs instead of creating beauty. When everyone shares in the vision, they make it beautiful in their own way, and they own their part of the success. Otherwise, it is just quid pro quo–in my story it was “build the edging” for “not getting an ass whoopin’.”

At lunch yesterday, the poor waiters were terribly short-staffed. Two tuckered table jockeys were tirelessly running full pace to underwhelm the needs of 12 tables.  As we opened the door to the restaurant, subtle hints of the abysmal service foreshadowed the experience: 5 minutes to be greeted, grunting faces of the patrons, kids hanging from the rafters. But a nice enough wink and nod from the sushi chef led me to believe that we would be taken care of. “Silly man that is hoodwinked by the sushi chef is doomed to a dinner of defeat,” my fortune should have read.

You know the drill. We sat down. Ten minutes pass before our waiter makes it to our table to take drink, dinner, and hell dessert orders, but this waiter wasn’t out back puffing on a stogey or flirting with the hostess–he was genuinely working as hard as physically possible, furiously juggling tables like a carney who just through a flaming chainsaw into the mix. There is no question that he was working hard, but he simply didn’t have time to get drinks on our table or tend to our basic needs.

My wife commented, “we’re not tipping this guy,” and I thought, we are not getting our basic needs met we probably shouldn’t tip this guy–very much at least. I did feel sorry for him, but I was also walking to the bar with crying children hanging from my leg just trying to get a soda and a milk. So, I postulated, “he could have fixed this…with little more than 5 seconds effort.” Had the overworked young man greeted us when we came in and said, “guys, welcome, we have an extremely packed house, and we are two staff short, I would love for you to stay but I want you to know that I am going to do my best to keep up.” Done. My expectations are set: (1) if I stay here, the service is going to suck, but I trust that this guy is going to do his best to take care of me, or (2) I am not in the mood to deal with this today, but I will be back because he took the time to address me. Instead the winking, nodding sushi chef dis-served us and the restaurant. He set the expectation that we will take care of you despite the chaos you see unfolding.

Often we think we want more business, even when we can’t handle it; we communicate our best wishes instead of our realities to our customers; and therefore we set unrealistic expectations in our customer’s minds. Communicate realistic expectations and work like hell to outperform, or you’ll end up working like hell communicate why you didn’t.