 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
EXECUTIVE GEEK is a book written blog or a "blook."
Be a part of its creation by giving your own hints & tips in the comments. 
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Mon, Dec 19, 2011 1:43 AM UTC
|
|
Guy Kawasaki calls it the “Art of the Start” and founding a company is clearly an art. It is an art because you are playing a very significant game, with tightly defined rules, and the penalty for breaking the rules is death (of the company that is). The problem is, no one gives you the rules. You are expected to understand a game that is neither intuitive nor obvious. In fact the game is quite complex and often based on a set of traditions that were never written down. Founders must make extremely critical business decisions every day that could literally be worth 10s of millions of dollars in 2-3 years. Although it is unfair, it is the game and if you win the game you win a lot.
So why don’t your company advisors help you navigate this game. To a certain extent they do. Your Angel investors, attorney’s, accountants, and venture capital partners all help you navigate, but they do the navigation from a certain context and biased that is not always in alignment with you as the Founder. Your attorney probably provides the most advice in these situations, but it can often be very slanted. If you go to any of the top startup law firms, these guys very much understand both the game and the ramifications of the game. But there is also a biased at play here. If you are negotiating with a top VC, you are doing one deal with this law firm, but the firm is probably doing 50-100 deals a year with the VC on the other side of the table. I think that most of these attorneys do their best to be fair, but the dynamics are clearly rocky at best.
So who is in the best position to help you? They don’t teach this stuff at Harvard, you can’t learn it by being on a Board, and people that have not founded a company can simply not understand it. The only mentors that can help you play the game and understand it from your perspective is a serial entrepreneur. The serial entrepreneur knows where the tricks and traps are, not because they super smart, but because they probably have stepped on them and seen their critical ramifications. They may not be smart enough to not experience the pain once, but they quickly put in place a strategy to not experience it again. By looking back in time against a game that has already played out, they can see how the game can be played better.
Over a series of 10 blog articles, I hope to give you some insight and perspective on how you can play this game and not get burned. Although it does not layout all of the rules, all of the tricks, and all of the pain, it puts “bumpers on the bowling alley” and tries to keep the ball in the center.
I hope this information in interesting to you and that you find valuable. I would love to hear feedback and your experiences in the comments.
Topics: Venture Capital |
Mon, Aug 22, 2011 4:01 AM UTC
|
|
I have to admit, I have had a bit of email-envy towards Gmail since they introduced the Priority Inbox. The concept is brilliant and the user acceptance has been tremendous. This is an area that is in very strong need of innovation and I was really glad to see Google step up and provide some value.
 SaneBox
But because I get so much email, 300-500 emails a day, I could never justify leaving my Outlook. I use a lot of tools to manage my inbox including QuickFile, Getting Things Done for Outlook, Xobni, Gist, and Producteev. I just cannot do all this within Gmail.
But SaneBox came to my rescue and not only provided the advantages of Gmail’s Priority Inbox, but far surpassed it. The installation was very easy and it allowed me to see how it was processing the email. I have a lot of email, so it took about 2 hours to complete the process. When it was done, only about 75 messages (out of 438) were left in my inbox. I said “Oh Shit” and scrambled to find where the rest had gone. But when I looked in the SaneLater folder, there they all were.
I went through the folder and sure enough SaneBox had done a wonderful job of determining what email was important and what was not important. Of the 75 left in my inbox, 100% of them were emails I would have selected to be priority. Of the 363 that it put in my SaneLater, all but 2 should have been gone into the folder. To train the system, all I had to do is drag the emails from the SaneLater Folder to the inbox and Voila it was done. From that point on all email from those two users are left in the inbox. If there had been something left in the inbox that should have been moved, training is just as simple. Drag the email from the inbox to the SaneLater folder and you are done. This is completely brilliant!
But SaneBox does not stop there. In addition to the obvious value, it has some cool tricks up its sleeve. It goes through your spam folder and finds email that was spammed and puts this into a folder called “SaneNotSpam”. It found over 100 important emails that my spam filter had miss-grabbed in only the last 30 days. I moved the email to the inbox and SaneBox will never let that happen again. If there is someone emailing you that you want to lose, just drag the email to SaneBlackHole and you will never see it again.
There is even a cool set of folders called SaneTomorrow and SaneNext week. If Monday morning you drag an email to SaneTomorrow, Tuesday morning it will re-appear in your inbox. If instead you dragged it to SaneNextWeek, next Monday it would re-appear. Very cool!
Finally, the customization is really well done. If you are not using one of the folders, you can make it disappear from the list. SaneBox lets you connect to Facebook, Linked-In, and Twitter to find more contacts and optimize the algorithm even more.
This is a real no brainer. If you use Outlook, you must go and install this product. The value is off the charts.
Topics: GTD, Organization, Outlook, Technology |
Mon, Aug 8, 2011 4:56 AM UTC
|
|
I am a big Evernote fan and definitely a power-user of the tool. Recently I wanted to enhance the way my executive assistant and I work together and decided that Evernote was the platform for the job.
I created an Evernote Notebook called “Virtual Assistant” and created 10 folders. Each folder has a specific purpose:
- 0 – Unfiled Note: I put all of my unfiled notes to be processed in this folder and this lets my assistant know what needs to be done. It also lets me know what still needs to be processed.
- 1 – Daily Updates: My assistant does 3 updates each day that includes what tasks have been completed, what is in process, and what is up next. This allows me to see the progress and eliminates a lot of calls I used to do to get a status. At the end of the day, she does a video update using Oovoo Video Message and puts a link in the folder. Since I am often tied up until after 8:00, this allows her to communicate with me even when I get back late.
- 2 – Communications: My assistant gets all of my phone messages and puts them in this folder. Even voice mail is transcribed and this allows me to easily review my messages even when I am in a meeting. When they come to me on my iPhone, I can just click on the number and it will dial for me. I can then attach a voice file to the note if I need her to do something for me.
- 3 – Business Cards: Whenever I get a business card, I take a picture of it with Evernote. My assistant takes the picture and uploads it to bizcard reader. It converts the card to an Outlook Contact and then hits Linked-In and pulls information from their Public Profile. If the card is for a lead, I tag it and she enters into the CRM.
- 4 – Meeting Notes: I use LiveScribe for all of my notes. Whenever I have a meeting that I want the notes managed, I use LiveScribe Connect to transfer the notes to Evernote. I draw a one inch line, right then left. I then write Evernote above the line. If I look at the pen display it will show Evernote. I click on the right arrow and it says point to each page you want to transfer. It beeps for each page. I click on the right arrow again and it allows me to select how I want to transfer the pages. I always choose automated Adobe Reader File. It will then transfer the page to Evernote the next time I dock the pen. I put a section called Actions and she converts all of these to Outlook Tasks.
- 5 – White Boards: Anytime I do a White Board, I take a picture of it and it goes into the system. I always put Actions in the lower right corner and she converts these to Outlook Tasks. I have just started using ZigZag and I am going to convert these to PDFs and send them in as well.
- 6 – Expenses: Whenever I have an expense, I take a picture of it front and back. I send these in and my assistant imports the pictures into Expensify. They are automatically scanned, converted to text, and put on my expense report.
- 7 – Audio Instructions: Whenever I need something special done, I create a voice note. As she progresses on the tasks, she puts it into the note and I can tell the status. This is really helpful.
- 8 – My Brain: If I have any lose piece of information that I need to remember, I either create a note, picture, or voice note. My assistant tags it and it goes into My Brain. I always do this with things I forget a lot.
This seems like a lot of work, but it actually only takes about an hour a day and often saves several hours a day. She likes it because it is easier to connect with me (I am often times at a remote location) and I like it because it gives me a great sense of control.
All these tools are evolving a lot and I am getting new tools every day. I can’t believe someone has not come up with an application for tightly integrating an executive assistant and the executive. I would love to hear other ideas about how to use Evernote, especially in working with your executive assistant.
Topics: GTD, Organization, Outlook, Technology, Virtual Office |
Mon, Jul 18, 2011 2:27 AM UTC
|
|
So in my previous article I talked about how Klout measures influence and the sophistication of its model. In this article I am going to tell you what I did to drive my Klout Score up nearly 20 points in 30 days.
First, it is important to understand that the score is not a linear scale. It is much harder to go from 40-50 than it is to go from 20-30. This is my interpretation of what the score is really saying:
| Score |
Engagement |
| 0-20 |
This person is not engaged or probably even trying to be |
| 20-30 |
The person tweets several times per day and has worked at creating a nice following (like 1000 followers) |
| 30-40 |
This person is working it and has defined a topic and people are listening the person of influence |
| 40-50 |
This person has figured out how Klout is working and has been able to create strong enough content that some of the top thought leaders are interacting with the content |
| 50-60 |
This person has arrived and the community and the top thought leaders are paying attention |
| 60-70 |
This person has reached critical mass and people are interacting regularly with the content. The person is now known by all the thought leaders and most of the active community for that topic |
| 70-80 |
This person is a thought leader and they are not only referring content, but creating original content and ideas. They are probably controversial, which is good and engaging to the community |
| Above 80 |
This person is a rock star and everyone knows them. They are well known and followed not
only in the topic, but even in broader areas. |
So to increase your Klout, you must do three things: create or curate great content, use the content to influence a defined topic, engage the thought leaders around that topic to expand your reach to other users.
Before I go to the strategies, let me say that yes there are a few ways to game the system and bounce your score for a little while. If you post interesting quotes from important people, they will often be retweeted and your score will go up. If you post jokes or funny things about movie stars, your score will go up. I assume if you post links to porn or tweets with provocative words in the title your score will go up. But these are all very short lived bumps and not really helping you increase your real influence.
If you think about your Klout Score as “Page Rank for People”, you will start thinking of it the right way. Klout pays attention to how many people are pointing at you and how influential those people are based on their Klout. The Klout team is pretty smart and now that they have a lot of money (Kleiner and Greycroft gave them $8.5M earlier this year) I am sure they are going to start flushing out gaming just like Google does.
So let’s look at the strategies I used:
Strategy 1: Focus on Posting Great Content in a Defined Topic
I selected “Startups” as my topic because it is something that I amvery passionate about. As I said in my previous article, I use Zite to read my content and it allowed me to identify great articles about the content. I would scan 50-100 articles a day looking for good content. Of that, I would read 25-30 articles. I would then tweet 15-20 articles that I found most interesting. For each article, I would curate the article with a quick lead-in,
make sure the title of the article was engaging, and then tag the article with #startup, #entrepreneur, #VC, or #Angel, depending on what was appropriate. To find the right #hashtag to use, go to hashtag.org and look for the top tags. You can also check www.whatthetrend.com and www.tweetmeme.com to see what is trending. Finally, analyze your tweet stream, your followers, your re-tweeters and see what tags they are using. Most avid Twitter followers use saved searches are looking for specific #hashtags.
Strategy 2: Engage with the Thought-Leaders of Your Topic
For this, go to the website www.wefollow.com and put in the #hashtags you commonly use. It will give you a list of the top thought-leaders for that
topic. Create a Twitter List with these top thought-leaders and watch the stream. As they post something interesting, retweet them. You might even send
them a direct message and engage them in a conversation. You can also write a blog article and @Message them. The objective is to get their attention and
have them look at your feed. If it is interesting, then they will likely follow you and you will be in there feed where you can influence them every day.
Now as you tweet, they will see your post. If you can interest them, they are very likely to retweet your message to their followers and now your post has amplification. This is especially true, if you retweet them often. Now, Klout sees all of this. Your score increases because an influencer follows and engages with you and your Klout score increases when your messages are amplified. Both of these are good things and a true sign of your
ability to influence.
Strategy 3: Pay Attention to the Time of Day and Activity of the People You Are Trying to Influence
I made a big mistake the first week I was trying to increase my Klout. I am a very early riser and that is when I like to tweet. But when you tweet at 3-4 in the morning, unfortunately no one is listening. It did not take me long to see the error in my ways, so what I started doing was posting the links to my Delicious account and then when the right time came along, I would tweet them using Hootsuite. I think for every topic on Twitter, there is probably a “best” time. I experimented a lot and found that between 7:00 and 8:00 am, then again at 3:00 to 4:00 was the best time. I did some Google searches on the topic and I found other people have found a similar trend. I think the best idea is just to watch your feeds and tweet when they are active.
Strategy 4: Increase the Half-Life of Your Tweet
I think a big way to increase the likelihood of a tweet being retweeted and your ability to increase your own influence is to increase the “half-life” of your
tweet. What I mean is to say that you should focus on getting into streams that are as persistent as possible.
Here is an example. If you tweet with no #hashtags or @mentions, your tweet is likely to stay in someone’s feed for less than one hour. Since many people have columns in their twitter console for specific search on #hashtags or @mentions, if you use them you will likely stay in the feed for several hours of even days. If you get your name on a list the same is true, as is being retweeted by an influencer.
All of these increase the time your tweet is visible and the longer it is visible, the more chance you will be able to increase your influence.
Conclusion
So these are the techniques I tried and these all worked. I am sure there are a lot more ways to increase your influence, so if anyone has any additional suggestions, I would love to hear them. I do think that Klout is very likely to be one of the next “big things”, so I would pay attention to it. I have been paying attention to them since they first started and in the beginning everyone was just giving me reasons why it would not work. Now, I am hearing a lot of thought leaders saying how important influence is and how Klout is leading the pack. I guess Kleiner and Greycroft saw the same thing.
Topics: Venture Capital |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
  
|
