Great video: Keep on Keepin on!

If you haven’t seen this video yet, it is a must. This was a lecture done at Carnegie Mellon by Randy Pausch. The story is explained in the video. Enjoy!

I have been noticing the lack of support an aspiring entrepreneur may get. Since leaving my job, I have been working on several ventures and for some reason people see that as confusion and as me being off track. I see it as diversification. That is the beauty of technology today, I don’t have to invest millions of dollars for my factory and focus on one thing, in fact I spent about $1,400 on my factory (Macbook Pro) and I can juggle 10 different projects if I really want. (thanks Seth Godin)

As of late, Several people I am very close to are beginning to worry a little although they aren’t saying it directly they are doing little things such as:

• Sending me links to job boards with jobs that might be a good fit for me.
• Pointing out my strengths then telling me I would be a great “insert corporate job here”.
• Showing me examples of people who have “made it” in the corporate world

Now please don’t get me wrong, I don’t disagree with corporate work. I just know for a fact that at this point in my life, it is not for me. I have too many creative juices that are still flowing and I had first hand experience of how quickly beauocracy can drain that. So personally I had to get out.

So, If you are pursuing an entrepreneurial endeavor and are lacking support here are a few things to note:

• Hear what the Nay-Sayers are saying but don’t necessarily listen to them.
• Be optimistic (If Twitter can become as powerful as it is, so can your business – no offense Jack Dorsey)
• Surround yourself with people who truly believe in your idea or  product

Realize that right now you may be the one who is viewed “confused” and “off track” and if you are told that enough you may begin to believe it, but keep persisting and you will have the last laugh. Don’t get me wrong this doesn’t mean you will be the next billionaire but you will be able to say you are doing something you are passionate about and that’s what really matters.

All of that being said, you are also going to have to realize you WILL still be the outcast for the time being, you are taking a different route  to success than anyone before you. You are not following someone else’s trail, you are creating a path. Yes that path may be the one with the thorn bushes and 3 headed monsters but it is a hell of alot shorter and a hell of alot more fun.

Keep Dreaming: Keep Persisting: You Will Achieve

I have been working on a few ventures as of late and one of the first things I do when I have an idea is run it off as many people of possible to get some critique. (Contrary to popular belief, you should NOT keep your ideas a secret because you are afraid someone is going to steal your idea.) One of the biggest commonalities I have noticed in people is the fear of failure.

I am not saying that you should ignore the potential negatives and the idea that a high percent of businesses fail, but if you dwell on this and you are probably not an entrepreneur and will most likely give up because of this fear of failure.

Failure is not a negative thing. Failure means you’ve tried. Think about the countless number of people who have had an idea but didn’t take action. No their business didn’t fail but this is simply because they didn’t try.

• Henry Ford had several failed businesses and went broke 5 times before starting Ford Motor Company – He is now known as one of the most innovative minds in history.
• Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to start Traf-O Data – which failed miserably – he went on to co-find Microsoft.
• Thomas Edison failed 1000 times before successfully inventing the light bulb.

The list goes on… Here are 50 more entrepreneurs who failed at first thanks to our homies at onlinecollege.org

Many of histories greatest success stories began in several instances of failure. If the fear of failure is the reason that you don’t go through with an idea – I hate be blunt but you are not an entrepreneur.

Once you have failed, learn from your mistakes, make corrections where corrections need to be made, and try again. Remember that you TRIED which is more than most people can say. I will take failing over not trying any day.

Here is a “Famous Failures” video from bluefishtv.com:

Hey guys,

I have been doing some serious thinking about the pantsoff idea. The costs of traveling to get these across have become a little bit hefty.Therefore I have decided to change the interviews to a Skype format, making it more cost permitting and more feasible to fit into many of these very busy entrepreneur’s schedules.

The moral to this story is:

The idea of change in a business plan. The ability to change in business is more important than ever in today’s market. In Building a business or organization it is important not be too set in your ways and not be too structured. Change is inevitable and it is  your ability to react and respond to it that matters. I realize in my case it is not a big bank breaking decision, but I also realize that I still have this message that I want to portray  and in order to do so I am going to have to hold off on the travels and focus on delivering great battle stories to inspire you guys.

Long Story Short:

My plan is still to inspire and motivate the next generation of entrepreneurs by bringing you the battle stories of successful entrepreneurs who have taken their “Pants Off”. I am just taking a different route. I am actively taking advice so please leave me message if you have some.

Here is an Unrelated inspiration tidbit from Steve Jobs:

G

Hey guys,

A few days ago I had an interview with a young and very successful entrepreneur out of Durham, NC.

Ryan Allis is 25 and has many successful businesses under his belt. His current company, I-Contact, is doing over 38 million in sales per year. I sat down with him for about a 15 minute interview and got some great advice which I will post very soon. ( I am not very good at editing video)

In the meantime here is Ryan on “The Big Idea.” This will give you a little background….

Thanks guys,
George

This was my first time at SXSW and I would have to say I have been missing out. It wasn’t the run-ins with Mark Cuban, Guy Kawasaki, Chris Sacca and many other big names that made this trip as exciting as it was. It was running into the individuals who bootstrapped their ways to success or who  that was truly inspiring.

It was sitting in the SOBE tent enjoying an extremely diluted adult beverage when a random conversation was sparked up with Alan Schaaf, a software developer from my home State of Ohio. As proceed to converse and I came to realize he was the founder and developer of Imgur. Imgur is a photo-sharing website that Alan started out of his dorm room that is currently getting 600 million photo views a MONTH! It has been in existence for less than a year.

It was standing in the AOL tent enjoying a free bucket of popcorn meeting Luis Mendoza, the free guy. Luis started a Tumblr and Twitter account for him and his friends to inform each other about all of the free food and drinks throughout SXSW. By the second day of the interactive event he had over 2000 followers and 10000 page views and ended up working nearly full time in-order to keep up with his followers. Now realizing the beauty of using a free interface to tell people about free stuff is quite the business model, some serious brainstorming was triggered.

It was hanging out in the Beacon Room and meeting the founders of InTheRooms.Com and Sweet Relief Fund that really made this trip what it was.

I  couldn’t help but notice the commonalities between the majority of the entrepreneurs that I met. They all had to be persistent when things got a little tough. The idea stages and the beginning stages are always exciting and fun. The key is to persist through the stages when things aren’t so fun anymore. This is much easier said than done. So the key to the persistence is to be passionate about what you are doing. The “In The Rooms” guys are great examples of this, both of them had issues with addiction in the past and needed people to communicate with when things got tough. Now here they are running the largest online support group for recovering addicts. Sure things got difficult when they were building this network but they persisted through it because they were passionate about their subject.

If you can Dream it and you can persist, you can achieve it.. Persistence is much easier when passion is involved.

Hey guys,

We have been getting some great footage over the last few days of SXSW – Meeting great people, hearing great stories, and having some beautiful fun. If you have never been to this conference, it is purely bucket-listable ( is that a word?)

If you are checking us out and you met us at SXSW please bear with us. In the mean time here are a list to the free parties around SXSW this week!

3/12 Friday

The PureVolume House
Friday 3/12-Saturday 3/20 @ 504 Trinity
Free tacos and endless booze
RSVP: http://www.purevolume.com/thehouse

PepsiCo @ SXSW
10am-6pm @ Austin Convention Center

3/13 Saturday

Mozilla SXSW Happy Hour

6-8pm @ Cedar Door (201 Brazos Street)

First 250 get in

RSVP on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=310283178032

Mobile Social SXSW

2-11pm @ Mellow Johnny’s

Free BBQ & Beer

RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=62070928&id=8304613#!/event.php?eid=125560744351

Gawker Media & io9’s Time Bender
8pm @ PureVolume House
Free drinks
RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=62070928&id=8304613#!/event.php?eid=341616735878

3/14 Sunday

Mashable’s MashBash SXSWi 2010
10pm @ Buffalo Billiards
enjoy a night of music, a 3 hour open bar and tons of networking including Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, and Adam Hirsch along with the Cliqset and Sony Electronics teams.
RSVP: http://sxswi.eventbrite.com/#m_1_1400

Adobe SXSW Sunday Brunch at Adobe Day Stage / Convention Center
10am – 11am
RSVP: http://adobesxswbrunch.eventbrite.com/

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=62070928&id=8304613#!/event.php?eid=313127508023

Hotel San Jose 10 Year Anniversary
730pm @ Hotel San Jose
Outdoor screening of documentary of history of the San Jose
Food and drink specials

Facebook Developer Garage Austin – SXSW Edition
2-530pm @ The Phoenix
RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=62070928&id=8304613#!/event.php?eid=331218348435

3/15 Monday

Austin JavaScript SXSWi Happy Hour
4-9pm @ Kung Fu Saloon
Another free party paid for by another software company, Appcelerator. Play a round of Street Fighter II or skeeball while downing free imported beer.  Also, “Man Bites Dog” build-your-own-gourmet-hot-dog buffet and free t-shirts. Just walk in, no RSVP required.

Do512/Demand Media/CLEAR Party
6pm 2 The Phoenix
Featuring Mike Relm & 42 Vodka
RSVP: http://do512.com/c/sx2010/event/2010/03/15/do512-demand-media-clear-interactive-party-feat-mike-relm

Thrillist Austin Launch Party
8pm-Midnight @ Stubbs (Downstairs)
ice cold shots of the Dutch Kruiden liqueur HARLEM, giveaways from Old Spice,
a DJ/VJ set by Eclectic Method, and live performances from RCRDLBL’s White Denim and Kid Sister.
RSVP: http://www.thrillist.com/sxsw

Sustainable Media Happy Hour
6pm @ The Gingerman
Beer and Goodies while they last
RSVP: http://www.triplepundit.com/sxsw/

Local Music is Sexy
8pm-4am @ PureVolume House
RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=62070928&id=8304613#!/event.php?eid=381286550774

3/16 Tuesday

Art Disaster No. 10

8pm-2am @ Beauty Bar (617 E 7th, 78701)

Inside: 8:30p Lachi, 9:30p Red Wanting Blue, 10:30p Leopold and His Fiction, 11:30p The White White Lights, 12:30a Shunda K, 1:10a DJ Orion

Outside: 9p CAW! CAW!, 10p Bright Light Social Hour, 11p Sunset, 12a The Shondes, 1a Pomegranates

RSVP: http://do512.com/event/2010/03/16/art-disaster-no-10

Fader Fort
1pm-8pm @ 1101 East 5th Street
RSVP: http://apps.thefader.com/pages/create_rsvp/levi-s-fader-fort-2010

Thanks Whitney Myler!

We are headed to Austin tomorrow to hit South by Southwest. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the event it is a 10 day interactive conference/festival that offers “unique convergence of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies.” You can learn more by clicking the logo below:

We are going to be actively filming and documenting our experience (our Kodak ZI8 is in the mail) so you guys can get a little taste of what it is like. We also plan on doing some interviews with some interesting entrepreneurs with great stories while on this leg of the journey.

If you are in Austin during this time period and would like to reach out and have some great conversation shoot us an email or tweet us!

@PantsOffEntrepr

PantsOffEntrepreneurs@gmail.com

Hey guys,

We had our first official meeting today with Co-Founder of Reverb Nation, Jed Carlson. For those of you who are not familiar with the company, they are the leading online music marketing platform for Bands and Musicians with almost 600,000 clients registered, to date. To find out more check out  http://www.reverbnation.com/main/about.

Meeting with Jed:

Jed and I sat down for lunch at Parker and Otis in Durham, NC. If you haven’t been there, you must go, great eats! Anyways, as I conversed more and more with Jed it was easy to see the reason that Reverb Nation has been and remains to be so successful and that reason is the sheer passion that he, and the rest of their leadership, have.

They have an Artist First Philosophy which entails “If it doesn’t first help the Artist, we won’t do it.”We must dedicate our resources to the customers needs.” He went on to say that they take the responsibility of acting on behalf of all independent Artists as a real responsibility. “If we don’t see their success as our responsibility, we will fail as a company and we will violate our reasons for existing.”

The conversation then turned to what type of things should one should think about when brainstorming ideas and thinking starting a tech –based business. Jed suggested that people shouldn’t ignore “old line” businesses, in any form, and putting a tech shell on it. He also stressed the fact that a very simple business model in today’s blog-heavy world is just “becoming important.” By making a name for yourself and being easily recognizable “you can do just about anything!” This brings us back to the beauty of today’s social media, ANYONE can become important! So why not start today?

As for Reverb Nation’s outlook, 2010 is going to be a huge year. They intend to focus on bringing their bands a plethora of amazing opportunities for them to be successful. Jed went on to say, with an excited smile, “As for 2011, there are tons of new exciting things in the making, but we will keep all of that under wraps for now”

I want to end this by thanking Jed for spending the time with me, and with a quote about customer service that really stuck out to me in our conversation. No matter what business you are in, this should be something you live by.

“ Whatever it is you do, no matter what business you may be in, you HAVE to be a ridiculously over the top, perhaps even embarrassingly so, advocate of your customer.” – Jed Carlson

A little about Jed:

Jed has been an entrepreneur at heart his whole life, being influenced by his father, who was a great business man himself. He always knew he wanted to work for himself and when we asked him when he took his “pants off”, he told us “I took my pants off at birth.”

Upon graduating College he bought a failing commercial printing business with hopes to turn it around. He borrowed a lot of money. He explained the debt-financing situation as “running from a train with fear of getting caught.” After selling this printing business, Jed went back to school at Duke University to get his MBA (he got his undergrad in economics from Bowdoin College), though knowing he was never going to settle for the 9-5. Jed got the most out of the Duke MBA program because he was able to apply most of the things he learned there to his past experiences. While working toward his MBA, Jed concocted the vision for ReverbNation, although he attributes its ultimate vision to collaborating with his co-founders.

@pantsoffEntrepr