It is a bit odd that I write this now, when my prayer time has been a bit inconsistent. Perhaps the silver lining is that at this moment, I can better explain how much life just is much better when I pray consistently.
At my best, I pray in the morning. (praying early in the morning is just refreshingly different) I grab my Bible and I proceed to my designated sacred space. I set the phone timer for 30 minutes. I usually listen to a praise song first and then read the Gospel reading for the day. Then I close my eyes and try to silence myself.
God is in the stillness, after all.
I then offer up those 30 minutes to my God. In silence. Listening. Conversing.
Sometimes, God reveals amazing things to me – and the feeling is wonderful.
Sometimes, prayer is dry. I have since learned that God uses the desert experience to reveal even more things to me.
I know sometimes we ask ourselves, why doesn’t God talk to me? Perhaps we only need to quiet down and listen a bit. When I started doing this consistently, I realized God has been talking to me all the time. I started seeing His Hand in my life more. He is in the everyday. But without prayer, I would never have been able to see and realize this.
30 minutes, everyday. Cadence.
Don’t we talk everyday to the ones closest to our hearts? A day wouldn’t be the same for me if I don’t get the chance to talk to my wife and kids. Shouldn’t it be the same – much more – with the One who gave us everything we have? The One whom we should love above all other things?
I have always said I believed in God. I have always said I loved Him. So how come I barely talk to Him? How come I never built a relationship with Him? Prayer is a gift which allows me to do that.
I can now FEEL IT in my life when I don’t talk to God consistently. I end up trying to control everything (the entrepreneur’s curse). And of course when things don’t fall my way (which is bound to happen very often), I feel frustrated and angry. There is no peace. I worry about things I shouldn’t be worried about. I get overly consumed with stuff I shouldn’t: like money, or winning, or reputation. These are traps.
There are much better things in life.
I said earlier that prayer makes life better. Does it make it make life easier? No. The usual problems life will throw at me will still be there. But prayer allows me to handle things so much better. It’s like having God in my corner in a boxing match. I can get pummeled – but I know God is there to support, guide, encourage, and even heal me.
But prayer is much more than balm. It can lead to breakthrough.
who’s in your corner?
It is only through consistent prayer that we can know what His wills in our lives (discernment). There is no greater source for career, love, or life advice better than prayer. Through prayer, I can say that God has truly directed me into a career I am excited with, a family I adore, and a life I cherish and love every minute of.
If you have God in your corner, He will tell you what you need to do. There is no problem too big (or small) for Him to help you with.
3 months ago I was talking to whole lot of doctors.
I was talking to our pediatrician for the needs of my older kids, our gynecologist for my wife’s pregnancy, my surgeon for my impending operation, more doctors to get the clearances needed for me to push through with the operation, and even visited a few confined loved ones and friends.
I was in and out of hospitals and hospital clinics. A good chunk of this time I spend waiting.
What did I do to pass the time?
I couldn’t help but be an entrepreneur.
First, I noticed that for all the clinics of the new doctors I saw, the secretary asked me to manually fill up a patient’s form. Curious, I asked the secretaries if I would need to fill up another form if I went to the doctor’s other clinics in other hospitals. All of them said yes, I’d need to fill up another one.
Meanwhile, for my existing doctors, they’d pull out my file from a huge cabinet.
HMMMMMM…
Instead of sitting down to wait, I decided to get up and peer in other clinics to see if they used desktops for filing records. Very very few of them had desktops. One secretary I saw was manually encoding the recently-filled form of a patient into the desktop.
Interestingly though, I saw a number of tablets used by doctors walking in the lobby. Thinking back, I remembered that a number of doctors who visited during hospital confinement used iPads to document their visits.
HMMMMMM…
The startup thesis forming in my head was: would doctors use tablet-based, mobile-powered clinic application to manage their clinics better?
So I asked my wife (who’s a doctor) for her opinion. I asked my own doctors (I thoroughly quizzed the poor cardiologist who cleared my operation) if they’d buy an app like that. I asked more doctors.
After getting some validation, I told 2 entrepreneurial friends whom I knew would be interested in this sort of idea to brainstorm with me. Excitedly, we eventually developed the idea even further after a couple of meetings over noodles and cake. We’re now set on testing our assumptions more rigorously through a minimum viable product.
Startup ideas are formed by thinking of problems to solve. More specifically, how to skin the cat BETTER than the status quo.
The best way to find opportunities? Observe. Never be shy in talking people. Never assume. Reach out and ask (you’d be surprised – most people LOVED to be asked). This is great way you can uncover some long-standing problems.
Be curious. And then, decide to be even more curious.
Sorry for the late announcement people, but the second Juan Great Meet with Howard Go will not be pushing through as scheduled next Wednesday.
I’ve a very good reason: this morning I met with a big-name sponsor who is interested in holding the event – this means we can hold the event for free, so more people can attend! And since the venue would be significantly bigger, I thought of inviting a panel of entrepreneurs we can learn from who could speak at the event. We are planning to hold this early August. Exciting!
I had asked the sponsor if we could continue with Wednesday’s original event with Howard and then just invite other speakers for the August event, but they were very intrigued with Howard’s background and insisted on having him in the panel.
So of course, if we continued with Wednesday, I’d get absolutely lynched for charging P500 and then having Howard speak again in a few weeks – for free!
So for those who wired me their cash – thank you very much!
Just kidding, I’ll wire them back to ya. All of you emailed me anyway, so I’d get back to you individually on how you can get the cash back. Apologies for the hassle and thank you for the patience.
Stay tuned for more announcements and details regarding our bigger event this coming August! Exciting! Lots to learn!
Uhm, nope, the entrepreneur doesn’t do the punching in this piece…
Seasoned entrepreneurs know that they will eventually get punched in the mouth.
A lot.
This is the litmus test for new entrepreneurs, and remains one key reason why the majority of people don’t take the plunge.
When you are starting up, you have all sorts of enthusiasm. Everyone is excited. The energy is palpable. You think you’ve got a great plan in place. YEAH! I’M GOING TO MAKE IT BIG, WORLD!
Then you get punched in the mouth.
You lay sprawled on the floor. There is blood all over. Your plan has gone up in smoke.
How will you react?
The following are punches in the mouth that I’ve personally gone through, or have seen friends gone through:
You discover that the super-duper, world-changing, paradigm-shifting, world-beating, the-word-innovation-fails-in-describing idea that you had is actually already being done. And they are doing it so much better than you imagined.
Your parents don’t support your leap
Co-founders leaving
There’s just no money in the bank anymore, and your employees are asking for their salaries
Your biggest client sends you casual fax message that they are letting you go
The prized employee who singlehandedly built your system leaves for Singapore
You realize the product you spent all this time building has no market
Facebook or google decides to create a feature which happens to be your main selling point
No one believes in your idea (or in essence, in you) enough to fund it
These are the type of things I never ever felt in corporate, so when I started getting punched like this, sometimes one after another, it was jarring.
We keep hearing things like “will” and “perseverance” associated with entrepreneurs.
This is why.
No matter how much it is glamorized (especially nowadays), being an entrepreneur is DIFFICULT.
We get punched like that for the first time, we fall. And more than the shock, more than the pain, the overwhelming thing which creeps in is doubt. Sitting down reeling and dazed, the thought that will circle back time after time is: can I really do this?
How you recover, how you ignore the pain, how you CHOOSE to repeatedly get up, how you go on with hardly any motivation, will greatly determine how far you will go in being an entrepreneur. It is a grind.
Last week, a friend of mine was about to take the leap. She had a consulting concept in mind and had a client ready. Being someone with integrity, she decided to ask her boss if there was anything at all that would be construed as unethical if she put up the practice she had in mind. She didn’t think it was going to be a problem, but she just wanted to be sure. She also trusted her boss and valued his opinion.
The boss shot the idea down. It WAS unethical, he said.
Huh?!
Tell me, is there something unethical when a marketing manager from an FMCG firm wishes to put up a consulting firm whose first potential client was a small firm engaged in construction?
I know a handful of FMCG marketing people who have put up their own consulting firms. None were sued. In fact, almost all these new firms were contracted by the very firms their founders resigned from.
So what gives ?!
Perhaps the boss thought:
“Uh-oh. If she leaves, I’m going to have to do more work, I’ve got to find a replacement, and it also hurts my reputation. Easy call here.”
Next story.
Another friend, this time from a large IT firm, had been in his firm for good number of years already. One very common occurrence was having lunch out with a set of friends in the office. He admitted that they would always have a good time – mostly bashing his current employers and trying to out-do one another with boss horror stories.
During one lunch session, he told his friends about a recent decision he’d made: he was going to take a pay cut to join a startup.
To my friend’s utter surprise, there wasn’t universal support!
“Of course, mostly everyone congratulated me at first, but you can see from their expressions and body language that some thought differently. Then later it came out:”
Iiwan mo na kami dito!” (So, now you are leaving us behind)
My friend was puzzled because he thought he’d get all-out support, after all, they were his friends.
Perhaps not. Perhaps the basis of their friendship had been the bonds they formed hating on their current jobs, so once that was gone…
Or perhaps it’s simply people being crabs.
I guess that’s one more advantage of doing bold leaps – you get to see who your real friends are. Real friends believe in you, and WILL support any endeavor of yours that involves pursuing your heart’s desires.
Find them and distance yourself from the selfish soul-suckers above.
In my first job, I was a high school english teacher. I loved what I did, but I earned minimum wage. That was my first year out of college, so naturally, I went out a lot with my friends – who were all mostly working in corporations. Every month-end, I had around P20 in my account.
A year later, I entered the corporate world. They more than doubled my salary, just like that! (even if I actually I thought I did a bit more work in school – where you are ruled by the bell and lesson plan submissions)
I bought a lot of things with my newfound extra cash, went out 1-2x a week with my friends, and gave nice Christmas gifts to my friends. This was also the year when Starbucks just opened in Manila. And oh boy, did I love my coffee.
My friends, this is what is so seductive about salaries. What it buys for us is a lifestyle. A lifestyle we weren’t used to when we were in school. All of a sudden, our purchasing power increases exponentially, and with that, our tastes somehow develop exponentially as well.
Baon and cheap cafeteria food for lunch will suddenly not be good enough. After some annual salary increases, Jollibee and “food courts” will not be good enough. Soon, we find ourselves spending huge sums of money on restaurants.
Eventually, eating out and nice Christmas gifts for friends become carsand condos. Worse, we buy them before we earn them – mostly through “great plans” our employers provide us, or these loans the banks ram down our throats (with all their ads selling the lifestyle, if you notice).
It isn’t any secret – all these great perks, your annually-augmented salary, and other benefits are designed precisely to keep you.
In just 2 years, you will be entitled to become a Manager, and then you will receive all these other perks and more importantly, a different pay grade! Then, you just wait a bit more, and then it’s VP time!
Don’t you notice that a better, flashier lifestyle is immediately dangled before us even if we just entered a new one? Here is your career. Here is what you’ll be receiving at every step.
In our pursuit of a better lifestyle though, aren’t we sacrificing a better life?
What about doing what we love? What about following our dreams? What about getting paid for something you’d do for free?
Oh, you can worry about that later in life. Much later. Look, here’s an 8% salary increase! Get yourself that new Retina Macbook!
Life or lifestyle? Frustratingly, it seems that to start pursuing one means denying yourself of the other. After awhile though, the differences surface. The more you choose lifestyle, the further your dreams can become. Witness the great number of corporate lifers who experience periodic existential angst.
But the longer your choose to pursue your dream? The likelier you end up with the lifestyle you thought you sacrificed anyway.
I think I’ve written more than a few posts on founding teams already. I can’t help it, because it’s just SO FREAKING important. This very first step will make or break your startup.
A huge part of my work now is assembling founding teams. Of course, I’ve had successes and failures. As usual, the failures have taught me much more than the successes. From what I’ve learned, here are more detailed principles I now live by when it comes to founder selection.
Ignore at your peril.
1) DNA=KRA
Founder DNA should match Company KRA’S.
Once you identify the 2-3 main strategic areas your company will be involved in, find founders who can fulfill EACH area. Are you starting up a mobile gaming firm? Then you need someone who designs great games, someone who makes great games, and someone who can sell them. If you are all three, then you can actually put one up on your own. There’s a very good chance that you are not though, so fill the gaps with co-founder or two. (I highly suggest keeping it to 3)
“Why can’t we just hire someone for the gap?”
The answer can be very practical. Because that someone who is hired can leave. If the person leaves, and is occupying a position of strategic importance (say, you hired a person who will develop your games), then your whole company gets stalled. If the founders are selected strategically, then one partner can always fill the gap of whoever employee leaves.
This is one secret why STORM works. The whole soul behind STORM is HR and IT. So over the years we’ve lost IT team leaders to Singapore, or lost internal HR Consultants. Whoever leaves, either Pao (founder, IT guy) or I (founder, HR guy) can take up the slack, so no time is wasted.
This way, you ensure that the DNA of your startup will always be aligned to its core objectives.
2) NEVER Compromise on a Founder
This is corollary to the first one. Sometimes, we get too excited with working with our friends or we get too excited about starting that we end up partnering with the wrong person.
We can delude ourselves into thinking thoughts like:
Hmmmmm…this guy isn’t as impressive as I had hoped, but he’s close enough
or
This person is just okay, but I do think I set my standards too high in the first place anyway. He should be able to do the job.
No, he won’t.
NEVER compromise. Don’t talk yourself in doing so. Keep on digging. Believe me, you’d much much rather get delayed than selecting the wrong person.
QUICK TIP: 3 things to seriously ask yourself: a) CAN he do the job? (capability) b) WILL he do the job (motivation) c) DOES HE HAVE TIME to do the job? (bandwidth)
That guy you selected COULD’VE BEEN this guy instead
3) You can only gauge talent in your own DNA sphere
Scenario: you want to fill a founder post with someone with a programmer background. “I want a great programmer,” you say to yourself. Then some person comes in and shows you some stuff he’s made. It works. You’re impressed. It’s easy to mutter to yourself, “This guy’s great!”
DON’T GIVE HIM THE KEYS TO THE CITY JUST YET.
I liken the above to this scenario: let’s say you’ve never watched football in your life. You could watch some schlub in the local soccer field score some goals (maybe one with a bicycle kick) and say to yourself, “Wow, that guy is an amazing player.” And then, a few days after you get to watch Lionel Messi play. NOW you know what “great” is.
Tip: in situations like this, ASK someone who is knowledgable about an area who can discern “great” from “mediocre.”
4) You have to have someone fulltime
I guess it IS possible for a startup to begin standing on its own two feet with all of its founders doing it part-time. This is just impossibly difficult to do, I’ve found. Without someone in your founding team who can put on the hours your startup sorely needs, it’s very difficult to pull off. The most valuable thing your startup needs is not funding, or a killer strategy – the most valuable thing it needs is great people spending time on it.
Even if it’s just one founder fulltime. You got to have someone who commits, right from the start. If not, development will be slow as hell, and somewhere down the line, your momentum and/or motivation just wanes.
This happens no matter how utterly magnificent your part-time founders are.
Don’t make equity room for these two
5) Get rid of pure talking heads
Never give substantial shares (or any shares for that matter) to people who will only assume what I call the “talking head” role. Someone who says he’s in it for merely “the strategy part.”
What characterizes the “talking head” is his lack of arms and legs – he won’t do anything. He just presumes he’s worth the equity because of the sheer “knowledge and wisdom” he will impart.
Resist his wily charms. You need DOERS who will contribute. Get DOERS who can multi-task and think as well.
You CAN, however, get these guys as mentors. It’s almost 100% they’ll agree.
Do these right, and it’s literally half the battle.
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Here’s quick way to enter the startup lifestyle: join one!
Below are startup career opportunities in the JUAN GREAT LEAP (JGL) startup network. If you are interested in any of these, please shoot me an email at pcauton@yahoo.com, along with a resume or linkedin link.
All the jobs are STARTUP jobs, so expect the following from all of them: a) the job description is fluid: the job WILL change as the startup changes b) you will have a lot of freedom to create and leave your mark c) there is always a possibility for earning shares, d) things are pretty exciting, e) being part of the JGL Startup Network opens up all sorts of possibilities as far as career and learning are concerned. f) the job title is merely a placeholder – you can call yourself what you want (like, Ambassador of Buzz, Master Chief, Super VP, etc…), I just used the term “head” as a catch-all.
From its “let’s make HR applications” days, STORM is now undergoing the transition to a fully-focused Flexible Benefits provider. Through flexible benefits, STORM helps companies solve this problem: How can I maximize satisfaction on a limited budget?
As business development head, the successful applicant will be helping me and Pao create strategies in creating business for the company not only locally, but also internationally. STORM now has the technology and Flexben support team capable of servicing an international clientele. More importantly, the successful applicant will be IMPLEMENTING these strategies.
STORM has been on an upward trajectory ever since its inception. We are very very excited about its prospects and we need a great, innovative business development person to put us over the top.
B) General Manager, STRATA (In Incubation)
Over the years, our team at STORM has created a wide array of different technology-based HR solutions APART from our central FLEXBEN solution. A number of these have been making serious money. The thing is, one of the clearest things we have to do strategically in STORM is to focus, and we have decided recently to focus on FLEXIBLE BENEFITS alone.
So what about the other solutions? (some of which make money and have clients) Instead of just killing the other products, the very clear direction is to spin them off by creating ANOTHER HR firm.
We need someone here with enough HR knowledge (and interest) not merely to hold deep discussions with HR business leaders, but more importantly to convince them of ideas. We also need someone who would be interested in technology and obviously, has to be a bit of an entrepreneur. In the end, this person will hold tremendous influence over how Strata will develop and look like. We need someone who can own the startup and make it grow.
The interesting thing about this startup? It ALREADY will have a client list and a revenue stream.
Substantialequity, in the case of this position, will be available (with vesting).
Local executive search has basically been the same over the course of the last 20 or so years. It’s high time to disrupt it. This is the battlecry for Searchlight, and this year is proving to be a tipping point.
The business isn’t exactly rocket science – it’s finding, convincing, and placing great people in great career opportunities. (which is also why there is a challenge to standout as a firm) So those who AREN’T in search now, or even fresh graduates, are very welcome to apply.
We need a young consultant who can learn the ropes fast, and help put our strategies into place. We need someone who’s great in social media, is a workaholic, can communicate and sell, represent the company well, and loves people.
D) General Manager, Mobile Payments Firm (In Incubation)
One of the startups we are currently developing is a new take on mobile payments. It has been in incubation over the last few months, and will probably launch in the 4th quarter. We have a topnotch founding team for this, but we would be needing a General Manager. I really can’t talk about this one in detail, but I can do so in person if you signify interest in learning more. For this post, substantial vested equity will be available.
Juan Great Leap is slowly transforming into many things: an online advocacy, startup lab, a startup community, even a bit of a startup school. Currently the only one “employed” fulltime by Juan Great Leap is me. I need a junior contributor who can help me develop all facets of the concept.
I need someone who is reliable, has a lot of energy, a good writer, has supreme communication skills, is organized, entrepreneurial, and someone who is very very interested in startups. With that skill set, you probably command a high salary – and I am telling you now, this firm probably won’t be able to match what a corporation can give you. (largely because the labs are a long-term play) But I am also telling you now: if you are interested in startups, there is no other job opening that will give you as much learning as this one.
Being exposed to the deal flow (seeing and being involved in the formation of new startup concepts) alone is priceless.
I recently vacated the CEO role of STORM to concentrate on Juan Great Leap. (I am still VERY involved in strategy and biz dev’t, though) Pao has assumed accountability for all day to day operations as its newly-minted CEO. So now we need a new head of technology. We need someone who also develops, but can do three crucial things: a) manage the current STORM tech team b) be involved in TRUE product development (using customer info to drive iterations), and c) represent the firm well in client meetings. Equity can be in play. We currently develop using PHP (but can be convinced to switch platforms).
Tired of the corporate grind? Send me an email ASAP!
For those asking, yes, to eliminate friction, you can pay the P500 fee at the event itself. Just send me an email at pcauton@yahoo.com to confirm your slot.
Like in the first event, I’m relying much on the trust factor here. Knowing that there are limited seats, please don’t flake, once you’ve made a reservation.
It will be a great talk. If you are a current web developer, I really recommend attending the event. Howard has so many useful insights on creating both value and revenue in the appstore environment. Below is a recent snapshot. If you are startup enthusiast, you will learn a lot about the startup process – Howard will talk about creating and closing different business until finally hitting it big with Mochibits.
Seeya!
Howard’s Word Stack app recent placing on the android appstore
JUAN GREAT LEAP 