The Case for Organic Growth: Lose the Money Box

I’ve had four people ask my advice on various business ventures this week. Four friends mind you, not people that would qualify as clients. I get asked often about aspects of starting or running a business, and for the most part I have no qualms giving advice for free. I’ve been hustling in some fashion for 15 years, and self-sufficient (living entirely off my businesses) for seven years. The precise value of my experience is not readily available on Salary.com, but fair to say it’s worth something.

So how do I decide who gets free advice and who has to ask nicely, and who has to actually pay? My simple test usually involves a mental history query, has this person done me wrong in the past? No, ok, sure whatever you want to know I’ll tell you. I’m not vindictive to those that have in some fashion wronged me in the past, I’m happy to give them advice too, for some money of course, as they would fall into the client category rather than that of friend. Anyone else asking, such as a stranger, I’ll usually give them my thoughts free, really I don’t care about money anymore than I have to for my friends at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage or The Fresh Market require.

Enough about me, let’s get to the crux of the issue that keeps gracing my ears as of late, how do you build and maintain a business with longevity in mind. In other words, how does one build something that is less one-off and more of a daily revenue generator? My answer to all four people was almost verbatim the same, and it will be repeated here for those of you watching at home. Grow organically.

With the advent of green washing, and an all around pension of those in the media to overuse terms like organic to the point of rendering them near meaningless, it is necessary to explain the word in relation to growing a new business.

Organic as defined by the online iteration of Merriam-Webster: of, relating to, or derived from living organisms <organic evolution>.

Just as evolution is an oft-taboo topic among Christians, growing organically is just as much something aspiring entrepreneurs do not want to talk about. What do you mean we have to wait to make money? What does it mean to give away my product, I thought I was trying to make money, not lose it? If you look close enough at their faces you can see the blood drain from their cheeks, as the skin settles back from the form of smiles to faces of inquisition.

Growing a business organically is so easy to compare to virtually any other organizational feat in life, think sports teams or ascending through higher education, I won’t bother you with such. Instead, just imagine a new business as something small and vulnerable, something that needs nourishing and protecting. Build it slow, let it fall before it walks, let the masses tell you it isn’t going to work, let people make fun of you for quitting your job to do it, let all of the awkwardness take place. Don’t try too hard to make it something it isn’t, just fail and adjust accordingly.

When you allow for the business to be small, imperfect, and open to change, you are in effect allowing it to be affordable to run, flexible to pivot into new directions, and above all else authentically yours. People seek realness from a business as much as they seek a quality product or service; look no further than your own curiosities. How many times have you visited a restaurant or clothing store and asked whom the owner was, and what their story was? Or online, how many times have you visited a website and rushed to click the About Us tab before all else? By operating on an organic level, of slow natural growth through effort and sweat over splash and big money, you will have a great story to share with all those inquiring minds, not to mention a sustainable business.

This blog post was partly inspired by the Jamie XX remix of Eliza Doolittle’s song Money Box. Somehow her lyrics, and the melody itself, provide an aura of less is more that perfectly speaks to the ideology of doing more with less. So often businesses are taught to think in terms of spend, spend, spend, when the best businesses can do with less, less, less and make more, more, more.

Eliza Doolittle - Money Box (Jamie xx Remix) by Tsiabaannah

Instead of going out to dinner tonight
We can grow vegetables
Underneath the skylight

Clicking these downloads everyday has its price
We can lounge on our couch
And listen to our 45s

So take your Dollar
Your Yen
Those Euros I can't spend
I won't get down with no pounds
Never need to leave this house

Don't need a moneybox
Cos I got lots and lots
Of what I need right here
Right here with you my dear
Don't need a cash machine
To make our days happy
So do me a favour
Don't jingle your change Sir

Instead of going to the movies tonight
There's no shame in us playing
Dust of that Sega Mega Drive

Hand me your trousers
You got holes in your knees
It's no fuss patch them up
Forget about that shopping spree

So take your Dollar
Your Francs
Your Rupees no thanks
I won't get down with no pounds
Never need to leave this house

Don't need a moneybox
Cos I got lots and lots
Of what I need right here
Right here with you my dear
Don't need a cash machine
To make our days happy
So do me a favour
Don't jingle your change Sir

Lock up your moneybox
It's not much of a loss
All that gold just goes to waste
Cos you're worth more anyway

No need to travel round London tonight
We can play Monopoly
Buy Mayfair in our own time

So take your Dollar
Your Buck
I couldn't give a penny
That's enough leave it out
Never need to leave this house

Don't need a moneybox
Cos I got lots and lots
Of what I need right here
Right here with you
I know I know I don't need a cash machine
To make our days happy
So do me a favour
Don't jingle your change Sir

Don't need a moneybox
Cos I got lots and lots
Of what I need right here
Right here with you
I know I know I don't need a cash machine
To make our days happy
So do me a favour
Don't jingle your change Sir
So do me a favour
Don't jingle your change Sir

Loobee loobee loobee loo

First Things Last

A struggle for many of us comes with the comparison of what we have to what others might have. In the sermon below Amos Disasa helps illustrate the point that comparison, and our conventional views of equality are not important when it comes to gaining entry into Heaven. This moved me when I heard it last week, and I hope it is helpful to you as well.

First Things Last by Downtown Church

Two Clouds

The battery in my smoke alarm must be running low, as it beeps every few hours in all it’s pitchy irritation. My eldest dog Rufus doesn’t like high-pitched sounds, other dislikes include thunder, strangers, and half full bowls of food. If a sound is loud and the pitch is high enough he’s been known to quickly hop on a lap, or curl up close to the nearest set of feet he can find until the startling sound storm passes.

Why this morning one of my many smoke alarms wanted to put the house on notice about an apparent lack of battery life at 5 am is a mystery to me, but Rufus wasn’t having any of it. With each pitchy chirp of the alarm his paws would scratch my bedroom door a little faster, my pets scratch instead of knock due to height restrictions. I tossed over in bed, hoping the sound and the canine notifications would go away, of course neither did. After twenty minutes or so listening to the cascading noises of door scratching and insanely loud beeping I got up and took care of it.

Now my home has one less smoke alarm, and Rufus, still shaken by the episode, has resorted to sleeping on my usually off-limits bamboo bathmat, as if to punish my tardiness in removing the battery from the device. Rufus might hold on to this grudge for a few days, or until I get some fresh bully sticks for him to chew on, whichever arrives first.

Our relationships, human ones that is, are a lot like the smoke alarm fiasco described above. We react in a state of panic when we must defy our presented character, in the case of the Pekingese regal, tough, unafraid, protecting, and evolve into survival mode, discarding the normal behavior, which surely at that hour would’ve involved collecting some of the 18 hours he sleeps each day.

Dogs hear sounds up to five times greater than humans experts argue, which would have this already piercing noise to the level of unbearable for poor Rufus to handle, akin to a human being shut in a room with deafening noise played intermitantly over and over again for hours on end. No wonder he had to go primal, he had to get to safety, and show his fear without regard for what either of his brothers or his master might think of him. While the incident is sad, it is similar to how a human might react if their house was on fire, and say someone they’d been arguing with was in the home with them. Forget the argument, let’s get to safety! Is there a way to be this honest with each other when a crisis is not occurring? Or are we never really this honest unless lives are on the line?

Often when we talk to each other we present our character foremost to match the context of the conversation, putting our true feelings on the back burner. The pop culture slang for this is putting up walls. I can’t count how many conversations I’ve had in the past few years where neither of us actually said what we meant, and the more this persists, the more it grows into the norm.

Take your pick of examples, a coach talking to a player, a parent to a daughter, a scorned lover to an ex, anytime there is a context, this notion of whom we want to be perceived as rather than who we really are comes into play. Add in the societal elements that go with being a citizen in the world today and you’ve got a person having a contextual conversation instead of a real authentic one. Sigh, roll your eyes, pause, take it all in, because it’s a lot.

With such a complex web of expectations and preordained rules, how in the world do we ever actually really talk to each other anymore? Perhaps by being above it, literally.

Imagine if we started off each meaningful conversation with each other by collectively stating the following-

Forget what we’re supposed to say, or what people might want us to say, or how people typically say what we’re about to say, and let’s just each get on our own cloud, and float above this place and all the norms that go with it. Let’s really just talk to each other with no preconceived notions, stereotypes, historical references, or anything else, just two people on two clouds facing each other above the rest of it.

What does removing ourselves from our normal place do? Could it give us a way to communicate without all the messy intricacies of following social protocol? Might we actually be able to say what we mean to each other more effectively, and maybe, just maybe, both arrive from our journey better off for it?

I Love My Mom

The noise left my house around 4 pm today, silence comes early on Fridays, with all the chatter from clients following their bodies to Vail, or Palm Springs, or wherever they weekend. I wondered how many of them were looking forward to spending time with their kids, soccer games and spilling stuff in the back of the minivan. I’ve always said I want 10, maybe it’s time to stop talking like that.

Not sure why I was thinking of my mom so much today, it was as ordinary of a day for me as any. Woke up too late, answered emails, took client calls, spent a few minutes on the phone with pops talking about father and son stuff, read girls, and then he’s back to the office, I better get back to mine. More calls, more emails, wrote some web copy, sent some tweets, and then hit the market. Mom was on my mind.

I texted a love interest yesterday, she never wrote back. Today I drove past a lost love as I left the market, she didn’t turn around to wave, 0 for 2 in love games this week. The thought brought me to mom, and how no matter what she’s always ready to talk. Frued, you might be right, maybe men do just want to marry their mom? Or at least someone that’s nice to them consistently.

I was working late tonight, silence replaced by Swedish electronica, packing boxes for client giveaways, on guess the subject, moms. Dang, I thought, why don’t I send my mom all this stuff like I send to these strangers. I need to do more for her.

Dinner alone is no different than lunch or breakfast alone, I just sit and wonder, thinking about the past, the present, and the future. I say thanks, so much to be thankful for, I swear I almost died three times already, and that’s not counting childhood.

Most clients won’t call my cell past dark, sans the international ones, so when my phone started buzzing away in my pocket I thought it must be mom, of course it was. We spoke, she told me she was wearing the Clark Covington internet marketing rockstar shirt I sent her years ago, I laughed, she asked what it meant, I told her nothing anymore. She asked me to send her something to read, I told her better yet I’d bring her a book soon. She got excited, and then asked how the dogs were, she knew better than to ask about the girlfriend.

Love, Forgive, Repeat

Friends will steal from you if they knew they would get away with it, and sometimes even that assurance is not necessary for them to jack your stuff. Friends will chat about you, no gossip, to others about your shortcomings. Friends will literally step on your back at the chance of coming closer to the summit on the rock of achievement. Friends will gently listen to your most delicate insecurities and load them up in their insult rifle, finger pressed tightly on the trigger, to fire back at you as soon as you offer a criticism of your own about them. Friends will look at your shortcomings and relish in them, knowing that at something somehow somewhere, they are better than you.

So let them be better, let them hit you with their best shot of what they think will hurt you the most. Let friends use you to get ahead in life, let them talk about you to make themselves feel at ease with their own person, and yes, let them take your money. Thank them for being part of your life, forget that you loved them and they hurt you, and forgive. Don’t forgive just to let them off the hook, though that is a residual effect of such, but rather to live your life in illustrious glory.

You did not choose to want to be around people, it was already in your DNA from birth, or maybe prior? Our collective desire to be around others is fueled by the utter sense of fulfillment people bring. Validation of being is only truly achieved through the prism of others, as we are never fully able to become sincerely sure of our life course alone. People matter.

Our entrée to deep relationships with people is trust, that sticky thing that can so quickly get broken. Trust allows us to open up, hey I trust you, so I’m going to tell you that I have awful sleep patterns, and anxiety, should I see a doctor or drink less coffee? Trust destroys walls of secrecy so the true you can arrive. Trust is reciprocal, you can’t fly the friendly skies because you’re claustrophobic, you think your neighbor Bill is stalking your wife, I’m here for you.

We have to invest our trust in order to receive the pearl that is friendship. We have to put everything on the line to say, you know what, even if this person does me worse than anyone ever has, the fact I have a chance to build a meaningful relationship upon which both our lives could be richer is more important, the risk is worth taking.

So let ‘em talk, let ‘em run wild all over your heart, because in the end, when you love, you forgive, and when you repeat the process you open your life up to endless amounts of beautiful, saint-like, amazing people.

Appreciate it All: Thoughts of Taxidermy and Motherless Children

My computer transmits information to my mind via the blink of an eye. Three blinks, payment sent, payment received, quote work for new job dispatched.

Eight tabs compete for my attention like twin boys after the first plate of mac & cheese. Dinnertime.

My mind wanders, scores of buzzing, bleeping, and blinking, what was I doing again?

I didn’t actually attend my ten year high school reunion, but if I had, I would have no description for what I do, nonetheless who I am. I’m not a lawyer like Tom, or an Engineer like Billy, or a teacher like Sarah. I’m an entrepreneur? What’s that? Sounds a lot like unemployed to most people. My neighbor asked yesterday, she isn’t the first to think I’m a drug dealer. Should I tell them different, what would it matter?

A year ago I was still trying to tell them, still trying to make my life matter, which is a fruitless endeavor for those that are still in the identity trap. Be forewarned whatever you do to enrich yourself personally won’t actually make you feel much better, not for long anyway. I reflect back to this day one year ago, all I see is dark clouds, no twins, no tabs sitting on the screen strong enough to distract me from the pain. Riddled in debt, dating, LIVING, with a girl I couldn’t even stand, driving a truck that leaked energy, literally and figuratively, we all fall short.

One year later I’m like my Chow German Shepherd mix Jill after being gone 18 days, she was found immobile in a patch of brush on the side of the road. I was found in my home, not on a single day, but in a single year, I was found. Jill had a deep gash on her leg, and was tied up like a Christmas tree to a roof of a car in rope-like branches that held her from walking. How long had she been there, in the 100-degree heat no less, days, weeks? She was wounded but alive. The first time I saw those sweet tender eyes in nearly a month I broke down, the whole animal hospital staff did too. The tenderness of being alive was more joyous than any cut, scrap, or disability on earth. For those that never loved a dog, they feel anxious, happy, sad, aggressive, and lonely. Dogs go through many of the same emotions humans do each day, as Jill’s wet eyes ticked up to meet mine, as she bowed her head down in exhaustion, all I could do was thank God.

Being thankful isn’t easy in a world full of people trying to impress us. You live where? You drive what? You vacationed in what country? I wonder what that really makes people feel inside. The great irony of trying to impress other people is that it often turns them off entirely. I don’t know about you, but I’m far more touched by the single mom working 60 hours a week to pay for their child to go to a good school than the socialite posing in designer duds on a yacht in the Rivera. To quote a Sia album title, Some People Have Real Problems.

We can have it both? That’s the rational I hear the most, we can have balance, you know hit the Rivera one week, and then the soup kitchen the next. Here is the problem with this theory, once you hit the Rivera being around homeless people in the soup kitchen is less of a calling than a duty. It’s gratitude bargaining, and it never works out right.

Being thankful for your life, for what you have, isn’t just about not living opulently, or looking down at people that have less, or making their life worse by intentionally pushing your more in front of their less, it’s about being true to who you are as a human.

Being gracious sets off a domino effect of goodwill that will properly season your insides to be better on the outside. You’ve got to be proactive, just like you are with your budget, or your diet, or your time, or anything else in life, sacrifice your selfish desires for the better. In a world full of people proposing the opposite, this is often easier written than done.

I’m surrounded by two things all day, commerce and money. Commerce the court on which entrepreneurs play their game, and money the scorekeeper. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of what it all means, of what you picture in your mind is a successful entrepreneur- Ferraris, private jets, foreign models, and a casino. Right, that is what you think entrepreneurs live like when they make it right? That is what the media has portrayed us to be, free willing sin-machines, with a little charity sprinkled in for good measure. It’s thanksgiving, somebody get a turkey for the homeless people, let’s throw them a bone. Disgusting.

We come in all stripes, some entrepreneurs don’t care about money at all, that’s how they make so much of it, they just don’t care. I’d like to think I fall into this category, though I’m tempted, I’m human, and dang if Porsche isn’t making this Panamera for me, it’s got 380 horsepower, vroom vroom.

We’re all tempted to just look inward, when so often we would be happier if we looked and acted on what we could do for others. Seriously, this post is for you, to make you happier in your life, like I’ve been in mine lately. Less is more, this is a movement.

So what I do to refocus my energy on others might help you. It might make me you think I’m crazy, but that’s ok since I stopped caring about my identity about a year ago, so either way this is what I’ve decided to share with you. An exercise in being grateful, take what you will, and know for me it works every time.

Lately I’ve been nurturing a fascination with reindeer. Maybe two or three years ago I learned they were real. I thought they were just as made up as the person they’re most associated with. But no, reindeer are definitely real, thanks to my zoologist friends for setting this straight.

After discovering the existence of reindeer I bought a picture of one and placed it in my room. It sits atop a metal storage rack, a casualty from one of my many failed businesses. The reindeer is docile, but massive, it’s body plump, antlers so pronounced they steal the show wherever the reindeer goes. If you look at the antlers closely on a reindeer, it becomes clear they are one of the highest reaching antlers of all the mammals walking the earth today. Stunning.

I’m a tactile guy, I like to feel and touch, not just see. Luck would have it I found someone that sells arctic reindeer hides, my bedroom needed a rug. Match made. This is what I think about when I start having impulses that aren’t in line with giving, with being a better person. I think about the cruelty of life, that if not our grandmothers, our great grandmothers were skinning and cooking these animals to live, to survive. Our life hasn’t always been about the iPhone, Netflix, or Lap Band surgery, it was once about finding enough food to eat.

So many people in our great nation are totally unaware that in some parts of the world, they still can’t get enough food to survive. There are no arctic reindeer for them to skin, they eat little to nothing and eventually perish. 20,000 air-breathing humans will have died from the famine in the African Horn region this year. And you want to go on a cruise? To upgrade the thread count on your sheets. There are people dying in Africa.

We sit back, and nod, we’re numbed to the pleas ever since homeboy got on the infomercials in the eighties and beat the subject to death. African starvation is like theatre, it’s in front of us, but it’s not real, right? Wrong.

I saw an interview recently on TV with a man from one of the hard hit regions in Africa where people are starving, ironically he is now working here in the states at the Plumpy’nut factory, where they make bars to sustain those starving in Africa. This one effort, started by a single mother of four no less, has surely saved thousands of lives. The man, he stood with a hint of anger in his face at the factory, and said something to the extent of, when we were starving we wondered why people didn’t come sooner, why they weren’t doing anything if they knew we were dying over here. This was his words, the gospel that compels us to do more for others is not always sugar coated, should we wheel barrel the dead bodies to your doorstep to get you to do something, when does it become real to you? I wouldn’t write this blog post if I didn’t think it is entirely in our power to eradicate world hunger forever. It is people, we can do this.

Gratitude is understanding how lucky we are, and acting on our thankfulness by reaching out to others and giving from the well of what we have to offer. Time is so valuable, if you knew how much I spent on people’s time it’s in the tens of thousands of dollars each year. Money is fine, but other currency exits. You have ideas, share them. You have connections, start connecting.

We become machines of change when we oil our soul with the humility that being thankful brings about. The engine for change already exists in our hearts, it’s just waiting to be fueled with gratitude and put into drive with execution on all that stuff you’ve been meaning to do.

In the hour or so I’ve been writing this post at a coffee shop a couple next to me has kept their arms around each other the entire time. Gratitude can be manifested outward, and if you take a minute and look around, you’ll see it is everywhere.