Let me start by saying this was one of 2 sessions that we attended in a small room.  Both were extremely engaging because everyone had a voice in the conversation.  I highly recommend attending some small sessions if you plan to visit SXSW.

Beth and Drew work as team leaders in the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts overseeing Susan Combs’ award winning Window on State Government site.  Here’s what they handed us at the session:

1. Know what people like most about their jobs
2. Expect high performance
3. Find and hire high performers
4. Promote the power of the team
5. Share success and failure
6. Embrace the importance of dreams
7. Reign in the Ego
8. Celebrate Differences – especially among high performers
9. Remember, there are no guarantees
10. Know that “happy is” as “happy thinks”

Know what People Like.

Of the list there are a few items that I find particularly interesting.  To start with, when I first saw this list, I was stunned to find that i was struggling to answer #1, “know what people like most about their jobs.”  We have annual retreats and often talk business, but for some reason I was drawing a blank.  What do you like most about your job?  For that matter, what do I like most about my job?

I like change. I engage with new people, new challenges, new technologies, and new workspaces every day. At the moment, I’m enjoying my life / work balance and feel like my job helps me to achieve my life goals.  I love the people I work with.  I love coding AND designing. Honestly, I could go on for a while about things I like about my job.  Getting to the core of it though, I am happiest when I have space and time to bounce between projects, both at work and in my personal life.  I’m not sure what conditions cause me to be ‘highest performing’.  Are people generally happiest when they are at the peak of their performance?  I was pretty happy relaxing in the pool with a Piña Colada in Panama last month so it seems that happiness and performance might not be explicitly related.

Expect High Performance.

I find number 2, “expect high performance,” to be inspiring.  I love that idea!  If I ask someone to work on mundane tasks, or if I accept sub par work, I’m doing a disservice to that person.  Of course, Beth noted that one should lead by example.  The only way that I can expect high performance is by doing the work that it takes oversee quality.  This means properly queuing expectations, spending the time to review the completed work, and enforcing the expectations afterwords.  Unfortunately I’ve been so busy lately with sales and travel that I don’t feel as though I’m fulfilling my management responsibilities as well as I could be.  This has inspired me to try harder.

Celebrate Differences.

Regarding number 8, “celebrate differences – especially among high performers”…  This one confused me at first but Beth clarified the concept when she described the practice of pairing people.  For example, someone who is detail oriented (me) works well with someone who is quick and thinks at a high level (Shane).  I wish I was better at articulating and remembering those traits people posses that yield ideal pairs.  Shane and Julie tried to impress upon me their DISC philosophy but some how it never quite became second nature to me. Perhaps I should try it again and see if it sticks.

Troubleshooting…

The ensuing discussion raised a couple of interesting topics.  For example, one person asked what to do about high performers that fail to engage with the team.  Fortunately, I’ve never had to face this particular problem on our team.  If I was presented with this challenge though, my sense is that in most cases, manager jujitsu works best. Why resist when I can help instead?

We have a problem.  How can I best support you?  You are an invaluable member of our team.  However, when someone on the team succeeds, I get the impression that you feel threatened or jealous. It’s important to me that we all feel joy in each other’s successes.  What can I do to help?

Managers can be your Friend.

Another topic that came up revolved around how to straddle the line between friend and boss. Shane and I have had to face this often as we openly consider the people that we manage to be our friends. In fact, part of our interview philosophy is that we won’t work with people who we can’t imagine wanting to hang out with.  After some debate on the topic, we settled on the idea that you don’t need to pick a side if you make the rules clear.  If we agree on a metric for success and we document the successes and failures, then talking about the working relationship becomes a mechanical and metered affair.  This is the same principle behind setting up clear contracts before engaging in business with someone.  The contract is the measuring stick.

Additionally to documenting failures, it is at least as important to document successes. Positive feedback makes for happiness and is a vital part of performance metrics.  One of the topics that came up had to do with bonuses.  Being that we work entirely with contractors, the concept of a bonus is sort of weird and uncharted.  We look at our annual team trip as a bonus.  However, that trip is much more than a bonus and it’s not bound to performance in any documented or linear fashion. I’m not really sure how to think of bonuses in the freelance world but it is an active topic between me and Shane.  One of the guys at the meeting suggested that bonuses are effective when they are predefined and tied to specific performance metrics. He works with individuals on his team to identify bonuses for the next year and milestones that need to be hit to merit the bonuses.  While that approach makes sense for a team of employees, I’m not sure it makes as much sense with contractors.  Also, Shane and I are of the mind that cash is not an effective form of bonus.  We subscribe more to gifts and experiences.  If I give you some money, you’ll spend it and it will be gone.  If I give you a present you will always think of me when you use it.  It also reflects a certain level of consideration.

What do you think it takes to make a happy and highly performing team … of freelancers?

Sometimes I really debate writing about some of our more successful techniques. What if someone actually takes our advice and does something with it? Make our competitors smarter? Then I remember that there really is enough work for all of us (I absolutly believe that) and I unclench my ass.

The fact is that starting a conversation with a stranger is uncomfortable for most people. For the developers I know, it is often more so. After all, they did not choose a people oriented career. The problem we often face when recruiting: How do you make small talk with developers in a public space, get them to come out of their shell and talk to you? Our solution: Hang a sign around your neck.

Most people are quietly wondering “what do you want from me” when you start talking to them out of the blue. It is a fair question. We all usually want something, perhaps friendship, perhaps influence, money, direction or a piece of gum. The easiest way to disarm people is to simple make it obvious what you want. If your interests match theirs, an instant form of trust is built. If not, then no harm no foul, you can quickly dispense of the awkward dance.

So here is how we played it. We went to Google I/O in 2007 looking for developers and hoping to learn a thing or two. Day 1: 37 aborted chat attempts and 2 business cards. Definitely the least social conference I had ever attended. We almost didn’t come back on day two.

You live in Santa Cruz long enough and you eventually figure that our homeless population must have some insight into things. Their sheer volume alone attests to that fact. Downtown has people lined up every 100 feet or so with “Buy me a beer (I’ll buy my own sandwich)” cardboard signs. Perhaps that will change some day, but at the moment, it is a part of the scenery.

So where am I heading (as if you hadn’t guessed from the lead in photo)? Most great inventions are simply taking a successful pattern from one part of your life, your industry or technology and applying it unexpectedly to another.

Peter climbed into my car the next morning with two manilla folders and four pieces of paper on which he had printed “Need Freelance Work?” We taped them together and off we went. We each took one and held it in our hands as we navigated the halls and sat in events. People consistently ask us what we were looking for. We didn’t initiate anything. They approached us. “You looking for Developers?”; “I freelance!”; “Can you tell me more?” and for us, the unexpected “What kind of work are you looking for?” After all, it didn’t occur to us until that moment that the sign read both ways. Day 2: 200+ successful dialogs, 47 cards worth keeping, 3 solid clients leads and 5 prospective devs got interviewed. In short, one good day.

And since then we have used it time and time again. It works. Just make sure you have a pile of cards and have a short spiel ready to go.

Today our good friend Iris from NextSpace asked us about our corporate culture mantra. Shane and I delighted in recounting it:

Happy, Helpful, Curious and Accountable.

As we recited our beloved chant, it dawned on me that it deserves a long overdue blog post.

What, you ask, is this 12 syllable slogan? It’s our cultural measuring stick. These are the words that we iterate whenever we meet someone new or review someone we’ve been working with. It applies both to our colleagues and to our clients.  In fact, we apply this gauge to everyone in our lives from presidential candidates to car mechanics. I asked Shane, who recently became a father, how he envisions his daughter as an adult. He thought about it for a while and after a couple days of deliberation replied,

I would be delighted to see Serenity grow to be happy, helpful, curious, and accountable.

(I am thrilled to report after the first 6 months, Serenity has a great head start on the “happy” part of the equation and is currently working on “curious”.)

This mantra came about a few years ago when Shane and I were deliberating over how to choose our team. After a great deal of debate and reflection, we concluded that there are 3 common characteristics among the people with whom we’ve had consistent successful relationships. These people are uplifting, they are always looking for ways to add value, and that they are always learning more about their trades. We summarized these attributes as “Happy, Helpful, and Curious.”

After a few months of applying that standard, we came to realize that a person can make us smile, have a supportive attitude, and be learning new things, but still not deliver on time or set our expectations so we added “Accountable”. I’m pleased to report that after a few years of testing this mantra, we’ve got a pretty solid song.

Happy.

I love what i do. I do it because I enjoy it.

My theory is that robin hood’s merry band was merry because they all enjoyed robbing the rich and giving to the poor.  I want to be surrounded by people who love what they do.  I look for people who are cheerful enough to match the enthusiasm of our team so that we can inspire each other.  (Cheerful = full of cheer)

I’ve worked in offices filled with miserable people.  It sucks.  Some years back when I was bouncing between freelancing and cubicalling I had a boss, Mark, who turned out to be a down-right vicious character.

When I first joined the team he was very supportive and complimented me often. Being new and not having a sense of self-worth, his financial offer seemed generous. After a week or two, I noticed that although he was quite nice to me, he was frequently YELLING at other people on the team. Though I often wondered why he didn’t yell at me, in my youthful naivete, I assumed there must be some valid justification (In retrospect it rather wreaks of Milgram’s controversial “Obedience to Authority” experiment in which Milgram convinced people that it was ok to torture). After a few months, a team member quit prompting Mark to reveal himself as he yelled,

Damn! Now i have to pretend to be nice to some other gullible newhire for 3 months.

It wasn’t long until he was unleashing his wrath upon me as well. By the time I left, I had been swindled out of more than $5000 and was starting to have regular nervous breakdowns. It was at this point that I decided that no matter what I do next, I refuse to tolerate tyrants. From now on I’m looking for happy people.

What is a happy person?

A “happy person” is a person who actually really wants to be smiling.  I realize that sounds weird…  Doesn’t everyone want to be happy?  Personally, I do not subscribe to the philosophy that we all seek joy.  In fact a couple years ago John Lanchester published a great article in the New Yorker Magazine, Pursuing Happiness, in which he argues that happiness is a relatively recent invention and that people are inherently built to be cautious and anxious.  In my own experience, I find that someone with an overabundance of resources can just as easily choose to be happy as they can also choose to be bored, stressed, jealous, angry, dramatic, or inhabit just about any other state of consciousness.  Happiness seems like the obvious choice though in practice, it can be very challenging and is generally reserved for the brave and the ignorant (We’re more so looking for the brave ones).

A happy person is uplifting by their nature. This person has problems like everyone else, but this person is balanced enough to be able to manage their problems with aplomb. Happy is trustworthy. Winnie the Pooh is happy. Rabbit is not. Ernie is happy. Bert… eh… not so much (though Shane is quite a happy person – the picture on this post was just for fun). Happy people have down times, but in general, they bring cheer. Happy is contagious.

How to tell if someone is Happy

How do you like freelancing?

We do a lot of phone interviews. If after a few minutes, I want to get off the phone, it’s usually because the person i’m talking to is making me feel bad. However, if I find that the person has a lot of uplifting stories, is quick to give compliments (that don’t sound like ass-kissing), and generally is making me smile, they are probably generally happy. Simply put, I tend to feel better after talking to a happy person.

In particular, in the freelance industry, we often come across freelancers by design as well as those who are between jobs.  Generally, it’s pretty easy to tell if someone is a genuine freelancer.  If a person is choosing to be a freelancer, it’s because they enjoy it.  However, if someone is a freelancer because they can’t hold a job or just got laid off, it’s more likely that this person is suffering a lack of direction and is not freelancing by choice. The difference between the two is tangible on a daily basis. We look for people who are doing what they want to do.

Helpful.

When I was a kid, I often would join my father in the garage as he worked on one of his many projects. I can only imagine how annoying it was to hear me say “what can i do?”, “how can i help?”, “is there something for me to do?”, “I’m bored.”. Though my heart was in the right place, I didn’t realize that all my nagging ceaseless questions were centered around MY own entertainment. I’m quite sure that my father must have imparted this wisdom to me countless times before the revelation imprinted in my memory,

Petey-boy, the best way you can help me is to quietly stand by until I’m ready for your assistance.

Aha! An epiphany! Helpfulness is about YOU, not me. Some people learn this lesson well while others thoroughly miss it entirely. Helpful is an art of living. Consideration is a way of being.

When Nick Ohrn pinged me the other night about a Wordpress embed pluggin that he found on his own time that might be a significant time-saver for an upcoming development project of ours, Nick was being helpful.

Reid Peifer is another fantastic example of a helpful person!  Not only does he often anticipate points where Shane and I are about to need assistance and volunteer himself, he’ll ping me on AIM once in a while and just check in to check in and see how I’m doing.  To borrow from Obama’s phrase, Reid embodies the Audacity of Helpfulness.

Honestly though, without getting too mushy or anything, the truth is our whole team is helpful.  I’m deeply grateful to be surrounded by such supportive people.  It’s one of the great pleasures of being in business for myself but not by myself.

How to tell if someone is Helpful

What’s the biggest mess you’ve had to clean up?

Think about it.  What was the last wrecked client relationship, code snafu, or general unexpected business debacle that you had to deal with?  How did you handle it?  How did it turn out?  Were you able to resolve it?

I’ve asked this question and been amazed at the responses. The beauty is that it’s not directly implying any aspect of helpfulness.  But a helpful person is often going to have threads of consideration woven into their tale.  This also often reveals accountability.  If someone is particularly not helpful, they will take this opportunity to blame other people for the mess.  The worst answers that I’ve heard to this are ones where the mess is not even cleaned up i the end.  A helpful person can not walk away from a mess.  A helpful person wants to make sure that everything is going to come together in a project and that everyone is being cared for.  Helpful is taking responsibility beyond your own domain.  Helpful people get joy out of offering solutions.

Curious.

When I was being interviewed for the job of Interactive Designer at 2Wire, my final interview was with then VP of Marketing Brian Sugar.  He asked me some pretty direct questions like, “How do you like this place?” and “You excited about this job?” But there was one question he asked that just floored me.  It was brilliant!

Teach me something about Flash.

I was extremely excited that he asked me this.  At the time I was basically living and breathing Flash.  Where do I begin!  I decided to just pick the most recent thing I had been learning about.  I believe it was something about XML sockets or maybe it was something to do with a new Tweening algorithm… Who knows? Who cares? He had opened a can of my passion and could see that I was clearly devoted to the technology and that I was constantly learning more about it.

I now realize that the secret brilliance of this is that specific interest in a field is independent of the general quality of curiosity.  For example, just because I’m personally not excited about being a Quality Assurance tester doesn’t mean that it’s not exciting for someone else.  If I want to find a good QA person, I need to find one that is curious about quality and about the evolution of technologies.  When I find the right person for testing our Wordpress sites, I’ll ask them to teach me something about testing Wordpress and they will brim with excitement and unravel a ball of passion about bugs they’ve found and how they’ve helped to get them resolved.

How to tell if someone is Curious

We ask people a lot of questions to help identify if people fit these qualities.  Some of the questions that best address curious are:

• What books have you read lately?
• How do you keep informed about the technologies and philosophies in your trade?
• Teach me something (a la Brian Sugar).

Accountable.

One of my favorite aspects of working with independent contractors is that they are running businesses.  In order to run an enduring business, you have to deliver on budget and on time.  As Shane often says:

I get my projects done on budget, on time, or else i can’t pay my mortgage.

Some years ago I had a client, Jonathan, who taught me a very valuable lesson. At the time, I had this philosophy that any financial or accountability issue can be overcome by working harder.  Oddly enough that philosophy lead me to work increasingly harder for less money with ever decreasing clients satisfaction.  The fact is, no amount of work will make up for silently failing to meet essential deadlines.

My perception was that Jonathan was getting to be very hard to please and the more challenging the project became the less I wanted to confront him.  My solution was to silently work harder.  At some point I had to confront him just to walk him through my work.  After a hair-raising shouting match, we reconvened with a truce and he explained to me the concept of Setting Expectations.  It’s Ok to miss a deadline.  It’s Ok to not accomplish the entire scope.  So long as you set expectations.

If I’m not going to be able to make a deadline, I need to inform my client as early as possible and work out an alternative strategy.  If the scope of a project is panning out to be much larger than initially expected, then it is entirely reasonable to renegotiate with the client as long as the renegotiation happens early.  What’s NOT ok is to let a due date pass silently.  Or to deliver part of the project but miss a bunch of essential components without any prior warning.

For the most part, people are reasonable.  When reasonable people work with reasonable people, then things get done and everyone has a good time.  People with accountability deficiencies involuntarily cause everyone else to work harder.  If someone can’t set expectations, then you can’t rely on your own expectations of them.  It means you have to micro manage or suffer the fate of frequent ‘fire-drills’ where everyone is forced to stay up late for a week to make up for the fact that a timeline or scope has become untenable.  This is also a point at which money can start to rapidly bleed out of the project.  When you are so focused on working that you can’t do your dishes, how are you going to remember to clock your time and review your budget?

How to tell if someone is Accountable

One super easy way to tell that someone is NOT accountable is if they are late for or miss entirely the phone interview.  Seriously.  We now always make interviewees call us so that we can immediately see they are NOT accountable.  Every single time we’ve interviewed someone who missed the call or was late, that person ended up performing really poorly where accountability is concerned and ended up not working out for our team.  On the other-hand, if someone emails or calls well in advance to politely request that we reschedule, then that person is likely to be solid in the accountability department because they know how to manage expectations.

Mantras Make Me Happy.

I have a horrible memory.  I’m always looking for easy to remember tricks.  That’s how Shane and I came to develop the happy, helpful, curious and accountable mantra.  My dear reader, I invite you to add your favorite life mantras below in our comments.  I’m always curious to find other phrases that can help bring clarity to the myriad murky decisions of life.

Lately we have been investing a lot of time and energy into sproutwire.com instead of sales. Meanwhile, our team has often been idle, developing their side projects, as we hunt for work. One great benefit and risk of working with independent contractors is that they are required to have other sources of income. This is great because it means we are not responsible for keeping our team working full time, but it is dangerous because it can easily lead to attrition. Eventually we all need to get paid. So how do we manage to keep together?

We communicate our opportunities.

I’ll tell you a story about how we’ll work together in the near and long term future. You should do the same. This narrative binds us. We share a vision.

If I pay you, then you have a default interest in our relationship. If I cease to have the opportunities to pay you, then it follows that you will have to look elsewhere. And eventually I will lose your allegiance.

In fact, this is a two way relationship. If you offer me a service, then I have a default interest in our relationship. If I can no longer use your service, then our relationship is in jeopardy.

Right off the bat, it is essential that in a dry spell, we maintain optimism regarding the future of our working relationship. We need to see each other in our own futures if we are to keep together.

We communicate our lives.

I’ll call it a second line of defense, but in fact I’m beginning to think that it is most important part of building an enduring team of remote contractors: great teams are great friends.

There are many ingredients required for a friendship: shared sense of humor, complimentary personalities, shared values. But one thing is required above all: regular communication. You can’t be my friend unless you share my joys and my miseries. You don’t have to share them all, but there is definitely a direct correlation between the closeness of your friends and the percentage of life events that you share.

We make a point of checking in with everyone on the team regularly. We’ve also recently set up a team blog. We’re using a plugin which allows us to take snapshots with our phones and email them to the blog (If it isn’t extremely easy to add stuff, then no one is going to want to put in the effort). This blog in effect servers multiple purposes:

1. Transform the remote team into a tangible team
   If you can see photos, videos, and read daily accounts of each other’s lives, then people that you’ve never met and know almost nothing about can transform into real people that you can relate to.
2. Remind us of why we do what we do
   Sometimes we get absorbed by our work. Especially in the freelance industry, it can be easy to spend all your time working and lose track of life all together. Making a point of sharing your life and reading about the lives of our friends and coworkers is a great way to regularly be reminded of why you are working so hard. You work because you love it, but you also work because you need money, and you need money to live. Don’t forget to enjoy your life!!!

We communicate our struggles.

Every now and then, we check in with our core team and ask, “How are you doing? Are your bases covered?” Usually things are fine even in a drought. But people need to pay their bills and sometimes we get into a pinch. When this happens, we either hustle to find some work for that person or we work out some options for meeting any intermitant challenges. These range from helping think through financial options all the way to potentially even offering financial support (though this is not an ideal solution). What ever we do, we care about each other and there is no better opportunity to convey this than having a chance to help someone in their time of need.

On a reciprocal note, our core team is made up of people that we find to be really helpful. Brandon frequently volunteers to help us with internal design challenges as well as with sales opportunities. Aaron has offered to defer his billing. Eric is always looking for ways to organize ours and his businesses, and is generally proactive in offering technical and general insight (any time he notices in conversation that i am unclear about a concept or terminology, within seconds he’ll send me a stream of really useful links that explain the concepts). Kelsey regularly jumps in to put out sysadmin fires. Reid and I started a theatre husband’s club as we are both married to theatre directors – a life abound with drama.

In fact, all the people that we regularly work with are genuinely helpful. It’s easy to want to stick with those that help you.

We work on our businesses.

We haven’t yet worked out any sort of stock options in our company. We might. It’s a big debate. But even without an official stock plan, we take part in each other’s companies. We value and solicit business input from each other. We help each other find work, invoice, estimate, manage time, manage money, and above all, manage each other.

Having a vested interest in each other’s businesses and lives binds us together. We are building an environment that fosters mutual loyalty and friendship.

How do you build a team? What’s the best team environment that you’ve ever worked in? What made it great?

One of the great challenges of working with a team of remote independent contractors is that there is no central office. People often say that by working with a remote team that is spread halfway across the globe, we are essentially missing hallway chatter. In other words, we’re missing a bond because we don’t run into each other and chat about things on a daily basis.

Since we don’t have a central office, we’ve decided to try a strategy of meeting with some of our most active team for a week in a Casa de Mar, a tropical resort in El Salvador (more photos to be uploaded when we get home and have a better connection). So far, I must say, the results have been spectacular (why don’t we have all our meetings in tropical resorts?)!

We Could Chat. But Why?

True, we could all read each other’s blogs or maybe randomly IM each other, but the fact is, once we get working, we’re working and would often rather spend our spare time off the computer.

Meeting in paradise is allowing us to release and discuss all our thoughts and concerns that we have collected over the months. We’re talking about things like:

• Re investigating our Mission Statements
• Life goals
• Future business plans
• What’s important to us
• Planning for the recession
• What we need from a Project Management software
• Quality assurance processes
• And, our best guesses as to what Eric looks like and how great it would have been to have had him here.

There’s Nothing Like a Personal Touch

Being in person allows for a chance to convey more than words. It also allows everyone on our team to get to know each other and to meet the spouses / girlfriends (i look forward to having some women on our core team and meeting their boyfriends). Being in person allows for face to face humor, it allows everyone to break barriers and to basically resolve our relationship as friends.

We have to be in person for Brandon to school me in ping pong. Or for Aaron to join me tearing up some waves. And since Mike Hudack, Alli (what’s your last name?) and Quinn and Melissa McLaughlin joined us, we have had a wonderful opportunity to share ideas and inspiration with our friends and mentors.

Meet the Jones’s

Perhaps one of the greatest aspects of meeting together in a tropical paradise is that we have all (except Aaron – but he’s working on it) brought our lovely spouses / girlfriends. Since they hold the keys to our hearts, we are able to attain great peace and insight by involving them in our business. And what better way to get them involved then to drag them kicking and screaming to the tropics?

Questioning Authority

Humility is best conveyed in person. This morning, Brandon brought up a great question regarding the hierarchy of our team. The question was basically, how do we see ourselves in relation to each other so far as the traditional boss / employee relationship is concerned?

There is a hierarchy for every project that we run and it tends to be the case that Shane and I are the bosses. However, in reality, we are just contractors ourselves facilitating other contractors. One of the great benefits of this trip is to equalize us and to make it clear that we are really peers simply playing managerial roles in the team and that we are all fundamentally autonomous.

Growing the Culture

Shane and I have a set of 3 tenets for our culture. People on our team must be helpful, learning and positive. In other words, we all must want to help each other, to learn from each other as well as from the world, and to be positive and optimistic.

To me, these are the core traits of a good friend. Getting together with people who fill these requirements is the same as getting together with friends. This retreat has made it obvious to me that our team is the right team and because I’d want to hang out with these people even if we weren’t working together.

Compliments to the Chef

This trip has recharged me. It is a success! In my eyes, it is a beacon that marks that we are clearly heading in the right direction. And I am overwhelmed with my gratitude for having the opportunity to work with such great people. I look forward to doing this again next year with twice as many people and on an entirely renewed adventure.

And Finally, A Plug for SproutWire

You probably saw our last post, but just in case … if you love reading about trials and tribulations of the individual in the business world and are as tired of wrestling with you RSS reader as I am, the beta is coming and I am personally inviting you to join us in creating a great new service.

Today I learned a lesson. It surprised me quite a bit as it counters a lot of my basic understanding of business contracts and relationships. It happened twice in one day and a little search on Google confirmed that this wasn’t some odd exception.

Two successful entrepreneurs I respect and trust enormously refused to sign our NDA. At first I was confused and worried. You see I was raised on the belief that in business, loose lips sink ships. I was under the impression that the proper procedure with any business idea was to get an NDA before sharing. I have a close relationship with both of them and asked why not. It appears that the business culture and realities of their trade make signing such a document unrealistic.

To quickly frame things, we are going to be launching a new company / service March 1st. We are really excited and if you know me at all – I don’t poke a stick at things or try 15 ideas hoping one will work out. I bid my time carefully and sprint when the timing is right. Over the past few weeks we have been madly working out details, refining the business plan and preparing for the launch. We will be having a private beta mid February, so hit me up if you are interested.

Back to my story.

Rather than try to reword it, I’ll let my friend explain it to you as he did to me:

I remember that when I started my last venture I was paranoid to tell people about what we were working on. I too had a boiler plate NDA and had people sign it before I shared our direction. I started to realize that the people whose opinion I really wanted were unwilling to sign the NDA. They claimed that they were exposed to so many ideas each day (i.e. venture capitalists and other entrepreneurs) that it would be impossible to sign and honor NDAs. Especially since in most cases many people are working on the same ideas or at least variations of the same thing. What I realized was that I had more to gain from hearing their opinions than by shielding myself from the potential threat of them taking my idea and running with it. In fact, if an idea is so easily copied then there is a problem either with the strategy or ability for the team to execute.

I’d write more but he makes his case pretty well. The question is simple. What is more valuable: their wisdom, advice and support, or secrecy? That may depend on your idea, but in our case, I’d like to have these two on our side. Does it mean I won’t ever ask other people to sign an NDA? Probably not, I am sure they have their place and time. Though I did learn not to ever ask a VC. In the end, the whole secrecy thing may be a bit over the top. The execution of the idea will be 1000x more important anyways. After all, Google sure wasn’t the first search engine, not the first free email provider, not the first online document replacement…

I’m going to get a bit naked here. Maybe I’ve been reading Naomi’s blog too much (don’t worry, my mom washed my mouth out with soap as a kid, so I’ll never talk like her). A few days ago Julie and I took a series of walks, whose dialog revolved around perception, motivation and sex. I asked Naomi for advice because I wanted a woman’s view and found out that she and her lad had a similar dialog. So for the woman’s perspective, check out her post (should be up tomorrow).

Our dialog over the last weeks have made me think a lot about setting the stage for success and giving someone what they need to perform. What food feeds their soul? What projects do they excel at? What feedback do they need? What turns them on and gets them going?

THE MARRIED SEX TALK: A SLANTED MALE VIEW

[This is a parody. A reading delicacy provided for your entertainment. No couples were harmed in the creation of this post. Any and all resemblance to a certain writer and his wife are a fiction of your own imagination and purely coincidental. Please don't try this at home, and if you do, have some couth and say it a lot nicer that I did.]

wife: “why don’t you pursue me more often?”

husband: “why don’t you send signals that say you are interested in being pursued more often?”

wife: “if you pursued me I would”

husband: “if you dressed sexier when you got home from work, kept your makeup on and created a canvas for pursuing I would. In your robe and sweats, the desire often escapes me”

wife: “so I have to put lingerie on to attract you?”

husband: “not necessarily (thought totally encouraged) – you need to flirt with me and let me know that you are interested. I don’t tend to shop at stores when the lights are off”

wife: “well, why don’t you flirt with me”

husband: [pause] … “cuz I’m a dumb ass”

wife: “I don’t always want to put on lingerie. why do I have to be uncomfortable to turn you on”

husband: “there have got to be comfortable sexy clothes for goodness sakes. I would be thrilled to buy you some”

wife: “don’t you find me attractive as I am”

husband: “I do. You are my beautiful lady. I tell you all the time. I am going to try to use a metaphor.

I am very visual about my sexuality (hence men and porn – I’m not alone here). On the other hand, you are very emotional about sex. We just get turned on differently.

So in a metaphor:

When you look ratty and expect me to be turned on, it is like me yelling at you and asking you to be turned on.

It just doesn’t work that way. For you to be turned on, I have to give you my full attention and pander to you – it is foreplay.

For me to be tuned on – you need to pander to my visuals and flirt with me.”

Perhaps working with people is not that different that the act of courting. Which brings me to the heart of management. The way I get it, my job as a manager is to give you everything you need to perform and kick ass, then get the hell out of your way. I’ll still be there in the corner when needed. The goal is to set you up for success. What I am starting to learn though (it sounds obvious from the outside), is that we all run on different fuel and need different staging and props. What turns you on may have no effect on me at all, or even worse backfire.

Understand Motivation: Mana & Ambrosia

Last week, I went to Santa Cruz’s first geek dinner (go Santa Cruz!). I snuck over to the cool kids table and plunked my skinny ass down into the only empty seat. During our conversation that evening, David Beach, gatherer and organizer of people for yahoo brickhouse, turned to me and said, good luck on your goal for a million. Kind of cool as I had never met this guy before. Suddenly I was face to face with a reader of our blog who I didn’t bully, cajole or beg into reading my posts (I love you all, thanks for being here). He said he liked the blog and followed our doings. I was excited for days and even though I feel silly, I’m still stoked on it. The idea that someone who leads innovation within a company like Yahoo is actively listening makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

A few days later, Peter & I met with Sean Tarrio, Director of Sales for UnitedLayer and the following day with Gerald Barnett, Director of IP for UC Santa Cruz. Both were looking to get Peter & I involved in entrepreneurial development projects. Sean is trying to build a Venture Fund that will drive business in Santa Cruz and Gerald is spearheading a program for companies to fund and mentor students at the university with startup ideas. If you are local and want to know more, shoot me an email. They wanted our financial and business support. After some discussion, I expect we will participate in both. The interesting thing is that we get pitched quite a few opportunities. Why participate now? Because each made a pitch that targeted our personal hot buttons. They laid out a plan which offered the opportunity to be helpful and of service in a way that might help further our own business interests.

A bit long, but I’m making a point. Can you guess what is one of the key ingredients to get me to be energized and productive? How would you set the stage to make me get out there and kick ass?

Ding, ding, give me a gold star (and a sticker please). Yeah, I am a sucker for recognition and the chance to be of service and hence, what I call influence (Seth Godin style). I like seeing things happen and know that I participated. That is my fuel. If you were my manager you would want to make sure that I was in a project where I could help steer the outcome, my voice would be heard and I have a sense of shared risk. Oh, and you will need to add a fun, positive group with a consistent lineup of new and different challenges. This is my ideal situation. But that wouldn’t drive most of the people on our team. In fact, I think most people on our team would freak out in my ideas environment (as I would in their’s). It all comes down to personality.

Want to learn more? Go read my article on The Model of Human Behavior – Understanding Personality.

Get them the Tools and Information They Need

Not everyone needs the same level of information and support for a project.

In the 1899 issue of the Philistine magazine, Elbert Hubbard published an inspirational essay title A Message to Garcia. Andrew Rowan, a young American soldier was given the task of delivering a letter with military strategy to the leader of the rebel forces in Cuba. Rowan did not speak Spanish, did not know the location of Garcia nor his forces. He had never been beyond the borders of the United States. To frame his task, the Spanish army had been hunting Garcia and his band of rebels for over a decade and never found them. So with no information, no leads, and no preparation he went on his errand. And delivered his letter.

Now I tell you this story because it inspires me, but I have also found that from a management perspective, this is total bullshit. If I told my team, go deliver a message to Garcia, it might happen but it might not. I am a business man not a gambler. But, if I take the time go make them a map, my odds go way up. Each person needs a different level of detail. Personally I can function of minimal information while Peter needs a much greater sense of definition. It has a lot to do with our personalities. There is an optimal amount of information a person thrives with – too little or too much and productivity stops. Learning that information gap in yourself and in your team is vital to everyones success.

Get out of Their Way

Ryan, my breakfast buddy from eBay, and I were talking management yesterday and he threw me the three key ideals he lays out for each person on his team. He leads by example and expects them to be: honest, predictable and committed. In that order. I got me thinking that not only is that vital in a team, but that is really the heard and soul of being a manager. With that foundation, the people I work with can be vulnerable enough that I can learn their hot buttons and their panic buttons.

As Ryan explained to me, the goal is to set a stage of trust. Brandon called me a week ago with a quandary. Another client of his was pushing him to come to a meeting across LA after Brandon had already said no because he had committed to some tasks for us and some time with his lady. The client pushed hard in a hard nosed manner. Brandon called me. We discussed the situation and I asked him if the issue was the time or the way in which the request was done? Was it the inconvenience or the person? He wasn’t sure. I turned it around, “If I had asked you to do this, would you be feeling differently right now?” “Oh, sure” he responded, “I’d go because I know you would only ask if it was absolutly critical.” And that made me realize, I have his trust. Because I am honest, predictable and there is no doubt about my commitment both to the business and his well being.

Because of that, I trust that Brandon will come to me when he gets stuck. You see, I believe you can only get out of someone’s way once the mutual trust is built that someone can come to you and talk. That you are predictable enough they can count on your response. That trust is not explicit, it is earned. Hard earned at times.

I had a tough (for me) talk with one of our contractors a few weeks ago after I learned that he pulled an almost all nighter on his wife’s birthday. In my eyes – big faux pas. In her’s too. The issue was that he never told us. He is a relatively new contractor in our team. I basically had to tell him, if your wife decapitates you, then we won’t be able to work together, you’ll be dead. And we began to talk a little more about time management. Getting out of someone’s way is not abdication. I tried that too – kaboooom. Getting out of their way is an act of trust that needs to be earned, in both directions.

Get Over Yourself

I was on the end of a very tough lecture a few years ago. I was not relating well to someone and in retrospect we were both being a bit childish. The difference was that while they were clueless, I knew better. Tom sat me down. “It is the responsibility of the person who has the knowledge to act upon it. Sometimes, someone has to take the first step, and the second, and the third, before the other person can join us in a dialog.” That is the heart of setting someone up for success. After all, they wouldn’t need the help if they had everything they needed in hand.

As leaders of companies, of families, I write this to you because we need to have the courage and set our ego aside. The world is full of people who react to emotional stimuli rather than pausing and responding. Take a stand. Be a better you and catch yourself. As I tell Julie, “I know you asked twice already, please ask me a third time just as nicely. I notice when you are being the better person and it invites me to grow.” Be patient with your clients, your kids, your preachy as hell blogger, your parents, your employees and your contractors. Help set the stage for their success. Learn how to romance your spouse, I am and it pays delicious dividends.

I am always learning. How to manage better, how to sell, how to write and how to speak. I’ve had good and bad managers. I have had the blessing to have great mentors and follow amazing leaders.

What makes a great manager? How about a great leader? Do you think they differ?

What about a great student? Or a great follower?

Alright you all – it is late and tomorrow if Julie’s 32nd birthday. Time to be a good hubby and dote!

You know why you need a mentor. You took the time and energy to find one. If you haven’t yet: take your list of dreams, goals and aspirations for your personal life, find someone who has achieved the bulk of them in your industry (or if there are none, consider changing industry) and grab their coat tails and never let go. A bit of elbow grease and a whole lot of patience and interviewing will do the trick. So, now that you have a mentor, what the heck do you do?

Be Open

When I mess up, I want to fix it and make myself look better. No one wants to look like an ass. When you are out in the world, there are things you share and things you don’t. When you work with your mentor, they need the hard facts. If they don’t know the truth, they can’t guide you. That extends beyond the daily business of your company. It includes your health, you marriage, and everything else that has significant impact on your life. It takes courage to share weakness. In the book Good to Great, they discuss the Stockdale Paradox – the idea that you can be brutally frank about your situation while maintaining a positive vision for the future. That is the goal of your relationship with your mentor.

Ask The Question

My mentor Tom taught me to ask a question. It is the first and last question I ask every time we meet.

“What do you know about my business that I don’t which would make the greatest difference?”

This is such a powerful question. It gives your mentor permission to be honest and share what they see. You may not like or understand the answer, but you will gain value from it if you listen. We sometimes get so focused on the minutia of the business, we loose track of the big picture. Sometimes we are focused in the wrong place. Sometimes we ignore something we decided was irrelevant, only to have our mentor carefully point out that we absolutely can’t ignore it.

A great example of such a talk (not with Tom) was the post I wrote on “Managing the Explosion“. Not the most pleasant talk, but the right one at the right time.

Your Goals & Organization Chart

Always have your list of goals for the company present when you are going to meet with your mentor. You should also bring your list of personal goals. Your company is simply a vehicle to accomplish your life goals and your mentor may be in a position to help you bridge the gap. With a list of where you think you are headed, you mentor can help you prioritize your goals based upon your current situation. If you are growing a team, bring your organizational chart with you and be prepared to discuss what everyone is doing, their performance and any issues you are dealing with.

Your Financial Statement

Have a profit and loss and an income and expenses statement for the current month, quarter and year with you. You may not use them, but if you need to discuss strategy, these two financial reports help give you the pulse of a business. If you have not created these and do not review them consistently, you are essentially flying blind.

Your Activity Sheet

Your daily habits form the foundation of your longer term results. You will work with your mentor to identify places in which you personally need to grow and improve. Tom and I worked out a list of 6 things I had to do every day that would have the most impact on my business. My daily list includes the following:

• Meet a new person
• Read from a business book for 15 minutes
• Create a list every night on what I need to accomplish tomorrow in order of priority
• Check in with everyone on my team
• Listen voicemail morning and evening
• Give Julie 30 minutes of focused listening

Most of these may seem basic, but they are the habits that we determined together would make the greatest difference in my life. Though I admit I do not always pull them off, especially the first, I continue to do them day in day out.

A List of Questions

Come with a list of questions. You may not get to them, but it is good to come with a desire to learn. If time allows, then you can work on your questions. Don’t expect their answers to be the ones you want. I remember a great story I heard a few years ago by a business man I’ve often had the chance to hear speak at events. After achieving significant results in his industry, he went back to his mentor and asked him why he never gave him any answers. His mentor laughed and said “I was giving you answers. You were just asking the wrong questions. You were constantly asking about the technical details of your business, when you should have been asking questions like, ‘how can I be more relatable?’ That is what you needed to work on and that is where I was giving you advice.”

Conclusion

Your relationship with your mentor is much like your relationship with a business partner. It requires patience, work, and a willingness to be wrong. One of my biggest struggles is putting people on a pedestal (like my parents) and finding myself disappointed when they are just human. They may have been further down the road than you did, but they have the same human failings we all do. Treasure their advice and forgive their mistakes.

You need to tell any woman who you interview like me the following: This is not going to be like any interview you have ever gone to. We are not a large corporation … we are two guys running a small company and we really do care about your dreams and what you want out of your life.-J

We are not running a reality show. This is our life, and for all of you who understand how emotional and difficult interviewing can be, it should be private. That why I let this article sit in the fringe for a month before posting it.

I had no intention whatsoever of blogging about the interviews themselves. Until tonight. J asked me to tell the next people we interview the quote above. I asked her if I could write it on our site and she agreed.

The last two days have been amazing. My heads is still spinning. This whole process is completely new to us. I love the comments on our resume posts ( Looking for an Office Manager to Grow Old With & Get your Resume Noticed By Us ), though they push us and make me work. The interviews have been incredible. I can’t believe that one Craig’s list post would bring so many talented and cool people. We’ve probably made every interviewing no-no in the book, got kindly corrected, and are getting better.

I didn’t get the job did I?

Our last interview tonight was somewhat of a disaster and it really was our fault. I have to say Peter & I feel pretty bad about it. Walking out to the parking lot afterwards, I heard a window roll down and a tiny voice ask, “I didn’t get the job, did I?” We were stuck standing there like deer in the headlight of guilt. What do you do?

So, we began to try to explain that we just didn’t see how we could help her achieve what she wanted. And if we couldn’t see that, then she was not a good fit. We are so blessed that she took the risk afterwards in the parking lot to talk about it and opened her heart to us.

You see, she has a strong background in corporate America. Truly impressive. She was sharp, professional, organized, and had the demeanor and polish that clearly took her to where she was today. What we didn’t communicate up front was that we care more about heart, than we do presentation.

You get so concerned in an interview thinking about “what should I be saying”, “what do they want to hear”, “What can’t I say”? It’s just a tough one all around.

So in the parking lot afterwards, she explained to us. In corporate America, when you interview, you can’t always tell people about your personal dreams. You can’t tell the office manager you interview with that all you really want is their job. You can’t tell the CEO you are about to support that your dream is really to start a beauty salon.

We care about your dreams

So what’s our deal? Basically, Peter & I are pretty darn serious about our dreams. In our business plan is our core life philosophy: that a great life is having success in 5 areas -family, finance, faith, friends and fitness. We chase our dreams with zest and our business is a vehicle that takes us there. We know the dreams of each person on our team and we all honestly believe that by working together we can all get there. That’s why we are so passionate and so tight.

When we interview, I want to know your dream for one simple reason. If we sit down together, talk about the future and conclude that by working as a team you can get closer to what you want from life, then you will bring a level of enthusiasm and passion to the endeavor that matches ours. And it will be a great journey. And if we cannot help you get there, then you should find someone who can.

Nothing is more frustrating than to work hard and make a pile of money, only to lose it in a law suit or to the IRS. There are core people to each and every business team. Few are more important than your accountant and your lawyer. Having been through the selection process a few times, I figured it would be worth sharing some of the wisdom we have gained.

I found an article on my final web search for a small detail while writing this post. Reading it a few times, I was incredibly stoked on Matt’s narrative. This is a great piece on the topic of getting an accountant for web based contractors, check it out: Accountant Showdown 2007.

The 5 Keys to Finding the Right CPA

1. Reputation

Good news travels quickly. Bad news is currently the only man-made invention that can break the time barrier. When considering an accountant, ask other business owners, lawyers and even your local IRS agent who they would recommend. The fact is, ask enough people and you will usually end up with a few good choices. We found our lawyer this way. We asked around town and all four of the people we asked referred the same woman. No contest. And they were right, she has been a true asset to our company.

Once you have a list to work from, let the interviews begin. Don’t be afraid to take their time. If they aren’t willing to talk to you now, they probably will never give you the time you need in the future.

2. Communication

Your accountant should never be the lone gunman. They are part of a team. They protect your assets and help you gain the knowledge you need to make smart business decisions. If you don’t understand what they are doing, and they can’t explain it to you, run like hell. There is no easier way to get yourself in a whole lot of trouble than to allow someone to play with your money without supervision.

Start by finding an accountant who has the people skills to match your level of understanding. If you have virtually no bookkeeping experience, make sure they can explain to you what they are doing in layman’s terms. Even better, find someone willing to teach you a little as you work together over time.

3. Guidance

An accountant is different from a bookkeeper. Your accountant should offer much more than just pushing your numbers around into new formations. They will help guide your business from a financial perspective. Tax planning, how much you can pay yourself, how to handle contractors vs. employees, and a lot more. Pay the money for their advice, it’s usually worth it.

When interviewing accountants, ask their perspective on business topics relevant to your industry. Ask if they have worked with freelancers before. Make sure they are familiar with the common perils and follies of your business type. Make sure they are familiar with the tax laws that will impact you.

4. Availability

Make sure you can talk to them when you need to. If you have to wait a week each time you have a question, it will directly affect the performance of your business. Ask what their turnaround time is after a phone call. How quickly can they usually fit you in for a face-to-face meeting? How prompt are they with email?

Our current accountant is phenomenal in all aspects except this one. He’s tough to get ahold of and it frustrates me. Frankly, it will probably be the death of our working relationship some day. For the time being though, he provides solid guidance and has been there each and every time we’ve needed him.

5. Protection

One of the major roles a CPA will play is to guide you in the situation of an IRS audit. Find out the level of experience your accountant has in working with the IRS. This is very important, as I’m told that the audit process is often grueling and expensive. Our current accountant was an auditor for the IRS for over a decade.

50 Questions to Ask while Interviewing an Accountant

1. What licenses do you have?
2. How long have you been in accounting?
3. How long have you run your own accounting business?
4. Who are your other clients?
5. How do you calculate your fees?
6. Do you have any specialties?
7. Do you have experience with freelance independent contractors?
8. How many accountants are in the firm?
9. Have you ever been convicted of a crime?
10. Can I see the results of your accounting firm’s peer review report? (normally done every three years)
11. Do you consider yourself to be tech-savvy?
12. Are you active in the local business community?
13. Do you outsource any of your work? Do you perform the work personally? If not, what is the review process?
14. Will the person I deal with change? Will I get a regular person to discuss my finances with?
15. Are your services standardized (packages) or do you offer customized services based upon my business needs?
16. Can you help me with 1099s & dealing with subcontractors?
17. Can you help me set up a good balance sheet and income statement?
18. How do you feel about teaching your clients about finance?
19. What was the last accounting workshop you attended about? How often do you attend continuing education?
20. Can I write off my new iphone? (probably) How about my business suit? (only if it qualifies as a uniform – has to have branding etc…)
21. How long from when I call can I usually get an appointment to see you in person?
22. Can I call you when I have a question? Do you answer questions by email?
23. Do you have the knowledge and experience to handle my tax situation?
24. Have you ever worked with a home-based business?
25. What new changes in the tax laws will affect me this year?
26. What type of retirement accounts are available to me? How would you recommend I use them to my advantage?
27. How will you help me maximize my tax savings? How do you double-check that?
28. How long, approximately, will it take to finish my taxes?
29. Who is your target client?
30. What do you love most about what you do?
31. What’s your privacy policy? Will you share my information with any third-parties?
32. Based on your experience, what form of business structure should I have?
33. What do you think of turbo tax?
34. What makes a good accountant in your opinion?
35. Do you know how to use ________ (your preferred accounting software)? In your opinion, is this the right software for my business? Why?
36. What happens if I get audited?
37. Have you ever been the accountant to someone being audited?
38. Do you personally know the local IRS auditors?
39. What are some of the common problems you’ve worked through with other companies in my business industry?
40. What specific deductions apply to me (childcare tax credits, educational credits…)?
41. Have you ever worked directly with a client’s financial planner? What issues did that cause, if any?
42. What are some of the things I need to be aware of as my business grows?
43. How does your firm handle setting up and guiding me through estimated tax payment?
44. What is the difference between a good accountant and a bad accountant?
45. Do you do your own accounting?
46. Without giving specific personal details, what is one of the biggest messes you have encountered and how were you able to help?
47. Do you provide bookkeeping? Payroll? What other services do you offer?
48. What records should I keep and how do you recommend I organize them?
49. Why should I use you?
50. Is there a question I should have asked that I didn’t?

So there you go. What other questions have you asked? What do you like best about your accountant? What should we avoid?