I've been preoccupied with marketing recently (more in another post yet to come), and one of the sites I've happened across is
IttyBiz by Naomi Dunford. A good read, and highly recommended. Her entry from yesterday,
Bikini or Thong: My Response To The Challenge pointed me to
Shane and Peter's Interviewing You: the Entrepreneur. Now, I've only been reading Naomi's blog for a week or so, and just looked at what Shane and Peter are doing for the first time yesterday, and they certainly don't know me, but what the hell, I'll answer the interview on the off chance someone, somewhere (Hi Mom) cares.
What’s your personal mission statement?
I don't have one, because I don't really believe in them. Call me jaded by spending most of the late 80's and early 90's in Big Corporate America. BPR, TQM, XYZ, PDQ, pretty much made me think all those things were worthless piles of steaming horse puckey.
What’s the biggest mess you’ve dealt with this year?
A very good friend of mine, a mentor from my earliest years and the guy who convinced me to get out of Big Corporate America, once said "This is not a problem, this is an opportunity to excel." Ok, he didn't say it once, he said it all the time, because one constant in Big Corporate America is the
problems opportunities to excel.
So I don't really see things as big messes. Not to say we haven't had several opportunities. But even those did, despite the temporary pain, provide a benefit. One client, earlier this year, gave us an insane deadline (which moved up a full week without any real notice), a crazy number of deliverables, and almost no source materials to work with until the night before they absolutely had to be on line. But we made several very good friends, learned a whole lot about our own capabilities, and several doors opened up. So on balance, it was a fine mess, if you take my meaning.
What current entrepreneurial efforts consume your time?
Marketing. Did I mention that already?
Why do you do what you do? What inspires you? When do you get most excited?
My favorite quote:
"The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well." - Horace Walpole
If I'm going to do something, I'm going to
DO it. Go Big, or Go Home. I'm into whatever I'm doing with everything I've got. Until half-an-hour later, when my ADD kicks in and I'm really into something else. These are the "well." My kids and their education is the "profoundly."
Boxers or Briefs? or as Naomi says, Bikini or Thong, duh?!?
Maybe the most important question on this survey. No, I'm not kidding. On the face of it, this question amounts to nothing more than petty voyeurism. I mean, who REALLY cares? Are you going to look at the web site my company built for you any differently if you know the answer to this?
But it does speak to our culture, and an issue raised early in the Internet era, during the heady days of 9600 bps dial-up and CompuServe. The trend spotted then was that even though we (individuals) were all becoming more connected via electronic media (e-mail was just taking off, forums were
it, usenet was widely.. um... used), we seem, sociologically, more distant from one another than ever. Pundits pontificated on the collapse of the social order and all kinds of other disasters. Of course, it didn't come to much (yet... I'm not giving up the bomb shelter). But now look around you. We all have 30,004 "friends" in our FaceBook and MySpace accounts, we're LinkedIn to 1,257,498 other people and yet when you walk down the street, nobody says "hi" because we're all listening to our iPods. I HATE iPods, not in and of themselves, cuz they're pretty cool, but because they provide yet another way for us to isolate ourselves from one another. Don't even mention those damned "Self-Checkout" lines at the supermarket.
We reach out electronically, via the ever-expanding IP network, because we can't or won't do so in person. I find this discouraging. Yes, it's very cool to converse with a fellow developer 12 time zones away via e-mail and IM or a FaceBook app, but I'm much happier if I'm sitting in a little Wine-and-Cheese shop, sipping and gnashing, talking about Important Things with people I just met through a friend-of-a-friend's-cousin's-older-brother's-sister-in-law.
But that's just me.
What do you do when you’re not [designing | programming | managing | writing | toiling for the wo/man]?
Usually, I'm thinking about what I was doing when I was programming/managing/writing/toiling. But in addtion, I'm:
- Fixing my 58-year-old house up. Been there seven years; Still unpacking.
- Playing with my three kids, two dogs and two cats. I may have a wife, too, but I have a hard time remembering.
- Yelling at my three kids, two dogs and two cats. Holy crap, can they get into stuff. I mean, REALLY.
- Cooking. Love it, love it, love it. Next business venture: a restaurant. When I have lots of spare cash to flush.
What one thing made the biggest difference when getting started?
I started my first "real" business (registered with the state, tax ID, the whole 9) when I was 18. So I was too young to really know how hard it was going to be, and by the same token, too young to CARE how hard it was going to be. Having started my fifth business (depending on how you count 'em) at the age of 39, I can tell you that energy makes a HELL of a difference.
What’s your exit strategy?
My two business partners are 15 years younger than me, so ideally I'll have them trained up and able to run this beast without my day-to-day involvement by the time I'm ready to step back. I'll likely never step down, unless they lynch me. Could happen.
What is the last thing that made you belly laugh?
Belly Laugh, eh? It was something my younger daughter, Renee, said yesterday. She's like that. I'm not going to share, though, cuz she's 7 and some of what she comes up with should be kept behind closed doors, lest you think I'm a really bad parent. Of course, parents will know better, but I'm still not sharing.
Have you ever been in business before?
Have I ever NOT? There's a running joke in the Esposito family. When a new woman comes around and looks likely to stay, the other women (aunts, sisters-in-law, etc) tell her "Get a good job, honey, because Esposito men don't work." I can count on one hand my male relatives with 9-to-5-ers. We are all self-employed, some more successfully than others, to be sure, but "Entrepreneur" seems to be written in our DNA.
At what point do you consider yourself successful?
Right here, right now. I'm doing what I love to do, building a business out of nothing. I am reasonably healthy. I have a wife I don't hate, and who at least gives me the impression that she doesn't hate me. I have kids who are showing signs they may not become drains on our already straining society. What more do I need?
Oh, well, that nice new Ferrari 430 Spyder. I'll never get that one past my wife.
What was your first experience with a computer?
Probably around 1980, but not really sure, a friend had a Bally Game System with a BASIC programming cartridge. Had to enter everything on a 12-key NUMERIC keypad (no, really, I wouldn't make this up), into 2K (yes, 2048 bytes) of RAM. From there, I built a 4-bit micro from a kit, then on to an Apple ][+. Oh, and I did some IBM mainframe coding in there somewhere, too, in FORTRAN and COBOL. Told you I was old.
Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates in a jello wrestling match, where’s your money?
I'm going with Jobs, because he really know how to be slippery. Jello is his natural environment. Flavoring is just a bonus.
Where do you do your best thinking?
I tend to go to bed with problems on my mind, and wake up with solutions. Sometimes at 3am. My wife long ago developed an immunity to me getting up with a start at crazy hours, rushing to the computer, hacking out some quick code, or some clever bit of prose, or whatever, and coming back to bed 30 minutes later.
What does your average daily work / life balance look like? How much time do you work, play and sleep?
My wife is a firefighter/paramedic, so I don't have "average." She works 24-hour shifts, followed by 48 hours at home. So, I work at the office two days, then spend one at home, working from home in the morning, and doing my best Michael Keaton in the afternoon when the kids get back from school. On the day Aud's at work, I send the kids off to school, laptop it up from 8:30 until 3:00, then homework, horsing around, dinner, TV for 1 hour if we're lucky and well behaved, and didn't have to wedge orthodontia, piano, soccer, baseball, tennis, et cetera in there somewhere. Next morning, I get the kids off and then hike it to the train downtown (Chicago). Home between 6 and 7 most of the time. Day after than, she does the kids thing, while I get up early and hit the 6:51 train to get me to my office by 8:00, work until about 5, home about 6. Except days when we have a Chamber of Commerce meeting, a networking event, or a vaguely-business-related-excuse-to-drink-while-writing-it-off party to attend.
Weekends are another story.
If I could introduce you to anyone, who would it be?
I'm fascinated by rare talent. Sports figures are the most obvious, so Michael Schumacher, Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan make the list. But people who've done rare things in business abound too. Peter Drucker would have been nice. Carnegie. In the non-dead category, I'd say Steve Jobs (if he'd take my calls after the Jello comments), Bill Gates (as much as I hate to admit that), and Howard Shultz.
What stops you from giving up when you are frustrated?
The opportunity to excel.
If Chuck Norris and Steven Hawking had a baby (hey it’s my damn interview), would you vote for her for president?
Given that she's running currently, I don't want to comment on my inclination or disinclination to vote for Hillary.
And now for my question...
I really don't have one. Sorry, I plead lame.
