brad garland

This blog title sounded like the beginning of a joke (Three guys walk into a bar…) but what I really wanted to talk about was the definition of the entrepreneur. The word ‘entrepreneur’ is defined as: 

one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise

I can appreciate that but my definition is beginning to bend slightly.  I believe a entrepreneur is someone that isn’t just geared towards business or enterprise but instead assumes the risks of going against their norm, the traditional, or someone that is moving towards their passions. Better defined as a rebel perhaps? Maybe “Passionpreneur”?

For example, I’ve really try to promote entrepreneurial thinking in my business.  Internally to creatively solve problem that we have but also in the hopes that someday my staff will move towards their own passions and become more than just an employee. I originally thought that meant in the ‘traditional business’ definition of entrepreneurs but I’m starting to see something else happen. Here’s just three examples: 

1) Court - One of my oldest friends chooses to quit his good paying job with us to focus his time in seminary to become a biblical counselor.

2) Dave - Has redefined his view of the American dream, sold his home, and is running for State House of Representative in Minnesota.

3) Drew - Has started an outsourced server management company, RoundHouse, to make the system administration a breeze no matter your host.

Three incredible stories, right? Three guys that are doing what they love and even though it doesn’t fit in the normal definition of entrepreneur I believe it’s just as valid a way to define it. I say this not to pat myself or our company on the back but to open a discussion of perhaps a new definition of entrepreneur. What do you think? Is the definition of entrepreneur changing in your eyes, too?

In the past, I have tested the idea of only checking emails twice per day and did it with a fair bit of success.  I have lazily gotten away from that but I just spent a better part of two weeks on vacation and have purposely stayed away from my email and wondered how many emails were actually actionable when I got back. Here’s what I found out.

I have two main email accounts (Personal & Work) with the vast majority coming into my Work account.  I broke down my email analysis into three categories of priority:

• All - This includes newsletters, group emails, advertisements and other randomness that isn’t being sent to just me. Mass mailings.
• FYI - Either smaller group or just ‘for-your-information’ emails that did not require a response by me.
• Actionables - These were emails asking specifically for me to respond back to them on when I returned.

Here’s how the numbers came out:

After 14 days and 432 emails I only had 15 emails, from both accounts, that I needed to do anything.  A mere 3.5%.  Now, to me, this says a couple of things:

1. Stop wasting your money/time - What would you rather do?  Spend cumulative 4+ hours per day checking your inbox via your laptop/iPhone/iPad or twice per day at 15-30 minutes per session. 
2. The power of delegation - I’ve been working on delegating tasks to people that work with/for me. The ability to empower those around you to make decisions and not require me to respond is one of the best ways to ‘be a good boss’ for one and reduce the extra emails. This is a topic in itself.
3. Don’t be held captive - I’m going to go back to checking email twice a day with a goal to move to once a week in the future (thank you Tim Ferriss and 4-hour workweek which I read this break!). No brainer here, back to 2x per day for me!

Also, re: newsletters.  I had NO IDEA how many newsletters I had subscribed to.  Since doing this rudimentary analysis I have begun unsubscribing to all newsletters and I’m easily in the 40-50 range.  Its out of control and you don’t even realize how often a newsletter comes in, you quickly delete it and keep that pattern going for years even! NO MORE!

I hope this allows you all to think about your own inboxes and time spent checking them and begin making the adjustments to breaking the shackles of email.

I had lunch yesterday with a business partner (we’ll call him Scott) and we got to discussing our businesses and how they are doing and all that ‘entrepreneurial type’ discussion. He owns a small 6-person audit firm and works mainly in the Texas region. So, in our discussion, I asked him how much he is looking into growing his business this year and he said he’s not. “Huh?!”, I said. He said actually over the past two years he’s been letting clients go. At one point, he had close to 50 clients his firm worked with but realized a couple of things:

1. He wasn’t happy that he was never home.


2. He was not seeing his 3 girls enough.

So, very simply, he decided to just stop growing and get back to a number (around 35 clients) where he could satisfy both those criteria. In the circles I’m in, you often hear and become excited to hear stories of meteoric rises, VC funded companies, and entrepreneurs building a company from nothing to IPO but, to me, this guy is just as much a superstar. It’s the lifestyle entrepreneurs that don’t get enough credit for building businesses just perfectly sized for them. I really respect that mentality. I’m still working on my business plan for my next business but I don’t know, maybe something small and big enough just for me is a good fit.

I’ve always struggled with the ability to capture a moment, a college class, a presentation, a meeting. There is often no pattern, reasoning, or order behind note-taking abilities. Mind mapping, bullet points, verbatim, argh! Anyway, point being, I have always had a hard time trying to find just the right way to take notes. By paper, iPhone, or Laptop.

Paper was always tops for flexibility but not very searchable or sharable. So I conformed to the computer and the closest thing I could find was Evernote. Unstructured text documents and it required the keyboard be used despite my need for more of a ‘mind mapping’ process. But recently, I think I may have found the holy grail (at least for me). It’s called the Pulse SmartPen made by Livescribe. It’s part pen/microphone/camera/storage device that allows it all to come together for me. Watch my demo/review of what I’m talking about but all I can say for now is so far, so good.



Oh, and for those interested in the church sermon and sketchnotes I did today, see below.

Recently, I joined an organization called EO (Entrepreneurs Organization) to be able to connect and relate with entrepreneurs with similar business and personal issues. It’s a great group and they pride themselves, especially the Dallas chapter, on providing the best experience and value for all their events and last night was no exception. The event was held at the Dallas Museum of Arts and the speaker was Ben Zander, who is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. I wished I could have taken pictures but my battery died before I thought about it. His message was so great and I took a lot of way from it. He spoke about ridding ourselves of the ‘downward spiral’ or negativity and staying within the ‘the art of possibility’. I wanted you all to at least experience some of Ben Zander’s greatness and so I’m embedding a video from a recent TED conference. Enjoy!

Had a few people ask how to do a good online demonstration when showing your product off. I’m not talking presentation skills but more the technical details to have it feel and look clean. I told them I’d put together a quick little screencast showing my setup, in a Mac world, on how to do it. So here’s what I do, nothing super complicated but small steps add up to alot!