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?

As many of you know, we run a banking community site called Banktastic.com and have for a little over a year now. It has been a fun experience. Very difficult to predict, at times, but very fun nevertheless and our community is great. Over the past few months I felt like, despite our community growing steadily, that it was beginning to feel a bit like a 13 year old boy as the community was trying to figure out what it was all about and what it wanted to be. I debated whether to step back and let the community define itself but the less we got out of the way the more the community was not sure how to proceed. So I decided that we needed to, like Madonna, redefine (or perhaps just define) ourselves a bit. I didn’t know how or what it should be at first but figured it would present itself.

And sure enough, it did…

I was watching a documentary on Ralph Nader (via Netflix through my Xbox 360 which is awesome btw) and although I don’t agree with all his views I was impressed by the man and his ability to push things through just as a private citizen. That’s right, he never held any political office and did things like help establish rules for seat belts in all vehicles, the freedom of information act, and clean air act. He inspired me to think big and find themes that could get resolved in what we’re doing. After a bit of brainstorming I came up with three major themes that even though they could work independently would be even more powerful as a whole. Transparency, Innovation, and Education. TIE.

These three principles will be at the crux of everything we do moving forward (as a community and as a company). We want to find those that are being TIE and tell everyone their stories. We hope by sharing their stories it will inspires other to do the same. It feels so good to have something so clear to look for and work towards to me. It’s just refreshing. We just released the news (video below) about the TIE principles at the beginning of the week and will be subtly making changes to Banktastic to accommodate this vision. I would love to learn about how you found your purpose too so please comment below. Thanks everyone!

At least once a year I like to go through a what I’m calling a ‘State of the company’ review that answers questions as if we are starting this company from anew. It should be noted that what I try to avoid is being generic. Avoiding those scenarios like meaningless, adjective-heavy mission statements and over generalized goals that don’t “walk the walk”. If we don’t take these values with us and live and breathe them, what’s the point? And beyond all that, I want a company that stands for something. It is a wonderful exercise that brings what we do back to its roots and I’d like to share with you guys what I’ve been working on.

What kind of company do you want to build?

Our company is expanding in both services and people. We are getting into software development now and want to provide the same high level of software services as consulting services do today. If we look at everything we do (technology audits, risk assessments, security testing, community platforms) all of these services common denominator is rooted in education. Our services provide more of a coaching experience than the judging people or organizations. So our vision/mantra/belief is all tied together in the phrase,

“Service through education.”

It’s short and sweet but with meaning. Everything we do ties back to this mantra.

What are our shared goals that everyone in the company exudes?

Next step is establishing through every single person in our company what we belief in. I see this as a ‘sales-side’ of the company. Not from the getting deals standpoint but from the ‘this is how we’re built’ standpoint. To say it in another way, it’s our Commandments.

• Quality service regardless of client - We treat everyone, regardless of size of organization, the same way.


• ‘Our word’ should mean something - Many people today don’t let a handshake or a verbal promise be a commitment to something, we do.


• Honest but realistic - We want to shoot people straight but also temper it with realistic expectations due to their situation.


• Give openly - We want to better this world so giving openly will always open more doors than close them.


• It’s not what ‘I’ accomplish, it what ‘we’ accomplish - We know this isn’t all about us, this is about the success of our clients and their customers.


• Success is defined by happiness, not $$$ - I’m most proud of this one. We define success based off of our clients and employees happiness, not by the size of the paychecks. This is why ROWE thinking excites me so!

I’m in the middle of this exercise and have started at the company level and I’m now working on the business levels and then down to the product level (then lastly, people level). Each level down gets easier due to the foundation the previous level left before it. I’d would LOVE to hear your feedback to this and how you are helping your company become a world class organization.

I was talking with someone that works for me the other day and they asked me how to handle a particular situation with a client of ours. I knew how we should handle the situation but I wanted them to take the reins so in the event this happened again, they didn’t have to come to me. So when I told them that they could handle the situation they responded with, “Nice job of delegating, Brad.” and what surprised me was my feeling was actually of guilt as if I did something wrong. Now I don’t think that was their intent of making me guilt but why did I feel that?

Were they right? Should I have just handled it?

Delegation, in this sense, is defined by Dictionary.com as: “authorizing subordinates to make certain decisions.”

Delegating responsibilities is something that we are working on as a company. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we just returned from a company retreat and during the retreat we discussed how there were a lot of ‘Ask Brad’ questions that occur in our day to day operations. This was actually slowing down productivity and process since they had to make an extra step to get to me before proceeding forward. I totally agreed for this need to change because I want our people to make decisions with confidence and not fear what ‘the boss’ might say.

Delegation is about empowerment. To be a successful entrepreneur and to grow a business you have to know when to take control and when to delegate. There are many times I’d like to do more of the fun things but know that if I did, I wouldn’t get any of the other things I need to complete. Also, the statement that Michael Gerber mentions in the ‘E-Myth’ book is always looping in my head. “Your goal is not to be working IN the business, its working ON the business.” I couldn’t agree more. If you spend most of your time handling the small things your time will fill up with that and you can’t focus on more of the big things.

So I definitely don’t think delegation is laziness and as your business grows you need to do more and more of it. The benefits are in multiples. You not only remove responsibility on you but you empower your people to do the job for you. And you know what, they probably do a better job of it than you do anyway!

Today we announced the private release of our new niche banking-specific community site, Banktastic.com. We are definitely excited about it and understand that building any site like this will be a long and hard road. We hope our dedication to keeping our content specific and relevant to the industry helps build the site as a credible source for the industry.

With that being said, releasing new web apps has got to be the most anti-climatic experience ever. Once we finally sent out the invites to the beta users we just sat there and were like, “OK, what now?” Heheh…we didn’t expect 1000s of users to flood the system but come on, we worked hard to get here, we need some fanfare!

Instead, we went home, spent some time with our significant others and called it a day. I know we have a ton of work left to do and are NO WAY close to done but just thought I’d share my experience. Any developers out there experience the same thing?