Scott Barstow

How to Start Simple

You woke up this morning with a great idea, one that will change both your life and the lives of everyone you know.  It’s the next big thing, for sure.  The next question you inevitably have is, “What do I do first?”

If you are a technologist like I am, the tendency is to start building something right away.  The cooler, the better.  People love cool.  I have taken this path at least three times in the last year, all with little or no success.

Instead, consider boiling the problem down to its essence.  What is the simplest path to take to figure out whether your idea makes any sense to anyone else?  There are two examples that come to mind that demonstrate this path as a viable way to determine if your idea is any good.  Eric Ries talked about two of them in his book, The Lean Startup

When Nate Swinmurn started Zappos, he started by taking pictures of shoes in stores and putting them on a simple e-commerce site.  He promised to buy the shoes from the stores if he got any orders in return for permission to use the pictures.  No inventory to buy, and no big budget.  He used the time to figure out his return policies, how to ship, and all sorts of other operational issues.  Once he had the model figured out, then he used investor money to scale it.

Food on the Table is another great example.  Food on the Table helps families plan meals around what is on sale at the grocery stores around their users.  Instead of building a system to do all of the meal planning and shopping list generation, the founders simply used pen and paper with their first few users.  They worked out the kinks in all of the processes, and used pen and paper until they could not keep up with demand.  Then they automated.

Obviously if the solution requires technology up front, then the path must be different.  However, many ideas that you may think require automation and technology out of the gate really don’t.  What you end up doing is wasting both time and money on something that was never the right approach to begin with.  Instead, figure out ways to test your idea using what is at your disposal today.  It will enforce discipline in your thinking and hopefully avoid the waste bin that I have dumped my ideas into.

Question:  What ideas do you have right now that you could start testing with less than a $500 investment?  Why not start on it today?

The Story of Chapman’s Ice Cream

Chapman’s Ice Cream is legendary in Canada.  They are a family-owned and operated business in northern Ontario.  What makes Chapman’s a great story is not the quality of their ice cream (I have never had it), but rather their response to a disaster in September 2009.

On September 4, 2009, their creamery burned to the ground, essentially stopping production for the entire company.  Because of where the company is located, the ripple effect of this could have been disastrous.  Nearly everyone in Markdale, ON works for Chapman’s.  It was the classic story where a small factory town loses the factory, and the town disappears. 

Except that it didn’t.  Chapman’s, through an insurance policy they had been paying on for nearly 40 years, kept every single employee either on their payroll or helped them to subcontract with the companies that were used to resurrect the operations of the company.  Chapman’s contracted with their competitors at times just to keep production moving and keep their people working.

Chapman’s returned to limited operation just seven weeks after the fire, and were back in full production a few months later.  Not only that, but they actually hired more people when they returned to full production than they had employed prior to the fire.

The lesson in this story, that we should all remember, is that the people who work with you and for you are the most valuable asset your company will ever have.  The Chapman family understood this and acted this way for 40 years before it was ever put to the test. 

Question:  What do you do to keep your employees happy and productive?

Google Finally Starts Appealing to Our Emotions

The latest ad from Google is the most compelling ad I have ever seen them create.  I saw it on Sunday.  If you have not watched it, check it out below.  Is it me, or did you feel like you were watching something from Apple?  Really well done, Google.  It makes me want to use your products.  Which, by the way, I already do.

Answering the Question Prematurely

I was at a client site the other day and they were talking about some exciting new initiatives that were getting ready to kick off.  While there was a good bit of excitement around it, there was also frustration with some of the thinking around how to attack these new opportunities.  It seems that there were those who wanted to overload the new stuff with some of the same burdens of the way things had always been done.

There are lots of ways to solve problems.  Many times our experiences shape how we think about the problem, and we draw conclusions because we think we know how the story needs to end.  In my mind, it goes something like this:  I hear someone say “The problem is that I can’t do x”, and I have solved x twenty times in the past five years, so I already go straight to the conclusion.  ”You need y to solve x.  It works every time.”

It’s a tough thing to learn to take a fresh look at the problem each time.  There is generally enough nuance in each situation to make it unique, so the challenge is to have the patience to let the brain do what it does best.  

Our brains are great at churning away at things, and using inputs that are not top of mind to come to the right conclusion.  The issue, at least for me, is opening my mouth before my brain is done.

Question:  What are some ways that you use to interrupt the rush to conclusion?  I would love to hear about them.

A Different Kind of Performance Review

I was reading an article by Premal Shah of Kiva this past week.  The focus of the article was on how to do reviews for the people that work for you.  I thought he had some really good ideas on how to get away from the traditional annual review.

At Kiva, the staff are required to present their latest work regularly to a group of their peers.  If they are working on a particular project or particular part of the world, they stand up and give a presentation to the staff about why they are doing this particular work, and how it’s going.  This review process factors heavily into a staff member’s performance evaluation.

I really like this idea, and when I get to the point where I have employees at Rocket Hangar, I think having something like this would be a great way to make sure I have the right people working with me.  If they don’t feel passionately enough about something to stand up in front of the rest of us and tell us why, then we shouldn’t probably be spending money or energy on it.

Question: If you had to do this at your job, would you feel strongly enough about your work to stand up and defend it in a room full of your peers?

Lessons from the Runway

I was at FashionSpark this past weekend, which is the fashion show associated with SparkCon here in Raleigh.  I was there, not because I know anything about fashion (other than that I don’t know anything about fashion), but to support a friend who was launching a new clothing company called Villette.  There were about fifteen designers that participated, from what I could tell.

What I love about going to events like this is that the designers basically just say “Here it is, world.  I hope you like it.”  The feedback is immediate, either with deafening silence or applause (there was some of both on Friday night).  Every detail matters, from the choice of music to the people modeling the clothing to the pace at which they walk.  It was really interesting to see artists approach the same stage so differently.

It was a really interesting event, and personally I thought Villette stole the show (but I am undoubtedly biased).

Googling Yourself

How often do you Google yourself?  I try to do this at least once a month to find out what is being said about me, or what comes up in the first few results.

It’s the first thing someone else is doing when they hear your name.  Is what people are seeing what you want them to see?  If not, is there anything more important than fixing it?

Along similar lines, updating your profiles on LinkedIn or About.me or Twitter regularly is critical.  I get a ton of hits to this blog on the About page.  The first thing people want to know is “who the heck is this person?”

Make sure it’s the message you want.

Being Ruthless About What You Shouldn’t Do

I have been reading and studying the book End Malaria this week.  It’s a compilation of 62 authors who came together to help, as you might imagine, end malaria in Africa.  For every book that you purchase, $20 is donated to buying mosquito nets.

The first part of the book is about focus, a topic that ironically, I have a hard time focusing on.  The first two writers, Kevin Kelly and Roger Martin, write about a very similar discipline.  Kevin Kelly writes about only doing the work that you are uniquely gifted to do, and Roger Martin writes about “thin slicing”, the practice of working your way into only the work that you are best at. 

Notice that I said working your way “into” the work that you are best at.  In most companies, shedding work that is given to you is seen as lazy or not being a “team player.”  It’s typically seen as working your way “out of” something, rather than “into” something.  

The fact is that you, and I, are horrible at certain things and really good at others.  I am great at starting new things, but generally not great at the tedium of managing those things each day, as an example.  When we do the work we are horrible at, it induces more stress and causes us to waste time and effort.  It’s not something that is in our sweet spot.  When, however, we are in a groove on the thing that makes us tick, we get amazing amounts of work done of amazing quality.

Working yourself into your best work does not mean you get to ignore the other work.  Roger Martin talks of taking almost a year to train the people around him to do the work that is required by his organization, and to do it his way.  It was at that point that he felt good enough about the systems and practices he had put in place to step away from that work.  It was more work up front in return for far, far less work in return.

The temptation we all have is to think we should do everything.  The fact of the matter is, however, we should do only a very small slice and do it unlike anyone else.  That is where we provide the most value.

Question: What are you doing today that would be better done by someone else?  If you had to divest yourself of it immediately, how would you do it?

Serving Two Masters - Will It Work?

I have been running Rocket Hangar for about a year now.  When I started the company, I had two primary goals:  1. Do interesting and valuable work. 2. Don’t go broke 

For #2, I lined up a series of consulting gigs that I still work on to this day, more or less.  Smaller gigs have come and gone, but I continue to have a decent stream of work from those initial clients.  This work has provided funding for me to do #1 without really having to spend much of my personal savings.

For #1, I envisioned jumping into the mobile application space and doing interesting and cool things there.  I built two or three really cool applications, but none of them have had any success commercially.  This wasn’t a surprise.  I expected to stub my toe a few times while I figure the whole thing out.

The tension for me in this whole thing has been determining whether my approach is the right approach.  I have spoken with several people who are very successful starters of companies, and almost all have said that the focus of not having consulting or other work was immeasurable.  On the other hand, I know of others that have used consulting as a way to find what the market needs and then fill it.  I have leaned this way, for sure.  I like having money coming into my company, and after the first six or so months of building things that no one really cared about, this rang more true for me.

The need for clarity around this has become more acute for me recently, as I have started to get a lot more inquiries on the consulting front.  I also have hooked up with a business partner here in Raleigh and we are doing some really great things together with new products.  I am starting to feel the need for help with the work I am doing, but don’t want to take on overhead without something more sustainable than consulting work.

Every day brings a seemingly endless stream of decisions to make.  I will no doubt screw some of this up, but I am loving the process.

Question: What has worked best for you if you were in a similar spot?  I would love to hear from anyone / everyone out there on the best lens to view this through

The Upper Crust Bakery - Fulfilling life-long dreams

There is a new bakery that just opened up here in Raleigh, very close to our house, called The Upper Crust Bakery.  We have made it one of our new favorite places.  This morning I took my daughter there for breakfast, and the food was awesome yet again. 

Everything is made fresh each day, and the decor makes you feel like you are in a Parisian bakery (even though you are in suburban Raleigh).

The best thing about Upper Crust is not the food, however.  It is the story of the owner, Mareia Gregory.  The first time we went in to eat there, I spoke with Mareia’s daughter about how they were doing.  She proceeded to tell me the story of how they had come to open the bakery.  

Mareia was a nurse for 30+ years, but had always dreamed of running her own bakery.  She started planning to retire a few years back, and the family started scheming to open the bakery.  After she retired, the bakery opened with the whole family pitching in.  Mareia is always there (at least in the mornings), working in the back on the delicious treats.  Her husband is usually milling about, fixing stuff or reading the paper.  Her daughter is out front, managing the counter.

I love places like this.  In the world of bland Panera, you really notice when someone takes the time to put their soul into their work.  If you live in Raleigh, I would urge you to try it out as soon as you can.

Our favorites are the orange scones, cinnamon rolls, and breakfast sandwiches.  Apparently the pies are amazing, but I have not tried them yet.