Scott Barstow

The Network Made Me Do It

A good friend posted an article on Facebook the other day about the network effect on extremism in modern life.  The author, Bill Davidow, is a veteran of business and studying the market.  

First, let me say that I agree with the premise of this article in that the network produces positive effect more rapidly than at any other time in human history.  We see this in the examples provided by the author, whether in wild market swings or the liberation of countries in the Middle East.  

However, I disagree with most all of the conclusions presented in the article.  

Davidow says “The Internet can be a powerful vehicle for creating thought silos. Most of us tend to read material that supports our opinions. Liberals usually listen to NPR. Conservatives get their news from the Fox network. “

Davidow seems to be saying that the network is making us more myopic.  I don’t believe this to be true.  While I can, if I desire, find all manner of information and commentary to support my viewpoints, I can also more easily find a wealth of competing or divergent opinions at lower cost than at any other time.  The network is not the cause of the myopia.  The cause is ignorance.

Davidow also seems to blame the mortgage and economy issues on the network.  It seems to me that the cause of the mortgage meltdown was unchecked greed, not the fact that there was a network upon which to facilitate it.  With no real threat of jail time or even loss of money, those that facilitated the housing bubble walked away not only unscathed but hundreds of millions of dollars richer.

Lastly, the thing that really set me off was the network being blamed for income inequality.  He goes on to make the tired point that the cause of job loss in the US is companies being able to manage work around the globe as if it were next door.  The flagship example of this account is the Chinese factory worker making $300 a month.  I simply don’t understand this point of view.  Why are we lamenting the loss of low-paying, low-skill jobs, and not welcoming a new era of higher paying, higher-skill jobs?  Could it be that we are simply behind with our education and job training?  The rest of the world is running past us while we sit and suck our collective thumb about losing jobs putting rivets on cars.  

I would think we would be excited about someone in India or China being able to afford an iPhone or something else made in the US.  A rising tide generally floats all boats.  Furthermore, the global marketplace is about finding the best talent.  It is not about finding the best talent that has a US passport.

I can imagine that previous generations similarly lamented the advance of innovation.  I bet people hated the telephone because less people went outside and talked to their neighbor on the sidewalk.  I bet people thought the world was ending when we built railroads or the interstate highway system.  

It turns out that humans as a species evolve as innovation evolves.  In 100 years, there will be the next crisis like Davidow sees now, and the internet will just be that thing that people got all worked up about in the 2000’s.

Question:  Do you agree with Davidow?  Is the network having more adverse affects than we realize?

The Triumph of Good - Remembering 9/11

Yesterday, September 11, was a witches brew of emotion for me.  I was up early, playing tennis with my daughter as the sun came up.  It’s one of my great pleasures in life, being out early and just enjoying her company.  She went to play a tournament match an hour later and lost, ending a pretty good weekend for her.

I listened to the radio broadcast on NPR of the various ceremonies at the sites as I drove to and from church later in the morning.  The singing of the national anthem by the Brooklyn Youth Choir was amazing.  If you didn’t get a chance to hear it, you can listen to them it here.  Listening to the families read the names of their lost relatives was almost too much.

When I returned home from church, I saw an amazing story on CNN of the water brigade of 9/11.  In the space of nine hours, all manner of boats moved over half a million people off of the south end of Manhattan.  It was the largest evacuation by water in world history, larger than the evacuation of Dunkirk in WW II.  It was completely unplanned and ad hoc.  It was carried out primarily by volunteer boaters and tugboat drivers who were no more sure of what was going to happen next than anyone else.  They risked their own lives throughout the day to ensure others would live.  There were stories of people jumping from the piers as boats were leaving and catching the rail, barely able to pull themselves onto the boat.  

Last night I saw a 60 Minutes interview with Ali Soufan, an FBI agent in charge of interrogating some of the early captives in the manhunt for Al Qaeda.  He has a book coming out today that I intend to read.  I also heard an interview with Lauren Manning, who was burned severely over 80% of her body on that day but has lived to tell an amazing story. Her book is another that is going on the list to read.

Like anyone else old enough, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing on 9/11/2001.  We saved the newspaper from the next morning, and we come across it periodically when we are moving things in the house.  I always stop to read it and look at the pictures.  

There is a lot of talk about how we are winning the war on terror.  As Dan Carlin has talked about, I am not so sure we have won anything in the last ten years.  We have lost thousands more American lives in protracted wars that have no end in sight.  We have lost freedoms at home.  Our government is over its head in debt, due in no small part to fighting two or three wars at a time.  

You know what, though?  I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.  We may be royally screwed up right now, but after taking in the events of yesterday I am convinced that we will be back.

What was your most memorable moment from yesterday’s ceremonies?

Why?

Why do you live where you live?

Why do you work where you work?

Why did you marry the person you married?

Why haven’t you done that thing you have talked about doing for so long?

I get stuck in ruts just like everyone else.  Every now and then I am reminded to pull my head out of (my butt) the sand and take a look around and ask the hard questions.  Most of the time I don’t like the answers.  

I get inspired by people like David Morken, who has consistently taken on the hard challenges (Ironman Triathlon, Wasatch 100, and now swimming the English Channel) to keep pushing themselves to get better every day.

This is a poke for you to do the same.  Live life on purpose.  

Specialized vs. Pigeon-Holed

There is a big difference between being specialized and being pigeon-holed.  

Specialized has a positive connotation.  You are so good at the thing that you do that people seek you out for that thing.  Reputation and (potentially) financial rewards follow you because of your speciality.  When I think of specialists, I think of people like Gary Vaynerchuk or Eric Ries.  They show up and everyone sits up and pays attention.  Specialists CAN do lots of things, but they CHOOSE to do one or a few things and do them really well.

Pigeon-holed is another kettle of fish.  When people think of you, they say in their mind “She does X really well, but not much else” or “He’s the web guy.”  You might get to move up the ladder in the area you are in, but until you have shown you can do something else, it will just be more of the same.

I was at a meeting last week with a guy who made the trip with only his phone.  I typically carry my computer and whatever else I might need to fend off the dragons.  This guy has moved way up the specialization food chain.  If you believe, as I do, that we are becoming a more specialized workforce, then every decision is first “Is this in my sweet spot?  Will this help me get better at the thing I am specializing in?”  The answer out of necessity might be no, but the more you can answer yes, the better.

Are you becoming specialized or pigeon-holed?  One or the other is happening, so start paying attention.

Know Thyself

The further along I get in my venture, the more I realize how important knowing what I am good at (and as importantly what I am not good at) is.  I have a tendency to think I can and should take on anything that comes across my path if it’s an opportunity to make money.  

What I am finding each day is that saying no to things I am no good at is liberating, both in time and mental energy.  It’s not only altered the consulting gigs I work on, but also my focus for the products my company is creating.  

There are a lot of ways to find out what you are built to do.  I took the Kolbe A test a while back and it really helped me to refine what I am gifted in, and what I should stay away from. It’s about $50, and well worth it. 

If you are not doing the work you are meant to do, the passion simply won’t be there.  The closer you get to it, the better it gets.

Are you doing the work you were cut out to do?  

What Matters

Every now and again you get a swift kick in the side of the head about what matters.

I have had a running gun battle with a guy at one of my clients for the last six months or more.  The battles have been ideological, practical, theoretical, and every other kind of cal.  We just don’t see the world the same way.  And I have taken it personally at times.  Recently however, I have made it a point to see things a bit more from his point of view, and (I think) he from mine.  The relationship has softened a bit.

Yesterday this same guy had 3/4 of his liver removed to try and stave the legion of cancer from advancing.  He has a wife and kids, and is just a bit older than me.  I don’t pretend to understand what he is going through right now.  

It’s easy to get wrapped around the axle about things that don’t matter (really).  Here’s hoping for a successful recovery for him, so that we can duke it out once again!

Surviving and Thriving

When we moved into our house, we found a great builder here in Raleigh to do some work on our house.  He was (and is) a true craftsman.  The work he did was first rate, and at the time he had all the work he could do.  Then 2008 hit.

I just saw him again yesterday because we need to do some small cabinet work in our kitchen.  I asked him if he was still in the building business and he said “Nah, I do small jobs like this here and there, but I am actually buying and selling auction cars now.  I work at a shop that buys cars at auction fixes them up and sells them.”

If you knew Tim, you would understand he is the kind of guy that can do just about anything, and will do just about anything.  But to go from building houses to reinventing himself as a guy in the car market?  That’s a pretty amazing transition.  I get the feeling he would rather be stabbed than work for someone else again, so he did what he had to do to get smart on something else and now makes (I imagine) a good living in the car business.  

What made the story even better is that he wasn’t grudgingly telling me about what he was doing now, and yearning for the good old days of building homes.  He was genuinely excited about his new work, and was effusive about how he had learned this new business.

Stories like this remind me that 95% of life is about showing up, digging in, and being unwilling to quit.

Are You Where You Live?

I was in a meeting today where there was a lively discussion about vendor selection.  One of the participants quoted someone ( and I wish I could remember who now! ), basically saying that the future of the next generation will largely be determined by where you call home.  Later in that same call, there was a reference made to a potential vendor wherein it was said “They are in Virginia, and when I hear Virginia I think established.”

This is a pretty interesting question to think about.  One of the promises of the Internet is we like to tout is “It doesn’t matter where you live!”  However, I am not sure that is really true.  There are definite cultural biases that play into how you are perceived based on where you live (even if you are not from there originally).  For instance, living in the South for the last few years, there are those here that will not work with people from the Northeast because they don’t trust them.  And I know personally (having grown up there) that people from the Northeast think southerners are ignorant, backwoods hicks.  Incidentally, neither of these stereotypes are true in my experience, but perception is reality in many cases.

That’s interesting, but what is more interesting to me is that I think this question is not so much about biases, but about opportunity.  If you live in Boston or New York or LA or obviously the Valley, there is simply more going on.  There are more people that are going to be like you or have the same interests or have the same passions.  You have a better chance to find new opportunities and meet new people and do interesting things.  You pay a price for it, but I think the advantage is real.

My wife and I have thought about moving, not necessarily for this reason explicitly, but I think certainly implicitly.  Being a part of this conversation today brought all of my thinking of the last few months into sharper focus.  I like it when I get the “aha!” moment in an unexpected place.

The counter to this argument is someone like Tim Ferriss or Chris Guillebeau.  These guys would be who they are, regardless of where they are.  Maybe it’s not a question of where you live, but what you want to become and how that should drive where you live.

Are we a product of where we live?  Or do we make our own reality regardless of where we live?  What do you think?

To Finish

I read a quote a few weeks back by Bob Cringley, one of my favorite people.  Because he is a successful author, he gets a lot of people telling him about how they want to write a book.  His observation was interesting.  He said “Everyone thinks they want to write a book.  What they really mean is that they want to have written a book.”

I would imagine the same kind of logic can be applied to starting your own company, or striking out on a path less traveled.  It’s easy to talk about how you want to do this or that, if you only had the time or if it was just the right time.  What is significantly more difficult is to actually follow through, to do it.  To take the leap.

Even harder still is to complete something.  To finish.  

Everything you thought you knew will be questioned and put to the test.  The temptation to run screaming back to what you know is safe ground is overwhelming.  The voices telling you how much of an idiot you are get louder every day.

The question is not “Do you want to start?”  The real question, as I am finding every day, is “How badly do you want to finish?”