Sean Eby http://seaneby.com A few things posterous.com Wed, 05 May 2010 16:12:00 -0700 Regulate Free Web Services? Let's see why that's wrong, and dumb. http://seaneby.com/regulate-free-web-services-lets-see-why-thats http://seaneby.com/regulate-free-web-services-lets-see-why-thats

It seems Dan Shafer thinks free services on the internet perhaps need some regulation to keep them from potentially leaving some free users out to dry when they change their terms, policies, or service offerings. Here is Dan's post:

 
http://danshafer.posterous.com/do-free-services-have-an-obligation-to-users
 
And here is the full-text of it and why I think his arguments are fundamentally flawed and borderline stupid, perhaps arguably communistic. Decide for yourself, however:
 

Many years ago, when the Internet was pretty new, my wife Carolyn entrusted a couple hundred precious personal photographs to an online sharing service whose name we can no longer remember. Unfortunately, she, in her naivete, did not keep local copies of her photos. Mass storage was relatively expensive and she felt like she had put her photos into the hands of a professional service. What could go wrong?

That's the problem. Your wife's naiveté was to assume her free photo site also doubled as a backup solution. You want to keep your data safe? You have to keep it yourself or replicate it in more than one place (i.e. not just in a single online site, paid OR free). Your wife is complaining about how she didn't receive a free backup solution from a company that wasn't even providing such a solution.

At some point, she went to log in to show someone her photos and she got a 404 error. The site was gone. Dead. No indication of what had happened to it. No warning. Despite my considerable tech prowess and good contacts, I was unable to identify any way to recover her vanished photos. And since the service was free, it's not clear they'd have had any legal obligation to help anyway (though they clearly had a moral obligation to do so). She has understandably never trusted another free service. She isn't even comfortable using Google Docs or Google Calendar.

Right, no indication, no warning, just gone. This can happen, especially if a company goes out of business or gets mis-managed. Entire countries sometimes get massacred from being mis-managed (go check out Iceland's entire financial structure, for example). No way to recover the the files? The service was offered for free? Then the service already paid for itself and doesn't really owe you anything, even morally. They didn't sell themselves as being reliable, or being around forever, or even, unfortunately as a backup service. Once again, that was the main issue here, not the fact that you couldn't get your files back. Who would even expect you should legally (or morally) get them back? It takes cost and effort to provide that recovery, obviously of which that company simply ran out of both. If they've run out of both money and all of their free volunteer time, then it's reasonable to expect that you're not going to get didly-squat back. How about instead of bitching, send them a Thank You card for the service they actually DID provide you and your wife for whatever considerable amount of time they did.

What do you suppose would happen today if, say, Twitter or FaceBook or 
MySpace or LInkedIn suddenly announced the end of their free services. 
If you want to keep your stuff, you have to pay up for a fee-based 
membership. Even assuming they gave us a way to export our stuff so we 
wouldn't lose it, the hue and cry would be deafening.

Well, lots of people would just get off the site. Hopefully, they aren't too big of woe-is-me type people and have backups of their photos (or at least the ones they care about) so that if Facebook/Twitter did start charging, they aren't without any kind of leverage. This is the big, scary world and people actually do live in "real-life" despite what people's MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter profiles might paint a picture of fantasy they have in their heads. Protect yourself.

Well, that's essentially what Ning Networks just did. With a reported 
2.3 million social networkers hosting their sites on Ning's services, 
the company has announced it is pulling the plug on free services -- 
except, apparently, those set up by teachers for their students' use 
-- this summer. Everyone has to start paying a monthly fee that will 
likely be a minimum of $35 or move their network to a different 
service. As wired.com said, "Once again — see Tripod, Imeem, etc. — 
users of a web service have had the rules switched on them once they 
began relying on a service. That’s why it’s important to choose web 
services that offer an easy way to grab your stuff and split — a 
feature commonly known as 'data portability.'" I agree but I think 
Wired.com is letting folks off the hook too easily. Of what value to 
anyone is the collection of their Facebook or Twitter posts absent the 
network of people to whom it was addressed and with whom it was 
shared? It's not about data, it's about relationships and investments 
of time and psyche.

Ning was awfully nice to offer free services for even as long as they did. People should laud them for their efforts in doing so. They've clearly provided as much, if not more, value to their free users than their free users have provided back in terms of free word-of-mouth marketing, identifying bugs and issues, and so on. Let's not be one-sided either: If it's greed you're after, the users using the free service are also greedy and certainly motivated by their greed to report bugs and issues since they want to keep sucking the free blood they're already getting (and keep getting). Most of them are simply not saying good things and reporting issues to Ning out of the goodness of their altruistic hearts. Maybe Dan is just a really, really nice guy.

So Ning can't figure out how to monetize free social networking -- at 
least at a high enough level to satisfy investors -- and consumers end 
up grabbing the short end of a messy stick. This is abysmal behavior 
on Ning's part. I don't care if their rules allowed it and they 
forewarned everyone. It's a stinky way to do business and blackens the 
eyes of all involved, including, unfortunately, one of the Net's 
really Good Guys, Marc Andreessen. The company says it is facing a $4 
billion opportunity, which makes it even slimier to abandon their free 
users, the ones who helped them debug, popularize and extend the 
platform on which a few people will now become wealthy. If the 
opportunity is that huge -- and it might well be -- why couldn't the 
company keep the free networks around and toss them a few grains of 
rice now and then? Why was a total shut-down necessary? There's really 
only one answer: greed.

Whether Ning can figure out how to monetize its service or not, who the hell cares? It's not your problem to solve. And who is to say it's to satisfy their investors? Perhaps they aren't even making enough just to break even (as most venture-funded startups basically burn through cash on losses).

Consumers are not grabbing the short end of the stick. They've received incredibly valuable free services, apparently too much value because it costs more to provide it then the users are giving back to Ning (which is a big fat $0). Users should be glad to receive the free services they did. After all, it was built with real money, even if it was provided from "greedy" venture capitalists.

Once again, if you have services and data you find valuable and are worried about losing by storing them with any 3rd party, paid or free, then perhaps you should be looking into doing personal backups.

Maybe it's time for the FCC and/or FTC and/or other agencies to look 
at providing some form of cushion or insurance for free consumer 
services so that the little guy doesn't get stuck holding the smelly 
bag of crap left behind by the greed mongers yet again.

No. Maybe it's not time the FCC or FTC looked into this issue. If anything, you might as well just say goodbye completely to Free services except for a tiny small handful. Business owners should retain the freedom to change Free plans, at their will, and perhaps even with or without notice, regardless of any implied moral obligation.

The irony here is you're writing this all on a Posterous blog (as am I), for which neither you nor I paid a single dime to use. And you know what? If I don't like Posterous, I can't even apply for a refund. I have to pack up and leave. And what if Posterous just folded up shop tomorrow because they too ran out of venture money and couldn't find a way to get acquired or reach profitability? Guess what, that's just too bad. It's also known as Real Life.

In any case, this sucks.

Quit bitching. Maybe consider first doing some personal backups and shell out some dollars for services you actually consume. At least that way, they're less likely to fold up shop abruptly. Or better yet, if you had a Ning network and it provided real value to you (not just the imaginary "Free" value), shut the hell up and pay for it. 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:14:00 -0700 What I appreciate about scientific study is saying "I don't know." http://seaneby.com/what-i-appreciate-about-scientific-study-is-s http://seaneby.com/what-i-appreciate-about-scientific-study-is-s

Knowing what you don't know and admitting it (as well as recognizing things you don't even know that you don't know) are central tenets in science which help progress go forward in the field. It creates the sense of new challenges and admitting things we haven't yet figured out yet as a human species. We also use "I don't know" when new information may cause previous assumptions or theories to be false until enough new evidence sets a new precedent.

This sort of thinking; admitting one is wrong or not fully knowing, is important to making one's self better and more wholesome. This just isn't true of the behavior of most of the world's popular religions and is an under-appreciated and under-popularized criticism of religion.

Because if a religious leader had to cast doubt or, worse, change their entire stance on what was previously considered fact (perhaps on the basis of it being "in faith") it causes the organization to lose credibility. So, instead of risking the prospect of looking incredulous and untrustworthy, their best bet is to admit that previous history was either misguided or misinterpreted, or worse, attempt to quietly move on and hope no one notices they were actually wrong about something.

What's funny is that it is truly a lot easier (and far more self-effacing) to either say, "I/we don't know the answer (yet)" or even better, "Turns out we were wrong about that." It seems the people most insecure about their beliefs are perhaps also the ones most afraid to admit they don't know the answer or that in fact one of their beliefs (or part of their belief) may in fact be completely false.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Sat, 23 Jan 2010 12:26:27 -0800 Testing Poll Everywhere polls http://seaneby.com/testing-poll-everywhere-polls http://seaneby.com/testing-poll-everywhere-polls
A poll better appear below here:

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:30:19 -0800 Obvious importance doesn't mean most important http://seaneby.com/obvious-importance-doesnt-mean-most-important http://seaneby.com/obvious-importance-doesnt-mean-most-important There is such an incredible emphasis on education and, within education, a huge emphasis on grades, test scores, and reputation/prestige of attended schools. There is not an argument to be made against having better grades, test scores, or attending reputable/prestigious institutions. However, what's often missed, at least in reading material and the media in general, is everything else that actually matters in one's success in life.

For example, school doesn't really teach any true level of structured leadership, management of groups of people, personal (or professional) finance, and certainly no requirements around "innovative" or "creative" thinking (that is, inventing unknown or new solutions to existing problems, however trivial they may be).

Or, at a more granular level, schools/universities definitely do not teach persistence, focus, discipline, relentlessness, charm (charm school?), passion (or lack thereof), curiosity, imagination, visioning or other high-level thinking, like-ability, emotional intelligence, articulating/teaching/persuading/selling others, and even just general interpersonal and relationship management/health.

It's these other dimensions that are all a part of our personalities that don't really get tested, scored, or otherwise "evaluated" when it comes to general academic excellence. It's troubling to me, even tragic, to see parents who are so overly obsessive of their children's academic performance when they pay no particular attention to their child's tendencies when in groups of friends, behaviors at large family events, or even just "getting things done" in a productive manner outside of school.

While not discounting the role and importance of education and raw intelligence, the argument to be made here with this post is that ALL aspects of our personality are in some way instrumental to our success. Each aspect and dimension of our personality has an interplay with one another that will ultimately determine our true success. Meanwhile, why do we pay such little attention to these other dimensions which many are as equally, if not moreso, important than academic success or raw intelligence? Perhaps it is time to evaluate yourself against the things no one else ever measured you by.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:20:13 -0700 On not knowing http://seaneby.com/on-not-knowing http://seaneby.com/on-not-knowing It's been a human anxiety and fear since the dawn of man to accept the fact that we may not know the answers to deep, burning questions about ourselves and our lives. We loathe the fact that we often can't predict the future or that we didn't know about something ahead of time such that we could have averted a catastrophe. At a fundamental level, the "answers" religion brings us are bite-sized, fictional pieces for us to consume to alleviate our anxieties and fears around, for example, death, or the meaning for our existence.

The truth we must face, though, is the dreaded, faceless, race-less reality that stands before us. Not as bystanders but as participants and players and warriors for our own lives. Take ownership of reality, including its extreme unknowns, I-don't-know answers, and surprises. This includes the good things and the terribly awful things too. A friend I knew recently committed suicide: a good, honorable, charismatic, talented person decided to end their own life. It's one of those oh-my-god-how-terrible (and it truly is) where you end up asking yourself why such bad things happen to such good people? The truth is that is bare and desolate: bad things simply do happen to good people. Bad things also happen to bad people. Meanwhile, occasionally great things happen to bad people, too! How dare them!

Reality isn't here to simply serve our needs. Justice isn't designed to merely enforce itself. Morals/rules/laws/social norms *exist* merely because they can be broken (and they do, often). The sooner you accept that realty "just is," the sooner you can take reasonable, rational steps to better yourself and your situation. No one is out there to save you; it's just you and perhaps a few close friends and family members (and for some, it's just themselves alone).

I find so many people want to remain dependent on someone or something (or a "higher power") for salvation, guidance, and what-should-I-do-now? advice. This kind of behavior doesn't serve you! It's a fallacy and a mistake to fallback on those things all the time. It can be helpful to have that support system but after everything is accounted for, the will power and the decision to move forward or do anything must come from within yourself.

This most definitely includes playing the cards that are dealt to you in your life the best that you can and not blame yourself for everything that happens around you. I know I personally have been so fortunate in my life to have amazing things happen, many of which can be credited to good choices I made (along with the help and guidance from people I trust, too!). That said, you can't have that perfect, planned life you think you're always on track to have. You have to adjust to the course shifts and steer things around. For me, this require muscle and effort and brains, not to mention some stress and burnout along the way.

Those shifts in course, surprises and situations that arise (and their accompanying challenges) are indeed what make life interesting, beautiful, and worth living. Rising above from where you are now is a hugely motivating and rewarding thing. No one can help yourself more than... well, yourself. It's OK to not know the answers and it's also OK to admit that you don't know, to yourself and quite often to others around you. It's not necessary to know all the answers all the time or to be up in arms, flailing around, because you don't know what you should do next. Take it one day at a time, peeling the onion of each problem and situation, one layer, one stroke, at a time.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:51:02 -0700 Chicago http://seaneby.com/chicago-246 http://seaneby.com/chicago-246

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Sun, 01 Mar 2009 09:21:02 -0800 UofI TEC Entrepreneurship Forum Audience Questions http://seaneby.com/uofi-tec-entrepreneurship-foru http://seaneby.com/uofi-tec-entrepreneurship-foru

Last week, I was invited to be a part of an entrepreneurship forum at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. During the actual panel session, we used my product, Poll Everywhere, to allow the audience of students to submit questions to the panel during our talk. This is a great use of Poll Everywhere and it worked really well in this instance.

Simple Text Message Voting | Poll Everywhere

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

The panel consumed all of the available time so we didn't quite get to as many of the audience questions as we hoped so I thought I might try to answer a few good ones that didn't get answered. Here we go:

Where do you go for inspiration? Where do you get ideas from?

On one level, ideas seem to come at me, randomly being around the city or driving or visiting with friends or out at a bar. Other ideas also come from reading new and interesting books that I've found or were recommended to me to read. Different environments and experiences also seem to give me new insights and ideas such as traveling through many different countries as I have or visiting new places (museums, national landmarks, small neighborhoods, and on and on). I also like challenging friends on different issues or problems to see if we can construct an answer to a tough problem. I suppose it has been said before but inspiration can come virtually from anywhere.

Team or idea? Which is important? Paul Graham said, you cannot change a team, but you can change an idea anytime.

Well, both are important. I disagree that you can't change a team but it is definitely harder to change a team than it is to change an idea. On the other hand, it's also easier (most of the time) to see whether you have a good team in place than if you have a good idea or not. A good team will eventually be able to figure out what it needs to do or how to transform the wrong idea into something new (and perhaps entirely different). When starting a business with partners or hiring outside employees or contractors for the first time, you absolutely have to think about who those people are with a critical eye.

Do you have someone like a mentor to review your business plan before launching your business?

Certainly advisers to the company and me personally are valuable for feedback on what you're trying to accomplish and how you are going to accomplish it. A business plan is not necessarily a prerequisite to starting a business but having at least something written down about what you are going to attempt to do, how you'll be doing it, who you're doing it for, etc., helps when trying to have meaningful conversations with advisers to get feedback in the first place. Also, remember that just because an adviser or mentor says something is good or bad also doesn't mean that you should or shouldn't do it.

Does team matter? What is the best size for a team?

Team absolutely matters as I said above. Team definitely comes before idea (usually). The best size for a team is not a known number but when starting from scratch, having at least 1 other person involved, either as a co-founder or hired help is probably best. Starting a business from scratch and doing everything yourself with no help is almost impossible (you need other people to help and be a part of what you're doing to succeed).

I've always heard "Starting a business is no time for on the job training." How much experience did you guys start with?

Starting a business is very much on-the-job training, at least in the sense that you will be learning what works and what doesn't in how to build a business around an idea, how customers are really using your products/services, and how the specifics of the business model function. Maybe that saying refers more to if you are building, say, software and have absolutely zero programming experience on your team. That lack of skill is probably going to prevent you from building anything significantly useful. Starting with more experience can definitely be a plus but as was said in the panel, some ignorance about certain things can also be beneficial! I definitely wouldn't look at "how much" experience you have as a barometer to whether you should start a business. There are too many examples of young people with very little experience launching a new business and getting somewhere with it. Would additional experience have helped them? Yea, maybe, but so what and why wait?

What separates you all from unsuccessful entrepreneurs? Luck? Sweat? Brains?

My success is only a small amount so far with my business so I can't claim some major public success as of yet. What separates me from others (I think) is my persistence and focus. Giving up and giving in too quickly or too easily is what kills people's momentum and any significant chances of success. Persistence and focus and maintaining those two things requires an ability to filter out emotions such as fear, trepidation, and feedback from the random person on the street who might say "no" to buying your product/service. Also, not that this is a big differentiator, it helps to simply start getting to work and getting shit done! Don't mull around all week or month *thinking*, start doing it, and do it now.

Start full-time or part-time?

Does not matter much. I started part-time and it worked reasonably well. In fact, having a nice paycheck and moonlighting on the side can be a really great combination for later success, including the ability to balance the two workloads appropriately and not get steamrolled by too much, too fast. With less time to focus on your product/service, it forces you to spend time on the absolute essentials of what is important about what problem you're solving for other people. Get the simplest product/service in place for people to start using and consuming it.

Do you think I should start a company while in school?

Definitely. You're surrounded (hopefully) with a plethora of other smart and bright people who might later want to be a part of what you're doing. It goes back to moonlighting while working a full-time job in that you will be forced to balance the important things against what your responsibilities are while still in school. Starting a company, even if it fails while in school, will also be of value if you decide to later get a job with a regular employer. That's a huge differentiator over other candidates. Come in with a story about what you did, why it didn't work, and the valuable lessons you learned from it.

 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:14:21 -0800 The best and most obvious advice... ever. http://seaneby.com/the-best-and-most-obvious-advi http://seaneby.com/the-best-and-most-obvious-advi The best advice I ever received and ever followed was simple: Save money. Live below your means by eliminating costs and personal belongings and expenses so that you have money left over to save in an account. What you do with the saved money is either let it sit there for a long time (not the wisest thing around) or invest it (a good idea but not all of it, and this sounds like a pretty bad idea had you done this just 18 months ago, right!?). Seriously, though, making sure you have a large stash of cash around for yourself is probably the best thing you might end up doing for yourself. There are thousand-and-one reasons why you will one day need that cash and I can assure you it won't be to help finance a new yacht.

For me, it's what allowed me to start my business and leave my full-time job so I could invest my efforts full-time into the new business. Most new businesses, naturally, don't start making significant revenue or profit for awhile. We're fortunate enough to have started a business that generated some cash practically from day one but still, making the money over time does take patience and discipline. Nevertheless, things would have taken even longer had I not been able to go full-time and I guarantee you that I wouldn't have been able to go full-time had I not saved money.

It's so simple... the concept, that is. Just save a little money and build a stash. Don't touch it, just keep adding to it. Keep most of it in cash and you'll know you're reaching a significant point when you have *at least* 9-12 months of living on the cheap stored in your stash. Some people suggest 3 months, maybe 6 months, but they're usually suggesting that for people who leave their jobs (or are fired or laid off) and need some cushion to find a new job. I'm talking about leaving your job for good and doing something else with your life to make a new living. Trust me, build cash, save it, and then be ready for that day when you'll need it. I promise you, one day you will need it, and you'll be glad you saved that money. Very glad.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:28:46 -0800 The plumber, the doorman, the road construction worker... http://seaneby.com/the-plumber-the-doorman-the-ro http://seaneby.com/the-plumber-the-doorman-the-ro I think that all of us work towards a better life, a better day. One of the ways to do that is to create wealth and one of the ways to create wealth is through technology. Technology, by itself, though, doesn't always automated every task and every obligation that humans require, like, say, plumbing.

The reality is that as we more ahead technologically, there will always be gaps in what we can automate. "Progress" is everything you can define as that which you can accomplish without thinking about it: Technology helps us get there but doesn't always solve the lower level details along the way.

If this is true, we have to accept the fact that some jobs, at least for now, will always require a human to do them. It makes me think twice about college since, technically, if everyone had a college degree (like 100% of the population), wouldn't you then need a master's degree to "get ahead"?

I don't know what this ultimately means... does it mean that we should all be getting degrees? Who is left to mop the floors? If we all get degrees, then are we all super-fantastic? If not, then don't we need Master's and PhD degrees? What happens to society if we then need to be in school for another 3-6 years? Can we assume our lifespans are that much longer?

My social democratic side struggle with relativism while my republican fiscal side thrives. Perhaps the point of human nature, no matter what, is that some people will always suffer and some some people will always thrive, no matter the circumstances.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:03:00 -0800 Predictably Irrational and Better Decision-Making http://seaneby.com/predictably-irrational-and-bet http://seaneby.com/predictably-irrational-and-bet

The relatively new book by Dan Ariely called Predictably Irrational looks like a pretty good read. I have always had a fascination and curiosity with trying to understand how we really think and make decisions. There have been so many times in my own life that I (or observing others) that I have seen strange decision-making. The kind of thing where you scratch your head wondering how someone could reach such an utterly stupid decision. Sometimes it really is because someone is just dumb but that's more rare than you would think. More often, it is a circumstantial fact that you may not be aware of which drove the decision. Other times, it could be one of the traps described in Ariely's book.

Those traps are what interest me in seeing if decisions can really be made better if you become self-aware of your own natural human tendencies to be susceptible to them. Herding is a decent example. From the book outline:

  • Herding: Assuming that something is good (or bad) on the basis of other people's previous behavior

    • Example: People wanting to go to a restaurant where people are waiting outside

    • Example: Going back to Starbucks because you recall enjoying yourself on your previous visit

      • At that point, you no longer ask yourself if you'd be better off with the cheaper coffee at Dunkin Donuts, or with the free coffee at your office


I like this one because it is something we can all identify with. In the first example, we somehow assume that a restaurant with a line outside "must be good." Who can blame us? I mean, clearly if that many people are waiting and the line extends outside, that restaurant must be good, right? Therein lies the predictably irrational behavior because while 8 times out of 10 that may be true, you're wrong 20% of the time. The area the restaurant is in might just be overly busy (nearby sports event at a stadium, maybe?). Perhaps the restaurant is physically just small and it is a Friday or Saturday evening (even if it is not a great restaurant, they're bound to fill up some tables if they don't have many to fill?). Maybe the restaurant actually has slow service (and bad food)? All of these are explanations of why just having a line outside the restaurant doesn't necessarily make it a great restaurant. Therein lies the question: Does noticing our tendency to make these assumptions help us make better decisions? I mean, if you know that the line outside the restaurant is not because it is good but because it is small (and not so good) make you a better decision-maker? In this case, a better decision-maker is one who is able to choose/find good restaurants. Obviously, the solution here is to locate additional facts about the restaurant before going there, in addition to the fact that it may (or may not) have long lines waiting to get in.

Predictably Irrational paints many examples of these situations and I reflect on my own personal experience when reading about these various "irrational" behaviors because I have been guilty of them myself. I just wonder if becoming more self-aware of them ahead of time would make me a markedly better decision-maker.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Sat, 27 Dec 2008 19:59:35 -0800 The unexpected in life http://seaneby.com/the-unexpected-in-life http://seaneby.com/the-unexpected-in-life With so many different philosophical views on how to live life, no one can doubt the spectrum presented with the phrase, "what you do now affects what you do later" against "what you do now is changeable and/or reversible later."

It's true that many decisions made now can be changed later but often recognizing which decisions are changeable later are sometimes more ambiguous than you would otherwise know. To complicate matters, "what-if" scenarios about choices you didn't make and predicting their outcomes makes it all the more interesting. "What if I hadn't taken that job and took a different one?" "What if I had applied to that other university?" "What if I had pushed harder for that promotion?" "What if I had made that sales call?" "Wouldn't it be more fun to have taken that time off?"

Quite honestly, I believe that woven between the fabric of decisions is a slight element of luck, perhaps even fate (if you believe it). A small pence of luck does indeed have a role in life as in nature. The luck is really masked by the things you don't know that you don't know. This area of knowledge is the truly unexpected; the things we absolutely know nothing about and can't even describe to others that we don't know anything about them. The absolutely undiscovered area of reality; things that, hopefully, scientists are moving towards discovering bit by bit. Of course, the game be as it may is such that the more we know, the more we learn that we don't know. Luck, whether prescribed by some higher spirit or fate or not is the area of the unknown.

Walking into an area unknown (but perhaps opportunistic) is what makes things happen. Life is about bets and making choices that sometimes you don't always have all the facts for up-front. Risk really is the reality, if not the most interesting part of life. Risk is about trying to discern between the choices that affect what happens later and cannot be changed against choices that can be changed. Ideally, all decisions are somehow reversible or fixable later on but the reality is such that they are not.

The funny thing about that is that opportunity is what creates "reversible" decisions. Counter-intuitive, maybe, but opportunity and finding new opportunities is what allows someone to escape (or "fix") a bad decision or situation. In contract terms, it is all about your BATNA (Best alternative to a negotiated agreement) [Thanks Jeff], which basically means your substitutes or alternatives if something were to not work out as you thought. Just as if you were stuck in a house fire, having more doors in the room that hopefully aren't up in flames yet is a set of opportunities that might just save your life.

The lesson (at least for me) is to try and make decisions that create more opportunity. Straight-forward, you say? Not quite. In fact, making choices that create more opportunity often involve the risk factor that I mentioned. What I mean is that sometimes creating more opportunity means closing doors to existing opportunities and, yes you guessed it, making a bet that more opportunities will emerge down the road even if you forgo existing opportunities now. Economists would call that opportunity-cost but in fact, it is part of our everyday life, and should be embraced as first-class tool for doing the best things for ourselves. Think about the new opportunities you can make for yourself, not just the immediate or short-term value, the next time you make any decision.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:28:22 -0800 You don't need much to live http://seaneby.com/you-dont-need-much-to-live http://seaneby.com/you-dont-need-much-to-live I grew up in an upper middle-class family and learned upper middle-class (Midwestern) values. Being a 1980s kid means my parents and family were 1940s/1950s kids. I owe much of my knowledge and wisdom to my parents. I also owe some of my flaws to them, too. I'm not a prisoner of them, though. One gift I have that many folks don't know they don't have is the gift of being observant of those flaws.

Fixing flaws in yourself (whatever they may be) takes a lot of time and discipline. It's really tough to disambiguate them sometimes, not to mention just difficult to break habits. Difficult, sure, but definitely something worth doing. The interesting thing about fixing some of these flaws over time has been seeing new flaws emerge. We all change and much as we try to improve ourselves, we also introduce new flaws in ourselves. It's a by-product that perfection isn't possible.

That's actually the way of the world, not just the way each of us individually behaves. Fix one thing, and something else breaks or another problem emerges. Our dissatisfaction with practically everything is a function our being prisoner to relativism. Give a man a million dollars and he'll want more; Give a man ten dollars and he'll want more. Give a man pain and he'll want less. Give a man a lot of pain and he'll want a lot less.

The power to overcome relativism is adaptation and flexibility. In other words, live below your means. Don't buy the new car, don't buy the new house, don't go on that expensive vacation. If you are trying to save your money, the fact is you must sacrifice something. You really have to put off some of those expensive things in order to accomplish whatever it is you set out to do.

Living below your means is the same as living with an attitude of "you don't need much to live." I can't stand how often I hear about people fretting that they "need" a new car or "need" that new house or whatever the hell they damn well "need." 95% of the time, they don't need it at all, they just want it badly. Restraining yourself from wants when you should focus on your needs probably accounts for the lion's share of any successful person's life. Successful people focus on their needs and their wants become fulfilled as a by-product. People that focus only on their wants end up just treading water and often never reach neither their wants or their needs.

It really requires basic financial discipline and self-restraint to keep one's self from being overwhelmed with debt and unnecessary things. By ignoring a lot of those wants, your emotional stress will find itself a new home in some other schmuck.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:39:56 -0800 Preparation http://seaneby.com/preparation http://seaneby.com/preparation There isn't a doubt in my mind about doing the things you love. They require virtues difficult to fabricate out of thin air: Patience, Flexibility, Adaptability, Preparation, Organization, Perseverance, and Practice. If you're wondering why you or someone you know is struggling to do the things they love or succeed at best, it's because they're lacking 1 or more of the above. It takes someone with a minimum level of all of those traits to be successful in any endeavor. I'm convinced that a lack in any one of those areas requires huge amounts in the others to offset any weakness in the lacking trait.

It's certainly possible to train one's self in these areas, to become better at them. Nevertheless, make no mistake: Future success is all about increasing amounts of chance opportunities and the more one can do that, the more one is exposed to higher level opportunities, be they based on challenge, financial reward, intellectual reward, or just fun.

This post, though, is about preparation. Most people, my family included, are somewhat in awe or surprised about my choice to start my own business. Not that anyone think it's bad (in fact everyone thinks exactly the opposite) but that a lot of folks' reactions comes off with caution and it isn't because they're concerned about me. No, I think they're concerned about themselves because most people love the idea of "self-employment" and "being your own boss" with such an affliction that they doubt their own abilities internally when they hear that someone else is running their own business. Of course, when they hear that, they assume that person is "self-employed" and "being their own boss."

The self-doubt people have about their own abilities is often exaggerated but then again, if you're seriously lacking one of the above areas, you're going to find trouble starting a business. Starting a business is straight-forward but certainly not easy to make successful.

As far as preparation is concerned, starting your own business should include making substantial amounts of savings before you do so. You should be prepared to live for 12-24 months with ZERO pay. In fact, 6-12 months is my own personal minimum even if you work a professional career. To add to that, I'd say your savings should never decrease below 6 months, but grow indefinitely to the point where you could not work for years and years and years straight and still maintain a suitable lifestyle. Most people may think this is insane: "How could I possibly save when I live paycheck to paycheck?" "Why would I expect to be able to get to that level when I only save $50 a week?"

The answer to saving is a combination of living below your means, saving, and investing your savings. Most people I've run into lack all of those traits and thus can never live long without a job. Fortunately for them, at least some semblance of a retirement plan is a way to stay disciplined about the prospect of one day living without a regular income.

The fact is, in all these situations, whether it be starting a business, living well without a regular income, or retirement, preparation always starts right now.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:40:37 -0800 On Mentors http://seaneby.com/on-mentors http://seaneby.com/on-mentors If you really do care about finding meaning and being successful in life, you must absolutely have mentors. I know of no successful person without at least 1 trusted adviser or mentor or teacher. I don't mean remembering a great teacher from grade school or university (though they can become life mentors in some cases), I mean relying on people who are successful themselves and are those you also trust.

It's not that you are not intelligent in your own right to be successful and do great things but mentors and teachers create a network and a balance that requires fairly little investment in exchange for great returns. A great mentor and teacher will challenge your views (even your aspirations) and you must find deep in yourself a way to understand what it is you're doing in life. For many, this is a most challenging task. After all, a mentor or teacher should care about you and will challenge you, much like a caring and loving parent. This doesn't mean that success is only rooted in "complex" things but certainly, doing rewarding things (especially financially) do require some talent and skill. A great mentor and teacher, especially one from the business world, will be able to help you understand the details.

What if you don't have a mentor now but want one? Well, you can't really go to Wal-Mart and buy one on the cheap so you're left to network on your own. Find people you share a similar worldview with. Who knows? Maybe they blog? If you email them and speak intelligently about the issues, perhaps you'll find someone who is responsive and willing to talk to you, if not help you outright. You'll never know until you do, though, so you'll need to try. The worst thing you can do is just sit there and fear rejection because frankly, rejection will happen, all the time, no matter awesome you are.

One of the keys to success involves finding a great mentor. If you don't have one (or two or three) and want to be successful, you need to find one, right now.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:19:42 -0700 A quick posterous post to the world http://seaneby.com/a-quick-posterous-post-to-the http://seaneby.com/a-quick-posterous-post-to-the I wanted to put a few South Africa pictures up and here was really, really easy way to do it.

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Sean Eby

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/173371/Michigan_Beach.jpg http://posterous.com/people/3Fs2da4I Sean Eby speby Sean Eby