kent's posterous

Having recently been left holding the bag with a client, this spoke to me since for this particular client, I did not have a contract. Don't learn about this the hard way. Find a lawyer, get a contract and become comfortable using it.

To add to this, don't start working on a new venture with someone or a group of people until you have a shareholders agreement. This is not Facebook and this is not a movie. Things happen, people change, circumstances out of your control will act on you and you will be thankful when there is an agreed upon document that answers tricky questions.

Some advice. I always felt as though contracts were cold and that they immediately created distrust in the relationship. Alan Watts has a great piece on this when trying to explain why so many marriages fail and end in divorce. He argues that part of it is because we fall in love, and then are forced into this legally binding relationship that creates some low level anxiety and distrust throughout the entire relationship. He is exaggerating to make a point, but I sort of agree with him. I mean, sometimes it feels right NOT to have a contract. If you feel that the client will be scared off, or maybe you really trust them etc.

DON'T worry about that. You should still have them sign a contract with you. Even if you think that it will make you loose the deal or loose the sale. The fact of the matter is that 99% of business does not happen without a contract and if you want to grow and work on bigger projects, why not get your feet wet with contract issues when you are small and learning the ropes.

I know it's hard. I know that client is just down the street. I know he's your cousin... but at the end of the day, there is a cost and some rules to doing business. Contracts are one of them. You don't have to love them, but you should respect and use them.

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Spend a little bit of money, to save a lot of time

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:14:58 -0700

I love 5by5. Today I was listening to their Build & Analyze show and Dan and Marco got talking about tax. Marco said something really telling that sums up why I buy all of my software, don't jailbreak my iPhone, use an accountant, use Fancy Hands, outsource where possible etc.

Spend a little bit of money, to save a lot of time.

Maybe it makes me lazy or maybe it makes me a frivolous spender, but there is something comforting about trusting my account to do my taxes rather than worrying about all of the details myself. Sure, it costs me $300-500 / year for this, but it's worth it.

I don't jailbreak my phone because I don't have the time anymore to dick around with it, when the latest update does work. Not to mention the fact, it takes away from other people's chance at financial freedom. It's these little things that I used to have so much time for that are no longer important to me. I am better at knowing what's worth my time and what isn't.

I am not saying to go hire a personal chef because you can't be bothered with cooking, but likely there are areas of your life that cause you stress and pain. These areas normally contain reasonably cheap professionals who love doing that job. Find those people, hire them, and go back to doing what you really want to be doing.

I use Allworth and Associates Chartered Accounts, if you live in Mississauga, give them a call, 905-820-5566, tell them Kent sent you :)

Thanks for reading, and thanks to Dan and Marco for an amazing show,

Kent

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Farming vs. Mining - my thoughts

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:16:59 -0700

There has been a lot of talk about this article http://blog.wilshipley.com/2011/04/success-and-farming-vs-mining.html

Where Wil Shipley paints a good metaphor for bootstrapping a startup vs. raising a bunch of money and trying to sell as quickly as possible.

I go back and forth on this issue. I used to love the idea of software as a movie. Come up with a great plot, make a great movie ad then move onto the next one. There is something really nice about this idea. The idea of creating something great, sharing it with the world and then moving onto another. Sounds good right.

On the other hand, I really resonate with Wil and the farmer mentality, as do many people. I look at my Father and my Father-In-Law who both spend their lives creating sustainable businesses. It must be a great feeling to walk into an office, knowing that your passion and work created it, that you like the captain of the ship will be there until the end. You aren't hoarding your shares, you aren't looking for an exit, you are looking to build a business you are proud of today and tomorrow.

I am sick of Idea guys. I used to think that was actually a job. There is no room at the table for idea guys. You've got to contribute, you've got to create something.

What do you think?

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Poke the box insights

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 16:19:56 -0700

I have been listening to Poke the Box, Seth Godin's latest work and the whole thing is about starting, doing the hard of work of creating your art, beating the lizard brain and taming the resistance.

If that sentence didn't make much sense, then you probably have read or listened to any of Seth's books. If you have, Poke the Box, won't offer anything new but will provide you with a succinct review of Seth's last book, Linchpin.

I love the book. It's a light listen and flows really well.

However, I predict his critics might say that Seth is preaching that quantity over quality is a good thing. Seth's pushes us to think like Dandelions that don't put everything on one seed, but hedge their bets with thousands of seeds hoping that one will land on fertile ground. I think he's right.

Seth says that starting is hard, which it is. Creating a success from that start is also hard and there is no guarantee that it's going to work, however the only way you will ever know is if you start.

I can't remember which startup person said it, but the quote goes something like this.

If you aren't embarrassed by your initial product release, then you waited too long to release it.

If only we could all take that to heart. There might be lots of embarrassed people out there, but everyone is their own worst critic. So take that project that you have been hiding and give it some light. Chances are it will find fertile ground and grow too.

Thanks and have a great night,

Kent

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Spin the plates

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 06:33:20 -0700

If you are consultant like me, you likely work on a bunch of different projects. At least, I hope you do.

It's sort of a paradox really, you don't want to work on too many projects, but you need to work on enough to make a good living. Sometimes it's hard to manage all of the projects, sometimes its hard to keep the plates spinning.

But don't let that stop you. There is nothing wrong with taking on projects, with adding another plate. As long as you can keep them spinning.

Sometimes one will wobble. That's okay.

Sometimes one will fall. That's not okay.

Your work, is to keep the plates spinning.

What's funny is that intuition will make the plates fall. Naturally, the way we work leads us to drop a few plates. That's because we are really good at putting out fires but not that good at preventing them. In school, at work, in life we are constantly bombarded with situations that need fixing. A crisis of some kind. While this exercises our inner firefighter, it doesn't keep the plates the spinning. We put too much attention towards one plate and the rest loose momentum. Once they start to wobble there is still a chance to save them, but the more they wobble, the more likely they are to fall.

You can't let them fall. Remember, that's your work.

So what do you do? It's simple. Spin the plates. Spin the plates a little each day. Some days, one or two plates might require a little more spinning, that's okay. Give them as much as they need to keep spinning, and don't move onto the next plate until you have set a time to come back and spin it again.

This takes discipline and it doesn't always work the way you thought it would. You need to practice this. You also need to know when there are simply too many plates to keep spinning yourself. There is nothing wrong with admitting to yourself and to the world that you need some help. You need someone to help you spin the plates.

Working this way is not only profitable, but also fun and exciting. Each project and task is different. You will exercise your brain in a different ways each day. You can take that learning and apply it to another plate. You can build upon your own experiences. It forces you to learn and evolve at a much faster rate. The better you get, the more plates you can spin.

But I almost forgot, you have to love spinning the plates. If this is a chore, if this isn't working for you, then plate spinning isn't for you. There is nothing wrong with that, there are lots of other things to get good at. But there is no excuse for not loving what you do.

So keep the plates spinning.

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I gave up Hacker News for lent... starting NOW

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 20:36:00 -0800

With lent fast approaching... as in already here, I couldn't decide what to choose to give up. In 2010 I did coffee but I've already given that up. I thought about tea or Nutella / peanut butter on toast but that's too boring. I got thinking about ways to make this sacrifice better for my business as well as my soul. Then all of a sudden it hit me.

I will block Hacker News

For the non-geeks that read this, Hacker News is like Reddit or Digg (if you don't know what these are then... maybe you should watch this) but mainly about programming and tech related stuff. It's become quite an addiction for me since grad school and I check it around 43 times a day according to RescueTime. There is nothing inherently WRONG with Hacker News it's just that I spend so much time reading about other peoples successes I wonder if I have left myself any time to create my own. 40 days should be a good test.

So if you want to join me in this and you have a mac simply do the following. These steps will keep you honest.

1. Open the terminal.
2. type $ sudo vi /etc/hosts
3. Add the following to the end of the file.

127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com

127.0.0.1 ycombinator.com

4. Flush your DNS cache with $ sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

5. Close the terminal and any browsers you have open and you are done.

What this does is to force your computer to look for the local server each time you load the page, since you presumably aren't running a local version of Hacker News on this will fail and leave you with a black page. I used both A records just to be safe :)

That's it! For the next 40 days you will not be distracted by Hacker News and you can use your new found time building something great rather than reading.

Re-tweet this post to join the movement ;)

PS: I am not even catholic but my wife is. She gave up Nutella last year which, if you know my wife, is a BIG deal. So I am just trying to keep up.

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jQuery Tools Validator - Custom Validation for Select Tag

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:23:00 -0800

Recently, I was building a validation form and chose to use the amazing jQuery tools validator library. However, it’s not 100% obvious how to customize the behaviour to validate select fields.

Here’s how you do it.

First let’s start with the form markup. I am using Formtastic (amazing ruby form library)

= f.input :price_range, :collection => ["Select","250,000 - 299,999",
"300,000 - 349,999", "350,000 - 399,999", "400,000 - 449,999",
"450,000 - 499,999", "500,000 +"], :include_blank => false,
:required => true

In order to make it clear that the user must make a selection, I like adding a default option called “Select” as he first option in the select. If the user doesn’t select from the drop down or, selects but doesn’t make a valid selection, we want to trigger a nice Ajax error reminding them to make a choice.

Here is the javascript that we will use to capture this behaviour.

$.tools.validator.fn(".required select", "Please make a selection",
  function(input, value) {
  return value != "Select";
});

Pretty simple right. So what’s it doing?

$.tools.validator.fn(selector,message,validation);

The validator function takes a jQuery selector, an error message and the validation function. To target all of the required select elements we want to use this selector.

".required select"

It targets all of the li.required elements that contain a select tag. Perfect right :) Don’t you just love jQuery.

The error message is self explanatory.

Finally, the SUPER simple validation.

function(input, value) {
return value != "Select";
}

Here we are simply checking to make sure that the value of the select field is NOT equal to “Select”, since that is the default option we give the user.

That’s it! Done right?

Almost, one final detail to make sure that this validator gets called at the right time.

$("#new_registration").validator({inputEvent: "blur"});
$.tools.validator.fn(".required select", "Please make a selection",
function(input, value) {
return value != "Select";
});

We pass the {inputEvent: “blur”} to the validator() function to make sure that the validation gets called when the user “blurs” or moves away from the element that they interact with.

Very simple.

Thanks for reading.

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Putting first things first.

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:03:29 -0800

We had some sad news today about a good friend that we work with who passed away. He was a kind, hard working person who loved his family and cherished his grandchildren. He will be missed.

Whenever death rears its head I can't help but try to put first things first.

Take care of your body.

Take care of your mind.

Take care of your soul.

Tell the people who matter, why they matter and tell them often.

Forgive.

Listen.

Love deeply.

Put the work down. It can wait.

Thanks for reading,

Kent

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Knowing and doing

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 21:09:14 -0800

I find myself re-reading the same books over and over again.

Sometimes no matter how simple the instructions are, following them is very hard.

Knowing and doing are not the same thing but it's so easy to convince yourself that they are.

I think the time has come to start doing.

Sent from my iPad

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