Get moving and live longer

In April, the NYTimes published an article called “The Right Dose of Exercise for a Longer Life.”

The short version: Get moving, even a little bit, and you are less likely to die prematurely.

“They found that, unsurprisingly, the people who did not exercise at all were at the highest risk of early death. But those who exercised a little, not meeting the recommendations but doing something, lowered their risk of premature death by 20 percent.”

It’s amazing to me that such a small thing — just exercising a little — has such a huge impact on your longevity.  And it’s not just in living longer (though that is absolutely motivation in and of itself.) Richard Branson was once asked how anyone can be more productive.  He paused and then said two words: “Work out.”

Science and business are aligned.  Time to hit the gym more.

Lessons from “Becoming Steve Jobs”

I just finished “Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader” this week, by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli.  While I was reading it just for fun, I did find a few interesting and important business/life lessons.

The book illustrates why and how Steve Jobs ended up becoming Steve Jobs.  Brent and Rick do a good job, with tons of insight and wonderful never-before-heard stories.  Its narrative is way more personal than the “official biography” written by Walter Isaacson.  (Brent had a personal relationship with Steve — they in the 80s and Brent was enough of a friend to have dinner at Steve’s house.)

The book focuses a lot on the “wilderness years,” or the years after Steve was ousted from Apple and before he returned.  This period defined Steve, enabling him to have the skills to orchestrate the greatest business comeback ever.

While no one can really teach you how to become Steve Jobs, there are a few valuable lessons:

Family matters and so do priorities.  Steve viciously prioritized.  He didn’t just say “no” in terms of products; he said “no” to a lot in his life.

In his final years, he had two priorities: his family and Apple.  Having kids clearly changed him; he made sure to give them as much of a normal life as possible.  I was encouraged to learn that one of the world’s most famous and successful CEOs deeply valued his family time. As current Apple CEO Tim Cook said, “[Steve] hardly ever traveled and he did none of the conferences and get-togethers that so many CEOs attend. He wanted to be home for dinner.” (p314.)

“The past can be a lesson, but the past is gone.”  Steve had an innate restlessness that gets mentioned quite a few times in the book.  This restlessness drove him forward.

Jim Collins, bestselling author, argues that this type of restlessness is the most important trait of greatness. “It is the foundation of resilience, and self-motivation. It is fueled by curiosity, the ache to build something meaningful, and a sense of purpose to make the most of one’s entire life.” (p295)

The iPod was a mind-blowing success, but Steve was immediately focused on the next great product.  At a smaller level: He would hold one belief one day, but his team would demonstrate that there was a better way.  Sometimes as soon as a day later, he would come in and acquiesce to the better way (not always graciously.)  He seemed to get better at this as he got older.  When he was younger, he was more brash.  Later in life, he realized that he didn’t have all the answers and wasn’t always right.

Two key times in the 2000s when he did a 180 on his original belief: (1) He thought iTunes should be Mac-only.  (2) The maintained that iPhone should not have third-party apps.  Apple was better off both times he changed his mind.

Tell a great story.  From the book: “Steve innately understood from an early age that the right words and stories could help him win the attention he needed to get what he wanted.” (p28)

Woz invented the personal computer, but Steve made it accessible and desirable to the public.  Before iPod, plenty of other MP3 players touted features like megabytes and settings.  Steve knew that we all just cared about having 1,000 songs in our pockets.

One of my favorite examples from the book was from Steve’s NeXT days. To generate publicity, he picked a fight with Sun Microsystems.  Steve’s marketing guy had proposed an elaborate marketing strategy, but Steve just said, “Nope. The only thing that counts is picking a fight.” (p185)  They videoed two programmers building a basic database, one used Sun’s system and the other used NeXT’s.  “The NeXT programmer completed his task so much earlier than his counterpart on the Sun workstation that he had time to play a bunch of computer games.”(p185)  The ads they ran in the Wall Street Journal resulted in a “shit storm of publicity.”

Patience.  Patience was clearly hard to learn after Steve’s immediate success with the Apple II, which introduced personal computing.  After numerous failures (Apple III, Lisa, NeXT,) Steve learned that greatness is incremental.  After seeing how things were done at Pixar, he became less focused on creating a bang immediately.  Quickly, yes.  Immediately, no.  He was more focused on all the little things that would eventually enable that next bang.

Quality wins.  More than anything, Steve Jobs cared.  He didn’t want to create “just another” anything.  He always wanted to create the best and he went out of the way to make that happen.  This is one of the under-appreciated changes that he wrought on our world (through both Pixar and Apple.)  As consumers, we used to settle for adequate.  But Apple showed that we recognize and are willing to pay for design and quality.  We have higher standards now.

Seek Excellence.  When Steve was being a jerk or yelling, it was (usually) because he was seeking excellence and wasn’t willing to sugarcoat. “He wanted smart answers, and he didn’t want to waste time on niceties when it was simpler to be clear, no matter how critical his response.” (p230)  But, the key point, is best described by Bill Gates: “So many of the people who want to be like Steve have the asshole side down. What they’re missing is the genius part.” (p383)

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent.  Because this is our life.  Life is brief, and then you die, you know?  And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives.  So it better be damn good.  It better be worth it.

-Steve Jobs

Make a better cold call

You’re about to make a cold call. You have the contact. You have the phone number. You’ve done your homework. Even so, your call will be unsolicited and your prospect has no idea who you are. How do you get them to listen? 

While some say cold-calling is dead (or not), and it’s definitely warmer than it used to be, it’s still an important part of business.

When I started at Article One, one of my largest responsibilities was generating interest in a new product from an then-unheard of company. A challenge, for sure, and one that required a lot of phone calls.  I was admittedly terrified when I was first picking up the phone.

That said, I had a lot of success with it. I found that I could attribute my success to three things:

1. Persistence – Continuing to try would almost always pay off. Sure there are prospects that I’d never reach, but stopping after one or two tries was truly giving up.
2. Go for the no – I’d rather be told “I’m not interested” than being stuck in the limbo of not-knowing. Yes is always best, but this philosophy made “no” okay to hear.
3. Take the shot – “You miss 100% of the shots you never take.” Wayne Gretzky is right again. As one of my mentors always said, “sales is a contact sport.” You gotta pick up the phone and play the game.  You can’t win from the sideline.

That said, the above are more mindsets rather than tactics. So what tactics worked?

1. First, ask how they are – It’s an answer that almost everyone responds “good” to and softens the pitch
2. Be forthright – Admit right out of the gate that the prospect hasn’t talked to you. It focuses people; they stop wondering “who is this?”
3. Ask for their time – Most cold-callers will plunge right into a pitch.  Big mistake.  By simply asking for their time, before taking any time, you gain permission and a small acceptance and separate myself from others.  If they say no here, you don’t want to spend time on them anyway!

So what does that look like? Let’s pretend John cold calls me, and he uses the above techniques:

John: “Hi David, this is John from Acme Corp. How are you today?
Me: “Good….”
John: “You and I haven’t spoken before, but I’m hoping that you’d be willing to give me 15 seconds to explain the purpose of my call. After that, you can decide if it makes sense to continue talking or not. Does that sound fair?
Me: “OK, sure. Go ahead.”

After this, John would jump into a compelling pitch that reflects the homework he’s done on what value he can provide me.

My goal in this first conversation is simply to get a follow-up meeting when I wasn’t the interruption.  Getting a simple “yes” using these techniques dramatically increased the number of my prospects who continued the conversation.

If you’re cold calling, give it a try and then make it your own. What do you have to lose?

A new kind of athlete

This blog is for a new type of athlete.

When you read “athlete,” sports probably comes to mind.  You may even think of a famous player from your favorite sports team.  Like Tom Brady, or David Ortiz, or Madison Bumgarner.  (Can you tell I’m from Boston and now live in San Francisco?)

But I consider myself a different type of athlete: a business athlete.  (I borrow the phrase from The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, which I read years ago.  It’s forever stuck with me.)

Loehr and Schwartz once trained professional athletes (i.e. Olympians.)  But, over time, their clientele shifted to executives in organizations.  They were surprised to find that “the performance demands that most people face in their everyday work environments dwarf those of any professional athletes [they] have ever trained.”

That may shock you or it may resonate.  But, after working at two startups (one “failure,” one successful) and the world’s most valuable company, I completely buy it.

In order to succeed in business, you can’t just show up and expect to be a business rockstar.  There’s a lot that happens along the way.  Consider sports athletes.  Even if you managed to have the exact same build as Madison Bumgarner, there’s no way you would have walked out of the bullpen in Game 7 of the 2014 World Series and delivered San Francisco our world championship.  Bumgarner has years of training, experience and innate talent.

So it goes in business as well.  You have to control your energy, continually train, strengthen and expand your mind.  You need to grow, to execute, to ship.

To be the best, aside from experience, it’s all about investing in yourself.  I’m a huge believer of this and have walked the talk.  (I have spent more on myself through books, courses and events than I have on any electronics in the past 8 years.  And I love electronics.)  But, often, I’ll learn things and forget them.  Or I’ll know them, but will never have been forced to explain them.  Or I’ll write them down somewhere and lose them.

Enter this blog.  I want this to be a repository of what I learn.  A place for me as much as for you.  (Maybe even slightly more for me.)  I will update it regularly and hopefully it will be a helpful resource for you.  More soon.

Onwards.