Strengths, Weakness & Community

Some of the stuff that I see out there right now is this idea of like, I got an idea, I want to build a company, I want to hire people, and I want to make money. What we miss along the way, because it takes a lot of energy and a lot of time, is this idea of, I want to meet people, I want to grow, I want to learn, I want to be part of the community. I don't care, and this is not a judgment value because this is about business, I don't care if you decide I want to give back and grow trees in my neighborhood or do any of that stuff. What I'm talking about is being part of the community of what you do, right? If your idea is to build an application that— nobody give me their idea, but like to shut off lights by blinking your eyes, something silly like that. Then you need to maybe be part of the community that deals with power and lighting and all these other things. If you're not, you're missing a lot of what happens when you grow that industry, right? So that's why I think it's important. And then obviously some of these are really important in terms of Big groups. Yes?

Just to go back to that point, are you suggesting that Uber should have been involved in the taxi commission in some way in the cities that they were moving into?

I'm not suggesting that they are part of the taxi commissions. I'm suggesting the people who started that business have to know a little bit about and do research and be part of the understanding of that community. It doesn't mean they have to be a part of it and show up And go to the committee hearings and do all that stuff. It means they should, if you're looking at a specific place maybe that you want to disrupt, you should do your homework. One of the easiest ways to do your homework is to be a member of and be a part of a lot of this other stuff. It doesn't mean joining a taxi commission and being part of that to then go, oh, this is what they do. Now we're going to build this. But I'll bet you they know everything that's going on there. So, yeah. I'm talking more from the perspective of if I'm a data scientist or a product manager or an engineer or an entrepreneur, I should join organizations that are involved with these groups so that I get information and start to build my community. Because you're going to meet other people like-minded and you're going to share ideas. Maybe different completely in terms of what you're building, but you're going to help each other. I see this a lot, especially with funding. 'Cause somebody gets funding and then, you know, 'cause we're looking at, you know, what? The people who funded the company I currently work for, I would say less than 10% of their portfolio is gigantic, right? But they do a lot of other stuff. And one of the things they do is they have funded some of the, like at General Assembly, they funded some of the companies that students have formed when they left there 'cause they're always looking for great ideas. It doesn't happen unless you make those connections and join those, you know, join the alumni association and do stuff like that. So that's what I suggest. Does that answer your question?

Yep, totally. Cool.

Okay. So I'm going to go through a few other things just to give you an idea. Does anybody know Learn Something New? Does anybody like to learn something new? I like to learn something new. So if you go to this site, it's kind of cool because it gives you A lot of information that if you want to learn something about technology, if you want to learn something about creative, data, language, advice, anything business-wise, a lot of that stuff, these are resources for you to go into and start to look at. Some of you might be like, nope, don't need it, don't need it. Some of you might be like, this is a really cool resource because now I'm starting to collect a centralized place to start to build on my Education, right? Because you're all here, you're all getting a really good education, but what if you do more, right? It's that person who doesn't just keep waiting for the floodgates to open. I know what these programs are like, so I know it's been referred to me as I walk in the door and someone opens up the fire hose of information all day long and I'm exhausted at the end of the day. So now, once you leave here, you'll have a chance to sort of lay it all on the table and figure out what you need and what you need to work on. So this is a great place to start. Start collecting areas that you're like, I need to work on this. How many people here do a monthly or quarterly strengths and weaknesses list? Excellent. So this is what I recommend. Do at least a quarterly strengths and weaknesses list. Because if you do this— And I only list 5 at a time. Because I don't want to feel like I'm horribly weak. Although I often have more than 5 at a time. So, if you list your strengths here and your weaknesses here, here's what happens for most of us. All of you, like I talked about earlier, you all have a confidence in one area or another. You're all like, I do this well. I do this well. I do this well. When you come up against a problem that's new, we often rely on our strengths to solve it because we want to look good. It's hard to say to a group of people, especially teammates, I don't know if I can solve this problem. I need help. So, we jump into our strengths and try and fix it. Sometimes takes longer. We keep repeating the same way we fix steps as opposed to growing and learning new methods and new paths. So, if you work on your weaknesses every quarter and you start utilizing some of your weaknesses, they actually become strengths so that every quarter when you rewrite your list, those weaknesses or many of them, not all of them, should go to your strengths list. And you should be listing a few more weaknesses on there, right? Start a business, one of the weaknesses I had right up front was employee management. Because for a while it was just me and I was really good at managing myself. I loved telling myself what a great job I was doing. But then when I started hiring people, I was like, oh, I better learn how to have a conversation with people. I better learn proper management techniques. And I better learn what it means to grow a business with people and not micromanage because they're going to get annoyed and leave immediately, right? So that's something I work on and then I put it in the strengths category until one of my employees quits and tells me I'm a horrible manager. And then I think about it and I might put aspects of that back on the weakness list. It might not be that I change how I manage. It might be how I change how I react to employees who tell me I'm a horrible manager. So these are things that I want to look at. So you should do that every quarter. Then you have an action to take because if you don't have the weakness down on your list, you don't have an action to take. More important, if you don't have a mentor to help you to say, you're kind of weak in this area, then you might not be sure what your weakness is, right? Because for me, I wake up every day and there are certain aspects of me that I'm like, ugh, you know. Sometimes I'll wake up, I'll look in the mirror and I'll just be like, ugh, right?

Yes.

Do you ask other people? Absolutely. Yeah, we're going to talk about that in just a minute, but absolutely. Because all of us have this idea of how we're perceived, right? Like today I'm in my startup uniform. I'm loud. I'm trying to keep your attention, keep you excited about the information because I love this, right? I love this information and I love the idea of building something. So I think I'm perceived in a certain way, but it's not until I get feedback from people that say, hey, this is what I think, That I can match that as well and I can grow a little bit and I can be this person that when I walk in the room, I'm like, when do we start, versus I'm trying to be who I think you want me to be to get into this position, right? Can anyone—