A Geek Leader Podcast - inspiring technical and creative leaders around the world

We all have feelings of inadequacy. Many times I have this fear, that someone is going to show up at my door and shut it all down.  They will tell me that I’m not qualified to write about leadership, or to host a podcast, or to build websites or mobile apps, or to teach.  And it will all be over.  Everyday, at some point in that day, I suffer from feelings of being unqualified to do the work that I know I’m meant to do. Sometimes I let mistakes that I make, thoughts that I have, and my feelings get in the way of my work.  I’ve come to learn that these feelings and thoughts are normal.  We all, at times, have feelings of inadequacy.  We all have fear of missing out and fear of not being good enough.  That’s fine.  But leaders, do it anyway. Sometimes its hard to do what you know you need to do, because you feel “Unqualified.”  But aren’t we all?  Am I qualified to talk on Technical Leadership?  I guess so, but I wasn’t always.  I had to start somewhere.  I mean, is an author an author before he publishes his first book?  Is he qualified to be called an author?  No, but that doesn’t mean he can’t become one.  Leadership is the same way.  Even if you’ve never been a leader before, you can start now.  You don’t have to be “qualified.” to lead, you just need to start leading.  This book by Paster Steven Furtick, my paster and lead paster of Elevation Church, reminds us how throughout history God has used unqualified people do amazing things.  Its an inspirational book that just reminds us of many different people that had flaws and imperfections and glitches.  He talks about how the character Vanellope von Schweetz in Wreck it Ralph had a glitch, maybe was a glitch, but that glitch is what made her great.  She was successful, not in spite of her glitch, but because of it.  We’re the same way.  God had put things in our life that only we have experienced in a unique way.  We have a special perspective that may really resonate with someone and help them out in a way that no one else can.  Basically, this book shows us how the things that make us unqualified to do great things, may actually be the things that make us great. Stepping outside of the book and taking its meaning into technology, Let’s take Steve Jobs. Many of the things that made him not a great techie, such as his love for fonts and design, helped him take personal computers main stream, by making their user interfaces beautiful. Steven Jobs dropped out of school, but dropped into classes on design.  He didn’t have the education and technical programming skills of someone that should be qualified to run a computer company.  But what he had, was exactly what was needed to make Apple a household name. If you want to get this book, you can get it through my affiliate link on Amazon by clicking the image below: I hope you enjoyed this show, please head over to iTunes and subscribe and leave me a rating and review, even 1 sentence will help spread the word.  Thanks again!  

Most people in Technology struggle with communication… better yet, most people in business struggle with communication.  I’m no exception to that, but I’m working on it.  Here are some of the things that I’ve learned and implemented to help me with communication. One of the reasons some of us are bad at communication is due to fear.  We’re afraid to let people that we don’t know, what we don’t know.  We’re afraid that they will think less of us or something… But really, if we only new how little they already think of us, then we wouldn’t care what they think of us.  By little there, I mean how little time they spend thinking about us.   Think about, how much time do you think about the last time someone misspoke in a meeting, or said something in a funny, out of context way?  Not much right.  You may have thought about if for a few minutes at most then it was gone.  If you do mess up, its only going to last a short while.  In episode 7 I spoke about overcoming fear, check that out to find out more. 7 | 38 | 55 Rule Albert Mehrabian, a psychology professor published some research that showed 7% of the message received is through the words you actually say, 38% through vocal tonality used, and 55% through non-verbal communication (body language, etc).  Now, did you read that?  That means 93% of our communication is NOT the words that come out of your mouth… but more importantly, its how those words are used.  Now, I’m not a believer that this rule is 100% true 100% of the time.  That’s one thing that bites us a techies. We like hard, fast rules that are always true.  But situational awareness will also dictate a lot of the messages being received through the communication.  For example, if you’re in a crisis, things will be take very seriously and literally, but if you’re out with friends, people may think you’re joking or being more sarcastic.  But the spirit of the rule still applies, most of our communication is non-verbal. Email Communication We all get too many emails.  Keeping them short and to the point is super important.  Also remember that only 7% of our communication comes from the words we say.  So how the person is reading your email is largely how they will interpret it.  That, along with the situation they are in when they get the email. For example, if you send me a humorous email that makes a jab at me or says something sarcastic, but I’m in a bad mood and going through an outage with a system at work when I get it, I may not get the sarcasm or the joke and it may come a cross pretty bad.  I have a rule of 4 with my team and email. All emails should be 4 sentences or less… or at least that’s the goal.  With the 100s of emails that I get every day, I find that I usually start to zone out after about 4 sentences and then I’m likely to either skim or skip the remaining sentences in the message.  This is bad for both me and you. Its best for business emails to be short and to the point.  Recognize that we’re all busy and we have work to do, and that your email is interrupting someone’s work.  So keep it short.  There are of course exceptions to this, like when you’re documenting a meeting or prior conversation, or sending someone information that they requested.  Emails that they request are different than ones you interrupt them with. Another rule that I follow with email is the back and forth rule of 4.  If an email goes back and forth more than 4 times (2 from me and 2 from you) then we aren’t getting anywhere.  I mean, seriously, we’re missing 93% of the message right :).  So after 4 times, get up and go talk to the person, or call them or find another means of communication, like messenger, skype or slack. But bear in mind that these communication channels also have limitations.  Face-to-face doesn’t have documentation, so its good to send a “Same Day Summary” back to the person just to recap the who, what and when of that conversation in a documented form, allowing them to correct anything that might have been miscommunicated.  Phone and skype work the same way, but there is also the disadvantage of body language and non-verbal queues. But vocal tonality will at least get you to 45% of the message.  The Difficult Conversation I speak more in depth on this one on Episode 4, so I’ll like that episode for the details, but in short, be direct, authentic and unapologetic. Practice and Batching If you’re not good at communicating, practice. Just like anything else in life, the more time you put into it and the more you practice at it, the better you will get. Practice speaking up at meetings, having face to face conversation, keeping emails short, etc. Another thing to do is to batch requests.   Batch your communication request to reduce the amount of interruptions you’re causing for other people and yourself. I hope you enjoyed this show, please head over to iTunes and subscribe and leave me a rating and review, even 1 sentence will help spread the word.  Thanks again!

In this episode I interview Anthony Roldan from HubSpot about the companies culture code. I was pretty much blown away with the autonomy and freedom that HubSpot offer’s their employees.  Their growth is amazing and there is no doubt that they are a leader in the marketing software industry.  I’ve followed their blog for a while and used lots of their free tips and tools for marketers in the past, but this was my first time meeting and talking to one of their employees. Some of my key take aways: I was shocked and intrigued by their “no QA” on projects.  I love the idea, but it also scares me as a software development manager. I love their hiring process. Their culture is amazing and it must have taken some serious faith to implement that from the top down as they have done. Be sure to listen for tips on how you can implement some of the these items at your own work place. Anthony Roldan is an up and coming star at HubSpot.  I hope I’m not embarrassing him here, but you can tell he’s passionate and extremely intelligent.  He knows that Leadership is important in the growth that hubspot has experienced. Did you catch how he got his current role?  He just started doing it, and they created it for him.  He stretched himself, like we talked about in episode 24. A big thank you to Anthony Roldan from HubSpot! You can reach him at Anthony Roldan <aroldan@hubspot.com> or at twitter @aroldan. Be sure to check out the following: HubSpot Development Blog HubSpot Product Team (Facebook) HubSpot on Twitter You have to check out this HubSpot culture code… pretty amazing: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34234/The-HubSpot-Culture-Code-Creating-a-Company-We-Love.aspx I hope you enjoyed this show, please head over to iTunes and subscribe and leave me a rating and review, even 1 sentence will help spread the word.  Thanks again!   Check out my TEDx Talk on Motivating Creatives.  It ties in nicely with the ideas of Autonomy brought by Anthony at HubSpot

You can’t grow if you don’t stretch If you’re looking for advice on yoga, flexibility or getting shape, then you’re in the wrong place. This is going to be a short episode about getting better. Ever had a rubber band, and stretched?  If you stretch it too far to fast, it snaps.  We’re the same way.  We need to stretch ourselves in small steady ways. If you stretch a rubber band a little bit, and hold it for a long time, it’ll loose some of that tension that makes it spring back.  It becomes easier to stretch and will expand and hold easier.  It’s larger… We’re the same way.  If we stretch our abilities a little for long times, that becomes our new normal.  If we want to be a better leader, we have to step out and stretch ourselves.  If we want to be a better communicator, we have to talk more, write more, and do more communicating.  We have to stretch ourselves and get a little uncomfortable.  We can’t get any better and grow more if we don’t stretch.  We all want to improve, if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be listening to this podcast or reading this article.  In order to do that, we need to stop reading and listening (at least for now) and start doing.  Start stretching yourself.  We all want our teams to grow and to stretch themselves, but they will learn by example. So just as a leader leads the way, we have to lead the way in stretching ourselves. I hope you enjoyed this show, please head over to iTunes and subscribe and leave me a rating and review, even 1 sentence will help spread the word.  Thanks again!

Part of being a great leader is being a great learner.  If you decide to be leader, either in a leadership/managerial role, or just leading those to your left and to your right, you must also decide to never stop learning.  When you stop learning, you stop leading. Last week my wife and I rented “The Intern.”  It’s a movie with Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway.  De Niro plays the part of a 70+ year old widower who is board with life and wants to have something to get him out of the house.  He’s a retired VP from a phone book printing company and he decides to apply for a senior internship program at a start-up tech company that was founded and is ran by Jules Osten, played by Anne Hathaway.  Ben started out as a huge underdog, as he didn’t even know how to turn on his mac when he got started.  But his desire to learn and his work ethic in doing so helped propel him into a sort of leader of the interns. As an intern, he was reporting directly to the CEO when he inspired her and built a relationship of trust. His desire to learn, and ability to see situations from different perspectives helped him grow as a person and leader, but more importantly, it helped him grow those around him. That’s what leadership is all about, growing those around you.  If you can learn something and share that to those around you it helps you learn it better, gain more respect from your peers. Its also a great for building relationships and trust with those you work with.  I feel very strongly that learning new skills and new ways of using your current skills is extremely important in both personal and professional development.  Every year, I create a professional development plan for the new skills that I want to learn or the things I want to improve on throughout the coming year. I encourage all those around me to do the same and I try to see how I can hold them accountable to help insure success. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Remember that leadership is a process, not a project.  If you want to improve and be a great leader, you must change and grow.  Time stops for no man.  Be sure you stay on top of new research and the latest trends… So, how do I do that? For me, I consume a ton of information… probably way more than I should. I subscribe to several podcasts, I have an audible subscription that I use for just non-fiction books to help me learn.  I use youtube when I want to find out how to do something really quickly. I have a lynda.com subscription for deeper learning and course work.  These are just a few of the ways I learn new skills and information.  Of these methods, I may retain 10% of what I consume, and of that I may implement another 10%.  That means I probably only act upon 1% of that which I consume using these methods.  That makes them not seem that efficient.  But its still helpful.  If you improve 1% every day for a year, you’ll be 365% better.  Stew on that for a little while…. Some other ways to learn is to get a mentor. I’ve had a leadership mentor for about 2 years now and he’s helped me learn more than I can from all of these books and podcasts which I consume.  Also teaching others helps you learn.  You may think you know a subject pretty well until you try to teach it.  That’s when you learn all the things you thought you knew.  One paradox with learning is that the more we learn, the more we realize we have a lot more to learn.  Don’t let that discourage you.  Stick with it and reflect back every quarter what you’ve learned and achieved.  Reflection is important to insure you stick with it and continue to grow as a person and a leader. Always remember that this journey is a process and the destination is a mirage.  We’ll always be striving for greater knowledge, influence and leadership. I hope you enjoyed this show, please head over to iTunes and subscribe and leave me a rating and review, even 1 sentence will help spread the word.  Thanks again!

When most people talk about Leadership they talk about the psychology side of it, but I believe that it goes much deeper that than.  In this episode I’m going to talk a lot about brain chemicals and I’m going to get a little deep into the biology of leadership.  I was first made aware of such a think when Simon Sinek talked about the makeup of the brain in his famous “Start with Why” TEDx Talk a few years ago.  I was fascinated with the fact that his “golden circle” was grounded in biology and not psychology. There are many chemicals in our brains that affect our emotions, our feelings and our behavior.  I want to talk about 5 specific ones today.  It really makes an impact when you combine these chemicals with the basic human stories of our past and present. To get the full impact of this article, you really need to listen to the podcast episode on this post. I should probably make it abundantly clear that I’m not a scientist nor a doctor, and I don’t play one on TV.  This is all information that I found on the internet or read in a one or more books that I’m piecing together in my mind… So please don’t use this to make any sort of medical decisions. The four “Happy” chemicals are: Endorphin– Masks Pain – You feel these when you go for a long run.  The historical reason for Endorphins were for hunting.  Humans aren’t the fastest or strongest of animals, but we’re built for endurance.  We can track animals for miles and miles to get the kill, all the while, endorphins worked to mask our pain. They also made us feel good and encouraged us to go out again and again.  It’s a good system for our survival. Dopamine– Makes you feel good when you achieve a goal – The historical reason for dopamine is again for our survival.  If we waited until we were hungry to go get food, we’d starve to death.  Dopamine makes us want to achieve a goal, it makes us feel good.  Its that feeling you get when you check something off your todo list.  Sometimes, I add things as I’m doing them to the to do list, just ot check them off and get that dopamine rush… but… dopamine comes with a warning. Its highly addictive.  Other things that release dopamine include alcohol, drugs, gambling, eating.  Its great for motivation, when balanced. If it becomes unbalanced, problems happen.  Ask any drug addict if their addiction has caused any issues??  So how do we keep it balanced? Oxytocin– Safety and love – Oxytocin makes us feel safe.  Its released when we feel as though we belong.  It also is released when have human contact.  Oxytocin increases our generosity and our caring for others.  Its released when we see others helping others… when they use their time and effort, not their money.  That’s partly because time and effort are equal commodities.  We all have a finite supply and once its spent, we can’t get it back.  Oxytocin reduces the negative effects of Dopamine and inhibits addiction. Serotonin– The leadership chemical – Serotonin is that sense of accomplishment or pride that we get when we’re recognized for something.  It’s a basic human need to feel like we’ve done something that matters.  The beatue fo Serotonin is that its passed through to others that are somewhat involved or assisted you in that success.  For example, if you graduate from college and go across the stage to get your diploma, you receive a rush of serotonin for your accomplishment.  You feel proud.  But at that exact same time, your family members watching you feel proud too.  They also receive a rush of serotonin.  This helps increase the relationship between you two and build the bond.  Its why great teams want to win one for the coach… not for the trophy.   But there’s one more chemical we must talk about.  Its cortisol.  Also called the stress chemical.  Its that feeling you get, when you’re scared.  We’ve all seen the documentaries where a herd of gazelles are grazing in a field and one hears something and his head pops up… then all the gazelles heads pop up. That’s cortisol.  It heightens our senses, makes us hyper aware, paranoid and tightens our muscles in order to start the fight or flight process.  It’s also quickly spread among social animals.  Then, one gazelle sees the lion, and darts off, they all follow and survive.  The cortisol leaves their bodies and all is well… good stuff right?  Well… Maybe not.  Its great in short doses, however, in order to heighten our senses and tighten our muscles our body needs energy and it takes that energy from somewhere else.  It takes it from our growth functions and our immune system. This is bad for us, if we have a sense of fear in our workplace.  If we’re always stressed, we have a constant drip…drip…drip of cortisol in our system, weakening our immune system. Cortisol also inhibits the production of Oxytocin.  This means that stressed and fearful people are more concerned with their selves than that of others. How do you think this will affect team work or business growth?  Think about it.  We are slowly killing our employees when we make them afraid and lead with fear.  We must lead with trust.  If you’re reading this instead of listening to the podcast, I highly recommend you listen to this episode.  You’ll get a lot more out of it as I go more in depth on the effect of these chemicals on leaders. I hope you enjoyed this show, please head over to iTunes and subscribe and leave me a rating and review, even 1 sentence will help spread the word.  Thanks again!

A few months ago I read the Jesse Itzler book, “Living with a Seal.”  I heard it was really funny, and I knew a little about Jesse through some podcast interviews that I heard him on.  I also thought it might motivate me to get in serious shape, however, it sort of scared me a little bit.  In this book, Jesse meets this Navy Seal, who he calls “Seal” and invites him to live with him for 31 days and to train them.  Seal reluctently says yes only if Jesse will agree to do whatever Seal says, whenever he says it, no questions asked.  Jesse agrees and the story takes off from there.  Its a hilarous story that tells about Jesse’s pain and progress.  It clearly points out that in order to make phyiscal progress in training, you must go through pain.  In one part of the book, Seal runs some sort of off road ultra marathon and comes back to Jesse’s home with broken feet.  Jesse ask if he can do anything for him and Seal’s response is priceless.  He says “I’ve earned this pain, let me enjoy it.” Seal has learned that in order to make progress, you must feel a little pain. Our biology has evolved to tell us that if something hurts, stop doing it.  This is a safety mechanism to help us survive.  But anyone who has ever worked out knows that in order to get stronger, you must get sore.  You must go through pain in order to have progress. In Episode 8, I talked about the leadership process, and mentioned that you have to understand that becoming a great leader is a process, not a project.  In other words, there is not end date in leadership development.  The destination is a mirage.  You are never finished growing as a leader. Then about 3 weeks ago, while at church, our pastor made a point about the “paradox of progress” and how the more progress you make, the better you can see that you have a long way to go.  This reminded me about the pain of progress that I learned a few months earlier.  I realized that progress is the journey that we strive for. It’s not the final goal that matters so much, but more the progress we make to get to that goal.  Many times we set goals for our personal development, and find out when we reach that goal, we loose our desire to continue to improve.  Sometimes we find that the goal isn’t as rewarding as we thought it would be, and not as rewarding as making progress to the goal.  All in all, reaching the goal can feel like a let down. I remember when I had a goal to run my first 5k.  I was so excited to be able to run the entire 3.1 miles and finish with a 10 minute pace. But achieving that goal, showed me how much more work I had to do if I wanted to continue to improve and eventually run a marathon.  I soon realized the goal was nothing more than a milestone to a much larger goal.  I think our leadership process needs to work the same way.  We need to look at our SMART Goals that we setup for 2016, as just milestones for something much greater. So whenever you’re making progress towards a goal, you need to understand that there will be pain.  Be like Seal, and enjoy the pain you earn.  If you aren’t feeling any pain… then you probably aren’t making any progress. It’s important to celebrate your progress, it helps motivate you through the pain.  Don’t let the paradox of progress slow you down.  Whenever you discover that you have a lot more work ahead of you than you thought you did, let that be a sign to you that you’re making real progress.  Because you don’t know what you don’t know… until you learn that you don’t know it. (say that 5 times real fast). I hope you enjoyed this show, please head over to iTunes and subscribe and leave me a rating and review, even 1 sentence will help spread the word.  Thanks again!

I loved this book (click here to pick it up for yourself).  It took me a few weeks to read through it all, but I really enjoyed the wonderful stories that Richard Branson tells about his experiences in Entrepreneurship and leading the Virgin Group. He breaks down the book into four main categories: Listen, Learn, Laugh, Lead and then gives a nice recap of his top tips.  Many of his insights and stories are from the Virgin group of companies and can seem a little like marketing or promotional material, or better yet, highlight reel for the companies he’s founded.  Other stories come for various business leaders such as Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Elon Musk. I love the way he openly and honestly points out the mistakes of some companies and leaders, but then also praises either their turnaround or other industry leaders who do it right. Listen In this section Richard talks about the importance of taking notes.  I’m terrible at this… really terrible. All through college I didn’t take notes.  I learned to listen and pay attention, without taking notes. It served me really well there, however, with the increased amount of information I’m taking in these days, I can’t keep up without notes. Richard recounts many times where his note taking has saved him and he can look back and see ideas and commitments he’s made in the past. He also talks about how he believes people that take notes are better equipped to do their job and to be leaders. “A really skilled listener not only takes in what has been said but will also hear what has not been said. The unspoken word.” This quote shows me that there is more to listening than just hearing.  Listening requires taking in the body language, facial expressions and tones that surround the words. Sometimes you can hear more in the silence than you can in the words. “Simplicity wins every time.” On my door of my office I have an equation that I stole from Todd Henry’s, “The Accidental Creative”.  It states “1+1=[((27/3)/3)-1].”  That reminds me to keep it simple.  Everytime that I can remember picking a complex solution over a simple one, I regretted it in the long run. “Keeping it short goes a long way” I’m a huge fan of this.  I even have a rule (that’s only mildly enforced) that only permits 4 sentences in an email form my team members.  It helps them learn to get to the point and to understand that if it needs to be longer than 4 sentence, then we should probably talk about it. Learn “Live as if you’re going to die tomorrow. Learn as if you’re going to live forever” (Gandhi). I believe that learning is very important when it comes to leadership and just being a good employee, especially in the technology field.  When I teach my students at the local university, I try to teach them how to learn, moreover, what to learn.  If you understand how to learn, you can learn anything. Richard uses a quote from Seneca in this book that I just love… “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” It basically teaches you “how to get lucky.” For more information about that, check out episode 15. As many of you know, Richard Branson hosted a reality TV show where he hired an apprentice.  Sara Blakely, the CEO of Spanx, competed on the show and gave this quote, “The smartest thing I ever did in the early going was to hire my weaknesses.”  I’ve used this in previous podcasts and will probably use it again.  I think it’s the most important thing a leader should do when hiring, but its also one of the hardest.  We like to hire and work with people that are just like us.  That doesn’t workout too well.  We’re also intimidated by people who can do things better than us, but if they excel at my weakness, then together we can make a great team. Laugh “One hundred per cent down to the people-first culture.” If your employees come first, then the customers, then the shareholders you will be successful.  One of the biggest mistakes I see leaders and businesses make is to put the customers first, and their employees second, or sometimes third. If employees are first, then they will love their job and put the customers first in their mind, because they love and want to do what’s best and right for the business and their fellow employees. “Everything begins and ends with our people. If we keep our employees happy and engaged, they will keep our customers happy who will then reward us with their loyalty. That repeat business helps our bottom line and creates value for our shareholders.”  “Sometimes, rather than sitting back and complaining about lousy service, it really pays to get out there and find a way to improve upon it by reinventing it yourself.” Many people believe that being successful will make them happy.  That’s so untrue.  It usually works the other way around, but it really all depends on how you define success… and how you define happiness. I believe that happiness will determine success and we all know that laughing can help you be happy.  I’m a believer that happy employees are more productive members of the team and of society.  One of the things that I do with my team to encourage happiness is to encorporate service into our routine.  We spend half a day per month serving together as a team.  When we started this, it was only once per quarter, but we saw such a huge impact in happiness and productivity that I made it monthly. Lead “Leadership is the ability to hide your panic in front of others” (Lao Tzu) In times of crisis, this is so true.  But I believe that it also helps build resistance so that you don’t panic.  What I do is try to pretend I’m someone that doesn’t panic and is calm.  I pretend to be like Jack Bower from 24.  He was always so calm in the face of extreme pressure.  I also remind myself that no one will die… its only software, etc. For mote tips on dealing with and overcoming fear, check out episode 7. Much of the leadership part of this book is pretty common sense. Its really about treating people well, and working hard to make sure your team is happy and knows your expectations. One thing that really stood out to me was the explaination of Virgin’s “No PTO” policy. Where they don’t track paid time off.  I’ve seen many companies that did this and said that it was to make employees happy and that it saved the company money because they didn’t have to pay it out when employees quit, etc.  But Richard explained that with technology and the fact that employees are nearly always connected to work with their smartphones, there is no way to track how much an employee works.  If we can’t track their work time, we shouldn’t track their time off either. There is a section in this book where Richard talks about giving speeches.  You can find some of my tips on public speaking in Episode 14. He talks about keeping them short and sticking to Q/A formats. My favorite quote from the book about public speaking is from Winston Churchill, “A good speech is like a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the subject but short enough to create interest.” Lastly Richard Branson mom advises this “You’re guaranteed to miss every shot you don’t take”. So take that shot! Cheers. Sponsor: What’s HTML? : Learn it in 4 Hours “What’s HTML”   I hope you enjoyed this show, please head over to iTunes and subscribe and leave me a rating and review, even 1 sentence will help spread the word.  Thanks again!

SMART Goals.. Specific. Measurable. Achievable. Realistic. Time Bound. Specific – The Goal must be specific in nature.  Which of these is better?  Improve on customer service.  Or Increase our customer service survey rating by 10% over the 2015 numbers by July 2016. Measurable – The goal must be clearly measurable. In the example above, you can see that the first goal was not measurable.  Improve… is not measurable unless you put some numbers and a way you will be measuring the improvement.  I used survey rating as our measurement and an improvement of 10% as the goal. Achievable – It has to be realistic.  If I had never run or exercised before, I should have a goal to run a marathon next week.  That’s just not achievable.  It takes months of training to build up a base and expect to finish a marathon without serious injury. Realistic – Goals must be realistic.  If I had a goal to become to create the largest social network by the end of the year… well its possible, technically, but not realistic. Goals must be realistic and for large goals, you should be able to break them down into smaller goals. Time Bound – Goals should be bound by a date. If you want to achieve something, be sure to put a date on it so you can track to it.  If you say, I want to run a marathon, but don’t put, By 12/31/2016, then you’ll likely never run that marathon. You’ll tell yourself that, you’ll do it next year, etc.   I’m a firm believer in documenting your goals. If they are down on paper, in a place where you have to look at them daily or weekly, you’re more likely to achieve them, and if you share them with people, then you have people there to hold you accountable for your goals.   I challenged my team to run a half marathon together last year.  I told them if you really wanted motivation to achieve the goal, post it on Facebook that you were doing it and when you were doing it.  By putting it out there, you have your followers holding you accountable, and now, you won’t only be letting yourself down, but them to. That’s usually enough motivation to keep going and finish the goal.   My 2016 Goals Personal Goals Attend 100% of my kids sports games and practices in 2016. Have game night with the wife once per month after the kids go to bed in 2016. Have a movie night with the wife once per month after the kids go to bed in 2016. Have a date night (with baby sitter) at least once per quarter in 2016. Take my family on a vacation to the beach in 2016. Take my family on a vacation to the mountains in 2016. Fitness Goals Run at least twice per week for 46 of the 52 weeks in 2016. Work out at least twice per week for 46 of the 52 weeks in 2016 (runs don’t count). Eat fast food no more than one time per week for 46 of the 52 weeks in 2016. Average 10,000 steps per day in 2016. Complete a 5 day fast. Business Goals Increase my podcast listeners by 10x. Increase my email subscriber list by 10x. Write one book in 2016. Create and launch 3 iOS Apps in 2016. Give at least 3 talks in 2016. Sponsor: Surviving a 5K Race I hope you enjoyed this show, please head over to iTunes and subscribe and leave me a rating and review, even 1 sentence will help spread the word.  Thanks again!

Yesterday I gave a talk for the South Carolina iSTEM group at Saluda Trail Middle School. It was exciting to speak to teachers. Teachers that are working towards bettering the education experience. If you don’t know what STEM is, its an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education. I spoke on the Hour of Code, which is an initiative from Code.org to get students to learn an hour of code (or coding) this week. The Hour of Code is backed by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple and many other big named players in the tech space. I was honored to be able to speak for 2 hours on the subject. Some of the highlights of my talk include: Over coming the fear of getting started. Its hard to teach coding, when you don’t code. But understand that if you’re authentic, and put forth the effort, your students will get it. The goal isn’t to have your students leave as expert coders, but to have them leave confident in themselves and hopefully, with some insight into what Coding really is. Dispelling misconceptions of coders. People think that all programmers do is code. That’s so far from the truth. There’s a great deal of other skills needed, including communication (both written and oral), creativity, math, research, etc. There is also a thought that all coders are introverted. I had my team take a personality test a few months back and shockingly, 100% of my team are extroverts. That’s right, 100%. There is also a misconception that coders like to be locked away in a dungeon to pound out code… some do, but not all. There is also a misconception that coders are middle aged white guys. Far from the truth. My team includes people from Hispanic descent, African Americans, females and white males. Diversity is important for teams to get different input and perspectives. I also talked about the benefits of understanding coding at an early age. How it helps develop critical thinking skills, creativity, confidence and problem solving skills. Our athletes start learning their craft when they are very young. My 5-year-old started both soccer and basketball at age 3. But the people that write code to keep our airplanes in the sky, our medical equipment functioning, and our military systems armed don’t start learning their craft until college?? Really? Something seems wrong here. I believe that coding should be taught along side Math, English, Social Studies as a core course for all k-12 schools. Imagine if those graduating college with a computer science degree already had 16 years of coding under their belt. The things they could do would be amazing. I hope all teachers out there participate in the hour of code for your schools, and those that aren’t teachers, but work in technology should donate some time, help a school out or setup your own workshop to assist during the hour of code. For more information about the hour of code, check out code.org. Sponsor: What’s HTML? : Learn it in 4 Hours “What’s HTML”   I hope you enjoyed this show, please head over to iTunes and subscribe and leave me a rating and review, even 1 sentence will help spread the word.  Thanks again!