Quintified

Quintify currently has a job posting for a marketing intern. I think this is an awesome opportunity — if my kids were a bit older I’d encourage them to pursue it. (I wish I had the time to pursue it myself!)

The first two resumes / cover letters we got reminded me of what I often see with such things — the cover letters and resumes are form letters, and mention nothing about the specific opportunity we’re offering, or in this case about Port City Deals (a major subject of our job posting.)

Wouldn’t it be so easy for them to say, “I checked out Port City Deals and love it! I can picture a site like this in every metropolitan area across the country, and I’m excited about having a role in bringing that about! While I haven’t done much with marketing a real product at this (young) point in my life, I’m eager to learn as I go and jump in with both feet.” (Better yet to suggest some first steps toward marketing the business opportunity.)

But instead: Here I am. Here’s my background. I can help you, and I’ll benefit too. I’m going to call you next week to make sure you got my stuff.

But did you read my stuff?!?!?!

Agghhh!!

(Couldn’t get this one to fit in Twitter…)

A nice aspect of my focused programming times is that I can listen to podcasts while working. It’s like listening to the radio in the background, so I don’t get every word, but 20 hours of Dan Miller gets you his gist…

(Yes, over the past couple weeks I’ve listened to over over 20 hours of Dan Miller’s “48 Days to the Work You Love” podcast. And I’m still in 2006. (Just in case you’re wondering, I love my work, but have always been a glutton for both receiving and giving career advice.))

My favorite podcast is the Stack Overflow podcast with Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky. I highly recomend this to all computer programmers. Unfortunately they only do one hour a week.

The Duct Tape Marketing podcast is great too, as is Dave Ramsey’s.

However, I can’t listen while I’m writing or reading English, so I need to rewind my current podcast just a bit after I post this.

I recently heard Dave Ramsey tell a distressed caller something like, “You need to do ten years’ worth of work in the next three months.” That motivated me to contemplate my situation and to wonder, “What would it look like to get ten years worth of work done in three months — what does that mean?”

Fortunately for me, my situation isn’t bleak like Dave’s caller’s, but this “10/3″ challenge motivates me because I see so very much opportunity at the moment with my Vienna — now is the time to march!

But as I sit here, eleven hours into my workday, I find myself wondering if New Hanover High School is playing soccer tonight, and I remember that my son wants me to play a rented Wii game with him before it goes back to Blockbuster in the morning.

I’m not sure I know exactly what 10/3 would look like, but I know what it wouldn’t look like. I need to eliminate everything that’s not important, and work hard when I work, and work a lot, and see where that leads. (And sometimes soccer and Wii with son IS important, and blogging!

As an aside, Paul Graham, another member of Quintify’s virtual board of directors, has an excellent essay on compressing work and the reward that can ensure from that. Most highly recommended.

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “If you start to take Vienna, take Vienna.” My friend Matt MacDowell of 360Skate and Pacific Medical and I have talked about that quote for a number of years, but the problem for me has been settling on a “Vienna” to take, as there are just too many great (fun!) opportunities out there. As a result I’ve lacked a singular focus.

Today I was at a GrowthCLUB 90-day planning session with ActionCoach Reggie Shropshire (highly recommended!) which wrapped up thinking I’ve been doing the past several weeks.

I now have my Vienna.

I left GrowthCLUB with 6 goals for the quarter but they all feed one main goal — the one thing I am going to focus on regarding business this quarter, this year, and on into the future. Everything I do professionally will be in light of that one thing and will be evaluated by its effect on and contribution to the realization of that one thing.

After years of entrepreneurial thinking and endeavor among a myriad of pursuits, I’m pumped to have just one thing!

I read somewhere once a recommendation to have a “virtual board of directors”– a hypothetical one, not just a literal one like I found references to online while trying to find the source of this idea. This virtual board of directors is composed of business/thought leaders whom you know and respect well enough that they can both ask you good, hard questions about your company and answer questions you have for them, with you holding all the conversations in your head.

For example, Tom Peters in on my imaginative board of directors. I’m quite familiar with his many books and thinking, and I have a good feel for the “hard” questions he’d ask me if he were at a real Quintify BOD meeting. And if I stopped and asked myself “What would Tom Peters say to me if I had a one-on-one with him and he knew my situation?”, if I sat and thought about it for a bit I’d be able to answer that fairly accurately.

I want to “flesh out” this vBOD more, but here’s my preliminary list, with a key theme or two for each (of many themes most provide).

• Tom Peters — WOW work done by WOW teams (PSFs) comprised of WOW people. (”And why is your vBOD made up entirely of non-young white men???”)
• Seth Godin — Forget “mass” anything regarding advertising or probably even product development
• Paul Graham — work hard and add incredible value quickly, taking the harder path whenever two options present themselves
• David Thomas — author of The Pragmatic Programmer — his discussion of code generators in that book lead to much of what drives Quintify
• Dave Ramsey — pay it out of cash flow after your emergency fund is built!!!

About time for a board meeting!

Two questions for you:

Anyone else you’d recommend me to add to my virtual board of directors?

Who would be on yours?

Reid

I’m not sure where I got this from, but I have this on a file on my computer that I review almost every day:

5 predictors (markers) of success

• passion
• determination
• talent
• self discipline
• faith

For me this list is mostly a reminder to keep pushing — to be determined and to be self disciplined. Perhaps those are the two items on the list that are the easiest to fake (to do anyway) if they otherwise tend to be absent?