San Francisco/Seattle

This is a "catch up" post. I've been super behind on blogging lately as we have been crazy busy (more on that later).

Two weeks ago, the day after returning from New York with Tom, Jaspar and I headed up to Seattle. We were hired by the Best Western to do social media training for a number of their hotels. On our way up to the wet North West we stopped over in San Francisco for the evening to attend a start up mixer that Jamie was hosting.

LAX to SFO marked my first Virgin America flight. I wasn't too impressed. It was like Jet Blue with mood lighting. Richard Branson has long been an entrepreneurial hero of mine so I should have more allegiance to his airline, but my AAdvantage miles have kept me addicted to American.

Jamie's mixer was great. I invited Luther and Dan, and met a bunch of angels and entrepreneurs doing all sorts of amazing things in tech. We drank wine, got a tour of Yelp's offices, and ended up driving around downtown San Francisco for an hour and a half looking for Jaspar's friends house. As the mixer wound down, Dan said farewell and told me he was headed back to the office. It was nine thirty and we were a very glasses of wine deep, "Really?" I said.

Dan is the CEO of Huddler, a Stanford educated, nationally ranked gymnast with discipline that could outlast 99.99% of the population. Discipline is a quality I have long prided myself on, but I left 100 hour work weeks back at the investment bank. Given what I learned in New York about Tom's working style, I have begun to question the value of long, hard hours. I am unsure of what to aspire to.

In early morning Jaspar and I hopped on a flight to Seattle and over the next three days worked with the amazing staff of three different Seattle area hotels. We detailed Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, CitySearch and Google Analytics. I'm proud to say that in the week since we have left they've already started to generate business from their social media efforts. We hung out with Jonas at his incredible lake house, ate great seafood at Flying Fish, and went Christmas shopping. Good week.

Best Book of the Year, Decade and (maybe) My Life

Last night, as I finished reading Shantaram, my eyes welled up with tears, as they had many times across the nearly 1000 pages I had just read. I was crying because I had lost one of the wisest companions I have ever come to know. This book is incredible.

Shantaram is based on the life of its author - Gregory David Roberts - who convicted to a 19 year prison sentence in Australia, escaped over the front wall of the prison and went on to become an international fugitive.

The book touches on this only lightly. The real focus is the decade that Roberts spent in Bombay - falling in love, opening a clinic in the slums, working for an arm of the Bombay mafia and fighting with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. The story is exciting and never once slows. But the true brilliance of the book is in the long philosophical discussions. The author has with himself and the other characters of the novel, particularly Abdul Kader Khan, the don of the arm of the Bombay mafia he joins.

I'll go no further. Read it.

Social Media Interview

New York

A week ago today I was in the city that has my heart - New York, New York! Tom invited me to go find a new location for his furniture store. We stayed at The W Union Square, ate at Del Posto, meditated, did yoga, shopped, and spent a few hours looking at locations. Even with all this "work" we were able to find the perfect location for his new store.

The way Tom does business is fascinating. We woke up at noon, ordered room service, meditated for an hour, did yoga for two hours, and then and only then, as the sun set on the city we emerged to look at locations. If I was with anyone else I would call this lazy, with Tom I call it genius. On the plane to New York Tom said something that I have been wrestling with since:

"It is better to do nothing, then to do the wrong thing."

This reminded me of my recent post on decisions. I'm a doer. I make decisions quickly. Sometimes I'm right. Sometimes I'm wrong. But I feel that the momentum in action keeps me going. Tom does the exact opposite, eliminating the momentum and finding stillness. When he decides he is almost always right. His track record as (perhaps) the only profitable retail furniture store in the recent economic crisis speaks to this.

So now I'm thinking. I'm wondering what is a more effective method of doing business. And I'm not certain what to do...or not do for that matter.

Action

I am relentless when it comes to making decisions and trying new things. But over the past year I have often doubted the wisdom of this approach. It's tough to have to explain to friends that, "I opened an office of virtual assistants in the Philippines," one month and then switch to talking about doing, "social media marketing plans" to pay the bills for that office the next.

This morning I read one of my favorite posts in a long time on Fred's blog, about the virtues of action oriented leadership. It even starts with a Churchill AMAZING:

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

Inspiration

After seeing Up in the Air this weekend, I've discovered a strange irony in the sadness and destruction of people being laid off. Sometimes being fired is the greatest thing that can happen, if being fired sets you free:

hallelujah

hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!!!

Mentors

Mentors are essential. I am fortunate enough to be surrounded by some incredible mentors in my everyday life. But most of them are not familiar with online businesses and social media. So I have another set of mentors who I follow in my Google Reader. These tech entrepreneurs and VCs dispense sage advice daily, the kind of advice that keeps a young entrepreneur like me going:

Albert Wenger
Bijans Sabet
Fred Wilson
Jamie Siminoff
Jason Calacanis (TWiST)