THE DREAM IN ACTION

above picture is of my father and my brother in-law to be

Alert: This post is not business, travel, or startup related at all. It’s almost completely personal. If you don’t know me you may not find it interesting at all. But I hope that you take what I’ve realized here and apply it to your life. I hope that you’re happier and more appreciative of your situation because of it. You’ve been warned.

A few weeks back, on St. Patrick’s day I had my engagement party. My folks were in from San Diego, my folks in law to-be were in from the burbs, and a bunch of friends from both home and college trekked there way to Chicago to help celebrate. We started the day at 8:30am with kegs and eggs, and of course bubbly to celebrate.

When you have an event like this where people are coming together to celebrate something in YOUR life, you really have to take a minute to realize how lucky you are. I didn’t do that, at least not right away. Tonight as I was going back through pics from that weekend (pictures here) I realized what a cool group of friends I have and how lucky I am to have them. My Dad has always told me that a persons ability to pick their friends has a crucial role in the direction of their life, and he’s dead on. It’s the same as the idea that you become your surrounding or environment. As my Mom would say, “Garbage in garbage out.” When you decide to put yourself around good people you’re in a better spot to make good decisions, have good experiences, and have a better life.

lanjut →

image via Robert Scoble’s flickr

Over the past 2 months I’ve made some drastic changes to how I use Twitter (which I will share below). When I was in China, as I was reading The 4 Hour Work Week, I realized that my control over my own productivity was slipping from my hands. I spent so much time on non-productive tasks and it was time for a drastic change. I realized that my Twitter habits were guilty of productivity theft and I needed to put an end to it. Here’s the experiment…

Before

At one point, I was following 1001 people on Twitter. At home on my Mac I used Tweetdeck and REACH to manage my twitter followers. The constant flow of Tweets was entertaining for sure but because of my desire to see as much as I could from the “Twittersphere” I dropped other important tasks. At work I limited Twitter but used iGoogle’s Betwittered to follow the streams. It got to the point that I couldn’t even see the Tweets from people I knew personally because of the huge number of people I followed that I didn’t know but were just interesting to me.

I have always been a huge fan of taking Twitter relationships offline. Late last year I met Ross Kimbarovsky, founder of crowdSPRING via Twitter. We had dinner one night and now have a solid, offline friendship. Same goes for Steffan Antonas, a Wordpress & Twitter guru out in San Diego. When I was home I met Steffan for drinks and we now stay in touch, sometimes via Twitter and sometimes via email. Another example is Fraser Kelton, VP of BizDev for AdaptiveBlue (maker of GLUE), who I’ll be meeting up with in two weeks on my trip to NYC. These are just a few examples of many more!

There are some incredibly valuable relationships to be had out there and I’ll always love Twitter for making those relationships easier to develop and find. But it got to the point that I couldn’t separate the social networking from the social noise making. I didn’t want to lose the ability to develop those relationships into valuable ones only because I was trying to keep up with so many other people I’d never met.

Realization

As I realized that I had to make this change I first had to decide how. Another relationship that I’ve begun to nurture through Twitter is the founder of Seesmic, Loic Lemeur. I follow his blog closely and saw him post on his drastic change in Twitter usage.  He had the Twitter folks write a script that would “unfollow all”. He did this because his direct messages got out of control. He was following 23,o00 people and understandably it was overbearing. 

I realized that I wanted to take a similar action. My goal was to get back to my close friends and people I’d met in person. I wanted to see the random actions, “I fed my dog ice cream and he loved it”, from my friends (so I could later make fun of them) but I didn’t need to see these posts from everyone. So how would I do that? What would the affects be and how could I test before making the jump?

Change

In China I basically didn’t use Twitter. This was my test. I think I had a total of 10-15 posts the entire month and it was relaxing. It freed me to focus on what I was learning from my training courses and it freed me to explore China. I reduced my blog posting to ‘travel only’, and I focused on the experiences I was having. I felt freed, I felt focused, and much more productive. I knew that when I got back I needed to apply some of the Tim Ferriss (4HWW) principles to really change my productivity and focus. I would employ the low(er) information diet.

So, when I got back, I promptly got in touch with Loic and asked if he could share the script with me. He couldn’t give me the script but I got in touch with Zac Bowling (@zbowling) and he ran it for me. In a total of about 20 minutes I was following O people. I had completely started from scratch with Twitter and it was scary. I started re-adding people like my parents (yes, they’re on Twitter), my sisters, my college friends, the people who I stated above, and other people that I knew in person. It was easy to find who I communicated with most often using saved Twitter searches in REACH (coming to beta soon!). 

I definitely do need to apologize to some people because I haven’t yet added everyone back that I should. I’m doing this gradually. If I know you in person I’m probably following you (again). However, for those who I don’t know in person I’ve limited my consumption of your tweets to regain my personal productivity. Please don’t take it personally. If we have had conversations, please @reply me and get back in touch, I’d love it. I should say that there is no goal here of having a ridiculous follower/following ratio. I could careless. I only care about the value that I get out of the tool and I’ll take almost any action that will increase that value measure.

After

The results of my experiment have been pretty interesting. Right away I lost about 150 followers. It dropped from 1500 followers to about 1340. Losing those followers didn’t bother me at all. If people are following me only/just because I’m following them then peace. Then, people started following me at a much faster rate and even though I’d lose about 10 followers a day, I’d add about 11. Now my follower number is about 1360 and I sincerely hope to interact with many of those people in the future.

Twitter is very much a two way street. Those who interact with my question type tweets I’ll follow and interact with them, those who don’t, well I guess they’ll continue to just follow my tweets. I definitely engaged in the question tweets of anyone who @replies me or that I’m already following. I’m a huge supporter of the platform and now that my Tweets go directly and quickly into Facebook it’s engaging even more friends!

My productivity has sky-rocketed due to my low information diet and reduction of Tweets to consume. Now I rarely consume Tweets and send Tweets at the same time. By doing this it’s easy to spiral into a Twitter session that lasts much longer than it needs to. I can’ t say I’d recommend this experiment to everyone, but I would recommend identifying what and who are important to you and making sure that the tool enables better communication instead of the tool becoming a barrier to solid communication. 

Below is a hilarious video about the “Twittershere” shared by my sis @taylorgraves

As you develop a growth strategy for your business there are a few important decisions to be made. The classic choice of what type of a company you’ll be is first; product leadership, operational excellence, or customer service are the basic 3. At some level all companies choose their identity using these 3 categories. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel, but can you just blatantly copy another company? Do you have to be different to be good?

When Harvard Business School’s assistant professor in entrepreneurship, Mukti Khaire, was asked about research he’s done about startup growth, he responded that the most surprising fact he found was that, “there was a very strong positive effect that mimicking older organization had on venture growth.”

Khaire said, “while I expected this based on theoretical frameworks, we have come to associate entrepreneurship with novelty so strongly that I was nevertheless surprised to see that mimicry was beneficial even to young firms that typically do not possess historical institutional baggage.” One startup founder said to Khaire in an interview he conducted during his research, “it pays to be on the bandwagon.”

lanjut →

I recently got a pro account to Remember the Milk so that I could use their iPhone/iTouch application. This allows me use use that device for my to-do lists and view/work these lists from any computer. I now use RTM for my work to-do’s, my personal project to-do’s, and now other lists like Dreams, Things I Want, etc. 

I’ve recently been working on compiling a list of “Dreams”. These are things that I’d like to do if I didn’t have to work everyday. Forming this list will help with:

lanjut →

My last day in China was another amazing one. I decided to head solo to Tongli, one of the ancient water cities in China. I was to arrive at the bus stop by 8:30a and travel for about 2 hours by bus to Tongli. I chose Tongli because my guide book said that it was less touristy, thus less crowded, and I wanted  to experience authentic, rural China on my last day. I wanted the reverse culture shock to be as drastic as possible as I came back into the States . I wanted the sites, sounds, and smells of China to be as memorable as possible as I returned.

The Sprint through Shanghai

That morning I decided to take the subway to the train station. I got on the subway about 45 minutes before my bus was scheduled to leave. Plenty of time, so I thought. Well, I some how misread the map and went one exit too far. This added an extra 10 minutes. Then, when I finally got off at the correct stop, I asked a woman, “where exactly is the train station?” I was pointed in the direction of the Shanghai Stadium. At this point I had about 15-20 minutes to spare. The stadium however was a good 10-15 minute walk from the subway station. I started walking. As I check my watch at 8:25am I realized I was really pushing it. Picture this… a white man, standing 6′3, with a full day pack, absolutely sprinting through downtown Shanghai. I became the laughing stock of many Shanghainese that morning!

I finally recruited someone to help me find the train station at about 8:31am. Me and my recruit were both running towards the train station and all around the stadium, neither he, nor I, had any clue where exactly this station was. How I convinced a commuting Chinese guy to run through downtown with me, I’ll never know. As we arrived at the station and ran to the counter I didn’t need to understand Chinese to understand that my bus had left and there wasn’t another one coming…all day.

At this point I really wasn’t upset at all. I just decided there’s gotta be somewhere else that would be cool for a day trip. I refunded my ticket for 80% of the cost and purchased a ticket to Xitang, another water city. This one was about an hour and fifteen minutes away. Closer but much more touristy.”Oh well”, I thought, “better this than nothing”.

“Be Back On-time!”

I got the bus to Xitang about 9:15am and we were on our way. I read as much as I could about Xitang but my guide book didn’t include much other than saying, “this place is touristy”. No biggy, I’d explore none the less, and I was excited to be traveling solo again.

lanjut →

On Auren Hoffman’s blog, Summation, he posted this yesterday:

“The top 1% of U.S. population now make 23% of income. (& top 10% of the U.S. population make 50% of income).

Is this because we live in a winner take all economy???”

This got me thinking about Vilfredo Pareto and the 80/20 law. His law states that, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This stat from Auren makes me think that Pareto was just getting started with 80/20 but not necessarily right forever.

Is it possible that as we go on and on in life, in the world, etc, that this law will become more like 90/10? Not just economically speaking but in all things.

Will less continue to determine more and more?

Image via Wikipedia

Pedestrians absolutely do not have any kind of right of way. Really nobody in Shanghai has a right of way. At one point I was in a cab at 9pm (dark) and there in front of us was a guy on a scooter with no light coming directly at us. He was honking that we didn’t see him! In short, the driving is way crazier that NY or anything we’ve seen in the States.

KFC is huge. The colonel is killing it in China. I don’t know how they’ve completely dominated the Chinese markets, but in both Shanghai and in Beijing, Kentucky Fried Chicken is the bullocks. Much larger even than McDonald’s is in the States.

Spitting, no swallowing mucous. The Chinese don’t believe it’s healthy to swallow your mucous. So, every morning you hear “hawking” non stop. It’s pretty disgusting.

Subway pushing. Basically, there is no sense of personal space in the crowded cities of China. On my last day in Shanghai I was riding the subway during rush hour and witnessed first hand the sardine packing that goes on in the subways. The ideal situation is that you keep your footing and end up inside, the less ideal is that you get pushed onto the ground. I held my own.

No tipping. From taxi drivers to bar tenders, you never tip in China. Call me cheap but it’s kind of nice.

Americans all have guns. I had lunch with a random Chinese kid that I met in Xitang on my last day in China and he asked me how many guns does my family have? This shocked me, but he went on to say that he thought all Americans have guns. He said that that’s why we are such a safe country because everyone has guns. Interesting huh?

One front wheel on full sized trucks. I’ve never seen it before, but in China they have full sized trucks, almost as large as an F350 that have only 1 front wheel. I was trying to figure out why this was, but all I could come up with is that they don’t have to go 60-80 mph on a freeway and maybe one wheel allows them to make tighter turns in smaller streets.

Service employees study customer names and characteristics. In our hotel I thoroughly enjoyed coming to breakfast (sometimes hungover) and have 2 or 3 hostess’s say, “Good morning Mr. Graves” or better yet, “Zao Shang Hao Mr. Graves”. Apparently, the reason they learn the customers names so well, is because they have meeting where the employees talk about the names and the physical characteristics of each guest. Also, there are 2 -5 people assigned to each guest, to know their names. At any giving time it seemed there was always 2 service people for each guest. It was brilliant!

I miss China. 

During my adventures in China I read The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. The man is incredibly motivating and thought provoking in his quest to challenge the socially excepted lifestyle of differing retirement to the end of your life. He promotes spreading the fun and the work out and setting up means of income so that this New Rich (freedom of time and money) lifestyle  can be made possible…now.

The book starts with the process of identifying your dream adventures of knowledge, travel, and life exploration. Although I’ve already read through the book, I’m far from finished with it. I’ll be working through the exorcises and likely even the entrepreneurship aspects of the book over the next few months. Tim promotes the idea of a ‘muse’, a business that you own but don’t even run. By completely automating a source of income you can free yourself from having to “deal with it” and become what you dreamed of as a child.

As I brainstorm both my dreams and my potential “muses” I’ll be sharing much of the process/adventure here.

The really fun part is the dream identification process. Let’s start with this.

These guys literally have figured out a way to fly. By putting on suits that turn them into flying squirrels they’re able to base jump and stay airport with control for minutes at a time. This is def on the list. Thanks Mom for sharing this, now you can’t be mad when I do it :)

wingsuit base jumping

At GE we use NPS or Net Promoter Score to see how our customers view the business. On Eric Ries’s, Lessons Learned blog he also uses NPS to see how his readers are liking and sharing his blog. Today, I’d like to use the same measure to see how I’m doing here on my blog.

Net Promoter Score basically asks, how likely are you to recommend X? You take the people who would promote you (7 or higher) minus the people who wouldn’t (3 or lower) and you have your score. I’m hopefully going to get 50 people to fill out this survey and I’ll definitely present the results here afterwords. I really enjoyed the results last time we did a survey so please participate here, it’ll only take you 4 seconds.

So, I’d like to ask you…

How likely are you to recommend Ryan A Graves.com to a friend or colleague?

Click the link to answer the survey

Over the past month you’ve not seen any startup type posts, I’ve gone Tim Ferriss on you and have just written about my adventures all around China. And I’m not done writting about them :) But, now that I’m back, I’ll continue to talk about my adventures with SocialDreamium and ActionsTalk. I’ve also been reading ‘The 4 Hour Work Week’ and have many thoughts to share on that over the next couple weeks.

As always, I love the interaction on this blog and encourage you to comment and get conversations going around anything we talk about here. Talk to you soon!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Blogging and traveling, a golden combination (thenextweb.com)
• NPS is Growing Up (adaptivepath.com)
• Talking Travel with Tim Ferriss (again) about his new TV show: Trial By Fire (gadling.com)

Tomorrow I’m headed out of Shanghai for a solo day trip to Tongli, Suzhou. Tongli is a water city also known as the Venice of the East. Apparently the stand-out features of this rural, authentic, and tourist light city are the beautiful bridges and the Chinese sex museum. No, that was not a typo.

I’m pumped for a day of solo exploration and adventure. Much pictures to come!

For previous pictures from the trip check it out.