Tribal Pizza

Comfort != Happiness

The last couple of posts (Brussels Sprouts and Difficulty Is A Vector) might give you the impression that it's all doom and gloom at Tribal these days and that's not the case.  We're currently in The Dip, where we've made a massive push and have made serious progress,  but have hit our first real wall -- getting unit #1 open and operating. 

The gloomy posts serve two purposes. The first is to let people who are going through similar challenges know that we share their angst.  The other reason is that if we don't capture the difficult times now, we'll likely gloss over them in the future when they're behind us. 

That brings me to the title of the post.  We simply don't equate comfort with happiness.  I'm not sure when this got drilled into us, but I think it really gelled during our "big company" days.  All too often, we saw folks choose the path of comfort and with pretty dismal results.  Opportunities were missed, implementations were mediocre, and innovation withered all because someone (or several someones) in the dependency graph decided that they didn't want to be uncomfortable.

So, the forecast for the next few weeks is lower lows, with a chance of higher highs and gusting difficulties in the direction of our choosing.

"Difficulty" Is A Vector

Webb and I were talking about some options with Tribal's first delivery unit.  As with any set of options, each one had it's pros and cons.  A couple of the options represented several miserable months while we got our systems, schedule, and staff put into place.

These were still considered viable options and he hit the nail on the head when he said, "It doesn't suck any more than walking into a cushy job and losing a little piece of your soul each day . . . it's just different."

Thus was born the Tribal Pizza Unified Theory of Suckitude, which states: "Sometimes you control the magnitude of the suckiness, sometimes you control the direction, you may even be able to exchange control of one for the other.  Good luck trying to control both."

The next time you find yourself in a difficult situation, ask yourself: "Am I here because I chose the magnitude or the direction?"  If you chose the direction, then it's your own fault that it sucks so much.  If you chose the magnitude, then it's your fault for being there in the first place.  And what if you chose neither?  Then it's your fault for treating difficulty as point with neither direction nor magnitude in an attempt to violate the laws of nature.

Brussels Sprouts

I'm pretty open about food and as I have aged I have become more accepting to different tastes. However, one thing that has never changed is that I can't stand Brussels Sprouts. As a kid, I tried three strategies for dealing with forced consumption of the horrid little buggers.

First, I railed, threw a fit and refused to eat them. That didn't work!

Second, I swallowed them whole and forced them down with water. Well, I didn't have to taste them, but, almost choked. Plus the darn texture bothered me more that way.

Lastly, I accepted my fate and decided to eat them first. I knew I wouldn't like it, but, I would eat them first and get them out of the way. Then I could cleanse my pallet with my other food and enjoy my meal -- sprout free.

When my task list becomes filled (as often it does), I am reminded to eat my Brussels Sprouts first (in other words the most despised tasks get done first). This leaves my remaining work to cleanse my pallet and refresh my soul.

How do you deal with despised tasks?

Minimizing Procrastination or the Careful Art of Negotiating with a Rogue State!

I've been thinking about procrastination quite a bit since starting my own company. There is an entire industry promoting helpful tips on how to avoid procrastination. I've never really spent much time until recently reading any of the advice. Instead, in the past I just tried to avoid procrastination. My success rate is hit and miss. Some careful analysis of my own love/hate relationship with procrastination has led me to some interesting conclusions. First, if you are like me -- you just can't avoid procrastination. It's just part of your character. I know I like to work in spurts. Do nothing. Pulse. Do nothing. Do nothing. Do nothing. Pulse. Well, this pulsing strategy works really well for some types of adventures. Some it doesn't. It's not conducive to owning your own business -- there are just too many plates to spin. Something always needs your attention. So if we can't avoid procrastination, how can we minimize it? How can we negotiate with it?

First, see procrastination as a strategy or a technique for achieving a host of different goals. I've begun to see procrastination as a form of asymmetrical warfare a part of my psyche uses against the more successful, driven and motivated portion of my psyche. But why? Well, I would categorize the goals behind procrastination this way:

• Delaying a potential frustrating, embarrassing, or difficult event
• Using my time in an alternative time-wasting manner, such as daydreaming
• Avoiding a boring or uninteresting task
• Being lazy because I'm either mentally or physically exhausted
• Being lazy because I believe I'm either mentally or physically exhausted

The little rogue state that encourages the use of procrastination isn't such a boogie man -- just misunderstood and underrepresented. Also, he's not that mature; so he doesn't use good techniques in dealing with situations. Armed with this information, I've come up with some alternative negotiating strategies for dealing with him. Yes, I negotiate with myself! I'm not that concerned with my sanity because they are bilateral talks -- if they were six party talks, well then I'd be riding the crazy train.

Here's a few different negotiation strategies, they go something like this:

Scenario 1:

"OK, so I see you want to procrastinate. Why?"

"Well there is some unpleasant event I don't want to deal with."

"OK, let's take care of that right away! Now!"

"Now."

"Absolutely, the sooner the better. That way there is no time to worry about it. The more you worry the more dreadful it seems."

"I don't want to."

"I know, guess what, let's use that time we free up from worrying to do something fun."

"Fun?"

"Oh yeah, let's daydream, read a book, walk in the park, grab a beer, or catch a movie."

"Really? Can we get a beer and see a movie?"

"Sure. But, first we deal with the event."

"OK!"

Scenario 2:

"Hey, do we have to do such and such? Let's do nothing instead!"

"Why don't you want to do such and such?"

"It's boring!"

"Yeah, I know"

"Cool. Agreed? We can do nothing then?"

"Hold on. We really need to get this done. Here are the consequences of not getting this done. Guess what, it may actually mean we have to work harder."

"So. But, not right now."

"I hear ya. Guess what, I'll make you a deal. Let's work on it for 40 minutes and then we can take a little 20 minute screw off break. What do you think?"

"I don't know."

"Come on."

"OK, but, just this time."

At this point, I think to myself, no problem I can negotiate with you all day like this. We'll get 8 or 9 hours of work done at this pace.

Anyways, you get the point. When you find yourself trying to procrastinate find out why. Then try to negotiate with the part of you that wants to. Trade with that part of yourself if you have to. Sometimes, when you've driven procrastination a way for a while let him win a few negotiations. Just don't let him in on the secret that you have only let him win the battles you wanted to loose. You're consciously creating free time for your mind and body to relax and have fun -- and that is doing something! That helps you drive your success and stay motivated.

How do you deal with procrastination?

Higher Highs, Lower Lows

I read a lot about startups.  Blogs, books, magazines, pretty much anything I can get my hands on.  A lot of people talk about "the roller coaster ride" of starting a company, which seems like a great analogy until you actually do it.

Sure, there are lots of ups and downs.  There's definitely excitement.  Certainly an admission fee must be paid.  Sounds just like a roller coaster, right?  If this were the case then any adrenaline junkie with the cost of the ticket in his pocket would jump right in.

Here's the problem: the "lows" aren't the dips in the ride.  The dips in the ride are simply part of the excitement -- they're fun, they add to the experience.  The real lows are the wait in line between rides.  You need to not only crave the ride, you have to be able to stick it out to get on in the first place. 

Most of what I read hints at the wait in line, but no one ever seems to capture it fully, probably because by the time they write about their experience they've forgotten just how bad the line can be.  So, here's my addition to the analogy to try to give you an idea of how low the lows can go:  Sometimes while waiting in line, you'll be set on fire.  That's right, actually engulfed in flames.  The rules are simple: if you wait it out and make it to the front of the line, all of the physical damage will disappear and you get to ride.  If you step out of line, the flames go out, but the damage remains.  You are informed of this rule not at the beginning of your wait, but right about the time you can see the boarding area.  You will have just enough time to say, "You must be fuh" before the match is struck and the heat is on.

There are two questions, then: Do you ever even consider getting on the ride?  After having not only shuffled along in line but having done so while on fire, do you get back in line to ride again?  If the answer to either of these is no, then you're probably best off just grabbing a funnel cake and watching the show.

Misery Loves Company

Starting a company is hard.  Really hard.  One might even say "wicked hard", if one were from Boston.  That's the beauty of Against the Odds, an autobiography of James Dyson.  See, no matter how hard things are, they're probably easier than they were for James.  I knew that he had toiled for a long time to perfect the Dyson vacuum cleaner, but I didn't know how long.  He spent years building prototypes in a barn while in debt that other might find crushing.  He knew that he had something that worked, but all of the math he found to support his empirical evidence was "rubbish".  Instead of trying to prove that he had something valuable by working out formulas, he proved it by building it -- over, and over, and over again.  But it gets better.  Even once he had a working prototype, he had a bear of a time getting funding.  I'll admit, the first couple of chapters were a little slow (in my opinion), but the book on whole was fascinating. 

If you're working on a tough problem that seems to be getting tougher by the day, pick up Against the Odds.  After all, misery loves company.

Not Cool, Man. Not Cool.

Since Webb and I sit less than 2 meters apart for many hours a day, we hadn't hung out outside of work for way too long.  To rectify the situation, we got together this past weekend to cook, drink, and hang.

We were doing all three at once when the subject of our new embroidered shirts and hats came up.  The pieces are, from what I've seen in the past, technically perfect.  We don't have the easiest logo in the world to draw, let alone stitch into fabric and yet the logo looks really sharp on the hats and polos that we got.

Webb hates them.

He tried to explain why for a drink or two and then he nailed it: "Dude, Tribal isn't trying to be cool.  Tribal is cool.  Those hats are NOT cool.  Those hats are trying to be cool."

He was dead on.

Later in the night we were talking about a one of our friends who has done 90% of our testing for us.  I didn't realize it until I was driving in this morning, but we paid him one of the highest compliments we could: we described him as "genuine".  As a matter of fact, we're pretty sure that he's the most genuine person we know.

Once that thought lodged in my head, I quickly saw that the people and businesses that I like are the ones who are genuine.  I can't stand the big chain pizza companies because they pretend to be customer-focused, but aren't.  I love the hole-in-the-wall Mediterranean place that we go every Thursday for sharwirma because it's everything it promises to be: a hole-in-the-wall with good food for almost no money.  I resented my Jaguar because it was pretending to be a luxury car, even though it's far from luxurious to be in the shop all the time.  I love my new Nissan Versa (the car we've chosen for our delivery vehicles) because it does exactly what it's supposed to do and was cheap enough to put on a credit card (in case any potential investors are reading this: that's not what I did).

Take a look around today.  Are the people around you pretending to be something they aren't?  Are the places you go putting up a thin veil or are they living their values?  As for me, I'm going to go search for some new hats.

The Dancing Bear Problem

Last week my wife and I went to Rainforest Cafe for lunch.  I had never been to one, even though most of the malls where I shop have one.  I used to work with one of their senior operations people and remember hearing how expensive they are to build, so I wanted to see what all that cash got them.  While I commend them on their commitment to the theme (EVERYTHING is jungle themed), I think they suffer from a Dancing Bear problem.  The term comes from the book The Inmates Are Running The Asylum and refers to things that do something, but not particularly well.  Sure, the bear is dancing, but he's not dancing well.  The fact that it's a bear that's doing the dancing is the only thing that makes it even remotely interesting.  Which brings me to the food at Rainforest.

Our hyper-caffeinated teenage waiter (pictured left) tried to push margaritas and rum punch on us at 11:45am with little success.  I ordered a burger, which is $11 with chips or $12 with fries.  I was anxious to see how much of the cost was for the animatronic jungle that we were sitting in and how much actually went into making a good burger.  It should be noted here, once again, that I was CTO at DuClaw Brewing Company for 3 1/2 years.  They make my favorite burger in the world: The Arizona Burger.  I've been to Burger Bar, the Hubert Keller joint in Las Vegas and I still think The Arizona Burger is the best I've ever had.

Back to Rainforest:  The burger was thoroughly mediocre.  They kitchen cooked it properly and, as far as I could tell, plated it properly which means that they executed it correctly.  This also means that this burger has no chance of ever being very good.  It is simply "a burger".  No, it's simply "an $11 burger served in an animatronic jungle".  The burger did not dance well.

Anyone who has been to Rainforest may say, "Yeah, but kids love the place."  No doubt about it, sitting in a simulated jungle is a real kick for kids and I understand that that's really what you're paying for.  The problem I have is that I know that it doesn't cost more to serve a great burger than it does to serve a mediocre one.  We're not talking Kobe beef and shaved truffles here, we're talking about the most flavorful and interesting dish you can create within budget.  That doesn't have to cost more or take more effort to prepare, it only requires that someone commit to serving a good burger during the recipe development phase.

Which brings me to the reason that all of this is particularly important to me right now:  I've been thinking about the Tribal Pizza recipes a lot lately.  Even though our production kitchen isn't ready yet, there's still plenty I can do in my home kitchen.  The most important thing that I can do now, however, is commit to serving a really good pizza.  We're a very technology-driven company that has, in my humble opinion, some really killer marketing ideas.  None of that matters, however, if people are disappointed with the product that we deliver.  It's not like they'll take bite after bite of a mediocre pie and say to each other, "It's not great, but man was that website cool!  Let's do this again soon!"  No, with any luck they'll talk about the pizza and the rest will kind of disappear -- only to be noticed when they order somewhere else and have a less enjoyable experience.

Software Isn't Legos! It's IKEA Furniture.

As often happens in a startup, I found myself at IKEA yesterday.  We needed a place to put our coffee pot and microwave, which is the extent of the kitchen equipment that we have right now.  I picked up a Gehrfleugurfluggen chest that seemed to fit the bill and for $80 I was out the door. After I got back to the office and started putting it together, it struck me as a good analogy to software development -- far superior to the common "components are like Lego bricks" analogy that I read so frequently.

Let's start with the problems I see in the Lego analogy:

• With Legos, pieces fit together in a consistent fashion.  Outside of using Super Glue, they'll always connect the same way, even if you're building different designs.
• Legos are HIGHLY standardized.  Sure, you can add the space pieces and castle pieces and Star Wars pieces, but those are more like design elements than core components.  When the media trots out the analogy, they're talking about the standard little blocks.
• Hand 2 people identical sets of Legos and identical instructions and you'll get identical results.  Does that sound ANYTHING like software development to you?

Okay, here's why I think that IKEA furniture is a much more fitting analogy:

• They give you all the parts and instructions, but so many times you find yourself undoing what you just did in order to do it the right way.  The pieces may be backwards, upside down, or just plain wrong, yet they still seemed right at the time.
• IKEA pieces are familiar in style and function, but they can be wildly inconsistent.  While putting together the Gehrfleugurfluggen, I put the little cam wedgies in to hold the sides on and then they all fell out.  It turns out that there were 2 sizes of cam wedgies, one for sides and one for drawers.  They have you put the sides on first.  There were 4 side wedgies and 12 door wedgies which made the chance of grabbing the door wedgies much higher.  Not only that, but the side wedgies are bigger which meant that the door wedgies would "fit" in the side holes, further leading me down the false path.  Sound like software to you?
• Hand 2 people the same IKEA pieces with the same Wordless Workshop style instructions and you'll get 2 different pieces.  Assembler #1 will use all the nails to attach the back piece.  Assembler #2 will use about half the bag.  Assembler #1 will actually attach the little safety strap;  Assembler #2 . . . not so much.  Assembler #1 will finish in about half the time having put everything together correctly on the first attempt.  Assembler #2 will have scratches, dents, and loose pieces from having put things on backwards and then "fixing" it.

Having played with Legos, assembled IKEA furniture, and written software throughout my life I can attest to the latter analogy being much closer to the current state of development.  If you have a better analogy, feel free to post in the comments.

P.S. Assembler #1 uses emacs . . . Assembler #2 uses vi.

The Exception To The Rule

Yesterday Webb posted about the difficulty we are having with vendors.  There is a notable exception:  our leasing agent.  As we've mentioned before, cash is critical to us during our bootstrap phase.  One of the solutions to the "we need equipment, but don't want to spend money yet" dilemma is to lease our production equipment.  After putting together our $20K commissary kitchen package, I clicked the "lease this equipment" link on the equipment vendor's site.  After filling out the form, having our credit checked, and waiting a week, I finally called the leasing company and left a message. 

I got no response.  (remember yesterday's post?)

Since time is almost as valuable as cash, we decided to look around for other financing.  A quick Google search and some site review turned up Pinnacle Leasing.  2 days later we had our approval and it was time to finish our purchase. 

If they were simply fast, convenient financing I probably wouldn't be posting this.  The thing that really impressed me was our agent's industry knowledge and helpfulness.  Our agent, Tod, went to culinary school and worked in restaurants for several years.  He knew the equipment, he knew which of his lenders would finance which gear -- it turns out that very few will finance our exhaust hood and fire suppression system -- and what "good restaurant terms" look like.  Since Webb and I have strong credit histories, Tod actually got us a MUCH better deal on our kitchen than most restaurants.  Not only that, but a couple of times when there was a question for the equipment vendor, he volunteered to contact them instead of putting the burden back on me.

Lesson learned: If you can find a vendor with experience inside your industry, you're very fortunate.  It's going to be much easier working with them since there's a built-in level of understanding.

I eventually heard back from the equipment vendor's "preferred" leasing company.  I ended up playing phone tag with them for a couple of days and then figured out that if things were this difficult during the sales process, they were probably going to be a nightmare if we ever needed help.