Practicing Jiu-Jitsu makes time slow down…yes, really.

Every once in a while I think about the perception of time.  Why is it that when I was a kid, one year felt like an eternity?  Now I often feel like time goes by very quickly.  More on that subject can be found here.

I am in Oregon spending time with family, and something clicked for me yesterday.  I took an hour during Christmas eve to visit a local gym in downtown Portland for open mat to get a few rolls (Jiu-Jitsu spars) in.  

Afterwards, I took a shower.  My host in Portland works for the water department.  He has an hourglass in the shower to make sure water is not wasted.  I think the timer is set to 4 or 5 minutes.  When I showered yesterday, it felt like the hourglass was going very slow, in a good way.  I was appreciating little things about the shower, the moment, the post-Jiu-Jitsu exhaustion, water rolling down the back of my neck. Every time I looked back at the hourglass, it looked almost as full as when I had glanced at it before.

The epiphany came this morning, when I took a shower without doing Jiu-Jitsu first.  It felt like I had just blinked and the entire amount of the hourglass had elapsed.  I was probably thinking and worrying about a million things other than what was actually happening. Awareness…slipping by.

My dad is a practicing zen buddhist, and he often talks about Being Present.  Jiu-Jitsu slows down time because when I grapple with an opponent, it is literally impossible to think about anything else.  Awareness…kicking in.

Awareness has begun to spill into other areas of my life, and it feels incredible, almost magical.

I am thankful on this Christmas Day for a great family, amazing friends, and a strong sense of purpose.  I am also thankful for my increasing ability to slow down time to enjoy it all.

Osssssss.

This post originally appeared in the Proven.com blog.

At Proven.com we are saddened to hear the news of the destruction and damage caused by hurricane (then tropical storm) Irene this past weekend. We feel for the folks in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington D.C. who will have to spend time and money re-building their homes and businesses and getting their lives back on track.

At Proven.com we want to help. For this reason, we are making it free for customers in those states to hire qualified construction workers to help with the rebuilding effort. We will extend this help to customers in those states for the entire month of September.

We started Proven.com to help skilled workers get jobs and to help employers find the right people. We are proud to help our Eastern Seaboard brothers and sisters in any way we can.

This post was originally published earlier today by The Entrepreneur’s Bible, the blog of Wasabi Ventures, one of our investors.

I won’t spend any time explaining why hiring is hard.  It is.  Lots of people have spilled gallons of (virtual and real) ink on that subject.  Setting aside the war for talent that rages on in Silicon Valley today, it is just plain difficult to ascertain ahead of time how good a fit a potential employee will be.

At Proven.com (formerly WorkersNow), my co-founders Joe Mellin, Sean Falconer, and I have come up with a couple of quick tests that give us a pretty good indication of someone’s frame of mind and enthusiasm.  Ultimately, we are trying to assess a fit with our culture.  In other words, I am sharing what has worked for us, not making it a prescriptive recipe for others.

The GSD Task

Before anybody joins Proven.com, they have to perform a Get S___ Done (GSD) task.  The task is different for everybody, but it generally centers on the person’s area of expertise.  The GSD task tells us two things.  First, is this person’s style a good fit for the way we work? And second, we want to see that they are fired up enough about our company such that this challenge elicits a “heck yeah, I’ll do that.”  We have seen several potentially good candidates fold when confronted with the GSD task.  The folding can come in the form of whining, making excuses, asking for absurd timelines, or simply going radio-silent (all true stories).  We don’t take this personally and realize there is a chance we missed out on a good person because our hurdles were too high.  We are OK with that, because this way we are guaranteed that the people we do count as our prized employees are certified GSDers.

The Gym Membership

Fitness runs in our company’s DNA deeper than in most Silicon Valley firms. Joe and I met our third co-founder Sean at Crossfit in Palo Alto, which set off the chain of events that culminated with Sean leaving his Post-doc at Stanford to join our company.  We have found that people who care about their health and fitness tend to be happier, more productive, and a better fit for our culture.  For this reason, we pay for every employee’s gym membership.  Many of our employees choose Crossfit, but we will pay for any form of gym as long as our employees are getting off their butt and moving.  We value people with a strong work ethic who are constantly trying to get better.  We find that people who are really excited about physical activity tend to have those characteristics in spades.  I want to reinforce that this is not mandatory, nor do we care about the absolute level of fitness somebody has.  We have just noticed that we really like working with folks who strive to improve physically, as this translates well into Proven.com’s everyday execution.  Excitement about physical self-improvement is not as cut-and-dry a criteria for us as the GSD task is, but we have found it to be a good proxy for cultural fit.

Hiring will continue to be hard, and maintaining a culture only gets more difficult as a company grows.  There are only 13 of us now, but as we recruit the next key hires, these criteria are top priority for us.  We are excited to continue the journey and to add self-improving GSDers to our team along the way.

In early June, I started training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with Carlos Sapao at Ocean Beach Barra Brothers.  For those who don’t know Jiu-Jitsu, it is a very physically and mentally-demanding martial art that focuses on ground fighting (grappling).  I had wanted to learn a martial art for a long time, but one thing or another kept getting in the way.  Once I finally made it to the academy, I was immediately hooked. BJJ combines the physicality of Crossfit (which has been an amazing fitness journey in itself) with the strategy of chess. BJJ has so far taught me a lot about myself and how to stay calm while being attacked and overwhelmed.  I have found that developing this skill has had a lot of applications in many areas of my life…I love the fact that I am learning so much about myself through my practice.

I have a high-intensity head and heart (not a real surprise to those who know me well).  This is really helpful at times, but it can also wind me up into high stress at times when being calm would lead to more clarity of thought and action.  That is where Jiu-Jitsu comes in…no matter how intense a day I had, it all goes out the window when I am grappling with a  200 lb. guy (or a 120 lb gal… Jiu-Jitsu technique negates a lot of size advantage and tests the ego) smashing
my head to the side and trying to choke me/armbar me/etc.  This process of cleansing the mind through training has really allowed me to become a better entrepreneur and manager. I find that I am much more effective when I have a clear mind, and Jiu Jitsu really helps me get there.

I look forward to continuing to learn from Carlos, Matt, and the amazing people at Barra Brothers.  For me, knowing Jiu-Jitsu has really allowed me to know peace…and for that I am thankful.

On May 21st, 2011, I completed the GoRuck Challenge, one of the most physically and mentally demanding things I have ever done. The Challenge started at 6:00 PM at the Presidio in San Francisco and ended at 5:30 AM the following morning.  In that time, we marched around the city while wearing a backpack loaded with 4 bricks and water.  Along the way, our Special Forces veteran cadre, Lou, came up with a lot of different “games.” Games included family favorites such as “bear crawl up Lombard street,” and “carry a 210 lb guy and both of our backpacks up a steep hill.”. We also engaged in perennial classics such as “do pushups in the surf” immediately followed by “bear crawl and roll around in the sand.”  The event is inspired by Green Beret training, and is the brainchild of Jason McCarthy, the founder of GoRuck.

I decided to sign up for the Challenge to test my physical limits and my mental resolve.  When you start, you do not know know when the event will end, so there is a constant mental battle within yourself…the battle rages until you let go, and, in Lou’s words, ”embrace the suck.” Jason and Lou had promised 8-10 hours, and as the overachiever that they are, delivered a solid 11.5 hours of constant physical and mental challenges.

I find that overcoming mental and physical challenges have really helped my mindset as an entrepreneur.  In starting a company, you often have to “embrace the suck,” something that is difficult to do (or accurately describe) until you consistently do it and push through seemingly impossible obstacles.  As I was getting ready for the event, I drew inspiration from Ben Horowitz’s blog about being a startup CEO…his ending words have stuck with me…Don’t Punk Out…DPO. Previous to the Challenge, I wrote DPO on my hand with a sharpie, and I referenced back to it throughout the night more times than I am proud to admit.

Just as valuable as training myself in the art of not punking out and persevering, is knowing who will actually stick with you when things are tough versus who is all talk.  Stephen DeBerry of Bronze Investments and Kapor Capital is one of the main angel investors in Proven.com.  I am sure he regretted inviting me to his daughter Ella’s first birthday party, as that is the day he agreed to do the GoRuck Challenge with me. We had our investor updates during 6 AM runs in Tennessee Valley in Marin, and kept sending each other links about training for the Challenge.  On the day of the Challenge, Stephen showed up with a smile on his face, he embraced the suck, and stuck it out through the night to finish and earn the GoRuck Tough patch.  I can’t put into words how much it means to me that I know that Stephen will not quit.  Trust me, there are moments throughout the night when your brain starts playing with itself and entertains your deepest fears of failure…knowing that your investors can push through those moments with you is invaluable.

My next big challenge is the GoRuck Ascent, a 100-hour event in the Colorado Rockies over Labor Day weekend. People ask me why I put myself through these not-so-comfortable events.  It’s tough for me to answer that…I just feel a  draw to learning more about my deepest
fears through facing them. I have sometimes called it “emancipation through pain and struggle.” For whatever reason, I feel much more at peace with myself by living this way.

P.S. Shameless plug here…I am raising money for the Green Beret Foundation for the GR Ascent…if you donate over $100 here, I will send you an author-autographed copy of “The Green Beret in You”

Chris Yeh and Wasabi Ventures invested in our company.  They also invited me to write on their blog.  You can read my post about Web 3.0 and the GSD Revolution here: http://su.pr/18QWzd

There are a lot of books about entrepreneurship, including a few that are considered proverbial bibles on the subject.  Two examples of these books that I think are very valuable are “The Four Steps to the Epiphany” by Steve Blank, and “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore.  I would also add the more recent “Business Model Generation” book to my absolute must-read trifecta for any aspiring entrepreneur.

I read the first two books while in business school, as they were considered essential tools to understand startup product/customer development and marketing, respectively.  I sometimes looked at the books on the shelf with a certain amount of pride….as in “I already read those books and know that stuff.”

I was wrong.  I learned those things in a different context, as a student in the very early stages of business planning.  I forced myself to start reading both titles again and was amazed at the patterns I recognized.

It is one thing to learn about patterns through stories of businesses gone by, for example, through the opening story in “4 Steps” about Webvan and their colossal implosion.

It is an altogether different thing to learn those exact same things through the prism of the business I co-founded, with all  perspective and context earned through the many high-fives, bruises, cuts, and scars experienced along the way.

I have gotten some great insights and renewed inspiration through re-learning…now I am trying to keep an eye on all the things I think I know, because as I recently learned, I am most likely being a bonehead about those too.

“Two guys and a dog” is one of the many Silicon Valley stereotypes that gets thrown around when talking about new companies.  For us, two guys and a dog in a garage (then a spare bedroom) was the reality for the first 10 or so months of the company’s existence.

When we first started WorkersNow.com (then TicTasks), things were hectic, uncertain, and scary (heck, they often still are).  We were running up our personal credit cards to build a product (this is before we got funded) and Joe was doing odd jobs on the side to pay his rent while I was finishing my degree.  When things get dark, playing with a dog can be an amazing antidote, and often a source of positive energy and creativity.

Today we are 10 gals/guys and a dog and have closed two rounds of financing, but we still have Coal, our Chief Morale Officer at the office every day.  Our CMO loves his red Kong, which he drops in front of you with absolute disregard for anything else that may be going on.  He also goes on customer sales calls, company outings, and even investor pitches…I think @stephendeberry at Kapor Capital was somewhere between surprised and amused when I walked into our final meeting with Coal in tow.

I often tell people that most of the reason I co-founded a company is so that Coal can come to work with me every day…I am only half-joking.

Passion matters.

We at www.WorkersNow.com are very passionate about our mission to change the way blue-collar labor is hired.  We need to make sure we communicate that passion to the folks we talk to about our company. Every time.  

We have done the same pitch dozens of times during our fundraising process. That said, I try to approach every time as if it were the first time.  Same goes with customers. I never assume that I can gloss over any part of your story, and I always keep up the intensity.

This intensity comes naturally to me, and is exacerbated by the fact that I love our company, our team, and our mission.

Even then, sometimes a small token reminder is useful.

I always joke with my partners Joe and Sean that I am about to take a shot of Tabasco sauce right before going into a meeting.  I now carry this little bottle with me as a good luck charm.

In the startup world, there are two kinds of founders/executives: those who feel fear, and those who lie.

Fear is a little like like cobra venom…a little of it in your bloodstream will make your endorphins rush (cobra venom is actually abused as a substance in India, but that’s another matter), but a lot of venom will leave you paralyzed and convalescent with a foamy mouth.

A cobra bites you (insert startup disaster here) and the first natural reaction is “Oh crap, I was bitten by a poisonous snake.” Your survival instinct is activated, and if the amount of poison is small enough, you should be able to run/call help/do whatever you need to do to survive.  This is the scenario where fear is a powerful motivator that can lead to focused action and can result in progress for your startup.  This “cure” can be a new feature, a new revenue stream, a better sales approach, etc. that helps you regain your forward momentum.

Sometimes, however, the amount of fear is so much that paralysis occurs.  If you have started a company you know those moments…the ones that leave you thinking “oh s___, I am going to pass out and die in this hot desert with a foamy mouth and that stupid cobra got the best of me.”

The trick is not to never be afraid (if that is the case, you are not taking enough risks)…but to avoid the paralysis.  Cobras will show up at your door, they will most certainly bite you, but unlike what happens when you encounter an actual cobra in a hot desert, you do have some control over how much of the venom you let into your bloodstream.  

I suggest you let in just the right amount of venom, the amount that will fire you up and help you focus on Getting S___ Done (GSD - more on this in a later post) to find the cure to that bite.  

And if for some reason you feel like you start foaming at the mouth…just take a nap (seriously)…when you wake up, open your door a little and invite that cobra to bite you a bit more gently…then get to work!

I love helping entrepreneurs because I got a lot of help and advice when Joe and I were starting WorkersNow (then called TicTasks and subsequently named WorkerExpress).  I also truly enjoy talking to dreamers and people who want to invent things and make a difference.  I often get calls from entrepreneurs, who share their ideas and ask for feedback.

One of the first things I try to sniff out is the true level of commitment of the entrepreneur and the team.  I will make time at 6 AM or 10 PM for people who are truly committed to their idea, while I will have polite but short conversations with those who are not.

I think that startups are like an egg and bacon breakfast.  There are two parties in the breakfast: the chicken is involved in the breakfast…but the pig is committed.  

As far as I am concerned, startups are a game fit only for people who are truly putting their bacon out there.  That means no “looking for other jobs,” or “doing research on a market,” or otherwise skirting the commitment to take the full plunge into the dark vacuum.  Nothing wrong with people who want to be involved, but not committed, they just don’t make good startup founders.  

On the other hand, those who, when asked about options, say “what plan B?” have my undivided attention and passionate support.

This is my new blog. I called it “Sent from a rotary payphone” because that has been my mobile signature for the last year and a half or so. I created that signature half to make fun of people who brag about their phone and half because when I was a kid, rotary payphones were an everyday thing…my favorite response is “how did you do that?”

I am actually in the market for a cool rotary payphone for my place…let me know if you have one.

In this blog, I intend to write about startup philosophy and scar tissue…peppered with some random musings. I will also share some of the colorful metaphors and stories that have made their way into my life.

Read it if you will, ignore it if you won’t.

Pablo