Iarfhlaith Kelly - Code agus Craic

As some of you already know, I’ve launched a new business with some entrepreneurial friends called The Board. This is effectively a pseudo board of directors for your business made up of experienced business owners from non-competing, complimentary sectors. The Board meets every month to discuss current business issues, helping members make important decisions that can be implemented immediately to improve their business.

I passionately believe in the concept and have (hand on heart) benefited hugely from my own membership on The Board since it’s initial inception almost 18 months ago.

However, I am also a big follower of 37signals‘ business approach, who believe that meetings are toxic. If you haven’t heard of these guys before, take 5 minutes to read a few excerpts from their new book, called Rework, where they devote an entire chapter of the book to explain why meetings are toxic and should be avoided at all costs.

On a daily basis I rant and rave about 37signals’ approach to business, and on this point I agree with them that most meeting are toxic. However some meetings are necessary, even vital, to a businesses success.

So, I find myself in a position where the people that know me could potentially be confused by my apparent double stance on this issue. In this post, I want to address these two positions, and justify why I believe so passionately in both, despite the fact that they seem contradictory.

Toxic Meetings

Meetings become toxic when:

• you don’t need to be there;
• you have no power to make a decision at the meeting;
• it’s outcome does not affect you;
• your points of view are not considered;
• there is no reason to hold the meeting in the first place;

If one or more of the above scenarios is true, then that meeting will be a waste of time for you and you should avoid it.

Productive Meetings

Meetings are awesome when:

• you have a pressing issue that you need advice on;
• you have the power to make a decision on the issue by yourself;
• it’s outcome has the potential to have a massive impact on your personal and/or business life;
• your own input into the meeting is valued and respected;
• there is a strict agenda which steers the course of the meeting;

In these cases, meetings can be incredibly powerful. And if, when a meeting is called, all of these scenarios are true then it’s simply vital that you attend.

Another Reason Meetings Work

Most people live in their comfort zone. They go through their life keeping the status quo amongst their peers. Regardless of what social circle they’re in, most people will do whatever it takes, deliberately or not, to maintain that status quo.

Here’s an interesting fact:

If you take the salaries of all your friends, and then get the average, chances are, that’s what you earn.

That’s an amazingly powerful insight.

Most people are afraid of failure, but even more afraid of success. (more on this in another post soon) but suffice it to say that by becoming a success you are breaking the mould of your peers, and forcing change upon your own life, which can be very stressful and potentially lonely.

Most people can’t (or won’t) push themselves out of their comfort zone. A lot of people have blockages to their on success (myself included) and I see time and time again, cases where they sabotage their own potential because it means leaving their comfort zone. Again, I’ve done this to myself more times then I can remember. It’s something I’m working hard on improving.

Productive meetings work, because in them people are pushed outside of their comfort zone. They’re encouraged to make the right decision, not the easy decision. They’re given insights that they may have otherwise dismissed because of their own mental blocks or personal baggage.

After a really great meeting, people feel motivated, energised, determined and focused. And without the advice and encouragement from other participants of the meeting, I simply don’t think that’s possible.

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Yes, some meetings are toxic. But we’re not all 37signals. Some of us need help getting past our issues (most of which I believe is a result of how we perceive the world, rather than how the world actually is - again, that’s for another post). For this we need the help of others who are willing to push us out of our comfort zones and onto the fast track (or the slow track, depending on what your goals are).

Yes, I’m a 37signals fanboi, but yes, I’m also a huge believer in productive meetings. The Board has helped me break through some very serious issues in the past. And I look forward having them help me make more decisions for years to come into the future.

Disclaimer: I am a co-founder and shareholder of The Board.

Today we’re launching a totally new business concept called The Board. It’s aimed exclusively at business owners to help them grow their business, solve issues, and fulfil their potential as entrepreneurs.

We’ve been quietly trialling The Board for the past 18 months, tweaking it’s format, figuring out what works and getting feedback from a selection of trial members. Now though, we’re ready to launch it as a fully blown business and can start accepting applications for membership.

We have secured funds from a number of private investors and are excited to be hosting our first official board meeting tonight in Dublin.

What is The Board?

The Board is a support group for your business, provided in the form of structured monthly board meetings. Each meeting is chaired by a trained facilitator who’s role is to ensure that the agenda is adhered to and that everyone gets to an even share of the allocated time.

Board members are made up of other business owners in non-competing businesses, often in very complimentary sectors.

Throughout the trials, we’ve found that typical areas of discussion include:

• improving cashflow;
• growing sales;
• seeking advice in gaining grant aid;
• staff issues;
• etc.

What Next?

I’ll write up a whole lot more about this over the coming weeks as further announcements happen, but for now, if this looks like something you’d be interested in then head over to http://theboard.ie and signup for an info pack.

Comments welcome.

Earlier today over on the Webstrong Blog I launched the first phase of TrackPath. A simple web app to help you track your quotes and proposals. Below is a copy of the post. You can find the original one here.

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Today we’re launching the first phase of a little app called TrackPath. Available at http://ontrackpath.com, this simple tool lets you track your quotes and proposals. It measures their success rate and provides meaningful statistics to help you make better decisions so you can write more effective proposals in the future.

We’re quietly excited about this project because it scratches an itch we had in our own business and also because we managed to launch it less than 10 days after the idea came to mind.

The Pain

During a recent seminar, I (momentarily!) lost concentration on what was being said and instead started to think about all the proposals I had out at the moment. I tried to recall which ones I needed to follow up on and which ones still needed to be sent. But, I couldn’t remember them all.

I then started to wonder about proposals that had gone out in the past. How many had I won? How many had I lost? If so, why did I lose them? Was I too expensive? Did I not follow up fast enough? Did I have the wrong approach? Was it a cold lead?

All these questions came flooding in and I realised I didn’t have any answers. Moreover I had no easy way to get the answers because I wasn’t tracking the success /failure rate of my proposals.

The 10 Day App

So, I quickly scribbled down a basic wireframe for a simple app that would let me track my proposals.

The next day I booted up Photoshop and started turning the raw sketches into proper designs. I built 5 screens in all and made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t add any new features to these designs until I had launched the app as was laid out here.

To put myself under some pressure I set a launch date for July 6th, just 9 days later, and I setup a Twitter account, registered a domain and launched a teaser site announcing the project and launch date.

I handed the designs over to Phil, who started slicing and dicing the screens into proper code.

Meanwhile I began configuring the application framework. Things like login, registration, authentication, password reminders, etc.

Once I was all done, Phil had the dashboard coded up in HTML and CSS and it was ready to be ‘turned on’ with data driven content.

I quickly built a couple of database tables (one for users and the other to store the proposals). And then started coding up the PHP and SQL statements to pull everything in.

Each time I finished a page, Phil would have another UI screen ready to go,. And it went on like this until we had all 5 screens built.

The Business Model

No project is worthwhile without a business model, and while I accept that this is a very simple app I do think it’ll be a valuable addition to any small business in the B2B space and I think it’d probably be reasonable enough to charge a small fee for the app at some point in the future.

But for now, it’s completely free until we gauge people’s interest and see what the response is like.

Moving Forward

TrackPath is a single user app. But it’s very likely that we’ll flesh this out in the future to include multi-user accounts so each rep can each access their own proposals, with a managerial account overseeing these proposals and tracking the performance of each sales rep. We’ve a hundred different ideas about where to take this new project but we’ll carefully consider each one before including it in TrackPath. Because at it’s core it’s a simple app, and that’s how we want it to stay.

Please check it out at http://ontrackpath.com, we’d love any feedback you might have.

Almost everyone who succeeds, fails the first time. In fact they usually fail many times before they get it right. Failure, it seems, is a key ingredient in the success of any business, project or person.

What can we learn from this? Well, if anything it’s that failure is just a stepping stone to success. And there are few better examples of this than Abraham Lincoln. The man failed at almost every point in his life, right up until he became the U.S. President, and the most powerful man in the world at that time. See for yourself.

One of my heroes, Guy Kawasaki summed it up nicely when he said “if you succeeded at everything you did, what would you have learned along the way”?

This truth became clear to me when I tried to build my first pc. I naively went out and bought a processor and a motherboard, stupidly thinking they would just ‘work’ together. Of course they didn’t. I then bought a system fan and a few other bits and pieces like memory and a graphics card. There was problems with all of those too. But despite the challenges, I over came them and I learned a ton about computer hardware in doing so. And to be honest, I’m not so sure I would have learned as much if everything had worked together first time. The end result was a killer system that I knew inside out.

The bottom line is, don’t worry about failing, just make sure that when it happens you get up and try again. You’ll eventually get it. Remember, you’re always stronger and wiser the second time around.

Even Michael Jordan knows that failure is just a part of success: [Thanks Dave].

I’ve been planning the launch of the Webstrong Blog for a while now, and I’m delighted to say that I’ve finally kicked it off. The new blog will focus solely on developments within the web community and news relating to the company. It’ll be a platform for honest, transparent and inspiring stories on business in Ireland, building web apps, and running a software company.

I think the new blog comes at a good time because I’m at another stage of major change in the business. For one, my time in the Hothouse is coming to an end and I’m looking at expanding my team again. Plus I have a great new office lined up too, which I’ll announce as soon as I’ve signed the deal.

Keeping Up Two Blogs

A concern I had when deciding to launch the Webstrong Blog was that this blog, my personal blog, would suffer as a result. But the reality is that Webstrong is a lot more then just me now, and together with my team we’ll be writing posts from all angles and opinions. So it won’t be just me posting on it, which should make things a little more interesting.

The Big Brand Decision

One big decision that most bloggers must have to make is whether to brand their blog as a personal one or as a business. I reckon it depends which one has the bigger voice, is most important to you, most appealing to your audience and most marketable overall. For me, that used to be an easy decision, but I think it’s time now to give the company an identity all of its own.

I’ll be posting in both places now. So go check out http://webstrong.ie/blog for more information.