Iarfhlaith Kelly – Code agus Craic

This is me. Age 4, having a picnic in the Phoenix Park with my family.

It’s the perfect day. Life is simple, anything is possible and the world is my oyster.

At that moment, I have no responsibilities, no worries, no debt, no issues, no unpaid invoices, no deadlines and no baggage. All I have is hope, energy and a desire to enjoy every day of my life.

I have no inhibitions, confidence is sky high and I truly believe I can do anything.

Yes, I’m naive, but that’s empowering. I’m too young to let silly preconceptions about ‘how the world works’ get in the way of my hopes and dreams. My potential is truly infinite.

That was me aged 4. Now I’m 26 and asking myself do I still feel like that?

The truth is, that I don’t.

So what changed?

Fear of Failure. And the Growth of an Ego

How come I don’t feel like that now? What has changed in my life? The answer is of course that I grew an ego. I became aware of what people thought of me and feared rejection from every area of my life.

An ego is a truly terrible thing. It debilitates us from achieving our real goals. It puts up barriers to innovation and prevents us from standing out and being different. Someone without ego has the power to change the world. It’s a strange phenomenon really. The person most likely to make a change is the person least likely to desire fame. And inversely the person most likely to desire fame is least likely to change the world.

Maybe that’s why we see so many ‘fake celebrities’ these days, famous for nothing except being famous. What happened to the real heroes?

The desire for popularity is a very complex beast and your ego drives it. It’s like a thirst that can never be quenched, and once you start drinking it, it’s very hard to stop.

Learning to Change

So, what can we do to reverse this? Should we ignore what others think and drive forward with our plans of success? Should we ignore the status quo and be the one to be different? Should we lose our fear of making a fool of ourselves?

Easier said than done.

But ironically, those that succeed in taking their ego out of the equation and losing their fear of failure are actually far more likely to be successful than those that don’t.

The trick is to try to make meaning, not wealth. I believe that wealth is a bi-product of doing something you love that others also want.

My mum always says: “do what you love and the money will come”. That’s one of my favourite pieces of advice. Another favourite is “stop trying to impress people and start being impressive”.

Now take those two key pieces of advice and I think you’ve got a recipe for success, and a road map to fulfilling the dreams you had when you were a kid. When nothing was impossible.

Be Inspired

The only thing left, is to be inspired. And you only have to look around you to get that. The web is teeming with people willing to take a chance, leave their egos behind and attempting to change the world in their own way.

This is what matters to me now.

Here’s a great video made by GrassHopper on what it means to change the world. [thanks Fin].

I was going through some old folders on my laptop this week, tidying things up and I found some old scans that I’d done of my school journal covers. 

Channelled Expression

The journal cover was one of the few ways I could express my individuality in school. So, I made the most of it, and it’s amazing how creative you can be on such a small canvas when you’re restricted by so many [school] rules.

I think most teenagers have a natural urge to express their individuality and I was no different. It’s a pity blogging wasn’t around back then because I can only imagine the type of controversial, angst ridden rants that I would have put down. Especially after a tough day or a row with my parents. It would have been really cool to be able to look back on them now.

But, it wasn’t, so all I have are these scrap book collections stuck onto the covers of my old school journals. 

These young bloggers don’t know how good they have it.

Forgotten Interests

Seeing these old covers also reminds me how much passion and I had for my hobbies at the time. Mostly mountain biking, dirt jumping, rock music and dry comedy. It makes me want to bring back some of those interests and use them as fuel for my life at the moment. Whether it be for fun, for work, or just plain living.

These quirky interests are what makes us different from everyone else. They make us us, and gives us our individuality. The Internet is a massive place and a world where everyone tries to create more noise, bigger hype and generate more interest then those around them (they might not admit to it, but they are) and it’s your individuality and quirkiness that will help you get noticed.

So if you’ve got some old school journal covers, works of art as a kid, silly old recordings, or funny moments caught on camera why not take them out and dust them off, because it’s those kinds of things that make you unique.

First off, just in case there’s any misunderstanding. This IS an April Fools’ post. But unlike the others I’ve read today this NOT a joke, it’s a rant.

The April Fools’ tradition is a complete. Waste. Of. Time (say it slowly). It’s a waste of time for the people playing the jokes and it’s an even bigger waste of time for those who fall for them.

It’s not even midday yet and already I’ve been bombarded with wind-ups on the radio, in the press, and online. These fictitious stories have wasted my time, annoyed me, and confused me. Some of them are very believable, at least a the start of the article. They usually get more ridiculous as you read down through them, testing the audience on what they can get away with.

Take Advantage

My message to everyone reading this is to take advantage of all this goofing off and to use it to make grounds on everyone around you taking part in this farce. I might come off here sounding like the guy that ruined the party, but come on people! We’re in a recession and the last thing we can afford to do is spend a whole day of the year playing jokes on each other.

They say that when there’s fire in the streets, buy property. Well when there’s people goofing off all around you it’s time take advantage and gain some ground on your competitors.

Ignoring Today’s Press

I get distracted with my RSS feed at the best of times, but to read the drivel that’s been coming through on blogs and news sources that I admire and respect is just too much. So, I’ll be ignoring all media sources for the rest of the day. In the mean time I’ll be busy developing my business, doing deals, and earning money.

Enjoy the rest of April Fool’s people. And like they say in Dragon’s Den: I’m out.

It’s exactly one year to the day that I launched this blog. So I though I’d do a quick review of why I started it, what I’ve learned in the process and where I plan on going to next.

I Started Because…

I started blogging for a few different reasons. One was because I felt there was a web community in Ireland that was quickly gaining a voice and I wanted to be part of it. Another was that up until last year I was still working from home and I felt a little isolated in my daily routine. I needed a way to meet other designers and developers. A virtual water cooler. Another was that I believed I had value to add from my experiences so far and that a blog would be a perfect platform to voice these opinions.

But what finally got me out the traps was a very quick chat I had with Niall Larkin in the Digital Depot. He probably doesn’t even remember it, but it resonated with me enormously. The web is about connections, and it’s about having an online brand and an online reputation. Writing a blog is by far the best way to make all of that happen. So I got busy designing a custom theme and launched a week or so afterwards.

The Benefits

The benefits of starting the blog were immediately apparent. I met some old friends that I didn’t know were in the web space, and I made some new ones that I admired and respected. I started to feel immediately connected with what was going on in the web community both in Ireland, and the World. But launching the blog was just half the trick. It’s just as important (if not more important) to read and comment on other blogs written by people in your niche. This is where the real value comes in, the community engagement. It’s not an essay, it’s a conversation.

Twitter Power

Using Twitter has increased the sense of community online by ten fold. It’s really only just starting to take off, but the web community have been using it for years. And although I felt I was a little late to the party (when I joined last year), the Irish web folk on Twitter have been incredibly friendly and supportive. I can’t recommend Twitter highly enough as a means to engage with other people in your industry, your niche or your interests. There’s a community there for everyone.

I liked Twitter so much that I started playing with the Twitter API. At first I added an aggregation script to the short.ie homepage, a project I started last year. Then later on I launched Twitter Perch, a tool for following people who talk about things that interest you. And then just earlier today I launched Twission, a Twitter Search extension that adds tag information on the degrees of separation between you and the tweets in the search results. There’s a more comprehensive post about Twission over on the Webstrong Blog.

Meeting in the Flesh

Having met everyone online, I was looking at ways to meet my new contacts in the real world. Thankfully there’s an abundance of events in Ireland where you can meet the people in the web community. There’s everything from Firefox Parties, to Connector Events, to Bizcamp, Bizspark, the Irish Web and Blog Awards, Twestival, and of course the recent FOWA conference.

Meeting these guys in the flesh really brought home the sense that there’s something powerful happening in the web community in Ireland at the moment. We’re getting together, we’re gaining a voice and we’re doing some really interesting things on the web.

The Year Ahead

The last year in the blogosphere has been truly ground breaking for me. It’s changed how I work, it’s changed what I know, it’s forced me out of my comfort zone. I’ve made new friends, had great work opportunities, and it’s given me a voice that I didn’t have before. But it isn’t going to stop here. The year ahead is going to be even more exciting. I’ve just launched the Webstrong Blog and have great plans for the business. I plan on making even more connections, releasing more apps, going to more events, and having a whole lot of fun in the process.

Here’s to another year of Code agus Craic.

I was at a negotiating training session last weekend as part of the Hothouse course. It was given by the excellent Dermot McConkey. He gave us great tips on selling, negotiating and promoting our business. Lots of good stuff.

He’s also really good at telling stories and one point he made was that as adults we have an inherent aversion of selling to people we don’t know. This originates from our childhood when our parents constantly told us “don’t talk to strangers!”.

This got me thinking about what other things we teach our kids that makes it difficult for them to succeed in business later on in life. Here’s my top three:

1. Don’t Talk To Strangers

Like I mentioned above, as children we were constantly told not to talk to strangers. This teaches us that engaging in a conversation with someone we don’t know is wrong. For a kid, this is a perfectly good piece of advice. Child abductions are rising and talking to strangers significantly increases the risk.

But what about later in life? This lesson is a sticky one and often proves hard to forget the older we become. This is the reason we often feel uncomfortable while trying to sell. We’re going against our parents advice! The ‘don’t talk to strangers’ lesson is still inside us pushing against us when we’re making those all important sales calls. It’s the little voice inside our heads that shouts out ‘No! Don’t do it! It’s wrong!’.

But this is real life and as business owners we have to get over this and go through the hard slog of picking up the phone, or knocking on that door, or going to that networking event, even if it goes against what our parents taught us as children.

2. It’s Important To Fit In

As business owners the one thing we don’t want to do is to look exactly the same as our competition. We want to be noticed, to stand out, to be at the forefront of people’s minds when they think of companies in our industry.

This behavour goes against everything we’ve learned as children. All I wanted to do when I was in school was ‘fit in’. Someone who fitted in didn’t get picked on or bullied or discriminated against. Life went smoothly. If you managed to fit in really well then you might have even been the cool kid in the class. Even better!

But this sort of reward for meeting the status quo doesn’t transfer to adults in business. In fact, the complete opposite is true. To be noticed we need to stand out from the crowd, go against the grain and be different in as many ways as possible. We should be aiming to behave just like the bold screaming child at the back of the classroom, stamping on top of his desk waiving his school bag over his head. Now that’s what we should be doing to get noticed.

3. Expect Gifts Often

As kids we learned to expect gifts. Every time our parents arrived home we looked at them expectantly, asking the all important question ‘did you get me a present?’. This is the natural innocent behavour of a child, but yet again it doesn’t translate to adulthood, especially during business negotiations.

In a negotiation we must never expect a gift. We have to fight tooth and nail for every concession, and these often come at a price. In other words, the opposition will concede something if we concede something. Unfortunately though, this lesson is something we’ve had to relearn as adults because as children we expect things for free and we expect to give nothing in return. Obviously though, this is not an accurate reflection of the real world.

Reteaching Ourselves and Our Children

These three small points show that while we think we’re helping our children, we’re actually making life more difficult for them in the long run! But despite this I would definitely not recommend you start telling your kids to go out and talk to strangers or to ask to be picked on in the classrooms. No, nothing like that, but I really do think it’s a shame that the skills we used to succeed as children actually may prevent us in some ways to succeed as adults.