This is an installment of the ongoing “Fatherpreneurship Series”, which is defined here.

When my son was about 2 years old, I repeated an experiment that my grad-school economics teacher told me about. I offered my 2 year old some candy. Then I gave him a choice. If he chose not to have candy that day, I would give him two candies the next day. He went with getting the candy right away. I upped the offer: three candies. This went on to about 6 candies when he started to think about it seriously. I quickly cut off the experiment then (Mom would have killed me) and we had a nice candy break.

As a father, a real scenario of choice is the act of disciplining a child and suffering short-term grief and trauma with the hope that this is a good long-term life lesson. This can be a very grueling experience and the easy path (giving the kid what they want) is sooooo tempting.

Business is the same way; startups especially so. The pressure to move quickly and keep moving “up and to the right” is very strong. Getting momentum and KEEPING momentum feels paramount above everything. So when a decision to take a short-term hit for a long-term gain comes up, the decision is always harder than it should be. What looks so sensible on paper feels so counterintuitive to an entrepreneur.

But take that deep breath and be like a responsible dad: live with the temporary trauma and headache of a sobbing, pouting, screaming kid so you can have a well-balanced child in the long run.

So what’s the chart? That’s our monthly unique visitors: one of the key currencies for consumer Internet startups. The pressure to grow “uniques” is very strong. Recently at Boxxet, we decided to make some big changes to our site (improved algorithms, new page link styles, moving out certain types of content) to make it stronger and healthier for the long term. But there would be a big short-term hit.

One of the benefits of being experienced entrepreneurs was that we knew we had to do it. So we took a deep breath and took the hit. And so far, we are seeing the gains. Whew.

From the Startup News site, I was led to johnplaceonline.com, where there is a terrific list of life lessons, almost all of which I think are applicable to one’s life, children and startup.  Some of the lessons are below, but go ahead and go to johnplaceonline.com to see the whole article.

2. Evaluating Relationships
3. Conversation
4. Handling Difficult People
8. Giving
10. Saving
13. Debtor Responsibility
15. Practicality
16. Politics of Advancement
18. Positive Thinking
19. Personal Accountability
20. Setting and Achieving Goals

 This is an installment of the ongoing “Fatherpreneurship Series”, which is defined here.

I just finished my first season as coach for my son’s baseball team (6-year olds).  As my wife said about the experience, “it’s like a long vacation; it was very fun and fulfilling, but we are ready for it to be over.”

The most challenging part of coaching a team was getting the kids to focus on the drill, lesson or even game.  All the stereotypes of kids staring into space, spinning in circles, playing with the dirt…  all true.  Even my most gung-ho players would lose focus.

I tried to keep the players in check but not let their lapses bother me. 

Leading a company somethings feels like coaching a kids’ baseball team.  How do we stayed focus with all sorts of distractions surrounding us.  Here’s some commonality between coaching and leading a company: 

LONG TERM and SHORT TERM GOALS

For kid’s baseball, the season goal is to keep them interested and learning enough so they want to continue next season.  Weekly goals were focused on things like specific skills (throwing, batting) and game rules and strategies (running through first, covering second). 

In business, I’ve set such long-term goals such as “Making marketing and communications a more accountable department” (Biz360) or “Finding the best content on the web’s most popular subjects” (Boxxet).   Short-term goals would include “Capture 25% of the Fortune 200″ or “Grow web visitors 1% per day every day.”

EXPLAIN | DEMONSTRATE | PRACTICE

The best practice for doing a baseball drill is Explain | Demonstrate | Practice.  I wrote that phrase down on the top of all my practice plans.  It was a not-so-gentle reminder to not rush into drills but to be deliberate. 

The business version of this is probably: EXPLAIN | LEAD | MANAGE.  I posted a while back about Leaders vs Managers, and the best startups have some of both.  Too many times, I hear people not knowing what the goals of the business are.  It is up to the leaders to set the goal and the managers to communicate thoroughly.  In a perfect world, your executive staff have a lot of both leadership and management skills.

Tell them what you’re going to tell them.  Tell them.  Tell them what you’ve told them.

This is the sales and Powerpoint cliche.  SOOOOooooooo true though.  You’re think you’re being boring but repeating yourself.  Nope.  Do it.  True for 6 year olds and 60 year olds.

Until next season…

This is an installment of the ongoing “Fatherpreneurship Series”, which is defined here.

Money gets people all twisted up, both in business and families.  My wife and I got tired of negotiating with our six-year-old son everytime we went to the store to buy something, especially for a birthday gift for a friend’s birthday party.  It was time for an allowance.

Generally, we would think pretty hard about something like this.  We would talk to friends, consult books, ask the ouija board.  But we came to quick conclusion on how to proceed.  We were pretty aligned on the value and purpose of money as well as the responsibilities we wanted our son to have.   We decide that we would try something quickly and make adjustments if needed (for which we made sure we warned our son).

The allowance had the follow attributes:

•  The allowance was not tied to chores or behavior.  He gets his allowance despite behavior and outside chores.  Bad behavior led to lost privileges (GameBoy, sweets, etc).  Chores are part of family life and we all do them without direct monetary compensation.

• The allowance is to pay for all the kid’s discretionary spending.  With few exceptions, we no longer buy him discretionary items.  If he wants to pump quarters in the video arcade at the pizza place, that is his money.  If he wants to buy something at the museum store, he needs to buy it himself.

• We give him $10/week.  We do this on Saturday.

• Of this allowance, he must do the following:

  • 25% of the allowance goes into savings.  I don’t have a great explanation to a kid on the benefits of savings, but he seems to understand the rainy-day and future nature of savings.
  • 10% goes to a charitable fund, which he can dispense to a charity of his choice
  • That leaves $6.50/week for spending.  It seems like a lot to me, but so far, it seems to be working OK.

Some nuances, which I have not yet broken out (and may not break out) include:

• Matching 1:1 any money he moves from spending to savings,
• Adding an interest rate to savings.
• Adding an interest rate to any borrowings. 
• An old friend from college, when she heard about this plan, said that she certainly was taught how to save, but not how to invest.  Good point.  I’ll need to think about that as well.

We’ve put the responsibility on the kid to make decisions on what to buy, which is fascinating to watch.  I hope that he understands the value of savings, the discipline of spending, and the warmth of giving.  So far, it’s been a very positive experiment and, thank goodness, has stemmed the nagging at the store.

Note: we use Google spreadsheet to track the simple calculations.  I’ve put up a template, which you can copy and use yourself:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pyRRMru19_p6OCJ3s7kZcWA

I try to keep my blog to my professional life but I find many parallels between raising a child and business.  From big-picture items like values to daily things like time-management, I find my thoughts often overlap.  Well, I am starting the “Fatherpreneurship” series, where I will discuss fatherhood issues that have some overlap with my business thoughts or where I use a similar part of my brain. 

I may not always make the direct link between fatherhood and business in these posts, but at least an overlap ought to be obvious.

I’ve marked some older posts as Fatherpreneurship and will write a bit more about fatherhood in the future.

If you are make, sell, or invest in software, you know that the LAMP stack is the heart of your application, the Internet is the nervous system, but what is your brain?  Sorry for the strained analogy, but I think entrepreneurs should think about how to take advantage of Wikipedia to make their software better. 

 I wrote a contributing piece on Venture Beat that makes the argument.  Check it out.

The Metrics Series continues over at the Boxxet blog with…

1. The lesson behind losing 3/4 of interested users

Of the people who came to our front door, 40% signed up and 60% returned when we emailed them. That means 76% of the people who stop by to a closed beta did not immediately return to see Boxxet when we let them in.

2. A rant about Alexa and the scrooge of bad data

Bad data is more than an inconvenience, it can be downright hurtful to a business. Great web sites may be shut out of advertising, business deals may never happen because a company did not pass a fictional Alexa test, potential employees may choose not to join a company b/c of its Alexa numbers, adversaries may aim their resources at the wrong competitors.

Over at the Boxxet corporate blog, where I’ve been blogging more, we’ve started the Metrics Series. In this series, we plan to share some fun and hopefully useful metrics around Boxxet.

Posts that are already up:

* Google’s search share is > 90% ?
* Jennifer Aniston vs Web 2.0

Check it out!

Late last summer, my then five-year-old son, my wife and I decided to put up a “lemonade stand” for fun.  Actually, we decided to sell these terrific ice cream cookie sandwiches that we make at home.  Vanilla ice cream sandwiched with two homemade oatmeal cookies, mmmmmmmmm.  MMMMMM….  Sorry, I was distracted there for a moment.

We had a great time.  We made some upfront decisions on philosophy, product, pricing, positioning and go-to-market strategy, but as in any “startup,” it did not go as expected.   Here are some highlights and lessons:

Clear Corporate Goals and Philosophy:

I figured the lemonade stand will help my son learn about cost of goods, the potential monetary profit of work, salesmanship, and responsibility.  I also wanted to do it because (1) I never did it as a kid and (2) I wanted him to get a taste of the entrepreneurship (see my line of work at my startup, Boxxet).

Maximizing profit was not our philosophy that day.  We wanted to learn, have fun and share our great product.

A Unique and High-Quality Product:

I’ve bought lemonade, hot cocoa, cookies and smoothies from kids all over.  I am a sucker for the stand and will stop every time to buy.  But I don’t often buy truly great product from a lemonade stand.  Yes, that is not the point (and why I always stop at stand), but I felt there was room for improvement.

The week before, we had made ice cream cookie sandwiches as a family for a party.  We had fun making, eating and sharing these desserts.  They were fun to make, easy to handle, delicious to eat and were a hit at the party.

It became clear to us that the ice cream cookie sandwich would be a unique and desirable lemonade stand product.

Product Pricing:

This was a discussion between my wife and I about this.  These types of sandwiches would go for $2-$3 at a store or restaurant.  I felt that the lemonade stand needed to keep a $1 threshold for someone to the stop the car and help the kid.  Also, I felt that we need to leave value on the table by giving more to the customer.  We looked back to our Corporate Philosophy and went with $1.

Of course, it was the five-year-old who nailed it when he said, “if they have money, it costs one dollar; if they don’t have money, it’s free.”

Go-to-Market Strategy and knowing when to change it

Our first plan was to market via cute kid and kid-created signage along a high-traffic road in the heat of the afternoon.  We abandoned the strategy after about 10 minutes.  In the end, I believed we would have sold our inventory, but hanging on the side of a busy road was not that pleasant and it wasn’t fun to watch 30 cars pass by without stopping (people are intent on getting from A to B when they drive).

Then we went to the local park where people were hanging.  While we thought we could sell stuff there, we did not want to “sell” to or bother people who are relaxing.  Once again, we turned to our corporate philosophy and we moved on.

So we did what my son wanted to do in the first place.  Sell in front of our house.  It was lower traffic but much more highly targeted: neighbors who were more motivated (guilted?) to buy.   Turned out to be a great move.  We hung out, brought out music, chairs and drinks, had neighbors hang with us and caught up with people who were walking and driving by.  We had access to corporate HQ for freezer needs and potty breaks.  There were a great deal of intangible value. 

Building The Right Team

We knew we had the back-office and operations all handled (mom and dad).  Once the people saw the product and price, they were willing customers. But we knew we had a hole on the sales side.  My son is a great closer but not a good opener.  He’ll engage in a great conversation once warmed up and the customer will want to buy.  But he’s not the “jump up and down and holler at the top of his lungs” type (pretty useful for a lemonade stand).  So this leads me to..

When to Hire Your VP of Sales

At one point, our ten-year-old neighbor came over to see what was going on.  He volunteered to help.  We quickly agreed as we just gotten to our final selling spot after unsuccessful attempts elsewere.  He hopped on his bike and started tracking down cars and bringing them to the stand.  We had our “opener,” some would call him a “hunter.” He insisted on helping for free but we made him take a commission (need to have a “Win Win”).

Relying on Friends and Family:

In a startup, you often rely in friends and family to help get the company started: financing, the first few sales, moral support.  No different here.  Our neighbors really put fuel in our tank.  One came over and bought seven (for his extended family who was having dinner later but had no dessert planned).  In fact, it turned out that two party goers would buy about half of our inventory.

The Sweet Feeling of Momentum

Startups are a struggle, but there is nothing like the feeling of momentum.  And we had it as people stopped, bought, and enjoyed.  We sold about 22 of these things.  After a few discounts, commissions to the ten-year old and paying $5 back to mom/dad for COGs, our son netted about $10.   My wife and I had a great time, we hung out with neighbors and I think our son learned something.

And, of course, we saved a few ice cream cookie sandwiches left over for us to eat for dessert that night.  We enjoyed our day and our treat, and that turned out to be a great exit strategy.  

I am a daily reader and a big fan of the Wall Street Journal paper. Over the past few years, the Journal has not been hesitant to make changes. They redesigned their layout a couple years ago. They added a Personal Journal section. They started a Weekend Edition. With each major change or addition, I held my breath and wanted to know how my experience was going to change. The redesign of an icon is not to be taken lightly.

I’ve liked the changes they have made in the past. Surprisingly, I read the Journal as much for pleasure as for business. If you had asked me if that were possible ten years ago, I would have said no.

So when the Journal made a huge design change on Jan 2, I once again braced myself. There were a lot of initial thoughts that were negative. Some thought the smaller paper felt less substantial (I did too, at first). Others felt that profits were trumping experience (print newspaper are facing so many challenges that I expect papers to try to cut costs).

I did not want to come out with an immediate judgment. People generally are uncomfortable with change.

As the two weeks came to pass, my blog post was supposed to say something along the lines: I am fine with the redesign. I do like the smaller size for convenience reasons; I still feel that it gives ups an intangible heft-ness. It felt easier to read; the content remained good. Basically, no harm, but no great breakthroughs. Summary: boy, it must hard to redesign icons.

But earlier today, I read a front page article in the Journal (subscription needed, sorry) titled: “An Immigration Raid Aids Blacks — For a Time.” This article documents the changes in a company town when federal immigration agents chased out a mostly Hispanic workforce and made opportunities for local African-Americans.

It was a fascinating read. Uncomfortable at times, revealing, stark, worrisome, maybe even inflammatory. But it was brave and it was IMPORTANT. I encourage people to pick up today’s Journal and read that story.

After reading that story, any post on redesign seemed small. So tomorrow and next week and next month, I will pick up the Journal, not because of its width or font or layout, but because of its proven ability to publish important stories.

[Image from the terrific site newsdesigner.com]