Jonas Eriksson's Blog: Jonaswrites.com - official site of author and writer Jonas Eriksson, page 6

Sports as Inspiration for Attitude

Rafael Nadal has tons of the right attitude to succeed.

I’ve been playing sports and competing in one form or other since I was a little boy. It’s tougher now to stay fit and keep a consistent training schedule with a full-time job and family. But I can take some of the things I’ve learned from sport into my daily life and career.

Playing sports teaches you many things. Sportsmanship, discipline, how to maintain your health, dealing with losses and wins, how to be a part of a team, giving feedback to team members, and much more. But one of the things I benefit most from is the attitude that sports teaches you. The give-it-your-best-always attitude.

One of the world’s best in this area is the man in the picture, Rafael Nadal. He works incredibly hard to always bring his best game and even when he’s not in good form or even injured, he fights, fights, fights. He makes the opponent hit another ball, and another ball, and another ball. Relentless is a good word to describe him on the tennis court.

To be able to bring his a-game to every single match, he has to work hard every day of his life. This means practice, practice, practice. But also: discipline. He can’t let up and eat chocolate croissants for the tournament breakfast or go out with his friends twice a week. He needs to sacrifice some things to achieve others. And he does that with great success.

Not everyone has the talent of Nadal. I play tennis every week, but I’m not even 10% of the player he is. But I learn from his attitude in the things I do. This can be adapted to pretty much anything, from exercise, to eating habits, to the dedication you put into the things you do. To making sure you’re always mentally a 100% there.

It’s too easy to procrastinate away your time, doing more or less meaningless things, but if you bring your sports mindset into your daily habits and make sure you always give it your all, you’ll have no regrets.

Bringing your best is all about changing your habits to the better. Here are some tips:

1. Wake up early and do something useful.

No matter how painful this might feel for some, it’s a powerful habit that brings a positive start and trend to your day. Examples of things to do: go for a walk, hit the gym, read a book, write something. Be productive.

2. Cut something bad out of your eating habits.

Exchange the daily candy bar when your energy is diminishing for a banana or some nuts. Eat porridge instead of white toast for breakfast. Have a lighter dinner. One habit change will make room for the next and soon you’ll feel healthier than ever.

3. Don’t watch so much TV.

TV can be relaxing, but it’s rarely intellectually nourishing. Why not cut down an hour of TV-watching for some quality time with your kids/spouse or doing something more productive? Reading a book is more stimulating than watching TV.

4. Don’t procrastinate.

This is difficult and that’s why there are whole books devoted to this. I’m reading one right now called The Inner Game of Productivity that has some powerful advice for beating your inner procrastinator. One piece of sound advice is asking yourself what you are afraid of? Why are you not starting on that thing you know you ought to do. Write a sheet with two columns with all your fears for not starting to the left and all your answers to those to the right. Another powerful tool is to create a vision board of what the thing you need to do can bring you. It could be images of a new car, a shining new office space, or a trip around the world. Something that makes up for the hard work you’re about to put in.

5. Go to bed early/Sleep well.

Sleeping well reduces stress and improves general health. It’s personal but staying up late at night often means doing things that are non-productive such as TV, video games, etc. So if you can improve your sleeping, you can also improve your quality of life.

So get to work with your a-game. Wake-up early, go the gym, eat well, work hard, focus and you’ll reap the rewards.

Experience First – Lessons From SOL Republic

Design products with passion and put the experience first and you shall succeed.

Is it that easy? Well, of course not. But if you start there it seems like you improve your chances drastically.

This constant talk about user experience is not just business blabla or a trend – it’s sense. I was sent an interesting video today talking about passion and experience from a product point of view. It’s Brian Solis interviewing SOL Republic‘s co-founder Seth Combs. Watch it below:

Just listen to how passionate Combs sounds about his product and its users. Makes you want to buy it straight away.

Check out SOL Headphones on Amazon or their official website

How to React to Tough Feedback According to John Mayer

You have to be able not to get your way. Cry a little bit. Take a bump.  And let it send you back to the lab. Even if you have to say “I’ll show him!” It’s all gonna be better for it – John Mayer.

I watched an inspiring video today with one of my musical heroes, John Mayer. He’s doing a Q&A at Oxford and there are some insightful bits in the 50-minute long interview. You can watch it here. If you’re pressed for time, this outtake about his friendship with Steve Jobs really resonated with me.

I really like the part about tough feedback where John describes how Steve Jobs or any good manager could kill off bad ideas down with just one rhetoric question. That’s how a great leader acts, he doesn’t say NO! – he poses a question that lets you find “no” yourself, which strengthens you and your ideas immensely.

John then talks about how the “independent” artist world can be too soft, where the artists have too much say and that’s why the end product is poorer. You can obviously argue this back and forth, but even as an independent author I have to admit that there’s something there. To develop as an artist/individual/employee/whatever you need feedback, you need to hear when your stuff’s not up to par. And when you have the power to cut out that vital criticism and just go ahead and do what you want anyway, there’s a risk that the art/you/everybody suffers.

Everyone needs a filter. Or like John says:

“I miss bosses in general, I miss editors, I miss people who tell me – don’t do that! We wanted it and we got it and I don’t think it’s that great for an artist to have a manager whose job is to filter out all of the ideas and then meet them out accordingly with patience and grace.”

That’s not the way to do it. Take criticism for what it is, and be honest, then go back to the lab and improve.

Remember: everybody benefits from that.

The Wolf of Wall Street

Really looking forward to this movie. The book was very entertaining and when Martin Scorsese directs and Leonardo di Caprio acts – we usually end up with something great.

Read more about the crazy story of Jordan Belfort’s “Pump and Dump” efforts here

or the Wikipedia article on the real The Wolf of Wall Street (Jordan Belfort) here

Or watch the trailer:

Truly Viral Ads in Christmas Times

This is what happens when ads go truly viral. Westjet’s Christmas stunt spreading the Holiday spirit.

And, you can’t miss the number of funny commercials that Will Ferrell has starred in (as Ron Burgundy of Anchorman fame) for Dodge Durango.

He has also appeared at Conan:

And Emerson college:

Happy Christmas! Don’t Forget to Read and Write

One week vacation means mainly: family time. But also reading and writing time. I’ve almost forgotten what novel nr 3 is about and where I was going with it and I’m reading at least four books at the same time. Not good. Need to get my head together.

But first and foremost: Christmas!

Have a nice Holiday season everyone and remember to be good to each other!

Why Fighting Guilt Is Good Business

Today I read an interesting article about GFC – Guilt Free Consumption which talks about why “guilt-free is the new luxury for consumers and the Holy Grail for businesses”. It’s a positive sign in the world I think, we are more aware about our impact and more connected to the state of things around us.

As a consumer it’s about making smart choices and as a business, being aware of all your processes and taking responsibility for ensuring a transparent and “clean” approach to your sales – making it truly good business. This is really just a way of fighting your customers’ concerns proactively. And it works!

There are many good examples in the article, but I will borrow a few (I find the formatting of the article a bit hard on the eyes, so hopefully this will be a nice, easy-on-the-eyes summary):

Peddler’s Creamery ice-cream shop in Los Angeles powers its churner by asking customers to peddle an in-store bicycle. GUILT-FREE indulgence indeed!

Burger King launched Satisfries - French fries with 40% less fat and 30% fewer calories than the McDonald’s equivalent.

Miya’s Sushi in Connecticut, US, goes beyond simply not including endangered fish such as yellow tail tuna on its menu: it offers dishes made with non-native, invasive species that are damaging the local habitat, and thus eating (and enjoying) them makes customers part of the solution.

The Wish Lit app allows the user to enter the cost of a desired object and then calculates how much energy they need to save in order to purchase it.

This is great inspiration for any business in any industry. The next step is of course to look at consumption that goes beyond guilt-free and becomes actively positive in impact across every domain.

How can you make your business guilt-free?

Pessimistic Perfectionist Turned Entrepreneur

Daniel Jacobsson is one of the two founders of Bannerflow, an online banner production tool used mainly in the affiliate and bought media market. He comes from a background of design and web development and has the rare knack of being able to do both. What once started as an idea to remove a production bottleneck has now in a short span of time become a company of 14 employees with offices in Stockholm and New York.

Daniel calls himself the opposite of an entrepreneur, a pessimistic perfectionist who’s built on logic and loves problem-solving. We talked about his start-up journey and what advice he can give to other aspiring entrepreneurs who might have an idea worth the time, but not sure whether they have what it takes to realize it.

Know when to bury your pride and dare to hit that release button. - Daniel Jacobsson

What did you feel when you quit your day job and decided to go freelance? Did you have the seed of Bannerflow in the back of your mind or did it come later?

I was slightly frightened and thought: “What have I done? I had a perfectly decent job”, yet it was exciting becoming my own boss with all the freedom and responsibility that comes with that. Would I be able to pay the rent? Would I get any clients? Some pressure for sure.

The idea of BannerFlow, or AdFlow as it was called initially, was already in mind at that stage. But I didn’t give it any serious thought until a year later when I realised I was still being a creative slave to others.

How did you come up with the idea?

Working as a web designer for an online marketing intensive brand left me continuously reminded about the tedious process of producing large volumes of ads. Yes, producing is the right verb – not creating. Campaign material often had to be produced in ten different sizes/formats combined with localized messages in up to twenty different languages. On top of that, each banner had to be provided in Flash and GIF format. In total, one of these campaigns could result in more than 500 banner files being managed and weeks of work. That could have been a pleasant task if it weren’t for the fact that the creative process was non-existent. At this point I figured that most of my production tasks could potentially be automated. If one only had the time to build it…

How long did it take from idea to realisation? Did you experience any problems/learnings in the beginning?

It took roughly a year from idea to hitting a planning phase. Once entering that, I was lucky to have my programmer friend on board focusing on the backend design of BannerFlow. We incoherently started putting the pieces together on the side of regular income-bringing freelance work.

In less than a year, we had a beta version ready to be commercialized. Unfortunately both me and my partner were little interested in selling the product. We were a lot keener on  improving and adding on features than standing in conference rooms showcasing our application. Meanwhile, friends and former colleagues pushed me into meeting up with potential clients they knew of – especially my former employer. Luckily, despite my lack of sales finesse, we were able to get our first client.

In retrospect, the biggest challenge has been learning to compromise on perfection. My previous mindset was that nothing could be presented or released until it’s perfect. That’s indefensible in the long run – sometimes you have to be ignorant to move forward.

What were your fears when you started working on BannerFlow?

As more and more time was put into the project, the more committed we got but also the stakes got higher. How much time has been wasted if this wouldn’t fly? Will our product be technically obsolete once it is ready since it’s taking so long? Even if BannerFlow is accepted by designers and other users, will third-party affiliate and ad servers accept our banners? There were many questions, but we chose to ignore them initially.

Did you ever think it would become what it is today?

Not at all. Of course we were aiming at making it a successful project – one wouldn’t start if that wasn’t the goal and ambition. But we didn’t have any idea of what it might become. Mostly because we are both quite pessimistic of nature and didn’t want to put that extra pressure to our work by having unrealistic dreams. No thoughts or attention was given to how to potentially sell the product at this point – our only comfort was the knowledge of knowing the need for the product was/is obvious.

Do you have any advice to give to aspiring entrepreneurs? What to do/What not to do?

I can only speak to those who are like me: cautious, pessimistic and perfectionist. When stating those characteristics, I’m happy to learn I’m more the opposite of an entrepreneur - more of a logical, problem-solver than anything else. Still, I’ve definitely picked up on a couple of things:

Know when to bury your pride. Dare to hit the release button – your product will never be perfect anyway, but it’s hopefully good enough to start.
If you’re not into sales, partner up with someone that is – things will move quicker and give you the opportunity of doing what you love.
Draw a line for how far to foresee and outline possible user-scenarios and functionality. At some point it’s better to keep things simple and add on functionality as you see the demand.
To keep the momentum during the start-up phase, if you’re feeling bored or tired juggling an important project, don’t hesitate jumping into that “unessential” but fun task that normally wouldn’t be worth spending time on. This injects the energy and boost needed to continue fumbling in the ever-dark tunnel of a start-up.

Tell me about some recent developments. What are you working on right now?

Currently we’re working day and night on developing our new platform for BannerFlow, B2. It will be an open, self-service version, opposed to our current, private enterprise platform. We will introduce a SaaS (Software as a Service) subscription price model in line with other existing cloud applications such as Salesforce. But we will still keep the tailored Enterprise models for our premium clients.

The new, wide range of potential users will be the key. We also prepare our platform to be accessible via API to open up for white-labelling, third-party usage and other partnerships. With this new strategy we’re facing entirely new technical challenges such as implementing support for payment methods, overlooking support channels and nonetheless: usability. We need any user – may it be an Senior Designer, Marketing manager at Nike or a part-time bakery assistant – to be able to design and publish banners easily, regardless of their needs and knowledge.

What are your future plans for BannerFlow? Do you do 5-year plans or take it year by year?

We have just come out of the phase where we plan one or two month ahead. Our current aim is next year’s release of the self-service version of BannerFlow. 2014 will also be the year when BannerFlow is taking a further step into becoming not only a production tool but also an ad-server in a sense. Long term strategy is to set BannerFlow as the standard tool for HTML5 banner creation, much as Adobe Flash has been in the past. Very bold, but not impossible given the lack of user-friendly tools for HTML5 ad creation. The goal is that our sales head-quarters in NYC is fulfilling and surpassing our expectations to conquer the North American market which is the, by far, biggest spender in online marketing.

Do you have a mission or vision for the company?

Our key mission is to create products that are powerful enough to satisfy enterprise clients’ needs, yet with a usability awareness that enables your grand parents to use it as well.

How is your company structured and do you have a plan for further growth?

Would like to define our company structure as the classic, dull Swedish type; fairly flat without an obvious hierarchy in which freedom and responsibility are essential elements. Everyone is expected to contribute and participate to the same degree regardless of position or role. Currently our team has the rough ratio of 70% developers and 30% sales. With our scaleable, upcoming platform we’ll be able to push sales harder. All revenue is allocated for continuous growth. Filling the gaps as they turn up. Right now for instance, we’re looking into SEO and social media – two areas we haven’t even bothered digging into earlier.

How is it to work at BannerFlow? What could you expect as an employee?

We strive to have a inspiring, fun but still focused and goal-oriented environment. We always try to reward ourselves when business is going well. Next week for instance, the entire team is flying over to our colleagues in NYC for a one weeks’ conference. Really looking forward to that!

Things have become more organized the last few months. We have weekly all hands meetings, daily technical morning meetings and soon we might experience the first rage email by a colleague who has had his/hers coffee cup kidnapped. The down-side is that things get more impersonal and common. It’s important to address and maintain the atmosphere of an energetic start-up despite the growth and not let it turn into what you once left yourself in your previous employments.

Read more about Bannerflow at www.bannerflow.com

We Live in Boxes – Let’s Look Outside

I hate using cliches, but the headline was too apt not to use it. Also it makes me think of the theme song to the hit TV-series Weeds. The song, written by Malvina Reynolds, is a political satire about the development of suburbia in the sixties and the “ticky-tacky” material used to build them.

But when I write that we live in boxes – I don’t mean cheap houses,  I mean our world view and our lives. Because many of us, and I’m definitely one of them, live on a pretty safe and narrow path. We have it pretty good, but still we complain and are desperate for more.

We only see the edges of the box. This is the way most lives are set up and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just that it wouldn’t hurt to look outside the box once in a while.

It can sometimes be a major eye-opener.

One guy who’s a master of making us look outside the box and see the world differently, is Hans Rosling.

Are you complaining about your salary, your job or something else? (I do this at times and sound like a baby). Look at his Ted Talk:

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

And we need to think to more. Think more outside our little boxes.

Manager, Leader, or Coach?

Are you a Manager, Leader or Coach?

Or all three? Then you’re most likely a good one.

Too many managers are just being a manager. They organise and tell people what to do. They manage and set expectations and goals, but rarely inspire and coach their team members into exceeding them.

Or! And this is important: feeling good about reaching those goals.

On their business card it says “manager”. So they manage. But what many of them manage best are to set up their own career stepping stones.

But it’s not enough to manage, you need to lead and coach too if you want to maximise results.

And…this one is tied to the first one: to have fun!

Most managers forget about having fun. They forget that life and work doesn’t have to be a grey and a black zone. They see work as the place where you make enough money to have fun in your spare time.

Just writing that makes me kind of depressed.

We spend eight hours a day or more doing work. Shouldn’t it at least be a little bit fun? And shouldn’t you at least feel a little bit good about yourself from time to time?

We want the money, yes, because we need to pay the bills and buy a better car. But we need more than that. We need recognition and purpose.

We need to feel a part of something bigger.

This is what drives and inspires us. Not money. Not KPIs. Something bigger.

We want to make a difference in people’s lives.

You don’t need to work for the Red Cross or build schools in Africa to do that. It might be handing out the mail, cleaning someone’s car or providing some other valuable service to your customers. But you need to feel it. You need to feel your purpose.

This is what creates inspiration and drive – powerful energies that can change you. And that can help you change the world. And have fun while doing it.

Your manager, coach and leader is the guy or girl that should make you feel like anything is possible. That you can be a part of that equation.

And if you are a manager: strive to be that person your past employees talk about for years. And not in a bad way.

Lead, coach, manage. In that order.