Life in Small Bites

A huge shadow swam under my tiny life-raft. For the next three hours I never looked back in the water. If the Shadow was going to eat me at least it wasn’t going to catch me looking.

Two weeks before my encounter with the shadow I was standing in front of a wall of fishing lures in the Carswell AFB Exchange.  I just received orders to proceed to Homestead AFB in Florida to attend Air Crew Water Survival Training.

An attachment to the orders suggested creating a small personal survival kit that could be placed in the leg pocket of one’s flight suit. Recommended articles to include were:

1. Waterproof matches
2. Small pocket knife
3. Small magnifying glass
4.  Asshole compass*
5. Water purification tablets
6.  Band-Aids
7. Fishing line and hooks
8. Fishing lure
9. Condoms (to be used as water container)
10. $40 (bills-10X$1, 2X$5, & 2X$10)

* So called because it was small enough to be quickly swallowed prior to capture by an enemy and could be subsequently recovered when it passed out the other end.

Carswell AFB is in Fort Worth Texas – plenty of lake fishing in the area. The wall of lures was all for freshwater fishing – nothing for ocean fishing. I settled on an innocuous looking purple plastic worm with an embedded hook. I scrunched all the assembled items into a small plastic travel soap container and bound it tightly with a thick rubber band.

A week later I was sitting in a classroom with 30 other pilots listening to lectures on ocean survival techniques. This information would be crucial if the pilot had to eject and ended up in the open sea–usually alone. Appropriate cautions, preventions, and remedies were discussed about sun protection, hypothermia, and managing food and water requirements.

The instructors also talked about barracudas and sharks. The instructors advised that the fear of sharks was overblown and that we needn’t focus on them. Why oh why did they follow-up this advise with actual photos of sharks cut open revealing rings, watches, sunglasses, dog-tags, and shoes – I’ll never know?

After three days of classroom instruction and testing all of us were put aboard a landing craft (LCM) and then taken out to sea – until no land was in sight. All of the pilots had previous parachute training. For this training exercise each pilot was wearing flight helmet, flight suit, and G-pants.  Attached to a parachute I was launched off the LCM by speedboat, parasail-mode, to an altitude of 2,000 feet.

Airborne, with full aircraft survival kit, including an inflatable one-man rubber raft, dangling from my parachute pack, commanded by the signal from the speed-boat I released the tow-line connecting me. Once released the speedboat continued and was quickly out of sight as I descended toward the sea.

By design, for training exercises, intentional hardships are built-in. For example, normally the small life-raft would be automatically inflated when the parachute was deployed after ejection – but not in this training.

Just prior to hitting the water, with visions of the rings, watches, and other swallowed paraphernalia, I pulled the releases to detach from my parachute while simultaneously pulling the auto inflate cord on my small underarm water-wings. While the water-wings kept my head above water the next moments were long in passing as I manually inflated my raft with explosive breaths trying not to hyperventilate while working to blow-up the raft as quickly as possible.

Soaked, but safely in my raft, I thought of how I would pass the next several hours until I would be winched up by a rescue helicopter. After singing every song and hymn I could think of, and even making up a few, I remembered my personal survival kit in my leg-pocket. Upon reviewing the items, the only ones that had immediate utility was the fishing gear.

I took the purple plastic worm, attached it to the line, dropped it into the sea, and tethered the free end to the side of my raft. Passing time by thinking of ‘not thinking’ about sharks I resumed my singing.

20 minutes later I felt a firm tug on the line. Then another – and finally a tug that nearly overturned the raft and me. The line went slack. The Shadow swam by. I started counting clouds.

An eternity later I heard and saw an approaching rescue helicopter. Hovering above me the helicopter lowered a cable to which I hooked onto and was winched up – raft dangling under me.

After initial expressions of sincere appreciation to the air crew I was too mentally exhausted for much conversation. Silently I journeyed back to base accompanied by my roaring inner voices of thankfulness and wondered about the “What if’s?” and “What nexts?”.

Learnings:

1. Purple plastic worms can attract sea monsters.
2.  Learn more songs, especially hymns.
3. Prayer works!
4. Select appropriate resources in advance to cope with current environment.
5. Check all gear for proper functioning before departure.
6. Willful transformation of Fear into Focus releases possible solutions.

By Michael Josephson

Take a look around. Business, education, politics. If there’s one thing we don’t have enough of, it’s good leaders – men and women who have the vision and the ability to change things for the better.

Former Air Force General William Cohen wrote a fine book called The Stuff of Heroes in which he identified eight laws of leadership. Here are his rules:

1. Maintain absolute integrity.
2. Know your stuff.
3. Declare your expectations.
4. Show uncommon commitment.
5. Expect positive results.
6. Take care of your people.
7. Put duty before self.
8. Get out in front.

His laws embrace important competencies like knowledge, communication skills, commitment, optimism, caring, and a powerful sense of duty. But General Cohen also recognized that the foundation of a successful leader is character, including trustworthiness, honor, and courage.

The best leaders draw on these moral qualities to influence others through inspiration, persuasion, trust, and loyalty. They do the right thing despite the costs and risks and do it not because it will yield approval or advantage, but because it’s the right thing.

In these cynical times, it’s easy to think such leadership is unattainable; yet in every walk of life there are hundreds of men and women – parents, teachers, coaches, civic activists – who fit this mold. What’s more important, every one of us could be among them.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

By Paulo Coelho

Every Warrior of the Light has felt afraid of going into battle.

Every Warrior of the Light has, at some time in the past, lied or betrayed someone. Every Warrior of the Light has trodden a path that was not his.

Every Warrior of the Light has suffered for the most trivial of reasons.

Every Warrior of the Light has, at least once, believed he was not a Warrior of the Light.

Every Warrior of the Light has failed in his spiritual duties.

Every Warrior of the Light has said ‘yes’ when he wanted to say ‘no.’

Every Warrior of the Light has hurt someone he loved.

That is why he is a Warrior of the Light, because he has been through all this and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is.

David S. Rose

From the Fathers Day edition of the Wall Street Journal Blog

David S. Rose is Managing Partner of Rose Tech Ventures,  a venture fund focused on Internet-based businesses.  I echo his insightful and eloquent comments and quotes attributable to his father as thoughts that I wish I had expressed to my own Dad.  There is useful wisdom expressed here.

David S. Rose: Sayings From My Father
GUEST MENTOR David S. Rose, CEO of Gust: It is safe to say that my father has been, by far, the most important influence on my life as an entrepreneur. Back in the days of the dotcom boom, when I was in my 30s, I was delighted to be named a finalist for the prestigious Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” Award in New York. It was no surprise at all, however, when my father actually won the award just a few years ago…when he was in his late 70s!

For as far back as I can remember, my father has served as my primary role model, showing by example the importance of impeccable integrity, hard work and dedication, creative business thinking and the need for maintaining a long-term perspective. Today, in his mid-80’s, he is as energetic and engaged in the entrepreneurial life as anyone I know, creating new business and social ventures, and mentoring yet another generation of entrepreneurs.

While my siblings and I have had the privilege of growing up under his direct tutelage, many other people have had the benefit of his distilled life experience, because one thing he is not shy about is sharing advice. Indeed, his seemingly endless store of one-line advisories has served as the soundtrack for the lives of his children, his grandchildren, his employees, his protégés…and anyone who has ever come within his orbit. Here, in honor of Father’s Day, is a selection of his timeless advice for entrepreneurs; some original, others relayed from heroes of his such as Twain, Churchill, Plato, Shakespeare, Santayana and Montaigne, as well as his own father and brothers:

You can get anything done if you’re willing to give away the credit. This was driven home to me when I was a teenager. I watched from a ring-side seat as he single-handedly conceived, implemented and succeeded at pulling off a brilliant, entrepreneurial, off-the-wall solution to a problem that saved an otherwise-doomed $100 million project. But at the ribbon cutting ceremony, a dozen other people, including the Mayor, were showered with credit while my father’s name was not even mentioned. I was absolutely devastated, but he was quietly and calmly proud, pointing out that…

Plato’s definition of ‘beauty’ is “fitness to the end in view.” …and his end game had been to save the project, not be honored by the mayor. The moral of this is to have a clear idea of what you are trying to do, and then focus on getting that done. In many ways this is a precursor of the Lean Methodology concept of the Minimum Viable Product: don’t be distracted by surface appearances or unnecessary features; start by solving the immediate problem with a “beautiful” solution.

Your actions shout so loud I can’t hear what you’re saying. One of his many admonishments on the subject of integrity, the point is that one can talk a good game, but at the end of the day it is what you do—and only what you do— that actually counts. Integrity means practicing what you preach, saying what you mean, and living up to your promises and exhortations with your own actions.

You only get one chance to make a first impression. He first told me this in seventh grade when I moved to a new school, and I have come to realize how important (even though it seems ridiculously obvious) this is in virtually every business environment. When people meet you for the first time, whether investors, customers, or potential partners, YOU are in control of what they begin to think of you. Once that first impression has clicked, it is damnably difficult to get people to change their mind. This is now a standard part of my presentation training seminars for entrepreneurs, because in a venture pitch your target investor will likely start making up his or her mind about your opportunity before you are two or three minutes into the presentation.

Negotiate iron-clad contracts…and then put them in a drawer and forget them.
I have relied on this one virtually every day of my entrepreneurial and investing career, and preach this to all of my own protégés. My father is one of the sharpest business people I have ever met, but also the straightest shooter. He stresses over and over how critical it is to ensure that the underlying paperwork in any deal is in your favor and gives you negotiating leverage when the chips are down…but then points out that “with great power comes great responsibility”, and you will always do much better by using the power to dictate fair terms for everyone, rather than taking advantage for yourself.

Trust everyone, but cut the cards. The corollary, from Mark Twain, suggests going into every discussion and negotiation assuming good intentions on everyone’s part…but not being naïve about it. In my own entrepreneurial career I’ve taken this even one step further. My corporate motto has always been “everyone gets one chance to screw us”, because if I limit my exposure on the first interaction, it will be the cheapest money I ever spend to find out who plays fair and who doesn’t.

It’s one thing to piss on my back, but don’t try to tell me I’m sweating. This one comes from an old-time construction superintendent with whom my father himself apprenticed, and it again boils down to honesty and integrity. Whatever you do (or whatever someone else does to you) should be done clearly and with no obfuscation. Own your actions, and don’t try to fool yourself or anyone else with false rationalizations. (As in “its perfectly ok to pirate music and movies against the express wishes of the copyright owner, because I’m actually helping them by giving them added exposure…”)

Every tub should sit on its own bottom. That is, examine each action or relationship independently, and don’t mix yourself up by conflating unrelated activities. For example, if you are considering taking in a strategic investment, analyze the equity investment independently as one piece, and the strategic contract as a separate one. Similarly, when considering a problem, break it down into the smallest possible components and figure out how to solve each one on its own. Quite often a seemingly intractable problem can be handled with two or three simple actions.

Nice guys don’t always finish first…but you should act as if they do. History has shown that bad things happen to good people, and if one runs around maintaining “nice guys always finish first”, you will (a) be disappointed, and (b) convince people that you’re hopelessly naïve. But the fact is that if the “nice” is combined with other characteristics such as “effective”, “smart” and “hardworking”, nice guys often DO finish first, and have an easier time and more support from those around them.

If three people tell you you’re drunk…lie down anyway. Mark Twain’s advice about having a decent respect for the opinions of others is something that I remind myself about nearly every day. Entrepreneurs are almost universally convinced that they are bearing the Word of God, and that anyone who disagrees with them must therefore be either an idiot or invincibly ignorant. I am certainly no exception to this belief, but after nearly four decades in business I have come to realize how true Twain’s words ring. While it is critical for entrepreneurs to have faith in their own visions, it is equally critical to listen to what the market and other smart people are saying. Coachability, flexibility, and a willingness to listen to (if not heed) good advice are some of the key things that I look for an as an investor.

Happiness is the exercise of one’s vital powers along lines of excellence. Last but not least, George Santayana’s perceptive view of personal fulfillment (what Abraham Maslow discussed as “self actualization”) pre-dated by decades the concept of “flow”. Exercising my ‘vital powers’ as an entrepreneur, an investor and a mentor makes me one of the happiest people I know…just as it has for my life role model.

Happy Father’s Day, Daniel Rose!

“I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.

I’ve learned that making a living is not the same thing as making a life.

I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back.

I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.

I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one.

I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.

I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

by Maya Angelou