Stickers and a fangirl

Looking back on this week, I am unlikely to remember the magic in the air from the summer rains, the excitement of some potential new prospects, budgeting for the next fiscal year, the absolute joy of dinner with my friend Anton, Adam closing his first deal, the beginnings of some hard core data analysis, getting giddily over-caffeinated with the boys from Ruckus, meeting a digital loyalty guru, taking a sales call from my CrossFit gym, taunting Joburg boy with photos of Cape Town, literally flying through the 27 80kg back squats on Monday; or, on the less positive side, the weakness I exhibited on Friday at the gym (turns out I was getting sick) and the occurrence of a weird shoulder issue that probably just needs a little bit of rest.

What I will remember? Stickers.

Well, that and coming out as a fangirl.

Look, I think you can tell a lot about a company by its employees. I think you can also tell a lot about a company by how it handles criticism. Chalk and cheese, as they say. But I tell you what, I was literally feeling like a seven-year-old girl getting obsessed with stickers. Stickers!!

Thursday was a nutty day. Between the whole Oscar Pistorius thing (he shot & killed his girlfriend, verdict is definitely still out on what the hell happened here, but super sad for her and her family), the State of the Nation address and opening of Parliament that shut Cape Town right down, and my throwing my toys, as they say, at every vendor in sight about these stickers … it was almost a tempest in a teapot.

I mean, I take my job responsibilities very seriously, but some bits more than others. Fiduciary responsibility and regulatory compliance are pretty well the top of the list. Customers and staff come next.

Our new financial year starts on March 1^st. To prepare, we need to produce budgets and we also need to change the financial reporting categories to fit my new view of the world. It’s a bit mind-numbing to go over every single category for income and expense. Definitely un-glamorous, but very necessary. I have a bit of an attention to detail which can be annoying at times, but on balance is probably a good thing.

My love affair continues: no day or week is like the last. Never boring. Just like CrossFit.

Speaking of CrossFit, I was definitely having one of those head-over-heels in love moments on Monday when we were doing heavy back squats. There’s that moment when you have just chalked up and you watch the little bits of chalk dust fall through the air and you know the bar is going to feel heavy, and light, at the same time. Just like when you approach a new movement like a freestanding kipping handstand pushup without fear or expectation, and somehow everything just goes right.

Love that. Like I love my technicians make me laugh out loud almost every day of the week. Maybe THAT is how I pick the vendors and partners and friends that I love; the ones that make me laugh?

I was definitely thinking this week about emotions, emotional reactions, and rationality. I know it may be unrealistic, but I like to think of myself as being pretty calm, cool, collected, and rational. I’m the one who keeps a calm head when everyone else is panicking. I’m the one who, when the milk spills, goes to get something to clean it up. My mother tells this story of when my brother was tiny and he burned his hand and while she was still freaking out, I had already gone to the sink and gotten a bowl of cold water for his hand. That sounds like something I would do.

But I’ve also got this vindictive streak. Do not hurt me or my people. I’ll give you every chance in the world, but I draw the line at unethical and I really don’t care for stupid.

But here’s the thing. We know, now, that I’m a salesman. Outside of the places I’ve worked, most of which I’ve sold hard, at least for a time, there are a few things I rave about. TiVo. The Economist. Sichuan Gourmet. CrossFit (although that one’s been tempered down because it’s not right for everyone and there are some things about it that are definitely pretty stupid). Cape Town.

I was chatting to this guy I met recently, who is seeming to be like another J to me, in that it’s almost like I’m talking to myself when I talk to him. It’s easy to get along with such people, and I’m happily building networks of super smart, super insightful, super connected people to be my friends and advisors in the industry. Yes I know, you do need a diversity of opinions but you also need people on the same wavelength. But I digress.

Anyway Lance was about as fascinated by my coming out as a fangirl as I am. From my side, I am interested because it doesn’t happen that often, and in this case I’m proud of it and embarrassed by it at the same time. Fandom, by its very nature, is a bit irrational. But hey, we’re all irrational and we’re all biased. At least I admit to mine, if only to myself, and only the degree to which I’m actually self-aware. That’s a lot of caveats, I know, but hey: just remember: people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Here’s how it works: at the end of the day, I try to be as professional as I can when it comes to customers. Their needs come first. If some customer has a specific set of needs, I will bring to them what I think is the best solution. But all else being equal, I’m going to sell them the solution I like the best.

It all comes down to this, right? We don’t buy from companies, we buy from people. Some products are so good you’ll buy them even if you don’t much care for the company or the people.

So I’m a fangirl.

You know the other thing about fans? They are the ones who are the most betrayed if you screw up. Irrationality and emotion cuts both ways.

This post was too long so I broke it into two. This one is more what I did, the second more how I felt. One last thing to mention here is how utterly fascinated I remain by the human body. So Saturday I wake up feeling a bit under the weather. I drive out to Stellenbosch anyway to meet Riaan and go to the river, because I won’t be seeing him for another month or so, and I wasn’t feeling THAT bad (cold, not flu). So now that I’m up and about, I went to open gym. I wouldn’t have gone to that either except that I was having a skill session with Grant (more about that in the next post, too).

But then afterwards I raced off to acupuncture. It was a bit of a shame because it looks like I missed some gymnastics practice. I mean lifting heavy weights is cool, but what’s cooler is watching people do backflips and cool stuff!

In case you’re not aware, I have this therapist called Byron who does the most amazing things to help me heal and reconfigure my body, and he does it all through stimulating the central nervous system. I can, at this point, literally feel the CNS get fired up, and it feels just like a cup of coffee or three, but when the body actually starts processing what’s happened, I crash, and I crash hard. Normally I see him at 7am and by 6pm I am a bit of a wreck (Byron happens on recovery days, obviously).

And we talk, and one of the things we talk about is how I have the body awareness to be able to tell soreness pain from injury pain from sensitivity at the attachment points. Similar to how with the fascial release, not only do I have an apparently impressive pain threshold, but I have a very good ability to tell the type of pain we’re looking for (it’s a burning pain from the fascia getting unstuck from the muscles) apart from the other type of pain.

So this acupuncture session was fascinating to me because when I’m really needing acupuncture it knocks me completely on my ass. I was drifting in and out of sleep, but I was peripherally aware of what my body was doing, in phases. First, that weird acupuncture sensation that if you’ve felt, you know what I mean, and if you haven’t …. Well, try describing the flavour of a banana to someone who’s never had a banana. Second, the CNS stimulation, and hard core at that. I’m glad I was asleep or it might have been a bit intense, even for someone who is used to it. Third, my right arm, the one with the shoulder issue, had a BIG involuntary muscle contraction. Fourth, when it was time for the needles to come out the CNS stimulation was gone and I woke up without a hint of drowsiness. But I had to wait for a lecture on the transcendental soul to end before I had the needles removed (Saturdays are TCM lecture days, so you can learn some interesting things if you’re not snoozing).

We humans are like machines. Actually, we are machines. Emotional machines, sure. But boy is it interesting to step back and observe what is happening to your physical and emotional self.

Eve6 had it right: It’s sickening how comforting the privacy of the mind can be.

• “The mind also had to be ready.” – Byron
• “That’s not really a fair fight.” – Bryony
• “Unfortunately the actual regulations are seemingly impossible to find.” – Dominic
• “So that’s gonna be rough. And then …” – Grant
• “I liked his eyes.” – Adam (not what it sounds like)
• “What’s the male equivalent of Hello Kitty?” – Ellie
• “It’s a spring. Your ass is like a spring.” – Coach Grant (not what it sounds like)
• “I don’t know what’s up with them.” “That guy is dodgy.” – Ellie & Rudolph (what else is new?)
• “I’ll save you the R2 it would take to call them. Just call Rob.” – Mike
• “You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.” “But you can.” – Ellie & Mike
• “Not that anyone from [company name omitted] has ever said anything REALLY stupid. But if you were to do so, I wouldn’t laugh in your face.” – Ellie 
• “So much for NDA.” “Hehe. Yeah. So – “ – Ellie & Mike (NDA falls away if the idea is stupid and company goes under)
• “Naughty is such an unprofessional word.” – Rob
• “Don’t pick unnecessary fights.” – Doug
• “You’re becoming much more in demand from my side.” – Doug
• “You’re telling me my life is hectic?” – Ellie
• “You’re telling me there’s opportunity in my industry?” – Ellie
• “Oh my God Ellie …. They have you!” – Anton
• “OK let’s not kid ourselves. I can be unprofessional too.” – Ellie
• “You can’t have seven different income streams and no CEO.” – Anton
• “So it’s not just me going crazy over stickers?” – Ellie
• “I think we should affix Hello Kitty stickers to all our devices  and see if anyone notices. …. I think I might be losing it a little bit.” “It is possible.” – Ellie & Rob
• “Just about every decision made by a human being in the history of the world was an emotional one.” – Rob
• “If I believe in you I’ll be selling you.” – Lance
• “Input. OMG.” – Dominic
• “The fact that you’re a fangirl piques my curiosity.” – Lance
• “That’s a lot of income, income, income all in one place.” – Bronwyn (it was actually three places)
• “Being vindictive and being hot are mutually exclusive.” – Lance (he meant not mutually exclusive)

Simplicity and the snake

Doug says my best attribute is my enthusiasm. I’ve been saying recently that I’m a salesman. Same thing. Maybe?

Prior to Doug, I had always thought my best attribute was my ability to make order from chaos and to communicate between different groups of people. I always thought that’s what made me such a good product manager: I could talk to sales, customers, marketing, AND engineering. I like all of them but I preferred the smartest ones, who were often, but certainly not always, the engineers.

The notion of a single best attribute is probably a stupid one anyhow. My worst attribute? Well at the moment probably I’d have to call it as overestimating my own capacity. My stupid ass decided it would be a good idea to do multiple workouts at the opening of a friend’s CrossFit box on day 4 of training.

Somehow I apparently forgot that would have been my fourth consecutive day of training, which is the stupidest thing ever because my cardinal rule of training is never train more than three days in a row. Especially when you’re coming off the work equivalent of Hell Week. Fun opening and cool to catch up with some of the guys and actually, come to think of it, while it may not have been the smartest thing, fatigue can cause weaknesses that I usually hide to manifest. And that mantra from the martial arts studio about leaving your ego at the door and not acting like a fool could be much more aptly applied to the rest of my life.

You would have thought I would have figured it out on Thursday. I was laughing at myself, having caught myself in the middle of that awkward moment where you realise that a) for at least the third time in the last hour, you have no idea what your coach just said and b) you just said a really, REALLY stupid thing. My mind only gets un-focused like that when I’m exhausted. At least my 1K row times were not as pathetic as they could have been.

But enough of my stupidity. Back to the subject at hand. This week I had a meeting with a guy who I was trying to sell Wi-Fi to, and this somehow led into a 20+ minute nutrition discussion. He kept saying that I should be a personal trainer or nutrition coach, because I sounded like I really knew what I was talking about, and when he asked questions I had good answers, and I clearly spoke with a passion.

But here’s the thing. It’s not my passion. Garth & Hermann: this is their passion. You can see it when you talk to them. Me? The salesman in me can project enthusiasm. What this guy didn’t realise is that I could care less whether or not he adjusts his diet as the result of what I tell him. I strongly suspect he won’t.

My parents teach at university, and one of the pieces of advice I recall them giving me was not to become a teacher, for a number of reasons but mainly because most students don’t care. And when you care about what they are teaching and they don’t care about learning, that is going to eat at you. Some people are better than me, to be motivated by the people they do teach and help. Me? No I’m definitely of the tough love sort. One friend was complaining about her coach who goes too far in the tough love direction and she may be right, I don’t really claim to know. I guess each athlete has a way that’s ideal for them to be handled.

I don’t even know what my ideal way to be handled as an athlete is; I suspect it changes based on my mood. I know what it is NOT, which is to say: ‘You’re doing it wrong’ without telling me, specifically and non-judgmentally, how to fix it. But figuring out the best way to coach every person who would walk in my door? Hell, it’s hard enough to run my company where I can boss people around if I want. As I’ve said many a time, forget carrots and sticks: the best carrot is carrot cake. Find someone’s intrinsic motivation and go from there.

To that end, I must say, potential bossiness aside, on Thursday morning we did the morning meeting a little bit differently and started off by listing our top priorities for the day in the technical team. There were about twelve. By the end of day Friday, almost all of them were done, including, much to my excitement, a chance to see how this Ruckus gear actually performs in a hostile environment. Honestly, that ain’t bad. My team is kind of kick-ass, and I really kind of love them. We just can’t operate at this pace forever.

You know, it was just an emotional rollercoaster of a week. I think that takes it out of you more than anything. Not unlike the insulin spikes we try and avoid!

I seem to keep getting off track in this post! I think it’s because my body is still very tired, and I’m about to go through to Byron who is, no doubt, going to knock me on my ass as he always does. Great plan for a Sunday night: get that CNS in repair mode, cook some fish, train qigong, fall asleep.

Speaking of sleep, yesterday afternoon I was literally fantasising about sleep. Then I took a nap, and recovered enough for the Chinese New Year celebrations at the martial arts studio. I wish I hadn’t been so tired, but on the plus side my exhaustion let me excuse myself after dinner rather than having to explain why I wasn’t drinking. You know, rules are rules, and that may actually be one of the situations where I would have made an exception. You do not want to offend your master for a reason that is, at the end of the day, arbitrary. Maybe I’ll just make sure I’m similarly exhausted when Kim’s birthday comes along (isn’t his mom beautiful, by the way??).

It’s a funny thing. I really do enjoy what I do, and when I enjoy something I really, REALLY go at it. But as I was walking to be a very, VERY late attendee at a dinner at Hudson’s on Friday night I was looking at all of these people having a good time in the restaurants, and bars and wondering what on earth I was doing. Skyrove isn’t everything. Even I will get burnout if I’m not careful.

This, now, is the year of the snake. The year of the dragon brings with it lots of dynamic change but it’s all the animals in one and it’s actually quite an upsetting time, apparently. The year of the snake is supposed to have a lot of the positive energy of the dragon without as much of the hectic.

Speaking of hectic? Regionals this year is going to be held in Joburg. As we all know, I know enough about training at altitude to be very, VERY afraid. After a bit of research it turns out that to acclimatize you need between 4-6 weeks, and 2 at a bare minimum. Well, I’ll head up there a week early for work and see how that goes. Can’t stress about things you can’t control, now can you?

Look, I don’t really know what my passion is. I was thinking about this. I used to love product management. Then I got bored. Then I was super into social enterprise. Then I realised I’m far too impatient for idealists or a world that doesn’t actually get blended value yet. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m actually not sure it matters too much what I am doing so long as it’s mentally stimulating.

Skyrove is definitely that. It’s a technical industry with a bunch of super smart kids. I think it came to me when we were meeting with Kerry-Anne on Friday and she said I had an unusual talent for making the really complex simple, but without dumbing it down.

Making the complex simple: that’s what a good product manager does, and in reading Doug’s latest email to me, that’s essentially his feedback about what I’m doing best. So my passion, as best as I can articulate it from where I’m sitting right now, is to avoid boredom by bringing elegance and simplicity from confusion and chaos.

Sounds so nice when you put it like that. But I’m definitely more passionate about not being bored than I am about helping people change their lives.

• “I’ll leave the unethical behaviour to him.” – Ellie
• “When Merakis have problems, they have complicated problems.” – Tim
• “I would urge you to be prepared.” – Shafiek
• “How long have you been in sales?” “Fourteen years.” “Uh-huh. Takes one to know one.” – Ellie & Arthur
• “Your biggest problem it outside of your control.” – Doug
• “And you can sell like a mother*cker.” – Doug (I just get more and more dangerous I’m afraid!)
• “I love it when I’m proven right.” – Doug
• “That’s definitely a lot to start with.” “Welcome to our industry.” – Kerry-Anne & Ellie
• “I wonder how you’re able to pull it all out, sometimes.” – Adam
•  “Yeah …. We’ll just keep that part between us.” – Tim (I love when my guys do stupid things and then actually tell me about it rather than try to cover up!)
• “I don’t like him very well.” – Gina
• “You can't use that excuse every week!”  – Bronwyn
• “I'm all for being customer-focused. But I'm not a doormat.” – Ellie
• “I’m going to be doing this for the rest of my life.” – Hermann
• “You had the biggest smile on your face afterwards hey!” – Nick
• “There’s nuances to everything.” – Chris
• “Positive energy and negative energy are both contagious.” – Jeremiah
• “The Grand Master is here!” – Kim
• “You must work for your luck.” – Shirfu 

No one else I care about

Is allowed to be rushed to hospital.

So I like to think I’m all tough. You learn how not tough you are when you leave the hospital all choked up, not because anyone’s life is in danger but because things could have been so, SO much worse.

A lot going through my head at the moment. A co-worker, friend, and someone I rely on emotionally as well as professionally, in the hospital. A coach, a friend, and one of the few that I confided in about how upset I was about the other guy …. Also winds up in the hospital. I was feeling a bit jealous of him on Saturday as he was saying he was getting back to double and triple workouts in a day, and now he’s obviously not training at all.

Both will fully recover, so far as I know, and I’m getting back to the dual training from next week, after a REALLY bad scare this week. I was afraid I’d re-injured my back after Monday’s workout. I am still not sure what exactly I did, although that workout made me crazy sore, or how you can go from fine to ‘holy crap I can’t touch my toes without excruciating pain’ to nearly fine again and doing deadlifts in the space of 48 hours.

OK, I know part of the answer, and his name is Byron. He’s a damned miracle worker although I’ll admit to disliking therapy days because I know my CNS is going to shut down around 6pm. Cure is sometimes more hectic than the disease. Thanks to Byron my eyes started to glaze over during a webinar about integrating carrier Wi-Fi on the mobile network. No, it wasn’t the subject matter: I just couldn’t focus!

But I guess sport mirrors my work life. 9:35am Monday morning I had customers blowing up right and left. By 11am customers were fine and I had two huge new inbound leads. You know, you win some, you lose some.

Adam, our new sales guy, is literally chomping at the bit. He’s about to be released into the wild. The world better get ready.

A new intern arrived from France and in his first few hours plugged a lot of the holes in our customer database. I can only imagine what’s going to happen next.

But it’s been rough, most of our technical staff were out of the office for one reason or another most of the week and things have been manic. Just, plain, manic.

And yet, things manage to get done. Lots of things. Had our product kickoff meeting, and Stefan’s head didn’t explode. Had a conference call with a company I found overseas, and I think I may even have impressed him a little bit. Took Adam along to a few customer meetings, both of which were great, and one of which involved a road trip. I even learned about a new kind of backhaul: lasers!

What else happened? Got myself a tentative speaker slot for a conference in July, had lunch with the lovely Michelle Atagana and discussed how to get Wi-Fi knowledge to the masses (and possibly wound up with a lead on a conference), and had one of those weird moments when I was chatting with two people in Sunnyvale at the same time: one about romance and the other about, you guessed it, Wi-Fi.

Here’s the thing: as much as I like change and innovation, I also like routine. I like my people around me. I say all the time that my co-workers and gym-mates are like family. It’s not until you miss seeing some of them every single day that you learn how much you not only rely on them for what they contribute to your life, but how much you need them emotionally.

What’s up next? Big prospect meeting, company meeting, board meeting, possibly more recruitment, definitely getting Adam launched into the field, managing the new intern, kickoff meeting for our new web site, and financial budgeting & modelling. And all the stuff I didn’t get done last weekend can now happen this weekend. I hope.

Yes, this is hell week for me. I’m also managing 7-8 hours of sleep. It may be manic, but it’s manageable manic.

Honestly, I’m having the time of my life. Now if only I could sort out those blasted double unders my life would be perfect.

Almost.

• “What’s that?” “Kale.” “What?” “Kale.” “Parsley?” “Kale.” – Bronwyn & Ellie
• “We have an interesting puzzle on our hands.” “Yes we do.” – Ellie & Stefan
• “Well, it seems like a much better direction than the one we have at the moment.” – Stefan
• “How are your glutes?” – Grant
• “That came out all wrong.” – Rob
• “The wheels turn slowly. But they do turn.” – Renier
• “First I Googled ‘why is Wireless G called Wireless G.’ That wasn’t terribly helpful.” – Adam
• "If the subscriber can't pick up a reliable wireless network, nothing else is going to matter." – Steve Hratko
• “You know that unobtainable goal? That’s Shaolin.” – Shirmo
• “I wish I knew why!” – Ellie
• “He’s never been my favourite person.” – Stefan
• “It’s expensive for everybody.” – Eran
• “It would work for about a month.” – Stefan
• “Either something’s wrong with your diet, or you’re not as fit as you think you are.” – Howard (that or I just really suck at deadlifts, which is my theory!) 

Being a salesman

So my first sales hire started this week, on Friday. I am excited for the reasons I described above, but also because now we get to see what happens when you prime the pump with a young, motivated person who I can train, who has real sales targets, and whose commission structure is very generous after he hits those targets. So now we see.

We also got the unexpected news late on Friday that an intern that we weren’t expecting for a month was going to be arriving next week. So now we have some more resources to throw at our customer care initiative and at prospecting.

The biggest problem remains not having enough hours in the day. I keep wishing I were superhuman and could do more than I am. But, I am what I am. I suppose the same goes for my team; I wish our technical staff were bigger. But we aren’t. Yet. I guess it’s a good thing that everyone is over-busy as it beats the alternative, but we do have to be careful not to get so caught up in the day-to-day that we lose sight of the big picture.

Our main task for January was staff recruitment in sales and admin/operations, and for me, to wrap my head around the finances, which I now know better than I did but I want to be knowing some of these metrics by heart. February is going to be budgeting & financial planning, sales, account management, and product month. I put up a white board with our top 5 priorities on it, next to the office announcements board. I wrote up six priorities as I wasn’t able to stop at five.

So this week I was recovering, mentally and physically, from the competition last weekend. Firstly, I saw my miracle-worker Byron and then I went to acupuncture. The latter was absolutely epic; I fell asleep on the table within 10 minutes, and when I came to it had knocked me so completely on my ass that I was barely able to concentrate on qigong and then couldn’t do any work at all later that evening so I went to bed. Healing is training, too, of a sort. Sometimes the healing is more hectic than the training!

Not more so than Thursday’s session, though, where part of our workout was five rounds of 40 second sprints on the rower. I was very proud of myself for not holding back, although my body did give up and my power output decreased from the first to the fifth round, but after I finished I did indeed fall off the rower not to stand up again for a good five minutes. THAT is the Ellie I was missing last weekend. I finished and I actually kind of wanted to cry a little bit. Which is weird, that feeling had never come across me before.

Er, at least not like that. I must say it was interesting to hear the response from some of the folks at the gym to my competition, and in particular that last event. Interesting indeed. Also amusing to watch someone nearly fall over because of a rower but for different reasons than mine.

I managed to have a somewhat social week, too, which is probably a good thing. I made a new friend called Lance. What happens when  a sales guy meets a sales girl? They try and sell each other stuff. Like advice about work/life balance.  And talk about CrossFit. But he’s very cool, and what really makes me smile is the story of his young daughter who misheard ‘Cape Town’ and thought he was flying to ‘Cake Town.’ Can you imagine? Like a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory writ large. Cake Town!

But, as an ex-ISP guy, I was happy to hear that he approves of my strategy, even the more extreme bits. I suppose I’m a bit ruthless when it comes to core competencies, but what the hell: go big or go home. I don’t have the time to mess around.

This subject came up again a few times this week: with Kelsey at breakfast at Arnold’s, with Michelle at Alex’s birthday, with Juliet at dinner at her place.  You know, it’s easy to say that people should break out of their ruts and get over their fears and shit. But then again how many of my deepest darkest fears do I really face? Normally I just avoid them, or tap out. For me the bigger ones aren’t work-related, they’re personal. I have no problem in the boardroom or at the negotiating table; I have problems admitting what I want.

This is the best quote from this blog post that I love about overcoming your fears: Like George Clooney said in Three Kings, “The way it works is, you do the thing you’re scared shitless of, and you get the courage AFTER you do it, not before.”

No further comment required.

I love that my friends seem to find me inspiring and charming. But it’s not actually me, it’s the salesman in me. And, perhaps, that I’m genuine in my compliments. And that I genuinely like people.

I’m also loving this feeling at this time of year. The results of a full month of clean eating are showing themselves. The body image issues I had last year have not recurred [yet]. OK, I lie, but at least not as bad as before. I’m almost fully healthy, and it feels so nice to train like that: solid, balanced, stable, but with the added benefit of a heightened focus on form.

I learned a lot from last year. I learned that this strict diet is for me, and not for my team. It’s annoying, yes, to go to the coolest bar I’ve been to in Cape Town, by far, with the best mixologists (apparently), and have to turn down free drinks five times in an hour. Well, somehow the ratio of male to female at Knock Knock was a bit out of whack on that evening. But nonetheless, I really wanted a strawberry mojito, but I wanted even more not to keep to my commitment to myself for the second year in a row.  

But wow what a great week of friends and conversation! Everything from the confidence of sport with Kelsey to talking about the guy she’s been seeing to talking with Michelle who was wondering out loud how one finds the time to be seeing anyone [indeed], to eating disorders, overtraining, and my plans to Wi-Fi the world with Juliet.

Speaking of Juliet, she’s a kindred soul. She was telling this beautiful story of becoming frustrated with a co-worker because said co-worker was not able to see a situation multi-dimensionally. It was this frustrated: ‘But how can she not SEE!?!’ that I thought was actually quite cute. I mean, you can’t get frustrated with someone who doesn’t see what you see. Obviously, they miss it. Not everyone is a broad, strategic, lateral thinker.

On the subject of such people my VC is getting hardcore on me! The honeymoon’s over and he’s asking the tough questions very bluntly now. As he should be. That’s what a good Board does, is watch out for your blind spots and hold you accountable. Doug may be the most incisive person I know. In most cases I have the answers; I just remain frustrated that there are not enough hours in the day.

As a product manager, I used to pride myself on being able to talk as easily to sales as to engineers. That skill and underlying nerdiness has served me well so far in sales, business development, and relationship building in what’s a very technical industry at the end of the day. But opportunity and potential is one thing; execution is another. Now comes crunch time in becoming Skyrove product manager.

We had an Olympic lifting seminar on Saturday. Somehow I wound up feeling physically weak that morning and my poor hands were hurting (whine, whine). But something is definitely happening: between what Grant taught me the other week and something that kind of came together with my tall snatches or high hang snatches or whatever you want to call them …. It’s a process, fixing ingrained crappy movement patterns. But when that first pull is right, the bar flies. When you get that full hip extension, the bar flies. Now if I could only put the first pull and second pull together I’d be all set.

That feeling of the bar being weightless, for that split-second: it’s magic. Kind of like getting your balance right and walking on your hands, which I’m practicing more now. Because it’s fun. And because I can.

So is getting to the bottom of your to-do list. Mine had 18 items on it Saturday afternoon when I started. As it stands now it’s down to about 12, most of which are, in fact, critical to get done before the end of the weekend. 3, 2, 1, go!

• “Human beings are strange with these things.” – Rudolph
• “It’s an extreme interpretation. But it’s not invalid.” – Lance
• “It does mean you’re a salesman.” – Lance   
• “He’s probably more angel than human.”  – Mom
• “That’s the beauty of IT. It does what it wants, when it wants.” – Scott
• “No man! You can’t take the good looking one!” – Bronwyn
• “Because it shows autonomy.” – Doug
• “I liked that it seemed organised.” – Adam
• “So, I wanted to tell you that I’ve hit the first problem of the day.” – Bronwyn (always a Friday!)
• “I’ve never seen it like this!” – Bronwyn
• “It’s a hobby.” “Not with you guys!!” – Ellie & Alex
• “What about liquor and men?” “Bad combo.” “Oh. Yes.” – Ellie & Michelle
• “What did you do to poor Andy?” “I called him a toy.” – Laurie & Michelle
• “I’m afraid all the time. But I do stuff anyhow.” – Andy
• “Ellie isn’t drinking because she’s in a cult.” – Rob
• “You have to get comfortable with the idea that it’s not going to kill you.” – Jean 

Fittest in Cape Town 2013

I learned something this weekend. Anyone is beatable.  Any given Sunday, right?

So the weekend started out, as it does, with the work day Friday. I had my sales candidates in to interview with Rudolph and Bronwyn, and we had a clear winner. Super excited; the guy is going to be a rock star. Took Helen out to lunch at Starlings, and then came back for a meeting with an AV company that’s a partner of ours.

Then I went out on a tech support call to a holiday apartment in Clifton. Because that’s what one does on a Friday night when one has to register at Camps Bay High School anyway. Living the dream, man. But, one of those moments I’ll never forget is standing in the foyer calling through to my new sales guy, and offering him his first job. Not the first time I’ve made someone a job offer, but the first time I’ve done so in South Africa.

I’m excited not only because I like him as a person, and his skills, or because the other team members were unanimously enthusiastic, but because he really wants to work at Skyrove: he likes tech, he wants to work for a small company, and when I was talking to his reference about how he is and how best to manage him, the guy might as well have been describing a younger version of me. Except one who figured out sooner that he was a salesman.  

Anyway. After arriving home I went for a slow jog around the neighbourhood, then inside to stretch and foam roll. I kept having to tamp my pace down; I felt like a race horse that was being held back.

The next morning I woke up bright and early, calmed my nerves with some qigong, and made my way to Camps Bay High School for day 1 of the Fittest in Cape Town competition. This competition is done as I think all CrossFit competitions should be, and the events are not announced ahead of time, at least not on the individual side, where I was competing.

People will always bitch and moan. A lot of people whined about the programming in the competition. I must say; I thought it was great. Definitely an all-around test of fitness. The first event was a 2 rep max deadlift, the fourth event was a 6.6km road race up a hill and back down, spiced up with a handstand walk, an agility event, and an event I should have rocked with running & burpees. The final event was a bruiser of a mental game, with front squats coming up after kettlebell overhead squats and a messy encounter with sled pushes & pulls.

At the end of the day I was disappointed in my performance and final placing. I kind of lost concentration on an agility event and forgot to go fast (!), didn’t push hard enough on an event I should have won, misunderstood the briefing as to how the handstand walk was going to be measured (I’m actually quite bitter about that but have only myself to blame), and I obviously need to work on my range of motion on pistols.

So these minor competitions are mainly learning experiences. I learned from Regionals not to go to Caprice afterwards, especially if one is not drinking and others are. Ha. So I avoided threatening to punch anyone this time around by avoiding the situation entirely.

What did I learn? Other than that anyone is beatable, including myself? It’s true, we don’t have any Annie Thorisdottirs or Kris Clevers in our field. Well, I was just saying the other day how I compete better than I train, and a whole other Ellie comes out in competition. Well … apparently not always. I have never finished this low in a competition, actually any sort of competition, ever in my adult life, where I’ve ever seriously competed at it (I was seventh at the end).

Why did she not appear? A few reasons. I was distracted. I was intimidated. Fundamentally, I didn’t commit. Won’t make that mistake again. You know, something inside me snapped before Regionals last year. I think it just snapped again. Sometimes you need to be humbled a bit, and I’m certainly not going to get anywhere this way. Beatrix was right: you compete like you train.

Secondly, I learned that there is a circumstance in which I do completely lose my cool. I am sick and tired of people whining about judges calling them for no reps. If the judge wants you to exaggerate the hip opening at the top of a burpee or have your feet together for a handstand pushup, then don’t whine about it, just do what the judge says. Don’t waste time arguing in competition about whether or not you think the judge is right. I mean, honestly, you can’t see your own range of motion, which is why there are judges, and yes, you can wish that everyone was held to the same standards but this is part of the sport, you really can’t take it personally.

What made me lose my cool was I had one judge on one side saying good rep and head judge on the other saying no rep. You can’t have two judges. I would say, if a head judge wants to take over judging from an individual athlete’s judge then he or she should do just that, but make it clear to both the athlete and the judge that this is what’s going on.

Separately, time to get out the video camera and work on my pistols. Clearly my perception of what constitutes hip crease below knee is not beyond a reasonable doubt, so, fix that up before it actually matters for anything.

Really, I’m just bummed that I didn’t make it to the final because that combo of events was just the sort of thing where you see what sort of heart you really have in you, when it starts to hurt and THAT is where the competition Ellie does come out. I was really upset that I didn’t get a chance to meet her this time around. In all fairness, the ladies that made it that far were the ones who deserved it on this weekend.

Every cloud has a silver lining though and this one had a few. Firstly, by not doing the last event my body wa fine to resume training sooner than normal after such a competition. Secondly, my ankle, which hadn’t allowed me to squat as recently as Thursday, took the pounding of a massive downhill like an absolute champ. Third, I am getting much better at walking on my hands. Fourth, I learned that it is quite fun to compete as an individual. Fifth, that I missed competing on a team.

It was a whole weekend where I barely thought about Skyrove at all. Then I got back to work on Monday morning with my body a bit sore and my mind tired. It took me until the evening dinner with Doug & Michael to get my head fully back in the game. Then again, you start talking loyalty, ethics, and shareholder politics and that’ll wake anyone out of a slumber. But even the normal Monday was good: we started down some good paths with our data & analysis team, mapped out a new IVR call flow, and documented our sales process including identifying some gaps in the process. All good stuff.

I always thought that I was better at operations than I would be at sales. I am now actually finding out that the reverse may in fact be the case. I felt it when I was calling through to a woman who had applied for a bookkeeper role to tell her that she wasn’t a good fit but I wanted to consider her for sales, and I launched into this whole long semi-tirade about how awesome sales is if you’re not trying to do the unethical hard sell of something someone doesn’t want.

I must say I was also laughing at myself a bit. I pride myself on being level-headed, especially under stress. So I was at dinner seeing  one guy getting all riled up over something unethical, and another guy getting upset over being treated poorly (disrespectfully).

I was laughing to myself that what has made me the most upset in the past six months is a handstand walk and pistols! I said on Twitter that I was disappointed but not upset. That was a total lie.

But we know this: there are two things that do make me upset. Perceived injustice, and disrespect. I suppose why I don’t get upset over something like an unethical act (that didn’t really do any damage at the end of the day) was back to Michael’s wonderful comment a few months back: It’s not are you upset, it’s are you surprised.

• “The best carrot is carrot cake.”- Ellie
• “The tea lady fainted and the cemetery’s on fire.” – Rodney
• “Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s going to be dreadful.” – Pierre
• “You only liked that because you like burpees!” – Lloyd
• “You look perfect. And you look conditioned. You’ll do great.” – some guy from the road race [who obviously didn’t realise CrossFit isn’t a beauty pageant]
• “He may be pretty … but he may not be very smart.” – Ellie
• “Oh, never mind then. Your solution is a good one.” “That’s why I did it.” – Ellie & Tim
• “Yeah, I hated them too! Then I met them.” – Ellie 
• “Emotions lead to bad decisions.” – Michael
• “It doesn't have to be that way.” – Michael