Lessons in marketing from the CrossFit Games

The CrossFit Open is upon us. I didn’t get into this sport to compete. As with many things I could never have predicted this when I first walked in the door of Cape CrossFit or first heard LaaLaa talking about this crazy paleo thing on New Years Day of 2010. I actually seem to recall saying something along the lines of: ‘Well that method of training sounds cool. But I’m never going to stop eating bread and drinking beer!’ Never say never.

CrossFit is a cult. It is. It’s also a method of training, a series of branded gyms, and a competitive sport. Some day I may talk about the genius of Reebok marketing (big shout out to Chris Froio).

I was introduced to the notion of ‘braai marketing’ last week. A braai is a South Africanism that doesn’t really translate. So for the non-South Africans, imagine a Fourth of July cookout. That’ll work as a metaphor. The notion of braai marketing is that you want to have a brand that’s so well-loved and notable that people talk about it, and in a good way. Think TiVo. Not USAir or Comcast.

Now what the geniuses of marketing at CrossFit have done is to turn the competition season, that really is designed for the fittest people in the planet, into a massive marketing engine for the brand, and the sport.

How have they done this?

Well, consider golf, or tennis. I don’t know anything about these sports, but I bet even to enter a tournament you probably have to have a track record of some sort or pay a large fee. So the normal people of the world never do so, and we get to watch Tiger Woods and Roger Federer on TV, but we really can’t relate.

CrossFit did the opposite: they made it so every single person can compare themselves to all the elite athletes, and in such a way that the elite athletes become aspirational. It’s the same model that works inside a CrossFit gym.

If you’ve never been to a CrossFit gym, here’s how it works: it’s group training. There are a basic set of movements you are taught, then you are released into the wild of the normal gym where there is something called a workout of the day, or WOD (cuz every cult needs its own language). There is often a strength or technique portion then a metabolic conditioning portion which is normally either time-based (complete as many rounds of this circuit as possible in 8 minutes) or task-based (do this many reps of these exercises as fast as possible). I am definitely simplifying but the details aren’t  important to my point.

What is important is that a) there are recommended weights to be used and b) within that framework, everyone does the same workout. Can’t do pullups? Use a big rubber band to help you. Can’t clean 50kgs? Use 30.

The gyms have no mirrors, but they do have a whiteboard. So if the first part is 1 rep max back squat and the second part is 21-15-9 deadlifts and box jumps, or whatever it is, you write your scores up on the whiteboard after. It’s public, for everyone to see.

What does this mean? First, if you can’t do the workout at the recommended weights (‘as Rx’d’ in the lingo), you aspire to that. Second, everyone is suffering through the same thing but you’re also kind of competing with each other. The people to whom CrossFit appeals the most are those Type A personalities who want to be good at everything … and better than the guy or girl next to them.

There are benchmark workouts and the gym records for those are also on the board, although in many cases they are shockingly outdated in my experience. Be that as it may, you want your name up there. And you want to move up the list, and if you’re on the list you don’t want someone else knocking you out of your spot.

As much as it’s friendly and there is camaraderie, because these gyms are like families, everyone also knows who the better athletes are and how they stack up. You have someone better than you, or close to your own ability, you push yourself harder than if you’re on your own. This has been studied. It is true. So that’s part of the formula for success, and the reason that the sport experiences like 500% year on year growth or something stupid like that. Not to say there aren’t some severe problems with the model. But this post isn’t about that.

The way the CrossFit competition season works is this: there is a world championship, called the CrossFit Games, held in Los Angeles in July. There is an individual competition and a team competition. To get to the CrossFit Games, you have to finish in one of the top spots in your Region at a live competition called Regionals. Regions that have more CrossFit gyms get more slots: for example I think all the U.S. Regions get 3 slots for women, 3 for men, and 3 for teams, but Africa gets only one of each. Fair enough, we have far fewer participants.

In order to qualify for Regionals, you as an individual have to finish in the top 48 finishers for something called the CrossFit Open. The way that teams qualify is not important for the point I’m making. Enough of the intro already.

The CrossFit Open is pure marketing genius. So what is it? It’s five workouts, announced over five weeks. Everyone around the world does the same workouts. Even people who haven’t registered for the Open will probably do similar versions of the workouts.

The best part? The workouts are announced weekly, one a week, and then you have to complete the workout within a few days. The way the scoring works is that the top finisher gets 1 point, second gets 2 points, etc., so lowest point total across all five workouts is the highest placing finisher going into Regionals.

What does this mean? They’ve done some things very well, namely:

• Anticipation: Everyone wants to know what the next workout is going to be. There is a countdown widget on the CrossFit Games web site.
• Comparison: You can compare yourself against others in your Region, and the top athletes in the world. This makes those top athletes seem somewhat super-human (trust me, when you go all-out and then someone gets double your score and you wonder how on earth is that humanly possible???).
• Competition: You can see how you compare to everyone else in your Region, by workout and overall. So everyone knows not only who are the top athletes in the gym, but in the entire Region, and worldwide.
• Braai/water cooler marketing: In the Open season, it’s pretty much all anyone talks about. How did it go for you, what will the next workout be, check so-and-so from this gym, or check the scores from THAT gym, either they’re on drugs or they’re not very strict on the movement standards (yes, there is cheating, intentional and non-intentional. It’s a sport)
• Ecosystem marketing: CrossFit coach celebs like Carl Paoli & Kelly Starrett put out pre-Open YouTube videos giving recommendations & strategy. Top athletes put out videos. The entire CrossFit world blogs and video blogs about the whole thing. Talk begets talk.

It’s navel-gazing at an obscene level. But the absolute tactical genius of it is that really, during the Open season, it does get to be the thing that everyone talks about. It literally turns the everyday ‘in gym’ competition into a worldwide competition. In other words, you might feel pretty cool being the top dog in your gym, until all of a sudden you’re ranked number 7,000 in the world. Or, you might feel a bit better about yourself that you’ve in the top 10% worldwide.

Now, it has a very bad side which is that if you’re a ‘bubble’ athlete you may need to repeat the workout multiple times to get a good score. That’s one of the things about CrossFit that makes it so fun: each workout has its tactics. It’s not just about athletic potential: it’s about the application of that potential. You could be sick, or injured, or something, and one bad score in a week can and will put you out of contention.

Oddly enough this is about as uninjured as I’ve been heading into an Open. Yes, I have this nagging hip issue and yes, my shoulder is acting wonky but last year I had a BADLY sprained ankle. I had it taped up obscenely before the 7 minutes of burpees workout, and I literally could only snatch without pain the day before the snatch ladder workout. The year before, I was officially the most pathetic qualifier for Regionals of anyone worldwide: after the second workout I got knee tendonitis and couldn’t squat, then I sprained my ankle. So I did one rep for each additional workout just to stay in the competition. Great claim to fame, that. I did a little better last year, finishing fourth out of about 180 (and one point out of third: the double-unders killed me in workout 4).

At the moment out of over 90,000 people registered for the Open, Africa has about 630 men, and about 280 women. That’s about 1%. That makes us a relatively un-competitive region just by the numbers. In my case, I’m going team for Regionals so if I finish in the top 48 is kind of irrelevant. Although unless I happen to sprain my ankle for the third year running, I should finish pretty decently.

Unless, of course, the first workout is 7 minutes of double-unders. Well, we all have our weaknesses. That is mine.

One further comment. It is exciting, yes, even though it's a qualifier and even though we're in a non-competitive region so where we finish in the rankings doesn't really matter. But even still, it's a competition; it's a ranking; you compete. Last year, this was very exciting to me. I would check the web site multiple times a day, I would download and watch the movement standards videos even though I know bloody well the movement standards for a thruster or a wall ball. 

Not even kidding, before going to bed before the first workout was announced last year I felt like a little kid the night before Christmas. In a way I literally haven't felt since I was six.

When I woke up and found out the first workout was 7 minutes of burpees, it definitely felt like Christmas. Yeah, I'm weird.

This year, I'm not so into it. Maybe it's because I have other things going on. Or I'm more mature. Or that the hype gets old. But man I can see it in the people who didn't do the Open last year. They are excited. That's good marketing. Excellent. Props to CrossFit.

We find out the first workout tonight, sometime while we sleep here in South Africa. There are a few days a year when the first thing I check upon waking isn’t my email, and this Thursday will be one of them. 

I learned my lesson last year not to check in the middle of the night when you wake up. It can cause insomnia. Then again, with Vodacom’s network in the pathetic state it’s in, there is a 50-50 chance that I wouldn’t even be able to check in the middle of the night.

That’s something else that worked better in Joburg. It’s amazing how much more mobile data you consume when it works.

• “It’s terrible when your whole life is sport.” – Rebecca
• “I do have trust issues, come to think of it.” – Ellie
• “It’s a balance between not hyper-extending your neck and not being able to see.” – Richie
• “But that takes confidence because you sometimes do fall quite hard.” – Richie 

Karma’s only a bitch if you are

I’ve was thinking last week about first impressions. Sometimes my first impression is right, sometimes it’s wrong. For long-term relationships it probably doesn’t much matter other than possibly to laugh at later if your first impression wasn’t so positive. Doug and I will be laughing over this one for years, I am sure.

So a good first impression, like a really good one, is almost analogous to infatuation. Love at first sight. It probably is a form of infatuation. Infatuation worries me. Irrationality worries me. Emotion worries me.

But it’s like Laurie from 4Di said at Boostrap Camp – attraction is part of leverage. I don’t specifically mean physical attraction, I mean just to like the person. In any sort of relationship, it helps to like the person or people you are dealing with. But just because you don’t necessarily have a great first impression doesn’t (or shouldn’t) count for that much. Although we’re human, right, it does.

When I was in Babson they gave us some personality test or other and then stuck us in a room with others of our personality type. Best group ever. Point made. We get along well with people who think like us and react like us. This is why diversity is so important, and the wisdom of crowds. Please, read the book before passing judgement on the wisdom or folly of crowds. The data nerd in me doesn’t like knee-jerk reactions. Unless they are my knee-jerk reactions and then if you call me on it and ask me where’s my data I’ll laugh and own up to my folly.

I keep saying how much I like this industry and it’s because it’s filled with really smart and knowledgeable people. It’s not fluffy, like some other industries can tend to be. I met some people last week who have forgotten more than I know about ISPs and Wi-FI, and this stuff is complicated, and what you don’t know can hurt you. Also, who you don’t know can hurt you. I like to think I learn fast, and I can put two and two together. But at the end of the day, if nothing else, this job has allowed me to meet some really interesting people.

I was having a bit of a laugh to myself about my own double standards when a vendor of mine was late to a meeting and this caused me to miss my training for the day. Now because I happen to like these guys a lot, I didn’t mind, and to be honest that was my fifth meeting of the day, I had missed lunch, I still had a dinner meeting and I was really strung out from the excitement of the day so I didn’t really feel like training.

But here’s the thing, and I actually even told them this: if they had been one of their competitors, who I have not had such a good working relationship with, I would have been VERY angry. Quite the double standard. Same exact situation, and the way that you react to it is, of course, 100% in your control, but also of course is largely due to how you feel about the people. But then we got to talking about clubbing baby seals, as you do, so it was all good.

I was chatting to Lance about the difference between people you want to work with and people you want to go out for drinks with. It’s like that stupid thing they always ask about Presidential candidates: who would you rather have a beer with? Interesting question but irrelevant. In an ideal world, I will have competent co-workers who I like, respect, and want to hang out with. In the real world, it can stop before number 3, and sometimes that is even better especially when you’re a leader.

The sorts of people who impressed me last week either were clearly highly knowledgeable or saw things in a multi-faceted light or demonstrated something else. There is that likeability factor which is so critical in your relationships with customers, vendors, partners (and, of course, staff, shareholders & board). But really, when you start off a meeting with an etymology lesson that’s pretty damn cool, at least to me.

On the flip side, there are some people and companies that are less than ethical, and I’ve already seen some of that. Honestly, I don’t care. I’ll do business as I do business, and my staff kick some serious ass. If we do things as we’re capable of, we’ll do well. Wi-Fi the world, baby. Hmm, our company does need a mission statement.

This is one thing my parents taught me well: even if someone does something unethical to hurt you, you do your best to turn the other cheek and follow through on promises made to them. It is possibly the case that I respect a promise or an ethical commitment more so than a legal one, not that I don’t obey both. As I’ve said though, attack me or mine when we have no obligation ethical or otherwise, then watch out.

Also don’t annoy me. I don’t generally get angry or annoyed. I get amused. And when I’m amused, I tend to play, like a cat with a mouse. I may not be the smartest person around. But I’m pretty smart, and I’m pretty creative, and I’m pretty charismatic. So that combination makes me dangerous. Even when I’m playing, I’m not playing around. But back to the relationships thing – it’s nothing you didn’t bring on yourself. I have a very long fuse, and I can only think of maybe five people my entire career that I actively dislike. Sadly, two of them have been people I’ve met in the last six months.

And hey, on the flip side, I definitely have some people who don’t like me very well. I am sure there will be more. I’m growing out of the wanting everyone to like me phase. What has to be done has to be done, and if you have good intentions, good ethics, and do your best, you know what, you don’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

It’s a cliché that what goes around comes around but it’s also totally true. I do favours for people with no expectation of any return: just because I like and believe in the person. People do the same for me. We have long memories for who has done well by us and who has not: there is sociological research to back this up (yet another subject that came up in one of my meetings this week. I love it when you talk behavioural economics to me).

Trust, be fair, and protect. That’s a good code of conduct.

There was this other strange thing that happened to me this week. I caught myself on not one but two occasions referring to South Africans as ‘we.’ This whole ‘us vs them’ thing is very strong. As an expat you never quite fit in or know where you belong. I’m an American who resides in South Africa. So what the hell am I?

Also, on Tuesday, I was listening to the radio as one does, and the news comes on in Afrikaans and it’s talking about the Oscar Pistorius thing, so I changed the channel to see if there was some music on. There was a news broadcast in English. So without missing a beat, I changed back to the Afrikaans station. Not that I could understand 100% of it, and I sure as hell can’t speak in Afrikaans. But I can understand most of it, and it was more interesting than whatever the English station was blathering on about.

It’s a weird life I live. All those big questions that are fun to talk about: identity, morality, the purpose of life. We all go through good times and bad times. It’s fun to talk about fate, or luck, or our purpose in life but at the end of the day it’s sort of like anything. Most things in life we can’t control, we can only control our reactions to them. I may not like the workout of the day but I’m going to do it anyway.

I’ve said before that I have tended to try to stay away from leadership. My brother hates the spotlight, like really hates it. I don’t mind it at all, but at the end of the day responsibility and visibility worries me. I would hate to fail with everyone looking at me. Failing hurts more than succeeding feels good, but they both bring you back for more.

The other thing is that if you’re not actually in charge, the buck stops somewhere else. You can’t very well snipe at the foolish boss if you are the boss. But turn that on its head: if you had a chance to make things work as you thought they could, isn’t that positive side a whole lot better than losing the ability to whine and complain?

There are two sides to every coin. So I don’t set myself up to fail.

But does this mean I play it too safe? 

Jozi Love

There’s this moment when you’re driving on Route 2 into Boston when you come over the crest of Belmont Hill and all of a sudden you can see the city laid out in front of you in the distance. The Pru. The John Hancock Building. The bridge. Yeah, I do sometime get nostalgic. I’m glad I lived in Boston. I am. I was so happy my first few years there.

Moving on. Recently I’ve been flying into Lanseria Airport, which is a small airport northwest of Johannesburg. The main airport, O.R. Tambo is huge: one of the biggest, if not the biggest, on the African continent. Not that huge. But bigger than Cape Town or Lanseria. Oddly enough, people still refer to it by its old IATA code, ORT. It’s now JHB. I think. It might be JNB. It confuses me, and I’m good enough with IATA codes that I still know Lanseria (HLA), Toronto (YYZ), and Corpus Christi (CRP).

But I digress. So when you drive south towards Joburg from Lanseria there is a similar thing that happens, where you come over the hill and you see downtown Joburg in the distance, and houses & rolling hills in the foreground. The last time I flew in there it was night, so I didn’t notice. This time, my heart skipped a beat.

I had left Cape Town Saturday afternoon, after doing not much more in the morning than practicing my clean (it’s FINALLY starting to come together), and then Karen. I hate wall balls so, so much. So I decided to do 150 of them. I could have made a better choice, because my mobility is shocking after a week or so of on-and-off illness, and definite stress/lack of sleep.

I really like Joburg. Like, I start to get a bit upset when I leave it. It’s weird. I’m not sure what the appeal is, to be honest. It’s a young city. It’s charming with the trees, and charmless with the sprawl and lack of mountains. Maybe it’s that the altitude makes me crazy. Maybe it’s just that I like the people up there. Probably it’s just that the grass is greener.

No, I’m not planning to move to Joburg. I had written ‘No, I’m not moving to Joburg’ but I have learned to be careful with definitive statements about my future. Almost every one I have ever made has turned out to be wrong.

Yes it’s charming with all the trees (biggest man-made forest in the world), and yes there are some nice restaurants  and  sunsets, and that fun mix of dodgy and dangerous and extremely affluent all check-to-jowl, but really it’s the people, and the fact that there are some people up there that I really like. Like REALLY like. The air is thin up there, more on that in a bit, but there is an energy to the place and to the people. It’s not charmless, although some parts of it can be (sorry, Midrand). And then you get the chance to giggle every time you drive past Avastar.

And there’s just something about the moon … I was sitting in Parkhurst on Sunday evening and the moon was almost full. The sky was grey, the clouds were purple, the moon was luminous. As Shirfu says, it’s not the Cape Town moon or the American moon. It’s the moon. But I notice it more in some places than in others.

We’ll see how I feel when winter comes and it’s very cold and the sun sets super early; it’s an hour earlier than Cape Town.

Why was I in Joburg? Well, I suppose you could say I was selling. Or shopping. Or both. Or even, you might say, dating. Hence having a pimp to set me up.

Meeting new people is strange. One of the topics that came up in one of the meetings is just what I like so much about South Africa. Well, hard to say, although I’ve tried to address this in the past in the blog and in various conversations. One thing is the contrasts, the beauty & the beast, the affluence and abject poverty. I also like how straightforward people are. There were some comments made in initial meetings that were very, ahem, to the point. I’m not easily ruffled and they weren’t directed at me, but that is one of the things that I like. I’m straightforward, usually, and I appreciate when others are as well.

Of course I also have this unfortunate habit of answering almost every question given to me honestly, including ones I perhaps shouldn’t. But it’s telling: someone asked me in the week what my biggest challenge was. I had to think about it, and I almost wrote it here but realised that would be giving away too much. If you want to know, ask. I’ll tell. If I trust you even a little bit. What I will say is that in the grand scheme of challenges, it’s certainly not bad. There are some people I wouldn’t want to be right now, and we’ll leave it at that.

I also had no fewer than three people in the last week ask me flat out about my love life. I don’t recall this ever happening in litigious America, but what the hell? Go ahead, ask me almost anything about me … just don’t ask me how much I’m paying for bandwidth. A promise is a promise. I won’t necessarily volunteer information but if you ask, I’ll almost always answer. I’m weird that way. Direct, I suppose.

One other thing I will say about Joburg: training at altitude is hectic but addictive. On Tuesday we had a metcon: 400m run, 25 kettlebell swings, 400m run, 25 wall balls, 400m run, 25 kettlebell swings, 25 wall balls. So I know enough about altitude not to redline and die panting, and I was going great up until after the first set of wall balls. At some point in there I spiked my heart rate, and when that happens you don’t recover if you’re not used to it. I also just really hate wall balls.

But then I came back the next day for more. I am not sure what it is, I think maybe just the novelty of my body not being able to do what it can normally do. Or that when you’re oxygen-deprived and then recover you feel that much more awesome and alive.

What scares me more than anything is competing at altitude. Both for myself and my teammates, but especially for them. I am afraid that if they are not used to it, the adrenaline will cause them to go out, as one does, and then they’ll hit the wall and not be able to recover fast enough. But you know what? This is all outside our ability to control. I didn’t get into this to be a competitive athlete, and I don’t think I was put on this planet to focus my life on it. It’s a hobby, and one I take very seriously, but it’s given me so much in terms of mental & physical strength that the placement in competition won’t be what I remember years from now. Although let’s not kid ourselves, I’m competitive as anything and I hate to lose. In sport. In sales I like to win more than I hate to lose. I think that’s the salesman’s resilience.

Well, it was good to be not sick and back at it. I suppose as I’m talking about training I should say, irony of ironies, that the blog post that for some odd reason gets 1.5x the normal hits is the one where I make a public commitment to 8 hours of sleep (although Stickers and a fangirl did pretty well, too!). This, by the way, is one of the best posts I think I’ve written that never got many hits.

I have been good; at least at trying. I had some insomnia in Jozi due to over-excitement, no doubt, on Tuesday morning I woke up after 6.5 hours, couldn’t get back to sleep, so meditated instead. Not as good as sleep, but you do what you can. Speaking of meditation we’re now starting qigong tai chi, which sounds like two worlds colliding dangerously.

As we also know I’m very impatient, so my first thinking after the week’s meetings were: ‘Wow, I should have done this months ago’ followed closely by ‘But there’s no way I could have done this months ago.’ It’s learning. My strategy has been the same since December. But even still, every month comes big clarifications when you get to the details. I do, however, have some interesting stuff coming, once I finish my budget and margin analysis this weekend (yes, this is what I do for fun). We’ll see how the market responds to it, as one does. No other way to find out than to go try to sell.

This week was also exciting because a) we got new furniture, b) we got verbal commitment on what is going to be a big deal for us (it’s not banked until contract is signed and money’s in the bank!), c) I got to have a call with one of my favourite Wi-Fi boys (this one in California), d) Bryony fixed my shoulder, or very nearly, by fascial release on my back which means I was right, and e) my house in the States finally sold which means I can stop doing the equivalent of burning money every month. And I have a very exciting to-do list for the weekend. AND the CrossFit Open starts next week.

Change is in the air. The financial year ended at the end of Feb, and autumn made itself quite apparent when I landed in Cape Town and it was raining sideways. After I’d just been arguing that it doesn’t do such things.

I did learn one other lesson this week – the moment you make a comment about the macro-environment, it can change. Change is the only constant. Innovate or die.

Do, or do not. Yoda’s a smart guy. Or … not sure you can call him a guy. Smart little thing.

• “Awake yet?” – Grant
• “That’s going to be messy.” “Yes it is.” – Conrad & JP
• “Are you hacking into servers in Washington?” – random guy in the bar
• “No, I don’t like the music. I’m here for the Wi-Fi.” – Ellie (true!)
• “You can’t very well videotape a 5km run!” – Ellie
• “A snail is like a cross between a mushroom and a calamari.” – David
• “Yes, he would.” – Gian
• “You have to trust your middle managers.” – Gian
• “I think you just did.” “Oh, right. So I did. Never again.” – Ellie & Lance
• “Market share is a lot of luck hey.” – Doug
• “You need contrasts.” – Doug
• “You don’t explain feelings. You feel them.” – Ellie
• “Every day we delay we’re leaving money on the table as far as I’m concerned.” – Ellie  
• “I think that taking acid when there are a bunch of other people riding motorcycles around you may not be a good idea.” – Mike
• “You don’t have a comeback for that, do you?” “No. Damn you.” – Ellie & Rob
• “I’ve also learned not to take so long to learn my lessons.” – Keldon
• “That’s the guy??” “That’s the guy.” – Keldon & Ellie
• “I don’t know if that’s how pimps work, but it’s how your pimp works.” – my pimp (now this was after protesting that I was two-timing him with another match-maker!)
• “People aren’t buying last mile.” – Stuart
• “You’re the only one in the industry who thinks that.” – Lance
• “They’re very competent.” – Stuart
• “That call I just hung up on twice? That was Telkom.” – Stuart
• “I used to be soft. Then I hardened the f*ck up.” – anonymous, non-CrossFitter
• “You are married. To your job.” – Ryan
• “The pimp’s job is only done when you cash the check.” – my pimp
• “Welcome to the deep end.” – Ellie
• “Every algorithm works great until something fundamentally changes.” – Roelf
• “The Open is going to shake things up.” – Julian
• “When the roads are expensive and bad, cloud is not a good solution.” – Andrew
• “It smelled like burnt computers. That’s what 9/11 smelled like.” – Andrew
• “It is a form of product marketing, I suppose.” – Ellie
• “Did he just say he dropped something off a roof? He just said that, right?” “Yes, he did.” – Ellie & Adam (not our guy, and not an AP!)
• “Well they did have sandwiches. But I don’t really count that as food.” – Ellie
• “Clarity of mind is really the best gift you can give yourself.” – Rapelang
• “Most of them won’t understand what you mean, so you have to go with personality.” – Rapelang
• “3-4 months is a long time for us.” – Zach
• “Hey, guys, the Ruckus dropped my connection.” “Yeah, we unplugged it.” – Ellie & Adam
• “If you’re as good at sales as I think you are, it doesn’t matter what you think.” – Doug (that’s where he’s exactly wrong)
• “Do it. Hit it. Hit it hard.” – Doug 

Nice but dangerous

Apparently Yogi Berra once said: “In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. In the practice, there is.”

This week I was busy making a budget. If this sounds hard, it’s because it is. I have learned a few lessons from this.

The first one? It’s the same as the first rule of startups. Everything’s going to take twice as long as you think. The second rule of startups? Double the first rule. I wasn’t expecting to be floating in and out of illness and I also wasn’t expecting to spend an entire day in sales training. Although I’ll admit that I learned a thing or two at the sales training. Or fifteen. I also learned that I rely on getting work done on my weekends a bit too much.

I have always been one of those people who laughed at overly optimistic sales projections. So I tried not to do that. And yet. I certainly don’t trust anything more than three months out, but that’s the nature of the beast. And an interesting comment was that it can actually be more conservative to have smaller budgets for operating expenses or discretionary expenses. Makes all the sense in the world; it’s the budgetary equivalent of sandbagging, and I have learned a thing or two about sandbagging over the years.

Because I’m a numbers nerd (I tease myself endlessly for this), there is actually very little that I like more than digging into the numbers. If this, then this. Drilling down into why certain costs varied month to month, what’s buried under here, why is this number in opex when it should be in COGS. Nerdy business stuff.

I think what makes me the happiest, actually, is that to develop a budget I actually had to develop a spreadsheet business model of how sales projections and assumptions around margin, close percentage, inbound leads, sales targets, etc would flow through to the business. I now have my business in a spreadsheet and I can adjust it as we go. It’s a wonderful thing to see how changing certain assumptions impacts the numbers.

There is certainly an intensity to me; a competitiveness that I tease and others tease. I like to think I am pretty reasonable and have a pretty long fuse, and at the end of the day … I really am a nice girl. I’m honest, I really do want to do the best thing for the customer, and my staff, and vendors, etc.

Stupidity, dishonesty, and apathy make me really, really mad. Just like I once wondered how good of a salesman I really am, I also once wondered just how tough I’d be as a manager. I’m pretty well starting to figure that out.

Here’s the thing. I don’t think you get the best results by scaring or berating people. Something goes wrong, you figure out why not for the purposes of punishment (usually…) but so you can make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Nice, but dangerous to outsiders. Tough, but fair: that’s how I’d like to be as boss. I want everyone to have an opportunity to learn and grow, just as I was given. But they must sink or swim.

Of course, there are many reasons why I’m dangerous. I don’t try to be dangerous, but I’m a salesman. Salesmen are dangerous. Charisma is dangerous.  

I think I forgot to explain before why being a fangirl is so unusual for me. I like to think I take a balanced view. There is good, and bad, and ugly, and indifferent, in most or all things. To make a fangirl out of me I have to be really impressed. It doesn’t happen that often. Or, I suppose, you must just resemble me. We tend to like people who are like us.

But I’m just a little crazy, and I’m human. Watching myself this week was …. Interesting. It was another nutty understaffed week in which I was sick one day, sorta kinda well the next, definitely didn’t sleep enough, baaaaaaaaaaaarely managed to stick to my non-drinking commitment but did have some evil sugar. That’s how you can tell I’m mentally exhausted. I was also a super moron to go do a 30-minute metcon at CrossFit after having been sick the day before, only eating a salad, and on an absolute emotional wave. What happened? I had a sugar crash about 10 minutes in. I can be SUCH an idiot sometimes.

Although I learned, through adversity, that pushups are easier if you tighten your core. Imagine that. You know perhaps ALL of CrossFit would be easier if I’d just keep my core tight. Well, at least I got the coach to laugh at my silliness: ‘I’ve been doing this three years now and guess what I just learned?’ Carl Paoli would not be impressed.

Speaking of stupidity and adversity. There are a few people I know who tend to bring out parts of me that I don’t care for so much: the one that would rather be negative than positive, and who can’t just let things go. It doesn’t last forever, I think I only stay snarky while you’re actually hurting me and the wound is fresh. Once I move past that, I turn to condescension and indifference (mixed with a biting comment here or there).

Oh well, we all need to vent. I think perhaps finding people whose company we really enjoy, who share some of the same frustrations, and who are in the same industry so we can trade war stories …. Well, it’s like we’re brothers in arms I suppose. I’ve had this before with some co-workers at Ask Jeeves and Exit41. There was this one guy, to remain nameless, at a company also to remain nameless … we used to go out drinking about once a week, essentially to bitch about other people. Oddly enjoyable hours spent in bars over beers. Like a guilty pleasure.

I have said before that I am waging war on negativity. Mental exhaustion makes me tend towards being more negative. I’ve said before that I am a bit of an intellectual snob. Well, I’ve met my match. And then some. It’s a little bit scary.

So I can go a bit too far sometimes, I suppose in either direction. Emotions make me stupid. So does lack of sleep. But that was not the case Monday or Wednesday. That was just me being emotional.

So this post didn’t start with ‘I love Doug’ (disappointing, I know) but I will talk about him because he’s awesome. On Friday I was telling Doug that what keeps me going back to CrossFit is that intrinsic motivation of wanting always to be stronger or faster than before, or to do something I couldn’t do before. I can now do kipping freestanding handstand pushups. That is super cool. There’s a ton of other things I can’t do or can’t do well …. But they are as much reason for me to keep going back as that 100kgs is now a ‘safe’ heavy back squat for me. I’m pretty sure my max was 97 about three months ago.

Business is the same thing. What motivates me is seeing stuff that wasn’t there before. The signed contract. The revenue numbers ticking up. Hitting targets. There’s nothing as empowering as a motivational tool than to throw a goal up and, as an individual or a team, try and hit it.

On the flip side, nothing makes me more upset than not achieving things as fast as I want to. Not that I’m the slightest bit competitive or anything. Takes one to know one.

Back to Doug. Earlier in the day I had just been reminding him that you have to get people in the right frame of mind for constructive criticism he later called me at 6pm with constructive criticism on my budget when I was utterly exhausted. Criticism VERY WELL TAKEN, I need critical feedback, and it was probably the most useful feedback I’ve gotten in six months. His timing sucked but he pointed out another lesson. Your model needs a key, and it also needs the ‘if-thens’ to be called out explicitly. Goodness knows I may not remember why I made various assumptions back in February when I was doing my forecasting, or that certain things must happen before certain other things can happen.

I really do like my team. I love to see them get fired up and excited, and working really hard. I was having one of those happy dance moments on Tuesday when we did a brand identity workshop in order to inform our style guide for the web site redesign. I had a very vivid flashback to my first day at Babson where we did this business simulation in small groups, and I, uncharacteristically at the time, completely took over the room. Because someone had to do it. I was usually the one who thought I could lead better than the leader but didn’t actually want the responsibility of leading. Reminds me a bit of a story that Adam told when I interviewed him. But I digress.

So, here, I specifically stepped off to the side and let the team do their thing, only sometimes contributing. I was very happy to hear general consistency around not only that we want to be fun and funky and innovative and exciting but that we want to be process-oriented and data-driven. It is great to have some form of validation that it’s not just me pushing what I want onto them, but they seem to want it too. Perhaps my all-too-obvious excitement at insights and showing them how we can make decisions based on data is having its intended effect.

I changed my Skype status this week to something awesome: ‘the plural of anecdote is not data.’ True.

Exciting times ahead. I was really feeling a bit besieged on Wednesday, between everyone seemingly wanting a piece of me on the one side and cold, hard reality on the other. Hence, part of the emotional overload. Interesting times, at least.

Trying to separate the good ideas from the bad? Sometimes it’s easy. Actually it usually is. Sometimes you know something is a bad idea and you do it anyway. It’s like that awesome Alice in Chains line: ‘no one plans to take the path that brings you lower.’

Busy week. Monday night: dinner and out way past my bedtime with one of my favourite Wi-Fi boys. Tuesday: Nasty cold & WebAfrica reseller event. Wednesday: going away dinner for Helen. Thursday: qigong lecture & dinner at Orinoco Flow. Friday: Dinner & drinks @&Union with Sam, and a chance to catch up with Jason Lilley who looked about as exhausted as I felt after my four and a half hours of sleep.

This next week is going to be very, VERY interesting. As is the week after, come to think of it. The CrossFit Open starts that week.

It is not that hard for me to make a rule for myself not to drink or not to eat any grains during competition season. What I’ve known all along would be way harder is sticking to a bedtime, especially when you’re in a moment and just don’t want to go home.

So time to up the ante. 8 hours a night, minimum, starting now. I’m done with this hangover of exhaustion mode. Not. Cool.

Why the Yogi Berra quote? Because play time is over. Not that I was playing around before, but you hit a point at which you’re ready to go and then nothing gets in your way. No one puts pressure on me like me.

• “As you said data now, I was busy typing it.” – Adam (yess!! I am winning!)
• “We need a relationship that’s based on –“ “– not lying?” – Rudolph & Ellie
• “It was the best idea since bottled beer. Ouch. Bottled beer – “ – Rudolph
• “Stefan’s not feeling violent today. It’s a Monday.” “It’s coming.” – Ellie & Stefan
• “Open source is getting to me.” – Stefan
• “Have you met me? I’m not very patient.” – Ellie
• “I am getting excited for you now.” – Rob
• “That’s not what I meant by behave.” – Lance
• “Did you bring me here on purpose?” – Rob (no, I brought him there on accident!)
• “Wow. That’s like …. The definition of a hubristic statement right there.” – Rob
• “Are you a sports model?” “No, she’s actually the CEO of a company. It’s weird.” – waitress & Rob (I’m still not sure what exactly he finds weird)
• “You’ve taken this photo to a level of analysis that no one else has.” “I know. But it’s so cool!” – Ellie & Rob
• “You wouldn’t want your successor’s job.” – Rob
• “I stretched them yesterday but I didn’t use the stick because I was late for dinner.” – Ellie
• “He’s from Kraaifontein. He knows what he needs to bring.” – Rudolph
• “Now I’m gonna call the prospect. Because that wasn’t actually the sales call I was expecting to take!” – Ellie
• “I don’t play.” – Bronwyn
• “I woke up and realised it was just a dream. And then I thought about it and realised that actually it probably wasn’t!” – Ellie
• “I can’t even remember that photo being taken!” “You weren’t even drunk then!” – David & Ellie
• “Wi-Fi is a drug in Africa.” – Allister
• “I think you’re very nice. Dangerous, but nice.” – Lance
• “You can’t steer around interference. This isn’t Bend it like Beckham.” – Rob
• “Americans don’t understand the Oxford comma.” “Some Americans.” “I forgot there was an American in the room.” “An American who knows proper punctuation, that is!” – Rob & Ellie
• “Do you see why I like this guy?” “Uh-huh.” – Ellie & Adam
• “So Mike tells me: ‘You’ve gotta meet this chick Ellie,’ and I’m thinking ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me.’ Then I met you.” – Rob
• “They’re just like us!” – Ellie
• “Come for the wireless, stay for the snark.” – Rob
• “Only behind your back.” – Tim
• “I liked that comment directed at you … about the stickers.” – Adam
• “I don’t know if you’ve looked at yourself in the mirror lately, but you’re a big sack of mostly water. And water absorbs Wi-Fi really well.” – Rob
• “What’s a ‘Ronnie list’?” – Steven
• “You can’t have your stickers until you sing happy birthday.” – Ellie
• “What’s wrong with the oranges, Bronwyn?” “They are green.” – Ellie & Bronwyn
• “I’d rather have a broken arm than a sick mind.” – Shirfu
• “Being healthy takes time.” – Shirfu
• “I should go meditate in a cave for all of you!”  – Shirfu
• “We must all find our nemesis and thrash it.” – Shirmo
• “I expect you to deliver the deliverable, not the miracle.” – Doug
• “I’m not really patient enough to be in my position either. But I don’t really have a choice.” – Ellie
• “Perception is reality. But it’s also perception.” – Ellie
• “Well, you’ve sold me on Skyrove!” – Jade
• “They don’t seem to care how the standards are. They just make stuff that works.” – Tim
• “He does come across as pretty clued up.” – Tim
• “If you’re going to be a salesman, you need to be charismatic and you need to be tenacious. It sure as hell doesn’t hurt to be good looking, either.” – Ellie
• “The problem I have with him is that I believe everything he says.” – Ellie
• “That was boss, that whole conversation.” – Jason (I get philosophical when I’m sleep-deprived)

Strategy, likeability, & the judging of books

I love Doug, my VC. I love when he goes all hard core on me, and I love when he strokes my ego (this is more validation because what I’m doing is quite the stretch for me, even if I don’t always admit that). I also love when we just talk about STUFF, like what makes a good entrepreneur.

He said that having a sense of humour must be an important part of it. After the last few days I am now going to generalise his input to be that you have to be just enough of miserably f*cking crazy.

My contribution to the discussion at the time was to say that you had to be good at both seeing where to go and how to get there. An offhand comment from Lance over chat made me double-down on this one. He, like I, flatters himself a great strategist. But it came up because I was talking about my attention to detail, and he said that he had that too, and it was what made him a great strategist.

It actually makes a lot of sense to me. A lot of people can see the forest but not the trees, or they can see a vision but get lost on how to execute. A lot of people can see the details but get overwhelmed by the volume of details and lose sight of the context and what it all means. To be able BOTH to see a big vision AND how to get there, is, apparently, a very rare combination.

It’s that same thing that makes a good salesman so rare: a salesman is really just a good people person. You’ve got to be able to handle the fast-talking guy who claims he’s not technical but really is as well as the actually very technical CIO, and the customer who really doesn’t even know what she wants but knows what she doesn’t like, all without missing a beat.

Strange the routes we take in life, but you know what? Having been a product manager for ten years taught me both of the above. Nature, nurture …. Can’t tell. Doesn’t matter. I am who I am and where I am.

So I said in the last post that if you’re a fan of something or someone, you’re biased, and you have to watch out for that both in the time of infatuation, and then if that person, or thing, or company, or whatever, disappoints you in any way.

I was also thinking that we’re obviously more forgiving of people that we like. At least, I am. Here’s the secret, by the way, of how to get me to like you: be intelligent, be engaging and think laterally, make me laugh, accept criticism well, don’t lie to me, and be positive more often than you’re negative. Not that hard.

I mean, being likeable is one thing, and there most definitely is such a thing as being too charming …. But being likeable does have its advantages.

Speaking of advantages, I’ve also been thinking (not sure how I find the time for all this thinking!) about the advantages and disadvantages of being physically attractive. I seem to recall that there were studies somewhere that people who are better looking have higher wages, on average. But the thing is, it can cut both ways: we shouldn’t, but do, judge books by their covers. I was relaying the story of my recent underestimation of a certain person who I presumed was ‘just’ a pretty boy. Big mistake. It may not matter; most people will figure out what’s going on sooner or later.

Or not. My friend Sam, who is lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and a model, had a throwaway comment on Christmas. We were talking about a mutual friend who is super smart, very insightful, hard working, strategic … the exact sort of employee your company wants. And his isn’t listening to his ideas for improvement. I was expressing some frustration to her, like ‘what is wrong with those people, why don’t they get it?’ and she said something along the lines of: ‘Well that’s easy for you to say: YOU are good looking!’

Beware the ad hominem. That is all.

Beware the charismatic leader who doggedly sticks to his or her worldview. Hell, beware the leader who doesn’t listen. I’ve learned more by listening to Adam’s questions in his first two weeks of sales than I did selling by myself in all of January. How much more would I learn if I would shut up every once in a while? I’m quick to shut down the pointless bitching in others but not in myself. Doug is right.

One of the people I follow on Twitter had this gem that Riaan and I were talking about while swimming in the river at his farm on Saturday morning: ‘Most people don’t reach their goals because they lose focus, can’t stay dedicated, and get tired of making sacrifices.’

Then my awesome boss from the early Exit41 days, Ed Boudrot, who always gave me good advice but not necessarily advice I was ready for, came out with this: Willpower – excuses = discipline.

As I said above, if you’re going to be an entrepreneur or, hell, a successful athlete at your chosen sport, you’re going to have to struggle through all sorts of stuff that would make someone less dedicated back off.

That’s why I don’t commit to too many things: between Skyrove, CrossFit, qigong, and trying to have some semblance of a social life, I have my hands more than full.

So I am going out to dinner on Monday night. I really want to have a glass of wine or two, because it would be fun, and there’s a certain level of relationship-building with vendors and partners that happens over booze. It just does.

But I won’t. I’m in my second year now of not drinking during CrossFit competition season (also, no desserts, or grains, and cheese only VERY rarely). Last year, this may not have been the healthiest thing for me but this year I’m handling it a bit better as I’ve realised that this is partly about how awesome I feel when I am ‘strict’ this way but also because it’s a good exercise of self-discipline.

It’s not because I feel like I HAVE to do this or else it will impact my performance. That’s part of it, sure, but really, the difference in a given workout isn’t whether I had two or three glasses of wine on a random night in February. Probably I’d do better as a competitor if I quit my job and led a stress-free life, but that sure as hell isn’t going to happen. I’m doing it as an exercise of emotional control and that’s why I have nightmares in which I, horror, consume a cocktail to get over nerves. Weird.

Not weird, though, because as much as I can be disciplined, I can also be extraordinarily un-disciplined. If I have one drink, I’ll probably have five. If I have one cookie, I’ll probably have ten. Best just to abstain, sometimes, especially when that old pre-frontal cortex is tired.

Well, there will be some drinking in London in June post-Regionals. I also decided that I’m going to take a mini-European vacation then because damned if I’m ever going  to take leave if I don’t just decide to do it. I bet I can do some awesome blue sky thinking while drinking espresso in the cafes of Marseilles or Seville or Lisbon or Barcelona. Or Athens or Alexandria or Istanbul. The right place will come to me. Europe. How romantic.

I’m right now nostalgic about the spring ephemerals of New England: the trilliums & Dutchmans breeches & wild ginger & bloodroot. There is just something about the place I grew up that is absolutely magical and that will stay with me forever, no matter where I am living.

I have definitely been struggling with consistently putting it all out there at CrossFit lately. I think there are two reasons for this. Firstly, my job. I’m not making excuses, and I’m trying to get enough sleep, but that ambient stress really does take it out of you. Secondly, I’m busy trying to fix my technique. My deadlifts have never been good; Grant is literally deconstructing and re-constructing my clean, my pullups aren’t very efficient, I need to go deeper on my squats. Oh and then there’s those double-unders.

So you have a workout and you must choose between form & intensity and lately I’ve been choosing form (usually, at least…). Which I think is the right choice for me right now but it feels like a bit of a cop-out, like I’m not actually trying my hardest, and just decent isn’t actually good enough. It’s time for one of those workouts where form doesn’t REALLY come into play and you just have to keep going. You know, like 7 minutes of burpees.

But you know, it’s cool when something  finally clicks. What I love about Grant’s coaching, or at least Grant’s coaching of me, is that he not only shows what but explains the biomechanics of why. And he’s patient. You know it’s not in any way a pleasant thing to have someone completely change your form on a technical lift you’ve been doing for nearly three years. But at least I’m motivated.

Love this concept: ‘The only two people you should ever compare yourself to is the person you used to be and the person you want to be.’

I love it more in the abstract, though, because I’m far from it. I wish I wasn’t, but I’m still the one who gets annoyed at shocking movement standards that I see around me. When, really, why do I care? It’s one thing in competition when you can, rightly, be annoyed if the same movement standards aren’t being applied to everyone. But in the normal gym why do I care if someone’s chin isn’t over the bar on her pullups or half the people are either doing snaking pushups or not even touching the ground?

Meh. I’m not perfect. But I am a pretty damn good strategist.

I had this other insight this week. I’m all worried about creating sustainable competitive advantage, which of course you want to do to the degree possible. But it’s not always possible. It may not matter, however. You can copy where I’ve been. You can’t copy where I’m going, unless you can copy my brain and my team. Good luck with that one.

• “Sometimes … you just don’t listen to the truth.” – Riaan
• “Oh, so you know what type approval is? That puts you ahead of [someone who should know better.]” – Ellie
• “I grew maggots already since the last time I saw you but I had bacterial contamination so I had to restart it.” – Riaan
• “As soon as I’m back we’re going to lock you up in the chamber.” – Riaan (not what it sounds like)
• “Luckily they were all nerds so it was OK.” – Ellie (not what it sounds like)
• “That’s why this is the perfect lift.” – Grant