Being a successful entrepreneur means going through a process of becoming one.

No one is born a successful entrepreneur. We all start out from zero. The men and women who “make it” put themselves through the process of becoming a leader of a company, capable of creating value and generating wealth.

That’s a personal process as much as a professional one.

Last week when I was in Austin, I was talking with someone I’m going to be working closely with this year, who asked me, “what’s exciting about where you’re working right now?”

I told her my endgame is to be an entrepreneur myself, because I’m motivated by the opportunity to earn my freedom.

I also explained that I think that WP Engine represents an opportunity for me, as an employee, to learn how to build a company myself.

I think the growth of any company is limited only by what the founders themselves can envision, and then their willingness to be self-reflective and grow in response to the company growth.

The founder cannot be the same leader they were of a 3-person startup when the company has 50 employees. As the company evolves, so too must the founders. I’d even go so far as to say that when companies plateau, it’s safe to say that someone on the leadership team may need to let go of an old way of doing business.

The strategies that grew the company through the first 15 employees will not work for the next 50. What’s more, those early strategies might actually hamper growth.

The entrepreneur can choose to do things according to their first response, or they can ask, “how has my company changed, and how should I respond accordingly so I don’t get in the way?”

Sometimes that’s why bringing in new execs is so powerful. The founders may want to get the right sort of help to take the next steps.

Employees can ask the same question. They truly have the same opportunities to grow or not.

My role has evolved so dramatically in the last 14 months, and sometimes I have a hard time keeping up with it. I’m not the same person that I was a year ago. You can even look at photos and see the difference. I’ve done my best to grow in response to the company’s growth.

Shots from Big Sur, camping on the beach in Jalama, and tons of the Pacific Ocean. 

I made the completely video with a new iPhone app, Montaj, which is like Vine plus extensive editing capabilities. It’s amazing what you can do with your phone and 5-second clips.

Call the morgue.

I just got back from Austin, where I got to check the pulse of SXSW and see how it’s doing. If you want the TL;DR for the next 1300 words, this is it: SXSW Interactive is DOA. Other tech conferences are quietly moving on, and the tech industry is doing the same.

Last year, I was an Austinite, and a local member of the startup community. I commuted in from my apartment to attend, and it was my city that was being invaded by the tech scene’s Spring Breakers. This year, I attended SXSW as a tourist, having moved to SF close to 6 months ago.

This year, I wasn’t one of the locals faking (or not faking) their distaste for the crowds of fewer nerds, but 10 times that many marketing people from San Francisco, and all over the world, to the ordinarily small town of Austin.

As an import, I looked at SXSW with very different eyes than last year. As I walked and Uber Pedi-cabbed around Austin from party to party, event to event, the crowds felt awfully thin. In comparison, once Music kicked off, 6th Street came alive like everyone expects it to. Interactive didn’t generate the same raw energy it had in years past.

There has been a lot of talk that South-By is “over,” and the proof I noticed was compelling. A number of the “influential” folks had opted not to attend. Lots of people were talking about XOXO in Portland being the new “under the radar” influencer conference that the cool people will attend instead. And as I wrote this, I saw Tweets from YxYY popping up in my feed as further evidence that the innovators and creative folks who make SXSW amazing may be abandoning the festival.

I didn’t quite understand how SXSW Interactive could possibly wane until I started thinking about the roots of what SXSW Interactive really must have been like a decade ago. Picture a small nucleus of entrepreneurs and technologists taking refuge in the slower pace of Austin for a big palaver about the amazing things they were trying to build, to share new ideas, and get drunk together one weekend every year.

Now, picture that not happening. Instead of taking advantage of Austin’s slow pace to draw out the ideas over a weekend of badass panels and intimate parties, large company interests have done their very best to turn downtown Austin into the Vegas strip, replete with free booze and meaningless parties sponsored by Coke-a-Cola, Doritos, and Target.

SXSW Interactive from a decade ago didn’t need Vegas Edition anymore than CSI needed a Miami edition. If that is what SXSW has become, the organizers should own that and move to Vegas.

What the hell happened?

SXSW’s heyday would have been before smartphones, when it was still wasn’t cool to know how to spin up your own dev server, and startups hadn’t become so mainstream that Bravo TV, home of America’s Next Top Model, decided to try a startup reality show.

The conference has gotten bloated. Attendance will easily exceed 30,000 this year. You can’t make a genuine connection in that crowd. There’s simply too many people to navigate Austin and find the people you’re looking for. It’s totally out of control as a marketing fest.

The masses have taken over the festival, which means the early adopters are moving on to the next event. That’s the way of things. Conference Darwinism.

But really, there’s no shame in the SXSW organizers capitalizing on the profitability of the festival, feeding off of the reputation of innovation that has been spurred there in the past. But the fact that everyone universally agrees that SXSW is a terrible place to launch is telling. And it means that SXSW should probably stop marketing itself the same way it did in 2005.

When Target is partnering with FastCompany to throw a giant party at SXSW, you know that the target market is no longer the startup community.

Yep, there’s tons of money to be made at SXSW, and more power to them for cashing in. It’s an incredibly profitable market to cater to and I don’t fault the organizers for chasing the money. After all, based on what I can see, there are plenty of conferences in plenty of awesome cities for the tech set to migrate their time and attention to.

Of course, the conference organizers love the growth. It means more money. What’s better than selling 3,400 SXSW badges? Selling ten times that many.

Does innovation require small, intimate groups to happen?

The fertile conversations of years past aren’t happening as much. Unless you’re already in the same GroupMe with Robert Scoble and Brian Solis, you’re probably at a party that an agency spent a gazillion bucks planning, but ends up being a glorious spectacle that everyone attended, but nobody remembers.

Finding *the* hot event is a game where people stay buried in their phones, hunting on various apps, hoping to locate the epicenter of “cool” before it vanishes into the night, or behind a velvet rope.

Everyone who attended this year spent a lot of time either trying to catch a good gathering, or waiting in line, and not nearly enough time engaged with the people SXSW is supposed to be about.

For balance, I did meet some amazing people this year, and had a handful of *amazing* conversations. There were a number of small, intimate events that I was really proud to attend. But those intimate interactions were an edge case, not the norm.

In 2005, fewer than 3,400 attended SXSW. With 30,000 plus attendees this year, no wonder it felt so hard to find an intimate gathering. You might as well be hoping people would notice your brand new iPhone app out of 750,000,000 in the App Store.

Maybe influencer conferences like SXSW simply have a shelf life. Clayton Christensen might even have a comment about the edge of innovation and Tech Conferences.

What it comes down to

The people who live on the cutting edge of innovation and new ideas are the men and women who make a conference like SXSW. When a group of those folks gather together and share ideas for a week, everyone comes away talking and blogging about the AWESOME of simply being together. People reveal (launch) their new products, key relationships are formed, and companies get funded precisely because of the influential nature of the attendees and the access they get at an intimate conference.

Of course, when they come back the next year, a few folks who aren’t quite on the cutting edge will join them, and a few years later, Doritos and Target will catch on, and send their agencies, and that transforms what was a pretty badass gathering of folks into a big frat party, which is a lot like what SXSW felt like this year.

There were pockets of greatness where I looked around and found myself surrounded by people I knew from the pages of PandoDaily, VC firms, and various startups all talking in one big extended group. Under the right circumstances, a small group of creative people, famous or not, who hang out together for a weekend will invariably share amazing ideas and come away saying, “Holy shit, that was magical. I can’t wait for next year.”

That was what SXSW was like in its first few years.

I don’t believe that the spirit of innovation at SXSW has disappeared from us. It’s just moved on. I’m guessing that every great conference will have a shelf life before the masses “catch on.” I also don’t think that’s inherently a bad thing. With every declining institution, there is a new opportunity for creative people to create something new. Andrew Warner calls them “the ambitious upstart.”

Find which other conferences they’re going to this year, and you’ll find the same magic that SXSW used to be.

Here’s to finding that magic in 2013.

Hope this Helps.

Austin W. Gunter

There are two kinds of tech people in the world.

Tech people who should live in Austin, and tech people who should live in San Francisco. (Yes, LA and Seattle and New York, I’m leaving you out of this discussion. Bloggers don’t seem quite as hell-bent on making comparisons between you guys and SF.) (Also, people who make overly simplistic analogies, and people who don’t.)

The comparisons between the ATX and SF keep popping up as if the cities have some shared DNA and therefore *must*  resemble one another. People say things like, “Austin is where San Francisco was in the 70s and 80s, with the obvious implications that in a few short years, Austin will have the density as well as the pedigree of the startups in Silicon Valley.

Posts like Hamish McKenzie’s, “Will the Austin startup ecosystem ever live up to its promise?“ on PandoDaily are deep with the implication that Austin and San Francisco are so similar, except that Austin is somehow a weak, skinny younger sibling to San Francisco, with a weaker resume, and a lower bench. But not to worry: Austin will keep “growing up” and live up to San Francisco’s expectations of what Austin should be.

That’s just never going to happen. At least, not if you ask an Austinite.

The rise of Capital Factory as an incubator, and the amazing community that has bloomed in the last year is perhaps the most important signal that Austin is starting to “fill out.” But, to put it bluntly, Austin doesn’t want to be San Francisco. And frankly, Austin also wishes that San Franciscans would stop using their city as the yardstick to measure Austin’s “startup potential.”

The differences between the city aren’t necessarily because Austin hasn’t “lived up to its potential” yet (although I do think Austin is only just now beginning to step up as a startup city in many ways). No, for all their obvious similarities, Austin has a very different identity from San Francisco, and that will always be reflected in the Austin Startup Community.

Austinites are damn proud of the identity of the city, too.

Austin is just different

When I moved from Austin to San Francisco last year, my Austin friends aimed some good-natured mocking at me. They couldn’t fathom why on earth I would want to leave Heaven ON Earth (AKA, Austin, Texas) for any other city, much less San Francisco.

I heard all the things that they loved about Austin. Austin has a growing laundry list of characteristics and accomplishments that are drawing global attention for good reason (Hello Formula 1). But none of the things that make Austin Austin were motivating for me any more.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized they may never have motivated me the same way they motivate everyone else who lived in Austin. Things like the “balance” that everyone builds into their lives, while still having access to excellent and diverse restaurants and art. Austin’s slacker culture means that everyone can choose to modulate their work and home life to carve out a balance of everything that fits them.

There is a lack of intensity, or “cut throat-ness” that San Francisco definitely has. I moved to San Francisco to seek out the intensity and the cut-throat vibe. And I love myself for seizing the opportunity to move. I miss my friends and connections back in Austin a great deal, but on the whole, I do not miss Austin for the qualities that make Austin the great city that it is.

That doesn’t make everyone who raves about Austin wrong. And it doesn’t make me, the person who moved to San Francisco, right. I think it depends on what you want to get out of life. They both have exciting and growing tech scenes, and they both have great art scenes, and they both are surrounded by beautiful geography. There’s a ton of other things that allow both cities attract awesome, talented, creative people from all over.

But there is a key cultural difference that I think means that Austin will never be “exactly” like San Francisco.

A different yardstick

Lets create a different standard to measure our cities along a spectrum of intensity, because I think that’s where they key differences between Austin and SF are.

Start at one end with Portland, “the city where young people go to retire,” then place Austin somewhere right in the middle, and then have San Francisco be on the other end, the super intense end.

Portland is a city that I cannot spend more than a few days a time in. I can’t stay too long because I know if I stayed a day too long in Portland, I’d suddenly be happy to embrace the slow pace of the city and stop working my ass off. I’d end up getting sleeping real late every day, drink some coffee, maybe write some poetry on my porch (or not), and then find a part time job selling cigars like I had in college.

San Francisco, on the other end, is such an intensely driven city that you cannot help be swept up in what is going on all around you. That’s part of the point, and why I chose to move there. Practically everyone you meet in SF has something awesome that they’re creating, and without realizing it, they help you get better just by being around you. San Francisco’s culture involves hustling and kicking the most ass possible, and you feel like a chump if you aren’t working as hard as everyone else.

San Francisco makes you focus on shipping rather than talking, otherwise you literally won’t make it. It’s too damn expensive to not be awesome at what you do. Yes, there are always tire-kicking folks in any city, San Francisco included.

Austin is the city that will basically let you have it both ways: you can work a ton on your startup, but you’re expected to also have a bunch of other hobbies and projects that you’re into as well. It’s all about the tapestry of your lifestyle.

I tell people that Austin is the “be yourself” city. Where Portland seems to just slow down, Austin is still super active and driven. And where San Francisco is the distilled essence of hustle, Austin still wants you to be able to chill out every now and then. In Austin, one of the primary values is this idea of balance, and everyone strikes a clear balance between work and play. The city, as a result, feels more balanced and less intense than San Francisco. There are TONS of cool things to do, just like in San Francisco, they just happen at about a 7 intensity, not at a constant 11.

San Francisco

San Francisco  is relentless. You find the *best* of everything in San Francisco.

San Francisco is not just about the best coffee in the city, it’s about the best espresso on the planet. And it’s not about the best startup, it’s about the “fuck off, we’re going to IPO, be billionaires, and start our own countries,” startup. SF isn’t about making a green vehicle, it’s about making Tesla, the all-electric vehicle that is going to turn the automotive industry on it’s head. SF isn’t about Venture Capital funding, it’s about, “holy shit, check out the ridiculous round that we just raised because there’s an entire street of VCs.”

SF is a pressure-cooker. If you’re an entrepreneur, you go to San Francisco in order to turn the volume up to 11, and see how much you can take, for how long, before you decide you’ve reached your version of escape velocity.

For many people, that literally means selling their company for so much money that they never have to work again, but then turning around and working 60-70 hours a week investing in other people’s companies. They just have something in their DNA.

As an individual, San Francisco offers more intense opportunities, but forces you to choose to focus on one or two of them. You invest your time in fewer things so you can do each thing as big as possible. San Francisco isn’t as balanced in the pursuit of outsized companies.

Austin offers you more options, but greater variety means that, on the whole, Austinite’s don’t focus as intensely as in San Francisco.  Austin’s defining characteristic (part of it’s slacker culture) is a belief that intensity isn’t always the best thing. Austin believes in variety and moderation. This affects the startup community. Austin, the city, will let you pick and choose from its buffet line, and then admire the smorgasbord you put together. Your lifestyle is a work of art in Austin, and I think the culture rewards you for how you live as much as what you do, often moreso.

That’s why in Austin, there are thousands of “entrepreneurs” who have no employees. Everyone is starting something, but not as many people are finishing anything. There are exceptions*, of course, so Austinites don’t get upset at me for this before you look around at the next High Tech Happy Hour. Lots of people are doing cool stuff, but there ARE a lot of “social media consultants” who attend the tech events in the city.

Any time you dial down intensity and drive for the sake of balance, the result must be less output.

The exchange between intensity vs. output is a valid one that gets you a greater overall quality of life. In Austin, the job market is less intense, and there are also fewer opportunities for a community and content marketer, like me. There were times that I looked around in Austin, and realized that I had zero clue where I would fit into the startup ecosystem outside of WP Engine.

And the thing was, I wrote my job description and practically made Jason hire me. So really, there may not have actually been a natural place for me in Austin in the first place. I had to create my own job. In San Francisco, I see a number of people who do similar things as me. I hang out with them. We swap notes. I learn something new from them every time. We talk nothing but work sometimes. I like that.

Austin’s “Potential”

With all that in mind, Hamish, and everyone else, probably needs to chill out a bit where he says that “Austin has never lived up to it’s potential as a startup hub.” First of all, Austin is becoming a more and more badass place to move your startup every year. I’m finishing this post from inside the Capital Factory, where during normal weekends the space would be full of entrepreneurs building and shipping startups, but this weekend has also been packed with more VIPs than I’ve ever seen in one place. SXSW has come to town, and Capital Factory has the amazing office space to serve the event.

Capital Factory is officially a destination, not just for startups native to the area, but also for the startups that have moved here from LA and San Francisco, and for the tech moguls and influencers who have spent the weekend interviewing, meeting, and may also invest in these companies by the end of SXSW. I introduced Robert Scoble to the folks at ZingCheckout and OwnLocal, and would have intro’d him to StormPulse if I’d been able to find them around the incubator.

WP Engine is also becoming a big name in Austin. We’re at the 50 employee mark (I joined as employee #12 last SXSW), and has grown out of Capital Factory (we are bursting at the seams, really). We have our own office space in downtown Austin that we’ll move into once the build-out wraps up. WP Engine loves Austin for our base of operations, but we also recognize the value of having an office in San Francisco for our marketing presence to connect with the ecosystem out there. But Jason and Ben probably wouldn’t open a company like WP Engine in San Francisco. Austin is a better fit for our support and engineering team.

No, Austin does not have the same density of San Francisco because Austin hasn’t hit critical mass quite yet. It’s happening, but that sort of thing can’t occur overnight. In the next few years, it will happen, but even when it does, Austin won’t look like San Francisco in a lot of ways. Austin will still retain the same sense of balance and won’t have the same San Francisco intensity. That will be by design. The Austin culture wants different things.

Austin also doesn’t care about social or consumer apps very much, preferring to focus on enterprise software, and products that have a great deal more utility. I don’t think the absence of lots of mobile companies is actually a black mark against Austin – I think it signals that the city builds companies that can clearly answer the question, “So how do you make money?”

Austin companies, by and large, focus on sustainable, long-term growth. This means fewer “moon shots” or IPO-focused founders. Austin has a bootstrap mentality baked into the entrepreneurial scene. The current crop of startups portends that Austin could have an increase in billion-dollar exits over the next few years. SpareFoot is going to blow people away by how far the founders take the company, for example. And MassRelevance continues to show steady, but rapid growth.

But Austin’s culture will support a different style of startup, and create a different startup ecosystem than San Francisco has. Austin isn’t going to be defined by “Tech Giants,” or major consumer apps. In fact, I want to go on record and predict that Social Entrepreneurship will take root in Austin, nurtured by the values and community spirit of the city, and become something Austin is known for.

Yes, Austin could use more investment. There are companies like Rally.org who left Austin for San Francisco because the funding they needed wasn’t available in Central Texas. San Francisco knows how to invest in startups, and in the last few months, I’ve already seen the results that investment can have on the growth and success of a new company. Austin doesn’t seem to realize how powerful funding can be for an entire ecosystem or it would be doggedly pursuing another 2-3 VCs to balance out the Austin Ventures dominated scene.

Some people will disagree with me about the need for more funding, and that’s fine. But to get real about creating a tech ecosystem, you have to forget the “bootstrap culture” arguments insofar as they prevent companies from having access to the capital they need to grow. More investment will equal more successful startups, which will only help the community to grow.

Come to Austin for the balance, and stay for the barbecue and the Southern feel. Come to Austin to “be yourself.”

But if you’re looking for intensity, and you want to live the next few years to the hilt, there’s no better place to live than in San Francisco. Your life may look imbalanced, but hopefully what you can accomplish will change the world.

NOTES:

*That’s why rent is cheaper in Austin. It’s also why salaries are lower. Rent and salaries go up with how many people are trying to live in a limited area, and they correspond directly with how skilled the population is, and how in-demand those skills are. I saw the ad on Hacker News last week for the first Python Engineer at a VC-Backed “startup with revenue” in San Francisco. Not only was the startup offering tons of salary and benefits and relocation, but also a housing stipend, maid service, and personal training sessions. That’s how badly they wanted the best available Python engineer on the planet. They wanted to pay that person an absurd amount of money, with incredible perks.

**Brett Hurt, founder of Bazaarvoice, and now with Austin Ventures, has written an incredible post about the state of Entrepreneurship in Austin. He outlines 3 stages of Entrepreneurship, and explains that Austin is largely stuck at the First Stage, where San Francisco and Silicon Valley are more prevalently at the Second and Third Stages. His experience as an entrepreneur gives him amazing insight into how different mindsets reflect different stages of businesses at each of the 3 Stages. I highly recommend reading his post if you’re entrepreneurial, and looking at or currently living in Austin.

Just a picture on this Friday afternoon to share with you all. I hope you’re doing exceedingly well.

When I bought the convertible last year, I had just gotten out of a very serious, long-term relationship. I didn’t yet know that I would be moving to California within a year, or how my life was going to take off.

After buying it, I realized that the car became symbolic of my priorities and how I’m choosing to live my life right now. Rather than being an impulsive purchase, I knew exactly what I was paying for, and months later, from a different part of the country, the wisdom of the car still speaks to me.

Right now, I’m moving fast and light, soaking up everything life has to offer. I welcome people to hit the road with me. However, there is only enough room for one other person to hop in and enjoy the open road with me. Someone with a grand sense of adventure.

The reality is that everyone pays money for things that can make their lives better. For me, the car is a source of joy every time I climb in, even if I’m only running an errand like I was today. But when I send the payment in every month, I’m happy to spend the money. The car is a practical metaphor for who I am. It’s a snapshot of me.

What do you focus your time and energy on that brings you joy? Are there symbols in your life for the part of the journey you’re on?

“How long have you been here?

 

Less than a year?

 

That’s not a super long time for everything that’s happened….”

Have you ever gotten a gut-check on your ambition? A little message from the world around you that suggested it would actually be ok for you to slow down and take a breath first?

That sort of feedback is really hard for those of us who are making our careers in the hard-driving tech industry. Working 10-12 (and more) hour days, 6 or 7 days a week is a badge of honor, and there is so much talking and tweeting about #hustle and #startuplife that it can be hard to tell the difference between posturing and working round the close because shit needs getting done.

Many of us in tech startups have a similar drive. We actively seek out opportunities that will grow our companies, and grow our careers as a result. We seek opportunities, and we follow through on them.

The more things we can build with our efforts, the more successful we become, the grander our organizations can become, and the more money we are able to make. The better I can perform for WP Engine, the more I can learn, the bigger an impact I can have, and the more I can measure it, the bigger my career gets.

When you’ve pushed for years and years to get to a place of career growth, you get used to that as a state of being. And then it can be hard to find a bit of balance because you start believing that the absurd level of hustle is essential.  The voice in your head says, “Without absurd hustle, I simply wouldn’t have been able to get to where I am today.”

...Therefore, without more absurd hustle, I won’t be able to keep moving forward to where I want to be.

In my head, I have this voice that tells me that if I don’t keep pushing hard for more, I’ll lose ground, and end up back at square one. It’s incredibly motivating, but it’s also exhausting. In the past few months, since arriving in San Francisco, I’ve been wondering if it might actually be permissible (yes, that’s the word to describe it) to stop, look around, and let myself catch up with myself.

“How long have you been here? Less than a year….?”

Translation: “Austin, I hear you pushing for more, but 1) here’s a little perspective for you about how much time things actually take, 2) you’ve actually moved plenty fast, and 3) slowing down and taking a breather isn’t a crime, and you may be glad you did…

Last week on a phone call, Jason asked me that question. I had some new ideas that probably would have added more responsibilities and more work to my plate. I was angling for growth for myself, and growth that would tie into WP Engine’s. As companies grow quickly, they often create big opportunities for employees and founders to grow as well, and I look actively for those openings. I want to be there when they happen so I’m able to turn them into potential opportunities.

In my head, opportunity knocks once, and you sure as shit better be ready to answer. If you’re not, you miss out for good. And there seem to be a million opportunities for me to add things to my plate right now.

In my head, there is always more work to be done, and not enough time to do it.

And as I write this post, I wonder if it is possible for me to be happy with what I’ve got for the time being, and then spend some months rounding out my life a bit.

Ben mentioned to me several times that there is a lot to be said for learning how to execute at your craft, and that may mean spending time just doing your work for a few years.

But not driving hard towards the future is something that I think I’d actually have to *learn* how to do.

Since graduating college, I’ve discovered a direct relationship between the things that I can pull off and the work I’ll be allowed to do in the future. The more I do now, the more I’ll be able to do later.

Conversely, if I miss an opportunity to grow now, then I may miss an opportunity I want later. At least, that’s what the voice in my head tells me.

If you’re reading my blog, I suspect you relate on some level. You want the most, the best, the biggest possible, and you know that what you have right now doesn’t match it yet. You haven’t made it yet. You can’t be satisfied yet. You can’t let up or relax yet. You’ve still got another hill to climb, and a battle to fight inside yourself, and a victory to not celebrate because you’ve got to wake up again in the morning in hot pursuit of the next growth opportunity.

But what if you believed that the next opportunity was right around the corner? Would that make it ok for you to let the immediate go a bit, and focus your energy differently? Would you be able to relax a bit?

How does that affect what would otherwise be an incredibly all-or-nothing attitude about life? We either made it all, and climbed on the rocket ship as it was launching, or we fell back to earth, flat on our back, starting again from square one.

It’s been fear of never achieving escape velocity that drove me. Fear of continuing to have what I’d always had, but never really wanted, that kept me setting my alarm at 5AM for an early breakfast, and to start sending emails and writing before I had to be at work.

Fighting every day like my life depended on it. Fighting to get something that I knew I wanted out of life, fighting so that I could someday take a deep breath, look around, and be satisfied.

But what day is that satisfaction supposed to arrive?

Do you relate?

In the past couple of months, I’ve been hearing a different perspective from the world. The advice I keep getting suggests that it may actually be time to slow down for a bit and settle into the work I have before me. To slow down and let life catch up with me a bit. There isn’t a rush right now.

Maybe I don’t actually have to keep hustling so insistently right now. Maybe the ground isn’t going to fall out from underneath me, and maybe the world won’t leave me behind like I’m afraid of. That stability I wanted to create might be all around me at this point.

Maybe I’ve made it through the atmosphere, my heat shield has held up, and I’m now peacefully floating in zero gravity with the heavens welcoming above me, and the Earth smiling up at me.

Maybe this is a year to lay down a foundation.

The Question

All that leads me to the question, “When is it (is it ever?) ok to take your foot off the gas and relax your hustle?” Is there a right answer to this question?

Is it ok to loosen your grip on the steering wheel for a moment, and take a breather?

I think the answer is probably yes. I think it might be ok to rest my bones and my mind, and focus on just doing the job at hand for a while.

What have you all done when it was time to slow down for a bit?  How did you know it was ok to let up your pace for the moment?  Did you have a hard time giving yourself permission to let up?

What is a Social Media Community Manager? Oh sorry, I didn’t hear you over the sound of how hip my job is. I’m responsible for engaging current and prospective customers via social media channels, building a strong community around our brand, analyzing relevant metrics, SEO management—you name it, I do it.

I spend all day on Facebook, writing blogs, chatting up customers, whatever I need to do to ensure maximum ROI for our company; basically playing around on the internet. It’s pretty much every college kid’s dream job so I—oh god, I can’t do this anymore.

I’m a real person with real feelings, not a profile picture to analyze for your own amusement. My status updates say, “Check out our newest eBook!” but read between the lines; what I really mean is, “Check out me, please. I need validation!”

Don’t read the rest of the article too closely. It ends on a dark note, matched only by the level of sarcasm and hyperbole that is left up to the reader to understand.

What’s the point of sharing that?

Simple.

Nobody really trained any of us who are now in our 20s for this job many of us have, running digital media. I’m fortunate to have created an opportunity to handle branding and messaging at a startup company I love, as well as work closely with the product team on new features, but I digress. The point is, we didn’t plan for these jobs where our identities on social media would become closely intwined with the companies we work for, and our actions out there in the public sphere would thereby have such a powerful affect on our professional lives as well.

Where many of my friends have the luxury of venting on Facebook or Twitter, I have to bite my tongue. Or go low-tech and see if I actually have paper in my house I can write on. (More sarcasm).

The reality that you have to be more and more conscious about your communications the greater your social reach is makes it all the more important to appreciate the work you do, to respect the people you work with, and to love the work your company actually does. That’s really the only way you can talk about it on and offline all day long and still be congruent with your own values. Otherwise, you cultivate all that social influence to share something with the world only to feel empty because you’re not saying anything that matters to you on a personal level.

Without that personal meaning in your job, being on Twitter all day would be enough to drive anyone to write hilarious McSweeney’s pieces.

As a writer, the fact that I can get paid to do all those “community managery” things is living the dream. I get to write all day long, AND I can still feed myself. Hell, I could probably afford to get married and support a family in the next couple of years. Point is, those of us that are doing this often came straight out of writing programs, and we’re doing pretty good for ourselves.

Especially when we get a million RTs and Facebook shares for the things we pour ourselves into writing.

While I’m on the subject, have you followed me on Twitter yet?

Hope this helps.

Austin W. Gunter

I’ve had the opportunity to be on the receiving end of Jason’s enablement since joining WP Engine over SXSWi 2012. I can honestly say that I’ve had more opportunity to build my own life than I had any reason to expect from joining someone else’s company. But I also know that Jason acted in his own self-interest by letting me loose to build as much as I could, as quickly as I could.

In his post, he mentions me coming out to the PHP meetup to film his talk rather than watch the Final Four on TV. All I remember thinking was that if given the chance to spend an evening with an entrepreneur like Jason, or watch TV, I knew that it was a simple choice, and that I was lucky to have the choice to make. I’ll soak up as much knowledge as possible, and am opportunistic to spend time around entrepreneurs I respect.

Something key to Jason’s philosophy also happened that evening. After the meetup, he and I were drinking Hendricks and Tonic and finishing some Nachos, and I remember telling him that everyone at WP Engine had the opportunity to inject something personally meaningful into their work every single day, and that not all companies give you that opportunity. When I told him that, he sighed very deeply, had a moment to himself, and said, “That’s good.” The company I’m part of enables all its employees to grow because Jason set out to make it that way from the beginning.

When I was discussing the viability of moving to San Francisco with Jason over breakfast at TacoDeli (the best $20 I’ve ever invested), I asked a ton of questions about how me moving to SF would be in the best interests of WP Engine, because I knew that had to be the first priority. If the company leadership wasn’t 110% convinced that having me in San Francisco would be a 10x win for the organization, I was going to be swimming uphill, and I didn’t want that. I wasn’t going to move if it wasn’t going to be good for the company, the devotion does go both ways.

Jason went through how the company would benefit, and then he told me something key. He said, “We have a ton of rockstars at WP Engine. People who could get a job at a lot of companies, and the way I see it, I can make one of three choices in how the company treats them.”

1. We can hamper their growth because we’re afraid if people grow too much that they’ll leave. BUT, all that’s going to do is make talented people want to leave as quickly as possible, and nobody is happy while they’re actually working here so we don’t get their best work.
2. We can do nothing either way. We don’t stop their growth, but we don’t help it either. People will be less anxious to leave, but once something that gives them a better opportunity comes along, they’ll disappear.
3. We can pour as many resources into our employees as is humanly possible, and as much as they can handle. This strategy puts faith in the fact that everyone wants opportunities to learn and grow, and as long as the company can provide those opportunities, they’ll love working here, and do amazing work.

Jason said, “Nothing lasts forever, and nobody stays at a company forever. Since we know we can’t keep people forever, I choose to go with the 3rd option, because I think that will mean the least amount of turnover, the most loyalty, and the highest producing employees possible.”

We dwell on how startups enable founders to quit their day job and master their own destiny. But what about everyone else?

What about what they can control, how they want to grow and learn, how their personal goals might be fulfilled?

A startup must be an enabler, otherwise you’re just building another big company, exactly like the one you as a founder refused to devote your life to. In 2013, in the tech world, with our opportunities and capabilities, we must do more than just build another big company.

Thanks for letting me be part of this. Thanks for letting me enable the people I work with in return. You’ve set a high bar for entrepreneurship, and I appreciate the challenge. And yes, I love you guys too

Hope this helps.

Austin W. Gunter

@betapunch @beccagallery because I’m still annoyed that you guys tweeted links to our previous tests twitter.com/DanielleMorril…

— Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) January 9, 2013

Danielle Morrill of Referly had a good reason to be upset with BetaPunch today. BetaPunch is a startup that provides user testing for startups. Apparently Danielle used BetaPunch last year for some user testing. It didn’t go so well because BetaTest violated her trust as a potential customer by sharing the data from her beta testing on Twitter without her consent or informing her first.

As a startup, they wanted to get the attention and notoriety that would come from having a Silicon Valley insider, like Danielle, as a customer. BetaPunch is a Baltimore startup – apparently founder Ross Nochumowitz is also a founder of BigBoyzBailBonds. So while this isn’t the founder’s first entrepreneurial endeavor, he may feel a bit isolated from the core of tech startups in Silicon Valley, and wanted to gather as much attention to his product, which admittedly, could provide a valuable resource. Other startups like UserTesting.com provide a similar service for $39 per test.

To make the most of Danielle as a customer, Nochumowitz tweeted the results of Referly’s beta tests (the tweets have since been deleted), perhaps following the example of the over-hyped “growth hackers” and grab as much publicity from the notable customer as possible. But he didn’t ask first.

He tweeted the results of Danielle’s beta tests, which contained raw feedback of an evolving product. You might as well share the first draft of your novel with a publisher. The results aren’t going to be pretty. That’s a violation of user trust, and warrants harsh feedback. If you don’t know how to keep customer data private, do you really know how to run your business?

The value of customer trust far exceeds the value of publicity one customer might bring, much less the monetary value of a customer. I think Nochumowitz got a lot more publicity than he originally intended, but I doubt the PR blitz will help sales much.

At this point, the job of the Social Media person is to jump in, take responsibility, apologize, and work towards a speedy resolution. Publicly asking forgiveness and making grand gestures of supplication are essential.

But Nochumowitz decided his own “death my social media” judgement by whining on twitter that Danielle hadn’t said “thanks” for the awful customer experience she had received.

@daniellemorrill yes 3 free tests that you never bothered to acknowledge or thank us for #classy

— BetaPunch (@BetaPunch) January 9, 2013

;

It was only then that Danielle wrote the post.

Then BetaPunch dug the hole deeper.

@daniellemorrill no. Actually, to let people know that you were ungrateful for what was done for you was worth every character.

— BetaPunch (@BetaPunch) January 10, 2013

And still deeper.

@daniellemorrill no. Actually, to let people know that you were ungrateful for what was done for you was worth every character.

— BetaPunch (@BetaPunch) January 10, 2013

;

And then got out the shovel of self-righteousness, lest they never forget that HackerNews never sleeps and burns self-righteous founders at the stake.

The public test was posted for less than 1 hour then deleted / apologized and sent 2 additional tests as a make-up and not a single thanks..

— BetaPunch (@BetaPunch) January 10, 2013

Danielle decided to blog her dissatisfaction with BetaPunch’s customer experience, not because Nochumowitz tweeted the results, but because he acted like an entitled brat and demanded thanks for use of the service.

Sorry, Ross. You’re the one that should have been grateful to have an influential user, and bent over backwards to thrill her with your customer experience. If you had busted your ass and made the most of the customer, you would have created a huge opportunity for the hard work building your product to see the public.

If you had busted your ass, Danielle might trust your startup. And she might have written a completely different blog post.

Trust is everything. As a startup, you *must* earn your early customer’s trust one-by-one, and you must maintain it. You have no reputation to fall back on, so you’ll live and die by the trust of a single customer, and you’ve got to have a stockpile of trust and goodwill for when you make a mistake. And as a startup, you’re going to make mistakes, and the only thing that will sustain your customer relationships will be their trust in your company, your product, and your support.

Social Media is one of the fastest ways you can earn their trust. Quick responses, quality support, and cordial, earnest communication will create incredible relationships with your customers. A long string of happy customers on Twitter becomes an asset to your company every time someone researches your startup.

One of the biggest parts of my job every day is just being available on Social Media in case someone has something to say about WP Engine. I’m lucky that the majority of the time, when people have something to say about about our support team or our technology, they usually have something nice to say. But part of my job keeps me ready to respond just in case someone has something not so nice to say about our company.

My job on Social Media is to be there every time a customer has an issue. My job is to apologize for their trouble, listen to them vent, and empathize as long as they need me to while I escalate their issue for a quick and satisfactory resolution.

The job of the Social Media manager is care about our customers. Most of us are lucky because our companies have incredible customers to work with, but responsibility to our customers isn’t contingent on how we feel in any given moment. It’s contingent only on the fact that they’re our customers, and we want to provide the best support possible.

Every company will have a frustrated customer on Twitter or Facebook sometimes. Typically, it’s justified frustration. The level of frustration a customer expresses on Twitter is almost always equal to the size or reputation of the company in question, and compounded by the quality of their trouble with your product. Woe to the poor social media manager if the customer had a bad experience at the hands of a Support Tech.

The silver lining is that most people love an underdog and so startup companies will be forgiven for technical errors if they make up for them with stellar support.

But woe to the startup that publicly bites the hand of a potential customer, much less a highly influential one.

Whether you’re right or you’re wrong, your customer is always right. Make them feel happy they brought their problems to you by apologizing and making amends. They’ll trust you and tell all their friends to come spend money with you.

Whine that they didn’t ever “say thanks” for the free trial of your product that you offered them, and you’ll burn a bridge before anyone else has a chance to walk across it. They’ll tell all their friends about you. Tell them to stay the hell away.

Let’s say you’re the founder of a company. Your job sometimes is to eat some shit. Wash it down, put your big boy pants on, and get back to work. If you let a bit of negativity get to you, giving up will start to look easier than pushing forward. Find a way to be thankful for the opportunity to learn something about your product and something about your own ego. Whatever you do, don’t go AWOL on Social Media.

Social Media is a double-edged sword for your startup.

Social Media makes communicating with your company incredibly easy, so people will communicate more. This is a good thing. It’s an opportunity to develop more relationships with more customers.

Social Media also makes every single piece of company communication public, and everyone can see the things on Facebook and Twitter that are being said on behalf of your company. This is also a good thing. It means that you can build relationship with hundreds and thousands more customers by proxy.

But only if you are polite and prompt every single time you speak with a customer on Social Media.

If you’re a dick, Social Media will bury you. It’s not one customer, it’s one customer, and the reach of their entire following. Danielle Morrill has a large following. Forget a Klout Score. If you can write a blog post and bury a company, you’ve got influence.

By the way, BetaPunch finally said something nice on Twitter about the whole experience.

Thanks to all from hackernews and twitter who provided us with feedback. Very helpful stuff.

— BetaPunch (@BetaPunch) January 10, 2013

Too little, too late. There are 96 comments on HackerNews as I push “publish” on this. So much traffic went to Danielle’s blog post that her server crashed. BetaPunch, everybody knows about you now, but nobody is going to trust you with their beta testing.

In the end, BetaPunch may actually have turned out to be a fitting name for the startup. The “Punch” they’re feeling right now is the wind knocked out of them. Never underestimate the power social media can have for a startup company.

Hope this helps.

Austin W. Gunter

Mikey Trafton is the founder of Blue Fish Development Group, Fire Ant Software, an original investor in the Alamo Drafthouse, and mentors several Capital Factory startups. When Mikey and I met in 2012, he told me a few stories that distilled his motivation for entrepreneurship down into radically discrete elements that are so simple for us to apply in our day-to-day lives there is zero excuse not to. Things like how we do our laundry, or the work environment that we want to have.

Mikey calls the result of these motivations, “local optimizations.” As an entrepreneur, when Mikey wants to adapt a tiny area of his life, he evaluates his circumstances, isolates the element that he wants to be different, and then makes a change to create a situation that will serve his interests.

These local optimizations have been major players in Mikey’s life that led him to start his first company.

Mikey’s story tells me that “entrepreneurial mindset” can be attained. You or I can train ourselves to think and behave like the successful entrepreneurs that have build companies and created products that are changing our world.

Mikey told me that he started Blue Fish because,

“…I wanted to have a cool place to go to work every day. If someone else had started Blue Fish, and I had started working there right out of college, I wouldn’t have ever needed to start my own company.”

As soon as I heard Mikey say that, I thought, that boils entrepreneurship down to it’s essentials.

He’s not after a revolution.

He’s not on a wild crusade.

He’s using zero buzzwords.

Mikey is just stating an honest desire to have a great place to do work that matters with people who “get it.” When Mikey looked around, he couldn’t find a place that he liked to work, so he went and created his own place. He didn’t have to become an entrepreneur. But he did need to work in a certain environment in order to maximize his life. And he was unwilling to compromise those values.

Mikey was describing the results of a lifetime of “local optimizations,” slight modifications to his environment throughout his life that have made him into the entrepreneur that he is today. The same willful qualities that he describes made him a “bratty kid” also made him a “successful entrepreneur.”

Me, I’m a selfish person. I heard Mikey say those two sentences, and I started scheming how I could get more access to his mind so I could hear him tell his story and hopefully apply it to my life and efforts.

The interview is the result of that conversation

Here are the highlights of what we talk about:

• The founding ideas behind the Midnight Cowboy Speakeasy
• Why Mikey wanted to become an Entrepreneur in the first place
• Minority owner in a company is something Mikey wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy
• Started Blue Fish Development Group to be “an optimizer of my local environment”
• Discovering that “going the extra mile” for his clients is a keystone motivator leads Mikey to start Blue Fish
• “I just wanted a cool place to work” is the only justification Mikey needed to start a company
• Sought to create a “get it” culture. A place where he want to work, and a place where his employees want to work there as well
• First contract was with Sun Micosystems turned his idea into a 6-Figure Company overnight
• His first attempt as an entrepreneur is met with a crisis when he doesn’t hire for cultural fit
• Your company is only great if the people who work there also think it’s great
• How to hire really badass developers who normally work in “product” companies in a consulting company
• Turning down business for the sake of the culture
• Tweaking the business model to attract the right people
• How being “incredibly selfish” motivates Mikey to seek ways to locally optimize his environment in an entrepreneurial manner
• “As a child, being selfish made me a brat. As an adult, I guess it makes me an entrepreneur.”
• Asking “how” questions, not “why” or “who” questions
• “Don’t compromise your values” vs. “Being a selfish jerk…”
• Why a high need for approval makes Mikey a perfect leader for his company
• “I’m not afraid to go try something if I think it will improve my happiness”
• Also, “I’m even less afraid to remove things if I think they are getting in the way of my happiness.”
• “I’m one of those people who believe rich people should pay more taxes…and I’m rich, so that belief technically hurts my wallet…”
• “One of the things that makes me happiest is when one of my rockstar employees comes into my office and tells me they’re leaving to start their own thing or to be a CTO…that’s freaking awesome”
• Mikey’s rule on relationships: they must be built on a spirit of mutual giving
• The more you give, the more you get, and the world is a better place
• “The rantings of a selfish man”
• Being opportunistic and creating opportunities for yourself
• The belief that you actually *can* create the life you want
• Forget the 5 year plan…How do I prioritize for right now, and let the rest work itself out?
• Not everybody has to be an entrepreneur, not even me…and I’m fine with that
• Knowing what matters to you and being able to prioritize accordingly
• Know what you care about and then prune the tree
• I’d rather make less money and have a great work environment
• “There’s two kinds of people in the world…”
• “Giving myself permission to live the life that I wanted to live…”
• Define your goals correctly: “The goal to make $100MM…that’s a messed up goal.”
• Realize the core values of how you want to live your life, and your opportunities will balloon
• “If Bluefish had existed when I graduated college and I had gotten a job there, I never would have started my own company…”
• Summary, “Get to watch DVD player all day, and you’ll be happy.”

Hope this helps.

Austin W. Gunter