ENTREPRENEUR

Isn’t it funny how a random, luck of the draw pairing of two people seated next to each other can turn a dull plane ride into anything from an intellectual conversation to a business opportunity to a random hookup (not what happened to me, but you get the point).

In any case, this evening I hopped on board a plane bound for Chicago from LA and happened to sit next to a pretty cool guy whose story rekindled my faith in my generation.

My newfound friend, a recent college grad of 6 months, told me about being from a small town in Iowa.  Stereotypical place – the kind of place where the True Bloods and Friday Night Lights of the world are set.  Everyone knew everyone else’s business.  Too many people peaked in high school and got dead end jobs.  You know the story.

Fortunately for him, he had the drive and motivation to get out and do something.  He graduated with a double major in Psychology and Environmental Science but couldn’t find a job right out of school, like so many other recent grads of the day.  However, instead of wallow in despair or give up on his ambition, he took his difficulties in stride.

To pay his bills, including his newly due student loans, he took out a job in construction, working 10-12 hour days.  However, on top of that, he came up with a strategy for finding a job in Chicago, a city to which he wanted to move.  He realized that the University of Chicago is a great place to work, and created a profile on their career site, sending out literally hundreds of resumes.  Despite all of the rejections and recruiter silence, he persisted, tweaking his cover letter and modifying his resume for each position.  One can only imagine how mentally and emotionally taxing this must have been – working long days in construction six months after graduating, applying to jobs in a completely different city, having to drive 9 hours to that city when recruiters and hiring managers wanted to meet in person, and seeing all of your saved money being spent on expenses for jobs that you don’t end up getting.

Despite it all, though, he persisted.  He knew that he wanted to work in Chicago, and he didn’t let a short-term rejection get him down.  Then one day he got a call from one of the positions to which he applied, asking if he could come in for an interview.  He did.  He didn’t get the job. But, he was ultimately asked to come back for an interview in another department.  He ended up speaking with a newly recruited, high profile doctor, who was running a study on monoclonal skin cancer and needed a research study coordinator.

He liked my friend enough that he called him back the very next day, offering him a well-paid position that provides 6 weeks of paid leave, full benefits, and great hours.  My friend accepted on the spot.

A few months later, he moved to Chicago, a city that he wanted to be in, had a great job, and is getting incredible experience in the healthcare industry, an industry that’s only going to explode in size and influence in the upcoming future.

Why do I consider this a remarkable story?

Because he realized, like a dwindling few from our generation do, that there is no instant gratification.  There are no quick fixes.  You don’t achieve success without working HARD for it.  He understood this, and he met it head on, working in construction to make ends meet while simultaneously driving back and forth between two very distant towns to find a job that would help him build his career.  He understood how important it is to know what you want and focus your resources strategically on getting it.  He knew that those that work hardest end up being luckiest.  He realized that the only way for him to achieve success was to get down and dirty.

People like that inspire me.  There aren’t too many people out there that are not only know what they want, but are willing to work extremely hard, as brief as that time may be, to get what they’re looking for.

Stories like this only make me work harder, make me better.  I hope they do the same for you.

—

Now, on a lighter topic, my newfound friend also told me about an interesting little cultural activity in his small town.  Apparently, it’s possible to buy kits to build light airplanes – planes that have fabricated, non metal wings and snowmobile engines, and that actually fly.  He was telling me about an interesting story about his town, where it was all-too-common for everyone to build their own planes and do fly-by breakfasts at the local airports.

Every weekend, weather permitting, his local airports would sponsor social pancakes, and people from all over the area would wake up at 6 AM, jump into their handmade planes, and fly to the sponsoring airport of the week, where they would eat breakfast and socialize.  Some weekends, there were even “airport breakfast hopping” events, where multiple airports around the area would host breakfasts, and everyone would literally fly from one airport to the next, piloting their homemade airplanes, eating pancakes, and socializing.

For someone coming from the east coast, that’s just unheard of, but man does it sound awesome.

This was a pretty bad week for me.  I slept in on two days when I should have been working out, and I didn’t eat enough calories on my cheat day (which, for those of you that know the purpose of a cheat day, can attest to being a really bad thing).

I lost a lot of muscle this week and not a lot of fat, though my waist size and weight did go down a bit.  Based on my results from the past two weeks, it seems like I may need to eat more calories, so for this week I’m going to be a bit looser with my diet (still eating the same things as bef0re but will add in an extra snack here and there).

So here’s what happened:

Final Phase Fat Loss – Week 3

Suprailiac measurement: 13.5mm (same as last week)
Weight: 172.6 pounds (down from last week)
Waist: 34.25 inches (down .25 inches from last week)
Bicep flexed: 15 inches (same as last week)
Waist/bicep: 2.283 (down from last week)
Lean body mass: 145.8 lbs (down from last week)
Approximate body fat: 15.5% (same as last week)

Let’s start from the end

A couple of days ago, one of my really good friends came to pick up the last of her things.  I was storing them in my apartment while she was in India, getting ready for her upcoming wedding.  When she collected the last of her clothes, jumping in her rental car on her way to DC where she would be moving, it hit me.  Business school was over.

Indeed, it’s all done.  The apartment that I’ve lived in for two years, primarily because of its proximity to school, will soon have new tenants.  I’ll be moving to midtown, ironically enough with one of my friends from DC – in fact, he used to live two streets down from me when we were in Arlington.

I’ve gone from seeing around a quarter of the class every week to no more than 5% every month.  I built some pretty incredible relationships throughout my two years at Stern.  There’s no question that almost everyone in the entire class was smart, sociable, and really fun to be around.  It is sad knowing I won’t see many of them again.  But I’m fortunate in that I’ve been in many, many situations in my life where I’ve developed some strong relationships and then had to say goodbye to many of the people that I got to know so well (in fact, my study abroad experience in Italy is the quintessential manifestation of that).  I’ve learned that most relationships won’t last forever, and I’ve been able to transition into a mindset where, even with that knowledge, I’m able to fully enjoy the experience while it’s happening, yet I’m still able to move forward without too much trouble when it’s over.  That’s not to say that I’m okay with losing touch with all of the people I’ve come to know so well.  On the contrary – I plan on staying in touch with my closest friends on a very frequent basis.  But these days, I’m okay knowing that the great times will be transforming into the next big thing.  This is a night-and-day difference from how I used to be.

The last two years have been the best of my life, but now it’s time to move on.

What I got from it all

I’ve talked many times about my decision to go to business school, so I won’t go over that here.  I will say, though, that I got everything out of this experience that I was searching for, and then some.  There’s no way I can describe just how much of an impact these past two years have made on me.  In fact, I have such a different way of looking at the world now that I’m almost a different person than I was before I came to business school.

No one can truly know how much of a crazy roller coaster (full time) business school is until they’ve lived the experience.  For me to try and explain it here would be futile, but suffice it to say, it was a life changing, personality changing, mind changing, outlook changing experience.

In the past, I’ve written about the “true” cost of business school.  Soon I’ll be posting a final number – the total amount of money that has left (or never entered) my bank account due to business school.  Financially speaking, it’s hard to say right now whether it was worth it or not.  My belief is that it was, especially if the stuff that I’m working on now starts to take off.

But there’s no doubt in my mind that it was worth it in terms of life experience.  If anyone’s debating whether or not to go to business school, I would suggest looking at your current situation and asking yourself if you’re ready for a jarring, life changing experience.  If so, then do it, you won’t look back.

Departing words

My parting words of wisdom from business school:

• Put in the effort to get to know new people, you’ll be glad you did
• Make every effort to go to parties, social gatherings, get togethers, random dinners, late night karaokes, around the world trips, industry conferences, and any other place where you can spend time with other people
• You’ll always have work, you won’t always be able to spend time with the people that matter to you
• Figure out what you’re passionate about and make no excuses about going after it
• TAKE RISKS, lots of them, continuously

A look back at some of the greatest times

(Click to see the larger image)

Last week, I gave you the results of my first week on FPFL.  Unfortunately, this week’s results aren’t as spectacular.  I did go down a bit in waist size, but no noticeable loss in fat, and actually, a small loss in muscle.  I’m going to take this as a one week fluke and keep doing what I’ve doing, and readjust next week if I have to.

Overall, I did really well this past week, though I have to say that if I did anything wrong, it would be sleeping too late on multiple nights, and also missing my HIIT cardio session (which I will make up for today, since usually Sundays are rest days).

In any case, here are the results:

Final Phase Fat Loss – Week 2

Suprailiac measurement: 13.5mm (same as last week)
Weight: 175.4 pounds (down from last week)
Waist: 34.5 inches (down .5 inches from last week)
Bicep flexed: 15 inches (same as last week)
Waist/bicep: 2.300 (down from last week)
Lean body mass: 148.2 lbs (down from last week)
Approximate body fat: 15.5% (same as last week)

As promised, I’m posting the results from my first week of doing Final Phase Fat Loss.  I have to say, I was really good in both the diet and exercise.  Usually when I’m on a cutting program I find myself getting a bit sloppy here and there, but this first week was almost perfect.  Hopefully I can keep it up.

So here are my results from this week:

Final Phase Fat Loss – Week 1

Suprailiac measurement: 13.5mm (down 1.5mm from last week)
Weight: 176 pounds (same as last week)
Waist: 35 inches (down .3 inches from last week)
Bicep flexed: 15 inches (up .1 inches from last week)
Waist/bicep: 2.333 (down from last week)
Lean body mass: 148.9 lbs (up from last week)
Approximate body fat: 15.5% (down 1.3% from last week)

These are really good results for a week’s worth of work – but, they won’t last long.  Right now it’s all just muscle memory that’s taking over, but once I start getting down into the 11-12% range in bodyfat, my results are going to slow down dramatically.  This is also a good illustration of why using just your weight to measure your progress is a bad idea (unless you’re morbidly obese).  Body composition is more important than just absolute weight – what I really care about is fat and muscle, and the way to measure changes in those are not through pounds alone, but through bodyfat measurements.

Next week I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing – working out hard (after most of my workouts I can barely breathe and feel sick) and eating right.

Wish me luck – nobody said this would be easy.

In his recent post on the dire financial situation of current 20-somethings, Bob Adams laments the fact that no one from my generation has made a clamor about the insane amount of debt that the politicians and baby boomers are running up for us.  It’s interesting – he makes an analogy to the days of his own youth – days in which his parents’ generation started wars, authorized crimes, and threatened their children’s future.

He then states that his own generation did the exact same thing to us that they were complaining about when they were younger.  The hypocrisy that his peers have shown in starting wars, running up debt, and causing global meltdowns not only matches, but surpasses, that of his parents’.  For noting and proclaiming this, he should be commended.

He then goes on to state that his generation is doing the exact same thing to us (everyone in my generation) that his parents’ did to them.  In fact, it can probably be argued that he thinks it will be much, much worse for us than it was for him.  Though this may be the case, I’d argue that there’s one thing Mr. Adams, and every financial journalist and economist of his generation, is missing.

It’s not just us.

People are living longer than ever.  Most of the baby boomers are in their mid-60s, and with an average 20 or more years to go, they are far from unaffected by the mountain of debt and inflation that they claim will suppress their children – us.  In fact, it may be worse for them.

They are the generation that will soon enter retirement, losing their largest financial assets – their ability to trade their skills and time for money.

They are the generation that will soon have to start drawing on their savings and investments (if any) to sustain another 2 decades of life.

They are the generation that will have to combat their exponentially decreased earning potential with a dollar that they claim will decrease significantly in value, and with debt that has to be repaid from coffers that will be emptying at an increasing rate.

They are the generation that will have to combat with the inflationary effects of food, gas, and basic living, not to mention highly increased medical costs – costs that will undoubtedly compound as they get older.

And they are the generation that will need to somehow try to subdue continuously accruing expenses for a longer period of their lives at a moment when inflation is likely to rise very quickly and the interest on our massively accumulating debt just begins to come due – all at a time when they’re no longer earning money, tax receipts are dropping, and interestingly enough, retirement accounts may be the last new place to start generating some revenue for Uncle Sam.

Am I worried about the debt and lowered purchasing power that I’m left with due to the spending habits of my parents’ generation?  Absolutely.  But I’m lucky.  My dad’s a smart guy, he set himself up for a decent retirement.  And he taught me a lot about how to do it right, so now I’m using all of that knowledge to prop myself up, before the fallout hits.

But to Mr. Adams and the rest of his commiserators, those who happily write about the terrible future they’ve left for my generation, I’d say take a look at your bank statement, take a look at your retirement funds, take a look at your Social Security account statements, all of which you’re undoubtedly still receiving by snail mail, and make sure you will be able to survive the mess that you’ve left, for yourselves.

As for me, my sister, my friends, and any other (hopefully many) well-educated members of Generations X, Y, Z, the millenium, the Internet, the digitals, and whatever else you want to call us – we’ll be busy starting new companies, taking advantage of high return financial securities like options, saving for our retirements early, and working late nights to outperform our Eastern Asian counterparts, all so we can pay off the bills that you and your old buddies have left us.

Just a quick post today for those of us that own Macs.  If you’ve ever wanted to add a piece of a website to your dashboard, you can use something do so using Safari, which allows you to select a portion of a website and add it to your dashboard.  I use this to get real time stock updates with Google Finance (note, the clips don’t refresh automatically for me, so I have to refresh them manually by hitting Cmd + R).

If you want to learn more, you can do so here: http://appletuts.com/en/mac-os-x/widgets/creating-a-web-clip-widget-using-safari/

Image from celiece

The new blue collar

When I was going through four years of hell, also known as engineering school, at UVA, I was continuously bombarded with propaganda about how important a programmer/analyst (I did CS and Systems & Information Engineering) was to the overall functioning of a company.  In fact, I even had to take several nonsense classes on how important an engineer is to society as a whole.  Those classes stressed the importance of considering the larger societal implications of any actions we took as engineers.  Throughout my four years of school, my professors and classes continuously reinforced the idea that being an engineer, a data scientist, a software developer, was a demanding, and critical position.

So you can imagine the unease I felt when I recently that one of the professors in business school called software development the “next blue collar job.”  In fact, there seems to be a common conception that development has gotten super cheap, and that anyone can buy a coder and have a web or mobile app up and running for almost no money or time.

Do I think that they’re all wrong?  Yes and no.  Am I biased?  Probably.  But I do think that outsourcing your development isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Buying a coder vs. building a business

There’s no doubt that the cost of developing a new tech product has gone down exponentially over the past few decades.  Software developers used to be a hot commodity – highly sought after and respected, and save for everywhere but Silicon Valley, that esteem has degraded.  Now you can buy 2 weeks from a college student in Indonesia for the cost of a month’s rent and have the next big viral social network/hot web app/e-commerce solution.

But it’s important to make the difference between outsourcing your development (essentially, buying the rights to a piece of software), and getting the right people to build a tech business.

When you build a business that revolves around tech, you can’t expect to spend a couple of weeks writing code and then have a final product that you can go out and sell.  No, when you build a tech business, you need to expect a rapidly changing, highly dynamic set of technical requirements, customer requests, bug fixes, and new research and development efforts in order to stay competitive in the market place.

These are things you don’t get when you outsource.

When you pay someone that’s not a core part of your company’s internal tech team to develop something that you’re going to sell, you face a mountain of risks.  First of all, if you’re working with an overseas team, it’s going to be a hassle making sure that they understand just what it is that you want built.  The language barrier, combined with cultural differences and differing expectations can all make the development process a nightmare.

For example, I was talking to a friend of mine that had to manage an outsourced development team for his job.  He was telling me how he would develop a set of requirements for his system and then pass them on to his team in India.  The requirements were fairly standard, and both parties agreed that they would use the requirements as the authoritative product specifications.

I can’t remember the exact details of his situation, but I remember him telling me that at one point his team of outsourced engineers had built a feature that allowed the user to add information to their system, but not delete it.  When he went back and asked them to add that feature, they refused, since that request wasn’t in the requirements or specifications.  When he finally got them to agree to build the feature, they created something that was so counterintuitive that no user would ever know how to delete an item from the system.  When my friend called them out on it, they said that the specifications had not explicitly detailed how the delete functionality should work.

That’s ridiculous.

If you worked with an in-house tech team, they wouldn’t refuse to fix their error simply because the specifications document didn’t explicitly detail what they had to do.  In fact, they’d probably feel embarrassed that they produced a sub-par piece of software and want to fix it right away.

They’d have skin in the game. And on top of that, they’d probably understand from the start that there are certain features that a system needs to have, regardless of whether they’re specified or not.  They’d understand the context in which their application would be used.  They wouldn’t see the process of writing code as a client’s job, they’d see it as their company’s product.  There’s a big difference in the quality of product that’s produced with these two mindsets.

In addition to risking a lack of understanding with your outsourced development team, you run the risk that you won’t have a dedicated, specialized group of people to make changes and updates to your product as they become necessary.  Normally, when you outsource a product, you’re making a one-time transaction whereby you exchange money for code.  Once that transaction is complete, the outsourced development team may be under no obligation to change the code they’ve given you.

If you’re in an industry where technology is rapidly changing, you can’t afford for your product to be left behind when the market moves past you and you don’t have a team ready to respond.

There are a slew of other issues that come with outsourcing, including challenges in coordinating meetings, having your development team not understand what the product will be used for in the US, causing them to miss asking the right questions, and being delivered a crappy product with no way to change it (yes, believe it or not, outsourced developers may not be as good as what you find in the US).

What it comes down to

The big issue with outsourcing your code is that you lose the ability to work with your developers in an agile, rapidly-changing, high-context environment.  For large companies that have a lot of time or money to spend on the development of new offerings, outsourcing may be a good way to cut costs.  After all, they already have a developed brand name, customers, and product set.

But for a startup, outsourcing the development of your first, core product could be a fatal mistake.  If you’re building your company on the quality of your initial service or product offering, can you really risk trusting the development of that product to a guy thousands of miles away?

Be careful with your outsourcing, and really examine if you need to pay for someone else to do the dirty work for you.  Skimping on good developers now could cost you your future multi-billion dollar company.

So some of you have been wondering what it is that I eat when I go on these intense bulking or cutting sessions (for those that are interested, FPFL is a cutting routine).  Every program is different, but the fundamentals are generally the same – for calculated cutting cycles, you generally want to create a calorie deficit of 500-1000 calories per day to lose fat.  For bulking, you generally want to create a calorie surplus of 500-1000 calories to build muscle.

The deficit and surplus are measured with respect to the approximate number of calories you burn per day.  A majority of those calories are actually burned while at rest – this is your basal metabolic rate (BMR), and represents the energy that your body consumes just to keep you breathing, digesting, sleeping, and even thinking.

There are several sites out there that can calculate your BMR for you – the best ones will do it based off a combination of your weight, lean body mass, and sex.  For me, my BMR is around 1600 calories, and then I use another 800-900 calories a day in movement, so I would need to consume around 2700 calories a day to maintain my weight.

On FPFL, the goal is to create a calorie deficit of around 250 calories by improving your diet, and the rest from increased exercise.  The exercise itself is designed to increase fat burning by manipulating your body’s production of cortisol and leptin (in addition to burning calories while actually working out).

In addition to the calorie deficit, it’s important to maintain a healthy ratio of the macronutrients (what foods are composed of).  In nearly every workout routine, you’ll see a similar ratio of approximately 40% of calories from protein, 20-40% of calories from carbs, and 20-40% of calories from fat.

FPFL is a reduced carb program, so I’ll be getting a 40/20/40 split.

In addition to macronutrient ratios, it’s important to spread out calorie consumption throughout the day.  For men, it’s generally suggested that 6 meals consumed every 3 hours is optimal.

Believe it or not, I’ve actually been eating more or less like this for the past ten years.  I’ve gone through tens of cutting and bulking cycles and have made it a habit.  I haven’t always been perfect, but that’s generally how I eat.  Now that I’m starting a strict fitness routine, it’s time to clean up the junk in my diet and get really healthy.  So without further adieu, here is my meal plan:

As promised, I’m posting my “before” pictures and stats.  I have to say, I’m not too proud of posting these right now.  I’ve let myself go, but hopefully I can use this as motivation to get even more fit and in shape than I’ve ever been.

Stats

Suprailiac measurement: 15mm
Weight: 176 pounds
Waist: 35.3 inches
Bicep flexed: 14.9 inches
Waist/bicep: 2.369
Approximate body fat: 16.8%

Plans for tomorrow

Dynamic Workout 1, first day of eating healthy, and waking up early.  Wish me luck.