Shawn Lankton Online

I listen to NPR’s Science Friday podcast every week. Last Friday, there was a great interview wit author Michael Pollan. In it he talks about his new book, “In Defense of Food, An Eater’s Manifesto.” Pollan says that he can really sum up the whole book in 7 words.

Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.

As a mostly-vegan who is appalled with the amount of junk that people eat, I couldn’t agree more! I also like his description of processed-packaged-supermarket-stuff as “edible food-like substances.” I think his message is 100% correct, and very important. Most of the stuff Americans eat is not food. By eating better stuff Americans could be a lot healthier and happier!

While I may sound fanatical about it, Pollan does a great job of getting these points across in a calm, informative way. He even talks about the history of food science and how we got in this predicament. Check The Science Friday Website for a link to the audio of the interview.

Listen to the Interview

It is with a sense of sadness and triumph that I write these words. Last night I finished the last of author Tom Robbins’ books. It was a good one to end on. “Still Life with Woodpecker” expounded on the nature of love, outlaws, pyramids, and redheads. Being crowned with crimson myself, I tried to identify with the fanciful prose and witty remarks about my carrot-topped comrades.

I even went on to investigate my own redness. When I asked my mother (who recently did our family lineage) if the red hair was Irish or Scottish or what, she informed me that the rouge locks on my noggin were “from the Saxon Reds.” Ah yes. Visions of sea-faring Vikings wielding battle axes and the pagan god Thor wielding lightning and hammers flashed in my head. Anyway… back to the book.

Now that I’ve read all of Tom’s stuff, I guess I’ll have to find a new author to obsess over and kiss the ass of. Anybody have a good suggestion? I’ll leave you with some amusing and inspiring quotes.

“Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.”

“The analytically minded might conclude that persons with red hair tend to be either dangerous or funny.”

“In the world according to the positivist, the inspiring thing about scrambled eggs is that any way you turn them they’re sunny side up. In the world according to the existentialist, the hopeless thing about scrambled eggs is that any way you turn the they’re scrambled.”

“What limits people is that they don’t have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.”

I finished Tim Ferris’s book, The 4-Hour Work Week. This book is very inspiring, and takes a very different take on entrepreneurship than most books you’ll find on the subject. Tim suggests increasing efficiency in everything you do (both personal and professional) by applying the 80/20 rule and setting deadlines. (The 80/20 rule says that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts) When you only do 20% of the things you were doing before, and you set deadlines so you complete them faster than you normally would… efficiency ensues.

So in addition to this efficiency point, Tim also suggests setting up little-to-no effort income streams in the form of small niche-market internet-based businesses. He recommends outsourcing everything to a handful of companies so that your only “job” is making sure everybody plays nice together.

Once you have your life efficiently outsourced and funded with a work-free business… you take unlimited vacations and party like a rock-star! That sounds like a pretty sweet deal. I think this review came off making his book seem overly simplistic and not realistic. That wasn’t my experience at all. I really felt like he gave good information on how to make his reality come true! In fact it got me very excited about the prospect of having a “muse” (his word for a hands-free income stream). I’ve been making some moves in that direction since then. This book is definitely worth a read, and will end up in the stockings of some of my friends this Christmas.

Also, check out Tim Ferris’s Blog. It has lots of interesting stories and ideas regarding his “lifestyle design.”

This book is another attraction in Tom Robbins’ impressive line of books. Tom is far and away my favorite fiction author; and although this isn’t my favorite book of his, its worth a read. It started off slow, but once the plot got going I couldn’t put it down. “Just one more chapter, then I’ll go to bed.” Yeah right!

Here’s the synopsis: A loin-cloth-wearing magician, a sexy, enlightened debutante-turned-gypsy, a hemorrhoidal scientist/author, a rogue athlete/drug dealer, and a roadside hotdog-serving zoo are the characters and participants in a caper that might have changed the world, but ended up vanishing in a puff of light. How’s that for a summary?! This book made me want to be a hippy and eat mushrooms. In fact, I made mushrooms for dinner last night! Let me leave you with some notable quotes that found nestled in the pages:

“The principal difference between adventurer and a suicide is that the adventurer leaves himself a margin of escape. (The narrower the margin, the greater the adventure”

“Romanticism and science are good for each other. The scientist keeps the romantic honest and the romantic keeps the scientist human.”

“The world is perpetually changing. It doesn’t do much else but change… Why do you want to stick your nose into it?”

I attended a talk last night as part of the Georgia Tech Business Plan Competition Workshop Series (pdf). This was such a fantastic talk that I will have trouble putting it succinctly into this post.

Stephen Flemming
“Transforming Innovative Tech into Business”

As with any other person who has been a VC or angel investor, Steve was incredibly sharp, and seemed like he would be impervious to BS either on the giving or receiving end. Steve began his talk discussing the pros and cons of starting a business in the Southeast. He went on a diatribe about how ludicrous the spending in California is. Then he pointed out that although there isn’t much VC investment in Georgia and the surrounding states, there is a better tax situation, and much better access to real estate, talent, and customers.

Steve continued by discussing the cyclical relationship between institutional investors, VC’s, and entrepreneurs giving some insight into how that relationship drove VC’s behaviors. Some interesting take-aways were that VC’s want the entrepreneur to get rich, and that they’ll only have to be brutal and cruel if they have to in order to make the returns they promised their investors.

After giving some insight in these areas, he began enumerating the things that you must convince investors of when trying to raise capital for a business.

1. You have a large, fast-growing market segment
2. You have a technological advantage that will block competition
3. You have reasonable financial terms
4. You have measurable milestones for success

He went on fleshing these out for most of the remainder of the talk, but kept peppering in useful tips. I’d like to point out some here:

1. Get a good referral (from another investor, an attorney, etc.) If you’re plan comes pre-qualified it. You’re in.
2. Make a 20 page business plan with a 2 page executive summary. No More!
3. Power-Point deck using the 10-20-30 rule (10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point type)
4. In all of these documents, sell the company, not the product.
5. Do your homework on the investors you’re presenting to and tailor the presentation. It will help you and impress them.
6. Choose your investor wisely. Don’t just follow money; find someone that can help you with experience, expertise, contacts, etc.

Check out Steve Fleming’s website as well. Here you can find his blog as well as some useful information about starting companies.

Furthermore, here is a list of other resources and websites that Steve
suggested:

• Tesla Motors
• The Elements of Style
• Edward Tufte
• The Art of Start (Guy Kawasaki)
• Presentationzen.com

I just completed this book, The Myths of Innovation, by Scott Berkun after receiving a recommendation (and borrowed copy) from my friend/colleague Jimi Malcolm.

This short, fast read talks about the myths that people have about the process of innovation, and some steps on overcoming these myths and innovating well anyway! Although I found the book inspiring and informative, I think I can sum up all of Berkun’s talking points briefly below and save you the trouble of reading the book : )

• Work hard.
• Work on meaningful problems.
• Work on hard problems.
• Work diligently and tirelessly, but take well-earned breaks to reflect. He belabors the point that innovation comes from persistent effort, not “ah ha” moments.
• Frame and re-frame the problem you’re working on. By following the same rules and same metrics for success that everyone else follows, you’re doomed to mediocrity. Re-examine the problem and re-frame it.
• Work really, really, really hard.

Finally, here is a video from the “Google Tech Talk” series. I haven’t watched it yet, but I’ll bet you can get the gist of the whole book over the 1 hour video.

Last night I finished Hackers and Painters. This book is a collection of essays by Paul Graham, a PhD computer scientist, entrepreneur, and accomplished painter. (All of the essays are also available on his website) He makes a lot of great points about economics, entrepreneurship, design, and society. He also rants ad nauseum about his belief that LISP is the best programming language ever.

One of my big take-aways from this book are that to be successful in a tech startup you must work very hard, and make a product that is beautifully designed and loved by users. Furthermore, you must continue working hard and improving constantly or you’ll get squashed by big competitors. If you can do this, then Graham claims success is inevitable.

Recently, I’ve been reading motivational articles by Steve Pavlina. This guy is pretty remarkable (he finished two undergrad degrees in just three semesters!). Now he spouts wisdom about getting what you want out of life. I epically like some of his concepts outlined in these articles:

Overwhelming Force
Cultivating Burning Desire
The Power of Clarity

He makes some very good points about how setting goals and then making very strong and directed actions to accomplish those goals. From reading his stuff I’m getting a big surge of can-do attitude and am eager to try to tackle some goals I’ve been putting off for a while!

While traveling I had a lot of time to read on planes and trains. I occupied that time with a book about a man unravelling the mysteries of life. This book, although it seems very fantastic at times, is put forward not as a fictional story, but as a real-life account of events.

In Tales of Power, the main character and author is the apprentice of an unusual, captivating, and gifted man named Don Juan. Don Juan tries to help Casteneda understand what he calls “The Way of the Warrior” which is a necessary step in learning the “Sorcerer’s Explanation.”I’m not going to comment on whether or not I think it is ‘real’ per se. What is for sure is that the ideas in the book about how to live well, and how to change yourself in pursuit of impeccability are inspiring, and of value to anyone. Let me share one of my favorite quotes:

“The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness.”

Since I’ve finished the book, I find myself very often wondering what a warrior would do in certain situations. I like looking at things in this way. I don’t have high hopes of one day becoming a sorcerer, but… what the hell, here’s hoping.

Another fantastic Tom Robbins book closed today in the playful sunshine of a sunset in Piedmont Park. Its been said on numerous occasions by me that this author can do no wrong. He has proven hilarious, engaging, and inspiring once more in “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.“Let me share briefly two of the many quotable sections discovered between the covers…

“If little else, the brain is an educational toy… The problem with possessing such an engaging toy is that other people want to play with it, too. Sometimes they’d rather play with yours than theirs. Or they object if you play with yours in a different manner.”

“Poetry is nothing more than an intensification or illumination of common objects and everyday events until they shine with their singular nature… How is this done? By fucking around with the syntax.”

I of course highly recommend this guy to everyone. It is fun and witty and will make you appreciate women and the world’s desperate need for their feminine touch.