Stone Walls

For twenty five years, I have walked by the same stone wall. I never gave it much thought until one day I spotted the rock shown above. Not only is this rock interesting...as a rock, it jarred me into thinking about slavery and the equity some of us have or don’t have in America.

Where I live on the east coast, between 1619 and 1869, so many stone walls were built that if it was one wall, it would circle the globe ten times. There are stone walls everywhere; some with stones so big that you’d think they were placed there by the same people that built the pyramids. But that’s not far from the truth. At least some of these walls were built by slaves.

The next time you see a five hundred pound rock in a stone wall, ask yourself how it got there? Big old, white farmers, their bull-strong sons, and donkeys didn’t move all those rocks. Now ask yourself who benefited? Fields were cleared, walls were built, crops were harvested, and four generations later the land was sold to Walmart.

The fact is, someone owned the humans that built the walls that turned into generational equity for one family and not another.

Going forward, I think it’s important to find ways to level up the equity each of us has in America. Generations later, this is not going to be easy to do. Then again, neither was lifting all those rocks for little or nothing in return…

Don’t Let Your Tongue Get Your Teeth Knocked Out

It’s obvious to most people that you wouldn't sit down at this table uninvited and rudely share your opinions, political views, medical advice, or preferences for Tesla over Harley.

I even politely asked for permission to take this picture and the guy on the right wanted to cancel me. After some calm introductions and smiles, we all implicitly agreed to be friends.

This doesn’t happen on the Internet though. Instead, most people commenting and tweeting approach others like they're hogtied in public square before a throng of angry rockthrowers. Let me insult you whilst my friends stone you to death. This might get you likes, followers, and support from a partisan tribe, but it never changes anything.

If you spend any amount of time on Twitter, you’ll notice that most of the political pundits and rubes that have amassed at least ten thousand disciples have done so by stoning people to death. They throw and their followers start looking for rocks. It’s circular, endless, and pointless. Really. I can’t think of a worse way to waste life.

Insulting statements that attract likes and followers are truly antithetical to building a foundation of genuine power that can affect change. There’s nothing less powerful than a flock of bleating sheep. Imagine spending two years becoming a political shepherd, posting fresh veg to your base, firing up the troops, and bathing in dopamine only to realize you're not an influencer, you're a mook. History will show that it’s all so pointless.

Go back to the picnic table (see photo). If you can’t find some common ground, don’t let your tongue get your teeth knocked out. Just shut up. Please. You’re undeniably part of the problem.

The one thing we all have in common is our humanity. True power resides in those that contribute to the forward and upward graph of evolution. Small kind things, family and friends, dedication to a noble mission, and the pursuit of sustainable innovations are stuff to spend time and energy on. Building a mook army on social media...well, you’re just pulling the graph down.

The same could be said for spending time on the consumption of this stuff. At least I tell myself that I’m better off reading a book or walking deviceless in the woods. With every moment spent on political bullshit there is something positive we should have done instead.

I realize this post is a contradiction of sorts. I’m throwing rocks at political twitter and producing negative energy. However, I see it as a noble mission. Moreover, I’m saving myself.

I’ll just conclude by saying: in person, on the Internet, with friends, or amongst strangers...keep your teeth.

Easy Fitness Advice

Pertaining to health, wellness, and fitness, I stay in the top 5% for my age; always have and fingers crossed, I always will.

The secret is to have a fightline.

Your fightline is an exact time each day, 10:00 AM for example, when you ask yourself these questions: “Did I win yesterday?” and “How can I win today?”. More specifically, “What do I need to do over the next twenty-four hours to be healthier than the last twenty-four hours?”

Your assessment of yesterday informs what you need to do today. You are either going to subtract stuff from yesterday (stress, caffeine, sit time, alcohol, sugar, etc.) or add stuff (steps, meditation, reps, protein, fiber, water, stretches, etc.). This addition and subtraction is fightline math.

If you lost yesterday, the day before, the day before that, and so on for days, weeks, months or even years, there’s only one thing left to do: win tomorrow.

You can win tomorrow by making small, fightline calculations: a bit of stress reduction here; some extra steps there; one less drink of coffee or wine; and/or any other smart addition to, or subtraction from, yesterday.

Be consistent. You’re better off doing ten pushups every day, than doing a hundred one day and nothing the next.

Be reasonable. You’re better off walking up one short hill every day, than climbing a mountain every month.

Be aware. When you can feel your adjustments, you’re making genuine progress. Daily walks are perceptible; removing ten grains of sugar from your daily diet might not be.

Be mathematical. You’re aging every day. There’s no such thing as staying level by living life today exactly like you did yesterday. Use fightline math to stay ahead of your biological clock.

If you are consistent, reasonable, aware and mathematical, you’ll become the best version of yourself. I guarantee it.

As for my fightline, it’s 9:30 AM, right after my Unified Health and Performance workout on Zoom. At this time, I know if I lost yesterday (always due to bad decisions); it’s also when I calculate how to win tomorrow.

FYI: the older we get, the harder the fight!

The Lego Recycling Machine

The Lego Recycling Machine is a fun, relatable, and fictional story that adults can use to teach children how technology and circular thinking will inspire the earth-friendly product designs of the future.

Last week, I drove twenty-two miles to pour two Home Depot buckets of random Lego blocks into the eager mouth of a Lego Recycling Machine.

The Machine was located at the end of a nondescript stripmall, right next to an In-N-Out burger. The entire storefront was occupied by a huge Lego logo, a collection chute (the mouth), an exit hole (for boxes and envelopes), and a locked service door.

I never saw an employee. The machine was exclusively operated through the Lego Loop app that I downloaded to my phone.

Nine minutes after pouring ten gallons of mixed Legos into the machine, using the Lego Loop app, I paid for an organized box that included: 1,830 blocks from our bucket, 315 Lego Next Life (LNL) blocks, and three new Lego Building Instruction Booklets.

I left 986 [unneeded] blocks in the machine for resale to others as LNL blocks. Every LNL block sold converts to fractional Lego Coin [crypto] that I can use within the rapidly expanding LNL economy.

91 missing blocks were mailed to me from machines located elsewhere, as these machines are each capable of autonomously preparing packages for shipping.

Even more fun, students from my son’s school used the Lego Loop app to form a club. Using the app, members voted on projects by pledging blocks and Lego Coin to an array of designs. The first build completed, a huge Battlestar Cruiser, used 9,002 blocks pledged by eighteen members. Using the pledged Lego Coin, blocks needed to complete four additional designs are being purchased from others.

Lego Recycling has become so popular that billions of abandoned Legos have been sourced from yard sales, flea markets, basements, and attics the world over.

Lego Group, the company that makes the machines, now earns more profit per year from recycling Legos and reselling designs than they do from manufacturing. Moreover, the machines are adept at detecting and rejecting counterfeits; this feature has almost wiped out the Lego black market.

Lego’s Director of Regenerative Initiatives, Hans Swedman, attributes the success of the Lego Recycling Machine and the Lego Loop app to artificial intelligence and machine learning. “The machine is able to sort, size, organize, and assemble boxes of Legos and new Building Instructions in ways that could not be imagined, and at speeds that could not be matched, by an army of engineers!”

The Lego Loop app is not only enabling a new social recycling and construction experience, it’s also fostering a generation of Lego recycling entrepreneurs. One eleven-year old boy, alias Joe Cakes, has reclaimed and is reselling nearly a million blocks; his mother told me that Joe and his father visited several hundred yard sales last year, and that Joe has earned enough LNL crypto to almost pay for his first year of college!

The Lego Recycling Machine has become so important to the Lego Group that the company has been able to cut its use of virgin plastics over the last three years by more than 50%.

Lego Group, a company which has produced over 400,000,000,000 plastic bricks since 1958, is showing the world that circular thinking, machine learning, and blockchain technology can create a profitable, regenerative, niche economy that is far more reliant on preexisting product than new.

Who would have thought that the top selling toy of 2022 would be a bucket of your old blocks and a couple of machine-generated Building Instruction Booklets?

This post was inspired through conversations with my son (age 11) about AI and ML; by the nine years I spent innovating in the Auto Recycling industry; by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation; by The Paperclip Maximizer; and by a post in the Wall Street Journal titled “Lego Struggles to Find a Plant-Based Plastic That Clicks”.

After reading about Lego’s noble effort to engineer plant-based blocks, I thought, with 400Bn Legos on earth, why bother? We don’t need more, we just need a smarter way to recover and recycle the nature-resistant bricks that already exist.

Climate Change Needs a Cigarette

By 1950 over half of all men and a fifth of all women in the United States smoked. Today, after more than fifty years of anti-smoking campaigns and deserving attacks on the tobacco industry, the smoking population has declined to less than fourteen percent of the total population.

Along the way to creating broad awareness of the dangers of smoking, smoking has become uncool, dirty, and generally viewed as an addiction of the unfortunate. Smokers are called butt suckers, ash heads, nic bitches, chimneys, cancer clouds, and other ugly names.

There are a lot of similarities between ‘the war on tobacco’ and ‘the war on climate change’: unhealthy consequences that [will] span generations, entrenched big-money interests, disinformation warfare, inept initial government responses, cultural trends, and more.

What’s missing from the war on climate change? Cigarettes.

With smoking, you can point to any effect and instantly know the cause: lung cancer…cigarettes; heart disease…cigarettes; mouth cancer…cigarettes; yellow teeth and premature aging…cigarettes; bad breath…cigarettes; and other dreadful things due to…cigarettes

Sure, with climate change there’s CO2 and greenhouse gasses, but try pointing to them.

Furthermore, climate language is constructed around addition versus subtraction: The more CO2 we ADD to the atmosphere, the bigger the problem, and so on. However, adding something [invisible] to anything that appears to have unlimited capacity [the atmosphere] instantly creates a comprehension hurdle. When we can’t comprehend the size of the groceries or the bag, it’s hard to understand the problem.

Subtraction on the other hand, is easier to grok. The world has finite resources, and eight billion humans, consuming as we do today, will deplete the resources that future generations need (e.g.: clean water). ‘Unlimited resources’ is a notion that nobody should have. On the contrary, when we consume [subtract] more than we need, we are the problem. There’s a simple truth to this common sense, depletion argument that doesn’t require specialized knowledge, carbon calculators, satellite data, climate models, or Ted Talks…demand will outstrip supply.

Since resource consumption and carbon generation are two sides of the same coin, it’s my belief as an entrepreneur and a marketer that ‘consumption’ is a far easier problem to communicate and solve than ‘generation’. Here’s a crude antidote to support my thesis: “consumption pig” or “carbon footprint”? Which combination of words generates an emotional response?

Words are everything.

My motivation for writing this post is simple: Like a lot of American families, we are generally aware that there’s a climate problem. However, we are nearly clueless about what to do about it. Sure, we recycle; we talk about climate; we read about climate; I have worked on climate initiatives; but, my family is still consuming way too much of the world’s remaining resources.

Not wanting to call — even jokingly — my family, friends, or neighbors “consumption pigs”, I decided to endeavour to come up with something we can use to lovingly shame each other into trimming our consumption.

After an extensive branding exercise, I have latched onto remixing “climate change”, “consumption”, and “hog” to come up with…”chog”.

Less offensive than “pig”, “chog” is the ‘cigarette’ climate change needs.

Excessive consumption…chogging.

Kids that leave the lights on…chogs.

McMansion…choghouse.

Large SUV…chogmobile.

Shopaholic…chogaholic.

Hamburger…chogburger (meat’s a problem)

Daily Amazon deliveries…chogwild.

Instagramming soccer mom iIdling an SUV for seventy minutes…megachog.

It’s time to make chogging as offensive as smoking.

This does not need to be mean-spirited. With family and friends, I suggest using a smile. With chogholes, try alternative approaches :)

Far too many of us are chogs. If the climate crisis is as urgent as it seems, expect to be politely prodded, then shamed, and then ultimately required to reduce consumption. Chogging and the preservation of species, including humans, are incompatible. It may take fifty years, but one way or another, chogs will become…dinosaurs.

Related post: The Last Chog

Family Entertainment Guide

I created this guide to help our children navigate the constant pull of social media, Netflix, video games, and other forms of what I call “shallow entertainment”.

I deliver this guide like a business presentation (each section as a slide). I try to be quick, to the point, upbeat, and casual.

A tabloid-sized (11 by 17) copy of this presentation (pictured below) is taped to our refrigerator. [Omnigraffle file]

This is a guide, not rules! We often remind our kids about what’s in the guide, but we don’t strictly enforce any of the bullets below.

The goal here is to create awareness [of shallow entertainment] and to inspire self-motivation.

Shallow Entertainment Sources

• video games

• social media

• episodic TV, Netflix, YouTube

• politics, cable news, local news

• cheap novels

• sports and entertainment news

• shallow news (e.g.: Apple News)

• unnecessary shopping

Why This Guide Matters?

Solitude is necessary to deep thinking; deep thinking is necessary to navigating complex tasks; your ability to complete complex tasks makes your work products highly valuable. Today, social media, endless alerts, devices, and shallow entertainment deprive almost everyone of solitude. Be different!

Your attention [your time] is your most valuable asset. Don’t waste your attention (and your youth) on shallow entertainment.

Create don’t consume. So much happiness comes from creating. Spend more time creating than consuming [entertainment].

Invest TWICE as much time into real-life, face-to-face, in-person friendships, relationships, and networking as you spend on entertainment, and you will be twice as happy, healthy, and wealthy because of it.

Entertainment is a reward for doing something charitable, for learning something complex, for accomplishing goals, and [generally] for completing a meaningful day. If you don’t deserve the reward, go to bed and try harder tomorrow.

Shallow Entertainment Timing

Beyond spending a few minutes in the morning to review social updates and headlines, mornings should never be dedicated to entertainment.

Entertainment comes at the end of the day…after you have completed your homework, chores, exercise, learning, sports, arts, health, spiritual, and goal commitments.

Shallow Entertainment Boundaries

Weekdays: 60–90 minutes TOTAL* a day is more than enough (all sources combined).

Weekends: 90–120 minutes TOTAL* a day is more than enough (all sources combined).

*Including: no more than one TV/Netflix episode a day, and 100% of your social media usage.

Better Than Shallow Entertainment

• Ted Talks and smart YouTube videos

• Exercise, sports training, walking, or running

• Important books (not shallow novels)

• Serious, thoughtful, smart internet posts

• Prayer and meditation

• Playing music or creating art

• Napping

• Spending time with friends

• Preparing healthy food

Before Entertainment Questions

• Are you getting more As than Bs, and no Cs?

• Is your homework completed?

• 30 minutes of cardio? 100–200 pushups?

• Have you prepared a healthy meal today?

• Is your room clean and organized?

• Do you need to attend to your laundry?

• Do your pets have food, water, etc.?

• Any cleaning, organizing, or chores to do?

• Have you responded to important requests to communicate (e.g.: emails)

• Have you reviewed your goals (and schedule) for the day, week, month, and more?

• Have you learned something smart and relevant to your career today (e.g.: read one long article)?

• Are your finances in order, and are all your bills paid?

Succeeding @ Youth Sports

In his best-selling book “Outliers”, Author Malcolm Gladwell states, “10,000 hours is the magic number of greatness.” In other words, if you practice 10,000 hours, you could be great…or maybe not. According to a recent study, “Practice Does Not Necessarily Make Perfect”. Instead, “greatness” can be attributed to a variety of factors. In sports, we only have to work backwards from what’s measured at the highest levels to see that ‘practice’ is just one component in an equation that also includes technical, tactical, physical, and psychological inputs, or TTPP for short.

If your athlete goes far enough in sports, you will notice that player assessment (forms and software), elite training programs, professional player development, recruiters, academies, scouts, coach training, and more are all leveraging holistic formulas that include TTPP.

So what should the parents of a young athlete focus on?

I am not an expert. Three of our kids graduated as varsity athletes; our youngest plays club soccer at a high level; I have coached soccer for many years; and as an entrepreneur, I have invested ~2,000 hours researching venture opportunities in youth sports.

I have given a lot of thought to succeeding at youth sports: what it looks like, how to obtain it, and why we should care.

In the early years, adults are obviously part of the equation. If you (the adult) and your athlete invest 3,000 hours into youth sports you can preserve three overlapping probabilities for success (see red arrow).

High probability (big circle): your athlete will become confident, outgoing, responsible, a team player, meet long-term friends, and make a lifetime commitment to health and fitness.

Reasonable probability (medium circle): your athlete will become a varsity athlete, a collegiate athlete, participate in club sports, and perhaps coach as a parent.

Extremely low probability (small circle): your athlete will be awarded a D1 scholarship, become a pro, and/or coach professionally.

It’s unpredictable, but if you and your athlete invest 3,000 hours filling the technical, tactical, physical, and psychological [TTPP] buckets, all outcomes — however remote — are possible.

Think of the first 3,000 hours as nearly a third of the way to the 10,000 hours needed to achieve mastery. The amount of hours invested per week ramps up with age. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all schedule to follow. Some kids reach mastery by age twenty, and some need five or six additional years. Accelerated investment [in a sport] doesn’t seem to be a surefire recipe. Who hasn’t seen a fast-starter (technical) that’s either lost (tactical), repeatedly injured (physical), and/or unhappy (psychological)? All of the TTPP buckets have to be filled.

In invasion sports (e.g.: soccer, hockey, basketball, lacrosse, football, etc.) where one side is always invading or defending territory, filling the TTPP buckets includes, but is not limited to:

T- Technical: The athlete is acquiring the 1v1, handling, and scoring confidence needed to assume responsibility for predominantly enabling (when attacking) or preventing (when defending) FORWARD movement of the ball or puck; versus relying upon a teammate to do it. (Eventually, someone has to move ‘it’ forward.)

T- Tactical: The athlete is acquiring the right-place-right-time situational knowledge needed to reliably participate in, or prevent, an invasion.

P — Physical: The athlete is acquiring [experiencing] an understanding of how nutrition, rest, and age-appropriate training for strength, stamina, agility, balance, coordination, and speed are all interconnected and essential to competing and winning.

P — Psychological: The athlete is learning how to embrace failure, how to process criticism, how to live in the present, how to visualize success, that succeeding in sports requires a ‘marathoner’ not a ‘sprinter’, and that the [bucket filling] journey…is the reward. Link

Google “technical tactical physical psychological” to learn more.

Note: Experts strongly suggest that kids “should not take part in organized sports activities for more hours per week than their age. For example: a twelve-year-old athlete should not participate in more than twelve hours per week of organized sport.”

The psychological bucket — the smiles bucket — is the hardest to fill. Motivating a child to happily invest 3,000 hours is the most formidable job in youth sports. Most kids quit before they become teenagers. Eventually, everyone has to self-motivate, but until early adulthood, parents and coaches play a big role in filling and [unfortunately] draining the smiles bucket.

The graphic above depicts a scenario that is all too common: technical, tactical, and physical buckets are filling, while the psychological bucket is empty…and your athlete wants to quit. How come? There’s a parent that thinks he’s building a pro, or a coach that thinks she’s launching a career, and one or both of them are fun crushing zombies.

Fun has to be the organizing idea…full stop/period. It’s amazing how many parents fail to put a foundation of fun under their athlete’s entire youth sports experience. It’s certainly not easy to position, plan, and execute every action and activity as fun. Nevertheless, everything and anything, including your advice, coaching, prodding, and feedback that’s not underpinned with an intention to fill the smiles bucket…drains it. I’ve done this. We all do it. This is easy to fix.

Begin by teaching your athlete what future fun looks like…and how to earn it.

Humans are transactional. I do X, and then I get Y. (I go to the dentist; I get a toy.) As kids and parents transact, a fun-trust account either fills or depletes. Parents create a fun-trust surplus when they consistently and reliably deliver the fun/joy/happiness they promised or implied. With a fun-trust surplus, it’s easier to pitch complex transactions that include [distant] future gratification.

In other words, parents dedicated to delivering fun in the early years and judiciously thereafter will succeed at pitching hard work, practice, patience, perseverance, and even setbacks as pathways to future fun. Conversely, no-fun parents with fun-trust deficits can’t make the same pitch. Everything about sports can be positioned and organized as either fun or as a pathway to fun.

Note: Competency builds confidence. The only way to build competency is to keep playing. The only way to keep them playing is to keep it fun. Until it’s a job, kids PLAY sports. Suggested Ted Talk

Along the way to 3,000 hours, you will see amazing young athletes that have incredible technical skills and/or advanced physical capabilities; they will seem so talented and so advanced that you may be tempted to drop out of the race. Don’t. Bigger, faster, stronger, or two years of extra experience are not reliable markers for future success. In fact, if anyone in the world could reliably predict which athletes at twelve will be successful at twenty-two, they would be wildly wealthy. Early selection is a myth; late bloomers are common; and all of the TTPP buckets have to be filled.

If you are a competitive person that’s wondering at this point, how to win, how to beat the system, and how to arrive at the end of the journey on top. Here are two observations:

First, ‘winners’ seem to simply win the war of attrition. As noted above, most kids quit, including most of the ‘future hall-of-famers’ that have been identified early on by so-called ‘experts’. Every athlete that plays a sport for fifteen to twenty years wins.

Second, overachievers have one thing in common: they’re smart and deliberate goal setters.

So, here’s my formula: During the first 3,000 hours, preserve all of your athlete’s options by filling all four of the TTPP buckets; always make it fun; ignore all the hype pertaining to young superstars…even when they’re yours; and guide the entire process via goals that are great, granular, gritty, and guided.

Goals — Activities and actions are undertaken with SMART goals in mind. Goals are essential. Work with your athlete to set weekly, monthly, season, and longer-term goals. Every two weeks, take ten minutes to review progress.

Great — Activities and actions are intended to be [great] fun, or a pathway to future fun. Especially in the early years, if it’s not fun, you’re draining the smiles bucket.

Granular — Deconstruct big picture goals such as ‘get better’ or ‘score more’ into granular goals (and routines) that add up to something bigger. Granular example: three times a week, kick with my left foot, from the right side of a small target that is twenty feet away, and strike the target ten times out of one-hundred attempts; adjust upward as the goal is met.

Grit — Choose activities and actions where initial failure is probable, a bit of agony is inevitable, and hard work is required; doing so builds grit. A good example of the intersection of grit and fun is when kids compete against older siblings.

Guided — Use highly qualified coaches and instructors to make granular adjustments, and to obtain continuous advice and feedback. (Parents are rarely qualified to do this.)

Coaching The Cross

Last week, you put seven kids on the field, and three of them were your most experienced players, but the other team’s demoralizing attack overwhelmed your defense and scored at will. Chances are, the other team was coached to cross the ball to score, and they were coached on how to defeat the cross on the defensive end of the field.

This post covers how to use the flashcards to teach scoring via ‘the cross’, and how to defeat ‘the cross’. There are certainly other winning strategies, but this one is easy to teach and easy to execute.

To begin, your team will need to understand coverage area responsibility. Once everyone understands coverage area responsibility, coaching the cross (attacking with / defending against) is simply a matter of emphasizing the flashcards listed below.

Cross to score: In a competitive 7v7 match, even your strongest players will not be able to drive the ball up the middle and through multiple defenders. Instead, coach your team to score by crossing the ball in front of the opponent’s net. Use the following flashcards to emphasize that your team is a cross-to-score team first, and not a team of superheroes:

• ATM - Avoid The Middle. When driving the ball toward the opponent’s end of the field, don't play through the middle (that’s where everyone will be). Drive the ball to the corners and cross it!

• SGS - Superheroes Get Stuffed. Superheroes that try to drive the ball through multiple defenders always get stuffed. Don’t get stuffed. Play to the corners and cross the ball to your teammate.

• AT! - Attack Together! Don’t be left behind! Every attacker should be moving forward as fast as the attacker with the ball.

As a point of emphasis, I ask the team: “Who’s faster, the player moving the ball up the field, or the player sprinting up the field without the ball?” Kids answer: “The player sprinting up the field.” My response (with a smile): “Then why are you all ten yards behind the player with ball? Attack Together Please!

Defeating the cross: Kids are hardwired to chase the ball (like cats chasing toys); defeating the cross involves deprogramming this behavior. Defenders have to be repeatedly reminded to stay on their side of the field. The Right Defender should NEVER be in the Left Defender’s area of responsibility, and vice-a-versa.

• PYP - Play Your Position. Don’t run all over the field, you will be exhausted by halftime. Focus on dominating your portion of the field. Don’t be crossing from left to right, or right to left. Stay on your side of the field.

• DTC - Defeat The Cross. Good teams know how to cross and score. The Left Defender must cover the left side of the box, and the Right Defender must cover the right side of the box. Stay on your side. PYP.

Related notes: Highly skilled players (the best players on the team) will try to play through the middle, they will get stuffed, and they will be reluctant to settle on an assist via a cross...especially when mom or dad is counting goals. Two bits of advice:

• Inform parents that you are a cross-to-score team first; that playing through the middle, taking too many touches, and getting stuffed is frowned upon.

• Inform your superstar scorers that if they take turns, work together, and cross-to-score, the Left Wing and the Right Wing will BOTH get a chance to score.

In some game situations (e.g.: when the score is lopsided), give maturing players opportunities to score by instructing advanced players to cross the ball to a maturing player. Coach maturing players to UTF (Use The Force) when receiving a crossing pass.

• UTF - Use The Force. NO WILD KICKING. Settle, inhale, look, exhale, kick.

Practicing the cross: Use half of a 7v7 field to set up a drill where three attackers (left, center, right) challenge two defenders (left, right) and a goalie.

• Use cones to divide the field vertically (between left and right).

• Instruct the defenders to NEVER cross the dividing cone line.

• Attackers begin at midfield.

• Instruct the attackers that they can only score on a cross that comes from one side of the box or the other.

• Set up two cones at midfield that the defenders can use as a small exit goal.

• Scrimmage until a score, or until the ball goes out of bounds.

• Cycle attackers and defenders until everyone has played both positions (attacker and defender) at least three times.  

• Use the flashcards to remind defenders and attackers about key points of play. For example, DDI - Don’t Dive In for defenders.

7v7 Soccer Field Strategy

Note: I realize the terms “sweeper” and “stopper” used below may seem dated to some. Nevertheless, the 7v7 strategies remain valid.

Field strategies are most effective when the coach spends fifteen minutes at a full-field practice outlining (with cones) and placing every player in a rectangle that covers each overlapping position. Showing kids their entire area (their rectangle) of responsibility prior to a game helps you to set an expectation for attacking and defending (by position) during a game. Move the ball (by hand) all around the field and ask every player to move to the place in their coverage rectangle where you expect them to be as the ball moves around the field.

Pertaining to field strategy, the most important flashcard is ABM (Always Be Moving). Soccer is a sport where players rarely stand still. Coach your players to Alway Be Moving to the best place in their coverage area to receive or to intercept a pass. With a smile and a big voice, I tell players "If you're standing still, you're probably doing something wrong; there's always a smarter place to be."

Field strategies have to be somewhat dynamic. Against a weaker opponent, your entire team will unconsciously press up and attack, and against a strong opponent, your entire team will retreat into a defensive stance. Try teaching the concept of 'shape'. When I ask players to Hold Your Shape (HYS), I tell them that no matter how small the field gets, as everyone converges toward the net (on either end), trust your teammates, hold the basic shape of the formation, and then quickly return to your assigned coverage area as the field re-expands.

Here are some suggestions for positioning your players on the field during a game.

Definitions

• Maturing Players: kick without thinking and struggle with passing.

• Skill Players: the strongest players on the team.

• Stopper: whenever possible, stops the ball at midfield / overlaps with the sweeper.

• Sweeper: sweeps the ball away from the net; when under pressure, ejects the ball from the field.

Suggestions 

• Place maturing players into positions where they can succeed. We often put maturing players where they are either 1) sandwiched between two skill players, or 2) on the wing positions, and 3) rarely on defense unless they are highly capable of clearing the ball up the sidelines and/or with smartly ejecting the ball out of the field of play.

• During practice, use cones to show the entire size and shape of each area of responsibility.

• On the diagrams below, areas of responsibility overlap; make sure to remind players of their overlapping responsibilities.

Priority Defense

This is a great formation to use when you feel that your team might be overwhelmed by an opponent. In this formation, defensive players rarely cross midfield, and the center’s primary responsibility is defense. When the center does move up to attack, you also need at least one wing that can score.

Priority Offense

This is a great, aggressive formation for teams that have more skill players than maturing players. Place your strongest skill players on defense and allow them to play up and attack like midfielders. Put the least developed player into the sweeper position, but behind a solid stopper.

Priority Center

For when you only have 2-3 skill players available.

Notice the five positions stacked in the middle.

The center is the most important player on the field.

The sweeper is the second strongest player on the field, and the primary defender.

Maturing players are sandwiched between skill players.

If you have a third skill player, place him or her at striker.

The 2-2-2

The 2-2-2 is probably the most common 7v7 positioning strategy.

Pros: easy to teach, and easy for the kids to move the ball up the field vertically.

Cons: without the center players (center-mid, stopper, striker, or sweeper) used in the formations above, passing triangles are less likely to form, and triangles lead to controlling possession and to more scoring opportunities.

Coaching Coverage Areas

Right Wing coverage area shown above.

When you coach/teach ‘coverage areas’, you will be giving your players a far better spatial sense of individual responsibility, including stamina requirements, across every position.

Every position has a coverage area of responsibility. We simply call these areas ‘coverage areas’. Most coverage areas resemble large, overlapping squares or rectangles.

Players are responsible for all of the attacking and defending within their coverage area.

“If you are not attacking, you are defending. If you are not defending, you are attacking. There is no third option.”

Suggested steps for coaching/teaching coverage areas:

• For at least one practice, reserve an entire 7v7 field.

• Prior to the practice, choose a field strategy that will complement the strengths of your team. Coverage areas for every position are delineated on the field strategy diagrams.

• Hint: prior to beginning this exercise, let the kids scrimmage to burn off some energy.

• Use cones to outline every overlapping coverage area on the field. You may need up to twenty minutes (prior to practice) to strategically place the cones.

• Put at least one player into every coverage area.

• With the ball in your hands, quickly move around the field while asking every player on the field to rapidly move to the best place within his or her coverage area to be.

• Example: If you are in the far right corner of the attacking end of the field, every player should have moved to a place within their area of responsibility that is as close to you as possible. The Right Wing should be standing next to you.

• This is a great time to stress ABM (Always Be Moving) to the best place in your coverage area to receive or to intercept a pass...no matter where the ball is on the field.

• With a smile, I tell players “If you are standing still, you are probably doing something wrong. Always Be Moving.”

• Review, correct, and repeat until everyone understands where to be in each coverage area...no matter where the ball is on the field.

• With the coverage area cones still on the field, and at your water break, using a dry erase board, relate the board to the field size, to your selected field strategy (drawn on the board), and to every overlapping coverage area on the field. If you do this while the cones are on the field, coaching with a dry erase board during games will be far more effective.

• With the coverage area cones still on the field, restart the scrimmage.

• Place yourself within the scrimmage and repeatedly communicate your on-field expectations (e.g.: Always Be Moving).

• Pertaining to this exercise [coverage areas] use the flashcards listed below [as reminders] to set your on-field expectations.

• And coach...ABS - Always Be Smiling :)

Recommended Coverage Area Flashcards / Concepts to repeatedly stress while you’re on the field during the exercise described above:

ABM - Always Be Moving. Every player needs to understand that even if he or she does not possess the ball, he or she must Always Be Moving [ABM] to the best place to receive or to intercept a pass (within their coverage area).

CES - Create Elephant Space. “When we go on attack, instantly create and maintain elephant space between you and the closest defender.” Elephant spaces are big enough for...an elephant to walk through.

PYP - Play Your Position. “Trust your teammates. Stay out of their coverage areas. If you're covering your teammate’s area, who’s covering yours? Please play your position!”

DNL - Defend Never Land. “If the ball is in Neverland, alarm bells should be going off! Instantly move into or toward Neverland! Everyone works together to drive the ball out of neverland! Defend Never Land as if invaders are coming to [use your imagination].” The younger kids love the concept of defending Neverland!

CYA - Cover Your Attackers. When the other team has possession, no matter where the ball is on the field, cover the attackers that are in your coverage area. Play Your Position (PYP), Cover Your Attackers (CYA), and get ready to intercept a pass.

Select other flashcards to use as coaching reminders during this exercise.

Youth Soccer Flash Cards

I coached ~ten seasons of youth soccer. I created the flashcards below for nine-year-olds. However, I have found that most of the cards can be used with older kids.

The Flashcards serve three purposes:

• They remind me, as the coach, of the three to five things I want to emphasize each week.

• Kids readily, easily, and eagerly buy into the method of using three letters (ABM, ABT, UBG, etc.) to learn and to receive continuous coaching.

• Parents can use the flashcards to emphasize what's important to the team.

There are four flashcard categories:

1. The Ultimate Soccer Player

2. Success Tips

3. Attacking Tips

4. Defending Tips

5. Keeper Tips

Here are all of the flashcards below on Google Docs.

The Ultimate Soccer Player

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Always Be Smiling

We are here to have fun!

Smiles are infectious! Smile for your teammates, for your coaches, and at your opponents.

Always Be Talking

Be a field general!

Always let your teammates know your intentions by calling out plays and/or by asking for the ball.

Always Be Moving

If you are standing still, you are probably doing something wrong 😀 Always be moving FAST to the best space on the field to receive or to intercept a pass.

Always Be Practicing

Jump rope, dribble, juggle, and shoot every day. Use your weak foot more than your strong. Stay fit and strong all year long.

Success Tips

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Use The Force

NO WILD KICKING

settle, inhale, look, exhale, kick

Play Your Position

Don’t run all over the field, you will be exhausted by halftime. Focus on dominating your portion of the field. Don’t be crossing from left to right, or right to left. Stay on your side of the field.

Use Ball Gravity

When you control the ball, sometimes it makes sense to MAKE the opponent come to you. This is called “using ball gravity” to pull the opponent into a weaker field position.

Win Every Throw-In

Everyone moves fast toward the throw-in area, and then we make smart throws fast! When defending, we cover our opponents like a WET blanket.

No Field Drama

If you are hurt, stay down! If you are frustrated or mad at yourself for making a mistake, get up, smile, and find the best space on the field to be. No pounding the ground. Your team needs you!

Always Be Moving

Players are assigned a position; each position has a coverage area* (Right Wing shown in green); players are coached to always be moving (ABM) within their coverage area.

We measure motivation by observing what happens before and after touching the ball. We tell players to NEVER touch and stop; when the ball is in your coverage area, repeatedly go after it; or rapidly go to the best place in your coverage area to receive or to intercept a pass.

*Depending on skill, speed, and stamina, we let players ‘lengthen’ their coverage areas.

Hold Your Shape

Every formation has a shape. As the ball moves up and down the field, the formation should hold its shape. Even when everyone is packed near the box, the formation should hold its shape!

Attacking Tips

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Create Elephant Space

On attack, Always Be Moving (ABM) to Create Elephant Spaces (CES) between you and every defender. Elephant spaces are big enough for an elephant to walk through!

Avoid The Middle

When driving the ball toward the opponents end of the field, don't play through the middle (that’s where everyone will be). Drive the ball to the corners and cross it!

Superheroes Get Stuffed!

Superheroes that try to drive the ball through multiple defenders always get stuffed. Don’t get stuffed. Play to the corners and cross the ball to your teammate.

Attack Together!

Don’t be left behind! Every attacker should be moving forward as fast as the attacker with the ball.

Follow Your Shot

Don’t stop after shooting on goal. Follow your shot all the way to the goalie.

Flip The Field

Attackers with the ball always attract traffic. If you have elephant space, sometimes the best decision is to kick the ball to the opposite side of the field.

Defending Tips

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Show A Shoulder

When approaching an attacker that has the ball, show your right shoulder to steer the attacker left. Show your left shoulder to steer the attacker right.

Don’t Dive In

First, use the shape and position of your body to force the attacker into the weakest possible position…then go for the ball.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Cover Your Attacker

If we are not attacking, we are ALL defending! If the other team has possession of the ball, everyone’s job is to cover any attacker that is in their coverage area.

Defeat The Cross

Good teams know how to cross and score. The Left Defender must cover the left side of the box, and the Right Defender must cover the right side of the box. Stay on your side. PYP.

Defend Never Land

Never Land is the shaded area that surrounds our goal and the penalty area, and extends all the way to midfield.

Everyone defends Never Land, including offense! We control Never Land.

Unless you have Elephant Space, don’t pass or ask for a pass in Never Land. Drive the ball out of Never Land.

Move the ball out of Never Land and up the sidelines (see direction of arrows).

If the ball reaches the purple shaded area near our net, you are to EJECT the ball from the field of play on your first touch.

Keeper Tips

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Empty Your Head

Goals and mistakes happen. The best keepers have short memories. You have less than sixty seconds to recover. Breathe, smile, and get ready for the next attack.

Keeper Ready Position

Come three steps out of the net. Use the goal posts at the opposite end of the field to align yourself. Bend your knees. Get up on your toes. Put your arms, hands, and fingers down. Turn your palms toward the attacker with the ball.

Watch this YouTube video.

Keeper Radar On

As an attacker with the ball approaches, get into the Keeper Ready Position. Your chest is now a tracking radar. Angle your body and quickly shuffle from left to right (without crossing your feet) so that your chest is always centered on the potential path of the ball.

Watch this YouTube video.

Attack The Floaters

Don't wait. If the ball is floating toward you, jump through oncoming attackers and toward the ball with one knee in the air. Yell "keeper" loudly! Use your hands to scoop the ball into your waist.

Watch this YouTube video.

Knock Down Rockets

If you try to catch a rocket shot, it will go right through your hands. Knock down or punch away rockets instead.

Be A Monster

You are the monster of your box. You're hungry. The ball is your lunch. Attackers are your desert. Don't hesitate. Yell like a monster. Pick up the ball before an attacker can get to it.

Avoid The Middle

Avoid the middle dude. There's hardly ever a good reason to punt, throw, kick, or roll the ball into the middle of your team's side of the field.

Roll The Ball

Unless you can kick the ball like a guided missile, on goal kicks, roll the ball to one of your defenders instead. Don't turn over the ball by punting it to the other team.

Crush Corner Kicks

On corner kicks, stand at the goal post that is furthest away from the corner kick (the back post); this way you can charge forward to Attack The Floaters (ATF). Have one of your defenders cover the post nearest to the corner kick.

Organize Your Defenders

Don't let your defenders daydream. Confidently guide your defenders into positions where they can help you to Defend Never Land (DNL), Defeat The Cross (DTC), and Crush Corner Kicks (CCK).

Slow Motion Option

Once you have control of the ball, sometimes the best decision is to move slowly enough to let your team recover and get ready to attack. At other times, the best decision is to move quickly enough to take advantage of an unorganized opponent. In all cases Organize Your Defenders (OYD) first.

Kick The Pass

Don't forget, when your teammate passes the ball back to you, you can't pick it up. You have to kick the ball first.

Getting The Most Out Of Youth Soccer

We are a soccer family. I coach and all of our children play or played soccer. Our daughter captained her varsity team. Our twin boys play varsity, and they are also seasoned referees. Our youngest son plays for a local club team. And together, we have spent thousands of hours on and around soccer fields across the country.

When it comes to vacation, forget the ocean, we have so much fun with soccer that we only rent properties that are close to soccer fields. Weird huh? It wasn’t always like this. My wife and I didn’t even play organized sports. Twenty years ago, being a ‘soccer cult’, as my daughter calls us, was decidedly not part of the family vision. However, the benefits and the positive experiences kept piling up, including:

• making great friends with like-minded families

• having the kids away from the screen and running on the field

• having undistracted teaching opportunities in the car

• having the opportunity to demonstrate organization and leadership through coaching

• experiencing success through teamwork

• learning how to overcome failures and weaknesses

• having the opportunity to relate sports to the challenges of life

• having fun traveling, coaching, playing, and competing

• having a great first job as a referee

• learning about dedication and keeping commitments

We aren't the only ones that wear out tires driving to soccer events. In fact, the families we know that have had twenty plus years of healthy fun together while seemingly raising great kids, are also...dedicated soccer nuts.

If creating a family soccer cult, or perhaps something a bit short of this, sounds more fun than strange, here are some do’s and don’ts that we learned along the way:

Do make it JOB ONE to get your son or daughter to come back next season. This has to be the hardest job in youth sports, as most parents seem to be struggling with it.

Do make it all about fun. Kids only want to play if they are having fun. It’s not easy to find the fun side of inconsistent coaching, bad weather, overwhelming competition, and/or other uncontrollable things and events. However, it’s imperative that you always find a way to inject a bit of fun into each experience. It could be in the car, after practice, after a game, and/or with a new friend from the team. Always find a way to add a spoonful of fun.

Don’t share your [youth soccer related] disappointments, anxieties, criticisms, or negative thoughts in front of the kids. If you are not having fun, your child won’t either.

Don’t compare and measure. I can almost guarantee it: if you get your child to come back season after season, and year after year, your athlete will catch and/or surpass every eight-year old superstar you see on the field today.

Do praise and reward hard work. It’s fun to be recognized for working hard.

Don’t worry about A, B, and C team placements. By sixteen, the kids that participated annually are all friends, and most of them are on the same team by this age anyway.

Don’t undervalue attitude, smiles, and politeness. I have seen plenty of kids get a leg up simply based upon personality. When everyone is having fun, all this is easier.

Don’t think everyone deserves a trophy. Winning is way more fun than losing, and the kids know it. However, waffles after a loss and some praise for working hard is also fun.

Don’t coach unless you're the coach. Coaching contradictions, out-loud criticism, and endless coaching is no fun for anyone. Exchange polite emails with the coach about coaching.

Do teach work ethic and character. The funnest kids to coach are the kids that have already learned the value of hard work, teamwork, dedication, and politeness. These kids seem to succeed just by showing up.

Do consider becoming a coach. If you don’t coach your kid, someone else will. When I coach my kids, I double the fun!

Do think long-term. Every kid has a different trajectory. There are countless stories about pro athletes that did not succeed until later in life. Prepare for a long and fun journey together.

Do what most Olympic athletes do and participate in multiple sports, and/or make sure your athlete is training the opposing muscle groups that are not frequently used in soccer.

Don't try to build a lottery ticket. You can't turn your child into a pro, a D1 athlete, or a varsity superstar with extra, extra, stuff. Unless it's all done in the name of fun, the only thing you will accomplish by age fourteen...is burnout.

Don’t let anyone tell you that there’s too much emphasis on fun in this post. Stick to being the chauffeur and the master of fun, and you will succeed at creating your own tribe of dedicated soccer nuts :)

The Hardest Problem in Recreation

If we want more people to be compelled to vigorously exercise, mixed-group scheduling combined with play space provisioning is the hardest problem (in recreation) to solve.

• • •

It’s 4:00 PM on a sunny Saturday afternoon and Joe, age 8, is sitting on the couch watching television. There are five hundred other kids within ten miles doing nearly the same thing. There are countless athletic fields, play courts, and parks nearby...and all of them are empty.

Everyone is bored, but nobody is playing.  

Most kids - and many adults - won’t turn down an opportunity to vigorously participate in a fun group activity. So why are so many of them sitting on the couch?

Imagine five hundred willing participants within ten miles (more or less depending on population density), they are girls and boys ages eight to eighteen, athletes and non-athletes, and availability (to play) depends on transportation and other commitments.

Today, to spontaneously move five hundred kids off of the couch, it would take an army of on-demand coordinators to reserve play spaces, schedule supervision, and distribute the participants into balanced play groups that meet everyone's needs.  

The coordinators would have to account for availability (kids and supervisors by time slot), age-range, gender, skill-level, friend requests (to play together), transportation logistics, proximity, and play space inventory.

All of this coordinating would require at least five-thousand messages, and just as many playgroup and destination re-configurations.  

Moreover, securing safe, convenient, and appropriate places to play makes the problem even harder to solve. Participants will need to cross borders into other towns and cities to participate, and this is typically frowned upon by host communities that maintain public spaces for local taxpayers (only).

Now imagine doing this planning, reserving, and coordinating within every ten mile radius, every day, and all day long; this is what it will take to get people everywhere...spontaneously off of the couch. 

Leagues, clubs, and youth sports organizations solve a tiny fraction of this problem, but they can’t deliver a solution on demand. It’s too hard.  

If we want to get people to get off the couch by enabling spontaneous group play, we have to solve this problem first.

Eighty percent of the solution involves designing a super-simple (to end users) on-demand, playgroup scheduling and communication system (see www.x.ai for ideas), and the remaining twenty percent of the solution involves continuously providing enough play space inventory.

The Secret of Stuff

As children, my dad taught us how to sort pennies...dirty pennies.  We used a big sorting board that was covered with shallow boxes labeled by year.  We turned over thousands of pennies looking for 1955 double strucks.  We never found one.  We rolled pennies until our fingers turned green.  In addition to priming our immune systems, this was great training for someone destined to become the king of stuff.  

We started by organizing coins, then graduated to basements, barns, and garages; then onto the family business which was auto recycling.  

By fourteen, we had learned how to convert any mountain of stuff into a bucket of cash.  To become the kings of stuff, we used modern equipment, proprietary software, massive warehouses, fleets of trucks, and creative advertising.  The basic formula was simple: move everything to the center, sort it into smaller piles, toss the junk, containerize, label, and rack the remainder, age the rare stuff like wine, and price the common stuff to turn over quickly.

The business of stuff included scrap, auto parts, electronics, and consumer goods; it led to an acquisition by Ford Motor Company, spin-off businesses, wealth, security, and the freedom to acquire a stream of - you guessed it - endless stuff.  

I have handled more stuff than most people on earth.  I even started a business called ‘Stuff Pro’ to help people that were drowning in their stuff.  As the king of stuff, I’m writing this post to share the secret of stuff.  Ready?  Nothing distracts one from achieving true happiness more than the pursuit of stuff.  Ask anyone that can’t leave a bad job, that can’t afford the car they are driving, the house they are living in, or the credit cards they are paying off, or anyone else that’s drowning in clutter or deprived of time: “Does the pursuit of stuff lead to happiness...or not?”

Marketers don’t want you to know this, and the consumption economy would crumble if everyone did, but there’s a HUGE, hidden burden that comes with every single bit of stuff.  Beyond the purchase price, there’s the time-cost of stuff, including the time to acquire it, move it, store it, clean it, repair it, upgrade it, move it again, dust it, box it, bag it, rack it, sell it, ship it, move it again, account for it, dispose of it or recycle it.  Moreover, consumers rarely think about the cost of insuring, heating, cooling, renting, powering, and paying taxes for the space where they store their extra stuff.  And, even fewer worry about the cradle-to-grave, environmental impact of simply having stuff.

Back to true happiness.  At the end of life, nobody ever wants more stuff, they want more time!  Time is your most precious commodity.  People that undervalue their time spend it on futzing with stuff.  Smart people account for the future value of their time.  If you want to earn $100 an hour in the future, then why do you spend so much time cleaning and moving your stuff?  it’s a low-wage job.

Furthermore, your stuff is worth way less than you think.  Have you checked eBay or Craigslist lately?  There’s so much stuff on the web now.  Rare things have become common, and regular things are free.  Your time is worth more than your stuff.   Your heated, taxable space is worth more than your stuff.  Are you holding onto worthless stuff?   

If you want the freedom to create anything, or the ability to travel, or to be the master of your time, then consider the hidden cost of everything you acquire.  Think about this: if you could afford to rent everything, you’d have the time to do anything.  Truth.  Stuff is a burden; the burden begins the moment you start looking for it, and it doesn’t end until it’s been properly recycled; and when you give it to others...the burden travels.

Whether pursuing or purging stuff, ask yourself: will this enrich my life?  If not, use the time instead to create something, read a book, write a book, play an instrument, exercise, or travel.  Remember, people are remembered for what they create, not for what they consume.

Related:

The Story of Stuff https://youtu.be/9GorqroigqM

21 Surprising Statistics That Reveal How Much Stuff We Actually Own    https://www.becomingminimalist.com/clutter-stats/

Simple Money Borrowing and Lending Rules to Live By

In 1964 a local businessman lent my father enough money to launch his business; you could say his money, combined with my father’s ambition, underwrote the next fifty years of our family’s above-average financial well-being. My father was able to grow a substantial business, and the lender, a man that expected very little in return, slightly profited; however, he left a lasting impact that spanned three generations.

More often than not, businesses are built upon loans. Without loans, the world of commerce would come to a grinding halt. If you plan to borrow or lend money, here are a few simple rules to live by:      

Borrowing: Nobody forgets a bad debtor! A debtor is someone that owes a sum of money. The only way to become a debtor is to take on a commitment to pay a person, friend, bank, company, or other lender in the future. If you owe money to anyone, for any reason, you are a debtor.  Who you owe, the amount you owe, why you are indebted, and your current circumstances DO NOT MATTER. Unless you are released from your debts, you are a debtor. If you don’t live up to your payment commitments, you are a bad debtor. You can be friendly, smart, generous, and soulful, but if you are a bad debtor, it’s a negative tag that’s impossible to escape. The database is permanent, and although people forgive, they never forget unpaid debts. If you want to avoid being a bad debtor, don’t go into debt. And if you choose to go into debt, make damn sure that you thoroughly understand, and can live by...the terms of your debts.  

If you are struggling with your debts, always, always communicate with your lenders; reiterate your commitments; negotiate extended terms; and never act as though your misfortunes are someone else’s problem or responsibility. Pay your debts and be remembered as a good debtor. I want to reiterate that being a bad debtor does not equate to being a bad person. Understandably, some people have to ask for their debts to be forgiven. The point is, the “bad debtor” tag is nearly impossible to shake, and better to be avoided altogether.

Lending: Smart lenders anticipate bad debtors. Unfortunately, there are too many good people that are bad debtors. If you are thinking about loaning someone money, or getting paid in the future for anything, including your labor, make sure you can afford to convert your ‘loan’ into a donation. People get sick. People fall on hard times. Stuff happens. As a creditor, be prepared to suspend or extend payments and forgive debts.  

When lending, ask for repayment terms, including interest, that are equivalent to the terms you would be willing to accept as a borrower. When the potential for nonpayment is obvious, charge higher rates. Be transparent about everything and never take advantage of people. Put everything in writing. Here’s a tip: use your phone to record a video whereby the debtor reiterates his or her commitments; nothing outlasts a reminder that includes the recorded words of a borrower.

It’s really, really challenging to be both a friend and a creditor. If a friend needs money, once again...make a donation. If a friend owes you money, is unwilling to live by your agreement, and is threatening to end your friendship, then they are friends you don’t need. Collect what’s owed and find new friends.   

Lending and borrowing can change lives and help dreams come true. No matter the amount or the persons involved, take it seriously and live up to your commitments.  

I write these notes to share with my children...

The Haley Pitch Every Founder Should Know

Prior to spending a ton of time on a business plan or an investor deck, create a simple Haley Pitch.  It's the most efficient way to obtain valuable feedback from advisors, mentors, and the critics you respect.

You don't need to nail it.  

However, you should be able to demonstrate that you have invested at least one hundred hours discussing prototypes, mockups, storyboards, or wireframes with potential users and/or customers.

Meet Haley

While creating pitches for my last four ventures, we used a fictional character called Haley as our ideal user. 

Depending on the venture, Haley has been a mom, an event planner, the CEO of a non-profit, and a bride. 

Once you've got it down, you'll be able to deliver the Haley Pitch in three minutes.  

Here’s how:  

Slide One (above):  Backstory & Problem

Start with a story.  Quickly describe Haley, her situation (context), and her acute problem.

When using pictures, you don't need demographic details.  

“Haley is a bride.  She’s marrying Jeff.  Haley needs to discuss and obtain feedback on cakes, venues, bands, dresses, food, and a myriad of other details from her bridesmaids, her mother, her in-laws, from Jeff, and even from Jeff’s friends!  Coordinating all this using email will create a clustercluck.  Clusterclucks are hard to manage.”

Clustercluck defined: “Any set of circumstances in which massive disorganization has the potential to cause serious damage, or a disastrous situation that results from the cumulative errors of several people or groups.”

Please also read “It’s Not What You Said, It’s How You Made Them Feel” by Tyler Crowley.

Slide Two (above):  Product Scaffolding

Similar to construction scaffolding, entrepreneurs can use 'scaffolding' to construct the concept of their venture.

In one sentence (see template below), combine the job-to-be-done (by your product or service), your brand name, and your unique value proposition.

This is also where you show a screenshot(s), storyboards, an early demo, and/or paint (over the phone) a clear, concise picture of your product or service.

Template: “When Haley wants to X, she'll use Y to get Z.”

• X - job-to-be-done / pain to be eliminated

• Y - your brand name

• Z - unique value proposition

“When Haley wants to privately coordinate her wedding plans with everyone who matters, she'll use StackChat to simply manage a related stack of issues and input [i.e.: prevent a clustercluck}."

Below are some additional examples that combine a job-to-be-done with a brand and a value proposition.

• When Haley wants to be transported across town, Haley uses Uber to obtain inexpensive on-demand transportation.

• When Haley wants to remember a song, Haley uses Shazam to rapidly acquire essential song information.

• When Haley wants to consume a lot of information, Haley uses Instapaper to transform distracting web pages into a uniform stream of curated information.

• When Haley wants news, Haley uses the Boston Globe website to obtain current, reliable, genuine information.

Watch:  a short video related Jobs-To-Be-Done featuring Clayton Christensen.

Read:  The Few Sentences You Need to Dominate Your Market

Read:  David Cancel talking about his “No Ands” rule.  

Read:  my post on Product Scaffolding

Slide Three (above):  More Scaffolding.

For those who can't relate to your first job-to-done example (e.g.: coordinating wedding plans), quickly outline additional examples.  

"Travel planning, housing decisions, big ticket purchase, repairs, group dining, health, and healthcare decisions...all have potential to become clusterclucks.  When Haley wants to privately coordinate these things with everyone that matters, she'll use StackChat to simply manage a related stack of issues and input."

Slide Four (above):  Mobile App:  Job-To-Be-Done

If your mobile app only had ONE button (think Shazam), what would it do for users?  If your answer contains the word ‘and’, be prepared to defend the clarity of your product vision.  Your mobile app should be the one-click, one-button manifestation of your product scaffolding, and not a feature cacciatore.

"When Haley launches StackChat, she will be able to quickly respond to her clustecluck messages by subcategory."

Learn more about Jobs-To-Be-Done on Medium

Slide Five (above):  Instant Onboarding Ideas

Do you have any ideas that will enable a user to get up and running quickly?

It’s really hard to move users from being curiously interested to becoming committed users. Enable users to experience maximum value for minimal effort.  Avoid complex signups, forms, data capture wizards, upload requirements, unnecessary this-before-that roadblocks, and pre-use instruction manuals/videos.  Give visitors dead-simple ways to try your product...instantly.

"By enabling anyone to enter a Pinterest or YouTube URL, anyone can instantly start a private or public StackChat."  

Slide Six (above):  From None to Huge

You might be creating a product that will eventually have broad appeal and become a billion dollar business.  However, I would like to hear about the first customer segment you intend to target, and how that segment will lead to related exposure opportunities.

Using round numbers...

“Annually, there are 3.5M brides and grooms like Haley and Jeff, and another 16M bridesmaids and groomsmen; during the wedding process, all these people combined will have 100M conversations with 20M different businesses.”

For any given product or service, there are often multiple segments you could initially target.  Pick an entry point (segment) that is easy to define, easy to reach, and most importantly, one that exposes (through usage) your product to a broader audience.

Slide Seven (above):  User Acquisition

Tell me about some of the ideas you have for reaching and acquiring users.  For example:

• ads and articles in bridal magazines

• search advertising

• a partnership with a company that already reaches brides (e.g.: The Knot)

• blogging and social media

• influencer marketing

• direct selling

• by creating value for a related party (e.g.: event planners as a conduit)

Slide Eight (above):  Business Model

Outside of selling banner ads, do you have any unique ideas for generating revenue?  In the simple example above, regular humans (like Haley) will use StackChat for free, while business users interested in 'stack commerce', routing and queueing controls, and more, will pay $100 per-seat (annual).

Now I get it! 

For your product or service, if you can outline the job-to-be-done, your unique value proposition, a brand concept, some go-to-market and onboarding ideas, combined with a product demo, storyboards, or wireframes, we can have a productive conversation.  I'm never interested in long resumes, slides filled with text, tables, charts, and (initially) projections.  After we get through your product vision, we can talk about plans, strategies, numbers and metrics. 

StackChat Status

I worked on StackChat with Daniel Clarke.  I invested a small amount of capital and created the storyboards; Dan interviewed potential customers; and we both spent a lot of time in coffee shops discussing strategy.  At this point, StackChat is not a fully-baked idea.  For the job-to-be-done, StackChat's value proposition overlaps with Slack's, and 'clustercluck prevention' is not a slogan we can go to market with.  However,  there's a bunch of things here, including Haley, worth recycling.

Product Scaffolding

Similar to construction scaffolding, entrepreneurs can use 'scaffolding' to construct the concept of their venture.

I frequently get into discussions and debates with friends and founders about the viability of new products and services.  Product scaffolding makes it easy for me to rapidly evaluate the opportunity size, branding, and believability (is it possible).

In my experience, if you can’t describe your product or service using simple, harmonious product scaffolding, your venture will struggle.

Product scaffolding is ONE sentence:

• When Haley wants to be transported across town, Haley will use Uber to instantly obtain inexpensive, on-demand transportation.

• When Haley wants to remember a song, Haley will use Shazam to rapidly acquire essential song information.

• When soccer enthusiasts want to play, they will use Rocket Soccer to instantly schedule a convenient, competitive match.

• When artists want to record a music video with their fans, they will use FanStudio to effortlessly schedule a live, professionally orchestrated recording.

Use This Template:  When A wants to B, A will use C to get D.

• A)  a character, actor, persona, or segment  

• B)  the job-to-done by your product or service

• C)  your brand name (actual or under consideration)

• D)  the value proposition you intend to deliver

Erecting Your Scaffolding

1. Choose a segment to target.

2. Nail the job-to-be-done.

3. Settle on a value proposition.

4. Come up with a brand that fits.

1)  Choose a Segment.  You should know, and be willing to love, your customers.  Anything less creates an uphill battle.  When choosing customers to serve, I rely on this simple metaphor:  Don’t back a hip hop artist when all you listen to is rock and roll.  

2)  Nail the Job-To-Done.  The ‘want’ or desire to get a job done causes people to contemplate and/or seek a product, service, or solution.  (See “want” in the sentences above.)  Consumers then HIRE (with their time or money) a product or service to do the job.

The best ways to determine true ‘want’ are to ask and observe.  Set aside biases, preconceived notions, your habits, and your rituals.  Ask: What do you want to do?  Observe:  What are they trying to do?  Dig deep.  Repeatedly ask and observe.  

When someone is hanging a picture on a wall, are they decorating a room, hiding a hole, sharing memories, or showcasing art?  What are they hiring the picture to do?  Ask and observe. Ask and observe. Ask and observe.

Nailing the job-to-be-done is the only way to deliver the right value proposition.  If your observations reveal that people ‘want’ more art in their busy lives, do you ‘want’ to sell empty picture frames?  Learn more...

Avoid Run-On Jobs-To-Be-Done.   For new ventures, I am a huge believer in the “No Ands Rule”.  Avoid the word “and” in your product scaffolding.  Get a foot in the door, a wedge in the market, or a prominent slice of mindshare by picking a SINGLE job-to-be-done.  

Here’s an example of bad, run-on scaffolding (using “ands”): “When artists want to record a music video with their fans, and acquire new fans, and build a simple website, they will use FanStudio to….[to get lost and confused]”

3)  Settle on a Value Proposition.  A value proposition is the reason humans ‘hire’ your offering.  Peter Sandeen has the best definition of ‘value proposition’ on the web:  “A strong value proposition is a believable collection of the most persuasive reasons your target customers should do what you’re hoping they will do.” 

I am going to add: if you can’t deliver it on day one, don’t say it.  For example: you can’t deliver a “global network of passionate fans” to user number ONE.  However, you could pitch (to early adopters), your product’s capacity to simply enable: paid, private showcases, or fee-free, online tipjars, or some other “believable collection of persuasive reasons”.

To sum up: the WANT or desire to get a job done causes people to contemplate and/or seek something; while your value proposition is the reason WHY humans HIRE your offering.

4)  Come Up With a Brand That Fits.  I like adaptable brand names that you can pour meaning into (e.g.: Google, Mint, Twitter, Square), or harmonious brand names that conjure the embodiment of WANT + WHY (the ‘want’ or desire to get a job done + ‘why’ humans will hire your offering), (e.g.: Facebook, Salesforce, Linkedin, Travelocity).  

Adaptable brands make it easy to pivot, while harmonious brands make it easier to communicate value.  If you really think that you have uncovered true ‘want’, and if you know with unflinching certainty that you can deliver a unique value proposition, consider a harmonious brand name.

A final word on brand names:  It’s often hard to secure the .com for harmonious brand names.  However, if you can get the .com (recommended), you probably don’t have to worry about trademark infringement.  Alternatively, secure the best, pure (no hyphens), adaptable .com name that you can imagine.

Also read:  The Haley Pitch Every Founder Should Know

Big Data Can't Find Austin's Songs

Some time ago I worked with an artist named Austin. Austin was immensely talented and equally tortured. He's been writing songs since he was twelve and drinking whiskey since he was fifteen. Austin doesn't own a computer, doesn't use social media, and he lost his cellphone number because he couldn't pay his bill. Five managers have walked away, and he's been tossed out of venues up and down the east coast. Nevertheless, he's got a good heart, striking charisma, a commanding voice, and he effortlessly writes the kind of timeless songs that are loved by everyone that hears them. Beyond being a bit of a drunk, Austin's biggest mistake is endlessly waiting for the rockstar bus; he's invested twenty thousand hours into being a musician...with no plan B.

On the other side of town, Cara graduated from a notable university with a degree in music. She has been playing piano and guitar since she was ten.  You can find Cara on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and she operates her own Wordpress site.  Cara is attractive, fit, and energetic.  She records music with a notable producer, is managed by a pro, and plays to packed rooms in her hometown.  Not only does Cara have over ten thousand fans, friends, and followers, her family supports her in every way imaginable.  I like to watch Cara perform, but I can't whistle a note or recite a chorus from a single one of her songs.

You can find entertaining Caras all over the world. They are everywhere.  You can't find Austin anywhere. He's barely on the Internet.  His unmastered recordings are decaying on a hard drive in a defunct studio, and the venues that loved him have given up trying to find him.

If you want to be in the label business of discovering, co-writing, developing, producing, investing in, and promoting dozens of Caras in the hope of creating a (360 degree) breakout, big data can help you. However, if you are looking for Austin's unpromoted songs, big data falls on its face. 

Given the risk, the failure rate, and the lottery machine nature of the music industry, I would rather promote one of Austin’s songs versus discovering a dozen Caras.  

Sure, the big labels and a few independents have a formula for making Caras into celebrities, but it’s expensive, inefficient, and the product is often bland and repetitive.

To date, nobody has created a machine that finds Austin's songs.  Given where the world (consumption, demand, streaming, etc.) is heading, this is what I want to invest in.

Meanwhile, you can find me at Cara’s next gig.

Life Lessons From a Landscaper

On January 1st, 2015, after a courageous battle with cancer, Bruce R. Warila passed away.

My father was a successful businessman who built an auto recycling empire. Despite the fact that he spent his days amongst a sea of wrecked cars, bent metal, and burly men, my dad went home each day to his beloved trees, his blossoming flowers, and landscape designs. He was a junkyard dog with a soft spot for pansies, pine mulch, and asparagus.

It was there among the thousands of trees he planted, pruned, and watered that he shared the wisdom he had acquired through his keen observation of nature. He wasn’t exactly a philosopher, but if you read between the vines, his life lessons often delivered as landscaping advice were real and important. Here are just a few:

• Think long term. It takes fifty years to grow a majestic tree. Some people don’t see the point in investing in trees. You will be amazed how fast time goes by. Someday, the trees you planted will be more valuable than your house.

• Have a plan. Plants and trees takes years to grow. You have to account for size and proximity now and many years into the future.

• Plan carefully. It takes fifty years to grow a majestic tree. If you cut it down, you ain’t getting it back.

• Mark change. When you walk around your yard, watch how things continue to change from season-to-season, and year-to-year. Nature has the capacity to split rocks, carve canyons, and blanket the sun. You can see it happening if you open just your eyes and take inventory of your surroundings.

• Respect the things you can’t control. Nature will have more impact on your land than you could ever have.

• Start small. Don’t go out and buy the biggest tree you can afford. Get a younger tree that hasn’t been pumped up with fertilizer and care for it yourself; you will end up with a better plant.

• Pull weeds. Weeds will choke anything. If you don’t attend to weeds quickly and frequently they will overrun your garden.  

• Make sacrifices. Sometimes you have to cut down an older, misshapen tree to let a younger tree flourish. 

• Prune the deadwood. By cutting away the branches that no longer affect the health of the plant, you are giving what’s left a better chance to survive.

• Old plants need attention too. Everyone knows that you should water recent plantings. However, those trees that have been providing shade for the last ten years…they need hydration too.  Nothing keeps a tree happy like ongoing attention.

• Initial conditions matter. When planting trees and shrubs, dig extra large holes. When trees are rooting, don’t make them do extra work; they need all of their energy to adjust to new surroundings. 

• Diversify. Don’t plant too much of the same thing. Insects, blight, and extreme weather can kill off entire species. Make sure you plant a diversified portfolio of plants and trees.

• Inclusive trumps exclusive. The best landscapes are the ones that you can share with the community.  

• Don’t overdo it. If a little fertilizer is good, a lot must be great. Wrong. Too much food and drink will kill anything.   

• Buy local. Look for plants and trees that were grown locally by people you trust. It’s going to be easier to establish plants that are used to the local environment.

• It’s OK to make mistakes, that’s what chainsaws and shovels are for. Try new things and plant stuff every year. You can always rip it out or move it later. 

• It’s not work, it’s exercise. My yard is the best gym in town.

• Real men plant flowers. Planting is a great escape, and it gives you a wonderful sense of accomplishment.

This list could go on and on. I am sure that I learned more about life from our tree talks, than anything else.   I am going to miss our yard safaris, but I am looking forward to seeing what he has planted in heaven.   

~Bruce 

Free Restaurant Pro-Forma

This post on my blog is an odd duck for me. However, I realize this post is useful to others. In 2016, I did in fact consider investing in a huge restaurant concept with some friends. If you found this post, I would love to know if the spreadsheet was useful. Please send me a note and/or feedback to brucewarila on Twitter or Gmail.

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Lots of entrepreneurs consider the restaurant business.  It’s easy to sit in a restaurant and imagine doing it better.  I’m no different.  So, when presented with the opportunity to invest in a new restaurant business, I dove in like a Shark Tank advisor.  

In reality, the restaurant business is hard.  It’s really hard.  Those that have mastered the trade are often immensely successful; everyone else seems to struggle.

Like any new business, the best place to begin is to develop a detailed understanding of how wealth is created and lost.  There are four essential steps to this process:

1. Find truly successful industry advisors.

2. Read all of the how-to (succeed) advice on the Internet.

3. Create an operating budget from scratch.

4. Validate assumptions with your advisors.

To save everyone that stumbles upon this post some of the time it takes to create an operating budget from scratch, here’s the one I created.

Some things you need to know:

• There are many hidden columns in the workbook.

• Many variables are within the hidden columns.

• We were planning a HUGE multi-purpose facility in the middle of a densely populated city.

• Some of the numbers were intentionally altered to differ from the actual plan.

• You should validate F&B costs, labor costs, and other costs, as a percentage of gross sales, with your advisors.

• Sales and marketing costs reflect the effort required to drive a significant event business.

• The ‘comps’ within the workbook were surfaced from information we found on the Internet.

• The ‘impact’ tab was our attempt to measure the social impact of this business.  

For each division (restaurant, cafe, events) we estimated an average week two years in the future; projections then ramped up to and over this estimate on a monthly basis (over a five-year period).

Anyone with some basic knowledge of Excel should be able to pick apart and customize this workbook to fit your needs.  

Thanks to Travis Talbot, Franklin Ferguson, and Daniel Clarke for helping me with this.  I did not know anything about the F&B business when I started.  These guys had to answer over a thousand questions to get me up to speed.