Week 4. 23 days. 23 words to explain the last 23 days…

Exhausted, Joy, Frustration, Relief, Annoyance, Pride, Fear, Satisfaction, Powerlessness, Content, Doubt, Excitement, Guilt, Love, Worry, Hope, Anxiety, Euphoria, Disappointment, Sympathy, Gloom, Joviality, Resentment,

I should mention that on some of the days, you were blessed with feeling if not 1/2 but all of those emotions on the list!

nMotion has been incredible for me. It has fed my brain so much information that I walk out at the end of the day buzzing and humming and feeling like I’m going to explode with all that knowledge. It has also forced me into situations where I needed to pull up my big girl panties and deal with things that pushed me to the edge of near paralyzing anxiety. The one thing that it has done, despite being stressed, overwhelmed, exhausted and anxious… it has made me the happiest I have been in a very long time.

Don’t get me wrong. My life has been pretty damn phenomenal and I’m pretty blessed (and spoiled), but that life gives me the emotional nurturing I need. nMotion… this gives me the intellectual nurturing I need. It has re-ignited a passion in me that I haven’t felt since I worked for Micrografx. It has spurred a level of creativity in me that I haven’t felt in a long time. It went off and shook up the hornet’s nest and we have a whole lotta whoop-ass going on right now! I feel purposeful.

piv·ot

noun \ˈpi-vət\

: a pin or shaft on which a mechanical part turns

: the action of turning around a point : the action of pivoting

: a person or thing that is central or important to someone or something else

For those in the tech world, PIVOT is a word that we hear a lot. I’d have to say that in the last 1 1/2 weeks, I’ve heard the word at least 2 gazillion times (maybe even 3 gazillion, no exaggerating!). I won’t bore you with what it means in that world, because that definition isn’t the reason I picked the word.

There are pivots in each of our lives. We hear something, see something, feel something, that causes us to do a 180 and see the world with new eyes and a sense of awareness that we didn’t know existed before. Some of the pivots of our lives are positive, some are negative, but all have a level of importance for us to rock the ground under our feet.

2 years ago I did something crazy. I signed up for Startup Weekend. I had just finished reading The Barefoot Executive and was starting to realize that my world needed to be bigger. In the book, it mentioned that you should find a mentor, surround yourself with those you wanted to be like. I thought of 2 things when I read this.

1. Where in the hell do you find people like that?
2. How incredibly self serving.

So I signed up for Startup Weekend because you know, I needed to find those people.

At the opening of Startup Weekend, they brought in a local company to talk about how they had created their business and built it from a startup. I had no clue what a “Bulu Box” was nor did I know who Paul Jarrett was, but if they were speaking at Startup Weekend, I needed to hear what they had to say.

I sat there and listened to their story and was caught by how he stressed the importance of mentors and how important they had been in the growth of their own company. After listening to Paul and his wife Stephanie speak, I did the next crazy thing. I stood in line to ask him a question. Little Miss Wall Flower, can’t approach another human being for fear of dieing on the spot, walked up to this stranger and said “How do you even find a mentor?”. His response was simple. (now I can’t remember exactly what he said… I’m old, my brain leaks out knowledge on a daily basis and I’m pretty sure I have early onset dementia) but summed up it was “Keep putting yourself into a position to meet them”.

I want to say that the sky opened up and I was bathed in this light of all knowing and angels sang and all was right in the word and a green line appeared on the ground which I could faithfully follow in the direction to those people, but yeah, that only happens in movies.

I walked away from that conversation thinking “What the hell? That didn’t answer anything”.

But let me tell you a secret. Though all those magical fairy tale love story things didn’t happen in the exact way it would in the movies, they did happen, but it took me 2 years to put it all together and realize the pivot I made when he answered my question.

Back up there, under the numbered list, remember #2 “How incredibly self serving.” Yes. Purposely surrounding yourself with the people you most want to be like is self serving. Yes, it is can be selfish and slightly narcissistic. But that isn’t how the last 2 years for me has been. Yes, I continued to put myself into a position to be surrounded by these people, but they stopped being people that I wanted to be like because they were successful and more about people I wanted to be like because they were incredible people and I really liked them, oh and yeah, I guess they are successful too. It also turned into an understanding that for every piece of advice, every nugget of expertise, every moment that I got to spend with these beautiful human beings meant that I got to do something pretty incredible at some point, I could have an opportunity of being the person that someone else wanted to be like, and I could give back all the knowledge and love and caring that had been so gracefully and openly given to me. I have realized that an act that I so quickly wrote off as self serving was anything but self serving.

Back to Paul. Paul was very giving of his time and knowledge. He took time out of his busy schedule and answered the question of someone who held no immediate need other then to mentor, even for a brief moment. He caused another human being to pivot. 2 years later, I was given the opportunity to once again sit and listen to Paul and Stephanie speak. This time it was at nMotion. They were still giving so much of their time and knowledge and offering us the opportunity to learn from them. It was at that moment when the angels sang (in my head at least) and I realized how important my conversation, 2 years earlier was. I looked around this room where my fellow nMotion teams sat and was speechless as it sank in. How do you find a mentor? Keep putting yourself into positions to meet them…

Are you overweight? Do you need to shed a few pounds off that junk in your trunk. I have a program for you, and it REALLY works! I’ve lost 10lbs in the last week and I just know that I will see the same results for the next 95 days! Join a business accelerator and you too can lose 10 lbs in one week!

All serious now. This week has been overwhelming for many different reasons. One of the perks is that it has gotten me out of the house and forced me to starting moving! I’ve cut down to one soda, walk 10 blocks, on average, more then I did before, and by the time I’m to damn exhausted to eat, drink, or think… An exercise program I can get behind 

It has been really great being in this think tank with all these other teams. Having people around you to bounce ideas off of, to get ideas from, to get support and just every day interaction has been electrifying to me. I’ve learned so much in such a short time frame and if my mine wasn’t already overloaded with thoughts and ideas, this just makes it even more exciting! I’ve needed this.

Words have always inspired me. As a child, I wrote poetry and short stories as fast as my fingers could fly across the college ruled paper. I would close my eyes and the words would flow like a river, spinning and twirling into a kaleidoscope of colors. As a child, my writing was the only way for me to communicate the emotions that sat bottled up and discarded by those around me. My words always seem foreign to me after they were laid out on paper. Even now, I will re-read work that I did a week, month, year ago and I’ll question “Did I really write that?” I’m consistently amazed at the emotion that is under my skin.

Moving into nMotion next week, I wanted to have words to guide me on this journey. Working with my other business, quotes play an important part in the layouts that my members create, and they are something that I’ve drawn from frequently throughout my life. So I went searching.

I sat down and thought about what will be some of my biggest struggles this summer. It is always slightly depressing to sit down and think about what your faults are and which ones are going to trip you up the most. This last week we had 2 days of Lean Launchpad training, and I really struggled with something, and my co-founders recognized this. I needed to understand what the plan was. I needed to have that question answered and to understand it and to embrace it. That doesn’t necessarily sound like a bad thing, until you factor in the fact that in order for me to move forward, I must understand it. The great unknown of not knowing is overwhelming to me. It leaves me frustrated and makes me feel insanely vulnerable.

I am a “think to the end” kind of person. If we do this, this will happen, and then this will happen and then we are here. This comes in handy at times, and can be a huge asset to life in general, but it is also a hindrance. When you think to the end, you make assumptions about people and things, and there simply is no way that you can be 100% sure that your assumption is correct. You may end up missing out on an opportunity that you hadn’t factored in. It is a huge dissever to people as well, as you put a burden of expectation of “they will never change” on their shoulders and people are, by nature, always changing.

So, I knew what my guiding quote for this summer needed to be. It needed to be imprinted on my brain to pull up in those moments where I felt frustrated and needed to understand which path we were going on. Those moments when the path was trying to pick me and I needed to stop trying to pick it.

You don’t always need a plan. Sometimes you just need to breathe, trust, let go and see what happens.

The official press release went out today so I can finally spill the beans.  We did it.  We made it!  They like us!  They really do like us!

Seven Startups Chosen for NMotion 2014 Summer

DigiWidgets – Plug-in graphic editing engine for websites.  Fresh from their win at the JumpStart Challenge, Lincoln entrepreneurs Stacy Carson (Gotta Pixel) and Carl Steffen (Stone Fin Development) formed DigiWidgets as a plug-in graphic editing engine for websites that empowers users to create, manipulate and sell digital media.

I feel like I should give an acceptance speech, but I’m sure that is horribly cheese and a bit narcissistic.  I’m also a little afraid that if I try to list out everyone I need to thank I’m going to forget someone by accident and I don’t want to do that.. so I’m going to make a giant huge THANK YOU to everyone 

By the time I stand in front of a crowd for Demo Day, it will have been one year since I came up with the original idea for DigiWidgets.  I look back at my blog post on September 6, 2013 and I am truly amazed and what has happened since then.  I have stood in front of several crowds now and pitched or told my story.  I have gone to countless meetings and conferences and events and have met some really incredible people.  What I said then…

My motto in life is becoming more and more “Have the courage”.  It’s both a personal and business journey for me.

• Have the courage to stand in front of strangers and give them a part of your life to judge.
• Have the courage to be okay with not getting the prize, because more doors will open.
• Have the courage to smile and say hello to people who intimidate the hell out of you.
• Have the courage to expect more.

I’ve set and met many personal and business goals in the last year and I have even more for this year!

A couple days ago my friend Amber asked me to speak in front of a group of ladies who have “Coder” behind their names (#LNK Coding Women).

I really didn’t hesitate to say yes to Amber, because well, besides Jill, Amber is perhaps the sweetest girls in the whole entire world, and I can’t say no to her.  It just is what it is.  So I said yes, and my Innie screamed “What the hell are you thinking?”.  I told him to shut up.  Outtie applauded loudly and gave Innie a snide look with a slightly curled lip to let him know that he was no match for her.

I should explain my inner personalities.  Innie is an introvert.  He is male.  He doesn’t like speaking and he typically will be the one to talk me out of doing whatever it is that I think I need to do.  Outtie is my extrovert.  She’s a girl and she is sweet and lovable but doesn’t treat Innie very nicely.  (Now, before you think I’m loonier then a loonie bird, I do know that I don’t have split personalities and that Innie and Outtie aren’t real.)

So I stood up in front of 40 or so women and I realized… I’ve got this.  I love talking about Gotta Pixel when I know I can properly explain what it is, and why it is important to my life.  I love to talk about my journey.  I love to see shaking heads and smiles and I love to hear laughter when it isn’t at someone elses expense.  I love standing there and for a minute, all 40 eyes looking at me don’t scare me half to death.  But what I loved most was the group that came up to me and introduced themselves and said “thank you, that was inspirational”.  Talk about cloud flipping 9.

Each day I grow strong in my confidence.  Each day I grow closer to accepting the future that I see before me.  Each day I realize that my dream of speaking at Lincoln High School is getting closer and I will reach that goal.  Each day, I am closer to being exactly who I want to be.  Courageous.

Carl and I pitched yesterday at the Jumpstart Challenge.  There were 3 categories:  Real Estate, Insurance and a Wild Card category.  The idea behind this was that the there would be 2 existing companies that would come in and tell the group what their problem was.  Groups could then take the problems and create a solution to fix that problem.  If you weren’t interested in finding a solution for the two companies, you could pick the wild card category and find a solution to a problem you saw out there.

Since Startup Weekend last year, I’ve had the vision of creating software for my Gotta Pixel customers.  I have had so many incredible people cheering me on and if it wasn’t for them, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t be right here, right now.

Carl and I pitched the DigiWidgets software.  I’m pretty proud that I was able to get through what I needed to pitch and we got to show off our new software (which rocks).  We won.  But not only did we win the wild card category, we also won the real estate category.  Seems that our software would fix a separate issue that they had!

I have to admit I was kind of in shock.  It is incredible that I was able to find Carl and bring this little idea into the world.  2014 is going to be a really great year I believe.

You know those movies where the little girl is laying on her back, in a dandelion filled hill, starring adoringly into the sky and dreaming of her future.  There were moments in my childhood that I was that little girl.  They only happened when I visited my grandmother’s farm.

The trip to her house was always filled with angst and trepidation.  5 bodies crammed into the front seat of the El Camino and not a seat belt in sight.  Cautious and quiet, as the excitement built to a level that was so incredibly hard to contain within our little bodies.  Not a word escaped from our lips.  Knowing glances were given to brother as we passed the house with the big tire tractors.  It was a landmark.  Not much longer until we got to grandma’s.

And when we turned onto that quarter mile driveway.  The only way to explain that feeling is like there was an invisible line that separated the road and her drive way and when you crossed that, evil daddy had to check his attitude on the other side of the line, because it would not be tolerated, in any shape or form, on that other side.  It was like on one side I was the scared little girl who was told to shut up with words and fists and on the other I was the girl who was allowed to run free, build houses in refrigerator card board boxes and paint my fingernails any color I wanted.

They would drop us off and I’m sure that I never stood in dismay and sadness watching the dust be kicked up by the wheels of their car.  They could have never of come back and it would have been okay with me.  I was “home”.

My grandmother claims that she doesn’t have much patience, and I’ve seen hints of that here and there growing up, but she treated us like gold.  She is why I make the best damn fried chicken gravy.  Ever.  Sorry, you can say yours is better, but shamefully, it would be a lie, and for that, I will not apologize.  She taught me everything there was to know about cooking.  I made the most scrumptious chocolate chip cookies that would send me into a raving fury when my brother and uncle would tried to steal one fresh out of the oven.  I made real sour cream chocolate cakes, from scratch, no box to be found.  I listened and watched ans she magically took what was only suppose to feed 4 and turned it into a feast for 10 when extra folks from church showed up unexpectedly.  I watched her as she found a billion and 3 things to entertain us with; beads and dress up clothes.  Beads to be strung on fishing line.  Books and more books, and every single one of them caught our attention and provided us with stories we would have never of read in our every day lives.

I admired her like hell.  She worked for the University of Nebraska in the student registration department.  She was an upper upper person.  She had an office and a secretary who always had peanut M&M’s on her desk.  She was in charge of getting all those kids registered during a period that didn’t have computers.  I can’t imagine the stress that came each year as she was put to task to literally orchestrate a system that was by everyone’s standards chaos.  But she did it.  With great poise and confidence and she did it really well.

I always knew, from the moment I could understand that I wanted to be like someone, that she was the person I wanted to be like.  She was a successful woman who never forgot her family.  She was confident and stubborn and strong.  She was so graceful at striking blows to those who doubted her, and when she was done, those who received the blow didn’t even realize what happened to them and would thank her for her time.  She was a kind woman, who invited men and women to the holiday gatherings simply because they were here in Nebraska, without their own families, and we don’t let people spend holiday’s by themselves when we have a perfectly good place at our table.  There was always some stranger at our table, and we all greeted them with a smile and a hand shake and a very direct “PASS THE BUTTER”.

We moved back to Nebraska after our “breaking out of Nebraska” phase for one reason.  Family.  I needed my children to know the wonderful woman that grandma is.  I wanted my daughter to draw from my grandmother the same ideological qualities that I drew myself.  I wanted my kids to know a woman, who at age 85 something, is still as active as her body allows it and has made a packed to never stop learning.

Tomorrow, grandma goes in for surgery to replace a bum hip.  She’s had it replaced once before, but it isn’t as dependable as we expected it to be.  We’re all a little scared even if we don’t show it on our faces.  There is a glue in every family.  The person who keeps us all coming back to the same place, time and time again.  The person who mediates and delegates and negotiates so that we all figure out how to get along.  She is that in our family.  She is mom, grandma, great-grandma.  She is loved and admired not just by her family but by all the families she has touched in her life.  We spent the day with her today, and as we gave her a goodbye hug and kiss, we lingered a second longer then usual.

If you had just one word that would package you’re entire line of thought at any specific point in your day, what would it be?

The sun has rose on the first day of a new year. Snow is coming down in a barrage of sharp bursts and nothing about today elicits a desire to venture out my front door. I sit nestled in my chair, with my laptop and a warm cup of coffee ready at my finger tips. Downstairs, my husband sits with our children, watching morning cartoons. The kids are snuggled into their “grandma made me” blankets and neither have a fear, a care, or a sadness within their hearts.

2013 was almost like a dare to myself. I dare you to do this. Find the courage and dare to do this. Not to be boastful, but I dared to do a lot of things that I thought would surely indeed swallow me up into the black abyss that I envisioned as its result. I didn’t get swallowed whole. I didn’t die. I didn’t throw up. I didn’t say to many things that were completely stupid. So if I look back and find a word for 2013, it was DARE.

I want the right first word for 2014. I want to be able to look back and see that word and realize that it was the stepping stone for my entire year. Something that will have the strength to hold me up when I need the encouragement but yet passive enough to let me move forward when I feel that I have outgrown my current place in this world. I realize that my word isn’t as abstract as I thought it was going to be.

We moved a lot when I was a child. We never finished the school year in the same house that we started in. I can still feel the the disappointment and sadness when I would walk into the house and saw all of my belongings hurriedly put into black garbage bags. I grew wary of the next move. I never put much effort into solidify my foundation. I tried not to fall in love with a bedroom, a school, a friend. When you fall in love with something that is only going to be taken away in a week, a month, 6 months, the pain just gets to be to much, and eventually you just give up. You create temporary feelings for temporary things. And when the inevitable happens, you put all your temporary feelings behind you and suck it up, because you’re a kid and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.

2013 reminded me that with my family, I have built a firm foundation. I have fallen in love with my home, my husband, my children. I have put things on the walls and allowed roots to grown. I have done this because I wanted a different world for my children. I wanted them to have childhood friends that would be there from the first day of school until forever. I wanted them to fall in love with their rooms and have the illusion that I never had.

I realized this year though that I haven’t done a very good job of creating a foundation for my friends. The ground around me continues to be unstable and rocky. There is always a constant urge to keep everyone at arms length instead of embracing the friendship that they have offered. I know that I have some pretty incredible and kick ass people in my life right now, and I call them my friend, but I also know that I have not allowed myself the basic human right to reciprocate what they have always offered so openly and honestly.

So in my search for something that will have the strength to hold me up when I need the encouragement but yet passive enough to let me move forward when I feel that I have outgrown my current place in this world, I realized I already have the word. Friendship. So, my one little word for 2014 is simply that. Friendship. Building and nourishing and enjoying and realizing that unconditional love grows outside of my home as well.

So here is to 2014!

One of the first things that will catch your eye when you see the wall in my tiny, out of the way, but perfectly placed office is a red picture frame that houses a piece of paper that reads…

Have the courage to touch the butt.

You will look at it a second time to make sure that you read it right.  You will mentally scratch your head at the oddness and out of placeness it possesses.  You will go back and forth on if you should ask about it.  It fringes on the weird and you just don’t know if you should go there so soon after being invited into my house.  Ask.  It has a good story.

For those who have seen the movie Finding Nemo, there is a scene when Nemo and his friends have swam to the edge of their world, the reef.  They hover there, inches from the great abyss that none of them had ever had the courage to travel, and they taunt and tease each other, daring each to swim out into the great unknown.

They soon notice the dark shadow at the water surface.  One of the friends exclaims “Look, it’s a BUTT!”

In their naivety they had learned that this object was called a butt.  For those of us watching the movie, we giggle at this because we all know that it is a boat.

Nemo stands strong and declares that HE is doing to touch the butt.  As he makes this declaration his father appears.  He is furious and forbids Nemo from going outside of their safe little world and into the unknown because you know… you could die (fail).  Nemo is forever defiant and puffs up his chest and leaps.  He swims to the butt and smacks it with his little fish fin and a smug look comes over his face.  Unbeknownst to him, his act of courage would result in being kidnapped, taken a world away, cared for by friends that everyone should seek out and have, and be reunited with his father in the end.

You can look at this story in two ways.

Taking risks leads to danger and see, Nemo proved that it isn’t worth the risks.

Or you can see this story as an act of courage each of us must go through every single time we decided to do something for our business.

We get all comfortable in our safe little worlds.  The worlds we can control and where we can easily predict what is going to happen next.  We can build systems to handle each thing that may happen and we build our confidence in knowing that we do these things incredibly!  We are rock stars.

But one day, we realize we are right at the edge of something else.  Something bigger then our safe little world.  Something that is going to involve us having the courage and taking a leap.  The fears of the unknown paralyze us.  There are a thousands questions and scenarios that will play through our heads like a film turned on high speed.  The fear mounts as we realize we don’t have a single answer to a single question or a single scenario.  The only way we are going to be able to get the answers is by Having the Courage.

Just like Nemo, once we take the leap, there are going to be times where we fail.  We are going to get swallowed up whole, and it is going to suck.  We are going to feel despair and anger and heart ripping pain.  But when you have that group of friends around you, supporting you, encouraging you, being there to lift you back up and brush off, you will find a way to make that failure into a success.

You won’t know if your leap is a success or a failure if you don’t leap.  You’ll simply stay in your safe, comfortable world that embraces you with loving arms and soothing words.

In my life … my “butt” was being an introvert.  I looked at my life 1 1/2 years ago and realized that this safe and comforting place I had put myself was holding me back.  Not just holding me back, but holding my kids back.  I didn’t want them to grow up thinking that this was the most idle way to live your life.  I wanted them to have a role model that knew she was an introvert and leaped into situations that totally contradicted those needs.  I needed to have the courage to touch my own “butt”.  I needed to be able to leap.  Forget the “lean in” theory.  LEAP IN!

What is your “butt”?  What do you need to find the courage to leap into?