Sopha Shop

The Blog of D.B. Keohane


by 1 Comment

This is David Foster Wallace

It’s been a bit since I dropped some knowledge here, but the wild days of my time as an “private school teacher” are coming to an end (or are just beginning, depending on how you look at it).

I’m still gonna teach, just not in the rep tie and spit-shined bucks way I have for the past ten years.

I have so much more of my story to tell, particularly the second half of my contest story.  For now, however, I want to introduce you to David Foster Wallace.

He died by his own hand a few years ago, following that long tradition of great American (tortured-soul) writers that includes Hemingway and Kerouac and the great Hart Crane (who stepped off of an ocean liner between Mexico and New York). He is what I’d call an encyclopedic writer in the sense that reading his work makes you have to research and learn more about the obscure references he makes than a jaunt through a Hardy Boys mystery. Other writers of this ilk include James Joyce and my thesis arch-nemesis Thomas Pynchon.

DFW wrote a great book called Infinite Jest, which I’ve only somewhat waded into, and plan on getting more involved in at some point. One of his more accessible and interesting works is a story/article called “Consider the Lobster” which was featured in Gourmet magazine.

I delve into David Foster Wallace because I came across this great film culled from his commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005.

I implore you to watch it. Enjoy.

About these ads


by Leave a comment

Part 2: The Contest?!?

This is part two of a continuing series in which I pull back the curtain and reveal some of the wackiness, triumph, tragedy, and a whole lot of ‘huh?” as I make a frightening and risky career change.Without further ado, the second part of “The Teacher, Who Thinks He’s a Fraud/May Be/Probably Isn’t, And The Magical Tale of Him Putting His Ass Out There While Risking a Pretty Damn Happy Life So Far”:

Whenever trying to make a new connection, sell something, or get attention of any kind it is vital to have a story that resonates. Even better if your tale is memorable AND can be told in a minute or two.

This is basically the idea behind “elevator pitches,” stories that entrepreneurs and start-up companies use to woo investors, board members, or co-founders. The pitch is quick and compelling, and aims to convince that an idea is viable, unique, and quite possibly, THE NEXT BIG THING!!!

My personal elevator pitch, as I try to convince someone to hire me, sans experience and all, has continued to be, “Yes, I don’t have a Marketing Degree/MBA/Certificate of Completion from the University of Phoenix… Buuuut, I do sales/marketing/business leadership everyday as I trick teenage boys not only into reading Shakespeare, but also into actually, possibly enjoying it.”

This works sometimes, most of the time, not so much.

So, I have another story that wins folks over and convinces them that maybe, just maybe, I may be a risk worth taking.

This story is called “The Contest,” and it is tale full of stress-filled Google Chrome re-freshes, LinkedIn connection pestering, and twitter twit-tweeting.

The tale begins with a somewhat risky, yet pretty innocuous comment left on the blog of Tim Ferris (who is a guru of many things, but mainly, the number 4).  Ferriss had handed over his blog for the day to LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and blogger Ben Casnocha to discuss risk, career change, and the idea that one could apply entrepreneurship ideologies to one’s own life. Hoffman and Cashnocha were promoting their co-authored book, The Startup of You, and were offering mentorship and a whole suite of prizes to whomever them deemed to be taking the biggest career risk.

My comment, among the almost six-hundred left on the site, told what I thought were the riskiest aspects of leaving my teaching career: loss of ‘stability’, passing up an opportunity for my kids to get a very expensive private school education (think what you paid for college and add $10,000 to $5,000), and the ability to pay bills, a mortgage, and two car payments.

I left my comment, didn’t think much of it, and moved on.
Then, in late August, I get this email:

Hi Dennis,

Thanks for your comment on the 4HWW blog on risk.

We’d like to feature your story as one of the top 3 comments from that post — can we include your photo (from LinkedIn profile or otherwise) alongside posting your comment?

Let me know ASAP.

Thanks,

Ben Casnocha
Co-author, Start-Up of You

I mean, pretty cool, right?

What I hadn’t realized was that I wasn’t just one of a “Final Three”, but was involved in a battle to the death for … what again, oh yeah, a great mentorship opportunity! (Exclamation points have lost all power, trust me, I teach English, and my students have no idea what the word emotion means never mind trying to have them identify it in writing!)

It was in the next month that I realized the complete and total addictive nature of the internet and social media, and, probably annoyed a whole bunch of people.

Next Week (Maybe): Part 2 of Part 2 (HA!) Aptly titled, “The Contest?!? – Part II”


by Leave a comment

Something I Keep Coming Back To

The words of Seth Godin, marketing maven and though provoker:

Who goes first?

Initiating a project, a blog, a wikipedia article, a family journey–these are things that don’t come naturally to many people. The challenge is in initiating something even when you’re not putatively in charge. Not enough people believe they are capable of productive initiative.

At the same time, almost all people believe they are capable of editing, giving feedback or merely criticizing.

So finding people to fix your typos is easy.

I don’t think the shortage of artists has much to do with the innate ability to create or initiate. I think it has to do with believing that it’s possible and acceptable for you to do it. We’ve only had these particular doors open wide for a decade or so, and most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it.

That used to be your job. It’s not, not anymore. You go first.

 

I read this a couple of weeks ago and continue to put myself into the category of never “believing” that I am capable of “productive initiative.” Two weeks ago I posted a “Part I” of an adventure I am in the midst of and I feel awful that “Part II” is still sitting in front of me, almost complete. Creating art is not easy and I am sooo impressed with people like Seth, and Leo Babuata who continually churn out new and fresh ideas. Yeah, some of the bits they post online have been sitting around for a lull in creativity to find their place in the world, but they are truly “shipping” their wares.

Yeah, I have a crazy busy life, but, (and maybe you feel the same way too) I really, REALLY don’t want to keep “copyediting” the world.

Designing it sounds so much more fun.

 


by 3 Comments

How I Got Here and Where I Am Going – Part I

As 2013 is beginning to unfold, I continue to be excited about what this year holds. I have a lot on the line in 2013, you might say that all of my chips are on the table at this point. For the next few weeks, I am going to share some of the ups and downs that I experienced in 2012 while looking for a new career, as well as the most recent developments in this ongoing story.

Without further ado, I present “The English Teacher Risking Life and (Really Just) Career Stability Because He Has a Hankering to Add Some Meaning to His Life,” in multiple parts.  Here is Part I:

Sitting at my desk, dazed by boredom, sweating because the heater is inexplicably on as the thermometer toes the 85º line, I am generally pleased as my students engage and share ideas to test each other’s creativity.  So, I decide to open my email.  Here’s what I find:

“DB,
Please return your desks to their original rows and out of the non-standard
circle you have been using for the past few days. Thanks.
August Pierce,
Business Manager.”

As a teacher, when you find something that actually works and makes your students more productive and happy, you feel like a champion among educators.  And yet, my good, and pretty widely used idea, in this instance, gets crushed.

Looking back, this was the push that I had needed for a long time.

Although I had been considering a career change for awhile, this call to cease innovating was the last straw.  It was time to make a pivot; to change careers.  This was a very risky proposition seeing that I had all the job security anyone could ever want, as well as the opportunity for my kids to get a very expensive education for free.

What I didn’t count on was how difficult such a transition would be.  I have a degree from a pretty well-regarded college, I have years of teaching experience, and I am damn close to earning a Master’s degree from Harvard.  And yet, the pivot, which I thought would be smooth, has been more like a rusty door hinge; meaning that years of built up corrosion (lack of “experience”) have caused this change of career to creak slowly and barely budge.

Here’s a sample of some of the early frustrations that come while living life in the Rusty Door Hinge:

-I showed up to a job interview wearing my standard “Private School Uniform”,  blue blazer, khakis, scuffed brown shoes (I had removed my tie on advice from a friend who worked at the company and mentioned that they had a very casual workplace attire policy). It turns out that this was even overdoing it; by not wearing jeans, at an interview for a sales job at a suburbia-based “online development platform” company, I had inadvertantly signaled that I was not only a square, but I also unexpectedly projected an air of smug superiority. The interview actually was very pleasant, I think. I didn’t end up getting the job, but I did have a really long conversation about high school football in the middle of what would have been a tedious work day.

-Trying to take the “30 minute”personality test/calculus challenge for a “Marketing Consultancy Samurai Guru” position at a “pretty big deal”, local Inbound Marketing Company. Oh, and I decided to do this on Mother’s Day in the brief interval when may two kids “should” be napping.  This doesn’t seem like much until you factor in that over an hour into this mock-SAT: I am sweating profusely while my two-year old (sans nap)  climbs all over me, and my wife taps her toes in my direction, standing with a baby in one hand and a giant “child management control” bag in the other, reiterating that the car is indeed packed and that we are now late for dinner at “YOUR” parents’ house.

-Grabbing dinner at a local-yokel establishment when the family is out of town and chatting up a technology headhunter who ends up kinda being a big deal. Like most of my discussions with the kind and connected people I have been randomly meeting on this odyssey, I am blown away by the kindness and willingness to help that actually exists in this world. I think the best thing that this whole experience has taught me is how much people want to help others, whether they know them or not. However, in this instance, the connection kind of disappears, Keyser Soze-style, and I never hear from him after multiple emails. The thing is, the whole thing has me questioning whether or not the headhunter even existed (he did-actually confirmed by a co-worker) because he disappeared from my life so cleanly and completely. I am going to send another email in the morning. Keyser Soze didn’t just disappear forever. The car he drove off in had some destination. Right?

Next week: Part Two – The Contest?!?


by Leave a comment

Ideas for Business Work Incredibly Well in Various Areas of Your Life

Recently, there was a guest post on Brad Feld’s blog, Startup Life, from  Scott and Cathy Yates. The Yates’s happen to have some pretty great ideas about how communication in marriage is a vital component of successful  entrepreneurial ventures. They should know, they both had roles in creating the well-funded blog content creation site, BlogMutt.

The main idea of the post is that before you can seek out investors to fund whatever project you may be undertaking, you first need to win over your “first investor,” your spouse.

Think about it. If you are starting a new venture, there’s a good chance that your spouse will be investing in the idea pretty directly by supporting you as you work initially without a paycheck. Or the spouse may be sacrificing the time that might have been spent enjoying life with you as you spend all your nights and weekends working on your business.

Scott and Cathy present all the components–particularly the trust, honesty, and faith–that are needed for any entrepreneur’s dream fulfilling mission to be successful. You can read the entire article on Feld’s site: Startup Life-Your Spouse is Your First Investor.

As far as the deeper implications of the ideas presented in the article, they fall into the same category that I believe many thoughts focused on business improvement fall into: they can be applied to more areas than just business. The Yates’s story is not one of a successful business partnership, but that of a great life partnership.

In the mysterious way that some kind of karma works, I stumbled upon this article at just the right time in my life. Over the past couple of months, I have been really calling on my super-awesome wife to go above and beyond the normal duties of being a mother of two fun and rambunctious kids. As I have been trying to deepen connections in the Boston tech/innovation world while beginning a new adventure as a journalist, Sarah has often had to shoulder a greater burden at home.

Although my wife knows that I am so grateful for her added investment to our mutual journey, the Yates’s story made me want to get her more deeply involved in this wild phase of my life. As the article points out, “We think it’s important that you convince the person closest to you that you have a good idea, a good market, that the opportunity is ripe, and that you are the one to go after it.”

So, following the Yates’s advice, I made sure that all the details of my recent endeavors as well as the my plans for how I proposed to proceed on my “what-am-I-going-to-be-when-I-grow-up” odyssey clear to Sarah. It was a great discussion, and her feedback helped immensely. Approaching some aspects of our marriage as a start-up business should be an interesting adventure.

I just hope I did enough to convince her that I’m worth investing in!

Thanks Sarah!  I am so thankful for all you do, you amazing super-Mom!


by Leave a comment

Great Night for Timbre, CoachUp at Boston Shark Tank / VentureFizz

 Great Night for Timbre, CoachUp at Boston Shark Tank / VentureFizz

The six finalists of the FutureM/BzzAgent Shark Tank arrived at Microsoft NERD with a promise that at least $100,000 would be committed by a group of investors that included Boston Seed’s Greg Balter, Hubspot’s Dharmesh Shah, and Fred Destin of Atlas Ventures, among others. After each company gave its pitch and the “sharks” deliberated on how to distribute their investments, a surprising $442,000 was committed to local tech/innovation startups.

The highlight of the entire event was the exchange between Intrepid Pursuit’s Mark Kasdorf and the duo of Destin and Balter. Destin countered the terms proposed to invest in Intrepid’s music discovery app Timbre. However, Kasdorf passed on the possible $150,000 to $200,000 offer which led to Dave Balter adding $100,000 to the deal. After some highly entertaining and pressure-filled moments, Kasdorf accepted $350,000 in funding from both Balter and Destin.

CoachUp’s founder Jordan Fliegel gave the most energetic pitch of the evening, taking advantage of the Shark Tank format to put the investors in the hot seat. When prodded by Dharmesh Shah whether CoachUp would expand to other areas, including music lessons, Fliegel responded passionately that they would not. In one of the most passionate moments of the night, he proclaimed, “No, nope it won’t happen, sports is huge, we are not leaving it.”

The evening was a success for Fliegel and CoachUp, as the coaching connection platform received $28,000 in funding from Shah as well as meetings with a couple of investors from the “Piranha Pool”, which was made up of various investors not on the featured panel. The company’s idea of “professionalizing the industry” of coaching was also praised and lauded by audience members covering the event on twitter.

Continue Reading at VentureFizz…


by Leave a comment

Check Out my New Webpage

So I just created a new command center for myself at www.dennisbkeohane.com .  I thought it could be a kind of hub for my “professional” self.

Let me know what you think.  Please, comment or send me an email at den.b.keohane@gmail.com.  I especially would like to know what you think about the “Who is Dennis Keohane?” page.  Anywhere I’ve over-exaggerated or anything I’ve left out, please call me on it.

Thanks!

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,355 other followers