Berberian's Blog

Addiction

The other day I was talking to friend about what to do when you find out someone close to you has an addiction problem.  His first reaction was one of mistrust – how could things ever be the same between them again?  He said things like, “He was high when we last talked.  I’ll help him but it will never be the same; I don’t know if I can ever trust him again.  If it weren’t drugs, I wouldn’t feel this way.” 

I have four people very close to me that all suffer from some sort of addiction (illegal drugs, pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and other stuff).  I’ve had to think about my behavior and what my reactions are upon hearing the news of their problem.  I had similar reactions to those above – but in time I learned that those thoughts are only about me and do nothing to help the person recover from their addiction. Whenever someone decides it’s time to come clean there are a lot of emotions around the table – anger, sadness, mistrust, cynicism, and hope.  However, hope is typically present in only small amounts – if at all.

People assume that the person screwed up to get into this condition – they’ve behaved like a screw up – so they’re only going to screw up this getting clean process and fall off the wagon.  So you immediately become very suspicious of an addict’s behavior right after they’re out of rehab or whatever.  I found that I had to work at burying by suspicion and focus my actions and conversations on being more supportive – they need help getting their lives together not a watchdog.  If they’re in a program they have sponsor that helps them with their addiction issues – since I wasn’t that person for anyone, my role way more to show that I still care for them and I want them to succeed.  It’s an absolutely difficult process to watch someone get clean – but once they do it’s like getting a new friend or family member that knows you well and has a passion for life that is invigorating to observe.

At some point a person either gets clean or they die (or disappears into oblivion which is the same I guess). You don’t know when that point is and if it is now, I would want to be there for them. No one I know (that I’m close to) has fallen off the wagon once they decided to get clean – but if they did I’d like to think I’d still be there for them – because losing them would be worse than them dying – I’d lose a bit of hope in people’s ability to change.

Three Customer Service Stories

1:  I bought a HP printer at Costco about six weeks ago – one of those ink jet multi-function jobbers that cost about $200 but every time you by new ink you drop another $75 (which by the way only last for about 11 pages).  Anyhow it sucked.  First HP print software is bloated it takes up literally 200MB of disk space and takes over 30 minutes to install (I don’t know what it’s doing but I’m sure it is sucking all sorts of system resources), second I hate the quality of ink jet printing (which I knew going in but I thought my wife could live with it – she can’t).  So I take the product back after 6 weeks – I don’t have the receipt since my wife shredded it, I’ve used up all the provided ink, the box is mangled and my reason for returning it was “I don’t like it anymore.”  You know what the Costco customer rep said – “Would you like cash or store credit?”  Amazing – only in America!

2:  Last week we went on a trip to LA to get out of the cold (Malibu was 78 and clear skies – beautiful).  We had a rental car from Budget – we get there and end up waiting 20 minutes for a bus to arrive,  They pack the bus so full the driver blows off other stops down the line.  Only 3 dudes on the bus are going to the “Fast Break” aisle.  I immediately size up the situation and tell my Renee to make “fast break” off this jinky bus and be the first in line when we stop.  We stop – she bolts – I deal with the luggage and when I get off I see her standing in line with about a dozen people in front of her.  There are 8 agents working, they take about 10 minutes to process one person – 30 minutes later we have our car.  As we’re walking out the line has grown to over 70 people – it’s outside and wrapping around the building.  The people waiting to catch the bus back to the airport are standing under a sign that says “Buses arrive every 5 minutes – time since last bus left: 18:23” and counting.  Never again.

3:  I bought Vista and Office 2007 to install on my Mac using Parallels.  I purchased the upgrade version since I owned XP Professional but it wasn’t installed on my machine.  Low and behold Microsoft has a help line for Vista.  I was reluctant to call India and be placed on hold for 90 minutes only to get an unsatisfactory answer but I figured what the hell I’ll try.  I called India via a US 800 number, talked to someone whose birth name isn’t Renee and in less than 3 minutes I got patched through to Bob.  Bob was nice but told me I had to do two OS installs.  I was unsatisfied but happy that it only took 4 minutes to get to that state.  I then surfed the web and found out how to do it with just one install.  Lyla from Microsoft then called me a day later to make sure I was satisfied with their support – I said “Yes” because I didn’t want to get into it – she then sent me an email saying the issue was closed – or was it?

Knee Stuff

For those of you that don’t know – I was in a bad car accident in 2003 and really messed up my right leg. I had my patella (kneecap) removed, rods inserted into my tibia and femur, which included several deck screws to hold stuff in place, I lost the small artery that runs down the leg, and month later I had a silver dollar size chunk of my femur excised through my quadriceps. I haven’t really talked about my injuries much because – well there are so many people out there with worse stuff – it just feels like I’m complaining. 

Every now and then I search the web for “patellectomy” and come up with virtually no results.  I’m basically looking for folks who have had a similar injury and how they are coping without a kneecap.  My conclusion is – not a lot of people have this procedure – generally it is considered kind of a last result to alleviate knee pain when the knee is relatively in tact (with very mixed results from what I can tell) and in most injuries some of the patella is generally salvageable.  I had three orthopedic surgeons care for me during my recovery and none of them ever did a complete patellectomy.  Well my first surgeon can now say he’s done one, the other two can at least say they had a patient that had one. So for the .00001% of you that don’t have a patella, I’m going to blog about my experiences.

This is also my cheap version of SEO to get my blog at the top of a Google search.  I’m sure this one post uses the word patellectomy more than any other site. Patellectomy, patellectomy, patellectomy, patellectomy, patellectomy, patellectomy – now it does.

Air Force Academy Visit

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak at the Air Force Academy.  I gave the same talk to four different classes of management majors – each 50 minutes in length.  While you’re tired at the end of it – it was really fun to reconnect with the professors – many were just getting their USAF career going when I was a cadet.  The fact that some are now retired military and are continuing on as civilian professors means I’m getting old.

Every time I go and present I come back feeling pretty pumped up – the folks in the department of management do a great job making you feel special (even though your just one of dozens of speakers throughout the year – it’s good to be king for a day).

The royal treatment was great but interacting with the cadets was the highlight of my visit.  They were attentive, engaged, genuinely interested in business, had creative ideas, asked thoughtful questions and basically made me feel special knowing that I once sat in those same chairs.   I believe the caliber of the students has gone up markedly since my time at the zoo, and cadets today are much more focused on what’s next after the Air Force.  Several cadets have emailed me with business ideas and surprisingly they’re all good. These business plans weren’t just simple ideas taken from someone else – like opening an ice cream store in a new location (which isn’t a bad idea just a simple one) – these ideas are all derived from personal experiences and have been thoroughly researched and developed (some even had prototype products). 

Ben Casnocha accompanied me on my visit Monday. I should have given him time to present; his message would’ve really resonated with the cadets. Ben has accomplished the impossible in their eyes, he founded a business while he was a high school student and has turned it into successful software company managed by a group of professionals.  Ben now is enjoying the fruits of his entrepreneurship, traveling the world, writing a book and getting to meet all kinds of new people as he takes one year off before he starts college. Every would be cadet entrepreneur would love to figure out how to start a company while having a full time job.  Starting a company when that is all you have to do is hard – but doing it while you’re doing something else is simply unimaginable. It was great getting to spend time with Ben and to see the Academy through his eyes – I hope our paths cross again.

My Startup Process

Since August I’ve been trying to figure out my next business.  I’ve started four other companies in my life – why should it be that hard for number five?  I’ve looked at over 40 ideas. I spent anywhere from a few hours to several days researching each idea.  They all suck for some reason or another but generally because they don’t fit in my box of constraints.  (I will share some of those ideas in future posts.)

Monday I’m a guest speaker at the USAFA.  I’m going to talk to the seniors in the management major about “How to pick the right business for you.” Since I’m living that dream everyday, and I need to prepare for my speech, I thought I’d try to put some structure around my activities.  Here is how I evaluate a business:

First are the constraints; questions I ask myself – the answers may be different for each idea:

•    Skills/Team – What am I good at?  Who can I recruit and what are they good at?  Skills and team are the same – you assemble a team to augment your skillset.  You can recruit folks after founding the business but I think to start a company you need to have a meaningful amount of talent on the founding team.
•    Commitment – What is my level of commitment in terms of time, personal resources and mental stamina to make the business a success?  This seems like a simple thing for most to answer, but when you dig in and really dissect the issue by asking probative questions, you’ll uncover vast differences between team members.  Whenever you see founders with conflict between themselves and / or employees – it’s largely the level of commitment is different.
•    Funding – Can I raise money for this idea?  This needs to be examined from two perspectives.  The idea may be good but as a founder you may not be able to raise money for it; that is you have no credibility in the space.  The flip side is, you may be totally backable as an entrepreneur but the idea is weak.
•    Passion – Do I love the idea (product/service)? Do I love the business of executing on that idea?  Passion for the product I believe is largely optional - most businesses sell boring stuff (unless your Apple or Victoria’s Secret – that may get boring too, I don’t know I just like the ads).  The passion that is critical to have is for executing on that idea.  You don’t have to like all the stuff about building a company, but you have to want to achieve some goal that allows you to endure the things you don’t like.  It’s different for every business but you need to identify the key activities that will drive success.  I’ve seen many more successful companies where the CEO doesn’t really “love” the product but they are absolutely hell bent on building a company to <x> in revenue or selling it for <y> millions or some other goal. That said it’s best to be passionate about both – it makes what you do more fun.
•    Other – Other stuff that’s important like: moving, time away from home, moral constraints (some people may have a problem running a strip joint others may not), desired money in the bank when it’s over, spouse’s opinion, and whatever else…

So that’s the box I create for every idea and see if it works.  If it does, then I take it to the next step, which is to build a quick and dirty business model – I’ll talk about that in another post

My Old Blog

When I started blogging in 2004 I used a service called Squarespace.  I’ve switched to Typepad simply because I like the look and feel better of the final web site.  Squarespace is much easier to use but lacked key design elements.  Anyhow there is now a break in my content – you can access my old posts here.