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Control and Responsibility

Over the past decade, the deep rooted traditional business methods have taken a shift, arguably for the better. In the Information Age where almost anyone can find out what they want to know, it’s much harder for businesses to feign values. People quickly become aware of any inconsistencies between what the businesses say they stand for and what they truly are. The same applies to company culture.

To note one thing in particular, the difference between a business that stands out as genuine versus the alternative comes down to looking at how control and responsibility are at play. A business feigning values will often have a structure of controlling more than they should, while shirking responsibility for mistakes onto those who fall lower on the totem pole. Rather than accepting a lack of sufficient leadership, they often play the blame game in an arrogant attempt to avoid displaying vulnerability or weakness.

Fortunately, in looking at the structure of Talixa, I see quite the contrary. Our business is exceptional at delivering quality through the services we offer, yet I see selflessness from our leadership and the other team members. Rather than trying to micromanage and control every part of the business, we each have lanes suited to our skills and experience as well as having a plethora of opportunities to excel. Since responsibility is shared across the board, team members are not afraid to admit to their flaws and work together to develop and grow. By filling in our gaps and working for the good of the team and the community, we are better equipped to scale as a company.

Hardly anybody likes when people pat themselves on the back, though. As far as I personally am concerned, I can’t take credit for the company culture and the success we have seen. I can, however, speak on behalf of the wonderful people that are also a part of this team and working to bring new industry and growth to our community. The more I get to know them individually, the more I am blown away by their willingness to serve. Where does your business or employer land on this spectrum of control and responsibility? If your business is community driven at its core, we’d love (insert shameless “Happy Valentine’s Day” plug) to develop a relationship with you.

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Title Inflation

My first job as a computer programmer was for a small software company. Our tech department consisted of only a handful of people. I functioned as developer, QA, tech support, and network administrator. When I left, we had three programmers. As the person with the most time in the organization, I had the title ‘Senior Developer’. At the time, it sounded great. However, it would be more than a decade before I would have another title suggesting my status as a more senior level engineer.

During the last few months, it has become apparent to me that title inflation has really gotten out of hand. I read an article last week that Javascript Developers want to be called UX Engineers instead. The bulk of programmers are not great at interface design – developers use logic, interface designers use feeling. It’s a left brain/right brain thing, and few people are actually great at both.

Likewise, everyone wants to be a Full Stack Engineer today. Sure, plenty of people can do all parts of a project – from the HTML frontend to the backend and the database. However, very few are actually experts at all of the above. Most Full Stack Engineers are really just jack-of-all-trade sorts who have not mastered any particular part of the process.

I see even more title inflation when I look at small business owners. Everyone is a Founder or CEO – yet few, if any, of them have employees or revenue to command such a lofty title.  Or better yet, people claiming the title Director of some department or another yet having nobody underneath them. You’re only fooling yourself.

What have I learned from all this? Titles are meaningless. What really matters is what a person has accomplished. If you had to prove to someone that your title was appropriate, could you do so? On your resume, can you provide several bullet points to validate your title? If you cannot, you will be disappointed when the next organization you work for gives you a title inline with your actual skills.

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Goal-Oriented Design

When building anything, keep the end goal in mind. Too often, businesses fail to consider the importance of big picture thinking when starting a new project, especially regarding an intentional design process. In designating specific tasks or planning out projects, most would focus on immediate results. However, in looking at a company like Amazon, there is such an emphasis on long-term growth that their team is looking seven years out and planning accordingly.

Jeff Bezos is noted for saying that when people compliment him on current growth, he can’t help but be amused, because the next few quarters of sales were already determined for the most part by the planning and processes designed years ago. Similarly, in looking at the long-term nature of building out a sustainable income on a platform like YouTube, very few businesses want to hop on board, knowing that they would barely make any money initially. The same goes for other Social Media platforms, though I’d contend that a lack of understanding of how to leverage these platforms is a contributing factor as well.

Ironically, the type of work that pays out well in the short term doesn’t scale very well. In addressing goal-oriented design, one of the biggest upsides comes from knowing that the growth ceiling is often much higher despite taking a bit longer to see returns. We’ve all heard it said that slow and steady wins the race, yet too many times businesses take an overly aggressive approach to increasing company revenue. We can’t really blame them, but what we can do is make better choices for ourselves to change the narrative of how success is achieved in business.

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Do What You Want*

So many businesses today are doing what they DO NOT want and confusing it as the right thing to do. Maybe they feel like they need employees to follow the 9-5 workday to achieve success. Perhaps they are doing things just to “fit in” with other businesses, and at their own expense. Even still, most businesses that I’ve encountered have some aspect of their work that adds no productivity or value, yet they continue to “go about their business” anyway.

However, I need to be clear… the asterisk in the title is there for a reason. The message conveyed is both good and right in its true nature, not to be confused with or distorted into a message of business driven by greed, hedonism or self-gratification. So long as a business’ goals and core values promote good in an ultimate and absolute sense, it’s hard to go wrong. Simply consider how each decision relates back to the mission and vision of the company.

Personally and vocationally speaking, my efforts are focused on helping other businesses, organizations, and individuals to do exactly what I’ve suggested. If we don’t want to do something, we’re certainly not going to be capable of doing our best work. We can put on a good show and do enough to get by, but the world would be so much better if every business and every person was operating at peak potential for the sake of making the world a better place. Let me know what you’re doing that you shouldn’t be, and I’ll do my best to help you do more of what you want* in any way that I can.

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Invest in Yourself!

Most people with any type of investment account are concerned with the kind of growth their investment will achieve. News sources provide up-to-the-minute stock updates. Talking heads on cable news talk about the likelihood of a recession. All around us, people are concerned with investments. But what most people ignore is investments in themselves. Beyond college, few people pursue any further education or training to advance themself. People want to achieve more, but few will put in the effort to make it happen.

Businesses are often the same. Recently, I spoke with a potential customer about an app for their business. The customer indicated that they were very concerned about losing business to a big-name competitor. They wanted to be able to more effectively compete with the giant in the industry. When I asked what their budget was, they indicated that they had $250. I could tell similar stories about other businesses too.

Are you making investments in your future? Today we have more options than ever to better ourselves. Innumerable websites offer online training, books on any topic can be found to hone your skills, and online groups and forums abound for connecting with others. Are you exploiting those opportunities?

In the end, whether it is our personal life or our business, we must be willing to invest time and money if we wish to see growth. Otherwise, we will constantly be at the bottom of the totem pole wondering why we can never get ahead.

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Leverage Networks

Over the last several months, my mission has been to focus on company scalability. As a community minded individual, implementing a business model that would encourage Talixa to grow only when we help others do the same has always been a priority. I would argue that this is the reason we saw so much growth so quickly. In April, Talixa transitioned from a part-time company to a full-time company. By July, we had enough projects to keep us booked full-time through the end of the year.

Initially, those were my goals. My work revolved around doing whatever I could to ensure that the company was an asset to the community. As we’ve brought on more team members, I needed to redefine what specifically I could do to allow Talixa to become an even greater asset to the community. What I’ve realized is that I need to make myself available to the rest of the community so I can see more of our community reaching their potential, through Talixa’s infrastructure.

Tom never needed me to help him grow his company. I firmly believe that. However, in looking at what happened as a result of my decision to be a part of the company’s growth, I realized that the element of collaboration, transparency and accountability could explain the rapid growth. When other people can see what we’re working on, we can get the necessary feedback to make the right decisions to position ourselves for sustained growth.

With all that said, Talixa Software & Service, LLC is offering a brand new service… one that I’m particularly excited to share. As far as social media is concerned, our community overall does a fantastic job of utilizing facebook to spread the word and market the products and services that are locally available. However, I have seen very few people utilizing twitter to its fullest potential. People like Elon Musk (Tesla, Space X, Boring Company) are utilizing twitter to accomplish unbelievable things and reach the masses, despite claiming that it is the most difficult platform to conquer.

I have been in the process of tearing the platform apart, breaking down every bit of information I can understand, in order to come up with a process to leverage our local networks and scale our community, catering to our strengths and capitalizing on them. Our business model has worked incredibly thus far, so I don’t intend to change it at its core. Talixa will only scale by helping our entire community do the same. For this reason, we have created twitter business packages to deliver exceptional value, and the reason we can offer the service at the most competitive price is because we’ve created a win-win scenario… a blue ocean.

If your business is on twitter, send us your twitter handle (e.g. @TalixaSoftware) and we’d be happy to give you some extra exposure through our twitter, even if you aren’t actively tweeting content. If your business isn’t on twitter, make an account right now! Otherwise, you’ll miss out on the huge potential to accomplish immeasurably more than you’d expect. If you’d like to learn more about our service, check out this link: bit.ly/2MuMPoF

If you have any questions or feedback about what we’ve ventured into, please reach out! We’d love for you to be a part of what we’re doing and reap the benefits alongside us.

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Hack Day

In December, I participated in the MLH Local Hack Day. Hack Day is an opportunity for tech nerds of various disciplines to get together and collaborate on projects or to simply attend lectures presented by various people and organizations.

During Hack Day, I was invited to speak to the students of our local tech school – South Hills School of Business and Technology – about my experiences as a programmer and an entrepreneur. One of the topics of my presentation was advice for aspiring developers.  Below is some of the advice I gave.

Never stop learning.  The people who get ahead in life are those who are educated. They read daily. They are always learning the skills needed for tomorrow’s workplace. Those who are left behind – particularly in tech – are those who have antiquated skills.

Shut the TV off. At the end of your life, you will never look back and say “I wish I had watched more television”. TV can provide entertainment, but it will never help us achieve our goals. In fact, TV will derail our goals and dreams by preventing us from acting to achieve them.

Learn Linux. It’s sad the number of techies out there that don’t know their way around a Linux server. Given the number of things that run Linux such as Android, Docker, AWS, and Google Cloud; knowledge of Linux is crucial to your tech career. If you’re stuck in a Windows-only world, it’s time to diversify!

Master JavaScript. Like it or not, JavaScript is becoming the dominant language of development. Not only is JavaScript the defacto language of the web, it is increasingly being used for server side development (Node), build automation (Grunt), robotics (Johnny5), and has become the standard language for passing data between systems (JSON).

Master Web Development. Along with the growth of JavaScript, web technologies are exploding too. Cordova and Ionic allow web technologies to be used to create mobile applications and Electron allows JavaScript to be used for cross-platform desktop applications.

Write Code Daily. A weight lifter gets stronger by lifting weights. A runner gets faster by running. A coder gets better by coding. Reading books is great, watching videos is cool too. But if you want to write better code, get in the habit of writing code every day.

This is just a short list of the advice I provided. Nonetheless, it’s a pretty solid checklist to start down the path to becoming an expert software engineer.

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Know Your Numbers

As a US based tech company, if someone were to ask which language we would use to be able to communicate with the most people around the world, “English” would probably be the expected answer. While English is second only to Mandarin Chinese (the most spoken language in the world), communicating nonverbally through science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) would serve as a more universally effective method. Regardless of whether the person on the other end of the conversation can speak the same language, anyone can relate through numbers.

In business, numbers are considerably more important. From margins to revenue and analytics, companies live and die by their numbers. Some of my favorite businesses have closed, not due to a lack of quality in their product or service, but because they failed to understand how to properly manage and utilize numbers. Sadly enough, companies with millions of dollars in revenue can still have little to no profit. Likewise, companies can often easily fail to deliver on the value proposition of their product or service.

As I continue to help Talixa develop and grow through refining our business processes and my own social media processes (specifically twitter for the time being), I constantly am looking to see what the numbers can tell me. Experimenting is one of the best ways to learn, because it leads to a wider range of experience. Individuals, businesses, and organizations can develop and grow simply by taking action upon an understanding that numbers are a priority.

Looking for advice based on anything I’ve said? I’m happy to give it, free of charge. Reach out using any of these methods:

DM Talixa on Twitter: twitter.com/TalixaSoftware
Message Nick on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nick-gordon
Email Nick: nick@talixa.com

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Organizational Aspirations

Throughout my life, I have observed that there are two types of people out there – those who aspire to excellence and those who are content to get by. This extends to businesses as well. For example, consider Chick-fil-a. Just like McDonald’s or Burger King, Chick-fil-a is a fast food joint.  But unlike their competitors, it’s apparent that Chick-fil-a aspires to be something more. You see it in the quality of their staff and the quality of their food. As far as fast food goes, Chick-fil-a is the gold standard of excellence in all that they do.

Unfortunately, there are too few businesses out there striving for excellence. Companies try to cut corners, find the cheapest bidder, outsource their call centers to people who struggle to speak English, or engage in other practices that show anything but excellence. These companies try to gain our confidence but they never will. We may use their products and services, but only when we’re looking for a cheap solution. Indeed, these companies have turned their products and services into commodities differentiated by nothing but cost.

When people look at the goods and services your company offers, what do they see? Are you an organization demonstrating excellence in all you do, or a another in a long list of organizations content to push the mediocre?

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Contagious Generosity

Social experiments are rather interesting. Looking back at my high school senior project from a number of years ago, I had almost finished preparing a research presentation about how collaboration, gratitude, and generosity are integral to the success of individuals, businesses, and organizations. As I stared at my screen, however, I felt as though something was missing. While the research was both accurate and interesting to me, I had my doubts that anybody else would care. Why would they? After finding out that I would be one of the first presenters, I quickly devised a plan that involved some scheming and a trip to the store.

From the start of my presentation, the other students could see that I brought a few shopping bags full of something, and it caught their attention. When the time came I unveiled the great mystery and passed around several different bags of candy to different groups of students. To go along with the candy were some very specific instructions. I not only gave each group the option to do with their candy as they pleased but also informed them that groups would go one at a time.

The first and last groups were the most interesting to watch, because the first group had the opportunity to set the trend of sharing their candy, while the last group had complete freedom to keep their own candy in addition to what was shared with them. Everyone willingly shared, and they ended up with a better variety of candies than they started with. As others presented in the following weeks, quite a number of them brought in more candy as well. I was pleased that a simple activity caused my presentation to become more memorable and effective.

In applying these principles to helping businesses develop and grow, I can’t help but relate this experience to what I see with Talixa. We hire people who offer something unique in certain areas and constantly fill in our gaps. The company has grown by focusing on serving others to the best of our ability, while delivering maximum value and doing the job the right way the first time. Our team has proven time and time again that our services greatly exceed the minimum requirements. I urge you to start implementing new ways to reach more people with your generosity, and prepare to watch your business grow.

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