Here are my notes from a talk given by Vancouver based Dr. Randy Paterson, author and psychologist at Changeways private clinic at the Vancouver Wellness show Feb 7th 2009

Here are my notes on his talk.

People often engage in actions and behaviors that if you keep asking them “and if you get that, what will that get you?” the ultimate result is often “If I get that I’ll be happy”. One way to figure how to achieve more happiness is to find what works to make people the opposite of being happy, being miserable, and then do the opposite of that in order to become happier. In this talk he’s discussing how to be miserable, not necessarily full blown depression.

Pete’s note:Adults with ADHD have much higher rates of depression and dysthymia than non ADDers

12 Ways to be miserable.

1. Don’t exercise
2. Don’t eat well
3. Don’t waste your time in bed
4. Give 100% at your work
5. Retail therapy
6.Do what you feel like doing
7. Exist on hope
8. Install a negative filter in your brain
9. Do downwards comparisons
10. Be informed, watch the news
11. Be fashionable, not stylish
12. Improve yourself

Sometimes depression is a natural reaction to some person’s life situation.

Ronald Kuhn was the first person to discover an antidepressant, the trycyclic Imipramine in the 1950’s. At first the drug companies weren’t interested in it because it would take hundreds of millions of dollars to get approved and they thought there weren’t enough depressed people out there to make selling it profitable.

Pete’s thoughts: there goes the conspiracy theorists “depression is a conspiracy of the drug company” theory out the window.

1. Don’t exercise.

James Blumenthal did a study of 156 people with major depression and divide them into 3 groups, aerobic exercise, antidepressant (Zoloft) or both. The

Exercise group had 60% improvement
Antidepressant group had 66% improvement
Exercise and antidepressant group had 69% improvement

To follow up he brought them off antidepressants and discontinued the Aerobic program. The relapse rate (became depressed again) was:

Exercise group had 8% relapse
Antidepressant group had 38% relapse
Exercise and antidepressant group had 31% relapse

Routine exercise is shown to be as effective as psychotherapy. Aim for 3 x 30 minutes a week, but 6 x 30 minutes a week is the best treatment for depression. It doesn’t matter what the exercise is, yoga, Taichi, weightlifting walking, as long as you build up a sweat.

2. Don’t eat well.

If it’s advertised on TV, you probably shouldn’t eat it. Broccoli doesn’t have an advertising budget. If it comes from dirt, eat it.

3. Don’t waste your time in bed.

Most people in urban centers are sleep deprived. Some suggest that even low levels of light might affect your quality of sleep. Your bedroom should be so dark you can’t see your fingers.

8-9 hours of sleep is the best. You can get jet lag by changing your sleeping schedule. It takes 3 days to set your circadian rhythm. So maintain a regular sleep schedule.

4. Give 100% at your work

If you do, how much is left for the rest of your life? Keep work in its place.

Think of the last 3 people you know at work that retired. Ask yourself this question.

Does their legacy live on?

5. Retail therapy

When you feel a void, buy something to fill it. Storage is one of the fastest growing industries in North America.

6. Do what you feel like doing.

Some activities start bad and get better. Some start good and get bad. The feelings after last the longest.

If you base your actions on your feelings about the activity beforehand, you’ll eat too much, drink too much, watch too much TV etc. So be more hedonistic. Do what you’ll be glad you’ve done, because the feelings after have longer lasting benefits.

7. Exist on hope

Hope can be destructive. Gambling is a hope disorder. A lot of bankruptcies are caused by hope. Appropriate hope is great. Inappropriate hope and excessive hope is self-destructive.

When we’re in hope, we’re living in the future, not the present. Don’t hope, plan.

8. Install a negative filter in your brain

Then positive and neutral events in your life won’t pass through. Depression tends to create an involuntary negative bias. Pay attention to the whole picture.

10. Be informed, watch the news media.

reality media filter    coverage

safe bus
safe bus
bus crash            bus crash
safe bus
safe bus

Avoid too much news consumption. Be usefully informed, not obsessively fixated.

11. Be fashionable, not stylish

Quentin Crisp said fashion was learning about how to become like everybody else. Style is the opposite. Take your individuality you want to hide and bring it up to the front. So be stylish, not fashionable. Spend more time being like yourself than others.

12. Improve yourself

We live in a culture of inadequacy. Even though he’s a self help author he says stop reading self help books. Or pick up a few, learn them, but don’t only read self help books.

Half the point of therapy is to get out of therapy. What if you were already good enough? What would you do then? Why not start doing it now?

Books by Dr. Randy Paterson

Your Depression Map: Find the Source of Your Depression and Chart Your Own Recovery

The Assertiveness Workbook: How to Express Your Ideas and Stand Up for Yourself at Work and in Relationships

I found it to be a very useful and interesting talk. I’m sure there’s more than 12 ways to be miserable but it’s a good start. He gives training and presentations to psychologists and to the general public, details are at his website.

Pete’s note: Adults with ADHD are far more likely to have major depression or Dysthemia (chronic low level depression) and anxiety than non ADDers. If you think about the symptoms of ADHD, and how they can impact a person’s life, it’s not too hard to imagine how having adhd and not learning how to effectively manage those symptoms could easily lead to depression.

You might consider making a list of what things you can do that will make your adhd symptoms worse, and try doing the opposite of those things.

What are some of the things that you do that make you most miserable? What are their opposites?

Tweet This Post

This was from 60 minutes, about what they say will be the second wave of mortgage crisises.

via Garth Turner’s Greater Fool an excellent blog on housing/financial problems by former Tory/Liberal MP Garth Turner.

Watch CBS Videos Online

You might also want to look at this related chart

Here’s another good video about the corporate real estate market from Tom Barrack, who Fortune magazine named the world’s greatest real estate investor in 2005. His blog is on the top right hand corner here, he needs a blog consultant, no easy link to the blog.

Here’s an interesting video from Peter Schiff 2006 that predicting the housing bubble busting and a lot more. Part 2 get’s even more interesting.

Adults with ADHD are more likely to have problems with money, savings and debt than most other people. Often they have problems paying their bills when they have the money to do so and completing their taxes when the govt owes them money. They’re also more likely to be in denial about or minimize these problems. If this economic crisis could be be several years long (no one really knows how long it will be), denial is a very dangerous strategy.

There’s one small blessing in the midst of all this chaos. The insanity of paying an average of $450,000 a few months ago for a 1 bedroom condo in my hometown, Vancouver will end, and go to a more reasonable rate. I wonder how low the prices might go?

Tweet This Post

I recently installed Thesis a paid WordPress theme by well known WordPress theme designer Chris Pearson of Pearsonified. Chris has created the several WordPress themes such as the popular Copyblogger, Neoclassical, Cutline and Press Row.

Unlike most standard Wordpress themes it’s SEO’d properly, i.e.,  H1 tags default for posts titles which WordPress should use as default but they don’t.

The default settings are excellent, typography and layout is amazing and you can customize it very easily. They have control panels in the design section of WordPress that I really wished my previous theme Northern Web Coders had, would have saved me days of messing around trying to customize things. They have an active forum for support and an actual detailed online manual for the theme vs 1 or 2 screens of information most WordPress Themes have.

I’ll do a detailed review later, I’m still in the midst of tweaking things. Still on my to do list are the navigation bar buttons at the top,  possibly a header graphic but possibly not, and a better RSS layout.

You can check out the Thesis theme here (aff).

I’ve also added a section for ADHD related gadgets and books from Amazon.com on the left sidebar that some of you might be interested in. I get a small cut on any purchases you make on Amazon’s website if you click through any of the links.

So please tell me what you like/don’t like/would change/ is missing from my new blog design.

Tweet This Post

Do you know if it is? Do you know if it’s not?

Most protein powders, protein bars and protein drinks are made with whey protein, which is made from milk. Is your government checking and letting you know if the whey protein products that you’re eating or drinking safe to consume? Especially since the whole Chinese baby milk scandal was because the biggest dairy companies in China were watering down there milk to make more money and using melamine  to hide that since adding melamine increases the protein content in such poisoned milk products so the milk doesn’t look like it’s watered down.

By 22 September, nearly 53,000 illnesses, over 12,800 hospitalizations, and four infant deaths had been reported, caused by kidney stones and other renal failure. The chemical appeared to have been added to milk in order to cause it to appear to have a higher protein content.”

Melamine is a metabolite of cyromazine, a pesticide… Ingestion of melamine may lead to reproductive damage, or bladder or kidney stones, which can lead to bladder cancer

Melamine was also used in the 2007 Chinese pet food scandal where pet food made from China killed dogs and cats in North America, Europe and South Africa. But it wasn’t just pet food.

the FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture said that between 2.5 and 3 million people in the United States had consumed chickens that had consumed feed containing contaminated vegetable protein from China

Both Chinese

government officials and manufacturers went so far as to deny that vegetable protein was even exported from China and refused for weeks to allow foreign food safety investigators to enter the country….

Well it’s not just a Chinese problem anymore.

It is now clear that China has exported dairy products like powdered milk and milk protein products around the globe and we know that some of them came to the United States,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch. “It is time for the F.D.A. to take this issue seriously and stop the import of dairy products from China until this situation is under control.

The US has imported two million pounds of a milk protein called casein this year, along with other powdered milk proteins that are used as ingredients in many processed foods, according to figures from the United States Department of Agriculture. This includes 293,000 pounds that were imported in July. The Food and Drug Administration did not immediately return calls for comment on Thursday.

I don’t know if or how much Chinese milk protein product were imported into Canada, but if the US did, highly likely we did. Here in Vancouver Canada, there are a lot of health food and supplement stores selling protein powders, not only for body builders and athletes, but also for those who want a quick and easy source of protein. I’ve been told by one store that some of the American made protein powder come from whey made in China.

Why is no one in the media or opposition politicians in the election asking questions about the safety of protein powders, drinks and bars especially since the vast majority of them are made with whey or milk protein?

I’m not saying that I know for sure that there is melamine contaminated protein on our shelves, but I’m saying it’s a definite possibility there could be, and consumers have a right to know, and no one in Canada or America seems to be checking to protect us, and they should. The Europeans and Asians are.

European Union regulators on Thursday ordered rigorous testing of imports containing at least 15 percent milk powder after concluding that food containing tainted milk powder from China may well be circulating in Europe and putting children at risk.

So did Indonesia and the Philippines. Why is Canada and America so far behind? Is it the neoconservative beliefs of the Stephen Harper conservatives here in Canada  who don’t want the government to regulate food safety but for ideological reason prefer that industry do itself? This idea the Tories get from the US Republican party that most governmental regulations are evil and kill or reduce them as much as possible and let industry regulate itself? US President George Bush was so against insanely regulating industry that he cancelled a regulation reducing the level of arsenic in the drinking water. Arsenic!

Hi, please re-elect the Conservatives (or the Republicans in the US) with a majority government because we don’t believe in government and want to do are best to weaken or eliminate as much government as possible and let the private sector watch and govern itself instead of having government do so because there’s never any dishonest or unethical people in business, just in other areas:) Well that worked out well on Wall Street didn’t it? Or the 2008 Canadian Maple Leaf meat poisoning (listeriosis) outbreak with 18 dead so far, and probably more to come since the symptoms may not appear for 90 days. The Harper government transferred inspection duties for the Canadian food inspection agency to the meat industry. Maple Leaf was an early adopter. Harper even lobbied to have US listeria standards lowered. Read the excellent editorial on the topic Listeriosis is the least of it by the  Canadian Medical Association Journal (PDF)

Why aren’t Canadian and American regulators doing the same as the Europeans and Asians? They should be checking to see if any protein based products that come from milk or milk proteins made from China are in our stores and if there is they should be banned or at the least tested for melamine and the consumer should know about it. Milk and protein powder, bar and drinks are the obvious ones but what other food products might be infected? Protein is added as ingredients in other foods too under various names. The governments should also make it mandatory to list if ingredients in foods drinks or supplement come from foreign countries and list that on the labels.

One of the 21 dairy firms in China new about the problem in December but “did not even begin testing its milk for dangerous substances until June, the cabinet probe reportedly found.”

The London Times reports that half of all dangerous goods seized in Europe in 2007 came from China. Also

The determination to stage a perfect Olympic Games may also have delayed revelation of the adulterated milk powder. Twenty-one topics were banned from Chinese media during the Olympics – eighth on the list was food safety scandals.

So the Chinese communist government was willing to let their own citizens babies die so they wouldn’t get negative publicity during the Olympics. Wow.

I think that all food products from China should be tested for safety, it’s not like this is the only time this has happened and even though they occasionally execute people for corruption, it still goes on. Corruption, lack of proper government oversight, lack of truly free and independent consumer protection organizations and lack of a free press to report on such corruption and public safety seems to be quite a deep systemic problems in China, much more so than in the west. Although we sometimes have corruption and scandals too (In Canada read On The Take: Crime, Corruption And Greed In The Mulroney Years, in the US under the Republican party, there’s been just too many to for me to remember) we still have a semi free press to expose such things, China doesn’t.

Why isn’t your local and national media asking these questions? Why aren’t your politicians, especially the opposition parties asking these questions in the midst of national elections in both countries? If not for the good of the country at least for their own partisan political advanatage. Are some parties more concerned about letting companies do whatever they want with minimal or no government oversight so their neoconservative ideology is pure, (or perhaps it may be due to maintaining the wealth of their campaign contributors), or are they willing to use government to do what the main function of government should be, protect their citizens from harm. Think about that when you vote.

I tried contacting the national offices of the 3 opposition parties in Canada, the Liberal party, the Green party and the NDP to suggest that they look into it, most of them seemed clueless even when I spelled out for them. I left voice mails with the news tip lines of the local papers the Vancouver Sun and Province, but had no responses.

Maybe some of you might start asking member of the media and your local politicians these questions and more if you value your health.

Apologies for the long post, did it while trying to get out the door to go to Barcamp Vancouver 2008.

I just edited this for clarity the next day.

Tweet This Post

Phishing is unfortunately getting more common, and more advanced. According to Wikipedia, Phishing

is a criminal activity using social engineering techniques. Phishers attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

Your bank will never ask you for your password by email. Take this Phishing Quiz to see how good you are at detecting the webpage and email scams, it’s not as easy as you might think.

Via Susan at Divine Parenting

Tweet This Post

2nd Update: Gilles Gagnon an ADQ candidate in Abitibi-East, Quebec is backtracking from his comments  on his business’s website about American and European Jews waging war too maintain their economic status.

Update: Jse-Che Lam a former member of the Star’s Community Editorial Board clues in the clueless

The Boisclair controversy did not crack Page 1 of the Star but earned front-page status in Chinese language dailies nationwide… If Boisclair had been a GTA-based politician, these words would have swiftly ended his political career.

One could explain to André Boisclair why “les yeux brides” is both divisive and inappropriate. However, I’m afraid that unless he could experience the world through my eyes, he would never truly understand.

Parti Québécois Leader André Boisclair, who liked to snort cocaine while he was a cabinet minister see his wikipedia entry said to students in a speech on Wednesday that when he was in Harvard

I was surprised to see that on campus, about a third of the undergraduate students had slanted eyes,” he said.

“They’re not going to work in sweatshops. They’re people who will later work as engineers, managers, and will create wealth. They’re people who will innovate in their countries. There is ferocious competition in the world today.

Apparently it’s not the first time he used the word and he cluelessly refuses to apologize.

Yesterday, faced with repeated questions from reporters, Mr. Boisclair said he stood by his remarks and didn’t understand why a fuss was being made, since he has used the “slanted eyes” phrase repeatedly in stump speeches in the past.

“There’s no way I will apologize,” he told reporters during a campaign stop in Quebec City. He said he used the expression because “these people are a source of amazement for me. I’ve been to Japan; they are my friends, my colleagues. No way I will apologize.

So he also doesn’t know the difference between Japanese and Chinese people. The Parti Québécois is the same party who’s leader complained they lost the election by “money and the ethnic vote”

It’s not just Boisclair who’s clueless

Fo Niemi of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, a Montreal civil-rights group called the PQ office to talk to them about the inapporpriateness of Boisclairs comments and got this response

…he said the party’s director of communications for the election campaign, Shirley Bishop, aggressively told him over the phone that she saw nothing wrong with the comment and blamed “people like you” for making racism an issue.

He’s not the only one. The Toronto-based Chinese Canadian National Council called on Boisclair to clarify his comment.

“It is rather disappointing to hear Mr. Boisclair, and an aspiring premier at that, refer to students of Asian heritage in this manner,” council president Colleen Hua said.

“Indeed, it is ironic that today marks the start of Action Week Against Racism in Quebec.

“So we are taking action in asking Mr. Boisclair to correct his statement immediately.”

Apparently the 2 other Quebec provincial leaders don’t see the word as a problem

I think I know Mr. Boisclair well enough to tell you that I don’t believe Mr. Boisclair used that term in a pejorative way … . Believe me, I find plenty of fault politically with Mr. Boisclair, and I’m not shy of saying it, but I wouldn’t fault him for using that expression,” Charest said.

Dumont, who hadn’t heard Boisclair’s remarks, responded by joking: “I have those eyes. I’m told all the time I have slanted eyes.

Dumont suggested that Boisclair was just trying to convey an image.

“Frankly, from knowing Mr. Boisclair I don’t think it was done in a way that was mean or against anyone … . I tend to believe he is a man of generosity.

Not used in a pejorative way? How clueless can you get? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that you shouldn’t use words to describe people of a particular race that they find offensive, but apparently if you lead a political party in Quebec during a provincial election you don’t have to understand this.

Why is this behavior acceptable in Quebec? I know not all the Quebecois think like this. I’ve lived in Quebec for a few years when I was young and went back during university on a French immersion course and had a great time there and enjoyed the people. My last name is not english it’s French.

When I was coming back to Alberta in the early 80s I remember seeing seeing statues of black lawn jockey in house in Quebec. I thought I was in the deep south in the 50’s. Apparently they’re still been sold today

Boisclair should apologize immeadiately. Should you feel like expressing your opinion, here’s the his party’s website their phone numbers 514 526-0020 or the toll free one: 1-800-363-9531

Or if you feel like it you could also send a letter to the montreal media ie the Montreal gazette.

Wikipedia has a list of Montreal media outlets

Tweet This Post

Would a Quaker follow what Pat Robertson says to do? They’re both Christians (well theoretically on the last one, I don’t recall jesus talking about the benefits of assassination)

So when a group of Shia Imams held a press conference last week in Montreal, Quebec where

the Canadian representative of a powerful Iraqi cleric (Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most senior Shia cleric in Iraq) has issued a fatwa on his behalf asking all Muslims to act in the best interests of their adopted countries. Imam Sayed Nabil Abbas delivered the message. Abbas gave the message of tolerance, which he says the cleric wanted heard after the recent arrest of 17 presumed terrorists in Toronto. “All Muslims must act in the best interests of the countries in which they reside,” Abbas told the news conference. “We condemn all forms of violence,” he said, adding the Canadian government must investigate “any harmful acts against our common security.” All Muslims are called on to “heed the words” of the fatwa, Abbas said.

A Fatwa is “a legal pronouncement in Islam, done by a law specialist on a issue.”

Several Toronto newspapers (among others) carried the story and implied that all Muslims should follow it.

What they all failed to mention is the fact that a fatwa or religious ruling from a Shi’a cleric wouldn’t be on all Muslims since there are a lot of Sunni Muslims in Canada and they wouldn’t consider following the religious ruling of a Shi’a Cleric any more than a Southern Baptist would automatically follow the latest Papal ruling.

This doesn’t mean the ruling and the press conference was not a good idea, it was a great idea by the Shiite Imams. This doesn’t mean that most Sunni Muslims in Canada would necessarily disagree with what the Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said either.

I certainly would claim no expertise on the subject of Islam, but it’s pretty basic to know that there are 2 main versions of Islam (as well as other smaller versions).

If members of the media don’t even know those basics, what else don’t they know? How will that ignorance effect their reporting? They should start learning. Wonder how many non Muslim Canadians know? No matter what you think is the best way(s) to deal with homegrown terrorism, it’s very important that the media isn’t giving you accurate information and context.

The CTV news version of the press conference left out the “Shi’a Muslim” part and decided to say “Representatives of Canada’s Islamic community issued a call to action”

The Globe and Mail’s version by Ingrid Peritz used “Muslim leaders in Montreal”, and also left out the “Shi’a Muslim” part.

The Toronto Star’s Sean Gordon said “a group of Canadian Muslim leaders”

CBC’s website was at least a bit more specific, mentioning “Montreal news conference of prominent Shia Muslims on behalf of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.”

The National Post also mentioned that it was “A group of Montreal Shi’a Muslim imams”

However they said this

Mr. Abbas, who is the imam of an Islamic Lebanese centre, said that 10 years ago, Ali Sestani, the Ayatollah for all Shi’a Muslims in the world.

One they misspelled his name “Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani” someone who has been in the news quite regularly but more importantly they just claimed that he is the Ayatollah for all the Shi’a Muslims in the world. This is not true. He is well respected by many Shi’a Muslims but he is not “the leader” of them all. Their are Shi’as in other countries besides Iraq, for example Iran, Lebanon, Syria etc. and while some may be followers of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, some may follow the legal interpretations of other religious scholars.

I talked to Jihad Turk, the director of religious Affairs at The Islamic Center of Southern California about this on June 16th. He confirmed my belief that Sunni’s wouldn’t be bound to a Fatwa of a Shi’a religious scholar anymore than one branch of Christianity would follow the dicates of another.

He said that Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has one of the biggest following in the Iraqi Arab Shi’a world, but other Shia’s may go to other religious scholars for a correct interpretation of islamic legal guidance. He also mentioned that there’s been many Sunni Scholars who have done the similar Fatwas.

I was going to write a lot more on this, topic. I blogged before about the need to understand the global view of violent, racist Islamic supremacists in Islamic countries. after the British bombings but being the info omnivore I am I’ve collected far too much info on the alleged Canadian terrorists for a blog post so I might just leave it at this.

Tweet This Post

After the arrests of the alleged Islamic supremacist terrorists in southern Ontario recently, a few people decided to do something positive as a response to it. They took a page from the very successful blog We’re Not Afraid by Alfie Dennen and friends. At one point it was getting 4 million visitors A DAY, and has received more than 10,000 photos from people around the world showing pictures of themselves, family, friends and pets with the message We’re Not Afraid.

I’ve blogged about it before here, here, here, here, here, and here. Can you tell I thought it was a good idea:)

Blogger Warren Kinsella, along with Dennis Mills and Senator Jerry Grafstein, who organized the Rolling Stones SARS concert, Cam and others have created a website I Am Not Afraid, and a blog http://i-am-not-afraid.blogspot.com as a Canadian response.

Here’s their message.

We are people – from all walks of life, from every region – who love this country, and who want to help send a message to the world, and to other Canadians.

That message is this: “I am not afraid.” To those misguided few who choose violence – who choose to terrorize others – we simply say: it won’t work. If your plan is to scare Canadians, your plan won’t work. We are not afraid

They hope to do 3 things.

* One, to use this web site as a forum for people to post their own personal ways of saying “I am not afraid.”

* Two, for those in and around Toronto, to organize a rally, march and attendance at a Blue Jays game in the next few weeks – because the Jays play in an area that was allegedly targeted.

* Three, to get Canadians to reclaim public spaces across Canada – to go to restaurants, theatres, schools and any place where people gather – and show that they aren’t afraid, either.

Here’s how you can help them.

* Post your own “I Am Not Afraid” message here. We’ll have a message board up soon. In the meantime, send us stuff at iamnotafraid@gmail.com. Photos, artwork and colourful messages are welcome. Be creative and positive.

* Come out to our rally and march – come out to the ball game! Check back soon for details

* If you can’t make it to Toronto for the rally and game, organize an iamnotafraid.ca event in your hometown!

I think it’s a brilliant idea. The purpose of terrorism is to create fear in civilian populations for political purposes. Terrorism needs fear as its fuel source, and murders innocent civilians in the hope of creating that fear. So let’s deny the narcissistic psychopaths their fuel.

As I mentioned before, participating in something like this a lot more productive than:

1. Feeling afraid, helpless and paralysed. Feeling that many media outlets are trying to create, since for many media companies, marketing fear, helplessness and anxiety is a business model.

2. Cursing the darkness impotently, or doing what the terrorist want you to do, attack innocent Muslims so Osama Bin Laden can get more recruits for his cause.

3. Or just feeling useless and fatalistic, i.e., there’s nothing I can do.

next post will be on my thoughts on the attempted terrorist attacks on my country by the islamofascists.

Tweet This Post

When the experienced professionals don’t believe in your business idea, are they always right?

If you decide to take the plunge from complaining about your boss to becoming your own boss and starting a company, you will be in for a wild, wonderful and occasionally terrifying ride. One thing you’ll probably acquire as I did, was a new respect with anyone with the guts to start up their own business.

One of the things you’ll notice is that many people will tell you that your business won’t get off the ground. That it won’t be a success for one reason or another. The failure predictors.

When you are looking for funding, hearing that a VC (venture capital) company has declined to invest in your company, it can be depressing. Probably more of a setback than hearing from uncle Phil who’s business experience is limited to 20 years at the post office, telling you that your business idea won’t work and that you should go back to the cube farm.

However it’s nice to know that even some of the “experts” predictions of failure (or limited success) can be proven wrong in a spectacular fashion.

Many ADDers are known to have what some people call “resistance to authority” issues. Other say they’re only resistent to people with authority that happen to be stupider than they are, and are:

a) unaware of that fact and
b) posessing delusions of adequacies that are not supported by available evidence.

One positive outcome of these tendencies is that there are many ADD enterepreneurs. Many of the positive traits of people with ADD can be very useful in starting a business, ASSUMING they identify the areas of the business they either don’t like or are not good at i.e., paperwork, scheduling etc and hire someone/find a partner to take care of those areas.

Christian Mayaud, Chief Dung Analyst of the blog Sacred Cow Dung has a great story on how the experts are not always right. He talks about one VC firm that’s been around since 1911, BVP that has the guts to list the MOTUS that got away. MOTU in the VC world stands for

“Master Of The Universe” company. It is the legendary 100+ x investment. It is often the bellwether company in an emerging industry.

Here’s their Anti Portfoilo

We chose to decline the investments below, each of which we had the opportunity to invest in, and each of which later blossomed into a tremendously successful company. Our reasons for passing on these investments varied.

Apple Computer

eBay

Federal Express

Incredibly, BVP passed on Federal Express seven times.

Google

Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to “these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine”. Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?”

Intel

Intuit

Lotus & Compaq

So next time an expert tells you why your business idea won’t go anywhere, listen to the reasons, see if you can learn something from them, but do take them with a grain of salt.

If, however, you’re the only one besides your immediate relatives that think it’s a good business idea, than that’s another story. Fantasy businesses are different from real ones. We ADDers can be great brainstormers, creators of a million ideas, just make sure you know the difference between a dream and a solid plan.

Tweet This Post

I Talked to Dave Sifrey, CEO of Technorati at the Moose Camp about my problem getting my blog indexed properly in Technorati. In about 3 minutes the problem was fixed. So the moral of the story is if you have a problem talk to the CEO, they more likely to be biased towards action than their subordinates.

Unfortunately I missed the morning because I had to deal with some of the logistics of getting Digged and Del.icio.used, a task I was very happy to do. Was in a very happy mood all day, despite a lack of sleep. I’ve been blogging for a year and finally had a post that hit it big time. Have 22,000+ hits today so far and still a bit of time left to go. Once I catch up on my sleep I’ll do something to celebrate it.

In some of the sessions I learned more from the questions and comments of the participants than the presenters. One reason to go Northern Voice 2007 is because you get to learn a lot from the well educated techies there, many of whom are very articulate.

If you didn’t get a chance to go and want to learn more, check out the Aggregator they have where you have links to blog posts and photos about the conference by the participants.

Talked to Robert Sanzalone a techie who’s equally comfortable as a speaker (teaching English in Japan helped us both it seems).

Had an entertaining lunch with Chris Pirillo, Ponzi, Ianav, Julia Leung and others. Got to meet Wordpress founder Matt and asked him a few questions about my blogging software Wordpress, he was very helpful.

A very practical session I attended was the Great Podcast Sound for Cheap by Bruce Sharpe. Bruce gave some great tips for cleaning up audio from podcasts, in contrast to other presenters who it seemed took half of their presentation time just to get started and go over some theory that most of the audience seemed to know, instead of focusing on practial tips. Nice to have some good conversations between session, some so engaging that I missed a session or two. Overall had a very good time.

Went to the BBQ in Stanley Park at night, had a few good chats and a good walk.

Tweet This Post