By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!


What's the best startup approach to take? 

Well, why not go into your (next) startup as you go into life -- completely naked and alone with nothing to lose, expecting no applause.

This will allow you to start immediately and most importantly to start with a "the buck starts and stops here" mentality.

And as a bonus, anything above that which you experience will be a very pleasant surprise.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!


We hear a lot these days about the supposed value of being a "digital native" (defined as a person born or brought up during the age of digital technology;  familiarized with computers and the Internet from an early age) as though being a digital native will automatically bring value to a hiring company.

Well, I'm here to tell you that a "digital native" is most often  a flat out nothing.

What, why? How can you say that? 

Because being a "native" doesn't mean the individual competent at the skill to which they claim to be native.

Doubt that?

Well, consider how the communicative efficacy of the English speakers we all know or have heard who claim to be "native speakers".

The problem with the "digital native" moniker is that most of the folks this applies to only have experience sole as digital consumers.

They no experience or only very limited experience as digital producers.

They don't possess digital competency in general and more specifically they don't possess digital competency in a business context.

They are competent at perhaps locating an app in iTunes or Google Play, installing it and then using it among friends for fun.

But can they write production quality code? No.

Can they design, run, analyze, interpret and improve an online marketing campaign? Heck no.

Can they troubleshoot or debug a software or hardware problem? Nope.

The answer is most likely no, no, no.

The bottom line is that signing up for a twitter account to tweet your college ski trip is not the same as creating a twitter campaign for a fashion brand let alone an integrated multi-phase marketing program for said fashion brand.

There is good news, so hang tight.

The good news is that for those digital natives that do go beyond the install, that take the time to look under the hood, that actually remove the valve covers and look at the source code or to work to apply these tools in a business context to satisfy real world use cases, well, those digital natives are worth their weight in gold as they are as rare as an honest politician. They can write their own tickets and would be welcome just about anywhere.

So stop thinking being a digital native is enough. It isn't. A digital native is just a fancy word for a digital consumer.

Strive to be a digital producer. Be a digital creator. Be a digital expert.

Think about it. 

You can thank me later.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge

"So, what, you think you're a minder read and can read minds, right?! Ha!"

I often find myself fielding this question although sometimes it's delivered in a tone of voice that conjures up images of an accusation such as "charlatan!" rather than a genuine question.

But that's okay, as it shows interest and engagement on the person asking it and once they allow me to explore a little more with them, they are usually hooked and have an "aha!" moment.

....

So the simple and honest answer to this question or perhaps the rejoinder to this accusation is, of course, I'm not a mind reader nor do I purport to be. And yet my results are there and they are what they are with them being more often than not extremely uncanny in their accuracy. 

The most important insight from my work and research that I try to impart to my students, clients and skeptics is that you don't need to be a mind reader to be accurate in your reading of a situation because in most cases the party in question through their actions, reactions and inactions almost to a tee loudly and graphically telegraphs exactly what they are thinking and how they are thinking as well as their intentions.

....

By James Santagata
Managing Director, Career OverDrive!

Don't waste your life waiting for the bus to come pick you up. 

Newsflash: It ain't coming!

Well, at least it ain't coming anytime soon or it would have been here by now...

Sometimes, the smart move, sometimes the only move is to make a conscious decision to lace-up your boots and start the long, back breaking journey on foot.

You'll be told by others, perhaps even through your own internal talk, that you aren't ready, that you aren't prepared, that the timing isn't right.

But you need to realize one thing while you ask yourself another.

Life isn't a dress rehearsal and if you aren't ready now, without getting in the arena of life, bench marking your skills, tempering and honing the skills you already have now while developing new ones, when, pray tell, when will you ever be ready?

The answer is NEVER.

And in that case your future is as clear as day and ends with a Death Bed Regret.

Remember, we almost never regret what we do, we regret what we didn't do.

By James Santagata
Managing Director, Career OverDrive!

Be spicy, be like Thai food.

Understand that life is simply a sales, marketing and, most of all, perception game so
learn to stand for something and don't worry about being the "nice guy" or "nice girl".

Stand for something. Mean something.

Be like Thai food.

Spicy.

It's not cafeteria food.

And it's not for everyone.

But then again, how many people will stand in line for "cafeteria" food vs ethnic food? Thai food may have a smaller audience but it's an audience of dedicated foodies.

So Spice up! 

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!

Over the years I've seen a few patterns emerge from otherwise talented people:

1. They give up too soon. As soon as the going gets tough, they fold. Often this is due to the obedience / approval seeking behavior taught within the school system. That may be fine for a student who just needs to graduate, but in the "real world", that is, post-school life, well it will harm you and your career often greatly.

2. Many folks label and then internalize valuable market feedback as "failure". Let me be clear here: It's only failure if you:

(a) label it as failure
(b) don't learn from it
(c) refuse to get back up

Stop labeling your experiences as a "failure" and start extracting value from these experiences by conducting post-mortem review. These reviews can be as simple as spending 10 minutes thinking what you learned, good and bad, from this experience, making some notes and seeing what could be tweaked or improved next time. Beyond that, see your "failure" for what it is -- a learning experience. And when we are learning, we make "mistakes" - they different between failure and mistakes couldn't be clearer.

(a) a failure is an outcome, not one event. It means you most likely haven't learned and the process is over because you didn't get back up.

(b) mistakes happen when we learn. It is an ongoing process and the most valuable part of the mistake is the lesson or lessons that we learn. 

Start to reframe your view of the world that way and see how fast you will improve.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!

So many of us, myself included, have been in situations where we either don't attempt something or spend too much time worrying about some future event that may very well never come to pass.

If you've seen the heart-wrenching clip Christopher Maloney prior to his taking the stage to sing and then singing you know what I mean (give it a look below).

Two lessons (and a bonus) From Christopher Maloney's Experience:

1. Put yourself out there. Until you put yourself out there, you can't benchmark yourself or find out if you're good at something, need improvement, love it or hate it. This takes some risk, but it's mostly psychological risk. This is often compounded as people tend to label learning experiences as "failure" and then give up or avoid future opportunities to improve themselves. Don't be like that.


2. The difference of worrying about the future and being "in the moment". When Christopher stepped onto the stage he was overtaken with stage fright, shaking and becoming teary-eyed -- and who can blame him? But once his song came on and he opened up his pipes, he immediately went into a trance as he was overtaken by the music and his passion as he was transformed into another person -- with an amazing voice!


3. Bonus Lesson: When Christopher was asked by the judges why he had kept his beautiful, rocking voice hidden for all these years he said that people told him he wasn't good enough and that he would embarrass himself or fail. 

They said, "Don't come on here, you're gonna embarrass yourself, make a show of yourself."

Fortunately for him and for us, he finally went ahead and put himself out there. It was also beautiful to see the love and support he had given to his grandma and that she returned in supporting him. The bonus lesson: dump or disassociate with those who bring you down, and double-down on those who support and love you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1T9-I3wx8I#t=23

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!


There are two primary, legal and simple ways to win almost any competition and which involves no cheating.

(1) Prepare and then perform better than your competition. This is often very hard which is why so many are reluctant to rely on this.

(2) Brainwash the other competitors, saddling them with emotional and mental blocks.

If you follow the way societies works, including American society, you'll soon see that (2) is most often how those in power, seeking to gain or consolidate power operate.

If you simply disconnect and deprogram yourself from these myths and memes you'll find that success will come faster and easier than ever.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Career OverDrive!


Myths and memes. 
 
Love it when people soak them up.

Less competition for you and those that understand the way the world truly works rather than how the social engineers would like it to be.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, Silicon Edge

Recently Andy Serwer, managing editor of Fortune, sat down with Marc Andreesen to discuss The Future of Work, Cars and the Wisdom in Saying 'No' (full, unabridged version on Forbes Magazine here: Inside the mind of Marc Andreessen).

In this interview, I was particularly struck with Marc's views on the impact of the ever-accelerating and widening technological adoption on the job market, and the elimination of entire categories of jobs as well as his comments on education and the need for re-training.

Andy Serwer: We all understand that the Internet revolution is inevitable at this point, but it’s also kind of controversial. There are scads of new jobs at Facebook and Twitter and other places, but what about the ones that are destroyed by the inroads of technology into every industry? Are you actually creating more than you’re destroying?

Marc Andreessen: Jobs are critically important, but looking at economic change through the impact on jobs has always been a difficult way to think about economic progress. Let’s take a historical example. Once upon a time, 100 percent of the United States effectively was in agriculture, right? Now it’s down to 3 percent. Productivity in agriculture has exploded. Output has never been higher. The same thing happened in manufacturing 150 years ago or so. It would have been very easy to say, “Stop economic progress because what are all the farmers going to do if they can’t farm?” And of course, we didn’t stop the progress of mechanization and manufacturing, and our answer instead was the creation of new industries.

From my vantage point, this is completely off track for one main reason -- in the earlier stages of mechanization and automation we had far, far, far fewer people on this planet so that these productivity increases could support and sustain larger and larger populations. In addition, the rate of change was far lower and more localized. It was the difference of seeing single family home burn, to the firebombing off an entire city with no where to run to the simultaneous firebombing of an entire country if not world.