Celebrate the People & the Adventures

CELEBRATING Startups, mentors, the people and the adventures we have taken together, I celebrate you. 

As a mentor in the startup ecosystem in Australia and Europe, I am always in awe of the people I have had the honour to work with and for the adventure, we go on together.

Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, and as the year gradually begins to drop the curtains on a lot of beautiful experiences, it seems like a pretty good time to reflect on the people you met, bridges you built and adventures you had in the past 12 months. But you don’t have to wait until Christmas to celebrate the people and start setting goals to achieve. I believe that every quarter of the year gives you time to reflect on the wonderful people you have the pleasure to meet and the adventures that you go on together in business and life. Sometimes, the adventures don’t turn out as well as you hoped so make sure you acknowledge them and learn from them quickly and move on.

As a digital nomad, I travel a lot and I find that the thing that makes people most uncomfortable is not being able to place where you are from. The question in there heads is “why you are in my community”? and “what’s in it for them”. Things start to ease once they know you travel full time, but most don’t feel comfortable with the fact you don’t have a base. Then the next question is “Where’s your favourite place in the world?” I have spent my life travelling, I often get asked this question. And my response is always…

“It’s not about the place; it is always about the people and the experience you create.”-Linda A. McCall

Give yourself time for Reflection

As you reflect on the year, it might be worth the time to look back at the interactions and connections you made this year and ask yourself, how you bought value to them, how could you have made it better and what did you learn. These are reflections just for you so that you, not for any other purpose.

It’s mentally satisfying to stop and celebrate those interactions you had, and it’ll help you appreciate life more. If you haven’t done this yet, it’s never too late to recognise the personal connections, and the relationships built. After all that is what business is all about, building relationship they are what makes a business thrive. So, when you think about business in simple terms it’s just “building relationships” but make sure you build them with the intention of giving first.

Shared Experiences

Here I’ll be sharing with you my experiences and thought-provoking ideas on how best to celebrate the people and the adventures that made 2018 worthwhile or any year, it’s about taking the time to be grateful to reflect and to learn from all your experiences.

MY 2018 EXPERIENCE AT A GLANCE

Another year of full-time travel in 2018 and it has been a great year that’s packed with a lot of adventure. This year had my partner and I met with hubs and incubators all over the world, from Canberra, Boulder Colorado, Denver, Silicon Valley, San Francisco LA, Nth Carolina, Bundaberg, Emerald, Cairns, Yeppoon, Rockhampton, Blackwater, Bowen, Owensville, Sydney, Mackay, Airlie Beach, Atherton Tablelands, Cape York, Brisbane, Toowoomba and even Hamilton Island. The list is endless, and I’ll be needing five more blog posts to list them all but that is what I love to do is experience the people and the place is a bonus.

Yeah, I know, that’s a lot of places in one year. But it’s not just the places that are fascinating; it’s because we were able to connect with a lot of really amazing people and the pods of innovation that we’re involved in. This interaction made me feel connected and every experience was a new learning for me. It made me feel better is I was giving back to the community in some way, weather it was mentoring, learning or participating it’s all gold. I felt a lot more effective if I had the intention of giving back.

The Mission

We (my partner Mark and I) embarked on a mission to connect small regional towns, small businesses and startups. To help them innovate in business and stay relevant globally. Using the appropriate startup techniques, we can support startups, run hackathons, mentoring, workshops, etc.

Drew Houston once said…

“Instead of trying to make life perfect, give yourself the freedom to make it an adventure and go ever upward.”

As we travelled this year, we took advantage of the adventure and discovered where we are most effective in connecting with the people and community, even in the most remote areas.

It’s important to understand that as we travel, we all have the potential and the ability to reconnect and reignite conversation and create a togetherness in some communities, I noticed it took an outsider to reconnect the insiders. that, for some unknown reason were unable to do otherwise.

On our travels, we were able to support both private and government startup hubs, produce incubation programs and provide the necessary mentorship where we were needed. We worked hard to keep their regions connected with what’s happening around the world.

HOW TO CELEBRATE YOUR YEAR & APPRECIATE THE ADVENTURES

Celebrate the people you meet and appreciate the adventures that come with along with it. Here are a few little tips to help you reflect on your adventures. I call them adventures because you didn’t know what was going to happen, you said “yes” to the opportunity and you went with it. You are the one that creates the outcomes because you showed up and participated.

1. Take Notice Of The People That Made Your Year Awesome!

One fact remains that without people, your year would’ve sucked. That’s why it’s important for you to take notice of the people you had the pleasure to meet and connect with.

When you look back on your year, you realise that the people are everything, they are the reason you do what you do. They support you, and they’re a global community.

Next you look at your LinkedIn network, be grateful for each and everyone and the experience you had with each other, both good and bad. Both experiences taught you something new about yourself or opened your mind to something new. Celebrate these encounters, connections, and collaborations.

It’s important to celebrate the people I had the pleasure to work with, all the communities I had the pleasure to connect with, thanking them for the adventure, collaboration, courage and respect they shared with me along the way.

Finally, I look back at the regional towns where we hope we made an impact by giving our time to mentor businesses and supporting small businesses. I celebrate them for the courage to be in business and embrace your ideas and listen to our startup concepts and be willing to take the journey of a Startup, because it is not an easy path. But having the passion to solve the problem you are endeavouring to solve it remarkable. Because, even if it doesn’t work you learnt something along the way.

2. Celebrate What You Want To See More Of

When I look back on the adventures of the year, I am truly grateful for it all. To experience, to support and be supported by other leaders and to be given great opportunities. Indeed, I am genuinely excited to serve the startup ecosystem.

Yes I agree what Tom Peters said, “Celebrate what you want to see more of.”

All these exciting adventures were due to the simple willingness to saying ‘Yes’ to the adventures and surrounding myself with like-minded people who are all striving for the same thing, to enhance businesses using the power of innovation.

STAYING RELEVANT IN SMALL BUSINESS WITH INNOVATION IN REGIONAL AUSTRALIA

After experiencing all the innovation spaces in the USA, after 34 meetings and countless incredible conversations with innovators the aim is to share it with small business in regional Queensland to help them grow. One of the best things about travel is to observe how other people have used there innovations to better the world. From the creation of the internet to connect people to the simple intention to use that innovation to make life better on campase then to bring it to the world. It only takes a simple idea that people a willing to use because it makes their life better.

These days Facebook (meta) is available to anyone with a computer and internet connection. It is a tool used for personal expression and business innovation and targeted marketing. Incredible really, it’s the easiest time in history to start a business if you know how to use the tools.

So with that bringing back the learnings from the USA to regional Australia is simple. To take away the scary idea of innovation to simplify it to “helping others” innovation becomes accessible and anything is possible if you just try to solve an existing problem that makes life easier for others.

There is always a positive and a negative to innovation when create something because you have a certain idea of how you believe people will use it and often you learn that they either don’t care enough or they use it in a way you never thought of. A classic example of that is Henry Ford and the motor car.

Making something more accessible to people to connect can often come from a personal need. That innovation, if created could be the thing that makes the difference, like Zuccaburge’s Facebook. He saw a need and built the solution to help people on his university connect and share photos. Now, it’s gone from the Uni campus to solve one specific problem to global connection and now a business tool everyone uses. Another classic example of when you create something simple the user case can be enormous.

Innovation can be an overused word that can scare people. If you are still scratching your head about this word, lets talk about the elephant in the room.

Whats is Innovation Really?

It’s not something that is overly complex like some like to make it. It’s as simple as helping someone find an easier way. Having heard it so often in the innovation, startup space it can make you cringe when it’s thrown around so often but only when people try to make it feel so out of reach when it’s just helping others find a better way.

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower,” Steve Jobs.

Innovation is crucial to our country and continued success of any organisation, community or business. It’s a bit of a buzzword in 2018 for business and is slightly overused, don’t you think? But more to the point, how can innovation help small businesses stay relevant in today’s fast-paced and ever-shifting economy? How do you stay relevant and avoid being that business that closes the doors after 20 years because you got comfortable being the big name and not innovating, listening to your consumer and then suddenly someone finds a better way because they lost touch with what was needed today not what we did yesterday. Be the business that listens and learns from the consumer. Be that business that thrives through observation and changes.

3. Be the Observer – Human Behaviour

We can never ignore the importance of human behavior because machines are now learning from us, but that’s a whole other conversation for another day. Just keep in mind the immense responsibility we now have for our future.

Human behaviour effect’s everything about your business, your team feedback, company culture, partnerships and all the people in the business and how people interact with your product are important behaviors to observe.

Businesses are changing so rapidly, the revolution of technology is disrupting and altering our behavior and the different ways we can do business. If there’s no stopping to observe the transformation of behaviors and recognition of what these changes could mean for your business, your previously successful business enterprise might be on a crash course sooner than you know it.

If you travel through regional Australia, you’ll
see creativity and innovation everywhere, like Swarm Farm Robotics in Emerald
and Artemis Submersible Robotics in Airlie Beach Qld, and so many more.

4. Changing The Way We Do Processes

Recently, at the Future Agritech Challenge in Atherton TableLands, in Queensland, Australia, and that was where I observed innovation at its best, and I salute everyone who participated.

It was a remarkable experience for me as a startup mentor to see established startups unpack what they had built in such intricate detail. Watching the founders of the participating companies pitch their startups all weekend and explaining in depth what problems they solve was exhilarating. The one company that has the best knowledge of their product and spoke with confidence won the game, and that was Swarm Farm Robotics.

They were truly advanced in their vision for how they help change the way we do the process of farming. Make no mistake; it was no overnight success for them. It was a long hard journey with lots and lots of mistakes and learning. Now they emerge as proud winners ready to represent Australia in Greece for the World Future Agritech Challenge in May 2019.

Now that achievement is definitely worth celebrating, and I wish them a grand adventure for the next stage. It was a demonstration of true courage by all who had participated.

5. UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF TRUE COURAGE

The biggest lesson to learn from the above challenge was courage, true courage. Despite the fact that they all knew only one winner would emerge, the other participants still went ahead with full throttle. There were however, not many participants, willing to put themselves through the paces to take the chance and embark on this journey of changing the way things are done.

In my travels I noticed there just doesn’t seem to be enough hunger in people to want to change things we are all to comfortable, so perhaps that is the problem. Perhaps we are not willing to be wrong and just happy to experience the way we things have always been. I think the next decade will change our experiences and industries dramatically and that technology will enable us to be more innovative.

Bob Iger said, “The heart and soul of a company is creativity and innovation.”

Finally, Local is now Global…

What we think of as local is now global with tools like Social media. We are often too focused and comfortable with solving problems in our local community, and that’s fantastic, but imagine if we sought to solve the same problem in communities all over the world.

The rest of the world is waiting for us to produce more, they want more. We are world-class producers, and we can do more to boost the economy through innovation. That’s true courage.