Category: Blog

I’m not going to rip my eyeballs out until I’ve at least attempted to delegate it.

A month ago, I had a “crystallization of discontent.” I needed fewer plates spinning in the air or I was going to snap and join a cult or something. I didn’t know what I needed to delegate, just that it was no longer, in my view, optional.

In the short term, delegating almost anything is harder than doing it yourself. But many solopreneurs rip their hair out after trying to do everything for too long. If your business is your baby—which it damn well ought to be—then you may want certain things done in a way only you can do them. (I need to get over that, but that’s another story.)

There are a lot of steps you typically have to take in order to effectively, systematically delegate day-to-day business activities that rob you of only a few minutes at a time. It might be editing, bookkeeping, managing inventory, running pay per click (PPC) campaigns, scheduling, website maintenance or sales. At any given time, there are at least a couple things I know should be getting done, in an ideal world, that aren’t getting done.

That raises some challenging questions: Hire an intern? … employee(s)? Make greater use of contractors? Plug and chug and continue doing almost everything myself?

My biggest need wasn’t strictly related to my business. I needed to free up time during the essential early- to mid-morning hours when I’m the most creative and productive.

For many months I’ve gotten my two children ready for preschool a couple mornings a week, driven them halfway across town, and gone through a 10 – 12-minute drop-off process. By the time I was actually ready to get my workday started I was often contemplating a stiff drink. (Kids—can’t live with ‘em, can’t ditch ‘em with your chain-smoking neighbors! Sheesh!)

I spend plenty of quality time with my kids on weekends and in the evenings. I love aspects of the afternoon/evening routine, such as wrestling with them and reading to them before bed. That said, I do not consider mornings wrangling a two- and four-year-old quality time. The last couple times I was buckling up my daughter to get her off to school and she gave me that squirrely “I pooped my diaper and didn’t tell you” smile, I found nothing funny about it. In fact, I was pissed. Although it only means a five-minute delay, it comes at a stressful moment when (a) I’d already rather be at work, and (b) I’ve already spent the last 45 minutes on menial household and parenting tasks.

Doing this and trying to make money as a solopreneur without going insane wasn’t sustainable. Because I peak early in the day, an hour of time in the morning is worth two in the afternoon. Many of those hours were being swallowed by microtasks, costing me money and eroding my sanity.

I reached out to Angel Kwiatkowski, founder of Cohere Coworking and one of the most well-networked people I know. She put me in touch with Jeanie Sutter, owner of The Second You, a company in town that assists people by getting errands and busy work off their plates.

We set up a meeting within a couple days and Alicia, our vetted personal assistant, started almost immediately. She shows up three days a week, takes care of a few household tasks like ironing, brushing my daughter’s hair and cleaning the kitchen, and whisks the monsters safely off to school. I cannot believe how pain-free this was. My quality of life and income have improved measurably.

 If you have barriers (financial, aspirational or other) to hiring, or contracting out work, a service like The Second You is a great way to delegate things like errands, laundry, or walking the dog on your lunch break. I admire the hell out of those badass “I took night classes, earned a degree and founded a successful company while raising four kids and working full time” entrepreneurs. I’m not that driven.

About John:

I’m a nerd who obsesses about language. As the Chief Storytelling Officer (pomp!) at Garvington Creative, I specialize in top-shelf B2B content marketing and copywriting. A graduate of the Global Social and Sustainable Enterprises MBA program at CSU, I work with businesses to get their messaging crystal clear so people understand, at a glance, what they do and why it matters. Then I roll up my nerd sleeves and work with them to create content that positions them as trusted resources, ultimately helping them win the kinds of clients they deserve.

I’m also the founder of North FoCo Pub Runners, which, like my son, is about to turn five. You can find more from me at GarvingtonCreative.com

You can see John’s panel Storyfied Marketing: The illuminating and persuasive craft of business storytelling on Tuesday February 26th, 12:00pm-12:45pm @ Innosphere.

Many companies start with writing – jotting down ideas of a business plan on a napkin, drafting a 5 year-plan, writing down ideas for an investment pitch, and formulating business agreements. But most companies don’t realize writing only becomes more central to a business growing and thriving as employees communicate with each other, clients, and the public.

Just as a thought experiment, what percentage of your work-related exchanges are done in writing? Have you noticed some exchanges that used to take place on the phone or face-to-face have shifted to being done in writing? Think about how you communicate with clients, colleagues, and supervisors, or how you network and maintain relationships – how much is done through email, inter-office messaging systems, texting, or social media platforms? Think about how you plan, execute, report on, and evaluate projects — how much of it is done by writing, sharing, editing, and presenting documents? How much information is communicated in writing about your company through websites, marketing, etc.?

Just working through those questions, most of us would say our workplace interactions and productivity rely heavily on written communications. But the next question is, how much can go wrong and how much time can be wasted if people in a business struggle to write professionally, clearly, and effectively?

As a result, myriad problems can emerge. Inner-office communication culture can slip due to written messages not being respectful or courteous enough, prospective clients can pass on working with a company because they’ve made a judgment about the intelligence and credibility of the company based on problems in written communications, networking and marketing efforts can fall flat because messages are poorly organized for their genre or not appealing to the intended audience, and the list goes on.

While many people earn a position at a company because of their desirable set of skills for performing job duties, many people are not confident about their written communication skills – particularly if they are writing in forms and genres that are new to them. Also, while many companies make efforts to train employees on industry-specific systems, they overlook the need to articulate their business writing expectations and train individuals to meet them. 

This is where Appendance, Inc comes in. Writing is our thing. We are a company composed of women with graduate degrees in writing who have been teaching writing for colleges and companies for years. We want to urge companies to think about how writing factors into cultivating the company culture they want, and then we help them get people at all levels of their company to write effectively for that culture. Some companies want regular training on effective writing to show the value of this skill set and help employees strengthen it, others have just a few individuals that need to elevate their writing skills through individual coaching, and still others want our expertise in crafting or reviewing the writing they make public under their company name. Our services are listed on our website, appendance.com, and we regularly offer writing tips, tricks, humor, and rants on our blog and through our social media channels.

Writing involves skill sets, and we all CAN get better at writing. This means companies can be more intentional and effective with all the ways they do business through writing, and they can craft the company culture they want, simply by improving the writing skills of the people in their company. 

About the Author

Beyond leading professional writing seminars for Appendance, Katie Hoffman teaches Composition and Literature at Colorado State University. She earned her Bachelor’s in English Literature from Ferris State University in Michigan and a Master’s in Rhetoric and Composition at Colorado State University. She has experience training employees, leading professional development workshops, copyediting, and conducting individual, group, and online writing consultations. Outside of work, Katie is a trail runner, mother, bookworm, and swimmer.  

You can check out Katie’s panel 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Email (and other business writing) on Tuesday February 26th, 11:00am-12:00pm @ The Articulate.

Research shows a majority — 67% — of employees worldwide are disengaged, and a hyperfocus on growth and profits is coming at the expense of people’s well-being. There are significant gaps in leadership where an old style reliant on control and blame tactics isn’t working.

To counter those trends and meet a market need, we started Crafted Leadership. We exist to bring conscious leadership into the global workplace.

What is conscious leadership?

Conscious leadership:

• supports people to move out of an outdated command-and-control leadership model and into a new leadership paradigm

• supports leaders to be more present, aware, and engaged. Leaders develop their ability to make ongoing choices from a place of 100% responsibility and to respond from creativity (instead of reactivity)

• builds teams who trust one another and move through conflict without drama, while cultivating openness and curiosity

• encourages participation and engages team members through operational integrity  

• replaces turf wars with true collaboration, and openness to discovery invigorates the whole system

• integrates an ongoing, open-loop feedback system

• communicates the details in a way that invites wonder and that does not blame anyone or withhold key information

• is the new norm for global work cultures

Crafted Leadership provides skills-based training around four tent poles of conscious leadership: self mastery, relational mastery, integrity, and improvisation. Focused attention to these areas builds teams of high trust and collaboration — sustainable alternatives to fear and burnout.

You lead by default or you lead by design

You’ve heard the saying, “natural leader.” Not exactly. Leadership is mostly a learned skill.  Those who lead by default manage through unconscious patterns and bias. Those who lead by design are self-aware and undefended. To lead by design is to put attention to learning and embodying leadership skills.

What are the key conscious leadership skills?

The Architecture of Inspiring Leaders is our model consisting of 13 skills that cover vital aspects of conscious leadership. These skills are simple, but they require practice and commitment. Practice is the difference between just talking about leadership and living it.

The Architecture of Inspiring Leaders

Conscious leadership develops emotional, social, and body intelligence. We call it whole body, whole person learning. For example, we learn to leverage our intuition for better decision-making; we influence others through resonance, not control; and we generate trust rather than fear.

Conscious leadership has a rational basis

Conscious leadership has a rational financial basis for companies as well. Dysfunctional leadership leads to turnover, which reduces productivity and revenue. By creating cultures of high-trust, relational value and relational capital is preserved, turnover is lower, and your company has more discretionary spending. High-trust teams positively correlate to high-performing teams, who help increase financial returns.

Conscious or unconscious leadership can be difference between success and failure for an organization. Which do you choose? 

If you agree or are interested in our mission, you can read more at craftedleadership.com or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We’d love you to join our community of conscious leaders!

About The Authors

Nancy Kepner is the CEO of Crafted Leadership. Prior to co-founding Crafted Leadership, Nancy served in senior leadership for Denver-based nonprofits. In these roles, as well as global work experience, she experienced firsthand the challenges of leadership and saw the need for practical, actionable programs that helped people move from an individual contributor level to a successful leader of teams. Out of this need, and a decade of dedicated engagement and experimentation in leadership practices, the vision for Crafted Leadership was born.

Julianna Christie is the Chief Learning Officer of Crafted Leadership. Julianna has spent over 20 years in corporate settings, successfully facilitating conversations that take global organizations to the next level. Her expertise in strategic planning, leadership development and organizational transformation has yielded her a reputation as an inspiring facilitator and trusted, gifted coach focused on innovation, integrity, and growth.  

You can check out Nancy and Julianna’s panel Embracing Differences on Friday March 1st, 1:00pm-2:00pm @ Innosphere.

Technology companies have a diversity problem. The number of women in tech has been steadily declining since the 1980s. Only recently at Colorado State University, has the number of women enrolled in Computer Science increased from 7% in 2013 to 11.3% in 2016.

As still the only woman programmer on my software development team 13 years after starting, my passion is to increase the diversity in software development.

As a mom of a 2yo girl and 5yo boy I constantly check my unconscious bias – am I raising both my children to know they have the same opportunities and capabilities? Researchers at the University of Washington found that by age 7, children implicitly associate numbers with boys instead of girls. Microsoft researchers found that by age 11, girls become interested in STEM subjects; however, by age 15 they lose interest and it rarely recovers. Computers and video games are for both girls and boys; foster a love of numbers, math and problem solving in your girls and boys; constantly check your unconscious bias.

Recognizing that there is a diversity problem and making others aware of the gender gap is the first step. At my organization I’ve organized a monthly diversity meeting to read, watch talks and discuss these issues. I presented to the entire company on life as a woman in tech. Start with awareness and then work towards changes.

I strive to change the face of your typical software engineer to inspire more women to enter tech. If we change the stereotypes of programming and show young women that women do exist in tech, we can encourage more girls to consider degrees in computer science. For example, I have spoken with high school women on my path and life as a woman in tech and taught courses through Front Range Community College. I want to be a role model for girls and women interested in technology.

I’ve made it 13 years, but life as one of the few women in tech is hard and exhausting. It’s not just me either, after 10 years, there is a 41% quit rate of women in tech (compared to 17% for men); we don’t see the career opportunities and are just burned out.

To learn more, Code: Debugging the Gender Gap is a phenomenal documentary on the lack of women in computer science. The history from the 1950s (women were in fact the first programmers!) to where we are now is astounding.

There are changes you and I can make today. I have to check my unconscious bias daily. Raise children to know they have the same opportunities. Give the women candidates and resumes a second look; was it your unconscious bias that put that resume in the no pile? Small checks on yourself can change the path of your life, someone else’s life, or the future of your organization.

About The Speaker

Darlene Rouleau is a UI/UX Software Engineer for Schneider Electric.

You can see her panel Women in Tech / Diversity / Unconscious Bias on Tuesday February 26th, 10:00am-11:00am @ Cohere Coworking.

Having grown up in Fort Collins, I didn’t have much opportunity to interact with diverse cultures or mindsets. The city we know today is a mecca of diversity by comparison!

Now, when interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds, I consciously stay open to things “outside my comfort zone”, remaining mindful of thoughts and inner reactions, while reminding myself to let go of prejudice and judgemental self-talk. Confucius said, ‘those who know that they don’t know are wise’.

There is profound wisdom in all cultures, but sometimes it’s difficult to recognize. Going open-minded into a cross-cultural situation allows me to be open to that wisdom, while recognizing divisive self-talk that may emulate from my own cultural bias. This awareness allows me to see my own cultural shortcomings and gives me a head start at foiling reactions that may come off as disrespectful.

So, what is the value of considering culture when doing business across cultures, or interacting with a co-worker from a different cultural background? For me, it’s a no-brainer. I feel not to do so is a form of arrogance and ignorance. It was only by living in China for over 20 years that I came face-to-face with my own racist reality. I ran smack into a great wall of culture that didn’t make sense.

Not long after arriving in China, I learned a valuable phrase, wisdom that I hold firm to yet today, “know yourself and know others”. It’s a well-known Chinese expression that comes from the book The Art of War.

It means if we understand ourselves and others, those with whom we are at battle, negotiating, or befriending, we will be successful. He also said that if we just understand ourselves, we will only be successful sometimes. The trick is having access to the right knowledge to achieve success.

Whether doing business with, establishing political relations with, or just befriending people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, we, as individuals and a country, need to realize the importance of learning about and understanding others. By not doing so, we may resort to shaming and blaming, consequently not fostering a healthy basis for success.

As Americans, we feel that everyone speaks English and watches our movies, so we don’t need to “waste” our time at learning their language and culture. But, when we consider the wisdom in The Art of War, we clearly see that this is not the case. If we don’t put forth the effort to learn about others or work with those who have; we are putting ourselves, and our country, at risk – be it in business, politics, or relationships.

Learning about others can take many years, but there are ways to bridge the gap:

1. Hire a consultant who posses the skills you need
2. Learn the concepts of Cultural Intelligence (CQ), and discover the areas you need to grow in

About Todd Cornell

Todd Cornell is a China Business-Culture Consultant who has lived over 20 years in Chinese speaking countries. He possesses above average China cross-cultural skills and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. He has negotiated and managed multi-million-dollar technology transfer projects, joint ventures, and manufacturing businesses in Taiwan and Mainland China, and was the Associate Director at the Confucius Institute at CSU. Todd has gained profound insight into best practices for success with China, which are found within Chinese culture and philosophy. Todd is also a certified Cultural Intelligence trainer. Todd lives together with Rascal, his 13-year-old Chinese West Siberian Laika, in Fort Collins.

You can see Todd speak about Business Best Practices in China at 11AM Tuesday, February 26 at the Downtown Artery and on Cultural Intelligence is for Everyone 1PM Thursday, February 28th at the Downtown Artery.

Once, on my way back to Scotland to finish my degree after spending the summer with my family in Fort Collins, I stopped at an arthouse cinema in London to see “Mirror” by the Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. At first, things didn’t look so good. There were three people in the audience and my jet lag was seriously kicking in. Yet once the movie started, I was awestruck. I felt something I have never quite felt before or after: that, indeed, a mirror was being held up to my innermost self.

My fascination with Tarkovsky and his undying faith that art can change the world has been rooted deep down inside ever since (you can read my take on “Mirror” at kitbaker.com). 

But what hill of beans does that amount to in the city of Bikes, Beer and Bands? What do you do when you know about art and music that does not yet have a foothold in Fort Collins but can change lives – like “Mirror” changed mine? 

That’s my challenge: to increase the range and quality of art and music we create and have access to in Fort Collins. The kind that can truly change lives.

After three years of trying that were somewhere between John Cage’s “consider everything an experiment” and Samuel Beckett’s “Fail again. Fail better.”, there has finally been a breakthrough.  On February 28, thanks to LC Live and CSU (with an assist from yours truly), a quartet of woodwinds from the Brooklyn-based International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) will play a concert here featuring modes of heightened listening conjured by outstanding women composers from both sides of the Atlantic – Anna Thorvaldsdottir (Ecological) and Pauline Oliveros (Deep). 

ICE started up with $603 in catering tips; today, thanks to a steadfast commitment to placing the artist entrepreneur at the heart of everything they do, they have 35 of the best young musicians in New York on their roster and a budget north of $2M. Two of those musicians will be in Artup Week talking about new digital tools and a research project that have applications both within and well beyond the music world. They will be joined by two experimental media artists and CSU lecturers talking about a digital tool of their own that lifts sounds to rarified heights and a transgender entrepreneur from Denver who is breaking astonishing new ground with the firm belief that anything is possible.

This encounter between local and global is a microcosm of the balance that invigorated my life and work in New York, London and Berlin – a balance I am now working to foster here in Fort Collins.

One of my favorite pieces of music is Ives’ “The Unanswered Question.” My career has been a million unanswered questions, through which artists have led me to places I never dreamed I could be.  Nothing means more to me than to be joined by friends in those places.  I hope to see you on this and many more creative adventures to come.

About Kit Baker

Kit Baker is an arts administrator, writer, and producer who has worked on both sides of the Atlantic.  In New York, he worked with artist entrepreneurs Michael Counts, an opera director, installation artist, and creator of large scale immersive theatre events, and MacArthur Fellow and Avery Fisher Prize-winning flutist Claire Chase, founder of the International Contemporary Ensemble.  In London UK, he worked with Pierre Audi at the Almeida Theatre to resource productions and performances by Tilda Swinton, Yuri Lyubimov, Astor Piazzolla, Philip Glass, Phelim McDermott, Deborah Warner, Toru Takemitsu and dozens more.  As a development professional, he has raised millions of dollars for the Tate Gallery, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc, Aperture Foundation, Cunningham Dance Foundation, GAle GAtes et al., Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and more. He was assistant director of the Jeff Award-winning TransformTheater Berlin on tour from Chicago to Siberia.

You can attend Kit’s panel Notes from the Field: Using Technology to Advance Artrepreneurship at 3PM Thursday, February 28 at Downtown Artery.

The Classical Convergence Series concert featuring the International Contemporary Ensemble will be Presented by LC Live & CSU Thursday February 28th at 7:30PM in the Organ Recital Hall at the University Center for the Arts.

Since I was a pasty, awkward middle schooler I’ve been writing computer code. Much of my coding time is spent fixing my own silly bugs, but a couple of magical coding moments standout:

• When I accessed my hideous, lets animate-all-the-gifs AOL-hosted homepage on a middle school computer.
• Character-by-character, copying Tetris onto my TI-85 calculator from a friend.
• Watching the How to build a blog engine in 15 minutes video with Rails video. Rails was the secret weapon for small teams with big dreams.

Whether it’s skepticism honed by time or just reality, I’ve experienced fewer of these of moments over the past ten years. That is, until recently.

About a year ago, I solved my first problem with machine learning, identifying handwritten digits with only a few lines of code. It was magical taking something that seemed so human and solving it with so little code. There’s no way I could solve this problem elegantly with my traditional toolset. The problem I worked on is only scratching the surface of what machine learning can do. For example, machine learning is used today to:

• Detect breast cancer
• Drive a car
• Detect emotion
• Make your Facebook newsfeed addictive

It’s possible machine learning and the larger field of artificial intelligence will be the largest technological leap since the Internet.

So, where to begin? And should you even try?

There’s clearly demand for jobs in machine learning. Notice the large gap in employer demand vs. job seekers:

• from a Cornell University study

A major reason for this gap is that many companies are mistakenly looking for machine learning researchers, not candidates that know how to apply machine learning. Paraphrasing Cassie Kozyrko, Google’s Chief Decision Intelligence Engineer: if you run a bakery, you don’t hire an oven maker. You hire someone that knows how to bake bread. There’s a small minority of ML problems that require a new algorithm. Most problems can be solved with off-the-shelf models.

This hiring mindset is changing, but the wheels of big business move slowly. Today is a great time to take advantage of this gap: it’s significantly easier and cheaper for small companies to collect large amounts of data than it was a decade ago. Many smaller software companies have large enough data sets to solve time-consuming, differentiating problems. However, very few small companies have an applied machine learning engineer on staff to take advantage of all that data.

If you’re like me (machine learning-curious and too lazy to go back to school), applied machine learning might be for you. At 11AM Tuesday the 26th of February at The Innosphere, I’ll be giving a talk on getting started with machine learning. You’ll learn enough to talk intelligently about machine learning at your next network event, see me live-code a machine learning problem, and receive a curated list of resources to get you started.

In short, take advantage of my wasted efforts, false starts, and wrong turns. Just get the good stuff for applied machine learning.