Last Friday night there were four to eight people in my office hanging out, doing great work and brainstorming cool ideas for the future of our company. They were there from as late as 8pm to 11:30pm. That’s right, 11:30pm on a Friday night. To most people this sounds horrible. “Why would I want to stay at work until 11:30pm on a Friday night?!?!”

I once read a great Seth Godin blog post (I wish I could track it down) where he described a family vacation. He woke up early and headed down to the lobby to work for a few hours before his family woke up. While in the lobby a couple walked by, saw him working on his laptop and said “oh, that is sooo sad.” They felt sorry for him because they thought he was a person who couldn’t leave work at home and enjoy his vacation. 

Seth’s point was this, he felt sorry for that couple because they worked 11 1/2 months a year at jobs they hated doing something they weren’t passionate about so that they could enjoy 2 weeks away from their jobs during a vacation. That is sad. He feels so passionate about his work that getting up early and working on his passion is as equally enjoyable as spending time with his family on vacation. And he’d found balance and managed his time well enough to figure out how to do both. His genius of and.

Here is a similarly themed blog post by Seth. Great stuff. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/workaholics.html

Warren Buffet buys companies. He buys them, usually, when they are in distress of some form or another. He does this so that he can buy them for less than they are worth. Most people would think that he is taking advantage of these companies, exploiting them.

The interesting thing is, most of the companies that he buys come to him for help. They seek him out and offer him their companies for less money than they could get from other potential buyers. They want him to “take advantage”; they want him to “exploit” them. Why?

His reputation. The genius of and, as it applies to Warren Buffet, is that your reputation, your brand, can take something that used to be “the seller gets what they want OR the buyer gets what they want” into “the buyer AND seller both get what they want”. 

Integrity. Transparency. A hands off management strategy. These things are what Warren Buffet has built his brand, his company and his legacy on. And they have created his genius of and.

Let me be the first to say that I used to love this saying; and I lived by it. The basic summary:

Build a business

“When you are building a business, you are creating something that can function without you having to be there for it to function. For example, when you are away on vacation the business is still generating profits.”

Build a business entity around a job

“When you build a business entity around a job, you have to be there for the business to make money. The classic examples are: dentists, doctors, lawyers, etc.”

I’d like to point out that one isn’t better than the other in terms of generating profits. Quickly in my career I realized that many successful people build “businesses that are jobs” that actually produce larger profits than other people who build “true” businesses. 

But, recently, this notion of: “build a true business OR build a business entity around a job” seems like it has fallen apart a bit. The main reason? Social media.

If you haven’t read Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It I highly recommend it. I won’t rehash his book on social media here, but it is great and a it is a must read.

Social media has given the jobs which have always been the poster children of “businesses that are jobs” unique opportunities. Consider Jay Parkinson who is crushing it with his blog and his revolutionary approach to medical care. Part of his business is the traditional “I have to be there to make money”, but a large, and growing, part of his business is becoming: books, creative products he is creating, creative services he is creating, etc. Things that scale.

So, where I used to think:

“build a true business OR build a business entity around a job”

I now think people have the opportunity to:

“build a business entity around a job AND build a true business that scales”

The genius of and; and the power of social media.

Six months ago I found myself saying things like, “I sleep like crap. I need to:”

• …drink less coffee.
• …get more hours of sleep a night.
• …etc.

Rather than getting crazy and changing my entire behavior because I believed: “stop drinking coffee OR I won’t sleep well”, “get more hours of sleep OR I won’t feel better”, etc. I inadvertently stumbled across an AND.

A friend convinced me to start working out with him four intense days a week at CrossFit. As a result:

• I sleep great at night. (my Zeo score went from low 60s to high 70s)
• I sleep the same number of hours each night.
• I still drink coffee and love it.

A simple, but powerful example.

“the genius of and”, the phrase is definitely not mine. But my take on it is simple:

A lot of things that are important to us tend to be discussed in terms of compromise:

1. I can have a killer career or a spend time with my family. 
2. I can push the boundaries of innovation by taking career risk or I can have a stable job doing boring work. 
3. I can travel the world or I can focus on building my career.

And so on. “the genius of and” is the opposite of compromise. It is:

1. I can have a killer career and spend time with my family.
2. I can push the boundaries of innovation and I can have a stable job doing great work.
3. I can build a great career and also travel the world.

Sometimes it isn’t as black and white as this. We’ll discuss “the genius of and” in detail and via specific examples (I hate abstract discussions) via this blog. Looking forward to it!