Robbie Abed's Personal Blog

You ever meet someone and about 2 minutes into the conversation, you think something is extremely weird with their story or background?

I had a conversation with someone recently and the summary of our conversation was “I am a doctor looking to quit and intern as a social media analyst”. I kid you not. 8 years of medical school, exams, well-paying job at a hospital, etc. and now he is interested in a low paying social media job.

Not social media for doctors type deal. Just social media.

The one thing I pulled out of this conversation was “I don’t think this person is really a doctor”. He was making really good money, and just wants to drop it to learn more about social media? Doesn’t make sense, and it shows.

I just don’t see the point of faking it or lying about what you do. I think people underestimate how easy it is to spot when someone is lying.

Tell me the truth. Tell me how it is. Tell me of how you tried something and it didn’t work. I’ll like you more. I promise.

Not only will I like you more, I’m more inclined to help you more.

If you don’t tell me the truth, I’m just going to make up in my head what I think the truth really is. Trust me, the truth I told myself is a bigger lie than the lie you just told me.

When I write, I don’t necessarily write for one specific type of person or demographic. I just write whatever’s in my head. Wether it’s a rant about technology, or career advice, or just personal life, I generally just write without thinking about who it’s for.

However, I will notice that some of my blog posts do well in countries that I don’t expect it to do well in.

For example, This post titled “No Matter the Decision You Make, It’s Always Wrong” was a huge hit in russia. It actually was translated by two different russian sites and they had 17 comments, and 62 comments. Apparently, nobody being happy with decisions people are making is a big thing in Russia.

Here is a translated version of the second link top comments:

As you can imagine, I had no idea the Russians would relate to it so much.

Recently, I posted a short, funny informative post called the “Paypal Mafia.”  This post was really targeted towards technologists and entrepreneurs in the US, since it’s all about entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

Which country loved this post the most? India. Don’t ask me why, but my India traffic skyrocketed. Here is a screen shot of my latest twitter feed.

Don’t get me wrong, I love it. It’s just interesting.

I’ll leave you with one more funny tidbit about my blog. What search phrase / keyword do you think brings the most traffic to my blog? Career Advice / Mobile / Entrepreneurship / Rants???

NOPE.

“Jake from Statefarm”.

I wrote a post a long time ago about how I loved the jake from statefarm commercial. I can’t tell you how many emails I get from people who ask me who the actress is in this commercial. It’s hilarious.

I once wrote an email that was full of emoticons. My boss dared me to send it, and I did. That was 10 years ago and that was for a company outing. It was a funny email.

Now Facebook says screw this, If MSN allowed you to create emoticons on chat 10 years ago and Gmail does it already, let’s join the party.

I saw a taco in my newsfeed and I almost freaked out. Why in the world is there a taco in someone’s status updates.

I just don’t know how I feel about it. They obviously want to learn more about what people are doing, and instead of allowing third party apps to provide this data.

Good for them. I refuse to use the taco but I know my feed is going to be full of these things now. Good for the taco’s I guess.

I got a message from a loyal reader that said this:

Here’s a blog post you should write:

If you owned a company, give your workers 1 day or 1 week where they can write whatever they wanted without getting in trouble. See what people’s real reactions are to stupid people in the office and their lazy work ethic….

I just got a stupid email from someone..

and I wanted to respond with…how the hell should I know, am I supposed to do your job for you too????

yet, we all know we cant..

My response was:

Preaching to the choir buddy! I would LOVE if this happened, but  yet it will never happen. People can’t handle the truth because there are feelings involved. Can you imagine if that reader actually responded with that?

What do you think would happen if your office was allowed to write whatever they felt without getting in trouble for it? Use comments section below.

I’m one of the most selfish people you will ever meet.

I chose a job out of college that had me travelling everywhere except home. I had a great time doing it, but my family (wasn’t married at the time) was at home. They never understood why I had to get on a plane and go to different places. What’s wrong with chicago? Why couldn’t I be closer to the family?

I moved downtown even when my family was in the suburbs. This might not seem like a big deal, but for a middle eastern family whose family tends to be within 5 miles of each other – this is a huge deal.

I quit a well-paying job so I can do something that I was more passionate about. Nobody understood how I could do that. Wasn’t I happy with a stable job?

I quit my job 6 months before my wife finished school and started working. Couldn’t I wait instead of putting my immediate family at a bigger risk?

I did things because I wanted to do them, and no other reason besides that. I didn’t care what my close family told me to do.

However, there is one thing that I am extremely selfish about. It’s about helping others in areas that I failed in and eventually overcame. The one area that I failed a lot in was my career and interviewing. [ See how I failed over 11 interviews in detail (Part 1), (Part 2)].

I created a private newsletter that helps people get connected better in Chicago, and help connect people with jobs. I constantly connect people who I think can work with each other. I’ll take phone calls during the day for people who need advice or just want to talk about what’s happening in their life. The crux of my advice is to be selfish when it comes to your career. This is the only way to get ahead.

You’re probably thinking how in the hell is helping other people selfish? That sounds like the opposite of selfishness?

I do this, so one day if I need their help – they will help me back. That’s why it’s selfish of me.

I recently got burned by someone who I helped extensively over a long period of time. When I needed a favor back, that person said no. I selfishly assumed that this person would help me back. I was wrong.

I just have to accept the fact that this person is just as selfish as I am. Good for that person. They learned how to be selfish from the best…

This Guy (Max Levchin from University of Illinois Champaign)

pitched an idea for a mobile device money transfer service to this guy (Peter Thiel)

Peter said cool, let’s do this. Then they buy X.com who was founded by some dude named Elon Musk.

They decide to name the company:

The company goes public in 2002 and this company buys them:

Then this is where shit get’s interesting. The Paypal employees hated the ebay corporate structure. Within 4 years half of the first 200 employees quit.

This guy gets fired at Paypal (according to wikipedia):

Yes, Fired. He made a shit ton of money anyway, and started two companies:

The first one is ya know, just some sort of car that only runs on electric

Just whatever. Then he decide’s that he needs to do more. So he creates another company that makes spaceships

Just spaceships, no big deal. NASA SHMASA. They also break some records about being the only company to return a spaceship from low earth orbit. Boring shit, really. Then they attached the thing to the International Space Station. Nothing you can’t see on Youtube. Anyway, this guy


decides he ain’t done yet either. Invests an early $500,000 in this company:

for 10.2% of the company. He got ripped off if you ask me, but whatever. What’s a billion when you got Millions.
These guys (2 Paypal engineers & designer)

said “we’re bored with our lives, let’s create some new shit”. They quit and create this company:

Which then gets bought out by this company


Russel Simmons (left),

who was one of the first paypal engineers has a conversation with a dinner that Max held.

What do they talk about? Out of all the shit in the world to talk about, they talk about how hard it is to find a dentist. What else are they going to talk about? So Russell creates this company with another person with some funding from Max

It’s just a site full of pissed off people ranting about food. The executive vice president of Paypal, Reid Hoffman

says screw this, I’m going to do something new. Starts this company

The former, COO David O. Sacks decides to join in on the party. So he creates

Yishan Wong, engineering manager at Paypal. He’s just another dude that can code. Nothing special.

He now becomes the CEO of a website which I’m totally not addicted to

Product Manager Premal Shah becomes founding president of

and finally Former Marketing Director Dave Mcclure

starts

In the meantime,
BRB, starting company.

My main source of information: Wikipedia Paypal Mafia

Please note, there are many people / companies in here who I am missing such as other co-founders of yelp, founders fund, etc. This wiki link: Wikipedia Paypal Mafia has a lot more information in it.

Imagine this common conversation at a networking / business event:

Mike: So John, what do you do?

John: I just moved here from New York, and I’m looking for a full-time job as a Graphics Designer. I’ve always loved Chicago and I’m glad I made the move.

Mike: Oh, great. Welcome to Chicago! Where are you staying?

John: At my buddy’s out west. He’s a good friend of mine from College. I’m staying there until I get situated.

A fairly simple and straight forward conversation, right? It is, but there are two problems with this conversation:

1. You admitted to being unemployed.
2. You admitted that the only reason you are at this event is because you are looking for a full-time job. This is why you are selfish.

I know you didn’t straight out say that, but this is what the other person is thinking about you.

Because of this, Mike isn’t going to help you find a job even if he is looking for a graphics designer for his company. In the small chance that he does, he’ll ask for your résumé and most likely not respond. In the even smaller chance that he does offer you a job, he knows you’re unemployed and will give you a lowball offer since he knows you need the money.

*************************************************************

ABSOLUTELY, UNDER NO CONDITION SHOULD YOU TELL SOMEONE YOU ARE UNEMPLOYED.

*************************************************************

What’s wrong with admitting that you’re unemployed?

For whatever reasons, people associate unemployed with unemployable. I don’t agree with this, but unfortunately this is the case for many who meet unemployed job seekers for the first time.

John’s situation also brings up many questions such as to why he left New York without securing a full-time job in Chicago first. Did he not have a job in New York? Did he move to Chicago because his buddy was giving him free rent? Did he get fired from his job in New York? If he’s talented graphic designer, I’m sure he should have no problem finding a new job right?

So many questions left unanswered.

What’s wrong with going to a networking event to find a full-time job? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? 

Yes, you are 100% correct. If someone asked me what they should do to find a new job in a new city, I would tell them to network their ass off. Go to events, work the room and get connected to more people. Keep doing it until you hit jackpot.

Except one thing: Nobody likes job seekers at networking events. By telling someone that you are at an event to find a job, you just lost all credibility. People go to networking events to find interesting people, not people who are looking for a job. They want to find new business relationships and new contacts to help them with their business. There is nothing you can do for them, and this is why many conversations fizzle for active job seekers at networking events.

And here you are meeting people to benefit yourself. How selfish of you! You were correct to not bring your résumé with you or have a business card that says “seeking new opportunities”. Unfortunately, by telling the truth to a stranger, you screwed yourself.

Another thing to consider is that since you will be going to a lot of networking events, you will start seeing the same people again! Do you really want the conversation to be about how you are still looking for a job?

So, what can you do?

Lying is not an option, get that out of your system now. You’re not even allowed to “fake it till you make it” by exaggerating. That’s off the table.

This is what you need to do.

Your #1 goal is to build a relationship first. Once you build a relationship, then you can tell the person you are looking for a job.

The goal of a networking event is to meet someone who knows someone who is hiring a graphics designer. If you go with that mantra, then you can focus on building better relationships with people who can potentially help you.

Here is how the conversation should go:

Mike: So John, what do you do?

John: I do graphics design work. I’m currently freelancing and working on side projects. It’s an exciting time!

Mike: Oh, interesting! What type of freelance work do you do?

John: I do website, print and some social media work. How about yourself?

Ok, so what changed in this conversation?

1. John didn’t mention he was new to Chicago. Although it’s a great talking topic to say that you came here from another city, he shouldn’t start the conversation with it.   Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a BAD thing to be from another city, your goal is to find a job, not to find new hot spots in the city. By opening with that line, you’ve admitted that you aren’t settled.
2. John is a freelancer, not unemployed. This opens the conversation to what John’s good at and could potentially lead to short-term money. This also shows that John knows how to make money and is in fact employable. By telling someone you are unemployed and looking for full-time, you just shut yourself out of other opportunities. I understand that some jobs aren’t “freelance-able”, but you get the point. Being an independent contractor is better than being unemployed even if both are making zero money.
3. The conversation was less about feeling sorry for John, and more about answering the question directly.
4. John redirected the conversation to learn more about the other person.  John knows he doesn’t have much of a platform to speak off of, so he bounced the question right back to Mike. The goal is to get a coffee meeting with Mike to learn how he can help this new person.

So who can you tell that you are unemployed and are looking for a full-time job?

People that know you, like you and trust you and that’s about it.

I know this is especially tough when you are new to a city, but find the people who you can trust and you can tell them the full truth.

How do you find these new relationships? Do what I did: 250 Coffee meetings in 400 days. If you hate coffee, do tea. If you hate tea, follow me on twitter. I’m not sure what that will do for you, but it will make me feel better that I have a new follower.

Do you know what happens when I reply back to an email after 8pm during the week?

They reply back at 9pm.

Do you know what happens when I reply back to that email at 9:30?

The reply is sitting in my inbox in the morning. The only issue is that they replied back to the email at 10pm and I was too tired to answer it. So I let it sit in my inbox overnight. I slept knowing that I needed to answer that email. I read it, and ignored it. It was on my conscience for at least 12 hours

I’m done. I can’t continue like this anymore. I am digitally behind on everything and it’s messing up my life schedule. Here is a screenshot of my iPhone:

The one thing you will notice however is that I have no new e-mail notifications. That’s because I’m on top of my e-mail, but it’s causing everything else to be disregarded.

Yes, I am inbox zero compliant. It’s the one e-mail philosophy I stick too. I do have a major problem with reading something and not taking immediate action on it though.

Oh yeah, I don’t delete anything. I’m an archive machine. Don’t believe me? Here is a screen shot of my Gmail:

What I’ve done so far to fix my digital issues

• Inbox Zero. It has changed my life.
• Unroll.me - I have used this for the past 4 days and wow is it amazing. It takes all your email subscriptions (I had 143) and takes them out of your inbox and sends you a summary every day. I had 143 email subscriptions AFTER I went on a unsubscribe rage 6 months ago.
• Boomerang for Gmail - I use the “send later” function to send an email at 8am the next day, so I don’t get a reply back at 11pm the same day
• Five Sentences or Less – All of my emails are mostly 5 sentences or less. It’s allowed me to speak more clearly as well.

What I’m going to do to make it better for me

• No more replying back to emails after 7:30pm unless I absolutely have to. If I do, I’m going to boomerang it to send it at 8am the next day.
• Set a reminder to update my apps and iOS every saturday afternoon. I wish apple would allow me to auto update apps without my prior approval.
• Delete a mass amount of emails from my Gmail starting with emails over 4 years old. I’m a digital pat rack. This one is going to be hard, but I know I need to do it.

What I should do but probably won’t

• Get off Facebook. I’ve tried this and you know what, I can’t. I use it to spam my friends and force them to read my blog posts. I also have Facebook comments on my blog, so this is really tough. I think people actually like me on Facebook, too. That’s always a plus.
• Don’t read email at all after 7:30pm – This is the equivalent of telling a smoker who smokes 2 packs a day to stop smoking all together. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Baby Steps!
• Get off Twitter - I kind of like twitter. I use it to build relationships mostly and force my twitter followers to read my blog posts. My spam blog posts are much easier to ignore than Facebook though
• Delete apps I don’t use - Too much work. Maybe next saturday

I will keep everyone posted on my progress. Wish me luck!

udpate: I just saw this post on lifehacker. http://lifehacker.com/5982344/are-you-really-as-busy-as-you-think-you-are I probably should read this two times.

It takes too long.

It takes longer than it should have taken.

It shouldn’t be that hard to do, but it is.

It never turns out the way you first imagined it.

It sometimes never happens.

Other people slow down the process.

You don’t have the right skill set to start it.

You don’t have the right skill set to finish it.

You don’t have enough money to do it.

You can’t convince other people to give you money to do it.

You barely have enough money for you and your family.

You don’t know the right people to get it done.

You don’t have a mentor.

The people who know how to get it done, won’t reply back to you.

You don’t know where to start.

You don’t have enough time to start it.

You don’t have enough time to finish it.

It’s not worth your time to learn a specific skill set.

You don’t have enough people on your team.

It sounds better in your head than it does in real life.

Your real job takes up all of your time.

Your family takes up all of your time.

Surfing the internet is easier.

People might not like it.

People actually don’t like it.

You can’t get enough people to use it.

You don’t know enough people.

You don’t know the right people.

You think that someone will steal your idea if you do it.

What you built is amazing, but people don’t know about it yet.

A lot of people know about it, but they don’t use it.

People are too busy.

People are too busy to respond back to you.

You’re too old to do it.

People will laugh at what you built.

People won’t use what you built.

You’re not smart enough.

You don’t have enough patience.

You don’t want other people to know what you’re working on.

Someone already created what you wanted to create.

Your idea wasn’t really that great to start with.

The hardest part about starting anything is you get in the way of yourself and you care too much about what other people are going to think about it.

So what if people won’t respond back to you. So what if people will laugh at what you built? When you die, are they going to look over your grave in the cemetery and say

“Do you remember how shitty Robbie’s blog was? I can’t believe he spent his time on that. I think he paid 10 dollars for that shitty theme Actually, I think he created it himself! It was full of grammatical errors and link bait headlines.”

And what if they do say that? You’re f****** DEAD. It doesn’t matter what they think! LITERALLY.

Would you rather the conversation over your grave be like this?

“Whatever happened to the blog Robbie talked about writing? He spent so much time talking about it, but I never actually saw it. That was Robbie’s problem: He had all these ideas, but never finished anything.”

No matter the decision you make, it will always be wrong.

Live your own life and stop caring what other’s are going to think about you. Start something and then finish it. Then laugh at how stupid your creation was. Then create a better version. And repeat it until you are happy with the result.

Once you realize that failure is a made up word and what other’s think about you doesn’t really matter, anything becomes possible.

Follow @RobbieAb

Meeting is the name. Coffee is the game.

Mark Suster inspired me to take 50 coffee meetings. I took his advice, and then I took it again, and again and again and again. To the tune of 250 coffee meetings in 400 days. The result was phenomenal.

My main motivation to do this was because 1)I like people and 2)I knew no one in Chicago after I quit my job. I wanted to get connected in a deep way.

Here is a summary of what has happened:

1. My bullshit detector has improved dramatically. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I have gotten very good at determining who is telling the truth and who is exaggerating. Are you just trying to get me to develop your product for free, or do you really want technology insight? Do you really have 3 fulltime employees, or are they all unpaid interns? Is your startup really doing well, or are you just saying that to make yourself feel better?
2. People think that developers are going to solve all of their problems - “If only I had a developer, this business would take off and I can get the real funding I need to take this off. I need a developer to take on sweat equity”. I sigh every time I hear this. Somehow, someway successful starters with non technical backgrounds make things happen with very little money. These are the people who developers want to work with! Not the people who ”just need a developer to finish the last 20% of a project started by a college kid over the summer”.  To quote The Social Network “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you‘d have invented Facebook”.
3. Some people have no business being entrepreneurs - I hate to say this, but there are some people who have no business starting a business or quitting their full-time jobs to pursue a project. I get the hustle and persistence and follow your dreams and all, but there has to be a point where you look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what have you really accomplished in the past 6 months or year. No product, no co-founders, no customers, no funding, no industry knowledge and no real vision. Sure, it’s extremely great learning experience, but I sometimes question why people do it. Get a real job and get paid.
   
4. Under no condition should you talk smack or gossip about another person or their business - I made this mistake once and I’ll never do it again. There was gossip about a startup funding situation and I repeated the gossip at a Starbucks and I’m about 99.9% sure that the CEO of the company was sitting right next to me and heard everything I said. I spread gossip about someone I didn’t even know. I felt like crap for days. Just don’t do it. I’ve also made the mistake of telling someone I hate a product and find out that the person’s best friend is the founder of that product. It just doesn’t pay to talk smack. Nobody wins.
5. People are surprisingly very open about difficult situations – I don’t know if this is a Chicago thing, a startup thing or people just trust me thing, but for the most part people are very open about the troubles they are having at their companies. When a meeting starts with “I need help”. These are the meetings I like, because it takes guts to say that and although I’m usually of very little help – I want to help this person. The person has opened themselves open to be vulnerable, and I appreciate that.
6. Trust is everything – “Do I trust you” is the question I usually ask myself when meeting someone over coffee. My first goal in any coffee meeting is understanding how I can help this person. Whether it is technical advice or connecting them to another entrepreneur, developer, business owner, investor, etc. I really just want to help. I’m a give forward type of person. If I trust you and like you, I will connect you. Sometimes I’m “on the fence” with someone. I’m not really sure what this person is really up to even after a coffee meeting. I will shoot someone else an email or ask someone a trust about what they think about a person. Which brings me to my next point.
7. A bad reputation can screw you, very quickly - Once the word gets out that you’re a bad person or you do shady business deals, the word travels fast. Actually the word travels to everyone besides you. If I ask a trusted person about someone else, and I hear bad things about them I immediately discredit the other person. It was as if we never had coffee.
8. I still love Dunkin Donuts more than Starbucks Coffee any day of the week. DD is so simple when ordering. Medium coffee cream and sugar please. None of this special edition coffee that they got from some tribe in Africa or Nicaragua type coffee crap. I do drink more Starbucks than I do Dunkin Donuts because taking coffee meetings at Dunkin Donuts is not really an option. DD all the way.
9. Shipping Matters. Technical or Non Technical, I just want to hear you shipped something, anything. It shows that you care and you can execute at the bare minimum. If I’m talking to you about the same idea you had a year ago, the conversation isn’t going to last long. SHIP.SHIP.SHIP. Even if you ship something that sucks. People like other people who ship.
10. The most powerful question you can ever ask is “How can I help you?” It’s a game changing question. The look on people’s face and the big sigh while they think of how I can help them is awesome. It needs to be asked at every meeting. It can open doors and opportunities.
11. The more I see you, the more I like you, and the more we can help each other - The coffee meeting is just the start. The people who I see consistently attend meetings and networking events are the people who I end up doing business with. It shows that they care about the community as much as I do, and I appreciate it more.
12. There needs to be something better than Starbucks to meet people. If I didn’t have an office, I would pay a monthly charge to a coffee shop that gives me access to a private room with computer / project setup and coffee. I’ve had this idea for ages, please someone do this.
13. Being addicted to coffee is awesome, but sucks at the same time. I was anti-coffee in a previous life. Now, I’m all about it. I seriously cannot imagine a morning without coffee. It’s hot and makes me feel awesome. It sucks because I know it’s not good for me. I want to stop. But I probably won’t. Coffee is for closers, right?
14. Rapportive is an absolute life saver. Seriously, it’s amazing. It’s a chrome extension for Gmail that gives you detailed information about somebody just from their email address. It’s super simple and super effective. I use it to pre-stalk the people I’m going to meet.
15. There is no easy way to track people after you meet with them. I would have loved to have some simple dashboard interface that allows me to see the progress people have made since I met them. I imagine it would integrate with my calendar and give me summary highlights of everyone. I keep up with people by randomly seeing them at events, saying hello over email, etc. As I said before the people I follow-up with the most are people who show up to the events. There are some software products that reminds me when I haven’t emailed someone in a few weeks. I couldn’t care less if I havent emailed someone in 2 weeks. That’s not what I care about. I want to see how they are progressing and what they are working on. I dont’ know how this could be done, but it would be amazing.
16. Being connected has its perks - Being connected in any community opens a lot of doors. The type of people who I would never have access to a year ago, are now people who I talk too often and I get a better response rate on my cold emails.
17. Yes, coffee meetings can be a huge waste of time - I don’t take coffee meetings to make it feel like I’m actually busy. What I’ve done in the past 400 days is not sustainable. I think what I did was necessary to build my personal platform in Chicago, but not necessarily the best route for me to take going forward.

Overall, the past 400 days have been amazing and I don’t regret taking that many coffee meetings. It’s one of the best decision’s I’ve ever made.

Follow @RobbieAb