You can't Change the World Alone.

Being an introvert has caused some real challenges in my life. I often describe to people that I am not anti social, I am socially inept. I love meeting people and having intellectual conversations, but I am totally clueless at starting conversation with random people. Once I am involved in a topic of interest I do fine, but getting there is really difficult for me. Friends will often describe their first opinion of me as standoffish, but once they get to know me, they understand it is a lack of skills. I have trouble making phone calls of any kind because having to be the first one to speak paralyzes me. I never make a social call just to say hi, I have to have a reason otherwise I feel like I am bothering someone. 

I have owned a number of businesses over the years, and the one common problem I have had is that I was always doing them alone. Cafe Luwak was the one exception where it was supposed to be a family business with my mom and Forrest, but my mom quit after a couple of months when she realized running a restaurant was actually hard work. Still, Forrest and I ran the business for 6 years, and even though we failed, it really was nice to have my son as a partner. Had my son been older and out of school, I think we would have made it. Unfortunately the business didn't make any money, so I had to work another job to help cover the bills which meant that I was absent at key times when the business needed strong management. 

Besides not being able to fully manage my businesses properly alone, I also wasn't able to finish a lot of the projects I started. In 2005 I started working on a website for the cafe that would have online ordering. I got it to the point where it was about 90 percent done, but I could never get that last 10 percent finished. When I was on the DDA, I put together a full presentation for a city wide event system that would be hosted in the cloud and I would provide JavaScript code so any business could use the system on their website. At that time no one even knew what the cloud was. Two years later Chicago released a system that was exactly like I proposed, and they got national attention for being the first city to do something like that. For years I have been working on designing an automated brewing system, but I lack the skills to design the electronic circuits, but I keep working on trying to figure it out. I have ideas for a number of apps that I never get finished, the list goes on and on. 

Now I don't want to make it sound like I fail at everything. I have had a number of successful projects to, but those were the ones I was hired to do. It is kind of like the mechanic who does a great job fixing customers cars, but can't keep his on the rode. It is really hard to put time into a project that isn't generating revenue with the hopes of long term income. I have always thought if I could get one of these projects finished, I could generate more passive income that might allow me to retire one day. 

One of the common things that you see in companies that succeed is that they are never alone. A lot of people look at Apple and think Steve Jobs built it all, but the real brains behind the company was Steve Wozniak. Neither one of them would have been able to build Apple by themselves. Woz had the engineering talent, and Jobs was the visionary. When you look at other companies, the pattern is the same. Microsoft was the same way. Gates was the visionary, and he also had programming skills, but he wasn't alone Paul Allen was his partner when they first started and grew the company together. Startups really need to have a balance that is created by having more than one leader. In most cases it does seem that one leader will emerge larger than the others and eventually become the one most remembered. 

Knowing how my limited social skills have affected me in the past, I recently reformed Kartech as an LLC, and my son is a partner in the business. We have merged in his lawn care business which helps him by having a shared back end to the businesses. I have also started writing this blog, and I am working on other ideas that will help me meet people who may have common interests. I have been going to user group meetings more regularly and really making an effort to get to know people in the development community. I am really working hard to learn from the mistakes of my past and find ways to avoid doing everything alone. 

I may not ever do anything that changes the world, but I would really like to do something where I will be remembered. One of the reasons I write these blog posts is the hope that someday after I am gone, my children and grandchildren will be able to read my words and have a better understanding of who I was and not forget me. It may not be changing the world, but I hope I can remain a part of their world.