Three Reasons Why Being an Athlete Makes You a Better Entrepreneur

I’m often (very skeptically) asked about my ability to run a company and be a competitive athlete at the same time. This summer, I’ll race in the U.S. Triathlon National Championship for my third year, so I’m spending a lot of time training.  At the same time, we’re growing ScriptEd substantially in the next few months -- so yes, I’m a very busy Boss Lady.

Rather than seeing my athletic ambitions as a distraction from ScriptEd, I see them as essential to being a better business leader. I’m sure that if I were not an athlete, I would not have the confidence and skills I need to run ScriptEd. Here’s what being a competitive athlete makes you good at:

• Knowing What it Takes to Achieve Goals: Race planning and business planning are similar. Both require you to be strategic and focused. You have to make plans for where you’ll allocate resources and contingency plans for when things go wrong.  You need to determine intermediate and long term goals, and you must define how you will measure your success.
• Working Smart (and Hard). Balancing training and running a company forces me to do only what is essential. I don’t have time to waste on doing things are not helping me reach my personal goals and ScriptEd’s organizational goals.  For training that means figuring out the most efficient and effective ways to spend my time exercising.  Seven minutes of burpees is way harder than a 30 minute run.  For ScriptEd, that means not signing on for every opportunity that comes our way -- we strive to only do the things that help us achieve our mission.
  
• Understanding Incremental Progress: I’ve been competing as an athlete since I was eight years old. I did not become a good athlete overnight. I became a good athlete by practicing nearly every day for the last 22 years.  Building a company is similar. ScriptEd has grown over the last three years through a series of small efforts that happen every single day, by placing one foot in front of another. Success doesn’t happen overnight. It happens by being dedicated and persistent and making little bits of progress every day towards your goals, even (and especially) when things get hard or you experience setbacks.  

Being an athlete and being an entrepreneur, for me, go hand in hand. Both continue to teach me new things about myself and the world all the time.

What is a social entrepreneur?

I am a social entrepreneur.  Ashoka defines a social entrepreneur as individuals with innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing social problems.  

Social Entrepreneurs find ways to solve social problems where traditional measures just don’t work (ie, government, school districts, business, etc.). Some great examples of people who are social entrepreneurs are Muhammad Yunus (Founder of the Grameen Bank and Microfinance), and Margaret Sanger (Founder of Planned Parenthood).

Nearly as soon as I started teaching at the beginning of my post-college life, I recognized that there were a lot of ways to impact the lives of the students I worked with beyond my classroom walls.  Since then I’ve worked towards implementing entrepreneurial and nontraditional ideas to hammer away at problems related to education, urban poverty and civic engagement.

I’ve brought this instinct to ScriptEd.  We are innovatively solving a bunch of problems at the same time:

• Lack of Computer Science Educators in Schools: It’s not possible to become certified as a Computer Science teacher in New York State.  Our nontraditional solution here is to engage volunteers as teachers. ScriptEd staff work with volunteers to ensure that students in under resourced school get access to quality education as quickly as possible.
  
• Lack of Access to the Tech Community for Low-Income and Underrepresented Groups. Again we solve this through a bit of social engineering: We foster deep relationships between people from the tech community and students from under resourced schools, and then we connect kids to internships over the summer.  These connections are the social capital our students will need to access careers in tech.
  
• Pathway to the Middle Class:The economic impact of entering the technology industry will be enormous: while the average annual income for the demographic ScriptEd serves is $43,000 for a family of four, the average annual salary for a software developer in 2012 was $92,790.  To prepare students for careers, we make sure our curriculum is very industry focused.  

What are some out-of-the-box and creative ways you can make an impact in your community?

Letter from a Hackathon Volunteer

ScriptEd students and volunteers are some of the most remarkable, dedicated and passionate people I've ever met. I am so lucky to have a job that gives me to the opportunity to work with these kinds of people every day.  They motivate me to work harder and be better.

Going forward, I hope to showcase their amazingness from time to time.

Today, I'm sharing (with his permission) an email I received from one of our hackathon volunteers. Enjoy!

So, I need to be honest. I really didn't want to go on Saturday. Suzanne had badgered me a few months back and I of course was in because, ya' know, volunteering and it was a while away. But this past week was super hectic and stressful and all I wanted to do on Saturday was lay in Central Park with my dog. Spending 12 hours working my butt off teaching kids to code was very much *not* the same thing. And I'd met some of these kids before, they were cool, but... it was going to be tough. They didn't listen. They weren't focused. Too rambunctious.
     I could not have been more wrong about the kids. I could not have been more wrong about the best way to spend my Saturday afternoon. I've had a smile plastered on my face since I left Saturday! I have never seen kids work so hard, stay so focused and keep each other going as much as the MIHS team did on Saturday. And while I didn't see every group, it seemed pretty universal. I've participated in a bunch of hackathons. Most of the time the engineers (professional engineers!) do half the work that those kids do. And they moan and whine and require tons of swag and expensive coffee and mountain dew.
     Those kids are amazing. I knew you all were "doing good" by building ScriptEd. But, I truly never realized that the kids were actually so invested. The fact is, when I've worked in situations like this with kids before (I taught "digital photograph and web design" at summer camps for years during college), the kids were horribly "privileged" and refused to do hard work. Not the MIHS kids. They seriously got that the harder they worked, the better their opportunities in the future would be. You're not just "doing good" — you are helping these kids actually create better lives for themselves. And this isn't an intangible — the effects are incredibly obvious and present.
     I haven't done anything in the past few years that has made me so proud as watching those kids work, and then celebrate, on Saturday. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you so much for creating an amazing organization. Please don't hesitate to ask for any help I can provide. I will definitely be involved as much as possible.
Thank you again! 

Doing and Thinking

At the encouragement of a friend, I’m resuscitating my blog. The hiatus began a little more than three years ago -- right before the idea for ScriptEd came about. I became completely consumed by the idea for ScriptEd, and have not stopped working on it ever since. I’ve never had kids, but I imagine the all-consuming nature of running a start-up is similar to having children.   

So, I stopped writing.  

And over the last few months, for the first time in since then, I’ve started to feel like I can pick my head up and start to reflect. I’m working on ScriptEd full-time now. (I was not for the first 1.5 years). I’ve hired a staff.  We’re at a point where I no longer have to worry about whether we’ll make payroll. We have health insurance. We’ve got a great team that has taken on some of the work I used to do. We’re growing from a team of 4 to 11 or 12 over the next few months and doubling our volunteer corps next school year, and while I’m still working very hard, I’ve finally come up for a breath.

Writing is one of the best ways for me to reflect and process. I am by nature a “doer” -- I am incredibly good at getting things done. I’m certain this strength is a big reason ScriptEd has been so successful. Writing is “doing” and “thinking” at the same time. Two birds, one stone.

This isn’t just selfish, though.  I have a lot to share. I’ve got lots of hard-earned lessons and inspiring stories from our students and volunteers.

So stay tuned! I’m excited to share with you again.

Twitterspeak (1 year later)

(Popular Demand Repost)


"'You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he said almost sadly.  'Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak.  I've read some of those pieces that you write in the Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations.  In your heart you would prefer to stick to Oldspeak with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning.  You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words.  Did you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?....Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?...Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meanings rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten...The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.'"
-Syme to Winston in Gorege Orwell's 1984.

"Brevity is the soul of wit"
-Lord Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet

"THANKS!!!!! N Y MY NAM HAD 2 B NEAR LAST MAURYA LML" (Translation: "Thanks! And why (did) my name had (have) to be near last Maurya? Laughing Mad Loud." )
-A student, my facebook wall.

The Economy of Language

Since I started using Twitter, I've become more connected to the world around me by following several major news organizations and individuals who tweet commentary about current events.  However, Twitter and other more modern forms of communication impose an economy of language on users such that each word becomes a good in the marketplace of ideas and complex issues are said in catch phrases that don't always explain full meanings. When I speak about the economy of language, I don't mean to limit my argument to just Twitter. I also mean the language used in text messaging, and to some extent Facebook.  I will refer to this new form of language as "Twitterspeak," because Twitter currently imposes the most strict character limit of these forms of communication.

My ambivalence towards these forms of communication comes from the economy of language they impose and what that means for human communication, particularly for young people still learning how to effectively communicate in a written format.

Brevity is the soul of wit, but the enemy of thoughtfulness. 

Some argue that forcing a writer to be more succinct produces better writing. Paul Krugman of the New York Times recently wrote this blog post on the subject.  He believes length constraints force him to be more concise and make each word more meaningful. Every paper returned to me in my first philosophy class said "Eliminate Needless Words" boldly in red on each page.  Over time, I learned the importance of being clear in my writing.  I am supposed to carefully select words to maximize meaning and precision.  Like an economy, I am striving to reach the appropriate intersection of cost and benefit.  I have fallen out of practice a bit since college, but I know it is always something to aspire to when writing.  Twitter, in the extreme, forces me to do this.
   
I believe in the immense networking power and the free exchange of ideas that is facilitated by Twitter and Facebook.  Recently it became clear that these mediums are so powerful that they are able to catalyze revolutions.  However, it remains unclear whether or not they will be effective in helping citizens form a plan of governance.  It's easy to write "Overthrow Mubarak" in under 140 characters, but it's much more difficult to exchange ideas on the formation of government in the same length. When Speaker Boehner tweets something like "House passed bill 2 keep govt running, cut spending; if Sen. Reid won't pass it, we'll pass shorter one 2 keep govt running, cut spending" there is very little complexity in the expression.  Twitterspeak is similar to politicians arguing in sound bites and catch phrases.  No one can give an in-depth reflection on fixing the economy in sixty seconds.  One might argue that tweets can contain links for further information, or that a compilation of tweets can give an idea about a trend that is occurring, but a tweet in itself rarely can convey a complex thought.  

Code Switching  and Neuropathways

Just because these modes of communication are short does not not make them inherently bad. Not everything that needs to be said needs to be complex.  The problem arises when people use these short statements as their primary mode of communication.

 My students use Facebook, Twitter, and text obsessively.  They write messages that make some sense in  Twitterspeak.  However, when they need to produce a piece of writing with fully formed sentences and thoughts, they are often unable to do so. In this case, the argument that being more concise produces better writing fails because it presupposes that the user knows how to use the English language properly in the first place.  Instead of writing "eliminate needless words," I find myself commenting "spell out complete words" on the tops of their essays.

Perhaps I am not being fair. I am making a value judgment on the importance of stringing a coherent sentence together. Maybe these values are elitist and antiquated, and maybe we are moving to a new form of communication.  Who am I to say that one form of communication is better than another?  Languages have shifted before, and they are bound to do so again.   

In graduate school, I learned that successful students are able to "code switch"--they have the ability to switch back in forth between one dialect or language to another when it is appropriate to do so.  For example, I can code switch between writing "hahaha's" and "LOLs" and ":)" in instant messenger, and more formal language when it is appropriate, such as in an academic paper or formal letter.  Students who are growing up in the generation behind me have been exposed to "Twitterspeak" at a much earlier age, so my norm and their norms of communication are different. If a student lacks experience or knowledge of more formal writing, he will be unable to code switch.  When I am reading a student's essay, I do not think I should be reading "LOL"s in place of "This is funny," "ur" in place of "your" or "you're," "IDK" in place of "I don't know" or "n" in place of the word "and."  Unfortunately, students that are growing up in an Internet generation without a lot of exposure to formal writing might understand "Twitterspeak" as the correct form because that is what they are used to reading.  

These mediums of communication are constantly reinforced.  Students instant message, text, and tweet more than they use the phone.  They no longer pen love letters, or even email that much for that matter.  Instead, they send an @tweet and cram as much into 140 characters as possible.  As John Stuart Mill said "The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used." Moreover, the teachings of modern neuroscience help explain what I read in student essays.  With each repetition of Twitterspeak, the child's ability to Twitterspeak grows and improves.  Sadly, my students don't get nearly enough "reps" at writing actual sentences.  These behaviors all build mental pathways.  The longer form writing pathways are generally shoddy.  


The danger of this is that the absence of well executed expression leads to an absence of in-depth and analytical thought (see Orwell's quote and article linked below).  We should only teach our students how to be concise after they have learned to be long winded.  The problem, then, does not lie with Twitter, Facebook, or texting as modes of communication, but with parenting and education.  

It is possible to teach a student to read and write well, even in a society that has begun to function in an economy of words.  Teachers and parents are doing it everyday, and there are plenty of students who can code-switch between "Twitterspeak" and formal English.  This use of language is only a current manifestation of an age old problem, after all.  There have been several critiques on the use of colloquial languages throughout history.  I, for one, will not be giving up Twitter, or my Twitterspeak, but I will be making a more concerted effort to teach students how to write, and therefore think, clearly. 

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"A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers." 


-George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

Two-Thirds Triathlon, One-Third Merde*

Shit.

My coworker has forwarded me an email about the Nations Triathlon, my second triathlon.  The race organizers and city officials have decided to cancel the swimming portion of the race due to flooding.  I had been so excited to compete in a triathlon again, and now I couldn't.  I began to seriously consider skipping the race and staying home instead of making the trip to DC.

The problem, though, is that the race is scheduled for September 11th.  Ground Zero is a block away from my apartment, and the last place I want to be for the 10th anniversary of the event is anywhere near where I live. The media is reporting that there have been threats from terrorists, and all of the streets surrounding my apartment would be closed for the majority of the weekend.  I want to leave.

Faced with two mediocre choices, I decide to stick to the original plan and head to Washington DC to compete in the Nation's Triathlon, or as I told my coworkers, the Nation's Duathlon.  I tell my friends that I might not compete once I arrive in DC.  My spirits are pretty low, and I'm feeling sad (which is a little bit silly I guess.  There are better things to get sad about).  The thing is, I have spent my entire summer waking up at 5:30 AM to train, and I have made a lot of sacrifices to be ready for this event.  Some days I would even make the long trek to 145th street in Harlem to swim at the crack of dawn.  Swimming is my strength, and I believe its absence will make me completely noncompetitive with the rest of the field (and I'm a competitive person). 

Early September 10th, Erik and I head to the Path Train to take us to New Jersey.  We are  picking up the rental car in Jersey City.

Shit.

I forgot my bike cleats.  If I don't have them, I can't compete (This isn't such a bad thing).  However, if I do decide to compete, it's going to cost me a lot of money to buy another pair. It takes me an hour to return to my apartment. I weave through the exponentially growing 9/11 crowd to retrieve them.  It is pretty clear that my ambivalence about racing has translated in to a lack of preparedness for the trip.

 I end up not eating all day because of the traveling.  I realize half way through the drive that I'd better go to the race registration rather than the hotel because I probably won't be able to register in time otherwise.  By six o'clock that evening, I'm registered for the event and checked into the hotel, and completely exhausted. I can't find the energy to go place my bike in the transition area, so I take a nap instead.  I wake up thirty minutes later and rack my bike just before the transition area begins to close for the evening.

That night, Erik and I go out to eat with my friend Christine.  Thinking of my race, Christine suggests we eat Italian food for carbo-loading purposes. I'm ready to eat just about anything, and am not thinking too much about how I will fuel my body, so I agree and ask that we go as soon as possible.  I get back to the hotel at 10:00 PM. Unlike my first triathlon, I'm not nervous, I'm just exhausted, and I am able to fall asleep immediately.

5:45 AM, the alarm goes off.  I put on my tri-suit and get ready to go. 

Shit.

I don't have any food.  I forgot to bring energy bars and sports drinks with me.  I have to be in and out of the transition area and ready to race within the next hour.  The transition area is a half an hour walk away.  Washington DC is a big city though, and I should be able to find somewhere to buy food on the way.

But we don't.  The city is silent.  We discover that nothing is open early on Sunday mornings in DC, or at least not this Sunday morning.  I'm spoiled by New York City.  Everything is open all the time.  Once we realize our dilemma, Erik sets off in a different direction in search of food, and I rush to the race start.  By the time I arrive, I only have 10 minutes to set up my stuff and get out of the transition area.  This proves to be very difficult--5000 athletes are walking in the opposite direction of me, out of the transition area and into their starting corrals. I'm filled with anxiety.  Maybe I should have stayed in New York after all.

By 7:00 AM I'm out of the transition area, and the race has started.  My age group is not starting until after 8:00 AM, so I hope that Erik will arrive with food, and will be able to hold my phone so I don't have to carry it while he competes.  He calls me and reports that he has had no luck, and has walked nearly three miles. I'm starving.

Around 7:20 AM I notice that a food cart has opened and is selling danishes, muffins and coffee.  Luckily, I had stuffed some extra cash in my spi belt and so I buy a humongous muffin and a coffee.  This is NOT the ideal pre-race meal, but I'm out of options. I call Erik to let him know that I have found food.  He begins to rush back.

I wait, and wait, and wait for Erik to arrive. At 7:45 he calls to tell me he is at the starting line, and wants to know where I am.

Shit.

The roads have been blocked off, and he can't get around to where I'm waiting.  Still with a muffin for him and my phone, I begin to worry that I'll miss the competition all together.  I can't compete carrying this stuff.

Somehow, Erik finds a way to get to me by 8:00. I hand him my phone and the muffin and he hurries away. Up until this point, competing is the last thing on my mind.  For the next five minutes I can finally focus on the race.  My race wave is started, and all of the other woman sprint ahead of me to their bikes.  I wonder why they are going so fast.  Maybe it's just because I feel sluggish from my muffin. I run at a slow jog through

Shit.

The ground is so wet and muddy that most people have difficulty getting their bikes out of the transition area.  I have to run carrying my bike over my head through tons of mud before I can get to the road.

What happens next is totally unexpected: I absolutely kill the biking portion of the race, becoming one of the top cyclists in my age group (and for women in general, for that matter).  After that, I run a 10k in 49 minutes (the equivalent of running 6.2 miles at an 8 minute pace).  I'm completely confused with my time at the end of the race, but also euphoric.  I can't stop smiling.  I wait in line to receive my splits, and I discover that I have improved my time by 18 minutes in the biking portion, and by 6 minutes in the running portion.  I think to myself:

Shit.

 I have what it takes to be a triathlete, and not just a one sport athlete, after all.  Time to get serious.

*Pardon my French

My First Triathlon

Before I begin, I must first apologize to my readers for never completing my mock trial series.  To make a long story short, the WIHS mock trial team advanced to the fifth round of competition and lost.  This earned them the status of top 16  in New York City.  This was a pretty fascinating story filled with all sorts of drama.  I'm sorry I didn't finish the series. Maybe I will later this summer.
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About 40 minutes into the biking portion of my first triathlon ever, I was passed by an overweight middle-aged lady on a not-so-great bike.  She passed me pretty quickly, too, and I was trying really, really hard to go fast. I was passed by a lot of people the entire time I was riding.

At the beginning of the biking leg of the triathlon, I thought I had over-exerted myself earlier swimming through the Potomac. I'm a good swimmer and had been told by several people that I didn't need to train for it, so I didn't.  I thought that maybe that was my mistake, and the cause for my exhaustion on the bike.

Competitors started the race in waves of eight people.  Eight people would jump in the water, and 10 seconds later, another eight people would jump in.  Even though female competitors did not begin swimming until after all of the men had started, I ended up finishing the swimming leg surrounded by men.  So in the beginning of the biking section, I was only being passed by a lot of men, which I didn't think was particularly surprising.  But then I started getting passed by a lot of women, too, and my confidence in my athletic ability took a beating. When this woman in particular passed me, I decided to stop and check to see if I had a flat tire.

I didn't. Relieved but still perplexed, I tried spinning my wheels.  The front wheel barely moved.  I then realized that for the past 15 kilometers I had been riding with my breaks pinched against my front tire. I had my bike"repaired" the night before by a bike mechanic, and I thought my my ride was in good shape.  Frustrated at my novice mistake of not checking my breaks before the start of the race, I quickly fixed them and hopped back on my bike. To the relief of my legs and my sanity, I started passing people (including that lady).

I finished the biking section and started the running section with very sore legs.  Despite my setback, I finished the race and didn't do too badly-- I came in 9th out of 70 women competing in the event for the first time, and I was only 10 minutes away from the first place "newbie." My total time for the 1.5k (1mile) swim --40k (26mile) bike-10k(6 mile) run was 2 hours and 52 minutes.

The physical stress of the biking mishap, however, was no where near as stressful as the logistical preparation for the triathlon.  I was a basket-case the day before the race, stressing over the minutia of my equipment, the transition area, and making sure everything was set up correctly so that I could easily switch between events.

Preparing for a triathlon is an organizational feat.   Triathletes must get together all of the equipment they'll need to compete in three different sports, and then figuring out a way to get all of it to wherever they're going. This is especially difficult if you're an urbanite without a car.

Competitors vary in the equipment they'll use for the event.  I am more of a minimalist.  I used a swim cap, reflective swim goggles, a "triathlon suit" (an outfit that you can swim, bike and run in), biking cleats, a bike computer, my bike, socks, a helmet, sunglasses, a 'chest strap' (a strap that goes around your body to make it easier to put on your racing number after the swim), and my running shoes. I also had a lot of Clif bars and Powerade with me.  On top of that, was given a lot of numbers to put in various places-- one for my helmet, one for my bike, one for my gear bag, one on my swim cap, and one I had to put on between swimming and biking. I also had to have my racing number written on both arms and above both of my knees, and my age written on the back of my right calf.  I had to wear an anklet with a timing chip and a wrist band that signified I was a competitor in the race.  So much stuff!  Some racers had even more equipment: wetsuits for swimming, zip laces to save seconds on tying their shoe laces, areobars for their bicycles---the list goes on and on.

That's me! (in the black)

As you might gather from my list above, not only is this a logistical headache, it's also a very expensive endeavor to be involved in a triathlon.  I had no idea how much money I would end up spending in order to compete when I signed up for the race in January.  I thought I would be all set after dropping nearly $800 to a "decent" bike and $190 on a registration fee.  What I didn't realize is that I would have to buy so many more things than that (like special pedals for my bike, special biking shoes, and everything else listed above), along with a gym membership so I could swim (which I didn't use much), a car rental for the weekend, and a night in a hotel.  I can also safely say even though I spent a lot of money, I did things on the cheap compared to many triathletes.  Most competitors were sporting bikes in the $2000 range, and some were upwards of $6000.  I was astounded by how many people  had so many expensive pieces of equipment.  There is definitely a huge barrier to access in this type of competition-- it is not for the unemployed or underpaid.  It turns out that the money spent on equipment has very little to do with how fast someone finishes, though.  It doesn't matter how expensive your gear is if you're out of shape.  It was funny to watch the professional triathletes speed away on bikes less expensive than the ones used by men with beer bellies.

The money I spent to participate is what motivated me to still compete even after I injured my foot 12 days prior to the race.  Against nearly everyone's (and the doctor's) advice, I figured that I had put too much into it financially to back out. The good news is that my foot was fine, and if I won't need to pay the 'start-up' costs for my next triathlon.

When I crossed the finish line in front of the Capitol building in Washington DC, there was no doubt in my mind that everything was worth it.  I have competed in hundreds of athletic events in my life, and I have never had so much fun, and I felt so happy.  The finish line was crowded withe friends and family members celebrating everyone's achievement.  I cannot wait to compete in another triathlon.