The Company You Keep

A reminder to my teenage daughters and anyone who may need this. A favorite of mine from a few years ago. 

The Company You Keep

Tell me who your best friends are, and I will tell you who you are.  

If you run with wolves, you will learn how to howl.  

But, if you associate with eagles,

you will learn how to soar to great heights. 

 "A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he is really like 

is shown by the kind of friends he chooses." 

The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you closely associate - for the good and the bad. 

The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve.   

Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity.   

An important attribute in successful people is their impatience

with negative thinking and negative acting people.  

As you grow, your associates will change.  Some of your friends will not want you to go on.  They will want you to stay where they are.  Friends that don't help you climb will want you to crawl.  

Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream.  Those that don't increase you will eventually decrease you. 

Consider this: 

Never receive counsel from unproductive people. 

Never discuss your problems with someone incapable

 of contributing to the solution, because those who never

succeed themselves are always first to tell you how.  

Not everyone has a right to speak into your life. 

You are certain

 to get the worst of the bargain 

when you exchange ideas with the wrong person. 

Don't follow anyone who's not going anywhere. 

With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it. 

Be careful where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life. 

Wise is the person who fortifies his life with the right friendships. 

Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies

Nothing surprises me with Paleo, anymore. When the hubby sent me this recipe, I knew I'd have every man who even considered paleo (and many who don't care) wanting to have the recipe.

Here's the link to the original: Maple Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

• 1.5 c. almond flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tbsp arrowroot
• 1/2 tsp. maple extract/flavoring
• 1/4 c.  Organic amber honey
• 1 egg white
• 3 tbsp. melted coconut oil
• 1/3 c. Enjoy Life semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 5 strips Uncured Whole Foods 365 bacon, cooked, cooled, and diced

Instructions

1. Mix almond flour, arrowroot and baking soda in one bowl. Set aside.
2. In another bowl, beat egg white and slowly add melted butter and then maple flavoring.
3. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix well.
4. Add chopped bacon and chocolate chips last.
5. Use a cookie scooper and scoop out onto a baking stone
6. Bake at 300 for 12-13 minutes depending on the size you made your cookie.
7. At 8 minutes flatten your cookie, if you care about how they look. Then, bake for another 5-7 minutes. *For me, 13 minutes wasn't enough time.

Make sure you cool them completely, they can be doughy if you don't.

Paleo Ahi Poke

Paleo Ahi Poke

1/4 lb. Sushi Grade Ahi Tuna block
2 Green Onions with tops
1 tsp. toasted sesame seeds
1-2 tbsp. Toasted Organic Sesame Oil
1-2 tbsp. Coconut Aminos (soy sauce substitution)
pinch red cayenne pepper powder
pinch sea salt

Chop and dice the ahi block into cubes. Chop and dice the green onions. Sprinkle in sesame seeds, sesame oil and coconut aminos until there's a sufficient amount of liquid coating the diced ahi. Once combined, sprinkle with cayenne and sea salt and allow to marinate in the refrigerator 1 hour up to 24 hours.

Serve cold and enjoy!

Spicy Pineapple Paleo Chili

A lot of family and friends have asked for this recipe, so I decided to post it on my blog vs. emailing it out to a zillion people (and probably forgetting a couple).

The original recipe was posted in Paleo Magazine August/September 2012 issue. When I made it for the first time, I altered it. After my husband wanted to live off of it the past month, I've continued to alter it more based on our tastes. In all, I've made various versions about 8 times in the past month. 

Spicy Pineapple Paleo Chili

2.5 lbs. Local Grass Fed Ground Beef
12 ozs. Uncured Bacon-chopped 
2 Green Bell Pepper diced
1 Large Sweet Onion diced
1 Large Jalapeno diced
2 Tbsps. Minced Garlic
1/4 cup Chili Powder
1 28 oz. can San Marzano Crushed Tomatoes
1 Pomi Diced Tomatoes
1/4 cup Tomato Paste
2 Tbsps. Garlic Powder
1 Tbsp. Ground Red Cayenne Pepper
1 Tbsp. Coconut Oil
1 Pineapple - diced
Sea Salt to taste

Chop and dice vegetables, then saute in coconut oil. Once cooked, set aside in a bowl. Brown ground beef while folding in cayenne and garlic powder. Once brown, combine sauteed vegetables with browned ground beef and tomatoes. In separate frying pan, cook bacon until done but soft (not crispy). Fold bacon into chili pot and let simmer for 45 minutes. Add tomato paste and pineapple 5 minutes before serving, after turning off the heat, but keep the lid on.

Wonder Woman

Great User Experiences

I've written about bad user experiences, now here's the good..

Path who needs another mobile diary timeline of your life? I know I know.. But, Path is so beautiful that it beckons me to open it every day! Unlike Facebook, where you can have virtually unlimited friends, you're limited to 100 of your closest friends. Mine? My favorite startup, development folks that I love and trust. Plus, a couple of my "early adopter" marketing friends.

Why do I love it? It's easy to navigate, use and let's face it.. it's beautiful!

Jobvite having seen and used most every ATS and Recruiting platform (or at least a demo of it), this is the best I've seen. And by best, I mean by at least 1000k times better.

I hate Taleo. It's not a secret. If you've looked through larger company job listings and applied anywhere in the past 10 years, chances are you have used Taleo. The scary thing? It hasn't really changed or improved in a decade. 

Jobvite makes it easy for applicants to apply via their LinkedIn profiles, and upload your resume without parsing it and hacking it 12 ways from Sunday. 

If you haven't heard, there is a hiring war going on in a lot of cities (especially within IT). Getting a software engineer excited about your company is one thing. Actually making them fill out a profile on your corporate Taleo site? You're basically telling the candidates that you don't respect their time and showing that your company is stuck in the "black hole of the recruiting process".

Who uses Jobvite? Software Engineers-basically any company that you would *want* to actually work for. For my other friends and non-software engineering types? If you want to work for an innovative company, they should have a Jobvite portal for you to upload your information into.

What are you favorite user experiences, lately? What makes them awesome? Tell me! I'm always looking for great user experiences to add to my list.

The relationship between large corporations & staffing agencies-is broken.

My Top 7 Examples of Bad User Experience

I recently had a client looking for a very senior User Experience Designer to add to their team. In my quest for this person, I started asking myself ...

"what really makes a great user experience designer?"

Along the way, I remembered my own first experiences in college.

I feel old typing this. But, "when I went to college".. it was 1994

• We were using dBase on an Apple II
• We used CorelDraw 4 & 5 on our friend's computer he had in his dorm room. Having a computer and that newest expensive software? Was a HUGE deal-it was super $$$.

Back then, was the birth of the web. Not everyone had cell phones, either. SHOCKING!!

Today, we visit websites and apps via our tablets, mobile phones and anywhere we have a connection. I am going to come right out with it..

EVERY company

needs User Experience people

2012 eCommerce & B2C facts

Percentage of online shoppers that base their opinions on a website 

by the design of the site alone: 

42%

Percentage of online shoppers that did not return to a site 

based on the site aesthetics: 

52%

My 7 top examples of Bad User Experience and User Interface Design

• Mobile "optimized" site - that looks like a table of contents
• Flash - I have an iPhone, iPad and a MacBook
• Pop Up Ads - I click to close them. Period.
• Flashing Banner Links - again, it looks like an ad and I will not click
• Site Consistency - your user needs to feel comfortable
• Auto Play Video - huge problem on major media/magazine sites
• Keep it simple - the best design is often the most clean

I'm considering switching banks. A good percentage of my frustration is their UI and UX on their website.

What sites frustrate you? What else would you add to my list?




*I registered for Stanford University HCI classes to dive deeper into Human Computer Interaction. They start sometime in February!

Once it starts, I'll be writing on the blog to let all of you know how the class is going!

Here's a nice 2012 B2C Color Infographic from the folks at: The Infographics

The difference between being a leader, and leading

"Whatever else each of us derives from our work, there may be nothing more precious than the feeling that we truly matter — that we contribute unique value to the whole, and that we're recognized for it."

What a powerful statement. It's very simple, really. Most of the time, it's easier to push people for "more". Whether more is more time, more production, more sales, more contacts, more meetings, more coding, more traveling... More gets in the way of Appreciation, too often.

http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2012/01/why-appreciation-matters-so-mu.html

by TonySchwartz

Points from Tony's blog:

•  "The single highest driver of engagement, according to a worldwide study conducted by Towers Watson, is whether or not workers feel their managers are genuinely interested in their well being. Less than 40 percent of workers felt so engaged."
• "Oddly, we're often more experienced at expressing negative emotions — re actively and defensively, and often without recognizing their corrosive impact on others until much later, if we do at all."
• "Feeling genuinely appreciated lifts people up. At the most basic level, it makes us feel safe, which is what frees us to do our best work. It's also energizing. When our value feels at risk, as it so often does, that worry becomes preoccupying, which drains and diverts our energy from creating value. "

This is why I'm incredibly passionate about company culture creation and preservation. Think about what you say, what you do and how you lead.. as if your grandmother were sitting on your shoulder watching your every move.

Would she be proud?

Someone reminded me on Twitter tonight about an old saying. What do you want people to say about you and remember you by at your funeral? Now, go do that. 

Simple, but perfect.