Now when someone comes out to train and asks which technique we are going to learn first, my response will be:

none.

The way I and most learned parkour taught us bad habits, it taught us to rely on techniques and specific skills. Once you mastered all of the core “techniques” it becomes a matter of combining them in runs, which is good. But then it comes to a matter of creativity, and coming up with different movements and ways of moving. At this point we are free. Sometimes the most inspirational parkour comes from people incorporating movements from other disciplines into parkour. Take for instance, Oleg’s Out of Time. He incorporates breaking moves in there and it looks awesome!

But why should this be limited to those with other backgrounds and those who have been training a long time? Why shouldn’t everyone have this freedom from the onset? That is why I want to encourage new traceurs to just move. Whatever comes naturally. And as they begin to move, give them small tips on what might make a particular movement more fluid or quicker. In this way their mind will not be constrained to the movements defined by us. They will simply move from point A to point B in whatever way seems fit.

Overtime they will learn the central techniques as there is a reason they have been developed. But they will not be limited to them. Some will say this is dangerous, I don’t think so. As long as you start with simple, small, low obstacles, and move from there they will be fine.

It is one thing to tell someone that this is the proper way to do something, it is an entirely different thing to let that person discover why this is the way most people do something.

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1. Mobile Parkour Park
2. The Secret to Nailing Techniques
3. David Belle Interview: Perfect

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of great blogs to read and RSS is a great time saver. But I just did some spring cleaning of subscriptions and it feels so good. Cutting out those blogs which have rarely offer something of value to you, or are maybe interesting sometimes but not really worthwhile. Cut it out. Over time all of these subscriptions can build up and become a time drain.

If this blog is one of those, it won’t offend me. But if you are subscribed to the main feed, consider subscribing to just one of the categories first

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Some people are idealists, which is used slightly different than the definition, typically people who see things in a perfect world, what could be. On the other hand there are pragmatists, defined as relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters : practical as opposed to idealistic.

In comes the pragmatic idealist. When viewing situations, we should frame them idealistically, what would be the best possible outcome. We then have to realize that this is most of the time not possible. So pragmatically, what can we do to move toward that goal.

Ideally we would want to hire someone full time to do that job. This way they can get the full vibe from the team, and provide their knowledgeable input in the decision making process. We can’t afford someone of quality to fill that spot, but we don’t want to outsource those duties. How about bring on an independent contractor or consultant to do that. It’s not a one time project so they can really get to know the team and be a part of it, but we don’t have to pay a full year’s salary. And maybe eventually when we are making more money and have more work, we can bring them on full time.

That’s a basic example, but the idea is to start with the best possible end and move backward instead of how we normally do it, start from where we are and make incremental steps forward.

This is just a thought, would love to hear you input!

Related posts:

1. Contracts: Why They are Important
2. Birds of a Feather… Squawk Together
3. Choose What To Do by the People You Want to be Around

This is absurd. Network carriers will only cancel or not renew their contracts if Republic provides a poor service or if they can get better prices elsewhere. They don’t care if the company which owns their regional partner also owns an airline which competes with them as long as their regional partner is saving them money.

For example, my dad’s company both sells concrete and cement (the main ingredient in concrete). The cement is sold to it’s concrete company and is also sold to other concrete companies which compete with it. And they have no problem because they are getting the best valued product.

To use a recent airline example, take JetBlue, American, and Lufthansa. American and JetBlue came into an agreement in which JetBlue and American will interline on non-competing routes and are swapping slots at JFK and DCA. Lufthansa owns 19% of JetBlue, has two seats on the board, and codeshares with JetBlue. American and JetBlue are leading partners in the competing oneworld and Star alliances. But Lufthansa does not mind because JetBlue is still providing value to them.

Don’t get me wrong, network carriers may use this as a negotiation tool when negotiating the next deals, and one may even leave for another airline once the contract is up. But we will see no contract cancellations.

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You people who are trying to accomplish something creative, why do artists, musicians, and designers tell you that your not doing it right but when they explain their creative philosophies or rigid structures in which creativity must take place, why does it never make sense?

The other day the marketing team with eagle-trade and I were working on the music for an upcoming video promotion. Our marketing director, Chelsea Weiss, wanted the music to be faster at the end than in the beginning. I have a little music background, but not much. So I just made the lyrics double the speed and it worked perfectly. Now later I was telling the story to a friend of mine who is very musically talented. As soon as I told her that Chelsea wanted the music sped up, she said, “you can’t do that!”

Musically she is correct, you can’t speed up the music to a different tempo, it doesn’t sound good. I told her to hold on and I finished the story. She said, “ohh, well you didn’t speed it up, you changed the bars” (or some musical term I have since forgotten).

Now if my friend was in my shoes, when Chelsea asked the question, she would have said that’s not possible and maybe she would have proceeded to the proper solution and maybe not. But the point is, people of different specialized groups have different terms, have different views on how things go, have different skill sets, have different ideas, and are generally different from other groups. Yet they are pretty standard within their group so they communicate well.

But once groups try and communicate with one another, things get very difficult. Often times the groups interests are aligned, and a solution that satisfies both is fairly straightforward, but different perspectives get in the way. Causing each group to look down on the other. Interactions like these build up stereotypes over time of the other groups which make it even more difficult to get things done due to the general lack of trust.

There are a lot of things you could do. One: Southwest has a program where everyone in the company spends a day or two working with people in other areas of the company. The program is completely voluntary but it allows people to understand and respect what other people do for the company. When they go back to a tense situation between groups, they can now better understand where the other group is coming from and know where to go for the best solution.

If you are dealing with individuals or people outside your company, how do you do this. The most important thing is to be open to learning. Try and learn the basics of what they are doing so you can communicate better from their point of view.

Third option, bring in an impartial mediator. Ideally someone who knows both sides of the equation and can bring the different levels of communication together.

Finally, the most important thing is, next time your in disagreement with another group. Take a step back, try and think from their end. Ask them questions before you make accusations and demands. Everyone will be a lot better off.

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1. Persistence
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3. Contracts: Why They are Important

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/02/08/338060/big-vision-at-small-airfields.html

I may be partial, but this is really exciting stuff, and exactly what we need to see more of!

In 1978, when the airlines were deregulated, it was score one for capitalism. Routes abounded, fares plummeted, and air travel was open to the masses. But for some reason, there are still a lot of problems in the aviation industry. Security is a huge hassle, there are so many extra fees, and it all around is not a pleasant experience (to all but us airline nerds!)

I for one think no extra amount of security will make us safer and we should drop the level down a bit. It’s the law of diminishing returns. I also think that unbundling of the fees is a good idea, you pay for what you use. And Southwest has shown you can make money by not doing it. The market at work.

But for true success in the aviation industry there are two more critical pieces which need to fall into place. The first one is air traffic control. ATC needs to be radically changed. Alfred Khan, the man behind airline deregulation, said that for the full effect to happen, ATC must be deregulated as well. Now, many people have bad ideas of chaos coming from this. But it could actually be done in a very standardized way which would keep everything uniform. If you think about it, we don’t have problems with different groups running ATC around the world. I’ll probably speak more to this later.

And finally, the whole point of this article, is the airports. Airports are primarily government owned. And as this article points out, governments do a poor job running GA airports. But let’s expand this, does this mean that governments do well running large commercial airports? I think the trend of having private companies run airports is a good start, but I think in the long run, airports need to be both owned and operated by private companies.

In 1997, congress passed a pilot program to begin the privatization of airports. Branson has received a lot of press, but it is unfortunately in a very tough market. Chicago Midway was supposed to be the big one that would unleash the floodgates, but the deal fell through last year due to financing drying up. So there are difficulties.

But I think entrepreneurs willing to take on small airports is a great start, there has obviously been success here and hopefully these people will take on bigger projects at bigger airports.

Would love to hear what you think!

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1. Welcome to the Aviation Section!
2. Republic Loses Sean Meanke
3. My New Website and Categories

We first started work on eagle-trade in October of 2008. Sure we made a ton of mistakes but we were learning. At the end of last year, over a year after we began, we were having a bunch of issues straitening out the site redesign. The site was previously hideous and we really needed a new design. While we were working on this new design we brought on a couple guys who would do web programming in house which we were really excited about. We were also discussing expansion strategy and realized that in order to have a scalable website, we would have to start from scratch (you do not want to see the mess of code and files we have). We would also need to re-brand.

At this time the redesign was taking  more time and money than was planned (and we gave a lot of leeway). We hadn’t done much promoting of the site that semester because it was always supposed to be done “next week.” So there was very little traffic (which is even worse for a user generated content site). At this time I wanted to simply shut eagle-trade down and relaunch with the new, re-branded, scalable site when it was done. I argued that our brand was dead and we would be better off with a fresh start. Two of my partners argued that there was still more to learn and we should stick it out. We had a lot of discussion about this, but thankfully two of my partners talked us out of it.

Why do I say thankfully? Because when we had two weeks left of classes and the site was in decent shape. And we decided to move forward with marketing. And something amazing happened. Over the last couple of weeks of the fall semester and the first couple weeks of the spring semester, the site grew tremendously. The brand we had been building for the past year was still in people’s heads, they just needed to be reminded. And not only did they come back, we had the most successful transactions between students we had ever seen.

What does this have to do with persistence? I didn’t give up, I just wanted to jump over to the new thing. But what this shows is that it takes time, but I honestly think that most businesses close because they don’t give it enough time to develop.

I am going to leave you with a story told by Jay Conrad Levinson (the guerrilla marketing guy) at this year’s Entrepreneur Magazine’s Growth 2.0 Conference. The story went a little something like this:

He was called in by a cigarette company to create a marketing campaign. This company was the 31st ranked cigarette maker in the country and had a brand that was perceived as feminine. So he built an brand image around real Texas cowboys. The campaign was a big hit and came off well, but at the end of the year they were still ranked 31st. But the company decided to persist with it. Who is this company, today, one of the largest cigarette companies in the world, Marlboro.

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1. The Importance of Verbal Communication
2. Contracts: Why They are Important
3. Birds of a Feather… Squawk Together

For the longest time I wanted to make a business out of parkour because it combines two of my passions. However, the parkour community is a bit apprehensive to commercialization. I am not against commercialization, but I think there are plenty of people who would take advantage of the parkour community to make a quick buck (WorldWideJam). And I didn’t want to be associated with hose types of people, so I have patiently waited until I had an idea which fit the time for something which would build real value for the parkour community and which I could run profitably.

I know, you thought the idea was here. Well for now the idea will remain under wraps. If you are interested in potentially getting involved with me on this one, send me an e-mail. adam(at)adamkuebler(dot)com

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1. Which parkour technique to learn first?
2. Choose What To Do by the People You Want to be Around
3. David Belle Interview: Perfect

I will be going through and finding everything I do on a daily basis and determine the best way to go forward with it. So it will be from file structure to which applications to use. How much should I move to web apps and how much should stay on my desktop. Should I use aptana studio instead of dreamweaver? Do I want to focus on itunes, pandora, or last.fm for my music.

Most importantly I want to know from yall which applications you find most useful in your daily lives? Any lesser know alternatives to popular services I should consider? Any nifty web apps which replace desktop apps?

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What I want to open a discussion on today is specialty vs. jack-of-all-trades. It seems to be common wisdom that one should focus on what they are good at and what they like doing. Division of labor. And I absolutely agree… 95% of the time.

The 5% of the time isn’t often talked about, so I wanted to bring it up. As an entrepreneur, you don’t have the luxury of hiring a large staff. Unless you are lucky enough to have a rich uncle or connected enough, and have a good enough idea to get VC money, you are likely to be bootstrapping.

And there is nothing wrong with this, bootstrapping teaches you a lot of good lessons and puts your business on a good foundation. My first and current business (eagle-trade) began earning revenue with less than $1,000 invested, and another one I am working on could be earning revenue with less than $100 invested.

When you a bootstrapping an early stage start-up you don’t have the money to hire consultants, salesmen, marketers, financial analysts, clerks, assistants, technicians, engineers, etc. You have to do everything yourself!

Here’s an example. Say you love carpentry. And you see a market for quality handcrafted custom dinette sets. You only have $1000 free in the bank to spend and your credit isn’t good enough for a loan or you just don’t want to risk taking out a loan. So you buy any additional tools you need and build a prototype or two.

You have to go out and find customers, sell them on your product, build it, and make sure they pay for it. After you grow your sales a bit maybe you can hire an apprentice, then maybe a salesmen and so on and so forth. But to get to that point you have to know how to do everything.

Some people might say, well that is what co-founders are for. Sure, co-founders can allow people to specialize more. But depending on what business you are in, you will need at least 4-5 co-founders to cover all the major knowledge areas. While it is doable (eagle-trade has 4 co-founders) the ideal number of co-founders is two. And you could spend all your time trying to find these co-founders when you should be building your business.

Now what if you want to start a business but have a specialization and aren’t a jack-of-all-trades. No problem. There is an endless fountain of knowledge on the internet. In fact, some colleges (such as Harvard) are showing videos of classes for free online. You can learn about whatever you  need to know. It’s all out there.

And the thing is, you don’t need to be an expert, you just have to know enough to get you to the point where your business is earning enough money to hire experts to run various fields and let you take care of whatever is most important to you.

Being specialized in an area can give you a huge advantage and is definitely something to strive for. But when starting a business, you must be a jack-of-all-trades.

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