My wife Lara and I are volunteers and board members of Positive Tomorrows, a non-profit private school that provides a free education and support for homeless children and their families. It’s hard to imagine, but the children who come through the school doors each morning are truly homeless–living in shelters, sleeping on the couches or floors of relatives, or sleeping in parked cars. The school is a sanctuary for one of the most at-risk and defenseless groups in our society.

The school provides a nurturing and supportive environment to build academic and social skills, not to mention self-confidence and HOPE, for children that would otherwise spend their days in a shelter, fall through the cracks in the public school system, and potentially repeat the cycle of poverty that they are unfortunately a part of.

I’m reaching out to friends in Oklahoma, back home in Texas, and all over the U.S. to ask for your support. We have a major fundraising event this month called Cork and Canvas, and every dollar from every ticket we sell goes directly to the school. If you’re in Oklahoma, please consider attending this event. I’ve attached a link with details below. If you’re not in Oklahoma, or you can’t attend, please consider making a donation to the school anyway. And if you have friends who might be interested in attending or donating, please forward the links to them, too. We’re a small school with a very modest budget and ANY amount makes a difference. It’s amazing, the kind of strides that the school’s teachers and staff can make with the kids on such a tiny operating budget. With more money, we could do so much more.

The links below provide plenty of details, but don’t hesitate to get in touch with me if you have other questions. I hope to see you at Cork and Canvas. Let’s make a difference together.

Please sign up or donate online

Ok, I get it. Well, sort of. There’s a blog article from OnStartups – 10 things that you won’t learn about business from MBA School. It’s easy to climb onto the “bash MBA” bandwagon. There are plenty of people that boast their MBA pedigree or continuously look for opportunities to reference their pumped-up mental muscles. Sure, it’s annoying behavior, but MBA’s didn’t corner the market on continuously self-referencing their status, and some of the criticism is unfairly directed at the degree instead of the personality behind the behavior.

I’m in agreement with the author that there’s nothing better than working in the trenches to earn your stripes and scars and to give you practical, useful insight about running and owning a business; however, that is true for lots of professions that require advanced education or licensure: lawyers, architects, doctors, etc… There is no perfect training for being an entrepreneur and for that matter, being a leader.

What’s driving the anti-MBA backlash?

1. MBA programs are money-makers for many universities. Rent an executive suite and presto, you’ve got an MBA program. An MBA program lacks some of the academic rigors that accompany other advanced degrees. Nope, that doesn’t mean that it’s easy – but there are comparatively different standards between getting a typical masters or PhD – proposing research, thesis, etc… and being subject to a committee of advisers and evaluators to whom you must demonstrate your individual excellence before advancing.
2. Like lawyers, there are just too many. And when you have too much of anything, even a really good thing – you’re going to start finding some bad apples in the mix.
3. This is a problem with the university system in general, but there is such a thing as being too convenient. The rigor of the experience can become watered down by versions of MBA programs that are expedited or expanded at such a pace that the product suffers.
4. There are people that just aren’t a good fit for the degree and they finish. See 2 and 3.
5. Enron – If you’ve seen the wonderful documentary, The Smartest Guys in the Room, you can’t help but think that there’s a little bit of Jeff Skilling in every MBA.

What’s an MBA all about, anyway?

1. An MBA is a generalist degree with a broad introduction to understanding the underlying dynamics between finance, marketing, and operations. Every part of your business falls into one of those broad categories — and an MBA prepares you with the knowledge to manage those different elements, but not be an expert in any one.
2. Most MBA programs are practical, rather than theoretical. They build on not only your previous education, but your experience. There are more seasoned, professional business leaders on the faculty, rather than academics. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking academics – I’m married to one.  But an MBA program is meant to be a practical program, geared around understanding and creating solutions for real-world business problems.
3. An MBA is best suited for someone that has 3-5 years of working experience at a management level.
4. One of my professors said it best: “When you leave here, you need to understand how to read a financial statement, effectively present your ideas, and manage a project.” If you can do that, and work on developing your skills as a leader – you’ve got a pretty good chance of being successful in whatever you do.

So, what’s the “profile” of successful entrepreneurs?

1. They are great risk-takers.
2. They excel at creating and working through their organization.
3. They make decisions without complete information, without looking back and sometimes…even without an algorithm.
4. They treat their businesses as assets that enable other comforts in their lives — without letting the businesses become a job. They have a vision for someday exiting the business and enjoying the financial rewards, rather than the psychological rewards and status of a particular job.
5. They are great at creating a currency of relationships. I got that one from Tim Ferris.

What entrepreneurs could learn from an MBA program:

1. The ability to uncover and understand the most important trends that drive cash-flow
2. Developing a systematic approach and the ability to prioritize and mange projects through completion
3. The ability to know when to bring in an expert – to recognize when the task at hand is beyond your personal capabilities
4. Executive writing skills – if you can sum up a problem or course of action in a succinct way that 80% of your audience will understand – you’ll get more people on board
5. The ability to write a business plan and use it as a living document… a roadmap to guide your professional aspirations and those around you.

An early ultrasound says there’s a 75% chance that we’re having another girl in March and baby naming is a subject of much discussion around the WyRobot household. Middle names are much easier for us, but first names are a bit more challenging. We like unisex names, southern names, names of strong women characters and admittedly pop culture names that we grew up with or at least I grew up with.

For full disclosure, these are the first names that I really love, but we just couldn’t find enough common ground to move forward with:

Samantha: I always wanted to call my daughter, “Sam” like the character in Sixteen Candles
Ripley: Like Sigourney Weaver’s character in Alien
Juliet

First Names

Natalie
Penny
Violet:
Finley
Riley
Dylan
Kara: Like Kara Thrace from BSG
Shelby
Julia
Ellie: Jodie Foster’s character in contact

Middle Names

Harper: Like Harper Lee
Dylan: Like Bob and Thomas
Parker: Like Posey or Peter

You won’t change our mind, but we love the discussion so opinions are welcome.

I’m desperately trying to NOT comment on topical news issues, but I couldn’t help a few thoughts about Walter Cronkite’s passing today. I’m sad that such a respected voice of trust is now gone and I’m left to consider what that means for us, the rest of us. We’ve become such a stratified and segmented society. What I mean by that is that we all choose sides and make choices to align ourselves with products and pop culture that reinforces what we perceive as our core values – our brand. We’re all defined by the information that we associate with. This is branding – a process of defining ourselves by our associations for the purpose of creating  a perceived perception of who we are. I don’t mean to pick on Fox, but for the most part, it’s more propaganda than news. When you get your news from Fox, you’re making a statement about yourself as much as you are trying to narrow the types of information that influence your perspective. This isn’t a left/right thing – you know what I’m talking about. We seek out information that confirms our assumptions rather than seek the truth. We don’t want our ideas and convictions to be challenged, we want to be validated.

WC represented the trusted voice of America – a voice that I’m sad seems to be absent in our everyday experience. There are still great journalists, but is there a market for them? You have to take all of this in context. The reason that Walter Cronkite was so successful was in-part, a result of his convictions; however, CBS gave him the stage to be as objective as possible.

In summary, we’re experiencing a period of such significant change, that I can’t imagine what information will be available to my daughter when she wants it. I don’t know where she will find a Walter Cronkite in this world and I don’t know how any of us find the perspective to trust anyone, anymore.

I just received my anticipated invite to Google Voice and now I have a dilemma – GV or Youmail, which I’ve been using for over a year.

What I love about Youmail

1. Different outgoing voice mail for different contact groups or even individuals
2. Example: My wife gets Darth Vader, clients hear something less Darth.
3. Visual voicemail application for Blackberry
4. Listen to voicemail online
5. Voicemail transcription – haven’t tested it yet (not automated)
6. Block unwanted callers

What I might love about Google Voice

1. Automated transcription
2. 1-Phone number for all phones
3. It’s free and it’s google technology
4. You can conference people into your conversation (up to 4)
5. You can listen in to voice mail as it’s being recorded)
6. Set your calls to do-not-disturb
7. Listen to voicemail online – email inbox

Do you have a review?

Now that I have 23 months under my belt, I’m obviously an expert on parenting. Ok, maybe not, but I am grateful for having such a happy daughter and although I can’t take full credit, we’re doing some things right. Other than being one myself, I don’t have a lot of experience with fatherhood so I wasn’t sure what the right roadmap was for me. None of this is suggests this is the right approach for every father, it’s just the roadmap that I ended up writing for myself along the way.

1. Never raise your voice in front of your child
2. Never let your child cry more than 30 s econds without comforting her.
3. Ask questions and listen, even if you don’t understand what she’s saying.
4. Go to the library together and read every day
5. Write her letters for her to open up when she’s older.
6. Remember, she will measure all other men against you.
7. Sing and dance no matter how atonal or uncoordinated
8. Make tents and conjure all of your imaginary forces
9. Teach her about animals, how to respect them.
10. Practice with stuffed animals
11. Be the bath time parent
12. Take pictures together and talk about themwith her
13. Listen to good music with her, not just kid music.
14. Remember, she will repeat the things that you say.
15. Be affectionate to others in front of her.
16. Let her create her play, her own way
17. Help her see how her actions impact other people.
18. Remember, Santa is scary at 12 months old
19. Don’t worry what other parents think about you.
20. Measure your success by your child’s trust and happiness.
21. Surround yourself with parents that share your values.
22. Model compassion, create structure – don’t worry about discipline
23. Let her be messy – just about everything can be sprayed off in the bath
24. Be playful, learn about who she is through laughter
25. Take her outside, teach her about the moon, let her pick the flowers

This was the view over our house last night about 10:30 PM.

How many times have you sent an email with an embarrassing typo, forgot to include someone on the message or just plain said something that you wish you could take back? Once you click send, you’re committed. Take the bullet out of the chamber (not sure why this never occurred to me) by adding your “to” addresses LAST. That’s right, even though the first field you fill out is the TO email field – skip it for the moment. Write your email. Read it, then read it again. Then fill out the to address.

Revised email order:

1. Write body of email
2. Spell-Check
3. Read it
4. Read it again
5. Write the subject
6. Fill out the “to” fields
7. Sometimes read it one more time
8. Send

Just completed a massive scrub of all of my social networks – deleting every connection that I had little reason to connect with. Where there is obligation, there is also risk – at least opportunity risk. When your network of friends gets too big, you risk not investing enough in the ones that matter most. Less is often a good thing.