I’m chronicling the stories of determined entrepreneurs, innovative leaders, unique path creators, and friends. Last month was Rishi Shah and this month is James Tamplin, CEO and Co-Founder of Firebase.

I met James Tamplin when he was a student at the University of Wisconsin. I remember first meeting him through a mutual friend. He became one of our BrainReactions professional brainstormers. He had a British accent, a larger-than-life personality, and he improved the quality and quantity of his ideas at our brainstorming sessions for Fortune 500 companies by leaps and bounds. Based on the data we collected about his ideas, I think he may have actually improved by as much as 300%, which is remarkable.

James has great entrepreneurial passion. He started traveling the world to places like Australia and South East Asia after graduation from UW, and through an organic farming program, ended up in New Zealand. When he returned to the US, he partnered up with Andrew Lee, a friend of his from high school, to dive deep into the tech entrepreneurship world. Their first company was called Keep Security, which made a fingerprint sensor that plugged into your phone and acted as additional security when making credit card payments. Keep Security folded, and he then moved on to SendMeHome.com (later acquired by TrackItBack). During the time they were working on SendMeHome, I visited them in Santa Barbara and saw the life that James was leading.

What I saw firsthand was the moment that all great entrepreneurship stories have: the low moment. That moment where you are out of money. James had cashed in his Roth IRA to fund this endeavor, but they needed more money, so they started selling physical possessions like their additional computers. You learn a lot crashing on someone’s couch. When I was sleeping on his couch I witnessed James and Andrew working around the clock. James was sleeping on a beanbag on the floor of Andrew’s bedroom. He talked his way into a job teaching gymnastics to high schoolers – though he knew nothing about gymnastics.  When they needed even more money, James started eating a diet of cereal. I remember how appreciative he was when I treated him to In-N-Out burger!

Then, something exciting happened: PC World named their SendMeHome App as one of the top 100 products of 2009! I remember seeing it listed on the same page as Google Books, the Sony Playstation 3, and DropBox. This is exciting. This was downright inspirational. A couple of guys who I saw working out of a small room, sleeping on a beanbag and eating nothing but cereal can have an award winning product next mega corporations like Sony and Google. What a world! But these Santa Barbara moments wouldn’t be the lowest or highest by a long stretch. They soon sold their SendMeHome company and were ready for the next adventure, the real highs and lows, and the real parts of the story worth telling.

Like many tech entrepreneurs, James and Andrew made their way to San Francisco. They were staying with relatives to begin with, creating something new again. This time, it was called Envolve, a very interesting app that allowed visitors on a website to chat with each other. You can see it in action at the bottom of Universal Records artists’ websites like Ricky Martin. This little chat widget even translated for users who were speaking in different languages.  I was impressed with this particular innovation.

As with their previous project, this innovation story had its highs and lows.  James and Andrew went to Haiti to do a service project. James had gone before and told me stories of the work they did there. It was always eventful but nothing like what they would encounter in January of 2010. The time they were in Haiti was also the time of the earthquake. James told Andrew to come up to the roof of the hotel and watch the sunset.  Five minutes later, the earthquake hit. James leaped out of his building into a tree when he saw it happening. They were unharmed, and they continued to be of service in Haiti, doing things I could not imagine – finding people to see if they were alive, and if not, helping with body bags. There were stories ranging from leaving the Embassy to go to the streets to help people, sometimes serving as amateur doctors. It was something. (Read James’ first-hand account of the Haitian earthquake in this note on Facebook.)

Later, James and Andrew were flown out of Haiti by a US Air Force cargo plane and headed back to San Francisco where they continued to work on Envolve.  They finally launched it to the world in July of 2010. As luck would have it, later that month someone threw a can of gas into the car they were sharing. Their garage and part of their house burned down. James was taken to the hospital with smoke inhalation. They were still operating on a shoestring so this – especially the hospital bill – was devastating. At this point I was staying in San Francisco for the winter so I could see with my own eyes how difficult a time period it was for James. But I also saw that he was as keenly focused as ever upon what he was passionate about and what his strengths were. I knew they would have success with Envolve. He and Andrew were too talented and most importantly, too determined.

Shortly after the fire, they moved up from Menlo Park and into San Fransisco and started anew, building on the determined success they had. They got a proper office in an amazing building next to Mashable with views of the Bay Bridge and AT&T ballpark. I saw this my next visit to San Francisco the next year. Each time I visited in the winter they had taken significant steps in making their company substantial. On my most recent visit, they added a team of developers and were gaining hundreds of thousands of users at a rapid pace. They were then accepted to the prestigious Y-Combinator program in San Francisco and had the chance to share Envolve with people like Ashton Kutcher and learn from Al Gore and Mark Zuckerberg.

From Fire To Firebase: They continue their growth and patterns of innovation. They just launched Firebase, which I’ve recently read about in Wired and Forbes and has been described as the “Dropbox for apps.” Read about this innovation because it has been gaining great momentum since their launch party and San Francisco developers are jumping on board, and in our technology-centric world, this is one group that you want to be on board.

James is creating his own path in his life. All paths that are worth journeying have both high and low moments. Looking back at the path is the way to understand. I have been always interested in observing how James is journeying. In the winter of 2009 I saw him building a company while in Santa Barbara sleeping on a beanbag, eating cereal, operating from a small room. In the winter of 2010 I saw him building a new company while recovering from the Haiti earthquake and about to encounter a fire. In the winter of 2011 I saw a boom and their office in SOMA San Francisco. In the winter of 2012 I saw James and his team about to launch Firebase and with a team of expert developers. It is helpful to check in each year at a certain point to assess your friend’s journey and remind them of how far they have come.

Innovate and grow your leadership program by rooting down, branching out, and then flipping it.

Biomimicry is an innovation technique that allows us to address our challenges by learning from nature. As a leadership developer, you want your participants and your program to grow.  The oak tree is a metaphor for sustaining growth: one acorn can produce an entire forest of mighty oak trees over time. These oaks keep producing more acorns, the forest grows, and the environment is impacted for the better. In developing and growing our leadership programs, we need to root down and branch out, much like the oak tree does.

Root Down:  If you were to peek into a high quality leadership program, you might observe what I found in my research of high impact leadership programs – the foundational roots of what makes a leadership program matter most for learning and development:

I. Participants Engaged in Building and Sustaining a Learning Community
II. Student-Centered Experiential Learning Experiences
III. Research Grounded Continuous Program Development

Hopefully – and more simply – you would see participants developing something together, engaging with each other, and connecting purposefully in pairs or small groups. Pedagogies like these are strengths of many leadership programs. Other fields and disciplines can learn from this as they attempt to make their content more “hands-on” and personal for participants.  Leadership programs are exceptional at group based, experiential, interactive and collaborative methods of learning.

It has been difficult, however, to shake lecture and reading. Many times a program or course needs to have some of this. Hopefully the key word is “some,” as there are more engaging activities that could make up the bulk of the program. The most current opportunity for innovation now is to:

• leverage what we know about what works for leadership learning and development inside classrooms and formal program meeting times, and

• leverage what we can do with technology, multimedia, the web and social media to create better leadership learning experiences outside of the classroom or meetings.

We want to continue to root down in our highly experiential, interactive, group based methods, but branch out into experimenting with methods that may improve the experience or investment.

Branch Out:  We can now take our lectures and reading to higher engagement levels by creating videos that deliver this kind of content. The videos provide an opportunity to be more engaging than simply listening to a lecture or reading text. A video can integrate the audio with the visual to activate the brain in more connected ways, showing models and metaphors visually. You can then host your video on YouTube – or a number of other sites – and embed on a blog.  This allows you to share it on social media platforms and receive direct feedback and questions.  Modern technology allows us to create new programs at a much higher quality level and cost effectiveness than we could have done just one year ago.

The Trunk:  The trunk connects the roots to the branches, just like new innovations you experiment with in your program are connected to and supported by the best practices of leadership development. For instance, if you are building upon a “Flip the Classroom” style program with a component of the program that requires participants to view videos, why not design the videos with best practices in mind?  In the programs we’ve built for the University of Wisconsin & Dartmouth, we have socially designed so that groups can view the videos together. These videos are reflective or strategic activity based, so it provides an opportunity to share what you are constructing, gaining feedback and iterating upon it.

People can also be paired up to do videos and activities together. This structure can make a big difference by building mentoring and coaching relationships into the program. The videos are a more engaging way to provide content, guiding people through reflection activities. This design can be even more effective if the social element is added where students are working on the video activities in small groups or one-on-one. Even if it is just one student viewing the video on their own time, a content design focusing on guiding step-by-step activities that the student can do can still be personal and internalized if it is a guided reflection where they are making meaning.

The Time Is Now for Growth:  I have been waiting for an opportunity like this in the leadership development field for years. I feel the time is finally ripe to root down in live interactive, experiential and group-based learning experiences when participants are together in the formal meeting, but to complement that with visual, reflective and strategic activity focused video or online workshop modules.  The moment for innovation is now due to the quality of technology, low cost, and speed of implementation.

Like the oak tree, our programs should always be growing by rooting down and branching out. My new book – based on research of high quality leadership programs – shares 16 root-attributes, 40 branch-actions, and 34 acorn-outcomes that I always begin with in designing a new leadership program or innovating an existing one.  In closing, I ask you, “What are your roots?  What are your branches?  What can you do to root down and branch out to grow?“

Have you heard of the “Flipping the Classroom” trend, made popular in education by Khan Academy? Are you interested in learning more about the implications of this innovative program development and teaching model, and how it might apply to your college or university? This workshop is debuting at Dartmouth and Darin can bring it to your campus or organization.

In this workshop program, participants will investigate tools and interactive techniques to foster experiential group activities during meeting times and utilize digital media (video, examples and demonstrations) to deliver content as a part of learning focused programs. Participants will additionally learn about this model in action in higher education for students at Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center. The “Create your Path” personal leadership & innovation program integrates engaging digital content to guide reflection exercises, while utilizing the precious classroom time for students to interactively learn from each other. You will also learn about this approach for faculty and staff at a University of Wisconsin Innovation Initiative.

One of these people is Rishi Shah, a founder of Digioh, FlyingCart, and a popular blog called GettingMoreAwesome. I’ve known Rishi for years since we shared a tiny office in Madison. We even took a roadtrip from Wisconsin to San Francisco together when he moved out there and I get the opportunity to check in on him each year. Each visit I see growth, there are new products, new team members, new results, and new innovations. Rishi is new school and old school. He develops web apps and subscribes to the Lean Startup philosophy but has a whiteboard in his office with “Call Customers” written on it.

I got to spend a week on Rishi’s couch. If you really want to learn about and from someone…you’ve got to crash on their couch. When we roadtripped out to San Francisco 2 years ago it was just Rishi leaving the Midwest, taking a risk on moving to San Francisco. When I visited last year, Rishi had convinced his lead developer, Robert to move out to San Francisco. I remember they had taken a tour at Google and were blown away. They came back from that visit inspired and with smoothies. The thing they kept talking about was how amazing it was that they had Odwalla smoothies there for employees.

This recent visit Rishi added a new developer, Ben, to the team. Now there were three Wisconsin guys in San Francisco merging the Wisconsin work ethic with San Francisco innovation. They were also operating leanly…sharing a co-working space, working around the clock, sharing meals together, having a lot of fun, and getting absolutely incredible amounts of productive work done. But remember, you learn the most crashing on the couch. Each morning at Rishi’s place I was awakened to a very loud blender. Each morning Rishi wakes up early and makes a 30 ingredient smoothie for his team of 3. He blends fruits, vegetables, and grains with vitamins. He puts the smoothies in a to-go container and brings them to the office. His team starts the day with energy, nutrition, and something to look forward to. Rishi (knowingly or unknowingly) brought one of the best ideas his team saw firsthand at Google to his scale in his co-working office space. He brought in the smoothies. But, Rishi didn’t buy the expensive pre-packaged smoothies. He is operating lean and effectively. He made more nutritious, tastier, and less expensive smoothies each morning…homemade. He also made one for me each day and they were amazing. Maybe he will pivot and get into the smoothie business.

The innovation lesson I learned is that you can start right now. Rishi is working towards building a significant organization like Google. He doesn’t have a campus with thousands of employees. He has an office of 3 people in a co-working space. He found a way to bring one of the most inspiring ideas from Google to his company at a scale and in a way that works best. This single act of making smoothies in the morning shows a lot about Rishi’s character. He really cares about his team and having a positive organizational culture. He literally does it first thing in the morning.

I was inspired by Rishi and how he was leading his organization in a lean and innovative way. From crashing on his couch I saw that he was living sturdily and Spartan-like. He was living simply to invest in his team and product development. Rishi also blends not only new school smoothies but also old school philosophy into his business by focusing on the customer. I saw him do each day what was written on the whiteboard…call customers. Many organizations won’t even respond to customers emails…but Rishi reaches out and calls them first! This is why his team’s FlyingCart and Digioh products are growing and doing exactly what their customers want…because he knows! He’s talked to them himself…and he’d probably make them a smoothie if they crashed on his couch.

I thought about this as I returned from a week in Peru and am about to journey on a 15 day adventure to Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco. This trip is costing me very little since I’m using Frequent Flier miles at the lowest rate and staying with friends the whole time. My friends are also really innovative so I learn from them…it’s like a professional development experience. As a bonus I get to escape the Wisconsin winter for a bit too. When I travel I’ll be doing interesting meetings, events, sharing ideas and strategies with friends, as well as writing and designing new programs from coffee shops. This trip for me is a signal, example, and validator that I get to work how I want, when I want, where I want, and on what I want. It is valuable. What did you check on checklist? What couldn’t you? If this is important for you, is there one aspect of the checklist you can work on? Start check-by-check with actionable ideas.

I applaud people wanting to do something new. What doesn’t work is adding something new on top of everything else. You do everything with less quality. A point has to come where you hit the Escape button on what is working the least well or is the least needed to be able to make room for something new. You need to make time to think up what that something new could be and to give it a fair shake. You can’t do it if you are operating so many things at once that you can’t give proper focus or quality devotion to any one thing. Perhaps this could be the year of Escape for you. You back out of or even cut 3 things that are not needed as much now as they were before. You use this new space to develop something new that is even more relevant.

Commit yourself to hitting escape on 3 things this year. It is a liberating experience to gain those hours and resources back. It is motivating to develop something better and new for the future with those reclaimed resources and hours. Make a list right now…what 3 things could you cut? What 1 new thing could you add in if you freed up the time to think it, develop it, and launch it well?

Now we have an opportunity to turn our observations into quantitative data. What is the quantitative or numerical measure associated with this challenge. It is time, specifically measured in minutes. I decided to keep track of the order that I did things in the morning and how many minutes each took. This was in order to arrive on time for an 8:15am meeting.
1. Wake up (usually woke up right away but did a 10 minute snooze sometimes). 7:00
2. Brew coffee 7:00-7:20 (20 minutes before it was ready)
3. Check all of my various email accounts while the coffee was brewing. 7:05-7:25
4. Bathe 7:25-7:45
5. Groom 7:45-7:55
6. Get Dressed and prepared to leave 7:55-8:00
7. Leave for meeting 8:00
The problem was that by the time it came to get dressed I was rushing and wasn’t happy about that. I only had five minutes to get dressed, gather everything up, and head out the door. This needed to change. I was waking up early enough…I had always been able to get ready in one hour…so something was different now. I needed to get to the bottom of it.
I reviewed my time list above and I saw two items that I was spending a lot of time on that I judged to be too much. I didn’t have a problem with 35 minutes for bathing, grooming, dressing, and preparing to leave. I did have a problem with what happened right after I got out of bed…the coffee and checking of email. When I focus on that part of the morning routine I notice the email checking happens because of the coffee brewing time. I have to wait for the coffee so I go online and sometimes linger there even after the coffee is ready. So that problem would go away if the coffee problem could go away. One problem causes another. So, I will next zero in on the problem that matters most…coffee taking 20 minutes to brew:

You now have to ask what is the problem with the problem.
Why was coffee taking 20 minutes to brew?
1. The coffee machine is small and old. It drips really slowly.

What are potential solutions?
1. Get a new coffee machine. This seems like a waste since the coffee machine works fine.
2. Brew the coffee and then bathe. Not a good solution because I want the energizing effects of the coffee early. Plus it is a nice reward when waking.
3. Clean the coffee machine with vinegar so that it is less clogged and brews faster. Great idea!
4. Delay brew the coffee so that I hear it 20 minutes before I wake up and it is ready the moment I step out of bed! Great idea! This will help me wake up more energized. The delay brew has two great benefits.

I implemented the innovation. It was simple. I loaded the coffee machine up at night and programmed it to start brewing at 6:40am. I decided to give it a difficult test the other day. I had the 8:15am meeting the first day after I arrived back from a trip to Chile and Argentina. It was a long flight and I hadn’t slept much so I knew waking up would be really difficult that day. I heard the coffee machine kick in at 6:40. I was up before the alarm. I enjoyed that first sip of coffee at 7am and started getting ready. I was ready early and had time to check emails before I headed out the door at 7:55. People were surprised to find me at the meeting early after my long trip and even commented about it. We talked about using data to innovate and I shared the story. The innovation worked!

All of this started from a challenge or problem…I’m rushing in the morning.
The solution was rather simple. What was needed though was the quantitative data to help me “get it.” Many times we cannot see what is most obvious. I couldn’t see that coffee was taking 20 minutes to brew or that I even had a delay brew function on my coffee machine.

An IBM executive gave advice to graduates. He said to develop the skill of figuring out how to do something with data. This can be finding it, gathering it, organizing it, generating it, analyzing it, interpreting it, making meaning of it, communicating it, and innovating from it. I bet he means quantitative data (numbers). I enjoy taking qualitative data (observations, what people say, etc.) and turning it into quantitative data so that you can more easily do something with it. Innovation can be more successful if it is grounded in data. This was an example of how to take stuff and turn it into data and an innovation.

What is a challenge you are having in your life? Is there a way to observe and assess it and turn it into data that is quantitative…like time, dollars, a 1-10 rating, etc? Doing this will help you compare in relation to other things and see what the problem is so that you can focus in on it and develop innovative solutions that may be simple once you have awareness.

For many of us we just hit the repeat button in our work. It seems safe, easy and effortless but too much repeat with the wrong things leads to rapid decline. You’ve seen a lot of examples of businesses that have gone out of business because they didn’t change, they just repeated. For many of us, we do the same things year after year. We run the same program again, the same event, use the same strategy or system. It becomes less engaging, less challenging, less rewarding, and the returns and results diminish. Before we know it what we are doing becomes obsolete because someone else stopped hitting the repeat button and what we offer is no longer needed.

In thinking about this Repeat button metaphor, let’s use the example of people that create products that deliver our music to us. They didn’t repeat how it is delivered. They produced an Ipod, or Grooveshark instead of the same CD player again. Lucky for us though, they still kept the Repeat button in the new devices and software because it is good to listen to the same song a few times in a row now and then. The music deliverers repeated that Repeat button feature/benefit but did not repeat the way the music is delivered…that is now different and better. It saves money and is far more effective to have digital music files on your computer or IPod instead of a stack of cassettes. Some things are worth repeating (like the Repeat button with music players), others aren’t (like producing cassette players). This year check yourself before you wreck yourself. Are you hitting repeat again or doing something better and new that saves time and money? What are you hitting repeat on that you should reconsider?

According to the AMA Report, “Proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic has traditionally been the entry-level threshold to the job market, but the new workplace requires more from its employees. Employees need to think critically, solve problems, innovate, collaborate, and communicate more effectively and at every level within an organization. According to the AMA 2010 Critical Skills Survey, many executives admit there is room for improvement among their employees in these skills and competencies.”

NEED to do something about this and advance your culture to one of more innovation and collaboration? Learn from my experience conducting innovation projects for over 10 Fortune 500 companies and teaching innovation skills to universities like Dartmouth and Wisconsin. Let me guide your group through engaging, simple, and best practice activities so that you can learn and practice these 4C skills at higher levels to save time and generate better results.

I can customize one of my trademark programs to your organization and launch it as early as this month. I’d recommend starting with the 3Cs of Innovation workshop where I facilitate your staff through their own innovation challenge where they continuously are COLLABORATING, CREATING, and COMMUNICATING. Your group generates and develops needed ideas and catalyzes development of critical skills. I even have a 10 module video program complete with collaborative activities that groups can do on an ongoing basis to keep the collaborative innovation action sustained.

Visit DarinEich.com/workshops to see more and start the conversation. The innovation opportunity bus is leaving…get on now!