Nothing Better Than Working On A Startup That Has Something To Do With Music : - )

Here I am helping to build a fresh new startup, and feeling so grateful to Tom Wilson and Sean Weas for choosing me to help them build Kazamster. 

It's this beautiful software startup that lets you bring your playlist with you to any streaming service of your choice.

Okay it's in Beta, so it only has the option to convert Spotify to Google Play Music right now. But hey, 500 users have logged in since the launch just four months ago. It's pretty clear to me that Tom and Sean have built something people want. 

Playlist are so very personal to us users. We build them with mounds of passion, creativity, and love. Of course the streaming service's would like you to stay with them forever, but like any free enterprise system us users have choices. Maybe we want to switch over to another service for whatever reason. It's not like we're saying we don't like the one we're in,we just want to swim in the music waters of another streaming service, and we want to bring our playlist with us. 

I can't say what the streaming services are thinking, but surely they don't want to let users take their playlist with them, it's one of the main things that keeps users locked into their service. I don't blame them one bit, it's business. Keeping customers is doing good business. Yet, disruption was bound to happen. 

For me, besides all the cool things I'm learning and doing to help Kazamster, I'm listening to a ton of music! This is so good for me, as sometimes, as an adult, I get caught up into all work, and forget how to have fun. 

From what I've been reading I can say the Playlist is going to have a giant impact on all of our futures. It's going to turn into something amazing, and you and I are apart of that. In fact you've been creating it. You've been helping to shape it. 

Update: As of 10/18/16 This startup is running itself. It's still up, but Tom and Sean have joined a marijuana startup called GrowFlow, which looks intensely exciting to me. I don't know what to do. I can't run Kazamster by myself. I looked into buying it, but still that would leave me alone searching for a developer. I'm working on learning code and Salesforce. Two things I can do for free and on my own time. 

Keep building your startups ~ 

  

#Slack:How You Show Up For Work

I was surprised to see a major television advertisement for a product I had used just two years ago.  As far as I knew, Slack was an unheard of internet tool to help people collaborate on a business idea. I had no idea it WAS the new way we run a company. Or more to the point, the new way we show up for work.

Yes, I used Slack very briefly. I didn't know how to use Slack, yet I knew it was a tool to help people build companies.

It was one of my startups DigiThin. I dabbled in Slack a bit with one other person. That startup ended and I never thought about it again until I was asked to join the startup Kazamster! Immediately they linked me to Slack. It was different then what I had seen previously. I was sort of scared of it. I didn't want to screw up any work Tom and Sean had done. I wanted to be accepted to the team. Therefore I was hesitant to post, share, click, or generally use Slack. 

I got over myself. It doesn't matter if I screw up using Slack. This is the new way the workforce communicates. I'm learning a ton with this new business model. It's extremly weird cause you don't get to walk past the people you work with in some art filled hallway and make a traditional comment, like "Hey, how is your summer going?" instead you look at your feed from Slack and wonder. 

• I wonder if they like my work ?
• I wonder if what I'm doing is making an impact for the company?
• I wonder if they think I'm crazy?
• I wonder how many people work from home?
• I wonder if they realize how much work I'm doing?
• I wonder if they realize how valuable I am?
• I wonder why they don't answer my questions?
• I wonder what they are working on?
• I wonder if I will run a company with Slack?
• I wonder why my brain ticks and quivers with excitement!
• I wonder how Slack became so big they could put an ad on T.V.?
• I wonder if Slack is how 90% of the workforce will show up for work?

Startups: Like Straw Bale Gardens

I planted my first ever straw bale garden. I did it a bit late so I might not get a good crop. The first thing I had to do was get the bales. Then for two weeks you have to condition the bales. This is a process of putting high nitrate fertilizer on top of them, and watering the bales each day. The bales weigh around 70 pounds dry and 150 when soaked. 

After about two weeks the bales start heating up, supposedly to around 130 degrees or more! In fact they can ignite spontaneously! So be careful. Then you have to put on less fertilizer and keep watering. What's happening, is the straw is starting to break down. It's becoming compost.

The reason I decided to grow a straw bale garden is upon reading an article about it, a few key factors stood out to me. 

• The crop should grow twice as big as when in soil.
• Very few weeds to weed out.
• You can almost never over water.
• The bails hold water so you can skip a few days and not kill the plants from dehydration.
• You can put the garden almost anywhere: on cement, on a deck, on rock, it doesn't have to be on dirt. 

Okay, I'm sold. I want a garden twice as big with hardly any weeds! So far my garden is tiny. The growth has been small. But I did plant it the 1st week of June, and most of the seeds I started. 

When I walk the dog in the neighborhood I'm surprised to find that, many gardens are giant. Three times the size of my growth. I guess if straw bale gardens are like startups, I'm right on the mark. All the neighbor gardens are big companies that started small. They have had time to mature. I'm just at the beginning, just like the startup I'm in now, Kazamster. I just joined at the beginning of June, and they launched April 1st 2016. 

So far it seems to be growing like my garden, a tiny bit each day that you can hardly notice. Tom tells us that Kazamster is getting an average of 5 new sign ups a day. Wait! That's noticeable! That's huge to me! We have hardly done any marketing. I'm myself have been getting up to speed as to where they are when I joined, re-reading the Traction book, and developing the traction plan.  

There must have been some startup fertilizer sprinkled on Kazamster. Sprouts are coming up! It's so beautiful to see a startup growing. Just like my straw bale garden, it makes me happy.

I'm hoping my giant pumpkin will take off and grow a grand champion, and that Kazamster will too!

 Enjoy your gardens ~ and keep building your startups!

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