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On Business On Leadership

What do cocoa beans and leadership have in common?

Cocoa Beans
photo from http://whiteplate.blogspot.ca/

I have a colleague who is passionate about chocolate. But not just passionate about consuming it, but radically passionate about where he is consuming it from. I discovered this passion one day after giving him a Mars bar. For the next two days the bar sat unopened on his desk until he could determine without a shadow of a doubt that the cocoa beans were not purchased from plantations that involved child slavery. He could not, and the chocolate was politely returned to me. An interesting conversation followed about the horrific world of child-slavery and African cocoa beans.

The thought that our everyday choices could be impacting the world around us is unnerving. As a business owner I am out there creating products, in my case it is web products, whereas you might be creating products in an entirely different space. And from my perspective the thought that is even more unnerving is that we are relying on consumers to make the ethical decisions. Are we creating a product that is ethical? Or are we making a product that makes it really easy to be unethical? Like the tasty chocolate bars fuelling child slavery. (Not all chocolate bars are made from plantations using child-slavery and Mars Bar may not use child-slavery either).

Some people don’t care about this. I’ve heard the following statement just a couple weeks ago, “First make money, then care about making the world a better place.” I wrote another post on the 10 traits of a leader, which is a summary of a talk given by Dave Olson. One of the points is that you can look around a room and see the leaders by observing where the buck stops. Who is taking responsibility for the problems and doing something about them. That is the leader. When we create products we often avoid the awkward questions and pass the responsibility onto either the consumer or the factory managers? We have the ability to empower people to make good decisions by giving them good products. However, if we aren’t taking responsibility for our product lines then we aren’t being leaders.

With the web we have a huge opportunity to use technology to empower the individual to shape one’s own self. Let’s give people more of the good choices. Let’s be leaders.

Categories
On Companies On Leadership

You can’t buy authenticity

Club Penguin Founders
Photo by darrenhullstudios.com

Last night was awesome. I got to sit and listen to three guys talk about their journey starting a business and keeping their values in tact. I learned how they made really important, life-altering decisions. Like how Lance, as the original animator of the game, came to the major conclusion to make all the characters in the game penguins. His reasoning? “It was easier to animate a wobble than a walk.” In all seriousness, these three guys Dave, Lance and Lane built a really cool game, Club Penguin, and a really amazing business while keeping their values in tact. I am writing this blog post as much to share their unique story with you, as for myself, just to unravel what I heard with the kinds of questions I face every day.

I want to be part of a business that holds its values highly, doesn’t care about what “normal business” is, and creates a culture where everyone is free to become better. Sitting, listening, to these guys, reminded me just how much I want that. I’m sorry, but I don’t think money is the only goal. I think making money must come secondary to humanity. Every time. These guys really knew their values, and when big decisions came they didn’t have to run numbers and sacrifice their values. They let their values decide.

How many of you have heard the phrase “business is business”. I have, sometimes it feels like I am hearing it weekly. In my opinion it’s a copout. And after hearing these three talk, I really believe it is. It is saying that we don’t need to be accountable for how we are treating people because making more money is the highest priority. It’s sad, but that disease of thinking seems to have penetrated our business culture so deeply.

The founders of Club Penguin, Lance, Lane and Dave, told a very different narrative. They spoke of how they built a company with a culture that cared about each other. It didn’t calculate shares based on numerical value, but based on a fair partnership. When they sold their company to Disney they insisted that their company continue donating a portion of their revenue. When Disney acquired Club Penguin it instantly became Disney’s largest donation department.

When things get stressful or scary we can sometimes feel like we are unqualified to make the right decision. We look around to see what others are doing and we can sacrifice our values for security. Lance Merrifield said that every bad decision he made was when it was made out of fear. Why do we think fear is a good motivator if we make bad decisions when we are afraid? Lets know our values so well that when we are afraid we can stop and ask, does this really align with my core values? Or am I doing this because everyone else is doing it this way? As the old metaphor goes, just because everyone is jumping off a bridge doesn’t make it a good idea.

Club Penguin is an inspiration because they demonstrate that it’s possible to build companies differently. Let’s build great companies without sacrificing our core values. Let’s change the norm of business. One day we are going to look back and money won’t matter. What will matter is our family and how we treated those around us.

Categories
On Leadership

Did you know that your body language can make you happier? I didn’t.

Happy Body LanguageLook at these characters from Star Wars. They all look so relaxed and happy, despite the fact they are taking on the Death Star. What if we could feel as relaxed and happy as they do in our stress filled lives. A new Harvard study says that we can, and it has to do with our body language. We have known for a long time that body language influences how we perceive one another. In fact 97% of communication consists of body language. But what we didn’t know was that our body language actually changes how we feel inside as well? An incredible study released by Amy Cuddy, a professor and researcher at Harvard Business School, shows just how much our body language can make us feel better or worse.

What Dr. Cuddy surprisingly discovered is that a change in our posture actually changes the levels of coritisol (the stress hormone) and testosterone (the dominance hormone) by a lot. After studying various subjects she found that it only takes 2 minutes of holding either a high power pose or a low power pose to change those levels dramatically. In fact maintaining a high power position for 2 minutes increased testosterone levels by 20 percent. People in low power positions experienced the opposite with testosterone decreasing by 10 percent. Not only that, but, high power people experienced about a 25% decrease in cortisol, reducing their level of stress, whereas low power people experience about a 15 percent increase making them more stressed.

Apparently when people meet in a room we naturally assume either a low power position or a high power one. So what is a high power position versus a low power position? When a person wins a race and they lift their arms and chin in the air, that’s a high power position. Whereas a low power position is when a person crosses their arm or sits folded. Basically a low power position is when a person is making themselves smaller and a high power position is when a person makes themselves bigger.

That means that people who hold high power poses actually are happier, more confident and have less stress! So I guess the lesson here is that if we are conscious of how we posture ourselves we may be surprised by the results. So before you walk into that stressful meeting take 2 minutes to stretch your arms and hold a victory pose in the washroom. When talking to people place your hands on your sides, instead of folded in front of you. You are awesome, when your body language reflects that it will make you feel awesome too.

If you have 20 minutes here’s a video of Amy Cuddy speaking about this at TEDtalks.

Categories
On Intelligence

You are not your IQ!

Einstein quote

I’m just going to straight out say it. Our test of intelligence is wrong! Not only is it wrong, but it is crippling people’s confidence for no good reason. As a society we love our heros. I love Spiderman, that guy is amazing, he’s quick witted, out-smarts his enemy and has the agility of a spider. That’s pretty cool. But spiderman is not real. We often create great stories of our real heroes too. Einstein, great guy, huge imagination and remarkably intuitive. He proposed theories 55+ years ago that modern physicists rely heavily on to explain the phenomenons they are discovering today. We are told that Einsteins IQ was around 160-180. But guess what folks. He never ever took an IQ test. So that number is as much a figment of our imagination as Spiderman’s ability to climb walls.

Like our notions of beauty, the idea of IQ has been largely brought to popular culture through Hollywood. Wait, you say, what about IQ tests and academic scores? I’m not saying that IQ tests are not valuable. However they more accurately tell us our current level of education than anything else. Most IQ tests are broken up in 5 parts. There is a grammar component, mathematics component, problem solving component, pattern recognition component and history component. Each test is organized a little different, but all of them contain those components. They are scored based on efficiency (time to solve), accuracy and subject knowledge. The last IQ test I took was while I was in University. There was a question that I was asked that I only knew because the class I had just taken earlier that year had talked about that exact scenario. I scored fairly high on the test. Which is great, it meant that education was doing its part, I was retaining what I was learning. But as an intelligence indicator it failed. Had I taken different courses I would not have known many of the questions.

As I am sure many university students do during school, I conducted personal experients (often with my classmates and professors as the primary subjects). While attending the University of British Columbia Okanagan I loved getting to know my professors. During those years they became some of my heroes, they are experts in their fields of study, passionate about learning and passionate about sharing that knowledge with others. So I would watch how they interacted with the students, how they graded them, and how they evaluated intelligence. Then I started watching the students, the way in which they portrayed themselves, and how their marks reflected that appearance. I learned very quickly that in certain classes, those that were graded by theoretical, abstract or essay style exams the marks had a direct correlation between the student/professor relationship. You can read more about some of that experience here. It was in those classes I came to the astonishing conclusion, that I could predict marks based on the professors relationship with the student.

This is a very long topic, something I am fascinated by and which I am going to write about again in the future. But if you took the time to read this I want to compel you to do something. Reevaluate the way in which you view intelligence. Do you assume doctors, engineers and programmers are more intelligent than say a hockey player? If so, why do you think that? Do you assume that a successful business person is more intelligent than a successful chef? Or a professor with a doctorate is more intelligent than a business person? Are people born with certain aptitudes or do we become what we believe we can become? Lastly, what are your thoughts on intelligence? I would love to hear them.

Categories
On Design

Why design matters a lot, but not the way we think!

The notion of UX design has been thrown around a lot in the web for the last few years. User experience is important, that’s easy to understand. The last time you had a negative experience at a restaurant or hotel did you go back? On the web it is no different, especially in a space where millions of people are landing on new websites for the first time every single day. If they have a bad experience they will probably never return. But the kind of design that I want to talk about is for the user who is already actively interacting with your product. Have you ever wondered if you designed it the best way possible? Why does that even matter if users are actively using it every day?

There is a guy named Timothy Presterograduated from MIT, who set out to solve a really important problem. Over 4 million babies are dying every year around the world for completely preventable reasons. Turns out half of those kids would make it, if you could just keep them warm. When Timothy, along with his team, created a solution it got on the cover of TIME magazine. Pretty good start, right?

Timothy quickly discovered that while they had created a really beautiful product designed to inspire, it never got used. In short, Timothy learned a really good lesson. Design a product so that it will be used, not so that it will win design awards. To do that he needed to change the way he thinks about design.

there’s no such thing as a dumb user,.. there are only dumb products.

We most often think of design as it relates to beauty. However, we need to think of design in multiple ways, including function. One of the things that Timothy learned is that “there’s no such thing as a dumb user,.. there are only dumb products.” We need to start creating products that are easy to use correctly, and hard to use wrong.

Have you ever noticed how programmers tend to create incredibly efficient code that is incredibly hard to use? Or how graphic designers often create truly stunning pieces without much thought into the real world ramifications.

Design matters a lot, it matters to users. Could you imagine how different an application like Photoshop would be if they created a product that was easy to use correctly and hard to use wrong. I’ve heard numerous conversations about the frustrations of Photoshop over the years.

Later, this same Timothy had another opportunity, this time to create a product to cure children of Jaundice. Apparently it’s very easy to cure. All you need to do is shine a blue light on an infant for a couple weeks. However, it’s also easy to use current products wrong. Because of it, children are needlessly dying. Timothy and his team designed their product so that it was easy to use right. The bucket only fits one child so the light covers all of the child and the design looks trustworthy so that doctors will trust it and use it.

Often when we think of design we focus on how it looks or what experience it gives the user. We know it’s a good design when it wins awards. However, people like Timothy are discovering that awards are not always the best way to judge design. Instead, if our goal is to create designs that make the world better then we need to focus on designing them to be used, not just to be admired.

Categories
On Companies

Why I am glad Gizmodo got it wrong about Grooveshark

Last year, 11 months ago, Gizmodo posted an article claiming Grooveshark Will Soon Be Destroyed. Man, I am glad they got that one wrong. I love Grooveshark. I admit, I never used Grooveshark in the old days. In fact I only stumbled upon it in the last year. (After it was supposed to be dead). Since then I have fallen in love. How does that song go?

As an application developer I was initially intrigued with how they had developed their app. I thought it was really well designed. I love how it works. Then I started using it and I was hooked. It’s so unenvasive. I read a comment about Grooveshark that all its users were evil and didn’t attend any shows or pay for music. I thought, how can that be when my friend, a musician himself, uses Grooveshark to create playlists and share them with me. How I attended two awesome concerts this summer and purchased too much from iTunes. Thanks to Grooveshark I got into Bon Iver before rocking off to their show. Maybe I just haven’t met the evil ones yet.

I like the direction Grooveshark is going and I am glad that Gizmodo got it wrong.

Categories
On Leadership

10 traits of an amazing leader, you can have

So tonight I attended a brilliant talk on leadership by Dave Olson. When I wasn’t aggressively taking notes I found myself nodding in agreement. Here is a summary of the 10 traits of an amazing leader.

1. It’s where the buck stops

We are all leaders. Some seem to naturally attract people’s respect and ears, for others of us we are in the process of learning the same traits to become great leaders too. When looking for leaders in a room watch where the buck stops. It’s a simple expression, but it means a lot. A real leader finds problems and solves them, they don’t just highlight them for others and pass them on, no they take full responsibility and own them.

Increasing your ability to solve problems is how you grow. Do you want to solve $10,000 problems or $10,000,000 problems.

2. Be decisive

Leaders are clear and confident about their decisions. It’s hard for a team to follow an indecisive leader. As Dave said, “People don’t rally around unless they hear a clear trumpet call!”

3. Adaptability

Adaptability is about more than being flexible and able to change. It is about knowing the difference between things that you can control and things that you can’t. A leader knows how to let go of the things they can’t control and laugh about them.

4. Become a good judge of character

Burn me once, shame on you, burn me twice shame on me. As a leader we put people in places of leadership, we need to be able to trust the character of our teammates. Whereas skills can be taught, character is really hard to bring out of somebody. As Dave said, when you have a garden it’s better to uproot weeds early than to let them grow and uproot everything around them when you pull them out.

5. Develop self-awareness

Often times the person we see ourselves as is not the same as the person others see us as. This is a tough skill to develop and sometimes it requires honesty from others, which can hurt a little. Leaders are self-aware and develop inter-personal skills that help the people around them grow. We need to be honest with ourselves so that we can “preach what we practice, not practice what we preach.” When a leader does well he reflects it on his organization and team. When it goes badly he reflects it on himself.

When a leader does well he reflects the success on his team. When a leader does badly he reflects it on himself.

6. The ability to deal with criticism

Criticism is hard to receive. Sometimes it is true, sometimes it is not, often times it is a mix of both. Leaders know what to accept, what to throw away and what to learn from.

7. The ability to deal with flattery

Flattery can be much more dangerous than criticism. A leader knows to be careful of flattery as it can greatly mislead them about the character of the flatterer and lead to some bad decisions. As Dave stated, “If you believe criticism it will depress you, if you believe the flattery it will destroy you.”

8. Become great at communication

Leaders have the ability to rally people to a better future. They know how to communicate vision. A leader must be clear on outcome and focus, but not on all things. They need to give followers the latitude to select the strategies and tactics to accomplish the goals.

9. Be focused

The one difference between successful people and non-successful is focus. Focus needs to be simple and clear and people will be on board. It needs to be purposeful. “This is why I am doing it.” A leader eliminates distractions. They know how to kindly say no because they have a focus. They have something they are already doing. A leader does the things they are good at. And a leader delegates tasks to people if are good at them. They don’t delegate a task to people if they are not good at it. Leaders find what people are good at and they give them more of it. A leader also gives people the freedom to try things and lets them say, “this isn’t what I’m good at.”

10. Take care of yourself

The main reason that leaders don’t achieve their goals is because of burnout. Don’t let yourself become a rusty bucket on the side of a road because of burnout. Take care of yourself because no one else will. Great leaders make sure they don’t get tired. I actually wrote another post on overcoming burnout here.

 

Categories
MySQL Uncategorized

How to reset the root mysql password if you forget it

I’ve been setting up a LEMP server, Nginx Mysql PHP, on Ubuntu and lost my root mysql password. Here’s what I did to reset the password in Terminal.

After logging into my server via SSH on Terminal I ran the following lines in Terminal.

# /etc/init.d/mysql stop
# mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables &
$ mysql -u root

mysql> use mysql;
mysql> update user set password=PASSWORD("NEW-ROOT-PASSWORD") where User='root';
mysql> flush privileges;
mysql> quit

# /etc/init.d/mysql stop
# /etc/init.d/mysql start
$ mysql -u root -p

I found this solution in an answer by Benjamin Manns to a StackOverflow question here.

Categories
Essays On Intelligence

How to overcome Burnout. 7 simple ways to overcome burnout learned from personal experience!

light bulb not burnt outBurnout is the worst. There is nothing quite like it. You go from performing at 100% to less than 50% and there is nothing you can do to boost your output. Not even caffeine helps. I remember the first time I experienced burnout. We had just attended a trade show in Toronto. The months prior to the show I worked very hard to get everything ready. I was designing the trade show booth, the signage and programming the new StreetText features. Then in the airport on the way to Toronto I got food poisoning. It wasn’t until after the trade show that I burnt out. I didn’t even understand what was happening.

Sitting at my kitchen table with my laptop open, I was writing some code. I think it was a Saturday afternoon. Suddenly my brain started to get foggy. It’s hard to explain. I stood up shook it off and sat down again to keep working. Again my mind became foggy. So this time I thought I must need a five minute break. So I took one, everything cleared up I felt normal again and went back to work. I wrote about 2 lines of code and again my mind became foggy. I kept doing this all afternoon wondering what was going on until I finally gave up and took the rest of the day off. The next 6 months were brutal. I went from foggy to exhausted, my productivity decreased substantially and I began depending on caffeine to power through the days. Soon my body became sick, I stopped caring about leading a company, setting direction or fighting to maintain the levels of excellence I believed in. I felt like giving up.

That was not quite 2 years ago and I am still recovering. On my journey to overcome burnout I allowed myself to repeat bad patterns of behaviour again and again before becoming sick enough that I knew I needed to re-look at how I was operating.

Have I learned anything?

Rule number 1: Stress kills.

This is really important to understand. It is hard enough when you need to work late to complete projects, but when you are under stress too, that’s when your body gets sick. I was working in a high-stress environment. I have two business partners, one of which naturally puts a lot of stress into the business. I’m very grateful for both of my business partners, they bring a lot of different skills to the table that I don’t. But a culture of stress is not worth much.

If you work under a culture of stress you need to stop. Either change your environment and work somewhere else or change the environment. For me to change the culture meant that I needed to lay down some ground rules. Project deadlines need to be realistic. Over expectations are not acceptable and additional “outside” pressure to complete jobs is not acceptable. High performers like you and I don’t need additional stress from others. It doesn’t help productivity. Ultimately it kills it. The challenge with rules is they need to be enforced. Our tendency as a company is to under-estimate project deadlines, become stressed when we cannot meet our own promises and project that stress onto each other. I am still working at changing that culture and it usually requires a battle every step of the way.

Rule number 2: Get active.

As my body became more sick it became harder for me to eat food. I would feel sick at work, at home, at meetings and when traveling. This summer I started biking to work regularly and I noticed that when I biked I felt better. Biking became an escape for me. It gave me time to feel normal and the space to process some of the problems we were trying to overcome at work. Overtime biking actually improved my health. Not a lot, but a little bit. But when I stopped biking for a short while I would get much sicker. I know that being active helps combat stress. For me cycling was my way out.

Rule number 3: Live caffeine free.

I no longer drink caffeinated drinks (for the most part). Caffeine is really dangerous. It gives you energy when you actually need to rest. I don’t drink coffee anymore. Like a lot of people I would drink coffee though out my day to keep me focused and charged. But caffeine also increases your blood pressure, increases your stress level, and in my case contributed to me becoming sick. Not having any coffee during the day is hard. It means I have to had to change my sleep routine to get through the day focused and energetic.

Rule number 4: Establish a regular sleep schedule.

I’m somewhat disciplined, but this has been the most difficult thing for me to implement. When I have a big deadline approaching my natural habit is to work late nights. Not only that, I love hanging out with people. Pulling the plug on a good evening with friends is like pulling teeth. Going to bed the same time every night however has proved to be extremely valuable for my health and my productivity. After just 2 weeks of maintaining a steady schedule I noticed drastic improvements in my work output.

Getting a good rest can be hard. I live on a noisy street, I know. But it is worth getting. If you have a hard time sleeping due to stress it is probably a good idea to talk to a doctor. For me I found keeping a fan running all night helps deaden some of the noise. On some nights I have resorted to earplugs.

Rule number 5: See a doctor.

Not everybody needs to see a doctor. However, for myself seeing a doctor was tremendously valuable. After various tests and failed diagnosis, my doctor put me on a short term medication that allowed my body the time to recover and heal itself. Honestly, this was a huge aid in recovering from stress induced sickness. Everyone is different and may develop different symptoms. Doctor’s are extremely educated on matters of stress and even just talking to one can greatly benefit you.

Rule number 6: Do what motivates you (work in your strengths and interests).

We are all good at doing some things. Some of those things are enjoyable for us to do and some of them are not enjoyable. I will give you an example. I enjoy programming code and I am good at it. However, even though I am good at fixing computers I really don’t enjoy doing that. Some of the things that we enjoy doing are going to pay the bills and some of them aren’t. I really love free skiing but that is not going to pay me anything. I also really love building cool applications. That does pay my bills. So do the things you are good at and that pay your bills. The rest are called hobbies.

If I had to fix computers and other peoples problems every day, it wouldn’t take long before I was burning out. Because I would be using energy to not only do the work but to motivate myself to keep doing the work I hated. Most of us have to do somethings that we don’t enjoy along with the things that we do enjoy. Just make sure that the majority of what you do is something that you enjoy being good at and that you enjoy doing.

Rule number 7: Celebrate large milestones with short holidays.

In our business we have numerous tasks that we work hard to achieve. However, we don’t celebrate when we hit our targets, we simply go to the next one. I was lucky enough to have a good conversation with another business owner who also has experienced burnout. In the conversation he asked if we set milestones in our company. I answered that yes we did. Then he asked me if I took time off after reaching them. I responded, “Why would we do that?”. He explained to me that when we reach our milestones we need to take time off to recharge and recover for our next one. No use starting the next milestone on anything less than a full tank of fuel. This is an important piece of wisdom that I am going to implement in my life. Had I taken a week off from work after our trade show in Toronto there is a chance that I would have recovered and not burned out at all.

Final thoughts

Burnout is not something that I need to experience again. I know that it is an unpleasant experience. For me these steps are now part of my life. I value my health and I believe that it is something worth fighting for. For some of you it may mean finding new employment and for others who are self-employeed like myself it may mean creating a new culture, developing new habits and changing the way you motivate yourself and your employees. I wish you the best in your effort to eliminate burnout.

2018 update: The truth about burnout

Categories
On Business

3 simple ways we could have built our startup faster and cheaper!

Growing a Startup

Here are three of the things I would have done differently when originally founding my startup had I started with the knowledge and experience that I have today.

Testing grounds.

Originally when we developed our products we never really tested them. Instead, we built our products to work the way we imagined they would and then expected that our target market would overwhelm us with demand. Kind of like what happened to Apple when they released the iPhone. It didn’t work out for us like that. Today I would test our ideas in our target markets prior to investing a huge amount of money developing them. I would want to know three questions. First, do I really understand the need of my market? Second, is my product solving that need in a way that our target market will find easy to use and adopt. And thirdly, is there existing demand for my product or for a similar product?

Growth strategy.

When we launched StreetText our growth strategy was simple. We would go to trade shows, hire a few sales people and customers would sign up. We soon discovered that is not a growth strategy. It’s not even close to one. Today I would want to know who are the early adopters that I can target right now. Is there a segment of my target industry or market that is emerging or growing. That is likely where my early adopters are and I would set a 6 month marketing plan to target that group. After those 6 months I would reassess our growth, adoption rate and turnover rate and plan our next 6 months accordingly.

Investment.

We took investment early. That both helped and hindered us. It helped by offering a buffer until we became profitable and it allowed us some flexibility to learn as we went. However, looking back we spent money where we shouldn’t. We paid a sales staff before we had a product to sell, we over paid for product development that never saw the light of day, and we paid for our own mistakes. Depending on what stage of the startup I was in I would do things differently. If I were in the early stages I would raise money only after I was 100% certain that we knew we had an idea that would solve a current need in a growing market. Then I would carefully spend money on only the Minimal Viable Product (MVP). That means only the 1, 2 or 3 features that users must have to test the products adoption rate. If I had extra money at this point I would save it for some marketing and product tweaking as needed. I would not spend money on overhead such as sales staff or even pay salaries to founders that could work a second job (myself included). If I were in the later stages of startup I would only raise more money if I was either profitable and all the money would go into new customer acquisition or if I knew that the majority of my current customers would be extremely disappointed to lose the service and I had an exact number for the cost per customer acquisition.

Final thoughts.

Writing this now it seems like the steps I would have done differently are very logical. But at the time when we started it wasn’t. We read books about business and tried our best to make wise decisions but we still made some dumb mistakes along the way. Fortunately for us a lot of perseverance and a little luck have helped grow our company to profitability. But there were many times where we went through hardships, including no paycheques for a few months on end, when they could have been avoided. Business is dynamic, always changing, and we will most likely face new hardships along the way. But hopefully we will continue learning from them and I will continue writing about them so that others reading this might be able to learn from it. Hopefully these articles are helpful. If you have any requests or would like me to elaborate on a topic just ask in the comments below and I would be much obliged to do just that.