I met a really successful waterloo-area entrepreneur last week, named Neo (name changed to protect the innocent). He pointed me to a weblog by another popular and successful waterloo-area CEO-type businessperson CEO Blog - Time Leadership by Jim Estill, of SYNNEX. Jim was also on the panel for a recent Waterloo Accelerator Centre event called "Don't Cry in your Beer" (about dealing with business failures). Oh yeah, and he says to get more sleep .

Anyway I'm excited to find another waterloo-area blog, there just aren't enough of them. I'm a huge believer in the "CEO blog" or the "founder blog" .... obviously ... I mean, what a record of what you've done and where you've been. I don't keep a diary but even if I did (or Jim) you'd never to read it anyway. And so for me this blog has wound up being a bit of a diary too for my own reference.

Two weeks ago Communitech had their annual Entrepreneur Week which was just as good as the one I went to last year. Not just good events but everyone from the business community comes out and so it's good for networking, saying hi to people you don't see all the time, whatever. Tiring though (for me anyway, since I'm more of an introvert than an extrovert).

When I was in school my friends from engineering had an expression that apparently they were told about. It was about four phases of learning that were supposed to match the four years at university. I think it's good.

• (1) First you don't know what you don't know,
• (2) Then you know what don't know,
• (3) Then you don't know what you know,
• (4) Then you know what you know.

I think that now, when it comes to business, I know what I know. Obviously there's a lot more to learn, but at least in the real basics of it ... and since an MBA takes 1-2 years, it seems I'm on the right timing. I think that when I first formed the company in early 2004, I was in stage 1. I got lucky with some stuff, and unlucky with other things, but it wasn't really until a trip to Boston to meet with a couple of VCs there that I realized that I had absolutely no clue what I was doing ( as noted in this blog ). That's phase 2 :-) That was a truly sucky phase to be in because I realized that I was at a huge disadvantage. Last friday Neo told me (since I asked) that his father had been seriously into business and that he himself had been into business since a teenager, through college, etc. I expect that MOST engineers, including myself, haven't got this background. Those who have it though, come in without the handicap of having business culture seem totally incomprehensible.

Anyway, phase 3 probably started sometime early this year, and I think phase 4 finally clicked in during Entrepreneur Week. I was at "Chapter 4" (don't ask) an all-day event and I realized that I was with or ahead most of the people around me, including the presenters. That's a nice feeling to have!!!!!

PS. I recently completed a 2-page "business plan" / "summary" / "investment letter" / whatever, and now I'm in the funny position where I show it to my friends and parents and they're accusing me of writing a load of buzzword bullshit. It's pretty funny because I used to have the same knee-jerk reaction to business-speak. But now of course I realize that it's jargon, not buzzwords and that words like, say "value chain" have a real precise meaning that would take a paragraph to write out full hand.