Lawrence Hester @lawrencehester - Tumblr Blog

Bear Chase 100km Race Report

2 weeks ago I attempted to run my first ultramarathon @ the Bear Chase Race Series in Lakewood, Colorado. One of my colleagues, Davis Cutter, had challenged me to run an ultramarathon 4 months earlier. I replied to Davis’s offer in May without hesitation. I told Davis that I was “in,” even though in the previous 12 months I hadn’t run more than a dozen times (and no long distance).

Realizing that I only had 4 months to get in shape, I reached out to my friend Jimmy Beltz and asked for advice. He recommended that I see if Liza Howard could coach me. Within a day, I was on the phone with Liza planning out how I was going to scale up my running from couch potato to 62.5 miles.

From May until the first week of August, my weekly totals gradually increased from 20 miles to ~ 50 miles per week with long runs of 18 miles. I had a couple of minor setbacks with overly tight hamstrings but I really started to feel like I was getting in shape.

And then disaster struck on August 8th. That morning, I woke up and could tell that my heart was beating erratically. After phoning a friend that is a doctor and then getting a second opinion from a friend that is a nurse, I went to urgent care to get an EKG. The doctors confirmed my suspicion and diagnosed me with atrial fibrillation. I was admitted to the hospital overnight and was released nearly 48 hours later after I naturally cardioverted to a normal sinus rhythm (I was on the operating table at the time awaiting an electric shock -- plenty more to that story).

After my release, doctors recommended that I significantly scale back on running and consider giving up the ultramarathon dream. Their advice hit me like a ton of bricks and made getting out of bed the next day a mental challenge. Nevertheless, Liza and I figured out a way to re-ramp my running after a two week break and added a heart rate limit (150 bpm) to my training. Within weeks, I was running 18 miles again.

Unfortunately my hospital visit made me hyper sensitive to my Garmin heartrate monitor’s alerts. On two occasions I stopped a long run when I couldn’t control my heart rate. My longest training run was 21 miles, well short of the 31 miles Liza and I had originally planned for. All of this set me up for a very challenging Bear Chase.

On race day, I slept 3.5 hours which I knew could cause some heart issues. Adding the race adrenaline (and fear), I was in a tough spot to start. I ran the first lap (12.5 miles) in 2:02:39. My legs felt great but my average heart rate was well above normal @ 180 bpm. I stopped to grab a couple of chia bars and stroop waffles at the bag drop and to change my socks. My Stance socks were not drying very quickly and were filled with dirt from the river crossings. I changed into Smartwool socks.

The second lap (12.5 miles), my heart rate continued to be elevated and remained between 170 and 180 bpm. My legs still felt good but I did need to walk for a minute at mile 23. I ran the second lap in 2:10:30. After 25 miles, I felt like it was time for a shoe change and removed my Hoka One One Speedgoats. I put on Topa Ultrafly road shoes for the remainder of the race. After a short break, I was back out on the course. My marathon times was 4:34:33 including the breaks.

Midway through the 3rd lap, I hit a wall and began to walk. Additionally, my body no longer wanted the nutrition that I was carrying so I began eating food at the aid stations. I devoured the tortillas and beans, bananas, and pretzels. My heart rate did drop when walking but remained elevated @ 120-150 bpm (levels I normally see when jogging). I finished lap 3 in 2:51:56.

At this point, I wasn’t sure if I’d make it back out. My legs were shot and my heart was telling me that today wasn’t the day. I laid down on the ground at the bag drop for at least 30 minutes. I also ate a stack of pancakes and sausage. After changing my socks for a dry pair and removing some of the dirt from my feet, I went back out on the course with my pacer, Gabriella Quarantiello.

I ran mile 38.5 and then I accepted that I would be walking the rest of the course. At this point I was also extremely nauseous (I did manage to keep everything down). I finished the lap in 3:12:30. Gabby walked in front of me for mile 45-50 and had to remind me that we could make it to mile 50 every 2 minutes. At mile 44, Davis also lapped me en route to his second place finish in the 100k.

At mile 50, it was clear that I had nothing left. Anything more than a slow walk was pushing my heart rate back above 150. My crew at the finish all told me that they thought it would be a good idea if I called it a day @ mile 50 instead of heading back out for another 12.5 miles of walking. I had nothing left to fight with and conceded to their thinking. I notified the race director that I was dropping out. Overall, I finished the 50 miles in 11:01:19. A special thanks to my fiancé, Marina, for putting up with all of my early alarm clocks and everything else she does for me. Love you. And thank you to my parents, Larry and Emmie, for being out on the course all day (among all the other things you help with). Thank you to Liza for getting me this far. And the FH crew for all the onsite cheering!

Looking back the next morning, I regretted my decision to leave the course. At the same time, I knew that it was smart. I wasn’t setting a miraculous PR or course record.

Nevertheless, not meeting my goal was severely disappointing. I put in a good deal of effort to make it that far. As I’ve gotten farther from the race, I am happy that I made it 50 miles. I didn’t get to train nearly as much as planned due to my hospital visit. And I started training with no base.

Not one to accept defeat, I’m looking forward to getting back out on the course and pushing towards my next goal, the Leadville 100. #alwaysrunning

Don’t blindly follow rules

If you’ve been on the internet anytime in the past week, you’ve likely encountered the story of United Airlines dragging a passenger off of a flight in Chicago. There have been plenty of articles written about the incident. Most journalists tell the story of why airlines overbook flights, or how the UAL public relations team and CEO have mishandled the aftermath.

With that said, almost everybody ignores a key player in the story. Few are laying blame on the employees that decided the police needed to be called and the passenger forcibly removed. People are focusing entirely on the United Airlines rulebook, rather than the the gate agents that “followed the rules.”

As a society, we are inherently lazy and inclined to just follow the rules. It’s probably for good reason. Nobody gets fired for following the rules. And if you think about your position with a short-term perspective, it’s significantly safer to be a rule follower. Hell, it also takes a lot less energy. It takes much less brainpower to mindlessly do what you are told than to think critically about everything you do.

In Jeff Bezos’s annual letter to Amazon shareholders, which coincidentally was published soon after the UAL incident, he had a similar thought. Jeff wrote,

“Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp. It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, “Well, we followed the process.” A more experienced leader will use it as an opportunity to investigate and improve the process. The process is not the thing. It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us?“

Processes and rules are a natural addition as an organization grows. Both are necessary for an organization to scale efficiently. At some point organizations need more structure. But, like everything else at an evolving organization, rules and processes are created as a response to change. In many respects, these processes are nothing more than a best practice becoming “the” practice.

As Jeff noted, we have an insatiable draw to follow and then blame the rules over questioning their purpose. We tend to view rules as laws rather than guidelines. Although we’ve all been guilty of this at some point or another, it’s that mindset that stifles organizational growth. We all know that feeling when a rule feels wrong. It’s a weird place to be. But it’s tough to act on that emotion because following the rule brings a sense of security. In the short term it protects your job. But in the long term, it keeps you and the organization from evolving and growing.

Things might have ended differently had a UAL employee dared to stop thinking like a computer and thought about breaking a rule. Maybe they would have offered a higher than normally allowed compensation to somebody for giving up their seat. Maybe they would have kept the plane grounded until another person agreed to go. Maybe it wouldn't have ended how it did. But all of that would have started with one person choosing to challenge the rules before they blindly chose to follow them.

Next time you're faced with a similar decision, I challenge you to think before you follow. It will feel scary, but it will take you much further.

Commit to Your Line

After roughly 20 years of snowboarding, I decided to make the switch to skiing for the 2016-2017 season. For context, I’m not learning to ski. My first year on the slopes was in Minnesota during the mid-90s. I learned to ski then, and have been fortunate enough to get in a couple of skiing runs every year since. This past season I dedicated 5 days to skiing, and the change felt great. I’ve been loving the adrenaline rush that comes with pointing my skis downhill on a steep run.

A few weeks ago I dropped into Horseshoe Bowl (a double black diamond) at Breckenridge. There was a solid 17 inches of fresh snow on the mountain that morning, and I was just getting the hang of skiing in powder. Half way down the run I got a little too confident and took a very aggressive line.

After reaching a speed that was above my skill level, I decided to bail. Rather than stopping, I sat down on the back of my skis and attempted to fall. My right ski dug into the powder and turned hard to the right. Instead of popping off, the ski jammed into the snow and twisted my knee. (I had trouble walking for a week but I’m doing wonderful today).

The next morning I thought about my fall, reflecting on what I could have done differently. I decided that the run was a controlled risk, and while most would conclude “Go slower,” I wanted to figure out how I could have successfully completed my line. The more I thought, the more clear it became that if I was going to ski a challenging line, I needed to commit to my path. At the very least, if I had stayed over my skis and fell, my bindings would have probably released and I would have been okay. But of course I would have also had the opportunity to glide into the bottom of the run with my arms in the air, celebrating my early season accomplishment.

Like many things, this small lesson from the slopes made me think of FareHarbor. It reinforced that any calculated risk we take at FareHarbor needs full commitment. If we don’t lean into our skis and commit to the challenge ahead, we will lose control of the outcome. We risk ending up with a subpar result, and hurting the organization. Not committing 100% will result in wasted resources, the most precious of which is time. Even worse, we might become afraid of taking another risk in the future.

We need to be 100% committed to a challenge if we want the best opportunity for success. And worst case, if we at least lean in, we’ll be able to pick things back up and walk away on two feet. We’ll be able to look back and see what changes would have helped us reach success, and we’ll know if it’s a risk we want to take again in the future.

Raising the Bar

As FareHarbor has grown, we’ve gone from a startup where everybody does everything, to a company with specialized roles. It wasn’t too long ago that we were figuring out what was measurable and how we could use those statistics to help our employees, and ultimately our clients, reach success. With the addition of daily, weekly, and monthly KPIs, I was afraid that employee performance would start to too heavily focus on those measurements, similar to teachers teaching to the test.

Meeting a KPI should never be the end goal. And you need to be careful about a hyper focus on exceeding KPIs if you’re heading in the wrong direction or your goals are too low. To better describe this feeling, I looked towards an old TV favorite of mine, the Biggest Loser. Below is an email I sent to our Team @ FareHarbor:

Subject: Raising the Bar

When we started FareHarbor, we had no sense of its potential and quite honestly, no ability to create reasonable expectations. Fueled by an insatiable desire to win, to change the activity industry, and to help our clients, we always shot for the moon. It went beyond wanting FareHarbor to be the best - we’d do anything and everything to be bigger, faster, and stronger than the day before.

As we’ve grown, our expectations for each team member have changed substantially. For those of you who have been part of the family for a few years, you’ve witnessed the metamorphosis of your job targets and descriptions. Your role changed from simply “more” and “everything” to a more detailed and descriptive framework. It’s been a scary leap as a management team to start actively measuring performance. But the fear isn’t that the individual results will be disappointing. We’re more afraid that an absolute focus on numbers will change our culture and dilute the DWIFT.

Today I am going to ask you to start treating KPIs as if you are a contestant on the Biggest Loser. Now, before you snicker, please give my analogy a chance! For those of you that have never watched the Biggest Loser, it’s a contest to see which person can lose the largest percentage of body weight. In the show, personal trainers create KPIs for contestants. These KPIs include calories consumed, steps taken, minutes of exercise, etc. It’s the trainer’s belief that exceeding KPIs will lead towards realizing the contestant’s goal - weight loss.

At FareHarbor, it’s our hope that the KPIs around each position will similarly lead you and the organization towards success. What is success? Broadly, we define it as personal growth, happier clients and more sales.

Without KPIs the Biggest Loser contestants would be shooting in the dark on their weight loss journey - “just be healthy as you can all the time.” By having individual KPI’s in different categories they can hone their focus on the KPIs that drive success. If in one week a contestant focuses entirely on running and loses zero weight, they might add swimming or stairs the next.

With this analogy fresh in your mind, I’m now going to ask you to think about the type of contestant that wins the Biggest Loser. Is it a person that clocks in, hits their daily targets, and then calls it a day? Is it a person that proactively analyzes KPIs to determine what actions are the most effective in creating weight loss? Or is it the type of person that uses KPIs as a motivational tool to push harder?

As a seasoned show viewer, I believe the winner uses a combination of tweaking KPIs and blowing past expectations. They are continually optimizing their KPIs for success and never waste energy focusing on the wrong metrics. The top contestants always request feedback from their trainers and ask how they can do more. These contestants want to win and crush their goals. And then they they want to make the next day’s goals even higher. These aren’t the type of people to settle for “ok.” Adapting quickly is how the best win. They continually analyze which KPIs work and when they know they have a winning recipe, they stick with it and turn it up.

When the winners step on the scale, they don’t fear failure. They embrace measurement as an opportunity to quantify their success!

With FareHarbor quickly approaching its fifth year, the amount of data we have around each role is increasing. Our ability to figure out which KPIs will move both you and the organization further is increasing.

But, we still need your help to make our dreams of reaching the moon a reality. We need each of you to think about your daily measurements as a Biggest Loser contestant. Are your KPIs helping you do better? Are they moving FareHarbor forward? And most importantly, are you using them to push yourself further?

At the end of the day, if you’re focused on the wrong metrics, no amount of DWIFT will help. And if you are using KPIs as a new measure of meeting the average, you are never going to excel. As a group, let’s all try to get better, bigger, faster, and stronger.

Much love, #DWIFT, #cantstopwontstop,

Lawrence

Doing the Right Thing

I can’t begin to imagine how hard it must be to put so much effort into something you know is disappearing. However, the Zerve team stepped up. They have consistently been focused on doing the right thing for their clients and employees. Before we all continue to compare our products, it’s worth taking a minute to acknowledge the Zerve team’s effort throughout these challenging times. Their dedication, devotion and effort to helping their clients is something both the industry and I will never forget.

The past few days have been tumultuous in the tour and activity industry. Zerve’s exit has been jarring. I am proud that FareHarbor has been able to aid Zerve’s clients and hopefully their employees in their transition. We are also saddened to see the exit of a hard working, noble and client-focused competitor. We will continue to be open about the details our relationship with Zerve and strive to make the transition as smooth as possible for all clients seeking to continue to excel in their operations without having to worry about what booking platform is best for their business. In Zerve’s absence, there has been a vacuum of companies claiming to work harder, have access to all sorts of data, and in general over-promising. The major fact that has been ignored throughout this entire process is the fact is that Zerve’s own team has been the hardest working of everyone this weekend, and they have nothing to gain! I think it’s important to state that I have no benefit in singing Zerve’s praises, I am purely writing this out of respect for the Zerve management team and employees. Over the past 72 hours, I have had several conversations with Scott Newman, one of Zerve’s founders. Many conversations were held in the middle of the night and I’ve witnessed members of the Zerve team helping their clients through every hour of the day. Given that they have nothing but goodwill to gain or lose, their efforts can only be considered stupendous. Zerve has always had excellent service and it’s clear that service will continue to the end.

Learning to Love Running Again

If you’re starting a business, I recommend you check in with the bigger picture as often as you can. When you live and breathe the details of your business on a minute-by-minute basis, you can quickly become too caught up in each individual situation. Grab what you can from each individual performance, keep running hard and focus on those lofty big picture goals.

In 2008, a friend of mine asked me if I had any interest in signing up for an Ironman. At that point in my life, I had never run more than 8 miles at a time. After 30 seconds of thinking, I enthusiastically replied, “Why the hell not? I’m in.”

Three weeks later, I ran my first half marathon and became a total fitness addict.

Over the next 5 years, I would train hard and participate in a lot of road races. While I was never a competitive racer, I felt pretty fast – and would eventually manage to break the 7 minute/mile mark for a half marathon. Most importantly, I loved running. Rain, snow, sleet, or a hot sun, I would get my miles in.

Then, in 2013, my fitness obsession met FareHarbor. Overnight, my 15-mile runs were replaced by long hours of work. I quickly gained more than 30 pounds. And although I would attempt to run 2 marathons sans training (I only finished one), I was now very slow.

In 2015, we finally had enough staffing at FareHarbor that I could put my computer and phone away for a couple of hours a day. It was time to get fit again.

Unfortunately, every time I attempted to run, I hit a mental roadblock. Checking my pace on Strava was depressing. I knew that I couldn’t expect to be the old me without hard work, but slow speeds were difficult to get over. In fact, I couldn’t string more than 2 runs together in a week and I was quick to quit.

Two months ago, I set my focus on getting back into running. The first day out with Strava, I felt the familiar pain of being slow – of comparing my out of shape, 33 year old body to my in-shape, 25 year old body. The fun disappeared and I instantly thought of giving up. The next day, I went out for a run with no phone, no watch, and no goals. After 40 minutes, I came home feeling wonderful. I had a runner’s high.

Over the course of a few weeks, I went on many untimed and unplanned runs. Eventually, I started to feel fit again and I began timing myself. Running was fun again, but slow days were still a mental battle. Honestly, slow days could ruin my enthusiasm for the remainder of the day.

Why was I so concerned with each individual run? Anything could affect a single run’s performance. Heat, cold, wind, or even what I ate that day. Everything had an affect on my daily performance. Yet as frustrated as I was, my speed was improving! I was discounting my overall improvement by nitpicking daily stats.

Certainly, there is value in analyzing individual performances to find areas of improvement. But, you cannot live and die by those singular occurrences. You’ll lose sight of what you should be celebrating.

Interestingly enough, I applied my mental breakthrough about running to my role at FareHarbor. The results shocked me. I was so caught up in minute details and daily reports, that I was blind to the larger concepts that were propelling our business forward.

It was an easy mindset to fall into. As somebody that expects perfection from the team, it felt natural to over analyze each situation and to evaluate our performance based on the last data point.

Over the past month, I’ve still kept an eye on the details (it will be hard to let go), but I’ve also started focusing on larger trends in each department and across the organization. Exiting the minute-by-minute emotional roller coaster has been a relief, and allowed me to spend more time where I should - working on the overall company’s performance.

Pushing Personal Limits

This last weekend I tried to run a marathon without having run more than a 10 mile long run in over a year and more than 20 total miles in any 7 days. At mile 25, I was pulled off the course and unable to stand. Sunday was a reminder of how difficult marathons can be and how far I'm willing to push. I hate that this photo was taken before I could go no farther but love that it caught me at the edge. #hellonearth #limits #push

A photo posted by Lawrence Hester (@lawrence_hester) on Oct 20, 2015 at 10:20pm PDT

You’re a “worthless fuck.”

Changing the perception of a salesperson

A guest post by Max Valverde, FareHarbor’s CCO and Head of Sales

When I tell people at parties that I work in sales they're unsure how to respond. Is this a profession you're proud of? On a scale from Janitor to Astronaut... how should I be responding here?

It's understandable though. Arthur Miller and Hollywood would have you believe that sales people are sleazy, scum of the earth types who hate their job. A series of bad life choices led them to the other end of the phone. While there most definitely are seedy sales people selling snake oil, I want to share a different narrative. A story of engineers, Ivy Leaguers, Division I Athletes, who had many choices. And they chose to sell FareHarbor.

FareHarbor provides an online platform and a suite of free marketing services for activity and tour companies. For the sake of brevity, take my word that today FareHarbor has hands down the best platform in the industry. The problem is that for the past 5 years the available platforms abused the market and in turn any faith in reservation software. The booking platforms lacked the base essentials in favor of providing glitchy bells and whistles. Did they never speak with a reservationist or check-in booth prior to development? Many businesses have actually reverted back to pen and paper reservations because "we've tried all the different softwares and you all suck." This is a direct quote:

"In short, [competing reservation software] almost single-handedly destroyed our business." No Google Adwords, online marketing, or email campaign could ever repair what these other softwares had done to the market. We could give away free kittens and $100 bills with FareHarbor and activity companies still wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. It's that bad.

The FareHarbor team has seen it first hand from the well over 1,000 accounts what we can do for our clients' revenue. While it may sound like hyperbole, it's not uncommon for a client to go live on FareHarbor and see their online revenue double overnight. So we dial to tell business owners about what we're doing for our clients. But they don't want to hear it. Every day my team gets called names and is made to feel like dirt; like the salesperson in the movies. The responses get personal - earlier this week someone on my team was called a "worthless fuck." It can hurt when the insults are directed at my team's character and it begs the question - why would somebody choose this as a profession? Here's why.

What if you had a medicine that's cured thousands? What if those who needed it refused to talk to you - or worse - what if they thought your medicine was poison?

If you're a badass you keep trying. Our team of sales people love a seemingly impossible challenge. Tell them they can't do something and they'll show you where you're wrong. They keep dialing because they believe in what we're doing. They have seen what we can do... and between the hangups and vitriol, they are somehow able to speak with thousands of companies every week.

They keep calling because FareHarbor always increases revenue, it always makes happy clients, it always works. And they stay motivated by being truly curious about the industry. They love to hear the different stories - The couple who started an activity company back in the 90s - The business man who quit his job 5 years ago to launch the #1 activity company in his city. They listen to what works for clients and what doesn't.

Over time my team began to offer advice from what they had learned. By listening first we are not only changing the market's perception of what an online booking platform can be... but what a "salesperson" can be. Our team sees tens of thousands of activity websites, engages in detailed analysis of booking metrics, and out of happenstance has become one of the most knowledgeable group of "activity and tour business consultants" in the country (if there is such a thing). The market is beginning to turn to us for advice on check-in flow, online marketing ideas, and how to make next season the biggest ever. They know we have our finger on the pulse of the industry - because we listen first and have the talent to distill what we're hearing. And slowly, we've started to show that we are the opposite of poison.

There's one line we hear again and again from our happy clients. We hear it every week and it's the purest form of validation you can receive as a salesperson.

"thank you for your persistence."

It reminds me of an abused dog finding a happy home. Sales has a stigma. Online booking has a stigma. My team is changing this one call at a time. They're showing that there's no such thing as a dishonest salesperson when you're selling an honest product.

Dilbert - Value of a Startup Idea

On the back of my post yesterday, I couldn’t help but share today’s Dilbert, Value of a Startup Idea: http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-09-11

So you’re thinking about starting a business...

A few weeks ago, FareHarbor’s Chief Commercial Officer and I hosted an AMA on reddit. We proposed that participants ask any question, and we would answer. While some of the questions were about particular business ideas, many revolved around general themes. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be tackling a few of the most popular questions.

“I have so many ideas to start a business. How do I know if an idea is the business I should start?”

Starting a business is very much like falling in love. If you’ve ever been in love, this concept has probably already registered. One of my biggest challenges in starting a business was that I could never seem to settle on just one idea to be my “next big thing.” Looking back on my first business, a crouton company, not even the investment of my entire personal savings could keep me from searching for other ideas. Probably not a good sign.

How does this relate to love? Well, for me, dating always feels like an experiment, where I’m allowed to just test things out. But once I fall in love, it becomes a healthy obsession.

In his book, Modern Romance, Aziz Ansari’s description of today’s “Tinder” world perfectly depicts many first time entrepreneur’s fear of commitment. A good number of couples make it to date three before at least one of the daters has checked out. They’ve already lined up dinner and drinks with another match, one they think will make a better, more perfect partner. And so, their current relationship is put on the back burner, left to quickly die.

This “Tinder” world is all too similar to most people’s experience in starting a business. They’ll launch an idea to see if it’s something they might enjoy or find success with, but never stop fearing that their next idea could be a bigger winner. By launch day, they already have a foot out the door. The minute they catch a glimpse of the next big thing, or collide with their first big hurdle, they back burner their current business and launch the next.

But not owning a business isn’t the same thing as being single. Your grandmother will never remind you that you aren’t a business owner.

This is where the concept of love is so important. Love most often means exclusivity and true commitment. People that are in love aren’t fielding dates from potential partners. They’re committed, they’re decided and they’ll fight through any rough patch to stay together. You should only start a business if you’re totally in love with an idea. Launching an idea just because you like the sound of being an entrepreneur will never get you far.

While there are plenty of ways to start a business without making large personal or financial commitments, there’s no shortcut around giving your all. You have to be fully committed if you want to succeed. So how do you know if you’re ready to stop dating an idea and turn it into a real life project? Make sure you’ve researched the market, evaluated all potential competitors, and done a good amount of cost modeling. But most importantly, make sure you’re head over heels in love with your idea! Never been in love? Well, you’ll know…

The Inspiring Story Behind the Launch of Silverton Mountain, Colorado

Building a dream: A true life story from Aaron Brill, founder of Silverton Mountain: http://snowboardmag.com/stories/building-a-dream-a-true-life-story-from-aaron-brill-founder-of-silverton-mountain

Working on a new post (with graphs)

Writing up a blog post after the AUA that @maximundo and I did last week and started charting @fareharbor numbers. Couldn't help but graph my body weight vs. number of employees. It's nice to be able to run again!

A photo posted by Lawrence Hester (@lawrence_hester) on Sep 1, 2015 at 6:13am PDT

Quality Co-Founder/Brother Time

Our cofounders take Aloha Friday very seriously. They even sleep in these shirts. #alohafriday #bromance #cantstopwontstop

A photo posted by FareHarbor (@fareharbor) on Aug 28, 2015 at 1:06pm PDT

Saving Customers Money with Lower Credit Card Rates @ FareHarbor

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sending the following email to our clients. I’m excited that we publicly announced the credit card rate change today: http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/fareharbor-saves-its-tour-activity-operator-customers-money-yet-again-with-industrys-2048620.htm

“Aloha,

We have some very exciting news for you today! I wanted to email you directly. As many of you know, FareHarbor is very much a family business. Many of you have had the pleasure of speaking with all four Hester siblings. But, you've likely been in contact with one of us much more than the others—Anders! Before I share some exciting FareHarbor news, I want to wish Anders all the best as he becomes the first of the Hester siblings to tie the knot next weekend.

Now, please don't panic! Anders's absence over his honeymoon will allow FareHarbor to highlight our Support team's strength, our commitment to customer support and your business's success. We reinvest in you, our clients, which is why our 24/7 support team has grown as FareHarbor has grown. We are proud to say that FareHarbor support will tip the scales at more than 40 full time employees in the next month! We are dedicated to your success as we view our relationship as a true partnership.

Finally, time to share the exciting news. When Zachary and I started FareHarbor just over a couple of years ago, we were determined to develop a business and a model that always put our customers first. From day one, people have asked us how much profit we make on credit card transactions. Our answer has never swayed: "None, it's our goal to make your lives the best and give you the lowest rate possible!"

Starting tomorrow, FareHarbor will be venturing into new territory (again). Due to the increase in our overall credit card volume, our credit card rate is taking another dip lower. On August 1, your credit card rate will drop to 1.9% and 30 cents. We believe that this could be the lowest flat rate ever offered and it's all because of you. And with FareHarbor's continued growth we have the opportunity to continue pushing the rate lower in the future (so tell your friends!).

Zachary and I couldn't be more thankful for your continued support. The last few years have exceeded our wildest expectations, and we hope that our software and commitment to customer support will continue to exceed yours.

Mahalo, Lawrence CEO”

We Started on a Couch: A Story of Growth from the Road Less Traveled

Yesterday, I had a long talk with a friend of a friend that was in the same position as me just a couple of years ago. He's starting a business and deciding whether or not he should seek out professional investors. After speaking, I sent him the following note:

"One of the toughest challenges with going "stealth" or not raising money is definitely the validation piece. We're in an environment where people equate success more with funding than with numbers. Personally, I'd rather the company be successful than raise a noteworthy round. On the flip side, it can make recruitment harder as new employees want to tell their parents that they were recruited by a company that was featured in a TechCrunch article on a big raise."

Speaking to him got me thinking. Why have all the stories of people starting a business out of their garage disappeared? Certainly some of them are gone because of the opportunity to pre-sell/fund via channels like Kickstarter. But every idea cannot be pre-sold. Where are all of the Earl Bakkens? Where are the Larry Ellisons, the Bill Hewlett and Dave Packards, the Howard Schultzs, and the John Mackeys? Why are companies thought to be more successful if they have raised money on an idea than if they have grown organically with grit and man hours? When did everything change?

The following is the story of FareHarbor's first 2.5 years. The story of risk vs. raise. It is a story of a friends and family backed business that's managed to grow, scale, stay alive, and thrive in a cash-fueled competitive environment. Hell, some of our competitors think that funding is the #1 trait of a software company! While I don't know where our story will end, I think it's a story worth sharing today.

Bootstrapping

People shouldn't be afraid of taking what many would describe as the "harder" route. Our decision to bootstrap has encouraged smart decisions--both with time and money. Needing to reinvest our revenue for growth has made our spending so much more thoughtful. We don't waste money on fancy offices or first class tickets. Every hiring decision has been for a specific need – to play an integral role on our team. No one is superfluous. Spending our own money has made this a lean and smart and precise journey. On more than one occasion, we have slept on air mattresses so that we could invest more into our product and our customers.

And our revenue model only allows us to make money when our clients make money. We are all in this together. Tying ourselves to our clients’ success has set a clear vision for what we must do to be successful — help our clients grow their businesses.

Just as important, bootstrapping has helped create a #cantstopwontstop employee culture of enthusiasm and belief in our product and clients. Everybody has an opportunity to grow and make an immediate impact on our organization. Not raising institutional money has given our whole team, top to bottom, a sense of ownership that comes with doing it on our own. We earn our keep.

Will the course ever change?

While I love the foundation that bootstrapping has created, it is likely that there will be a juncture where raising institutional capital could help accelerate growth or allow us to capture additional opportunities. Nevertheless, our current path has allowed us to foster a team mentality – a culture of unity, excitement, ownership and personal success, as well as a remarkable energy and team spirit which we could not replicate if we had been provided capital by outside investors. We are a family.

Enough About Why We Choose Our Path: Year 1 and the Couch

Before I start, the following is not a story of a business started at a tech “disruption” conference, a pivot from a Groupon knockoff, or even a light bulb in Istanbul. This is a story of a couple of brothers with unhappy software experiences as both a tour operator and a tour operator’s customer. It is a search for a better solution.

FareHarbor is like many other bootstrapped companies. We put everything into our business. To start, I spun a 4-year relationship on its head by moving from Boston to Hawaii. For those aspiring entrepreneurs, starting a business will seriously strain a relationship and distance will only add to the difficulty. And to take FareHarbor’s beginning to another level, at 30 years old, I slept on my brother’s 21-year-old girlfriend’s couch (which was at least 6 inches too short) for more than 3 months to save money.

Amazingly, before launching our product, we already had a committed customer, North Shore Catamaran. So it was with much trepidation that our small team of five — a San Francisco-based development team of three flying between SF and Hawaii and my brother and I in Hawaii — launched FareHarbor on February 8, 2013. On day one, my brother and I committed to filling all of the holes that the product team couldn’t fill. We were the automated manifest emails to captains and crew, reminder emails to guests, etc. In the early days, FareHarbor was a shell and we were the filling. The backend was basically my brother and I doing everything by hand (reminds me of Kramer pretending to be ‘Moviefone’ in a Seinfeld episode).

Immediately after launching our story took another weird twist. One of North Shore Catamaran’s reservationists was having issues with her cellphone data plan and couldn’t keep pace with the new online bookings. My brother and I made an instantaneous decision to offer to take over the phones for free. Suddenly, we were in a way... our own client.

Over the course of the next 5 months, our development team built out the FareHarbor platform around the Hester brothers’ use. It’s why our software has had the ability to rebook or cancel and refund customers from the beginning—our first week the North Shore of Oahu was faced with 40 mile per hour winds and 30 foot waves and we needed to change every passenger’s reservation.

Of course, being reservationists didn’t stop us from seeking out new clients. In fact, for the first 5 months, I served as a full-time reservationist for North Shore Catamaran, full-time sales, onboarding, 24/7 support rep for FareHarbor, and half-time marketing and business development consultant for OvaScience, Inc., a leading female fertility biotechnology company. Fortunately, the couch made as good of an office as it did a bed.

The next 7 months weren’t much different. With my job description cut to just jack-of-all trades for FareHarbor, there was still more to do than time in the day. At this point, my brother and I were filling completely different software functionality holes manually. Now we were the invoicing, transportation manifests, and in some cases, “automatic” price changes (anything “automatic” in the early days was us).

We sacrificed everything to make sure the product succeeded. This is not to say that our product team was slacking by any means—they were pumping code out with lightning speed. But still, we decided as a group to stay small and lean and profitable. These constraints made us focus on functionality fundamentals. By December of 2013, FareHarbor was the original team of 5 and only had ~25 clients. But we had a lot of knowledge. As a group we had answered thousands of calls and entered thousands of reservations for more than just North Shore Catamaran. Our deskwork now included a parasail operator, scuba company, horse polo field, and even check in staff for a beach cat.

Growing Up: 2014, The Year of Change

I had 2 big goals for the first half of 2014. 1: Scale FareHarbor. 2: Run the Boston Marathon. As a witness to the Boston marathon bombing the previous year, I had been granted a special entry to the race. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the chance to walk for training let alone run.

Nevertheless, I hopped on a plane that April for what would be a very fortuitous meeting. With only a couple of mainland clients at the time, I thought I’d try my luck at sales during my trip back to Boston and sent a few introductory emails. I had one positive response and scheduled the meeting. Wanting some sales tips, I invited the only sales guru I knew in the area, my sophomore college roommate, to join me.

Our meeting with the potential client couldn’t have gone any better. In fact, it went so well that halfway through our potential client turned into something more when he asked, “Can I make an investment?” On our drive home, I could tell my roommate’s wheels were turning by the look on his face. When we got back to his house, he turned to me and said, “I can do this.” Buoyed by his enthusiasm, I gutted out the marathon the next day in 4:28.

Overnight, FareHarbor had a Chief Commercial Officer and head of mainland sales. With 10 total employees and 86 clients, our developers were even calling us a “thing.” It was time to start organizing our group into roles. With little guidance, we set preliminary responsibilities and expectations, and started running harder and faster. By July, my brother and I were officially not the support team. Looking back, our titles and “catch-up” meetings make me laugh. Even though we all had set jobs, we continued to all be sales, onboarding, and 24/7 support reps. More people only meant more of us doing everything.

That August we were on a product tear and rolling out new functionality to help our team grow out of being the backend hole filler. We finally took the time to build out scalable software instead of functional software. Within a few months, the results were noticeable. By late fall, we were a team of 30 and had a total of 300 clients.

2015 to...

What’s been amazing is that our growth rate has stayed fairly consistent from 2013. And what has been scary is that in absolutes, we are doing more in an hour than we used to do in a day, and more in a day than we used to do in a month.

In the past 8 months, our whole team has had to scale to keep pace with new clients and new employees. Everybody’s role has changed. Our bi-weekly management meetings are now about organizational challenges instead of that support call one of us took 2 minutes ago. It’s frightening. We even have in-house HR!

But, the excitement has never wavered. We’re all still flying by the seat of our pants and hanging on. More importantly, our enthusiasm for our clients continues to grow. At every opportunity, I’ll still step into a check-in booth to hangout with FareHarbor users for a day and watch the software at work.

As of today, we have a team of 75 employees, over 1,000 clients, and are still maintaining profitability. We continue to reinvest every dollar into our product, service, and our customers. We’re going to the moon and back and we’re taking every client with us.

How?

Are you still wondering how we’ve done it? It’s the difference between what we think the best characteristics of a reservation system are versus some of our well-known competitors. My top 3 things to look for in a service provider:

An endless devotion to their clients (Will they do whatever it takes for you?)

Functionality and Product (Was the product designed with an “industry insider’s knowledge?”)

A #cantstopwontstop attitude (Is their work more than a job? Or are they just a bunch of smart people looking for an exit?)

What’s Next?

We have some game-changing announcements coming within the next few weeks, and they’ve all been made possible because of our clients. Nobody knows where the future will take us. But I am positive that if we maintain our culture, stick with the original game plan of always putting our clients first, and continue to produce the best product, it will all work out.

Want to learn how we started from our CTO’s perspective? Visit zachsnow.com

We're still hiring @ FareHarbor. Join our team of 50+ and you'll get to live the #hilife for at least a week a year (yes, that's a free trip to Hawaii and your own 1 bedroom apartment on the ocean). To learn more and apply, visit FareHarbor.com/jobs

Creating Company Culture

I’ve always been much more math/science oriented than raw emotion when it comes to working with people in everyday life or business. Why? It might be that I’ve always excelled in the sciences vs. the arts. Math grades always made more sense to me than English—they were black and white, wrong or right.

For the longest time, my brain has worked programmatically in all situations. Or so I thought. Tonight, just under half the team at FareHarbor (25 of us in 4 times zones) worked well into the night over pizza, thai, beer and wine to get a new client live. And it made me think, where did this amazing culture and #cantstopwontstop attitude originate? There certainly wasn’t a formula that allowed us to hire such a remarkable group of people. And there doesn’t even seem to be a formula of snacks, salary, office space or responsibility driving the culture either.

To break down my nerdy reliance on math to the core, I’d look at my dating life. I broke up with a girlfriend of 5 years in October and ever since, I’ve found myself reading those awful articles on when to kiss a girl, take her home, introduce her to your parents, etc. For some reason, I’ve thought the answer to moving past heartbreak and finding the “one” was as easy as solving for A in A+B=C.

It’s odd to admit that my personal life has felt so science oriented while my business life has been driven by so much passion/art. But it’s the truth. And the juxtaposition couldn’t have been clearer than tonight. Before rolling into the office to begin the all-nighter of work with the team, I received a call from a girl that I thought was amazing and wonderful. She wanted to let me know that our relationship wouldn’t work out.

Honestly, I was surprised. According to all those stupid magazines, I’d done everything right. But the reality was, I’d done everything wrong. I’d acted like a robot—not me. I was too busy making sure that everything went to plan—but whose? Should I kiss her? Buy her flowers? Why not see what Men’s Journal says...? When did impulse and emotion die and “rationalization” take over? I’m not sure, but early enough to kill off any hope of ever seeing this girl again.

On the flipside, when I walked into the office an hour later carrying a 12 pack of beer, a bottle of wine, and a Domino’s order, I was greeted by something incredible—a team of dedicated and happy employees. Why was it so awesome? Because tonight’s exercise in getting a client live was purely optional. Nobody was required to dedicate their night to helping the company.

So why even make the connection between my dating life and the culture of FareHarbor (other than one seems to be going poorly and the other so well)? It’s because I’ve easily read more about dating since my breakup than I have about creating company culture. Sure, I’m the owner of all of those “must reads” for entrepreneurs that want to grow their business (Work Rules by Laszlo Bock; The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz; etc.). But all those books have one thing in common; I’ve only made it to paragraph 2.

Now, I’m not trying to knock what’s in the remaining chapters, because I am sure it would be insightful knowledge. Instead, I’m admitting that all of FareHarbor’s culture has been created completely organically. There has been no formula and no advisor.

How have we done it without a guidebook or formula? Well, for fiduciary responsibility sake, I’ll admit that we have a financial model that we follow to make sure we can afford to buy something or hire somebody. But beyond that, it’s pure emotion and passion for what we do from the top down. Our employees know that I am one of the loudest, sailor-mouthed, and fired up people they will ever meet. Our employees can feel how excited every person in a management position is for our business. And everybody at the top busts their ass too.

So what’s my advice for the aspiring business owner? Put the book down, do some basic math on how much you can afford on your team, and let your emotions do the rest. At some point you were an eternal optimist—let everybody see it, and don’t hide. Your business was built on your back and there is no reason to change now. Let your heart shine and your true self be visible to your team. Only then, can you create the foundation for a team that’s as excited about your product as you are.

And to my future dating self? Well, stop reading those stupid articles first. And why hide who you really are? You’re a foul mouthed-sailor, ironman, and just crazy enough to have started a business that’s more than 50 strong. You’ve already taken one of the craziest leaps—does it get scarier than that? There’s no formula for perfect so take a risk, act like you, and have fun. You have nothing to lose.

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Lawrence Hester