Bee-Ess-O-Meter

Aging is full of Bee Ess.

We gain knowledge, experience, stories and a lot of gray hair. We can’t stop aging, though the dollar volume spent on trying to is profound (estimated at $191 billion). Why not enjoy the aging and surround yourself with people who enjoy it too?

How does one do this? Find an alternative value for your years of experience.

Here’s something noted as a bonus for the aged: a highly tuned Bee-Ess-O-Meter. The more time you spend around people, in an industry or just working through challenging problems, the more you tune your Bee-Ess-O-Meter. Sometimes you let things past the meter, just because you can and there's no good reason to let the meter beep. Consciously, you know there are plenty of little things that get by the meter, like the number of insects in our food supply -- it is what it is. It is the rest of the situations in life where the more life experience you have, the more likely the meter is a siren in your ears.

We have structured our firm to keep the industries we work with diverse. This means our ears get to filter through industry-specific and agnostic culture, knowledge and language. The biological impact, beyond the grey hairs, is a tuning focused on common words, visual language, strategies and tactics.

Yet here’s where it gets challenging: when we cross wires between the “Don’t-Get-It-O-Meter" and the Bee-Ess-O-Meter. Knowledge is expanding at an ever increasing pace, so as we age, we can either keep up or fall behind. This is when the wires get crossed. But just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean the meter should ring, yet it does. So as we age we have to remain curious about what is new, what is changing and how the world functions today versus when we were much younger. Having an aged mind with curious youthfulness is the ideal mix for aging in the creative field.

So now you might be starting to wonder - how does this apply to me and my venture, job or future role in a venture? Well, here it is. Three things you can do to increase the odds of your new product, venture or offering being successful:

1. Get a Bee-Ess experienced board of advisors, a group of people who have seen it and done it, with the “it” being something close but not exactly what you’re doing.
2. Stiffen your spine and flex your muscles. The advice should increase the strength of your decisions. It will also require you to have a spine when the advice and decision don’t match. Advisors who have your desired experience are more likely to have empathy for what it will take to stiffen your spine and make the best decision.
3. Know the value of an hour is not equal in all hands. You might get $350 worth of hourly advice that saves your venture $350,000 in costs, or $150 worth that provides just that in value. The value of the advice should be measured by the Bee-Ess-O-Meter, not the hourly rate.

Surrounding yourself with the Bee-Ess aged can be the start of something great and will certainly reduce the chances that you’ll paint yourself in a corner or step on your poncho (two other metaphors we’ll cover in a future post).

When you need a bit of advice, reach out to Kitty Hart, Aaron Keller or Brian Adducci. They have plenty of grey hair (though one of us may be coloring it) and highly tuned Bee-Ess-O-Meters.