You often see aspiring entrepreneurs reading books by Jack Welch, Donald Trump, Bill Gates, etc. I can see how their advice might be valuable if you’re steering a business that’s got tons of cash and thousands of employees, but how much does what they write really apply to small businessmen and entrepreneurs?

When you’re coming out of the gate, megamanagers and celeb CEOs aren’t the best guides. How much do they really remember about starting out anyway? Is it really valuable to learn about Six Sigma techniques or when to layoff 10% of your workforce if you don’t even have a running business yet?

At this stage, what you really need to figure out is how to make it out of year one alive. Everything else is cart in front of horse.

Find stars in your own galaxy
A better idea: Find a star in your own galaxy to emulate. Seek out a company that has some valuable similarities to what you do and watch. The ideal candidate is a person or company that’s 1) done great things and 2) actually resembles you in some way.

So if you’re starting a t-shirt business, follow people like Threadless. If you want to open a kick-ass food store, pay attention to Zingerman’s. If you’re a design firm looking to sell products on the side, watch Coudal. Compare and contrast yourself to pioneers in your own niche rather than the world at large.

I presented a slideshow of Skateboard Graphics to my co-workers while we were in Maine a few weeks ago. Skateboarding and its culture had a strong influence on me during my adolescence. Skateboarding is the main reason why I pursued a career in Art and Design actually. It turns out that a few of my co-workers also had fond memories of skating. Mark Imbriaco used to skate and Jeffrey Hardy still does. Jason Fried used to light his Vision Gator deck on fire and ride it down the street. Now that’s hardcore!

Powell Peralta, Santa Cruz, etc.

Ah the ‘80s. The graphics of V. Courtlandt Johnson and Jim Phillips are iconic. Menacing, horrid, grimey. Punk Rock and Metal. I would spend endless hours drawing skeletons and dragons in my school notebooks. During this time, all graphics were influenced by this style. However, as the 80’s came to a close that would change.

World Industries

The graphics for World Industries changed the industry. They were different than the usual skulls and gore that were popular at the time. Artists Marc McKee and Sean Cliver introduced an element of wit and pop-culture commentary that would take the entire industry in a different direction. World Industries gave birth to Big Brother magazine which in turn gave birth to Jackass.

Mark Gonzales and Neil Blender

I loved it when skaters did their own board graphics. I should have also included Ed Templeton in the presentation too. These guys weren’t just great skaters but also incredible visual artists in their own right.

Chocolate

Chocolate is a company that broke away from World Industries. Their graphics continue to innovate. Artists like Evan Hecox take seemingly mundane images like guitars and soda bottles and elevate them to art by putting them on skateboards.

More…

Obviously this is all just scratching the surface. There is so much more to explore with skate graphics and skate culture. Here’s my presentation below. I’d love to hear your stories about skateboarding and how skate culture has influenced you.

I spent a few days out in the country last weekend. The city may have the energy, but the country helps me recharge.

Something I really noticed this time was just how dark dark is in the country. The view through the window at night is empty. It might as well be painted black.

In Chicago you can’t find total darkness outside. Nighttime is tinted orange. Street lights, lamps, passing cars, reflections — they all dye the dark. When you look out the window at night in the city you can what’s outside.

It’s not any better or worse, it’s just different.

You also can’t really see the nighttime sky in the city. You can look up, but you can’t see what’s really up there. You may catch a few lucky stars and that moon, but there a million things missing.

All of this reminds me that everything is relative. Dark here isn’t dark there even though it’s nighttime in both places. The sky there isn’t the sky here. Even though you’re looking up at the same thing, they aren’t the same.

That’s a good thing to be reminded of from time to time.

In “Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User,” David Pogue points out the difference between common knowledge and universal knowledge. (The piece, which includes a list of seemingly obvious tips, was the most emailed article at the NY Times site for a few days.)

One of these days, I’m going to write a book called, ‘The Basics.’ It’s going to be a compendium of the essential tech bits that you just assume everyone knows — but you’re wrong.

(I’ll never forget watching a book editor at a publishing house painstakingly drag across a word in a word processor to select it. After 10 minutes of this, I couldn’t stand it. ‘Why don’t you just double-click the word?’ She had no clue you could do that!)”

Many readers chimed in with other “basics” that they assumed every computer user knew — but soon discovered that what’s common knowledge isn’t the same as universal knowledge.

It’s easy for those of us immersed in the tech world to forget what it’s like for normal folks to use a computer. For example, it’s tempting to think “we should just do this in Twitter” while forgetting that most normal people have no clue what Twitter is (...or 37signals for that matter).

And if you’re only trying to reach a tech savvy audience, it’s fine to write these folks off. But the bigger an audience you want to reach, the more you need to remind yourself that a large part of your target group is missing knowledge that you think is obvious.

Sequoia Capital’s “R.I.P. Good Times” deck made the rounds on the web last week. It’s Sequoia’s take on what happened with the economy and what their portfolio companies should do to weather the storm.

What was their advice before the downturn?

The analysis is good and the advice sound, but it also begs the question: What was their advice before the downturn?

Now they are saying you should:

• Control spending
• Throttle back growth assumptions
• Cut earnings assumptions
• Focus on quality
• Lower risk
• Reduce debt

They also say that you “need to become cash flow positive” and “spend every dollar as if it were your last.”

So what was their old advice? Did they encourage their companies to spend more than they had, skimp on quality, grow grow grow, take on more risk, and accumulate more debt?

Was being cash flow positive not a favored strategy before the downturn? If it wasn’t then, when was it going to be? If you weren’t in a position to make money when times were good how are you supposed to be in a position to make money when times are bad?