I left work early and wandered in 30 minutes before closing. Now, I’ve worked in services industries before, and despise people who walk in right before closing, so I made it clear that my visit was simply exploratory and I was unprepared to take action – I just needed 15 minutes of their time. I was interested in opening up a “business” account at a local bank – one of the larger ones in the US.

The banker I sat down with was friendly and seemed genuinely interested in helping me. He began asking me if I had a corporate entity established, what my Federal Tax ID was, and where I would be conducting my business activity. Things were going great.

Then, he asked “Tell me about your business” … and that’s where the differences in our thinking became apparent.

I responded, “Well, I run a lot of startup experiments, and I’d like to separate the costs of these experiments from my personal account.” The look on his face said it all – he was extremely perplexed and signaled waves of doubt.

“Starup experiments?” he replied.

“Yes, well defined experiments that validate or invalidate different assumptions I have about the business model.”

He then asked, “So … tell me about your experiments?” I went on to explain a particular experiment that would help me assess market demand through a “bottom up” approach. I talked about the various inbound marketing tactics I would use – video content marketing, blogging about the problem, email list building, social media marketing, Google Ad Words, etc. – to drive traffic and measure how many people were filling out my web form asking to share additional information.

He then wanted to know “who my customers were” and I responded, “I have no idea, I am searching for one”. I said I had some assumptions, but was more interested in collecting some data before making any hard and fast decision on who exactly were my customers. Besides, my first “guess” was probably wrong.

Things weren’t going well – I was getting agitated with the skeptical tone he was using when asking me questions. Then it happened – he asked me for a business plan.

I immediately stopped him and said that the most I was willing to do is share my current business model canvas, but that I was not going to write a business plan just to open up an account. He didn’t like my response, and was probably caught off guard, then pressed me further to conduct market research and develop financial projections. I then used a line I learned from Steve Blank. I said, “You know, no business plan survives first contact with customers, right?”

The banker then grinned and moved back and forth in his seat and said that “He” understood that, but the bank would still require a formal business plan before opening an account.

I stood up, thanked him for his time, and walked out.

He is a big fish in a small pond – and he is perfectly comfortable with that. He knows more “one-liners” – ranging from snippets of wisdom, snippets of insults, and snippets of inspiration. Anyone who has spent more than an hour around him has undoubtedly heard one of them.

I could write stories for days about him, but instead, I want to share three that all relate to something he truly loves – music and singing and being the Rockstar he never was.

1. School Rides in the Hammer Knocker

For more mornings than I can recall, my two younger brothers and I would pile into the back bench seat of my Dad’s Ford Bronco – he’d nicknamed it the “Hammer Knocker” – and we’d be tucked in a silly row starry eyed and ready to go to school.

Now, everyone who knows my Dad knows he loves to sing – especially in front of people – and especially after a few drinks. But this is where I first began to realize how much he loved singing.

As we pulled on to the long road leading to Clay Springs Elementary, he’d start – with unwavering consistency – at the same point every day. Just as we’d pull around the parking lot loop past the fence of the main school entrance it would begin. My dad – Papa John, Juan Carlos Fuerte de Brazo, PJ, Big Daddy, BD, Ducky – would warm up his voice before singing a cheerful little tune he liked to sing before dropping us off and going to work.

Like some Italian Opera singer preparing back stage he’d start:

“Mee, Mee, Mee, Mee, Meeeeeeee. Ut ughem. Excuse me. Mee, Mee, Mee, Mee, Mee, Mee, Meeeeeeee”

It was hilarious, calming through consistency, and built up just enough excitement before the school day.

Then suddenly, with a large sweeping breath of confident assertiveness, and just the right amount of humility, he’d begin – and we all of course followed.

“Oh what a wonderful morning, Oh what a beautiful day! I’ve got a wonderful feeling – everything’s going my way!”

It was great. My Dad was great. I thought it was really great.

He seemed to always make the song last and finish right in sync with when the “Hammer Knocker” rolled right to a stop in front of our school’s hallway.

I mean, what a way to start each day. I hate to sing, but man, I hope to sing songs to my kids one day.

2. Benny & the Jets

He was not designed and built to sing this song. It is that simple. John Armstrong knows “Benny & the Jets” by Elton John, but it is one of the few songs that he can’t sing.

We were all at the beach for a weekend, Ormond beach to be specific. Staying at the New Port Beach Motel. It was our favorite and we always looked forward to our visits.

But from there on my memory is a bit spotty – so I’ll do my best – but from what I recall. My Dad put in a request to sing “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals.  However, when this song came on, the DJ made a mistake and called another man up. This large bearded man with dark and deep set up walked up and took the microphone. He began to sing my Dad’s song request.

Now, this man had the deepest voice I’ve ever heard. When he started singing, the walls shook as his emitted vocal cords banged themselves back and forth through out. It was scary and impressive. The song finished to a round of applause and then, the DJ called up my Dad for next song.

The next song was “Benny & the Jets”, yet being the sport that he is, he went up on stage and grasped the mic. Parts of this song are just too high for my Dad to sing. We had the distinct and embarrassing opportunity to watch and listen to him sing and flounder and try to stretch his voice to new octaves. He was hilarious. This experience was vague and short lived and we still talk about it to this day. It was this strange and intimate experience my family shared and we’ll laugh about it forever.

3. Steppenwolf

“Get cha motor runnin’. Head out on the highway. Lookin’ for adventure. Whatever comes my way.”

Sometimes I felt like this song – this great song – would seem to always begin to play just as we were turning the corner off of Wekiva Springs Road and onto Votaw.

And every time it did, the drumming on the dashboard would begin. The contained energy my Dad had been holding within would begin pouring out through his drumstick fingertips.

He’d sing and belt out this song from his core, channeling so much emotion. It was powerful and real and really meant something to him – just like Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” and “Thunder Road”. The emotion he exuded when my Dad sang was palpable. I can still feel it today and look forward to it when I occasionally – and not often enough – go home.

Often, I think my Dad was supposed to be a Rockstar. He certainly has the charisma, just enough bravado and self-confidence to have been one. However, he turned out to be something far greater – a fantastic Father. Both someone whom I can look to for examples of what to do and what not to do. He will be the first to tell you he isn’t perfect – but that he always did his best. And beyond doing one’s best, what more could you ask for from a man?

I am fortunate enough to have a great father and I will love him forever – Happy Father’s Day BD.

Three years later, he published a sequel and changed the title: Games People Play. Maybe now you’ve heard of it?

The book discusses how infants need physical attention, else they “fall into an irreversible mental and physical decline.” He then goes on to argue that adults also need physical attention – yet are willing to substitute physical contact with others for symbolic emotional “strokes”. These “strokes” can be a Facebook “like” on our status update or a “Wow, your hair looks nice today!” or a “re-tweet” of our blog post. These “strokes” are like little tiny shots of dopamine to our brain. They make us feel good.

Now, we all desire intimacy, and loneliness is not something that feels good. This is why we engage in acts of “social intercourse” – even if it is negative or harmful to us – because as humans we were not designed to be alone (hence the need for physical contact). Yet “alone” doesn’t necessarily mean physical isolation from others. We can be surrounded by people daily, but if we are not a good communicator, we can feel the dark grasps of loneliness pull at us. We might be “emotional constipated” – as more than one person has called me – and live in a state of loneliness because we have difficulty sharing how we really feel with others.

Eric Berne argues that it is because of our need for intimacy – we engage in what he calls “games”. Berne defines as “game” as:

an ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well defined, predictable outcome.

Much of Berne’s theory evolved from Freudian psychoanalysis and he believed that within each person, there are three “ego states”. The three states are as following:

Parent: the attitudes and thinking of a paternal figure

Adult: the adult-like rationality, objectivity, and acceptance of truth

Child: the stances and fixations of a child

When we play a “game” we are within one of these three states and each “game” is played to satisfy some hidden motivation and yields a payoff. Unfortunately within each “game” there can only be one person who “wins” and one who “loses”.

Yet, we have an alternative. We can choose not to play “games”.

As we grow into adulthood and enter into another state of mind, we have a tendency to shed our self-assurance, spontaneity, and curiosity – for fear of what society and others may think – because we’ve been conditioned by “conventional wisdom” as to what is “right” and “wrong”. Yet, by becoming more comfortable within our own skin, we can begin to reject “games” for real intimacy.

The line read:

Keep your home open.

Beautiful in it’s brevity, isn’t it?

It made me think back to a time when my friends and I would wake up from a long day of swimming and wrestling in the pool. We would splash around our backyard pool playing “shark”, “marco polo” or some other creative scheme we’d devise from the early morning until well into the warm Floridian dusk. Exhausted little bodies — sprawled out on whatever bed or couch was available — would awake to my Mom cheerfully making a “power breakfast”. Now for those unfortunate souls, who have not yet had the distinct pleasure of eating my Mom’s “power breakfast”, I’m sorry. It is just one of those things that warrants a vist into Apopka. She’d make enough cheese grits to feed an army, turn a small pig turned into bacon, and serve up an endless amount of scrambled eggs. Often times there would be pancakes or French toast, country potatoes and of course, gallons of orange juice. I think my parents must have spent a small fortune feeding my friends breakfast each weekend.

This of course is one anecdote, but throughout my youth and with unwavering consistency, my parents kept our home open. Thus, creating a culture where everyone either started the day or ended the night at the Armstrongs.

I am so thankful that my parent’s designed a home where I could bring over my friends (almost always without permission) and created an environment where anyone would feel comfortable stopping over — for whatever reason. I can say with a fair amount of confidence, that anyone I hung out with through the ages of middle school and high school knew the passcode to open our garage door. I can recall countless random knocks at our garage door during the middle of dinner, and next thing I knew, we had another guest joining us for dinner. It was always great and we were always fortunate enough to have an extra pork-chop to share.

In creating this wonderful and welcoming home environment, my parents always knew who I was hanging around with, being influenced by, and could put names to faces. There was never a “Well, who is this kid” moment.

As we grew up and became relatively more mature, my friends became friends with my parents. I honestly can’t think of a single person who does not like hanging out with my parents — they are so much fun and give freely. They don’t take themselves too seriously and really enjoy life with the people around them. I think my friend Reed summed it up best, “if you aren’t having fun at the Armstrong’s place, then you’re are doing something wrong.”

My parent’s have made significant sacrifices and investments in my brothers and I, but also into each of our friends growing up. I attribute this to the ever open home they generously shared. While it has quieted down over the years, it will always remain open to those looking for a White Russian, a judgment-free conversation, or a warm cup of tea. Feel free to stop over, we keep our home open.

Take for instance people who borrow from ‘payday’ lenders – they always act in their own self-interest, and in fact pay quite a bit of interest for doing so. In most states, ‘Payday’ lenders are regulated by usury laws – of which prevent the practice of making unethical or immoral loans. Yet, they still provide working capital at rates of interest – rates of which anyone who was not in dire straits would scoff at. Yet, time and time again, people revert to them as a primary vehicle to manage their money. Why though?

I make the argument that people decide to borrow at such rates, not because they possess the financial aptitude to calculate the effective rates of interest and compare these prices in a marketplace, but because it involves their survival. People will always act in their own self-interest to survive. This is quite simply why a broke man will always take a loan – it is a glimmer of hope and future opportunity.

If something is required for survival, then no matter how costly something is (in this case access to working capital), it will therefore be in a person’s “best interest” to obtain access to that item. The access to and the high cost of borrowing this working capital is required for survival and thus tolerated.

People engage in this ‘survival borrowing’ to smooth over their consumption spending, required to maintain their day-to-day life or to provide one for others. This could mean using the money to feed oneself or paying school fees of a family member or getting medical care for a loved one that is sick. People will take any risk at any cost to protect and provide for themselves and their family – and who can blame them?

The outrageous effective rate of interest paid is not a deterrent to someone in survival mode. Again, this is why a broke man will take any loan at any price.

It was my first time actually participating in a Startup Weekend event since early 2011. As anyone who knows me could’ve expected, I pitched an idea related to lending money – at “fair and reasonable” rates given my background in microfinance and support for MFTransparency. It felt good again to stretch myself and share an idea I had for a business in front of a room of strangers – my pitch was polished and spoken with supreme confidence. I quickly put together a really, really great team – consisting of designers, software engineers, and even a tax attorney.

We were well on our way to granting money through a web application that simplified a user’s loan application experience through a clean user interface and automation. Beyond this, we had an algorithm that assessed risk and would provide the user an instant pre-approval or rejection. We encountered a series of state by state usury laws that prevented money lending at outrageous interest rates — a concept confirmed by our own consciences. Thus, we decided to scrap the concept of lending and instead focus on the quantification of a person’s shared social capital to predict their likelihood of loan repayment. We soon realized, that there was a real business opportunity in ‘Social Scoring as a Service’.

The bytes of data you share and the patterns in which you share them are indicative of your perceived willingness to repay on a loan. We believed that even those whom might seem unworthy of a loan when viewed through the lens of traditional banking risk assessment standards, could still be eligible for a small loan big enough to create personal opportunity. We were assessing risk beyond an individual’s capacity to repay. You remember George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life, right?

After our final pitch, my team and I ended the weekend having had a ton of fun, but still left with additional assumptions – are people willing to share their data to qualify for loans or insurance at a lesser rate? Do banks and insurance agencies spend time ‘Googling’ applicants? Could we really assess risk and predict a borrower’s willingness to repay? These were all questions I was anxious to find answers for.

After the event, I spoke with my college roommate and friend who works at one of the largest insurance agencies in the world – “Hey, do you ever ‘Google’ an applicant during your underwriting process?” His response was chilling and matter-of-fact, “Well, of course. I try to find whatever ‘dirt’ I can about a person.”

Whoa, right? When was the last time you checked November 13th 2008 at 3:47pm on your Facebook ‘timeline’ to see what you posted? Or better yet, what someone else posted? Are you comfortable with a friend of a friend who is underwriting your insurance or approving your loan application seeing that?

The sharing of these delicate and permanent pieces of our lives can be frightening, for they offer a peek towards where we are headed as evidenced by where we came from.

Yet, we should not be afraid or ashamed to share such a fundamental component of ourselves, because the path of our parents does not dictate where we will go or what we will do with our own lives.

By the very nature of living, we descend upon a path that they never had the luxury or time to travel. We are propped forward to read and observe and steal the best of their style, while carrying the cross of their flaws – from which we must learn and improve upon.

Each day is a new day and our own. A life filled with new opportunity and intersections of chance to be inspired and take action on the change we want.

We should be equally anxious to share with others where we came from, as where we are going.

The event kicked-off with an inspiring talk given by Rick Perreault of Unbounce. Rick talked through the importance of getting out of the building and talking to potential customers and not building a product that does not solve a problem people are willing to pay for. His no non-sense approach and pragmatic advice seemed to really resonate with teams as evidenced by the amount of customer discovery that took place during the weekend.

Afterwards we shifted focus and played a game of ‘Half-Baked’ to help shake attendee jitters before pushing ahead right into Startup Weekend’s infamous ‘pitch-fire’. We had several ideas pitched and ended up with four teams ranging in size of 5 – 8 individuals. Several attendees had previous Startup Weekend experience from Vancouver and began executing immediately.

During the rest of the event teams worked late into the night – engaging with Coaches, writing code, and constantly iterating through their minimum viable products. From time to time teams would take short walks for some fresh British Columbian air and a cup of Tim Horton’s world-famous coffee.

As I alluded to earlier, there was a strong emphasis on Customer Discovery, and the Lead Organizer – Evan Wilms – did an incredible job challenging teams by asking very probing questions about each team’s value proposition and customer segments. He clearly understood the importance of finding product/market fit and contributed valuable advice to teams.

I helped coach teams with their final pitches as they scrambled to polish off their final presentations before presenting to a stacked judging panel – consisting of several prominent local entrepreneurs and investors. Francois Deschenes who founded myBestHelper one year ago at Startup Weekend Vancouver sat as a judge and gave a very inspiring talk to attendees about the importance of maintaining momentum after the event.

Nearby in Vancouver, the increasing presence and success of local technology companies are attracting more risk capital (making flights across the border and into Silicon Valley as thing of the past), and the spillover effects on this investor community into Victoria are already getting noticed. Accelerate Tectoria is one local accelerator program leading the efforts to build a more vibrant and connected entrepreneurial community – offering educational programs and investment to aspiring entrepreneurs.

The strengthening of the risk capital community in British Columbia is a great signal for those entrepreneurs building products that service a global community, but don’t want to leave the idyllic landscape of the Pacific Northwest.

Some may look at others as wasteful in light of an opportunity they would wish upon themselves, others may laugh at the pursuits of another as childish and not solving of a grander problem; we all will certainly hate and fight against ideas and values large swaths of the planet hold as Truth, and many of us will never understand our neighbors. That said, we still wield free will over our actions in pursuit of an honest life in sync with our perceived purpose. An extreme example would be one’s willingness to relinquish their life in protest of gross forces squashing their pursuit of purpose. Through dissenting actions, they lived a honest life because when you think about it, what life is worth living if it falls outside of ideals we each believe as Truth?

I admire the men and women whose perception of purpose imbues their tangible daily actions, for it is not easy these days. They live lives in which they are unashamed of. They are the honest ones – living a life of selfishness or sacrifice – but at least living a life, once again, in sync with their perceived purpose.

Startup Weekend Organizing Teams are democratizers of entrepreneurship and builders of community – bringing together people from the fields of science, arts, technology, and business to create innovative solutions for local and global problems. They provide their communities a platform for experiential education to validate business ideas, form teams, and set entrepreneurial aspirations in motion. They are responsible for real businesses getting started. The ripple effects of their efforts will undoubtedly evoke economic change from the bottom up.

Earlier this month, Startup Weekend held the first of many Startup Retreats in the United Arab Emirates celebrating the efforts of Startup Weekend Organizing Teams. The purpose of the Retreat was to build stronger bonds between different entrepreneurial communities in the MENA region and amplify the impact Startup Weekend Organizing Teams deliver. The Retreat was fully sponsored by the Sharjah Tatweer Forum – proving their dedication to supporting the grassroots growth of entrepreneurship. I am incredibly grateful for their support.

I had the chance to finally meet people I have exchanged emails with for nearly two years and learn of the little stories of Startup Weekend success that collectively put a dent in the universe. As I boarded a plane back to the USA, I felt incredibly motivated to make sure Startup Weekend core operations continues to be responsive to the needs of Startup Weekend Organizing Teams – the people who are ultimately responsible for delivering the Startup Weekend experience to attendees in their communities.

In 2010, there were only 4 Startup Weekend events that took place in the MENA region; I expect to end 2012 with 40+ events. It has been a wonderful ride and I am optimistic for the future.