Alex Garden lives in the Seattle area, where he works at Microsoft. But he got his start as a tech entrepreneur in Vancouver. It was as the founder of a startup called iValet that he learned an important lesson about truly listening to yourself.
"It [affects] how well you listen to partners, suppliers and advisers, which is huge," Garden said.
"It gives you a good sense [of] whether you're in love with your idea because it's clever or whether you're in love with it because it's the right solution."
Garden said he fell into the trap of falling in love with a clever idea at iValet. The company produced software to allow parking companies to use all the spots in a lot and get the most value for the best spots.
"It was an amazing technical solution, and it worked," he said.
"But going into the business, people who I had worked with as advisers from the parking industry told me I would have a hellaciously difficult time going to market, not because of the viability of the design, but because of the private parking business."
That traditional business model rewards parking management companies that are conservative and cost-conscious. Taking a risk on something new isn't part of that business culture.
"I thought at the time, 'You know what guys? That's great advice, thank you, but I know better, I'm the technology person and technology can solve problems,'" Garden said.
But Garden ended up having to shut down the startup, and only through dumb luck was he able to make some money from it through selling off intellectual property to larger software companies.
"I don't think that in retrospect that advice would have prevented me from going forward," he said, "but I would have gone forward differently."
On developing self-awareness: "One of the things I'd say is that the more well-developed your skill of listening to yourself is, your overall self-awareness, there's almost a direct correlation between how self-aware you are and how successful [you are]. That's true no matter how you define success. … It manifests in how well you listen to yourself and how you understand your balance. It manifests in how well you relate to the organization that you work for, and understanding whether your needs are being met, and being in a position to watch other people's body language and understand if they're stressed." •
