There are two books Paul Allen, CEO of WorldVitalRecords.com and FamilyLink.com, recommends to individuals to read before they talk with him about starting a business. The first book is The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki, and the second book is Love is the Killer App by Tim Sanders. I read both of these books when I came aboard Paul’s team. And as I read, I came to understand Paul’s way of doing business, as well as how my mind should be focused to work with him.

Yesterday several members of our team had the opportunity to hear Guy Kawasaki speak at Salt Lake Community College to an overflow crowd of students, mentors, entrepreneurs, hopefuls, and admirers.

Takeaways? Yes. We are in a growth pattern here at WorldVitalRecords.com and FamilyLink.com and I was interested in what Guy had to say about taking services and products to a next step. Well, he didn’t call it “next step.” He called it “jump curves.” And better yet—“create a new curve.” So…his advice is NOT to produce slightly better products or to “duke it out on the same curve” with similar types of companies, but go deep, intelligent, complete, and elegant with what we do.

And our team is of a similar mind. We are working to “go deep” in the genealogy and family history space with “INNOVATIVE TOOLS TO CONNECT FAMILIES”—our new mantra (which Guy highly recommends for a company), as opposed to a mission statement (which Guy highly discounts).

Of course Guy had themes for some of his suggestions, like “Don’t worry, be crappy!” and “Don’t be afraid to polarize” all with the intent of helping us see what is needed to really innovate and get funding.

He said that the “new way” to get funding is to use as little money as possible to get where the “dogs are eating the food.” He said that in order to get a higher valuation for a company, organizations need to “show up with a growth history rather than growth projection”—show where a curve already happening.

Well, we are now at a point where we can show that the curve is already happening. We are now poised to jump curves and create new ones.