Paying Dues is Not Necessary, But Hard Work Is!

I never liked the idea of starting at the bottom of a hierarchy, doing grunt work, and incrementally getting more money and freedom, as I did my job well and played the proper politics. That’s partially why I’m an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurship allows you the freedom to do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, and have “unlimited” earning potential.

However, here’s the reality:

1. Most entrepreneurs spend more time working for themselves than they ever would for their boss.
2. Being a successful entrepreneur often requires you to work harder (stuff that’s outside of your comfort zone) than you ever would for someone else.

When you work for someone else, you’re given a job description and an estimate of how much you’ll have to work on a weekly basis. Of course, you may have to work more hours sometimes and do stuff out of your job description, but a rough ceiling is set.

When you’re an entrepreneur, there is no ceiling. You’re responsible for 100% of the result. On the other hand, you have the freedom to do whatever it takes to achieve that result. However, very often, what’s required is gaining new skill sets, going outside your comfort zone, spending your own money, and doing whatever else it takes.

This reality is very different from the one that’s painted in the media. I used to think that entrepreneurship was only about doing what I enjoyed 100% of the time, not having any challenges, and become rich overnight.

The problem was thatn when I tried to live the picture that the media painted, it didn’t work very well. I found myself resisting the hard work that would lead to growth, which made me feel guilty. It also meant that the business wasn’t growing, which meant we amassed tens of thousands in bad debt.

When I switched my paradigm away from purely passion to passion and purpose, my life completely changed personally and professionally. It’s a much harder life to live, but completely worth it in my mind.

I’ve seen many people stop being entrepreneurs because they are running into challenges, which is not fitting in with their paradigm of “living the dream effortlessly”. Unfortunately, they don’t realize that entrepreneurship has challenge after challenge and a great entrepreneur is able to constantly confront those challenges and recontextualize them as opportunities.

A great book you may want to check out is the War of Art.

16 Inspiration Strategies that Have Worked for Me

1. Setting a vision that truly resonates with me on an emotional level.
2. Surrounding myself with peers who are on the same path at a similar level and supporting each other in every way possible.
3. Reading autobiographies of people that I really admire.
4. Having short-term and long-term goals that are inspiring and believably achievable.
5. Being a parent.
6. Being part of a network of people doing stuff that really inspires me.
7. Being exposed to mentors who are many levels above where I am.
8. Making progress toward that vision.
9. Constantly learning new and more effective ways to realize my goals and vision.
10. Recontextualizing my experiences to be grateful and appreciative for every moment.
11. Creating an action plan that leads to my goals and vision.
12. Eating well.
13. Getting good sleep.
14. Taking time for relaxation.
15. Having deep family and friend relationships that are deeper than what I’m doing or have achieved.
16. Having faith in a higher power.

What To Expect When You’re Starting a Business (3 Misconceptions)

I completely believe in the potential of entrepreneurship as a vehicle for changing the world, creating wealth, having freedom, and pursuing your passion. At the same time, many people drastically overestimate how easy everything will be. By being more realistic, you can massively increase your odds of success and not give up too soon thinking that your business was a failure when it wasn’t.

1. You’re Initial Idea Will Not Work. When you’re starting a business, your idea is essentially a bunch of assumptions (ie – If I do x, then so-and-so will do y). Most of these assumptions will be wrong. Even successful experienced entrepreneurs will have many incorrect assumptions about their business idea. However, it’s ok!!!! If you realize this ahead of time, systematically test the assumptions, and don’t bet the farm upfront, you’ll be more than ok.
2. It Will Take More Than Twice as Long and Twice as Much Money to Get StartedPartially related to randomness and partially related to your assumptions being wrong, things will just take much longer and be more expensive than you think. If you give yourself lots of wiggle room, you’ll be ok.
3. Your Challenges Will Only Grow. As your business grows, the quantity and magnitude of your challenges will increase. If you think things like coming up with an idea are hard, wait until you start worrying about employees, making payroll, etc. You must completely recontextualize challenges as positive events and consciously choose them or you’ll go crazy. Solving challenges is the best way to learn and grow. Solving tough challenges gives you an advantage over current and potential competitors who may confront and not be able to overcome the same challenges. I see too many people give up when they face challenges thinking they’ve done something wrong.

Constant Maximum Personal Growth without Exception in Every Moment

A note to myself….

That is the vision for my life. Living this as a father, husband, son, social entrepreneur, and human being is the best way that I can make the maximum impact on the world and be fulfilled.

The plateau of wealth, materialism, fame, hedonism, and power are well-documented. After a certain point, each incremental improvement yields a smaller reward.

Growth is its own reward and its benefits multiply with each incremental improvement.

The dissolution of fear, greed, jealousy, anger, negativity, etc. is not easy and becomes progressively harder as bigger and bigger blocks are removed.

Sometimes there is nothing outward to show for personal improvement. Therefore, the need for recognition and approval for may have to be surrendered in order to stay focused and not default back to old behaviors.

I believe who we are echos more loudly through history than what we do.

As the famous basketball coach, John Wooden, said, “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.” – John Wooden

Books Are One of the Best Mentors You Can Have

What is the lowest cost way to quickly get great mentorship guaranteed?

Books!

On Amazon.com, you can buy the best books the human race has ever known on any topic, for between $.03 and $30. Or you can pick it up for free at the public library if its a classic.

There are three types of books that I personally find great for personal growth and success:

1. Autobiographies
2. Self-development
3. How-to

Autobiographies provide a step-by-step recounting of someone else’s journey in their own words. It really helps you get beyond what the media says about them and understand their worldview. Self-development books provide general principles for success based on research and/or personal experience. Finally, how-to books provide step-by-step advice on a how to accomplish a specific goal.

It’s too bad there is a stigma against books among young people. The real stigma is being forced to read books one doesn’t enjoy or benefit from by well-intentioned schools and parents.

We can’t control where we are born and who our parents are. Some of us are lucky and exposed to principles growing up that will have us be successful. Unfortunately, others are never exposed to these principles by parents or community. For these individuals, the right books (in-print or audio) are a second chance.

To Do Lists Generally Hold People Back

If we had all the time in the world, to do lists would be the perfect time management tool.

For the better or worse, we only have 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year, and around 70-80 years to live.

Furthermore, we consistently and drastically over-estimate what can be done in a given time period, because we don’t account for randomness and having less than 100% productivity.

With only a to do list and no accountability system, many people default to what is most urgent or what they want to do. This doesn’t create the best results.

A to do list is step 1 of 4.

Step 2 is dividing the to do list into what MUST get done and what is on the CRITICAL PATH to your most important goals. When creating MUST goals, it is important to be disciplined about not including would-be-nice goals. When creating CRITICAL PATH goals, one must work backwards from a general life vision, to specific goals, to specific actions that can be taken today that will most directly lead to the goals.

Step 3 is prioritizing the MUST and CRITCAL PATH action items and making more tough decisions about what you won’t have time to do. Realistically, you probably won’t be able to get all of them done as quickly as you’d hope, so having them prioritized helps you focus on the most important ones first.

Step 4 is scheduling and taking action on what’s most important first. Most people need some sort of accountability system to make this happen. A basic system includes sharing the actions with someone supportive and attaching a consequence to uncompleted actions and a reward to completed ones.

The Power of Mentorship – We All Should Have Lots of Them

Why Raising Children Is Fulfilling

This weekend I was at a seminar, and I randomly ended up sitting next to a student who had attended one of my talks two years ago. During my talk, I did an exercise where I connected people who could help each other. During dinner, he thanked me and told me he found his business partner that he still works with today during that session! Wow!!!! Amazing!!!!!

It meant a lot to hear that. It is nice to hear that one’s actions are making a difference.

The reality of speaking is that the impact is intangible and most people won’t track you down to share the impact you’ve had. In many ways, one must act on faith beyond simply measuring the audience’s initial reactions and people who come up to you at the end of the talk.

Raising a child is different. You’re with that child every single day for hours at a time. You see the little changes. You see him/her mimicking your actions. Your child literally would not be able to survive without you. Even if Halle were never to see me again, there would be a sense of fulfillment knowing that I helped make her life possible and was her care taker.

It is fascinating to observe my thoughts on family and career transform.

What I Learned After Lying Motionless in Dubai

Note: This entry is a journal entry to myself, which I’ve decided to share publicly…

I’ve spent the past few hours lying motionless on a hotel bed in Dubai.

My body hasn’t acclimated to the time difference yet, and it thinks it should be frolicking outside right now.

So, instead of fighting it, I’ve essentially chosen to meditate, despite constant pressure from the mind to relive every seemingly random moment of my life and philosophize about it.

The biggest virtue I will focus on in 2010 is surrendering my addiction to thoughts and stimulation.

The biggest addiction I’ve had in my life that I’ve conquered is addiction to sweets.

In high school, I used to have 1/4 of an Entenmann’s Marshmallow Iced Devil’s Food Cake every morning for breakfast. Then, I used to bring candy with me to school and eat it throughout the day. I was always “hungry”, I always carried food with me too. In reality, I was just having withdrawals from sugar.

Fast forward to today, ten years later. I’ve had a handful of desserts over the entire year, and it hasn’t really been that much of a struggle. I’ve been working on my diet since I was a freshman in college. I actually eat much less now. When I’ve needed to fast for 24 hours for my religion, it has been very easy.

One of the biggest reasons I wanted sweets in my life (beyond the addiction) was that I felt like having dessert was one of the best ways to suck the most joy out of life.

Today, I look at the world much differently. Addiction distorts one’s mind. If we feed our addiction, then we justify it. When we justify our addiction, it becomes invisible to us, which means we don’t appreciate its impact, and we don’t endeavor to solve it. Why else would people choose to eat foods that will without a doubt shorten their lives by decades in some cases?

Addiction takes away our freedom to act independently and think clearly. It takes away our ability to appreciate now, because we’re looking for our next fix constantly.

The biggest addiction of our generation is an addiction to constant stimulation. We get this through checking facebook a million times per day, watching our favorite TV show daily, constantly refreshing our email inbox, or just incessantly thinking about the past or future.

I used to feel that not having dessert was bad, because I looked at it as a loss of sweetness. In reality, it is the freedom from the need to have sweetness. Paradoxically, this sweetens every moment.

I now choose to have leverage over myself. The path out of stimulation addiction for me is giving myself the freedom and space to not think and therefore, be bored. We don’t realize it, but the discomfort of boredom has a major impact on our lives. We don’t fully appreciate it, because every time we start to experience it, we look for our next stimulation fix.

Erasing my food addiction didn’t mean stopping eating all food. It meant stopping eating food for the wrong reasons. Our body needs food to survive.

In the same way, thoughts allow us to function in the world. If we are alive, there is going to be stimulation. The problem is stimulation for the wrong reasons. Stimulation will never truly eradicate boredom. It will only temporarily hide it. The only true antidote to boredom is giving yourself the freedom to experience it. Then, as resistance comes up in the form of desire for the next fix, one must surrender that. One must constantly surrender each impulse.

Here are the costs I see to stimulation addiction in my own life:

• I make BS excuses about why something is absolutely critical right now. In doing so, I make it OK to be stressed. Research has just shown extremely conclusively that stress is just bad for your health. It is almost silly for me to eat really healthy on the one hand in the name of being healthy and then prematurely age myself by justifying stress.
• The addiction distorts my thoughts and sharpness. As a result, I don’t deal with feelings of jealousy, frustration, and anger as they come up. Instead, I justify how I don’t have enough time for them. In reality, I’m just not comfortable with how they make me feel.
• They distort my sense of what’s important. So, instead of focusing what’s most important, I might choose to check my email, read a random article on the Internet, or do an activity that impulsively makes sense. As a result, I’m pretending to be busy, when I’m actually just wasting time, and sometimes even causing more damage to my life than benefit.
• I lose integrity with myself, because I know that I’m being hypocritical. On the one hand, I’m trying to be a healthy person who does what’s most important, but on the other, I know I’m not completely doing what I know already works.

The daily exercises I can do to free myself from this addiction on a daily basis include:

• Meditation for one hour in the morning.
• Meditation for one hour in the evening.
• Three 10 minute meditations throughout the day at 10am, 2pm, and 6pm.
• One 30-second ‘refresh’ every waking hour.
• Only checking email and articles at pre-defined times.

In other words, I commit to spending about 2 and a half daily to surrendering the addiction. Feels scary and somewhat impossible, but I can do it! I must do it!!!

My dream life is having harmony between my intentions, thoughts, and actions. Taking these steps would allow me to live my dream life.

Using the regret minimization framework of Jeff Bezos, not living my dream life would truly be a regret for me. The ‘time’ sacrifices that it would require more than make up for themselves in the long-run.

My Vision for My Life

I picture my life becoming exponentially more rewarding, loving, challenging, and more peaceful than it is now.

I picture truly living every moment. By that, I mean constantly having my actions be in harmony with what I know is best and what my soul says is best.

I picture constantly setting a new standard for myself that scares me (ie – Oh my God, how can I replicate this XYZ over and over? That is going to be challenging!)

I picture the distance between realizing my own limitations and courageously confronting them shrinking. In that sense, I picture the realization of my limitations as joyous, because it also means their dissolution.

I am aware that I have not chosen an easy life.

It will often mean doing the EXACT opposite of what I feel like doing.

When I experience a challenge, it will mean confronting it.

It will mean looking under the rug in every area of my life constantly even when I don’t won’t to.

It will mean swallowing my pride, ego, and overall desire to be “right”.

I feel that I am being drawn to something with incredible gravity.

Oddly, the closer to it, the infinitely stronger it becomes and the more rapid the pace.

It will mean eating what I know will give me energy when others are eating what won’t.

This vision of life has not been changing for me over the past 10 years. It has only become more clear.

I am thankful for the vision which I see.

I am grateful that I know that I have the ability to realize it.

I pray for the courage to walk this razor’s edge in life every single moment.

What happens to me is irrelevant. It is who I am when it happens that is the work of my life.