BornEntrepreneur

You dine, rather than consume.

It’s a one hour cup of soup and a glass of red wine at a local bistro. It’s not a four minute, thirty second frozen dinner and diet coke consumed at your laptop in less time than it took to heat up.

You sit in silence and listen to your breathing.

You don’t text message back and forth or look at your watch or be uncomfortable that you’re in public at lunch by yourself having a good time. You put your cell phone on mute (not vibrate) and turn it upside down.

You walk slow, with your head up, proud and purposeful, but with a curious nature about you.

You don’t walk fast, head down, shoulders hunched, thinking about your destination and the imposition the walk is causing you.

You think, “right now, my walking is the destination.”

You are proud of the small things you have accomplished today, instead of beating yourself up and feeling guilty for those you haven’t had a chance to get to yet.

You know that, not only will happiness find you, but that it is right here in this moment.

You try not to get too excited about the future because, not only is it almost always different than you imagine, but you realize that the present is where the actual experience exists.

You imagine a moment and a feeling the way you want it to be. You attach a firm picture in your mind to it, and then you let it go, comfortably knowing how the energies of the universe will shift and shape to allow it to come to fruition.

Relaxation is not being so serious.

Relaxation, most importantly, is not being so hard on yourself.

Life is too short to feel regretful. Life is too short to not enjoy the present. Life is too short to be afraid. And certainly, life is too short to be anxious, uptight, and in a hurry. Life is too important to forget this.

You look at people in the eyes and be with them because you realize they are not a distraction from your moment. They are the key piece to it all.

Some comments of interest so far:

• time zone changes are frustrating. In the beginning I thought it would be helpful to have such a dramatic time change between Sydney and Austin, thinking that I’d be able to knock stuff out and have it show up in my colleague’s inboxes when they wake up. Not so easy. I’ve started going out more at night (naturally) so it makes it near impossible to wake up at 5am or 6am as I was before. This morning I woke up at 9, checked the local time in Austin and it was already the afternoon—which kind of deflates my personal motivation—their day is already almost over.
• unexpected interruptions of flow. Whether it’s broken suitcases, discussions about what to do for lunch, or doing laundry, it’s all an interruption. If anything, it is training to be able to leave and then re-enter a solid state of flow. Difficult indeed, but a necessity in this environment. The only way I can think of that would counter all the distractions would be to wake up super early in the morning (which I was doing before) or having ‘closed door’ office hours. I do not want to do that, though, as it really is shutting off other people. But then again, maybe if they understand it’s for the best and only for a limited amount of time, that would be okay. Still debating the best method…Ah, perhaps a good alternative to an actual closed door is for me to put on headphones. I still feel a little guilty about that, though.
• fear of opening my inbox. I’m sitting here without having opened my gmail inbox because last time i was in there it was 276 unread messages. That was after a 4 day hiatus of not having internet access because I was staying at a lakehouse hundreds of kilometers outside of Sydney. Last night when I checked it after coming in from a night out I guess I COULD have processed it all and gotten it down to zero, but I tell ya that’s frustrating just thinking about. I guess the trick is just setting out the time and knocking it out. Not sure how to conquer it otherwise. My 3-4hrs/day of working are quickly dwindling due to extra distractions (mainly my parents have now arrived in Sydney, so there are 6 of us all staying together in a small 3 bedroom apartment.
• Hmmm…Okay, time to start processing so I can close some/all of the open loops. Speaking of, I wonder if this segment of my trip is teaching me to be more comfortable with having some open loops out there…time will tell.

Two days in a row now that I’ve woken up super early. The first time it happened (4am) I thought it was a fluke because of a misaligned body clock, but when I woke up naturally this morning at 5am I realized, perhaps my body is so anxious to “get things done” that I’m jettisoning myself out of bed.

Some people claim that my trip to Australia should be a time of disconnecting and total relaxation. In my opinion, though, that is an old-school escapist vacation mentality. I LOVE my job. I am enamored by the work I get to do, and get paid for, so “disconnecting” for me is not a fun thing to do. I don’t need/want to “escape” from anything, even while I’m traveling.

In terms of workflow a few things I’ve learned thus far:

• very important to get through emails and to-do items just as always. I remember yesterday morning as I was leaving for the day to explore Sydney I had this pain in my gut because I was not taking my laptop with. It was kind of funny as Katrina knew it too. However, it wasn’t because I’m addicted to being connected, it’s because I’m addicted to extinguishing open loops. I had a lot of open loops that morning, despite my waking at 4am. Mainly because I was going through an inbox of 150 emails due to about 72hrs of non-processing—and still didn’t finish. And mainly because I was trying to get through them all–mistake! Point learned: Prioritizing emails responses and to do items is a MUST when traveling.
• I’ve accepted now that I’m not going to be able to do as much as I could before when I was working 8-10hr days. Now, I’m trying to squeeze it all into one 3-4hr block in the morning and a 1hr or so block of casual social networking in the evening. This is forcing me to be okay with not quite being SO responsive to everyone. It’s okay to let a few email fall through, as long as I put them in my to-do list to reply to them later. The anxiety of leaving for the day for exploration is not because of the low priority open loops. It’s because of the high-priority ones, those that I didn’t get a chance to get to because I was focusing too much on the lower ones. So I’m learning priority-level discipline–albeit forced, so that I don’t have that pain in my gut when I leave for the day without my laptop.
• Web based tools. Keeping the clutter low on this little computer is a must, mainly because the hard drive is so small – 12gig. But in all actuality, this is a blessing. I like not having a bunch of applications installed on here—it’s almost like a mental cleansing. I’ve been using Google Docs quite a bit and also instead of installing programs I try and find an web based alternative. For example I always like keeping track of my time I spend doing tasks. This is mainly because when I get into my flow, I totally lose track of time and then find myself frustrated with how many hours I focused on something that was low priority. I’ve been using Online Stopwatch instead of my usual Multitrack Stopwatch. In all honesty, it’s just a small file to download, and I could install it, but it just feels good NOT to.
• Not having a means to digitally capture my life as usual is tough. I normally use twitter and facebook mobile throughout the day to catalog my ongoings. This is impossible here, though, as international rates are a pain with my current cell phone plan. I might change it, but maybe it’s a good thing to challenge myself here. Not sure. It is getting me to blog more after all and post  facebook photos.
• Brainstorming increases dramatically when out of the element. All day—TONS of ideas. Wow, can’t even explain. Just being exposed to so many different elements that only being in a foreign environment can provide is quite breathtaking. My brain impressed me. If anything, that’s a reminder to everyone that we still have the faculties to brainstorm like always, but perhaps we’ve forgotten the path to that synergy. Or perhaps the pathway has changed over the years, it’s just a matter of tapping into it in a new way.

That’s all for now. I’m going to work on a miniature version of a weekly review so that I can make sure that I’m not overlooking anything crucial on my to do list. Lookign forward to it as today will be an AMAZING day of exploration if I can be sure to have closed all open loops. No more anxiety, hopefully.

It’s 4:35AM in Australia and while everyone else (my sister, her roommate, & my girlfriend) are asleep, but my internal clock was aching me to ‘get the hell outta bed!” So here I am sipping tea and writing a blog post.

Before my travels to Sydney I purchased the super tiny Asus eeePC 901 series.

Yes, the thing is tiny. I’ve figured how to type pretty well on it, though!

There are a number of challenges that traveling abroad has already presented and will be presenting soon. I will be here for 6 weeks, so as person who spends about 12hrs/day on the computer (personal + professional) things will be transforming a bit. Hopefully it will teach me to work in a more efficient, productive way. I feel like it’s almost like jumping into the deep end a bit…we shall see.

I will be sharing these challenges and the steps I’ve taken to overcome them over the course of the next few weeks. My girlfriend, Katrina, thinks they sound like boring posts…lol, but I’m really facinated with it anyways.

For the past 1.5 weeks I’ve been adhering pretty closely to the GTD lifestyle. This was all kicked off by a mini gtd seminar I helped organize at Conjunctured. I asked Drew Arnold who I met after being featured in the Statesman a while back about mine and John Erik’s use of GTD in our lives. Drew had contacted John and I in hopes of meeting others who shared his way of “getting things done.” Months after that initial meeting I found Drew at Conjunctured one day randomly and we got to talking and we thought we’d give it a go at having a GTD seminar at Conjunctured led by him. He really knows his stuff—I admire how much in control of his workflow he is. I hope to get to that point someday soon. I feel like I’m on my way.

Anyways, so after that seminar I started getting into it again. I realized the reason I “fell off the wagon” last time was the absence of a weekly review—an integral part to the success of the program. I was convinced that I “didn’t have time to do a weekly review”—apparently I just had too much stuff to do. I’ve since realized this was a horrible oversight and detrimental to the program’s success. I have since had two successful weekly reviews. And I must tell you it helps to provide an endcap to each week’s flow. And it also reinvigorates your trust in your personal system.

So right now I’m writing this post because I’m brainstorming my goals:

• 50,000+feet: Life
• 40,000 feet: Three- to five-year visions
• 30,000 feet: One- to two-year goals
• 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility
• 10,000 feet: Current projects
• Runway: Current actions

It’s difficult. But I guess something of this magnitude should. I tell ya though, I’m super excited to discover what these goals are and share them publicly.

“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” – Vincent van Gogh

Sometimes it takes hearing something that takes your breath away to make you second guess yourself about how you measure success.

I encourage you to reevaluate what you’re trying to do in life by looking at the end goal of it all. Is your end goal really money? Or is it simply just happiness and you’ve brainwashed yourself to think that as soon as you get enough money you’ll finally have the time to be happy? I know it seems like hackneyed idea, but really dig deep and ask yourself “what the hell am I doing?!”

I remember several years ago I read a business book that interviewed one particular successful business man and he said the secret to his success was his wife and family. What? I read that at 21, and I thought “what a load of crap.” He said his wife’s support and love for him helped him through the toughest times and allowed him to strive for the highest peaks. Honestly, I thought he was kind of pathetic. I had always subscribed to the thought that “I don’t have time for a serious relationship. I may never get married because I wouldn’t be able to dedicate enough time to the relationship to make it work. I certainly won’t ever have kids—it’s the sacrifice I need to make in order to be ’successful’.” I look back on that mentality and realize how ignorant I was. I was totally missing the point of it all—”it” being life.

It’s not going to be here forever, so embrace every aspect of life that you have already attained–your family, your friends, your significant other, the success in your business thus far. In fact, you might be surprised to find out how successful you already are and that you’re not doing so bad after all. Once that gives you a mental confidence boost, you also might start to realize that the money part might just get a little bit easier and not seem so daunting.

Don’t neglect the loves in your life. Because that’s what got you here. And that’s what’s going to get you to the next step too.

How Come That Idiot’s Rich and I’m Not?

by Robert Shemin (Author)

About a month ago I read this book pretty much cover to cover sitting in Borders Bookstore. Here are the key takeaways I took from it and have tried to implement in my own life. My responses to these points in are italics:

• have one goal only

  To build recurring revenue to sustain myself during a 2month travel to Australia and SE Asia. My plane leaves in mid-December, 2008.

• have a charm to remind of goal

  When my sister was in Vietnam, she sent me this amazing handmade dragon lantern. During the shipment a number of the dragons broke off. Today, I took one of those broken dragons (about the size of a quarter) and tied it to a hemp string and have hung it around my neck as my ‘charm’. Perfect, especially since the Asian dragon is symbolic of power!

• find some heroes to emulate and copy what they do daily

  The way Tim Ferriss lives his life is an inspiration to me. He’s totally changed the way I think about the intersection between business life and personal life. I’ve been reading his blog a lot lately and staying up to date on his tweets via twitter.  I’m still trying to find more ‘heroes’ so-to-speak. I have been a longtime fan of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which is pretty much led by Ty Pennington. I look up to his zest for life and his urge to help people. So, perhaps I will add him to my list.

• start tracking daily money in and out down to the penny

  hmmm…I don’t know about this one. But i have definitely started to be more aware. I’ve cut the spending on credit cards down to nil, so I’m just using my debit card for everything now. I’ve made an effort to move my auto billing for things like cell phone, internet, and auto insurance to my debit card, because I realize I had just forgot about all those auto bills, and my debt was racking up. This way I can see it all the time.

• a vision without a map is worthless

  I have created an action item list for the 4 endeavors that are in front of me at the moment. I was sure to give myself deadlines for each item, and was especially sure to only put items on the list that help me reach my ONE goal.

• start a plan by first looking at the end goal

  I’ve found that it’s a lot easier to get through a list of tasks when I keep reminding myself WHY I’m doing it. Forgetting the end goal in my experience is the worst mistake I can make. If I do, I lose a LOT of motivation. Otherwise, the tasks seem to fly through and it keeps my excitement level high.

lot’s of good developments in my business endeavors. Was just jamming out to the Killers “All these things that I’ve done” after I received what could be a MONUMENTAL email in my inbox for a very large retail store to carry a selection of some of our t-shirts. Not only that, but I’ve received a couple very flattering emails lately that make me feel like all my networking is really paying off. People are starting to notice that I’m out there working my butt off doing lot’s of stuff, and they’re starting to come to me for advice, and business development type situations…very cool. And then there’s the fact that I just got some great publicity in the “green issue” of Austin Monthly (i just picked it up today actually at Whole Foods)….what an honor to be featured in their mag. It feels so great to see the brand name of my company and a photo of our products in a high quality printed magazine…we’ve gotten lot’s of publicity in online publications, but it’s a totally different feeling to see it in print. This is the first time we’ve been in print since our Daily Texan article a few years ago. Pretty rock’n. What else good as happened??? Going on a business trip this weekend to my first tradeshow. Will be going to the men and women’s apparel market in Dallas with my partner. Especially exciting coming at a time like this. I’m on a high. What else? We’ve almost got our sales rep in Los Angeles up and going. We’ve shipped her business cards, and I just sent her sample tees in the mail today. Super excited to see how that turns out. But I wont’ get my hopes up too much. We have hired 4 sales reps so far and every one of them has flaked. But this particular rep is the most ed experienced we’ve dealt with and we’re paying her a monthly retainer. Excited about the possibilities! What else is good??? Ahhh, so much…what a great feeling.

And then there’s Conjunctured…my other venture. Oh my…it’s moving. We’ve completed almost entirely a business plan…submitted it to a business plan competition, and have been actively having conversations with some pretty badass potential clients. And we’re about to get some wicked office space if all goes as planned…

and then there’s my health…kick’n ass with exercise per my new experiment!

and my relationship with my amazing girlfriend is stronger than ever…it will be 3 years next month— having an amazingly supportive person standing by you all the time, good times and bad…is an amazing feeling.

sorry to get all high on my own self-promotion, but things have been tough lately, so it’s really great to see things really coming together.

Keep all the good stuff coming…

btw, just picked up a new book at the library today…I think I found it at the perfect time.

So, Yahoo rejected the buyout by MSFT.  Interesting.  Very intrigued to see what happens to the Yahoo stock on Monday morning on the trading room floor. Will shareholders start selling their stock, or perhaps will another company (Google perhaps) make a higher bid?  Or even if Microsoft comes back in with another higher bid, that should be interesting.  Glad I purchased a few shares when I did. This could get interesting.

On another note, there is about to be spin-off created in TimeWarner.  They’re about to create a new separate company for their AOL counterpart. So, according to the book I just read on investing,  this is an excellent investment opportunity. I don’t have the extra capital to invest, but if I did I would buy a few shares of Timewarner and also AOL once it spins off into a new company. The idea behind investing in a spin-off company, is that the whole reasoning behind the spin-off is to better support the main purpose of that organization. By focusing more heavily on it, and not having to dilute focus on it to other counterparts of the business, profitability will inevitably skyrocket.

Does that correlation exist?  At this point, I’m not totally sure.  The inspiration for this post comes from that the fact that over the past several weeks I’ve been doing multiple sets of pushups daily on a regular basis, and because I’m not exactly the most muscular guy in the room, I’ve started to notice quite obvious physical improvement. I can tell it’s working because for one, I’m able to steadily increase the number of pushups I can do, so I know I’m getting stronger. And two, I’m seeing definition in my arms and chest that I haven’t seen since my sophomore year in college when I was going to the gym on a regular basis. And keep in mind, this is all just pushups (mainly because I actually enjoy doing pushups…I always have for some reason).  Probably about just 20/day for 2 weeks. Nothing intense.
So, this where it gets interesting…

Over the past week for just a random reason (to see if I could do it, or maybe it was because I set up Joe’s Goals) I started increasing the difficulty and variety of the exercises. Started doing crunches, squats, and even ran a mile for the hell of it one day (of which I haven’t done for years…I hate running because I think it’s boring).  Here’s the thing, though.  I noticed my business productivity and personal motivation go up a little bit. I’m very aware of my internal self, so when a small amount changes, I notice it big time.  And boy did I notice. The past few days have been incredibly productive, and the best thing is that because my motivation has increased I’m doing the tasks that I’ve been avoiding for a while now, without even thinking twice. I must admit I didn’t expect this at all.

Maybe this seems like old news to you. And in fact, I think I’ve read it before somewhere.  But when you experience it first hand, it’s a bit different.

The key is determining what it is about exercising that has increased my motivation. It could be a number of things:

1. increase in testosterone (i’ve already started to research natural ways to increase testosterone to further increase motivation if this is the culprit)
2. increase in muscle tone has increases my self-confidence and thus my motivation to live life to it’s fullest
3. the presence of the workout routine increases my work routine follow-through
4. something else I’m not thinking of…

I’m going to continue the experiment for a while longer. I wonder if there’s a plateau, or if motivation just continues to go up?  As a personal productivity obsessive and avid lifehacker, this is quite exciting to me! There’s an obvious correlation between personal motivation and business success. Now, the key is finding some way to hack into that extra supply of personal motivation.