“Don’t get old”. It’s a piece of advice my grandparents share with me almost every time I see them. As my grandpa takes my hand, he tells me that “Getting old is hell”. An former marine, now in his mid 80s, having the drive to do it all, but knowing that no matter how hard he tries, no matter how much his mind says “yes”, his body argues with a definitive “no”.
As we grow up, we’re enticed by the idea that after 30 or 40 years of hard work, we get to retire and enjoy our “golden years” traveling, playing golf, watching old John Wayne reruns, whatever we want.
Basically, it’s ingrained in our psyche, from an early age, that we have to work hard now to work less later. Save our money today to have money tomorrow. All in preparation for the future, at the expense of the present.
I believe something is inherently wrong with this line of thinking.
CONTINUE READING
When I was in college, I looked up to entrepreneurs as if they were deities. Just ask my partner Sam Davidson, who came and spoke to my Junior-year Marketing Strategy class, back when I was nothing more than a wide-eyed-I-don’t-know-what-the-heck-I’m-going-to-do-with-my-life college kid. He walked in thinking he was going to chat about the ups and downs of running a business, and walked out with a new best friend (ehem, that would be me), who couldn’t wait to grab coffee and soak up any and all knowledge that he, the almighty entrepreneur was willing to share.
And now, here I am, very much in the position that I looked up to only a few years ago, running my own business. Now I’m the one sharing coffee with college kids who have their own world-conquering plans and want to know everything about what I do, how I’ve done it, and how they can learn from it.
I used to think that entrepreneurship was this unattainable status that only happened to people who got really lucky or had a lot of money to throw around. If you think back to when you were in school, you probably thought the same.
Little did I know, back then, that the beauty of entrepreneurship isn’t in the success, the accolades, the respect, the money, and no, not even the freedom. But that the beauty of entrepreneurship is in the ugly.
CONTINUE READING
Create. Learn. Improve. Repeat. This is the “mantra” of Karol Gajda, a fellow blogger, entrepreneur, and world-traveler. It’s simple, yet speaks volumes. It’s a four-step process that can be applied toward nearly every decision in your life. And yet, many of us can’t seem to make it to step one.
Learning. Improving. And of course, repeating. None of that can happen if you aren’t willing to focus on the step one: Creating.
Creating is scary. Creating is daunting. Creating is challenging. Creating is uncomfortable. Creating is a risk. Creating doesn’t happen overnight. Creating is broke. Creating is ambigious. Creating is change. Creating is uknown.
Creating involves us looking inward and tapping into something previously untapped.
CONTINUE READING
The idea of working a “nine to five” has become almost archaic to our generation. That’s because this generation, more than any before, live and die by one thing: Passion. Yes, the word that has been so bastardized, so over-played, so repeated, that it’s meaning nowadays is much less, well, meaningful.
But when it comes to defining what we really want – what we love, we’ve got it twisted. It’s not about the money. It’s not about the prestige or the recognition. It’s not even about passion, success, or happiness.
It’s about contribution. We all, at our core, want to make a difference. Be it big or small, we want to have an impact. We want to leave an impression. We want to change the world. We want to be heard. We want to matter.
CONTINUE READING
Somehow, we’ve made it to the middle of January already. Yep, let me be the first to say, “Where is the year going?”
How are those resolutions coming along? Still hitting the gym? Are you keeping your promise to use fewer exclamation points?
It’s funny how it takes a date on the calendar to motivate us to do what we probably should have been doing all along (yes, that means you, excessive exclamation point user).
Hiten Shah isn’t a big fan of resolutions. And neither am I. Rather than resolving to add or remove something from your life like exercise or soda, start resolving to change your perspective, change your approach, and shift your focus.
Shah, in his most recent newsletter, had this to say about resolutions:
“…If you’re actually practicing being a conscious and growth-focused entrepreneur, you shouldn’t be waiting for some socially acceptable milestone to inspire yourself to become better than you are. You have to be continually igniting that flame from within, regardless of what the calendar date is…”
And how do you do that? By doing what scares you the most.
CONTINUE READING
