Sweat Equity

Summer doesn’t officially begin until June 21, but it’s already hot! Living so close to the Gulf of Mexico provides me with another glorious wonder: the humidity! Not only do you get to melt in the shade, you get those amazing sweat stains that people love to stare at.

MMM... nice.

Summer is a great time to gain some sweat equity in your personal projects for your small business or if you’re tackling your own Gretchen Rubin inspired Happiness Project (I am doing this by the way… details to come soon!).

Personal projects really seem to come alive during this time of the year. I guess the ratio of sunny days and time to kill really balance out and so you begin to see more art, more theater, more film, and more music being plastered on Facebook walls and in Twitter feeds. I absolutely love it! People are finally out of the long winter/spring funk and moving forward.

Some folks define sweat equity as not receiving a salary at the beginning of your small business to make sure your business survives. I like to see sweat equity as the hard work and dedication you put into ANY project great or small, seeing as sometimes the final product is your only payment.

No matter how you look at it, get busy! I encourage you to put aside procrastination and the human weakness we have to make sure every pre-set condition is met before we venture out.

As Richard Branson says, “Screw it, Let’s do it!”

A Creative and Business Review of “City of Lakes”

Ron Dawson is an accomplished screenwriter, director, award-winning video producer, speaker and author… and at this link he reviews the amazing project “City of Lakes”:

A Creative and Business Review of “City of Lakes”

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Your Community Should Foster and Encourage Young Talent!…

My hometown is a bit of a downer.

Don’t get me wrong I love where I’m from even if it is a bit backwards and small town-ish. Beaumont, Texas (pop. 111,000) isn’t exactly “small” but it’s no Manhattan. I’m relatively young still but I know that the one thing the people my age say around here is this:

“This place is a black hole for talented people or people with any type of dream other than refinery work.”

Beaumont, like so many other small towns in the middle of nowhere, isn’t short on talent. But the lesson most often learned the hard way here is unless you plan to work at the refineries that surround this area, you better start packing your bags.

The answer isn’t here, but somewhere else.

It doesn’t have to be this way, but never the less this is the situation that the “good ol’ boy” system in our area has created. They don’t want to hear your ideas unless you go off somewhere, create it, and then bring it back or if your family name is prominent then a few more doors will open for you too. When you’ve finally made some cash, then and only then are they proud to call you their own.

I hate to sound like I’m complaining but in too many ways, I am.

For dreamers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners the phrase “no” is common place. But in the case of encouraging, fostering, and setting about change in an unfriendly place, we must begin with ourselves. I can only speak for my experiences in this part of the world, but Beaumont is without a doubt a no-centric, hostile place. Not many business owners want to offer help and support or mentoring without first gaining money or a share in your company first.

It kills creativity. This way of thinking stops the next generation in its tracks. I know it deterred my plans quite a bit until I found help online. Even in this digital age though we should be able to reach out to our real life communities for guidance.

So my resolution will always be the same, treat others the way I would like (or would have hoped) to be treated.

What’s your take?

Time to Learn from Your Mistakes!

Whether we like it or not, we are all moving forward into the future. Some of us cling to old memories and stories of days long gone. We hold on to pictures of ourselves when we were young and compare them to recent pictures where we are decidedly less than young.

Last night I cleaned out the filing cabinets that hold my entire collective entrepreneur and business history. While I was looking through the invoices, the receipts, and the e-mails, I began to separate the papers into the ventures I considered successful (the ones that made me money) and the ones that I thought were epic bombs (the ones that lost me money).

I wasn’t stunned by what I saw.

The “failure” pile was immensely bigger than the “success” pile. I’ll tell you in all honesty, I was a bit crushed. The first decade of my business existence looked like a history lesson in “What Not To Do: 101.” In all, my failures should serve as a warning to others. Better yet, these failures should serve as a lesson for myself.

Both my success and my failure have brought me to the place I currently reside.

My success provides money and livelihood. It sustains me and allows me to purchase goods and even provides a shot of confidence. But my failures allow me something just as valuable: experience.

I value experience as much as I value education and/or money.

Everyone is different, but I hope that if you are ever at a point where you can stop and examine the last few years of your business or personal life, that you’ll count it all joy. These things are making you the person you are. The trials and tribulations of this (business) life will make you stronger if you allow it to.

If you learn a lesson from each failure, as well as each success, you’ll be that much stronger in the end.

Why You Should Work Yourself to Death…

Bones to bury... shoes to eat...

It’s late, or maybe it’s early. Either way, you’re tired.

Don’t worry. If you can make it to 5:30pm on Friday you’ll be sitting pretty looking forward to another weekend. If you’re like most folks those nice, fuzzy “weekend feelings” usually end Sunday evening when you realize that Monday morning is a few hours away. So you start preparing for the week however you can. You lay out an outfit for Monday, maybe prepare your lunch since you’re brown bagging it lately “due to the economy” (and not so much due to your ever expanding spare tire). You lay your head down at a reasonable hour and you may sleep, but you never rest. Your mind is too busy looking at the week ahead.

Then before you know it, your alarm is screaming. Time to get a move on! But you honestly don’t want to. You’d rather lay in your bed and not wake up for another few hours, but you do so begrudgingly because those damn bills have to be paid. Maybe you work out, maybe you don’t, but then you grab a shower, grab a bite, and head out the door to another week of unsatisfying work.

If this is your life, do it full blast. Enjoy those paychecks! Enjoy that restless sleep! Work yourself to death! Just think, if you push yourself and push yourself, you’ll complete a few more assignments, move a little ink, and maybe one day your boss will notice and pay you what you’re worth.

Don’t worry, you’ve only got thirty more years until you retire. That’s only 1,500 more weeks or so of this and BOOOOOOM! The sweet, sweet embrace of death will be here to take you to the other side (or if you’re atheist, nowhere).

One question though: ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME?!?

This is how you want to spend your life? Working your ass off day in and day out, only to be “rewarded” with two or three weeks of vacation a year?? You gladly trade time away from your family, friends, and the things that matter most to you for a chance to upgrade your 2006 Honda Civic to a 2010 Honda Accord? You’re giving up your life to trade in your 1,200 square foot house for a 2,250 square foot house?

**Don’t get me wrong, material things are great. If someone wants to give me $100 million dollars, then I will gladly accept it and promptly move to a small island somewhere never to be seen or heard from again.**

The most precious commodity you have is time. We freely give our time away; time we can never recover. Even as I type this and you read it (and hopefully share it with friends), we are giving are time up.

This will always happen, but I hope you more closely examine the things you give your time to. For me, giving an extra few hours on any project that ultimately doesn’t make me happy or help me spend more time with my family is without a doubt, a complete WASTE.

Decide today what kind of life you want to lead, because you ultimately get one time to do it.

Get busy… times a wastin’!

Pick Yourself Up…

I just got my ass kicked.

This guy probably did it.

Not in the physical sense, but the crowd ate it up anyway. The monster standing beside me, former WCW professional wrestler Krusher Kong (of the Colossal Kongs), was just defeated in the main event of our TV pilot episode being filmed at a civic center in deep East Texas.

We lost, but I was euphoric. The TV taping was literally 2 years in the making and tonight was the night. We were so close to getting this TV product off of the ground. The energy was good, spirits were high. It was a fairy tale ending to all of the long hours at the office, on the road, and in meetings. The real work was about to begin but we didn’t care, this part was over.

Unlike most fairy tales though, this one didn’t have a happily ever after.

Instead the economy continued to fall apart at a record pace. Budgets dried up. People lost their jobs and livelihoods. That wasn’t the only reason I’m sure, but it was the main reason. No matter what the reason though, in the end, we lost our show.

The product itself was great. The local TV affiliates wanted to the show on air, but no one could take on extra production costs at a time when most stations didn’t know if they would survive.

After almost 3 years of hard work, the closest my dream TV show would get to small screen would be when I played it on my Mac. For me, it was a heart-wrenching time. I literally gave everything I had for this dream to come to fruition, but it vanished and there was nothing I could do.

I wanted to quit everything. I don’t believe I was depressed during this time, but I do believe I was mentally exhausted.

These seem to be the hardest times to pick yourself up, but these are without a doubt, the times you need to do just that. Don’t wallow in self-pity. Stop blaming yourself for problems and mistakes. Learn from the experience and start to work on the next production, or the next idea, or the next goal. Get up!

Human beings, by design, are forward-thinking creatures. We have dreams. We have goals. We succeed. We fail.

No matter what path you’re on, remember that hard times, failures, and disappointments will come our way. We need to learn to navigate these waters with the same spirit of excitement and adventure that we have when things are going great for us.

In these rough times, when we learn to pick ourselves up, we often learn what we’re made of.

The ZeroCut Initiative…

Our venture isn’t an ultimatum to TV or the hierarchy of the pre-existing gatekeepers for keeping us out. If anything we’re exceedingly grateful for their help along the way. We absolutely, without a doubt, could not have had the success we have had individually without their consent and blessing on the projects we’ve birthed so far.

Coincidentally it is their inability to truly back-up what they say that has lead us to this process… this movement if you please… to take matters in our own hands.

The old ways are changing. We fully accept this change. We need this change.

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only thing that matters at the end of the day (in business) is whether your accounts are in the black. I’m not anti-capitalism. I’m very, very pro-capitalism. But if your local motto is stressed on the fact that you want to truly have local programming on your airwaves, then why are you consistently shutting out local shows?

That’s OK. Each business (including local television) must do what it needs to do in order to survive.

Where TV leaves off, ZEROCUT CREATIVE, will pick up.

Spring time will never have been sweeter!

Great Leaders Inspire Trust

Great post by Ray Silverstein.

Silverstein, a recognized small business expert, is president and founder of PRO: President’s Resource Organization, a network of advisory boards for small business owners.

Silverstein founded PRO in 1993, after selling his multi-million dollar tool and hardware manufacturing company. Today, he facilitates PRO groups throughout the Chicago area and in Phoenix. He has facilitated over 1,000 such meetings to date, making him one of the leading authorities on business peer groups.

I’ve copied the story below but click here if you want the original post on Entrepreneur.com.

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What does it take to be a compelling business leader? We hear all this talk about leadership styles but, really, is any one style preferable to the others? In my observation, there is no single, universally superior leadership style.

That being said, there are some universal qualities that successful leaders share, including the ability to inspire trust, the vision to move a company forward, and the foresight to provide the training employees will need to realize that vision.

Inspiring trust is critical. People are not willing to recognize someone as their leader unless they trust them, not just intellectually, but ethically and morally as well. Likewise, people won’t follow someone unless they’re convinced that person knows where they’re going.

When ask to define their leadership style, entrepreneurs often reply, “I lead by example.” What they mean is, “I work long, hard hours and will take on any task.” Leading by example is terrific, but it’s not the be all and end all. Employees aren’t dumb. They can recognize effective activity versus meaningless busyness. That’s why one of my favorite pieces of leadership advice is “don’t do well what you shouldn’t do at all.”

I suspect that leading by example may sometimes mask a fear of letting go. A true leader doesn’t just inspire trust, he or she returns the favor, trusting those who follow. To lead effectively, you must overcome your fear of losing control and allow others to step in. When an employee sees the boss has confidence in him, he becomes more willing to accept responsibility, therefore making a greater contribution to the organization.

Ironically enough, true leaders understand that their business requires more than one leader; someone other than themselves. They know that, ideally, every employee within an organization should take the lead in some situations. And–here’s the kicker–true leaders assume responsibility for training and guiding their followers into leadership roles.

I have a friend, a business consultant, who likes to talks about “the three Ps”: program, process and people. The program is your vision, your plan. To achieve it, you need to develop a process that allows to you achieve the desired results consistently. To see the process through, you need the right people, people who trust your leadership.

In other words, real leadership is not necessarily doing (i.e. leading by example) but creating a process where average people can consistently achieve better-than-average results.

One of the toughest tests of leadership is the ability to make personnel changes. Rather than do so, too many entrepreneurs will accept mediocre performance. True leaders are willing to make sure they have the “right people on the bus,” even if it means ushering some people off. If you are willing to tolerate mediocrity, what does that say about your leadership style?

Over the years, I’ve encountered many leadership styles with interesting labels: The Benevolent Dictator, Rah-Rah Type, Open Book Manager, Theory X, Theory Y, Autocrat, and Team Builder, for example. They all offer certain pros and cons, which I’ll be discussing in more detail in future columns.

More importantly, regardless of what your leadership style is, it can work, providing you employ people who are comfortable with it. And, of course, who trust you.

One Year…

If you were told an irrefutable truth that 1 year from now you would be dead, what would you do?

I know most would naturally ask, “How do I die?” For this moment look past that.

If you had one year left to live, what would you do? How would you spend your last year?

Would you wake up and go about in the same routine? Would you drag yourself out of bed and make your way to the job that you hate? Would you lock yourself in your house out of fear of the unknown? The questions abound: Do I go to church? Do I go back to church? Do I get angry at the world and plot to take people with me into the unknown?

Believe that for a moment there are no right or wrong answers.

If you could do anything, what would it be?

Where would you go? Who would you talk to? What new experiences would you try for the first… and last… time?

Would the grudges you have been holding for years suddenly seem so inconsequential? Would you lose all hope and end it now with the unknown an bearable given?

Could you find it in the deepest parts of yourself to embrace it and truly live life the way it was meant to be lived? Could you bring yourself to experience the unknown horizons and uncharted waters?

The truth is a truth that no one wants to admit: We do not know which day will be our last.

We make plans and build “toward the future” when in reality, our futures are never guaranteed. We are not promised a tomorrow. We are not promised success. We are promised nothing.

Here’s the damnable misery of it all: If we so choose, “nothing” is exactly what we will get out of life.

This is not an original concept at all. I am no philosopher. I am 26 year-old, small business owner. I don’t have a right or wrong answer for you. Only questions. So all I can speak about are my own experiences and thoughts.

The way I live my life is what most “logical” people call foolhardy. I think of my goals and dreams in terms of months, not years. I am defiant of the social-norm for life, love, and responsibility.

I am a family man through-and-through. They are a huge reason why I live the way I do. Don’t get me wrong, I try not to engage in foolish activities or unsafe practices (drugs, etc.), but I absolutely, without a doubt, live without reservation.

I have lost friends because of this. It’s sad. My heart truly breaks for the friends I’ve lost. Although I’ll offer an apology whenever someone believes that I have wronged them with my “stupid sense of urgency about all matters”, I do not apologize for wanting to embrace the life I have left.

However long that may be.

What about you? What would you do with your year? Where would you go? What do you think you would see? I honestly want to know, because you may give me a clue about where I’ll be headed.

Jonathan Fields, himself a family man and life renegade has a great blog up about making an impact. Do read it if you have a moment.

Neither of us invented these thoughts, but never the less these thoughts remain.

Let’s start sharing some thoughts on the subject…