Young and Frugal

When was the last time you looked at the world through the eyes of a child? The eyes of curiosity that see everything with an innate sense of wonder? The eyes it seems we all used to have.

As we grow older everything seems to move at a faster pace, and in the interest of time we begin to accept things instead of wondering about the intricacies of why. We easily forget our curiosity that once wasn’t even satisfied by answers; we lose the curiosity we all used to have.

As adults we all too often look at the simplest items and see them for what they are; a pencil is a pencil. We forget about what it was like to have a sense of wonder, to open our imaginations to the endless possibilities that one simple tool could provide; we forget the wonder we all used to have.

You can get it all back, the eyes, the curiosity, the wonder, it just takes time. Not time as we know it at this stage in our lives; the “let me block out some room on my calendar” time, time as in slowing down.

Today I slowed down to examine a pencil, and it was the best part of my day. I didn’t have a bad day, but taking the time to examine a pencil instead of just use it was that good. I slowed down looked at it and let my mind wonder; I was instantly enthralled by it’s shape, I became curious as to how many lines of writing were required to flatten what was once a sharp lead tip, and thought about the words, no matter how brilliant, that had been permanently vanished by the now depleted eraser. Whose pencil was this? And how did I come to possess it?

These questions led to more and more, soon I was thinking about the business behind pencils and pondering on what would make this pencil better. In this moment I regained my childlike eyes, curiosity, and wonder. It was spectacular!

Slowing down is all it took, slowing down allowed me to rid myself of the cynicism that somehow creeps into all of us and made everything wholesome and good again.

The eyes, the curiosity, the wonder, we all still have it, we just have to slow down and allow ourselves to let it come out.

You know that horrible mental state that you get in when you haven’t gone out of your way to spice up life in a while? Call it a slump, a funk, or a rut…I’m in one; it’s not just writers block either, it’s my entire mental state. I feel like I have to do something to get out of it, and for me this typically means creating something to look forward to…entrepreneurially.

Seth Godin say’s that “you can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones,” and while I’ve generated a lot of bad ones, I’ve also had a few gems. The funny thing about those “gems” is that after many false starts, I’ve come to realize that that the concept or idea doesn’t matter, it’s all about how passionately the idea is pursued that makes it worthwhile.

For example: the Snuggie.

Generally speaking the Snuggie is not a brilliant or even original idea (it’s been in SkyMall under a different name for years); basically someone marketed a bathrobe being worn backwards. But it’s a hit, people love it to love it or they love it to mock it, either way it is selling like crazy! In fact, the only reason we all know about this lackluster idea is that someone was crazy enough to wear a bathrobe backwards and passionate enough to see his idea all the way through. (The marketing and pop culture phenomenon behind it is a completely different case study).

Back to my problem: I need something to look forward to entrepreneurially. I have a few fairly well thought out ideas, one of which is a complete revamp of this site to allow for “user generated content” (kind of), another would be very legally intensive because it borders on the line of legality (though everyone I’ve pitched it to loves it), and yet another is to start my own juice bar (I’m kind of obsessed with smoothies).

While I am confident all of the ideas would work, figuring out which concept to commit myself to is another question. Revamping this site would hands down be the easiest and least capital intensive, though the revenue model is questionable. At this stage it’s probably a tossup for the most capital intensive concept between the storefront and the legally questionable concept (which would obviously require a legal team.) The most exciting idea is legally questionable (would create incredible buzz…I already own the domain), the most promising is probably revamping the site, and the juice bar probably has a chance to do the best from a cash-flow standpoint.

My problem really comes down to me being horrible at making decisions. I hate making them; in fact, I’m horrible at it, the only way I cope in day to day life is that I force myself to make a quick last second decision because I know I will be fine either way (Soup or Salad?).

Currently I’m leaning towards revamping the site due to the fact that it is the easiest to moonlight. I still have a lawyer looking into some things for me to see if the waters are navigable for the other concept, but for capital purposes at least I should be able to see a relatively quick result on the website, as opposed to the other two.

I’m sure I’ll always be keeping my eyes open at various ventures, and coming up with random ideas that would work if I was passionate and pursued them, but for now, I’ve built what I feel is a pretty good brand and I’d like to follow it down the rabbit hole to see where it takes me.

After too long, a site revamp is coming. Stay tuned, and I may just need your help.

Thanks for listening.

In school my favorite professor would always preach “live like no one else now, so that you can live like no one else later,” this phrase seemed to always get lost amongst a crowd of in the now college students, but he kept saying it with the true heartfelt emphasis of a teacher who really loved his students. In a moment of self reflection today I looked back and remembered this and it was as if the dots all connected.

While this phrase can be applied to almost any aspect of life, it really hits home on the financial front. Think about what it would mean to live like no one else (mainly your peers) now, foregoing the huge flat panel TV with hundreds of HD channels, foregoing the new car, or the big house, and just being content with what you have. Living like no one else now inevitably means spending less money, and saving a lot more money. Saving now by building a solid base for retirement and an emergency fund, means that later on in life your savings will be exponentially larger thanks to the power of compounding interest.

In a nutshell, by foregoing your wants now, you will have more for your wants later; but on a more interesting front, I’ve found that if you forgo your wants now, your desire to have that product will continue to decrease until you are glad that you didn’t purchase it. This happened to me last year around Christmas when I really wanted a BMW, and was even in negotiations with a dealership to purchase one. The time came to pull the trigger and I got cold feet. For the next few months I looked back wishing I would have done it, but now, I’m glad I didn’t. Because of this decision, we don’t have a higher car payment, our insurance isn’t higher, we have better gas mileage and we are saving more money for our future.

Live like no one else now, so that you can live like no one else later.

Recently I read a blog post by a young woman who had been fired from her job. She went to lengths to complain about how she felt betrayed by the company, then somehow backtracked and explained how she understood why the company fired her…because she was a horrible employee. She didn’t say it in those exact words, but she lead me to believe that she was a horrible employee. As I read her post, I repeatedly asked myself “what is this girl thinking!?” She might as well just write “Horrible Employee, Don’t Hire Me” on her resume. All it takes is for one prospective employer to Google her and she’s no longer a candidate.

Too often people pour their souls onto the Internet, whether it be a friends wall posting or a blog post, and once it is up, it is permanent. A snapshot of how you were feeling at one point in time has been published to the world, and you can’t change your mind on it. We are the first generation that grew up with social media, our lives are practically public information from politically incorrect jokes we write on a friends facebook wall, to the many many inappropriate pictures of us that other people took and tagged us in. For many it won’t really matter, but for those with big dreams (specifically business, political, or athletic) it may.

For the last 7ish weeks I’ve obviously taken a bit of a hiatus from writing. Some of the hiatus had to do with writers block, some had to do with a lack of desire to write, but a good bit of it was actually me censoring myself. As a writer who draws from his own life experience for just about every post, it’s now much harder to write since my co-workers know about this site. Now, if I write about a bad day at work, even if I write about what I’ve learned from it and try to spin it in a positive light, I could come off as complaining (something no one likes). If I write about how I really messed something up, I could (or would in one instance) become a direct target for all the blame, when I shouldn’t be.

Protecting your personal brand online is fairly easy, and protecting it offline is too, but when those worlds collide it becomes a much different world. These instances are even becoming newsworthy: someone on disability posts facebook pictures of them skydiving, someone fires an employee then updates their status telling the world why, or my personal favorite someone gets a job offer then tweets about it saying how the money is great but the company sucks. I’m not saying to have two different “brands” but think of it like this: your work persona vs. your out at the bars persona. Your friends may not care how you act at work, but your boss may care how you act out at the bars.

Over the coming years, as more members of Gen-Y run for office, and further succeed in business and sports it will be interesting to see the scandals that come from all of this, but I think the bigger question is, as Gen-Y becomes even more of an influence will anyone care about poor decisions posted on facebook or twitter? After all we’ve all had them.

On Monday I posted the following:

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” -Antione de Saint Exupéry

All 135 characters of this quote fits snugly into the 140 character limit of Twitter, but instead of just tweeting it (which I did), I blogged it.

I think it’s fairly obvious why, but at the risk of having excess I will explain. I had a whole blog post centered around the quote, but the rest wasn’t an improvement on what he wrote, it was excess.

All I can say is that throughout our lives we surround ourselves with excess, excess house, excess car, excess cable channels, excess words in a blog post. And all of this excess only leads to more excess; electricity bills, gas bills, cable bills… We live highly inflated lifestyles believing that these things make us happy, but the feeling of happiness is fleeting, takes us off track, and leaves us wanting more. Our car is no longer the latest and greatest, so we trade it in for another, a bigger/slimmer TV comes out so ours is already outdated, our wants turn into “needs” and we truly think of them that way. When this happens we lose focus of the little joys that make us happiest; things like watching the sunrise, reading a good book, meditating, and spending time with loved ones.

I won’t proclaim to have the answers to perfect happiness, but I would bet that it starts out by stripping away the excess in our lives.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” -Antione de Saint Exupéry

I have a friend who is a very successful entrepreneur, so successful that at 24 he is the youngest CEO listed in the 2009 Inc 500 (a listing of the 500 fastest growing, privately held companies in the country). He is the person who instilled in me that entrepreneurship isn’t about what you are doing, it’s about the fact that you are doing it. (Something that I also wrote about in Entrepreneurship: Just Do It). This phrase is something that I have really taken to heart, and as a result I’ve gotten the ball rolling on multiple projects. But I want to add something crucial to the phrase: entrepreneurship isn’t about what you are doing, it’s about the fact that you are doing it and having fun.

Having fun may very well be the most crucial aspect in the entrepreneurial process, because if you aren’t having fun you won’t stick with something long enough to see where it can go. The following examples are all people who started out by playing around, tinkering, experimenting, and flat out having fun.

In Steve Wozniak’s autobiography iWoz, he writes about how everything he did in inventing the personal computer was fun for him. He recalls how much fun it was when he played a game where he would try to design a computer using one less chip than he used the time before. Each time he would come up with a more creative way to accomplish his goal. To me that seems impossible, but to him it was playing around. Steve Jobs was the same way, he didn’t have a solid grasp on the engineering side of things, but running the business was his playground.

Michael Dell always loved computers, he loved them so much that he started making them for friends and family. By the time he knew it, he was running a successful business out of his dorm room at the University of Texas…and he was having fun doing it.

My friend in the Inc 500 started out experimenting to see if he could leverage a house he bought to buy another in order to rent it to his fraternity brothers. He had so much fun in the process that it spiraled out of control and by the time he graduated college he was running a $2 million business. 

My wife Mary loves to bake, she describes it as her labor of love. She looks forward to playing in the kitchen, baking for our local farmers market, and we both have fun doing a great deal of work to fulfill some orders that we now have from stores. We are by no means a successful business, but we are having fun doing it and making some extra money. For the time being that’s good enough for us.

Another friend of mine, Chris Anderson, combined the three things he loved to play with: wakeboarding, fluid dynamics, and working with his hands; into literally building a best in class wakeboarding boat in his driveway (article) and founding Epic Boats. In fact, he had so much fun doing that, after he found a manufacturing plant for the boats, he wanted to get his hands dirty again, so he started playing with aero dynamics and working with his hands again. This time around his play turned into one of the hottest electric car companies around: Aptera.

Too often we think of entrepreneurs as huge risk takers, but I hope that by looking at the few examples above you realize that often times they aren’t. In many instances it is just someone tinkering and playing around while having fun. When they finally look up they realize they have something great. That’s how Apple, Dell, Epic Boats, Aptera, our struggling bakery, a successful real estate venture, and even this website came to be.

What are you waiting for? Start playing.