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Truth and Fire at Tony Hsieh’s Trailer Park

October 27, 2015 by 5dmin Leave a Comment

[My impromptu performance at Tony Hsieh's trailer park music jam last weekend]

Last weekend after Thrive, a small group of us went to party at Tony's trailer park music jam. I was fortunate enough to get to perform a couple of songs with a band… no rehearsal, they improvised the music on the spot and we met just minutes beforehand!

Thank you Leanne Turner for filming this for me! And Bren Stylewise Davis, Erica Lee, Milan Rao, Samantha Skelly, TJ Anderson, Michael Shen, Ben Roy, Mike Sherbakov and others for being such a supportive audience 🙂 (and John Lee Dumas were you there or showed up right after?)

Oh and Jayson Gaignard, Dan Martell, Sheevaun Moran … you all went for a walk right before this, so here's the recording 😛

(Oh and huge props to Nick Kho for getting me, and thus everyone else, to the party)

Experience vs. Expression: A Life Of Interconnected Work And Play

September 18, 2014 by [email protected] Leave a Comment

[Day 21 of my open journal experiment] This struggle will sound familiar to you:

When you’re working a lot, creating, expressing your talents, you often feel guilty that you’re not experiencing more of life. You wonder while working, “Isn’t life all about experiences? I should go travel, have adventures, new experiences, try everything the world has to offer… I’m spending, even wasting, way too much time just working right now. I’m missing out.”

And when you’re playing, traveling, experiencing all that life has to offer, there’s a sense of guilt in the back of your mind… “I should be creating more. Time is passing me by, and I’m not fully expressing my potential, I’m not creating enough. Sure I’m having fun, but I’m losing valuable time that I could use productively to move my life and business forward.”

You’re obviously not alone. Virtually everyone I meet struggles with this dichotomy.

Here’s the good news: you don’t have to struggle with it. And just ‘being where you are, being in the moment’ might not be enough of an answer, because this dichotomy still bothers you on some level. Here’s a philosophical approach. I’ve shared this with a lot of people individually so far, and it has created some big breakthroughs.

It’s simple: these are not opposing forces at all, but rather synergistic ones that rely on each other for maximum depth and growth in each.

Let’s start with a quick definition so we’re on the same page. I define work, creation, building, etc as “expression” here. I do so because when you live and work authentically, your work, your creation is expression. It is an expression of your heart, of your talents, of your mind, of your abilities, of your full self. Whether you are an entrepreneur, a musician, or an accountant, your work is an expression of you. If your work doesn’t feel like ‘expression’ at all, you should look into adjusting your work as you’ll find greater happiness and a higher service to others when your work becomes more closely tied with expression of your talents, abilities, and desires.

Experience here is defined as what you get to do in life. Play, travel, relationships, music, food, adventures, and everything else you flow through.

Let’s integrate experience and expression…

I like to use triangles to integrate dichotomies. Recognize that two things that seem juxtaposing typically have an integrated answer above and beyond either position, but sitting on top of both of them at the top of the triangle. In this case, we’re putting Experience and Expression on opposite sites, then drawing a triangle on top of them and asking “What’s at the top?”

Intentional experiences, in addition to being there for their own sake, expand you. They make you grow. If you travel to another country, or you go skydiving, or you enter a new relationship… you grow from it. You expand your consciousness. If most of your experiences do not expand yourself and your consciousness in some way, then choose different experiences.

Creation is expression of self, and the greater the self (expanded through experiences) the greater the levels at which you can express the self. You literally have a more expanded self to create. Every experience expands your power to express and create.

So the more consciousness expanding experiences you have, the greater your ability to express, and the more of you there is to express.

What do you need to have great experiences? Sometimes, you need money. Other times you need great relationships. Sometimes a reputation, contacts, freedom, power, opportunities. All these things expand your possibilities to experience all that the world has to offer.

How do you acquire more of those powers? Through creation, through expression. As you express more of yourself and your abilities, you grow your business, your network, your abundance – as that expression creates direct value in the world and the marketplace.

So expressing more gives you more experiences. Also, if you really love your work, expression in itself largely becomes as much of an experience as an external one, if not more.

The way to grow yourself is largely through experiences; as you grow yourself, you get to express at a higher level, adding more value to the world, by expressing a higher version of you.

The way to expand your opportunities for new experiences is through greater expression, through creation of value, freedom, and abundance.

Whichever you are doing at the moment, whether experience or expression, you are not sacrificing the other, but rather enhancing both. So dive fully into your experiences, let them expand you. Dive fully into your expression and creation, let it create freedom and abundance for you.

Of course, you’ll have to ask yourself some questions about experience and expression for this to fully apply in your life… Are you having experiences that expand you? Is your work an expression of you (talents/skills/abilities, heart, mind)?

This would certainly apply to a purpose driven entrepreneur who travels the world. To a life coach who experiences deep relationships. To an artist who parasails at sunset with his best friends. To a musician who holds deep conversations over wine and cigars with his lover. To a software developer who goes to art museums. To someone whose work, at least to some extent, is an expression of self, and to whom experiences are an expansion of self.

It probably wouldn’t apply so much to someone working a desk job they hate, whose ‘experience’ consists of getting drunk at the local bar every weekend. Or to someone dispassionate about their work, whose experience consists of watching hours of mindless TV per day.

If you are living life on purpose, expanding yourself through your experiences, and expressing your expanded self through your work, then the two are already integrated, and you can know that you are exactly at the right place, at the right time, whether you are working (expressing) or playing (experiencing). And you can further integrate by choosing experiences that spark your growth, and shifting your work to be a greater expression of that inner growth.

Power, Love, And Wisdom (Your Highest Self)

August 28, 2014 by [email protected] 1 Comment

This is day 6 of my 33 open journal experiment. I’ve been wanting to write publicly about this topic for awhile, so a blog post is a better fit than Facebook for this one.

The highest version of yourself is at the intersection of Power, Love, and Wisdom.

Love

Love is the source and the point. It’s what creates life and bonds life together. If you disregard the Power and Wisdom components, and just live with Love, you’ll be okay.

Love should be the motivation for your life, for how you build your career/business, for how you cultivate your relationships, for how you show up in the world. It’s the greatest form of energy there is. I can write more about Love here, but so much has already been written, and it ultimately just sounds cliche to write more words for it here – you’ve either found this truth for yourself, or you haven’t (yet).

Grow your ability to Love, and you’ll live a better life. Love yourself, Love others, Love your work, Love the world, Love Love.

There was a time in my life where I believed Love and your “Inner God” or your ‘highest self’ were synonymous, but that model has evolved for me to instead be the intersection of Power, Love, and Wisdom… or your greatest expression of Love.

Power

Power amplifies whatever it’s attached to. Power is influence, the ability to create change, the force that makes things happen.

On a more “practical” level, you grow your Power by growing your ability to influence and create change in the world. Learning copywriting is increasing your Power, because you can influence people’s decisions. Growing your audience is Power, because you can reach more people with your message. Gaining and direction wealth is a great form of Power, because the market forces dictate so much of what each individual and society as a whole does, and because it expands your own freedom and ability to influence.

Power is your ability to change minds, change behavior, change the way the world works.

So if you start with Love as your base motivation for creation, as the energy source for your life, then Power amplifies that Love. Amplifies your expression of Love. Empowers you to influence more people with your Love.

In my drawing, the overlap of Power and Love is Love expressed, amplified, and expanded.

Wisdom

Wisdom is the human expression of Truth.

The highest form of Wisdom is the closest we can get to understanding and expressing Truth. It’s seeing as far forward as we can into our future, based on understanding the cyclical nature of our past. It’s understanding how the world works, it’s understanding the chain of action-reaction as far as the human mind can see.

On a more practical level, Wisdom is knowing what to do to get a desired result.

You go to a mentor with Wisdom because they can see farther and deeper than you, and can help you make the right decision when you’re lost, expand your perspective, or see a greater truth in your current reality.

The overlap of Wisdom and Love is consciousness.

If you take Wisdom and overlap it with Power, you’ll know how to best use your Power. Grow both your Wisdom and your Power, and you multiply your influence. Your decisions will be wiser, based on a greater understanding of Truth, and you’ll be able to do a lot more with your growing Power.

The highest version of yourself is at the intersection of Power, Love, and Wisdom.

Bring yourself to the center of these three energies… you start with Love as your Source, you amplify its experience and expression with Power, and you multiply by directing it with Wisdom.

Knowing this isn’t enough.

How do you apply it?

It’s simple, but it’s a life long journey. Grow each energy. Commit to growing your Love. Commit to expanding your Power. Commit to gaining greater Wisdom. Let this become your model for personal growth, using these circles as broad categories for the skills, concepts, and lessons you create for yourself.

As you commit to this journey, you also become a force in building a humanity that can sustain a deep understanding of Love.

PS – Massive gratitude to Vivian Hanai who planted this seed in my head when she taught me the mantra “I am Power, Love, and Wisdom” before speaking at Eben Pagan’s Accelerate last year. That mantra has now taken on a greater meaning for me, as it means I am my highest self, an expression of God, my greatest expression of Love.

A Humanity That Can Sustain A Deep Understanding Of Love

August 18, 2014 by [email protected] 2 Comments

Here’s what I believe we’re doing in the world, what my generation is responsible for:

Building A Humanity That Can Sustain A Deep Understanding Of Love

I can go on in essays about how Love Is The Answer, but there’s already plenty written on that, and you either agree or you don’t (some would say, you either Remember, or you don’t).

But just knowing the answer isn’t enough to create a world that Lives the answer.

And I believe that’s just what we’re doing now, creating a world that can live that answer sustainably.

What do I mean by sustainably?

The 70’s got really close to this (referring to America), in that so much of the population had a deep understanding of Love. The culture, the music, the people, the spirit… but it wasn’t sustainable, so it didn’t last. I could even argue that we spent the next two decades take huge steps back from it, largely because it wasn’t sustainable.

It wasn’t sustainable because while much of the culture understood this, we just didn’t build the economic, political, and technological structures and environments to sustain it. So what you had was Woodstock… Love and Beauty and Rebellion and Drugs and Music, until you ran out of food, shelter, and money… and structure.

So what’s different now?

If you look around, the culture has been waking up to Love. More and more people are awakening and remembering the Power of Love.

But it’s not just in a rebellious, hippy way (nothing against hippies – again, they were pretty damn close to getting it right).

It’s all coming together synergistically… the entrepreneurial revolution, the technological evolution, and the mass cultural awakening.

In the 70’s, Love and Business/Capitalism were on opposite sides of the spectrum. Now, Entrepreneurial Creation is actually one of the Greatest Expressions of Love.

In the 70’s, Love and Technology were on opposite sides of the spectrum (well, except for in the minds of great entrepreneurs and thinkers like Steve Jobs, who recognized the convergence of the two way before the rest of the world). Now, most technological progress improves not only the quality of human life, but also the environment (think Tesla, or more broadly almost anything with a microchip), and people actually strive to create technology that improves the planet, not to mention human freedom and global equal opportunity.

The political landscape, well… I don’t follow enough politics to claim any expertise here, but I do believe we’re seeing the evolution of conscious capitalism, and a political environment supporting that evolution.

As the political, economic, and technological atmospheres converge with the cultural, artistic, and spiritual awakening to Love, we’ll live in a world where people’s lives and careers will experience, express, and embody Love… sustainably.

And a society is just a collection of people and the relationships (political, economic, familial, spiritual, cultural, sexual, emotional, intellectual relationships) between them, so we’ll have a world that will experience, express, and embody Love.

More than any generation before us, this can really last.

So what does this all mean, and what do you do with it?

I believe it will progress exponentially and happen with or without you. With or without me. But I invite you to participate… better yet, to lead this revolution. To accelerate it. To be on the right side of history. To create meaning in your life, by helping to build a humanity that can sustain a deep understanding of Love.

Having this goal, this commitment, and this belief alone will start to transform your thinking, your decisions, and your actions to those of a solutionary.

Thoughts? Comment below. I would love a discussion about this.

2013: A Reflection and Goals for the NEXT Year, Part 2

January 31, 2014 by [email protected] Leave a Comment

Ok so this post is about a month overdue, it’s a follow up to part one. Better late than never though. A lot has changed in the past month, so I’ll do my best to keep this 2013-related.

My Biggest Lessons from 2013

Don’t lose the forest for the trees. It’s so easy to get caught up in a project, deal, business challenge, etc, and spend so much time and emotional energy on it. One of the biggest things I learned this year is that most of the small stuff, despite how important it may seem in the moment, won’t really matter much 5 years from now. It doesn’t affect my vision that much, and getting caught up in it can actually distract my energies from my greater vision in life.

Look inside for strength. Develop spiritually.

This year has been a spiritual path for me, I just didn’t know it until the last couple of months. It wasn’t intentional, but it was deep, powerful, sometimes enlightening, and sometimes painful. Now I’m on this path more consciously into 2014. I’ve found an incredible spiritual mentor/guide, I’m reading a ton of new books, and have been meditating consistently.

Despite being a self-proclaimed atheist all my life, I’m finding god in my own way, and feeling a lot stronger in all that I do as a result. Not to mention happier. I’ll write another post later on my concept of god, inner and outer, as I develop these ideas more clearly for myself.

Physical neglect affects all else. Sleep. Eat. Exercise. Have sex. Meditate.

I’ve committed to sleeping 7+ hours a night pretty consistently, working out every day, started for martial arts classes, am eating great, and spending more time outside. These things should be simple and obvious, but I’ve burned out multiple times over the last couple of years, pushing myself so hard based on my idea of who an entrepreneur is… based on my work ethic, based on my past and my future. I’ve now clearly realized that the better health I’m in, the clearer decisions I can make, the better and more focused my work is, and therefore the less hours I have to actually work. I’m a lot more effective, and a lot happier.

I’ve also realized that it doesn’t take that much effort. A 20 minute workout each day can make a huge difference. Changing up my diet doesn’t take much work or money either, and most of the time I was sacrificing sleep to ‘get more done’ I was actually being super ineffective.

Simplicity. Simple means focus. Greater energy where it matters, rather than scattered.

Building something complex is easy. Being busy is easy. Scattering your energy all over the place to make ends meet is easy (though it’s hard work). Simplicity is actually harder to stick to, but ultimately gets better results, and is more sustainable and more scalable. I’m still working on simplifying a lot of my business life, but I’ve made a ton of progress in the last few months, and it’s really improved my profits.

The biggest thing here has been setting rules for what projects to take on and what to pass on, despite being good opportunities. I run opportunities and clients through a value system now, rather than just jumping on something because it seems lucrative. There’s a lot more to this, but that’s for another post.

Trust myself, listen to myself deeply, but be skeptical of my ego.

I’ve realized that most of the time, my intuition is right, while my ‘logic’ often leads me down roads of complexity. Logic says take the big project for a big check. Intuition says avoid that client because they don’t fit my values well, and the short term pay off will result in a long term headache. Each time I’ve followed the logic approach this year, I’ve gotten the headache. Each time I’ve followed intuition, things have worked out for the best, and again I’ve been a lot happier.

This has also caused me to make some bolder decisions, like committed myself to NEXT despite short term financial success being elsewhere, which has been probably the best decision of my life to date.

No one else will take and ‘run’ and grow your company for you. Build good systems and hire good people to improve and manage those systems.

I hired an operations team at the beginning of the year and thought that would take care of everything. Some things improved, but ultimately I trusted too much and had to dig myself out of a hole. I’ve realized that even if I hire good people, it’s my responsibility to build systems in my business, to build a good leadership team, and to make great growth decisions and evolve the business model. No one’s going to do that for me, at least not with my level of commitment, but that doesn’t mean I can’t scale or free myself from day-to-day operations.

Best and most sustainable approach to growth: great operations, superb product delivery – NOT “sales” (except through natural networking).

I’ve built an awesome client base through doing great work, being honest, and getting great referrals. Each time a deal got ‘sold’ for me, it didn’t work out well either for me or for the client. I don’t think that the service industry needs ‘sales’ to succeed, at least not in the traditional sense, but rather just great delivery. The results and reputation sell themselves and can result in exponential growth. “Selling” to new people each time requires a lot more effort, both up front and long term.

Follow passion, joy, and meaning.

Purpose. Not just the money. With this advice, I’ve co-created Maverick NEXT with Yanik. While financially sustainable in itself, we didn’t launch NEXT as a ‘money project’ but as a passion and mission project for us both, integrate our collected purpose – and for me personally also for greater joy and meaning, creating the kind of peer network I’ve always wanted to have.

Last year at Underground 9, someone asked Yanik “Would you ever do a Maverick Business Adventures for young entrepreneurs?” … and Yanik said he’d consider it if the right person and the right deal came along to run it. This is something I’d been thinking about for some time before, but really just didn’t have the balls to bring it up. Within weeks, we were talking about a young entrepreneur network concept, and 2 months later we conceptualized Maverick NEXT.

I don’t need to “prove myself” to create massive value.

Focus on the value, not the ego, not external validation or comparisons. I used to think that I needed to build a certain size business, like a million dollars in revenue or something, to start really having an impact on young entrepreneurs. This was just a limiting belief holding me back from being of the greatest service to the world, an excuse made up by my ego.

At Eben Pagan’s Accelerate, I had a great conversation with one of the speakers Matthew Monahan, a young entrepreneur who sold his company for $100M to Ancestry.com at 29 years old. He made me realize that I really have nothing to prove, that all that matters is the actual impact I have on people’s lives through the work that I do, not the credentials to do that work. That’s all that gets measured by the right people. I’m so grateful for Matthew because that conversation probably helped me skip a couple of years of pursuing all the wrong things, instead of jumping straight to pursuing my purpose.

My primary goals for 2014:

Grow my web architecture agency to $300,000 (about double this year’s revenue), while removing myself from about 80% of operations. I plan to keep a leadership position to direct the team, and do some creative direction on client projects. And of course, continually improve our systems.
Grow Maverick NEXT to 50 active members. My BHAG is to grow NEXT to 100 active members, but honestly it’s a lot more about the quality of the network and their experience, not the number, so I’d be happy with 50 awesome members whose lives and businesses we get to transform.
Become conversationally fluent in Spanish. Carried this over from last year and the year before that… so what’s different this year? Use Duolingo – it’s fun, and almost addictive, or at least habitual – and competitive. I plan to spend a good portion of 2015 in a Spanish speaking country, so this is really important now!
Move to San Diego, ideally by the beach. Currently planning on spending 6 months there in 2014, hopping around different AirBnB spots. Next stop: The Philippines!
Spend a week on a tropical island, doing almost nothing for the whole week. I’ve traveled a lot, but haven’t taken a real vacation since Marketer’s Cruise a year ago, and before that Aruba after my college graduation 3 years ago. I really look forward to just sitting on a hammock under a palm tree on a sunny tropical island, doing pretty much nothing.
Put on an incredible NEXT Summit with 100+ attendees. More on this coming very soon, but basically it will be an event for young entrepreneurs to get together and learn from really high level Maverick Entrepreneurs. All NEXT members will attend as part of their membership, and we’ll make tickets available for sale to guest attendees. It will be epic.
Spiritual development: get comfortable with and get to know my own inner god, and pull that god source into my life more actively, more consciously.
Get in the best shape of my life to date. Ally and I are keeping each other accountable on this one, and so far we’re on a good track.
Possibly: launch a SaaS product in the copywriting industry. This is a secret for now, and while it’s a really exciting concept, I’m not sure if now is the right time given my other major goals for the year.

I’ll keep this blog updated with my progress, especially on the NEXT stuff, and as always look forward to your feedback. I’m so grateful to have these incredible lessons from the past year, and ambitious goals for this year.

What are your lessons from last year? Goals for this year? I’d love your comments below.