Day 268 – Even lazy days require work!

When we went to bed last night we agreed that today would be a pajama day.

Crepes for breakfast and a day of just sitting around snacking and binging on Netflix.

Mission accomplished! We did not do anything today! We watched about 11 episodes of Fringe and snacked all day long.

That being said I still had work to do. So tonight at about 7 o’clock I went to the ware house to give the plants some much needed attention. They have been growing so fast I have not yet had time to stake them and it would seen that I got to them just in time if not a little late. I was there for a solid 4 1/2 hours and still have a couple hours to put in tomorrow. I know they call it weed and it grows on its own but in the conditions we have to grow for legal consumption is a whole different story. I am learning a lot and making plenty of mistakes but it is going well. We are able to stay afloat for now waiting on the process that has been almost a year in the making.

Tomorrow I have a VERY messy desk to uncover and get to the grind right away. I need to be working on the business plan for Eve’s Moonshine Co to begin to look for capital. I have a conference call with a marketing guy that will help me begin to draft a marketing plan with the new focus of the Moonshine Company and the new locations. I have to contact the county this week and begin to gather the information necessary for the Federal and State licensing. A very busy week indeed. Oh yeah and it is the end of the month, have to figure out how the heck to pay the bills!

Lots to do I better get some rest!

Peace.

Day 234 – Relaxing doing chores?

Man Today was a relaxing day!

I slept until noon and I am not ashamed! When I did get up Amy was being very domestic in the kitchen canning and I did laundry and cleaned a bathroom.

Isn’t entrepreneurism glamorous? Seriously I talk a lot about all the business stuff but, there is so much more. I am human and I have to live and eat and do chores. Since our kids are growing up and moving out I am actually having to do more chores again. There used to be 4 of them to divide up the chores and now really there is just the youngest and I feel bad having him do everything so I do a lot. Heck I even did all of the laundry today!

I know this seems trivial but. when we think of Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and other successful people I think we forget that they take out the trash, scrub toilets and mow the lawn. We work hard at growing our businesses and we still have to just live. We work long hours and still have to deal with the dishes in the sink.

Actually during the day, since I work at home, that sink full of dishes provides a needed break in working. I like to stop and do things around the house to break up the day. If you have been following this for a while you know I make the bed first thing in the morning and then I go to work and then do a few chores interspersed throughout the day.

Actually it is kind of relaxing and so when I say today was a relaxing day and I did chores, it is relaxing to me. That does not mean I am going to come clean your house. I have plenty to do here! Of course today since it was Sunday there may have been a Bloody Mary accompanying me. Oh yeah and guys, your women REALLY like it when you do these things. I mean they REALLY like it if you get my drift. Test me on this. A little bleach in the air is a great aphrodisiac!

This afternoon Amy and I were able to just relax on the couch and watch a couple shows. It was a great recharging day before attacking the upcoming week!

Day 211 – We cross paths for a reason.

Okay today I got a few new posters made and delivered to a new placement in Everett. I sent off a dozen emails and stayed on top of things as I keep moving forward.

I am beginning to realize that the light at the end of the tunnel is just a mirage in the desert of business. There is no end only tunnel and that is fine. It is not really a race but as I stated on my first day it is a journey. That is really beginning to sink in.

The journey has highs and lows, easy digging and bedrock. With each day comes challenges and victories with lessons to learn from each.

I literally find rewarding things every day as I come across new people and take steps forward. I met a guy on Monday at the Sam Adams coaching event that was is a butcher in Seattle. While we shared our stories I thought at the time that this was simply another guy just like me on his own journey. After I got an email from him today I started to reflect on why our paths may have crossed. He casually mentioned that he was interested in starting a spirit for his company to extend his brand. Honestly I did not think much of it at the time. I mean, why would a butcher of 30 plus years be interested in creating a spirit. After doing some research on who he was and what he has done for small farms here locally I am excited to meet with him and my mind is flooded with ideas.

I love being able to work for myself and really let my mind go where it has always wanted to go. Meeting with this guy aligns with my purpose of helping others and that really turns my crank.

Day 105 – Look a Doorknob!

I read earlier this week that a normal person has a filter that blocks out 98% of irrelevant crap during the day. A filter that quickly sees and determines what is important  and what is not. It automatically prioritizes things that an individual encounters and allows them to operate in structure and stay focused.

If I had grown up now as opposed to the 70’s I am sure I would be on all kinds of medication and be branded with Attention Deficiency Disorder. You see I have no such filter. Everything is important as it enters my brain and begs to be put into first place. The author put it so well. He said that a normal person looks around the room and sees all kinds of objects, perhaps taking note of any dangers or just notices the doors and windows in a room.

I notice the door and the shiny doorknob and it is like some one stands up in my head and shouts, ” OH MY GOD! A DOORKNOB! DO YOU SEE IT? EVERYONE! EVERYONE! LOOK ITS A DOORKNOB!”

Everything I see is a distraction. I walk through a room where a movie is on and 20 minutes later I have forgot that I was going to the garage to check the breaker for the dishwasher, because my laundry wasn’t dry and the mailman had not come yet.

It is a struggle for me to do things that a normal person takes for granted because of all of the shiny bouncy things.

I work for myself. I am coming up on my two year anniversary of doing so and every day is a miracle. Working for yourself is an incredible cool thing. I get to make my own schedule and I answer to myself. Well it is cool for some and  a horror for people like me. I have to make structure out of of absolutely nothing. It is like standing in the middle of a flat completely barren desert and making a roller coaster every day.

I literally have to create the mirage of something and then operate inside that mirage without looking at the damn doorknob! Like I shared a couple weeks ago the secret seems to be filling my days and making things as busy as possible so I am managed by my schedule instead of the other way around. That of course has challenges too. As a business owner I cannot afford to be reactionary or create the perception of that in any way. It is a very fine balance and one that I struggle with. Thank God for Amy, who helps more than she can imagine keeping me on track.

Things would be so much easier without that damn shiny doorknob!

Day 80 – Hat of the day . . .? The carpenter’s hat!

I spent most of my day being handy. I have had the design for this new retail display floating around in my head. The rustic, reclaimed wood look. I spent time researching lumber and stains. taking dimensions off of lumber from apple boxes. After about four hours of engineering, staining, and assembly here is my finished product! It holds one full case and has room for signage. In the future we will be getting a 8″ x 12″ brand that we can burn into the back display board. We will also be putting pegs on for recipe cards and specials. The other flavors will all be in the same bottles so it will be universal for our product only. That is good so retailers cannot put other things on our display rack.

It felt good to take over the garage and kick out the car. I set up my sawhorses and air compressor. I got out the nail gun, level and even my angle finder! Sometimes it feels good to set up shop and actually create. Working with my hands is relaxing and almost like therapy. I love going to the hardware store and just looking around or going from isle to isle trying to figure out the best way to build something.

Now that I have the first one build my beancounter side can take over. How can I do it faster, more efficiently and less expensive? I will build several more on days that I need to relax and be handy. Until eventually I can no longer handle it and then sadly I will have to outsource it.

I will no doubt have some other project by then but for now I am basking in my triumph today. It was not only a triumph in productivity in getting something major accomplished but, a therapeutic one as well.

Day 43 – Seize breaks when Opportunities arise

Wednesdays are usually days I get a late start. I have a Pub Quiz I run On Tuesday nights and I get home pretty late. When I get up in the morning the first thing I am taxed with is writing a blog about the quiz the night before. When I got up this morning and sat down to my laptop I was surprised with a Windows update! So after literally an hour of installing and updating I was able to get my blog done.

Not long after I finished I was surprised to see my lovely wife pull into the driveway. She had a headache and was home early. She took a nap and I finished a few things that were on the urgent plate. She woke up from a nap and came done in her pajamas. I looked at the clock and smiled because it was about 2 o’clock by this time and I had not gotten out of my PJs yet either, good day!

Amy was feeling better and asked how much work I had left to do. Now, we have not had too much time to just hang out in a couple months so it was easy to step away from my desk. We snuggled up on the couch and watched one of our favorite shows for the next 4 1/2 hours. Of course we were constantly interrupted by our #3 son Ethan tweeting us live shots from his bromance trip to Disneyland with his best friend. We are not jealous at all but all of his things are currently for sale. He has a nice TV and PS3, email me for more info.

Sometimes you have to just take a break. When opportunity is there you seize it. Of course I had thinks to do but they were not as important as spending time with my bride. She is first and the reason I do what I do, but I am not willing to sacrifice moments like today. It charges the batteries and now I am ready to keep on rockin!

Day 37 – Am I really working?

Webster’s defines work as “Activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.” Now for some that is pretty subjective and even I am guilty of blurring the lines a bit. There are many different kinds of work we do on a daily basis. I can do laundry, clean the kitchen, or balance the checkbook. Yes those are all things that by definition are considered work. I want to talk tonight about my businesses and working in them. This is something that a lot of people think about but no one really wants to address because it would embarrass most of us and condemn even more. How much actual work do you do during the day?

I have heard it said that most working people arrive at 8am for work. After checking their email and facebook they start the coffee pot and make their rounds talking to co workers about how tired they are because of staying up to watch Game of Thrones. After a couple cups of coffee and some more facebook they may get the early morning requirements out of the way and back for another cup of coffee. It is estimated that the average worker does not actually get into real productive work until 10:00 or 10:30. lunch is at noon and of course there is the discussion that starts about 11:30 about where you are going to go. Always pushing it getting back you arrive no earlier than 1:00 on the nose and if you are two minutes late, who really cares right? Of course as soon as you get back you have that 20 minute trip to the bathroom. Then you try to get back into what you were doing before lunch, you have a full stomach and so you are getting tired and operating at about 80%. Starbucks run at about 2:30 to get you over the hump and by 3:00 you are back to full strength. About 4:15 you are already thinking about soccer practice and what is for dinner, dreading the commute home, 5:00 cannot come fast enough. All counted there has been almost 4 hours of work done in the average day.

Look I get it. I was there. It is 200 times worse when I am at home working for myself. There is the kitchen and laundry and of course Amy needs me to go have snacks with her! (I love snacks! I will work harder so we can keep going lover! ) Work is effort exerted to perform something. Nothing gets done without the work and there is NO CHEATING. Physics defines work as the product of force acting on an object over distance.

So if success is $1 million dollars and the starting line is $o, there is a required amount of work (force) that needs to be done (applied to the business) in order to get across the finish line ($1 Million). There is not short cut, there is no fudging it. I have to move my business from the start to the finish line period. Now If I choose to stop pushing my business in order to do the damn dishes, then that is work that is not getting done. When I finish the dishes I still have to come back to the same spot and get back to work. I don’t have to tell you that it is easier to keep a rock moving than it is to start moving a stationary one.

My point here is really about focus. We all have 24 hours in a day. The most successful people are productive and actually do work that matters more than the rest of us. I am getting back to work. Besides I still have 2 kids that live at home that can do the friggin dishes!

Day 23 – Punctuation added for your pleasure

So here we are day 23. I was talking with some friends last night. It was a serious business meeting in their hot tub and there may have been a few adult frosty beverages but, hey that is how we roll sometimes. The first question was about my blog. “Do you have anyone proofread you blog before you publish it?” HAHAHAHA, I seriously laughed. The answer is no and that, I am sure is no surprise to my regular readers. My editor at this stage is a squiggly red line under a word. However that does not cover know instead of no and it does not stop me from ending a sentence with a preposition or starting . . . which ever is a faux pax. I will be happy to share my English transcripts with you all and it will be no surprise that I did not do very well. I try to write this blog like I am speaking, conversational and well, that is not very great either but that is not the point.

I maintain that I have created this blog as mostly an accountability tool for myself. I have a habit now of writing every day and that being said I look for things to write about all day long. I weigh the experiences of the day and try to figure out what will be the best to write about. Last night my friend told me that even though that may be why I started, there are people reading this for more than just to hear my stories. Believe it or not some are actually listening to what I say and maybe even learning something and looking forward to hearing what I have to say.

That still being said, I cannot change who I am or how I communicate. I am a high school graduate with lots of street smarts and unfortunately English is not a requirement at Hard Knocks University. I hope you all can see past that and deal with it. I will try to do a better job of at least reading through it to find the obvious know vs. no mistakes, but that will be about as far as it goes. At the end of this journey if I decide to turn it into a book, that will be the editors job!

Today was a good day. I spent all of it in the office and never set foot outside. I have several things I am working on for wrapping up 2013 and others moving forward with 2014. I learned a new program and got a little bit better with Google Sketch-up. Lots of emails and a few phone calls. I actually got out of my pajamas only to put them right back on. Yeah I know my office life sucks LOL. It is nice to be working hard in your pajamas, don’t get me wrong, but I feel way more productive when I am dressed and even looking professional even if I am not leaving the house. You will just have to trust me when I say I feel a lot better talking with a customer or distributor when I am showered and dressed than when I am in my pajamas still.

Did I use the right word there? I can never remember if it is then or than.

Talk to you guys tomorrow!

 

Day 16 – Balancing Busy

So I imagine there will be many days like today over the next year that I will not have anything specific to talk about, so here we go. Today was a very busy day even though I only was able to cross two things off my list. Yes. I actually have a list! So even though I didn’t accomplish or finish tasks on my list it was still a very productive day. Form time to time there are things that come up that demand your immediate attention and they take time. They are the urgent things and even though they are not on the list they are still very important. I will tell tell you that late in the day I looked at me list and there was nothing crossed off. You know what I did? I looked at a couple simple things and I did them. There is something amazing about crossing things off your list. I’m sure there are dopamines that are released or something scientific. Amy has assured me of that and whether I believe it or not, I do know that I feel better when I look at my list and there are items with lines crossed through them.

There is a big difference in things that are busy and things that are productive to move your business forward. Doing laundry and cleaning the house is something that needs to be done but is it productive? Working from home that is a fine line. Housework of course always needs to be done but, I assure you that in the scheme of your business it is not productive. Today was not that case for me. I had a couple conference calls with investors and needed to take care of a couple things for them that took a lot of time. When I look back at my day even though I was not able to cross a lot of things of my list, I was very productive. Productive to the point of moving things forward and in big ways.

So I look back and I try not to get discouraged. While I was not able to get things on my list done, I look back on the day and I have to ask myself, “was I productive?” The answer is yes so it is a win. When I look at what i did all day it ultimately moved me forward and you have to put that in the win column.

You see sometimes it doesn’t just boil down to the list. Sometimes it comes down to evaluating the efforts expended. That take a very honest look. Yesterday I cleaned the entire house, bathrooms, kitchen, vacuuming, and laundry. While I was busy all day and I felt like I accomplished a lot I had to make sure that I did business stuff too. Yesterday, while I did all those things I still had to move the business forward and I felt like I did. I made a few deliveries, answered some potentially prosperous emails, and also sent out some feelers. It is a balance that you have to be honest about.

At the end of the day you are really only accountable to yourself and I feel pretty good about it.

Day 7 – Where is the file on ….. ooooo look shiny!

You know its not hard to stay busy and it is even easier to appear busy. Where we are really effective is when we are productive and there is a big difference and it is not as easy for me. Like they say busy is doing stuff and productivity is getting stuff done. Dare I say business is a form of laziness, it is avoiding the things that you should really be doing.

Working from home is pretty damn awesome I am not going to lie. My commute is literally 14 stairs to my desk and I can reach around the corner behind me to fill my coffee cup. There are however many pitfalls. For you to understand this particular challenge I will need to share some personality traits. I am a Class A personality, a Sanguine, or as we refer to it in our church, I am an Otter. Outgoing, fun to be around and the life of the party. I am a very positive person and not afraid of much. On the other side of that I am undisciplined, unorganized, and I can be distracted by a shiny object in the next room before you can say, “SQUIRREL!”

It is not difficult for one to see my challenge working from home. I am trying very hard to have a list, something that Amy is amazing at, to help me stay on task and focused. I have to set up structure and I have to hold myself accountable to it. I have to go to bed at a reasonable time so I can get up when my alarm goes off. Yes I have an alarm just like you. I try to schedule things in the morning like 9am phone calls and meetings to motivate me and start the day off working. The other thing is that I have several projects and tasks for each one and learning to set priorities is a task all it itself. What is urgent and what is important. I have people that count on me and expect me to follow through on things, just like a job. The difficulty is that I have to work hardest on staying focused and not getting lost on Facebook or doing something that is just busy, like the dishes in the sink. There is never going to be a boss or someone that will be looking over my shoulder other than my own conscious.

I will say having this freedom is more of a blessing than a curse but, I just wanted to share it is not all glitter and lucky charms. You bet that if I want to take a nap I take a nap. If I want to work in my pajamas until noon I do, well not really. It is hard to feel professional in scrubs and a sweatshirt but you get the point. It is pretty amazing that all the successful people I have studied all have a very regimented schedule. A schedule is pretty powerful and it is effective because it demands focus. Focus equals productivity and productivity equals results. Pretty basic but not always easy. I am trying very hard to adapt to a schedule and maintain it because that is not who I am but something I know I need to aspire to.