The Slow Starter (and I mean SLOWWWWWW....)

I have always been a slow starter.  Going back to my childhood, growing up in New Jersey, my life revolved around sports.  Football (American style, although I am now a Premier League football fan; I say this because I had my first European view of my blog yesterday, from Germany!), baseball, and basketball, depending on the season.  I was always the smallest guy on the field or court, and I was extremely competitive.  And baseball was my passion.  I was the star pitcher from the tender age of  9, for all of the teams I played for until I was 13 (then puberty struck-another example of a slow start-and sports were an afterthought; but I still played sandlot ball anywhere I could).  As a pitcher, my first two innings were always the toughest.  I always struggled to get into a groove.  But once I did, I was virtually unstoppable.  My Little League baseball days were the most memorable, playing before packed stands and pitching my heart out, all 4' 11" of me (and I was in 7th grade!).  As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Here I am, 23 years beyond college graduation, and I'm still talking about owning my own business.  Sound familiar?  I always questioned those who jumped in head first into their endeavours growing up.  I lost all of my closest companions after 7th grade, because they all began experimenting with drinking, drugs, and the like. How do they do it?  Aren't they afraid?  What if their parents find out?  What if they overdose or die of alcohol poisoning?  Now, I don't regret making the decision to leave this group; it wasn't my gig.  And for the most part, it still isn't my gig (although I do enjoy a great glass of California Zinfandel or Belgian Ale).  But there are parallels to this experience that mirror my life today.  I have watched countless people throw their hat in to the arena of entrepreneurship  from the sidelines  (very few of them in my personal life, except for a handful), and I have lived vicariously through them for so long.  It's like a perpetual warmup in baseball, never throwing a pitch in the heat of a game, or smacking a tennis ball against the wall with an imaginary opponent.  At least in Little League I had the balls to get out there and compete, fighting through those first two innings toward victory (most of the time).  Why do we lose that childhood fearlessness?  What do we have to lose?  I used to pretend I was the Bionic Man as a kid:  "This is Steve Austin, astronaut.  A man barely alive.  We can rebuild him.  We have the technology to make him better than he was..better, stronger, faster..."  I used to ran as fast as I can from place to place, listening to the music play in my head from my favorite show, feeling the wind in my face with my blue windbreaker on (I think his was red, but it didn't matter; it had stripes on the sleeves, and that's all I cared about).  I WAS Steve Austin, and nobody could catch me.  When I was a bit older, Han Solo's Millenium Falcon was parked in the woods at the local park.  It was made out of a tree.  If you walked past this tree, you would not have noticed this fact.  But when I sat in the cockpit with my friend John, that tree flew into hyperspace quicker than it ever did in the movies (I didn't experience the same mechanical problems Han Solo did).  When do we stop dreaming?  I just finished James Altucher's book Choose Yourself.  It's a quick read, full of information and ideas.  He talks about the SuperFriends, the cartoon from the 70's with all of our favorite superheroes, all in one show.  He spoke at length about Superman in particular, and I read that part of the book just before I went to sleep.  Our 3 month old son sleeps in a crib in our room (not for much longer), and he has a projector that shoots the stars and nebulae of the universe on the ceiling of the room, so you can sleep beneath the stars.  It's the coolest mini-planetarium I have ever seen.  So, I dream a lot.  Many of my dreams come true (so far the less consequential ones, but I'm shooting for the stars on that, too).  And last night's dreams were amazing.  I was swimming along the azure shores of a beautiful mountain-lined beach.  The water was warm and I was swimming fast.  Below the surface, every sea creature imaginable was visible.  I love watching nature shows, and I am familiar with most discovered wildlife.  But there were creatures beneath this surface of such color and beauty, of the likes I have never seen.  Segue into the next dream; I am Superman.  Yes, the Man of Steel himself.  I couldn't see what I was wearing, but I was flying above the clouds at such speeds that I could only have been Kal-El himself.  Through the clouds (most of them were puffy and vapor-filled, but some were actually made of ice, like a snow cone).  And the sun was rising above the horizon, in such vivid hues of orange, red, and purple.  I was soaring through the stratosphere, looking for my next adventure.  What are we waiting for?  We still have the world at our fingertips.  NOTHING HAS CHANGED.  We are only a little older.  THAT'S IT.  There is absolutely nothing that can hold us back from pursuing our dreams.  Nothing.  Only me.  Only you.  The rest of the obstacles are absolutely imaginary, figments of our imagination.  Your boss, your friends, your family obligations, your debt, the guy who flipped you off in traffic, they can't stop you.  Nobody can stop you.  We are all Steve Austin, or Superman, or Wonder Woman, or Scarlett Johannsen (ok, focus....).  To finish where we started, when will you step on the mound, stare down the batter, focused on the weathered catcher's mitt 90 feet away, and fire away?  Will you take that first step from the dugout toward the mound?  What is your dream?  

The Idea Machine (yes, grey matter, that sticky, gelatinous mass encapsulated by your skull that is wasting away, if you don't take care of it; and I don't know that it's sticky, but it is in the movies..)


Ideas. They are best developed when we are exercising our brains. A lot of emphasis is placed upon ingesting healthy food, working your body, etc., etc. Don't get me wrong, these activities are as vital to our mental health as they are to our bodies (I'd probably lose my mind if I didn't run and hit the gym six days a week). But what about the mind? Now, you may be saying that your mind gets plenty of exercise. What are your routines? Cluttering your brain with wasteful thoughts? Most of us, with very few exceptions, are guilty of this. What did you do tonight? Did you spend the better part of your evening hours planting your ass on the couch watching the news? I mean, what is "news" anyway? One of the definitions for news is: a report of a recent event; intelligence; information. Let's face it, ladies and gentlemen; there is nothing intelligent about mainstream media, cable, or local news. Are you gossiping with family, friends, colleagues? How many sleepless nights do you spend worrying or living in fear (this is a big one for me; lots of fun and festivities with this one). These are just a few examples of how your mind can get cluttered with useless information and activities. I'm sure many studies have been done on cranial capacity. I'm not scientist, but I would venture to say that all of these distractions occupy most of the usable space in our brains. But fear has to take the cake, if it were measurable on some kind of synapse scale. Fear and I have had a very special relationship for a very long time. From upon graduating college forward, my mind has been virtually paralyzed by fear: Will I have enough money for retirement (why the hell was I so worried? I accumulated and invested my hard earned money for 15 years after graduating, just to lose every penny, and then some). Will I have a job in five years? Ten years? What is my long term financial plan? Will I even be alive in ten years? For the longest time I was terrified that I wouldn't live to see my first child be born (I just had my third, sixteen years after my second, so I guess I can rest easy now). By the way, what the hell kind of childhood did I have to be so afraid of dying all the time? I'll attribute that to being born and raised in New Jersey (no real reason behind this; I just couldn't come up with anything else; wait a minute, I just remembered what it was..it was the Cold War!). Do I have enough life insurance (I am an insurance junkie, always worried about what will happen upon my eventual death instead of living and dreaming and loving where I am right now; one of my favorite sayings was that I am worth more dead than alive...just call me George Bailey; who knew Bedford Falls was in New Jersey?). The truth is, we are conditioned to be fearful by the very media I mentioned earlier. It is hard to avoid, because we are mercilessly bombarded by so much useless information over the course of the day. Television isn't even the worst of it anymore, because it is almost easier to avoid than the multitude of devices vying for your attention. Think about your desktop or laptop at work and at home, your smartphone, your tablet (Ipad, Android, or whatever). Jesus, I find myself checking my LinkedIn or Facebook account when I'm taking a piss at work (I don't even use Facebook but maybe 3 times a year; talk about clutter and wasting your time, not to mention the inherent danger of holding your mobile in one hand and..well, you get the idea). If you have made it this far through the post, isn't it clear that my mind is implacably cluttered right now? Bottom line is this; the more useless material we absorb over the course of the day, the more we hamstring our mind to grow. And we reduce our capacity to create, to stimulate the idea machine. And herein lies my biggest challenge, COMING UP WITH AN IDEA FOR A BUSINESS. Over the course of my adult life, the cluttering material has changed, but the result has always been the same: I have been hampering my ability to pursue my dreams...

The Perpetual Wantrepreneur: My Journey Toward Entrepreneurship

March 22, 2014

I labored for months to formulate an idea for a blog .  I figured I should write about something that I am passionate about, following the same principles that you would for entrepreneurship.  I had heard that you can make money blogging, but that is not my reason for beginning this journey (my blogging journey, that is; more on my wantrepreneurial journey later).  I've been listening for a few months now to entrepreneurial-related podcasts, reading e-books, magazines, watching movies, meditating, whatever might bring me one step closer to my dream of self-employment; ways to promote your business, your company, your ideas, how to create interest and build your brand.  Now I know that there are possibly millions of bloggers around the world who generate some kind of income blogging.  Some make a full time living out of it. Some make millions of dollars. As nice as that sounds, that is not my intention at this moment.  My reasons a bit more self centered:  I need to memorialize in writing how painstakingly difficult it has been for me to pursue a career outside of the corporate bubble.  In short, I have been paralyzed by fear (and SO many other things, mostly excuses) for nearly 30 years now, dreaming day after day, month after month, year after year about the idea of pursuing and owning my own business.  And as I was running on the treadmill on this first full day of spring (watching the snow fall all morning until 2 pm), I had a bit of an epiphany..ok, it was a full-fledged epiphany, divinely inspired by some kind of universal force.  I know it was divinely inspired, because it was the best original idea I have come up with in probably my entire life.  I decided to write about something that I am passionate about, where I am THE expert in the field (I challenge just about anyone to prove me wrong on this). I DECIDED TO WRITE ABOUT MY WANTREPRENURIAL JOURNEY.  I haven't checked to see if anybody else in this country (or on the planet) has blogged about the subject.  But I have a lot to share with anyone who is going through this very process (and I hope that a lot of you are, because if you working in the corporate world, you will be sooner than you think). That being said, my purpose is two-fold, maybe even three-fold; I am a reluctant expert on the subject, but it's time I shared this knowledge for my own therapeutic benefit as well as the benefit of those who are suffering along with me. I have lived, breathed, digested, and vomited so much material on this subject for so long.  I can help you get through this, and maybe you can help me as well.  I'm not really sure where to start, I don't have an outline, a timeline, or an agenda of any kind.  So just sit back, relax, and enjoy the journey.  Because it is about the journey, not the destination, right?