Sunday, April 17, 2016
If You’re Thinking of Moving to Los Angeles…
You need to know some things about the city first.
You’re going to love it, and hate it. You’re going to feel
crowded and alone at once. You’ll feel like everything you’ve dreamed of is
within reach, and yet, at times, you’ll also feel like it’s all as distant as
the stars. You’ll find opportunities you couldn’t anywhere else and you might
not be ready for them.
Los Angeles is said to be a place of selfish people. We’ve
got those. Lots of them actually. But more than that, it’s just because it’s a
place where only the ambitious survive. If you don’t care of yourself here,
nobody else will. Come here if you’ve got a little bit of savage in you, if you
aren’t afraid to go out on a limb that has a good chance of breaking. Embrace
the greater risk, greater reward mentality. At the very least, Los Angeles will
change you. But first you’ve got to forget about home. If you don’t commit
yourself to making it work, you’ll fail. Stay or leave because you want to, not
because you have to. If you come, whatever brought you here has to be priority
number one. Everything else is secondary.
Los Angeles is a strange place that rewards the obsessed.
It’s a land of delusion, and the beauty of it is that sometimes the delusional
turn out to be right – everyone supports each others delusions here enough to
call them dreamers and visionaries. That’s the magic of this city – that
energy, that positive thought and like-mindedness does help along the way.
Angelinos have that Han Solo “Never tell me the odds” spirit about them, and
it’s infectious enough to drag you out of doubt and into action. But you cannot
lose sight of your mission entirely or this beautiful city will turn brutal to
chew you up and spit you out back to wherever you came from.
I’m not really just talking about LA. I’m certain this
applies anywhere you go when you pack more dreams than clothes. I can’t claim I’ve
been living by my own advice consistently since I’ve been out here, but when my
experience has been that when you put your foot on the pedal and don’t let up,
good things happen.
Wholistic Millennials
The millennial mindset regarding health is that it isn’t
just a physical concept. More and more studies have been published in recent
years, showing how tightly connected the mind is with the body, and how even
the thoughts we allow ourselves to think manifest themselves physically.
Alternative medicine won’t be replacing traditional medicine
anytime soon and it shouldn’t, but using it in conjunction with traditional is
proving successful. Mainstream medicine is beginning to accept wholistic
approaches to health, including the acceptance of meditation as a part of the
way to combat and prevent certain physical ailments.
People are beginning to seriously question why are
continuing to be increasingly drugged up on pharmaceutical and prescription drugs.
We do have a drug problem, but people are wising up and realizing the source
isn’t what we’ve been accustomed to believe.
Millennials are at the forefront of this push, and the
market for health conscious living is going to boom in the next decade as
millennials step into their spending primes.
The Misperception of the Golden Age
In the midst of the current presidential campaign we’ve been
given perhaps the most polarizing candidate in recent years in Donald Trump. It
seems people either love him or hate him. If I were going off of my news feed
on Facebook I’d go out on a limb and say my generation is the latter.
I find this a bit ironic. We weren’t around in the middle of
the Civil Rights Movement or Vietnam – times when America was deeply divided,
and yet millennials aren’t fooled by the pithy slogan “Make America great again.”
We respect that discontent can remedy complacency and ultimately continue to
improve our country, however, we will not be suckered into forgetting that
America is great. We are infinitely closer to equality for our citizens than we
were at any point before in American history.
Racism still exists. That’s a fact – we need to acknowledge
that and have real dialogue as a country to provide minorities with the same
opportunities that any white male is given. Are we better off in this regard
than in past eras? Absolutely. Is gender equality improving? Slowly, but
surely. Thank upward mobility. And our citizens in the gay and lesbian
community, well disagree if you will, but they’re finally starting to get the
same rights as heterosexuals, the rights they deserve.
America is great. We’ve hit a bump in the road with the
economy. Even a mountin, if you will. The global economy hasn’t been doing so
hot either. But as a nation we’re progressing. If we’re really concerned with
living up to our title as the “Land of the Free” we’ve got bigger fish to fry –
let’s find a way to decrease incarceration rates of our own people, instead of
romanticizing a chapter in which our nation was bitterly divided.
Friday, April 15, 2016
Age Is Just A Number
If you’re old enough to drink, age is just a number. In
theory, your experiences would be roughly proportionate to the number of years
you’ve lived, but it doesn’t always work out this way. Fifty years old means
something different from person to person. For some fifty years leaves them
bitter and broken, for others fifty years means wisdom and radiance. What
matters is how you use your time.
Did you give your dreams all of your energy? Did you pursue
them with reckless abandon? Were you bold? Don’t waste your time – you owe it
to yourself to make the most of your life. Time is the most precious resource.
Let time and effort shape you. Experience and maturity are
two very different things – you incur experience naturally. Maturity, however,
requires introspection and effort. Your effort determines what you’ll evolve
into.
Those people society admires, the ones they worship like
gods, they’ve managed to live lives most could only dream of. They’ve been
bold, bending time itself, maximizing the opportunities each hour presents.
Age is just a number – pay more attention to your habits,
challenge yourself, push boundaries, be great, and defy expectations.
Building a Team
Millennials have been fortunate to grow up in a time where
the internet has made thoughts and ideas accessible to people of all
backgrounds. This is just one of the reasons we crave collaborations – it’s
engrained in our social interactions. As a millennial entrepreneur it’s
critical to know how to assemble a team.
1) Don’t Be Afraid to Be Vulnerable
For men especially, we have this idea that we have to hide
our weaknesses. I’d argue the opposite – by exposing ourselves we demonstrate a
confidence that’s actually more genuine and frankly, more modern as society
continues to shed pseudo-masculinity. People appreciate authenticity. You still
need to use your judgment so as not to be taken advantage of, but you don’t
want to surround yourself with sharks anyways. Authenticity attracts genuine
people.
2) Don’t Fear Greatness
You don’t need to be the smartest individual in the room. In
fact, it’s better that you aren’t. Surround yourself with talent and become a
leader they can love – respect alone isn’t good enough – lead with passion and
people will respond. Handpick individuals who are strong at the things you
aren’t – if you’re big picture or an idea person (which is a legitimate thing)
then surround yourself with people who are great with details, specialists with
skills you don’t possess.
3) Keep it Together
The most important part of building a team is keeping it
together. Destroy your ego. Give credit to others. The key word in building a
team is build – iron sharpens iron. Express your appreciation, incentivize,
motivate, and challenge your team to create something that will endure.
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Will to Win
The universe rewards persistence. Yesterday I wrote about
the disappointment of losing, but I ended by telling you we won’t quit. That’s
the key – if you ever put a qualifier on the conditions in which you’ll quit
then you’ll never do anything big.
Things will go wrong. That much is inevitable. But you don’t
get to feel sorry for yourself too long.
Today the director of the competition approached us to
inform my partners and I that the judges got into a heated debate about whether
or not to put us in the top three. They all believe fully that we will succeed,
but again, the other businesses were already established.
The universe smiled down on us for trying to make something
of nothing – that’s the definition of a visionary. The judges decided to “sneak”
us into the next round. Two weeks from now we will give a brief pitch to the
angel investors.
Ask and you shall receive. Put it in the air that you’ll
never give up – don’t leave room for quitting – that’s the way to win. Give
yourself a chance to do something only you can do, something that’s never been
done before.
I Am Sisyphus
I usually don’t write like this, using my blog like a
journal, so I beg your pardon in advance. Today was rough. I don’t like losing
and I lost. An app I’ve been working on with my cofounders was in a competition
pitting us against 99 other businesses. We made it to the top 10. Today was the
pitch round to determine if we’d make it to the final round of three. We
finished third on one score card, fourth on the other. Needless to say, we
didn’t make the cut.
The kicker: winner gets 100k back towards their business.
One of the companies that beat us was a cupcake bakery. Fucking cupcakes. The
reasoning for the three advancing past us is that they are established
products, while we are in the development phase. I get that. We made it as far
as we did because of potential. Our concept is gold, but we just recently got
our programmer. Having a coder on our team eliminates our biggest expense –
it’s not the end of the world that we didn’t win the competition. It just
would’ve been nice. Oh, well. We’re going to push and push and push until we
break through the stratosphere. My cofounders and I are the modern day
Sisyphus. We will turn this into a labor of love – whatever it takes, as long
as it takes.
But I guess what I’m saying is right now it’s nerve-wracking
being fresh out of college, having moved to the opposite side of the country,
and chasing my dreams with reckless abandon – and it’s exciting.
Anyways, hopefully I’ll have good news to share next time I
write a journal post like this. Until then, keep pushing. I promise I will.
