For Seth Godin’s Live event, called “Pick Yourself,” I’m wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle t-shirt.

This post will serve as a guidepost for those that I’d like to meet! If you see a small-ish asian guy walking around with this shirt on then you know it’s me.

Why TMNT? Because I doubt that I’ll have any copycats today (but if I do I’ll probably LOL and then I’ll have to take a photo for posterity’s sake).

Please say “Hi!” (yes, you can yell in my face or across the room) and we’ll connect and we’ll have crazy-awesome conversations about whatever we’ll talk about (I have no idea what we’ll chat about but that doesn’t matter!)!

I find my choice of attire exceptionally fitting (pun intended) since the conference is here in New York City and for those that don’t know (how could you not know?!?) TMNT live in the sewers under NYC.

Duh. Isn’t that where all mutant turtles live? Sheesh!

In all seriousness I can’t wait to meet you and I hope I can provide some value to you, your business, your venture, or even give you a little push in the right direction to build a bit of momentum (you have to forgive me as that’s just the professional coach inside of me).
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There comes a time where you realize that you’re the only person in the room who has the answer. Or, perhaps you’ve been in that strange situation where you realize you’re the only one that sees what is really going on and are baffled why no one else is getting a clue.

I feel this way often – and I’ll admit that most of the time it’s not that I have a unique or unbelievable perspective or that I have somehow transcended the room’s collective intelligence , but rather the fact that I simply became aware of my differing viewpoint on the topic at hand.

The question is what I do with that knowledge – and that’s your challenge as well. Continue Reading…

I’m firming up a number of other speaking engagements this year (and even have a few slots open, email me!) and there’s one that I’m both extremely excited about but also anxious about: The Influence Conference.

Now, many of us have attended conferences where “influence” was one of the catchphrases, themes, or even the titles of many of the keynotes and breakouts. But not as many of us have been to an all-women’s conference… and even less still have ever spoken at an all-women’s conference.

Like me. I haven’t ever been to that type of conference so when Hayley Morgan, Jessi Connolly, and Casey Wiegand reached out to me and asked me to consider it I had to pause, touch base with a few folks I trust the most (especially my wife), and ask them if this was a good idea.

All of them said “Yes!” – and their excitement got me even more excited! So I told them that I’d be honored and humbled and put it on my calendar.

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This is a shoutout to the best mother on the planet!

Naturally I’m biased and this is one of a billion-and-a-half blog posts dedicated to the awesome mothers all around the world.

But seriously, my wife is awesome.

Over 5 years ago we had our first, @Roenne, and you’ve raised her to be an incredible little girl who’s curious as you are curious, who’s kind as you are kind, and who loves life fully as you model how to live fully.

Then came #2 and you shared the same amount of love to @Arden in the same measure. Your capacity to give and to serve these two is unbelievable, and you run the most important “startup” that I’ll ever have, our family.

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I’ve been running 100mph for the last few weeks as I’ve been attempting to try to close a number of open projects and responsibilities that I’ve got. It’s been more than few 10hr+ days, including weekends.

I’m not a fan of that lifestyle at all and thankfully it’s for a limited season of time. More importantly I have relationships in my life that keep much of this in check and who inspire me by doing incredible work with limited resources! You may have even inspired me as I’ve read your blog posts and looked through your tweets!

For example, there are only a handful of times in my life where I’m going to be spending hours upon hours writing my final thesis for my double Masters degree – I finished the first very rough draft this past week and it’ll scale beyond 200 pages at this point (and it’s not even done yet).

Handing that in last week was an incredible sigh of relief, but as my wife could tell, I was exhausted. I was entirely spent. I had little to give and could do almost nothing more than the agreed upon responsibilities for our family. I felt like a slug! Continue Reading…

I used to think I was hot stuff (I typically, at least in my head, use a different word for “stuff”) – my youth, arrogance, and straight-up ignorance fueled my pride, ego, and wiped everyone off the boards before I would give them time and attention.

Something has changed, dramatically, and I’m not sure when it began but I think I like it (thank God!). You see, I woke up this morning, hopped in the shower, and began planning out my day as well as what I was planning on writing and publishing as well as the teams that I have to lead and inspire.

I thought about all the things that I had going on as well as all the things that needed to get done. I realized my list was about 10-12 explicit things that needed answers so that I could continue to move forward, build momentum, and kick serious tail.

The problem was that I didn’t have any of those things answered and I had no idea how to solve them – not even a hint of an idea. I realized that my schedule for the day was covered with nearly 100% ambiguity and I didn’t know jack.

I just hung my head and I realized that most of my job is dealing with exactly that: Not knowing much about anything and managing ambiguity and trying to piece together some sort of coherent vision, strategy, and a plan of execution.

When the heck did it all get twisted? When did this change occur? At one point I thought I had it all together (when I thought I was hot sh*t) and that I had a solution for nearly everything but looking back on the last few months I’ve been operating in shades of gray.

Things are getting done but the amount of times I could say that I knew what was going on is really at an all-time low.

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Did you know that you’re an investor? If you publish anything or have a blog at all that you’re an investor in people, their missions, visions, hopes, and dreams.

Have you ever thought about it that way? Have you ever thought of yourself as an investor? I have and I do, constantly.

The first time I realized this was early in my blogging history when someone had enough courage to comment on my blog and told me that I had encouraged them to try something they had always wanted to try but they didn’t have the right perspective to make the commitment to move forward.

All that changed with a simple blog post. What’s funny is that the purpose or intent of that particular blog post had almost nothing to do with what she had taken away from it! A loose bit of correlation and a whole lot of trust were the key ingredients.

I was shocked but I accepted it graciously, thanked her for the comment, and proceeded to ruminate about this dynamic for the rest of the day. Had I stumbled onto something incredibly unique? Had I done something outstandingly brilliant?

Nope. Not really. All I had really done was hit the “Publish” button on a blog post that I didn’t feel had much brilliance in it at all. And yet I had changed someone’s life and made a very positive (and perhaps life-long) investment.

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One of the things that I’ve learned over the years is that when success is all about me (diagram #1) and everyone pouring into me then a few things happen:

1. It’s all about me – This feels good, but ultimately it’s selfish, prideful, and doesn’t help my health (literally).
2. It’s not sustainable – Because I’m feeding off of everyone that I come in contact with it ends up being exhausting.
3. It’s not stable – In addition to not being sustainable, it’s also emotional dangerous as my emotions are subject to the masses perspective and opinion.
4. It’s directionless – Getting shuffled by everyone’s opinion I serve everyone and as a result I serve no one.
5. It’s not productive – It just isn’t. Trust me.

When I started moving into the second model I learned a great deal of things and how it’s much more a model of personal and professional success than the former:

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One of the last places that I had on my list of Atlanta Coworking spots was Bean Work Play Cafe, a neat (and very different) coworking spot that is both traditional productivity venue plus childcare for working parents.

Located right in Decatur [Google Maps] you have access to a number of great spots to eat as well!

Talk about a win-win-win (childcare, productivity, food) in that regard!

I instantly felt very comfortable as the founder, Adela, greeted me and quickly showed me around the place – the front area (accessible from the rear) being childcare with very neat facilities for 1 to 6 years old and then in the back where you can hold meetings (various conference rooms available) and the coworking area with simple (and clean!) kitchen with individual rooms for even greater productivity.

Take a look at some of these images, as well as an interview with the founder, that give a general idea of the overall experience:

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I had a very soft launch last night sharing a few things about the history and backstory of ChairCo, my professional coaching organization, and things seem to be working very well so today is the official announce of the new website and the online acceleration class that many of you have been asking about!

It has taken months, nearly half-a-year, to get this up and running and it’s been an incredible investment of my time and resources, but I couldn’t be more pleased with where it is today and for all the people that helped me out to finalize and launch this neat new project.

Of course, a huge shoutout goes to Jared, one of my partners at 8BIT, who did the design and branding of ChairCo – it’s pretty much the nicest site I’ve ever personally owned! Some slick CSS3 and HTML5 effects to boot!

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