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I can fix anything, except broken Crayons

October 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

While working on a computer today and my son asked me what I was doing. I told him “I am fixing this computer”. As I stepped away he pulled up a chair and said “I can fix anything, let me do it”. I was able to sneak this picture:

I can Fix Anything

I can Fix Anything, let me do it.

He proceeded to work on the machine talking about how he can fix anything, quite proud of himself. Then suddenly he seemed to realize limitations to his skills and stated:

“I can fix anything, except broken crayons. I can’t fix broken crayons.” – my favorite four year old

I am glad that my son is confident in his abilities and wise enough to know he does have limitations. Being his dad is absolutely the best thing I have had the opportunity to do. Like many other parenting experiences, I also felt inspired to do more than write a blog article about this. I felt inspired to continue to do something that I pledged to do long ago. Someone at some point in my past stressed to me the importance that we empower children with the confidence to believe that they can achieve anything they set their minds and hearts to accomplish. I wish I could remember who it was, but that call to action stuck with me.

Please join me in an effort to encourage young people to believe in themselves. Start today!

Filed Under: Images, Inspiration, Leadership, Lighter Side of Things, Parenting Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Ridiculously great Wisdom by a ridiculously wise and driven man

July 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I was a big fan of Will Smith before I watched this. It’s been a while since I watched it and it always reminds me of the important things in life. I love his use of ridiculous, it is one of his favorite words, hence the title of this post. Here is a few gems:

“Your life will become better by making other peoples lives better.”

“Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity.”

“Ridiculous sickening work ethic.”

“Be willing to die for the truth.”

Looking for a bump? Watch this, it will be a great way to spend 10 minutes of your life:

Filed Under: Inspiration, Video Tagged With: , , ,

Do Golden Apples fuel your business relationships?

June 30, 2010 By 2 Comments

Today I had scheduled to do some follow-up calls with a few of my long time IT clients. After a few 20-30 minute chats I felt like blogging about it. When I started my IT business back in 1997 I was very interested in making every customer a “customer for life”. It was a simple goal and while it has not been 100% successful I am extremely fortunate that the majority of my current clients have been clients for many years. As a result they really know me and I really know them. I know about the personal and professional challenges they face, the highs and the lows. Really we’ve been through a lot together, we are like a family. I know about their families and they know about mine. When we talk we catch up on personal business, share ideas and support each other. I was also reminded that business is always personal for me.  My clients are friends and I enjoy their friendship. In business it is always a delicate balance. Luckily, as my own boss, potential clients and I can choose to work together. In my prior career I did not have the luxury of this. I can tell you among many of the perks of being your own boss, for me the ability to choose who I work with is a huge perk.

Freia, from Das Rheingold, with the tree of golden apples

Freia, from Das Rheingold, with the tree of golden apples

Some people may read this and think that I am naive, but there is more to this. I had one client years ago that made me miserable. One of my close friends told me a story that someone had told him some years prior by the founder of a large warehouse store. It was the tale of the golden apples. Basically the saying was as long as the golden apples (money) were falling off the tree not to worry about difficult clients. I’ve used this to console myself over the years and I have to say I am at a point where I no longer agree with this. If your customers values are not in line with yours and it is causing you stress, you will be better off firing them and finding new customers. When I take stock of my customers today, they are all in line with my values. I do not feel that this is an accident. I think that ultimately when your values are out of whack, relationships will be dysfunctional. I think part of my position here has come with age, I am very comfortable today with who I am and I am not afraid to tell someone if they are asking me to do something that I do not feel I can ethically, successfully or efficiently execute. When I was younger I was much less self assured, I was driven and competitive, I guess I was what I needed to be at the time. Today I am glad that my values drive my business and personal relationships. I am open about who I am, what I stand for and genuinely enjoy establishing relationships with people who share my values.

I would love to hear your opinions about this post and your own personal experiences or philosophy on this. I will feature a couple of the best examples that come up in the post.

Featured Comments:

Occasionally I receive comments on my blog that really impress me and I want to showcase them (and the commenter!) in the post:

“Great post, Joe! This reminds us that usually when people grumble about their jobs and out of their unhappiness, make the transition to become an entrepreneur, one of the reasons they usually cite for their discontent in being an employee is they have issues with the people in their environment, and with the people with whom they have to interact. Unfortunately, once the new business-owner has survived the inevitable period of financial insecurity, they become determined to never experience that again, and this is usually when they make the subconscious pact with themselves to accept all money, no matter from whence it comes. The effect of this ill-advised decision is to create for themselves, all over again, the same kind of environment that they had once dreamed of escaping — a work environment in which they are exposed to troublesome individuals.

This post is a great reminder to business-owners about one of the elements that factored into why they decided to become a business-owner in the first place. Control over their work environment. Thanks for this!” – Kathrina Rashid

Kathrina was a recent guest blogger on my blog, you check out her post entitled “Sexual Assault Awareness by Kathrina Rashid PHD“

Filed Under: Inspiration, Leadership Tagged With: , , , ,

The 4 benefits of being attacked by bees

June 25, 2010 By 6 Comments
Joes Gone to the ER

Joes view at the ER

One week ago tonight, right about now I was walking down a trail behind my house. I heard the buzz of some very angry bees, a sound I had heard before and learned not to stick around to find out why they are angry. I started to sprint towards home and realize “oh no, you’re running down hill and won’t be able to stop”. Before I could slow myself down my right ankle folded and I hit the ground and slid and rolled on the trail a bit before coming to a stop. I could feel something was seriously wrong with my ankle but between the bees and the fact that I knew the pain in my ankle was sure to get worse, I limped home like a wounded animal. I was in a lot of pain when I got home, I took a quick bath while icing my ankle and popped 800mg of Ibuprofen while my wife and 4 year old son prepped for our trip to either urgent care or the ER. I admit I was not very rational while under great amounts of pain, but there was a decision to be made. Urgent care is in Walnut Creek about 25 minutes away and the ER at San Ramon Regional Hospital is 10 minutes from my house. Then I remembered my healthy community day at Leadership San Ramon Valley. The President of the Hospital Gary Sloan and one of his top ER doctors had been a part of that program. I remember a hospital is a business and I felt like I should support the local hospital and deal with people that I can trust.

So off to the ER we go, I won’t get too much into the details because really there are a few important facts about my visit and those are enough:

  1. My ankle was only sprained and they ruled out breaks, etc.
  2. The advice the doc gave was really useful.
  3. My doctor was the guy I met at Leadership, small world.
  4. I was glad I went to the ER at San Ramon Regional.

How can there possibly be benefits to this?

After I hurt my ankle I was really stressed about how this was going to affect my work. I have so much going on every day, for starters I wasn’t going anywhere for ~3-4 days while I kept my leg elevated and my ankle iced. It was hard for me to imagine what the benefits of being laid up for a while would be. My work was going to suffer, house projects, social life, bah humbug I was  in bad attitude city.

Saturday I was on the couch ALL DAY. I watched World Cup Soccer, slept, read, slept some more, wow I sure slept a lot. I had no idea I was so tired. There was benefit #1 – I really needed some rest. I slept in Sunday and repeated my FIFA, Sleep, Read, FIFA, Sleep process. Did I mention even though I read I didn’t read much because I would get tired and fall asleep.

“There was benefit #1 – I really needed some rest.”

Sunday I also did some planning for the week ahead of me. I realized that I still needed to set my goals for the week even though I was obviously going to have a temporary handicap. Sunday night with a lot of help from my wonderful wife I setup a laptop and second screen that I felt  I could use while I kept my leg up on the couch, or at the very least that I could periodically lay back and put up my leg. This was going to be a handicap big time for me, I am used to a 30” Samsung LCD flanked by 2 21” Samsung LCD’s (and not the wide screen ones, old school 1600×1200!).

Monday rolled around and I slept in a little bit, close to 7:30AM. Really late, I know, but with a 4 year old at home parents reading this will understand what this is like. Getting around was a pain, trying to work was a pain, I tried to keep my best face on. This wouldn’t last forever. One of the things I did Monday was work on long term goals. I wrote down very practically what I wanted to accomplish in my professional life. This was benefit #2 – setting long term goals is really important. One of the things I realized while doing this was I needed to set daily and weekly objectives for myself. I took out a notebook (I can write faster than type when I am lying on my back with my foot up) and started writing dates. Each work day was ½ a page. I wrote down the things that absolutely had to get done those days. I had to be selective, as I was not going to be spending 10 hours at my desk typing away with my sprained ankle. I noticed something very interesting, the things I wrote were contributing directly to my long term goals. Duh in hindsight it seems so simple.

“This was benefit #2 – setting long term goals is really important.”

Tuesday I kept resting up but I also used the time when I was resting my foot to take in some world cup soccer. My eyes and brain started getting used to the game, it was a rush watching a well-executed goal especially if it was undertaken by the team I had adopted to root for during the match. Being a tourist of Football is really fun, not much invested, a lot of what I was seeing was new and if the team I was rooting for lost it was no big deal. This was benefit #3 – I learned to love watching World Cup soccer.

“This was benefit #3 – I learned to love watching World Cup soccer.”

Landon Donovan

USA! USA! USA!

Wednesday I kept up my new passion watching World Cup Soccer. It was exciting as heck to watch Donovan score the game winning goal in stoppage time in the US best showing since 1930. I would have missed this piece of history had it not been for my injury. There is just no way I would have been able to justify the time to watch. In addition to watching history in the making, I was getting a little better at working on my laptop and my attitude had improved a lot by the end of the day. I even got bold and drove around the neighborhood, did I mention I sprained my right ankle?

Thursday was fairly ambitious I had scheduled work at a client site and added a lot more to my “must get done list”. I really felt solid by the end of the day. I started to see the benefits of the injury to my ankle taking shape and the eternal optimist inside me knew I’d see it eventually. This was benefit #4 – there is opportunity in any situation.

“This was benefit #4 – there is opportunity in any situation.”

By today I was absolutely sailing, I got more work done in less time than I have on many days where I don’t have anything to blame for slowing me down. I feel much more prepared for the weeks ahead and 1 of 4 of the weeks (by most estimates) that I will spend using crutches is done and I am roaring and ready for the next 3.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this personal story, I’d like to leave you with a quote about life by the late Joseph Campbell:

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

Featured Comments:

Occasionally I receive comments on my blog that really impress me and I want to showcase them (and the commenter!) in the post:

“You know Joe this is one of those posts that is so genuine that I have to read it over and over just to prove to myself that you wrote it. In the normal every day life there can be indeed moments of triumph, self discovery and even finding a greater deeper appreciation for what you have, where you have come and understanding things won’t stay the same. They won’t stay where they are now and with positive thinking, a bit of focus and keeping yourself well stocked with resources like energy you can tackle about anything. Thanks for sharing.” – Lyndi Thompson

Lyndi is a Social Media and Online Marketing Specialist, you check out her blog at http://lyndit.com

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Filed Under: Inspiration, Leadership, Lighter Side of Things Tagged With: , , , ,

On not waiting for others to make things happen (podcast)

January 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Here is a podcast I recorded this morning over at Cinchcast.

Filed Under: Inspiration, Podcasts Tagged With: , , , ,

Has Hell Frozen Over?

November 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Not long ago we were reading how Mozilla Firefox had more exploits than Internet Explorer and today I am prepared to go out on a limb and recommend a point release of a Microsoft Operating system. What the heck is going on in Redmond? What happened to our churn the product out and let the customers find the bugs then patch the frequent security issues 2 months after they hit the wild company we grew to love? Apparently they have been listening to feedback and have made unprecedented improvements in product quality and security maybe we should send them a thank you card. Wait a minute, before we decide who we should thank, let’s look at some of the motivation that is driving the changes – namely competition. Apple has put up a very strong showing with their industry standard design and solid performance. This has created market share for them at a very fast pace. Google and Microsoft are also heating up the competition in a number of areas but perhaps most importantly the operating system arena with the upcoming Google Chrome Operating system. So before you mail your thank you card to Redmond, let’s remember that without strong competition they would not have been quite as anxious to improve their products.

Now on to the substance, Windows 7 is ready for Business

We skipped Vista, don’t get me wrong we used it and we knew it but we did not advise any of our customers to use Vista at any point of the product cycle. In fact we made efforts to have them avoid it, basically advising our customers that Windows XP was the way to go for business. That has all changed thanks to the fantastic work that Microsoft has put into making the point release of Windows 7 my favorite operating system ever. Yes I am excited about Microsoft product again, it’s been a long time but I am grateful because I’ve had a love/hate relationship with them for years. My relationship with Microsoft has had its ups and downs:

• DOS was ok.
• Windows 3.x was ok.
• Windows NT (3.x) was ok.
• Windows NT (4) was ok.
• Windows 95 loved it.
• Windows 98 was ok.
• Windows ME hated it!
• Windows 2000 loved it.
• Windows XP mostly loved it.
• Windows Vista mostly hated it.
• Windows 7 Love it!

So as you can see, without getting into disasters like Bob, or the security lapses, etc, the ups and downs I’ve experienced with Microsoft Operating systems have been significant. Please don’t tell Balmer that I like Windows 7, I want them to continue to think like they have been since they started working on Windows 7. Let’s let this be our secret.

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: , , , ,

Commit to Excellence

November 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Is there any reason you can think of to NOT make the best of every day of your life? Each conversation you have with family, friends or your spouse, work and even parenting. Today I challenged myself with that very question and I could not think of anything that stuck. I came up with excuses but I could not come up with reasons. It sounds so cliché – “Live life to the fullest” or “Carpe Diem” but you know what, those are some of the wisest words man has ever uttered.

Take an honest assessment on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 meaning horrible and 10 meaning completely dominant – how powerful would you rate your commitment to everything you do in a given day? I suspect if most people are honest with themselves it comes in well under 5, it would for me and I am at what I feel a very high level of productivity/attitude for my lifetime. Now imagine how effective you would be if you increased your commitment to everything you do in a given day 10% or 1 point on that scale. Think about your relationships with others, your children, your co-workers, your boss, or even your clients. How much of an impact would it have in those relationships if you cared more today than you did yesterday. I would be willing to theorize that for every 10% you increase that scale you would feel a very big improvement in the quality of your life, your health and the lives of people you interact with.

Today is a day that we give thanks for the bountiful harvest in our lives, much as the pilgrims and Native Americans did during a time of peace and prosperity that inspired this Thanksgiving Day ritual. For me I have an additional thing to be thankful for, awareness that I can be happier, more productive and successful in every aspect of my life by making a series of decisions to commit to excellence. Also the pride I have that these decisions will bring happiness, joy and success to the people that I care about and to people I’ve never met.

Filed Under: Inspiration Tagged With: , , , , ,