Starting at Square One

I think all of us have experienced the momentary or passing thought about starting a business or building a brand or living a lifestyle independent of a "day job" where we have to report to a boss and punch a time clock (physically or otherwise).

Some people have done more than think about it and have registered small business names. I know I've done that in the past. Others still have actually made sales and enjoyed some limited success. My father did that for a brief time, running his own small business back in the 1970s and early 80s for a few brief years.

But it's rarer still to find people that have actually built companies that become household names. And it's more rare that you actually hear about it as it's happening. Usually they build huge companies, become celebrated entrepreneurs, and then sit around on their beach cabanas or custom yachts and reminisce to some author or reporter that tells a condensed and shortened story of how they went from zero to hero without really being able to capture or show the hard work along the way.

I'm optimistic, so I tend to think that my efforts will one day generate a comfortable stream of income for myself and my family, and I may stumble across an idea that turns my brand into a company that rivals Apple or Google or Coca-Cola for global recognition. However unlikely that may be, I want to capture (even if nobody else cares right now) the steps and starts and stumbles and challenges along the way. Then when someone wants to know the real story, I can give them the Cliff's Notes version and point them here for full details.

Telling Stories

I've always been a natural story-teller. My mom used to tell me that when I was in pre-K, my teachers would tell her that during free time I would entertain the other kids telling them stories, usually about some random toy or object that was in our play area. As I got older, I channeled this ability into a lot of what seemed like frivolous and fanciful efforts, such as making up backgrounds for characters of table-top RPGs (like Dungeons & Dragons) or creating alternate mythologies to explain the world of computer games I played because I didn't want to take time to read the lore of the game developers (such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft).

I took some creative writing in college, but "common sense" got the better of me and I majored in technical communications, which is a fancy way of saying I went to college to learn how to write online help and user manuals. Yes, that's pretty dry and boring stuff, and believe me it gets a bit boring communicating those essential details to users all the time.

People have always told me I am a good writer, but frankly the thought of cranking out a book-length manuscript always seemed a bit daunting to me, and I was always good at starting stories, but had a hard time ever coming up with a satisfying ending. In fact the only short story that I ever remember thinking was good enough to submit to any kind of a contest was one that featured a knight on a quest to rescue the princess from a vile dragon. As the story went, the knight tracked the beast to its lair, fought it to defeat, rescued the princess, and was rewarded by the king with his daughter's hand in marriage. But to the knight's great horror, on his wedding night as his bride gazed at him with a victorious grin he noticed her pupils had the same vertical reptilian pupils as the dragon he had supposedly slain. The story received an honorable mention but it did not get published in the anthology for which it had been submitted.

Later when Internet newsgroups were a new and fancy thing, I actually chronicled the adventures of a weekly gaming group in which I participated. I played a bard, so I would write the story of our heroic adventures (always making the bard as much the hero as possible, of course) and re-writing lyrics to popular songs of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s to tell of our tales. One day I actually received an email from someone who had just moved into our city and he said he had been reading my posts since he learned he would be transferred and he wanted to join our group. So I guess that means Tom was my first real fan.

Blogs without a Reason

Since I first heard about blogging, I thought there might be a way to scratch the creative storytelling itch I had, but they came out at a time when I was convinced that blogs needed to have a purpose to be monetized, and while I would get occasional inspiration to write about something, I had neither the depth of knowledge nor the time to conduct research in order to make sense of anything, so my posts were like shotgun blasts in different directions, scattered and devoid of a focus and purpose. Unsurprisingly they never really gained a following and I abandoned them pretty quickly. Instead, I focused on my day job that paid the bills and those hobbies that gave me most enjoyment for the least effort.

Breakthrough Inspiration

Actually the breakthrough moment that brought me my first idea generating a body of material that was actually focused and sustained over a lengthy period was a dramatic and catastrophic health concern that hit me in December of 2010. I was diagnosed with leukemia (acute myleoid leukemia, to be more precise) and was hospitalized on death's doorstep. Within about 48 hours of being diagnosed, I was informed that the strain of AML I suffered was among the most aggressive the doctors knew, and it could literally kill within six weeks or less of initial onset.

Obviously I survived since it's nearly five years later as I write this entry, but in the first day or so of hospitalization I exceeded my data, voice, and text limits on my phone wildly by answering so many questions from friends and distant relatives. So I hit on an idea. I had a pretty good network of facebook friends, and I decided once I had my father bring my laptop to me in the hospital that I would create a facebook page dedicated to my illness and just point all my friends there to find the daily and weekly updates on what was happening. On the one hand it was an effective communication tool. On the other, it gave me something productive to do instead of sitting around all day in a hospital bed being bored to tears.

This page produced months worth of detailed descriptions, notes, and raw material. And many friends and relatives told me I should turn it into a book. But almost as soon as I returned to work and was pronounced out of the woods for my health, my elderly father began a long, slow spiral downward. He held on for about three more years, spending the final six months of his life in an assisted living facility where he could get the 24-hour care he needed. But I was also dealing with an elderly uncle who passed away during the same period, and between caretaker roles and my full-time job and managing estate paperwork I didn't have much time to do anything but dream about something different or better.

But in the final year of my father's life I finally began to realize I didn't want to reach that stage regretting all the things I'd never done. As a result I began seeking out and reading and researching how to do something on my own and how to break out of the monotony of the nine-to-five world. That's safe and traditional, but that's not what I wanted.

And So It Begins

Thus, in the late spring of 2014 I began a daily discipline of listening to James Altucher's interviews on his current and back catalog of podcasts and making notes about books that would be helpful and ideas that were inspiring. James calls inspiration "the idea muscle" and he says that like any muscle it has to be exercised to grow. I knew I needed to generate ideas and over the course of the next few months I did.

In February of 2015 I launched my first blog with a real purpose. It's called The Lion's Teeth, and it's dedicated to the local MLS franchise, Orlando City SC. I spent money to have a logo created and made up business cards and it's developed a small but steadily growing following among fans, players, front office staff, and even fans spread around the world that have only heard about the team but don't follow it regularly.

In future posts I'll detail more about that blog, and also about the next step I've taken, only yesterday. You remember that inspiration I received when I was sick and the encouragement people gave me to write about it? Well, I'm finally doing it. I've launched an online campaign to raise the money needed to turn those notes into a physical book and an e-book. And I have a second related title planned, which will focus on the remarkable story of my bone marrow donor.

I'll also talk more about that campaign and the effort to get that project created in future posts. But for now I'll close with a few of the books that I've read over the last year that have been the most inspiring to me.

Living Healthy - Batch Cooking

In the "about" section of my Blogger profile you may have noticed it says I am a leukemia survivor. I indeed was diagnosed with AML (acute myleoid leukemia) in December of 2010. After undergoing several rounds of aggressive chemotherapy I had a bone marrow transplant in April of 2011.

While I was otherwise fairly healthy before that diagnosis, not having had any other serious health concerns identified by my doctors, I had weighed about 250 pounds before my diagnosis, which means that by standards like BMI and most nutritional experts I was 75 pounds overweight. I felt chubby and fat and lethargic a lot before my diagnosis, even though I did low-impact aerobic exercise several times a week and I had been moderately- to somewhat-active in going to the gym to work out.

Clearly, however, I was eating way too many calories of the wrong type and not burning off nearly enough of them to maintain a healthy weight. I was also eating a lot of the wrong type of calories--relying on frozen dinners, eating out, and drinking soda pop where I should have been drinking water.

If there was one positive side effect about chemotherapy, it's that it made me lose a lot of weight. The medication is so harsh on your system that often you lose appetite and over the course of five months I lost over 60 pounds. After my bone marrow transplant the weight stayed off for another six months or so, but as my appetite began to recover, I started noticing the weight was coming back on. When I woke up one day and realized the scale had reached 230 pounds again, I knew it was time for a serious lifestyle evaluation.

I talked with my doctors and told them I wanted a drug-free option and they recommended three simple things: track calories, eat unprocessed, nutritious foods, and get a moderate amount of exercise. So among other things I found several great online communities, web sites and smart phone apps for tracking calories and exercise plans.

I'm happy to report that I've lost some of that weight and I'm on my way toward my goal weight of 175 pounds. Being active certainly helps, but the number one tool I've found that really helps me is my nutrition. I'm a once-a-week shopper when it comes to the supermarket, so I have learned to shop for good ingredients and then cook up something tasty, usually on Sundays, that will give me my lunches for the office during the week. I also buy some healthy snacks.

Today I'm sharing my menu for this week, which I cooked up on Sunday, June 21 after my weekly shopping trip.

Main Protein

My main protein for this week is chicken breast. But I never simply do a bland dish. I always like to add some flavoring and spices. Usually this comes in the form of some wet and dry spices, and this week the marinade I created was no exception.

As the base for my marinade, I started with my go-to ingredient: zesty Italian salad dressing. I also had a packet of Savory Monterey spice that I bought at the Supermarket to add to that. Those were my pre-mixed ingredients.

To these ingredients I added some low sodium soy sauce, some minced garlic, and some coarse-ground Dijon mustard. I like my chicken to have a bit of a bold and slightly unique flavor, so I vary the exact ingredients every time I cook--basically I go with whatever seems like it would taste good at the time. I know that some people may complain about adding calories to the meat by putting spices on it, but honestly they don't add very many calories per serving (fewer than 25 calories per serving from all the flavorings combined) and the only reason I would recommend not using any additional flavorings is if you are under strict physician-supervised dietary restrictions or if you have an allergy to something.

At any rate, after I get the marinade made, I put it in with the chicken and throw it in the fridge for a while. I like to let my marinade go for anywhere from 30 minutes to 24 hours depending on how ambitious I am. This week it was closer to 30 minutes.

Since the total weight of the chicken was a little over two pounds, each of the six servings I cooked is just under six ounces, but for purposes of tracking the calories I call it six ounces. I then cook the chicken on my stovetop grill, and after 12 - 15 minutes (I like to make sure it's thoroughly cooked but not overcooked) it comes out looking wonderful.

Vegetables

I can't have a meal without vegetables, and I'm a fan of fresh veggies with a little bit of spice and flavor to them. So this week I created a marinade with most of the same ingredients as I used for the chicken (I only left out the Monterey spice). For the veggies themselves, I selected onions and green peppers. I know some people don't like green peppers, but I do appreciate the fact that they have a nice hearty flavor and a crunchy texture. I toss the veggies in the marinade, and once the chicken is cooked I put all the ingredients in a large sealable plastic container to go into the fridge.

This will sit in the fridge all week. And every day I will take a single piece of chicken and some of the veggies out to put in a smaller sealed container for work. I had a few soft taco tortillas left over from a recent tailgate party, so I took those to the office as well on Monday and will use a couple of them each day to help me eat up my lunch in a fun wrap.

Breakfast and Snacks

For my weekday breakfasts and snacks, I like to buy and take something to the office that is both tasty and nutritious. Every day I carry about five snacks, all of which I eat between the time I arrive at work and about 10:00 am, usually:

• +/- 1 ounce block of hard cheese (Asiago this week)
• 5.3 ounce cup of Lowfat Greek Yogurt
• Small banana
• Handful of fresh berries (raspberries this week)
• 3 ounce bag of baby-cut carrots

The snacks are usually pretty similar every week, although I will sometimes substitute nuts for the cheese and a pair of Fig Newtons for the berries. As you can tell I try to be conscious about what I eat, but I'm not an obsessed lunatic who will sacrifice flavor for the sake of a few calories. The main thing I want is to greatly reduce the amount of processed food in my diet and have better control over where my calories are coming from and how many there are in each meal. 

Lunchercise

The other important thing I build into my workday is exercise. I work in an office park that measures a little over 3 miles in circumference if you walk around the main perimeter and border roads. Most of the route is shaded, and walking it gives me between 45 and 50 minutes out of the office in the fresh air every day. I take a bottle of water on my walk, especially during the summer months, and then I eat lunch at my desk after I return. Between my walk and the normal walking through the office that I do on a daily basis, I almost always hit my 10,000 step daily goal, which is about five miles of walking as measured by my various fitness apps and gadgets. This cardio exercise every day helps keep me feeling active and gives me energy to focus for the afternoon when I get back to the office without having to resort to any energy drinks or sugary sodas.

Another benefit of getting out of the office for a walk like this is being able to listen to audiobooks. I'm a member of an online book club called the Sword & Laser, and I alternate listening through the monthly pick for that book club or listening to something inspirational. Occasionally I will really need just a dose of good music, so I'll tune in to one of my custom play lists and jam out to that while I'm on my walk. Below I've listed a few of my favorite audiobooks from the past year that were part of the book club's selection.

Meditation Moment: Mark Twain and the Majority

I enjoy reading. Reading is a great way to travel across time, cultures, and dimensions and stretch your mind with new ideas and time-tested truths that are sometimes easy to overlook in the hectic pace of modern life.

One of the things I hope to do in this blog is to offer up a few of my favorite quotes every week in the form of a brief meditation. Today's will be a bit "meta" since I'll introduce both the content and the format for the first time in the blog.

Quote

For each of the meditations, I'll start by stating the quote and the author. Like this:

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect"

-- Mark Twain, personal notebook (1904)

Context

After the quote I'll have a brief overview of the work or speech or context from which the quote was taken (if applicable). In this case, the quote comes from a writer's notebook and is attributed to be from 1904. These "notebooks" were assembled by editors after Twain's death, and bits of journals, scraps, and essay or story fragments and ideas are all cobbled together. It's not clear if this was some thought that he had jotted down when thinking of an essay, working on a story, or simply reflecting on a humorous thought he wanted to capture. 

Biography

After the context, I'll give a brief thumbnail biography of the person to whom the quote is attributed. Mark Twain was one of the most famous American authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He led a long and very colorful life, with careers in journalism, mining, river boats, lecturing, and literary fiction. Twain was born Samuel Langhorn Clemens in 1835 in the town of Florida, Missouri. Twain wrote hundreds of short stories and 28 novels, along with essays, lectures, and other writings. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) are American classics, still read and taught in English and literature classes around the world today. The pen name "Mark Twain" comes from a term used on riverboats to announce a sounding (depth) of two fathoms or twelve feet, which means the water is safe for navigation. You can read more about Mark Twain on his Wikipedia page or hundreds of fan and scholarly sites that are dedicated to him.

Meditation

Finally, at the end of each "Meditation Moment" I'll provide a brief meditation or reflection on the quote. This will be several paragraphs of my own thoughts and how I relate to the quote. Others may have different opinions and that's fine. I don't feel like I want to teach in this blog, but just share some of my insights, ideas, and experiences. I hope there are some who will find them helpful, but in the end it's an outlet for me to do some writing that is a little more creative and philosophical than the dry technical communications I do at work all week. So without further ado...

Twain's comment is an observation about the dangers of "group think." This can wind up leading to dangerous or negative consequences in all areas of life. In organizations like companies, it leads to restricted and narrow thinking because "we've always done it this way." This can lead to everyone believing there is only one way and one solution and failure to see competitive threats in the marketplace from either new nimble start-ups or established companies entering new markets. One of the most famous examples of this in the last decade has been the demise of Blackberry as a relevant marketer of smart phone devices.

At the end of President Clinton's second administration, Blackberry was riding high. Vice President Al Gore famously said he couldn't get along without his Blackberry. This was a huge endorsement considering the popularity of Clinton's presidency and the booming prosperity of the late 90s. But just a few years later when Apple introduced the iPhone, the Blackberry was doomed because everyone at the company had drunk their own Kool-Aid for so long that they could no longer conceive of how a rival entry into the smart phone market could pose a threat. They were so wrapped up in the idea that Blackberry was the only viable smart phone option that they never saw the bus from Cupertino coming until it had crushed them on the pavement and roared off toward the horizon.

But it's not just companies that have to be wary of single-minded group think. Markets and societies need to be wary of it too. Recall the financial crisis of the last decade. In the middle of the previous decade the popular "wisdom" said that real estate was an asset whose prices could never fall. The only direction for housing prices to go was up, and nobody stopped to question if that was really the case. Banks were so eager to lend money to potential home buyers that they quit requiring documented proof of income, and investment banks were so eager to get a piece of the action that they created more and more elaborate financial instruments to fragment and package individual mortgages into leveraged security bundles that were so complex even the Wall Street wizards constructing them were not sure what would happen if there was ever a problem. But there wouldn't be a problem because it was impossible for real estate prices to ever fall. Right?

A decade earlier the bubble was technology. Five years after the housing bubble there was a bubble in natural resources, primarily oil. Mark Twain's observation on the dangers of buying into the majority opinion are applicable to many areas of life. If you start believing something is iron-clad unshakable truth and everyone you talk to seems to agree--it may be time to stop and reflect and see if maybe there isn't a different way of looking at the same thing.

So now it's your turn. You can respond in comments if you want, or you can spend a few minutes thinking about the following questions for yourself.

• Are there opinions I hold that seem to be shared by everyone I know or meet?
• Can I articulate my own reasons for holding those opinions without relying on the spoken (or unspoken) "everybody knows that..." argument?
• If someone challenges my opinion on that topic, can I answer that challenge without sounding like every talking head I've ever heard?

Remember, it's not wrong to hold majority opinions on all things. Every major world religion teaches that murder and theft are wrong, as do all the national legal codes in the world. That doesn't make them wrong. But when you find yourself holding an opinion that matches with "everybody else," it may be time to stop and reflect. Failure to do so may be detrimental to you or your career or your physical, emotional, or financial future.

Additional Reading

At the end of each meditation, I'll offer up some links to additional reading.

Paperback	Paperback	Kindle	Kindle

A Blog of Gratitude

There's a common theme you'll find in this blog, and that's gratitude. I'll share more about my past later, but the fact that I have access to a computer that is connected to Blogger and lets me share some of my thoughts makes me grateful.

If that's all I had to be grateful for, then you might wonder why I should be grateful. And if you have access to a computer or smart phone or tablet that you can use to read this blog, then I will tell you unequivocally that you should be grateful too. Oh, you shouldn't necessarily be grateful you can read my drivel, but you should recognize and be grateful for the power and freedom and access you have if you are able to read these words online.

We live in an age where almost every individual has nearly limitless possibilities. But I don't care about everyone else's possibilities, and right now you don't need to care about theirs either. I care about your possibilities, and you should as well. More about that in posts to come. First I'd like to share a little about me.

Who am I?

I was born before there was an Internet available to the general public or to mere students in high schools and universities. When I was born, networked computers were the domain of government agencies, university research labs, and corporate skunk works departments. In fact, I was in college before I went to a computer lab on campus and someone excitedly told me about this fantastic browser called "Netscape" and before I received a 3.5-inch "floppy" diskette advertising something called America OnLine in the mail--the snail mail... from the post office. Yes, kids--there was a time when data really was sent on diskettes that way.

I was born to working-class parents of very modest means. My mother was a schoolteacher and my father was a horticulturalist. That's a fancy way of saying that he worked in a commercial greenhouse and grew plants for a living. He didn't own the greenhouse--he worked for the greenhouse owner. He supervised people and he was supervised by other people. There can be a lot of money in some commercial greenhouse operations, but most of them are commodity businesses that work on very thin margins and only work because of economies of scale. They are labor intensive and costly to operate. Thus, they require a lot of labor and they pay agricultural wages.

So that is to say that the "tribe" from which I come is not a tribe of privilege nor of abundance in material terms. I did have the privilege of growing up in a household where my parents remained faithful to their marriage vows until my mother passed away from cancer. I also had the abundance of a grandmother that lived close by and served as a baby sitter and coach in life lessons from the time my mother went back to work after my birth until my parents decided I was old enough to trust with a key to the house when I caught the bus to school in the mornings. I know that not everyone has that luxury, and I recognize it both as a privilege and as abundance, and I am grateful for both of them.

But in some ways, it took me many decades to realize just how grateful I should be for those circumstances in my formative years, and it seems that many who have achieved great things in life started from far more humble means and were driven or forced from an early age to create, to innovate, or to hustle simply to survive. Those skills learned in the early years of "survival training" then led them to seek more and more, possibly out of an unspoken or even perhaps unrecognized (at least in a conscious sense) fear of returning to that desperate state from whence they began.

Others who have achieved great things were born into abundance and had the first-hand example of parents or family members whose hard work and genius for creation or innovation had helped build vast fortunes. These achievers are not the ones who grew up always expecting things to be done for them; these were the ones who grew up with the realization that their own work and genius could result in even more amazing and impressive achievements.

Lies My Father Believed

But I largely grew up believing lies that were told to me out loud and without words about the limitations of people like my "tribe." One of my father's favorite sayings was "Your actions speak louder than your words," and neither he nor I realized for decades just how incredibly true that is. My father's words always told me, "You can become anything you want, Son. You can do anything you set your mind to." On the other hand, my father's actions told me that men of our "tribe" wear clothes until they literally fall apart at the seams, live paycheck to paycheck, drive cars that were already high mileage and high maintenance at the time of acquisition, put up with the demands of taskmaster bosses that pay meager wages, and never consider that there could be a future better than the present.

My father embodied and lived out that lie--and he did so because it's what had been drilled into him since he was a child and what he saw around him. He never pushed beyond the limits of his own experience because for every voice or promise or dream that there could be something more to life, there were a hundred or a thousand voices telling him that fate had chosen his path for him and he had better just learn to accept that.

Like I said, my father spent his entire life believing and being constrained by those lies. He died in an assisted living facility where he required 24/7 care for several months that I simply could not provide myself because I was too busy caught and in danger of being crushed by the same lies that had prevented my father from ever truly living.

My Uncle's Driving Force: Passion

Meanwhile, my uncle (my mother's brother), who had died just a few months before my father, had been born in the same year as my father, and had been raised by parents who were much the same socio-economic creatures as my paternal grandparents. But my uncle had fallen in love with music at an early age, and from the time he was able to legally drive he held a job playing music in churches. Music was his passion, and he turned it into his career. Now anyone who has ever been a church musician knows that like teaching school or being employed in commercial agriculture, this is not a path to fame, fortune, and riches. Indeed, in addition to his "regular" job, my uncle taught keyboard and voice privately and he also taught in schools and universities for decades. But again--this was a passion he pursued.

By the time my uncle died he had visited all 50 states, taken trips to four or five continents, owned and restored modern and antique luxury cars, and lived very comfortably. As a result, he was active and enthusiastic and always looking forward to the next adventure even up until the day he collapsed and had to be rushed from his house to the hospital for the final time, just a few days before he died.

I am grateful for my father and grateful for my uncle both. I am especially grateful for the contrast in their lives that allowed me to look at the differences in how they both lived as I reflected on my uncle's death and prepared for the inevitability of my father's passing.

The Accidental Mentor

While I have so many reasons to be grateful to so many others, I'm going to end this post by saying I am grateful for someone else as well: for a man of whom I only became aware about 18 months ago. He's not a blood relative and he's not someone who presented himself as a salesman or a life coach or a guru or teacher even. But he is a man whose life experience has led him to share the importance of gratitude with the world through many channels. This man's name is James Altucher. And while neither James nor I realized it in January of 2014 when I first saw him speak at a conference in Miami, Florida that I paid to attend virtually, seeing and hearing his talk was a turning point in my life.

You see, several years before, back as early as 2009, I had begun to realize that a better future really was more than a pipe dream. I had internalized the lies that my father and I both had swallowed hook, line, and sinker for so long that I was utterly blind to the reason my uncle had not succumbed the same way my father had. But I could not shake the sense that the future could be better than my present if I could only figure out how to bridge the gap. But a whole set of other lies had put blinders on me that kept me from converting the idea of "pursue your passion" into action.

When I heard James speak at the Miami conference, a light bulb clicked on. He mentioned a free podcast that he did weekly, and I quickly bookmarked it and subscribed via iTunes. I began listening to this podcast and I began hearing these amazing interviews with incredible people that had all decided the "real world" wasn't good enough for them and so they would go invent their own path in life.

On his podcast, James has interviewed Silicon Valley billionaires, venture capitalists, social media celebrities, and world-renown entertainers and authors. And all of them have similar stories. The path from "there" (wherever you are and whatever your circumstances when listening) to "here" (wherever the life of the interviewee has taken them) is not nearly as complicated nor as rare nor as reliant on the fickle finger of fortune as everyone popularly believes. There is luck involved, yes, but only when you understand the true meaning of the word luck: preparation meeting opportunity.

Do the preparation, and the opportunity will appear. Do the preparation and the opportunity will appear. Do the preparation and the opportunity will appear. This is the message from every single episode of James's podcast.

And that message finally made everything click into place and finally started breaking down the lies from my past, and like the climactic scene in that classic Pink Floyd movie, it utterly and completely exploded the wall separating me from pursuing my own dreams. You see, popular mythology that we tell ourselves in the United States is merely another kind of lie. We call ourselves the "Land of Opportunity," as though opportunity is the whole sum of the equation. But opportunity without preparation is merely fantasy. Opportunities abound, but what we lack is a fundamental cultural understanding of the need for preparation. Without preparation, opportunity is meaningless. Without preparation, there can necessarily be no luck.

The secret--and it's one that many successful people, and certainly one that every unsuccessful person has never truly internalized and fundamentally understood--is that we CREATE our own luck. We bring it into being. It's not some cosmic happenstance; it's not some random chance. By doing the preparation, we are ready when the opportunity arrives as it inevitably and necessarily must.

So I'm dedicating this post to James Altucher, and in gratitude for what I've learned from him, I want to share that same opportunity with you. I'll give you two links to his podcasts, and two links to books of his that I've found incredibly helpful.

Pocast links:

• Stansberry Radio Network page
• iTunes page

Biographical sketch:

James Altucher on Wikipedia

Web Site:

JamesAltucher.com

Book links:

Choose Yourself



This book is all about biographical and autobiographical lessons that James learned from his own experience or that of others which helped lead him to the place he is today and the opportunity he has to share what he has learned with the world.

The Power of No



This book, written by James and his wife Claudia, reminds you that it's OK to say No. We are brought up to believe that Yes is always the right answer, which means a lot of times we say Yes to a lot of the wrong things--or things that ultimately are harmful or destructive to us. Learning to say No and learning when to say No are sometimes difficult habits, but can help you focus on what is most important: you!

If you have the money I highly recommend buying these books. If you don't have the money, then at least listen to his podcasts. Those are free, and the inspirational stories you will hear from James' guests and his unique interviewing style just might help you realize that the dreams you had given up as fantasy aren't so far-fetched after all.

More to Come

I said briefly at the top my purpose in writing this blog is to try to share some of the things I've learned from some amazing and inspiring authors. You'll find stories from my life in this blog and stories of successes and failures I've experienced. You'll also find a number of links to free resources online related to the summary. And when I recommend a book or an author, I will provide links to the web site as well as links to Amazon.com where you can purchase the book if you wish.