A few years ago, I was travelling through France and decided to spend a few days CouchSurfing with Keveen. Little did I know he would be constant inspiration and source of positive energy for years to come. There are few people in the world with as much positive energy as this man, and his true goal in life is to tirelessly spread his love to the world.

In a recent visit to New York he captured some amazing footage of Mike and I, and the Holstee environment. After watching the video it was clear that he had a vision, but the recording experience seemed so effortless and came so natural that you could have never guessed the production quality and direction of the short clip.

I am so proud to be connected with Keveen and the Korakor adventure, and I look forward to working together with Korakor to help spread the love!

Just officially made the switch to Google’s Chrome browser and love it.

I had been flipping between firefox and chrome for the past 2 weeks, but since I discovered the extensions for Chrome today – no reason left to keep using Firefox. If you haven’t already definitely consider it.

Pros: Faster, slicker design, intuitive experience, and better (smoother) extensions.

Cons: The only cons so far is that when doing backend stuff on Joomla or Wordpress i get page fails once in a while and I cant always drag to resize images.

A few plugins I have going now on Chrome…

Firebug Lite: To check out coding and test CSS changes

Delicious Tools: For bookmarking

Google Voice (by Google): Seamless integration of google voice into the browser.

Send from Gmail (by Google): A simple way to email the link to the page your on to read later or share.

Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures: I have been waiting for something like this for ages. It allows you to select what signature to use in Gmail based on the domain you are E-mailing from.

Happy surfing!

How it started:

A few months ago I met Marissa, a co-founder of If We Ran It. Together with other people involved in the If We Ran It project they hosted a dinner to kick off the project. There I met Chris, the President of a the Secret Society of Creative Philanthropy… and the story begins: He explained the SSCP, but to be honest, I didn’t really get what it was all about. I just thought, this guy chris is super cool – and this sounds very mysterious…I knew there was a social component but need to learn more!

One day I got an email from Chris saying something along the lines of “It’s time…” I didn’t know exactly what to do, but I was excited as anything to do it!

Chris stopped by the Holstee office with two envelopes, each containing a single $100 bill. The envelope also had a letter which outlined that the $100 needed to be used to create a positive impact, with a few inspiring past stories to get the juices flowing.

I still didn’t fully understand whose money it was, but part of me didn’t want to ask because I kind of dug the mysterious do good-ing element.

What I did:

The first day of getting the money was exciting and liberating. But as time passed it became a bit worrisome : “would I find the right person”, “how will i know they really need it”.. etc.

There is an elderly woman who walks down avenue B, as early as there is light and collects bottles, cans, and other recyclables that return a deposit. This woman was always an inspiration. No matter what the weather she was up early, trolleying around an enormous load and doing something amazing for the planet.

I’m not an expert on logistics or recycling, but based on my observation this woman has developed a system ahead of its time. Recycling is great, but the massive diesel trucks that wind through the city collect more than what can effectively be recycled and create a lot of pollution in the process. What this entrepreneurial senior citizen has developed is an amazingly effective recycling process. She sorts the bottles directly from consumers waste into her trolley and walks them about 10 blocks to a local drop off where she is rewarded for her work. From there the bottles are already crushed and sorted and ready to be sent out.

How it happened:

One morning I was up early walking and spotted this women collecting bottles, she was a good bit ahead of me so I ran ahead. Before reaching her, I took a moment to jot a quick note on my envelope. As cheesey as it sounds, I wrote: “THANKS FOR SAVING THE PLANET”, it was the first thing that came to mind, and exactly how I felt.

I ran up to give this woman my letter. As it turned out she didn’t speak any english. When I reached out handing her the envelope she instantly refused to accept it. Using hand gestures I pleaded for her to accept. Initially I didn’t want her to see the money in front of me, for fear that she would be uncomfortable. The message wasn’t getting through though, so I asked her to open it first. She opened it and to my surprise, refused it with even more excitement – not the reaction I was expecting.

I smiled, said thank you, bowed, thanked and about every other physical gesture I can make to show her it was a gift of gratitude. She eventually cracked a smile and began carting on. Halfway down the block she looked back and shouted “Thank you!”

What a way to start a monday morning…

-Gerry Spence

(I came across this quote on the background of @dan_gould’s twitter page. Absolutely love it.)

While writing down the resolutions, I got some great advice from Fabian. He said more important than writing each new goal is writing why its important to you. Writing why serves as a constant motivation to act on them.

While most of the things are pretty surface level, they are all things I would be proud to accomplish and accordingly I tried to make them as tangible and realistic as possible. I also wanted to make sure they were personal and not professional goals, we already do lots of milestone and goal setting at Holstee.

resolution
:: why
:::: how

50 push ups a day
:: to stay strong till i die
:::: get up and do them first thing when i wake up

one book every 2 months
:: to keep my brain fresh and awake
:::: read every night, figure out how many pages a week/night to finish book and stick to goals

one small sketch a day
:: to get comfortable drawing
:::: have a daily alarm set for the afternoon (4pm) when creativity starts to decrease to sketch something

run 4 miles a week
:: improve cardiovascular health
:::: run every other day, make up miles on runday (Sunday)

learn piano
:: to learn to play songs and make music (not sound)
:::: log playing time try for 3 hours a week

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I enjoyed the read through and through from start to finish. On the last page of the short story Sherlock summarizes how he so accurately was able to understand and solve the case.

“In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the everyday affairs of life it is much easier to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected.”

In operating Holstee we often think about the long term goals – growth, reach, new products, new experiences. Our partner and advisor, Fabian does an amazing job of helping keeping our eyes on the horizon – as Sherlock mentions, it’s just too easy to focus on the “everyday affairs of life” creating and reacting to items that appear on our daily radars.

This quote for Sherlock served as a great reminder to the importance of knowing where you want to take your dreams. People always say if you don’t know where you are going you will never get there – and I couldn’t sagree more. The next step is taking that goal and thinking analytically on how to get there.

I know this sort of Tony Robbins, self-fulfilling prophecy, style of thinking isn’t new news for you – and it wasn’t for me. All the same I think the idea of “solving the case” of our dreams and aspirations by thinking backwards is worth taking a moment to do more than think about. The real benefit comes from writing it.

If you are like me you have heard it, and felt inspired by it a million times – but have never actually taken the time to actually write it.

For me, this time is different. I am going to write it – and you should too

Whether it develops into a strategic plan with measurable milestones for your business or the direction you want to see your personal life evolve into – write it down. I can’t see how you could regret it.

Posted via email from daverad’s posterous

Posted via email from daverad’s posterous

Posted via email from daverad’s posterous