The folks at JetBlue woke up one day last year and said, stop the presses!! We’ve got an idea. Let’s sell a pass where in a typically slow time of travel, for a fixed fee, customers can fly ALL THAT THEY WANT for 30 days.

They called it the All You Can Jet (AYCJ) pass. They sold out several days early. This year, they brought it back. They’ve got quite the social engagement of people on their Facebook page for All You Can Jet.

I had some travel I needed to do for Doba in Sept; specifically, attend the Shop.org Annual Summit in Dallas and meet with some business partners in the Bay Area, etc.

Feature Creeper got a hold of me, and I booked the AYCJ pass with JetBlue. And then I booked 10 flights or so. Why’d I do that?

Well, long before LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter and all the latest Social Networking services du jour, if you wanted to build or grow a social network, well, you went places. And met people. Face-to-face. Crazy I know.

Back in January ’09, I posted 2008: My Year of Travel. And 7 Reasons Why Smart Entrepreneurs Will Make 2009 Theirs Here are a couple of the reasons I gave then that are still solidly behind my All I Can Jet decision:

1. GTD. For those unfamiliar with those 3 letters, it stands for: Getting Things Done. There’s an almost cult-like following that follows David Allen’s methodology/book. IMHO, sitting down with someone face-to-face is significantly more efficient in getting things done that anything else. I know, it’s 2010. There’s Skype and IM and the telephone still works too. But I’ve said before that sometimes you have to get on a plane or hop in a car. If you want to build relationships and turn those relationships into something getting done that benefits your business, travel is a home run.

2. Conferences/Trade Shows. Actually, quite genius. It’s like they’re providing a ‘people platform’ to bring people together to get business done. In a couple of days (sometimes only 1) you can accomplish more business than in weeks and weeks. Do your homework in advance and set up all the meetings you want. They’re going to be there, you’re going to be there, it’s like this uber confluence and vortex of GTD. Especially if you’re a new entrepreneur looking to develop or bring products to market, you HAVE to attend the relevant conferences/trade shows/events. It’s like the key to unlocking markets; you’ll learn more and meet more people in a concentrated time than any other way.

3. ROI. Track your travel expenses to the penny. Then look into your business for deals that got done and business activity that progressed, and I guarantee you’ll see a positive ROI on that expense. And then compare that to the deals that are hung up and not moving forward and the relationships that are going stale and not doing you or them any good, and you’ll see that you haven’t had face-to-face communication either ever or at least recently.

4. People are Social Creatures. We just are. Relationships are stronger when you have that face-to-face time. You want to know who your real friends/followers/contacts are? Log onto Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or your “social network” of choice. Think about it then. Skim through all that data. Guaran-damn-teed people you’ve shaken hands with somewhere sometime are infinitely more connected to you and your life and ultimately your business dealings and entrepreneurial success.

Here’s my schedule of cities. If you want to “connect” with me, the good old-fashioned way, or know someone I should meet with, let me know!

Boston: Sept 11-13
San Francisco: Sept 14-15
L.A.: Sept 19-20 
Seattle: Sept 23-25
Austin: Sept 27
Dallas: Sept 28-30

I’ll update with how many miles I traveled and how many hours I spent working like a fiend on my iPad or MacBook Pro in giant aluminum flying tubes of death at the end of Sept.

I do not watch, read, follow, or care about “the news”. I’m talking general news. You know, stuff on CNN or KSL 5 (local NBC affiliate).* And I’m not exaggerating. I don’t care about it. Not one little bit. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

Extreme News Delay

I found out about the Haiti earthquake 2 days after it happened. The oil leak in the Gulf? Like over 3 days. Mosque new Ground Zero? Couple days delay. I asked Amy what other major news stories I might have missed, and she said “like the kid that killed Natalie Holloway killed another girl in south america.” I have no idea who Natalie Holloway is, or for that matter, that sadly, she is dead, or that she was murdered by someone doing more killing. Local things like flash floods in Draper, UT last week (just over the hill from me) or car accidents or this or that I find out the next day best case scenario, if ever. If I didn’t follow twitter and friends on FaceBook, I’d probably never find out this stuff. And know what? I don’t care. Maybe that sounds harsh. Let me explain.

News Junkie

I haven’t always been this way. There was the time during the gulf war of 2003 when we bought a TV just for cable news coverage and put Iraq maps on the wall of Secure Offer (precursor to Doba) to track the invasion. Time when I got way caught up in the 2008 election–and actually closely followed/cared about politics for a bit (whole other series of posts, no, actually an entire book on that subject. Politics. Blah.) And the time that was the proverbial straw that broke my back when in September of 2008, the Hanks family embarked on our Great American Road trip to South Dakota and points in between.

The News is making me feel like I’m dying.

If you remember, that’s when the economy was rocketing off a cliff and down to the depths. Bailouts, buyouts, massive failures of massive businesses. Work was stressful, road trip was stressful, and I was following all of this news–this massive flood of negativity and drama and emotions and interruptions to my vacation, and to my life, and to what I saw as my world. One night I told Amy, I think I’m having a heart attack. I couldn’t breath. I had pretty severe pain in my chest. It came and went a few times on that trip. Went to the Dr. after I got back, he said, you’re having Panic Attacks. Put me on some meds (I took once or twice if I remember). And that’s when it all hit me: The news is making me feel like I’m dying. WTF is up with that?! And it’s all coming from things that I have no control over whatsoever. Could they affect me? Yes. Can I do anything about it? No. So then why care. Why put it in my head? Why let it impact at all? Until it does, if ever. So I decided to bail on the news.

Addicted to News?

It was really hard to disconnect from the news. Part of my daily routine was to check MSNBC.com several times a day for news, and I’d watch the nightly news a few times a week. I couldn’t stop checking the MSNBC site. I finally edited my computer’s host file, added in all the major news sites, and assigned them bogus IP address.

“Safari can’t connect to the server” stopped the news dead in it’s tracks, and I quickly broke my news habit.

Now I find that I shun it. Airport TV on CNN? I sit far away. People start talking about something in the news? I just disconnect from the conversation. People tweet too much about the news? Unfollow.

I Do Not Care

Here’s the brutal, honest truth: While I can feel sad/sorry/empathy for the people in Haiti, I do not care about the earthquake. Nothing I can do about it (I did donate some $ to the cause). Natalie Holloway? Too bad, it really is. It’s sad. But do I need the sadness of that in my life? All of these things don’t impact me. 99.9% of the news DOES NOT IMPACT YOU. Unless you hear it, and put it into your mind, then it does impact you. Cause it’s in your head, in your frame of mind, playing with your emotions. Why bother then? When I had a brush with death and a boulder hit my leg, that’s news that matters to me. If your house burns down, you won’t need KSL to tell you about it. You don’t need CNN either, to debate and dispute and report and opine on a bunch of crap they drum up for ratings, TO SELL YOU ADVERTISING. All the rest of this stuff is smoke and mirrors and garbage drama that I do not have time in my life to bother myself with. Life is too short to be interrupted by all the things media companies choose to sensationalize, and I’d even say, traumatize you with.

So disconnect from the world of news. It’s incredibly liberating. You’ll have a lot more time and energy and cycles for what really matters.

* Technology news, ecommerce news, etc. I follow extremely closely as it matters intimately to my company, my job, and my career. More on where I get that targeted, filtered news in another post.

First, a 15 step explanation on the photo:

1. I love AC/DC
2. Back in Black is one of my favorite AC/DC songs/albums.
3. I haven’t blogged in a hair under 3 months.
4. Some reasons for that is I’ve been spending time on Twitter (@jeremyhanks) and FaceBook (My Profile)
5. Status updates (micro-blogging) is extremely space constrained
6. I like to talk. Verbosely. And spew my opinion. And kick off the occasional rant (Health Care Cluster *#&@ & Best Rant of All Time. Seriously.)
7. There’s an inherent conflict between #5 and #6
8. Blogging lets me type for as long as I want. AND YOU WILL READ EVERY LAST WORD I TYPE!! (Wedding Singer reference case you missed it)
9. So I’m back to blogging, I’m committing to at least one post a week.
10. In my head, I thought, I should post about coming back.
11. In popped AC/DC: “I’m Back in Black” (written while hearing Brian Johnson’s emphasis and inflection on those lyrics)
12. I love posts with images, so I hit iStockPhoto
13. Searched for “Back in Black”
14. This image came up.
15. It’s a nice image, and you know what they say about images like this. They sell.

Have a great weekend! See everyone next week with more posts. I’ve got to talk about news bans, the Jeremy Fitness Challenge, tons of thoughts about entrepreneurship, stuff going on in Utah (Omniture/Adobe, LaunchUp, cool startups, and more) and just all around mind blowing goodness!

This Thursday, there are 2 events in Utah about capital. One is a 6 part series about how to raise $ put on by the Utah Fund of Funds. Here are the details, the other an every other month meeting by a group called GenX Capital. Definitely both great resources if you’re an entrepreneur in Utah interesting in Fund Raising, and let’s be honest, what entrepreneur isn’t??

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We have lined up another great guest for the May 27th lunch – John Pestana. John was co-founder and executive vice-president of Omniture, which he formed with Josh James while attending BYU. John helped grow the company to its current size and also played an important part in the process of going public. This should be a great event and very informative for everyone on either side of the funding table.

Thursday, May 27, 2010 from 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM (MT)

Rose room
3003 Thanksgiving Way
Lehi, UT 84043

http://genxcapital.eventbrite.com/

About: GenX Capital is a networking group for people in their late 20s to early 40s with an interest in venture capital, private equity, entrepreneurship and investment management. We meet every other month for a lunch and invite a seasoned professional to speak to us and answer questions. There are no membership dues or fees. Simply show up and pay for your lunch. Our goal is to provide a forum for like minded people to network, collaborate, and learn from each other. You can join the GenX Capital LinkedIn Group

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The Utah Fund of Funds with partners MBRC, GOED and USTAR is pleased to present a six-part training series on How to Fund Raise Money from Institutional and Non-Institutional Investors.

Location for all six sessions:

Miller Innovation Center
Miller Business Resource Center SLCC Miller Campus 9750 South 300 West Sandy, Utah 84070

Training classes 1-6
10:00am- 12:30 (sack lunches are provided)
1. May 27 Are you building a VC or investor ready company? Venture Economics
2. June 24 Marketing as a Global Company based in Rocky Mtns: networking, press releases, creating a web trail, etc.
3. July 22 Designing the perfect investor
4. August 26 Raising Money: From Institutional and Non-Institutional Investors
5. September 22 Start-up therapy
6. October 28 Legal Clinic: deal docs: what to expect when closing a round of funding

Register for in-person attendance: http://ufoftraining.eventbrite.com/
Register for the online web streaming http://www.bizvision.com/video/2471

Register before May 26th at $75 for all six or
Pay as you go for $25 a session

Payment will go directly to food, course materials, and production costs.

For questions or more information please contact:

Tamee Roberts
Office Project and Govt Relations Manager
Utah Fund of Funds
310 South Main Street Suite 1310
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
801-521-3078 ph
801-521-3079 fax
801-671-4046 cell

I think it’ll be a great event, definitely worthwhile to go to if you see any type of fundraising in your future–which come on, let’s be honest, is like 110% of entrepreneurs, right?

Hope to see you there.

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Verite and SEO.com proudly host the “Social Media Summit: Building Trust in a Connected World Summit”, presented by Women Tech Council and community partner LaunchUp.

Featuring three New York Times Best Selling authors:

• Chris Brogan
• Julien Smith
• Mitch Joel

Event Details:

According to Mitch Joel, “The smarter entrepreneurs and top executives are leveraging these digital channels to get their voice ‘out there’–connecting with others, becoming better community citizens, and, ultimately, making strategic business moves that are increasing revenue, awareness, and overall success in the marketplace–without the support of traditional mass media.”

This event brings together today’s most respected thought leaders in social media marketing and building meaningful online relationships.

The summit will feature each speaker for 45 minutes and conclude with a roundtable Q&A.

Price includes 2 books plus breakfast – Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, and Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel.

7:30-8:30am – Registration and Breakfast Networking

8:30am-12:00pm – Speakers and Q&A

Registration for the Social Media Summit: Building Trust in a Connected World

Read More (to see the video)

Raise your hand if your life has been improved by an entrepreneur. (everyone’s hands better be up!)

Now raise your hand if that entrepreneur DOES NOT have ties to immigration if you go back 5-6 generations. (pretty much no one’s hand should be up!)

We have a problem in America in that entrepreneurs, smart and motivated entrepreneurs, want to move here and start companies here and solve problems here and CREATE JOBS here, and we can’t get our damn visa program together to faciliate that. So what do they do? Unless they have their own capital (find me an entrepreneur that does), they try to start those companies somewhere else.

The Startup Visa is trying to solve that:

StartupVisa.com was created by Eric Ries, Dave McClure, Shervin Pishevar, Brad Feld, Paul Kedrosky, & Manu Kumar to help raise awareness and change policy around the EB-5 visa, which enables investors from other countries to get a visa in exchange for starting a business in the US with $1M in capital (or $500K for economically targeted areas) and the creation of at least 10 US jobs.

StartupVisa would like Founders to be able to come to our country and start companies if they can raise capital here to do so. Sounds logical to me.

Click on the “Tweet Congress” button below the capital and tell Congress to support this initiative!

You can read more here:

Startup Visa End of Year Update
Let’s Give Visas to Startup Founders
The Startup Visa And Why The Xenophobes Need To Go Back Into Their Caves

Wikipedia defines Energy as:

“In physics, energy (from the Greek – energeia, “activity, operation”, from – energos, “active, working”) is a scalar physical quantity that describes the amount of work that can be performed by a force, an attribute of objects and systems that is subject to a conservation law.”

Over lunch yesterday, I ended up having some discussions about where entrepreneurs get their energy. More on some of my thoughts around this later, and also on things I’m trying to do (like LaunchUp.org) to provide a spark of energy to entrepreneurs here in Utah.

But my main takeaway is this: Entrepreneurial energy is very different than that described by Wikipedia about energy in physics. Physical energy is subject to laws of conservation: “In physics, a conservation law states that a particular measurable property of an isolated physical system does not change as the system evolves.”

Entrepreneurial energy is not subject to the fixed nature and inability to grow. It actually grows and grows as you have more if it being shared. As the system evolves, the energy available to entrepreneurs keeps getting larger and larger, and the more individuals involved in local ecosystems of entrepreneurship share this energy, the faster energy spreads and the greater the available energy is. It’s a perfect example of the snowball effect. Some places are doing a hell of a job evolving their system, and from the outside looking in, I can see their entrepreneurial energy breaking the laws of conversation.

It’s about sharing and connecting. About being open. About getting all amped up on entrepreneurship and making sure everyone else knows it.

Finally, where do you think (generally or specifically) entrepreneurs get energy from?