Amy and I have really gotten into NBC’s, as Wikipedia puts it, “post-apocalyptic science fiction television drama series” Revolution. The premise is that something happens and in a single night, all power on Earth is disabled. It’ good.

A lot of people are predicting similar apocalyptic things for the retail and e-commerce industries. Massive changes? Definitely. Apocalypse? Hardly.

So we set out to try and put some structured thinking around it all, by first looking back over the last 20 years, and then prognosticating about the next 20. We took what we did and just published the first part of a 3 part white paper series called The Retail Supply Chain Revolution. You can download it here:

The Retail Supply Chain Revolution, Part One

I really think if you have any interest in e-commerce, this research and insight will help you survive and thrive in this new world, and avoid any sort of dystopian future.

The disruption and change over the next 20 years will make the previous 20 look like just a minor bump in the road. Actually, maybe it will feel like the power went out.

Awesome.

I finally got around to presenting DropShip Commerce at LaunchUp.org last week.

When we introduce each company, we read their answer to this question: “What 3 lessons/observations would you tell other entrepreneurs?”

Here’s mine:

1. Don’t try to be an entrepreneur. It is not trendy or cool or the American Dream. It generally sucks, you’re trying to do the impossible by creating and inventing something from nothing, and luck is far more of it that any of us admit….
2. …. Unless you were born this way: the drive for an insane work ethic, the scrappiness to be tenacious and resilient, the charisma to sell and inspire and lead, a misaligned risk/reward and sacrifice “meter”, the competitiveness to win at all costs, and a curse of looking through the world of “opportunity googles” ….
3. ….Then I’d tell you to take the leap and dive in and “Just do it”, but you already are. You don’t talk about entrepreneurship, or learn about entrepreneurship, or plan to be an entrepreneur. You are. You Do. So if you’re not “doing it”, well then, see #1.

Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur? Do my friends. Do.

1. Go read this awesome essay by Paul Graham: Startup = Growth

2. Read it again.

3. Stare at this image:

Good. Now you have awesome ideas and text in your mind¹. And an awesome picture in your mind².

Startups take money (and by default time, since, well, you know that one) and you grow. And growth will ultimately get you value. Without growth, you’ve got grandes problemas. Find something that you can measure in the short-term, that aligns in some way shape or form with your long-term vision, and grow the hell out of it.

BTW, have you even seen something grow so fast and awesome that the hell literally just left? I have. Doba grew over 3,200% in 4 yrs. And it was crazy and awesome.

Grow my friends, grow grow grow!!

¹ Paul Graham rules
² Google image search rules

These grain silos are about 4 miles from where I grew up in Burley, ID. For one of my high school dances, me and a few friends took our dates to the top. Cool, right? See the big bad city of Burley, unique, WAY different. Problem was: They’re grain silos. The dirt and dust up top was literally 16 inches thick. Add in some dudes wearing dark dress clothes, and some ladies wearing long dresses, and things got….how should I say? Powdery? But hey, I’m a farm boy, that’s what you get.

Anyway, this post isn’t a chronology of my high school dates. Granted, that’d be so much better. But this is about Silos in respect to startups and entrepreneurship.

I’m in Starbucks in San Francisco as I write this. Why am I here? Well, I came out for The Small Business Web conference Tuesday and today. And then I’m meeting with other entrepreneurs in the broader eCommerce space and some investors and some potential customers. Why?

I think it’s critical for entrepreneurs to find ways to break out of their immediate surroundings.

The world’s a big place. You have an ongoing need to fill in blind spots, to gain external perspective, to understand related business models, to look for parallel disruptions, and to run your thinking past people way smarter with different experiences and frameworks than you.

So with a day and a half at a targeted conference and a couple handfuls of other meetings over 2 more days, and 4 days out of the office, I gain some critical and important insights that then I can dump into my brain, and the organization, and see what comes from it.

None of us are really recreating the wheel. Specifically to our problem/solution. And ESPECIALLY generic to startups and models and tactics.

But you have to get out of your office. Out of your city. Go to a targeted conference. Sometimes easiest place to meet if the place everyone is at. (crazy, I know) Decamp to a city for a week, and have it filled with meetings before you get there. Have some conversations with other entrepreneurs. With some investors (they see TONS of companies and trends). Talk with some competitors. If you’re really doing something disruptive, you are on the same team as them in fighting and changing the status quo. It’s not bad to know them and engage.

Break out of your Silo with some lean and mean and targeted travel! Added bonus? What do you have to do without all the normal life of home? Work! Work at the hotel. Work on the plane (I swear, lock me inside a giant aluminum flying tube of death, buckled into a tiny chair, with magical WIFI from the sky, and it seems I get more done on a 3 hour flight than I do in 3 weeks!). Hmmm… Maybe I need to rethink my treadmill desk. You will just plain get more done!

Make it something where you can add to their external thinking, and then gain from theirs.

It’s one of the most important things you should be doing as an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur? Fly away, fly away, fly away. Airplanes = good. Silos = bad. They’re old and stale and dusty.

If you run in startup circles (especially if you’re ever interfacing with investors) you are familiar with the role of an Entrepreneur in Residence. It’s an experienced/seasoned entrepreneur in various roles at a Venture Capital firm, or higher education/government institution.

But before you can be an “seasoned” entrepreneur, you start as no entrepreneur at all. Because the only path to entrepreneurship is to be born with certain defective personality characteristics, and then to basically go do it. You can’t learn it in school anymore than watching videos on Youtube can teach you to fly fish. Entrepreneurship is trial and error, mentoring, and apprenticeship.

So mid last year, I was struck that startups don’t have a counterpoint to this prestigious position that lives on the other side of the table. Since I’m a believer in Yin/Yang, we set out to create the Yang to the E.I.R. Yin. And to find a guinea pig that would sign up for bailing on school to live/learn on the front lines of a startup, with the ultimate goal and outcome being that they would go be an entrepreneur someday.

We call it: Entrepreneur In Training (E.I.T.)

We call him: Applessassin (a.k.a. Jon Allen)

What follows now is a guest post by Jon. It’s his story, decisions, life changes, and experiences to date as (to my knowledge) the world’s first officially titled startup E.I.T. (seriously, it’s on his business cards).

The path to be an Entrepreneur in Training E.I.T. (Hands on Education and Experience> MBA and “A name on the Resume”)

The past few years I have been on a journey to figure out what it is I want to do with my life. As I have attended college at the University of Utah I meet many talented individuals in my same situation. Most of us are in a hurry to get ahead, finish paying for school, and move on with life. We have little life experience to drive our decision making process. We often turn to professors and advisors for advice and are told the only path to success is Consulting, Investment Banking, Fortune 500 Companies, or Big4 Accounting Firms. We are also told that we will never survive the working world today without a Master’s degree, MBA, or Law Degree. While these are all good career options that have helped many people find success, I see everyday student’s ignoring their dreams and what they are passionate about to pursue these “Cookie Cutter” careers. I was almost one of these people who ignored what I like doing for the conventional “Cookie Cutter” path. My advice now for all people is to not fall in to the trap of doing something just because it is the “normal and conventional” path but to pursue what you think you want to do for the rest of your life and learn as much as you can along the way!

Before I became an E.I.T.

In college my career path seemed set. I would get a Bachelors degree in accounting, attend Beta Alpha Psi and network with local Professionals, I would stay up late studying every night to maintain a high GPA, get an internship just prior to graduation with a Big4 Accounting firm, come back and complete my Master’s of Accounting Degree, and go out of state and work a lot hours until I became the partner in the firm. The path seemed so simple and for some reason to me this felt like the only way I could find success. The funny part about it all is I was never excited about my degree in accounting, never excited about what I would be doing during my internship, and never excited about doing a Master’s degree in accounting. I was being fueled by the money I could earn, the minimal risk in the career path, and the fact that my teachers and advisors would get really excited about me helping the schools rankings by taking a job at the firm. Everything was on par for me to do these things until my Internship when I had a big turning point. I had been working 70-80 hour weeks as an intern in Washington D.C. for the same accounting firm my dad had worked for 25 years before me. It didn’t take me very long to figure out that this wasn’t the right career for me. I tried to ignore that I disliked the job I had chosen by focusing on the free dinners for working all day, the vacations I could take when I was in my 40′s, and the idea that I could retire when I was 65 and not have a care in the world. It is hard to make an extreme career change when you have had your expectations and goals set on something so long, to be so close to accomplishing what you always wanted, and then turning it down for the complete unknown.

I am happy to say that I started doing some serious introspection asking myself questions like, “What am I passionate about?”, “What would I willingly stay up until 4 in the morning to work on?”, “What type of job would I be willing to skip lunch for because work is better than food?”.

My whole life I had enjoyed reading business books and startup books. I had spent high school staying up late editing movies for school assemblies. I would wait every week for the newspaper to pull out the ads that had all of the electronics from all of the different brands. I had spent my weekends pulling apart and putting back together old computers. I had helped organize the business plan competitions throughout the state of Utah. I had worked construction and really enjoyed building things. All of these things combined I knew I wanted to be in an environment where creativity, business, diversity, and innovation were all a part of my daily job description. I think I have a little bit of ADD and don’t like to be pigeon holed into one small thing but like experiencing lots of things.

When I got home from my internship I started looking at other options and applied and got accepted to the full-time MBA program at the University of Utah. I started interning at the University Venture Fund, a student run venture fund where we would do diligence for local firms and invest. At the same time I was going to lunch with as many people I could asking their perspective on what I should do when I finished my undergraduate degree.

Turning down an MBA and BIG4 Job offer to work for a Startup Company

It is funny how the universe has a way of putting the right people in your path at the right time. After receiving a job offer on completion of my internship I moved back to Utah and was shortly introduced to a few people who would change my life forever. The first, Al Doan, whose a random kids whose phone number I had from 5 years back I randomly called and asked if he would like to grab lunch. Al had worked with techStars for while and started a few companies. When I called him up, he had no idea who I was. I told him about the MBA, the job offer, and my what I enjoyed doing and asked for advice. He said very simply, “Why are you going to an MBA? From what you have told me you really need to go work for a startup!!!”

I began researching startups in the area cold calling and emailing the ones I liked explaining my background and that I really wanted an opportunity to work for them. Finally Jeremy Hanks, from what was DropShip.com at the time, emailed me back randomly and invited me to do some research and come into the office to interview for a position as a Marketing Crony(Intern). I interned for the summer and at the end of the summer he said very simply you should just not do the MBA program and come work for us full time. His offer was simple, “you want to be an entrepreneur, the MBA is for experience and you are going to pay a bunch of money for it, come work full time as our E.I.T. and you will get way better business experience.”

The fear of losing the MBA name on my resume was very scary to me! I talked to a lot of people and thought a lot about the opportunity and realized the opportunity to work for a company like this and get mentored as an “Entrepreneur In Training” was once in a lifetime. I realized “When a rocket ship is about to take off, don’t ask questions or which seat you are in, just get inside.” I accepted the offer and for the last 6 months have been an Entrepreneur In Training for what is now DropShip Commerce. I love waking up every morning, taking on new challenges, and learning. I love my job and know that the startup world is a place I want to be for the rest of my life!

What being an E.I.T. (Entrepreneur in Training) has taught me

I don’t want to downplay the importance of a formal education because in a lot of ways it still prepares me to do my job well. I do however want to strongly emphasize that hands on experience trumps all formal education and that college should just compliment your skills career and not define it.

Since becoming an E.I.T. here at DropShip Commerce I have had all sorts of unique opportunities that I never had in school. Here are some of the range of activities I get to participate in on a daily basis that I never would have gotten working for a Big Company or in a Full-Time MBA:

• Attending board meeting’s with local investors, advisors, and other seasoned entrepreneurs
• Attending executive meeting’s where strategy and real company problems and solutions are being discussed in real time
• Looking at a terms sheet, our companies articles or incorporation, stock options plans, and stock certificates
• Keeping the books for the company and making financial projections for the companies future
• Analyzing key metrics and data to determine where we are at and where we can improve
• Picking up a Diet Mountain Dew and David Sunflower seeds for our CEO Jeremy Hanks
• Researching the eCommerce, DropShipping, and Supply chain markets looking for trends and opportunities
• Building IKEA Furniture, Ordering Trek desks, and FitBits for new employees
• Testing software to help make sure it is functioning properly
• Helping to recruit new and talented people to come work with us
• Editing documentation and user guides for our customers
• Networking with all sorts of investors, business professionals, and students from different schools in Utah
• And much more..

As an E.I.T. I feel really lucky to learn from talented and smart people everyday. I enjoy working on a huge range of projects that help me know the in’s and out’s of our company. This opportunity has been the greatest education experience of my life. I have learned more about business in the past 6 months than any other time in my life. I now feel confident telling students that if they don’t like where they are at it is alright to pursue an unconventional career path to do something that you enjoy! Worse case scenario you fail and you still got some really valuable life experience. I hope that more entrepreneurs help mentor confused students like me. I know that my experience as an E.I.T. is better preparing me to one day be a capable and experienced and hopefully successful entrepreneur here in Utah.

Awesome. Amazing advice for anyone considering entrepreneurship as a career. It’s so close to my own story. And BTW: Jonny is as awesome as he comes across in this post.

Entrepreneur to Aspiring Entrepreneur? MBA? Utter waste of time. Might as well take your $50k or $100k or $200k (SERIOUSLY?!) to Vegas, and bet on black #17: If you loose, you’re ahead cause that moment when the ball is circling the roulette wheel with a bet that large would be SO INTENSE and then you could go spend the other 729 days you’d have wasted listening to professors who 9/10 times have no damn idea what entrepreneurship is (hell, actual entrepreneurs don’t even know what it is) and work at a startup (where you will get PAID). If you win? Well my friends. Even at the low end of $50k, that’s $1,750,000. Seed round? Check.

Double whammy.

Well that’s the subject of this post. (and it’s not these guys, Pendulum the band. Although they are completely awesome!)

My life’s been pretty nutty last few weeks. Like as in probably most I’ve worked. Ever. Except growing up on the farm. Especially a dairy farm. That’s 7 days a week. 365. If you ever want to know real work, all you/us entrepreneurs out there? Go live/work on a farm for a year. Then you’ll look at startups like the cake walk that they are.

Anyway, you only have so many hours in the day. Until we can bioengineer ourselves to find sleep unnecessary, or we invent time travel, we are capped.

Lots of people talk about work/life balance. Balance? I think that’s entirely the wrong framework/analogy. Balance conjures the idea that with the appropriate tweaking, everything is all good. You’re balanced. It’s just the wrong word for it.

I think a much better visual is a pendulum. When I think of a pendulum, I think of something moving, something changing, something always in flux, something swinging. That sounds way better about how life really goes. And I know, pendulums, without external forces, end up in an equilibrium position. Balanced. But find me a life or a startup that is free of extreme external influences, and I’ll find you you a unicorn or an native Idahoan that isn’t spectacularly awesome.

In case you where wondering, your time and priorities are “Bob”. You and your life are the Fixed Point and the 360 degree plane around that fixed point reached at the apex point of your pendulum. And you swing, swing away. Always in motion. And not only in two dimensions. It’s not like you can write “life” on the left, and “startup” on the right and move between them. You’re hanging from this giant point in the sky, swinging all over. Left, right, front, back. At the whim of the universe and your plate and what pushing on you, changing your direction and high you swing in that new focus. Sometimes so relentless pushing you to a high point on that 360 degree plane that the rest of your points all are 0.

Your job as an entrepreneur, as a dad/mom, as a husband/wife, as a friend, as a family-member, as a human who has primary needs of your own: add your own internal pushes to go against the external forces to swing that sucker back towards other priorities. You can’t find “balance”, that’s a fools errand. You find appropriate swinging. Work/Life Pendulum.

Back to me being late on my weekly post…I’m out of whack towards startup life right now. I’ve got to swing some things to me. So yesterday morning, I did a little me time for an hour up American Fork canyon.

I feel like a million bucks, ready to let that sucker swing me right back hard to whatever else. My next internal push on my pendulum? Family.

Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur? Swing my friends. Swing.

This is final post in now what has become sort of a 3 parter.

Started with Killer Blue Whales about some of my pressures and fears, then Fontal Assault about how startups teams play into the mix, and now bring it home with Fear.

And for this one, I’m sharing what one of my advisors emailed to me after seeing my Killer Blue Whales post. I sent this out to my team as well. It’s SPECTACULAR.

I can tell you from all my experience the most powerful motivator in the world is not greed, it’s fear. Whether it’s fear over upholding the expectation of others, knowing that others lives and careers and families are depending upon you, or wondering whether your big idea is in fact a superior candidate in the tightly congested field of other ideas, it’s always fear.

People go too far in trying to manage stress and anxiety related to fear. It’s not all bad, not at all, in fact. Fear is the reason we are alive. Fear is the reason why humans avoid being eaten by the bears. Absent fear, you are eaten by the bear. Not a good outcome.

Fear is your friend. Harness it. Engage it.

Greed, by contrast, has always seemed to me to be an inappropriate motivator. It combines with things that fall outside the Golden rule, typically. It relates to a time when being smart meant something akin to being crafty, in the ancient market bazaar kind of way, not in the world of creating value.

But since I am on it, the only other thing I might offer is that, if you get with the idea that fear is not unhealthy, but in fact it’s a desired component, find a way to share it. I think fear is a great component to creativity (create-ivity), and having people have their own share of fear means that when they overcome an obstacle, their sense of accomplishment is even so much more turbocharged. All this is pretty fluffy, and I think this is exactly the headspace you operate in in any case, so all is well on the Western front.

It is a big world out there, expectations are high, people are smart, the ideas are flowing, and it all looks pretty intoxicating and overwhelming/intimidating. One of my sayings, however, in contrast to all these great ‘potential’ threats is: ‘no points for original thought, life is execution’. All entrepreneurs have ideas, some of them are really great ideas. Further some of those ideas are viable, some of those viable ideas have technically viable means, as well as market opportunities. And then there are those ideas that are not only all of the above, but the team could actually make it happen! Making it happen is actually where it’s at.

Fear monger to fear monger? Embrace it. Harness it. Share it.

Don’t get eaten by the bears.

At the risk of totally way overplaying an analogy* (but I just really wanted to use these pictures)…

and also the risk of mixing metaphors — but I am king of that: from animal kingdom last time to military this week; actually, those are analogies. Can you mix analogies?

anyway, here we go….

You see, I am but a very small piece of a very big, complicated, and complex picture. I think last week, you saw how important your spouse is in your entrepreneur/startup world. Very true.

But as important as they are, there’s something that’s even more (sorry Amy!) critical.

As the “entrepreneur” in the equation, I am sort of like a Special
Reconnaissance Operative. Yeah, I’m out in front of a lot of stuff. Trying to keep eyes in the back of my head. Putting my neck out there. And someone might just shoot your head off. It’s easy to feel like you’re solo (again, see my post last week). It’s damn frightening to be behind enemy lines. You’re the sharp tip of the spear. Sort of feels like this**:

(image source: Wallpapers Wala)

But startups are not recon missions. Startups are more like Frontal Assaults. Doesn’t this quote from that wikipedia link sound perfect when applied to startups?

The military tactic of frontal assault is a direct, hostile movement of forces toward the front of an enemy force (as compared to the flanks or rear of the enemy). By targeting the enemy’s front, the attackers are subjecting themselves to the maximum defensive power of the enemy. It is often a commander’s last resort when he has run out of tactical options….this procedure proved increasingly suicidal.

Not sure about you, but that dude, just above, with the spear and the shield? He’s not doing any frontal assaults.

He’s just recon. He’s just scouting. Probing the defenses. Gathering intel. But he’s got backup. More than backup, he’s got an Army. Well then, framed inside of entrepreneurship and startups, “subjecting yourself to the maximum defensive power of the enemy” sounds like a damn fine time to me.

So back to me and DropShip Commerce. My army? my team? Well, they all enlisted. They signed up for this. (and re-enlist every day, every week while the pressures and unknowns and directional changes and barely managed chaos play out real time). They all have made sacrifices and take risks and have fears. My little IM with Amy? Specifics are different, but that mental narrative applies to a lot of us. Seven of them quit their jobs and walked out the door from Doba with our whole spinoff, to go into the unknown and continue working with/for me, all my faults included (hard core special ops types). Two of them came back to work for/with me after many years of doing so previously and then living a utopian life without my ADHD for a good while (possibly the insane ones). Two of them picked up their families and careers and moved hundreds or thousands of miles. (that’s commitment akin to scuttling the ships) One of them dropped out of MBA school weeks before starting to dive into entrepreneur training (smartest of the entire bunch). Three of them left good companies/opportunities to work harder on things infinitely less defined. (no regrets!)

You want to talk about pressure? Intensity? Drive to blow things up? I can tell you, the sacrifices of my team and then living up to our potential we owe to each other as a startup/organization are 1,000X greater than whatever I might feel from investors. That’s only money. Startup compatriots? Well, that’s time. And energy. And careers. And geography. And stress. And family. And sacrifices. And we’re all in the thick of it. It’s not easy to build something from nothing.

I do get hit with a lot, and everything last week from my mind dump is completely true, but the honest truth is that when I hear: “Wow, look, you won the battle. You won the war.” for GearTrade, for Doba, and eventually for DropShip Commerce. My response is: Nah, I just scouted the enemy a bit, helped point that spear towards a weak spot, and then this amazing army, in something the overwhelming majority of the world would consider a suicide mission, full on frontal assaulted and steamrolled to victory, and I get to take credit for a bunch of other people’s work, who all have their own fighting to do for us to win:

Blaine, Clark, Ben, Mike, Dave, Todd, Jason W, Josh, Brad, Jonny, Jason C, Joel, Rachelle, Travis, Eric

Just hope…no, strike that: do more than hope, engineer and architect a team behind you that looks like this:

(image source: HDWPapers.com)

That’s how I picture the other 15 DropShip Commerce Action Team members. Yeah, they’re that good.

Entrepreneur to Startup teams? Rock n Roll my friends. Rock. n. Roll.

—————————————–
* – I’ve never been in a real war. If you have, wow. I mean no disrespect with my analogies. You probably tire of them. People like me trying to prove a point. Startups truly aren’t at all like real battle. And just like last week, I have nothing but good intentions and karma with anything I say. I sent a similar message to the elephants, lions, and wildebeest that me and my fellow Killer Blue Whale entrepreneur friends so indiscriminately consume in Africa, but they don’t have reliable Interweb access, so you didn’t see it online.

** – And when I say it feels like this, I am TOTALLY referring to how I picture myself, all ripped to hell like this guy, able to hold a 100 lb solid metal shield and throw a massive spear like the length of 3 football fields.

I debated on whether to post this off and on for a few hours. But I am extremely focused, in my life, with my team, and with the broader entrepreneur community, to be brutally honest. To engage in no bullshit. To be authentic. Real-time. No spin, no positioning. That’s the opposite of honesty, transparency, truth. Life’s too short. If there’s one thing I want to be known for, is that I tell it how it is.

Entrepreneurs have the highest highs. And the lowest lows. We can simultaneously live in our minds where 1. we are so convinced we can change the world that we set aside normal thinking and strike out to do what most people see as impossible: to create something from nothing; but 2. we are so afraid of failure, it can at times almost paralyze us from taking the very actions and risks necessary for the shot at success. I think we’re all bipolar. Or at least mentally disturbed. Probably dropped on our heads or something as kids.

Anyway, again, I could easily justify just letting this little thing slide by. Why even share at all? What if it creates problems? What if people read it the wrong way? See, even inside of this simple blog post, I’m battling 2 voices in my head. Risk is this dump is not good for me or the company. Reward is that by sharing unadulterated honesty, other deranged souls can commiserate and hopefully see some “normalcy” in a career that’s the utter opposite of normal.

First, a quick “Disclaimer” to current and future potential investors: I am 113.7% in all ways, shapes, and forms, and to the best of my ability, intelligence, and skill committed to do all in my power (and some that’s not) to see spectacular success with DropShip.com. For those that have invested, your trust in me and the DS team is so meaningful, we are on it. But I’m human. I have hopes, fears, pressure…

…so and without further ado, here’s an IM from about 3 hours ago, sort of that came out stream of consciousness, that I had with my wife Amy (BTW, watch what she does. Entrepreneurs you better hope you have the right spouse, like I do, or you should probably either give up entrepreneurship or jump on google right now and type “divorce attorney” in the box and hit I’m feeling lucky. Whole other batches of posts about spouses of entrepreneurs and how they support/build up.) after a long and very productive and exciting and taxing and typical entrepreneurial day of meetings/calls I had on a business trip here in NYC:

—————————————————————-

7:39
JerCore
amy I’m worried
this biz is getting serious. these investors, they just expect so much
it’s so high expectations

7:39
Amy Hanks
What, like results?

7:49
JerCore
I see these really really really smart and experienced people saying, Jer, I am investing in you. (I’ve literally had 6-7 people say those exact words). and they are giving us significant money. Some of that money comes from people I consider friends

7:49
JerCore
and I also see these really really really smart and experience people get so excited about what we could do with this business/opportunity

7:50
JerCore
like as in, it could be huge

7:52
JerCore
it’s so much pressure, they’re trusting me with that money

7:52
Amy Hanks
I know it stresses you out.

7:52
JerCore
it’s my reputation
my entire career, past, present, and future

7:53
Amy Hanks
I think you’re getting yourself worked up a bit, too. You’re sitting in New York in your hotel room. You’re probably exhausted, feeling overwhelmed, with hours of work ahead of you.
Settle down. Have you eaten dinner yet?
Maybe go out for a walk. Take a little break to clear your head.
Go work out.

8:02
JerCore
when we take their money, which we do because they do not F around, and I’m just stressed as hell about being able to deliver. I know I can do it. it’s just so much pressure. I’m really struggling with it. On one hand, I’m so so excited. The last 2 days have been awesome
on the other, I’m paranoid.

8:06
Amy Hanks
i know. And I’m just trying to talk you down. I think you’re experiencing what it’s like for a big fish to leave his little pond and realize that there’s a lot more to the world than he thought.
It’s ok to be nervous. It’s ok to be scared. It means you’re growing.

8:09
JerCore
yeah. good point. now my new mission in life: i’m going to be a big fish in the entire ocean!

8:10
Amy Hanks
Baracuda.

8:11
JerCore
Baracuda? Seriously? blue f’ing whale baby.

8:11
Amy Hanks
i thought you might want to be something a little more bad ass than a whale!

8:12
JerCore
“The blue whale is a marine mammal belonging to the suborder of baleen whales. At 30 metres in length and 170 tonnes or more in weight, it is the largest known animal to have ever existed.”
what is more bad ass than the largest known animal to have ever existed?!
that’s like 340,000 pounds

8:13
Amy Hanks
A killing machine like a barracuda!

8:14
JerCore
blue whales eat great white sharks and their pansy barracuda friends like they’re peanuts in a bowl at a bar

8:14
Amy Hanks
Ha! Shows what you know. Baleen whales eat krill.

8:16
JerCore
not my sub-species
I’m a Killer Blue Whale

8:16
Amy Hanks
LOL!

8:16
JerCore
if it’s alive, we eat it

8:16
Amy Hanks
Ah! Never heard of it.

8:16
JerCore
we’ve been known to breech ourselves in Africa, eat 5/6 elephants, couple lions, and a wildebeest or two, then back in the ocean we go
apex predators

8:17
Amy Hanks
Wow! Impressive!

—————————————————————-

So. Get to it. Fear is good. Pushing yourself (and having others push you) is good. Inventing a new species that’s an Apex Predator is very, very good.

This letter from Hunter S Thompson is applicable:

My dear,

You know what I tell myself everytime I write?

Faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.

I sit on my chair, and force myself to write… and keep writing, until I get to that point where it’s no longer the fear of mortage payments that’s driving me, ’till it’s no longer the thoughts of long days with empty stomachs forcing my fingers to glide over that keyboard – but instead, the thrill of writing one letter after the other, one word after the next, one sentence after the former… until I write for writing in itself.

It’s comparable to riding down a one way dead-end steep highway on a bike with no brakes. At first all you can think about is your death in the more than likely head-busting collision that’s about to happen. But pretty soon you realize that the road is infinitely long and infinitely steep – all you’re doing is gaining speed, and there’s no end in sight. Heck, you can probably ride this thing now with no arms.
And that’s when the fun starts.

Falsely yours,

Hunter Stockton Thompson

Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur? Kick ass my friends. Kick ass.

-Jer

Sitting for More Than Three Hours a Day Cuts Life Expectancy – WSJ
Your Desk is Making You Stupid – Inc
Stand Up While You Read This! – NYT

Most of them talk about a level of activity to shoot for is 10,000 steps per day.

In April of 2011, after seeing some of this, I bought one of the first generation FitBits. I wore it for a week. It tacks your steps, and daily, shows a chart like this (mine from day 1 of FitBit Sunday April 24, 2011):

I walked 6,593 steps that day. And when I saw that first pie chart, my reaction, was “holy shit.” For 95.3% of a 24 hour period, that little magical device of accelerometers and technology tracked 0 movement. Zip, nada, big ol’ goose egg. Taking a test in college? 95% = muy bueno. Tracking your movement? 95% SEDENTARY = you die young and can’t backpack into your 80′s (a life goal).

I bought a NordicTrack treadmill and a TrekDesk less than a week later. In 2011 I used it ok, but coming into 2012, I set a goal, a New Year’s Resolution: to walk 10,000 steps per day, averaged by month, for all of 2012.

It’s the only time in my life (38 yrs) where I set and kept a New Year’s resolution. Here are my charts:

The reason I kept this goal is simple: as long as I remembered to clip on the FitBit, goal was tracked and reported. And then I just had to get up and move, and walk, or run, or hike.

Over the course of 2012, here are my stats:

Days with recorded steps: 366 (leap day!)
Total Steps: 4,123,067
Average Daily Steps: 11,265
Total Miles: 1,901
Averages by Month: Jan 11,985 Feb 10,924 Mar 11,341 Apr 12,010 May 11,604 Jun 11,593 Jul 11,538 Aug 10,094 Sept 12,118 Oct 10,258 Nov 10,642 Dec 11,088

We are now in the process of rolling out treadmill/walking desks for anyone at DropShip.com who wants them. Of our 16 team members, 4 of us currently use walking desks and 1 uses a standing desk. We have several more we’re buying. If an employee wants one, we will get it.

For 2013? I’m upping to a goal of 12,328 steps average per day. That’s 4,500,000 steps this year. Days like this from last Friday where I hit over 25,000 steps, covered more than 11 miles, and moved my Lightly/Fairly/Very Active % from 5% to 32% (WHILE WORKING!!) are going to help:

Active. It’s the opposite of Sedentary. And if you sit for work, it’s impossible. So get Active! Get a FitBit. Get a walking desk. (LifeSpan of Utah is where we’re buying ours). Life’s too short to not walk while you work.