Day 2 at the EIA - Team Formation

That game last night was insane! I was in a bar in Antibes called The Blue Lady, with most of my newly formed team, where we saw Simon Baker (from the Mentalist). A yacht boy bought us all shots in celebration of the crazy score. The best part was definitely being there with my team. 

We did a lot of team formation exercises yesterday in attempts to build a team. We created many ideas and pitched them for each other, hoping to create a stellar team. It went back and forth a lot as team members went in and out. 

Finally, my team came together and I couldn't have been more satisfied. Everyone is very smart and all excited to work together and make things happen, including myself. 


Here's to the start of day 3!

How much is your time worth?

"Think of your time as worth $300+ dollars an hour."

That is something my mentor and boss reminds me of all the time and I find this to be the best way to place value on the things that fill my life.

From work to having a social life, what you do matters. It matters to you, and others can only place value on your time accordingly, so value your time. The people that surround you take up your time an energy. A text message that takes one minute to write is worth $5. Is that message worth it?

What about a task assigned to you at work? Is that task worth $300?

It's only natural to now add that tasks and people are also more than just that moment. Everything you do and everyone you meet has more value to it than meets the eye. There is also the other side of that, where those tasks and those people are not worth as much as you think. Be very careful when judging someone or something's real value. They could turn out to waste your time.

So how much is your time worth to you?



PS Remember to value other people's time accordingly as well. Are you asking for a favor? Is it worth their time? 

Finding Talent - Should you settle?

Finding talent is always difficult, but at what point do you lower your standards and decide that this person will have to do for now? That sounds a bit grim, but it seems to be the reality of the situation. Do you lower your standards or not? It's like my boss and mentor says, hiring is like dating. You have to test each other out first to see if you're the right fit, and if not, you move on. But even in dating, the longer you wait to find that right fit, the lower your standards become.

I believe in people. I want to give everyone a chance and if I could, I would. We have been searching for interns (we say interns, but really just looking for trainable people), and can't seem to find hungry, capable, young talent.

How do you solve this problem? Would you settle?

What do you want to do with your life?

Many people have asked me, “What do you want to do with your life?” I usually just list of whatever I have planned as a career or answer, “I don’t know yet.” But I do know, and my career is not what I want to do with my life--it’s how I plan on doing it. The other day, someone asked me this question and I decided to actually answer. I want to inspire.

I want to inspire people be better, stronger, alive, and awake. I want people to want more, fight for more, and live more. I want to inspire people to be happy, sad, confused, thrilled, upset, and renewed. I want people to marvel at everything and to feel like what they do matters. I want people to stop wondering if life is meaningless and act like it’s not. Because why not? I want to inspire people to read, run, play, hike, swim, dance, feel. People need to feel. I’m not going to lie and say that it’s always been easy for me to do all these things. To believe in a good life is one of the hardest things in the world. But it can also be one of the simplest. You’ll find that once you start believing, things will start to fall into place. Whatever misfortune or heartbreak chooses to cross your path, if you believe life has more to give, the more you can take.

I want people to take more from life, not other people. I want people to believe in their own strength and to love what they do and do what they love. There are plenty of other people in the world to do what you don’t want to do. And then I want people to go out and infect other people. Have a conversation with someone who is tired of living life and help them understand how important it is to be passionate about something, anything.

Someone once paraphrased Gandhi and said: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” But I can’t just be this change, I have to share it. People have become so apathetic that they have stopped looking around them. I want to compel people to see. This is why I do everything that I do. It’s why I over-stuff my schedule and work a little too hard. It’s why I teach music and choose to learn and play music. It’s why I write. It’s why my first business is based on community development. It’s why I’d rather be a part of ten different things over one stagnant thing. It’s why I smile when I’m upset. It’s why I drag my friends out of bed to go to Santa Cruz for a day.

I don’t know if this answer satisfies all the parents of the world that want to hear about a stable job and a predictable life. It probably won’t. But if you want to know what I want, this is it. I want to inspire people to live. 

Passion does not equal CEO?

My whole perspective on loving your job took a 360 degree spin after listening to an interview today. I was riding the shuttle to the parking lot from SJSU, not really paying attention to what was going on around me. And then, a sentence, spoken by an unknown man on the radio, struck me. (I suppose I had been listening subconsciously.) He said that passionate people do not make good business people.

Passionate people do not make good business people.

In that one sentence, he threw my whole concept of success out the window. I've always felt that you must find work doing something you love. And I applied that concept to the creation of businesses. However, this unknown man pointed out that working on something you love, does not mean being successful in the venture. To become successful, it is important to know the business side of things-the spreadsheets, networking, and people management.

Loving what you do can be a good thing, but it can also be bad, as you can end up closing your mind to other business opportunities. You would also tend to try to get investors and the like to fall in love with your product, rather than get them to see the financial benefits. And as cold as that might sound, people want to see the numbers!

He also said that personal energy was really a driving force for the success of many business folk. CEO's have a charming charismatic personality and enjoy their work. But passion is a far stretch.

It was then that the RJ announced the speaker's name: Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert and the author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the story of my life.

I do think that it's important to enjoy what you do, and love it, but now I realize we must also be careful to not be over-passionate, and maintain a sense of reality.

Advice from Will Smith

Worth the read.


“The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.

I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented. Where I excel is ridiculous, sickening work ethic. You know, while the other guy’s sleeping, I’m working. While the other guys’ eating, I’m working.

There’s no easy way around it. No matter how talented you are, your talent is going to fail you if you’re not skilled. If you don’t study, if you don’t work really hard and dedicate yourself to being better every single day, you’ll never be able to communicate with people - with your artistry - the way that you want….

The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is: I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. You might have more talent than me; you might be smarter than me. But if we get on a treadmill together, there’s two things: you’re getting off first, or I’m gonna die.
It’s really that simple."

- Will Smith