back in the OC empire

Im back in my OC empire…sleeping on the floor in my shared 350 sq ft mansion (with A GREAT view). We did a cram session of info today, talked with the soccer shots franshising owners about some stuff…fingers crossed that they catch our vision and get behind us.

our spring season we only had 23 kids in our program, we believe that we already have about 150 kids enrolled for this fall (thats an estimate but it could be more or less..we dont know until the season starts). Thats a pretty good growth rate. We have lots of work to do, but for the first time in my life…i dont dread my job. I really enjoy what im doing…now if only we can build up our company and make some money at it.

cross your fingers for us my loyal readers……reader…….hi amanda (my wife).

PS. next week is “scary time” (we give our weeks names…like POWER WEEK and stuff like that)..next week is the first time that i am the only partner here working the phones, running “demo days”…etc. I have the Least experience so its a little intimidating. even my toes are crossed now.

what am I leaving behind.

I am leaving behind a lot of hard work…but, I cant help but feel that I wasted my time. I know that in hindsight…40 yrs from now, I will have a very clear picture of all the great things I got out of the last three years of my work life…but right now it looks a bit hazy.

Let me break it down for you. I bought a house, good investment. Then I took my spare money and invested it in building a rental suite in the basement, good investment. I also had spent a couple thousand dollars when they were pouring the basement so that they would add a separate entrance to the basement, good investment. Then everyday after work I sat in the basement watching YouTube videos on how to- tile a bathroom, install linoleum flooring, install a kitchent, hang doors, install laminate flooring, install shelves etc…, good investment. I bought my dad a plane ticket to fly up and help me work on the project, good investment. I put all my spare money into increasing the value of my house while my friends were buying new quads and campers with their extra cash, good investment. The problem was that when the markets crashed it meant that after all my work, my  house was now worth an estimated 20,000 dollars LESS than what I had into it. Pretty cool, basically the lesson learned is that a good investment opportunity is just that, an opportunity..not a guarantee.

During this time I was putting in 3 years towards getting my CGSB lvl 2 tickets. That certified me to work with Radiation, inspecting welds and castings (with the opportunity to work on inspecting airplanes as well). My boss felt that it was best for me to own my own tickets. I dont totally agree with him, at least as far as how he defined the process of getting to that point. If my name is on the ticket and I did the work, then I would in every sense of the word “own my own tickets”. You are the bottom end of the totem pole, making the Least amount of money in the industry, yet you have to come up with $10,000 to pay for your tickets. When I was in my courses, all of my fellow students….every single one of them, had their courses paid for. Most of them also had their hotels and food paid for. Some of them were paid an hourly wage to be in the program, since they were employed and it was part of their training. So it seems that most (All) of the industry would agree with me, but that’s besides the point.

I was working towards Franchising. There is a 90% dropout/failure rate in this program. In November 2008 I finally recieved all the tickets necessary to start up your own business and franchise under a large companies License number (Way too expensive and difficult to get approved by the Government to have your own Radiation License, and the liability is THROUGH the roof!). The deal was that I would work for 2,000 hrs for the guy who got me into the program, and then I would cut loose on my own.  16 days after recieving my tickets, I started to have some pretty severe physical symptoms.  Then I spent an entire winter on call, 24 hours a day…7 days a week.  And I BARELY got any work. So the bills got harder to pay, and i spent more and more time in the doctors office. I had most of my blood taken out of my body, one little innocent looking tube at a time.  On May 9th I was finally told that I would no longer be able to work at my job in canada. bummer.

Then my boss put his hand through a table-saw. So he really needed me to stay and cover all his work for him or he would lose the few contracts that he did have. The problem was that there was no work available.  So I stayed on, committed full-time. I skipped a lot of family stuff and just stayed in a small town. Only I didnt get any calls, just like i told him that there was no work in my area all winter (he didnt believe me) there was also no work during the summer. I paid all my bills with a Mastercard, and used up the equity that I had access to in my home (the bank thinks its worth more than it is). Then when I told my boss that I had to leave in July he got really upset. He told me that my character was a disappointment, because i hadnt stayed on to work the full 2000 hours that I had told him I would work prior to branching out on my own. hmm…someday i might write him a letter.

SO..i left a job that paid me $30 an hour reg, $45 an hour OT…only it actually worked out to more because I got paid a minimum of 4 hours for every call out. When its working at a fulltime rate you end up getting paid about 16hrs worth of work for about 11 hours of actual work. Also, anything after 3pm is considered an OT hour. Once i franchised though, that hourly rate was triple digits..not a bad payout.

Now i have nothing to show for all that, living on the floor in California, sharing 400 sq feet with two guys. My wife and 4 month old boy are living in canada while we wait for their paperwork to come through for them to immigrate to the States (looks like it could be up to 10 months). And i am starting up a business from scratch. awesome. (its called Soccer Shots..look us up at soccershots.org Orange County)

math test

its super fun writing a math test after ZERO hours of sleep. My reasoning and deduction skills were a bit slow..but I managed to get a 14 out of 15 so im happy about that. It wasn’t actually too difficult of a test..we were taught way more than we were tested on, so that was nice.

the foot thing…fun times. Just like last time, after sitting in the hospital for 7 hours..my symptoms dissappated and by the time a doctor came around to check on me, they were gone..just like last time. So he said “i have no idea…but it seems to have fixed itself”. This wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that absolutly nothing brought it on (I was laying in bed) and that 2 yrs and 4 months ago the exact same thing happened while i was sitting on a couch and got worse while washing some dishes. The clinic doctor said he had no idea and then sent me to a hospital where the symptoms dissappeared before i saw a doctor. So so far only the walk in clinic doctor has seen anything. The symptoms are similar to a blood clot, except that it doesnt progress into a deep vein thing..and they are similar to gout except its on the wrong part of my foot (top, outside part…instead of running up from big toe)

so after a sleepless night in the hospital i got no answers..but at least i was  a little better prepared for my math test than the doctors were for my foot. 🙂

Successfully Significant

Define for me, Success.

Wikipedia says that it is an *achievement of an objective/goal, *a level of social success, *the opposite of failure.

Oddly enough Success was also the name of an automobile manufacturing company that boasted a car with a two-cylinder gasoline engine, steel tires (rubber for an extra 25 bucks), and a chain drive. It claimed speeds of 4-18 miles per hour depending on which one you picked off the lot and an incredible 100 miles per gallon. The story of Success ends after only ten years in the manufacturing business when, despite the bargain deal of only 250 dollars per “horseless carriage”, it joined the long list of early unsuccessful automobile companies.

If someone sets bargain basement level goals are they a success when they attain them? Would you consider your neighborhood angst ridden teen a success if he told you that he was happy to report reaching his goals for the day, which involved waking up, finishing off the chips he fell asleep eating and smoking a half a pack of menthol cigarettes?

Would the man in front of you in line at the grocery store earn the title of success if you know he was a multi millionaire, a member of all the right social clubs, the captain of his mens lacrosse team, a red cross volunteer, a regular donater of blood, a living organ donor and the head of your neighborhood watch? What if you also knew that behind closed doors he beat his wife and verbally abused his kids?

Is the standard set too low when we tell people that in order to be a success, they just have to make sure they don’t fail? Is a D- on a report card even good enough to earn a kid a raise in his allowance? Is a D- the mark of a successful student?

So what then is a true definition of Success?

I would propose that as we get caught up thinking about what we need to do in order to be a success, what we actually should be focusing on are ways to be significant.

*meaningful, *of consequence, *having or likely to have a major effect, *important, *influential, *effective.

I was a boss of manual labor crews for many years. In my trial and error attempts to motivate guys I learned that one of the most important factors in attaining high levels of achievement was the ability to focus and take ownership, i.e. internalize. When you reach a state of self awareness that allows you to claim ownership over your circumstances you are then ready to push the boundaries of your limitless potential. The harsh reality is that there are many external factors that greatly influence our ability to attain success as it has been defined for us. These factors are often beyond our control, lowering the ceiling of our potential by taking ownership away from the individual and placing it on the circumstances that are we are placed in. This in turn leaves a wide vacuum of space ripe for the picking by every defeatist attitude our minds can conjure up. We then find it easy to believe the lies of society- “i’m too fat”, “i dont have enough money”, “i dont drive the right car”. Then the soft little shoulder of societys swoops in and says that nothing is our fault because we were held back by our circumstances. lies.

I propose that whenever you hear the term success, instead substitute the term Significance. I will give an example. When you ask yourself if your accrued wealth makes you successful, what you are actually asking yourself is whether or not you are making enough money compared to your peers. Since you can not control what your peers make, you have taken ownership out of your own hands. When you ask yourself if you are a successful athlete, you are actually asking yourself whether or not you are at an ‘acceptable level’ compared to your peers. Again, your limits of potential are lowered. If instead, you ask yourself if your wealth, your athleticism, your time management, your work ethic, your family life, your charitable donations etc. make you significant, then you have taken the reins.

I believe that one of our main purposes in life is fulfilled only when we answer the call to be significant. We are each given a unique quantity and diversity of talents, what we do with that amount determines our significance. Do I make a significant positive impact on the people that I come into contact with? Do I use a significant amount of my wealth to increase the quality of life of those in need? Do I use my athleticism in a way that makes a significant positive impact on the kid that always gets picked last?

Often when you reach out to that lonely kid that never gets picked, your chances of being successful diminish, but Every time you do, your level of significance increases.