Author: mr

I had a conversation the other day with a friend about why we don’t do what we could do.   We are afraid to find out how much we can do. Why? A few things appear to me when I ask this question.   The first is similar to my lovely wife’s thoughts.  If you know what…

This evening, I had some friends over, to sit around the fire and talk.  While in some sense, I don’t have this time if I’m going to be hustling and accomplishing all these huge goals, it was one of the major constraints of my vision.  To not neglect my friendships, or my wife, or my…

So I don’t have any coaching for almost 3 weeks due to the holiday season.  What am I supposed to do with that? I’ll tell you what I’m doing.  I’m going through the same pre-coaching questions, looking at what seems good, making some commitments, and putting dates on them. I am recommitting to my vision,…

Sometimes I feel a bit hungover after I discuss my goals.  Like sharing them, casually, dissipates them.  Like some of the power of action goes out of you, as though you’ve actually done them. And then, answering people’s questions can feel tiresome, since you don’t know all the answers yet. What good is all this…

Solving your problems, even little ones.  Just replaced the screens in our sun porch with pet proof screens so that our kitten stops tearing out of it. I sent the emails yesterday.  Today, I feel a bit discouraged, as though this is just more or less impossible, and that I will have to do a…

Normally, I would not have sent those emails.  I cold-emailed 20 executives trying to set up an exploratory meeting so I could learn more about what they’re doing at their companies. I’m not yet committed to starting at a particular date, or moving on from my  job, so the most I can actually do is…

In my coaching session yesterday (Is there an emoji that encapsulates the feeling of being excited to do something while simultaneously mourning your bank account?) my coach said something very interesting. Me: “I have been having trouble engaging fully at work because I’m not sure if I will be there in a couple months, due…

I had a couple conversations today about my consulting idea, and the people I was talking to kept bringing up problem after problem that would be hard to solve. And for a lot of them, I kept getting really excited.  Because I liked those problems.  I know they’re hard, but I want to solve them.…

I had a hard conversation about lots of things with the VP of engineering, and even briefly pitched the idea of using my current team as a case study for the improvements I’d like to make with my prospective business partner in such a way that we could use it as a platform for what…

And here we come to the biggest blocker in all of my previous attempts to start an online business. How do I find out if people are willing to pay me what I would like to get paid for the thing that I am thinking about making? All the steps to get there seem onerous,…

I have a problem where whenever I do anything fun, and come back to my normal life, I find myself being a big hungover. Not the alcohol hangover.  Fun hangover.  In fact, I’m not planning to drink anything until we’ve made our first sale (of whatever it is we end up doing).  Until this business…

I just signed the (expensive – $2000 / month for 3 calls) coaching agreement.  I remind myself that part of the value is that it hurts (how is paying to hurt yourself a good idea?  What’s wrong with you, masochist?) and that will help me get committed.  And that several people I know have highly…

What’s the next step?  Work backwards. We want to have a million dollars, roughly, at the end of one year.  What does that business look like? It means we have to 1) create  a business and sell it at a multiple at the end of a year, or 2) create a business that averages 80k…

Let’s be honest.  We have four kids under 10, 2 of which are under 4.  We are tired. And when you miss out on sleep for 3 or 4 days in a row (a routine occurrence in our world) you start to feel beat up and burned out. I am already considering reasons why I…

Recently, at work, I had decided to pull out all the stops, and try to get to the next level.  It has been a bit of a struggle, and I decided to take more ownership of my situation.  I had asked for and gotten approval to get some executive coaching to help me be more…