VIDEO: A toy train in space.
What happens when you take a toy train, attach it to a weather balloon with an HD camera and an old cell phone with GPS? This unbelievable bit of awesomeness.
Get Out. Get Moving. Start.
Action always beats intention.
A dream you don’t have to fight for isn’t a dream—it’s a nap. One changes your afternoon. The other changes your world. Keep fighting.
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Introducing the Quitter Hall of Fame!
What is a Quitter?
A Quitter is not just about quitting a job.
A Quitter is someone who quits average.
I’ve had the opportunity in the last year to meet hundreds of them across the country.
Their lives are inspiring, encouraging and flat out awesome.
So today, I’m starting the “Quitter Hall of Fame.” My goal is to introduce you to a bunch of awesome people and in turn give a lot of awesome people the exposure their particular form of awesomeness deserves. (There are 100,000 new blogs launched each day, it’s hard to stand out. Maybe we can collectively help change that.)
The first inductee to the Quitter Hall of Fame or Q-HOF as it will now be referred to is:
Do you have what you need to start your dream?
One of the things fear loves to tell you is that you don’t have what you need to start a dream.
You don’t have the right skills.
You don’t have the best talents.
You don’t have enough time.
You don’t have enough money.
You don’t have the best tools.
See Tony Blair for FREE!
That’s a fun sentence.
So is “See Tony Dungy for free.”
So is “See Cokie Roberts for free.”
So is “See Patrick Lencioni for free.”
So is, well we could play this game all day because there are 14 speakers at the World Leaders Conference and the entire webcast is free.
That is awesome.
Going forward, I’m going to try to do a better job of giving you access to cool stuff I find. Like this.
Don’t miss the free webcast. It’s on September 27 and 28. (Or in layman’s terms, this Thursday and Friday!)
30 words every blog needs.
I don’t know what my blog is about yet. I’ve been writing it for over a year now, and the ideas haven’t jelled into a cohesive theme. How do I know this?
Because I can’t explain it in 30 words or less.
I was reminded of this dilemma recently when I found the brilliant blog “Pocket-Sized Stories.” What’s that blog about?
Allow me to share the first 30 words you see at the top of it:
1 great insight is worth 1,000 good ideas.
That’s the title of a book I just read by Phil Dusenberry.
It’s also something a guy named Matt Cheuvront reminded me of recently.
In the last year, I’ve discovered something – I’m a big fan of Quitters.
I don’t just mean people that quit their jobs. My friend Bob is a wildly successful lawyer and calls his job “fundraising” because it allows him to build missions that serve thousands of people around the world. I hope he never quits his job. Being a Quitter is not just about quitting a job.
A Quitter for me is someone who quits average.
People who refuse to accept common and instead dare to live out the talents and gifts they’ve been given.
People who know that true life change always leads to selflessness, not selfishness. You can’t have a life changing moment without wanting to then help other people have their own. Joy is always contagious.
So over the next year, I’m going to do 2 things:
1. Celebrate Quitters
For reasons beyond my talent or coolness, I have a platform. While I do, I want to be intentionally generous with it. One way I can do that is to tell the world your Quitter story and introduce 100,000 people to the adventure you’re on.
2. Find people who will help me do #1.
I’m going to actively look for folks who can help me, help you. I don’t have all the answers or all the resources. There are a lot of brilliant folks out there who hold pieces of the puzzle that I don’t possess. I’m going to find them and then say, “Hey, let’s change the world together and help a lot of folks.” And then we’re going to do that.
Today, I get to start both of those goals by introducing you to the aforementioned Matt Cheuvront. He’s a Nashville guy like me and more than that, he’s a Quitter. He’s chasing his dream with a company he started called “Proof Branding.” After a lot of discussions and brainstorming, we realized Proof would make for an awesome sponsor for my two goals. This Saturday he’s teaching a fantastic session at the Quitter Conference at 7AM that is going to be full of great insights. For those of you who can’t attend, I’d love you to hear his story and encourage you to check out the amazing program he’s working on for Quitters called “Launch.”
Why am I doing any of this? Well, it turns out helping other people change their lives is always more fun than obsessing about your own.
Without further adieu, here’s Matt to tell you his Quitter story!
If your dream doesn’t feel like this sometimes, it might not be the right dream.
This is a picture of my little sister Molly reacting to the arrival of the ice cream man.
If your dream doesn’t make you feel like this sometimes, it might not be the right dream.
If there aren’t moments where you feel amazed that you get to live your dream, it might not be the right dream.
If there aren’t times when you jump out of bed or jump on a plane or just jump in the air because you get to be a painter, singer, dancer, business planner, doctor, nurse, lawyer, or whatever your “dream job” is, maybe you haven’t found it yet.
And that’s OK, because eliminating what you’re doing as a possible candidate gives you one less place to look.
Will you always feel like this? Will your reaction to working on your dream always be like Molly’s reaction to the ice cream truck? Of course not. There are lots of grind-it-out moments where you have to do things you might not like for the privilege of doing things you love.
But if your dream doesn’t feel like this photo sometimes, it might not be the right dream.
3 ways to register a complaint on Twitter.
Mad at someone you’re following on Twitter? They tweeted too many times? Or maybe said something you weren’t happy about, or tweeted a link to a blog post too often for your taste?
Here are the 3 things you should do immediately:
You have a gift. Here’s how I know.
You have a gift. You have something unique and special and important. You’ve always had it.
Even if you don’t believe in God, it’s hard to argue that you showed up on the planet empty.
How do I know?
Stop trying to look cool in front of Seth Godin.
One time I got to hear business guru Seth Godin speak at a lunch.
There were about 15 of us in a small room in a conference center.
Godin spoke for about 30 minutes, and then opened up the floor for questions.
Here was one of the most successful marketing minds in the last 20 years.
Here was someone who has sold millions of books.
Here was a keynote speaker who gets paid tens of thousands of dollars, asking 15 strangers at lunch if they had any questions. And do you know what happened?