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.

Are you ready for the next Internet?

Leadership/ Social Media May 11, 2012 • Comments

Two weeks ago, my friend Santiago told me something shocking.

He said, “In June of 2011, people spent more time using their mobile apps than they did their desktop browsers.”

This was the first time that had ever happened, but it’s not that surprising. That same month, combined sales of smartphones and tablets were greater than the sales of desktops and notebooks for the first time ever.

That’s not really shocking information. The idea that people use apps a lot won’t knock you over. Small surprise. Thousands of articles have predicted this. What is shocking, though, is how many people missed the arrival of the next Internet.

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Fear and time.

FinishYear/ Quitter May 9, 2012 • Comments

Fear always tells you two things about time:

1. It’s too late.

2. Do it later.

The first destroys you with regret.

The second delays you with laziness.

They’re both lies.

Wage war against them.

Right now is the best time to get started because it’s the only time we’re guaranteed to have.

The two resources your dream needs. (And how I can help with one)

Quitter May 8, 2012 • Comments

The truth is, my wife and I didn’t have “chase a dream” as a line item in our household budget.

We didn’t have money earmarked for that. Some people are that smart perhaps, we were not. So when we started to talk about doing something different with our lives, when we started to have big “what if” discussions, money was an issue.

I remember my wife and I going back and forth about whether we should pay to have someone redesign and redevelop the Stuff Christians Like blog. We didn’t have a “blog development” line item in our budget and had to be really careful. We had to McGuyver things together with the limited resources we had.

That’s why it was important to me to give you a money back guarantee for the next Quitter Conference.

I think you’ll love the conference.

You are going to learn a ton, laugh a ton, and dream a ton.

You are going to meet hundreds of people who will encourage you to never give up on your dream.

You are going to be blown away by the surprises we’ve planned for this one that we’ve never been able to pull off before.

But more importantly you are going to feel like the ticket price was worth every dollar you spent because I don’t take those dollars for granted.

I’ve been in the trenches of dream chasing, I know that every dollar counts. I know that the two resources that are in the highest demand are your time and your money.

So if you come to the Quitter Conference in Nashville on September 21 and 22 and don’t LOVE it, I’ll refund the price of your ticket. No questions asked.

The last one sold out and we had a waiting list. Please don’t miss your chance to go to this one. To get the early bird ticket price of $99 before that ends on May 24, sign up today!

conTENT not CONtent

Blogging/ Social Media May 4, 2012 • Comments

(Today we’ve got a guest post from Matt Chambers, the director of SafeWorld! You can follow him on Twitter @chambers_matt, or read his blog http://ethoshift.com.)

conTENT not CONtent by Matt Chambers

I have a confession to make.

I’m a…contentaholic.

Never heard of it? That’s because it’s probably not officially a “real thing.” (Not yet anyways)

But I promise I have it. It’s self-inflicted, easily enabled, and I’ve been struggling with it for years.

Basically, it’s a mental filter that stops enjoying moments of reality for what they are and processes them according to what kind of tweet I could create as a result, or how amazing it would look on Instagram.

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The only alarm clock you desperately need.

FinishYear/ Quitter May 2, 2012 • Comments

This is a picture I took of my alarm clock two weeks ago in Indianapolis.

I wasn’t there to work out for the Colts, but that’s a pretty good assumption.

I spoke in Grant County, Indiana on a Friday night. Then rode 95 miles back to Indianapolis and checked into the hotel at 12:30AM. Roughly 3 hours later I was up for a flight to San Antonio.

Before I took my dream job, I didn’t expect so many 4 AM alarm clocks. I bought into the myth that when you find your passion or calling or dream, things will be easy. Life will flow like a gentle river of fresca, passing banks of candy cane grass. La. La. La.

I was wrong. Here’s the truth:

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Sunday Summary – FinishYear Week 17

FinishYear April 29, 2012 • Comments

Week 17 of FinishYear is over! (It’s not too late to join FinishYear with us! Here’s what we’re doing.)

On every Sunday in April, we’ve been sharing a quick summary of how we did that week on our Finish List.

Here’s my list of goals, and the summary of the progress I made:

1. Make the Quitter Conference awesome for people who attend.
We added five amazing things to the Quitter Conference this week. We’ll announce them in the weeks to come, but I can’t believe some of the pieces that are falling into place for this event. We’re headed to another sell out, don’t miss your chance to go, sign up today!

2. I am going to finish reading 12 non-fiction books this year. One per month.
Didn’t do a ton of reading this week. I’m in the middle of writing another book, so I’m jumping through a dozen or so that I’m quoting from. I have just a day left to finish my fourth book Imagine: How Creativity Works. I’ll be cranking away on that one in the next 24 hours.

3. I am going to finish running the Nashville half marathon Saturday, April 28th in under 2 hours and 10 minutes.
Done! I ran yesterday and my time was 2:07:16. (My app said 2:03:36, but I think the official race time was unfortunately more accurate.) Either way, I hit my goal and beat my previous time of 2:16:10. Next up I think I’m going to start training with my buddy Stephen Brewster at the gym.

4. I am going to finish writing a new book in 2012.
Manuscript is due June 1. Right now I’m in the process of expanding the outline and clearing out all the fake books I keep trying to write. (My first drafts are usually the books I think I “should” write, not the books I really want to write.)

5. I am going to finish a box of thank you cards this year as a sign of my gratefulness.
Zero cards. This is my least productive goal right now.

6. I am going to finish handwriting out the entire book of Proverbs in a moleskine notebook.
I’m in chapter 24!

That’s how I did.

How was your week?

What on your Finish List went well? What on your Finish List needs more attention next week?

Don’t become a travel agent.

Leadership April 27, 2012 • Comments

A few weeks ago I tweeted a link to a New York Times article and wrote this, “Why didn’t Leica, Nikon, Canon, Pentax and Olympus build Instagram? A critical question every business has to answer.”

The article raised a challenging idea that keeping up with innovation can become “a cyclical problem all successful companies eventually face as the technology around them changes, but they cannot change.” The success of the past essentially makes it hard to recognize the necessary innovations of the future. (Read the article here.)

In response to my question about why didn’t Nikon build Instagram, someone tweeted, “Maybe because they’re imaging hardware companies, not social media companies?”

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Skrillex wants you to put down your smartphone.

Social Media April 25, 2012 • Comments

Skrillex is one of the biggest names in electronic music right now. He plays sold out shows across the planet, recently won a bunch of Grammys and has a Facebook fan page that adds 300,000 new fans each week.

His sound is based on the magic he’s able to make with a Macbook and a billion digital files. Knowing his penchant for all things electronic, he’s the last person you’d expect to throw a flag of caution about how much we all use our cellphones. And yet …

This is what Skrillex recently said to a group of people at one his shows as reported by Rolling Stone magazine:

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