In this digital age a black and white resume in Microsoft Word is an analog solution to explaining your career.

A digital portfolio is the modern solution for career professionals who desire to distinguish themselves from the herd.

With this approach I have been able to significantly improve my career options and increase my total compensation by 50%.

If you’re not in the middle of a career change, forward it to a friend who you know is.

Better yet, forward this to a friend that you know should be changing careers.

Raising money and your career change

You should approach your career change like you were raising money from investors.

If I was trying to raise money from investors what is their bottom line question?

“If I invest my money in you, will you give me a better return than if I invested in someone else?’

Let’s start with these questions

• What have you done before?
• Are you better than everyone else?
• How do we know you can do it again?
• What kinds of results can you provide?
• What do other people have to say about you?

This is not a shortcut

This approach is guaranteed to be the long and narrow road.

Creating a career portfolio will take longer, more effort and more risk.

Most people will never put in the work to differentiate themselves from the herd.

I’ve never enjoyed the herd.

They seem to like words like predictable, normal, steady and reliable.

Their results usually seem to be congruent with those terms.

Making the decision to leave

Two years ago I realized I needed a career change.

After exhausting my wife from listening to my woes for years, I started putting plans into action to leave my job.

I was running a small software division for a product and team that I helped take from a whiteboard idea to a market ready product.

We were experiencing success and arguably things were about to get easier.

But I was loosing heart.

I really enjoyed the job and the challenges in the marketplace.  The environment was tough.

I started to dream of what “better” really would look like.

The shift begins to be unavoidable

I used to become very agitated with myself.

Why can’t I just settle in like everyone else?

Why can’t I be agreeable and compliant like those other people?

Why do I always have to make a ruckus?

Now, I have made friends with this recurring pattern in my life.

Every time I have changed jobs I get to where I can’t swallow the pill anymore.

What I used to be willing to accept or tolerate, I can’t anymore.

I don’t wake up on a particular Monday and say, “I’m not willing to do this”.

It is more of a gradual internal shift over many months or years.

My guess is that my story is a lot like yours.

• Your daily passion gets easily deflated
• You see warts where you previously pretended they were “beauty marks”
• You heart is not in the mission anymore.

Each time I’ve arrived here, I realize that the best resolution was to remove myself from the story instead of continuing to try and change it.

I don’t like what resumes have become

I hadn’t created a resume in years.

It felt a bit overwhelming to get started.

By not having a current resume, I realized I was using it as an excuse for why I needed to stay compliant to the dysfunction.

“I need this job and I’m not prepared to make a move.  Suck it up.”

Over the years, I have read hundreds of resumes and most are predictably and painfully dull.

Most are full of alleged accomplishments, amazing feats and bulleted job duties.

I wanted to revolt.

Imagine that, me wanting to revolt.  I know it’s hard to believe.

So instead of adhering to the perceived standards, I was going to break the rules.

Anyone can create a one-page bullet list of job duties.

I wanted to create a portfolio instead 

Professional trades like Architects, Artists, Graphic Designers, Journalists and Software Developers all have professional portfolios.

A few years ago my brother the architect, started looking for a new job.

He spent weeks preparing an exquisite leather bound professional portfolio that looked ready for your living room coffee table. The contents documenting his accomplishments would have made Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright feel nervous to compete with these design chops.

It was so much more engaging than a black and white bulleted lists.

It told such a better story.

It was visual.

It offered concrete proof of what he had delivered, designed and created.

I was ruined.

Never again could I follow the norms of job hunting and schlep some drab 8 ½” x 11” text file.

Ideas are hard to put on display

My working career has been about the creation of ideas that translate into business value.

What the hell does that mean?

In Sales you don’t sell products (well some people do) you sell an idea of how a product can solve a business problem.

I offer ideas for a living.

As one of my favorite podcasters and authors, Todd Henry, calls it, Translating ideas into value at a moments notice.

Provide specific examples of accomplishments

Documentable accomplishments are obviously ideal proof of your career performance.

Point to a specific news article, press release or external reference source.

You offer your ideas in plain view.

Original thought is brilliant evidence of what business and organizational value you will actually bring.

I never intended to write publicly or keep up a blog.

Instead it was my version of a digital portfolio.

I believed it would provide a competitive differentiation between me and every other candidate in the CEO’s office.

Why a blog is a great start?

A blog (WordPress site) will enable you to provide a much more robust body of evidence of your career storyline.

In a traditional resume you are generally limited to a maximum of two pages in total.

With an electronic portfolio you have the luxury of progressively disclosing your career story through a series of small chunks of content with embedded links that are wired up to display your thoughts, ideas, pictures of projects, and documents.

The density of content that you can provide with an electronic portfolio would never create an effective stand-alone resume.

Don’t know how to get started?  Here is a link to Jeff Goins step-by-step setup guide.

Endorsements

LinkedIn has brilliantly capitalized on this premise of offering an aggregated collection of other people’s advocacy or endorsements of your work.

Other people's words about you hold more weight than your own.

Even better is what they are willing to write on your behalf.

If you have not pursued this age-old tactic, you better get started.

I utilized endorsements in my first sales job selling Radio advertising in the mid-90’s.  I was really young, and looked even younger.  My competitors had more experience than me, had better products to sell and were arguably better at sales than I was.

I needed help.

I started asking for endorsements from my customers.  In those days they actually pulled out a piece of company letterhead and typed a full letter.  I carried them around in a three-ring binder in clear covers.

When a prospective customer would ask “Why should I do business with you?”  I’d pull out the letters and flip through them and say, “Mr. Smith says you are in good hands with me”.

In essence the letters promised, Aaron does not lie, cheat or steal.  He is really smart and works hard.  Give him a shot.

Examples for you to steal

Now it is your turn to get started.

See my digital portfolio:

• Bio
• Career Overview
• About
• Media 
• Endorsements

I am happy to provide you document templates to get you started.

If you need advice on how to ask for them, shoot me an email. Am@aaronmchugh.com

Walt surrounded by Mickey dolls (credit: ©Disney)

I wonder how many of us would consider failure a blessing?

Walt Disney did.

Mickey Mouse was born on a sketchpad during a train ride home after Walt Disney had a failed business venture.

How many of our greatest moments in life are shrouded in the appearance of failure?

Time is often the best judge of what was a success or failure.

Walt Disney was a revolutionary man

He did not accept the words “It’s never been done before” as a reason to quit.

Here is a quick rundown of a few of his most notable creations:

• Create a full length animation feature-Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• Invented the Multiplane camera used to create three-dimensional effects in animation
• Redefined Amusement parks by opening Disneyland in 1955

Podcast

In today’s podcast you will hear my interview with Gabriella Calicchio, CEO of the Walt Disney Family Museum.

The museum is absolutely amazing.

It is located in the Presidio in San Francisco. You will hear me describe a magical day that my family and I had riding tandem bikes from downtown to the museum and then across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Walt Disney Family Museum

As you listen to today’s podcast

I would encourage you to listen with ears fixed on Walt’s innovation, tenacity, creativity, and fierce commitment to excellence, and vision for a future that no one else could see.

I believe the lasting effects of Walt Disney’s life is similar to the way we see Steve Jobs today.

I hope you enjoy.

Highlights:

• Learn how the Walt Disney Family Foundation created the museum
• How Walt took $40 and a cardboard suitcase to began Walt Disney Studios
• How Mickey Mouse was named
• How Walt’s life can inspire you to do more in your life
• How Walt Disney started tinkering in the garage
• How the merchandising of Mickey Mouse was as important as the animation
• How no one believed that a full length animated movie would be successful

Riding Across the Golden Gate

I grew up with Walt Disney

My grandfather worked at Disneyland for over 28 years, starting in 1956, the year after the park opened.

Growing up I thought my grandfather and Walt Disney must have been great friends because he had a picture of them hung in his office.   They were on the Jungle Cruise together.

My grandfather was driving the boat and Walt was right behind him as the two of them cruised through the jungle river.

Walt Disney Family Museum

Walt’s imagination was woven into my childhood.

I’ve spent hundreds of days at Disneyland. My grandfather had a free guest pass.

So the first time I paid for a ticket to Disneyland was when I was 39.  We used to get in through the employee back-gate and see Disneyland from a rare view.  My brother and I would get dropped off in the morning to play alone all day and then picked up at midnight after the fireworks.

Talk about a boyhood dream.

Walt Disney the Entrepreneur

I recently listened to Walt Disney’s biography by Neal Gabler titled
Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination

Walt Disney is obviously best known for the animation characters that he created, most notably Mickey Mouse. What’s important is to understand is that in addition to being an animator, Disney was an entrepreneur, a visionary, and transformed multiple industries.

For instance, product merchandising.  Today, we take for granted seeing product lines accompanying a movie release. We are used to seeing lunch boxes, dolls, action figures, and the like as part of a major movie release.

Walt Disney was a pioneer of this concept.

Takeaways from visiting the Museum

When I visited the museum there were two significant takeaways for me.  One was that Walt Disney tinkered and experimented with his animation in the garage at night while he maintained his day job.

So often we see men like Disney for only their greatness and we forget that they were just like us.

Like us, he had a day job.

And like us he invested the small margin areas of his life into the work he dreamed of getting paid for doing.

The second takeaway was that during the tour you hear Walt’s voice saying

“I think everyone should have
a good failure when they are young”.

Failing and greatness

What I learned was that he sketched the very first Mickey Mouse on a train ride home after an admitted business failure.

The takeaway that is applicable to you and I is that out of failure, sometimes, greatness can be born.

Reference:

5 Reasons Why You Should Start Creating in Your Garage

In this post, I write about Walt Disney’s story of starting work in his garage at night after he got home from work.

The “How” of Your Life

In this post, I write about the importance of focusing on “How” we accomplish success in life, not just “What” we accomplish.

Don’t Do It!

Aaron
Lizard Brain what are you saying to me?

Lizard Brain
Your family needs you to not screw this up.  
Don’t be such a revolutionary that you get canned from your job.  
It takes more money than you have.  
It will require you to borrow money from your friends and family and you’ll ruin your relationships.  

Taken straight out of my journal from December 2011.

The Context

I was thinking about leaving my day job and not looking for a new one.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for a living but I was sure I could not continue doing

• What I was doing
• Who I was doing it for
• Where I was doing it

I knew I was scared.

• Scared to change.
• Scared to screw up a “good thing”.
• Scared to be foolish.
• Scared I was arrogant and that no one would want me.

I Went to the Lizard and Asked

What the hell are you so afraid of?  

What do you really think is going to happen if I quit?  

You are going to be destitute, broke, 

ashamed and ruin all of your relationships.   

Isn’t that just wonderfully ridiculous?

The concept of the Lizard brain is talked about a lot.  I love it.

It reminds me that I am not the only guy who hears crazy stuff like this.

Here is what happened instead.

Despite the Lizard’s advice, I resigned from my job in November of last year.

I didn’t have a job for four months.

I received phone calls from people asking me to work for them.

I am not destitute.

I didn’t spend a dollar of my savings.

I went to Hawaii and surfed with Mike Field and played in the sun with Sam Ainslie and Kevin Lynch.

I had sex with my wife at lunchtime.

I stopped using an alarm clock to wake up.

I walked my daughter to her bus stop most days.

I wrote an eBook that was endorsed by Seth Godin.

And the list keeps going.

Ask your Lizard brain what he is really saying.

Write it down.

Laugh out loud.

Show it to your friends.

And tell it what it can do with itself.

Get started.

Dell Griffith at his best

I started a new job two months ago.

At moments I have felt like Dell Griffith from the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

I have traveled seven weeks of the past eight.  Here is a quick list:

• Dallas, TX
• NYC
• New Jersey x 3
• Philadelphia, PA x 2
• Tulsa, OK x 2
• Des Moines, IA
• Corpus Christi, TX
• Houston, TX
• Moab, UT
• Chicago, IL

It has been good.  And I’ve had to put some of my sideline projects towards the back burner.

It is different than having four months off from full-time employment.

Last fall I resigned from my job and took some time to breathe.

It was by choice.  I purposed to have some time off.

Some people felt sorry for me as if I was down on my luck.

I guess the abnormal idea of pulling a Tim Ferris and actually taking a few months off work sounds too good to be true outside of a book?

I’ll give you a download on that story.  It is a good one.  That leads into this post.

I’ll invite you into my head

I’ve been thinking through a number of posts I’d like to write and thought I’d publish the list.

A couple of them are near ready to launch and some are only in my head.

Just so that you don’t think I gave up and threw in the towel here are my “Coming Soon” ideas.

How Do I Compete Against Myself?

IDEA:  It’s about working for a competitor to my old company.
Many of my ideas in the previous company are causing me challenges now at my new gig.
I never thought about the challenges of competing with myself.

Straddling the Fence of Success: Family and Work

IDEA: I’ve had numerous conversations recently about the tension of being successful in one or the other world.
Most people rarely get it right in both.  I’d like to flush out some thoughts on how to straddle the fence and succeed in both worlds.

Flush Your Resumes. Create a Professional Portfolio Instead

IDEA: I have an aversion to resumes.  Only because they are bland and boring and part of the conformist approach to career changes.  I have some tested ideas that I can share on converting to a professional portfolio instead.  This one is pretty close to complete.

How I Turned Seven Hours in an Airport into Aloha

IDEA: This one I am stoked about. I was stuck in an airport for seven hours waiting for a flight.  I turned it into a little bit of relief, relaxation and exercise.  I think I spent $60 and it was one of the best time’s I’ve spent in an airport.

Living Life, Observing Life and Commenting on it

IDEA: I find that some people are really good at living life.  Some people only observe life and don’t really participate.  Others are skilled at commenting on life but often on the life of others.  I am a proponent of all three.  I find a challenge in doing all three concurrently.

Why You Shouldn’t Follow the Rules to Build a Platform?

IDEA: I’ve been giving my eBook away for free and plenty of people have counseled me on why I shouldn’t.  I thought it would be helpful to share why you should break the rules of building a Platform.

Podcast: Why Everyone Should Have a Good Failure When You’re Young?

Interview with CEO, Gabriella Calicchio, Walt Disney Family Museum.
I toured the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco in February.
It is phenomenal.   Especially if you have any interest in how ideas come to life.
During the tour, Walt Disney’s voice comes on and he speaks about his early failure in his career that resulted in his first sketches of Mickey Mouse.  Scheduled to release in May

Podcast: Interview with Todd Henry author of Accidental Creative

We are scheduling the interview for later in May.  More details to follow.  Check out his podcast, it’s one of my favorites.

Your Vote?

Would love to hear from you on which of the above titles might capture your attention and interest?

Let’s keep going.

Did you know there is no cure for bad leadership?

No amount of pointing out the errors of their ways or negotiating or attempting to improve your reactions will change them.

Leadership is everything.

The long-term outlook of an organization or a company will always be impacted by leadership.

There will be a shrinking return on our investment when we are under bad leadership.

A great attitude won’t fix it.

A positive mental attitude can influence a lot of things, but bad leadership is not one of them.

The up-side

Sitting under bad leadership can influence and shape us to become better leaders ourselves.

Once we know what we do not want to do, how we do not want to lead or what we know not to say, we become better for it.

Airline’s love to woo us with the allure of elite membership status.   They promise shorter lines, a six-foot stretch of red carpet we can walk over and the hope of free upgrades to roomier seats.

Here is what I learned the hard way. 

The only people who achieve Premier, Executive or Admiral status end up living a life similar to George Clooney’s character, Ryan Bingham in the movie Up in the Air.

Ryan spends less than two weeks in his own Omaha, Nebraska bed each year.  The movie profiles his almost tunnel vision pursuit of reaching the ten million mile mark with his airline of allegiance.

The tragedy of his story is that his quest for elite membership unfolds as a lonely reality of solitude and isolation.

After almost ten years of business travel, I’ve learned that if you have crossed the airline’s elite membership ticker tape then you’ve just lost at least 50 days of your life per year.

Having a wallet full of elite airline membership cards seems like an attempted payoff.  Shorter lines and red carpet walks are a poor trade for the days and nights spent away from my real life.

I revolt instead. 

What if we redefined success as never gaining elite status on any airline?  What if instead, we found a way to structure our life in such a way that stopped short of that reward?

Could we instead travel one fewer trip each month?  What if success was defined by not being rewarded for being away from home?

How close to the line can we walk? 

I shuffle my air travel between two to three carriers and successfully achieve no elite rewards.  Yes, I enroll in each of their reward programs but I attempt to never achieve the Premier, Elite, or Aviator, statuses.

My story.

I travel a fair amount for my day job and end up spending 40 to 60 nights away from home each year.  Just even typing it I feel the conflict inside.  I love my family and love my friendships that await my return each trip I spend away.

For some business travel can be a nice deviation from their real life.

For me, real life beats any business trip.  I work for an international software company.  I travel because it is a necessary requirement to meet our current and future customers in the comfort of their conference rooms and offices.

Face-to-face meetings enable for a human connection to occur.  I utilize web conferencing technology like GoToMeeting or Webex regularly, but I also know when you simply have to be there in person.

I view it as a trade. 

I trade days and nights away from my family for compensation that enables for care of my family.  Some weeks I’m not so sure it is a good trade.  Using the principle of Dollar Cost Averaging for Life I settle in for the trend over time.

As you read this you see the precariousness of my goal.

I travel a lot but I value being at home.  I value caring well for my family and I am away from home a week or more each month.

The world will always tell us what constitutes success, but most of the world doesn’t live a life I want.

Redefining success empowers us to pursue our own target versus accidently achieving one that leaves us like our friend George Clooney.

How about you?

In this podcast I provide some of the back story to writing my recently released ebook, Don’t Quit Your Job. Fire Your Boss.

I started writing it over the course of last year.  I underestimated the amount of time and energy it would take.

I understand now why writers say that once they are finished with a project they are long since “over it”.

I almost quit numerous times.

I felt like maybe it was just important that I write it down for myself, but did not need to go through the exercise and investment to make it a market-ready released book.

In some ways the love of the story lessened as I neared the end.

If I had to guess, I would say I invested 150 hours into the writing, editing, and revising process.

My creative team easily put in another 100+ hours as well.

Plug for Bottle Rocket Design & Laurie Thornton.

I am really proud of the yield, the end result.

Read what Seth Godin and Jeff Goins wrote about my ebook.

In today’s Podcast:

• Hear additional storyline to a couple of key sections of the ebook.
• What it took for me to break the chains of indentured servitude.
• Learn how the character Jerry Maguire fed the original vision of this manifesto.
• I read a few selections and provide additional commentary.

Below are sample sections from the ebook.

For a full free copy download here.

Dedication

This mission statement is for artists, entrepreneurs, liberators, innovators, heretics, and, most especially, for forty-hour-Monday-through-Friday-work-week employees.

This is an invitation to unravel what the world has taught you about your work, your career, and your future.

Introduction

I am not telling you how to get rich quick. I am not selling you some tuition program or training course I have created.

Rather, I’m offering my experience and my story to you purely for your own enrichment and encouragement. I’m offering my pain, my joy, and my discovery freely in hopes that you, too, will find a new rhythm for your career.

I love to work.

I don’t work because I am a workaholic but because I love the invention and creativity that happens in my career.

When I fired my boss, my career transitioned to an entirely new plane of enjoyment for me.

You, too, can discover a new way to approach your work.

You, too, can have a brand new job starting tomorrow.

Indentured servants: Forty years of hard labor

In medieval times, indentured servants worked the land of a king for a fixed number of years until their debt was paid in full. The king owned the field, the crop and the harvest yield. He got rich, he ate and drank as much as he liked, and the servants learned to live on the crumbs from his table.

Kings love servants and minions.

Does this sound familiar to you?

For many people work can be a place where they feel like indentured servants. It can be a place where they feel obligated and stuck.

Many companies and leadership teams have this same ancient mentality. They believe that their employees are lucky to work for them. They believe that each worker is a replaceable cog. They are looking for compliant workers and employees, under the weight of needing to meet their own financial obligations, settle in for forty years of hard labor for the benefit of the company.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Why approach your workday with this kind of obligation? 

I was an indentured servant

I realized that I was looking for a partnership, not an obligation. I dreamed of being in a business arrangement where the company and I were equally investing in each other.

Believe it or not, it is possible. I found that part of the problem was that I was acting like a factory worker or an indentured servant. In fact, I was training other workers around me to relate to me as a replaceable cog.

Once I could name and describe this arrangement I could begin to navigate and craft a new arrangement. I stopped thinking and acting like an indentured servant and I started being a skilled craftsman instead.

Headlamp camping on the beach

In the past six months I’ve seen and experienced some things that are worth sharing with you.

As the years tick on I am gaining understanding of my place in the world and my unique offering to the world.

Summarized, I am really good at playing.

I used to not believe it.

I just thought everyone loved adventure and sought it out regardless of the circumstances they found themselves in.

A gift that’s meant to be given away.

As more gray hair finds it’s way into my crown, I realize that I am entrusted with this gift.

You see I have this insatiable desire to see what is around the next corner.

When I leave Suburbia and pursue Adventure here is what I’ve learned.

By way of invitation I’d like to share a handful of stories of what I found around a few corners.

Fly Fishing the Gray Reef

Me on the Gray Reef

“The Reef” sounds like some coastline of ocean doesn’t it?  In Wyoming there is a river called the N. Platte and this special section is the perfect combination of temperature, depth and food source.  So the fish grow to be monsters and there are a bunch of them.

Dr. Bruce Kautz has become a friend.

For years he was an ally of our family as he lead the fight to keep my daughter Hadley alive.

He was our pediatrician who diagnosed our daughter, Hadley Rae McHugh, twelve years ago with cerebellum hypoplasia (her brain did form correctly).

He was there to admit us into the hospital where she died 
two years ago (January 28th 2011).

More on our family story at McHughStory.com.

What does this have to do with fly fishing and adventure?

Bruce called me out of the blue in late September and said,

“Hey you still fish?”

“Yeah, I still fish.”

“Wanna go to Wyoming with me for two days with a guide and fish the Reef?”

Of course I’ll go.

Bruce and our guide

As I fought back tears, I told him I’d call him back and let him know.  I called my wife and told her the story and we both agreed the answer was “of course”.

Bruce (still hard to call him by his first name) was in the thick and thin of our life.  He saw us at our worst: accidental drug overdoses, broken femurs, hospitalizations, surgeries, infections, and writing scripts for wheelchairs, feeding tubes and seizure medications.

He is an honorable man. 

He called it work, but our family called it salvation.

Here is the punch line, picture me laughing my xxx off in the front of the boat hooking up with big trout for two days.  Picture me with a sore wrist from hooking and landing more fish than fishermen with nets and a rowboat.

Do you see the contrast?

He lived with me through the famine of my life and now he is offering me an adventure to experience “plenty”.

Surfing Hawaii-The Big Island

Mike Field Surf Board Art

I had recently resigned from an eight-year career and I needed a break.  After years of traveling for work I have accumulated a handful of airline miles.  I cashed in enough to fly to Hawaii, the big island.

We have a good friend there, Sam (the guru who taught me to play) and I was invited to soak in some aloha.

I’ve learned over the years that it is actually quite enjoyable if you choose to not schedule any concrete plans.

It rarely yielded an actual vacation.

I used to fill the calendar with events and obligations.

Now I go with a list of desires and try and let the week take shape.

That said, my friend Sam might still say I’m still learning how to live Aloha.

I guess I still have too much Howlie in me?

Here is a quick run down:

• Surfing (Mike Field showed me the way)
• Stand-up Paddle
• Morning paddling session with the Hawaiians in the 6 man canoe
• Running in the lava fields at sunrise followed by a swim (Kevin Lynch)
• Beers mid-day and taking a nap in a lawn chair
• Friends and meals at night

How is this not just bragging?

Here is how.  I’ve taken a lot of relational risks over the years.

Mike, Sam, Kevin, and “T” have all received relational deposits from me over the years.

I’ve sought these guys out through phone, email, texts and surprises in the mail.

As a result we’ve forged a friendship that enables for me to be invited into their worlds.

A morning paddle or a surf session is their normal.

I get to participate in a story that is already in motion they simply make a place for me in it.

The beauty of this kind of adventure is that it is not a simulation of the authentic.

It’s the real deal.

I have no issue with using a guide service, but it is a gift when your guide is your friend.

Mountain Biking the Redwoods

The fellas heading into the Redwood Forest

Meet Bill.

He is the Director of Guest Services at Mount Hermon Conference Center outside of Santa Cruz, CA.

He’s been there for 18 years and can’t imagine doing anything else.

In case you’ve never been there, picture gigantic trees that are 2,400 years old with a high-ropes course 100 feet up into the canopy.

Jurassic Park meets the Ewoks from Return of the Jedi.

I met the mild mannered Bill while attending a Wild at Heart Boot Camp.

Do you see the connection?

• Bill graciously agrees to take us on a guided tour of the redwoods for a two hour mountain bike ride.
• He supplied the bikes, the route and the invitation.
• It was a story already in-motion and this is Bill’s normal.
• He rides this ride once or twice a week but he was stoked to take a bunch of hacks out for a cruise.

Check out the rag-tag crew above.  Ambassador Bill on the right.

Two Hours of Surfing in Santa Cruz

My brother Matt suiting up

I disagree.

Most people would assume that two hours is not long enough to have an adventure.

Between breaks during our weekend at Mt. Hermon, Matt and I got a hook-up from my friend Curious Gabe.

Gabe is a long-standing columnist and photographer for Surfer Magazine.  I asked him in line for dinner

Who should we call to go surfing?

Gabe, being connected to that world said “Definitely Richard Schmidt Surf School”.

Thanks to Gabe

A few emails later, we were scheduled for a 2 pm surf lesson.

Although we didn’t have some great story of relational connectedness, we did have a twenty-something who loves surfing so much he works for beer and gas money.

Up and down the hill, wetsuit on, catching waves, wetsuit off, back up the hill all in three hours.

You should’ve seen our smiles.

When all the other guys opted for shuffleboard or a game of cards, we lived an Outside Magazine article.

Up and back to Barr Camp

Ray Cameron bound for Barr Camp

Barr Camp has been around since the early 1900’s.

It is located seven miles up the Barr Trail on the way to the summit of Pikes Peak.

Barr Camp is actually a hut with beds, a wood stove and two your ladies cooking up ramen noodles and coffee.

In order to get to Barr Camp you have to be willing to gain around 2,800 feet of elevation.

For most people it takes three or four hours to get to Barr Camp.

My buddy Ray Cameron’s son was back from college for the weekend so we joined the youngsters in an up and back trip one Saturday morning in February.

We swap stories

We chat personal finances, business challenges and the challenges of dealing with his daughter’s cancer and me loosing mine.

Hiking trails provide a phenomenal context for unpacking stories. 

As you tick off the miles you are invited to unravel your own story.

I love the concept of parallel play.

The idea that boys and men play better together when they are doing something versus just sitting at a coffee table.

I love coffee and can gladly polish a pitcher of beer with fellas, but I love trails like nothing else.

It makes me happy just typing it.

Climbing James Peak in a blizzard

This one makes me laugh just thinking about it.

One of my favorite mountaineers was Alex Lowe.

He has this charismatic, optimistic, specimen of a man.  He had to be around 6”4+ and could do hundreds of pull-ups.

He was superhuman and super gracious.

I met him once and had a good chat with him about sometime I had spent on Mt. Rainier and met a few of his friends.

Alex Lowe, James Peak and Matt Dealy

My buddy Matt Dealy and I love mountains.

And we have this unfortunate reality of our lives that we dream of them more often than we experience them.

This day, we purposed to actually go into them, regardless of weather forecast.

We wanted to hike/climb James Peak outside of Idaho Springs, CO.  I had guided a client up the mountain in February ten+ years ago.

I knew it would be a kick and a coin toss probability that we would make it.

Alex Lowe would always say,“You can’t tell what is happening up there from down here”.

I always loved that mantra.

It encouraged me to push higher on climbs or hikes and not give up or turn around just because it was crappy weather where you were standing.

Matt and I couldn’t even get out of the car.  It was literally a blizzard outside. 

We drove to 10,000 feet and there were no cars at the trailhead, no snowplow had cleared the road and the weather app promised snow and wind.

We packed our packs and headed up anyway.

Luckily I’d been there a dozen times and could navigate our way up to St. Mary’s Glacier.

It was an absolute whiteout.

The video below probably describes it better than I can in words.

I love pushing in a controlled environment. 

What I mean is that I love suffering when it is for fun.  Why?

In life suffering is so uncertain. You don’t know when it will end.

You can’t seen the end of it or know when relief is going to come.

I hate that reality.

In the mountains you can always turn around and go home.

You are in control of how bad it gets or how long it lasts.

Most people don’t think this is fun.

Matt’s one of the few friends that enjoys this kind of day.

We didn’t make it very far up the mountain before we decided that some hot coffee sounded better but we were the only guys on the mountain that morning.

Skiing with my daughter Averi

The best for last.

My daughter Averi is almost 12.  She is a bundle of joy, athleticism and fun.

She makes me laugh at how fearless she is.

We escaped suburbia a few weeks ago for a day and skied at Monarch outside of Salida, CO.

It was just the two of us.

After three kids I now know that the activity itself is not the point.  Spending time together is the point.

I definitely failed that principle with my son who is now 17.

When he was young, I thought the adventure was the point.

Now when I play with my kids I am able to flex with their temp (they may argue that point).

If we need to stop and get a Starbucks to bribe them, we will.

If we need to go inside to warm up and eat a $20 lunch, then we do.

I won’t bore you with my dysfunction but it wasn’t that way for my son when he was 12.

Luckily you can always start being the man you should be today.

I hope you will risk pursuing an adventure very soon.

If you can’t think of one, shoot me an email and I’ll give you some idea starters.

am@aaronmchugh.com 

Download Your FREE copy

This is an invitation to unravel what the world has taught you.

Early praise for free eBook

“This absolutely beautiful book is a true whack of the truth on the side of your career.”

Seth Godin, Author The Icarus Deception

“I loved this book. Reader beware: this book will call you out and into your best work.”

“Revolutionary. McHugh pulls the string that unravels a person and leaves them only with hope.”

Morgan Snyder, Author, Become Good Soil

This book is for you if

1. You want to enjoy going to work each day.

2. You feel confident that your career is too important to approach with apathy.

3. You want to gain greater influence at work.

4. You’re ready to explore new alternatives for finding recognition for your work.

After reading, you’ll be able to:

1. Establish a unique strategy for firing your boss.

2. Know how to obtain the freedom to offer your best in any job.

3. Understand why quitting your job won’t help you.

The Free offer

I am giving the book away for free.

No strings attached.

Yes, absolutely free.  That means

• No email address required.
• No hoops to jump through.
• You can forward it to anyone you’d like.

And yes, I know this is a bad way (in theory) to “build a platform”.

If you want more, you’ll come back.

CLICK HERE

You are sitting 9.3 hours per day

You know those really cool NPR interviews that you listen to where there is hustle and bustle in the background?
The one’s where they interview some guy in a subway about economics in Greece?

I’m proud to say that Nilofer Merchant and I ended up with a cool NPR vibe in this podcast.

We had a chance to meet for lunch in Los Gatos, CA at a phenomenal restaurant Nicks on Main.

Subscribe in iTunes

What I loved about my conversation with Nilofer?

Yes she has a long resume of accomplishments.

• TED Speaker
• Writer
• Blogger
• Fortune 500 Heavy Hitter
• Agent of Change

Most importantly, she is a very real person: Authentic, kind and spirited.

In this podcast:

Walk-n-Talk meetings

How Nilofer started walking meetings instead of coffee sit-downs.
As a result how she is logging between 20 and 30 miles per week.
You will want to read her Harvard Business Review article about how today Sitting is the smoking of our generation.

And check out the Los Angeles Times Article on her TED 2013 talk.

Recommendation: Don’t be sitting while you read her article.

Check out the Fitbit that she wears.  Hear how a little picture of a growing flower on your wrist will help motivate you to get out of your chair.

#SocialEra

How in her book the #SocialEra she outlines how the structure of power in business has shifted forever.

Formerly what only centralized big organizations could accomplish can be accomplished by a team of two people working in different parts of the world.

The 900 LB Gorilla no longer has the upper hand.  The little guy with a laptop, a great idea and an Internet connection becomes a dangerous threat.  A revolution has begun whether you know it or not.  You might at least want to read about how the world you live in has changed forever.  Buy her book for your Kindle Reader.

TedTalk-February 26^th

Nilofer will be speaking side-by-side with Bono on the same stage at the upcoming TED2013 event.  She will be delivering her compelling parallel between sitting and smoking and how it is truly slowly killing us.

Check out Nilofer’s speaking page with a full download of her articles, videos and upcoming speaking events.

More on Nilofer from her About page

Nilofer Merchant — is an author, corporate director and speaker based in Silicon Valley, California.

Because it is unique, you might want help to know how to say the name. Any chance you remember those cookies that Nabisco creates called Nilla-wafer’s? That will help, cause the name sounds a lot like that but with an o in the middle. It’s Nil – O – fer.  (Just don’t call her NIL or FUR, okay?)



Creds

As someone who has grown businesses — from Fortune 500s and silicon valley web start-ups — for 20 years, Nilofer is like a secret agent in knowing how to piece together exactly and only the parts that matter (frameworks, strategies, and cultural values) — to get the needed results.

Somewhere along the way, people started giving her monikers like “The Jane Bond of Innovation” because of her ability to guide companies through impossible odds, and that one stuck.

She’s worked for major companies like Apple, and Autodesk, and startups in the early days of the Web (Golive/ later bought by Adobe). And Logitech, Symantec, HP, Yahoo, VMWare, and many others have turned to her guidance to develop new product strategies, enter new markets, defend against competitors, and optimize revenues. And, Merchant is one of the few people who can say they’ve fought a competitive battle against Microsoft and won, for Symantec’s Anti-Virus $2.1B annual business. She has personally launched more than 100 products, netting $18B in sales, with expertise in Europe and US markets.  Today she serves on boards for both public and private companies.


Ideas


CNBC has called Nilofer a visionary. Her ideas are shaping the future of many organizations.

“The Future is not created. The Future is Co-Created.” That’s the central thesis of her first management book, published by O’Reilly Media in 2010 and something she learned the hard way.

Her second book, 11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra, was released in the Fall of 2012, by Harvard Business Press. It was chosen by Fast Company as one of the Best Business Books of 2012. In it, Nilofer reconciles things that are often considered opposing forces—doing right by people and delivering results, collaborating and keeping focus, having a social purpose, and making money—because they are really not in opposition. They never have been. But it does take a more sophisticated approach to understand business models where making a profit doesn’t mean losing purpose, community, and connection. Finding the right balance between them is the key. And what is created will be rich in many senses of the word.

Explore. This blog has been around since 2003. You’ll find ideas that are both “provocative and yet practical” as Seth Godin has said. Nilofer has been featured in the WSJ, written innovation columns for BusinessWeek and Forbes. Her work as a columnist at Harvard Business Review (HBR) is on social business models and there’s a reason these ideas resonate. Find out for yourself.