What The Goonies Taught Us About Adventure

The Goonies-1985

I’m a big geek when it comes to movies.

I’m a bigger geek when it comes to adventure and road trips.

I’d love to tell you a story about my son and I retracing the steps of The Goonies movie a few years ago.

I hope you will be encouraged to plan your own adventure with your kids before the summer is over.

Who doesn’t love the Goonies?

We had this idea that we’d fly to Portland, OR and retrace the making of The Goonies movie.  We found this website that provided scene-by-scene beta including maps of where each scene were filmed.

We’d decided that we’d take our portable DVD player in the car and retrace the movie over a couple of days while we car camped along the coast of Oregon.

We romped, hiked, sauntered, waded, walked, galloped and gazed for four days.

We found an excuse to go create an adventure.

My son was young enough to still think it was cool and we would re-enact the scenes at each location.  It was awesome.

Here are a couple of fun photos that can tell the story better than I can in words.

Memories instead of stuff

While your kids are still at home, make memories instead of buying more stuff.

In our annual budget travel tends to be one of our largest expenses.  We drive used cars all with over 100K miles on each of them.

We live in a nice home, but we don’t all have the newest gadget or most trendy fashion.  My kids have started to notice that although we don’t have some of the other things that the Jones’s have, we go on some killer trips.

Don’t make it complicated

A couple of times my kids and I have hoped in the car with a map, sleeping bags and a tent.  We point the car in a direction and a vague idea of where we might land and allow the adventure to unfold organically.

To be fair this fits my personality.

During the week, I am organized, measure statistics and forecast revenue.  I try to not apply that same analysis to my play.

I encourage you to find a few low budget ways to pull a Clark Griswold and go visit the World’s Largest House of Mud.

Error on the side of not knowing

You don’t have to know where you are going, where you are going to sleep, or what you are going to eat.  I’ve found that part of letting go of these things allows us to be more aware of our circumstances and environment.

For instance, if you’re hungry then you pull over and find something to eat.  If you’re tired then you start looking for a campground or a cheap motel to stay in.

A couple of practical tips

  • Get a good book on audio
    Little kid suggestion: Peter Pan, Wizard of Oz
    Teenagers: Travels with Charley, Into the Wild
  • Let your kids pick out the treats for the car
    Bribe them with Starbucks or ice cream
  • Let the schedule be driven by your kids
    How long the hike is, the pace you go at and what you listen to in the car.

Summer is almost over.  It’s not too late to hit the open road.

Act Like a Professional Eight Minutes at a Time

Yesterday I ran for eight minutes.

That’s it. That’s all the margin I had left between meetings and work obligations.

I slept five hours.

I started at 7 a.m. and finished after 11 p.m.

It was raining outside and I decided to strap on my running shoes and go anyway.

For years I neglected these narrow windows of opportunity and skipped the few minutes of exercise available to me.

It felt too small a fraction to account for anything productive.

A good friend of mine walked me through a simple math equation that pros use:

[Small Margin] + [Consistency] x [Time] = Accumulated benefit

Meet Neal

He is a decorated runner, triathlete, and marathoner.

Here are the results related to running over time:

8 Minutes x 4 weeks x 12 months = 40 to 50 miles a year

What Neal decoded for me that day was that the best of the best, the elite athletes on the cover of magazines, choose to run for eight minutes instead of skipping it all together.

Don’t get stuck on this as a running story; running is only the metaphor.

Start acting like a pro

We believe the pros have:

  • More time than us
  • More margin than us
  • Fewer conflicts than us

The truth is that a pro chooses to go for it anyway.

Whether it is running, investing in your marriage, trying to find a new job, or saving $3.22 at a time…

It all adds up.

Are you willing to act like a pro and go anyway?

Let’s Lead Like the Building is On Fire

What if we lead our organizations like the building was literally on fire?

What if we skipped all the niceties and the politically correct advisable techniques and simply lead?

I care about people.

I care about the impact I have on people’s lives under my influence.

And, I exhaust myself somedays in caring about my effect on people more than simply leading them.

I lead better when the building is burning

Upon some self reflection, I see clearly how I am a better leader in crisis.
In crisis, I am decisive.
In crisis, I am brave.
In crisis, I am precise in my leadership.
What is wrong with me that the above are lacking when crisis is not present?

The question came to me

What if we lead like the building was on fire?

What if we skipped all of that added layer of corporate conditioning?

Instead of “You know we should talk more about this.”

We might shout Go this way!

Instead of “Would you mind if you considered an alternative?”

We direct NO!

Instead of “I wonder how you might feel about this?”

We emphatically traffic the under-performer towards the exit.

Crisis quickly surfaces what we really believe.

Why Serve 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, who, under the weight of needing to meet their own financial obligations, settle in for forty years of hard labor.

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 my truest desire was 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.

*Expert from eBook: Don’t Quit Your Job. Fire Your Boss.

For your complete free copy download here.

The Illusion of Ease

Jackopierce-Jack O’Neill & Cary Pierce

When I see a pro at work I have to remind myself that the ease, perfection and polish that I am witnessing is an illusion.

Nothing this good comes easy.

Sure there are protégées but the truth is that they are extremely rare.  Most of them fizzle out and never reach full maturity in their craft, skill, or gifting.

The temptation is to be duped into believing that this perfect polish was achieved easily.  Let me give you a few examples to prime your senses.

Pick your favorite writer, your favorite band, your favorite photographer or painter.  How about the entrepreneur or public speaker, school teacher or professional athlete?

Made to look easy

When you experience them in their respective area of strength do you say to yourself

How did they get so good?
Man they make that look easy.

It is true.  It does look easy.

When the pros are doing their thing, they are absolutely inspiring to watch.

In the past few weeks I have felt a temptation to assume that the pros I have encountered somehow found a shortcut.

They must have found the magic pill, magic button, hidden road or seed to plant their money tree in their back yard.

I know better.

They must have found a shortcut

When we make the conclusion that someone got a free pass or got to cut to the front of the line and bypass all of the hard work, perseverance, disappointment, agony of setbacks and defeats then we create a dissonance between us and them.

We interpret the gap between them and us with a list of reasons for the gap being so wide.

  • We conclude that they didn’t have to work as hard as we do.
  • They didn’t have a tough start like we did.
  • They must have had a really good father, mentor, friend, grandfather, professor, boss, rich uncle, etc.
  • They are more naturally gifted.

When we conclude that the pros were the benefactors of a shortcut then we justify our current position as affirmation that we will likely never close the gap.

The truth is that the pros also waded through the same crap 
that we have to in order to achieve their dreams and desires.

Don’t preclude yourself from the pursuit of your desires.

Don’t embrace the temptation to believe the illusion of ease.

Show up and do the work and close the gap instead.

Unravel What the World Has Taught You

Madness or Brilliance?
Madness or Brilliance?

Do you remember watching the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire ?

Remember Tom Cruise playing the slick sports agent whose career implodes in a single afternoon?

In the first three minutes of the movie we get the Cliffs Notes of his life. He has spent years working for the most successful sports management company of his day. He is fierce and suave, and he is dying inside.

In his words, he had become “another shark in a suit.”

One night, just before his corporate conference, he finds himself at a moral crossroads, a point of breakthrough. During his wrestling—his epiphany—he does headstands in his hotel room and unravels what he had previously learned about the world.

He starts writing a mission statement

He is not merely writing a memo, he realizes, but a mission statement. A suggestion for the future. In it, he advocates a provocative concept to his coworkers: charge less money, take on fewer clients, and give more personal attention. In the next scene we see him running 110 bound copies of his manifesto, title page and all, and stuffing them one by one into his colleagues’ in-boxes.

He calls it “The Things We Think and Do Not Say: The Future of Our Business.”

Jerry Maguire is alive again.

His mission statement makes him famous, but for all the wrong reasons.

His peers smile as they make eye contact from across the conference room while making sure not to stand close enough to catch the career-suicide bug that they knew had surely infected him.

Soon Jerry is fired and leaves the office with his mission statement in one hand and the goldfish, his only heretic recruit, in the other.

OK. To be fair, the cute secretary comes with him, as well. She can’t resist a man of principle.

What does Jerry Maguire have to do with me? 

Everything. What you are reading now is a mission statement. Not merely a memo, but a suggestion for the future. You awoke to your in-box stuffed full of my sweat-stained declaration of independence.

This is a manifesto. A coup d’état. A sudden illegal overthrow.

I am inviting you to unravel what the world has taught you about your work, your career, and your future.   

I may end up being the lonely guy holding a goldfish with no one following me. But, like Jerry, I’m willing to run the risk.

I’ve lived too long following the rules and expecting the outcome to match the promises.

It hasn’t worked.

*Expert from eBook: Don’t Quit Your Job. Fire Your Boss.

For your complete free copy download here.

Your Boss, Your Biggest Customer & Your Future

If you believe that your boss, your factory, your pension, or your biggest customer is your only hope for a prosperous tomorrow, then you will do anything to protect those eggs in that lone basket.

You will resign your will, your opinions, your creativity and your passion in trade for self-preservation.

The more you feel like a victim who is subject to the whims of the company or the policies of leadership, the more you feel like a slave to your mortgage payment, the more you will shrink back and keep signing the unwritten contract.

Two choices will always remain:

  1. How will you choose to respond?
  2. How will you choose to interpret your experiences?

You have the power to transform your workplace experience solely based on your interpretations and reactions. Tomorrow, when you return to your office, you can have a brand new job and a new arrangement for your future. But only if you are willing to recalibrate what you believe.

*Expert from Don’t Quit Your Job. Fire Your Boss.  

For your complete free copy download here.

Kill the Giant Squids & Dominate the World

WORLD DOMINATION SUMMIT 2013

When I told Leith, my wife, about the event a few months ago her reaction was “What in the world is that?”

It is an event focused on living a life you want to live vs. accidentally living a life you think you should.

Chris Guillebeau author, world traveler, adventurer and entrepreneur was the gracious host of 3000 fellow world changers.  The WDS team curated an unbelievable lineup of speakers, break out sessions, a mobile app for keeping track of people you met, opening party with a marching band at the Portland Zoo, and on and on.

One ingredient to change the world

If you’ve ever had an idea, a dream, a vision or hope of making something, sharing something, creating something, organizing something then you my friend should have a seat at next year’s WDS 2014.

Changing the world we live in only takes one ingredient,
offering our full self.

I’ve spent many years hiding myself, taking the back seat, waiting for permission, editing the full story and the world was only receiving a faint glimmer of the whole me.

Invitation to offer yourself

Being around 2999 other people who share a similar desire releases an invitation within me.  When you witness another human being offer their truest self it unlocks something in each of us and we are invited to do the same.

The world was flat

I met a guy named Bo that is going to sail around the world by himself.

  • He’s not a record holding sailor.
  • He’s not independently wealthy.
  • Until a few months ago he didn’t even own a sailboat.

There was a time when people would have told Bo,

“Even if you make it past the man-eating squid,
you’re going to sail off the edge of the world and die”.

Today, the only real obstacles to sailing around the world or dominating your little swatch of the planet are:

The thoughts in our head

I can’t do this.  It’s not going to work.  What will people think?

We all entertain these voices that keep us believing that there is a man-eating squid ready to devour us if we continue down this ridiculous path that we dream about following.

The daring and barely brave go ahead anyway.

Consistently showing up and doing the work

80% is simply showing up faithfully and chipping away at the project, task, or dream.

Bo’s going for it. He bought his sailboat, untied the bow and is shoving off towards the sunset.

What’s our excuse for not leaving the dock?

I need your help!

I’m attempting to expand my patch of world domination to ChangeThis.com.

This is a Manifesto network that distributes ideas that change minds.

My eBook, Don’t Quit Your Job. Fire Your boss is being voted on for acceptance to their network and I have three days left.

Would you be willing to take three seconds to click on the button (bottom of the page) that says “Yes Write this Manifesto”-click here.

Why We Should Avoid the Sea of Same?

Being the same is easier than creating something unique.

Being the same is less risky than paddling out away from the sharks to see what the blue ocean holds.

Being the same is safer because you know people will buy your (fill in the blank).

Be a heretic instead.

Don’t succumb to copying the guy next to you.

Find your voice.

Find your story.

Create your own special sauce recipe.

The risk is that you may actually create something of lasting value.

The Sea of Same as my friend Mike Field calls it is filled with microscopic differences from one offer to the next.

Don’t be like them.

You’re better than that.

Redefining Success: Straddle the Fence of Work & Family

Redefining Success: Straddle the Fence of Work & Family

I find it difficult to always be in balance.

Usually work, life or play is taking up more than their fair share of the allotted time between sunrises and sunset.

The biggest tug-of-war is between family and work.

The older I get the more I see how driven we are as a nation to “succeed”.

The irony of that quest is that the definition is largely driven from deep within us.

We each define and adapt our own definition of success.  There are of course external definitions that influence our belief system.

How your neighbor or your brother or your co-worker defines success likely does not align like a dovetail joint with your version.

Success is making a ton of money

I had dinner with a guy a few months ago and his definition went like this.

“I care about making money”.

He and his family have aligned around the idea that Dad goes to work and mom cares for the kids.

In his early forties he believes that once he banks his millions he will be able to nestle into a life long practice of investing in his family.

The truth is he already has a million dollars or more socked away, but that first million or two was not enough.

He kisses his kids and boards his next flight to go fight in foreign wars on foreign lands.

Will his theory work?

Maybe he’s right?

Can we maintain hyper focus on our work for days, weeks, months, years and decades and then make a switch to our family later?

My experience says no.

Time is not a renewable commodity.

Relationships are fragile and largely dependent upon continual deposits over time.

In home mortgage terms, you can’t make a balloon payment once per year.

Healthy relationships simply don’t tolerate annual airdrop care packages.

What if family always comes first?

I have other friends who are so engaged with their family it is worth taking note.

They attend every one of their kid’s practices, volunteer in their kid’s classroom and help make magical birthday parties a reality.

Wow.

I’m not just talking about women here.  I mean I have guy friends who show up and make their kid’s lives amazing.

I’ve tried to take a few cues from their example.

There is a balance

I’ve seen plenty of people who allow the pendulum to swing so far towards this direction that their families lack sustainable provision.

Lot’s of time invested and great relationships but challenges arise when it comes time to send your kids to the dentist to get a cavity filled.

Physical presence is not enough

I’ve learned that being fully present is the single best gift you can offer your family, co-workers, employees, friends or acquaintances.

I wanted to believe for years that if you were there in physical presence that was enough or at least good enough.

The reality is that physical presence is useless if we are not also emotionally present.

The crux then becomes how do we maintain both physical and emotional engagement in both worlds?

How do we straddle the fence?

How do you afford to take your kid to the dentist and be emotionally engaged in his/her life?

How do you afford to go on a nice vacation with your wife and be around on a Thursday evening to enjoy a glass of wine on the deck?

Straddling the fence of these two invitations is difficult.

I’ve met very few people who actually have navigated the fence straddling very well.

I have met thousands of people who have a lot of money.

I have met many fewer who have a lot of money and simultaneously have great relationships with their children, wife and friends.

Which side of the fence do you want to be on?

How precarious might your journey be if you attempt to occupy positions of influence on both sides of the fence?

Be thoughtful.

Walk on purpose.