Pebblestorm

Here’s one thing that scares me: organizing new events.  Yep.  You thought I was fearless?  Or that other people who start their own companies are fearless?  No – they feel fear just like anyone else (even CEOs of the largest companies)…but they don’t let the fear stop them from moving forward.

Consider it this way: practically by definition, entrepreneurs (that includes you too) always feel fear because they constantly push the boundaries of their comfort zone.  Yes, some people have bigger (even massively bigger) comfort zones than others, but there is still a comfort zone. Even for Donald Trump.  Doing anything new, such as making money through enjoyment, requires you to get out of that zone…which is by definition scary. Make sense?

For example, I find it’s always scary to decide (because now you’re committed) to organize a new kind of format event, such as the one I’m holding next week in San Francisco: http://ceoflowsf.eventbrite.com. Once you’ve done it, it gets much easier and you find other ways to get out of your comfort zone to scare yourself 🙂

A peek into my process

Here’s what I go through in putting an event together (whether in person, a conference call, anything):

1. I reflect on the kind of event I want to have, including it’s purpose, type of attendees, location, and how I can make it enjoyable for both myself and them. I might reflect on this for a few days, weeks or months, until it gels enough for me to want to do it.
2. I pull out a calendar and just pick a date.
   
3. I post a note and that date on my blog (now I’m committed!) That committed energy ‘pulls me forward’ to make the event happen. Another example from May: “Upcoming Pebblestorm Events (LA, SF, DC, Kauai)“.  For example, I had no idea about the logistics for the Kauai trip when I first posted about it.
4. I prepare everything…argh.  This is still a part of the process I mostly don’t enjoy. I do enjoy creating handouts and exercises for it, but not the logistics (venue, invite list, food…)  I do work to find ways to make it easier to organize, such as doing it with friends, at the same place regularly, etc.  Anyone who enjoys helping get events together as a hobby, PLEASE contact me.
5. The event works out perfectly and we all have a great time!

Throwing rocks

The analogy I use is this: I’m standing at the edge of a river I want to cross.  Do I take a long time to architect and build a perfect bridge?  I could.  Or do I just pick up a big ol’ rock and throw it in the basic direction I want to go and then jump?

Ker-plunk!

Are you stuck? Take babysteps

Stop and consider the question, “is my fear holding me back from moving forward?”  If you’re stuck, here are some ideas, PebbleStorm-style, to play with.

1) Rather than ignoring fear or pretending it doesn’t exist, acknowledge that it’s ok and normal.  EVERYONE feels it.

2) Consider ways to make it easier on yourself, such as taking babysteps.  You know you should do something, and that big something is paralyzing you. What is the smallest little step you can take to move forward?  It should be something you can complete within seconds (such as making a decision) to a few hours.

3) Return again and again to the principle of “make money through enjoyment” as your guide to which babysteps to take.  How can you make your path work for you and what you want?

4) Choose a next babystep NOW to commit to. It could be as small as picking a date for the event, or reserving a URL for a business, or buying a notebook. Small is great! Fall in love with small. Huge castles are made of lots of little bricks. It’s more important to think of ways to not let fear stop you, rather than feeling like you have to take huge steps.

5) Repeat steps 1-4.

Examples around events

– Instead of starting by trying to throw a 100 person event as your first, hold some 5-20 person sized events to practice and build a first audience base.

– Hold an event at your house or a friend’s house, to simplify the venue.  Though it might complicate the cleanup, ha.   Speaking of which, I’m going to have one for 6-8 people at my place in Santa Monica on the evening of Sunday, September 28th, details to come in the next week. See how I just committed to it without having done any planning behind it yet? 🙂 Ker-plunk!

– If you’re nervous about charging for an event, start with an amount you’re comfortable with.  $5? $10?  $1000?  It’ll vary per person.  You can take babysteps to experiment and to build confidence and momentum. Also, it’s perfectly ok to lose a little money here and there in some experiments, but your intention must be to have a profitable business. That means if you lose money on an event, don’t do the same event/pricing/whatever again, change it up and try something else!

– Try overcharging for an event or service once in awhile. You might discover that you AREN’T overcharging, and that people are happy to pay your ‘high’ price, because they’re getting more value from your events/services/products than you assumed.

– Instead of a sit-down dinner, start with a potluck.

– Call a friend to brainstorm about it, or to get support (either emotional or logistical) for it.

…You get the idea.

Now pick a teeny tiny babystep and just do it!

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In a post in May, The Power of “Why Not?”, I outlined some reasoning for “why not do some work from kauai?”  A half dozen people agreed, and here we are now 😀

It’s my first time here, and Kauai is amazingly beautiful!

For the first part of the trip, Will Jessup (founder, www.CitrusByte.com), Tony Wong (founder) www.DigitialOnionInc.com, and Patty Yun (CitrusBuyte/MBA, USC) came out.   We quickly discovered that the Grand Hyatt Kauai, on the south shore, has an excellent office area:

The view from our office (with one of my favorite books, and a key inspiration of www.CEOFlow.com):

Initial thoughts on this kind of trip

To any of you skeptics – we really are working here in Kauai in addition to enjoying ourselves at the beach 🙂  The most valuable part of this trip isn’t the amount of work we crank out with our analytical left brains.  The value is giving ourselves some mental space to breathe, getting clear, and letting our creative right brains make those “aha!” and “why didn’t I see that sooner?” leaps of intuition. Sometimes this happens while we’re writing, hiking, driving, sometimes while sketching… but it’s the kind of thinking that happens rarely when we’re overloaded from work back home.

Great Place to Stay in Princeville

Ever want to stay at a townhouse in Princeville?  I’d recommend where we are: http://www.kauaitownhouse.com/

More Trip Pictures

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2134583&id=218087

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In 2007, while thinking quite a bit about what I wanted to do next in work and life, I realized along the way that what I wanted wasn’t among the most common work options you can jump into:

• A corporate job (working for someone else? Nah.)
  – I’m including “start a company that takes outside financing” in this category as well…because you’re still working for your investors.
• Consulting (you’re always “on the clock”)
• Non-profit (work on changing the world, but the stable income ain’t much!)
• Artist (work through authentic passion, but good luck supporting yourself)

My goal changed from uncovering the next opportunity to creating my own perfect working world, combining the best parts of all.

Why can’t I have:

• The stability of the corporate world
• The independence of a consultant
• The financial upside of a starting your own company
• The passion of an artist / purpose of a non-profit

The goal: create an environment that enables a workstyle of “more fun, more freedom AND more money” – without compromising anything. I’m not willing to sacrifice my health, personal life or purpose for work.

What does the ‘5th Work Option’ actually look like?

A business based around your passions or life purpose (or as I’d say, your “Unique Genius”), that generates a steadily growing flow of passive income. It often begins either as consulting or time-based services or a side project/hobby…and then over time develops into a business that sells products, programs, information or anything else that requires only a little bit of your time. Also, through the process of building the business, you develop enough of an ‘audience’ and base of True Fans (who actively spread word-of-mouth for you) to generate a plenty of income.

Easier said than done, right?

PebbleStorm

The thinking of “how I can I make this a reality?” led to the development of PebbleStorm, and my life purpose of “to help people make money through enjoyment.” PebbleStorm is a roadmap to this 5th Work Option, to make it easier, less lonely and less risky to get there.

Why is my purpose about helping others make money through enjoyment? Because the more like-minded people there are who think this way and help each other stay focused on making money through enjoyment rather than just making money…the easier achieving the 5th Work Option becomes – for us all! This is why one of the most important parts of PebbleStorm is community – connecting people at similar stages of development to share information and to support each other.

In 2006 I gave this presentation to my old sales team when they asked me to come speak. Although it could use refreshing to make it more self-explanatory, its intention is still exactly on point for what I’m talking about today through PebbleStorm.

It was one of those epiphany decks…it came to me in a morning and I slapped it together in a couple of hours. I realized that morning that I didn’t want to talk about sales stuff – I wanted to change the way they were thinking about work. How could I get them to appreciate the value of working primarily for enjoyment and other intrinsic motivations, rather than addictive, ultimately empty, extrinsic motivations like titles?

(Now – the culture there of emphasizing extrinsic rewards like titles wasn’t a dynamic created by that team, it was a dynamic at the whole company…which rewarded people with titles so frequently that it was impossible to keep track of all the levels. Now I know how dogs feel in training school 🙂  Having said that, I appreciate and am grateful for everything I learned at the company and for the amazing people there.)

If you work mostly to earn money or prestige (rather than for the enjoyment of the job itself), you end up in a vicious cycle because those external motivators will never truly satisfy you. Soon after you make more money or acquire more prestige, you get used to it (habituated), as an addict gets used to higher doses of drugs. Then you need a new fix (even more money, a bigger title) to get that high back…leading to a cycle of dysfunction.

A brief intro to the deck: I believe that capitalism/westernism taken too far is destructive (Enron, pollution…), and I believe that buddhism/easternism taken too far is stagnating (no development, no progress).

However, combine the best of the west (progress, advancement, development) and the best of the east (self-awareness, equanimity, centeredness)…you can have the best of both worlds: success without drama. In fact – the lack of drama, and its associated waste of energy, is one key part of helping you achieve more success than in an extreme capitalism/”show me the money and nothing else matters” model.

The intention behind the deck was to get the sales team a-thinkin’ about more than their next career step – I wanted them to begin paying attention to themselves and their purpose, and to increase their awareness of how different kinds of motivators (extrinsic v intrinsic) can lead to very different outcomes (unhappiness vs happiness). I wanted to nudge them to a more constructive path.

Hmm – I’ll have to put out the word to see if anyone back then remembers the presentation, and if it changed their thinking…

In the coming months, as I work with a handful of CEOs interested in trying out new ideas in their organizations in order to unlock their total potential, I’ll publish examples of how to put these ideas into practice.

Introduction: I wrote this to myself in August 2007, as I began defining what my ideal, perfect working world would be. This was the origin of PebbleStorm.

What’s the equivalent “perfect work” description that you could write, or begin to write, to yourself?

——————————————————————–

How can I make the biggest impact with the least effort? (And with the most happiness?)

“Small pebble = least effort, big wave = biggest impact”

I want to work on what I want, when I want, with whom I want, and make plenty of money at it.

CORE PRINCIPLES

I want to…

1. Be in control of the work/business, not have it be in control of me. I don’t want to be a slave to a company, even one that I start.
2. Work on what I want, when I want, with whom I want.
3. Make the biggest impact with the least effort. Eliminate or outsource low-value activities.
4. Enjoy work, by working from a place of desire, not obligation or ego
5. Contribute from areas of strength. Find the shortest distance between the strengths of collaborators.
6. Prioritize opportunities that come to you, that pursue you, over ones that you have to pursue.
7. Reframe the way I (we) think about time and progress. Sometimes we can make real progress with a project/new company, and sometimes we can’t. When we make a cake, there are points when we’re working actively to buy stuff, mix the ingredients or serve it, but there are also periods in between activity where it just has to sit (driving back from the market, baking time, waiting for dinner to finish before serving). Don’t waste energy pushing the cake when it needs to sit. Or in other words – we can’t make a baby in one month with nine women!

ANCILLARY

1. Focus on level of productivity rather than time or speed. For most things, trying to make them happen faster is only detrimental to the results/productivity.
2. Each new project should add value or build on the others, not detract from them. By working from my strengths, adding multiple projects can make me more productive, not less productive.
3. Keep it simple, keep it easy, KEEP IT FUN. Done right, this should feel like a natural flow without unnecessary or low-value effort. Even when the effort is extreme, it shouldn’t be unnecessarily stressful.
4. Work with whom I want. Find a great collaborator(s) for each project, someone that has talent and I’d like to work with. Then find an idea.
5. Build as little from scratch as possible.
6. Don’t say no. Stay open to all possibilities. Take things as they come.
7. Don’t set ‘artificial’ or unnatural goals, let things take a natural course. But every time I touch a project, make definite progress; move the ball.
8. Practice acceptance. Things will change, things will and won’t work, collaborators will come and go. Use judgment to determine when something is worth effort to change & fight for, and when it’s best to accept and let it go.
9. Manifest / visualize what you want

CULTURAL VALUES

1. Integrity in purpose, approach, values, relationships is the most important thing
2. Succeed by helping the ones around you succeed
3. Help people follow their interests in ways that align to the group goal
4. Companies/managers/execs should work for the employee, not the other way around
5. Diversity is beneficial (avoids groupthink)
6. Work should ALWAYS be interesting (eliminate, outsource, reframe what isn’t)
7. Create a company that doesn’t depend on “selling”…sales pressure creates incentives to compromise the integrity of the client relationship