Pebblestorm

If I could share only one thing with you to make the biggest impact on your success, it would be to have you look closely at the people you spend your time with. You are a reflection of them and their attitudes and values – for good, numbness or toxicity – rub off on you!

After spending time with friends, family or coworkers – do you feel energized, powerful and inspired – or drained and exhausted?

The people you spend time with are like the soil to the dreams, business and life seeds you’re planting.

Optimistic, supportive, accepting people will help your Unique Genius bloom (along with your income, enjoyment and freedom).

Pessimistic, discouraging and judgmental people (including the ones we love) will crush your dreams, energy and success – or at least make it feel like you’re moving through molasses.

Valerie Young left a particularly insightful comment on why the people we love can be so discouraging: “The people who are least likely to support our dreams are the people who love us the most. Why? Because they love us. And taking chances like following a dream is scary to them and they want you to be safe.”

So:

• Which of your close friends, coworkers or family members are energy vampires that leave you drained? How can you limit your exposure to toxic or discouraging energy?
• Which of them are inspirational and encouraging, and how can you spend more time with them?

It’s important to know this, because it has an enormouse affect on your own chances of enjoyment and success.

Don’t let people kill your dreams!!  Spend time with people that will support you, no matter how crazy you want to be 🙂

Dear Parents…

Parents are usually the first dream killers people experience in life (luckily, mine weren’t).

Did your parents support your aspirations, or discourage you from dreaming?  Please encourage your children’s dreams of what they want to be or do – even if those dreams aren’t ‘practical’.

A Quick PebbleStorm People Exercise

Here’s a simple worksheet (a sample from more upcoming www.UniqueGenius.com materials) you can look through and print:

PebbleStorm People Exercise

Do You Agree? What’s Worked For You?

Has changing who you spend time with affected your business?

Sometimes it’s hard cutting off or limiting energy vampires – what’s succeeded for you?

Please leave a comment!

The Unique Genius Superheroes Interview Series is about ordinary people who have created businesses they love around their purpose. Tricia McEntee didn’t create Esalen, but after she found her own purpose, she was promoted to the CEO role there.

Esalen Institute is an amazing retreat spot on the California coast, in Big Sur. It’s gorgeous and a place that holds all kinds of personal development workshops. If you’re from California, you’ve likely heard of it and how influential it’s been in the development of new ideas.  If you haven’t heard of Esalen, chances are you will in the coming years!

When I met Tricia McEntee, she was kind enough to share her story on camera (<5 minutes) about how she found her purpose in 2009:

Tricia’s Steps To Finding Clarity

1. She was frustrated with work and wanted to make a bigger difference, creating a strong desire to find more of herself to give.
2. She played, opening herself up.
3. She spent time questioning, studying purpose and inspirational leadership at a workshop.
4. She had a ‘trigger event’ to activate her purpose: a serious conversation with the chairman of the Esalen board about her future was scheduled.
5. In preparing for the meeting, she was inspired over a weekend to create a collage of her passions and interests (activating it)…and as she completed it, her purpose came to her in about a minute!

How Did Finding Her Purpose Help Her Succeed?

1) She felt clarity in life and in how she could contribute in a bigger way to her own and Esalen’s future.
2) Four months later they promoted her from CFO to it to CEO when the position suddenly became available.

I’d bet that if Tricia hadn’t found this clarity of purpose it’s unlikely the CEO role wouldn’t have been offered to her…or at least that quickly.

Coming Soon…

There’s a process to discovering your purpose. Register for a sneak peak of it at www.UniqueGenius.com.

Of course, once you find purpose, how do you turn it into a business you love?  That’s what the upcoming “Feed Your Freedom Mastermind” will be about, a six-month group coaching program that will be announced soon.  Click here for more details.

How Did You Find Your Purpose?

Leave a Comment!

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The My 10-Step Personal Success Routine post has been one of my most popular.  This post builds on it with the idea of designing your week.

A b2b sales consulting client of mine is FreedomSpeaks/CitySourced, and Kurt Daradics (“KurtyD”) is the CEO. KurtyD’s a great guy – he’s very purpose-driven and has a lot of character.  Not to mention he also does improv comedy 🙂

We recently sat down for a private session to help him make progress on building his sales machine.  Interestingly, one of the things that he took away wasn’t about sales process – but about how designing your week can be a huge help in staying focused, balanced and productive.

KurtyD’s suffering from success – CitySourced is getting great press, leads, attention, funding, etc…and he’s working on amping his own organizational game to keep up.

Here’s an excerpt from his post “Fight The Resistance“:

“Lord knows I’ve been busy, but even though we’re seeing traction, I still don’t feel like I’m really getting that much done, sorta spinning my wheels.  Even lately I’ve been feeling a bit paralyzed and at the end of the day my focus and concentration has been toast. I’m terribly behind on some personal correspondence and taking care of personal business. The start up has officially consumed my life.

I was starting to get a bit concerned and burned out, and regardless that my diet has been good, I’m getting enough sleep and exercise, I still wasn’t performing at my peak.  Also, I truly sense that we’re on the right about to break through and deliver some major game changing technology, and that little voice inside my head that tries to tell me I ‘don’t deserve it’ or that I ’should go back to bed” has been really trying to throw me under the bus. Seth Godin calls this voice “the resistance“. That little voice has been really confusing me lately, reminding me of all the things that need to be done, and it’s been causing me some anxiety and tempting me to work from a place of desperation rather than inspiration.

Today I had a cool breakthrough. My pal and coach Aaron Ross aka @MotoCeo really helped me break  some things down. Aaron has been helping us think through our sales process and we’re currently getting ready to launch our sales efforts using Salesforce.com, where Aaron used to be Sr. Director of Sales.

Aaron showed me how he manages his calendar and as cliche as this may sound, this was a big ‘aha’ for me, and something I’m implementing immediately.

• His Mondays are for planning and thinking about the “non-urgent & important”.
• Tues are for new clients calls and meetings.
• Weds are reserved for existing accounts and clients.
• Thurs is a ‘catch all’ day. [Aaron: I normally use these days for one-off coaching sessions/workshops]
  
• Friday is errands, bookkeeping and some ‘catch all’. [Aaron: clean the clutter, get organized for next week]
  

Aaron helped me focus on the fact that if I want my business to catch a fire that I really need to get the “magnifying glass” positioned in the right place and hold it steady so that it burns the leaf, that’s the spark that catches fire.

I have a strong sense that the calendar trick is to work really well for me. For example, the tools I need and documents I have open for new sales calls is much different that what I need for existing clients. By batching the work in a focused fashion I can dive deeper and batch all the work. Then I can deliver a list to my asst or project manager in a bunch, rather than piecemeal through out the week, which delivers better process and efficiency to my team and saves them time too.”

Thanks Kurt for sharing!

Other Tips & A Screenshot Of My Calendar

I block out time for my Personal Success Routine (“PSR”), meditation, exercise, etc. first, and then schedule work time around those blocks.  In the shot below, that time is all the aqua color.  You can see the morning blocks for my PSR.  (Side note: the 10-Step PSR I wrote about in 2009 has been mostly out the window for awhile, since I got into a serious relationship.  But – what’s cool is we are creating a new “Mutual/Couples PSR”. I promise to share it when it stops evolving.)

I use Google Calendar and have multiple calendars to color-code my work.  I don’t get too fancy/complicated. I use a few basics:

• Aqua is “personal time” like exercise, meditation.
• Purple is client time (prospective or current).
• Red is “get stuff done” – usually I’m on computer creating something.  ‘Pay the bills’ would also fit into this.
• Yellow is Team/Visioning time (with partners/employees).
• Green is travel (not on this screenshot).

(Click on the image to expand it)

If You Want An Exercise Routine That Makes It Easy To Get Your Butt Kicked

You see my Tuesday and Thursday mornings are blocked out for CrossFit / exercise.  If you’re looking for a badass exercise routine that will get you in shape without a huge amount of time, check out CrossFit.  I started a month ago and it’s awesome! I like that it’s done in small groups (this is key for me), there’s lots of variety, and it’s tough.

How Do You Design Your Week?

Leave a comment and share the wealth!

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Kurt Daradics’ blog

Is your website a source of frustration or enjoyment for you?

Dare I say you can ENJOY (re)building a site??  I do dare!

Websites are big sources of uncertainty, stress and excuses for not moving forward – but they don’t have to be. With a little help and guidance, you can actually have fun building a great one in a weekend…without spending as much time, money or energy as you think it takes…and without worrying about all the technical stuff.  That’s right – even if you’re a techno-phobe 🙂

I and Simon Carstensen have a new PebbleStorm teleclass next Wednesday on how to “Build Your Website in a Weekend”.  In it Simon (the brains of this website operation stuff) will explain how to enjoy building your website without having to:

• Spend lots of time figuring out how to set it up
• Spend $3000-5000 to have someone do it for you
• Struggle to attract customers once it’s up

So if you need a new website or need to redo one, this teleclass is one you don’t want to miss.

How To Register

http://simoncarstensen.com/weekendwebsite

In addition to sharing the steps of how to do this on your own, the call will give you a sense of how Simon’s upcoming group program will work if you want a) a Simon’s personal help and b) the support of a bunch of other people (like me) who are doing the upcoming weekend program together.

I And My Mom Are In The Boat With Ya

That’s right – I will be doing this call and his weekend course with you, as I update my janky 5-year old www.BuildASalesMachine.com site in preparation for an upcoming sales book launch 🙂

My mom’s signed up as well, so she can finally turn www.MardeRoss.com into a site about her passions.

Your Horror Stories – Leave A Comment

We’d love to hear from you if you have any horror stories about spending way too much time or money on your site. Please leave a comment about it!  Or, what worked really well for you?

Everyone who reads this blog (this means YOU) wants to help others or make a difference in some way – whether it’s before, during or after you make a pile of money.  There’s greatness & happiness in you.  So is your current work exposing that greatness and happiness, or discouraging it?  Does your work make you “more of who you really are” or “less of who you really are”?  Take five minutes for this handy-dandy sanity check.

FIRST: Your Positive (Light) Side. How Often Does Work Bring Out Your Best?

How do you see yourself?  What are your values?  How do you want to feel and move through life?

STEP ONE (1 Minute)

Write down five values or feelings or ways of being that you are, such as Creative, Appreciative, Happy, Growing, Healing, Supportive, Patient, Fun, Accepting, Gracious, Wealthy, Valuable, Trusting, Inspiring, Making A Difference, etc. The don’t need to be your perfect top five, just write down five that come to mind.  This should not take you more than 30 seconds.

Here are five that just came to my mind – though I have thought about this quite a bit over the past 1-2 years 🙂 :

1. Playful
2. Adventurous
3. Loving
4. Patient
5. Trusting

STEP TWO (1 Minute)

Now stop and reflect – does your work help you be more of these values each day?  Does it make you, for example, more playful, more adventurous, more loving, more patient, more trusting?  (If you’re not sure, the answer is no.)

For me, the answer in general is yes-yes-yes-yes-yes…though it ebbs and flows day by day or week by week.  I am always working on being/feeling more of these values more of the time each day.  Although I have my ups and downs some hours/days/weeks/etc, overall I clearly live my life along those values much more now than I did a couple of years ago, B.P. (Before PebbleStorm).

SECOND: Your Negative (Dark) Side. How Often Does Work Bring Out Your Worst?

STEP ONE (1 Minute)

Write down five negative patterns / feelings / ways of being that you see in yourself that you don’t like. Being honest with yourself, what negative aspects of you come out in your work – can you be fearful? Stressed? Mean? Inconsiderate? Busy? Abrupt? Forgetful? Late? Dream killing? Discouraging? Selfish? Jealous? Unhealthy?

This should not take you more than 30 seconds.  You are allowed to ask coworkers and spouses for their suggestions…though you may not be able to stop them at five, heh!

Here are five that just came to my mind that I notice in myself (plus some extra notes about each for context):

1. Impatience – While I am vastly more patient than I used to be, this pattern does come up. Impatience (as distinct from urgency) is a form of unhappiness. To me, impatience = arbitrary dissatisfaction with your present moment or situation when you can’t do anything about it except change your attitude…like a child in October who’s unhappy that Xmas is two months away.
2. Workaholic-ism – I can easily slip back to the pattern of “more work creates more results”, which is only true in the short term (days, weeks, months).  Throwing more hours at something is a crutch for lacks of creativity, clarity or patience.
3. Stress – Stress is the true enemy and a killer. The irony of my expanding self-awareness is that while I am less stressed than I used to be, I am more aware of when I have any stress at all.  The cleaner you make a room, the more any little dust ball stands out.
4. Don’t listen – When I’m impatient, stressed, etc, I can stop listening to partners, clients, employees. Not good!
5. Lack of clarity – Right now I am ‘focusing’ on just four active businesses/lines of thinking (PebbleStorm, CEOFlow, Build A Sales Machine, DataSalad), and it can be challenging creating and updating clear visions for each regular, both long-term visions and short-term plans.

In general I am not impatient, or stressed, or unfocused. But these are darkside patterns that I tend to slip back into if I get off track,  too busy or even when I travel (travel can throw my whole routine off) and I stop or slack on my 10-Step Morning Personal Success Routine.

Step TWO (1 Minute)

Take a minute to reflect: in your work now, today, this past week…how many and how much of these negative patterns came up?  Do you feel them every day, or infrequently?

Does your work bring up more of your positive attributes or more negative patterns?  What’s ‘winning’?

This exercise does not help if you lie to yourself about your work – and I’m not just talking here to the lawyers, investment bankers and bail bondsmen out there.  CEOs and executives can often more unhappy and stressed than say, a factory worker, because the responsibility and pressure gets to you over time without you realizing it. You don’t even notice it until you stop and look back in moments like now.

THIRD: Whatcha Gonna Do About It?

Whether your work sucks or you don’t love it – don’t quit your day job if you need income!  But at a minimum decide you deserve better, and that you will do something about it.  Create a plan for how and when you want to escape – even if it’s years away. Don’t let yourself look back five years from now and think, “how did five more years go by so fast?”

Here are three places to start to stir things up in your noggin (the “Make a list” step is the 5th minute of the “5 Minute Sanity Check”):

1. Make a list (1 Minute): Quick! Brainstorm 10 things you can do tomorrow or next week to help work bring out more of the good stuff, and keep away more of the bad stuff?  Of the 10, pick out 2-3 are the best ideas you are going to try right away – and get a buddy to support each other in doing them!
2. The Unique Genius Worksheet: To get some of your creative juices flowing, you can get (for the first time or re-download) our Unique Genius worksheet from: http://www.PebbleStorm.com/updates (On that same page, you can also download and listen to the “Invitation To Inspiration” call recording, to hear what being a part of an inspirational community feels like.)
3. “14 Simple Ways To Inject Enjoyment Into Work”: No matter what your work is, you can ALWAYS find ways to make it more enjoyable right now: https://pebblestorm.com/2009/07/11/14-simple-ways-to-inject-enjoyment

FOUR: Leave A Comment Below And Share Some Wisdom

How did the sanity check work for you?  What are you going to do differently now?  Or what worked for you that you’d recommend to others? Please leave a comment!

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Can just three days with the PebbleStorm community, such as in the recent PebbleStorm Immersion, change your life?

In January we held an in-person event here in LA, the PebbleStorm “Learn, Create & Launch Your Business In A Weekend” Fun Immersion.  20 people attended the first day of the event (“Learn”), and 10 of us continued on through the entire three day Immersion “(Create & Launch”). The videos and stories here from three people are a small sample of the amazing energy, support and progress of the group.

Jared Krause, a social entrepreneur focused on directing group energy and action at direct solutions to global problems:

Jared wrote a blog post about the PebbleStorm Immersion three weeks after it ended:

“I went into the immersion not knowing what to expect. I’d gotten to know Aaron very briefly and frankly if I wasn’t at my wits end I probably wouldn’t have done it. I saw a video he did for a smaller event (that ended up attending and liking) and thought, what the hell. I remember thinking that Aaron seemed like he was actually enjoying his life. A guy who’d built a hundred million dollar per year sales team actually enjoying his life. Amazing.

My company has been death rattling for months and I’ve been looking for what’s next. It’s really hard letting go of something you give your all and believe in and I felt relatively fragile going in to something where I was going to not only think about next steps but really expose my situation to strangers. The fact that Aaron was so open and honest about having been through a failed startup, then a very successful traditional technology track and come out on the other side climbing mountains, riding motorcycles and meditating gave me enough confidence in him to give myself over his process.

Really, it could hardly have been better. What I’ve told people about him since is that Aaron’s totally excellent at figuring out not just what you’re great at, passionate about and excited to do, but also how to package that in a way that you can sell without feeling like you’re selling. And for a lot more money that at least I had imagined. He leveraged his skills and the collective experience and knowledge of the group to help me focus on what I could do to get started quickly, use the resources I had and really start to hone in on how to live the life of my dreams. That’s a big claim, but I feel more capable than I ever of have of getting there. I’ve been actively looking for that path for the last 4 years and in many ways I got more focus and direction out of the 3-day immersion than I had in the previous 4 years.

One of the biggest takeaways, perhaps the biggest, is the idea and practice of baby steps. Frankly, when I first heard him talk about it I was almost annoyed. I never take baby steps. I start running then move directly into flying before (often) falling and starting over. It’s not that my ideas aren’t strong or my ability to execute isn’t there, it’s that I didn’t realize that the way to actually go where I want to go is to break the huge task into little steps that I’m comfortable taking. And then to actually take them. One after another without skipping any.

Since the immersion I can’t say that I’ve conquered the world or made $1,000,000 (it’s been 3 weeks), but I can say that I’ve started to speak to people from the heart about what I care about and am getting tremendous response. In fact, as I’ve started to talk about it, I’ve started to attract clients quickly and easily. It’s not earth shattering, but within 3 weeks and with no more than 4 hours/week I’ve attracted a small handful of folks who are serious about paying me to do something I’ve dreamt of doing for years.

I’m having my first event tomorrow. It’s a gathering of 12 friends and partners getting together to talk about what we can do together. What’s happening in their lives and how we might work together to support each other and take focus on creating positive solutions to some major problems. I can say that I’ve been totally shocked by how many people not only said they wanted to come to the meeting, but were really, genuinely excited about it and wanted to bring people with them.

I’m looking forward to it and looking forward to keeping engaged with the PebbleStorm community. Aaron has attracted an absolutely amazing group of people. Dynamic, supportive, brilliant, passionate and engaged. Really, one of greatest advantages of the immersion was getting connected to such a fantastic group of folks. For anyone considering it, I would highly recommend it particularly if you’re looking for a real, practical and actionable way to start moving toward the life/work situation that you really want. Aaron is living proof that what he’s doing is working.

Thanks Aaron and thanks PebbleStorm!”

Onna Young, founder of Life After Debt: “A place for people to empower themselves financially, get debt free, and life a life they love and that inspires them”: “We’ve all created a business in a weekend, and it was nothing short of stunning and amazing and quite powerful experience for everyone in the room…”

And Even After The Event Ends…

Jared: “…the further I get from the Immersion the more value it’s having to me.”

Phil Gascoyne, business coach & mentor: “4 weeks after the event when the hype is gone but the practical wisdom and community encouragement are just as powerful.   There hasn’t been a day gone by since the event that PebbleStorm hasn’t affected my life in some tangible way…and it is continuing to have even more impact as I take action on the ideas I have learned.   Thanks Aaron and the PebbleStorm Community.”

Thank you Phil for being such a positive and encouraging member of the group – I know people got as much help from you as you did from them.

It’s All About The Community

My vision for PebbleStorm has always (since July 2007) been to create a community of trusting people that have fun helping each other succeed. I was (and am) clear that my favorite part of work is creating things with people I trust and like – and I wanted to be able to do that all the time, and make money at it. What’s your favorite part of work?

Whether it’s in PebbleStorm or another group that more closely fits you – communities do exist that want to help you succeed and be happy. You don’t have to go it alone – and in fact, it’s a lot more fun and easier to succeed with a group of like-minded people. If you can’t find a group that you connect with, create one!

Next Up: A PebbleStorm Group Program/Mastermind

In the coming weeks we will be announcing the details of our next group program/Mastermind, which will be a group of people from around the world (including from LA, SF Bay Area, DC, NY, Dallas, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, Paris, Copenhagen, Buenos Aires, Australia, Brussels…) coming together to support each other in:

1. Making as much money as you authentically want.
2. Aligning your work with your life values and passions.
3. Creating fulfilling work that makes a difference.
4. Feeling powerful, valuable and capable of making an impact.
5. Having the peace of mind & freedom that comes with having all the support you want from people that you trust and respect.

Don’t want to wait?

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One of the keys to getting clear on your purpose and dream work is to be more selfish than you’ve ever been before – stop holding yourself back by playing small!  You can small in all kinds of ways, such as the amount of money you want to make, the freedom you can have, or in the impact you can make in the world.

I don’t mean be selfish in a negative or greedy way that harms from others.  I mean be selfish in a way that preserves and sustains you, so that you can live the way you want to…and thus have the energy and ideas to make a bigger difference to others.  Are you being unselfish, or are you actually self-sacrificing yourself and your dreams?

By living and working smaller than you deserve, you limit your ability to make a difference in the world and to others. It’s the same reason that airlines tell you to put the oxygen mask on first before you do it for a child.

The following coaching exercise is a favorite of mine, and only takes two or three minutes. Give it a shot, and please leave a comment below about what you think or learned!

The Unique Genius “Ego Indulgement Exercise”

• Get ready to be more selfish than you’ve ever been before…
• If you had more money than you could ever spend…
• And all the friends and love and houses and travel and stuff and family and ___ and ___ you ever wanted…
• There is nothing you want or need that you don’t have…
• Imagine spending a couple of years ‘on the beach’ just relaxing, until you then get bored and know it’s time to create something…
• You don’t need to work but want to do something meaningful…
• What do you do/create?

Ironically, it is the kind of work or business you create at that point in the end, when you don’t “need” anything or to work at all, that will create the possibility of you getting all the other goods (money, freedom, success, etc.) with ease.

Here’s why it works:

1) By first satisfying your ego‘s ‘needs and wants’, it lets your ego chill out while you get clear on what you authentically are meant to do.  When you feel needy and stressed (“I need more money, time…”), it blocks your creativity, intuition and self-awareness, and thus access to Unique Genius insights.

2) Being more selfish than you’ve ever been means taking care of yourself and inspiring yourself first, so that you can help even more people / make an even bigger difference. It means dream bigger.  How many non-profit workers do you know who are making a difference, but are totally drained in doing it?  Couldn’t they make a bigger difference if they found ways to truly take care of themselves at the same time?

Want More? Three More Unique Genius Questions…

1. What are you already doing for free to help people? (Or what would you do for free?)
2. If you could be successful at anything (beyond or in addition to your current career or being a parent), what would it be?
3. What’d you want to be when you were 8, and why?

With question #3, the “why” is the interesting part…what is behind it?  My personal example: I wanted to be a pilot – not because I wanted to fly planes, but because of the freedom.  So it’s no coincidence that freedom is so important to me today and to PebbleStorm!  Another example: a common answer for people who wanted to be doctors is because they wanted to be able to help people.

You don’t have to be a pilot to have freedom within your work, or a doctor to help people in your work.

How can you bring in those childhood desires or passions into what you’re doing today?

P.S.: Coming Soon

A 21-Day Unique Genius Self-Study Program – keep an eye out!

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The first five days of this 15-Day 100% Fruits & Veggies Cleanse were surprisingly easy – mostly because I and my amazing girlfriend Jessica are committed to supporting each other with the shopping, cooking and eating. It takes a lot of time to buy make all this food on your own! After the first couple days of no hunger cravings at all, I started to get a little hungrier – perhaps my body was getting used to the food shift.

How I’m Feeling: My Skin & Energy & Stuff

My girlfriend says the skin on my face is much clearer.  My body feels good –  about the same as before I began.  My energy is consistently high through the day, though I have noticed a few times when I got tired or yawned, which might be because I’m eating fewer calories.

It is partially because I’m running low on sleep the past couple of weeks, as I’m trying to do too much every day (both fun stuff and work stuff…our “Learn How To Create & Launch A Business In A Weekend Fun Immersion” is this coming Friday & weekend).

Exercise

I  worked out a couple of times (weights or yoga) in the first few days of the cleanse, and after a workout I would be starving. On the fifth day, after a weights workout, I cheated a bit and made my chocolate protein smoothie, which is pretty close to the cleanse diet (cacoa, flaxseed, banana, chia seeds, water, rice protein powder).

During the cleanse, I’ll continue to exercise, but will take it easier in each workout.  I’ll wait to push myself until at least after the 100% juice portion is done.

100% Juice For Five Days

Day 6 is the first day that is 100% juice, and we stick to this all week, Monday-Friday.  Here’s an example day:

• Morning: Green Lemonade: Kale, Cucumber, Celery, Green Apple, Lemon, Ginger
• Mid morning: Celery Cucumber Parsley Apple
• Early Afternoon: Carrot Romaine Hearts/OR Spinach (and Apple, when needed)
• Mid Afternoon: Coconut Water, fresh if possible
• Evening: Green Lemonade: Kale, Cucumber, Celery, Green Apple, Lemon, Ginger

On the first day, I’m surprised I’m not hungry or getting hunger cravings.  I’m not sure if this is because of the juicing itself, or because of the shift from eating to juicing, and in a few days my body / hunger will go back to what it was.

Juicing this much takes a LOT of time. Luckily, Jessica had a fancy-shmancy juicer already. We need about a gallon of juice per day per person – so for two people, if we did all the juicing ourselves, would be two gallons of juice per day. That would be hours of work in shopping, prep and juicing.  We just don’t have the time to do it all at home, so we’re buying about half of it fresh from the local Santa Monica co-op juice bar.

PebbleStorm “Learn How To Create & Launch A Business In A Weekend” Fun Immersion

I’m preparing this week for our upcoming PebbleStorm “Learn How To Create & Launch A Business In A Weekend” event, starting Friday (Jan 15). It’s actually two events: the first day is an open “learn how to do it”, and then for a smaller group of people, we’ll actually hold their hands in creating and launching businesses that weekend.  We still have a few open spots for the first day; the full 3-day event is sold out.

It’ll be interesting to see how the juicing affects, or doesn’t, my energy with the added work and mental load. Is this the optimal time to switch diet?  No, but when is anything ever the ‘perfect’ time?

[UPDATED] Some Questions & Answers

Q: What juicer do you use?

For this cleanse, we are using the Omega 8006.  I know nothing about juicers; it’s my girlfriend’s.  If I bought a new one for myself, I’ve heard Green Star is hard to beat.

If you’re going to buy either a blender or a juicer, I’d get a blender like a Vita-Mix or Blendtec.  I own a Vita-Mix TurboBlend 4500 (now they sell a VitaMix 5200), which I use to make my regular daily morning green smoothie (see point #10 on “My 10-Step Personal Success Routine“).  Juicing is much more labor intensive (in prep and cleanup) then just blending, so juicers often sit unused on the shelf.  I use my Vita-Mix every day.

Q: Where do you purchase your produce?

From the local, convenient grocery stores: Santa Monica Co-op, Whole Foods, and Albertsons.  We would/will purchase from farmers markets, but the timing hasn’t worked out yet.  We have been buying big batches of food at one time, and running into one big store is more convenient for long lists.

Q: Do you ever use  frozen fruit?

We aren’t using now during the current 15-day fruit and veggie cleanse, though I wouldn’t be opposed to it. I do use it frequently in my daily morning green smoothie (point #10 on “My 10-Step Personal Success Routine“).

Your Advice, Suggestions, Results, Questions?

Please leave a comment below on the post!

Coaching, Health & Making Money

Sustainable health is essential to your success and enjoyment.  While my business coaching focuses mostly on combining your passions with work to make money in ways that are meaningful to you, health always becomes a part of the conversation. You can get on my schedule for a no-cost trial coaching session at http://www.PebbleStorm.com/coaching.

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I just started a 15-day 100% fruit and vegetables cleanse with a group of friends. It’s not a pure juice cleanse – we eat the veggies ‘n’ froots as food for 10 out of the 15 days, and only five days in the middle of the program are all juice.

Why do it? Really, it’s just because they asked me to and it sounded interesting! I’ve often been a “eap and the net will appear” person, jumping into things because they sounded interesting before I fully understood what was required (like the Ironman and the 28-day surival course…)

I’ve always wanted to try something like this program, so when my friend emailed me about it I thought “Why not?” (Prior post: “The Power Of Why Not”)  How often do you avoid trying something adventurous – in work, love or eating – just because it’s different, unknown or outside your comfort zone?

Get The Junk Outta The Trunk!

I’ll use this program to clean up some junky eating habits of mine. Mainly, letting go of sugar and dairy (I love hot chocolate).

Why do I want to stop eating (almost all) dairy, as much as I love it? I’m not allergic to dairy, according to an allergy blood test, but when I have dairy I often get a bit of a runny nose – so something in my system reacts against it. But it tastes sooo good 🙂

The Big Difference I Felt On The First Day

Healthwise, I’ve been feeling really good the past couple of weeks. I’m also mostly vegetarian already, so it’s not a huge shift for me to spend 15 days just eating fruits and veggies.  I wasn’t expecting to feel any differences quickly.

However, I noticed one big difference today, this first day of the program: I wasn’t hungry between meals, and I didn’t have any sugar/junk food cravings at all.

We’ll see if this program keeps the hunger and junk food cravings away even as my body adapts to the regimen.

I’m Already Pretty Clean – No Alcohol, Coffee or Caffeine

I haven’t always been a healthy eater. But ever since my teens, I keep getting a littler better with my eating habits every year, and over the years it’s added up.

I had one single dramatic shift in my eating habits, which happened in late 2007. After working with an ayurvedic nutritionist, I learned that I am allergic to wheat gluten and soy. I also learned that while I’m not allergic to alcohol, coffee or caffeine, I should give them up because they aren’t good for my body type, my system. I immediately gave them up and felt MUCH better afterwards!

Alcohol was really easy to give up. Coffee has the been hardest to stay away from – I love it! But, it’s highly acidic. I never appreciated how hard it was on my body until I stopped drinking it and then went back and had it again. If I have some now, my whole body feels crappy and I’ll often get a light skin rash on my face.

Interestingly, after I gave up drinking I started to notice how omnipresent alcohol is in our lives, how many people depend on it in small and large ways in relationships, work, having fun and coping. You don’t notice it much because it’s so embedded into our culture.

The eating vices I still have had: excessive sugar, chocolate and dairy.

Why No Caffeine?

With diet (as with everything in life), there are no one-size-fits-all answers. Alcohol, wheat, soy, etc. don’t work for me and don’t work for many of you, but for some of you it might be an excellent and valuable part of your diet.

Why no caffeine? I’m an inherently energetic person, so stimulants like caffeine unbalance me, make me anxious, and I just don’t feel good.

When I used to drink coffee every day in the morning, I needed it to wake up (or feel like I was waking up). Coffee and caffeine became a crutch.

After I stopped drinking it, I stopped feeling like I needed it in the morning to wake up. My energy actually felt more even throughout the whole day, rather than spiky.

Are caffeine or coffee a crutch for you, or do they really enhance your performance? Do they make you feel better or worse? The only way to find out if it’s something that is good for you, or isn’t, is by experimenting. Try going without it for two weeks (or change what you drink or how much), and journal about the changes in your energy and how you feel.

Why Diets And Magic Business Solutions Don’t Work

Eating and health is a perfect analogy to business – there is no magic bullet or diet, and the only way to learn what works for you is to try different things and practice self-awareness. It doesn’t matter if a diet or business worked for your best friend – that’s them, not you. You have to figure out your system for yourself. You have to learn discernment and how to determine what works for you.

It’s worthwhile to try someone’s diet or business system, but don’t blindly follow it (even PebbleStorm’s upcoming “Learn, Build & Launch A Business In 3 Days Fun Immersion” in Los Angeles). Realize that you’ll need to tweak, customize and tailor anything to your own personality.

Should You Go Vegetarian, Vegan, Give Up Alchohol, or…?

Sure, go ahead and try something, such as giving up coffee, because someone you respect has done it.  But don’t blindly stick to it – pay attention to if it actually works for you or it doesn’t.  Only through your own personal experimentation and observation will you learn what works for you. This is true both in health and in business. This is why the second step of PebbleStorm is “Play”, which has two meanings: 1) to literally play and have fun and 2) to experiment.

The Power Of Community / If You Can Only Do One Thing…

Doing most anything is easier and more fun with other like-minded people. I know this cleanse will be much easier as part of a supportive group!

Likewise, designing, starting and evolving a business is much more enjoyable – and easier – with the support of others. That is the essence of PebbleStorm – a community of people having fun helping each other succeed.

Are the people around you supporting or draining you?  The best thing you can do for yourself is to stop spending time around energy vampires and dream killers, and spend as much time around people who accept, support and inspire you.

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My art was a talent that came out of nowhere in 2008 as I began to nurture PebbleStorm  and my own Unique Genius.  No one’s as surprised as I am about this.  (You can see a decent collection here: “Art of PebbleStorm  CEOFlow / Fall 09“.)

It still doesn’t feel comfortable for me to say I’m an artist, even though I am…only  because I never – as long as I can remember – thought of myself as one. Engineer,  business  person, entrepreneur, athlete…sure.

But “artist”?  Yep, though I’m still getting used to the idea.

So now I wonder whenever I meet people…

What talents are in you waiting to come out that would inspire yourself and others?  What stories do you tell yourself about what you can or can’t do that aren’t true?

I also wonder what other talents will come out of me in the future that I don’t even know about yet.

I guarantee this – if you let yourself dream BIG – your ideal work, your dream business – it would involve you playing with and sharing a lot more of yourself and your talents that you do today (both known or yet-undiscovered superpowers).

Mash Your Passions

Bringing those talents into your work is essential to find the money, enjoyment and meaning you crave. You will love your work more and it will make you more unique and interesting to customers.

So what passions or talents or interests do you have that you think wouldn’t be relevant to business?

Here’s a simple example: my great friend Yanitz Rubin had forgotten about his passion for entertainment and comedy until PebbleStorm. Now he’s creating an event called “Improv for Entrepreneurs” to help people unlock their creativity and ideas. His goal isn’t to design a billion-dollar business from day 1 – his goals are to create a FUN way (for him and others) to attract the perfect audience for his coaching and other businesses.  Yanitz will ultimately make tons of money at this while having tons of fun!  I’d be jealous, but I will get to go to his events 🙂

Try playing with ideas on mashing them up with your work – either your current work or a new business idea that lets you play with and envision work however you want.  This is a first step towards the freedom you want.

Listen To Yourself

What activities does your subconscious keeps bugging you to pursue that you don’t have time for or that you think aren’t for you?

(Shhh – don’t tell anyone and I promise nothing, but I’ve taken a few singing lessons recently. It’s an idea that has bugged me for months, even though I’ve NEVER thought I could sing.  I still can’t, but I’m not afraid to try it.  I even have some ideas on how to bring this into PebbleStorm that don’t include Karaoke.)

You can have fun with work, and part of that includes mixing your passions into it in ways that make it more fun for you and more interesting and fun for customers!

I hope this note gave you some food for thought. Even if you shift just one degree in course, you’ll end up in a better place in the future.

Enjoy!
Aaron Ross

Related blog posts:

The Sun Sketch and Unique Genius:
“What is your Unique Genius?”

The Treasure Map Sketch inspired its own event:
“Reinventing work with a PebbleStorm Treasure Map Hike”

Mashing your passions:
“Mash your passions!  How could you combine yoga and poetry and…?”

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Get the Unique Genius Worksheet (Playsheet!) for free by subscribing to PebbleStorm via email:
http://www.PebbleStorm.com/updates

If you resonate with what I’ve been sharing here on PebbleStorm (www.PebbleStorm.com/about) and how I live my own life, you are meant for more – to play a bigger game in life, to have more fun and success in work, to make more money and to make a huge impact in the world (mine: I’m helping 100 million people make money through enjoyment).

Do you feeling a yearning to experience more purpose and fulfillment while making more money? Do you feel a nagging sense that you’re NOT really making the kind of contribution and positive impact in the world that is possible?

• Perhaps you’re one of those accomplished people who doesn’t want to do only what you’ve been doing, yet you aren’t sure what you want to do next, what bigger mission is in store for you (there is one!)
• Or even if you’ve tapped into your purpose, your Unique Genius, you still think you can’t both make a lot of money from it AND have fun and freedom in work and life at the same time (wrong!)
• You find yourself depleted, stressed and overwhelmed by the demands of your work and the uncertainty of where you’re going (this is not the way you are meant to live.)
• You have core values (integrity, spirituality, meaning, enjoyment, fun, giving back…) that you struggle to integrate into your work (you can.)
• You still think that you can either do what you love and what helps others, OR make money – that combining the two is only for special people who lucked out (wrong!)

Perhaps the most frustrating is the sense that you’re just missing something – which you are…but the good news is it is possible to find it.

I know how you feel. I felt that way.  I’ve been through all of this and more in the past few years while transitioning from the stable-yet-unfulfilling-and-freedom-killing corporate life at Salesforce.com to creating my dream business, PebbleStorm.

Here’s one more issue I faced, a doozy: do you also have more ideas than you know what do with, creating confusion about what to do next?  (Figuring out how to do them all while having fun while “working,” as much as I want and from where I want, is what led to my own breakthroughs and vision for PebbleStorm.)

WAKE UP and STOP PLAYING SMALL

I want to grab your shirt and shake you and yell WAKE UP!!

Do you really want to wake up some morning in a year or two or TEN from now, still doing what you’re doing and making what you’re making?

• YOU are the only thing getting in your own way.
• Not a lack of money, time, education, contacts, whatever – those are all just excuses.
• Your vision board isn’t going to magically make it happen either.
• You can have it all f you stop playing small and stop compromising on what you want and accept in life and work.

While not everyone is meant for big things...YOU ARE if you’re reading this and you feel it, if it resonates.

Examples Of The Power I’ve Found Through Play & Purpose

The name PebbleStorm came from my intention to create an environment of work in which I, and others, can make big impacts with small amounts of effort (“small pebble, big wave”).  Play and Purpose have been the keys to discovering my Power:

• I created two profitable passive-income businesses (www.DataSalad.com and www.ColdCalling2.com)…in four hours each (well, ColdCalling2.com took 4:15). And I spent less than $100 to do it, each. They’ve generated more than $25,000 in passive income in the past twelve months – including $6,000 in July.
• I created and developed PebbleStorm into a $10,000-per-month attraction-based coaching, speaking and seminars business – going to $20,000 and then $50,000 per month next year – while spending less than 4 hours per week to found and launch it. (Now that it’s past the baby stage and is growing up, I can productively spend more fun time on it). And with no “selling”!
• I’ve spent less than $100 out-of-pocket to create and launch PebbleStorm – yes, I know it’s time to redo the website 🙂
• Without me asking, a top internet marketing guru offered to help me launch PebbleStorm, resulting in a first webinar of 1300 registrants and a sold-out first group mastermind program (a follow up one is coming in early 2010).
• I wrote a soon-to-be-published book (“CEOFlow: Turn Your Employees Into Mini-CEOs“) in one weekend – Nov 22-23, 2009 – yes TWO DAYS.
• I am designing a first-ever “PebbleStorm Immersion: Uncover, Build & Launch Your Business In 3 Days”. This will be an intimate event in January for my private coaching clients.  Even better – 1/3 of the time will be for playing, getting to know each other and building ongoing relationships!
• Over the past three years, while doing all this, I’ve lived and traveled overseas for four months in places like Bali, Argentina, China, Japan, Brazil, India, Nepal and Bhutan.

And that is just in the first year of PebbleStorm – 2010 will be crazy!

Most of these topics will be the subjects of their own blog posts in the coming months.

Until then, come to the event and learn how it works…

A New Kind Of Event With Nancy Dunn

For a couple of years, people would ask me “PebbleStorm sounds great, but what do I do? How can you help?”  This year, 2009, I’ve begun creating more ways to help people: Unique Genius Playshops, a six-month Mastermind program (a new one will begin early next year), private coaching, etc.

Now I’m doing something brand new with another PebbleStormy (yes, that is a word) entrepreneur, Nancy Dunn.

Nancy is the founder of TimePlayPowerAndPeace.com.  She’s an ex-Sony/MGM/Fox senior marketing executive who managed more than $1 billion in spend. She left that world to have a family and to discover her true purpose: to help women in leadership live a life of more time, more play, more power and more peace.  Oftentimes women in leadership have to play the corporate game to succeed, and in the process lose parts of themselves. Nancy’s truly mastered how to combine the power and action required to succeed in the business world with her feminine side and the conscious design of what she wants from life.

(Here’s how Nancy describes me: “My friend Aaron Ross, founder of PebbleStorm.com, ex-Silicon Valley CEO, adventure-seeker, and general awesome guy just found a way to combine all his various passions and crazy ideas into a single, meaningful business that he loves, that helps people, and that makes money.  Now he helps other people do this too.”)  Hey, thanks Nancy 🙂

We wanted to have fun doing something together that would help the kinds of people that resonate with what we do – professionals like you who have been successful at something, yet now are looking for more meaning, enjoyment and money in work. People who want to integrate their values and spirituality and life with their work, rather than having their work and life be disconncted.

So Nancy & I put our heads together to CREATE A REALLY FUN AND POWERFUL LIVE EVENT that will:

• Inspire you to step into the life, contribution and impact you know you came here to make.
• Teach you secrets and practical tools from two master teachers and successful ex-corporate executives, each of whom left their corner offices behind to find their true, authentic, dynamic calling – and are having the time of their lives doing it!
• Introduce you to a cool, community of like-minded people that will become playmates, workmates, clients and partners!  (The whole point of PebbleStorm is to expand our trusting community of people that has fun helping each other succeed.)

We are hosting a unique event called:

“PLAY, PURPOSE AND POWER: CHARTING YOUR COURSE FOR 2010 AND BEYOND”

* We’ll Play – Because it’ll be fun and it will open up your creativity and give you more access to what will make you happier and more successful!
* We’ll show you ways to tap into finding your Purpose – What are you meant to do?  What is your Unique Genius?
* We’ll reveal 3 ways to shift into exponentially greater levels of Power – How can you make a bigger difference and make more money?

You will also connect and build support for your goals and actions within a community of like-minded conscious leaders, high-level executives, and purpose-driven entrepreneurs who are authentically committed to helping each other succeed.

Whether you’re ready to take the leap into a career that has deeper meaning and fulfillment, OR primed to step up into greater levels of impact, purpose, and contribution doing what you’re already doing, you won’t want to miss this AWESOME event.

You will also connect and build support for your goals and actions within a community of like-minded leaders, high-level executives, and purpose-driven entrepreneurs who are authentically committed to helping each other succeed.

Come PLAY with us and design 2010 into the life of your dreams!

How To RSVP

Click here for the details and how to RSVP

So You Live Outside LA…Want Us To Host This Kind Of Event In Your City?

Leave a comment, you never know what you’ll get if you ask for it!  Especially if you live someplace fun or exotic 🙂  We’re always looking for excuses to travel and build the PebbleStorm community.

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One my essential entrepreneurial practices is a morning Personal Success Routine (“PSR”), that is my foundation for the day.  If you don’t have one or you never consciously designed it – you need one.  If you have one, I’d love to hear about yours in the comments.  I’ve found that when I don’t follow some kind of morning Personal Success Routine that includes some or all of various meditation, writing, exercise or happiness activities, I feel less healthy, less happy and less productive – both in the ways I have fun and in work.

Why I had to figure this out

When I left salesforce.com in late 2006, “my plan was to have no plan” –  I was “committed to being uncommitted”!  I wanted to have a bunch of different work and life adventures, for at least six months, before settling into a long-term direction. In work terms, that meant doing consulting projects for awhile rather than trying to start my own company right away.  I’ve seen that when I or others jump from one job/career to another, it’s impossible to get the mental space and clarity that helps you actually consciously know “is this really the right path/step for me, or am I doing it just because it’s the next rung on the ladder or it’s convenient?”   (Not unlike relationships.)

Whenever I was in a 9-to-5 job, it automatically forced me to create a morning routine – wakeup at 7a, eat oatmeal, shower, get dressed in a collared shirt, get coffee, read the paper, take the bus to work…etc.  (As I’m writing this, I’m noticing how much my morning consumptions changed – no coffee, oatmeal or newspapers.  I’m a little allergic/sensitive to coffee and oats, and I don’t read news anymore – online or offline.)

No daily structure can be as bad as too much structure

After I left the 9-to-5 world, I had to figure out a whole new morning routine for myself. I mean sure, it’s fun waking up to nothing for awhile…but it gets old.  When you have no morning or daily structure, it can be as irritating as having too much structure.  And even though I’d been an entrepreneur before, it was different because I was the CEO of a company…and thus had another 9-to-5 job.

• Side note for everyone who thinks being a CEO is automatically fun, enlivening and easy – it’s not. It can be the loneliest, most stressed role in a company, if you aren’t conscious in your design of your company or role.  It’s why I’m also doing CEOFlow: “Turn Your Employees Into Mini-CEOs”.

So now in my PebbleStormy (yes, that’s a word) world of “work on what I want, when I want, with whom I want, from where I want…” I’ve been experimenting for a long time on how to start my days off on the right foot.  Trust me, either lying in bed or doing nothing in the morning gets old fast – well, if I do it more than 1-2 days per week…

My routine that helps me feel healthier, happier and more focused and productive each day

1. Get enough sleep.  I’m actually working on getting more sleep. I’m only getting about 6 hours per night (last night I got 5).  I want 7 – 7.5 hours per night, which is perfect for me.  The whole “sleep when I’m dead” mentality is bullshizz.  What good is not sleeping if you don’t enjoy your days as much?  I feel like crap when I don’t get enough sleep after a few days, and am much less clear and productive.   Right now I set my alarm for 7am.
2. Drink water. 1-2 cups. I get dehydrated at night. It’s the best thing to have before anything else in the morning.
3. Get moving, I do either some jumping jacks, push ups and/or sit ups. This is both for the exercise and to wake up and get my blood moving.
4. Meditation. I do 10-30 minutes almost every morning.  It would be nice if I was more regular about meditating for 5 minutes before bed, too.  I did a blog post about my practice: A lifetime happiness and focus enhancer: Vipassana meditation. If you’ve never meditated before, you can start with 1-2 minutes: Meditation 101: How To Start.
   
5. The Artist Way “Morning Pages”. The essence of this: just write three pages of anything, even gibberish, every morning, and it will help you unlock your creativity.  I really like these as a way to do a brain chatter dump, and get some advice from myself. Sometimes I just do half a page, sometimes the full three pages.
   
6. 1-2 happiness/centering exercises. These days I’ll do some exercises from either the Hoffman Institute retreat I did or from the Abraham-Hicks book “Ask And It Is Given” (I love their Focus Wheel Process).  I HIGHLY recommend that book for both the content and all the great tools in the back!
7. A “3 goals” process. I ask myself the question, “if I can only get 3-5 things done today, what should they be?”  What are my top priorities?
8. Exercise: 4-5 days a week I do either running (20-45 min down to the Santa Monica beach) or yoga in the morning (I love Rudy at 9am at Power Yoga in Santa Monica).  If I run, I do it early – after I drink water, but before all the other stuff (before meditation, etc).  When I do yoga, it comes after my writing/meditation.
9. Skin brushing: I had a couple of trusted experts tell me about this, and now I do it most days before showering.  There are plenty of articles about skin brushing and why it’s good for you, but I’ll tell you the main reason I like it – it stimulates my skin and nerves and body like I’m getting a caffeine charge.  Very cool.
10. Good food: Almost every morning, I have a green smoothie (picture on Facebook).  I have a Vita-Mix blender, and dump in spinach (a lot!), an apple, berries, and all kinds of superfoods and goodies like ginger, lemon, mesquite, rice protein, flaxseed, hempseed, maca, goji berries and spirulina.  You can google “green smoothie” online for all kinds of suggestions.  I became religious about this after taking an amazing ‘uncooking’ class from June Louks in Malibu, who wrote a great book called  “Rawumptious Recipes: A Family’s Adventure to Healthy, Happy, Harmonious Living”.  I’m not a raw foodie, but can appreciate all the information and recipes.

I’m always experimenting with these steps, adding, subtracting, playing.  The order of steps often changes depending on the day and whether I’m running, doing yoga, am time-limited, etc.  I’m not too anal about it.

This might seem like a lot – and it is.  I set aside a couple of hours for all of this, not including the exercise.  That’s how important it is to me. I didn’t start here, I evolved this over the past three years, building on it step-by-step, then starting from scratch and trying other things. My travel still plays havoc with my PSR!

Take babysteps rather than jumping in too fast

You don’t need a lot of steps in the morning, or some complex routine.  Start with something simple, such as a green smoothie.  Or 1-2 minutes of meditation.  Create a plan to have a more exensive PSR over time, including good food, exercise, meditation, happiness awareness/practice and goal-setting.  If you try to do too much too quickly, you’ll be more likely to fall off track at some point and get discouraged.  Start with one thing at a time – take babysteps, and keep at them.   Keep it simple and add one new practice per month.  If you fall off track, just get back on when you can.

[Updated] Being kind to myself

I woke up Monday morning feeling run-down (it started Sunday night), and I needed a rest day. So my PSR for Monday was staying in bed sleeping and/or reading a fiction book until 11am 🙂   Being successful includes being kind/easy to myself in addition to pushing myself.  Too much of one or the other unbalances me.

How I Design My Week For Success

A follow up post about designing my week:
https://pebblestorm.com/2010/03/12/how-i-design-my-week-for-success/

“Productive Flourishing” Charley Gilkey’s PSR

If you really want to take this thinking to the next level, check out Charlie Gilkey:
How Heatmapping Your Productivity Can Make You More Productive

What’s your PSR?   Please share in the comments!

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In July I spoke at a Meeting Of The Minds event in Southern California. MOTMs was started by Kurt Daradics of FreedomSpeaks and Baron Miller, and is a great group of entrepreneurial people that meets monthly.  I had fun sharing with them last night!  The format was casual (more of an interview) and not a presentation, and so rather than a slide deck, I put together a collection of sketches I’ve done over the past year, and at different times during the talk I’d call one up to share with people.

Here is the collection…enjoy!

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This summer, a group of PebbleStorm entrepreneurs got together for a “Treasure Map Hike” in Topanga Canyon. We began the day with a guided visualization, then started hiking. Along the way we picked up pirate toys, new friends and great ideas!  Some lasting friendships and business partnerships have come from that one fun day.

The full Facebook photo album is on the PebbleStorm Fan Page.

Some people go straight for the enjoyment gold, some have to climb mountains before they get there (like me), and others wander through the desert, fight dragons and hike through volcanoes to get there.

If you’re a mountain climber or volcano-hiker and want some help…

Unique Genius Coaching – you can work like this too!

I am now doing individual coaching of clients.  I even have a client as far away as Copenhagen, Denmark. (Hi Simon!)

PebbleStorm is a community of people that have fun helping each other succeed – as you can see from the pictures and video below 🙂

In my own coaching, I help you get clear on what you are passionate about, how to find your Unique Genius, and show you how to make money from it in a way that aligns with your values and how you want work to make your life amazing!

Sign up for a “Let’s Get Acquainted Session” here.

And now…

Arrr!!!
And more fun 🙂

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If you could go back and give “yourself-of-six-months-ago” advice around working, and specifically around how to find your purpose while having more success and fun with work, what would you tell yourself?  What three pieces of advice would you share?

Yes, this is me around 4 years old. If I could only go back in time and give myself some advice that I’d actually listen to and obey… 🙂

I think you’ll know what I mean when I say I used to rush around in work so much that I never had a chance to pause, breathe and reflect on what was working and not working in, um, work.

How often do we stop and reflect?  (Or even just stop?)  Not enough!  Yet it was taking a pause (in the form of a trip to Asia waaaaaay back in mid-2007), that helped create the mental space for the vision of PebbleStorm.

The phrase that comes to mind is “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”  Anything with the word “doom”, I want to avoid!

On October 28, we had a PebbleStorm webinar on “Lessons Learned” since PebbleStorm’s launch back in March.  Specifically, I’ve been thinking about “what advice would I give myself back then?”, what 3-5 pieces of advice would I share to help me be more successful with greater ease, clarity and fun?  I’ve been asking what advice the other PebbleStormers would give their prior selves too… so that we can all benefit from it.

What We Shared:

• I’ll share my own Top 5 Lessons Learned from doing this program over the past six months. What advice would I give my past self?
• Some other PebbleStormers will be sharing as well – what would advice would they give their past selves?
• The two most popular pieces of advice that people shared will surprise you!
• What works?  What have people accomplished?
• Funny enough, all these lessons learned are ones YOU can still learn from, that yourself of six months in the future would tell you now!

To Watch The Recording Or View The Slides, Register Here:

Once you register, you will receive an email with the links.  If you don’t get an email in your inbox right away, try it again – you might have misspelled your email.

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Yesterday the Amazing Onna and I had some fun recording video, which can be fun if you don’t take it too seriously 🙂

Have you ever felt blocked from doing something you felt you should do?  I mean, blocked for MONTHS?  I find that happens to me all the time, and rather than using discipline and willpower to push my way through, I practice using fun and enjoyment to sneak around the resistance.

For example, I know I ‘should’ have been doing more video over the past months to help people connect with me and PebbleStorm, but I’ve been resisting it – for no good reason. And the longer I waited, the more guilty I felt…

Finally I took my own advice – to redesign/reframe how doing more video could be fun, so that the blocks and resistance disappear. On Monday, Onna Young and I had some fun shooting video on Monday for PebbleStorm. The result?  The rest of this post…

We’ll keep playing with video – it’ll be fun to see how this evolves.

How have you had fun creating business (or personal) videos? Please share your tips in the comments!

Welcome to PebbleStorm”  Video Now On The “About” Page

Where did the name PebbleStorm come from?

Casey Berman Shares About The PebbleStorm Community

9 Ways To Have Fun Creating Videos For Your Business

1. Buy a simple and fun video recorder for under $200: like a Flip, a FlipHD, or even a handheld camera.  My pocket camera Canon PowerShot SD 780is takes high-definition video as well.  You don’t need an expensive camera.  If you have a Mac or a webcam than you already have one ready to go.
2. Do it with a fun person/people – apply this lesson to everything!  It makes all the difference in creating video, creating businesses, or creating your life 🙂
3. Keep it simple – yes you can create a fancy setting, background, etc… but you don’t need to.  For these videos, we just walked outside to my front yard and started shooting.
4. Play with the editing – I use iMovie on my mac. It’s simple and really is fun to play with the different settings, fades, etc.  I just make sure I don’t spend too much time trying to get it perfect.  I literally just play with it.
5. Practice…but don’t be a perfectionist. We took several takes of each, but overall perhaps spent 30 minutes to an hour on these and the other video shots we did.  And it will get easier over time.  Of course there are parts of the videos that aren’t perfect, like the sound quality or birds cawing, but so what?  We got them done and had fun!
6. Do it in a fun place – like from Cabo, or anyplace that would make you feel more fun, comfortable or inspired.  Sure the sound quality might be worse in a random place…but so what?
7. Be spontaneous – before Onna came over to my house (she comes over on Monday afternoons for these kind of PebbleStorm work/play sessions), I sent her a text “Today we’re doing some video!”…and we just did it.  It was fun because it wasn’t a huge, complicated project.  We jumped into it and did it.
8. Create a routine – Onna and I are going to do a video interview series, more questions like the “Where did the name PebbleStorm come from?”  As we keep up the weekly drumbeat of videos, it’ll get easier and more fun and smoother… until we decide we need to shake things up.
9. Don’t worry, be crappy – just grab a camera or turn on a webcam and just do it!!

P.S. – Coaching

I’m now doing one-on-one coaching, to help people take their professional experiences, mash them up with their life passions to create an exciting business that is meaningful and enjoyable…just as I did for myself with PebbleStorm.

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My First Burning Man

The Friday before last (Aug 31), I made an executive decision to go to Burning Man the next night – Sat Sept 1. I did the 24-hour mad scramble, and made it 🙂 I went up with an internet and legal entrepreneur Alexis Martin Neely and my marketing coach Max Simon.  It’s the kind of experience that could have been very challenging with the wrong people, and I’m glad I went with them and Alexis’ family and friends, because I had a great time both at Burning Man activities in general, and also in just getting to hang out with them personally.Burning Man is crazy! During the days I went to workshops or lectures on fun or just interesting topics like Acroyoga, Contact Dancing, Trance Dance, Group Singing, Polyamory, Shamanism, Conscious Business and…well, you get the idea. There’s all kinds of even crazier stuff for people to wander into or explore.  At night, we went out dancing at huge parties in the desert. A lot of people there are on drugs, but lots aren’t (like moi). It’s impossible to describe the environment – you have to go to “get” it.

I’m not sure about lessons learned yet, but I was exposed to all kinds of new ideas and experiences that stretched my awareness. I feel like it’ll take some time for everything to sink it and to see how it shapes me in the future. I’m still detoxing 🙂

More Pictures, Video n Stuff:

Pictures on Facebook
Video: Thunderdome fight:
Video: Burning The Man
What is Burning Man?

Next “Inner” Adventure: The Hoffman Institute

The more self-aware and conscious I become, the easier it is to see my blind spots – the ones I didn’t even know existed 🙂  Do you know what I mean?  Everyone has blind spots they don’t see – even you.  Yes even YOU, the person who’s been to every personal development course known to man! Anytime someone says “I’ve already done all the work, I don’t need anything else”…I call bullshit.  The work never stops, because there is always another layer to peel back.

This is critical for people developing their Unique Genius and dream business, because your success and happiness is a reflection, in big parts, of how authentic and open you are. It will be a lot harder for most people to achieve their dreams and goals without this kind of work – just as it’d be harder without mentors and coaches and partners.

Here’s Hoffman’s short homepage blurb: “The Process allows you to examine and better understand your life and reveals why you behave the way you do. Published scientific research demonstrates the Process’s long-term positive effects on relieving depression and anxiety. To date, more than 70,000 people worldwide have used the Hoffman Process to improve their quality of life and restore their relationships with friends and family.”

I’ve been excited for quite awhile to do the Hoffman Process, ever since Marni Battista (founder, Dating With Dignity) told me about it and how transformational it is.  So I’m going offline again on Friday for a week at the Hoffman Institute (www.HoffmanInstitute.org), a personal development retreat – no phone or email allowed.  Besdides Marni, another close friend, Yanitz Rubin here in PebbleStorm, has said it’s just amazing – totally transformational. For example, one of the main areas I’m interested in looking at and working through is being able to create more intimacy in relationships – friends, family, romantic, etc.  I feel like I tend to keep people at a distance, at least more than I’d like.

Their main essay introduction is “A Path To Personal Freedom And Love”

I’ll report back on this later in September!

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While people in PebbleStorm are working on all kinds of projects – internet, coaching and more (like George Kao’s “Effective Social Media Marketing with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn”), Erin and Hong-Anh here have created a couple of great images that I wanted to share first as a complement to their words tonight (Wed, Aug 19) on the “Invitation To Inspiration” call!

Erin Halling: Helping kids Play Into Love with themselves, their lives, and their dreams.

“I found my Unique Genius! Whoo! It was inside me all along. It bubbled out a couple weeks ago while I was going over some of Aaron’s PebbleStorm slides and writing in my journal. I noticed that Aaron’s Unique Genius is made of two parts. The first is part is something he is good at- helping people make money. The second part is something he is passionate about- making money through enjoyment. Put the two parts together, and you have his Unique Genius- helping people make money through enjoyment.

So I asked myself, “What am I good at?”  I’m good at playing. I enjoy crafts, finger painting, baking, laughing, running around, tickle fights, pillow fights…basically, playing.

Then I asked, “What am I passionate about?” I’m passionate about kids loving themselves and believing in their dreams. I want them to feel confident and know that their lives are filled with infinite possibilities.

After that I put them together and came up with my Unique Genius-

Helping kids Play Into Love with themselves, their lives, and their dreams.

It seems so simple now. Every time I look at it, read it, or think it I get a little zing in my heart. It’s like I want kids to fall in love with themselves, but that is way to passive and doesn’t sound like fun. No, I want kids to Play Into Love with themselves.…full blog post: on “Play Into Love”

Hong-Anh: “Helping People Manifest Their Heart-of-Hearts Vision”

Hong-An, who’s blog is “Miracles and Magic“, is an incredible gem 🙂  You’ll understand when you listen to her.  Part of her unique genius is helping others nurture their own unique genius…and the most recent visualization and explanation she’s come up with is this one…

“Helping People Manifest Their Heart-of-Hearts Vision”

She’s beginning with the intention and visualization here, and future steps will include fleshing it out in words or more images, and also how this will end up helping her make money 🙂   Actually – the making money part will be easy, since Hong-Anh is and will be a PebbleStorm leader in helping others with their own Unique Geniuses!

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Been wanting a taste of PebbleStorm or even just looking for some inspiration?  Join us on Wednesday for some inspiration! It’s a fun call on “Sharing Some Simple Success Stories”…

I have a PebbleStorm program running with about 15 people in it. I kicked it off at the PebbleStorm Launch (“Thanks For Making The World More Of The Place I Want To Live“) back in March.

Every month I hold a private teleseminar or webinar for the current PebbleStorm group. PebbleStorm’s a safe, accepting environment for people to play and experiment and culture their Unique Genius, which usually involves them exploring interests, passions and ideas that are new and even unfamiliar with…since they’ve been suppressing them for years or decades.

An Example – My Art

For example, until last year I had no idea that art is part of my own Unique Genius, until I started playing with sketching about a year ago.  At first I was embarrassed about them (my first two hilarious first sketches…yeesh), and sharing them with accepting friends helped me develop my art talents.  No one’s more surprised than me that my sketches are many people’s favorite part of PebbleStorm…after the people in it.

Opening Up The Call This Month To: You

Many people in the group have had great breakthroughs and progress in their clarity and are seeing their present and future plans crystallize. My own plans for the future are getting more and more clear as well.

I’m opening up the monthly private Pebblestorm group call this time to share with more friends (it’s f-ree of course).   This call is for any (current or aspiring) entrepreneurs seeking:

1. More clarity for their work or life purpose, or
2. More enjoyment in their work, or
3. More inspiration!

…and of course all three eventually lead to more money 🙂

Inspiration Guaranteed

Most of the call will be PebbleStormers sharing about what’s happened for them over the past four months, their breakthroughs, successes and what has worked /not worked for them.  It will be inspiring – guaranteed.  I’m inspired every time I talk with one of them!

Download the Call Recording:

…By subscribing to upates:

Know any CEOs juggling life, employees and the world, who are feeling overwhelmed and uncertain? I have a great opportunity for both you and the person that refers them to me…keep reading…

CEOFlow is my coaching program for CEOs. I saw, from being a CEO, working with them and knowing many of them, that it’s easy to create a business that traps you rather than works for you.  It’s also just lonely at the top.

While we begin by focusing first just on the CEO themself, because the CEO is the ‘pebble in the pond’ that creates every ripple within the business, the CEOFlow system is about turning your employees into mini-CEOs who can help you run and grow your business like high-level executives.

Here is what is possible for CEOs to experience:

• A peaceful and centered mind – stress is the enemy (of your and your company’s success)
• Manage & succeed by being yourself rather than stepping into a different CEO personality at work
• For women, find a path to power that doesn’t compromise your femininity
• More enjoyment of your business and your daily work
• Your ideal combination of money, freedom and adventure

F^ree CEOFlow Sessions For Five CEOs

I’m offering a free CEOFlow consult to five CEOs (each is a $375 value).  Again, for a sense of the specifics of the program and my approach, you can take a look at www.CEOFlow.com/mini-ceos.

How To Apply

Send an email to info at pebblestorm dot com, with answers these questions:

1. How many employees (including part-time or independent contractors) do you have?
2. If you could wave a magic wand and change 3 things in your business or life right now, what would they be?
3. What 3-4 things do you feel are holding back the potential of a) your business, and b) you within it?

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