Winning Despite Failure – Thanks Jim Kukral for the Timely Perspective
Yesterday, I found myself sitting in bankruptcy court, definitely, a first for me. Long story short, business has been good, but my personal finances went into a tail spin when Wells Fargo foreclosed on my home in the middle of an Obama plan refinance. BoA didn’t help the situation eith
er by jacking my interest rates up to 30% even though I hadn’t ever missed any payments at the time.
So after months of work reorganizing my personal finances, things came to a head when my wife and I went to court and asked for a discharge of debt, aka we went bankrupt filing chapter 7.
Not happy about it, but as I was thumbing through the book, Internet Marketing from the Real Experts by Shawn Collins and Missy Ward of Affiliate Summit fame, I came upon the 3 minute lesson from Jim Kukral, whom I’ve had the good fortune to have known for a few years now.
The chapter was his famous ‘Are you a Loser or a Failure?’ topic.
Now, I have been lucky enough to here Jim speak more than a half dozen times. In fact, one winter, I heard him give his presentation ‘Are you a loser or a Failure’ three or four times in a week. It’s a good presentation, but by about the 2nd or 3rd time, well, I had heard that one before. Lesson learned, internalized, filed away, and appreciated.
Context is Everything
Then yesterday while I’m sitting in bankruptcy court with dozens of other people in the same situation, I came across this familiar topic again.
Well, even though I could just about give this speech myself from memory, it sank in on a new level.
The general point of the topic is that Losers give up and quit and people that are failures, learn from their mistakes and try again.
That pretty much sums me up. The downward spiral of my personal finances can be traced back to my corporate accounting days when I made $100k per year. Salary was great, but to support that salary and stay on the fast track, I had to relocate every couple years. That led me to rack up a lot of debt, which I could maintain when I was making $100k, but then the Chinese Mafia got involved (literally).
One day I found my division at Motorola transferred and sold to the Chinese Mafia. That’s not the type of thing they tell you during the HR employee transition meeting unfortunately. They just give you the name of the most visible corporate shell owned by the mafia, aka your new bosses.
So to keep my long story short, once I found out who I was working for, I turned those assholes in to the Feds as fast as I could, lost my corporate accounting job, but saved my life and the lives of my family. Who needs a $100k per year salary when you are dead or ‘disappeared’?
For the next 5 years, I worked to build my own business, and looking back, I have done pretty damned good. I just didn’t grow it to the point where I was profiting $100k a year, this that and another thing, and before you know it, I’m seeking bankruptcy protection and REALLY starting over.
But not starting over completely. Because I’ve got 5 years of lessons learned, a growing business built on my reputation and results (but not physical assets hence the chptr 7).
I wasn’t feeling down or negative yesterday, the low point of this whole mess was last March when I learned that I had been foreclosed on 
without any written notification. That blindsided action was depressing a bit, but there’s only so much you can do in that situation.
But it was definitely a boost to internalize Jim’s message again yesterday, especially in the middle of a week, when I’m working like crazy on projects for my clients. The future looks very good, business is looking good, I’m not only working from a clean slate financially, but I’m working from a clean slate with a lot of great experience.
Icing on the Cake
Now today, the day after bankruptcy, Amazon just delivered Jim’s new book “Attention This Book will Make you Money – How to Use Attention Getting online marketing to increase your revenue”
I’m expecting big things out of the future.
Free Running with Vibram Five Finger Toe Shoes Video
Since I got my first pair of Vibram Five Finger Toe Shoes last fall, I’ve been wondering when they might be used for free running. The shoes are just too damned fun. Even for the less daring they kind of turn the whole world into a playground due to the heightened sensory perception activity that your brain receives from your feet and toes.
This video features some but not all of the participants working out in a free running playground or park. Some of the folks are wearing Vibrams. I would think that the feedback would be very important in helping you sense and react with the fractional seconds necessary to process your next move and reaction. That said, I do have to wonder just how strong your feet would have to become to be able to jump some of these distances barefoot.
Not Familiar with Free Running?
Here is the video that introduced me to the sport. I have not tried it myself yet, but it reminds me a lot of skateboarding and rollerblading, which I used to do quite a bit years back.
There’s Something About Game Design – Brenda Brathwaite
First I apologize, anytime I am in a hurry and don’t actually put any effort into a title on this blog, I just put in the words ‘There’s Something About . . .’ before whatever and run with it. This isn’t going to be a long post, because, I really am in a hurry, but I’ve decided that I’m not going to put this off any longer.
About a month ago, I was in Savannah, Georgia for a Geekend Conference on River Street. I hadn’t spent any real time in Savannah, since moving from the city in 1995. I’ve spent a few vacations on Tybee since, but no time just hanging out in Savannah, so this weekend was definitely cool just for that alone.
But the real highlight of the conference for me came from a very inspirational talk by Brenda Brathwaite. Brenda is a video game designer, which is kind of like saying Tiger Woods is a golfer. She is considered one of the 100 most influential women in the game industry and to hear her speak is to understand why!
At the techno heavy Geekend Conference, Brenda took a step back and discussed her relatively recent projects building . . . board games, and I haven’t been so inspired since attending the Podcast and Portable Media expo on podcasting and video casting back when YouTube was new.
Its hard to imagine getting excited about board games, but the key here is not the medium being digital or non-digital. She essentially stepped out of the digital world temporarily to explore different areas in games, deconstructing board game after board game, then using her artistic and design talent to create several board games intended to teach a lesson, such as her game ‘Train’.
Train is essentially a simple game. Upon opening up the box, you get some train cars, some figures in a cloth bag, and some train track. You dump out the figures from the bag, set up the track and the object of the game is to move the figures in the train as efficiently as possible.
The game is about the Holocaust.
Within this game as in the other ‘board’ games that she has created, she has found a way to not only teach players the ‘system’ of the game world that is presented, but give her players a small touch of life experience of a game system that represents a real world system with real world people.
I have been essentially writing on blogs for several years now. I’ve done this for a bunch of reasons, but one of the more important reasons hindered upon my desire to someday be able to do some writing justice to the topic of my demise as a corporate accountant when I ran up against organized criminals in China at the company I worked for as well as organized criminals within Deloitte and Touche and HSBC and a few other organizations. What followed was a relatively insane time in my own life as I went from a corporate accountant on the fast track up to whistle blower for the IRS in the matter of just a few days.
My life and the lives of my family were threatened, evidenced was gathered, lawyers were used, private detectives were outside my house, death threats came in the middle of the night, strippers and prostitutes were paid off with ill gotten gains, 2 way radio devices were shipped out the back door of a plant in China and ended up attached to explosive materials creating IED’s in Iraq. The whole situation sucked, and I helped uncover it.
Understanding the systems that were at play in this crazy situation seemed like they might make very good and important fodder for both a fiction and a non-fiction book some day. But after listening to Brenda’s talk and her experiences, I realized that it would also make a fantastic game. Not just something ‘fun to play’ but something that could help people understand the complexities of globalization, international tax law, money laundering, the spread of capitalism in China and much more.
Purpose of this Article – Blogmarking this topic
So basically, I am writing this quick summary of my inspiration, just so that I don’t lose track of things as I continue on through the holidays. I plan on picking up Brenda’s book on sex in video game design sometime soon as well, and definitely look forward to adding game design to my own repertoire some day soon.
Just Signed up for this Seminar with Steve Wozniak
What a cool last minute find in LinkedIn! Might have to hang on LinkedIn more often, just to find events like this. I’ve been wondering how useful LinkedIn might still be for me, and having some doubts until I found this.
Twics – Twitter Comics find a Twomedy Home
Just when you thought there couldn’t be more stupid combinations of partial names that mean nothing and even less when mixed with the word twitter, well the Chicago Tribune has come to your rescue with a new word, Twomedy.
Twomedy is the practice or engagement of a comedic mind who chooses to express themselves in 140 characters or less on Twitter in hopes of never being discovered, not ever.
On twitter almost anyone can be funny. You can have your nanosecond of fame if you can just whip out a witty one liner every day or 3 raising the temporary mirth level in the twitter stream until some fan boy or girl wets themselves over the latest deep insight from some johnny-come-not-so-lately social media titan with 20k twitter followers of which 18,500 are questionable.
What the hell am I blabbering about?
Nothing really and I’m doing it in more than 140 characters. Here are some people that are reaching out and tickling some ribs though.
- "i like my women like i like my beer: tasty, rich, kinda thick, a little malty, almost empty, comes in a box, recyclable, what was i doing??/" – @tehawesome
- "I love watching my wife sleep, but it feels a bit like stalking. Maybe I should try it from in the bed, instead of out here in the bushes." – @toldorknown
- "I like the communion wafers that stick to the roof of your mouth because I really like to savor my Savior." – @Aimee_B_Loved
- "With thousands of car salespeople being put out of work today, panhandlers are about to get a whole lot pushier." – @BlueLanugo
- "Listen, Batman. You can call it a "utility belt" all you want. I know a fanny pack when I see one. Just hand me the wet-nap and shut up." – @sween
- "Wife put crock pot cooking corned beef dinner near open window. Had to beat three Leprechauns and two Kennedys off the window sill." – @giromide
- "Are the employees at the Post Office immortal? Because that would go a long way towards explaining their lack of urgency." – @joeschmitt
- "Hit 9 bikers on the way to work this morning. Love the quiet ride of the hybrid. We get points for this at the end of the week, right?
" – @Kathy_L
- "Either cartoon ladies are getting way hotter or I need to keep this kind of thing to myself." – @hotdogsladies
- "Follow your dreams. …Did anyone see a Zooey Deschanel made of donuts come through here?" – @luckyshirt
Robin Williams they are not, but they do show that almost anyone can be amusing from time to time and some of us time and time again even. They may not be stand up material. Their timing may be non-existent, but they are human and have a sense of humor. Who knows maybe twitter will actually even become useful some day. . . .
Setting My Projector up on the Dock
I’ve been working from a WiFi Cove on Lake Wylie for more than a year now. All that time, I thought about setting up my projector out on the dock, but never got around to actually doing it. Then I flew out to Vegas on Sunday to meet with my friend/business partner Joe Klein of New Media Creative. On the way out there, I watched Jim Carrey in ‘Yes Man’ which was a damn good movie from a motivational perspective. Damn good movie anyway, but perfect for watching just before going to a brainstorming meeting with a business partner.
So a few days later I return home from my trip, I sleep for about 14 hours to recover from Vegas and a bit of an allergy thing I had going on before I left, which totally leveled my voice on Tuesday while I was in Laughlin at Joe’s. So I get home, setup my computers on the dock on Friday, and get down to the business of setting up my projector on the dock.
My father-in-law received an old projector screen from a friend a few months back and its been sitting in the shed/barn/guest cabin(three rooms, 2 down and one loft above, that is finished, so its actually all of these things combined. The screen was too small to use inside, but putting it outside on a 10 x 10 covered dock, it is about perfect.
Now, I have a few challenges with the projector on the dock setup.
- First and foremost, I need to insure that the screen does not block the view which kicks ass.
- I need to make sure that the light from the sun doesn’t wash out the picture through out the various times of the day.
- I need to make sure the elements don’t trash the screen with rain, wind, dew, bugs etc.
- I the projector has to be able to hit the screen without impediments like chairs or people casting shadows.
All of those things were mostly easy to cover. I used some rope to tie the ends of the screen down on the lower corners. I re-angled my high top bar desk in one corner and position the projector off of one corner aimed at the screen.
Of course I completely screwed up with the screen and pulled it down too far the first time I opened it. That means, I’ll have to take the thing apart and fix it later. lol I love projectors and the ability to work on a computer with a screen several feet away (great for not burning out your eyes and working with groups of people) but retractable screens, can give you a run for it sometimes.
The angling over everything turned out just great for afternoon sessions when the sun angles down from the other side of the dock. The brightness works for everything from mindmapping to movies (currently playing Yes Man while I type this). Its a little darker than I’d like, but my bulb on my projector is about 400 hours past the time when it should have burned out. Its about one third as bright as it was when it was new, but still bright enough that it works, so I haven’t replaced it yet, and keep hoping for the day when it blows out on its own so I can justify spending $400 to buy a new one . . . but then again if I keep watching this movie, I’ll probably just buy one anyway!
Now for the record, the movie trailers for Yes Man, don’t really do it justice. It is very funny, as much as you’d expect from a Jim Carrey movie, but its also got a great plot, story, and acting as well from all the actors involved. So if you haven’t seen this movie, yet, I highly recommend it, especially if you are on a plane for Vegas heading to a brainstorming meeting.
If you are going there to gamble, well then, this may not be the best movie for you after all….
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