I’m on my honeymoon this week and my good friend (and best man) Mike has agreed to step in and do some guest posts. He blogs regularly at The Bleacher Seats (a blog about Ranger’s baseball) and has some great insights into life, work, and unem­ploy­ment. This is part 2 of a three part series. For click here for part 1. Come back Saturday for part 3!

It’s Mike again and I’m back for Part 2 of my 3 part series, Lessons in Funem­ploy­ment. (Please hold your applause until the end.)

Since leaving high school, I’ve met a lot of people. Some of those people were positive influ­ences, like friends and college profes­sors. Those people may have chal­lenged me or forced me to look at the world in a different way.

If I did change because of them, it was to become a more mature and well-rounded human person. Someone with a greater under­standing of who he is and what he believes in.

But there were others that I met that weren’t as inter­ested in making my life better. These people were often too wrapped up in them­selves, using other people or trying to keep them down.

Briefly, I want to describe 3 such people that I’ve run across in recent years. We will call them Patrick, Dave, and Mr. Schmitt.

“You’re not good enough.”

Patrick was an instructor of mine in college. He was respon­sible for grading various projects for a film class that I was taking. Patrick wasn’t a bad guy, but he also wasn’t a great commu­ni­cator and his method of grading was based more on the gut than the cerebral. (He gave someone else’s project a poor grade because it ‘felt’ too much like the movie Signs. This is not construc­tive criticism and in no way would have made the film­makers better at their craft.)

As that partic­ular class wore on, a lot of people took issue with Patrick. He seemed to be looking for Hollywood caliber from a group of people in their early 20s. There was, essen­tially, no learning curve and no consid­er­a­tion for the need to grow as a storyteller.

I got a B in the class, but my expe­ri­ence with Patrick took away a lot of my enthu­siasm for film­making. (Mind you, that was the whole reason I went to school in the first place.)

Patrick spent a lot of time teaching me that I wasn’t good enough, instead of teaching me how to get better.

“My ideas are better.”

Dave was a guy that I worked with in my very last semester at univer­sity. We were tech­ni­cally colleagues, but Dave never saw it that way.

He was one of those creative types that is too wrapped up in his own “genius” to consider those around him. He put the rest of the crew he was working with through Hell because he couldn’t get past his own ego.

He also completely failed to under­stand that film­making, like a lot of things, is a collab­o­ra­tive effort and rarely has anything to do with the vision of one man. (Unless you’re George Lucas, which Dave had a lot in common with if you take away George’s money and success).

To Dave’s credit, I did learn one very important lesson from him. Don’t be like Dave.

“Remember that you work for me.”

Mr. Schmitt was my boss at a summer camp that I worked at for 3 noncon­sec­u­tive summers. (Unlike Dave, I actually worked for Mr. Schmitt and not with Mr. Schmitt.)

Mr. Schmitt’s strengths were in marketing and PR, with a lot less emphasis on inter­per­sonal skills. His manage­ment style was like that of a carpenter trying to implement the appro­priate tool to get a job done. (When you’re using a hammer, you don’t have to ask it nicely first. People are not like hammers in this way.)

Aside from poor commu­ni­ca­tion, Mr. Schmitt spent a lot of time inad­ver­tently talking about what I wasn’t doing well. The position that I took over in 2006 had been occupied by another guy for 5 summers.

On days when there wasn’t a lot going on, Mr. Schmitt might pop into my workspace and talk to other employees about how great the guy was that I had replaced.

On and on he would go as I listened to all of the reasons why someone else was better at my job than me.

Of course, there was a lot that I loved about that job and it was far from thankless. But a lot of frus­tra­tion could have been spared if Mr. Schmitt had treated his employees like people and not poseable action figures (with Kung-Fu Action Grip).

All 3 of these men had a profound effect on me. By the time I left college people like Patrick, Dave, and Mr. Schmitt had worn me down. That thing that I had wanted to do for a long time wasn’t all that appealing for a while.

I was burnt out on people who fancied them­selves creative and decided to take a break from all of it. My dream was the last thing on my mind.

Feel free to tell me what a talent­less loser I am in the comments.

…

If things seem grim now, don’t worry.

My story isn’t over and, like most stories, the hero (that’s me!) can only overcome after a period in which all hope seems lost. Act 3 is coming up shortly and you can tune back in on Saturday to see whatever became of me and my dream.

(You may now applaud.)

I’m on my honeymoon this week and my good friend (and best man) Mike has agreed to step in and do some guest posts. He blogs regularly at The Bleacher Seats (a blog about Ranger’s baseball) and has some great insights into life, work, and unem­ploy­ment. Show him lots of love, he’s good people. This is part 1 of a three part series. Check out part 2 on Thursday

I can’t predict the future. I want to be upfront about that.

The closest I can get to clair­voy­ance is to tell you what I think probably happened sometime after I wrote this

First, Alex got married to a beautiful girl named Rachel. I was probably at the wedding acting as the greatest Best Man the world has ever known. It’s also probable that I tried to eat my weight in delicious wedding cake, because there is almost no food better than wedding cake.

Then Alex flew off (and hopefully he took Rachel with him) to somewhere sunny and left me to provide a week’s worth of content in his absence.

No doubt Alex wrote a nice little intro for me at the top of the page, but there are a few things I’d like to make sure you know about me before I really get rolling.

My name is Mike (and it’s nice to meet you). I am 25 years old, a college graduate, and have been unem­ployed for almost 2 years. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Radio, TV, & Film, with an emphasis on production.

(I’m also single, in case any of you ladies were looking for a guy who lives with his parents and might occa­sion­ally try to eat an entire wedding cake by himself.)

When I orig­i­nally went to school, I wanted to be in “the biz” as a writer/director. As college wore on, I did very little writing and even less directing. What I did realize is that it isn’t just those two facets of produc­tion that excite me, but produc­tion as a whole. It’s being on set that I enjoy, even if I’m just pulling cables or setting up lights for someone else.

Coming out of college I had a plan to look for that kind of work, but it hasn’t been easy to find it in these economic times. Thus I remain unem­ployed. Continue Reading…

Today is the day: At 1pm Rachel and I become one.

Yeah, she’s gorgeous

I have been thinking long and hard about what I wanted to write today.

At first I thought I would write about my fear. There is a lot of fear in my heart about this new adventure. Not that I am second guessing it in any way, more so part of me thinks I will fail as a husband. But I decided not to write about that.

Then I thought I would write about dealing with stress while planning a wedding. I may still write that someday, but not today.

I also thought about telling the story of Rachel and me. There may come a day when I do that and pieces of that story will inevitably show up on the blog; But in the end, I do not think I should write about that.

Today there is only one thing to write about: love. Continue Reading…

Millions of people think student loans are good debt. They are wrong. There is no such thing as good debt.

There are two types of debt most people think are good:

1. Mortgages
2. Student Loans

I think was all under­stand why a mortgage is bad debt. If you forget, go back to 2008 and look at the mortgage crisis. Then look at what banks are doing differ­ently and ask yourself if they learned anything. (Spoiler alert: they didn’t).

Student loans are trickier.

Few people would say college is a bad thing. In fact, college can be a really good thing! Most higher paying jobs expect a bachelor’s degree. And there is no denying a “club” exists that you join when your resume has “Bachelor’s of…” on it. But that does not make going into debt for college a good thing. Continue Reading…

Paul Graham rocked my world with the essay Manager’s Schedule, Maker’s Schedule . In it he walks through the differ­ence between how managers and creators think about time.

I have been studying creativity for about six months now and one of the issues that keeps coming up is this differ­ence between how creators and managers think about time.

Managers vs. Creators Continue Reading…

Seven days until the wedding! Family is coming into town, got to finish getting the apartment ready, and so many other small details to finish up before Saturday. As far as the blog goes, I have some really cool stuff planned for the week I’m out of town. Make sure to check it out.

Manager vs. Maker Schedules — Update: I just found this amazing article (thanks to Seth Godin). It goes into the differ­ence between how mangers and creatives think about time. Worth thinking about. I’ll probably blog about this.

Mission Accom­plished –What happens to Non-Profits that do the thing they set out to do? Some of them go out of business. This is a very inter­esting article. Worth your time.

The Sleepless Elite — “For a small group of people — perhaps just 1% to 3% of the popu­la­tion — sleep is a waste of time.” My favorite part of this is where they point out that most people who think they only need a few hours a sleep are wrong. Even so, this is really cool.

Jimmy Fallon’s Friday — Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert introduce us to Friday the way God intended it!

Robbed Hell — For those of you who have been following the Rob Bell contro­versy, this video hilar­i­ously sums up what everyone is talking about. (See Rob Bell’s original video first or this won’t make sense

A few weeks ago Michael Hyatt ran a contest in conjunc­tion with an interview he did with Scott Schwertly, author of “How to be a Presen­ta­tion God”. The rules went like this: tell me why you want the book in a comment.

Easy, right?

I presented the “story of a young man” which was how I came to love public speaking. It started in high school when I was the listening ear to several students. It grew in church when I was asked to teach a class. It was refined in college when I took every oppor­tu­nity handed to me to present in front of the class. And it lead me here — looking to start a business that will revolve around writing and speaking.

I ended the whole thing with a line I thought was fairly clever:

With your help, Michael, his next step in the process will be reading “How To Become a Presen­ta­tion God.” Will you help him? Will you help me?

After almost a week of waiting, Michael announced the winners and I was one of them!

I was stoked.

The book arrived a few days ago and although I haven’t had much time to read it, I did read the first chapter.

I can already tell it is going to be an amazing read. Continue Reading…

Could you fire your dad? That’s exactly what Mitchell Kaneff had to do when he realized his father was slowly wrecking the family business.

In his article Why I Fired My Father From The Family Business, Mitchell walks us through the hard decision he made as president of a large box company to fire his father. His dad had been causing major issues with the exec­u­tives and was trying to take the company in a direction opposite of what was making it a success. You can read the article here.

It is mostly a fluff piece; even so it has me asking myself some inter­esting questions.

Mostly I’ve been asking: do family busi­nesses still work?

The short answer is yes they probably do; but as Mitchell found out they can come with some difficulties…like firing your dad.

Thinking It Through

How does an entre­pre­neur deal with family in their business? Most big names (I’m thinking Dave Ramsey) say you should stay far away from family busi­nesses. If you do start one you must write down exactly what is expected from each family member. He also encour­ages making it clear from the beginning that family has to work four times harder than everyone else, otherwise moral rapidly diminishes.

In contrast, I am a good example of someone who success­fully works with family: I work with my mom. She’s not my boss, but we’re both para­le­gals for the same firm working on similar cases. We have made it work, though there have been a few bumps along the way. I think we’re the exception to the rule.

It helps that she is not my boss. We work together as equals, not manager/employee.

That being said, I think in most circum­stances it is best to stay away from building a family business. My (soon-to-be) wife worked for a company that was family owned and operated. The grand­par­ents worked their butts off while all the children and grand­chil­dren worked just hard enough to get their massive paycheck (while destroying moral and constantly loosing business for the company). It is a nasty situation that even­tu­ally caused her to leave.

I keep relating this to my own business. What is my wife’s role in the blog? Will I want my children to be part of the business? Should I even consider letting them be a part of what I’m doing?

All questions I am trying to answer. But for now, I’ll keep moving forward as a lone entre­pre­neur and hope the answers come when I need them.

What is your expe­ri­ence with family busi­nesses? Are they a good or bad idea? Let me know in the comments.

I almost never post on Mondays, but sometimes I find something so amazing that I have to share it.

Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing and prominent blogger, recently posted “The Future is Coming Faster Than You Think.” The 5 minute video created by Corning Glass is worth watching. I have added the video below.

Click here if it does not show up in your email or rss reader.

What do you think, is the future made of glass?

To be honest, the video feels is a bit ideal­istic (as all these kinds of videos do). That being said, this is something you and I need to pay attention to.

How long did it take the iPhone to change the world? How about personal computers? How about the internet?

These things spring up suddenly and revo­lu­tionize the way the world works. Most of this type of tech­nology flies in under the radar until one day we think back and realize every­thing is different.

As entre­pre­neurs it is important to know where tech­nology is heading. The way you do things is going to change rapidly and you have to be ready to adjust for it.

Are you ready for a world made of glass? Is this future even possible? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Bachelor party last night. I promise we didn’t get too crazy!

As of today I am a mere 2 weeks away from my marriage. My life has already changed dramti­cally and sometimes Rachel comes over and we unpack boxes or watch a movie on the couch cushions (the rest of the couch is coming today). If this is a preview of my life I’m really excited for it!

1 minute a day — April is financial literacy month so Steve at MoneyPlan SOS has gathered together a dozen financial coaches and bloggers to post a 1 minute video every day in April on financial literacy. A different blogger will film the video every day and all the bloggers will share it. If you aren’t subscribed to Steve’s blog this is something you will want to follow.

How Do You Overcome Distrac­tions? — John at Tent­Bloger asks the question, “How do you overcome distrac­tions?” The answers are worth checking out. Add one of your own!

12-year-old puts Einstein to shame — this kid is probably the smartest person alive. If he fufills even an ounce of his potential he will change the world. Check out the video on the page — it is amazing

Gmail Motion — in case you missed Google’s April Fool’s joke is Gmail Motion.

Matrix of Music — I don’t even know how to explain what this is. One thing is certain — it’s worth checking out.

Burrito Memories — One man’s life summed up in three panels.

Axis of Awesome — All popular songs can be condensed to four chords. This video is hilarious. (thanks Unfet­tered Bloke for this)