October 5, 2010

Family Teams Discussion

For the last 3 years the biggest area of change in philosophy and action has been in regards to how Kami and I see family. This is a training discussion that we lead in our home with about 20 people sharing our story and the things that have had the biggest impact on us. In short, we discuss the difference between holding a more American or individualistic viewpoint of family vs a more historical or international viewpoint of family as a multi-generational team.

You may be interested if:

  • You struggle with having enough time for work/family
  • You or your kids struggle with sibling rivalry.
  • As a working man you derive more satisfaction from accomplishments at work than family
  • You have no idea why people would have kids.
  • You feel bad sticking your parents in a nursing home someday but not as bad as having them stay at your house.
  • You’re looking for an excuse to be self-employed.

You can DOWNLOAD the MP3 HERE

Also if you want to see the slide deck from the Keynote Presentation to follow along visually you can VIEW the PDF HERE

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December 15, 2009

Finding Meaning on the Mountain: Thoughts for my friends Katie, Luke, and Anthony.

This past week has been hard for our family.  3 people were found missing on Mount Hood in Oregon. Two of the three were friends of mine that I have climbed with in the past. Of those two that I knew personally one was found dead while one is still missing. In a time where there is so much hurt and confusion, the inability to help seems  unbearable. Upon hearing about the situation, my wife Kami and I instantly thought of driving to Portland or even the mountain. Our goal would be to try and provide support practically and emotionally to friends and the families. Today, I realized I think that my greatest support can be offered in writing my thoughts as a friend and fellow climber of Luke and Katie. This writing is dedicated to the family of Katie, Luke, and Anthony. My hope is that it will provide some comfort and a small respite from the grief you are experiencing.

Katie Nolan and I on the summit of Mount Hood, April 2008 (You can see Mount Saint Helens and Mount Rainier in the background)

This past week I was reading  a book about K2, the “World’s Most Dangerous Mountain”,  by Ed Viesturs. He tells of the “tragedy” that took place in August of 2008 when 13 climbers died in a 36 hour period while attempting to summit the mountain.  More interesting than the actual event was the response of the general public. Continue reading →

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November 12, 2009

How I Went From Waiting Tables to Being a Professional Blackjack Player

Over the summer I put quite a bit of time into developing a new biz plan for a blackjack educational website. One of the projects I had was to write some content that we would be giving for free as a way to build trust and generate publicity.

I ended up writing out my story of how I became a professional blackjack player. It was a really fun process that involved about 2 weeks of writing, 1 week of proofreading, and one week of design.

Click the Book Cover to DOWNLOAD for FREE

In the end, I am really happy with the product.  For me it has done quite a few things Continue reading →

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August 25, 2009

Wonderland Slideshow – Our 93 mile journey around Mount Rainier with 4 kids

Actually, it may be better if you put these videos in the “documentary” category because all totaled, they are more than an hour long. If you don’t have the time to watch them all, I would encourage you to watch the first one and the last two. In one sense it’s a shame to even put these pictures and videos online because they don’t seem to do justice to the images and emotions that we experienced on the mountain but hopefully they give you a little bit of a feel for what we experienced.

Over the next couple of weeks we will be posting some more thoughts and specifics on this trip.

ALL OF THE VIDEOS CAN BE VIEWED IN HIGH QUALITY BY CLICKING “HQ” (in the bottom right corner)

Continue reading →

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July 26, 2009

Lemonade Stand

This last weekend our neighborhood hosted a garage sale and somehow our kids got the idea of doing a lemonade stand. I wasn’t too excited about it but as the saying goes, “when life give you lemons…make a lemonade stand.” At least that’s how the saying goes for entrepreneurs. So, off we went. We started by having them watch their cousin Kelsy’s video.

Here is a snippet from the day:

Here are some of the lessons that our kids learned about business and finances from this, (mostly) fun and simple, experience

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June 24, 2009

It’s Not Too Late

Picture 6I just passed out fliers to our neighborhood for our third annual 4th of July Neighborhood BBQ. Three years ago I organized this for the first time. It felt really weird for a couple of reasons:

  • We are the youngest couple on the block and for some reason older people are inherently intimidating
  • We had just moved on to the block. I guess I thought that for some reason people would be asking “Who does this young upstart think he really is messing with our traditions…etc”
  • Some of my neighbors appear cranky
  • I didn’t really know any of our neighbors Continue reading →

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June 13, 2009

We Rate this Summer’s Hottest Nine Movies

It’s been about a while since I’ve posted so I decided so I decided to provide you with a special update about this summers hottest number. Below are my reviews of the ninest movies of this summer. Since I haven’t seen any of them I am simply going to rate them based upon their use of this hip number.

We will start off with Peter Jackons Ultra 9 movie:title_district9august14

Don’t be confused by an Acadamey Award winning director. Without even having to look beyond the title you will notice that there is a 8:1 ratio of non-number 9 characters to number nine characters. Seriously, with a title like this how nine can a movie be? We would suggest waiting for this one to come out in DVD and maybe check it out as a rental where hopefully it will be 99¢ !

Next up we have Nicole Kidman who, lets face it, has nothing nine about her, starring in this movie:nine_l200905131553

Continue reading →

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