Month: January 2014

A Thought and A Goal

Improving myself.

That’s really the point of this whole little journey I’ve thrown myself into. What I’m learning on this trip is that you often have to admit you weren’t doing the right thing first before you can start doing the right thing after. Humility is becoming a trait I’m much more familiar with these days.

I’ve always loved knowledge. My head is full of random tidbits and facts to the annoyance of my coworkers and the joy of my trivia team members. History has always been where my interest lay: by the time I was 11 I was going through any book I could find on World War II. By high school, it was the Cold War. No real surprise I chose history as my major then.

Things somehow changed after college. Somehow, some way, I got the impression that I didn’t need to learn anymore. Sure there was on the job training and articles to be read on my industry but as far as general knowledge and books were concerned I figured I could get through life based on my instincts alone.

As mentioned in my first post, stupidity seems to have been a theme for me.

My mindset changed when a friend loaned me a book called Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi, a book I will go into more detail on in a later post. Around the same time I read this post by Ryan Holiday on his “trick” to reading. It was like the floodgates had opened up.

I began devouring books again – since my friend lent me that book in August I’ve gone through
twenty two books and I’ve barely scratched the surface of my new reading list. The selection includes everything from historical biographies, self-help books, histories of chemistry and mathematics and even a textbook. I’ve learned more in the past few months on how to effectively live my life than I ever was able to learn in school.

There is a freedom in crafting your own education that I’ve never experienced before. Major characters of history, from Alexander the Great and the Ancient Greeks, to James Madison and the Founding Fathers have written on the importance of becoming your own man through a strict regimen on self-education. It was a concept I had read over and over in class, assuming I was doing just that. But I’m realizing I’m only now starting to understand what they were getting at.

Unlike Mr. Holiday, I do have a small trick i use to get through more books: Audible. If I’m commuting or traveling or doing dishes or working out or on a bike ride or even just trying to shut my brain off after a crazy day I’m listening to something. I can certainly read faster than I can listen, but you can’t always be in a place to sit and read. Audible fixes that problem and it’s the best investment I’ve yet made.

Every so often I’m going to post my thoughts on the books I’m reading. Honestly, it’s a way to ensure that even if I have a boring day I won’t have an excuse to not write something on here

Here’s a list of some of the books I’m currently reading or have read in the past few months and will be posting about later:

Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi
48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene
The Art of Worldly Wisdom, Baltasar Gracian
Guns, Germs and Steel Jared Diamond
Civilization, Niall Ferguson
The entire Theodore Roosevelt trilogy by Edmund Morris
Churchill by Roy Jenkins
The Clockwork Universe, by Edward Dolnick
Euclid’s Window by Robert Blumenfeld
The Disappearing Spoon, Sean Runnette
And so many others…

There is a point to this post and it’s this: this blog has gotten a lot more support and a lot more interest than I had expected it to. So I figure I should put that to good use. My goal is to have just one person read this post and decide to pick up one of these books and start a journey of their own.

That seems to be the perfect thought to leave the country on.

Something in the water: On San Francisco and Friends

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As I write this, a thick blanket of fog covers the city and a barge bellows out in the bay. This is the San Francisco I remember living in – constantly grey, a jacket always on hand and a fog always threatening to descend.

I decided to come into the city a few days before my flight to Europe. Being that my last day at the old job was on a Tuesday and my flight from San Francisco on a Thursday, the idea of twiddling my thumbs at home seemed less than exciting. Patience has never exactly been a virtue of mine.

I’ve had a mixed relationship with the city by the bay. I moved here to go to college, but left it to do my last semester abroad. For a long time San Francisco was tainted for me by past memories and experiences. At one point I even uttered the words “I hated San Francisco”.

Yeah, I’m not sure what I was thinking either.

Over the last few years, though, that’s changed, a change I’m truly glad for. Living so close to one of the worlds greatest cities and not being able to enjoy it was awful.

The change began when an old friend of mine from college invited me out. I took him to a place called Dave’s for a few drinks. That turned into a five bar pub crawl on a Tuesday night as he re-introduced me to the city I had once called home.

I began remembering why I had wanted to move to SF in the first place.

The key with any great city, big or small, is its secrets. It’s both the places no one knows about yet are discovered together or the places you refuse to tell anyone about because you want to keep them to yourself.

SF is a labyrinth of back alleys, hidden courtyards, phantom staircases and concealed gardens. Discovering them isn’t hard – take an afternoon and pick a neighborhood. The Mission is especially great for this, but North Beach and Alamo Square are fantastic as well and the old warehouse district in the Embarcadero has some of my favorite hidden places in the city.

Walking through the Mission one afternoon I smelled something incredible. I wasn’t even hungry but I’ve never let that stop me before. The smell took me to the most blue collar dive bar I have ever seen in San Francisco – every one was male, everyone was over 60, everyone was watching the baseball game and everyone was talking about the ‘the good ole days’ under the union.

Hidden in the back corner was a kitchen. Walking up to the counter I couldn’t believe what I’d stumbled on: beef tongue soup? Fresh pasta with house cured pancetta? I had died and gone to heaven – the bar served Jameson and Anchor and the kitchen served two different dishes with the word ‘confit’ in it.

I ended up ordering something called a french onion soup sandwich. No, not a french onion soup and sandwich – a sandwich that had all the characteristics of french onion soup.

I don’t care if you believe me, I don’t care how good a restaurant or a chef you want to put it up against, I will place this sandwich in the running against any dish ever made, ever. It may not win, but it will come real close.

And no, before you ask my dear reader, I will not tell you where it is, I will not tell you how to get it, nor will I tell you anything else about it. Because this is my secret in my San Francisco.

Go find your own.

San Francisco is an escape for me – a friend calls it my “San FranVegas” and that’s not entirely inaccurate. Over the last few years, the city by the bay has become a place of displaced reality, a place I can go to and disappear in. I think this is one of the reasons so many people fall in love with this city – you can live here for years, but wander down a new street and you can be a complete stranger.

Yet beyond it’s secrets, it’s food, it’s architecture, it’s neighborhoods or it’s bars or its history I’ve found something else to love here. The people.

My friends have all been fantastic during the last few months of transition, but my friends here in San Francisco have shown me a special level of care. It must be something in the water: it’s no surprise that the entrepreneurial sprit is appreciated in the Silicon Valley, but what was surprising was the level to which my friends offered to help over and over again. Offers of employment, offers of introduction, offers of monetary support, offers of a bed or a couch or a floor or a room, offers of anything you can imagine. As more people heard through the grapevine what I was working on, more offers came through.

For that they deserve this public shout out and thanks. They know who they are.

When you begin working on your own project, you have a deep and unsettling fear that resides inside: that you’ll be going through this alone, that you’re the only one who will be checking in on how you’re doing, that you’re the only one that you can count on,. That simply hasn’t been the case for me. i think if you’re honest about what you’re doing and show people your passion, those close to you will go out of their way to help support you. I sure hope it’s not just me who’s been this lucky.

There are only three places in the world that I would call home and SF is one of them. From the friends, to the secrets, to the food there is quite simply no other city like it in the world. And it will always have a place in my heart.

There’s a million reasons you leave your job.

There’s the common reasons: you have another opportunity that comes up, you have to move, you’re getting married or having a baby and need some extended time off.

I didn’t leave for any of these reasons.

There’s the less common reasons: you’re going back to school or you’re having surgery or an illness that needs to be taken care of.  You and your boss are fighting, you and your boss aren’t getting along, or you’ve developed an unhealthy emotional connection with someone in your office and just need to get away.

I didn’t leave for any of these reasons.

Then there’s the rare and unsightly reasons: you’ve caught someone stealing from the company, sexual harassment claims, a family tragedy, an emotional breakdown or simply being fired.

I definitely didn’t leave for any of those reasons.

I had always thought that the idea of the “quarter life crisis” as so many in my generation are apt to call it, was ridiculous.  An excuse to quit your job and go teach English abroad or run off to a new city and become a waiter or a barista.  An excuse to go back to school and “find yourself”.  In the end, an excuse.  And as much as I hate to say it, I looked down on those people.

Well that was stupid.

Actually, it was beyond stupid.  I should have seen the signs years ago – that feeling of restlessness that every traveler knows means its time to move on.  An urge to become more involved, more effective, more known.  My entire being was fighting a pitched battle between putting down roots or jumping onto the next flight to Thailand.  I was conflicted by my need to make a difference in my community and my sense of hopelessness in being able to do anything of importance.  I felt trapped.

I was waiting for something or someone to change my own situation instead of forcing a change myself.  I was too scared to make the leap.

Stupid.

I had been at my job for the past two and a half years.  Originally hired on as a junior account manager I was quickly promoted four times in two and a half years and helped to turn a team of two into a team of nine, We went from bringing in tens of thousand of dollars into bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars in a quarter.

I had never been challenged like this before: I was running full campaigns for clients that spanned from PR to advertising to events around the country and the world.  I was writing business plans, I was bringing in new business and helping to build a team and a company from scratch.

At 25 I was promoted to Director of Accounts, running the day to day of the company and its accounts and overseeing a team of five.  I was the youngest officer in the company and one of the youngest agency directors in Sacramento.  I was ecstatic.

Really, really stupid.

I failed in this position.  Miserably.

The reasons are less important than the outcome and the outcome was that I lost the trust and more importantly the respect of my team.  It was a slow realization but when it came it hit me hard.

Taking a step back, I looked at what I had been doing over the past few months and was shocked by the results.  Every bad habit, every distasteful trait I had seen in old bosses were present in my “leadership” qualities.  I was running on my own schedule, coming in late, running off to trips around the US for business meetings with little advance notice.  I sat in my office and rarely came out to chat with my team instead making them come to me.  I was trying to lead by instinct but when that instinct is based on a false foundation it was always going to be off-kilter.

You can moan over your mistakes or you can fix them.  I chose the latter.  I gave up my office and moved into a shared workspace with my coworkers.  I brought them into my calls and my work, showing them what I was doing and ensuring I always knew what they were up to; if anyone went on vacation I could seamlessly take over their projects.

Robert Greene notes that “at all times you must attend to those around you”.  I began taking a much greater interest in what my teammates wanted out of their jobs and the company as a whole.  Slowly but surely I turned things around.

I presented an overall restructure to the company that would address most of the issues I had heard from my coworkers.  I included a biz dev and marketing strategy for the company as a whole that would see incomes rise across the board.  In a role that had seen me challenged in more ways than I could ever imagine this was my biggest one to date.  It was wholeheartedly endorsed and I felt accomplished for the first time in months.

I had learned more and grown more from this job than other in life.

So why would I leave that?

Six moths earlier I had begun working through a thought experiment with friends.  It didn’t take long before we realized that the project not only had legs but would be able to run fast and far if we gave it the right attention.  All of the joy, the excitement and fear that you only experience in a start-up began to come back.

I left because for the first time in my life I had found a project that I was truly passionate about, a project that connected all of the things that I love doing the most.  It combined writing, events, community involvement and civic duty. I wanted this and I wanted it bad.

The truth of the matter is it’s ambitious, possibly even impossible.  But I knew that going into it, and I knew that when my I put my notice in two weeks ago.

So that’s where things stand: I’m putting the last two years behind me and focusing all of my energy and attention on this new problem.  I want to see what happens when you put everything you have into something, when you make it so public that you simply can’t fail because everyone is watching.  I want to see if I can stand it and if I can rise to the occasion.

I’m leaving in two days for Europe for two weeks to clear my head.  I have four months of funds saved up and no idea how to make money off of this thing.

Should be fun.