Umar Haque is one of my favorite new business authors.  I found his blog on the HBR list that I follow, and downloaded his short essay Betterness: Economics for Humans onto my Kindle to start reading it.

The essay is short, about 80 pages, and is an ideal read for entrepreneurs and psychology dabblers like me who have been following the Positive Psychology field grow out of Penn.  In the essay, Haque takes the principles of positive psychology and applies them to the economy.  Namely, just as positive psychology recast the paradigm of mental health from therapy to fix mental and emotional problems, into coaching for peak mental and emotional performance, we can also think of world economies as something to be optimized as well.

Umar does a brilliant job to redefine “wealth” as more than stakeholder returns.  He uses the word wealth in reference to higher order returns: emotional growth, social connection, emotional health, job satisfaction, to name a few.  Here’s a post that will elucidate this movement is already happening.

Just like business coaches help executives reach their peak performance, we can also envision economies measuring themselves according to higher-order returns, and performing at their peak instead of half-hearted therapeutic attempts to remedy wage stagnation and widening economic inequality.

“A move away from business towards betterness.”

Umar takes the mission statements of a few growing companies and singles them out as exemplars of growing wealth in human terms: emotional, social, personal, and mental wealth, as well as monetary.  He gives examples of those higher-order returns and challenges corporations and entrepreneurs to begin measuring their success according to the things they want the world to have tomorrow that it lacks today.  It’s a much-needed expansion on how we define “wealth” in human terms.

I carved out a simple writing exercise to help me think about the impact that I want to have on the world, and then how to measure it.  I’ve taken Umar’s lexicon from the book, and applied it to a simple set of questions that can be answered over time to develop a new business, a personal manifesto, or to re-examine how an existing business is measuring their impact and growth in terms of Purpose, Products over Trinkets, and how to create true value chains.

Let me know what you guys think:

1. What kinds of higher-order returns to I want the world to have tomorrow that it doesn’t have today?
2. Which kinds of precise benefits to I want to return, and to whom?
3. How can I measure the human wealth that I create?
4. Specify the Common Wealth with precision and accuracy.

1. Whose wealth will be enhanced?
2. Who will benefit most from what is put back into the economy’s buckets?
3. Who will gain the wealth created?
4. To whose common wealth will I add?
5. How will the created wealth be enjoyed in common, shared amongst the community?
6. How will the wealth created enrich others as well?

I hope this helps.

Austin W. Gunter

Karen Borchert and I met at Austin Java to talk about Entrepreneurship in Austin

Yesterday, I had coffee (she had a latte, I had a huge espresso) at Austin Java with Karen Borchert, Director of Products at Phase2, an open-source technology services company serving publishing, public policy and non-profit clients globally.  Karen has founded and run NPOs as well as the social venture, Keen Guides, a video tour company with accessibility in mind.

We met to talk about Social Entrepreneurship in Austin.  Actually, one of the first things that we did was acknowledge that many of the ventures in Austin are simply more socially focused than in many other cities, simply because of the local culture.  Karen pointed out that so many of the startup companies in Austin have an eye towards sustainability or are as equally cause-based as they are profit driven.  She pointed to the work that Suzi Sosa is doing at the Dell Social Innovation Challenge as a prime example.

Since I have been talking with a handful of entrepreneurs about creating a social entrepreneurship incubator in Austin, I gave Karen the big picture of the project, and asked for her feedback.  She is an alumnus of the LaunchBox Program in DC, and shared some of her insight about what makes an incubator successful.

It was a good coffee conversation until we started wrapping up, and I asked her to please “call bullshit” on my pitch.

Best question I asked today was: "Can you call 'bullshit' on my idea?" The answer was amazing.

January 31, 2012 12:06 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@austingunter

Austin Gunter

That was when the conversation actually got interesting.

I’ll summarize the big idea that she put forth.

Startups need funding, whether bootstrapped or invested, to pay for the following:

1. Excellent Developers to build the right technology tools
2. Designers to create an identity, brand, and product
3. Legal filings
4. Media / Content
5. Sales / Marketing

Incubators traditionally pair entrepreneurs with investment in exchange for equity so the entrepreneurs can fund 1-5.  But often, a new venture doesn’t know who to use or how to vet potential technologists, designers, or other service providers for their venture, and they waste a lot of money and time trying to find the right folks.  Karen suggested that an incubator might be more successful by taking the same equity, but instead of handing the startup cash, handing them a bucket of time from a tested, trusted, stellar talent network that would provide the development, design, sales, marketing, etc.

Instead of giving cash to a company with no idea as to the quality of the service provider it will eventually go to, foster a symbiotic network of high-quality start-ups and high-caliber service providers.

If the concept worked, the incubator would shift the focus of entrepreneurship towards the development of the people involved in startup companies, instead of on getting funded.  The service providers / engineers would be served by getting market rates for their services while also giving them a chance to work in startup companies.  The idea people could retain the services of great service providers to help them ship products.

Karen’s thesis statement was, “I think most people would love to work at a startup if they could just find a way to get paid.”

As I mull this over, the question of how to split equity comes up, as well as the very real problem of this model not eliciting 100% commitment from all parties and people walking away when things get rough.  I hear Angel Investors say that there is no substitute for the commitment of founders who have already sunk a year or two and tens of thousands of dollars into a venture.

But, I don’t think the amount of money invested comes before entrepreneurial commitment.  I think commitment is the driving force behind an entrepreneur who invests his or her own money into making an idea work.  The amount of money is equal to the time it took the entrepreneur to prove to the world that they were right.

Karen, thanks for spending the afternoon talking with me.

I hope this helps.

Austin W. Gunter

Saturday afternoon, I volunteered as a “production assistant” for We Are Austin Tech.  My job was to record timestamps for each interview question and transcribe the answers.  I took about 15 pages of notes over the course of the afternoon, and got to listen to interviews from some amazing entrepreneurs that I admire for how they live their lives and the challenges that they take on.

Basically it was an inspiring way to spend a Saturday.  Thanks to Joshua Baer for inviting me to help out, and to the whole crew, led by Austen Trimble, for being so awesome to spend the day with.  Amazing and talented people.

Biggest epiphany: Bijoy Goswami, in his interview, defined “bootstrapping” as the process of discovering your personal business model…a process that can take up to 10 years for some entrepreneurs.

I had never defined bootstrapping as a primarily personal discovery, instead of a business model one.  I’ve always mentally blurred the line between the business model and the entrepreneur – not all models work for all entrepreneurs – but I hadn’t articulated the connection so clearly.

It means that as of this year, I am officially a bootstrapper.  It feels good to say that.

“To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily.  To not dare is to lose one’s self.”

Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish Existential Philosopher and Theologian said that.  I love Keirkegaard’s work because he explores our emotion and choice when we as people face big life decisions.

“Facing a big life decision” is a fancy way of saying making an choice that will change my life.  We say a decision is important because it alters the current balance our life in a substantial way.  Once we’ve made a big choice, there is no turning back.  Choosing where I eat lunch isn’t typically a life-altering event.  There isn’t a lot of risk involved.  Choosing to live in Santiago Chile when I was 20 changed my life forever.

Choosing to start a new project, or start a new business carries a great deal of risk with it.  If things don’t go as planned, the business could fail.  We could fail.  Whatever the outcome, it can take time to regain a sense of balance.

Earlier this week, I wrote that I am moving out my parents’ house because it will make my life less stable.  The goal is to lose my footing in order to not lose my dreams.  I am choosing to take a risk, and I feel afraid because I know that might fail.  The fear can get in our way if we bow to it.  Recently, I’ve decided that if I’m feeling fear then I’m doing the right thing and pushing my comfort zone.  It means I’m making progress.

Here’s another quote from Kierkegaard:

During the first period of a man’s life, the greatest danger is to not take the risk.

When I feel afraid, I remind myself of this.  I am 25, and I don’t have much to lose.  With each year that passes, I have more to lose.  Now is not the time to wait for something to happen to me.  Now is the time risk failure in order to make something happen.

Two weeks ago, I was talking about risk with a mentor of mine, and she reminded me that taking a risk is like riding a Segway.  Segways won’t move forward until the person riding them risks losing their balance and leans forward.  Segways move when rider leans forward past the point of being balanced. Right now, if you stood up and started to lean forward, once your center of gravity passed your toes, your body would fall forward.  The human body is programmed to prevent you falling on your face.  Once you lean too far forward, your foot steps forward and catches you.  You’ve almost fallen, but you’ve also taken a step forward.  If you didn’t lose your balance, you would have stayed in the same place.

The Segway works the same way.  Only once the rider leans forward and loses their balance the gyroscopes kick in and the Segway moves forward.  The farther forward the rider leans, the faster the Segway moves.  It’s natural to feel uncomfortable when you lean forward like this. If you’ve ridden a Segway, you know the sensation of almost falling over right before you start moving.  After a few times, most people learn to trust that the Segway is not going to let them fall flat on their face.

Instead of a wheelchair, I rode a Segway all 4 years of college.  My arthritis was very bad those four years, and  I rode the Segway to class every day.  I forgot how scary it was the first time I rode it.  Leaning into the risk and trusting the Segway became natural.  Trust was my segue through the pain of walking and helped me graduate from college.

The YouTube video below is me riding my Segway across the stage at graduation to accept my diploma.

Taking a risk is the only way I know to segue from one stage of life to the next.  And once I get comfortable with one risk, it seems like it’s always time to take the next one.

What is your Segway?

I hope this helps.

Austin W. Gunter

PS: Kierkegaard also said that “anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”  Here’s to your anxiety.

How many 25 year old men are still living with their parents?

Last week, I got so much positive response from my post, Coming Clean, where I talked about having Rheumatoid Arthritis. The positive response to such a personal story made me consider being that open regularly in this blog.  That post received 1,000 unique hits because the Arthritis Foundation shared it on their Facebook page and their Twitter stream.

Prior to that moment, I never believed I could be that honest about my pain, and I was amazed by the comments from people who had their own stories about rheumatoid arthritis to share.  The response was humbling and encouraged me to continue.

Last night, I shared something about my childhood on Twitter that I’ve never shared before.  It’s an important part of my life story, but I had always wanted to keep it quiet in the past.

I think it may be time to bring my story of RA into my blog and my writing. It feels like the time has come to start embracing that saga

January 9, 2012 3:52 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@austingunter

Austin Gunter

I grew up with Rheumatoid Arthritis, and nearly died at 13 from complications. When I was 15 I had both hips replaced.

January 9, 2012 3:52 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@austingunter

Austin Gunter

I was asking questions about Health Insurance for independent consultants / contractors like myself, and I decided that I probably wasn’t the only person in Austin with a life story that involved chronic illness.  I might be the only one who had Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis at age 13, but I’m sure that the city is full of people who have survived challenges in the past.  Kate Voth, who has survived cancer several times, comes to mind.

When I was 13, I was normal and healthy, played football, loved it, all that stuff.  Then I started getting these really weird fevers and joint pain all over my body.  Within a few months, the fevers were spiking at 103 Degrees every day, and the joint pain was keeping me from walking around much.  I was about 5’10″ but I dropped down to about 120 lbs and nearly died in the hospital from complications that winter.

Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis meant that my body’s immune system had turned against my body and was attaching my joint and connective tissue.  My case was very aggressive, and I don’t have a joint in my body that hasn’t suffered significant cartilage loss.  Things don’t quite bend as well as they ought to, and certain movements, normal for other people, can be painful for me.

Things got better, and by the time I was 15 I was on the swim team, feeling healthy and living a pretty normal life.  Then my hips stopped working over Christmas break 2001, and I spent the next 18 months not walking.  I kept up with all my classes through this great program the school district had to send a teacher around to collect all my assignments and visit me twice a week to teach me the math I couldn’t figure out on my own.

In the summer of 2003 finally found a good orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Greenway, who replaced both of my hips with ceramic replacements in one six-hour operation that June.

The X-Rays of my hips immediately after surgery. You can see the screws attaching the socket to my pelvis.

I remember waking up thinking this is exactly like it looks in a movie with bright fluorescent lights gradually coming into focus, hearing a nurse say, “He’s coming to, go ahead and call the parents.”  

They wheeled me into a room and the next day a physical therapist strapped a belt around my waist, pulled me up out of bed and made me stand up.  I still had the epidural and catheter attached, and I couldn’t feel my legs, but they were going to get me walking again.  The next day, I took my first steps with fake hips.

After 2 weeks of hospital Physical Therapy, they sent me home where I had a new lease on life.  You see, before the surgery my hips had lost all cartilage and the bone-on-bone movement of walking was incredibly painful.  The ceramic hips took all that pain away for the first time in more than a year.  Learning how to walk again was easy compared to the bone-on-bone pain.  Before the surgery, I couldn’t even get out of bed on my own.

I literally had to learn how to walk again after that surgery. Imagine relearning to walk instead of living a normal 15 yr old life.

January 9, 2012 3:53 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@austingunter

Austin Gunter

That was normal life for me. Wasn't all bad. I definitely used it for fun too. I had a Segway that I rode on campus at St Edward's.

January 9, 2012 3:54 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@austingunter

Austin Gunter

I went back to high school for my Junior year and took almost a full course load.  I would come home after school, put on a movie and take long naps.  My body took about 2 years to fully recover from that surgery.  I still have 7-inch scars along the outside of my legs.

Paying for college was a major concern for my family.  We had good insurance, so my medical bills didn’t cause problems, but paying for college was going to be a big issue like it is for most middle-class families in America these days.  Making matters more challenging, I wanted to go to the very private St. Edward’s in South Austin, since it was a smaller campus and had a Writing and Rhetoric program I wanted to join.  Paying for college somehow worked out between my SAT scores (1380) and my various scholarships.  Those scholarships made it possible for me to graduate debt-free, and I’ll always be grateful to folks like George Kozmetsky for their grants and scholarships that put me through school when I wouldn’t have been able to manage a job, classwork, and rheumatoid arthritis.

There were plenty of mornings that I couldn’t get out of bed because of the pain I was in, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.  In order to make things easier on me, I rode around campus on a Segway.  The State of Texas wanted to buy me a HoverRound, but I knew the Segway would make it easier for me to get dates.  If you can’t fix it, feature it.  The Segway did star in several first dates, and I became known for better or worse around campus as “The Segway Guy.”  

That was a lot more fun than most people imagined. Everyone asked to try it out, and I would teach them how to ride it. Super fun :-)

January 9, 2012 3:55 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@austingunter

Austin Gunter

I’ve never made a point of sharing Rheumatoid Arthritis publicly mostly because I didn’t want to burden people with it.  Those of you who have had a chronic or debilitating illness can attest to how differently people can treat you when they know you’re in pain.  I don’t want people to be on edge when they’re around me.  There are other things to be worried about, and I think everyone has their own pain to focus on.  I can handle my own as well as anyone else can.

I think this weekend I realized that I knew who I was apart from the illness, and I didn’t have to worry about anyone else getting confused about my identity.  I’m Austin the Writer, Austin the Entrepreneur, Austin the Connector, Austin the Extravert, and now people will know that I’m also Austin who has Rheumatoid Arthritis.

The question of health insurance still remains.  I have a good situation set up right now, thankfully, and there isn’t an imminent risk to my coverage.  It is a temporary fix, though, and if there are ever coverage gaps, it would be an interesting challenge to fight a health insurance company to get back on their rolls.  I represent a drain on their profits even thought I work very hard to focus my diet and to keep my body in good condition with Tai Chi.  It’s an expensive proposition to pay for the biologic injection I give myself every night before bed.  I’ve had great success in treating my own condition with diet and exercise, but I still need really awesome (pricey) medicine to function at a high level day in and day out.  Without the medication, the inflammation usually comes back after about 48 hours and I end up back in bed like I was at 13.  That may change someday, and I have high hopes about healing.  For now it’s a daily process, and I’m in better health than I was last year and the year before that.  Lot to be thankful for.

But I think it's a story worth sharing for my own sake, just to share it, and for anyone else who might read it and hear something important

January 9, 2012 4:06 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@austingunter

Austin Gunter

For my own sake, I’m making public acknowledgement of this in my blog.  It’s healing for me to write about it and then put it out there to be read publicly.  I think that the upside of sharing it outweighs any potential downside.  Austin, the city, is a forgiving place that allows individuals to be themselves.  And the nature of social media allows us to be genuine and flawed human beings one moment, and perfect the next because we always have an opportunity to change our status a few minutes later and be a different expression of ourselves.  In that way, Facebook and Twitter do allow us to be more human more publicly than we ever have in the past.  They allow us to be genuinely flawed like never before.  I’m grateful for that.

I’m not sure where things go from here.  I love being able to share my story with people, and there is more to it than this.  It would be cool to hear from other people who have a similar struggle in their own lives.  I’m open to answering questions or having coffee or lunch to talk about it, especially if you are just getting started with your own battle for health.  I think someday it would be amazing to start a non-profit for kids like me who have Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis.  We’d provide resources for their whole family to cope with the challenges and pain their children face on a daily basis, just like I did.  The emotional and identity issues are as painful as the purely medical ones, but there is a great deal of hope and support to be found in the community.

So we'll see what happens.

January 9, 2012 4:08 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@austingunter

Austin Gunter

If you continue to read, I’ll continue to put all this out on my blog.

Thanks for reading this far and sharing this part of my story with me.

I hope it’s been helpful.

Austin W. Gunter

PS: You can read all of the tweets here.

But I found this video because Bret Hurt, Founder / CEO of Bazaarvoice, tweeted it out, citing the importance of good company culture encouraging employee productivity.  Bazaarvoice is famous for their culture, so I queued this up and listened to it in my truck while I drove over the weekend.

I was inspired.  Eric Schmidt talked about the potential for connecting people together as a way to foster entrepreneurship and innovation, and how technology like Twitter keeps governments accountable.  He made the point that connecting people is a fundamental good for society, even if it doesn’t seem like a directly profitable enterprise on its face.  It was the encouragement I wanted to hear.

I’m a genetically-inclined connector.  It was awesome to hear the CEO of Google encourage me to continue seeking to connect inspiring people, pointing out that Search didn’t look profitable when Google was started either.  I don’t really want to be Google, but I would like to make a living being Austin W. Gunter, the Connector.

Landing in Cheyenne for a Wedding in July

Think about it.  When was the last time you were confident about making a resolution at new years and then sticking to it?  When folks talk about their new years resolutions, I rarely hear anything resolute in their tone of voice.  Plenty of doubt and insecurity, but little confidence.  The conversation tends to revolve around someone saying, “wow, I hope I can keep it up past February…”

I’m having the internal resolution “conversation” with myself right now.  I have few more hours tonight to put my plans for the next year to paper, and then my time is up.  I’m getting in my car to drive to the Rio Grande Valley early tomorrow morning, and I won’t have another chance to focus on this before the ball drops Saturday night.  I’ll be giving myself a second chance to actually eat Tripas, and I won’t have any ability to worry about my plans for 2012.

I’ve got to crank it out now or it’s not going to happen.  Forget February.  It starts tonight.

So I’ve sat down in my buddy Zach‘s apartment and we’re about to set our goals for next year.  We’re going to do it together.  No waiting, no excuses, just lots of really loud music and maybe some guys beating drums in a circle.  I’ve come up here to work with Zach and let him work with me because I’m going to be more successful making plans when I’m in the same room with someone who challenges me to always be better.

Me and My sister, Being Hilarious in August

But we’re not writing “resolutions.”  Resolutions don’t work, as I’ve said before, so Zach and I are going to be doing something that does.

Resolutions don’t work because you have to waiting for a certain time of year to do them.  It’s almost like as a country, we need permission from the calendar to do something new with our lives.  I’ll start being better next year.

I don’t think that next year ever arrives.  I could wait my whole life for next year.

Don’t wait to make your life better.  Do it now, or don’t do it at all.  

As humans, I fundamentally believe we should always be getting better. We’re meant to change and grow.  And we’re either growing or dying, regardless of what time of year it is.

Which one are you choosing?

I’m choosing to grow, and I’m making commitments to myself in order to make that growth possible.

At my Grandma's Funeral in April

So, the question remains: how can we make sure we keep the promises we make to ourselves?

Step One: Start with a Strategy for 2012.  The Strategy will keep everything in place.  The strategy should be a simple question you can ask yourself as you go to bed every night.  

Zach asked me, “Does someone want to stop smoking or do they want to be healthy?  At the end of a day can they look back and say, yes I was healthy, or no I wasn’t?  Smoking may only be one aspect of being healthy.”

My Strategy for 2012:  Be clear on what I’m saying YES to because I know what I am willing to say NO to.  I wrote a few weeks ago, each time I say NO, it makes my YES much more powerful.  I’ve found that I don’t really know what I want until I’ve decided what I don’t want.

Things I never want again:

1. I don’t

ever want

to be laid off again
1. I don’t want to work in a business culture that constrains my personality
2. I don’t want to second guess myself when I say YES or say NO

1. I want to continue building my own list of clients and projects for copywriting, community building, and making introductions
2. I want those projects to be inspiring and challenging for me, and I want to know that I have the solution to problem that makes a business 10x more valuable
3. I want to say NO to any project that doesn’t match #1 and #2, and I want to feel great about it because I’ll be able to say YES to contracts that do fit those criteria.

Those are not resolutions.  Those are strategies that have a simple Yes / No decision matrix built in to them for making decisions simple:

My Talk at the Next Fest titled, "What's Your Intent," in May

Did the project sound exciting and challenging?  

If Yes: I’m in.  

If No: Not interested.

I’m declaring war on my fear of saying yes and saying no in 2012.  Tonight, I was afraid of what might come out with Zach and me working together, but I told the fear to take a hike.  I have found that fear is the #1 indicator that I’m doing the right thing.  The more fear I have, the more certain I can be that I’m the right place.  The more certain I am that I’m challenging myself.

If I’m afraid, then I’m taking risks.   That means I’m growing.

Now what?

 

Here’s what is going to happen after I publish this post and close my MacBook.  Zach and I are going to collectively work through our strategies and goals for 2012.

1. We are going to write everything we loved about 2011
2. We are going to write everything that sucked about 2011 and that we never want to see again
3. We’re going to write a list of what we want in 2012
4. We’ll take the 2012 list and come up with the top 3 or top 5 goals for 2012
5. We’re going to create action steps and deadlines for each of those goals
6. Once I’m clear that Zach has made good on his goals, and he is clear that I’ve made good on my goals, we’re going to seal them up and set them in motion
7. Final Step: We’re going to take the list containing everything from 2011 that we never want to see again, all the things that we had to learn the hard way, and all the balls the chimpanzees dropped, everything that sucked about the past 12 months, and we’re going to burn the list.  Game over 2011.  2012 will have it’s own bullshit, so we’re going to be clear and open for that so we can take the hit and learn the lessons we need to.

The failure will come, but we’ll accept the lessons it brings.

Laura and I, making Jack-o-Lanterns

Since I’m constantly reading, I thought it would be fun to share the list right now.  I think that I started 2-3 books last week alone, so they’re all in various states of completion.  Imagine the piles of books around my room and try not to be too jealous.

 11/22/63
by Stephen King

What if you could go back in time and stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating John F. Kennedy?  Would you do it?  What would the consequences be?  That’s what this book covers in about 800 pages.

I’m a big Stephen King fan, mostly from his Dark Tower series and his book on the craft, On Writing.  This book is lagging about 500 pages in.  He gets caught up in this fantasy of living in the 1950s.  Everything King writes anymore is painfully autobiographical.  It’s like he’s got a giant sandbox to recreate his own life and we’re along for the ride.

 I Will Teach You to Be Rich
By Ramit Sethi

Ramit writes my favorite personal finance and career blog.  He is sarcastic, off putting, and a bit of a dick.  But I read him because he’s got a lot of good data about setting up my 401k and Roth IRA, as well as how to automate the crap out of my checking account and credit cards.

It’s personal finance for the Generation Y audience.

Tribes
By Seth Godin 

When I built the community of entrepreneurs at Tech Ranch Austin, we were building a Tribe of Entrepreneurs, and the ecosystem to support them.  Seth Godin has written another immortal little chapbook to discuss how to imagine the community that you wish existed in your town and then go build it yourself.

Stop waiting for someone else to build it for you.  Go become a leader.  Imagine how many people you’ll serve.

The First-Created Man
Fr. Seraphim Rose 

If you know me, you know that I’m actively reading about Spirituality and Orthodox Christianity.  I picked this book up a few days before Christmas and added it to the collection.  It’s a collection of Homilies from Saint Symeon the new Theologian on Adam and Eve and the creation of the world.

The book has answers to meaning of life questions as understood by the Orthodox Church.  It’s really dense reading, but applicable to how I’m living my life.  If you decide to check this out, I want to have lunch and talk about what you thought.

Brining Nothing to the Party  - True Confessions of a New Media Whore
By Paul Carr 

Paul Carr writes like he’s a selfish tool and I think he’s exaggerating.  It feels like a melodrama of the wallflower writer archetype:  The asshole on the fringe of the party, wishing he was actually throwing the party.

Yes, writers think this way about things.  We really do.  We also want to be entrepreneurs as well, as Carr becomes, getting funded and growing a big company, parties and all.  It’s a great romp in the UK’s Startup Culture of the 1990s.  And a fun read on my new Kindle Touch.

I just think he’s more human than he makes himself out to be.

The Book of the Shepherd
By The Scribe
As Discovered by Joann Davis

Sylvia, my business coach, gave this to me for Christmas.  It’s a book about forgiveness and hope.  It’s about questioning the status quo and making your own way.

When I read the book, I can feel both sides of my brain wriggling around, digesting the archetype as I read.  It’s how I know the book is doing what it’s supposed to do.

So far, I highly recommend it.

The New Yorker

My favorite magazine of all time, now on my freaking Kindle.  I was in a wheelchair when I first started reading the magazine at 15.  There was this amazing story about this nutjob who owned a diner in upstate New York and the writer for the magazine who had been going there 20 years.

The owner / cook was openly hostile to new patrons, but would treat his regulars like family, making them custom meals and telling nutjob stories.

The prose was amazing, and I was hooked.

The Harvard Business Review

Ever since visiting the Acton School of Business (Entrepreneurship), and reading the Harvard Business Cases for the classes I sat through, I’ve started a love affair with this publication.  The school electrified me and I think that rubbed off on the reading material too.

I’ve just come out as a big business nerd.  Hope you still love me the same…

If you like reading about business models and making money, and want to keep learning, go grab this.  

Writing on the back of the Chevy my Granddad gave me.

Before he passed away, my Granddad, the beekeeper, would tell these fantastical stories of his entrepreneurial journey.  He would talk about saving his nickels and dimes in order to buy Chevy Trucks, or a few acres of land, so that he could work more and make more money.  The stories were fantastical because a few nickels and dimes always had this funny arithmetic that without fail would add up to  brand new pickup trucks.

For example:

Granddad was stopped in Midlothian, Texas delivering some bees or honey to some customers.  He pulled into a diner for breakfast, and didn’t add the bacon or the ham to his meal, thereby saving about 5 or 10 cents.   Then, as he told the story, he took that dime he saved and bought the land around the diner.  When I was 15, a highway project paid a lot more than 10cents for the land he bought.

He ended each story the same way.  ”Austin, I didn’t buy the ham for breakfast, and I saved that nickel and bought a new pickup with it.”

His stories were fantastical in their simplicity.  Nickels and dimes always added up to a new Chevy Truck or some land.  The truck would help him make money as a beekeeper.  The land almost always became very valuable a decade or two later.

I never understood how this magical arithmetic worked for him.  The proof, however, was in the pudding.  I invariably heard this story while riding in the passenger seat of a new Chevy Truck on the way to work some bees on some land that he had bought years ago.

Yesterday, I decided that a MacBook Pro is a Chevy Pickup in my life.  I make my living writing and connecting people using my blog, email, and a word processor (I’m using Word and Pages right now).  I can work from anywhere as long as I can get my computer online, but I need the computer to write and connect just like my Granddad needed the truck to work his bees and make honey.

What is the equivalent of ham at breakfast for me?  It’s definitely coffee at Starbucks, and lunch around town.  Excluding the lunches and coffees that I invest in when I meet someone new, or pick their brain, how much money could I put to a new MacBook Pro each month if I skipped coffees and lunches, putting that same money towards the computer?  I bought my laptop in 2007, and replaced the hard drive in 2010.  It’s time to upgrade.

Looking through my wallet, I have about $40 in Starbucks giftcards.  That’s $40 towards a laptop right there.

Sure, a well powered MacBook Pro, and warranty (essential) will top $2,000 easily.  But I think that Chevy Trucks probably cost about as much when my Granddad started buying them in the 30s and 40s.

Does the same fantastical arithmetic that worked for my Granddad run in my family?  Here’s the experiment.

1. Each time I go out to Starbucks and use a gift card, I take the amount of my purchase, and transfer it to a separate savings account.
2. Every time I can get wifi for free without paying for it, I put $2.00 in the savings account.
3. When I find a way to eat lunch for free, instead of having to go out to eat, I put $10.00 in the account
4. Each week, I tally the money in the account and see what I’ve saved on trivia, and put towards my next Chevy Truck / Macbook Pro.

Assuming a few other basic revenue sources, the Goal is to bring the laptop home by the end of March.

Hope this helps.

Austin W. Gunter

Granddad would love this: My first Installment: $2.00 from Starbucks to MacBook Pro Fund.