“I wanted walk, move, digest, ingest; There are moments in life, moments when you know you crossed a bridge. Your old life is over“ Limitless 2011

This is a quote from a movie called Limitless with Bradley Cooper. It really motivates me, I can sit and skim through the movie and see parts that make me continue and hold on to those moments I have felt in life. Those moments where you know your old life is over.

Some of the best feelings I have had is when you know you have just crossed a pivotal point in your life, where you know what you just passed, will leave you as a new person.

I have felt this a couple times in my life and it is actually the best feeling I have ever had and the most addictive feeling to me in the world.

A little of my history:

My Grand Father had a very active brain. He was a treasure hunter, pilot, scuba instructor, has had probably about 10 businesses easily in his life. He currently has a hotel in the number one scalloping place in the world, and has raced Yachts where he was banned from participating in that race because they thought he cheated. We use to say he was the real life “Most interesting man in the world”.

He also has been in many odd situations, some legal, some illegal, and some even working with the government that were illegal as well. He is a great man, and really is a genius. He has had multiple inventions, and has assisted in some of the most remarkable underwater discoveries to date.

My Father, has been a scuba instructor, treasure hunter, insect (bug) man, pilot, commercial building inspector, mold inspections, insurance auditor, and blue plans examiner. He has a bunch of other licenses and approvals and is now going to become a pilot instructor (our new idea).

I would have to actually talk to them for hours to get a good list of everything they have completed, but I can tell you that, by no means do my father or his father slow down to focus on their projects. They are always thinking of new ideas or solutions to change or better what they do.

Back to me:

So, genetically speaking, I know that somewhere in my blood is a chemical composition that makes me want to achieve as much as I can and as fast as I can. I have sat awake at night with thoughts pouring into my head. Ideas I could not stop that kept me awake.

When people approach me with an idea, I tend to brainstorm and take it apart, and by the end of it I have a thousand more ideas to make it work or streamline the process. My brain seems to never slow down and likes to analyze things. Sometimes this drives me crazy because I can’t take a vacation from it.

What I am trying to do is take the very active mind that has been passed to me, but try to apply it to business. I am in love with the feeling of accomplishment, not the regular accomplishment that a regular job typically provides, but the type that is life altering. The one where you know what you did will ultimately change you or everyone you know.

I have always heard “Humans only use a small percentage of the brain. That Albert Einstein actually used an extra 3% based on tests and that is what made him smarter.”

I like to research things I hear typically before I repeat rumors, or urban myths. I looked into some research and read that we actually do use 100% of our brain; we just don’t typically use it all at once. So the saying that we don’t may actually be false.

It feels good though to think that you only use 10% an that the other 90% could be some type of secret untapped resource of brain power. People would respond to that saying with things like “Yeah, the other 90% could be telekinesis, or mind control, or something else”. I do though know my brain acts differently sometimes. When I take lots caffeine, it tends to make my mind focus on things and act faster.

In the movie Limitless, he takes a pill and has him using 100% of his brain all the time. This would be an awesome thing personally if it had no side effects, and would also allow me to sleep.

I just wanted to post up this movie, so you can watch a good movie, and think,”If I had a drug that would make me use 100% of my brain, would I use it?”

It is a very good movie because that’s how I feel some days with lots of caffeine, and I think the move is a little under rated.

Here is the preview:

I watched a video today (at the bottom of the article) about Dennis Crowley (@dens) who is the co-founder of Foursquare and I wanted to go further into detail about what he was talking about during his convocation speech to the 2011 Syracuse School of Information Studies.

I currently have not been too much into Foursquare, but after listening to Dennis Crowley’s speech and seeing how he is passionate about his business model and about his beliefs in success, I now have a newfound respect for him and his company from how I have felt in my experiences.

He spoke about his last 10 years, and how he had been through failure, but has always been passionate about what he is doing currently. He spoke about how he did not achieve success right away and how he has failed many times throughout the past 10 years.

I too have been through many ups and downs of entrepreneurialism, and I wanted to share some of the things I have learned that I believe are the keys to success which Dennis touched on in his speech.

You can be anything you want when you grow up.

He talked about how his mother taught him this at a young age, and how it changes as you get older and no one revisits that question. The interesting thing though is that if you watch trends, you tend to see some of the most successful entrepreneurs don’t even start until later in life. It’s interesting to see people work a 9-5 job for 10-20 years then finally get into the entrepreneur lifestyle.

I remember sitting in class 3 months before graduating college, and my teacher was making me create this website (my online resume at the time), and said “Joey, you have to have an online resume, you have to show what you can do or you will never get a job.” I laughed on the inside at the moment, and I said to her “I never want a job though, I work for myself I have three people working for me currently. I hope to grow this into a big company.” She looked at me kind of in disbelief, but later found out two of the people in the class did work for me and I had company on campus. I started out just wanting to do an IT company, and have always wanted to be very successful in IT. One thing I realized over time is that you can be anything you want though and now I see so much more to the world then just limiting it to the technology sector.

One of the main questions I ask people “If I gave you 2 million dollars and you never had to worry about money again, what would you do?” Typically you hear a couple answers like, “live on a beach”, “Move to Europe”, etc; but sooner or later, you will see the realization kick in. What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about money? You would typically work in an industry or a job, or create your own job, or work on a hobby the rest of your life. No one wants money; money is useless. You don’t want the money; you want the access to do what you love. That is where a real business plan starts, where you find out how to create your passion into something that you can do the rest of your life, which can support yourself and possibly a family doing.

This brings you to another topic he discusses,

Do what you love and the rest will follow

This is something that people tend to not understand until after they retire, or they get enough money to get away, or figure out how to change what they love into what they do for a living (which is typically 10-20 years after working a 9-5). If you love something, and you can figure out how to make it into a profitable system that you can actually live off of, then you are never working, you are living. You would enjoy every moment of work while others complain about theirs. If you do what you love, sooner or later you will find a way to make it work for you.

I personally love what I do. I help people build businesses, and when they succeed, I get to look back and see the mark we left on the world. I know, no matter what, that I have helped someone in someway further the reality of making his or her dream closer to a reality.

Sometimes those realities change, and that’s why he said this,

You can always pivot

The reality is that in business the best thing to do is Pivot. What you are today is not what you were 10 years ago, or will be in 10 years. This truth holds true for most businesses. One thing I heard which is very true is that most successful businesses do not make their profits on what they were traditionally setting out to do. In order to stay successful and to maintain with the shifts or trends in the market, you need to make sure you and your companies make these pivot changes. Think about a company that only made blackberry cases or a company that only programmed for the windows platforms. These companies would be losing market shares, and would be losing them very fast.

I try to analyze these trends, see where the markets are going and figure out what’s the best method for the company to start before the shift. The company sometimes does not adapt to pivot changes because the key decision maker is stuck in their ways or has not been focused on the market and only on the company operations. There are all kinds of variables on why the company has not changed, but these are all isolated situations.

Sometimes not making the change though may lead to failure, or even lead you to another market. One thing he said that people have to take to heart though is,

Everything happens for a reason

Everything absolutely happens for a reason. Sometimes we do not see it until later in life where we sit back and laugh at something that may have seemed to cause pain, or thank our selves for the change that arose from what happened.

I have looked at all of my “Failures” as lessons learned. Sometimes, the only true knowledge that we attain is through failure. I typically believe we learn more through failure than we do through success. I do not really refer to it as “Failure” as I tend to call it a “set back”.

I remember one time when my sister “DolFan Jill” had a kick off party to start her new business that she has been doing now for a year. She was expecting a larger turn out, spent a lot of money on an event, and was hoping to see more come from the event than what did. She looked at it and said, “Maybe I should give up”. I told her “If in football, they lost their first game and said ‘OK, we lost, seasons over, lets go home and quit’ they would never go forward and win a championship.” She understood what I said because it related to her, and she is still successfully running the business today. You cannot let what some people call “a failure” effect you, when it is only a temporary set back. Instead, you take from that set back and you decide how to avoid it next time.

Everything happens for a reason. We just have to learn from the bad, cherish the good, and keep our chins up. When I have been at my lowest point in life I did not shed a tear, instead, I smiled and laughed. I actually looked at my life and said, “It can’t get any worse, and it only gets better from here”