For Seth Godin’s Live event, called “Pick Yourself,” I’m wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle t-shirt.

This post will serve as a guidepost for those that I’d like to meet! If you see a small-ish asian guy walking around with this shirt on then you know it’s me.

Why TMNT? Because I doubt that I’ll have any copycats today (but if I do I’ll probably LOL and then I’ll have to take a photo for posterity’s sake).

Please say “Hi!” (yes, you can yell in my face or across the room) and we’ll connect and we’ll have crazy-awesome conversations about whatever we’ll talk about (I have no idea what we’ll chat about but that doesn’t matter!)!

I find my choice of attire exceptionally fitting (pun intended) since the conference is here in New York City and for those that don’t know (how could you not know?!?) TMNT live in the sewers under NYC.

Duh. Isn’t that where all mutant turtles live? Sheesh!

In all seriousness I can’t wait to meet you and I hope I can provide some value to you, your business, your venture, or even give you a little push in the right direction to build a bit of momentum (you have to forgive me as that’s just the professional coach inside of me).

via the Pick Yourself Directory!

One of the neatest things for me personally is that I don’t have a strict agenda as to why I’m even here in the first place. I feel I’m at a critical juncture with some large decisions to make and I just felt that flying to NYC in the middle of May would be part of developing the solutions and strategies that I need.

Strategic, right? … Right…

And I’m not even sure of the challenge or even a problem that I’m trying to solve! I’m just open to finding a bit more clarity. I hope that you (yes, you!) can assist me in that today as we chat about neat things.

And for those that are digitally engaging with this post and are not in NYC today – that’s too bad! I wish you were here so we can hang out and chat. If you have any wisdom-from-beyond to give me I’m open to anything you have to say.

Nothing off limits here! … … … as if “limits” were being observed anyway!

Have a great day folks.

There comes a time where you realize that you’re the only person in the room who has the answer. Or, perhaps you’ve been in that strange situation where you realize you’re the only one that sees what is really going on and are baffled why no one else is getting a clue.

I feel this way often – and I’ll admit that most of the time it’s not that I have a unique or unbelievable perspective or that I have somehow transcended the room’s collective intelligence , but rather the fact that I simply became aware of my differing viewpoint on the topic at hand.

The question is what I do with that knowledge – and that’s your challenge as well.

More often than not I don’t share those thoughts vocally – it’s for my own internal notation. In the areas of leadership this plays itself out often in the form of affirmation towards others, helping them fully appreciate their unique perspective and giving the the platform to stand a bit taller.

It’s also simply allowing them to contribute before you begin to contribute yourself. You see, sometimes the best thing that a leader can do is bring someone else’s idea into the limelight and highlight for others this individual’s own accomplishments or powerful contribution.

I have personally seen this done extremely well and I’ve also seen it done poorly. The difference lies in the heart of the leader and their own sense of self-worth.

For those leaders that are too insecure it often results in taking center stage way too often and even taking the credit for an idea that wasn’t originally their own.

For the leader who is intimately aware of both their own limitations and as well as their own aptitudes and who have found their self-worth in the quality of their relationships and less in their accomplishments they are more apt to notice a situation where positioning another instead of oneself is the right call to make.

I haven’t figured this out perfectly nor have I executed this internal philosophy flawlessly – I have a lot to learn in terms of leadership, especially the type that’s able to create significant impact.

What I have seen, though, time and time again is how important it is to truly have a strong team around you and not just a bunch of “Yes” men – yikes, I could tell you stories from personal experience where the leader had surrounded himself with only those that would bow to his command instead of those that would complement (and challenge) him the best. How incredibly sad those environments ultimately are, even though they may be doing ‘good’ work they are shadows of what they could really be.

We all have people who are counting on us to perform our duties and responsibilities with excellence. To them, we are the right person for the job. The question is whether or not we really are the absolute best for them in the short and long run.

Because we all know what it’s like to work for someone who has long outstayed both their welcome and their effectiveness. Unfortunately we also know what its like to be undervalued, under-utilized, or completely passed over.

Be an incredible leader of self first before you ever begin to try to dictate who’s right for what job. Be the right man (or woman) for the job of being you.

I’m firming up a number of other speaking engagements this year (and even have a few slots open, email me!) and there’s one that I’m both extremely excited about but also anxious about: The Influence Conference.

Now, many of us have attended conferences where “influence” was one of the catchphrases, themes, or even the titles of many of the keynotes and breakouts. But not as many of us have been to an all-women’s conference… and even less still have ever spoken at an all-women’s conference.

Like me. I haven’t ever been to that type of conference so when Hayley Morgan, Jessi Connolly, and Casey Wiegand reached out to me and asked me to consider it I had to pause, touch base with a few folks I trust the most (especially my wife), and ask them if this was a good idea.

All of them said “Yes!” – and their excitement got me even more excited! So I told them that I’d be honored and humbled and put it on my calendar.

This is the first year and first even that the three are putting together and it’s slated to be unique blend of inspiration and practicality with two tracks for the participants to cycle through:

1. Life – Each of our lives are uniquely shaped by God himself. By telling our stories of grace, forgiveness, trials, loss, and triumph – we are telling of the Good News. Each speaker has a story to tell, full to the brim with the Goodness of God.
2. Strategy – If you are wanting to take your storytelling to a new place this track will help. Your influence in social media can bless you and your ministries relationally and even financially. These sessions will give you practical tips to leverage your influence for good.

I’ll be spending my time in the second track and although I’m still working through some topic ideas it has to circulate around their core mission:

The goal is to make much of Jesus with your influence online or in your community.

I’ve obviously got some time to walk through a number of topic ideas and I’d love to open it up here to the community and get some feedback – I may even use some of your stories to help generate content for the conference to share with the folks in attendance!

1. How do you make much of Jesus through your online influence? What have you seen happen positively and negatively?
2. How do you balance the tension between serving your community and profiting from it (making a living)?
3. What strategies have you seen that make online storytelling incredibly impactful and effective?
4. If you were to tell a bunch of passionate Christian women one thing, what would that be?

Thanks all! I’m super stoked to be there and perhaps I’ll see some of you there…?

Also, tickets and registration are opening up this week!

This is a shoutout to the best mother on the planet!

Naturally I’m biased and this is one of a billion-and-a-half blog posts dedicated to the awesome mothers all around the world.

But seriously, my wife is awesome.

Over 5 years ago we had our first, @Roenne, and you’ve raised her to be an incredible little girl who’s curious as you are curious, who’s kind as you are kind, and who loves life fully as you model how to live fully.

Then came #2 and you shared the same amount of love to @Arden in the same measure. Your capacity to give and to serve these two is unbelievable, and you run the most important “startup” that I’ll ever have, our family.

Thanks for not giving giving up on us and for being a mother to two beautiful daughters and even entertaining me, at times, as a child! I’ve got a lot of work left to be done on my heart and soul and you’re an invaluable part of that equation.

I love you. Thank you, so much.

I’ve been running 100mph for the last few weeks as I’ve been attempting to try to close a number of open projects and responsibilities that I’ve got. It’s been more than few 10hr+ days, including weekends.

I’m not a fan of that lifestyle at all and thankfully it’s for a limited season of time. More importantly I have relationships in my life that keep much of this in check and who inspire me by doing incredible work with limited resources! You may have even inspired me as I’ve read your blog posts and looked through your tweets!

For example, there are only a handful of times in my life where I’m going to be spending hours upon hours writing my final thesis for my double Masters degree – I finished the first very rough draft this past week and it’ll scale beyond 200 pages at this point (and it’s not even done yet).

Handing that in last week was an incredible sigh of relief, but as my wife could tell, I was exhausted. I was entirely spent. I had little to give and could do almost nothing more than the agreed upon responsibilities for our family. I felt like a slug!

The natural and very human response is to head in the direction of those things, people, and activities that revive us and restore us – I began taking a look at my options (besides outright sleep) and began noticing a few patterns:

1. Physical Activity – Although I’m physically exhausted I suffer from mental exhaustion more often. I don’t mind heading into physical activity and exercise as a remedy.
2. Stillness and Silence – Part of the growing discipline of productivity for myself is being still and clearing my head of the thoughts of the days activities and pressures of leading my companies. I’ll attempt to sit and do absolutely nothing. Some might  call this meditation and it’s essentially that but I prefer to call it “being still.”
3. Higher Powers – I also try to access one of the core sources of my being, energy, and mission by communing with the Lord – regardless of if you have a relationship with God or the many varying perspectives on “higher powers” we all can commit to agreeing that there’s someone out there that’s in control (or at least have thought about it a few times). This resurgence of commitment to God greatly helps me when I’m exhausted.

The last thing I try to do is engage anything that I do on a normal and everyday basis. I try to spend time in the other areas that may not get as much time and attention and re-commit myself to them.

Where do you go when you’re exhausted? From where do you revitalize yourself? Love to hear your personal process!

[Image via Creative Commons, pragmagraphr]

I used to think I was hot stuff (I typically, at least in my head, use a different word for “stuff”) – my youth, arrogance, and straight-up ignorance fueled my pride, ego, and wiped everyone off the boards before I would give them time and attention.

Something has changed, dramatically, and I’m not sure when it began but I think I like it (thank God!). You see, I woke up this morning, hopped in the shower, and began planning out my day as well as what I was planning on writing and publishing as well as the teams that I have to lead and inspire.

I thought about all the things that I had going on as well as all the things that needed to get done. I realized my list was about 10-12 explicit things that needed answers so that I could continue to move forward, build momentum, and kick serious tail.

The problem was that I didn’t have any of those things answered and I had no idea how to solve them – not even a hint of an idea. I realized that my schedule for the day was covered with nearly 100% ambiguity and I didn’t know jack.

I just hung my head and I realized that most of my job is dealing with exactly that: Not knowing much about anything and managing ambiguity and trying to piece together some sort of coherent vision, strategy, and a plan of execution.

When the heck did it all get twisted? When did this change occur? At one point I thought I had it all together (when I thought I was hot sh*t) and that I had a solution for nearly everything but looking back on the last few months I’ve been operating in shades of gray.

Things are getting done but the amount of times I could say that I knew what was going on is really at an all-time low.

Like I said, I really like it, but this morning was one of “those” mornings when you wake up a bit differently and you see a bit more clearly about what’s really going on. I’m not shocked by reality and I didn’t slip and bump my head – I just had a brief moment of clarity as I shampooed my hair.

There are times when we’ve got everything figured out and when things are humming along like a Formula One race car and then there are times when you realize that your still in the race but the Formula One car has been replaced by your grandmother’s cadi – but you’re still asking the deville to go 220mph.

Or something like that.

Have a great Friday folks. Work through ambiguity and be the hot stuff that you really are – just don’t fool yourself in believing that you’ve got it all figured out; you don’t, and that’s ok. Love it.

Have you ever thought about it that way? Have you ever thought of yourself as an investor? I have and I do, constantly.

The first time I realized this was early in my blogging history when someone had enough courage to comment on my blog and told me that I had encouraged them to try something they had always wanted to try but they didn’t have the right perspective to make the commitment to move forward.

All that changed with a simple blog post. What’s funny is that the purpose or intent of that particular blog post had almost nothing to do with what she had taken away from it! A loose bit of correlation and a whole lot of trust were the key ingredients.

I was shocked but I accepted it graciously, thanked her for the comment, and proceeded to ruminate about this dynamic for the rest of the day. Had I stumbled onto something incredibly unique? Had I done something outstandingly brilliant?

Nope. Not really. All I had really done was hit the “Publish” button on a blog post that I didn’t feel had much brilliance in it at all. And yet I had changed someone’s life and made a very positive (and perhaps life-long) investment.

You do this as well, every single day that you publish content on your digital properties and blogs. You make small deposits and investments in other’s futures – some days it’s significant deposits and sometimes it’s small, but it’s still a deposit nonetheless.

The challenge is understanding that you may never see the actual fruit of your investment, meaning, that that might be the only interaction you ever get with that one person and they may never return after that. Hopefully not, but that’s a reality.

Which means that your investments aren’t for yourself necessarily but for others – it’s selfless and the oftentimes thankless. We all know this from experience as we examine our daily pageviews and visits and see 1,000 of them and 0 comments.

Yes, zero. I have days like that too. A lot of them, actually.

But that doesn’t disappoint me like it used to – I understand it as a fact of life and that most of the small deposits and things that we do for others will never be explicitly reciprocated. Does that mean that I should stop or that my ROI is bad? Obviously not! I would have quit a long time ago if that was the case!

So be encouraged, understand and see yourself as a positive and life-giving investor in others – all you have to do is commit to publishing, every single day (or at least consistently!), and know that it’s making an impact (or will make one) and that that’s a very, very, good thing.

And I love it. It’s a joy for me.

So what are you waiting for? People need your investment!

One of the things that I’ve learned over the years is that when success is all about me (diagram #1) and everyone pouring into me then a few things happen:

1. It’s all about me – This feels good, but ultimately it’s selfish, prideful, and doesn’t help my health (literally).
2. It’s not sustainable – Because I’m feeding off of everyone that I come in contact with it ends up being exhausting.
3. It’s not stable – In addition to not being sustainable, it’s also emotional dangerous as my emotions are subject to the masses perspective and opinion.
4. It’s directionless – Getting shuffled by everyone’s opinion I serve everyone and as a result I serve no one.
5. It’s not productive – It just isn’t. Trust me.

When I started moving into the second model I learned a great deal of things and how it’s much more a model of personal and professional success than the former:

1. It’s about me + them – I haven’t forgotten about myself but it’s much more balanced between my customers and my team. I’ve been more successful with my partners than alone.
2. It’s sustainable – This is because I get to pick and choose who I get to work with and when. As you can see, I’m not serving everyone because everyone can’t be a customer and/or partner.
3. It’s much more stable – Because my time is calculated and well-spent I get to create a more healthy balance for work, life, and everything in between. My wife is much happier too.
4. It has significant purpose – My aim is focused and my effort is made optimal. I know where I’m headed, who I need to work with, and what I need to be doing with my time.
5. It’s productive… as all get out. I don’t waste time and people don’t have time wasted. I love it!

Much of this is energy management and the focus of our efforts. We need to be successful the right way, instead of the many different and varying wrong ways.

Be successful. Be loved.

One of the last places that I had on my list of Atlanta Coworking spots was Bean Work Play Cafe, a neat (and very different) coworking spot that is both traditional productivity venue plus childcare for working parents.

Located right in Decatur [Google Maps] you have access to a number of great spots to eat as well!

Talk about a win-win-win (childcare, productivity, food) in that regard!

I instantly felt very comfortable as the founder, Adela, greeted me and quickly showed me around the place – the front area (accessible from the rear) being childcare with very neat facilities for 1 to 6 years old and then in the back where you can hold meetings (various conference rooms available) and the coworking area with simple (and clean!) kitchen with individual rooms for even greater productivity.

Take a look at some of these images, as well as an interview with the founder, that give a general idea of the overall experience:

Easy to get to and tons of parking space available!

A few thoughts from the Founder:

That’s Adela right there at the front desk, being the first person to say “Hi!” when you walk in. What a gracious host!

She also have quite the resume, working at such large places as ING America as the Director of HR! Her vision for BWPC is:

We wanted to create a new model for working and caregiving that fits the modern family.

And… I think she does really “get it”…!

Little “spy holes” on the kiddos!

They even have swag!

And, here’s where I worked for the day:

I really enjoyed my time there that day – I felt that the area was comfortable, the noise level wasn’t as bad as you might think (didn’t hear any screaming kids, good sound management!), and the location and parking was convenient and hassle-free.

The seating was comfortable (I liked my seat!) and the people were friendly but very productive (very focused moms who know they have little time to waste!). For the working class with kids this would be a great place to hang out, for sure.

But it’s not just for casual browsing, the internet speed was very decent and so I didn’t feel held back in anything that I needed to get done either. I was very happy with the speed in fact – just take a look at the SpeedTest!

If you need a place and you’re in the Decatur area then this is a spot to check out. Sure, there’s another place just down the road for coworking but you don’t get nearly the same environment!

Check out these other Atlanta Coworking spots!

I had a very soft launch last night sharing a few things about the history and backstory of ChairCo, my professional coaching organization, and things seem to be working very well so today is the official announce of the new website and the online acceleration class that many of you have been asking about!

It has taken months, nearly half-a-year, to get this up and running and it’s been an incredible investment of my time and resources, but I couldn’t be more pleased with where it is today and for all the people that helped me out to finalize and launch this neat new project.

Of course, a huge shoutout goes to Jared, one of my partners at 8BIT, who did the design and branding of ChairCo – it’s pretty much the nicest site I’ve ever personally owned! Some slick CSS3 and HTML5 effects to boot!

But what I’m most excited about is the fact that the online course is now online and that many of you will be able to be accelerated this year in the directions that you need the most help in. Some of you have big goals, big dreams, and big projects that need to be tackled and it’s been disappointing to turn away so many people that wanted to walk through my physical class located here in Atlanta because of the geographic distance.

As a result, many of you asked when it would be available online or in an online format, and I took that to heart, spending countless hours writing out my unique process and a unique curriculum designed to help you get from point A to point B a lot faster.

You’ll encounter unique content, walk throughs of how I process information, and nearly 40 never-seen-before videos encouraging you every step of the way. It’s a serious investment of your time so you’ll need it!

My hope is that countless people can receive this amazing personal coaching resource and in 30 days feel refreshed and revitalized as well as feel equipped with better tools to make those ideas happen.

A Few Bonuses:

I’m also running a discount and unique bonus opportunity through this month (ends June 1st) that gives a $50 dollar discount as well as free access to my new instrument Action & Influence. 

Just use “Tentblogger” at checkout to claim it!

I’m not sure how long I’ll run this promotion but I hope that many of you will take advantage of it. As I’ve walked many through the process already I’ve seen the incredible results and I’ve been pretty blessed to be a part of the process.

Thanks for all your support and let me know if you have any questions! Check out the site as well as the Learning Center – I’m praying for big things this year for you! Your vision, mission, project, and organization is worth it.