About three weeks ago, I announced (with tremendous fan fare and a rousing opening second only to Beijing’s Open Ceremonies) that I was starting my own business.  So, my dear and trusted readers are probably wondering, how are things going?

Well, so far so good, but some days I wake up and wonder if I would have been better off staying in Tibet as a yak herder.  Getting out of the gate is truly difficult: the work that you put in is all expense, with very little tangible results (everything is on paper) and half the wild ideas that I’ve come up with end up going in, not the recycling bin, but the trash.  Some of my original ideas were so bad, they were put on a train in contamination barrels headed for the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in Nevada.

Sarcasm aside, when I stand back and look back over the last month and look at the process that has gotten me to where I am right now, I’m rather amazed at it all.  Somehow, a little flicker of an idea sparked in my head, and through a rigourous process of throwing everything I could against a wall to see what stuck, has now turned a strategic and tactical plan that, if all goes well, is ready to be implemented and, barring any funding hiccups, should be live by the time we all sit down to eat Turkey.

Did you see that slight of hand?  I gave you a nice gloss over in my perfect plan above.  Funding!  While I’ve spent almost all of my professional career in Finance, asking people for moola hasn’t been the easiest experience.  On the fun scale it is somewhere between having your face duct taped to Michael Moore’s thigh on a 98-degree day in the middle of the jungle and being kicked in head by a Clydesdale.  Getting funded has almost nothing to do with Finance and everything to do selling yourself–just as much as your idea, if not more so–to people who are smarter and more experienced that you (that’s why they have money) and think you might be able to make them rich.

My description above is apt, but I’ve now embraced a core piece of my personality: I really do need to embrace my inner masochist.  Last year, when I was freezing in a tent at 19,000 feet ?  It sucked and I might have lost half my brain cells, but I loved it and would do it again and again.  As much as I whine about the funding process, and as much as it hurts starting from absolute zero, there is something really enlightening and actually <gulp> enjoyable about it.  It is amazing waking up in the morning with your unrestrained creative process as your best friend and, not being able to rely on anyone else, you have to figure out a way to take all of these ideas on paper and give them life.  In the Corporate world, my creative process has often gotten me into trouble, but here it is really the only asset I have.

This endeavor has also greatly challenged my views on optimism.  There are so many factors flying in your face every day that tell you that this is the most highly improbable thing you could be doing for yourself.  Much of my life, I’ve internally programmed my conscience to warn me of danger and to look for signs of safety.  Now, I am dangling myself out on a limb with my whole net worth, which isn’t exactly Gettyian, on the line with failure a strong possibility.  If I used the oh so illustrative and relevent Homeland Security Threat Level Metrics to measure the early stages of my constitution under likelihood of upcoming danger as Severe, High, Elevated, Guarded and Low, I’d be somewhere around F–ked.

Initially, the bumps in the road set me to panic as I had somehow convinced myself that mistakes along the way were going to be costly to my meager sums and that my margin of error was way too small.  Now, I realize that a day without a setback is a day where I am probably not pushing myself hard enough.  It is difficult, day after day, deliberately throwing oneself into the fire without support, but after you do it a few times, it becomes kind of cool.  Not to say that I dance through this mine field as Fred Astair either, but somehow, my brain is starting to look beyond the clutter into the potential future.  Being wound up so tightly, it took a few blows to force me to loosen my grip and understand that I can actually stear a lot better when I’m laid back in the seat, with a cold, um, Pespi in my hand (I would never condone drinking and driving under any circumstances) and Panama cranking on the radio.

Who knows how this will all turn out, but so far, the most important thing I’ve learned is I’ve found where I belong.

Heart warmning, isn’t it?

Just like Jerry’s kids, I’m just buttering you up to take your wallet.  So, if you want to give me some MONEY, you know where to find me.

If not, enjoy the free Doritos, which I’ve grown addicted to in the last month.

Regardless of your proclivities towards the Bible, in other words whether you read it as myth or literal, it is safe to say that from a philosophical point of view, a truism is conveyed in the story of when Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, namely that mankind kind of screwed itself.  Enlightenment does bring us certain benefits, no doubt about it, but knowledge isn’t always a pure and unvarnished good, even when the information is cloaked in the best of intentions.

Just what am I getting at here?  Well, a few months ago I spilled my smart ass, enlightened beans when I wrote the following post about Freedom:

Before I could do what I set out to do, I’ve had to begin the process of reestablishing the foundations which will eventually allow me to do what I set out to do. My initial thoughts were that this site would go silent until these things were in place, but, I’ve learned something indirectly from my good friend Ian Wood, that the process of reestablishing and regaining your foothold IS the interesting story. Fulfillment is all good and wonderful, but how one gets there is what people relate to versus the eventual results of the story. Accomplishments don’t happen without going through a lot of shit along the way.

So, where am I right now? Here is what I wrote in my journal at the Rombuk Monastery after fending off some gastro-intestinal issues, one year ago today…

…I think that this vulnerability is required to gain a way of living that I consciously choose, apart from mindless routine designed to construct certainty and the illusion of safety. This is what Bruce Lee meant when he said, “When one is not expressing himself, he is not free. Thus he begins to struggle and the struggle breeds methodical routine. Soon, he is doing his methodical routine as a response rather than responding to what is.”

I also made the infinitely foolish mistake of opening my mind to this drivel, when I quoted a passage I wrote at the Rombuk Monestary:

…It still leaves me with an extremely uncomfortable uncertainty around what lies ahead. I keep relying on the trust that I’ve placed in my preparations, plan and, most importantly, my team. We’ve done an excellent job in staying strong and healthy to this point, our acclimatization plan is excellent and we have a great Sherpa with some very solid experience here.

This is the crux for me. Full, 100%, pure commitment. Putting one foot in front of the other, not looking back and, as our Sherpa says, “bhurti, bhurti” or “slowly, slowly” doing what we set out to do…

A few months ago I was blindsided by a major life event.  At almost exactly 5:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, every metaphorical rope I had tied into for career and personal safety was maliciously cut when my then boss informed me that my services were no longer needed.  The financial and career safety I had built for the past 8 years shattered in a split, “sorry, this isn’t your fault, but we have to go in another direction,” and I was left holding a pink slip and an incredibly uncertain future.

The problem for me was just beginning.  Without the knowledge of everything I wrote above, I could have easily gotten back on the bandwagon with a job that provided a great living.  Unfortunately, I cannot escape the knowledge I’ve gained in the past and I didn’t feel settled with that option.  I’ve had this creepy business idea in my head for a while and instead of normally providing my thoughts a mild irritation during low activity periods (which, in my brain, is pretty frequent), it became a screaming banshee alerting each part of my body that if I want to live the life I say I’m determined to live, I have NO CHOICE, but to risk everything and build this silly business.

Dammit.  You have no idea how much this frees me, but at the same time, pisses me off to no end!  Just what do I think I’m doing?  Right now, I don’t have the money to do this, nor the resources to pull it off, nor the focus to hone my business plan versus blogging about nothing.

Actually, I now have a business plan, naturally of which I can’t divulge the full details, but it will be a business intelligence/web 2.0 solution for the adventure travel community.  I have a major problem with it, too: it is REALLY good.  I wish it was crap enough to scare me back into the corporate world, but instead it is actually compelling me to move forward.  So, right now I’m just a kid with a dream, but that’s it.  I hope to share with you here my process for moving forward and, somehow, getting this business built.

I’m haunted–HAUNTED–by this statement that I wrote a year ago:

This is the crux for me. Full, 100%, pure commitment. Putting one foot in front of the other, not looking back and, as our Sherpa says, “bhurti, bhurti” or “slowly, slowly” doing what we set out to do…

Acting on this firmly held belief, this week I liquidated all my “holdings” for cash, so that I can live modestly and do what it takes to get this business funded to hire or partner with people that can get this technology developed and launched.  If this doesn’t work, I am literally worth nothing; placed on the same economic plain as an entry-level McDonald’s employee (unless they have a piggy bank with some spare change in it, then they’ll have a leg up on me).  I’m headed off to Brazil in September to meet people within my industry to figure out how to break into the market.

Why am I so pissed off about this?  Why?  Because, I am honestly doing exactly what I’ve always wanted to do.  This is beyond my dream–this is who I am…and it is scaring he bejesus out of me.

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