The Best Advice Ever Given In a 5 minute YouTube: Wear Sunscreen

In a previous post, I touched on the topic of going back in time and giving advice to my 16-year-old self right after the 1977 lifeguard crew photo was taken. That message would be simple.  “If I could offer you only one tip for your future, sunscreen would be it. Wear sunscreen.”  Today, my future-self of that 16-year-old lifeguard, is wearing the skin of many years of “burning to get tan”.  It’s a casual regret that requires semi-annual monitoring and with increasing frequency for removal of suspect patches. 
If the genie fantasy of the magic lamp ever fell into my possession, my only selfish wish would be to go back in time to redirect my youthful self to put a shirt on or wear sunscreen during my time in the sun. Yes, ok, I’d also slip in some additional selfish advice:  buy Microsoft, Apple and Amazon stocks and don’t sell until we recover from a global pandemic. 

Baz Luhrmann popularized a rap-like song in 1999 with words credited to an essay written as a hypothetical commencement speech by columnist Mary Schmich.  The five-minute message, for me, became the best advice that spans an entire lifetime.  I can only imagine how my response to life’s responsibilities would have been more enjoyable if I would have heard and headed this advice at a much younger age.   Spend 5 minutes watching the video.  You may have to play it back a few times because your mind will drift on a personal reflection and may miss the next nugget that comes pretty fast.   The line of “Get to know your parents….” echoes and rings true. If you can, do something about that today.  If not, find a photo and keep it out.

Without further commentary, please take the time now to click the link.  I can assure you that your thoughts and focus will be much different if you just catch one phrase and hold on to it for a while.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

For added convenience, I found the lyrics online and are posted below.

Continue reading “The Best Advice Ever Given In a 5 minute YouTube: Wear Sunscreen”

What I Retired From

I have been purposefully planning for “retirement” for twenty years after I read the book ” Your Money Or Your Life”, which I have referenced many times throughout this two-year-old blog. That book started me down the road of understanding personal finance as it pertains to my little world of managing my spending and savings rates. For me, it was all about squirreling away financial resources to have enough FU Money and eventually being able to walk away from horrible bosses at will.

There are many definitions of Retirement, and for me, it has changed several times throughout my career. To this day, I still don’t have a simple definition of what my “traditional” retirement will look like.
I do know the difference between the choices of retiring at a certain age and retiring when savings and investments can stand on their own to cover a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle.
Continue reading “What I Retired From”

What Is Maslow’s Theory of Hierarchy of Needs: Social Media?

Here’s a new twist on a familiar theory from B-school that is still valid today as it is applied to Social Media.  The social media hierarchy mirrors the original theory beautifully.  In 1943 Abraham Maslow published a paper describing the human theory of motivation.  It describes basic interdependent stages of human growth through the achievement of psychological needs. Continue reading “What Is Maslow’s Theory of Hierarchy of Needs: Social Media?”

Act Now. Experience Is Standing By

Leo Buscaglia was an author and motivational speaker, who at the time. focused on personal relationships. He was often referred to as Dr. Love. His work and message still endure today. He authored fourteen books and coined a valuable question that his father asked him every day when he was a child: “What have you learned today?”.  It’s an interesting question to ask yourself at the end of each day.
Our Memorial Day Holiday is nearly upon us and I would like to share this very fitting poem. It begins with a brief introduction of how Leo obtained it and the life lesson it provides. The poem is written out below along with a YouTube clip of Leo reading it.  (Which method of delivery did you prefer?)

Like many things that are within our reach, we sometimes wait just too long to decide, to act, or to appreciate the opportunity at hand.   It’s an important National holiday weekend that you probably will spend with family & friends, so practice recognizing the moments and appreciate them.

Carry On.

Continue reading “Act Now. Experience Is Standing By”

This Will Help You Be Prepared For Change Before It Happens

Who doesn’t like a good book that you’ve enjoyed reading and learned a few nuggets of knowledge from the author? Case in point, Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard. It’s an easy reading parable about a couple of mice in a maze looking for, what else, Cheese. Being a parable, it is generously peppered with metaphors related to the pursuit of goals. Continue reading “This Will Help You Be Prepared For Change Before It Happens”

What To Do When They Move The Cheese

Who doesn’t like a good book that you’ve enjoyed reading and learned a few nuggets of knowledge from the author? Case in point, Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard. It’s an easy-reading parable about a couple of mice in a maze looking for, what else, Cheese. Being a parable, it is generously peppered with metaphors related to the pursuit of goals. The book will help make you aware of the dynamics that are occurring outside of your field vision (the maze) and the constant changes to the environment that you choose to be in. It’s a very fast-reading book that can help you learn how to recognize, plan, and respond to the silent language of change to your best advantage. Continue reading “What To Do When They Move The Cheese”

How To Spend 168 Hours Each Week

Common sense marketing

Robert Kiyosaki, author of the Rich Dad Poor Dad book series wrote: “For many, the power of their excuse is more powerful than the power of their dreams.”
Excuses might be one’s defense mechanism for avoiding the discomfort of moving into unfamiliar territory.
Up until the age of when we were selecting what college we were planning on attending, someone else was making our choices for us. There are of course a few exceptions. Take for example when I was a kid with a dime in my pocket. I had some pretty exciting choices to make when I was selecting some candy to blow my dime on at Zarchies’ corner store. Back then, ten cents could buy ten pieces of candy. Zotz, Bazooka, Hot Tamales, Bullseyes, Pop Rocks, and Bit O’ Honey were some of my favorites.  I vividly remember walking home and eating those sugary delights. I had to make sure I ate all that candy before I got home. Hint, don’t get the Bit O’ Honey. Remember the slogan?  If you’re in a hurry, forget it.

Bottom Line #1. The best position is to be in is to make a decision for yourself.  In some cases, if you don’t, someone else will make the decision for you, and you may not like the direction or result.  Either way, a decision is going to be made with or without you.

OK, back to the topic on excuses. Making excuses limits your behavior to get what you really want. One has to learn to identify what one wants once they filter out the noise of professional objectives.

For the past three weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of filtering out, actually eliminating, every one of my professional objectives that came into me through a corporate Outlook email box. Yep, I’m no longer at my place of employment.
More on that story after I finished digesting the seven years that I was there and after I finish organizing a bunch of moving parts to complete the exit. Of course, there is a happy ending to the story. Not as good as Edith’s story, but along a similar thread.

Since the previous package, I’ve prepared for these reorgs and times between gigs by getting my financial house in order. If you recall from previous posts, I discovered the term escape velocity.   The FIRE Community refers to it differently, but the same concept.  Since I have a science background and was a child of the NASA era in its heyday, escape velocity provides much more meaning to me as I was not able to achieve this with a lot of help and guidance.

The one thing that I struggled with and made plenty of excuses to avoid working out in detail was deciding what I would do with my time without the structure of corporate goals and objectives.
When I finally receive my very last W-2 statement, how will I spend the 168 hours each week?  For 33 W-2 years, 40-50 hours each week was structured by an employer, customer or a service to a series of fantastic direct reports.

I had designed a robust cash flow model that extends out to 2027.  I really struggled to design a schedule to account for the actual 168 hours that are available each week while unemployed for, say, the next 33 years. I made the excuse that I had the plan rattling around in my head and I will eventually write it down when the time comes. It was made tougher because of inexperience, procrastination. Of course, reasons and excuses fueled by perhaps some complacency and lack of a sense of urgency without a deadline also didn’t help matters.

Bottom Line #2:“While we are postponing, life speeds by.” -Seneca

Again, Mrsfromthebachrow nudges me lovingly into a different thought pattern to shift my behavior away from a financial analysis planning excel sheet into daily practical living and planning.
Over the course of the past three months, I’ve come up with the following response to the question that I repeatedly asked myself. “How will I spend my 168 hours each week when not in vacation mode?”  I started with the easy stuff and worked my up until the struggle became unproductive.  This is what I came up with, and just recently started to add time values to them.

  1. Sleeping: 58 hours
  2. Gym time & Yoga: 14 hours
  3. Fun, leisure, friends, family spontaneity: 12 hours
  4. Blog research & writing: 12 hours
  5. Meals, Prep & clean up: 10 hours
  6. Reading: 10 hours
  7. Improving Website design skills & website security: 2 hours
  8. Managing cash flow, expenses, investment allocations etc.: 2 hours
  9. Grocery shopping: 2 hours
  10. Keeping up with professional skills: 2 hours
  11.  Club activities: 2 hours
  12. Linkedin research: 2 hours (you, know, networking and job hunting)
  13. House Cleaning: 1 hours
  14. Inside house maintenance/projects: 1 hours
  15. Outside house maintenance/projects: 1 hours
  16. Library time:  1 hours
  17. Procuring supplies: 1 hours
  18. Wasting time online: 2 hours?
    Crap, how many hours is that, only 135 hours?  What the hell am I missing? Oh, that’s right, a job and travel.  I don’t have one of those right now, so there’s some of those missing 33 hours.

Bottom Line #3. Humans don’t prosper without a positive way to spend their waking hours. Children, family, exercise, and chores can take up a few hours, but without something else, it can be brutal.”

Bottom Line #4. “To get different results, you’re going to have to do things differently.” -Darren Hardy

What else do I want to accomplish?  (I have a separate running list of places that we would like to do some slow travel and is this outside the scope of this piece.)
Now that I’m between jobs, so to say, and in decompression mode, it might be time to make a shift away from accomplishments and ask a different question.  What do I want to learn?  What new hobbies or experiences do I want to get involved in?
Those are better questions, don’t you think?

Again for the past three months, I started jotting down things that could fill in the 33 hours that I have available.  This was a brain dump and the items are not ranked. So here goes.

  1. Get better at fly fishing and fish locally
  2. Try learning Spanish with podcasts
  3. Explore Paintless Dent Removal training (PDR)
  4. Factory Five 3 day build school in Michigan
  5. Build a Factory Five Roadster
  6. Take a WordPress Coding Course at the local Community College
  7. Rebuild the lawn mower engine that has been giving me problems
  8. Restore the 1999 Trek Mountain Bike that my team gifted me.
  9. Lakefront time: biking & paddle boarding
  10. Part-time work at a marina, fitness center, winery, Trader Joe’s, Costco,
    a. usher at concert venues, college sports arena or Wrigley Field
  11. Write the personal finance course for College Seniors
  12. Write a sales training course for the service industry
  13. Temporary Contract Sales Manager
  14. Cloud-based project marketing consulting. (yes, Julian, I’ve been following)

It’s an interesting list that is broad, yet not too deep. I plan on revisiting my childhood and adolescent memories to see what I neglected all these years.

Perhaps it’s time for all those silent readers to take a few moments to jot some other ideas in the comments section and share them for consideration. It’s brainstorming, so no idea will be rejected.
While you are preparing your thoughts, I’ll leave with this last point that puts this whole FIRE concept in the proper context for me.

Bottom Line #5. “The goal of life is not to relax on the beach, sipping mojitos all day. The purpose is to find something you love that also adds value to the world.” -Benjamin Foley

Here’s What Happens After You Take The Package

Exactly ten years have passed since my time standing on the GE “Meatball” logo during sales meetings. On February 18, 2008, I took a separation package which provided me with an opportunity to leave a job that I truly enjoyed. Forced out by a couple of truly horrible, horrible bosses. A pair of real douche bags.

Continue reading “Here’s What Happens After You Take The Package”

A Happy Ending To A Career

At the time of this writing, I’m approaching a 20-year career milestone in sales and marketing management that provided me with the privilege to be the last manager for several people who chose to retire under my watch. It was quite the experience helping them put some of the pieces of the retirement planning puzzle together.

Over time, I learned the age of my direct reports but did not learn the importance of this information until a conversation with Edith. She was my inside “telesales” rep based at our U.S. headquarters. She was a fascinating and humble person that I got to know over the two years she reported to me. I learned that she won an Olympic silver medal in track & field during her athletic years.

Continue reading “A Happy Ending To A Career”

How to Make a Difference at the Beach and Other Places

One of my favorite beach stories, which appears in many versions found easily with a Google search, is about an “experienced” beach walker strolling the beach as the tide was going out. Along the shoreline various sea creatures were left exposed as the tide waters receded. On this particular day, there was an abundance of starfish scattered about the shoreline as far as one could see.  Continue reading “How to Make a Difference at the Beach and Other Places”

This Action Will Increase Your Pay

Just about this time of year, most big companies finish going through their annual review process and it usually closes with a salary adjustment. In the years gone by they were called merit increases or raises. Back in the day before the markets melted down, raises could be anywhere between 5-12% with the average hitting around 7%. Continue reading “This Action Will Increase Your Pay”

This Is Why You Should Prepare For The Job Interview

Planned Behavior-Based Job Interviews are popular and common and an objective tool used in many job interview processes. The questions below are just a small sample of the questions asked during this type of interview. Google “Behavior-Based Interviews” and you’ll find plenty of resources and supplemental information. You will find some clever answers to many of them.  https://www.livecareer.com/quintessential/star-interviewing   The whole point of these Behavior-Based Questions is how you clearly and effectively demonstrate how you can process information and communicate during the interview. Continue reading “This Is Why You Should Prepare For The Job Interview”

A Biased View of The Evolution of Corporate Structures

If you’ve been with the same company long enough, you gets to experience various organizational structures. Some work great, but others struggle to gain critical mass and are destined to be moved to the bottom of the file cabinet. One of the biggest challenges comes when the C-level managers decide to perform reorgs every 18-24 months. It usually happens when new leadership comes in and decides to start rearranging the “furniture” right away so that they have their fingerprints on the organization so that they can justify their existence. Continue reading “A Biased View of The Evolution of Corporate Structures”

This Action Will Get You The Job Offer During The Interview

If you’re thinking about starting a job hunt, Harvey Mackay said it best: “Dig your well before you’re thirsty”. It’s also a title for one of his books. I’ll let Harvey and many other good authors provide the guidance and prep you for a productive job hunt.
Before that, get your profile on LinkedIn, no exception, first and foremost. See my earlier post on my take on LinkedIn.
For now, I’m going to jump right to parts of the interview and provide you an exceptional tool that will help you gather your thoughts and prepare you more effectively than any other candidate you are competing against. Preparation and how you handle yourself during the interview will differentiate you from the pool of candidates they bring in to fill a job.
The first tool will require some homework that will be fulfilled during your research and preparation for the company. Continue reading “This Action Will Get You The Job Offer During The Interview”