(got this text from a friend today, but I haven’t responded yet because I don’t think I can accurately answer via text)

It’s such an innocent question, but yet can be so loaded based on the depth of my desire to answer.

Running a business really is a non-stop roller coaster of emotions. One day the sun is out and unicorns are marching along to a happy tune. The next day the world might as well come to an end as everything is ruined. It seems a bit dramatic, but really the swings are crazy in growing a business and can happen over the span of a few weeks, a few days, or sometimes even within the same day. I feel like I’m in a constant sensory overload.

One of the most valuable skills I learned over the years is the ability to manage my emotions and not get wrapped up in the swings. I’m also really good at putting things in perspective, because really at the end of the day, I still have my mental and physical health, with a great wife, and a roof over my head…see, now everything is better again .

On the worst days, all I want to do is rant about it to people (employees, customers, investors, Annie, etc), but many times that’s not possible because I have to keep the positive image for the sake of the company. Also, not everyone is built to deal with such swings and thus it’s not fair to dump on them because they might deal with it in a much worse way than me.

Today I walked to pick up Annie and thought about listening to a podcast on the way, but there was so much noise in my head that I needed to sort out, that I opted to walk in silence. I needed the walk to help me sort through my own thoughts. Taking walks really puts me at peace which explains why, rain or shine, I try and walk every day.

I wish I could say that such situations aren’t normal, but really I think every day I need some time, usually at the end of the day, to just white balance myself. Writing on this blog and mediation in the morning both help, but on the bad days, even all the skills I’ve built up over the years of being an entrepreneur aren’t able to help me cope. The stress is constant and usually coming at me from five different directions. It’s like I’m in a state of perpetual growth and challenge.

Six weeks ago the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board sent me a letter stating that I was in violation of their employee worker comp laws and thus fined a $10,000 penalty. I didn’t think I was in violation, but worried that I just forgot to file/pay for something and was thus actually in violation.

The Board gives you the option to petition the penalty in writing, but they warn you that the decision after the petition is final and can’t be changed. So I submitted and waited…and waited….and waited. Then finally received this letter from them a couple days ago:

Seeing the $10,000 fine go down to $0 was/is a great feeling. But this isn’t the first time I’ve dodged a business legal bullet. It’s not that I’m not on top of things, it’s just that there are SO many things to be on top of that, undoubtedly, something unintentionally slips through the cracks. My hope is that it’s a $10 mistake vs a $10,000 mistake.

Building something that people are willing to pay for is hard enough, but adding on layers and layers of legal stuff (State, Federal, IRS, Workers’ Comp, Insurance, etc) makes the job that much harder. Sure it can be outsourced (which for some I do), but that involves extra money that often times isn’t around, so you end up having to do it yourself.

My first business was selling old edition textbooks online through a company called DiscountedDepot. It was very lucerative for me until the bookstores, I contracted with, realized they could do the same thing and cut me out. I really enjoyed growing the business, but I also really enjoyed growing my knowledge about how to grow a business. This was the first time I realized I had a love for not only the team (DiscountedDepot), but also for the game (business).

When Kevin and I started Swift Kick to do college leadership trainings, we got excited every time a new school booked us. In four years, we grew Swift Kick to be one of the top leadership training programs in the country and were voted top speakers on the college market for three years in a row. We loved seeing Swift Kick (the team) grow, but we also loved dissecting the game (college speaking).

My love for the team and game spreads beyond just business.

When I got engaged to ACbert, I started asking everyone around me, with marriage experience, what advice they’d give me as a male going into a marriage. Then, when we actually got married on Feb 5th, 2009, I continued to ask that question. In love, just like my textbook selling business, I’m extremely passionate about not only increasing the success of our marriage, but also about growing my understanding of what ‘love’ is. Once again I have a love for the team (me and ACbert) and for the game (love).

My knowledge hungry approach for the team and the game continues to stay with me as I ramp up Student Launcher. The better I understand the game, the more successful I can make the team.

A friend and I were discussing his option of getting a Masters degree or starting a business. Conceivably he could do both, but let’s go with the assumption that they will both require 100% of his focus, so he has to pick one.

While discussing, I compared his Masters vs Entrepreneurship decision to that of house buying vs house renting. I’m a big fan of renting over buying and have even calculated the numbers on an excel doc to determine the outcome over the long run, and I’m not alone in this opinion.

For most people, however, I would probably tell them that buying is a better investment, not because it actually is, but because they are human, and 99.99% of humans won’t have the self-discipline to make renting be a better investment. The reason that is, is because buying forces you save away a huge chunk of your income every month via your house mortgage, and the pain of not paying your mortgage is so high that most people do it every month, year after year.

Renting, on the other hand, frees up a bunch of money that would otherwise be put into a mortgage. At the end of the month, you look at your healthy bank statement, and from here have two options. The smart option, and the way renting becomes a better long term investment over owning, is to take all that money and put it directly into some kind of investment. Unfortunately, most won’t have that discipline and instead will spend some of it, or all of it, and then invest the rest. Unlike with a mortgage, investing becomes the last option, instead of the first.

Now let’s come back to the Masters vs Entrepreneurship decision. Getting a Masters degree is much like owning. You are forced to put in a bunch of time to take classes, that leads to great networking, that most likely will result in you being smarter, better well connected, and ready to take on the world. Entrepreneurship is like renting, every day you have a set period of time, but no one is forcing you to do anything and thus you might sleep in an extra 30 minutes, watch a few extra hours of T.V., or go out with friends a little later than normal. That means success, through hard work and focus, is secondary to all the other options throughout the day. Getting a Masters forces you to put your personal success first, whereas Entrepreneurship leaves that decision up to you, and in that case, 99.99% will sleep in a little extra, stay out a little later, and make their personal success secondary…because there’s always tomorrow.

When deciding between buying and renting, it comes down to what you choose to do with your money. When deciding between a Masters or Entrepreneurship, it comes down to what you choose to do with your time. If you rent or start a business and are willing to put in the same amount of money/time as you would with buying or getting a Masters, then it’s the smart decision, otherwise, stick with owning and getting a Masters.

For my 30th birthday, ACbert got me a beer brewing kit as part of her 30in30for30 adventure idea. She had known about my home brewing aspirations for a while, so this was the perfect gift. As soon as I got the kit, I opened the directions and dug in…

Two months later, I finally had the chance to taste my first batch. I twisted open the bottle, took a deep chug…and spit it out. It was horrible. I mean below Miller Lite horrible. It was so bad I had to rinse my mouth out with water.

Similarly, over last summer, we bought a bread machine and I was equally excited to start baking my own bread, so I opened the directions and dug in…

Three hours later, I opened the beard machine lid, tore off a chunk of bread, stuck it in my mouth…and spit it out. It was horrible. I mean Wonder Bread horrible. It was so bad I had to rinse my mouth out with water.

Similar starts and similar ends, but here’s where the two stories split. With the beer, I needed to wait two months every time I wanted to re-test my strategy, whereas with bread, I only needed to wait three hours. That meant for every one beer batch I got to test and improve on, I tested 40+ bread batches. Which one do you think I got better at faster?

Entrepreneurship, especially in the early stages, is all about testing your hypothesis as fast as possible so you can either ramp up successes, or move past failures. The faster you get to test, the better. The longer you have to wait between each test, not only does time slip away and costs go up, but the number of possible variables that might be causing the issue becomes much higher, which makes it harder to know exactly what variable was the issue.

After my first couple batches of bread, I discovered that our machine required more water than the directions called for. Out of all the possible reasons why the first batch was bad, it was easy to pin-point exactly what was wrong within two days. Now, not only do we make great bread each week, but we also love to experiment with new types of bread because we don’t have to worry about the basics any more.

Now it’s your turn. If you have an idea, think about how you can test your idea more like a bread maker verses a beer brewer.

In the past, a lot of my decision making was based on gut. I’d do, or not do, based on my feelings towards the idea. The problem was that my internal compass wasn’t well formed when I was younger. So my gut reaction was a hit or miss.

Then, as I dug more into entrepreneurship, I used data as my north star. I’d have five different dashboards to track everything and if the data spoke, I listened. The problem with this approach was data doesn’t provide any emotional insight during the decision making process. In fact, the point of using data is to remove the emotional element. This type of decision making didn’t feel right to me. It missed the human element.

As I get older, my gut, or internal compass, gets smarter. With each new life experience, my ability to make a better decision the next time grows. So I find myself trusting my gut more and more again, but I also know the importance data plays in decision making.

Last week, I listened to JOYUS Founder and Chairman Sukhinder Singh Cassidy give a lecture for the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series where she described her decision making process as starting with a gut feeling, then using data to confirm or deny her gut, then going back to her gut to pull the trigger. Gut, data, gut.

I didn’t have a label for my current decision making process, but gut, data, gut feels right with how I now like to make decisions based on a blend of data and a stronger, though still developing, internal compass.

Speaker friend, Jon Vroman, asked me this question on Facebook, and since it’s something I’ve actually thought about a lot, I knew it needed more than just a Facebook response.

Going back to the beginning of my college career, I had this idea planted in me that I’d find “the one.” Not in terms of love, but in terms of mentors. I’d have “the one” teacher that, almost like an awe inspiring alarm clock, this person would show me a whole new world I’d never seen before. I waited, and waited, and waited, but “the one” never happened. Well it almost did.

He was an older adjunct teacher for my intro to entrepreneurship class at Aurora University. He’d created and sold multiple companies. He truly seemed like my “something from nothing” hero.

On the first day of class, he filled us with motivational war stories from the front lines of entrepreneurship. I couldn’t get enough, I was in awe and knew there was no where else I was interested in being. Then it happened…

We were in a discussion about who should sit on a board of directors and my newly minted hero said, “for me it was always filled with men because there just wasn’t a need to have women in the boardroom.” My head sank. The whole class went up in arms.

Turns out his views on women were from an era gone by and no one told him. To his credit, he did actively listen to the criticisms of the class and by the end of the term he had changed…a bit. But the damage was done. My hero was no more.

Beyond him, no one else came close to being “the one” for me.

I continuously hear people talk about how a specific person changes their life forever. As if it were some magical moment where this perfect image of a person came down from above and it was meant to happen. Maybe I need to keep waiting because it makes me feel like I missed out on something in my life.

In the mean time, I’ve built up an amazing support group of people, and networks, around me. Theses are people who individually each have something that is awe inspiring to me. But as well have flaws and things that I know I don’t want to emulate. Put each individual piece together and then I’d have “the one.” It’s piecemeal on my part and maybe that’s ok, because no one is perfect by themselves. We all have our flaws.

Which brings me to my final note on this topic. I know some people I’ve connected with look up to me in awe and use my life as inspiration (or maybe I just think they do). And I’ll do my best to be their “the one,” but they should know that I come with my flaws too. I hope that what you like about me doesn’t blind you from my flaws and you piecemeal the best parts for your life instead of an all or nothing approach.

I lied, one more thought. This is also why I don’t find myself gravitating to any one religion or way of life because in each I find the pieces I like and pieces I don’t.

I’m on the last few days of a month long sprint to build the V1 of our new product we’re launching called AlumniChoose. Today I woke up at 7am and worked almost solidly till just a few minutes ago. With breaks for lunch and such, that’s almost a 14 hour day. The past month has consistently been 10-14 hours days. All of it in preparation of making sure we hit our V1 launch date of Jan 16th. By launch, I don’t mean send out the press release. I mean I have a team of beta schools that I’m working with who will test and give their feedback. From there, we’ll assess next steps in terms of development and marketing. My eyes are red and tired and my body will collapse on the bed tonight just like it has for the past month, but the crazy thing is, I can’t wait to wake up the next morning and do it again.

Hat tip to Nate St.Pierre (though don’t know where he got it from). Reminds me of a previous post I did in 2009 called The Vision Gap.

Borrowed this from my friend Jamison Kingfield because it speaks a lot to my views on success in business and life.