Thursday, August 21, 2008

Live in the Present

I never really considered myself much of a music guy but this week has been my live music week. Sunday I saw Marnie Neimi's excellent Bluegrass band, last night I went to a Bob Dylan Concert with YPO and tonight I heard Erinz Fire (another great band)at a Technoplanet event.

Technoplanet hosts excellent, well run computer industry events for resellers (I was a speaker). The event today was for Apple resellers. They had a bowl of apples at the podium I was speaking at and I almost started to eat one while I was speaking thinking this would break any boredom in the room.

I am always energized by speaking with entrepreneurs. The audience were all business people who sell Apple products. They have intense competitive pressure. And some of the resellers were very vocal about it. The purpose of the seminars are to help them with business ideas on how they can thrive in the environment they are in.

Complaining if it makes you feel better might be OK. It has never made me feel better. Complaining if it will make a difference is always a good idea. But there are many things that complaining about will make no difference - EG the price of oil or the currency exchange rate. I try to figure out which things I can influence and which I cannot.

Tim Moore, my COO, calls the things you cannot influence or change "conditions". If something is a "condition" then the exercise is how to constructively react and deal with it.

Some conditions are caused by inevitable change. And the "old days" never come back. So the goal is to figure out how to make the present awesome.

Quote for the day:

"The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself."
--Douglas MacArthur

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