Upon my own reading of this blog, it contains VERY little comedy and is written very business like…probably because I was “to-do” listing all day…feel free to not read this one as it contains next to zero redeeming comedic value. Thank you.
I gave away my ticket to the Oddball Comedy Tour for Saturday and canceled a stand-up gig on Sunday so that I could go into work and get caught up. I went in for a few hours today as well, but the bottom line is I feel decently caught up with everything at work. I feel like I’ve got a good handle on where I want this week to go, and how to get there.
I also organized all the paperwork around my house, cleaned out the back of my SUV, cleaned out the cab and the back of the work truck, threw away a bunch of old stuff that had been piling up around the house, cleaned up a little, put my new sink together…well 90% there.
…read the rest of Delivering Happiness, made my lunch for tomorrow and put it in the fridge, read a few articles in a Men’s Health magazine, watched a comedy special I’d be meaning to get to (Mike Birgbiglia’s My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend…which was very one-man-show-ish…but I still really liked it), shaved my beard, took a shower, created a plan of action for this week at work, and now I’m writing this for you because I like you.
This post is going to be super short because It’s already 9pm and I have more to do before bed.
If I took anything away from Delivering Happiness, (written by the guy who took Zappos.com from an idea to a billion dollar company) it would be that when you have a passion for your business, and not just a “talk the talk” passion…but a “I’m investing my last dollar in this because I believe in it” passion, you give yourself the best chance at success.
Ok, that’s pretty obvious. What wasn’t as obvious to me anyway, was the idea that you have to lay the groundwork for future successes by hand. I was really blown away by how much the company brought in house instead of finding a reliable third party to perform those functions. It seemed the more the company delegated responsibilities, the more they faltered. The more they brought things in house, the better off they were.
While we’re no million dollar business, the reasoning is sound. Instead of delegating things from the get go, doing them yourself the right way and THEN handing them off is by far the takeaway here. My pop has done a pretty great job at building things himself from the ground up…the handing them off part…well…we’re working on it.
Scheduling all of our jobs has always been challenging, and we always said if we could make the system better, it would probably help tremendously. Instead of looking at improving the current scheduling system, I’m going to take it and start over completely (in theory, of course!… could you imagine how quickly PoppaKon would stroke out if I created a whole new system overnight?) If I just start from scratch and design a scheduling system from the ground up that maybe we could EVENTUALLY utilize, that might be better than taking what we have and revamping it. I don’t know. What I do know is it’s all got to start with me if I want to take the business from where it is currently and make it bigger/better/less stressful/more profitable. Reading that book gave me some good perspective into the ‘why they did it’, not just ‘what they did’.
WHATEVER. I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT ANYWAY
What else…oh yeah…the list!
1. Blog about it daily. DONE!
2. 1600 Calories a day. DONE!
3. Only meals that have been cooked by someone not paid to cook. So like mom’s dinner yes, delivery pizza no. DONE!
4. Read 4 books. (I’m open to suggestions!) Done with Delivering Happiness…next up is Let’s Pretend This Never Happened…then Teresa’s book which I forgot the name of because I’m a bad person.
5. Work out once a day for more than 30 minutes. (this is going to be lenient, like walking is acceptable) DONE! Cleaning out everything is going to count for today because I broke more than 4 sweats.
6. Tweet one joke a day (I will be posting this one to Twitter @kenbonowitz) DONE! I’m kind of going overboard lately…
7. Drink only water. DONE!
8. 100% Abstinence (yes, that means no flogging the pope, or whatever awesome euphemism you use) DONE!
9. Do one RAOK a day! (this will probably be pretty lenient as well, but we’ll see) DONE!
Today’s RAOK:
Even though I can’t spend money this month…it doesn’t mean I can’t plan it out for the future…So I realize that I’m going to be losing some weight from now until the 21st, and I stepped on the scale at the beginning and took a picture so I’ll know how much I’m down. I’m going to donate 5 bucks for every pound I lose to a random charity that I’ll pick later) I figure I’m not spending any money on Monster energy drinks or candy or movies or concerts or well…anything…so I’ll have some change to spare.
10. Surprise someone everyday. (probably my favorite submission out of all of them) woah…NOT DONE.
Unfortunately, I didn’t surprise anyone today. I spent every single minute of my day completely alone today. Which is a little strange now that I think about it…but yeah…I had zero human interaction today…weird.
11. Learn to juggle 4 things. YOU KNOW WHY – NOT DONE
12. Learn a song on the trumpet. YOU KNOW WHY AGAIN – NOT DONE
13. Spend zero dollars. DONE!
14. Look like fat Thor (DONE!)
15. No texting. I will be available to call or Skype or email. But I won’t be texting. (I AM however SNAPCHATTING BECAUSE IT IS AWESOME)
