I am a big fan of eliminating vices out of our lives. It was great to see articles pop up about Ben Affleck telling Oprah that he had finally quit smoking. An interesting part of all of this is that both he and Matt Damon used hypnosis to help them quit. Affleck mentions that the “guy just sat there and told me nicotine is poison.” Hypnosis allows us to change our neuro associations more rapidly, and so under hypnosis Ben was able to make the changes to his mental perspectives on smoking. What vice in your life could you cut out simply by thinking of it as a painful and negative experience and associating greater pleasure to abstaining? If you’d like more information on how to make changes rapidly, let me know and I’ll post more on the topics of NLP and Hypnosis.
I was invited to lunch today by a commercial lender that I met on the tram at Disneyland. During the meal we talked through a few deals I am currently working on and about some deals that we hoped to do in the coming months. While we were wrapping up our lunch at Mimi’s (it would have been sushi if it were my choice) the gentleman in the booth next to ours piped up and, after apologizing for eavesdropping and interrupting, mentioned that he is an investor and also represents clients that are looking for deals wherein they can invest their capital. We had a pleasant, but brief, conversation and exchanged cards with the promise to talk again very soon.
There are a lot of deals out there and a lot of capital still waiting to be invested. You never know where you’ll meet the person that can help you close your next deal, it could be on the tram at Disneyland or at a booth at a girly restaurant. Keep your eyes and ears open and make your own destiny.
I would venture it safe to say that people enjoy shopping where they feel they are appreciated and where they get good customer service. Sears has been in the news and on business blogs a lot recently as a struggling company and one that is losing customers.
My wife and I bought a new home a couple of weeks ago and I have been shopping for a new washer and dryer (our laundry has been piling up). I’ve done some online shopping and gone to the local Lowes, Home Depot and Best Buy. Last night I went online to Sears.com and compared found a good deal set. Then I cross checked them to one of their affilliated companies, The Great Indoors. The price for the same Kenmore set was much better at The Great Indoors. I must say that I think this is one of their mistakes. No customer wants to buy a product and then learn that they could have had a better price on the same product from the same store. This isn’t really where my beef with the company lies however. The Great Indoors doesn’t really carry stock, so it would take 2 days to get the appliances (you remember that I mentioned the laundry was piling up?) Earlier today I called a local sears store to see if they had the appliances in stock and if they would price match. I dialed the number that Google Maps Mobile brought up and it just rang and rang. I then went online and got the number… no answer. I called the automotive department and they gave me the same number to call… no answer. I didn’t give up too easily as I tried to call another Sears nearby. When I got to a live person the gentlemen was very polite and took the item # to look up the product. He then, I’m assuming accidentally, hung up on me. A few more phone calls too Sears, Sears Grand, K-mart (whose appliance section is Sears) and I finally went to Lowes and got great service and bought my new appliances from them.
If all of their stores are being run the way that the 4 I tried to deal with then there is no question as to why the company is struggling. Let’s hope the new CEO can turn things around.
Most companies won’t get that many attempts from their customers to let them get it right. This experience certainly reminded me to be good to my customers.
I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and this week the leader of my church passed away. Glen Beck says much of how I feel, his video is below.
After the concert the traffic in our parking structure was at a stand still so I looked up nearby restaurants on google maps on my phone. The closest place was Kiki’s, just a couple blocks away. We headed over by foot in the drizzling rain. When we got close to the corner I spied Kiki’s, a quaint little taco stand that although it had an ‘A’ in the window was most certainly closed. Blasted google maps! We walked back and drove to Clearwood’s Northwood Inn where we threw some peanut shells on the ground.
I hope to one day be able to have the sort of influence upon people that Garth Brooks has. I don’t mean that I want to be a music star, as if that was an option anyway. I feel richly blessed in my life and want to help people live a life full of passion. I want to inspire people. To have people that need a little kick in the pants, a little motivation, some reframing or a new perspective come to me and I want to lead them on a journey to greater personal strength. What Garth did, in taking a little time out to share his experience with Alva the concession worker, was amazing. In those few moments Alva’s entire life may have shifted course. I may be hallucinating this but I see a girl that had poor self esteem that now has something she can hang on to as a reminder that she is of infinite value. I see a girl who will now take charge of the life that she may have been drifting through. How can I make this sort of impact in the lives of people I am lucky enough to be a part of?
I got an email early yesterday morning from my friend Deyl inviting me to lunch. I’ve posted links to Deyl’s blog before but the background is that Deyl and I went to Elementary, Middle and the first part of High School together. I moved from San Diego to Wrightwood just before our Sophomore year. It was great to reconnect with Deyl and even though we didn’t have hours to chat since we both had meetings we had to get to I really enjoyed talking through a couple of deals. Deyl and his wife Paige have a great outlook on life and are both going to be household names within a matter of years.
As I was waiting outside the Cheesecake Factory at Bella Terra I overheard a couple of businessmen discussing a new product they were promoting. Since I try not to be shy about opportunity I introduced myself and we shared a brief, but rich, dialog. They invited me to help them with their product and we exchanged contact information. I don’t know if anything will come of the interaction, but I was pleased that I didn’t allow a silly fear of introducing myself get in the way of a potential opportunity.
I made it back to Chino a little late for my two o’clock meeting but not too late for it to be saved. I met with one of my new licensees and we went through some business strategies for how he can make good money even in the current market. There is a lot of opportunity out there and we are only limited by our own lack of vision.
A few business calls and emails later I was on my way home to my beautiful wife and kids. My twins turned 1 year old today… Happy Birthday!
We are packing up and moving to a bigger house this weekend. I am amazed at how much ‘stuff’ we have accumulated during our 5 years of marriage and 3+ years in this house. Perhaps the hardest thing is to look at everything and realize that it had a cost. I have boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff that I don’t really use. It must have cost me thousands to buy all of this stuff but it adds up piece by piece and dollar by dollar.
How much do you think you’ve spent on ‘stuff’ that you don’t use? What could you have spent that money on instead (philanthropy, investments, HDTV)?
My wife bought the movie ‘Annie’ for our daughter yesterday. Of course that means it was the first thing on the TV this morning. ‘Annie’ is a classic. I think just about everybody knows at least one of the songs (It’s a hard knock life!). At one point when Annie is at Daddy Warbucks house the dog, Sandy, catches a would be assassin. Annie is stunned that somebody would try and kill Daddy Warbucks and the following dialog ensues:
Annie: Who would want to kill Mr. Warbucks?
Grace: The Bolsheviks, dear. He’s living proof that the American system really works and the Bolsheviks don’t want anyone to know about that.
Annie: The Bolsheviks? Leapin’ lizards!
I had a couple of thoughts after watching this part of the movie.
1. The Bolsheviks aren’t much of a threat to successful Americans these days. Instead we are crippled from our own limitations. It seems that the term ‘The American Dream’ doesn’t have as much luster as it used to. It seems to me that people used to dream bigger. Too many of the generation X’ers and the current generation Y’ers are of the belief that others should provide opportunity for them. Nobody is out there waiting for us to graduate college so they can hand us a $100,000 a year salary. Don’t get me wrong, high paying jobs do exist. I just feel that too many people are waiting for opportunity to find them.
2. The American system really works. This is really an extension of the first thought. There are people making it big today. That could be you. It’s not a matter of rolling the dice, random chance, luck, etc. Go out and create your own opportunity, create your own destiny, live your dreams!
I have an idea. As I get more and more into Real Estate in various ventures my passion for it only grows. Recently I have been networking with people that have been in the industry longer than me, or at least in other areas. I love talking with other people that are working projects, making deals, and creating their own markets. I would like to start doing mini-interviews with people from varying sectors in Real Estate and posting them on here. If you are reading this and have somebody that you think would be a good candidate for a 10-15 question interview please email me at tyler(at)tylerjorgenson.com
I’d love to interview The Trump. He’s a marketer and branding machine as much as a developer.
Stay tuned for interviews. Many of the people may be those you’ve never heard of, but it’s often the guys that you’ve never heard of that are making the biggest waves.
Proverbs tells us that “Where there is no vision, the people perish“
I believe that the opposite of this proverbial statement is also true. That “Where there is vision, the people prosper”
Many of us fall into the trap of ‘going through the motions’. I was at dinner with a friend the other night and he told me that for many years he would set goals and whenever he would revisit his written goals he would see that he had accomplished them. Oddly enough he hadn’t written goals in the last two years. We were at dinner to discuss how he could take action on a particular dream of his and make it a reality. Although this post is full of quotes another favorite of mine is ‘a goal not written is only a wish’.
The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.
– Ronald Reagan
For a long time I have considered going into politics at some level. A little while ago I interviewed for a planning commissioner position (A city planner from another city got the gig). I had hope that I would be able to make positive changes in government. Recently, however, I’ve been thinking that one could possibly make as much change, or more, by working through the private sector. So when I came across the above quote from Ronald Reagan I was pleased. This is actually why I enjoy it when successful business leaders enter politics later in life. Hopefully they can infuse the success and lessons learned in their business careers into government. With the campaigns heating up I encourage you to look at this as one of your considerations for who you are supporting.
I posted a couple of these from my phone while we were in Newport today. I absolutely love this part of California. I would love to live here, even though I am sure that everyday is not as perfect as today. The water was smooth and calm, there were dolphins swimming, birds flying, children laughing, and it was all capped with one of the best sunsets I have ever been blessed with. If all of 2008 be as great as today was this is going to be a banner year.
A nice day on Balboa in Newport Beach capped of with one of the best sunsets of my life.