Tyler Jorgenson

This isn’t it.  But this is a precursor to the big announcement, and it can still be fun.

Introducing the 31 days of Blog Awesomeness!

Each day in January I will have a blog post on something that you, my wonderful readers, want to learn more about.  If you don’t ask or share with me what you want to hear I’ll just post something that I think is cool.  It will be more fun if you give me the topics.  Do you want to learn more about facebook fan pages? Facebook adverstising?  Setting up a website? Motivation? Manufacturing? Hypnosis? Training your dog? If I don’t know the answer off hand (I have zero dog training experience) I’ll research it or bring in an expert to help.

Leave a comment here on this post (If you’re reading this on facebook or elsewhere visit http://blog.tylerjorgenson.com/2010/12/the-big-announcement/ to leave a comment) with what you’d like to learn more about and I’ll see if I can’t work it into the lineup.

What now?

After reading about the new movie 127 Hours on a popular movie blog I started thinking about the future.  More accurately I started to thing about the present.  If you’re not familiar with the movie it is the story (based on the real deal) of a hiker who gets his arm trapped beneath a boulder in the bottom of a crevasse where nobody knows where to find him, or that he is even there.   The hiker, Aron Ralston, spent 127 grueling hours trapped in what he thought would be his grave.  He saved himself by cutting off his own arm with a dull pocket knife and walking out to freedom.

I watched Ralston talk about this on Jay Leno December 3rd and what I found was most interesting was his talk of how he felt when he realized he’d solved the ‘riddle’ of how to escape… by cutting off he own hand!  When he realized he could use leverage and break his own bones to get free rather than cut through them with a knife he said it was a feeling of ‘ecstasy’.  Do you feel that way when you solve a problem?

In some ways, not at all as literal as Ralston, we all deal with our own rocks and hard places every day.  We get stuck in tough situations and have to find our own way out.  This past week I escaped a couple of my own boulders and it is liberating.  The challenge is that for the past 18 months these were a couple of big boulders I thought about every day.  But, now I’m free.  So now what?

For me it’s time to retreat in order to move forward.  I’m going back over old notes and ideas and evaluating current projects from new angles.  I’m excited about some of the projects I’m working on and I’m focusing on the steps that can be done today to make those projects more successful.

What rocks are you currently stuck under?  How can you escape them?  Now what?

If you’ve read my tutorials on how to set up your own website (Vol 1 and Vol 2) you know that I use Dreamhost for a lot of my website hosting.  If you’re looking at signing up with Dreamhost here are some cool coupon codes that Dreamhost just sent me.   Update on 2/19/2011 the two codes crossed out have been redeemed.

Coupon Codes:

875859468480
522947537408
398785984443
193392240606
190259318882

… you will get all these super special advantages not available any other way:

* If you choose our one-year plan, they’ll get $15 off!
* If you choose our two-year plan, they’ll get $100 off!

(Each code is good for only ONE sweet DreamHostering referral!)

Enter the 12-digit code in the “Promo Code” field when they sign up at:

https://signup.dreamhost.com/

This isn’t a big deal if you’re not looking for this service, but if you are it’s like an extra $100 you can spend on google adwords.  Woot!

The Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC had a new venture seed capital competition this year.  Last night some classmates and I attended the finals and the awards ceremony.  Twelve entrepreneurs pitched their businesses to the five judges.  There were a lot more than twelve hopefuls originally but through some preliminary rounds these were the finalists.  In the end six of the budding entrepreneurs left with giant checks.   Three with $5,000 and three with $12,500.

The whole event of listening to the pitches, talking with the presenters and judges and eating the buffet (well, the buffet was just a bonus) was invigorating.   Sometimes I get tired and worn out.  I love being an entrepreneur and the who process of idea to testing to design to launch is a thrill.  But it can be tiring, especially when some ideas go all Matthew McConaughey and fail to launch.  Being there with all so many people that were at different stages of the process but all excited about the journey was just what I needed.  The wind is back and my sails are hoisted.