Sometimes I wonder if I am even built for this shit. The last couple of years have been tough. I could be proud of our top line growth. It has been pretty impressive, although I now have some graying whiskers. But there have been times that have made me feel more stress than I knew was possible. There have been sleepless nights. Sweaty sleepless nights. Those nights where you are covered in sweat and both cold and hot at the same time. You toss in bed trapped in a thought loop, and you wake up, get some water out of the faucet and splash it on your face hoping it will wash the thoughts away. It doesn’t. By the end of the night your nervous system is so tired of dealing with worry that there is a sense of peace because it can’t process anymore anxiety.

Then there is a phone call with a new problem that punches you in the diaphragm. It’s ok, but you weren’t expecting it. It is rarely the first punch that knocks you out, it is the successive beatings. You remind yourself that this isn’t that bad. It could always be worse. It could always be a lot worse. But it doesn’t help.

The thrill of entrepreneurship is like a roller coaster except when you get to the bottom there is a mob waiting to beat the shit out of you. A lot of us deal with the stress with coping mechanisms. I used to be a heavy drinker until that started to fuck my life up more than the stress. It was nice not being sober for a period each day. It gave my mind a break from dealing with problem after problem. Being un-sober has its advantages, but keeping my family was more important than trading the worry for dopamine. If you drink to deal this with this shit, I get it.

Although I question whether I am built for this sometimes,I know there is nothing else I could do besides being an entrepreneur. It is wired into my DNA. I can’t really explain why I do it. At first I thought I did it for the money, but there is more to it than that. If you are like me, we like to build stuff, we like to tinker, we like to try new things, and you just can’t do that in a job. We must be built differently.

Stubbornness usually has a negative connotation, but stubbornness in an entrepreneur can be your best quality. Tell that to your wife! And persistence is one of the single most important traits of an entrepreneur. But most people stop at that when describing an entrepreneur. What does persistence even mean besides to just keep going? Sticking with something means being able to withstand pain. Your success is correlated to the amount of pain you can endure. Stress and anxiety are forms of pain. Monotony is also a form of pain. The people that can remain focused and endure are usually the most successful. Entrepreneurship is a marathon. And marathons are painful. Not that I would know. Running that long seems dumb. Business is painful enough.

It is amazing how most of the shit we worry about is just temporary shit that passes. I just never can convince myself of it at the time. When your mind is screaming to stop, but something in your gut pushes on. This is the muscle that no one really talks about. You can’t show it off like a 6-pack, and it’s not something you can bling around. It is a silent resolve to continue. It is being weak, but stumbling forward. It’s not sexy, it’s more like a drunk determined to walk it off. It’s ugly, it feels terrible something inside you tells you to keep going.

This is entrepreneurship. Stumbling forward.

For some reason as business owners we always equate doubling our income with doubling our workload. It feels like the right thing to do. There is some kind of guilt we have that says in order to earn more we need to work more. And this is simply sheeple shit.

Yes, volume matters. It always matters. A lot of people that are scared to grow their business preach that those of us that run big businesses are working too cheap. They do have a point. Some big dumb companies do a lot of work too cheap. But. Without doing a lot of volume, you are never gonna make a lot of money. There is a balance there… or is there? Shouldn’t the size of your company allow you to charge more? Don’t you have more resources than the small guy? Don’t you have more money to do a better job?

The more I learn about pricing, the more I realize it is mostly a dumb head game. Can you charge whatever you want? No, probably not. Can you charge more than you are charging now? Yes, probably a lot more.

The slightest increase you make as an outsized effect on your profit margin. Once you do the math, it’s hard to unsee the massive income increase. It’s really, really hard to ignore.

Ok so you want to see some real numbers. This is all gobbly guke until you run your own numbers. So I will share with you my numbers and you can understand the monumental shift.

One of our smaller branches does about $90,000 a month. Yearly that is about $1,080,000. The net profit is about 19%, so it is $205,200 in net income a year. We perform about 14,400 services a year with an average service cost of $75.

What happens when I go up $10 per service? That is about a 13% increase. It is pretty fascinating. Again, it’s hard to unsee these numbers.

Our net profit goes up $144,400 per year. Instead of $205,200… it becomes $349,600. Almost doubling our profit by only going up 13%.

By going up 13% on our prices, our net income increases by 70%.

I can hear that little voice inside your head screaming, “but you are going to lose half you customers!”

But that little voice is wrong. It is very wrong. In fact, it needs to shut the hell up so you can make some more money.

With the last 4 increases we have done in the past few years, we have only lost 2% of our clients.

Ok let’s say that is gobbly guke again. I know that little voice inside your head is calling me a liar right now. So just how many clients can I afford to lose by going up 13%?

It’s just math so let’s do it. To make the same $205,200 with a 13% increase, how many clients can I afford to lose? Before the increase it took 1800 clients to net $205,200. After the increase it takes 1058 clients to make the same net profit.

I can afford to lose 41% of my client base to make the exact same money. I can 59% of the work and afford to lose 742 clients and make exactly the same money.

The reality is that you will never lose 41% of your clients… but you can afford to. It is a good way to tell that little nagging voice in your head to shut the hell up. You can work 59% of the amount of work and make the same money.

Another little secret we have learned along the way is that we don’t broadcast a price increase. We just do it. This keeps that cancel rate even lower. Some people are gonna be pissed off either way. Why notify them to be pissed off? They don’t really care about the $10, they just don’t want their price to go up. So we don’t tell them. Ignorance is bliss.

If you know someone this might help, please share this.

~Blue

If this is the answer to any question, it is the wrong answer. There has to be a reason, and it better be a damn good one.

This is an even bigger problem if the way it’s being done is the same way everybody is doin’ it. Because that means you ain’t no different than everybody else. And in a sea of monotonous competition, you are just another ruffle in the ocean.

Now you don’t have to overthink this. To stand out from your competitors really isn’t that hard. Chances are they aren’t that smart… of if they are it is more of reason to get your shit together. It is the little things that separate you from everybody else. Little easy things can make a perceptible difference in your business.

For instance, the words that come out of the food hole of your employees will be etched into your customer’s minds forever. I know that is frightening if not fucking terrifying. If your employees tell your customers dumb shit, you will forever pay for it. BUT if they are trained to say a few good catch phrases, your customers will remember you in a positive light forever. If you have ever been to Chic-fil-a, they always finish there conversation with “my pleasure.” I don’t know why I remember that, but I do so it matters. In a fast food world of minimum wage burger slinging punks, those kids at Chic-fil-a might actually give a fuck. Enough to remember to say, “my pleasure” anyway. The little things are so important. And because pretty much everybody does a shitty job with customer service, the ones that give half-fucks stand out like a naked man at a parade.

Anything you can do just to be a little more friendly with your customers will go miles. We all take this professional thing a little too seriously. Customers are more attracted to energy, friendliness, and enthusiasm than they are “professionalism.” Humor breaks down boundaries. It makes people smile when they think of you. So make your voicemails funny and memorable. Greet your customers in emails like you would a quirky friend. Be a little dorky, and etch your brand into their cerebral cortexes.

And if you are in a business with several competitors all doing the exact same shit, try to think of ways to describe your offerings just a little bit differently. You may be doing the same thing as your competitors, but you don’t have to tell the customer that. Please don’t! The way you describe your service can be the difference between a Lexus and Toyota which are arguably the exact same thing, but people will pay 20% more for the “L” badge.

The ole saying “don’t sugar coat it” is fucking WRONG when it comes to sales, because everything tastes better with sugar on it. You know it and I know it. Your customers will want to lick you if you put sugar on it… so lather it on. I mean which is better an apple? or a candy caramel apple?

It’s almost like we pride ourselves in doing things to industry standards, but your customer doesn’t give a fuck about industry standards. Your customer wants to be seduced. And it is our job to seduce them.

I listened to a sales pitch of a 24 million dollar pest control company the other day on Youtube and this kid got the message. The owner mentioned the way the industry phrased selling a pest treatment “spraying 3 foot up the foundation and 3 foot down on the ground”… as if that was the common nomenclature for the industry and he decided to sell it in a totally different way. He went on to explain how they invented a three block technology method. They would spray the perimeter of the property, the grass between the house, and the foundation of the house. This would totally prevent insects from entering the property, crossing the grass, and entering the house. Now they do basically the exact same thing with the exact same equipment as any other pest control company but he made it sound so good just how he described the service. He even threw the word “technology” in there.

But it just goes to show how it is the really small things that really affect the way your customers perceive you. So just because it is way it’s always been done, might be the best reason not to do it that way.

There is still hope. If you aren’t the most interesting. If you aren’t the brightest. If your neural capacitor center ain’t the speediest at processing information. There is still hope.

Why? Intelligence is supremely over rated. So if you aren’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, there is still hope.

There are two things that have a higher value than intelligence. Because you see, there are a lot of really intelligent people that are not successful. They lack these two things.

The first is courage. No matter how smart you are, if you lack courage you are fucked. This is because you lack the guts to try anything. If you ain’t got the guts and you ain’t gonna take the risk you will never get the reward. They call it risk the reward ratio. The higher the risk, the higher the reward. With no risk, there ain’t much of a reward. Kinda like a money market account. You can safely make 5% on your money, but that ain’t shit.

The second thing is persistence. If you ain’t got persistence, you ain’t ever gonna make it through the hard times. And for every good thing, there is a hard thing to get through. Seth Godin calls it the dip. I call it a motherfucker. There ain’t no skippin’ the dip. You gotta go through it to be successful. It is unavoidable. This should be a commandment. Thou shalt suffer to succeed.

The most important thing you gain from being persistent is experience. And experience just means you have fucked up a lot to learn how things don’t work. But in finding ways that don’t work, you invariably find ways that do work. So next time someone brags about being experienced, what they are really saying is they ain’t smart, they are just persistent in their learning. You could call it stubbornness. So if you are a stubborn ole bastard, you might be on to something. Go try something hard.

Now if you think you are really smart, well chances are… you probably aren’t. Because most smart people think they are dumb. The more they know, the more they realize they don’t know shit. That is the blue collar Socrates version.

So back to intelligence. It really isn’t important how fast your processor runs. It is really about acting on what you learn. Most principles of being successful are pretty goddamn simple. If you know it, do it. If you don’t know it, learn it, then do it.

The ultra secret to the wealthy is that they are really good at acting on what they know for extended periods of time.

Courage + persistence = success

If it is so simple, why isn’t everybody successful?

Easy. I’ll tell ya.

It ain’t easy. People are lazy and wimpy. Intellect is no match for being lazy and wimpy.

This is good news is that for all dumb folks.

I didn’t say it felt good. It sure as hell doesn’t feel good.

Those of us that are driven to succeed are pre-programmed to hate failure. Our education system programs us to believe succeeding is good and failure is bad.

I know that failure is necessary. I know it. I know it. I just hate it, hate it, hate it.

So what if you fail? So what? We are supposed to fail, but the programming in our mind tells us we have not succeeded. I get it. Failure is a motherfucker.

But it shouldn’t be. It is practically the only way to learn. Experience is just the name we give our mistakes. The word “expert” comes from the word “experience.” To claim that title you must have many failures. An expert knows the solution because they know 488 ways that don’t work and one way that does work.

And as an experienced business person… read that as (fucked up a lot) I know failure very well. And I have to constantly remind myself that failing to try is much worse than failing to succeed. And giving up on failing is even worse.

The value of experimentation is not the trying. It’s the trying again after the experiment fails.- Simon Sinek

Repeated iteration is the path to success. Or in other words, repeated failure(learning) is the path to success.

I know it burns sometimes, good lord almighty does it burn. But you know it is necessary. Instead of failing there are better suited words for it.

Iteration. Experimentation. Testing.

There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes. — R. Buckminister Fuller

It helps to reframe failure as an answer to curiosity. The most curious people are usually the most successful.

The best people at succeeding are the best people at failing. It is a perspective shift to not look at things as right/wrong or succeed/fail, but as a method of testing outcomes and continually iterating on each outcome of the experiment. Controlling failure just like you would control an experiment in a laboratory. And become a testing facility to continually optimize for a better outcome.

A set back is just a set up for a comeback. If you are not failing, you are not learning. And every once in a while, you get lucky. So keep rolling out the bets, your odds are better the more you bet. You ain’t gonna get lucky unless you’re playing the game.

~Blue

P.S. What failure has led you to your biggest breakthrough?

Who would have ever thought that a Porta-potty business could be so lucrative?

Charles W. Howard. That’s who. He relishes dirty dumps, and pumps them out for cash. His trucks roll around with the slogan. “WE ARE #1 AT PICKING UP #2.”

Charles is the epitome of a New York success story. Now 53, he looks like he just came off the set of The Sopranos. Rolling up in a blacked out Escalade with a blonde bombshell on his arm. It is clear, Charles is all business. He drops the F-bombs like he is from Queens. And that’s because he is from Queens. But he is the king of Queens when it comes to dirty business. Where dirty deeds are slurped out of toilets and funneled into dollars. He is the Potty King of New York.

And what kind of revenue does the king of New York porta-potties bring in?

Last year his gross revenues crested $35,000,000.

How many fucking toilets does it take to bring in a cool $35 mil?

It takes 18,000 shitters littered throughout New York City.

When asked why he is the greatest toilet man in America he replied. “I had different theories about business, and they all turned out to be correct.”

“Charlie” as his poop scoopers affectionately call him, is not a graduate of a prestigious business school. He didn’t even graduate high school. His education came in the form of taking over his dad’s porta-potty business at age 16. In 1981, when his dad was considering selling out for $25,000 to a competitor, he dropped out of school to take over his dad’s shuttering 150 toilets. And CallAHead was born and his education began.

Porta potties are one of the most profitable per square foot rentals in the country. These 4’ by 4’ are a desperate man’s sanctuary, and they rent for an average of $200 plus a month with a retail cost of only $550. With that kind of “spread” you can understand how scaling up a business can be immensely profitable.

Charlie’s business theories are a little different. Instead of going after the initial contracts on porta potties at construction sites, he sends out a couple sales girls to get in the superintendents head. His other competitors are too shy to sell with sex. Arriving in VW Beatles, one girl is business and one is flirty. Though they might not get the sales right off the bat, they make an unforgettable impression. His best sales girls make $150,000 a year.

He was one of the first to use stainless steel pumping trucks to give the impression of an anti-septic feel, and he is maniacal about the cleanliness of his potties. He is fanatical about all the details. One of his workers recounts a story where a pump line blew and sprayed fecal matter all over his uniform, face, hair, the whole chibatta. When he returned to the office, Charlie lost his shit because the guy had taken off his uniform.

His wife Kimberly is the star of their Youtube channel and TV commercials and it’s almost like she knows what men like even more than taking good shits.

But it hasn’t all been easy. Business is tough no matter what you are doing. In fact, in his highly competitive service area, he calls business war. And he has been through many a battle.

From environmentalist suing him for pressure washing his potties near an animal refuge, to a nasty publicized divorce in the New York Post, to Hurricane Sandy nearly flooding him out of business. The cost to sit on the plastic throne is great.

Before the 2008 housing crisis he was pumping out $2 million of the shitters. But then his business took a shit… more like a torpedo to the groin. Sales cratered to $600,000. His 72 foot 1.4 million dollar yacht was repossessed. His wife divorced him and took the house. Things were pretty shitty.

Then in 2009, he lost $250,000 in an arson. Charlie had made a lot of enemies from environmentalist to disgruntled employees. But some suspected he got an insurance payout to keep him afloat. Charlie says he never took a dime worried his premiums would explode.

But a man like Charlie can’t be held down. Both hated and loved. He was destined to be the Donald Trump of toilets. As the economy recovered he and his sexy sales team built back up his business. Now over 1300 drivers clean the temporary toilets that cover the city. With New York City being having over 1 million people per square mile, the demand for port-potties is off the stall. And considering density is one of the most important factors in a service companies profitability, this has been a boon for CallAHead.

Now private equity is trying to get a piece of the assction. What is a porta-potty business of this magnitude worth?

Charlie claims he has had offers as high as 40 million to acquire his company, but he isn’t quite willing to give up his throne just yet. This has been a rising trend where Wall Street is looking to Main Street for steady and consistent returns. It may be a shitty business, but one guy figured out how to turn the turds into cold hard cash.

I hate firing people. Well, no that’s not completely true. I love firing some people. But I don’t get off on it. Firing people usually has to do with cleaning up somebody’s mess. Or maybe it is cleaning up my mess because I hired the dumb fuck in the first place.

When you fire some people, it can create an even bigger mess. And after firing dozens and dozens of people it is like pulling the pin on a grenade and hoping the bastard doesn’t blow. And boy have some of mine blew after that pin was yanked. Damn near lost my hand a few times. The ones you need to fire the most are the ones that are gonna burn the worst.

Phil Knight called “business war without bullets” and damn if that isn’t spot on. Some of my employees that lost their job and determined I needed to lose mine too. And sometimes they even succeeded in taking my job. Even if you don’t tell them they are a half-ass excuse of a bag of bones… which I don’t recommend telling them. It is like they already know it. And when you cut their cancerous presence from your business, they take it on themselves to go Stage 3 and try to you for good.

The more I think about it, the more I realize… I have fired a lot of people. Just in the last few weeks we have fired three people. And that is a good thing. It may sound callous, but the more people you fire the better for your organization. It means you are willing to prune. It means you are willing to make hard decisions. And it keeps people on their toes. Too much predictability and you will naturally assume more weakness. Maybe that sounds cold and heartless. But fuck it. I didn’t make the rules. You either play by the rules, or they play you.

And if you are putting off firing somebody. It is usually a mistake. And every day that goes on not firing them, the stakes grow. The cancer spreads. It is best to nip it, cut it, gas it, whatever you got to do… at the first sign of it. Just like real cancer, is just too much to risk having even a little bit of it.

The worst cancer I have let spread has turned into year long lawsuits. Lawyer fees… those bastards are the real winners. And the insurance companies that hire the shittiest lawyers to represent you. Their balls are usually the size of olives. Because they don’t give a shit. Tee time is at 9. And don’t fuck with their tee time and toddies. The name of the game is settling and paying off sheister employees as fast as they can. And then rolling it into your insurance premiums.

And as an employer I get to play with fire. But the power to fire is like trying to hold fire. It is a bit unpredictable and best used with tact. If ever so slight a wind blows, the fire can burn whatever it touches. So it is best used very carefully, quickly and thoughtfully. Else it will blow back.

So when you hire somebody, you should also think about firing them. They say hire for core values which means don’t hire them for anything else. Their core is impertinent to your core. A lot of us are looking for talent, but human sanctity is much more valuable.

Seriously. Don’t do it. After employing over 50 employees for the last several years, I have learned some hard lessons. Ones that aren’t always preached by the ministers of home service.

Most of you fit in one of two categories. You either hate your employees, or you are too good to your employees. In the service business, if you are going to make any money at all, you have to have these pesky people plodding for you. The more people you have out spreading your seed, the more your bank account grows… theoretically anyway.

But assuming you don’t hate your employees… and that is not judgement by the way. I can certainly understand if you do hate them. I am sure it is probably warranted. I wouldn’t mind contracting a hitman to take one out I fired this past year. But I am guessing there is a rather large faction out there that is too good to your employees. And I think that can be just as problematic as despising them and treating them poorly.

Their lifestyle is not yours. It’s probably shittier, and it is not your job to give them the good life unless they earn it. And you have to be careful how you think about the scale of your generosity. If you are paying yourself a salary of $100,000 and your employee is getting paid $50,000. You want to make sure to provide them what someone making $50,000 would appreciate which is about half of what you would appreciate.

I think ya gotta be careful with bonuses. Bonuses are tricky and I have come to hate them. Especially around Christmas. I have been really generous in the past, but I haven’t got an ROI from being overly generous with employees bonuses. One year I didn’t even get a thank you for a $50,000 bonus I paid out. So I have scaled back the dollar amount of bonuses lately. I still want to show my gratitude, but at the end of the day it is silly to overdue it. Small bonuses are pretty effective. Keep your profits and spend them as selfishly as possible on yourself and your family. I am sure you deserve it more than your employees.

Don’t give them loans. The ones that need loans are losers and they probably won’t last very long anyway. When you think back to employees that have asked for loans, were they your best employees? None of mine were. They all crashed and burned. The real pain in the ass with giving them loans is the mess it creates for your accounting and the burden it creates to deduct money out of their paycheck for the next 6 months. AND giving loans now becomes the precedent you have set. You owe them for them to owe you.

I know some companies go out of their way to do special things for their employees and I think that is great, especially if it is things like wishing them a happy birthday or remembering their work-iversaries. But I think you can take this too far. It should be a two way streak of appreciation. You want to show your appreciation for them, but you also want to have people that appreciate their job.

If you overdo employee appreciation, you can create an entitlement issue. This is one of the most sickening lessons I have learned cycling through hundreds of people over the years. My generosity and appreciation for employees CREATED a bigger issue. Entitlement is a nasty result from over giving. Once you give too much, it is hard to walk it back maybe even impossible. Entitlement creates a culture problem. Instead of people having an eager workforce, you have one that becomes bratty and petulant. I think you have to walk a line of not being too good. Because whatever you do sets a precedent. It sets an expectation.

That is why I love tying compensation to performance, because they will expect to get paid more when they perform better. And that is the way it should be. This ain’t easy to implement, but if you can pay your employees based off of value they provide. Then their compensation is placed in their hands. It is fair. They know it. You know it. And if you create that magic system, they know exactly what they have to do to EARN more money. And if you got it set up right, the more money they EARN, the more money you EARN.

The point of running a business is not having happy employees. The point of business is making a profit. I can feel the brainless libtards already gearing up to send me a nasty response, but this ain’t some ideallic adventure we are on. As owners we have skin in the game. Our own fucking skin. Your employees don’t have any skin in the game. Remember that. Entrepreneur literally means “bearer of risk.” And you don’t bear risk unless you can reap the reward.

Running thin profit margins is DANGEROUS. It is not fun. It is stressful. Not making the profits you deserve is miserable. Again the point of business is to squeeze as much profit as possible out of your business. The best businesses are not ashamed of this. That is the game. Having happy employees can increase profits, but it is not THE point. Their job security depends on you having a healthy profit margin. The amount of their benefits depends on your profit. And your sanity depends on making a profit as well.

That is one of my favorite quotes by Steven Pressfield.

But it’s free? Why wouldn’t they? Turns out attention is not free. It is a highly sought after commodity. And here you are trying to steal… someone’s attention. You are trying to rob their time. Pry their eyeballs to read your shit.

So are you really in the writing business or “the steal attention” business? Which could otherwise be called the advertising business. It matters because it requires a different perspective on your work than otherwise thought.

Ok so, nobody wants to read your shit. What makes someone want to read your shit? The same thing that advertisers use to get people to buy their shit. It’s no different.

Your title. Just any old thing will do right? Uh, no. You need a brilliant title. It needs to create curiosity. It needs to start a mystery. It needs to be a hook. You know. You are fishing for readers and your title is the bait. Clickbait. But not so fast.

After you steal their attention. You must now hold their attention. So the process continues. Create a mystery, then solve it. Or some people call it a loop. Pose an open ended question, then answer it. Tell an intriguing story holding them to the end with the punchline. Keeping those eyeballs glued to your writing. Once you get it open, you gotta keep them to the end.

But what else is there to holding a readers attention? When your brain recognizes advertising, it shuts off. When it sees the same adages, the same way of speaking… it goes into sleep mode. So if you are using common phrases, don’t. Make up your own. Be inventive. Break a few rules.

The brain loves novelty. We are wired to gravitate toward shiny new objects. And you can put these shiny objects in your writing to make it more interesting. They call them catch phrases for a reason. Oops did I just use a common adage? Is your brain still with me? That should probably read, a word rattler… just make something up unique that your reader will recognize the meaning to.

You can even make up words. Gasp!!! Yeah make your own words up. Dr. Seuss did it, why can’t you? Who made the rules to this game anyway? A lot of times making up just the right word you need to snap write in the word puzzle is just the missing piece you need to complete it.

Some of the best stories put you in the story. When a reader pictures themselves in your story, you have effectively crawled into their head. Yay! And using words like “you” in your writing can help get “them” into “your” story.

And if your writing can elicit emotions… Holy frappizoli. You have really done it now. You crawled right from their head down into their heart. And the heart is where really good advertisers want to be because they know that emotion trumps logic. And if you can get to this hallowed ground, you have got your reader by the strings. Just pull here. Pull there. Buy here.

Oh you are selling anything? Maybe you don’t think you are.

But oh yes you are. But you don’t have a course. Ah but you are still selling something. Do you want people to read more of your shit? Ok. That is what you are selling. It’s just time to admit writing is just advertising. It is marketing. Whether is branding your style or pointing toward a product. It’s all marketing.

And this is what the best ad copywriters in the world get paid to do. They get and hold attention. That is the game.

I feel it. And I don’t like being put it in a box. The box is more like a dog crate. And I am the dog.

To venture out takes courage.

But from what?

It takes courage to not be accepted.

It takes courage to change. Everyone expects you to be the same. Because it gives them comfort in knowing that they don’t have to change.

And truth be told when you try different things, they won’t all work out. Figure on about 1 in 10 working out. But if you don’t try anything new, nothing will change.

So you have to be willing to fail 9 out of 10 times. And I don’t particularly like failing. It ain’t fun. But being conventional ain’t fun either.

It only takes executing one idea to change your life for ever. One idea.

The thing about conventional wisdom is that wisdom isn’t conventional. The treasure is never out in the open. It is never obvious. It requires searching. Digging. Or Diving. To come back with the treasure, you have to seek it diligently. You have to be willing to be called crazy, or worse.

If it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth it.

Be crazy. Be you. Seek what you desire. The crowds be damned.