On Hiatus - Backpacking Across Europe

I’ll be out of town for the next 2.5 weeks as I backpack across Europe. Be sure to check back in early June, I’m sure I’ll have plenty to write about!

A Week in Transition

This has been a big week for me. Monday marked the first day in a transition that will impact my life for a very long time. Recently, everywhere I turn, people are talking about following your passion. At work, home, and every aspect of your life, there should be passion. There are many different definitions of passion, not all of which apply. Here are just a few:

• any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.
• strong amorous feeling or desire; love; ardor.
• a person toward whom one feels strong love or desire.
• a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything.

For a long time I mulled over these definitions, looking for the things in my life that I was most passionate about. At the same time, I tried to identify the things that were inspiring the wrong kind of passion. For instance, I decided I had come to hate my house. The neighborhood had gone downhill, and just last week there was an armed robbery just two blocks from my house. The cops pinned him down in the basement of an apartment complex, and the SWAT team brought him out five hours later. It was cool seeing all this, but didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

What I’m Passionate About

Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.

-Hardy D. Jackson

After a great deal of consideration, I had come up with a list of things that I am truly passionate about:

Computers - Nearly every dollar I have ever earned (with the exception of one summer as a lifeguard) has stemmed from the fact that I enjoy working with computers. I have built and sold desktops, acted as tech support, and worked in design, programming, and database consulting. I even had the opportunity to work at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the birthplace of the first graphical web browser, MOSAIC.

Leading - It was actually at NCSA that I realized just how much I dislike taking direction from others. In any group situation, regardless of my role, I have always had a tendency to take charge and direct the efforts of the group. In situations where I have little control over the direction of a project, as with NCSA, I have a hard time getting excited about it.

As my business has started to grow, I have had to hire employees and freelance help to manage the growth. I found myself more in a project manager position, and found that I really enjoy directing the creative talents of others toward a common goal.

Travel - As far back as I can remember, my parents took my brother and me along on my dad’s business trips. They instilled in me a love of travel that has only grown over time. Since then I have driven from Chicago to both coasts several times, and the southwest twice. I think traveling is a critical part of broadening your own perspective and truly seeing the world for what it is. My business has allowed me to fly all over the country meeting some of the most interesting and unique people I know. Some of the best experiences of the past few years have been on those business trips.

Competition - I’m an extremely competitive person by nature. Even at the most trivial games, I always feel the need to win. This has caused some friction with girlfriends in the past who were equally competitive and didn’t take well to losing. I think this competitive spirit is at once a flaw and a tremendous asset. In business, I think it’s critical in order to be successful. I see other companies doing things and think “We can do what they’re doing, and we can do it better, faster, and at lower cost.” That, of course, can place some pretty ridiculous demands on my time, but I suppose that’s to be expected.

Customer Service - That may sound like a strange thing to be passionate about, but it’s true. I love blowing customers away and turning them into raving fans. Late Thursday evening, a client sent me a database of 150 of their clients so that we could conduct customer satisfaction phone surveys for their business. He asked us to get started ASAP and hoped to get some results within a few weeks. We started the next morning, called all 150 clients by 3:00 PM, and called him with the highlights by the end of the business day, less than 24 hours after receiving the list. At the end of our conversation he said “That’s incredible. Send us the bill and we’ll pay it right away. I don’t care how much it cost.” Clients validating our efforts like that make it all worthwhile.

My Business - I realized that the thing that kept popping up in the previous categories was my business. Even though I have only been able to work at it part time, I spend the rest of my time wishing I was working on it. I often found that it was easier to work on my own business for 15 consecutive hours on a Saturday than to work on anything else for three hours any day of the week. The entrepreneurial spirit is very much in my blood. My dad is an entrepreneur as well, and shares many of these same passions (except for computers). He also happens to be my business partner, which is awesome. His dad and grandpa were entrepreneurs as well. My path was genetically predetermined…

The Right Time

With all these things in mind, I decided it was time to take drastic action in the pursuit of happiness. I didn’t like my house or the neighborhood, so I moved out last week and am still getting settled in.

Professionally, I decided it was time to throw myself into my business full time. April was the best month we’d ever had, and things really seem to be coming together. We’re now developing Standard Operating Procedures and web-based training software in several different industries, and are pursuing others as we speak. We’re working our way into several key partnerships that will extend our capabilities dramatically. Things are looking good.

Before I throw myself into this career full time, though, I decided to do some traveling. On Tuesday, I’m heading to Europe to go backpacking for a few weeks with a close friend. I’m going to see Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Greece, and who knows what else. We decided this would probably be the last chance we ever had to make a trip like this, and we really couldn’t pass it up. Hopefully I’ll come back from this trip with a renewed vitality, a better view of the world, and some awesome stories.

I hope you’ll excuse the somewhat journal-ish post. Things have been incredibly chaotic lately, and it feels good to verbalize everything a little.

With all this change happening at once, as you can imagine, I’m scared shitless. But I don’t want to wake up one day close to retirement and realize that my entire working life was wasted on things I don’t connect with on a deeply personal level. I want to look back and be proud that I always did the right thing, followed my dreams, and left no part of life unlived.

What will you see when you look back on life 30 years from now?

A successful life is one that is lived through understanding and pursuing one’s own path, not chasing after the dreams of others.
Chin-Ning Chu

IDEO on Following Your Passion

I’ve recently done a lot of reading about IDEO, Inc., a Palo Alto, California based industrial design firm. Let me give you a little background info on the company… Full Story →