This Saving the World Thing is Hard

photo by jaygoldman

Orlando is beaming with excitement right now. In the midst of an NBA title run for the first time in 15 years, we are a few shots and stupid, stupid mistakes from being up 3-1. The town has been painted blue and white. There are posters, signs, huge wall murals, Superman capes and cheezy t-shirts everywhere you look. And while Orlando and Central Florida are optimistic about a title run (even though Kobe might have us in check now) the city is still not ready to accept social change.

With the launch of Talk For Hunger publicly 2 weeks ago, it has been eye-opening and humbling to hear the stories of the vendors in their first weeks of changing not only their lives but the views of the homeless in our community. The vendors, along with Chris and the interns, have heard everything from "I don't support the homeless, they are all lazy panhandlers" to cold shoulders, fake cell phone conversations to down right "NO."

The Struggle For Local Social Change

It has been a bitch to get people to listen and open their minds to new ideas of improving our community. The local Orlando Chamber told us to get a membership and call the Coalition. When pursuing local advertisers we have heard words so downright awful it makes it hard to go into the next establishment. Here's a quote you can use

I hate the homeless, they come in and fuck up our bathrooms.

So how does anyone begin to implement new ideas and change society?

It starts "one by one." One person that opens up and walks in the door, goes out in the world and talks and then that talking, over time, becomes a tribe.

With blogging, we all work hard, write cool stuff and promote our posts to gain new readers one by one. Some achieve this feat faster than others and some just like finding one new reader a day, a week maybe even one new person a month who wants to hear their views, opinions and ideas.

With a business it starts with one patron at a time. You can't pack the house until that first customer walks through the door. That first customer brags about the service, food, products, etc, and that spreads to the best kind of business you can possibly have.

With your career, it starts with one job at a time. You get that entry level BS job at the firm that is supposed to suck out your life for 40 years, only to see that you are gaining skills, building relationships and preparing yourself for your next career move. Then you start building your career, your brand and your life based on one opportunity at a time.

With Talk For Hunger we only sold more than 10 issues in 1 day once. That's a shot in the gut for us, when we looked at models from South Florida and Chicago where individual vendors were selling 100-200 a day. But one-by-one we are building the brand, spreading a message and letting the readers, businessmen and women and everyone in between know that we are there making a difference.

Being the New Kid on the Block

photo by miskan

It doesn't matter if you are starting a business, helping the homeless or becoming a rock star, the beginning is both fun and shitty. It is exciting to see people like Jun Loayza stay on track despite living week to week. It is inspiring to see someone who panhandled his way to $20 a day, go out and create a life for himself while only making $10 a day. It is awesome to see someone challenge themselves to quit their day job or travel the world all while paving the way for others to do the same.

It's scary to see people leave conformity and comfort in the pursuit of an ideal lifestyle. It's hard to start a mission to save people the world has forgotten about. It's tough to give attention to anyone but yourself when faced with economic stress.

Being the new kid on the block with a mission to enhance lives, including your own, takes some balls, it takes character, planning, determination and will power to see the outcome to the end. That's a lot to ask of anyone, especially one with so many ambitions.

This year I made it a personal goal to employ 50 homeless in Orlando. I made it a goal to make a living doing the stuff that I love to do with the people and companies that I choose. I made it a goal to go overseas and teach technology and communication to the people that can benefit from it most. It is still going to be hard, but who the hell said saving the world was going to be easy?

I'd like to meet that guy.

-Greg Rollett

The Rock Star Philosophy

(photo by Daniesq - ps that's not my band they just looked like they are having fun!)

A few months ago I talked about instilling the Rock Star Lifestyle into as many other people as possible. Over that time frame I have been going back and forth on how to expand this notion and make it

• possible
• repeatable
• teachable
• profitable

I don't have all the answers but know that giving others the confidence, poise and performance measures to live like a Rock Star is something that is very important for personal development and lifestyle design to create successful career paths. Living like a rock star does not mean you have to work for the man (or the machine in the case of a major label), nor does it mean that you have to live freely, location independent or on your own.

Crappy nights in Georgia Still Need Rocking

Living like a Rock Star boils down to having the ability to perform at your highest capacity, no matter the place, no matter the time, no matter the crowd. One of the last shows that I played with my band (StumpP, not the recent retired but called into action Sneakers) was in a small town in Georgia, after an 8 hour drive, where we played for 15 people, including the staff. By all means it had the making of the worst night of our career together, but we lived like true rock stars and tore the roof off the building, sold CD's to every single person in the room, doubled our pay out and left feeling like we tore up a sold out show! That was living like a rock star.

The fundamentals behind living the Rock Star life are by no means set in stone and as I start working on the outline for the course we'll be rolling out, things are bound to change. What I've come up with are 3 distint areas that are the focus behind the rock star lifestyle:

• Skills Assessment & Career Development
• Lifestyle Design
• Building Confidence and Humility

Each piece has differnt influencers that lead to differnt outcomes, with the end goal being able to perform to your highest ability day in and day out. The key piece of the entire course will be the way in which you take action to achive the lifestyle you wish to live. You can talk about change all you want, but at the end of the day your actions will determine your happiness and outlook.

Information for Action's Sake

We all suffer from information overload. RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook updates, mobile phones that ping your emails, tv, news, papers, webinars, conferences - whatever and however you take in the information, you get so much of it that it makes it hard to digest and turn that information into usable actions.

Even those golden blog posts, "5 Ways To Do Whatever," are usually written without much focus on actionable items that you can perform right now. Think about all the b/s you read every afternoon/morning and how much of that impacts your day-to-day life. I can count on my hands the number of writers that inspire me to take action and make a difference in my life. That equals a lot of wasted time and resources.

In order to live the rock star life you need to focus on core actions that have an impact. In my own life I started slowly, made a plan and started finding the pieces that made the puzzle look like the picture on the box. Some examples may be:

• Start a band, play shows, record and album, sell the album, promote the album, repeat.
• See a problem, create a solution, recruit others, enforce the solution.
• Discover a skill, educate, network, create authority, address authority, work in the field, own the field.

________________________________________________________

Well, it's Friday, and Jun Loayza just let me know our video from his awesome bloggers series is live. That took place on Wednesday of this week and really motivated me to start getting this Rock Star Lifestyle thing going and moving it into motion.

The video is embedded below and you can learn more here. Tomorrow (Saturday) we will be co-hosting Start-Up Saturdays at 2pm EST and 11am PCT. I am super stoked for that. The topic is on company money, funding and all that good stuff that has to do with paying the bills and making your start-up tick.



I know the posts haven't been as fluid lately, but its all part of being that Gen-Y guy trying to find his direction and all that jazz (plus we have some clients who rock hard as well and want this enthusiasm to carry over into their business). In the mean time, catch me posted living like a rock star, helping the community and still not saying NO to any project that looks fun and challenging.

-Greg

Your Company is Stale Like Bread

photo by McBeth

Graham Brown of Mobile Youth (who I have grown quite fond of his little Slideshare presentations) pointed out the obvious is a not so obvious way.

• The most powerful man in the world is black.
• The biggest selling hip-hop artist is white.
• The richest golfer is black.
• The president of Iceland is a lesbian.
• The best Olympian likes to hit the bong.

The world is changing. More accepting and more diverse than ever before. More mobile and more connected goes without arguement. So why are you playing by the old rules?
Change is hard.
It is hard to accept and hard to measure. In times of recession and economic shit storming it is easy to look back at worked the last time and continue on the same path. Layoffs, cutting spending and ceasing to innovate + wait and see are the themes of corporate America right now. We are losing jobs at record pace, yet our products are still as good as they were yesterday and rent is the same price (if not higher) as it was last week.

How can innovation lead your organization today, in the midst of this recession to get you out ahead? How can listening to concerns of your employees, being more transparent to them and rewarding them help you thrive today.

5 Ways to Ignite Change in Your Business Today

1. Talk to your employees. They are the ones who are the faces, voices and future of your organization. Being transparent with them will only make them produce with greater results and give them the confidence that they are a part of something great. Besides, don't all employees talk shit about their boss, company, etc. What are yo scared of?
2. Give more than you take. In times like today organizations and businesses that find ways to give, whether it be information, education, products, resources and help their community grow will reap the benefits further than an organization that tries to squeeze every penny and resource out of their community before closing their doors.
3. Crowdsource. Whether it is from the mail clerk, the janitor, the CMO or a first time customer, look at the people that represent your company and see how they can add value to your business. Lego listens to their community and builds ideas and inspiration for fanatics, and then works with parents and gives them safe products for their kids. How can someone you don't know help your business grow?
4. Defy the norm. Like the examples above, dare to stand out. If you can rally troops to believe in your product, you will win, even if you are the orange in an apple game.
5. Go back to the start. I know I said innovate, but sometimes innovation happens when you get back to your core. Why did you create your business or product in the first place? If you run a job board, is your focus to nickel and dime or create relationships between companies and job seekers? If you make soda, your goal should be the smile and satisfaction your consumer has when they take their first sip. Do everything in your power to make that moment happen.

Are you still living in the past? We voted for change but haven't changed ourselves. What will it take to get to that point?

-Greg Rollett

Generation We - WE are Change

I came across an awesome video from Generation We today and had to share it. Some key points that I took from the 5 minute clip and my commentary:

• If we spread out the national debt, every American would be responsible for $30,000 (not including their college loans, credit card debt, failed mortgages and everything else)
• Generation We volunteers in record numbers (like the concert we are throwing in less than 3 weeks in Orlando where we have over 100 volunteers, 100 Gen-Y band members, 2 local competing radio stations, 1,500 all-aged concert goers and sponsors coming together to make our community better)
• We are technologically advanced (walk through the mall and some kid will bump into you while texting)
• Amercia is an arrogant and greedy nation (yup)
• We are the largest demographic group in the U.S. and if unified we can control America's political landscape (that is if we can get the movement off Facebook groups and into offices, chamber meetings, PTA's, Boards of Directors and into the marketing campaigns of corporate America)

Watch the video now. Will you join us?




A few weeks back I posted the Generation WE eBook in my top 5 free eBooks to read now. Here is the link again to get a copy of the book by Eric H. Greenberg and Karl Weber.

I think this is another great movement by strong willed young people who are really standing up for our future. I think the video said that in the 2016 election, everyone in Gen-Y will be legal voters. Imagine what kind of impact that can have if political leaders are not looking at us as the future of this country.

Ryan from Employee Evolution said a few weeks back that:

us 20-somethings have been graduating into a world where we are buried in debt before stepping foot into our first job, and dealing with living expenses that are often more than average starting salaries. Our generation has inherited a world that needs some serious fixing.

If you do not believe that we are going to look to make changes in the way we live you have another thing coming. Everything must be changed to, from the government, to salaries to nonprofits to marketing.

Everyone is out to make a buck, right? The way we go about it is going to change. There has been an influx of green companies, organic foods and businesses giving back to the community just as quickly as they give back to their employees.


In the recent issue of GOOD Magazine (I love how they use DAMN in their tag line) they have devoted a special BETA issue to GOOD Businesses or those that have been listed as B Corporation. This is a fascinating concept. From BCorporation.net

B Corporations are a new type of corporation that use the power of business to create public benefit. B Corporations:

• Meet comprehensive and transparent social and environmental performance standards;
• Legally expand the responsibilities of the corporation to include stakeholder interests;
• Build collective voice through the power of the unifying B Corporation brand.

I think this is an incredible initiative and as Gen-Y comes into power I really do believe we will see a shift in the dynamics of companies and government. The need for trust and communication are too valuable to us to let it slip away.

What do you think? Are we Generation WE or are we going to continue down the money hungry/hidden agenda path that is being sent for us?

-Greg Rollett