I love it when investors, of any ilk, recognize that they have an area that makes sense to them and that they focus on it. Many investors try to be good at too many strategies and too many industries (I’ve been guilty of taking this approach, myself) and as a result, really dilute their efficacy and ultimately, their returs.

Mike Maples Jr., seems to have his approach well understood and in this video, from the Future of Funding event, he elaborates on why he looks for, “Thunder Lizards”, what they are and why the market matters more than the team.

Thunder Lizard by Mike Maples Jr. from Adeo Ressi on Vimeo.

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As most of you already know, Haiti was devastated by a 7.0 earthquake on Tuesday of this week. The damage assessments continue to roll in and the death tolls are still rising at this point, with the country’s limited infrastructure presenting massive obstacles in the relief effort. As I’ve been following the news on this earthquake, I’ve been struck by how my friends and others are using the Internet to voice their concern and to join in the call to take action. The sheer number of Tweets, blog posts and Facebook status updates imploring people to do something has been simply staggering (more on this here). It’s inspired me to try and play a small role in helping the people of Haiti (it’s estimated that up to 1/3 of the population is going to be in need of aid).

Before I get into the details, however, I want to highlight some things that you can do, yourself, to give to the relief effort:

• Text "Haiti" to 90999 in order to donate $10 to the Red Cross relief effort via your mobile phone bill
• Text "Haiti" to 20222 to donate $10 to the U.N. relief efforts via your mobile phone bill
• Donate through the Clinton Foundation’s dedicated page
• Donate through UNICEF
• Text "Yele" to 501501 to donate $5 to Wyclef Jean’s nonprofit organization

Now, in addition to sharing several ways that YOU can take action to help the people of Haiti, here’s what I’m going to do (and you can help me with it):

• I’m running a half marathon tomorrow, up in Bellingham, WA. It’s my first half marathon.
• My plan is to tweet every mile that I finish
• For every response or retweet that I get through Twitter, Facebook or on this blog, I’ll be making a donation through the U.N.
• My donation is going to be based on:  The # of responses/retweets X $.25 X the mile that the response comes in on.

That might sound confusing, so here’s a bit of an example: If I get 2 responses after mile 1, I’ll be making a donation of $.50. If I get 4 responses after mile 12, then I’ll be making a donation of $12.00. After finishing the race (I hope!) I’ll be adding all of this activity together to determine how much I’m giving to the U.N. So, a potential outcome could be the following:

In drumming this idea up, I wanted to see if I could play a part in sparking a fire amongst my circle of friends. In theory, if you choose to interact with me during this race, you’ll be more likely to take some action in your own life to donate to the Haiti relief efforts and potentially, you’ll decide to act to get others involved as well. This is where the retweets and shares will come in to play, I suspect.

Regardless of how many of you choose to participate with me, I’m excited to have a cause to run for tomorrow. I haven’t been actively training for this race for very long (this is my first long race since my marathon in 2008), so I’m a bit nervous about my ability to finish. Holding this cause in my head and hearing from a few of you is going to be a big motivator for me to focus on the most important part of the half marathon: finishing.

So, what do you all think? Anyone in?

**One caveat: there is the very small potential that this gets really "viral", which would be incredible. Given that I’m not independently wealthy (I’m a struggling entrepreneur after all..), I’m going to have to put a cap on how much I end up giving. Hopefully that doesn’t dissuade you from participating in any way, but if it does, I understand. I’ve told 2 people I trust what the cap is (well above the scenario modeled above), so this is something that I take seriously, but I’m keeping the number private because the focus here is really to engender personal participation.**

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On my 2010 plan for next year: write more. On my blog and elsewhere.

I’m in year-end mode, mentally. For me that means really taking stock of this past year, primarily through:

• Identifying and remembering successes
• Rooting out the failures
• Elaborating on the lessons learned
• Comparing my accomplishments to last year’s plan

That might sound a bit more rigorous than the process actually is, but it’s essentially the mental work that I do at the end of every year. With each passing year, I find that I enjoy getting more detailed in the process and I engage in more writing, thinking and documentation of my plans. This year, for example, I plan on documenting all of the above areas and printing it out for reference throughout next year. The more I make very specific plans, the more I execute on them.

Are you in year end mode right now?

What are your plans for next year?

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Freedom of the mind is the most important of all freedoms.

I really believe that. It’s something I learned both viscerally and intellectually many years ago. While doing a lot of reading and thinking about myself and my mindset, I came across the story of Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor who wrote about his experience and developed a philosophy around it. His ability to maintain mental strength and optimism in the most dire of situations put things in perspective for me. His focus on controlling his mental state, even when the rest of his life was dictated to him, was inspirational. It clarified months of thinking and reflection and I don’t think I’ve ever been the same since.

On the 4th, I headed out on a run and got to thinking about the 4th of July and what it means to me, as an American. I thought a lot about what I want for myself and my ability to achieve those goals. I dwelled on the fact that freedom of the mind, in a country that fosters such freedom, changes how I think about life and its possibilities. Our good fortune in the United States comes from the fact that the right mindset, in conjunction with the structure of our legal and economic systems, promotes innovation, creation and constant renewal. 

However, that freedom and structure comes with a price: self-motivation. In an environment where so much is left free and unregulated, success is not guaranteed. Arguably, “success” becomes an always out of reach target because the process of definition becomes more challenging. When your peers are constantly re-defining success using their own imaginations and your vision of success morphs over time, freedom of the mind can often feel like a burden.

I think that most of us have times in our lives when we forget what it takes to make the most of our freedom. We forget that with the opportunity of a free mind and a society that supports it, we have to work to focus that mind and achieve. With all that we have around us, we forget that we have to go earn what we want out of life.

As I ran and thought about my own ideas of success, I pondered a question: With my idea of success inevitably in flux, how can I be confident that I’m utilizing my freedoms?

Our mental boundaries define us.

If freedom is typified by a lack of limitations on your actions, thoughts and outcomes, your own boundaries are the primary limitations. When your mind is the largest determinant of your happiness, your imagination an engine of possibility and your society a loosely organized support structure for the fulfillment of imaginations, YOU are the only one really holding yourself back.

When our thinking is small and narrow, so are our goals. The freedom to define ourselves and our ideas of success is also the freedom to limit ourselves with our thinking. When we set goals and seek to achieve them, it’s important to know that we’re both drawing lines of accomplishment and lines of limitation. Our true freedom is highlighted when we outperform against our own goals. When we regularly remind ourselves of the fact that we set limitations that can and should be broken, I think we embrace our freedom by recognizing the role we play in actualizing it. Through the process of regularly resetting the boundaries in our mind, we change our view of our limitations.

Which is how my target run of 9 miles became an 11.5 miler. On the 4th of July, I needed to remind myself to set goals and to outperform them when possible, because that’s part of what it means to me to be an American. 

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We all face challenges in our lives, big and small. How we face them and deal with them defines us: to ourselves and to others.

The way in which Nick Vujicic faces his challenges inspires me, I hope it inspires you as well.

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I know, I know, this is my second lengthy video in a row, but this is also a really great piece of video that I’ve been meaning to share out.

I’ve been following Gary V. for about a year now, seeing how he markets himself and his business. I’ve been impressed with his energy, enthusiasm and his really impressive grasp of how to use the Internet to communicate with people and build an audience. The theories in my head often play out, in the real world, through his actions. Watching him gets me fired up to go get more real shit done, so hopefully watching this interview might have the same impact on you

(PS: By the way, he’s not bullshitting about his work ethic and getting through his email. I emailed him recently and heard back within a day, it was pretty shocking.)

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Been meaning to share this for a while. This sums up a lot of what I think about the world:

Hat tip to Brad Feld, who said the same thing a while back and introduced me to the video

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Dear friends and readers of this blog:

If you think to yourself, "I don’t understand why people vote the way they do. I feel like so much of the country is crazy."

Or you think, "Why is everyone up in arms about politics, it’s not like it matters who’s President anyway."

Or maybe you’re just tired of people making snap decisions about candidates based upon the things they hear in the news, through ads and from headlines and feeling a bit hopeless about the state of affairs.

You’re NOT alone.

But you are lying to yourself if you’ve gotten to a point where you think your actions don’t matter. Consider these few things:

• Your vote does get counted in this country (many countries can’t say that).
• Your $$ matter. Give to the candidate or the issue that you care about. It doesn’t matter if it’s $5, $25 or $2,000. Your money DOES help. Look at the Obama campaign, which has stunned EVERYONE in its ability to raise money through the donations of "ordinary" citizens (more than 2 million people have given, do you want to join them?). You’re not ordinary – you live in the U.S.A. and probably have disposable income. You are in a position of global wealthiness.
• You have FRIENDS WHO LISTEN TO YOU.

If you’re out there, talking with people about this election, making sure that your voice is heard; through your vote and your wallet, you are doing something.

MAKE YOUR VOICE MATTER.

Register, today, if you’re not. Put your address in here, right now, to check your local info and make sure you’re registered.

Then, go call/email/text/IM/Facebook/MySpace, whatever, 5 or more of your friends this same thought.

You can do it.

(Or listen to these celebrities tell you the same thing..)

PS. If you happen to live in a "swing state" or have friends in "swing states", your voice matters even more. Think about utilizing that understanding in the coming 30 days.

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Barack Obama : : Change We Can Believe In | Sam Graham-Felsen’s Blog: “A More Perfect Union”

Thank you, Barack Obama, for believing enough in the American people to actually tackle a complex subject and discuss it with nuance, depth and honesty. I want to see more of this kind of talk from our leaders and I hope that both you and Hillary can elevate the next several weeks of campaigning by continuing the behavior exhibited here.

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There is, in each of us, an idea of self. A vision of who we are, what we stand for and what we’re capable of accomplishing. Like the perfectionist painter, this idea is the canvas in our closets that we continue to modify and hopefully, improve.

I’m of the belief that this idea of self is always in flux. This last weekend, I ran my first marathon and changed a piece of my self in a meaningful way. This post is about examining my conception of self and one of the tactics that I apply to create change in my life.

I used to be a small, small kid.. I hated it

Shortly before my 10th birthday, I started taking Tae Kwon Do (TKD). From day one I was hooked. Being shorter or smaller didn’t matter. I was fast, I learned quickly, I liked to fight. I was good at it, immediately.

A few months later, my family adopted a cat. Aside from fish, I’d never really had a pet and taking that cat in really opened my eyes to how attached one can get to an animal. We named her Aintabelle (the opposite of Isabelle..super dorky) and I quickly became her favorite.

As coincidence would have it, I have pretty severe pet allergies. We didn’t really know it at the time, but when we took in the cat, I inflamed the asthma that was latent in my lungs.

So there I was, 10 years old, passionate about this new sport I’d started, in love with a new cat friend we’d adopted and wheezing. A LOT. Life seemed really unfair to me at the time.

Despite the asthma, I managed to keep practicing TKD. I loved it so much that I fought through the asthma. It’d flare up, but I managed it.

At home, as we figured the allergies out, I had to stop playing with the cat so much (it was hard, I’d usually just stop when my eyes got too red..) and she couldn’t go in my room at all. It wasn’t perfect, but combined with the inhalers, the allergy meds and the modified diet my parents put together for the cat, we kept it going all throughout my teens.

The thing was, I had asthma.

It was allergy-induced and although exercise exacerbated it, I could make it through in certain situations. I loved TKD so much (perhaps because I’d tried it before having to deal with asthma-attack laden lungs) that I figured out a way to get through. I got stronger and stronger every class and it actually made me more fit. I had to work 20% harder than everyone else, but I didn’t care. It meant that I had more gas in the tank when I was finishing matches (my specialty became winning in the final round). I did what I had to do, because I wanted it, just that badly.

PE and school sports however, were another matter. When cross-country and track and field came around, I tried to compete, like I did for all of our sports. I ran a bit but didn’t really enjoy it. It was torture, running while having lungs that were not terribly efficient and seeing other kids go so much faster with much less work. It demoralized me.

Physically, I developed two self-images

At school I became the kid with asthma, who couldn’t run when you had to run in PE or who would, but was slow and had the inhaler. That was me. From time to time, I’d feel great and run well, but most of the time, I was slow, it was painful and I hated it.

Meanwhile, at TKD I was a different person entirely. I matured, I competed, I did well and it was a virtuous cycle of reinforcement. Day after day, month after month, I developed an idea of who I was in my TKD uniform: I was a competitor, a winner, an instructor, a coach. A leader. More than anything, Tae Kwon Do taught me how to lead when I was a teenager.. it was incredible.

Why was this happening?

I think that while my asthma is much more prone to flaring up when I’m running (particularly uphill) what really occurred was that asthma became more than just a physical ailment that impeded my performance. It became something that formed my sense of self. Thinking about that for a few moments is, for me, really enlightening.:

The way in which I saw the world, the opportunities available to me, the possibilities in life.. all of the options in my head became affected by a physical affliction.

I got it in my head that I wanted to be good at TKD. That I could prove myself through it – that martial arts, unlike other sports, were a place where the fact that I was smaller, smarter and not white didn’t matter. They might even be assets. My frame of reference, at TKD, gave me the ability to envision great success, despite asthma.

I decided that I could and would be good at TKD and with hard work and practice, I was right.

But it wasn’t sustainable

As I met with more success in TKD, a disturbing pattern began to emerge. I’d prepare myself for the competitions and then, day of, I was often less interested in winning the competition than just getting it over with. Many times, I only really invested myself in winning when I thought I had something to prove to others. There was the match where the kid was double my size (no joke – I weighed 50+lbs, he weighed 98 lbs), or the numerous times when I sparred the adults in class and I’d destroy them for taking it easy on me. More often than not, I was motivated to prove others wrong.

I remember two distinct moments of clarity on this point:

- The first occurred when I was preparing for the state championships my senior year of high school. I was at this point, the favorite. I’d won the past 3 or 4 years and I’d actually competed nationally a number of times. It was a strange feeling, being the favorite. I took training easier. I didn’t push myself to fight the bigger, tougher opponents in my classes. My friend Rocky had argued with me, saying that if I forced myself to run, I’d be in even better shape and would be able to not just finish the fights strong, but to finish the tournament strong. Fighting 4 or 5 9-minute bouts was devastatingly tiring. He was right. I didn’t care. I ran once and stopped.

- The second occurred at the high school graduation party my parents threw me. My master came to the party. At this point, he’d been part of my life for 9 years. I was his 3rd student. He cared for me quite a bit. He made me who I am, in some ways. He talked with my parents about the fact that he was disappointed that I was leaving the state and couldn’t continue to train with him for Nationals and the Olympic Games. I heard about this later from my parents and the overriding thought in my head was, “That sounds like too much work.”

At some point, I’d taught myself to rely upon others for motivation

I’d looked to prove other people wrong with TKD in the first place and followed that pattern by looking to others for motivation to get better at TKD. Progress, after a while, became a series of spurts, rather than steadily occurring change. I’ve learned that this approach doesn’t tend to work well in the long run. We have to create and maintain the habits that define us. It requires continuous investment and repetition, that’s why it is, in fact, habitual.  My habits take work, regularly.

So, one of the habits that I care a great deal about is that of self-motivation.

When no one has expectations of you or they already think that you’re doing well, you can often coast and make excuses if you don’t live up to expectations. The reality of the world that I live in is that it doesn’t take a tremendous amount of work to just tread water. In personal and professional life, being average to above-average doesn’t seem to be challenging. Of course, this is contextual, so I understand that I exist in a privileged class. I might rephrase this and say: coasting, in life, appears to be the norm.

I think that in some ways, this reflects upon how much we want to be seen as “nice” people. In the world that I live in, very few people are truly honest in their evaluations of one another. They bottle problems up, they hold back with suggestions, they get scared to give praise. While this is polite, it also makes it much less likely that we can look to others for motivation. One of the reasons that I have this blog is to solicit feedback and motivation from my friends. Only a few of you choose to

I don’t think that this is terrible. It does, however, explain why I’m more likely to give you feedback and try to offer praise. I have had to learn that I can’t rely upon you for motivation.

Which is why this habit is called self-motivation

Over the past several years, I’ve taken up running. It started off slowly – 10 and 15 minutes on the treadmill at the gym. Jogging really slowly with friends. Introducing myself to the idea of enjoying running, not hating it. I found something amazing happened once I started running outside in San Francisco: I got happier.

It really was as simple as that. One day I started running down to the Marina and along the water and after that I couldn’t stop. It’s just that beautiful, calming and energizing for me. I’ve always loved the water and running along it made me appreciate running and San Francisco far more than ever before.

As I ran, I got healthier, I got happier and I taught myself self-motivation.

At first, when I started running regularly, I found myself looking at how others were doing in order to find a reason to push myself a little harder. I was falling back on the habits I’d developed in TKD. But I realized it and sought to change it.

Now, when I run, I play mind games with myself. Sometimes I see someone running faster and see if I can keep up with them to test if I’m taking it too easily. I see how much of a song I can make it through at a dead sprint at the end of my run (I was up to half a song or ~2 1/2 mins). In short, I learned to focus inside for my running motivation and increased performance.

I made myself start running the bridge, to see if I could do it.

I could.

I took the US Half Marathon course map and did it, the day before the race, to see if I could do it.

I could.

I started training with Allison for the LA marathon, to see if I could get my mileage up quickly.

I could.

3 weeks after Allison said that she was going to do the marathon, I knew I was in. I wanted to see if I could prove that my past self could be changed. I wanted to see if I could grow far beyond the asthma attacks of my youth to complete a marathon.

I could.

Pushing yourself isn’t just about being positive

Which brings me back to the title of this post, “Proving your self wrong”. As much as it was important for me to build myself up and enter the race, feeling as if I could do the marathon, that’s not the whole story.

Many of us know and believe that being positive is a great thing, that it helps us push forward in life. But many of us forget that along the way, we reach points where we feel as if we CAN’T do anything. In those moments, many of us vow to avoid those can’t determinations again. We don’t push through.

I was twittering, leading up to the marathon and during it, because I wanted to document some of my thinking for myself (and anyone else who was interested). In mile 20 of the race, I twittered:

“Mile 20. I can do this. I can do this.”

I didn’t twitter however, that at mile 23 of the marathon, I KNEW that I couldn’t finish. I felt it in my legs. They were done. Too tired. I’d gone out too fast, shouldn’t have separated from my partner at mile 12 and it was far hotter than I was used to. My head told me something:

I wasn’t going to be able to finish.

And so, what I want people to remember is that sometimes, it’s not that you’re lacking a positive outlook. It’s that you need to prove yourself wrong. If you want something out of life but think you’ve objectively determined that you can’t have it… you’re probably right.

But what if you’re wrong?

Go test yourself. Your self just might change.

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