The Blog of Corey Keller

Part of my goal of building a trail.

[kellersblog-blog]

Party at TechShop

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours… . In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.”

- Thoreau

On Thursday, my wife and I went to TechShop’s 21+ Night because I won a free ticket through Pittsburgh Startup Weekend.  I’ve wanted to come to TechShop since its announcement, a few years ago, but it was hard finding the time. It’s one of those things similar to Startup Weekend; it turned out to be a great idea.  I originally thought we were going to have to buy beer and food, but it ended up being a 3 hours of free beer with snacks, deserts, and a number of activities. My wife and I screen printed our own shirts, soldered Christmas ornaments, designed masks for the photo booth, saw a 3-D printer, tasted some great beer, ate too many brownies, saw some really cool products, and we shot a marshmallow cannon.  We had so much fun trying to complete all the projects.  We'll definitely be back for other 21+ Nights and to take some classes.  

The whole time at the party, I kept thinking about how great this place will be once I’m able to start taking our children.  I feel fortunate to live in a place, like Pittsburgh, where there are these type of opportunities for our children.  I can’t wait to start taking them to classes and get them interested in engineering, design, and science.  To show them how our world works, and how they have this incredible opportunity to have fun and contribute.  

That’s the amazing thing that places, like TechShop, our doing for people.  TechShop is allowing people to challenge what’s possible.  By being a member or taking classes, you’re introducing yourself to the endless possibilities that TechShop offers. 

Yes, it’s not cheap, but they’re business, and they need to be compensated for taking the risk of buying all this equipment and performing the required upkeep.  It’s an amazing space to meet, teach, and create. I think the gift of a TechShop membership is probably one of the best things you could buy someone, especially a child in your life (Children ages 12 to 17 can work at TechShop under the direct supervision of their parent or legal guardian).  Buy yourself, or someone else, the opportunity to create their future.

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Slaying The Beast

“Obstacles are things we see when we take our eyes off our goals.”

- Zig Ziglar (Week 1 / Day 5)

  For most of my life I’ve seen obstacles of mainly my own creation. When I was young in school I didn’t have the right clothes. How would I be cool without them? In sports I needed these shoes.  When I was looking for a job at the end of college, I thought about how I didn’t have the right connections.

My life has been a period of rolling waves of obstacles and emotions. It’s the ebb and flow of life.  In one of my favorite audiobook, Jim Rohn’s, The Art of Exceptional Living, talk about how we need to change our philosophy.  You can’t change a lot of the circumstances around you.  When I was younger, I’d complain about politics, gas prices, or generally how life is unfair, until I realized that you can’t change this stuff, and I should only work on the things I could change.  The Jim Rohn quote at the top of this post sums up his philosophy, “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.”  

There were periods in my life, when I wished I had done something else. If only I would have done this or that, my life would be immensely better, and maybe this would have been true but I couldn’t change it.  It’s important to learn how to deal with these emotions. The Resistance, will never go away. There will always be the battle, a battle warring inside of you. We’ve been fighting this battle all our lives. If you look at the regularity of my blog posts, beyond this week, then you’ll notice my battle. For the past three years, I’ve been trying to publish a blog post everyday.  I’ve had periods of success when I was defeating the Resistance and their have also been longer period where I’ve lost that battle.

Resistance is the obstacles in our life and it comes in all forms. It can be the simple cop out, “I’ll do it tomorrow.” How many times have you told yourself this lie, only to find yourself a day, a week, or even a month later and you’ve accomplished nothing. It’s happened to me more times then I’d like to admit. Resistance has made a fool of me. I’ve been beaten down, submitted, and humiliated, but everyday I try to fight again.

That is the hidden beauty of this battle. It’s that you can start fighting the Resistance today. You can start now and you can win.  Everyday I wake up on time, write, and publish a blog post, I’ve won. I’ve danced in the darkness and come out the other side. 

What resistance are you fighting?

Got it?

Now, go slay the beast!

* The photo at the top of this blog post is from daimanuel.com

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Speaking In Public

“What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination.”

- Zig Ziglar (Week 1 / Day 2)

For the past few weeks, I've been slowly consuming Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen, in preparation for my eighth speech in the Toastmasters Competent Communication manual. I'm excited to use these techniques for the speech.  

My theme of the talk will be the 1 Second Everyday app with which I captured one-second of everyday for the first year of Kenny's life.  I want to use this speech for more than a pat on the back for doing a good job on parenting, but I want to relate the amount of seconds wasted during the day.  What if we utilized those seconds?  What if we treated those seconds with as much importance as the rest of your time.  

Like the above quote, the best part of creating this one year video of our son was not the end product, even though that was special.  It was the about making the time to capture all those seconds during the year.   

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The Height of Your Success

“The height of a man’s success is determined by the depth of his belief.”

- Zig Ziglar (Week 1 / Day 3)

How high will my success be? Zig believes it will be as high as the depth of my belief.  I think about and deal with Resistance. Steve Pressfield's War of Art talks about the resistance being the biggest obstacle in the way of creating your art. The resistance restrains the height of your success.  Whenever, I decide to take a risk, resistance keeps nagging me to quite.

If your belief isn’t strong then the resistance will swallow you up.  You should act like Hemingway in the Woody Allen film, Midnight in Paris, when he states,“If you’re a writer then declare yourself the best writer.” Not having confidence will get you nowhere.  If you have an idea for a startup, project, or new group at your company then have confidence to declare it.  If you can’t motivate yourself, how will you ever motivate anyone else?

I think more people need to realize this connection.  You have the ability to choose the height of your own success.  You only need to believe.

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It's much easier to stay home then to attend Startup Weekend. That is if easy is how you want to live your life.

“Motivation is fuel necessary to keep the human engine running.”

- Zig Ziglar (Week 1 / Day 2)

During the weekend of November 21 - 23, I took part in my first Startup Weekend, Pittsburgh Startup Weekend 6. I found out about this event almost two years ago while studying for my Master of Science in Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh’s iSchool. It seems like over the course of the last few years I’ve always had an excuse for why I couldn’t attend. Finally, this fall my schedule freed up, and I immediately signed up when I saw the announcement of the event on Twitter. The main reason I wanted to attend is because I’ve been working on the goal of building a trail. Pittsburgh Startup Weekend satisfied all of the criteria about building a trail: networking, a chance to create a new project, practice shipping my work, create an impact, learn new skills, and get out of my comfort zone. 

Don Charlton, the founder of Resumator, put it best during his keynote talk on Friday night. He said, “You had to be fucking crazy to sign up for something like Startup Weekend”. He went on to tell us it’s nuts to think we’ll lock our selves in a room for 54 hours and create a company. We’re crazy to leave our family and friends to join a group of strangers and try to execute on an idea. It's crazy because it’s easier to stay home and not take part in this event, to not meet new people, to not pitch, not learn a new skill, not express yourself, or not care. Don’t come to startup weekend if you don’t want to do every one of those things, because it’s impossible to stay in your comfort zone. If this is your first time, you’ll grow in ways you didn’t think was possible. You’ll do things you didn’t realize you could. There is the opportunity to be entertained, eat great food, network with decision makers, learn from experienced mentors, and then at night you can have a beer with some of the most interesting people you’ll ever meet.

The main experience is you’ll be amazed at how much fun you can have locked in a room full of strangers trying to turn a glimpse of an idea into a business. People do win Startup Weekend. I was fortunate to be on a talented team that executed well and won first place but there are no losers. Everyone walks away with much more than they showed up with.

I think Startup Weekend embodies the quote at the beginning of this post. Motivation is what you will get at Startup Weekend. During the event and afterwards you’ll be motivated to continue with the success you achieved during the weekend. It’s what allows you to spend 54 hours working on a dream.

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Fifth Pick Four Program

"Success is not a destination, it's a journey.  It's the destination in which you are traveling." - Zig Ziglar (Week 1/ Day 1)

Today is the start of my fifth Pick Four Program.  If you're not familiar with the Pick Four Process, it's based on Zig Ziglar's Goals Program.  I use the Pick Four notebook published by Seth Godin's Domino Project.  The Pick Four notebook walks you through a few brainstorming techniques that help you figure out your top four goals that you will want to achieve in the next twelve weeks. 

After figuring out your four goals, you need to write out your plan to achieve each goal, which includes the benefits of reaching this goal, skills or knowledge required to achieve this goal, major obstacles and mountains to climb to reach this goal, individuals and organizations needed to help me reach this goal, and the plans for achieving this goal.  I spent the last week figuring out my goals and coming up with a plan. 

The rest of the notebook is left for you to fill out.  It has twelve weeks with two sheets for each weekday, designed to write out your daily goals and accomplishments.  I like to start my morning by writing out my Pick Four goals for the day.  Then I place the notebook underneath my pillow, so at night I'll remember to fill out what I completed during the day.  I've done four Pick Four notebooks, and during the first three, I had a difficult time sticking with the program until I started using the pillow tip from Zig Ziglar.  

This program works and it's been on the most important habits I've implemented.  I've used this plan to start writing everyday, started learning to program, completed my master degree, found a new job, organized our personal finances, ran a marathon, and figured out how to make my wife's dream of staying home full time with our kids, a reality.

My goals for my fifth Pick Four program our the following:  

Goal 1

Is to increase my monthly income to a specific amount to allow my family to live the type of life they want and deserve.  It's not that my family really wants for anything, but during the last Pick Four program, my main goal was to make enough money to give my family the option of having my wife raise our child full-time.  To do this, I raised my income by finding a new job and we cut back our monthly expenses.  Now I want to focus on increasing our monthly income to give us some more discretionary and investing income.

Goal 2

Is to pay off a specific amount of debt.  During the my last Pick Four notebook, my wife and I did a good job of organizing our finances and setting up a system to keep us on track with our new budget.  Now, we want to focus on becoming debt free.  These next twelve weeks is about following through with that system.  This means making sure we perform our weekly reviews, enter our receipts into YouNeedABudget (YNAB), and make spending decisions based on our budget.

Goal 3

Is to sign up to be a Pittsburgh Half Marathon Charity Runner for the American Heart Association in honor of my father who passed away almost three years ago from a heart attack.  This is something I've been wanting to achieve for a few years.  In the next twelve weeks, I'm going to sign up as a charity runner, start training, and figure out how to raise the money to cover my $400 minimum donation amount for AHA Charity Runners.  

Goal 4

My fourth and final goal is to publish a blog post everyday of the Pick Four program.  My plan is to wake up early every morning to write for an hour about my goals, edit my post as I have time through out the day, and schedule the post to be published at 6 AM the next morning.  I want to concentrate on performing this process everyday to help build the habit of shipping my work on a daily basis.

I'm looking forward to working on these goals for the next twelve weeks and achieving each of the goal goals I've set.  I'll be writing every morning with the goal of posting something by 6 AM the next morning and to continue this process for at least the next twelve weeks. 

I love today's quote because it gives the highly motivated person a bit of satisfaction.  When I think of success, I think about reaching the end of the goal.  I think of accomplishments, but this goal reminds you that success is not about reaching the top of the mountain.  It's not about reaching your goal; it's about traveling towards your destination. This blog post is my version of success. 

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Pick Four: Organize our finances

How do I achieve this goal?  Completing IWTYTBR's Six Week Plan.  What I've completed so far?  What I still need to complete?  What I doing?  What software I'm using and why?  How are things going so far and what do I need to still do? Today, I'm talking about my second pick four goal which is to Organize Our Families Finances.  For a while now my wife and I have just kind spent and saved.  I had a simple system set up but neither us paid much attention.  All of this changed once we decided my wife was going to leave her job so she could stay home and take care of our young son.  With our income decreasing by a third it time to create plan and starting thinking about how and where we spend our money.  A lot of people bad mouth budgets because there boring and time consuming but I'm trying to find something that we can stick with.  I've been reading Ramit Sethi's I Will Teach You To Be Rich book and following his Six Week Plan.  I've also been working to find a software package that works for our family.  I tried using the free service MINT but I'm not comfortable with them logging into my accounts to atrieve my information.  The real reason I haven't been a huge fan of MINT is that it tries to automate to much of our bugeting process.  I find myself just looking at the accounts, where they're categorized, and tracking my budget.  I'm not a huge fan of there budgeting process.  There is a lot of work revieiwing their processing.  In using the service consistently for the last few months, I've found it difficult to stick to a plan and get a good handle on our finances.  This lead me to trying YouNeedABudget (YNAB) which is all about handling your budget and breaking the paycheck to paycheck cycle. I just started the free 30 day trial and I'm trying to figure out if this system will work for me and my wife and if it's a system that will be handle to continue using in the future.  I'm definfitly leaning in the direction of purchasing because I love the companies philosophy.  Other services I looked at talk about getting you our of debt or organizing your finances but YNAB is working to not only help people improve their financial situation but also teach them the proper ways to handle their money for the rest of their life.   After my one month trial, I'll let you know what my wife and I think about the service and if we decided to purchase it.

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Pick Four: Building a Trail

What is building a trail?  I was introduced to this idea by Seth Godin in his blog post, "Are you willing to build a trail?" In his blog post he talks about a help-wanted ad he posted a few years ago.  In this post he listed some of the application questions.  They were the following:

          Point to your personal website

    Show us some of the projects youi've led that have shipped and made an impact.

    Show us work you've done on the clock, and how you made it work

    Are you restless? What do you make or do in your spare time that leaves a trail and makes an impact?

    Find a particularly lame example of UX on the web and fix it into something better than good

    What's the best lesson you've learned from Steve Krug or Steve McConnnell?

    Point to a blog post that changed the way you think about connecting with people online

    Have you created anything worth watching on Vimeo or YouTube?

    Where do you work now? What's great about it?

Then he asks the following question to the reader.  Would you be ready to apply of it?  I'm one of the readers who wouldn't been ready.  After reading this post, I realized that I need to work on building my trail.  Since reading this post a few weeks ago, I've built a basic website which hosts my blog and links to my about me page, someday/maybe goals, and social media.  Now I'm working on figuring out how to answer the other questions or start projects which will give me something to talk about in each question. Since I've started my professional career after college, I've been in jobs where I performed a lot of research and analysis.  Most of my project work has been in my personal life when trying to complete my goals.  In the next few weeks, I'll be trying to figure out projects to start that I can ship and make an impact.  

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Pick Four Update

Today, I’m thinking about my goals for the week.  What I want to accomplish and how I’m going to accomplish it.  I’ve been working on my current Pick Four notebook for the past nine weeks.  This week, I’m planning to write about each of my four goals. To explain what I’ve and what I’m planning to do.  I’ll talk about how I’m building a trail, mastering our finances, learning to code, and moving & sweating everyday.

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Someday/Maybe Lists

Today, I updated the Someday/Maybe list for the link above.  There is a list of about 100 items which I intend to complete in the future. This list will be changing.  I'll update to show the things I've completed and new projects I want to complete someday.

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About Me

The About Me page has been published.  Just click on the About Me link at the top of the page.

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Writing an About Me Page

The past two days, I've been thinking about what I should include in my websites About Me page. Yesterday, I found Bernadette Jiwa's post, "10 Rules to Writing an About Me Page." Today, I'm going through those rules to help me create this page. I'll post it tomorrow morning at 6 am.

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Keep your thinking right and your business will be right.

Pick Four (Week 7/ Day1)

I think this quote is a perfect fit for this website.  My goal for this website is to be an accurate depiction of the type of work I'm creating and can create for others.  A reason for why people should want to work with me.  Publishing daily blog posts is about continuously working on my thinking process.  It's about creating and shipping my work everyday.  If I continue to create high-end work everyday than this will be a positive project.

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Twelve Grown Men Staring at a Piece of Cardboard

Tonight, I spent most of the night with a group of old high school friends staring at a piece of cardboard with our leagues' draft board duct taped to it. Drafting NFL players for our fantasy football teams. Afterwards a bunch of grown men stand around and rosterbate about how good and bad each other’s teams ended up. In every group it’s a similar range of reactions. From confidant & boasting, about their great draft & all the steals they got in whatever round, to the melancholy, thinking about what they should of, could of, or would of done, to the dejected.

The Sunday after next, we’ll all be sitting around our TVs rooting for our hometown but secretly only caring about our fantasy players doing well and not getting injured.

Family, Football, & Food. It’s why Sunday’s are my favorite day of the week again.

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New Pick Four Goals

For the past two weeks, I've been planning which Pick Four goals I wanted to choose to accomplish in the next 12 weeks. I made a list of 100 goals I wanted to achieve someday, then I trimmed the list until I found four goals that are important to my family and I. I try to pick goals that are beneficial to not only myself about also how they'll effect my family and other people around me. I try to choose different goals to create a natural balance in my life.

My four pick four goals are the following:

1) Start a side-hustle

2) Pay off all of our debt

3) Learn to code

4) Move (&Sweat) Everday

These four goals give me a Work, Financial, Mental, Fitness goal.

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First Summer Family Vacation

Monday, was my first day back from a great family vacation. It's was the first time my wife and I took our young son to play at the beach. It was one of the best weeks of my life. All we did was hang the beach, play in the sand, take walks, read books, and play in the waves. Our little boy loved every part of it. It was great to experience all of it with him. It was a trip I'll remember for the rest of my life.

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Big Birthday Weekend

I'm getting ready for a big birthday weekend. Not mine, my wife's. The Boys & I are ready to give her one hell of a birthday!