About four years ago I read "The 4-Hour Work-Week" by Tim Ferriss, and was enthralled. The book promises to show you how to obtain financial freedom, visit exotic places, and have loads of fun while doing it... sort of like channeling your inner Richard Branson. Sign me up! A friend of mine who recommended the book said "I don't recommend doing everything he says, but some of it is really good." I soon learned that this was sage advice. Join the New Rich? For those unfamiliar, the tagline of the book is "escape the 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich." In other words, the book promises the ultimate in autonomy. No more daily grind, do whatever you want,...
I have amazing news. My family will be part of a three episode reality TV pilot! A friend of ours pitched the idea to a Vancouver based production company, and the working title is: "Gawking at the Graham's." One of the most innovative aspects of the show will be that everyone in our young family will wear helmets, with front-mounted GoPro cameras, to get a first-hand view of the action. Naps, food-fights, and Marathon enactments of Thomas the Tank Engine will be recorded in full HD. Danny Tanner... eat your heart out. Best of all? You can watch me doing the bird-feeder while blurting nonsensical phrases during important meetings due to extreme sleep deprivation. "All work and no play make...
We interrupted my five-year-old son’s birthday dinner so that a potential buyer could look at the rental we’re living in. The agent that’s selling our place and his assistant pressured us into saying yes. My wife and I both came out of the interaction pretty convinced that we had lost a battle on behalf of our family, and our son, and were really upset. It was a classic win/lose scenario… or was it? In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey insists that there’s no such thing as a win/lose in any negotiation. It’s either a win/win, or a lose/lose. If it’s the case that both sides come out of a negotiation with a win, then...
It has been an incredibly depressing stretch in professional sports over the past 12 months. Here’s just some of what hit the news for sports fans: The Ray Rice domestic abuse scandal and graphic YouTube video. Adrian Peterson’s child abuse charges. Donald Sterling’s racist remarks. Slava Voynov’s domestic abuse charges. The New England Patriot’s illegally deflated game balls. The steady stream of cases of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in the NFL, NHL and other contact sports. All I can say is... UGH. Normally I look forward to watching the Super Bowl, but with everything that’s happened lately, it was difficult to think about flicking on the TV this Sunday. For the first time, I felt conflicted about the goodness of sports....
There is a little-known company that is Silicon Valley's moral equivalent of “The Smoking Man” in The X-Files. It's one of the most influential tech companies in the world… and hardly anybody outside of Silicon Valley has heard of them. You’ve likely heard of their offspring though: Dropbox, Code Academy, Heroku, Genius.com and AirBNB. Y-Combinator is a company that exclusively focuses on funding and launching tech startups, and readers are given insider access into their exclusive world through “The Launchpad” by Randall Stross. Set in 2011, the book reads like The Shark Tank for tech startups, and is an outstanding overview of what it takes to launch a startup in Silicon Valley… in three short months. Here are five lessons...
