It seems all we hear about these days is the next big company buying up the startups. A new American dream has been birthed out of Silicon Valley. In this version of the dream, the smart, quiet, slightly nerdy kids from high school become millionaires overnight after spending countless hours coding an app, a software program or an otherwise handy tech-related solution to make the rest of our lives easier with the help of computers, tablets, smartphones and the like. Call it Revenge of the Nerds. Now every third grader wants to be an app developer when he or she grows up.
Crazy.
Some people fear the current trend of ridiculously overvaluing tech IPOs signals the cusp of another dotcom bust, similar to the early 2000s when major companies went belly up after the stock market crazed and overzealous valuations failed. Financials just didn’t add up at the end of the day. The spreadsheets didn’t balance. Something was amiss. And then there was nothing.
Business is eerily similar to our own lives in one way: When the financials don’t add up, and we continue to ignore the warning signs, there soon might be nothing left. But there is no one to buy us up when we’re done screwing around. There is no way to integrate our own lives with the best assets of another person and create a new life. We have to live with what we create, with what we do and with what we dream.
Sometimes, that’s overwhelmingly depressing.
At the beginning of the New Year, there is no shortage of tips on how to set goals, keep resolutions, reflect, vision board and the like. But often, these tips are shallow attempts at helping us gain clarity in a life that is moving in multiple directions at once and the advice just can’t keep up. Yeah, it would be nice to set monthly goals, but when you work three jobs in five different industries plus have a family to take care of and seven hobbies, where do you even start?
Most people will tell you to start by eliminating. Get rid of all the things that don’t generate revenue. Get rid of everything that’s bringing you down (what if that’s revenue?). Shed the unnecessarys. Simplify.
That’s great advice, but most of us shudder at the idea of simplifying. Simplifying takes too much work.
Now you don’t have to. My good friend KC spent the past 10+ years trying to figure out how to acquire his own epic life by merging together all of his passions. He was a college-educated rock musician traveling the country like your prototypical rocker…but he was married. He was a high-stakes sales person for a multi-million dollar advertising agency…but he worked from home so he could be with his kids. He studied transcendental meditation, drank green smoothies and ran miles and miles and miles…while listening to business and marketing podcasts.
And he created an incredible framework for helping others figure out how to craft a life that highlights rather than eliminates all the things you love. He offers the framework for free in a multimedia explosion of content on his website. I highly recommend you check it out if you’re looking for answers and finding nothing but to-do lists zooming around your brain.
Let 2013 be the year you do your own M&A deal. Make it a priority to acquire the parts of your life that have gone stale, to reach for the things you don’t yet have but want or need. Find a way to make it happen and then merge all your passions together. KC will help you make sense of it, and I’m always here to help guide you back toward sanity when life gets to be too much. The Framework helped me make sense of all my odds and ends interests and made me realize that what I want is possible. I’m just going to have to create it.
Stop listening to all the people who say you can’t have it all. You can have as much as you want. It might just take some creativity to blend it all into something we can make sense of.
Do you think you have weird passions that don’t add up? Share them below and we’ll see what we can come up with! It’s like playing the matching game…match the passion with the career or fill in the blank.
