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REBOOTING

Mike Key —  09/13/2012 — Leave a comment

It’s time to reboot things here.

A little over three years ago when I started this blog I began writing about entrepreneurship and business success. While writing, I never quite found my voice, or purpose for my writing outside of self promotion. Over time I stopped writing and two years passed while my site sat mostly stagnant.

Two years later and a lot of things have changed. I live in a new city, just celebrated my 3rd wedding anniversary and turned 30 years old. That last one, has hit me the most though. I’ve spent a lot of time really thinking about my own personal identity, who I am, what I’ve done over the last 10 yrs of my 20s. As I’m sure anyone would.

But now I have found my voice and my vision for this site rooted deep in my personal belief of rugged individualism and nationalism, that is American exceptionalism.

I have a lot of ideas about becoming and starving towards being a free, educated and moral man, that I’d like to share with those who are concerned with the direction the world is heading. And I’ve decided to start sharing.

Through the pursuit of knowledge and sharing of ideas, I hope to wake up others out of their modern day conformity. To challenge men and woman to become exceptional individuals. Who strive for nothing short of being the best of themselves and reaching their highest human potential.

I’m motived by American history and our founding fathers. Say what you will, “Slave Owners”, “Racist” but Thomas Jefferson spoke 3 langauges at age 7, went on to LAW SCHOOL at age 17 and wrote the declaration of Independence and helped draft the constitution at age 33!

Or if you like, you can think back to the great men of the renaissance. We have this idea in modern culture that these where all just freaks, really smart old guys. But a lot of them did a lot of really amazing things at a young age, and just lived to be very old.

Take Ben Franklin for example. The man was just smarter than most of us.

I think there is something to be learned in history on how to develop ourselves. And I think history can also teach us how to prepare for what’s coming in our future as well.

So bare with me while I work to reboot this site, after all I’ve got a few opinions to offer,  some sound advice, a few personal experiments and some how-to’s that I am really excited to share.

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Dream Big, Act Big

Maren Kate —  03/30/2010 — 3 Comments

Today’s post comes from a guest Maren Kate  an entrepreneur who blogs about her escapades at Escapingthe9to5.com where she chides people to dream big, act bigger and run screaming from the status quo. My kind of thinker. Enjoy.

It is a wonderful thing to dream, but it’s an even better thing to act upon those dreams. Throughout my life I’ve dreamed of a certain lifestyle, certain freedoms and the chance to do the extraordinary, but it wasn’t until after college that I realized dreams were just realities waited to be acted upon. This realization changed my life, up until about 21 I’d always assumed that you could dream but life happened to you regardless. This couldn’t be further from the truth and as I ‘wake up’ more and more from the fog of ‘the real world’ I see that your life can be as big as you dream it but your dreams can only be as big as you are willing to act upon.

This is actually reason for celebration, it means you don’t have to wake up everyday and think ‘what will life hand me today’ instead you can literally happen to life, all it takes are baby steps. The way I act upon my dreams is three fold, I’ll explain my ‘action plan’ below: Continue Reading…

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TRY > FAIL > ADJUST

Mike Key —  03/21/2010 — 3 Comments

I’m pretty sure I learned this little tidbit when I was invovled with Quixtar, but it’s a pretty simple princple.

Most people who try something and then experince failure just give up and quit. That’s the wrong approach. After you experince a failure you need to simply readjust what you are doing and try it again. If you fail again, ADJUST WHAT YOU ARE DOING AGAIN. Keep doing this until you succeed.

I’ve failed in business a couple of times. Most recently I tried to start an IT company with a friend. I very quickly learned that two heads is a monster, especially when you both have different ideas about the direction the company should go. The whole thing turned out to be a big waste of nearly 3 months. Complete failure.

Did I give up and go looking for a job? NO! I adjusted my plan for business, this time, minus the business partner. New name, new plan, new strategy, and now I’m 3 months into a successful web development company.

The simple point here is if you fail, get up and brush the dust off your feet. Take a look at what you did wrong, learn from it. Adjust your plan and try again. If you fail, adjust and try again until you end up with this formula Try = Success!

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You Have to Make It Happen

Mike Key —  03/18/2010 — 7 Comments

We’ve got a real problem in this country with people and what they believe. No I’m NOT talking politics. We’ve bread a culture that believes things should be handed to them, that they no longer have to work hard for success, but that it should be handed to them.

This is a wrong way of thinking; one that needs to change. If you want something, you’re going to have to go out and make it happen.

I’m learning this first hand. For years I talked about business and being successful. In reality I was waiting for success to land in my lap. I was hoping it would be handed to me with the least effort possible, and in turn my first couple of businesses were mediocre. I applied the least amount of effort to everything I did.

And then one day a light bulb went off.

I’ve found a lot of success already, because I’m pouring blood, sweat and tears into making it happen. I’m getting out there and hitting the pavement, shaking hands, staying up late working on projects, making phone calls, doing follow ups, going to networking events, building my following on twitter, keeping up with it on facebook, etc. I’m putting in the work, not just sitting back and hoping it will come to me. I stay up late and fry my eyes with two 24inch computer screens, doing favors, hoping for some return. I’m taking a huge risk on all of this right now. But with risk, comes great rewards. If this thing is going to happen, I’m going to make it happen.

Now, here’s the deal. We all know this principle. So why are so many of you waiting around for success to land in your lap? Equally, why are so many of you thinking that you should be handed that next big promotion without doing any work?

If you want something, you’re going to have to pursue it. You’re going to have to bleed out of your eyeballs to make it happen. You’re going to have to be relentless in some cases. You’re friends will probably think you are crazy. Forget them. Your friends are probably losers anyways. Stop dreaming pie in the sky and start making the pie. (Does that even make sense?) You’ll probably have to get outside your comfort zone for starters.

My wife wants to buy a Hummer. A freaking Hummer in this economy! And guess what, she’s going to drive a freaking Hummer because WE ARE GOING TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Only one way that is going to happen. Not by me sitting around hoping to get lucky, but by me getting out there and MAKING IT HAPPEN.

Stop waiting for lady luck, get up off your ass and MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Word of the wise, there are NO SHORT CUTS to SUCCESS. So avoid the MLM’s.

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I’m a Foursquare Cheater

Mike Key —  03/14/2010 — 4 Comments

I’m coming clean, I’m a Foursquare cheater.

And why not? I personally think it’s funny that right now as of this posting I’m the mayor of places like the Taj Mahal, the Pyrmaids and the PlayBoy Mansion. Even thought I’ve never physically been to any of these places. TO be honest, cheating has become more and more fun.

I was inspired by a guy called Dr. Cheat who also blogged about it and become the mayor of dozens of places. The problem with Foursquare.com and services like such as Gowalla.com is that there are holes in the validation system. And I found the biggest one of them all. The mobile website. I first learned about this from TechCrunch here: http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/16/foursquare-cheating/ But you don’t need an API to check in to any place on planet earth, you can do it from your computer, so long as you use some logic.

http://foursquare.com/mobile/venue/485303 < Just use the mobile website.

Now according to TechCrunch I’m pathetic because I’m cheating, but really I just want to say that I personally think there are two problems with the system. One is how easy it is for me to check in everywhere, and the second one is all the people who keep putting their homes on foursquare. We’ve all heard the stories about people who’ve been attacked on myspace, facebook, and other services. Is it a wise idea to put your home on foursqaure?  Maybe you should check out http://pleaserobme.com/ a site setup to show when people aren’t in their homes.
Continue Reading…

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