Joe Hackman

Joe Hackman

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Ridiculously great Wisdom by a ridiculously wise and driven man

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I was a big fan of Will Smith before I watched this. It’s been a while since I watched it and it always reminds me of the important things in life. I love his use of ridiculous, it is one of his favorite words, hence the title of this post. Here is a few gems:

“Your life will become better by making other peoples lives better.”

“Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity.”

“Ridiculous sickening work ethic.”

“Be willing to die for the truth.”

Looking for a bump? Watch this, it will be a great way to spend 10 minutes of your life:

Do Golden Apples fuel your business relationships?

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Today I had scheduled to do some follow-up calls with a few of my long time IT clients. After a few 20-30 minute chats I felt like blogging about it. When I started my IT business back in 1997 I was very interested in making every customer a “customer for life”. It was a simple goal and while it has not been 100% successful I am extremely fortunate that the majority of my current clients have been clients for many years. As a result they really know me and I really know them. I know about the personal and professional challenges they face, the highs and the lows. Really we’ve been through a lot together, we are like a family. I know about their families and they know about mine. When we talk we catch up on personal business, share ideas and support each other. I was also reminded that business is always personal for me.  My clients are friends and I enjoy their friendship. In business it is always a delicate balance. Luckily, as my own boss, potential clients and I can choose to work together. In my prior career I did not have the luxury of this. I can tell you among many of the perks of being your own boss, for me the ability to choose who I work with is a huge perk.

Freia, from Das Rheingold, with the tree of golden apples

Freia, from Das Rheingold, with the tree of golden apples

Some people may read this and think that I am naive, but there is more to this. I had one client years ago that made me miserable. One of my close friends told me a story that someone had told him some years prior by the founder of a large warehouse store. It was the tale of the golden apples. Basically the saying was as long as the golden apples (money) were falling off the tree not to worry about difficult clients. I’ve used this to console myself over the years and I have to say I am at a point where I no longer agree with this. If your customers values are not in line with yours and it is causing you stress, you will be better off firing them and finding new customers. When I take stock of my customers today, they are all in line with my values. I do not feel that this is an accident. I think that ultimately when your values are out of whack, relationships will be dysfunctional. I think part of my position here has come with age, I am very comfortable today with who I am and I am not afraid to tell someone if they are asking me to do something that I do not feel I can ethically, successfully or efficiently execute. When I was younger I was much less self assured, I was driven and competitive, I guess I was what I needed to be at the time. Today I am glad that my values drive my business and personal relationships. I am open about who I am, what I stand for and genuinely enjoy establishing relationships with people who share my values.

I would love to hear your opinions about this post and your own personal experiences or philosophy on this. I will feature a couple of the best examples that come up in the post.

Featured Comments:

Occasionally I receive comments on my blog that really impress me and I want to showcase them (and the commenter!) in the post:

“Great post, Joe! This reminds us that usually when people grumble about their jobs and out of their unhappiness, make the transition to become an entrepreneur, one of the reasons they usually cite for their discontent in being an employee is they have issues with the people in their environment, and with the people with whom they have to interact. Unfortunately, once the new business-owner has survived the inevitable period of financial insecurity, they become determined to never experience that again, and this is usually when they make the subconscious pact with themselves to accept all money, no matter from whence it comes. The effect of this ill-advised decision is to create for themselves, all over again, the same kind of environment that they had once dreamed of escaping — a work environment in which they are exposed to troublesome individuals.

This post is a great reminder to business-owners about one of the elements that factored into why they decided to become a business-owner in the first place. Control over their work environment. Thanks for this!” – Kathrina Rashid

Kathrina was a recent guest blogger on my blog, you check out her post entitled “Sexual Assault Awareness by Kathrina Rashid PHD“

Update your iTunes or face potential exploitation

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While reviewing this weeks CERT summary I noticed three vulnerabilities with a risk rating of 10 which is the highest. With the wide distribution of the iTunes software, these vulnerabilities have potentially serious ramifications. Since they involve remote code execution it is prudent that any and all users of iTunes upgrade to version 9.2 or newer. You can check the version you are running via help/about in the program menu. Here is a partial screen-shot of this portion of the Cert advisory followed by a link to the advisories:

iTunes Vulnerable

iTunes Vulnerable - Cert Advisories

Resources:

The 4 benefits of being attacked by bees

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Joes Gone to the ER

Joes view at the ER

One week ago tonight, right about now I was walking down a trail behind my house. I heard the buzz of some very angry bees, a sound I had heard before and learned not to stick around to find out why they are angry. I started to sprint towards home and realize “oh no, you’re running down hill and won’t be able to stop”. Before I could slow myself down my right ankle folded and I hit the ground and slid and rolled on the trail a bit before coming to a stop. I could feel something was seriously wrong with my ankle but between the bees and the fact that I knew the pain in my ankle was sure to get worse, I limped home like a wounded animal. I was in a lot of pain when I got home, I took a quick bath while icing my ankle and popped 800mg of Ibuprofen while my wife and 4 year old son prepped for our trip to either urgent care or the ER. I admit I was not very rational while under great amounts of pain, but there was a decision to be made. Urgent care is in Walnut Creek about 25 minutes away and the ER at San Ramon Regional Hospital is 10 minutes from my house. Then I remembered my healthy community day at Leadership San Ramon Valley. The President of the Hospital Gary Sloan and one of his top ER doctors had been a part of that program. I remember a hospital is a business and I felt like I should support the local hospital and deal with people that I can trust.

So off to the ER we go, I won’t get too much into the details because really there are a few important facts about my visit and those are enough:

  1. My ankle was only sprained and they ruled out breaks, etc.
  2. The advice the doc gave was really useful.
  3. My doctor was the guy I met at Leadership, small world.
  4. I was glad I went to the ER at San Ramon Regional.

How can there possibly be benefits to this?

After I hurt my ankle I was really stressed about how this was going to affect my work. I have so much going on every day, for starters I wasn’t going anywhere for ~3-4 days while I kept my leg elevated and my ankle iced. It was hard for me to imagine what the benefits of being laid up for a while would be. My work was going to suffer, house projects, social life, bah humbug I was  in bad attitude city.

Saturday I was on the couch ALL DAY. I watched World Cup Soccer, slept, read, slept some more, wow I sure slept a lot. I had no idea I was so tired. There was benefit #1 – I really needed some rest. I slept in Sunday and repeated my FIFA, Sleep, Read, FIFA, Sleep process. Did I mention even though I read I didn’t read much because I would get tired and fall asleep.

“There was benefit #1 – I really needed some rest.”

Sunday I also did some planning for the week ahead of me. I realized that I still needed to set my goals for the week even though I was obviously going to have a temporary handicap. Sunday night with a lot of help from my wonderful wife I setup a laptop and second screen that I felt  I could use while I kept my leg up on the couch, or at the very least that I could periodically lay back and put up my leg. This was going to be a handicap big time for me, I am used to a 30” Samsung LCD flanked by 2 21” Samsung LCD’s (and not the wide screen ones, old school 1600×1200!).

Monday rolled around and I slept in a little bit, close to 7:30AM. Really late, I know, but with a 4 year old at home parents reading this will understand what this is like. Getting around was a pain, trying to work was a pain, I tried to keep my best face on. This wouldn’t last forever. One of the things I did Monday was work on long term goals. I wrote down very practically what I wanted to accomplish in my professional life. This was benefit #2 – setting long term goals is really important. One of the things I realized while doing this was I needed to set daily and weekly objectives for myself. I took out a notebook (I can write faster than type when I am lying on my back with my foot up) and started writing dates. Each work day was ½ a page. I wrote down the things that absolutely had to get done those days. I had to be selective, as I was not going to be spending 10 hours at my desk typing away with my sprained ankle. I noticed something very interesting, the things I wrote were contributing directly to my long term goals. Duh in hindsight it seems so simple.

“This was benefit #2 – setting long term goals is really important.”

Tuesday I kept resting up but I also used the time when I was resting my foot to take in some world cup soccer. My eyes and brain started getting used to the game, it was a rush watching a well-executed goal especially if it was undertaken by the team I had adopted to root for during the match. Being a tourist of Football is really fun, not much invested, a lot of what I was seeing was new and if the team I was rooting for lost it was no big deal. This was benefit #3 – I learned to love watching World Cup soccer.

“This was benefit #3 – I learned to love watching World Cup soccer.”

Landon Donovan

USA! USA! USA!

Wednesday I kept up my new passion watching World Cup Soccer. It was exciting as heck to watch Donovan score the game winning goal in stoppage time in the US best showing since 1930. I would have missed this piece of history had it not been for my injury. There is just no way I would have been able to justify the time to watch. In addition to watching history in the making, I was getting a little better at working on my laptop and my attitude had improved a lot by the end of the day. I even got bold and drove around the neighborhood, did I mention I sprained my right ankle?

Thursday was fairly ambitious I had scheduled work at a client site and added a lot more to my “must get done list”. I really felt solid by the end of the day. I started to see the benefits of the injury to my ankle taking shape and the eternal optimist inside me knew I’d see it eventually. This was benefit #4 – there is opportunity in any situation.

“This was benefit #4 – there is opportunity in any situation.”

By today I was absolutely sailing, I got more work done in less time than I have on many days where I don’t have anything to blame for slowing me down. I feel much more prepared for the weeks ahead and 1 of 4 of the weeks (by most estimates) that I will spend using crutches is done and I am roaring and ready for the next 3.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this personal story, I’d like to leave you with a quote about life by the late Joseph Campbell:

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”

Featured Comments:

Occasionally I receive comments on my blog that really impress me and I want to showcase them (and the commenter!) in the post:

“You know Joe this is one of those posts that is so genuine that I have to read it over and over just to prove to myself that you wrote it. In the normal every day life there can be indeed moments of triumph, self discovery and even finding a greater deeper appreciation for what you have, where you have come and understanding things won’t stay the same. They won’t stay where they are now and with positive thinking, a bit of focus and keeping yourself well stocked with resources like energy you can tackle about anything. Thanks for sharing.” – Lyndi Thompson

Lyndi is a Social Media and Online Marketing Specialist, you check out her blog at http://lyndit.com

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Diana Brown Helping Foster Kids SOAR

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Diana Brown Guest Speaker at RotaryI had the pleasure of speaking with the authentic, passionate and selfless Diana Brown this evening on my Blogtalkradio Podcast. Diana is the president and founder of SOAR for Youth. After a very successful career in IT including Fortune 100, education and government Diana was inspired by comments a friend had made about being a foster child. Her friend had experienced abuse at the hands of their aunt who was also their foster parent. The story changed Diana’s life as she felt that she needed to do something about the situation facing foster children.

Diana approached the issues facing foster kids the same way I would imagine her approaching any challenge she had faced in the business world. She spoke to faculty involved in Social Services and gathered other information about the problems. Armed with this information she devised a 3 year summer program to help these kids in need through a partnership with UC Berkeley. The program she created and implemented with the help of plenty of volunteers provides the kids with anything from basic life skills education to college preparation. When the kids arrive at camp they are quiet and keep to themselves but by the end of the week they are laughing and enjoying themselves the way kids that age should be.

Listen to the Interview

I listened to Diana tell her story at a Rotary meeting Tuesday. Tonight it really sunk in how committed she is to making a difference. She doesn’t get paid and most of the people who work with her are volunteers. She is extremely frugal working to ensure that the money that is raised goes into changing the lives of these kids. I feel very fortunate to have heard her story, it has inspired me in many ways. I would encourage you to listen to the interview and if you feel compelled to support SOAR some how please consider it. If you have the opportunity to volunteer, I believe it will be a life changing event for you.

Participant Testimonials:

What did you learn that will help you the most this next year?
  • Learn to love myself.
  • Just to look at things from a different point of view.
  • English and Math classes and stress relievers.
  • That you are never alone and there is always a way to survive and be very successful.
  • That even if you don’t see some interest in some things you should not just back away from it, give it a try…

More information about SOAR:

SOAR for Youth was established in February 2009 to provide high quality support, opportunities, and rapport that foster youth would have otherwise received from their parents.  One of the goals of SOAR is to help foster youth become independent and productive members of our society.

Through a summer residential academic enrichment program that uses teaching, coaching, counseling, outdoor adventure activities in collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley, community foster youth organizations, and Bay Area children services agencies, SOAR helps teenaged foster youth gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence needed to pursue post secondary education and succeed.  It is a three-year program. Once selected, each youth is invited to attend three summer camps (Prepare To SOAR, Learn To SOAR, and Time TO SOAR).  In addition, SOAR stays connected with the youth throughout the following academic years, providing sustained support and attention to encourage their progress.

Access the Soar for Youth Website

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