Thought I’d give a one time rep a try

Currently I’ve been estimating my max weight via a rep calculator, found here http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/OneRepMax.html. 

Yesterday I decided that I wanted to try and see if I indeed could lift as much as the calculator says I could.  First up was squat.  Currently doing 205lbs 6 times equates to 238.  I put 235 on there.  With my wife watching I went down and…came back up.  And fairly easily surprisingly.  I thought it was too easy.  Then I thought that I wasn’t really too far off from trying for my goal weight for one rep, which was 250lbs.  So I put that weight on as well.  After a quick gut check I went under the bar and lifted it up with a bit more strain then the previous rep.  Then I went down slowly, made sure I touched the support bars and then…got it back up!  Bam!

I was pretty pumped and turned to my wife and said some noise or something that was legitimately sincere AND macho.  I was excited to have knocked out my goal on squat for the year. 

I then got everything set up for doing my current one rep equivalent for bench.  Got it up and came down slow and was actually able to bring it back up a couple inches, but that was it.  I set it back down on the support bars and then went home. 

All I have left to wrap up for the weight lifting goal then is to reach 225lbs on bench, or 190lbs lifted 7 times.  Last time I lifted more than just the one rep I graduated onto a higher weight.  So next time around I’ll be working on finishing 185lbs 7 times, 180 7 times, and 175 7 times.

Pretty exciting cause once I’m done with reaching those goals it’ll be time to change my routine a little bit to work on other areas of my body that I want to improve on.  I may find a way to get a pass to our local rec center as they’ll be able to accommodate my desired workout routines better than the current setup I’ve been going to at my brothers.  We shall see!

Pipe vs platform, control chokepoints, don’t diversify.

           Where do I start with this post?  I definitely think my businessfail.com idea would be a good one.  I was thinking of whether it would be text or maybe doing a youtube channel for it would be better and I’m not sure so I’ll have to think further on that.  What I’m thinking I would do though when I start it up is to have it just be a weekly post or something.  With that post I’d just do the best fails/things learned from those fails as some weeks may have many to post.

            Last night I made my first call for my ad posting business idea.  It wasn’t really nerve wracking.  I did say to myself that my goal would be 5 calls.  I only made one.  That was all I needed to easily blow through my hour session of working on my business.  The call was a total disaster ha ha…sigh.  Tis ok though cause I have permission to suck at first.

            I looked up the company name and called.  The company name has the person’s name in it.  So when I called she answered, “Hello.”  I said, “Hi my name is Brock.  Is this Barbara?”  She said, “Yes”.  Again the lady’s name is in the business name.  I said, “Are you the business owner?”  It was one of those moments where you know you shouldn’t say what you’re about to say, but for whatever reason, mine being anxiousness/nervousness, you uncontrollably blurt out what you didn’t want to say anyways.  From there on the conversation lasted about 5 seconds longer.  I got halfway through my second sentence.  She cut me off.  I asked a question and she just hung up on me.

            Lesson learned is that I had to change my wording up a little bit to get even quicker to the point and not really ask for permission to at least get two words in. 

            Later that night I was reading my “Winning through Intimidation” book and it talks extensively about operating from a position of power and authority and that there are several ways to do this with many jobs/businesses that don’t normally command power/respect.  I’ll do a post on the notes I took from the book once I’m finished with it.

            I also read a summary of a biography of John D. Rockefeller recently.  He focused on a couple things.  Hiring geniuses to do the heavy lifting.  Another thing I gleamed from that summary was that he controlled checkpoints in the shipping industry so that he forced his competitors to do his will else he’d crush them and then buy them out.  One other thing I got from the summary was that Billionaires don’t really diversify.  They stick to just one or two revenue streams, but become masters at that one revenue stream, whereas the average millionaire has multiple streams of income from different industries.  The middle class focuses on credentialing up via degrees/job titles.  The poor just expect people to take care of them.

            Another thing I read just yesterday was a Harvard Business Review Blog that chronicled the institutionalizing of failure into PBS, the public broadcasting station.  They made it mandatory for their employees to purposely take risks and fail and make mistakes and see what worked and then move on from those things.  Start to finish has created a powerhouse of a company and change in traffic from their audience in a drastically positive way.

            Another thing I came across was a Wired magazine article talking about how there are two business models now.  One is a pipeline type, i.e. producers produce and ram product/services down consumers throats.  The other type is the platform type.  Platform would be the internet broadly, or more specifically things like youtube and twitter and facebook where producers can produce value and then consumers can then consume that value.

So I started thinking, “How do I position myself for the collapse that is coming?  What business do I need to start that will control in Rockefeller chokepoint fashion, that I could start/take over via my commanding position via proper intimidation, and that is a platform?”

One idea I had was to buy up an app building business like Appsmoment.com or something like that where it is cutting edge, platform based, can grow in capital appreciation, but also have monthly cashflow revenues.  I also thought of education sites like udemy.com or kahnacademy.com.  Buying up those types of companies and then merging them together.  Anywho there will definitely be more on this later as I do more introspection, but I wanted to put it all on paper before I couldn’t articulate it what I wanted to do.  Feel free to drop some bomb ideas in the comment section below on how to achieve business greatness.

Lifting update

I figure since I’m doing a fair amount of posts I might as well do an update on lifting.  I’m still going!  I’m pretty close to reaching my goal for the year in bench and squat.  I think I’ll reach it by year-end.  This is because I just need to finish the 205 sets on squat and then do it for 210.  Bench is very close to graduating from my current 180 sets to 185 and then once 185 is done I’ll have to finish with 190.  I had my first kid on the 12^th and so I didn’t lift at all during that time except for one session with my arms is all.

Surprisingly and thankfully I still get pretty good and sore.  It sucks of course, but it is the good kind of sore and it isn’t the debilitating kind you get when you very first ramp up working out again so I guess there is the silver lining in this whole thing.  While I’m getting stronger it is just too bad I’m not totally ripped ha ha. 

I decided that when the baby came I’d throw out eating healthy and have packed the weight back on.  Instead of throwing out the good food that we paid good money for as well we’re gonna finish that food and then I’ll be back into eating healthy again so that is good.

TV update

You may get to my point where you come in on Monday and hear people talking about all the football game outcomes from the weekend and you remember that football is actually on and that you don't care that you missed it.  I had my first child born this last week and we had to go to the hospital to put her under observation for high bili levels.  Being in the hospital a couple days last week watching tv was just a reminder how huge of a waste of time it is and how pointless it is and mind numbing.  It is striking to watch tv once you haven't in a long time lol.

Line upon line as it pertains to business

I’m finding that there are many more commonalities in life than I had previously thought especially as it pertains to healthiness of life and all of its activities.  One of those things is failing.  Failing a lot.  Failing quickly.  Knowing that you are going to fail.  Knowing that failure is a learning opportunity.  And finally that eventually you just…win!  Win a lot.  Win with some luck. 

I read this article yesterday.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304626104579121813075903866.html?mod=trending_now_2

It was legit and is a common theme to a book I’m reading titled “Winning through intimidation”, which I really like.  I don't want to hear bs.  People (me) need to hear they're going to fail, big and a lot, before they make it big.  Solution is just figuring out how to persevere through it.  Today Ashlee is gonna join me for my very first hour session at the library to work on my business.  It'll be interesting to see what happens and what things I learn.  Who knows I may even have my first sale.

This post is actually being written as one, but over two days.  Yesterday I went to the library and found all the rooms booked full for use.  I had worked out that afternoon and so I was tired and had a headache and had already done a little copywriting for my father-in-law and decided to head home anyways knowing that I’ll need to call ahead of time to book rooms to use, which I’ll do going forward.

One business idea I have is to start a blog called fail business blog.  Basically just a blog or something that chronicles my failures in business and the failures of others.  People love drama.  They love it in other people’s lives and not their own.  I think the same applies to customers too.  They want a good product, service/experience of course, but I think they’d also want to see the dirty side of things too so maybe that is something I can do sometime in the future.

Ramit gave me permission to suck and suck I will

            I’m learning about how to make 1k on the side of my day job.  One thing I’ve touched on with my new direction of starting a business is that I’m probably going to fail.  This guy, Ramit, is giving me some insights and tools I can use to progress in that regard and he also said, “When you first start, your questions are going to be terrible.  There’s going to be awkward silences on the phone.  That’s fine.  It’s expected.  As I’ve said, I give you permission to suck.”

            For some reason this is actually motivating to me to hurry up and mess up to get over it and get into the good parts of being a businessman.  I’ll keep you posted and in the meantime tell me how you’ve sucked lately, what you learned from it, and what you’re going to do differently.  Maybe your suckiness can help me (us) not be so sucky.