Day 40 – This will be a short post. It is 5:45 am on a Saturday morning. I just boarded an airplane at Reagan National heading back home. I’m tired. I woke up at 3:30 am to get here. I slept about 2 hours last night because the folks I stayed with had a pretty big rager when the bars closed down.

It’s 9/10/11. Tomorrow is 9/11. As I board this plane I can’t stop thinking of those passengers who boarded a plane ten years ago tomorrow just down the road from here at Dulles Airport. Last night my buddy Phil and visited the Pentagon Memorial where those passengers were used as weapons against American values.

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Day 39 – We’ve talked briefly about lifestyle design, a term used to describe the plan you create for your life. I’m big on planning because without goals, we seem to just float endlessly from task to task without any real direction. How can you drive a car without knowing your end destination? How can you cook a recipe without knowing the end product you will eat?

Goals are also important in life. Everyday I work from a to-do list. Our design and development team operates from a calendar with weekly and monthly goals. Our campaign management and fundraising teams even operate from quarterly lists.

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Day 38 – Crappy things happen to most of us. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to use your problems as an excuse or as fuel?

I find that there are two kinds of people in the world:

Those who use their problems as an excuse to fail and to be lazy.

And those who use their problems as fuel and motivation to do great things.

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Day 37 – Let me tell you something that is driving me absolutely crazy – everyone is living completely unremarkable and ordinary lives. It seems that everyone is just pacing through life doing the same old boring routine that everyone else is doing just because they are supposed to.

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Day 35 – Friday I had the pleasure of being treated to lunch by two attorneys looking for online advice. We talked a lot about unique content and blogging, but in the end, my advice came down to one thought – don’t give up.

Blogging every day is hard and most of the time results come slowly.

I have no idea where this blog is going. It will evolve as we go while hopefully helping me and a few other folks. [Read more...]

Day 34 – Screw ups suck. As a political operative, my instinct is to spin. The camera ate the tape. The camera is broken. The audio didn’t record. In this situation, I could blame the problem on numerous technical issues.

But that’s not the truth. The truth is that we screwed up royally. We were so concerned about the new sound equipment and allowing everyone in the bar and on the web to hear us that we literally forgot to hit record.

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Day 33 – I’m not the most successful person in the world. In this non-election year, I’ll be happy just to keep my business afloat. There are people doing what I do, people who are younger, that have been more successful. But I know our product and strategies are superior, so I keep on trucking. Even when the clouds come in and the day turns gloomy, I put my head down and work even harder. We’ve hired three new full time employees in the past two months. We will crush it.

Some people find success easy. They stumble across a trend at the exact right time. Others are born with the perfect body to throw a football and drive past a line. Certainly we see people who inherit successful companies and live a life of leisure.

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Day 32 – Today I was invited to a dove shoot. Unfortunately, I’ll be in Washington during the event, so I had to turn down the invitation.

Now, I am married to a manners queen. Elizabeth knows everything about etiquette, and, while I’m not ignorant about the topic, her focus on manners is something that’s helped me.

So, I started thinking. What’s the polite way to turn down an invitation? Then, what if you don’t have a good reason? Being out of the town is a pretty good excuse for not going somewhere, but I know that there are times when I have to turn down invitations (formal or informal) because I’m just too busy or too tired.

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