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Crippled CEO Blog #081:

I am pretty weird.

I have cerebral palsy. I use a wheelchair. I think differently than most people. My sense of humor is… unique. I’m weird emotionally — I’m pretty much perpetually in a good mood. I might get angry four times a year. I talk weird. I have weird interests. I can’t do anything without going all in with it. 

I’m weird. 

But if you’re also weird, I have good news for you. 

It’s better to be weird. 

For one, being weird helps you stand out. There are lots of people in the world, and being something different separates you from the crowd. If you have weird interests or hobbies, that means you probably have unique skills, as well. These are things you can use to your advantage.

The less obvious benefit to being weird, though, is that you probably have a clearer idea of things you are not suited for. You know the situations you do poorly in, the work you fail at, the people you don’t get along with, and so on. If you can come to peace with this and accept these things, rather than trying to force them, you will have an additional level of self-awareness, and few things are as powerful as self-awareness. For me, the physical things I can’t do are super obvious. I already know that I won’t be pursuing a career in carpentry. The ability to rule out bad ideas so you can focus on the good ones is so important, and it’s much easier if there are aspect of you that aren’t typical.

We all want people in our lives to accept us, to feel like we belong, so that makes being different seem scary. And the weirder you are, the smaller your tribe will be. But the people you do find will be your people. Your relationships will have depth, not width. I will take that any day. And the truth is, if you are kind, if you mean well, if you give people the benefit of the doubt, if you are generous, you will find people who care about you. I promise. Take it from me, a weirdo of epic proportions. 

(You know who’s into some REALLY weird stuff? Your mom. And it’s definitely working for her. It would be weird if you DIDN’T sign up to get a link to the latest blog from me every Sunday by text message. Just send a message to 484848 with the word CRIP in the body and make me your servant.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #080:

I don’t think you should be putting money away for your kids to go to college.

I know. This is sacrilege. Every good parent, after they pay for the necessities of survival, are obligated to put some of the remainder into the college fund for the kiddo.

And maybe this was a good idea 30 years ago.

The reality today, though, is that unless your kid wants to be a doctor, engineer, scientist, educator, or lawyer, traditional college likely isn’t the best course. 

It is also egregiously overpriced.

Of all of the degrees that are a waste of money, I am particularly annoyed by one of the most popular ones: business. 

Spending $100k to get an MBA is dumb. 

I’m a high school drop out. After a decade of running my own businesses, I had this insecurity that there was some secret knowledge in a business degree that I was missing out on. I decided to start taking online classes at a university. The only problem is that I kept leaving my books in shrink wrap on my desk at my office. I wasn’t reading any of the material. I wasn’t paying attention to the lectures, only logging in to make attendance. And after a year, I was consistently getting perfect scores in every quiz and test. 

Apparently, actually running businesses also teaches you the material. Go figure. 

And instead of paying six figures to get this information, I made money while I learned it.

Definitely do set some money aside, preferably in an investment account that compounds, to give your kid a head start — just don’t pigeon hole what it can be used for by calling it a college fund. 

If your kid wants to go into business, instead of spending it on college, let her use the money to start two or three different businesses over the course of five years or so. Even if they fail completely, she still got the education. She can then use that knowledge and experience on the next thing that she does. Just like college. But there’s an excellent chance that one of them doesn’t fail, and now your education fund is a successful investment. 

If your kid wants to be a writer, an artist, a photographer, a filmmaker, or any other creator, instead of going to college for this, she can use that money to live while she spends a year or two writing/creating full-time, honing her craft while educating herself online. If she wants, she can hire specialized coaches/instructors to help her advance. 

Learning how to run a business or getting better at a craft, like writing, requires actually doing it. You can read about doing sit ups all day, but you don’t get anything out of it until you actually do them. Giving your kid money to get the actual experience is going to be more beneficial. I promise. 

Or, for another option entirely, you and your kid can decide to let the head start fund continue growing and compounding while they forge their own career path without any additional financial support. If you put $200 a month into an investment fund, and that investment earns a very reasonable 8% a year, your child will have $1,061,940.70 when they turn 45. Almost $1.6 million when they turn 50. Working an average job that pays the bills for a couple decades and then cashing out over $1 million at 45 and then deciding what to do from there is not a bad plan. Plenty of people end up doing that on accident, but without the $1 million payday in their 40s. This also seems like a better alternative to getting a degree you might not use.

The world is evolving rapidly. Many of the jobs your kids will have in 18 years don’t exist right now. It’s impossible to predict what role universities will play in the future. Give your kids the best kind of help that fits them specifically, not what society necessarily expects. Maybe that means going to college, but there’s a good chance that it doesn’t.

(I didn’t have to go to college to learn a bunch of things from your mom. One thing she did not need to teach me, though, was how to make sure I never miss the latest blog post. Send a text to 484848 with the word CRIP as the message and I will send you out a link to the latest one every Sunday.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #079:

Earlier this week, the wonderful, conscientious, superbly detailed, on point, and all-around joy to be around Hunter Zumino was on the phone with a customer. I overheard her say, “… he’s kinda like my boss.” I thought she was talking about me, so when the call ended, I jokingly said, “Just kinda like your boss?”

It turns out she was referring to somebody else, and she added, “I said it like that because, besides you, I don’t know who my boss is.”

And there’s a reason for that. I had just never explained it to her, and I’m not sure I have really ever explained it anywhere.

Business school will tell you that there are five types of authority in the workplace, but I prefer to boil this down to two.

The primary form of authority that people think of at work is what I call Positional Authority. As the name implies, this is where someone has authority over you because of their position or their title. They are clearly defined as your boss or supervisor, directly or indirectly. They have ultimate control over everything you do at your job and all of the decisions you make.

I’m not a huge fan of this style of authority. You do need it sometimes. In the warehouse at Life Saver, for instance, you need one or two people directing traffic so that the entire shop is on the right track. But that’s all we have out there. There are roughly 25 employees in the warehouse, and we still don’t have assistant managers or division managers. The production manager and the operations manager co-lead all of them. Besides that, the hierarchy is entirely flat.

The same thing goes in the office. The only person explicitly “in charge“ is me, even though there are seven of us in the office, and eleven total, including people working remotely. 

Instead of Positional Authority, I prefer Knowledge Authority. 

As I told Hunter the other day, who is and isn’t her boss, and vice versa, depends on the topic being discussed. In certain things, she’s going to be the most knowledgeable, so when it comes to that, she is the authority. She is the boss of that thing. Other people should defer to her expertise and decisions. And things where she isn’t as knowledgeable, she asks the person who is, and then for that thing, right then, they have the authority. A couple weeks ago, I asked her to show me how to issue a refund for a customer with the newer online sales platform we use, that I don’t have much experience with. While she was telling me how to do that, she was in charge of that process. She was acting as my supervisor/my boss. 

When it’s not clear who knows more, and there’s  a disagreement about how to move forward, then a discussion is had to figure it out. Ultimately, I’m available to make the final call if there’s an impasse — due to my Positional Authority as the CEO — but also because I have been at Life Saver the longest and likely have a degree of expertise on the topic. 

Giving people the opportunity to be the authority/in charge specifically in the moments where they are the most qualified makes a lot more sense to me than giving one person total control of a group, any of whom may be more knowledgeable in certain areas and might be the best person to make decisions on those topics. 

Letting the person “in charge” be fluid, changing to best suit the situation, seems like a much smarter approach in many scenarios. 

(Do you know who always wants me to be in charge? Your mom. She loves it when I tell her what to do. But one thing I never have to tell her to do is subscribe to my weekly text with a link to the latest blog. Just send a text to the number 484848 with the word CRIP and I’ll send you a link to the newest blog posts every Sunday or your money back.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #078:

This blog entry will only apply to you if you have a service business or plan on having one. If you don’t, you can probably skip it.

If you’ve been reading for a while, then you’ve heard me say that the only place your small business should be advertising in 2021 is online — social media and Google Ads. 

And that’s pretty much true. 

But there is an exception. It is an exception because it is a relatively small, one time investment that pays for itself, over and over again, for years. 

I’m talking about a full vehicle wrap. 

If you have a service business, you use a vehicle — probably a van or a truck — to deliver your services. 

And you need to wrap that vehicle.

You might be thinking right now, “I have magnets on my truck. I’m good. A wrap is so expensive.”

No, Ken. Just no. A full wrap is going to cost you around $2,000. If you have an established business, you can’t afford not to do this. The cost per impression (people who see the ad) over 5 years on the mobile billboard that drives all over your area and parks in your customer’s driveway is easily the best advertising deal you’re going to find. It is a billboard you get to run month after month, but you only have to pay for it once. You’re not going to get the same effect from magnets.

Besides advertising to all of the people you drive past and all of the people in the neighborhoods you work in, it will also help you close sales. When you have a professionally wrapped vehicle, potential customers are more likely to trust you over your competitor who just has a magnet. You look more like a legitimate, quality company. It might be the reason somebody chooses you even though you are more expensive.

Now that we know you need a full wrap, here are some tips to avoid common mistakes and do it correctly.

• Start with the brand 

The focus of the wrap is going to be your brand, not your service. Use Fiverr or 99 Designs to make sure you have a high quality logo. Consider creating a “character“ that represents your company who you can feature.

• Almost never use photos 

Unless you do something really esoteric (like pool fence) that people aren’t familiar with, your brand and company name should be enough to let people know what you do. If you install AC units, having a photo of an AC unit on your truck isn’t convincing anybody to go with you. It’s not communicating anything about your brand. 

• No bullets. Limit the words. 

Your company name, a tagline, your website, and your phone number. Those are all the words that should be in your vehicle wrap. No one is going to read your list of bullets at 65 mph on I-95. Focus on the one thing you want people to learn about you and make it big.

• Stand out. Be creative.

An interesting, creative vehicle wrap costs just as much as one that looks like everybody else. Why not be different and cool? I’m going to include a wrap for my future pool service company here. We told the designer to go nuts, and this is what he made. How much better is this than a stock photograph of a swimming pool? Or a list of bullets over a water background?

That’s it. If you stick to those rules, you should be in good shape. But the most important part is that you actually decide to do it. Don’t miss out on the best ROI currently available in advertising.

(You know who never wants to wrap it up? Your mom. She crazy. But she’s not too crazy to subscribe to my weekly text message letting you know about the latest blog post. Send a message to the phone number 484848 with the word CRIP and you’ll get one message per week from me with a link to the latest post.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #077:

I was originally going to send this as advice in a text message, but then realized y’all might also find it useful. Also, she reads the blog, so it’ll be fun when she sees it. (She won’t get mad, will she? Nah.)

She’s been struggling with a likely common conundrum — one I struggled myself with, but via a different platform. 

She believes, with excellent reason, that optimum success in her particular freelance industry requires a large and engaged Instagram audience, but abhors the thought of doing what’s required to achieve that result. She doesn’t enjoy the process, or the effect it has on her as a person. But she does want the success she sees the top performers in her space enjoying, at least in part, from their IG prowess. 

Instagram does work. If you enjoy the work that goes into flourishing there, and you’re good at it, you will have good results. And that’s exactly what you’re seeing there: people thriving in the place they belong. 

The problem is that if you, as a consumer of content, do most of that consuming in one place, only see people succeeding there, that seems to be the only path forward.

If you spend most of your time on Facebook, you think you need to do well on Facebook. If you’re on Pinterest all the time, you think Pinterest is the key. When we set up a new dealer, if they are an avid TV watcher, they tell me they want to try a TV commercial. 

It happened to me. The platform I spend most of my time on is YouTube. And so, I saw all of the people that I look up to, doing what I want to do, killing it on YouTube, and decided that was the necessary path to success. The problem is that I am a cripple who looks crippled, who talks faster than people can understand, who can’t hold a camera, with zero video editing skills — YouTube isn’t for me. You know what is for me? Writing a weekly blog. It uses the things that I am good at and enjoy. Also, managing a team of specialists for all the other things. I’m good at that as well. That’s what works for me.

If the idea of posting constantly to Instagram gives you anxiety, then don’t do it. You don’t want to follow other people’s roadmaps for their success. That works for them. But you are a different person, with a unique set of skills, talents, values, and preferences. Maybe you’re better off making longform YouTube videos about the state of your industry, or sharing the unique way that you do your craft. Maybe fun TikTok videos are the right thing for you. Maybe you host a podcast/YouTube channel where you interview the top performers in your space, and you then become a coveted authority due to the host advantage (which I previously wrote about here: https://crippledceo.com/2020/11/crippled-ceo-blog-055-the-host-advantage/). Maybe you create a documentary/docuseries following the path of your business, detailing your growth and improvement, and/or your development of a new innovation you are creating. Maybe you write a weekly blog and post it on Facebook. Maybe you create and sell an online course for other practitioners, and you not only get income from this course, but its existence makes you an expert/authority/thought leader, allowing you to charge a lot more — the goal with freelance work, always, is to have the smallest number of hand chosen dream clients as possible, whom you charge a rate most would think is crazy. Or maybe you just spend all of your time focusing exclusively on your craft, let your reputation grow organically, nurture your customer evangelists, and get to your dream client scenario that way. 

You want to double down on your strengths and do what you enjoy. If you’re doing things that make you happy, that you excel in, then eventually you will win. It’s inevitable. It’s a bullet proof recipe for success. Trying to force yourself to do what works for other people rarely works out for the best.

And it is important to remember that, as counterintuitive as it sounds, we have learned from Seth Godin that we are seeking the MINIMUM viable audience — we are trying to focus on the subset of customers who will be ecstatic with our work, for whom we are the perfect fit. We are looking for our tribe. Kevin Kelly wrote about the concept of 1,000 true fans — that if we can get 1,000 people who really adore our work, who spend $100-$200 a year on us, we can do really well. Likewise, if we can get 100 people to pay us $1,000 a year, we are also doing pretty well. 

And if we are only looking for our fan club, our tribe, our dream customers, then chances are they are going to be the kind of people who will appreciate our unique approach. They will like that we don’t promote our work in the same way as everybody else. To them, we will stand out amongst the herd. 

And that’s it. If you are stressing out because you think that the best way to market yourself is something you either don’t like or you aren’t good at, I have good news: that makes it the wrong choice for you. It definitely is the right choice for those other people who excel at that thing. But you are different. You have a path that they can’t do, and down the road, maybe they’ll be looking at what you do, envious, wishing that they could do the same.

(I’m not even going to tell you about the path your mom takes. She definitely does get my text with a link to the latest blog every Sunday, though. Just send a message to 484848 with the word CRIP and you’ll become an instant VIP.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #076:

Last week, I answered the first five of the eleven questions posed in the book Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss. People seemed to like the first five, so I’m excited to finish the rest off this week.

6. What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

I have so many, actually. The most salient, well-known one is probably milk. Specifically, 2% Publix brand milk with a hint of Hersheys chocolate syrup. This is all I drink. And I don’t mean that as hyperbole. It is literally the only fluid that I ingest. There is a large Yeti cup next to me right now, as there always is, filled with milk. And even though I drink it all day, every day, I still really love it. I still get a tremendous amount of joy out of it every single time. My mom had a similar relationship with coffee, so it might be hereditary. 

I also count letters in sentences and phrases with a speed and accuracy that people seem to find alarming. I do it as a game. The goal is to find naturally occurring phrases in the wild that I hear people say or read that end with a multiple of 10 (e.g. 10, 20, 60, etc.). There are some weird rules to the game that I won’t get into, also, but the letter counting thing has been with me since childhood.

I really enjoy staying up bizarrely late. On weekdays, I go to bed between 1:30 AM – 3 AM. On weekends, I go to bed between 4:30 AM – 6:30 AM. I used to wait for the sunrise on the weekends, but I have trouble making it that late these days as I get closer to 40.

7. In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?

For many years, I only had one other person with me in the office. First, my dad, and then later, an office manager. If I had some idea or project I wanted done, I was going to do it myself, because there wasn’t anybody else to do it.

Eventually, though, this mindset led to me being the bottleneck for all kinds of things. It took me a long time to realize something obvious: Life Saver doesn’t care WHO does something as long as it gets done. And if I pass along ideas and improvements to other people, there is a much better chance that they actually get done — maybe better than I would have. Now, the criteria for what I do isn’t: “Am I the best person for this task?”, it is: “Am I the only person for this task?” And sometimes, the answer is still yes, and if I’m only saying yes to those things, then I’m able to make sure they get done. 

Listening to audiobooks while I use the restroom has been pretty great, also, like I mentioned in the last post.

8. What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore?

You can mess up/screw off until you’re 40 and still live a great life. And maybe you should. 

9. What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?

The bad advice I usually hear is the type that sounds right because it’s cautious and risk averse. Stuff about not trusting others, not taking risks, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and so on. And I think that entire mindset is malarkey.

10. In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips?

I’ve gotten really good at saying no to invitations to things I don’t want to do. I have a rule that I don’t do showers: actual, bridal, baby, golden, any of it. No showers. The same goes for birthday parties for small children. I’m good.

In business, I’ve gotten better at saying no to unreasonable requests. I tend to be generous by default, so this has been a helpful realignment. I’m also much more willing to say no to anything that disrupts the excellent company culture we have. It’s important, and fragile, and I consider it my personal responsibility to keep it safe.

11. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)

I don’t know if I can recall a time where I felt like I had lost focus, though I’m sure I have and not noticed, but I have certainly felt overwhelmed. For me, the secret to getting back to being just whelmed or even underwhelmed is a reality check. What’s really at stake? What’s the worst that could happen? And what can I do right now, like literally in the next 15 minutes, that can make it better? A combination of reassessing and then moving forward seems to help when I feel overwhelmed.

And that’s it! Those are the 11 questions. I hope you all enjoyed that, and if not, why did you keep reading? That’s very kind of you.

(I bet you know who did enjoy that. Your mom. She also enjoys my text every Sunday that gives her the link to the latest blog. You can also get this by sending a message to 484848 with the word CRIP as the message. You should do it. It’s good karma.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #075:

I’m currently making my way through Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss. If you don’t already know, Tim Ferriss is great. 4 Hour Work Week sounds way cheesier and dumber than it is, and Tools of Titans is an encyclopedia for life that’s really worth checking out. 

In this book, Tim sent a list of 11 questions to a gang of super performers, and then curated their best responses.

I’m no super performer, but I thought it might be a fun exercise for myself to go through the questions, and I figured I could share those answers with you all as well. I will do five of them this week, and then do the rest next week. 

And if you have a few minutes, go type Tim Ferriss into YouTube and watch a few things. You’ll thank me later.

• 1. What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss. 

Chris Voss was the chief international hostage negotiator for the FBI. He was forced to learn and develop simple, practical, teachable negotiation methods that worked every time, because in his work, when they didn’t, someone died. He then went to the top business negotiation classes in the world (e.g. Harvard), first as a student and then as a teacher, and quickly figured out that his methods didn’t only work on hostage taking criminals, but they worked well in business and life as well. 

It is rare to get a book on a topic and have the advice inside be so useful, so not obvious, and so well taught. And how many skills are more important than talking to the people around us, which is really what he is offering in the book? If you are a person who talks to other people, highly recommend this one for you.

• 2. What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? My readers love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc. 

I’m hardly sharing any unknown secrets here, but my Yeti cup has really changed my life. As a person who needs another person to refill their beverage, having a large cup of it that always stays cold is rather nice. Also, using the Delivery Dudes bodega / concierge service to get me small stuff like four gallons of milk — that’s been a game changer. 

• 3. How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?

I failed pretty spectacularly at being born. Seriously, I screwed that up so royally that I ended up permanently crippled. Way to start things off on the right foot, or in my case, the right wheelchair wheel. I could argue that being gimpy has been pivotal in many of my successes. 

If you don’t think that one counts, we will do one more. I started Child Safety Store originally in 2001. I built the website myself. I entered in every product. I wrote every description. I edited all the photos. I ran the Google AdWords campaign. And in just a couple years, it was doing $300,000 a year in revenue. A person could have easily lived off of that income alone. But then I left it on auto pilot. I didn’t care about it. And I just let it… fizzle… until it died. It is the saddest kind of failure, because it’s the one that happens because you didn’t even try.

I started it back up again in 2017, and it is already on its way towards something more special than what it could have been before. I think it needed to die, and I needed to grow some, so that we could get it right the second time. 

• 4. If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it—metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions—what would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph. (If helpful, it can be someone else’s quote: Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?)

I’m cheating. I have two. 

The first would be:

Keep Showing Up

Because that’s the key to everything, right? Whether you are writing a novel, learning how to cook, starting a new business, exercising, parenting, whatever it is, the key to succeeding is that you just keep showing up. If you keep showing up, then eventually success is undeniable.

And the other would be: 

Drowning is the number one cause of accidental death for children between the ages of one and four years old. Multiple layers of protection, like pool safety fencing and infant swim self-rescue training, are the solution.

• 5. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.)

I put an Amazon Echo on my night stand, right outside my bathroom. Whenever I go into my bathroom to go pee (which takes me a few minutes longer than you — start to finish about 6 minutes), I tell her to start playing my audio book. That small amount of time, energy, and money to buy the thing and the books has paid off exponentially.

That silly thing aside, I would say the biggest investment I have made, that has most affected my life, is in the people around me — curating them, building my relationships with them, and weaving them into my life by doing everything I can to change theirs for the better. I have realized that when I find a new diamond in the rough that I want around me forever, I invest heavily in making my life an awesome place for them to reside. I do this primarily because I want people I care about to be prosperous and happy, but a side effect is I end up with friends deeply embedded in my life — we work together, roommates, neighbors, etc. — and I have the very best humans as friends for decades. 

So, that’s it for this week. Next week we will do the remaining questions. Let me know if you enjoyed this, and maybe I’ll do something similar in the future.

(You know whose questions I always answer? Your mom. And I answer them thoroughly and in detail. Your mom also gets my text every Sunday about the latest blog post. You can, too, by sending a text to the phone number 484848 with the word CRIP as the message. You should do it. Don’t let your mom have all the fun.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #074:

I think a lot about, and talk pretty regularly, about this idea I live by that I describe as “AND versus OR”. 

Author and legend Jim Collins describes this concept as rejecting “The Tyranny of Or” and embracing “The Genius of And”. (If you own a business, his books are essentially required reading. Highly recommended.)

Have a job you love or make great money?

Nice employees or productive employees?

Happy workforce or disciplined workforce?

Details or big picture?

Succeed short term or succeed long-term?

Build a company that does good in the world or build a company that is really profitable?

Close friends or lots of friends?

Humble or confident?

Smart girlfriend or hot girlfriend?

Cake or ice cream?

The answer to all these, and so many other “or” questions that we are presented with, is BOTH. You don’t need to choose. In so many cases, both is not only possible, it is the best option. You don’t need to settle. You can have your cake and eat it, too. Hopefully with ice cream.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.“

And I have proven this over and over again. I’ve proven it at Life Saver. Life Saver is a company that makes the world a better place — we are actively reducing the number of child drownings each year, both by physically making pools safer and by deploying a thorough and comprehensive educational campaign. We also make money, because being profitable is necessary to keep doing the things we do. Profitability is like blood or oxygen. It’s not the point of life, but you need it to keep going. And we are successful at it while simultaneously serving another purpose. 

At Life Saver, we have happy, kind, thoughtful employees who are treated well and who enjoy flexibility and freedom. They are also super productive and efficient. Someone might tell you that you have to choose. But you don’t. You can have both. And they didn’t have to choose, either. I believe most people at Life Saver rather like working there, but they don’t have to take a pay cut to enjoy that privilege. They got both. 

And this doesn’t just apply to business. I’ve done it personally as well. Hot and smart lady friend? Check. Awesome home and cool neighbors? Check. Love seeing my friends and love being alone? Check. Being intelligent, hilarious, successful, good looking, AND humble? Checks all around. Especially that humble part. I tell everybody I know how incredibly humble I am. I’m very proud of my humility.

In life and in business, stop settling for one thing or another. Embrace the power of AND. You really can have it all. I promise. Especially cake and ice cream. 

(When I’m with your mom, she embraces the power of AND, also. I won’t even tell you the choices that we don’t make — in an order that would surprise you. You know what other choice you don’t have to make? You can subscribe to the weekly text message notifying you of the latest blog by texting the word CRIP to 484848 AND you can share this with a friend. You don’t have to choose. You can do both. And you should.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #073:

Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of my dad passing away and three days after that will be his birthday.

I’ve talked about him here before. If you’ve been reading these for minute, then you know that my dad grew up in rough circumstances in an abusive home, he volunteered to go to Vietnam at age 17, he led a reconnaissance team that saw lots of combat, death, and killing, he became addicted to heroin, he brought his heroin addiction back to the US, and remained addicted to opiates (which included prescribed methadone replacement therapy) until the early 80’s, shortly after my younger brother was born.  

He was a phenomenal dad to my brother and I, and from what I could tell, a pretty awesome husband, as well. He and my mom started the company that would become Life Saver Pool Fence Systems, Inc. in their garage in 1987. When I took it over in 2003, it was doing over $1 million in revenue with dealers in most major cities throughout the US and occupied a 6,000 sq ft facility. 

By all accounts, when he passed away, Robert Lupton was successful, respected, and looked up to by everyone who knew him.

So, what are some things that we can learn from my dad‘s life?

1. It’s never too late to start. My dad started Life Saver at roughly the age I am now. He also had my brother and I at about the same time. Everything I saw him accomplish, which was a lot, happened when he was older than I am now. I feel so far along in my track, so deep into my life, that the idea of starting from scratch at this point seems crazy. But that’s exactly what he did. And the second half of his life was great for it. 
2. Your past doesn’t dictate your future. My dad‘s teenage years were highlighted by abuse. The next 20 years were war and drug addiction. And then he was a great dad and a successful entrepreneur for 30 years. No one who knew him at 55 would have known who he was at 25. And no one who knew him at 25 would have predicted who he’d become at 55. Radical change is possible.
3. Know your weaknesses and adapt to them, without shame or embarrassment. He would tell me to remind him to get gas at the gas station less than a mile up the road, just moments away, because as crazy as it sounds, he knew there was a good chance he would forget. So, he said something. Other people might have been too embarrassed, but he wasn’t. Also because he knew he couldn’t trust his memory, he had a system for everything. The same things went in the same pocket in the same way every time. He systemized his life to counterbalance his deficits. 
4. He was reliable. If he said he would do something, he would do it. He paid his bills on time. He was punctual. He kept his promises. He answered the phone when you needed him. All of this sounds so simple, but you have to get a lot of things right in order to be the kind of reliable that you can set your clock to. It’s a good thing to strive towards. Do the people you know trust you when they need something? Do they think you’ll show up when you say you will? If not, why?

There are a ton more we could get into ranging from business to credit scores to not having an ego to the selfless way he cared for his disabled son (me) and his dying wife (my mom). There are many lessons I learned from Dad and the example that he set. But I think that’s enough for now. 

If your dad is still alive, give him a call. Tell him a couple things that you have learned from his life. He’ll appreciate it. I know mine would have liked to read this. I bet yours would like to hear the same from you, as well.

(Do you know who else was a big fan of my dad? Your mom was. She also shares this blog with her friends, which makes her super cool, AND signed up to get the link to the newest blog each week by sending a text with the word CRIP to the number 484848. Be more like your mom.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #072:

How do we make new friends?

There are a few ways. Someone sits by you in class. Someone sits by you at work. Someone’s sits by you at a concert.

Apparently, we primarily make new friends by people seating themselves in our proximity. 

But in all seriousness, it’s random. We encounter a new person out in the world, we speak to them for some reason — often on multiple occasions — we connect over something, and voila! New friend. 

The problem with this is the vetting process sucks. Yeah, you’re going to naturally avoid obviously crazy people. But most people aren’t obviously crazy. It isn’t readily apparent when you first meet somebody if they are going to be a drain of your energy, create drama, or even be straight up nefarious. That takes time to figure out. And with time, comes a personal investment that is hard to eschew. 

Your friends matter. There is an often repeated wisdom that we are the sum of our five closest friends, and there’s truth to that. Your friends have a massive, incalculable influence on your life. They impact the way you think, the goals you set, the way you spend your time, and your bar for what is acceptable and unacceptable in everything ranging from nutrition to dating to finance.

If our friends are so important, why do we just accept that our friend group is largely accidental — people we have met by chance, invested time in, that we mostly like the majority of, but continue to allow into our lives? I know people who are constantly complaining about their friends. This is insanity to me. 

Why do we accept having friends that aren’t only adding to our lives?

And I’ll be real honest, at the risk of sounding like I’m bragging, the reason I feel comfortable writing about this is because I have what I am describing. All my friends are awesome. There is zero drama in my life. It has taken a long time, and a lot of work, but it’s possible.

So, if the process of making friends isn’t changing, and it’s not, how do we do it? 

1. Sit in cooler places. If you’re sitting in places where awesome people are more likely to be, someone awesome is more likely to sit near you. And, as we know, sitting near someone is like the only way to meet people. 
2. Be really cool. Be a person worthy of having awesome friends. If you focus on improving you, you will attract a higher caliber of human. If your life sucks and is filled with drama and problems, you’re going to scare away people like me (and you definitely want people like me). 
3. Cut ruthlessly. I curate my friends. And a big part of the curation process is I get rid of people who are throwing things off. Just like an employee with the wrong attitude can poison the culture of a company, one bad friend can screw everything up. Get rid of people who don’t treat you the way you want to be treated. Get rid of people who drain from your life instead of adding to it. Get rid of people who don’t act in a way that inspires you to do better, who aren’t role models for you to aspire to. There are things about all of my friends that I want to emulate. Being around them helps me be a better person.

That’s really it. That last one is pretty crucial. It’s tough to do, especially if you’ve known someone for a long time. But you’re not doing either of you any favors by hanging in there. Let them go. Make room for somebody you admire and respect. 

Besides your family and your spouse, the friends you pick are the biggest impact on your life. Put some intentionality in deciding who you want to give that power. It’s worth it. I’ve had crappy friends. I’ve had awesome friends. I really prefer the latter.

(Did you like that as much as your mom did? Probably not. She loves everything I do. You should be like her and send a text message with the word CRIP to the phone number 484848. I will send you a link each week to the latest blog post. Act now while supplies last.)

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