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Let’s be real honest for a second: I use having cerebral palsy and being in a wheelchair to make money, whenever possible.

I try to exploit my disability for profit.

I do not feel bad about this.

In fact, I use everything useful, interesting, and unique about me for my gain. (Thank God I don’t have boobs.)

When you talk on the radio, there is a volume sweet spot they tell you to maintain. Not too quiet, not too loud. Just right. Dan Carlin, host of the ridiculously popular and amazing podcast Hardcore History, was terrible at this as a radio host. He was either really quiet or REALLY LOUD. Never in the sweet spot. His producers thought this was a problem. He has gone on to make these “mistakes“ part of his trademark, style, and brand. He owned it. In fact, if you do it now, you are copying him.

Most of us try to downplay our flaws — keep them out of the spotlight. But the only thing that happens when you do that is you give that thing power. Every time it is exposed, it is raw and sensitive like a fresh wound under a bandage.

But if you own it, and even try to use it for your benefit, it can’t hurt you anymore. There’s no way I’m going to be insulted by someone mocking my disability when I call my blog Crippled CEO. With just that one thing, I have sucked all of the power out of what is arguably a massive deficiency, and I’m now using it to promote and brand myself — to stand out in a crowd. Or, in my case, sit out, you know, because I can’t stand. 

There is something about you that society thinks you should be embarrassed about. You are fat. You have messed up teeth. You stutter. You murdered your husband while raising big cats. 👀

You can either shy away from this thing, hide it, and continue to feel shame about it, or you can own it, and try to use it to your benefit. As always, you get to choose the story you tell yourself about yourself. You should make it a good one.

(If you know somebody that can use this, please send it to them. Also, if you share this, I will love you forever. If you want to make sure you never miss a blog post from me, you can make me your servant and retain me to send you a link to the new blog post every single week by texting the word CRIP to the phone number 484848.)

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The grand finale was called the French Arm Chopper.

That was the big, and rather expensive, magic trick that Casey and I concluded our shows with. It was amazing. But we did not have it when we started.

Casey and I were about 12 years old when we embarked on our magical adventure, which was simultaneously my first ever entrepreneurial endeavor. Casey — my oldest and one of my closest friends, then and now — was obsessed with magic, the beginning of a lifetime of performing for people. I knew nothing about magic beyond watching him do it, but I convinced him that we should turn his act into a business; the beginning of a lifetime of talking people into starting businesses. I created and printed up flyers on my 1994 computer, and then we headed out, going door to door, informing our neighbors that we were available to do magic for birthdays, daycares, special events, and so on.

And, magically, we got hired. Several times.

A daycare, a school, birthday parties — we were doing actual paid gigs. Casey would be the magician, and I would… assist. I didn’t do much on stage. 

Our goal was to raise enough money for our holy grail magic trick, the French Arm Chopper. It was a miniature guillotine that appeared to chop your volunteer’s hand off and drop it into a bag, just like the infamous tool of the French revolution. The bag was a bright red. Casey would joke that it was originally white. 

After a few performances, we secured the glorious French Arm Chopper, and it became the magnificent conclusion to our shows. 

This initial foray into business didn’t go too far beyond that. Magic gave way to other hobbies, and the interest sort of fizzled out. But there were some lessons from that experience that I use to this very day.  

1. You need somebody who is good at doing the things you are not good at. Whether this is a partner or a first employee, you need a ying to your yang. I wasn’t performing any magic, but Casey would not have been driven to monetize and market it without me.
2. Do something you love. We had fun doing this business because we liked magic. Casey liked it more than I did, but I had a solid appreciation of it through him. If your business revolves around something you legitimately enjoy or care about, and you are hopefully good at, you greatly increase your odds of success.
3. Reinvest your profits. I am sure there was some video game or something I would have loved to buy, but instead, we put our earnings back into the company to get bigger and cooler tricks. This sounds easier from far away, but when you’re actually running a business that is having some success, and there is something important to you personally that requires using this cash you’ve earned — that really is yours — it is a difficult thing to choose to abstain and reinvest. Having a clear goal of why you are putting the money back into the business, and what the parameters have to be for you to take out a portion of the profits, makes this much easier. 
4. Work with people you like. Casey is one of my best friends. We were technically working, but we were doing it because it was fun. This doesn’t have to stop when you grow up. I work with my friends and family to this day.
5. Don’t be afraid to charge. We were 12-year-old kids, but we were still charging $75 an hour, and places were paying it. You might be surprised what people will say yes to. 
6. Just start, using what you have. I made flyers on my computer because that was something I could do. And we went knocking on doors because we didn’t have a car. Instead of focusing on what is holding you back, just move forward with what you do you have.

My first business was not a huge financial success. But it was fun. I cherish the memories. And I still use some of the lessons that I learned. Nothing is too small or too silly to try. And if you have a child thinking of embarking on an entrepreneurial adventure, encourage and support them. You never know what they might learn.

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I write one blog entry per week.

I could do two. I could probably even do three without the quality dropping off. 

And three would be better, right? I would be getting more words out to all of you. I would be transmitting more ideas. I would be closer to my goal of having enough of these to compile them into a book (would you buy that book?). 

So, why not three? Is it because I’m lazy?

And the answer is… kinda.

Wim Hof is famous for his paradigm flipping views and experimentation with breathing, and the importance of breathing in our lives. He has several breathing exercises which are proven to improve your health, both mentally and physically. He’s also an expert in meditation. He believes that everybody should engage in practiced, thoughtful, intentional breathing. Given how important he believes this daily practice is, how much do you think he recommends that you do? An hour a day? 30 minutes a day?

Not even close. He says to do one deliberate breath per day. Just one.

Similarly, a fitness expert in the Tim Ferriss book Tools of Titans recommends doing one push-up per day. One single, solitary push-up.

Why would people who believe so strongly in the benefits of something recommend that you do so little?

Because everybody can do one breath or one push-up per day. There’s no reason not to. You’re never going to be too busy. It is easy to accomplish that goal.

And that’s important. We are more likely to keep doing things that we are succeeding at. Momentum is powerful. Habits are strong. Rigging the game to set yourself up for success will help you continue to keep playing it.

This is counterintuitive to how we think. It seems like we should try to do as much as possible, and when we embark on a new routine for self-improvement, that is usually what we do. And then we slip up, because it’s hard, and we ran out of time, or energy, or willpower, and now we feel guilty, so we don’t want to think about it. So, then we don’t do it again the next day, and now the habit is broken. 

But if you make it easy for yourself, you build up this winning streak that you don’t want to break. You’ve gotten used to this routine. You have not only developed a habit, but this thing you do is now part of your identity. Now you’re the guy who takes a five minute walk each day, or reads two pages of a book each day, or plays one game of chess, or donates five dollars to a charity every week, or writes a blog that is read by a bunch of awesome weirdos every Sunday. You weren’t a person who did push-ups, but now you are. Because you started. And you started because you made it easy.

What is a daily or weekly habit that would put you on the path to being the person that you want to be? And what is the tiniest, easiest possible version of that thing that you could definitely do no matter what? Tell me in the comments. I want to know.

(I bet you know somebody that might find this blog post useful. Why don’t you send it to them? They will appreciate it, and they will think you are a smart person who reads awesome stuff. You can also guarantee that you never miss my next post by sending a text message using the miraculous device that you are probably reading this on right now to the phone number 484848 with the word CRIP. Doing that will make you a part of the CRIP army, and you will get one, single text message from me personally every Sunday.)

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Someone recently asked me advice on telling people what to do. How do I go about it? Am I nice? Am I super blunt? How do I give people orders every day?

“I really don’t,” I said. 

“But aren’t you, like, the boss?”

“Yep.”

“So, doesn’t that mean you tell everybody what to do? Isn’t that the job?”

I’ve heard people say that they want to be the boss exactly for that reason, so that they could “just tell other people what to do.“

And I think there are a lot of “bosses“ out there who legitimately feel like this is their responsibility. This includes business owners.

But this really isn’t the case. Beyond asking someone to hand me a pen, it is pretty rare for me to explicitly give someone a command. Rare doesn’t mean never. It does happen. Usually in the form of creating a project for somebody to accomplish. But I certainly don’t spend my day barking out orders. And if you’re in charge, I don’t think you should either.  

Now, before I go further, there are exceptions. In some businesses, you do need a commander on the field actually directing traffic and keeping things moving efficiently. This exists. But I think it’s a lot more rare than most think. And if you are the business owner and this is you, something is wrong.

So, if I’m not telling people what to do, what am I doing? Why aren’t I? How does anything get done?

Instead of explicitly telling people what to do, I hire smart, capable, responsible people, I make sure they know what’s important, I work with them to determine their responsibilities (a process they are a part of), and then I let them do pretty much whatever they think they should. 

That’s it.

Because the people closest to their responsibilities know what is necessary much better than I do, they are infinitely more capable of deciding what needs to be done and when.

They do a far better job of assigning themselves tasks than I ever could.

This ends up being a win-win for everybody. I’m not constantly needed to keep people busy, allowing me the time and mental bandwidth necessary for me to work on the bigger picture. The last 12 months have been a major restructuring at Life Saver. There’s no way that I could have even seen what needed to be done, let alone have the capacity to accomplish it, if all my time and energy was spent feeding people their daily tasks. 

Just as important, my employees are happier and more fulfilled. They have ownership over their responsibilities, and get to structure things in the way that works best for them.

Now, in order for this to work, you need to do a few things. 

1) You need to spend a bit more time and money to get the type of person capable of thinking on their own. It might take trying out a few people before you find the right one. And if you are planning to cheap out on employee pay, you should also plan on having to tell them what to do every minute of every day.

2) You have to be OK with people doing things differently than you might — or maybe even not as well. You can’t give people freedom and then get upset when they use it. Mistakes are inevitably going to happen, as well. Make a conscious choice ahead of time to be fine with all of this so that you can improve your odds of reacting correctly when it happens.

3) You have to keep open the lines of communication. Expectations need to be clear on both sides, and you need to be available to answer questions and offer guidance as needed.

Being a boss doesn’t have to mean bossing people around (and if that’s something you WANT to do, because your ego likes the sound of ordering folks about, you probably should avoid being in charge of anyone until you address that). With a relatively small change in thinking, and a few key steps, you can give your team and yourself the freedom you are looking for.

(Was this helpful? Share it with somebody who can use it. And if you want to make sure you never miss one of these, send a text message with the word CRIP to the phone number 484848. You’ll get one single message from me every Sunday with the link to the latest blog post from me. It really makes me happy when people sign up for this, so if that’s you, thank you in advance.)

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You’ve heard of Tough Mudder, Warrior Dash, the Spartan Race, and so on. That genre of self-inflicted group torture is known as OCR (Obstacle Course Races). Amelia Boone, an attorney, is one of the most accomplished OCR athletes in the history of the sport. She has won both the Spartan Race World Championship (2013) and World’s Toughest Mudder (three times! 2012, 2014 and 2015), beating out thousands of other racers, most of whom are men. In 2014, she won the WTM title eight weeks after major knee surgery.

She’s ridiculous. And probably a crazy person. In maybe the best way possible.

Amelia claims that she’s not the fastest or the strongest. She’s the best at suffering. She says that is why she’s successful. 

In order to become the best at suffering, she did what you do to become better at anything: she practiced. She went out of her way to put herself in terrible, excruciating, uncomfortable scenarios over and over again so that she got better at enduring them. 

Most people avoid going out and training when it’s snowing, or raining, or under the extreme noon day sun at the height of summer, but that’s exactly when she would make sure to go get work in. Day after day, Amelia deliberately put herself in these worst case scenario situations to build up her tolerance, so that she’s ready for anything that might happen.

David Goggins, Navy SEAL and ultra-marathon champion, does the exact same thing. He puts his body in horribly uncomfortable conditions, not just to train his body, but more importantly, to train his mind to be able to push through the agony.

I I have cerebral palsy. I use an electric wheelchair full-time. What do I care about people who run ultramarathons?

If you’re like me and you have a disability, or chronic pain, or an invisible illness, or depression, or anxiety, or anything else that is inescapable and bears down on you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, then you know that we don’t have to go out and seek painful, difficult situations to endure. We don’t have to go out running in the snow to find suffering and hardship. We are living in it.

Amelia Boone and David Goggins chose to view enduring suffering as a good thing, as a skill to be improved upon, that helps them achieve incredible things. They know that iron sharpens iron and pressure creates diamonds.

If, like me, life dealt you a hand of cards where suffering and hardship is mandatory and constant, part of the ante you pay just for existing, then you have a couple options, because you get to choose the story you tell yourself about who you are and your situation.

You can choose to view your suffering as pointless, a weight around your neck that makes everything worse and everything hard, absent of any benefit or value. It just sucks. Some days it sucks more than others, and that’s just your life. 

Or you can choose to view it as the training you are going through that is making you capable withstanding things that would break regular people. Amelia Boone and David Goggins might go test the limits of their will a few hours a day, but you’re doing it all the time. You’re becoming something unstoppable. Because if what you’re going through doesn’t break you, then what will? If surviving this is possible, then what else can you do?

You get to choose. You start by choosing once. But after that, you have to choose again every single day. And you might make the wrong choice sometimes. That’s alright. As long as you know that you have the ability to choose how you view your pain, your suffering, and the things that happen to you, you can control the story of your life. You get to make yourself the person you want to be, and use what others would consider pains and weaknesses as the fuel to get there.

(If you know somebody that can turn their suffering into a superpower, please send this to them. And if you’d like to become a CRIP and receive a text message with a link to my latest post every Sunday, send a text with the word CRIP to the phone number 484848 to subscribe.)

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The price you charge is part of your marketing. It is part of the story you tell and the story your customers tell themselves about your product/service.

Recently, I was confused. I did not believe what I was hearing from the voice on the phone.

A Life Saver was telling me that he raised his price — dramatically — to much more than the competition, which made sense given the vastly superior quality, the workmanship, the brand, the skill and experience of the expert that would be doing the installation, and so on. He had been charging roughly the same as the competition previously, or sometimes just slightly more, but had finally decided to stop being scared and get what he deserved. 

That part did not confuse me. That made sense. What he said next was confusing: “I am closing more jobs with the much higher price. And I am closing them easier. And no one is haggling. And I’m getting more reviews and they are referring more of their friends.”

WHAT?!

Economics 101 tells us that when we raise the price, we lose volume. That’s the trade-off. Sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it’s not, but that’s the choice we make.

So, at first, I brushed off this one story as anecdotal. Part of me thought he was maybe full of baloney.

But then I started hearing the same thing, again and again. “I raised my price, and I’m selling more.”

And then it hit me. I figured it out.

The original offer seemed bulletproof from the Life Saver’s perspective: I am going to offer you something much, much better, but you’re going to get it at the same price (or maybe just a little bit more) than the other one. It’s a no brainer. Because the Life Saver really, truly KNOWS how much better it is. He knows what he’s offering is a bargain.

But that’s not with the customer hears. They get all of this explanation on why the Life Saver brand is so much better, in every way, and then they get the price, and it’s about the same. This doesn’t add up. This isn’t how things work. It must not really be that much better. Because price matters. The price is part of the story we tell ourselves about what we buy.

If a Rolex was the exact same watch, but you could buy it for $100, would anyone care about it?

“But my customers, in my area, in my industry, all they care about is price. They just want the cheapest one.”

Really? Look at their house. Is that the cheapest possible house they could find? Are they driving the cheapest possible car? Are they wearing the cheapest possible clothes? Is there a child in the cheapest possible stroller? Of course not. They did not only care about the cheapest price for those things, and they don’t only care about cheapest price for your thing either.

In fact, when price is the only information available, a higher price may make something feel like the better/safer option. 

I offer you a new phone case for your brand new iPhone. One is 50 cents ($0.50). The other is $30. Which do you choose?

You probably picked the $30 one. But I didn’t tell you anything else about them. You didn’t know what they look like, or the quality, or even the name of the brand. All you knew is the price, and you voluntarily chose the more expensive one. Because that one must be better and 50 cents is too cheap for a phone case. 

If you’re going to claim that you are the vastly superior option, you must have the price to go with that, or people won’t believe you. 

Now, what about the better reviews and referrals the Life Saver was getting?

If you are the cheapest, people might tell their friends because they also want them to get that deal. This isn’t the referral you want. You don’t want to be known as the option that’s only worthwhile because it doesn’t cost much.

But these people are less likely to go online and leave you a great review. They didn’t pick you because you were great. They picked you because you were cheap. And nobody is proud of that. Nobody cares about that cheap thing they got.

Because we care more about the things that we are invested in. The more money, the more time, the more energy we have put in to something, the more convinced we are how wonderful it is. We are more proud of it. We are more loyal to it. This is one reason the military puts soldiers through boot camp. That is why people love their alma maters for the rest of their lives. That is why there are such fierce debates between iPhone vs Android, PlayStation vs XBox, Republican vs Democrat, and so on. The more you have put into something, the more you attach it to your identity.

So, if I buy what you are selling for a much higher price than the other options, I am now invested in that thing.  I am going to justify to myself, and to others, how much better this thing is, all the reasons that I bought it, and how smart/savvy/responsible/BETTER I am for having chosen it. I’m going to post about it on Facebook. I’m going to show it to my friends when they come over. I’m going to go leave a review on Google. If I pay the average price, I perceive my purchase as an average experience, I’m less invested, and now I don’t get to tell that story. 

The price is part of the marketing.

Now, an important part of this is that you actually have to be better. That is why so many people just try to be the cheapest. If you are the most expensive, you’re making a promise. You are making a claim that you are special, worth it, and deserve to be talked about. 

That is why these Life Savers have discovered this phenomenon. The Life Saver Pool Fence actually IS better — you can see it, you can feel it, you can read the results of the scientific testing data, you know it’s backed by a lifetime warranty. And if the strength of the product itself isn’t important to you, then you might care about how Life Saver donates free pool fences to families who have had a fatal or non-fatal drowning incident, or how Life Saver gives to every drowning prevention non-profit in the US that we are aware of, or how Life Saver was started in my parents’ garage over 30 years ago and we still make pool fence by hand every day in Delray Beach, FL, sliding sturdy aluminum poles into slots on a long wooden table and stretching the mesh over before screwing everything in place, almost exactly like my dad did more than three decades ago. Depending on who you are, and what you care about, one of those stories, or some combination, might lead you to believe that Life Saver is “better” and worth paying more for. If you are going to rise above and be the one people believe they SHOULD pay more for, what is the promise that you are going to make? Can you keep that promise?

And when you choose to be exceptional, not every customer is your customer. Porsche isn’t for everyone. And neither is Land Rover. And the people who buy Porches aren’t the same people who buy Land Rovers, even though the price on some models might be similar. That’s okay for Porsche and it is okay for you, too. Not everyone will choose a Life Saver Pool Fence. That’s why we also have Pool Corral and Pool Fence DIY. All three of those are removable mesh barriers intended to protect your pool, but each one is intended for a different kind of person, just like Jeep, VW Bug, and Mercedes are all vehicles, but they are all intended for very different people. And just like with those cars, the difference between those people isn’t just what they are willing to spend. It is the very fabric of who they are, what they care about, and the ideas they identify with.

If you really are remarkable, then give people the opportunity to pay you enough that they have a story and devotion that is now worth remarking upon. Give people the chance to invest enough in you that they can be loyal. And then keep the promise you made by charging that price, and generously reward their loyalty. 

(Did you dig that like a dog digs under a fence? Did you at least get what you paid for? I hope so. If you did, could you please share it with people? You might really help someone. Also, some people who read this are CRIPs — Creatures Realizing Infinite Potential. You can also be a CRIP and never miss a blog post. Just text the word CRIP to 484848. What if the next one is the right combination of words that forever changes your life? Weirder things have happened. Some lady eating a bat in China made the NBA stop their season. Life is crazy. You never know. But I promise I will only text you one time per week. Who doesn’t want a nice text on a Sunday?)

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Often we think that success in life comes in front of an audience: the new job, the big promotion, buying the awesome house, unveiling the new artwork/restored car/song, announcing your early retirement. But as I sit here eating chocolate cake at 9 PM, I think it’s the things you do with no audience that create success (which sometimes leads to those publicly seen symptoms) — the morning work out you do or don’t do before work, the money you do or don’t put into a savings/investment account each month, the chocolate cake you do or do not eat late at night, the self-improving/educational reading you do or don’t read before bed, the extra work you do or don’t put toward your projects and goals.

These things, that we do alone, that nobody can see, I think, are what really create happiness and “success”. Not the spotlight moments. Not the big award on stage. The series of small, daily smart decisions, each a drop in the bucket, until they become a tidal wave of momentum you are surfing on. 

But it’s hard to know that because we don’t see that part. We don’t see the late nights. We don’t see the work squeezed in at any possible moment, between meetings, while getting gas, in the parent pick up line. We don’t see the consistency, even when they didn’t feel like it — ESPECIALLY when they didn’t feel like it. 

And nobody escapes it. By the time you discover someone, chances are, you are learning about them because they are already a master of their craft. It seems like they were born that way. It seems like they are naturally gifted. Michael Jordan, Whitney Houston, Wayne Gretzky, Steve Jobs, J.R.R. Tolkien, Elon Musk, Arnold Schwarzenegger… they all just seem to be imbued with otherworldly talent. And in those cases, those specific cases, there might be some slight predisposition toward their craft that gave them an edge. But far more importantly, they all worked when nobody was watching. The real thing that separates them is a daily, consistent striving to improve. There are no naturals. No one starts off great. It has to be earned. I wish we could have seen Tolkien’s first short story or Jordan’s first time trying to shoot a basketball. I promise you that both were terrible. Nobody starts off writing Lord of the Rings. That’s just the only thing we see.

When Forbes did their article about me, I shared it because I thought it was cool, and I was proud of it, but I was astonished by everyone else’s reaction. Everyone else was a lot more excited about it than I was. Because there was nothing difficult about doing that interview. It felt far less impressive than what I do day after day, night after night, conversation after conversation — the much more difficult things that don’t get any praise. But nobody can see that part. You just see the woman on the podium getting her Olympic medal. You just see the article in Forbes.

If the secret to greatness isn’t natural born talent, but rather consistent dedication, that means greatness is something accessible to all of us. You just need to do the work. But it’s not going to happen on accident. You can’t work toward becoming somebody without first deciding who you want to be. You can’t live up to an ideal without first defining that ideal. You cannot surpass a goal without first setting the goal.

A wise man once said that we are our habits. It only takes two weeks of doing something every day for it to become a habit, good or bad. What good habit do you wish you practiced every day? If you started today, in two weeks, it would be almost automatic. What version of YOU do you want to create? And what specific actions do you need to take, every day, when no one is watching, in order to get there?

(If you know somebody that this can help, send it to them. And if you’re the kind of person who wants to keep on getting better, who is doing the work when no one is watching, join the CRIP fam and text the word CRIP to the phone number 484848.)

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Here is a business secret (and regular life, too) that has been huge for me, that I don’t think you will read anywhere else: trust people right off the bat. Trust everyone. Trust strangers. Trust anyone you encounter until they give you a reason not to.

Right now, I can feel your eyebrow raising. Your eyes squinting. Your brow furrowing. Trust everyone? What kind of idiocy is this? Shouldn’t trust be earned?

In my opinion: nope. 

And, spoiler alert, I am going to tell you why. 

Most people are trustworthy. The vast majority of people you encounter are honest and generally looking to do the right thing most of the time. In fact, most people who are going to screw you over in some way are GENERALLY trustworthy otherwise. And then, for some reason, usually a circumstance that created a rock and a hard place, that typically honest person cheated you; e.g., either due to bad luck, bad planning, or incompetence, they are in a position where they can either pay their rent or pay you for services rendered, they choose rent, and you don’t get paid. Most people don’t INTEND to screw you. Some do, most don’t. 

And so, since most people are worthy of being trusted most of the time, if you trust everybody, over the course of your life, you are going to be right more often than not.

That’s just science.

So, why do this? What is the benefit of presuming people are trustworthy?

For one, being the type of person who trusts first is good for you. It makes you kinder, freer, more adventurous, friendlier, more confident, and so on. You will be less paranoid and less anxious. You are more likely to give the benefit of the doubt, which I’ve talked about previously as one of the keys to being a happier person. 

Giving someone your trust feels like something you are doing for THEM. But in reality, it is something you are doing for YOU. 

Second, trusting people can lead to great opportunities. So many times, I have seen people ruin or turn down something that could be fantastic because of the possibility that somebody might screw them or not hold up their end of the bargain. I remember pleading with somebody once, almost yelling, “Why are you assuming he is lying and going to cheat you?!”

The reply, “Why are YOU assuming he isn’t?”

If I was physically capable of doing a face palm, I would have right then.

FYI, I actually did get that deal done. And, surprise surprise, everyone has done what they said they would. 

Trusting people also makes life more convenient and saves time. I was recently at work when the guy showed up to my house to fix my air-conditioning. No one was home. I just went ahead and gave him the security code to my front door. I suppose he could have robbed me, but I was reasonably sure he wouldn’t. My most important belongings are locked up. There is not much there of value that can’t be replaced. His company is probably bonded and has insurance. And it turned out just fine.

I give my employees quite a bit of autonomy and trust that they will act in the best interest of the company, and do the things that need to be done. I don’t micromanage them. I don’t put trackers on their computers to monitor their activity. I don’t block certain websites from their browser. I pick good people and trust that they will do good work. This has  turned out really well for me so far. They are happier, more productive, better able to solve problems, more creative, and I have a lot less stress.

I trust my customers. If they tell me they didn’t receive something, or something is defective, I just trust them and fix it. I’m sure I have been bamboozled at some point, and sent somebody something for free that they didn’t deserve, but the vast majority of the time, doing things this way just results in happier customers and time and energy saved.

A friend of mine just recommended a friend of hers as an employee to work in the warehouse. I told her to tell him he can start on Monday. No application, no resume, no interview, not even a phone conversation, none of it. I trust her. I’ve never met him, but I trust he will likely do a good job. And, worst-case scenario, if he doesn’t, he moves on. No big deal. 

Now, while I do start with a baseline of trust, I do weigh the upside versus the downside. I’m not going to give a stranger the login info to my bank for no reason. I do give that info to my assistant, though, because I’ve known him for 30 years and it makes it easier for him to help me.

I give employees keys to the building and security codes so they can get in, but we also have cameras in the warehouse just in case.

Society tells us not to trust, that people will stab you in the back, that the world is full of cheaters and liars. And that will happen. Trusting people will occasionally come back to chomp your callipygian. If you spent a lifetime believing this, your experiences will have reinforced it to be true, and it is going to be a very hard habit to break. But I promise that it is worth it. You will live a happier, easier, less anxious, reduced drama life. Just try it out, and let yourself be surprised by how good people can be.

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We have become experts at efficiency. In 90 minutes, I can respond to 100 different emails to 100 different people completing, managing, or making progress on 100 different tasks.

We can video conference with half a dozen people from around the world with the click of a button.

We can use a Google Doc, or something similar, to rapidly coordinate on a document in real time.

We can transmit our thoughts via text message or phone call to somebody thousands of miles away almost instantaneously.

We can learn about any topic, at any level of complexity, at any time. The total sum of all human knowledge is available to us in text or video whenever we want it. Any fact, any skill, or any concept is accessible to us, and almost always for free. 

We are really good at getting a lot of stuff done, bolstered with the technology that gives us superhuman capabilities.

And that’s really cool. Actually no, it’s not JUST cool. It’s INCREDIBLE.

Now, with all of those capabilities, with all of this efficiency, have you achieved more than Benjamin Franklin?

You know, Ben Franklin. The guy on the $100 bill.

The guy who accomplished so many amazing things that we often forget some.

Most people likely remember the biggest ones. He helped author the Declaration of Independence. He created, wrote, and published the Poor Richard’s Almanack. He invented the lightning rod. And also the Franklin Stove. 

If you think harder, you might also remember that he invented the bifocal lenses and served as the first Postmaster General. 

But, if you’re like me, without Google, you probably don’t remember that he also invented swim fins, published the first American political cartoon, was the founder of the University of Pennsylvania, was the sixth governor of Pennsylvania, and was the first ever US ambassador.

And even with that extensive list, any ONE of which would be enough of an achievement for a lifetime, I’m sure people in the comments are going to tell me things that I missed.

But it’s not just our friend Benjamin. Have you accomplished more than George Washington, Julius Caesar, or Cleopatra? Do you run your business or division better than Henry Ford or Rockefeller?

These people created and managed wildly successful, massive organizations with thousands and tens of thousands of people, without a single email or Zoom call.

How did they get so many important things accomplished without being even a fraction as efficient as we are?

How have I managed to grow and create multimillion dollar enterprises, write a blog each week, etc. all while having a big chunk of my time and energy sucked away each day by a disability most people don’t have to deal with?

They did it the same way that people who accomplish big things right now do.

They focused, maybe obsessively, on only the things that matter the most. They cared a lot more about being effective than being efficient.

You can become really efficient at loading and firing a musket, but it’s still not going to be as effective as shooting a fully automatic machine gun.

The key to achieving greatness isn’t doing more. It is doing less. It is doing only the most important things they are actually going to move the needle and put you closer to your goal.

How many of the emails that you sent, the work that you do, and the meetings that you have are doing either of the above? Some might be. But I bet most aren’t. Here is a good litmus test: what would happen if I DIDN’T do this thing? What would we miss out on? Would it even matter?

If you can figure out one major, important task per day that really matters, that really moves the ball down the field, that really helps your life in some meaningful way, and make sure that you get that one thing done, even if that means sacrificing some other things that might not even matter, you will be a lot closer to achieving that Ben Franklin status.

How much of your free time are you spending doing the things that you truly love the most, as opposed to unplanned, less satisfying, forgettable recreation (watching TV, scrolling through Facebook, etc.)?  I certainly have my things I waste time on, but I have watched less than one or two hours of television a week since I was 18 years old. The average American watches about 40 hours of TV per week. That extra 38 hours of time each week has allowed me to do even more enjoyable/worthwhile endeavors. That’s 1,976 hours per year, and 39,520 hours over the last 20 years that I got to spend doing cooler stuff.

You don’t have to slave away constantly to do great things. If you focus on only doing the most productive things that matter, and spending your free time only doing the things that you really love the most, you will live a richer, more fulfilling, more successful life. Our boy Benjamin accomplished incredible things, but he was still known for drinking and orgies on the regular. 

If you cut away the fat from your work and from your recreational time, you can do great things in both. You can have it all.

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Right here, right now, I am going to show you how to never have a bad day again for the rest of your life.

It is up to you to choose to actually do it, to put this into practice, but you definitely can. 

Because I have never had a bad day.

Not one. Not ever.

This isn’t because I have managed to avoid bad things happening to me. Definitely not.

Almost exactly one year ago, I was lying on my back, the asphalt from the parking lot burning me, while blood poured out of my forehead, streamed over my face, and filled up my curly hair. I didn’t know it yet, but my ankle was also broken in two places. Paramedics would soon show up and pick me up from the hot concrete, put me on a stretcher, and take me to the hospital where I got 16 stitches above my brow and a soft cast for my ankle.

That really sucked.

But it wasn’t a bad day.

Other good things happened that day. And I don’t mean the very true, but difficult to sincerely appreciate, platitudes about waking up and breathing and all that. Though those things did happen as well, and I am pretty stoked about it.

Before I did a front flip and smashed my face into the rather sturdy parking lot outside Life Saver, I’d had a rather enjoyable, productive day at work. There was a great meeting with the amazing Alan Korn in the morning, and in the afternoon I worked on an AI bot to automate Life Saver’s Facebook messages — which we still use. 

And after my face exploded, people who loved and cared about me met me at the hospital. Kate Mottram brought milk from my house (without chocolate, but still). Mike made sure my Nexium got picked up. My friend Nicole, who I hadn’t seen in ages, was one of the three bizarrely gorgeous nurses who treated me. The doctor who stitched me up had a sense of humor and appreciated my jokes. When I got home, my girlfriend at the time surprised me by showing up, coddled me, and helped to get some of the blood out of my hair. The experience sucked, but was it a bad day? Not at all. Good stuff happened that I enjoyed and appreciated. 

If you choose to decide that there are good, even great, moments that happen every day, and recognize those, you can then eliminate all future bad days from the rest of your life. You might have bad moments. But an entire bad day? Impossible. How can the whole day be bad when these other good things happened? 

And once you have eliminated bad days, congratulations. You are now free from bad weeks, bad months, and especially bad years. If there is something good in each day, how in Thor’s name can a whole YEAR be bad?! The entire concept just seems so foreign to me. And there is no reason it can’t be foreign to you as well. It just takes a small change in the way you think and talk, a change to the story you tell yourself about your life. I’ve never had a bad day because I am the only person who gets to judge my days, and that was the decision I made.

You can, too. 

Welcome to the #nobaddays club. 

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