He’s a tremendous entrepreneur, full of hustle, and a perfect guest to kick off the podcast. So young but so wise!

In the interview we talk about:

• Landing your first customers (and what types of clients to target)
• Building an international business while still in college
• Outsourcing the outsource-able tasks
• How running one business can open your eyes to other business opportunities
• Automating your side hustle business
• Managing your time to avoid “getting caught up in the busyness rather than the business.”

Mentioned in this episode:

• Chelsea Grin – Chris’ metal band
• Monolith Management — Chris’ band management company
• TaskBullet.com
• TOFU Marketing
• The Lifestyle Business Podcast: Rip, Pivot, and Jam
• University Venture Fund
• InfusionSoft
• The Foundry in Salt Lake City
• SEOmoz.org
• Unbounce.com
• Technorati
• Neil Patel – QuickSprout.com

Do you have any questions for Chris? If so, please drop them in the comments below and I’ll make sure he sees them.

Thanks for listening and I’ll see you in Episode 2!

I actually watch a lot of them while folding laundry. I get to learn something new and get some chores done at the same time. Two birds, one stone, as they say.

Even though I have done almost no public speaking since college, it’s a goal of mine to someday give a TED talk. I don’t know what the topic would be, but I think it would be cool to be on that stage presenting alongside so many other great individuals.

I was beginning my initial research on what it might take to make this goal a reality, and I discovered a couple things. First, it’s much easier to get on stage at one of the dozens of locally organized “TEDx” events. And second, there was a TEDx event happening locally in just a couple weeks!

I figured if I wanted to eventually speak at one of these events, I should probably at least attend one first to see what it would be like. To my surprise, tickets to TEDx Hayward were available online for free, so I ordered one up and put it on the calendar.

The theme of the event was “Applied Peace Innovation,” which is obviously the best kind of peace innovation. It was pretty much the least controversial topic in the world, but its breadth lent itself well to a wide range of talks centered on that noble theme of making everyone better off.

For being “sold out,” the event was embarrassingly poorly attended. It was actually kind of disillusioning after watching the TED talks online delivered to packed auditoriums and standing ovations. Not including the speakers, there were maybe 50 people there when the talks began. In a room with seating capacity for 400, it looked pretty sparse. (Eventually a few more trickled in.)

Still, I was eager to watch and learn at my first TEDx event, and I want to share some of the biggest business takeaways from the day that you can apply to your side hustle.

1. Helping Others Helps You

The speakers presented compelling evidence arguing in favor of giving compassion to our fellow citizens. They found that offering compassion and empathy helped both the receiver and the giver.

For me, the most surprising bit of evidence was that this seemingly selfless kindness had profound emotional and physical benefits for the giver as well. Even on a biological level, those offering compassion to others experienced less cellular inflammation! Crazy stuff, even if it was just a scientific proof of the Golden Rule.

“No one has ever become poor by giving.” –Anne Frank

In business, the idea of being helpful is a no-brainer. No one buys a product or service that isn’t going to help them in some way. This concept is discussed at length in The Go-Giver, one of my favorite business books of all time.

2. Connecting in a Disconnected World Starts With a Smile

How sad is it that smiling at strangers is considered creepy? Look up from your phone, and offer up a smile. It’s contagious.

(I know I should do this and still don’t. Working on it.)

One speaker told a story, relayed from one of her students, about the impact a smile can have. In the student’s dorm, there was a girl no one was friends with. She walked around with a dark cloud over her head and scowled at everyone.

The student began smiling to her each time they would pass in the hallway. Initially, she was greeting with the usual scowl.

After a month of smiles though, the guard had lowered. “Thank you for seeing me,” the girl said.

Businesses know the power of smiles too; they coach front-line employees to make eye contact and smile. Wal-Mart even hires greeters to stand at the door and welcome you with a smile. How about the smile on the box of McDonald’s Happy Meals?

(image credit)

It’s an easy way to trigger positive emotions in customers and those around you. And even if you get nothing in return, you’ll feel better just from activating your smiling muscles.

3. The Best Pitches Use Real Data to Back Up Their Points

After sitting through a few talks, a pattern started to emerge. The speakers who used concrete data, either from their own studies or sourced elsewhere, made far more compelling cases than those who spoke merely in terms of ideas and generalities.

One example was a chart that showed the stocks of companies that participated in some specific carbon emissions reporting program outperformed the rest of the market by a factor of 2. If you’re in charge of that environmental initiative, that data is absolutely golden in recruiting new customers (companies) into your program.

Similarly, the best salespeople use at least some element of rationality to make their pitch. In your side hustle, it’s easy to accomplish this by imitating any number of big companies. Consider:

• “The average customer saves $300 a year by switching to Geico.”
• “The longest-lasting, most dependable trucks on the road.”
• “Weight Watchers customers lose 15 pounds more than those who diet on their own.”

4. Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Many of the TEDx Hayward speakers were “academics” — professors, researchers, PhDs. Their scholarly research was interesting but a lot of it had me wondering, “so what?”

Until that research and learning is applied in the real world, the impact can only be very small. To be fair, every movement has to start somewhere, but academics and education is only the beginning.

Impressing your university peers is one thing, but making a real difference perhaps requires a different focus and a different set of skills.

“Well done is better than well said.”  –Benjamin Franklin

I’m sure you’ve met your share of “professional students” — those who love learning for the sake of learning, but never seem to do anything with the knowledge they acquire.

Indeed, one of the key side hustle skills is learning quickly and applying that education in the real world. There comes a time to stop reading, stop researching, stop procrastinating, and go out and make something happen.

5. Filter for Your Audience

I kind of expected this going in, but the most of the talks were forgettable. It makes sense that the TED talks you see online and the ones that get shared are truly the best of the best.

In your side hustle, the takeaway is to filter your products or services down to just those the customer needs to see.

Think of it like SportsCenter. You don’t need to sit through an entire game when you can get the important highlights and story-lines in 45 seconds.

Consider giving your resume or portfolio the SportsCenter treatment. Do you need to include every job you’ve ever had or every project you’ve ever worked on to land your next customer? Probably not, and odds are they’ll appreciate your on-target “highlight reel” too.

Have you ever been to TED event? What did you think? Are they worthwhile for entrepreneurs to attend?

What is a side hustle?

A side hustle is simply a way to earn extra income, apart from your “day job.” There are dozens of examples, which we’ll cover in full detail soon.

Today, it’s all about the common characteristics of a side hustle.

Mindset

When you think of the word “hustle,” what comes to mind?

I’ve found it has two very different connotations:

One positive — “He’s not the biggest guy on the court but he sure shows a lot of hustle!”

And one negative — “I got hustled by that used car salesman!”

In the context of a side hustle, it’s universally positive. The type of hustle I’m talking about is:

• Getting more done with less

• A “finisher’s” attitude

• For the love of the game

NOT:

• Ripping people off

• Easy money

• Mind-numbing work

The first step to building a successful side hustle is to get the mindset right. Without the optimistic, can-do, make-something-happen attitude, it’s really difficult to find the positive energy required to build the business.

If you’re the down-on-your-luck, woe-is-me victim of life, I’ll be 100% honest: this whole side hustle thing probably isn’t going to work out for you.

It starts with attitude.

The good news is attitude is free, and it’s equal-opportunity; everyone has access to the side hustle mindset.

Investment

A side hustle should be a low-risk project, meaning it shouldn’t take a lot of start-up capital. Like Chris Guillebeau discusses in The $100 Startup, there are a ton of rewarding lifestyle businesses that got off the ground without breaking the bank.

I started the business that eventually became ShoeSniper.com with just $5 — because that’s what it cost to open a Google AdWords account at the time. (And I think it’s free now!)

Instead of investing a lot of money, the largest side hustle investment is typically the hustler’s time.

Time

Side hustles are part-time endeavors people use to build new skill-sets, supplement their income, or just to experiment with some new business idea.

Initially, a side hustle should take up no more than 20 hours a week of your time. Of course if the business really takes off you’re welcome to adjust the hours accordingly, but for starters it’s important to keep the time investment to a minimum.

The idea is to take some knowledge or skill you have and leverage it into a small but viable business.

If it feels like work, don’t do it. Side hustles should be fun!

And no matter how busy you are, I’m sure you could scrape up an extra hour or two a day if you really had to.

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have 24 hour days.” –Zig Ziglar

Of the limitless side hustle opportunities, I want to focus on time-leveraged ventures.

In the beginning, it’s 100% OK to take on a part-time job, freelancing gig, or other “by-the-hour”-types of work, but in the long-run the goal should be to leverage your time so that one hour of work can result in many hours worth of income. That’s what I mean by time-leveraged.

Trading hours for dollars can be a good way to get started, to learn new skills or break into a new industry, but it’s not a long-term path to financial freedom.  After all, you only have so many hours in the day.

Income

Side hustles are NOT get-rich-quick schemes, but can be quite lucrative.

Imagine if you could bring in an extra $500 or $1000 a month in your spare time, doing something you love. That would be awesome right?

That’s what this site is all about.

It won’t happen overnight, so align your expectations accordingly, but it is absolutely feasible to be earning a significant side income after a few months or a year. Regular people make it happen all the time, and so can you.

Rewards

Besides the extra income potential that gets everyone excited initially, having a side hustle can be rewarding in other ways as well.

For instance, it can give you a chance to pursue professional goals outside of work, challenge yourself in a new arena, and flex your entrepreneurial muscles (maybe for the first time!).

Filling your days with meaningful work is a path to happiness. If your day job doesn’t get you excited anymore (or it never did), a side hustle is the perfect outlet to explore and experiment with something that will.

The Hustle

To make a side hustle work, it takes real work. That’s why it’s called a hustle, because it’s not for lazy people.

(Although if you set it up right, an initial time investment can pay off for months or years down the road without much ongoing work.)

But if you’re not ready to put in the hours at the beginning, or if you’re happy with your job, or if you make enough money already, a side hustle probably isn’t for you. And that’s totally fine.

The best side hustlers have a hunger for something more, and use their hustles a means to get there.

Are you ready to hustle?

You may have noticed the site has a new name and new look, so I thought I should probably take a minute to explain. “So Much Cooler Online” lives on in spirit (and you can still access all the old posts if you so desire), and has now been given a more business-y direction.

But you’ll notice I’m still apt to make up words like “business-y,” and like just about everybody else, I’m still way cooler online.

Side Hustle Nation is the name I’ve given to the community of part-time entrepreneurs who are always working to make something happen outside of their day jobs. This particular brand of entrepreneurship is something I really get fired up about because it’s how I got my start, and indeed how a ton of great businesses got their start.

The posts will still enjoy a healthy dose of randomness, but for the most part they’ll center around the side hustle theme.  I think you’ll like it.

Check that. You will like it. (The domain cost me $100!)

Thinking Outside the [Text] Box

I’ve recorded a few episodes for the all new Side Hustle Show podcast, where I interview fellow side hustle entrepreneurs for actionable tips you can apply to your business.

It’s been a ton of fun so far and a cool learning experience. I hope to get those production-ready and published here in the next week or two.

If you know of anyone who might make a good guest for the show, let’s make the connection. My initial thought was to do one episode a week, though that might prove a little ambitious. It’ll be easier with your help!

Similarly, Side Hustle Nation welcomes awesome guest content. If you or someone you know has some ideas the audience will find valuable, let me know and we’ll make it happen.

Housekeeping Stuff:

Bear with me on some pending design and formatting issues. It’s taken some time to get everything set up and is still something of a “work in progress.”

In the meantime, could you do me a huge favor and give the ‘ol Facebook page a thumb’s up?

>> https://www.facebook.com/SideHustleNation

Thanks so much!

If it gets annoying you can always bail out later — no hard feelings at all.

Looking forward getting this project off the ground and seeing if it flies. And if not, it should be a fun ride either way.

As always, feedback is welcome (and encouraged!)

Stay tuned!

I’m 4 years into my blogging adventure and have enjoyed the outlet and the writing practice (845 posts and 211,000 words — for the sake of comparison, the final Harry Potter installment is 198,000) but don’t have much to show for it beyond that.

And that’s OK but I think it’s time to aim a little higher and try to reach a broader audience.

What does that mean?

Probably fewer pics of Mochi.

And in the meantime it might get kind of quiet. Just a heads up.

First, the bad parts.

Packing

I don’t even like packing for trips, so I definitely don’t like packing up all my worldly possessions.

It’s a pain, and the whole time you’re thinking — how do we have so much stuff?

True story: I successfully went dumpster diving for moving boxes.

The Rental Market

There was not a large of supply of rentals, which made it pretty tough. Plus being self-employed with a dog and a giant short-sale-shaped red flag on my credit, I don’t think we were anyone’s first choice.

It was kind of weird to fill out rental applications. It had been a lot of years.

I was like, hey my income is none of your business. And then I understood it kind of was.

The hot rental market led to some interesting exchanges, including this email response:

Thank you for inquiring about my rental house at [123 Fake St] in Livermore. Additional information:

1. Rental $1800,security deposit $2,000

2. Social Security of all over 18 will be required and place of employment and salary; credit reports will be made

3. If you have pets- $10 for pets kept outside and $50 for pets kept inside(monthly)

4. Smokers (inside) $50 monthly

5. Any additional person moving in – $50 monthly

6. No Junky or inoperable vehicles in driveway

7. No clutter in driveway or front of yard

8. Rugs will be professionally cleaned and landlord will be provided with a receipt

9. Tenant agrees to weed outside, trim bushes, mow lawn and generally keep outside neat and uncluttered or landlord will hire gardener and pass charges to tenant

10. Tenant agrees that landlord or his agent will conduct inspection of premises (in and out) at least twice yearly. Landlord will hire gardener and pass charges to tenant

12. Tenant agrees that landlord or his agent will conduct inspection of premises(in and out) at least twice yearly. Land lord will advise when inspection will take place

13. Tenant agrees to keep driveway and garage floor clear of oil, grease, etc

14.Tenant agrees to pay $10 a day for visitors or family staying longer than two weeks

15. Landlord has take photos of property(inside and out). Tenants agrees that photos reflect the pre-occupation condition

16. Deduction for repairs, cleaning and other costs (except for wear and tear) will come out of security deposit and tenant(s) so agree. Refund will be made AFTER all repairs, cleaning etc., has been made

No photos of interior or exterior is available

Wow this guy seems like a real gem of a landlord! And for how detail-oriented he appears to be, he skipped #11.

No photos available? No thanks…

And that listing was a legit one (as in not a scam), which leads me to my next point.

Craigslist Scams

You always hear about people getting scammed on craigslist, but I never understood fully how it went down.

Well now I know.

Here’s how it works. The scammer posts a nice house for a noticeably below-market rate. When you inquire, they reply they are out of town on business, but will take your rental application electronically.

Which of course has all your personal identifying information so they can steal your identity.

Some shady characters out there.

Comcast

Holy crap I can see your building from my patio! Why should it take 6 phone calls and 90 minutes of my life to figure out how to transfer my service from down the street?

And apparently their rates went up at some point last year. We’re on auto-pay so never noticed.

I’m not a Comcast hater, and rely on their service for my business, but I can see why some people are.

Physically Moving

My body was more beat up after 1 day of moving than from 4 days of skiing. Thankfully we had some amazing help, which transitions nicely into…

The best parts:

Amazing Support

Couldn’t have done it without the help of a great group of friends. Special shout out to treadmill-and-dresser-hauling muscle man, Raf.

Purging

We got rid of a ton of stuff. It was pretty great.

A Fresh Start

I think more than anything, the best part of moving is the chance for a fresh start. Even though we’re still on the same street in the same neighborhood in the same town, it feels good to put one big mistake behind us and look toward what lies ahead.

Starting a new chapter. Moving on.

Author Tal Ben-Shahar is a Harvard pyschology professor and his class on positive psychology has become the school’s most popular course.

Let me summarize the book for you in one line:

Fill you days with activities you find meaningful.

That’s about it.

It could be your work, it could be writing the great American novel, it could be walking the dog, skiing, blogging, or maybe even watching TV.  Pretty much anything you find fulfilling.

And the shoe biz really hasn’t been doing it for me lately, which explains a lot!

Other takeaways

As a country, we are 10x more depressed than we were 50 years ago. And the average age of diagnosis is 14, down from 29 in the 1960s.

Is our modern life that much more depressing, or are we simply more aggressive about diagnosing depression (and prescribing medication to feed the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry)?

We are trained from an early age to defer happiness. Study hard so you can get into a good school, so you can get a good job, so you can get a promotion, etc. No pain, no gain, right? Only the gain is no guarantee of happiness.

Work to tip the balance of “have to-dos” vs. “want to-dos” in favor of the want to-dos. One study cited found that mothers did not particularly enjoy the time they spent taking care of their children. Possibly because it was positioned in their mind as a “have to do” that was competing with “want to do” activities.

Our propensity toward happiness is partially genetic, partially based on our surroundings (people in free societies w/ food and shelter are understandably happier than those starving and homeless under oppressive regimes), and partially based on what we do.

As explored in the Geography of Bliss (a much more entertaining read), people are capable of happiness and misery in every area of the globe. All else being equal, it’s what you do with your time that really makes a difference.

Great quotes:

“We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.” — Anne Frank

“Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” — Abraham Lincoln

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” — Leonardo da Vinci

Like pretty much everyone, I’ve made some poor decisions along the way. But none worse than this.

Nothing else comes even close.

Remember the most expensive blog post ever? Well, we’ve got a new winner in town.

In 2007, I decided to buy a townhouse. (Bryn was a willing accomplice to this heinous crime, but she’ll agree it was mostly me.)

Takeaway #1: Just because a $600,000 townhouse is now $500,000, that doesn’t make it a “good deal.”

Within 6 months we’d lost our entire down payment. Within a year, double that.

Still not seeing the sinking ship or the depths of the bubble burst, we decided to pay off our second mortgage. While everyone else was bailing out, we were dumping more cash in.

Takeaway #2: Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.

Because we were responsible homeowners. Not like those other idiots who bought houses they couldn’t afford with interest-only, adjustable rate loans. (We had a fixed rate, and never missed a payment.)

Those dummies were ruining it for us “smart”, responsible folks. We reasoned to ourselves.

Within two years, the value was around 45% of what we paid. There was perhaps a $170k spread between the property value and the principal left on the loan.

So I did what any business person would do: tried to make a deal.

Wells Fargo, the servicer of the loan, wanted none of it. Dozens of calls, hours on the phone, letters, emails, piles of faxed documentation (really, faxes?), literally years of correspondence.

Entirely for naught.

Disgruntled taxpayer alert: Every Obama-era acronym ostensibly designed to help people in our situation – TARP, HARP, HAMP — for one reason or another, didn’t apply to us.

Here was my reasoning to Wells Fargo:

“It’s in your best interest to work with us. If this thing goes to foreclosure or short sale, you’ll lose more money in the end. You’re a publicly traded company. You owe it to your shareholders to make a deal with us.”

Takeaway #3: Logic and banking don’t mix.

Honestly, we wanted to stay put. There was a reason we bought in the first place.

We liked the property, the neighborhood, the location. Pretty much everything aside from the fact you could move next door for half price.

master of his domain

Now seems like a good a point as any to mention how stressed out and unhappy this whole situation made us, really for several years. We had to watch from the sidelines as our friends bought bigger and nicer places for far less, and complained about how tough the market was.

About how they were able to qualify for these nice government incentives.

About how they were able to refinance to ever-lower rates.

Must be nice…

I mean we weren’t any worse off because of it, so we should have been happy for them. But it was challenging.

So not only was it a terrible financial decision, it turned out to be a truly wearing emotional decision as well.

And despite my best efforts at negotiating a win-win solution between us and the bank, I was getting nowhere.

one of many fun gatherings

Ultimately we concluded the best course of action would be to cut losses and move on. Sunk costs, and all that jazz, with little likelihood of any near or mid-term recovery.

A year ago, I turned off our auto-payment (still had dutifully paid on time every time), listed the house as a short sale, and watched my carefully maintained perfect credit score sail off into the sunset.

Takeaway #4: You are not your credit score.

The buildup was worse than the actual event. In a way it was really freeing.

The best part?

Nothing happened.

For almost a year.

We took full advantage of this strange and unorthodox new savings plan. We reasoned that the near-term cash savings were likely to outweigh the potential near-term future appreciation.

And yes, of course there were Excel spreadsheets created with future value calculations. Always always a spreadsheet.

Basically the opportunity to invest that cash today would generate a better return than sitting around and waiting another 10+ years to maybe recoup the down payment, let alone earn a return.

Takeaway #5: Cash is king.

Then, in early January, 10 months after starting the short sale process, we got notice Wells Fargo finally gave their approval.

In the end, they ended up settling for a price we would have happily outbid, on top of losing a year’s worth of interest.

And we had to move.

we left our mark

So instead of agreeing to my win-win proposal, they forced both parties into a lose-lose. Pretty crazy business strategy.

If the whole experience had any positives, it would be that it’s given us something of a new perspective on life.

Things don’t always go the way you plan. For two admittedly over-analytical people, who by every account have had a pretty good go of it so far, it was an important lesson.

Is home ownership still an essential ingredient in the American Dream? I’m not so sure anymore.

Takeaway #6: It’s only money.

Of course it SUCKS to lose that kind of money. There’s no sugar-coating it.

But at the same time, it’s only money. There are far worse things to lose. We still have each other, our health, our friends and family. Mushy, right?

It’s taken some time to get over the sting of it, but the big picture is still bright.

And by wiping away that bad debt, we actually significantly improved our net worth! Silver linings everywhere you look.

Chris, before stomping too many of these landings destroyed his body.

So I thought it might be fun to come up with some marketing ideas for ski areas. The goals of these ideas would be to:

• Increase customer engagement and create “higher friction” relationships.
• Increase revenue.
• Increase market share.

Here we go.

Get Social

An active community on Facebook could be really valuable for a ski area. You can run contests, share conditions, and encourage fans to post pictures of their trip.

Offer a small token of appreciation to users who “like” your page.

Quantify, Quantify, Quantify

Through more religious ticket-scanning or GPS-enabled smartphones, skiers could track their daily and season stats for runs, vertical feet, miles traveled, top speed, and more.

The ski area could publish the top 10 in each category on their website and have prizes for each.

Plus, the data would be valuable internally to see the habits of both the heaviest users and the crowd as a whole.

How many skiers do you need to have to turn a profit each day? And work backwards from there.

Theme Days

Generate some buzz with theme days on the mountain. 80s day, pajama party, cowboy up, black and white, etc. Discounted tickets for those in costume and prizes for best dressed.

Companion Passes

Season ticket holders could get companion passes to bring their buddies for a discounted rate. Or even free, and maybe they spend some money in the lodge.

Maybe you upsell 4 companion passes for $50 when they buy their pass or something.

Email Capture

If the lift ticket counter offered $10 off on the spot in exchange for people’s email address, what do you think their take-rate would be?

In no time they’d have a huge list of proven-customers, not just prospects, they can keep in routine contact with. Build a relationship, share of mind, and all that jazz.

Huge opportunity I haven’t seen any ski area take advantage of yet.

Video Contests

Everyone’s got one of those GoPro camera’s these days, but what do people do with the videos? Give them a reason to share them with your ski area’s name attached to it.

How about contests for best air, best pow run, or most spectacular wipeout?

Early Bird Special

This would suck, but ski areas could totally sell early lift access on powder days. I’m pretty sure the hardcore powder hounds would pony up an extra $10-20 to guarantee fresh tracks before they let all the rifraff in.

But it would suck for everyone else and destroy the equal-opportunity of the freshies. No one do this, please.

Premium Lift Line

Ski areas could upsell priority lift line privileges to let high-rollers cut ahead of the crowds. I’ve seen this at a couple places already.

It could be sold an a daily or annual basis.

Honor Competitor’s Coupons

So what, you sold a lift ticket for less than you wanted to. You run a fixed-cost business, in that the revenue from that incremental customer is pure profit.

I feel like ski areas view this as the difference in collecting $30 vs. $60, when the reality might be more like collecting $30 vs. collecting $0.

On-Slope Dining

On a sunny day, how about a hot dog and beer stand at the top of the chair or something? Nobody wants to go into the dark and smelly lodge.

Bounce-Back Offers

At the end of the day, station someone in the parking lot to hand out coupons for your next trip, but that have a tight expiration window.

Full Service

Bus transportation, ticket, meals, rental equipment — all included at a discounted bundled rate.

Family Plan

Give families or groups a reason to choose your mountain over the competition. Maybe it’s a buy 3, get 1 free deal, or a “family 4-pack” type of offer.

Sponsorships

At Whistler earlier this month, I noticed their terrain park was sponsored by Nintendo. This is only the beginning. Chairlifts, runs, and lodges could all carry corporate sponsorships.

Let’s ride The North Face quad up and then grab lunch at the Salomon Snack Shack.

If you ran marketing for a ski area (what a cool job!) what would you do?

I first heard of this a couple weeks ago.

It states that if there are several crabs in a bucket, and one tries to climb out, the others will pull him back down.

Not having access to a team of live crabs to test this on, I had to rely on wikipedia. The “crab mentality” is summed up as:

“If I can’t have it, neither can you.”

If the crabs worked together, they could escape. But instead their selfishness and distrust maintains the status quo.

It’s used as a metaphor to describe human behavior.

Let’s say the bucket is your job, and you want to leave to try something new. Do your friends and co-workers encourage that leap of faith, or do they try and pull you back down to reality?

What’s your gut reaction when one of your peers takes a risk and is genuinely happy and successful? I know it isn’t the right answer, but a lot of the time for me at least, it’s jealousy.

We can be better than the crabs. Smarter. More cooperative. More encouraging.

If you want to climb out of your “bucket,” whatever it may be, don’t let the other crabs pull you down.

And if you’re happy in your bucket but see someone else making a break for it, go ahead and give ‘em a boost!

You never know, maybe they’ll turn around and offer a hand up.

Side note. Did I ever tell about the time we had a mini crab feed? I did not appreciate the apparent awesomeness that is crab meat. Way too much work for way too little food, I thought.

What say you?