brad garland's tumblr

We headed to Albuquerque this weekend for the international balloon fiesta they have there every October.  It’s was a ton of fun and the girls had their heads on a swivel with all the balloons that were there.  We went Friday morning to one of the ‘special shapes’ launches.  It’s an amazing feeling being in the middle of literally hundreds of ballonists launching their ‘birds’.  We also spent the entire next day at the Albuquerque Zoo & Aquarium, another fun field trip. 

If you haven’t been to Albuquerque sometime, I’d recommend it and definitely bring the kiddos.  Here’s the pics from the weekend:

IMG_0428.MOV (3895 KB)

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about gastric bypass.  It’s only a few more months until my three year anniversary but I wanted to touch on something that consistently rears its head, almost daily.  The fear of before.  The fear that I will go back to what I once was. Overweight, unhappy, and in pain. I made this extreme choice at such a young age to not only to extend my life for me but also for my girls.  I can not go back to before…for them.  

I hear the stories of many of us that have had the weight loss surgeries “beat the surgery” and it just makes me sad because I can see how easy it can be done.  Since my lowest weight (~190) I have gained weight back (~205 now) and although some weight gain is supposed to happen I still fear falling back into my old ways.  And yes, I’ve been at or around this weight for about 18 months now but it’s still a constant fear I deal with everyday.  Addiction is a scary thing and if anyone doesn’t think that food is one of those then I suppose we will just agree to disagree but it’s real for me.

Anyway, I didn’t have an agenda here other than convincing myself its ok to be a little vulnerable at times and to talk about some of the things that keep me up at night.  For those in the same spot and need some people of like minds or situation, check out our GB network. Thanks for reading everybody.

Memo.m4a (1172 KB)

In my last post I talked about family.  Today, I want to think about the entrepreneur herself.  It is often discussed in business books and in seminars on what it takes to be an entrepreneur and to succeed at starting a business.  Stories of 80-hour work weeks and late nights are the norm to be “successful”.  Based on those readings, there appears to be a diametrically opposed sentiment stating that one that starts a business you either choose a successful business or successful family life but never the two shall meet.  Is that the case? Does someone, in today’s connected world, have to sacrifice the time from the people that are the reason you try to build a successful business?

Can’t wait to see your comments.  Sound off!  Success or family?

In my recent post about the differences between the lifestyle and high growth entrepreneurs, we discussed what strategies are used to run both types of businesses.  Either way, however, those strategies have to be implemented by people and sometimes entrepreneurs take that point for granted.  Businesses are a support system of people employed (and not employed) by the company and are often bigger than we realize.  Normally I’d say that we have 15 employees in our organization but that’s not everyone effected, see below:

15 employees

10 couples

12 children

All of these people are supporting or being supported from our business and that’s something an entrepreneur can also be proud of. Many times we forget that fact.  Be thankful for the extended families that you have.

Now with that defined, let me get to the point.  The author tends to think that as an entrepreneur you can only be one way or the other but I don’t think it’s true.  I hope, in my life, to run multiple businesses concurrently and will consider how to run my businesses accordingly to their potentials.  Some businesses that earn very consistent and recurring revenues may work for a ‘lifestyle’ investment and some may lend themselves to a ‘high growth’ play.  I don’t understand why I can’t balance both like anyone would with their stock portfolios.

Maybe I missing the point. What kind of entrepreneur are you? Can you be both a lifestyle AND high growth entrepreneur?

I posted a tweet a couple of weeks ago trying to figure out the best to consolidate our music libraries onto one machine and share across all our laptops so we don’t have to keep big copies on everyone’s machines.  So after many hours of work this is the best solution I came up with today but it’s pretty close and it’s mainly thanks to iTunes 9 and the ‘Home Sharing’ feature to get it all to work.  Please let me know if you have questions or better ideas! Thanks.

Happy Friday, got a little teary eyed watching this expression of unity. Beautiful thing.