Zoom, zoom

The thrill of the race starts with everyone at the starting position. Ready to take off, revving the engines. The exhilaration of going around the track is all the fun we need the first time we get going.

Get around the track and don't crash. Take it slow if you have to. The goal is to finish. Winning would be great, but not necessary.

The light is red. No one is allowed to move.
Then it turns green, and everyone takes off.

The car starts off slowly, as the engine is full of life.
Picking up speed, the transmission shifts into second gear, then third.

Who cares about finishing, this is fun.
Let's go faster.

Pushing in the clutch, and shifting into fourth and then fifth, the world zooms by as the speed continues to go higher.

100 mph, 110, 120...

Zoom, zoom.

The surroundings become a blur. We can't tell who's watching and who's not.
We're focussed on the race. We have to stay on the road. Speed is the desire.

Zoom, zoom.

The race gets faster as finish line approaches.
The car used to be much slower.
Life used to be slower.

As we look forward to our goals, our vacations, our retirement, time zooms by like a jet fighter until all time stops.

The race will then be over.
We will be dead.
And someone else will take our place as driver of another car in the same race.

Zoom, zoom.

Dealing with my depression

The dark cloud creeps slowly into my mind without a slight hint of a storm.
The storm sneaks up like a burglar, without any notice.
And when it enters, it plays a game of pool with my thoughts, to have a little fun before ransacking my brain.

The pool ball doesn't know that any pocket will do. The burglar doesn't care. He wants to play around. He selfishly toys with my emotions for his own amusement.

And life gets darker in the process.

The slippery slope of depression affects one in three people. I don't know what causes it, just like I'm not 100% certain what causes happiness.

When I'm feeling stormy, I'm useless. I put on a mask and smile, while I cry inside.
Have you ever tried to work and cry at the same time?

I'm not much of an outside cryer, so admitting this is tough for me.

Expressing my feelings isn't easy to start with. Furthermore, the little voice inside me won't stop whispering negative thoughts. Each day that passes, the whisper gets louder, until it gets to a deafening scream.

I cope with my storm by turning off the thought thief's voice.  The only way I have figured out how to turn him off is by getting busy.  Getting busy isn't easy when I can't even find the motivation to have a shower.

In this funk, I secretly wish:
Someone would hold me.
Someone would praise me.

The darkness lifts after a few days.
The storm clouds disappear.
The skies clear with rays of sunshine pouring warmth into my life once again.
Life gets back to my normal while I clean up the debris the storm blew in.

What you want is not what you get

You get what you deserve. Getting is what is given to you when you’re ready to receive it. If you’re not ready to receive it, you get what you are ready to receive.

I'm not talking about the negative things that happen in our lives. I'm talking about the positive desired outcomes that we don't seem to get.

Life is like that. Crunchable, bite size portions so we don’t choke on our food. 

Lottery players dream of winning the lottery only to be pushed into another week of dreaming.

In extreme circumstances, the winner of the lottery spends their new found money within five years. They get rich in money. They stay poor in thinking.

More money makes people stupid.

But there's hope.

Look at your life and analyze what you really want.

Then ask yourself why you don’t have it yet without blaming other people or circumstances.

The life you lead is yours and no one else’s. The reason you might not have something is because you’re not ready for it.

You think you’re ready. But you have a blindspot. 

What could your blindspot be?

What are you not taking into consideration?

Let’s use a different example. Some people want world peace. It’s impossible to want world peace when you can’t get along with your spouse, sister or children.

So how could people want more money when they don’t know how to manage the money they have? More money doesn’t solve today’s problems. It just makes the old problems bigger.

You get what you deserve, because life is played like a game.

You can’t collect $200 until you pass Go. You have to go around the same path a few times before you have enough money to buy that house. You have to accumulate income producing assets to generate wealth.

The lottery isn’t the answer.

That one business idea isn’t the answer.

The answer is you.

You have to work harder, work smarter, think faster and interpret patterns that already exist but no one else sees.

You will get what you deserve.

So how do you change what you deserve?

How committed are you to changing? How hard are you willing to change in order to be ready to receive life’s next great gift?

Answer those questions and you’ll get exactly what you deserve when you’re ready.

How to evaluate a business

There are a number of different ways to evaluate a business's value.

Here's how I simply evaluate them. There's only one question that matters: Can you make a reasonable return on your investment given the amount of profit left over at the end of the year?

I define reasonable as 20-25%.

A typical rule of thumb that I like to use is 3 - 5 times EBITDA. EBITDA is an accounting term that stands for "Earnings Before Interest Taxes Depreciation and Amortization". To calculate it, you take the profit before taxes and add back in any interest, depreciation and amortization. Multiply that number by 3 and 5 and you have the low and high ranges of the business value.

If you can't calculate a business on profit because there isn't any, it doesn't mean the company is worthless.

If the business has real assets like inventory or equipment, the value can be determined at a percentage of the depreciated asset value on the balance sheet.

For instance, a restaurant that has no profit may have equipment worth $200,000 for sale. There is obviously value in the equipment. The question of how much value is dependant on the motivation of the seller and the willingness of the buyer. 

I recently talked to a business owner who had profits of $100,000 but wanted $800,000 for his business. At 8 times EBITDA, I immediately wanted to look at the balance sheet. The balance sheet had assets valued at $320,000. 

The value of his business is worth $300,000 to $400,000 to me.

Unfortunately, it is worth twice that to him.

A motivated buyer who overpays for a business is going to have below average returns on his investment. The buyer also jeopardizes the viability of the business when he overpays. The financial commitment might be too high for any return. Securing bank financing will almost be impossible. 

When a business is worth more to the seller than it is to the buyer, a deal is hard to do.

For any deal to happen, you need both a willing buyer and a motivated seller.

If the seller isn't motivated, then a reasonable deal will be as difficult as pulling your own teeth with a set of pliers without a shot of whisky.

Evaluate the motivation of the seller before talking price. Don't waste your time with someone who is looking for a 100% premium above the EBITDA value or the depreciated asset value. Make an initial reasonable offer. If the seller doesn't respond positively, walk away.

There can be no deal if the seller's expectation is unreasonable.

A story about what happens with office technology

Once upon a time, a young kid, Sam, graduated from university. He didn't know much about computers, but he was always willing to try new things. Screwing things up didn't scare him.

The boss, Doug, hated computers and limited his usage to sending and receiving emails. Even then, if the young man wanted an answer before next week, he was better off dropping by the office. The boss was used to a different time when all notes were dictated and typed by a secretary on her typewriter.

The young man could see brilliance in his boss's eyes. But his technical skills on a computer were equal to a three year old's penmanship.

There was another person, John, working with Sam who was the same age as Doug. He liked his job, but computers were getting the best of him. He felt like they would break if he hit the wrong key. He was afraid of them ever since the manual work had gone on them.

The computers sensed it.

And the computers got stronger. And with it so did the internet.  Doug and John liked the internet. They could see sports scores and news highlights. Even Facebook was a blessing. They could find friends they hadn't seen in 25 years.

The day to day tasks on the computer got harder and more complicated. Most of the easy stuff got transferred to smart phones.  The young kid was getting older. He grew into the internet, but didn't grow up with it.

Sam was now forty years old. His boss and John were fully struggling in their careers. Doug and John never had smart phones. They didn't even like cell phones. The young kid would do most of their computerized work for them until the company recognized how much of a burden they were. The two older guys were downsized and ended up working at Walmart until they retired.

Sam continued to work but every year got harder. New systems were released every 90 days. Phones made him accessible 24/7. There was no shut off switch from office emails. Change was harder to accept.

Why can't we just do it the old way?
It used to work before.
It will still work now.

Sam's new boss was 25 years old. He grew up with the internet. He had computers in his house since he could walk. Change was the only thing normal in his life.

Sam no longer could keep up to the kids. They were all quicker on the new technology than he was.

Sam was still smart. But a lot of the stuff he knew didn't matter in the way things were done now.

The work world had changed. And he didn't see it.

Then it hit him. He was exactly like Doug and John. He had kept current on the technology he understood. Until it passed him by.

Technology will always move faster than our willingness to learn it.

Unfortunately, our willingness slows down increasingly with age.

A major crisis has to happen every 80 years

Major wars generally happen every 80 years.

It's not time that is relevant. It's the people.
Time doesn't click that way. People do.
Time does not exist. It is an illusion people created to bring structure to their existence.

Here's why wars have to happen every 80 years.

A generation is defined by a group of people born roughly within a twenty year period. It takes four generations to completely forget the problems of its 80 year old predecessors.

We raise our kids the way we wanted our parents to raise us. We fix the deficiencies of the past and thus create new ones unknowingly.

These deficiencies repeat themselves every four generations.  It's like the earth needs 365.25 turns before it completes one cycle around the sun.

We need four generations to return to our starting point as a civilization.

In Strauss-Howe's book "Fourth Turning", the authors demonstrate how every major crisis was started when a "Hero" generation comes of age.

The hero generation hasn't been seen since they fought the Nazis.
Heros have re-emerged in the millennial generation.

Why can Donald Trump win the US election?
He offered in the last election and nobody took him serious.

His message is as obnoxious as her hairdo. His arrogance hasn't subdued. He promises the exact same things as he did four years ago.

But this time, people are listening.
Some might think that everyone's tired of the same old political rhetoric.

Trump might be considered a breath of fresh air that way.

Four years ago, the hero generation wasn't ready to influence the rest of the population.
Now they are.  Some of them are 33 years old.

The Hero generation is biting at the bit to get into a fight. They don't want to talk about fixing the world like their "Nomad" parents did before them.

They are going to fix it.

North America is about to go through a major crisis. Nothing like it has never seen in 80 years.

The Heros are lining up.

Musing of a troubled mind

The harder I try, the harder it gets.

The faster I run, the farther I move away from my goal.

I don't know if this makes any sense, but everything I was taught about trying might be wrong. Remember when we were younger, our teachers would encourage us by saying, "You just need to try harder".

Yoda says there is no try, just do.

I know what I want.
I've been sending mixed messages.
Because I'm in conflict with what I want and what I need to do.

Does anyone else out there ever feel like they are settling in order to get what they need.

I don't believe strong enough that everything will be ok without total effort.
I have tried to believe before without result.

There I go again, using that messy "T" word.

Once in my life, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted. I chased it until I got it. It took me 22 months to get it.  The lesson I learned was persistence was the key to achievement. Interestingly enough, the thing I got wasn't what I wanted. I sold it after 7 years only to put me in the exact position I was 10 years ago.

Am I going crazy?

I don't think anything comes easy. I think challenges are God's way of asking us if we are serious about our wishes.

Challenges are a person's way to self-select out of an opportunity.

I do this all the time with people who want to work with me.
Why wouldn't God use the same strategy on me?

I don't want to survive. Anyone can do that.
I want to thrive.
I want to leave something on this earth after I die.

My wife thinks my desire is primal. She thinks our inability to have biological children drives my fire to create something else.

Could it be that an inability to plant a seed drives a desire to make something else remarkable?

Awesome Aline is smart in the way of these things.
I think she's right.