I am Jeff

I posed a question on my Facebook page that’s been weighing me down lately…

If there were no limitations or consequences, what would your “perfect” average day look like?

To clarify a couple things in advance:

Limitations: financial, geographical, health, other people, etc.

Consequences: stuff that could get you into trouble or kill you.

Average: you would do all this, every single day, without dying or getting sick of it.

Most of the responses I received were a good start… but I want to go deeper.

So, here’s my “perfect” average day:

The sun shining through the window onto my face wakes me up.  I grab my iPad, check my analytics and adsense accounts to make sure everything is looking normal. Yep, it’s 8am and I’m already at $100. I’d then peruse through my Twitter and Facebook stream really quick, checking for anything worth a damn. Seems like all is well in the world.

I let the dog out and hop in the shower, not even worrying about wether or not I should shave, which obviously means I don’t. When I’m done, I throw on some shorts, a t-shirt, and my trusty flip flops before heading out the door to go grab a quick breakfast at Bumblekiss (a great local breakfast spot). As I get close, I notice there’s a front row parking spot… just calling my name.  I don’t even have to order the eggs benedict, and an ice cold coke. The order was placed the minute the waitress saw me pull up, and it’s delicious, as always.

As I stand up to leave, I overhear a young kid at the neighboring table tell his mom “that car is awesome!” and I can only assume he’s talking about the Maserati Granturismo that awaits me in that front row parking spot. The custom flat black paint job makes it look almost militaristic. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Time to Head to the “Office”

As I press the button to start the car, the radio turns on… AC/CD’s Thunderstruck.  Hell yeah. I pop open the sunroof and I’m on my way.  Today’s turning out to be a pretty good day so far.  They seem to be playing only my favorite songs on the radio… which makes sense, since the car has Pandora radio built in. Of course, I went premium so I don’t even have to listen to the ads.

Since it’s such a nice day, I decide to take the LONG way to the office, so I can get the car out on the freeway where she belongs. I call my assistant, letting her know I’d be about 20 minutes later than normal.  Now usually, going the long way (down the 205, and back up I5) would take a good 40 minutes, but I’m doing 90mph, because in this car that feels like 60.

So, I pull up to my office (hot damn, another front row parking spot) which is in a big warehouse loft in the Pearl District, ready to make things happen. As I enter the building, I’m greeted by my assistant, who promptly fills me in on what the day has in store for us. Apparently I’m meeting with a client, who is looking for some new strategies to increase their online business. So, I spend the next few hours doing some research and preparing for our meeting. When the time finally comes, I throw a couple ideas at them which totally blow their minds, so of course they give the approval to go ahead. Done deal.

My phone rings. It’s my girlfriend (assuming I have one, since this IS my perfect average day). She wants to know if I want to grab lunch. Her office is close to mine, so we often meet up for lunch at our favorite spot. Today, she fills me in on a juicy story that is unfolding with some of her co-workers. I don’t really have anything too exciting to report, other than today has been awesome so far…  so we make plans to take Friday off and head to the beach with friends as we finish up our lunch. Then, we go our separate ways again, surely to meet up later tonight.

As I start walking back to the office, I see a past client eating lunch on the outdoor patio… he quickly invites me to sit down and join him. “Lunch on me!” he proclaims. I explain I already ate with my girl, but I’d sit and chat for a second. We instantly start talking business, because he’s still seeing results from the campaign I put together for his company nearly 6 months ago.

See, because I run my business the way I want to, and work only with people that are a good fit, things always work out this way. It’s almost like we become friends through the process. So, when I see them 6 months later (and more often way sooner) I don’t ever think to myself “oh god, there’s Bob, I better duck and hide”. I genuinely like working with my clients, and judging by their responses when we bump into each other, I think the feeling is mutual.

I get back to the office and decide to start working on the new client project while the ideas are fresh in my mind. After about an hour my phone rings again… this time it’s my buddy Phil. He’s in town visiting his parents, and wants to hang out for a bit before he has to head back down to Long Beach the next day. Sounds like a perfect reason to take the jet skis out, right? So I head home, grab the truck and the skis, and head down to the river to meet up with Phil.

When we’re done tearing up the water, we decide there’s no better way to end the day than some cocktails and a nice juicy steak. So, we head over to one of Portland’s finest steak establishments, the Acropolis, for some drinks, food and a little entertainment. I send my girl a quick text, letting her know what we’re up to, and that she’s welcome to join us, which she doesn’t. She knows it’s important that us men have our “man time” so we spend the next few hours just kicked back, relaxing, talking about the good old days.

As I walk through my front door, I’m instantly greeted by our wet nosed, 4 legged companion, Doc. He gives me the sniff test, approves, and lays back down on his oversized bed as I grab a glass of juice and hit the couch to spend some quality time with my lady friend.

At 11:55pm, I check my analytics and adsense stats one last time to see how the day went and make sure all is well. $240 today. Not bad.

So, that’s my “perfect” average day. I’d love to hear part or all of yours. Leave yours in the comments…

Every year, right around the first week of January, I sit down and evaluate my life. Not in a weird suicidal way or anything, but more like a ‘what’s working and what’s not’ sort of thing. I like to look at it from every angle, business and personal, and evaluate the things that are important, and the things I think I can live without.

So, as some of you may know already, I’ve sworn off two things in 2011. Drinking Coke (for the most part) , and attending Real Estate conferences.

The Coke thing is something I’ve been trying to do for a while now (15 years to be exact) and I just decided 2011 was going to be the year I made it happen. So far so good… in the month of January, I’ve already cut back the amount of soda I drink a considerable amount. I was drinking around 96 ounces per day. For those counting, that’s almost 3 liters and like 90 teaspoons of sugar! The hardest part so far was getting past the caffeine headaches.  But, I conquered those early on and now it’s smooth sailing. I still treat myself to a coke here and there, but nowhere near as much as I used to. Now I can say I “want” a coke, not I “need” a coke.

The second thing I wanted to cut out of my life in 2011 was attending Real Estate conferences. In the last couple years, I’ve attended dozens of conferences all over the country. I’ve gone as a speaker, a sponsor, and a plain old attendee. I’ve seen the best and the worst. Spending thousands of dollars (sometimes per trip) all for what? To say I went? To see my e-friends? It sure as hell wasn’t to get new business. Sure, I could say I learned some things here and there… but at such a huge cost in both time and money, that I just can’t justify it any more. I’d much rather invest both the time and the money into my own personal business or a non Real Estate conference where I would actually learn something new, and I’d be willing to bet I can come out 10x ahead of where I would if I spent it on the same conferences again this year. So, that’s the plan.

At the end of 2011, I’ll look back (and forward) and evaluate if my decision was a wise one or not. I have a feeling, I already know the answer, but only time will tell.

If you’re like me, in that you’re constantly writing “to-do’s” on post it notes and sticking them around yourself, you might want to take a look at TeuxDeux.

TuexDeux is a “simple, designy, browser-based to-do app”.  And they do mean simple.  For those of us who just need a quick and easy place to store to-do’s, TeuxDeux delivers.  As you can see in the above image, each week is broken down by day, and each day is broken down by…  well, nothing actually.  Using simple drag and drop technology, you can arrange your to-do’s in whatever order they need to be completed.  A quick click will cross the item off the list as being complete, and another click erases the item.  If you don’t finish a task, it will automatically carry over onto the next day until you mark it off as complete.

That’s it. No scheduling, no reminders, no bells and whistles. Just a simple, clean, to-do list in all it’s glory.

But, what about when I’m away from my computer?

Never fear, TeuxDeux just released an iPhone app.  The app, which costs $2.99, automatically syncs with your account on TeuxDeux.com and provides you with all the simplicity of the browser based version, from the convenience of anywhere. Don’t have an iPhone? All is not lost! They’re working on a Blackberry version, and releasing the API for other developers as well.

So, when you have a lot of stuff teux deux, get TeuxDeux, and get it done!

What if you took a list of the top 10 (top of mind) “new media” folks on Twitter and threw them into some crazy algorithm that calculates a bunch of numbers and spits out an even larger list of the people that those 10 are following, which then gets thrown against a peer ranking system to rank who the most connected people are?  What would that list look like?

Well, I did just that.  The results are below in the form of my Top 100 Most Connected “New Media” Peeps:

The above list is the list of people that came to my mind when I started thinking of “new media”.  They’re in no particular order.  But, the list below is.

So you can see, just by seeding the system with a few names we’re able to get a pretty extensive list of “new media” types, using a fairly simple (yet fairly complex) algorithm and a couple calls against the Twitter API.  Cool huh?

Although this list was created just for my personal curiosity, one thing I thought to be pretty funny was that someone like @ChrisBrogan was so far down the list. Just barely above @MCHammer, who I’ve never really thought of as a player in the “new media” world.  But, maybe I’m wrong…

Connect with me on Twitter:  @JBern

…if you tried just a little bit harder?