I’m not really sure if fundamentals can ‘technically’ change or not since they are “fundamentals” & all (the foundation and most basic part of our beings)…but I’d like to think that I can change whatever about myself when ever I want, or need to.

I was very quickly getting sick of my life (I recognized a pattern about two weeks ago), doing the same things that I’ve always done and expecting to get different (BETTER) results.
The end outcome wasn’t changing, so I decided to make it change…I only have one life and I better be the best ‘Chais Meyer’ that I can be! I always have the opportunity to compare myself to the countless other 27 year olds that have already made millions of dollars, sold multiple business and met the president of some far off country…but where would that get me? Life is based off of ‘Cause and Effect’ & what I did ten years ago, one year ago, or one week ago helped create a road map to where I AM today (as good or as bad as that is). The question that comes to mind after realizing this is, “What am I going to do today (the Cause) to change my future (the Effect) for the better?”
I can no longer be the victim because I AM THE VICTOR…and I need to start cusing acting like it!

“Take Responsibility for yourself and change your cusing fundamentals!”, I yelled at myself in the hotel room.
No one is going to take you by the hand and make you be better, stronger or smarter…YOU are the only person responsible for you!
DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME READER!?! YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU!

For me, that means sleeping less (from 9 hours to 5 or 6 a night has been good so far), learning more (applying myself and dedicating one hour or more each day to learning something that will better my tomorrow), applying myself (TAKING ACTION, ideas are great but their just ideas if they never get implemented) and limiting the amount of time I spend on things that distract me from progression (AKA. Disc Golfing and the above ;)!

Keep Pushing & Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

[image used from: http://studio.angoulvant.net/tag/3d-fundamentals/]

Just now commenting on the book ‘Crush It‘ may seem a little late, as it was officially released back in 2009, but Gary Vaynerchuck just appeared on my radar…and I’m glad he did!

I first saw Gary when I went to an Up-lifting / Technological / Entrepreneurial conference in Omaha, Nebraska a few months ago (called BIG Omaha). Gary was one of the speakers and spoke about business, the web and all around randomness while he was answering questions that were asked by the audience; He’s a Total Stud, a creative thinker, a free speaker (he speaks his mind & cusses a lot), he’s inspirational, and an extremely potent individual (in the nicest way possible ;).

As soon as I heard about his book ‘Crush It’, I had to buy the audio version and see if Gary was ‘just another business guy’ or something more…I’ve since discovered that he’s definitely more!

I’ve listened to a lot of business related audiobooks and Gary’s is the most real audiobook I’ve EVER heard!
What makes an audiobook more REAL than the next?

• First, Gary goes off the script a lot in this book! This is right in line with his unedited episodes on his Video Podcast (for Wine Library TV). ‘Going off the script’ is exactly how it sounds…he stops reading the words that he wrote in his book and starts explaining in more detail, gives real world examples and he even comes up with new thoughts as he’s recording the audiobook and shares them with his listeners. This, in my opinion, is how ALL audiobooks should be…If the author wants to mention something else to his listeners, just do it…share any/all of your thoughts if they may help us get a more complete experience from your book, even if it wasn’t in your initial published draft! Thanks Gary for helping me find what I was missing in 95% of all audiobooks!
• Second, Gary speaks to his readers/listeners in a no bull shit way, “You’re not going to get rich over night, it may take months or years until your hard work pays off”. Thank you for not feeding us with another round of crap, the kind that eventually leads people to a feeling of disappointment because of their limited results after 2 months of ‘hard work’!
• Third, Gary puts a massive priority on what it takes to make yourself & your business(es) a success & that is Sweat (you know, the liquid that comes out of our pores when we do something that is intense)! When we realize the importance of our own hard work and how it’s the only thing that gives us a leg up over the next guy, we will change our priorities and stop expecting someone to just hand us success because we put 20 hours a week in on a particular project or business.

If you want to either create or re-create your own personal or business brand, this book  is a must have (the audiobook version is my recommendation)!

Thanks again Gary for sharing your thoughts, examples, and experiences with us to hopefully better ourselves.
Please listen to this book and tell me what you think of it and have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

:: I’m going to be updating my progress as I start to re-create my own personal brand over these next few months…Stay Tuned & CLICK HERE if you’d like to subscribe through email…I’ll send you a new email every time I write or record a new blog post!

This image is great because the guy in this picture looks as proud to have $17 as we are.

This was truth about 5 days ago…I looked in my online personal checking account and saw a dollar sign “$” with the following numbers “17.00″. Unfortunately, this was not a mistake by Wells Fargo, they did NOT accidentally move the decimal point over two places from the end of the number, we actually had $17 in our checking account.

This is not a pity cry or a call out for help, I am proud to have $17 in my checking account!
Why? Because this is ‘the real dirty’ of not living a typical 9-5 lifestyle, of working for ourselves and putting all of our extra cash and resources into our businesses that will someday repay us for scraping by in order to feed our businesses.

Could we do it another way? Could we work a full time job and also make our businesses grow?
Yes & Yes.

There’s no right or wrong when it comes to living life the way you want to. For us, it’s all about constant progression…if we are moving towards a growth direction and we’re seeing constant change for the better (personally and professionally) we are willing to have a harder short term (and a better long term). On the other hand if we’re sitting back, blowing our money and wasting our time, we deserve to be in a tight spot without the reward of our business growing for the future. The fact of the matter is that we’re running, pushing, and sometimes fighting to get what we want…we plan to have a huge financial turn around during these next 6 months…and that news will be even more exciting to share!

Business is not always easy & it’s sometimes dirty, but as long as you have a higher purpose, bless others (individuals and businesses), and work with more passion than the next guy/gal…things will eventually go your way.

Have an Awesome day & don’t forget to thank your God for what you have!
~Chais & Shawna Meyer

I was doing some random work for Computer Hardware about a two years back and I helped them make some movie posters for their ‘Home Theater’ side of their business.

I took a few original movie posters and slowly converted them into vectors.
If you know how to use vector files (.eps and .ai files) please click the “Download” Sticky note below to use this artwork for your own use. The text can be modified as I’ve included the fonts in this zip file…

I hope you enjoy some freebies (this falls under the creative commons license).
Have an awesome day!
Chais Meyer

A buddy of mine (Mike Nyffeler) sent me a link to this video today, and it really helps me see ‘what we really want out of life’…Purpose.

Take 10 minutes and watch this video, it will reinforce some thoughts you may have about your own life and what drives you.

I was shooting the shit (AKA. Talking) with a buddy of mine, in my office today. We started talking about business and happiness. The conversation was started by him recognizing my chalk board walls and the writing that is on them. (my wife and I painted 50% of the walls in our office with chalkboard paint to help us visually layout our ideas and thoughts everyday)
This particular section of the wall was designated for our “Star Customers”, the customers that do everything right and then some. This list is ongoing and ever changing to help us identify what makes up our Star customers and how we can get more of them.

For us, a Star customer recognizes growth potential in themselves and their business, they want to learn and better themselves rather than having someone spoon feed them everything. Knowing this, we can manipulate our current business systems to reward these Star customers. This is not standard business logic, “rewarding customers, it will never work, we’ll lose money on that”, says corporate America.

We’re starting to see this ‘new agey’ business logic with a lot of young business owners because they’ve seen how happy customers (and employees) make for an extremely profitable and Happy business.

Maybe I’m noticing this new model in more businesses recently because I’m reading Tony Hsieh’s (CEO of Zappos) new book, “Delivering Happiness” (http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com), which is absolutely incredibly! This book is an overview of Tony’s life (Personally & Professionally), with his wins and losses along the way. He’s inspired me to be better at focusing on happiness instead of money, and then the money will take care of itself.

I’m striving to make every business I’m involved with a true success (according to my customers and employees), not Gross Profits. My wife & I are super passionate about this and challenge you to look at life this way. Take a look at Tony’s new book and tell us what you get of it, here’s the Amazon link if you’d like to buy it and check it out (http://www.amazon.com/deliveringhappiness).

Make others Happy in Life and you will be too!
Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

This is a really interesting question, part of me believes that we’d like to know everything that’s going on in our world…but I’m not so sure if most people really do want to know some of the shitty stuff that happens out there...

‘Is Ignorance Bliss‘…to you?
If you don’t know, try asking yourself the questions below and see if you can come up with an honest answer for each one (would you really want to know?).
- Would you want to know if everything you’ve “known” about Your religion turned out to be a farce, made up by people in power for control?
- Would you want to know if the majority of wars were started to help a few individuals/companies make an extra buck?
- Would you want to know if our government was corrupt to the core?
- Would you want to know if your significant other has been cheating on you?
- Would you want to know if you’re favorite athlete or movie star had been manipulating the system (with drugs, steroids, breaking the law, sleeping their way to the top (AKA. Sex for Success), etc.) to make them who they are today?
- Would you want to know every person that dislikes you and why they do?
- Would you want to know if the life you have lived up until now has been a total lie and is orchestrated by someone else?

If you answered no to any of these questions than you’ve decided that ignorance is bliss you in some circumstances. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, I just wonder why we as humans don’t want to know the 100% truth all of the time, shouldn’t that make us better people? Can we be our best without knowing the truth?

I don’t have an answer to these questions yet, it was just a thought I had the other day and I wanted to get other peoples’ take on it all.
What are your thoughts? Is there something wrong with the ‘Ignorance is Bliss’ mentality or do we need it to stay sane in our world of chaos?

Thanks for letting me share my thoughts with you & have an Awesome Day (Even if you really don’t want to know what’s happening during the day today ;)…I’m Kidding!
~Chais Meyer

About a month ago I met this guy named Tyler Wilterding (here’s his facebook page), a New pastor at a New Church plant in Kearney, Nebraska (the Church is called “The Table”).

I’m generally turned off by pastors and the standardization of organized religion because of what it all stands for…I realize that not every organized religion or church is the same, or even close in some cases, but I feel when the idea of ‘togetherness’ is to believe the “I’m right, you’re wrong and you’re going to burn Forever unless you follow my way of believing…” message, I don’t really belong.

My God is different than that, not pushy, arrogant or right until the very end…in my opinion, those things are not the vision I have of what/who God is.
This is probably why I felt comfortable around Tyler right away, he didn’t push me in any direction, he let me share my viewpoints and didn’t argue anything with me, he treated me like what I imagine the Biblical Jesus Christ is supposed to represent…Love!

Tyler asked me to have lunch with him and pick my brain about beliefs, the local Kearney people and to get my idea of where the 20 something’s mindsets are when it comes to religion. I pre-warned him that I’m not an expert on any topic and I just have my opinions to share…that’s it. He was okay with this so we had a beer and burger for lunch (that’s how it should be, drinking a beer with a pastor at lunch time…) and discussed all of the above.
Tyler mentioned to me that he wasn’t happy with his website and I felt okay telling him that I also thought it looked like crap and that I’d be glad to help him set up a new one.

He paid the basic fees (like $50 - $70) and I configured / set up the new site for him. He’s been managing his new website (http://www.thetablekearney.com) for about a week now, and I’m happy that he’s happy with the results.
For the work that I did for him, we would normally charge a customer $2,200/year to do the same thing…all I wanted of him is to pay it forward to someone else that needs something. Wouldn’t our world be better if these type of ‘pay it forward actions’ were done all of the time? Could we do one remarkable thing for someone every month, week or even day, without asking anything in return?

Think about how you can help someone with a talent that you already have, after you decide on a couple things that you can do to help,  just make them happen…don’t put to much thought into it…you may think your way out of helping someone because of the time and/or energy commitment it may take to get the tasks completed…just do it!

Thank you for reading and have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

:: [Update: Tyler has since gifted me with 2 frisbee golf discs and a $20 gift certificate to a local restaurant. Thanks Tyler!

The story of charity: water - The 2009 September Campaign Trailer from charity: water on Vimeo.

Last week I was at a conference of young entrepreneurs in Omaha, Nebraska and I heard a talk from Scott Harrison.

Scott is the founder of Charity: Water, he shared and explained with us the situation of water, or the lack of water, for hundreds of millions of people living on this earth.

I don’t normally rally behind fund raising campaigns because I feel like there are so many unknowns about the projects…Where’s the money actually going, how’s it actually getting spent, and who is in charge? After hearing Scott’s stories, reading on this website and learning about the situation myself, my wife and I decided to do something to help.

We get fresh drinking water everyday and we don’t think anything about it. We don’t ever stop to think about the people out there (near 1 billion people) that don’t have this privilege! If we can start a small page on the web and donate $20 to help one person have fresh drinking water for 20 years…Why wouldn’t we?

If not us, then who? If not today then when?

Start making a difference today and help change other people’s lives forever! Donate Here.

Thank you very much for reading this post and have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

:: Please let us know what you’ve heard about this company and we’ll talk to you soon!

This Blast from the past is one that helped me develop my marketing mind. It brought to my attention that I need to think about who’s listening to my story, instead of how great I think my story is. Take a look and tell me your thoughts. (This post was originally written on October, 1st 2007)

Marketing (in the form of advertising) affects who it affects…

Words following this statement might be something like this:
Duh…
No, Really…
Wow, That’s deep (with a hint of sarcasm)…

But it is so true and simple that we (especially myself) forget about it.

I was with my mom watching television last week and we saw an Alltel (cell provider) commercial that has the 4 guys (they represent the other cell phone companies) and “Chad” (from Alltel). The four guys always do something silly or stupid to make Alltel look like a better company. My mom loves these commercials (absolutely loves them…) and I…not so much.

So, I think to myself that this commercial is a waste of time and money and that if I were to do it, I would do them a different way (I don’t know everything about commercials, but I know my own tastes and what effects me). The interesting part is that my mom loves it the way it is, maybe my way wouldn’t effect the people that it currently does in a positive way.

Using myself and my views as a basis to judge whether all marketing is good or bad, is an incomplete way of looking at it. I need to view it (marketing) from other’s points of view (my mom and people like her), as well as from my own. This combined point of view is the middle ground that every non niche company tries to find. It requires more work and is more time consuming, but it is the area that I need to be shooting for.

What I learned:
1. Look into marketing deeper (my own, other company’s and individual’s)
2. Don’t judge what works or doesn’t off of 30 seconds of thought (I need to push myself to grow).
3. Don’t forget about the customers / partners / investors that don’t think like me!

I hope you enjoyed this Blast from the past & have an Amazing Day!
~Chais Meyer