Planet Crimson

So, my current phase is working on reducing my food intake (quantity) and improving the quality of what I eat. To that end, I am working on getting away from drinking soda. But, to do that, I have to break myself of my caffeine addiction. I could literally drink a soda and fall asleep… the caffeine does nothing for me at all. Of course, without it, massive headaches ensue. So, I’m working to wean myself off slowly. I am buying caffeine-free sodas and alternating them with my Pepsi. I’m trying to stop with the empty calories and the High Fructose Corn Syrup, which I’ll be much more able to do if I am not addicted to caffeine. My life is not such that I can just cold turkey it and deal with 3 days of headaches.

Other steps I need to take are to join another gym. The one I’m with right now is never open when I am available. I do NOT want to be at the gym when there’s a lot of people there because of how I look right now. I want to go in the middle of the night when there aren’t many people to contend with. Plus, my current gym is just cardio and weights, and the one Alex goes to has a pool which means no-impact lap swimming instead of treadmilling it on my plantar-fasciitis-sore feeties. (Yeah, I’m working on those too, doing stretches before I get out of bed which is helping a lot with the pain. I’m also trying to spend a few less hours on my feet on the weekends when I work.

So, I have about 150 pounds to lose to where I’d be “comfortable”, and an additional 30 to be “ideal”. I’m not basing those numbers on anything scientific except that if I lose 150, I’ll be back where I was when I was in high school and the year or so following that. I thought I was fat then but I don’t think that was based on reality. I’d be content being at that weight at this point, though I’m sure at that point I’ll be like “I already lost 150, what’s another 30?”… but I’m not setting my goal that high.

So, given a healthy weight loss plan of 1 pound per week, that would mean it would take me 3 years to get there. That seems like an eternity! Let’s assume that at first, given how much I have to lose, I might lose 2 or 3 pounds a week at first. That might cut it down to two years. So, yeah, I’m gonna have to break it down into chunks. Getting below 300 is goal 1, then I’ll work at it in 10-pound chunks (pun intended) to get to 200, then I have only 20 pounds to get me to “comfortable”. That seems do-able, right?

Hopefully, I can drag Charles down to the gym with me, too. He’s already said he will, but he says a lot of things.

So this is my no-willpower gradual plan that should lead me to victory. Wish me luck!

I’m firmly of the opinion that one year of owning your own business and managing employees should be worth 2 or maybe 3 years of doing so in a middle-management position or any position where there is someone above you. As of last week, I am up to 9 dealers, only 1 of which is part-time. 8 people who have no other job but with PN. 8 people whose current livelihoods depend on me making good decisions for the business. 8 people who I have to try and make sure get along with each other and get their job done right.

Add Alex and I to the equation and it’s actually 11 people.

I’m not a big bragger about all that I have accomplished, so I won’t… but damn are we doing well! December 2008 was a lean, lean month for us. Most of our regulars were on vacations, spending time with family, etc… so we were pretty slow. I expected the same for 2009 and boy, was I wrong! We had our best Thursday ever and our best single day ever a few Saturdays ago when we kept two games going strong until 2pm the next day (when one broke), then the other game broke about 6pm, by that time the main game had restarted for the next night.

So, now we’re working on some more promotions. I got rid of some tired old promotions that had outlived their purpose and were a cash drain, and I’m a good solid couple of days’ work away from rolling out a new system to bring our business into the digital age and on par with some of the nicest poker rooms in the world. Such a system would normally cost tens of thousands of dollars to bring to life, but since I am a programmer myself, I was able to accomplish it at a fraction of the cost. All that’s holding me back right now is making sure the system is as user-friendly as I can make it so that it’s something we can seamlessly integrate into the business, not bend over backwards to fit into. I seriously can’t wait to get it going because I’m, by nature, a geek who wants everything to be online.

I’m also still slowly working on my post-30 diet. I feel that I have pretty much put a stop to the bad habit of stuffing myself until I was over-full and only eating enough to satisfy my hunger. Now I’ve been trying to eat stuff that’s better for me. That doesn’t necessarily mean low-fat, low-carb, or low-anything, but I’m trying to reduce my intake of artificial sugars (beyond aspartame which I eliminated a few years ago and now just tell people I’m “allergic” to) and other garbage like that. We have a newer chain called Fresh and Easy that has a lot of healthy, pre-made meals that are ready to cook. Their store-brand food has no preservatives, artificial flavors or colors.

This phase of my diet is less about losing weight directly rather than finding meals and snacks that I can eat every day that will not leave me craving unhealthy junk. I’m not really at the point where I’m going to start tracking any weight loss progress, and I’m not really ready to put my number out there for where I’m at right now. The number I’d like to be at, however, is 180, which is what I weighed when I was in high school and stopped growing. I wasn’t “skinny” at any point in my life that I can remember, but that number is where I want to be to feel that I’ve made it down to where I should be. I believe that I can maintain myself there, and depending on how well I am feeling and doing with my health at that point, I can decide whether or not I want to try and get down to 150, which is where I think is about the lowest I could go given my structure, height, etc. I’m not built to be a 110-pound runway model. I’m realistic.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at today. I’ve been putting in a lot of hours at PN training up a couple new guys and trying to expand my hours, and I’ve gotten so much done. I’m feeling so very positive about where stuff is heading right now.

There’s no reason to write up long-ass blog posts very often when you have Twitter… but thanks to Wordpress-Twitter integration, you don’t have to keep coming and checking to see if I’ve posted something, since it posts there.

That said, I’m in this new era of my business. I’ve connected to so many of my customers and a couple of competitors on Facebook and Twitter now that it limits what I can even talk about on here. I can’t vent about something, and I can’t brag or speculate about new cool ideas. With every major project I’ve embarked upon, I usually enjoy fantastic success because of my own hard work and unique and strategic ideas. For some reason I have yet to put my finger on, this causes others to see how well I’m doing and decide they can either do it better or just plain ol’ copy it. I experienced this a lot with my n00bstories.com website over the last 8 years and now I’m starting to see it a lot with Poker Nation.

The problem is that I always take it personally (inside). When my Facebook page has a suggestion that I become a fan of one of my competitors because one of my favorite customers is a fan, it makes me upset. Logically, it’s just something that’s going to happen, but emotionally, it’s the same feeling as when you have a bad break up or have a fight with a friend and another friend goes and hangs out with them. It feels like betrayal, because I’ve worked so hard to make my place a fun place to hang out. I’ve done my best to make everyone feel welcome and included in everything.

But, while I’m building a community, others apparently just see it as a business and they don’t have to eat steak every night. Something they want a burger.

But, I’m never the type to roll over and just accept it. I transformed my little industry when I walked into it and I’m poised to do it again. Having so many people invest money to emulate me just shows me that what I’m doing hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Seriously, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. It’s October 1st which means my birthday is 23 days away. I have 23 days left of my 20’s. Halfway to 60… holy shit.

On one hand, I met my major age-30 goal. I think it was around the time I turned 27, I decided that I wanted to own my own business by the time I was 30. And this goal would not be achieved with a silly work-from-home making a couple extra bucks every month. I wanted to have a business that actually supported me fully and preferably a couple of employees as well. I hit this goal with time to spare! Early this year, I was able to step away from being at my store every day and gradually got down to only working the two busiest days of the week. And I only work those by choice. Now I get to focus on big-picture items like our social networking, other marketing, business meetings with various people, and of course once in a while I just get to sit around and do nothing productive at all, because I deserve it.

I entered this business that desperately needed someone with brains and talent to do better than the horrible offerings that were out there. A year later, I have pushed the envelope and become the de facto standard. You know you’re doing it right when virtually ALL of your competitors specifically target you in their advertising. There’s even a new place opening up that has copied everything they could from me from their name, to their website URL, to their house rules, to their floor plan/layout. So, the market I entered is very different from the one I’m in now. Now we are way over-saturated. The casinos are able to better compete with the private card rooms now and yet people still open them up and the small pool of players gets spread even thinner. Fortunately, I am well-capitalized and WAY smarter than the other guys and now that I’ve shuffled the wrong people off my bus and strengthened my core team, we have a lot of big awesome stuff coming to keep us as the market leader.

So, I need a new goal. I have two big items to tackle. My debt (personal and business), and my weight. It seems much easier and preferable to attack the debt goal because making money is a lot easier than hitting the gym. At least for me. I was inspired when I met an 80+ year old lady who had just recently (in the last 3 years) lost 150 pounds, which was half her body weight. She was getting her nails done where I get mine done in preparation to go on a 60-day cruise with her daughter.

I never thought of myself as an optimist, cup-half-full type of person but then I thought about it and realized that I actually AM and have been for a long time. I’m a risk-taker because I only see positive outcomes, and that’s usually what happens. I don’t spend a whole lot of time building a cushion to fall down on because I don’t intend to fall. But, that’s what Charles does. So in a way we compliment each other VERY well because he worries about that stuff enough for the both of us, but applies that to paying down his debt quickly and saving up a cushion.

Anyway, I can’t be wasting my time posting on here when I have work to do.

So, the whole moving process is slowly proceeding. It doesn’t appear as though they’re going to be able to work with me on the price, but I did get the price per square foot talked down enough to where I can move into a 1600 sq ft suite (which is 600 more than I have now) for significantly less than I’m paying for my current location. I really wanted more than 1600, but the money I’ve projected to make each month doesn’t cover the increased rent for the new spot, so it doesn’t make sense mathematically. I’m still stuck with figuring out how to get a second bathroom added to the space, but luckily it doesn’t have to be ADA-compliant and can therefore be a very small room with a toilet and a sink.

Other than that, I’ve had to come up with some cool ideas and make some tough decisions and brought myself like 18 steps higher up the “I know what the fuck I’m doing” ladder. Unfortunately, it’s not really stuff that I can talk about on here.

Also, I’m turning 30 in less than 2 months. I’m not really thrilled about it, even though I have achieved most of what I wanted to achieve by this age. The only thing I’m going to fail on is being married. When I turned 27, I decided that by the time I was 30, I wanted to be running my own business and married to Charles. The funny thing is, the former is what made the latter not happen yet. So, it’s not like I can pause time and 30 is going to happen, no matter what, so I have to be content with reaching my goals… and in fact exceeding them in many ways. 3 years ago, I never would have imagined that at this point, my business would be supporting as many as 11 people at one point and 9 people today. That gives me such a huge sense of pride and good old American Dream.

So, I’m looking forward to taking an overnight trip up to the cooler weather in Lakeside, AZ to have a Labor Day BBQ at Mom’s house, and I came up with a new cool promotion to do at Poker Nation which is probably going to be ripped off (like all my other good ideas) by my competitors. It’s one that I have to implement rather quickly but luckily now that I’m down to 6 dealers instead of 9, it’s 33% easier to get a hold of everyone and communicate the changes.