John Saddington came and spoke to our class today about entrepreneurship. His talk to me was really about how to win at life. He spoke for about 30 minutes, then took questions. All in all I think he was there for about an hour. The Q&A session was my favorite part of everything. When John opens his mouth, wisdom falls out. The guy is super smart, I learn a lot everytime I hear him speak.
Above: Here's yet another blurry picture of John. This is the second time my phone didn't focus on John, while I'm trying to photograph him :(
I recorded John's talk so that I can go back listen again and take detailed notes. However off the cuff here are a few things that stuck out to me: (I'm not going to go into detail on any of the things in this post.)
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E-Commerce is based off of two things:
- Excess Income
- People's laziness (John gave some fantastic examples of stupid ebooks that get sales everyday.)
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The internet rewards Doer's. Just do it. (Whatever your "it" is)
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Timeboxing: this was a term I had never heard before. It is the way that John manages his time, he has a idea in advance with how long something should take him. This gives him a leg up on others when he's able to look at a project and say, "this will take me 170 hours and here's why" vs I can get it done, but I'm not sure how long it'll take.
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Know how much money you need to make a month to survive. Know to the penney, give or take a change in a utility bill.
He spoke about a lot more than the 4 points I listed above. There is a backstory to each of the points I listed above. I am still processing things, and am not in a place to write in more detail at this moment. He also spoke about failure and how much it sucks, and how painful it is. His talk was geared towards anyone who thinks that entrepreneurship/business/doing your own thing is in your future. I am really not giving justice to all that was shared.
Our Weekend Project:
Things are getting more interesting at The Iron Yard. This week for our weekend project, we are building a turn based video game from scratch. It is required to be fully functional, and meet a specific spec. (Which is doable) Then there is all the "optional" bonus, and Power Level 9000 stuff like...
Adding artwork, using a Heroku server and making the game multiplayer, etc. If I don't do anything else I'm going to code in a cheat code, that gives your charter unlimited health (GOD MODE!). All I'm going to say about the cheat code is:
↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A
That code will give my project some "nerd cred" :D HA!
Anyways I need to get to my homework. I have had a fantastic week to date, life is good, and the future looks fantastic!!
About My Cover Photo: This is a 3D scene from the NES game Contra created by NES--Still-The-Best. Whenever I think about Contra I think about the famous Konami cheat code: up up down down left right left right B A [Select] [Start]. (Yes, there is a little boy inside of me who loves video games, lol)
Until Next Time...