Always Be Closing

This video is awesome and he’s got a good lesson: Always Be Closing. Phil Jackson (coach of the LA Lakers), showed this video to his team before the start of Game 5 of the 2008 NBA Western Conference Finals to inspire/motivate them. It’s from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross starring guys like Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, Al Pacino, and Ed Harris.

Dream Kids Job: LEGO Builder

Remember those tiny little blocks of plastic that came in multiple colors with long detailed instruction manuals? I don’t know about you, but when I was a little kid, I loved playing with LEGOs. In fact, I was never into the other brands of constructor toys (i.e. Mega Blocks which I always thought were a LEGO ripoff, or K’NEX which I thought were awkward to play with, etc.).

This morning I came across an article about Nathan Sawaya. He left his job as a corporate lawyer to become a professional LEGO model builder and now he earns 6 figures building life size sculptures out of LEGOs! That’s awesome. I would assume the demand for an expert LEGO builder doesn’t mean thousands of kids can grow up hoping to be LEGO builders for a living, but it’s nice seeing someone do something they love, that’s fun, and makes them a lot of money. Here’s some cool pictures:

If you want more photos, there’s a whole slideshow here.

Michael Phelps and Inspirational Rap Songs

If you’ve followed my blog, you’ll know I love inspirational quotes and songs. Last month I wrote a post detailing some of my favorite inspirational rap songs.  Over the weekend I came across a featured article on Yahoo! (it was on the front page) which explored the topic of what music Michael Phelps listens to:

In nearly every camera shot of Michael Phelps on dry land, he can be seen with iPod headphones dangling from his ears. The earbuds are a ubiquitous presence in the ready room and on the starting block; they’re just as much a part of Phelps’ ‘uniform’ as goggles and a swim cap. About two minutes prior to the start of a race, Phelps sheds the iPod along with his warm-ups. So, what is he listening to?…

Phelps listens to hip-hop music on his [iPod]. He says it helps motivate him before a race.

Phelps has said that “I’m Me” by Lil’ Wayne has been on his playlist in Beijing.

Other artists that populate Phelps’ iPod include: Jay-Z, Young Jeezy, Eminem and Outkast….[he] usually keeps things rap-centric. Phelps doesn’t speak much about the specific songs he’s listening to, but he did tell NBC in 2004 that Eminem’s “‘Til I Collapse” was on his most-played list at Athens.

Sweet. So Phelps gets pumped to the same music that I do. And judging by the fact that my last post on the subject is the most read post of all time on this blog, I figured a lot of other people get inspired by rap songs. With that said, I thought it’d be cool to break down some of the songs Phelps listens to.

Using Public Transport? Alma Mater Gear Required

First time is chance.  Second time is coincidence.  Third time is a pattern.

The past 3 times I’ve used public transport (outside of Philadelphia) in 3 seperate states in the US, I’ve run into Penn students and alums all because one of us was wearing something Penn affiliated. You never know who you’ll meet out there, but wearing alma mater gear seems like a good choice on public transport.

Life is Beautiful

I had really hoped to save this post title for a longer post on personal mantras (coming up) and the power of mental thinking, but I came acros a post today that really makes me just think “life is beautiful.” The post is from the current CEO of OLX, Fabrice Grinda. His entry details his transition from a young and socially awkward guy into a socially adept and confident entrepreneur, dater, and all around balanced person. I met Fabrice last year and he came off as a very confident and empowered person as well as entrepreneur — he sold his last company for $80 million a couple years ago. So a post like this was really interesting, because I would have never guessed what he was like before.

I also think on some level I can relate with a transition phase, although I feel like a lot of my growth as a person happened in high school from the ages of 14-17. I without a doubt know I’m going to change a lot as I grow older and enter new life phases. I always feel like I have more room to improve and grow. I think at the end of the day, it’s just truly beautiful to look at how we can grow and develop as people — how we can learn and change ourselves into more complete versions.

US Presidential Election Markets 08

Prediction markets and betting markets tend to be an interesting comparison to traditional polling. I pulled up a research paper from The University of Iowa which runs the Iowa Election Markets as a way for people to bet real money on the outcomes of the election. The IEM is regulated by the US government and setup as a research study tool. The abstract of their April/June 2008 paper reads:

We gather national polls for the 1988 through 2004 U.S. Presidential elections and ask whether either the poll or a contemporaneous Iowa Electronic Markets vote-share market prediction is closer to the eventual outcome for the two-major-party vote split. We compare market predictions to 964 polls over the five Presidential elections since 1988. The market is closer to the eventual outcome 74% of the time. Further, the market significantly outperforms the polls in every election when forecasting more than 100 days in advance.

Today I checked out the betting odds on the US Presidential Election in 2008. The money right now is on Obama to win at a 66.67% implied probability of success. Yet if you look at the average poll numbers on RealClearPolitics (averages out all the major US polls like Gallup, Pew, etc) Obama averages 46.8% in polls with 11% of voters undecided on average. Even if all of the undecided voters go to Obama, it still seems that the current polls would have Obama at 57.8%.

So on one hand we have the gambling markets which say Obama wins 66.67% of the time and on the other hand we have the public polls which even in the most extreme case go 57.80% for Obama. My friend Kiley made a good point that part of the discrepancy can be attributed to the fact that the polls are overall national popularity polls, whereas the betting markets take into account relative popularity in key swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Still, I’m not sure what the rest of the market discrepancy is caused by.

The election is only 82 days away. It seems that based on the research paper of the IEM and the strong confidence as well as discrepency in the gambling markets (where millions of USD are bet on the Presidential outcome), Obama is going to take this one. It will be interesting to see how the prices move in the election markets as we get closer to November.

NBC Makes Sharing the Olympics Impossible

I wanted to embed some videos of Olympic events on my blog, but unfortunately NBC has been shutting down videos all across the Internet for copyright infringement. Instead of making content embeddable everywhere, they choose to keep it in their silo. I should be able to easily share any piece of Olympic content to my friends on Facebook or on my blog. I should be able to find any Olympic video quickly on YouTube. Unfortunately that’s also not possible.

I couldn’t even find ways to share video off of NBColympics.com, which is the official Olympics website. I think they could’ve at least provided direct links I could send to people. Last night Phelps hit his 5th Olympic gold medal. So far I’ve seen each of his races and it’s unreal. He is a beast in the water. Unfortunately I can’t share any of his races here.

Lessons from Religious Marketing

Over the course of the past few weeks I’ve consistently seen the same elderly black woman sitting on a bench on Penn’s campus handing out flyers for a Christian organization. The other day, I sat down at a bench nearby this lady to eat a nice sandwich in the beautiful weather.

Only one thing really struck me — she spoke Mandarin Chinese to every Asian person that walked by. I only took 3 weeks of Mandarin at Penn before dropping the course, but I could recognize it instantly and I watched her several times converse with people who spoke Mandarin. She could talk pretty freely with them. She speaks Mandarin, that’s pretty smart I thought to myself. The other thing I quickly noticed was that she did not engage anyone who looked anything other than Asian.

Running in a Thunderstorm

Sunday in Philadelphia was heavy rain, thunder, and lightning; a thunderstorm. It lasted all day long and well into the evening. It was in the cool 60s all day long with a nice breeze. For me this was a perfect time for a beautiful 7 mile run.

I put on a pair of running shorts, socks, and my running shoes before stepping outside of my house. I was drenched in about 5 seconds. I headed out on a fairly solid 7:15 minute mile pace.

There’s very few things that I enjoy as much as long hard runs in drenching rain. I don’t like drizzles. If I’m running in the rain and getting wet, I want heavy down pours. Rain so thick that it’s nearly blinding. It is a nice change up to the usual running workout in the blistering summer heat.

The Transition of Niches into Mainstream

One thing I’ve thought about lately is consumption, media, and population pools. My thoughts have really centered around niche sports and hobbies emerging into the mainstream markets. The first business I ever did online was selling things like Pokemon cards, Beanie Babies, Playstation 2s, etc. on auction sites like Yahoo! Auctions (RIP) and eBay. It was really just finding emerging products and hype/fad items. I’ve always enjoyed following trends on ideas or products. It’s all about where culture transitions to.

Ethnic Food in Philadelphia

One of my favorite parts of Philadelphia is the wide variety of eateries out there. Lately I’ve established a nice mix of international/ethnic food spots. I like adventure eating and trying new foods all the time. The best experiences are the times when I go to an authentic restaurant with a friend who is from that culture or familiar with the culture and I let them pick out our meals for the night. I usually don’t even ask what they ordered. I prefer not to know; it’s more exciting that way and I’ll eat pretty much anything you put in front of me.

Lessons from an entrepreneur turned investor

The other day I had a long chat with a friend of mine who has started and exited several start ups in his life. He is now an angel investor in early stage companies. We discussed at great length some of the lessons he has learned since he first started investing in start ups and how his experience as an entrepreneur reflects upon those lessons. I thought it’d be useful to write up some of the main points we discussed (keep in mind all investors are different):

• Invest in people who are down, but never out. He prefers watching people go through hard times and seeing how they handle them. In his words “You can really tell a lot by how someone acts when they are in a corner, when they are forced to survive…not when they are flying high.” For people like this, being down is a temporary state of being — it really shows their ability to maneuver when they don’t have all the cards going their way.
  

I love me some NFL

Yesterday, 2 awesome things happened in my life.

The first is that the NFL pre-season kicked off with the annual Hall of Fame game. I think I almost forgot the feeling of watching real football on TV. And this was just pre-season where no one except the guys really trying to make the team work hard and where the starters don’t really play. It was still exciting to watch all the action live and to feel the energy of the game enter into my system once more.

The second thing that happened yesterday is that I participated in a Fantasy Football draft for the only league that I do each year — a league with my some of my closest high school buddies that is entering it’s 6th year. The league started in 2003. It’s crazy to think how long I’ve known the guys in my league and how awesome it is to be a part of the league each year. We play for no money. It is absolutely all about the pride and status associated with being the champion and having your name engraved in our trophy. This is why I love fantasy sports. This is why I love running a company that makes fantasy sports possible for the millions of people on social networks.  It never gets old. Year after year after year. It keeps us all in touch, it gives us an avenue of competition, and it makes following the NFL about 10 times more fun.

Here’s the team I drafted:

QBs (start 1): Matt Hasselbeck, Matt Leinart

RBs (start 2): Clinton Portis, Earnest Graham, Fred Taylor, Chester Taylor, Ricky Williams, Leon Washington, Xavier Omon

WRs (start 3): Terrell Owens, Santonio Holmes, Chris Chambers, DJ Hackett, Ernest Wilford, Sidney Rice

TE (start 1): Kellen Winslow