"It Feels Like I'm Living My Dream"

Yesterday was the official launch of our new canned cold brew partnership with The We Will Collective, Iowa State University's NIL collective organization. We started by offering cans in our brick-and-mortar shop, followed by retail availability early next week and direct-to-consumer online sales a few weeks later. As I watched TJ pass out cans to eager Cyclone fans at our soft launch event yesterday morning, I couldn't help but smile. It felt like something big was happening, though none of us could adequately define what that truly means.

Several hours later, I received several missed calls from TJ. I was in a meeting and couldn't answer, but I started getting concerned. I texted him and asked if everything was ok, and if he needed me right away. Turns out, he was just really excited to talk about everything.

A few hours later, I finally had a chance to connect with him. In the first few minutes of the conversation, TJ said something I suspected earlier in the day. "I feel like I'm living my dream." I know this is true. I've felt that way for a while now, but yesterday seemed to cap off a wild 9-month run since opening our doors.

TJ's recipe is simple. Know your calling, grind, fail, learn, grind, fail, learn, continue following the call, grind, fail, learn, and suddenly, you're an overnight success. It's been a 4.5-year journey for him. Nothing about it has been easy. Lesser people (myself included) probably would have given up by now. But not him. His mission was so clear, his why so big, and his patience so great, that nothing was going to defeat his spirit or crush his dream.

Living our dream has a price. We all have different dreams, and the prices to achieve them vary, but there's no free pass. The cost is steep, but the rewards are grand. I suspect TJ already knew this, but having a front-row seat to watch it play out in real-time is special.

Here's my parting thought. I don't think TJ is special. He's just a regular guy, but a regular guy living his dream. If he can do it, so can you, and so can I. If that's true, what's stopping you from going for it?

Riding a Bicycle is Like Riding a Bicycle

I went bike shopping with my kids the other day. Two years ago, we purchased a couple of used bikes off Facebook Marketplace for maybe $50 total. To be honest, these bikes were nearing the end of their life when we got them. They were great first bikes and they most certainly served their purpose. But I promised the boys brand new, hand-chosen bikes for this coming season. They can now ride fully independently, I too love riding bikes, and we now live two blocks from the best bike trail in the state. Needless to say, I’m pumped!

As we were walking through the store, Pax expressed some anxiety about the whole ordeal. “What if I forgot how to ride a bike? What if I can’t do it?” I quickly responded, “it’s like riding a bike.” He stared blankly at me, clearly not understanding my bad joke. You know the expression! Riding a bike is one of those things we quickly pick back up. We can go months or years without riding one, then the moment we hop back on it’s like we never stopped. Call it muscle memory. Call it instinct. Call it magic.

We don’t study to ride a bike, researching the how-tos and techniques for hours on Google and YouTube. We learn to ride a bike by failing to ride a bike. We get on, pedal 20 feet, careen into a ditch, get up, and try it again. Failure after failure, we learn to stay up. Then just like that, we know how to ride. There’s never a moment where we say, “Oh, 5 failures from now I’ll know how to ride it.” We just keep failing until we stop failing. Then we never look back.

Money, work, and life are much the same way. We can research it until the cows come home, but it won’t teach us how to live it. We need to hop on the proverbial bike, scrape our knees, then try again. Each time, we’ll get just a little bit better……until one day we’re soaring down the bike trail of life with the wind in our face and the sun shining down.

Some of you have a bike you’re scared to hop on. You’re terrified of scraping your knees up. You will. You’re nervous you won’t be very good. You won’t be. You think the process will be uncomfortable. It will be. But if you’re willing to get scraped up a few times, you’ll be soaring in no time!

It’s like riding a bike!

There is No Impact Without Failure

During yesterday’s keynote address at a high school FBLA conference, I stressed the importance of failing. We live in a culture that tells us to avoid failure. Even parents protect their children from failing these days. Not only do I dislike this mindset, but I actually think we should pursue failure. In my talk, I shared two primary reasons why failure is important on our journey:

1. There’s nothing worth doing that doesn’t involve the risk of failing. I jokingly mentioned there was still a chance I would botch my talk and completely humiliate myself. However, there was one surefire way I could have avoided the risk of failure. I could have simply stayed home, which would be much safer and ensured nothing bad could have happened to me. On the flip side, staying home also meant I had a zero percent chance of making an impact. You can’t have one without the other.

2. When we fail, we learn. Failing is never fun, but it stretches us and helps us grow. When we put ourselves in uncomfortable situations and force ourselves to figure it out, we will absolutely fail from time to time. Simultaneously, we’ll also learn, adapt, and stretch ourselves. That’s exactly why something that may be uncomfortable at first eventually becomes comfortable. In the absence of failure, there’s an absence of growth.

I’ll leave you with the wise words of the GOAT, Mr. Air Jordan. “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. And 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.”

It’s Never Too Late

Last weekend, a friend approached me and said he had news wanted to share with me. Immediately, his eyes welled up as he started talking. He excitedly shared with me how he and his wife had just become debt free and set into motion a dream they had talked about for so long.

Any time someone shares a big win, I celebrate with them. However, this one felt different. I worked with them nearly a decade ago…..with very little success. And that experience came on the heels of very little success for the prior several decades. Literally decades of wishing, wanting, and not seeing it materialize. But not this time! This time they did it!

It’s never too late. This couple could have given up decades ago, conceding the system was rigged against them. I’m so glad they didn’t. In that moment, I could see so many regrets, mistakes, and failings wipe away from him. It’s like they dissolved right there in an instant.

It’s never too late to do the thing you’ve constantly failed at, were too scared to try, or kept putting off for any number of reasons. It’s never too late!