The trip itself was only about 24 hours and since I had just broken another window regulator in the convertible I rented a Jeep Patriot for the trip. It still feels weird to be in a vehicle that high.

Thursday evening was a business dinner hammering out the details of a couple of projects. Friday morning was breakfast with Steve and Friday afternoon was lunch with Rush and Todd. I think I may go there for a few days in June while Lindsay is off on her trip so I can do some more catching up.

Personally I’m dating a great girl whom I’ve been with for six months. I can’t thank Lindsay enough for the happiness and stability she brings to my every day life. She’s been a key to a lot of this.

I’m also thankful for my many friends who continue to support me and in turn whom I try to help and support when I can.

Life is good.

So I purchased his book, Killing Sacred Cows.

One of my initial impressions of the book is it wasn’t written as a beginners financial book…or a “how to”. I asked Garret about this in a phone call and he confirmed it the book wasn’t for your average person. In actuality, the book isn’t as much about finances, as it is in finding your Soul Purpose or the reason you exist. In doing so, by Garret’s theory, you will be happier and more successful…and that doesn’t necessarily mean financially.

While there are some very interesting concepts in the book, a section I read tonight, really hit home based on a long ago relationship and a recently failed relationship. In this particular section, Garret talked about how he became so obsessed with being “debt free” and having a certain amount of “security” that he was in fact going backwards and denying himself and his family things that would bring happiness and productive results into their lives. According to Garret, he truly realized this when he told his wife they couldn’t move out of their small apartment because it would cost them too much money to have a house…and then he realized that he had a successful consulting business AND fourteen cash flowing rental properties. He quickly changed his mind and the happiness of his family and the positivity and productive mentality the home purchase brought into his life quickly led to an increase in financial success in his professional life.

I’d like to make clear this isn’t giving people a license to buy whatever they want guilt free. If you can afford a purchase and it is going to bring lasting happiness into your life and make you more productive, then the theory is this positivity will in turn boost your production

Now my place is not to debate whether this is BS or not, but each of the multi-millionaires I know are the most positive people I know. That being said, I can only relay my personal story that followed a similar path recently.

When the first “Love of My Life” aka the “Bird Girl” and I broke up, it was in large part because I had no financial control. I spent every dime I had and then some. She was a very fiscally conservative person…being in banking and finances this was probably a good thing…haha. The devastating emotional impact of this breakup, caused me to re-think my actions in this area…which was a good thing. The bad part, however, is like all good things, you can take it too far and turn it into a bad thing. For me this meant becoming obsessed with the idea of being “debt free”. For years I have pinched pennies and never really done everything for joy. Sure I’ve had rough times in owning my own businesses but there have been times where I can afford to treat myself as well and don’t.

This came to a head in my last relationship with the 3rd person I’ve ever been in love with…I have yet to come up with an appropriate nickname for this person. When we went on a surprise trip to Puerto Rico, all I could think about is what else I could have done with that money…and not fun stuff…I mean pay my credit card off or something. This thought process and resulting blogging about it probably hurt our relationship to the point it never recovered.

So how does all of the above relate to my insight or revelation. When I went on the cruise about a month ago, I was determined to basically not give a shit about the money. All I wanted to do was to have fun and enjoy myself…and I did. When I returned home I was relaxed for weeks…and still am. My production since that cruise has been so high, it was and is shocking to me. Business has taken the largest upswing I’ve ever seen and more is coming down the pipe behind it. I purchased a car that I have always wanted and the joy of doing so has further increased my positivity and happiness. In turn over the last few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to help others due to my success and I’ve also taken it upon myself to reach out to friends I haven’t spoken with in some time and see how they are.

Part of the curse of being a business owner is each and everyone I know says that they lead a very emotionally up and down life because of business. I understand there will be down times again in the future. However, the positivity and…for lack of a better word…joy that I have in my life is overwhelming. I hope I can share it with others and improve the positivity in their lives as well.

This afternoon I received a phone call from the largest accounting firm in the area who also has several other offices throughout Florida and Georgia. I was asked to speak in front of a large group of businesses and non-profit groups regarding web technology. This is a great opportunity to not only help people but to increase awareness of my business!

What a great day…I’m going to go play with my car some.

I also realized that my future is something larger…and I made a commitment to be worth 300 million within 5 years. Doing so is going to result in moving away from the love I have for my web design company, although it is going to continue to run and move towards to opportunities that have opened up. Hopefully I can find someone to run the company for me as I can provide an almost endless supply of clients now.

Without getting into the “deep” aspects of what I initially believed was a 10 day business networking event, I’d like to remember some of the fun times.

My roommate for the week was Adryana who is a part of the Hobby Millionaire team with Bonnie, Patrick, etc. She is originally from Costa Rica and we hit it off right away and had a great time as roommates. There was a large Canadian contingent that I gravitated towards and they got me good later in the week.

On Thursday, for my birthday, Chris, Denise, and Garfield snuck up behind me with a birthday cake and had 500 people serenade me with “Happy Birthday”. My face has never been so red.

Lisa Nichols, a famous writer and author who has appeared on Oprah frequently called me up on stage and touched me arm to say something and her reaction was, “Oh my goodness” which the audience died over. She only made it worse when she said it was not on purpose but she just had a womanly reaction to how big my arm was…I about died.

There was so much laughter, so much love, and so much bonding and cooperative business…there is nothing else like this place that I have ever experienced. Instead of being worried that another web designer is going to get your business, you send people to each other and let them make the choice…there is PLENTY to go around.

I honestly don’t think I’ve cried, hugged, shared, and given so much of myself in my entire life. The experience is just one of those things you can not explain to people…they have to take the leap of faith and go. It has had a profound impact on my life and I cannot wait for the next event in 2 months.

My job, as technical advisor, was to play the game for about 10 hours a day, answer questions, and help with sales. The first day we ad a small panic when our game server went down briefly after an update but apart from that it was smooth sailing.

I didn’t get to walk around much due to the activity at our showroom floor but I did stroll around once or twice and checked out a few products.

The food in the food court was outrageous and I quickly learned that the “Street Meat”…vendors with carts outside the Javits Center had the best food and prices.

In the evening I was able to wander around a little by Times Square and had some great dinners at the Landmarc, John’s Pizzaria, and Sushisamba 7.

Tuesday night I started to feel ill and on Wednesday I was so sick I did not make the last day of the show. I made it to the airport early because of this and managed to get on an earlier flight…which ended up screwing me.

Apparently Atlanta was having terrible thunderstorms and after 2 hours of circling we were redirected to Knoxville to refuel and then headed back to Atlanta. If I had taken my original flight I would have made my connection but due to the “early” flight I did not and spent the night sick on the floor of Atlanta Airport. Yay.

To say I was happy to finally make it back to Gainesville on Friday would be a mild understatement! Pictures coming soon in the gallery…promise!

This would normally have been a 4 or 5 hour task but instead took 2 days as instead of being smart and pre-ordering items and having them delivered, our company CFO thought it best to try and transport two, 42″ LCDs, three laptops, and other electronic gear from Best Buy without pre-ordering…yea…that took about 4 hours.

The only funny part of this was while waiting for a taxi in 30 degree weather, a woman with a baby in a stroller came out and I let her have the taxi I had just hailed. She gave me an odd look and said, “You aren’t from around here are you?”

A bit of a shame when being a gentleman is considered an oddity.

Eventually I made it back to the Javits center where I made friends (being facetious) with the local Union guys…the “Freeman”. Talk about a racket…I’d avoid doing business in NYC just to avoid being bent over.

They got pissed off when they found out when I had already setup two laptop + HDTV displays without their help. They were going to shut our booth down and I told them to piss off but one of the other team members got scared and told them to finish the last two…so we paid $100 an hour to watch some guy screw bolts  into a bracket into a LCD monitor. This guy was actually cool…the foreman…Anthony…was a doucher.

I did manage to strike back for the good guys by circumventing their rules on networking and bring my own router and running multiple lines out of the one line they gave us instead of paying them $2000 for it or something retarded.

Thursday night I stepped out and saw two of my friends in NYC…Darby and Laura. I went out to a wonderful restaurant called the Landmarc with Darby and then stopped by Laura’s and caught up.

On Saturday, the rest of the team arrived and it was game on from there!

Pictures of Toy Fair 2009 will be added to the gallery soon!

The highlight of the weekend was meeting Ed Mercer, also known as “Mr. Costa Rica”, a billionaire. The largest landowner in Costa Rica, Ed is known for being one of the foremost environmentalists in the world. He was at the event discussing life, investing in Costa Rica, etc.

Ed was a very cordial, down to earth individual and he related some great personal anecdotes about success to everyone in attendance. Ed is quite the pool player and had won seven games in a row while beating all challengers until I took the table. I can proudly report that I was the only person to beat him during our time there…so I’ve got that. Haha.

A great event and I returned home feeling very energized and ready to move forward.