I hope you all had a great 2008. 2009 looks like it will be a difficult year, according to economists, but with tough times comes GLORIOUS opportunities. To steal a direct quote from Tim Ferriss’ blog:

To bring in a wonderful 2009, I’d like to quote from an email I received today from a mentor of more than a decade:

While many are wringing their hands, I recall the 1970s when we were suffering from an oil shock causing long lines at gas stations, rationing, and 55 MPH speed limits on Federal highways, a recession, very little venture capital ($50 million per year into VC firms), and, what President Jimmy Carter (wearing a sweater while addressing the Nation on TV because he had turned down the heat in the White House) called a “malaise”. It was during those times that two kids without any real college education, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, started companies that did pretty well. Opportunities abound in bad times as well as good times. In fact, the opportunities are often greater when the conventional wisdom is that everything is going into the toilet.

Well…we’re nearing the end of another great year, and, despite what we read about the outlook for 2009, we can look forward to a New Year filled with opportunities as well as stimulating challenges.

That’s right, keep an open mind and aim high, and look out for the opportunities to present themselves. But you have to know that you will, at one time or another, fall. You will fail and it will suck and there will be self doubt, but you have to keep going. You have to muster up the courage to try again. Last month I was catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen in about a year. She mentioned to me that she doesn’t know what it feels like to fail, because she has always succeeded at everything she has done. Oh, poor soul, I thought. Wait, just wait, it will come. The older you get going through life without failing, the more it will hurt when it happens and the less you’ll know on how to deal with it. And it will happen. Take your licks now, because that is how you grow. Or you can shrivel away, and avoid life, and become a peon. Its up to you.

Last year I started something in late spring I called Project Social. What an epic failure. I started out as a nightclub promoter and lasted all of three nights. Yes, three! It wasn’t because I wasn’t good at it, it just felt like work. Going up to pretty girls making sure they are having a good time and getting free drinks all night sounds like a lot of fun, but it wasn’t jiving with me. I felt pressure to succeed and the whole point of Project Social was to have more fun. So I stopped. There’s nothing wrong with calling it quits when something isn’t serving you and your life ambition. Plus the promoter I was working for was not somebody I would conduct business with again, but we’ll leave it at that.

The City Bee is live now, and to be honest I have no idea how its going to do. It could be a fiery ball of doom for all I know, but I had to try. Obstacles came up, lots of them, but I barrelled through them with the help of my talented partners. Some things didn’t turn out exactly as planned, but I made workarounds and compromised with my partners. The website itself is not something I am entirely interested in at this point in my life, but I bet it has the potential to bring tremendous value to many people out there. But who knows, maybe it was all a big mistake. And I am ok with that. The journey to create it has been incredible. I built a website from the ground up. It was a conversation with a dear friend over dinner and drinks and turned into something real in a matter of 3 months. How cool is that? There are still things I’m learning about what I need to do. I had to take a few steps back in order to make a few steps forward. My partners don’t really have any idea the type of work I had to put into it to make it the way it is, and I’m ok with that. I’m not doing it for glory, I’m doing it to learn. And learn I have. From that knowledge, I’ve got something special coming down the pipe. Super excited but for now I have to remain hush on it. Time is my biggest enemy here. Juggling priorities is my most difficult issue at the moment. Right now I have a big fat issue I have been neglecting for far too long; the GMAT. Its now or never so I am going full deluxe overdrive mode for the next little while. Who knows, maybe it will be a miserable failure. That’s cool, bring it on.

“It was great just watching you, every day was like a privilige. Then the time come for you to be your own man and take on the world, and you did. But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you’re no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!” – Rocky Balboa