A New Title for What I Am

I just learned what I am...

While reading Escape From Cubicle Nation I found out about Anywired and read the post Become a Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Complete Guide and 40+ Resources.

I'm a Lifestyle Entrepreneur! What does that mean you ask? You really should read the post, but here is a great description from Skellie over at Anywired.

"If you are — or would like to be — an entrepreneur, yet you’d be happy to earn enough to live the life you want rather than becoming filthy rich, lifestyle entrepreneurship might be a good fit for you.

Lifestyle entrepreneurs will generally base their ventures around time minimalism, or something they love, even if there are more profitable (but more time-consuming, or less interesting) options available.

The goal of a lifestyle entrepreneur is not to amass a huge fortune, but instead, to achieve certain definable goals and, beyond that point, to ensure business does not interfere too much with the enjoyment of those goals."

Now don't get my wrong, I think it would be cool to be filthy rich. But not at the expense of the relationships with my wife, kids, or current freedom. I spent 9 years climbing the corporate ladder and had a good position with a good salary. The next step in my plan was a VP position which would lead to a C-level position. But ultimately what I found is the stress of those positions, the time requirement, and the sacrifices I was going to make just weren't worth it.

I quit my job and started my own consulting firm to create freedom in my life. Here is my current daily schedule - which I adjust daily as I need to fit into my lifestyle.

7:15 am - Wake up to alarm clock of "DAAAAADAAAA IT'S LIIIIGHT TIIIIIME!"
7:45 am - Get breakfast for the alarm clock and take a shower
8:15 am - Make coffee and lunch for Bubba
8:30 am - Catch up on my favorite blogs or take Bubba to preschool
9:15 am - Blog (I have two others here and here)
10:00 am - Work on client projects (yes I start "work" about 10:00 am)
12:00 pm - Lunch or go pick up Bubba from preschool
1:00 pm - Work on client projects
4:00 pm - Stop work to alarm clock of "DAAAADAAAA I HAVE TO GO POOOOTYYYYY"
4:05 pm - Play with Bubba, Chrystal, and Mianna for the rest of the day.

I say this not to brag or gloat but to say it's possible. We are not getting rich and sometimes money issues are stressful, but we (my family and I) live a comfortable life and love it. We have more freedom (though not necessarily financial) than we have ever had. Join what Tim Ferris calls the NR and break the chain!

Photo by Dazzie D'

Five Years of Wonderful

Five years ago yesterday I married my best friend!

For our five year anniversary I surprised Chrystal with a trip to Santa Ynez. We stayed in a quaint B&B called Meadowlark Inn and went wine tasting for the first time. Both of us thought it crazy that we have lived in Santa Barbara so long and never gone wine tasting.

When we arrived I was a bit disappointed because the B&B was not what I expected. I was expecting something a bit nicer, but the old adage “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” definitely applied. Upon arriving, the inn keeper welcomed us by name and was so friendly we immediately felt at home. We stayed in the Cabernet suite, which has a funny hot tub on the patio (check out the video). There was a mix up with our wine tour schedule where I thought it was Saturday, but it was Friday. The tour started at 11:00 but we were not able to get there till about 1:30. The staff was super accommodating, and adjusted our wine tour to start at 2:00 by picking us up half way through the tour and then took just the two of us for another two hours to complete the tour.

The best part about the tour is that the inn owner does the tour personally. We were told that she was a former restaurant owner, so she new all of the places to go that had great wine versus just popular wineries. To our delight, our tour guide was Brigitte (pronounced bri-gee-ta) of Brigitte’s restaurant fame in Santa Barbara (now Opal). We heard wonderful stories of her move to the United States from Germany and how she has been involved in starting multiple restaurants in Santa Barbara (Brigitte's, Downey’s, and Norbert's).

My favorite tasting room was Artiste, which is a tasting room and art gallery. The featured artist’s medium was wine! Chrystal and I both thought it was so interesting. All the wine labels are featured artists, and the name of that wine is the name of the painting.

At the last winery which was my favorite, Rusack, we just sipped wine and talked with Brigitte about the restaurant industry. The winery manager finally had to come and kick us out because they were closing.

What really made our stay, other than it being with my best friend, was that we were treated like family. It is not the nicest B&B I have stayed at, but it is definitely my favorite experience at any B&B. Brigitte and her staff staged a great experience that we will forever correlate with wonderful memories. As a business owner Brigitte really understands that hospitality is about staging a memorable experience for the guest.

We definitely plan on doing future wine tours with Brigitte, and hopefully she will be a future client of kevin sturm Consulting as she is going to open a restaurant at her other B&B Story Book Inn.

If you would like to contact Brigitte directly to inquire about a customized wine tour you can reach her at info@meadowlarkinnsolvang.com.

Fun with Photos....

Okay...so I don't pretend to be a good photographer. Wait...I do pretend to be a good photographer, but I'm really just a hack that gets lucky with a photo sometimes. I was playing with some photos recently in ACDSee, which is a pretty cool photo editing software if you don't know how to use photoshop, and realized we took a couple pretty good pics. So I figured I'd show them off to the world.

This is series of shots at Hoover Dam. The fam and I were driving to Flagstaff from LV and decided to stop off and take some dam photos. I think I took some pretty good dam shots.




When Chrystal and I realized we were like 70 miles from the Grand Canyon at my sisters place, we said we couldn't be that close and not see it. So we drove for about 1.5 hours, spent 30 minutes look at the Grand Canyon, and then drove the 1.5 hours back. But we got some nice pictures out of the trip.




This is a shot at the Grand Canyon, but just of a bench that we thought was pretty cool.

Thought I was a "CREEPER"....

So my father-in-law is in town for Memorial Day weekend, and the whole fam went to dinner the other night at Palazzios...one of the great restaurants in all the world. After dinner, Chrystal and I were going to see X-Men The Last Stand with her dad. Since the whole family was there, Cara had offered to babysit Brody...so she took him back home. When we got to the movie, the 9:25 showing was sold out. The 9:55 showing we decided was too late for us old folks, so we just went home.

When we got home, the house was really quite and I figured Brody was asleep but could't find Cara. So I went to see if she had gone over to the neighbors place (she's staying there while Chrystal's dad is in town), but she wasn't there either. I then went upstairs to she if she had gone to her room, but was "creeping" up the stairs so I wouldn't wake up Brody. As I hit the first landing of the staircase that leads to Brody's room, I heard the door begin to open so I turned to see if it was Cara. Cara came out of Brody's room, gasped, and jumped back into Brody's room. I then realized I didn't just scare her, but that she thought somebody else was in the house...and when she saw that they were big she just really freaked out.

When things calmed down, I asked her why she didn't lock the door and grab the Louisville Slugger on Brody's shelf. She said she didn't know what to do, but knew that she needed to get out of the room so that who ever was in the house didn't know that Brody was there...which I think is just about the bravest thing I've ever seen personally. Tiny Cara was going to meet who ever was in the house face-to-face to protect Brody. I was pretty sure before, but after the other night was 100% positive that Brody has the best aunt of all time!