Wow it has been a while since I have put one of these up. Since we last spoke, I’ve traveled eastern Europe and had a semester of college (and joined a fraternity, Delta Tau Delta). That, however, is for another post. In addition, since I start my second semester tomorrow, I doubt I will actually ever get to blog about it. If you really want more info, you’re welcome to shoot me a text .

What got me back on my blog was a different post I had read by a dear friend and mentor, Tom Krieglstein. He was asked by a friend if he had a mentor. And his response (in a blog post of course) was that there was never a specific person who fully inspired him to do what he does today.

I am paraphrasing considerably, so I recommend you just read his post, but here what I drew from what he said.

Tom mentioned that he “had this idea planted in me that I’d find “the one.” Not in terms of love, but in terms of mentors”. I would like to reflect on Tom’s current status. He has a love, but no mentor.

I never planned on finding Tom, and even when I did I never assumed he would become the type of influence on my life that exists today. I don’t think he planned on it either. But I think one of the reasons our relationship exists was that there was never a bar. I know Tom, and I think based on his personality that if he ever met someone who he thought could be his mentor, he would set the bar very high for this person. And this person who would not know they were being tested.

I think the reason Tom never found a real mentor was because he was looking for one, and an incredible one at that. Tom was looking for the next great entrepreneur, capable of creating something from nothing and inspiring the world around him.

What Tom failed to mention in his blog post is that instead of finding this person, he became it. Tom has grown multiple ideas from a single thought to a multi-million dollar business. He has inspired thousands of people all over the country. He has inspired more people than most of us will ever meet in our entire lives, and this guy is 30.

We all have dreams, and most of us have people to look up to. But no one is perfect, and the only people we can truly motivate are ourselves. Don’t look for success in others, find it in yourself. At the end of the day, how awesome would it be to become the exact person you looked up to?

Tom never found a mentor, but I am kind of glad he didn’t. Because if he found his, who would have found mine?

For those of you who do not feel the need to follow my every tweet (which I completely understand), here is my complete itinerary:

June 29th – Fly From JFK to Geneva, Switzerland

July 1st – Travel to Les Deux Alps, France

July 6th – Travel to Verona, Italy

July 8th – Travel through the Dolomites, Italy

July 13th – Travel to Interlaken, Switzerland

July 15th – Travel to Saas Fee, Switzerland

July 19th – Travel Back to Geneva, Switzerland

July 20th – Travel to Zurich, Switzerland

July 22nd – Travel to St. Andrews, Scotland

July 26th – Travel to Budapest, Hungary

July 28th – Travel to Prague, Czech Republic

July 31st – Travel to Hluboká nad Vltavou, Czech Republic

August 1st – Travel to Český Krumlov, Czech Republic

August 3rd – Travel to Dürnstein, Austria

August 5th – Travel to Vienna, Austria

August 8th – Fly back to JFK, New York.

This is going to be the greatest experience of my life. Pictures, tweets, status updates, and blog posts to follow.

See you all in August…

—

For those of you who haven’t heard of Assassins, ask a Senior. Because Senior year, assuming there is someone willing to run it (my advice, don’t), you will be part of the most complex “cat and mouse” game you have ever seen. Assassins has been the focus of my existence for the past few weeks, so what I have decided to write is the complete guide to how this game was put together. Enjoy.

When I was asked to run Assassins, I realized I could think of it as a challenge. I had heard in previous years that the game had lost some of its competitiveness because in the end, the rules were easy enough to bend and if you wanted to be honorable, your chances of winning would slip. I knew there must be a way to run this game without a hitch. If everyone knew they had a fighting chance, more people would fight. So I started on a journey I would end up regretting more times than I would ever imagine.

The first step was to organize communication. With 220 players, I needed a way for people to report kills without contacting me directly. Each player was given a game card with their name and a passcode. When there was a legal, legitimate kill, the victim would simply hand over their card to their assassin. The assassin would then go online and fill out a form that would automatically check the passcode with the name. This gave me more time to focus on other topics in the game. From that point, I would only need to address disputes.

The initial rules were simple: Nothing at school. Unfortunately that was the only easy rule. So I asked the people who really were into it. I wanted this game to survive, but that didn’t mean I needed to write the rules. In my mind, I just interpreted what others wanted.

When I started planning this game, I thought all I would need to do was plan it. I figured once I started the game, it would run itself. In short, I could not have been more wrong. I found that for quite a few people, it was simply easier to lie about a kill then forfeit. In addition, a lot of players chose to use the smallest water guns possible. The problem is it’s easy to stay dry when you are being shot by a water gun the size of a fist.

The biggest issue I have had to tackle is dealing with everybody. With 220 players and 1 of me, it is easy to say that I was getting quite a few phone calls each day. I will point out that some people did volunteer to help me. However, most of them volunteered at a time when my only task was resolving disputes, which is a task that I cannot delegate to anyone else.

I had three different types of communication with people that could lead to an argument. The first was registration. Since I had to make game cards for everyone in the game, assign and distribute targets, and study for APs at the same time, I needed to get all of it out of the way early. But after I closed registration, I then got a wave of students who still wanted to play. When this happened, I took a very simple approach. Anyone that contacted me, apologized for being late, and asked politely was given a spot in Assassins. After registration, 40 players were admitted to the game, and 1 was denied. The one exception was for people that asked me after targets were given out. At that point I couldn’t take any more teams and still be able to study for my APs.

I knew that once I made one rule, ten people would ask me to create rules that were similar. Furthermore, I didn’t want the Assassins rulebook to be a paperback. I took the same approach in dealing with new rule requests as before. Anybody that asked politely for a rule to be created, I took a long look at. Astonishingly, quite a few of my friends seemed to think that they could just tell me the rules they wanted in the game and I would just go along. I got calls at any hour of the day, and some requests as late as after the game had already started. All in all, my goal was not to impress my friends. It was to create a game that would give everyone a fighting chance.

The last communications I received were after the game had started. Rule clarification, protocol clarification, and dispute resolution. This needed a different approach. In prior scenarios, I had more time on my hands and less people getting in contact with me. Once the game had started, I would receive 50 or more communications per day. When I received a communication from someone who knew the rules and had a question that could only be answered by me, I normally answered it within minutes. What I simply could not deal with were people that would ask me questions that could have been answered by the emails I had already sent them.

Assassins has been a blessing and a curse. On one hand, I have had to start turning off both my phone and computer at 10pm because I am just too tired to keep talking to people. On the other hand, I have changed the way people think about Assassins.

Most people knew I was in contact with the school administrators about this game. Most people don’t know I was also in contact with the New Castle Police Department. When I first started talking to them about Assassins, they told me I was the first organizer to ever bring it to their attention. In addition, I found that this year, the amount of issues the department had to deal with were “reasonable.” In their minds, the game hadn’t become completely safe, but it was on its way.

Assassins is played all around the country. Some games get a lot of scrutiny from adults, and some get none. My goal for this game was to make it in such a way that in the future, it could be played openly. We wouldn’t need to hide it from the administration or the police.
That was my goal for this game. Only time will tell if I succeed or not.

In summary, Assassins was a huge undertaking. But If I had the choice, I would do it again.

Just kidding. I will never do this again.

—

Thank You For Reading

Tom’s message was incredible, that with the right level of intensity, a group of people could change an entire campus. It was a revolutionary idea to me, so I made sure I “ran into him” again the next morning.

The next morning I went up to him at breakfast and started a conversation. I told him I was interested in bringing him into my school, and he seemed slightly intrigued. I ended up giving him a copy of my Wall Street Journal. I know now that he doesn’t read the newspaper. But he got a kick out of the fact that a 15 year old gave him one.

The following year I was on Student Council and thought he would be a great keynote speaker. I made the calls, got the contract signed, even met him for dinner in New York City one night to discus the details. For Tom, it was the first time he had ever spoken to a school where he only communicated with a student prior to his speech. Most of his speeches are at colleges, so the fact that this happened at a high school was even more surprising to him.

At the end of Seminar Day 2010 he offered me the chanced to come intern for him. I had a little time before I went away for the summer so I agreed. It was an amazing experience. I won’t go into full detail because it is at the beginning of my blog.

Now I have another story to tell. Last June I was approached by my assistant principal about an idea. He runs ideas by me all the time, but this one in reticular intrigued me. He had this idea to take a group of seniors after AP Exams and let them do some internship instead of having to spend the last 5 weeks of school in a classroom. I loved the idea and told him as such. The following fall that idea took form. It was called Senior Experience.

Again, I am not going to go into huge detail on Senior Experience because it is in another part of my blog. But even before Senior Experience became real, I had already spoken to Tom about it. See, I had known about Senior Experience before its inception, so when my mini internship ended last summer, I told Tom there was a good chance it would not be the last time I entered his office.

As it turns out, it would be the last time I walked into that office because they moved. But that is beside the point. For the last 5 weeks I have been working for Tom. And what a 5 weeks it has been.

As you might recall from previous blog entries, I started my internship listening in on sales calls. I would take notes on only on the business part of the conversations but also the personal aspects of the conversation. The idea was to know the customer in every sense, to connect to them on a personal level. Because personal connections are unbelievably stronger than business connections.

Further down the road Tom recognized a skill of mine. While I was good at taking notes, it was not my specialty. Tom started sitting me down and pitching me ideas. I was a springboard. If you gave me nothing, I would give you nothing back. But if you gave me a small idea, I could turn it into something bigger within minutes. It was the same thing my assistant principal had been doing with me for years. The difference is, Tom was able to point it out.

The last week of my internship was spent at a Social Media Conferenced called Likeable U. In those two days I attended various Keynotes, Seminars and Panel Discussions. I heard from CEOs, Public Relations experts from the NBA, and even a current NFL punter. Full disclosure, the punter is the current punter for the colts, and the colts rarely punt. Still, he was a cool guy.

One of the most important things I learned at Likeable U was that it was more than possible for me to excel in the job market at a young age. I met people who were not more than a year older than me and had already started in the market while they were in college. They told me that my enthusiasm would be a bigger factor than my age if my enthusiasm was big enough.

I learned that the best core ideas don’t come from a boardroom, but from the most unlikely places. The boardroom is where those ideas are further developed or implemented, but not initially created.

The people I met at this conference were the people I wanted to become. Those that didn’t let their age get in the way. They just kept moving forward until their goals were achieved.

This internship gave me 3 key advantages. First off, I learned a lot more about social media. How to avoid its potential downfalls, and more importantly how to further use it to my advantage.

Secondly, I learned how to sell. I spent weeks on sales calls understanding what techniques worked and what didn’t for each type of customer.

Lastly, I learned about myself. I learned that I am not the kind of person you want creating something. Rather, someone who will take an idea and run with it. This internship gave me an understanding of what I am going to be in the years to come.

That was my Senior Experience 2011. And I promise I am going to talk about assassins soon…

There are a lot of people in New York on a given day. I classify them into three groups; Residents, commuters, and tourists. I classify a commuter as someone who spends more than 20 hours a week in the city. All of these groups are easy to identify.

Resident’s are like commuters, but are more laid back. This is because they don’t have to wake up as early to go to work. They simply have more time in the day. Commuters get between one and three hours less sleep than residents, so they are more likely to be in a rush.

Either way, both resident’s and commuters go by a New York code. It is the code that differentiates the two groups from the tourists. For example; A new yorker knows that the traffic light is not the best way to tell when to cross the street. A new yorker knows to take their metro-card out of their pocket BEFORE getting to the turnstile. And a New Yorker knows that if you get a phone call on a Metro-North train during peak hours, you ignore it. People pay hundreds of dollars a month to ride those trains and expect silence. If you break that silence, you will be known as a tourist.

There are a few ways to know if you are acting like a tourist in New York City;

1. If you spend more than 5 seconds at a subway turnstile.
2. If when everyone else crosses the street, you wait for the light.
3. If you can’t walk more than 5 blocks without someone stopping you to offer a bus tour of Manhattan
4. If you answer your phone on the train and don’t care who is listening.

Wherever I go, I try to blend in with the culture. I’m not shy or anything like that, but I never like to be labeled as a tourist.

When I travel with people, I don’t like when they label themselves as tourists either. Because when they do, they label me one as well.

When you travel, what do you do to blend in?

In a word, this week has been insane. To kick it off, I played Lincoln Center on monday. The true difference between a rehearsal space and a concert hall is a concert hall doesn’t need microphones. It is sculpted in such a way that sound can carry from one part of the theater to the other. It is an architectural masterpiece. But besides that, it was an amazing night just from a musical prospective.

Tuesday was even bigger than that, if you can believe it. Tuesday was Seminar day, and boy was I dressed for it. I wore a CIA style earpiece and a full suit. and by 8:45 that morning I was already tired. But this year was different, because this year I didn’t have that much on my plate for seminar day, so I have no idea what it could of been like for the people who actually had to run the event. Nonetheless, Annalie Aplin and the HGHS Student Council pulled that day off without a hitch.

On a side note, for the second seminar day in a row, I got an internship offer.

Wednesday I went back to work, if you could call it that. I say that because most people attribute work with negatives, and I can’t call what I am doing negative.

On wednesday I was able to shine at Swift Kick, as I was asked to put my own spin on their program. Currently, Swift Kick is a speaking company targeted at colleges and some high schools. One of their trainings focuses on increasing student leadership, while the other focuses on shaping a digital identity.

A few months ago I did a free seminar on the impact of social media on students. The presentation was to an audience of parents and teachers. When the presentation was concluded, the first question asked was “Are you going to go speak to the students?”

I said no because I had way too much on my plate to start thinking about making free speeches a career. But, When it came to expanding Swift Kick, my prior experiences came forward. Why can’t we appeal to parents just as we do students? Why can’t we teach parents how to raise a student through social media?

And then the real idea hit me.

For about five months now I have been discussing this idea of intrinsic motivation. Motivation that doesn’t come from a paycheck or fear, but from the drive to complete a task or make someone else feel good about themselves. When someone is intrinsically motivated, they do more than those who are simply motivated by payment. So if employees were intrinsically motivated, wouldn’t that make the company run better?

I am going to give you two scenario. In scenario one, a co worker you have never met before comes to you with a task and asks you to complete it. In scenario two, a co worker and friend comes to you with a task of equal effort. Which one will you complete with more effort?

There is an added level of effort when a friend asks you to do something. You know that the sooner you complete it, the sooner your friend can move on with their day or complete their next task.

Therefore, when employees are better acquainted, the company runs better. And how can we get employees more acquainted? The same way we get students more acquainted at high schools and colleges.

This is where my idea took form. Swift Kick has a product that can bring a student body together. It makes sense that you could use that same tool to bring a company together. And how can you pitch that idea to some of the top businessmen in the country? Present to the parents at some of the top high schools in the country.

So in conclusion, when you present to parents in top high schools and the like your presentation, then you tell them about your corporate programs. When these parents, who are also captains of industry, hear about this product, maybe they decide to jump on.

That’s just the morning. Wednesday nigh I went to a seminar on how to use Google Aps to increase efficiency in the classroom. It’s part of an organization called EdTech Meetup, where once a month a group of people come together to listen to a speaker and discuss who we can use technology can further the advancement in education. Not surprisingly, I was the youngest there. But it was honestly amazing. I didn’t only get to hear to a google expert and get a chance to see the new chrome laptop, but I also heard from professors and teachers from all over the tri state.

What is starting to emerge in this internship is the transition from observation to interaction. I have an idea that has been brewing since I did my first presentation on social media. A lot of parents don’t know enough about social media and its impacts to make an educated decision on how to let their kids use it. So over the next few weeks, I want to make that my goal. Get parents to understand the true benefits of social media. It is a strong force, and everybody deserves the chance to use it to its full potential.

Thursday was where everything in Tom’s mind started to take form. I learned about myself that day was that I can be creative, but not in an artistic sense. My creativity strives from my words. When I talk and when I blog, I can be creative. Tell me to build a website and tell me exactly how you want it to look, and I will build it. But tell me to design a website, and I’ll be completely stuck.

In the past few days I have gotten the same question over and over, which is “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?”. And I don’t have a clue. I want to be involved with technology because that’s what I am good at. I want to be in a position where I am interacting with others constantly. I can’t sit behind a desk and do data entry. You couldn’t pay me enough to sit behind a desk for the rest of my life and do data entry.

People tell me I should start some company. Here is the problem: My specialty is not creating the next big idea. It’s taking an idea that has the potential of becoming the next big idea, and making it the next big idea. I can take something good and make it great. So what does a person who wants to do that do? In my mind, I feel like I would be the perfect right hand man. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to be out in public, but I won’t be the guy who made the product. So what will that mean for me? I have no idea. I guess we will all just have to wait and see.

Thanks for reading

One of the biggest things I noticed didn’t have to do with the business part, but the personal part. Whenever Tom started or ended a call, he always kept a personal element. When I read Made To Stick, they referenced a similar aspect.

Think about this: More people will donate money to a single child in Africa than the number of people who will donate to a cause for an entire African country. That doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, because obviously an entire country is more important than the a single person. And yet, facts are facts. When people see that one child, they no longer are thinking logically, they are thinking with their emotions. People act differently when thinking emotionally. Emotions drive people to acting in a way they would never act when thinking logically. So when we get people to connect on an emotional level, they are much more likely to care and, more importantly, remember.

Start-up type businesses are all about making themselves stick. When it comes to higher education and especially corporations, The people you contact within each organization have a lot on their plate. Therefore, in an initial sales call your goal is not to sell your product, but to make yourself stick. In our case, we want our prospective customers to know that Swift Kick is personable, innovative, and, well, cool.

When you talk to someone about your product, it sticks to you. You know all about your product so when you talk about it you can think about your product from every aspect. But when I talk about leadership training, most of you won’t know exactly what leadership training is. You will know that we are training people to become leaders, but probably not much more than that.

So when I talk to customers, I can’t just talk about the product, because it won’t stick with the customer. “Innovative” will stick. “Cool” will stick. When you think of “cool”, something comes to mind. When you refer to something as cool, you link it to something else you already know. In other words, it sticks.

My goal is to make myself stick. So the next time I call and say “Hey it’s Andrew from Swiftkick”, people don’t say “Who?” If they have related me to other things in their mind, they will know who I am. I will be (to a certain extent) emotionally connected with them. And, with that, I can start to sell a product.

When you make yourself stick, you greaten your chances of success. That’s a life lesson right there.

I know its been a while, but I guess I’ve been pretty busy. What changed is my plans for the future. For those of you who are unaware, this past wednesday was my last day of classes. I am participating in a pilot program called Senior Experience.

Senior Experience began because of an elephant in the room, senioritis. After AP Exams, a senior in high school has little motivation to keep themselves focused. While some people claim to get senioritis in middle school, my belief is that senioritis begins as early as the day one is accepted to college and does not end until they actually get to college. The reason for senioritis is that certain parts of school motivation come from fear. We fear getting a bad grade, we fear what our parents will think, and we fear what colleges will think. But fear only works to a certain point. Once that fear goes away, they only motivation we have to keep going is intrinsic motivation, motivation that stems from our desire to complete the tasks assigned to us. For some, intrinsic motivation is a part of school. But for most, intrinsic motivation dies the second we hear about that night’s homework or the next day’s test.

We still have intrinsic motivation. We all have things that we love to do, whether it be solving problems, writing a novel, or even teaching. We all have activities in our life that thrive and excel based on our intrinsic motivation. Senior Experience was created to get seniors involved in activities that would keep their mind at work and keep their motivation levels rising. And the man in charge was the perfect one for the job.

I am going to go on a tangent here. This semester I had an english class called Senior Literature. The teacher, Mr. Corsilia, let us choose whatever books we wanted. Essays had little requirements, only that we wrote what we thought about the book. It was the first english class I had ever taken which I truly enjoyed from start to finish. In past years, I didn’t always read the books assigned to me. I had no motivation to do so. What I got this semester was the opportunity to read what I wanted. I immersed myself in Daniel Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, and Dan Heath. Books that I loved and could read simply because of my intrinsic motivation. And it showed, because I have read more books in the past few months then I have ever read before.

Corsilia understands senioritis at its core and has spent his classes trying to overcome it. This year, he took it a step further with Senior Experience. Because instead of having seniors in class where motivation and learning levels are low, this year students are allowed to spend a month doing an educational activity that would drum up intrinsic motivation. This year only about 30 seniors are involved, but the hope is that it will grow with time.

Back to the story. For those of you that keep up with my blog, you know who Tom Krieglstein is. For those of you who don’t, go to TomKrieglstein.com and find out, or else. Tom, who I interned for briefly over the summer, is who I am spending my Senior Experience with. For the next month I will not be going to school. Instead, I will be in New York City learning lessons that will help me way beyond the classroom. I will learn about the true challenges of running a Start-Up. I will start to get more acquainted with public relations, and will get to work hands on with the customers themselves. I don’t know exactly what I will be doing, but I know that I won’t need to rely on fear to keep the learning process afloat.

As part of my Senior Experience I will be blogging about my internship along the way. Just a heads up.

And at some point I am going to have to talk about assassins…

Anyway, there are certain emails I give out and certain emails I don’t. I am also very selective in what I subscribe to. Because when I get an email in one of my “priority” inboxes, I check it almost instantly.

I got an email a few days ago:

When communicating online or even in person, the types of words you use are key. When online, it can be even more important.

But, its a two way street. If you hear someone say something inappropriate like “that’s so gay” or “that’s so retarded”, you can’t go up to them and say “Why on earth would you say something like that!?!?!”

I see it all the time, especially on facebook. People will have status updates like:

1 in every 10 people are gay.That means 1 of every 10 people is
instantly put down, given bad labels, left alone, put in minority and
more… for something they didn’t ask for. Many gay teens are turning to
suicide as a way of escaping. If you want to tell them that life will
get better and that you respect them for who they are, copy and paste
this. Most of you won’t, but lets see the 5% of you who will.

That is a Facebook status update from a friend of mine. It has great intentions, but it doesn’t help the cause in a healthy way.

So what can we do about it? I’m glad you asked. I happened to be an avid blog reader and today I came across a post by a friend of mine who has uncovered a new way to help minimize certain language in a healthy way.

Here’s the link…

We Hate The Hate, Do You Really Mean That?.

Take it in and spread the message…

Peace.