Totally applaud this effort. Anyone making good content on the cheap and creative deserves some praise and some sharing. Although I don’t agree with the washing part, I thought this was excellent. Have a look.
Also see my previous post on the subject.
As another birthday approaches, I got to thinking… I need more stuff to do. Here is the list I plan to slowly, or perhaps quickly mark off. If you see something you can help with, let me know. Especially the part about the Hollywood starlet 
First it was people like Ricky Henderson, Dwight Gooden and Ozzie Smith. Then the likes of Johnny Depp and Michael Hutchence, followed later by Mike Carroll and Rick Howard. All were my idols of my younger years. Hiroki Nakamura has been assigned that role for a while.
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Comments on the video:
In a slightly rare display of creativity, the lightly-fashion themed event was nice. What to look forward to:
It took me at least three solid attempts at blogging before it stuck, and now I think I am up for a third attempt at twitter. I have had my account for a couple of years now, deleted almost all my posts at one time thinking I was done for good, had another half-hearted attempted at doing it again, quit, and now here I am again. Thanks to all these tools that now make it so painless, I think it may stick.
Thank god for Ashton Kutcher.
I am in serious need of followers, so hook it up.
I’m gonna communicate through comments instead. I’m kind of an old soul that way.
do you want to try and guess a date of when you will be done with twitter?
i will go with by the end of june 09 you will be done with it
Ah… the origins! Growing up, I was always an entrepreneurial-type kid. My friend Peter and I had a stellar little lawn mowing company called ‘2 Mow Crew’, inspired by the name of the controversial rap group 2 Live Crew who was hot at the time. We took our work very seriously. I pushed the mower and he edged it all up. You could say we were delivered a premium service, because we kept our client-base small and focused.. We were not the guys to call if you had a jungle of bullshit in your front yard. We are the guys Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid would’ve called if he needed some yard guys. I still remember the feeling of accomplishment after doing a yard up right. It was similar to the feeling we’d both get after detailing a Porsche or Ferrari at our next gig: Car Wash On Wheels.
I think I still technically work at Car Wash On Wheels. Once you work there, you never stop working there. It is a lifestyle. Just about every friend that I have from high school stepped in the Car Wash on Wheels van at some point in time. And working for the owner was a such a big part of many of our lives that I would bet more than a few of us still kinda feel like we work there. Like we could roll up, and wash cars tomorrow if we wanted. It was the closest thing to stripper money for a guy. You would come home feeling worn out, dirty as hell, sweaty as hell, with a fat wad of cash. Just a like a stripper, right? We always had fat stacks of cash from washing cars. I think my younger brother was rolling with a Sky Pager and Motorola 5000 in 7th grade.
Later, my other good friend Fabian and I tried to invent things. That was fun and a great learning experience. I remember being a an 18-year-old kid sitting in some slick attorney’s office high in the Galleria Towers, as he laid out what the process would be. Very cool experience, but made no dough.
Then while reading some entrepreneurial magazine – I think it was called Success – I read about a guy that was selling wine over the internet. Being young, slightly insecure and ultra naive, I thought to myself… who would ever buy something from a 19-year-old kid? But this internet thing… Nobody would have to know that I was only 19 years old. I could fool them and maybe they would buy something.
Enter Online Performance. At the time, all my friends were buying and fixing up Honda Civics and Acura Integras and the like. I would go with them to these super shady retailers where they would buy their parts and just hang out. Then I got the idea… If these shady bastards were able to open the wholesaler accounts to purchase inventory, maybe I could too. Except I would never have a store… I would just sell through a website. Not having a computer and not having ever surfed the web in my life, I started working on a plan. I also found a partner – Fabian. I also drew the logo by hand, seen above. That logo would later adorn the hood of every tricked out Honda in Carrollton, Texas
I went to this super smart kid that was still in high school to build my site. His home office was where I first surfed the web (first site: Yahoo. first search: Seal, the musician). The first Online Performance site was basically one huge animated gif (think 800 x 600) that almost killed every poor dial up modem it encountered. We had that site for while, strangely with minimal complaints. Our second was the one pictured above, and is still available to view via the Wayback Machine:
View it here. The messageboard – wrongly labeled a ‘chat’ by me back in the day is also available to view.
I really had no heart in the car parts business, but I did enjoy promoting my business and some of the design stuff. We had absolutely no competition online for the first year, so we owned the search engines for every imaginable relevant search term. I would answer 175 product inquiry emails a day (pre- affordable e-commerce) and would sell products to people on almost every continent. One customer would call me at 11AM from Guam, when he was returning from a night home at the illegal street races.
One day, when seeking a new host for my website, I stumbled upon Lori Barber at Netsuccess in 1997 and the rest is my ‘career’.
Oh yeah… one of the most fun things we did with Online Performance was make t-shirts… ourselves. I wish I still had one!
Awesome story…I still remember my hairbrain schemes for making money as a kid. The best gig ever: Washing Windows…damn, we made a GRIP of money one summer. If only I could still have all my rent and food expenses covered….
And who was your first content provider? axxcess from Shaun and Chad? We were even younger than you… and then started our careers.
The second I saw these… I thought: Who is this brilliant Taka Hayashi dude that was so kind as to combine my two favorite shoe brands into one super shoe? He is like Arnold in Terminator II – sent here from the future to somehow change my life for the better and while he is at it, show sneaker kids what their world should look like. These may as well be called Vans x Visvim = The Best Shoe Ever.
OMG. These are gorgeous!
A big YES!
Those are dope, where can I get some?
Because blogging about Archbishop Desmond Tutu just isn’t as fun without some crazy speakers.
Also as part of the REFINE in 09 personal improvement strategy, I plan to come up on a nice bag that will last me a lifetime. A bag that I will someday pass on my son or some deserving young kid that I will mentor when I am qualified to mentor Heritage is always huge with me, and you could make a movie about the history of this brand – or at least a really good documentary.
How about the Louis Vuitton Danier Graphite Roadster? Refined (if you don’t mind a label on the outside, and I’m guessing you don’t)? Check. Heritage? No question. Quality? It’ll last longer than you will
Lisa Marchbanks, 
B, 
your mom, and 
Ryan are discussing. 
Chad, and 
EB 8:47 pm on July 7, 2009 Permalink |
work at starbucks…I can dig it…Get an attitude? as in diva attitude. man it’s so liberating, but then u feel bad afterwards sometimes lol…love the list
Jon Ball 12:53 pm on July 19, 2009 Permalink |
Im down! Lets plan it! I wish we could kill 2 birds with 1 stone and take a 356!
B 9:28 pm on August 11, 2009 Permalink
I like your list, i want one.
Lisa Marchbanks 12:41 am on October 31, 2009 Permalink |
Dude, you’ve just inspired me. I’m making a list like this (although mine will be much different). BTW, I actually HAVE met Desmond Tutu. I just have 2 words: life. changing.