Month: January 2016
Confidence Gained From Martial Arts Training Helps Your Career And Life
Ok , when I was kid I was a chubby,poorly dressed nerd. I was a good athlete but I struggled with my weight. We went to tiny and strange church and that made me very different from my friends. Being fairly intelligent this lead me to sequester myself in my room with books. Not necessarily a bad thing except that your social life dies. That will effect your ability to interact in business later in life. Good and bad there, but hang on.
That nerd trait served me well but the lack of interaction and confidence would have been hard to overcome. What changed? Martial arts entered the picture. Training in the ring and the discipline of that style of training helped in so many ways. The discipline helped me finally start building my conditioning. While playing and being decent at other sports, I just never was pushed to get in shape. Wrestling and martial arts gave me that discipline and desire. A big help in the confidence killing Jr high age lol. I’m going to toss some random pictures in here of what that does as well as training and students, then we will move on to how it helps in business and life.
The fact is the confidence I gained from training gave me more than I could imagine. I was terrified of girls and not exactly popular before I started this. That confidence allowed me to go on a date with girl who was way out of my league. 31 years later we are still together. That is a fact!!!!! In business, it helps in so many ways. While I fear little after spending time having other pro fighters try to take my head off, I do fear trying to get new clients and business. The nerd still comes out but the confidence allows me to schmooze. Over the years I’ve stopped having to worry as much about it as most of the business I need finds me (very much a function of a life in martial arts).
Confidence to talk to that girl/boy. Confidence to go on that job interview. Confidence to approach new business for your social media marketing empire. All of these things can be gained by taking the Step to start training. I still see the benefits every day.
Who Thought Fremont Street On Halloween Was A Good Idea??!! (In pics and words )
So last fall my wife had an upcoming conference (medical industry ) that was going to be in Vegas, so I booked a few training sessions with fighters I hadn’t had a chance to work to with. Of course I all booked some PR and advertising work for that week since I was going to be there. Neither my wife or I thought anything about the dates we would be there. So Halloween in Vegas didn’t dawn on us. What really didn’t dawn on us was when some friends with us said “let’s go to Fremont Street ” on Halloween night! We were staying at The Wynn on the strip , so a short cab ride later and we were there! The cab ride was cool as well. The driver was Thai so we had a great conversation about Muay Thai and Thai culture. No matter what I’m a fighter and trainer at heart and my conversations will end up there. Plus its always nice to hear about the culture and country from a native. They enjoy talking you as well. Martial arts crosses boundaries, but I digress lol. Back to poor decision making. I might have failed to mention that one of our friends wanted to go in costume, we did not. So above you’ll see a picture of my wife(sensei Sandy to Team Transcend fans) and I on either side of Avatar! Took this at the Wynn just before we headed out, mostly in case they needed our picture for a milk carton! Fremont Street is very cool, if always a bit goofy and strange. Add thousands of crazy drunks in costume on a night and I felt like I was going to end up on an episode of CSI !!! Seriously though it is a cool area. It’s old Vegas meets some new tech with cool street beer vending carts. If you go to Vegas often or just like the old Golden Nugget style history you should go. Check it out at
http://vegasexperience.com/ And now I’ll start the adventure pictures. It was actually safe and fun but very strange for us Midwest folks. Take a look.
All The Travel Gear You Need For Less
So as you can see it was a blast. Strange,visually stunning yet overloaded, but a blast. Did I mention strange. OK at least for a Midwestern Muay Thai fighter/trainer and his hospital department manager bride it was strange. Tons of fun though!
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Travel Pics For Today With Wine!!
These pictures are in and around the beautiful Rocky Waters vineyard near Galena Illinois. Great area for a short trip. Lots of history and food. Lots of food. The area is both quaint and beautiful. From a historic view it was the home of Ulysses Grant and 8 other Civil War generals. When i say its an historic area i mean it! I’ll do a whole pictorial and review of Galena soon, but for now a few from Rocky Waters. I love their Tower Red. Really a very good wine not just an Illinois tourist plug(so many bad wines here). The Tower Red is awesome and I really like the Hillside Rose as well. You can do a great Tasting here and it is just cool to walk around and look. Kyle Spahn runs a great place! Check out rockywaters.net
Look for a full Galena review soon including where I stayed and more. Great place and a cool easy trip. But seriously if you are someone who travels the Midwest and does the wine tastings at all the crappy wineries, this is really great wine and a fun experience. Cool building, interesting people and good wine.
Random Walk Pictorial Vegas Part 1
So I’ve been thinking about travel posts and pieces a lot lately. As someone who travels extensively, something that doesn’t get covered enough is just random shots of an area. I like to get to know an area if I can. All over it. The cool and beautiful and the slightly grittier. In some places, a few feet is a stark difference in how things look. So on and off here I’ll be posting some random pictorial pieces with some captions. As part of larger travel pieces from trips, I’ll add these. Heck it may just become my review process! It lets you see what things are like and not just the glossy pics we all post. Doesn’t mean the pictures won’t be beautiful and cool, just a bit different. Enjoy, learn a bit about what an area looks like and share. I have tons of Vegas so I’ll start there and it will take several articles. Coming soon as well, Galena Illinois for its history, food and wine.
Read the captions to see where the pic is and a bit of what was going on. I’ll keep to doing big full travel articles but going along with our lifestyle theme here, I think this is a cool way to show a place. I wander randomly when I get somewhere, so the posts should wander.
More coming soon. I take way to many pictures on trips, and enjoy just discussing the random. Fremont Street on Halloween may have to be the next travel piece. So many goofy pictures from that.
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Renting A Cabin In The Great Smoky Mountains
I’ve been taking Trips To the Smoky Mountains for as a long as I can remember. As an adult, I’ve been taking my family there fairly frequently since 1993. I’ve been there many times and been all over the area. I love it. The beauty of the mountains and the plethora of things to do makes it a great destination for any age or economic demographic. From cheap restaurants and motels to gourmet experiences and gorgeous/expensive resorts. Live music, great craftsmen showing how it was done hundreds of years ago. Science, go carts and bungee jumping plus lots of food. Some cool bars for night life if that’s your thing. Great shopping and unusual items. Did I mention lots of moonshine stores and tours? Very cool.
I could list so many great things about the area but you can easily look up what you are interested. One of the best parts is being able to see and learn about the history of the area. Being of proud Native American heritage and being raised in both native and white culture, it is a fantastic place for me. You can see and learn much. Again I could go on forever, rafting, fishing hiking and water parks. Food !!! OK no let’s move on to lodging, specifically cabin rental this time around.
There are so many different choices for lodging in the area. Motels, hotels cabins and condos. Timeshares and complete resort communities. The list is endless and the prices range widely. You can still find a motel room in the area for under $50 a night. Or you can spend over a thousand a night. I’ve stayed in hotels, time shares and cabins here. Most were great and some, wellll lol. I want to talk about this last trip though. Let’s go through who I used, how it works and then a bunch of pictures ! Remember, I’m a fighter/trainer that travels often and writes a bit but not a travel writer or photographer! Please bear with me and enjoy my amateur status !
This time we went through a rental management company called Aunt Bugs. There are many like this in the area. People build or buy investment/vacation cabins in the area and put them in rental with a company to help cover costs. In the case of Aunt Bugs they are all in various gated properties. Large areas that are open, feel like you are in the middle of nowhere but have security as you come in. At ours, we drove up a tiny mountain road, straight up, for a solid 15 minutes after going through the gate to get to our cabin. Be aware that it can be like that. I loved it, but if you fear heights or tough driving you might want to rethink this.
We made our reservations and paid through AuntBugs.com. I travel often so I’m picky, but I will say for a small operation they did a great job. On check in day, we drive to their office in town, picked up the security pass and key and then headed off to our mountain home for the week. The one we were staying at was quite a ways from the town where the office was but that was great with me. See the cool tourist stuff in town and then drive out through the beautiful Wears Valley and up a mountain to our hideaway. Perfect.
The cabin we had was gorgeous, and remote. Standing on the beautiful deck the first night, having a beer and looking at the mountains a small black bear joined me. Didn’t really join me, he stood down in the yard and looked for food while I watched him. Great experience, but know that you will possibly come in contact with bears. Learn about what you need to do and how to act. There was also a great hot tub on the deck. We were there in March this time. One evening my wife and I stayed warm in the hot tub looking at the mountains, while snow flurries came down and we enjoyed a great bottle of wine. Truly as great as it can get.
I’m just going to let a group of random pictures speak for themselves. Enjoy and see if this might be the relaxing adventure for you.
Find all kinds of great things here especially travel gear.My personal picks. Bob’s Picks Check out AuntBugs.com to see all the different options. The people there were helpful and it was all quite simple in a complex age. As somebody who gets to travel often, I really enjoyed this one. By the way, I didn’t hire the beautiful models in the pictures. That’s my wife and daughter. Martial arts has been good to me lol.
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