Lol, thanks for the kind words, bro. Yeah, with all the tools out there that are subscription based, and the ability for anyone to outsource, the reality is that "bare bones" is not only possible, but it is the most efficient and effective biz model, we call it Ultra Lightweight (ULW) :)

The good news is that he is incredibly qualified and was able to find a great paying job. However, as any entrepreneur knows, that's a slow kind of torture. I know that he will rise from this, I am helping him realign his strategy, moving closer towards an ULW model.

During my years as an accountant, I saw many companies get squeezed, especially small businesses because they were carrying around so much "fat". At this juncture, all business owners (especially fledgling entrepreneurs) need to take a hard look at the overhead NECESSARY to run their business, and attempt to extract the emotion from making tough decisions.

An old friend of mine recently went out of business after a 16 year history! Because of the nature of his business, it was not necessary for him to have office space, it was nice, but not necessary AND it was his largest monthly line item expense. That piece of overhead tipped him over the edge and out of business.

We run our company as an Ultra Lightweight business model, not every business can do this, but during these times in particular, the Lighter the Better.

Great points, Sean

These are great, bro, inspired Melissa and I to spend some time appreciating the beauty and detail of the city we live in :)

First of all, Ryan, MUCH respect for your level of dedication to your goal. You have identified something you want to achieve, and architected a method to motivate yourself to achieve it. I don't think that is extreme at all, it makes perfect sense.

Working out is something that, at first, is a pain in the ass for everyone; but if you commit to consistency, it becomes a repose from the everyday stresses of life - and you end up feelin so damn good when you're done.

Last year as my wife and I were planning our wedding, I was so discouraged because of how much I had let myself go. I made a massive commitment to myself to start living a healthy and fitness oriented lifestyle.

There are two things that I did that were HUGE:

1) I set measurable and identifiable goals & recorded my progress.

Without some metric (I suggest body fat %) with which to judge your success within a few months you may get discouraged and lose motivation.

2) TAKE PHOTOS!

Some dude told me to do right when I started because he said that my mind would play tricks on me at some point, but if I had proof to verify my progress I would be in better shape. It's the equivalent of a company trying to compare this year's Gross Margin to last year's except all they have is this year's financials. You can "feel" and "think" you were more profitable, but unless you have a snapshot of last year, you can't really prove it to your investors.

Here is my Before & After set (http://tinyurl.com/9q83bv)

Some cool tools that I am using this year to help keep me on track are:

http://www.thenakedtrainer.net(by the founder of Plan HQ)
http://caloriecount.about.com

Sorry for the ridiculously long post :)

Nathan, you locked it down, bro :)

I am currently reading Outliers, and found that part interested as well. I agree with Gladwell about the three things - autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward - necessary to derive satisfaction from work. I guess from a very rudimentary perspective, your work, whatever it is that you spend most of your time on a day to day basis, has to be in congruence with Who You Are or there will always be chaffing, something gnawing at you that simply doesn't feel right.

Some people are really good at anaesthetizing themselves from this feeling, hell, I tried it for a while. Out of college, I landed a job as a consultant for ProcewaterhouseCoopers. At the end of my first day, I knew that the corporate world was not for me...three years later I finally left. After a brief sabbatical, I moved to New York City, I thought, maybe it was just the company, so I landed a job as a Financial Controller at a major REIT in Midtown. All along knowing inside that I was entrepreneurial by my nature and that I could not possibly feel satisfied outside of dreaming up ideas and constructing them from scratch. At that job I had a corner office on 5th Ave over looking the Empire State Building, I had all the corporate perks, and was bulling a six figure salary, and killer perks...in addition to that I wanted to throw myself out of my 35 Story Window wall everyday. Finally, after a long series of events I left and did what I had always wanted to do, start my own company, dreaming up ideas and building them from scratch.

You (and Gladwell) are absolutely right, I think when people are most transparent, they know exactly what it is that will allow them to be satisfied with their work, the trouble is articulating that and being honest with yourself about it THEN (and this is the tough part) being able to walk away from all the security/pragmatism that kept you from following that intuition in the first place.

Great post, Ryan