I flew into Atlanta on Thursday, drove into Nashville with Tyler and Kevin on Friday, and flew back to Pennsylvania yesterday. Some random thoughts from what happened in the middle…
+ Ben Arment is the real deal. There were close to 90 people at Dream Year Weekend in Nashville, and I would be willing to bet that almost every single one of them was sitting there wishing that they were in the Dream Year program. That’s how inspiring Ben was as he talked.
+ Of course, I AM in the Dream Year program. So I was sitting there thinking, “I can’t believe I hired this guy to be my coach for the year. Boy, am I smart.”
+ How much of Ben’s content will actually be put into place by those at the weekend remains to be seen. But, seriously, it was great stuff. And considering this was the first time he had presented this material in a weekend format, I’m sure it’s only going to get better (more on that in a minute).
+ Google Maps + Nashville’s highways = FAIL. Thank goodness for my Navigon GPS app.
+ I can’t tell you how excited I am for the future of BlogRocket. This is going to be an amazing, challenging, prayer-filled, exhausting, but fantastic year.
+ I met so many cool people that I won’t even try to list them all out. (But if you were one of them, please leave a comment so I can say hi.)
+ At 4:20pm on Friday Tyler got a call from Carlos Whittaker asking for a few jokes on some current events because he was about to go on CNN as a talking head. Thanks to some coffee from Sharideth, it took Tyler, Kevin, and I about 15 minutes to whip up a nice crop of one liners that we sent off to him just in time. I didn’t catch the show, but Los was appreciative.
+ We had a fun dinner with Matthew Paul Turner on Saturday night, and made a mad dash for the Apple Store to get Kevin’s MacBook pro fixed with about 4 minutes to spare. How does Apple treat a $900 video card repair that is out of warranty? They do it for free anyway. WIN.
+ Had a beer with some cool folks on Friday night including Kyle, Greg, and Jesse. Oh, and some dude named Jack who worked for American Idol for 4 years as one of their casting folks. Picked his brain about the show for 5 minutes, which I enjoyed way too much.
+ So good to see Jon Acuff again and hang out a little on Friday night. He spoke at Dream Year and killed it. He also saved us seats at church on Sunday and I am here to report that he doesn’t pay attention AT ALL during the service. He has a notebook out the entire time and is just writing jokes about everyone. It’s shameful.
+ Went to the 10am service at Cross Point yesterday and really enjoyed it. Pete spoke a fantastic message on fear that went right along with the Dream Year content. Was good to see my friend Lindsey Nobles too.
+ I was just kidding about Acuff’s note-taking, of course. (side note: was great to meet his wife Jenny, and also got to meet MPT’s wife Jessica too. Spouses, for the win!)
+ Rumor has it that Ben might be putting on another Dream Year Weekend in the summer, possibly in the D.C. area. (You didn’t hear that from me.) If you’ve got a dream percolating in you, but you’re not sure what the next steps are or even if you want to pursue it, I highly recommend attending.
+ I read through half of Tony Hsieh’s “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose” on the plane ride home last night and I’m REALLY enjoying it. After having my entrepreneurial fires stoked this weekend, it has made for a fascinating read.
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sorry for the brain dump, but I’m still processing through a lot right now.
Great weekend though! I hope yours was as well…