I went to the grocery store at around eleven o’clock last night. Wearing my Arizona basketball jersey, I stood in line annoyed at yet another first round exit from the March Madness tournament.  A Sun Devil fan walked by in a t-shirt with that horrid yellow color, which to Wildcat fans, has the same effect the color red does on a raging bull. My matador smirked at the sight on my jersey, smugly walking by to let me know his side of the rivalry won this round.   I hate what UofA basketball has become.  I’ve come up with five tips, all of which could be applied to the workplace if you so choose, for the Wildcats to consider if they want to keep that twenty-three straight seasons of postseason appearances alive next year.

1)  We all know about the candidate, player, or recruit with the perfect credentials.  Degree from Harvard, 4.0 GPA, quick first step, a McDonald’s all American.  Very rarely do these types of people have the impact on an organization or team that you’d like them to.  They are the individualistic and/or egotistical that play for the “I” in team. 

Tip: Make them (aka Jerryd Bayless) humble.  Don’t allow them to put themselves on their own pedestal.  Teach them how to play as a part of the team, and don’t allow them to play until they learn that lesson.   

2)  To be successful in any organization you need a leader with a vision.  A vision gets everyone on the same page.  A leader empowers others to work towards that vision.

If a leader kinda has a vision, or if they are leading with the mindset they just want to get by without making any mistakes so they can really get em next year, then they will never be able to lead others.  

Tip: Find a new leader (aka head coach. Sorry Kevin)

3)  Companies pride themselves on culture.  The culture of an organization can greatly enhance, or severely hinder people in their success.  If the culture of a company relies on name or buzzwords alone, that is not culture.  A culture exists within each and every person that operates in an organization.  

Tip: Just because the name Arizona is labeled across the chest of every jersey does not mean other teams fear you.  If anything, it fires them up.  Opposing teams can sense the lack of heart and leadership within the culture, and know that if they are able to bring just one person with heart or talent down (Fendi, Jordan Hill, Nic Wise) the rest of the culture will crumble.  Build a new selfless culture that puts emphasis on the word “team.”  Maybe have everyone write “I will play as a team” a thousand times on the blackboard.

4)  An organization cannot exist without clear communication.  Especially when that communication is coming from the top.  This year Lute Olson temporarily resigned, then resigned, then was coming back, then wasn’t.  It left the team in limbo all year.   

Tip: Lute, I love you.  I don’t know what happened this year, but I hope that you communicated with your team, because it didn’t look like they were ever on the same page.

5) Life deals all types of things that are unfair.  Things we don’t agree with.  Things we would dispute.  But it all comes down to the same thing: you have to deal with it.  

Tip: So what if the ref didn’t call a foul.  Maybe it was a block instead of a charge.  Control what you can control.  Shut up and play.

You should not be happy with yourselves as a collective whole right now Zona.  The committee put you in the tournament instead of the Sun Devils (who deserved it more, btw) and you did not give them any reason why they should let you in next year.  There’s a lot of work to do.   

Have a good off-season, gentleman.

Whether I like it or not, I have been influenced by living in a RV for the last four months. In the RV, I had two overhead compartments for clothes and books, and one drawer underneath the refrigerator to store shoes. I learned to live simply.

When I returned home to Phoenix a few days ago, I did four loads of laundry. I stuffed clean socks into an overflowing, bedside drawer. Boxers poured out from the drawer below the socks. The closet did not have enough hangers for the new t-shirt additions I had picked up from various stops around the country. The simple lifestyle I had assumed on the road did not roll over to life at home.

So yesterday, I decided I needed to make the changes to live simply. I canceled my cable TV, leaving a desolate, 50 inch TV in the living room. I cleansed my closet, donating a hundred and nine items of clothing to goodwill. The products that took up space in the cabinet below the bathroom sink are long gone. Today, the daunting tasks of the garage and kitchen loom.

What started as a way to avoid reflecting on what happened over the previous four months actually turned into my first realization.

That realization is that I can, and want to live simply. And that we shouldn’t take up more space than what is allotted.

by Noah Pollock

Although our journey across the nation comes to an end, in Tucson in 5 days, our most difficult journey has only just begun. In collecting the information we have collected, in experiencing what we have experienced, we learned to take things for what they are. In examining the trees throughout the forest, and minding not the forest itself, we learned to leave over-analysis behind.

It was not always so. Pursue the Passion set out to find what makes people passionate. Perhaps youthful arrogance led us to believe ourselves capable of distilling conversations to their passionate roots. The first leg of the trip, through mid-August, we faithfully executed our original plan. As we continued, our insecurity in the project’s simplicity grew. In retrospect, to believe that we could meet someone for an hour, cut their passion into a two-minute video, then progress to our next meeting, was a serious overestimation of our own abilities.

Dreaming big is always an overestimation. As feelings of doubt in the project mounted, we surveyed more honestly both the task before us, and our own abilities. It was difficult to come to grips with, watching our initial ideal exposed as somewhat frivolous, but we found comfort in several things. We found camaraderie, on the trip, with each other and those we met along the way. We received emails from readers who found genuine inspiration in what we offered. We found an incredible life experience being lived everyday.

What we have found is broken monotony. We departed as overly serious, business minded adventurers, and return humbled by our experiences. As a group, we have grown to support and nurture each other in a way none of us have ever known. What we have to offer is an honest interpretation of our travels, without presumptions of conclusions, which can help to avoid, or break, the mundane working existence. There is no singular, universal passion. Rather, there is an open-mindedness, fortitude and confidence shared among all we have found that is passionate.

Showering. Something you probably take for granted on a daily basis. But after spending close to four months on the road, we consider the act of showering somewhere between an enjoyable experience and something you would sell your soul for.

We started off this journey comfortably. We showered at my mom’s house. We showered at the house Jay grew up in during our stay in Los Angeles. Things got a little more out of the ordinary in the northwest when we showered and stayed at my stepdad’s great aunt Pinky’s house. But we definitely weren’t roughing it when we were being hit with the naked, dual headed shower sensation in Cape Cod, or in a cleanly kept condo located thirty-eight floors up in Chicago.

We have roughed it, showering at a dirty truck stop in Hastings, NY while paying eight dollars a shower to do so. We’ve had showering situations some would consider humorous, like when we showered in Jay’s cousin Tony’s artsy house in Portland. His shower was located in a room that was like a melting pot. The shower was next to the kitchen stove which was under a bedroom loft, where Tony and his girlfriend Stephanie slept. That time when we stayed with five girls in Delaware was pretty good too. The PTP crew upped the total shower hungry twenty somethings to nine that Wednesday morning, with only one ill-pressured shower available for use.

And oh, we’ve gone showerless. But let me tell you something. Showerless in Spokane is nothing compared to showerless in Mobile. It is humid and sticky in the south. If you don’t shower, you don’t survive.

Our most recent escapade to find a shower involved meeting girls at a bar on Beale Street in Memphis and latching on to them like they were the fountain of youth. Yesterday, Zach managed to finagle four showers from the attractive blonde working the counter of Hard Rock casino’s health and spa in Biloxi, MS. Today in New Orleans, we shower in a tub surrounded by rubber ducky curtains belonging to Ben, a friend of Brian Conley, who we briefly interviewed in Philly.

Despite the uncertainty of where and when we will shower next, there are two things you can count on.

There is no such thing as a group shower for the sake of conservation. And we will always use your shower products.

This morning, as I lay in the RV on Dauphin Street in Mobile, Alabama, I read a few signatures sketched on the ceiling in Sharpie.

“Good job enhancing the power to thrive”- Coach Valerie, Los Angeles

“Thanks for the inspiration!”- Kelly Faulk, Jobing.com, San Diego

“Keep spreading the joy.”- David Kravetz, Founder of Fairytale Brownies

I include all of these signatures because they were within the first week of us being on tour. We hadn’t done anything with the tour, yet, these individuals felt that need to write something regarding our accomplishments.

Ever since we started the roadtrip, I’ve been struggling to put a finger on why people are excited about what we are doing with Pursue the Passion. I have emails each day saying what we are doing is amazing. We have press coverage all the time. And sometimes I just wonder why.

Right now I’m reading Atlas Shrugged, the 1,069 page book written by Ayn Rand. Throughout the book I have been intrigued by her writing style, but when I read a passage on page 216, I had found an answer as to why people are excited about Pursue the Passion.

Below is the passage.

“In the summer days and in the heavy stillness of the evenings of the city, there were moments when a lonely man or woman- on a park bench, on a street corner, at an open window- would see in a newspaper a brief mention of the progress of the John Galt Line, and would look at the city with a sudden stab of love. They were the very young, who felt that it was the kind of event they longed to see happening in the world- or the very old, who had seen a world in which such events did happen. They did not care about railroads, they knew nothing about business, they knew only that someone was fighting against great odds and winning. They did not admire the fighters’ purpose, they believed the voices of public opinion- and yet, when they read that the Line was growing, they had a moment’s sparkle and wondered why it made their own problems seem easier.”

One of the benefits of touring the country is having the opportunity to see how people live life. Through the hosts we politely impose upon, the professionals we meet in interviews, and people we randomly come across, we’ve been able to make a few observations.

One is that residents of a city or state rarely have been to what that city or state is known for. For example, how many New Yorkers have been to the Statue of Liberty? Memphians in Graceland? How many people from the Bay Area have walked across the Golden Gate bridge?

I’m guilty. I’ve lived in Arizona for the last five years and have never been to the Grand Canyon. Or the red rocks of Sedona, which to my surprise, is a nationally sought after destination. I guess we take it for granted because the opportunity will always be there.

We can always go, but we never do. Why not?

This is what you would call an exploratory, therapeutic post. It aims to analyze problems, and how I deal with them. By the time I write the last sentence, I hope to have analyzed whether it is best to address with them in a preventive approach, or as I have been doing, in a reactive manner.

Take a few problems that I have right now, all in different stages, all of different varieties, but nonetheless, problems.

Problem 1. My tenant called yesterday to tell me that my roof is leaking. I have had this roof fixed approximately nine times, each by the same company under a warranty. The last time I had it fixed was last year, when again, it was leaking. Now we are in reactive mode, and undoubtedly will be paying a pretty penny while waiting in a long line to resolve the problem.

Problem 2. The rear tire on the right hand side of the RV has a couple of rubber cracks that embody the 11,000 miles we have trekked on one set of treads. The cracks compliment a missing chunk near the center of the tire, which alarmed Zach enough to tell me I should consider getting it replaced.

Problem 3. My girlfriend is flying into Atlanta on Thursday evening. I haven’t seen her in two months. My hair is at a point where I could opt for the $12 haircut at Supercuts, or I could pull off the middle of the road look that prescribes a trim in two weeks.

Three different problems. Three different stages. Three different echelons.

I have indisputably dealt with problems in the past with a reactive mindset (please see Sleeping in an Auto Body Shop in Hastings, New York). The reason? Oh, I don’t know, how about because I’m optimistic about the problem not actually occurring? Or because I hate forking over money for something that hasn’t happened yet.

“The best time to fix a roof is when the sun is shining.”

Sure it is. Just like preventative maintenance on your car is a smart thing to do because it cost a helluva lot more to buy the thing in the first place.

I guess the root of my problem in dealing with problems is money, especially without an abundant, plentiful, worry free income stream. And having time to fix the problem. So how are problems avoided?

How about finding a balance between prevention and reactive? Oh yeah, the balance thing. Balance is impossible, and anyone that tells you different is a liar.

Maybe I could take a page from Barry Moltz’s book and say that sometimes, failure just sucks and there is nothing to learn from it. Maybe problems just suck and you have to roll up the sleeves.

Money and time are the two issues you have to evaluate. How much would buying a new tire cost me now, and how much will it cost me if it goes flat between Virginia Beach and Duke University today? What will my girlfriend think of my hair longer, or shorter? Should I buy a new roof (chaaaaaa-ching!) or patch the hole?

Problems just suck. They bite the procrastinators in the ass, and take advantage of planners like a NFL team in the prevent defense during the third quarter.

So the conclusion is that it’s a matter of evaluation.

Time and money. Risk versus reward. Prevention or reaction.

Ahhhh (deep sigh). Time to deal.

After CBS big leagued us, and our lunch date cancelled, Pursue the Passion did what it does best. Improvised.

Right now, as I write this, I am in the Metrodome in Minneapolis, stealing wireless internet from the Minnesota Vikings while watching the Twins thump the Mariners. It is 12:55 CT, 10:55 PT on a Wednesday afternoon, and we have a couple hours to kill before our next interviews with a 83 year old boxing trainer and the only female to solely own and operate a boxing gym in America.

I’m not too interested in the ballgame. I’m more interested in who the hell has time for a baseball game on a Wednesday afternoon. It is, after all, the official hump in hump day.

So who is here? Lots of screaming camper kids adorned in the brightest t-shirts you’ve ever seen. Hot Orange, Lime Green, Bright Blue, you name it. They’re having fun. There is not too many business executives here; just the ones trying to close a sale with a client. And a handful of dedicated dads with company logo collared shirts.

The imbalance makes me wonder…if America can’t break away every once in awhile for an afternoon baseball game, what can they break away for?

We were talking last night with our host Christian, a passionate public defender, and discussed his recent vacation to Thailand. We talked about how he had to beg and plead for a two week vacation.

On his vacation he met people from all over the world that were on similar adventures.
But the difference was that the other Aussie and German travelers he met weren’t on a two week getaway, they were on a two-three month vacation.

Here in America, we call that a leave of absence.

These two thoughts came together to make me think, “Are we too caught up in the workplace? Are we so engulfed in our work that we can’t break away for an afternoon ballgame with peanuts and cracker jacks? (Hell, they have wi-fi at the game, you can even check your email while you’re there!) And are we so indispensable that two weeks vacation is an unreasonable request?”

This may sound like an infomercial America. But it’s not. This is reality.

What do you got for me in response?

Yesterday I came across Whitney Johnson’s “Dare to Dream” blog. She had an interesting point on one of her posts that said, “for all your readers know, you may be daring them to dream, without having dreamt yourself.”

This quote frightened me. I’m scared that you, the reader, think that I, the author, am just some 22 year old kid telling you to follow your dreams. I am going to share with you how, and why, I am pursuing the passion so you do not get the wrong impression of this site.

My Story:

I chose accounting when I was deciding what my major should be in college. My step dad told me that accountants made the most money and had the most opportunity out of school, and since I was insecure and money driven at that point, I chose accounting.

I never planned on being accountant, but that was the path I was led down by default. All of my classmates either were continuing their accounting education by obtaining their masters degree, or were accepting offers at Big 4 firms for fifty thousand dollar salaries in the fall semester of 2005. I was stuck in the middle. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.

I had twenty interviews with potential employers that fall semester, and one thing became apparent. Not everyone had it figured out.

But that damn question of “what should I do with my life” lingered over the heads of everyone I talked to in the interview waiting rooms. Even after I accepted an offer with an accounting firm that fall, that question still remained on my mind.

In my very last interview, I got this funny feeling. I was overcome with fear that this would be my last interview. As I watched my interviewer ramble on and on about how much she loved her job, I realized that I liked interviews. I discovered that I liked interviews because I liked people. And what I enjoyed most about people was talking with them about their passion.

I went home that night and thought about what I would do during the summer between graduation day and my official start date in Corporate America. I got out a pen and paper and jotted down the things I wanted to do. I wanted to travel. I wanted to be close to sports. I wanted to better myself. Most of all, I wanted to continue having the feeling I had when I talked with people about their passion.

These desires that I wrote down is what you now see with Pursue the Passion. The RV came as a necessity because we had nowhere to stay, and I actually thought that when I bought Maggie Miracles (the first RV), that I was making a sound investment. Three hours into the first trip, broken down with green liquid spewing from the engine, I quickly realized that it had not been such a financial savvy decision.

That summer I interviewed 75 amazing people. I traveled 10,000 miles by RV, my mom’s 4Runner, plane, and train for 2 months. I went to places like Nike, Microsoft, Playboy, many sports stadiums, the homes of welcoming strangers, and cities I had only read about. It was the time of my life.

The summer also had an inadvertent effect on my Corporate America experience. It completely soured it before I even stepped in the door. I knew, that after being exposed to all different occupations and possibilities, that I had made the wrong choice to go into accounting. I was selling out by going into a secure, stable, well-paid position because it just wasn’t me. But because I was contractually obligated to show up on September 4th, I was going to show up on September 4th.

On August 23rd, two weeks before my anticipated start date, I reported to a “real job.” The corporate lifestyle benefits came throughout the week, ranging from extravagant lunches to all types of corporate goodies. I temporarily forgot about all that I had gained and gleaned during the summer.

But as the months passed, I began to revisit the advice that was given to me. I began to write a book about the pursuit of a passion, despite not working with a passion myself. This was troublesome to me, and even more so as I continued to receive emails from people around the world who were inspired by this site.

I felt not only like a corporate sellout, but also a hypocrite. I thought to myself, “how can I have a site that says to pursue your passion when I’m not pursuing it myself?”

I guess that was my “aha” moment where I said to hell with this. I started to get by on a PB & J diet, sacrificed Saturday nights, and saved up so I could go on a second PTP tour. I sent out over twenty carefully crafted sponsorship proposals to corporations, schools, and small businesses to see if they’d be interested in sponsoring the tour. No luck.

One day I received an email from the boss saying that she wanted to see me. I made the decision that it was now or never for me. It was time to quit the job I despised.

I walked into the office belonging to my boss at the scheduled time on the scheduled date with my heart pounding and my roommate’s co-worker’s resume. My boss was seated on the other side of the desk with two envelopes. Much like a classic western gunfight, I drew first. I quit. BAM!

I left the two envelopes on the table, one containing a raise, the other a bonus, and said goodbye to steady paychecks and corporate security.

With no paycheck, I scrambled to get by. I hired my friend Jay, who graduated in December with a college degree and is now on the tour, and paid him minimum wage to help me get things in line with the Pursue the Passion tour. He crashed on my couch, and we ate free Hot Pockets and Stouffer’s products, given to us by Nestle, until we couldn’t take the taste anymore.

Every day I would rise at 5am, wake Jay up at 8am, and we’d work until 9pm or 10pm. Then we’d bounce back the next day, looking for sponsors, passionate people to interview, and couches to crash on.

It wasn’t until I focused all my time on Pursue the Passion did I start to see results. After all those hours of writing sponsorship proposals, we found a sponsor in Jobing.com right in our own backyard. We went from having four people visit the site a day to an average of two hundred people per day. We made a pact not to eat Hot Pockets again.

Things started to click and hit full stride come July 1st, the official start of the second Pursue the Passion tour.

We’ve been on the road for over a month now, pursuing our passion, and the question that I frequently receive is “so, are you any closer to finding out what you want to do yet? What you going to do after this?”

People don’t realize that I am a passion pursuer and a crazy entrepreneur that will not stop until the bank account says zero. My goal is to turn this website into a resource that will help people who are in the same situations I found myself in as a student, and in the working world.

I am whole heartedly and no longer hypocritically pursuing my passion, and I invite you to join the journey as well.

Last night the PTP team gathered for pizza and contributed to an interesting discussion about passion. The subject of the discussion stemmed from an interview we did with Rick Welts, who led the marketing efforts behind the original USA “Dream Team.” We took the stance that the USA no longer has a “Dream Team.” The reason why there is no “Dream Team” is because the basketball team we put out on the floor does not play with passion.

Let me tell you why Jerry Colangelo, Director of USA Basketball, can learn something from the Pursue the Passion. On the first tour we booked interviews with people based on their title, or by the company they work for. While we found that the majority of people we talked with fit our profile of “passionate,” we still had a handful of people who clearly did not fit the description. This put a small dark cloud over our heads because we were not living up to the name we had set out for the tour.

The Pursue the Passion tour that we are on right now has “Dream Team” like people included on the interview list. We are booking interviews based on a person’s passion, not their title. It is the most exhilarating, uplifting experience talking with these types of people.

The USA team is making the mistake we made on the 2006 tour. They are offering roster spots to players based on their name. Their endorsements. Their marketability.

Why?

This clearly did not work for the USA based on their bronze performance in 2004. Plus, I do not want to see Carlos Arroyo, a Puerto Rican point guard and NBA bench player, rip apart an American squad again by playing with pride and passion for his country.

I’d like to see the 2008 “Dream Team” compiled on passion. They should have an application for players to make their case of why they should be on the team (aka submit your story). They should have every player on the team referred by a coach who can vouch that a certain player plays with passion (90% of our interviews are booked on a referral basis). This will weed out the players that are joining the team for all the wrong reasons, and get other players on the team for all the right reasons.

Take a note from the PTP. Compile a Dream Team based on passion…or else.