The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for January 2014

Can Bill Rancic Help You Grow Your Game?

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billrancic

“I participated in an Influencer Program on behalf of Dad Central for ROGAINE. I received a product sample and promotional item to thank me for participating.”

Some of you might look at the mug on the guy in the photo above and say, “that Jack Steiner is one handsome man” and who could blame you. There is one problem, the guy in the photo above is author and television personality, Bill Rancic.

I offered to stand next to him and make him look even better, but he is a gentleman and turned down the opportunity. Just in case my mother reads this I have to let you know that none of that happened because she thinks I am a million times handsomer than Bill.

Sorry Bill, mom’s love their boys.

Why Are We Talking About Bill?

I spent some time speaking with Bill Rancic last week whom you might recall is the winner of the first season of The Apprentice and now serves as a  “Growth  Coach” for ROGAINE.

We didn’t talk about Donald Trump at all so I can’t tell you if Bill knows whether Trump’s hair is real or if Trump is a ROGAINE user but we did talk about the Grow Your Game initiative, family life and being an entrepreneur.

One of Bill’s roles is to use social media to share his personal experiences and ideas and talk to men about conquering challenges we face personally and professionally.

I was very curious to see what Bill would be like and wondered if the conversation would be peppered with praise and sales pitches for ROGAINE or if we would really delve into the meat of Growing Your Game, you know doing things to improve your life and become more confident.

Grow Your Game

As part of his Growth coach responsibilities Bill is part of a team of coaches that are helping five men grow their game in all aspects of their lives. I think that is cool.

Granted it sounds a little goofy to say you are trying to grow your game I am more concerned with what is happening than what it’s called and the idea of doing things to improve your life makes perfect sense to me.

I know how I interpreted things but I wanted to hear Bill’s answer so I asked him:

“Define what being your best self means to you. Is it financial, physical, emotional or a combination of all three?”

His initial response made me think I was going to get the canned answer.

“My best self will be different than yours. It is subjective. What we have done here is taken these 5 men and armed them with the tools they need to change their lives.”

So I asked him to expand upon what that meant and to tell me about obstacles people encounter and how to get around them. I liked his response.

“I always say that people see things the way they want to see them. We think we are living a certain way but often we aren’t. For example remember when you were a child and you tape recorded your own voice.

Remember the feeling you had when you listened to yourself speak the first time and said ‘I don’t sound like that.”

Think of living life as if you are a conductor. They work hard to get all the different pieces of orchestra to play together to make music”

That conductor analogy works for me. We don’t have time to be experts in all things so finding people who can help you take care care of things that are less important so that you can focus on priorities makes a lot of sense.

But I wanted to know more so I asked him:

“What is your best advice on how to succeed as an entrepreneur and a family man?”

He responded with

“It can be tough to be an entrepreneur. There are people who will tell you that you can have balance but that is not true. You are always going to have some sort of imbalance. When you are building your business you will always be pulled in different directions and if you want to be successful you are going to have to work harder than the next guy.

Early on your family life may suffer some. It is like raising a child. When they are first born they may wake up every three hours and need to be fed.

But as you go along they grow and reach a stage where you don’t have to give them that same constant level of attention and things become easier.”

I appreciated that because it is honest and it is not filled with buzzwords and double talk about how using ROGAINE can magically solve your time issues and make your business successful.

It is a tool that can help your confidence but it doesn’t replace hard work. That is the kind of candor that I appreciate and am intrigued by. Don’t know if I will ever have the chance to hang out with Bill again but if I do I am curious to see if he is the same guy I think he is.

Should Children Be Allowed To Have An Instagram Account?

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What's important?

This post was either going to be the sequel to Easy Choices Lead To Hard Decisions or an updated version of How To Make Time For Blogging but then I found out my 9.5 year-old is on Instagram.

I have an account so I am familiar with what it is and how it works so when I found it she was using it I wasn’t uncertain about what it was she involved in.

What I didn’t know was whether her account was set to public or private or what she was doing with it. Had no idea who she was following and what she was sending out and that concerned me.

I Pay Attention…Really

She is 9.5 going on 30 so you better believe I pay close attention to what she does online. I have the passwords and login information for any account she sets up online.

Instagram was something she was on for about two days last year. She told me about how her best friend signed her up for it and I said I wasn’t thrilled about her getting involved without any parental involvement.

Her mom and I sat her down and talked about it and then we followed along and watched her interest quickly wane. One day she told me she was done with it and I said ok. I didn’t check to see whether she deleted her account and I forgot about it.

A short time later I moved to Texas and in the hustle and bustle I forgot about it. Anyhoo, a couple of days ago she told me she was back on it and I made a point to start following her.

I can see she really did stop using it and that it is recent that she resumed things but it leads to the same question all the same.

Should Children Be on Instagram?

I sat down with her and had a long discussion about privacy concerns and she explained what she was doing to protect herself and I told her I was proud because she is conscious about maintaining privacy and trying to protect herself.

But what she hadn’t thought about was what her friends could do with her photos/videos and how once you put something online you lose control of it.

Nor had she considered the ramifications of what happens as you age or as I explained to her, “you used to love Dora and now you would be embarrassed if people thought you were still watching.”

I think the stuff she has online is cute but I am her father and though I may tease her there is no fear nor concern that I am going to harm her.

When we spoke I made an effort to try not to paint the Internet as a big scary place because I don’t want her to live life afraid of being hurt or harmed by anything and everything.

Yet I know full well that there are some things that merit greater degrees of concern so trying to find the balance of how to guide her is tough.

It Is Not Just Instagram

It is not just Instagram that we parents need to be concerned about. It the Internet and social media in general. It is knowing that our children have access to news and information that often may not be appropriate for them and that they won’t always know/accept/admit/recognize this.

My 13 year-old has already told me about how different children are now and how I just don’t get it. One of his friends told me that girls are different too and that I should be prepared for big changes in dating.

It took great restraint on my part not to ask him if that meant they had three sets of genitals or horns growing out of their heads. Hell, I wanted to tell him in my day girls had teeth down below so we had to wear condoms made of steel.

Don’t worry, I didn’t say any of these things out loud. Don’t want to scare or scar these kids for life. 😉

But I do think about these things and am always interested to see/hear how other parents take some of these challenges on.

What about you? How do you think we should handle children and social media?

10 Ways To Build More Traffic To Your Blog

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Driving Cars in a Traffic Jam

  1. Run around cyberspace and insult everyone you come in contact with on their blogs.
  2. Come back to your blog and insult them some more in the hope that they will come and visit.
  3. Post banner ads promoting your site as a resource for free sex, viagra and penis enlargement.
  4. Hire an African Elephant to march through Manhattan with a sign promoting your blog.
  5. Tell people that if they sign a petition on your Blog Bush will be recalled.
  6. Tell people that if they sign a petition on your Blog gay marriage will be abolished.
  7. Send press releases to major media groups announcing your new reality TV show about a person and their blog.
  8. Create a virus that forces computers to make your blog their homepage. Not legal, but it could be very effective.
  9. Get Dad 2.0 to make subscribing to your blog as part of the cost of admission.
  10. Ignore dumb and idiotic lists like this one.

The Dad Blogger’s Guide To Blogging- A Writer’s Tool Kit Part One

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leftovers

Blogging Tips: Technically the post below ran in January 2012 but it didn’t include a picture which means it couldn’t be promoted on Pinterest. Since the information is still good and the message still meaningful I decided to run it again (with a pic, hello Pinterest) and hope that it resonates with new readers who didn’t catch it the first time around.

Repurposing/reusing content is one of the easiest ways to keep the content flowing and to ease the blogging work load.

Some of you wish that you were me because I get paid to do the things that you can only dream about. I write the songs that make the whole world sing and tell the stories that make the whole world smile.

My teammates love me because they know that any time coach puts me in the game we have more than a fighting chance to win. It doesn’t matter what odds we face because my very presence inspires those around me and puts fear into the hearts of our opponents.

I can tell you what it is like to hit a grand slam in the World Series and what it feels like to win a game on a dunk. My prowess on the football field is unmatched. I can pass, throw, catch and kick the ball. It is common knowledge that you can’t stop me, you can only hope to slow me down.

That is because I am Jack, the dad blogger. I am Jack, the writer.  I am Jack, the father. I am the friend you’d like to have and the man you wish to be.

It is a good thing that I don’t take myself too seriously, isn’t it. icon wink The Dad Bloggers Guide To Blogging A Writers Tool Kit Part One

+++++

And now that we have gotten that nonsense out of the way I can share with you The Dad Blogger’s Guide To Blogging- A Writer’s Tool Kit. If I ever decide to write an eBook that very well might be the title or maybe not. It really depends on how I build my brand and what sort of platform I choose to develop.

When you read the next two paragraphs I want you to read those as if you were the one that wrote them.

You see I am not as well known as other bloggers. Some of that is because I haven’t ever been a speaker at any of the major blog conferences. For that matter I haven’t ever been one at any of the minor conferences. The advantage to that is that no one can accuse me of being part of  The Problem With Blogging Conference Speakers.

It also means that I have to work much harder to promote myself and my blogs.  It means that I don’t receive as many pitches to be a brand ambassador or to conduct product reviews. It means that my blog isn’t always among those that are looked at for the “top blogger” lists.

Some of you might look at those two paragraphs as being the words of someone who is envious, angry and bitter.  Not me, I see them as signs of opportunity. I see them as a signal to step back and ask myself a series of questions:

  1. Is blogging fun or is it work?
  2. What is my blog about?
  3. What can I do to become a better writer?
  4. Am I telling enough stories?
  5. Why aren’t I subscribing to Jack’s blog and why haven’t I become a fan of his Facebook page?

It took me less than a minute to come up with those five questions. If I chose to take this as seriously as others I could have listed another 5 and then expanded upon all ten. Rest assured that if I write the eBook then I will do just that.

Alternatively you can go spend a chunk of change to read the words of a social media guru who will tell you that no one knows what is going to happen in social media, that you need to work on being authentic, open and transparent and that you need to develop your “writing voice.”

Damn, I think that the snark in that last paragraph included me in it. Nothing like hoisting yourself on your own petard.

Are You Really Going To Write An eBook

Am I really going to write an eBook? The answer is…I might. I playing around the with a few different ideas. One is to take content I have already written and use it for the book. For example I could take posts like those below and use them to form the foundation of the book.

  1. Writers Write Right
  2. “My Dad Says Good Writers Have An Opinion”
  3. A Simple Trick For Curing Writer’s Block
  4. How Frequently Should You Update Your Blog

In theory it is a faster way to put the book together and to get it out into the marketplace. That being said I have to ask myself the same question I pose for my children. Will doing things faster help me?

The kids will tell you that I only ask that if I think that the quality of their work is suffering because they are doing things too quickly. I don’t mind honest mistakes but I hate the ones that we make because we aren’t paying attention or we are moving faster than we are capable of going.

Aren’t There Too Many Books About Blogging

Remember how I said that I am not a famous blogger because I haven’t spoken at the blog conferences. Well one of the ways that I can change that is by writing a book. The organizers love booking speakers who are published authors. I am tempted to write a book about what it feels like to give birth. The fact that I am male is incidental and immaterial.

Everyone knows that our great grandmothers gave birth and went back to work in the fields. The modern woman is weak. This book will provide proof of that and help me get that speaking gig so that I can say 1,098 people are now familiar with my blog.

And now if you will excuse me I am off to go purchase a helmet because something tells me that I might need it.

Who Knew That High School Would Be Connected To Retirement?

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Sometimes you struggle to find the right way, the best way, the perfect way to set the tone. (February 27, 2016)

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a tellar but for want of an understanding ear.”
― Stephen King, Different Seasons

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”
― Stephen King, On Writing

“They didn’t agree on much. In fact, they didn’t agree on anything. They fought all the time and challenged each other ever day. But despite their differences, they had one important thing in common. They were crazy about each other.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

I am not a homeowner. I used to be, but I am not any more and I haven’t quite decided if I ever will be again.  Been close to three years since we sold our house and now I feel a bit like a professional itinerant.

The boy who made me a father is 13 now and is 18 months away from starting high school. He told me today that his friends told him that it is important to start looking for a high school when you are in 7th grade.

He said he is concerned because he is half way through 7th grade and he hasn’t done any looking so he wanted to know if his parents had. Told me that he didn’t want to be left behind and then asked me if I was going to tell him we have to move.

I told him that I didn’t know the answer to that question because I don’t know where I want him to go to high school. It is mostly true, mostly meaning that if I had unlimited money there are some private schools that I would seriously consider.

Can’t say I would definitely send him to those any more than I can say I would definitely send him to some of the public schools that are on the table. It all requires more thought.

What I did tell him was that the advantage of not owning property is that it provides flexibility that didn’t exist before. We can look around and try to identify the best school and then do our best to move into the neighborhood.

And then I thought about what it means to have a child in high school and how much closer I am to retirement age than I once was. Thought about how it is nothing more than a concept and a dream right now and wondered what I would do if I really had enough money to retire.

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Sometimes I know  and sometimes I feel and sometimes I think there is a book locked inside of me that will put me in the position to retire where I want to, when I want to.

Of course it can only happen if I write the words down and don’t keep them trapped inside.

But more often than not I take a more traditional and practical approach and think about where I should be living. The thoughts focus on places that provide a good education and affordable housing.

And then I start to see myself moving away from the beach and my home state towards the center. See myself moving back to my adopted home and setting up shop there.

I could buy a home there and be a homeowner again and I could do it more easily and faster than I can here.

Speed isn’t necessarily the biggest concern or consideration, education is. And as a semi-professional itinerant I am in a position to have more influence on what high school we call home. Can always move to the neighborhood that offers that opportunity and maybe while we are there I’ll write that book and find myself laughing because everything changed for the better.

Lessons Learned Driving Through The Desert

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It took twenty-one hours to drive from Fort Worth, Texas back to Los Angeles and the whole time I was in the car I wondered if I was heading the wrong direction.

Listened to The Ecstasy of Gold as I drove through the desert and did my best to clear my head and just let life happen because it felt like I had been stuck in a moment that I couldn’t get out for years.

Felt like life had been a loop with me starring in Groundhog Day and that I was coming out of it and entering a new place, but only if I let go and let things happen.

Saw the movie yesterday and can say that I loved it but I can’t tell you exactly why. It touched a part of me, reached out to the dreamer and to the guy who got behind the wheel to drive across the country and back and realized that I am not done traveling.

I am in a familiar and yet unfamiliar place where I am stuck between moments.

Been trying to think about how to explain this to the kids and what my obligations to them are. It is an interesting conundrum parents face

Standing on ground that isn’t always stable while peering through the fog while you try to figure the best way to guide your children across.

It can be one hell of an experience trying to figure out what the right path is. Not talking about morals, laws or any sort of ethical position at all.

Those sorts of things tend to be quite easy to teach and guide, but it is the other stuff that gets crazy.

Examples

I know of families that intentionally live in small apartments because they prefer to spend their money on traveling around the world. They have taken their children all over the globe and intend to do all they can to continue to do so.

Others focus their energy and money on one or all of the following sports/dance/education. I can give you a list of reasons why people do what they do and share some of the pros/cons but so much of this becomes an exercise in subjectivity.

These few words aren’t meant to provide you with a guide. If anything it is just some insight into my thought process and at best this will give you a quick snapshot.

Education is a big push for me because it is something that can’t be taken away from you. I am a fan of experiences and living life too so some of my focus is upon finding the best way to provide that for my children.

So maybe what I am saying is that I am shooting for a balance between the two and giving the kids the courage to step outside of their comfort zones so that they don’t miss out on some of those experiences.

What The Desert Taught Me

That is a big part of what the desert taught me. There were other lessons and stories that were gained through it. I think that is part of why I enjoyed Mitty because every time he zoned out I thought, “I do that too” but the question I ask myself is if I am willing to let those moments of zone out stay as dreams or if they become the springboard to reality.

2014, the springboard into the future when possibility becomes opportunity.