About
Hi I'm Dean Soto! I'm a Catholic, an entrepreneur, husband and father, CISSP, and a productivity freak. Talk to me, I want to have a discussion, or I can just ramble.Links
Productive CatholicJoin Me!
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Hey everyone! Thanks for visiting! You have two tasks, and two tasks only: Join the conversation, and follow me on every social network that you can so we can converse everywhere!Following
It’s pretty dang cool knowing that the barriers to success that were once high 5 years ago, are demolished and allow souls in less affluent countries than ours achieve their dreams. Awesome.
gary:
This maybe the best feeling I have had about #crushit I am so happy I did this!Yesterday we got new books titled Crushed it. They are wonderful books.
We are thansful for them. Today we are starting the Annual Examination.
Books – New arrivals at Shepherds Junior School
I am super excited about my new web venture. Shiistr.com was originally supposed to come out on the 1st of November, but it got held up because of technical issues. Now, that all of those issues have been solved, it is all good to go.
The really cool thing about this project is that it is seriously going to be grassroots. My cousin Brett and I funded the whole thing ourselves, we are doing all of the marketing via social media, and all of the support for Shiistr is coming straight from our users and nobody else (i.e. we haven’t hired a huge team of sales reps). We aldready have almost 2,000 fans on our Facebook page, and that is just from the idea of Shiistr and not from an actual product.
No matter what happens, I know that this is going to be a good thing and an experience that I can share with my children. While I do pray that it will be successful, the fruits that have come from it already have been astounding. I’ve learned project management skills, coding best practices, and web design techniques that I would never have learned otherwise. I got to run a team of contracted software engineers and build a fully functional business-class website. Seriously, how cool is that?
Anyway, I’m all uppity and excited about the whole thing. The only thing that is going to be interesting is to see how long it takes for businesses to catch on. I am doing the tech side of the project, but apparently the business side has been running into “this whole thing is too new” with local businesses. Not a big deal though. It’ll work out.
Some days at work Some weeks, I just can’t seem to pump myself up to get things done. One thing that I found that always helps is if I make a bet with myself. What I mean is, I create a deadline for a particular project that I am working on, and I try to put the deadline on a delivery date that just barely borders the impossible (i.e. on a day that I know that it can be done, but it’d be uncomfortable meeting that date).
After I’ve chosen the deadline, and here is the key, I tell someone that it will be done on that date. Usually I try to find someone that has a stake in the project, but even if they don’t it’s a way to keep myself accountable. The fact that I know that someone else is depending on me is enough motivation for me to keep chugging away.
Were you expecting something more profound? Sorry, but that’s all I got today. It works, and that’s all that matters right?
I am currently MCing for an all hands meeting at my job, and it struck me as to how many people willingly follow someone that takes the lead. I never thought that I was a good leader, and I still think that that is true. But it’s funny, being a good leader is not nearly as important as just taking the lead. If I want the audience to clap, I clap and have them clap. I bet you that I could have them clap for no reason simply by taking the lead and tell them to. Leadership is a skill that grows everyone that you take the opportunity to lead.
I suck at leading, but I am not afraid to lead. I know that the more I do, the better I will get.
