Dead or Alive - The American Dream?

I was reading an article online this morning about the American Dream and if it is alive or dead? It made me pause and wonder if this was really what people thought? In reading the media, there is gloom and doom around every corner with the real estate crash, oil at an all time high and people losing their jobs. Have we lost the American Dream for good?


On the other side of the coin there continues to be growth in new start up small businesses. Entrepreneurs continue to thrive in a down real estate market as they scoop up deals and rehab them. More people are working around the fuel obstacle by using mass transit and trading in their gas guzzlers for mopeds and motorcycles. We continue to adapt and thrive despite the onset of hardship.

Are we destined to live out a more bleak future than the robust years of our parents? Or will we rise above with our high technologies, new inventions and efficient means of communicating at a global scale?

I tend to be a glass half full person and see the possibility for more opportunities in all of this chaos. The great hope that this next generation will grab the bull by the horns and work hard on creating new green space, more efficient ways to work together and better ways to harness the renewable energies of the sun, geo-thermal and bio-fuels. Many new small businesses will be created and many people will benefit from a better standard of life in the decades to come.

We really live in the most exciting time ever in the history of the planet as we can talk to another person across the globe, fly anywhere that we like and experience brilliant medical breakthroughs that prolong life beyond our expectations. Think about it.

The American Dream? I think it continues to live in all of us. By Brad McLeod

Let me know what you think and share your comments and opinions. You can reach Brad McLeod at mbmcleod@mindspring.com

Waking Up

We had a great beach weekend over Memorial Day. We traveled down to the Isle of Palms near Charleston and stayed at Wild Dunes and enjoyed the sand and water with the kids, mother, and my brothers family.

It was a good time to get out of Atlanta traffic and turn off the cell phones and try and relax for a a few days. Ah, the freedom to do nothing and enjoy some time off with the family. It was refreshing to get out on the beach and do a little running on the soft sand and to paddle my kayak and spend some time with my kids in the surf.

One of things that my son and I do are look for sea shells. We collect them and put them in a box with a small peice of paper telling when and where we picked them up. We did this in Mexico and found some awesome shells and put then in a really cool little box we found in downtown Sayulita. One day, it is my hope that he will look back on these boxes and open them up and find the notes and think back to the days of spending time together looking for shells and curious things on the beaches around the world.

Early one morning I greeted my son Dane who is 2 years old. I said "good morning" and asked if he slept well. He replied "woke up". We got a laugh out of that as he did indeed "woke up". Yep, that's a good thing - to be able to "wake up" every morning.

Although my son didnt mean it this way - I took a slightly different meaning from his comeback. My take - I think it is great to wake up every morning and to be grateful for every waking breath. I dont want to sound morbid, but one day I will not wake up. So I want to really be engaged to take advantage of every day as the true gift that it is. Every day is important and we only have so many of them to live and breath and make a difference on this planet. I am grateful for every day that I wake up.

Woke up. Yes; it is great to wake up. By Brad McLeod

You can reach Brad McLeod at mbmcleod@mindspring.com if you have comments or would like to trade notes on travel, family, financial freedom and lifestyle.

4 Hour Rich Dad

The two most influential books that I have read in the last 5 years have been "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kyosaki and "The 4 Hour Work Week" by Timothy Ferris. Both books have been quoted numerous times by many experts and recently I have heard more than one business person (Kendra Todd, The Apprentice) and (Jay Van Orden, Internet Business Mastery)and Yanik Silver of www.InternetLifestyle.com talk about how influenced they were by these books.

The concepts behind Rich Dad explain that the Average Joe works for their money, while the rich let their money work for them. The rich invest in businesses, real estate and stocks and let their investments work for them 24 hours a day. You know your listening to a rich person speak when they talk about the money that they made "in their sleep, while on vacation". The Average Joe can only scratch his head when he hears this statement.

The 4 Hour Work Week has many great points and new takes on how to simplify your busy life while working less and making more. Sounds like a pretty good deal, huh? I like Tim's style as he works smart and plays hard. His list of exotic locations he has traveled to will make even the savvy traveler drool.

I took away the major points that everything you do should be scalable and that you should build a system (Automation) in business and always look to outsource. To be scalable is to not have a business where you have to work 20 hours a day to make it work. Instead you have to delgate and hire out others to work and make the business function on a day to day basis (hence the 4 hour work week). The other is the automation meaning a method to create management free money and eliminate yourself from the wheel. By outsourcing, the book explains the concepts of hiring others to do the task that are not your most productive use of your time. If your not great at HTML code, hire someone else to do it (through a virtual assistant in India). If you are better at selling product but suck at copy writing and research - then hire it out. Save the most productive and money making things for yourself to do and get someone else to do the rest.

The final takeaways I have are that I intend to work less, have my money work more for me, and spend more time with my family and friends in far away exotic locations (can you say Sayulita, Mexico?). Ciao. By Brad McLeod

You can reach Brad McLeod at mbmcleod@mindspring.com if you have comments or would like to trade notes on travel, family, financial freedom and lifestyle.

Christmas Gifts

What better way to start up this new blog than to post up something about our travels down to Florida for a great Christmas. We spent a few days in Tallahassee visiting family and relaxing, eating and looking at lights.

I decided to throw my board in the car at the last moment and my brother and law, Lee Craig and his son Brannach Craig headed out to the City of Tallahassee Skate Park on the south side of town. The new skate park was absolutely fantastic and I remarked several times at how we always wanted a park in Tallahassee years ago but always just skated local wooden ramps at friends houses and all the streets in between. The new park is super nice with great texture, tons of great lines and yards of metal coping. Too much fun for a guy my age... but I will take it. At the end of the session we were already planning a way to get back on Christmas day for more. Lee gets so psyched he heads out to MoJo's Skateboard Shop in the mall in picks up a new Blind board.

So we show up early the next day and are skating and wishing we had a broom to sweep up some sand and leaves and low and behold a dude shows up with one. We get to talking about keeping the area clean and how we were so blessed to have a nice skatepark like this in Tallahassee as I did not have a place like that years ago. The guy with the broom agrees and said he felt the same. I asked him when he skated in Tallahassee and he says late 70's. My mind is racing and I asked his name and he says Lee. Man... my jaw dropped as I looked at his face and yelled out "Lee" and went to hug him. This was one of my old skate buddies from many years ago - Lee Nettles - who now lived in Tallahassee and owns the MoJo Skateboard Shop. I had not seen Lee since at least 1982 - over 25 years. We skated back in the day on the Skateboards Inside Out (SIO) team (started by Barry Zaritsky) and had a blast as teens doing a sport that nobody thought was cool except us. Here is a picture of the SIO gang in the late 1970s at the half time of a Florida State Seminoles football game as we skated there for the crowds entertainment (Travis Clayton, Scott Hughston, Brad McLeod, Stuart Singer, Jimmy Odum, Lee Nettles, right to left).

Skating was our life back in those days. I sucked at traditional sports like baseball and was way too small for football. I remember getting cut from the Leon Baseball team and kinda feeling bad. I got over it and found my world of skating which was an absolute gift for me. Skating was my passion and I took every chance to get out with the SIO gang and go down to ride at Shawn Peddies pool, Steve Rayburns ramp, Travis Claytons backyard ramp or to go out to FSU and explore the concrete.

Anyway, back to meeting up with Lee Nettles was a great moment and we both went on an on asking about old friends and catching up. We broke out the boards and caught a few runs and I followed Lee on an old skool carve through the whole park catching every wall and more. We exchanged numbers and vowed to meet again in the near future to catch up and skate a session.

We came back to the house and ate lunch and were so psyched that we jumped back in the car and headed back to the park. My daughter Ollie (not named after the skate trick Ollie) had wanted to come along and it was great to work with her at the park and ease her back and forth between two small concrete ramps. Her balance is really starting to come along. Were going to have to go out and buy her a new board so that she can jump in the fun and follow her old man down that concrete dreamscape.

Cant wait to get back down to Tallahassee to skate the park and meet up with Lee and maybe Steve Rayburn and others. I am reminded that life is a gift and every day I am alive I am blessed to be healthy both mentally and physically and given a chance to show my daughter the things that I love. By Brad McLeod

You can reach Brad McLeod at mbmcleod@mindspring.com if you have comments or would like to trade notes on travel, family, financial freedom and lifestyle.