When it comes to being thoughtful about gifts, I’m about a 2 or 3 on the list of ten. For some reason, my mind goes blank in this category when it comes to my family, partners, and friends. I have an attitude of gratitude all the time. I suck at conveying it well. So I’ve been on a mission lately to change that. Which lead me to have a sit down with a lady that specialized in crafts that would help me to convey these things. I mean who better to learn from than from someone that works for a company that is built on gratitude and creating an unforgettable experience. Right? So we met up at a Starbucks. The first thing I saw when we sat down was an order form for the product on the table. Next, we talked for
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9/4/18 By Chad Denke I got a rare opportunity to have a date night with my wife this weekend without the four kids. Grandma was in town and I planned a dinner at the Melting Pot. A place that has some special memories for us. Dinner was great and we actually had a good waiter. Which is like hitting the lotto these days. We gave the waiter our card. When he got back, he had a strange look on his face. Then he set down a handwritten credit card slip. Kinda like the old days. Except it didn’t have the carbon on it and they didn’t
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Isn’t it crazy where the road of life will bring you at times? I started working out over 5 months ago now.  Something that was not in my plans but was a part of a commitment I made when I joined Impact Club. Which is a club where I committed to writing daily, work out, donate to charity and tell my story. When working out in the past my mindset has always been about shaping my body. Conforming to this image that is on TV all the time. But this go around I didn’t have any expectations in mind.  I was just going to do. And do is what I did. For the first 4 months, I dragged myself to do the workouts. Fighting it every time. Then something happened. A fork in the road. My mindset started to shift in the way it processed what I was doing. Instead of looking at things of “I’m
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Many things have left a mark on my life over the years. Some inflicted by myself and some by others. One of the greatest persons to leave a mark on my life was my grandma. She was a lady driven to make a young boy’s wildest adventures come true. Every summer I met up with her to fulfill that goal. We would go to all kinds of crazy places. Like natural bridges, civil war forts, Indian tribal grounds, metal detector hunting and even shoot guns. I always came home with treasures of stuff. Which I packed away. One of those treasures was this fossil that you see above. I opened this the other day with my kids after 30 years of it sitting in
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8/24/18 By Chad Denke In my post yesterday on Facebook “It’s not a struggle.” I talked about how I have had a paradigm shift in how I look at things. Business and life can take on this form as well. All too often we get caught up in a one-dimensional view of how things can be done in our walk of life. Which over time can drag us down or allow us to lose the drive and quit. Kind of like a horse with blinders over their eyes. Keeping you going in one direction. It causes you to only see things one way. Preventing you from seeing a better way of doing things. That’s why a lot of businesses that
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My birthday is next month. Bringing to mind the old adage “I’m getting too old to X”. But then again I’m more of a person that looks at things as “Age doesn’t matter.” Now I know a lot of people would disagree with this statement. They believe that doing something boils down to the physical health of their body. When in fact it boils down to their mindset. I was reading about Joe Moglia today. Joe has reinvented himself several times over the course of his life.  He spent 16 years
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This place is complete chaos I thought. As I looked back from the front of the bus all alone. But that was ok. My experiences had taught me how to cope with that. My team of missionaries was on the other bus. I had nothing to worry about. Thriving in chaos is what I do. That’s why my leader who also had the same name Chad elected me to be the one to ride alone on that bus. Chad knew I had been in sketchy dark places of my life before. He knew I had been a drug dealer before. Putting myself in situations that most people
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This morning I read an article on leadership about a former employee at Google Kim Scott.  In her first major leadership role. Kim presented some results from a campaign with her boss Sheryl Sandberg that her team developed. The meeting was a smash and Kim walked out with a new set of confidence. On the way back to her office, her boss praised her for the presentation. She also revealed to her that she had more than a few “umms” while presenting. Blowing it off Kim continued to walk
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I Almost Puked Life if full of mistakes. We all make them. Big and small. Especially investors. Not long ago I read about China’s shared economy that has gone bad. You may have seen it in some cities. Those green bicycles on every corner with no locks on them. If you want a ride one, you scan
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  Before there were a million channels for you to watch there was public television. With Bob Ross and his ever-changing amazing paintings. I always wondered how he was going to make what looked like a blob into something that was Amazing. It seems like that is the new wave of businesses today. What started
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