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The CEO's Journal: Entry 15- I'm Excited
Me (Austin Chambers), and future star basketball player, Ethan Vey
March 22, 2019
The all-star game votes are all officially in! There were over 770 votes from players an coaches all over the province and everyone seems to be REALLY excited for the event. It’s going to be GREAT!
Circle May 11th on your calendars everyone!
March 23, 2019
I have a pop up shop this weekend and it's gone pretty well so far. But the highlight of my day was getting to watch one of my best friends play professional basketball.
Daniels a big weirdo
Daniel Gordon is a member of the Island Storm NBL team and today I not only got to watch him play, I got to do it
from the seat directly behind his bench!
I’m really happy for Daniel and every time I get to watch him step onto the court get an overwhelming sense of pride. That’s my bro!
This is only the beginning for Daniel and I’m really excited to see how his pro career progresses!
March 24, 2019
So tired. It’s 8:00pm and I’m literally about to go to sleep. I’m always exhausted after pop up shops so on Sundays I usually take a long nap in the afternoons. But not today. Today I didn’t have the chance to nap. I went straight from the pop up shop to Daniel’s second and final game of the weekend and then to the gym to train a young athlete named Julia Warren. So now, it is 8:00 and I’m about to call it a day. We’ll talk more tomorrow.
Goodnight!
March 25, 2019
Last night I fell asleep at 8:30. Because of that, I woke up at 3am. For those of you who have never experienced this, it’s a very strange feeling. I woke up ready to start my day except that it was still nighttime (kinda). I was very disoriented and just read for a few hours before finally deciding to return back to bed at 6.
I awoke again at 11 and surprisingly felt somewhat normal. Anyways, besides my strange wake up time, the day was pretty uneventful. Not much to say here today except that I spent most of the remainder of the day at my desk just catching up on some work that I had missed over the weekend.
March 26, 2019
I’m pretty good at managing stress. I usually do a really good job of keeping myself in a calm, focused and in a positive mindset while working. However I’ll admit that sometimes, I feel overwhelmed and stressed. Today was one of those days. I found myself worrying about how to handle business taxes, how to make sure our all-star event goes smoothly and also how we’re going to maintain our growth over the summer when pop up shop opportunities are much more limited. Even though all these are potential issues in the distant future, I still found myself really worried about them. I’m someone who is always looking ahead which is usually a great quality. But on days like today, it can make me unnecessarily stressed. I often look to my uncle for guidance and tonight I remembered an important piece of advice that he gave me: When you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed, go workout! So I did. I forced myself to get up, take a step back from the issues at hand, and headed to the gym.
I had a really great workout and immediately felt better. But believe it or not, one of my favourite parts about working out is the walk home. I always find my mind to be so much more clear on those walks and I often get some of my best thinking done on that trip home. Today was no different. Halfway through my walk I thought of solutions to 2 of the problems I was so stressed about. Thank you Uncle Chris!
Note to self: When you’re stressed, GO TO THE GYM!
March 27, 2019
Pretty good day today. It’s officially grind time for getting everything for this all-star event ready. It’s still over a month away but already I’m so pumped for it! There’s lots to do so I want to get a little bit done every single day in preparation for it. It’s going to be amazing. Also, today I finished Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It was my 5th book of the month (go me!). The only thing I’m worried about now is that I’m running out of books to read and I’m going to have to buy some more. But that’s a good problem!
March 28, 2019
Something that most people don’t realize about me: I take very little money out of Elevate for personal use. I look at Elevate as a lifetime investment and because of that, I want to nurture it as much as possible. By taking money out of the business, I would be doing the opposite of that. So instead, the vast majority of the money earned on clothing sales goes right back into the business.
It can certainly be difficult to stick to this and I have to have a lot of discipline to spend my money wisely but I know that in the near future, it will be worth it.
March 29, 2019
One of the tougher parts of running a business (for me anyways) is delegating responsibilities and managing people. Like most entrepreneurs, my business is absolutely precious to me. It really is a struggle letting go of some of the responsibilities and trusting them to other people. But I know that it’s something that you HAVE to do otherwise the amount your business can grow becomes very limited. You need other people to help you build a big and successful business. So although it isn’t easy, I’m continuing to force myself to trust others with certain tasks.
I just want to take a moment right now to shout out Samantha Au and Jake Upshall. These two have really been on the ball lately with keeping up with the responsibilities I’ve given them. They’re making this whole “trust” thing easier for me because I can tell that they take their responsibilities very seriously. They ask a lot of questions and make sure that they’re doing things the way I envision them being done. So thank you guys and please keep up the great work!
March 30, 2019
I forgot to write about this on Thursday but I was interviewed for the newspaper! It went really well and I really enjoy interviews. In the future I want to do as many as I can. Today the article was posted and you can check it out here:
Thanks for your support everyone! Austin Chambers, Founder & CEO