The CEO's Journal- Entry 17: Can't Progress Without Stress!

April 7, 2019

The second day of the ATR basketball camp went really well. The players all worked really hard and I can proudly say that each and every one of them learned something new today. After the camp I then had a one on one session with Emily Sullivan, a 9th grade point guard from St Kevin’s who’s already good enough to play on the senior team. I had an amazing time helping Emily improve and It really is amazing to know that I am playing a part in someone’s growth and development. It’s definitely one of the most rewarding things that I do and I ‘m hoping that over the summer I get to do it every single day.

April 8, 2019

I love Mondays! I know, I’m weird. But I can’t help but to be excited to see what this new week has in store for us. I practically jumped out of my bed with a huge smile on my face. I love Elevate and I love the process of building it each and every day.

April 9, 2019

Sometimes I forget that I’m still technically a university student. I make all of these plans for how I’m going to get my Elevate work done but sometimes I forget to adjust that plan according to my school work. Don’t get me wrong, my school work gets done on time. It’s just an inconvenience because I end up having to move my Elevate time around. But let’s be honest, I’m doing Elevate things all the time anyways so I guess it’s not the end of the world that I have to do school sometimes. Today was a pretty stressful day just because I was studying all day for an exam that I have tomorrow. But the day wasn’t all doom and gloom. Two REALLY great parts of the day stood out to me.

The first is that I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Holy Spirit senior girls basketball game. I train a lot of the girls on that team and it was great to be able to watch them in action. Regardless of how they play I enjoy showing them support and also learning which areas of their game to work on next. A positive from the game that I’m really proud of is that they’re executing one of the moves I taught them quite a bit. Little things like that never cease to put a smile on my face.

The other part of today that I really enjoyed was a meeting with my friend Lucas. Lucas and I are very like minded individuals. We both work extremely hard at not only our ‘jobs’ but we also put a really big focus on learning and bettering ourselves every day. I learned a lot from Lucas in our meeting and I can see us working together in the near future. Stay tuned for more on that haha. I also found some time to read today. I didn’t get through too many pages today because of the whole ‘studying’ thing but I did read enough to gain some insight as to some important questions I need to continue asking myself about the brand. Particularly; how to make sure that we continue to grow?

In time you guys will see how I plan to answer that question.

April 10, 2019

My exam today went alright. I’m mostly just glad it’s over. I can’t wait until I’m finished and finally have my degree simply so that I wont have to worry about studying courses that I have no interest in. But let me stop now before I go into a rant on the things that I think are wrong with our educational system. What I DO want to ‘rant’ about though is a book I read recently. I am not a fan of ‘Outliers’ by Malcolm Gladwell. To me, it’s basically just a big book of excuses. The book takes a bunch of successful people and points out the opportunities they had which contributed to them being successful. Now don’t get me wrong, opportunity does play a role in our ability to be successful. If there are no opportunities then of course it’s going to be impossible to achieve success. But the main thing I have against the book is that it too heavily points to opportunity as the reason that some people are successful and others are not. For example, the book points out that Bill Gates had access to a private school and a computer lab growing up and credits much of his success to that. Now of course, Bill Gates would possibly not have achieved the things that he has without that computer lab… But my question there is what about the other students in his school? Didn’t they have access to that computer lab as well? Why don’t they also have successful tech companies? The key here is that Bill Gates took advantage of his opportunities and worked extremely hard at what he was passionate about. We all have opportunities and challenges in our own lives. But it’s the choices that we make in response to those opportunities and challenges that dictate the direction that our lives will take. To say that Bill Gates is the icon that he is today because of his school and computer lab and other circumstances is discrediting the work that he put in to achieving the things that he has.

I just don't understand what the purpose of the book was. Why try to make people believe that success is due to luck? Should people not try to be successful then? Or was the book meant to make those who haven't obtained large levels of success feel better about it? It's my opinion that the book put far too much emphasis on circumstances and attempted to minimize the work and effort of those who have achieved greatness in their fields. Yes, some people have it better/worse than others. But I believe that the choices we make are what allows us to take advantage of our opportunities and overcome our obstacles.

What do you think?

April 11, 2019

The past couple days have been incredibly stressful and busy. Between studying ,working on the Elevate All Star Weekend, meetings and figuring out some other future plans/projects, I haven’t had as much time to keep up with the regular day to day tasks I usually do. I am ashamed to admit that I haven’t posted on the Instagram account in a few days now. Considering that that’s how we originally gained so much of our popularity, it’s really terrible that it’s been neglected lately. I need help and I know it. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve been bringing people on board here and there to help me with various tasks. Jake for example has been managing the Instagram story and Chris manages the ambassadors. But I need a lot more than that and I’m not sure what the best way to go about getting that help is. In a perfect world I would have a small team of people working with me full time. At this point even part time would be amazing. That’s basically what Samantha does. But if 3 days per week I could have everyone come in for 3-4 hours and work together, that would be HUGE. This brings me to my next issue of managing the business’ finances. I’ve gotten much better with it as time has gone on, but at the end of the day I’m the passionate CEO. I have so many things that I want to do with the brand and I need to actually make a plan for what to save, what to allocate to, how much, what order I should do things in, etc. As you can see, I’m learning as I go. Elevate has the potential to grow so rapidly and right now the main thing stopping it from growing is me. This is why I make sure I make time for learning every day. The business’ ability to succeed right now depends on me and the things that I choose to do and how much time I allocate to the many different requirements of running a successful company. The book I’m currently readying is Zero to Tone by Peter Thiel and it’s actually helping to answer a lot of the questions I have. I think I’ll speak some more about this book tomorrow. For now I gotta get some sleep! Goodnight! April 12, 2019

I couldn’t sleep last night. I couldn’t stop my mind from trying to figure out how I was going to expand and improve Elevate. There are so many things that I want to do with this brand but I just can’t figure out the best course of action. Not yet anyways. This morning I literally drew out a brainstorm bubble and wrote down each of the things that I want to do with the brand. That helped me to feel a bit better and now what I think I’m going to do is set some time aside on the weekend to actually work out the details of what I want accomplished and how I’m going to get each of them done. Categorizing everything and seeing it all laid out on paper really helped me to feel less anxious about everything so I’m going to make note to do this as a stress relieving technique for the next time I feel overwhelmed.

April 13, 2019

I feel like I’m always telling you guys about how busy I am. But it’s the truth and this weekend is especially busy for me. Here’s what today looked like for me:

This morning I woke up at 8am to prepare for and head to our pop up shop at the U14 Club Provincials. After spending 3 hours there I headed to St John Bosco School to run another camp for local basketball club, ATR. Two hours later I was back at our pop up shop, this time for 6 hours. Immediately after that I went to Gonzaga to watch one of my proteges, Ethan Vey, scrimmage. Ethan’s goal is to go to a prep school and I’m doing all I can to help him achieve that. I recorded his scrimmage and my plan is to send some clips to the school he wants to attend. I’m also going to review the scrimmage with Ethan to show him what he needs to improve and areas where he could have done better. I want Ethan to become the best player that he can and reviewing his film is a way that I can help him to do that. Oh, and Ethan played very well by the way.

I’m exhausted now and can’t wait to get some sleep. Talk to you guys tomorrow!