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P Street in D.C. is one of the worst areas in the city. Some of the things I saw, the things I experienced, the things we came through, really gave me a whole new perspective on life.
One thing I thought of, I call it By Sea, By Land, By Foot. It'd be a 100-mile paddle, a 100-mile run, and a 100-mile bike, back-to-back-to-back. But I don't want to end up in the hospital.
Any time I meet someone or learn about someone that's really interesting or inspiring to me or has a story that really resonates with me, I just cold call them, and I try to meet him or her.
I do a workout every morning in which I purposefully try to make myself uncomfortable. It sets me up for the rest of the day by reminding me that I can choose to be OK in the midst of tough challenges.
Before I left for American University, my mother told me to sign up for everything I could: to take advantage of everything from on-campus lectures to sports and social events to the amazing D.C. culture.
When we first started Marquis Jet back in 2001, one of our first goals was to try to break into the Hollywood marketplace. We thought it was a good way to help build brand credibility and attract new customers by word of mouth.
Later on in my life, it became a big theme: just being okay and comfortable to take the risk and to have really thick skin and realize not everybody is going to love your product. Get over it, and if you believe in it, keep going forward.
If I had done 'Go, New York, Go' for the Spurs, it might not have worked. It really taught me a lot about demographics and tastes and styles. I never went to business school, so that whole experience was my crash course in marketing, contracts, negotiations, and product launches.
If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.
I feel like I'd invested so much in the physical side of my life: running marathons - I brought a SEAL into my house - I have a trainer. But I've invested very little on the inner work, and in a world of distractions, I felt like to have the whole picture, I really had to spend a little time alone and work on being present.
When I graduated college, I remember all I really wanted was to make enough money to have a swimming pool, because I love to swim, to grow my own fruit. I wanted to have a little plot where I could grow my own oranges and make enough money where I could to take two weeks off a year. I figured if I had that, it was game over.
I used to delay doing stuff that I just didn't want to deal with - things like putting the garden hose away properly or doing the dishes right after dinner. Now I have this little voice in my head that says, 'I know you don't want to do this, but just do it anyway.' In other words, there's far less stuff that I put off until tomorrow.