So let’s see, so far I have breezed through childhood, college, grad school and my “professional” career so far.  If you don’t remember you can stroll down memory lane here:   My journey to this point.

Dave has talked a bit about his early days as an entrepreneur and dissatisfaction with the real world (To be an entrepreneur), so I figured I better catch up.

I’m not going to bore you with all the details of my career, but let me start by saying that what motivated me to do what I was “supposed” to do (read:  go to school, get a good degree, get a good job) was the basic belief that the working world is a meritocracy.  I believed that skill and ability were valued, acknowledged and rewarded.  Looking back I have no idea why I believed this.  Naiveté.

I now realize that although I have demonstrated my abilities, they are only valuable to my immediate supervisor.  He relies on me to figure things out.  However, the decision makers have no clue what my competence level is.  I am X, I do Y for a price of Z.  I can be replaced with any number of comparable units.

Truthfully, I expected too much.  I’m under no delusions that I can alter the corporate world.  So I have an important choice:  take it or leave it.

I have a friend who has carved out a nice life for himself as a medical device entrepreneur.  He has been a great source of inspiration and also provides a great dose of reality.  It is certainly not the easiest path, but in the end, it comes down to where you fit as a person.  When discussing my frustration with the job world, he mentioned that he is always paid exactly what he is worth.

Bingo!  A real meritocracy.  Or at least as close as we get.  In truth, random events and many things outside of our control affect our destinies much more than we’d like to admit.  Some people just get lucky or jinxed no matter how you slice it.

So far it sounds like I’m obsessed with pay.  It’s a bit complicated because I really assign almost no value to money itself.  However, I became incredibly disgruntled because I constantly had to figure out how to do things for a colleague who made 2x what I make.  It just didn’t seem fair.  It wasn’t fair.  My own boss admits that.  He also admits he is powerless to do much about it in the short term.  This is just not a scene I want to get sucked into.  People sell away their life.  In the ideal world they would reward me comparably to my colleague.  In the real world the colleague gets laid off and I stay the same.

I choose not to be a unit.  I choose to be my own brand.

Dave and I hope to create some sort of value for you.  I plan to provide a lot of free content related to our product and nutrition in general.  I hope you will find it useful and join in a discussion about how to live a healthier happier life whether you choose to buy any of our products or not.

If we succeed, we will be rewarded financially.   If we don’t, we will still be rewarded with a great learning experience.  It’s that simple and I love it.

This is the beginning of the 5th month of Longbars. At the beginning of September we filed the “Articles of Organization” for Newtrition, LLC with the Arizona Corporation Commission.  Just before Thanksgiving the ACC sent notice that the Newtrition, LLC entity had ‘been approved’ (whatever that means).  Next step after filing with the Arizona Corporation Commission was to publish a “Notice of filing”.

Filing the notice was pretty simple.  With the notice that was sent back by the ACC was also a listing of newspapers in which we could publish.  For just $37.00 and a short phone call with a pleasant and helpful woman named Laura and the Articles of Organization were published through AZcapitoltimes.com

Now I want to talk a bit about where we stand in the process and what the upcoming hurdles will likely be. First off, the bars are delicious, and I’m excited to have processed a sample order through the website.  Also, thinking about how to begin letting people know about Longbars has been some what of a challenge.  A month and a half ago I set (what seemed like) a very realistic personal goal of having the bars in hand by the first of November, and actually selling them by the first of December.

As it turns out, I may have given myself too much time to attain that second goal of selling the bars by the first of December… we’ll have to see at the end of the day. But I did learn an important lesson about setting goals: don’t set them too far apart, and try to articulate the goals more specifically. So, I’ll be working on that going forward.

Some good news on the sales front. There’s a good possibility that we’ll be selling the bars in a local nutrition shop that also sells Vibram’s awesome five-finger shoes (more on that in a later post). As more information becomes available about where Longbars are available I’ll be sure to spill the details.

Until then.