Bryan Entzminger

The word “successful” immediately brings Warren Buffett to my mind. I think this is probably for a few reasons. First, he’s incredibly wealthy and a nearly incomparable investor who truly understands the fundamentals of what he’s doing. He’s old but still skilled, having achieved success without exploiting or belittling others – at least from what I can see. This contrasts sharply with other wealthy and productive individuals who often bring controversy and division wherever they are.

Of course, I haven’t ever met Warren, and I’ve not researched that hard, so maybe I am just ill-informed. But that’s what I think I see. However…

Wow! Talk about a can of worms. Transparency is challenging because I strive to follow Jesus’ two greatest commandments: to love God and love my neighbor.

I think that’s an inspiring idea, but the truth is I live by the principle of “we fall down, and we get back up.” Not of my own strength or volition, but prompted and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

In a practical sense, it might look like this:

I had no idea when I started writing based on daily prompts how deep some of the questions would get and how hard it would be to answer them. I realize I’m probably starting to sound like a broken record (remember those?) but this is tough.

I’ll assume I can’t give it away to family to avoid obvious and self-serving answers like my parents, wife, or kids. Those choices hardly seem fair, since I could be effectively giving it back to myself.

I’ll assume the $1,000,000 is completely tax-free to avoid calculating after-tax percentages.

Well, this one will be quick because I still don’t really feel like grown up. I mean, I do what I think of as “grown up” things, but I still very much feel like a teen trapped in the body of a grown up. In fact, at more than fifty years old, I wonder if anyone ever really feels like a grown up.

Maybe It’s Just Perspective

As I ponder this question, I wonder if I don’t know what it feels like to be a grown up because I thought the adults in my life had it all figured out. They seemed to know the answers to the questions. They could fix problems. They talked about things with a perspective that comes from experience more than education. So I thought being a grown up meant knowing the right thing to do.

Now that I’m in the range of middle age, I wonder if I look to younger folks like I know what’s going on and how to fix things. Unfortunately, I still feel like that confused kid who thinks everyone else understands everything.

For the longest time I never really thought of myself as goal-oriented. I mean I’d go through the trainings to learn about SMART or SMARTeR goals, and I’d kind of bristle at the thought of them.

I find it challenging to fully commit to one thing without neglecting others, which seems related to my personality. But at the same time, I could easily see that in the context of business, this could be used to say, “These are the goals YOU set. We’re just holding you accountable,” recgnizing that there was an element of social pressure to set the goals that were expected.

Thankfully, I’ve moved past that, at least in part, and have a healthier relationship with goals. That said, I think the hardest goal I ever set and achieved was actually two interrelated health and activity goals.

This one digs deep because there are so many different mediums and genres within those mediums. It’s hard for me to nail down a simple few and I don’t have the time to walk through all my memories, so maybe I’ll focus on just audio and music.

How It Started

My love affair with music and audio has been around for at least as long as I can remember. I know I’ve seen pictures of myself as a toddler with headphones on listening to music on my dad’s stereo.

That was probably when I was around two years old. Maybe a little older, maybe a little younger. I don’t know if that’s weird or not, but it’s the history I have.

This prompt is fun to answer, but it feels strange since my hobby turned into a successful freelance business that’s now facing some challenges.

My hobby is podcasting. Or, more specifically, creating and editing audio podcasts. I’ve started dipping my toe into the world of video, but I’m still pretty new at that.

I love (and sometimes strongly dislike) what podcasting makes possible. From a technology standpoint, it’s possible for pretty much everyone to have a voice and to share what they create. And there really are no “rules.” Many industry leaders continually challenge existing “rules” to expand possibilities.