milestogofromhere.com | Jeff Miles's personal blog | Faith, Family, Fitness, and Fun

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  • Follow Friday – The Hustle

    Follow Friday – The Hustle

    What… in… the… heck… is… The Hustle?

    “I knew it! You’re just out to get something from me!”

    You

    Please keep reading, I can explain.

    To this point, all of my Follow Friday posts to date have been about people. I have had the recommendations section of my site since I started rebuilding the site because I wanted to have a place where I could point my readers to resources they would find useful. Several of the links on that page are referral or affiliate links and I try to state that plainly at the top of the page so there is no trickery involved. Honestly, if you find that offensive, I would have no problem whatsoever with you opening a new tab and googling each of the links I provide, but when it costs you nothing for me to earn swag or even financial compensation for referring you, that seems ok to me because I use and find value in each of the products, services, and subscriptions I recommend.

    Share graphic located in each of The Hustle newsletters

    That being said, I have been toying around with the idea of including some of the newsletters and tools I use/follow for a few weeks now, but it wasn’t until this week that I felt I was truly doing it for the right reasons. Over this past weekend, Joe Biden was announced as the projected winner of the 2020 presidential election. Then, on Monday, the news broke that there had been major progress in a vaccine to combat the Coronavirus which caused a huge “rotation” in the stock market, to the tune of double-digit percentage swings on entire segments of the stock market. On Tuesday, I was instant messaging with one of my friends/co-workers about it and took a screenshot of a section of The Hustle from that day and sent it to him. After he read it, he asked where it came from because he knew it didn’t come from The Morning Brew, another email newsletter he knew I subscribed to. I sent him a link to The Hustle and asked him what his thoughts were around me posting a Follow Friday post about it explaining that I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t be received poorly. A good discussion ensued and here we are and I’m posting a Follow Friday post about The Hustle.

    So what is The Hustle? Like The Morning Brew, which you may have heard about recently because they were recently acquired by Insider Inc., The Hustle is a daily business-focused email newsletter that tries to not just report what happened but do it in a way that is informative and fun with just a hint of snark. Credit to The Hustle, their first mention the day after The Morning Brew was acquired was a congratulation to the Brew Crew, one of their primary competitors. As you can see in the featured image on this post, the advertisement is that you get the scoop on business & tech in 5 minutes or less. They also have a funny Friday Shower Thoughts section which combs the r/ShowerThoughts subreddit for comedic/insightful gold.

    If you’re someone who is in a corporate or startup environment that wants to stay informed about what’s going on in the business & tech world, The Hustle is definitely worth checking out.

  • Follow Friday – Jane Gasdaska

    The email said, “What in the world are you doing?”

    At that point in May 2018, I had been traveling a lot, somewhere in the ballpark of 4 or 5 trips within the span of a few weeks, which meant I was reading A LOT and had been churning through books and making a lot of updates to Goodreads which triggered almost daily updates to Jane Gasdaska. She had taken one of the status update emails from Goodreads and forwarded it to me asking how in the world I had been reading so much lately.

    I first met Jane when she was the keynote speaker at an internal tech conference at Phillips 66 in 2014. At the time Jane was a leader within our commercial organization and was a great fit for what we wanted as a keynote speaker. As a member of the core leadership team, I was given the opportunity to go to dinner with our IT leadership team sponsors including our CIO as well as Jane and her assistant. We had a great dinner out with a lot of great conversation, and Jane revealed her I ♥ IT shirt (pictured above). The tech conference was a hit and Jane did a phenomenal job as our keynote speaker. At some point during the conference, it came up that Jane and I were both avid readers, and a couple of years later we connected on Goodreads.

    Fast forward to 2018, I read the email mentioned above as I was waiting for one of my co-workers to check out of the hotel in Vegas where I had been a speaker at the ServiceNow Knowledge18 User Group Conference, a final commitment from my previous role in the Customer Support Technology group at Phillips 66. I shot Jane a quick response apologizing for blowing up her inbox and explained that due to my new role as well as commitments from my previous role I had been traveling quite a bit, and I asked how she had been and how she was liking her new (and current) role in Organizational Change Management. That led to a quick touchpoint phone call and an ongoing mentor/mentee relationship where she and I touch base every couple of months to trade stories on how things are going, anywhere I might be stuck, what we’re reading, the pulse in the organization, and the occasional technical troubleshooting that I provide for her. It has been a great two-way street that I look forward to as I see the appointment coming on my calendar.

    As a Phillips 66 employee, I am able to receive her Monday Moment blog posts via internal email, but she also posts them on her blog every week. You should check them out on her blog.

    Follow Jane Gasdaska: Twitter | LinkedIn | Goodreads | Blog

    Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

  • Follow Friday – Paul Carter

    Back in 2012, I had a pretty major back episode that required disc decompression therapy to allow me to get back to some semblance of normal. There was a combination of events that led to the episode, but one of them was a very high-intensity plyometric workout. After that episode, I realized a lot of things I had been taught about lifting, working out, and fundamental strength, as well as many of the underlying assumptions in my lifting, were incorrect which had led to a relatively speaking weak core. As I was laying on the decompression table day after day, I resolved to challenge all of my assumptions which resulted in me searching out websites like T-Nation where they post a lot of content for seasoned lifters who are looking to up their workout game. I already mentioned Lee Boyce last week, this week I want to introduce you to Paul Carter. When you first see his pictures, you realize this dude is JACKED and after watching a few of his lifts on Instagram, you realize it’s not all show, the man is a BEAST. But what I feel really sets Paul apart is he is not afraid to shy away from taboo subjects like emotional & mental health. Subjects that you typically don’t find talked about much and he’s not afraid to call anyone out. For example, a little over a month ago, he posted this little gem.

    But he’ll also post these as well!

    The caption he posted on this image is fantastic, go check it out!

    These have been some of my favorite posts of his lately. If I have learned anything the last few years (since Michael died) it is that strength looks a lot different than what I thought it looked like. Loving so deeply you get emotional is strength, real men do cry, and I’m worth loving.

    Finally, I also appreciate posts like these two, they’ve really gotten me thinking recently.

    On the last one, he said something in the caption that really struck home for me (relevant parts pasted below).

    …
    Words are incredibly important and play a huge role in allowing us to connect and communicate and get to know each other.

    –

    But if you want to cut through the bullshit about what’s really important to someone then simply look at their behavior. And see if the words and actions consistently line up.

    –

    If someone gets up at 4 a.m. to train, and runs off to work two jobs then as you can imagine, training is important to them.

    –

    If someone tells you that it’s important to them to lose fat, and get in shape, but won’t stay on plan with their diet, training, sleep, etc, then what are they really saying?
    …

    I don’t know how many times I’ve said, “I’m trying to lose weight.” when let’s be honest, if I was really trying to lose weight, my behavior would be different. So there it is, one of the things I respect about Paul is he challenges me to be a better me and I need to be hungry for awhile…

    P.S. – the dude has EPIC cheat meals, but he’s earned them 😁.

    Follow Paul Carter: Yoke Squad | Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

    Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

  • Follow Friday – Lee Boyce

    I have followed the website T-Nation for years. After a while, I noticed there were articles by a specific coach that always resonated with me. For those that don’t know me personally, I am a rather large guy (I’m 6′ 4″ and currently over 300 pounds) that is banged up from playing football for 14 years. As I started noticing the pattern I realized that the coach that was writing a lot of the articles that resonated with me was Lee Boyce. He consistently puts out content like his #TallGuyTuesday posts as well as posts that are focused on former athletes that are banged up from their years of playing sports.

    I appreciate guys like Lee who don’t go after the typical customer but utilize their expertise to help groups that wouldn’t normally get attention. If you are someone who likes to work out I recommend following Lee, but if you are like me and are a little larger than the normal person and are a little banged up, I recommend you follow him.

    Follow Lee Boyce: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | Website

    Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

  • Follow Friday – The Oatmeal – Matthew Inman

    As we were driving to visit some friends yesterday in the wee hours of the morning I had some time to reflect on what is currently going on in the world, particularly the United States. Over the last several months we have grown more and more divided. What started with a “we can beat this together” attitude has digressed into a free-for-all of divisive discourse and a ridiculous “us vs. them” mentality.

    I have followed The Oatmeal for a long time and have cracked up hysterically while reading his (warning: sometimes crude) cartoons. You may have heard of him because of the Exploding Kittens board game he created. A few months ago he put out a comic called You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you. It is phenomenal and EVERYONE should read it and reflect on their current belief system and evaluate how they may be sabotaging themself.

    Click on the image below to be taken to the “classroom friendly” version of the comic. (It is long, but extremely well worth the read.)

    At one point this year, as I was noticing tensions rising within the members of my team at work, I used this comic as a way to have an open and honest dialog about what was going on. For the people leaders reading this post, I would strongly encourage you to do the same.

    As we finish out 2020, we have got to do better as a country about discussing the issue at hand in a way that is respectful and constructive, but that will only happen if we’re honest with ourselves and realize we may not have all the right answers and the more we dig in and tune out views that are different than ours, the more we sabotage ourselves.

    Follow The Oatmeal: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Website

    Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

  • Follow Friday – Tarana Burk

    Follow Friday – Tarana Burk

    Tarana Burk photo credit - Dougal Macarthur
    Photo credit Dougal Macarthur

    One day on my drive to work I was listening to the Unlocking Us Podcast by Brené Brown and heard one of the most eye-opening and enlightening podcast episodes I’ve ever heard. In the episode I listened to, I was privileged to be introduced to Tarana Burk. Tarana has been fighting the fight for racial and gender equality for close to 30 years and is the creator of the Me Too Movement. I can’t say enough about how this episode opened my eyes and helped me begin to understand the fight that women and people of color go through on a daily basis. Everyone should listen to this episode!

    Follow Tarana: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Website

    Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

  • Follow Friday – Britt Crawford

    Follow Friday – Britt Crawford

    Britt Crawford

    I had just finished giving a productivity presentation at Phillips 66 and as is usually the case someone walks up with a question regarding the way to use different tools available to simplify a workflow or reduce the number of steps needed to complete a task. In this particular case the guy was asking about coloring cells in Excel without having to use their mouse since they had to do it SO often in his group within Finance, and “Oh, by the way, did your wife go to ORU?” This is how my friendship with Britt started. A like-minded, thoughtful, and hilariously funny guy that as we came to find out had a lot of connections to where my wife went to school and her mom had grown up.

    I’ve known Britt for several years now and got to catch up with him over lunch yesterday. What I deeply respect about Britt is how encouraging he was when I shared with him some of the frustrations I was dealing with and it just fit with how he has weathered the whole pandemic. When I apologized via text last night about being such a downer, he responded with grace and encouragement.

    Instead of whining and complaining like so many people have, he has decided to use his LinkedIn profile (the only social media site he participates on as far as I am aware) as a means to encourage people by sharing and posting content that lifts people up instead of tearing them down. We need more people like Britt on social media.

    Follow Britt: LinkedIn

    Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

  • Follow Friday – Rafael Grassetti

    Raf Grassetti | Instagram

    Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) were a large part of my childhood. I loved watching the TV show, had a bunch of the action figures, and went to my first concert to see them right around the time of the first live-action movie. I found Rafael Grassetti a few months ago on Instagram and have been following him ever since. His 3D artwork is amazing, but he took it to another level with the release of his TMNT series. I absolutely love it and have now used it as the background on all my devices.

    Follow Rafael: Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | ArtStation

    Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

  • We make better music together…

    We make better music together…

    Together – For King and Country featuring Kirk Franklin & Tori Kelly

    As an introvert, there is something about music that has always been a retreat for me. Without a doubt though, I love collaborations more than anything. Two (or more) artists taking their unique style and blending it together into something greater than either one of them can achieve on their own has always been magical to me.

    As I look around at what is happening in our world right now it breaks my heart. The dissonance and discord are deafening.

    I have struggled with what to say because the last thing I want to do to my black brothers and sisters is to insult you with more ‘whitesplaining’, we don’t need any more of that. The most important thing we need right now is white people willing to listen and hope to understand because whether we want to recognize or admit it or not, we’re the ones with the privilege and with that privilege comes responsibility.

    I am a large, bald, strong man with tattoos on both arms that can be very intimidating if you don’t know me. When my son was born I made a promise to myself that he would know that strength (or in this case privilege) was never to be used to your advantage. Since he was a little guy, I would ask him “why are we strong?” to which the appropriate response was always and will always be, “to protect other people.” Even with the looks that I get like the “I’m going to eat someone’s children,” looks (direct quote from someone who finally got to know me), I can’t even fathom what my black brothers deal with on a daily basis. My heart breaks for the mothers raising young black boys knowing they are raising beautiful young boys that will one day be looked at with distrust and fear.

    To the people in my circle asking, “why the riots and looting? What does it accomplish?” We were warned over 50 years ago and we still didn’t listen or change.

    “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

    John F. Kennedy – March 13, 1962

    “… But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense, our nation’s summer of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.”

    Martin Luther King Jr. – “The Other America” – April 4, 1967

    And to those who would say that Dr. King protested peacefully and others should follow suit, remember, we killed him too.

    To my black brothers and sisters, I know that talk is cheap, “what am I doing about it?”, you have every right to ask.

    First, my children will know that hate or discrimination in any form is unacceptable. On the night the George Floyd protests were starting I shared an open letter from the mother of a black boy to his white friends’ parents so we could have the discussion that their friends of color were not growing up in the same world they experienced and it was their responsibility to stand up for and stand with them.

    Second, I work for an amazing company that strongly encourages diversity & inclusion and I will continue to support and encourage the employee resource groups that represent minority populations.

    Finally, I promise to listen. Forgive me for my ignorance. Please, tell me how to help and stand with you.

    I’m not black, but I see you.
    I’m not black, but I hear you.
    I’m not black, but I mourn with you.
    I’m not black, but I will fight for you.
    I’m not black, and I love you!

    On May 4, 2020, the following collaboration video premiered amid the COVID-19 crisis and is more relevant now than ever. We make better music together…

    Please, tell us how to stand with you.

  • Book Review: Raising Passionate Jesus Followers


    I didn’t quite know what to expect when I was asked to review Raising Passionate Jesus Followers by Phil & Diane Comer. The fact that the foreword was by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs of Love & Respect fame piqued my interest so I went ahead and agreed to review the book. To say that I was thoroughly impressed would be an understatement. While I was reading this book I recommended it to everyone that asked me what I was reading. The authors present a fantastic framework for raising your children. I think one of the reasons this particular book resonated with me so well is that it is in lock step with what I believe the only answer to raising kids or doing anything. As my Pastor Whit George says the only hope that people have is knowing the real Jesus. Phil and Diane to a phenomenal job of laying out a framework for raising your children that has a foundation rooted in Christ. There were several personal stories that helped me relate to the authors and see my struggles in raising my children in the scenarios they gave. There was only one part where I differed from the authors from a theological perspective. However, that one difference was in a section where the authors were relaying their personal list of the ten things you have to teach your kids. The authors share their list but encourage the reader to develop a list of their own so the theological difference is easily dismissed, not anything to throw the book away over. I do not want to spoil any of the book for you so I will end this review but strongly encourage you to pick up a copy of Raising Passionate Jesus Followers by Phil & Diane Comer.

    *Note: I received a free copy of this book in order to review it and the links above may be affiliate links where I receive commissions.