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I never thought I’d say this, but I am a Wal-Mart shopper again. I say this after my wife and I went grocery shopping at Wal-Mart for the second weekend in a row. In the past, Wal-Mart angered me to no end. The stores are almost always packed with rushed and inconsiderate shoppers, and their customer service never really impressed me. Recently, I’ve been shopping mostly at Target and occasionally Tom Thumb and Central Market.

But lately, I’ve found myself back at Wal-Mart. And the reason? Wal-Mart is more vegetarian friendly than Target. At least that’s how it is in Fort Worth. Wal-Mart carries more vegetarian brands and has more diverse vegetarian products. It seems that Wal-Mart is making a more conscious effort to offer vegetarian and organic foods, and I like what I see.

Also, I like the new image in the stores. I’m a fan of the little star symbol that now accompanies their name:

And the slogan Save money. Live better. doesn’t scream cheap as Wal-Mart once did. Now, it sounds more like Wal-Mart is doing you a favor. We’re not cheap. We’re helping you save money so that you can spend it where you really need to spend it.

Target, you still hold a special place in my heart, and maybe one day I will return to you. But for now, I’ll be at Wal-Mart on the weekends, stocking up on veggie burgers and fiblets.

So this was our first Thanksgiving as vegetarians. For a while, it seemed as if we weren’t going to be able to have a main course. We thought that the only place that would sell Tofurky, our dish of choice, was in Arlington, and we were having one hell of a time making it there during business hours. In an act of desperation, we tried Central Market and were delighted to find that they sold Tofurky.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed the Tofurky. Megan, not so much. Sure, it wasn’t exactly like turkey. No, you probably couldn’t give it to a meateater and expect him to be satisfied. But I enjoyed it, and that’s all that matters!

This vegetarian thing has not been as hard as I thought it would be. It always helps when you make your mind up to do something. I haven’t had any cravings for meat. The only problem has come when we’ve eaten out. I never realized how much fast food and gas station food contained meat. But I’m making it. And thanks to Central Market and Tofurky, I made it through Thanksgiving.

We’ve all heard those cliche expressions before:

I’m a real hard-worker…

I’m easy to get along with, I have a lot of friends…

Or something along those lines. And chances are that pretty often you roll your eyes and say yeah right and laugh to yourself. I know I do.

But that goes two ways.

Lately, people have been telling me that I have an inviting personality, that I’d be good for marketing. I laughed. Maybe you did too. But when more and more people comment on something, at some point you have to consider that it may be true.

It seems that lately none of my confidence is original. By that, I mean that I don’t just wake up one day and think that I have certain skills or capabilities. Other people are telling me what they see. Little by little, I’m accepting the possibility that my perception of myself may be off.

A few years ago, I could not have seen myself in a management position. Recently, I’ve handled situations that would have made me want to crawl under a rock and hide from the world. But in some instances, people have been right about me. Or at least that’s my perception right now.

How do you see yourself? How do you think others see you? Would you dare ask? Should you twist people’s perception, or should you play into it? I think these are all very important questions that we should ask ourselves sometimes.

Hindsight is 20/20. Unfortunately, some people’s foresight leaves them completely blind. The fact is that everything changes. You might be on top today, but there’s always someone (or something) with a bullseye on you, looking to bring you down.

I knew this before the lesson was learned. When I first got into the oil and gas business, everyone said that the work in the Barnett Shale region would last forever — about 20 years! Okay, so 20 years isn’t forever, but when you’re a 23-year-old kid still fresh out of college, 20 years is indeed forever away. There were all kinds of studies and statistics to support the claim. But there was one thing they forgot to include in their assessments: foresight. They were so stuck in the here and now that they forgot to have any foresight. And foresight should have told them that it was nonsense. I knew it was. It was too good to be true. That’s why I saved my money up and got ready for the hard times. Nothing lasts forever. No market stays the same.

Sure, I can see why everyone thought that the boom would last forever. Gas prices were around $4.00 per gallon. We all know that once prices go up, they never go down. And then the bust happened. Some people got caught with their pants down. Some people really got hurt.

And now when you look around, everything in business is changing. The Internet is largely to blame. Everything is going online, just some things are doing so more slowly than others. Will anything ever replace the Internet? Right now it’s so easy to say no.

Organization structures are getting smaller and more efficient. Communication is changing, things are becoming more intimate. Organizations are becoming more transparent to their customers now. When did this all happen?

Now, I’m always trying to look ahead. I admit that I have a hard time seeing things before they happen, but at least I’m trying. Are you?

I never thought I’d say this, but I’ve officially made it through three days of vegetarianism. If you know me well, you know that this is unbelievable. Heresy, I dare say.

I had toyed with the idea for a while but never took any action. Megan and I consumed some vegetarian propaganda and she was hooked, so I decided to jump in for the ride. I’m not really sure why I’m doing this. For me, it’s not about the animals. I know that their executions are not civil or painless, but that’s not reason enough for me to go vegetarianism. I don’t have to see it. I can look away. I mean, really, how did you think the animals that make your meat products were killed?

It does scare me not knowing what’s in our meat. The way we manipulate animals with steroids and such, is it safe? Of course, it’s hard to know what’s in any of our food, even in a vegetarian diet.

Megan and I also decided to cut out soft drinks. It’s no secret that that stuff’s just liquid trash. No nutritional value whatsoever. I’m still drinking tea though, so I’m not sure how smart that is. But it’ll come in time. Baby steps for now!

Ah, Madden. I can not tell you (and my wife will attest to this) how many hours I’ve spent playing sports video games. Madden NFL, NCAA Football, the NBA 2K series. Sports games offer the perfect balance of fantasy and reality; you get to play as your favorite team or franchise, but you get to be in the driver’s seat and show that you can run things better than the guys who get paid for it. (Am I right, Raider fans?)

But let’s be honest, things have gotten crazy with sports video games. Every year you’re sold the same game, the primary difference from last year’s version being an updated roster. That’s it. You’re paying $60, year after year, to have the current athletes at your disposal. Sure, they try to make it different in other ways. They throw in features you most likely don’t truly care about: deeper franchise mode, improved gameplay (which has been lacking in the same areas for years), retro jerseys, and whatever else they feel will pacify you. But the fact remains, the only thing worth the money is that updated roster.

I think that this is ridiculous considering the capabilities of these next generation video game consoles. New content is available online. Now, even roster updates are available online. Of course, the updates are offered only for the current installment of the video games. Last year’s version doesn’t get a roster update, how else could they justify the $60 price tag every year? With the current consoles, you can download expansion packs, new costumes for your video game characters, and new maps for your games; you can even download whole video games online. Why the need for a CD copy of the game year after year? Why can’t these features be offered online year after year? It would be more convenient for everyone and the prices would surely go down.

I’m sure that video game stores like GameStop are on their way out the door anyway.

Of course, a franchise like EA’s Madden has a monopoly. With their licensing agreement with the NFL, EA wiped out the competition (NFL 2K and ESPN Football). They dominate the college football market too. It’s time that they realize that having the monopoly is not enough. It’s time to give us what we want, not what they want. And that’s why from now on, as much as I love sports video games, I’m going to have to take a pass in the future.

Don’t be told what you want,
Don’t be told what you need

I spend a significant time wandering around aimlessly on YouTube. I watch a little bit of everything: music videos, video blogs, educational videos, and whatever else tickles my fancy at the moment. Just before writing this post, I came across a music video in which the record company (who posted the video) had disabled embedding. Obviously, this is an attempt to prevent viewers from posting the video on their blogs or Facebook pages. Personally, I see this as preventing word of mouth.

Sometimes people post their own videos and dub an appropriate song over the video. The record company may find these videos and take the audio track away, basically destroying the video. I understand that the record companies own the rights to these songs and therefore it is their right to regulate the use of said songs, but come on. Really. Isn’t that a bit too much? Some guy using your song for some silly video that he made in his spare time is not stealing revenue from anyone. Besides, in the music business, the majority of the profits does not come from record sales. It comes from tours and merchandise sales.

As a whole, the record company is light years behind the game. The world is changing, the economy is changing, the competitive environment is changing. In today’s marketplace, sometimes you have to give a little out for free. Some bands such as Nine Inch Nails and Wilco have released complete albums, free of charge. Radiohead did something similar when they allowed fans to name their own price for the band’s In Rainbows album. The Grateful Dead encouraged their fans to record their shows and share bootlegs with other fans. The Dead asked only that the fans refrain from selling the bootlegs.

I realize that record companies are likely scared of the Internet because of pirating and such. Regardless, if they are to survive, they must embrace the Internet when they can and utilize the appropriate features.

And so I leave you with a video that is very dear to me. This is a fan-recorded video from the first concert I ever attended: Radiohead at the Superpages.com Center in Dallas, Texas. The second song they played was “There There”. The atmosphere was amazing and the song had such an effect on the crowd. Luckily, since no one has yet taken this video down, I can share that moment with you. Who knows, maybe you’ll become a fan too. If not, it never hurts to try. It’s much better than a record company wasting money trying to advertise the song.

I picked up All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin at the library over the weekend. The book’s an easy and enjoyable read and I’m only a few pages away from finishing it. In the book, Seth Godin explains that the title of the book is an intentional fabrication used only for the purpose of catching attention. I’d say that his tactic worked because it pulled me in.

Godin argues that marketers aren’t liars, consumers are liars. Consumers lie to themselves every day and yearn to be lied to. SUV’s aren’t truly safe, but consumers feel that they are. Organic fabrics aren’t any better than other fabrics, but consumers feel that they are. There is no justification for those $80 pair of jeans you bought other than the euphoria you experienced when the payment transaction was confirmed. Yes, I agree with Seth Godin that consumers believe these things because they want to.

As Godin says, marketers are storytellers. A successful organization should tell a story, it should put an image in your head. One such example is Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers. I remember discussing Cane’s ad nauseam in my marketing classes. The restaurant truly is a wonder. Cane’s focuses on one main item — chicken fingers. That’s it. Sure, there is toast and coleslaw and fries and the sauce. But pretty much, it’s just chicken fingers.

And Cane’s has done really well. This may come as a surprise to some, but Cane’s is not original by any means. My wife first told me this and I recently found a post on someone else’s blog that goes into more detail than I am prepared to. But what separates Cane’s from these other restaurants is its story.

If you’ve been to Cane’s, you know the story. Todd Graves, the founder, first revealed his business plan in a college course. He was told the plan wouldn’t work. He tried proposing it to banks who rejected his requests for a loan. As the story goes, Graves went to work as a fisherman in Alaska to save up some capital to start his dream. And the restaurant is named after a dog he once had. Isn’t that a great story?

Yes, it is. Because the luxury of hindsight makes it so hard to believe that a college professor and loan officers could not believe that Graves’s vision could make it. And the part about Graves working and saving his money and finally starting his own restaurant — if that doesn’t scream American Dream, I don’t know what does. And do you think the part about the restaurant being named after his dog is a mistake? Hell no, we all know how people feel about their dogs.

As for those other restaurants, I don’t know their stories. I doubt their stories are as sexy. Universities use this same idea, but they call it “traditions”.

And so Godin got me thinking, What story am I telling? What is my story? And I’m not exactly sure. Have I found my story yet? Do I have a story worth telling? If someone sat down across from you and looked you straight in the eye and asked, “What’s your story?” what would you say?

I think my story so far has been a search for my story. I feel I haven’t found my groove yet. I don’t know where my ideal location is, I just know I want to experience more places than Louisiana and Texas. I don’t know what I want to do with my life, but I can tell you a long list of careers I do not want to pursue. But surely there’s a story in there somewhere. There has to be, right? I do feel that it is forming and gradually showing itself to me. Maybe I just need to pay closer attention. Because some day I’m going to have to tell my story. And I want to make sure it’s damn good.