brad garland

Our company just wrapped up our second annual company retreat out in Angelfire, NM. We normally take three days and look at our company introspectively from all facets of the business. It also gives us all a chance to sit back and enjoy each other’s company in a “non-work” environment. One of the things that I found particularly cool this year was how we were able to debate about things in a non-argumentative way. We talked about everything from business models to politics to religion. At first, I was curious what the outcomes would be but the discussions were great and really informative! We have people in our company with a vast array of backgrounds and opinions and the fact that we were able to discuss them without it getting out of hand is really great to see for our team. Everyone went into it with mutual respect for each others opinions and seemed to realize that the goal wasn’t to change others opinions but to have everyone understand their own.

In related news, last week on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart ex-Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was on and talked about how there was many a times where the Court had to learn to disagree agreeably and thought that was a great way to put it.

Today marks the two year anniversary of my gastric bypass ROUX-en-Y procedure. I have stayed within 10-20 pounds of my lightest weight since hitting it over two and a half years ago. At my lowest I was 190 and this morning I weighed in at 205. I’ve recently gotten up to 212 and have started working my way back down by counting calories and getting back into working out.

At this point, post surgery, I can say that my life is pretty close to normal. Here are some of the big differences between before and now:

Dear Mr. Email,

Our relationship has been going on for almost 15 years now and I feel like you have done an amazing job of slowly becoming an integral part of my life for both my business and personal affairs. We spend so much time together that some would consider it cheating. What I’ve come to realize is that we are too close and I need a break. This closeness has come at the expense of other things (productivity to name one, my attention to name two). You and I need some rules to help continue our relationship. So here’s how this relationship is going to go moving forward. These are the rules:

1) We will ‘talk’ twice daily. - I’ve spent many years thinking I need to talk every fifteen minutes to you but we both know that’s just not true. I’m limiting our chats to twice daily, I’ll review any and all emails that come in during those times and handle them accordingly.

2) No notifications - I’m switching all my email notifications (desktop & mobile) to ‘manual mode’ and will only check them if it aligns with rule one.

3) Deal or no deal - When I do review my emails I will handle it in two ways. If I can answer in two minutes, I’ll handle it now. If not, highlight it for later, delegate it, or follow-up by other means (phone, IM, video).

There is no negotiation here, Mr. Email. I know you don’t like this but I think this will be best for both us. Let’s start with thirty days and see how it goes from there.

Regards,

Brad

• I can go without email and be okay.
  
  Limited myself to 5 minutes a day and it worked beautifully. I was able to ‘catch up’ after the week in about an hour. I’m going to start having a set length of email time 2-3 times each day and see if it helps my productivity.



• I suck at really turning it off.
  
  As much as I want to disconnect from everything Internet, I have anxiety when I can’t do even the most mundane of tasks (reading feeds, checking what ppl are up to on Twitter). Suggestions?



• My team are rockstars.
  
  I have been blessed to have a team of people that have the skill set and desire to make my company better everyday. They don’t just cash out when the boss is on vacation. They are always looking to make what we’re trying to do mean something. I’m so lucky to have them.



• I need to keep focused on what makes me happy.
  
  I think a lot of us end up having jobs that we do just to collect the check and that’s fine for the short term but over the long haul it never truly satisfies. This ties into my #2 but I missed working this past week because I enjoy it and the people I work with so much.



• Push to be even more transparent
  
  This isn’t a realization I had just this week but a personal development goal I want to improve even more on. Many say that I’m too transparent and as a CEO you need to be careful on what you say. I disagree. I have gotten more respect and support for being open than if I kept it to myself. I just want to try and be even more transparent even if that means exposing vulnerabilities.

Ever heard of the term? I just learned it this week.

A staycation is defined as a vacation but in or around your home. I’m so used to always having a planned vacation setup that I’m really excited about this week. I plan to just chill as much as possible, hang with my girls, and try to ‘fall off the grid’ as best I can, though, I still want to read news and blog some this week. With things picking up with Banktastic private networks I was really hesitant to leave but some perspective can’t hurt anybody, right?

Alright, I think we’re going to hit the lake today with some friends so let the staycation continue! Have a great week everybody.

It’s last night at about 9:30p and I pull up Apple’s website to see what the availability would be for my Apple store at Willow Bend mall to have an iPhone 3G tomorrow. The website says it would be available in my flavor (white, 16GB) tomorrow so I began wondering what time I had to get there in the morning to be one of the first? They opened at 9am so what? 8:30a? 7am? 5am?!?

I decided on 7am and if the lines were too long then I’d just leave and go to my appointment early. Well, I rolled in at about 6:50a and only one car was in the parking lot and I ended up being number 3 in line. YAY! I had a book, magazine, and my current iPhone to keep me busy. The time went by really quickly. Everyone else waiting were really nice and we chatted each other up while we waited.

The store opened at 8am for those with Genius Bar problems or training and all was looking good that I’d be getting my iPhone 3G today when the store officially opened at 9am. That was until at 8:30a the store manager came out and looked up and down the line (up to about 50 at that point) and announced that despite what the website said they had not received any iPhones yet. WHAT?! She said the website said they were in stock because they had two iPhones on hold for others and it was a glitch in the system. This didn’t make people happy. Some were down right pissed. Come on, guys, what is this little girl going to be able to do about that? “Sorry for the trouble, free iPhones for everyone!” Negative.

She said what she could do is check with FedEx to see if she could get a better indication on when it would arrive today. After about 10 minutes on the phone, she came back and stated with confidence that some would come today no later than 12pm but she didn’t know what kind or how many.

12pm?!? I had a BIG appointment at 10am that I couldn’t miss so that wasn’t going to work. So after that realization I tucked my tail between my legs and headed to work. The only time wasted was my own and it was all ‘sleep time’ so not much lost in my book. But I’ll tell you this, I’m not trying that again. I will either wait until the phone is readily available anywhere or just order it from a AT&T store and go pick it up when it arrives. Fool me once, shame of you. Feel me twice, shame on me!

UPDATE: I walked into an AT&T store this evening, paid & ordered what I wanted, they will email when it arrives (10-21 days), done deal. 5 minutes tops.

UPDATE 2: Ordered it on Wednesday night, it’s Saturday morning and got this email from AT&T.

Looks like they maybe underpromising and hopefully over delivering!

UPDATE 3: Picked up my white 16GB iPhone on Monday, got it all setup and I’m rocking! My wife is loving her new/old iphone, too. Kudos to AT&T on under promising and over delivering.

I couldn’t help myself.

I’m sure there are going to be another thousand reviews on the software but the beauty of the web is that people are also interested in my take. So I did three parts.

1) From a Apple fanboy perspective
2) From a financial services perspective
3) From a private ‘internal only’ to my guys at The Garland Group/Banktastic perspective

Enjoy and if you have any additional thoughts, let me hear from you, k?

Part 1 - Apple Fanboy Perspective


Part 2 - Financial Services Perspective


Part 3 - Private Video to my guys (you gotta be pretty special to get this link, :) )

As my two-year Kate would say after a meal, “All done.” The 1st BarCampBank in Dallas is officially done. Pictures here. Videos coming soon.

It seemed like a whirlwind weekend but I’m thinking that’s the status quo for these things. We ended up having 29 people show up to the event and the majority were at their very first Barcamp experience. After I kind of kicked things off and let everyone know how this experience worked it flowed pretty well. It was tough, being a person that naturally wants to teach and lead folks, to just stand back and let them mold the event that they wanted but it was worth it. I did get nervous at the very beginning when the 1st sessions didn’t start on time. I was afraid it wouldn’t ever start but finally, someone piped up and said “we’re starting in here” and everyone dispersed to the rooms of their choice and began.

And the conversations were great!

I spent the first half of the day not participating at all and just letting the attendees get involved (per the ‘Open Space’ recommendation). I wanted to jump in there two or three times but held back and again, glad I did. There were so many smart people there and I love the fact the smaller the groups for the sessions, the better the conversations were. What was interesting, for me, was what happened at the end of the day. It seemed like the majority of the people were not going to be able to make it for the 2nd day. So I did a quick poll and asked if we should do the 2nd day at all? The ones interested said yeah but it didn’t make sense to do it in this space. So we decided on a brunch meet-up and afterwards, calling it a day. So the beauty of the unconference wins again. People voted with their feet and it worked out great.

Lastly, one of the best parts for me was the after Barcamp stuff. A group of us went out to eat together, laughed, drank beer, and just hung out. We all ended up at Mark’s for a while and had some REALLY great conversations that I wished got recorded (but maybe that’s what was supposed to happen). I’m just a sucker for some real good conversation I guess.

I definitely want to again thank everyone for attending. It wouldn’t have been as good without you all and I hope to see you again at a BarcampBank in your area.

We knew the news for a couple of weeks now but wanted to hold off until after our 1st doctors appointment which was day and everything looks good. So Jenny is 5.5 weeks pregnant and is due around early February ‘09. We are very excited about it and I coaxed Jenny into doing a video to announce it to the world!



Thanks to everybody for the support!

Been spending time thinking about the generational differences that we have not only with older folks but there are also significant differences already being assumed by the younger generations. This is a bit of rant on an idea I have been watching with my daughter and how her generation is already taking a lot of the conveniences we have recently gotten for granted.



Comment below if you have another thought…would love to hear from you.