​I came back about two weeks ago after spending a week and half in Japan with my family. One of my sisters lives in Chiba, and she got married on the 4th! It was a beautiful ceremony.

We spent a week before the wedding touring around some of Japan's most famous sights. Because there were 22 of us (a lot of the bride and grooms friends came from the US for the wedding, too!) we rented a charter bus to take us around for the week before the wedding. My sister and her fiancée planned the trip to a tee, so the whole thing went incredibly smoothly. And even though I'd been to visit my sister in Japan for Christmas 2012, it seemed like most of what we saw was completely new.

All in all, it was an awesome trip that we all had a blast on. So thanks to my sister and her new husband, and I wish them the best on their new life together! And in honor of the excellent trip they organized, here are my top five memories from the whole thing.

 A 600-year-old Shinto shrine a short drive away from Fuji-san itself. Of all the temples and shrines we visited on the trip, this was definitely my favorite. It's not crowded like the Meiji temple (located in the heart of Tokyo) or Toshogu (a world heritage site), so I could enjoy the tranquility of the space more. And is it tranquil! To get to it, you pass under the first Shinto gateway and onto a long, unpaved footpath through a forest of Japanese cedars, flanked by mossy stone lanterns. The walk there seems to quiet the mind and prepare the spirit for the shrine itself. At the end of the footpath, a bridge takes you gently over a brook that flows so smoothly that it whispers rather than babbles. It is the perfect transition into the shrine complex itself, which seems so much at ease and in rapport with the forest and the stream that it would be hard to imagine one without the other. By the time you reach it, you're now attuned to the spirituality and majesty designed into the shrine. I'd say it is hard to visit the shrine and not feel spiritually cleansed afterwards. Traditional Japanese architecture and landscaping was truly genius in this respect.

​About halfway through the trip we stayed for a night at an inn on the Kinugawa, or Angry Ogre, river. The place was both a traditional Japanese inn and a hot springs bath. It was an incredibly pleasant experience because, besides being relaxing, the whole thing was very immersive. The rooms don't have any Western-style furniture. Instead, guests sit on the floor on low tables and sleep on futons. They brought us Japanese-style robes to wear while we were at the inn . My sister told me what they were called, but I forgot to write down the names. Anyway, once we got checked in, we headed down to the hot springs baths. This being a Japanese hot springs, that meant segregated baths for men and women, as they can only be used while naked. Once you get used to it, it's pretty awesome- especially the views over the Angry Ogre river. When we arrived, it had just started to sprinkle, so we chose the outdoor bath over the indoor one. The softly cascading rain made a comfortable contrast to the hot springs.
After drying off and changing back into our robes, it was time for dinner, again in a very traditionally Japanese fashion. That meant again sitting on the floor as they brought out tray after tray of food: all kinds of raw fish, fermented vegetables, soups, and rice. Many in the group were turned off by how "weird" (to us) most of the food was, but this was easily my favorite meal because of the whole experience that went into it. All said, I could have easily spent a week at that place!

​This was the closest thing the groom got to a bachelor's party. Basically, all the guys went one night to sing Karaoke at an all-you-can-drink karaoke place. Unlike in the US, in Japan you rent a private room by the hour or half-hour for your party and they bring whatever snacks and drinks you order directly to you. And since it was all-you-can-drink, we kept the drinks coming. I lost count of how many rounds we ordered, but even without them we would have had a great time. The groom's friends visiting from the US, five guys in all, were old friends and had no problem letting go and just having a good time- one of the good things about having a private room! That set the mood for the whole night, and soon we were all dancing, crooning out lyrics, and laughing hysterically.
Afterwards we went back to the hotel around midnight, but somehow me and one of my brother-in-laws wound up at a late night Ramen restaurant just around the corner, where we had a surprisingly deep conversation about the meaning of life. I say that given how much we drank, to anyone who understood English at the restaurant we must have been pretty funny. He and I laughed about it the next morning (me with a horrendous hangover). But you know what? Our Ramen Shop Philosophizing was a great way to end the night.

Nikko Edo is a theme park made to look like a 17th century Japanese village. Though the park was aimed at kids, we still had a good time here! We went the day after the Inn & Hot Springs, and the weather was perfect: sunny, warm and breezy.
I liked it because of how interactive it was. We learned the basics of katana fighting, archery, shuriken-throwing, and even dueled with "samurai" in the streets. A couple of the girls in our party dressed up in Kimonos, and a few of us guys went on a ninja-training obstacle course that we failed miserably at.
It was also fun for me because I was finishing up Shogun, the book by James Clavell set in early 17th Century Japan. So I could actually walk through a "17th Century village"- in theme park form, granted, but fun and enjoyable nonetheless.
Since I mentioned Shogun- I started reading on the airplane to Japan and I'd say it made the whole trip more enjoyable. Besides being an excellent book in its own right, it also gave a lot of insight into the history of Japan and where modern Japanese culture evolved from. Highly recommended read, especially if you're planning on visiting Japan!

I'm running out of sisters to watch get married off. Plus, there's something about seeing a sister (or any loved one, for that matter) walking down the aisle that just makes the tears flow.
It was a Western-style wedding, which apparently are very popular in Japan, held at a place called Camelot Hills in Omiya. The place tries to be a replica of an old manor-house, which a decently large chapel inside for the actual wedding ceremony. I'm not sure how faithful of a replica it is, but it was a beautiful venue.
The wedding process, based on what my sister described, is very straightforward in Japan: you pay a lot of money to a place like Camelot Hills, and they basically take care of everything for you. For example, Camelot Hills took care of the catering, DJ and MC, photography and videography, the minister, set-up and clean-up, and more. They helped my sister find translators to interpret during the reception and after-party (the ceremony itself was only in English). It was the job of one staff member to follow my sister around the whole night and constantly fix her makeup, redo her hair, and adjust her dress for photos. They had shuttle buses going to-and-from Omiya, right near our hotel, to make it easy to get there.
All in all, I was impressed with how smooth the venue made the whole thing- Except for having a shuttle bus drive off at the end of the night with all my things on board! But to their credit, the venue was great about arranging to have the bus drop them back off to me.
One last thing worth mentioning that was fantastic about my sister's wedding- the desert bar they had at the afterparty. Besides having a station where guests could make smores (the bride and groom met at a bonfire in Oklahoma), they had a mouthwatering array of sweets that made me feel like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory- on top of the wedding cake, by the way.
My favorite? A chocolate mousse topped with strawberry sauce, covered in gold flakes (yes, real gold) with a stick of chocolate stuck in the top. The thought that I was eating real gold made the dish taste even more decadent.

Thanks again to my sister and her new husband for the amazing time we all had!

Dillon Dakota Carroll
Dhaka, Bangladesh

Happy new year, everyone! 2015 is officially here. What a year it'll be.

Here's some of my personal highlights from the year:

Big Milestones and Successes:

• Launched the Agile Product Design program at CCEW, and led the first team of interns (Levate was the product we invented, in case you're curious).
• Planned and organized the 2014 Social Entrepreneurship Symposium at OU, and hosted Paul Polak, a personal hero of mine
• Finished the OKC Marathon, as well the the July 4th OKC GoRuck Challenge 
• Graduated from the OU Summer Accelerator with Levate
• Quit my job to work full time on Levate
• Became a certified Black Belt in Extreme Manufacturing in a workshop with Joe Justice in Seattle. Met Steve Pavlina (another personal hero of mine) at his Lifestyle Design workshop in Las Vegas.
• One sister got married and another got engaged
• Did a 5 day hike on Inca Trails to Machu Picchu with the family. Special shout-out to my Dad for organizing the trip!
• Ran two workshops abroad, in Lima, Peru, and thus made my first income as an entrepreneur.

Biggest failures:

• Levate still has no funding. We did not anticipate it would take this long, and the frustrating part for us is that a lot of what we're doing right now is waiting on other people.
• The Levate Kickstarter was unsuccessful.
• Injured myself in the Marathon. Will probably have to have a minor surgery on my knee to fix part of the damage.
• My friend Eric Morrow and I tried, and nearly succeeded, to get a pilot language immersion dorm up and running at OU. We got shut down for not getting permission first.
• I tried to design my first "muse" (low input income generating business that frees you up to focus on non-income generating activities) and failed. Looking forward to trying a new idea though!

Favorite Moments:

• Spending both Solstices around bonfires with the family in Prague, Oklahoma
• Hanging out with my sister, her fiancee, and my Dad in the Lima airport before they headed home
• Reconnecting with old friends and making new ones
• Right after we made our first successful funding pitch. Ethan and I were in Tulsa, and were stunned and excited. It was like a jolt of electricity in our nerves. While Ethan drove us home from Tulsa, I sat in the passenger seat and typed out the letter of intent we would send to our investor, reading out loud to get feedback from Ethan.
• 1 Million Cups presentation with Ethan in Tulsa. We work well together, and presentations are no exception. The people at 1MC are wonderful and very helpful and we had a great time giving the talk.
• Getting up at 4am on a clear, crisp night to watch a lunar eclipse
• Camping in Turner Falls and getting righteously drunk around a campfire with my friend Michael
• Seeing the awesome response from students to our the immersion dorm Eric and I tried to set up.
• Starting this blog. My favorite article? This one.
• Exploring Las Vegas with new friends at the Lifestyle Design Workshop
• Dancing with the family and DJ'ing at my sister's wedding
• Auditing the class on Italian Literature. In particular, the class on Dante's Inferno was spectacular. Restored my faith in Universities.
• Friday morning breakfasts every other week with the accelerator crew.
• When the Cadre of my Goruck challenge gave us our patches for finishing.
• Spending 2 days camping in the woods by myself from December 29th-31st. It was a great way to reflect and prepare for the new year!

Favorite Books from 2014:

• A Pattern Language and A Timeless Way of Building. Changed the way I thought, and about much more than architecture and design.
• The Alabaster Girl. I will forever divide my life into before, and after reading this book.
• Four Hour Work Week and Four Hour Chef. In the words of my friend Eric, "it's a game-changer". Read it. Let it change your life.
• Microadventures and Access all Areas. Life on your own terms.
• The Art of Possibility: Very inspiring. Parts of it made me cry. Shout-out to Helene Hipp, who gifted it to me!
• Little Bets. I debated on putting this on the list versus Nail it Then Scale it. In the end, I went with Little Bets because it shows how to take the agile entrepreneurial mind-set and apply it across fields as diverse as architecture, comedy, animated films, and of course business.
• Secrets of Power Negotiators. This book tells you why to negotiate, and how to do it well. So do yourself a favor and learn how to ask for what you want in life!
• Log From the Sea of Cortes. Renewed my desire to visit Baja California, and Steinbeck's portrait of Ed Ricketts is moving.

Favorite Movies I saw in 2014 (not necessarily released in 2014... I'm waaay behind on most things popular culture)

• Interstellar
• The Secret life of Walter Mitty
• The Grand Budapest hotel
• Amelie
• Cloud Atlas
• Django Unchained
• The Watchmen

Here's to an awesome 2015!

Ah, what am I doing here, you ask?

Lots of things.

It started as a family vacation to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. In fact, I'm in Cusco now with some of my family. In two days we'll take a bus to the trailhead and hike some 25 or more miles over 4 days to the famous fortress in the Andes Mountains.

To get a better deal on the rewards ticket to Lima (I think my roundtrip ticket cost about 50k miles and $75 in taxes), I was going to have to stay in Peru longer than my family anyway. So, I decided to make a longer trip out of it and test a couple of personal hypotheses I have.

Hypothesis #1: I can work remotely on my Levate to-dos effectively, efficiently, and without interruption in the amount or quality of work I can do.
Hypothesis #2: I can give entrepreneurship workshops abroad and get paid to do so.

I'll talk more about each of this later. But first, I can hear you ask, I thought you were trying to save money?!? Something doesn't jive, amigo!

Yes, you are right, I recently ran a month-long experiment where I took great pains to limit my expenses. And yet, here I am in a foreign country, and the only thing that's truly expensive about it is the fact that I'm paying $459 in rent for an entire month that I'm not at home. The flight cost me $75, the tours and trip to Machu Picchu were already paid for by my very generous father (who I am lucky to have- Love ya, Dad!), I'm using couchsurfing to stay with new friends in Lima instead of paying for a hostel or hotel, and food (particularly in grocery stores) is inexpensive here. So using the same frugalness I used in October, my $1,000 a month goes much further in Peru than in the US.

With all of my moving around, I also took great pains to pack as light as possible. Everything I brought fits into a standard size backpack and a satchel. In case you're interested in my packing list, you can find it here.

So, into the hypotheses I was testing for this trip. I wanted to treat this trip, or rather the part of it where my family isn't here, like an experiment. If the experiments went well, well, the idea is to try and do the same thing on a more permanent basis. In other words, move out of my apartment and spend a few months in different places around the world, giving entrepreneurship workshops and working remotely on my startup with my business partner Ethan.

So first, let me talk about what it's been like working remotely. I needed to make sure I had reliable access to decent wifi, and a way to make phone calls to the US.

I figured the phone call part out pretty easily. With a netbook, smartphone, headset with mic, and skype subscription, I can basically call anyone I want. Skype has a plan where you pay $15 a month and you get unlimited calls from your skype account to landlines and cell phones around the world. Even cooler, the first month is free. I can reach out to anyone I ordinarily would in the US, just routed through a wifi connection and connected to their phone line.

The complicated part is that no one can call me, unless they're using my skype account. If or when I do this again, I may look into purchasing a Skype phone number. Like a regular phone number, if someone calls that number, I can answer it anywhere I'm connected to my Skype account. Pretty slick, and from what I remember it is reasonably priced. I could even have my cell phone number route to my hypothetical Skype number, I imagine.

What I'm missing out on here is the face to face interaction with my connections and especially with my team. A phone call or video call can never compare to sitting across a table from someone or shaking their hands. That's ultimately part of the price one pays for working remotely. And I do hate leaving my partner, Ethan, to take care of in-person meetings on his own.

Thankfully, there's only an hour time change between Oklahoma and Peru. I do have to be careful about keeping track of that hour time change, but I can only imagine that it would be much more complicated to coordinate meetings and such as the time difference gets bigger.

So far the wi-fi situation has been a mixed bag. In the hostel (I stayed in one for the first two nights) and homes I've been staying in, the wifi has been consistently good. That makes working from wherever I'm lodged quite convenient.

On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be consistent wi-fi access in cafes like in the USA. Some public places, such as parks or shopping centers have free public wi-fi, but the quality is spotty at best and they all seem to require you to log back in after 15 minutes of using it.

I have been visiting a couple coworking spaces in Lima, trying to set up workshops (more on that later), and one invited me to use their space while I'm in Lima. Their wi-fi was excellent. This makes me wonder if I could hop from coworking space to coworking space, giving workshops and using the spaces to work remotely for a couple weeks at a time before moving on to a new coworking space. Because of the camaraderie among startups and entrepreneurs, I imagine most spaces wouldn't mind. Especially if I'm already giving workshops there for their occupants.

So far, I've given one workshop here on the Lean Startup validation cycle, and I have a workshop on Agile methodologies lined up for when I get back from the Inca trail and Machu Picchu. I'm doing both of these free of charge. Getting paid for them would have been nice, but it seemed most important at the beginning to build experience as well as a network first. I'm trying to arrange paid workshops with two coworking spaces, Comunal and Stars Camp.

The first workshop I gave went well. You may be interested in how it came to be. Well, I knew no one in the Lima entrepreneurship community before this workshop. I spent a few days sending around a ton of cold-emails to organizations I found online. One of my emails got forwarded to the director of EmprendeAhora (Innovate Now in English). As it turns out, November is Lima's entrepreneurship month, and the Director, Romina, wanted me to do a Lean Startup workshop for some of the old graduates of the program. After setting up this workshop, I asked her if she could connect me to anyone else she thought might be interested in having me put on a workshop. She connected me with Arturo, which led to the Agile workshop I'll be putting on, as well as the connections with the two coworking spaces I mentioned.

By the way, I was very impressed with the state of the business my students had. All of them had paying customers, which is awesome! That is typically the hardest part for anyone starting their own business.

These workshops I'm giving are all in Spanish. I'm pretty confident about my Spanish skills, but there is definitely a world of difference between shooting the breeze with friends and teaching a workshop. So while my Spanish was shaky for this first workshop, I hope to continue improving on my ability to deliver the content and lead the exercises in a foreign language.

So far, the feedback has been assuringly positive from the workshop, including in the anonymous survey I sent out after the workshop ended. I did discover a lot of things I could have done better personally, which coincided with the constructive criticism I've received from the students and Romina, the organizer. For example, I did not do a good enough job explaining and framing the mock interview exercises, and several of the students were confused by it as a result.

I'm feeling very positive about my chances to get at least 1 paid workshop set up with one of the coworking spaces. By the way, some of the next posts I want to do will be about the coworking spaces I visited. They were both quite interesting places, with what seemed to be quite successful and functioning communities. As I travel more, it will be interesting to compare notes on the different coworking spaces.

What else is there to say right now, as we wait to go hiking to Machu Picchu?

Well, the food's amazing. Really fresh seafood, and a wonderful spin on food adopted from other cultures. Peruvians have incorporated their unique flavors into fusion Peruvian-Chinese (called "Chifa" in Peru) and Peruvia-Japanese food, and have even given a Peruvian spin to dishes like sandwiches and burgers.

Despite how crazy the drivers are in the crowded Lima streets, I have been quite pleased to have connected with a ton of open, fun, and amazing people while I've been here; both through the workshops I'm giving and through Couchsurfers. In fact, I went with some of my new friends to take surf lessons on the beach in a town about 45 kilometers to the North of Lima, called San Bartolo. We paid $15 each for lessons that lasted almost 2 hours in total. It was the first time I'd been surfing, and it was a blast. We finished the day eating seafood on a terrace overlooking the beach, laughing and chatting until the sun went down.

The past week and a half in Peru have felt formative, to say the least. Now I'm off to hike the Inca Trail.

Until next time,
Dillon Dakota Carroll

Late last night, I returned from the Conscious Life Workshop hosted by Steve Pavlina in Las Vegas.

I have read Steve's blog on and off since I was 16. He began doing workshops several years ago (I can't recall how many), and I always wanted to attend one. But it was never the right time. Ah, as a teenager, had I the money? Had I the circumstances to take advantage of such a workshop?

This time, the universe aligned. I had the money to afford it, and the airline miles for the free plane flight. I had the time, and I had taken the leap, having left my job at OU Economic Development on August 1st. To give you a reference point, one of Steve's most famous articles is 10 reasons you should never get a job. The topic of the workshop was balancing your ideal lifestyle with creating $10,000 in monthly income, a very relevant topic as I find myself CEO of a 4 month old startup with $0 in revenue.

And it was a fantastic experience!

It was very oriented around doing specific exercises and brainstormings to identify your ideal lifestyle, redefine your relationship with money, and hone in on strategies to generate income in a fulfilling way. I already had my "leap of faith" after leaving my job at the beginning of the month, for many of the others at the workshop (there were 125 of us) it was an impetus to take the leap. One attendee from Germany emailed his boss during the lunch break on the second day to let him know that he was quitting.

The big takeaway from the workshop, around which everything else was organized, was that creating your ideal lifestyle should be the top priority. That is the biggest component of personal happiness. Once you have your ideal lifestyle, you can design your income streams and work around that. I think it's a smart idea. If you put off pursuing happiness in favor of accumulating dross or shackling yourself to your career, then chances are you'll never make the time to pursue your ideal lifestyle. There will always be one more promotion, another million to squirrel away, etc. Steve's point was that those that prioritize creating their ideal lifestyle, tend to succeed at balancing their work and income.

I think it's a powerful way to frame your life. Ask any creative type, and they'll tell you that identifying your constraints early on does not hinder but rather aids problem solving. By knowing what you need to work around, it grounds the problem- in this case, how can I make money!- and gives you a starting point. This is the same reason that a good pattern language is such a powerful tool, because you're pre-making a large swath of decisions based on essential top-down principles and allowing your creativity to shine in the implementation of those decisions.

I created the following one-pager to synthesize my biggest takeaways from the workshop. I'm afraid it lacks the illustrative details and anecdotes that bring the points to life, but I hope that you'll find it useful anyway!

In the meantime, I'll be busy honing in on what I think is my ideal lifestyle. I feel like I am at a crossroads, an intersection of oh-so-many enticing paths and trails leading to who-knows-what kind of adventures, treasures, and trouble. What an exciting time of possibility, of exploration and reinvention!

Thanks to all my new friends from the workshop- Dan, Emilio, Ben, Colin, Rohit, Carlos, China, and all the rest!

Oh, and because you asked, here's a video of the giant, flame-spewing praying mantis in Downtown Las Vegas. It's right in front of Container Park- a cool symptom of the area's recent economic revival.

Until next time,

Dillon Dakota Carroll