I have an obsession. One that was cultivated at a very early age and one that I'm even more intentional about now. It is an obsession with learning from others who are the best at what they do. In my mind, it doesn't matter what industry they're in or what kind of work they do. There are parallels that can be drawn and ways of thinking that cut across generations, industries,  and creeds.  Watching someone who is the best at what they do talk about how they do it is an incredible thing to behold. But when you get two people who are the best at what the do, arguably the best at what they do in the history of their professions, sitting in the same room and talking about it together, that is pure mind stimulation gold. Being born in Omaha and having worked for a company associated with Berkshire Hathaway, I have been a Warren Buffett fan for a long time. Now living in NYC and being true fan of the perfection that is possible in word-smithing and lyrical story telling, there is no one better than Jay-Z.

In this interview with Steve Forbes, they are both incredibly open and candid about the challenges and the factors that played a role in the success that they've had respectively and what they see for themselves going forward. It is worth the 52:39 to watch the whole thing (watch it here) but here are the quick hits that I took away the first time I watched it

"I was lucky, I got started early. I knew what I wanted at a young age. I'd read every book on investing in the Omaha Public Library by the time I was 12." - WB

"You don't have to be smart in this business (investing), you have to have emotional stability and not care about what people think once you've made your decision. " - WB

"I love Tom Watson's quote, 'I'm smart in spots and I tend to stay around those spots.'" - WB

"Success doesn't come from making a ton of brilliant decisions as much as it comes from making sure to never make terrible ones." - WB

"Being an artist is similar to being an investor. Both professions are a constant battle to find and act on the truth. To explain your truth." - JZ

"Music is like stocks. There are always things that are hot and the foolish jump for the popular. I've stay true to what I know and that is how I've been consistently successful." -JZ

"I get to do what I love everday. It doesn't get any luckier than that." - WB

"Knowing what to leave out is just as important as knowing what to focus on." - WB

"I was once asked. "How do you beat Bobby Ficsher?" The answer is simple, play him in something other than chess." - WB

"When the landscape of business changes, you don't have to change who you are you just have to change how you go about communicating that." - JZ

"The best moat that you can have is your own talent. The markets can't take that away from you. Neither can competitors or inflation." - WB

"I tell students all the time, you have the brain power and the energy, develop the habits of success now, early in your career." - WB

"Charitable Foundations are not tested by the markets. It makes it a lot easier for them to lose focus when they don't have to stand up to a market test." - WB

"Philanthropy is a much tougher task than business. In business you're looking for the easy thing to put money towards that will lead to quick results and the bottom line. In philanthropy, you're looking for the hardest things in the world and endeavoring to make them right." - WB

"If you succeed 100% of the time (in philanthropy) your projects are too easy." - WB

"If at the end of my life I was known as one thing, it would be as a teacher. There is no higher calling than that." - WB

Looks like after "surviving" an earthquake earlier this week, DC and NYC are going to have the rare chance to experience another natural disaster: Hurricane Irene. So, I think that there is really only one question to ask: what kind of supplies do I need to host a hurricane party? If you're in the city and want to come out and watch Irene make her way up the Eastern seaboard, come on over the Half Pint Friday after work for a rocking good start to what is sure to be a wet and wild weekend. RSVP HERE

Theodore Roosevelt is responsible for one of my favorite quotes. A trip to Valencia, Spain and the Bull Fighting Museum (and some great photography by Annie) is responsible for one of my new favorite pictures. Put together, they are a great reminder to dare greatly.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

Do you smell that? That's the smell of awesome in your smart phone market place.  Now you don't have to wonder what's going on with your friends olfactory nerves, you'll be able to know for a fact! People around the world are check-in to what they are smelling and share it with their friends with SMELT IT!

Have you ever been sitting at dinner with your significant other and thought, "wow, the smell of this fresh baked bread and the rosemary butter is just amazing!" Before SMELT IT your only choice was to text a friend and waste precious time away from your date. But now, with SMELT IT's over 1000 smell directory, you can quickly identify that smell and share across your favorite social networks.  And, to increase the user experience even more, you can tag your favorite smells to your geolocation based check-ins and add photos of the things your are smelling to share on the most popular photo sharing apps out there! The Web 3.0 synergies are endless!

Brands are going to smell this opportunity a mile away and some major corporations and agencies are currently getting their first whiff of the pungent revolution. Never again will people forget what scent shampoo they love or what their ex-girlfriend's perfume was.

Download it now! And just remember: If you dealt it - tell everyone on SMELT IT!

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[for more on my thoughts about things like this - check out my post Going Amish]

A local book store can offer a glance into popular culture's mindset. And, if I didn't know better, somewhere in a big huge leather chair filled conference room, book publishers and authors decided to wage war on the past.  It seems to me that they are trying to make the past a four letter word.  Everywhere you look in the book store, and especially on the end caps, the prime real estate fought over by cookbooks and biographies alike, the theme of "conquering your past" is everywhere.  The encouragement to get rid of your past like this weekend's garbage is inescapable. But, as seems to frequently be the case, that got me thinking. You can learn a lot from taking out the trash.  As I pulled the plastic draw strings up this morning to carry the past few days worth of trash down to the bin, I saw a peak into the memories of the past few eventful days.  Meals eaten, letters received, bills paid, products that had served their purpose and are no longer of value. The things that were thrown away were not horrible and terrible things that shocked and appalled me when I saw them again, but things that had run their course and were no longer needed.  Things that no longer were valuable for me keep around. And of course, living in NYC I am very conscious of the amount of space that I actually have to keep around things that don't serve a purpose right now or in the future.

The same is true in taking out the trash of the past.  While there are obviously the true extreme pasts that are filled with felony worthy habits and tragic decisions that marred the future, for a lot of the folks out there buying the self help books, it is possible that the past they are "dealing with" is actually just a part of their history and the scars that tell the story of their past. Not all of the past, even the tough parts have to be looked at as awful or horrible things, just not things that made the cut to be carried into the future.  It is just how we think about it that matters.

While there are certainly decisions, habits, and choices in my past I am excited to have thrown out, there are a part of my story and something that has shaped the current version of me .  But, that said, there is something refreshing about the action of tossing the lid on the bin and knowing that those things are not around to stink up or clutter my world anymore. What was in my trash this morning doesn't define my today or my tomorrow.