Imagine you could see in to the future

Imagine you could see in to the future. What would you do with that
information? Say for example you knew for a fact that you'd win the
lottery that night. Would you go to work? Now, say you knew that
suprize layoffs are coming tomorrow and your number's up. Would you
order the lobster and fine wine? Today I looked at my financial
situation. I know for a fact that I will not have enough money to make
it thru April unless I stop paying my bills. Which I'd have no problem
doing but for my credit. I want to get a merchant account for the site
and the company I choose will run my credit. Bad credit; no MA. No MA,
no site. No site, I punch a clock for the rest of my life and end up
handing out grocery carts at walmart when I'm 70. So at this point in
my life my credit score is very important to me. Now knowing that, I
have 2 alternatives. I could either get a job. Any job. And work e-
commerce on the side. Or I could go all-in and risk it all on my
ideas. Now the problem is that I fully believe that I will make $
online. But it's highly unlikely that I'll make my rent in the first
month. More likely I'll make a few dollars here and a few dollars
there. So I'm going to have to get a job. Any job really as long as
it's not sales. Not that I can't make money in sales but I just think
that I've taken my sales journey as far as it can go. So I'm moving on
to the next thing. And that's making money online. But I want to do it
right. I'd much rather focus on my site in my time off then rush it
forward before it's ready. So, workforce here I come. Goin' up! :) $$

A life lesson in the FatBurger drive-thru

I've detailed my biography often enough to recap it fairly quickly. I
came to Vegas, played poker professionally, was the victim of too many
bad beats, started sales job etc. But I've left one detail out. Not
because I intentionally wanted to hide it, but because I didn't think
it important enough to include. I left Colorado Springs at night. Not
because I was running, or because I had anything to hide. Because I
wanted to traverse the desert while it's cool. During the trip I had a
major epiphany. Vegas is open 24/7 so why not offer a delivery service
that operates all day? I could get people anything they wanted, and
I'd charge a fee for the service. The drivers would make a small
salary and keep any tips the made. So during this trip that all I was
thinking about. The Las Vegas delivery service. When I came to town I
was excited to get started on making this dream come true. And for the
first time ever, I had the financial backing to do it. You see, I'd
come with $6,000. I went to the local SCORE office to see what I'd
would need to get started. I'd imagined a business plan, liability
insurance and some kids willing to work as 1099's. The nice gentleman
there said I could try to get this business started, but he'd never
seen it before. Because of that he didn't think my concept had much
chance. And I agreed with him. So I let my delivery business go. I
didn't give it much thought after that. For almost 3 years it was
little more than a dream, built upon sleep deprivation and road
hypnosis. Until Monday morning. My laundry was finally done and I was
anxious to go home and get it folded before it wrinkled. But I had a
passing thought. I hadn't had anything to eat since the night before
so I decided to get a bite. I have a craving for a chicken sandwich.
Despite never having had one. I pull in to the drive thru and I'm
stunned by what I see. It's a van from "Anything You Want Delivery
Service." In the FatBurger drive thru. At 4:30am Monday. My business
is in front of me. The same exact business I'd given up on because it
wasn't plausable enough. I look up the business online and they've
been in operation since 2008. How long I wonder until someone else
stumbles on my idea for 1every? Or the idea I had last Thursday? That
unfortunately isn't a matter of if but when. I learned what could be
the most important lesson of my entire life Sunday. You snooze, you
lose. I've listened long enough to the cynics and haters. Any fool can
think of a reason why a idea won't work. And I am no fool. At least
not anymore. No longer will I listen to anyone who says my ideas can't
work. The measure of an inventor isn't simply how many ideas he comes
up with. Heck, I've got enough theoretical inventions that I could
spend a dozen lifetimes developing them. The true measure of an
inventor is how many of his inventions come to market. It's not hard
to invent a lightbulb. The true genius of Edison was to devlop from
scratch the system of wiring and delivery to make his little lamp a
success. I've tweeted and posted enough about "then the fun part
starts." What I meant by that was that once I start marketing online
I'll spend a massive amount of time perfecting my portfolio. Very soon
(within the next few days) the fun part starts. One golden opportunity
slipping through my fingers is enough. I'm human. I will make
mistakes. That's the price of being my own boss. I understand that.
And I accept it. The key is to make sure I learn from my mistakes. And
I will never again make the mistake of listening to someone I am
blessed with the gift of invention. It's high time I use it. Take
care. Goin' up! :) $$

1 Corinthians 13:11

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I
thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things"
I've often thought about that passage as a resignation of youth. Like
you can't have fun after a certain time in your life. As if adulthood
is a jail sentence of dreams that never came true and soul crushing
hopelessness. But I realize now that that's not the case. Adulthood
simply means having to make ones own way in the world. And once the
basics in life are taken care of then you can have fun. And because of
that, I've come to a major decision. To understand the impact of this
I must go back a bit and explain. In November of 1997, my friends and
I discovered yo-yo's. This was right in the middle of a major yo-yo
craze led by Yomega corp. They had invented a simple yo-yo that could
spin and come back on it's own. Also if you got a knot in the string,
you could simply take it apart. This led to a massive wave of new
players. Including myself and my friends. About a month later, I saw a
television program that would change my life. It was Guinness world
records on Fox. It featured two yo-yo pros competing for the record
for most tricks in 1 minute. After seeing this I knew that was what I
wanted to do. Be a professional yo-yo player. So I went without lunch
for two weeks and bought my first yo-yo. I worked furiously to improve
my skills. But alas, after some 10 years my carefully thought out plan
proved fruitless. I still practice from time to time and that's where
I find myself tonight. In a style called freehand I was trying to land
a variation on a trick I'd been doing for years. After I got it once I
wanted a cleaner run so I tried again. But the string became knotted.
As often happens I decide to snap the string rather than work it out.
But this time was different. I'd been using pure nylon string that is
very tough to break. And when this did it sounded like a whip. I look
down and I see a blood blister on my hand. Please undestand I have
much more important things to be doing right now than yo-yoing. But
there I was standing in my living room. With a little red slash on my
hand when the passage comes to me. The freedom of entrepreneurship is
a double edged sword. I'm free to set my own hours but I have to
actually do what I need to do during those hours. I have no boss but I
have no hourly wage to rely on. There's no ceiling to what I can earn,
but there's nothing if I don't produce. Here's what going to happen.
First, I'm done yo-yoing. I'm selling nearly my entire collection. I'm
only keeping about a dozen yo-yos that have sentimental value to me.
And I'm setting my schedule. From now on I'm going to devote the hours
of 1pm to 3am Monday to Saturday to generating income from the
Internet. Could be my main site, could be blogging, eBay, adsense,
affiliate marketing, or clickbank. But during those hours, that's what
I will be doing. Also, there's a bookstore I've enjoyed going to for
years and that's going to be my home office until I can afford to buy
a home Internet plan. Or until AT&T gets off it's ass and unlocks
tethering. Frankly I'm not optimistic about that. I've had a week to
rest, relax and decide what's next. And I've rested, relaxed. But the
time for that has passed. If I'm to make money online, I need to take
making money online seriously. Giving up a passion I've had for some
13 years is a heavy cost. But I'd pay it gladly. Once the site's up
and running, I can take all the time off I need. Until then,
goodnight. Thank you for your time. I'm goin' up! :) $$

Justin Bieber is my hero

I've noticed that Justin Bieber has been a trending topic on Twitter
every time I've checked for at least the last month so finally I
became curious enough to see what these tweets were. Initially I'd
thought that the stream was a reaction to some news event or a new
album release. Then his name stayed on the board. I thought that it
may be simply the actions of some rabid fans. Finally I thought he
might have a bot-net sending tweets to keep him there. But as with the
most truly inspired ideas, it's simple. Upon looking at the Justin
Bieber tweets I noticed they were all from different people. And they
seemed to be written in reasonably proper English. (As much as teens
today can write correctly.) But a lot of them were closly related.
Like "Omg I love you Justin Bieber please follow me!" Or "Justin
Bieber Justin Bieber Justin Bieber that is all. Please follow me." But
there was one tweet that cracked the code behind why Justin Bieber has
been able to remain a trending topic. It said "OMG! Justin followed
me! This is the greatest day of my life!" That's the key. Justin has
realized (or has been informed) that people will work very hard if the
reward is attractive enough. And in this case it's Justin following
you. So his fans tweet furiously to get his attention hoping that
he'll follow them. And the fact he's following some 50,000 people says
it often pays off. This is how a celebrity should relate to his fans.
So well played Justin. If that whole music thing doesn't work out a
fantastic career in marketing awaits you. Have a great night.

The death of a Salesman

Before I go in to detail about the events that have taken place
recently, I think it would be best to go over what's led me to where I
am now. I moved to Las Vegas in June 2007 excited to start a new life.
I didn't get a job initialy because I'd come with a decent bankroll
and my plan was to support myself by playing poker. I now know that
the first rule of professional poker is you don't play with your rent
money. You make decisions based on elimination of risk rather than
maximizing reward. Several bad beats later, I was in need of a job.
But what? Remember that at this time Vegas had a very low unemployment
rate. So I had my pick of jobs. I'd made a decision about 10 years ago
that if the opportunity ever presented itself, I wanted to try my hand
at sales. The reason why is that I realized that if I'm to be
successful, I needed to learn how to sell. Also I knew that sales
floors tend to be open to training new employees much more than the
rest of the job market. I went to the next job fair in town and got my
sales job. Throughout the 2 years I worked there I had ups, and I had
downs. But I always seemed to make a good paycheck right when it
counted. My problem was that I could never seem to get ahead. So on
the 2 year anniversary of my being hired, I left. My friend called me
a few days later and offered me the chance to work with him. Long
story short, we didn't make any sales and I was forced to move back in
with my parents. About a month later my friend calls me again and is
working at a new floor. So I pack what will fit into my car and came
back. I was excited to work again but I didn't want to go back to
sales. You see, by this time my patience dealing with potential
clients was gone. Hearing the same tired excuses and BS every single
day had become a problem for me. But I did what I had to do. Then a
disagreement over payroll led me to leave that job for a new company
in a different sector of the economy. Prior to this I'd always sold
education. Now I was going to contact businesses for grant
preparation. But much to my dismay, despite the fact that we were
dealing with businesses, the conversion ratio was abysmal. I sent deal
after deal to closers and I only make a few sales. More and more I
felt like I was wasting my time. One of the central philosophies in my
life is the importance of time management. The fact is if you're on
welfare, or the Forbes 400 everyone shares the same 24 hours in a
day. And the fact was I didn't like spending day after day calling
people and not making sales. On Friday my boss calls me in to his
office and goes off on me about how many leads I have. Keep in mind,
I've always had a large number of leads. I pester my team leader
constantly about more leads. After about 10 minutes of berating me, he
hands me one stack of about 30 leads and takes the other 300 or so
that I had. And tells me he doesn't want to see me off the phone for
the rest of the day. I go back to my desk and I think of a quote I'd
heard Jim Koch, CEO of The Boston Beer Co say in a commercial. He was
thinking about his future. He said "You know what? I don't want to do
this (work for someone else) for the rest of my life. Matter of fact,
I don't want to do it tomorrow." And I didn't want to be calling
people for money the rest of my life. I didn't want to do it that day.
And I don't want to do it ever again. Please don't misunderstand me, I
believe that salesman are vital to the success of any company. I just
don't want to be a salesman anymore. Luckily during my career I
discovered my passion. One of the companies we sold education for was
an Internet marketing guru. He came to Vegas in order to introduce us
to the new system we'd be selling. I'll never forget when he came down
because I thought to myself "I can do that." Prior to this we'd always
sold real estate courses. And although I believed that the info we
were teaching our clients would allow them to invest, I never saw it
as something I could do. The Internet allows for such a low cost of
entry into the market that in my opinion, anyone who wants to can set
up a business. So there you have it. I've learned everything I can
learn about sales and am ready for the next step. And that next step
is creating a business for myself that will not just pay the bills,
but for the first time in a long while allow me to truly succeed. I'm
not sure just yet what form it'll take, but I will have a business
online. So it was written. So it shall be done. Because I'm goin'
up! :) $$

Coming soon...

I just quit my job. Now I'd like to write a long detailed story about why but for now my minds not in the right place to do so. Look for that post very soon. Until then, rest assured, I'm goin' up! :) $$

A quick lesson in math:

My goal at this job is very simple. First and foremost, I need my 10
sales. But I need to continue to make sales consistently to be able to
focus on building my business correctly. So here's what I need to do:
I must make 5 full commision sales a week. That'll make me $4,000/wk.
Given the close ratio I've seen so far, I'll need to write about 12-13
sets to get one sale. Not a great rate but so be it. So I need to
write about 60-65 sets per week to make my 5 sales. That's roughly 1.5
sets per hour. That's it. It's going to be a good week. Because I'm
goin' up! :) $$

The cost of freedom

Social mobility is a subject I've been interested in for some time.
What is it that allows some people to climb the socioeconomic ladder
and prevents others? The answer I've found is that most people either
don't understand the cost of upward mobility, or are simply unwilling
to pay the price once they discover it. For a long time in my live
I've been ignorant of the cost. Last Wednesday I decided to run a
simple cost analysis to see what it would cost me to launch my site.
The numbers shocked me. For years now I've known that if I had several
breakout weeks at my job I'd be able to start a business of my own but
I could never seem to get enough sales consistently enough to do it.
At my new job we're talking to small business owners who more often
than not can afford our services. And all I need to earn the maximum
commission is 2 sales. The first sale is paid $400 to pay for the
building, keeping the lights on etc. Once you get 2, that sale is paid
at $800 and you get full scale retroactively for the first as well.
Back to the numbers. I added up the rate on everything I could find to
start my site and it came to about $6,000. Which when I added a
cushion of 15% came to just shy of $8,000. Or 10 full commision sales.
Think about that for a moment. After retention fees and taxes I'd need
to sell more than $80,000 at my old job to do that. Now all I need is
10 sales. You can understand why I'm so excited. For the first time in
my life, not only do I have a path to owning my own business, it's
something I can realistically see myself doing! I'm off to get ready
for work. 10 sales is the price of my freedom. A heavy cost. I pay it
gladly because I'm goin' up! :) $$