I know its been a little while since I last posted, which is unfortunately becoming a nasty habit of mine so I figured the least I could do would be to explain why.
The past few years have taught me quite the number of things:
- Traveling will change anyone’s life for the better (booze vacations to Mexico not included)
- Every relationship is as volatile as the stock market during a recession… more or less
- Don’t write about pregnancy unless its in a journal that will never be seen by a woman
- Though your job should not dictate how you define yourself, it influences who you are, and we’ve allowed ourselves to define others by their jobs
- North American values are about as misplaced as my keys when I’m in a hurry
- Common sense is just about as rare as the dodo
These are just a few of the things I’ve picked up along my travels through life so far, of course they’re just opinions but that’s what everything in life is about, opinions, since it appears there are few and far between that seem to have any regard for facts these days.
One thing I realized when I returned from Barcelona is that I need a new way to make money. The job I had was fun for what it was, but not something I wanted to do anymore. So when I got home I started interviewing people in every job I thought I may want to get into. By interviewing I mean taking these people out to lunch and just chatting about their jobs and industry.
I sat down with a handful of Investment Advisors, Real Estate Agents, and a variety of guys in one sales environment or another. None of the positions interested me for one reason or another.
I realized I’m not one to just sit around in the penalty box of life and wait for my time to expire, and I will likely be interested in a number of ventures throughout my life. I am not anticipating to follow a linear career path.
My main objective is to be outside of the rat race and working on my own terms by 35. I think these are reasonable expectations that I can meet. But the freedom I was looking for could only be met by founding an online business or having some sort of revenue generated on the WWW. I want to have the freedom to work from home (or anywhere else in the world for that matter) and so as of March/April 2008 I started trying to figure out how to do that.
Since there are no schools for starting an online business, I realized it was basically up to me to fill my head with as much new and helpful information that I could. A lot of people online are scam artists, looking to make a quick buck on the backs of the desperate with no sense of ethics or business longevity. Then there are others that provide a substantial amount of great content but the hardest part is…WHERE THE HELL DO I START?!?
Affiliate marketing is where I decided to first plant my roots as I decided if i started a site designed to sell other people’s products it would teach me about web design, the challenges of affiliate marketing as well as eventually force me to learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which is how to get good search rankings within Google and other search engines to have people visit my site for free.
My first site is almost complete and is called www.TheFatLossAuthority.com
The video on the front page (should be available within a week) is literally the best of about 17 other videos and unfortunately was filmed on the first day of a very short haircut, lesson learned. I’ve also learned the consequences of outsourcing work to “professionals” you’ve never worked with before. The saying “its hard to find good help these days” sticks out in my mind.
My second site which is still in the building stages is called www.HeartMyShoes.com and is geared strictly towards women looking to have a little leisure time at work and check out what other women wear on their feet and of course….judge them accordingly. (If you are female and reading this PLEASE visit the site and submit some of your shoes, I NEEEEED more submissions). This site is barely out of the beta stages and there is already an argument going on between 2 girls. This has been a lot of fun so far and my goal for this site is strictly to generate as much traffic as I can. In the 3 weeks I have been working on this site I have learned more about web design and coding than my entire year running this blog. IT IS EXHAUSTING.
My third attempt might be learning how to develop membership sites online and every intricacy that goes along with that. That’s something I am currently looking into during my current ZERO SUM PAYCHECK 14 HOURS DAYS.
So that is what’s going on in my world these days. Its a lot of fun but the challenges are steeper than climbing Mount Fuji (not as bad as Everest, but still bad).
Both my biggest challenge and advantage at the moment is living at home. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my family dearly, and the fact that they’ve been accepting of my current aspirations is a clear testament to the type of people they are, but after living on my own for so many years, the desire to leave the nest again is extremely strong.
But the paradox is that this is also my advantage. I can pursue these current goals on the savings I’ve built without the responsibilities of a mortgage, family, or 9-5 job. These are huge blow backs to face later on and would easily cut my productivity 90%. So though living at home is my biggest challenge as I want to be residing in my own residence (even if i’m renting) and starting to build up my savings again, being back in the nest is easily my biggest advantage at the moment.
I hear so many people say, “well, I’m buying a new place so lets have fun now, because once I get my place I won’t have any money left to do much more than maybe go out for dinner once a week”. Needless to say, hearing this reminds me of what I am working towards, the freedom to, not just do whatever I want, but the freedom to do exactly what I want. And I think that’s worth the struggle.
So I figure I have another 2-3 months of serious working and hustling to do before I will have to get a J-O-B and scale everything else down to part-time in hopes of a breakthrough.
But its been a blast so far, well minus the fact that I am hemmoraging money.
I will do my best to post more often and keep you updated. Please subscribe to my updates so you’ll know when I update Perfectly Turbulent.
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