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Why Start The Day With Blogging?

August 31, 2008 By

Start every day with blogging or morning pages.

Seriously. The rush that you get from getting something easy done begets productivity. Every time. It’s a way of getting control of your day, finishing something that you decided to do, and actually limbering up your synapses for the job of thinking. Thinking and communication is the reason that we get paid. Period. Having something that you can say ‘I’m done,’ with gathers momentum for you, and getting something –even trivial–done….reinforces the habit of actually doing. Keeps you from procrastinating.

It puts you in control of your day. You’ve set a task and done it. You’ve carved out some time for something important, and prioritized it. This means that you’re in charge. And because you’re in charge, all the tasks that come at you are less stressful. You’ve carved out your time to connect, to think, to plan, to be. You don’t ‘need’ to catch up, feel guilt or anxiety about anything.

There is a radical difference in what I produce on the days that I do my writing than on the days that I don’t. Life happens. Sometimes you get interested in something and stay up till 1am in lieu of taking care of the productive tasks and doing the things that you’re supposed to do. And when I wake up late, and don’t carve out that time…the day takes control of you. Needless stress.

So–in order to reduce stress and get back to creating and thinking, do morning pages, do writing tasks, set some time to get stuff done in the morning.

Just sort of a ‘rah-rah’ to my damn self so I can make sure I do what I’m supposed to do on a regular basis. I think that the argument can be made for a block of 2-3 hours right after you wake up to:

  • Write
  • Exercise
  • Pray
  • Think
  • Express gratitude.

That investment controls your mindset for the rest of the day. Its one of those things we ‘know; but it becomes hard to actually do.

So, I’m going to stop that and be biased towards ‘doing.’

Tomorrow, I’ll write about how the campaign is going. There are some good things and some screwy things that are happening.

Filed Under: miscellany

Selling Strategies…Notes.

August 30, 2008 By

Next thing: Selling Strategies.

That’s the tricky part of what we’re trying to do here, right? I mean starting a consulting firm with nothing but a PC/Dream dream…and insisting on doing small projects, with a rapid deployment ethos.

That’s a novel thing to do. I am going to have to create a process that ‘heals’ itself. What I’m selling can be replicated, but having organizational knowledge and a high ‘give a shit’ factor is nothing that can be faked.

I do give a shit. Always have, at my core. My results and effort have at times been uneven. That’s called life. I did the mortgage and real estate thing for five years without having my heart in it. There is a TON to like. The people, the job, the microcosm nature of what you do. It is a blast. And, I never plan to leave utterly.

But, the job of being a Realtor, Mortgage guy was always a means-to-an end thing. In my core I wanted to create and write, and the practical/cowardly part had me on the conventional path. I still love lots about it. I will always write at Bloodhound and try to call OODA/other issues to the attention.

But Selling Different:

[1] I’m taking a defined position. Small vital projects done by fiduciary talent. This will work for two reasons:
a.) the small projects are easy to find–because of uneven work-flow distribution.
b.) freelancers working on their own high and awesome projects can be engaged briefly and for a low-cost-relative to their talent. They need cashflow, but also desire operational flexibility. Also: not being officially tethered is an important distinction.
c.) starting freelancers need work to make the jump, and there will always be transitional people. (Do I want them??)

[2] This doesn’t mean I don’t take other work types. It clearly means I never pitch them. I can (easily) support myself setting up blogs for Realtors @ 1500-2500 a pop * 3-4 month. Never a shortage of that business, and with the tutorial stuff I’m capturing on video, it’s an increasing value proposition (thanks Aaron for that). Average Joes are getting multiple deals using basic tools, and ordinary execution. Friggin’ cool. There will be byproducts; I certainly don’t want to be in the ‘placement,’ business, but a $20k buyout will more or less be a reasonable (nay, low) fee for fiduciary talent–and

[3] Bidding on contracts with a guaranteed 100% deadline performance record is way different than bidding on contracts as a way to weasel myself into a firm and start sucking on their teets. Admitting: we’re here for limited engagements gets something out of the way. We’re not into ‘many’ things, we’re in one camp, firmly. Short contracts blow up the implied accusation Like Realtors who take a listing overpriced (and then hammer the customer to get a ‘reasonable price’), lots of contract firms weasel their way into a company with a low bid, miss the deadline and then the client is stuck. I want a contract that is ultra simple, but has severe penalties for me if the deadline is missed. (And the asset/player).

[4] Lead sources: No limit exists–top of head:

  • -twitter
  • -linked in.
  • -cold calling
  • -business journal scanning.
  • -craig’s list
  • -earned press.
  • -networking in CMH.

etc. I can create a decent plan/program that gets us started. I’ve got to learn about getting specs, and I’ve got to get trustworthy assets in that vein. I’m better than the average guy.

[5] Spaces:

  • Right now, I can field requests and get talent thrown at someone pretty quick in the following areas:
  • Writing
  • PHP(LAMP)
  • Sales People (for hire sales folks)
  • Design (primary asset is an unquestioned talent, but is also got professionalism issues that they are well aware of)
  • Development.
  • Fixit stuff (networking)
  • Rails development
  • CSS/WordPress/Etc.

That’s more than enough breadth. I might cut it back a little bit, but the niche is getting ridiculously good people ridiculously fast for short term gigs. The small project boutique, not the race to the bottom.

That’s enough text for now, it’s time to churn content as fast as I am able to do it.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals, Business Building Tagged With:

Right Right Now Notes.

August 30, 2008 By
  • Right Right Now Notes:

I’m going to call my business ‘right right now.’ Maybe write right now. Dunno. Not super important TODAY. Focus: I delivering short projects on short deadlines with an increasingly good basis. I’ve been doing similar work so far, and I don’t have a system in place to ensure that we get things done fast. I’m improving–but there is only so much someone can do ad hoc.

These are all things I’m almost thinking. I may change my mind about some, all or most of these ideas. First of all, not being the cheapest is not going to be something I changed my mind about.

This is mostly ‘attributes,’ I’ll do one on sales strategy (cruise monster, offer project work in lieu of jobs, etc).

Starting Point ideas/brain storm (some well thought out, some just whittle bitty ideas, still cooing and puking)

  • instant return. profitable as a JOB by 9/15/08. 3 jobs in by then. find work now, find work before business cards are printed. Sales focus first.
  • No investors, partners. Collaborators and advisers, sure, but it’s my ship, my time to rock, my dream/idea.
  • 100% high quality, known & vetted freelancers. No race to the bottom, only quality assets delivering the work.
  • need: freelancer vetting process
  • ability to throw 100 hours a week at a given project with quality people.
  • focus on LAMP with the “P” being anything from Rails to python to whatever.
  • Some design and writing.
  • A good, trusted place for quality workers to send and profit from overflow work (possibly)
  • Create gitomer type kick ass elevator speech. (maybe Christina can pitch in)
  • Freelancer gets an average of $100/hr++
  • 100% of the time, never, ever, ever, under any circumstances take hourly projects.
  • Get a crystal clear spec in the beginning.
  • Charge for changes suggested by the customer.
  • Get a timeline established and agreed to within X of taking project.
  • Have a 1 strike-and your out process for missing deadlines. “none of our remaining people have ever missed a deadline.”
    • have some sort of system for personal emergencies that allows us to swap assets

        - point is: company never misses deadlines.

  • Collect greater of 50% or $2500 in the beginning. Once rep established, collect more.
    • Easier to find paying clients than it is to collect from douche bags
  • Have a project average of roughly 30 hours to completion and $6,000 net.
  • All people are 1099’d as legitimate contractors.
  • Roles:
    • Sales People (find work, negotiate prices and contracts.)

        - Spec Writers: Can be sales people, the people that get the job order or tech lead/asset.

        - assets: people that do the work that runs the business.
        -         evangelists: find assets.

  • Requested assets get an additional 20% in some cases, with 10% extra going to freelancers, 5% going to evangelist. (TBD)
  • Contract will not obligate an asset to be used, but that’s not super strong.
  • In demand assets get their rates automatically increased.
  • NOTHING HOURLY. REUSE WORK, DELIVER A KICKASS EXPERIENCE.
  • Agreement:
  • Assets will have fanatical devotion to hitting deadlines.
  • Deadlines will be realistic.
  • Unrealistic deadlines will have premium prices of +75%.
  • Unrealistic deadline is 60+ combined hours in the first week.
  • All cost of researching EXISTING systems borne by client. i.e. if we have to research a company’s old code, that is the only ‘hourly’ project.
  • We can outsource functionary shit, but never architecture/design high end stuff.
  • All passwords delivered & code with reasonable comments (what it does, mostly).
  • Collect at spec, and have clear agreement that is simple and easy to understand.
  • TODO: Get Bonded/E&O.
  • Single proprietorship (leaning towards. Name on the door, ass on the line. LLCs are pseudo protection, and my assets are under lawsuit threshold).
  • Avg. project is closed out within 20 days.
  • Noncompete:
    • 18 months from when we found a job asset and company must buy out at $20,000. Not a big one, but one to keep us from being eviscerated.
  • Agreements
  • Deadlines: Core of our business. missing deadlines is huge.
    • Negotiate realistic deadlines. Negotiate realistic deadlines.

        -        Once deadline is hit, do it again

  • First time assets get hounded by me. We need to get progress reports.
  • Assets are graded based on:
    • Client rehires
    • fiduciary values (must care deeply that the client has good tools)
      • DEFINE FIDUCIARY VALUES
    • client happiness
    • communication with team/client and internal.
    • deadline delivery.
    • on budget.
    • Client interactions
    • Referrals of other assets (bonus system/residual must be in place)
    • economy??
    • finding opportunities for work for us??
  • Assets must have:
    • linkedin 6 months old or older in active use
  • Written process that we are held accountable to and that improves!!!
  • “How did we do” after each job, reviewed and process improvements created. 6 sigma.
  • Process must manage expectations (skill)
  • We want to be “ink dry-to-go” within 24-48 hours.
  • How do we make it easy for people to buy our people….?i.e. channels that need to be open, ways to order?
  • We don’t have a ‘bourse’ of commodity coders. No no no no no.
  • We are ‘cheaper in the long run because we’ll make your stuff work together’.
  • Process made crystal clear:
    • Agree to engage us.

        -        Get spec &         Send check.

        -        For new clients, spec-work = billable (again: easier to find a new client than to deal with dickheads)
        -        Register asset (to enforce buyout.)
        -        deadline clock starts…
        -        Work done.
        -        mile stones all have ‘approval & payment deadlines,’ when next deadline up.
        -        each milestone paid prior to beginning of next one.

  • clients get credit = to 125% of their last bill.
  • We must qualify clients to ensure that they can & will pay.
  • Assets Find opportunities naturally.
  • Have assets perform without rancor
  • We don’t want assets financially dependent on us unless they are ‘money drunk, ‘ and then we can deal with as needed.
  • Have this be based on finding short term jobs.
    • Our assets are free to meet one another? collaborate? not a company…but anyway.

Intellectual Property: We’re work for hire with rights to repurpose source code.

RRN= us client= them.
–client gets original code w/rights to reuse.
–author gets no residual|nothing is due after contract is paid to RRN.
–coder can reuse.
–RRN and Client both gets use of code. All are negotiable; not a principle matter, but we want to have understanding of who gets what and when.

More to think about, i’m certain.

Filed Under: miscellany Tagged With:

Right Right Now.

August 30, 2008 By

I think that I can make a great living, and help people, all in harmony with my values. I’ve really had an interest in freelancing for a while (having done it for this year), and in general the ethos of the freelancer. I liked mortgage brokers and Real estate agents because on the good side, they aren’t kept citizens. They can’t be told what to do, and they are giving the finger on some level to corporate conventions. That is attractive to me, in every way that you can think of.

Oh, it’s a hair’s breadth away from something worse, I get it. There’s not a lot of distance between someone that’s fiercely independent and wanting to not be kept, and someone that is a ‘get rich quick’ style of person ruthlessly hurting anyone and everyone to get what they want. There’s not much difference/distance at all there, and I have treaded that line for my entire career. Keeping ambition in check and remaining focused on serving people in lieu of ‘getting yours.’

Fiduciaries, Not Functionaries.

So MREA talks a little bit about functionary and fiduciary duty. A nutshell–functionaries perform tasks that anyone can do. Fiduciaries perform tasks that only someone invested and committed should be doing. Oversimplifying, but you get the gist. Right now, there is a frustration on the part of companies. They have a ‘race to the bottom,’ with their programmers, designers and even writers, and then they complain that they are hiring price and not talent. An interesting and business-critical product/project gets screwed up because the person handling it wasn’t invested and vetted based on anything other than the fact that they had a coupla references and a good price.

Places like oDesk, and to a lesser degree eLance & CraigsList force this sort of thing to happen because they take difficult jobs–even programming a simple form capture site should be done with care–and make them a rase to the bottom. In some respects that’s what a bourse will always do. The issue is that the hyperfocus on price and rate means that you can wind up with some schmuck that had to underbid on this because they’d burned all sorts of bridges….or some other schmuck who is very green and learning on your dime.

But it’s refreshing, invigorating and exciting to work with people that seriously take the ball and run with it. It energizes all involved, and maybe a little extra money goes to the programmer, but it’s thrilling to have a partner that helps you see what the next steps are, who’s fluent and energetic. It’s seriously thrilling to meet with a mind and have a multiplication effect because you’ve learned and reasoned with someone. And you don’t get that by insisting harshly that the person works for the cheapest price. You don’t get that by wagging your finger at someone and lording over the fact that there are other bidders.

I do get it. Price still matters, and there are some basic tasks that should be performed by a ‘punch out guy,’ but you still need the benefit of an intelligent, fiduciary quarterback to get you started. You need the kind of work that only they can produce, most exceptions notwithstanding.

A few notes in a moment on the creation of my toy.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals, Business Building

A test for MacJournal

August 30, 2008 By

does this win?

MacJournal is an interesting new piece of blogging software that I just got. I don’t know if I’m going to keep it or not, but I really appreciate the green ‘matrixesque’ font on the black screen. I like being able to have a singular focus on what I’m writing, and this toy seems to be able to achieve that pretty swimmingly.

So…away we go.

Let’s see how a list works:

It’s imported from Gdocs, so it’s not perfect, but it’s fine:

* Install WordPress.
* Install & Configure Following Plugins:
o WP-EZ uploader
o Audio-Player
o Related Posts if possible in theme.
o All in one SEO Pack
o Google XML Sitemaps
o WP-Cache upon request.
o Pod Press upon request (as of today, there are acute issues with pod press for WP 2.6.1)
o Install auto upgrading tool for clients to use
* Set up hosting.
* Social Media when necessary.
o Technorati
o Stumble Upon
o Digg
o Flock
o Reddit
o Friend Feed

* Select Categories
* Research Categories
* Create navigation
o About/resume
o Most popular posts..
o help client understand and write a ‘pillar’ post.
o Links to FB/Linkedin
* Start with Template and design it tweak it
o (Client must learn about the functions of WP.)
o Minor CSS Edits/Color changes.
+ Column Width is easy to screw things up with.
* Coaching calls on:
o Getting around in WP
+ Dashboard
+ Adding Plugins
+ How to google.
+ How to extend WP functionality.
+ What wigitized means and what widgets are.
o Blogging in general
o SEO dos and donts
+ Write good content
+ …that has keywords.
o Getting traffic
+ Follow
* One page reference for your blog will be done.
o All addresses and passwords.
o How to upgrade.
o How to do everything.

Custom Work:

* List Building: Start With Aweber.
* Create a folder.
* Write an article.

Support Via IM for 6 months after launch.

Suggested work (by students)

* Ning
* Xing
* Twitter

Let’s see how the other stuff works:

  • Bullet point list generated w/macjounral.
    • inner bullet point
    • inner bullet point
  • I love the instantaneous “green on black full screen mode”
  • I hate the fact that my FLIP doesn’t want to connect today for some reason i don’t get.
  • Let’s set a BHAG for September: $250k raised 1 month. $8500/day.
    • Social media: 10,000 giving $25/week = 100k
      • Something is wonky about these lists internally. It’s correctable but highly annoying.

         now: I’ve identified how cool a full screen text editor is. vv cool. Need to find a better one that does the green/black thing.

WLW kicked ass for the most part, and it’s the thing I miss. THis is probably not going to cut it for me because it behaves poorly as a text editor

Filed Under: miscellany

Odesk: I am Declaring War On You.

August 27, 2008 By

I love freelancers.   I love the idea that someone can say, “I’m not gonna be a corporate douchebag.  I’m going to do the work I love on my terms."   I love freelancers.   I love the people that want to create, invent, propel, and are fearlessly going against the grain.   I love freelancers.  I love it that there are more and more of them each day.   That more people are getting setup to fuel dreams, and pursue their muse.   Sure, there are still corporate jobs to be had out there, but why?  The big thing about 2.0 is that it’s an object lesson in how easy things are.

But freelancers have enemies.  It’s uncomfortable for middle managers to have to deal with preternaturally competent generation Yers that have figured out how to make a name for themselves.   The same efficiencies that cloudware uses to set us all free is now also being used to throttle, harness and crush the spirit of freelancers. 

Of course, I’m talking about Odesk. 

To ruthlessly commodities freelancers seems to those with little imagination that it’s a mitigating risk.   By having controls (random iterated screenshots, strict hourly pricing, a one way-street ratings system), first glance seems to make it appear that you are  going to ensure quality.

But it’s not the case.   As Issac Kelly said, "God, it’s like dealing with people you got away from work to begin with."   A level of corporate control, another attempt at making us docile and obedient lambs.

Do you really, for a second, think that ANYONE is going to do their best work when subjected to per minute billing & strict hourly controls?   No.  You’re basically ensuring some sort of mediocrity with this system.  And I guess mediocrity is normal& it seems safe.  

My big question is this:  Why would an employer want to hire someone that is willing to subject themselves to this sort of thing for anything but "oil change" level work?   Where is the humanity and connection between people?   Where is the comradery & charm of engaging as equals?   You’re not getting the best or the brightest, and then neophytes are going to think that that’s what the world of freelancing is, a race to the bottom.

I want Odesk to fail.  AND to make them fail, I’m going to offer something better really, really soon.

Premium freelancers, premium prices & short projects.  The fact that 2.0 allows us to be radically decentralized and to create an organization out of nothing works in my favor.  The fact that Odesk has taken the "just like employees," position works in my favor. 

I’m going to make a big damn bourse for freelancers, and I’m going to make it the best thing that has ever been. 

Because as a nation of independent, hardscrabble farmers, America kicked ass.  As a nation of employees, we’re getting our clocks cleaned.  Let’s clam for ourselves the freedom & independence to work as equals, to work with honor and not some code.

Odesk is a nightmare for Freelancers, and an affront to the entire movement.  No self respecting freelancer should touch them with a ten foot pole.  Let that place be the province of hacks and amateurs. 

I’ll find the work for all of you, I’ll get you paid what you’re worth, and I’ll make all of us rich in the process.   I’ll be blogging about this as it takes shape, but it’s surprisingly concrete and specific in my head what I need to do, and how I’m going to do it.   I am glad someone showed me what Odesk is because it’s everything that I’m not.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals, Business Building, miscellany, selling/marketing Tagged With:

Momentum—The Breakfast Of Champions.

August 16, 2008 By

No wait, that’s feedback.  

Anyway, 2008 so far has been interesting.  I’ve been a vagabond for the most part, not really committing to do anything, and it’s been fun.      The profit hasn’t been where I want because I haven’t focused on anything.   I have dabbled in too much, and kind of searched for what I want to be when I grow up.

I created a working and well functioning subscription info biz.   It works well enough, and if I pumped some google ads into it, I’d be able to do whatever the hell I wanted with it.   

I’ve picked up some freelance projects.

I’ve done some loans.  (Though SB-185, and the restipping of perfect files killed the joy there). 

I’ve gained and fired an assistant.   I’ve picked up a lot of google-fu.   I’ve even made more friends. 

What I want to do now is focus on something with more depth.   Right now it’s Owens2008. I’ve thought about “new market survival guide,” but I haven’t burned the bridges, and gone out full barrel.   You know?  

Dan Green said that you gotta take it seriously yourself.   You can’t roll your eyes, you gotta damn the torpedos.   And there’s nothing to it but to desigin it and do it.  

I’ve always had an enthusiasm for people that give the finger to society, and become entrepreneurs.    I have always had contempt for kept citizens, people that slough through stable jobs.   Probably too much contempt, because having a treadmill job pays the bills.   I’ve always wanted to fan that flame, because there is something absolutely sacred in creating a life out of nothing.   It’s why I liked being a mortgage broker.   The industry said, “Screw You, we’ll get it done.”   That was a good thing.   The bad part was that FNMA and FCMLC incurred serious moral hazzard because of the widespread presumption that the Government Would Come To Help.

Anyway I’ve learned a few things:

  • By dabbling in everything all at once you focus on nothing.   It’s a coward’s way out.   Focus on something.
  • Momentum is key: get some progress and then honor it by doing it again.
  • Liking your wife is a big deal. 

Oh, to be thirty three forever.

If there’s time, I’ll flesh out my next BHAG. 

First, it’s raising 1.2 mm for Robert Owens.  82 days or somesuch. 

Even though Todd stole some thunder out from me, I’ll still relaunch tomorrow.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals

Friggin Overwhelm: The War For My soul.

August 12, 2008 By

It’s not really happened to me before at any point.  I’m not an ‘at work sociopath,’ but I haven’t ever felt the stifling overwhelm that I do right now.   Haven’t felt work related stress in a long time.  It’s ‘uncoool’ or ‘non deterministic’ or something to feel like there is a lot to do, but there is a lot to do.

Some of it is in the new gig I took as finance director for Robert Owens For Ohio Attorney General http://owens2008.com.  That is a massive job—raising money for a (really good) third party candidate.  Some of it is doing stuff for HREU and some of it is doing stuff at http://loanofficersurvivaltraining.com.   Some still is GenuineWife’s class schedule which has me one-on-one with the kids four evenings a week.  My friend Jeremiah talked about overwhelm and at the time I couldn’t relate.   It’s not happened to me—even though I’ve stared down some massive failure, I have never felt out of sorts about it. 

Boy.  That changes. 

I feel like a computer that has just been asked to open all of its programs at once while updating its drivers.   It’s not gonna run fast for a while, and progress is halting.  I have to make some changes—pare some stuff down, and further renegotiate some commitments.  I don’t know what to turn off and what to do, and I’ve never had the kind of withering indecision that I feel now.

I picked up Robert Greene’s ‘33 Strategies of War’ again the other day.  Strategy #1: Declare War On Your Enemies: The Polarity Strategy is what I need right now.  I am being gnawed by rats that I’ve created.  I’ve put too many little tethers on myself and almost everything that I think is mandatory is really optional.   My enemies are all that distracts me from what I want to do and be.   The little unfinished tasks and the little daily and weekly commitments.   Even GTD can’t help you if you’re ‘D’ ing the wrong ‘T’.  

And so stress accumulates.    I talked a little about it here, at Freelance Folder, how we need to fight a war on clutter—both mental and physical. 

I  not just DONE it, and pared down my roles to simple tasks, and gone to war.  I’ve been…well…trying to keep things clean and level.  I’ve been overly distractible.

Fighting a multi front war is tiring.  Having to sustain income for my family while chasing dreams and muses is…not a joke.  So I have to realize I’m in a war and throw myself into it.

I’m fighting a war for my soul.

I’m fighting a war.  There are many battles to manage, but to get to the next part of my life with my soul intact, there is a ton that I have to do, know be, think.   I have to be growing all the time and I have to challenge myself, but I have to also ensure that I get things done.  Get it?  I have to get ahead of the details, and master everything.  Or else i get gnawed on by Winston’s rats. 

Seriously.  If I let the details chew me up, I’m toast.  Useless to myself wife, kids.  Not having I have to not let that happen, fight the battles that I’m in, and choose the projects that matter to me.   I have to do it this way, because that’s who I am and what I do.  Armies can get destroyed by their inability to manage sickness of bring food to the front lines.    I can be killed by having the damn details get at me.

It’s time to go to war.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals, miscellany Tagged With:

Ohio Attorney General 2008: Owens Will Win.

August 1, 2008 By
image.png

Remember Rocky?  When Rocky landed the big left on Appolo? Suddenly Appolo knew he was in a fight?  There we go. 

It’s war, baby. 

And we will win.  Final election prediction: Owens 41.  Corday 36.  Crites 24.

image

Now…I can’t WAIT to release the next batch of fundraising totals.

Filed Under: miscellany

What to I want to Be When I Grow Up?

August 1, 2008 By

I’ve been a mostly-at-home webworker for about 8 months now.  It was November 2007 when I was asked to provide thankless tech support at my office that made me leave.   One of my coworkers came up to me with the charming invitation: “I see you spend all your time on the computer, why don’t you help me out with this.”  He said it derisively, as if he needed an excuse to not know how to do something—as if the ability to react to my own environment was a fault.

I helped him out despite my best inclinations, and then someone else said, “I hear your a big computer geek…can you help me with Vista.”

“I’ve never looked at Vista.”

“Oh, well, I thought you said you knew stuff about computers.”  Mortgage brokers are assholes.

“Someone said that about me,”

Then the challenge, “so you can’t figure it out.”  This was to pique my ego, and it didn’t work.  At all.  

“There’s this site you may have heard of called ‘Google,’” I begin, “and it is a really useful tool to find out what’s wrong with your computer, just type the problem in to the bar, and go from there.”

“So you can’t help me?” he says as if the failure is mine.   And then I get asked, “why have you not helped XXXXX” from an owner.

Because the owners are generally nice guys, I pitch in, it takes 20 seconds.  “I thought you didn’t know Vista,” he says.

“Never seen it before, but Google has the answers to everything—if you have issues, just Google it.”

Then that becomes sort of my nickname.  Said with a combination of admiration and derision around the office.  Nobody googles it, they still ask me.

So I picked up some work with my friend Tim, and got to talking about Internet marketing with him.  He’s a shill, but not in a bad way, he’s intensely focused on bringing students into his classes, and pretty good at it.  I pick up some work with him, and more follows.  Then I stop going into the office because I’m able to get more done via IM, and I’m not distracted by morons.

The mortgage industry caused some acute changes to happen in our office, and so my plan to come back in Feb was changed.  I still had aspirations to be a producing LO, but I had lost the loyalty of my assistant (and the office was pretty screwy).  And the work kept coming in.

My skill is lead generation; I am world class at lead generation for any industry.  I am not world class at conversion, I am not world class ast customer service.  So, I created an ebook: http://losurvivalguide.com and put it on http://e-junkie.com and it continues to sell.  The book is great, it has lots of practical stuff that nobody does and everyone should to have a nice, white shoe mortgage business. 

Website work came in in WordPress.  I coordinated vendors and did some paying projects.  I had as much fun as possible doing it all, and then had the bright idea to creat http://loanoficersurvivaltraining.com.   There is a ton to love about the industry.  I was able to support myself doing that, and not be tied to any uncertainty.   I continued to blog on places like http://tendayteam.com http://lenderama.com, http://mortgagecicerone.com, http://bloodhoundrealty.com/bloodhoundblog, and others.  I was making a living in a third career of some sort.  I would be prospering if I hadn’t run into the IRS buzzsaw in early 2007.  (It also is fair to say that I puttzed around in mid 2006 with anticipated and actual job changes that cost me net $25,000 at a time when it was still easy to make money).

Anyway, I’ve taken a project as finance director for Robert Owens, a fiscally conservative unencumbered candidate for attorney general.  It’s a project that runs out shortly after the election ends in November, but it will pay me well, I believe. 

But really, what do I want to do?  That’s a question I gotta answer because I’m 32.  And it’s time to really figure this stuff out.

Filed Under: miscellany