Super Basic Marketing Plan for RRN:

Premise:  Must get the business I want in 2.5 hours/day/less.  2.5 hours/day marketing 2.5 hours/day managing = 20 hours week.   Goal:  $25,000/monthly revenue, I keep 40% = $10,000….I get that done and scaled, and we go from there.

This means each week, I bill 25k/4.3 (weeks/month) = $5813.49.    That’s solid stuff, good numbers.  I need to consider some things:

[a] must average something in the realm of $2500/gig so I’m only at ~10ish gigs/month.   This is up from current average of ~$1700.      Less/fewer writing gigs (time, velocity).   More of what?    Develp big ticket type items?  Make a web presence?  Be a jack of all trades?

[b] iterated projects:  I want simple stuff: build a blog, design a campaign, write some Aweber responders.  I don’t want ‘make some sort of database that clients can access + loginto.’  Good developers hate that stuff.

[c]  set a revision schedule upfront:   spec–>revision (planned)–>tweak—>final.

===

OK, that said, that’s doable.  And I can figure out work quickly.    I need to also find more people that can do stuff, but the problem is, I can’t guarantee work right now, and it’s all on an ad hoc basis.

I think that I need to stop implementing; good paying work keeps me from selling, selling is the only thing that gets me leverage.  Leverage is the only thing that makes this work @ 20/week.

[1] sales calls:  minimum 15 contacts/day. (Phone)
5 new (minimum)
5 existing (minimum)
5 misc (wherever the flow is)  This should not take that long at all, really.
[2] linked in questions:  20/month religiously.
[3] Linked in connections: Try to get 10/week w/depth, where depth = ppl. that will hear what I have to say, etc, etc, etc.
[4] blog posts: blog here and blog elsewhere to gett talent.  Blogging around the freelance blogs should be done regularly to get freelancers to register.
[5] email messages & campaign built for aweber.
[6] Do I participate in any boards/rfqs?  I don’t think so.  I stil hate odesk (elance is somewhat better, but the douchebagifiying of the freelance market is why I’m here).
[7]  Project log: what I’ve completed, and make it run in the company blog.
-deadline
-requirements
-date started
-date finsihed
-testimonial.
[8] authority site on small fast projects.

I need a way to make money on bigger projects, but I think I’m going to skip it, and leave that in the freelancer agreement.

I need a better method of  veting people than trying them out, any ideas?

Do I do PPC?  (No for now)

Do I hire sales people? (Could, but a project manager is more important, and I want that role to be revenue based and not salaried).
I need to make deadline dimentia part of my own ethos.  I have to think in terms of scheduling projects with a 2 week otu deadline and doing them ALWAYS in a week.  “We get busienss because we deliver on time, and the deadline for you is alaways early, blah blah.”   Must develop that idea/ethos quickly & impliment for my own fuff.
More later, as is ever the case.  Agile minde tonight.

Hate me if you want for posting too much.

To track:
Sales calls
LI Questions
Blog Posts
Guest Posts
Comments
Quotes
Quotes Won
Projects Started
Projects Finished.
There are plenty of other things I could measure, but this gets it for that component for now.

We’re all Peter Drucker’s bitches.

God bless Peter Drucker.    (Whatever is measured tends to improve).   And god bless you for reading this stuff.  I’m using my own shorthand for this, not out of fear, but out of unwillingness to explain WTF I’m doing.  

First:  General:

  1. Time Woke Up.
  2. Weight
  3. Calories In
  4. Calories Burned (Excluding Base Metabolic Rate; just use the  #’s provided and a walk = 110/mile)
  5. Cardio Minutes (realizing that there is a big difference in quality in a good vs. bad cardio minute)]  (workout will take 150 minutes with drive/etc.)

(5 things) total commitment:

Goal by EOY: 38# lost:  19/month thru the holidays: 19/4.3 = 4.4 #/week.


Goals here:  measure when I wake up, plot it.   Dreamlife would have me waking up at 5am each day, but I also dig a pot of coffee around 7pm and they aren’t congruent.


Next:  Writing:

  1. MP Done  ~20 minutes
  2. GC Done here:  ~20ish minutes
  3. FT Done  (1 essay/day written till we have ‘em all)  ~40 minutes
  4. SP Words  ~30 minutes minimum
  5. Ghost Blogging Done (2 posts complete)  ~30 minutes when assigned.
  6. Guest Post Written (1xd)   ~30 minutes.

6 Things.   Should take:  170 minutes.   If I get up at 6am, I can be done by 9am. Real goal is more on FT/SP but this is a reasonable & tenable minimum standard.  Sometimes sooner, baby, sometimes sooner.  load= 15hrs/week.  I can also get ahead with this in downtime, I guess.

RRN Marketing Plan (Behaviors + Other)

  1. Blog Post (1xD)/Site Writing.  (25 minutes)
  2. +Project Summaries (as completed) (15 minutes a day)
  3. If my goal is to hit 50k/revenue, I need then to do 2x 2500/week/5k/week.
  4. 15 Contacts (not counting them in seperate categories for now)  90 minutes.
  5. LI Questions (1xd)  5 minutes.

    1. Looking for freelance writers.
  6. Blog Comments (10xD-20 minutes)

    1. Freelance Folder
    2. Freelance Switch
  7. Craig’s list responses: 10xD  (This is mostly to test responses). 30 minutes.
  8. Projects Started
  9. Projects Finished
  10. $ collected.


185 minutes.

RRN Goal By EOY = $56,000 total $$ billed and $20,000 retained.

7-9 committed hours a day.  This is doable.

That’s only 10  things

21 things to track.  That’ manageable.  A bunch are quick.  (LI questions/time woke up/cardio) I think I make a couple of spreadsheets; combining ‘writing’ and general’ & leaving RRN apart from it.


Wherein I Make Sweet, Passionate Love to Google Docs:

First of all, Larry, Serge, way to be a gangster.  You’ve got way more info about me than the IRS does, and for that I applaud you.   Across your servers pass my dreams and hopes, and god love it if I don’t know enough about your privacy.  Second of all, this will be reworked for BHB or Lenderama soon.

Still, I trust you for the most part, for the time being, and so I am giving you even more information about me.

All your life life is about metrics:  how many days, how many shots of adrenaline, how many kisses, how much breath, how many thrills, how many tears and how you felt about it all.   And anytime you want to hit a goal, most of the time you can measure it with metrics.

How much weight do you want to lose?  ~Calories Burned + Calories In = Weight (YMMV).

How much business do you want to do: (attempts–>marketing touches–>responses—>conversion %)

Anyway, the gorgeous thing about Gdocs is that the ‘fill out a form,’ function is stupid simple.  And what I want to do (create a kickass bourse for small projects and elite freelancers) is easily measured.   How many projects did I get, how many ppl. did I pitch, how many blog posts did I make?

So again, since the ‘fill in a form’ function makes things easy, and since I know, more or less what I want to do.  Now, I’m not going back into Mike Ferry-douchebag land.  That land is for some people, and I appreciate the standard of excellence, but I’m not making the commitment to lifestyle, and overhead and materialism that that stuff does.

Since I’m creating my life, I can choose, right?  SO I’ll put together a doc that has:

  1. Time I woke up (I’m not consistent–I don’t really care what time I get up, but I care what I do when I get up.  scratch that.  I want to be up by 7am, but I don’t need to get up at the BCD anymore)
  2. Writing done/measured

    1. Morning pages  [discrete yes/no, should be 75% or better, averages s700 words]
    2. Subprime (a novel, yes, a novel…want to write ~650 words a day.)
    3. FT (next and nifty project…want to finish 2 essays a day)
      1. This will require some serious sales/promotion time in about 3 weeks.  Kick
    4. GCB:  I like to have something ready for semi-public consumption once a day.
    5. FT Blog Post
    6. Other Blog Posts:  I blog at a number of places and I want to blog 3x weekly around.  (I used to wish to blog 4x weekly).
    7. OPB:  (I am a ghost blogger, and I must write for them in the morning or the snakes get out from my desk and run loose)
  3. RRN marketing tasks (I am passionate about processes.  always have had an operations bias.   RRN gives me the chance to address that:
    1. First sales call made by:
    2. Leads generated
    3. RRN Blog post written
    4. RRN promotion done
      1. (this needs some love)
    5. Projects Quoted
    6. Projects Accepted
    7. Projects Completed:
    8. $$ Collected
  4. Exercise:
    1. calories in
    2. Calories out
    3. Weight (yes virginia, I gotta post)
    4. Cardio
    5. resistance)
    6. Reading Done (pages).


Now:  Because GDocs can be a damn simple form, I can do this really quickly.   docs.google.com fill in a form.    I create 180-200 columns and have the end sum them up.  Each time I fill in a new form it appends a column, so what I’d be able todo this pretty easily; if I got my exercise done, it’d append to one, etc.   The forms can all live on a PWD protected WP page that can be my “dashboard,” and I can make a public dashboard so I can be held accountable for my progress.

Since my blog is a thesis blog, I can put the code in the top right-hand sidebar and have it look semi attractive.

Next thing:  I make them all add to a column with 60 or so days.  I column sum it/divide it by days.   I can see what %% I’m done, etc, pretty easily.  This can be a kicking way to do numbers analysis and Opt Out of the meltdown.
The next thing that I need to add is some sort of ‘days past’ mechanism so I can know what pace I’m on.

So i’ll see:

Sub prime words:  700  goal 21,000:  pace :  24000: % etc.

Not hard.

Best Rock Songs In The History of Rock Songs:

[criteria: done by bands you have or should have heard of]

10.  Such Great Heights- The Postal Service/Iron and Wine:  When a song can be done electrically and acoustically, it’s probably pretty good.

9.]  Ben Folds: Song For the Dumped:  Yes, Virginia, the piano can Rock.

8.]  Mysterious Ways: U2.  On your knees, boy.

7.]  Untouchable FaceL Ani DiFranco:   Nobody alive covers the range of emotions as well as Ani.

6.] Certain Songs: Hold Steady:  Closing time was too saccharine, but this song paints the end of the bar night picture better than anything on the planet.

5.]  Come As You Are, Nirvana: An invokation and invitation.

4. ]  Spirit of the Radio: Rush  No song on the planet has a more energizing guitar opening.

3.]  Like A Rolling Stone:  Bob.   It is that good.  Everyone’s pretty much right about it.

2.)  Spirits in the Night- Bruce Springsteen:  Oh, man, the snapshot of your early 20′s.

1.)  Everlong – Foo Fighters:  The cadence, the desparation, the driving beat, the fact that it kicks ass acoustically and with the whole nine.   There is no better song, and nobody can say different.

“I love you” she said to me, and she was beautiful. I was living in Pittsburgh, PA at the time, in a tiny apartment on Brighton Street next to the YMCA.  My place was a borderline flophouse–I was at least three decades younger than the youngest tenant.    I had just gotten fired from Sarcom for hijjacking them for a raise for the third time in 4 important trips (I had become privy to the rate that they were billing my $34k a year self out at, and it was 1999, so I got ‘em twice when I had leverage.  The joke wore thin by the third time, and they let me go.)

I was in her apartment surrounded by girly things and romantic comedy VHS tapes of middling quality. And you’d think, that a 23 year old guy would love to hear from a doe eyed 26 year old that she loved me.   But it was less of a feeling and more of a tether to me.  I didn’t know what to say, because we’d had three dates together.

I was then, too clueless to know it, but Jen had invited me over to seduce me.  To consummate her claim on me.   We had just finished dinner, were staying in on a Saturday night just prior to Memorial day, and she loves me she says. I wasn’t honored by this.  I felt like I should have been. I was revolted.   Because I was revolted, I felt like I was a bad guy.   Of course, when a woman reaches out to you, says she loves you, you’ve gotta love her back, right?   To me, it was pathetic.   3 dates.  No real affection or chemistry for her, and what kept me around her was the fact that she looked like the picture of the woman I thought I’d marry–5’6, short brown hair, dark eyes.  She worked as a client of the magazine I’d worked for previously. At the moment, though, it was a tether.  A claim on me, I wasn’t allowed to reject her because hey, she’d said “I love you,”  I’d be a cruel asshole if I left her hanging. But really–there was no way she loved me.  I took her to a pens game, to dinner, and this was the third date.   We talked a few times on the phone, and we held hands walking around in Oakland, and she drank too much as we went from bar to bar.  I didn’t have the signals dialed in (one of the benefits to the anxious Midwestern christian piety was being too naive to know that a woman was trying to get you in bed), so I drove her home then.  She was somewhat sad when I didn’t go in with her, but I brightened when I agreed to go out the following Friday.

“I’ve never really met a guy like you” she said.  “You’re such a gentleman.”   I guess my mom would be proud, but she was in a desperate race to the bottom.  Anyone that didn’t kick her would be considered a gentleman.   Anyone that didn’t leave within 30 seconds of having sex, well, that was a soul mate.  I learned within a few weeks to smell out the many girls that were like this–that had endless neediness that nothing would fill (objectification of women has had the consequence of producing a population of females that is 40% crazy, compared to only 35% of men that are nuts.) So there were tense moments.  “I just met you, i feel,” I said, and she filled the awkwardness with, “and it seems like we’ve been together longer.” So I inquired about her dating history, gently.

This girl had been with many, obviously, and she’d also never had a relationship last longer than 3 months.  “There aren’t any nice guys,”  she said to me hopefully.  And you know, she was right.  Because had I less self respect (even dating her meant I had little) we would have been in her bedroom and we would have had a disposable time. But–there it was, what do you say when someone makes The Statement?   You can’t say that you love them back when you don’t.  Unless its the path of least resistance, and unless it would be the only thing that would give back her dignity.  An hour past and we talked, and I probed her on all things.  “I’m a good person” this future crazy cat lady said. More tomorrow, real work calls.

When I was 23…It was a Very Good Year.

“I love you” she said to me, and she was beautiful.

I was living in Pittsburgh, PA at the time, in a tiny apartment on Brighton Street next to the YMCA.  My place was a borderline flophouse–I was at least three decades younger than the youngest tenant.    I had just gotten fired from Sarcom for hijjacking them for a raise for the third time in 4 important trips (I had become privy to the rate that they were billing my $34k a year self out at, and it was 1999, so I got ‘em twice when I had leverage.  The joke wore thin by the third time, and they let me go.)  I was in her apartment surrounded by girly things and romantic comedy VHS tapes of middling quality.

And you’d think, that a 23 year old guy would love to hear from a doe eyed 26 year old that she loved me.   But it was less of a feeling and more of a tether to me.  I didn’t know what to say, because we’d had three dates together.   I was then, too clueless to know it, but Jen had invited me over to seduce me.  To consummate her claim on me.   We had just finished dinner, were staying in on a Saturday night just prior to Memorial day, and she loves me she says.

I wasn’t honored by this.  I felt like I should have been. I was revolted.   Because I was revolted, I felt like I was a bad guy.   Of course, when a woman reaches out to you, says she loves you, you’ve gotta love her back, right?   To me, it was pathetic.   3 dates.  No real affection or chemistry for her, and what kept me around her was the fact that she looked like the picture of the woman I thought I’d marry–5’6, short brown hair, dark eyes.  She worked as a client of the magazine I’d worked for previously.

At the moment, though, it was a tether.  A claim on me, I wasn’t allowed to reject her because hey, she’d said “I love you,”  I’d be a cruel asshole if I left her hanging.

But really–there was no way she loved me.  I took her to a pens game, to dinner, and this was the third date.   We talked a few times on the phone, and we held hands walking around in Oakland, and she drank too much as we went from bar to bar.  I didn’t have the signals dialed in (one of the benefits to the anxious Midwestern christian piety was being too naive to know that a woman was trying to get you in bed), so I drove her home then.  She was somewhat sad when I didn’t go in with her, but I brightened when I agreed to go out the following Friday.

“I’ve never really met a guy like you” she said.  “You’re such a gentleman.”   I guess my mom would be proud, but she was in a desperate race to the bottom.  Anyone that didn’t kick her would be considered a gentleman.   Anyone that didn’t leave within 30 seconds of having sex, well, that was a soul mate.  I learned within a few weeks to smell out the many girls that were like this–that had endless neediness that nothing would fill (objectification of women has had the consequence of producing a population of females that is 40% crazy, compared to only 35% of men that are nuts.)

So there were tense moments.  “I just met you, i feel,” I said, and she filled the awkwardness with, “and it seems like we’ve been together longer.”

So I inquired about her dating history, gently.  This girl had been with many, obviously, and she’d also never had a relationship last longer than 3 months.  “There aren’t any nice guys,”  she said to me hopefully.  And you know, she was right.  Because had I less self respect (even dating her meant I had little) we would have been in her bedroom and we would have had a disposable time.

But–there it was, what do you say when someone makes The Statement?   You can’t say that you love them back when you don’t.  Unless its the path of least resistance, and unless it would be the only thing that would give back her dignity.  An hour past and we talked, and I probed her on all things.  “I’m a good person” this future crazy cat lady said.

More tomorrow, real work calls.

Ten Songs That Were The Late 90′s to me:

My all time favorite album is Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by the Smashing Pumpkins.   Everything about it is a genX manifesto, from the self indulgent double disk treatment to the whine-sneer of Billy Corgan’s voice.   The landscape of the record is amazing–150ish minutes of wandering from hard rocking tunes from the 70′s (Bullet w/Butterfly, Muzzle) to songs (porcelina) that were truly lovely and kind.   I’m sure that I don’t understand all of Billy’s intentions with the record, only that it was a title shot and to me it won.   None of the songs were my favorite, having just DL’d the American Gothic EP you can see hints of the latter in the former.

Anyway, the Late 90′s were a pretty confusing time for me.  I was totally without identity, trying to get the approbation of my parents (while still rejecting their workaday values).   Was in my early 20s, and I remember the days and the women (when I was 23….it was), the apartments and the bars and everything vividly when I hear some songs.   The list below isn’t a list of ‘favorites’ by any means, it’s a list of songs that I deliberately listened to and sometimes didn’t deliberately listen to, but always takes me back.

10.  My Philosophy: Ben Folds Deliberate Listen.  My friend Will introduced me to them.   I’d probably also want to include The Rascal King on this list.

9.  The Poet Game By Greg Brown. WYEP out of Pittsburgh introduced me to this chestnut, and GB is probably the most underrated songwriter in existence.  I remember this song very well.   And I linked you to a reasonably good cover.  Better voice, but less expressive than GB’s original.

8.  Summertime- The Sundays. This was the song that got me on napster, actually.   I loved this tune so much.   And it was a hot little chick, wasn’t it?

7. Radiation Vibe: Fountains of Wayne I remember the summer of 1997 in DC, running across the bridges and rollerblading down hills.  One of my very favorite songs before and after.

6. Disarm/Today: Pumpkins Siamese Dream didn’t do it for me like Mellon Collie, but these two songs lifted out of it are still magnificent.   They are the same song, I used to go from 3 skip skip 6 all the time on some CD player I had.

5.  The Cardigans: Love Fool. No, I didn’t like this song, but it was everywhere.

4. Red Hot Chili Peppers:  Roller Coaster ubiquitous.   Maybe “music is my aeroplane” should be here, that takes me back.

3.  Republica- Ready To Go dunno when this song came out, but it was on a mix tape.  I didn’t hear it a lot then, but it takes me back.

2.  Dave Matthews- Crash. In a bit of foolishness I was listening to this song in my DC apartment in the early summer of 1997.   I got punched in the arm because I told the girl I was with that it reminded me of someone else.   She never spoke to me again, ever.   I deserved that for being obtuse.   I remember the original girl in the late spring of 1996 or even 1995 (don’t remember exact dates memory = fuzzy).  It dawned on both of us that This Was a Song About Sex and It Was Dirty.  we were both innocent.   I had only heard the single on the radio as background music.

1.  Third Eye Blind: Losing A Whole Year:   This is it.  About how I felt, just sorta cheerful and then looking back, and lonely.  Wanting someone to dig me like I dug myself, and like me for the RIGHT reasons, not just cause i was around.   And not want to change me or parse what I was saying.

I’d put counting crows and cranberries on the list but that was more of a mid 90′s thing.  Most of this music was popular, and I didn’t broaden my tastes much out of the conventional stuff until probably 2000.   Still, thsese are the songs that bring me to a place and a state of mind so quickly.

I think 1997-1999 was when I was at my absolute craziest I’ve been.  (First year of marriage was close).   I’ve always had demons (who doesn’t), and the whole time was giddy and euphoric–probably like the housing boom felt in 2005.   I remember seemingly every day something new being possible, and it’s probably still happening, but I had the sense of wonderment that I haven’t found since then.   But when you’re 22, the whole world is a blank canvas.  you don’t know it’s OK to do things that are different so you try to keep your options open by not being authentic, etc, etc.

Anyway, this is probably 1997 and 1998 to me, I don’t know when the songs actually came out, really, (2 second lookup) but this is the top of mind stuff that I hear and saw.

Some ‘fitness’ related thoughts:

This blog is now being written for an audience of one–maybe two.  I’ll continue to write for public consumption on Bloodhound, lenderama, cicerone, freelancefolder, and my new stuff at rightrightnow.com which will be launched tomorrow or the next day.

By far not exhaustive:

  1. I have to do what i will do.
  2. I have to be world class in fitness.
  3. Fitness should take up 10-15% of my total energy time and thought.
  4. Fitness includes eating right?
  5. Do I wanna be a vegetarian?

Some things I think I’ve decided:

  1. Competition brings out the best in me, the ruthless high “D” side.  (see DiSC).   Let’s do it.
  2. Bythat I mean, triatholons etc.
  3. I need to work out w/wife.
  4. I need to not ever drink any alcohol, until–at the least–I’m at a generally acceptable weight.   I don’t stop drinking when alcohol is available and will blast through a six pack, or even a twelve pack in almost no time…when there’s nothing on the schedule.   This isn’t a huge lifechanger, I seriously drink maybe once or two times a week, but I don’t need the calories.  Anyone that serves me or attempts to serve me alcohol that’s read this will be treated with ruthlessness

Search for — or create– meaning: Ten Weeks of Reflection Before New Years Day.

New years is coming, and I intend to spend the next ten Sunday mornings reflecting–and planning on how I want to live.   New Years is my favorite–by far–of all the holidays.  I love the built in sense of renewal.   I love that it follows Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I love that my birthday (St. Patrick’s day) is about a quarter of the way into the year and I can reflect on my start.  I have big plans–giant plans for 2009.   I feel like I’m me for the first time in years–probably ever.   I have–I think–finally shed the brittle and anxious piety that comes with Midwestern Christianity.  I’m in a headplace where I can actively create more parts of my life without thinking I have to look over my shoulder to gain the approbation of the mediocre.  (Thank you, Greg Swann, Andrea, Heather, Jeremiah Arn & Tim Harris for lighting the path, and especially thank you Heather for giving me wide latitude to be insane).

Every new years eve has failed to excite me.  I’ve thought that it would be this reflective and anticipatory time to be able to bite the ephemeral.   I thought always that everyone would be building something together, and being constructive.   Didn’t happen.    I’ve felt bitter disappointment over a lot of them because I thought somehow that there would be this meaning, I’d have a chance to reflect on a year that I’ve had, and that I could journal, log, think.   I’ve rang in the new year always wanting some event.   The Robert Kiyosaki book (don’t recall what it is, I trashed them all), that talks about some Damascus experience on new years mountain has been what I want.

Bright, clear guideposts in a muddy world.  And kiddo, they don’t exist.

Nobody is going to remove the resistance so you can be the dude you wanna be.  Best case, they’ll be neutral.  Neutral is considered supportive, so be grateful when people aren’t actively resisting you.  And if you have someone supporting you in your life (parent/spouse/collaborator) cherish and honor them, and renew them in every way that you can.   Because anything that reflects your energy back to you, and enhances it.  God, that’s the dream.

We/I want meaning to be handed to me, processed and packaged in bite sized capsules, you know, “this is the year I finally learned to love,” or “that was the year that I finally figured out who I am.”   But it’s growth or decay. An incremental slide, either growth or decay.  Change doesn’t happen through milestones, miracles and mysteries solved, it happens a little tiny bit at a time, inch by imperceptible inch.   You decide to set course for stuff, and if you’re me, you flail around fighting yourself because your expectations for love, romance, sex, recognition, money, life, fatherhood, education, property, fitness, business, & adult hood itself have all been different from the reality that’s here.

Creating and sustaining energy, recreating yourself, working hard, taking real risks (it’s not a risk to not have a day job…it’s a risk to let others define you).  Isn’t easy.  I’m not a virtuoso, and I’m not someone that has this energy that’s burning and bursting (compared to my standards–other people are slugs).  But, you have to avoid–by all and any necessary means those that attack that.

In our lives, what time is taken to simply reflect, recreate, and renew.   I don’t mean what are some ‘recreational activities’ (Nintendo/tv/restaurants & shopping).  I mean: what are things we do to recreate ourselves and exfoliate the debris that the world puts on you?  Deliberately, what do we do?  An artist’s date?  What what what?

The opportunity though, is to create meaning is extraordinary.   To really refine and define what I want to live and the way that I will do it.   The mac helped, the reduction in cash need helped, everything that I’ve done has helped.   This won’t be a panacea but it too will help, to have a standard that’s soberly examined.

There are 10 more Mondays (11 including the day that this post goes live) left in the year, and in that time, I want to figure out some sort of plan that can cover the areas/widely in my life & the things that I do.  There are lots of things to spend an hour or two on.  Fitness, Money, Marriage, and there are things that I’ve never processed discussed or put out there to deal with.  And there’s time to do it.   Sunday mornings.   I’ll start with the (important and low hanging fruit the easily expressed) and move from there each Monday.

The (again, tentative) schedule:

  1. 10/27: Fitness.
  2. 11/3:   Money
  3. 11/10: Clutter
  4. 11/17: Art & Writing [salient thought here:  will smith: "I don't want to get too metaphysical, but by even contemplating a Plan B, you almost create the necessity for a Plan B"]
  5. 11/24: Goals (Personal & Business: what the goals are and how they came about)
  6. 12/1: Materialism (Weddings, ceremony, commemoration, phoniness, starbucks was the canary in the coal mine).
  7. 12/8: God
  8. 12/15:Marriage
  9. 12/22: Family Stuff (TBD)
  10. 12/29:  Scheduling stuff. (TBD)

I am committed to doing, more or less, one of these a week for ten weeks.  I want to be both at the highest ‘thought’ level and the practical level (so I’ll figure out a budget and figure out why something is in the budget).

Black Helicopters | Liberty | Love

Get out yer tin foil hats.   Because I’ve gone off the reservation again.

It was 2005, the first time the thought occured to me.   I was buying a coffee-and-paper at my local BP.  I was asked to present some ID.  It was again, for my protection.   I said, “golly, do you have a rash of people committing bank fraud $5 bucks at a time?” Another woman made me trapse out to my car to secure my ID for my purchase of $21 bucks.   This was back in the willy nilly lassiez faire days in 2005, remember, when houses sold at an average of 4 hours on the market, and banks were lining up to give pan handlers good terms on a loan.

Both times, I was given some sort of, “well, it’s for your protection” deal.   As if I was being done this big favor by this chick that had asked for my ID.  “Oh, you claim it’s for my protection?  Then I can’t say shit, can I.  Because it was for me. And since you were helping me…I can’t say anything.”   Magnanimous, she was, helping me be protected from fraud.   She was even instilling fear.    But really, in the wake of the bailout hand over of our labor to the banking interests, does it seem strange that our society is giving us obedience tests in preparation for the government to fill more space and usurp more power from us?

I might be alone (I’m not, check the video) in thinking that the reason we switched to check cards from checks was to get more convenience and speed.   We’d be insulated from having to check ID because the vendors would know the funds were there.   My thinking now was that it was to centralize transactions through one chokepoint that can be easily watched.   The inconvenience of cash puts more power into the hands of fewer people who can wipe out billions without much of a problem.

Remember this:

My thought now is that these obedience tests are to weaken our defenses and get us ready for ‘papers please,’ type security tests..that no longer raise our ire or outrage.   I don’t think that the government itself is in on the deal, I just think that it’s a tool best used and manipulated by those that would like to enslave us.   A decent, free man who loves his life has no concept of gettting the government  While fraud and identity theft are a big spectre, there are lots of times when we gird ourselves against risk with a cure that is of dubious benefit.

-booster seats.

-seat belts (click it or ticket has done more to make me not have seatbelts than anything else).

-Friggin’ texas forced immunizations

-unlawful gambling.  GAMBLING.

We’re reminded time and again how we need the gov’t to protect us.  They are doing this for our benefit, citizens, so you have to obey, obey obey.   I don’t think that there’s a global conspiracy.  I may be naive.  I think that though, every man, in every position of power he is in has as part of his nature, the tendency to seek to get others to obey.   The government is an all to willing accomplice, because the nature of leviathan is that it grows to consume men.

As for a ‘practical’ response to this type of stuff, without getting to ‘black hellicoptery’ or ‘new world order-y’  I don’t know really what the answer is.   I know that every time I do something and make something cool, it increases the amount of energy that Leviathan has to capture.  I believe we can out grow and outpace Leviathan, and win by out hustling it.

This ends the black helicopter, tinfoil hatted rants of CJ.  On to your regularly scheduled programming about Goals, God, Freelancing, & Weight Loss.

Perverse Incentives Of Consulting Firms

So Right Right now is happening, soon. Once I grind out the current batch of projects, I’ll be on track to get the site up and launch it in earnest. I’ve been using Basecamp and I just started using Highrise.

I really, really like Heap and Torch, but they need a level of polish that they don’t currently have. Those applications are so tauntingly close to perfect in many ways that it’s hard to skip them, but they’re not ready yet. Torch particularly lags behind heap in what it can do…so I have to use something else because I have to have software that just simply works. I predict though, that if the current usability issues can be solved, that Heap + Torch will be world-beatingly good. An email based ecosystem rules. I just don’t happen to agree with the way that they perceive to do lists at present.

And Basecamp is oxygen simple. I don’t like the way that it perceives due days, and the lack of ability to globally assign all due dates in a list to some later date. But it’s easy enough to use, and I’m somewhat over my hotkey bias. The hotkey bias was based on the fact that I used a celeron based dying, windows PC, and a miss click with my mouse would cause me to be in some neverland for 15 minutes.

But what I wanted to write about today was process stuff. More aptly, designing a pre-and post project checklist that gets you where you’re going and ensures your company learns and grows and gets more valuable over time. Anyway, here is the current ‘post project’ wrap up that we’ll do on each project:

  • final QC Review: spelling, all bullet points and loose code tied down.
  • Change any passwords shared externally and record passwords
  • Evaluate team members based on: hitting deadlines, communication
  • Evaluate areas where we can improve on future projects.
  • Thank all team members for participation and share evaluation
  • see if there are further projects that we can help with.
  • solicit & record feedback from team members on how to improve process
  • look at things that were in this spec that can be added to general templates.
  • Look to see if any opportunities for mutual profit exist as a result of this project.
  • Gain client testimonial whenever possible. If not possible, ask what we’d have to earn
  • to get one.
  • Send all files to client in a zip file for their records and future use.
  • Create Project P+L.
  • Do we have any permanent resources in project that are reusable?
  • Add resources to code library.
  • Blog Project case study: Start Date, Due Date, Done Date, Team Members, Client
  • Happy?

This is not exhaustive, and we don’t want to be plagued with mission creep. my guess is that this list will get bigger for a while and then get really small. But it’s what to think about because when we do a project, we must get better at our jobs, each time.

There is a perverse incentive that programmers (who need jobs) to be sluggish with projects. By saying that someone doesn’t intend to work somewhere very long, it eliminates that. By getting world class people that are using this stuff to fund and further their careers (in lieu of people that can’t get jobs elsewhere), we’re saying: hey, we’re going to improve your processes and systems, we’re leaving, and we’re unbiased because, while we’ll honor your money, we’re not in it to siphon money from you to us. We’re here to kick ass and make you better, and we’ll be gone. We hope to be invited back, but, a long term thing just isn’t us. Oh, yeah, and we’re not really into feature creep, we want to give you kick ass work quickly.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at with this thing, and I am actually executing and funding it so we’ll break out and start networking and getting customers.