The phrase that he contributed to my thinking was this: “If the offer still stands.”  He did a logo for Right Right Now, an idea I had on creating a small project specialty company.  The idea was OK, maybe, the logo looked great.  He got back to me a day or so later and said, “If the offer still stands…I’d like to work on this project.”

He’s done a about 40% of the total output from stuff you see on the web.  I like his ethos, efficency and work.  He and his brother Issac created a site called Servee, and for those folks not wanting to use/learn WordPress it might be a fit.

The phrase that he contributed to my thinking was this: “If the offer still stands.”  He did a logo for Right Right Now, an idea I had on creating a small project specialty company.  The idea was OK, maybe, the logo looked great.  He got back to me a day or so later and said, “If the offer still stands…I’d like to work on this project.”   The humility of that phrase, and the earnestness was top shelf, and it struck me at the time as a good ethos.

I’ve employed, off and on, probably 15 people in the last year, all freelancers.  Maybe as many as 20.  I’ve sought quotes from probably another 10 or 12.

One common theme is this: the outrage when a bid is passed on.  I sought a quote recently for a project that I wound up outsourcing for $500.  I sent the bid out on Monday to 3 people, in separate emails.  I said that I’d go with the first person with a reasonable offer/delivery time.  One guy did the work, no harm, no foul, Tuesday.    One guy passed due to schedule reasons.   The third guy gets back to me late on Wednesday saying that the work could be done by Friday or Saturday.

I told him hey, I got this handled.

I got a 912 word email telling me that I was treating him  badly.  That I didn’t know what I was doing, and that I should lose his email.  I’ve sent the man 7 offers, he did and was paid for 4 of the 7.   He declined one, and didn’t get back on another.  Then there was this gig.   The one that I undervalued him.   I probably ask too many people for quotes, but I don’t think I’m too far off base.

Sure, sure: best practice for sure would have been to send a follow up and close the loop.   Just like best practice is to ALWAYS acknowledge both delivery of a job and payment for the job.  But, I don’t want to create a race to the bottom.  I don’t want to make it so that I play people off each other, make a weirdo competitive thing.  I want people to do the work, I had that gig pegged at between $350-600, and $500 was in the range.

Anyway, if more than a day passes, confirming that “the offer still stands,” is a great best practice for accepting a bid and taking in work.  It’s a great way to start and keep a relationship, and it’s a great idea long term.

My principal balance is under $25,000 which is the IRS’s apparent Magic Number for not making you endlessly fill out form 433a. I don’t know, I’m not a Tax Attorney, not like my friend Phil Hodgen. (Note: preceding link was gratuitous and contains deliberate anchor text.)    This is down from over $93,000 in actual tax plus the juice that I ignored for a year:

Now, no doubt that there were some disproportionate consequences for my actions, but bottom line, 99% of this was my fault.  Or, 100% of it was my fault, really, but the consequences that come from being in debt to the IRS are pretty friggin’ severe.  I’m down to ~$35k, all in, no criminal investigations, no perpetual re negotiations, no more levies should hit me.   I’ll pay this off by next tax season, and I’ll be and stay ahead of my taxes.

I’m sharing this because this whole taste has soured me against finance.  I don’t want to be in debt–even if it costs me.  It adds a level of complexity and ‘bitchery’ to my life.  Debt saps my energy and it makes it harder for me to keep my promises.  I’m not doing it anymore.  I’m no man’s bitch.  I have to get out as soon as I can conceivably do it…and never look back.

Here’s why:  I had a great month in July.  But it just caught me up.  I didn’t get ahead, and I’m still waiting for my PPC bill to hit me so I can know how much I have (Google & Yahoo have never been accurate with their statements, have always been off).   I’m still surfing the payables. I will be till this thing is put to rest.  And when it is, I’ll turn the after burners on, get a little scratch up before I make another move.

Having this makes me work less hard.  I understand the conservative argument: it’s futile sometimes to keep grinding out work.  It’s futile to have to work & have all your money go to taxes.  It sucks to look at your family and not be able to do the things you want because you effed up your 20′s.  It sucks to pull in six figures and live like college students.  (Though, as usual Mark Cuban is rockingly right).  Paying a tax I don’t fully believe in kind of sucks.

Debt Slavery isn’t a lie.  I’m not stuck on consumer debt, but I screwed up.  I always thought that the checkerboard would arrange itself so I’d have one massive triple jump and be able pay everything off.  I thought I’d earn enough to swiftly and permanently punch my way out of this thing.  The way I expected things to roll was that I’d be able to pay it all off at once.  Reality doesn’t work like that.  I’m not gonna hold a winning track ticket and suddenly pay everything off.  Gotta chunk it down a little at a time, grind it till the interest stops being most of my income, and do the Debt Snowball thing.

So, a commitment:  I’ll update this about once a month.  Eventually I’ll do the google docs goal tracking thing, but I’ve got other fish to fry, auto responders to write, blogs to sell and a course to design.  Serving others at the highest level I know how is the way to punch through this wall.

The uncertainty though is hard to contend with.  Look, the bottom line is that they are gonna put me on some type of payment plan.  Most likely it’ll be $500 a month, far, far less than what I’ve been paying.   That will be a relief, cash flow wise.   I’ll be able to breathe a little and relax.

But it’s not known.  It could be another month of the same old ‘report to the revenue officer.’  It could be that my 2005 returns are wanting, and they want more info that I’ll have a hard time supplying.   It could be that they are gonna say I owe more.  Anything is possible.

Tom Petty says that the waiting is the hardest part.

Dealing with the weight is a wait and a distraction I don’t know–quite how to process.  On the one hand, it’ll either be good news or no news.

But the waiting is the hardest part.

I am mentally having a hard time with it.  I know that one of the biggest joys of my life is coming in about 6 months when I write that final “F-off” check to the IRS.  I want that to happen this year, in 2009, in the heart of the recession.   But the distraction of the maybe is something that the linear part of me can’t deal with.  I’m having a difficult time focusing on my lists & tasks.

I know–a little bit–what it’s like to have a loved one with a grim prognosis.   The uncertainty kills.  It’s part of the reason why mortgage brokers got so much money.  They bore the burdens of financial uncertainty along with their clients.  I’ll let you all know what happens, it’ll be sometime in July that the finish line will honestly and actually be in sight.  That I’ll be able to dash for it, and get the merciless evil that is the IRS out of our life.

Then I’ll work on the rest of my debt.

Miles to go, but I see the path at least.

More later.  Cutting some videos for thesis blogs.

I’m going to get back to posting my Goals on Google Docs on monday.

The main metrics are as follows:

• +30 Thesis Blogs Sold.
• 40 Guerrilla.ME accounts opened.
• 100 Copies of my Book sold.
• 45 videos made for Guerrilla.ME & Thesis Blogging.
• $7500 month in the rest of freelance business (closing out existing pipeline….stop doing one off jobs).
• 8 Pounds shed. (Been far off the wagon in that area)

Now, I’m gonna post about this stuff almost every day here, I’ll probably exclude it from the feed except weekly by finding some category driven plugin to do that.

There have been some serious bummer growing pains in moving from selling blogs at $2,000 to $750.  I’m still committed though.  The bummers:

1. Expectations: My original article didn’t say what I would get done.  People expected everything from an identity package and letterhead (!) to a much more refined look that comes from multiple revisions.   So I’ll say it now: Custom Header, Cusotm Color Scheme, Custom clean look….plugins and analytics set up, good checklist.  Thanks to Mark Shandrow for finding and using Thesis Open Hook.  For some reason, it Fubar’d the fist time I installed it, and never went back, but now it works well.
2. Videos: The first batch of videos were utter crap.  Not really, but I was stuttering more than Rain man and they didn’t have the pop or polish I’d want.   So I scrapped ‘em.  I started doing ‘em again, this time with Screen Flow instead of Snap Z, and holy hell…what more can I do.  The problem is that the production takes longer.  I think it’ll be worth it…but I’m a little stuck on making ‘em perfect instead of getting ‘em done.  There’s a serious “OMFG its COOL factor with ScreenFlow….but I dropped the ball HARD on the videos this week, stopped selling for a while to try to get caught back up…and am daunted by the task.
3. Paid Wall I envisioned this as a membership site, I got WP-Wishlist to run it, and then realized that this was a chore.  So I moved everything  to rightrightnow.com  I planned on having both the ‘guerrilla.me’ and the ‘thesis blog’ videos there, but it makes more sense to have that stuff all live at http://guerrilla.me.   The camo makes it look and feel more like a traning environment and initially I can sell more Thesis Blogs than Guerrilla.MEs.   The paid wall ate me up, and I should have dumped the videos to a 100-200 MB file and delivered.
4. Script: I need a script that works with thesis to install it and the plugins automatically.
5. Pricing: Existing Blog Hosts Gotta figure out if I want to migrate/upgrade existing blogs.  ALL the problems with DNS/Hassle were with people that I upgraded with existing blogs.

The downside of doing ‘products,’ is the lonliness in the start.

I did love it though: I loved the first season, its novelty.  I love the excitement, the pacing.  I love the real time(ish) nature.  I love how preternaturally competent Jack Bauer is.  A chemist, bomb expert, computer expert, hand to hand, mechanic.   I loved how he performed some type of “killing Russians” help-desk action aboard a submarine.  I love the linear focus ruthlessness. At least part of me does.

DiSC Profiling

I’ve been thinking and messing with the DiSC profiling system sinc probably 2003-2004.  Howard Brinton, Star Power does DiSC stuff.  It’s a quick shortand for typing people, and the shorthand often works.  It’s not perfect. Over-labeling people dehumanizes them.   DiSC has been called other things.  (BOLT, ETC), but the basic premise is this:

D- Dominance.  Classical Type A.  My way/high way,
i – Influence.  Artsy type, wants to be the life of the Party.
S- Supportive.  Think: people pleasing, maybe submissive. (always thought supportive was submissive.)
C- Contentious.  Analytical.  To a fault.  Loves them some rules.

So, Jack Bauer is a D.  A machine, do whatever it takes, break the rules, bend the world to my will.  I’ll torture, the mission, the objective is all that matters.  I’ll cut you open, if you have one nugget of information.  I’ll rack up a body count.  Whatever it takes.

I’ve DiSC’d myself, and I generally identify with D and I.  Or I and D.  Depends on the day, the mood, and if my wife’s responded to me.   I used to want to be more D.  More of a ruthless bastard.  Now–not so much.  Oh, sure, when necessary, I’ll break ‘social conventions,’ to get my way.  If you cheat me, wrong me, or if you wrong a friend of mine, I’ll tear you in half.  Try it some time.  It’ll be fun.  Seriously.

Debt Collection Methods for the Insane.

I did collect on my last debt by using ruthless methods.  I was shorted big cash, and i had it in minutes by being the most important event in the debtor’s life.  It took little time using modern tools to, and an anxious story to get everyone in his office complex knocking on his door, letting him know that I wasn’t kidding.  D’s count on that, and if you can convince them that you’ll go as far as it takes, they’ll acquiesce.  I am not kidding.  I don’t go to war often. OK sure, the method used was illegal.  I don’t care,  it is also illegal to charge back a credit card after you’ve had your cash refunded.   It’s also illegal to drop a deal after you run out of money.   Side note:  ths was way, way more than a simple misunderstanding.   This was a corrupt sociopath that I damn well should have avoided.

A written agreement–as Austin Realtor Eric Bramlett suggested…would NEVER have solved anything.  Sociopaths are not really bound by what they said, put in writing, promised, vowed, or affirmed.   I’m a heartbeat away from being a sociopath.  It’s a daily battle. I’m winning currently.

A Life Past Type A

Back to Jack, though, cause he’s the subject header, and I just used Hulu to catch up on 24.   He’s ruthless, and this season has him even more so.  D personality.  F#@% the rules, it’s time to go to war.

Now…a D type has some place in the world.  When you’re trying to hit a deadline or achieving a goal, it works.  Channeling some ‘whatever it takes,’ into your brain helps a ton.   When you’re trying to deal kindly with people?  Well, let’s leave that personality at home.  When you have to build teams, you need some I and some S.

D b.s. doesn’t work.   It pulls you into drama land.  “How Dare You Do This To Me,” crap.  I’ve been there, and I’m mostly gone from that world.  Mostly.  I think that the “D” type was the baby boomer personality.

I wrote a book about mostly that.   Which will be live tomorrow, it’s for sale now, but the website looked like it was done by a kindergartner.  In 1997.  More later, as is always the case on teh inter-web.

So going up the stairs to my second workout took effort.  I was clearly dragging.  There are two flights of stairs up to my gym, and each one took effort.  I didn’t look like I had any energy, and I was looking forward to just being done.   To coming home, to going to bed.  Anyway, I looked at myself in the big mirror and caught an image of me dragging ass.

So I said to myself: “Self, what would you look like if you were looking forward to this trip.”  And so I put some false bounce in my step.  It hurt a little going up each step, but it ws managable.  And I hopped and danced a little, just put the spring in the step that you do when you’re looking forward .

And instantly I felt better.   It wasn’t perfect, but I felt like I was glad and lucky to be there, and to have this opportunity to make my body healthy.   I still felt the sore, but my mind went to those times where you just float up the stairs and run around.

So I’d say a miniexperiment with NLP led me to believe that it works OK.

More in a bit.  I’m behind on lots of stuff, as the sidebar reflects.

I set goals–sell x units, do y in volume.  But I never felt it.  The big ‘so what’ was always behind that.  I couldn’t make myself give a crap about any of it.  Sell another commodity house here in CMH?  Sure.  Happy to serve.  No, really.

I got jazzed about the marketing: doing something that generated leads.  And I had a tsunami of leads.  But I saw myself as a (just) six figure guy, and that’s what I did.  Oh, I sustained a bunch more in ’05, but we all did.  I had the gig from 01 to March of this year.

If I felt I had enough listing appointments, I’d flake out on people, cancelling them.   I only wanted so much work, and I didn’t realize that.  Since I was great at generating leads, I could always pick from the easiest and nicest people to work with.

Each quarter, there I was, netting out what I needed as a Realtor, letting leads and deals rot on the vine.  When leads are abundant, I didn’t value them.  (Hey, kids, they are still abundant).  Rather than work with an asshole it was, “Here, here’s your listing back, sign this mutual release, and I’m out of there.”   I didn’t care, couldn’t care, and still don’t see the anxious need to produce the nothing that makes up a lot of the Real Estate Practice.

Still.  Still there are good reasons to love the business.  The reason I still orbit it is this:  if someone is willing to take a 100% commission job, they value freedom over security.  That must be nurtured, period.  That spark is sacred, and part of the best within the American spirit.  If you can do your job better for them,

Life went on.   I would then pretend I loved the business after being geeked by a MFO event or something like it.  And in lieu of creating what I wanted to (leads), I got stuck as a practitioner.   And I would set goals I couldn’t care about each year.

60 houses.
$350k average price
$550 GCI.
$350k net.
1000 hours prospected.
Etc.

Yawn.  Possible?   Sure.  But money doesn’t lead, it follows.  You don’t start with an income and then build a life around it.   To maintain it, I had to ingest so much poison I almost became that guy.   And I didn’t have the right ethos then to really get after it.  I didn’t have acute needs, till the IRS gave me the Rodney King treatment, I was coasting, if that.   I didn’t love what I was doing.  And that’s a way to waste your life.

Not saying you can’t.   Not saying it’s not possible, but I ratcheted it all down to mere numbers.  Numbers do matter, but only when you’re chasing something that also drives you.   Right now, i’m driven to write, driven to lose weight, driven to help people get efficient, and I’m driven to get out of debt.   I’m carrying a net worth of roughly -$65,000 that I want GONE.  Money comes easily enough for me.  I don’t need to make that the end all/be all.   I want to make Right Right now into a practice of some sort.  A couple people asked what my BIG DAMN GOALS were:

1. I will weigh in at 175# before March 1st 2009. My ultimate goal is 159#, but I won’t be thinking about that for a bit. I want to think about all the milestones I need to pass through first.  Friends, that’ll put the total weight loss at 97#.  That’s a gymnast.  I’ve already lost a bunch.  Only standard is to get to 175#.
2. Next E-book, f-therapy, does 10,000 units. I’m getting it started (this is the first time I’ve talked about it) at http://f–ktherapy.com  It’s a strident treatise about uncluttering your life, your mind, and ignoring the toxicity of our society.
3. I will get “subprime” published and collect an advance of $50,000 or more. Again, I’m already stacking the deck in my favor.  The quality of the writing & insight matters, but I’m making it such that I’ll get the most receptive audience possible.   I don’t know if it’s a meritocracy or not, but if it’s not, that benefits me as I like to win, and I’m competing to win right now.  I stack the deck with stuff that makes it hard to ignore me.  Just watch.
4. To be debt free in 500 days. I have my debt pegged at $65,000, most of it being the IRS’s suff.   It might be a little less, and I’ll tabulate it next weekend.   My budget/burn rate is something like $2500/month.   Gross THAT up for taxes, and I’m at an income need of $4,000.    365/500 =73%.   73% of $65,000  = ~47,450.   Gross THAT up by 30% for taxes = $62k.   Divide that by 12, and we’re at: 5200 month for debt retirement.   Add that to $4,000 and we have a need (without savings) of 9200/month.  This puts me at 108,000 for the year, a number I can hit in my sleep, doing this stuff.

That’s pretty much what matters.   I put a $$ on the advance because I want to have it taken reasonably seriously–I’m not necessarily going to just take the first person to write that check, I’m going to make it have the best chance at a real live widespread audience.   I know times is hard.   I don’t want to be in a ‘need the money,’ point in my life.  And I won’t be.

A lot of other things are ‘nice to do’ next year:  I wanna read about 100 books, 40 fiction/60 nonfiction.   I want to run a 3:30 marathon.   And to make $108k, I’ll need to divide my income somehow–ebooks aren’t a ‘guarantee’–I need to pursue the courses that I have taught, and the rest of the stuff that I regularly do.  I think that if I rely on the consulting gigs for the income and make everything else ‘fun,’ we’ll be juuuuuuuust fine.

I have to rewrite it fully (or therabouts, there are great scenes) by Feb 1, 2009, choose the best representation by 6/1/09…and catch lightning in a bottle.  I can do ll this stuff, things like this always happen quickly for me.  Someone next year will sell a breakout debut novel, lose a ton of weight, and do a kicking e-book.   Why not me?

Dashboard comes up tomorrow.

Mandatory Recurring Bills

1. Housing: $1300
2. Internet: $26.00
3. Cell Phones (H + Me) $105
4. Vonage: $30
5. Car insurance: $71.
6. Health insurance: $336 (comes out of my checks, but that’s the cash net)
7. Electric: $125
8. Gas: $45 (not on budget–this seems to be about as high as it gets)
9. Trash: $24
10. Water: $25
11. Car Payment: $230 (included here because it would be gone if not paid)
12. gym membership/Heather: 68

$2335 Cash/month: $27k/ year to have basic living done

Other Household Expenses:

1. Food: $550/month
2. Co-Pays: $55
3. Gasoline: $250/month
4. Clothing: $250/month (must be doubled–can be deferred

Total: $1175/month: 14100/year

Debt Service:

1. Student loans (me) $21,500/140 month
2. IRS: $23,000: $600/month + Refund. each year.
3. 401k loan: $310/month
4. Misc “weighty” debt acquired: 7k. Not being served until other stuff is gone, daddy, gone.

$740 * 12 = $8880

Business Expenses:

1. 900/month: staff stipend.
2. Lunches/70/month

Total: 970 * 12 = 11640

Totals: 27,000 + 14100 + 8880 + 11640 = $61260 cash. Expenses are $5135/month. This requires a pretax income of 85k-90k+/- to make it. That is an exhausting lifestyle–having that as a base and having to go up from there. Blah. Earning 85k (7k month) +/-) requires the overhead. The Staff Stipend and the Health insurance come out pre tax, and can–to a point–be floated. The student loans can be ditched without much of a penalty, but that’s not the behavior I want to model.

Serious change needs to happen.

Having that kind of overhead to live is not fun–it creates a grind because even if we had $75000 in the bank, we’re only looking at 13 months +/- to be able to survive. The answer is not–as Tim Ferris says to give up the glass of red wine and defer your lifestyle. The answer is to think different:

1. What can we do to cut expenses in a radical way?
2. Can we get someone else to pay for us to live?
3. Can we leverage our intellect to change the game?
4. Can we cut big expenses? Saving on food doesn’t matter much, but changing our spending does?
5. Can we sell something on an iterated basis to make us money?

This isn’t a solution that we can “Simple Dollar” our way to the end–while I really like many things about being a mortgage broker, there is nothing unique or novel about that job. I like the freedom, and it’s something that can easily be outsourced. I can build a system in 6-12 months that teaches this, and focus on another source of income….without being tethered to the job.

Chris Johnson is a thinker, taker of risks, and writer. His blog: GenuineChris.Com talks about creating insane personal success through radical transparency.