Sonia Simone at Copyblogger Misses the Boat, Big, With the Tribes Post.

chris — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:01:30 +0000

I don’t know why Brian Clark and the Copyblogger people are going on this high school motif. Yes, there is differentiation and branching off going on in the Internet right now. Yes, the rules are evolving on how we make money. Yes, the “Fresh off The Used Car Lot” types are here. Yes, there are groups of people that are not communicating with others. Normal, human, don’t you think?

Sonia talks about how–ultimately–there are cool kids vs. Internet marketers. The cool kids get attention and the IM crowd gets paid. I get paid on the Internet. I’m not getting private jet money–but I do very OK thankyouverymuch. I…am in a tribe obsessed with human connection. You know, the one that didn’t get mentioned…the one that uses Facebook. The one that gets more and more leverage. Oh, sure, I did the book thing and made money selling ebooks, and I’m launching the **** out of my next ebook. I’ll do six figures from F#@% Therapy, if I hustle.

But ultimately, my income and security will be found in a third way–by connecting to people I meet on the Internet. No mention of that tribe. I’m working towards getting rich. I’m working towards running around with a cool group of people. Helping things grow to a higher and higher level, getting cool things made, cool people connected with, and keeping it REAL.

By growing my social media presence in depth, I, too am an Internet marketer. I am an unlimited freelancer, an unlimited salesperson. Sure, I get a little rush when my Blackberry pings from my e-junkie account And sure, I’m probably missing the boat by not putting affiliate linkseverywhere.

But…you don’t have to worry about my motivations. If I tell you that HeapCRM is the best thing since ACT 6.0, you can bet your sweet ass I mean it and why. I don’t lend my reputation to anyone, unless the product is F#%@ing great. You’re not thinking I’m going to be after some affiliate commission. I care about people, and it’s making me rich. I’m not saying that Brian and Sonia don’t care. I am saying that the best way to sell on Internet is to build your robust social media presence and sell to it, protect it, guard it, and add more value to it than anyone else can.

That’s the easiest way to make big cash on the Internet, and all it takes is caring, using Facebook, connecting and….helping. The best part is that the skills from both crowds come in handy. The cool kids crowd can help ya get an audience, and the IM crowd can help you sell. Provided that you care, you’re beyond contempt.

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Big Damn Goal Post. Part 2, a Budget

chris — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:21:35 +0000

In my last post, I talked about establishing what my expenses were and having an income goal.

The income goal comes from what matters to me–it’s not some arbitrary number. Let’s think about a budget and some debt service/debt retirement:

It’s not natural for me to do a few things: be organized, do a budget. I’ve had to build all sorts of things to do both. GTD works–my version (of which I’m off the wagon currently, and climbing on). But, I need to really know what I’m doing with my dough. See, I’ve pulled myself far out of a deep hole with well-over-six-figures in unsecured debt. Now, I’ve got to get the rest of the way out so I’m able to take another title shot and eff it up again.

I’m organizing a budget, and the first thing I’m going to do is try to establish my minimum ‘burn rate,’ or the number that exists WITHOUT regard to debt service. A car payment can be put off for some months without consequence. Not so much a rent payment (folks, because I wanted to knock out my debt, I radically downsized a while ago. The plan is working, and when our tiny place is clean, it’s fun, and we’re radically decluttering and making each of our possessions fight to stay owned by us.)

The goal is to know–first–what I’m spending. No clue. No clue at all. I know I’m wasting a bunch of money that we can stop wasting.

Rent Payment    $800
Gas Bill    $120
Electric Bill    $140
Internet    $36
Verizon Cell Phone    $133
Health Insurance    $240
Food:    $420
Car Insurance    $40
Health Club    $32
Gas:    $200
Total: $2146

Now–I can prbably get the food down a little bit, if I had to, and if I was real disciplined about it, but that’s been close lately. Let’s gross that up for taxes–assuming I’ll have a tax rate at this level of 35%, and we’re at $2897, * 12 = $34,765 gone before anything else happens. That’s pretty low, and that’s promising.

Most freelance budgets don’t account for taxes. I’m using 35% to make up for state and federal taxes up to $100k, and 45% on income earned after that. Arbitrary to a point but it gives me some cushion. I’ll get a lot of offsets, but I have to pay both sides of the effing payroll tax.

Now, I still have a car payment of $204, and student loan payments of about $175. I also owe about $650/month to repay my “let’s stay out of jail” loans from 2005-2007. The car payment is really nothing. My student loans went berserk when I was faced with going to jail or letting ‘em go. Easy choice, kids, easy friggin choice.

So, my debt service is looking at $1029. That’s 50% of my budget, really. Ouch. Still, manageable. So, let’s gross that up again:

$1389.

Add this to $2897, and we have: $4286/month. $51,432/year. $989 per week.

This doesn’t include a lot of ‘misc’ things currently, like doctor copays and car maintenance. So, let’s gross this thing up yet again, by 25% to cover those things that I missed. Let’s then bring this up to $1236/week. ~$64k a year. That’s simple enough to hit. ~$247/work day for everything, including debt service.

That’s seriously thinking small, but it is a number I know I can do, and easily. The next step is to take the number and subtract 8 weeks vacation (three weeks to move, five weeks for the rest of the year). 52- 8 = 44. = $1454, which brings me close to $300/day.

Remember, kids, this is without ‘savings.’ Debt reduction or debt service is savings. I need to build my cash position to about $15-18k in new money quickly so I have maximum operational flexibility. That won’t be that hard.

I can fine tune this as I go along, as MINT is helping me do that (though the annoyance with MINT is that they don’t letcha put other bills that a bank doesn’t know about into the account–so they can make sure the information is really, really accurate.). We’re also tentatively planning a move to Portland, OR, which is more and more likely to happen as time passes, and that move will cost $4500 bucks. Still, the budget is what it is, requiring that I earn $989 per week, minimum. That’s not that rough, as I’ve certainly been averaging more than that lately. I have some business expenses which break down as follows:

Basecamp: $25/month
HEAP: $9/month
Aweber: $20/month
Hosting: $25/month (i see this getting to be higher next year).
Misc. Software: $35/month. (buying say, photoshop elements)
E-Junkie- $5/month.
Skype: $3/month.

Those are reasonably trivial expenses. Some (Internet/Verizon) have some household overlap–and can be addressed however we want to.

Edit: The actual budget raised a little bit: it trends up to a $69,000 cash need before savings. I added some prescription copays, etc, to it so when the sidebar shows up, please realize that there are some differences. I might circle back to this, but I have a hard target for my income.

All managable.

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Sonia Simone at Copyblogger Misses the Boat, Big, With the Tribes Post.

Big Damn Goal Post. Part 2, a Budget