Welcome, Tweeter!

Not a picture of me as a kid.

Since this is my personal blog, I have made the decision NOT to include ads on the sidebar.  I hope this makes for a better reading experience for you.  But I must preface this entry with a warning:  I am reviewing something here that will make me a couple bucks if you buy it. Don’t bother.  Just read on, it’s kind of funny…

Now about the Rich Garbage Man … <–link opens a new tab:

LOL, I LOVE THIS GUY.

I decided to blog about it because it is such a great example of the perfect affiliate marketing offer.  His video plays upon clicking the page, so you don’t have to do anything to start listening to his message. He’s a blue collar hero, a former garbage man who struck it rich.  I already like him.  It’s the classic story, the American dream. Wouldn’t we all love to quit our jobs and work from home a few hours a week, and become millionaires?

I don’t endorse this guy or his product, but I bet if I met him in real life, he’d be someone I could relate to. I can see myself buying this guy a beer (or a coffee, depending on the situation).  Now, I didn’t even read the entire page, but I did read the first few paragraphs.

He talks about driving to all these huge houses to pick up trash, and one day, some punk kid walks down the driveway, and as he took the trash, the kid threw him some books.

“He then said wait, before you throw that out why don’t you take it home and read it… and then laughed and said oh yeah you’re a garbage man you dont know how to read… and walked away.

I was ready to pound that kids face in, but I was on the job. I needed to keep my cool. So guess what I did… I took that bag of books home with me.

That Was The Most Important Day Of My Life, And Changed Me Forever!”

So, are you smiling? I am, because the sales letter was so predictable, yet so satisfying.  What a great story.  I am sure you have heard that the best salespeople tell stories.  I can’t think of the last time I saw such a great example of this.

The thing I didn’t like about his video, and he may have done it on purpose, but he says the phrase “garbage man” a total of 6 times, to remind us, in case we forgot (in addition to the word garbage appearing 21 other times on the page)!

What do you think, is this guy smooth, or what? If anyone actually ORDERS this, let me know if it’s any good.  I am guessing it’s decent, but I am too busy to add anything else to my plate right now.

I guess if you DO get the Rich Garbage Man’s course, leave me a comment and I will send you two eBooks as a free bonus, that I wrote myself.  One is an environment-friendly way to make $2400 a month working one day per week (and it has NOTHING TO DO with Internet Marketing.  The other is an eAutographed copy of Leo Luck’s FORBIDDEN Roulette Roadmap: You Have to Have Balls to Win (Leo Luck is my DJ name, I thought it would be an appropriate penname for my gambling guides.  (Yes I am serious about the eBooks, but you should still be smiling, because the title of the roulette book is just clever).  Admit it, you are smiling.

Hope you will enjoy the rest of my blog.  Tweet with you soon!

Oh yeah, check out the 30 Day Challenge, if you want.  It starts August 1, 2009.

Chris

After reading Malcomb Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker, about innovation and the winning full court press basketball strategy, I think about being a David. How can I avoid playing by Goliath’s rules? Is Goliath the established mode of thinking where I have to trade my time for money, in equal proportion?

I have never been happy working for corporate jerks. Even though working for myself might seem unstable to outsiders, to me, the trade off is worth it, because the freedom and integrity are more valuable than just knowing what day I get paid. Working at Office Max, I learned a little bit, but it is depressing to me, to just nod and smile, worshiping the CEO, bending over to make the upper crust happy. Working my butt off as hard as I can and not getting back anything extra in return. It’s the classic Office Space debate; if you don’t give people something to motivate them, if you only pay them JUST ENOUGH so that they don’t quit, they will only work JUST hard enough so that they don’t get fired.

The things I was forced to do, working for other people, was embarrassing.

For example: Office Max sells a ton of extended warranties, and they make a lot of money doing this. Most of the people who buy them don’t need a warranty. They just buy it because the employees are pushing it so hard. And the employees are not doing it because it’s of any value, they are doing it because if they don’t, they wil be reprimanded by management. I think I am going to copy this rant to an article and publish it, because people should read this: NEVER BUY A WARRANTY. THEY ARE RIPOFFS, AND YOU DON’T NEED ONE.

However, as a manager at this chain, I actually found myself reprimanding my underlings, when they “forgot” to offer the warranty. Did I truly care? No. But I had to go through the motions, to avoid my own reprimand from a manager higher up the ladder. There was a small incentive to get employees to sell the warranties, in that they might get a commission of a dollar. But it is interesting that no ACTUAL PRODUCTS sold would get you a commission. Only the warranties (Max Assurance), because they are like pure profit. Most of the time the products would come with a better plan from the manufacturer, and the MaxAssurance wouldn’t always cover the breakable parts (like how ridiculous is it that on glass tables, the glass was not covered under MaxAssurance?!).

This is the type of crap I hate about working for other people (You may remember my previous blog articles, the 7 Words That Changed My Life…) You sell out your ethics, and you don’t even get your money’s worth. You work your fingers to the bone to make them extra money, and when finished, you are lucky to get a pat on the back. You know what? A pat on the back doesn’t buy groceries or diapers.

So MAYBE Goliath can represent all the people who are trying to force me to work for some greedy corporation, who doesn’t care about me, or whether I live or die, because I am not a person, I am a job title. I can be replaced at the drop of a hat, because so many people are looking for work. They are doing me a FAVOR, just allowing me to put on their uniform and use clever tactics to get unwitting customers to purchase things that no one ever needed.

David says no to this, yes to self-empowerment. I want to work smarter, not longer and harder. Will I work for another corporation? Sure, probably many, but only because it is absolutely necessary to help me reach my other goals. When the design business is good, I will enjoy it. When it slows, I will find backup plans, like working at an office store or data entry cubicle. But I will keep working on the #30DC ideas, and taking one step at a time towards MY DEFINITION of success.

Ed Dale gives us a preview of how this year’s 30DC will be different from last year’s. We need to be market leaders and get really comfortable with creating content for our market or niche. Long video, hope you are sitting down and didn’t drink too much water today. Use the restroom before hitting play, just to be safe.

I am listening to Seth Godin’s Tribes right now, and considering the number of tribes that I belong to:

• WKUK fans
• web designers
• Christian entrepreneurs
• social media enthusiasts / TWEEPLE
• font nerds
• electronic music producers / DJ’s / listeners

How many tribes do you belong to?

Picking one of these, I remember the feeling of community that I experienced upon my stumbling into the world of freelancing.  I would go to freelancing sites when I first started, and bid on as many jobs as possible.  I met other designers, developers, and artists.  There was a feeling of competition, yes, but there was also a lot of mutual respect.

I became friends with several buyers.  And several service providers.  Many times providers would also be buyers, too. I started helping others find projects, when I had a surplus of work.  If I didn’t have time to take on a project, I would recommend a friend in the industry.  The group of people I worked with started to refer clients to each other.  We would focus on our strengths, and enlist the help of others when needed.  It was a crew of guys and girls from all over the world. We started to become a tight-knit group, with different skills.

We were like the Marvel universe only with design geeks instead of superheros: There was Jolme, the Illustrator; Felipe, the Wordpress Wizard; David, the Hosting Hero; Andy, the Project Manager; Melissa, the Copywriter; Ashok, the PHP/MySQL guru; Duncan, the eCommerce Expert; Kartik, the Joomla guy, and me.  I was usually the CSS Polisher, logo maker, or odd-jobs man.  I was also the communicator.  I was the hub, the others were the spokes.  If someone needed something done, I could always introduce them to the right person, and eventually the whole team had worked with each other in some way.

As time has gone by, each of us has grown busier, and we don’t connect as often as we used to.  Such is life.  But each of us would not be where we are at today, if it were not for our little circle of friends, the ‘web’ of superheroes. It was another form of a tribe.

Do you have a tribe?  Do you have a superpower and a network of other superheroes?  It may not be as cool as shooting spikes out of your knuckles, but when someone says thank you, it’s just as rewarding.

We are looking to network with people who have similar goals.  So it would seem natural to determine what our goals are.  If you want to discuss the ideas presented in this blog, leave a comment, follow me on Twitter [@webovator] or let’s connect on Facebook.

My number one goal is to find ways to earn a substantial income without trading massive amounts of precious free time.  I have been reading and studying many great thinkers over the years, and have come to realize that true wealth is having the free time to do the things you really WANT to do.

Whether I want to backpack across Europe, take pictures of waterfalls, take up surfing, or just hang out with friends and family, I need to secure enough free time to make those things possible.  Sometimes working as a designer or developer, free time is impossible to achieve.

Working endlessly at a job requires too much time, even if the money is there. So the goal is to work smart, not long. Working hard is a good thing, but only if it’s productive.

Some books that have made a big difference in the way I see life:  Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. Talk and Grow Rich, by Ron Holland. The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss. You can find these on the sidebar if you want to check them out.

There is a lot of truth to what these three books have taught me. Which we will discuss over the coming weeks.

The first thing to consider is that our goals need to be clarified. A road map must be drawn.  I need to find several ways of making money, without investing 40 to 80 hours a week. Residual income is the goal.  How to do that without sacrificing all of our free time? It’s a lofty goal, but not unachievable.

The possibilities are endless. We can simplify our lives by cutting out what is unnecessary, and devoting more time to the few things that actually pay off.  We can start online businesses and once they are set up, reap the benefits.  Anything takes effort at first, but if you work smarter, it will take LESS TIME AND EFFORT LATER.  This blog will explore those possibilities.  Stay tuned.