Missed it…

As I often do, I’m changing the plan some.  Blogs are cool to work on alone, but podcasts and frequent YouTube shows are team projects.  I’m still going to put out a few videos this month, in part to maybe attract a team or use as templates if I outsource pieces.   But the weekly podcast and video are out (not happening) for now.

It’s not the work of loading and editing the podcast and setting up the audio and video, I’m ok at that now.  The hard part is the podcast’s that I like are generally conversations, and with no guest or co-host I’m talking to myself, lame.  Friends just don’t get the format yet.  They will.   I have a podcast edit and over an hour of video.  I’ll post those when standup daily has more momentum in those areas and can afford to have some pretty slow content out there without making people never read again.  More on this soon.

Today (hopefully within an hour of posting this) I leave for surf expo down in Orlando.  This should be pretty sweet.   As I mentioned a few days ago, I went in 2012 and thought it was a great experience.

It’s going to be about a 450-mile drive down to Orlando.   I’ll be testing my number one product on the way there and creating a fair amount of content on the trip to build a better site for the business.   I trust the product, but didn’t feel good about moving a bunch until I have tested its limits myself.  At least that’s part of the reason I haven’t made them available for sale yet.  If this product fails in extreme situations it could lead to accidents and serious property damage.   I want to create value for customers, not piss people off.

Trying a new technique to learn stuff on the drive down. I’ve recorded an audio file of reading over product content and pricing sheets I want to be familiar with for the expo.  Going to listen to it on my ipod for the trip.

Best Advice I Ever Got Twice

“The only sure way to fail is to try and please everybody.”  This is what I was told during my first few months working with a madman.  Several actually, and for the first year it drove me insane not being able to come to civil terms with those fools I dealt with every day.

In hindsight it’s even clearer that I was beating a dead horse, but I honestly drove myself half mad.  It’s something that I think a lot of people experience in their twenties, figuring out how to accept things you cant change and not let them influence your life.  Obviously you experience this at younger ages too, but in the “permanent” world shitty situations are amplified when there is no end in sight (end of season, semester, whatever).

Lately I’ve taken a more relaxed attitude on things of this nature and life is much better.  If I ‘m in a situation I don’t like after an honest go, if I can I move on.   More people can move on than will admit it. Better things will come along and if they don’t ,change your plan and work harder.

The second time I heard that advice it was implied in my favorite podcast(can’t find the # right now) The Lifestyle Business Podcast*.   It inspired me to start working for myself.

Still been thinking about a farm somewhere instead of an apartment or house.  That would be pretty sick…Probably have an article on how I would set up a solar system on the horizon.

Created while listening to 7-19-87 Eugene Dylan and the Dead.

*they do not endorse my  blog at all.  If it’s not ok to reference them without permission somebody please yell at me.

someday maybe

I’m looking for five acres in southern Colorado.  Not just any five acres (I’m sure there’s many or several at least), but five acres that I can buy and build a two room house on and call “the farm”.  The thought is to build a sweet small place that can later become the guesthouse for a main baller-ass mansion. Not really, but a simple place next to a bigger house if the need for one comes up.

I’ve never set up my own energy source like a solar or wind system.   Since I was in college though it’s been extremely interesting to me and think it would be so badass to live “off-the-grid”.  That’s not to say that I want to drop off the face of the earth and never enter civilization.   Knowing that my water and power access was up to me alone and I couldn’t bitch and blame the power company would be cool.   From some quick research I figured I could get a pretty nice system that would keep me and a girlfriend lit up for around five grand.  Independence is cheaper than I thought.

Growing my own fresh veggies and having a few chicken eggs would be sweet.  Eating healthy is becoming increasingly difficult for me and investing labor directly into healthy foods would make me eat them.  Not to mention the simplicity of knowing exactly where your vegetables come from.

For this dream to happen, I need for my online income to start kickin in.  If I hit my income goals in the next quarter however this will happen.  My current living situation is about done, (taking care of a once sick now nearly healed family member) so a move is on the horizon anyway.  It would be pretty cool to pay about the same in rent into a mortgage/taxes and own something that I could live on and off of.

Having lived in varying degrees of isolation, the place that I need must be a few hours drive from a city and less than an hour from something resembling a town.  All the land that I’m looking at meets those criteria easily.  Work on the farm (and online) during the week and then go snowboard, or to the city where I already have friends, or rafting, or to music shows every weekend.   I had a similar setup in very rural Hawaii for a while; the issue with that was the money just wasn’t there. After travel to Honolulu most weekends, I was breaking even. Hard work on the right project should change all that for me this year.  I’m stoked.

Podcast comes out Sunday and Video comes out Monday.

*created while listening to Ladies and Gentlemen…The Grateful Dead Fillmore East, New York April 1971

walking in rain

This morning I’m sitting in the parking lot of a small strip mall.  The outside thermometer on the truck’s dash last read 45F before I shut off the vehicle.  Medium sized round drops of rain have been steadily coming down since we hit the strip of land separating the two bridges between home and where I sit now.  Being in the south, there are lots of churches.  One in the close vicinity to my parking lot just played a church bell melody twice, (can’t put it into words) and then rang eight loud tolls for the time.  I come here almost once a week and still that damn bell surprises me every time.

This time last year I was also commuting in the rain.  It wasn’t as cold, but man did I dread rainy mornings like this when I had to walk to work.  It wasn’t flat there either, and though I had the downhill shot most of the way in the morning, steady rain meant steady slips and at least one fall.  All those times walking to work in the rain, I would dream about this very truck I sit in now.  How much easier life would be if I had a nice sealed truck that I could stay dry in, carry laundry around in, pick up a girl in.  I’m in the truck now and can say that I am thankful to be here when I need the truck even more.  The office that brings me to this strip mall is my dad’s doctor, he hasn’t been driving for months now and has at least two doctors visits a week.  That’s why I’m back at home and that’s why I spend a fair amount of time in waiting rooms and parking lots.

It sure would be shitty getting my dad to these doctor appointments on foot, if my folks had to live the way I chose to live for a few years.  It makes me think how lucky my family is to have the luxuries we do, and how those things become more necessary when life becomes less than perfect.

When we get back from the doctors, the forecast shows that it will still be raining.

Not being a huge…

Yesterday I outlined a few things that I plan on doing in 2013.  The purpose of all of those things is to become a better person this year.  But what does that mean to be a better person?  Here’s how I’m going to start running down this dream of “not being a huge doucher.”

For me, to try and define “being a good person” begins as a selfish endeavor.  I think humans want to be happy, and at this point in my life I believe there is one tried and true source of that happiness, helping fellow humans.  I slowly picked up on this concept in my late teens and early twenties lifeguarding.  Lifeguarding can be a job that sucks the fun out the beach, when some guys do it year in and year out, they get burnt out.  I’ve seen some bad cases of it, where guys’ lives were literally ruined (no shit, life in prison) because of poor choices they made while depressed after too much time on the beach.  But no matter how shitty some one’s outlook on life, their attitude, if they made a save and helped out a stranger, they were high as kite on it for at least 20 minutes.   No joke, a dude who you could guess was hours away from a self dug grave, happy like kids on Christmas morning with the flip of a switch after stopping some dumb Guido from drowning in front of his surprisingly buoyant girlfriend.

Though I’m hopefully done riding a lifeguard tower, I recognize that after eight months off the beach I really miss helping people.  So I’m going to borrow a step from high schools around the country and volunteer four hours every week this year with a goal to serve over 250 hours by the end of the year.  It’s Wednesday and I still haven’t found an outlet for this week.  Things I’ve been considering are big brothers/big sisters, habitat for humanity, and the red cross.  Last organized volunteer program I was involved with ended in a violent pitbull attack on yours truly and a written apology from the animal clinic….(saving that story for later)

Got several hours of footage for this weeks video yesterday, I’m thinking they’ll be released every Sunday or Monday, still haven’t decided.  Done some preliminary work on setting up the podcast, should have something recorded by end of day today.

With the weekend fast approaching, I realize that while I don’t have tons of financial resources, I already have more time than anyone else in my life and I need to take advantage of it.  This being my first “winter season” not spent on a Caribbean beach watching tourists burn, the cooler temps have kept me indoors but NO MORE.  Going to get an adventure in somewhere new no matter what the temps are this weekend!

New Years Day

“Over the last two years I’ve done a huge amount of research on lifestyle design, specifically related to owning your own business and living the life of an entrepreneur.  In 2012 some very big changes were made that led me to some great places and set me up to live the life I want.  By creating my own revenue source and having a set of habits and routines that truly optimize my time I aim to have money and time to share with others.  The groundwork was laid in 2012, but 2013 must be a year of focus and hard work on things that count to reap the benefits of the progress I’ve already made.”

Excerpts from my 2013 Manifesto

This was the introduction that starts my list of goals set for 2013.  I decided not to include them all here as only I really benefit from most of these things.  The basis for these goals I will share however.  To get good at something, you have to do it often, know it’s ins and out, PRACTICE.  Blogging, Podcasting, and making quality YouTube videos are skills that when used properly, seem to have limitless value in being an entrepreneur or a “freelance marketer” .

So far I’m meeting this goal in that I have posted a blog entry today.  Just like the “about” section of this blog states, every single day this year I have posted a new entry.   Once a week under the name standupdaily I will also post a youtube video and once a week I will upload a podcast.  The podcast is the most foreign to me currently.

Next week I travel down to Surf Expo, what has to be one of the coolest trade shows on earth.  If you’ve ever flipped through a surf magazine and daydreamed yourself into one of the ads(think beautiful half naked women, big blue barrels, palm trees, unlimited custom boards without price tags, ect) that is Surf Expo.

“It’s like walking around a surf mag” said me last year.

I will have a podcast and a youtube video done before I travel to the “show” so that all the kinks are knocked out and I can get together a good vid from SURF EXPO 2013!!!

Happy  New Year Everybody, decide where you want to be next year and get down to make it happen!

Titles are hard….

Blogging is a piece of the internet that I haven’t taken full advantage of.  That needs to change.

The Internet has truly altered my life trajectory over the past three years.  If I had to single out one genre of the web that influenced me the most over that time, it would be podcasts. These podcasts encouraged me that being independently successful was an opportunity now more than ever.  Rather in the form of a podcast, being discovered as a great artist on YouTube, or most promising to me, starting your own business.  I never thought of those things as being out of reach, these podcasts just told me that I have EVERYTHING I need to build a huge company or put out a hit YouTube show or podcast that changes the world.

These podcasts were my daily entertainment on my hour walk to work.  My work at this time was as a permanent employee of the U.S. federal government.  I was un-firable and if wanted  a subsistence wage for the rest of my working life, with health insurance, vacation, overtime, and retirement, the whole nine yards it was mine….

In the spring of 2012 I quit.  I skated on the last few checks from the gov’mint and then with failed plans of local start ups due to an ending tourist season I packed it up and moved home….back to the place I grew up with my parents in the house I grew up in.  Talk about feeling like a rock star.  Got lucky and got a pretty good job with a new up and coming local company and got a ton of experience in a great industry.  Working on the guiding principle that one of the greatest common denominators of people who have done great things, they quit.  So did I once again.

Here I sit, with several agreements for contract work in the next few months but no daily job.  Once again, I’m pretty broke but by no means busted, a new company founded with limitless potential and nobody calls the shots but me.  Make no mistake I am living the dream. This will be the daily reflection on the things that are going on with me that feel like writing about.  I want to become a better writer, learn about others through their blogs, and share some value with the Internet through the blog platform.