Hello, all! I'm very happy to have found this forum and people who are genuinely interested in building a business rather than selling a $36 outdated internet marketing program. Thank you for being here, and thank you for the opportunity to learn from you and hopefully contribute as I can. It's a little overwhelming, so I'm very grateful for the tags to help a newbie sift through and find the Gold.
I'm a very private person, and posting about myself is challenging. But here goes.
I'm a slowlaner who has wanted to be a fastlaner all my life but haven't been able to get out of my own way. You can ask my siblings how many times I've said to them, "we're all smart, talented, and skillful - why aren't we all millionaires?" I've known all my life that the solution to all of it was to make money in my own business. But I haven't done it; I've walked all around the edges of it, but I haven't done it.
Slowlane: I'm a successful slowlaner in the IT industry - I make twice what most of my peers make because I'm very good at what I do and willing to do it as a contractor. Last year was sheer hell in terms of job stress. This year, I'm finally on projects where I have some energy left at the end of the day to put towards myself and my goals. I'm single and therefore have more time than most people to devote to building a fastlane life.
BTW, I coached small business owners for five years in a non profit (I've had a crazy career/hopped industries several times). I saw, first hand, a lot of what MJ describes played out. It also added to my fear around starting a business, because I saw how deluded so many of them were and how so many of them failed - and how we failed them. Don't get me started on my rant about business plans - what a crock. But I did learn some fundamentals about marketing. I even wrote a 40 hour course on how a B&M can compete with Big Boxes - which I'm sure is sitting on an SBA shelf somewhere (Small Business Administration).
Before that, I also co-owned a mediation company with two lawyers (family business). It was a failure - we were too early in the demand curve for the area (mediation was unknown back then); and we had no idea how to market the business, although I did do a lot of speaking engagements. We paid a premium for traditional marketing collateral and branding; what a waste. (This was pre-social media days.) We did pretty much everything you could do wrong in starting a business.
Fastlane: I taught myself Wordpress a few years ago, a little SEO, how to research and write articles, and a few other things and created two websites - one for myself that was an Amazon affiliate site with a lot of great content I wrote myself - it didn't make any money because I couldn't figure out the traffic side - and one for my dad's business, which is still up and running. (I just checked: there's a grand total of $.56 in my Amazon account. Oorah.)
I'm currently using Darren Hardy's Live Your Best Year Ever routine to get myself launched in the right direction, and I'm working on getting up early per the Miracle Morning idea. (My getting up issue is a going to bed early issue.) I read that book and suddenly started gorging on inspirational reading again. I have a list of about 100 books I want to consume - like I'm sure you all do!
I have the last 10 days of the year off, so I will be firming up my yearly, quarterly, and monthly goals as well as working on my business idea. I'm thinking about a Progress thread - I want to be sure I'm committed to it before I start one. So more on that later if/when I post that.
And I live in the southeast. So don't give me any of that nonsense about Arizona being hot. You haven't had hot until you've experienced hot with 100% humidity.
My funny high desert story: I have traveled over all of the country except the far northwest. I went to a conference in Albuquerque once, and a group of us took the sky lift to the top of the mountain for dinner. They warned us about the effects of drink and altitude. I had one drink - only one - we had a nice dinner, and then took the lift back down. I was feeling great until I stepped off the sky lift at the bottom and fell flat on my face. I was pretty embarrassed at the time, but it's pretty funny looking back on it.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to getting to know you all!
I'm a very private person, and posting about myself is challenging. But here goes.
I'm a slowlaner who has wanted to be a fastlaner all my life but haven't been able to get out of my own way. You can ask my siblings how many times I've said to them, "we're all smart, talented, and skillful - why aren't we all millionaires?" I've known all my life that the solution to all of it was to make money in my own business. But I haven't done it; I've walked all around the edges of it, but I haven't done it.
Slowlane: I'm a successful slowlaner in the IT industry - I make twice what most of my peers make because I'm very good at what I do and willing to do it as a contractor. Last year was sheer hell in terms of job stress. This year, I'm finally on projects where I have some energy left at the end of the day to put towards myself and my goals. I'm single and therefore have more time than most people to devote to building a fastlane life.
BTW, I coached small business owners for five years in a non profit (I've had a crazy career/hopped industries several times). I saw, first hand, a lot of what MJ describes played out. It also added to my fear around starting a business, because I saw how deluded so many of them were and how so many of them failed - and how we failed them. Don't get me started on my rant about business plans - what a crock. But I did learn some fundamentals about marketing. I even wrote a 40 hour course on how a B&M can compete with Big Boxes - which I'm sure is sitting on an SBA shelf somewhere (Small Business Administration).
Before that, I also co-owned a mediation company with two lawyers (family business). It was a failure - we were too early in the demand curve for the area (mediation was unknown back then); and we had no idea how to market the business, although I did do a lot of speaking engagements. We paid a premium for traditional marketing collateral and branding; what a waste. (This was pre-social media days.) We did pretty much everything you could do wrong in starting a business.
Fastlane: I taught myself Wordpress a few years ago, a little SEO, how to research and write articles, and a few other things and created two websites - one for myself that was an Amazon affiliate site with a lot of great content I wrote myself - it didn't make any money because I couldn't figure out the traffic side - and one for my dad's business, which is still up and running. (I just checked: there's a grand total of $.56 in my Amazon account. Oorah.)
I'm currently using Darren Hardy's Live Your Best Year Ever routine to get myself launched in the right direction, and I'm working on getting up early per the Miracle Morning idea. (My getting up issue is a going to bed early issue.) I read that book and suddenly started gorging on inspirational reading again. I have a list of about 100 books I want to consume - like I'm sure you all do!
I have the last 10 days of the year off, so I will be firming up my yearly, quarterly, and monthly goals as well as working on my business idea. I'm thinking about a Progress thread - I want to be sure I'm committed to it before I start one. So more on that later if/when I post that.
And I live in the southeast. So don't give me any of that nonsense about Arizona being hot. You haven't had hot until you've experienced hot with 100% humidity.
My funny high desert story: I have traveled over all of the country except the far northwest. I went to a conference in Albuquerque once, and a group of us took the sky lift to the top of the mountain for dinner. They warned us about the effects of drink and altitude. I had one drink - only one - we had a nice dinner, and then took the lift back down. I was feeling great until I stepped off the sky lift at the bottom and fell flat on my face. I was pretty embarrassed at the time, but it's pretty funny looking back on it.Thanks for reading, and I look forward to getting to know you all!
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