IM Problem

There are a lot of subtle benefits to my job. I get paid more than a lot of my friends. I have unadulterated internet access. I'm paid to sit on the computer all day. There really isn't a lot of work that I have to do. I know everyone that I work with. I can come and go as I please each day with little thought to anyone watching me or caring. I have access to latest and greatest software.

In all honesty, it's a great job. There are very little problems I just do what is asked of me and don't go looking for them. The biggest problem is my own lack of patience and laziness. It's easier to sit around and read articles all day than talk to someone about getting more interesting work to do. It's easier to talk to friends online and complain about how bored I am than actually sit and focus on task or talk to someone in the office and get a solution for whatever my roadblock is.

I love the fantasy though. The idea that there is some perfect job out there. Or really that I can get paid to do whatever I want whenever I want.

Every time I start something new, I expect some ideal situation. I'm going to walk in and be surrounded by smart, successful, beautiful people all with big goals and dreams and connections to make them happen. Even the MBA program I just started, the people are normal. There is a range of backgrounds, ages and ambitions. But for some reason I wanted some perfect fantasy.

I'm not sure where my expectations come from. Maybe it's all just because of some ridiculous fantasy. I'm in love with what could be rather than what is. Always thinking something else would be better rather than enjoying what is.

Will I always want the fantasy? Will I ever find happiness in what I have?

Anyone else notice this? What have you done about it?

Life Area Effects

I've been noticing lately the combined effects of areas of my life. Say you break an individual down into the following areas:
Physical Health, Employment (Work / Job / Contribution), Financial, Relationships
Each of these elements contributes to some degree to their overall happiness level. Having a strong foundation and support structure in one area will help make up for deficiencies in others. As things change, it could topple over existing structures.

I wish I had a better grasp of this concept. Right now my work life has gone up and down, sometimes adding positive support, other times dropping the floor out from under me. My living situation is in flux as I prepare for a big move, so that has caused some stress. I've developed some good relationships that are adding to my life and providing some solid support.

It's hard to quantify and qualify all these influences and come up with any kind of model for actually objectifying how they impact my life. In order to do that I would need to spend some time clarifying the parameters and logging enough information to start creating definitions and logging real conclusions.

My current goal is to put together a program around this kind of foundation. I'm going to take my business coaching company and turn it into a life coaching company. I'll work with individuals to lay out specific life improvement goals and then design steps they take towards them as well as ways to measure them and record the results.

This is all in a very soft, formative stage at this point, but my interest has been in this kind of thing for a while. I feel like I have a clearer idea of what I want to accomplish with this approach than I had with the business coaching, so making this switch will be a step in the right direction. It's going to take a lot of time and focus though, so I've got a lot of things to take care of first.

I'll try to continue to update the process.

Work Rollercoaster

So yesterday, at the end of the day, one of my coworkers gave me a public dressing down about creating work items in our system. Normally, this kind of thing really wouldn't bother me, but it really got to me this time, and has every time it has happened at this company. The reason for this is because I was doing exactly what I was told to do by my boss. When I tried to defend myself, she told me that my boss is wrong and not to do it anymore.

I've had a good number of jobs so far in my life. I worked at my parish office, as a lifeguard, for a few temp companies, at the dorm front desk, for a defense software company, at GameStop and now at this health IT company. This is the only place I've felt like I don't know what is expected of me, if I'm doing my job correctly.

I feel trapped in a dead end job. It's like an abusive relationship - I want to leave but I need it to pay the bills. I've been working here for two years and it's almost like I've done so many different things that I'm not good at anything.

At this point I'm really just lost. I've lost so much professional confidence that I don't know what to do.

Can anyone help me?

How to find the right Career for you

There are a lot of how to guides for finding the right career for you. Many people have written long books explaining detailed processes for narrowing it down and figuring it all out. Usually this involves some kind of paper and pen list. You write down everything you like in the world, and as you do it you slowly get a better idea for what you like more than than other things. Then eventually your favorite activity is suppose to bubble up to the surface of your brain and you're happy and know exactly what you want.

In my experience, this has never worked. I have a lot of interests and they are often changing or are unrelated to each other. Also, part of what would make a great job for me would be that it changes frequently since I get bored with doing the same thing and often go through periods where I feel more or less inclined to work independently.

Another large factor in determining what I want to do is the pay. No, life is not all about money. I do have financial goals as well as bills to pay though, so as much as I'd like to pretend I don't need to think about money at all, that would be a lie.

So taking all of this into account, I present you with a new strategy. It's as simple as possible and involves no pencil and paper. Here goes...

Envision all of your hobbies that you are an active participant in doing the work beyond just being a member. For example, if you write on a forum all day, this does not count. If you have signed up to be an administer for that forum, then that would count. If you just attend meetings, that does not count. If you are on an executive committee or are helping out on projects, that counts.

Now that you know what you care enough about to actually put extra work into, merge those activities with your current job. Think about what position would use all of those skills or would combine those interests. It doesn't have to be exact, but should be related.

In order to offer more clarity, I will use myself as a demonstration.

Right now I volunteer as a coach for a basketball team, I am the Treasurer of the Toastmasters club that I belong to, I am a Lector at my church and I organize my own group for the MS walk. Since I play active roles in coaching, Toastmasters and the MS walk but am just a participant as a Lector, I will remove that from consideration. My day job is doing software development work.

So taking all this together, I should do a job involving coaching/teaching how to use or develop software and includes gathering and coordinating a group of people for a good cause.

Now, that's not a final result but without needing paper and a pen, I have a solid idea that I can use as a starting point and continue to refine. With the right direction in mind, I can either work to shape my current job into something that fits that, or try to jump to another position that is inline with my idea.

Strange Twist

So after acting like I don't exist for a few weeks, my employer has thrown a strange twist at me. They want me to fly out to Idaho to do some training. But before I get into that, there is a reason this is so odd.

On Monday I went for a run so I could think about my future and what I want now that I know I'm not going to Austin. I ran through some scenarios in my head and there was only one that really felt like it resonated. I need to quit my job.

After a little more thought, I realized that it all lines up just right. I can quit on May 29th, which is the two year anniversary of when I started working here. That gives me a month to make arrangements and make sure I'm not jumping into a big pile of nothing or some fleeting hopes and dreams of magic success.

My idea is to switch to doing consulting work on a case by case basis. That way instead of having my employer be my only customer, I can start to diversify and build a bigger base of skills and contacts. If I build my income back up to the current level in that model, there is still a growing potential for more income sources and areas to test out. Also, there is more risk but more control since the more time and effort I put into it, the more I should get back out.

Following this line of thought, I'd have to give my two week notice on May 15. Interestingly enough, now they want me to fly out on May 19-21.

So I'm a little torn. At this point this is all still a work in progress. Most of the advice I've gotten since I came up with the idea has been to not jump into something unless I have a plan. I have two weeks to put something together, so I'm going to see what I can do. The Toastmasters conference is this weekend so I figure that and Craig's List will be my best bets for starting to build up a network of clients.

So, here goes nothing.

Perspective

I think I'm starting to get a better understanding of how people see me. This is mainly because of the people who are doing to me what I must do to other people.

Let me take a second to explain. When people send me emails, I respond usually within the hour if not immediately. When people call me, even if they don't leave a message, I call them back, usually right when I see the missed call.

Recently I've met some people who respond constantly with no delay to any message they are sent. It's nice at first, but then after a while you start running out of stuff to say back. They're all about results, results, results. I don't have any results for some of the stuff I'm working on. It's because I'm afraid and don't put the effort into it that I should. I know this, I hate this, but it's extremely hard to force yourself to act on something, even when you don't have anything else to do.

So clearly I do this same thing to other people. They're doing what they want and moving at their own pace and enjoying it and I keep making demands of them to do more or do what I think they should. That must be really annoying.

Knowing this, I'm not sure what is a good solution. Most people seem to be able to generate stuff to do when they are bored. Maybe my lack of focus on detail is what saves me time but then kills me later because of the lack of recall. Also, my jumping from thing to thing leads to a large amount of projects left uncompleted or pending. I never seem to make the time to accomplish big things.

Ironically enough, the big things that I have accomplished and taken the time to do right are the ones I usually end up happy about. An example is my car. I took a long time searching around to determine all the criteria that mattered to me. Then I tried out a lot of cars and finally had put together all the info I needed to make a decision. To this day I'm extremely happy with and excited about my car.

I think the reason I have a problem at work is because of my location. Being in the middle of an open cubicle room, I feel like people can always see what I'm doing. This makes me think I have to always have the appearance that I'm working or busy, even when I'm not. Even when I am working, I feel like any distraction pulls my focus away even when wearing headphones. So I have a situation where I'm setting myself up for failure.

Having these thoughts is always a dual edged sword. It's like now you know what the problem is, but most of the time the solution seems out of my control. So you end up just stewing in the problem.

Qualified

I had written a post a while back about what it takes to be able to charge someone for services. In other words, how much knowledge and experience does it take to justify billing someone. The answer is surprising.

If you are like me, you grew up going to a school till you graduate and then moving up to the next school. You may have stopped at high school, college, post graduate studies, or maybe you are still going. The idea though, is that by completing all the school programs you are gaining a specific knowledge that makes you qualified to be payed. After growing up with this, you are conditioned to the idea, thinking that is the only way things work. The reality is different.

We see alternatives all the time. The guy selling flowers on the side of the road doesn't have a degree or certification in biology or horticulture. He just has flowers. You have a need for flowers, so it is worth it to you to exchange for them. All he had to do was get the flowers and position himself in a place where the price he is set is less than the value of the flowers to the people passing by.

So there you have the answer to qualifications. What qualifies you is your ability to secure a resource, set a price, and get a level of exposure. Nothing else is required.

This can be misleading though, because it brushes over the hardest part. That is, actually doing it.

The main reason the average person has one job as their sole source of income is because it is easy. You gained the qualifications, you got through the interview, now your reward is to just show up everyday and then receive a paycheck for your efforts. You have earned the right to put in your eight hours and then go home and watch TV, with two days out of the week left free for you.

So now the question is no longer are you qualified but rather, are you willing to do the work.

Question

So I have this philosophical questions about how the world works. When you find something that you are good at, and you start doing it, is that when you actually start getting what you want?

I'm a good writer, speaker, trainer and manager. Now I'm finally actually starting to do these things in a professional capacity. Does that mean that my company should actually start paying me a higher amount since I'm producing more value?

I figure, I can wait it out for a while, see what happens. In the mean time I'm going to follow my sister's advice in continuing to build my network inside and outside the company. I guess I'll see what opportunities comes from that.

Eventually I think I'm going to start trying to find ways to give public speeches for a fees and such, and then try to continue to grow the audience. I'm not quite to the level where I'm comfortable with thinking that I should charge people to hear me talk, but with more practice I feel like I'll get there.

Honest

So I'm gonna be honest. I've been really slacking with my business ever since I read that article talking about how all these people are doing it better then me. I probably would still be more enthusiastic about it now, but I haven't had any luck reaching my latest investor. The prospect of paying $20 a week in parking and trying to get up to a farther away county every Friday just to get 5-10 leads isn't very inviting either. At this point I think I just need to regroup and find a better approach.

The best idea for now would probably be to attend some REI meetings, not as a "Jobber" trying to find investors to work with, but just as someone who wants to learn more about the industry. I think just taking some time to do market research and learn about the purchasing process while I look for my own house would be extremely helpful. Not only would it save me money but after going through it, I'll have experience to look back on and compare with, rather than just playing with the ideas I've read in various books.

Also, I might be able to just volunteer to work with an investor on the weekends who is already doing these deals. That way I see what they do and get some advice, since usually having a mentor to learn from is a great shortcut and extremely valuable. I've noticed that at my day job, whenever I work with a more experienced member of the staff I pick up different tips and tricks that save me time in the future. Plus, by working with an investor, I can get a better idea of the information they want and where they would go to get it.

So for now I'll keep working on trying to find a car, building up my stock portfolio and putting money into my house fund. While I do that, I can start attending REI meetings and see how things go from there. Also, I'm planning on going to a Toastmaster's club meeting this Monday, so we'll see how that goes as well.

Update of Financial Plans

So I've finally reached the point where I've "primed the pipe" when it comes to my stock portfolio.

If you've read what I've written previously, you know that I'm following the advice of The Little Book that Beats the Market in how I screen my stocks and when I buy and sell. Basically, it screens on two filters, the overall price/earnings ratio of the stock and the ROA the company gets. Each month I've been buying a couple of stocks off of the report it creates and now a full year has gone by. This is significant because owning a stock for 1 year qualifies it as a long term investment so I will have to pay the lower long term capital gains rate on the profits instead of short term capital gains.

One thing I did not do correctly based off of the books suggestions, is that I bought stocks every month this year. Instead I should have determined the total amount I wanted to invest and then put a percentage of it in every couple of months for 3 years. Since the formula is suppose to average a >=20% ROI each year over the course of a three year period, unless I continue to add to my portfolio for the next two years, I will be very heavily front loaded. If this was the market highpoint of the three years, I will have bought less for more.

Regardless, I am excited to have finished building my portfolio base. While I will most likely continue to add to my portfolio, having set this future fund up, it gives me more security. I'm planning on doing some rebalancing of where I move my money, esp since I am planning some large purchases for the next year ( a car and a house). I will most likely stop funding my separate Roth IRA and move to my company's Roth 401k program.

Another reason I'm very encouraged by this, is that now that I have a security base, I can move into a little more concentrated and riskier investment. After consulting various sources for information over the last year and a half, I've determined one source that seems to have excellent stock filters and a very broad market view. I think I'm going to build up a risky investment fund and direct the resources towards their recommendations to test what kind of results they can produce. So that will be a side project for the year to come.

Also, I've been reading Having it All. The descriptions it has about how the mind and body work have been very interesting. Some of the ideas about each person's personal beliefs shaping their reality corresponds to what is discussed in The Greatest Salesman in the World and Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It seems the part of the book I'm at now is moving in the same direction as The Pathfinder right where I am on hold. They start discussing how to figure out what your dream life would be like and how to move towards it through goal setting, positive affirmations, and directing your subconscious through positive speak and such. While this is all good stuff, I've actually come to peace with where I am for the time being. While I plan on changing things in the next year, I have established the goals I want to reach and for now I'm trying to live in the present and enjoy the situation instead of ratcheting up more and more expectations on myself. So while the advice will be helpful in the future, I'm putting it on hold until I really want to focus on it.

Things have also picked up at work. I've moved away from doing testing and bug fixing (finally) and am back to doing some development work. This is actually the main part of the job that I enjoy, so I'm trying to learn from the people I'm working with and develop a real skill that I can rely on in the future. That way, no matter how things turn out I'll have the safety net of knowing I have a desirable skill that people will be willing to hire me for.

Busy Busy

I haven't been posting much because things are shifting and picking up at work. Also, I'm trying to add some activities so I get more done, develop new skills and start working towards the future I want. Plus, I'd like to have more actual experience to write about because I feel it brings more value.

Currently, the biggest thing going on is that I'm coaching a basketball team. It's an all boy 5-6th grader team. It's a little unstructured but I enjoy coaching and seeing the changes in the players throughout the season. Our first game is coming up next Friday so I'm hoping that what we've done in the practices will make an impact on their play.

I started reading Having it All since I couldn't find anything at the bookstore and I happened upon it after reading a review of it on GeniusTypes (link). I'm not too far in yet, but I've seen a lot of the "big perspectives" promoted so far in other books. The most noticeable was the goal visualization, which is practically word for word from The Science of Getting Rich. The idea of the formless intelligence is also pretty much word for word. So we'll see if he comes up with anything original. Worst case scenario, he seems to include enough stores of his life that I might be able to learn from or get some better perspective.

On Monday I'm going to try and go to a meeting of the local Toastmaster's club. I don't really have a problem with public speaking, but I figure getting some practice might lead to more opportunities to use my skills, and being able to discuss your ideas in a large crowd is always a positive. The larger the crowd you can speak to, the more you are worth in the speaking world.

Before I picked up Having it All, I finished reading Made to Stick. I highly recommend this book. It helps to illustrate what really matters to another person when you are trying to get a message across. The idea they talk about that I really loved was "The Curse of Knowledge", essentially the idea that once you know something it's hard to imagine not knowing it, which makes it hard to teach someone else. The way they described it as moving from small, concrete examples to more abstract concepts, felt dead on to me.

I'm going to try to make a courthouse run tomorrow. Hopefully there will be some new listings in the right zip code and I'll have something to send out to my client. I want to get some feedback from him because that would help me get an idea of where I stand and if the information I'm obtaining and providing is valuable. So we'll see how that goes tomorrow.

Thanksgiving

I was going to write an angry post about how some of this conventional financial wisdom on different sites is extremely lacking, but I decided against it. I guess it applies to some people, but I think the idea of having to lie to yourself in order to not spend all your money and go into debt is ridiculous.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a good holiday, and for everyone outside the US, I hope you have a good Thursday.

I'm going to spend the time off doing some reflecting about where I am in various areas of my life (my job, my living situation, my business, my current financial approach) and where I want to be. Then I'm going to brainstorm about how to get the different areas where I want them to be. I've been in a holding pattern with some things for about a year or so, but I will have reached a lot of goals starting 12/1, and therefore it'll be a good time to implement changes.

Bogged Down

So things have picked up at work as of late. My manager dropped by a few days back and almost apologized for not having anything for me to do for so long. Now it seems she is trying to make up for it by dumping everything she can on me for the upcoming release. I've plowed through a couple of the issues so far, but I still have a lot of stuff to do that I'm not sure how to do. Usually the hardest part is figuring out what exactly they want me to do and where it actually takes place in the code. The actual writing of the code to fix the problem and doing some preliminary testing goes quick.

On the business front very little progress has been made. I found a couple of potential investor numbers in the paper a few days back but haven't had the chance to call them yet. They may or may not pan out, but it's good to have any kind of hope that tomorrow's leads could actually be used towards something instead of just going to waste like the last few weeks.

I'm coming to the end of my car hunt. I've pretty much determined that I'm going to get a Chevy Malibu and probably get this '02 model that I test drove. The '08 has a new design and I think the '04 introduced a design that's different as well, but I feel like the '02 model actual looks and feels the best of the three. The newer designs feel cheap and rigid, while the older design is a little rounder and better proportioned. Plus the older model has pretty low mileage and seems to be a steal for the price it's being offered at.

The stock market has been very choppy recently. The US economy seems to be slowing down with company growth into foreign markets propping it up some. I think everything is just going to have to take the dip and then slowly start to rebound as we start to rebalance. Sadly, that means my stocks will take a big hit for a while, but I'm looking long term anyway so things should pan out. Once I purchase a car, my next objective will be a house anyway, so I'll focus on that and try and jump on some purchases when I see large dips in the market.

I've been working on essays for grad school applications as well. There are only three of them and they are two pages, one page and one page. It's difficult to write towards an unknown audience, so I'm just trying to focus on points that make me look like a better candidate for admission. Sometimes it amazes me how, with the right wording, the stuff I've done since I graduated can actually seem worthwhile and productive. I guess when you're cramming two years worth of information into two or one page it shouldn't be hard to make it look good.

Well, tomorrow kicks off with another courthouse visit and then I'll go from there.

Frustration

I'm making some small steps now. Today I was able to locate an investor's add in the local paper. I gave them a call at lunch but got the answering machine. I left a message with a brief description of my services and my number, so we'll see if I get a call back. Worst case scenario I don't hear anything from them and move on to looking for another investor's add tomorrow.

Also, I found a car that might be worth buying. I'm going to head directly to the lot to test drive it on Wednesday after work. I almost headed over there yesterday, but the lot closes at 8 and that's when I would have had the chance to get there by, so it didn't work out.

I finished some small things I was working on at work, but the results seem to point to bigger changes being made. I'm not sure exactly how those changes will be made and I can't get a hold of anyone who would have ideas. So right now I'm pending.

I read Orbiting the Giant Hairball over the past couple of days. It's basically a "look outside the box" book. It points the reader into these ideas that all corporations are the same rigid systems and only the author has the right path. This of course is a quiet rebellion, where due to his intervention all this "wonderful creative innovation" occurs and shakes up the business system. I have a feeling that if someone else wrote about his experiences from a perspective outside of his, there would be a completely different flavor to the book.

The problem with books like that are that they try to bring up a lot of questions but don't have any answers. It's nice to think outside of the box, but unless you have some kind of plan before going off the deep end, you're going to end up jaded against the idea of starting your own business or trying to do something different. The reason for this is because you're likely to fail. The statistic "9 out of 10 business fail" is correct. Either you have to be willing to start at least 10 businesses, or you have to have a plan of action going in where you take on the risk in increments that you can handle.

That's all I've got for today.

Stand Still

So I blew off the meeting on Saturday. My plans didn't work out as expected on Friday and I had my first basketball practice for the team I'm coaching on Saturday. So instead of getting up early and passing out poorly made business cards, I staid home and slept in.

Disappointed? Yeah, me too.

I'm not making any real strides in my business or in my hunt for a car or a house. I feel like I'm in a rut right now and have been for a while. Part of my thinks it all stems out of my dissatisfaction with my job, but it may be other things as well. This is usually the hardest time of the year for me since I fight against my SAD. Also, my computer crashed over the weekend, corrupting key files for the operating system to boot so I may have lost everything I've done since I upgraded my computer in February. Luckily, I copied my financial information over to my new (old) laptop, so that has remained intact.

I'm hoping that the reason my hard drive isn't being recognized is that the RAID drivers were corrupted and maybe if I reinstall them things will be ok. I've had a lot of problems in the past that ended poorly, so my hopes aren't very high at this point. At least I have a backup hard drive and I was able to access all the data from before February without any problems.

Normally when I run into a rut like I'm currently in, I put together some plan of action and try to push to make some changes. After that I'll get a few things done from the list and nothing big will change. So I guess I"m going to do it again. Here is my current situation:

I need a car.

I have a budget of about $8K setup to buy a new/used car. I'm looking for something mid sized that will get pretty good gas millage, has less than 60K miles and will last me for 5+ years. Right now, the make and model I'm targeting is a Chevy Malibu. I found a few online and I'm going to setup test drives for later in the week.

I need a new job.

While software development was fun to learn, I hate the environment and I don't like the subject matter enough to put outside time into learning more. Instead, I'd be happy to take a job with less pay in the finance field. I'm looking for a place that will pay for me to get an MBA and will give me an opportunity to actual use my skills. I think I'd like to work in a larger company rather than a smaller one.

I need a new place to live.

I have a down payment built up to about $10K, which is not that much. It will only be me living there, so I don't need a very large place, just something that I can exist in and potentially setup a small business operation.

So now I have to find a way to make this stuff happen.

Work

Recently I've been debating my concept of what work is or what constitutes work. Has the model of work shifted from a previous viewpoint to a new one with the changes in technology?

The Old Ways

When the Industrial Revolution hit, there was a strong need for labor. People started to give up working on their parent's farms and moved into the city to work in large factories. Thanks to the assembly line style, each person did a specific task in the advancement of the creation of a product. The amount of work done was a direct effect of the worker's efforts, how quickly and correctly they could accomplish their given task.

In this system, a job works similar to the concept of bartering. You, the worker, are using your time, effort and energy in producing a product for your employer in exchange for payment.


The New Ways

In the Information Age, the age of higher education and computers, this system seems to have broken down.

Now computers are doing the mundane, repetitive tasks that the workers were doing before. The workers now are in charge of directing the computers. So instead of doing the work, the workers now seem to just be in charge of making sure that the computer functions and completes the job on time. It seems that the goal of companies is to collect more and more people that can manage these computers and maintain a certain quota of people who have the skills needed to fix problems that could come along, as well as find ways to make the computers work faster or more efficiently.

In this system, instead of the worker trading their time, effort and energy, it's more just about time. You are "on call" or in a place where the employer can call on you to do something if necessary and in exchange you are paid.


Why has this happened?

At one point I was eating lunch with some contractors who were working on a project with the core group of testers. One of the guys was relating some experiences he had at previous companies where the business was poorly run, but the government still fed it more and more money. The other guy then broke down his explanation of the situation like this:

The government is seen as responsible for everyone. If you don't have a job, the government is believe to be suppose to step in and give you the welfare to keep going. The problem is that this is a large job and the government can't do it all and prefers not to have to do it. So what the government does is it just keeps pushing out the money it collects from taxes back into the economy. It'll keep funding poorly run companies just because they keep people employed no matter the quality of the work produced. If people are employed, then they are no longer the government's problem. So in effect, the government doesn't care what you do with the money as long as you are keeping people employed that it would have to deal with itself if not for you.


Is this true?

When I heard this I didn't really believe it. But now that I'm pretty much living in that situation, I can't deny it anymore. It seems that companies are more concerned with maintaining a certain amount of "resources" or skilled laborers, that are available for projects than actually completing a certain amount of work. This is why movies like Office Space are made. We have a surplus of available labor that is not really being used, but is just available for use.

What do you think? Do you think this is really how it is? How do you categorize a successful, productive day at work? How do you justify your eight hours of work each day?

Sales

I find it amusing that probably 95% of the conversation I've had at the office since 9/25 revolves around having the insert from Halo 3 sitting on display on my desk. It's amazing how many people play it, as well as the demographics of the people.


So today I want to rant a little bit about sales. My entire life I've been told about how education is important, mainly because without education you end up doing some "low level" job, usually involving sales. Well, while education is important, the ability to sell is extremely important as well, and there is no avoiding it. Everywhere you go, every conversation you have, when you are expressing your ideas or your thoughts, you are selling.

One of my greatest disappointments was the realization I had after a few months of my first real job. Before that I had done all these various ridiculous jobs that were more task oriented than time oriented. At one point I had a job where I sat in the back room and stamped numbers onto cards for 8 hours a day. Yes, this actually happened. By the end of the time I was working there, my right arm had grown significantly compared to my left from the stamping. I think it was something like 8,738 cards that I stamped. Looking back, a computerized device could have and should have done this.

Anyway, the disappointment was the fact that when your raise or performance grade is determined, it's not based off of your performance or some kind of tangibly measured statistics that are very concretely in your control. Instead, it is largely based off of how much your manager likes you, how much he or she thinks you do, and how much easier you make their job. (Some of this may have been correlated with my previous boss who, if you follow any Jung personality models is an ESFP) I was disappointed by this because I've always had a problem with being what I consider "phony".

I think this problem with being a phony goes back to this conditioning against sales. I have this ingrained feeling like when I'm doing something with the sole intent of trying to get someone to like me or just purely sucking up, it's dishonest and morally dishonorable. I also have a problem with taking other people's money because I get this feeling like what I'm doing is wrong. But in reality, being able to sell and incite good feelings in people is important and will make a large difference in your career and workplace environment.

In regard to this, I don't really have any advice. I've read "The Greatest Salesman in the World" and even did the nightly routine they suggest, slowly working my way through each scroll for 9 months. Do I really feel like I'm better at sales because of this? No, I don't. I think the problem is that to be truly good at sales, you actually have to get to the point where you aren't selling at all.

What I mean by this, is that you aren't really looking for the what the result of convincing someone of something will get you anymore. It's more just about you having a passion for something that is so great that you can't contain it. It just explodes forth from you and other people can see how important it is, so it becomes important to them as well, or they feel like they should learn more. Instead of trying to get people to like you, you become so legitimately interested in the other person that you really, truly care, and the person sees these and cares for you as well because of it.

In cases when I've gotten to a point like that, I haven't had problems with that feeling like I'm doing something wrong. I think it's because nothing about that is phony, so why would I feel like it is?

Ranting and Raving

I'm going off topic today since I don't have anything new to report on my business front.

So, watching Heroes last night I noticed a few things. First, a TV show is a lot more fun to watch without the commercials. I originally got into Heroes late and therefore was watching the episodes online with very limited commercial interruption. Also, I watched them in bulk. I was working night shifts at that point and old TV episodes were my only solace, so I'd plow through as many as I could fit in an eight hour session. I got through the first half of season 1 of Heroes before I caught up, and I plowed through most of season 1 of Friday Night Lights.

Anyway, I believe commercial advertising is dead. I cannot recall a time I've ever ended up buying a product because I saw a commercial for it on TV. The closest thing is maybe a movie or a TV show I watched, which does not completely fit even since I was going to see it anyway, regardless of the commercial. In some cases, I've actually changed my mind and not seen something because I hated the commercial. So it seems to actually be a net negative. The only value commercial breaks hold anymore is allowing the viewer to get up and get something to eat or go to the bathroom. Soon, when I have a little more control over my living situation, I will only watch TV shows after recording them so I don't have to watch commercials. I may even just record whole seasons and then just watch them in binge fashion to save time. This also applies to listening to the radio as well. Soon everyone will just listen to CDs or HD radio without commercials.

The second observation was that Heroes is becoming the OC. They're adding relationship drama to what was once a show focused on the next stage of evolution for humanity. It's like watching a "boy" comic become a "girl" comic. Do more women watch TV then men? Is that why there seems to be a need to add this element into every show? Maybe the writers have all been offered better jobs on other shows, but it's just disappointing and annoying.

So my second off topic rant for today is the Dallas/Buffalo game last night. I started watching it late, but the entire time I couldn't shake this feeling like Dallas was going to win. I wasn't sure how, but I just knew it was going to happen. The entire Buffalo organization needs to be fired and replaced for the absolutely pathetic management display. The plays they called and decisions they made, they might as well have put out a Welcome mat at the goal line. How does someone throw 5 picks and still end up winning the game? Esp when you have 2 defensive and 1 special teams touchdown. Just pathetic. The best part of the whole thing was this commercial with this really dumb looking cowboy to which my brother said, "What is this? Tony Homo's boyfriend?" Priceless.

One final rant for today. I'd like to get some feedback from the audience about the Employee/Employer and Employer/Employee relationship and obligations. To what extent is an employee indebted to an employer for that paycheck? If the employer has nothing for an employee to do, why is the employee still indebted 8 hours of time to be spent at the office just to receive their salary? If they employee has other things they can do that will add more value to themselves, which means they are increasing company assets, shouldn't the employee be sanctioned to do them? Where is the moral obligation line for the 40 hour work week in regards to time spent at the office? Let's hear what you think.

Holiday?

I opted not to take the holiday today and instead go in for work. I'm planning to take it Thursday or Friday instead in order to execute the plan I mentioned last week.

I've been reading through Forbe's 400 wealthiest Americans recently. I'm trying to figure out what is the difference between the successful and the immensely successful. It seems that with most of the people on the list the commonality is that they started their own business or financed someone else starting a business. Also, there is a large number of people who made their money in real estate or oil. The other large chunk seems to be the people who run investment firms.

The most important thing to take from this is that all of these people work in areas where you can cut out a large amount of taxes. Real estate can have some phantom costs that counter balance the income. Investments are taxed at a lower rate when held for the long term and dividends are taxed at a lower rate as well. And when you start your own business, you are basically a partner with the government, employing people that they would otherwise have to look out for, so they are willing to cut you some slack on different expenses that would normally be paid for with after tax money.

For the past year or two I've been trying to move my money over to these types of asset classes. I recently discussed my portfolio breakdown. I keep a certain amount in liquid reserve for emergencies and other things that I'm planning on buying. The rest I'm moving into areas where it will generate money and then be taxed less.

I've been starting to feel like I should section off some money to invest in my business so I can step up the growth a notch. While it's nice and easy at this pace, it's also going to take a long time to start moving in a direction that will create exponential growth. I'm not sure exactly how and where to put some injected capital yet, but I'll be working through options.

Also, over the weekend I had a discussion with one of my advisers. She thinks it would be a bad idea to bail on this job after 6 months. Since I just left a job after about a year and a half, any prospective companies would start to think of me like I will only be there for 6 months. While my business pursuits are still small I'm going to need a full time job to keep me afloat, so breaking down that option, while motivating, could lead to potential ruin. So I think I'm just going to focus on making what I do at work more inline with my goals by trying to get more involved with other areas. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do that yet, but I'll be working on that as well.

For all those who did take the holiday off today, congrats and I hope it was restful and relaxing.

Goals

Tomorrow will be my weekly trip to the courthouse. I'm looking forward to it because it will be a welcome break from my current work monotony. Based off of the real estate numbers from articles I've read this week, there should be a good number of foreclosures.

To date I've compiled a list of 71 foreclosures over the last month or so. Unfortunately none of this has led to any actual purchases or cash flow to this point. It is understandable why though, since I've only been sending leads to my investor for 3 weeks. The first round of leads contained some that were weeks old and potentially had gone bad. The last round I sent had a total of 6 leads, so there wasn't much help there.

Based on what I read in the Jobber information, you should expect something like 1 in 100 leads will produce a sale. Right now I haven't reached 100 and if you don't count the first few weeks that had turned stale, then I still have a ways to go. This serves as reinforcement to my idea that I should be going out to other counties to pick up my lead quotas. Currently, I'm still sticking with the plan of exploring during the holiday on Monday, but if the courthouse is closed then I'll have to make other arrangements.

One of my brothers is actually currently employed and I've played with the idea of recruiting him. I've tried to involve him on some ventures in the past with poor result, so it makes me hesitant to even offer up the suggestion now. Also, when you don't even have a flow of income it's hard to figure out how you would split it up. What I might do is offer him a flat rate for every lead that ends in a purchase, and then hopefully the deal I have setup with my investor will provide me some solid income over that. It's hard to say what to do though, since I don't have any precedent to use for measurement.

For now, my current plans remain at a trip to the courthouse tomorrow and one planned but unconfirmed for Monday.

In concert with the books I've been reading, I developed a few new goals yesterday. My first is to get a new job doing something more inline with my goals by January 1, 2008. This is a bit of a surprise since I just changed jobs at the end of May, but the daily grind at my current job has reached an unbearable point. It's not that I don't like the job, but the work is unfulfilling and boring. It's nice to have a certain amount of free time at work, but I don't have that feeling of freedom to spend the time towards something constructive. The environment of my cubicle has become mentally taxing to the point that I find it hard to accomplish anything, even just simple tasks because I'm so use to the lackluster stream of intellectually stimulating work.

The second goal is to build contacts, systems and ideas to the point that in 3 years I will be able to break off from any job I'm involved with and start my own business. I don't have a 100% game plan of how to do all these things yet, but the idea will be to find a mentor as well as start implementing ideas from the books I read, rather than them just remaining abstract ideas. I'm not sure if I'll take the route of going to get an MBA or just trying to find a job that will teach me how to run a business, but based off of goal 1's result, that should be easy to determine.

The third goal is to be a CEO of a successful business in 5 years. Either through the business I start reaching a profitable and successful level, or through the skills learned from the business opening up offers from other businesses for me to step in at the CEO position. This is a lofty goal, but I feel like completing the first two goals will put me within grasp of achieving this.

Now the problem I have is finding a path to reach each goal. For the first one, I've already started updating my resume, I'm going through the Pathfinder, and I've started looking into companies that seem to implement the business systems I would like to learn. The hard part is breaking out of this mental rut I'm stuck in and pushing myself to focus and make progress. I'm hoping that establishing these goals here will help me to do just that.

One final note, I've been doing some reading about how to build up traffic to your blog. Some of the stuff is really gimmicky and I really don't want to do. Like I could start putting together lists of things, but it seems to trivial and pointless. But I would like to keep increasing traffic. If anyone reading has some ideas or suggestions, or things they would like to read, leave some ideas in the comments.