I once heard that when something doesn’t work out, or in other words, you ‘fail’… It’s just the universe telling you that you may be going in the wrong direction. I like that and I think I’ll buy into it.

After all, this is like a game and skills increase the more you practice.

A REALLY bad characteristic I have is that my slate needs to be clean before I can start something new. I don’t know if this is a sign of OCD. I think it may be. In my home, if I have to fix up a room, I would rather have nothing but the studs showing. That means a complete wipe of what is there. Demolition to the extreme.

I love a clean slate or a perfect avenue to work in. Everything has to be perfect for me to feel comfortable to work. As it turns out, this is not a good thing when it comes to starting a business.

Mobile Marketing

I have chosen mobile marketing as my business venture. It is perfect for me. I have always wanted to help local businesses. Since I first learned about the internet back in the early 90’s I knew that there was something in me that could help businesses out with their online presence. Here is my chance to combine a few things that I know very well with something I have always dreamed of doing and turning it into something I can do for a long time to come.

Here’s my plan.

Start out with introducing local businesses how mobile marketing can get their customers talking positive about them. This would be done by using gps based localized marketing. Foursquare, Yelp, Facebook, Places etc.

Once a business see’s the benefits, I introduce a mobile website and than move on to a full blown mobile marketing campaign complete with text marketing, social media, and local SEO tactics.

My next step is to design a few different options for the local business owner with different prices for my consulting services. I can breath because this is starting on a clean slate.

I’m psyched!

The truth is, lately, the battle has been tougher than ever and I’ve lost my footing. It also feels like as soon as I get my footing, here comes another wave to knock me down. Punching the inside of my cube isn’t going to do much except hurt my hand. Although, it’s exactly what I want to do right now.

Let me tell you about my job. I work as a technician in the wireless telecommunications industry. I was one of the first members of an elite team that literally banged out a wireless network for one of the big 4 carriers in a very populated area in the country. A feat that I am proud of.

During the hay-day of my career, I worked with some of the brightest technical minds in the industry. We worked together and jump started something great. Naturally, as the industrial age, our parents, education system and superiors have taught us, we assumed that our day of climbing the ladder would come. We just saw the light and figured we would grow our salaries and eventually be able to retire with a good 401K.

It hasn’t turned out that way. 11 years later, I am still doing the same thing only in a much more hostile environment. The hay-day is long gone. Most of the brilliant minds have moved on to other companies. Our spirits and hopes and dreams have vanished in the cinders and ashes of what used to be a brilliant and glorious display.

As the days and weeks and months go by, my future looks dimmer and dimmer. I am managed by management that doesn’t know me or my strengths. I am working for a company that has no idea I exist. It’s painful because I really did pour my hear and soul into this career.

As I walk backwards in this tunnel and the light at the other end gets smaller and smaller, I often find myself in this level of panic. It creates this sense of urgency that I can’t ignore. I need to make choices that will protect and secure my family. I know wholeheartedly that this career is not the way.

Yet, I battle myself instead of just running forward in leaps and bounds. I find it difficult to break some of my habits. I know I need to find my strengths, passion, resources and opportunity and run with a new set of ambition.

I hope I can find myself out of this holding pattern very soon.

Cheer me on will ya?

I have been wrapping my brain around, through and between and finally starting with full intent to finish.
And it feels good.

I picked up the term ‘starting’ from Seth Godin’s new book, Poke the Box.
A book he was going to name “Go Go Go” and talks about understanding failure in a way that I have never heard.

While listening to the book on audio for the last few days, it’s been eating me up that I have not posted here at my blog for a while. I feel as though I have let down my ‘non existent’ audience. Along the way, I remembered that I love this free, no borders, no rules avenue I have to let out some of my thoughts for the world to read. At least perhaps someday.

The good news is that I have seen, heard, read, found some really cool stuff! There are a couple people in this world whom I feel very attracted to. People I can relate to. Teachers that have appeared because of my due diligence is seeking.

I’m even willing to bet you’ve heard of a couple of em. I’ll lay out my list anyways with links to their sites in case you wanna check em out for yourself.

Pam Slim – Escape From Cubicle Nation

Chris Guillebeau – The Art of Non-Conformity

Leo Babauta – Zen Habits

All three of the above all preach one common theme. They just do it in their artistic way. They all teach that if you want to change the world, your world, all you have to do is Go! Go! Go!

One of my favorite memories brings back this event that I believe each one of us goes through. In some way. Let me paint a picture for you and let us see if you can relate.

It’s a warm summer day and you’re out with your friends swimming in a back yard pool. One of your buds decides that he’s going to climb up on the roof of the garage that’s close enough to the deep end to use as a high dive. That is of course you have enough peer pressure to drive you up to the hot roof and actually make the plunge.

You daringly go up and wait for the kid who’s house it is to show everyone how it’s done. You watch and make sure he lands in the water safely and comes out of it alive. That gives you at least a bit of courage. You look around and walk up to the edge of the roof, glaring down at the cool water below. As you figure out just how much of a jump it’s going to take to clear the ground and land in the water, your heart is practically jumping out of your chest.

Showing invincibility, yet scared out of your freakin’ mind, you tell yourself, you’ll jump on 3 NO MATTER WHAT. You hand over any free will to the number 3 and tell yourself that the second you ‘hear’ it, you are going to jump.

Did you jump? Did you take the plunge when you were a kid? Or did you ‘chicken out’?

Some kids did. Some kids sat up there for what seemed like eternity while his friends cheered him on. No matter though… Some kids never made the jump.

Do you remember that feeling? The one when you were looking over the edge convincing yourself that you would be okay? I think going through something like this is enough to make a life long lasting impression on who we are. In that moment, we tested out what we were made of and began to understand what it would take to make these decisions throughout our lives.

I forgot how to jump. I lost that edge at some point. I stopped counting to 3. Did I just ‘mature’ or did I conform?

What’s amazing though is I have realized it isn’t too late to start. It isn’t too late to juice up on that fear of uncertainty and just jump. The world wants us too. The world needs us too. If we can, than we must.

I have personally taken it upon myself to make that leap. If I fail… well, then I fail. In this case though, failure is a huge victory. Because it means that I jumped. I will jump again and again and never stop jumping. The failures will show up. Hopefully tons of them… but the second I jump again, they are erased. Forgotten. Wiped away. That’s the beauty of this game. The trick is actually playing it.

The greatest tragedy is not how short life is but rather how long it takes to start living it.

Go! Go! Go!

You have a laptop that you sometimes take with you while you’re out at a meeting or even on vacation. There’s a good chance that you use it at home while connected to your WiFi. This machine is most likely loaded with great links you’ve collected while out on the road.

Your spouse has a laptop. Perhaps this one is used more for Ebaying, Facebook, Instant Messages with family. Maybe holiday/birthday shopping. It could be used for your family photos and videos. Perhaps you have a few links to some really awesome recipes.

You head on over to your parents house and they ask you to take a look at their PC. For some reason, they can’t send emails because of some spyware. If you could only remember that link to that small free spyware remover.

Enter XMarks.

This is where all your bookmarking troubles disappear forever.

This little tool has been a life saver for me. For the first time in almost 20 years of being online, I can now have all my bookmarks on any computer at anytime. Free.

The power here is remarkable. The benefits are huge. The value is invaluable. This is especially true if you do any type of work online. Imagine from now on having access to all your links at your fingertips.

For some of you, this may be old news. Bookmark organizing has been around for awhile now. I admit it. There are bookmarking sites out there that do the same thing. Well almost. Let me show you why this one is different.

Your Online Dashboard

When you open an account with Xmarks, a very simple tool allows you to import all of the bookmarks on your current computer. One finished, you can then go to each computer where you have been storing bookmark links and also import those without disturbing what you’ve already imported.

The benefit is once you uploaded all your links from all your computers… They are stored online for as long as you keep your account. If you choose however, you can setup different profiles for different computers. This way you can keep sensitive information where it belongs.

Your Plug In

XMarks is compatible with all your favorite browsers. Including Mac’s Safari browser. All you have to do is install a very simple plugin into your browser and XMarks runs in the background keeping track and keeping you in synch with all your machines.

At home, bookmark a site. Go to work, sync up (if it hasn’t already) and your bookmark is with you.

It may seem like a simple non-essential tool. It isn’t. For me, Xmarks means one less thing I need to think about. I have been testing it now for about 2 months and it hasn’t failed me once. Upon initial install, I took about 3 hours (I had nearly 20 years of bookmarks all in different locations to work with) and organized my list. Everything is in its proper place and incredibly easy to find.

More Features

Personally, for now at least, the basic free version is perfect for me. It does exactly what I need it to do with the exception of 1 thing. It doesn’t allow me to backup links that I have stored on my Android Phone. The good news is if you are willing to upgrade to premium, you can sync up with your phone. The other biggie is being able to backup your bookmarks. This however can be done by exporting them to HTML and keeping them safe offline as well.

Conclusion

If you’ve been looking for that perfect bookmarking tool, you really owe it to yourself to check out XMarks. When you do, let me know what you think! Would love to hear some feedback

My mind was racing and I just couldn’t stop it from going at rapid speeds. Honestly, I enjoy these periods. It tends to be the times where some pretty good ideas seep through and come into light.

Well… I working out the question “what can I do with ResourceBlvd.com that would genuinely add value to people’s lives…”
You know, a question like this shouldn’t be hard to answer!
The debate that was going on in my mind was filled with self destructive questions like…

“What do I have that anyone would want?”
“Who’s going to listen to me anyways?”
“I have no authority… why should I even try?”

Ouch Ouch OUCH!

When I have these moments, I wish someone would just grab a bucket of cold water and drench me with it.

Anyways, here’s the deal. I am super excited because I have no doubt that I finally figured out the direction I am going to take with this blog. The next phase of design and content is going to thrust me into the right direction and I am really psyched about it!

If you are one of the few that visit this site, I appreciate you! I hope you’ll come back to see the really amazing changes that I have planned come into reality here at ResourceBlvd…

Anyways… thats it for now!
Stay Tuned!

Guy

Just check out this video!

As of right now, at the time of this posting, I have a total of 2 posts on that forum.

I’m not going to lie.

I ignored that place for this long because I couldn’t stand the arrogance and just needed to stay away from the negativity. The word noob and newbie and nub and noobie really get to me.

I mean really… when do you graduate from noob to doer and so-on and who determines when you move up the ranks?! Who gives the diploma? Is there job placement?!

Sheesh! Enough already…

Another huge reason I had to get my butt outta there was because I am the type of person that is information hungry and I love ‘tools’.

You’re probably saying “Well if that’s true Guy, then why would you NOT want to be there? Duh!”

Because!

Why in the world would I want to hang out with a bunch of marketers all marketing their own stuff that I am very tempted to buy that will only point me away from what I’m doing and have me bouncing off the walls as if I was in a pinball machine!?

They are all trying to sell me something and I am prone to buy and I don’t need it!

You know where this would leave me? With analysis paralysis. Wondering if I needed to reevaluate my direction and doubting myself! There’s too much information to make any sense of it all. I was also afraid of going broke before making any money.

Keeping It Basic

One huge lesson for me is gaining the ability to keep things simple. The gold rush effect that seems to loom over the Internet Marketing community is indeed a very distracting effect. It’s a real enemy and in my opinion fuels procrastination.

It really takes hard core discipline to keep your blinders on and tread forward.

Here are some tips I use…

Set Goals

1. I pull out my journal and I set goals. This is a hard habit to get into but the payoff is tremendous. The simple idea of writing it down has this magic effect that turns ideas into something you can touch. When you see what you need to do, it impels you to take action. Goals can look something like this.

Monday: Research 4 keywords that have decent traffic and buyer words that I can write articles on to test a market. Go to Squidoo and snatch up the lens links for each of them.

Tuesday: Write an article for each keyword and create the lenses.

And so on…

None of those goals will say anything about researching the latest SEO Tools and buy the best one, or get on Warrior Forum and respond to 40 posts (unless you are marketing internet marketing products and Warrior Forum is a selling ground for you).

This doesn’t mean that you can’t go out and add value when you have time and all your tasks are done. If you’ve reached your goals and you feel satisfied… go ahead! Reward yourself.

Eat That Frog

2. Eat That Frog. Have you ever heard that saying? Brian Tracy has a book entitled that. What ever the hardest most daunting task you have to do that day… Do it first thing in the morning. Get it over with.

Build Rome

3. Rome wasn’t’ built in a day and either will your business. Take bite sizes! Keep your tasks manageable. Don’t overwhelm yourself. It’s sucks bad to come up short because you have too much to do. I see it in myself, I see it in my wife, I see it everywhere! When you have too much to do in a day and you can’t get it done, it has a way of getting to you. Don’t let it get to that point.

Don’t Blink

4. Keep your target in your sites. Not only do you have to know what your target is… you also have to keep looking at it! What would a marksman be if he closed his eyes right before he pulled the trigger? What about a hunter? The deer would laugh at him! Don’t look away. Choose ahead of time what you are going for with careful consideration and then stick to it. Don’t deviate from what you set out to do.

Cross it Out

5. Track your progress. Cross out what you’ve done or put a check mark next to it. How can you know what needs to be done if you don’t remember what has been done? This holds so true with internet marketing especially because there are SO many SMALL things to do and it’s VERY easy to forget what you’ve done. Especially when it comes to building backlinks.

And The Most Important One

6. Don’t ever ever ever ever ever ever ever quit!

I guess that’s why that didn’t work so well.

It really hasn’t changed very much since the last time I’ve looked at it though. The responsibility is still the webmaster whether or not he wants to keep your link on his page.

They can easily delete your post or comment etc.

So, basically there are a few different ways to building links for you site. I am going to break it down here so that I can understand it a little better myself.

I am not going to go into too much detail for each method but it will definitely be enough to get started.

Perhaps The Easiest – Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is a great way to build backlinks. The trick here is to not go out and spam a bunch of blogs and just consider that as a valid way. Most likely, as they should, the webmaster will most likely just not approve your comment and delete it from his/her server.

If you are going to be commenting on blogs (and adding your link back to your site at the same time) then add value. Read the post, or at least some of it, and then comment on something you find interesting.

This is probably the most important tip. There are other details such as how to post your link that are up there as well, but if you don’t get a link up, then it was wasted time. The way to make sure you at least get a link up is to comment in a fashion that shows you’ve actually read the post.

Article Submission & Guest Blogging

The 2 are different I know. However, what if you wrote a great little article and you wanted to somehow get it on a high ranking site other then an article directory? Well, you become a social butterfly, get over your fear of talking to other people and be ready to hop into the limelight!

Do you know how many bloggers out there are hungry for content on their site? I mean look at this blog. I don’t post everyday… I want to believe me. It’s not like I am short of ideas to write about. My enemy is TIME! I am a full time Daddy, Husband, Employee, Brother, Friend. I barely have time to watch ‘The Office’ which is my favorite show ever!

The point is, I wish someone would come to me and say something like “Hey Guy! Let me post an article on your blog. I promise to make it really good and relative to your niche. The only thing I ask is that you allow me to put a couple links back to my site.”

Heck Yea!

I would jump all over it and many other bloggers would too! So, find a blog that relates to your topic. Example would be something… let’s say you were promoting ‘dog grooming sheers’. You could go and do a search for Dog Grooming Blogs. I’ll bet there are a few. Find one that you both like and has a decent ranking.

Next, find the contact page and ask the owner of the site if they would like some content for their blog. When they say ‘of course’… start writing something RELEVANT and ADD VALUE! I cannot stress it enough! You could talk about how to shave a dog gently or how to shave a poodle to make him look like a Q-tip. I don’t know… But if you are really marketing the niche then it should be easy to come up with something.

A line in the post saying something like… “I found these “dog grooming sheers” that really helped my friend get the job done”

Get it? Good… Now do it. You’ll be surprised just how famous you can become. The great thing about this is, if you get a good response, that blogger may ask you back! That’s 2 links plus their readers may actually check out your link also! Win Win Win… Win.

Forum Commenting and Profile Links

This one can be effective as well but just as important to pay attention to what you are doing. Add value, add value, add value. I cannot stress it enough. There is nothing worse then going into a forum that you frequent just to find some new guy that just joined spamming away like he owns the place. It really is horrible.

The trick is to become a lurker for about a week before you even post a link anywhere. Including your profile! Hang out first. Get to know the way the forum vibes and then after about a week, make a post.

That doesn’t mean you need to spend hours reading topics but it does mean that you have some idea about what it is you are about to comment on. Google is looking for natural links and the webmasters hate spam. The combination of this makes it a challenge to get links but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

Besides… The benefits for creating long lasting links like this means you have more of a chance to stay well positioned for your search term.

So that’s it for now. There you have it. Three really effective ways to start building backlinks.

Time to go play!

See ya.

Enter Write Monkey

Here is a piece of software that in my opinion will stand the test of time.

How many programs do you have on your PC that you cannot live without? I’m willing to bet that it isn’t that many. Three? Tops? I know I have a couple that no matter what machine I know I will be using more then once, there is software that comes with me.

I can now officially add Write Monkey to my arsenal.

I must have some sort of attention deficit going against me. Easily distracted is my forte. It may have something to do with my excitement to learn and not want to miss anything. It turns out that this is a really tough obstacle if you need to take some time to write. Unfortunately for me… writing is in so many areas of my life. Blogging, Articles, Emails, Copywriting, Pre-Selling. I’m sure there are more that I am too distracted to think about right now.

No More Distractions

This really neat tiny editor does one thing that no other I’ve come across can do. It wipes away all the distractions on my screen and forces me to focus on my writing by going full-screen. It hides the tabs I have open at the bottom of my screen and it makes you do one more step to get back to your normal desktop.

I was skeptical at first. I’ll admit it. I thought ‘how could just getting rid of my desktop give me more creativity?’ So I tried it and it worked! I felt as though I was finally alone with my words and the creativity started to flow again.

This little tiny feature in my opinion is pure genius. I literally felt pounds of clutter get put to the side which frees up the creative juices.

Maybe you don’t have that problem. Right now you’re saying… “Guy… I don’t need that. I can control myself. When it’s time to write, I don’t let things get in my way and I can focus on what I’m doing”.

Ok… Fine… Then maybe these other features will interest you.

• The small size of the program makes it so it barely uses any resources making it super fast.

• You can carry the monkeywriter directory anywhere you go and copy to your hard drive. No installation steps to take ever…

• Keyboard friendly giving you access to all the keyboard shortcuts you are used to.

• Advanced Stats on what you’re writing. Things like word count, sentence count, paragraph count, words per sentence and even tell you how long it should take to read your document.

• Backups and Autosave

• Spell checker

• plus a ton more!

But the best feature is that it’s completely free. The author of the program just asks for a PayPal donation.

Writemonkey is a Windows zenware* writing application with an extremely stripped down user interface, leaving you alone with your thoughts and your words. It is light, fast and free. With an array of innovative tools under the hood, it helps you write better. Editing is for another day …

Hopefully I can paint a picture with my words that will describe the impact and you can also share in the drama of this short event.

I had just gotten home from working my graveyard shift at my job. The commute home is about 45 minutes and this day, it was raining. The sky was gloomy and unpleasant. Fortunately I was listening to Jim Rohn talking about communication in my car so my mood was under my control. This allowed me to keep a grin on my face.

It wasn’t unlike any other normal day except for the fact that I got home after my oldest Son had gotten up for school. He was sitting on the sofa waiting for the clock to say he had to head to the bus stop. On Television, which he was watching, was a morning episode of Spongebob.

I sat down beside him instead of slipping upstairs and going to bed. It gives me some time to bond with both he and my wife at the same time before they start their day and I end mine.

Doing Time

The episode that was playing was quite funny. Spongebob was at driving school again attempting to take his driving test. After demolishing the entire school, along with the parking lot where the test was being taken, a nuclear explosion launches the boat into the air. With our little sponge friend at the wheel and Mrs. Puff, the drivers Ed. teacher, in the passenger seat, they go hurling into an array of mass chaos.

During their… flight… they attract the local police which begin the chase.

Of course, my son finds this funny.

After a few minutes of the cops trying to catch up and stop Spongebob anyway they can, the boat crashes into a truck filled with fruit punch. The truck explodes and the fruit punch floods the local rest home.

When the cops arrive, even though Spongebob was driving, they arrest Mrs. Puff and she is sent to jail.

Freedom

Well, for those of you who don’t know… Spongebob and Mrs. Puff have a real love/hate relationship. Basically, Spongebob loves driving school and Mrs. Puff hates dealing with him. She quickly began to see the benefits of being locked up. She no longer had to deal with Spongebob and in her point of view, was finally feeling free.

On the other side of things, Spongebob feels terrible about what has happened and recruits his trusty friend Patrick to help him break Mrs. Puff out of jail.

After a few attempts, Mrs. Puff tells Spongebob that she doesn’t want to leave jail and that she was happy she didn’t have to deal with him! Well, this didn’t even phase our little buddy. He just knew in his heart that he had to remind Mrs Puff what it was like to ‘live on the outside and not be in prison’.

Like a tidal wave smacking me in the face…

This is where the 17 seconds of this little show forced me into a near state of panic. The next moments followed by an innocent comment from my 7 year old son, nearly knocked me to the ground.

Here’s what happened…

Spongebob: (whispering in Patrick’s ear) “Patrick, she has lost it! She is completely institutionalized. She’s forgotten what its like to LIVE on the outside and not be in PRISON.”

Scene cuts to an unknown regular guy. He’s sitting in a car both hands on the wheel looking absolutely miserable. He’s on a 4 lane highway and stopped in traffic and all you hear are horns going off. This lasts 3 seconds.

Scene cuts to the same guy sitting in a cubicle in an office. He’s sitting there with the same miserable look and the clock behind him reads 12:20 (give or take). Around him are all his colleagues sharing in his misery. This lasts about 3 to 5 seconds.

Scene cuts to the same guy. The day is coming to an end as it’s dark outside. You see him standing inside his home looking out of his window. He has the same miserable face and tired eyes. In the background you can hear his wife say “Coming to bed honey?” to which he replies in a very monotone voice “yes dear…”.

Now as impacting and lesson filled as these 17 seconds of a silly little cartoon turned out to be, what followed was the icing on the cake.

My son said exactly what I was thinking and didn’t want to admit…

As innocently as he could ever mean it and without knowing the impact, he said with snicker in his voice “Hey Daddy… that guy was just like you!”

I went to bed and laid there wondering how much he notices and promising myself that if indeed he pictured me as a miserable trapped slave to society… that it needed to change.

What does a father say when his son asks his 40 year old dad… “Hey Dad, why aren’t we rich?”

The truth. That you spent your fortune on trinkets because you followed the wrong plan.

That is not a question I ever want to answer.

Take away what you want from this post.
You can judge or reflect.
You can deny or accept.

Whatever your situation… I hope you do take from this little post that life is in our control.

We make it what we want whether we know it or not.

The trick is to control your desires and go after them.

Take Care…

Here is the video of the scene from Nick themselves. In case you wanted to see if for yourself. Spongebob Squarepants – Doing Time