I mentioned this in passing in a couple of blog posts recently, but after meeting Joe Lavery in Orlando, he had no idea I’m now doing internet marketing full time, so here it is:
I Quit My Day Job on March 25, 2009!
I should have quit a year ago, or even sooner. The only things holding me back were: health insurance (my self-employed plan is now $125/month), money reserve (I have enough to last me a couple years), and pissing off the people who trained me (which was a stupid reason anyway).
March 26, 2009: Immediately after quitting my day job, I stepped on a plane to Dallas, Texas for AM 2.0 to meet Armand Morin, Ryan Deiss, Ray Edwards, Ryan Healy, and Mary Wilhite for the first time ever.
I was totally ready to tell Armand that I quit my day job so I could attend as Jeanette Cates’s guest, but the only interaction we got to have was him yelling at me for pricing my stuff too low. At least I got to tell Ryan Deiss that fact, even though I’m not sure he knows who I am.
The next two weeks after returning included knocking out as many points as possible for Armand’s AM 2.0 Platinum 100-point checklist, launching our most profitable webinar ever ($17,000 on the launch), and updating Action PopUp, WordPress Crusher, 47 Hour Report, creating Split Genie, and running a couple webinars with Ryan Healy and Derek Franklin.
April 17, 2009: Back on the road… flew out to Austin, Texas for Eric Louviere’s MemberSnap seminar after super-programmer Henry Fuentes invited me. I brought my business partner Jason Fladlien along, especially because Marlon Sanders had been e-mailing us but liked him way better, so I figured the three of us could hang out.
We sat in the seminar a grand total of 25 minutes all weekend, and talked with Marlon most of the time. He taught me most of what I know now about “branding” (yuck) and positioning and basically made me paranoid about everything going on with internet marketing.
April 23, 2009: Mass Control 2.0! I only had a couple of days to stay at home before waking up early Thursday morning and heading south on California Highway 99 through Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, and finally to San Diego, California… six hour drive from Turlock.
I wasn’t registered for the conference so I made sure to stay far, far away from that conference room. I chilled with Lance Tamashiro most of the weekend, and got to meet David Risley (who confused Frank Kern for Kid Rock), met Jason Moffatt for about ten seconds (who was busy macking on some chick), met Alex Jeffries (who I’d never heard of but he was a big hero of Lance’s), Ryan Wade (ViralTweets), Joe Lavery (long time customer) and who could forget Dale Maxwell the colon cleanser.
April 29, 2009: Time to co-host my own workshop at the Impact 100 event in Orlando, Florida. Through a strange twist of fate I stayed at the same hotel I stayed at ten years ago when I was in high school for the Future Business Leaders of America. Jason Fladlien, Mary Wilhite and I hosted the “Niche Riches for Beginners” workshop.
Jason talked about the niche selection system, Mary presented on webinars, I dissected list building and traffic, Jason explained copywriting, I talked about product creation and basically got in everyone’s face and made sure all 16 participants gave me their name, phone number, webinar topic, and time and date they were going to present that webinar. We presented from 9AM to 5PM (with breaks).
Joe Lavery was there again, so was Charlie Fry from the Video Sales Tactics class… he flew out from Philadelphia just to see us which I thought was cool. All theparticipants in that class were AWESOME… and the three of us had so much fun that we are hosting another workshop, the “Action Seminar” in Dallas, at the end of May:
Dallas Embassy Suites
4650 W Airport Fwy
Irving, TX 75062Friday, May 29, 2009 from 9AM-5PM (Workshop)
Saturday, May 30, 2009 (Networking Breakfast)
I’ll have more info about that later including where you can register. It will only cost $97 to attend and we’ll have Jeanette Cates (the Tech Tamer) and Marc Harty (PR Traffic) onboard as guest speakers.
That’s what I’ve been up to for the past month and a half since I retired from my day job: four seminars in a month.
I heard once that if you quit your job, the LAST thing you should do is immediately sit in front of your television set… either get a new job or go on vacation, so I went on vacation.
But now for the more important question: how do I manage my time now that I don’t have the day job to hold me down? How do I make sure I get enough accomplished, still have enough free time, and don’t goof off with my newfound free time? I’ve already got that covered, and I’m ready to explain my day to day system to you for free, but I need something from you first:
- Ten comments under this blog post.
- Ten tweets about this post (Twitter icon is on the bottom of the post)
Once I those those two things from you guys, I’ll spill the beans about exactly how I manage my time and how I maintain my business day to day. Thanks guys! Leave your comment below…
