Oh, I just thought of something. For the rest of this post, read everything in a Scottish accent, I think it might spice it up just a bit!

Now the thought behind this post is to drop a bunch of quirky little factoids about me and my life that you probably don’t know, unless you’re Big Brother himself!

Without further adieu, here is my list of 25 14 things that you probably (and hopefully) don’t already know about me!

***Editor’s note: I just spent a couple hours on this post and half of it got deleted. I’m just going to give you this, sometime in the future I’ll have the motivation to complete the last 16. Beware of the evil WordPress erasing monster!**

1 – In response to pure boredom (or a group of really dumb 21 year olds), a group of friends and I decided to drive from San Diego to Las Vegas at midnight as a spur of the minute idea. We wanted to drive the 6 hour trek (one-way) for “the fun of it”. We spent a whopping hour and a half there, I proceeded to lose $25 at video blackjack. We then reluctantly drove back another 6 hours, through the desert in a car with working no air conditioning. Little to say, I will not be making that moronic move again.

2 – While on the driving topic, when I was 8 years old, my dad and I rode on a bus across the USA for a mind-numbing 3 days. I think I was scared straight while on that ride. I specifically remember an incident when a middle-aged man was arguing with the bus driver while driving through the desert of New Mexico. To my surprise, the driver screamed back saying, “If you don’t shut the f**k up, I’ll drop you in the middle of this desert!!”

Note to self–don’t piss off or talk back to crazy bus drivers. You don’t know what those guys are made of!

3 – I have worked some kind of job since I was 12 years old. My first was as a “tree valet” at a Christmas tree lot. For work, I would help customers pick Christmas trees and carry them to people’s cars. I worked purely on tips and surprisingly made pretty decent money for that age. I don’t know if it was worth having a permanent glaze of tree sap all over, though.

4 – After I graduated high school, I played in a band called Novastellar. I played guitar for about 2 years with the group and played nearly 30 shows. Oh yeah, we were totally big time!! We thought that we would make it big, but those dreams quickly faded after many sleepless nights and not a lot of money. I think I’ll stick with internet marketing…

5 – As a kid, whenever my friends would want to wrestle or play fight, I always wanted to be “the camera guy”. I felt like this was a safe place so I wouldn’t break any bones (which they did on multiple occasions). It’s kind of irony that now I feel being in front of the camera is one of my strongest points! Go figure…

***Remember, you should be reading in a Scottish accent! Don’t let me down!***

6 – I am a left-hander, so for some reason for my 9th birthday, my parents decided to give me presents geared for lefties. I thought it was weird at the time, and even more so now! Actually, one of the lefty scissors they gave me then is still on my desk, right next to me. Weird, weird.

7 – In high school I had a group of friends that would love to do pranks. By no means were we bad kids, but we just liked to test our limits. One night, around midnight, we “borrowed” about 50 orange street cones from a construction site. We proceeded to create a maze within a large street intersection near my house. By the way, that maze led to a dead end. It was quite funny seeing very frustrated people who needed to backup through a winding road.

8 – As a kid going through school, I was one of the quietest kids in class. It seemed like I was always nervous about everything, and I still can’t explain why today. For some reason near the middle of high school something clicked in my head. Since that time, I’ve never felt the same. Good thing!

9 – When I was about 8 years old, a friend and I were throwing around a football in the side yard of my house. My family had a cockatiel bird named Corkey in a cage that sat in that yard during the day, just to enjoy the daylight. During one of my throws, I accidentally broke the side of the cage with the ball. Thinking I was smooth, I put the broke piece over the hole, thinking my parents would never notice. Well, the bird found a way out and flew away, never to be seen again. TO THIS DAY, I still have never told my parents the truth! I should come clean..

10 – In middle school, my mom used to take my friends and I to play rounds of golf on a par 3 course. On the 18th hole, I hooked the ball quite far and into the customer parking lot. Not good. I heard a bounce, bounce, BANG!!! My mom, friends and I quickly packed up our clubs and called it a day. I still get nervous when I’m teeing up on that last hole.

11 – For the past year or so, I have been brewing my own beer in my kitchen. I took up the hobby because my dad used to make some when I was younger, so I wanted to test my skills. I love beer and I LOVE the fact that I could feel pretttttty good from something that I’ve created myself. I recommend trying it if you’re interested, it’s not expensive at all!

12 – In elementary and middle school, I would always come running home craving a cold glass of Coka-Cola. To tell you the truth, I always craved that stuff. I was definitely a caffeine addict as a kid… good thing about all I drink now is water (and beer!).

13 – I purchased 1987 Suzuki Samurai last March for about $1200. I have always wanted to learn how to work on cars, so I figured this would be the best chance for me to do it. Since then I have been able to fix it up to where I could drive it around the streets and through the sand dunes of my local deserts. It’s a blast and one heck of a beast for a box on wheels that weighs less than 1000 pounds.

14 – Sometime last year, Matt Wolfe and I were enjoying our time in the desert with his family and our significant others. We geared up to go on a night ride to some of the sand dunes, so Matt and I hopped on two different quad motorcycles. As we were waiting for everyone to get ready, Matt and I were racing back and forth around camp. Unfortunately, there was an incident when I turned without completely looking and Matt crashed into me on my right side and went flying over my head for about 20 feet. Thank God for a metal bar that saved my leg and the sand that padded Matt’s fall. Somehow we both came out with just some cuts and bruises. :-/

Photo credit: http2007

Out of the endless amounts of lessons and tips that Alex has given me,
I’d be very safe to say that his lesson of “stop chasing money, let money
chase you” has sunk in the deepest for me.

For this video, I chose to do a little spoof from a Geico Insurance commercial
series involving a stack of money that follows me where ever I go… and yes,
even places I would never expect to see another with me…

I’ll stop my blabbing so you could watch the video.

I hope you enjoy it just as much as I did creating it!

Just to start it all off, it is absolutely amazing to see that Alex spend the entire two hours thoroughly explaining his lesson, but IN ADDITION took nearly three hours answering each and every question that was asked. Now if you can’t tell that this guy is a hands down class act, then I don’t know where you’re mind’s at!!

Alex’s first lesson was purely about organizing your thoughts, actions, work, and everything else that goes in to starting up and successful online business. As many might have thought that this is elementary or repetitive from what you might use currently, it’s definitely the right place to start.

For myself, I felt that his words about thoroughly organizing every aspect of your business and working days were IMMENSELY important. Overall, I would say that I am not completely organized, but I do definitely try my best to be… but I tend to lose track rather quickly. I either need a constant reminder to organize my stuff or I need someone who has a proven story to tell me. I believe the latter will work for me this time!

Planning seems to be the largest problem for most people… I can DEFINITELY tell you it is for me! But it’s really amazing because planning should be the number one element in a business.  A solid plan would allow for a business to actually know what it’s doing and where it ultimately needs to be.  That is SO IMPORTANT!  Why would you ever want to run a business and wander throughout your day like a chicken with its head cut off?  You’d be aimless with no target for the future.

One of the many key elements of planning that Alex explained was that of knowing your goal, but then planning BACKWARDS.  As odd and possibly difficult as it sounds, it makes perfect sense.  If you have a goal in mind, you need to know how it’s going to feel once you’re there, so that’s when you take a step back and ask yourself what you did to get to that almighty goal.

All you do from that point, you simply keep taking one step back at a time and continue to ask yourself that same question, “What did I do to move ahead towards my goal?”  Sooner than you know it, you’ll be finding yourself sitting at where you are TODAY with a fully drawn out plan to give you a clear path of how to achieve your goal.

Now you might be screaming at me yelling, “I don’t exactly how to get to my goal from where I’m at today!”  There’s no worries, just visualize the goal and connect the dots as best as you can.  One thing that Alex stressed is to get something written down on paper.  Don’t worry if it’s wrong, you shouldn’t ever think your first plan is going to be bulletproof!  You’ll always have the chance to go back to it and alter anything that you learn down the road.

———————————————–
I know it was a bit long, but I hope it helped you out, as I think that MANY of you feel my pain about properly planning for the future.  I know that by writing this post, I am basically promising to myself to not slip back to my old dirty habits of disorganization and no planning.  You should do the same if you have the same problem.

Here’s to a new beginning!  Cheers!!