I need to write something, but it’s been a bit of a crazy week and I’m pretty burnt out today. Instead of doing the usual (picking a topic, thinking about it for a while, and then writing) I’m going to give an update on a few things that are going on in my life and here on the site.

I don’t talk much about me (except the occa­sional story) so unless you know me in real life you probably don’t know a lot about me.

For one, I’m 25. That shouldn’t be a shocker; I use to have that info on the about page. I talked about it a bit around my birthday as well.

Since I gave up pizza delivery, I’ve been making coffee drinks at a small inde­pen­dent franchise (not Starbucks, but similar). Like pizza delivery, I’ve already learned quite a bit but you’ll have to wait until a later post to learn about that.

Besides making coffee, I’ve been writing all over the web. I’m staff writing at two other financial blogs: Faith & Finance and Personal Finance By The Book. They’re both great sites that you should check out. They’re like my site, only less aggres­sive and with a more obvious Christian leaning.

Faith & Finance is a bit more big scale. Tim, the main guy, distances himself a bit more in his writing. He’s really good for money tips and obscure (and helpful) knowledge about things like when stamp prices are going up or when the best TV deals are coming.

Personal Finance by the Book is run by Joe. It’s similar to Entre­pre­Life in that it’s a smaller site where one guy gives his thoughts and opinions on money and finances.

Adding my voice to these blogs has been a lot of fun! I like getting write a bit outside my norm. It’s helped me develop my voice and intro­duced me to a lot of great people. If you want to have me guest post for your blog (it doesn’t have to be about money) shoot me an email.

In other news, A Stress Free Christmas is no longer for sale. The page is still up, but you can’t buy it anymore. If you missed it, send me an email and I’ll make sure you’re the first to know when I relaunch it later this year.

Besides that, I’m still working on selling Grandma’s house. Nothing to report, really. I’ll probably have a post about it next week, but most of what’s going on is boring: filling out paper work, deciding on a price, getting the relator a key, etc.

All-in-all I really enjoy where my life is now. There are some unique chal­lenges, but it’s the kind of stuff I enjoy.

PS — Read a few more personal thoughts at Personal Finance by the Book where I wrote the recent post, Words Are Like Wind.

What’s going on in your life?

There is no such thing as an unim­por­tant person.

I learned this when I worked at Block­buster. At the time I was barely 20 and working in a very nice part of town. Most of the families I rented movies to were making $100,000 or more a year.

My old store (just kidding…sorta) (credit: The Consumerist)

Working retail can be pretty boring when it’s not busy, so one of the things my co-workers and I did to pass the time was joke about “million­aire wives.” These were the wives of men who made lots of money. They had big homes, nice cars, plastic surgery, and 2.5 kids.

The thing that set these women apart for other customers was their attitude – they were mean. I don’t know if it comes with not having a job, but these women would walk into the store, ignore their children for half an hour and then yell at me for taking more than 30 seconds to check them out.

We use to make a game out of finding them in the crowd. We would look at how a woman was dressed, the way she walked, and how she handled her children and try to guess if she was going to be mean or not.

I’m not saying I’m proud of this, it’s just what we did.

But something weird happened on Friday nights. On Fridays, their husbands would come to the store and rent movies with their kids. Most of these men were heads of companies, vice pres­i­dents, and even a few CEOs. They were valuable, well connected business men coming into my shop to rent a movie.

What made these men so unique is how kind they were to me. With rare exception they were always friendly, talkative, and genuinely inter­ested in what I was doing. I always expected them to be mean like their wives, but they never were.

I worked harder for the nice husbands then I did for the mean wives (again, not proud of that). And it taught me something:

Everyone is someone, so be nice.

A simple lesson, but one that has helped me more than any other. Now, I work at being friendly and inter­ested in the people others ignore:

• The grocery store clerk checking me out.
• The janitor cleaning up a spill at the bank.
• The disabled teenager tearing tickets at the movie theater.

These are people who deserve our respect, kindness, and interest.

And when I take an interest in their lives something amazing happens – they’re inter­esting!

Maybe the grocery store clerk is a single mom working three jobs and raising two kids. Maybe the janitor migrated to this country and is working to build a better life for his family. Maybe that kid who has trouble reading the tickets because of his disability can teach you more about patience, kindness, and gentle­ness than anyone else.

Maybe not.

But every time you take notice of someone unim­por­tant, you are opening yourself up to new oppor­tu­ni­ties, people, and expe­ri­ences. This is the stuff that makes life worth living.

Your Turn

I have a challenge for you that will teach you to network while improving your life. Are you ready?

Next time you run an errand, take a second to learn something about the person helping you. These people are use to being ignored, so your interest may surprise them.

Ask questions like, “how are you doing today”, “have you been on the clock long”, and “what’s your name”.

Look them in the eye when they answer.

Some will be closed off and defensive; some will completely ignore you; most will smile and tell you about their day, their job, and their life. They will be happy to have someone inter­ested in them. And you will feel great for having bright­ened their day and connecting to someone outside of your world. I promise, you will never regret the kindness you gave to someone who had nothing to offer you.

Question 1: When was the last time someone ignored you because you were too lowly to be noticed?

Question 2: Where are you going to try out my challenge?

Once in awhile, we are presented with an oppor­tu­nity that has the potential to change the way we do life. Last November I was given one of those oppor­tu­ni­ties at the Only72.com sale. Today you have the chance to partic­i­pate in the same opportunity.

Click the picture to go straight to only72.com

Only72.com is a niche sale where 22 products normally selling for $1087 dollars are sold for $97 bucks! These aren’t cheap products, they are some of the best stuff the web has to offer.

To say this is an awesome deal is an understatement.

The catch is, the sale only lasts 72 hours and once it’s over this package will never be offered again.

This sale’s niche is Personal devel­op­ment. The only72.com guys have brought together 22 e-products that will teach you how to:

• Sell stuff you don’t need
• Get 28 extra hours a week
• Get control of your inbox
• Get in shape
• Learn More, Study Less
• and so much more

At noon (est) on Thursday (72 hours from right now) the sale is over; and once it’s over, this deal goes away forever. Click here to go directly to the sale, scroll down to see all 22 products, or keep reading to see why I think this sale will change your life as much as the last one did mine.

Last November’s Only72.com sale had a small business niche. At the time I was planning on buying an eBook that was included in the sale. Normally, the book sold for $60 bucks and for a measly $37 dollars more I got 21 more books that cover a long list of topics I’ve needed to under­stand for this blog.

Have I used all of the eBooks? No. I’ve read about half in the six months since the sale. But even those would normally retail for over 500 bucks if I bought them indi­vid­u­ally. And every one I read (even the ones I’m less excited about) has taught me something about small business that I didn’t know and given me at least one tool to make this blog better.

This blog would not exist without that epic sale. It helped me change my life and start the business I’ve dreamed of. And now I have the oppor­tu­nity to give you the type of offer and help some families in need.

Change Your Life and Help the Needy

As I said, this year’s niche is personal devel­op­ment. The eBooks (listed below) equip you with tools that will help reclaim your dreams, stay current with email, get in shape, get out of debt, and so much more! I have listed all the products below, but you can go directly to Only72.com now and look them over.

So far my favorites this time around are, Sell Your Crap, The Art of Relaxed Produc­tivity, and Learn More, Study Less. But there are 22 products included in this offer, most with multiple eBooks, work through guides, and so much more!

Because I partic­i­pated last year, I have an oppor­tu­nity to be an affiliate for the Only72.com sale. This means that if you purchase this package after clicking one of my links, I get a nice commis­sion — $48.50 to be exact . And because I believe it is important to give as a part of every­thing I do on this site, if you purchase the package through my affiliate link I will donating 22% of my commis­sion ($10.50) to Charity:Water.

What is Charity:Water?

Charity:Water is one of the greatest non-profit orga­ni­za­tions I have ever seen. They build water wells in villages with unclean and cont­a­m­i­nated drinking water. They give the locals jobs, build the wells from local materials, and train a local how to repair the wells. For some of these families, it is their first time ever drinking clean water.

Unclean drinking water is the number one killer of people throughout the world. It’s not a western problem, but every­where else it is a major issues.

So, not only does the Only72.com sale offer you products that will change your life; not only are you getting $1,087 dollars worth of goodies for $97 bucks; you are also helping to support the blog, and you are helping families get clean drinking water.

This is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Let’s go over what you get again:

• $1,087 dollars worth of amazing products for $97 bucks.
• 22 Personal Devel­op­ment Products that will change your life.
• Saving lives by helping to build water wells through Charity: Water
• Keep the site going by supporting me.

I promised a long time ago that I would only offer products that I thought were bene­fi­cial to you. Stuff that teaches you to control your money, work your passion, and live a life of purpose. There are few oppor­tu­ni­ties that will help you do that as well as the Only72.com Sale. Remember, this sale ends at noon on Thursday and once it’s over this offer goes away forever.

Go directly to the site by clicking here, or check out all the products below.

(more…)

Last week, my wife and I spent 5 days in Portland exploring the city and attending Donald Miller’s The Storyline Confer­ence. Since our adventure is just beginning, we hoped the confer­ence would help jumpstart our story. We weren’t disappointed.

At its core a story is basically a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. All movies, books, and ghost stories fit this defi­n­i­tion. One that misses any of these elements is not telling a story.

A few months ago, my friend Josa went to Mexico to serve a small dying church who’s pastor stole all their money and left them in a really bad spot. Josa is rebuilding a dying a community, serving the needs of the people, and strength­ening a poor area of Mexico with the only hope anyone has: the gospel.

Josa is telling a good story. (more…)

It all starts here

Networking has become a dirty word. The mental image most of us get is a large group of people (middle aged men?) stand in a room, making boring small talk, and hoping that something they say will make someone like them enough to do them a favor.

The idea becomes: be nice to people so they’ll do you a favor; but is that all there is to networking?

What Is Networking?

You network every day and you don’t even realize it. Networking is building friend­ships. In the business world, these friend­ships translate into favors, but if you think about it, all friend­ships do that! If your friend is mooching off of you, either that friend will even­tu­ally stop mooching and start contributing or the friend­ship ends.

A good example of networking is The Storyline Confer­ence . At the confer­ence, everyone there wanted to tell a better story. There were coaches, business owners, future entre­pre­neurs, and grandmas. They were the kind of people who have a dream and are willing to work until they live it. Those are the kind of friends I want to have!

Meeting My Heroes

The other cool thing about networking is that at events like The Storyline Confer­ence you get oppor­tu­ni­ties to meet people you admire. Two of these people for me are Donald Miller and Michael Hyatt.

Donald Miller is an author, entre­pre­neur, and creative thinker. If you have ever read Blue Like Jazz or A Million Miles in a Thousand Years you know why I wanted to meet him. He has a fresh perspec­tive on life, Chris­tianity, and living a good life. Half way through the confer­ence he signed a few books and I got the chance to talk with him.

Michael Hyatt has been a hero of mine for awhile. He is the Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers, the largest Christian publishing company in the world and the 7^th largest trade book publishing company. He is an author, speaker, and he blogs over at michaelhyatt.com. If you are inter­ested in being a leader, in starting your own business, or in orga­nizing your life more effi­ciently Michael Hyatt is the man to follow.

After the confer­ence Michael was nice enough to stay for a little while and chat with me about starting a business, following my dream, and orga­nizing workflow. He also took this photo with me.

Start Networking

Networking has a bad name not because it is bad, but because it has been abused. Some network so they can use people. Most network because they want to build friend­ships with like minded people. If you network with the right people, you are well on your way to a successful life.

Take the plunge, network, and make friends; it’ll pay off ten times what you put in.

Have you ever heard the phrase “winners never quit”? I sure hope it isn’t true because as of yesterday I offi­cially quit my day job.

For the past four years I have joyfully sat behind a desk earning my twice-monthly paycheck, my two-weeks vacation, and my (really good) health insurance. I felt the security that comes with knowing money will be added to the bank in two weeks, that health insurance is handled by someone else, and the security of not having to worry about the mutual funds my retire­ment is put into.

It was also a job that drained my creativity energy and hindered my ability to accom­plish most of my goals.

It was a great job, but my heart is in entre­pre­neur­ship. (more…)

Rachel and I spent seven awesome days in Jamaica for our honey moon. A week of white sandy beaches, beautiful sunsets, gourmet food, and friendly people.

We relaxed, we swam in the ocean, and we enjoyed the luxuries of an all-inclusive resort. I couldn’t ask for a better place to spend a restful week with my wife.

It’s hard not to enjoy that beach

I am a firm believer that no matter what happens or where you go, there is always something you are suppose to learn – yes, even while on vacation. Below are 9 lessons I learned while on my honey moon in Jamaica. (more…)

Coming back from the honeymoon is like waking up from a dream. Every­thing is exactly as I left it, but it’s taking me a bit to adjust to the change.

The changes are crazy, but wonderful!

• Sleeping in a bed with someone else takes some getting use to. Sometime we fight for the middle.
• The pantry and fridge are full of food. My stomach is happy just thinking about it.
• There are more than two kinds of shampoo and I can’t count all the make-up. It’s a world I though having a sister would prepare me for, but alas I am still constantly surprised by it.

There’s so much more. I have only been back a few days so the apartment is still a mess: boxes are every­where (but I can still find every­thing!), nothing but the kitchen is set up (but it’s a great set up), and getting all our finan­cials in order was harder than I thought it would be (no internet for a week put me a bit behind).

But none of those are really issues. Every­thing is great in my world. There’s plenty to do and lots of new stuff to adjust to, but there is also the rest of my life to figure it out.

I’ve learned a lot during my short marriage, and I’ll be sharing some of that shortly, but until then thank you for your support on facebook, twitter, and right here on the blog. I appre­ciate it more than I could every say!

I’m on my honeymoon this week and my good friend (and best man) Mike has agreed to step in and do some guest posts. He blogs regularly at The Bleacher Seats (a blog about Ranger’s baseball) and has some great insights into life, work, and unem­ploy­ment. This is part three of a three part series. Click here for part 1 and here for part 2

…and now for the exciting conclu­sion of my weeklong series, Lessons in Funem­ploy­ment. (If you’re sick of me and my constant whining, don’t worry. Alex will be back next week.)

I left college in December of 2008 with my Bachelor’s Degree, but I didn’t start looking for produc­tion jobs imme­di­ately, because most of my drive had been lost at that point.

Instead, I came up with a new plan, which was to get any other job that I could find and do that for a year or so. (This could have been retail or working for a restau­rant or whatever as long as it wasn’t in production.)

After working for Mr. Schmitt for another summer, I started looking for real world jobs in the fall of 2009. Nothing much came of that and I sort of meandered about for a while until I was struck suddenly by an epiphany.

It was one morning, just as I was waking up, that I had an idea, the very first thought that popped into my brain. It was something like “I want to make movies.”

My real­iza­tion was that I had had a dream once and that I had let other people like Patrick, Dave, and Mr. Schmitt (those fiends!) talk me out of it. Those people had managed to deaden my spirit, but I wasn’t going to allow that anymore.

From there, I decided that I was going to give it a real go. Not sure how exactly I was going to do it, I set out looking for produc­tion jobs. (That obviously hasn’t worked out because I already told you that I’m unem­ployed. Can this story possibly have a happy ending?! Buckle up, because it’s about to get really real.)

I did get a few gigs early on, but it wasn’t long before they dried up and I was left exactly where I had started.

The weeks and then the months rolled on and there was nothing to show for it. Finding crew calls on Craigslist, I would send my resume out into the universe and never hear anything back. The few leads I had didn’t turn up anything either.

It got harder.

The constant rejection was eating away at me because I was being told almost daily that I wasn’t good enough.

Even­tu­ally I had no spirit left and I slipped into a depres­sion. I still ate and bathed and stuff, but I did little else. You can only get knocked down so many times before you don’t have the strength to get back up. (Is there anyone out there that still wants to call this funemployment?)

There were mornings where I would open my eyes and my very first thought would be “If I lay in bed all day, never even bothering to move to my computer chair, nobody on this planet will even notice.”

That went on for months, I guess. My birthday came and reminded me that I had wasted another year of my life. (This is the first time I can remember not wanting to celebrate my own birthday.) Before long it was Christmas and then New Year’s.

2010 was gone and my life was no better.

Sometime early in 2011 I had another epiphany. This one didn’t slap me across the face like the one before. This one was quieter and more subtle, like someone whis­pering from a different room.

It was something like “Are you just going to quit?”

Truth be told, that sounded pretty good at first. There may not have been anything to salvage anyway, assuming I even wanted to try.

But then there was a spark. I realized that I had let people like Patrick and Dave and Mr. Schmitt take all of the fight out of me and I started to get mad.

At them. At myself. At everybody.

I decided that it was time for me to get up off of the canvas. Not only that, but it was time to start swinging. If it’s hard to find a job, then I’m trying harder and doing it with a chip on my shoulder. Other people aren’t going to tell me what I’m good at or who I am anymore.

You can rest assured that things are going to be different from here on out.

Not just different, but better.

For those of you who know me, you haven’t heard this story before, but it is true. As I went through all of this, it was never something I wanted to talk about. You probably know that I’m not a sad sack and that I don’t like being down on myself all the time. So, I never felt the need to say anything about it.

For those of you who don’t know me, thank you for reading. I’m not sure if you’ve learned anything because it was never my intent to provide content exactly the way Alex does. I just wanted to share my story with you and, if you got something out of it, all the better.

At the very least, I hope I haven’t driven all of Alex’s readers away.

Feel free to tell Alex that he has lost you as a reader in the comments.

…

While I still stand by my 2^nd epiphany, it has not been entirely easy. A few months ago I inter­viewed for a full-time job that was exactly what I’d been looking for. Coming out of the interview, it felt like the best I’d ever had and I waited for a call that never came. So I took another hit and got knocked down, like so many times before…

…but I got back up. I’m not done quite yet.

I’m on my honeymoon this week and my good friend (and best man) Mike has agreed to step in and do some guest posts. He blogs regularly at The Bleacher Seats (a blog about Ranger’s baseball) and has some great insights into life, work, and unem­ploy­ment. This is part 2 of a three part series. For click here for part 1. Come back Saturday for part 3!

It’s Mike again and I’m back for Part 2 of my 3 part series, Lessons in Funem­ploy­ment. (Please hold your applause until the end.)

Since leaving high school, I’ve met a lot of people. Some of those people were positive influ­ences, like friends and college profes­sors. Those people may have chal­lenged me or forced me to look at the world in a different way.

If I did change because of them, it was to become a more mature and well-rounded human person. Someone with a greater under­standing of who he is and what he believes in.

But there were others that I met that weren’t as inter­ested in making my life better. These people were often too wrapped up in them­selves, using other people or trying to keep them down.

Briefly, I want to describe 3 such people that I’ve run across in recent years. We will call them Patrick, Dave, and Mr. Schmitt.

“You’re not good enough.”

Patrick was an instructor of mine in college. He was respon­sible for grading various projects for a film class that I was taking. Patrick wasn’t a bad guy, but he also wasn’t a great commu­ni­cator and his method of grading was based more on the gut than the cerebral. (He gave someone else’s project a poor grade because it ‘felt’ too much like the movie Signs. This is not construc­tive criticism and in no way would have made the film­makers better at their craft.)

As that partic­ular class wore on, a lot of people took issue with Patrick. He seemed to be looking for Hollywood caliber from a group of people in their early 20s. There was, essen­tially, no learning curve and no consid­er­a­tion for the need to grow as a storyteller.

I got a B in the class, but my expe­ri­ence with Patrick took away a lot of my enthu­siasm for film­making. (Mind you, that was the whole reason I went to school in the first place.)

Patrick spent a lot of time teaching me that I wasn’t good enough, instead of teaching me how to get better.

“My ideas are better.”

Dave was a guy that I worked with in my very last semester at univer­sity. We were tech­ni­cally colleagues, but Dave never saw it that way.

He was one of those creative types that is too wrapped up in his own “genius” to consider those around him. He put the rest of the crew he was working with through Hell because he couldn’t get past his own ego.

He also completely failed to under­stand that film­making, like a lot of things, is a collab­o­ra­tive effort and rarely has anything to do with the vision of one man. (Unless you’re George Lucas, which Dave had a lot in common with if you take away George’s money and success).

To Dave’s credit, I did learn one very important lesson from him. Don’t be like Dave.

“Remember that you work for me.”

Mr. Schmitt was my boss at a summer camp that I worked at for 3 noncon­sec­u­tive summers. (Unlike Dave, I actually worked for Mr. Schmitt and not with Mr. Schmitt.)

Mr. Schmitt’s strengths were in marketing and PR, with a lot less emphasis on inter­per­sonal skills. His manage­ment style was like that of a carpenter trying to implement the appro­priate tool to get a job done. (When you’re using a hammer, you don’t have to ask it nicely first. People are not like hammers in this way.)

Aside from poor commu­ni­ca­tion, Mr. Schmitt spent a lot of time inad­ver­tently talking about what I wasn’t doing well. The position that I took over in 2006 had been occupied by another guy for 5 summers.

On days when there wasn’t a lot going on, Mr. Schmitt might pop into my workspace and talk to other employees about how great the guy was that I had replaced.

On and on he would go as I listened to all of the reasons why someone else was better at my job than me.

Of course, there was a lot that I loved about that job and it was far from thankless. But a lot of frus­tra­tion could have been spared if Mr. Schmitt had treated his employees like people and not poseable action figures (with Kung-Fu Action Grip).

All 3 of these men had a profound effect on me. By the time I left college people like Patrick, Dave, and Mr. Schmitt had worn me down. That thing that I had wanted to do for a long time wasn’t all that appealing for a while.

I was burnt out on people who fancied them­selves creative and decided to take a break from all of it. My dream was the last thing on my mind.

Feel free to tell me what a talent­less loser I am in the comments.

…

If things seem grim now, don’t worry.

My story isn’t over and, like most stories, the hero (that’s me!) can only overcome after a period in which all hope seems lost. Act 3 is coming up shortly and you can tune back in on Saturday to see whatever became of me and my dream.

(You may now applaud.)