So life at our house has been a little bit “bumpy” over the last 7 months to say the least. Lean economic times doesn’t begin to describe it.

I keep telling myself that this rough spot is just going to make victory taste that much sweeter and I do believe it. One of my favorite movie lines was in from Bad News Bears (if you’re lax on your crappy 80′s movies it was about a kid baseball team that sucked, but the coach believed in them…dig out the Betamax machine, I’ll send it over).

Anyway, the coach says to the kids “you have the uncanny ability to SHOW UP” because it’s all the kids really had going for them. They stunk at baseball but they were there doing it every practice and every game regardless.

I liken our current position and our vision of the future much the same. Sheena and I have the “uncanny ability to show up”. Sure we get down, discouraged, feelings hurt and generally pissed off, but we just don’t quit.

As things were chugging along ever so slowly, I woke up one morning and went to take my 4 year old to school and noticed my truck door wasn’t shut tight. Some hoodlums had broken in and rummaged through the truck violating my personal space, chucking everything on the floor and all they had the brains to make off with was the $0.50 that I keep in the cup holder to pay for shopping cart use at the local grocery store.

While I laughed at myself for being such an asshead for not locking the truck up (yes, it was open) I had to take pleasure in laughing harder at the shitweasel that violated my vehicle and only got away with $0.50!

Earlier in the month I had gone to meet with someone for a job interview. The person said they were impressed with me but felt that my resume was misleading as it didn’t contain the same information as I’d had delivered in person.

When I asked for clarification, the person gave examples and I had to laugh internally because ALL of them were present (and very clear) on the resume.

The person proceeded to tell me that they sometimes checked resumes while drinking alcohol. VERY nice thing to share! So my families future and the groceries they get to put in their bellies hangs in the balance of someone who can’t clearly see that I’m perfectly suited for position that I’ve applied for because they are too pissed up while checking resumes?

Whoa.

I’m not sure who to laugh at for the last tidbit I’d like to share, but I’ll share anyway. Maybe someone will reply with a way to make it humorous to me!

The ceiling in our kitchen had developed a crack in it. Wife points up to it and says “how come?” I gaze up at it blankly, shrug and reply “don’t know”.

Later on, the crack(s) start to turn yellow. Any Mr. Fixit worth his weigh in sawdust knows that yellow ceiling equals water damage. After poking my drywall saw around a bit and making a 6″ by 8″ hole, I report gleefully to wife that it is indeed wet. She is unamused.

Knowing that there is limited access to that part of the attic, I empty the bathroom closet and cut a huge hole in the wall to fit my ripped, masculine body through. After ripping some insulation down and nearly choking to death, I find that the roof is leaking causing the problem down below. Awesome.

Yeah, even after typing this all out, I still can’t figure out who to laugh at. I’m normally very fun but couldn’t seem to muster a one-liner out of the fact that we need a new roof (or at least a roof repair) and have no way to pay for it.

I will figure it out and get it fixed. Maybe THAT’S the funny part…I mean, many would lay down and cry and whine and let it drag them down, but I’m too stubborn/dumb/driven/determined to let it stop me.

I wonder if it will stay fixed if I do the repair while drinking alcohol like my resume friend….

OK, I have mentioned working outside your comfort zone before but I did it again today and I want to share the experience. For the past 13+ years I’ve worked in engineering in the petro-chemical industry. It’s not a terrible gig but it’s an old boys club where you sometimes feel like a hamster on wheel with no where to go.

It’s a field where you can be really driven and move yourself up in responsibilities and pay, but to do that you’ve got to jump ship and move from company to company. The firms generally want to keep staff but historically, don’t make a real effort to keep good people.

As we face this recession and all of the job cuts, I have taken a different approach and have applied for positions outside my regular field and I bet I’m one of the few from my former company taking that approach. Is it daunting and even a little bit scary? You bet it is. I felt a little under utilized in my former position but I was good at it, knew what I was talking about and could display my skills very easily.

This potential new position is a whole new world. While I do know more than the average consumer on the topic, I still can’t help but feel a little anxiety. It’s ok, I feed off new challenges and will give it my all. The point is that the job is outside of my comfort zone and that excites me to some degree. It means that I’ve got the guts to try something new and that is what will set me apart from many of my former coworkers who will be sticking to the same old game plan just hoping for things to pick up and go their wayl

I’ll be posting some details and findings as things progress along. Stay tuned

I excitedly applied for a handful of positions that were a bit different than what I was doing before. If I was getting depressed and burned out doing the same thing for 12 years, why go look for a job doing it some more right? Well I got one email today that said “thanks but no thanks” so I called someone who works for the company I’d applied for and told him what was up. He informed me that the position I’d applied for was his boss’ job!

Now I’m quite confident I could do the job and do it very well, but the guy probably has twice the experience that I’ve got and could almost be my father! I guess you could say I was only about half bummed out.

Next I got an email from another lady saying to call them in the morning and we’d discuss a position that I’d applied with through her. Nice.

What happened in internet marketing world? I was madly writing articles and decided to have a look at my Clickbank stats. I figured I was getting some decent click thru rates on one niche product but wasn’t making consistent sales. I decided to try the site out myself and it has a search box that the user fills in and clicks submit on. It should then take them to the vendors page but it didn’t! It had them enter the info all over again which likely lost me many affiliate sales

Luckily one of my Internet Marketing friends online is a genius when it comes to WordPress (and most every other technical thing) and he fixed it up in a jiffy. We’ll see if that helps conversions. I plan to throw 20 more articles at that niche and pick up as many backlinks as I can to see if the fix relates to some more sales.

When you get bummed out because the guru’s made you think Internet Marketing was going to be easy as pie with no work, don’t feel bad…it likely was (and maybe still is) tons of work for them too….but that doesn’t sound as good when they’re trying to be all slick.

Well here we are kids, day #2 of the longest period of being jobless that I’ve ever had. Last time I got laid off on Friday and started at the new job Monday so if someone calls tomorrow and says “get in here” we’ll have a tie and I’ll be amazed. Yeah right.

So today I applied to 4 new jobs and went back to basics with the Internet Marketing. The hardest thing about making money online is focus. It’s VERY tough to keep at one thing with some many temptations of other stuff to look at and do floating around.

I don’t feel too ashamed about it as it is the job of these big time marketers to draw our attention into their offers and make us read or watch…that’s what marketing is! I AM ashamed when I fall for it knowing that I’ve got much bigger fish to fry.

So, I posted my services on the Warrior Forum and Digital Point, got some leads and tips from some friends (thanks JMo, Sid, Kelsall and Mikey W) and I tried doing a little video. Man, I must be the least photogenic person out there! My wife says I have the gift of gab and have tons of great info to share with people but I feel like friggin dork when I watch my own videos.

Oh well, maybe this blog will see video yet…we’ll see.

So here I am freshly turfed from my job in a career I’ve been in for over 12 years. Around 42 of my colleagues have been sacked so far and I doubt the company is finished handing out golden handshakes. It’s a pity because I was one of the ones that actually LIKED the place. Sure there were office a-holes that I could do with out just like any office and there were politics that didn’t need to happen, but that goes in in many offices.

SO…the question now is what to do about it. Well, I always land on my feet somehow and although I’ve never had to repair in such a down economy, my drive and spirit will pull my family and I through this.

Someone asked on an internet marketing forum if I was going to take this setback and turn it into an opportunity to go 100% with building my dream internet marketing business….well sir, it’s like this.

That company was generous enough to afford me a pretty nice wage and I have a couple little mouths to feed so if I can find another day job that pays well, you can bet your boots, I’m going to take it.

Some other cool opportunities have come along though…..

One of the biggest let downs at my former employer was that my strengths and skills were NOT EVEN CLOSE to being used. I’m a driven, outgoing people person that is able to manage people and make them feel wanted and valuable no matter what their role at work or place in this world is.

The cool opportunity I saw that I think would be the dream job of a lifetime is for me to be the caretaker of Hamilton Island, Australia.

My duties there would include:

- exploring the Great Barrier Reef’s 600 islands
- reporting back weekly on blog with photos and video
- living rent free in a $5m villa perched 80 metres up a ravine
- entertaining overseas visitors or tourists befriended over cocktails at the marina bar

Sounds like heaven right…..

Looks like heaven too…

Naturally I’m keeping my options open since there were 200,000 applicants in the first 24 hours and they capped it 30,000 but you never know…..someone has to be chosen right? If a couple million of you comment on this blog and vote for me, you never know….and you can come visit me and chill in my new villa.

Better continue with niche marketing for now just incase!

Sorry folks, I missed posting yesterday so today will be a two-for….lucky you

Amidst the current market doom and gloom people (including friends of mine) are losing their jobs and getting stressed out pretty badly. The company I work for is no exception. I work in the oil & gas industry engineering piping systems for refineries that make gasoline.

Have you noticed the gas prices lately? Here in Canada, over $1.45/liter in the summer and now around $0.72/liter. Some people jump up and down for that change and I can understand it to some degree. For those not directly employed by the industry, they are saving money but check this out…

My city is FULL of refineries. A huge number of families here are employed directly or indirectly by one of the major oil companies and when the price of gas falls sharply the plants do not have as much money in their budgets to do maintenance and improvements to their refineries and as a result, firms like the one I work for do not get new contracts and people get laid off.

I’m not usually one to worry about stuff like that because I go to work every day and do the best I can for the $$ they pay me and I usually turn out above average work or at least strive to. That said, I was discussing “what if’s” with a buddy and when we got off the phone I asked my wife what she thought we’d do if I walked into the office Monday and was told “sorry man, we won’t be paying you anymore”.

Little scary to think about huh?

That got us talking about something that I’ve become really passionate about in the past few months but before I go into that, I must also say it made me think about internet marketing (what doesn’t?). With that came two questions that I want to ask you, dear reader, right now….

1) If you suddenly lost your job and someone stood there with a gun to your head and said “learn to make money online RIGHT NOW” how quickly could you take action, get your ass out of the forums and go learn, apply, earn, rinse, repeat?

2) Why aren’t you doing that ALL the time instead of waiting for things to get really serious?

p.s. as a side note, I just read this headline “Suncor approves C$20.6B oil sands expansion plans” which explains why I don’t buy into the negativity…..it ain’t over ’till it’s over!