Never make excuses, make progress
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Never make excuses, make progress is the message on my latest t-shirt design. It’s been my motto for most of my life, and I believe it’s such a positive and demanding message. For those of you that follow me on Facebook or Twitter you know that I recently lost my job. Well, I didn’t exactly lose it (I know where it is), but my employer made it so terrible that I wanted to leave. It’s a classic tale of incompetent upper management power tripping all over their peons.
I didn’t like doing that work anyway, to be honest. I learned how to be a web developer simply to dig myself out of student loan debt from getting a dumb degree in music. This does put a damper on my plan to retire at 41 with a gazillion dollars, but I’ve been able to sleep well for the first time in a few years, and that must count for something, right?
So what progress are you making, loser?
Update: 8/19/2020 – I release an album of original music! It’s called Life’s a Play, and it’s available in all major online retailers and through my other website ModernGuitarMethod.com.
Great question! I’ve been hard at work finding ways to diversify my income. Most of these things haven’t earned me anything yet, but I’m confident that over time, each endeavor will combine to make me a comfortable income. Here’s the list:
- Affiliate advertising
- Merchandise
- Modern Guitar Method YouTube (Subscribe to my channel, please!)
- My book, Modern Guitar Method
These are all things that anyone can do! I believe that if you wake up every day with a goal of doing one nice thing for someone else, and one productive thing for yourself, you’re gonna have a good time.
You said you were gonna give away money.
Update: 8/19/2020 – I did it! Check it out on YouTube! I made fifty bucks through album sales, so it was a little more feasible, considering I’m almost completely broke and unemployed right now. It’s a tough landscape out there!
This is true. I announced in a guitar technique YouTube video that I recorded in July that I plan to give away $100 per month to an unsuspecting single parent at the grocery store. While my job loss has made me nervous about that, I still plan to do it in the month of August. You can call me a lot of things, but a liar isn’t one of them. I do my best to live with a high degree of integrity, and I care deeply about helping others. There’s a chance that August is the only month I’ll be able to do it for a while, unless something changes.
Another plan of mine, which is slowly coming together, is to raise $10,000 for local charity. Something that will help the underprivileged and underrepresented in my city of Oklahoma City. I would create a campaign to sell 10,000 copies of my guitar method book, and for every copy sold, donate $1. I think this could be a good opportunity for me to earn something for myself, while also doing something good for my community. It feels like it could be construed as selfish, since I would be earning a profit, but I have to pay my bills too! The other thing I thought of is that, if there’s nobody earning money, there’s nobody donating money. It’s my goal in life to educate and give. I don’t know how else to do that. If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments. I would love to talk about it.
How can I help?
If you’re interested in helping me help others on this journey, get in touch with me to offer your advice or support, like and share my posts on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, and spread positivity and joy. Those are two very important things we should be doing every day, regardless of whatever else is going on in the world. We are in this together, after all, whether you like it or not.
