Escape From Pianosa

I had dinner tonight with my friend from college, Dave Ford. He’s got a really amazing travel story going, not to mention a powerful message: you can quit your job, travel the world for a year, and change your life forever if you put your mind to it. In his own words:

I worked my ass off for 6 years, put some cash in the bank, and set off to see what else was out there in the world. What I am finding is completely rocking my world. Life has never been better. I have walked through Penguin colonies in Antarctica, climbed mountains, layed on some of the best beaches in the world in Brazil, and have stood in front of wonders of the world. I am just getting started…. Currently less than 20% of Americans hold Passports. If you do not have one, go get one and see what else is out there. I promise you will not regret it.

After tackling South America, he’s headed off to Africa in January for another six months of amazing travel stories and videos. I’m going to help him take his current blog, which is now hosted at Blogspot, and set him up with his own domain, a clean and powerful WordPress blog, and some effective ways to get his message out and build up an audience.

As I work through the improvements in his blog and his online marketing, I’ll post updates here and hopefully this will serve as a guide to moving from blog hosted by a third-party to a more serious and professional blog, hosted on your own site.

In the meantime, I definitely encourage you to check out what’s going on in his life at his old blog, soon to be new and improved. For some intense reading, check out his adventure with the hallucinogen Ayahuasca.

I love these Seinfeld commercials. I don’t understand why advertisers don’t use these story commercials more often… stories that are three short episodes shown during a TV show. People love stories. Maybe they’re worried about channel-flipping? I don’t know who could tune in to The Office and turn off the TV before it’s over.

Dwight vs. the self-aware computer. I love it. The singularity will not be televised, it will be IM’d to your desk.  God this show is great.

I just started watching The Office and I’m kicking myself for missing the past three seasons. Michael is a brilliant character and he’s already taught me something about online marketing:

Michael: “Business to business. The old fashion way. No blackberries. No websites. I would like to see a website deliver baskets of food to people.”

Indeed!

Thank you Nora, you said some very nice things about me. My run as a freelancer (which included a lot of real estate and some dabbling in writing among other things) has come to an end, at least for the foreseeable future. My first job is at a small online marketing firm in Baltimore and I’ll be working on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is something I enjoy immensely–although I didn’t really realize it until about a month ago.

I’d fallen into the habit of taking my friends’ websites and finding a dozen or so things that they could be doing better. Like, hey you need to have a blog so you can interact with your customers and you need to be building links to your site and you need to improve your layout so it’s more user friendly, and all sorts of other ideas for building up traffic–things that I’ve learned and implemented with my various web properties over the last few years. Well lo and behold, you can get paid to do that! It’s a natural fit for me.

My other job is more of an internship with a nonprofit in the DC area, where I’ll be working part-time for the next few months. That allows me to pursue one of my other passions in life, which is spreading the message of freedom; a brand evangelist for liberty if you will.

And don’t worry Nora, I plan to keep my entrepreneurial approach to life and work.