Day 146: I've Got People!

I'm not quite sure how to lead up to this story, but I'll give it my best...

Let's go back to the entrepreneurship thing, and how it has manifest itself in Atlanta Yoga Scene. Well, I created a little website for the idea and am constantly updating it with yoga events in the area, new studios, blogging topics I like, etc. It got me thinking--I need a master schedule of classes for all yoga studios in the area.

I started working on this one morning (I wake up at around 6:00 am every day to either run, blog, or work on AYS) and it took me almost two hours to get through five of the 50 Atlanta yoga studios. This was wholly unsustainable. I'd be at it for weeks if I did the whole thing by myself.

Enter "The Four-Hour Workweek." This book by Tim Ferriss essentially tells people how to come up with a brilliant product, strategically overprice it, market the bejeezus out of it, outsource all the work to virtual assistants and live a beautiful life raking in cash.

I haven't quite come up with my genius, life-altering product, but on Day 146,  I applied a nugget of that advice and I hired a virtual assistant to assemble the master schedule of yoga studios for AYS.

I'm actually really proud of this whole endeavor for a few of reasons.

1. I hired an American girl who is only a couple of years older than me, so I feel like I'm helping out a friend
2. I'm providing temporary, paid employment to someone! While I can't hire an army (nor would I need one), I can help one person stay busy and make a little cash. That feels good to me.
3. I'm delegating! One less thing to think about!
4. She has no idea what she's getting into, and only asked that I pay her $50 to do this. Since it took me two hours to do five studios, this will likely take her 20 hours to do the whole thing, which is sort of a rip-off. Okay, REALLY a rip-off. But if she's good, I'll hire her to do it again and again and again :)

You could say that I've got people now!

Day 132: I'm Officially Official!!

Kay, so it's time to fess up to my entrepreneurial venture. I started a website/blog called Atlanta Yoga Scene and it is awesome! It's a listing of all the yoga studios and teachers in Atlanta, all the events going on (of which there are tons), a blog, and an upcoming master schedule of classes.

Can you believe this didn't already exist?

I started a Twitter account and created a Facebook page a month ago (that already has 117 "likes"!) and within a month I've gotten a lot of really good response. When I first launched the page on Facebook a week ago, I got a swarm of emails saying "put my yoga studio up," "add my name as a teacher," and my favorite "come to my class!"

Well today, I got my very first FREE YOGA CLASS as a result of starting AYS!! I went to Ember Hot Yoga, which is a stunning new studio up in Woodstock. And I'm in love with it almost exclusively because it's my first free class (although, admittedly, I have a couple more coming up soon).

My little business is legit, and people want to work with me! And give me free stuff!!


I feel awesome.

Day 90: I'm Not Clever with Titles, So I'm Going to Call this "Wordpress"

The instruction guide was like, "You click once, and we read your mind and create the best, balling-est website you've ever seen!" I was sucked in pretty instantly, believing that it really would be one click and I'd have an amazing website on which to start my entrepreneurial adventure.

However, hundreds of thousands of clicks later between a website host that promised no support and a non-working Wordpress document, I was crying and pretty close to dropping my computer over my balcony. Seriously.

One click, my ass.

After realizing that I had irrevocably destroyed everything I sought to create, I scrapped it all, ate more of the cost of the host than I should have considering it said "Free two week trial!" and started all over on a different website. On Day 90, and only a couple clicks later, I figured our how to host and use Wordpress all by myself! I haven't started adding content yet, but I'm really, really super stoked about winning the war.

Day 79: Social Media Pro

On Day 79 I went to a PRSA Meeting on social media, in place of one of my colleagues, which was totally cool because I got Maggiano's food and lots of ideas. To those uninitiated, PRSA is the Public Relations Society of America and they're the professional organization for some of the work I do at my current job. You're bored already, I'll keep it short.

I swore that I wouldn't write too much, or really anything, about work stuff, but alas, it was a busy day where I couldn't find time for another New Thing, and dammit, I am actually really excited about this. I'm going to be using social media in all the right ways now to dominate the world with my new entrepreneurial venture (once it's fully formed and all). This meeting gave me the tools and the ideas and the strategy to engage people and have them fall in love with my business.

Oh, and I met a whole bunch of cool people and networked and yadda yadda, but really, I was excited about learning some new tips and tricks on social media.  

But seriously, watch out Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others. I'm coming for you--with a vengance.

Day 77: Entrepreneurial Excitement

(I feel pretty vulnerable writing this, so please be nice with your comments.)

I'm not as thrilled about life as I used to be. I've discovered that this whole American way of living isn't going to bring me the kind of enjoyment that I want out of life--especially now, while I'm young.

A story:
One of my co-workers recently came into work with this idea that she would stand up every hour and do something. When I asked her why she was doing this, she said it was because people who have desk jobs (like myself) have an 80% higher chance of diabetes and other life-threatening illnesses, even if they work out for an hour a day afterwards. Her approach was to stand up once an hour to combat this. My natural reaction was to think of any non-sedentary job in that I could do to get out from behind a desk.

It also made me think of all the other things I could do if I wasn't working at a desk. Some days, I come into work and my only task is to check my e-mail. After that, I have to stay at work for 8 hours and I just waste the day on the internet. I have literally wasted weeks of my life behind a desk.

What also frustrates me is that according to everything I've been taught about life and money, I need to save every stinking penny that I can so that when I'm 75, I can finally retire (or older, depending on how our economy pans out). Then, and only then, am I allowed to fully explore my passions, launch myself into my favorite hobby, travel how I want to, etc.

And until then, I work. I'll get two weeks a year of vacation, not nearly enough to travel in a way that makes my heart sing. I'll work hard for someone else's bottom-line profit in order to get more money in an attempt to whittle away years from that retirement date. I'll sit behind a desk, fully aware that it's detrimental to my health.

Maybe this is part of my quarter-life crisis and I'm just a rebellious youth looking for an alternative, that soon I'll accept this as just how life is, but right now this picture seams so bleak to me. This is not the way I want to live if I can help it.

To inspire me to break out of this, I've recently been reading blogs about lifestyle design and entrepreneurship. There are people who travel the world and make money off of website advertising, people who work at night when they are most productive and read their favorite books during the day, business consultants who work over Skype, and more. These blogs have allowed me to dream about things I could do to allow me to live a life I find meaningful.

On Day 77, I finally took action towards this goal and bought a whole slew of e-books about how to make money from entrepreneurial, freelance and online ventures. You can check it out here if you're interested.

Now, I'm not quitting my job just yet, nor am I throwing caution to the wind and investing thousands of dollars into products to sell or a website to maintain. I'm simply taking the first step on a path I find more attractive than the one I'm on. I may fail, in fact, I'll likely fail a couple of times before I get it right. But, at the end of the day, I'd rather fail a couple of times at something that will give me the opportunity to live the life I want, than be successful at keeping a job that enslaves me to a path that I don't want to be on.