Me? Featured on Rockstar Finance?!

Thursday was a ridiculously awesome day at the Self Employed Movement.

I remember it like it was yesterday because, well, it basically was. My alarm rang for me to get out of bed. I usually snooze at least 5 times before I get up. I’m definitely not a morning person and my beautiful fiancГ©e can attest to that.

I decided to quickly check my emails and my WordPress app for anything good. I opened the WordPress app, and it was goooooooood! Really, really good. I had something like 50 views which was basically half the views I got on average for an entire day until this point. The majority of those came from a referrer called rockstarfinance.com. I’ve never heard about the site before but I definitely know all about it now! I have no idea how I got on there and on their front page but if you had something to do with it, please let me know and I’ll buy you a beer. Ehhh…..make that a 12-pack!

My view count has literally more than doubled in two days.В I had 1,151 views in the 12 days prior and my view count of the Self Employed Movement is now at 2,738 views. Holy. Shit.

A huge thank you to every single one of you who have supported the Self Employed Movement! Whether you came across it through Rockstar Finance, you found me on Twitter, (@SelfMployedMvmt,) you’ve put up with the random notifications on my Tumblr that a new post is up, or you’re crazy enough to follow the blog via email or WordPress, thank you so, so much. I can’t put into words what your support has done for me. I get chills; the good kind, when I get great feedback that I’m doing something that makes a difference in the lives of others.

This is a good follow-up to other posts that I’ve written: “I’m Not Shit if You Don’t Know Me” and “Focus on What Makes You Awesome.”

If I never listened to my fiancГ©e and never published my posts, who knows if I would have gotten this opportunity? If I stuck to the original plan to publish a post a week but not publish anything until I had 6 months’ worth in reserve, who knows if I would have gotten the publicity so early on in the Self Employed Movement’s existence?

If I wasted my time and effort into make a sweet Facebook page, who knows if I would have had the time and energy to write the now famous (to me at least) post “58 Ways to Keep Yourself Miserable?”

I also must admit, I didn’t think that post was one of my better posts. But guess what? That’s not for me to decide. It’s up to my fans to decide and if they think its Rockstar Finance-worthy, then dammit, it is! The point is, don’t be afraid to put your product or your idea out there for others to come across. Heck yeah it’s scary! Its scary putting a piece of you (your product, your writing, your whatever) out there for others to judge and critique, but that’s where the magic happens! That’s where your dreams and your goals (of being self-employed) can come true!

My one hope is that my “success” inspires you to take action. If a dude who’s failed more than you’ve even tried, almost doubted himself to the point of giving up, and has no previous “professional” writing experience or education can achieve something like this, just imagine what you can do?

You owe it to yourself to stop putting things on hold. Yes, I know, something always comes up, but you’ll figure it out if you want it bad enough. I’ll be facing something similar which I’ll share in an upcoming post.

I wanted to become a professional soccer player and I damn near did it! My dad wanted to start a business and we ran it for 4 years. I wanted to start this blog and I did it. We’re normal fuckin’ people. We’re immigrants. My parents moved to the United States with nothing. No connections. No money. No internet. No Google.

There’s so much opportunity out there and so many resources that it’s overwhelming. But you just gotta start with what you have!

We didn’t need anyone’s permission. We didn’t need anyone’s advice. We just put our heads down and we got started. If I didn’t know something, I read about it. If I couldn’t read about it, I sought out someone who knew more than I did.

But you know what we had? The courage to actually pursue our dreams. Everyone said we couldn’t do it and had their doubts but we tried it and we did it. We had the humility to know that we’ll probably fail but we found that out on our own terms. We learned from those failures and that’s the best kind of education we could have ever gotten. We achieved something incredible. We won’t go through life wondering “what if?”

Needless to say, I didn’t hit the snooze button once that morning! You owe it to yourself to stop hitting the snooze button on your idea.