It’s time for thinking. It’s time for planning. It’s time to apply everything you have inside your cranium to the problem of how you’re going to free yourself from a job in which you’re working for someone else. Or worse, free yourself from the idea that social security or a pension is going to get you through your years.

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While the economy collapses around you and while the world economies are releasing depressing statistics constantly every time you turn on CNN… you need to be thinking.

Sometimes it takes hitting bottom before people take action. You might be there already. You might have been laid off from a job you thought was more secure than it was. You might be at the bottom right now or fear being at the bottom.

Fear spawns solutions.

It’s time to think a lot about how to extricate yourself from this mess – and come out on top.

If you haven’t noticed – the world has turned to online business. Whether you were part of it, or even awake or not – there’s a good portion of the world that is using the internet for business. There are billion dollar companies and much smaller hundred dollar a month companies doing business online. There are lots of happy people working for themselves. Personally I know hundreds. People have already made fortunes online… There are so many more to be made. Everyone in business online had to “learn something” to get where they are.

Many companies and individuals alike resisted the change to computers and online business. Traditional newspapers and magazines didn’t “get it”. They resisted. Reporters, photographers, videographers… they didn’t prepare themselves for the inevitable future by ramping up their online skills & computer skills. There are whole populations of these workers that are now floundering over what to do.

Eventually they’re going to come to the same conclusion everyone MUST… Time to go back to ‘school’.

Learning is the answer to all of this.

If you’re in a situation where you don’t know what to do about the future. You’re afraid of the future. The answer is just that - learning. You need to learn something that will take you above the mess.

Everyday I interact with some of the top bloggers on the planet. You know what? Nobody is talking about how bad the economy is unless they’re writing articles to the general public that is concerned about it.

We’re not.

Why is that? How can we not be concerned?

It’s not really affecting us. We work at home on our computers. We have teams of people also self-employed that handle niche areas of the process that we know can do better than we ever could.

We don’t drive to work. We don’t worry about gas. We don’t have to deal with co-workers’ bad attitudes. We don’t need to worry about overhead – we’re living in the same house we must live in anyway. We don’t worry about office furniture, heating, A/C, electric costs… health benefits… etc. We’re independent consultants. We never worry about getting fired.

Because of this recession, income for those of us who make a living online has not dropped very much at all.

Our entire business. Our entire income – relies only on us and what we’re doing everyday. Do right – we’ll be OK. Do wrong – eventually it all goes away.

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I don’t know anyone that’s screwing off so much that it’s all going to go away. When you’re running your own show there’s a responsibility that FEELS good. Yeah, responsibility that makes you proud. It’s only you running the show. You’re responsible for everything positive and negative that happens in the game. Drop the ball too many times – you’re meat. Run with the ball everyday and you’re going to set personal records all the time.

So – there are two keys… One is e-business. One is learning.

Getting your butt in the e-business game as soon as possible is the most important thing you can do at this point in time.

At ANY point in time.

I jumped in 12 years ago when I threw away my master’s in psychology to start out as a computer technician troubleshooting operating system, hardware and network errors. I knew VERY little – but was able to get an entry level job with a temp place making $11 per hour. After 3 months I had learned enough that I got a position as a break/fix technician with Entex – a huge corporation that had  a contract with GTE phones in town. Salary: $17 per hour.

Over the next couple years I learned everything I possibly could about computers, networks, and most importantly – building websites and search engine optimization (SEO). Salary: $23 per hour.

I knew then, like I’ve known since I graduated high school and went to the Air Force as an enlisted Airman. Learning gets me where I want to be. Learning can change my world faster and more completely than anything else I could possibly do. Learning takes me higher up the ladder. There is no top of the ladder… only more ladders branching off the ladder I’m on.

Google was just getting going at this time. I was making OK money fixing computers and network issues with Entex. However, I was really interested in web development and the SEO area. I wanted to work for myself and have someone pay me $30-50 per hour like I saw others doing.

I saw a job in the newspaper… Entry level SEO / Webmaster. Pay: $25,000 per year + bonuses.

I was making almost $50K per year, but I realized – if I have 40 hours a week to work on SEO with this company I’m going to learn a hell of a lot. I’ll be surrounded by 15 people that are focused on creating and selling e-learning products they create right there in their studio.

The bonuses were awesome if I could reach them. Basically I needed to rebuild the company’s 5 websites and get pages from them ranked in Google, Infoseek, Excite, AOL, Yahoo, and other search engines in the top 1-10 positions in the search results based on keywords – very competitive keywords that every company selling Microsoft, Cisco, A+ training wanted to be number one in Google for.

I took the job.

I learned more in that first 6 months about web development and SEO than I could have in 5 years of college courses. Why? I lived and breathed the new game.

It was hands on, experiential work that taught me thousands of things that have served me well for 10 years now. I could say that those 6 months of learning were the most important of my life because I’ve made a lot of money as a result of those skills.

My pay by the time I left that company to do SEO / Web. Dev. on my own in 2001? $84,000 per year plus income from all the other online projects I was doing on my own.

From that point on I’ve done web development and SEO projects for a number of companies as well as created my own companies, projects, e-products.

Today? Same. I’ve kept up to date with the changes online and I’m learning them as they come.

The same opportunity is there for you today… learning is out there for in many forms now.

E-learning is, in my mind – the most amazing way to learn and give yourself the necessary skills to get into a new game where you’re not relying on working 40-50 hours for “the man”.

You create the new game. You make it what you want to make it.

If you’re sitting there in your house and the world is falling down around you – if you’re not sure what to do… I’m sure for you.

Learning, and in particular, E-learning is the answer.

Learn something new. Get interested in some area that you can bring online. Maybe it’s writing. Maybe it’s doing podcasts (audio files) of you reading someone else’s awesome content they’ve already written. Maybe it’s editing digital photos you’ve taken in a creative way and selling posters. Maybe it’s you figuring out how to use a $99 mind mapping software that you can apply to a field you know well and selling 4′x6′ posters of your creation.

Maybe you’re really interested in PPC (pay per click) and you master the Google Adwords PPC system. It takes you 1 year to do it – but, afterward you’re making $50K per year as a PPC consultant, working for whatever company you choose.

Maybe you get interested in Camtasia Studio 6 and go on to learn everything about that amazing program. In 3 months you’re making $30K as a consultant. In 1 year you’re making $80K because experts are very much in demand.

There is something for you in this internet-fueled world.

You’ve gotta find out what it is.

What is it that you can wake up every morning and DO?

Once you find out what it is you’ve got to learn as much as possible about it. You MUST get away from working for someone else. You’ve already seen that it’s a LIE – it is NOT MORE safe than working for yourself.

E-learning is the key to getting you at a point where you’re self-reliant.

E-learning courses are affordable and usually put you in touch – email touch with experts you’re paying for the course that are indebted to you – they’ll help you with whatever questions you have if you ask for advice. Access to experts that are already successful is key to your success. Ask them everything you can… continually. Keep in touch. Use them as a resource forever – you paid to use their e-learning program – they need to help you… you’re a customer for life!

You didn’t buy anything from me – but I’m going to offer my help if you need to run something by someone and you don’t know how to go about it. Maybe you need an opinion or to be pointed in the right direction. I’m good at that. I’ve told companies making 30 million per year what to do online – I can give you a good idea. I don’t have all the answers but I usually know where to point you if I don’t.

Email me and ask me anything related to e-business or e-marketing… or anything remotely close to it and I’ll help in whatever way I can. Please don’t ask SEO questions because I’d never have time to answer those. Besides, I get paid for that knowledge… ;)

Best of Life!

Vern
Hawaii seems to be the prime location for elearning companies, and yet I’ve found very few. Why is that?

(Photo: Flickr Creative Commons by user: lisandro moises enrique.)

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2. Swapping Skills to Keep Learning