Business Beyond Gambling

In one of the comments someone asked what I plan on doing now that I’m done with gambling. It’s a good question, and one that I don’t totally have the answer for.

I feel like I’m a little bit behind, since it hit me so fast. Normally I would prefer to have a solid new plan in place before stopping one business, but that’s not how it always works.

My approach has been to get involved in a lot of different ventures, and to let time sort out which are worth doing and which aren’t. Actually, this post is more for me than you guys, just so I can take stock of where I’m at.

• The Skinny Snob Diet Book : I wrote this book because of my excitement with eating healthy. It’s been selling for four months now, and is doing ok. I don’t make a lot of money with it, but it doesn’t take a lot of my time either. I think if I had a better sales page it could make a lot of money because the info is really good.
• Better Than Your Boyfriend : This site is definitely my favorite project that I’m working on. That’s very fortunate because the money I make isn’t close to justifying the time I spend. As I continue to experiment with different ways of making money with it (ads, the casino link, donations), I’m confident I can find a way of generating income without compromising the quality of the site.
• The TV Show : I’m working on a TV show with a friend in Boston (that’s where I’m originally from). Right now we are still developing the show, but my expectation and hope is that it will become my primary source of income at some point. Unfortunately I can’t really say much more about the show yet.
• Mentoring / Life Coaching : I recently took on someone to mentor in business. This is another project that I really enjoy being involved in. I’ve always enjoyed working with other people and helping them, so it’s a natural fit. I will probably soon consider taking on more clients with this.
• A Possible Web Business: I have two killer ideas for some online businesses. Unfortunately the technology is over my head, but I just met some very interesting and capable people here in Austin with experience in this sort of thing. I’m hoping they can give me some advice or possibly work with me on this one. If launched, I think it would be a huge moneymaker.

Well, it’s a start anyway. As you can see, my current position isn’t all that great, but there is a lot of room for expansion. My hope is that this site will grow like Steve Pavlina’s to the point of covering all my necessities, so that I can focus all my remaining energy and time on the TV show, mentoring, and the web businesses. I have good momentum, so I think it is going in that direction. My newest plan is to start targeting specific sites whose users I would probably like having here. Lifehacker.com is the next one, so I’m going to start writing some personal development articles with them in mind.

I think it will be really interesting to look back at this post in a year and be like, “Man… with all those plans, how did I ever become a male stripper?”