The BOLD & DETERMINED 145th Post Extravaganza!!
Holy Shit Let’s Party!!
It’s the start of the new year and dammit I’m pumped. 2011 is over. Good goddamn riddance. The past is the past and it’s time for the new and the now.
In this post I’m gonna go wild n krazy and just talk some bullshit with you, go over my trilogy plan for BOLD & DETERMINED (but not too much), throw some pics in, maybe throw some links in to cool blogs, and maybe one or two other things.
The Background of BOLD & DETERMINED
I started BOLD & DETERMINED because I had a some things to say. I figured if people wanted to hear what I had to say then they would find my blog. For an entire year I simply wrote what I wanted to write. I knew next to nothing about blogging or the technical side and I didn’t bother to educate myself. I did zero advertising of the blog, I did zero SEO work for the blog, I left zero comments on other blogs. I just wrote what I wanted and steadily, as people who needed to find the blog found it, the readership began to grow and increase.
The obvious downside to that method is that I did not take the blog seriously. If I had nothing to say, or felt lazy, then I just simply wouldn’t post. I was also quite lazy about the backend side of blogging that you, as the reader, don’t likely know much about but is highly critical for the functionality, look and feel of the blog. When I did some work on the look of the blog and changed it to a much better look and feel is when productivity on this blog really started to sky-rocket (which was, perhaps un-coincidentally, right at the time of this blog post).
Old School BOLD & DETERMINED Theme
The End of the Beginning
The last three months have really been a whirlwind of traffic. When I look at the readership of the blog compared to 6 months ago, 3 months ago, or even 1 month ago, I often let out a “HOLY SHIT!“. The readership is big enough to turn to phase 2, the sequel, of BOLD & DETERMINED. This year. This year’s post will be of much higher quality than all of last years posts and there will be, conservatively, double the posts.
The trilogy and final act of BOLD & DETERMINED will come in 2013.
Regular readers know of the ruckus about The Hollywood Physique
There will be a post coming soon about this. You can wait for that post to make a comment about it.
A Message for the Real Dealers
So there is no confusion: I now view this blog as business and not just art.
What does that mean for you?
Better, and more, free content to read.
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I was sitting in a coffee shop a couple weeks ago, smoking a cigar and staring out the window. I was working on a piece for the blog and it hit me like a ton of bricks: I’m working for free. It struck me right then and there that I have only two options for the future of the blog: Go full throttle or delete it all and watch it burn. I have chosen to go full throttle. And you’re going to be able to read all about it.
I’ve got some informative posts about making a dollar and a cent online coming soon. Some of you killers looking to make some money online may be very interested to read about it.
Now, some of the readers expressed a disinterest in me earning money for my valuable time that I spend here on BOLD & DETERMINED. At this time I would kindly and warmly like to invite those readers to click on the “X” in the upper right hand screen of their browser.
Odds and Ends
My Favorite Posts:
My real deal favorite posts are the ones that get me fired up for the gym.
Those are the fun posts. I goddamn love to pump iron. All the other stuff I write about is work.
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Here are some blogs I dig:
In Bona Fide - A blog that only links to other blog posts. I dig this site for two reasons: A) You can always find some cool posts you would have never otherwise seen and B) Ferdinand Bardamu sends me traffic from here. Be careful though, you can spend all damn day going through the archives.
Sovereign Man - “There are two ways to sleep well at night.. Be ignorant or be prepared“.
Leangains - Intermittent Fasting for Fat Loss. The holy grail blog of Intermittent Fasting.
Grerp - I’m gonna throw you guys a curveball and send you to the only female written blog I read. If you ever want to get married I would highly suggest giving grerp a read. If you feel like something is “off” or missing in your relationships grerp may just open your eyes a little.
Smart Passive Income - Pretty good stuff for the aspiring internet entrepreneurs.
Leave some comment feedback:
I’m gonna toss a “Favorites” link in the sidebar for all the best-of posts, so the new readers can get up to speed. Leave a comment or send me an e-mail and tell me what posts you think I should put there.
If there’s something you want to read more about, let me know via comments or e-mail. I know a lot of you guys are interested in the dating thing (i.e. The Gentleman’s Guide to Modern American Dating), a lot of you guys are into the blogging thing, a whole truckload of you are into the weights but let me know what are you most interested in.
Or just stop by and say hi.
And for you other real dealers I have some good stuff coming your way this month and this year. In particular, I know there’s a hell of a lot of regular readers who don’t comment but who are looking for some more of that brand of kick ass that BOLD & DETERMINED provides. I got you covered, boys. And I’m the same way, I have left maybe 5 comments on blogs in my entire life.
Until Monday..
Keep Killin’ and Real Dealin’
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Related posts:
Nick
I found this site a while back looking for information on Sparta and warrior food- Ding, Ding, Ding! Guess what came up? Yeah- Precincts of Pain, which I think of more like “Precincts of POWER”! Keep it up Bro, I’m right along side you. Appreciate all the work you have put into this, you have my Respect.
John,
ty for the compliment. Precincts of Power, I like that…
VP,
Good to see you are finally thinking about doing business on this blog and still want to do art too! Look forward to more posts!
Even though I just had a little rant against Internet Marketing on your other blog post, I’m damn glad to hear you’re going ahead full throttle and believe you should make as much money as possible with this blog because it is damn good. Just don’t sell out and start bullshitting like so many other bloggers.
Russ,
You can rest assured that BOLD & DETERMINED will not become an affiliate marketers page. I will be doing some of it, and I will be showing the guys out there how to do it and make a dollar and a cent. IM is a low ambition way to get out of the 9-5 jive and get on your way to building a real sustainable business. I do not believe IM is sustainable but it’s a step in the right direction. It most certainly should not be your lifes work.
Marketing (selling, really) is sustainable for as long as you add value to the company’s sales funnel and as long as the company can serve customers. Because IM is inherently influenced by technology it is unsustainable to hold on to a particular market position, it’s easy to lose the first mover advantage as the industry changes and matures. Just look at how mobile phone marketing is changing in tandem with the internet side. The only certain thing is that it will get harder to operate as a small business over time.
On the larger view, every single market in the world is unsustainable excluding some substance agricultural countries. We’ve leveraged ourselves with debt between 20-60 times beyond our actual capital. We sell bonds for our debt and then use the same institutions to buy them back. Most developed countries are committing financial fraud on a level that people cannot grasp.
We can’t simply go back either, I’m not laying down for another dark age.
See my comments on these two blogposts for more on how developing technology is giving us more options (nearly every blogger except John Robb is behind the curve on this):
http://hereticsway.gluontheferengi.com/2011/12/17/the-future-of-money-does-money-have-a-future/
http://hereticsway.gluontheferengi.com/2011/12/22/shelters-from-planned-obsolescence/
Eric,
Excellent comment.
Checked out Leangains, read everything on there…started IF yesterday. I’m pretty pumped to make the switch!
Jeff,
I’ve been doing it for a year. I love it.
IF update: it’s only been a week, but I’m like the energizer bunny from 4am-10am, which is new for me. I was already fairly lean, but I had to begin using the next notch on my belt to keep my pants up! Muscles feeling harder and stronger than ever (I also increased the rest time between sets on compound strength movements). I can’t see myself ever going back to eating breakfast.
Hey Jeff.. Started IF thanks to Vic’s references to Leangains too. When you say 4am to 10am, is that your workout time and you go on to end the fasting at about 8am for 8 hours?
Curious because I’m doing IF with fasted training.
Chris, here’s what I’m doing:
wake up - 4am
work/marketing - 5:30am-3pm
workout - 3:30pm-4:30pm
eating window - 10am-6pm, 2 large meals mostly meat & eggs
Found this site via Tried and True Fitness. Great posts here….should be required reading for kids looking to start training. Keep it up
Chris,
Will do, and ty for the compliment.