Coach Kip

What an interesting experiment. I had a great time doing so and it has been a complete eye opener to me. Here is what has happened.

After reading all the get rich quick, and make money now posts on the Internet I decided to see if it was real or not. I decided to see if it really was possible to make money quickly on line. So I set a goal. A big goal (at least to me). I decided to see if I could make $10,000 in about 4 months. This seems very possible if you read the Internet gurus, and the blogs about people who have done so.

I would not get rich, but it would prove that it could be done. I like money, and I thought that money would help us out a lot. But things change.

I was trying to do this while I was working two full time jobs. I am currently an Algebra I teacher in a Metro School in Nashville, TN. I was an Assistant Varsity Football coach who coached the Receivers in a Spread Offense, and the Outside Linebackers in a 3-3 Stack Defense. I also played a very significant role on Saturdays in planning for our opponent for the next week. For those of you in the know Receivers in a Spread Offense are a very key component. We threw for over 2,000 yards this season. Outside Linebackers (Bandits, Rovers, each defense has a different term) are a very important position on the defense.

I worked from 6:30am to 2:00 pm on academic related issues and from 2:30 to 6:30 on football issues. I woke up in the morning at 5:30am and went to bed at 9:30 pm.

So here is my time breakdown:

• 8 hours of sleep
• 7 ½ hours of academic time
• 4 hours of football time (7 hours on Saturday morning)
• 19 ½ hours dedicated to time that I could not work on the business. I really thought I could do some things while I was at school and my students were working on things. I forgot that I cared about my students and most of that time is taken up answering questions and solving 9th grade crisis’s.
• 4 ½ hours is all I had left to work on the business, eat dinner, try to stay fit (not working out too well), spend time with my wife, and be social.

So things change.

I recently spoke with the rest of the coaching staff and informed them that I will not be coming back next year. That alone frees up 4 hours a day and 7 hours on Saturday.

One of the best changes that happened is that I have a completely different view on what I want to accomplish. I no longer am tied to money. I no longer pray to the money god for guidance, a new house, and a brand new car. Those things were not the motivating factor in me becoming an independent business owner, and working from home. TIME! Time was the factor. In trying to do what I was doing the biggest thing I found was that I had no time.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved coaching. And I will coach again. I just plan on taking a year off to set up some income streams. I like teaching. But I do not see me going back in the classroom for a while. I am going to do some personal coaching and that will keep me connected with students, and able to still teach. I love getting on the Internet and developing businesses and business ideas. What I had a hard time doing was following through with those plans. I had a very difficult time staying focused on things. To me coming up with a plan is the easy part. Executing is not hard either. What I have a difficult time with is finishing.

Let me relate it to coaching. I love coming up with the game plan. I love coaching during the week. I love Friday nights under the lights. There is nothing better on earth. For those of you who have not been to a high school football game lately you should go next year. Just sit and enjoy it. They are great. The best part of Americana. Ok back on track.

Games are not the end point to me. The Championship is. The championship is the end of the season. Games individually are great but they are just one step closer to the end. The championship. In all my high school career, playing and coaching, I have always made the playoffs. It is great, and I am very greatfull for that. But we always got beat. Actually in all my high school career I have always lost to a team that made it to the finals.

I never got to finish a season. I never got to the end. I always was stopped. I don’t think that I am sabbatogeing myself toward my goal. I think that I desperately want to find the end. I desperately want to get to the end.

What is the end? The end for me is having a steady income stream that is passive. Something that I do not have to put a lot of time into to keep going. Something that will give me time. TIME TIME TIME! I like doing things. I do not like working. So I need to have something that will give me time.

Step back for just a minute.

My stats up until now are as follows:

9/9/2007 Begin $0.00
11/16/2007 Previous $345.17
12/7/2007 Gross $105.66
12/7/2007 Expenses ($49.92)
12/7/2007 Net $400.91

Which is pretty good considering I have done virtually no marketing other than social marketing.

If you look back at the stats, when I was primarily doing marketing I was making about $100 a week with just two products. I think that it is very plausible to make $1000 a week on ten products. But I decided that is not the direction that I wanted to go. Expenses were about ½ to ¾ of the profits. This still leaves you with a good income. But it takes a lot of time to keep up with them. It takes time to write the ads, and make sure that the keywords are still active. Google and Yahoo frequently change the price of keywords so it is a constant battle of changing keywords and bids to keep profits as high as possible. So I stopped doing that. It was too much work for to little profit.

What I have done is this:

• I have collaborated on two ebooks.
  I have updated and revised the 3-3 Stack Defense on EZ Playbook.
  I have written a book for Professor Moolah that is awaiting approval from Clickbank for marketing and sales.
• I have done a lot of back end work on Professor Moolah to get it set up for a complete learning and teaching site.
• I have in the works a complete redesign of EZ Playbook that will launch in February of 2008. This will add many interactive functions to the site and develop it into a social site for coaches, players, and fans. There is a lot of back end work being done so that the site can develop and grow in the future.
• I have done a complete custom WordPress design for http://www.trekkingaround.com and have begun the launch of the site. To do these things right it takes a lot of time.

So what is Trekking Around? It is me and my wife’s site about traveling. More specifically it is about us taking a year off and getting a boat to travel the Great Loop. A tour that will start in Nashville, TN this spring. We will travel up the Mississippi and cross over into Lake Michigan. We will go around the Great Lakes and end up in the Atlantic on the Easter Seaboard. From there we will travel down to the Bahamas or the Caribbean for Christmas and then we will either end up traveling back up to New York, or we will travel back to Nashville. That all depends on the next adventure.

As we travel we will promote Green living and run our Diesel engines on Biofuel. We are currently contacting boat manufacturers to find a live aboard that we can use in promotion and travel. We will use the boat to test the viability of Biofuel in a pleasure cruiser, and we will promote the manufacturer along our route by hosting open boat tours for people who are interested in boating, and doing so with low environmental impact.

We are far from hippies, and we are not into Greenpeace. We simply live in the environment and like it. So why not find ways that are inexpensive and low impact? We will be answering that question.

Plug plug – if you are interested in helping or sponsorship you can contact us directly at sponsor@trekkingaround.com until the site is fully up and running. Until then we hope to hear from you soon – end plug

Whew! I have done a lot. Nothing that will get me $10,000 by December 31st, but I have done a lot that will get me an income stream that will allow me to take a year to study environmentally low impact boat travel, and put my life on track for independent living in the future.

And I am Happy!

Conceive It, Believe It, Achieve It.

Coach Kip

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Personal update

Well it is playoff time. I wrote on my blog on EZ Playbook how great it is to still be playing in November. For those of you who are new subscribers to fill you in, I am a coach. A real coach, I currently coach High School football in Tennessee. And since it is playoff time I really am limited in my time to do much else. That and since I have to be a teacher in order to be a coach I have to do some teaching things too. This week we have to give out progress reports. Basically I would love to devote more time to you, but for the next 4-5 weeks I will be limited.

A few updates of my plans. I will be developing a coaching and teaching system through Professor Moolah. The ebook that we have been working on is ready to do, we just need to finish some marketing and we will be off and running. It is a book that helps professionals get online and shows them how blogging can help their business by increased exposure. It should be very helpful and really anyone can do it.

Back to the coaching and teaching plans. I of course am the coaching part and teaching part of Professor Moolah. I am developing two courses. One with Professor Moolah that will use webinars and group teaching to help professionals with their business online. The second is to do some personal coaching and life development though this site. I have found that I have become an expert in personal development, and getting the most out of people. I do not necessarily know all the X’s and O’s of football, but I know how to get my players to do what I need them to do, and what the team needs them to do. Through the suggestion of friends and family I have decided to do some limited one-on-one coaching and teaching.

I will specialize in Youth and College aged people and developing new thinking in the Information Age, but I will also accept adults who are interested in progressing their thought patterns and personal change with the new technology and new developments in making money. Translated that means there is a lot of opportunity for people who are willing to learn and change their thought patterns just a little bit to catch up with the changes in technology and availability of information.

Lastly I think that we have found our boat. It is an old Navy Cruiser converted into a live aboard vessel. It is very exciting for us but we don’t want to yet revel any details. One of the things that we have talked about in living on our boat is the fact that we will need to reduce, live simply, and live green. I would love to convert the diesel engine of our boat to include Bio-Fuel and see how cleanly we can travel.

Part 3 of Personal Aspirations will be coming soon. Stay tuned

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote that my wife and I where thinking of buying a boat and living on it.

Well we have decided what we are going to do. Coach Kip and his wife have decided to take a year long trip living solely on a boat. We are going to sell our townhouse, our cars, and most everything else that we don’t need and buy a Trawler.

A trawler is a boat that is similar to a house boat but made for traveling in larger open water. A trawler usually has at least one stateroom a kitchen or galley, and a living area. We are looking for a boat that is in the 45-65 foot range (yes we do know that is a large range in boat speak), and a cost of about $65,000 to $85,000.

It does seem very inexpensive for a boat that size but looking on different boat selling sites such as boats.com and boattraderonline.com it is certainly possible to get a boat in that size and that price range. That is very exciting for us.

Now there are just two questions that remain. When do we leave and how do we make enough money to do this?

I think that the most popular question we are going to get is “how do you have enough money to take a year off and sail a boat around?” Well you don’t have to have enough money saved up to sail for an entire year. You just need to make enough money while living on the boat to sustain your life on it. In other words you have to have to make enough money in a way that is location independent to be able to live on a boat.

How is this done? Well the first thing that we have found is that you have to get your mind right. You have to begin to think the right thoughts.

• You have to be able to visualize, and be able to see yourself doing what it is that you want to do.
• You have to be able to believe in what you want.
• You have to know exactly what it is that you are going to get, and know with all your heart, your body and your soul that you are going to get it.

We will live on a boat beginning next summer and we will travel freely to where ever we want.

Check for updates soon, and another blog with me and my wife that is devoted just to our adventure.

Conceive It, Believe It, Achieve It

Coach Kip

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I love the water, and I love travel. We plan on traveling abroad but we are ready to start a family. So there are all kinds of conflicts.

This weekend we were walking along a harbor on the Cumberland River and we found some houseboats. On a whim I said to Mrs. Kip “Why don’t we get one of these and live on it”. Well I have always wanted an RV and just travel the country, not caring where we stop. Since I love the water then living on a boat would be just as good, probably better.

Well guess what. Not only did she say yes, she is excited, and she wants to do it today! Well it won’t happen today, but we will be doing it soon. There are a few things that I need to take care of with the business, I need to establish a few income streams, but living on a boat will be the perfect solution to what we want to do. Now what kind of boat do we want to get.

Houseboats

These are the obvious, and the easiest to do. The offer the most affordable solution with the largest living area. Now I do not know everything about boating, heck I hardly know anything about boating. But I do know that a houseboat will only work on very calm water. You simply can’t take it out on a body of water with waves more than 1-2 feet.

Cruisers

I would rather have a sailboat, but to travel the rivers of the US a sailboat is out, so we need power. A cruiser will give us the space we need to live, and the ability to take it anywhere. Whether it is the Inter-Coastal Waterway, the US river system, or the Great Lakes, these are the best solution. So this is what we will probably decide on, but they are quite a bit smaller than a houseboat, and more expensive.

So what are we to do? Well we have a long way to go before we decide. There will be some interesting conversations in Coaches house, and nothing will be decided until the end of the football season, but we are going to do this, it will be great!

Coach Kip

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There are a few things that I want to accomplish personally in my journey of life. What I am currently working on is getting myself into the habit of reducing what I use (the whole reduce, recycle, reuse and I think that reduce is the most important). I am a former pack-rat and I am trying to rehabilitate myself

This weekend was the first experiment in Vagabonding, my new passion. Vagabonding basically is exploring your surroundings in a very non evasive low impact way. A lot of walking, a lot of bargaining, basically getting into your settings, and just having fun.

Orange Beach, Alabama, USA -
I have already been to many many places, which I will eventually get into, but this was one of the most fun, most beautiful, hot, and best travel spots I have been to.

The beaches were clean and sandy, almost no rocks at all. The atmosphere was very fun, and laid back, and as close to a Jimmy Buffett song as I can imagine. We visited a few hot spots sat on the beach a lot, watched feeding time at Alligator Alley, and packed it all into three nights and three days (I wont count the first day since we pretty much got there and fell asleep.

Total cost $348 (all included)

Total time - Late Thursday night until Sunday morning.

Travel - Two people, Ford Explorer from Nashville Tennessee, Approximately 6 1/2 hours of driving

How? We stayed at the Gulf Shores State park. A great state park across the main street from the beach. It was hot, but not terribly bad, there was little shade so I would bring some shade with you in the form of a canopy. We brought most of our food from home in a single cooler. I don’t know about you but when it is hot and I am on vacation I really don’t need a whole lot to eat. We had some packaged meat, fruit, energy bars, and some meat to grill. We took along the Coleman Road Trip Party Grill for cooking.
It is not like we never went out to eat. We went to the Flori-Bama grill and oyster bar. Great time, if you have not heard of it you need to go there and check it out. We also went to Tacky Jacks on the Bayou. A great and not overly expensive place. Finally we went to Lamberts Cafe. Still kept it under $400 for the weekend.
Most of our activities did not cost money. We spend a lot of time walking the beaches, and exploring Orange Beach by car. We would stop at a harbor and just walk around.

Clothes - Two swim trunks, two shorts, three t-shirts, one nice polo, three pair underwear, two pairs of socks, pair of athletic shoes, pair of sandals, one beach towel, one bath towel.

One Bag for miscellaneous items (flashlight, bug spray, sun screen, etc).

That is it. With a little research and planning you can pack easily for where you are going. We knew that we did not need anything special for going out, it was clearly a beach and harbor town, we knew that we would spend a lot of time on the beach (no need for a lot of pairs of underwear or t-shirts or socks). We did not need a lot of toys.

Simplicity is everything. It is much more enjoying to have a nice calm weekend, exploring and becoming one with the area. That is what Vagabonding is about.

Now don’t get me wrong. I looked into getting a hotel or a condo for the weekend. It just did not work out, and in the end camping seemed like it would be more enjoyable and it was. We spent no time in an air conditioned room watching tv. We spent morning, noon, and night on the beach, at a bar, in the ocean, or walking along a trail. It was simply the best way to spend the time.

So I am now rambling. The moral is this. It is time for us to reduce. There is no need for extra stuff, no need for luxuries, no need to spend extra money and time doing what is not important. What is important is having a nice simple vacation, under nice simple conditions enjoying what we are there for, the beach, the parties, the atmosphere. Not getting a condo or a hotel made us completely comfortable spending all our time out side. It let us explore the land, not the resort, and let us get out of it what we needed, a chance to unplug, unwind, and get ready for the next part, for me Coaching football, for Karen Teaching School, also to get focused on a strong push to get my business going, and in full momentum. If it was a time to have fun and go to a resort, we would go to a resort, but we wanted to go to the ocean and have fun, and it was a Vagabonding experience.

Conceive It, Believe It, Achieve It

Coach Kip

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