One of the games I started playing is Zynga’s CityVille. Everyone’s heard of FarmVille, and as far as I know, this is basically the same game, but it’s based on building a city instead of a farm. The game really is just Sim City, with some social networking stuff built in.

I used to make fun of all those people who were addicted to those games, so when I found myself going down that road, I got a little embarrassed. That didn’t stop me from playing though… using Facebook’s privacy settings, I was able to hide my addiction from most of my friends. Only a select few fellow CityVille players would get to see my requests.

However, after playing for some time, you reach a point where you can’t really proceed any further unless you either a) annoy the shit out of your friends with messages and requests or b) pay money. Once I got to that point, I figured I had reached my limit, and I slowly stopped caring about my city. Eventually the daily emails and requests stopped, and I haven’t even checked it out in months.

My experiment is over, and I realized a few things. It’s easy to get sucked into something as innocent as CityVille, and I finally understand how some people get addicted to these sorts of games. It’s an easy game to play, and you can pick it up and play for as little as a few minutes a week, or you can get right into it and play for hours a day.

He met his goal of being #1 on Amazon in several relevant categories (Business & Investing, Web Marketing, etc), and I saw his rank go as high as #48 overall in all books.

I think he achieved this success because he spent a lot of time marketing and connecting with people during his pre-launch. He also has a decent fanbase, and many people were in his corner helping him out to ensure launch day was a big success.

I’m not sure exactly how many copies were sold (or if Brad will release those details…), but I’m sure everyone would consider this a very successful launch, especially for his first “real” book. Also, he did it all himself. The book is self-published through CreateSpace, so he didn’t have the backing of a big publisher to help with advertising and promotions. This just goes to show how creative and effective Brad is at self-marketing and branding.

Congratulations, Brad on a successful book launch! If you haven’t picked up your copy yet, you definitely should.

As mentioned previously, Brad Gosse was nice enough to give my brother and I an advance copy of his new book Chronic Marketer, which comes out today.

I had a chance to read this book last week, and I have to say I enjoyed it. Brad’s writing style is very conversational… he doesn’t try to impress you with fancy words or complicated concepts, it’s more like he’s just talking to you, telling stories and offering insights. His no-nonsense approach is refreshing to read. It’s very informal and open, and he lays out his ideas in a straightforward manner, cutting through the bullshit. There’s ample discussion of his marijuana use, he talks about his work in the porn industry, the fact that he’s a proud yet productive stoner, and he isn’t afraid to toss out swear words to get his point across.

That’s really what the book is about – his story. How he got started, his approach to business, life and the world in general. It’s part biography, part how-to, and there are many things you can learn from a guy like Brad Gosse. He talks about how he got started (dropping out of school, working for his dad, etc), his beginnings in the porn industry, and how he got to where he is today.

Some of my favourite lessons from the book include:

• Asserting your value – making people pay you for your time and efforts
• Commanding respect – making people realize your worth
• Getting what you want out of life – how to change the rules to work to your advantage
• Intangible products – what they are, and how they can generate passive income
• Developing the right mindset – overcome fears, ignore negativity, and focus on success

Overall, the book is an interesting read, and well worth the $10. The book is as entertaining as it is both educational and inspiring. Chronic Marketer launches today, so pick up your copy and enjoy!

I decided to give it another go, and this time around it seemed to work a lot better. The slowness and errors were almost non-existent, and my overall website experience was considerably better. I guess I was a bit harsh on my other post…

However, it doesn’t really change my attitude on LinkedIn. I still think it’s mostly a waste of time, and I don’t see any reason why anyone would ever pay to use it. I’m not going to delete my profile quite yet. I’m going to stick around and see if there’s anything of value for me before I do something so drastic.

In the past month or so, I’ve been getting emails from LinkedIn, telling me I have “invitations” from people I might know. So I logged back in to LinkedIn, attempted to update my profile, attempted to accept a few requests, and then gave up on the whole thing.

LinkedIn is complete shit as far as websites go. Page loads are incredibly slow, everything is unresponsive, and I got about 20 of these in my first five minutes:

There was an error processing my request? Well shit. Clicking a link isn’t a complicated request, so I don’t understand what the problem is. I tried two different computers on two different ISPs… IE, Firefox, Chrome… nothing mattered – it sucked every which way.

Overall, I’m very unimpressed with LinkedIn, and I can’t imagine anyone would actually PAY to use a site this bad. Maybe on a good day, things work well and you can connect with colleagues and find jobs and all that amazing stuff. But based on my experience, I’m LinkedOUT.

My brother is on Brad Gosse‘s mailing list, and that’s where we heard about the event (and we got free tickets too!). Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay for the entire day, so we only got to see the first two speakers present. The good thing was Brad Gosse was the first speaker of the day, and he was the main reason we went to the event.

Brad Gosse speaking at the Toronto Action Summit

Brad is an entertaining guy to watch. He’s straightforward and real, and doesn’t come across as fake or contrived like many speakers do. His presentation contained swearing, cutting through the BS you hear other people talk about, and open discussions of his marijuana use…

My brothers made a parody video of one of Brad’s videos last year, and he loved it. That gave us an “in” that nobody else at the Summit had, so we spent a bit of extra time talking to him before we had to leave. He was really easygoing and he even gave us an advance copy of his book, Chronic Marketer. It was a review copy, and it even had pencil marks and edits in it!

Check us out:

Brad Gosse with Chris and Rob Maeder

Also, check out the infamous video:

In July, my friend Albert told me the Ford dealership he works at was looking for a shop cleanup person. It didn’t sound like very exciting work, but it paid more than minimum wage, and it offered convenient hours and a location close by. I decided to take the job, expecting to get around 10 hours per week. Instead, they have me working 20 hours a week, which is good for the money situation, but not so good for the time-and-social-life situation.

I now work Tuesday to Thursday from 7:30am to 4:30pm at my day job, then from 5pm to 9pm at the shop. Those are some long days. I also work Saturdays from 8am to 4pm, which isn’t very fun.

The job itself isn’t too bad. It’s dirty, though. I empty garbage cans into the dumpster, crush up boxes, clean up oil spills, scrub the floors and generally clean up whatever’s messy. I work with good people, there’s no stress and it’s physical labour, which means I get a bit of exercise. The issue is I don’t have nearly as much free time as I used to. Tuesday to Thursday is basically a write-off, because I’m working from 7:30 in the morning to 9 at night. Friday nights are affected because I have to get up early to work on Saturday.

I know it sounds like I’m complaining, but in reality, I think this is good for me. I’m hoping it’s only for the short term, since my day job hopes to have everyone back at 100% by the end of the year.

Update! Just yesterday, my company notified us that they are doing better financially and are bringing everyone back to 100% pay and hours. I put in my two week’s notice today at Ford, so starting in October, I’ll have normal weekends again, not to mention more time during the week. Yay!