The Showdown

I walked into my bosses office and shut the door behind me.

I glanced up and saw that my boss was typing on the computer feverishly.

Nothing new, this is how our meetings usually start.  My time apparently wasn’t as valuable as my bosses time.

It always irritated me, but I’m not the boss.

I pull out a black chair from the other side of my bosses desk and sit down.

I put my weekly report and pen in front of me.

Time for some small talk…..

“So, how was your weekend?”

I say this expecting to hear about what my boss did and then get the same question in return.

But instead, I got…..

“Good.”

***Awkward pause as my boss continues to type feverishly***

Alright, that didn’t go as planned.

My boss then says, “Sorry, busy morning.  Let me just finish up this email and we can start.”

I nod my head in agreement, but it doesn’t matter because my boss is still staring at the computer while typing.

Again, I’m forced to wait for my boss to give me their attention.  

I’m irritated.

Why am I in here if you aren’t ready for the meeting? I think to myself.

Oh, that’s right.

You’re the boss and I’m required to deal with this.

I guess I’ll just sit here waiting in silence….letting my boss control my time.

A few awkward minutes go by and my boss finally closes the computer.

“Alright, sorry about that.  Had a fire to put out, let’s get started.”

From then on, the meeting was an absolute massacre.

“Why didn’t you get this task done?”

“I thought you were working on this?”

“Why didn’t you ask me for approval on this?”

Then the one question that really pissed me off.

“Tell me, what exactly were you doing yesterday?”

This question implies two things.

One, I’m lazy.

Two, that I don’t know how to do my job.

Those are two things that do NOT sit well with me.

For the next 60 minutes I defend my job and define my responsibilities.

The meeting ended “positively” when my boss concluded that the best course of action was to micromanage me.

Some people do well with this approach, I absolutely loathe it.

As expected, the rest of my day was awful.

I sat angrily in my cubicle prison getting work done and after 6 long hours, it was time for another miserable hour-long commute home.

Before I get on the road, I whip out my iPhone to check on traffic.

An accident on the highway, gotta take back roads.

My hour long commute just became an hour and a half.

Just another reason to hate my job…..

Whatever….at least I have podcasts.

I don’t remember what podcast it was that I listened to that day, but on the way home I decided enough was enough.

I was going to buy a domain name and start my blog.

No idea how to make it.

No developer to help me get it done.

I was just tired of being treated like I didn’t matter at my job and I knew that I had to build something myself.

I was tired of my commute.

I was tired of defending my job.

I was tired of taking orders from others.

But most of all, I was just tired of the bulls*it.

Life is too short, it was time to act on everything I learned.

And I did.

I got home and watched a few tutorials about creating a blog and OneHourProfessor.com was launched.

Then, a few weeks later, I was making thousands of dollars.……

No, that’s a lie.

A few weeks later I was struggling through Wordpress and just trying to get blog posts written.

I decided that OneHourProfessor.com would be all about helping people with internet marketing.

I spent time doing keyword research.

I spent time writing blog posts.

I spent time trying to guest blog post at other places.

After a few more weeks, the needle didn’t move much.  I started to see a small increase in traffic…

But the blog wasn’t getting much traffic.

Reflecting back today with what I know now, I was doing so many things wrong.

But at the time, it didn’t matter to me.

Every crappy day at work was more motivation to make an awesome blog.

It’s a good thing I had this attitude too.

Because I was headed towards A LOT of failure.

I’m not talking about failing once or twice here either….

I’m talking about failing so many times that I lose track.

After posting around 25+ blog posts about random keyword searched topics on the blog you’re on right now….

I barely saw any blog traffic.

So, I guess we could say this blog, at one point, was my first failure.

At this point, I decided that I needed to try something else.

So, I created a niche blog.

And this is when things got really interesting…