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Stop SOPA and PIPA

Date: January 18, 2012 • By • Comments 0

Today, hearings begin in Congress on the very controversial SOPA/PIPA bills that would effectively hand over the power of the average citizen to the government when it comes to the internet. These bills are strongly anti-liberty and should be opposed at all costs.

Just to give you an example of the draconian nature of these laws, the only other somewhat industrialized nations to have laws on the books similar to these are China, Iran, and North Korea. Not a group we want to be associated with when it comes to freedoms.

Instead of trying to explain SOPA and PIPA to you in detail, I will let this video do the describing for me, as it does a great job -

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

To help stop these awful pieces of legislation – sign the petition here – http://sopastrike.com/modal/strike-modal/index.html

UPDATE: I regularly monitor my site to see how people get here, and many people are searching something along the lines of “the Christian response to SOPA and PIPA” and ending up on this post. While I couldn’t possibly claim to speak for the whole of the Christian community on this issue, here is the way I see it -

1. First, I do not claim to endorse piracy on the web, and opposing these bills is not at all an endorsement or even acceptance of any sort of theft. There are other ways to fight piracy besides destroying the internet and the freedoms we all have. In fact, we already have fairly strong anti-piracy laws in place.

2. Second, SOPA and PIPA, if passed, will almost certainly at some point be used at some point to censor messages that the government does not like. As a Christian who knows a bit about history, I know that those of us who are believers often end up the ones discriminated against. Why would I support something that would potentially lead to squashing free speech, including freedom of religion.

3. Finally, it is ok for Christians to speak out against their government if what they are doing is immoral. Some believers are afraid that speaking out might be a violation of Romans 13, in which Paul told the Romans to obey the government. However, remember the story of John the Baptist – he felt it was his obligation to speak out against his government when Herod was acting in an immoral manner. Therefore we see that there is certainly a Biblical case to be made for Christians to take a stand and speak out when government is acting in an immoral manner. Is SOPA/PIPA immoral? I believe so, because it attempts to take our God-given rights away.

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On Setbacks

Date: December 16, 2011 • By • Comments 0

Working for yourself is awesome, when things are going well. But it is pretty scary when things go awry at some point. Working in a business like mine where you have clients can be even more nerve-wrecking.

Even though I have been doing this for a year now, I still get scared when things that I was counting on fall through. However, I find that God always brings some new opportunity to my door whenever things don’t go like I expect.

This week has been one of those weeks. I had my sites hacked, two big clients either dropped out or scaled back their work for me, and I threw my back out and couldn’t get around like I wanted to. But, right on schedule, new doors opened up to make up for the revenue lost, and the site hacking has helped push me to move to newer and better servers, something I have really needed to do for a long time. And my back is getting better too.

For those of you out there trying to carve out your own path like me, expect setbacks. Don’t count on anything until it actually comes through. But, don’t be afraid, either. God has continually amazed me with new opportunities when things don’t go as expected. Over and over again, He opens new doors for me right when I am actually ready to go through them. Thank You, Father, for that.

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Economic Freedom And Quality of Life

Date: December 10, 2011 • By • Comments 0

I will let these videos speak for themselves…

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The Fallacy Of Safety

Date: December 2, 2011 • By • Comments 0

When people say to me, “Safety first,” I usually tell them that it’s not first, and not even in my top five. And certainly not anymore. However, our culture now seems to bow at the altar of safety. And it could eventually destroy us.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Benjamin Franklin

Many people use the quote above, often misquoted to say something along the lines of “Those who give up liberty for safety deserve neither,” but the concept is the same even when misquoted. However, we have given up so many of our liberties in the name of “being safe.”

For example, without making this into a heated political discussion, have you tried to fly recently in the US? Seriously, it is a nightmare. And why? Because we want to be safe. Many people want to blame the government for giving us the TSA and all of their silliness, but the truth is that people demanded it after 9/11. Instead of seeing 9/11 as a tragic situation that was meant to make us afraid (hence the word “terror” embedded in the word terrorist), and then consequently responding by being unafraid, we happily gave up our liberties.

The same is true with jobs. So many people I know want to do something other than what they are doing, but they somehow believe that working for someone else is more “safe” than working for themselves. Ask the now (as of the time of this writing) 25 million Americans who are now unemployed if working for someone else is really job security. At least for me, I can change course at any time if things are not working, and I can’t get fired or laid off. No wonder we see a decline in entrepreneurship in a culture that is too afraid to take a chance.

You see this in families as well. I understand the desire to keep children safe, but having worked on a college campus for several years, I can tell those of you who still make every decision for your child when they are 20 are doing them a real disservice (and you will probably have them still living with you when they are 40).

The truth is, every bit of this safety is a complete illusion. Someone could attack our nation tomorrow despite our precautions. You could get laid off or fired this week. Your child could end up being so afraid of making a decision on their own that they do nothing with their lives (a common scenario for this generation).

Safety is certainly a concern. Jumping off a cliff just because you say you are a risk-taker is stupid. However, not being willing to try something new because you are afraid you might fail is also stupid.

Our liberties are eroding daily. Our government closes in on us, more and more trying to tell us what to do in every aspect of our lives. And many people welcome it. I don’t. I have realized that much of the Occupy Wall Street crowd actually wants MORE government intervention in our lives. That is insane. You want to give up more freedom to the group that you freely admit has stolen from you? And you expect a different outcome?

At the same time we have that happening, less and less people are willing to take risks,and compounding that is the fact that the government continues to make it harder to do so.

This is also, I believe, a misunderstanding of human nature. As a Christian, I believe that all of us are prone to sin and evil. Thus, I never want anyone to have control over my decisions, because I know that they are just as selfish by nature as I am. The typical humanist, however, believes that people are basically good, and if we could just get everyone together, we would all take care of each other and look out for the good of one another (Hint:it’s also called communism/socialism). I just can’t believe that because I know my own heart as well as the heart of man and what is contained within. That’s why I want as little forced intervention in my life by other people (also known as government) as possible, democracy or otherwise.

If we don’t watch out, the “Fallacy of Safety” is going to cage us in and leave us with nothing but other people taking from us and telling us what to do.

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Real Freedom

Date: October 1, 2011 • By • Comments 0

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

Nelson Mandela

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Celebrating One Year of Freedom

Date: September 30, 2011 • By • Comments 0

On this day in 2010, I drove away from Cameron University, and Maranda and I headed north to start our own adventure here in Oklahoma City. It has been such an amazing year.

Since I left last year, I have started 3 businesses and have seen some real success along with some major failures. In fact, 2 of my businesses have been spectacular while one was a total failure. They say that 2 out of 3 ain’t bad, and I agree.

I learned a lot through the failure of the one business and the success of the others, and have been able to move on from that failure, and have done really well.

It has been extremely busy at times. I have found myself working all the time for most of the past year. But, it is totally worth it, because I am doing what I want to do and building something so that I don’t have to work all the time in the future. I also get to set my own schedule, and I wouldn’t want to trade that freedom.

For example, just yesterday, I got to have an almost 3 hour lunch with a friend. Not because we planned it that way, but because we just weren’t in a hurry. Sure, I had stuff to do, but it could wait. That’s something I have never had the freedom to do before.

I also get to work within my passions now. Every day, I can decide what I want to work on. Not that there aren’t parts of what I do that bore me, but I get to pick what type of business I am building, and I really love what I do. I have also been able to hire people to do most of the stuff that I hate doing!

Thanks to everybody who has been supportive and has cheered us on as we have gone on this journey! Here’s to another great year!

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My Interview with Mark Thompson

Date: August 4, 2011 • By • Comments 0

Yesterday, I did an interview with Mark Thompson, a great guy, bigtime web marketer, and owner of WPGoldMine. You can check it out here -

He was interviewing me because of some of the work I have done in conjunction with my business site at IronCladIM.com. I am still building everything out over there, but you should check it out!

You can also check out his site at WPGoldMine.com!

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Success

Date: August 3, 2011 • By • Comments 2

I got a lot of responses from my last post about my failures over the past few months. I learned a lot during that period, and have had the chance to get everything turned around. July was my best month ever, and I had already met my financial goals for August by the end of the day on August 1!

So, I learned from my mistakes, spent a lot of time praying and going back to the drawing board, even cut out some things that were making me money but were taking too much time, retooled, and now I am doing better than ever!

You have to be able to learn from your mistakes. More importantly, though, you have to have the courage to make those mistakes. That is what entrepreneurship is all about. Are you willing to take the risk that things might not turn out like you expect? It is a scary thing to have your paycheck each month be an unknown.

I know a lot of people who say that they do not try to do the things that I do because they want “stability.” But look around – with about 1 out of every 10 people who should have a job unable to get one (actually much more than that are unemployed, but I won’t go into the statistics for this post), I don’t think that the now-traditional “stable job” idea holds as much value as it used to.

Stability is an illusion. In fact, I think that what I do is actually MORE stable than what most people are doing. I can pick and choose what I work on, and no one tells me what I have to do each day. If you have a regular 9-5, you could lose your job tomorrow. If you see that what you are working on is not working, you may not have any choice but to continue down that wrong path.

I don’t say that to gloat. I say that to those of you on the fence about either continuing in your job or doing your own thing – do not let “security” keep you in your current job. I have at least as much security as you do. If you like your job and want to stay there, great! If you know that you should be doing something else, what are you waiting for? There will never be a “good” time to leave your job and start out on your own, and it might be hard at first, and, you know what, you might even fail. However, for me, as cliche as it might be, trying and failing is better than wishing I had given it a try.

If you are leaning in this direction or even thinking about starting your own business, hit me up! I can’t be there through the whole process for you because I have too much of my own to deal with, but I would be happy to answer questions for you! I will actually be starting a new place for folks like us soon to connect and help one another. More on that soon!

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Jesus is Not Your “Spiritual LinkedIn”

Date: July 8, 2011 • By • Comments 12

Christian internet marketers

Trust, but Verify – Beware “Christian” Internet Marketers

Most people would call what I do now (at least most of what I do since I have a few different things I am doing these days) internet marketing. I don’t like the term and try to call it anything else I can when possible because it is associated with so many bad things that I don’t want my name attached to.

Unfortunately, I have seen an even worse trend out there recently – guys who use the name of Christ to peddle their products on the web.

Who I Am

Here’s the deal – I am a Christian, and I am an internet marketer (I guess), but I am not a “Christian internet marketer,” nor will I ever use that particular term. I did at one time use the term “Christian entrepreneur”, but that is only because I was trying to help some folks I know who want to do missions or ministry start their own stuff so they have the freedom to do that. I have stopped using that term as well, though, because it bothers me even to pair the two and make it sound as if they are equals in my life. I do include the fact that I am a Christian in my site and talk openly about it, because that is who I am, and denying that would be just as misleading as using it for my own gain.

What I Am Noticing

Recently, however, I have been seeing guys who are using their “faith” to sell products and to build and gain trust with people. I despise this trend. I even got an email from a “respected” member of the internet marketing community (I won’t mention his name because that would be pretty crappy of me) who went on about Christ in what turned out to be a quite vulgar rant.
I can deal with someone having a vulgar rant. I have had them myself. But don’t pair them with Jesus.

I could have dealt with this, but the next week, the same guy, who just sent an email out to several thousand people telling them he was now a Christian, sent us all another email trying to sell a online product that he and I both know to be a scam.

I actually confronted him about it, in as polite a manner as possible, simply asking him why he would peddle such a product. His response – he wrote me back a nasty response  telling me in no uncertain terms never to contact him again.

That is fine with me. I rarely engage in fights or even debates on the internet. It is, for the most part (not always) silly and a waste of time.

But it did truly anger me.

It made me angry mostly not at him, but because he is just one example of this. I am seeing this happening more and more here lately. Pick one – if you are going to publicly proclaim your Christianity on the web, don’t scam people the next day.

Don’t use Jesus as some kind of spiritual LinkedIn. (For those who might not know what LinkedIn is, click here for an explanation.) I do business with Christians and non-Christians alike, and in the same manner, because it is business, not the church. I am not in any way ashamed of being a Christian, and I don’t hide it. But I don’t use it as a means to make cash, either.

The Takeaway

I don’t want this to be some kind of rant (too late!), so I will stop here and get to my point -

For Christians – Trust, but Verify

If you are a Christian, and someone comes along who says they are also a Christian, but they also have an agenda of some sort, be wary. Too many people try to use this as a ploy to gain our good graces these days.

This isn’t just relegated to the internet, either. I know salesmen in my former career who used to come and talk to me about church, but would take some of my colleagues out to the strip clubs. Be careful. When people who want to sell you something know you are a Christian, they may try to use it to your advantage.

For Folks Who Are Not Christians – I Am Sorry

If you are not a Christian, I am sorry that anyone has used Jesus to peddle crap to you or anyone else or has used the name of Jesus and then scammed you. Truth is, I am not perfect either and am not a good representative for Jesus, even on my best days. But, I really hate that anyone would use God’s name like this.

We talk as Christians about the Ten Commandments – remember that one about “taking God’s name in vain?” I don’t think it means what most people think it means. It is not necessarily saying “oh my God,” like most of us have been taught, it is more about using His name is a way that it should not be used.

Imagine this – if someone went to my friends and said “Casey said I should contact you about this, and he and I are good friends,” and I hadn’t given them permission to say such things, and they were using my name for their own gain, I would be rather unhappy.In my opinion, the same rule applies to God’s name. Using it to peddle products is pretty much the same thing.

I would love to hear some comments on this one – from people who are not Christians and people who are. Let me know your experiences and what you think.

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I Failed

Date: July 4, 2011 • By • Comments 3

failure in business

It has been a tough couple of months for me business-wise. However, I am glad to have gone through them. Here’s the story -

These past 10-12 weeks have been the toughest since my transition to working for myself. I had two of my businesses fail pretty miserably. Fortunately, I have several businesses that I am running, but one of them was my largest. Here is what happened, and those of you who are considering working online or working for yourselves, take this as a warning -

In March, I chose to invest some money in buying out someone else’s business, as they were being quite successful but just wanted to move on. Seemed like a killer deal. Most of the work, so I thought, was outsourced anyway, so no big deal. The business was basically doing search engine optimization for clients from web forums all around the world. Starting off, everything went great. My services were helping people do well in the search engines and getting traffic to their sites. It was going so great, in fact, that I thought it was time to really ramp it up and I was getting requests to do work from all different directions because of the success we were having.

I spent money to bring in new staff, buy some new software, and do some more advertising, and all of a sudden I had literally 10 times the business I had before. I thought this was great, but I made two very grave mistakes -

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I underestimated the time it would take to run the business, especially once it grew.

I underestimated the money it would cost to run the business after bringing in new staff and getting new equipment.

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Since sometime in April, I have been working 18 hour days, almost every day. And I have very little to show for it. Very. Little. I lost two months of my life and didn’t make a lot of money.

Now, fortunately, as I said, I have other businesses online and my wife is making money as well, so we came out of it okay. To be honest, I am glad that I failed at this. My focus was wrong on it anyway. I saw dollar signs, not something I really enjoyed. I also learned a few lessons that will help me, and maybe you, in the future -

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Lesson #1 – You cannot do as much as you think you can do.

Seriously. I don’t mean that in a bad way, either. What I mean is there is just so much time in a day for you to get everything done. And it is not as much time as it seems. Also, your brain only functions at peak capacity for a certain amount of hours a day, and at some point, even if you are still working, you are not getting half as much done as you could. Not to mention the mental energy spent on worrying about how much you have to do.

Lesson #2 – Everything costs more than it should.

When you do the numbers on something go ahead and add at least 30% to your estimates, if not more. Had I done that, I wouldn’t have gotten myself into the bind that I did.

Why do you have to do this? Stuff happens. It’s just the way it is. Little extra expenses or that one thing you forgot about adds up over time.

Lesson #3 – Don’t just look for the money.

Obviously, if you are working online or working for yourself, you have to pay the bills. However, there are so many ways to make money online that I guarantee you can find one that you like. I had several and still do, but I thought I could make more money this way, so I did it. Lesson learned.

Lesson #4 – Adding staff does not always diminish time on task.

I had some great staff members that I brought in for these projects, but I got so overwhelmed that I couldn’t even properly train them. They in turn couldn’t get the work done that I gave them, at least not like they should, which put the burden back on me.

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Now, you don’t have to worry about me – I am still going strong with my other businesses and growing them plus my own websites online. I will be just fine. I am also glad to have learned these lessons and to have learned them now instead of sometime deeper into this process. I am also still actually even doing some of the same work that I did in those businesses, but in ways that bring in much more profit with much less time expended. And I know that God takes us down roads to teach us certain lessons at the time that we need to learn them, so all is well. However, I hope I can maybe help you, and myself in the future, from learning those particular lessons the hard way.

I would love to hear you guys’ thoughts on this – make sure you leave a comment below!

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