Cameron Olthuis

I’m heading to Las Vegas in the morning for Webmaster World’s Pubcon Conference for the week. I’m speaking on social media on Tuesday morning, my session is about understanding the complex social media playing field. I hope that you can all come see my presentation. For the time ever, I’m actually preparing it in advance. Normally, I procrastinate and end up finishing at 3AM morning of. Needless to say this results in a presentation that isn’t as good as it could be. Not this time, I want to knock this one out of the park.

I’ll be in Vegas all week and I hope to meet everyone of you that will be there. Please come say hi to me, if you mention this post and there’s a bar nearby, rounds are on me. Looking forward to seeing you all there.

Funny mental picture isn’t it? A bunch of sun-starved geeks out on the beach trying to learn how to surf. Alas, I vow that every one of them, who gives an honest effort, will get up and feel the sensation of riding a wave.

Wondering what I’m talking about? ThinkTank, an un-conference that’s being put on here in San Diego by my buddy, David Klein, is bringing together about 40 or so of the top Internet Marketing minds to network and learn from one another in a casual environment. I noticed there were a bunch of very cool activities lined up (i.e. MMA Training sponsored by Surehits) for the event but I also noticed no mention of surfing. I thought, hmm, how can there be an event here in San Diego that doesn’t even include surfing, especially an event that will be happening on the beach??

So I contacted DK and asked him what he thought about one of my sites, 5ones, sponsoring an activity that would give surfing lessons to all the attendees. Seeing as dk loves surfing (almost ) as much as me, he was thrilled with the idea. So, my action sports website, 5ones, is hosting surfing lessons to any of the attendees that have the sack to get in ocean and try. Yes, that’s a direct challenge to Neil, Shoe, and all the other attendees. I have hard time picturing Neil on a surfboard but I will try my hardest to get him out there, that’s a promise.

I’m beyond thrilled to be able to share my passion of both surfing and the ocean with my friends. Surfing is one of those things that unless you’ve done it, you just have no idea what an amazing experience it is. There truly is nothing else like it in this world, and on so many levels too. Not only is surfing fun, and physically rewarding, but it also serves as a form of mental therapy. It doesn’t matter what stresses I have in my life, or how bad a day I’m having… when I go surfing, it erases all of that from my mind and I always leave the water with a smile on my face. Hopefully I will be able to pass this passion on to at least a few of the ThinkTankers.

PS – I think there still might be a couple spots left for this event. It’s a small investment for the amount of knowledge you will leave with and I’d recommend that any serious Internet Entrepreneur attend.

While sipping guzzling my morning coffee and reading through my feeds, I came across a great post from Sugarrae titled How to Find a Pair of Balls. Her post is more or less about; if you’re wanting something out of life you need to reach out and grab it. It’s not going to be handed to you.

The only difference between my success and someone else’s lack of it is that I refused to accept, and still do refuse to accept, anything less than what I want for myself in life. I don’t give myself excuses. I don’t wait for shit to be handed to me, I go in search of what I want.

I love reading posts like this because I can relate to them on so many levels and Rae inspired me to write a post about my experience. I struggled for years to get to the point where I’m at now and to be honest I still have at least a few more good years of struggling left in me. Otherwise, I’d be retired on a beach somewhere, surfing epic waves all day. And until I’m there you can bet your ass I’m still busting my ass and making sacrifices every day. I’m now starting what will be the third business I’m currently running. I work hard, even if it doesn’t always seem like it.

Most people don’t realize the amount of work that I’ve put in over the years to get where I am. Like Rae, I wasn’t handed an audience or a reputable name in my industry, I had to work hard for those like anyone else. My family and I sacrificed years of our lives for the hope there would be a payoff (better quality of life) at the end of the rainbow. We’ve gone through many times where we literally didn’t have a dollar to our name and we’d stay up all night wondering how we would come up with a few bucks just to eat the next day. Luckily for family or we’d have starved to death. But I also want to point that family only helped in times of emergency… the only unfair advantage I’ve ever had is my burning desire for a life that doesn’t consist of a dead-end job. I instead desire a life where I have as much free time to spend with my family and surf as I want.

I have friends and family (you know who you are) coming up to me all time asking if I can teach them to do what I do. The problem is that they’re expecting quick success because they chose to look the other way all those years I busted my ass with nothing just to get where I am today. All they see now is what looks like a pretty glamorous life from the outside (I can assure you though, it’s not always glamorous, far from). I am in no way trying to disrespect these people because I love them, but to be quite frank, none of them have been willing to do what it takes to become successful online.

Even though it may sound like it, I’m not trying to toot my own horn here. That’s not at all what this post is about. I’m just trying to point out that if you want to be successful in life you need to get off your lazy ass and do something about it. It will not be handed to you. It all comes to down to how bad you really want something. I’ve had every excuse and reason in the book on why I shouldn’t be successful but I refuse to accept that there’s nothing I can’t do or have.

I definitely recommend you check out Rae’s post.

I have to admit, I’m really having a lot of fun playing around in the action sports industry. Besides, my passion for action sports, one of the main reasons for starting Factive was that I knew I could come in with my audience building skills, dominate the online space, and have fun while doing it.

Our audience is growing at a very rapid pace… I couldn’t be happier. The best thing is that it’s super defensible traffic too, we get a very healthy mix of Google, direct, social, and referral traffic. We’re now at the point where we’re ready to start monetizing our sites. Exciting!

I love the fact that I’m building a company around something I love so much. I wish I would’ve done this sooner as it makes life so much more enjoyable to combine work with your passions. At that point it no longer becomes work, as big of a cliche as that is. For example, ‘board meetings’; instead of sitting in an office, I now have meetings with people while I’m surfing. I get to go hang out at cool places like the Red Bull headquarters. I can fly around the world on exotic surf vacations and call it work. And companies are backing their trucks up to my door with free products for me to review. Its got it’s perks to say the least.

My advice to you is: get into something you truly enjoy and figure out a way to make money doing it.

I have my sights on moving to Nicaragua right now. I’m trying to figure out the logistics so I can spend 2 out of the 3 months there this coming summer. Go down, check the place out, scope some real estate, surf my brains out, etc.

Consistent year-round swells, offshore winds 300+ days a year, low crowds, white sands, crystal-clear water, low cost of living…. sounds like the dream to me. I certainly can’t think of any good reasons not to move there. Seeing as all I need is an internet connection to make my living, work certainly wont be stopping me. At the very least I’ll probably be buying a second home there where I can spend 6 months a year.

This just happened down the street from my house, a San Diego man was attacked by a shark this morning and bled to death. Apparently this is the first fatal attack in 50 years in my area. This is pretty scary considering I was just about to paddle out for a surf.

I have never really worried about attacks around here just because they are so rare. I guess now I will have something to be cautious of. This is sad news and my thoughts go out to this man’s family.

For all you skiers: Simon Dumont set a new world record for the biggest quarter-pipe air EVAR!!

Chalk one up for the skiers….