Earth is an interactive map for surf, skate and snow spots as well as pro shops and company headquarters. It’s almost like local search for action sports. Check it out…

1) Patience – It takes a long time to learn to surf, it’s hard and one should not expect to be ripping waves their first day out. Same with building a business. It’s an exercise in patience. If you think you’ll be successful overnight, you’re sadly mistaken my friend. You will fall a lot at first but the more you do it the better you will get.

2) Thinking fast – No two waves are exactly alike. Every way breaks differently and when you’re riding a wave you always need to be making split second decisions. This is a skill that’s required in business too. You can’t predict exactly how the wave of your business will break so be ready to make decisions and adapt on the fly.

3) Positioning – This is pretty much what the other two articles I referenced above talk about. With surfing, you’re relying on so many elements to come together to make a surfable wave. When then do, you need to be positioned correctly to catch that wave. The same thing with business. Lots of waves will come your way, be in position and be ready to ride the good waves.

4) Wave selection – Being in the right position to catch a wave is one thing. Catching the right wave is another thing. As a surfer, you learn to read the shape of the waves as they’re coming in. If you pick the wrong wave it might close out on you and there will be no where to go. Like I mentioned in the point above, pick the good waves to ride. In business you need to learn to recognize and pick the right waves that you can ride to success. Get on the wrong wave and you might put your business in a position that it has no where to go.

5) Competition – There are a lot of surfers competing for the same waves as you, just like there are a lot of entrepreneurs competing in the same marketplace as you. If you don’t get aggressive while surfing and take waves, there are a hundred other surfers in the lineup who will paddle right around you and do so. In business, if you don’t jump on the opportunities presented to you, there are a hundred other people waiting who will. I love surfing next to the candy-ass surfers who aren’t aggressive, that way I can take all the waves I want. I also love competing in marketplaces where candy-ass entrepreneurs don’t leverage the opportunities that come their way, that way I can and I will.

If you’re a surfer, I’d love to hear some of things surfing has taught you about business.

Then one day, a light went off in my head and I thought… You know what, I don’t want my main focus to be building traffic, or increasing RSS readers, or any of that. Screw that stuff. This blog has my name on it and I just want to keep it real and write about things I want to write about and as often as I want to write about them. Sometimes that means I’m writing about stuff that relates to my career and sometimes that means I write about surfing, or taking a vacation, or whatever.

I honestly don’t care if this blog ever makes a cent, that’s not my intention with it. I don’t care if people read it or not. If you do want to read it, that’s great. I am stoked on that. But just be warned that I’m going to write what I want to write about – and they might not be exactly what you want to read about.

My traffic and RSS subscribers stopped increasing on this site a long time ago. And that’s just perfectly cool with me. I have enough other sites that I work my ass off on to increase traffic. This is my personal outlet and that’s they way it will always be.

I’m saving every penny I possibly can so that I can invest into as many distressed assets as possible. There are going to be some amazing opportunities to pick up some sweet deals on web companies over the next couple years and I want to be the one picking them up. Quite frankly, there are a lot of websites run by people who don’t have clue, so when I can swoop in, pick those up and rehab them, I will.

I’m spending as little money as possible on myself right now. I stopped buying new surfboards, taking surf trips, buying new clothes, going out as much, I downsized my house, don’t drive a fancy car, etc etc etc. The only thing I want to spend money on right now is distressed websites.

So in a nutshell, that’s it. I’m not only going to survive this recession, but I’m going to come out on top, much better off then I am now. What’s your plan?

I originally attended the Save Trestles rally partly because I was covering a story for 5ones but more importantly it’s an issue that I believe strongly in and want to support. Even though I’ve never even surfed Lower Trestles (as good as the break is, I’d rather not have to paddle over 50 people on each wave), I do think it’s generally a good idea to preserve one of the last pristine world class surf breaks in the country. There are enough roads, parking lots, houses and shopping centers elsewhere that the last thing we need to do is destroy a beautiful beach to build more. Nature’s a nice thing to enjoy and once it’s gone, it’s gone. You can’t exactly dig up the concrete and put everything back the way it was.

I was pleasantly surprised when the night came to an end and I’d realized both my daughters had actually sat through the majority of the hearing without misbehaving, even participating. They waved the signs they created, cheered when appropriate, and held their thumbs down when those in favor of the road presented their issues. And when my 5 year-old leaned over to me and said…

“Dad, these people should not build that road.”

I knew that bringing them to this event turned out to be a priceless experience for them. To quote the lyrics from one of my favorite musicians, Xavier Rudd…

“…our children keep growing up with what they know, from what we teach, and what they see…”

Politics aside… No matter where you stand on issues, I think it’s important to stand up for the ones you strongly believe in. In more ways than one, Surfing has turned me into a tree-hugging shark-hugging hippy, and by no means am I perfect. But as I listened to both sides of the argument last night, I don’t know how anyone could be in favor of the 241 Toll Road, hippy or not… It’s not even a political issue, it’s an earth issue.

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.

Such a place does exist and I am fortunate I was able to find my own little paradise in Nicaragua.

A couple months ago I wrote a post expressing my desire to not only travel to Nicaragua but also someday own a home there. Last month I had the pleasure of fulfilling half that dream as I was able to spend a few weeks in what is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful places on this earth. And after spending some time in Nica, it has only made my (now burning) desire of buying a home there that much stronger.

Nicaragua is not only beautiful in the sense of the breathtaking landscape… it’s a combination of everything; the people, the food, the culture, the surf, the experience, the wildlife… everything.

My trip began with a series of fortunate events… From getting bumped up to first class, to oversized luggage (think surfboard bags) fees being waived, to scoring a ride with a local surf guide from the airport in Managua to our destination in San Juan Del Sur… it was definitely a sign of good things to come.

Once arriving in San Juan Del Sur, my good friend Shaun and I quickly looked for the nearest taxi (and by taxi I mean an old Toyota 4×4 pickup with a bench in the bed) we could find to haul us to the nearest surf break, Playa Maderas. One of the very few annoyances I found in Nicaragua is that the surf is not easily accessible, it’s mostly by boat or muddy “highways” that will push any 4WD to the limits. However, riding in the back of a truck through the jungle is certainly an exciting experience in itself.

San Juan Del Sur is a beautiful little town that sits right on a picturesque bay in the Pacific. It served as a hub for most of our time spent in Nica. All the amenities you need can be found in SJDS; hotels, restaurants, bars, markets, taxis, friends, and more are found here. Here is a couple of pictures of the view from one of the restaurants…

We also spent a few days up near a surf break called Popoyo, where we stayed in a B&B that was literally right on the sand. It was the coolest beach house ever with the most amazing decks where I spent many-a-afternoons lounging around in the hammocks. There was a couple of pretty good surf breaks right out in front, so it was a nice change from the boats and 4WDs. Its nice just to grab your board and walk 10 steps to the surf. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of this place but that’s ok because they could never do it justice anyways. I do however have this wonderful picture of a whole pig that we roasted on the beach one night…

The one thing I can’t stress enough is how good the actual surf in Nicaragua is. In the few weeks I was there, the infamous offshore winds blew every day but one and the swell was consistently at a minimum of chest-high with most days going head-high or overhead. For you non surfers, that means it was really good.

All-in-all my trip to Nicaragua was a wonderful one filled with more great experiences than I can remember. I could turn this post into a book but I feel like it’s already getting too long. I can hardly wait until my next trip back. Some things that really stand out in my mind are….

The greeness. It’s their wet season right now which means that whole country is literally all green right now. So beautiful.
The people. I met so many wonderful people and made many life long friends. That’s pretty impressive for only being somewhere for a few weeks. I was also very impressed on how most of the local people there have no money or “things” yet they are so happy and nice.
The cost. Everything is so cheap… most meals, which I found to be excellent, where about $5 US. My last night there I splurged and went for a Filet Mignon, it was as good as anything I’ve had here in the states (thanks Nick!) and I think was only about $13 US.
The underdeveloped land. Surfing at beaches with no homes or people is amazing. You don’t get to experience that here in the US. Everything is so crowded. I was so blown away when we cruised the coast line in boats at just how empty the land is.

Here a couple fishing pics to leave you guys with…

A nice Blackfin Tuna…

Notice the colors of this Mahi-Mahi, they call them Dorado in Nica…

I want to give some shout-outs to the friends I made, if I forgot your name I apologize and it doesn’t mean I love you any less…

Alan, Codo, Nicaraguan Superman, Heather, Sandra, Sonya, Caleb, Oscar, Marlys, AJ & Molli, Nick, Josue, Cliff aka “killing it”, Jeffrey, Brandon, Ashley, Dan, Jesse, Gustaaf, Aaron & Rena, Kevin & Betsy, Mike, Victoria, Tona, and last but not least my good friend Flor de Cana… All truly wonderful people.

Next time you see me, ask me to tell you some stories about Nicaragua, trust me, I have lots of them I’d love to share ‘em all.

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.

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.

So how many of you remember my story about FTD Sucks and how they screwed me over on Valentine’s Day? If you don’t the click over and read it really quick so you can be up to speed.

So, there is this super bad-ass floral shop up in Anaheim that took notice of my post and decided they’d use my bad experience to their advantage to win over a new customer, me. Shortly after I checked into my hotel for SMX I got a knock on my door. It was a room service dude that had a bouquet of flowers for me. At first I thought maybe I had a secret admirer that wanted some lovin’ or maybe the SMX crew was just going the extra mile for their speakers. Nope, I was wrong. The following note was included in the flowers…

Dear Cameron, After reading your plight with FTD during Valentine’s Day, I just want to put in a plug for local florists. I’m looking forward to your presentation.

Wow! My heart melted. I was in love. I thought this was one of the coolest things ever and couldn’t believe someone remembered and cared about little ol’ me.

I just snapped that pic of me with the flowers. The ladies tell me that’s a super nice bouquet. Huge thank you to Avante, you effin rock and I love you.

Hope you all learned something. This would have been a great opportunity for FTD to step to the plate and make good with me… they didn’t and now they can kiss my badonkadonk. I will never order from that piece of crap company again and have told as many people as possible not to as well. They obviously don’t care about their customers. Now, on the flip-side – you all know a good florist.

This is something I’ve never really worried about too much with this blog. Mostly because it’s my personal blog and I don’t monetize it, nor do I have plans to ever do so. So now I have another hat to wear at my company, content police. Although I have to admit, I do slightly enjoy it when I find their phone numbers and I can actually call these people. It’s pretty funny.

I’m speaking on the topic of Linkbait which is what I usually speak about. I’m pretty excited for this session though since Linkbait strategies have changed so much recently and will continue to do so. Because of this there will be tons of new info to share so I’d encourage you all to come check it out. Plus Danny and everyone at Third Door put on the best conferences in the industry, hands down.

I’m stoked and so should you be. See you there.

So on Valentine’s morning, being the nice guy that I am and all, I decided to get online and order some flowers for my mom and both of my sisters. I checked around on all the different sites to see who could guarantee delivery on the same day I placed the order. I ended up placing four very large orders (flowers on Valentine’s Day aren’t cheap) with FTD since they were the ones that promised delivery on that same day. Yes, they promised even on Valentine’s Day. I had placed my order around 8:30 AM and had been waiting anxiously all day for that call from my mom telling me what a wonderful son I am. It never came. Instead, around 3:30 that afternoon and the emails from FTD start rolling in, one after another…

Unfortunately, at this time we do not have a florist available in your recipient’s delivery area who can deliver your product on 2/14.

Ok, so getting an email like that at 3:30 does nothing to help my cause of getting flowers to my family members on that day. By that time all the florists where way to buys to accept new orders and being hundreds of miles away from family I couldn’t just run down and get them. If FTD didn’t have the florist available in my area they should have never taken my order in the first place. Why offer something you know isn’t available in the first place. Second, they shouldn’t have waited until 3:30 in the afternoon to let me know. By that time I was basically out of options like I mentioned.

All-in-all I had placed four separate orders on Valentine’s day with FTD and not a single one of the made it to their destination. The fourth order showed up on Tuesday the 19th and the three others suffered the fate of no florists in the area. By the way, they never did alert me that the fourth order wouldn’t make it that day.

In conclusion I just want to reiterate the fact that FTD sucks and never in my life will I do business with them. If getting flowers to your loved ones on time is important to you I’d recommend you don’t use them either. I’m not one to complain about companies that screw me over, but I just can’t let this one go.

Literally, there are no details that go unnoticed at SMX. And that’s probably why these shows are so great. It’s the small things that make a difference. Everything from the quality of speakers and presentations to the audience was better than I ever thought. I really enjoyed the show, met some great people, saw old friends, and even learned a thing or two. I am honored to be a part of this conference.

I also want to give a few shout-outs: I had three good friends that were all virgins to speaking at industry conferences. And all three did a fantastic job with their presentations. Seriously, you all spoke like seasoned pros. Chris, Brent, Tamar – Great job!!

Me presenting:

There will also be a charity event on Monday night that is put on by both the Internet Marketers of New York group and BOTW, the web’s best directory. I really like the way these events are setup. Everyone is charged $40 at the door and then it’s open bar all night. The $40 all goes to the charity and BOTW sponsors the food and drinks. Pretty cool!

The great thing about the charity we’re supporting is that it hits close to home within our industry. Both Marty (aimClear) and Danielle Winfield have recently blogged about their experiences with Leukemia and Lymphoma. Marty actually won the fight with Lymphoma, awesome.

In the spirit of charity I’m tagging three of my friends to help keep this meme going. Neil Patel, Rebecca Kelley, and Brent Csutoras.

She really liked all the people in the industry and had a great time seeing what really takes place at these things. I guess she realized it’s not all the frat partying that she’s thought in the past. I do actually accomplish some ‘work’ stuff here and there.

It was also our 5 year anniversary the week before and since we didn’t do anything exciting we decided to drive up the coast to San Jose. Neither of us had done that drive before and I think we were both blown away at how beautiful it was. If it wasn’t for the cold water I seriously think that would be one of the best places to live on the planet.

We stayed a little north of Santa Barbara on Sun night then woke up early Monday and drove the coast. It took us a full 12 hours and by time we arrived in San Jose we were both wiped so I did a little work and we pretty much crashed. Next time I won’t stop so many times along the way as I missed some valuable SES networking time.

The next day we hung out around the conference and then went to the Google party at night. She was blown away by ‘the plex’, she kept commenting how it’s like a big college campus. After the Goog party we spent a couple hours visiting with David & Irma Wallace, who happen to be some of my favorite people in the industry and I look up to them a lot. Irma kept telling me I need to bring my wife to a conference and I finally listened to her advice, which I’m glad I did.

Wednesday was my presentation day. I spoke on the Linkbait & Viral Search panel and I think this was by far one of my better presentations. I decided to scrap most of the stuff I’d talked about in the past and just walk people through a real world case study that I was involved in. I can tell this format was appreciated by the audience with all the positive feedback I received and I’ll be sticking to it from now on. One of my goals this year was to improve my public speaking and I think I’m doing pretty good with, still a long ways to go though.

It’s funny because I used Jason Calacanis as an example for controversial linkbait and I didn’t realize it at the time but I guess Robert Scoble must have been in the audience. Not a few days later and it seems like he’s a little deprived of attention and now he’s following Jason’s example of calling SEOs scumbags. Unfortunately for him, I’m not going to fall for the bait and instead I’ll link to Rand and Danny’s rebuttals, they’re much better reads anyways and you won’t waste your time. Danny had a one-liner that’s seriously classic.

Want to be like Robert — and Jason Calacanis — and keep equating SEO with spam? Then fuck off.

Danny’s one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet so this was obviously well deserved. Good for you Danny.

Wednesday night was the infamous Search Bash put on by Webmaster radio and let me say that it didn’t disappoint, as usual. Darron, Eddie and the crew really know how to do it proper. My wife and I really enjoyed hanging out with Chris and Danielle Winfield from 10e20 for most of the party. They’re great friends and it’s a shame they don’t live closer because I know we’d have a blast hanging out with them.

That’s about it. Thursday we pretty much woke up and drove home. SES was great as usual and I had a blast hanging out with all the regulars, as well as meeting and hanging out with all the people I didn’t know. Can’t wait ’til PubCon.

So why did I make this decision and what I am doing next?

There are a number of reasons for this decision but if I tried to explain them all this post would quickly turn into a novel. With that said, the main reasons I’m leaving are: I don’t want to do consulting forever. And even though ACS is blowing up right now I think there are much bigger opportunities I’d rather chase.

This leads me to what I’m doing next and to be honest I’m not exactly sure what that is yet. I’ve been in discussions for a number of different offers but haven’t made any firm decisions yet. There is one project that’s in the works but I can’t give any details yet. You’ll just have to wait.

I’m excited for this new path in my life and it’s sure to be an exciting one filled with lots of ups and downs, as it always is. I’m throwing my hat in the ring for the title to be the first SEO billionaire. Does it have my name on it? I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.

I continue to remain on great terms with the guys from ACS and hope for nothing but the best for them and the company. If you have any further questions or have an opportunity you’d like to talk about feel free to contact me or drop a comment below.

My only complaint for the entire conference was from the last session called “Give it Up”. This session was the one where presenters were supposed to give up their favorite SEO secrets or tips. Unfortunately only half of the presenters had anything useful to say. A couple of them had no real tips or advice or gave the most basic SEO advice I could imagine. The ones that did give good tips though were awesome, so I guess that makes up for it.

Here are some pictures from the “Better Ways” panel which was a blast.

Sunday afternoon I am flying to Seattle for Danny Sullivan’s new conference, SMX. On Tuesday afternoon I’m on the Better Ways panel. Also on the panel is Alex Bennert, Greg Boser, Jim Boykin, Christine Churchill, Todd Friesen, and Aaron Wall. Wow, talk about a talented panel. I’m expecting to a learn a lot of new tips from these guys.

Hope to see you there.

The book is called Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters and is about building relationships with your daughter(s) to help shape her life so she grows up healthy, happy and responsible. The book is very good and I’d recommend it to any dad that has daughters. I’m dreading those teenage-years because I know payback is a bitch so this book had a lot of great advice for me. Hopefully I can raise my daughters to be strong and stay away from guys like me.

Since Greg was very generous by sending me this book I want to pay-it-forward. I am going to send the first 3 dads with daughters that contact me a free copy.

Thanks again Greg!

** Update: Sorry folks. I should have mentioned this earlier but the three copies are long gone. Thanks.