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.

Do what you love - Copyblogger has a very inspiring post on how precious life is and because of that we should be doing the things we love, not wasting time on things that don’t make us happy or just wear us out. Those of you that read this blog regularly know that I’m a big believer in this philosophy. I suggest reading the post and taking a long, hard look at what you’re doing with your life - if it doesn’t run parallel with your dreams then maybe it’s time for a change.

Using Twitter to write for you - Chris Winfield, a friend and fellow co-author of Search Engine Land’s ‘Let’s Get Social’ column, literally wrote a post using nothing but Twitter. Interesting read for sure; he asks questions like what is Twitter, how can marketers use it, and has Twitter ever influenced any of your buying decisions. Great primer for those that have yet to hop on the Twitter train.

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.

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.

Chalk one up for the skiers….

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 curious, how did you all find my blog? I’d also love to hear your feedback on what you think I should be blogging about. What kind of stuff are you guys/gals into and what would you like to hear from me?

PS - I’m expecting about 826 more comments… ummkay

I can see how it would provide tremendous value if you have 10,000+ followers, like Mr. Calacanis. But lets face it, I’m just not quite as popular as Jason which is evident by my 50 followers compared to his 10k+.

If you’re a Twitter user I’d love to hear why you use it and what value you find in it? Also, drop me your name and I can add you to my follow list if I’m not already.

Slow morning, which is good because it’s Friday and it’s a beautiful day! I’ve been feeling really positive lately and happy with my progress. It’s important to be positive; I notice a big difference in both the amount I accomplish and the quality of work. Plus it’s just a lot more pleasant to the people around you when you’re positive. Hope you all have a good day and weekend!

Another medium for those who don’t use RSS and would prefer twitts over email updates, etc.

Sock Puppets - My friend Michael ‘Graywolf’ Gray has a great post about being more entertaining than a sock puppet. The post is really about is engaging and entertaining users through social media. I don’t really want to get involved in the drama this post is centralized around and once you read Graywolf’s post you’ll be up to date anyways. The point is that you really need to understand this (social media) medium if you want to play in it. Read the post and you’ll see the two great examples, one understands this medium and one doesn’t. Nice to see an SEO lay the smackdown on social media experts…. social media outside of linkbait.

Starbucks - They’re finally stepping it up with their coffee. I’ve never been a huge fan of Starbucks coffee but I’ll definitely give them another try with this new brew. Never really cared for the taste and I always found it inconsistent, I guess that’s because they change their flavor every week and location. That would explain it. On the other-hand, I fully recommend illy, I won’t buy anything else for the house.

Shark Attacks - As a surfer, shark attacks are always on your mind. The reality of it though, is that you’re about as likely to be attacked by a shark as you are winning the lottery. News like this bodyboarder who was attacked and killed the other day always makes that thought just a little more eminent. Whenever someone comes to learn to surf, they’re always asking me about sharks and you can tell it’s on their mind and it makes them a little nervous. I suppose it’s good to always be aware of the dangers but there are far more things more likely to kill you then a shark. With that said, my thoughts go out to the boy’s family.

Party Bait - One of the funnest guys to party with at any SEO conference is hands down Chris Hooley. He seriously makes everyone step their game up and I’m hoping he shows up to SMX Social. It’s been ahwile since he’s blogged but today I cruised around and found a post he just put up. The post is based around relevance and how Google portrays you. What caught my attention though, is how he talks about how he hardly blogs anymore because his focused has changed. I can relate to this as I just recently went through a blogging drought myself. It’s seriously a whole other ballgame when you’re blogging because your livelihood depends on it. It becomes a job and starts to lose it’s fun. Chris, I know I just went off on a completely different tangent but here’s to hoping you become that crazy party guy again for a couple days and join us in Long Beach.

What exactly is it? 5ones is an action sports news and information site covering surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, and other industry happenings. Right now what you see on the site is just a small taste of what’s to come in the future.

Although technically started last July, due to both of our busy schedules it didn’t take long before the site was placed on the back burner, as neither of us could find the time to keep it regularly updated and give the TLC it needed. It’s around this time that I started to realize I was taking on too much client work and I needed to slow down or I’d never have time to focus and build out my empire. So that’s what I did, I started to make the time and refocus on doing this thing proper.

Fast forward to Jan ‘08. I hired a couple writers, gave myself the position of Editor in Chief, and started pumping out regular content again. Although we originally launched the site back in July ‘07, we feel that we didn’t really start the site until the first of this year. Since then we’ve been keeping the site updated regularly. We just finished the redesign and now we’re launching what we call version 1.0. I must say that I am very impressed with the design, which was done by Pat Bennett from Modern Web Design. I would highly recommend using Pat for design work as you can see he did a fabulous job with 5ones. He also did all the custom WP hacks/programming.

One of the questions I get a lot is - what’s the meaning behind the name? To be honest, there isn’t one. As most of you know, finding domain names is pretty damn hard these days, most everything we wanted was taken so we just brainstormed, that name came up, and it stuck. I wish I had a good story about how the name came about but I don’t.

5ones is the first of many projects that I’ll be releasing through Factive over the next year. It’s a joint project in partnership with 97th Floor, who will also be involved in one other Factive property that is expected to launch this summer.

I also want to give a shout out to the wonderful staff of writers we have on the team. I am very pleased with their work and their desire to step it up and progress with the site. We have had tremendous success with traffic and growing our audience in just a few short months and much of that is because of the quality of content our writers have produced.

When I left ACS last summer, I left because I had an idea, or a vision if you will, and it was just the right time to make the move and go for it. Although ACS was becoming a very successful company, my heart was no longer in building out a large consulting firm. I also felt like it was an opportunity cost and there were much bigger things in store for me.

Two things happened when I left. I was suddenly bombarded with tons of consulting opportunities and I started my startup. The good thing about the consulting opportunities is that I could pick & choose and I could now also command the same rates that ACS, a full service firm, was charging. It’s pretty lucrative when you’re a solo dude charging what big firms do. But again, consulting was not what I wanted for myself so I made sure I didn’t overload myself and would still have time to dedicate to this other thing.

So while Factive started out as my own little consulting gig there has always been something much bigger brewing in the pot. Today I am happy to announce that I am officially changing Factive from being my little consulting shell to an action sports media network.

What you see on the page there is a very small taste of what’s to come. Seeing as I’m completely self-funded it’s not exactly going as quickly as I’d like so I’ll slowly be rolling out sites one-by-one.

So what exactly is my vision? Well duh, I’m building myself a nice little media empire in the action sports industry. Right now there is one site, which I’ll be posting about separately, that has officially launched v1.0. There are quite a few more that are in the works and will be rolled out over the next 12 months. These include everything from content sites to an ad network to community sites and other stuff not yet mentionable.

As many of you know, I’m an avid surfer and skier, so this fits the mold perfectly of doing something I love. I’ve been involved in action sports my whole life and I’m very excited to be building a successful company in this vertical. It’s a great opportunity for me to leverage my expertise and build a large online audience that will be worth a lot 5-10 years down the road.

As for consulting, I’m still doing that as well, but have been cutting back a little to put most of my focus on this. With the projections & numbers I’ve come up with I expect to be consulting for at least another year, unless I take on a small investment which is a small possibility at this point.

Stabbed - Last night I was stabbed in the arm by a dart. It went in far and it hurt, pretty bad. I bled all over the place. The person who stabbed me is probably reading this post so I just want to say that I do not forgive you and you need to watch your back. I’m coming after you in your sleep Sucker (replace that ‘S’ with an ‘F’ if you want to know what I’m really thinking). Just because I beat your ass in ping-pong is no reason to throw darts at me.

Time Sucks - If you call my cell phone and you can’t leave a message because my mailbox is full, please don’t take it personal. I’m not trying to be a dick. I think I’m just taking the 4-Hour Work Week a little to literal and I’m trying to cut back on my time sucks. I already hate talking on the phone to begin with so naturally its one of my first time sucks to go. If you need to get a hold of me and I don’t answer your call then you can either call back, send me a text, or send me an email. I’ve been thinking of saying that on my voicemail but that might be a little too much. Again, this is nothing personal, just me trying to be more efficient with time. Does this make me a dick? A couple people told me it does.

Twitter - Speaking of time sucks…. Yesterday I got coaxed into signing up for Twitter, which I’ve been purposely avoiding because it’s a huge time suck. So far I’m rolling with it but who knows how long I’ll last on it. If you want, you can follow me on twitter.

time out - coffee refill…

Tennis - I’d never really played tennis in my life until a couple weeks ago. I’m starting to like it a lot though. I have a court here in my neighborhood and I went and bought some rackets and I’ve started playing. Nothing serious yet but I’m enjoying it and it’s a great workout.

Launch Day - Looks like one or two of my sites will be officially ready for launch today. I’m super excited to announce these to you all and let you know what I’ve been up to these last few months. While the sites have been live for months now, and growing, we’re just finishing up some touches on new designs/dev stuff and I feel like they’re finally v1.0 and ready for an official launch.

I have a busy day ahead of me so I’m going to cut this short this morning. Hopefully I’ll be posting a little later on in the day when this stuff is ready.

CEO SEO - Rand Fishkin wrote a really good post about Internet CEOs that ignore SEO. While I didn’t go into nearly the detail that Rand did I also touched on this back in the summer with my SEO is for Idiots post. The basic point here is that you shouldn’t be the CEO of anything if you can’t recognize the value of a good rank. I realize most people who hire CEOs or fund new startups are looking for a certain pedigree, but common sense should probably be the first thing you look for, as in if you don’t have any you shouldn’t be running a company. Read Rand’s post though, it’s very good and goes into detail with some good examples.

Passion - A big part of my little startup is content. As I’ve been hiring contributors to write for me the first and most important quality I look for is passion. If you’re not passionate about what I’m asking you to write about then you have no chance of writing for me. I get all sorts of resumes from people with English degrees, etc, but they don’t have a strong interest in the subject I’m looking for. Immediately these people are disqualified. In my humble little opinion, the one thing you can’t teach someone is passion. On the other hand, I believe grammar/english skills can be taught (I need to be taught myself). I’ve actually hired a couple people that have serious grammar/english problems but they are some of the most passionate individuals I’ve ever met. Their passion comes through in their content and in-turn, that makes for really really good content that others love to read, exactly what I want. I don’t mind taking the extra time to edit and I actually enjoy teaching these individuals how to write good blog posts, etc. I like passion.

I really enjoy writing these posts. I took a break from blogging for awhile because it got to the point where I no longer enjoyed what I was writing about. Things were starting to feel forced and it burned me out. I no longer want to feel like I have to write about SEO or social media or any of that stuff. I just want to have fun and write what’s on my mind - whether that happens to be SEO stuff or just personal stuff. Hope you enjoy this new direction as much as I do.

Submit Worthy - My homie Chris Winfield wrote a good post on Search Engine Land today about making your content submit worthy. Chris is a social media genius so when he says something just shut up and listen. The one-liner that stood out in his post was… “In order to be successful on social media news and bookmarking sites, you have to think like a typical power user”. This is so true and it’s so common sense it’s not even funny. It never ceases to amaze me the content people pass me for social media advice - the stuff that would never in a million years appeal to the 20 y/o geek who spends his lifeless life on Digg. Come on people, it’s not rocket science. If you want to be successful on social media sites you need to think like a 20 y/o nerd and what appeals to them.

SMX Social - I know I’ve already mentioned this but SMX Social is approaching quickly. You should come, it will be fun and you might even learn something too, and it will be fun. I can’t wait to show all my lush friends how we party SoCal style. Seriously guys, leave your panties at home cause we’re doing it proper. I’m especially calling you out party boy.

Hawaii - I’m going in a just a few short weeks. Can’t wait to surf, not that I don’t already do that everyday, but this is Hawaii, come on. I’m also going to the Kokua Festival… Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, Mason Jennings…. wow, can’t wait. This also serves as my warning to Kala, watch out pretty boy, I’m coming for you.

I’m seriously turning off all news feeds right now. I’ve started to post like 5 different news stories here only to realize they’re all stupid April 1st jokes. I don’t want to be that idiot sucker who falls for them. PS, am I the only one who likes this song? No, that’s not a joke.

Now excuse me while I start rolling these out for my clients