25 Things About Me – “you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask…”

I got tagged to do this by the Alex Jeffreys coaching students community, specifically by Julie Newman one of the most creative bloggers I know. So here goes…

5 Things Personal

I was born and raised in Germany (which makes English not my native language)

I grew up near Cologne, Germany

I met my wife, Nancy, who is from La Jolla, CA, in Salzburg, Austria at a “Sound of Music” dinner show that was put on for American and Japanese tourists (she was a singer, I played the piano)

We migrated to Los Angeles in 1996

We have 7 children, 4 girls and 3 boys (current ages 13 to almost 1)

5 Things Interests and Likes

I like to travel to Umbria, Tuscany and Greece (but haven’t for the past 15 years…)

I love music, especially Beethoven’s 8th Symphony, and Brahm’s Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra, and Glen Gould’s way of playing Bach

[Afterthought: Come to think of it, pretty much ALL 8th Symphonies are quite extraordinary and most enjoyable (Bruckner, Mahler, Shostakovitch... ]

I like to try something new (every day)

I like to lead and teach, especially groups of young musicians

I like good conversations and visits with friends

5 Things Professional/Career

I have a fairly large list of film and TV credits as music editor, orchestrator and score conductor

I am a “church musician”, and have played the organ almost every Sunday for the past 27 years with very few interruptions

I have been on the Internet since 1994. My first “commercial” domain was audiohost.com which I envisioned to be a hosting service to make it easy for people to add audio to their web sites (talk about cutting edge back then…)

I have been a real estate investor since 2002 – ups and downs included (CaWholesaleDeals.com)

I have been an information marketer since 2007

5 Things Ambivalent and Dislikes

I don’t like negative people who are always looking for reasons why something won’t work

I really don’t like the ups and downs of testing, rejection and mediocrity in marketing. I’ve coined the phrase “Success looks different from the inside than from the outside.”

I like technology, but dislike having to learn something new all the time just for staying on top of things.

I don’t like to do things on my own – but it’s hard for me to consistently step out of my personality to seek help, collaboration and partnerships.

I find most “25 Things About Me” from other people a lot more interesting than my own

5 Random Things

I used to run a couple of my own radio shows in a local radio station in Bavaria (“Radio Untersberg”), and did some cutting edge stuff there, like interview abused teenagers and run their voice through a special effect device for identity protection, having indy bands play live in the tiny studio, or airing a fairly long interview in English (with German translation of course) with Jim Dine about his “Untersberg” paintings when they were exhibited in Salzburg…

I like my son’s (Lukas) videos on youtube -

I really enjoy that I can be around my kids and family most of the time, and work out of my home office. It’s fantastic and a true blessing to see them grow and develop.

I can be persistent and stubborn (2 sides of the same coin to me), but at times persistence competes with eagerness to explore new things.

I enjoy being Catholic (although I didn’t grow up that way), and recently started to go to daily Mass (but I need a nap on Saturday afternoon to make up for that…

This blog post was inspired by a blog post of my co-student Nathaniel Monk in Alex Jeffreys mentorship program.

Nathaniel talked about how we often don’t give ourselves credit for accomplishments and for what’s actually working.

So, here goes my account of changes/improvements I’ve made since the beginning of the program with Alex:

1. On my Blog right here:

• Discovered and added some “tools of engagement”. These tools encourage visitors to leave comments and share the blog posts with their followers on Twitter, and Social Media. TweetMeMe, ViralTweets and CommentLuv are my favorites.
• Created welcome video for Twitter followers.
• Installed Twitter Counter.
• Started “Blog Traffic Getting With Thomas“, a series of videos about traffic getting methods, specifically for blogs. I implemented this series on USTREAM for two reasons. One, I hadn’t done anything on USTREAM yet and wanted to learn something new, and two, I wanted to test USTREAM’s effect on Google ranking (which is huge, I would say bigger than Youtube.)
• Engaged in commenting on other students’ blogs as well as comments on “launch blogs”. What I call “launch blogs” are the blogs that are active during the pre-launch in product launches. They typically get tons of traffic and posting engaging comments there can be smashing!
• Installed FreeListBuildingFormula.com as profit pulling platform.
• Installed Ultimate Footer Ads.
• As a result the blog is getting about 25 to 30 visits per day, which is up from right around nothing

2. On my Blog at CaWholesaleDeals.com

• Participated in promotions of two smaller and one major product launches (Flip for Profits with Jamel Gibbs, Hooked on Overages with Rick Dawson, and SIMS with Jeff Walker and Greg Clement). For Flip for Profits and SIMS this meant writing new articles for ezinearticles.com, creating a bunch of new videos (I think at least 15) and implementing campaigns with SENuke which I’ve come to appreciate a lot!
• Installed “tools of enagement” and encouraged commenting which I had never done before on that site.
• Got Ultimate Footer Ads installed.
• Adding about 25 subscribers per day to my real estate lists that way.
• 3 Webinars (one live content-only [15 attendees], one live content with promotion [45 attendees], one canned with promotion[20 attendees])
• Thinking about own product (looking to JV with expert…)

3. Emailing My List &  Promotions

• I’ve been hammering my lists with at least one email per day. They must be quite numb by now
• One additional promotion to a JV partner’s webinar

4. Outsourcing

• Interviewed article writing, SEO and content creation team.

Remember, I’m not writing this to impress anyone but myself. Let this serve you as a reminder to give yourself credit for what you’ve actually done and accomplished.

Please leave a comment, retweet and create your own account, linking back to this post to share!

If I feel depressed I will sing.
If I feel sad I will laugh.
If I feel ill I will double my labor.
If I feel fear I will plunge ahead.
If I feel inferior I will wear new garments.
If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice.
If I feel poverty I will think of wealth to come.
If I feel incompetent I will think of past success.
If I feel insignificant I will remember my goals.

Today I will be the master of my emotions.

- Og Mandino

Have you heard about “The Family Adventure Project“?