On Being Unemployed and Homeless

[syrakusos]

On April 30, 2008, wy wife and I both graduated Summa cum Laude from Eastern Michigan University. Her B.Sc. is in technology management; mine is in criminology. We also both completed new associate's degrees along the way. In July, she was granted one in network security and another in computer forensics. Laurel already completed two a while back, one in mathematics, the other in computer science. My associate's are in criminal justice (2007) and general studies.

From January 2008 forward, I began looking for fulltime work in security management. I sent out resumes, cover letters and samples of my work. Those additional materials included relevant magazine articles I wrote and significant class work. (I got an A+ on a term paper in a senior class in Terrorism for First Responders. Another paper examined the differences leadership styles in four safety organizations, two police departments, a fire department, and a private security firm. I sent a paper on Business Ethics and Objectivism to four leading business executives known to be Objectivists.) I did all of this in succeeding rounds. "I will be graduating... I am graduating... I recently graduated..." Each mailing contained different materials.

All along, our rental agent kept prodding us to renew our lease. We were in a large four-bedroom, four-story farmhouse in rural Ann Arbor. One of our neighbors was Bill Martin, the Athletic Director of the U of M. Another was a retired surgeon who was serving as a township trustee. It was a nice place and reasonably priced for what it was. We declined to renew the lease as we were interviewing in Portland, Oregon, Cincinnati, and other places. We never got jobs. The agent rented the house to new tenants.

We spent the month of August homeless and unemployed.

It was pretty interesting to say the least.

Problems like this are pretty much a matter of perception. In the information age, the primary resources are informational. Having educations and having been married to each other for 30 years, we had some stability. Nonetheless, staying in motels, visiting friends and family and finally, camping, gave us a chance to step back and decide what the next stage of our life is going to be. After weighing all the options, we moved back to Ann Arbor. We are now renting a smaller home in town. Plan B is to return to graduate school and do this all again in a year or two.

[syrakusos]

See, I figured with my new degrees and work experience in security, I would be an easy hire. As it turned out, my own employer at the time, AlliedBarton, would not interview me for any opportunity posted on their website. In addition, as part of the employment campaign, I wrote to regional vice presidents and presidents at the largest firms, AlliedBarton, Securitas and Guardsmark. I also sent packets to executives in different departments at the compnay headquarters of those firms. For one thing, I have some experience in training. I was a part-time instructor at a community college. I spent three years training UAW skilled trades. I have been a public presenter at a science museum and I run the education forums for my state numismatic conventions. I have some game here. ... Nothing... not even a reply letter from any of them...

I wondered if there was a problem. Was there some other Michael Marotta under a RICO indictment in New Jersey? So, I paid the Mark Lipmann Agency to run a pre-employment background search on me. "Clean as a whistle," the investigator said on the phone before mailing me the spotless printout of a 10-year history.

Creating theories is what people do best. (See David Kelley on "The Problem of Induction.") So, the best theory I have is that in reality, I am not a cop and never have been -- and more to the point -- am not the kind of person who would be. My interest in private security is entirely libertarian. If the sign says, "No Smoking" I don't care what you are smoking, I only care about where you are smoking it. When asked what I would do about a guard who was repeatedly late to work, I suggested getting behind the problem and perhaps changing the schedule to meet that person's needs, as human resources are valuable. You might have to fire them, but it is better not to. In another interview, I drew out on the back of an envelope a famous puzzle and then drew the solution to underscore the fact that I think outside the square. All of that only differentiated me. At least that's my theory.

Private security is dominated by former law enforcement officers. Being on public retirement, they can afford to work for the lower wages, and they tend to hire each other. When I suggested this to my supervisor at that time, a former street tactical officer, he told me of an interview where he met former FBI, former DEA, former State Police and former suburban patrol officers, all of them managers for whom he would be working. His point was to underscore my observation. Private security has a long way to go to disengage itself from the public sector.

The reason I did not know this is that I started in security, not in Michigan, but in New Mexico. It's a different world. When I was suiting up for my first patrol, my wife asked me how a scofflaw like me gets this kind of job. Six months later, when we were out on a drive, I had her take my picture in front of the Lincoln County Courthouse. "It took Pat Garrett to bring down Billy the Kid," I said. So... Plan B ...

Edited September 28, 2008 by Michael E. Marotta

[Brant Gaede]

Start an Internet service for your profession. You can do this kind of thing even if you go back to school.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael,

I agree with Brant. With your qualifications, you should be selling instructions on how companies and people can better secure their property, how to avoid identity theft, etc.

On a book market, these things can make you a decent income over time. On an Internet PDF, audio and video market with the right promotion, there is no reason on earth you should not become filthy stinking rich. (A book sold on Amazon goes for about 20 bucks and you get 10% as author. A PDF ebook goes for about 47 bucks, is sold to a targeted audience that wants it, and you get to keep all the money. All you have to learn is how to get in front of that audience, what to offer it and what to say to it. This market is HUGE.)

If you are interested, I will send you some information on how to get started with Internet marketing.

Michael

[Mikee]

Michael,

Frankly your qualifications seem purely academic. Are you applying for jobs where you would be supervising people who have years of law enforcement? The average law enforcement person has little respect for "theory". I suggest adding this training to your resume:

http://www.tonyblauer.com/ Or something like Krav Maga. Get really fit, it shows and the people you would be working with respect that.

Your prospective employers may have done an internet search on your name and found writings of yours that were anarchist/pacifist in nature. And I know some sense of that must have come out to some degree in your interviews.

I hope you can find something satisfying. Good luck in your search.

[Mindy Newton]

Michael,

Frankly your qualifications seem purely academic. Are you applying for jobs where you would be supervising people who have years of law enforcement? The average law enforcement person has little respect for "theory". I suggest adding this training to your resume:

http://www.tonyblauer.com/ Or something like Krav Maga. Get really fit, it shows and the people you would be working with respect that.

Your prospective employers may have done an internet search on your name and found writings of yours that were anarchist/pacifist in nature. And I know some sense of that must have come out to some degree in your interviews.

I hope you can find something satisfying. Good luck in your search.

I'm really sorry to hear this story! I do think Mikee may be on to something, as I know the extreme clubbiness of law enforcement, and an ever-growing degree of defensiveness among individuals in that profession. "I've got your back," is both the first and last rule of our men in blue, in my experience.

Hey, MSK, how about posting that stuff about internet marketing here? I'd like to see it.

= Mindy

[syrakusos]

Frankly ...

It is amazing how many errors you crammed into such a short post.

[syrakusos]

Thanks for the advice and support. I am still looking for work. However, we do have a home now. Of the two problems, the latter is the more consequential. It is not uncommon for a middle class person to be unemployed. It happens. You quit, you get downsized, whatever. It happens. It is unusual to be homeless, to have no permanent address. After we rented this place, I began looking for work again and the lacuna jumped out right away.

"Where were you between July 31, 2008 and August 27, 2008?"

On the road.

"What was your address?"

We used our business address on Plymouth Road.

"That's a UPS box."

Yes, that's right.

"You must have had a street address."

No, we did not.

"Where did you live?"

We visited friends and relatives and we went camping alot.

-Silence-

Being homeless today means that you can still get phone calls... if you have a cellphone. Our friends all have internet connections, but only the KOA campgrounds had wifi. We used coffee shops and internet cafes. But that depended on our still having computers...

Staying clean takes focus. Not all the motels had laundromats. Not all the campgrounds had running water.

Earning money while on the road is another challenge, even in the best of times. In the current economic context, with our mix of skills, it was another matter entirely. I mentioned the paper I wrote for a class in responses to terrorism. That class was about half civilian, half military/law enforcement. So, we went snowtubing with the gung-ho guys and my wife broke her wrist. No big deal, once it began to heal, but she is not going to work as a waitress anytime soon. So, the easy off the books work is not so easy to find. For myself, again, ten years ago, I picked up work driving a forklift, and things like that. In the Post-9/11 environment, sliding by without a permanent address is more difficult.

When we were in Portland, Oregon, we were surprised by all the beggars on the street and by all the clever lines. "Don't blame my mom," one sign said. Another read, "It's for beer and the dog." (nice lab) One woman with a great speaking voice offered to sing us a song for our spare change. It's a living...

What would you do if your home were erased by a storm? It is pretty easy to take the libertarian view that no one should be rewarded for living in a hurricane zone, but there is nowhere on Earth without wind and rain. How long could you live on the road with your credit cards and maybe some gold and silver? Campgrounds became an option only after we bought a tent. Fortunately, we were not in line behind 10,000 other people with the same problem. Being homeless is interesting to think about and harder to do, I assure you.

Edited September 29, 2008 by Michael E. Marotta

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Hey, MSK, how about posting that stuff about internet marketing here? I'd like to see it.

Mindy,

I will be doing exactly that. I am finishing putting some of my ideas into practice and after I have resounding proof they work and examples I can point to, I will be offering free training about some really good money-making stuff for newbies (as enticement for paid training for some even better money-making stuff, of course). I expect to do this both in blog posts and in email mini-courses. I will not specifically target the Objectivist world, but I will point to my work outside this forum once it is up for those interested here on OL.

For the time being, here is a quick overview.

The No. 1 product sold on the Internet is information. This sells better than sex, politics, religion, physical products and anything else you can imagine. So unless newbies are familiar with things like drop-shipping, or they don't mind endless trips to the Post Office for dispatching packages, providing information in a downloadable format is the most lucrative thing they could do. After you get a site, payment processor, promotion and delivery system up and running, most of this operates on autopilot and there is almost no overhead. So you do another. And another. And another. All at little or no cost.

Here's the first thing: you need something to sell. (You can also freelance your services, and there are supplementary things I will be including to do that, but the real money is in marketing.) You can get a product from other people by representing them (called affiliate marketing) or by outright buying (or otherwise obtaining) a product and selling it as your own (called master resale rights, private label rights and a host of other terms with nuanced meanings, but all meaning you can sell the product and keep all the money). You can also produce your own product, which is much easier that it seems. And for the shameless, you can even get your stuff ghostwritten for a little of nothing at specialized sites like Rentacoder, Elance, etc.

Products basically come in PDF files, software (program files on the browser side and scripts to run on the server side), video, audio, and membership sites. The most lucrative products are "How to" instructions. The most lucrative areas are money-making/finance, health/wellbeing, and relationships. Entertainment is also high up, but you have to know how to do that one, otherwise you are just a fan.

There is a term, niche marketing, which is within the success reach of anybody who is interested. A niche is a specialized market where people buy information. (Look at a magazine rack at the drugstore, for example, and you will see a bunch of niches.) Some niches are really small, but since the Internet removes geographical transportation as an impediment, a really small market offered to the whole world suddenly gets a lot bigger.

To sell a product, you need a place to sell it: a site. You can either buy a domain name and register it on a hosting account, then install site software like Wordpress or Joomla or a host of others (or even build a sales minisite from scratch), or you can use other people's stuff for free (Squidoo, Blogger, Weebly, etc.).

After that, you need a payment processor where you can receive money, especially from credit cards. The best two at this time are Paypal and Paydotcom. Incidentally, at this last site, you can take a product you have the rights to and register it and they will do all the financial stuff and provide you with the codes (Paypal also provides codes and processing, but not as much support for sales as Paydotcom, which actually uses Paypal as part of its operations). You don't need to be the author at either Paypal or Paydotcom. (You do need to be the author for Clickbank, which is another story, and a very good one, too. But that's for later as a newbie starts learning about joint venturing.)

Now, before doing all that, a wise marketer will obey the No. 1 rule in selling: sell what people want to buy. He will research to find out what people are looking for and buying. This kind of goes against the grain of Objectivists since Randian heroes are loners against the pack, but not one of her heroes are professional salespeople either. There is no shame in becoming competent at sales and learning the rules of how this field works.

In order to find out what people want, there are procedures you can go through to find out what people are searching for on the search engines (through keywords and keyword phrases). Then you evaluate which searches involve people buying stuff and which ones are simply searches for information or free stuff. Then there are procedures for profiling searchers so you know which ones buy what.

In short, the name of the game is to get your offer in front of pockets of people who want to buy what you are offering and speak to their interest. The rest is a bunch of techniques to do just that and there are many paths that lead to Rome. They call it driving traffic, but that is not accurate. When you do it right, it is more like getting in front of a big wave and preparing to get wet.

One of the great things about Internet marketing is that to be good at it, you have to give away a lot of great stuff as one of the ways to get attention and establish trust. This means that you can get a lot of great stuff for free if you look.

Also one of the best selling techniques is to get an email list of opt-in subscribers. By opting in, they give you their permission to send them free information and sales offers. If you can get your list to trust you by constantly sending them high-quality information, one sales broadcast turns into instant money.

The downside to all this (for me) is that profession-wise I am a perfectionist and I want to know everything. There is a hell of a lot to know...

Also, the hype is as thick as molasses in this field, so you need to establish some commonsense standards right at the very beginning just to get something done. It's great to dream about becoming a millionaire, but actually doing the work is not as exciting. You can easily get seduced into inactivity or sidetracked into doing stuff that is not productive.

This makes it imperative to learn about psychological behavior triggers. (Cialdini is tops on this.) You not only want to influence people to take the actions you desire (like buying your stuff), you also want to defend against doing stuff you will regret later, or at least be aware of why you are doing what you are doing.

I have only mentioned free stuff you can do (or really low-cost stuff) for now. You can also do Adwords and other pay-per-click advertising if you have strong nerves and like playing poker with card-sharks. It's great when you learn it, but you can lose you shirt with one small mistake, so I strongly believe that people should only get into that after they learn how to make money from free advertising and resources.

Also, as a huge financial problem is now facing the nation, my approach is the most sound one possible for the majority of people who will be searching for how to make money online. My main problem will not be finding people. There are already gobs of them and this will increase exponentially. It will be the panic driving most of them. I am thinking about how to get them to calm down enough to do the right things to make enough money to put food on their table and pay their bills.

More coming as this project matures. I am at the very end of my education-only stage. I have an enormous reservoir of technical information (although it feels like I only scratched the surface) and am now doing my first quality sites and trying out my new wings.

btw - You sell Objectivist ideas just like you sell other information. I will be doing that, too, as I go along. It will not be by sponsoring a quasi-religious movement, but instead by selling information and entertainment products to individuals eager for them. However, I expect Objectivism to be a secondary business line in my new career, not the primary one. That's for the most Objectivist reason of all: profit.

Michael

[Mikee]

"It is amazing how many errors you crammed into such a short post."

Ha! Well, I do try to be efficient.

[algernonsidney]

For starters, Michael, you are in Michigan. You are in an area that has been economically depressed for many years. Many people are leaving the area for something better.

One of my friends lived in Whitmore Lake. She didn't want to leave. She finally moved to Columbus, Ohio, last year. It's interesting the amount of Michigan people you see in the home of the Buckeyes.

You are also over 50. You are getting some age discrimination. I would bet on it. Also, don't do anything that gives away your age.

Have you talked to your professor, etc.? They are usually happy to help with this kind of stuff. Perhaps, they could help you get a job at the university.

You are using a mailbox for your mailing address. Why are you advertising that fact? There is no point in telling your employer this. Just use the box as your address. Instead of box, just put number. They will assume it is an apartment.

Back in 1998, I got my first job in Columbus, Ohio, using a private mailbox. The kicker was that I didn't live in Columbus at the time. However, I got no offers in Columbus until I used this as my address. I was rejected simply because I had an out-of-town address. Once I got an offer, I did a quick move.

Get out there and talk to people in your profession. I think you might be able to get a CISSP. Have you considered that?

Edited September 29, 2008 by Chris Baker

[sbeaulieu]

Hey, MSK, how about posting that stuff about internet marketing here? I'd like to see it.

Mindy,

I will be doing exactly that. I am finishing putting some of my ideas into practice and after I have resounding proof they work and examples I can point to, I will be offering free training about some really good money-making stuff for newbies (as enticement for paid training for some even better money-making stuff, of course). I expect to do this both in blog posts and in email mini-courses. I will not specifically target the Objectivist world, but I will point to my work outside this forum once it is up for those interested here on OL.

For the time being, here is a quick overview.

The No. 1 product sold on the Internet is information. This sells better than sex, politics, religion, physical products and anything else you can imagine. So unless newbies are familiar with things like drop-shipping, or they don't mind endless trips to the Post Office for dispatching packages, providing information in a downloadable format is the most lucrative thing they could do. After you get a site, payment processor, promotion and delivery system up and running, most of this operates on autopilot and there is almost no overhead. So you do another. And another. And another. All at little or no cost.

Here's the first thing: you need something to sell. (You can also freelance your services, and there are supplementary things I will be including to do that, but the real money is in marketing.) You can get a product from other people by representing them (called affiliate marketing) or by outright buying (or otherwise obtaining) a product and selling it as your own (called master resale rights, private label rights and a host of other terms with nuanced meanings, but all meaning you can sell the product and keep all the money). You can also produce your own product, which is much easier that it seems. And for the shameless, you can even get your stuff ghostwritten for a little of nothing at specialized sites like Rentacoder, Elance, etc.

Products basically come in PDF files, software (program files on the browser side and scripts to run on the server side), video, audio, and membership sites. The most lucrative products are "How to" instructions. The most lucrative areas are money-making/finance, health/wellbeing, and relationships. Entertainment is also high up, but you have to know how to do that one, otherwise you are just a fan.

There is a term, niche marketing, which is within the success reach of anybody who is interested. A niche is a specialized market where people buy information. (Look at a magazine rack at the drugstore, for example, and you will see a bunch of niches.) Some niches are really small, but since the Internet removes geographical transportation as an impediment, a really small market offered to the whole world suddenly gets a lot bigger.

To sell a product, you need a place to sell it: a site. You can either buy a domain name and register it on a hosting account, then install site software like Wordpress or Joomla or a host of others (or even build a sales minisite from scratch), or you can use other people's stuff for free (Squidoo, Blogger, Weebly, etc.).

After that, you need a payment processor where you can receive money, especially from credit cards. The best two at this time are Paypal and Paydotcom. Incidentally, at this last site, you can take a product you have the rights to and register it and they will do all the financial stuff and provide you with the codes (Paypal also provides codes and processing, but not as much support for sales as Paydotcom, which actually uses Paypal as part of its operations). You don't need to be the author at either Paypal or Paydotcom. (You do need to be the author for Clickbank, which is another story, and a very good one, too. But that's for later as a newbie starts learning about joint venturing.)

Now, before doing all that, a wise marketer will obey the No. 1 rule in selling: sell what people want to buy. He will research to find out what people are looking for and buying. This kind of goes against the grain of Objectivists since Randian heroes are loners against the pack, but not one of her heroes are professional salespeople either. There is no shame in becoming competent at sales and learning the rules of how this field works.

In order to find out what people want, there are procedures you can go through to find out what people are searching for on the search engines (through keywords and keyword phrases). Then you evaluate which searches involve people buying stuff and which ones are simply searches for information or free stuff. Then there are procedures for profiling searchers so you know which ones buy what.

In short, the name of the game is to get your offer in front of pockets of people who want to buy what you are offering and speak to their interest. The rest is a bunch of techniques to do just that and there are many paths that lead to Rome. They call it driving traffic, but that is not accurate. When you do it right, it is more like getting in front of a big wave and preparing to get wet.

One of the great things about Internet marketing is that to be good at it, you have to give away a lot of great stuff as one of the ways to get attention and establish trust. This means that you can get a lot of great stuff for free if you look.

Also one of the best selling techniques is to get an email list of opt-in subscribers. By opting in, they give you their permission to send them free information and sales offers. If you can get your list to trust you by constantly sending them high-quality information, one sales broadcast turns into instant money.

The downside to all this (for me) is that profession-wise I am a perfectionist and I want to know everything. There is a hell of a lot to know...

Also, the hype is as thick as molasses in this field, so you need to establish some commonsense standards right at the very beginning just to get something done. It's great to dream about becoming a millionaire, but actually doing the work is not as exciting. You can easily get seduced into inactivity or sidetracked into doing stuff that is not productive.

This makes it imperative to learn about psychological behavior triggers. (Cialdini is tops on this.) You not only want to influence people to take the actions you desire (like buying your stuff), you also want to defend against doing stuff you will regret later, or at least be aware of why you are doing what you are doing.

I have only mentioned free stuff you can do (or really low-cost stuff) for now. You can also do Adwords and other pay-per-click advertising if you have strong nerves and like playing poker with card-sharks. It's great when you learn it, but you can lose you shirt with one small mistake, so I strongly believe that people should only get into that after they learn how to make money from free advertising and resources.

Also, as a huge financial problem is now facing the nation, my approach is the most sound one possible for the majority of people who will be searching for how to make money online. My main problem will not be finding people. There are already gobs of them and this will increase exponentially. It will be the panic driving most of them. I am thinking about how to get them to calm down enough to do the right things to make enough money to put food on their table and pay their bills.

More coming as this project matures. I am at the very end of my education-only stage. I have an enormous reservoir of technical information (although it feels like I only scratched the surface) and am now doing my first quality sites and trying out my new wings.

btw - You sell Objectivist ideas just like you sell other information. I will be doing that, too, as I go along. It will not be by sponsoring a quasi-religious movement, but instead by selling information and entertainment products to individuals eager for them. However, I expect Objectivism to be a secondary business line in my new career, not the primary one. That's for the most Objectivist reason of all: profit.

Michael

Michael,

If this is quick, I wonder what your summaries look like...

~ Shane

[sbeaulieu]

Michael (OP),

I really wish you the best out there. All in all, it's good to see that you are not letting this situation drag you down (at least I don't feel that coming from your post). What MSK stated sounds like a basket of options worth digging through. With your background, have you thought about being a consultant?

~ Shane

[syrakusos]

You are in an area that has been economically depressed for many years. ... You are getting some age discrimination. ... Perhaps, they could help you get a job at the university. ... There is no point in telling your employer this. Just use the box as your address. ... They will assume it is an apartment. ... Back in 1998 ... ... get a CISSP.

Chris, thanks for the feedback. I appreciate your positive suggestions. Basically, I think I hit all those targets. So, I either need to be more persistent or else pick different targets. One of the reasons that we chose to relocate back to Ann Arbor after looking at Portland, Madison and other places came from a suggestion from another objectivist friend of mine. She asked what the unemployment rate is right now. I said seven percent officially, but we know that's not true. She said, "Assume it's 20%. That means that 80% of the people are doing all right and you can be in that 80%."

I think that my age is a plus in this market and in this sector.

University employment is highly regulated and unionized. My professors can only do so much. I wait for postings and apply. It's the best I can do. My present goal is to arrange for a graduate assistantship for Winter 2009. I just applied for an adjunct teaching job in criminal justice at a community college because it asked only for a baccalaureate. Usually, you need a master's. (It's another topic, but in this day, degree inflation is real. One of my crim texts was written by a woman with two Ph.D.s) Anyway, I keep my eye on the schools here abouts, but everyone else is hitting on them, too, of course.

Not to flog the details, but again, in this day and age, everything is online and a background check is automatic. I could stretch the dates of the old house and this one... but if the stretching is revealed, the consequences are serious. It is best to be honest, totally and completely honest, especially in security. "Back in 1998...." means "Before 9/11...." When I had the Mark Lippman compnay run my background, all I gave them was my social. They used that to get all my W-2s for the past 10 years and then queried the county sheriff in each place where I worked. This is the information age.

Although I have been a full voting member of ASIS International for three years, I cannot qualify for any of their certifications because I have only worked parttime and they require three to five years or more of fulltime employment to take their tests.

One of the reasons that we chose Michigan in the first place in 2005 and then again this summer is that the licensing here is weighted toward the BS degree in criminology. Many states -- Colorado, e.g. -- have no licensing. Most have some. Wisconsin, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, they all have mechanisms in place to close the market to the advantage of law enforcement. Michigan is the same way, except, as I said, that the four-year degree in criminology from a state university qualifies me to be licensed first as a private investigator and then to open my own guard company. Still, there are other barriers, of course: bonding for one and formidable application fees just to get started.

On one wall in my office and also in my wife's office, we have a quote from Harlan Ellison: "Those who are discouraged deserve to be."

So, yes, as I said at the top, we were fortunate to have more than schooling for education, to be smart, and to have each other to rely on (argue with). We were able to think our way through this. Attitude is everything.

[algernonsidney]

She asked what the unemployment rate is right now. I said seven percent officially, but we know that's not true. She said, "Assume it's 20%. That means that 80% of the people are doing all right and you can be in that 80%."

I don't think employment numbers are valid. There were lots of people in IT who lost their jobs and ended up taking jobs that they didn't want. If a computer programmer gets a job as a cab driver, it doesn't count as an "unemployed programmer." It counts as an "employed bus driver."

Michigan is in the toilet. It's about as bad as any place for jobs.

Not to flog the details, but again, in this day and age, everything is online and a background check is automatic. I could stretch the dates of the old house and this one... but if the stretching is revealed, the consequences are serious.

It may be different for your profession. It absolutely amazes me the amount of employers nowadays who still do not do any kind of background checks. Generally, if they do, they do job history checks. Some of them ask for past residences, but I don't think they formally check it. Who keeps records of where you have lived? I don't think any of my past landlords have any exact records of when I moved in and when I moved out. If they do ask for past addresses, it is so that they can check with the local police to see if you have any record.

The CISSP is a IT security-related certification. I don't know if you would qualify for it or not. I have always had the impression that you have done some IT work. I could be wrong.

[syrakusos]

With your background, have you thought about being a consultant? ~ Shane

Michigan regulates private security guards, guard companies, and private investigators. I could be on the wrong side of the rules very easily. For now, my business card says, "Criminologist." It's not regulated. Laurel and I attended a couple of "meet and greet" dinners last week and as I was explaining to businesses what their exposures are like, I was very clear to say that I am not an investigator, but a sociologist: I study the social environment and identify the criminogenic factors. For now, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Also -- and this is subtle -- one of the factors working against me is that I have never specialized. Long ago, I took Robert Heinlein's advice and chose to be a generalist. However, the highest monetary rewards go to specialists. For me, with my background, that would mean creating a business plan that defines the intersection of writing, training and security. Creating training manuals would be one example. Delivering training sessions would be another.

The flip side, though, is that those other skill areas have allowed me some income. I write a monthly column for the American Numismatic Association, for instance. So, while being a generalist has its costs, every liability is an asset.

Chris Baker wrote: "The CISSP is a IT security-related certification. I don't know if you would qualify for it or not. I have always had the impression that you have done some IT work. I could be wrong."

Right you are. Sorry. It did not click with me. I had to look it up. Laurel is the one who does the IT work. She has the certifications. When we are licensed, I will hold the permits and she will work for me -- at least on paper, reality being different than that, of course. As you say, when an IT person with CISSP certifcations is driving a cab... Michigan is tough, indeed.

Edited September 29, 2008 by Michael E. Marotta

[algernonsidney]

I study the social environment and identify the criminogenic factors. For now, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Well, with computer networks, the human being is still the biggest security breach. The human being writes down passwords where anyone can get to them and uses easy passwords. The human leaves his computer logged in and unattended. The human being keeps servers where anybody can get to them.

Also -- and this is subtle -- one of the factors working against me is that I have never specialized. Long ago, I took Robert Heinlein's advice and chose to be a generalist. However, the highest monetary rewards go to specialists.

I have noticed the same thing in IT. It's quite difficult to transition from generalist to specialist.

She has the certifications.

What certifications are they?

I don't think there is any one cure-all to your situation. I do think getting out of Michigan would be an excellent start. Texas seems to absorb new people pretty well. And snow is a four-letter word.

Like it or not, many employers trash out-of-town resumes immediately, even if you are willing to pay for your own move.

[Mindy Newton]

Hey, MSK, how about posting that stuff about internet marketing here? I'd like to see it.

Mindy,

I will be doing exactly that. I am finishing putting some of my ideas into practice and after I have resounding proof they work and examples I can point to, I will be offering free training about some really good money-making stuff for newbies (as enticement for paid training for some even better money-making stuff, of course). I expect to do this both in blog posts and in email mini-courses. I will not specifically target the Objectivist world, but I will point to my work outside this forum once it is up for those interested here on OL.

For the time being, here is a quick overview.

The No. 1 product sold on the Internet is information. This sells better than sex, politics, religion, physical products and anything else you can imagine. So unless newbies are familiar with things like drop-shipping, or they don't mind endless trips to the Post Office for dispatching packages, providing information in a downloadable format is the most lucrative thing they could do. After you get a site, payment processor, promotion and delivery system up and running, most of this operates on autopilot and there is almost no overhead. So you do another. And another. And another. All at little or no cost.

Here's the first thing: you need something to sell. (You can also freelance your services, and there are supplementary things I will be including to do that, but the real money is in marketing.) You can get a product from other people by representing them (called affiliate marketing) or by outright buying (or otherwise obtaining) a product and selling it as your own (called master resale rights, private label rights and a host of other terms with nuanced meanings, but all meaning you can sell the product and keep all the money). You can also produce your own product, which is much easier that it seems. And for the shameless, you can even get your stuff ghostwritten for a little of nothing at specialized sites like Rentacoder, Elance, etc.

Products basically come in PDF files, software (program files on the browser side and scripts to run on the server side), video, audio, and membership sites. The most lucrative products are "How to" instructions. The most lucrative areas are money-making/finance, health/wellbeing, and relationships. Entertainment is also high up, but you have to know how to do that one, otherwise you are just a fan.

There is a term, niche marketing, which is within the success reach of anybody who is interested. A niche is a specialized market where people buy information. (Look at a magazine rack at the drugstore, for example, and you will see a bunch of niches.) Some niches are really small, but since the Internet removes geographical transportation as an impediment, a really small market offered to the whole world suddenly gets a lot bigger.

To sell a product, you need a place to sell it: a site. You can either buy a domain name and register it on a hosting account, then install site software like Wordpress or Joomla or a host of others (or even build a sales minisite from scratch), or you can use other people's stuff for free (Squidoo, Blogger, Weebly, etc.).

After that, you need a payment processor where you can receive money, especially from credit cards. The best two at this time are Paypal and Paydotcom. Incidentally, at this last site, you can take a product you have the rights to and register it and they will do all the financial stuff and provide you with the codes (Paypal also provides codes and processing, but not as much support for sales as Paydotcom, which actually uses Paypal as part of its operations). You don't need to be the author at either Paypal or Paydotcom. (You do need to be the author for Clickbank, which is another story, and a very good one, too. But that's for later as a newbie starts learning about joint venturing.)

Now, before doing all that, a wise marketer will obey the No. 1 rule in selling: sell what people want to buy. He will research to find out what people are looking for and buying. This kind of goes against the grain of Objectivists since Randian heroes are loners against the pack, but not one of her heroes are professional salespeople either. There is no shame in becoming competent at sales and learning the rules of how this field works.

In order to find out what people want, there are procedures you can go through to find out what people are searching for on the search engines (through keywords and keyword phrases). Then you evaluate which searches involve people buying stuff and which ones are simply searches for information or free stuff. Then there are procedures for profiling searchers so you know which ones buy what.

In short, the name of the game is to get your offer in front of pockets of people who want to buy what you are offering and speak to their interest. The rest is a bunch of techniques to do just that and there are many paths that lead to Rome. They call it driving traffic, but that is not accurate. When you do it right, it is more like getting in front of a big wave and preparing to get wet.

One of the great things about Internet marketing is that to be good at it, you have to give away a lot of great stuff as one of the ways to get attention and establish trust. This means that you can get a lot of great stuff for free if you look.

Also one of the best selling techniques is to get an email list of opt-in subscribers. By opting in, they give you their permission to send them free information and sales offers. If you can get your list to trust you by constantly sending them high-quality information, one sales broadcast turns into instant money.

The downside to all this (for me) is that profession-wise I am a perfectionist and I want to know everything. There is a hell of a lot to know...

Also, the hype is as thick as molasses in this field, so you need to establish some commonsense standards right at the very beginning just to get something done. It's great to dream about becoming a millionaire, but actually doing the work is not as exciting. You can easily get seduced into inactivity or sidetracked into doing stuff that is not productive.

This makes it imperative to learn about psychological behavior triggers. (Cialdini is tops on this.) You not only want to influence people to take the actions you desire (like buying your stuff), you also want to defend against doing stuff you will regret later, or at least be aware of why you are doing what you are doing.

I have only mentioned free stuff you can do (or really low-cost stuff) for now. You can also do Adwords and other pay-per-click advertising if you have strong nerves and like playing poker with card-sharks. It's great when you learn it, but you can lose you shirt with one small mistake, so I strongly believe that people should only get into that after they learn how to make money from free advertising and resources.

Also, as a huge financial problem is now facing the nation, my approach is the most sound one possible for the majority of people who will be searching for how to make money online. My main problem will not be finding people. There are already gobs of them and this will increase exponentially. It will be the panic driving most of them. I am thinking about how to get them to calm down enough to do the right things to make enough money to put food on their table and pay their bills.

More coming as this project matures. I am at the very end of my education-only stage. I have an enormous reservoir of technical information (although it feels like I only scratched the surface) and am now doing my first quality sites and trying out my new wings.

btw - You sell Objectivist ideas just like you sell other information. I will be doing that, too, as I go along. It will not be by sponsoring a quasi-religious movement, but instead by selling information and entertainment products to individuals eager for them. However, I expect Objectivism to be a secondary business line in my new career, not the primary one. That's for the most Objectivist reason of all: profit.

Michael

Great, Michael! Thanks so much, I'll watch for the more.

= Mindy

[sbeaulieu]

I study the social environment and identify the criminogenic factors. For now, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Well, with computer networks, the human being is still the biggest security breach. The human being writes down passwords where anyone can get to them and uses easy passwords. The human leaves his computer logged in and unattended. The human being keeps servers where anybody can get to them.

Much like snow being a four-letter word down south, "user" is a four-letter word in the IT world. The worst attack vector is social engineering through phishing. Curiosity and click-happy addicts are sinking networks and resources. Physical security can be shored up by competent admins, but changing the user mindset, not so much.

~ Shane

Edited September 30, 2008 by sbeaulieu

[dongrimme]

Michael,

It looks like you're getting some good advice here. I have none to offer. Just a comment about how similar your ironic situation and mine are:

On the one hand:

1. I'm just about to achieve my life's dream: publication of my first book, The New Manager's Tool Kit (AMACOM, Nov 2008). Analogous to your graduation with honors.
   
2. My wife and I have been happily married for 31 years.
   

On the other hand:

1. We had to give up our home a few months ago (a "short sale") and are living in a rented condo unit (a surprisingly nice one for the low rent). We weren't homeless, but it was close.
   
2. My training/speaking business is in a major slump and we're almost out of money. Getting by on partial social security and the generosity of friends.
   

Best wishes to us both!

Don