It's fricken cold...

Okay, I fell off the wagon a little last night eating movie popcorn laced with salt. I justified it by knowing I'd do a long run. No need to justify it really, the bottom line is a couldn't keep my motivation strong enough to say no.

If someone asks me what is tougher, eating to lose weight or training, without question to me it's eating. What's at issue is that with eating you can get focused on something else, or have an emotional moment of some sort, or get bored and the next thing you know you forget about your diet. At least with training you know what you have to do and once you do it for the day it's done.

Last night I didn't get to bed until around 2 am, I was up on my computer working. Yes working. I was focusing on my triathlon toons site and revisiting the affiliate marketing programs I signed up for a long long time ago. Affiliate marketing is when I put the ad of one advertiser on my site and someone buys I get a commission from the sale. On the Triathlon Toons site I have two links where this happens. The cool links and coupons sections. The work is in applying for the programs and then finding the ones that are best suited to your site. I'm going to get Abbey to do this and wanted to re-familiarize myself with the site and make sure all the passwords still worked. Going to bed was tough, my mind was racing and by 2 am it was too late, I was already pissed off at myself for throwing off my schedule.

When I woke up this morning the weather was miserable. Rainy, cool and high wind advisories. Exactly not what you want when you have a long Saturday bike ride. I was going to ride right away and it started raining, I really wanted to get 5 hours in today. I decided to wait and started reviewing my triathlon toons site, most of the programming changes were done, the site is looking really good now. www.triathlontoons.com . Triathlons is such a niche market that I'm opening the site to general caricatures, before I can do that I need to finalize the look and feel and then we are copying it and it will be posted to a new site called www.caricaturetoons.com . Much more SEO friendly. I plan on marketing the shit out of it. I need to bring some bucks in as soon as possible. I already have over 10 artists that are to be uploading their galleries this week, we will have a lot of artists styles to chose from.

I haven't been as focused and excited about this site since 2009. Yes, 2009. I realized the concept came to me in 2009 almost to the month, I think if was November 2009. I still worked at Embassy. Overall I've only sold about $1000 worth of caricatures and that's when I was advertising on IM Talk, which cost me $700. I'm going to add all the other costs, I'm sure I'm into it for about $10,000 and maybe more. Hope not. Part of the issue is the site wasn't even getting ranked, there was no SEO, I let it drop and didn't do anything with it for near a year. I love the site, the functionality is awesome, the business model is sound and behind the scenes there is an elaborate administration dashboard and artists dashboard that is very rich in functions, including an IM messaging system between customers and artists. The site structure can definitely be re purposed for another business model. One of the ideas a guy gave me was creating a site using the same bones but instead of using caricatures allow illustrators or artists, amateur or pro, to sell their artwork or be able to be commissioned for artwork.

Undeterred I was still going to go for my bike ride, I was just waiting for the right moment hoping it would warm up outside first. In the meantime I spoke to the programmer and we discussed the next steps. Frankly I really think I'm onto something and Poochie and gang is doing a good job with the SEO. Where their lacking is in the communication and packaging of what they are doing. With the new site being launched for general caricatures I don't have a problem promoting heavily and all the SEO and SEM work and expense will be worth it over the longer term. My programmer is going to set up the site and then with a data base we will be able to make it dynamic or set up pages that are dynamic with galleries for each subject matter and this can be done relatively inexpensively. If a customer enters the name golf caricatures, up will come my gallery landing page that is part of the existing site.

What I've found is that caricature sites are run by artists, some are run by real businesses, maybe 10. The others are artists. We've done a competitor analysis on the top 10 sites and reversed there marketing strategy. One site www.dimpleart.com is maybe one of the most popular with over 25,000 caricatures done. There site sucks as far as I'm concerned. I've used them in the past, that's how I got the ideal. They are cheap, they are good, just one style. It's tough to find the order now button on the site. They are from Thailand. Probably the most aggressive and business minded site is www.mycaricature.com . His prices are higher, work looks good, I think the site sucks. I'm curious on anyones feedback if they like their sites or mine better. Be honest of likes and dislikes.

I've done a lot of work. You can order caricatures off my site and gifting items. It's a damn work of art, now I just need to finish it and promote it. In the past I've justified the expense as a way to write off triathlons, now I need to really make some money off it. After I make the general site I won't be spending any time on promoting the triathlon site. I do think there is a decent market for the product. I noticed Wal-mart USA offers a caricature service on their website and have supplier they use. The prices are decent too, not as good as mine but what do you expect they need to give Walmart some money.

If I could get the site up to 10 caricature orders a day I'd be happy, it would give me approximately $200 of gross profit per day, $1400 per week or $5600 per month, after expenses like poochie and some marketing it would put about $4000 per month or $48,000 per year in my pocket when all is said and done. Not a lot, but it's not a lot of work once it get up and running either. Who know, perhaps those numbers are low? I'm hoping so as my marketing is world wide. If dimple art has done 25,000 in 8 years that 3125 caricatures a year or 60 per week or 8.5 per day, so my numbers aren't that far off. Plus dimple art doesn't market as aggressively as I plan on it, they don't have multiple art styles to choose from and I'm hoping I can at minimum do what they do. Heck, I'd love to be able to do double what they do if I can. If the site could ever get to putting $100,000 a year in my pocket I'd be totally ecstatic, that would easily cover my yearly personal expenses nut. You can always dream. I found a writing site http://www.textbroker.com/ that does what I do with multiple writers at low cost and they are getting over 10,000 orders per month and over 60,000 writers in the pipeline.

I guess I'm more motivated than every with the shoe coming down at AG. I met with Wayne on Monday to discuss a wage drop. Curious if it means commission or just base and if there is a weaning in period.

Later in the afternoon I finally got on my bike and managed to get in near 3.5 hours before calling it a day. I was spitting rain all day with winds of 37 kph gusting up to 57 kph and it was damn cold. My feet got wet and froze to the point I didn't realize how cold they were and even with cross country ski gloves on my hands were getting cold. My ride was slow and I barely got the heart rate over 110 bpm and didn't feel like I broke a sweat once. The amazing thing was I was able to suck it up and get 3.5 hours in and I think what helped is all I thought about was my triathlon toons site and priorities of what needs to be done. I was dreaming a little about the possibilities after it is done and that I need sales NOW, at least to stop any bleeding and cover costs, which aren't too high but with poochie and abbey, programming and server fees right now about $2000 per month. Within a month or two I can get rid of Poochie and Abbey if the work is not there and they would have done a lot of heavy lifting for me and I could run it myself or have Alice help me a little.

When I got back I was frozen. I also didn't have one drink of water the entire ride. I left with three full water bottles and returned with three full water bottles. I did have a banana. Needless to say I was in a mini bonk when I got home. I also had a headache, remnants of the concussion. My head was good for the first 2 hours and then it started to get sore from the oxygen and road.

My feet were soaking and needed near 2 hours to thaw out. I thought I'd help them and jump in a warm bath and it was worse. I had to jump out, I was in pain and my feet were now scratchy. I needed to dry them and walk around the house. I was in pain and lightly screaming for about 15 minutes after getting out of the bath. I didn't go back into the bath for another hour. Even then it felt cold no mater how much hot water I added. I wasn't sweating until the end when I filled it up with more hot water and it was really hot. Even then it wasn't a lot.

With the mini-bonk and headache all I wanted to do was eat. I started with a frozen fruit and whey protein smoothie and it wasn't enough. Then it was soup. Then a full plate of left over chicken and white rice. It kept going. I finally started to feel a little better. Then Alice made some pizza, I had a piece and snuck another later in the night. When I got home from my ride I was a little depressed that the weight was back into the 190's, from the popcorn yesterday and no fluid loss on the bike today. Oh well. Even though I'm semi cheating yesterday and today, I had some candies and chips later in the night, I'm not going overboard. I always need to remind myself to eat fruit as a snack, I find when I do I lose the urge to snack on junk after a while it satisfies my craving. That was my last snack tonight, grapes. Worked great.

Tonight Alice when to our neighbour John Fortuna's 50th birthday party by herself. I was not feeling good at all and in no mood to socialize. I wanted her at least to have a good time and make an appearance so John knew that it wasn't like we both didn't want to come. I also didn't want to come, it's a lot of work socializing without having a few beers to loosen up and tolerate bland conversation. Booze makes everything and everyone more interesting and time flies. Sad but true, at least in this case. All there family was going to be there. However, last time I saw them we had the Rochester Hockey experience with all the cops and ambulances. I was sure they were maybe expecting me to be there and a little crazy. If I wasn't feeling so crappy I would have went.

Instead I stayed at home and surfed the web, primarily to set up my SEO business. I came up with a name, it's going to be called Results Cloud Marketing and I'm going to pair down the advertised services to the key ones, no use having too much clutter on the website to confuse customers. I can always offer different services after I start working with them. The one thing about the triathlon toons expenses is it is more than helping in my training and determining the process and best approach. As we are doing this I'm making notes on the steps and coming up with a checklist that I can give to Poochie to follow for each client to standardize expectations and time.

Whew, lots to say tonight. I did a little bit of snacking as mentioned and I spent most of the night in my bed watching TV and trying to sleep, which I couldn't. My body was so tired yet awake, similar to after doing an Ironman. Alice came in around midnight or so and her having me turn off the TV helped. My back is still really sore and definitely out of alignment, I'm glad I biked today and not ran. The misalignment is a problem in that it does put stress on other parts of my calfs. Even walking around the house was tough with my lower body swivelled from my lower.

Now I don't want this all to sound like doom and gloom. It's not. I'm a little melancholy today, not sure if its the time of season or physical. I did have a moment of clarity on my bike. I felt what it feels like to train and move work as my primary focus. It felt nice. It was the perfect blend. I could now visualize myself using training as an outlet to keep in shape and still be able to focus on work without abandoning training. It was a really cool feeling. There was no pressure and it felt somewhat enjoyable. I will say I do believe I'm still feeling the effects of last weeks beer and the concussion. Physically my resting heart rate is not as low and my training heart rate is not as high, it's way to low.

I'm also looking forward to stopping or reducing my blogging. I've chosen the World Championships as the cut-off, it seems like the perfect time. I do want to record everything leading up. I'm more motivated now to focus on work and it seems the blogging is getting in my way. When I just look at how many hours a day I put into blogging consistently I know that those hours alone will make me successful. I think I'm at a very positive turning point in my life. I haven't felt this way in years and years. I'm also entering the abyss and life is getting a little more scary in terms of long term financial security with AG. Sometimes that little push is what you need. I'm glad it didn't come earlier, I'm not sure I'd have been ready for it. I do believe I'm as ready as I'll ever be now. I'm also a winner, I always land on my feet and if I can do amazing things in triathlons from a fat guy to Clearwater, Kona and ITU and I've now done 9 Ironmans, I can definitely become financially successful. I'm using the lessons I've learn in training to draw on and as a confidence builder in the World Class competitive marketing of Ontario.

On the family front, Alyssa made some bread tonight. Little miss baker. Nothing like having temptation lying around the house. She's also a mess in the kitchen with bowls everywhere she says that's how the pros do it. Reid is still out and about. He's hanging out with Luke a lot. It turns out that a pretty girl named Lauren lives on the same cal de sac and I'm sure that's his motivation, he hasn't hung out with Luke so much in the past.

My feet never did get back to normal. They feel like the got froze bite (they didn't) and are still in the healing process. Hopefully tomorrows run gets the blood flowing more and gets them back to normal. It's also looks like the weather is here to stay for the rest of the month it's saying 13 -15 C will be the high. Still glad I'm training this late in the season though, I needed it mentally. In hindsight I wasn't ready to throttle back a huge about after IMLP.

Mod Bike - 3:21:59 / 92.89 km / 27.6 km / 114 avg hr
3268 calories