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My wife Lynn Sherwood and I had a sad 2018.  Our daughter Lauren died as a result of lung cancer.  We needed easy to read lung cancer facts. When we learned of her illness, Lynn immediately began searching for information.  She found great bits and pieces from many different places.  After Lauren’s death, as part of her mourning process, Lynn recognized that others suffering from lung cancer and their family members might benefit from a better source of information.

• Simple for the non-medical layperson like me
• A voice of reason
• All important lung cancer facts in one easy place

Thus was born Easy To Read Lung Cancer Facts by Lynn Sherwood.  I invite you to check out her comprehensive lung cancer knowledge base here: http://oddlygrateful.com/lung-cancer-knowledge-base/

I have long been interested in poverty, wealth, human productivity, gumption and the various castes we find ourselves in.  I am excited to live in a place in which these castes are by choice, luck or circumstance, not a permanent thing.  I am saddened by those that are unhappy in their chosen caste, but that do not take the necessary actions to change castes.  I brainstormed an idea for a Program to Help the Poor Become Rich.  Is isn’t perfect and would definitely need to be tweaked, but what do you think of the framework?

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I wonder about a program whereby a person aged 16 to 35 of the poor class is offered a loan to move to another city, away from their circle of friends that are also of their caste.  These friends and relatives have probably unknowingly “trained” them to be poor.  They would relocate to a new town, and would be assigned 3 mentors.  The poor person, whom we will call an acorn, would be provided with housing in an upper middle class area, food, professional clothing purchased on a shopping trip with their mentors.  A mentor would provide the haircut and grooming instructions that are necessary for a professional and successful person.  All expenses would be a loan, and the acorn would be required to pay it back within 6 months.

Mentors would invite the acorn to social activities that those of higher castes tend to do.  The acorn would be taught how to job-hunt, opportunity-hunt, how to speak well, how to read and write and would be provided testing to see what their natural abilities and passions are.  They would be introduced to “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” and to the “Cash Flow Quadrant.”  They would be loaned bicycles to get to work.

The acorn is now becoming a sprout!  The sprout would work alongside their mentors, observing how a person of a more affluent caste works, speaks and spends their time.  Within one week, the mentors would ensure that the sprout had a job or had started a viable small business.  It is likely that one of the three mentors would have formed a positive relationship by now and that one would not be getting along well with the sprout.  This is natural and perfect.  That mentor can now walk away.

So, before I further romanticize this Utopian process, let’s examine what would likely happen at this, the 7 day point, assuming the program began with 15 drug-free acorns.  It is my guess that at least 5 of the people would have refused and dropped out by now, saying things like, “I am not going to wear long sleeves, I don’t care if I have tattoos, I have the right not to be judged” or “I am not reading your books and I won’t listen to them on tape, they are boring” or “I am a night person, I am not getting up at no 4am to work for some bakery.”  “I have S.A.D. and need to take some “me” time because I am depressed.”  “I don’t think I would enjoy THAT job.”  “What does diet and exercise have to do with learning to be rich, I don’t like vegetables or long walks.”  It is likely that these 5 would continue their habit of avoiding difficult tasks in the pursuit of short-term satisfaction.

Of the 10 remaining acorns, I predict that a few would be doing well and would be motivated to win.  I further predict that one of those or a couple were just playing a con game on me and you, and that they fooled us both.  The remaining folks would still be plugging away.

In week two, sprouts would graduate to saplings, still not as strong as the mighty 75-year-old oak, but growing every day.  Saplings would be given the task of working two mornings a week as interns for a local property management company.  The task of this company would be to expose the saplings to the excuses and mentality of tenants and the divide between owners and renters.  Saplings would have finished 2 or 3 books, and their daily hour of YouTube video assignments.  They would have now watched 14 episodes of Shark Tank.  They would be working 40 hours per week the second week, as well as doing their assignments.  Most would likely have dropped out by the end of the week, but three would remain.

Those three would be introduced to an additional mentor at the beginning of week three.  This new mentor would be a millionaire capable of motivating and offering excellent advice.  All mentors would be encouraging and celebrate successes and help the saplings increase their self-respect and pride.  They would encourage positive attitudes, and help the saplings understand that they are making a new life for themselves.

By the end of week 4, it is likely that 1 more sapling would have dropped out.  The two remaining saplings would now be strong and would have been spending the previous two weeks seeking their own housing situation, with mentors advising them along the way.  Beginning the 5th week, saplings would now begin paying back the loans for clothing, food and rent, even if only $5 each week.  This would provide them with self respect that is typically absent when receiving charity.

The goal of this program is NOT the same as the goal of “public schooling” which is to create “employees.”  Why do poor people not just get a job?  We don’t care.  Rather, the goal of this program is to help develop free-thinking individual entrepreneurs.

We Buy Businesses That Are in Desperate Situations

As entrepreneurs, we have had our ups and downs.  In 2010 we spoke to a bankruptcy attorney to investigate options. This sucked. Maybe you have had a personal injury, another personal crisis, perhaps your industry is suffering or maybe the economy is in bad shape.  Maybe you are simply exhausted, fed up and ready to throw it all away?

We can only imagine the despair you must feel when your business, a baby you have put so much love, hard work and passion into, is in a bad position.  We are sorry that you are in this situation.  5 years ago things might have been looking great with an outlook of a steep upward trajectory.  A perfect solution would be for a financially ignorant white knight to ride up and pay you millions.  Unfortunately, that isn’t likely to happen.

Best solution?

We don’t know that we are your best solution, however we hope to be if it is mutually beneficial.  Back in 2017 we reduced our lifestyle, and instead began saving pennies.  We realized that within a few years, there would be an economic downturn, as there usually is every 6 to 8 years.  We

I pay $2.50 USD per finished video.

You will take each video I record and share with you, usually 3 minutes to 9 minutes in length.

• You will add a title
• Check frame rate to see if Hand Brake is needed
• You will insert my Intro, typically my video will be me introducing the topic/title for 3 seconds to 20 seconds, then you insert the “Intro”
• You will insert an Outro at the end.
• You will add a soundtrack & make sure audio is good.
• If it will make the video better, you will add free legal stock photos (Pixabay or similar)
• Also, you will need to listen to the whole video to see if any problems need to be fixed.
• Please be aware of any possible Amazon products that could be added (If I mention a book etc) because then you can add a pic of the book and we can add my Amazon affiliate link in the description.

There will be an average of 1 to 5 videos each week.

• You must be able to use Google Drive or Dropbox
• Your turnaround time needs to be less than 48 hours in most cases.
• I pay you $2.50USD for each correctly completed video.

How to get this job?

I will give you a sample video to edit, and we will then be able to decide which applicant we will choose.

I made a video of me editing a video, you can see that it should take less than 30 minutes for each one, and I am a self-taught amateur.

Again, I am an amateur, and I can edit 2 videos in an hour, another editor told me it took her only 15 minutes to do a 3 minute video.  I expect you to do a better job in less time, right?    This means that you will me making equal to about ₱260/hour!

Editing skill level?

See my YouTube channel to see what the “typical” video should look like when done.  https://www.youtube.com/user/shepardh1/videos

Are you interested?  Please respond with the subject line being: VIDEO EDITING 1STov

LET ME KNOW IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DO A SAMPLE.  If so, I will send you a raw video of myself, you can edit it with an intro & outro, include some extra text & pics, and I will see if  I like it.  If I don’t think the quality is good enough to work with each other more, but the video is good enough to put on YouTube, I will pay you $2.50.

If I enjoy working with you, and you think you can perform well at our price, I will hire you for more videos!  

 

I am an INTJ entrepreneur in the United States.  My wife is also my business partner. We are constantly investigating new business ideas while running our current businesses, shootinjh.com and nomadrifleman.com and oddlygrateful.com among many others.  We are contemplating extending into product invention, manufacturing and distribution in the upcoming years, while also expanding, changing and working in the luxury experience space.  We also intend to publish a couple of books.

I am seeking an Executive Assistant (EA) that is a detail oriented generalist to work 10+ hours per week at between $1/hr and $3.50/hr USD, starting lower and moving up quickly based on performance.  The successful candidate will report to me. When my wife, or other team members based in the US have tasks they need you to do, they will be run through me to you.  I start work each day at 6pm Philippines time, and would like us to overlap by a couple hours once each week.

“Getting the Job wastes everyone’s time if the Job relationship isn’t solid and lasting.  Excelling in the Job and earning money is what matters!”

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Imperative from the start:

• Perfect English skills.  Must have a 5-Star Skill rating in writing English C2 preferred!
• WordPress website building and blogging skills.
• Photo and video editing skills.
• Creativity & self-direction.
• I couldn’t care less about college degrees.
• Comfortable with Google mail, docs, Drive etc

Preferred, and OK if you will learn these additional skills

• Knowledge of eBook publishing
• Able to organize, format and edit books
• Knowledgeable in Shopify stores including various apps, order fulfillment, customer service etc
• Comfortable with basic QuickBooks
• Comfortable with Excel
• Knowledge of podcasting, getting listeners, promotion etc
• Knowledge of how to get books and articles uploaded to Amazon and Audible
• Knowledgeable in Amazon Alexa skills, how to submit and optimize audio files
• Other fun learning opportunities!

Must be able and eager to cheerfully seek more instructions from me when I give lousy instructions the first time. If I assign a task and my instructions are not clear and good, I want an assistant that will clarify exactly what I need. Having said this, I want someone that has self confidence and will handle projects without needing too much babysitting and hand-holding.

As we get to know each other better over the years, you will need to ask me for clarification and specific direction much less frequently. I want you to take risks and go beyond the edge and make mistakes! If you are not making mistakes, you are not creative enough to be successful in this position.

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Social Media Content Creation

Facebook.  Make sure that Daily Posts are made on 3 Facebook business accounts.  This will include creative content gathering, editing photos, making memes, writing comments and overall creativity.

Instagram.  Make sure that Daily Posts are made on 5 Instagram business accounts.  This will include creative content gathering, editing photos, making memes, writing comments and overall creativity.

Twitter.  Make weekly posts on 3 accounts.

YouTube.  Edit videos & create videos and video concepts.

Video editing.  Use stock footage from Pixabay etc and the many hours of video footage I provide to create and edit short videos that follow the vision of our company as per the strategies taught in Storybrand.  

Must understand basic audio editing as well.

Must be able to conceptualize needs and then compile and provide me with a list of images and video content that is needed to achieve our goals.

WordPress blogging.  You will write draft blog posts in perfect English for me too edit.  These will include text and photos that you select.  Once I have edited blog posts VA will publish them on WordPress sites.

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Digital Marketing Social Media Strategy & Management

You must have a work history of excellent natural organizational skills.  This is imperative to manage digital marketing and social media. Very frequently a creative person is wonderful at coming up with an excellent Facebook post or even a campaign of a dozen posts, however does not have the time-management skills and discipline to systematically create an overall plan for all of the different social media platforms and blogging to get across a consistent message.

Once that plan is in place, it must constantly be evaluated and improved upon and followed for years to come. the type of person that enjoys engineering or accounting would be better at the organizational part of this however a person that has more of an artist personality might be better at coming up with the content. Is it possible that a human being exists that would be good at both? 🙂

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Marketing & Advertising

Do lead generation.  By researching various individuals and companies and being a sleuth and finding contact information, then screening by writing individual emails using perfect English.

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Data Entry

We might from time to time give you data entry tasks.

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There will be many more tasks of different kinds.  This is a small sample.  

Dictation.  I will send audio MP3 files for you to type into Google docs.  I am writing a book, maybe another as well as articles and emails.  The successful EAG will not have to ask me if they should correct my dictation & grammar etcetera.

I might ask you to enter paper invoices (that I scan and send to you) into Quickbooks.

I might ask you to research 10 spotting scope manufacturers and find out who in the company is the important person to talk to about teaming with them for me to develop a ranging reticle for their spotting scopes.

I might ask you to research Wyoming state lands rules and processes for renting there a section of land for commercial shooting use. This requires a personality and a disc profile type of person that is able to be flexible and creative and figure out complex things  by asking me only 20 questions without having to ask 300 questions.

I might ask you to listen to hundreds of 30-minute podcasts, and to summarize each of them into hundreds of well-written articles that are each 500 to 1500 words long.

I might ask you how to get my recordings onto Amazon Alexa and similar as a daily briefing or as a skill. Your job would not be too search Google for an article telling me how to do this, I do not need you for that. Your job would to be to do research and experiment and actually make it work and then offer to teach me in a simple and efficient way or to Simply do it for me and give me easy and simple directions on how to get audio files to you. I use Audacity audio recording software.

I might ask you to do online research for magazine editors and then personalize an email that I draft to be sent to all of them.

I might ask you to research the Crossville Tennessee county building and planning regulations regarding short-term rentals, are Air B&B type services legal?  I might task what areas of Tucson Arizona allow these rentals.

I might ask you to read the book “High Trust Selling” and develop a plan for us to make better connections with our friends.

I will frequently ask you to proofread things I write for content, flow and grammar.

I might ask you to write an article for our blog about the three best restaurants in Jackson Hole Wyoming. You would need to do the research and then write the article in perfect English as well as collecting excellent photographs for that article.

I might give you a link to a folder in a Google Drive and ask you to look at the 5,000 images in it and select the 100 that you think are best for our marketing needs.  I might ask you to select and move 4,000 of the photos that you think are not great to a different folder that I can then review and delete.

I might ask you to write an article about the 5 nicest restaurants in Jackson Hole for a different blog, and while you could rewrite part of the above blogpost, it would have to be in different verbiage for search engine reasons.

You must be able to do research and come up with high-level, high quality answers for questions like the following:

• I can’t figure out how to get a read more tag to work in WordPress, I have read all of the articles that I can find and watch the Youtube videos and still I cannot get it to work. Will you please figure it out and then teach me?
• Please look for articles on the best high-end rifle bipods and provide me with the list.

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Details and “things”

Most of this job will be “other duties as requested.”  

I will pay you for the minimum number of hours per week that we agree upon, so you are promised that income as long as you produce well.  

With prior approval, I will sometimes be interested in you working additional hours for special projects if you need the money and I need the work done.

I want an assistant that is a “problem-solver.”  For example, if I say that I would like a logo created that “has a tree like the ones in the middle of an African desert” I would NOT want you to ask me what the breed of tree is named.  THAT is your job to search for answers.  Your goal should be to reduce the work I need to do by doing it for yourself.  Another example would be if you ask me what kind of business we do at shootinjh.com.  The fact that you would even consider asking this rather than simply researching it yourself means that we would not be a good fit.

If I notice that your work is only “good” and not “excellent” or if I notice that it is taking you too long to complete tasks I will consider if the problem is something that I can help you fix.  If I evaluate that you do not have the skills, creativity or work-ethic necessary, I will notify you that I do not need your help any more.

I will sometimes give unexpected bonuses when tasks are done with excellence.

This job is “for as long as I need you.”  I anticipate being a productive entrepreneur for many years.  As long as we are both happy and both of our needs are met, let’s continue!