I haven't posted on here in a while, but don't worry I'm back for good.

   Just last week I did some freelance in the place I used to work. Man do I NOT regret my decision for leaving. The experience I had working there last Friday was horrible. I remember when I used to love going in to work, I wasn't tap dancing to work but I was happy to be at work. The reason why the day dragged on was because the core values had changed. Back when I was working there and managing the store, I made it my duty to make sure every customer was happy and their issues were always resolved. The new owners' core values are about maximizing profits no matter what. I know right now some of you reading this are saying to yourself "But Josh, business is about making money. If there is no money then the business can not keep its door open". It is true that businesses need money to survive but not at the expense of the customers. Throughout the day I noticed that the customer's experience was highly degraded because of price hikes and no one to one time. I understand maximizing profit but for something that was previously sold at $40 should not be sold at $80 when it clearly does not have the features or build quality of items at that price point. When I say one to one time I am talking about dealing with a cashier I am talking about Red Carpet Service. This is something I learned back in 2008, you have to treat the person in front of you as if they are the most important customer in the world. This means making sure that they have no questions about the product or service. This is how you maintain a good relationship with customers, just by seeing me a customer came in and bought me lunch.  This might be just me preaching to the choir, but without a loyal customer base, businesses can not succeed. So after working that day, I have vowed to never work there under the new owners, no matter what they want to pay me.

   Other than doing that day of freelance, I have been working on getting back in shape. I know lots of people say that they want to get in shape so I actually made a workout plan. I might not look like it now but I used to workout like a madman. Throughout the years I picked up knowledge of the human body and learned workouts that give great results. This plan is not that easy and some of my fit friends had trouble keeping up with it. Heck even I can't do some of the things on it, it is more of a road map with recommended exercises. If you would like to download it, here is a link to the workout

   Another thing that I have been doing while I have been away from this site, is simply taking out my camera. I have a DSLR and I have been messing around with it, sounds like I'm wasting time. Well yes and no, I will try my best to use it to record videos for my YouTube channel. Using this I will be able to bring better quality videos to you my viewers. Other than making videos, I was contemplating selling stock images. At the end of it I love taking photos, even though not that many people will see them.

   The main thing that I have been doing during my time away from the site is reading. This in my opinion is the most valuable use of my time these past couple of weeks. Remember the books that I read are for the most part non fiction books. Reading books is one of the cheapest ways of learning something. I am not talking about picking up one of those for Dummies books (if these books work for you great, not really my cup of tea). I absolutely love reading biographies of successful people, heck I have Kevin Smith's biography in my list of approved books. By reading biographies you get to learn that your heroes are normal people like you and I. You also get to learn certain mistakes that they have made and how to avoid them. When most of us get out of school we stop learning. Hey Mark Cuban didn't know anything about software when he was selling it. No one taught him about it so he read every computer software he could get his hands on. The knowledge he gained from those manuals helped him launch his company MicroSolutions, which he later sold for a total of six million dollars. 

   There are many other things that I have been doing during the time of my last post to now. I chose to talk about these activities because I feel that you the readers can learn from these topics. I have also changed the books that I am currently reading and recommended book list. I'll catch you guys in the next post.