So, September 24 was the day, in the words of a Facebook friend, I unlocked an achievement and hit level 41.

Foie Gras

I also unlocked a new achievement, gaining about 5 lbs over the course of a meal. Here’s the evidence.

This post should have been posted then, but stuff came up, writing was delayed, so this happened.

At the same time, I was thinking back on what I’ve been doing over the past 15+ years.

Back then I was 23, the year was 1997 when I started doing “Internet stuff”. My first gig was as a web team leader at one of Asia’s largest media companies.

It was also the same year that Yahoo! started.

Besides building a couple of content portals from scratch, I also updated hundreds of web pages every day, primarily through cleaning up BRS format files (not “bank reconciliation statement”) but a type of text file, then FTP it into a server where it’s be formatted for the web.

I later moved to tech reporting where I had the chance to interview the founders of various startups, as well as IT majors like Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Red Hat Linux’s Bob Young and Seagate’s Al Shugart. It also helped to be on a coordination committee of Accenture’s dotcom startup awards, where I had the chance to grill tech entrepreneurs on their product and marketing strategies.

This was all pretty useful background, especially when I went on to start my own biz consultancy in 2003, focused mainly on strategy and marketing for various brick-and-mortar companies going the online route. Though I was brought in to come up with strategy, there were more than a few times where I ended up running people’s companies. It was good experience and pretty hard to duplicate via attending seminars or conferences.

Creating my own infoproducts and getting involved in lead generation and affiliate marketing seemed like the next step in 2006, which is about the same time I joined Azoogle and Neverblue. My affiliate ID number is in the 40k range at Neverblue.

This “Internet stuff” has done well for me for the past 8 years or so.

Although I’m still promoting my own products and running affiliate campaigns, I’ve been working on the life hacking aspect of the business since the start of the year. Some of the stuff you might have seen like the Geek Hackery books I worked on with Tamar Weinberg have turned out well. I’m looking at moving things up a notch in the coming month.

I’m also starting up my email list and sending out idea for growing your business and achieving that quality of life that comes with a healthy work-life balance

I’ll be sending out weekly updates (unless I’m heading out of town, in which case it might drop to every 2 weeks).

And if I get discount codes, free trials, beta codes, etc, I’ll be sending them to the list first.

Here’s the TL:DR version:

1) Doing internet stuff = good

2) Doing more life hacking stuff in the coming month = stay tuned.

3) Stay tuned = opt-in via the form below.

4) Expect weekly, unless I’m falling behind, in which case, maybe one email every 2-3 weeks?

5) “Sign Up” is pretty horrible button text. Don’t do it. It’s almost as bad as “Submit”. I think “Give me access” would be better. (putting it on my to-do list).

UPDATE: The email list is being, er, updated. Will post it later.