With New Year’s right around the corner it’s only fitting that my new office furniture I ordered about 3 frickin months ago finally arrived.  I’ll give you a little tour of my office – which is very exciting since I’ve moved up from working in the basement or even our 1-bedroom apartment when I first started.

Here’s the view as you walk-in:

I’m sorta into wild colors. This is a custom-built dining room table with orange leather legs and the paint color is a deep, deep purple. A little funky. On my desk you can see my very cool, super fast Voodoo laptop (in orange too!). 

A quick note on the laptop – I probably paid about double what a normal laptop runs. Why? Well my rational side said it’s because I wanted the top-of-the-line ultra fast, ultra high-end laptop with premium components and created to incredibly high specs. My emotional side said because it was orange and frickin cool! I rationalized that I was sick of my IBM Thinkpad going into a bluescreen and doing all this junk on me. It was slow and crappy – so let’s go over the top of performance. I found my new laptop at VoodooPC.com (They are a boutique high-end PC builder that HP acquired them last year.)

They do an awesome job of using language to make you feel like you’re “joining’ an elite group. But beyond that feeling of belonging and joining the tribe there is also the notion of exclusivity, uniqueness and something they call authenticity. I wrote a detailed break-down of the language and their process they use to create Zealots inside December’s Secret Society issue. (I do not make back issues available but there’s still time to get a copy if you want to sign up for a month trial on me.)

Trust me, my desk is normally not this clean especially when writing copy and working on projects – but I figured this was a good time to show it off before you couldn’t find the glass top again. Okay, continuing with the tour of the items on the desk. The big thing I use everyday is my Franklin Planner (the beige leather portfolio). Even though I have a bunch of online businesses – I hate PDAs or anything digital for my schedule, goals, notes, etc. I like good old-fashioned pen & paper. I’ve been using the Franklin goal-setting and planning systems since 1998 and I think they’re the best out there! If you want to set 2008 off on the right foot it’s worth investing the time to figure your values using Hyrum Smith’s book “10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management” (that’s what I did in 1998 and that was the starting point for my biggest breakthroughs). 

Nothing else really productive on my desk except for my Budha holder that has my lip balm and the cool Maverick Business Adventures paperweight my friend, Chris Zavadowski, got me for the Holidays. Speaking of Maverick Business Adventures – I’ve been drinking some Pacifico Beer getting ready to hit the Baja next month.

Moving on to the next pic of my office:

This is the far wall when you walk-in – and here you can get a glimpse of more orange! I’ve got an orange ottoman that our fax machine rests on and you can see an orange plexi-glass book shelf that I need to put up. And if you’re really a good student of marketing you’ll see the framed print of one of the most famous mail order ads – “They Laughed When I Sat Down At the Piano…” by John Caples.

Now here’s the back wall behind my desk:

I got a snazzy new stainless file cabinet and on top of it is a little recharging station Missy bought me (left-hand side). It’s pretty cool because there is a powerstrip  inside there so you just plug in your electronic components and hide the cords. I’ve got my Jawbone headset, digital camera and cell phone charging there. Next to it is my printer and then simple phone.

Okay now the final wall has my favorite part of my office:

My entire wall is a whiteboard in metalic silver. I’ve been in Reese’s ‘war room’ with whiteboard everywhere and he told me about this company called “Wall Talkers” that will custom design whiteboards for you. Instead of just the standard white I went with the metalic silver to keep the office looking good but also extremely functional. This whiteboard is about 6′ x 8′ so you can really spread out on it and work on your ideas. Right now I’ve been focusing on the Maverick Business Adventures so that’s what’s taking up most of the board with my mindmaps. Also, on the side wall you see a cool piece of art from Mark T. Smith.

That’s about it for the nickel tour.

When I ran my Apprentice program we used to do a fieldtrip to my office and everyone was amazed there wasn’t racks and racks of servers anywhere in the house. You really don’t need much in terms of equipment to be able to build a multi-million dollar online business. And if you want to start (or just explain to your friends and family what you do) pick-up my new “Moonlighting on the Internet” book from bookstores or online. It was kinda cool to walk into Barnes & Nobles the other day and see it there on the shelf.

Let me take this time to wish you a wonderful New Year filled with fun, adventure, laughter, good friends, good health and even more online success!

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.