🌐 Justin's Blog

When I was a kid, my parents enrolled me into sports year-round. In the fall I was playing soccer, winter basketball, spring was baseball and soccer, and in the summer I went to soccer camps.

There was a method to this madness. Truth is, I was a pretty mischievous kid and easily found trouble if my time wasn’t filled (even with all these sports, I still managed to drive my parents crazy 😆).

The sports let me spend my energy productively, and aside from filling my time, I learned about setting goals, how to deal with disappointment, discipline, how to get along with others, how to show respect, and how to follow directions.

I took this same “be busy” attitude into my teenage years and early adulthood. It served me well. But it wasn’t until I was a little older, wiser maybe, that I started to reflect upon this “fill my time” culture and realized that, despite its upsides, it has some pretty troubling downsides as well.

Choose Nothing

Doing nothing and just “being” is a valid, arguably more productive use of time.

Perhaps it’s an American thing, or a Western Culture concept, but it seems like we dislike “idle time”. We fill it with tasks, activities, apps, and projects.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things. Everyone needs something to keep them mentally sharp. But what about those times in your life when you don’t have anything planned?

Instead of filling that time, or stressing about an expectation to do something, what if you left that time empty instead, giving yourself permission to not do anything?

I have learned to do this over the past few months, and while it’s not always easy, I think it has been a net positive for my mental well-being. When I am not thinking about “future land”, I am forced to live in the present. I have the opportunity to appreciate the ones I am with, and to fully capture the little moments. I am fully appreciating the gift of time.

Don’t Make Plans

Have you ever tried not to plan out a day and then to live that day with a present mindset? It’s harder than you think!

Look, I get it, planning our days and weeks makes us feel like we are productive, and feeling productive makes us feel good. I’m not implying that being busy is a bad way to live your life. However, it just can’t be the only way to live.

You may find something else difficult about not making plans for one day: it won’t stop other people from trying to fill your day with plans! This can actually be a little overwhelming, but remember that you are in control of your time. Put up a boundary and stick to it.

Live in the current moment with your “no plan” day. If you’re tired, take a nap. If you’re bored, read a book for a bit. Go for a walk. Get a little exercise if you feel up for it. Finally, spend some time just sitting. Reflect and/or meditate. Just be at peace.

You don’t have to be alone during this time. Enjoy the company of others. Have a meal with friends or family. Play with your kids. Embrace the beauty of living with intention and in the moment.

Most importantly: don’t stress about the future because that isn’t guaranteed anyhow. And don’t dwell on the past because what’s done is done.

Just be present and grateful for the time that you have. You will find that without all of that extra weight on your mind, you will have more energy when you return to your planning ways!

#mindfulness

We are coming close to halfway through 2022, and I’m checking in on my progress with Spanish. I have been writing about my goals on this site for some time, and I tend to be very honest with my status, probably even a little harsh.

My goal is to eventually look back at these posts, hopefully when I’m effortlessly fluent, and remember the journey that it took to get to that point. I don’t care what you read or hear: learning a second language takes a lot of consistent effort.

So, with that in mind… how are things going?

On pace to meet my conversational fluency goal.

In January, I wrote my Spanish goals for 2022 where the overall goal was to be at an advanced B2 level (possibly even low C1) by the end of the year.

As of right now, I am at a low B2 level when it comes to speaking, which is close to the first level of official fluency. That said, it can vary on the conversation topic and time of day. I still get caught up in certain situations and I sometimes have to think a little too much. I believe that I am on pace to meet an intermediate to advanced B2 level for speaking by the end of the year.

Regarding listening, I am finding that the language is slowing down for me, so I am able to better understand what people are saying to me, and I am also quicker to say what I want to say with less time spent translating in my head. While this isn’t always the case (sometimes I have days when it’s just not clicking), this level of comfort with the language is starting to become my norm – and it’s incredibly encouraging!

There are a few things that have helped me over the past five or six months to get to this point:

• More structured lessons with my teacher
• Watching Las Chicas del Cable on Netflix
• Speaking with strangers

First and foremost, my lessons with my tutor have been more structured than last year, but admittedly, not as structured as when I started. However, I think this is due to the fact that I now have the ability to just shoot-the-shit in Spanish. Sometimes I don’t feel like a formal lesson, so we just chat about whatever. I need to get a little more disciplined though for the remainder of the year if I want to progress grammatically.

Next, I have found that watching Spanish shows on Netflix have really been beneficial for my comprehension. Specifically, Lorena and I have been watching Las Chicas del Cable, a very dramatic and interesting show taking place in the 1920s in Spain at a telephone company.

The actors have a Spain accent (as opposed to one from Mexico, which I am more accustomed to), and they speak about a million miles per hour. I use Spanish subtitles, so I can try to grasp the conversations, which isn’t always easy. Luckily, I have Lorena to help clarify what is going on when I run into trouble. I think this has had one of the biggest impacts on my Spanish so far this year, and it was pretty unexpected!

Finally, this year, I have been putting myself out there more and starting up conversations with strangers in Spanish. There is a delicate balance here because I never want to offend anyone by implying they don’t speak English well. Usually, I ask if they speak Spanish and depending on their reaction, I’ll switch over. I suppose another good option would be to just let them know that I am studying, and if they would be okay if I practiced.

Despite making good progress in these areas, I know that I could (and should) be doing more.

While I am pleased with the progress I have made by using the methods just mentioned, I know that I could be doing more to progress quicker in the language. I don't know, sometimes I just lose motivation. I suppose that is normal, but it frustrates me just the same.

By way of example, I haven’t posted on my Spanish blog (Gringocios) on a regular basis. I think it’s perhaps because the subject of the site is boring me a bit (business and entrepreneurship). The world has plenty of people pontificating – I don’t want to just be another person adding to the noise. I think I need to consider diversifying my post topics, and perhaps that will get me back on track.

I also have taken a step back from reading, which is sad because I think reading books in Spanish is probably the one thing that helps me the most. I’ll be honest, I have never been much of a reader, so I think therein is the issue.

That said, I recently purchased few books and just finished one. They are small, short stories designed for people who are learning the language. It’s more difficult to find these books given that my current level (I search for those written at a B2 level) but I find them to be incredibly helpful in understanding grammatical structures.

My commitment to vocabulary flash cards hasn’t been strong so far this year. I take notes on vocab words during my lessons, but I haven’t been revisiting them on a regular basis. Recently, I have started to change this, and I am slowly catching up with all my flash cards.

Finally, I admit that I don’t talk to Lorena enough in Spanish. We say some things to each other during a day in Spanish, but primarily we speak in English. This is my fault. I need to commit to speaking more with her, so I get practice speaking on different topics.

I plan to start telling her a story every day in Spanish. Something small to begin, but perhaps over time we expand that to more. I just have to commit to it.

The journey never ends, but I am starting to get somewhere.

Learning Spanish will be a lifelong journey, and I know that I’ll never feel like I am “done”, but at this point, I feel like I am getting somewhere with all the effort that I have been putting into it.

I have always wanted to have conversations without much strain for the other person, and I am starting to experience that on a more regular basis. I hope that soon this becomes even more effortless.

I look forward to the end of the year and to seeing where I am no up with my level. If I supplement what I am doing with some of the opportunity areas I mentioned, then I am sure I’ll be at an excellent place heading into 2023.

#personal

It’s hard to believe that a year ago, Lorena and I have were married in front of family and close friends! So much has happened in our first year of marriage.

Right after we were married last year, we had an opportunity to see my brother in Colorado (he was visiting his in laws), and then we went to Mexico for an extended amount of time. After those trips, we lived life as a newly married couple, traveling around to family for the holidays and creating memories together in Texas.

I feel so incredibly fortunate that we found each other. Every day, I am reminded how much I love her, and my heart still skips a beat whenever she smiles at me.

Here’s to an incredible year number two, I can’t wait to see how it unfolds!

#personal

This week Lorena and I arrived in Mexico to visit family, and to attend the presentation of our nephew, Diego, in the Catholic Church. In the ceremony, we were also confirmed as Diego’s Godparents. I am incredibly honored that my sister-in-law asked us to take on this role.

After the ceremony, there was a celebration with Lorena’s family (and let me just say, she has a huge family). I met family members that I have yet to meet, so I really enjoyed that. This also gave me an opportunity to further practice my Spanish. I must say that Spanish is coming along decently. The language is slowing down for me at times, making communication less stressful. I still have a long way to go, though.

We’ll be staying here in Mexico for an extended amount of time. In not so pleasant news, Lorena’s aunt Mica passed away after a hard fight with cancer. I had the opportunity to meet her last year when we visited Chicago for Christmas. We are awaiting word on when her ceremony will be back here in Mexico. She was a beautiful person, and even though I only met her once, I will miss her.

The trip is full of plans with friends and family, and also we will be going to Cancun for our one-year anniversary. I can’t believe it has already been a year, and what a year it has been!

#personal

Well, it finally happened. The news in this country has pushed me to purchase a security system. These companies are selling piece of mind, and I’m buying!

Over the past month or so, I have been poking around with security systems. This is a really cool industry with numerous major players. Just as many review sites and YouTubers as well! You can quickly go down a rabbit hole trying to determine what is “best” for you.

For me, “the best” means having some cameras in place to detect activity inside and outside the home. I thought for a while that it would make sense to have an alarm system as well, but that feels a little unnecessary with the cameras. I also saw that some studies have shown that anyone who wants to break into your place isn't really concerned about alarms.

In any event, I decided to go with just some cameras. There are about a dozen recommended brands on the market – each with extensive reviews and opinions in Reddit. Of course, in my typical fashion, I ended up going with one of the brands that isn’t nearly as popular as the top five. 😆

Sticking with my newfound paranoia, I’m not going to share the brand of camera I purchased. Because you know… bad guys!

While I was on this shopping spree, I also decided to purchase a mesh router. I didn’t even know what this was until doing research on cameras. I guess it’ll help the signal of your internet (including to your cameras).

So, here’s to both getting safer and getting rid of those pesky internet dead zones!

#personal

If you are like most people, then at some point in your life you have considered owning real estate.

Even people who don’t consider themselves to be entrepreneurs find real estate an attractive concept because it’s an easy business model to wrap your head around. Own a couple of low-maintenance residential rentals and let that other person pay off the mortgage while building equity.

Sounds great on paper, but as anyone who does this will tell you, things don’t always run smoothly.

I just need to look to my parents. During the recession of 2008, they purchase a few foreclosed condos. They are in a nice area with low crime and good schools. Even still, there is constantly something to be taken care of. Like the time their renter was literally stabbed by their crazy ass ex-husband, and was late on the rent by a few months because of the whole ordeal. I mean, there isn’t a book that can teach you how to deal with that.

When you peel back the onion, the reality is that real estate is not for the faint of heart. While it’s a great way to build wealth, it is not passive by any means. Depending on your property and the person renting, you may end up sinking insane amounts of time and money into the property to the point where you barely break-even.

I want to build wealth in real estate, but I prefer not to deal with the bullsh*t of having renters.

Upgrading appliances, fixing sinks, evicting squatters… I don’t have time for this. Okay, scratch that. I have time, but I want to spend my time dealing with it.

Still, the idea of real estate is very appealing to me, especially as I am completely burnt out from anything to do with the software industry, especially WordPress. As someone who started and sold a software business, there is something therapeutic about owning physical real estate. Like, you can touch it. It’s real. You can actually see the asset. Most importantly, it’s proven as the world’s oldest way to generate wealth – be it for a side income or a financial empire.

So, for me, it’s land > rental properties.

That’s not to say it’s all rainbows and butterflies. Land has its ups and downs, like any industry. But what I find refreshing is that the business model is straight-forward, with less complexity than other profitable industries.

Also, land is less impacted by the housing market. It is a little as you can imagine, but seeing as banks don’t generally provide loans for land in the first place, it creates additional opportunity for seller financing of deals (which has an added benefit of spacing out capital gains tax on a short-term flip).

I have already got the wheels in motion for this journey. I started off by getting the legal entities set-up and the business presence. All the software I am going to use initially has been configured and is ready to go. I’m also taking courses and getting up-to-speed with the basics because I don’t have a background in this business. Though honestly, that’s never stopped me in the past.

2012: "I don't know how to code, how can I start a software company? Ah, screw it, doing it anyway."

Result: ?

2022: "I don't know about land investing, how can I start a land investment company? Ah screw it, doing it anyway."

Result: #entrepreneurship

— Justin Ferriman (@JustinFerriman) April 19, 2022

If I know anything about my learning style, I am a “ready-fire-aim” kind of guy. Give me the basics, and let me start working it. I know that I’ll make mistakes along the way, but I don’t sweat those as I know it’s a learning opportunity (I made a crap-ton of mistakes when running a software company, and everything worked out just fine).

Want to learn how to make money from land investing?

If you find the concept of land investing interesting, and you don’t want to worry about renters or fixing sinks, then I encourage you to follow along as I share what I learn!

I won’t be writing about it here too much, as this is my personal site and I use it to write about a variety of topics.

I started a newsletter where I document my journey in building a land investment business from scratch – with no prior experience. Think of it as my online journal of lessons learned, from “hell yes” to “oh sh*t”, and everything in between. Things like…

• The strategies I use to find deals
• Business set-up & tools
• Marketing strategies
• Growing a team
• Automation of tasks
• Making money buying & selling land

I hope you follow along with me, I promise you will learn something along the way!

#entrepreneurship

Today Lorena and I are flying to California, and earlier this week we learned that the mask mandate was lifted for airliners. All the airlines now have an optional mask policy.

This was discouraging news to us because honestly, flying has been one of the least stressful things to do in the pandemic up to now. Everyone was just rockin’ their masks.

It’s not the plane that I’m all that concerned with as the air filtration is pretty solid, it’s the airport and the boarding process. Airports are incubators of illness.

When I think back to the pre-pandemic days, I feel like there was a 40% chance I would get sick after flying, especially around the holidays. Everyone is just sitting around coughing and sneezing, multiplied by thousands. I’m not saying I think we need a mask mandate for public places, but yes for public transit. That seems like an insanely obvious choice. At least until we progress more combating COVID.

In any event, we continue to wear our masks. I won’t be mad at someone if they don’t have a mask on, they are just doing what they are permitted to do and to each their own. I’m just annoyed that this happened right before our trip.

And well, chances are that mask mandate will come back by the end of the year given the usual spike of cases.

#personal

Lorena and I just got back from a trip to see family in both Connecticut and Michigan. As has become custom in the pandemic era, we were gone for an extended amount of time. This has its pros and cons (more pros, of course). It also means that we really look forward to our return home once the trip comes to an end.

But this trip home will be short-lived.

Soon we head out to California, followed by Mexico, which means that we will probably be back in Austin in early June. Similar to the most recent travel, these are family oriented trips.

The time in Mexico will kick off with the presentation of our nephew to the church (we are to be his Godparents). We will also try to plan a trip somewhere while in Mexico to celebrate our one-year anniversary!

Even though this is a busy time, I like the idea of living life instead of life living me (if that makes any sense).

On the professional side of life, there are a few things in the work for both of us that I am excited to write about once we progress a bit further.

#personal

I have been a blogger for a long time. Even before I started LearnDash, I wrote a blog while in college as I first became familiar with WordPress. Expressing myself through blogging has been a major part of my life.

So, when I first heard about artificial intelligence (AI) written blog posts, I sort of rolled my eyes. Many of you can remember the days of “article spinners” and the garbage output – half of the time they didn’t even make sense. I assumed the same for AI written blog posts and never gave them a second glance.

Until recently, and I must say, AI blogging is damn impressive.

I have spent a number of days the past week experimenting with a variety of AI content platforms to see the type of quality they would produce (finally landing on WriteSonic). My assessment is by no means scientific, but my best estimate is that most of the AI articles I created were about 60-90% complete. Meaning, most of the content is ready to be published without any updates.

To be clear, there were times when the articles were quite poor. This is most often the result of targeting a very specific industry topic that requires in-depth knowledge in order to write about it effectively. But I found that if I took it “up a level” to a more general topic, the quality of the content improved.

Herein lies the opportunity, and the method, in which you can use AI for your own content.

What you can expect with AI blogging.

If you rely on blogging as a core part of your business, then it can be challenging to come up with ideas and post structures regularly. This is where AI can help. When I use WriteSonic, I’m able to whip up outlines in about 30 seconds for any topic by just giving a few prompts.

For example, I put in the prompt Types of Mortgages, and got this outline:

Not bad, right? Honestly, this feature alone provides enough value for most bloggers. I should note that this is just one outline of about six that were presented after I gave my prompt.

This is just scratching the surface of AI content generation. Let’s say you wanted the intro written for you (just to kick things off). Well, that’s possible. Using the same prompt, I was presented with six intro paragraphs. Here is one:

Again, not bad at all! There are definitely some things I would change, but for the most part, it’s good to go and is a great intro to my article.

AI content is best when you keep the topics rather broad (in this example, “mortgages” is a pretty generic topic). If you drill down into a subject further, then you will find that the content isn’t as robust, with sentences that don’t really say anything. For example, I tried Paying off a Mortgage Early as the prompt, and the blocks of text weren’t so impressive.

This was the shortest of the six options presented. The longer ones weren’t any better. They all were essentially just a few sentences being repeated in different ways.

How you can use AI-generated content.

Undoubtedly, there will be people out there that use AI to write their entire blog posts, and without making any changes. It has to be said that the articles that are purely AI written are not the greatest. Even the best ones need a little massaging to sound more natural.

And that’s really the point. A natural sounding article is a good user experience that reflects well on you and your brand. If you are interested in using articles written using AI, then you owe it to the reader to do a little proofreading before you press publish.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll be impressed with the quality of your articles (and how quickly you’re able to complete them), making it tempting to just publish them as-is. But as my friend Jack points out in the tweet below, you’ll want to be approach this strategy with a bit of caution. Google doesn’t like this kind of content, and if they can figure out how to accurately detect it, they’ll penalize sites with AI content.

Keep an eye on https://t.co/OX3Qg2v4ht

— Jack Arturo (@verygoodplugins) April 9, 2022

So if Google will potentially punish sites using AI-generated content, how can you use it?

Well, one option is to just ignore the threat. There are some major outlets using AI content right now (and they have been for years) – such as the Associated Press. Make some intelligent modifications to the core content, and you’re in the clear (…hopefully).

I am testing this “intelligent modification of AI content” method for my real estate investment business, but admittedly, content marketing is not a primary customer acquisition strategy. If the content was flagged in any capacity, then the business would still function fine. That said, I will admit that it would really suck to lose a potential passive marketing channel.

Another option would be to use AI to help you create an outline for your article, and then you write all the content. This is a conservative approach that should leave you sleeping worry-free at night, and is probably the best way to get started using AI. It’s especially powerful for helping you come up with a good sales page, or product description. Granted, it’s more time-consuming, but it will help you get through writer’s block, which will help you write more efficiently.

Finally, you can just avoid AI content creation altogether. That’s certainly a valid approach. If your business is 100% online, and you really rely upon content marketing for customer acquisition, then not using it is the safest way to avoid any potential penalty. Either write the content yourself, or hire someone to do it for you.

AI content will only get better.

Something that we all know about AI and machine learning is it continues to improve over time. I think this may start to create a cat and mouse game between purely AI-generated content and Google.

If I have learned one thing in my career, it’s that you don’t want to try to beat Google at their own game. So, while AI content will improve, I highly recommend that you don’t just use the content “as-is”. Humanize it with your own voice and expertise.

#entrepreneurship

Once upon a time, calling someone on the phone was the way to go for receiving technical support. I can remember being on the phone with Dell all the time because something was always happening to my desktop computer.

Without fail, these support reps would always insist that you turn off the computer, unplug it, then plug it back in. I now realize how that Level 1 Dell support rep was providing the equivalent of a canned reply that gets sent out today for common troubleshooting issues.

In WordPress, this is the equivalent to: try deactivating all your plugins, then reactivating one-by-one until you find the culprit.

Not that anything is wrong with that advice. Given the nature of WordPress, more often than not an issue is the result of a conflict. The problem is that people often do this process on their live site instead of in a staging or developing environment, and this results in additional frustration and angst.

Which actually brings up a point worth mentioning: if you don’t know how to have a clone of your WordPress website on a development environment, then you should not be using a self-hosted version of WordPress. Just go to WordPress.com instead, where you’ll get 80% of the functionality without all the headache.

But by in large, support for WordPress products doesn’t include chat or phone. The vast majority are ticket based, with some still utilizing forums.

At one point or another, I used every method of support (phone, email, forums, chat).

In the early years of LearnDash, a forum was used to field support requests, with occasional Skype calls if necessary.

That wasn’t sustainable.

I then tried supplementing a ticketing system with chat support. I figured it would be a way to differentiate from the competition. From a pre-sales perspective, chat was outstanding, as I could close multiple sales before lunch. The problem was that after the purchase, these same folks tried to use chat for getting help as well, and they became increasingly frustrated when told that they needed to open a support ticket.

Now, I can concede that some of the support requests were simple enough, so it was possible to just answer it. If the request was more complicated, then I would raise a ticket for the customer. As smooth as that process sounds, it started to create a bottleneck. Also, I found that these individuals had different expectations about the time to resolution for their issue (often wanting same-day service). They would continually open chat again to check on the status.

What I noticed was that the chat functionality actually slowed down the entire support process as it created an extra, unnecessary touchpoint. If this was just one or two people, then it would probably be no problem. However, LearnDash is not some small-time plugin. Some issues are very complicated and require a lot of digging to resolve given a customer’s particular WordPress configuration. And therein lies the issue.

The WordPress business model is not a feasible environment for offering chat support.

In the world of WordPress, one of the largest cost drivers for a company is support. A popular WordPress company needs more people working in support than a SaaS – plain and simple. Why? Because the WordPress value proposition requires it.

Everyone wants their own unique WordPress configuration, but the reality is that not everyone is good at it. They’ll install duplicate plugins, never update the site, use garbage hosting, and so on. Inevitably, this increases the chances of something going wrong.

Support reps have to learn about the issue within a different context for every support request. This takes a lot of time from very skilled individuals. Multiply this by hundreds of tickets per day, and you can see why WordPress companies have so many folks working in support.

If you want chat support, you’ll have to pay at least $1,000/year.

Offering responsive chat support with so many unknown variables about the environment, and at a cost of just a few hundred dollars per year, is just plain bad for business. That may look different though if the everyday WordPress user is cool with paying a minimum of $1,000 per year.

For some, that expense might be worth it. In fact, I once considered offering chat support for that price as one of the purchase options for LearnDash, and I am confident that it would have been chosen by a segment of customers. The customer gets the chat support that they want, and the company gets more money. That sounds like a win-win, right? No. It’s not. It would have still been a loss to the company, especially at the low $1,000 price point.

First, if you have customers from all over the world, then you need to make sure that they receive the same amount of chat support time. This essentially means that support would need people working around the clock. Not just support people, but mid-level management as well to oversee these folks and to help with escalations. These employees then have to interface with leadership (the bulk of which working in U.S. timezones). The logistics get muddy, fast.

Secondly, let’s not forget that the vast majority of WordPress users do not have $1,000+ to spend on a single plugin, and as such it simply does not make sense to build out an infrastructure to support only a minority of the customer base.

For a business to realize profitability of chat support, they need to build the business around that offering to take advantage of efficiencies of scale. Bolting on live chat support as a “feature” is the opposite of this. It creates far too much overhead.

As long as WordPress businesses care about being profitable, they will not offer chat support – and that is in your best interest.

Listen, I get that there are people who really want chat support. You may be one of them! But you know what you also want? The teams that build the software to remain in business.

It’s Pareto’s principle, and it’s in your favor.

In exchange for an insanely low price, you get enterprise level software, continual development, and competent support on an insanely complex ecosystem of software. The only cost to you (aside from low license payments) is that you don’t get chat support.

But if more support is something you prefer, then my advice would be to take the money that you saved by not paying $1,000/yr for a license and hire a part-timer from UpWork to help out if problems do arise on your website. Let them handle the entire resolution process, and allow them to open tickets with the various support desks if necessary. This way you get white glove support to all the plugins on your site, not just one.

#WordPress