Author: Pedro Segundo

Student | Blogger | Thrill-Seeker

3 Reasons Why I Started Blogging

In this post, I want to share a couple reasons on why I started blogging and why you should as well. To be honest, I feel as more people should have blogs or other avenues to share their story and life.

Before I say more, blogging is way more complex than just writing and publishing your posts.

So here is my blogging story.

MY BLOGGING STORY

Playing sports my whole life made me realize the gap that was left whenever I was no longer an athlete. In June 2018, I stumbled upon various blogs that offered very valuable information and how ordinary people could have such an immense impact on their readers and community.

A lot of these bloggers were making a change and at the same time; Making a passive income along with it. I slowly began to learn more and realized

“you know, why can’t that be me?”

With efforts to try to fill this void of not playing sports, I decided to venture off and start something new. Making the executive decision, I said: “you know what, why not go for it.”

At the start, I was very confused on what I was doing and kept having thoughts on if this whole blogging journey would work. Trust me, to this day, I still don’t know what the heck I’m doing but what matters is that you grow and learn from it.

Why I Started Blogging

  1. Do something significant

The main reason I started blogging is due to the fact that I wanted to do something significant.

Since having a job and going to school was not cutting it for me, I decided to venture off and do something different than what everyone around me was doing. Even though I was still going to school and getting good grades to accomplish this college education. I felt a need to do something where I can express myself and use my talents and skills.

  1. Inspire others

At the start of my blog, another reason why was to inspire other people like me. I had a feeling if I documented my journey and experiences that go on in my life that someone would find value in it and can gain helpful insights.

Honestly, I love to talk and interact with others.

I am the type of person that can talk to you for days. It can literally be about anything and everything. My mom would tell me that I can speak to a wall for hours if I really wanted to. The beauty in that is through all my ramblings, sometimes I would say something that I think (and hope) will inspire other people.

My thing is these “people” wouldn’t ever get a chance to hear them. Then the idea of sharing my thoughts with the world came to mind. Hence, the birth of lifeofpedro.com

  1. Help students and athletes make a passive income/dominate life

A mentor of mine said to me…

“If you’re not specific in who you are helping, you’re not helping anyone.”

He would mention this same phrase over and over again until I finally knew what it meant. This quote really made me dig deep on who my audience would be. My main goal is to help other students and athletes like me be able to make an income and do the things they always wished on doing. That be travel the world, start their own business, pay off debt, or simply dabble in investment vehicles that can benefit our future. To this date, I’m not entirely sure but as time goes by, I am positive I will have a better idea.

Entering at Appalachian State, I had the opportunity to play Division 1 Soccer. As that was my passion and dream for years. Entering this college sports atmosphere deteriorated this dream entirely. Noticing that absence in my life was extremely depressing. Not having that sports, which took up about more than half of time were gone.

Having so much free time made me want to do something else and pretty much keep me busy. I am the type that hates not doing anything for a long period of time. You lose purpose in life doing that.

  1. Make a passive income

Last but not least, I started this blog to be able to make a passive income as time went by. There are many popular blogs such as:

  • Making Sense of Cents
  • Smart Passive Income
  • The Minimalists
  • Tai Lopez

All these blogs have one thing in common. They all make a passive form of income. Developing the blog once and letting it run. All with the simple benefit of providing value.

In June 2018, Making Sense of Cents generated over $100,000 in passive income just in that one month.

That is so insane. Imagine this.

People like you and I are grinding in college to hopefully land a job that pays six figures or more in a year. Michelle, which is the women behind Making Sense of Cents makes that in a MONTH.

All from blogging.

Although, I’ve made some money from my blog, but I am nowhere near making that kind of bread. My inspirations are to be able to reach a six-figure yearly salary just from blogging. That is very do-able. Only thing is that these results take time and hard work. It took Michelle years before she was pulling these ridiculous numbers. Now, she is self-employed and can lavishly live off of the passive income her blog produces.

You may ask how you can make money from blogging?

Well, the answer to that is affiliate marketing.

If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing. Don’t worry, I got you covered.

  • *Affiliate Marketing Blog Post

This post teaches you the basics of affiliate marketing and how you can try it for either your blog or your social media.

Affiliate marketing is only one of the ways you can monetize your blog but there are several ways you can do it. You just have to be creative and produce valuable content.

Why You Should Start Blogging

Okay now that I have given you my spill on why I started blogging. Here are a couple reasons on why you should start blogging.

There are 152 MILLION blogs on the internet as we speak.

Every half a second a new blog is being introduced to the internet. Do you realize how insane this stat is?

VERY CRAZY

I’ll give you 4 legitimate reasons why you should start blogging.

  1. You are you

You as a person are unique. Your opinions and sentiments are different than everyone else on this planet. With every blog post you publish, it will be a piece of you being introduced to this world. Once you inject your personability into it, it becomes different than everyone else.

You can always put a new spin on things that are already out there.

None of the 152 million blogs and counting are you. Don’t get me wrong, some of them will think similarly to you, but none of them will be you.

Screen Shot 2018-07-25 at 7.34.19 PM

That’s the beauty of blogging that you can create this community with your voice and bring together like-minded people to interact and learn from each other.

Your blog will be your platform to share your story. Now, I don’t mean for it be a place where you share what you do every day because quite frankly nobody cares about that. That is what social media is for. What I actually mean is that produce a ton of ideas and things you wish people knew about.

Writing about them in a simple Facebook page or tweet is one thing but writing them in a blog or website is completely different. If you don’t tell your story, no one else will.

If they do, they won’t be able to tell it as good as you would.

  1. Learn new things

Before I started blogging, I have never heard of SEO (search engine optimization.) I have heard about it vaguely but never really knew what it actually was. All it is is optimizing your website for search engines to make it easier for other people to come across your blog. I never knew what the blogging lingo was but now I am learning the tools one by one.

When you start blogging, you instinctively start learning all this cool stuff you never knew about and much more! Within a short time, you will be surprised by the amount of new valuable skills you have learned. Skills that you can use for the rest of your life. Remember, we live in the growing era of technology.

  1. Offer Inspiration

I am going to be straight up with you. There will be people who criticize you. There will be others who will never understand what you do. There will be people who will make fun of you at all costs.

At the end of the day, that DOES NOT MATTER.

Regardless of the fact, there are people who will be inspired by what you have to say.

Write to those people!

Create content that will inspire them to achieve things they never thought they could accomplish.

Serve as a role model on venturing on this journey and documenting your experiences to show other people that they too can do the same.

You don’t have to quit your job or quit school. That is not at all what I want you to do. You might be exhausted from these responsibilities and you want to write to de-stress. Maybe you went on a dope ass trip that none of your friends have gone yet, and you want to share with them all about your experience.

Why not blog about it?

The possibilities are literally endless that you can write about. There are a million things that happen in your life from your experiences that will inspire other people.

Like I said, people will criticize, joke, and not understand what you do.

Let me be clear that those are not the people you want to write for. Maybe later down the road, they will realize different.

One of my favorite quotes that I live by every day is

“Don’t let small minded people tell you your dreams are too big”

And last but not least

  1. Give help

One of the most important things that I have learned since the creation of my blog is that make sure every post is helping someone in some way. Make sure that each post is solving a problem for one or many people.

Write meaningful content and be transparent with your audience. That is really the only way to gain their trust and attention at the end of the day.

This can be anything from learning new knowledge you’re sharing or a life experience that will aid someone to overcome that same struggle they are having.

In my case, I’m writing to help people find other ways to make an income and be able to live life to the fullest without any regrets. That is my main goal. For everyone reading this blog, I want you to break your shell and try something new! Experience new things and make something great out of scratch. Life is only but so short so why not spend every moment to the fullest.

There is much more to blogging than simply writing posts. Blogging is a bit harder than you think or from what I made it sound. It takes a lot of dedication and countless hours writing, networking, and posting on social media. But regardless of all that, it is VERY possible.

Remember how I said there are 152 MILLION BLOGS and counting? If they can do it, so can you!

If you wish to broadcast your opinions and thoughts and make a change in someone’s life, why not start blogging today? If you are ready to start inspiring and helping other people and learning new things yourself by just simply being you, then read my blog post on how I talk about starting your blog simple and easy and make money off of it, only if you are into that 😉

Simple Ways to Start Your Blog TODAY & Make Money While Doing It

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For more tips make sure to follow me on my social media to stay updated with me and my blog!

Your boy,

Pedro Segundo

How To Take 18 Credit Hours & Still Live Your Life in College

Friend: “Yo, how many hours are you taking next year”

Me: “Bro, I’m taking 18……”

Friend: “Damn bro, that’s about to be hell, why?!?”

Me: “Not looking forward to it what-so-ever”

This is the conversation I typically have whenever I get asked how many hours I’m taking. To be completely honest, I have tried to take 18 hours before in the past and lowkey, I dropped a course. Not because it was hard but because I changed my major and the class I was enrolled in was required for my old major but not for my new major.

In today’s blog post, I will be talking about my experiences with loading up on coursework and things I have seen work for me and for others. By implementing these simple tips, you can get the success in the classroom while still living your best life.

Stick around for those of you looking to add another course or that are already taking 18 hours. If you are one of those taking 18 hours, you are in my prayers 🙂

THE DAUNTING VIEW OF 18 HOURS 

Let’s be honest, school is most of the time a very hassling area especially if you are not that good at school. For me, I wasn’t always the top student in my classes and I don’t know the feeling of getting a 4.0. So for someone that is not that good at school, loading up on your coursework can be challenging at first, but with proper preparation and having the right mindset, this can be easier than seen. You don’t need to be the smartest to get the best results.

18 credit hours is seen as this huge detrimental beast that not many college students say “oh you’re doomed for hell.” Reality is, yeah it’s hard don’t get me wrong but it’s something you shouldn’t fear of. I know for myself, that whenever I was taking 18 hours before changing my major, life was tough and the amount of more focus and work you had to put it was noticed.

During my freshman year, I took the bare minimum of 14 and 13 hours both semesters. Part of the reason is due to the fact I played college soccer, my schedule was already bombarded by it leaving no free time for more classwork. Now that I am not a student-athlete anymore, I am able to load my coursework up and do more things that revolve around my academics. Life is good now, I don’t have to walk to class every day looking like I got shot in the back from weights or feeling half handicapped from the waist below from rigorous training and runs.

Like said earlier, 18 hours is no easy task but with proper preparation and useful tools, you can take 18 hours and still live your college life and have fun, all at the same time!

So without further or due, lets jump right to it.

Planning Your Schedule

Alright, so you’ve determined that this semester is the semester you challenge yourself and get some classes out of the way now rather than later. Before you begin to arrange classes and start adding courses like a maniac, take a deep breath and relax.

You have to optimize and plan different courses for different schedules and think about factors and periods when courses would best be suited for.

My number one tip is to not take more than 2-3 difficult classes in a semester. Reason being is that you don’t want to overwhelm yourself by taking all the rigorous classes and not being able to complete all the work and not being able to focus properly for each. What I mean by this is, don’t go taking 2 math courses, a science course, and a history class all in one semester because you’ll find yourself in a deep hole come midterms when you have a stockpile of work and tests to study for.

In another hand maybe take like 1 math course, 1 science course, 2 prereqs for your college and 1-2 general education classes.

You want your schedule to be balanced but not make it too easy because as you move along the ranks of grade classification, you will have to start taking all these difficult classes you put off in the beginning, and that’s when you will see all the stress pile up like a snowball effect and collapse all over your face!

We don’t want

A tool I use when planning my schedule is Coursicle. Coursicle allows you to browse classes based on your college and plan your perfect schedule. It also notifies you whenever a seat opens up in a class that you want. I highly recommend using this FREE tool! Below is one of the alternative schedules I made for this upcoming Fall 2018 semester. I wanted to include it to give you a visual on how it looks and see how beneficial it can be whenever planning out this detrimental 18-hour schedule

Life of Pedro Coursicle for App State
Fall 2018 Coursicle Alternative Schedule

So when properly planning your schedule, I would recommend speaking to your academic advisor about planning your courses as they are the wisest tool you can use when doing this. Luckily for me, whenever I was a student-athlete, our advisors did all the planning for us and all we had to do it register for the courses. Making it as easy as taking candy from a baby. Shout Cliff Poole!

Now that I am not a student-athlete anymore, I have to do the planning myself but by speaking to your advisor and evaluating your strengths, planning can be fairly easy!

Okay, now that you have planned your schedule and have everything ready to go for the first day of school now we move onto keeping up with these classes.

TAMING THE WILD BEAST FOR THE SEMESTER

Now that you have it all set and ready to go, now we all we got to do is tame this beast so we don’t lose control over it and can handle the wild bursts of it.

The number one thing to avoid when taking 18 credit hours is PROCRASTINATION

Now, this can seem fairly simple but it is something literally every college student has problems with and everyone can relate to this.

I know for myself that I procrastinated a lot in high school but I’ve reduced it a lot now that I am in college. Due to the reason is, you can’t afford to procrastinate that much in college like you did in high school. You are in the big leagues and need to treat it as such to get the results you want because employers do not give a flying goose egg about your high school experience. They care about what you did in college. So if you goof in college, you might as well goofed with your future employer.

Now Rather Than Later 

 

Do yourself a favor and whenever you are assigned an assignment to do it as soon as possible rather than waiting 24 hours before it is due. It will save you so much time and effort later down the road and you will see greater success.

It’s amazing to see the time you have when knocking assignments as you go. You’ll have so much time to rage like an animal and do the things you want to do. That can be from hanging out with friends, going out downtown on the weekends, to taking time on your personal hobbies you thoroughly enjoy. The possibilities are endless.

Our main concern is to give you more time to live your life and live your lifestyle.

TAKE IT ONE STEP AT A TIME

Okay, so now that you know not to procrastinate, you need to divide your attention to focusing on one assignment at a time.

The main reason for this is when you are thinking about multiple assignments at once and you worry about how you are going to finish them all in time for your classes, you end up wasting more time worrying about what could go wrong instead of just completing assignments. It is important to take it one step at a time. 

Digesting courseload by bits of pieces rather than huge mouthfuls is going to make your life a lot easier.

A prime example of this happened to me last semester. I had an 11am class on a Monday which happened to be history. Walking in, I thought “today is going to be a nice and easy day.” As I was walking in, I see that everybody has a paper in front of them. I ask my neighbor, “was there a paper due today?” He says “yeah, man we have an essay due today.”

In my mind, I freak out! I had totally forgotten the due date and I didn’t have a paper.

I panicked so hard and begin to think of ways that I can finesse this. After a solid minute of creative brainstorming, I think “how much time can it possibly take me to write a two-page double-spaced paper on a historical event?” I say “easy as cake, I got this.”

I run down to the library, grab an energy drink (since it was 11am, I was sleepy) sprint up to the 3rd floor which at Appalachian State is the silent floor and I begin to furiously write this paper.

one hour later w/ Spongebob

I get the paper written in the best possible way that I can do in an hour. I sprint back to Ann Belk Hall to my classroom and casually walk in pretending I had been in the bathroom the whole time. Which granted is the excuse I had to say since that is what I told the professor after he counted me “present” for the class.

Don’t get me wrong, as I walked in people thought I had dipped and was not coming back since I took literally almost the whole class period in the “bathroom.”

I turned it in with 5 minutes to spare of the class and got an A on the paper.

Why did I mention this story?

Because when it got to crunch time, I focused solely on this ONE paper and got it done in little under an hour which if I would have procrastinated and thought of other assignments I had to do, it would have taken me much longer to do. It’s a proven theory that if have less time and more urgency for something that you get it done with max efficiency and time.

Stay Organized

Staying organized is such an important factor that is vital for both your personal life and your academics. I highly suggest everyone taking on heavy coursework to have a planner with them.

I use the Panda Planner (pictured below) from Amazon because it keeps me organized, there is space to write down daily tasks I want to knock out and places to gather notes and ideas for future business ideas or school thoughts.
I found this planner and any planner in particular to be a strong tool to use. The main reason I like this planner, in particular, is that one, It has a cool design to it and it’s visually appealing that makes things easier when planning/organizing.

Highly suggest getting a planner of your own to keep track of all the amazing things going on in your life.

 

Another thing I recommend for staying organized is investing in a virtual personal assistant. By personal assistant, I mean in an Amazon Alexa.

Being as busy with having my own personal ventures and taking 18 credit hours, it has been super useful to have a virtual assistant like Alexa that helps you throughout your day. By keeping track of meetings and what you have planned that day to finding the weather to dress appropriately for class as well. All with the command of your voice. That’s the best thing about it. It’s like your own Alfred and you are Bruce Wayne.

Down below is an article that I SPECIFICALLY talk about how having a virtual assistant can increase your productivity and keep you organized:

Make Time For Yourself

With all being said, putting in the work to be successful later in your career and taking 18 credit hours is cool and all but if you don’t put the time to yourself, you will be miserable

The most important thing is making time for yourself. 

You will become stress and miserable as heck if you don’t schedule the time to do other things than studying 24/7.

Everyone needs a break eventually, as well as fun things to look forward to. So go out with your friends in downtown and wild out. Go have a boys/girls night playing a game or simply having a bonfire to catch up with one another. Go travel to a different location or scenery that you always wanted to go. Literally, anything. The point is to get away from those books.

College is meant for you to explore and find out who you really are. If you are studying all the time, you won’t have the luxury to do that. My main motive is to find ways for you guys to do all the things you want in life in the most efficient yet enjoyable way possible.

Go out and do what makes you happy! Life is short.

How are you taking advantage of it?

Your boy,

Pedro Segundo

FYI: Go check out some related posts I have if you haven’t already.

LOOKING TO MAKE PASSIVE INCOME?

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And for more posts related to this blog on how you can succeed in taking 18 credit hours, I left some goodies down below:

 

 

Life After Being A Division One Athlete

My whole life I have seen myself as an athlete. From the days that I can remember to the days that I live today, it has always been as an athlete. Playing it for so long is something that has defined the person that I am today.

In this blog post, I will talk about the life after Division 1 athletics and things that hinder the growth of many college soccer players around the nation that lead to giving up on the sport.

Being an athlete particularly a soccer player was easy because not only did I love playing but I always was pretty good at it. What I didn’t plan for was what would happen to my identify if I didn’t play soccer anymore.

In high school, soccer became more important to my identity than ever. Being a freshman, I played soccer and ran track as well.

Corinth Holders Soccer 2015
Corinth Holders Soccer 2015

All the way to my senior year, I was recruited to play Division 1 soccer. All the hard work I had put had finally been paid off. The whole time I would play, the thought of being able to play Division 1 soccer was the whole goal.

Everyone on my club team strived for the same goal…..to play at the next level. Sports had mattered to me for so long that whenever getting that opportunity to play in college meant that is was well worth it.

My schoolwork was important as well but I never really pushed myself to do better than the requirements. I personally felt that I couldn’t find an identity in the classroom. I never really like going the extra mile, studying, and sometimes even doing homework due to soccer being a priority over school. Don’t get me wrong, I was a good student that received good grades, but yet, my mind most of the time would be filled with thoughts elsewhere.

After having different considerations, I chose Appalachian State would be the best fit for me in athletics and academics. I liked the scene in Boone and the mountains are what made it for me.

What Doing College at Appalachian State Is About – Boone, NC

The Start of College Athletics

Appalachian State Men's Soccer Fall 2016
Appalachian State Men’s Soccer Fall 2016

When I started this whole “college athlete” back in August 2016, I had many competitive factors involved, but in my mind, I was determined to work hard. I would push myself but found myself finishing near to last in many of our training.

The thought of doubt once again worked its way into my head. I began to think “why can’t I see success in something that was important to me?”

With having struggles finding success on the field, the coaching staff was everything but helpful in my situation. Instead of going for a sense of motivation and feedback, I was given very negative and pessimistic views.

It seems as, in collegiate soccer, the level of coaching goes down and coaches only focus on the factors that DON’T make a good soccer player. Training would focus on fitness levels rather than technical drills. In my honest opinion, yes you do need to have a strong fitness level but it is a waste if you have good fitness but can’t even complete a pass.

I was some of the few players that had a strong technical ability but as fitness was emphasized the most than any factor, I began to face struggles in the long run.

There was not one moment on the field that I did something good or was making strides to our ultimate goal. It was always negative and as a player, you get discouraged.

I face this struggle amongst other players that have been in my shoes. The misfortune of not finding joy in the game that you have always loved and played was beginning to fade for me.

I no longer saw joy in playing and every morning the thought of training was seen as a daunting task then an event I would look forward to in pre-college years.

Although I was faced with loads of adversity, I knew that I could not give up that easily on my goals.

Throughout the season, I had been making strides on my fitness, technical ability and my overall winning mindset that was engraved every minute of the day.

I noticed huge changes in my fitness and style of play after a working season at Appalachian. The time came for the 1-month off-season of winter break and I knew this was a huge opportunity for me. There was only one goal the whole break and that was to achieve the holy grail of our fitness test, the 2-mile, 1-mile, 1-mile. 

Fitness Test of Utter Death

Life of Pedro Segundo
Fitness Test for Appalachian State Men’s Soccer

Our fitness test consisted of

  • 2 miles under 12 minutes
  • 6-minute break
  • Another 1 mile under 6 minutes 
  • 6-minute break
  • And Another 1 more mile under 6 minutes 

Boy, was this a nightmare!

Now think about the physical and mental capacity you need to have to accomplish this. It’s nuts! Comment down below if you are able to run this today. I’m curious to see who is able to do this if there is any Jake Chasteen’s reading this right now.

During the pre-season, I finished with a 12:52 two-mile, 6:45 mile, 6:39 mile. These were pretty good results but they weren’t enough to compete at the Division 1 level. During our winter break, I knew this was the chance for me to come back stronger.

Working on fitness every day and making huge improvements on this test, I knew coming back on the first day of the off-season was up for grabs.

First day back, I was so determined and ready to push myself to reach the holy grail of making the desired times for the test.

Unfortunately, the day leading up to the test, I had torn my hamstring and was unable to participate. The nerve-wreck of emotions that followed was awful. I felt very disappointed in myself because of all the work I had put in was ultimately put to waste with solely an injury.  Constant thoughts of failure were rotating in my mind and I just did not feel the same as a player after this.

Struggling to reach peak form after the injury was extremely hard for me. As small re-injuries occurred and fear of tearing my hamstring again prevented my growth to reach my previous form. With the help of such amazing athletic trainers such as Ben Shabb, I had gotten back to form but with little over a month left of the off-season, it had been too late.

Soccer, which once felt so important to me, started to feel like it was holding me back.

Although still on the roster, I no longer felt like I was of the Appalachian State Soccer Team. As the spring term came to an end, I made the decision to not be an athlete anymore. I was extremely afraid to quit, as I had never quit much anything before especially soccer, but I knew that it was the right decision for me at the time.

Life After College Athletics

The summer between my Freshman and Sophomore year of college was extremely reflective for me. With my parents, reminding me constantly that if the decision I made would to be the right one. Friends always asking me if I still play soccer at App State and having to say no was extremely shocking for a lot of people. Due to the reason because everyone knew me because of soccer. It was kind of weird not associating myself as an athlete anymore, to be honest.

For those few months, I didn’t know how to spend my time. There were large parts of my day that I had never had free before. When soccer no longer seemed as important to me, I began to learn that there were many other parts to my identity that I had not yet explored much.

Playing soccer had stripped so much from my social life that the majority of my friends were either soccer players or other athletes. Being tied down to the sport limited me to make other friends.

Many people believe that athletes live a privileged existence, although that may be true to some extent the reason being is that college athletics is more of a job. It’s not this all mighty peak and status quo but it’s literally a job. Logging in more than 40 hours of week is something that I physically/mentally demanding to a young player.

You Are More Than Just an Athlete

It has been over a year since not playing collegiate soccer, and quite frankly I am happier at Appalachian than ever before. I didn’t know if I would like college without having soccer in the equation. It was made clear to me that I am so much more than just an athlete and that Appalachian has way more to offer than just sports for me.

I began to explore the academics side of it. With being an athlete, you don’t have much time to join new clubs, participate in extracurriculars, or even take more courses to get ahead. My whole freshman year was dedicated solely to soccer and taking the minimum amount of coursework. I never went out of my way to join new clubs or to put myself out there as I did in high school where I was a part of 5 clubs in my senior year.

Although in my second year, I was able to join new clubs, meet new friends, and load up my coursework. I started to feel the spark again in nurturing my mind rather than with sports but with school as school can be fun if you know how to balance it.

FINDING JOY AGAIN IN THE SPORT 

I got so caught up in trying to be successful in the sport that I forgot why soccer mattered to me so much in the first place.

The best part about not playing anymore is that I was able to play soccer for fun again. After years of obsessive training and competing, it has been such a relief for me to be able to play for fun.

Don’t get me wrong, I still play soccer but it’s not at a high demand as Division 1 soccer was. I still play intramurals with my ex-teammates (pictured below) and club soccer that has given me the chance to meet cool new people that love the sport like I do.

Appalachian State University Soccer at Alpha Phi Tournament
Using our talents to secure Comeback Shack Gift Cards

Now, I am able to play with my friends and have fun without having the thought of “getting better” each time I played. Instead, I enjoy what is around me and I live in the moment.

Not being able to play has given me time to reflect on what my image and what I will become without soccer. My whole life I pictured of being a professional in the sport but realistic expectations were otherwise.

I now dedicate my time to improving my academics, networking, and finding other ways to achieve the happiness that soccer once brought into my life. One of those examples is the Life of Pedro blog.

Playing it will still brings joy but being on the competing end and working to reach that goal is like no other feeling. You get a much more satisfaction out of it and the great memories you make on your route to that dream is priceless.

Now I want to make a call to action to all college soccer players that have been in my same shoes, that have faced the adversity and that have realized that soccer wasn’t going to provide a living in the future. I want to be able to meet, talk, and find out what your life consists of without college soccer.

I am a huge believer that college soccer needs to be changed as more and more players quit whenever entering college. College soccer has a way of taking the fun out of playing the sport, but just remember this final though

You are MORE than just an athlete!

Your boy,

Pedro Segundo

 

Afraid of Failure|3 Easy Ways to Overcome It

The topic of being afraid of failure is something that virtually everyone can relate to. Let’s be honest, who on earth enjoys to fail? Nobody right! Everyone fails in life no matter what.

It could be from you failing in your business, failing in school to even you fail to win a solo game in Fortnite when you have double digits kills.

Trust me, the third is the biggest failure lol

Elephants Compared to You & I

I came across this article the other day on how circuses train their elephants and made me think about how we could learn a thing or two from them.

So, the thing is, they take them when they are small and tie a heavy rope around their head. The baby elephant naturally tries to walk away but is held back by this rope. The elephant attempts to break free but quickly learns that it is not strong enough just yet. Naturally, it stays still.

As the elephant gets older and stronger the rope gets weaker but not weak enough for it for break lose.

Elephants Tied Up on Life of Pedro with Pedro Segundo from Clayton, NC

It gets even worse from here

As the rope is placed over their heads, they no longer pull and push and attempt to break free because they know it is useless.

The elephant becomes so accustomed to being held down that it no longer attempts to break free. If only the baby elephant knew how strong they truly are. If only he realized that once they have matured, even a rope that is “secured” to a pole cannot detain them anymore

Then they would be no longer afraid of failure

Similar to elephants, we as humans gain a sense of fear whenever we feel resistance, we give up too early and once we reach the state of failure, we don’t attempt to break the threshold ever again.

But fear no more, here are four easy ways to change TODAY!

Everything Is Going to Be Okay

MY BIGGEST FEAR:

Before I start talking about how you can overcome this monster of fear, I want to talk about a few things that I fear.

One of my biggest fears as I enter the online business world is the fact that I was afraid to lose money. Quite frankly, who isn’t either?

Working to gain that capital needed and putting myself out there and losing it all is the biggest fear I face today.

Pedro Segundo Clayton, NC Baby
“What are you doing blogging”

I don’t know what I am capable until the day I actually put my skills to test and go for it. This is one of the reasons I created this blog. If baby Pedro, fresh out of wound were to be talking to present me I would have told myself that I would never be blogging. I would give myself a quick ring to let me know of that, but……….

That’s the funny thing of the future though, you never know what things you will get into where those things will take it.

This has been my method of coping with fear, I go along for the learning experience and what lies ahead and hopefully at the end of the rainbow, there will be gold.

But enough talking about me, let’s talk about how YOU can overcome the fear of failure with these 3 simple proven methods!!

1) State Your Fear 

Whatever you are afraid of failing in, I want you to jot down something that you always wanted to do and why you haven’t done it

Now, when thinking about the why, were you ever afraid to fail in this area?

Many of you might say “yeah, Pedro I was afraid to fail”

I’m here to tell you that it is perfectly fine to be afraid.

The first thing you can think about is stating it and defining the ‘why.”

This is the most common excuse that we are given to ourselves when the factor of fear comes to mind. If you are having these thoughts, I’ll give you some examples of what you could say instead.

  • How you feel: “This will be very difficult to reach”
  • Your mind: “I’m not capable so there is no point in trying”
  • What you should think instead: Acknowledge this fear, own up to it, and then confront it

Once you define the way you can move on to the step

2) Accept Your Fear of Failure

Okay, so now that you know what you fear and know that this monster living underneath your bed can be taken down, we now must accept it.

Accepting it is probably the hardest thing to do when overcoming fear. Fear takes away so much freedom and control over your life that it plain out makes your miserable. Imagine, you being able to do whatever your mind tells you because that is what you want to do without having regrets at the end of it.

Life would be pretty good huh?

It damns sure would be!

Once you accept this fear, start to think of fear in a different light.

Maybe instead of thinking of it in a pessimistic way, think of it in an optimistic way. We are afraid of failure because most of us associate it with the feeling of pain and suffering. What if you associate it with something different?

For example, let’s take our Lord and savior of the lightbulb, Thomas Edison. When asked by a reporter how it felt to fail over 9,999 times before even creating the lightbulb, Edison looked over with confidence drooling from his eyes with a smile and said that he didn’t fail. He just found 9,999 ways on how to not create a light bulb. Now that is what champions do.

So next time the fear of failure comes striking through your mind, think of it is one step closer to your goal and see the difference it can make in your life.

3) EMBRACE EMBRACE EMBRACE

Talking with one of my friends, he told me of the story of Michaelangelo, Italian sculptor. He was the creator of the Statue of David. I’m sure we all know that masterpiece by now. It is one of the most iconic marble statues to ever be created during that period.

People would ask “Yo, Michael, how in the hell did you make a masterpiece from such a crappy piece of marble.” Michelangelo responds that the perfect statue is always inside the giant piece of marble, all you had to do was remove the excess pieces.

Image result for michelangelo david
SKKKKKKRRRRRTTTTTTTTT

What excess pieces do you need to remove from your identity to show the true badass you truly are. What is limiting you or holding you down that you need to remove and simply say “skkkkkkkrrrrtttttt.”

What is the bullshit excuse you are telling yourself you need to quit?

This is what happens when you go through a high volume of failure in a short amount of time. It gives you the opportunity to expose yourself and actually find what you need to remove from your self-identity.

At first, it may seem depressing not getting any results and having to repeat a process over and over again until you find a true winner, but something weird happens when you keep going and almost as luck strikes you, then you start becoming successful. You end up chipping away the excess and start to show the real potential inside of you!

Touching back on the previous point, start asking yourself how many times you failed today? Once you have a list of those failures, ask yourself, what did you learn from these mistakes?

This will create a feedback loop that enables you to see failure as negative feedback instead of this huge phenom of pain and suffering.

All you will have to do is review, change and try again 

The more you do this the better you will get at it. Success tends to swing in your favor since you give yourself more attempts to actually try and make this work.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Wolf of Wall Street is my favorite movie and to quote Mr. Belfort…..

The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.

-Jordan Belfort

Image result for jordan belfort

This is so true. Success for you is possible and it is real. The only thing you have to do is realize that the fear of failing is normal and it is all part of the process. Start implementing these 3 methods now!

You are much stronger than you think you are and you have what it takes to succeed out in this world.

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Missed out on how to create your blog today and start making cash? Click below on my earlier blog posts to learn more.

 

 

Simple Ways to Start Your Blog TODAY & Make Money While Doing It

Diving into how to start your blog and seeing the ways in which you can monetize is one of the best ways to create passive income for yourself. I am no expert on this topic but I will share my experiences with blogging. Note this is a lengthy post with loads of information. 

Having your own blog can give you a huge presence in the online world as well as leveraging your influence to impact others.

The Benefits:

  • Building an amazing audience base that shares the same goals and interests as you
  • Ability to express yourself
  • Document your experiences and memories that can potentially provide value to someone else that helps them succeed along the way

Blogging can be a lot of fun too but it can also make you some serious cash if executed correctly. Today, I will be covering everything you need to know to start your blog and monetize it so you can live the life that you WANT!

Making Your Blog:

First things first, we need to create a website that you can call home for your lovely thoughts. We need to find a host. The topic of hosting can get really technical but a simple way to think about it is leasing a space on the internet that you call home. Kind of like my 12-month lease for my apartment in college.

The flip side of your apartment lease and hosting is actually really cheap. Hosting a website costs on average about $3-7 per month to set up.

Blue host is the website hosting that I use for lifeofpedro.com and they have treated me so well since I joined them. They have a 30-day money back guarantee safety net that and provide top-notch customer service. Given this was my first ever website, they have been helpful in the process.

CLICK TO SIGN UP TODAY!

Below are instructions on creating your BlueHost Account:

1) Get Started Now

1 bluehost

2) Select Your Plan2 bluehost

3) Create Your Domain (This is your http://www.__________________.com)3 blue host

4) Create Your Account4 blue host

5) Install WordPress


Building Your TRUE Audience:

Next thing on your agenda is building a true audience. A true audience is the key to making your blog valuable.

Let’s take Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi for example. Whenever these two soccer superstars come out with a new cleat, there are millions upon millions of people that are die-hard fans that will sacrifice everything to get their hands on them. Like people will take drastic measures to get their hands on their idols new product. This can be applied to you as well.

All it takes is to build a strong solid audience base of around 100-1000 of true fans that

  1. Love your work so much they will buy whatever it is you are offering
  2. Notice how I said 100-1000. You don’t need millions of people to make this possible

For example. Let’s take an amateur soccer player who loves to play soccer and nothing else. All he needs to do is build a fan base of 100-1,000 people.

For instance. if he finds 1,000 people and offers ONE cleat or ONE jersey that are willing to give him $100 for his product

This equals out to be $100,000.

Can you live off that? You absolutely can. This is what your average college student thrives for, is a six-figure salary but here we do it in a passive approach as to getting a degree and getting a job to make that salary.

The amazing thing about this too, you don’t have to be the best blogger or influence in your industry or “niche.”

Now the more you build this the more income you are guaranteed to make and more channels of influence you gain.

Interesting story:

Whenever I was 12 years old, I had the dream of becoming a pro soccer player. After slow growth and frustration, I figured I would learn from a mentor to improve my skill set. That way I could actually play and all my friends would be peanut butter jealous. Hours of research led to one thing on how a Mexican little boy can achieve his dreams.

Finally, I found a guy named Matt Smith. He was a random guy that loved playing soccer and teaching people how to get better. I binged watched all his previous YouTube videos to kind of check out his style.

Sooner or later, it happened

Matt reached out to all his die-hard YouTube subscribers and asked if he made a training program if people would buy it? Everyone said yes. The birth of Epic Soccer Training came into place for the price of $50.

Matt has sold over 200,000 copies of his $50 training program.

Now do the math.

CREATE VALUABLE AND EXCITING CONTENT

So just as Matt did, you need to figure out you are passionate about and begin writing about it.

You want to offer value in return for the reader reading your blog. This is where your creative brain that I know you all have comes into play.

But like anything else guys, this will take time. A lot of times it will feel as nobody is reading your blog except your mom but don’t give up. Give it a whole year before the thought of quitting comes into mind. 95% of people that start something completely new give up whenever things start to get tough. But remember, to live how other can’t you need to do what others won’t.

Matt Smith was making videos and tutorials long before he became famous. Now, he lives of that hard work he put in the beginning and barely has the work again. His program alone makes him about $10,000 dollars without ever having to work again. Why? Because he built his true audience base.

Ask yourself. Does working hard now and enjoying the beautiful things in life later worth it?

110% my friend

If he can do with teaching people how to play soccer better, imagine the endless things you can do.

Offer A Solution To The Customer:

Our biggest goal is to build your true audience. Building your audience is the most important component of this process and the one you should focus on when you first start out. Note, this is a marathon, not a 100m sprint.

No worries though, you can still make some cash flow by recommending products through affiliate marketing. I would highly suggest this route for your first year before you start selling your own products.

Now if you want to dig deeper into Affiliate Marketing: I will be posting a blog post specifically for that next week:

After you have built a strong following base, you are ready to send out details and updates

You can go two routes with this.

  1. Writing a blog post or uploading a video to your product or
  2. My preferred option: create an email list

Benefits of Creating an E-Mail List:

We all have fallen into giving away our email list to a company or brand just for that coupon or discount right? The same concept applies here

Whenever giving away your e-mail address you create a confidential relationship between you and the reader. In order to get their email list, you have to give them something to offer, it could be a funny joke, a cookie, and high-five literally anything guys!

Once you have infiltrated the inbox, you are in the clear. For me, my email inbox is where I store all my important information that interests me the MOST.

Now if you able to gain access to that space, you have a greater chance of the reader actually looking at your product/service and promotes an even higher chance of you closing on that reader. Sounds good so far right?

What I personally use for building an email list and send out my monthly newsletter and updates is, Get Response. Get Response is one of the mgetresponse-email-serviceost reliable, easiest and cheapest platforms to do this on. This platform automatically sends out these emails which is the beautiful thing about it. All the work you have to do it setting it up. The rest is taken care of.

 

This is how I’m doing it:

  1. I find out what people are interested in the most or something they are struggling with
  2. I research products and services to best help that needs
  3. I send them a funny and engaging email through Get Response and mention a product that is worth checking out
  4. The reader checks out the product and wallah you got a traffic and a sale

Easy enough right?

The beautiful thing is that by collecting this email list, you are able to contact directly with your readers and you know exactly what is they want. Focusing on the right product/service is the only hard part but once that is done you can let this machine roll.

Wow, that was a load of information in one post. Hope that this article was helpful to you!

Creating your own blog and making a living from it is extremely challenging and exciting. Now that you know all the basics that you need on how you can create a blog and make it worthwhile…

What is stopping you?

P.S. Here is a pic of me when I was 6 years old grinding hard af on these blog posts on my HotWheels Laptop

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Your boy,

Pedro Segundo

NOTE: This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.