My story begins in January, 2012, when I was fired from my job for “poor performance”, which was ludicrous, because my boss set me up to fail from the beginning. He had tasked me to bring in new SEO business from large game companies like EA, Disney, and SquareEnix (makers of Final Fantasy) who make MMOs (Massive Multi-Player Online games) and Las Vegas Hotels (like MGM, Bellagio, and the Wynn) during Q4 (October, November and December of 2011, the winter holiday months) when large companies have allocated their budget for the year and are busy executing to collect during Black Friday until Christmas and the New Year. It felt like an impossible task. But I was getting paid a salary in the meantime, and he’s the boss, so I persisted. I worked LinkedIn, made connections that I didn’t have before, and got FIVE proposals to customers during that time. None actually committed to pay before January, and due to my boss’s cash flow situation, divorce, and overall mental unstableness, I was let go due to poor performance. Did I really perform poorly by getting five proposals to decisions makers at these companies, who didn’t have the budget, time or sense of to even make a decision to move forward? Or was it due to “poor management”? I wish I could have crossed out poor performance and put poor management in it’s place. But I left peacefully and resolved to improve upon that disastrous experience. It’s just another shock to my nervous system in life to wake me up and realize, this world is a messed up place. Hence what began what I now call, Project Payday – my quest for being paid well, consistently, while having the freedom, enjoyment, and passion for whatever I do, consistently. It seems an impossible task considering this mucky economy and intense competition, but I maintain faith that there is at least one option available for me that matches what I’m looking for. This blog was started to chronicle my journey.