Welcome to Nerd’s Guide To The Galaxy

I was twenty-eight years old when I first moved to California. I was only planning to be here for six months while I was in rehab. Three months in, I decided to stay and get a clean start in a new place. I knew that this alone would not keep me sober. After all, wherever I am, there I go! It’s not like Los Angeles doesn’t have more than its share of drugs and alcohol. But not knowing anyone here helped in the beginning.

A week or so before I left NY to start rehab, I was staying at my parents’ house, and they took me to have dinner with a Rabbi and his wife, who had a lot of experience helping people with drug and alcohol problems. It was on this Rabbi’s recommendation that I went to California to go to the Chabad Residential Treatment Center.

That night at dinner, the Rabbi’s wife (often referred to as a Rebbetzin) said something to me that I have not forgotten. In fact, while I am sure many wise things were said, this is the only thing I remember.

I’ll paraphrase it here:

Seth, you have a raging bull inside of you and you are about to go on a journey where you are going to learn to tame that bull. And when you do, there will be nothing that can stop you from accomplishing anything you want to.

These were powerful words that painted a powerful image and gave me hope, but they also scared me.

What if I don’t make it? I hadn’t made it yet and there were many attempts.

I didn’t believe the part about me accomplishing anything I wanted to. I did believe her about the raging bull inside of me, because I had already experienced that. Well, now in 2022, I can say I’ve experienced both.

I can’t believe it has been over twenty-three years since that day, and my journey has taken me so many places. I am reminded of the Dr. Suess book which I happened to read for the first time senior year of high school.

“Oh, the places you’ll go!”

I’ve had an amazing journey, and I’ve seen and experienced so many things in so many areas of life. I’ve met some great people along the way and I am inspired every day by the people I interact with – from clients, to friends and colleagues, and of course my 97 & Up Mastermind.

One of the first things I took away from my process of getting clean was how important it was to help others. When I began thinking about starting what eventually became Nerd Enterprises, I knew I wanted to find a way to bring that principle into what I did. Be of service. Help others.

So, when I eventually met and hired a marketing expert to show me how to use social media to grow my business, it was music to my ears when he began to tell me the process.

Create content and give it away for free!

Most will never pay you for any of it, but the small number of people who do will make it all worthwhile!

And he was right. Forget about the money, I get so much joy whenever people reach out to me and thank me for all of the resources I have put out there. These moments are when I know that I have succeeded in being of service to others.

From the first day I put out my first video, I promised myself that I would always have resources that met every budget. And I’ve remained true to that. I still put free content out there pretty regularly.

Enter Nerd’s Guide To The Galaxy!

This may just be the final frontier for me! My guide to the galaxy. I started out working out of my garage-turned office and eventually moved into my house. Now my garage is my gym and storage unit. My dining room is my office, and my wife and I plan to completely remodel this house soon. Who knows, my office may soon be an RV located anywhere in the U.S. with an internet connection. Or maybe I’ll move to the UK?! Or Israel, so I can be closer to my family!

I’ve seen so much and have had so many experiences, and if you know me then you know I love to share. I love to share my knowledge and I love to share stories that have a way of making learning interesting.

This is why each week, I write an email that is very different from the typical emails you get from any other business or marketer out there. Sure, I have courses to sell and programs to offer, like 97 & Up, but that is not the main focus of the weekly email I send out. The primary focus is to share with you what I’ve learned this week, or what might have inspired me recently.

I may share my successes with you, but I will never do that without sharing exactly how I accomplished them. It’s never really about me. If anything, it’s about how I can help you.

I’m fifty-one years old as of 2022, and not too long from now I will be fifty-two (in early 2023). My hope is to retire at sixty, but I can see myself getting bored, so I will probably do something, I’m just not sure what that will look like. If anything, it will involve more writing and not so much accounting work.

So what is Nerd’s Guide to The Galaxy all about?

Maybe that’s the million dollar question?

The idea is based on everything I can share based on what I have experience with.

My favorite thing to say is, “you never want my opinions, but if I’ve had the experience, you’re welcome to it.”

This begs the question, “What do you have experience with, Seth?”

Financial Accounting and Bookkeeping

Well, there’s financial accounting. That’s my core competency, and coming up you will see the next evolution of my content on that subject. It’s long form content with detailed screenshots. And then, of course, there are my videos. You will not see five-minute tutorials from me. Most will be between ten and twenty minutes, and every single one will have a linked index on YouTube in the video’s description, so you can quickly get to a specific part.

These videos will be thorough. Not meant for sitting back and relaxing. They will be more for leaning forward and engaging. Pause, take notes, and play.

My focus is on QuickBooks Online and the apps that we use to work with QBO, to better serve clients. You will see fresh content on many QBO topics, as well as the apps that I find and fall in love with.

Productivity Applications

If you’ve been around me for a minute, then you know this about me. I love apps. Not for the sake of apps alone. I love using tools and finding ways to get things done more effectively, more efficiently, and with greater accuracy.

In Jan 2021, I launched a new series of video courses called, “Process and Workflow Design”, starting with the self-titled course.

The first course shows you how to design your process before you decide what app you’re going to use. Of course, we use an app for this. It’s called Dynalist, and its strength is that you can easily lay out bullet points to outline a process and move things around.

One of my super powers is that I can dive into a new app and figure out how to use it in the intended way very quickly, but I am also good at bending applications to my will and getting them to work well in ways that weren’t necessarily intended.

And of course my primary superpower is my ability to teach. Anything I learn to do or use, I can teach it to you in a way that makes it easy to understand. My mother and her mother were both teachers. I think they rubbed off on me. I only say this because, after years of putting educational videos on YouTube, as well as writing content and presenting at major accounting conferences, I have gotten a lot of consistent feedback from people telling me that they love how I explain things. That I make things easy to understand.

You can expect to see me continue my coverage of many apps and how I use them.

Marketing and Content Creation

I was recently having a conversation with someone in my eCommerce Community on Discord. We have a water cooler chat channel, and there he asked me about the equipment I use to make my videos. I don’t often think about this part of things, because it’s something I do more in the background, but I really love to geek out on my equipment.

And I LOVE to create content.

In fact, this whole next phase that I am launching with Nerd’s Guide To The Galaxy is based on me going back to the beginning, when I was more prolific about creating content.

But now with more experience, I am creating what I am referring to as “hand crafted” content. It’s long form. It’s detailed. Like an online textbook with screen shots that walk you through everything step by step, and of course there’s always a video. My content meets every budget and it also lines up with every learning style. Some like to read. Some like video, some (ahem) like both.

And as I’ve learned how to create and market all of this content, I have SO much that I can share with you in this arena. And I plan on sharing a lot.

Health and Wellness

I wouldn’t let you hire me to help you in this area, but I have learned a ton, especially in the past two years. Meanwhile, I can refer you to the professionals I’ve hired to help me. They are amazing. And if you want to read something lengthy about my journey in this arena, read this post I wrote on Facebook.

The short version: after years of struggling and failing, and trying again, I am finally on my way to a sustainable program built  on changing everything about how I eat and exercise. I’ve lost over thirty pounds and I have about twenty-five more to go. I’ve put on a ton of muscle and I feel GREAT!

Addiction and Recovery

I got clean/sober on April 5, 1999. Click here to see the math 😃. I’ve sponsored a lot of men (and even some women) and have been very involved in service to Cocaine Anonymous. This is a big part of my life, and more than twenty-three years later I still go to meetings (in fact, I started one that I run on Tuesday nights), and I still work with others helping them learn what I’ve learned, which is a message of recovery.

As I said earlier, my experience with getting clean is what inspired my content creation and marketing process. It’s all about giving it away freely. Like Zig Ziglar said, “help enough people get everything they want, and you’ll get everything you want.”

The program of recovery has also taught me how to stay balanced, which has helped me tremendously in every area of my life. You might guess that as my popularity grew on the internet and in the accounting community, I have also run across my share of “haters.”

When I first got clean, I could be standing in a room full of people and all but one of them could praise me for what I’ve done or given them, but I’d be focused, even obsessed, with that one person who criticized me.

Today, I embrace the criticism. I use it, and I feed off of it, so I can improve from it regardless of how it was intended.

When I started teaching Excel at Santa Monica College, it was like that room I described. Most were very happy, but a few were brutal.

The brutal feedback led me to think about what I could do. In the end, I turned one class into three and tripled what I was making there. All because I was open to criticism and Recovery taught me how to take it and use it for good.

Recovery has given me tools for life. It’s a design for living that has benefits for all. I plan to share that with you.

I’m an animal lover

You’ll find out, if you don’t know this already, that I love animals, especially my two girls a.k.a. The Mighty Goddesses. Their names are Aphrodite and Artemis. You will see them make many cameos in my videos.

I love animals and I love working with companies who serve them, like SwiftPaws.

Every single day, when I wake up, I sit in a recliner chair with my two Goddesses for about an hour. I stroke them, and they usually fall asleep on my legs. This is my favorite part of every single day. Having dogs in my life for the past twenty-plus years has been the best. It changed me to the core. I have learned so much about myself. I never knew what it felt like to love this much until I had them.

Meals and Entertainment

I couldn’t resist working an accounting category into this. I love good food, and I also love getting outdoors, especially hiking. Where I live in Southern California, there is no shortage of places to go. After a series of articles that came out about hikers getting lost, stuck, and later found, unfortunately not making it, my wife is adamant that I only go with someone else. So I am always looking for a local hiking partner. The catch is, you have to get up really early. I like to watch the sun rise as we climb to catch a great view!

If you’re ever in LA, reach out to me, and even if you don’t get up early, I can steer you in the direction of some great restaurants.

As I write and share the many aspects of my journey as a human and an entrepreneur, I plan on adding all kinds of resources to this mind map, which you can access for free:

Nerd’s Guide to The Galaxy

And if you ever have any questions or suggestions for something you think I have experience in and can help you with, bookmark my Ask Nerd page and ask anything you want, any time you want.