Building Your Online Empire

The road to riches is paved with multiple income streams, and these days it has never been simpler to start an online business with little to no start-up capital. In my previous guide, How to Start a Business in an Afternoon using Python and Dash, I explain how to sign up for an Amazon Affiliate account and create a home page for an affiliate website from scratch using Python and the Dash framework. If you have not read the previous guide, do not worry! This article contains the complete advanced template code for the website and these new features!

If you want step-by-step instructions for creating an Amazon Affiliate account, along with steps on how to build the product links in the website, check out the original article…

Life is not Always Easy

Like many others, at some point in my life I’ve struggled with serious depression and social anxiety. As a teenager I talked to a therapist about my life issues, and in college I tried medication(Paxil) to help overcome my inability to participate in classroom discussions. Mental health issues, combined with an apathetic attitude, left me feeling like I was left out and never good enough most of my young life.

Instead of giving up or becoming negative and hating the world, I studied self-help and how to change. I spent most of my late teens and early 20’s learning how to socialize and become a better person. It paid off bigtime as I feel I built fantastic mental resilience and healthy coping mechanisms by my late 20’s. …

Secure Your Data

Not long ago, it was declared that Data is the new oil in the digital economy[1]. Since that declaration, understanding cyber security and how to protect data has become of utmost importance for businesses around the globe. As someone who works with sensitive education data every day, I understand first hand the seriousness of keeping records protected.

Working in analytics, one of my go-to dashboard tools is Dash by Plotly. Dash is a framework for Python written on top of Flask, Plotly.js, and React.js. It abstracts away the complexities of each of those technologies into easy to apply components. …

Why so much hate for the 9–5?

Honestly, I love my job. Not every day, and not all the time, but being able to work at the forefront of transforming K-12 education in the U.S. feels incredibly rewarding. I understand not everyone has a rewarding job, and not everyone wants to grind for the corner office, but there are a lot of really good opportunities out there in “9–5 land” for people willing to learn skills and put in some effort.

Instead of telling you how to quit, I am telling you how to get ahead.

On Hustling & Side-gigs

Before getting into the strategies I’ll share my opinion on breaking away from the 9–5: Hustling or side-gigs to break away from the 9–5 is no cakewalk. Of course, earning a living is possible, but it does not tend to happen overnight. For blogging, without some luck, growing organically and building a body of work takes time. I’ve been building my body of work on Medium since 08/2019 and it earned me ~$5,000 this year. I know the money is out there; however, I’ve had to grind and hustle just as hard, if not harder, than any 9–5 would have me. …

I suck at trading, but at least I‘m LUCKY…

That is the feeling I had until I found some consistency in my third and fourth years trading options. When I started getting into the stock market and trading in my mid-20’s, around 2013, I began with 600 bucks and a dream. I was going to make big money trading penny stocks while chillin’ on a beach in the Bahama’s… I’m sure we’ve all seen those ads.

I started with penny stocks, and soon upped the ante to stocks in the 2–5 dollar range. I clawed my way into some 5–10 dollar names by mid-2015. …

A Simpler Way to Mange Social Media

Promoting content and trying to grow an audience can be tedious and time consuming. I was trying to code a solution to distribute my content when my boss recommended I try Zapier, a no-code solution. Zapier is a free to use web-based automation tool!

Instead of posting across social media one site at a time, I used Zapier to set up an automated pipeline so I only need to post content once. For example, I post to Facebook, and that post is sent to LinkedIn, Twitter, and Reddit automatically.

It is super simple!

I am in no way affiliated with Zapier. Just a dude that loves the tool. …

The Wave of New Traders

A few days ago, I gave a talk at my old high school (digitally of course since covid). It has been 15 years since I graduated, and I was talking to a class of Business and Marketing (DECA) students about how I navigated life after high school. It was a blast! During the Q/A section, one of the students asked if I was in to trading and finance. My eyes lit up!

Whether it was caused by the crypto boom, the popularization of free trading apps like Robinhood, or social media like reddit’s Wallstreetbets (probably a combo of all 3), it seems like more and more people of all ages are putting money into the markets and beginning their trading journey. …