As of the date of this blog post, it’s my 30th birthday. And as I type this post, I’m not sure the exact direction it’s going to take. But you know what? That’s kind of how I feel about my 30s…

I obviously don’t know what it’s like to live an entire life, but I’d like to reflect on a few life lessons I have learned in my short time on this planet:

1. Family has and always will be the most important thing in life. You may have noticed my birthday falls directly after Mother’s Day and I’ve had the ability to share every one of those Mother’s Days with my mom for the past 30 years. We’ve been through more together in 30 years than most people see in a lifetime and it’s made me the man I am today. We’ve lived in multiple states, multiple houses, I’ve been to more schools than you can count on your fingers (and some toes), had a couple different father figures, but I wouldn’t trade any of it for my mom. Every tough challenge we’ve had, we’ve faced together and it’s made me the man I am today. I also can’t thank my grandparents enough for all their support, no matter where they lived in the world. And to my little sister, who isn’t so little anymore, stop growing up so fast!
2. Life has to have ups and downs or you can’t appreciate the ups. If nothing bad ever happened, how would you know when something good is good? There’s a constant bell curve in my life of high times and low times. It’s how you make it through the low times that matters and it’s the people you enjoy the high times with that makes all the hard work worth it.
3. Life is too damn short (and long) to deal with crappy people and crappy jobs. Whether it’s a significant other who doesn’t support you for who you are, whether it’s a stubborn friend who won’t change or whether it’s a job you dread every day; There is ALWAYS another option and another choice. You don’t have to do something just because other people are doing it. You don’t have to live in the same place because your family always has. You don’t have to have a standard 9-5 job because society tells us that’s what we should do. Surround yourself with great people and have a job that makes you happy (or at least doesn’t make you cry on the commute home every day).
4. Don’t buy a freaking house. I know this one is out of left field, but for the love of all things holy I wish I would never have bought a house when I graduated college. For all of my friends who are getting ready to take the next step in life, that next step does not need to be owning a home (especially if it spreads you thin financially). You can have an amazing quality of life renting a nice home (or apartment, etc) and you aren’t financially stuck for the foreseeable future. Buy a house if it makes sense and you’re ready to deal with plumbing leaks, home owner’s fees, landscaping, A/C breaking, siding repairs, etc. Trust me, the tax benefits, discounts on car insurance and free yellow phone books aren’t worth it.
5. You can what if yourself to death. Whether it’s starting a business, a new relationship, a new job, moving, etc etc. Go with your gut and make things happen. We are all human and we all make mistakes. Learn, adapt, change, move on and do stuff.
6. In what fantasy land is smoking cigarettes still a thing? Can we finally agree to just remove smoking from society? Fingers crossed this happens in my 30s.
7. Embrace things that suck and learn from them. Whether it’s a bad relationship, travel experience, job, restaurant, etc… The more things you can experience in life that suck, the more you can value the things that don’t suck. Just don’t get stuck in the loop-of-suck, where you continue to do sucky things.
8. The more you take care of your body the more it’s going to take care of you. Before I started IWearYourShirt in 2008, I was fit as a fiddle (what the heck does that mean anyway?). I exercised constantly, ate a very clean diet and it’s carried me through the most stressful 3 years of my life. Somehow I only gained 30 pounds and have avoided getting sick very much and I attribute that to laying a good foundation with my diet and exercise. For some reason our bodies are wired to enjoy fast food and junk food, but you’ll thank yourself by eating those things in moderation or very rarely. I know too many people that are always tired or always sick. The human body is an amazing machine, give it a chance to be a well-oiled one and take care of yourself.
9. I’m not a big goal setter and I’m going to try to start. The only goals I really set for myself in life where to A. Own a Porsche by age 25 (did) B. Be worth $1mil in total assests by age 30 (did not) and C. Retire on a beach and be financially independent by age 35 (not there yet). I would say being 1 for 2 on my goals isn’t bad, but you can see I was a bit limited in my goals. I want to establish shorter term goals and longer term goals and work towards them. If anyone has any great tips for goal setting, feel free to share in the comments.
10. I’m playing the lottery for the rest of my life and you can make fun of me all you want. You know what, someone has to win the stupid thing and I don’t stand a chance if I don’t at least play. Call me dumb, but the $2 a week for the next XX years of my life will be well invested if I win a $300mil jackpot. You can’t win if you don’t play right?
11. Last, but certainly not least, thank you Caroline for being the most awesome and supportive girlfriend a guy could ask for. 

So yeah, this post is a bit sporadic and I’m okay with that. My life has been a bit sporadic up until now and I’m sure that’s not going to stop just because I moved on from my 20s.

Let’s see what these 30s have to offer.

The new MacBook Pro will be announced this June at WWDC and I’m teaming up with the lovely and PR savvy Sarah Evans (@PRsarahevans) to give away the new MacBook Pro and spread the word about an online tool that will help to organize your life – Tracky!

If you know anything about me, I’m always trying new products and web applications to help streamline my life. I know Sarah gets a ton of email like I do and we both find it hard to keep up with everything. That’s where Tracky comes in. Tracky is a social collaboration platform and their online and mobile platform looks super interesting.

When David Gosse (@davidgosse), CEO of Tracky, demoed it for me, I saw a ton of potential. This is project management for people who hate project management. It’s fast, simple, works well on mobile and I figured it out quickly (if I can do it, you can do it!).

You don’t have to just use Tracky for project planning, like we did for this giveaway. You can use it for to-do lists, group events, social media collaboration, notes on-the-go and much much more. But enough of all that jazz, let’s talk about winning this Macbook Pro:

This giveaway will award a random participant with the awesomeness that is going to be the MacBook Pro 2012 AND it’s going to help Tracky get users, followers and spread the message of a better way to collaborate. Just enter the Rafflecopter giveaway below. The more actions you take, the more entries you get, increasing your chances of winning the MacBook Pro on May 23.

Good luck and feel free to leave feedback about the all new JasonSadler.com!

TIP: Setting Focus on DSLR Cameras

A handy little trick on Canon and Nikon DSLRs to set focus. In this video I show you how to use digital zoom on a Canon T3i with a 50mm 1.4 lens. This trick is a life saver if you film by yourself or aren’t an expert at setting focus through the view finder.

For the past 3 1/2 years I’ve been getting paid to promote a different company each day via social media on IWearYourShirt.com (IWYS). The idea of IWYS came to me in late 2008 when I had clients for a web design company I co-owned asking about Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. At that time, I had never made a video, didn’t have a Twitter account and maybe had 30 friends on Facebook (didn’t know half of them). But, I saw an opportunity, came up with a unique pricing structure (thanks Chris Yeh) and ran with the idea. I could have easily stayed with my web design company and enjoyed an already comfortable work-from-home job, but I wanted more and I wasn’t afraid of change.

Fast forward to today and another change is happening. After working over 1,300+ companies on a daily shirt wearing basis, I’m shifting my focus to having 1 sponsor per week. This change happens as of July 1 and means I will only have the availability to work with 20 sponsors for the remainder of 2012. Why am I doing this? I firmly believe the landscape of social media has changed drastically since 2009, 2010 and even 2011. So many companies/brands/marketers use Twitter and Facebook each day, that it’s hard to rise above the noise, no matter how unique the thing is you’re doing. Having a week to work with companies means a couple things for IWYS:

• More time to share the engaging and creative content I/we create
• More time to engage with the ever-expanding IWYS community and our sponsors
• My creative brain has been able to handle 365 companies a year, imagine only having 52 (or 20 for the rest of this year!)
• Much less availability
• Having initial conversations with potential sponsors to see if IWYS will be a good fit for them (instead of letting anyone sign up and not meeting wild expectations)
• More time for FUN! 

This weekly sponsor change only applies to me, so what does that mean for my fellow shirt wearers? Well, they aren’t going anywhere and their focus is only shifting slightly. Every day we have companies coming to us that understand the power and value of a good YouTube video. We’ve had to turn companies away because they want us to make videos for internal use only and it never fit in our daily shirt wearing model. Not anymore. 

The 4 shirt wearers (Sean, DeAndre, Bimini and Sarah) will be doing full-time video production and we’re moving away from the calendar buying process. I’ve done a ton of research on video production costs from companies around the web, I’ve talked to a bunch of our sponsors and I think we have the sweet spot for pricing and deliverables. We’ve basically been doing this already, but starting today, here’s the plan for the rest of the IWYS team:

• Get 1 Video made for $399
• Get 4 Videos made for $1299
• Buying a video gets you an HD version that you can use wherever and for as long as you like to promote your brand, product, etc
• Buying a video also gets you our same shirt wearing promotion we’ve always done. A team member promotes you via their t-shirt on Facebook, Twitter, our YouTube channel and IWearYourShirt.com (or you can opt out of promotion)
• From now until June, we’ll all still be doing TinyChat live shows at our regularly scheduled times
• 30-60 day turn around and an in-depth project management system to help craft and execute the perfect video(s) for your company
• We’ll work with you to pick the best t-shirt wearer for your video

Video is the most engaging piece of content we have on the web today. It’s easy to share, it helps explain product offerings and it’s incredibly helpful in increasing Google ranking for specific keywords. The IWYS team has a ton of video experience, knows editing software, is comfortable on camera and you should search how much a “video actor” gets paid (even for small production stuff). The $399 price tag for 1 video is incredibly affordable and this is what we love doing.

As with any change, I know people will have questions and concerns. Let me tell you that I’m not afraid of change, but I’m also not making this decision based on a whim. This is something I’ve been thinking about since 2011 and now just felt like the right time. I’m extremely excited to work with fun companies on a weekly basis and for our team to keep cranking out super engaging videos.

Don’t hesitate to email me with any questions and thank you to all of you reading this for helping evolve IWYS and supporting our great sponsors.

With the growth of social media and the influx of businesses, the Like button and the RT button are being gamed. Now, there are some creative businesses that reward Likes and RTs in interesting ways and I’m totally cool with that, but the majority of businesses out there just aren’t Like or RT worthy. I’m sorry, you’re just not. And instead of embracing that and realizing it, business owners brush off social media or say it’s useless because they aren’t good at it (or won’t give up the keys to someone who is). I’m guilty of this to some degree with IWearYourShirt. I want us, as a business, to do less pitching to our audience to Like/RT something, unless we really think it’s Like-able.

I am 100% okay with people asking to Like a post or RT a tweet when it’s actually of value to other people. I’m not okay with businesses asking to share/Like/RT every stupid discount, coupon, deal, quote, etc that they think is valuable. The thing about the Like/RT buttons is that they directly tell you if what you’re saying is worthwhile. These little buttons are feedback indicators of if you’re doing a good job of saying stuff or if you suck at it and need to let someone else control your voice in social media. Let’s face it, unless you’re selling Unicorn Tears, your business has competition in social media and you need to have the upper hand to set yourself apart and grow an engaged audience (read: be more interesting). And when you do trust someone to create content that could be Like-able or RT-able, that engagement will come without asking for it. 

So here’s a few questions to let your brain chew on: Why would someone Like my Facebook page in the first place? Would people say they “Like” my business outside of Facebook? Do they feel they’ll consistently get interesting content that they’ll Like? Are my tweets always just being pushed or am I pulling people in and using @ mentions? Am I just regurgitating other people’s information? Do I RT people? If I were a consumer and read my tweets, would I actually want to RT them?

Last but not least, not everything you say has to be Like-able or RT worthy. Sometimes you just want to express yourself without any return and that’s okay. But for the love of all things sacred, stop putting “pls RT” or “pls Like” in your social media messaging.

It’s amazing how things become 2nd nature and feel like “home”. I’ve spent 1 hour a day streaming live video for the past 1,200 days straight (some people don’t even brush their teeth that consistently). Ustream was a fantastic platform for IWearYourShirt and helped us grow our community from absolutely nothing to something. I can distinctly remember my first live video show on December 20, 2008 (clip only), announcing to the world, via Ustream, that I was ready to get paid to wear t-shirts for a living. 

I met one of my mentors/advisors through Ustream. I met a friend and eventual co-worker (Evan) through Ustream. I met a bunch of you reading this through Ustream. And while there have been some days when Ustream didn’t always work perfectly, it’s still a 100% free platform that has never let me down. I could not be where I am without Ustream and I hope Brad Hunstable and his team know how much I appreciate all their hard work in building a great live video service. Many of our sponsors benefited greatly from Ustream’s generosity in having us as a featured show and we amassed 1,100,000+ views during our live video time there. 

Times have changed and we’re ready to try something new. We have 5 people doing live video shows this year and we’ve listened to our audience tell us they want to watch all 5 but don’t have enough time in the day. Welcome, TinyChat. TinyChat is a live video platform that will allow us not only to broadcast together (schedule below), but also allow our viewers and sponsors to join us via a video broadcast. Now, it won’t be a daily occurrence, but I’m thinking “Fan Fridays” has a good ring to it. 

As with any change people might not come around for awhile, but I can honestly say I believe this is a huge step in the right direction for us to create more entertaining content for our community and our sponsors. One downfall to TinyChat is there doesn’t seem to be a video recording feature. We’re still figuring out how we want to handle that piece of content going away, but it’s even more incentive to make sure you watch us live! Speaking of which, here is the new schedule:

• Sean and Jason combined show from 3-4pm EST
• DeAndre, Sarah and Bimini combined show from 7-745pm EST

I’m personally very excited to try something new when it comes to live video and I hope you’ll tune in daily to check out the new format and platform. I also want to give a shout out to DotComBoy and all the other great Ustream moderators who helped us keep our chat organized and clean over the past few years. You’re hard work has not gone unnoticed. 

Thank you once again to Ustream and their staff. We’ll see you on TinyChat on Monday!

From drawing on walls with crayons as a kid to eventually graduating from the University of North Florida with a degree in Graphic Design, Jason Sadler has always been creative. In 2008 he recognized the growing influence of social media and decided he could utilize these platforms in a new and unique way, by getting paid to wear sponsored t-shirts for a living. Each day, Jason represents a different company online using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Ustream and Flickr. Four years later, IWearYourShirt.com has grown from one to five professional shirt wearers and has been recognized by media outlets around the world including The Today Show, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNN and more. He’s worked with professional sports organizations, advertising agencies, Fortune 500s and before getting paid to wear t-shirts co-owned a web design company. Jason is an avid automotive enthusiast that loves playing Scrabble, watching terrible movies and has been known to play a hoop of basketball or two. Jason lives at the beach in Jacksonville, Florida but frequently travels to speak publicly and share his nothing-to-something story.

And my headshot (courtesy of Laura Evans Photography):

Thanks to Matt Hoffman for the inspiration to make this video. My Top 3 things to think about when trying to be a better salesman are: #1 Never give a hard sell #2 Stick to your guns #3 Always keep the relationship open.

What are your sales tips?

Are razor blades exciting? No. Do they scream sexy? No. Can you still make one heck of an awesome video that promotes your company and makes you seem sexy/interesting/unique? HELL YES! 

I’m joining the Dollar Shave Club because of this video (thanks Eric Bailey for sharing).

Getting excited for a professional redesign of this blog!