Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker is one of the ‘big three’ money making bloggers on the ‘net. His computer savvy career all started with a simple apple computer in the 1980s. He went on to create an internet gaming business while attending college, and the successful ShoeMoney Media Group.

Shoe credits much of his success to his lovely wife, a physician, who supported him through everything including the dot com crash and his health issues (more on that in the interview).

Shoe has a very interesting paradigm that has helped him to create his successful business:

Embrace new trends and look for opportunities to exploit them. For example, SMG entered the ring tone market early, captured traffic and has monetized it. Finding angles and exploiting them for profit is a key aspect of SMG. Maximum and diverse revenue streams are built on fairly narrow marketing concepts that are then diversified. This is what Jeremy Schoemaker calls, “The Coke Theory. If you are already making Coke then you can make Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, etc and turn a profit on those as well. A company can achieve growth through small degrees of separation between sites, maximizing diversity within a small industry.

1. How do you define happiness?

I would say happiness to me is when you enjoy life and look forward to every day living it.

2. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your happiness now, versus when you were a child?

Right now I would say about a 8. I am very happy with my life. I have a fantastic beautiful wife and a healthy child. Career wise my wife and I are doing pretty well and we also have bright futures.

As a child I was somewhat unhappy. I was very overweight and my future looked pretty grim.

3. What do you do on a daily basis that brings you happiness? (and how consistent is the feeling of happiness throughout your day)

Every morning when I wake up I get to hang out and eat breakfast with my daughter before going to the office. That starts the day off right. Then I always make it a point to accomplish something within the first hour of the work day. Does not matter how small it is. I don’t check email or anything I just get something done. I also take a similar break from email/instant messanger/ at lunch and just buckle down and get something done. Then again later on in the day.

Accomplishing tasks and moving forward brings me an enormous amount of joy. After work I goto the Gym (3 nights a week) and lift weights. This is to get rid of any lingering stress from work. The other 2 nights I run on a treadmill. After working out I come home to my family and eat dinner/discuss the day. After putting our child to bed I enjoy catching up on television shows with my wife that we have tivo’d.

4. What things take away from your happiness? What can be done to lessen their impact or remove them from your life?

Not getting something accomplish really takes away from my happiness level. Does not really matter what it is. I hate not making progress. It really frustrates me. Also sometimes I will lapse a bit and sleep until noon… I feel like crap and rushed the rest of the day.

Also things I do not enjoy doing like:

• Cleaning
• Doing Dishes
• Washing/Gasing up the car(s)
• Lawn Care

I have hired people to handle. We also have a full time Nanny for childcare and 2 babysitters we call on from time to time.

I think learning to control your mental state is a huge way to lesson the impact of things that make you unhappy. Being OK with things you can’t control but learning from them.

5. What do you plan on doing in the future that will bring you even more happiness?

We have another baby now on the way and I am looking forward to raising that child along with Juliet (our 19 month old daughter). I also hope to be able to retire in about 5 years and spend a lot more time with my children. I doubt I will every truly quit working but it makes me happy to think I can
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To get more info about what the Happiness Project is and isn’t, please visit the Introduction Post. To see a running list of all participants, which I will be updating as things happen, please visit the Happiness Project Page.