Since starting this blog, I’ve had many people contact me directly asking various questions relating to business and doing business online. The number one question I am getting comes down to this:

Many people want to start a business, but they aren’t sure what to do.

My advice is pretty simple: stop searching for the next big thing and figure out a niche business providing a product or service that people are looking for.

The thing is – starting a business online doesn’t really have to be complicated. Most people wanting to start a business online would be satisfied with making low 6 figures a year in profits. That isn’t difficult to do. I’m not saying it is easy. I’m also not saying there isn’t work involved. But it’s not really not difficult.

Many people when starting online businesses look at affiliate marketing, blogging, arbitrage, information marketing, etc as options. There is a lot of information out there on how to make money doing these things. It’s not difficult to get started but it can be difficult for most people to see significant income versus having your own product or service.

Business Idea Generation for Serial Entrepreneurs

Serial entrepreneurs are people who create business after business. Sometimes this happens one at a time; other times multiple businesses are created simultaneously.  The skill sets of serial entrepreneurs can vary widely but typically most are creative and strong at both marketing and monetization.

As a serial entrepreneur, my own approach to coming up with new business ideas is probably different than what it would be for an average person. I look to see what people want. Why do I take this approach? I’d much prefer putting my resources behind something that I know has a ready market than trying to create a market on top of everything else. Then it becomes simply a matter of tapping into the people who want to find what it is that I have to offer.

I do discovery through the following methods:

• Social media – what questions are people asking?
• Blogs – what do bloggers mention having a need for?
• Reviews – what reviews show new products/services are lacking but there is a demand for?
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool – what areas are growing in search and where is there potential?
• Forums – what questions are people asking? Where is there apparent need for a new product/service?
• News – what changes are taking place that will result in a need for new products/services?
• Company offerings – what new developments are taking place that would make sense to roll out to my existing client base?

Although most of what I do is in B2B (business-to-business), I am really open. If there is an opportunity, I will go for it.

I am simplifying things a good deal. Since I am an advocate of using domains to attract traffic, the ability to acquire relevant keyword domains also factors into my filtering. I probably look at several dozen new business ideas a month and may pursue only one of them.

Business Idea Generation for Newbies

If you’re at the point of trying to find your first online business to start, you may consider the above discovery methods but I’d recommend taking a bit of a different approach.

I’d suggest to start off with an area you are genuinely interested in. Try and drill down until you get it to a level that is manageable for research purposes. Then go through the above list to see what ideas you can come up with.

Let’s say for example you are very passionate about both golf and travel. You see that on forums, social media, etc there are a lot of people asking about golf courses in various areas they will be traveling to for work or pleasure. You find out that there is no review site of golf courses that lists details about different courses. So you decide to start a site where you collect the basic information about different courses and then allow user generated reviews. You then decide to approach different golf courses, resorts and shops about advertising.  You can also include links for products to improve one’s golf game that would pay you a commission if a sale results (affiliate links). Finally, you want to include one personal review per month and look for courses/resorts to comp you and maybe work out a deal with an airline to be an official sponsor of your site.

Note: I have no idea if a site like the above exists already

It’s a lot easier to start a new business if you already have some basic knowledge of the market as a consumer and if you are enthusiastic about it.

Good luck!

Photograph by NJ..

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Today I’ll be sharing some thoughts about how we snack when interacting with others.

We Snack In Relationships

How we do this

Instead of spending quality time with family and friends, interactions are often becoming bite-sized. We fit in our interactions with others around everything else going on in our busy lives. The amount of time we spend with people may be less and when we do spend time, we are often multitasking.

Examples of how we snack with relationships

When I was growing up, it was rare that my family didn’t sit down to dinner together. If more than two of us were home around any meal time, we would eat together. I used to spend a couple of hours a day – minimum with one or both of my parents.

I conducted an informal survey amongst some friends regarding mealtimes. With the exception of two who have young children, all of my friends said meals were typically eaten on the run – including dinner. All members of a household would eat maybe one meal a week together.

I rarely talk on the phone with friends and family these days. Most exchanges are done via brief email, Facebook messages, instant messenger, etc. Most phone calls are short in duration and often only regarding arrangements to meet in person. (By contrast, friends I have made on the Internet, I do talk with by phone/Skype more frequently it seems.)

Why do we snack with relationships

The pace of life for most of us has just gotten busier. Trying to coordinate a phone call even can be difficult never mind sitting down to a meal with family.

But even when we are with those we care about in person, it’s not uncommon they don’t get our full attention. We’ve become avid multitaskers. Do you tweet when with others? Take phone calls? Check your email or text messages? All of these serve as distractions. I think there is also an almost compulsive aspect to this.

When snacking with relationships becomes a problem

This post is a pretty sensitive one for me. I know that I’ve had many relationships diminish in quality over the years because I don’t dedicate the time to them. I also know that I’ve felt offended when people I am with or talking to multitask.  I’ve also seen marriages of friends dissolve due to lack of quality time. I’ve seen the children of people I care about have behavioral issues due to lack of parental attention.

What should we be doing?

I think it wouldn’t hurt many of us to take some time to evaluate our relationships – especially those that matter the most – and consider if we are snacking when it comes to our interactions and if so, what we can do to change things if needed.

Moving away from snacking doesn’t necessarily have to mean more time, but it’s about making sure quality is there too.

What do you think? Do you believe snacking in our interactions is a problem?

Photo by *Micky

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Video coverage of Apple press conference

Twitlive LiveTechEvents

Blogging coverage of Apple press conference

CNN Money Engadget Gizmodo MacRumors PCWorld National Post (Canada) The Guardian (UK) TheStreet.com The Times (UK) Wired ZDnet

Twitter coverage of Apple press conference

Follow hashtags: #apple #applelive #appleevent #appletablet

Know of other sources? Please feel free to add them in the comments.

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Today I want to look at how snacking on food can be bad.

Why Snacking on Food is Good

I’m a proud snacker. I think that snacking on food is actually a good thing for these reasons:

• It helps keep our energy levels up between meals
• It helps keep our metabolism boosted so we burn more calories throughout the day
• It helps us to avoid overeating at meals because we’ve  gone too long without food

Where Snacking on Food Becomes a Problem

We live in a world of convenience and immediate gratification. Snacking as described above can be a great thing for us but the problem is too many people make the wrong snack choices:

• We consume too many calories when we snack
• Our snack choices tend to be too high in saturated fat, too high in processed carbs and too high in sugars
• Snacks too high in saturated fat result in sluggishness rather than giving us energy
• Snacks too high in sugar result in rapid energy depletion after a brief buzz
• Snacks too high in processed carbs get converted to sugar within our body and the inevitable sugar crash
• We often skip meals and get most of our calories from snacks – resulting in our bodies not getting the fuel needed

The end result of a pattern of bad snacking habits is:

• Weight gain
• Potential for type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and other illnesses tied into bad nutritional habits
• Lowering of productivity
• Lethargy
• Difficulty maintaining regular sleeping patterns if snacking goes too late

The Real Issue with Poor Snacking Choices

Regardless of what you do for a living, if you are making poor food snacking choices, it will be very difficult to reach peaks of performance.

For entrepreneurs and solo-workers, it can be even more of a problem. We all have a limited number of hours in a day to get things done.  Poor snacking choices limit the number of hours we can be in a highly productive mode. It often can become a vicious cycle: you make a poor snack choice. The buzz wears off or you feel lethargic so once again you reach for another poor snack to get an energy boost.

I’ve had several exchanges with participants on the YOAL coaching program who feel the number of hours they have each week “in the zone” of a high state of productivity is so small and of a concern for them. In each case, when I asked about their eating habits, all admitted to making poor snacking choices. (Skipping a proper breakfast and not exercising were also issues.)

I love chocolate. I have some chocolate most days. I noticed that I had developed a bad pattern: I’d have chocolate for my afternoon snack. Then within 60 to 90 minutes, I’d want a nap. I’ve been experimenting lately with moving my chocolate to my evening snack and have discovered on those days that I do this, I don’t need naps. My energy will be more constant.

What should we be doing?

Want to increase your productivity? Adjusting your food snacking habits is the easiest way to see an improvement. Here are some tips when it comes to food:

• Start off the day with breakfast. If you work out in the mornings, you may choose to wait to eat until after you’ve exercised.
• Try to not go longer than 2.5 to 4 hours during the day without either a meal or a snack.
• Keep snacks between 100 to 200 calories for women, men can go a bit higher.
• Snacks should be a balance of protein and unprocessed carbs. A little bit of unsaturated fat can help you feel full for longer.

Since moving towards this myself, I’ve seen considerable gains in productivity because my energy tends to be more constant. I’m also discovering that my weight is also more steady without counting calories or being as concerned with my food intake. I pretty much stay with the idea that I eat clean (i.e. unprocessed) 90% of the time, try to keep snacks higher quality. The rest seems to take care of itself.

I realize many people reading this will be thinking this is pretty obvious stuff. But I think this is definitely a case where we aren’t necessarily doing what we know is best.

What do you think about snacking?

Photograph by Mr+G

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My previous posts on choices and raising the bar have resulted in a lot of interesting discussions with readers. It’s gotten me thinking about many disturbing trends that are happening. The biggest set of trends relate to snacking.

Our society has become addicted to snacking:

• We snack with information.
• We snack with food.
• We snack with our interactions with others.
• We snack with our work.

By snacking here, I’m referring to us just getting a taste of something. Typically this taste – or snack – is just enough for us to feel like we’ve done “something” but that something is rarely enough.

Over the next 4 days, I’ll be running through each of the 4 ways we snack. I hope by the end of this series, you’ll become more aware of your own snacking patterns and perhaps make changes in areas where it is warranted.

We Snack with Information

How we do this

We skim and get the general idea of information rather than absorbing and understanding it.

An example of how we snack with information

Let’s say you see a tweet on Twitter that says, “Facebook demographics changing – largest growth in 35-50 age group,” along with a link.

The serious snacker would see that tweet and file the summary per the subject away in their head for the short-term.

The middle-of-the-road snacker would click on the link, skim the article and probably not end up with any bigger of a takeaway than what they learned from the title itself.

Why do we snack with information

We’re becoming avid surface absorbers of trivial information.  I think many of us feel that knowing all these bits of information must do something for us.

I’ve also noticed that people tend to be more interested in information that somehow backs up who they are and their own opinions even if it adds no real value to them to possess this knowledge.

I hazard a guess that if the above tweet and information were real, the people most likely to retweet (share) the information with others would be:

• Those that work in social media (relevant to their occupation)
• Those that use Facebook (since it is related to something they personally use)
• Those that fall into the 35-50 age group (since they belong to that age group)

When snacking with information becomes a problem

There are 4 times when snacking with information becomes a problem:

1. When we snack on too much information that has no relevance to us.
2. When we snack on so much information, our ability to filter out what is important – what we should know and be absorbing – becomes diminished.
3. When we pass along information snackage to others.
4. When we actually do come across information that is relevant to us and we choose to snack rather than to absorb and understand.

It is a really vicious cycle for many people: we don’t filter the information we take in to determine what is important or isn’t, we scan rather than read those things that could impact us, we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what we discover, we don’t take action on what we learn and then we feel the need to share this snackage with others.

What should we be doing?

I agree that snacking on some kinds of information is a good thing for some people. Information has become entertainment as well. I don’t think that we need to get rid of information snacking entirely.

But I do think many people need to start actively applying filters to information. Filters so that we can more easily recognize when we come across information that is relevant and/or can improve our lives and our businesses.

Let me share an example of this from this site:

One  of the posts on this site is about how to target Gmail in Google Adwords. This post contained information being sold by others. It is solid content. For those of you that have a business, being able to get highly responsive web site visitors for low acquisition costs should be a priority.  It really should be a no brainer to try it – especially if you are already using Google Adwords for advertising.

The post was one of the lowest read and recirculated ones at this site. I’m not really surprised about that because it is geared to a more limited audience than many of the other posts.

I decided to conduct a little survey. I went to people I knew who visit this blog (primarily those who have tweeted posts or who are subscribers) and asked if they had read the post until I got to 10.

I asked those 10 people if they could answer 3 questions:

1. Do they use Google Adwords? 6 of 10 said they do now and 2 said they have.
2. Do they need more business? All said yes.
3. Have they tried the Gmail targeting I described before or since reading the post? All said no.

Note: This isn’t to point fingers at any one individual or group of individuals. It’s simple to illustrate how our filtering can often mean we miss out on things that can provide value.

I’m not suggesting that the post described the Holy Grail of marketing. But what I am suggesting that all of this information snacking we do in the end will do very little for us if we don’t start to:

1. Filter out those things relevant to us,
2. Understand, rather than surface absorb information and
3. Take action.

What do you think? Do you believe information snacking is a problem? Do you do it?

Photograph by Incase Designs

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If you are struggling in any way with your business, I want to share some thoughts that I hope you will find encouraging.

I first read Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point” within a month or so of when it came out in 2000. I decided it was time for a second read recently.

Wikipedia gives the following overview of the book:

“Tipping points are “the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable.” Gladwell defines a tipping point as a sociological term: “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.” The book seeks to explain and describe the “mysterious” sociological changes that mark everyday life. As Gladwell states, “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do.”"

The Tipping Point For Entrepreneurs

Something happened to me today which made me realize there is a definite tipping point for entrepreneurs. This tipping point can be manifested in any number of ways.

I was talking with one of my business partners. We had spent several hours looking at reports compiled by 2 staff members for a long, ongoing project. A lot of data. He lamented to me that it was unfortunate that we have no use for a lot of the research done and it’s too bad we couldn’t turn around and sell it since it would be of use to others.

Within 30 minutes, we figured out a way to package the research. An hour after the initial conversation, we talked again and had figured out a slant on how to target the marketing of it in such a way that there is currently no competition. We spent 5 minutes calculating pricing. We determined that we’d be looking at an income stream of somewhere between $60,000 and $120,000 over the next year for perhaps an extra hour of work between us each week (and a few hours a week of staff support time). We worked out a few ways that would get us the traffic we needed to reach the income objective.  Two hours later the site was set-up. We have around 3 hours of work left before we’ll be ready to market it.

I’ve always seen myself as someone who creates businesses. Sometimes I build to sell. Sometimes I build to keep. I have helped others create businesses and income streams.

A decade ago I created a similar business to the one set-up today. It took 3 months for that to get launched. A year ago, a business of this scope would take taken from 4 to 6 weeks to roll-out.

What changed? What is different today?

I’d like to say that it was a combination of learning, experience and having resources available. But the real tipping point for me was losing fear and self-doubt. All of the rest of it was there before. Fear and self-doubt caused me to slow down.

The funny thing is – I didn’t even try to do anything to get rid of it. But there was tipping point. A simple thing.

I was talking with my assistant. I forget the exact conversation but we were talking about something that had happened to me business-wise. She said to me she never ceases to be amazed in what I’m able to do and joked with me that one day I need to write a book called, “Don’t Tell Me I Can’t.” (Ever the entrepreneur, I acquired DontTellMeICant.com.)

Apparently in the 11 years she’s worked for me, she never saw me as having fear or self-doubt. (I am actually laughing as I write this )

Everything changed from that moment on.

What is Your Tipping Point?

I think that all entrepreneurs have the potential for reaching a tipping point. It’s where something small – that typically happens in a blink of an eye – that result in whatever it takes is finally in place for you to be all that you can be.

It’s where your experience in whatever role you need to assume in your business, your team, your systems, your marketing efforts – the right combination creates a synergistic effect.

For each business and entrepreneur, this tipping point will come at a different place and different time. Like many of the examples Gladwell shares in “The Tipping Point,” it can often be a single small thing that results in a domino effect.

I think that for most of us, we can’t know what we need exactly to happen to reach the tipping point. I didn’t know. Most entrepreneurs I know of who have reached it didn’t know either. I don’t think it’s something that is directly under our control – at least in most cases.

P.S. If you’ve read the book and disagree on there being a connection – consider that I’m taking “artistic liberty” in making sense of something. Okay? Thanks!

What do you think? Have you reached the tipping point in your business?

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Ever wonder how to get YouTube Videos to autoplay on a website? I’ll show you how to easily do this.

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1. Go to the YouTube page and customize the options for embedding as desired

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2. Highlight the code by clicking in the “Embed” box then right click and choose copy

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3. Copy the code to a notepad file

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4. You need to replace rel=0 with rel=1&autoplay=1 in the highlighted spot above

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5. You need to replace rel=0 with rel=1&autoplay=1 in the highlighted spot above

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6. The end result should be code that looks like the second block.

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That’s all there is to it! If you copy this code into the appropriate location of your HTML file, your YouTube video will now autoplay. Just remember to use this carefully. Some people find it annoying. You also want to make sure you don’t autoplay more than one video on the same page!

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The famous, “I Have a Dream,” speech by Martin Luther King, Jr.  is just as awe-inspiring today as it was in 1963 when he first gave it. If you haven’t seen it, watch it. If it’s been a while since you’ve seen it, watch it again.

Very little of what MLK Jr. worked for actually happened during his lifetime. But the groundwork was laid. In my opinion, the primary thing he did get to see was a raising of awareness that had not been there previously.  He did it in such a way that people had to listen, even if they didn’t know, believe or understand. His legacy lives on and the power of his words, thoughts and ideas are all around us today.

The issues that MLK Jr. fought for aside, what he did was truly phenomenal. He spoke out and fought for his beliefs and ignored those that said change couldn’t happen. At a time when people of color did not speak out. Did not take their message to the masses. Did not fight for equality. He did.

Martin Luther King, JR. had no role model to fashion himself after. He had an unwavering belief that there were gross injustices and that propelled him to take action. He has showed us that no matter who we are, where we are coming from, if we believe and are passionate  - if we have a dream – we can make a difference. One person. Can. Do. It.

My question to you is this: what is your dream? What can you do to leave a legacy? What are you doing? What is standing in your way of doing it?

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How Google Rates Links From Twitter and Facebook – Nutshell

• Source of links doesn’t matter, Google treats all links the same
• If a profile on Facebook is private, Google doesn’t know about it
• Most links on Twitter are no-follow so page rank doesn’t flow

Matt Cutts really said nothing new in this video. It was simply backing up what was assumed by most people.

I wonder if at some point, given Google’s move into live search, they will eventually give some kind of weighing to links shared via Twitter.

What do you think?

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I checked with several people I know who use Feedburner on their sites and about half said their sites feeds were updated, the other half said they weren’t.

You can check to see if your Feedburner feed is up to date by going to your Feedburner URL. It should look something like this:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/YOAL — replacing YOAL with the name of your own feed. If you are using a custom domain, the URL will obvious be different.

Are there posts missing? If so, you can force a manual update by pinging Feedburner. Just enter in the URL of your feed in the box. Wait a few minutes, go back to your feed URL and it should be updated.

Hope this helped someone! If you have any suggestions for me/others or questions, feel free to leave a comment!

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