This is offically my favorite video on youtube now.

So my other post has started some talk with various friends and MANY of them have told me that they like the "rah rah" spirit but they're not sure how to get started. I invited a friend of 14 years to the house and I had a few suggestions for him on how to get his thought process going.

1) Turn your TV to CNBC and listen to channel 127 on XM Radio. Part of adjusting the way you think is adjusting the information that is going into your brain. I know this sounds so simple but I guarantee you'll find valuable programming on CNBC and develop an appreciation for the content they have. It will also train you to think with a business mindset.

2) Read magazines and keep up online with various blogs/news threads. You don't necessarily need to fully understand EVERYTHING you read, just get a read of the general direction of society's interests. Successful entrepreneurs, consciously or unconsciously, do this. They have an innate ability to sense patterns in society's interests and act before the rest of society.

Look at Google's ability to harness web traffic by giving people a straight forward way of searching and then turning those eyeballs into interested clicks that are auctioned off to the highest bidding advertiser for just about ANY product/service you can imagine. They understood back in 1998 that the web would be big and the globe would need a reliable search engine that served up relevant content.

Look at Apple - there were dozens of MP3 players out on the market before their iPods were released but they knew that only people who were more tech savvy were the ones messing around with these MP3 players. Their goal? Make it easy for EVERYONE with iTunes/iPods.

These companies think differently and choose to be on the proactive side of society and help guide the rest of us while we busy ourselves with our own lives.

3) Expand your horizons. The business you start may not necessarily be entirely related to what you do now and that's a good thing. Stop and think about what you do at your job. What have you learned to do your job well? Is it knowledge that is ONLY applicable to your job or can you apply it elsewhere? Reflect enough and you'll realize that you DO possess newly acquired skills that can be applied to a business of your own. Not only do you have skills that can be applied to your own business but by expanding your horizons and looking into other industries for a business opportunity, you'll realize opportunities that may not be apparent to those already in the industry.

Example 1: Guy works at a Internet start up and toils away in the customer service department. By putting himself in the customer's shoes and understanding their frustrations he learns how important customer service is in a company. Guy vows to change things in the company and moves on to SEVEN other roles in the same company where he learns valuable lessons in managing people, data harvesting, search engine optimization, customer buying trends, etc... Guy finally oversees software development that rakes in $20M+ a year, happens to look into the automotive lighting industry where he notices customer service is lacking and starts up a company to fill that niche. Business booms and he resigns via text message to the VP of HR. Guy now runs a one-man-band business and sends light bulbs to thousands of customers a year and loves it.

Example 2: Guy works at an Internet start up in 1999, fresh out of Stanford with a Masters in computer science. Despite him being a software coding genius, the dot-com tanks but he goes on to work at a few more start ups where he witnesses the importance of intellectual property law. Enrolls into law school in 2003. Guy is now an intellectual property patent attorney where his experience as a software developer gives him the technical insight necessary to do his job exceptionally well. Guy doesn't necessarily own his own business yet but he's well on his way to making partner or starting his own firm/consulting company.

Example 3: Guy gets a masters in accounting and works in the head finance department for several high volume car dealerships. Guy learns how to manage a business and develops a quick eye to identify healthy/unhealthy business situations. Saves up cash and quits to revamp high end homes. Armed with capital and the financial acumen from his car dealership days, he identifies an opportunity acquire a night club and turns it into a hit. After selling the club he moves on to acquiring and ramping up a struggling flight school. It's a hit. Guy sells it and acquires a struggling auto body shop where he pushes all the financial statements from the red deep into the black. Guy sells and celebrates and just recently acquired a small restaurant in a historic district in Virginia Beach with massive potential for growth.

None of these businesses have a common thread and he went from INDUSTRY to INDUSTRY! His uncanny ability to identify businesses/industries where an opportunity exists is truly rare but it can be learned and if he can do it not once but five times in 15 years! You can do it once!

4) Put on your Sherlock Holmes hat on and explore the world. Subscribe to Inc, Fast Company, Business Week, etc and check out the resources Inc.com offers to people interested in starting up their own company. At any given moment I personally have these and other magazines strewn around my house and office so I can read up on what other companies are doing and how they're tackling problems that I may be dealing with or may have to deal with in the future.

Every week I also interface with good friends who happen to be fellow business owners around my town to get a feel for the retail market and what is cooling off and what may be warming up. Not only do I try to get a barometer reading of my immediate surroundings, I also read newspapers in other major markets including Asia, Europe, and Australia.

John Donne: No man is an island And likewise - no country is an island (well, in our metaphorical sense...)

China:
SINA
China Daily

Hong Kong:
The Standard

Australia:
The Age

Interested in another country? Check out this site.

Being "Unemployed" does not mean "Unproductive"

As the title says - being “unemployed” does not mean “unproductive”. I would say that close to 98% of my friends all work for a nice company in which they are given goal/tasks each day/week/month by their manager. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing. Having things to do at work keeps you employed and gives you that satisfaction of accomplishing something. And that is PERFECTLY FINE.

However, I would actually like to challenge you to really think about your job. If you did not have a manager who gave you goals/tasks, what would you do?

A popular answer I’m sure would be “nothing”, however, one must make a living somehow and afford a roof over their head and food on the table so one cannot just do “nothing”.

And that brings me to the real question of this post - What CAN you do?

Forget about your job and your bills that you owe at the end of the month. Please stop and think about it because if you reflect on this question enough, you’ll realize your internal desire to do great things on your own.

For example, you may be able to make the best pancake in the world and if you truly can, you may have a calling to start a crepe cafe. Or maybe you love to play softball and you happen to know how to give that winning edge to your fellow teammates at bat and you want to share.

Whatever the case, I am sure that if you pursue that ability, you’ll succeed because you can make money doing just about anything out there. And I mean ANYTHING. The only question after you pursue that ability is how much money do you want to make? This sounds totally cheesy but only if you don’t stop to think about the possible ways of making a living in the world.

Here are three great examples.

Example 1: Guy loves playing softball. Guy realizes that he has the tools to modify softball bats to make them hit balls farther than normal. This is illegal in the rules of softball but hey, where there is a demand, there will be a supply. Guy sets up a web site and starts charging people to modify their bats at 120-150 per bat. Sales skyrocket and soon he’s modifying 30-35 bats per DAY. You can do the math.

Example 2: Guy loves software development. Guy understands in the lending world that banks have a chain of events that require human input at various stages in a bank loan. Guy produces a piece of software to automatically inform the humans when the lending process requires their input and charges the bank $1 per loan. Imagine how many loans a decent sized bank processes per month.

Example 3: Guy likes light bulbs. Guy realizes that there are specialized light bulbs in medical devices/equipment in doctors offices and hospitals across the country. Guy does massive amount of research to compile a list of light bulbs for all kinds of medical machines and distributes a catalog to hospitals/doctor offices across the country and turns around to be one of Philips’ largest buyers and acquires mass quantities of all the bulbs at a heavily discounted price and sits back to ship light bulbs off. Imagine the number machines in a hospital and think about how many hospitals and doctor offices there are in your city. Now fathom how many there are in your average size state. Now multiply that by 50.

These aren’t your normal stories about how people make a living. I’ve shared these real stories with you because I want you to understand that you CAN do something else other than your job. Also… if you think about it - when you’re not at work, you are “unemployed”. Meaning, you are not working and thus have the free time to work on exploring another way of making a living.

Do not think that the only way you can make money is by working at your job. Remember that.

The world will see you in the morning, roll by you in the afternoon, and leave you standing there by yourself in the evening if you let it. I encourage you to grab a part of it and mold it so the world NEEDS you to continue.

Everyday people/businesses do/see/buy/use things/services. Reflect and realize what your true ability is and run with it.

I hate starting my blogs like this but it REALLY has been a long time since I've blogged and I feel really awful about that. For my friends who I don't get to see as often as I'd like to check in on here and I feel that I've been doing you all a disservice.

So I apologize.

Anyway, I'm just going to update you all with some things that I've been pondering for the past few months.

1) doing searches for "pay bills" on craigslist's for sale section is an interesting thing. if you do that same seach in san diego, los angeles, and phoenix, it's sad how many results you find in phoenix.

2) i have a love/non-love relationship with panerai watches. i love their watches, the style, the shape, the uber-size cases however the way they were revived irks me a little bit. i guess it's because i'm not a huge fan of sylvester stallone. "what? what? what?" you say? yes, as odd as that is to say... sylvester stallone single-handedly revived the panerai brand. source: wikipedia - ... (panerai) remained relatively obscure until the actor Sylvester Stallone spotted and bought a Panerai Luminor in a jewellery store in Rome in 1995 to wear during shooting of the film Daylight.^[2] Stallone ordered a small batch of such watches with his signature on the case back, called Slytech. He offered them as gifts to friends, including Arnold Schwarzenegger.

some day i'll have one. preferably the panerai fly back 1950 model.

3) i also have a love/hate relationship with scrabble. the scrabble gods tend to give me all the good letters in one game vs spreading out the good letters among several games. case in point, i
threw down AQUARIUM in one game and won by a LANDSLIDE...



Did I really need all those 221 points in one move? No. Scrabble gods, are you listening? probably not.

4) H1 Hummers are getting more affordable. In fact, I inquired about one on craigslist recently and it was offered at 25k. I e-mailed back and mentioned that I was concerned about the climate control system in this older H1 and that replacing/upgrading the system when it fails could cost 3k easily. He replied back saying the adjusted price was 23k. Although that's a fun price for an H1 and it would look great with a mobilehid.com sticker on it and some mobilehid lights on it, the cheetah patterned seats kinda kill the deal. :(



5) i tried a new driver while golfing the other day and I couldn't believe how well I hit it. Now my favorite driver and my dog share the same name. SUMO!

6) i found a software programmer overseas to design my dream application that I have planned for mobile phone users across the country. :) Muahahahaa

7) what is up with the entitlement issues that children/teenagers/college students have these days?

8) i need to conjure up a way to cycle through a quarter million dollars a month on my plum card like this guy.

9) craigslist is a wonderful thing.

10) part of me wants to travel. like almost "matt harding"travel. to go adventure somewhere where nobody knows my name and all i have is some cash, a breitling emergency watch, and a smile.

11) i'm planning on getting lasik surgery soon. lasers and eyeballs are a funny combo, if you put them together you can either screw up or get it right, either way, you probably won't need your glasses anymore.

12) california real estate prices are looking good right now.

that's all for now, i'm pretty sleepy.