Developing My Sense Of Urgency

Building a muse, even a small one like mine, has been more about finding quick tips to avoid real work aka generating content. Its not that generating content is hard, or time consuming, its more like ” do I really want to?” type. This thought became more and more stronger not only in my business, but for everything I did from exercising to my obligations at work.
Before anyone screams manic depressive(going from super worker, to wanting to lay in a bed all day watching TV), all I really was facing is a bout of laziness and motivation. I was still interested in my muse, but I didn’t want to do the work. Obviously, when I didn’t work on it. Nothing happened, adding fuel to the fire, to continue the laziness.

Nowadays, with rising costs to live and not being in any situation to have a safety valve from it till things balance, I have developed a new sense of urgency. If I don’t build my business, well guess what?
I am going to be stuck in a endless loop of catch up to live. Its very depressing. It took us longer to feel the pinch than most, but when you do it turns into a a punch to the stomach. It literately, came on like, a switch, with this stark realization. I have to fight my sense of idleness, and really just do some things differently. Its really crazy, when you have some stuff that needs to be put out, and its just sitting there like its needs to be polished again and again, when its already good enough to go. Now, that laziness is sure beginning to sound like perfectionism, or the fear of failure. And quite frankly, the more I let this content sit, the more frustrating it will be if it doesn’t pan out.

 I have set up a counter, starting tonight. I have 60 days to build my muse and produce any income, even if its just one dollar in profit,  or else I need to pack my bags, and try a different tactic. For the next two months, I’m going to be journaling about this, to make sure I’m making progress. I will add a Facebook blog about it and edit it whenever I make changes. That way I won’t bore anyone with personal activities, unless your truly interested. The link will appear in a week(I mean it!). I hope it will inspire you and help you make less mistakes than I do. This blog focus will still be about general home business topics. I’ve been running out of contently lately due to..laziness, but I already brainstormed some ideas, that will pan out into something worth reading.

Now, excuse me, I have some work to tend to…

And its not organizing file folders(thats another topic, for a later time)

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Tags: urgency, lazyness, muse building, home business building, getting work done, freaking out

 

Nothing Much

For the Past 2 weeks or so, I’ve been tending to my personal pursuits. Playing Mass Effect, fiddling with a new router, reseting of my Mythtv setup, and general goofing off. Now, the living room is quieter, because I removed 2 loud computers. This was short lived. I took the remaining fast one, stuck it into the quieter case, and now, it..still quite quiet.
I now have a dedicated workstation for my work stuff. While its an old system(an AMD 3500, with 1 gig of ram), its quite stable and I would hate to put it out of commission early. So, it will continue to plug away, without being terribly slow.
On the business side of things, I’ve been having trouble focusing using my time wisely, I guess due to a lack of interest or spending time playing mass effect. I have also trouble working on anything while booted into Windows XP. So, hopefully, my dedicate system will help since, its just a button press away.

Currently, the workstation is running Ubuntu. My experiment with gOS is over, due to the fact it would never install. When they update gOS to Ubuntu 8.04(its currently based upon 7.10 or something) I might install and try it then.

So, I should hopefully have something more interesting to report in the near future.

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Tags: oldsystem turned into linux workstation, ubuntu at home

 

My Creative Shock Therapy Experience

Way back when I was a bright and snotty graphic art student, I would cram every book, magazine, and websites about design. I spent hours flipping through Wallpaper, Graphic Arts and 3d Artist. I would be in awe about The Designer Republic, and other British graphic firms. And I would browse odd collections of design from art books at the local half-price book store. I was very inspired at all hours, and it would reflect in the backgrounds, and the handful of sites I designed for friends.

Over time, as I grew up to old as I am now, design and art began to have a smaller and smaller role in my life, to the point it was nothing more than a afterthoughts in the back of my head. Its final death then arrived some time after marriage. Once the visual creative juices left, life changed. Thinking about design lost out to thinking about paying bills, taking care of the basics, and working. None of these things had much use for a composition, or a perfectly arranged furnishings. Overcoming these things, became my focus, and it didn’t feed the mind as much as creating visual content.

Until last week. I read a copy of the magazine Giant Robot, that was left by someone at work. The next thing I know, parts of my brain started firing, that I haven’t felt go off in some time. My brain rebooted in a small way. Ideas suddenly started flowing and out of nowhere, not only I wanted to illustrate again, I had better ideas for my muse. All because of an single issue of a Asian culture magazine.

Protect your creativity folks. Don’t shut it down, or feel embarrassed and ashamed what it conjure up. Feed it a balanced diet of [insert how you will keep it going] and I promise it will take you places beyond what its tuned for. Mine might be tuned to interesting visual representation of shapes, but it sends “interference” to the thinking process what the mind is consciously focused on.

I know this is sounding a bit Polly Ann’ish(is that even the correct way to write it?), but bare with me, for at least two more paragraphs.

So, was it my design interest was leaking its goo all over my business ideas, or was it the subconscious sending conscious ideas to the surface? I will never know until someone makes a comment or I decide for myself , but I like the results. I like the way how more balanced I now feel.

So I know it seems odd to get a business perspective from a home design magazine, an article about war gaming, a piece of music you haven’t listened to in some time, or for me- a art magazine. Tapping into that hobby will send your brain into overdrive. And when it does, be prepared for a new sense of energy, that I could only vaguely explain.

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Tags: CreativeThinking, Creative Business Thinking, Creative shock therapy, Creative intrests, Design effects on the mind

 

Armchair CEO - A special Look At Business From A Newbie(me)

While I thought I would never discuss economical topics on my blog, I just reached a melting point, that I decided to change my hats and become- an armchair CEO, like a armchair quarterback. I read a lot of business books, so why not make some observations? I don’t expect this to be a regular topic.
Tonight’s business to slam on- American Airlines.

American Airlines recently announced some changes, to weather the trying times. It decided to create some new measures, and while AA decisions will seem the norm in due time, the decisions will also keep AA stay as conservative, unoriginal, commodity airline. Management created part of this situation. Reason being most employees in large companies form tunnel vision and are unable to put forth a fighting spirit when challenges arrive. Most employees(myself included) start thinking more about their position in a company. They never might even see or speak to a single customer, being burden with internal paperwork. In AA case, this gets magnified, an an internal political war between the blue collar production workers(who are unionized, and this also include the white collared pilots), vs. the management white collar cube/office dwellers. Some recent incidents, has created a huge drift between the two and divided the company. It become a focus that ends up becoming a breaking point between two different worlds. Most of these things were very preventable on both sides, but because of a company driven plan to be mediocre, they were done anyways.
Being unable to control this internal battle, spills blood onto the customers, in small ways. It affects customer service, and the ability to maintain and attract customers. You then add rising oil costs, goals to cut costs at every corner, this becomes a larger fire.

The fire that AA has has created a loss focus on their passengers. The ones who pay a good chunk of their paycheck. And because of this loss of focus, you bleed in every section in your business.

What could have American Airlines could of done? They could of fought against the trouble, instead they choose to focus on the wright amendment, changing laws and asking for government bailouts, reducing pay across the board, while keeping management paid with bonuses for continuation of failure, failed to join the company in fighting the problem, and the creation of checked baggage fees, dropping of routes, cutting costs, and a possibility of a layoff of thousands.

They could of asked what would make you fly AA. They could of started an drive to make everyone customer service fanatics, or hire those who would. They could of killed every airline in the area for being the kindest airlines, even more than the international airlines are known for. They could of strive for a customer based business model, that gave the flying public an airline that might charge a bit more, but provides a sense of value beyond a discount carrier could provide. The business models for this, is out there. Service wouldn’t work during bad weather, but it could make the situation bearable.

AA has dropped the value of not just their company, but of all airlines. Its easy to do the standard practice to cut costs, charge fees, and lobby for airline regulations, but its hard to ramp up a big company with excess baggage(no pun intended) of problems to rise and become a leader. Its because no one is willing to change in different ways.
American Airlines- you don’t know know why we fly. You need to sit down and really find out. The answer isn’t cutting costs, fighting discount carriers, and appealing to the cheapos, who are never satisfied with anything. Its about creating an experience, in all levels, not just first class. Find those customers, who want that, and ask them what they want out of an airline. I would like world class service in all levels, even when things go wrong. I would pay a bit more for a ticket if that was the case, and I think even when cash is tight, a small taste of that would worth paying a bit more. And since the baggage fee never going to go away, I hope AA can make it count, by maybe say, using it to reduce lost baggage. Refund the cost when a bag goes lost. Make it hurt, and find ways to make your handlers in part of lowering this issue with incentives. Look deeper into what people want during a flight. And maybe even look in what people want in a airport! Get that help, and soon, you can know why people fly, even during the hardest of times.

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Tags: ArmchairCEO, American Airlines, AA, American Airline cutbacks, AA opinion, business editoral,

 

Wealthy Affiliate New Pricing

As y’all know, 2 posts ago I was promoting Wealthy Affiliate, which was talking about an price increase. The new price increase is in, and its 39 dollars. It use to be 9 dollars less, but I still think thats a pretty good bargain. They also added a new tool. All in all, its quite good! I think they need to still add some more tools, but most affiliate marketing programs are just plain scams, and junk. So already, they have some things going for them.

Late Thursday(early Friday, since my post normally don’t go live till 1 am or so), I hope to have a new article up. mostly Im trying to get back in to the swing of things, since I have leaving my blogging go wayward for some time now. Generating time and energy been quite hard for me. After talking to my wife about it some, I am having some trouble balancing everything than I use to in the past. Now, I got my fire burning again, because I was focused and worried about the wrong things. Though, most of it was being worried over some personal issues. Its amazing how worry, and a bit of anger in the wrong direction can leave you drained! Just a simple reminder. Till then.

 

Whoops

Nothing important, but I just noticed my previous post had tons of grammar issues. How embarrassing! Im going to leave it as is, kind of as a reminder- that you must check things over, or else you can end up publishing an piece that will leave most of the world going huh?

Check, double check, triple check. A rule of editing I obviously forgotten. Oh Well will write some more in a few days.

 

A Small Offer

Normally, I wouldn’t do this but, I feel like its important enough to share. One of the products I use, called Wealthy Affiliate(WA, for short), has been a great help for me in learning about affiliate marketing. It helped me by breaking everything down into a 8 week plan( by my slow standards, is taking much longer than that), and the very friendly and helpful web forum. It does also web hosting, and some great tools like a keyword tool, keyword list for some industries, and a Clickbank product finder. While their are free tools(like google keyword tool just works fine, and cb engine, for Clickbank), The biggest help is the plan. While there are plenty of affiliate marketing forums out there, most of them become victim of themselves; with people arguing over the dumbest stuff, and you waste time trying to go through post after post of garbage. I love the genuine help and focus from WA, and it was much more helpful than when I was trying to go about it on my own.
Recently, they announced they will do a price change after May 6th. The price wasn’t listed, but it going to be more than what it cost right now. It cost 30 bucks a month, and this might change, drastically(based upon the commission structure) I really like this product, and I found it to be well worth being a member of, and if you don’t like it, you can always cancel your subscription. I know reading from other members, they been part of WA for nearly 2 years, and still haven’t left!
So if your interested in creating an affiliate marketing muse, your overwhelmed by the information overload, and you need a plan to start, this would be the place to go. While I could have waited to promote WA later, I thought it would be better to get y’all in while the price is quite cheaper. So its really worth considering? It helped me make my first sale. That matters the world to me and to you, if it put you a step closer to the same, that success.
My Link to Wealthy Affiliate

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Tags: WealthyAffiliate review, Wealthy Affiliate, Affiliate Marketing, WA price increase

 

Its Been a Long Time, Baby.

Whether you think you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right

- Henry Ford.

Its been quite an interesting past month. I joined a gym, I joined a program to learn about affiliate marketing, and now I am changing Linux distro’s from Ubuntu to another one.

All mostly, just to support crafty goals of mine. I will spare the details about the body ones, but talk about the 2 latter.

In Personal Linux News

As mentioned earlier, Im dumping Ubuntu to another Ubuntu(or Debian for y’all purists) called gOS(good OS, not google OS). This os originally started out on a cheap walmart pc made by Everex that quickly sold out. It’s major differences from Ubuntu is The default interface runs in Enlightenment, instead of Gnome, and its heavy use of online applications from Google, and now Myspace(its now being coined the “Myspace” OS, rather than “Google apps” OS here recently). Enlightenment(or E18, for short and current version), has its pros for not having the huge memory overhead, while having an equal dose of eye candy. But, it still has to rely on other parts, to have a somewhat modern experience(example: gOS uses Gnome Nautilus, a file browser, to draw icons on the desktop and have file management. E doesn’t have these features). My reason behind the change, is because I’m not exactly aware of all web 2.0 trends, and this OS helps me be in the know for whats going down, due to its heavy online focus. While this may seem odd, but since the Internet is my current money making muse, spending more time being aware of trends, will help me focus on narrowing my marketing and spend more time interacting with others. Also, gOS still has access to Ubuntu software collection, so I can have a full fledge Linux experience at the same time. For a less drastic route, Flock(a social web browser, that runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux) could accomplish the same thing.

The Affiliate Marketing Part

About a month ago I joined a program that I read a tons of recommendations about. Its hard for me to say yet, So I won’t drop any names yet. I haven’t been dedicating as much time to business as I would like to, since I’ve been really tired here lately(and sitting around doing nothing could cost you cash), and my pace is picked up again, so I can balance the time I spend between work, spending time with my wife(very important), my work, and working out without feeling burned out from the latter. Its even harder since my wife and I are not on the same time schedule at all with work, and going to sleep, so things might be placed in the less perfect order. It works none less, currently, so Im thankful for that, even if it could be just perfect to have the same time off and the same weekends together and all that stuff.

As time goes, I hope these turn out to be good decisions!

 

The Weekly Update…

My muse is now slowly ramping up. I have spent only about 30 dollars now, and no return on sales. Oops! So, I am taking a step back from my pay-per-click(PPC)marketing and try something else, before attempting again.

While some tactics at this point would be to offer services of some kind, I’m trying to avoid this to an extent. This would be more like being self employed, meaning once you are not producing, your not making money. Ideally for me, I don’t want to create a new 15 hour a day job. So I’m going to keep “services” to a minimum. There is some natural self employment aspects in the beginning, but you just don’t want to make this your core aspect or the cash cow of your business.

At this time frame, you have to keep reminding yourself your in business. Its one of the hardest things to do. You might want to just run back to just doing more research, where its safe and beat yourself for not having found the magic bullet yet. While dealing with the unknown, your fighting fear. Its not an easy task, nor do I have an answer at this time to cope with such emotions, other than ride it out. I hope your not dealing with the same emotions as I am when you start out!

Working on a new page for the website, where I’m going to discuss my muse in better detail and the programs that I use. Stay tuned for that one, it should be up soon.

 

A Plan To Organize

While I slowly follow a weekly plan for ramping up my first business, I was doing some reading from an older book called The Organized Executive(non-aff. link). It spends most of its time talking about how to to effectively manange time, by how your organize how you read your mail in the morning, how to use a admin aid, and setting up a filing system. The book inspired me regarding the latter, to do some on the computer.

I keep a lot of tidbits, e-books, and other data offline, and having them just all of over the hard drive didn’t make much sense, nor did it it make sense to have a folder littered with files, aka the My Document folder. So, this is what I’m trying out:

First, I broke down the stuff I keep into content. I created a folder on that content. Then I broke it further down into sub-folders. For example: I have a folder on Business, then I would have a sub folder maybe on Internet Business, then in that folder one regarding Search Engine Optimization, and maybe another one for Yahoo Ads marketing. In each sub folder I create a content.txt file. This is for later.

Next, after creating the folders, its time to take the junk files and organize them into their appropriate folder. Keeping them in the junk folder, I browse thru each file for content in it and then open up the content.txt for the folder it belongs in. I write a quick note about the file. example

tought.pdf - talks about personal motivation in tough times.

This file becomes a bit of a card index file like at a library. This way if your stumped for information, you refer the card first, instead of the old way of just browsing everything in the folder.

Once the files are screened, and wrote up about, move the file over to its new home.

While this seems like a lot of work, and at the same time old fashioned, its really nice to have things stored this way for quick reference. You can then scale it to your prefrences.

- If you find a magazine article you like to keep, scan it and place it with your digital files. This way you don’t need to keep ripped articles around or entire magazines. Also, its efficient because you keep your loved articles, instead of forgetting about them 6 months later.

-You can save articles from the internet, if you fear they would disappear for time reasons(rare, but..its annoying to re-research something and have the page removed, common on college student pages). Easiest way I found is to just convert them to pdf’s, by selecting the print you want, and printing to file(instead of printer). You need a program in Windows XP/Vista to do this(you can still print to file, but not the pdf format), but Linux and Macintosh already setup to support this.

If your feeling extra geeky, you can put it on a NAS(Network Attached Storage) or a network shared folder so it can be used by others or to have access on a different computer.

While this may seem a bit old fashion to do in an age of tagging and meta data, this system is a simple start, and I doubt you tried to tag all your data anyways. Plus, why waste 45 seconds searching content of files? I bet you can open folders faster! This act might lead to doing some real tiding up maybe on a shelf or in a household junk drawer. Who knows?