This year, I decided I wasn’t going to be stuck in the house again without the proper tool.  When the first snow storm was even looming on the horizon I went straight to Wal-Mart, found the snow shovels (which were very few and were buried because it was still fall) and carried that thing through the store.  As I was carrying it to the register I had a lot of people stop and look at me.  I heard comments indicating that it was a good idea.  That they should buy one too.  When I got to the register, the check out lady made a big scene about how I was officially the first person to buy a snow shovel for the season and they joked about it.

I was confident that I wasn’t going to be stuck in the house without the proper tools. So I bought my shovel, took it home, put it right inside the door and waited.  The shovel has been confidently waiting for months through one of the first mild winters in a while.  We have had exactly one snow dusting all winter and the season is over.  Was I wrong for buying the shovel?  Absolutely not!  It was a great investment that gave me the piece of mind that if the snow storm came, I was prepared with the right tool.

When it comes to your business, are you prepared with the right tools?  Are you ready to handle the storms that may be looming.  Do you have the right tools to give you your survival?  Do you have a plan on what to do in the event of a business disaster?  Plan ahead and be prepared.

There is a new restaurant in town that we went to for lunch today.  They opened up a new Bill & ruths which is occupying the old Quizno’s.  When they built the new (old) Quizno’s we were a bit shocked because we already have 2 Subways in our little town.  Both times we went to this Quizno’s to try something new, the service was awkward.  We hoped to dine in, but we felt like we were shown the door.  The workers were confused and didn’t know what they were doing.  It wasn’t a great experience.  It didn’t last long and the new building sat vacant for almost two years.

The new restaurant, Bill & Ruth’s, sounds like it would have trouble getting into our community because its just another sub place.  However, they are known for other things.  For instance, we go there just for Gyros.  And when we go there, people rave about the 3 way spaghetti.  But what I think really is their draw is that the service is friendly, they are fast, they are efficient, and the owner greets every one and asks how their experience is.  He serves the food.  He picks up the trays.  He works behind the counter.  He makes sure everything is getting done from a place of service.

This is impressive to me.  If the owner keeps up with this amount of service, they will have no trouble keeping up in our little town.

There used to be a really good chinese restaurant in town called Golden China.  It was a whole in the wall with old school Chinese owners that entertained the animal control officers every day who also didn’t turn on the air conditioner.  It was a common joke that the meat came from the Dog Catcher and because of their service, you wouldn’t care.  This buffet didn’t keep a lot of food out on the buffet.  Instead, when the owner saw you come in, she knew what you would want and would go back cook it up fresh and put out there on the buffet for your pleasure.

The food was so good and I have searched all over the United States for Sesame chicken as good as theirs.  They retired and left only one other Chinese restaurant in town that no one I know goes to.  Then, a couple years ago, a new Chinese restaurant came to town.  They kept the buffet stocked and they were passable because of their service.  They took care of your needs and made sure to keep what you wanted out on the buffet.  But over time, their service became lacking, and before long, because they lost their pace of service, people hardly ever go there.  In fact, now we drive about 20 minutes to go to another Chinese restaurant.

How does this apply to our business.  If you want to establish good customer relationships, you will want to be sure to serve them the best way you can.  If you come from a direction of service and serve your customers, you will reap the benefits.  Maybe not immediately but the benefits will come.  For instance, I once, gave someone I didn’t even know a considerable discount on a website.  What I got in return was a referral that could lead to a hundred times more than what I charged him.  It not uncommon for me to throw in extra services that I think will benefit my customers because I want to serve them as well as I can.

When you operate in your business, are you serving your clients, or are you pressuring them to buy the next best thing.  Come from a place of service and you will reap more benefits.

The excuse I would imagine is that they don’t want to  lose all of the email (*cough SPAM) that they get at this old email address.  My advice to you is to get an appropriate email address just for your resumes.  I don’t really even mind if you get another yahoo, hotmail, or gmail account.  But if you can get an email address with a domain you do stand out.  It costs about $10 to get the domain and about 5 seconds to set up the email address.  It looks really professional.

What surprises me is that there is a group of people who still don’t get this concept.  They aren’t looking to be employed per se, but they are looking for a job.  I’m talking about Freelance Internet Workers – people who make a living at buying domain names and setting up websites.  If you are one of these people and you still use a Gmail address on your site to get leads I want to tell you that this looks unprofessional and is giving the wrong idea.  Customers may be wondering if you are really serious about what you do.

You’re also giving the okay for your clients to do the same thing and if you are then you shouldn’t be doing this kind of work.  If you think it’s ok for your client to use these free email addresses as their sole point of email contact then you don’t pay attention to the industry. Your clients may be wondering why people aren’t responding to their emails soon.  You may be wondering why prospects aren’t responding to your emails soon. Why? Because of our little friends known as spammers.

Because of the large amount of spam, email addresses from Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, Gmail, and more will be downgraded.  If you want to make sure that your email makes it through and gives the right impression to who counts, then I would advise you to use a domain related email address with a valid SPF record to ensure delivery.  Plus it just makes you all look more professional.

I’m not sure what exactly they did, but for a time they were able to make their clients a lot of money which in turn made them a lot of money.  I imagine they had a high end office in the Citiplex Towers in Tulsa and were really enjoying the spoils of some sort of trick that required little to no effort.  The only thing I know about the service was that someone in Russia was running some kind of program and it was driving traffic like crazy.

Life was good, until it got so bad, and everyone caught on to the same trick, that Google changes their Algorithm and gave what was known as a Google Slap.  In one small change to the way Google worked, an entire industry went down the tubes.  When they reformed as Xeal, Inc. it was completely driven on how to prevent this from happening again.

I was fortunate to learn how to pretend like “Google doesn’t exist” and on how to promote your site with honesty and integrity.  In everything we did, we had a vigorous checklist to make sure that we were not depending on Google (or any entity for that matter) to drive traffic.  We had to do it the old fashioned way in the new modern era.  That’s mainly where I got my inspiration to start Finding Innovation.  I wanted to do old school business in the modern world.

I used to think of my time at Xeal to be negative because I used to think about the stress, lack of pay, no benefits, etc.  But what I got was an opportunity on how to learn how not to run a business.  I love Tony Baker like a brother and he was the first mentor I had in this business.  I learned  a lot of great things from him.  But what I took the most away from the experience was how to not run a business, because I saw how much of a struggle it was to try to recoup from such a disaster.  Before I left Xeal, they were hit with one disaster after another and the giant was finally taken down.

Why am I telling you this story?

Because it’s about to happen again.  There are millions of “Internet Marketers” out there that are taking a  lot of shortcut and they aren’t putting in the work it takes to get to #1.  Do you know why they want #1?  Because the #1 organic link gets 46% of all of the traffic on a Search Engine Results Page.  They cheated, and now Google is about to mete out its punishment.

I am excited! Because I have built all of my client’s presence on honesty, integrity, and hard work.  I did it as if Google didn’t exist and for that reason my clients will prevail while all of the trash is taken out.  Apparently Matt Cutts of Google announced this would happen at SXSW and now I am getting a warning message from every Internet Marketing Guru that I subscribe to.  They likely taught shortcuts and now they have pie in their face.  There are no shortcuts in life.  Even in the Internet world.  Just ask Tony Baker.  He will tell you.  That’s why he is a guru with over 15 years experience.  He’s experienced it.  He taught me the lesson and now I am telling you to brace yourself.  Good Luck.  Stay Classy, San Diego!

Attract: Get More Visitors

We attract potential clients to the site with search engine optimized content and pay per click advertising.   We have a goal to achieve the number 1 spot in Google search results for key phrases.

Capture: Convert Visitors to Leads

We capture leads by pointing to a conversion point in the site.  We continue to optimize this conversion point to facilitate more completions and generate more leads.

Educate: Warm the Leads

We educate leads by teaching them about our business before the sale with free to use videos on the website.  This in turn helps attract more visitors to the website.

We also educate our leads with information regarding our industry that will help facilitate the sale.  This helps us reach 40% of our leads that would normally be lost.

Sell:  Convert Buyers to Customers

We sell our service to hot, ready to buy leads and exceed their expectations when it comes to fulfillment, training, and customer service.  It’s easier to continue to sell to existing clients than it is to gain a new client.

Which step do you think most people forget and which step makes the most money in our industry?

I was listening to an audio book recently and the premise behind it is that a person is successful when they do not drift in their decision making.  A person who is adamant to follow their definite major purpose and has a plan is always successful as opposed to someone who doesn’t have a plan which fails to attain any success at all.

I started looking into my life to see if this was evident and I can distinctly remember times where I was wandering aimlessly and I couldn’t find any success.  However when I had a plan I could always attain success.  I guess then it would behoove me to always have a plan.

Recently, a couple of girls in Tulsa wrote a song for Rick Santorum (not an endorsement of any kind) called “Game On” that applauded the fact that he’s the man with the plan and proceeded to outline that plan.  The video recently exceeded a million views.

At the same time, Invisible Children posted the now famous KONY 2012 video that has become the most viral video in the history of mankind.  Right now they have over 80,000,000 views.  In this video, Invisible Children outlines a horrible (apparently supposed) problem in the world.  The whole world is watching the plan that was outlined at the end on how to gain a solution.

People like it when someone has a plan.  They tend to elect people with a plan. Remember the plan to effect “CHANGE” in Washington?  I voted for that plan.  Did I get it?  I think reality set in.  But I was optimistic.  This is not a political rant, but If any candidate can show a plan on how they are going to change the world we live in then they will get the votes.

For instance, I had seen campaign materials for our congressional district’s candidate.  He came to my door and explained his plan to me and it sounded legit.  He could have been selling me horse manure and I would have bought it because he had a plan.

A candidate for our district’s cit council came by our house and outline his plan.  He’s got me vote.

I think that it doesn’t matter what the plan is… if it sounds reasonable, and it sounds logical you are going to get the support you need.  The execution of that plan or any plan for that matter gets you enduring support.

Have a plan, +share the plan + execute the plan= Success.

I was looking for a similar organization and thought about joining Tulsa Young Professionals.  I went to their site and they had some great information on the site and encouraged people to join.  They were running some kind of membership program created by someone in the area so I had hopes for it.  I joined and I was told to join the 8,000+ other young professionals in the area.  I got excited and wanted to see if someone else had created a nice Social Network for the group.  sadly, there wasn’t such a thing and there was no way to interact with the other members online.

I find this to be a disappointing reality for many people.  You join a group with the hopes of collaborating and it turns out that you are stuck in your own island.  I want to be able to give you access to every other member in the group so you can begin collaborating right away.

I was explaining this concept to someone recently and he told me that he was already part of groups like this around town.  I asked him where because I was interested in getting involved with them.  He told me that he was part of groups on LinkedIn to which I just chuckled.  I’m part of all of those same groups and never once have I gone onto LinkedIn and gotten involved with anyone else in the groups.  It’s a joke.  You can’t really have a good collaboration on Facebook because there are too many distractions.  What you need is an environment focused on one subject.

Anyway, I am going to be working on the marketing aspect of this concept next including a new logo and video.

What do you think about having an environment where local developers, writers, and marketers that support the Internet can collaborate and work together?

You ever hear people say that when things are going good you should brace yourself?  I thought “Why invite that into my life?”  Shouldn’t I handle that differently.  So when things are going good I have to rely on the stories in my foundation to take over.    So I began to think about how I would deal with situations when the enemy comes knocking.

I decided that I would maintain my pace.  I wouldn’t let the enemy slow me down, because if I’m doing something right, the enemy will come.  I’m not going to run away.  I’m not going to slow down.  I’m going to maintain my pace.  By focusing on maintaining my pace, I won’t quit.

I decided that I am going to be self-aware.  I’m going to be grateful for what I already have, because what I have is already great!  I am going to know where I come from and how I got here and where I am going.  I am going to know that I have balance in my foundation and nothing can stop me.

I am going to protect my focus.  The enemy is someone who comes to break your focus.  If I can protect my focus, then I have already won.  By protecting my focus I maintain discipline, I stay on pace, I remain self aware and as the enemy tries to throw flaming arrows into my camp, I’m just going to put them out – without breaking focus.

Well, the enemy came knocking yesterday and I made sure to follow these guidelines and it didn’t hurt me one bit.  I woke up this morning and kept on chugging.  I didn’t lose focus, I maintained discipline, and I kept walking with Greatness.  I didn’t get the thing I wanted, but I didn’t get hurt either because I maintained communication with my TUG.  I don’t know if this makes any sense to you, but if it does I hope it helps.

The story is this, I saw a house for rent that met the needs of the burden on our family’s hearts to move into a bigger house.  The terms were almost too good to be true.  My TUG reminded me of this.  I did due diligence and everything about the house checked out.  I found information on it, the names matched up everything.  I determined this wasn’t one of those Nigerian scams.  But then my TUG started working on me. (Your TUG by the way, is your True Ultimate Guide.  It’s a gut feeling.)

First, I shared the news about this house with my wife.  My TUG told me to tell her to not be disappointed if it didn’t work out.

I started doing the due diligence and everything was checking out.  Then my TUG revealed that it would be a pretty good scam.  I thought, wow, that would be a good scam and even I, an experienced webmaster, wouldn’t even see it right away.

So I mentally checked everything in my head.  Then I got a call from person and I instantly knew it was a scam.  There is no way someone with a Nigerian accent would ever own a house in Pryor, OK.  But I kept my mind open, and I began to test the person at which they failed at all steps.  I realized for a fact that this was a scam.

The first thing I did was call my wife and tell her.  She was disappointed. Then I went to the real estate agent where the house was listed.  Turns out, I was the fourth person that day to report the issue.  I also learned the police couldn’t do anything.  No worries.  I didn’t hand out any information that can’t already be found online.

Then I went home, fully expecting my wife to be heartbroken, and she wasn’t at all.  She has the faith to believe this feeling of hope was just a taste of what we are going to be fulfilled with and that we were content with what we had for now.

So, when the enemy comes to kill, steal, and destroy, don’t let him steal your joy.  Maintain discipline.  Keep the pace going.  Don’t stop.  Don’t slow down.  Don’t run.  Just keep swimming.

If things are going good in your life, don’t become afraid of the negative to follow, just be ready to toss it aside and keep going.

UPDATE: By the way, if the guy is reading this, I want you to know that I love you.  God loves you. And I thank you for giving us a bit of hope despite the turnout.

I’m a planner.  I like to make lists.  I have about 10 notepads with various lists.  I keep a budget.  I like to plan things out.  Sometimes those plans work out exactly how I planned.  Often times this is not the case.  This used to frustrate me to no end.  I used to call this phenomenon the “Bane of my Existence.”  When something didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, I would get a hothead, my blood pressure would rise.  I would not be a happy camper.

What I have had to learn is to become flexible.  You can talk about patience all you want.  But if you can learn to become flexible in your life, you can learn to overcome the reality that you are not in control of everything.

A couple of weeks ago I had a meeting.  I spent  alot of time preparing for the meeting, getting myself ready, preparing my presentation.  I wanted to make a good impression.  Before I left, my wife told me to go get em tiger, and I told her that everything will work out exactly how it should. (Kismet) I get all pumped up, I get into the meeting, and things start falling apart – and I don’t mind.

People knew about the meeting and they asked me how it went.  I told them it didn’t go as planned, but it went exactly how it should have.  They didn’t understand this.  I explained that the meeting went exactly how it should have.  I expect great things to come from it, but this is just a baby step.  I didn’t expect to something in one day.  It wasn’t even clear with what that was yet.

I didn’t give up.  I just kept walking on my journey.  In the meantime, I found a hundred other ways to make my presentation better, set a pace in my journey, and connect with people who I hadn’t connected with in a while.  I also had the opportunity to reflect on my journey and admire what I had accomplished.  My effort didn’t start just because of the meeting.  I realized that the meeting was part of the effort I started over 14 years ago.

So when things don’t work the way you plan them to work, just remember to be flexible, expect the unexpected, and see the opportunity in the situation.  You’ll kind that the producers of your life, already have the winner in mind from the beginning.

Quitting my job over a year ago and starting my own business allowed me to escape the 9-5.  But now I’m ready to get focused and move on with my success and new lifestyle.

I want the Freedom:
-To be able to go to bed at night knowing I achieved something each day
-To have the time to commit to living an active healthy lifestyle
-To unchain myself from my own desk and take some time for myself
-To be able to take a vacation when I want
-To be able to experience the world with my family
-To turn work down because I don’t need the money
-To be debt free

Fulfillment:
-To be able to continuously learn
-To be there with my family life every step of the way
-To share my wealth with others without taking credit
-To be able to change my lifestyle to make more healthy coices
-To supply my family’s wants and desires
-To share my knowledge with others

Recognition:
-I want to be recognized as a problem solver in my industry
-I want to be recognized as an innovative concept creator
-I want to be recognized as someone who is fulfilling their life’s desires
-I want to be recognized as a person whose hard work has paid off
-I want to be recognized as a person who earns what I am worth
-I want to be recognized as an awesome husband and father

About 13 years ago I had some time on my hands and I needed to find a job that I would like and make lot of money doing.  I needed a trade if you will.  I had access to a library and I would get the paper and I would read the classifieds each day and analyze the ads for a job that I thought would be the right fit.  At that time the dotCom industry was booming and the largest section of the classifieds was related to IT and specifically the Internet.  So I started looking at those ads and determining what the number one skill was that they wanted.  That skill was to be able to write HTML code.

HTML code it the backbone of the Internet.  If you don’t know HTML.. Well, if you didn’t know HTML then, you couldn’t build a website.  These days you can get away with it without using HTML but you aren’t really getting the full use of the Internet.  On top of that you need to learn CSS and JavaScript at a minimum plus learn a server sided language.  Anyway, HTML was that skill.

I looked in the library for a book on HTML and because of the location of this library it wasn’t really a place that would have books on this subject.  The library had a new librarian who wanted to introduce inter-library loan. I was the first person to start using it.  They had these big indexes of books that had been published recently (We didn’t have access to the Internet) and so I went through these indexes and looked for books about HTML.  I found one called HTML for Dummies and I requested it.

The book came in the mail and I quickly started to teach myself HTML.

I had been fascinated with computers since I started using them in 1985.  I lived in Germany and our school had funding from the Department of Defense.  So we had a computer lab furnished with Apples.  I think back on how funny it was that they had the new Macintosh computer and how it was this idol that no one touched.

In middle school, I wanted to get into the computer class so I signed up for keyboarding because that’s what class I thought it was.  I ended up learning how to use a typewriter for a whole year… Argh.  The next year I figured it out and was learning some BASIC computer languages.  I learned right away that you could do more than the stupid little things they had us doing.  I wanted to learn how to write a program to password protect something.  So while everyone else was playing Carmen San Diego, I figured out how to write this code and execute it. (Also, without the Internet.)

In high school, in my combined Geometry honors class, we got to participate in a Pilot program funded by Apple once again.  They had a fancy new computer lab and our class was broken up into teams.  Each team was to take a chapter of the textbook and create a learning tutorial of the chapter.  I don’t know what model these computer were, but I marveled at the fact that these things only took one minute to start up and be functional. We used a program called Hyperstudio and we had to create an awesome user interface.

My team was very creative.  I remember one member was Daniel Duff who was this art wizard.  I don’t remember who the other member was.  So we built this thing, and while everyone else was just doing the bare minimum to make it through we created a multimedia experience with music, pictures, and colors.  The teachers were so impressed they sent the guidance counselors and principal to check it out. I remember them telling me that they knew of people that were giving away big money in California to people who could do things like this.

So here I was with my HTML for Dummies book in hand with only two weeks to borrow it.  I had to teach myself HTML and I did.  About that same time I got a brochure in the mail for a place that I wanted to go live at and I designed my first website around that brochure.  I gained access to a computer with Notepad on it and made my first website, without access to the Internet.  Without any help because no one where I was at knew what websites were or how they worked.

I ended up moving to that place and I was ready to get a job and right when I did, the dotCom bubble burst and there were no jobs in that industry. I ended up working in the manufacturing plants in the industrial parks where I met my beautiful wife.  I learned more about processes and procedures than anyone in the Internet industry would care to learn. And finally four years later I went back to school to learn more than just HTML and shortly after that I made my jump into the industry.

Remember Tulsa Tower Guy? We had the opportunity to take the Tulsa Tower Guy Facebook concept and help make it International News while the event was happening. Check out our stats from this video I found. By applying some simple Internet Marketing techniques we were able to garner over 340,000 site views in three days, over 15,000 fans, and an event that was bogging down every Facebook user in the Tulsa metro Area.

We sold administrative access to Tulsa Tower Guy.

Check out the AP article here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/17/us-oklahoma-towerguy-idUSTRE77G6GS20110817

http://youtu.be/SQQHZZKeuTs

Here’s a video where I showed some of the statistics about halfway through:

I have some more detailed rundowns or actual statistics to show later.

Stick with me now, I do make a point.  I am not an adopter of new technology.  I’m the anti-gadget geek. Sounds counter intuitive right? I like to let a gadget or software be proven and tested before I jump all in. I didn’t get an MP3 player until the Zune was really popular and only because I realized that I could use it to play a soundtrack while at work.  I used to carry a huge box of CDs with me to work everyday.  The only Streaming music at the time was Yahoo Music and you weren’t in control. I did not get the first iPhone. I got the 3G. Then the 4. Now that I have an iPhone, my Zune collects dust. (It’s been sitting there for about 3 years, I should clean it off.)

Pay for Control

Now I use a service called Rdio to stream music that I want. I still use my iPhone to stream the music from Rdio, but I don’t use iTunes on my iPhone for music.  There are other services out there like MOG and Spotify.  There are other segments other than music, too.  With Books, you can see Nook, Kindle, or Audible for audio books. But music is unique when you consider the feasibility of Private Social Networks in their growth.

• I used to buy entire albums just so I could listen to the one song on it that I liked.  I have a closet full of CD’s right next to the Zune.
• Napster taught us that we could take those albums and rip them to a computer, and share with each other.  Very very bad…
• iTunes figured out that people liked this and licensed single songs to allow people to create their own customized albums.

In all of these cases you couldn’t just take the music where ever you went unless you carried something with you. To do this we went from CD’s to MP3 players,  to streaming online.  This is what happened.

• Yahoo music offered a service free of charge and you could listen to a genre of music. They controlled the playlist and you could only skip through so many songs an hour.  You could listen to this all day long.
• Pandora created a system that dynamically played music based on your interests and exposed you to music you didn’t know you liked.  They also limited the number of times you could skip songs. And they played ads.  Later your could pay to remove the ads.
• Zune took these models of streaming online and allowed you to marry this with the iTunes model.  You could control what you wanted and stream it online as well as to your library.
• These days you just use services like Rdio, MOG, or Spotify to do this and collaborate socially.  I can walk into any office with Internet, login and start playing.

The next step will be that they just imprint the music to our soul.

What’s the point.  The models show that people will find a way to make something more accessible and solves a problem and make it free.  Over time, the life cycle ends and then people are willing to pay to have control.

How does this apply to Private Social Networking.  Social Networks have solved a problem.  How to connect millions of people all over the world.  But then they created a new problem.  Millions of people are connected and you lose control of the information that is going on.  For instance, I quit using Twitter because most of my feed has turned to trash.  I’m losing time because I’m losing control.  Time is money.  Loss of control is loss of money.  I will pay to participate, but also have control.

What I’m trying to say is that the social network market is so over-saturated with trash, that people want to still use the platform and pay to maintain control.  Facebook used to be a party and you had to be a member of the club to get in.  Then they let everyone in and its a huge party.  I want to pay to get into the VIP lounge.

The client is not ignorant to the use of CRMs, but he hasn’t used a good one in about 10 years. What resulted was a ton of wasted money on systems he couldn’t possibly learn how to use. A client’s time is worth everything to them and they don’t have the time to sit for days or weeks learning these systems. So, I came in evaluated his needs and developed a system to help him capture, develop, and take care of his leads.

So I plan to blog about the overall systems and the various components. Stay tuned.

I wanted to share my story about how I am applied the principles from Mentorfish to my life at 5 o’clock this morning. First, my TUG gave me instruction. I walked in my Greatness. And then my TUG gave me validation. See what you think.

I want to talk about something this morning that a lot of us think about.  We all have dreams of what we want to become or what we want in life.  I remember that when I used to do work for people I would get resentful.  I used to think that all I ever did was build everyone else’s dreams.  I though, “When am I going to get to build my own dream?” Then this morning I realized something. While I was busy building everyone else’s dreams I was building my own dream.

Each person I connect with, I was able to learn something from.  I was able to be introduced to new people that I could learn from, earn from, and meet even more people with.  I didn’t realize that while I felt like I was toiling at someone elses dreams I was building the strongest foundation for my own dreams.

When you feel like you are doing nothing but building everyone else’s dream take a second to determine whether or not that is in fact building your own dreams.  Is what I am doing serving me and my future.  If not it’s time to move on.  If it is, it’s time to dig in more.

My recent events have inspired and motivated me and reminded me that I can do better than what I have been doing.  (Not as far as clients, they are all great, I mean with myself.)  Well, now it’s time to set a pace.  I had this huge high of doing everything within my Greatness and now I have to mindful that this is a marathon and not a sprint.

I couldn’t help myself when I got the inspiration again.  I had to sprint in order to keep up with the flood of thoughts and strategies I was getting, but what I got was a glimpse of what I need to.  Now it’s back to baby steps.

Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Watch for the Opportunity.

Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Watch for the Opportunity.

Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Watch for the Opportunity.

Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Watch for the Opportunity.

I saw the opportunity now it’s time to get back to work and make it to the next step if that makes sense.  It’s like when you arrive at the next destination, it’s time to read the map.  It reveals the next destination.  Then you have to put the map down and drive, bike, run, walk, crawl there. Baby Step. Baby Step. Baby Step. Watch for the Opportunity.

First of all, when people ask me what I do I really haven’t been able to answer them.  Here’s why: I don’t want to call myself a webmaster because that would imply that I am a master of the web.  Those don’t exist.  I’m not a web developer because right now although I can create some really nice websites, I don’t fluently write client or server sided scripting.  But I can have a conversation with it.  I do Internet Marketing.  I can optimize for search engines which is to say I don’t do VooDoo, but I build a web presence.  I’ve always thought of myself a bridge.  I can bridge business with technical.  I was reading a snippet on the 97 things every software architect should know and I learned that what I would be called is a web architect.  So that’s what I’m calling myself an architect.

I’ve been looking into a lot of my heroes and didn’t ever realize that Matt has his entire blog from the day he started blogging available.  It’s the best book I’ve read in a while.  You can see how he saw a need, developed a plan, and essentially built WordPress.  It’s a pain by numbers scenario.  It’s made me think about the things I need to think about.

For instance, the Internet doesn’t need more social networks.  Thought leaders need a way to teach what they know.  They don’t need to hack five programs together to do it, they shouldn’t have to pay some developer in the Ukraine an insane amount of money for a custom payment gateway, they need to be able to control it on their own hosting solution, and they need to have no barrier to entry.  What does that mean?  It needs to be free.  It needs to exist in a way that developers can download it, make it better, create a better social experience for end users to be able to pay an expert to teach them.

I just need to figure out how to monetize that idea.  I think eventually, instead of Web Architect.  I will make an amazing CEO of a leading technology firm that makes money by giving something away for free.  Basically, I want to be Matt Mullenweg.

This was a learning experience because I finally had something close to what I had been looking for but we learned about the drawbacks too.  The system was hosted online by the service.  We had no access to the backend.  Though the admin was extensive, we could not do simple things like change a client’s username.  We had no ability to clone the site.  If we wanted to create a separate site for each Boot Camp we had to create a new one manually including uploading all of the media, content, and more.

The signup system caused problems because all of the iGroops had a universal login system and we wanted a whitelabel solution.  It was hard to say “Look what we created” when we had to admit that some of the users had to use the same login on another iGroop they were already a member of.

So, after about 3 months it quickly became apparent that we needed to start planning to move out and on our own.  The site was drawing revenue so it was time to start planning our exodus from iGroops.

We eventually decided that the best way to do this would be to create a Private Social Network.  I began looking to see if there were any new scripts that could handle what we wanted.  Plus, I just got back from a WordPress conference in San Francisco where I learned that Ning was changing their model and that there was going to be a mass exodus from Ning to BuddyPress.  They announced a Ning to BuddyPress script!

I only found three new scripts that I was willing to use and all of them were on the verge of a major release.  But then I found a site called iGroops.  It was basically like Ning on steroids and it had everything we were looking for.  It wasn’t pretty but we did the best we cold and we were able to have it up and ready for Lifetime members within 2 weeks.  We built a buzz with lifetime members before the July 1^st launch and were actually pre-selling memberships before we even had our payment gateway set up.

Contemporary Lifestyle Publishing:

I first tried to build a private social network for a client from Canada.  The purpose was to help authors complete a publishing process through online collaboration. I tried to use WordPress Multi-User with BuddyPress and bbPress.  This was completely using Open Source software and the final result was a hack that worked but was never used.

This Open Source software was a far cry from being viable and has yet to mature because it isn’t the mission of WordPress to create a social networking system.

Achievement Journal:

I was contacted by this customer to take a second look at the project because I had the biggest hand in creating the previous prototype.  I was asked to try to create a new prototype that was as close to a social network / membership program as possible.  This time I tried to use Open Source Joomla with a paid JomSocial system.  It still didn’t create the complete social network experience.

The prototype is still live and has been pitched but has never gained funding.  I got calls on a weekly basis from my contact on who he was pitching the concept to.  The people he was able to pitch to were big, huge, extremely wealthy people who weren’t really getting the vision.  I’m talking owners of NFL teams huge.  I just went about my business and waited for the call with the go ahead.

Mentorship Mastery:

Keith Kochner called and wanted to have a conversation about revisiting his website.  In 2008, Keith had come to Xeal for a website and I was just bursting with ideas and he and Michelle could tell that I was the guy at Xeal that would get things done.  I was impressed by him too.  I hadn’t met anyone like him before and I made a mental note that this was someone that I would need to take special care of.

I met with Keith and found out that he still had the blog that I created for him and that he had paid an owner at New Medio, who handles Hanson’s social network, to create a membership social experience for his Boot Camp members.  It was hacked together and Keith didn’t like it.

So I came on board to find a solution.  I studied every possible avenue to find the best thing to meet his needs while taking advantage of his content.  I looked into learning management systems like Moodle.  I looked into Open Source Social Networking scripts like Elgg and Pligg.  I looked at Ning.  But I couldn’t find a single source that was all inclusive of all of the components we were looking for.  I went through script after script testing them out and trying to find a way to make it work and I couldn’t.

With the popularity of MySpace.com it was quickly understood that businesses could benefit from having a social presence on MySpace.  This was further realized with the popularity of Twitter as a social customer service tool and with Facebook opening their exclusivity to corporate networks.

During this year, I became very active in Social Networking and found myself having to login to about 6 different networks to post the same thing.  This was before the days of Open ID.  I pitched the idea that Xeal should create a service that would save your login information for all of your Social Networks, allow you to post one time in an interface, and it update all of your social networks.  The idea was given no merit.

A few months later, a service identical to this was released and became very popular: Ping.fm.  What’s worse, the developers were from Tulsa.

Twitter was gaining popularity and I found it to be a tool to connect with thought leaders in my industry.  I was starting to see how far behind Xeal was in innovating new ideas.  In late 2008, Xeal paid a visit to Blue Fin Financial to discuss a development outsourcing project where I met a former Xeal employee Noah Everett. The deal didn’t happen which was good, because a couple weeks later Noah left Blue Fin to work on a little side project called TwitPic. His service revolutionized the way media gets pictures of history in the making.  He reportedly turned down an offer of 6 figures much higher than $10 million dollars.  I was inspired needless to say.

In September 2008, Yammer took the Twitter model and created a private Twitter system for businesses.  I instantly knew that there would be a space for Private Social Networks. In September 2010, they launched version 2.0, an Enterprise Social Network system.  (I guess I was right.)

He gave it away free. He’s worth about $40,000,000.

What I took away from this was that you can’t give up on your dreams and it does take work and dedication to get to where you want to go.

I like how he mentions MySpace. When they got bought out by News Corporation $580 million in 2005, they really wasted a good opportunity. Interesting Fact. MySpace was created in 2003 as well because some people that worked together thought they could replicate Friendster and make it better. They built MySpace with ColdFusion (Ugh! Why?) in 10 days.

He took a script that the owner of Xeal claims he tooled around with while at Xeal. The only problem is that at the time he started the script he didn’t really have an application for it. Then Twitter became popular and he had the answer to a problem. TwitPic. This guy created one of the most popular ways to add photos to your Twitter feed from your mobile devices.

But then, it started to become famous. Historical pictures were being taken and given to the world instantaneously.

What really impressed me is that when offered much higher than 10 Million dollars for his idea he turned it down.

The kicker is that you have to do it the right way and there really is a formula behind it. I’ve been studying the people that have followed this formula and they have become some of the richest people that I know. The problem is trying to explain to someone that this formula really works. Now there’s two sides to this formula and I’ve have met people from both sides. There are people that swear by giving everything away for free and live by that to their dying day and they are seen as crackpots. Then there are people that know that the long hard road to monetizing their creations pays off larger dividends in the end and they are seen as the evil geniuses that they really are. I want to be one of those.

So, anyway. A couple years ago I was raving about how I created a social network for a client building a system called iGroops and how it was so easy. It really was. I was able to have a viable Social Network up and running in about two weeks. But really, it was a SAAS platform that you had no backend control over so it was like pretending to have a Social Network. We figure this out after only being live on the platform for only 5 months and it became a nightmare.

Now don’t get me wrong, it worked for our purposes. We had no idea if it would even be successful. But it was. It was successful enough that after the first year we were close to making about half a million dollars in revenue. But, I’m here to tell you we could have made more. Coulda. Shoulda. Woulda. If?

Shortly after we started planning the next phase which would allow us to have a script running on our own server with complete control over the backend. Really at the time there were not any viable Facebook clones out there with a subscription utility and it was a waiting game to see who came up with the subscription utility first and sadly we chose the first one which was wrong. But the right script didn’t come out until just a few months ago which would have put our timelines in a huge delay.

No worries. What we hacked together works. It’s impressive. People like it. But I can make it better now. The people read my blog and liked what I did. Now they are going to like what I am about to do. Here it goes.

With this current project I was basically being paid to find the “it” platform and make it happen.  I started off with Ning but I couldn’t rely on them since they recently switched to only paid subscription.  I didn’t mind paying monthly for it but they were talking about features that I wanted that just weren’t possible.  I wasn’t going to suffer through promises for a couple of years like I have been while waiting for WordPress 3 to come out.

So I finally found another platform that I thought would work and we quickly tested it out.  Needless to say we built the site in just a couple of weeks and have memberships rolling in. Let me tell you what all we are doing.

We have a paid membership system setup.  The only thing required was either a PayPal business account or Authorize.net.  We currently have 2 different levels of members but we can have up to three.  It also integrates promo codes and trial periods.

It also has an integrated referral program and include an integrated affiliate system.  We’re not using it but it is there and I believe it has a two tier system as well.

You can upload and integrate media into its integrate blog system with podcasting, forum system, and private messaging system. It also has web chat, live video conferencing, telephone conferencing.  If you can think of a way to communicate it has it.

I love the Frequently Asked Questions module. I will notice that I start getting the same questions from people so I just post it there and they are ready to go.

If you want to sell something, it has an integrated shopping cart.  All you have to do is plug in your payment variables from Authorize.net and it takes care of the rest including providing downloads for virtual products.

There are a large number of applications that we haven’t even started using yet such as audio video postcard system where you can send audio and video postcards to each other, you can also upload presentations for people to view.  There is a file sharing module, a document creator module, member webpages, photo galleries, reviews system, and even task managers.  It’s amazing how much is included in this program and you wouldn’t believe that you get it all for only $99 a month.

With this system we were able to build the new site in just two weeks and have over 200 members in less than a month.  The members are blown away by the content we have provided so far and we haven’t even scratched the surface of it’s capabilities.

Now I will admit that the system is a little bit quirky.  It doesn’t always work the way I think it should.  But if you are looking for an affordable fast way to create your own social networking site, then you need to check out iGroops.

Our plan is to start building our own platform where it works exactly how we want it to but in the meantime this system provides us with the blueprint that we need to get started today.  After years of trying to hack BuddyPress, and Jomsocial, as well as try out many other social networking platforms, you won’t find anything as extensive as what we have found with iGroops.  I’m happy to say I have found a platform that I can recommend to my clients looking for a system like this.

It’s a little bit funny when servers go down.  Web services go down.  Web sites go down.  Email goes down.  Everything related to our clients online business which we had created was lost.  I quickly came to learn something though.  Clients don’t mind as much when the site goes down or if a service goes down, but when their only connection to their clients goes down, then I have a problem.  For weeks during recovery, the major complaint of all of our clients was that we had to do something to get email back online.

It doesn’t take a hacker or an outage to bring your online business to its knees.  Sometimes it could be not paying your bill.  This morning I received a call from a client with a complaint that their websites were showing up with the words “Account Suspended” at the top.  I’m assuming this is a billing issue and I can’t control it because I didn’t handle their hosting. But once again, they are left without any communication through their websites because their email was through their hosting service.

So, what’s my point? After recovering from the last server issues at the firm, we had somehow come to realize that we could set up Google Apps for our domain name and run all of our email in the cloud.  From that point forward I have always run my email through Google Apps, because no matter what happens to my site or server, or whatever, my email is sitting securely on Google’s servers.  I will have communication with my clients in the event of an emergency.

When I set up new clients I try to explain to them that I will be setting up their email through Gmail and they get confused.  They don’t realize that you can set up your domain through Google apps.  You not only get Gmail with Google apps, but you also get Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Sites and you are using all of these Google services in the name of your domain name.  Its easy to set up and its free for the basic service if you have less than 50 users.

Now, it can be difficult to make this switch if you are already established on a hosting server, but if you just starting out or are making changes to your policy, I highly recommend that you move your email to Google Apps.

I don’t consider myself an SEO expert (or guru), but I do sell specialized my SEO knowledge.

Don’t get me wrong, Title Tags are a vital part of any website, but declaring the extent of your SEO skills to be the inclusion of Meta tags is weak.  Personally, I include the keywords into my posts and pages.  I even include automatically generated tags.  But I don’t go around stating that I am a Search Engine Optimizer because I know how to use Meta Tags.  Honestly, they shouldn’t be teaching Meta Tags in curriculum these days at all.

Just give me your money

If your Internet consultant wants to submit your site to search engines – Fire them!  Why would anyone want to charge you for something that takes 5 seconds and does absolutely nothing.  When a site is built correctly, search engines will be attracted to it.

Pfft… I scoff at you

If your Internet consultant guarantees you results – they better offer a double your money back guarantee or you should steer clear.  Any Internet marketer who claims they can guarantee you instant results that last forever are out of their mind.  I have been able to get within the top ten results of Google within 4 minutes of starting a campaign but without running consistent campaigns that content will disappear over time.

Keyword Stuffing = Google Sandbox

If your Internet Consultant thinks that adding a ton of “keywords” at the bottom of your website is Search Engine Optimization, please slap them upside the head for me.  I would hate to be blind using a screen reader and trying to figure out why there are a million towns listed on the bottom of your website.  Search Engines utilize the same logic and get confused too.

There are more debates over what can be considered correct and what can be considered wrong, but it all boils down to a few simple steps:

1. Build your site correctly from the beginning
2. make sure its comfortable for a human to use it
3. Develop it so it’s easy for a search engine to read it
4. Create good content that reads well
5. Keep adding fresh content to your site weekly

Act as if Google doesn’t exist, get the word out the old fashioned way using the Internet as your wire and your site as your home and you can go a long way.

Can you identify other ways that people misuse the term SEO in their skill set? Please tell me I’m not the only one annoyed by “SEO Gurus”.

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you should know that businesses of any size should be conducting video marketing.  YouTube is one of the top “search engines” that you can be placing content into.

You can create some videos using nice little cameras like the Flip or my personal favorite the Kodak Zi8, which I chose because of the external microphone jack.   I recommend creating a series of videos using Mike Koenigs 10-10-4 method, but if you need to throw a quick promo together showing images of your service or product, I recommend checking out Animoto.

I put one together real quick for my client Arrowhead Construction, Inc. You can check it below.  It took me about 3 minutes to put it together and a few minutes for it to be rendered.  You will notice that the video is short and that it includes Animoto’s labeling.  You can also purchase credits to create longer videos and if you would like to have white labeling, you can purchase a business license.

Check it out and let me know if you try it out and post links to your vids.

I love the new menu features in WordPress 3.0.  I love the fact that you can set a custom header image for seperate posts and pages.  You can set the background to any image or color.  I have yet to figure out how to change the colors for the main navigation though.  I probably have to dig more into that.

One new tool that I found that was a cool way to compliment this new theme is bgPatterns (http://bgpatterns.com/).  You can design a custom background tile.  You can see the one that I am using right now.  I went through their little system and generated an image that I uploaded and set to be tiled as my background:

Check it out and see just how cool you can make your new default theme.  If you build one I would love for you to share it with me.  Do you have any tips to share on how to make the default theme as cool as possible?  Let me know.