After a Personal Management class at the University of Scouting that I took my 11 year old scouts to last Saturday, I asked the instructor (who works for a local bank) how he advises the people in his bank when the dollar is loosing so much value and Bernanke dropped the interest rate again to help the stock market.

He said, “when I have little old grandmother’s who were getting 5 percent interest on their life savings coming into the bank and finding out that they get 2 percent, I’m not a very popular guy right now. These folks were barely making it as it was.”

Imagine that. Hard-working Americans who aren’t free-riding on the government, who’ve saved, who are now in their later years…and they’re savings are vanishing through their fingers. All so that we can shore up against the consequences of bad decisions by the Federal Reserve Board in the past. I couldn’t have painted a better picture how irresponsible policies to “stimulate the economy” hurt the poor.

This banker friend of mine, said, “2008 may be one of the most difficult years we’ve seen in a long time.” I fear he is correct and now wouldn’t be surprised if Bernanke does it again.

Well, I always knew they would and they’ve finally done it. Amazon has really stepped up to duplicate our friends at Lulu - it’s called Create Space and they’re going head to head. I created an account and it felt like I was on LuLu.com with different colors. DVDs, CDs, books and near identical offerings as LuLu.

Unlike LuLu, they’re even offering the ISBN numbers and submission services for free.

SelfPublishing.com has a good article analyzing the move. The article is focused on Author House buying iUniverse, but that news isn’t nearly as interesting as his discussion on Amazon’s move. Author House is just the link between the old world and the new, and, as far as I can see, their subsidy publishing business model has a limited shelf-life and reach. The do-it-yourself model will overshadow subsidy publishing as tools become better and the authors more technically savvy. I’m interested in seeing how Lulu approaches this new challenge coming from Amazon.

The weakness I see in the Create Space site is the lack of community tools for content creators to help each other. This is one of LuLu’s strengths. I suspect that Amazon considers the showcase a traffic driver to the website and that the rest of the community will be built around their books in their Amazon.com store. Still, there is a need for the community to help in the creation process when it’s expected to be do-it-yourself. That or the company needs to charge for doing the service like Author House does.

Amazon, generally, does well with their products…it’ll be fun to see how this self publishing space plays out.

How much can a website earn from 1000 page views (CPM)? It appears that it varies between $1 and $44 depending on how well you’ve learned to do it.

Seth, a great solution is www.LogoWorks.com, which helped create a logo for D & H for $260. Not a lot of time, not a lot of money, but a professional logo.

Provo’s a great place for a startup, writes business week. I agree.

Joe has articulated how the Internet has allowed us to take a new approach to business, tapping into many small markets.

Bnoopy: The long tail of software. Millions of Markets of Dozens.

John Jonas
figured out a long time ago that more of the search engine traffic is
pointing to unique searches and that he could create ways to tap into
that traffic.

This has got me thinking how we can tap into tons of small markets with FamilyLearn.

I’ve been reading Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results and the authors advocate persuasion as the real goal of a commercial website, not usability.

Wandering through a website endlessly, but very easily, doesn’t do customers any good. They need answers. Answering the questions of different personas that visit your site persuades them to stick around and eventually buy.

The Persuasive Process
1. Who needs to be persuaded?
2. What actions does this person need to take?
3. How will you effectively persuade that person?

The book is fantastic and only getting better. More thoughts to come.

Paul Allen asked a fascinating question today on his blog: Does God Help Entreprenuers?
He continued:

Someday I want to write an entire book on this subject.

It fascinates me to look back in history, to read the biographies and autobiographies of inventors and entrepreneurs, looking for acknowledgment of divine influence in their work.

Over the years I have read and heard many stories from innovators who believe that God gave them an idea, or helped them through a problem, or guided their efforts to find solutions.

Some entrepreneurs are actively religious, attending churches, synagogues, or mosques; others are “spiritual”, connecting with Divinity in their own way, through prayer, nature, or meditation, or in other ways.

I intend to start asking many of my entrepreneurial friends, with all kinds of religious views, if they believe God has helped them, and if so, why and how? If I get enough good material, I’ll publish it sooner or later.

Here is my response to his thoughts:

Paul, a few years ago, I began to feel that everything that is good in this world is INSPIRATION or IMITATION. We either receive inspiration from another source not of our own or we imitate those who have. I believe that more everyday. I’d be happy to share a few of the many ways in which God has helped and inspired me in my work when you need content for your book. I’ve been keeping a list of the significant turning points for FamilyLearn as a result of inspiration that I can’t claim. I look forward to your findings and your book.

Game of Work

goals must be:
1. Written.
2. Your own.
3. Positive.
4. Measurable and specific.
5. Stated in inflation proof terms.
6. Stated in the mosst visible terms available.
7. Made with a deadline.
8. Open to personality changes.
9. Contain an interrelated statement of benefits.
10. Realistic and obtainable.

Individual goals are the foundation of corporate human-resource development and planning.

SCOREKEEPING
No management by observation.
By measurement.
Winners keep track of results. Loosers keep track of reasons.

Sources of inadequate cash flow.
1. Too much inventory and other non-liquid assets.
2. Overly-high receivables.
3. Inadequate gross-profit percentages.
4. Unwillingness to implement cost-cutting measures.
5. Inappropriate compensation for the owner or key decision makers.

Scorekeeping basics:
1. Scorekeeping must be simple and objective.
2. Self-administered.
3. Offer a comparison between current personal performance, past personal performance and the accepted standard.
4. Scorekeeping should be dynamic.

FEEDBACK
spaced repetition is crucial to conditioning oneself to change attitude to change behavior to succeed.

FIELD OF PLAY
Define the following for each position:
1. Terminal Out of Bounds (fired)
2. Operational Out of Bounds (correction)
3. Minumum performance standard
4. Safety zone - humble player and helpful coach.
5. RRRs
6. Paydirt.
7. Between MPS and Paydirt is GOMB or “get off my back.”

Create a field of play agreement.

John Bresee, co-founder of the best outdoor equipment retailer on the web, spoke at the UVEF today.
I always love to hear him speak. After the luncheon, we talked a little and he said he is really good at seeing things about three years out. His presentation riveted me every moment.

Basically:

Entreprenuers who actually start business are the only ones who ever succeed.
No lottery ticket. Really easy to start, but really hard to perservere.
Split the category. Geartrader.com is going to take on a niche of eBay.com.

Checkout the following sites:
Dogfont.com woot.com

Be first in the category.
Stay focused. “We sell outdoor gear on the Internet.” No manufacturing.

Split off companies. Apparently, Sony could have had Apple’s market share
if the publishing division in Sony hadn’t crushed the possible iPod division.

Convert the highest and ship cheapest and buy cheapest.
Don’t worry about channel conflict.
Let your customer create the product.
Overlaying on google maps.

iTunes is missing the boat when they don’t open up to all musicians who want to publish their music.
Gary Hammill - the scary way is the safe way.
Google - free matching soon to come.
eBay - free auctions sites will suplant it.
Digital services that charge are begging for a beatdown.
At Backcountry Store, we hire those in our culture to write the content for our culture. Showing up is 90% of life.
-Woody Allen
Never look back lamenting about what could have been.

Don’t choose sleep over entreprenuership.

keep looking »

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My name is Neal Harmon and I write here so that I don't forget what I learn. Hopefully, a few others can learn as well. More about what makes Neal tick.

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