Food & Energy

Yes, in 2010 the world faces many problems. Problems that CAN and SHOULD be solved. I broke down what I think are the main problems that the world needs to focus on heavily. These two focus points are large markets (as in trillions of dollars) so although change is hard to do in these markets, if you CAN you will become huge. So yes your 1% models work great, but remember, how do you plan to reach 1%? Okay, let’s dive into it some ideas and possibilities.

Food

Yum! How can we improve the current situation? Food is seen as a scarce resource.

Fun fact it takes 58 to 100 days to grow corn. It’s not like a term paper where you can wait until the last few days and pull some all-nighters.

Food takes time to create. With that being said, how can you grow food faster or produce higher quality (vitamins, nutrients, etc.) foods with less space. A new concept that has been making way is Vertical farming, imagine that! Research and products/companies need to start focusing around this concept.

Just think about NYC and how many people buy groceries, fruit, vegetables, etc. Now imagine a warehouse in Broklyn that is growing fresh foods that you can deliver locally via bicycles. Now take this concept with a netflix subscription model where your focus is to get users to sign up for daily/weekly/monthly fresh food (freshdirect like, but have a custom meal plan focused around your budget). So you can kill two bird with one stone and get food delivered to your door, grown locally, and within your price range. This business could even partner with grocery stores to sell them fresh fruit rather then import them from around the world. If anything, we need to export this food to other countries. By focus on growing your food locally you cut down on the largest cost, transportation.

Side Thought: Growing food is one major concern, but another is recycling and disposing of food. For starters creating and recycling food (as in composting) should and needs to be integrated into our lives. Take a look at this “waste” station at a Starbucks in Korea.

From left to right: Cup, Lid, Liquids, Other Waste. So just think about a cup of coffee and how you can recycle each part. This might be over kill and could be accomplished by 1 container and smarter trash systems, but growing the food is half the battle packaging and shipping the food is another, it all requires energy.

Energy

This whole idea of everyone having electric cars and renewable energies is a pipe dream, at least for the next decade. The current grid can’t handle every American switching to an electric vehicle. Also keep in mind where the current power is coming from, especially for you Tesla owners. Can you say Nuclear Powered Car?

Also, where are you going to plugin and how are you going to pay for that electricity. Say you run out of battery on your drive and you have to plugin, can you at a gas station? Do you pay them or is it like an airport, if there is a plug, its finders keepers. Just some food for thought…
Now look, I am one of the biggest fans of Tesla Motors and what they have done. I have to hand it to Tesla Motors stepping up and JFDI. They actually are selling a fully electric car you can buy and even lease now! If anything, I wish I would have done it and want to help every which way I can.

Okay, back to Energy. We need to find better ways to create clean energy and leverage tax incentives to help migrate America from the 20th century to the 21st.

The next billionaires will be in the power business. Solar installations, Nuclear Plants (WTF? Yes, Obama just gave a ton of money and yet, closed a plant the same day), Wind Farms, Tide Harvesting, etc. It’s a business that everyone uses and will use for the rest of their life. Yes, you could be off the grid, but think about how many buildings & people in NYC/LA that still use power.

I know one of my lifelong goals is to build power plants (both wind and solar). Just think about it, you pay for all your costs initial (including fuel!) and just sit back selling it until you need to rebuild or upgrade. With traditional coal plants you build your plant and then deal with constantly buying coal. Can you say, How much is enough?

I was going to add transportation, but thinking about energy, if you could solve that by having renewable resources, we already have the electric cars, it would just take time convert everything over. The other interesting fact that electric transportation is important, is that you can use power from both renewable (wind, solar, hydro) and fossil fuels to power.

So rather then continue to rant and rave, I want to hear what do you think. How can you help these two problems we are facing? Do you think cutting back on wasting food at home really helps? What about food lost in transportation?

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Think about it for a second, how much is enough? 1 Million, 100 Million, 1 Trillion? Both personally and as a business or corporation how much is enough? Can you accept a specific number and focus on humanity rather then squeezing out another penny.

I don’t have a tv and watch a lot of shows/documentaries on Hulu. I was recently enjoying the film Mixtape, Inc. that discusses the undergrounds of hip-hop and remixing copyright material for a profit. The record labels and their MBA bean counters are always looking at their projections and missed sales due to mixtapes and illegal online downloads rather then accepting $XXX Millions and trying to do some research and development into how to be more profitable. Can you say, Why do the People Making the Decisions Never Understand the Problem?

You should checkout vyemusic.com it’s a “search engine” for music. Remember that thing called Google, it’s like that as it scraps the net for content and organizes it but doesn’t host anything…so you can listen, preview, and download music that vyemusic finds. Don’t worry, under the DMCA as long as vyemusic.com removes any links the RIAA asks and since it doesn’t host any music, in should be in the clear. It’s also interesting because it was created by a 16 year old who happens to have a Dad who is a lawyer.

It makes me think of the concept of change, think about a large profitable work horse of a business. You build up this mega monster that can do so much in profit, but you just feed it enough to keep it alive.

Soon find yourself losing it all at an accelerated pace due to competition. Understand that if you are making $$$ at something, someone is going to try and beat you at it because they want a cut of the action. Your work horse that was once a profitable business is now a sinking ship because you did not upgrade it for the battle that has begun. While you were racking in the money hand over fist, your competition has be focusing on your weak spots and improving and build a monster of it’s own. Your competition just bought a gun to a sword fight and is ready for battle. Understand that you need to be always moving forward, reinventing and trying new things.

People are so scared of change, but change is the only constant we have in this world. To help prove my point visually, watch a clip from Caprica. This scene shows the CEO who just announced to the world that rather then charging for thier product (ie. holoband) that they will give it away for free. This concept of change related to Caprica just made that work horse that produced 60% net profit of his company into a sinking ship. The CEO was going to be voted out of his own company at this meeting, but he has another idea and approach for this battle (ie. Research and Development of a Project…).

Okay, so how does this relate to the music business, startup, and how much is enough. Remember Napster back in the day, kids downloading all that music for free. Record labels wanting their piece of the pie. It wasn’t until Steve Jobs steps in and announces online buying of music. The demand for digital music was there, but there was no model or company that offered up a LEGAL way to do it. In todays world, bands like Girl Talk who remix music would have to pay over 12 Million an album to get access to those 10 or 30 seconds of a song. Just to give you an idea of how many songs and timeframe take a look at the wikipedia entry for one of his albums. The world needs an outlet or way to pay a fair royalty for a song that is remixed.

So what is fair, well that gets to the point, how much is enough? How much is a song really worth, is it $0.99 on iTunes? Is some music worth more today when its new and fresh then 10 years ago. Is that Ace of Base album still worth $9.99? Do record labels and artists who make it to that 1% really need millions of dollars?

What are you thoughts on the subject and how can we fix this or will this battle continue to go on and the RIAA continues to sue everyone and their mother in hopes of getting a fraction of a pie back from it’s sinking ship.

One last thought to leave you with is Bill Gates. Think about it for a second, he built and launched Microsoft which charges for licenses to it’s software. This monster of a company has made so much money, yet Bill’s day to day now is in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where he helps others. So did that profit from a copy of Windows that you bought go towards helping the poor or by pirating a copy give you cash as you are poor. (ie. pay what you think it’s worth can afford)

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When I think about my personal startup ideas and major failures, JDFI was always number 1 on my list. What is JDFI? Just Freaking Do It. I have launched and failed on numerous websites/ideas in 2009. In 2010, I do not want to have the same go around happen. This is why I focus so much on getting things out there as soon as they are ready (or even before). Rather then research and focus on marketing data where I would tweak the website until I felt that it was perfect, I say JDFI and launch it. Slap a beta sticker on that bad boy and focus on getting feedback from peers. Accept that things are not 100% right all the time and launch, iterate, launch iterate. People are accepting today more then ever. Gmail fails for an hour and people live with it, it may be tough with all those negative tweets about it, but life goes on and people will understand.

The funny thing about perfection is you can actually be better if you stop shooting for it. Last Christmas I got some golf lessons and although I lost a couple of balls in the water and on the roof of a house, the best lesson I heard was don’t try for perfection. During the putting practice lesson, the golf instructor suggested to imagine a 3 foot circle around the golf hole. Focus on getting the ball within that distance from a long putt rather then going for the hole. This way even if you miss, you 2 putt your way off the green.

By focusing on not being perfect you can actually lower your score because you are accepting the 2 putt system rather then trying to perfect your putting technique where you end up normally adding 3 or 4 stokes due to distance and direction.

Applying this system to a startups, you realize that you don’t need 100 servers or even 1, you can launch on a shared hosting account. Have you heard of digg (d i double g), Did you know that Digg was launched on a shared hosting. Yes, an almost top 100 website in the US was started on a shared hosting account. So rather then focus on perfection the first go around, shoot for something close, like a decent wage to live off of and no VC money. Once you are making say, $10k a month, then focus on building that startup into a megacorportation.

Just with this philosophy of JFDI, I have been focusing on the simple steps and getting ideas out there. Remember you can’t push a rope, you can only pull it. So focus your efforts on what you can pull and worry about the millions of things that “might” happen later because some of those things will keep you from launching your ideas today.

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I recently had an exciting time of traveling to Vermont with my Dad for a presentation he was giving. Him and I spent a lot of the drive talking about various problems America is facing and ideas on ways to improve them, but when trying to solve or give ideas on how to solve the problem it always came down to who has the power to make the decisions. What I started to realize is that in many cases (even past experiences of my own) the people who are making decisions seem to be the ones who DO NOT understand the problem at hand. Why is that?

Every time I meet a corporate CXX or dare I say (50+ year old VP) I realize that these people seem to be the ones who are making the decisions yet fail to understand today’s every changing market because they do NOT understand or even know what is out there or what the problem is. These are the same people who have FUCKED over America as a Harvard MBAs who is trying to save that extra 10 cents but doesn’t see how that 10 cents effects the entire rest of the company causing a decline in sales because that 10 cents is separating the company from the competition (like using organic eggs, they may cost more, but it’s a huge differentiator and a big reason why people buy a specific product).

Another issue that I see decision makers having is accepting change and innovation. Innovation is key and a big part for fueling companies. A lot of the companies out there (even ones that I have worked for in the past) seem to fail at accepting the changing market and fail to focus on ways to improve the future bottom line by constantly revamping the product. These companies and decision makers are just accepting a decline and maybe only focusing on slowdown the decline of a product or project and doing as little of extra work as possible.

Most business fail to realize that even if they are making money today, they may not be making the same amount of money the same way tomorrow. (ie. Google Adsense, remember those $10 clicks) Business and customers change daily, so if you are focusing on one specific niche and fail to keep up with the demand curve by innovating, then you are going to fail at some point or another. It’s the same thing when it comes to peoples expectations and future goals. Accept change and understand it’s the only constant in life. Stop settling and betting the farm that your product will sell today and tomorrow to the same person.

The key to having everyone on the same page is to set expectations and understand where everyone is coming from and what you plan to do. I see in America large business are run by people who do NOT understand this current market. People want to create a big brand awareness around their product, but do they know of the various ways to do this? The people making the decisions may say, let’s build a twitter app or an iphone app that does xyz, but these people and decision makers do not use twitter or own an iPhones. The decision makers may have read a review about an iPhone app making $1 Million dollars so they obviously think it’s the best idea since slice bread. Since they are the decision makers, and the boss in most cases, people won’t step up to the plate and say it’s a bad idea.

So maybe the next time your boss or the head of whatever who you work for says let’s do this… ask yourself, are they in the know or just staying the course.

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If you have a passion, you really shouldn’t be working for the man. Seriously! It’s 2009 almost 2010 and times have changed. People are making money wearing tshirts for a living! There is no reason you should not put yourself out there as a “expert” in a field and not make money.

Full disclosure, I was sent the book, “Celebritize Yourself” by Friedman, and asked to post a review. I have done a number of these in the past and I don’t get any compensation other then a free copy of the book. I have been putting off reviewing this book because I was pretty disappointing or maybe I have just so much knowledge in this field, that it’s old. Either way, it was not an exciting read for someone who wants to become a e-celebrity (online celebrity?) online. Similar to @garyvee, although I love him, his book, “Why now is the time to Crush it! Cash in on your passion”, which is similar in context, was also a bit of a disappointment for myself as well. Sorry Gary, I still love you man! I think it’s just that I am a huge Garyvee fan and have heard all of this over and over again and know that it IS time to cash in! So although I wasn’t to excited about the book, there are still some great takeaways. I wanted to provide and post up some of the cream of the crop content from Celebritize Yourself, let’s dive into some exercises that were covered in the book that I HIGHLY recommend.

1. 5 Reasons why I want to be a celebrity in your field. If you remember my book publishing 2.0 post you will realize that you NEED to put yourself out there. Are you ready? Can you handle it? Do you realize you are ALREADY out there? Okay, this last one hit me hard recently as no matter what you do, you are already OUT there. A simple Google search will bring up information or not, and both outcomes say something. So be true, honest, and yourself.

2. Do you want to write a book? It seems books are the new business cards of self proclaimed e-lebrities. Do you have a fan base of 100,000? Are you willing to spend time to learn technology and interact with people to build a following of 100,000 fans?

3. Outsourcing your book (at least the first draft?) – I find it amazing that most of the book discusses how you can leverage having a book and how you can write one quickly with the help of editors, ghostwriters, and co-authors. I am all for outsourcing, but if you are going to use your book as your business card, really put yourself into it.

4. Bold Aggressive Action – It didn’t say that exactly, but it did cover taking action and just waiting for it, won’t help. I have found that even a little action is more then enough, you don’t need to build a top 1000 website the first go around, just something to start with and keep going. Most people fail because they give up to early. I know for myself I have started to lose interests in a number of passions, but I think that is because I have been changing how I want to make an impact and how my current values of changed.

5. The Best way to Be is Entertaining, Informative, and Motivated. I have attended a number of motivating seminars and panels and I must say that some people (like @garyvee) are so uplifting that you can’t but help get you started on your next idea.

This book is not for everyone and I would tend to think that it’s for someone who has no understanding of the internet and looking to make a name for themselves in a small niche without technology. So if you are one of those people take a look or order a copy. I for one don’t recommend or encourage my readers to check it out. If you are serious, checkout the Problogger Book, I highly recommend it.

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As some of you know I have recently moved into the big city, NYC. I wanted to do a life experiment where I didn’t bring my current TV or buy a new one. I was thinking of waiting to buy a new Vizio when released in November that has all the features I am looking for (integrated with Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, etc.), but thats another post all togetherf. I am excited for it because it’s getting closer to my “media on demand” concept where you can pull up any content you want at any time.

So the experiment was can I still enjoy TV without a TV using my external 22in LCD monitor to watch Hulu and DVDs. See what the pro/con’s are and make suggestions for people who are in a similar situation or thinking how can I save money (recession what?) and still enjoy media entertainment.

So far it’s been a couple of months and I wanted to write up what I have learned how much Hulu is better then any cable provider I have had. Now first off I have to give some disclaimers as I am comparing Hulu vs FiOS as that was my last provider. Just as a note, I am obsessed with FiOS and really really really wish I had it where I am now (it’s coming to my building in the upcoming weeks, supposedly). I had an option between RCN and Time Warner Cable (TWC). As sad as it was I elected TWC for my ISP with “powerboost”, such a crock. Although considering I already had a Cable Modem (which was a whole issue within itself) it saved me a deposit and I feel like I am saving something… anywho.

Let’s jump into the quick comparison.

Cable VS Hulu

Cable Pro’s

• I can “surf” through channels without lag.
• Every station is in real-time
• Automate Recording (DVR) of Show (including from phone)
• On Demand – Instant Movies/Shows
• HDTV (mostly 1080i/24)

Cable Con’s

• Bill every month with “imagined” fees, such as the franchise fee I got, WTF!!! (Who likes bills anyway?)
• Required Commercials – Even Fast Forwarding DVR takes time
• If not on demand or dvr, can’t get past shows, also specific time, now option to search/skip/etc.

Hulu Pro’s

• FREE, FREE, FREE!
• Shorter Commercials
• Offers Past Episodes and Behind the Scenes
• Features FREE Documentary/Movies

Hulu Con’s

• I can’t “surf” through channels, only search and browse
• Lag time loading station/show
• No need for DVR, but can’t watch in real time, “The Office is on Fridays now ”
• Not HDTV

Okay, so that’s a quick list I put together, but let’s go through this pro/con list and understand all that the cable service and hulu provide.

To start off, all the shows I watch, except for a couple on planet green and the Science channel (can you tell I’m a nerd?) hulu has it all. Not only the most recent episode, but a past season for some depending on the show and will add new ones as they remove the old. For example, I watched the first episode of Warehouse 13 on SyFi and I really enjoyed it. Maybe it’s because I like to solve problems and each case is about finding what the problem is specifically and resolving it, all in one episode. Anywho, after watching the first one, I started the moving process and missed the upcoming ones… until Hulu. Hulu has not only the current episodes, but also a behind the scense episode to show some background into the case and background. Much like a bonus or behind the scenes on a DVD, this is pretty cool. I enjoyed these bonus shows and for that I gotta hand it to Hulu. Now where does Hulu seem to fail, surfing. I can’t just easily flip through some shows, which I know most of us do. I am not always in the mood for watching a show from start to finish. I noticed this when I would watch AMC or TBS where a movie might be on and I would force myself to watch it even though I had the DVD sitting in a box next to me. Strange right? Well, I just know that sometimes I don’t want to see the whole thing, but skip around or fast-forward to a good part.

Okay, let’s dive into the cost and why I feel like I am getting $#%& by every cable provider no matter who I have had. Just to give you some background I grew up with the following providers: Comcast, directTV, Adelphia, Cablevision, RCN, and FiOS at some point in my life, yes I guess I didn’t always pay the bill, but still watched tv, saw the issues and cost.

The biggest beef I have with cable providers are the commercials, you are BUYING a service every month and yet the provider is making even more money off of you. This is similar to newspapers (which I also can’t stand) who have the same argument, the commercials offset the price and your bill is lower because of the commercials. I know I had HBO when growing up and the thing I loved back then was that HBO would go from Movie to Movie (maybe a Brain Game in between, remember those? It’s now over). HBO was a premium service where you paid and got no commercials. HBO has changed dramatically, they have way too much self promotion. Always “internal commercials” about Entourage or one of their hit shows, ugh. It’s much like Sirus, which I also have beef with, it’s not commerical free as they do all of this DJ crap that talks about the channels and ugh!!! Okay, getting over that, I just can’t help but think I would be willing to “watch” these advertisement but no bill for me, if you can “subside” the bill, then you should be able to insert another one or two and cut out my bill thanks. If anything maybe I can get paid for the amount of commercials I watch, like a credit system (any VC interested?).

Here is the pitch, for each show you watch you are forced to watch a commercials, sound simple, yeah Hulu does this. Not only watch a commercials, but you can choose to watch commercials in between or a long one up front for some shows. Talk about options! I tend to watch the long ones and grab a drink or food, just saying. So the credit system works in way to pay for view. The commercials are so much shorter then with cable providers, it’s a 3 to 5 minute commercial with the daily show on FiOS but 1 minute or 30 seconds with hulu.

So with all of this talk about commercials I just have to point out something. I am sure you have heard of TiVo and how you can’t call your cable box a TiVo but a Digital Video Recorder. Anyway, the original TiVO (dating myself) had the option to remove commercials completely. They would search for the short frames of black and cut them out. Talk about a great service, it would remove the “crap” in between and just leave the show/movie I want. None of this “fast forward” crap. Well TiVo got hit hard about this and changed their service to conform, damn capitalism! I remember when I built a mythtv box (before boxee) it had a built in system that did just this and it was awesome!

I could go on a bit more with this comparison, but for myself, I don’t see getting cable anytime soon. For the shows that I would like to watch, I can always pickup the DVD pack and be a year behind, no big deal. So for the people who are unemployed looking for a way to cut down on bills, lose your cable provider and invest in an apple tv. It pays for itself within a couple of months!!!!

Has anyone else done this, no TV? I would love to hear your experiences with hulu and what features you would like to see.

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The next 15 days are going to be intense. Car events, my first Rally America event, and tons and tons of driving. Just to give you an idea of where this tour will be stopping at, take a look at the map below.

What is MySubie you may wonder, well MySubie is for Subaru Enthusiasts alike. Anyone and everyone who enjoys their subarus (thats “ur a bus” backwards…just saying) and who enjoys the scene and meeting people, need to checkout and join MySubie. Robert recently launched MySubie and we are doing this tour to help promote his site and get more subie fans together and interacting.

The next 15 days Robert and I will be driving and streaming some video on our adventure around America.

So if you are in New Jersey, Northern Minnesota, South Kent, WA, or Fremont stop by and say hi

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If you are anyone who is anyone looking to take that idea you have of a book and build a brand, you need to talk to Michael Drew at Promote a book. This past weekend I was lucky enough to attend this in-depth seminar Book Publishing 2.0 teaching the techniques and strategies on not only writing a book, but building a platform.

What do you mean by platform

Almost every author who writes a book should be thinking about speaking events, book signings/tours, conferences, and more. You want to build a way to not only promote your book, your brand, and your message, but build that fan base that can connects with you everyday. How can you do this? With the use of social media. By blogging your book and “crushing it” as Gary Vaynerchuk says (Yes, I know I am a bit of a fanboy). Learn some tactics from Gary, he is all over it! Creating videos, podcasts, blogging, tweeting, and not only interacting with his current fan base but by putting more content out there so he can reach even more people.

Are You Ready?

Michael Drew asks a lot from you if you want to be NYT #1, WSJ #1, USAToday #1, etc. Why should you care? Well Michael Drew is 50 for 50 on getting books on the #1 best seller list. With a track record like this you tend to listen. The problem for most is time and commitment. How much time and commitment you ask? Let’s lay it out in a step by step plan.

The Plan

In order to test and find your audiance the seminiar spend much of the time on personas. During the seminar everyone attending took a quick personality test. Everyone got to learn all of these fun letters and what Myers Briggs can teach us about people. I am an INTJ, so I tend to be fast, logical, and competitive. The plan Michael lays out is to write to each of the major personas (NT, NF, SP, SJ).

• Write out 16 categories for each part of your book
• Write 4 topics for each of the 16 categories
• Write a blog post on each topic to each of the major personas (NT,NF,SP,SJ) a total of 256 blog posts
• Create a video and a podcast for each blog post

So with all of this you are suppose to cover one topic in-depth each week including writing to each of the 4 personas for a blog posts, a videos based, and a podcast. This process should take 64 weeks to cover 4 topics in the 16 categories. During this time you will also need to maintain a 3 to 1 ratio. For each blog, video, and podcast you post you need to write 3 comments or responses with other bloggers/people online. This will allow you to build your platform by making a name for yourself and build your network of people and distributing content.

Distribution, Distribution, Distribution

To give you some idea of how many books you need to sell to reach bestseller status: 500,000. Just to help you along the way, you should have a network of at least 300,000 people who will buy your book. How many twitter followers do you have? Facebook Friends? LinkedIn? Blog eaders? Maybe 300K? 500k? 1MM?

You need to not only create enough content but interact with your audience and join in the conversation to reach all of these people. So the question I have for you is, are you really ready to create all of this content and put in the blood, sweat, and tears to getting your book on the #1 best seller or are you just looking to create a book. One other important fact is that book publishers see less of an appeal with authors who published a book and only got 1,000 or 4,000 copies sold then the unknown author of a book he is trying to put out. Sounds kinda of backwards, but remember It’s never about the book. Focus on build your brand and platform: speaking events, conferences, seminars, blogs, podcasts, TV show appearances, and more!

History,Trends, Repeat

The old saying goes “History repeats itself”. This is something anyone who is in marketing/PR or working as a social media expert needs to hear. Times are a changing and the way we marketed a product yesterday or even today needs to change. One of the biggest lessons I took away from Book Publishing 2.0 is how every 40 years the pendulum swings from an Idealist society to a Civic society. In the course of 80 years, history repeats itself. So what does that mean for us, it means we should be studying the 1930’s, FDR, and focusing on society as a whole rather then putting ourselves first. The idea of push marketing and grabbing a bullhorn to spread your message is dying. You need to focus on pull methods where you post your message that others share and spread the word for you. Think of twitter, if you are constantly saying “buy my product” no one will follow you. If you offer interesting tweets and join the conversation you will have a huge following.

Remember the goal is not to force people to buy, but get them wanting to buy that no matter how bad the product is, get people to be passionate about your product and love it. Can anyone say Apple?

Michael constantly said, it’s never about the book. Don’t lock yourself in a room to write a book instead focus on your platform and test what works and what doesn’t. Learn from your own blog history on what people want. Remember if you want to predict the future, you only need to look at the past.

Testing

A major part of this program was testing, which is something I spend why too much time with since I am such a geek. Everything in life you need to test. Things that you expect not to work sometimes work so well you are not only shocked but rich! Other things that you think are a sure bet, well you lose the farm and everything else. So with that you need to test everything you do with your book, blog, and platform. Learn about Google Analytics, A/B testing, and how you can extract data to really understand what you need to do and leverage it!

Just F$%& Do It!

The last step that I don’t think was emphasized enough was getting it done. Seeing a pile of work ahead of you and knowing that even under the best of conditions it’s a 64 week plan is very intimidating. The thing that I really enjoyed about this seminar is that everyone there kept saying here is the plan, it’s up to your timeframe on when you want to accomplish it. This is so true in life and a great way to view projects. You need to put in the time to get the results you want. Some people it will take a year, others 5 years, and maybe some an entire lifetime, it’s up to you on the timeframe…the plan is right in-front of you.

I really want to thank Michael Drew, Dave Young, Chris Maddock, Mark Effinger, and Will Braunstein for an amazing seminar of Book Publishing 2.0! I highly recommend it, especially for anyone looking to write a book!

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What a weekend with Book Publishing 2.0! For anyone out there who is writing a book, wanting to write a book, or trying to promote a book, contact Michael Drew over at Promote A Book. Seriously, he is 50 for 50 for putting his clients on the New York Time’s Best Seller’s List.

This past weekend I had the privilege of attending the Book Publishing 2.0 conference and what a conference it was. It was not only fun and exciting learning various strategies and tactics on promoting a book, but also very direct and kept you on your toes. Learning how to write your book from the ground up, but also market and test your content with different audiences to built a platform and reach your goals as fast as possible. Highly suggest attending an event like this, it just blew me away.

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If you are looking for a way to impress others at a future networking event, the guys over at Meat Cards have the product for you.

Meat Cards is just that, a business card that has your contact information sear on a piece of 100% beef jerky with the help of a 150 Watt CO2 Laser.

Yes, Freaking Lasers!

Since each piece of Jerky may contain some holes, the contact information may be a bit hard to read, but who cares? You are going to be able to offer your contact information in the form of a snack!

Now Meat Cards are still a prototype in the making, but looking to sell these 4″x11″ pieces of Jerky as future food business cards. Talk about an amazing way to build your personal brand.

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