I recently traveled from Taiwan to Los Angeles for a brief visit and now to New York.  Many colleagues ask me:

“How do you plan to pay off your daily and travel expenses while traveling without working?”

It’s a great question and I’d be asking the same thing if I met someone in a similar position.  Well, the simple answer is the Internet is going to be paying for everything.  Yes, the Internet is my bank account.

As you may have figured out, doing business on the Internet allows you the freedom to be 100% mobile as long as you have a computer and Internet access.  Obviously, you need to have a little tech geek savvy and some street skills.  But it’s truly a beautiful thing.  If you are interested in having the freedom to do business online, here are a few ways the Internet pays me:

100% Online Design Business

I say “100%” because so far literally all my clients have been only through online referrals and interactions.  I started my company Geekwhat Design earlier this year, we specialize in designing all types of web and print graphics for clients from London to Seattle.  So far, we’ve spent basically $0 on marketing/advertising our services and make anywhere from $800-$2000 a month.  I spend about 15-30 hours a week creating designs for clients and managing this business.  I can only imagine the scaling should we start to spend some $$ on marketing.

Blogging

This blog, Geekwhat.com, has existed for around 4 years on the web.  Back in 2007-2008, I worked hard to increase the visibility of the blog and raised its income to average $90-$110 per month through ads and well… some more ads.  Unfortunately, my server was cut off in 2008 after forgetting to pay the bill ontime.  I lost all my earlier blog articles and backlinks and had to start over again.  Lesson learned.  I am now making about $20-$30 per month and intend to increase that amount with the new blog design/layout and increased blog articles.  I’m intending to commit to about 1 hour/article at about 3 articles/week, so about 3-4 hours a week on this.

Selling Products Online

This one is a bit tougher because there is overhead involved and physical shipping of products.  However, I’ve learned recently of the process of automating everything from warehouse shipping to customer service.  In the past few months, I experimented with some  hip products and was profiting about $700-900 a month in my best months, but ran into some problems with sites where I was posting.  I’m contemplating going the solo route with an isolated online store and spending some money on advertising to get the word out online.  Clearly my products were selling well when viewed by the right eyeballs.   Before the automation kicks in, I’d say I would spend about 10-20 hours a week on this.

So, to sum up… based on these three methods, the Internet was paying me about $2000-$3000 a month on good months and $1000-$1500 on slow months.  Amount of time spent on these activities = 40-45 hours per week — and nearly zero marketing.  I’m in the process of outsourcing and automating a lot of my tasks to minimize my number of work hours so I can focus on marketing and increase my bottom line.  My goal: Have the Internet pay me around $5000-$8000 per month by the end of this year (with the majority of the income being passive i.e. automated/outsourced), this would be ideal.

More to come about automating and outsourcing.

Internet money image courtesy of http://www.taramagazine.com

Yum…. Pho. The popular Vietnamese bowl of transparent noodles with a satisfying soup base and the perfect combination of peripheral sauces and vegetables. The beauty of Pho is that it makes the very thought of Vietnamese food so clear and focused in a foreigner’s mind. When you walk by a pho place, chances are the restaurant name has ‘Pho’ in it. You know exactly what you’re going to get if you go in and sit down. It’s the perfect business lesson — focused, clear, and give the customer what they are expecting.

In comparison, the food served at Korean or Chinese restaurants (for example) is generally more vague. You aren’t clear right off the bat what you’ll be eating should you enter. If you place a Korean restaurant next to a Pho restaurant, a hungry passing foreigner would at least know right off the bat what they’ll be served if they enter the Pho restaurant. Whether he chooses it or not is another story, but just the clarity of the business is a win right away IMHO.

I think you’ve become successful when an average Joe can name what you do within 3 seconds after hearing your brand. Try the following:

Apple = iPhone. GOOD.
Samsung = … tv … tablet … phones… BAD.

Eminem = angry white guy. GOOD.
Kid Rock = … had that one rock-ish/rap hit…. BAD.

IKEA = home stuff. GOOD.
Sears = … appliances … clothes… BAD.

Caltech = engineering. GOOD.
UCLA = …. bruins … white racist chick … poly sci? BAD.

Simpler = win. Complicated = mediocre. Your thoughts?

Bruce Lee once said “be the water”.

If you’re an entrepreneur, I say be like a cockroach.

Yes cockroaches are tiny little creatures, BUT they’ve expanded to 4,500 different species (according to Wikipedia) and have been existent all over the world for a very long, long time. They’re also damn hard to kill and pretty much impossible to wipe out.

Here are some notable …respectable… characteristics of cockroaches (passages from Wikipedia):

They’re all about teamwork:

Research has shown that group-based decision-making is responsible for complex behavior such as resource allocation. In a study where 50 cockroaches were placed in a dish with three shelters with a capacity for 40 insects in each, the insects arranged themselves in two shelters with 25 insects in each, leaving the third shelter empty. When the capacity of the shelters was increased to more than 50 insects per shelter, all of the cockroaches arranged themselves in one shelter.

They survive through the harshest situations:

Cockroaches are among the hardiest insects on the planet. Some species are capable of remaining active for a month without food and are able to survive on limited resources like the glue from the back of postage stamps. Some can go without air for 45 minutes. In one experiment, cockroaches were able to recover from being submerged underwater for half an hour.

They’re tough fighters and just won’t take DIE for an answer:

It is popularly suggested that cockroaches will “inherit the earth” if humanity destroys itself in a nuclear war. Cockroaches do indeed have a much higher radiation resistance than vertebrates, with the lethal dose perhaps 6 to 15 times that for humans.

I don’t know about you, but I think every business / entrepreneur should definitely have these three traits.

In the future, if you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve hit a roadblock, just think to yourself…

WWACD a.k.a. What would a cockroach do?

Image courtesy of blingcheese.com

Do you play Starcraft?  If you have, you’d probably agree that there are strong parallels between strategies used in the game and techniques used to run a business (or even your own life e.g. optimizing your day-to-day expenses and income).

When you get attacked, is your defense strong enough to survive the attack?

Are you optimizing your efficiency?
Do you have sufficient resources?

When playing Starcraft, you must constantly be aware of what is happening all over the map, whether it be your opponents or your partners.  In the process of staying aware, you must make sometimes up to 100 decisions per minute to expand efficiently and eventually win.  Below are seven mantras that surround these types of decisions and are crucial to success in any Starcraft battle AND in starting/running a business.

1. Teamwork and Communication. When you are playing on a team with other players, you MUST work together and communicate in order to succeed.  Without a mutual strategy and technique, the team will almost surely fail and get destroyed.
2. Optimize Efficiency. In the game, you must prioritize the way you build and generate troops to optimize the speed by which you create the strongest army.  If you are not efficient, you will be destroyed over and over again by someone who is more efficient.
3. Strategy and Direction. If you just build aimlessly, you will be inefficient and lose.  You must have a very clear strategy and direction in order to defeat your opponents.  If for instance you have no clear plan to defend your base, your opponent will simply find your weak spot(s) and destroy you.
4. Knowing Your Competition. You must always observe the type of races you are competing against before starting to build.  Each race has its own unique weapons and strategy sets.  Without observing your opponents first, you won’t know how to defend against or defeat your opponents.
5. Having All Bases Covered. In any Starcraft battle, you must have all bases covered.  If you plan to attack someone, you must make damn sure that your homebase has sufficient defense to block off any attacks while you are away from home.  This ties back to #1 in communication with your team members.
6. Constantly Gaining Resources. In Starcraft, you constantly have workers called ‘SCVs’ mining gold and gas.  Normally, you’ll have around 15 SCVs obtaining resources, and that’s ALL they focus on doing.
7. Adaption. Depending on the map chosen, there are many variables that affect the strategy by which you should build your troops.  For example, variables include the number of entries to your base or whether the resources at your base are infinite or limited.

If you ask me, I think every entrepreneur or business owner should play Starcraft to simulate your business techniques in the game. As you play, you will notice your weaknesses, because they will recur over and over again.  Chances are these weaknesses appear in the way you run your business (or your life) as well.  Better to find these weaknesses before they wreak havoc in the real world!  Hell, enough application of business techniques in Starcraft just might be more efficient then sitting in MBA courses…

A while ago, I wrote a post about how life is basically a game of blackjack.

Here’s another bizarre analogy:

Being an entrepreneur is basically about throwing a bunch of seeds out there in soil and seeing which seed grows and becomes a gigantic and beautiful tree.

Basically:

• Soil = The venture / opportunity
• Seeds = Your time, efforts, and money
• Tree = …money

In the ideal combination of the right seed planted in the right soil, your tree (i.e. your mental and financial well-being) will become super large and beautiful.

As you analyze your tree, there are two basic variables to consider:

1. Your Happiness
2. Profitability

Given these parameters, there’s basically only three possible situations:

A. Large and Beautiful Tree = You are happy and the venture is profitable

B. Large and Ugly Tree = You are unhappy but the venture is profitable

C. No (or Very Small) Tree = Depending on the amount of time passed, You are either:

1. Just starting, or

2. If it’s been a while, you are unhappy AND the venture is unprofitable

Actually this concept pretty much applies to life, business, and relationships.  For example, in a relationship, the tree represents the state of your relationship and you and your companion are the seed and soil.

Spending some time first to really gauge out the right seed and right type of soil is much more efficient than just throwing a bunch of seeds all over the place a.k.a. pick the right opportunity and cultivate a focused effort rather than spreading yourself too thin.

I think this is a good visual way to gauge the status of things in your life.  So…

Is Your Tree Large and Beautiful?

In my last post, I talked about how to not be a whore and succeed in a business transaction.  In this post, I want to talk about wooing a potential client.

This article is about initial contact.

More specifically, the best and worst ways of getting someone’s full attention (so that subsequently he/she will believe in you and your product/service enough to actually fork out money).

In my experience, here are …from WORST to BEST… 7 ways of contacting someone for a sales pitch:

1. MSN or Some Chat Client = NO GOOD
2. Facebook Wall
3. Facebook Message
4. Text Message = ACCEPTABLE
5. E-mail
6. Phone Call
7. Meet In Person = HELL YEA!!

Notice one through five are all based on text communication.  Almost all tone and personality is lost through text, unless you’re an amazingly convincing writer.  Number six and seven are both verbal.

1. MSN or Some Chat Client - If you go this route, you’re just lazy.  You didn’t even make the effort to pick up a phone.  Plus, people can purposefully ignore your instant message while you sit there wasting your time wondering why they haven’t responded.

2. Facebook wall - If you try to get someone interested in your product with a public wall post, you’re trying to appear personal but in fact you are masking your greediness and trying to get a lot –by gaining more visibility– out of your minimal effort.  Don’t be an arse…

3. Facebook Message – This is where you start showing some actual effort.  You provide a private message, showing that you want to personally share something with this person.  Also, because it is an independent message (as opposed to one of many, many wall posts on one page), it receives much more attention and is much more likely to prompt a response.

4. Text Message – Actually this is still pretty lazy and shows a general lack of aggressiveness (and also some passiveness).  But at the very least, 1. it is very personal and 2. it is literally instant i.e. he/she will receive the message RIGHT away.  Plus, it takes quite some effort to type out a full, personalized text message on phone.

5. E-mail – Now we’re talking.  E-mail is very personal (as long as there aren’t any irrelevant CCs).  It is focused, direct (as opposed to on a platform like Facebook with a lot of noise), and free of any distractions (like other wall posts on Facebook).  It shows that you are focused and serious.

6. Phone Call – This takes guts.  Real guts.  You have to be ready for any response, whether it be positive or negative.  You got your A game ready.  It shows confidence and conviction.  Plus there is less room for miscommunication that could occur in text form.  Your words, tone, personality, and attitude are 99% conveyed through your dialogue.  If you’re a good talker, you just might secure a deal with only one or two phone calls.

7. Meet In Person – Old fashioned but by far the most efficient and successful method.  Taking time out of your busy and finite life to sit down with someone at a coffee shop or their company means so much more than sending out a text message or email.  Not only are you using physical dialogue (as opposed to text), but your attire and facial expressions can do wonders in contributing to your sales pitch.  Assuming you are on time, well dressed, and say the right things, you are automatically already in success territory.

meeting in person = the way to go

People can tell very easily whether you’re just out to make some of their money or if you actually care and are trying to help.  Don’t forget that being super awesome at following up is equally if not more important than the items mentioned above.  FOLLOW UP always.

These are just my two cents.  Your thoughts?

Obscene title?  My bad

Allow me to explain… the reference is to a typical business transaction.

Let’s parallel a normal process of building a relationship to a normal business transaction.  Typically when you meet someone you would like to build a relationship with, you go through the following process:

RELATIONSHIP:

You meet the person, you go through some dates, then you …get your jiggy on.  Let’s look at this process from a shallow viewpoint: basically the goal is to reach the final step of sex.  From an efficiency standpoint, the trick here is to minimize the ‘x’ in  ‘x times’, meaning minimize the number of dates you need to go through in order to reach jigginess a.k.a. sex.

So, the MOST efficient way would then be:

i.e. skip the dates and get straight to the jigginess.  The problem with this solution is that this route usually ends up in a very short-term relationship.

Now let’s parallel this to a business transaction.

BUSINESS TRANSACTION:

You meet the customer for the first time, you gain their trust and increase credibility through continual follow-ups ‘x times’, then you finally get the order and get paid.

Again, from an efficiency standpoint:

You would skip the middle and just try to get your new client’s cash right off the bat.  This is what I like to call the business of being a whore.  A one-time transaction that probably won’t end up in a long-term client.  No good.  You’ll notice a lot of such ‘whores’ doing business in China. 

Bottom line: Don’t be a whore when it comes to business. There’s no shortcut, build a solid relationship and credibility with your client and the money will come very soon and very naturally.

Your thoughts?

I’m not a fan of people who sit around and slack. Moreso, I dislike people who talk about business this, idea that, but don’t actually take action on anything. Most of ALL, I can’t STAND people who make a big deal about concealing their ideas for fear of someone stealing their grand, amazing, life-changing, phenomenal idea and running with it. Grow up.

Below is a genius quote by entrepreneur and CDBaby creator Derek Sivers, enjoy:

It’s so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.)

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

Explanation:

AWFUL IDEA = -1
WEAK IDEA = 1
SO-SO IDEA = 5
GOOD IDEA = 10
GREAT IDEA = 15
BRILLIANT IDEA = 20

NO EXECUTION = $1
WEAK EXECUTION = $1000
SO-SO EXECUTION = $10,000
GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000
GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000
BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000

To make a business, you need to multiply the two.
The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20.
The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.
That’s why I don’t want to hear people’s ideas.
I’m not interested until I see their execution.

Bottom line: Do your homework. Make sure your idea is legit. Do the work to execute the idea. Make it happen. Most importantly, stop talking or being overprotective.

Nike said it best: Just do it