Sorry for the extended absence everyone, but it was another expo all week in Vegas on the heels of the Drupalcon 2008 conference in Boston so I didn’t have time to post. Lots to catch up on so lets get started.
1. I’ll be writing a part II on starting your own real estate brokerage firm based on “start a real estate brokerage” post.
2. AOL bought social network Bebo for $850 Million
3. Facebook rolls out IM
4. Why Hulu is going to rock the video boat…earlier post here
5. I will be posting a 3-part case study series on the creation of StartupAddict.com and outsourcing in hopes fellow entrepreneurs can learn a thing or two.
I’ve been promising SA 2.0 this week (hell, I’ve been promising for months)….but I will truly roll it out even with the few concessions and kinks (damn bootstrapping).
Well all I can muster for a roundup on my residual “red eye” fumes but will be back on schedule tomorrow.
A business acquaintance of mine recently asked for advice to a question every entrepreneur dreads…How do I turn around my failing business? First off, there is no panacea for a failing business and every situation is unique even with best management practices, regardless of industry type.
I thought long and hard before giving my answer to my friend (which is contrary to my usual verbose knee-jerk reactions) and I finally told him about an exercise I learned of that was more in tune with psychology than business. I told him to write down everything he possibly could about his business, what the strengths and weaknesses are, the history of accomplishments the aspirations for the future and so on. After he answered the questions I told him to construct a boiler plate questionnaire of 20-30 questions that he had already provided answers for. I then told him to give the questionnaire to stakeholders of his business such as customers, vendors, shareholders, even competitors (the old adage keep your friends close but your enemies closer). He was shocked at the results that were returned.
The lesson is one of “know thyself”. The first time I learned of it was not in a business application, but a personal test. The goal was to answer a questionnaire regarding my personal characteristics and traits and then let my friends and family answer the same questionnaire that I answered about myself. I was absolutely astonished to realize the stark differences between what I thought of myself and what other people thought of me. Some of my perceived weaknesses were viewed as strengths in the eyes of my friends and family and vice versa. Sometimes like my friend you can’t see the forest from the trees when your in the trenches of day to day operations of a business. We become blind to our business’s faults. Seeing a fresh perspective from an outside source of what really fuels your business and what truly ails your business is the key. There is no better litmus test on how your business is doing or could be doing then hearing it first hand from a reliable but close source.
Don’t always pretend to have all the answers…it’s better to ask the question and find the answer. Then and only then can you devise a strategy appropriate enough to turn around your failing business.
According to a press release at Netflix… NBC will be distributing popular series and episodes like Heroes through the SVOD outlet. The deal follows NBC Universal’s announcement to use G4 and Mojo as “off-network” distributions channels.
On a selfish note this is awesome…my DVR went down forcing me to miss the final 4 episodes of heroes. My DVR which came bundled through Comcast rather than a Tivo is less than fantastic not at all Comcastic. The Netflix NBC Universal deal will certainly adds some healthy competition to the itunes arena as well.
Million dollar bill…WOW…stupidity apparently knows no bounds. I first came across this story in the early AM on Yahoo’s front page but then later found a more obscure but interesting piece over at Dave and Thomas about what a real million dollar bill should look like (now that is sweet). Hat tip to the boys for coming up with that one.
( it was ever since Desperado for me).
A gentleman from Georgia presented a million dollar bill to a teller and cursed her out once it was not cashed (shocker!). He was later arrested and also pin-pointed as buying camels with a stolen check earlier that day. At the end of the day he truly is entrepreneurial for thinking of something outside the box and innovative. Unfortunately, it qualifies as moronic as well.
This is a hysterical spoof of the Facebook News Network. Laugh out loud funny. I scored this at collegehumor.com via Oliver Thylmann’s blog. We definitely live in a facebook world.
The Zune is beating the ipod at least on Amazon.com according to Valleywag
This is obviously a bit misleading because the statistic on Amazon as a digital media player of choice is only a snapshot in time. One only needs to look at overall market share of the portable digital music player to see ipod has a crushing lead. After researching the new Zune, I finally broke down and scored the new ipod.
I just recently upgraded my first generation ipod (yes gray scale screen and looks like a white brick) with the newly hyped 16GB ipod touch. I have to tell you, I’m absolutely blown-away with Apple as a company continually living up to the hype. There are only a handful of companies in this world that can achieve the hype and Apple does it time and time again. I did grumble a bit when I first got the ipod touch and was forced to upgrade to Leopard before playing nice.
Granted this is an entrepreneur and startup blog, however you know it is the end of days when a news story about Santa Clause becoming political correct takes front page. Ho ho ho is no longer allowed because some women could get offended. Good old Saint Nick has to say ha ha ha now. If Imus in the morning got slammed for his ho comment, I guess it was Santa’s turn. The question I have is do we need to change fairy tales now too? I mean the seven dwarfs walk by Snow White every day saying “Hi-ho” “Hi-ho”. Because Snow white is not really a ho, one would assume that is a pleasant off to work song. What a world we live in.
I have been getting more and more requests to do more postings on real estate development rather than just exclusively cover entrepreneurship, StartupAddict.com and web 2.0 properties and concepts. I decided to satisfy the dual need of web 2.0 and real estate by doing two postings at a time — one dedicated to web related entrepreneurship and one to real estate endeavors. As always I appreciate your feedback as we all anxiously await for StartupAddict.com 2.0 to arrive.
I apologize in advance to my fellow entrepreneurial readers who are subjected to reading my “geeking- out” experience of converting my blog and Startup Addict mysql databases from cpanel to 1&1 dedicated servers. I spoke in an earlier post regarding the difficulty with the first Startup Addict programming team and I reluctantly let the project manager persuade me into hosting with them. Mistake #1 was hiring them and getting nothing for the first investment other than proof of concept (to reprogram) to Mistake#2 hosting with them and dealing with intermittent mysql database connections for both this blog and the SA site. What finally drove me over a cliff was getting a response from their server admin more than 24 hours after I reported a problem.
Okay tirade is over. In my search of exporting mysql databases from cpanel to 1&1 mysql databases on dedicated servers, I found very little. So, hopefully Google’s database of intentions will land a desperate reader here (I think I’ve done enough keyword stuffing) to indulge the search engine. So two hours into my server problem the secret sauce is exporting as a version 4.0 mysql dump and it will by default import correctly into the 1&1 server. Both cpanel and 1and1 use phpmyadmin to export and import so as long as the version is the same, you will skip the esoteric error messages from calling out to random lines of code. Just make sure you export as a .sql file rather than csv or other type files.
Hope that is helpful to the mysql database crowd and my apologies for subjecting my core readers to this rant about cpanel, 1and1 and mysql geek speak.
I apologize for the lack of postings, I’ve been caught up in memorial day vacation and a delayed beta launch ofStartup Addict.
My brother once told me it’s better to be lucky than good. Well I have to say from reading April’s issue of Kiplinger, Brad Duke is both. An awesome story about a 34-year old Idaho gentleman. He won the power ball and took his $220 million winnings in one $125 Million sum (85M after taxes). Unlike, the usual “blow-it, cause you got it” stories, Brad hires on 3 full-time financialadvisors and reinvests his spoils. He has 15 million in interest a year later and is diversifying his portfolio by investing in real estate (man after my own heart). I find the story so compelling because he plans on turning his 85 Mill into 2 Billion by the time he is 55.
You have to hand it to him, he wins at the most unlikely odds and lets his earnings be an extension of his entrepreneurial spirit by adding more funding to two existing companies Synergy fitness Group (health consulting biz) and Duke Speed Academy (helping kid athletes). He did splurge on 2 more cycling bikes. Brad Duke gets the ultimate “atta-boy” for being lucky and good…oh ya and best of luck with the 2 billion.
