May, 2010

Entrepreneurship — No Comments
28
May 10

Be a Shoe Salesman in a Centipede Farm

Obviously that’s a foolish idea since centipedes don’t wear shoes. Similar to selling freezers to Eskimos, you better be one hell of a salesman to attempt it. What I am suggesting is really contrary to the title in actual analysis.

Don’t try to sell something that there isn’t a market for. Yes, if you try hard enough you can create a market. But you can’t do it on a shoestring budget that most entrepreneurs are working with and it’s much easier to sell something that people already need.

Reinforcing Example: Google
No one from Google pitched you the idea that you should use their site instead of Yahoo. The need to search precisely and accurately for information on the internet already existed and directories were no longer cutting it. Websites were being created too quickly for true directory based engines to maintain their hold over the internet.

If you’re like the rest of us, someone mentioned Google to you and how much better they thought it was than the ‘search engines’ you had been using. The next time you went online, you gave it a try and were hooked because of its usefulness.

Possibly Contrary Example: Cocaine
You’ll have to excuse me on this one. I don’t know a thing about cocaine, but I just finished watching the movie Blow. At least according to the movie, there was an existing market for marijuana, but not for cocaine at the time. People knew about marijuana and already wanted to buy it. It sounded like people really didn’t know about cocaine until dealers started selling it. Perhaps there was a need for an easily obtainable, more extreme drug–I don’t know. However, the movie makes it sound like they created the cocaine market by targeting celebrities and allowing the country to follow suit.

Find a market, then a business idea
This is something that is fairly redundant when reading books, articles, and interviews from successful entrepreneurs. If you start with a product, however functional or trendy it may be, your business may not be successful because your market may not exist. You could make the most amazing gadget that cooks toast on my car engine and spits out toast when I’m driving my car in the morning. It’s a sweet idea, but I can already cook my toast in my house and it really isn’t that much of a hassle.

However, if you first asked me what I want my car to hand me on my way to work, then you can design a product based on what I recommend. You will have a built in customer base.

I would personally much rather my morning car ride would audibly go though my task list for the day with some wake up music playing in the background. I can cook my own food and bring it with me, but it’s hard to read during a dark, blurry eyed commute and survive to get where you’re going.

Self Improvement — No Comments
26
May 10

Too Many Goals, Too Little Time

Okay, so I fell off the wagon on my goal list. I’ve kept up some of them, but changing my habits around (read as ‘entire lifestyle’) was too dramatic to hang on to. I can definitely see the benefit of focusing on one thing at a time as I mentioned in my last post. So, what is my actual progress?

I’m soda and candy free. As much as I crave them (about twice per day), I have been able to hold off. It has been interesting in that it challenged me the way that going vegetarian did initially. For instance, I went into Burger King to grab a veggie burger on my lunch break and realized there wasn’t anything to drink other than water or pink lemonade, which I basically consider to be pink, non-carbonated soda. Water it is.

It’s amazing how ingrained some behaviors are and we’re not even aware of it.

My general cleanliness has improved, but I haven’t been anal about it. I think I can maintain the level that I’m at now while pursuing other goals without a problem. It’s not a focus, but rather something I just do because I naturally want to.

My dental care has been good, but not perfect. My general process now includes morning and nightly brushing with mouthwash always at night and sometimes in the morning. Breakfast really gets in the way of using mouthwash in the morning. I have a habit of grabbing a portable food and eating on the way to work. Since you aren’t supposed to eat or drink for 30 minutes after rinsing, breakfast and mouthwash directly compete so that is definitely a fight for another time. Flossing regularly will take it’s own thirty day challenge.

Exercise and a strict amount of work on my business have not gone well. I started fine, but quickly lost my motivation for these. Another difficulty was my increased level of sleepiness due to caffeine withdrawal. This was clearly a conflict of two different goals. I still have been doing both, but just having had the commitment that I intended.

I decided my television watching rule was a stupid idea in the first place. Watching TV for me is usually a result of no motivation to do other things or else a chance to unwind after ’strenuous activities’ like work or exercise. Needless to say, I watched a lot more television than I wanted to when I set my goals.

So where does this leave me now?

Well, I’m going to keep the strict limit on sodas and candy. It is working and I think I’m handling it well. I would hate to give it up now. However, the rest of these goals I’m going to have to be a lot less strict about. I will still try to work toward them because they are all an aspect of my life that I want to improve.

I think that is the ticket for attacking multiple goal items at one time. You can really only go cold turkey on one item at a time. Improvement can still be made in other areas, but so much focus is required to change a behavior absolutely that tackling multiple goals at the same time is really difficult.

Posts coming soon: the business I’m building, quarter life crisis?, and creating a life list

Self Improvement — 1 Comment
19
May 10

Breaking the Habit Edition

This is one of the most challenging things I’ve ever attempted (Embedded Systems Design excluded). I find myself at a contradiction of my normal behavior for almost all of my free time. I’m struggling to wake up early, to not passively watch television, and to generally just not be a lazy idiot. After some careful thought, laziness is the real habit that I’m attempting to break here; these individual items that I’m after are simply results of laziness.

It has been a fairly rough couple days. Things I thought would be easy are hard and that makes pretty much all of my goals are fairly difficult. I’ve definitely treaded the line of needing to self discipline for failure to accomplish one of my goals on a couple occasions, but I’ve rationalized my way out of it. I figure as long as I’m making an attempt at changing my behavior, then I’m within the constraints regardless of the actual action taken.

Here is my list of rules with updates:

1. Put things away after I use them.

This hasn’t been too bad. I’ve been making a conscious effort and it seems to be keeping the level of clutter down.

2. If I see an area that is cluttered, I will de-clutter it at that exact moment.

This made for an interesting start. I had to give myself a lot of leeway with it because my whole apartment was cluttered.  I would have been cleaning for two days straight. So, I’ve been lax on enforcing this one as long are the level of clutter is decreasing each day.  It would have been a better idea to start this when my apartment was clean.

3. Brush Teeth, Floss, Rinse with mouthwash twice per day.

This one isn’t so bad. It’s definitely not a built in habit yet though.  Each morning and night I catch myself as I try to go right to work or go to bed without the full cleaning.

4. Consume no soda or candy.

I originally thought this would be really difficult, so I was surprised when I didn’t want any soda or candy for the first two days. Today was a different story though.  My lack of sleep and caffeine built up and I had quite a slow afternoon.

5. Do a minimum of 2 hours of work on side business everyday.

It’s intriguing to have a set rule like this.  I was working on my business almost everyday, but my productivity and accomplishments varied quite a bit.  Now that I’m focused on a set time of two hours, I’m finding I get a lot more done and will push other things out of the way to get to work! This is a good one for sure.

6. Get at least a ½ hour of exercise everyday.

I’ve had some small hiccups, but have been accomplishing this every day.  I haven’t yet today, and being 9:30pm as I write this means I’ll really have to make myself.

7. Wake up at 7am every weekday, even on days off.

Well, I’ve been physically getting out of bed each day.  But once I fell asleep at my desk (at home, not at work) and once I fell asleep on the couch. Tomorrow I’m going to try to have something set out to do when I wake up (in this case, a short run).

8. Watch TV only for special events or for dual processing (while doing something productive)

This has been the most challenging of my rules and I should probably be punishing myself for my results.  I didn’t realize how ingrained television was in my daily routine. I use it to unwind and recharge after work. I used to wake up and watch sports center in the morning while my brain was waking up.

I’ve definitely still watched more TV than I should have, but I’m aware of it and try to do something else if I can.

Another issue I’ve had is decently bad headaches. I don’t have much choice but to sit in the dark or sit in the dark and listen to the television on a really low volume.  I don’t normally get headaches very often, so I wonder if they’re triggered by my change in sleep or diet.

Overall, it has been pretty difficult, but I’m hanging in there. I was disheartened today when I read a post by David at Raptitude that said:

“In my research on habit change, one point keeps coming up again and again: the likelihood of your habit sticking decreases dramatically for every additional habit you’re attempting to change at the same time. If you only focus on one habit, a successful take is almost guaranteed, but trying to change five habits concurrently almost guarantees failure for all of them.

The fact that habits can’t be changed en masse was always a difficult pill for me to swallow. I always tried to change everything at once, and it never worked.”

Well…oops. I guess I’ll have to try that much harder. After all, if I’m going to make it as a self employed internet entrepreneur I need to be an outlier anyway.  I might as well start outlying now.

Self Improvement — No Comments
16
May 10

Introspection | Myself under a Figurative Microscope

Lately I’ve been analyzing everything about myself. I mean everything, from career to hygiene to hobbies. I think it stems from a feeling that something is wrong and I’m not sure what it is. My life seems in disarray (although it’s really not that bad). There is a lot I don’t have control over, which is probably causing higher levels of anxiety.

I’ve always struggled with handling anxiety so I’d imagine my brain goes into a high alert status. After some processing I’ve decided that part of the solution is solving the problems that I don’t have control over. For some of them, it means doing something differently or minimizing responsibilities. For others, it simply means coming to grips with my lack of control.

I wonder if it’s a part of some kind of quarter life crisis or else some sort of natural life phase.  In fact, I’m positive that has something to do with it, although I’m sure my discontent in several areas of life is what really brought about this level of introspection.

It seems logical that the first step of progress should be determining what areas I’m really having trouble with. I briefly worked through a Wheel of Life exercise on Google Docs (courtesy of Jenny Blake, Life After College) and came up with a pretty solid list of things I can actively change that I perceive will make me happier.  It will be pretty interesting to find out whether making the changes will actually improve my happiness.

The only to find that information out is to make the changes and see how it goes.  So, much like a thousand bloggers before me, I’m going to challenge myself to actively work on these items for one month and see how it goes.  At the end of the time allotment I can analyze how the different elements have affected me and whether each one is something that I want to continue.

I suppose that what sets this challenge apart from the dozens of others I’ve read in the past is that I’m attempting to make a bunch of sweeping changes rather than just one at a time. I think it will be an advantage because I clearly won’t be able to forget what I’m doing since this will be a fairly all-encompassing challenge to my daily routine.

So, the items that I’ve identified as weaknesses are as follows:

  • Cleanliness - It stresses me out when there is clutter everywhere, so it would only make sense to not produce as much clutter.
  • Hygiene (specifically dental) – I’ve never had good dental hygiene habits and have a mouth full of fillings to prove it. My teeth are fairly sensitive now and I have a lot of concerns about the road I’m on if my bad habits continue (although it’s too bad I can’t undue the damage that is already done).
  • Focus on side business – I often find myself burnt out after work and come up with excuses to not get things done. If I don’t put in the work, then it won’t be successful.
  • Getting enough exercise – I’m sporadic about exercising even though it’s something that I enjoy.
  • Waking up early/on-time – I’m frequently “late” for work (although they’re pretty flexible and I don’t get penalized or anything, I just have to work later before I can leave) and it starts my day in a bad mood. Plus I think it causes me to lose time that I could otherwise be productive with.
  • Television watching – I use it as a time filler.  If I don’t have something specifically on my mind that I want to do, I become a de facto couch potato.  I don’t enjoy most of what I watch so it just becomes time down the toilet.

I know enough about myself that simply saying I should improve these things wouldn’t be enough to sustain my motivation for more than a day or so. What I need are firm rules that I’m not allowed to violate and consequences if I do violate them. So, here are the rules:

  1. Put things away after I use them.
  2. If I see an area that is cluttered, I will de-clutter it at that exact moment.
  3. Brush Teeth, Floss, Rinse with mouthwash twice per day.
  4. Consume no soda or candy.
  5. Do a minimum of 2 hours of work on side business everyday.
  6. Get at least a ½ hour of exercise everyday.
  7. Wake up at 7am every weekday, even on days off.
  8. Watch TV only for special events or for dual processing (while doing something productive)

Consequences: If a rule is violated, I will have to proclaim it publicly on this blog and also not be allowed to check my adsense stats the following day.

Today is the 16th of May so I will hold these rules in effect until the 15th of June. I’ll keep you updated.

Site News — 1 Comment
13
May 10

Hello again world…

I suppose I needed a change anyway :)

I had a bit of a hosting issue (my fault, not theirs) and was unable to recover my wordpress install and database.  Luckily, I was really just getting started before and, honestly, I think I was forcing the blog in a direction that I didn’t really want to go. Don’t get me wrong, I still very much want my business building and entrepreneurial adventures to be a part of the show, but I don’t think it can be the sole focus. It’s not my sole focus in life so it was hard to emulate that.  Unfortunately, I’m a real person with divergent interests.

Every piece of blogging advice you will read will tell you to have a focused topic for your blog or people won’t want to read it. Guess what? I don’t give a rat’s ass about other people’s blogging advice. I’m just going to write about what I want to on whatever posting schedule that I want to follow. I tried the 2-3 post per week method last time, but couldn’t keep it up.  I had plenty of ideas; I just didn’t have enough free time or motivation.

So what will this blog be about? Well, it will be about me–Brad Allmendinger.  I’m a freshly-turned 25 year old corporate slave with a growing side business (albeit very slowly). I have an overactive mind and don’t accept any fact or opinion at face value. I question whether we actually have landed a man on the moon. I question why people are content to work all day and then sit in front of the television the rest of the day. I question every shackle society has laid upon me. It ruffles people’s feathers and the world can be quite depressing from my point of view. Fortunately, it can also be an overwhelmingly fantastic point of view.

I know, I know…I said growing side business and you want to know all about it.  Well, those are really details for another post, but here’s a small splash. I plan to dominate the internet. I’m kidding, a little bit. In full actuality, I’m creating content-based websites and attempting to rank them in the search engines (mainly the big GOOG). To be completely transparent, I made $4.46 in March from the sites I’m working on, plus a few bucks from old abandoned projects. In April, I made $13.56. So far this month, I’ve already made $10.21.

I know you’re over there chuckling, but this is a business that takes time. It takes time for search engines to trust a websites. It takes time to create backlinks. It takes time for search engines the give weight to those backlinks. And besides, I’m right on track with my income goals.

Speaking of goals, they’re a big part of what I plan to talk about here.  Not just income goals, but also lifestyle goals, hobby goals, and any other kind of goals I come up with.

I’m out of steam for now…I promise I’ll add another post soon!