I'm not looking to become an expert in this, but I want to be able to regularly incorporate Flash into different projects. I can already make simplified little movies, but I want to learn how to use Action Script which is the programming language behind Flash (from what I understand). My end goal is to make small Flash files which react to mouse movement. Like when you roll your mouse over an area, it reacts in a certain way, or makes other objects in the file react. Shouldn't be that tough.
As for now I'm starting to get re-acquainted with Flash, and this is my first little experiment with it:
That's just from playing around a bit. I need to start learning how to properly use more advanced features. Both Flash and Swish have tutorials included in the software, perhaps those would be a good start. There's also a massive amount of free flash tutorials out there (Google it), but has anyone had luck with a particular one?
I've given myself a reasonable time line to get familiar with making customized Flash modules: Two weeks. So come 5-22-2008 I should have some crude example of a interactive Flash file posted here.
I don't know where this came from, but I was randomly curious on how much it costs me to simply exist here in Austin, TX. per year.
Fixed Yearly Costs: $1,000 = Car insurance ($84/month) $1,800 = Health insurance ($150/month) $960 = Cell phone ($80/month) $6,000 = Rent ($500/month) $12,000 = Food, gas, general items ($1,000/month) $2,400 = Random Costs ($200/month) Total = $24,160
That's just to live, doesn't even account for going out, travelling etc. I also have few monthly bills because I have no debt, no loans and no car payment.
I'll be in Chicago from April 3rd (Thursday) till April 7th (Monday). If you're in or around the area, hit me up!
Every time I go to Chicago I have a BLAST, and hopefully this time will be no different.
The purpose of this visit is A.) to have fun with friends and B.) to keep up with my goal of getting out of town every quarter.
This isn't a very long visit, but I'm always happy to meet new people over a quick cup of coffee, or meeting up Downtown for the nightlife. Call me if interested!
Woke up at 11:00am (I went to bed late last night)
Sent out HouseOfRave & BodyMonkey orders + handled existing customer issues.
Created a new section of Neon Signs to HouseOfRave. Added the section + all the products. Went faster than normal because everything in this section is priced the same.
Created the banner for the above Neon Signs page.
Created the copy, screenshots and other images for my upcoming sale of PalmReport.com.
Rode bike to gym. 4.6 Miles.
Rock climbed for one hour at rock gym + weights. My fingers and forearms are starting to get re-acclimated to the large stresses placed on them when climbing. I'm getting to the point where I can complete level 3 tracks decently well.
Rode bike back from gym. 4.6 Miles. Going back is was so much easier after a good workout gets you pumped.
I've started eating a whole lot more fruit recently. Today I ate 4 bananas, 8 clementines and 2 tomatos.
Read several chapters in the book I'm currently reading: 'CIA, Inc. Espionage and the Craft of Business Intelligence'
Wrote out this list of things I did.
Timed everything I did.
One of my New Year's resolutions was to keep time of the things I do so I can speed everything up and do more work. As the old saying goes, "Anything that is measured and watched, improves." Actually, that's from What Would Bob Do.
So about a week ago so I could start timing all the little tasks I do. So whenever I start handling the HouseOfRave.com orders for the day, I start the clock and try to beat my estimated time.
One of the scary things about timing yourself is seeing how LITTLE work you actually do. Whenever I have a boring task to complete, it feels like an hour, but unless my $12 Wal-Mart stopwatch is wrong, it only took me 18 minutes. Instead of going downstairs to get a quick snack after the task, I'll realize it only took a few minutes and keep working on something else.
On the flip side it also keeps me from spending too much time on something. For example as I was making the Disco Ball section banner for HouseOfRave I had to stop myself and just upload what I had as the clock started ticking past 10 then 15 minutes. I usually have fun doing those kinds of Photoshop tasks, but tinkering around with different backgrounds and fonts for an hour doesn't increase productivity.
Of course there's a bunch of stuff I don't document here, but I like looking back to see what I was doing at a similar date the previous year. This at least gives me a little snapshot.
Person: You're your own boss? That's awesome...it must be nice not to work for anyone. Me: I guess so.
Since I've never had a real job it's hard to say it's nice since I don't know the other side.
I suppose it's nice I've never had a real job, but there's a big problem: I've never learned the procedures and discipline you get by working for a company.
I've always contemplated taking on a job just for the experience, but this obviously takes away a lot of time from doing my own businesses. Perhaps I can find a fair medium where I can get the experience, but further advance my knowledge.
When I was in college and heavily active in a lot of financial clubs, a lot of big companies would try to hire the active people such as me.....they didn't even care I was a government major instead of a business major. However these companies require you to be at the office at 8am or earlier and leave at 5pm or later. They also teach you relatively little about running your own company, or anything particularly interesting besides stock. Even then, general entry level positions at these companies keep you busy with all the boring work no one wants to do....this isn't bad, but if you're not learning from your surroundings whilst doing the grunt work, it doesn't seem worth it. They ALSO don't allow you to run businesses on the side. Seriously, the people at Morgan Stanley said they'd hire me, but I was absolutely not allowed to run businesses on the side. Obviously a deal breaker for me.
One of the places I ABSOLUTELY ADMIRE and want to be more involved in is the IC2 Institute and the Austin Technology Incubator. I won't go into much detail, but these two organizations are divisions of the University of Texas and spin out some amazingly interesting companies and programs worldwide. I think these two organizations do some of the most amazing things I've ever seen, but sadly hardly anyone knows about them except people in the entrepreneurial fields.
Being at one of these organizations, especially the Austin Technology Incubator would put me directly into a place filled with startup companies, investors, buyers seasoned industry experts and tons of accomplished and intelligent people.
I want to be around a place like that.
I'm thinking if I got some sort of small job or internship at one of these places, it would be immensely useful in helping me get the discipline and procedural training I want from a job, but allow me to run my own businesses at the same time. I would also be in a place swarming with ideas and innovation.
Ideally I would like to work or intern at one of these places for around 4 hours a day. A paid position would be fantastic, but I'd be willing to work for free, just don't tell them that!
If you'd like to meet up, contact me and I'm sure we can setup coffee or go for a drink! Also inform me if you know any cool events happening during those dates.
This past weekend NevBlog.com was on the Digg.com homepage. Several of my sites have had pages posted on the Digg homepage before, but this experience was definitely the most interactive!
*Digg.com is a social bookmarking site, and articles on the front page often get server-crushing traffic thrown their way.
My most fun experiences with being on Digg were this past one a few days ago, and the time my businesses HouseOfRave.com was on Digg and I made 320 orders in a day.
I briefly posted on this blog how if you search on Google Images the word "Facebook" my full profile comes up as the #1 result. This is partly a result of me owning FacebookProfile.com (which I just sold) and posting screenshots of Facebook. I also wrote how a Lebanese newspaper used this images in their article.
Well this article on Digg brought in thousands of visitors to that Facebook screenshot which includes my full name, old address and current cell phone number. The first day it was up, NevBlog.com unique visitors went from the 2,000 to 4,000 range to about 25,000 for the day. The next day it dropped to around 9,500 uniques. The third day was nearly normal traffic. However this was a medium sized Digg, reaching a peak of 700-something Diggs.
THE PHONE CALLS: I generally get about one call per week from people Google Imaging the term Facebook and seeing my profile with all my information, but during my stint on Digg, I got about 50 phone calls from curious Diggers seeing if that number was real, in one day! All sorts of interesting zip codes, international codes and free online calls were placed to see if my phone number was real!
DIGG USERS SURPRISINGLY NICE: Judging by the type of articles and stupid comments you usually see on Digg, you get the impression most users are bored teenagers (which is probably accurate). But of all the calls I got, for the most part it seems Diggers were more concerned for my privacy which was unexpected. Most of the people that called did so to simply notify me I was on Digg and that my phone number was available online. I would quickly explain the situation and that I knew my phone number was there, thank them and the conversation was over.
However I also got a few prank calls. These are most likely 13 year olds with not much to do. However it sounds like something I would do also, so I can't complain, I thought the prank calls were rather funny (although sometimes the same people kept calling back which got annoying and lead me to believe these people sadly had NOTHING else to do).
DIGG TRAFFIC: Usually when a site of mine ranks high on Digg it isn't much of a problem. My experience with being on the front Digg homepage is this:
1st Day – 50,000 to 70,000 extra unique visits. 2nd Day – 15,000 to 30,000 extra unique visits. 3rd Day – 1,000 extra unique visits. 4th Day – Regular traffic.
Even when I browse through Digg, I generally look at the article, read it, then exit. Most likely I'll never see that website again. This pretty much holds true to the traffic patterns I've experienced.
SERVER LOAD: Digg generally delivers a server-crushing load of traffic to some sites, which is why many sites go down soon as they get on Digg. I have my own dedicated server, so it generally handles the job, but it DOES go down several times during a large Digg. Especially when the Digg involves a large screenshot image plus many other images. NevBlog is not an efficient website to say the least, so every page load of the site is quite a bandwidth hog.
When FacebookProfile.com was on Digg, it hurt my server more than NevBlog because it's all database driven. The amount of SQL queries racked up quickly, and would overload the services on my server causing Apache outages. This sucks because I also have about 4 websites on my server that get high traffic and use up a lot of processing time, if some of these are not up, I cannot make money. This is why I specifically wanted to host BodyMonkey on a separate service, to hedge my losses if something goes wrong with my server.
BEING ON DIGG MAKE YOU MONEY? IT VARIES: FacebookProfile.com got a lot of extra hits from Digg several times, but the advertising revenue only went up slightly. Digg users are used to quickly skipping through articles, and generally never click ads. I sure don't.
But get this…right before Halloween 2006, HouseOfRave.com was on the front page of Digg and I got 320 orders in a 24 hour period from it!! That's two months worth of orders in ONE DAY!! That's also thousands of dollars in profit from one big Digg.
The Digg article linked the Glowing Hair Gel product on HouseOfRave, and subsequently tons of blogs started writing about that product also. Now if you Google the term “Glowing Hair Gel” I am firmly planted as the #1 spot. Ha, even if you Google the broad term “Hair Gel” in Google I am still #3!
It was a blessing and curse at the same time to get all these orders, because while I had just made several thousand dollars in profit from that one day, I was still manually processing orders at that time. With the method I was using, it took me two solid days of the most mundane work EVER. Basically copy/pasting information from hundreds of orders…over and over and over till each one was filled.
So it seems you can make loads of cash if a PRODUCT or SERVICE gets exposure on Digg, but pay-per-click doesn't perform as well (at least in my experience).
I've actually never Dugg an article myself to get exposure, it just happens organically. If you try too hard to get on Digg, you most likely won't.
Well anyways, that's my experience with being on Digg!
One day a bunch of people from Lebanon tried adding me as a friend on Facebook. One of them notified me my full Facebook profile was published in a national newspaper over there!
If you go to Google Images and type in "Facebook" I am the first image to come up, so they used that image in the newspaper:
I've got no clue what that article says, but it's pretty funny :-) It reminds me of the article in the Russian Wallstreet Journal.
In case you're wondering, since I own FacebookProfile.com (Which I'm currently selling) I published some screenshots of my Facebook, coincidentally they've reached the top of Google.
What's interesting is since I published that fully un-edited screenshot of my profile I get about one phone call per week (usually from some bored teenager) who says, "Ummmmm....do you know your phone number is on Google?"
I always try out new programs, web widgets, technologies, Photoshop and Flash effects etc. and have no place to put them. To solve that I created a section of this site called NevLab.
This is like the think tank of a big company where people just tinker around with ideas, new products or processes all day in hopes of stumbling upon something new or useful later down the line.
It'll be like my internet technology testing area and playground.
The lab is very rudimentary in it's design and will remain so. It actually uses frames which I haven't seen on a website since 1997. Since some of the lab creations will have scripts in the head/body tags or require specific page colors or plugins, frames are the best technology for the job. Using a content management system (aka Blog) would be a terrible option for NevLab.
My trip to China went very well. The point of going was to educate myself about the place, because I knew absolutely nothing about it. In my lifetime it will be one of the largest consumer markets on the planet, so getting to know this place better couldn't hurt.
I honestly packed my bags like I would be hardship backpacking through some 3rd world foreign land...I was WAY off.
I presumed from all the comparisons I hear on the news that China was like India, but it was in fact MUCH different.
I primarily went to Shanghai and Beijing which are NOT representative of most of China. It's like coming to the United States, only going to New York City and presuming the whole U.S.A is like that.
LANGUAGE BARRIER Here is why India gets all the international call centers instead of China: Very little English is spoken in China. We figured since we're in Shanghai we would be able to get around very easily with only English...WRONG.
English was a very rare commodity, and when it was actually spoken, it was usually butchered. The Mandarin language is grammatically set up in a completely different way, so their English is sometimes very skewed....understandable....but skewed.
At a lot of restaurants we went to, they could not understand basic things like Coca-Cola, napkin, spoon, soy sauce etc.. If there were pictures on the menu, we would just point. Another tactic was taking picture of foods with my camera, then we would show the waiter and he would know "Ohh, they want dumplings"
FAMILIAR STUFF Of course there were McDonald's, KFC, Subway, Pizza hut etc. all over China. McDonalds was relatively the same type of food and menu, I hardly noticed any differences. In these chains you would usually find people who spoke good enough (not good...just good enough) English to get you through an order.
IMPRESSIONS OF SHANGHAI Most of my time was spent in Shanghai where I stayed at youth hostels or hotels, both always being quite nice. To me Shanghai felt like a mix between NYC and San Francisco. Just the impression I got.
I really liked it with all it's very modern buildings, most of which had crazy illuminated tops or some sort of full-building lighting feature.
Pollution was quite bad though, as in on a clear day you cannot see the sun. It didn't feel the pollution on the street that much, but a quick glance upwards and you can see the thick smog shielding the sun. I only saw the sun peer out fully one morning, and by afternoon it was gone. The weather however was extremely pleasant and very mild.
Check out this picture of a relatively bright day with a bad pollution index. You can see how blurred the buildings across the river are:
The night sky in Shanghai was always lit up near this area along the river called the Bund. Lots of large buildings line the river, including "The Pearl" radio tower which is the big space needle looking thing. It's like the Chinese equivalent of the Statue of Liberty, except it lights up in funky colors and is like a big lightshow in the night time.
FAKE STUFF As me and friends travelled we couldn't help but stand out as foreigners, meaning we were magnets for the street sellers. In some of the more commercial and shopping areas we were constantly approached by people selling knock-off watches, bags...you name it.
And of course...I bought stuff. It was however time consuming to sift through the different sellers who had good quality stuff and bad quality. I bought some really nice fake watches:
Pictured are a Breitling, Emporio Armani, Mont Blanc, Luminor Marina and Omega knock-off watches I bought for between $10 and $15. They have tons of great rip offs, and if you find high quality ones they are damn near indistinguishable from the real thing by the average person.
I also bought stuff like fake brand name cuff links....I'm not even sure if Louis Vuitton has cuff links that look like this, but oh well :) After bargaining you can get them for about $1.50/piece.
TRANSPORTATION Getting around was actually pretty easy. The roads & highways were very modern, they drive on the left like in the U.S. and most of the cars were relatively modern too. I was surprised to find out their emissions standards are higher than in the U.S., and also found it odd that EVERY taxi was a Volkswagen Santana 3000. I also see why General Motors is focusing so heavily on China, there are Buicks everywhere. I hardly ever see Buicks cruising around in the U.S. anymore.
Cab rides were relatively cheap, I don't think I ever paid more than $3 for a cab ride, and I'm almost sure they were jacking up my price from time to time.
One highlight of the trip was a 250+ MPH bullet train that takes you from the Pu Dong airport to Shanghai. It's top speed was 431 KPH which translates into 267 Miles Per Hour! It was pretty amazing since I got out of the airport thinking this was a poor, 3rd world country. The train whizzes by all sorts of farm land, small cities and even by the freeways where you see cars travelling at a pitiful 60 mph as you blow past them like they're standing still! The bullet train cuts the airport to Shanghai travel time from 1 1/2 hours to 8 minutes!!
As for NORMAL train rides, I took a 12 hour train ride from Shanghai to Beijing, the captiol of China. The train ride cost about $40 because I chose the highest class ride I could get. I figured it would be a pretty boring trip, but it was actually VERY nice. You get a good size compartment with 4 beds in it, and 4 people. You get two meals, comfortable beds with warm blankets, slippers, toothbrush, dining table and more. It was nice because I left at 7pm from Shanghai, messed around for a few hours on the train then slept a full 8 hours. When I woke up they served a breakfast and you're ready to start your day at 7am in Beijing! I actually preferred this to travelling by plane.
IMPRESSIONS OF BEIJING Beijing definitely gives you a reminder that China is still a communist country. I didn't get that vibe at all in Shanghai. First stop in Beijing, the Great Wall of China!
We took a private taxi 1 1/2 hours each way to get there, total round trip cost: $35.
Most parts of the Great Wall of China have been degraded to ruble over the last 2,000 years, but there is a large section which has been restored for visitors. We went here to go see this stretch of wall.
I don't know what else to say other than it's a big freakin wall in the mountains. I think the main objective of going there was 1.) to say I went to the Great Wall of China and 2.) to take a bunch of pictures on the Great Wall of China.
Probably my favorite picture: Doing a handstand on the Great Wall of China!
Here's a "Where's Waldo" picture, except "Where's Nev"
We spent some time at the Great Wall taking pictures and whatnot, they had all the usual souveigneers and junk like any tourist attraction. We left shortly afterwards in the same taxi we came in (Who fortunately did not drive away with all of our stuff) and headed back towards the middle of Beijing to see Tiananmen Square.
Tiananmen Square was just a big ass concrete square with a bunch of people walking around. Dotted through the square were communist police perched on boxes. Their postures were ramrod straight and they moved their heads side to side like robots. At the base of each box was two fire extinguishers. I'm not sure why they had fire extinguishers in the middle of a giant concrete square, and they didn't look friendly enough to ask.
This attraction was more for historical significance than anything. Of course I felt like taking another handstand picture:
Long story short with lots of important details left out:
1.) While in college I took a Psychology 309 class by correspondence so I could do it over the internet.
2.) I've always been pretty lazy about school.
3.) I have till March 22nd to finish the course (I leave for China on March 23rd and the class expires on the 30th or is marked as if I failed.
4.) I was almost done with the course when my computer crashed...no backups of the course work.
5.) I've got to re-do the whole thing in less than a month.
6.) I've been saying #5 for the last 4 months.
Each lesson has 2 parts, a computer-graded assignment and an essay for the instructor to grade. I have to finish the course much before the planned end date because something always goes wrong and a buffer zone is required.
Judging by my academic past, this kind of feat has never been pulled off (Oh yea, and I HAVE to make at least an 80 in the course). Each section of this class is really, really long and some of the questions are quite in-depth. So much for being a blowoff class like I initially thought. With everything else I have going on, this is going to be hard.....but possible if I focus on it.
In the top-right corner of this page I want to put a check-off list near my calendar to ensure I'm keeping pace with this schedule....but I'll do that later because I've already spent 30 minutes making this post and TALKING about doing the coursework rather than just doing it.
Someone needs to call me up and bitch at me if the assignments aren't on time....like a mean professor.
My worst purchase ever is gone...and it took accidentally destroying it to happen.
Since I bought the phone in March 2006, I've paid Verizon Wireless $2,117 . This includes the phone, added features, overage charges, taxes, stupid fees and finally my cancellation charge for breaking the contract.
All that money for only 8 months of phone service.
In no particular order, here are the moves I've made in this process:
The interesting part is one day after I filed my insurance claim for a water damaged phone, the phone started working again! At this point I had already switched back to Catherine Zeta Jones and bought a regular $50 phone and a $50/month plan. The insurance company has already sent me a brand new phone, so I now have a brand new Treo 700P to sell and recoup some of the money paying for phone service.
Insurance fraud? Possibly....but not really.
I've definitely downgraded phones, and it's not so bad. My new phone (Samsung t509s) makes calls and sends text messages, which is what a cell phone basically needs to do.
I do however feel a bit lost without the appointment feature on the old phone, and text messaging goes A LOT slower without a QWERTY keyboard!
Once in a while we all just "HAVE to Have" something. I do this mainly with electronic stuff, and generally it works out well and I'm happy with the purchase.
However 5 months ago when I got the Treo 700w when it first came out from Verizon Wireless, I had made a terrible mistake. Unlike my "Have to Have" cameras or tablet pc, this phone came with a contract.
I've had my phone for about five months now, and here is what I've paid so far for the phone and phone bills:
Because I just HAD to have this phone immediately, I irrationally accepted the high monthly fees, high starting costs and the expensive low-end service plan. The high overages were part part Verizon's fault for screwing up an order for a larger plan, and part my fault for being irresponsible. However in the end I'm paying the (very expensive) price of an emotionally driven purchase.
I went from loving this phone to hating it, as graphically portrayed here:
I don't actually hate the phone itself, just what it represents. I rank this as my WORST PURCHASE EVER.
LESSON I LEARNED: "Have to Have" purchases aren't always bad, but when irrational thinking muddles the details of a contract, beware.
College courses are extremely expensive, you have to battle to sign up for them.....yet unlike other expensive stuff, no one guards the classes.
I was recommended by someone to take a graduate level management course taught by an extremely prestigious professor who has "been there, done that" in the business world.
Instead of signing up for this class, I just looked up the publicly available class time/location and started going! I told the professor I was not paying for the class, nor was I any longer a student, and he happily agreed to add me to the class. I imagine some professors would PREFER students who WANT to take the class over those taking it as a requirement.
When I was a student I used to sit in on classes where they would talk about subjects I needed more knowledge on (Particularly computer science classes where I wanted to know how something was created). The best part is you can go speak with the professor after class or in their office hours, and they are always more than happy to speak with you.
I never fully realized it when I was a student....but the university is one of the few places where you have world-class authorities on a subject, and you can access all their expertise free of charge.
Since 8th grade I've played the guitar, but I've never LEARNED the guitar. After a few months of basic lessons I could pick up songs from guitar tabs on the internet, but all the theory behind it was skipped over.
Same thing with piano, I can PLAY a little...but I really can't read music all that well, or understand the theory behind it.
In my haste to just play something, I've effectively skipped over all the theory, and for this reason I have never progressed much beyond my skill level from the 8th grade. This bugs me because I really enjoy playing music.
Obviously I need some formal help in this area, so I've finally started taking guitar lessons again, but this time with a heavy emphasis on music theory, re-learning to read music and the mathematical functioning behind the guitar and piano.
Now that I've been playing for years, the theory behind it makes SO MUCH MORE sense than when I was a beginner. It's def. one of those "I told you so" kind of things.
The cost of professional lessons at the Austin School of Music (I didn't want to go with an independent teacher off CraigsList) is $105/month, which includes four, thirty minute lessons a month.
This time around, I am going to properly document what I've learned in each lesson. Once part of that is recording what I physically learned to play. I decided to do this in video form:
I feel this will be one of the better investments I have ever made. More of a personal investment though.
----------------
These music lessons somehow relate to the ONLY plan for the future I have:
Where ever I end up living, I want to have a music room. Meaning I want one large room with a bunch of instruments in it: basic everyday instruments as well as a collection of weird instruments from around the world.
It's about time I change my old school email address. Nev@mail.utexas.edu just doesn't look all that professional....although sometimes it's good to email someone with a school email address...(Like on Craigslist).
Currently I am starting to use NevMed@gmail.com
However, an email such as nev@enwon.com would create more exposure because people will often type in www.enwon.com when they see the email.
I was also thinking of nev@neville1.com...Ideally I'd like nev@nev.com or something along those lines, but Nev.com and Neville.com have been taken and not-selling for years!
Now I have to change all my email addresses from all sorts of places before it expires!
I'll also eventually have to change this business card. I don't really care for cool business cards, I prefer the free ones from VistaPrint!
These days I'm pretty selective of what I read on a daily basis. I used to read a lot of personal finance blogs, but quickly lost interest after the same stuff gets repeated hundreds of times.
However I have always enjoyed blogs that document personal adventures in money making. The point of these blogs is not necessarily to educate the world about personal finance, but to track progress of money making and experiment with new and creative ways of doing it. I also enjoy lots of technology related sites.
ONLINE READING: I like to keep track of the technology field, and a great way to do that is by keeping track of new trends, technology and tech news. Me as with most people stumble across the most interesting things via the most random web surfings.
- www.engadget.com - Gadgets and junk - www.gizmag.com - Probably my favorite technology site. - www.gizmodo.com - Gadgets and junk - www.hackaday.com - I come across a lot of underground technology through this site. - www.luxist.com - Luxury things, new trends. - www.techcrunch.com - Technology related news, mostly about how "Web 2.0" no-revenue websites keep getting funding. However they always manage to report the LATEST tech news.
On a more sporadic schedule, I checkout: www.business-opportunities.biz - Business blog aggregation site. Stumble across some nice articles time to time.
www.entrepreneurs-journey.com - Yaro from Down Under talks about his business experiences....although lately he has changed his format to "Blogging about Blogging" which I'm not a fan of. He has managed to financial support himself with his own ventures, so I admire that.
www.okdork.com - Noah Kagan documents his own biz journey. I've actually met up with Noah when he came to Austin a while ago where we met at a coffee shop near the UT Campus. The second after we shook hands and said hello, he proceeded to find a magazine to read in the bathroom....then disappeared for a very, very long time while I waited. His website is different, kind of immature and I've got a feeling Noah will jump into all sorts of wacky internet ventures and at some point hit it big.
www.howtobepoor.com - Max documents some of his side projects in a personal finance style blog. One of the few blogs I still read time to time because 1.) It's different and 2.) He can actually think of a money-making idea and implement it himself because he's also a great programmer. I wish I could program.
www.blogmaverick.com - I think it's INCREDIBLY REFRESHING to read a blogger who has actually "Been there, done that." Generally advice and opinions on the internet are dispensed by people who have never had any direct experience with what they're talking about.....like those people who become millionaires only by writing a book ABOUT becoming a millionaire. Their advice will rarely help anyone. Mark Cuban however is a a busy-billionaire and still bangs out a great blog!
WEIRD BOOKS: Sometimes I'll randomly stumble upon a book which is not really a business book, but a business book in disguise. For example, when I met with John Moore, he was flabbergasted that I had already read a book called DEALING CRACK. It was a very short book about a student who actually went undercover in rough neighboorhoods to find out about the underground world of hard drug dealing. When they guy who headed up the Starbucks and Whole Foods marketing groups strongly recommends this book, there is something to it.
The reason I read the book was because of the way it described these micro-economies fueled by illegal drugs. It's hard to exlpain, but the book captured the essence of supply and demand, customer care and business deals in such a raw and unique way that it was one of the top business books I've ever read.
BUSINESS BOOKS: I've read quite a few popular business books, and quite frankly I hate most of them. They talk about the same stuff and dish out the same advice......what I enjoy are STORIES about successful people....especially if it's autobiographical.
I believe the key to finding a book that may actually help is finding out who the author is. Is it someone who has never made any money except from hocking books ABOUT making money? Has this person actually accomplished anything in the field they're talking about?
If I want to learn about making big money, I'd read an autobiography by Richard Branson or Donald Trump, or perhaps a biography about Larry Ellison or Bill Gates. The key is to read A LOT of these books, because everyone has different advice that worked for THEM.
Another way to find quality reading material is finding out what someone you admire used to read. Obviously if this impressive person has accomplished so much, they can tell you what material has inspired them. Often some of the most famous figures of our time have read timeless pieces of work like John Locke and Gandhi.
I'm always on the lookout for non-conventional reading material the masses overlook, so if you've got a great site or book suggestion, drop me a line!
I've decided if I meet certain goals every month, I will take a small vacation every quarter. These little trips may be just a long weekend type thing to visit friends in various parts of the country, or just to get lost in a new city.
So at least 4 times a year I will pack up for a few days and get out. While these trips will be mainly for fun, I'll always be keeping my eyes open for new trends, ideas etc..
First destination is Chicago, I leave on Thursday.
I'll only use the funds in my Spending 1 and 2 accounts for the trips. Therefore if I don't meet certain monetary goals every month, I simply won't have enough money to go. 10% of my income goes to the spending 1 account, and 10% goes to the spending 2 account.
I've already bought a ticket which cost me $300 roundtrip.
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Income and Expenses for the month of March 2006 were as follows: Income: Exceeded $5,000 Expenses: $2,317
C u r r e n t B a l a n c e s : -General Account: $2,370 -Spending Account 1: $413 -Spending Account 2: $590 -Investment Account: $2,130 -Bills Accounts: $1,517 -Permanent Savings: $5,215 -Charity Account: $338
-Stock: $10,715 -Roth IRA: $6,705 -Emigrant Direct: $1,007 T o t a l: $ 3 1 , 0 0 0
-Credit Card: $0 -Business Holding: $9,818 T o t a l o n H a n d: $ 4 0 , 8 1 8
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House of Rave profit this March was $1,915. Looking back at my 2005 profits from HoR, I made $946 last March 2005. The income has more than doubled with very few actual changes to the website or increase in time spent on the site.
The first step to the increased profits was "Bob" shattering my complacency with making $700/month from HoR by asking, "Can you make more money with it?" I told him I could, and I even knew how......I just never thought about applying those changes until he asked.
I attest the increased profits to a few very small changes. A small change with a BIG result was using Outlook instead of webmail, and integrating HoR customer emails with my personal email. This way I am forced to see customer concerns or questions immediately....not simply whenever I feel like checking them. There were also other minor changes such as taking my own pictures of products. I am around the $2,000/month profit level with House Of Rave, now the next step will be adding another $1,000 to that every month.
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On Monday (4-3-2006) I met Max of HowToBePoor.com, who is thinking of moving to Austin, TX.. It was fun talking to him and his wife, and I forced him to write good stuff about me on his website.
He's been experimenting with Adsense, ecommerce sites and advanced programming....things that may not be extremely profitable at the moment, but he is building a strong foundation. I like.
There are TONS of people out there with lots of great ideas, but they lack the know-how to implement them into a viable businesses. Max has the advantage of knowing computers and programming inside and out, meaning when he has a good idea, he can act on it immediately without hiring a programming team. It's always fun to make new like-minded friends!
I've now graduated from the University of Texas: Major: Government Minor: Business
I am now: Neville Medhora, Investment Vehicle Creator. Investment Vehicle Creator = Phrase I made up because I don't like the word entrepreneur.
I will be celebrating New Year's in Miami, FL., then return to Austin to begin my IVC adventure/career. It's now fully up to me whether or not I succeed.
I live in a wonderful city, have roughly $30,000 in the bank, a college degree, a large arsenal of experience, a good business network, two forms of transportation, a loving family, I'm fully insured, have low monthly costs, multiple forms of reliable income, several large projects in the works and an insatiable appetite for productivity.
2006 will either be a wonderful year towards my success or a dismal failure.
The trick will simply be working hard and working smart. I've heard time and time again from successful people that simply outworking the other guy will get you ahead. I can no longer say I am busy with school, meaning I have one less excuse for procrastination and unproductivity.
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Upcoming Problems & Changes:
--In 2006 I will no longer have time constraints or the structured schedule that school imposes. I will have to self discipline myself to wake up earlier, work harder and properly manage my time.
"If we do not discipline ourselves the world will do it for us." --William Feather(Stolen from TheKirkReport)
--Another change I didn't anticipate was the change in my business card. I generally carry at least 3 of these on me at all times. The first order of change is creating a new email address. I was also thinking of putting an odd slogan on the card under my name such as "It rhymes with Devil," as it helps clarify the pronunciation of my name and stands out at the same time. I'm not sure if that's clever or just cheesy.
I was toying with the idea of getting ShowOffCards.com, business cards that portray you as a superhero. They seem to really stand out, but I think right now they are too gaudy for me:
I don't want to spend too much time creating a new business card, as I am the one who makes the first impression, not the card....although it can help.
I will however leave the web address on the card, as I've found a phenomenally large amount of people I hand the card to will visit and actually read it....speaking of, I must also update that.
--Another challenge will be meeting new people. In a quest to continually expand my network of people, I now must more actively put myself in situations where I can meet new people. The college environment forces people to interact, but once taken out of that environment, the rules change. For the first time in my life I am out of school, so this should be interesting.
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It's completely up to me now whether I succeed or go down in flames. Time to get started!
I went to a wedding in Houston this weekend. There I met a friend who recently bought a Mercedes S55 AMG and a Mercedes SL600 (you read right: six hundred). Together these two cars cost well over $200,000.
I was tossed the keys to the S55 AMG and I played around in it.
I had been drinking, so the most I did was rev it up. There's a very excited Neville inside that car:
As I came back to Austin on Sunday night, I posted up some quotes in my room. The wall to the left of my desk is now my "Motivation Wall"
There are also several quotes posted around random areas of my room, like near my mirror:
My favorite short quote on there is:
"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it" --Thomas Jefferson My favorite long quote on there is:
"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter if you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better be running." --Taken from TheKirkReport.
I generally mention productive things I do, but I also need to check myself and analyze the things I haven't done:
--I haven't kept up with my online resume business: Resumite.com --My excuse? Charging $50 for a website where I must deal with individual people who know nothing about web pages would logistically kill my time/profit ratio. The person must email me their info, I must register DNS entries and deal with all the logistics of creating a page, then go back and forth contacting the person to check if they like the final product. I had plans to automate this process, but one site does not fit all. Even if I charged more money, the time required for each site would not fit in my schedule. This is a basically a long way of saying I was too damn lazy.
--I haven't carried through with my traffic eradication experiment. --My excuse? I really wanted to do this, even though it was not a profitable idea in the short term. I wanted to do it... 1.) Because I loathe traffic. 2.) The exposure it would get. This was a very good idea that would work perfectly in Austin if I could get around all the bureaucracy and federal laws involving public highways. The experience in navigating the government would be worth it alone. This experiment still fascinates me to this day...I'm not sure why I never carried through. I even got permission at several tall, nearby buildings to observe traffic patterns from a birds eye view. I still want to do this. I can see the headlines now, "College student defeats traffic"....or "College student causes worst traffic jam in Austin history"
--I haven't kept up with FancyBlog.com --My excuse? I have no excuse for not adding one blog template a day to the site. I designed the page in a dynamic fashion, but it still requires a little work to make even small changes. I need to make the site into a blog-format, something I didn't want to do initially. I also wasn't into this idea that much. Once again, a drawn out excuse for laziness.
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These ideas haven't failed yet. They simply have not been carried through, which in my opinion is WORSE than having them fail.
Assessment:
Resumite.com - I probably will not fully carry through with Resumite.com in the near future. FancyBlog.com - I want to make this extremely easy to update so it will only take me around 2-3 minutes per day to update. Still in progress. Traffic Experiment - I've always wanted to do this. This project could literally erase the completely unnecessary traffic on I-35 near Downtown Austin, a stretch of road I must travel every single day. Still in progress.
When you can't have something, you want it more. This fact of human nature can be exploited to save you money.
Personal Example: Despite having built up a nice amount of cash from several businesses in my early college years, I would subconsciously deprive myself of money, making me "virtually broke" so I didn't spend too much money.
I did this by just pretending I didn't have any money in the bank. Unfortunately this method worked a little too well. I would only spend about $60 a month on entertainment, not a lot for a socially active college student.
Person: You're your own boss? That's awesome...it must be nice not to work for anyone.
Long story short with lots of important details left out:
Once in a while we all just "HAVE to Have" something. I do this mainly with electronic stuff, and generally it works out well and I'm happy with the purchase.
College courses are extremely expensive, you have to battle to sign up for them.....yet unlike other expensive stuff, no one guards the classes.
Since 8th grade I've played the guitar, but I've never LEARNED the guitar. After a few months of basic lessons I could pick up songs from guitar tabs on the internet, but all the theory behind it was skipped over.
I generally mention productive things I do, but I also need to check myself and analyze the things I haven't done:
When you can't have something, you want it more. This fact of human nature can be exploited to save you money.