Month: June 2007

Time For A Vacation

Time For A Vacation + Announcement

This weekend I am going to take some time off and fly to San Diego to hang out with my family. I am originally from Washington state, but my grandparents live in San Diego, so we have vacationed there ever since I have been little. Now that I live in Arizona, the flight to San Diego is only an hour compared to the 3-hour flight from Seattle.

My parents still live in Washington, so San Diego is a good meeting point for us. I haven’t taken a vacation or seen my family in about five months so this will be a nice break.

I am not sure how many people have used the WordPress Post Timestamp feature, but I am setting this post to go live about the same time that my plane takes off. The cool thing about the Timestamp feature is that if you ever go on vacation, you can post-date articles so they will still go live even if you are away from the blog. It’s pretty cool and I recommend you try it sometime.

June Goals

Now that we are almost done with June, have you accomplished the goals you set earlier this month? One of my goals was to hit 400 RSS subscribers. I was at 300 at the beginning of the month. I am happy to say that I have met that goal.

Another one of my goals was to develop 500 landing page web sites. We ended up changing out game plan on that so now our goal is to develop these web sites for quality instead of quantity. This will be a much more profitable business plan.

General Announcement

I have an announcement I have been meaning to share with you for awhile, but I think I will just go ahead and say it now: I have been seriously considering starting a podcast over the past month. I am happy to announce that next month, my biz partner, Josh and I will start a weekly radio podcast.

The podcasts will be 7-10 minutes long. We will use it to talk about our thoughts, feelings, successes, failures, and progress as young entrepreneurs. Another very general topic we will talk a lot about is the power of using your blog as a marketing tool for yourself and your business. Are there any other particular topics you would like us talk about?

I have always believed in doing whatever it takes to stand out from the crowd. It is getting more and more common that people have blogs, but there is still a very small number of bloggers that use audio or video to further engage their readers. Podcasting seems like a great way to stand out from the crowd. Eventually, I would also like to have a weekly video cast, sort of like what Rick Uyesugi of Bento Box Review does.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

The Right Friends Make the Difference

You Are Who You Surround Yourself With

Everyone aspires to be successful and live a better-than-average life. Unfortunately, not everyone actually follows through with their aspirations. Just like there are many paths to success, there are also many complexities which determine how successful we become. One aspect that I have talked a lot about is goal setting. Another important and determining factor of success is who we choose to associate with.

Are Your Friends Helping Or Hindering Your Success?

Since I’ve been a little kid, I have had big aspirations. I have also always wanted to take my friends along with me on my journey to success although I never considered whether they were having a positive or negative effect on my goals until recently.

Who we choose to surround ourselves with can have an enormous impact on who we become and how we live our lives. I am not talking about just from a business sense either – the right people can have a tremendous impact on your life in every way.

Before I moved to Arizona, about a year ago, I was doing a lot of partying and hanging out with people who weren’t helping me reach my goals. Basically, I used to surround myself with people on the sole basis of if they were “fun” to hang out with. When I moved to Arizona, I had the chance to start fresh. I now only hang out with my best friends (and luckily, business partners) Matt and Josh.

A Lot Can Be Accomplished In A Short Time

Many people who know me probably would say I am a “hard worker.” The fact is I haven’t always been a hard worker. In actuality, only since I’ve started my blog have I started to see any bit of success at all. By surrounding myself with like-minded and similarly focused people, I have been able to make incredible progress, both personally and through our businesses.

When all of your influences are motivating and positive, you will be amazed how much energy you have to work hard to be successful. Surround yourself with the right people and a lot can be accomplished in a short amount of time.

Pain Before Pleasure?

Most people around my age (early-twenties) spend a lot of time socializing and not otherwise using their time wisely. Once I started hanging around the right people, I realized that this is not how I wanted to live my life. I would rather sacrifice “fun” now by working hard now and be able to have the “fun” later. This is effectively known as living “pain before pleasure,” a saying that my best friend Josh swears by.

I think he is right. I know from personal experience – it’s easy to get caught up in a highly social and non-productive lifestyle. I chose to let go of relationships that did not better me as a person. Since then, I have been able to accomplish goals I would have never originally considered possible.

Surround Yourself With Similarly Passionate and Motivated People

There are many benefits to blogging, but one of the best is being able to surround yourself with like-minded people. There is a lot of power in talking regularly to passionate and motivated people. I have met a lot of great people through my blog who I chat with quite a bit including:

All of those people have been a great source of support and encouragement. They are all people I would have not known otherwise if I hadn’t been blogging.

Align Yourself With The Right People

My best friend and business partner Josh also recently touched on this subject in a post entitled You Are Who You Hang Around. Josh says:

The concept of surrounding yourself with great people in a business sense mirrors the lesson my parents taught me about friends. You will hear this concept mentioned often from successful business persons and leaders.

Surrounding yourself with the right people should be key for everyone, but it becomes especially crucial in the business world. Networking and associating with established business people who have experience can provide far more education than sitting inside a classroom. I have learned an incredible amount about business proceedings from one of my new business partners, Steve. One of the ways you’ll know if someone is the right person is when you find yourself challenged, growing and learning more because of that relationship.

Conclusion

Who Said That

As I said earlier, there are an unlimited number of paths to success and also unlimited complexities in becoming successful. I think it is very important to be constantly aware of some of the bigger aspects including goat setting and surrounding yourself with the right people. The right people are important not just from a business sense, but also from a personal one.

Have you guys had particular friends who have changed the way you live? A special business partner who somehow made it all happen? Write back and tell me about it.

Powerful Posts – June 24, 2007

Powerful Posts - June 24, 2007

Betshop Boy – Personalize Your Blog Posts – Add a Signature

iFFECT.net – Contrast and Readability

A Tentative Personal Finance Blog – 9 Questions To Ask A Financial Planner

Organized Mashup – Blogging for Business

Patrick Lee – Diversify your goals

Create Business Growth – If you are going to blog, do it with integrity

Smart Wealthy Rich – Brainstorming Is Useless If You Can’t See The Big Picture

Suncoast Scribe – To Incorporate or Not To Incorporate

Powerful Post Award - June 24, 2007

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Valid Source Code Helps SEO?

I just read an interesting article at Search Engine Journal claiming valid source code helps spiders better index your site. I’ve known about the importance of validating, but I had no idea it affected how your site was indexed.

What is Validation?

According to the W3C:

Validation is a process of checking your documents against a formal Standard, such as those published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for HTML and XML-derived Web document types, or by the WapForum for WML, etc. It serves a similar purpose to spell checking and proofreading for grammar and syntax, but is much more precise and reliable than any of those processes because it is dealing with precisely-specified machine languages, not with nebulously-defined human natural language.

The article gives a few tips including:

  • Use W3C to make sure your site is viewable in major browsers, especially Firefox & Safari
  • Test your site on mobile browsers
  • Check for all errors in HTML coding and fix them when possible

If you are interested in learning about the benefits of valid source code and how it could help SEO, then read SEO & Importance of Valid Source Code.

Google: Behind the Screen

I just came across an interesting documentary on YouTube. It is 47 minutes long and is a behind the scenes look into Google. I haven’t watched it yet, but being the Google-lover I am, I am very excited to watch it. If you have the time, give it a look and tell me what you think.

Update – just finished watching the video. It contained a lot of stuff I already knew, but it was still an interesting look into the world of Google. Definitely worth the watch, especially for those who are curious about the mystique of Google.