Seth Godin has compiled a free eBook titled “What Matters Now” with a collection of ideas from over 70 “big thinkers” about the world in 2010.

You can download the eBook free directly by clicking the button below. 

Here are a few of my favourite ideas, thoughts or quotes from the book.

Seth Godin – This year, you’ll certainly find that the more you give the more you get.

Chris Meyer writes about the evolution of capitalism but does so by comparing business to Darwin’s finches of the Galapagos Islands. Darwin observed that the finch’s beaks would evolve and change shape to match the form of the flowers which provided their food.

Chris suggests that businesses will need to evolve as capitalism changes in our new economy. Chris suggests that the game is changing and businesses in  developed countries will need evolve their beaks and learn the new rules of the game.

Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell’s story on “Bacon Salt” and how it’s our job to find the “one percenters.” The 1% of people deep in the trenches of a niche who become the roots of word of mouth marketing.  Many are looking for the masses right out of the gate. Focus on finding the one percent first and allow them to get the roots buried deep into the soil.

William Taylor suggests that in the past businesses found a feeling of comfort by staying in the middle of the road and today the middle of the road is the most unsafe place to be. Where is your business?

John Wood – “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”

Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos.com) – Everything Tony learned about business he learned from Poker. Here’s an example: The guy who never loses a hand is not the guy who makes the most money in the long run.

Guy Kawasaki on Evangelism. Guy’s message is usually pretty consistent. He is constantly hammering home what it takes to be successful. You think he’s trying to tell us something?

Dave Balter on “Dumb”

For example,

• Putting a college Yearbook online was considered dumb..
• Limiting small micro updates on the web to 140 characters was considered dumb.

“Recognize that your dumb idea may be tomorrow’s huge breakthrough.”

I remember when the iPod was first announced. It was considered “dumb.” Why would anyone want to carry all their music on a digital pocket device?

Look at the hilarious comments (especially the last one) left on CNET”s very first article about the iPod being introduced

“Naw …. wont take off”
“This will be the last thing from Apple ever, they’ll never be successful with this.”
“apple is going to go bankrupt with this new mp3 player thing. mp3s are going to be obsolete within the next couple years anyway”
“This is crazy. Next thing we know Apple will move all the Macs to Intel processors”

WOW. In case you don’t get why the last one is the funniest it’s because just a few years later Apple did switch to using the PC’s Intel Processor.

Gary Vaynerchuk and the “Thank You Economy.”

Gary is  right on the money and I’ve seen it in action. Two years ago if you made a video, posted an online petition and tweeted about Frito Lays not delivering enough Fritos to your restaurant, nobody cared.

Today, Frito’s headquarters calls you up and takes care of the situation personally. It’s an amazing world and the tools are here. How are you using them?

My father-in-law over at Quoteflections has done three awesome posts of his favorite quotes from the book. Check them out as well. #1 , #2 , #3

~Noah

Yesterday I mentioned how I was beginning a small experiment on outsourcing. As I had said in my first post, I’ve been outsourcing a large majority of my work for years but I’ve been doing it privately through sites like Rentacoder.com and elance.com

After reading the 4-Hour Work Week, remember I mentioned I contacted the two companies that Timothy Ferriss mentions in his book, Brickwork and GetFriday.com
I still haven’t heard back from GetFriday in three days.

Brickwork did reply after a few hours. Actually, the CEO replied and said they were backlogged and it would be a while before they could look at my requests. I replied back and said “I’m a little pressed and need someone ASAP” Well, the CEO replied again and said they would have someone contact me today or tomorrow.

Within 5 minutes I did get a reply from a Brickwork executive asking me to meet and discuss exactly what I’m looking for. We could do this via skype at my convenience! What a world we live in…. I’ll follow up with more on brickwork after this.

I was still in a bind for some tasks I was looking to accomplish before my Northern Ontario vacation next week so I tried going to some authority forums and posting my jobs and said I’m looking to hire someone. I got hundreds of replies but one stood out to me, a guy named David messaged me.  Not only did he say he could do the work, but he provided about 15 links to various discussions on the site where he had helped people and they gave him great testimonials.

I decided to take a chance with Dave or David. Dave got on MSN and at first I noticed his English was good but not perfect. But without asking anything in particular we carried on. I gave him the tasks. The task was something that had been bugging me for three years. When I first got into working online I started by selling web hosting, then I needed my own hosting for my own sites and so on……

For 3 Years, I’ve been paying small bills at about 5 different companies… One for $89.95, another for $69.95, two at $34.95 and another at $9.95… These are MONTHLY fees! On top of that, over the past year I got fed up with using poor hosting that I now rent a handful of truly dedicated servers from liquidweb in Michigan and they are awesome! The problem was, to not lose all my hosting/sites (which equal my pay-day), everything would need to be transferred to the new servers. This is an easy task when you’ve got basic HTML. But it gets a LOT harder when you’ve got forums, database driven sites etc…

Anyways, I told David the predicament and how I wanted to bring a few hundred (yes hundred) websites onto the dedicated servers. I gave David the details and away he went.

An hour later David messaged me… First VPS all accounts backed up, restoring now.
An hour after that… All accounts restored, please check for errors. I did a brief check and everything was perfect.

A few hours later… Second server, all accounts backed up and restoring now.
An hour after that….All accounts restored.

This went on for a few hours. David started at around 12:00 Noon and by 8:00 PM . He was done! Not just done, it was perfect! In fact, David went on to help with some config issues, answered a bunch of other questions, took care of a few tasks and all this before requesting a payment!

I asked David what I owed. Let’s just say the price was more than reasonable and with that, David in one day saved me about $335 US Dollars Per Month which I had been paying for about 2 years.

I finally got around to asking David where he’s from. He said, “India.” I asked David if he worked for himself or a company. He said he worked for CliffSupport.com.

Anyways, David noticed another job I had posted and mentioned he and cliffsupport.com could handle this as well. He gave me a quote (again more than reasonable) and a list of references for companies in the US they were providing similar services for. I checked his references and they checked out. I’ve now hired David on a monthly basis to perform some tasks which used to take up a good chunk of my time.

Notice how I’ve been able to write two blog posts in two days!! What tasks are costing you time & money, which could be outsourced, to a company like cliffsupport.com, brickwork.com or getfriday.com? Don’t delay any more!

Remember, I paid $335 bucks per month for a job that took ONE day to get done!
Break out your calculator and do the math $335 X 24 = $8040 Bucks!

I got back to the cottage and dove right into it. I immediately became a big fan. It seemed to be a mirror image of my career minus all the crazy and far more exciting & eccentric things Timothy Ferriss is doing. The parts about Tim’s family or friends asking, “what do you do for a living?” or “where do you work?” really echoed to me.

Tim always had trouble explaining how and why he made an income online. He struggled to truly explain to people who while they were working 9-5 (plus overtime), he was working only 4 hours per week. I have this problem too. Day in and day out, I’m asked this question. Usually, I just say I do some marketing for people online. Most of the time this does leave them confused and curious.

I know my grandparents used to say “as long as Noah isn’t doing anything illegal!” So I immediately felt where Tim was coming from. Usually when he explained he earned his income online, they immediately just assumed things like “pornography.” Tim became eventually just too frustrated with answering this question he now answers, “I’m a drug dealer.”

In a way, there is a level or mystery with earning your entire income online. I mean, people see you’re not struggling and they are. People see you going on vacation and they aren’t. I can understand it too. If I had a friend who was me, I’d be intrigued. In a way, I believe people essentially want a piece of the pie! That’s fine too. But don’t beat around the bush!

Anyways…back to the topic on hand. Another part of Tim’s book I enjoyed was on how he outsourced so much of his work to Brickwork and GetFriday (He said “Your Man In India” in the book ~ he meant their outsourcing company getfriday.com) I was intrigued because much of my success has been largely due to outsourcing tasks I couldn’t normally do. I usually just use rentacoder.com. The problem here is you get sometimes hundreds of “bids” for your posted job. The bidders can be from anywhere in the world, some are brand new, poor English, or they didn’t even read your request, they are just replying to ever single posted job! In a way, this becomes very tiresome to go through.

So after reading The 4 Hour Work Week I thought I’d try Brickwork and/or GetFriday. I submitted my quote requests and am now waiting. I just received a message from Brickwork. Because of the book’s popularity, they are now SWAMPED! I did get a message from Vivek Kulkari the CEO of Brickwork. The email explained it would be a week before they get back to me. The email read…

“We apologize for this delay, but due to an unexpected increase in business, all our resources have been working overtime to meet our client demands. We are currently focusing on ramping up our team size, to minimize such delays and inconveniences caused to our prospective clients.”

I guess they didn’t know they were going to be the main focus of a New York Times Best Seller!!!

Imagine this company in India, overwhelmed to the point they will need to outsource to someone else. Maybe America….

As for GetFriday.com, I haven’t received a response yet but I did manage to find their company blog. The blog explained how due to the book, they are now taking up to 28 days to respond, work out details and begin performing tasks!!!! This same task took just 24-48 hours a few weeks ago.

We’ll see where I get. I’m going to investigate a few other companies. I think people may be focusing on these two companies primarily because Tim Ferriss mentions them as the companies he uses. Thus, people believe these are trusted and the only companies out there.

Over the next 6 weeks, I’ll be focusing on outsourcing and posting my experiences here.
We’ll also see if we can get some interesting tasks handled by them….

Man, it creeped me out. We ended up having a huge discussion about the comment on my own site and in the end, I decided it wasn’t worth much more than a discussion. Getting really fired up about it only creates more confrontation and problems to which would end up with the thread being deleted (it was anyways). The arguments are also bad for Internet Marketers on a whole.

For the guy who said it, he literally wiped out a few hundred customers in one full swoop.

Now, I’m a reader of everything Dan Kennedy has published and to a large extent he teaches and stresses “what matters are results.” I’ve heard him say this numerous times. Leave branding to the big companies. What you want is results. Plain and simple. But he places this in the context of your marketing efforts and asking the question “Did you profit or not?” He also places this in the context of direct mail advertising.

When it comes to newsletter/site/member management, I believe it’s a different story…

One of the things I’ve always strived to do, is get to know my members. You know what you find with 99% of your members. You’ll find these are real humans with real problems, real stresses, real dreams and real desires. They aren’t just atm machines that can be tapped, they aren’t oil reserves to be drilled and sucked of every last drop. I can just imagine (after seeing the latest transformer movie) the way some marketers see this. Picture an ATM machine, it transforms into your customer, dispenses cash and then transforms back into a person. This isn’t the way to treat your customers, clients or members.

Granted, we all have customers that are like aliens, but in the end they are all human.

I’ve learned some amazing things about members, clients and newsletter subscribers! This especially applies to the Internet Marketing industry. We’ve got doctors making 100k a year, looking to get out of the profession and into IM. Teachers, Professors, University Students….

Then we’ve got construction workers, waitresses and waiters, or people working 10-12 hour days at brutal jobs…

But then we’ve also got another group. We’ve got people who are burdened with illness. We’ve got people here with disabilities, people with problems that many of us couldn’t even fathom. These are people who are struggling and putting their faith into you.

And you know what the beauty is with Internet Marketing? There is room for every single one of these people to literally make a living online. In fact, there is room for every one of these people to make a living they couldn’t have dreamed of in those previous careers.

Anyways, I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer. Just something that was on my mind this morning after another discussion with another member.

One of my members said this yesterday and I thought it was quite fitting…

There is such beauty in the Internet Marketing industry that everyone should be able to go to work in swim shorts.

Treat your subscribers and members with respect and they will do the same for you. You’ll also make some great friends along the way.

Cheers folks have a great day!

A good friend and member of mine, Dane Morgan, has given away a stellar idea. He says, “how about a community where people can engage and discuss lyrics to music.” You can see a blurb from his post below or visit his site using the link at the bottom.

I think it’s a fantastic idea! I really do, let’s face it! We’ve got eBible discussions, wine wikis, etc etc..Bands like discussion areas where fans can discuss their music.

Bring this to a central location, monetize the site and I think you’ve got a great little business idea. He’s right though, this would need to be done right. It would need to function better than MySpace and be clean, easy to navigate and search for your fav. bands. In turn, this would put you in touch with possibly millions of other fans.

“But if you are looking for an idea for a new site to start as a small home business, you might want to give this a shot.The idea is simple. It’s a community based site in the full flavor of Web 2.0. You would want a membership script and give each user a profile page and a publishing page. Then the idea is to encourage conversations between the users with a little twist. They are supposed to post their comments to one another in song lyrics. I call the site concept songversations (and at the time of this writing songversations.com is unregistered).”

DaneMorgan.com

First, I got an invite to be an Ether Beta Tester. Ether is pretty cool. It’s a pay-per-call phone service where you can pay to call and actually speak to people on various topics. My topics are Google Adsense, Adwords and E-Commerce. The way it works is people will pay to call me for a certain length of time. During that time, I’ll answer questions, talk to the person and hopefully give sound advice.

Ether then takes a cut of my “cost-per-call.” They ask you to set your own fees. I set my time at $49.95 for a 15-minute phone call. I chose this price point for 2 reasons. First, I think that’s a good amount of time to quickly go through Adsense placement or look at your website and give you some helpful tips on how to improve things. We don’t need an hour. Secondly, if I give you even 1, 2, or 3 tips that you take into consideration and it boosts your Adsense income from .10 a day to $1.00 a day! Then you’ve made a wise investment!

I may try different price points and times in the future but for now I thought this would be a decent starting point. I’ve found various “experts” charging much, much, more. I was able to find one guy charging a few hundred for an hour of time. I guess if you could get totally sound advice that actually paid off, it would be a wise investment!

Anyways, if you’re interested in calling me to discuss your Adsense sites or E-Commerce efforts, all you need to do is click the “call-me” link in the right hand menu.

The other opportunity I’m trying out is Lulu.com
I read about Lulu.com is the most recent copy of Business 2.0. The idea is cool. Essentially, if you’ve written a book, you can instantly publish a paperback, hardcopy or digital copy for no cost. Lulu.com will store your book and when it’s ordered, they will bind, create and ship your book. You are paid about 85% of the cost at which you set. The other costs are provided to Lulu for shipping and binding costs. Pretty cool right?

I think so! There are others doing similar things but I find Lulu.com is way ahead of the rest of them. Lulu.com is essentially a self-publishing warehouse. You can become a published author in about 5 minutes (after you’ve written the content) I like the way it works especially for Digital Products. If you create an e-book and need another avenue to get it out there then Lulu.com is the answer. I’m tempted to order my own bound copy of my own book just to see the finished product.

I’m also excited since I have so many books, documents and reports that I plan to get up on Lulu.com in the coming days. I’ll share the links with you. You may be interested in purchasing.

[tags] lulu, ether, adsense, adwords, internet marketing, revenue, income, e-business, ebiz [/tags]

After all, over 90% of businesses fail so chances are if you’re reading this and pondering with the thought of starting your own business the statistics are in your favor that you will fail.

As I researched today’s post, I started with the best search query my brain could conjure up. The search term I came up with was “90% of businesses fail” The reason I chose this search query was because I had heard it so many times. You hear it from your friends when you tell them your ideas, your family members, your co-workers and, your current employers. They all do there best to reiterate to you that the statistics say you’re destined for failure.

So I hit submit,  and the almighty google gave me 50,700,000 results for “90% of businesses fail” in an astonishing .85 seconds. I quickly glanced at my first result. Sure enough, we find our first result referring us to a study that concludes the reason 90% of businesses fail is because of lack of knowledge and the skills required to properly run a business.

I believe this is utter nonsense, look around and I’m sure we can find some extremely dumb and non-intelligent people running extremely successful businesses. I don’t claim to be a genius or expert in anything. I only try my best and do whatever I can to achieve success.

There are plenty of other reasons why you shouldn’t start a business. Let me give you a few to make this article even more dismal. Don’t worry, that’s my sarcasm coming through! You’ll have to learn how to read me properly.

The other reasons why you shouldn’t start a business are listed below. I’ll comment on them after writing this list.

1. You have no money.
2. You aren’t creative.
3. You can’t think of a business to start.
4. You’re scared of failing.
5. You’re disorganized.
6. You are in debt up to your knees. Related to post #1
7. Spouse won’t let you.
8. You’re too busy.

Having no money is a very common reason why many people shouldn’t start a business. After all, I’ll be the first to tell you that if you have thousands of dollars in credit card debt or other bad debs (mortgages are good debt) than these may actually truly be good reasons NOT to start a business at this moment. And if you aren’t creative, or you can’t even think of a business to start then really, what’s the point? Besides the mess in your office, the piled up credit card bills, your nagging wife,  your 9-5 job, and the mounting self doubt what else could possibly be a reason not to start a business?

Oh yeah! I almost forgot, remember what we started with? Over 90% of businesses fail! So the stats say you’re screwed. What’s the point?

Many other writers, friends, family, co-workers and current employers would end the article right here. Your chances of success are pretty much none, zip, nada, goodbye. So why continue with this post?

Well because, I have something to tell you…. They are all wrong.

IN FACT, Your odds of becoming successful on your own terms are actually much better than you think. I’m not kidding. Sure things may be tough, but it’s more than possible to be wildly successful. Let me try and show you how.

Right off the bat, forget the 90% of businesses failing statistic.

Its garbage, its a sham, its hogwash, its jealously, but mostly its fear!

The majority of the times you hear this statement from other writers, friends, family, co-workers and current employers what you’re actually hearing is the sound of fear. I’m not kidding!

As funny as it sounds, most people including other writers, friends, family, co-workers and current employers are scared or jealous that you might actually make it! They are afraid that while you go on with a much greater chance of creating and controlling your own destiny, their own destiny will be created by an employer. So next time you are told the awful statistic when you tell someone you’re going to start your own business, look them strait in the eye and conjure up the biggest, saddest puppy dog eyes you can make and say “well I guess thats the chance I’ll have to take.”

Don’t break eye contact, be strong, and with your nose sniff like a dog. Then you’ll know what fear smells like. It’s their fear.

What about the rest of the reasons why you shouldn’t start your own business?

Well, they are all plausible and valid reasons. You may just have to rethink your strategy because they can all be overcome.

For example, if you have no money and are in debt up to your ears then it may not be wise to invest in a heavy capital intensive business from the gecko.

For example, if you’re heavily in debt but have a dream to start your own magazine, it may be wise to start online before investing 100k in a printing press. If you’re looking for the greatest opportunity for the lowest bang for your buck then I suggest starting a web business. This could be as simple as selling junk on eBay. In fact, if you haven’t tried selling on eBay you really should!

Just grab some junk from the garage, snap a photo and put it on eBay. I bet you’ll sell it. I’ve watched my father sell pieces of scrap metal. Yes, scrap metal. It’s hilarious and millions of people are making it huge every day on eBay selling the most bizarre items.

Would if you aren’t creative and can’t think of a business to start? C’mon! This is just a lame excuse! Start anything then!

We ALL have something we like. Start a blog about Gardening if you love gardening, put some Google Adsense on there and just write! Don’t worry about Search Engine Optimization or traffic for a while! Just forget about it and write. I can almost guarantee you’ll start to see some clicks here and there.

Don’t get caught up in the hoopla of trying to make millions of your website the first week. Just write good content. If you build it, they will come. This has never been more true than on the web. Except you can’t just build a field, forget about it and expect them to come. You’ve got to make an extraordinary field! Surrond it with corn stalks, build stands, install a scoreboard, hire popcorn vendors, get the best dirt you can find, and make it  a little better every day.

If you’re totally disorganized, starting a business can be the perfect way to teach you organization skills. There are so many unique tools and websites out there these days to help with the basic functions of running a business! They can also help you stay very organized. Even if your desk is a mess, you’ll at least look organized to your customers.

If you run into the situation where your spouse won’t let you start a business, chances are your spouse feels that way for a reason. It’s not that he/she doesnt think you’re smart enough.

For example, you may be asking if you can quit your job and try and start a web business. This is the wrong approach. You need to start your  business in your spare time and spend some time nourishing it, learning and teaching your spouse about what you’re doing. Eventually, you’ll start to make money and soon that money will turn into more money and soon you’re spouse will see the advantages of you running your business full-time.

I never recommend leaving a job, (even though it sucks and you’re miserable) until you have a decent plan and have started your venture on your own time.
I hoped you enjoyed today’s article and it motivated you a bit and showed you all the reasons why you SHOULD start a business.

[tags] success, money, entrepreneur, motivation, blogs, business [/tags]

I have been considered an entrepreneur for many years now, I’ve launched various successful small businesses, created websites in a few hours and late sold them as solid profit-making machines for tens of thousands of dollars. I have a strategy of always looking to create various sources of income. I am quite young and for most of my working life, my own personal income has nearly doubled, tripled or quadrupled that in which I made working various jobs. The jobs that made me realize I was bound to be an entrepreneur included things like, paper boy, video store rental clerk, metal stamping  (HELL), brick cleaner (yes, I cleaned mortar off of used bricks), lawn cutter, snow shovel’er, waiter, innkeeper, university teaching assistant, research assistant, catering assistant, non-profit organization communications officer and I’m sure I’ll add to this list when I remember…

Now, I focus primarily on my own businesses and websites. I also place a very strong focus on helping others. I no longer work for anyone except my customers and myself. My goals are simple, to teach as many as I can how they too can make a substantial income online.

I do all this because I believe so strongly with what I said in the first paragraph. I used to work in an office and I lasted 8 months. I can’t imagine anyone has unhappily worked in a position for 10,20,30 years. I just can’t imagine it. Life is too short and these days, opportunities are abundant.

Finally, as my first post concludes which is also the “about me,” I will say this. I don’t ever profess to be a genius at anything or know some mysterious secret about building wealth online. I learned the way we all should, through hard work and many, many, many countless hours up until three or four in the morning striving just to make a dollar or two online. I do however know many things that I plan to share with members of this paid blog.

Anyways, this is NoahFleming.com I hope you like it.