Category Archives: Computers

Are you money motivated?

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, , , , ,

I have found that some of my best thoughts have been posted on other blogs. Over the last few days I have written a series of comments on another blog and I would like to share them here.

I had a very successful computer business. I was working 80 hours a week, and it was my whole life. It was not so fun. I wanted much more with my life, so I started to replace myself. I first started by finding people who could do what I did the same or better. This let my focus on other things. I soon took this too far, spending only 20 or so hours a week working on this business, the rest of the time doing other things and working at my church. I also started a few more businesses on the side. Everything was good, then I really started taking it far, I decided that I liked to travel so I soon was spending weeks at a time away, they could still call me but that was about it.

I had put systems in place, the only problem was that I did not put systems to watch the people managing the systems. My flaw was that I thought everyone was like me…honest and money motivated. So I put in place a system where an honest person could make a lot of money by doing fun work that helped people. The problem I found was that most people are NOT money motivated, when they have enough money they stop working, and second I found a few too many people who were not honest. Due to people not being honest and taking my customers and my assets and also due to lazy people who sat on the payroll I lost about 400k in a matter of 2 years. Much of this time I was away, traveling while managers said it was all going perfect, but they were the main crooks.

Finally I took on a partner, he bailed us out financially. Scaled back the business and made it manageable. The damage had been done, and we shut down our retail operations in Nov of 2007. We still try to sell online, but very little comes from that.

I still think that the idea of systems works, and my goal was always to be able to travel, and leave it to people, but the problem has always been the people. In my years I have employed at least 100 people, some were great and some took me for thousands, I just wish I could know in advance who is who.

Then some people asked me questions…here was my answer.

First when I mean money motivated, I mean people that want to earn big money. Most people are fear motivated, they have the fear of not paying the bills, and not having food, and not having a safe place to live BUT once those fears are gone (Once they earn enough money so that they don’t have to worry) very few people that I know will continue to do what it takes to make higher levels of income. This is why 80%+ of people have crappy jobs and are not really striving to do better.

You second question was, what would I do different. Well FIRST off I would have got out of the computer industry back in 2003 or so when it became super price competitive, and there was no margin or market. I also would not have borrowed the 300k+ that I did to keep my company alive, I would have just let it die and go start something else. But if I had to keep the company I would have had more time mentoring the employees. I would have spent more time figuring out who was good and who was bad and got rid of the bad people. I would have been much quicker to fire people, and slower to hire them.

I also would have spent a lot less money on print advertising and spent a lot more money paying people to make phone calls and go door to door. Our return for that was at least 20 times higher than any print ad we ever did.

Our world is too complex and getting worse…please help.

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Many people have jobs, where your job is to make something better.  In order to keep your job you need to show results.  Now a problem happens, many companies make their product just about as good as it can get.  In the real world of products they just move on to the next thing, but in software they keep adding features well beyond what is useful.

There are many examples of this. Winamp was perfect 8 years ago, it played music well, it had good skins and an equalizer.  Then they started adding stuff, and adding and adding.  They put in a video player, but it sucks.  They put in a browser, what is the point in that?  Adobe Acrobat is a program that never really worked well.  And every update just makes it slower.  There are third party ones that are much faster and better.  There are many other examples.

So companies that make programs have figured out that most people don’t need their updates, but if people don’t get their updates they can’t push future changes on them, that may include more advertising, or toolbars on your browser, and these companies love to do that.  So they have made their programs “phone home” each time they load, and if the company decided they want to send an update they will do so.  This makes these programs slower, and many of them gripe if you are not online when you load the software.  At least 20 programs I know of now try to push the Yahoo toolbar on their customers each time you update and unless you are very careful and unselect a box hidden somewhere you get it.  And it is hard to remove and almost totally useless.  There is really a battle going on for your attention, and these companies are trying more and more intrusive things to make you use their software, even though most of it is free.  The other day I noticed that if you update java, it tries to install download and install open office, a almost 180MB download.  Java is just a programming language, why should they push an entire office suite on users.  Most users are not smart enough to catch this stuff, then they call me when they see stuff they don’t understand, and these calls are increasing.  (As a note I love open office, I suggest it to many people and install it on all systems we sell.)

Now in the world of software this is a minor annoyance. You can run older versions, or usually disable all updates. But this is also done in many other areas, it is human nature that once something is very good you will keep changing it, even if the change is bad, simply to look like you are doing something.  One area where this is VERY costly and actually dangerous is in the area of Government.  The government keeps adding rules, and regulations in areas where none really is needed.  Many people running for office brag about the number of bills they introduced, and the number of laws they passed.  All of this makes life more complex.  Do we really need such a complex tax system that you have to call an expert for help and even the experts don’t know half the time.  Do we really need over 20,000 classifications for imported items.  Do we really need to have so many regulations on hiring employees, increasing complexity and costs so much that companies get fed up with it and simply hire people in other nations.  Should it really take over a year for a citizen to bring his wife to the US legally?  Do we really need the government to tell us what food is safe, to tell us that we need to give our babies over 20 shots, many of which cause more harm than good?  Should it be so complex to get a Federal grant that Matthew Lesko has become famous for his awesome 3000+ page book with over 15,000 DIFFERENT programs listed (BTW read his blog).  Do we really need a government with 1000’s of different divisions?

This has cost our country a huge price.  Our power has allowed us to survive for a while but now a crisis is coming. It is so hard to appease the government regulations that no nuclear power plant or oil refinery has been built here in over 30 years.  Most factories are built overseas simply because lack of regulations make them much more profitable.  Why would you want to build you widget here, and deal with the EPA the IRS and OSHA when you can built it overseas and import it for less.  This is why our balance of trade is so bad, this is why are money is flowing out of this country and we are all in debt, as a nation we are living well beyond our means.  This has been a problem for many years, but just recently it has gotten so bad that people have stopped lending to us, whole nations are writing down our debt, and this is causing problems for millions of Americans.  This is a problem, created by our own government decades ago, the symptoms were hidden for years, the official government report showed almost no inflation from 1997 until 2005 while the average person saw huge inflation.  Now it is all catching up, and millions of people are SHOCKED by it.  It will ruin the lives of millions, it will also improve the lives of millions.  I have written many times about this subject, see here or here.

Anyway this was suppose to be a simple post about how everything is getting more complex simply because people want to keep their job and have nothing better to do.  Please comment on what you think about all of this.

OK, I admit it, I was wrong. My OS Choice.

Business, Computers, concepts, Marketing, , , ,

As most of you know my main business is Emerald Computers, a computer company, where I sell computers and give advise.  Many people look to me as their computer expert.

Well for the first year of Vista being out I was negative on it, right when vista came out I was in my Ubuntu phase.  I was trying to use linux as much as I could to see if it really could replace everything that I did.  Because of this I did not personally use Vista, I used it on the computers I was fixing but not on my main computer.

After 6 months of trying Ubuntu I decided that, for me, a power user there were too many things that just did not work yet.  There were MANY things that were much better, than the Microsoft world, but lack of support for my games, QuickBooks, Photoshop and yahoo chat with webcam were the things I could no longer live without.  I went back to XP, and I was happy.  Well in late April XP crashed on me for the 3rd time.  I needed to reload so I decided to take a gamble and install vista.  I figured my computer is VERY fast so even if vista is crappy slow it will still not be that bad.  I have used vista on about 50 or so customers computers, and mostly disliked it due to the fact that most things were moved around.

Well vista loaded, it did it faster than XP, and almost all of my hardware was detected.  It was great.  Next I loaded my software, and I load a lot of things, I have checklist of about 30 things that I load on every new computer.  Almost everything I had worked right away, the ones that did not were fixed by upgrading to the newest version.  Even when you are an Administrator you don’t have real administrator rights, this is just like Ubuntu.  In Ubuntu you just put sudo in front of anything you want to run as an admin.  In Vista you do sort of the same, you just right click on it and click on “Run as Administrator”.  It was a very easy.  As a computer geek there were about 20-30 things I changed to make it easier to use, such as network settings, sharing settings, and all the programs I run.

So now I have been using it for a month, I wanted to wait a month before I wrote this blog so that I had a more expert opinion.  I run Vista SP1 Ultimate.  I have found it to be better than XP in almost every area, and in the areas it is not better it is exactly the same as XP.  I was surprised how many small programs are basically exactly the same as XP was.  I thought they would rework everything, but there are major things the left the same, even though the XP version was bad (Such as how fonts are loaded,

Now many people have said that Vista is slower.  I have seen many customers that have 4-5 year old computers and they load vista and YES it is slower.  My computer is 3 years old but it was a top of the line computer when it was built and it is still faster than 90% of the computers our company makes, it is a 4.9 on Vistas performance scale of 1-5.  So on my computer it runs great, it is MUCH faster than XP, and almost as fast as Ubuntu.

So if you have at least 1GB of ram and a Dual Core CPU Vista is great for you.  If you have a single core CPU or 512MB of RAM stick with XP.  Basically if your computer is over 2 years old and you want vista just get a new computer.  I can help you with that if you leave a comment, I can tell you want you need for your usage model.

So my OS of choice is now Vista.  It runs all the stuff I need and is fast.  There are many good ideas and features in Ubuntu that Vista could easily put in.  I don’t agree with some of the philosophy behind Vista, about making closed source drivers, and pushing towards trusted computing, for this reason I hope Ubuntu will soon be able to run, with ease, all of the things I need, and then I hope it starts to gain popularity.  Until then I will use Vista, or the next thing that MS creates.

OK, Punish me, I have been bad.

Computers

I have been working on many things in the last few weeks.  I also had a few advances and setbacks in my goals.  Because of this I have gotten behind on my blog.  I am sorry to all of my readers, I was glad to notice that my readership levels went up while I was not writing.  Mostly due to searches.  Well I have a lot to write about and I will try to catch up a bit in the next few days.

Awesome laptop deals, make your business more productive.

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A computer is one of the most important tool that any small business has.  Many business are stuck with old computers, they simply don’t realize how much better new computers are.  For many people a laptop is the computer that best fits what they do.  I have found a few good deals on laptops and we are selling them.  If you need a laptop download this PDF file to read all about them and order.

Even if you don’t get one from me, if your computer is more than 3 years old please upgrade, you will be surprised how much better they are, how low priced they are and how much more efficient you will be.

What you need to get set up for a successful MLM business

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This is the second article in my series on the MLM concept. Here is the first one with links to the rest.

I am going to define success as a business that is large enough to replace your entire normal income and also make a large positive change on your lifestyle. To be successful you first need to have a success mindset. You need to know how to make sales, how to make presentations and you need a team

For this blog I am going to assume that you have all of this in place and it is time to get started. Here is what else you need to get started quickly. These are the tools that I use.

Computer: You MLM is probably online, and you need to keep track of your customers and use your computer for marketing. (If you need a good deal on a computer go to Emerald Computers)
An office: You need a place where you go to work. This can be in your house or outside. It should be easy to bring potential customers there to talk with. I like to have a desktop as my main computer because you can use it longer with less fatigue. A laptop is also very useful.

Ok those are obvious, as should be having a good vehicle and an email account.

Now let me get a bit deeper, on what you need. I will assume that you are building an online business because most MLMs now are mostly online.

First you need your own domain name. You company has a web page and a domain name, but they control that. You need your own, something that is good for what you do, easy to spell, easy to remember. You then will get an email address on your domain. Never run a business using the email address from your ISP or one of those free sites like yahoo, msn or gmail, it really looks bad to many people. I use GoDaddy for my domains, it is cheap, had good support and works well.

Next you will want software to track your contacts. We use a program called ACT. With this program you enter in all the information about the people you are contacting. It them allows you to keep notes about them, update the info when you are on the phone, and most importantly it reminds you of the times you need to follow-up with these people. I also use a Palm Pilot to take all of this info and make it mobile, so that I can access and update it on the road.

Next you will want an auto-responder to manage your emails. What this does is track all of your contacts that wanted to be added to your various mailing lists. You also can preset automatic mailings, and send mass broadcasts to your prospects. There is much more you can do with it. I use a company called GetResponse and for the $150 a year I pay I get unlimited usage and it is well worth it.

Next you need your own website, you can make a simple site that you control. You should have a site for your prospects to visit. Another for your customers to visit and yet another for your team to visit. You need to learn about making a squeeze page, a way to extract data from your customer to feed to your auto-responder. I use a company called PrecisionWeb for my hosting. They offer much more than others for a great price. Check out the main Capital Active site for a great example of a basic page.

Next you should join networking websites like linkedin, Myspace, YouTube and make sites here for your business. You also can find many people who may be interested in your products.

Next it helps to have a blog, it is great way to establish yourself as an expert, as well as get a following of people finding out about you. It also really helps get you on top of the search engine results. I use wordpress because they are free, easy to use, fast and give you a ton links.

I found a lady who seems to have done everything PERFECT. I don’t know her, I just found her site from her blog today. She has her own great domain wealthcreatorsinc.com, and a nice blog. But you may not notice the two most important things she did, she made her page a squeeze page, where you must give her your information to go on. And second she DID NOT mention the name of her MLM this keeps you courious and willing to go on, and it lets her advertise without worrying about the rules of her company.

Next you need to create business cards with YOUR business name on it. I would suggest NOT to use business cards with the name of your MLM on it, they limit your advertising, and they are less flexible when you are marketing. Now carry many of these cards with you wherever you go. I hand out over 80 cards per week on average. More important than getting your card out is getting the cards of other people. I usually flip them over and write on the back details of what we talked about so I can remember.

I also often print up fliers with an upcoming event on it, as well as info about my website. Using this you can get a few more people a month to join your team.

You now need professional clothes. Depending on where you live you will have a different dress code. For Arizona pants and a nice button up shirt is good for most meetings. For the east coast you should wear a suit most of the time. No matter what, you need to have a suit for special events.

When I leave my house, I always have my Palm Pilot, my wallet with at least 20 business cards, my keys, my cell phone, an ink pen, a comb for my hair and usually I have my green laser pointer because it comes in handy all the time.

Well I hope this helps you be more successful.

Safari on windows!

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Wow, for once I am shocked and impressed by something in this industry. Mac just released Safari for Windows today. (Click here to get it) I was not keeping track and did not know it was coming, but shortly after midnight it came on saying that I could get it. I quickly installed it, and tested it out on my PC. The graphics look about the same but slightly better. I think they up the color setting on everything, and I like it. It seems to load as fast or faster. I will have to learn how to make some changes to it that I like to have but I will give it a good try.

This is a good idea that was a decade in the making. When you use it you feel like you are using a mac. I am a PC guy but I do see how this will get many new customers for Mac. I already see their market share increasing due to the tragic and predictable failure of Microsoft Vista. (Click here to see a survey of how big a failure vista really is)

I also downloaded FireFox on the day it came out, it was not so great at first but as IE got worse FireFox got better. For most of 2007 I used Ubuntu as my OS but I finally had to break down and go back to Windows on my main computer, but I did not go back to IE. I miss many things about Ubuntu, it is a much better OS but there are a few programs I need that simply don’t exist yet in the Linux world.

Thanks mac for raising the bar. I hope Microsoft either steps up or fades away soon.