Tag Archives: Business

Safari on windows!

Business, Computers, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

They are watching you, and keeping track of your wrongs (Unless you pay!)

Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What if an organization existed that kept a database on everyone. They would listen to whatever the general public says about other people, and they would record that information and save it in a database. Anyone can go and complain about anyone they like. The more people you meet the higher the chance you will have that someone will have a problem with you. Now what if they made that database available online, for anyone to search and look things up. Then they went a step farther and they would advertise on TV and on the radio the existence of their database, telling you that before you have a relationship with this other person you could look up what other people had to say about this person. They would also encourage you to report any complaints you have about others. You would be considered guilty of whatever action people have complained against you until you prove that you are innocent.

Of course they would not keep this database, and advertise for free, they would need to make money some how, so what if they let people become members of their organization, and a member would be allowed to ‘dispute’ anything in their own personal record and have it removed very easily. To be far they would have to establish a process for non members to dispute things, but of course these disputes would be given much lower priority. Also a member would be given a badge that they could show off the fact they were a paying member. If members paid a bit of extra money they even would be allowed to post this fact on their web page. The organization would advertise that you can only trust people that are members, even though membership is fairly meaningless, it only means you paid them off.

If such a thing existed would you be upset? Would you be outraged? Would you demand that the government do something about it? Would you see it as blackmail?

Well guess what, this organization DOES exist. It is called the Better Business Bureau and that have been doing exactly what I have described for almost 100 years. They pretend that they are there to protect people, that they keep detailed records on businesses but I have seen it first hand, that as soon as you pay them to become a member everything bad goes away with ease, and it is very hard to deal with them if you are not a member.

Also you have no idea what percent of people are unhappy with the company. Who is worse the small business with 10 customers and 5 of them complain or the large company with 10,000 customers where 50 complain? Well according to the BBB the larger one is worse. There are always crazy people who you can never resolve a problem with, we all know them, and companies are punished for having them as customers, even if only .1% of their customers have a bad experience they could have a horrible rating. The company across the way with 10% of their customer having problems pays the BBB off and gets away free. This is a horrable system.

So what can you do about this unfair, blackmail organization? As a customer do not trust them, do not use the BBB to handle your dispute, do not look up your vendors in their database and when you see someone who is saying they are a member, feel sorry for the delusion they live in. If you own a business or have influence in one please don’t become a member, do not give them money, and respond to complaints filed with them.

I am not mad at them, I have no problem with them personally, I just feel that such an organization should not be allowed to exist in our modern society. Maybe if they made some changes, and provided more information, including positive information it would be more useful, and also made it easier to dispute claims against you. But as of now there are many much better and more accurate information sources for those looking to find out about those they plan to do business with. Here are some examples of companies that many people consider to be horrible, but they have perfect ratings with the BBB because they pay, even though there are a huge number of complaints about them. Just read what some people had to say about these companies.
Frys Electronics: Vegas Midway auto team: Phoenix Best Buy (over 12000 complaints) ( I just love how most of the complains on these members are “Administratively closed” something only members can have done.)

Is having a budget really a good idea for you?

Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Money, , , , , , ,

I hear people all over the place talking about having a budget.   They say you have to plan how you will spend your money.  For wage earners who trade their time for money, and usually trade the same amount of time and thus earn the same money at a predictable level a budget sounds like a good idea.  BUT not everyone is like this, there are us entrepreneurs out there, people who trade effort or ideas for money.  If you are one of the 5% that really wants to be successful in life you need to follow a totally different set of rules, and listening to the people who are in the other mindset will only distract you and give you wrong ideas.

For this 5% a budget is silly. I don’t know how much gas I will use, or how much I may spend on eating out.  The thing is I hope I spend A LOT on gas because almost all of my driving is for business, and the more I drive then that must mean the more I made in sales that month.  The same goes for restaurants, I would love to take a lot of customers out to eat, each time I do I make about $1,000 on average.

So what are we to do in this position?  First FORGET the budgeting idea.  For the things you must buy, find the best deals and be frugal.  When deciding if you are going to do something don’t only look at the cost of the activity, like budget people do, look at the income opportunity.  In January we were planning on going to Vegas for 4 days for the CES convention, a few people questioned us if this was in the budget or not, of course it was not because we don’t have a budget, but going to this event made many changes in our business that have more than paid for the trip.

I read a blog today about a guy who suggests you cut your cable to basic to save the $200 or so per year it costs extra, and also to watch much less TV.  I agree with not watching mindless TV, but I can point to many times where I have seen something on TV that inspired me to do something different, and this action resulted in a large profit for our company.

So many people ignore the dollars, hanging there to be picked because they are so busy picking up the pennies on the floor.   The thing is that MANY people will spend 10 hours in a week, comparison shopping, looking for deals, going to 5 grocery stores to get the best deals but almost all of them spend NO TIME at all trying to find new ways to earn money.  One idea that can earn you money can be worth ALL the ideas you have to save money, yet 90% of the blogs out there on money are about how to save money.   This just shows you the wrong financial thinking that most people have.

Cheer up, the nation depends on it.

Business, Inspiration, Investment, Money, , , ,

We are not really in a recession or a depression…  What we are in is a crisis of consumer confidence.   Let me explain, when people think that things may be bad they stop spending and that thinking CAUSES things to be bad.  It is funny, over 70% of the people think the economy is in trouble but also over 70% of people said that they personally were doing as good or better than 2 years ago.

The reason they think this way is because they hear the stories from the media, the hear what is going on with their unlucky friends, and the belive the hype.  In reality most every measure of corporate profits is UP, and many other measures are also up.  The GDP will be up this year, exports are way up.  Things are looking up in many ways, so stop being so down, tune out the negative media and cheer up.  When you do this everything will get better, spending will go up, sales will go up and, yes, even housing prices will go up again.

Start today, go buy something.  If you are one of the 70% that are doing fine, then do your civic duty and shop, shop like you did two years ago.  If you want a computer go to Emerald Computers this month and get $50 off by using coupon code march50.

Anyway cheer up.  It will make you feel better, and help our economy grow.

The key to commercial success for Linux

Business, concepts, Investment, Marketing, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

You use a computer, and read blogs so you probably know a bit about computer and you probably know about Linux. Linux is great, robust and free OS. It runs almost all web servers and websites. Including google, wordpress and billions of others. Linux is very secure, robust, fast and hack proof. It makes great servers because servers are ran by experts. Without Linux the web would not exist as we know it.

Well for over a decade now they have been trying to make it popular for your desktop computer that you use every day as well. One of the best parts about Linux is that anyone with knowledge is free to change and customize it exactly how they see fit, and they have. Almost everything in Linux has at least 3 different programs that do the same thing, but they do it in different ways. People then pick and choose the different parts of Linux and combine them into a complete Operating System. They call this a distribution or distro. There are now 100’s of up to date distros, all with different ways of doing things and different followings. This has helped Linux in the past but in the world of mass merchandising it also has hurt Linux.

The problem is that when a company writes software to work on Linux they must assume things about how the computer is set up. Because there are 100’s of different ways to do this, and only a few million Linux users, they simply don’t bother. Companies that make drivers and hardware also don’t bother. The Linux people thus have to do all of it themselves. And, if they do it for one distro of Linux it probably will not work on many others. So the game makers, and the people who make the huge programs we need to function usually don’t bother making a Linux version. There is no Photoshop, QuickBooks, MSN or Yahoo chat with webcam, or robust video editing software in Linux because these are very complex and would usually be distro specific, and the userbase does not justify the cost.

The strength of Microsoft Windows was the fact that it was closed and controlled. People could not change the OS, all the rules from computer to computer were exactly the same. Because of this people could code for just ONE OS, that they knew would be supported and work for at least a decade. This is exactly what they did, 1000’s of companies started writing. Hardware makers could design one driver to work with the OS and everything was easy, because it was a standard platform, that was predictable. Windows was not the coolest, and it sure was not the most secure or robust, and they charged a huge price for it, but all of this was worth it because it was STANDARD. Nothing is more important than something being standard when it comes to business, and all the geeks need to learn this. McDonalds does not made the best burgers, but I have ate them in 5 different nations and they are all the same. When it is the same it is predictable, and you need that to get investors and make money flow. This is the main reason the Linux world still has less than 1% of desktop computers.

So now what? Well in a dream world someone with great power and clout would take all the best parts of Linux, get a ton of people behind him and release the ultimate distro of Linux. He would promise to not change it for at least 6 months and also promise that anything written for it will work for years on the newer versions. By creating a standard and unifying the Linux world programmers would start making software work on Linux and soon it would gain marketshare. It will be better and be free than windows, and soon takeover the world from the grasp of Microsoft.

Someone else, a tech billionaire named Mark Shuttleworth thought EXACTLY the same way, and he used his power and clout to do it. He calls it Ubuntu. He only release every 6 months, and he has static versions that are supported for two years or more. He then went much farther, he made a community around it. They have great free tech support with forums and chat. As well has many other great features and designs.  My good friend Matthew Helmke is one of the leading Ubuntu experts and forum leaders and inspired me to try it out.

This OS has the chance to become huge. For over a year now Linux has been the top distro, and it growing faster than the rest of the Linux world put together. The standard it presents has already encouraged many companies to start writing software for Linux. Many large games are not tested on Ubuntu. If you use Linux, switch to Ubuntu, for the sake of the Linux world. Raising a unified standard is the only hope that Linux has at commercial success.

I hope this explanation of a very tech thing from a business perspective educated both the techs and the business people who usually don’t understand each other.

I will offer much more of this sort of knowledge in the future so be sure to subscribe to this blog!.

Jason Dragon.

Try Try and Try Again until you get success.

Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, , , , , ,

I am always reminded of people who failed many times in their life, they lost money, houses and much more so that they could follow their passion. They would come up with new ideas and each seemed good but people were just not ready, or the implementation would not be correct and idea after idea would fail.  But they would keep trying, and one day an idea would hit and overnight they would become millionaires.

Nemo SpinnerI heard the story of one such inventor/ entrepreneur last night. He did everything from crazy submarines, to hovercraft to kids toys.  Then all of a sudden one of his toys hit, and made him millions overnight, and the money still comes in.  He invented the toy that has strings with lights on the and it spins.

I know that it does not happen to everyone, but almost every person that I have talked to who never gave up finally hit success at some point.  They would learn from their mistakes, improve on their ideas and keep going.  Each time it would get better until they hit the breakthrough and are successful.  Most of the successful people I talk to have that same story.  The only people who REALLY fail are the ones who give up and stop trying.

Find someone who can connect the dots for you to shortcut to success.

concepts, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, The World, , , , , ,

So the connecting the dots blog seemed to be popular. (Read that first if you have not done so) As I said in the article, I like to help people become successful. The other day I was chatting online to a 20 year old guy, located in the Philippines. He wanted to become a successful business person, but had no education about business and was working a low level, normal job. He had a web site that he started but there was nothing on it really. His goal was to become an online business phone book for his city, a city where no such thing existed. He then would charge people for premium listings. This is a sound idea but after 5 months doing it he had only 8 listing, all of them free listings.

To me it was obvious what was needed for him to be successful. I told him to get a paper phone book and call business people and verify that their company exists. Tell them about the website, and ask them if they want a premium listing. Give every verified company a free listing. He could probably add over 100 new listings per day. In a few short weeks he would have the largest listing site in the city, and once he has that he can start to advertise it. Maybe even do a customer review page for each customer. He had everything in place on the tech side, just lacked the business side. I hope that I helped him.

This is an example how, finding someone who has more dots can you can rock your company in just a few minutes. Having these dots is a huge asset. I think that I would be a great small business consultant. Maybe I can do that on the side. I basically have been doing that for businesses in the world of computers.

Jason Dragon

What's the Big Idea

concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, , , , , ,

There is a show that is on every weeknight on CNBC, it is called the Big Idea with Donny Deutsch.  If you have not seen this show and you are at all interested in being an Entrepreneur then you are really missing out.  This show is full of concepts and ideas about how to successful, how to start your business and how to make that business successful.  Look for it.

The flow of investment capital and how to keep it active

concepts, Investment, , , , , , ,

Well here is a quick mental exercise. I am going to think about, and share with you, my thoughts about investment money.

Well the main areas of investment I see are:

  • Real Estate (Commercial and Residential Property)(I am not counting owner occupied housing because that is not primarily an investment.)
  • Securities (Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, Futures)
  • Private Equity (Direct investment in private companies)
  • Metals and Jewels (Large amounts of money are kept in Gold, Silver and other precious metals)
  • Cash (Yes many people keep money in cash, CD’s and deposit accounts.)
  • International Investing (All of these areas but outside of the US)

Now, because the total amount of money is VERY QUICKLY increasing, the actual value of a dollar must be going down. This is evident by looking at the price of the dollar verses most any investment. You could have invested in most any are for the last 5 years and had a positive outcome vs. the dollar. Over 90% of this money is owned by less than 3% of the population. The total size of all of this investment money is well in excess of 70 TRILLION dollars. That is more money than most people can even imagine.

One important concept that I have noticed is the fact that money shushes around, from one investment type to another. In the late 1990’s the stock market was all the rage, and most other areas of investment were growing slower than normal, most investment money went there so the values went sky high. Then the hype popped in 2000-2001, and people started taking their money out of stocks, the people who left early took most of the profits.

From 2002 until 2006 the hype was all about Real Estate, as a whole the US made over 6 TRILLION dollars investing in real estate. That is about $40,000 for EVERY adult in the United States, and this number does NOT count the house you live in, only investment properties. By the start of 2007 people made a ton of money and started to see an end to the run-up in prices of Real Estate, so they started cashing out. Again the people who did it first made the most money.

Now this money STILL is out there. Where is it going? The easiest way to find this out is to look at what is going up in value. Metals is one huge area that has seem price spikes from 2007 until now. Another area is Private Equity. Most people who made this huge money qualify to invest in Private Equity and they have done so. They have brought companies private, they have started new companies.

Another area that has seen a huge increase in investment is the INTERNATIONAL segment. New cities are being built all over the world. The rate of investment in much of the world is on record pace.

Because of the vast size of stocks, and the fond memories many investors have, much of the money has returned to stock market. But many people who made a ton of money in Real Estate are looking to return to that market also.

So where should you invest??? The key is to move into the segment first and leave first, but it is hard to predict what will happen. For example I think metals were HOT but they are now near the top, and as we have seen when this happens there often is a fall. A lot of money has gone back to the stock market and more will follow, so there will still be a few years to make money in that area. Real Estate has taken a huge hit but should come up later, the returns will not be huge but at least there will be returns. So the two areas I see, where I would invest my money is in Private Equity and in International. In much of the world the Real Estate boom is just starting.

The best thing would be to start a company in a fast growing nation, and take advantage of the growth. This is hard so the next best thing would be to invest, using Private Equity, in a US company that does a good deal of business internationally.

When we stated Capital Active, this is exactly what we thought about, the fact that there is a huge amount of Capital out there, and that it needs to be kept moving around, kept active doing different things at different times.

Tell me what you think, please leave a comment to this blog, tell me if you agree or disagree.