Buy Amazon! Buy Through Me!

Many people buy things using Amazon.com. Their product selection continues to get larger and larger. What started out as a book store is now the World's largest online retailer and 16th most popular website over all. One of the things that has helped Amazon grow is the support it has in the online community. Many people, such as myself, participate in the affiliate program. That means that if you click on one of my Amazon product links you will get taken to their website and if you buy something I receive a small percentage of that sale. The nice thing is that as long as you don't close your browser, from my understanding, whatever you buy will be credited to my account. In other words I can advertise a Dan Brown book but after clicking the link you buy a J. K. Rowling book instead I still get a percentage of the sale.

This is my shameless plug for myself. I know that most of the people I know have bought something from Amazon at one point or another so I encourage you to buy from amazon after clicking on one of my links. You don't have to pay anything extra, and I get a small percentage of the sale.

Why should you spend the extra minute of your life to click through my website before buying something on Amazon? First, because this site does actually cost me a little bit of money. Due to coaching and DVD sales in 2010 I made money but we are about 10 weeks into 2011 and I haven't made a cent despite the largest rate of visitors yet. Second, buying Amazon products after clicking through my links is a way that you can support Learning to DO without spending any more money then you would have already. You spend the same amount of money and I make some money. Third, this website is free and not password protected. Unlike a book or newspaper, you get this information free. Buying a product at Amazon after clicking on one of my links is a way that you can say "Thank You" without much effort and requiring no extra money.

Perhaps you are interested in buying the Amazon Kindle Wireless Reading Device. Simply click on that link and then buy it! It is their number one selling product after all.Or perhaps you are interested in clicking on a picture. You can do that as well. By clicking on the picture or text below and then buying something.

If you are not into digital reading there are other options, such as books made from paper. For example perhaps you have not read the third Robert Langdon book, The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. It sold over 15 million copies in hardcover, so you know that it wasn't a terrible read.

Or perhaps you are interested in the Acadamy Award winning film The King's Speech. I actually went to see it in theaters recently and it is a very good movie.

If you take pictures or video on anything other than your cell phone you probably need another SD flash memory card. Who doesn't need another one, right?

On the other hand Amazon sells many other products besides books, media and electronics. Perhaps you need to buy your sixth pair of Saucony Grid Fastwitch shoes.

More than likely you are interested in something else all together. That's fine, if you simply click on one of my links and buy anything without closing your browser in between I still get a few percent of the purchase.

If you read all the way to the bottom, thank you for listening. It is strange for me to ask people to buy something. I feel that this relationship (sharing the story of my learning) should not be built around money. Money comes and goes but friends and family will, hopefully, be there either way. It is similar for my readers and I. My goal with this website is to provide information so that some people will learn something that will help in their life, hopefully at the price of free for them. To that end, it does cost me money and if people are going to buy things on Amazon they might as well contribute a few percent of their purchase to me. Thank you again for reading and if you buy something, thank you even more.

Quality Matters

My computer is an Apple 12.1 inch Powerbook G4 1.33 GHz, vintage 2004. In other words, it's old and not terribly fast. I bought it in the spring before I went to college and I have owned it ever since, nearly seven years.

As I gaze around my room and see how much junk I have, I also appreciate all of the valuable quality things that I have. Things that could very well last longer than I do. For example, I have a 1930s Royal typewriter that is in almost as good of condition now as when it rolled off the production line over 70 years ago.

I feel that quality stuff is totally the way to go when buying anything that will be used multiple times. For example, I bought and broke several $8-18 watches before I finally bought a $50 watch that does everything I need and it has lasted longer than any of those previous watches. My computer is a prime example. At $1,600 it was a huge expense when I bought it but provided it makes seven years that is an average of $20 per month. Considering that it helped me through two engineering degrees, thousands of hours of work, and that I pay way more than that per month for my cell phone, I can't imagine a much better deal.

Finally, buying quality is environmentally friendly because you buy less. Had I gone through three computers in the time that this one has lasted me how much of those computers would be sitting in a landfill? Similarly, using ceramic plates instead of paper or styrofoam plates entail a little bit of washing but nothing ends up in a landfill.

The same can be said for products as for time. Such as how I spend my time running. Running eight minute miles for 13 hours a week is great and I get into great slow aerobic shape, but seeing as how my goals involve running paces much closer to five minutes per mile, I need to run workouts close to those paces.

Just something to think about.

A Year After Publication

About 13 months ago my sister and I finished writing and editing What Gen Y Wants You to Know. Since then we have had 62 downloads and have given away at least eight books to people that do not really use the Internet or that would have liked a hard copy of our book. We have not sold any paperback copies of What Gen Y Wants You to Know. 

What have I learned?

Advertising, advertising, advertising, and then some advertising will get things propagated. This is one of the ways that anything sells. Lots of people hear about it and think it's cool. Word of mouth is a really strong way for things to propagate. It works because people trust their friends. I tried to follow Seth Godin's model or Dave's model of give it away free and then offer to sell it. The idea is that people don't actually want the information in the book as much as they want to own a book that has ideas they agree with. However, after the fact I realized that it probably takes six years of successful blogging to get to the point where that works. Or you have to start out famous.

I also learned that traditional publishing is a competitive playground. Millions of people around the world think they are great writers while precious few actually write well. (Yes, yes, I know I probably fall into that category as well, but you don't have to read my stuff and nothing I have written, with the exception of my thesis, is exclusive in any way. It's all free.) As far as understanding the publishing world and what it takes to get a book published by one of the nice big companies read Miss Snark's blog. Aside from all of the segues into her personal life it offers real sincere nuggets of publishing information. 

Some people have a hard time downloading things that take more than one click.

What will I DO differently next time?

That is a curious question because there are different avenues that I would like to take depending on the book that I am writing. I am working on a rope solo climbing book, and have been for two years. This would likely be self published print-on-demand because the market for this book would probably be less than a thousand people. It could be tens of thousands but based on the web traffic I measured in relation to key search terms, we're talking about a few hundred people so self publishing would be it. I would also not offer it free. Why not? I feel that the concepts are important enough that someone should have the whole book and feel that it has value because it costs money. If someone would download it free and print out only two pages he or she could easily get in a dangerous situation without knowing how to get out of it.

I am working on several other books and in fact have 130 pages of my autobiography covering ages 9 to 15 that I typed out on my grandma's typewriter. Traditional publishing is so enticing because the ability to say, "you can get my book in Barnes and Noble" is incredibly exciting! Having a book in a big chain book store means that the man approves of your idea and your writing enough to try and sell it. You may not make any money but you will have gotten a book published and in book stores.

EBooks are the future, hands down. Of course there will be paper books for a long long time to come and people will continue to acquire a few books every year. Yet the writing is on the screen, people sit in front of their computers and read from their screens. It's also kind of fun. Just write a book make a semi-classy PDF and share the link. It cuts out so many middle men, and inevitably people that cut into your profits or people that slow your ideas down. Similarly, news gets Tweeted by The People instead of investigated, written about, edited, printed, and delivered to your door step in the morning. It's fast.

If the book I write next is a little thicker I'm going hardcover. It's just more classy.

Put some graphs, statistics and color pictures in there too. I like looking at the pictures and I think most people do as well. It would also be nice if a book I wrote was slightly longer. It does not have to be a novel but What Gen Y Wants You to Know was a scant 48 pages with large type. Most people read it in like 20-30 minutes. It probably takes that long to read a week of my normal blogging. 

By the way, if you are in Seattle and you see Dave (the photographer) tell him that he should make a coffee table photo book because you would buy it. I've seen some of his pictures and trust me it would be worth your money.

I am Awesome!

Sometimes I have to tell myself that to avoid depressing thoughts. Specifically, applying for jobs! Finding a job has to be the worst job there is.

One of the things that I started doing a few months ago was attaching a sample of my work. People can say anything, but can you show what you do? You want to actually know what I can do? Well look at this:

An Abaqus finite element simulation frame taken 10 seconds into the quenching operation during the heat treating process of a transmission ring gear made of Pyrowear 53 showing the percent austenite in the steel.

I have close ups and other examples if necessary.

Publicity

It can chase you, you can chase it, and in many cases it goes both ways. How do you get it? What do you do with it once you have it? How do you keep it? To all of those questions I do not know.

Reportedly, one billion people watched the beginning of the rescue of the miners in Chile. One Billion. That kind of publicity compares to being the president of the United States.

Thinking of some of the recent big moments in history like September 11th, 2001 and the Beijing Olympics it is interesting what rivets the world. Tragedy (September 11th) and over coming tragedy (Chilean miners) as well as what I would describe as world peace (the Olympics) all seem to draw huge crowds of people to televisions around the world. It can be hard to say what will attract billions versus what will be far less.

It seems that for many organizations, publicity or advertising or marketing can all be difficult things. That is to say people would be interested in a service or a product but they simply do not know that it exists. It is also not always a glamourous job. What works and what does not work is hard to say. In most cases I do not know.

However, I occassionally submit blog articles to blog carnivals, a blog will post 5-30 articles from as many blogs and the hope is to get some readership from one blog to read another related blog. I have done this a number of times with limited success. However, earlier this week I had a great one. It was the Carnival of Money Stories. A whole bunch of articles about money. From how to save it to how to earn it to simply surviving unemployment. I received dozens of hits to my "Sleeping in Strange Places" article. After other blog carnivals resulting in single digit referrals this was a huge step up. Who is to say what will work? You will never know for sure unless you try.

From the Moon to a Mine in Chile to Mars?

Watching the first miners come out of the mine in Chile after being trapped underground since August 5th was interesting. As I write this only two miners have reached the top with 31 still to go. One of the commentators equated this moment with Neil Armstrong landing on the Moon. In large part because it was a technological achievement with lots of media coverage. I also read that NASA was providing advice and some health and medical equipment to the rescue effort. When it comes to putting human bodies in strange situations safely NASA knows what it is doing.

Every time someone compares something to the Moon landings I feel a little disillusioned. We landed on the Moon in 1969. It is 2010. What have we done in the 41 years since then? Okay, okay, we have made huge improvements as far as environmental regulations like clean air and water. We have advanced technology far beyond what most people even know how to utilize. My iPhone has more capability than a fifteen year old computer. We have done other things as well, such as address sustainability, efficiency, quality of life, disease, and of course crash a few economies. While all of that is very nice and that work is tremendously important, it does not inspire in the same way as exploration.

I really am a modern day explorer. "Had I only been born a generation or two earlier." It is the lament of every explorer. They have all felt at some point like they had to invent a challenge to overcome. The challenge of the Moon, circumnavigating the Earth, or climbing the highest mountain are all very legitimate and easily defined. They have also all been done. Next it becomes about doing the challenge in the best style. Which is an inspirational attitude yet fundamentally the challenge has already been completed.

I do not know why I want to do something no one has done before but I know that I do. This comes in many forms. My run on the Wonderland Trail in September was an example of doing something that no one had really done before. Yet it has been run in a much faster time and thousands of people backpack it every year so it was really not something new. As the NASA budget gets reorganized and re-prioritized it seems that the chance that the US will send humans farther into space is low. Our inspiration is so different and esoteric than in the past. Hundreds of years ago it was a new future in the New World. In the early part of the 1900s in the US it was a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. In the 1940s it was winning a war. In the 1960s it was getting to the Moon. To be honest it seems that the great problems that we are trying to solve in 2010 are things like the economy, national debt, healthcare, world hunger, clean water, and according the the commercials who would make the best politician.

What I'm trying to say is: let's go to Mars. Why? It would most likely create a number of jobs. We would develop and refine a number of technologies to be more efficient and reliable. It is something inspirational and tangible. It could be profitable. Besides the obvious book and movie deals there is the advertising. NASA and the US government in general has not really tackled this issue yet. For example, astronauts would probably spend most of their time in shorts and short sleeve shirts. Why not get some company to pay millions for the exclusive rights to have astronauts wear their shirts? Or why not put some nice flashy patches or stickers on astronauts space suits for other sponsors? There is also the space ship itself, pens, pencils, computers, watches, food, tools, utensils, and all of that other plain white stuff in a spacecraft that could take stickers. The astronauts, scientists, engineers, and others directly involved in the mission could be contracted for perhaps five years after the mission to make speaking tours, many of which could turn a profit for the government. There is also the merchandise and internet advertising, because I am sure they would blog their way to Mars and back. Why not sell a ton of Mars rocks?

Whoa, that paragraph kind of got away from me. I could talk about space profits for a long time. Anyway, what is next? I do not know.

Congratulations!

The unexpected complement rocks! I don't know about getting it, but giving someone an unexpected complement sure is fun. Two examples:

First...

"We just had our IPO [a few months ago]." Explains entrepreneur in a dull repetitive tone.

"Congratulations!" I reply with more enthusiasm than he has seen all weekend. The deal is done. I have his full attention. He invites me to come hang out with him (ice climbing in that case) the next day with a few of the other people at the gathering. Networking at it's finest.

Second...

"[My first novel] was released [a few months ago]." Explains first time published author in outwardly unenthused but secretly overjoyed tone.

"Congratulations!" I reply with excitement at the prospect of meeting someone who went through the traditional publishing ringer and succeeded. His attention is now on me. Time to ask the questions.

Why did I react in both cases with more admiration and excitement than any of my peers in those situations? Because I understand how hard it is and how long it takes. I realize that when it comes to the entrepreneurial hierarchy I am at the very bottom. Perhaps another reason I do not have an engineering job yet, I am simply not as skilled at selling myself.

In the first case, the person in question started a company in the outdoor industry, specifically the ice climbing industry. If there is any competitive industry ice climbing is it. There is a high barrier to entry, the market is small, and somewhat saturated. The profit margins are low and the top dogs are all in cahoots, albeit still competitive and secretive, but friends none the less. In other words, getting to the point where he was standing there selling his product was a huge accomplishment.

In the second case, a professor at a large university, who only in the last few years finished his Ph. D. was more excited to talk about his fiction novel than his work. After inquiring into his graduate school experience he confirmed what I expected: graduate school is not easy. It is stressful and requires thousands of hours. His novel was, in part, a reaction to the stress of graduate school. His writing was a way to relieve stress. Besides all of that, he was published. There is a huge difference between writing something and getting it published. It is a long process typically including a lot of rejection. With much "art" name accounts for most of the value. So getting the first book published, painting sold, line of clothing sold, album produced, even job landed I guess, is a challenge.

My point being, acknowledging the hard work that someone has put in to succeed goes a long way toward generating a sincere conversation about how they did it. To me it is valuable to see how people get to where they are. I am really good at learning. Perhaps it is my best skill... I figure that if I learn enough I will be able to replicate some form of their successes. What I have learned so far: hard work is the most important. Money, support, networking, previous notoriety, credentials, ideas, personality, ethics, and coffee usually play a role too.

So I say, congratulations on your successes!

How to Make Money from Space

This is kind of a vague area. Most people think space is cool and it's nice to hear about the most recent Mars rover but at the end of the day all we hear is how much it costs and not how much was made. So being a rocket scientist I will try to explain through several past examples and possible future scenarios. This post is inspired by the most recent state of the union address and some new goals the president gave to NASA.

First a story that was told to me in my aerospace avionics class by an 80+ year old retired guy. I forget the name of the company or the person but it was my professor's friend. Anyway for the Apollo program they had to use circuit boards and resistors and transistors. At the time the average useful life of the best stuff available was like three days. Apollo missions were up to 12 days. I believe my professor's friend owned a transistor factory. Anyway he was the head of the company and got the contract for the transistors and did those batches by hand. Apparently he had trouble sleeping during the missions because the chance that all of the parts he had cooked in the furnace worked for the whole mission was very low. Fortunately, there was never a problem. So the space program forced engineers to make more reliable components that benefit us today in every electronic device we use.

Nasa has required things that are smaller and lighter, mostly electronic things. They have not always come up with the innovation itself but required that some innovative piece be used. For example, the shuttle landing strip and shuttle tires. The landing strip is, I believe, the flattest landing strip in the world. It is also made of a very rough surface so that it can move water off of it faster than any other "road" in the world. This creates an issue when you have a spacecraft landing at very high speeds on only a handful of tires. The tires for the shuttle had to be very advanced. Things we take for granted in our tires in the teens (2010s) were not really existent 35 years ago when the shuttle was being designed. Now we have wires and many layers and tires that just keep going.

Other inventions they have at least helped create are water filters, cordless tools, and memory foam. NASA has contributed to over 6,300 patents, and you can bet most of them are the useful kind of patents.

We must also remember that communications and weather satellites bring in money directly because of the information that they transmit. Talking on a satellite phone costs around $1.00 per minute, yet tens of thousands of people use satellite phones every year.

Now the future is much more interesting. I can only imagine that the technology innovations will continue to keep coming (unless Apple and Google have a war for the world's technology). However the interesting postulate is about what the future holds. Space tourism? That's a really big question. There are only a few thousand people in the world that can currently afford to go into orbit. There are probably a million or so that can afford to take a flight into "space" at 100km above sea level and enjoy a few uninterrupted minutes of free fall (weightlessness). That is unless we can figure out some way to get to orbit without traditional liquid fuel rockets (yeah... that's not happening this decade) which are very very expensive.

Another possibility is mining. Almost every 90s space video game hinted at mining colonies, as well as Star Wars, Avatar, and other fantasy media content. They were somewhat right. If we can find something (paladium, platinum, uranium, lutetium, and other rare earth elements) on Mars that we run out of on Earth then it may become economical to mine on other celestial bodies.

One somewhat far fetched possibility, yet one that people like me sit around and talk about, is the possibility that Earth by itself is not enough. We have too much waste. What if we could dump it all on Mars for only three times the price of driving it to Michigan? What if all of our mining occurred in space? What if we could terraform Mars (think Dubai meets Army Corp of Engineers) so that it was a giant recycling center. Biodegrading waste and making oxygen, yet still harsh enough that we couldn't live there without spacesuits. How cool would that be to get a three year assignment to Mars? Kind of like the south pole, but it's Mars.

I can't quote a number and say if you pay X you will get Y. Unfortunately, I think that one of the most lucrative aspects of space is the exploration itself. I doubt Columbus, Cortez, Shackelton, Admundsen, or Armstrong will be forgotten soon. So there is always the speaking tours, the book deal, the movie, action figures, conferences and the like. To quote Pawn Stars, "the problem with one of a kind items is that you can't compare it to the last one you sold." I'll translate that to mean you just do not know the end result and the profitable tangents when you try something new.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is often called is a vital and to most people scary thing. The truth behind the matter is quite different. It is easy and simple.

Search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) have robots that crawl the web know as crawlers with web addresses like googlebot.com. Basically they go from link to link and use words in webpages to determine which searchers will want a certain page. There are algorithims and stuff that turn this simple process into a confusing affair for most people. The key is to keep it simple. If you want more search engine traffic to your website use words that label what you are talking about. My best example is "bottom-up meshing in abaqus". I wrote a long post about how to do it and as soon as the search engines found it with all sorts of key words like mesh, abaqus, and bottom I turned into a celebrity of this one particular type of meshing.

How does this apply to you getting more hits. Well, pictures, Flash animation, and video are not read by search engines. Wikipedia, which is a very simple website composed nearly entirely of html (the most simple programming code I can think of) often comes up in search results because it is loaded with words and links. Those are the two things you need and in that order:

1. Words are the blood of search engines. Searches are done with words and so far they only find words. If you want to become the most famous plumber in Boston, you need to make a website that incorporates words like plumber, Boston, best, maybe even the word famous to get more search engine hits.
2. Links are the nerves of the internet. A click on a link sends a signal somewhere else. If you want to get noticed by a website or better yet a blogger, link to their website. If enough people click on the link they will notice that they are getting traffic from your website and go check out what you have. This applies to search engines because their robots go from link to link to find other webpages. So the more links you have coming into your website the higher you will appear in search results.

That is all there is to SEO. Before you go out and spend a dozen hours trying to find a secret or pay someone to help with search engine optimization just keep in mind words and links.

One Year of Blogging in Review

One year ago today, February 27th, I posted my first blog entry. I did not know where this blog would take me. I started Learning to DO with one idea in mind: replicate the sort of blog that CiloGear has so that I could update the world on the trials of starting a company. Well, over the weeks starting a company kind of went up and down and who knows where it's at today. I have an email address and contractors refer to me being from Janzen Gear, but what does that mean?

This blog has evolved into something of a melting pot of information both personal and business. Everything from stories and videos from Pakistan to personal relationships and more info about running than you probably want. I have learned that I really like writing. If my job for the next ten years was to pop out several pages every day I could live with that.

By the numbers I would say I'm off to a good start. This is my 234th blog post in 366 days. Over 7,000 visits and 11,000 page views with absolutely zero money spent advertising, hosting, or on development. While that does not compare to the millions per month that other sites get, it is a decently large number. Recently I started averaging over 45 visits per day. If there is one key to getting more visitors every day it is consistency. The more content you have available on the internet the more people will find you. I even get fan email! I also get angry emails sometimes too...

As far as monetizing my blog goes, well, it has paid off. I am currently coaching one person and have made several hundred dollars as a result of that. We knew each other from working together the summer of 2006 and through Facebook stayed mildly connected until he started reading my blog and we started talking more. The next thing I knew I was getting paid to coach him. So I am not directly making money from blogging but indirectly I am.

I have become one of the world's experts in bottom-up meshing in Abaqus and I get about 10% of my hits on that post alone. I'm happy that post is helpful to people because I probably spent two or three hours writing it.

I think that I have been one of the driving factors to influence six of my friends to actually start blogging. For those of you who I helped inspired, yes I do read your blogs from time to time. This is significant for me. Everyone brings something different to their blog. Often times people are pretty revealing and tell things in writing that I would otherwise not hear about at all. This extends to instant messaging and texting as well. The difference with a blog is that the entire world can read it. I encourage more people to get into it. It is kind of like publishing your autobiography in small pieces. One piece of advice, if you do start blogging do it on your own terms. Do not let someone pressure you to reveal something you do not feel comfortable with.

Outside of the blog I spent seven weeks in Pakistan and made it to 23,050 feet and back in great condition. I have averaged more miles run in each of the last five months than any month before. I have run some nice races. I wrote my MS thesis and graduated with my masters. It was a good year.

With my sister I wrote an ebook and we produced it into an actual paperback. Although, I am the only person that has bought copies of it and the ebook has had only 52 downloads. In my mind it is worth it because I learned a lot about writing, publishing and advertising. When I release my next written work I am sure it will do at least five times better maybe ten times better. At this point in my life I am really just focused on getting the information out there and not making my first million. Like the title says "Learning to Do" that's exactly where I am in my life. By the way I am working on several written projects at the moment.

Life is good. Yeah it could be better (I could be paying more than the minimum on my bills), but I don't want to get demanding. Keep reading. I don't where were Learning to DO is headed except forward.

Successful Innovative Companies: Volume 17

The Successful Innovative Company of the week is: The New York Times.

What they do right: I can narrow this down to one thing that in my mind sets them apart from all the other print news. They adapted to the internet very well. They have advertising but not very much and it is restricted to the margins not placed in the middle of the articles. Their articles are in nice big print that is easy to read. They cover stories that are really interesting. This is not restricted to The New York Times but they just seem to cover stuff every now and then that is original and interesting.

For example, one of their reporters was held captive by the Taliban for over seven months and when he returned he wrote this very thorough story about it. Another story, much less dramatic, is a book review of Born to Run where the author takes a run around New York barefoot with Chris McDougall.

They are the most accessed online print newspaper. Their Alexa ranking for news is #6 which is the highest of any print newspaper in the world. It's easy to access too. You don't have to log in or pay money and you get to read from the most popular newspaper in the world, based on Alexa ranking. According to Wikipedia The Wall Street Journal and USA Today both have about double as many subscribers which is still significant. However, I am rarely sent newspaper clipping like I am forwarded online newspaper stories. So, in the battle of information I think it's better to be the biggest on the internet. I mean what research librarian has the power of the entirety of Google?

What they could do better: sometimes they do ask me to log in when I am two pages through a three page story. Since I read so few articles from any one newspaper (I usually use Google News) I draw the line at creating another login where I'll inevitably get sent more emails I won't read.

I also think that The New York Times has probably not fully realized their prominence in the world of journalism. I read one article that said they were planning to create some sort of system to charge people to read it online. I don't think they have done it yet but my point is: they are the leader in what one company can do for daily news publishing. There are news companies out there like CNN or BBC that are ranked higher but consider the way they give news. Their news is often in short blurbs by information hungry reporters. The NY Times on the other hand is journalists who write complete articles. Like Twitter versus a blog. They are both important for information and appeal to different types of people or when people are in different moods. So I'm not saying that one is better than the other. I'm saying that The NY Times is the leader of it's category.

In the book I've been reading (which I will eventually review) one of the themes is prioritizing your life. It's a book about how to make a living and have time to pursue your money consuming passions. The author says, pretty much strait forward, that you are better off trying not to make millions of dollars but instead spending your time with your friends and family and doing things that you want to do. So as The NY Times considers charging people for their paper I ask what is more important: money or readers? A business person would say money and an artist would say readers. As something of an entrepreneur and writer I can say that being a household name is worth more than any given number of dollars. Millions of dollars sit there and maybe you can make it a little bigger every year. A household name can create something and make even more money, you just might have to wait a little bit until the pay day. Besides, Google has done so well simply on advertising instead of subscriptions that I think other companies should keep that in mind before turning to a subscription model.

Untapped Niches

It all comes down to the market. Everything I read by successful entrepreneurs goes along the lines of "find a niche and and provide them something they don't have."

And that, might be something that can't be taught. You can teach what to do with something. You can teach how to develop something. You can teach how to find a niche. But show me what a niche is missing. If you can do that in a quantifiable systematic process you will make money. Lots of money.

In the past, three to 15 years ago, it was websites. A new way to connect people from different geographic or social locations that might never interact could now share information. 100 years ago it was the car. A way for people to get from A to B without horses or rivers or railroad tracks. In the world of mountaineering gear it was first the ice axe, then pitons, then crampons, then harnesses, then chocks, and finally cams and ice screws. In the world of music it was records, then tapes, then cds, then iTunes and the iPod. In the world of farming it was the steel plow, the tractor, and then evolving land conservation techniques.

The problem is knowing what comes next. There are millions of patents that have been granted. However, very few actually include a breakthrough improvement that makes people open their wallets.

So I do not have any advice on profit, otherwise I would be profiting off of a niche. Right now I am just trying to define the problem and ask the right question. Only then can I have the right answer.

Profiles and Memberships

Tuesday I finally started a LinkedIn profile. All I could think about while I was filling out my information was about how many times I have done this. Facebook, Summitpost, American Alpine Club (you can't see that profile unless you're a member), my resume, my blog profile, RunningAhead, Youtube, Google (yes they have profiles too), Wikipedia, WPI Materials Science graduate student website, and Flotrack. That's 12 profiles that I have. Most are readily accessible and and the others you can get in one email.

Is this ridiculous!? I mean each one of these is it's own little social network. Each one asks for more or less the same stuff. Each one is a way to be in contact with people without actually seeing them face to face. Does all of this serve any purpose? Is it worth the time?

It gets even more frustrating when you think about all the bank accounts I have online. I did the math a few days ago and I have ten loans (including credit cards with a zero balance) and four checking accounts. Then there are those sites where you have to log in but you don't have a profile, like phone bills and online stores.

All together I have or have had at least nine different passwords. I know I did this to myself but I don't feel alone on this. In 2008 (way in the past) Americans consumed 3.6 zettabytes. That is 3.6 million million gigabytes. That is 34 gigabytes per person per day not including work. Browsing through this study there are some interesting trends. TV has always been a big source of information. When it grew after the 50s it took away information from print. With the growth of the internet both print and TV are waning as sources of information. Another interesting aspect of the study was how much of the information we receive is visual. That is TV, movies, and video games give us all sorts of information. Text and spoken words contrastingly contain very little information. For example think of the two megabyte picture you took compared to the 20 kilobyte email you wrote. 100 times more information in the picture than the email. Sometimes it just seems overwhelming.

All of these groups want my email address. They all want my time. They want my attention. They want money. They want to succeed, however that is defined.

I will leave you with a quote that Groucho Marx apparently rephrased from John Galsworthy, "Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member."

I'm not quitting anything, but it's food for thought. Where does it stop? I am only one person. I have only one personality. Why should I express myself on 12 different websites?

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Researching the job market I found some interesting things. For some jobs less than one percent of applicants are even interviewed. Since most jobs are apply online these days it is easy to apply for dozens of jobs and for hundreds of people to apply for each job. Some of the recurring advice from my family, friends and the internet is to do something to put yourself in their sight. Call somebody, anybody at the company and ask questions, get your resume to the top of the list. Show up at an association meeting and talk to people. Get coffee where they get coffee.

On paper you may look great, but so do thousands of other people with your qualifications.

In person you may be mediocre, but you took the effort to show up when no one else or very few did.

The World Leader!

Unfortunately in the United States we don't focus on the world leader very often. When I was driving back through Canada I heard a commercial on the radio for an optemologist in Toronto who was one of the best in the world. I thought that was odd because in the US we never hear commercials for best in the world. It's always best in the nation or best in Wisconsin or best in New England or best in Worcester. While those are all nice things I would much rather be the best in the world.

Think about it. You have some sickness with some complication that requires some specialist. Do you want the best in the nation or the best in the world? While the price of flying to Spain for frostbite treatment is probably prohibitive for the best care in the world now, things are changing. With robotic surgeries occurring with the surgeon on one side of the world and the patient on the other it is not long before the best in the world is within reach.

This could be expanded to a bunch of other fields. You are building the largest suspension bridge in the world how about having the best suspension bridge builder in the world build it? In the world of running this is kind of standard. It's great to win a national championship but by far and away being the best in the world is more important. Ask any runner and winning a gold medal at the olympics would be far far better than winning the national championships in the US.

I realize that many fields are hard to quantify and defining one world leader would be difficult. But still, narrowing it down to the best five or ten in the world improves your odds of getting high quality instead of the best five or ten in the US. I also think that the US has many of the world leaders already we just don't advertise that fact. I can guarantee when it comes to space exploration the US has most of the best in the world.

The prevalence of the internet is making it so that companies, almost regardless of the products or services they offer, can be used around the world. While cornering any market is a good thing, cornering the world market is likely more profitable.

Consider your place in the world as you consider your impact. You may be more unique than you realized.

Making it your own

I have been spending a lot of time recently writing things that have predefined templates. My thesis, which isn't so bad after all, my business plan, which is so bare it is kind of funny, a website, and of course my ebook. People often suggest that you need to make something representative of yourself. However, they don't tell you what that means. I'm going to try to answer that, at least for my life.

First off take my business plan. I am an engineer. It's what I do and I'm not half bad at it. Unfortunately, it's called a business plan and I am more than half bad at business. I want to describe the company and how it will survive but many of the things I want to say are from my personal experience. There are no formulas, I am aware of, that say why it is a good idea to go to ice climbing festivals to sell more ice axes.

The solution: write what I think needs to be in my business plan. Write it so that someone who doesn't know me can understand it. Which is to say that in the business plan I am saying that I am the one and only employee with experience engineering, mountaineering, and running and not so much with business, law, marketing and stuff. If someone wants to invest they should know my strengths and weaknesses.

Second take my thesis. Describe what I can stand behind. Everything else is left out. It turns out my summary is less than a page, as of now. A year and a half of long days in front of my computer screen analyzing finite element results in bright orange, yellow, green, and blue. Scrolling through thousands and thousands of lines of code to find that one misspelled word or comma or wrong number and I have less than a page to say.

The solution: besides an awesome literature review and background that describes most of what I learned in the last year and a half I can say a few things my simulations demonstrated. That is the key, being able to say something. I have been to a number of masters and doctorate thesis' presentations and I have learned when it comes to basic sciences advances happen slowly. A person can work on a project for years and at the end have a 25 minute presentation describing the difference between two sample groups. It is not that a doctorate degree or masters degree means any less now that I know what it takes to get one. In fact I respect the degrees that much more. Many of the most powerful discoveries in science can be described in ten minutes once you understand all of the background.

Finally, take my fun, like running, climbing, going to Pakistan... I am Isaiah Janzen not someone else. I can not live my life trying to achieve physical feats that other people accomplished.

The solution: I have my own unique set of goals. Some of them are probably the same as other people but the combination of all of them, I would assume, is unique. Top athletes try to innovate their sports by taking it to a new level. I just want to say 'this is what I did, it was fun, and my life is better because of it'.

So go out and make it your own. It doesn't have to be different, but it will be.

Juggling my future

I am at a pivitol point in my life. Soon I will be in the real world. The place without new student loans. In fact the last five years of life I will now have to pay for. Going back in time... I scrimped and saved my whole life and it only payed for about a semester of college. I worked in the summers and all that payed for was a few months of rent and food. The thing is, I have less debt than many of my friends and I feel I live in more luxury than most.

To avoid the inevitable unemployment that approaches I have begun work on several sources of passive income. That is work that I do once and make money off for a long time. This blog is among those but it has not paid out any money at all, yet. I also published my first book Monday. More details on that will be coming shortly after I proof it to make sure it is releasable to the public. If everything goes well I will release it next week along with the free identical ebook. I also designed my first website about two weeks ago. It is really rough but it will grow with time and eventually I will sell a book there as well. I am also working on two patents right now. Then I am also running races for prize money. So far I am one for two on that front but it does pay out a little. While the running is not passive income it is an alternative source.

The purpose off all of these is to have things that inform people about something and can also provide some money for me. In this, the 21st century, things are going to be different. I see a decentralizing of almost everything. Instead of huge corporations and giant facories there will be dozens of nearly identical smaller factories. This is because the cost of shipping will go up and the standard of living around the world will even out so that it is not cheaper to produce things halfway around the world. I think that the power grid will turn to alternative energy spread out before we discover how to contain fusion in which case one powerplant per continent might be enough.

What does that have to do with my passive income? Well, I am an innovator, an entrepreneur, and an inventor. The problem is that these things depend on me producing something that people buy. At this point in my life I am living by the seat of my pants. I have no contract for future income past December 15th. I want to run a company, even if that is a company of just one. So I am learning html and css coding for websites, I am learning blogging and website development, I am learning the publishing industry, I am learning the intellectual property industry, I am writing a business plan and I am writing the coolest thesis ever! Well okay, my thesis is less than perfect right now... The point is that if I want to help build a company from the ground up I have to know how to do a lot of different things. Of course in the future, when I can hire people to do that kind of stuff for me, I will be able to work on the things that I like doing more such as research and development.

There are also other advantages to this these passive incomes. Once you write a book you make money every time someone buys a copy. Since I am going with low budget print on demand publishing for my first book it never goes out of print unless I decide to take it out of print (or the company goes out of business). The advantage even if you only sell one book per month is that in ten years you can still sell one book per month. I would guess that you could also work this out with a traditional publishing house after they sell your 5,000 books and decide it is not worth a second printing and continued publicity. While it is nearly impossible to think of myself as a writer it would be nice to know that I could write a few books and use that money to travel around the world climbing mountains and sightseeing.

A few other thoughts about why I have been doing all of this and not working 12 hour days every day on my thesis: Publicity for me. You can call it my personal brand if you want. I get to influence the world. Now I can write a stellar thesis and maybe seven people will read it this year. Maybe two next year and then 14 people in the next 20 years. Unless it is phenomenal new science it will not make me famous. I average about 30 people per day on my blog now. Not too many by internet standards but more people read my blog in one week then may ever read my thesis. I have even helped some people with Abaqus problems and motivated a few people to run more or maybe work a little harder. Finally, I have fun! I like telling people about different things. Sometimes I feel like I have all this pent up information

Want a preview of what will be coming in the near future to Learning to DO: how to create a website from scratch, several running related book reviews, a retraction/clarification of the metabolism article, a few more Abaqus examples based on hits I get from Google, and my sister and I's free ebook and not so free identical paperback.

Successful Innovative Companies: Volume 3

The Successful Innovative Company of the week is: Apple.

What they do right: According to Steve Jobs Apple does not release a new product unless it is innovative. The first home computer people actually used. The first laptop people bought. The iMac revolution. The iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, soon perhaps the iPad?

In the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley the story of Apple is told. A few guys in a garage that decided to make this cool product, a computer, that the average person could use. They followed that computer up with several more popular editions. They made a laptop that people still keep in their basements because it still works. The Powerbook was the first successful laptop and everything since then has been based roughly on it.

Then about 10 years ago music was becoming digitally accessible to the masses and there was a company called Napster that allowed free downloads. iTunes was created to make the music industry happy and it also happens to make the millions of usesrs happy by having nearly every song available. That coincided with the release of the iPod. This one little thing changed the world. Four letters and eight ounces, iPod. People used to read, sleep, watch, talk to others, but all of that changed. You could carry around all of your music in a box less than half the size of a cd player. Headphones are now so common place in public areas that you wonder what people did in the past. Then they came out with the iPhone and people had most of the capability of computer in a piece of plastic the size of a wallet. Music, camera, pictures, phone, texting, internet, weather, GPS enabled maps, and more!

Steve Jobs is reported to only release new products that are significant innovations. When Apple comes out with a new product you can guarantee it is something different.

What they could improve: It would be great if I could afford to buy more of their products. Unfortunately they are not about to start marketing to the poor when they are doing so well with the rich. I think a problem that can arrive when anyone climbs to the top of their pyramid is that they get cocky and disrespectful. I feel that sometimes Apple gives off this yuppie vibe that you need them to be cool, but changing that would destroy their amazing marketing so I guess it comes with the territory.

Economic Predictions, New Graduates, and my eBook

Ugh. It does not look good. This is currently the start of my sixth year of higher education. I have been around to see many of my friends graduate and immediately start a new job. They make tons of money, buy new cars, get mortgages, have nice new clothes, pay off student loans, take vacations, and seem to go on summer break indefinitely. That was until this past year.

I have tried to find the following statistic in print but I have not. This is heard from word of mouth from a man who's daughter I believe went to Duke business school, which I heard from another person is #1 in the country. In the past the highest unemployment for a graduating class was 8%, 2009 (it could have been 2008) had 58%. The smart economists interviewed by Fortune are not enthusiastic either. Well, I should rephrase that. They are not enthusiastic about the world economy until like 2012 or so when we figure out more stuff and make better rules concerning debt.

When do we climb out of this? Six years, maybe just until 2012 according to a guy that won a Nobel Prize. My parents told me the other night that Wisconsin was not expected to climb out of recession for another six years and that might be a little exaggerated but the hotel industry in wisconsin is at least not planning to get back to 2007 levels for the next six years.

The total rate in the US for people unemployed and underemployed is 16.8%. The article by Peter Ferrara that let me in on that also said that we need incentives (think government incentives like lower taxes) for job-creating investments. How does this apply to recent graduates? Well, when I first read new jobs or job creating I thought of companies expanding but that is a traditional shallow view of the word "new". What about jobs that never existed before? Apple was one of the first companies to embrace Facebook and send my messages about student discounts and specials offers and new products. I do not know but I would guess that Apple employs several people who deal in social media marketing. People that get paid to promote and keep Apple enthusiasts interested by tweeting, blogging, or sending out Facebook messages to the fan club.

The fact is that new graduates are uniquely suited for these new jobs. For example, in engineering (my area of most experience) more people than ever are learning how to use finite element software. While any mathematical prediction has to be taken with a grain of salt due to the many assumptions the benefits are significant. Several different simulations can be completed in one day by one person whereas physical testing most likely requires several people and several days.

So my hope, and other new graduates, is that the skills we have learned that our predecessors did not will enable us to have a comfortable future. We are in a hard transition. Baby boomers planned on retiring and are having trouble adapting to the reality that many can not afford to retire. They are also having trouble adapting to the new version of Microsoft Office released every two years. Us in Generation Y are having a hard time getting a job because someone in India or China can do the same work as us for half the price or less. Generation X has had a good life, but it looks like things might not always be so easy. It turns out that plasma screens don't pay for themselves when companies give out blanket 20% pay cuts.

The future is scary because things will change. The world is going to be very different. We (people) don't like change. We want things to be comfortable and easy. I read all sorts of blogs occasionally. Notable marketing blogs are: Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and Duct Tape Marketing. What strikes me about reading some of these blogs is that these people make probably hundreds of thousands of dollars and a lot of what they say I already know. Most people my age already know. They talk about the internet and how to connect to friends. The part where they take a new step is how to use that relationship to sell something. Since no one my age is really selling anything we just use the internet to find what we want. Business people are trying to grapple with this new thing called the internet because no one really understands us yet.

So I'm writing an eBook. My sister is coauthoring it with me because we are sufficiently different to make it complete. The book is going to be about Generation Y, from the perspective of Generation Y. It's about what we want and how we think. It will be free too don't worry. I want to try and explain us better to previous generations. Most of it is pretty obvious I think but it has not really been said in print enough to get the point across. Expect it to be available sometime in October.

My Company will be a Team

I have been teaching myself marketing recently. Apparently, you don't have to go to business school anymore. You can read in the blogoshpere everything you need to know. However, if you want one site to tell you what you need to know about marketing go to SpotlightIdeas. That particular post has 250 articles from the greats like Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, and many more.

So I am trying to learn about marketing. After reading well over 100 blog posts I realized something: people want to be part of a team. There is room on the team for almost everybody. There are leaders, there are followers, there are lone wolves, there are bench warmers, the aggressive people, the slackers, and so on. Instead of trying to just sell stuff and make money, get people to be on the team.

Okay, bear with me as I try to explain this. First there needs to be an idea, a product, a service, whatever that people want. Not need, but want. This is 2009 people aren't spending money on what they need but what they want. Case in point: I slept on the floor at my new apartment for a week and a friend's couch the week before but I still went to the Bean Counter several times each week to get a mocha or latte. Now I'm borrowing a day bed from a friend for free.

Second, now that you have someone that bought something, you want to keep them around. In the future they will most likely buy more from you, tell their friends, suggest a new product or an improvement to an existing product, write a positive review on the internet, and not create more hassle in your life. Why are they going to do all of this for you? Because you gave them something they wanted and it was everything they had hoped for or better. But how do you keep them around? I mean when you are selling durable goods that could last for ten or twenty years how do you insure that people come back?

Well, inviting people to be part of the process gives them a sense of ownership. Case in point: the benchwarmer on the basketball team. He works out with the team, puts in the time and effort yet only gets two minutes of playing time in a good game. His stats for the year will be less than one of the star players gets in one game. Yet, he is still part of the team. The team would not be the same without him. Most likely, he brings something to the table that no one else does. I know for a fact, having been on the bench and a star player, that there is a lot of value to the "worst" player. To some people a given sport comes very naturally but to others we have to work a little harder. Seeing the slowest runner show up to practice every day and put in the work is inspiring. They work so hard and no one outside of their friends in the sport ever know.

That's great but how does this apply to the corporate world, web 2.0, 2010, and making money? It's open source business. A team links the coach to the benchwarmer. Forget the fans in the stands. Every customer becomes part of the marketing department, the product testing department, and the team. That doesn't mean they need another username and password to clutter their lives. It means that you two will remember each other. The customer spends time with "you" and if it was a good experience they will be back. You then reward them in some way when they come back.

I like to tell the freshman and underclassmen in my sport after several months when they are still showing up: "Thank you". It sounds so simple but how often do people say "thank you"? Spending several seconds to just say "thank you", and perhaps why you are saying thank you will encourage them to work harder and keep returning. Why do I say "thank you"? I care about the team. If members of the team perform better the team as a whole performs better.

This is a metaphor for rewarding customers. It doesn't necessarily have to be saying "thank you" although that is nice. It could be saving them money on future purchases, alerting them to new products or letting them know when their old products are getting worn out. Case in point: I'm from a smaller town in Wisconsin. We have a shoe store on main street with two or three employees total. It is the old fashioned kind of shoe store and looks like something out of the Andy Griffith show. All of the shoes in the back are piled in boxes 12 feet high and 95% of the shoes in the store are brown or black. The owner keeps track of when my dad buys shoes and after several months when that particular brand of shoes is starting to wear out she will call him and let him know that his shoes are wearing out. So he always goes back and buys more shoes. Less than two minutes on the phone generates a visit that makes a sure sale.

So that's it:

1. Have something people want.

2. Get them to come back.