Does a 4-hour work week seem like a pie in the sky to you? Not to me. After reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, I’m convinced it’s possible. Ferris’ unique journey is a compelling read. More importantly, it has increased my efficiency and therefore… profits.

4HWW Principles

Timothy Ferris found four basic principles that when combined will help you escape the doldrums of every-day life, create success and prosperity without long hours, difficult bosses, commuting, or a time clock. Change your world by riding this roller-coaster to efficiency.

One of these four principles, Elimination, has left me without the ton of bricks I used to carry around for no reason. I’ve removed my least profitable projects, stopped commuting, simplified my processes, found my inefficiencies and dropped them, found my strengths and mulitplied them.

Elimination

Elimination is removing those things in your life or business that drag you down, tie up your time, cause errors or distractions. If you change your paradigm and see your day in terms of “what do I have or what do I do that really doesn’t help?” then you can eliminate and simplify – getting more done in less time. And I don’t mean more in quantity – volume isn’t the key. How you reach your goals is the key. Any activity, customer, or project that is really a time-waster should be considered for elimination.

My Personal Elimination Tools

• StayFocused by Transfusion Media is an extension to the Google Chrome browser that lives up to its name. It helps you stay focused by limiting the time you can browse websites you have designated as time-wasters. Track your time on websites and then configure them into StayFocusd. Like an automatic diet you’ll soon spend less time surfing and more time working.
• Other Inbox is a tool that analyzes your incoming email and places low-priority emails out of the way so you easily focus on what is truly important, not what appears to be urgent. This works great with Gmail.
• Google Voice gives you more control over your voice messages. Screen calls, read voicemail (which is quicker than listening), and customize your greeting based on who is calling you.
• Gmail removes spam better than an any other email client I have every used. Spam is growing; I get over 1,000 spam emails a day. Gmail has the best filter, and it lets me add my own filters. Combined with Other Inbox, and you will never waste time in email again.

Don’t misunderstand me. The 4-Hour Work Week is not a proposal to do more in less time. It teaches you how to identify and do what is most beneficial and leave out the rest. If the most important work is only a fraction of the time you are currently spending, wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you change your activities to maximize your profit or reach other goals? Get your copy of The 4-Hour Workweek now.

Tell Me

Now it’s your turn to help me. What tools do you use to eliminate wasting time?

      

We’ve been getting tons of local (Little Rock) requests for search engine marketing services. We’ve been providing search engine marketing for years but our customers were always large ecommerce web sites. Our customers targeted anyone, anywhere. Our customers didn’t care if you were in New York or Little Rock; if you were looking for widgets, they wanted you to come to their sites.

Internet Marketing for Local Services

But, local companies that only serviced Little Rock Arkansas seemed uninterested. They understood that they needed a web site but didn’t want to spend any money on internet marketing. Slapping the site at the bottom of their business card was “Good Enough.”

Over the last few years, that has changed. They’ve realized that research (whether local or worldwide) starts on the internet google. And we’ve had a lot of luck placing top results for local companies! I think it’s safe to say that it’s easier getting top results for local companies.

The Local Internet Marketing List

Below, I’ve compiled a list of sites that will assist your local internet marketing efforts. Google loves these sites and values their entries. This means that in addition to your information being placed on other sites, your site actually gets ranked higher!

Before you just start submitting your site, do some keyword research, write some optimized descriptions that utilizes those keywords. Good luck and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Local Directories

1. Google Local
2. Yahoo Local
3. Bing Local

Important Directory Sites

1. Dmoz.org
2. Botw.org
3. MerchantCircle.com
4. HotFrog.com

Important Yellow Page Sites

1. YellowPages.com
2. Superpages.com
3. Yellowbook.com
4. DexKnows.com
5. Local.com
6. ZoomInfo.com

Important Review Sites

1. Yelp.com
2. RateItAll.com
3. InsiderPages.com
4. ServiceMagic.com

Important Database Sites

1. InfoUsa
2. Localeze

      

As you all know, I recently created an AMI which allows a user to instantly launch a Magento ecommerce site using Amazon’s Cloud Computing Technology. So that brings me to two very different points (I should probably break this into two posts):

Point 1: Magento Rules the Ecommerce World

Magento is now more popular (at least more visited/searched) than other major open source ecommerce web applications (Checkout Google, Compete). Currently, I believe Magento is leaps and bounds above any other ecommerce system out. If you don’t agree, I urge you to show me a more fully featured, open source ecommerce system.

Point 2: My Personal Backup is still Jungledisk

I’ve been developing with Amazon’s AWS services for about a year. They’ve really been leading the development of “cloud computing” applications. Their API’s are pretty straight forward and although I have a few complaints, it’s a pretty nice system.

The Amazon S3 Network (which allows you to store data on Amazon’s cloud) has been my latest love. Amazon’s “pay as you go” pricing model makes it competitive even when you compare it to a DIY project.

After checking this out, I wanted to start running my personal backups onto Amazon’s S3 network. I thought I’d have to develop something but then I found JungleDisk. JungleDisk is a Windows and Mac backup system that stores all of your data on Amazon’s S3 network. That means, if someone steals my laptop, all of my data would still be safe. JungleDisk currently costs $20 (one time fee) and Amazon’s S3 network costs me about $6 per month for around 40GB worth of a data.

I’m real happy with JungleDisk and I’m proud to recommend them. Its automated, fast, reliable, and cost-effective. But, they have a few things that they should be worried about… They were recently bought out by Rackspace (Amazon’s cloud computing competitor). Although you can choose to use either Amazon or Rackspace, I’m usually scared to commit to a vendor unless I know their future intentions. I hope things aren’t going to change (JungleDisk claims nothing will change), but you never know. Also, JungleDisk has a very strong competitor in Mozy (Bought by EMC which also claims nothing to will change due to their buyout). Although I have used the mozy system, I stuck with JunlgeDisk b/c of it’s performance and the Amazon’s S3 network. But now, Mozy only costs $5.00 per month! For $5.00, its definitely worth trying. I’d love to hear your thoughts on Mozy and Jungledisk.

My recommendation: personally, I don’t care which backup system you use. You can continue to use 3.5″ floppy disks… but please… please… PLEASE BACKUP. I once had a client pay $10,000 for data recovery. Seriously.

      

Check Out the Original Magento Amazon AMI Here!

I wanted to setup a magento store and compare it to a number of competitors. But, to get the thing launched, you need to customize your server. I didn’t want to modify our server because I wasn’t sure if I was going to like magento and I didn’t want to make unneeded changes to the server.

So, I decided to make a new instance on my amazon EC2 account and build a new server.

I spent a ton of time looking for an existing AMI for Magento. After I didn’t find one, I set out to build one. I built an AMI that has Magento 1.2.1.1, CentOS 5.2, PHP 5.2.9, mysql 5.1.

If you want to check it out: download The Original Magento Amazon AMI.

Good luck and let me know if you need anything.

      

“Crisis Boosts the Learning Curve” on 12/31/2008 by Tom Keene on Bloomberg Radio

Tom was discussing the popularity of news coverage. He discussed that due to the the financial crisis, more people are interested in the news.

After hearing Tom’s statement I really thought about how much I learn during any crisis. I came to the conclusion that this is why so many people say you learn more from failure than success.

In the year and half of law school, I’ve learned (and remembered) more about law when there is some type of crisis than I have in class. In the 7 years of running my own business, I’ve learned more during our “times of crisis” than I ever did by reading a great book or college course.

I learn more about my friends and family when we disagree than when we agree.

Think about it.

      

I laid out over 18 goals for last year. I accomplished less than half. I tell you that just to let you know that I’ve laid out even more goals for this year. Just because you do not reach your goals, doesn’t mean that you should not make goals.

      

A typical day In our business… Replace “Boss” with “Client.”

What is your favorite Dilbert strip?

To view Dilbert Cartoons, go to http://www.dilbert.com.

      

http://del.icio.us/ – A social bookmarking web site… if you don’t use it, try it out… You can see all of my “favorites” at http://del.icio.us/rjmartino.

Does anyone use twitter.com?

      

Maybe I’m jaded. Maybe I’m confused. Maybe it’s inexperience. Maybe it’s poor management. Maybe it’s poor people.

But in my short experience it seems that when I’m pushing someone to get involved in a project, I’m doing most of the work. I can motivate someone to get involved with a project that they’re not initially excited about but after a few weeks, that fizzle goes away. Once the fizzle goes away, I’m the one that’s baby sitting, making sure work is getting done and making sure that the fizzle, that was once there, doesn’t go away. Many times the fizzle is long gone and they’re just doing the work so they don’t disappoint themselves or me.

Well, I think from now on, I’m going to look for people to bring ideas to me. I think I’ll wait to find the people that are willing to stick it out through the inevitable highs and lows. I’ll wait to see what ideas I want to get involved with rather than bringing ideas to people. I won’t try to change people’s minds or ideas until I’m completely sold on the people.

As I’ve said before, people are more important than ideas. Once I know I have solid people then I’ll share ideas. But I still won’t push ideas onto people. I’ll do my best to explain a vision and hope they catch fire… I’m not interested in the fizzle, I need to see the fire.

      

Well… I’ve started a new project that involves real estate… specifically – single family homes in Michigan, South Carolina, Mississippi, Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, and Indiana.

Its been a lot of fun and I’m learning a ton about other state laws, other markets, and meeting new people. This opportunity has great timing, great planning, great vision, and a lot of potential… But, I still feel like we’re missing something.

Its something I talk about a lot… great people. They’re hard to find…

When I find good people, its hard for me to share my vision… its hard for me to get them excited.

When I find great people, they just get it… Sometimes they get me excited. Sometimes they see it before I do!

I love working with great people… but they’re hard to find.

I’m looking for partners in the states listed above… Or you must be willing to relocate there

If you’re interested, let me know.