Tim Ferriss is hands down one of the most influential people in my life. Tim Ferriss has built a brand that revolves strategically around helping others while letting the universe take care of himself. He takes educated risks in life and makes it look easy. Tim has slaved away as the corporate chimp, and he knows the pain that people go through living a “normal” life. In the 4-Hour Work Week, Tim tells us how to escape or minimize the hardship on ourselves. Tim chose the two hottest ideas in today’s day and age, making money and fitness.  He talks about making money in his first best selling book 4-Hour Work Week(4HWW), and then  his second book demonstrates just how far this young man’s talents go, as he dives into the world of fitness in his second best seller, The 4-Hour Body (4HB). Tim is now putting the finishing touches on his next best seller, The Four Hour Chef.  His third book is set to come out later this year sometime in September 2012.  We hear some buzz about the new book the 4-Hour Chef in this short 27 min video as well as Tim’s role as an adviser and being a Venture Capitalist (VC).

So what does this extrodinary individual do in a day? Watch this exclusive video that Morgan Spurlock put together in conjuction with Tim to help us understand.

Here is a comprehensive list from Tim himself about some of the start-ups he has advised. You can learn more about Tim Ferriss on his blog right here at fourhourworkweek.com

About.me (acquired by AOL)
DailyBurn (acquired by IAC)
Milk (acquired by Google)
Posterous (acquired by Twitter)
StumbleUpon
Uber (The Escalade in the above video was via Uber, which I use whenever parking will be a hassle.)
Evernote
DonorsChoose.org (educational non-profit)
Shopify
Trippy
BranchOut
CrowdFlower
Foodzie
RescueTime
WellnessFX
Graphicly
TaskRabbit
Schematic Labs (makers of SoundTracking)

Other investments, excluding late-stage and stealth companies, include:

Facebook
Twitter
SimpleGeo (acquired by Urban Airship)
Unsubscribe.com (acquired by TrustedID)
Digg
Reputation.com
Basis

I will discuss more icons like Tim Ferriss further in future posts.

I would recommend to start researching Gary Vaynerchuk, Tony Conrad, JR Johnson, Chase Charvis,

I just had the pleasure to see Tony Conrad discuss his company about.me and his role of gaining “advisers” to leverage his  brand.

Email can be the golden handcuffs in today’s day and age. First off, this post is not going to tell you how to hack your girlfriend’s email to see if she is talking to other guys, or help you hack Google’s Gmail. This post will tell you how to hack your email and start taking control of your life. Let’s keep it simple and stay on the same page. The principles I will talk about can be applied to multiple email programs and are best practices for all email users.

Getting your email inbox down to zero

I want you to get your inbox down to zero. Not possible you say? It is. Here’s how.

1. Create a Folder and call it Archives.
2. Select your entire inbox and move it into this folder. This may take a few seconds depending on how big your inbox is. Now you’re down to zero, wasn’t that easy? We are half way there. Now we need to create your first filtering system.

(This next step will really depend on how much email you receive daily. If you have 25-100 emails coming in daily, then I want you to take the last week of all your incoming mail and set up email filters to send those messages to trash or to archive them. Most spam is sent from the same senders over and over. When I say SPAM, I don’t just mean companies that annoy you. It can be crap mail that your buddy sends you throughout the day. How about the notorious forwards from people? Those forwards can be funny, but dangerous too. They harbor viruses and Trojans. Stay away from them.  I know this seems like a lot of work at first, but imagine how much time you be saving yourself when you don’t have to eliminate them daily.

Getting down to zero is a pretty big deal with people in the business world. To be more efficient, you have to know what’s important. Getting your inbox down to zero will help you feel a temporary relief that you have a handle on things.

Are we down to zero?

1. Set up folders now for other topics. (Receipts, Bill reminders, Newsletters you like, Daily deal emails, etc.)
2. Create filters for emails to go the folders you create
3. Create sub folders under parent folders. (The goal is to not have hundreds of folders.)
4. Unsubscribe to emails the minute you review them. You should never receive an email from that sender again unless you opt back in to their list.
5. Set up white-lists (Allowed Senders) and blacklists (Denied Senders)

I hope you got some value from this post. Controlling your email inbox can be hard sometimes. Use these tips to regain control and help manage your email.  If you did share it with a friend.

Here are a few things to think about when it comes to building your business.

What you put it is what you get out. With that said, I would like to shed some light on tips that can help you grow your business and start your business right.

Business planning

Get an idea of what business model you will use, what type of budget you will be working with, and identify what problems you may encounter and how you can avoid them or overcome them. Traditional business plans are a thing of the past. Unless your seeking investment capital, I don’t suggest writing a traditional plan. Most people who start businesses don’t plan their business very well in the early stages of development.

Take some time to really think about your plan and outline your realistic Return on Investment (ROI).  It is up to you to decide how much detail your plan will have.

1) Define a business model to use. Decide on one business model or a hybrid of models.

2) Define what resources support your business model and document them.

3) Set a budget and operating cost plan for your business / define your expected ROI. (Return on Investment)

4) Define short and long term goals for the success of your company.

5) Define possible risks and roadblocks and create a contingency plan to overcome them.

There is no doubt that in today’s world we are being exposed to more information than ever before. Email, video games, social media, advertising, television, blogs, and news sites all want our full attention. We call this information overload.

Here are some staggering statistics by scientists from the University of San Diego, California. People are exposed to 100,500 words a day. This is the equivalent of 23 words a second. Can we even comprehend this much data? The brain processes much more than just words. Every time we look around, our brain is processing information. Information is abundant and plentiful and it is increasing everyday.

Roger Bohn, co-author of the study called How Much Information show’s studies conducted estimate that the total amount of words “consumed” in the United States has more than doubled from 4,500 trillion in 1980 to 10,845 trillion in 2008. The estimates do not include people simply talking to one another.  Robert Anton Wilson is the godfather of discussing the doubling of information. His works on information doubling are very true as well as very scary.

Total information consumption from televisions, computers and other media was estimated at 3.6 zettabytes (3.6 million gigabytes) in 2008.

Dr. Edward Hallowell the author of Crazy Busy and Delivering us from Distraction has written up words of 20 + books on the subject of Distraction and A.D.D.

Hallowell makes great points in his writing on how to deal with distraction and operate under such extreme conditions. I recommend checking out his books.

Marketing a product or service to everyone is not realistic

Keep your focus targeted and isolated so that your audience perceives you or your company as the go-to company in that specific industry. Your company should not aim to please all of the people all of the time. It’s impossible.

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot. You may think everyone needs your product, but when you break it down you will see that every product has a niche market.

Don’t go for broke. If you want to target the world to market to then you may have the best idea in the entire universe, or you just haven’t thought it through yet. You will need lots of money to compete against the larger companies in your field, and your approach maybe seen negatively by your potential customers. Defining your niche allows your customers to see your company as genuine subject matter experts (SME).

It is very important for a business owner to define their target market, because it will help marketing efforts to be well spent. Lets look at the business that I work in and how someone could be successful with reselling services such as domains and hosting. We provide our customers with turnkey websites and they have to drive traffic to the site they are provided. They can say “I want to market to everyone that needs domains and hosting.” If they go this route they have a 100% chance of not being successful. Why? The market is saturated with domain providers and resellers, and the market has companies that have large budgets to use on advertising.

If you segment your market properly and defined your niche, you will have a better chance for marketing success. Identify your niche. Review the example included in this article to help you see how a large market is segmented down.

• Bad Example: I want to market to people who need domains.

(way to broad)

• Good Example: I want to sell domains to women

(Still very broad)  So lets keep going.

• Bad Example:  I want to sell domains to women
• Good Example: I want to sell domains to women who are (insert religion)

Now we have taken our market from billions to millions.

• Bad Example:   I want to sell domains to women who are (insert religion)

• Good Example: I want to sell domains to women, who are (insert religion),(Insert Ethnicity), between the age of 35-45, Located in NY

We have now taken possible search terms in Google from Millions to thousands. I hope this helps you to help identify your niche market better.

Look for follow up posts on how to track your online marketing efforts.

Marketing a product or service to everyone is not realistic

Keep your focus targeted and isolated so that your audience perceives you or your company as the go-to company in that specific industry. Your company should not aim to please all of the people all of the time. It’s impossible.

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot. You may think everyone needs your product, but when you break it down you will see that every product has a niche market.

Don’t go for broke. If you want to target the world to market to then you may have the best idea in the entire universe, or you just haven’t thought it through yet. You will need lots of money to compete against the larger companies in your field, and your approach maybe seen negatively by your potential customers. Defining your niche allows your customers to see your company as genuine and as subject matter experts (SME) if it applies.

It is very important for a business owner to define their target market, because it will help marketing efforts to be well spent. Lets look at the business that I work in and how someone could be successful with reselling services such as domains and hosting. We provide our customers with turnkey websites and they have to drive traffic to the site they are provided. They can say ” I want to market to everyone that needs domains and hosting.” If they go this route they have a 100% chance of not being successful. Why? The market is saturated with domain providers and resellers, and the market has companies that have large budgets to use on advertising.

If you segment your market properly and defined your niche, you will have a better chance for marketing success. Identify your niche. Review the example included in this article to help you see how a large market is segmented down.

• Bad Example: I want to market to people who need domains.

(way to broad)

• Good Example: I want to sell domains to women

(Still very broad)  So lets keep going.

• Bad Example:  I want to sell domains to women
• Good Example: I want to sell domains to women who are (insert religion)

Now we have taken our market from billions to millions.

• Bad Example:   I want to sell domains to women who are (insert religion)

• Good Example: I want to sell domains to women, who are (insert religion),(Insert Ethnicity), between the age of 35-45, Located in NY

We have now taken possible search terms in Google from Millions to thousands. I hope this helps you to help identify your niche market better.

Look for follow up posts on how to track your online marketing efforts.

This week Rockable Press launched its latest eBook, Get Going with Google AdWords by author Chandler Nguyen and we couldn’t be more excited!

This book is designed with the beginner in mind, introducing you to the world of Google AdWords. Once you start to get a handle on them, you’ll be bidding on keywords that will help push your site higher in the Google rankings — without all of the time it usually takes for that to happen organically.

Nguyen has put together an “easy to grasp” guide on what AdWords are, what using them can do to give your site that added exposure and how to get started using them right away.

In this book you will:

• Learn how to put together AdWords campaigns that are simple and effective
• Gain a better understanding of your audience’s search behavior
• Discover ways to draw more people to your website
• Find practical examples offered throughout, and find other tools that you can use to get started with Google AdWords right away.

So if you’re new to Google AdWords and what an easy-to-understand guide of how to get started or if you just haven’t been able to wrap your head around this valuable tool before, this book is for you. You can pick up a copy of Get Going with Google AdWords by clicking on the link below — the book is available now!

Rockable Press: Get Going with Google AdWords

“How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People”

Recently in my current position at work, I have taken an interest in software development and project management. Currently I have been researching the ways to manage teams better and become a better Project Manager. The video below goes into detail about how Google helps to maintain there open source projects from poisonous people. Poisonous people? Yup, we can’t have people running around biting people. All joking set aside, poisonous people are the ones who just make your project go to hell. Simple as that. What can managers learn from this video and this article? Well a few suggestions that I have come up with that can be applied to training are the following;

1. Define your mission
2. Avoid scope creep
3. Document your experiences in a project team
4. Document mistakes and failures
5. Create conformity early

Defining the scope of your project will help your team know when they have arrived at there goal. Document your experiences so that if a team member leaves the team, new members will be able to see history of the projects.

When a project is a success, everyone knows it. When it has failed, people rarely want the world to see it.

Documentation is a great key to success. If you are a project manager then you should have a change system to document changes.

Conformity in a group early in the development stages of a project will help avoid project creep. Make sure your team members are on the same page as you and the project sponsors. A great way to avoid creep is by making sure that clear expectations are set forth in the project early. I hope you gain something from watching the video. Even if you have no interest in developing software, learning new techniques to managing a team can be learned from many different facets of business.

Old Spice’s ‘Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ was one of the most popular memes of 2010, and his campaign was the most popular online video campaign of all time.  It all started with a Super Bowl commercial, which made its way to YouTube, then Twitter and won the hearts of women and men alike all over the world.

I personally don’t care for Old Spice, but I do give it up to there marketing department for coming up with a marketing plan, that was good enough to make people do several things.

1. Remember the commercial
2. Remember the name
3. Create a buzz
4. Make the audience love it so much they duplicated it

If you are in the marketing department and you aren’t driving the traffic to make the purchase, well then your “FIRED”. All joking set aside, few people understand how to successfully cut through the “noise” and get the message through to the recipient.  I can’t show you in just one post, so perhaps we will have a follow up to this topic.

Make your marketing count, have fun with it and let it show what your company is all about. When I owned my clothing label ” Old Soul Clothing” I made mistakes. The #1 mistake I made was not showing the world what the label really stood for. There is a lot of science in marketing and advertising. If you are a start up company, you will get eaten alive by the big dogs if you try to compete with them. If you come up with something catchy and it is meant to go “viral”, then it will. The harder you try to gain the acceptance of people the less you are likely to get it.

Rapport is the perceived affinity between two or more people. People buy from people like themselves. We notice similarities on a conscious level, but we notice differences on a subconscious level. Building rapport will help you to communicate effectively on a deeper level with people to help them understand you quicker and trust you faster.

1. A person of influence must synchronize with the customer using
modeling, mirroring, pacing, and matching.
2. A person of influence shows true, genuine, and sincere interest in
clients and customers.
3. As a person of influence, confirm you are in rapport with your
client or customer.
4. Find out what is most important to your client/customer (identify
values).
5. Ask questions to discover the rules that define your customer’s
values.
6. Ask questions to identify needs.
7. Ask questions to discover the rules that define the customer’s
needs.

A few days ago, we announced that we were going to close down the Netsetter so that we could focus our resources on what we feel are stronger products with more growth potential in FreelanceSwitch and WorkAwesome.

While we were aware that the Netsetter had a certain loyal set of readers ever since Collis began the site as his personal spot to talk about startups, your comments on that final post encouraged us to salvage a piece of the Netsetter so that you can continue to benefit from the information you valued here. Every week on Fridays, we’ll be publishing a column on WorkAwesome bearing the Netsetter name.

You can read the first column on the new Google Keyword Tool today.