So I picked up a new iPad yesterday. Thought I might try shooting out an email to my blog to see how effective it could be as a mobile blogging tool. Seems to be working okay so far. Dint take long to get used to using the touchscreen keyboard, which I thought would take some time.

Navigation for including a photo seems to be simple enough too... I actually thought it would be a lot more difficult. Kudos to Apple for making this product easy to use.

I will have to install the office programs in the next few weeks and give them a shot but for the moment I would have to say that I am fairly happy with how the iPad is turning out.

One thing that is pretty cool is an inclusion of a .com button on the keyboard when in the web browser. Would love to see that included on other keyboards as a feature as it would no doubt help to save a bit of time in the long run.

Have any of you got an iPad? What has your experience been with it so far???

Do you have a business that doesn't make a profit? Do you wonder why this is the case?

There is only one reason that a business will not make a profit, because it spends more than it earns. This is the same reason people struggle financially on a personal level (they spend more than they make).

I have spent the last three years in the entrepreneurial scene and it is interesting to see a number of things occur:

1. People talk about long term gains.
2. People want to build a community before trying to make money.
3. People believe they need a better website, etc. first.
4. People make 101 excuses.

At the end of the day, the only reason you do not succeed financially is if you spend more than you earn. To solve this issue, you have one of a few options:

1. Increase your earnings
Increasing your earnings is one way to solve this issue. If you are spending more than you make, you can increase the amount you earn.

On a personal level this could occur by getting overtime or a pay raise. In business however, this could involve increasing the amount of time you work as a contractor for someone, picking up an extra client or two or developing a new product.

One thing I have noticed is that according to the book 'The Millionaire Next Door

', most millionaires who run their own businesses make products and services for other millionaires or businesses. This is because the wealthy have more disposable income than other people.

If you are looking for a way to increase your business income, then one option is to consider developing a product or service that will be of a benefit to a business or a wealthy person. Aim for top tier, provide a good service and charge a high price. You will find in the process that you deal with less customers but also in the process you get better returns.

2. Decrease expenses
This is one that people don't like to think about on a personal level but it is the most beneficial. Decreasing expenditure to a point where it is less than your income then you will not be making a loss.

In business, many people spend when it is not necessary. Until you have revenue to cover costs, don't build a new website. Only pay for business developments out of profits.

3. Increase income while decreasing expenses
If you are at a stage where you are doing both of these you will be increasing your results at a rapid fire pace. This is a great way to turn your business around and to make a profit.

4. Plan
Most people spend time working in their business, but fail to spend time working on their business. Do you have a plan for your business? If you don't plan, how can you expect to succeed? While it is true that most business plans don't get read, it is the process of creating it that is important and gives you valuable and objective insights into your business. Spending time developing a plan and establishing milestone tasks to be achieved and a schedule for these to be completed can have a huge impact on your business success.

These are essentially the only options you have to turn your business around from a money-hungry beast into a cash delivering asset. If after implementing these strategies you still cannot make a profit, then it might be a good idea for your business to close the doors.

There are more and more fashion accessories coming out for men each day. However, there is a difference between fashion and style. Style ultimately helps you to succeed both in business and personal aspects of life.

Here are the key accessories that any man wanting to develop their style should aspire to have. These accessories will serve you well in both a formal and a casual environment. These items will make the difference between good and great when it comes to personal appearance:

Sunglasses: (Photo courtesy of joshuahoffmanphoto) Sunglasses are an item that exemplify 'cool'. There are certain pairs of sunnies that should not be purchased (and they usually come from a surf shop). Guys who want to maintain their style should opt for a pair that looks good both in casual wear and with a suit. Look to the likes of sunglasses similar to the ones worn by Brad Pitt if in doubt.


Wristwatch: (Photo courtesy of C R) The watch is about the only piece of jewellery most men wear. It is likely that the only reason the wristwatch has remained is because it doubles as a timepiece. However, in an age where any mobile phone tells the time the wristwatch has become more an item of luxury and status than anything else.

Wallet:  Wallets are an essential item of style for any man. A lot more guys are starting to embrace minimalist wallets such as Kyono Slimmy wallet, with a lot of competition over looks, style, etc.

Money Clip: (Photo courtesy of Execgifts) The money clip is the cool way to carry your cash, especially when using a minimalist wallet. This cool little item makes the back pocket a little more comfortable to sit on (due to the fact there will be less in it). Also handy if you are worried about losing your cash and your ID at the same time... you can now keep them in separate pockets.

Pocket Square: (Photo courtesy of Nick Slide) The pocket square is simply the handkerchief put in the top left outside suit pocket. It adds a great deal of panache often overlooked by a lot of young males, but appreciated by a lot of females and older generations. Apparently the pocket square was originally used as a precautionary item, so that a man could help a lady who needed a handkerchief at a moments notice.

Cuff links: (Photo courtesy of Fluid Forms) These items along with the French Style cuff that goes with them turns anyone who wears a suit from an average guy into a man of great style.

Scarves: (Photo courtesy of WonderMike)Scarves add colour while keeping your neck warm. Scarves can be found in a variety of shapes and sizes, and it is good to have a few in your wardrobe.

Socks:  (Photo courtesy of Breibeest) Socks are the underrated item by most men (myself included). It is one area where in the corporate world you can get away with expressing colour and a bit of individuality without getting caught. If you want to keep it simple, plain black is the best colour for you. If you want to draw attention when sticking your feet up on the desk at work, consider socks with a little bit of colour. Throw out any old socks with holes in them and commit to getting some new ones today!

Belts: (Photo courtesy of the_moog)A general rule of thumb is that your belt colour should match your shoes, and the buckle should match your accessories (ie: silver). Don't be one of those guys who overlooks this simple rule, as most women will notice this straight away... and make judgments about you quickly.

Ties: (Photo courtesy of Dramatic)Ties are a fairly standard item in the business world. However, they can make you look significantly stylish if worn well in smart casual when everyone else is dressed down. Also, a lot of older people are now trying to dress without a tie to look cool to younger generations, but younger generations believe that you look more professional with a tie on so this notion kind of defeats the purpose. Red and Blue ties make good for the office and a black tie will go well for certain events as well as for blending with a lot of casual shirts.

What other items do you think are stylish that every man should own?

There is definitely a benefit in not desiring to own.

I am a fan of the writings of Seneca. In the Penguin Classics book 'Dialogues and Letters' there is a copy of 'On Tranquility of Mind'. This article is a must read for all who want to reach their potential in life.

We all have things we want to achieve in life. However, many of us don't end up achieving our goals. We pray, make plans and have a positive focus but the issue is not the method we are using for obtaining these goals but rather that we are focusing on the wrong things.As a result, we often become discontent with our lives.

Seneca suggests an alternative path. He suggests we don't focus on trying to achieve things in the world, but rather to work on cultivating our minds so that we do not desire or need to accomplish these things.Why do we need better food when we are living just fine on what we have? Why purchase a bigger house or request more responsibility? These end up becoming hindrances and distractions. Modern day speech would define this as the things you own end up owning you.

One example that Seneca gives is really good. He mentions someone from history (not sure who this person is) whose slave runs away from him. Rather than being disappointed at his loss, he decides instead to view it as a gain. This individual believed he was much more free not having to provide food, shelter, clothing, etc for an extra individual. He was able to look after for himself, and did not believe he was dependent on having a slave to determine his success in life.

How do you determine success?

What do you need to accomplish to consider yourself a success? Do you really need to do more, or can you be content on less? Are you setting goals for yourself that will get in the way of actually living your life? Are you taking each day as it comes and giving it your all without an agenda you are trying to fulfill? Often the greatest results and peace of mind come when we are willing to lay down our plans, our agenda, etc. and just work honestly and remain content with what we can achieve.

Without a doubt, people are starting to rely more on the recommendation of a friend than on traditional marketing methods (word of mouth).

If facebook was to become the hub of the Internet, then things would change dramatically. However, for them to do that (and to make money), they would need to make a number of changes.

Here are my suggestions for how facebook could become ideal enough to take over the web (note if any of these occur, I posted them here first):

1. Create their own barter dollars (kind of like on Second Life) or import an existing financial system (paypal, banks, etc).
2. Allow people to pay using these dollars for the products/services of others on facebook.
3. Facebook takes a small commission (.01%) on each transaction made.
4. Premium account upgrades for business (ie: allowing you to send recommendations to multiple people, add attachments to email or direct messages, unique layouts for business, unique URL's for pages, elimination of friend limit, file storage and other useful benefits not setup within the system currently.) Many businesses and people would be happy to pay $50-100 a year for this feature (even .01% of facebook users having this feature at $50 would equal $20 million a year).
5. If they allowed you to sign in with your page username (aka http:www.facebook.com/mrjoshmoore login name would become mrjoshmoore, added attachments and file storage, they could wipe out email overnight.) UPDATE: This seems to work.
6. People would be hired in future companies based on their ability the size of their network and their ability to influence them to make purchases.
7. People would have a 'services' tab on their profile, outlining the services they can be contracted for (both online and offline).
8. People could use their dollars to buy shares in businesses on facebook, and their investments could be fully disclosed (at their discretion) on their facebook page).
9. The only people that would be given access to the information that facebook has would be government agencies to protect ID theft rather than to sell them products.

What are your thoughts? If facebook was to become the Internet hub of the future, what would need to happen?

(Photo courtesy of Hoggheff aka Hank Ashby aka Mr. Freshtags)

No doubt you have something that you enjoy doing in your spare time.

It could be going to the gym, taking a salsa class, hiking or something else. The main point thing is that you have something you enjoy doing on a regular basis that you either spend money on or do for free (at best).

If you have a hobby then there is a good chance you can find a way to monetise it or turn it into a benefit of some sort for your long term gain. Hobbies can easily be turned into something of benefit other than the actual participation of the event.

Let me give you an example:

A few years ago I had a teacher at my university who was in his late 20's. He was growing his business quickly, but cash flow wasn't the highest. After deciding he didn't want to throw all of his limited funds against the wall going out drinking every weekend, he decided to find new hobbies he was interested in.

Within a short time this teacher:

• Became the local state Chair for a premium coffee association (which was used to further promote himself and his business by investing time instead of money).
• Started taking salsa classes (by the time I met him at university he was an instructor a few hours a week getting paid to teach salsa).
• Practicing transcendental meditation (by the end of the year he was starting to teach people about it for a small fee).

These hobbies not only had benefits in the form of extra business exposure and income. They also allowed him to find additional fulfillment in teaching others the skills he had learned and allowed him to reduce his regular outgoings of several hundred dollars a week wasted out on the booze. His health also improved (drinking less) and he met a whole lot of new people with similar interests.

What hobbies do you have? Do you have skills you want to learn? On my list of things I want to do are the following items:

1. Learn a martial art (Could I monetise this by working my way to becoming an instructor in time?).
2. Blog regularly (Blogging helps me promote my businesses and involvements, as well as establishing my name in Google).
3. Running entrepreneurial businesses (I can use my experiences to get on other company boards or possibly run classes at a local university in the future).

Not everyone will want to find a benefit in a hobby. However, if you are feeling entrepreneurial and want to maximise every opportunity available then it may be a good idea to find ways to turn your hobbies into opportunities. You may find the rewards (financially, spiritually or otherwise) of teaching, volunteering, etc. are much more than you could have gained from the normal level of involvement... and the chances are you will meet even more likeminded people in these areas.

Are you a facebook addict?

If you are anything like me then chances are that you are addicted to facebook. What's worse, we have lots of various things we are trying to do online (blogging, tweeting, keeping our resume up to date, etc.).

I have been experimenting for the last few months and have made a lot of mistakes along the way. Part of the reason I am writing this post is to let my friends know where i have gone wrong (my bad guys). The unselfish part of this post is to let you know how to avoid the mistakes I have made.

After determining I was addicted to facebook I was trying to find a way to eliminate the addiction. On top of that, I was still trying to find ways to promote my blog and other business involvements. After much deliberation I experimented with a few fan pages (both for me and my blog) but it tured out that none of them worked as well as my personal profile.

Lesson number one: People want a personal interaction

For some reason, most people don't feel that a fan page is a personal interaction. They want a direct link with you personally. As most people in the blogosphere (there are millions of us after all) and most people in real life don't have 5,000 friends, this should not be an issue.

Lesson number two: Go where the people are

People don't like leaving their social networks online. They would much rather find a link to your site on facebook and then have a quick look there. Even better, is your site having a platform in facebook. My personal profile is an extension of my in facebook. If people are looking for me on Google, it is usually because they can't find me on their network.

This could cause some issues for business. When you think about it, people don't really care what you sell. Most of the things that take off in facebook are things they care about externally.

I look at it like this. I would much rather go to a bookshop nearby and buy a book than purchase online. People find things the same. They would rather know me in person than online (online substitutes the times when I can't see them). Mark Cuban said a while ago that he believed the Internet had reached a point of maturity in terms of growth. I agree. The future of business is likely to be more in person with online merely substituting and promoting offline activities (if it is not already there).

Lesson number three: People take it personally

Short of leaving a network for good (think Myspace), don't delete your network. I have deleted over 700 people on facebook now, and have readded many of them since. Although this has all been an experiment (hey it's only online anyway) people still seem to get offended when you delete them on facebook. Reminds me of a time I have a chick friend call me balling her eyes out because her ex-boyfriend 'had already deleted her number from his phone book'.

Rebuilding a network (desite it being an online network) takes time. It is similar to the dollar theory (if you have $100 saved and spend $50 aka 50% you will need to earn another 100% to get back to where you started). Networks work in the same fashion.

Lesson number five: Frienship first

It is not wise to promote your own business a million times. People don't care. They only care about what you can do for them, and they only spend the majority of their time looking at their own wall and feed. Build friendships with people you know in real life first, and do it on their wall. People appreciate that more.

Pick the social network your real life friends are on as your primary. My personal opinion is to remove/placehold the rest (quality on one is better than mediocre on ten... and it shows in Google ranking too). You will find most people on twitter are on facebook too. I don't know too many people exclusively on twitter... but I know a lot exclusively on facebook.

Lesson number six: If you need to be productive, delete it off your phone

I HATE EMAIL! Fortunately, I get less communication via email these days than any other medium. It is primarily study or work related. As a result, I have the direct to my phone. Facebook on my phone creates clutter, both on my phone and my email inbox. Plus it increases the addiction. The simple solution to cure addiction and decrease the email clutter was to remove facebook from my phone. If I need to log into facebook more than twice a day (same as email) then something is severely wrong. It can wait until later.

Lesson number seven: Promote

People are moving away from email and other forms of communication (particularly Gen-Y). They are more interested in relationships. If you are on facebook, link to your profile. Put it in youe email signature, on your website, your business card, etc. Give it to people you meet when you are out and about. We need to concentrate communication channels rather than having hundreds. With 400 million peole on facebook, it makes more sense to ditch Email, Twitter and LinkedIn for communication. However, there is still something more useful.

Lesson number eight: Offline

Offline is the best way to do things. Sure, promote your social event on facebook but people prefer meeting you in person or talking to you on the phone. Hand written letters are also more well received (particularly with older generations). The last one is also a great way for getting in touch with people usually not contactable.

 

So there you have it, my lessons learned from experimenting with facebook. Oh and if you don't have me on there feel free to get in touch: http://facebook.com/mrjoshmoore

 

Cheers,

Josh Moore

How often have you heard the term 'overnight success'?

Rarely is someone an overnight success. A lot of work goes on behind the scenes for years before people gain enough traction to make it big. Many obstacles have to be overcome, discipline needs to be implemented, habits need to be formed and skills need to be mastered.

Essentially this means that what you do today will have an impact on who you will be in five years time. If you look back at the day so far, what have you done to begin achieving success? Of course you will have days (possibly many days) where there does not seem to be any progress. What habits are you implementing however that will help you to become what you desire?

Some of the things you can begin to do daily that can make a difference towards your success are:

• Exercise
• Waking up early
• Eating breakfast
• Doing more than you are paid for
• Writing/reading
• Partaking in social activities (however small or large)
• Giving time, money, effort, an ear or a shoulder 
• Maintaining a positive attitude
• Grooming
• Working overtime
• Managing time effectively

What attributes are you working on daily in order to guarantee your success? Often it is the little things that you think don't make a difference that end up impacting your success the most. It could be that extra push up a day, that extra ten minutes reflecting via prayer and meditation, that extra 15 minutes you spend working hard.

Success does not come overnight. It comes by daily improving your results and working towards your goals. Every day forward will make success in the long term much more certain.

What can you do today to start building success into your life?