So I never received a pre-release copy of the book entitled The $100 Startup – Reinvent The Way You Make A Living, Do What You Love, And Create A New Future by Chris Guillebeau.  It must have gotten lost in the mail; but that said, I did pre-order a copy from Amazon and picked it up the other day.

Having just thumbed through the book – it looks like a fantastic read.

Here is some information from the Amazon page for the book:

In The $100 Startup, Chris Guillebeau shows you how to lead of life of adventure, meaning and purpose – and earn a good living.

Still in his early thirties, Chris is on the verge of completing a tour of every country on earth – he’s already visited more than 175 nations – and yet he’s never held a “real job” or earned a regular paycheck.  Rather, he has a special genius for turning ideas into income, and he uses what he earns both to support his life of adventure and to give back.

There are many others like Chris – those who’ve found ways to opt out of traditional employment and create the time and income to pursue what they find meaningful.  Sometimes, achieving that perfect blend of passion and income doesn’t depend on shelving what you currently do.  You can start small with your venture, committing little time or money, and wait to take the real plunge when you’re sure it’s successful.   In preparing to write this book, Chris identified 1,500 individuals who have built businesses earning $50,000 or more from a modest investment (in many cases, $100 or less), and from that group he’s chosen to focus on the 50 most intriguing case studies.  In nearly all cases, people with no special skills discovered aspects of their personal passions that could be monetized, and were able to restructure their lives in ways that gave them greater freedom and fulfillment.

Here, finally, distilled into one easy-to-use guide, are the most valuable lessons from those who’ve learned how to turn what they do into a gateway to self-fulfillment.  It’s all about finding the intersection between your “expertise” – even if you don’t consider it such — and what other people will pay for.  You don’t need an MBA, a business plan or even employees.  All you need is a product or service that springs from what you love to do anyway, people willing to pay, and a way to get paid.

Not content to talk in generalities, Chris tells you exactly how many dollars his group of unexpected entrepreneurs required to get their projects up and running; what these individuals did in the first weeks and months to generate significant cash; some of the key mistakes they made along the way, and the crucial insights that made the business stick.  Among Chris’s key principles: if you’re good at one thing, you’re probably good at something else; never teach a man to fish – sell him the fish instead; and in the battle between planning and action, action wins.

In ancient times, people who were dissatisfied with their lives dreamed of finding magic lamps, buried treasure, or streets paved with gold.  Today, we know that it’s up to us to change our lives.  And the best part is, if we change our own life, we can help others change theirs.  This remarkable book will start you on your way.

I really like this last paragraph, the emphasis is mine.

There is a website associated with the book as well called, fittingly enough, The $100 Startup at http://www.100startup.com.  They will be heading to Vancouver, BC on June 211, 2012 at 7:00pm just not sure where right now.

Once I’ve gone through the book, I’ll share my thoughts with you.

If you have already received the book, or ordered  the Kindle version (which, by-the-way was MORE expensive than the actual book) share your thoughts with us.

Whether you are a seasoned individual that has plenty of experience, or a college/university graduate looking for the first professional job – or you are completely new to the job market – the interview can be nerve wracking.

Your stomach has butterflies, you feel sick – maybe hot and flushed; or you are like an icicle – freezing cold.  Your tongue is tied and you have developed a stutter though you’ve never had one.  And this is from someone that does very well in social situations!

The interview is scary.  I’ve been on both sides – and now I relish making the interviewee squirm in their seat!  Kidding – but I am there to get the best possible candidate and will use all the tools at my disposal to ensure that I do.  The cost of hiring and firing are just too high for me to make a mistake.

That’s why YOU need to be prepared when you meet me, another HR professional, or hiring agency.  Our reputations are on the line when we hire.

So what can you do to ensure you’re prepared for the job interview, whether it’s your first or fifth?  Here are some job interview tips.

• Prepare, prepare and prepare.  Know yourself, what are your strengths and weaknesses?  Think about your long-term goals and what you need to get there.  What are your personal attributes?  You will get asked questions about strengths and weakneses so you need to be prepared.  You will be asked about long-term goals.  Know yourself, it’s important.
• Research the company.  It might be a retail opportunity, or even part-time work – but know the company you want to work for.  What do they do?  Do they have other divisions?  Could you make a future for yourself at that company?  There are plenty of stories of individuals that start at the bottom of the ladder only to work themselves up to a senior position.  It makes the interviewer feel good when you talk about the company they work for (and where you want to work).
• The day before the interview – get enough sleep!  Don’t stay up all night and expect your interview to go well.  It won’t.
• If you need to drive some distance to the business, try a dry-run the day before so that you are familiar with the location and how to get there.  On the day of the interview – leave early!  Even if you have to sit in the parking lot for some time, it is better to be early than late and have to explain yourself.
• On the day of the interview (depending on the time of day) eat a good meal, but don’t go overboard!  Definately avoid foods that will make your mouth smell – no garlic, onions or other such items (yes, tuna falls into this category).  If you can stomach it, perhaps a protein shake – you don’t want to go on an empty stomach but you don’t want to gorge yourself either.
• Take a mint or better yet brush before your interview – if you are early and there are public washrooms; a quick gargle or brush will help your mouth taste fresh and give you more confidence.
• Don’t overdo perfumes/calognes or other scents – the workplace might be “scent free” (though you would be told this prior to the interview).  These items should always be used in moderation.
• Make sure you are dressed for success – even for a retail job or restaurant! For retail/food – business casual should be fine.  If it’s a professional job – dress the part.  Make sure shoes are polished and clean.  Clothes should be pressed with no wrinkles – you need to look good!
• Don’t overlook small things like nails — even for guys.
• Check your face before you go into the interview.  No boogers (or nose hairs) hanging out; eyes are clean – no PB&J on the chin.  You get the idea.
• If offered a hand shake – take it!  No fist-bumps, please.  Don’t crush your interviewers hand.
• Don’t slouch when you walk into the room.  Don’t slouch on the chair.  Sit TALL and PROUD.  Show that you are confident and try to remain cool and calm.
• Answer questions honestly and to the best of your abilities.

This might be your first interview, but it won’t be your last and chances are as soon as you step out of the interview you will have thought of dozens of better answers – but don’t fret.  Normally your first answer will have been the best for that particular question.  You want to do a “post-mortem” of the interview but you don’t want to fret over every aspect of it.  The reason for the interview post-mortem is to hone your interview skills for the next time.

If you got the interview through an agency – make sure you call them back and let them know how it went.  Chances are they will also call the employer to find out how things went, and will share this with you.

If you have the ability to do so follow-up the interview with a Thank You note.  They still go a long way to show your enthusiasm.

Though retail jobs are a dime-a-dozen, managers are always looking for specific type of people.  The cost to hire, whether in retail or a professional organization can be staggering.  Not only is the employer looking at the cost of placing the ad on an online market place, through newspapers or even a shop sign – there are interview costs, training costs and of course – if they employee doesn’t work out.

I found this great link http://www.sashacorp.com/turnframe.html that talks about the cost of employee turnover at certain types of organization.  They had this to say “Sasha is the only consulting group articulating this simple fact: Turnover costs are misleading.  The value of keeping one front line employee is many times greater than the cost of losing one, because turning someone  into a 20-year employee can save 10, 20 or more ‘turns’ on a front line job:   $100,00 or more.” (emphasis is mine).

I can attest to this as I do hire and terminate employees, the cost — plus the stress that it takes on the team can be tiring and for supervisors, and managers exhausting and draining as they are frequently required to “fill-in” until a replacement can be found.

So not only are you looking at the actual monetary cost, but the physical cost on the team and culture.  In other words - HIGH TURNOVER is bad, whether you are retail or a professional services organization.

I’ve provided some questions that you could get asked on retail job interview here, and I have linked to a few websites that provide dozens of different questions that you can use (or learn from):

Retail Job Interview Questions

• What makes you suitable for this retail job?
• What qualities do you consider most important in this retail job?
• What interests you about selling to customers?
• How do you go about familiarizing yourself with the products you sell?
• Why are you interested in a position at this company?
• Describe a time when you had to handle a difficult customer.
• Give me an example of when you went the extra mile for a customer.
• Tell me about an improvement that you made to the customer service process.
• Describe a situation in which you had to remain calm under great provocation from a customer.
• How have you dealt with angry customers previously?
• Tell me about a time you received positive feedback from a customer.
• What motivates you?
• What didn’t you like about your last job?

Websites that offer Retail Job Interview Questions

1. http://jobsearch.about.com/od/interviewquestionsanswers/Job_Interview_Questions_and_Answers.htm
2. http://www.best-job-interview.com/top-10-interview-questions.html
3. http://www.wisebread.com/how-to-answer-23-of-the-most-common-interview-questions

We have all heard the saying to think outside the box.  It gets thrown around a lot.  Instead of the same-old, same-old phrase thinking outside the box – I like to call it thinking outside the decision, and is directed more towards decision makers in any company or organization.

What does it mean – just as it sounds thinking outside the decision.

Too often managers are quick to make a decision and don’t approach it with enough thought and may quickly decide that path to take.  The problem is if the decision will impact multiple groups or departments, the decision might not be correct.  Thinking outside the decision simply means to spend a little more time on your thought process to ensure that the decision is the right decision to be made.

Here is a scenario:

You are the Manager of a call center, limited resources means that you can’t handle every request and you need to prioritize requests but first priority is always meeting your SLA (i.e., customer expectations or answering those damn calls).  You are approached by the Account Manager of one of your largest accounts (they pay the bills, and feed your children and put the roof over your head … you get the picture) and are asked to assist with some customer service (as the Account Manager has phrased it).

You are a 24x7x365 call center and you run three shifts but are very tight because you only have 15-agents. Your center takes in 8-9,000 calls per month and does make outbound calls but primarily to follow-up. You are not a revenue center – so customer service does just that, no selling or upselling (and you don’t plan to get into that business).

The Account Manager along with the VP of Sales are running a campaign to increase the number of individual retail sites the merchant operates.  Most of the process has been taken care of, the new sites are set-up in your systems but they are not selling anything and upon closer inspection it’s been determined that 80% of the new locations haven’t even called in to have their accounts activated.

The project is for customer service to call the locations (there could be up to 300 locations to call, across the country and in different time zones), walk them through the account activation process and provide some basic training.

The Sales team figures that by doing this you could get up to 75% of the locations (75% of 80%) selling product and generating sales which adds to the companies bottom line (and to the Account Managers and VP’s bonus).

What do you do?

I’ll answer what I would do – but would love to hear your solution and why you went about deciding what you did.  I’ll post my solution shortly after.

I received an e-mail a couple of weeks ago (sorry for the late reply) asking me my opinion about how to start a business without money – as far as I know, you will always need some money to start a business no matter the type of business it is.

Perhaps you’ve got a killer idea for an online business , what will you need to get started?

• Domain Name – anywhere from FREE to $15.00/year – or more depending on the extension
• Hosting – around $10.00/month for some very basic hosting.  If your business takes off you will need to move to either semi-dedicated managed server (around $50.00/month) or dedicated server (over $100.00/month).  If you’ve got no idea how to manage a dedicated server as most are un-managed, factor in costs to either contract someone to help or hire.  Hourly rates vary but my last experience several years ago, I spent about $50.00/hour to harden the server and help configure it — NO optimizations were performed and the server was not top-of-the-line, but something decent that would suffice.
• Development – the sky is the limit, unless you are a programmer/engineer and can do it yourself but even then you will need to outsource some work – for example graphics work.  In my previous venture I ended up outsourcing the graphics work and some UI design and development.  It wasn’t expensive but be prepared to spend several hundreds of dollars.

These are just a few of the costs you will most likely have – others will come up when you least expect it and can’t always be planned.

You also need to think about how your venture will generate revenue:

• Affiliate Income – you’ll make money by referring visitors to other sites, and when they buy the product(s) you earn some income
• Advertising – making money from programs like Google AdSense or selling advertising on your site.  Advertising is not easy!  You need a lot of visitors to your site; we’re taking thousands per day to make any real money.

Of course today many online services go into business without a notion of how they will make money – I’m thinking the most recent purchase by Facebook of Instagram (which Facebook purchased for $1 billion — yes, that is B and NO it’s not a typo).  Perhaps this is where your venture will lead?  Who knows.

If you’re interested, here are some links about Instagram discussing their revenue model (or lack of it):

• http://www.quora.com/What-is-Instagrams-revenue-model
• http://allthingsd.com/20120406/sequoia-set-to-lead-500m-valuation-round-for-instagram/
• http://blog.cgsm.com/tag/instagram-revenue-model/
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/startupviews/2012/04/12/5-startup-myths-from-the-instagram-acquisition-by-facebook/

So what type of online business should you start?  Do some research.

When you think about an online business, look at what you can move online that people do everyday off-line.  Why do you think Facebook is such a hit?  How about Pinterest, Instagram and all the other social media sites?  Think past social media and what you do every day that millions of others are doing and see if it can be turned into an online service.

Essentially you want to try and solve a problem that someone has – even if they don’t think they have a problem.

You can also look at the fringes of social media – sites such as Klout and EmpireAvenue (based in Edmonton, AB) come to mind.  These are social sites but they built their business analyzing your social networks and provide for ways to expand, engage and evaluate (that’s from EmpireAvenue) your relationships to guage how effective your social media efforts are.  Klout on the other hand also looks at your social interaction and measures your online influence on a scale of 1 to 100 – they use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google+ to measure your influence.

How about services that allow you to manage multiple social networks under one roof?  That’s what HootSuite does (they are Canadian also – based in Vancouver, BC), they are a Social Media Dashboard aimed at personal and corporate users and if you’re BIG into social media the $5.00/month for a PRO account is reasonable (no I’m not getting paid to say that, it’s my own opinion).  They also offer enterprise solutions.

These types of sites are generally aimed at corporate customers but they have also gained a strong individual user base (I use both Klout and EmpireAvenue).  EmpireAvenue goes even further and allows others to trade your “name” (like the stock markets do with publically traded companies) – check out these sites About pages to learn more about them.  And they are not the only game in town, there are several other similar sites.

So while you can’t start a business without money – there are a lot of online ventures that you can look into that could be started with minimal investment.  Of course you can also look to friends, and family to help finance your venture (hence the term Venture Capital — but I’ll leave that for another post.

Seriously it feels that after 8:00pm at night certain resteraunts don’t have to provide customer service.

I tried to send this to the company via their online form – and I could not.  Looks like they didn’t even test the form to see if it works — or to give them the benefit, perhaps its my browser (I’m using IE right now).  I won’t discolse the name of the company, but you’ll probably figure it out.

We live in the area, so usually visit the location in our neighborhood – however have noticed that the quality of products is gettting worse, the managers and staff don’t seem to care and are more interested in joking/laughing and having a good time rather than serving and taking care of their customers.

Question – do your manager NOT calibrate machines to ensure the right mixture of syrup/mix and water is poured?

We have gone to this location 5 times in the last 2 weeks and bought a large Mocha (coffee + hot chocolate with toppings).  It’s NEVER done right.  The staff just don’t understand what “little coffee” means.  Apparently it means half the cup to them.

My complaint:

• We ask for little coffee, but always get poured at least half of the cup.  Don’t your staff understand LITTLE?  We have go back 2x or 3x to get it right.  TRAIN YOUR STAFF BETTER.
• Why do I have to ALWAYS ask for the toppings?  Don’t they know how to make a Mocha?  Then when you ask, I get the impression they feel it’s a burden to do things right.  TRAIN YOUR STAFF BETTER and TEACH them customer service because, at least at this location they obvioulsy don’t know or care.
• More often than not the hot chocolate is watery.  Last night we went back twice.  The first time half of the cup was coffee even after the server said she’d put in less coffee.  Second time the hot chocolate was brown water.  We told the staff member, who said that they would tell the manager/supervisor who would come and talk to us.  The manager came out, but totally ignored us.

Instead the staff was laughing and having a great time and didn’t even take care of a paying customer that had a complaint.  Is this how you train your managers and supervisors?

So in 5 trips we’ve wasted whatever the cost of a large mocha is 5 times; hoping that the problem would be resolved but it never is.

What are you going to do to fix this?

 

Will have to see if they have a FB page and paste my complaint there, because this is what I get when I try to leave it on their website:

If you will notice there is no place to add my e-mail address.

If you are not on Twitter or checking out a lot of the major publishers out there, here is something that you may have missed on Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/sites/investopedia/2012/04/02/are-dollar-stores-really-a-bargain/3/).

My favorite part of this story:

Dollar stores are a great place to save some serious money, but you must be an astute shopper. As the old adage says: “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Comparison shop for not only price, but quality. Paying a few more dollars for a premium product that will give you years of use will save you more money than a cheaper item that won’t be around very long. If you have any doubts about a product, don’t purchase it. That advice should be used in every store you shop.

My son loves the dollar store for cheap toys, but honestly you don’t always know what you are getting and more often than not the stuff breaks within minutes.  I’m not wealthy however find that paying a bit more elsewhere results in better quality merchandise that actually lasts longer.  If you can afford to, either skip the dollar stores or just be VERY SMART about what you do buy there.

Amongst a lot of friends and family, I frequently get asked about my opinions for electronic gadgets.  Myself I’ve been using an older model Canon 8mp camera that works great and produces awesome photos.  Of course the camera is only as good as the person taking the pictures, and if you are the type of person that cuts the heads off of people when you take their picture – then I’m sorry, no matter how much you spend on a camera you will not get the results you expect.

Here is my pick for the best digital camera under $200.00:

Panasonic DMC-FH25K 16.1MP Digital Camera with 8x Wide Angle Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.7 inch LCD (Black) – Amazon price $139.99

This is a great looking camera, and for 16.1mp the price simply cannot be beat.  For the fashion conscious, this camera actually comes in several colors – black, blue, red, silver and violet.  Beyond colors, this camera does what others that are more expensive can do, featuring 27 scene modes to such features as MEGA O.I.S (or Optical Image Stabilization) Shake Detection.  If you are like me (and so many other photographers) that you can’t keep still, then this feature will really help you out.  The camera detects hand-shake and actually will compensate for the blurring that is caused by it.  The camera samples 4,000 times per second and even the slightest shake is detected and compensated for.  This results in stunning photographs that will always be crisp, clear and sharp.

Another superb feature to do-away with the blurring you may get on an image if someone is moving too quickly is Intelligent ISO Control Motion Detection.  Like MEGA O.I.S the camera detects subject movement and will automatically adjust the ISO setting and shutter speed to best suite the movement and light conditions.

There are several other fantastic features on this camera – but what makes it a hit is the price and the number of 4-star and 5-star reviews on Amazon.  It’s got 160 5-star reviews, and 61 4-star reviews and 36 3, 2 or 1 star reviews – so by far a larger percentage of 4-star and 5-star reviews for this under $200.00 digital camera.  For the price you cannot go wrong.

Virtually ever review of the camera by purchasers says the same thing “outstanding product“, “great camera“, “finally a decent camera that takes sharp photos“.

Click on the links above to read more about the Panasonic DMC-FH25K – one of my picks for the best digital camera for under $200.00.

Here are some technical details for those who care:

• The high-speed, high-performance Venus Engine VI is incorporated to enable the recording of beautiful images.
• The Sonic Speed AF system includes numerous re-engineering enhancements.
• Battery included.
• When you don’t know which mode will give you the best shooting results.
• Just choose the iA Mode, aim at your subject and shoot.
• The MEGA O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilizer) compensates for the blurring caused by hand-shake.

This camera is rated #3  in Camera and Photo on Amazon and #2 in Point & Shoot Digital Cameras.

Another image of the camera, in violet and full-size in blue:

Updates to several posts…

On the post Problems with iPhone Home Button turns out that after updating the version of iOS on the iPhone did resolve the issue with the home button.  That and the fact that our son uses the phone and there are generally 30+ apps “sleeping” which is probably also slowing the phone down.  I also did activate the feature as I described in the post so should the home button start acting up again, my wife can always use the soft home button.  Why wouldn’t Apple just create a gesture or single/double/triple tap to get to the home screen?

On the post Cost Of Running Devices In Your Home after running the Belkin Energy Use Monitor for just a little under one month on my laptop (an NV53 Gateway) it costs on average $6.28 to power the laptop over the course of a year or about $0.51 per month.  This takes into account the time it is actually left on and when I’m done I normally put it to sleep/hibernate.  Next to take this to some other electronics in the house, like our rear projection TV to see how much power that thing sucks up.  Updates to come in about a month!

So I was eagerly watching the live blogs and the announcements for the next generation iPad.

It is sweet.

The fun stuff…

New Apple TV announced with pricing to remain the same but will feature 1080p HD instead of just 720p.  Other “cosmetic” changes to the UI.

iPad 3 (??) details:

Officially announced 4G support.  In Canada that means Bell, Rogers and Telus (now to see if they up their prices, remain the same or drop them – from what I’ve read 4G LTE offers greater speeds and a lower cost to carriers but consumers will get screwed over as always).

16gb WiFi + 4G is $629 (US), 32gb WiFi + 4G is $729 (US) and 64gb WiFi + 4G is $829

Pricing is the same as the current model (WiFi only) at $499, $599 and $699 for 16GB, 32GB and 64GB respectively.

You CAN pre-order today (confirmed on the Canadian Apple site), the new iPad (iPad 3 ???) will be available on March 16 in US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and more.  Just not yet as the Apple online store is not available.

A5X processor quad core. 4x faster than NVIDIA Tegra 3.

…and NO FAIL WHALES at Twitter, speedy response all the way through.