Now that you’ve decided you don’t want to be broke or exploited as student/slave labor, the next issue should be obvious, “How do I actually get paid?”

The simple answer is to exchange something you have of value for cash. Not very helpful, though, is it? In truth, there is no easy solution because if you want to get paid, you have to invest a lot of time and thought into identifying, developing, and marketing your skills.

But what are skills? Skills are talents you possess that are valuable to other people. And yes, you do have skills, whether you realize it yet or not. I have no idea what you’re good at, so you’re going to have to figure that out for yourself. However, I can offer some tips:

• Don’t be modest. This is about identifying how you shine and broadcasting it to the world. False humility won’t get you anywhere, but at the same time know your limits and don’t make claims about yourself you can’t back up.
• Focus on you as a person. This isn’t about what labels people attach to you. You might be class president or an artist or The Best Son In The World, but these aren’t skills, although they can serve as a starting point if you examine what about you makes you good at these things.
• Think outside your major. Just because you study math doesn’t mean your only skills are quantitative (though those are great ones to have!). Look at everything you do, not just at what boxes you usually check on a job application.

Using myself as an example, I’ve always had a talent for technology. I took apart the family vacuum cleaner at age four (and put it back together!), and I spent thousands of hours playing with LEGOs and building cities as a kid. Since was born in the 1990s, this aptitude got channeled into the Internet, and now I can intuitively learn just about any program or process. I also have strong verbal skills, expressed by my love of reading, top marks in English, and the 16,000 (non-spam) emails in my Gmail account. Finally, I can think strategically, which drew me to play chess in high school and major in business, specifically operations, in college. Essentially, my relevant skills are technological, verbal, and strategic.

Once you’ve figured out what skills you have, you need to work out where you can apply them to create value. There are really two components to this step: whom do you want to work for and who will want you to work for them (and be willing to pay you). I can’t really help you at all here, except with the most general advice possible:

• Once again, don’t limit yourself to your major field.
• Be creative. You might be a business student, for example, but if you’ve always enjoyed art, you may have better luck selling those skills to small companies looking for some graphic work.
• Exploit your social network. Look at your family, friends, and family friends. What businesses do they run/work in? Presumably, they like you, and you might be able to get your first jobs through their good words.
• Don’t worry about building your résumé – any work you do of your own initiative will make you stand out as a job candidate, while giving you unique experience and talking points in interviews that no unpaid, coffee-fetching intern will ever have.
• Look for a niche. Find something unique to do that your skills qualify you for. Feel free to invent a job title or field. The only reason you’re studying whatever you are in college is that someone, sometime ago decided to invent a topic on which he could be an authority.

For me, I realized that IT is overflowing with technical skill, but is sorely lacking in professionals who a) can communicate the value of their skills to clients and b) can approach projects with a strategic mindset, offering perspective which goes beyond programming and instead focuses on using new media as an integral part of a 21st century business model. Of course, these are just words without step three…

…Because once you’ve worked out what your skills are and where to apply them, the real work of building yourself as an authority begins. Get your name out. Comment on authoritative websites. Go to relevant business events. Get work. Develop a portfolio. Market yourself. Basically, find people who you can offer value to, and when they ask why they should pay you, be ready to wow them!

So there you have it – how to get paid as a student. There’s one last part, though: constantly and aggressively expand. You have a lot of free time in college, so be sure to make the most of it. Hone your skills, add new ones, make yourself more valuable, and raise your rates.

You have value. You have skills. Now go out and get paid!

(Guest post by Cooper Dukes. Visit his blog here.) This version of the article was edited by the staff members of the Asitchanges.com Website.

If you can’t answer these questions, then I have a follow-up: How many unpaid internships have you taken since graduating from high school? (I’ll bet it’s more than one.)

As students, we are encouraged not to think about, or worse, entirely disregard the idea that our work provides a concrete value. The same people who preach these views are ironically eager to have student employees or interns work for them for free. This must change, my brothers and sisters. Consider this a call to arms. Let us be done with our unpaid internships and terrible student jobs. It is time to reconsider and re-recognize the value of your own work.

I take the opposite view – I think it’s incredibly important for students to consider the value of our work and the compensation we receive, or should receive for work.

Practically speaking, if you’re in college you can plan on leaving with a pile of debt equal to several years’ earnings. Good luck taking care of that if you don’t take a value-maximizing approach to your finances.

Money is important, of course. For me, however, a mindset of self-worth is more valuable, and will pay a better return on investment in the long run. How are you supposed to have any confidence in the work you do if your employer attaches so little value to you? How are you to obtain any idea of the fair market value of your skill set if you spend four years giving away your talents in college? And after you graduate, how are you to walk into a job negotiation and state the price you think you’re worth with a straight face, if you’ve never done so before?

I find being paid for the work I do to be immensely empowering, and it’s not just in the sense of “Oh, now I can go buy food for the week!” To me, being handed a check with thanks from my client makes me think the following: “I have a certain opinion about the value I can offer, and this opinion is shared by an independent person who has chosen to hire me. We have exchanged value – my time and expertise for his money, and we are both walking away with a feeling of added value.”

This is why I refuse to work for free: it’s simply not possible for an employer/client to appreciate or respect a relationship in which they give out nothing of value. And so I urge all you students out there to examine the work you do and the value you gain (or don’t gain) from it.

Isn’t one of the primary motivating reasons that people attend college so that they can have respect in the future? Why defer that gratification? Why defer respect in a professional environment? Let me put it simply: there isn’t a good reason to defer respect in a professional environment. And every time you agree to take on an unpaid internship or, you automatically establish a negative power dynamic in your professional relationships.

Using myself as an example, I divide everything not fun that I do into three categories: academic, income generating, or development:

• Academic work is what will get me my BSBA in a year. I receive no money for it, though I do try to cross-purpose any class projects so that I can use them in other baskets. I do this work with the belief that having a college degree will give me more value in the future than the value I would gain from not having a degree but working these four years. If I didn’t believe this, I would drop out of college.
• Income generating work makes me money. Professionally, these would be my business development, web design, and technology training activities. Preparing for competitions, pursuing leads, applying for jobs, etc. also fall into this category, based on the expectation of resulting future income.
• Development work is anything that will let me function more effectively, whether through better efficiency, organization, reputation, or knowledge. I consider my website to be development work, as are updating my résumé, writing articles, reading about technology trends, and setting up invoicing and time tracking software.

If a task isn’t academic, income generating, or development-related then I don’t do it.

As a final thought, I want to propose four guidelines for reconsidering how and why you’ll work:

No Free Lunch

1. Don’t work for free. As the title says, your time is valuable! It doesn’t matter if you’re a freshman political science major or on your way to med school as magna cum laude, you have skills and experience that you can bring to the table – you just have to figure out at which tables you want to sit.
2. Don’t barter. When negotiating with a student, a client/employer will usually try to barter with you as a first tactic. Bartering is a trade for something other than cash. For a client, the most often used tactic is, “Do this project for free and I’ll have future paid work for you. Call this a test.” Employers will go with, “You’ll gain experience working with me that you can take into future [paid] jobs.” In either case, politely explain that you’ll have to insist on being paid – if they refuse, wish them the best of luck and walk away… which leads us to #3…
3. You can do better. Have the courage to turn down offers that aren’t valuable to you. An unpaid summer internship fetching coffee isn’t necessarily better than spending a few weeks at home developing your professional skills and strategizing on how to market them. Also, always have a value threshold in mind. “If I can’t make more than $15/hour at an internship, I’ll go home and work retail part-time, while pursing leads for next fall.” Personally, I think a good starting point for value is to look at what you’re making at your current campus job, and double it.
4. You may not need money, but you do need respect. Regardless of your financial situation, your major, or how much you value monetary success versus social work, you need to be respected for what you contribute. Working without respect is soul draining; working for free without respect is slavery. You might ultimately disagree with me about unpaid work, but always remember that you and your time are valuable and that you should be treated as such.

(Guest post by Cooper Dukes. Visit his blog here.) This version of the article was edited by the staff members of the Asitchanges.com Website.

You have your domain name, or blog, so, how do you develop followers and appropriately market your website? First, you need to register with Google analytics, for those of you with that ability (sorry wordpress.com users). Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/ to create an account (It’s FREE). This site allows you to see where your traffic comes from geographically, and what sites are bringing you viewers. Your visitor data is important to track and analyze because you can use this to strategize through marketing and increase the volume of visitors. You can visit their help site here to answer any questions you may have about the site: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/?hl=en.

In my experience with blogging, I found that analyzing what type of articles draw the most attention, and posting more of those is highly effective in bring people to your site, but if your site has a specific vision, don’t stray from that vision, as it will confuse your readers about the meaning of your blog.

Also, looking at your statistics, you will see how many times you need to post to keep people visiting your site. If you plan on posting once  a week, you will have a mass of traffic around the days you post. If you’d rather have a constant flow of visitors, then think about posting three to five times a week, if not daily. I live by a rule here, “the more you post, the more you’re read,” and it’s worked well for me when trying to figure out what to do with a bad day of stats: POST!

Now, I’ve already written about the Tweet Deck and how you can draw traffic from people by jumping into their conversations. Don’t forget how important this strategy can be for your blog; you can bring traffic from all over the world in this way. View the “Tweet Deck” article here.

Another way I’ve found myself drawing more traffic, was going on Facebook and “liking” different groups, then posting on the wall. For example, I wrote an article about the “Jersey Shore,” so I joined Snookie groups and “I love the Jersey Shore,” groups and posted my article with a brief summary. This brought my traffic from Facebook to DOUBLE!

Facebook is also handy in ways where you can buy ad space, and post a flyer or something else you’ve designed toadvertize your blog, and this brings random traffic from Facebook in a massive way (they don’t have to be friends with you to see your advertisement.  Also, consider making a fan page after you’ve become a little more established, and send it to your friends, asking them to send it to their friends. People put little emphasis on how much friends on Facebook can help you. Think about asking your friends to post your article as their status, or on other friends’ walls! This brings your traffic to new heights through showing more and more people the article, and perhaps those people will post your article on their site to show their friends and it becomes this brilliant web of postings, and massive amounts of traffic for your site.

Encourage people to subscribe to your blog, and set up email lists to send out notifications of your next post! Email lists tend to grow, so sending this post out to about ten or more people a day, or week, will draw interesting traffic, if you ask those people you emailed to send the email to their friends, ten or more. Again, you’ll have a web of viewers, but it starts with your email, so don’t forget this important step of advertising.

If you and your friends have Gmail, you may want to think about asking them to add you to their rss feed. This makes visiting your site daily a breeze. Also, encouraging this through your advertisements, you can draw a constant flow of daily readers, and it will make your work a little easier, having a daily or weekly following without you having to post or email them.

As a final note, think about creating an interesting way of displaying your blog through Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. If you make your advertisement exciting and interesting, people will be more inclined to click on it rather than dismiss it. Advertise creatively and you will see results. There are thousands of possibilities for what you can create, and it doesn’t have to take forever. Download a background off of google images, and put your blog’s theme in it. Personalized flyers are an intriguing way of marketing to draw attention to your site outside of the internet!

So, I will leave you with this thought: The more you post, the more people will look at your site. The more you advertise, the more traffic you’ll bring. Work hard, and you will see results. Good luck.

Michael Hatch has been in business for about 40 years. He started as a board artist in the design side of the business which eventually led to the exhibition industry. He successfully owned an exhibit design and production company in the D.C. area. He later sold the business and took the profits to invest in A2Z, a technology company, that produced software for exhibition management. He leveraged knowledge of exhibit at A2Z for 10 years before joining Pat, a former IT director at A2Z to start Fantail Technologies. While at A2Z, they both serviced 70 for the top 400 exhibitions in America.

What value did you see in Fantail when you became involved?

Pat (Mike’s business partner at Fantail Technologies) asked me to see what he was doing. He had started to specialize in open source and cloud based software. He specifically looked into Salesforce because that’s what he used at A2Z.

I can see that cloud technology and open source has clear advantage over the solutions we produced at A2Z. We have recently gotten many large clients that see the value in what we provide.

Even though we are servicing events and exhibition industry, they are really offering cloud based and open source stack of products and services that cover a range of needs.

Why entrepreneurship?

I was in my early 20s and had just gotten out of the Navy was married. When the company I was working for got closed, I was hit with hard times. I started as a board artist, but essentially I did sales because I learned was better at that.

I went into business for myself. The advantage I had working for myself was that I could do things as slow as I needed to. I just hustled during the day to get business and did the production work at night.

I had to become an entrepreneur out of necessity. I read and learned what I needed to. Eventually a client asked me to come work for them, a very large advertising and marketing agency, and they were doing a lot of exhibit work which interested me. I tried it out. If it didn’t work out, I could always go back to working for myself.

I spent 5-7 years there and worked my up to a Vice Presidency and Partnership. I left them and went to Holiday Inn to their event corporate marketing program. What interested them in me in Holiday Inn’s program was it was very entrepreneurial. It was a self funded program. When I came back to D.C. I went into business again with 5 other business partners which I owned for 17 years.

In the beginning it wasn’t easy. The first year I worked for myself was very hard. We had a new born. We were essentially on food stamps. My wife had left her job. I happened to come across a classified ad in the post.

“Make your own hours.”

I could work there and then work on my projects afterwards. It was a shop that allowed me to do their work at a cut rate and then spend the rest on my business. It was rent free.

They had a full shop for constructing boards which I was able to utilize in doing the work. At first they gave me 75% of my business and then later as I became more proficient at getting business on my own, they were still providing 35% of the work I was doing.

Do you think that other people do the same thing in hard times? Do you think starting a business in a recession is a good decision?

There are some patterns that I generally see. There is a natural inclination in a recession to do a few things when someone loses their job. Some people can become independents.

Almost every small business runs into a wall after 5-7 years. I have seen so many examples where they have grown so much that they need a lot more resources in capital investment. A lot of small businesses if they have two or three bad months go out of business.

From what you have learned, what would you have done differently?

Mike hesitated to answer this question, but you’ll see later that he learned from mistakes that someone else made and incorporated the lesson into his own business.
What type of sales person would you classify yourself as?

I am a sales engineer. In the exhibit business it was a consultative sale. Technology is not something I understand easily. A lot of things just go over my head. I can identify what the client needs and requirements are and then making sure they get what they need.

I continuously build relationships. Relationships are important, even more so in the consultation side. They have to have a lot of confidence in a relationship to pay $200 per hour.

Did you have a low point in business where you wanted to quit?

In the middle of that 17 year run of my business, I had to bring all my staff together and apologize to them. I told them that I couldn’t pay them because I was out of cash. I let 14 people go. The next Monday I started up again and worked for no pay for 3 months.

Then 6-7 years later I decided that I didn’t want to do it again. I woke up one day and said I’m done. I signed a contract with someone to get the company sold. He couldn’t sell it in 7 months. I took it off the table. I then found an opportunity to sell the company to another company.

I was at the lowest point business when I was firing everyone. I also owed a lot of money. I started all over again because it was better to pay that money back working for myself than working for someone else. The pipeline was there, we just weren’t producing. The problem was bad management. I was the bad manager.

How did your business do the second time around? What changes did you make?

When I restarted the business, I wasn’t going to spend a dime on something that wasn’t absolutely necessary. This time around, we also invested in technology. At that time, the digital ink jet system was the latest technology. That technology worked for us for 3 years.

Technology is a mystery. It’s not something I understand. There is a lot of risk involved. Back then new technology was very expensive so it was a huge investment that eventually paid off.

How is working with a business partner who is a co-equal?

Ive been married for 42 years. Working with a partner is like a marriage. We have to make compromises. Sometimes, you don’t like them, or that’s what you feel. Sometimes there are financial problems. It’s very much a give and take situation. There some days where it’s not easy at all.

For 17 years I was the man in charge. When I started working with A2Z, I had to work with different personalities. The person I sold my business was a jerk for a lack of better word. He did crazy things that ended up on the front page of the Washington Post.

In situations where there are crazy personalities, I have been able to step back and watch things as they are.I can’t control how other people act, but I can control how I re-act. That’s a lesson I learned from my wife.

Being a partner is hard because you just can’t just walk out. If you work for someone you can quit. For someone who’s young, or hasn’t been married, its hard to understand how to deal with partner.

Even though partnership is an act of co-creating. There has to be someone that has the final say however. Having been in business for myself I’ve been in control and been in no control. When I worked for A2Z, as 10% owner, I was able to be a good ‘number two.’

Do you have a general direction where you want to take Fantail Technologies?

Yes. It’s evolving. We were looking at what has worked and what hasn’t in the last year. Coming from a particular industry, the events industry, and having solutions like Salesforce and Google has expanded our universe.

There’s a little story that I got from someone about “focus.”

“It’s little bit like the Serengeti. If you are like a lion out there, the place has a lot of food. But you can starve out there. If you can’t find that gazelle, then you can’t get food.”

We have decided not to actively go for business around the United States. We are concentrating our efforts locally because D.C. has enough business here. We’ll take business reactively from other places, but are proactive locally.

If we can convince the people in DC/MD/VA area, that we are the best thing since sliced bread, then it doesn’t matter if we are global or not. We’re going after low hanging fruit. If we do that business. That will lead to the other business.

What has been your most satisfying moment in business?

When I left my position at A2Z last year with a nice capital gain, it felt really good. In the exihbit business, we delivered a 200 foot island exhibit that was a huge deal.

Actually a side story about the exhibit. I had someone working for me who had just gotten out of college. She was designing 10 foot exhibits when I gave her the project. I told her that if she did a great job on the project, I’d give her a bonus. She met the challenge with full force and was able to deliver a masterpiece.

When I told her that everyone loved the exhibit, she asked if she could use her bonus to fly out to the exhibit to see it. That was definitely one of the greatest moments. The satisfaction of seeing it complete and the satisfaction of seeing someone develop professionally and do something great.
Who or what has been your greatest inspiration?

An early partner. John was the early customer which helped me get started. I learned a lot from him. I eventually stopped working with him. He was almost like my dad. From a business stand point I learned a lot of business principles. He was a mentor that I could ask any questions I had.

If you were conducting this interview, what would you have asked?

The one I would ask is what you asked earlier. What’s the biggest mistake you made and what would you have different now?

Remember I told you about how I got started? The company I used to work for was in deep trouble with the IRS. They couldn’t pay the payroll taxes to the government so they lied. It eventually caught up to them.

When I was running my business for the first time, I had to fire everyone because I couldn’t pay the payroll taxes. I told myself that if I could not pay the government their due, that’s when I would shut down. There’s no reason to break the law.

If you were in my situation?

If you can get outside investment, I would suggest that. It’s hard to start with nothing. When I went into business with my 5 business partners, I had access to work, and a line of credit.

I was asked to invest equally into the business to have “skin in the game.” When I had half the money, I was loaned money from one of the partners, and went in. I eventually bought out everyone else. I couldn’t quit my job at that point, so I needed revenue. It’s different when you have a family, a mortgage, and expenses.
I understand that you had to figure out the idea before you could put monetary resources in building the idea. However, for us, we have the skill sets to make it happen and our only capital investment is our time. Do you think I need a business plan?

You need a business plan. Let me ask you a few questions.

Do you need a resume?

Yes.

Do you need a business card?

Yes.

Do you need a business plan?

I guess.

The thing the business plan does is that it forces you to think through the ideas. The business plan will come up again and again. You may have it all in your head, but other people will want to see it.

It’s a big deal to be able to share it with your staff, maybe for a loan to a bank.

Find yourself a mentor. Having one definitely helped me.

I was very grateful to have had the chance to interview Mike if only to have further vindication that entrepreneurial success is possible in very harsh circumstances if one has the drive. Mike and I met through LinkedIN. He was very eager to get on the phone with me and talk about his business. Mike’s company and what Anant Corporation, where I provide professional services have a lot in common. My initial reaction was to see Mike as a competitor, but it turns out that their company does exactly what we want our channel partners to do in the future as we develop products. I will be talking with Mike in the future to publish an article on his industry.

New Office: Waterfront Center

Asitchanges.com took a hiatus from our weekly publishing schedule. As a few projects ramped up, we were stretched thin and had to dedicate our resources to deliver what we had promised to our clients. Nevertheless, we have caught up. These are the links from last week. Coming in the next day will be the links from this week.

Starting from next week, each of the links will be published as individual posts so that they are easier to syndicate to Facebook, Twitter, etc. I’m experimenting with a few ways to do this. Windows Live Writer? Ping.fm? HootSuite? I’ll take any suggestions if anyone has any.

In other news, Anant Corporation, and subsequently Asitchanges now officially has office space! Some pictures are included in this post. We’re located at 1010 Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown in a small office we’re subletting from the Shoptaw Group. I hope to get an interview with Jack Shoptaw and publish it soon.

Inspire – Get inspired to start.

30 Founders Under 30 Who are Shaking Up Industries
Under 30? Shake up the industry. Change the world. Do it.

Inspiration for Emerging Entrepreneurs: Bureacractic Corporate America
See how entrepreneurs escaped their jails of bureacracy and created innovative companies.

100 Top Entrepreneurs Who Succeeded without a College Degree
Abe Lincoln. Carnegie Mellon. Ben Franklin. Bill Gates. All of them did without a degree.Can you? Learn not that they did it without a degree, but that they did it period against the odds of those that held a degree.

Video: RedLaser:How a Company That Nearly Died Sold to Ebay – With Reddy and Powers
An interview with the guys that gave you RedLaser and Panorama 360 on the iPhone and Android. These guys are wicked smart and have great ideas on computer vision. As Andrew says, buy from them and learn how they do great things.

Podcasts: Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner
Great resource. Five ( 5 ) years of semesters from Stanford. Has substantial conversations with people from HP, Kauffman Foundation, and many other businesses across different sectors.

10 Difference between Self-Made Billionaires And You
Simple reasons how billionaires become billionaires. Here’s one: They get up and do something that others aren’t. Here’s another one: They don’t do it alone.

Video: Case Study of An Entrepreneurial Artist – With Matthew Inman
How does an artist make $1000 – $70,000 a day? Andrew of Mixergy interviews Matthew who produces a web comic.

Getting Rich Quick: True Tales of Overnight Millionaires
This article showcases four entrepreneurs who literally made millions of dollars “overnight.”

Educate – Learn how to do it.

The Power of Association
Written by Kelly Nwosu who studies Leadership and Entrepreneurship in Malaysia. I hope he comes on board to help write for Asitchanges.com. Has great ideas for the future of Africa.

World Population : 7 Billion, National Geographic Magazine
7 billion people speaking 7000 languages in 194 countries. This is the new state of the world. The more you know about it, the more you can help people with your business.

You Can Call yourself An Entrepreneur When…
“You can call yourself an entrepreneur when you wake up at 3am and you are super excited to get to the office and begin the day.” A great article about the “joys” and “freedoms” of working on your company.

10 Business Models that Rocked 2010
Wow. What a resource to help you understand how successful web companies work. Also look at the book that I’m going to recommend.

How to play the business dating game
“Networking is an important marketing activity for almost any start-up business but it can kill you. The reason: there are some well-meaning people who regularly attend such meetings and events and they possess a stealth-like ability to bore others to death.”

5 Steps to Help Your Small Business Save Money in 2011
Simple advice to help save money. This is very important. As Benjamin Franklin said, “The smallest leaks will sink even the biggest boats.” Something like that.

Creative Tips for Saving Money and Growing your Business (PDF)
Written by the readers of Small Business Trends. Great advice to save money in very creative ways. A must read. It’s 2 years old, but still relevant.

Video: Top Entrepreneur Videos of the Year
I’ll save you the time and give you the titles: Why Great Products Don’t Need Marketing, The Key to Recession Survival? Extreme Streamlining, The Simple Reason Why Startups Fail, Six Factors for Building Highly Unsuccessful Products, How we Found Opportunity in the Recession,

Global Innovation 1000
“Booz & Company identified the 1,000 public companies around the world that spent the most on research and development in 2009.” An in depth, scholarly study explaining how “Market Readers,” “Need Seekers,” and “Technology Drivers” drive their critical capabilities of “Ideation,” “Project Selection,” “Product Development,” and “Commercialization.”

What Exactly is a Business Model?
Vivek, a Professor at Berkeley, talks about 7 essential components of a Business Model: Reaching Customers, Differentiating your Product, Pricing, Selling, Delivery/Distribution, Supporting Customers, and Achieving Customer Satisfaction.

Just What Does your State Do Best?
LOL. My adopted home state of Virginia boasts “Education” as it’s best ability. This article evidences this by citing that Virginia has the best high school in the country “Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.” My high school.
Empower – Get empowered to do it.

New Office: Conference Area

Empower – Do it.

Book: How to Run the World
I had the chance to listen to Parag when he spoke at the New America Foundation last week while promoting his book. He asks us to see the current world on the verge of Renaissance and sees us in the middle ages.

Hey Executives: Here are 25 Ways to Make Your Job Easier
Great ideas to make your personal and business life easier. Everything from outsourcing to technology can help you make your life running your business easier.

How You Can Increase Your Productivity by 25% Today
I tend to agree with his ideas, especially buying a mobile WIFI device so that I don’t have be at the mercy of the coffee shop, airport, lounge, book store for my internet connection. Even as I moved into my office and waited for the internet to work, I was online with my ClearSpot device.

Founders Den: A Private Clubhouse for Entrepreneurs Opens in San Fransisco
A clubhouse for entrepreneurs? With more angels than in heaven? Seems like a great idea. I’d love to be a member of such a club if someone were to build it there in D.C.

Wisconsin to Form New Economic Development Corporation
Useful to those in Wisconsin or that want to partner with new businesses in Wisconsin. I love when the Government “gets it” and decides to put money in economic development.

Shopify: The easiest way to build an online store.
If you need to sell something today, I’d recommend you look into Shopify to do it. It takes no time to setup a store, and I’m not getting paid to say this.

Seven Attributes of a Startup Dream Team CFO
Startups: If you are growing as a company and need to hire a CFO or know that at some point you will need to, read this article on some good attributes to be on the look out for.

11 Free Resources about Creativity
Chris Brogan lists some great resources about creativity.

It’s all about Selling for Survival
A very straightforward article on the art of selling. Vivek Wadhwa explains how sales is everything in business. Always be selling. If you’re a non profit, always be begging. (That’s my line.)

5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Getting Mentored
Do you have a mentor? If not, then get one. Larry Chiang talks about the mistakes people make when trying to get Venture Capitalists to mentor them.

The five elements of a perfect blog post
There are many posts like this, but I like the third suggestion of “Have the courage to be real.”

Technology and Inventions Don’t Make it a Business
Martin asks some great questions such as “Can you build a winning team?”, “Can it even be commercialized?”, and “Can you sell it for five times the cost?”

Business Innovation – 45 Articles to Improve Your Organization’s Success
Mike Brown delivers another great post which could be a book. Great collection of articles on Innovation Strategy, Whole Brain Thinking, Innovation Techniques, Market-Driven Innovation, Innovation Challenges, and Innovation in Practice

10 Old New Rules for Business Emails
“Email is now the dominant form of business communication and should be treated as such. Some uniform policies help everyone stay on track.”

In addition to working on getting some office space for myself, I also am working to get two of my friends into creating their own personal brands and subsequently their own companies. I’ll keep you updated as they progress. This week’s Worthy Web has some great insights into all aspects of business. I would recommend looking at all of them. However if you don’t get time to read all of them, read the one on “Why entrepreneurs should write.”

Inspire

Jimmy Wales – Founder of Wikipedia
Watch a quick video of Wikipedia’s founder.

Global Top 1000 in Sustainable Performance
Check out this ranking of the top 1000 publicly traded companies that have been rated on their sustainability.

Richard Branson – Founder, Virgin Records
Branson talks on the power the power of your people and to ‘just do it.’ Start your company today. Work for yourself today. Do it.

New Businesses, Not Small Businesses
That’s right new businesses not small businesses creat jobs. Create one for yourself, and your friend, and then help them do the same.

Award Winning Social Enterprise Uses Bikes to Power Utilities
Wow. This is amazing. I am always impressed when people come up with the simplest things to help the world. “Attach one of Global Cycle Solution’s products to a bike, and it will transform into a corn sheller or a cell phone charger, to name just two examples.”

On Writing: Why entrepreneurs should write.
The title is self explanatory. Another link in this Worthy Web explains more.

Educate

Free Kindle Books: A Guide
I am always envious of how well Mashable creates such good guides. Commit to learning more this year with free books available online.

Go Green: 10 Eco-Friendly New Year’s Resolutions
Changing the world with business? Do it greener with these green tips.

Startup Exits Should Be Positive and Planned Early
I don’t plan to sell out, but apparently if you want to sell your next business success, plan early.

Top 10 Reasons Small Businesses Fail
Excellent list of reasons which I’ve seen everywhere, but hasn’t yet been compiled into one list.

15 mistakes young entrepreneurs make, but don’t have to
Mistakes indeed make the entrepreneur better, but some of these can and should be avoided at all costs.

10 Books from 2010 That Are Required Reading for Self-Starters
I’ve read a few on this list. The one by the founders of 37 Signals is good. It’s called “Rework”.

300 Video Podcasts to Learn From
Readers are Leaders and Learners are Earners. If you don’t read, maybe you can listen or watch these podcasts and learn something new.

Young Entrepreneurs, 8 Things You Need to Know
Review this post to see what you need to know. Get a CPA. Get a Lawyer. Get ready to be broke. :p

Social Media Strategy – 50 Articles to Quickly Get You Started!
A well organized, categorized list of articles on the subject of social media. If you combined all of the content on this post, you’d end up with a book.

Time for a Career Change Now!
If you are doing these things, you’re probably due for a career change.

Why Every Entrepreneur Should Write and 9 Tips to Get Started
If you are an entrepreneur, or want to be one, you should start writing. This website is a sideproduct of my writing and it has grown on it’s own.

Empower

Top 5 Microbusiness Opportunities for 2011
Great ideas to get started. We’re working on a few ourselves and fall in these categories: Web Apps for Business and Mobile Apps.

Reinventing the Business Plan, Funding Roadmap Sets a New Industry Standard in the Clouds.
Read about two great sites that can help you get started in business. A relatively cheap service that lets you create a business plan online. Another site that helps you find mentors.

The Stop-Doing List
I love this. This my friends is also known as one of the immutable laws of marketing: The Law of Sacrifice.

Is Crowdfunding the Next Big Financing Thing?
Yes.

Funding Lessons from a Successful Kickstarter Campaign
Along the lines of the last link. Knowing how to do a good crowdfund is half the battle. Doing it is the other half.

Top 50 WordPress Plugins for SEO, Social, etc.
We use WordPress and many of these plugins. I highly recommend reading this if you run a WordPress site.

Top 25 Most Useful Social Media Marketing Blog Posts
A great collection of links to learn about how social media marketing affects you and how to leverage these tools to empower yourself.

Top 10 Corporate Blogs in the World
Learn how the best are doing it. If you are going to play, might as well play to win.

50 Image Sites for Small Businesses
Looking for pictures for your website, print, or marketing materials? Find them here. Great resource.

10 Forums Every Young Entrepreneur Should Belong To
I had no idea there were so many. I’ll have to get cracking and sign up on these.

How to Network
A very to-the-point article on how to network.

I was lucky enough to have met some of these people; young entrepreneurs! These recent college grads started a website called, “CollegeOnly.com,” and their feedback increases daily! I had been walking in New Haven, CT, the home to Yale University, when approached by some members of the Marketing team. I was handed a door-hanging flyer that said simply, “You’ve been SEXILED!” with information about the website on the back– what a brilliant gimmick to catch the attention of college students! I was instantly drawn to these young ambitious recent-grads, and asked them to meet with me for an interview, which they accepted. The walked away and I could still hear them approach strangers with, “Heard of CollegeOnly.com? Take this door-knocker!” the sounds of a great marketing approach.

What is CollegeOnly.com? Well, I interviewed a Shahed Serajuddin, the Co-Founder “COO” who does Marketing and Communications Management for the website. He proclaims the site to be a “College Community,” one that limits membership to those in said institutions that have become a part of the website already; no teachers or other outsiders, just STUDENTS.

I proceeded to ask whether the site is like the way “Facebook” used to be, and he responded with, “Not exactly, Facebook no longer caters to the college community; it’s no longer an honest discourse with the campus—Plus, there are unique feature sets!”

Shahed’s favorite feature were the “Chat Rooms,” where you can enter your courses, residence halls, and clubs and have an open discourse with your peers. You can browse people here too, and find that one person you wanted to know more about or talk to in length about a political subject or the upcoming final. Mr. Serajuddin was unable to unveil some more top-secret features that he was even more excited about.

The makers of CollegeOnly.com have high-hopes for the next five years and are currently in the process of tweaking the site for “Critical Mass.” When it was first launched, there was a lot of buzz, but it had some bugs, and they are still tweaking the site for the schools with access to the site. Some schools include Yale, Cornell, Penn, and Princeton. These boys were even lucky enough to have news coverage from the New York Times about their new site.

Josh Weinstein had founded the site while still in college at Princeton; he had ideas to create a college-exclusive onlinecommunity that allowed his peers to converse and socialize without having to worry about their teacher or the general public having access to their party lives or discussions. He began by creating online dating sites like GoodCrush and RandomDorm. He co-founded CollegeGovs, which was a listserv for student body presidents that allowed one to connect through online “dating” and matchmaking—with this he began thinking bigger and better. This site became a huge hit, so he decided to expand his ideas past romantic endeavors, to general college life and social connectedness.

Josh graduated from Princeton in 2009, with a degree in Asian Studies, when he decided to proceed with his ideas and expand on collegeonly.com.  He lives in New York City, constantly networking and programming to help iron out the kinks on his site.

These men held events here at Yale University to discuss the site and to find out what their public wanted with the site; to find out what was in highest demand. They held a “study break” after my interview where they handed out sandwiches and doorknockers and other marketing accouterments. Josh and Shahed along with their friends, are living the dream many recent grads struggle with. They took their ideas and ran with them, and are creating a fantastic social media site that has been in demand since Facebook took away their exclusivity to colleges. This idea can bridge relationships between college peers tenfold, and that’s what their goal is.

Even after their business meeting, they won the hearts of the Yalies by trowing a “CollegeOnly.com party” at Toad’s Place, which is a local bar here at New Haven, where they gave out CollegeOnly sunglasses and took pictures of the students having a great time. They went above and beyond the professional relationship and showed the students they were just like them, and wanted to have fun. Not only did they get into the students minds, but they partied like it was 1980 with them too!

I find it intriguing to see such young adults with so much ambition as to build an idea from the ground up, self-market and create an entire business network to make their ideas a reality. I believe that if we all went with our gut about our ideas and have enough ambition to complete the task and make it happen, we can all have our own businesses or work to create an interesting job that you love to have, and love to live with, then this generation would be a much less un-employed and have a better shot at having a much less stressful existence in these tough economic times. I’d take this story to heart, to know that yes, you CAN start your own company.

You can check out CollegeOnly.com HERE.

If you grew up in an English speaking country, like me, you probably grew up with the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. Although originally written by Aesop, the story has gone through tons of adaptations and variations. I remember the above video from my childhood. This exact Disney clip. (How cool is Youtube?) Aesop’s fable presents us with two distinct paradigms:

1) The hare: faster and generally better at his art than everyone else, but too arrogant for his own good. Because the hare is an unfocused, overindulgent playboy, he loses.

2) The tortoise: a slow but persistent doofus who plods along at glacial speeds, incapable of a better performance. The tortoise is only able to win the race because of the hare’s arrogance – not because he had trained his ass off. Not because he outsmarted the hare, or was a superior strategist. The tortoise is a loser who stumbled on careless competition.

The basic message of the story condenses down to this: it’s better to move slowly and methodically in the race (i.e. business, relationships, learning etc…) than it is to move so fast that you 1) become overly cocky, 2) fizzle out or 3) some other negative that supposedly follows from moving quickly. If the tortoise and the hare represented the only two alternatives open to us, Aesop’s message would be (arguably) correct. However, there are other alternatives. In Aesop’s quest to teach the world a moral lesson, he got it terribly wrong. The fable of the tortoise and the hare is a dirty, filthy false dilemma.

Let’s break it down:

What are the traits that the hare embodies?

Speed, adeptness, and pomposity. Do those traits necessarily go together? Of course not.

What are the traits that the tortoise embodies?

Sluggishness, ineptitude, and persistence – Do those traits necessarily go together? If you said no, you’d be right again.

By grouping these traits together under the tortoise and the hare, Aesop demonizes efficacy and elevates persistence above other traits that would help you win your race faster.

Did Aesop Get it Right?

What would happen if we applied Aesop’s moral lesson to our businesses, our relationships, or any other aspect of our daily lives?

If we were to take a hare approach, we would start at a sprint and fizzle out. Our start up would collapse. Our new romantic interest would think we were needy, self-important, or something worse. If we were to take a tortoise approach, we wouldn’t get anywhere fast, and would only succeed if we never encountered more astute, systematic competition.

The Alternative

Is to smack the hare across his fuzzy button nose so that he doesn’t take a nap in the middle of his race. If the hare weren’t stupid enough to sleep while he was on the job, he would have run the tortoise into the ground. Speed of execution does not always go hand in hand with arrogance. If you can cultivate a speed and method that allow you to trump your competition, explode your network, or otherwise win whatever race you’re running – do it.

Longfellow wrote:

The heights of great men reached and kept,
Were not obtained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept
Were toiling upward in the night.

In the same vein, my newest favorite quote, courtesy Marcus Aurelius:

At break of day, when you are reluctant to get up, have this thought ready to mind: ‘I am getting up for a man’s work. Do I still then resent it, if I am going out to do what I was born for, the purpose for which I was brought into the world? Or was I created to wrap myself in blankets and keep warm?’”

What is the moral lesson we should read between the lines of Aesop’s fables? The moral lesson we should really take away from the parable of the tortoise and the hare?

Be faster than your competition. Be better than your competition. So much so that you could take a nap in the middle of your race. BUT, instead of being an arrogant ass and taking a nap in the middle of your race, like the hare, don’t stop until you finish.

It’ll be much more satisfying to nap after you’ve won the race, won the prestige, the girls (or boys) in bikinis, and the prizes anyway.

So what about you? Are you more of a tortoise or a hare right now?

As the new year approaches, what are you doing to become a freaky tortoise-hare hybrid of competition domination?

I’m not sure how well new years resolutions work, but I do know that trying to do things on a day by day basis generally works. Big accomplishments can only be done in bite size chunks. The old saying that “Rome wasn’t built in a day” applies to everything in life and business.

I hope these links help you get started or become prosperous this year in business. If you don’t work for yourself now, maybe you can set a goal. Here’s one I can suggest to you.

By this time next year, you’ll have a company that’s generating enough revenue so that you can quit your job.

Inspire

David Rachall III, CEO Fitness Trainer
David is fighting obesity, creating a career path for fitness trainers, and working towards a healthier America. Read up and see how one fitness trainer wants to change our country.

Educate

Empower

Empowering one life at a time. I’ll be the first to tell you that I judge a business by their mission. Once I saw David’s mission, I knew that I wanted to help him on his initiatives. I am very glad to have met David earlier this year. David Rachall III runs HealtheFit, a health & fitness company that does more than a standard personal fitness agency or a fitness center management company. At first glance, his company manages fitness trainers and several office gym locations around the District of Columbia. However, there is more to David and his company. He wants everyone to be healthy and wants fitness trainers to create a career out of their profession so that they can retire one day.

David Rachall III

David graduated from Grambling State University where he studied Recreational Therapy. After school, he ended up in an internship which turned into a job at a Washington nursing facility. He started working as a therapist and initially he was happy because he was able to apply what he learned at school. After examining his career path, he realized that all of the jobs in the long term were in geriatrics. He decided that he didn’t want to spend so much time in this field immediately after college.

To earn extra money and get a free gym membership, he took on a side job at Bally’s Fitness as a personal trainer. He fell in love with it and the side job blossomed into a career for him as he rose up the ranks at Bally’s to be a regional manager. Once there, he decided to move on with his life.

Why entrepreneurship? Why personal fitness?

I started in 2001. I rose quickly at Bally’s and understood a lot about the fitness industry. I realized that there was not a lot of substantial work being done in the field of personal fitness. They had taken personal fitness and created a sales process out of it. They were not doing anything to market personal fitness as a way of life.

As I worked there, I also had issues with the profit sharing between the clubs and the trainers. I decided to cut out the middle man. I decided to do it on my own. When I left Bally’s, 90% of my clientele thought the same as I did and came with me.

If you knew what you know now when you were 18 and entering college, would you have done anything different?

My experience in geriatrics has given me a great advantage in the health and fitness career so I wouldn’t change that path. If I was going to change something in education, I would have gotten a dual degree in business, or possibly a MBA in Marketing. There are a huge number of good fitness trainers that work for clubs that aren’t marketed and they are placed into a sales process. Overall, I’d definitely want to have learned more about Business Administration and Marketing.

What kept you going during that first year of being an independent fitness trainer?
Being an independent fitness trainer was scary. I was pre-programmed to go to school, get good grades, do as I was told, to get the benefits, the salary, etc. Being independent was completely different.

I tried to seek out others who had already done this before. I sought out mentors that had more wisdom. I have always believed that there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. If someone has been successful, why not use their model and do what they did?

I humbled myself. I asked a lot of questions. Fortunately my colleagues and mentors really helped me out. One of which that helped me decide to never work for someone else again.

If you could write a book on anything, what would you write your book on?

I would write my book on the mission of my company: Empowering one life at a time.

There is no set career path for the fitness professional. Aspects of business and marketing are two topics which are grossly neglected in our industry. Some people don’t understand the basics of business: a person could be the greatest fitness person in the world, but if no one knows about them, there is no way that they’ll ever come to their doors.

What are some feasible career paths for the fitness professionals? Do you know of any?

No.

Well, that’s what I’m trying to resolve with my company. If I were to write a book, it’d be
“How to retire as a personal trainer.”

Where do you see your business going in 2011?

This is going to be a year for brand recognition. We’ll be working on branding and marketing to build a foundation. I want to establish myself as DC’s premier fitness expert and make HealtheFit the nation’s premier fitness management and career development company.

How did you get into the gym management? Was it part of your business plan?

I’d love to be able to tell you that it was all part of a grand design and that I had worked out all of the numbers, but I can’t lie. There was no business plan for gym management.

The truth is that I was working as an independent contractor under someone else. A visiting property manager overheard me, essentially eavesdropping, talking about my certification background with AFAA (Aeobic and Fitness Association of America) and he asked me to submit a proposal to manage his fitness center.

I had never thought of going into fitness center management, and I submitted a proposal. There were some kinks we worked out. They didn’t want to go with a big company and gave me a chance.

We worked out the roles and responsibilities for the company and things have worked out pretty well. We’ve been doing that for 3 years now and are going to be adding more gyms as new buildings come up. We also have a verbal agreement that as these new buildings come up, we’ll be on the top of their list for managing the fitness centers in those buildings.

What kind of coordinated action are you taking to establish my brand?

I’m employing some online and offline marketing strategies and tactics. It’s mapped out on a step-by-step process. Separate strategies are mapped out to build my personal brand as well as the brand for company. There is a tactic schedule for daily, weekly, and monthly goals which all help in carrying out the defined strategies.

I’m using sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo Answers to give people a way to get credible fitness information and let them share it easily. By giving them information, I put myself out in places where people may or may not have heard about me, and let them advertise me through sharing it on the social networks such as Facebook and niche communities such as Yahoo Answers.

I’m also constantly connecting with people. I’m connecting with as many people as possible. I’m working to create rich content for our websites. Video is going to very important as far how we reach people. People are more and more reluctant to read. We’ll be using our YouTube channel shortly. We have a detailed strategy, and we’re executing the tactics to make it happen. I sought the help of a very capable Internet strategist to to help me with this.

How do you walk your clients to become the person they want to be physically?

We always begin with a health screening process which we screen for coronary or orthopedic issues.
Based on their history and current status, we try to figure what could be helpful for them. We then conduct a physical test to see their endurance and flexibility. We also conduct an in-depth test of their body composition in relation of fat and muscle weight.

Only after our assessment, we begin the first training session. A session may be half an hour to an hour.

We always make sure that we connect the health screening process to the exercise session. We always make sure that everything has a purpose. Nutrition is very important and can be responsible for 80% of a person’s fitness results. We use an online nutrition program called VitaBot to help them structure an eating plan.

Our method is very structured and has a scientific foundation for everything that we do. All of our assessments, recommendations are backed by health, medical, and fitness institutions.

How do you walk your personal fitness trainers to become an entrepreneur?

As with the fitness training clients, I always complete an assessment. I ask them a series of questions regarding their goals. What their personal goals are? What areas do they want to focus on? What demographic they want to work with? What their financial situation is. Where they’d like to see themselves from a financial stand point. Whether they want to be part time or full time fitness professional. I then try to help them plan out their actions for a year. Our industry changes so often that it doesn’t make sense to plan out for more than a year.

What has been your most satisfying moment in business?

I would have to say that one particular trainer has done extremely well. I got him involved in the industry in 2002. If you searched on google for “DC personal fitness trainer” he comes up on the top ten. He has done extremely well.

I have been extremely surprised with what he’s taken from me and how far he has ran with it. He’s taken a lot of what I taught him and is doing well. He’s hired a good designer and using SEO to get to the top of the results. I’m extremely proud of him.

What is your favorite aspect about being an entrepreneur?

The freedom to make a difference. I have the freedom to make a difference in the different areas of the fitness industry. I can help clients become fit. I can help a fitness expert get certified. I can teach a class at the AFAA and impact the greater fitness community. I set my schedule on a day to day basis. I make a huge impact on any and all of my clients. I have the freedom to make that impact.

I noticed that you have an office downtown just for your desk. As you render your fitness training and gym management services off-site, how has office space helped you? I ask this because I’m looking into getting office space myself.

Having office space has helped me immensely. It has helped me separate the home from the office. Before when I had my home office, it was difficult to move forward with my business plans. It helped me clearly define boundaries between my personal and business life. It helped me have a clear mind when setting personal and business goals. When at the office, it allowed me resolve any overlaps between the two.

What’s a good book that you’d recommend to someone in business?

Go-Giver’s Sell More. It’s by the same author as the-Go Giver. Essentially it helped me get an understanding of what I must give away as personal fitness trainer. It made me aware that I’m not selling a person on fitness training. It gave me the understanding that I should take time to explain how I can give more to them as their fitness trainer vs. someone else. Some professionals only give you what you are paying for. My clients don’t feel restricted when they need questions answered. If they have a question , they can always call me. Once a client, they are always a client regardless of whether they have met their fitness goals.

By giving a lot of free information and advice, I’ve have had more clients that I can handle. I’ve been able to get a lot of business through referrals because my clients sell me to other prospective clients.

Who or what has been your greatest inspiration?

I would have to say it is a combination between my mom and my classmates when I was growing up. “We always knew that you are going to do great things.” they told me. I did not know what I was going to do, but I always knew I would do great things because I had the support of these people.

My mom always said that I have had an uncanny ability to take negative situations and turn it into a positive one. I look at the issues in the fitness industry and the obesity epidemic in America and I realize that I have part of the solution. I see that I have a solution and I need to spread it.

I want to leave a legacy of giving a viable solution to resolve America’s obesity epidemic. I want to put in the infrastructure to mobilize the fitness trainers to help people get healthy. I want to bridge the gap between health and fitness.

If you were conducting this interview, what would you have asked? Remember that this is a question that would be asked to anyone that is a successful business leader that makes positive change around the world.

I would ask one more question.

What strategy do you have in place right now that will create great wealth for you as an entrepreneur?

If you were in my situation? How do you decide higher and lower priority?

I think you should sit down and look at what has to be done. See what cannot be done by anyone else. These are the things that only you can do? These are the things that you have to do grow your business.

Everything else can be done by anyone else. I’d imagine you have a good enough network that you can get them to do something for a short term. You have to just ask.

Knowing you, there are people that would take time and they would take a specific task. The task has to be very specific.

People will do the work just to be appreciated. Just giving them a pat on the back will be enough.

I have seen a dichotomy between the Gen-X, Gen-Y and Millennials when it comes to whether or not a business plan is necessary. What is your experience with a business plan? Do you think it’s needed?

My experience with a business plan? The act of putting together a business plan helps everyone. Whether or not you use it is a different story. After you put it together, you have a clear direction of where you’re going. After that, you have to take care of business.

It’s important to put together a plan for the financial projections. Even as I’m going through my MBA program, I see the need for a business plan for different reasons. Big companies have operations in place to review different metrics and they don’t necessarily need to be following a business plan that was set on day one. For new companies it’s different.

One business plan is necessary in the beginning.

I am excited about the possibility of a healthy America. While news reports and TV shows highlight an America which grows heavier, larger and unhealthier by the day, there is a champion in our midst fighting to make a healthy lifestyle the norm. David has very big ideas and knowing that he is committed to helping people, I don’t doubt that he will leave a great legacy.

His example strikes home the idea that there are problems in our country and the world that can be helped by business people with ingenuity, persistence, hope, and most importantly, action. David is an action oriented character.

He understands that forward progress is only possible by doing. Although I’ve known David for a year and have helped him with his business professionally, It dawned on me today where he’s going. I understand now his vision for what he hopes to accomplish with his company. He is creating an infrastructure and mobilizing the people to create a healthier America.

Book Suggestion by David

http://www.amazon.com/Go-Givers-Sell-More-Bob-Burg/dp/1591843081