Archive for August, 2007
Saturday, August 25th, 2007
As business owners, we are always looking to be more successful - however you define success. The question I have for you this month is, “are you ready for EXTREME success?” If you are ready to take your business to places you never dreamed of before, you will really need to challenge yourself to grow outside of your comfort zone, and take some actions you may have never considered. Below are a couple of tips to help you achieve extreme success in your business:
1. Believe in the Law of Abundance
I believe there are two ways of looking at things. You can chose to come from the perspective of abundance, or the persepctive of limited resources. As a business owner, if you believe in limited resources, you immediately limit what you can accomplish. Adopting a mentality of unlimited money, energy, and resources puts you in the mindset of finding a way to make things work. When you do this, you often open your mind to new possibilities, and therefore find opportunities that you never thought possible.
2. Utilize the Power of Leverage
One thing that all highly successful people have in common is that they leverage themselves. When you realize that the only true limited resource is time, and that you can create an abundance of time through leveraging yourself, you have unlimited power. One way to quickly determine what you should have someone else do is to determine what your time is worth in dollars/hour. Once you have this number, remove everything from your plate that you can pay someone less than that number to do. Doing this will open up huge blocks of time, and will put you on your way to extreme success.
3. Tap into the Power of Focus
If you want to achieve extreme success, you have to be able to focus. By figuring out what your top 2 or 3 strengths are, and focusing only on those things, you become tremendously effective. Surround yourself with experts in areas you are weak, and you will create a vacuum that will pull you forward!
4. Empower your People
One key area to extreme success is to empower your people to do more. In order to be able to focus on your strengths and leverage yourself, you must be able to effectively delegate things to your employees, and empower them to do the job. By letting go of micromanaging people, you will lower your stress level, and tap into the gifts and power of your people.
5. Do Less, and Make More
Extremely successful business leaders take advantage of the first 4 tips, and find themselves doing less and less work, and making more and more money. If you are ready for extreme success, you may just find yourself with the same problem!
Follow the above tips, and enjoy creating your path to extreme success!
Tom Kelly is a Profession Business Coach that specializes in working with small business owners, entrepreneurs, and salespeople. He can be reached at (773) 907-0921, or at http://www.potentialinmotion.com
Posted in Business | No Comments »
Saturday, August 25th, 2007
More and more people are participating in web logs, or blogs, all the time. It seems that every day there are a bunch of new bloggers out there, who are also spending their time making many new blogs. Unfortunately, most of these new bloggers don’t receive the full profit potential from their blogs. Most of this is because large amounts of bloggers don’t realize that they can make money off of blogs. Blogs that receive many viewers because of the quality of their content have the potential to be huge money-making machines for their authors.
With so many other blogs out there, there has to some feature to your blog to make it really stand out. A unique blog will shine among others in search engine results. Subjects that are too far out will alienate readers; try to be appealing and offbeat, choosing topics that generate mass interest but also have a unique slant that only you can give them. Doing this will bring in more traffic and loyal visitors.
When you have your blog ready it is time to have look for paying advertisers. Adsense by Google is one of the best and most reputable around. Backed by Google, you can be confident that you are getting the best rate for each click.
The biggest part of your job is still to come. This is getting viewers to your blog. Start with your list of friends, but do not stop there. Look for opportunities to exchange links with other blogs and to make yours as popular as possible. Link your blog to your home page and encourage others to do the same. Look for sites specializing in exchanging links. This can be mutually profitable for all parties.
Put affiliate banner advertisements on your blog if at all possible. Your blog will look much better if you have a limited number of ads for products related to the blog’s subject, instead of slapping on every ad you can find.
Blogging can be more than an unprofitable hobby. If these four steps are completed successfully, you will achieve a profitable status. It is important to show your enthusiasm and thoroughness, as these two qualities will lead to improvements way beyond expectations. Blogging is looked at by some as a hobby, however it can be much more than that. It can earn you money.
You can get a free copy of our latest ebook by clicking here: The 7 Keys To Business Marketing Success Sean Milea writes about Business Marketing at http://www.BizRave.com
Posted in Internet | No Comments »
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
In 1999, the European countries kicked off plans to auction spectrum for 3G. A ballpark US$200B down the road and 3G still seeks validation. But the establishment is on its side allowing the 3G bus to careen from country to country leaving a trail of red ink. However, just one ISP blunders with WiFi deployment in American cities and the Inquisition is back.
To understand better the brouhaha hark back to 2004 when Verizon launched a political broadside against Wireless Philadelphia. Demonstrating just what clout means Verizon got Pennsylvania Governor Ed Randell to sign a law barring MuniWireless initiatives unless the municipality or local body first offered the incumbent service provider an opportunity to deploy its own network. That the incumbent had all these past years to deploy a broadband network and didn’t simply means irony does not trump political muscle.
Then a funny thing happens. There was a groundswell of protest from the citizenry making the good Governor rapidly backtrack resulting in a last-minute deal allowing Wireless Philadelphia to proceed and with EarthLink subsequently winning the contract to deploy. MuniWireless was now officially in the telecom establishment’s cross-hairs. Taking on City Hall is one thing. But to take on the corporate telecoms establishment, groundswells and big cojones aren’t enough. Especially when the ISP depends on the same incumbent to provide fixed line connectivity to WiFi base stations.
In 2005 Diana Neff – the lady behind Wireless Philadelphia – explained its economics to me:
- In lieu of Capex related payments, the city government becomes the anchor tenant.
- Power, locations for base stations provided for free.
- ISP free to offer internet access into homes , offices at commercial rates.
- Free Internet access in open parks.
- Subsidized Internet access to weaker sections.
That’s the economic gist. Is its net wherewithal enough to rumble with fully amortized copper running voice and owned by an incumbent able to cherry picks where to put its DSLAMs? I’d say, barely. Just about. If all goes well. Now, if the municipalities were to ante up to also mitigate the Capex burden in addition to becoming anchor tenants, we could have a robust stand-off.
Here is the core argument on the economics.
- Nothing is free.
- Recurring revenues are a bitch to kick-off. To generate a stream that makes sense is usually a three year wait. This is the incumbent’s huge advantage. His three year wait occurred in the Triassic era.
- If the municipalities pay for equipment and become anchor tenants, MuniWireless has money then to wait out the gestation period required for monthly recurring revenues to stack up.
- If the municipalities are not going to pay for equipment, they need to ante up properly as anchor tenants. If neither, the MuniWireless operation goes bust.
- Again, the same economics do not apply to a cellular player because the 2G networks are comfortably amortized and the service ubiquitous.
- Unbundled services from the incumbent are a bedrock for MuniWireless economics. Without it the whole enterprise remains fraught.
- Lastly, look at the blood around 3G to understand what it takes to launch a new service, even when the service is allowed to rest on 2G crutches. In comparison, WiFi’s burn is peanuts and all it takes for the economics to work is at a minimum, strict & wholehearted adherence to the Neff model.
It’s safe to say that besides a continued reliance on incumbent backhaul, the basics of the Neff formula weren’t adhered to as ISPs like EarthLink sought to light up America’s urban landscapes. In a rush to move away from a dying dial-up business deals were signed up at the same velocity they are currently unwinding. We watched from the sidelines as each new deal resulted in one more concession and then another and another thrusting a precedence on the rest of the industry. By 2007, cities were refusing anchor tenancies and delivering a double whammy instead by demanding free services if the ISP were to be allowed to address the city population.
MuniWireless’ teething problems then have more to do with possible economic mismanagement and incumbent hostility than with WiFi technology. The same WiFi for example, is working wonderfully for T-Mobile in their WiFi@home service linking your home WiFi and the thousands of T-Mobile WiFi hotspots to their cellular network. This service is WiFi’s wedge into the telecom establishment’s door.
So someone may have screwed with MuniWireless but WiFi isn’t the perp.
Seeing T-Mobile’s intent there’s more to WiFi than WiFi. I wrote in 2005 about patching WiFi to cellular networks suggesting UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) as a method for cellular companies to co-opt WiFi and bring true broadband into the realm without investing in a questionable 3G. Kudos to T-Mobile for doing it two years later.
But WiFi-cellular links are already passé. If the cellular companies have been too slow/reluctant/hostile to the technology doesn’t mean the technology wasn’t there. WiFi is the tip of an OFDMA iceberg and the WiFi-WiMax nexus is what’s going to shake up the networks next. One doesn’t expect to see a WiMax operator mulling too much on the pros & cons of connecting to WiFi at the edges over a common IP back end. The first casualty of such ubiquitous footprints with high speed mobile wireless broadband access to the internet is going to be band-aid applications like Blackberry. Whether you sit at Starbucks, walk up to your car with your Frappuchino or drive off home, you can directly access your email server/service at a minimum 2-5mbps.
There are some very dedicated people working hard at IEEE under the IEEE P802.21 working group to develop standards for these vertical (cellular – WiFi) and horizontal (WiFi-WiMax) nexuses. The standard is slated for finalization by 2008 at which point WiFi begins its real role as the owner of the edge. As we old telecom hands have learnt at great expense, that’s where the winning lottery ticket is hidden.
For a non-incumbent, to make sense of a WiFi-centric business one needs to adhere to the economic arguments made in these article. That keeps the business afloat while you spread your network one home after another, one café after another. Your intent is to have as large a footprint as possible before you make that call to T-Mobile.
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