Another Article Done: Why People Get Help

I finished another article today. I think I'll need to go back and edit these at some point, but the idea right now is to get some good content up. There will always be improvements that can be made.

I need to write 2 more articles before I start promoting this site. That's when the real fun begins.

This is the article if you're interested: Why People Get Help, The 5 Fundamental Benefits

How to Do An Outline

I've spend the last few days refining my articles outline (or course outline as I'm starting to think of it) to flow better. I'm not done yet, but I am now happier with the overall flow, and I've written one more article. I cannot stress the importance of getting this outline right up front. It makes the writing part so much easier, I can't even tell you how much. It will save you a lot of rework in the end.

Here's a tip from a public presentations course I took about a year ago that will save you a lot of time, and ensure your articles or presentations flow.

Do an outline.
Lay it out like this picture. The blue circles show the order to write each part.



This means you write it in this order
1. Subject
2. Conclusion (what do you want people to do or remember as a result of this)
3. Agenda (3 main points is generally best)
4. Body
5. Summary of each agenda point
6. Any opening remarks (more for presenting live than writing articles)
7. Optional creative opening

The red arrows show the order you present it in.

I also got one more article written and posted, "Why People Buy Things, The 6 Fundamental Reasons". Check it out.

My First Article: Welcome to Business 101 for Engineers

On Monday I layed out my to do list. If you go back and look, you will see I was working on planning 25 articles and writing 5.

Well yesterday I planned them all out and started writing the first one.
Today I finished it, and posted it to the web (business101-bt.blogspot.com)

It's written with the intention of getting people to come back looking for more articles in the future, and outlines the topics (the 25 or so articles) I plan to cover in the upcoming weeks. When all the articles are done, I will re-edit them all into an e-book and start trying to sell it on-line. Right now the focus is on getting the first 5 written. Once 5 are written, the focus will shift to driving traffic to this site and continuing to write at least one article a week.

On the main web site, BoundlessThinking.com I also added a link to this under Courses. I will promote this as a free on-line course while I continue to write it. You can post comments to the author and ask me any questions you want after you read any section.

That's it for today. In my new-found lifestyle of flexibility I am going to spend the rest of the day doing some much needed work around the house.

8 Steps to Starting a Business: my To Do List

Mar 16, 2006: I'm posting this the following monday, but here's what I did on friday.
First of all, I dug out my to do list and gave it a read. Then I wrote down the next 2 things I need to do on the back of a cracker box, and put it beside my PC (you could also use regular paper, cracker box is what I had handy)

I've decided to focus on the Buisiness for Engineers site first. Here's what the To Do list looks like now. This is a good template to follow.

1. Define your Target Market (Done)

• Engineers wanting to move into management

2. Research & validate the top needs of the chosen market (Done)

• Time Managment - lots of stuff available already (project managment resources)
• Responsibility without Authority - lots of stuff available on that (leadership by influence)
• Lack of Business Understanding - very few good resources (this is my chosen niche)

3. Create a Web Site (In Progress)

• Content Page (good enough to start driving traffic to, don't go too crazy here the objective is to get to market ASAP, not to get it perfect before you tell anyone about it)
• email Gathering page (I have an email newletter subscribe button, this should become a separate opt in page at some point)

4. Create Newsletter Content (In Progress)

• plan at least 25 articles
• write 5 of them

5. Create/Find Free Stuff - 3 Items (perhaps this step should be later)

• Excel templates may be a good place to start
• Good, screened articles could also be good
• Research professional looks - what makes something look professional?

6. Create a Budget and Deadline for Spending (Promotion & Content Generation)

• This is to force some action in this area, not get to it when I get to it.

7. Publish your Site

• Register a domain name (I may or may not keep it under BoundlessThinking.com)
• Find a web hosting service

8. Start promoting your site (this one still needs some flushing out when we get here)

• Re-read the five best way to get leads to a site (see Product Launch Tips.xls)
• Buy Advertising
• Go to newsgroups and talk about the issues
• Buy an Autoresponder to keep in touch with subscribers automatically
• Submit your newsletter content as articles on-line
• Do press releases online

Here's my complete To Do list as it stands today (an excel spreadsheet with this list and a little more detail, comments and tidbits on resources to help with upcoming stages)

As you can see we are working on steps 3 and 4 right now. 3 is almost done, it just needs a few tweeks. 4 needs to be organized so I am writing articles that matter to this niche market, not just things that interest me. That's what I'll be working on this week.

Daryl

One last thing, here's an archive of how the site looks today so we can look back and laugh later. Cheers.

The easiest file backup system I have ever seen

It's been a few days since I posted anything. We had a bit of a family emergency that we needed to attend to. The flexibilty for this type of thing is great with your own business. I ended up taking thursday off, and working 18 hours on friday. The work still needs to get done, but the flexibility to do it when you want to do it is great.

Ok, so on tuesday I left off with a web template I had put together that I thought I could work with. What have I been doing since then?

DAY 9: Mar 14, 2006 - nothing too exciting, but something worth mentioning. I spent most of the day making sure I have an automatic backup system working properly. I know we've all heard this before, but I cannot stress the importance of this enough. YOU MUST BACKUP YOUR FILES REGULARLY OR YOU WILL BE BURNED BY IT. PERIOD. Just Do It !!!

I won't bore you with the details, but I ended up using FolderShare (FolderShare.com) to sync to an old desktop PC over the internet. It's free and very easy to set up. It mirrors all the files in My Documents, and my Internet Favorites (or whatever folders you choose to sync) on the other PC. There is a little task that runs in the background and keeps track of files you either change or delete, and does the same thing to them on the other PC so there is always an exact copy there. There a few really nice things about this:

1. It just works: it runs in the background on both PCs and syncs whenever both PCs are online at the same time. I don't have to manage it at all. I just need 2 PCs connected to the Internet.
2. You can work on either PC at any time: If the PC I normally work on fails and I have to send it to the shop (which I recently did), I just move to the other PC and start working there. All the files are there, same directory structure, everything. When I get my regular PC back I just plug it into the Internet, and viola, it grabs everything I updated on the other PC while it was in the shop. I don't mess with backup CDs, tapes, nothing. Just connect to the Internet, and give it some time to sync up. I have never come accross anything this easy to use as a backup system. Its great if you have a second PC lying around.
3. You could keep your backup remotely: I don't do this, but it would be dead simple to put my second PC at my sisters place and have not only protection against hw failure, but theft and fire as well. If she has enough hard drive space, I could just back up my critical folders to her PC, and she could backup to mine. If either of us has trouble, the other persons PC would always have everything we need.

The FolderShare website also talks about how to invite others the share certain files, security, etc. All in all, its a very nice little tool. I highly recommend you check it out.

The Best Web Page Size

One small note from yesterday's exercise. If your web page is too wide, people may not be seeing critical information. Not everyone scrolls around to see what's over on the right hand side of a page that's cut off.

A lot of PC screens are still set to 800 x 600 pixel resolution. I put together a little picture that shows the optimum web page sizes. Use this as a reference to ensure your must-see information is seen by everyone.

Branding the new Web Site

Had a strange couple of days. Friday my son had the day off school, so I made it a short day so we could spend some time together. Today has been up and down, and everything I did took 10 times longer than I thot it should, but looking back I did get some things done. These are some of the reason's I'm pursuing an on-line business: you get to see your results (and failures), and the flexibility is wonderful.

In any case, I scribbled down a few of my next steps on friday, and tackled the first two over the past few days.

Overall, my objective the past 2 days was to work up the skeleton for a reasonably nice web site (IE start to develop a brand) that I wouldn't be embarassed to put my name to.

Step 1: was to create a couple of logos
- a Boundless Thinking logo (my company name)
- a Boundless Thinking web header
- a Customer Satisfaction Guarantee logo
- an Internet Integrity logo (purely a branding exercise that illustrates an important personal value)

Step 2: craft a web template to make it easy to add and post things going forward. Major objectives were:
- clean look and feel
- use of text styles that are easily changable to facilitate future split testing in the future (I.E. that's where you try red headings one week and green headings the next week to see what people respond to the most - this is a exercise in developing effective advertising copy. I'm sure I'll be writing more about that as I go along)
- link it to my Boundless Thinking Blog articles (which are hopefully the start of a book)

I've posted an archive of the site so you can see where I started from even after I change the site in the future. It's not perfect, but I think its a very workable start: http://boundlessthinking.com/oldversions/Mar12,2007/index.html

I did everything here myself, but I also found a couple sites that do very good work based on their portfolios. When I get round to polishing this up, there's a very good chance I'll go to these guys:

Logo Design: http://thelogocompany.net/
Header Design: http://www.minisitegraphics.com/

I've also found that there are a lot of freelance work auction sites out there if you need web design or programming done. If I ever use one, I'll let you know how that works out. You can google "freelance programming" or "freelance design" and get a long list of these sites. Be sure to ask for some reference work before you choose a vendor, there are both very good and very bad designers out there. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

That's it for today.

Day 7: Preliminary Study on "Business for Engineers"

Okay, here's what I found during my investigation on "Management for Engineers".

Market Size:
Alberta: ~47,000 Registered Engineers with APPEGGA
Canada: ~470,000 Engineers
North America: 4,700,000 Engineers

If we conservatively estimate 10% of these are specifically pursuing a career path on the management side that leaves a market size of ~500,000 Engineers in North America with potential interest in Management training.

Lets do it again in potential sales based on 10% penetration, $30 each sale (IE a book).
Alberta: ~$140,000
Canada: ~$1,400,000
North America: ~$14,000,000

Good potential here

Market Analysis
One general comment I should make before I get too far down into this is that this market is motivated since it is mandated by the Engineering professional association that all Engineers spend a certain amount of time each year on professional development. This can include a combination of study on their own (I.E. books or on-line courses) and recognized courses (which I should be able to get into once I put some things together).

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I know all this because I am a registered professional Engineer in Alberta. My background is in power systems automation and computer Engineering, and I spent the last 5 years as a very successful Product Manager for the most successful substation automation device in the world (the D20 RTU) at one of the most recognized companies in the world (GE). I should be able to leverage all that into a good bio for credibility when the time comes.

Looking at on-line resources I found that Management for Engineers brought up a bevy of good hits on Project Management. This is not the niche I'm after, but raises a risk of being lost in the large in the crowd if I target "Management for Engineers". A further check on "Business for Engineers" yeilded results more related to the niche I am looking at. In general I found the following here:
1) there are some good books out there on this subject, but not a lot
2) there are a few good web sites out there that talk about this, but only a few, and the ones I found looked amateurish (good content, but poor presentation)
3) there are some courses available on this, mainly offered by colleges as part of larger programs (IE. there is room for luncheon to 3 day training sessions if I wish to pursue that)
4) APEGGA (the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta) identified this as a specific area their members were looking for more info on in their newsletter about a year ago

In Summary:
- I need to further refine my market segment from "Engineers that want to go into Management" to "Engineers that want to go into Business Management" (not Project Management). This is an important distinction if I want to attract the right market.
- the market size is plenty big
- the market is easily geographically segmentable (IE. I can start with just Alberta, or even just my home city of Calgary which would hold around 1/3 of all Alberta Engineers)
- the market is expandable geographically
- the market is motivated to learn
- there is good potential for future back-end sales of books, training, luncheons, etc
- The professional Engineering association provides an excellent channel to reach my market, and I am already a member of it
- this is an excellent fit with my background - I have some credibility in this area.

All in all, I've been thinking about this opportunity for probalby a year now, and this just validates what I thought to be the case. There is definate potential here.

Ok, so what next? Tomorrow will be a day to regroup and set out the next tasks so I'm ready for next week. I'm thinking I need to solidify and articulate my business strategy now.

Day 6: Preliminary "Spanish Kids Sites" market study

I spent most of the day yesterday looking for bilingual Spanish learning sites for kids on the web. What I found is that there is not much there. The sites that exist are mainly for adult learning, and in fact I was only able to locate 1 site that was focused around learning for kids and parents together. The only search terms that yeilded significant results were related to spanish materials for teachers.

This means a few things
1. there is an available web niche for this.
2. it will be a significant amount of work to create/gather content for this site (but no one said this was going to be easy)
3. maybe no one thinks there is a market for this?

The other thing I did was work out the rough numbers for market size. My son goes to one of 4 spanish-english bilingual schools in Calgary. His school has ~100 students per grade. So if I extend this, the market size is roughly as follows:

Market Size:
- Logan's School: ~500 students (Grades 1-6)
- Calgary: ~2000 (4 spanish bilingual schools)
- Western Canada: ~10,000 (5 big cities)
- English Canada: ~20,000 (Based on Stats Canada: ~30% of population is in the West. ~25% in Quebec)
- North America: ~200,000 (USA population ~10x Canada. Should also be greater Spanish interest in the USA)

So a North American market size of 200,000 students is not bad. If I can get $10 each from 10% of the market that would be 20,000 * $10 = $200, 000. Big enough to go after, but small enough that the big players will probably not want to compete there. All in all a pretty good market niche for a small start up.

Tomorrow I'll take a look at the Management for Engineers market and see what I find there.

Day 4: Brainstorm and Validation

Okay, I couldn't find my original brainstorm lists since my laptop is in the shop so I've done up a new one with the things that I remember from my old lists and with a few new things.
Step 1, Business Ideas.xls
Its a simple spreadsheet with 2 worksheets. Each sheet represents a valuable step in the decision process:

Step 1: Brainstorm - this is everything I could think of that I might like to make a business out of. A good way to build this is to keep a peice of paper at your desk or on your fridge, and just add to it as you think of things over a week or so.

Sheet 2: Validation - I take my favorite ideas from the Brainstorm sheet, and put them here to focus my thinking on the market potential of each idea. The first step is to write down the target market. Next comes the hard part: look at each idea, and determine if it is a product driven or market driven.

Let's look at some examples from my list:
A Book on Productivity - product driven or market driven? This is a book I really want to write, and in fact was my favorite idea, but when I look hard at this idea I have to admit it is a product looking for a home, not a solution to a market driven problem. Let's examine this for a minute. I have a target market in mind of young Engineers trying to make the transition from technical to management (IE myself 6 years ago) . The test is to flip this around and see if you get the product from the target market. In this case when I look at the target market, what they really need is management training for Engineers. Maybe a book can be part of this, but my objective must switch from "bring a book to market" to "help young engineers transition to management". As a result of this analysis I changed my pick from a Book on Productivity to Management / Productivity Training. At this point I still hope to create a book from this exercise, but this will definately change its focus, and will change how I research what needs to go into that book. It also opens up the possibility that the book is no longer the focal point of the exercise, and I need to be thinking more about creating and marketing training materials, not just about a book. I'll need to think about that one a little more.

Ideally our brainstorm ideas would be more market based like: "Help for landlocked surfers, divers and sailors ", but I for one tend to start with a specific problem and think up products instead of thinking of markets that need help. Must be the Engineer in me. If you can brainstorm "who would I like to help" first, and then "what is their biggest problem" second, that would definately be better. If you're like me and struggle with that, then its essential that you turn it around after you're done brainstorming and take an honest look at whether or not the market really wants what you are doing.

If I went to my target market and asked what their 3 biggest problems were, would my product address one of them. If not, you don't have the right product.

Day 3: Lost Focus Already

Ok, I can hardly believe this but I have already lost focus and wasted 1/2 a day thinking about changing my direction. I went back to look at some motivational blogs and ended up clicking links to all kinds of cool things that got further and further away from what I'm trying to accomplish. All the while thinking "oh, maybe I should do this instead, or do that instead..."

So, the word of the day is Focus!

A while back I wrote an article on productivity, and getting the right things done. It all starts with a purpose, then goals, then objectives. I've fallen into the very trap I preach to people about avoiding. So here's today's objective:
1. Go collect up all the ideas you've written down in various places over the past months so you can evaluate them.
2. Decide what 2 things you need to do first and write them down. This is what you will do on monday - no rethinking on monday. Just do it.

P.S. I've posted my productivity article on my other blog if anyone's interested (2 parts, with a plan to add more)
Part 1: What is Productivity?
Part 2: I Work Hard, So Why Don't I Feel Productive?

Day 2: My Motivation and Starting Ideas

Like a lot of people I have been thinking about starting my own internet business for a while now with mainly the vague idea that an internet business would be a good thing to do.

Here's my motivation.
1) I want a business I can run from anywhere on the planet. If I want to spend 3 months in Brazil, then I want to be able to do it without taking extended leave from my business. (hmmm, sounds like an internet business)
2) I want to decide when I work - if its a nice day I think I should be allowed to go outside and work later in the evening. If the weather is crappy, then I can work during the day. (sounds like an internet business where I am the boss)
3) I want to learn. I want some practical experience in what really makes a business successful. I've worked for a big company and learned that only a very small percentage of the people have any real appreciation for what matters and what doesn't in terms of satisfying your customers and making money. You can only learn so much in that environment, I need a new learning platform (sounds like I want a small enough company to be able to touch and feel everything).
4) I want to be in control of my destiny. When I come up with something great, I want to benefit from it. When I screw up I want to know it and feel the impact of it (back to that learning thing). I think we all have the potential for greatness. Now I want to find it and prove it in myself.

I want a small, fully-owned, mobile business.

Here's my Plan
I have taken 2 months off work. I just came back from a month in Costa Rica to get work out of my head. March is now dedicated to figuring out how to start my internet empire and getting started.

Here are my 2 starting ideas:
1) There must be a way to leverage my existing expertise on the internet.
2) There must be a way to get started in something completely new.

How? I'm not sure yet, but I have a few ideas, I'll let you know what I come up with...