The Innovationist » Business

Microsoft Needs Vision, Here It Is

James Fuller — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:21:27 +0000

I’ve been thinking for a few weeks about Microsoft, and what they’re doing wrong. What are they doing wrong; quite a bit, but what if they’ve managed to set up an integrated platform, under our noses. They could easily bring us something that no one else can, in short order. No competitors can catch up, not Google, not Apple, no one, if they take the proper path.

Microsoft has before it a golden goose, it’s up to them to decide whether to continue starving it or to feed it. The first step is to look at where they have already invested: everywhere, from the enterprise through to the cloud and mobile systems. They have a wide base and a tall hierarchy, but they aren’t capitalizing as successfully as they could or even should be.

Why are they failing? It comes down to 3 reasons: horrific marketing, horrific web presence, and lack of integrated focus. The one I’m primarily wanting to touch on is their lack of integrated focus, because without it they are gone, but I’ll touch on the other two.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft released an update to their Office Live system, something that has been around for nearly 3 years, and yet many people still have no clue about. Why; why doesn’t anyone know about this? It is common for people to bash Microsoft, because they don’t offer a cloud alternative for the desktop Office Suite, but it’s simply not true. Who’s fault is this? It’s the marketing department, they haven’t bothered to promote the platform; it’s also partly due to how confusing Microsoft’s web presence is, it’s anything but simple. Their presence exists in two ends of the spectrum: a mangled mess of links to variations of systems on their main domains and a group of domains that can be hard to find, because of a lack of directions to them. So what they need is a simplified interface, and user direction, from both marketing and a user experience standpoint.

Microsoft, regardless of their poor marketing and website design, has a unique opportunity. Microsoft, is the only company to have an operating system on 4 platforms(enterprise, desktop, mobile, and consoles), a web presence that includes search, email, and cloud systems(enterprise & consumer), high-quality desktop software, and near-universal hardware support. The one thing they are missing in integration across all of these levels, and it makes them look like they are wandering aimlessly. The need to figure out what to focus on, and how to make the entire system more seamless.

My first recommendation to them is to start with the future of the desktop, quick boot systems that allow near instant access to the internet. I propose that they provide a hybrid-OS offering using an instant-on system, that provides access to a browser and several other basic applications. The next recommendation, is one I’ve already made, clean up your web interfaces to make them more user-friendly, and make your cloud systems more prevalent. After you’ve dealt with these issues, you’re ready to more actively promote systems like Live Mesh, that will allow you to integrate and sync cloud data, across multiple systems; I recommend purchasing DropBox to help with this. The should continue to work on integrating Office and their cloud systems, during this.

In the foreseeable future, the majority of what we will be doing, will be on the internet, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t need our fully developed operating systems. Using a hybrid-OS approach, they will be able to provide both instant-on support for average use case, while still providing the ability to switch over to the full system for heavier workloads. This is what we need in the next few years, ChromeOS can match you in the first, but not the second, except via remote-desktop support. One issue with instant-on systems, is trying to get universal support, but Microsoft is at an advantage as it’s already worked with low-level compatibility, are there going to be hitches, I’m sure, but they should still have some ability to solve this problem, along with manufacturers.

Next step is to make their web presence more coherent and simple. Promote your integrated services together, rather than splitting them across different domains, you have two live office platforms, three email services, and a search engine, and none of them are connected in a highly sensible way. You’ve also failed at promoting these from your main website, because of the kludgy method of navigation and association among your many many products. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify. It’s all about simplification so that your users can find what they are looking for; help them out.

Now, you’re doing okay on this next thing, you’ve got Skydrive and Live Mesh, as well as Office 2010 integration with Office Live, but you can still do so much more to make it simple. Google is kicking your ass as simple collaboration, you need to get this right, and make sure you’re doing it better than they are. You need to get syncing to both the cloud and to other devices down, that’s why I recommend you purchasing DropBox, it would provide a great starting point. This is going to be one of the key changes you need to get right, and get it right, now. The sooner you get people using your system and having it seamlessly integrated between the desktop-mobile-cloud the better you will be.

Maybe they’ve been working on this in the background, and they’re just failing to compile the parts, or they have failed to have vision as to what they actually have, and how it can be connected. Either way, it seems that Ballmer is stumbling in providing his teams the ability to create a fully integrated system, either he has the vision or he doesn’t; I’d go with the latter. Now, is when they need to make the move, get to work on bringing your teams together, so they can create a seamless experience, and hire new marketing people.

The Halting Point

James Fuller — Sun, 23 May 2010 03:34:43 +0000

I’ve hit a point where I have to halt the majority of what I do, and shift focus to current matters at hand. Sadly, this means that I must drop my project, there are multiple reasons, that I’ll get to in a second. I have to figure out my five year plan, as well as my three month, six month, and annual plans. The rail I’m currently on is running short, and if I don’t switch tracks now the future goes up, I can’t ignore and put off any longer.

As for what I’m referring to, is my current situation, financial, physically, educationally, and “professionally.” Financially, I’m done, I have about 2 months left to handle my bills, which also places me in a position, where I can’t risk it all on the web, the risk to see a turn-around that quickly, isn’t feasible. So in the upcoming months, the blog might shift, sites will go away, but they won’t die or be lost, I have contingencies in place. Physically, a few months ago, I had doctors tell me that I needed to get my thyroid checked out, because it was enlarged, and I had lost close to 20 lbs. in the course of six months, I failed to make that appointment, and two months later, I’m down another 12 lbs. I’m not a big guy, I’ve never been over 150, so this is a bit of an issue.

Educationally, this has stalled as well, even though I constantly learn something, it’s becoming more and more of a struggle to learn something that is actually of value. I need to make a change, and become more focused in my learning, this is probably my biggest issue, I research topics, as doing so I follow tangents; which is a very interesting way to learn of a new thing, but it doesn’t help with actually learning. Another issue, is I have very broad interests, one second I can be reading up on Accounting or Marketing, the next I could be reading a text on Algorithm Design, or just doing Calculus, this obviously leads into the professional situation.

I don’t have a clue what I want to do professionally, I know what I wanted as a kid, I know where my interests lie, and I know what I’m good at, but that doesn’t help me figure it out, it just makes it murkier. As a child I always wanted to work with computers and robots, I never thought that I’d step back from this position. My interests over the past five years have been in programming, cryptology, economics, finance, business, and design. What I feel at least somewhat competent at is financial analysis, and architectural design. This of courses, raises issue with what I should do, because I, honestly, don’t have a clue, finance or trying to make my childhood dream work. I don’t know, but I’m leaning toward the financial aspect, and letting the programs slip to the side, which brings me to the project.

The past two years, I’ve focused into understanding how to analyze data to create semantic content, one of the biggest moves in my thinking was to take the initial load off of the machine, and place it in the hands of a human, the biological entity that understands the semantics of an item. Let the user build the connections, let them do all of the heavy lifting, and then use these seeded inputs as an ever expanding learning set for the machine. This meant making something usable for a user to interact with, first it was an RSS Reader, then it was a URL shortener, that handled multiple links, then the idea grew into a distributed network of bundled connections. All of these I’ve managed to fail on in some way, except for the last, I’ve just hit a wall as far as I can go on it, with my understanding.

I thought hard over the past week, about seeking a more technical person, or just releasing the current source of the project, after it’s cleaned up a bit. The first way would have the possibility for a good return, but I oddly feel bad about it, it makes me feel like I failed. So I’ll be working to clean up the code, write out lots of the mental documentations I have, as well as collect and clean up the digital and physical documentation, so that others can take the idea to the next level. Currently, there is already a working model of what I saw it being about three-months down the line, at BagtheWeb, they did some things better, mainly having a fully functional product, not just a prototype, but their product is still in early enough stages that it could be caught and surpassed. I just don’t have time, with having to deal with these other issues, to devote wholeheartedly to the issue.

So I apologize to the people who did play with the project, and provided quite valuable feedback, it wouldn’t be anywhere close to what it is, even as little as it is without you. It won’t be going anywhere for now, but I also doubt updates for the indefinite future. I just have stuff to sort out first, maybe one day I’ll come back to it, with the passion I had, when I was creating a research tool, with a semantic future.

Adobe Pops Above Google to Flash Apple (and Opera) Users

James Fuller — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:57:01 +0000

Jesse Stay, brought to my attention earlier, with the screenshot below the code, that Adobe was activating pop-ups through Google Adsense; of course this shouldn’t happen, since Google doesn’t allow such actions, in their ads. I went to check in out for myself, and got nil. I immediately assumed that it was limited to Mac, and went in search of the User-Agent check, and found it after about 5 minutes.

Update: The rest of this article is a bit technical, if you would like a less technical description, you should go read Adobe and Google Sitting in a Tree.

Below is the source of the issue:


document.write('

Adobe pops up on a Mac

The interesting thing I spotted quite quickly is that it is also going after Opera, don’t ask me why, that’s pretty obscure. I immediately tested it out, just to see, and ended up getting the pop-up.

After looking at the code for about a half hour, I still don’t know what everything is, and exactly how it’s getting past Google, I also don’t know how ad’s are created, because I’ve never bothered to look at it. So I’m not sure, if this is something anyone could execute, or if Google is allowing it. So it’s possible that there is a vulnerability in Adsense.

What I can tell after looking at the code, is that they are targeting Apple, and Opera, users, as well as using javascript to activate flash, in the background.

First they are setting the DCid as either DCF0 or DCF224198296, this should always validate as false and the will set DCid as DCF224198296. Then, it goes on to check if the browser uses plugins and has at least any values, if it results in true it attempts to setup ShockwaveFlash and perform a version check on it, setting the variable pVM to the version number. If that statement failed, it assumes you are using IE and initializes using ActiveX.

I don’t understand exactly what is going on in the eval, so I can’t say much about it, besides it calls DCFlash with the DCid(“DCF224198296″) and the pVM(“Flash Version”).

I apologize if the rest of this is rushed for now, I’m getting a bit tired.

The DCFlash function then initializes an assortment of variables, before setting up the FSWin function.
FSWin checks to see if the window is already open or the DCid was set in error to DCF0, it then checks to see if the window is centered and gather your screen size for offsets on the window border. Following FSWin is the window initialization, which disables all navigation, in that window.

Next, is the User-Agent analysis, which first check to make sure that your current Flash version is at minimum Vers. 8, it then checks to see if you are using either a Mac or Opera, if you aren’t the value is less than 0, returning true, this then compares in with window==”false”, which is true, in an or statement, which will return false, if both are set. If this test of the browser conditions fail, either using an old version of Flash, or using a Mac, or Opera it will default to just the default hyperlinked gif. Otherwise, it sets up Flash to be displayed in the window pain.

During the course, of writing this the test ad I was using has disappeared, but I’ll see if I can gather any more of the code. One thing I found odd, is that the ad was stored within an iFrame, which I couldn’t find with any of Google’s other Adsense ads, I managed to find a representation of using an iFrame, after I woke up.

The Influence of Homogeneity on Choice and the Web

James Fuller — Mon, 10 May 2010 05:11:06 +0000

One thing that consistently occurs in markets is a trend towards homogeneity, it’s nothing new, it’s been happening for millennia. The occurrence in the web is a bit disturbing, however, because of time and focus. Alas, I’m getting ahead of myself, I should probably talk about the various forms of homogeneity, that occur naturally and in our daily lives.

Homogeneity, in nature, it is as common as a step in the evolutionary process. As species adapt, the mean difference, across the whole corpus of the species, becomes smaller, and the species pick up both positives and negatives, that affect the species future. The huge negative for homogeneity is that the corpus, minus the mutated(outliers), is that susceptibility to a common tragedy. A tragedy, by contagion, can be common, if a disease does infect one entity, it can easily spread to those that are also susceptible, though the entities with mutated genetics, assuming theses genetics, increase resistance or provide immunity to the disease, or any common tragedy. If the tragedy is large enough, it can cause the mean difference to go up, or even hit an maxima, which it comes back down from in favor of the mutates.

Homogeneity, in business and our daily lives, occurs quite frequently, and it is an influencing factor over choice. To look into the idea of choice and homogeneity, you don’t have to look further than skin deep, or in this case clothing. Every one of us has a desire to fit in, and this desire results in us commonly grouping, even, subconsciously with those who are like us. From this desire, we find ways to look, sound, or interact the same way; our desire also has a side effect, it removes the necessity of thought in many circumstances, just go with what everyone else is doing. Of course, there will always be a few who don’t want to be classified, or collated with others, sadly they create their own group, through these actions: non-conformists.

To see the corporate side of homogeneity, look into the restaurant/fast food industry, or supermarkets. Mom & Pop’s have been gobbled up by the McDonalds and Wal-Marts , because the layperson doesn’t know what they have to offer. If you go with one of these household names, you have a good idea that the food is going to be decent, or that the store will have what you’re looking for within its doors. This homogeneity, decreases local competition, but it’s okay, because it saved the average consumer time and money, because these chains get reductions for ordering extremely large amounts of goods. Of course, some people will stick to the Mom & Pop’s, to be contrarian, or because they know it just as well and it has become ritual.

When it comes to the web, however, the steps toward homogeneity become much easier, but there is even fewer checks and balances, than in any of the other cases. We interact with the web on a time basis, and this time is limited, so we find a subset of sites to stay in constant contact with, normally staying within a triumvirate: search, networking, and news-history. However, the common solutions for these problems are reduced to a common set of sites, there are alternatives, but it requires more rigor on part of the consumer. So what do we do, we choose, by what provides the most tools, where are my friends, and how can I find out more.

What happens when you’re playing this zero-sum game of choice, Louis Gray says there is no zero-sum game? You end up selecting those that might not be the best, but save you time and trouble. Want to use e-mail, read blogs, or just IM with friends, you can go use any random email host, any old RSS-reader, or link walk the sites, or anyone who offers an IM service, OR you can just use Google, and get all of these services simultaneously, plus several dozen other services. Do you see what just happened? Multiple services where just reduced, they were hit by a common tragedy, and now there is one hyper-efficient service provider, which most people are going to use because it’s simple, and they don’t have to think about where they are going to go, or what they are going to do. Where can I share images, discuss things with my close friends and family, and provide a set of personal information for people that people can use as entrance sources? Well there are a large number of services that will let you share images, and any number of places and ways to share that information, but to truly access everyone, without making them do work hard, and that site is becoming Facebook. The case is you don’t see a corresponding 1-1 gain loss, gains are primarily individualistic, while losses are primarily distributed, there are cases where the inverse occurs, but they are few and far between.

These companies are becoming goliaths, that are going to harm the web, if they continue to grow, it won’t happen immediately, but even now Facebook is trying to change the rules. And you can say all you want that there are other services out there, I’ll admit that, but when you’re playing a zero-sum game, based on how much time you spend interacting in different locations, you have to focus on where you’ll get the optimal return. There will always be alternatives, for those who truly want them, but for the general public, they don’t mind as far as they know, everyone does the majority of the same things on the web. Until, something happens that causes the homogenous species, to see what the mutates have already seen and adapted for we’re looking at an interesting ride for the next 2-3 years.

Social Geo-Location Is A Weak Medium

James Fuller — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 08:21:59 +0000

Earlier, I was watching an Iron Maiden concert and realized that any decent medium can be used to express a story or culture. Social Geo-location might be able to pass a story, but the majority of the usage I’ve seen, thus far, doesn’t. This is just one of a few issues that make social geo-location weak, there is the issue of user base, barrier to entry, and application of the data.

I feel that the location services aren’t proper for expressing the story. They don’t describe the why and what is happening the majority of the time, and when they do the data is extremely condensed to fit within the minuscule boxes of Twitter or SMS. Twitter is hard enough to express a story through, though you can still manage to get it or a cultural message across in one tweet. Sharing a cultural message through one of these locations is likely even harder, with the exception of religious establishments.

How social can you really be with these applications? These applications all have tiny user bases, even after quite a bit of promotion on large blogs and a period of time. Foursquare, which is one the most publicly discussed ones, only has half-a-million, even after breaking out at SxSW, last year. Compared to Foursquare, few of the other services come close in size comparisons. The problem with low user adoption is that without your friends, how relevant can the product be, which I’ll discuss a little later.

The barrier to entry for nearly all of these services, is that they are limited to internet enabled phones, or smart phones. In fact, only one service of the several that I’ve looked at, had a entry level that wasn’t quite restrictive of it’s base, and it’s none other than Foursquare, with SMS check-in’s, which still appears to be hit or miss. If you’re reducing your initial growth capabilities, immediately, in a social market, you’re damaging your product.

The services use the location data, in their own ways, but I don’t know if they are applying it where it would actually be of value, as an addition of context. If you can take the data from these products and connect it to events and people as they occur, you simplify the enrichment of the story. It’s still pretty easy to just say where the event’s took place, with the addition of maybe 2 dozen key strokes, as I write this at my house.

Another issue is that the product might not be relevant to users, especially, when people begin using them to check in as they leave. If I were to use these services, it would be to let my friends know where I am, so now you have users undermining the principles of your product, way to go. You’re app actually ends up being even more irrelevant than it already is. The likelihood that your friends are even on the service is an anomaly in the first place, unless you live in a metropolitan area(e.g. New York, San Francisco, LA, Portland, Miami, etc.).

I give all the people who work on these applications props, though, because they discovered a great system. They created a user-promotion based advertising system, which you encourage by having deals with various venues to reward the heavy users, and little trophies for reaching little milestones for the rest of the users. They have also brought the idea of geo-location to the fore, which sometime in the future will be used to add context to real stories or cultural messages. So I would like to thank all the people, who work on these apps, for their work, but you guys apparently don’t understand geo-location, it is better served to add context to other mediums, than as an independent social medium.

Splitting the Web Markets

James Fuller — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:27:54 +0000

I’ve been looking into the web, trying to figure out what it’s going to look like in a few years. I’m still looking at various scopes, but I decided to analyze some of the more generalized markets that we have right now. You’re not going to find anything new here, just 5 areas of the web we will see changes in, and the coming monetization of the web.

Infrastructure = Hosting & ISP’s

Data Resources = Data

Data Access & Storage Protocols = API’s

Services = Applications that modify the Data through use of API’s to provide a value

Directories = Provide the ability to find what you’re looking for quite rapidly, can be pseudo-static or dynamic.

Each of these different markets can and most likely will be monetized within the coming years, most likely coming from the users themselves. Hosting & ISP’s have already done it. Directories that aren’t fully dynamic can do it with advertising, and even some of the dynamic real-time directories will be able to use the advertising model. The Data & DASP’s will be subsidized, for the most part, by the initial service’s charges, or possibly the service will be subsidized by external developers paying for access to the data, or just the data itself.

The benefits we will see is that our data is more stable, at least in the sense that the company isn’t going to go belly up, services should be better, and there will be more positions, hopefully. We all walked around expecting everything to be free, when we should have been asking how can we help make more services. Maybe the free world was just the accelerant for innovation to get the initial business models developed, promote an open generation, and allow everyone a shot at getting their ideas out there, it’s easier to pick up users, for a simple service, when you’re not charging them after all. The problem that we had with free is that we all became so jaded by it.

Focus on one of these markets and how you can change it. Each one is easily branched into another, you can traverse up or down that list from where you started. Look at Google, they exist in each of these markets. They started with a DASP that collected vast amounts of Data, then used initially used this data to create a Directory Service, along with quite a few other services, one of which is AppEngine which exists to share their infrastructure.

As the web evolves we’ll see these markets split and converge on each other time and time again, we may even see a new general market pop up. Just as an example of the splitting a market look at the services, there are so many sub-markets that exist within it that it would be hard to categorize them. For an example of convergence you just have to look at the various projects being developed to better connect the web, one of the most recent one’s to pop into my radar is Salmon, which is working to pull comments back to the original source and re-disperse them with the source feeds. Time to watch the ebb and flow, and maybe enter one or more of these markets.

Sometimes The Small Things In Life Matter

James Fuller — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:38:16 +0000

No one is too small to make a difference, they just might be too small to do it by themselves. If you can get a few big dogs in to help you out that’s great, but the problem with them is that they can’t be everywhere and help you all the time, look for someone smaller. Turn to the rats to help you out, they are plentiful and will be eager to help you for next to nothing as long as you provide something that makes them happy.

That was the realization I had watching Wanted, when Wesley releases the rats into the mill. He provides them with peanut butter, albeit laced with gasoline, in order to have them help in his mission. Several dozen dogs couldn’t have presented him with the return that he received for the hundreds of rats that went out to return his favor. So maybe you should follow his lead and seek the little guys that want you to help them out, not the big guys that you want help from. How do you think they got big, they helped the little guy out, and he let his friends know about it.

Look at how the successful social-networks grew. They all start with a small focused market, Myspace with Musicians, Facebook with College Students, Twitter with texting and the Early Adopter. Each of these small markets had one huge thing in common, they were set in a location where they could expand to the general population, Myspace to fans, Facebook to older Alum and the general public, Twitter to marketers and people looking for an audience. Then they expanded to the mainstream audiences through word of mouth and the necessity for people to have friends on the network to interact with.

They did 3 things and they did them well.

They decided on a market.
They expanded their market into a natural evolution of the original Market.
The focused on the large groups, of small people, to help spread the message, not small groups, of big guys.

Far too many people have the wrong perspective. They seek to become a giant by standing on the shoulders of other giants, rather than building a self sufficient community that helps each other rise up to the sky. I’m going to show you a perspective variation of the King’s Chessboard, a parable in which a king offers a peasant a payment for his services, the peasant simply asks that the king give him double the amount of rice that he gave the day before, until he has covered each square on a chessboard, starting with one grain of rice. The king soon realizes that he can’t honor this payment as it’s too much for the kingdoms granary.

In my variation, I’ll have the king offering 2 different rewards to the peasant, he can receive 1 billion grains of rice each day until each square has been covered, or he can take the option from the original story of 1 grain of rice and have it doubled everyday for each square. Most people would be blinded by the large sum that they are told they will receive each day and wouldn’t quantify the fact they will actually lose a large sum by taking the larger initial choice. In fact, you will receive only ~.0000007% of the total had they chosen the doubling.

So remember, sometimes it’s better to go with the small people and to take time for the little things in life. They will pay off much more in the long term than always trying to do something that involves the major points in of focus. Take your time and if someone needs help don’t be greedy go and help them you never know the power to change your life they might have.

Strive To Create Wealth, Not Money

James Fuller — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 05:00:54 +0000

We are all spending our days working for someone, whether it be ourselves or someone else, or something. How do you know what you’re doing is worth your time and effort? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for several weeks, and I still haven’t figured it out, to be honest. I do have an idea of how we may be able to come up with an estimate, this requires honest introspection, no lying to yourself.

Several Questions To Pose

How many people are effected by what I do, positively?

What matters most to me, people or things?

Why am I doing this?

Is there something I could change to improve the world?

The reason for each question is to determine whether or not you are a wealth creator or a money earner. They are also good questions to ask when ever you come up with an idea that you feel like you could sell. Each of these questions are hard to answer because you have to remove your personal bias of yourself, or the answers will be wrong.

How many people are effected by what I do, positively?

How many people are you effecting positively with what you do on a daily basis, dozens, several hundred, maybe thousands? Do you even know if you have an effect on their lives? If you can’t tell whether or not your doing something that improves others lives, either through productivity or providing a service that they can’t do themselves, your probably just trying your hardest to get rich. The only problem is that you are meaningless to others, you have a discernable value and can be replaced by many other people. If you’re working to provide value, you have cast your stone into the water and the ripples of your actions will return your reward in time.

What matters most to me, people or things?

Do you pride yourself over who your friends and family or over the material objects that surround you? Would you rather work hours on end to buy things to impress others or would you rather spend your time with those people? If you want to achieve wealth you have to look inward to see what truly surrounds you. You have to be willing to make a change in someone else, no matter how poor or insignificant they may seem. If you only make decisions about others to further your own status and to make more money, your failing yourself and the world.

Why am I doing this?

What do you get out of doing what you do? Are you passionate about what you do and where does the passion come from? Is it from coming from your heart and your dreams or is it coming from the need to fill your wallet. The truth is nothings worth doing if you don’t love it, truly and honestly, yet so often you see people make stupid decisions just to get enough money for something they didn’t really need. There is no doubt in my mind that if your willing to look you can find a niche doing what you love that you can make money, as an extra positive. Normally, the two are hard to see coming together and if you can’t see it you may have to make a sacrifice in one.

Is there something I could change to improve the world?

If you had one thing that you felt you could change wouldn’t you do it? Don’t give money to charities, they aren’t actually very good at doing what they say they do most of the time. They are mainly just a tax break for the rich that allows them to say that they’ve done something good for others.* If you really want to be involved with change, get out there and do something with your person. Show up face-to-face in a soup-kitchen, read to the elderly, do anything to assist, just don’t give paper. You don’t even have to set time aside, when you see an elderly person in an airport and they need help with their bags, drop what you’re doing, it’s not as important as helping, and assist them, ask if they need it first.

* I’m not saying all charities are bad, but ,quite a few, are just tax havens for the rich and very little money is shared with the actual recipients.

Looking back can you see how action and being there for other is far more important than money. Wealth is not a tangible asset. Wealth is what you are able to create out of thin air, it doesn’t exist until someone created it. Money is a tangible asset that we use to easily share wealth with others. Money is a representation of wealth that we can trade for wealth that we want. You can work at making money all you want but if you aren’t actually creating wealth your job is useless.

As we rise back out of this turmoil that has arisen, those that focus on making money without providing wealth are going to flounder. The only way that you can survive is if you can change someones life, even if it’s only in a miniscule way. We are going to see an uprising in wealth producers and watch as the middlemen start to die off. If you don’t figure out how to provide the value that people want in return for their money, you won’t have any for yourself. For too long we were screaming, “SHOW ME THE MONEY,” now those times are over and the money is fading away.

“Strive To Create Wealth, Not Money”

That’s a motto to follow now that we have seen what happens when your chasing something that isn’t real. Wealth is real, money is not. Go out now and become a wealth creator, go out and sell your product or service that will actually change someone’s life.

Success Isn’t In Your Genes, It’s In Your Heart

James Fuller — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:21:26 +0000

The other day I watched Gattaca and was fascinated by it’s attitude. The film is supposed to be a sci-fi thriller looking into a dystopian future where if you weren’t genetically engineered you were of lower social rank. This however isn’t what I took away from the film, I took away something far brighter, a look into successful habits. The protagonist is a genetically inferior child with a weak heart and huge dreams to reach the stars. Here’s a list of some of the habit’s I found.

Don’t Save Anything to Go Back

This is probably, the most noticeable in the film as this statement is only slightly paraphrased from the film. The reason not to save anything is because the risk going to prod you along, you will know in the back of your head it’s sink or swim. I don’t recommend going so far as that if you make a mistake you will fail completely, but just far enough to make it hard to accept failure.

Always Look Up

In the film, Vincent stares at the rocket that is his dream multiple times as it is taking off. He was positive that he would be able to find a way to get on it no matter how impossible it seemed. Positivity will lead you towards your dreams, you just have to know where to look, up.

Share Your Success

What’s better than one person being successful and reaching there goals. It’s multiple people assisting each other in achieving their goals. The movie provides a very close relationship between multiple characters as they each find success through assisting each other. Pull someone along for the ride and let them occasionally pull you up also when you slip.

Don’t Let Others Tell You What You Can or Can’t Do

Being born in a time of genetic engineering, Vincent’s parent’s new exactly what was wrong with him from the time he was born. As the movie progresses you can clearly see that he was triumphing over these ailments that were supposed to cripple his potential. He set his own bar and didn’t let what was supposed to happened keep him from going strong. Don’t let other’s inhibit you from doing what you set out to do.

Success Isn’t In Your Genes, It’s In Your Heart

Remember that, you achieve what you want to achieve, and only what you want to achieve. Your life isn’t predetermined by what’s pumping through your veins but what’s pumping through your mind. So what is it that you want from life and who are you taking for the ride?

3 Types Of People You Just Can’t Forget

James Fuller — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:23:57 +0000

I got to reminiscing over the last 6 months at my job. I’ve seen several hundred customers come and go but only remember maybe 20 names. So I asked myself if I could group them into categories to figure out what made them so special, I came up with 3 groups that contain them.

Douchebags

These are the guys that do pretty much anything to make your job just a bit harder. They can be overly pushy when you tell them that you’re unable to assist them. They will do anything to get what they want and don’t give a damn whether it’s possible on your end, but their persistence though annoying sticks with you. You use them to benchmark your other customers. These guys stick out because they ruffle your feathers and they just beckon to be remembered.

Nice Guys

This group you don’t want to forget because they are the few people who can brighten your day up. They can call you up on short notice and you don’t have anything for them that’s decent but they are happy to take what you have to offer and so glad that you could get them out of there bind. I had one guy, Mr. Bruce, that wouldn’t stop smiling it was just so remarkably odd, normally I see people who are upset because they got into an accident or their flight was canceled. These are the people you want to come back again and again just so they can cheer you up.

Frequenters

These people come in maybe once every month or two and setup there reservations before they ever leave. You get to know exactly what they want when they show up. You really don’t want to forget frequenters because they are probably 20-30% of your business in my small town. You can’t offend them because they will go to your competitors and are unlikely to come back.

These are the 3 groups that I just can’t forget, I know them all by name and see someone from one of these groups atleast once per week. One thing about these groups though is that they aren’t self contained, I’ve got frequent nice guys and frequent douchebags. I’ve also managed to get a nice douchebag, I assume it’s just because I’m not used to the abrasiveness of people from NYC, they don’t come to small town West Virginia that often. I bet if you wanted you could even make your self unforgetable by mixing them with your own style.