The Wii boosts a very unique controller and the first time you touch it most people are not quite sure how to use it.  Nintendo has long been thought of a very childish gaming system but the Wii seems ready to shake that reputation.

So how do you Wii? With friends and loved ones? By yourself? And what is your favourite game for the Wii?

By the nature of a social network, it wants to learn about you but to what degree?  I mean you don’t leave all the windows open in your house when you go to bed hoping that no one looks in.  Just a little food for thought.

Luc

Cautious Facebook’er

A lot of business professionals were restricted before to a desk in their residence and now that landscape is changing.  Don’t some of your best ideas come when you are out and about?  Say in a coffee shop?  I’ve found myself setup at Williams Coffee Pub these days doing work and drinking tea (I don’t like the taste of coffee) and getting out of the home office. 

So how many of you do some, part or all of your work from a wireless café, bar or public place?  What do you find so liberating about it and are there any beefs you have about your new found freedom?

Luc

Chillin’ with my Laptop!

Luc

Well how much should you save to start with?  After all, living is not cheap with the prices of gas rising, real estate always growing and everything keeping pace with inflation.  What if you saved 10% of every pay that you received?  You’d eventually become a millionaire (possibility a few times over).  I know that you are thinking that 10% is not that much money and well you are sort of right, it isn’t, and if your pay check looks like this then are you really going to miss it?…

Monthly Pay: $2500 x 10% = $250

That leaves you $2250 a month to spend on rent or your mortgage, food, clothing, entertainment, and more.  You really aren’t going to miss the $250 a month that you are saving?  This is a concept that has been taught time and time again and I am sure that if you are savvy enough then you are already doing it.  Perhaps you fall into the other group of people who believe that because it seems too easy it isn’t true.  I’ve been reading the book, The Wealthy Barber, and it states the same 10% savings rule.  The book is really worth reading and I am going through it but I thought that this was an important concept to share with you.  I am off to continue saving my 10% a month… call me in 20 years and ask me how I am doing

Luc

If that doesn’t sound like you then that is fine but when it comes to searching for a job you have to really put some thought into what it is that you want to achieve.  What is your goal?  If your goal is simply to get a job then don’t be surprised if you are working at MacDonald’s or in some dead end type of job.  You got yourself there and you can get yourself out of that rut.  Now you may be asking, “What does this guy know about crap jobs?”  Well, for starters, I’ve had a couple of them.  Yes with name tags and the whole deal taking orders some a guy or girl who didn’t know what they were doing.

The greatest gift that we are given as adults is the freedom to choose.  We can choose our friends, enemies, lovers and careers but we’ve got to put the energy in to get and see results. 

So how to I start to find a job that fits me?

Focus – When I mean focus I mean focus on your core abilities and hone them over time.  You will NOT be great today but in time you will do some great things.

Target your Search – By targeting I mean to say that you will need to figure out your goal (i.e. Being a Web Designer) and then take steps to getting there (ie. Handing out resumes to design companies)

Don’t settle just because it’s a job – When you are young you have the choice of hunting for a job that really fits you so why would you stay in a job that doesn’t?  If it was a bad dating relationship you wouldn’t stick around to see how it turns out, would you?

Using these three areas will help you decide the best plan of action in your job hunting. 

The one thing that I really don’t care for about the book is the tons of examples of the 80/20 principle at work, in life and in business. I’d talked about reading this book for some time but I put it off because I didn’t have time in my own personal life. I was always running and it felt as though I just couldn’t find enough time in a given day to do the things that really mattered to me. When I recently stopped and started to re-evaluate my life choices I found something interesting… I was working too hard at staying busy for the sake of staying busy. Some examples of this in my life include…

Being married to a Job that didn’t love me – I was working so hard trying to get ahead that I felt as though I could never catch up. I wasn’t sleeping properly and I found myself worried and anxious for no good reason. Naturally this is a sign that I avoided dealing with and shrugging off. You may find yourself saying, “Hey that sounds just like me” and if it does I would suggest having a look at you life and asking “Is this really working for me?”

I didn’t make any time to have a personal life – I had long been avoiding myself and more importantly listening to myself and my wants and desires in life. This is not a healthy path to go down and yet I know I am not the only one that has done this sort of thing.

Hiding behind work to avoid dealing with problems – We’ve all got problems in our life and it is in those challenges that we find the answers we are seeking. The problem is when you stop trying to find the answers and focus on something so that you do not have to deal with your problems you can become insulated from the world and when the day comes when you finally have to deal with those issues you may find it a little hard to cope with.

Realize that by spreading yourself thin you may get things done but not to the same level as if you focused on the things that you do best and give them your whole attention. Ask yourself a question about someone you look up to, “why is _________ so good at what he or she does?” Personally I like thinking about an architect like Frank Lloyd Wright or an artist like Salvador Dali and what made them so great at what they did is the fact that they committed to what they do. They don’t see failures as failures rather only as setbacks along the journey to get to where they are going. They are committed, period.

In some cases they changed their lifestyle to suit their pursuits and went after it. I’ve read a lot about successful business owners and entrepreneurs and I can say that most had to make a switch, either mentally or lifestyle wise to be able to chase their dreams. In this pursuit they are focused and being committed helps you stay focused. Of all of the power on earth, most of it is action and very little of it is thinking. That is the groundwork for greatness. Think about a time when you have been happiest in life. Did it take action? How much of it involved thinking? How much of it involved action? I am sure I could make up some 80/20 there but I do not think that matters.

The book is well worth a good read and merits attention if you yourself find that you are looking for a little direction or just a different way of looking at how the world works. So go and be the best that you can be.

Luc

When he took the menu down to 12 items the service improved, customers came back and business life was healthy.  Because I am in the web development industry I see a lot of companies that do similar things.  I’ve got think that a lot of people that don’t understand what good business is; is not about competing on every level with your competition but sticking to the things that you are truly awesome at and letting them become the cornerstone of your business.  Just a little food for thought; pun intended.

Luc

a) the role they fill is one that demands them to be “physically” there

b) There company believes that in order to get the most productivity out of an employee they must be in a physical location

Most people and companies don’t work like this yet because of “fear of the unknown” but I see this making up a larger part of businesses that can get away with it because of the lack of physical overhead, the freedom it gives an employee and the potential for greater productivity and the fact that most people in Canada and the US have a computer or two laying around at home. The hardest thing that I could think of is if teams choose this model for attracting workers and then find out that they are less productive and a threat to doing business but then again managers and employers in a physical offices face the same issues having the person right there.

What prompted me to write this was reading, Trizoko’s Article on “How Virtual Teams rock” which is definitely worth reading if you have a minute. Would you build a business that could be virtualized?

Lucas

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be moving my “how-to” type articles to my current project to WebmasterFarms.  Some of the scatterbrained articles from the past couple months highlight my lack of focus but as a trusted mentor of mine told me recently “It’s time to focus”.  Most rookie entrepreneurs and business owners never get far for one reason or another or they want to take over the world by creating as many companies as possible to weaken the risks associated with starting a business.  When you start to learn about possible businesses that you could run you start to think that you could be successful doing just about anything but here is the question, plain and simple, “What are you passionate about?”  

I asked this question to myself over the break I took from writing on CommerceCubes and realized that the answer to my questions was right in front of my nose but I had to stop to see it. 

The Goal of CommerceCubes is to share my experiences in entrepreneurship and business and acting as a networking tool.  In time I’d love to see other entrepreneurs posting on here and sharing the experiences that they have had and for those of you interested feel free to contact me. 

Lucas