You don't have to hire an expensive firm to have a Public Relations (PR) strategy as a startup. The beauty of today's internet is that anybody has the power to reach tens of thousands, even millions, with the properly timed tweet, hacker news mention, or mention on an influential blog. You don't have to make it onto a cover story in Inc. or Entrepreneur in order to achieve your PR goals, in fact you can start with some basic steps and relationship building.Read More…

Everybody wants to read more. Whether it is for pleasure or learning (or for the crazy few, the two go hand-in-hand), we would all benefit from the ability to read a little faster and improve our comprehension of what we are reading. What if you could spend five minutes right now to greatly improve your reading speed and comprehension? Here are some tips for tackling that stack of magazines or list of business books that you have been wanting to check off of your list.Read More…

Find out why our bodies are naturally inclined to choose to seek pleasure, than actually enjoy it. I've discovered that many of the pursuits that drive us as entrepreneurs are actually ones that won't satisfy once we attain them.Read More…

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending the BaconBiz conference in Philadelphia. The conference overall was a mind grenade of great advice and inspiration. One of the key concepts that kept coming up was the idea of focusing on benefits when writing about your product, and not just the features. For example, which is the more compelling reason to continue checking out a product?Read More…

If you're following along with the blog, you'll know that this is week number three of my gainful unemployment. One of the biggest challenges that I've had to face this week is maintaining momentum, and knowing exactly what to work on.Read More…

This week I have the pleasure of being the guest on Paul Kemp's The App Guy Podcast. We discussed working on your app while holding-down a day-job, validating your idea before investing too much time and money, and the pain points we're trying to solve for freelancers by building Harpoon. Read More…

Today is my first day as an unemployed worker. If all goes according to plan, I'll be unemployed forever.Read More…

At the end of the 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferris recommends a book by David Schwartz, "The Magic of Thinking Big." Based off of the title of the book, assumed the book would be too "salesy" or slimy for me to really enjoy. Fortunately, I was wrong. I gained a lot of inspiration from this book, which basically explains how our thoughts and attitudes have a large role to play in how productive we are, what we accomplish, and to a degree, our level of success. Read More…

Most of us know how to tackle large tasks: You make a plan, set aside time, and execute. However, how do you make sure those little, pesky to-dos get done? Put new batteries in the camera. Call the bank about that letter. Pick up some milk while you're out. Small to-do tasks are easily forgotten because they just aren't important enough to stay at the top of our minds.Read More…

I feel that the quest to be productive will last my whole lifetime. Every time I think that I have it figured out and put a system in place, the smallest change usually sends the system crumbling. However, I've recently settled on a few tools that are starting to stand that test of time, for one reason or another, and I thought I'd take a moment to share them with you.Read More…

This has been a struggle for me personally lately when it comes to being an entrepreneur. I am writing a book, blogging once a week, building a software product, maintaining a few existing software products, and exploring new opportunities. In surrounding myself with blogs, podcasts, and books of those who have found success in entrepreneurship, it is very easy to feel like I don't have what it takes. I see that they have more followers, bigger email lists, more blog comments, and those that share their income (which a surprising number of them do), they make WAAAY more money than I do at this point.Read More…

What is holding you back from trying out that thing that you've been thinking of doing? Are you trying to find a shortcut instead of starting the hard work? Are you waiting until you finish reading that "how-to" book before you get started? Don't wait, start.Read More…

This week I finished reading Made to Stick by brothers Chip and Dan Heath. The book is centered around six principles of sticky ideas, and is geared towards marketers, writers, leaders, coaches...basically anybody who has ever needed to get a message across. Read More…