lifestyle_150

Lifestyle business Lie

by with No Comment entrepreneurshipProductivity 
Recommended Media
Stanford University Entrepreneurship Podcast
Small Biz Pod Podcasts
Five Minutes with Jack Podcasts
Startups for the rest of us Podcast
Lifestyle Business Podcast
Automate my small business Podcast
Smart Passive Income Blog / Podcasts
Recommended Books
Lifestyle Business Podcast
Crush it - Gary Vaynerchuck
Various books by Seth Godin
Four Hour Work Week
Recommended Applications
O-desk - Outsourcing website
99designs Setup Design Competitions
CoHuman - Team collaboration 
Mailchimp - Free email marketing
Capsule - Free CRM
pixlr - Free online photoshop
Capsule - Free CRM

There are alot of people right now that want to leave thier job and start a “lifestyle business”. The term “Lifestyle Business” was first coined in the book The 4 hour work week. Tim Ferris is very smart and I read the book a few years ago and found it inspirational.

There is alot of useful stuff in there about how to be ultra efficient and get what you want from life. However some people get the idea that it is possible through being clever to build successful a business with little effort. There is alot of hype on the internet that supports this view (mainly from people selling ebooks and training courses on how to get rich on the internet).

Even Tim Ferris didn’t manage to build his first lifestyle business from scratch. He had a business where he spent 70- hours a week building up prior travelling the world and transforming the business into a “lifestyle business”. I have not heard from one credible entrepreneur that really is doing well that hasn’t had to put in alot of work in the startup phase (see recommended media above).

Pat from the excellent smart passive income blog is a good example of someone living that “lifestyle business” but even he admits in his most recent podcast that it took time and effort to setup things to where he is today.

So I guess the message in this post is if you want to build anything thats worth anything it will take time and effort (probably alot more than you expect). Hopefully you enjoy the ride but if you not prepared to put in the work you may as well give up and watch TV instead.

adminer1

Reporting In WordPress

by with No Comment entrepreneurshipProductivity

I have been looking for decent plugins to setup some reporting on my wordpress sites for a while. My search is now over I have found the

best reporting plugins for wordpress

They are Adminer and Exports and reports
Adminer gives a way of quickly viewing and running sql scripts on wordpress tables within wordpress. Exports and Reports gives a way of generating reports from those scripts within wordpress. I have not found anything else like them. I was using them to setup some reports and that was when  I came up with my first problem with queries on wordpress tables it was

How to run a SQL Query to show the post details with the category information.

I was trying to join the wp_post table to the wp_term_taxonomy table so I could find
the categories that match the posts. It took me a while. Below is a diagram that shows how the category information is organized in

the category id is not in the wp_posts table in wordpress

The code I wrote to do the join is below
select a.id ,b.term_taxonomy_id,c.term_id 
from wp_posts a, wp_term_relationships b,
wp_term_taxonomy c,wp_terms d 

where	a.id = b.object_id and b.term_taxonomy_id = c.term_taxonomy_id 

and c.term_id = d.term_id
carolinetowers_movie_poster

Graphic Design on a Shoestring

by with No Comment entrepreneurshipMusicProductivity

The image above I had made up for $150 using

The way it works is that you setup a prize action and people submit designs you then choose the one you like. If you don’t get any you like you don’t pay. Below is how I briefed in my design and the ad I put up. I received 2 designs , the one I choose went through 1 iteration.

The project is a Rock Show based upon the movie I imagined- details can be found on www.carolinetowers.com

Below is my brief

A poster is required for the action movie “Caroline Towers”

Summary
3 Main Characters – Richard Steel (hero), Leader of the resistance, Architect

About

  • Huge building
  • Lower floors = lower class
  • Lower floors being filled in and occupants murdered so the tower can continue to grow.(The big secret)

Poster Style
below are some I like

More Details

I was absolutely stoked with the results , especially when you look at the awful drawing I did above for guidance! I would recommend the site for anyone after artwork. Anyone else had any experience with 99 designs. As ever any comments are most welcome

Wikipedia-logo-300x300

Downloading the internet

by with No Comment DisastersProductivity

Having local copies of useful stuff on the internet is handy when your not online. The internet is also constantly changing which means that just because something useful is on there now doesn’t mean it always be as useful in the future. For this reason I like local copies of some key items 1. How to download the wikipedia I used okiwiki 2. How to Download all your google docs You can now download all your google docs in one go easily. Click Actions -> Download -> All items 3. How to download maps onto your iphone I use offmaps but its a bit annoying. I also tryto zoom around on my iphone in the maps application to put the maps in cache (although is teduios)

podcast_rss_mic

Podcasting With an iPhone on the Move in 10 Steps

by with No Comment MusicProductivity

I just published the latest podcast for my band Jimmy Yukka & His Amazing Band. I thought writing a post about how I did it might be useful. For this episode I decided to try to record a podcast whilst walking around a park. Obviously by doing this you do sacrifice sound quality but if this means I can more easily complete regular podcasts then for me its a sacrifice worth taking.
So heres how I did it.

Step 1 – What You Need

Recording

  • iPhone
  • iPhone headset (earphones / mic)
  • 1 headphone foam (from a larger headset headphone)
  • 1 paperclip
  • Some cool sunglasses
  • A little spiral bound notepad

Mixing

  • Garageband

Putting on WordPress

  • WordPress
  • Podpress plugin

Step 2 – Protect Against Wind

using an iphone to record an podcast

Silly Mic

After testing walking around the park and recording I realised that although the mic in the iphone headset is pretty good but it does get affected by wind noise in addition when it moves and hits something it made an annoying noise. So the first thing I did was cover the cable mic with a headphone foam and attatched it with a paperclip to the cable. I then wrapped the cable around my sunglasses arm to stop it from banging about. Although it looks quite ridiculous it worked fairly well.

Step 3 – Record Using Some Software


The standard voice recording software on the iphone is a bit annoying. I downloaded italk recorder with italk syncthese are both free and I quite like them. With this software you can change the recording quality and pause the recording. There is a good review of it italk here.

Step 4 – Preparing Podcast notes


I had sketched out what I was going to talk on a paper about the size of a post it pad and then left the house.

Step 5 – Recording a podcast outside


I picked up my iPhone and walked to the park and started to record. I realized that I had to walk reasonably slowly otherwise I would be heavy breathing too much. I also have to slow down by speaking a bit. I recorded the show about 8 times and ended up using the last recording.

Step 6 – Mixing a podcast in Garageband


Some people don’t even do this step. I will have to do a lot more podcasts before I can miss this out. I used to think I was pretty articulate but when I listen to a recording of myself I realised what a  blundering dither I am when I speak. So I think I recorded about 25 mins and edited out 10 mins of waffle and errrrrrr and eummmm and ahhhhhh and sneezes and coughs etc. I edited the podcast in Garageband.

  • Go to the “control” menu and turn off auto ducking as your podcast will sound horrible with it on.
  • I also use the high pass filter to reduce hiss (to find this hit show track info and then do to track details and it is      one of the effects. Then go to manual edit and experiment with what effect the filter has on a the speech. You          want just enough to take out the nasty noise but not too much as it will make your voice sound nasty.)

Step 7 – Review Podcast and Re-edit


Once I finished editing I then  move my recording to itunes so I can review it on my iphone. To do this go to the menu in garageband called “share” and then “send podcast to itunes”. I then synch my iphone and review the podcast making notes if theres anything that needs to change. If it needs re-editing I then re-edited the podcast and repeat.

Step 8 – Output for iTunes


Once I was happy with the recording I then move my recording back to iTunes. Once the recording is in iTunes right, click on the recording in iTunes and select “get info” to setup the information about the podcast episode.

  • Go to options a check “remember playback position” failing to do this will mean listeners have to go back to the start each time
  • You should setup the artwork for the podcast episode here too.

Step 9 – Post using Podpress


In order to do this you will need add the plugin podpress and  setup your podcast. This page here has a good overview on how to setup podpress for your podcast and use it for posting podcasts.

Step 10 – Create a post in WordPress and add the podcast


Podpress (see above) will have installed an extra section in the “add new post” screen that allows you to add your podcast file to the new post (which will be the show notes.)

Final Result

To listen to the final result the podcast “Episode 4” can be listened to or subscribed to from my bands website www.jimmyyukka.com. Earlier podcasts were recorded with myself and Mick using my macbook pro with the integrated mic and recording straight to Garageband.

Get More Advice

  • When embarking on this activity I called The podcasting advisor and he responded to my question and featured mobile podcast recording on his show. So if you want to know more,  listen to the show on:

Podcast Advisor

If anyone reviews this and has any better ideas then please comment below.