My time is worth about $75 per hour. How do I know this? Because that’s about how much money I can make in an hour if I focus just on making money.

• This is based on my current consulting rate ($150 to $200 an hour)
• Take into account the amount of time it would take me to find consulting work
• Take into account the point of diminishing returns, which means I can’t literally spend 24 hours a day consulting
• Take into account the amount of time I need to spend on breaks, eating and so on

So if X time devoted to bargaining is going to net me Y money, I should see if X over Y is greater than $75/hour.

Examples

• If I need to bargain for 20 minutes in order to get a $2 discount, that’s clearly not worth it to me because I will be saving $6 per hour spent.
• If I need to bargain for 2 hours in order to get a $2000 discount on a new car, that’s clearly worth it because it translates into a rate of $1000 an hour.

Other Uses

This is also important when you evaluate services. For example, it would cost me around $400 a month to hire cleaners for my house. However, to keep my house clean to the point where I feel comfortable, it costs me 4 hours a month, or $300 of time. In other words, I shouldn’t hire cleaners and do the work myself.

Lesson learned, always figure out what your time is worth. It will allow you to make much better decisions on how to spend it.

I picked my job in high tech because it required a minimum of dressing up and I avoid going to social occasions if they say “formal wear”.  Heck, If Barney Stinson himself stopped by my house and told me to “suit up!” I would put on a pair of jeans and a comfy t-shirt.  So yah, I dislike formal wear.

That said, you see that guy in the picture on the top right hand side?  That’s me wearing a suit for my wedding.  When I look at that picture I don’t remember if I was sweating or not, I don’t remember if my neck chafed and I really don’t remember how well I was breathing with a tie on.  What I do remember is how amazing Julie looked and how magical that day was.  I remember the beautiful meadow where we got married and I remember how much fun that whole day was, even though 10 hours somehow passed in 1 hour.  And DAMN, I look good in that suit.

What am I trying to say?  I’m trying to tell you (especially you guys) that sometimes dressing up is a good thing.  No, you don’t need to do it every day (although you can try to look good even without a suit) but sometimes a nice suit is called for.  Sometime you do need to suit up and look like the fine looking gentleman you are.  Trust me, ten years later you won’t be looking back at those pictures and remembering how uncomfortable you are.

Ladies, feel free to share this post with your men and tell them to stop whining and look dress up for a change.  If you can put up with the horrible torture devices that are women’s formal clothing then we men can man up and put on a nice suit on occasion.

###

And a little tribute to our generations “man’s man!”…

Suit up!

Talking is like breaking through the walls imprisoning you.

I used to be the kind of guy who was scared to say what he wanted.  The more I liked someone, the more I hid away what I really wanted in an effort to keep them happy.  It’s a stupid habit and it’s one of the things that caused my first marriage to implode.  Well, I’m not that person anymore and I recently had proof of that when it came to my healthy lifestyle.  You can read about it on my fitness blog but I’ll give you a quick recap here.

Basically, my wife and I were spending too much time in restaurants which caused me to eat too much.  One quick conversation later and we came up with a much better lifestyle which is working out great so far.  It wasn’t hard, it wasn’t scary, it was just a conversation and it led to a great solution.

Bottom line, if you can’t tell your partner (or best friend or parent or…) what you want, you’re in trouble.  Either you need to overcome your fear of communication or the person you’re trying to communicate with doesn’t belong in your life, either way, you have a problem.  You should never be afraid to talk with someone in your life, ever!

Cliched but totally true!

If you recall my goals for 2012, one of them was all around health.  Well, today I accomplished the first goal, a set of 10 bench presses with 305lbs!  Feels awesome to reach this point, especially when, 8 years ago, I was unable to do 10 reps of just the bar (45lbs).  I’m going to repeat here what I said in the 60 in 3 post:

Please note that I’m 38, I’m not a professional body builder and I spend less than 5 hours a week at the gym, and some of those are spent on cardio.    I have no secret training technique, no super duper bench press method, I don’t use high priced muscle supplements and I don’t use a personal trainer.  Also, I only started going to the gym when I hit 30 (and 30 hit back!).  I say this because I keep hearing people tell me they’re too busy or too old or too tired or too lazy.

Trust me folks, it’s not that hard and you don’t end up looking like a body builder who uses too many steroids either.  What you do end up with is a healthy body that will keep you mobile and independent well into old age (plus some impressed looks from your fellow gym goers).

All it takes is hard work and dedication.

This Is Your Inner Procrastinator. He Doesn't Want To Work, He Wants A Nap!

Gal’s Note – This post started out as another part in the Diamonds or Dogs series, but it became something a bit more than just about that.  Specifically, it became all about how I deal with my inner procrastinator and handle two blogs, a start up and a full time job.

First, let me be clear, procrastination isn’t something you are dealing with alone.  Every one procrastinates.  In fact, I would say that the natural tendency of the human brain is to procrastinate.  Why?  Because we’re short sighted creatures more interested in right now than in tomorrow.  It’s not our fault, evolution has made us this way.  Evolution has taught us not to spend energy that we don’t need to spend. That’s really good strategy for a creature that lives day to day, minute to minute and needs to think about short term survival, not long term success.

In fact, if you think of us as a species, it’s only in the last five thousand or so years that we’ve had to think long term.  We had to harvest fields and keep some of the seed for next year.  We started living in large communities and needed to think about waste disposal and not pissing off the neighbors.  We even started trading our extra goods for someone else’s, which made us think about producing more than we ourselves needed.  Still, these were relatively simple plans with very obvious benefits (do this or die is a really good motivator).  It’s only in the last 100 or so years that life became really complicated for most of us.  Now we need to restrain ourselves from eating too much, produce work that is usually completely unrelated to our day to day life and navigate an increasingly complex social web.  Is it any wonder that we would rather sit home and watch TV with a pile of potato chips?

Every day, our primitive little brain is yelling at us “stop wasting energy!  Eat more!  Have sex with that person!  Drink that!” and it’s really hard for the logical part of our brain to control it with “no, we should be healthy so our lives are longer.  We should not have sex with that person because we’re already married.  We should not drink that because it’s bad for us”.  And this is especially true of procrastination.  Your primitive brain doesn’t care about business plans, career goals, a good education or cleaning the house.  All it wants is to eat, sleep and procreate with minimal energy expenditures.  Procrastination is so attractive because it’s so short termed.  Why waste energy now when this homework isn’t due until later?  Why workout now when you can sleep some more?  Why do this report when you can play games?

Why Indeed

Your logical brain tries to beat that primitive side down with a variety of arguments but it eventually fails because those arguments are usually long term.  They’re things like health, education, income, career or marriage.  As wonderful as all of those things are, they’re a bit ephemeral.  It’s hard to quantify the benefits of better health, especially right now when you’re arguing against the short term and very obvious benefits of napping on the couch.  Again, our brains are very short termed thinkers.  You can try to overpower that with will power but you’ll eventually fail.  The short term and obvious will always win out against the long term and vague and you’ll go on procrastinating and hating yourself for it.

But Wait, There’s A Better Way

So rather than this futile wrestling with your primitive brain, why not recruit it by offering some concrete, short term rewards?  Think of the primitive side of your brain as a 4 year old.  The 4 year old isn’t interested in work or exercise, it wants to play, eat and sleep.  Understand that and work with it, rather than against it by giving this 4 year old very clear rewards that are immediate and applicable to its goals.

For example, I came to the office today with 20 different projects to do and about 50 emails to deal with.  I’m also trying to eat healthy and not give in to my tendency to binge on candy.  I suppose I could try to willpower my way through all of that but I’d probably fail.  Instead, I set up a number of short term goals.  I told myself:

• If I cut this down to 10 projects and 20 emails, I will treat myself a Chipotle Burrito Bowl
• If I cut it down further to 5 projects and 10 emails, I will treat myself to a coke zero and a 45 minute break at the book store

These are very concrete goals.  Even better, they appeal directly to the primitive brain’s wishes to rest, eat and play.  I planned them out ahead of time so neither of these rewards will “break the bank” in terms of money or being unhealthy and they’re both very achievable in just a few hours.  That’s important because the primitive brain’s time horizon is very short (again, think 4 year old).  A promise of a reward tomorrow is going to be ignored, but a reward a few hours from now is going to be heard and understood.

Additionally, I talked myself into seeing these as really cool things.  I know this is going to sound a bit weird, but your primitive brain is really primitive.  It’s easily fooled and if you tell yourself “wow, this cup of coke zero is going to be AWESOME!” your primitive brain will listen and believe.  The logical part of your brain my find it laughable but that’s not the part of your brain you’re trying to convince, is it?  So yes, I know it sounds silly to talk to yourself like a 4 year old but it really works.  Get hyped up about these rewards, talk about them in your head like they were the best thing ever and keep reminding yourself that you’re dealing with emotions and urges that have the maturity level of a 4 year old.  Would you deal with a 4 year old by laying out carefully planned rewards that are weeks or months or years away?  Or would you deal with a 4 year old by telling them “if you clean up your toy box I will give you this AWESOME red balloon”?

That’s it.  That’s my sure fire way of being more productive and avoiding procrastination.  All it takes is an understanding of your urges and a willingness to work with them rather than against them.  That, and the ability to deal with an angry 4 year old who’s prone to tantrums

###

And now I’m going to go reward my inner 4 year old by taking a walk!  That’s what we agreed we would do after we finished this blog post

I'm hiring!

As you all know, I’m currently trying to launch Diamonds or Dogs.  As you’ll see in Wednesday’s post, my next stage involves generating traffic for the site before I try to raise some venture money.  In order to that, I need your help.  How can you help you ask?  Well, I’m glad you asked!

First, I would really appreciate feedback on the site itself.

• Is anything broken?
• Is anything misspelled?
• Any technical issues?

I’m aware of the current issue with recommendations (you may also like…) sometimes recommending things they shouldn’t. Anything else?

Second, what do you think of the site’s content?

• Would you use a site like this?
• How can I make it better?
• What’s missing?
• What do you think of the items and reviews?

Third, would you like to be a reviewer? That means you’d need to send me a profile and then 1 review every two or three weeks, and yes, you get a cut of the profits if your items sell well. Does that sound like fun? If so, contact me and let me know.

Fourth, assuming you like the site or a specific gift review, I’d really appreciate some free publicity. That means:

• Like one of the items features on the site on Facebook. I’ve tried to make that easier by including “like” buttons on the bottom of every item review.
• Share the site with your friends who may not see this post
• Tell people about the site or about specific reviews
• Retweet reviews

Essentially, spread the word about the site and any specific item you may like. Who knows, maybe someone in your life will get the hint and buy you the item you “liked”

Thank you all very much for the help and I look forward to helping you with your own endeavors in the future!

A Smile Makes A Stranger Into A Friend

I wrote on Monday about methods I used to increase my happiness and I realized I forgot to include one.  In fact, this is something I’ve been experimenting with recently and it’s been working great.  Specifically, it involves walking somewhere where other people are present, making eye contact and then smiling.  To some people this will sound ridiculously simple while to others it will sound very intimidating, but it works.

The key here is genuine human contact, which is something we all crave.  We all want attention, especially of the positive kind, and what better attention than a nice smile from a stranger?  Wait, I can hear you now, aren’t I the person smiling?  Where did this smiling stranger come from?  Well, here’s a funny little fact, when you smile at someone they usually smile back.  Not always that’s for sure, but often enough to feel really good.  And that return smile is like sunshine warming you up.

A Smile Is Worth A Thousand Hellos

So get out there and start smiling at people.  At the very least you’ll make someone else’s day a bit brighter, but I guarantee you that you’ll get some smiles in return and that is truly a wonderful thing.

###

As a bonus, this method will also work for those of you trying to increase your confidence.

First, let’s get this straight, happiness is the ONLY goal in life. Everything else is just a means to end, a way to achieve that goal of being happy. You think you want to be rich? No, you just want enough money to explore all the different ways in which you can be happy. You think you want a family? No, you just want to know that you’re passing on your genes. You think you want sex? No, you just want to be happy because sex feels good (and it really does!)

So I can try to make more money, I can try to have a better relationship and I can try to have more sex because these are things that will make me happy, but I can also just short cut through the whole thing and focus on things that make me happy.

I say this because a couple of days ago I heard the following from a friend:

I love how, when I’m in a good mood, the world exists to delight me. Things that would grate on another day become charming. The woman with the loud laugh… the couple making out on the corner… the businessmen boisterously shaking hands hello… the cute hippie server who takes his sweet time at the cute hippie restaurant… the sun catching my face while I’m waiting for the light to turn… even the insane cyclist who tries to dart across the street after the light has turned red and almost gets hit by a bus… I still think to myself, “fucking idiot”, but with laugh instead of anger. I see the good in the day, and so my mood gets better, and I see more good in the day, and I think to myself, MAYBE we and our crazy world on our amazing planet will be okay after all. And to think, all that starts with a good mood (which I actually have control over every single day).

Listen to that, her whole day was better just because she was happy. She didn’t need a new job, a new neighborhood, a new diet or a new car, she just needed to be happy.

So here are a few techniques that I use when I want to focus on happiness. These are habits that I’ve picked up over the years and they’ve helped me through the rough times. They’re also invaluable during the good times as a way of keeping my spirits up.

Gratitude Journal

Every day, write down the things you are grateful for. They can be as simple as “I’m grateful it’s Friday” or as complex as “I’m grateful to be in a such a wonderful and supportive relationship”. These things should not devolve into complaints like “I’m grateful it’s Friday because my job sucks and I want to kill my boss”. Try to write at least five of these every day and don’t worry about repeating yourself from day to day; there’s no rule against something making you happy multiple days in a row. This habit helps remind me that life is pretty awesome, even when it seems rough.

Show gratitude

I try to tell people thank you whenever I can. I know it sounds counter intuitive because isn’t showing gratitude all about making THEM happy and not ME? Yah, it does sound that way but there’s something about showing sincere gratitude that really makes me feel good. I think deep inside everyone wants to feel appreciated and knowing I made someone else feel appreciated make me feel like I’ve done something nice, which in turn makes me feel happy.

Stop and smell the roses

Yah, this is coming from a guy who’s working a full time job while trying to launch a business, run two blogs and maintain a healthy marriage, but it’s true. Every once in a while you just need to stop and appreciate. This does NOT mean stop and zone out in front of the TV. You need to stop and just do nothing. Look out the window, stare at the stars, go for a walk. In other words, do something relaxing that allows you to appreciate life and the beauty around you. TV is bad for this because it’s usually filled with news and commercials intended to make you feel inferior or scared. In fact, my next happiness tip is…

Stop wasting your time with Facebook, the TV, network news and whatever else people are using to sell or scare you

You log into facebook and you see people boasting of their new car or their perfect baby and it makes you feel bad (even though that facebook status is meaningless and right now that baby is crying and the new car owner is looking at the hefty bill). You turn on the TV and you see pretty people and commercials for products that will make you just as pretty (even though those pretty people have professional makeup artists and the magic of photoshop at their disposal and look nothing like that in reality). You read the news and everyone is trying to scare you because fear sells (even though the world around you is actually a pretty decent place). See my point? Stop listening to this bullshit. It’s not valuable and it just depresses you. Go for a walk, work on your project or just enjoy a break instead.

Ultimately, when you’re happier you’re going to start seeing the world around you in a completely different way, just like my friend.  So yes, focus on your projects and on your family and even on your sex life, but don’t forget the end goal.

###

These are my secrets for getting more happiness in my life. If anyone has their own tips for happiness, please feel free to share in the comments.

I added the “Diamonds” side of the site over the weekend, set up the landing page and moved a few blog posts over. I also added more posts and a few new female reviewers.

A few points:

• I’m actually not an engineer, I learned most of this just by doing. The things I didn’t know I hired people to do.
• Hiring people is easy these days. You can find qualified folks all over places like eLance or just by asking your network. My graphic designer was a girl I dated a few years ago and my developer is someone I’ve never met who I hired through a website. Total costs for both of them so far are around $700.
• Total costs for the rest of the site are less than $100. That includes domain registration ($50), hosting ($10 a month), WordPress CMS (Free), Outbrain recommendations (Free), various Google tools (Free), Share This plug in to allow people to “like” posts and share them (Free), Feedburner plug in to allow people to subscribe to a feed of new items (free) and pizza for my first feedback session where my friends told me what they thought of the site ($30).
• No complicated business issues so far. The only relationship I had to form was an affiliate one with Amazon. They’ll take care of actual ordering and fulfillment and then pass along a share of the profits. Sometime in the future I might work directly with drop shippers but that’s too complicated right now.
• I’ve gotten amazing support through my network of friends and family. I’m about to publish my dad’s profile and first review plus one of my close friend just got his mom to sign up as a new reviewer.

Next!

My next goals are to start marketing the site.

• AdWords campaign
• Facebook campaign, which I’m hoping you, my readers, will help me with
• eMail campaign
• YouTube video. Yes, I have a good idea for a YouTube video about gift giving.

###

Best of all, this has been a ton of fun and I’ve learned a lot.

Special thanks to my wonderful wife who keeps testing things, making sure what I write makes sense and giving my great ideas for how to improve the site.

No, this isn't me

Gal’s Note – Unlike other blogs who’ll tell you that working for someone else makes you a brain dead wage slave, I’m going to tell you that starting a business is not for everyone.  It’s risky, takes a lot of work to start and requires a lot of time to maintain.  There are no easy solutions here and no easy alternatives to a day job.  Some people will like this choice and some won’t.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with working a standard job for someone else and if that’s what you like then by all means, enjoy.  In fact, if that’s what you want, I have a few other posts you may be interested in.

Gal’s other note – This was originally meant to be a single post.  However, due to the increasing length of the post and my own time constraints, I’m going to make it part of the whole Diamonds or Dogs series.  I’ll explore more aspects of starting my own business in the over the new couple of weeks.

So you want to create a business? Here’s a few things I’ve learned over the years, starting up both successful and unsuccessful businesses.  The basics of starting a business consist of:

1. The Idea – What is it that your business will do?
2. The plan – How are you going to launch your business?
3. The communication – Who are you talking to about your business and why?
4. The execution – Putting you plan into action.
5. Adapt and evolve – What do to after it turns out that your plan was wrong.

The Idea

Thomas Edison said that “genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”. What that means to a struggling business owner is that your idea doesn’t have to be perfect, you just need to work very hard at making it successful. I would also add from my own personal experience that your idea will change as you start developing it. For example, Diamonds or Dogs, my gifts site, was conceived as an online store for electronic gadgets. It then turned into a gift review site for men with an intended audience of women and is now a gift review site for either gender as reviewed by people of that gender. I’ve had that experience with every business idea I’ve had and with every start up I’ve been involved with. Businesses evolve, so don’t be afraid to change if you think it’s necessary.

That said, do stick with something if it’s working and don’t just jump from idea to idea every week. The trick is knowing the balance between sticking with what you’re doing and switching tracks to something new. For me, I stick with what I’m doing unless it’s obviously not working or the new idea is so incredibly good that it makes my previous idea pale by comparison.  My guidelines for “not working” is if I’ve been working hard at something for 3 months and I’m making no progress.  That to me means something is wrong and either I need to change my idea or my approach.  As for my guideline for an idea that’s incredibly good, well, It’s like my guideline for porn, “I’ll know it when I see it”.

Sources for Ideas

As for where to get ideas, I would suggest looking at your everyday life. What do you do well? What do you need and can’t find? What do people talk about? Keep a mental track of these things and eventually you’ll find an idea. Are people saying they can’t find a good Mexican restaurant in your neighborhood? Are they saying they wish they had a website that would make looking for gifts easier? Are you really good at helping people stay in shape? Are you an incredible shopper?

What you’re trying to do is keep two lists. The first one lists the things you’re good at. The second lists the things people want. Sooner or later, the two will intersect and there’s your business idea. For example, on my list of things I’m good at was “setting up websites” and “writing reviews”. On my list of things people are looking for was “a better way to find the right gift”. The two intersected with Diamonds or Dogs.

But I Have No Skills…

Then stop whining and get some.  Seriously, if your list of “things I’m good at” doesn’t seem very long, go out there and improve yourself. I learned how to set up websites on my own. I know other people who’ve learned similar skills through night classes, hobbies or trial and error. The more skills you have, the greater your chances of finding that intersection of something you know and something people want.  There are so many ways these days to learn skills that not having them is a really poor excuse that only lazy people use.  Try a free podcast from the iTunes store and learn how to code or learn Spanish, volunteer at a local shelter and learn how to cook a lot of food, take a night class and learn how to play the guitar or learn a book on knitting.  The world is quite literally at your fingertips but it’s up to you to take advantage of that.

But I Don’t See Any “Needs”

Then you’re not paying attention or you’re spending too much time in front of the TV.  Talk to your friends, read the news, peruse magazine, read your local newspaper, read online blogs, talk to your coworkers.  All of these are sources for “what people are looking for”.  All you have to do is pay attention.  As you read an article, note any questions or problems that seem unsolved.  As you listen to a conversation, pay attention to anything people are complaining about.  All of these are needs.  If you can solve them, you might have a viable business.

Also, don’t underestimate what people want. There are a lot of needs out there and the internet does a great job of connecting people with niche needs with other people with niche skills. Do you think your knowledge of 1800’s African history is pointless? Maybe, or maybe not. Maybe there’s a niche out there for a website on 1800’s African history, or maybe you can write a young adult fiction novel based in that era. The key is to know your skills and add to them where possible.

It Doesn’t Need To Be Perfect

I can shoot holes in almost any idea.  What if this happens?  What if that happens?  What if…  Listen, you’re never going to find the perfect idea.  If such a thing existed, someone else is already doing it.  What you will come up with are good ideas and good ideas are good enough.  If your idea sounds good, go with it, even if it’s not perfect.  Don’t let perfection be your enemy!

###

Ok, that’s all for ideas.  Next post will discuss making a plan for launching your business.