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A transcript of the Interview with Brad Slavin and Kane Miller

KM 4-hour Workweek

BKS: My name is Brad Slavin and I run the 4-hour workweek meetup group here in San Diego, California. We have just over 350 members and the group has been going for about three and a half, four years.

Part of the reason for being here today is to acknowledge some of the people who have been members of the group and I have KM with us today and he and I are just going to have a conversation about the 4-hour workweek, some information about some outsourcing, lifestyle design, things like that and hopefully you find this conversation informative. So welcome to Kane.

KM: Thank you, Brad. Glad to be here.

BKS: So, Kane, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and things that our audience might enjoy hearing.

KM: Okay. So I grew up in Canada and I went to university for engineering so I have a technical background. After I graduated, I worked in an office for about five years doing consulting for software implementation projects. So, it was pretty good. Like I learned quite a bit. I worked with good people but I got to be around 27, 28 and I was thinking I could be doing this for the next 30 years. I might make like 50 percent more money. My stress level would likely go up. I would be managing more projects. I’m like, “Do I really want to be doing this?” and so I ended up just quitting my job and it was during the beginning of the recession. Luckily I had US citizenship as well through my father so I decided to move to San Diego where it was sunshine all the time and beautiful ladies and tried my luck down there.

So, my original plan was to get a job in an office again just to slowly move into doing my own thing. When I talked to a friend, he told me about internet marketing and how he knows people that have no technical experience and like have never been to college and make like $100,000 a year just building niche websites so I started looking into this and I was thinking like if these people are going to do it, someone who’s as nerdy as myself should totally get into it.

So, that was about April, May 2009 so the last two years I’ve been self-employed, working entirely for my self. For the first six months or so, I was still like living off my savings but now I’m totally supporting myself. I’m actually supporting my girlfriend who’s – you know, as well and just quit her job recently. So life is really good.

BKS: Cool.

KM: Yes.

BKS: Very interesting. So, you came to the 4-hour workweek meetup group here maybe a year ago and you were explaining to the people in the group how the book had influenced some of the decisions that you had made and sort of the direction that you chose to take your life. Can you tell me a little bit about how the book influenced you, what parts of the book you appreciate, what things that you’re using today and just …

KM: Definitely, definitely. So before I read the book, I was actually reading Tim’s blog and I was already kind of in the same mindset that he is, that like life shouldn’t just be about working 9:00 to 5:00, 40 hours a week for somebody else and then dying and not having like anything to – not having anything to show for it, I guess.

So I was really big in the work-life balance, like working efficiently when you have to work so that you can do everything else that you want to do on your own time. So the book just helped reinforce that but it also gave me better ideas as far as outsourcing, things like even managing emails. If you get like – you can spend a whole day checking your emails or responding to them and that becomes way too time-consuming so you can hire like a VA to take over that task. So simple things like that I thought were really good ideas.

BKS: You spoke about the work-life balance and how that’s important to you. Can you describe, you know, what typical workweek – I know that a lot of people speak about the 4-hour workweek.

KM: Yes.

BKS: But I think we’ve come to realize that it’s not necessarily only four hours of working a week. It’s maybe doing things that you don’t like doing just for four hours. So what does a typical week look like for you?

KM: Yes, for me, my schedule is not always consistent because I still do like a fair bit of traveling and the biggest thing that [0:05:00] my current lifestyle allowed me is I don’t have to ask permission to take time off. I think that’s huge. I don’t have to set my alarm clock which is really the most exciting thing for me for working from home for myself was not having to wake up to an alarm.

So, those two things are pretty huge. I think in 2010 by the – yes, by the time the year was over, I took about three months vacation although like it wasn’t just three months of backpacking or something. I still had my laptop and I still did a bit of work but I was able to travel and, you know, for the most part do what I wanted to do and the times that I was home, I was actually working fairly hard but it was stuff that I really enjoyed. It wasn’t anything that felt like work to use finger quotes.

Yes. So I think, you know, the four hours that is actually work every week is probably stuff like accounting type things or, you know, doing taxes or anything related to finances, I guess.

BKS: Sure. So in 2010 you said you took three – the equivalent of three months off.

KM: Yes.

BKS: And you did a lot of traveling. Where did you go? What did you see? And were any of the things that you learned in the book applicable to the traveling scenarios that you had from like immersion? Did you go there and learn anything new or how did you participate?

KM: That’s a great question. I went up back home to Canada a few times. I went to New Mexico and there was an internet marketing cruise in the Caribbean that I went on.

BKS: I think Erica went – was that the one that Erica Douglas went on?

KM: Yes.

BKS: Yes.

KM: Yes, exactly. It’s a 10-day cruise for internet marketers they have every year and that was really cool because you get to network with a lot of people you have never met and exchange ideas and then there’s a lot of partying so it turns out that 10 days is actually – it’s a lot longer than you think especially when you’re stuck in a cruise ship but it was pretty fun. See, I didn’t do any like long overseas trips but this year, I hope to do more of that.

BKS: Okay.

KM: So, yes.

BKS: It makes sense.

KM: Yes.

BKS: And can you explain to us what it is that you do do that has pivoted your life from what was the 40-hour, 50-hour, 60-hour grind a few years ago to where you are right now which is really a lifestyle designer and somebody who’s really in control of your own destiny? You know, what is it that you are doing? What’s your muse? The …

KM: Gosh …

BKS: … product or the service that you’re providing that you’re leveraging the principles from the book, the outsourcing potentially, the digital downloads or some other type of service or product. What are you doing?

KM: Got you. So what I started building back in early to mid-2009 was a social bookmarking community and if you’re not familiar with internet marketing or the term social bookmarking, it’s a website where people can share each other’s webpages which will promote the webpages to search engines making them look more popular which will increase traffic.

So, what I got out of the book that I’m applying towards this business model is automation and outsourcing. So, this is a service where basically now it runs itself. People go to my website, sign up. They can sign up for free or they can – we have different paid options and the first – my first tier of customer support is a guy in the Philippines. We pay him – I think it’s about like $3 an hour now. He does an awesome job. He has decent English. He writes emails. He can even do like documentation, data entry and that kind of stuff.

So yes, that’s – I have a partner but just to maintain status quo with the business. We don’t have to do a lot of work so …

BKS: Okay.

KM: Yes.

BKS: And so from what you’re describing, it’s a membership site that has a free component and what’s more of a – it’s a subscription site.

KM: Yes, a subscription site with the free component. Yes.

BKS: And then you’re allowing people to become members of your site and through the actions that they take or the promotions that other people on your site are doing on their behalf, you’re increasing people’s search engine ranking through social bookmarking.

KM: Exactly, exactly.

BKS: Okay. And if our viewers want to take a look at your site, is there – where can they go?

KM: Oh, they can go to SocialAdr

BKS: Can you tell us a little bit about starting out ground zero from concept all the way through to seeing if you can understand if there was going to be a need in the arena for what it is that you are providing and how did you scale up? You know, what was it like to get your first client and how do you promote yourself so that people can understand how one can create a business that can create a lifestyle?

KM: Great question. So I wish I could say that it was super easy and that it happened overnight but it was quite a struggle at the beginning. When I had this concept, the reason I thought of it is because I would use it for myself so I was manually going around to these social bookmarking sites, creating accounts and promoting my own stuff and I realized like, “Why isn’t there an automated community where people can just log in, put in their webpage details and then the system will automatically submit their bookmarks to these bookmarking sites?”

So I’ve started covering this and I’ve initially thought it was going to be like a one-month project and it would be done. Now, I would get a bunch of people and they tell their friends because they were so awesome and they’re just like snowball from there. It turned out – you know, it was a lot of work. I kept on thinking of new enhancements and when I finally got it out of beta phase, I did a – what’s called a Warrior Special Offer. It’s a promotion on the WarriorForum and I had maybe like 20 paid members.

I wasn’t sure how to get to the next level so I brought on a business partner that I found through the WarriorForum from Minnesota and we brainstormed different ideas and different ways to do promotions. Set up my affiliate program which is pretty huge because now our members can tell their friends or other people about the site and get a commission for any sign-ups that they refer to us.

So, I would say from June 2009 to about like October or November, we were just wrapping up and then we kind of hit our stride in like November, December 2009 and it has been increasing, doing a lot better from there since I …

BKS: And then, you know, what is unique about what it is that you guys are doing or you said you spent – and are spending a lot of time doing features and enhancements and things like that. You know, what would – what’s like the value prop that what it is that you’re doing has provided to people.

KM: Well, I’m not entirely sure of all the features our competitors have now because it seems like there’s new competitors all the time but when we started, I’m pretty confident we were the first – we’re a human account-based social bookmarking community that was automated so there were other ones who were everyday getting emails saying here’s your task. You have to go to this site and add this bookmark and go over here and add – so it was really a manual system.

We’re the only ones – the only service where you could just enter all your account details and then after that point, clicking one button would post bookmarks to all your accounts and it was like a credit base system. So if you submit other people’s bookmarks, they would do the same in return. So it was the whole community aspect.

So yes, and search engines are more than ever using social signals and using social media sites to evaluate rankings for different keywords of websites. So, it’s becoming more and more relevant in today’s search engine optimization world.

BKS: Sure. And to change gears back to a little bit more of the lifestyle design aspect, one of the important things for getting here today, so that we could interview you is one – I’m off to the Netherlands for a month to do my lifestyle design but you have some really big news about what your – you guys are up to, your girlfriend and yourself.

KM: Yes. So, this 10-day internet marketing cruise I went on in the winter – it was last winter and like seven months ago. I talked to a bunch of people who either currently live in the Philippines or had an office of Filipino workers and they lived in the US and would travel back and forth managing it; and I just heard a lot of really good things about the environment over there, the climate, how cheap it is.

So we started looking into it and you can get a beach house for like $500 a month. [0:15:00] In my experience, Filipino outsourcers are some of the best that you can get. I find they’re like really honest, quite smart and English is one of their official languages. And once you’re over there, it’s pretty easy to travel to other places in Asia, Europe or Australia, New Zealand.

So I proposed to my girlfriend this idea – I didn’t propose.

BKS: Yes, because I just did that this week so only one of us has to propose.

KM: Exactly. So yes, we – she has always wanted to live overseas and we figure we’re still young. We don’t have kids so we’re going to try in September to move over to the Philippines and see what – see how it goes really and we thought of maybe hopping around so we might spend three months there and three months in Vietnam or Thailand or New Zealand. We’re not really sure yet so we’re just going to get a one-way plane ticket and see what happens. We just need our laptops. We’re good to go.

BKS: That’s awesome. I mean you’re taking action which I found is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to all the members and all the people that come through our group in the last few years is that knowledge is one thing but actually taking action and taking those first steps is really the key to having a life that you love and that you’ve designed.

You hinted at the efficacy of Filipino outsourcing. Can you describe to us some of the outsourcing that you do, some of the struggles that you have doing some outsourcing, just some of the highlights and some of the struggles, the good, the bad, the ugly when it comes to outsourcing and any advice that you could give?

KM: Okay. So, I have a fair bit of experience with outsourcing but most of it has been done through a website called oDesk. So that’s oDesk.com and it’s a pretty simple format. You just post details of whatever job you’re looking for and then you’ll get people applying from all over the world.

You can put how much you’re willing to pay. You can specify whether it’s fixed price or hourly. You can even do milestone payments if it’s like a longer project and then you just look through everyone’s resumes, their work experience. There are different tests that people do for like English proficiency with different programs and tests and then you start – you get a shortlist and you can chat with them on Skype and figure out who you want to hire and generally, it’s a good process.

I’ve had good results but sometimes, it’s frustrating because you will get somebody that will basically lie to you. They will tell you they have all this experience and they’ll say, you know, “Yes, I’ve done WordPress programming. I can do new plugins and I’ve done themes from scratch,” and then you start working with them and you realize like they’re having to Google for everything they’re trying to code and they’re borrowing code from other places and they don’t really know what they’re doing. So it’s – there’s times when it has been a little bit frustrating but overall, if you find the right person, it’s definitely very – it’s cost-effective to find an outsourcer and I’ve hired people either for customer support or article writing, for programming and for like data entry, like going around to different sites and filling out forms and that kind of stuff.

BKS: Okay.

KM: So, yes.

BKS: And you said one of your guys who’s working for you right now is working for three bucks an hour.

KM: Yes, I think and then oDesk gets a 10 percent cut so it’s really $2.70 I guess he’s making.

BKS: Okay.

KM: He has a family. He has wife and kids. His name is Bernard. He’s a really good guy. He has worked for us since …

BKS: Hi, Bernard.

KM: I think since like November, December 2009 so it has been over – it’s probably a year and a half. I mean he also has a couple of other employers so we’re not the only ones but he always does a good job that the couple of times he has had like a vacation or he has been sick, he has been, you know, really good about letting us know and we can obviously take over when he’s not around so …

BKS: Sure, sure. So, you’re currently just outsourcing to one customer support person? Do you have any programmers who are working on any projects for you or …

KM: Yes, I have two different projects that are unrelated to SocialAdr. One of them, I actually just fired the programming team because it was supposed to be – they bid on the project in one month and three months later, it was probably like 60 percent done. So, I’m looking at hiring somebody to finish that off. That’s another SEO service and it was WordPress development and then I have another site that is [0:20:00] also over the deadline but they’ve done a lot of work and it has been a lot of good work so I’m just working with them to finish up this project. Another month or so left and these are both companies that were in the Philippines. I’ve hired Indian companies to do programming before and I haven’t had the best experiences so I think I generally try to do Filipino programmers.

BKS: Yes.

KM: I don’t know. I mean I’ve talked to other people who had good experiences hiring Indian programmers but I don’t know. I’ve …

BKS: You have.

KM: I have. Yes, exactly.

BKS: So as people are listening to this, they’re probably wondering, “Well, it’s easy for him to have a life that he wants because he’s a programmer. He sort of understands the programming aspect.” But there are pieces of the business that you don’t necessarily understand or super familiar with. Is there any outsourcing that you do for other functions inside the business or is it just primarily for customer support and programming at this point in time?

KM: That’s a great question. Well, conveniently enough, my business partner’s wife is our accountant so like I don’t have any accounting training so I probably have to outsource that or hire an accountant if that wasn’t the case. But yes, I don’t really do much outsourcing. I think I need to do more if I want to fully automate my business and like replace myself. I still think that even though I could work a few hours a week and everything runs itself, I still find that I like to get in there and do more than is absolutely necessary. So I always think you can be successful both ways, either the route I took by being quite technical. So I have this idea. I was able to start programming it and for the last two years, I’ve been the main developer for my company.

So it did help when I had the vision to know like how I could get it functioning but on the other hand if you’re not technical at all, I think that’s also an advantage because then you can become really good at outsourcing and managing other people. That frees up a lot of your time to keep growing your business and do other things so you don’t get so involved in, you know, staying up fixing server problems at 4:00 in the morning. So I think you can – at least with internet marketing, there are two different approaches and I think they both can work extremely well. I’ve seen a lot of huge internet marketers that have no technical skills at all do very well.

So don’t be intimidated by not knowing how to program PHP or not – you know, not even know how to use WordPress because you can learn things like that fairly quickly and you can always hire people to do everything for you. So …

BKS: So that brings up something that’s interesting is that one of the trends that we’re seeing in the 4-hour workweek group and when we speak to other people is that more and more people are moving towards the internet marketing approach, either providing a done-for-you internet marketing service for other people or using internet marketing concepts and strategies to be able to promote their own business. Because you’re in the internet marketing realm, if you were to provide some advice about how to go from zero to getting a little bit of traffic other than of course SocialAdr, what do you see as being appropriate for the current landscape in June 2011?

KM: So, are you asking if somebody has a website already, they want to get more traffic …

BKS: Yes.

KM: I always try to recommend that people learn about internet marketing before just jumping in and doing a bunch of things. So, there are a few courses you can take. One is – it used to be called The 30-day Challenge. Now I think it’s just called The Challenge. It’s a free training course that teaches you about on-page SEO or off-page SEO, different things like that. But as far as other services to get traffic, there are a lot of good ones out there. That’s a tough question. I never recommend just using one service either. Like I’ll never tell anyone just use SocialAdr because I think the whole putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea. Google is always changing their algorithms so you always want to have a variety of links from different sources. So, yes, that’s about …

BKS: That’s it.

KM: That’s it. Well, one more thing I would like to add with keyword research which is the first step of any SEO campaign. Like that’s one step that a lot of people are terrible at or skip or rush or they have in [0:25:00] their mind like, “Oh, I think people are going to be searching for this so I’m just going to go after this,” without knowing what the competition is like or what the actual search volume is like. So that one step of keyword research, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you need to like find training for how to do it properly or hire somebody because that’s a critical step. You could waste a thousand dollars on advertising for a keyword that you have no chance of getting traffic for.

BKS: Okay.

KM: So …

BKS: And then when it comes to living a life that you want to live, a lot of what Ferriss talks about is to create the ideal day and then the worksheet of how much does it really cost. Are there changes that you’ve had in your life based on the success that you’ve had? Are you renting more or renting less, buying more or like how has what you learned in the book can – is it even a place that it’s applied to how you live your life right now from a financial perspective?

KM: That’s a great question. Well, I mean other than doing the geoarbitrage which I’ll be doing in September like sending money in Filipino pesos and then earning money in US dollars, right now, I can’t really say that the book has – I’m applying anything financially that I learned from the book. I think a lot of what I do financially is just stuff I’ve always done. Like I’ve never really been flamboyant and bought expensive clothes and expensive cars. Like I drive a ’97 Ford Escort Station Wagon so yes, a lot of the money that I’ve been, I guess, earning the past couple of years, I’ve been investing in other things, either other businesses or like have some real estate stuff going on; but yes, I can’t really credit the book for any of my choices in that regard.

BKS: So as we come back to the book and we start to speak about not just the inspiration that you got from The 4-hour Workweek book. Are there other events or other books or other seminars or people that you’ve come across in your life that have influenced your perspective and the way that you structured your company and the way that you are approaching the work-life balance? You know, what are the other places that you’ve pulled inspiration from?

KM: Wow, that’s a – you know, I can’t even think of anything other than The 4-hour Workweek and Tim Ferriss. Like I was – like I said, I was reading his blog before. I wrote the book but I was already kind of down that road just – like I think I wrote the book in early 2010 so I was already working for myself and believing that you don’t need to be in an office and that you – you know, it can work remotely. You can arrange your life to be as much work as you want at that time. So, it’s probably – yes, it has been my biggest and maybe only inspiration.

BKS: Okay. And you’ve been to the meetup group a number of times. If you were to provide advice, feedback or some guidance to people who read it maybe even before you did, it seems like you’re, you know, only 18 months really into this book and there are some people out there who are three and a half, almost four years and are nowhere near the level that you are – that you’ve attained. If you were going to provide some coaching or information to these people, what would you be saying?

KM: I think I would be saying – a lot of people, the reason they don’t make a change in their life – like they’ll talk about what they want to do and I met so many people that always say like, oh, I want to – you know, I want to go to college and be a nurse, a totally random example, and then they never actually take that first step and enroll and it’s always because of fear, like I have – and I had fears.

Like what am I going to do if I quit my job in Canada and throw everything in my car and drive down to San Diego without knowing anybody? Like what happens if it doesn’t work out? I knew – you know, that’s a valid fear but I knew I could always return back home with my legs. I could get my job back. Like I had friends and family that could support me but I think what you need to do is overcome that fear and think of, you know, if I don’t try, I’m always going to be left wondering what if. So, a lot of people that don’t take action, they just need to get over their fears of whatever is holding them back and [0:30:00] just go for it, I think.

BKS: Okay. It makes sense.

KM: Yes, I mean that’s at least what worked for me.

BKS: And when it comes to muse ideas and inspiration, did you identify the market first or how did you go about building SocialAdr? Not from a technical perspective but I know you said it was something that you needed and there wasn’t anything else that was out there. But how did you go from realizing there was a need to catering to what the community wanted?

KM: When I first started – when I first sat down and started writing the code, I initially thought like, oh, this would be a great tool that I’m going to use and maybe like a few other people. I didn’t imagine that it would occur as what it is today and I have to credit my business partner for a lot of that encouragement because he came in and he can see like quickly what potential it had.

Like when he first told me, he was like, “Oh, we can easily do like 10 grand a month in revenue.” I was like, “Really?” And then he’s like, “Oh, we could easily do like 20,” and like he kept saying – we kept having these goals that I thought were a little bit crazy but, you know, we worked towards them and it’s once you have something that is a valuable service that people enjoy and you have something like an affiliate program where they’re incentivized to share the idea, it almost becomes viral in a way. So, yes, I guess I didn’t identify the market initially. I just knew it would be a cool thing to have and I started working on it. So …

BKS: Cool. And you’re in a relationship right now. What are her feelings about the whole you’re living the 4-hour workweek lifestyle? What are her feelings and have there been any dynamics in the relationship as it relates to the 4-hour workweek or some of the goals that you have for living the way that you are? I know that you said that she wants to live overseas but, you know, for some people, their biggest stumbling block other than taking that first step is having a partner who may not necessarily be as bought into the concept. What’s …

KM: Yes, yes. When we first – so we’ve only been dating for about eight months. When we first were dating, it was – the dynamic was a bit odd because I was the guy that would wake up at like 10:00 AM and go to bed at 2:00 AM and she would wake up at 5 o’clock and have to be at work by like 6:30 and was going to be at 10:00 PM. So it was a little bit hard to adjust and she was definitely a bit jealous of the fact that my schedule was so loose, like I didn’t really have to be anywhere at anytime. I just kind of did my own thing.

So, I think that encouraged her though so she has already read The 4-hour Workweek. She has quit her job. She started working on a little bit of internet marketing stuff. She’s really into zumba which is like a Latin dance exercise craze, I guess. I haven’t gone myself but – so she started a zumba website. Yes, so she’s totally on board with the lifestyle design and, you know, we’re moving in the same direction together now.

BKS: I know that Tim Ferriss updated the book, certain new resources because of the, you know, tremendous popularity. One of the things that we saw in the 4-hour workweek group was that a lot of the resources that he had mentioned became very, very popular and people sort of swamped these guys and for a lot of them, their quality of work went down until they could ramp back up and get new resources and new people. You’ve mentioned oDesk as a resource that you use consistently. If you were going to, you know, share with us some things that you do on a daily basis, resources, websites that you go to, tools that you use that may be helpful, you know, what would be in your KM toolkit for success?

KM: That’s a great question. I’ve started to use Evernote a lot more lately which – thanks to Brad. He has given me some pointers on how to use it more effectively. So, if you don’t already use it, you should check it out. It’s a great tool for taking notes and capturing images and it’s so exciting what [0:35:00] these notes – I don’t know. What else can you use Evernote for? I seem to …

BKS: It’s …

[Crosstalk] [0:35:07]

BKS: Yes, image to text recognition. I use it to grab notes that are written on a board. I use it really to take all of my – what would have been handwritten notes because one of the features that I used is the ability for it to synchronize from my phone to my laptop and from – so I have access to all of my information anywhere. I also have the Android phone so I sometimes use that for an MP3 voice recorder and then I’ll attach those voice notes into Evernote but overall, it’s jut a great place to always have that information right there in front of you. Yes.

KM: Yes, exactly. The other tools that I use a lot are a lot of Google apps to be honest. So these are free tools. It’s Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs. What else have I got going on? A lot of the Google Docs I use for outsourcing communications with developers so we’ll use the spreadsheets to track a lot of project progresses and what not. For my business partner, we have a folder we share where we put in different business documents and what not. So, I use Skype quite a bit for both just texting or like type chatting, whatever you want to call it and as well as voice chatting. That’s probably …

BKS: That’s the toolkit.

KM: Yes, I mean I’m not using anything crazy expensive tools or anything that a lot of other people probably don’t use but yes.

BKS: Yes. So, oDesk, Evernote, the Google apps and …

KM: Skype.

BKS: Skype.

KM: Yes.

BKS: And you can be a remote warrior.

KM: Yes, I use Google – I forgot Google Voice for my customer support number for SocialAdr. So if you call in, it just goes right through a recording which gets transcribed and then dropped into my support email box so our first tier guy can hear it and if – like sometimes we’ll call them back or sometimes he’ll just type it and email it to that person.

BKS: That’s interesting. So what’s your workflow for customer support? It’s Google Voice, transcription, email. Your guy in the Philippines then listens to it?

KM: Yes, although we get very few phone calls and sometimes people get frustrated. Like they – we don’t even have a phone number listed on the website and we tell people like try calling Google. Like we’re an internet company. Send us an email and that’s what we prefer to do just because we have virtual offices. We don’t have like physical locations that we can go to. I don’t want to be on the phone all day when our first tier support guy can answer really simple questions by email. So …

BKS: Okay.

KM: Yes, it’s primarily email through a Web form or just directly to our email address.

BKS: Okay. And if somebody was just starting out today, didn’t have necessarily the same technical background that you did, wanted to free themselves, what would be your sound bite of advice that you want to make sure that people understand about either how to get their mindset, whatever people – whatever you think that would be important that you can add to the conversation that maybe they’ve heard somewhere else before but to hear it now from somebody who’s doing it successfully would really make a difference.

KM: Okay. So there were a few things that got me to where I am now and one of it – I tried – I’ve had a lot of ideas since college for websites so I thought we would, you know, be the next Groupon or Facebook or, you know, huge websites and I get a buddy and I – after work, we, you know, spend an hour once a week working on these websites. It’s just not enough time. Like if you’re working fulltime, it’s really hard to start a side business.

You just – it’s hard to find the energy so for me quitting my job was probably the best decision I ever made. I’m not saying everyone should go out there and quit their job. I was fortunate enough to have some savings so I knew I had like a year and a half or something when I quit to live on until I was out of money so that was my window and that – like knowing exactly how much time I have until I had to go find another job was the encouragement I really needed to make – I was working probably 80 hours a week when I first got going for a few months just because I was so afraid of having to go back and work in an office. I don’t know what my suggestion really is. If you can save lots of money and just jump right in and work really hard, I think that works for me. Some people [0:40:00] obviously can juggle two jobs at once but I wasn’t able to do that.

BKS: Okay. Well, today we had KM from SocialAdr who came in to talk to us about his 4-hour workweek experience and how the book influenced him to have a lifestyle that he wants. Last year, he took three months off and in September, he’s looking to move to the Philippines and maybe do some traveling to Vietnam and he has extricated himself from the 9:00 to 5:00 and he’s living into the promise of the book.

So, it does work. We’re going to be having more and more of these little mini interviews with other people who are very similar to you, who had a job or still have a job and are finding some work-life balance who saw the principles of The 4-hour Workweek. So, hope to see you back here again and thank you very much.

KM: Thank you. Good talking to you.

This interview was transcribed expertly by Cabbagetree on Elance.com

Related posts:

1. 4 Hour Work Week
2. Changing the Group Dynamics – 4 Hour Work Week
3. 4 Hour Work Week – 4HWW – San Diego

The apply with Linkedin Button has been released which allows businesses to accept job applications from users via their Linkedin profiles. The small button is just a peek at the way that I think Linkedin is going to leverage their business network database to benefit their user base. The service is available here – https://developer.linkedin.com/apply

If you have ever searched for a job you will understand the beauty and elegance of this simple button – rather than filling out possibly hundreds of job applications, sending resumes via email and trying to fit yourself into the employers mold – applicants can now apply at the click of a button.

Sure, I can see the downside – when applying for a job becomes to easy, just a click of a button perhaps the quality of the applicants go down. But from the other perspective, you get access to a host of information about the applicant that you would not have had ordinarily.

Hiring managers no longer need to sift though countless resumes, trying to establish authenticity and suitability for the position, here the information and the personal profile of the user AS WELL AS their connections are displayed.

We all know that getting a job is as much about what you know, as it is WHO you know – and now Linkedin is allowing us to get recommendations, or endorsements from people that you may already be connected to at a company.

Think about it, you may have interacted with multiple people at a certain company over the years, and if you kept up to date with your social and business networking, you can leverage those links into finding the ideal job. And for employers, they can connect with existing employees to determine the fit or possible conflicts prior to the interview stage.

Time to start asking for endorsements or recommendations from people that you have worked with in the past; Be they clients, customers or coworkers.

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2. LinkedIn.com Milestone
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I wrote last time about Google Offers and today they have finally released it to the public. Floyd’s Coffee Shop in Portland is the first official Google offers location.  As I was writing this the number of remaining went down from 425 to 395 in about 20 minutes…so congratulations to both of you.

Now I wanted to give you a few more updates from the big brains at Google that happened in May 2011. On the heels of Google Offers, Google has just announced another service called Google Wallet.  This is their take on the next generation of smart phones with contactless smart card technology (sort of like the old Mobil gas station speed pass) that will make.

 

Basically you will wave your phone over an in store credit card reader and without using your credit card, you can make a credit card purchase.  While Google is not the first to have this technology, they are the first to link it all together. They are linking payments with coupons and offers, online and offline redemption and location based promotions. These major retailers have already signed on to the service.

Not only will you be able to pay for your purchase but MOST importantly coupons and other special offers will be displayed on your phone and you will earn points for making purchases at Google affiliated retailers. Think about it, coupons and special offers based on your cell phone location linked to Google Places, and Google Offers. Who knows, maybe they will send you a coupon to Starbucks just before you step into your local coffee shops.  In this play, the options are limitless and they have extended the coupon seamlessly from the computer to the phone.

They have also announced a line of laptops that are cloud based and you basically pay for them on a monthly basis called Chromebooks. Pricing will be about $28 per user for business and $20 per user for educational institutions per month.

There is another brand spanking new Google Service…. it is called Google +1 (pronouced as Plus One). It will be very similar to the Facebook Like button but instead up voting on Facebook you will be interacting with Google +1 everywhere on the web and it will keep track of your votes and display them to your friends. Getting started with the service as a website owner will be easy – you will simply  insert some small code into your website and once installed people will be able to give you site an upvote or a “+1″ Think of it like a verb – I just +1′d that site or that product.

Google is positioning +1 as a recommendation system, where you can give you stamp of approval or up vote for a website. This information will be shared with your other friends to help make it easier for them to find relevant info on the search engine. Think of it as a way to share a tip or suggestion, rather than sending an email or a link to the product, service page.  It is your annotation that your friends can use to see your input on a certain link.

Pretty soon you will be able to +1 everything from Coffee Makers, to attorneys, to restaurant links and even other websites  in the search results. And once it is officially launched you will be able to go to the Google +1 Webmaster Central interface and get a +1 button for your site.

One of the prerequisites to using the new +1 service will be a public Google profile, you can claim yours at https://profiles.google.com/and this is where my interpretation comes in.

If Google is really trying to take some of the thunder from Facebook by suggesting that users +1 rather than clicking the like button then build a social network already…don’t just provide the features of a social networking site like chat (google chat), Photo Sharing (picassa), email (gmail), your contacts (google Contacts) get off your butts and actually build a competitive social networking site.

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As a non-programmer I was struggling to find a way to build user stories. So I created this quick keynote template.  Please be aware that I have only watched some Youtube videos on the subject and I am not an expert.  Any suggestions on this template would be appreciated.

agile-user-stories.key

agile-user-stories.ppt

agile-user-stories.pdf

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1. The Story of Stuff

Did the marketing brilliance of Frank Kern and the sales mastery of Jordan Belfort strike out with their joint venture Locella.com?

One of the best parts of living in San Diego other than the weather which goes without saying is the HUGE and very viable Internet marketing community that thrives in the Southern California climate. For those of you who are not familiar with the ranks of the Internet marketing elite in San Diego we have Mike Koenig (personal hero) from Traffic Geyser and his new social media marketing machine , Frank Kern, Trey Smith, and not sure where Jason Moffatt is these days but San Diego was his home. These and others understand that the San Diego lifestyle works perfectly for our Internet marketing business – the benefit of living close to these guys is the ability to go to the events and to network with other people who are are at the top of their game….that was a long ramble but anyways living in SD also gave me the opportunity to walk by the Locella building on my way to the bank.

Full disclosure here – I’ve been a big fan of Frank Kern for a number of years I went through his Mass Control, Mass Control 2.0, and List Control with my Four Hour Work Week Meetup group. My girlfriend thinks that given the chance I would name my first born child male or female to – “Frank Kern”.

At the List Control event I was introduced to Jordan Belford, the “Wolf of Wall Street”. This guy was absolutely amazing his presentation style, commanded the stage and his ability to convince people to move in a certain direction really inspired me. Two words – absolutely brilliant. Jeff and I have changed our business because of what we have learned from him.  Authentic excellence.

Needless to say there was an opportunity to sign up for coaching with Belfort and I snapped that up in a heartbeat and I subsequently attended live event in Los Angeles. But I digress, one of the things that I learned at List Control was that Jordan, Frank and Trey were forming a local Internet marketing company Locella.

What a blow to the kidneys that was…to hear that the top guys in the Internet marketing space were now going to be competing with me directly, ouch. I checked out their website and through some competitive intelligence discovered that they were going to be providing Pay-Per-Click management and basic SEO to plumbers and auto repair body shops.

I even called the office and got pitched on their program. Initially I panicked about having an Internet g-ds like Frank Kern and sales guru Jordan Belford not only in my physical backyard but also directly compete with me my industry. Heck I was so scared of Locella that I ran my own SEO campaign to outrank locella for the words “locella internet marketing” and I when I last checked I was number two right below their BBB listing. No joke I was scared of what was to come.

Frank Kern is a role model for me and THE (I mean THE reason that I am in Internet maketing today) and when he entered into my space and was going to be competing directly against the local business I asked myself if it was time to reconsider my approach that had been working so well for local business marketing? (thank you Mike Koenig for that little bid of inspiration) Was it time to move onto something less competitive? Well that though lasted all of 30 seconds

Do you know what it is like to see legends enter into your niche with more firepower and brainpower – it is the stuff of nightmares. But the reality is that past success does not ensure future success…

The Locella offices are just down the street from my bank so I started to walk by their offices and do some strategic investigations which led to some online research and I figured out what I needed to do to get pitched by one of their salespeople and using what I learned from NLP and Jordan I deconstructed the sales pitch “they were using the straight-line” in an effort to figure out precisely what they were offering. I never got to the quote stage but from what I heard and the 10 page sales letter that I read some things just did not add up for me.

At the core it seemed like installing a

1. wordpress website for a client,
2. with a tracking phone number and
3. point some PPC traffic to the site for lead generation.

Seems pretty simple but I think that their price point was about $800 and I am not quite sure how much was going to the PPC budget and how much was directed towards the company but I figured that at the price of those clicks there was going to be fulfillment problem – someone was going to get screwed here. There did not seem to be enough margin to create a sustainable business and way to much client interactions for Frank and Trey to worry about. I think there was a dream of future valuations for the business – but honestly I did not see why it was worth their and Jordan’s time.

My assumption was that Jordan trained the team and that Frank and Trey were the Internet lead gen brains behind the operation. This part is speculation but I figured that they might have had the service fulfilled with a national brand like ReachLocal but at 30% of the PPC spend going to ReachLocal there was really no margin for Locella to be in the business and for the CLIENTS TO GET WHAT THEY WERE PAYING FOR. Was there integrity in this model to begin with? Sure you have a great sales engine but who the heck was going to fulfill it…

So when my business partner Jeff and I did the math on what it would take to appropriately manage somebody’s PPC spend and knowing how much PPC costs in the plumbing space is on a PPC basis – it seems to us that either they were charging too little for the service, they were not delivering on what they promised or they were doing some other lead generation techniques other than just pure PPC because there is NO way to get a high volume of PPC leads for a plumber and make enough profit by charging $800-$1700 a month all inclusive for PPC bid management and Internet marketing….even with a 30% conversion rate on clicks to calls – just no way!

So Jeff and I went on our merry way and just assumed that we had a well financed competitor with more sales peoples, and more cache then we would ever have and we got down to minding our own business.

Fast forward 5 months and a few weeks ago I went to La Jolla and walked by the Locella offices to see how they had grown and to my surprise they had moved out! I mean this place was stripped bare…I then went to locella.com and instead of a full blown website it was just their logo and a contact us telephone number. Called the number and it looks like the businesses shut down completely – it was a typical “please leave a message and we will call you right back” message but something just did not feel right.

I am not quite sure what’s happening but I’ve also noticed that Frank has picked up his pace he is offering consulting services at FrankKernSuccess.com and it looks like Jordan is in South Africa and Australia continuing to do what they’re doing so I am not sure what is going on.

I sent Jordan an email on facebook asking about Locella but from the outside it looks like the Jordan Belfort – Frank Kern – Trey Smith Internet marketing machine known as Locella has crumbled to the ground.

The major lesson that I learned here is trust your gut and worry about keeping your clients happy and not spending time copying your competitors – because they don’t always get it right.

Related posts:

1. Driving Web Traffic Now! With Landing Pages
2. 4 Hour Work Week – 4HWW – San Diego
3. Writing a book on Marketing

The swiffer wetjet is a great product to clean your floor but one you run out of fluid you are beholden to their proprietary cartridge for a refill.   This is the perfect kitchen adaptation of Razorblade Economics and I needed to find a way out of the cycle, $8.00 per cartridge gets to be a little expensive especially because it is only about $.40 worth of actual cleaning solution. Never mind the cost, think of the sustainability and recycling issues associated with having to discard a plastic container ever few weeks just to keep the floors clean.

So I pulled out my cordless drill and a bit that was large enough for a small funnel that I have and started to investigate how to drill and fill the cartridge.   Opening it was easy, but what I found out is that if you don’t seal the hole fully it just leaks and empties the contents everywhere – it needs to be airtight.   What do do in this situation?

Well sugru to the rescue – I used sugru to make an airtight stopper for the hole and viola – it worked.  The stopper is easy to remove and once inserted seals the hole to ensure a perfect seal.

I love days like this.

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1. Sugru – Smart Hacks Super Pack

Today I received my Sugru Smart Hacks Super Pack from the UK.

For those of you who don’t know about Sugru you can find http://www.sugru.com and on Facebook at http://facebook.sugru.com.  Sugru is a silicone rubber that molds and sticks permanently. Subaru is designed to meet help you modify hack enhance or otherwise improve upon products or processes in your daily life. Think of it like silly putty except it gets hard after just a few hours.

The smart hacks super pack, contains 12 5g sachets of Sugru in black blue green and orange. They claim that it will bond to aluminum steel and ceramic glass would leather some fabrics and plastic. I can’t wait to see what “activities” I can get up to with this awesome product.

You should check out YouTube for videos related to Sugru -  people have done some pretty amazing things. I think one of my favorite is the iPhone 4 protector where this guy puts pieces of Subaru around the edges of his iPhone so that when he lays it down it doesn’t scratch the glass surface or the outback of his phone. I hope to be this creative in my usage of super.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X9VCHF-_Y[/youtube]

Let me know if you’ve had success with Sugru,  or if you want any more information about this awesome product.

Related posts:

1. Swiffer WetJet modification with Sugru

Using a standing desk to supercharge your life.   You may not be familiar with the concept of a standing desk, but they have been around for hundreds of years.  Some of the greatest thinkers of our time have expounded their benefits.  After hearing Eben Pagan talk about his standing desk I had to give it a try.

My standing desk design is a modification of the Amazon.com door desk concept but with longer legs!  Attached is a video outlining the benefits of a standing desk and some pictures of the construction, ergonomics and the configuration of a standing desk.

We now use these exclusively at the office and they have been a huge boost to productivity and to mental clarity.

[FLOWPLAYER=http://wh-streaming.s3.amazonaws.com/door_desk.flv,500,425]

I hope you find this helpful.

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I just helped a friend migrate her email to a Google Apps Hosted account.  While there are a number of ways to migrate your existing email to a Google Apps account I have found that using the unix command line software called larch is the easiest way to do it.

This is for migrating email on a hosted domain so it was a FQDN – fully qualified domain name vs. shifting a user account to a domain.

After reading the larch man pages I came up with the following command line option to sync between a 1-and-1 account and Google Apps Hosted email account.

larch –from imaps://imap.1and1.com –to imaps://imap.gmail.com –all –from-user user@domain.com –from-pass password –to-pass password –to-user user@domain.com

It took about 20 minutes to run and migrate about 4000 email account and sub folders. There were some error messages about Net::IMAP::BadResponseError: Could not parse command (giving up) but I did not really worry about them.  I saw the folders that were having problems and they were from some archived email that she had – so I was not going to worry about them

[Apr 18 15:53:38] [info] 0 message(s) copied, 40 failed, 4242 untouched out of 4282 total

After the migration I logged into my google apps hosted account and made sure that the mail was migrated.  After checking I changed MX records for the Google SMTP servers and the entire migration process was completed.

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