I’ve always learned by doing, so I decided to chime in and share my philosophy – Stop reading and start taking action!

Someone responded and informed me that I “was stating the obvious” and gave me a whole list of reasons why reading is good (the guy seriously needs to bring back reading rainbow if the whole entrepreneurial thing doesn’t work out for him) and he was going to make seven figures from all of the books he read (note that he said make, not made).

I come across people like this all of the time. They believe that bringing an idea to market and building a profitable business requires a certain type of elite knowledge only gained from books written by guru’s who became rich selling business books – very similar to what I discuss in this post.

I’m definitely not the first person to say this but there are a lot of really dumb millionaires. You probably won’t make a billion if you’re dumb, but reading a book by a business guru won’t get you there either. If you are the one reading the book, chances are it’s already too late – you need to be the one writing it. I hate to say it but there is no secret knowledge passed on by the elite entrepreneurial “illuminate”, only connections – because after all it is all about who you know.

I have a pretty simplistic philosophy when it comes to business, and that’s what works for me. In college I was inspired by a few classes I took about Japanese Sumi-e art. The idea is to create a composition in as few strokes as possible, make each brush stroke meaningful and to speak through the voids left by simplicity.

“The goal is not simply to reproduce the appearance of the subject, but to capture its soul. To paint a horse, the sumi-e artist must understand its temperament better than its muscles and bones. To paint a flower, there is no need to perfectly match its petals and colors, but it is essential to convey its liveliness and fragrance. Oriental sumi-e may be regarded as an earliest form of expressionistic art that captures the unseen” Read more about Sumi-e.

Success as an entrepreneur isn’t about complexity or elitism, it’s about clarity. There is no 49 step program that will lead you to the promised land. Find simplicity and clarity in your life, idea, product or company and that is what will lead you to success, regardless of how you decide to measure it.

Many developers killed it with iPhone apps in 2010, however 2011 is the year of the tablet.

As always, there are huge opportunities for those who get in early, and even though the iPad has been out for a year the game is just getting started.

The media is still completely obsessed with the iPad and holiday sales for the iPad 1 were through the roof. I have never seen a single product receive so much hype and essentially free press. It’s just crazy to think that 12 months ago the tablet market was created out of thin air and yet these products now dominate tech news on a daily basis.

A few days ago Apple announced their second quarter earnings and iPad 2 sales were a bit of a disappointment, not because of slow sales but because Apple can’t produce them fast enough – now thats a good problem to have!

The Blackberry Playbook was just launched and will add fuel to the fire, however the reviews are a good indication that RIM and Motorola are still a year or two behind Apple with the hardware and software. This confirms that developing for the iPad is still the place to be, at least for the next year.

A recent poll showed that even though iPad sales were high this holiday season, only 5% of adults in the US currently own a tablet computer. Think about that for a second, 95% of consumers are not yet a part of this market.

If 20% own a tablet by 2013, the market is going to quadruple in size in the next 2 years. There are not many, if any other areas of the market that I can say are going to grow that quickly with relative confidence. If the second and third year growth of the iPhone are any indication of what we will see with the iPad – those who are able to build popular apps are in for a wild ride.

So you’ve decided to jump on the iPad app bandwagon and have a killer idea. There are really three different ways to have your new app developed. Assuming you know Objective-C, you can develop the app yourself. You can outsource the work and have a freelancer develop it for you. Or you can hire a professional app development company (the most expensive of the three options). Option number three is only recommended for those with an existing service and a large budget. Below I am going to cover the first two options in a little more detail.

If you are brave enough to attempt building the application yourself you will need to register as a developer and join Apple’s iPad development program which is $99 a year. This gives you access to the iOS Dev Center and the SDK along with the interface builder, iPad simulator, guides and tutorials.

There are quite a few third party tools and frameworks that make the learning curve a bit easier and essentially allow you to create an iPad app quickly using a drag and drop interface, however the tradeoff is functionality. I don’t recommended taking this route unless you just want to create an app version of your website.

Here are some good tutorials for getting started with iPad app development:

How to prototype interactive iPad applications in 30 minutes or less using Apple Keynote – This shows you how to build a iPad app prototype with no programming knowledge what so ever. Very useful if you plan on designing the app yourself, but having it developed by someone else.

iPad Programing Tutorial – Hello World++ – How to create a very basic interactive app for the iPad.

How To Build iPad Apps With Xcode and Interface Builder – Highly recommended tutorial that will walk you through building your first iPad application, a simple calculator.

This is the most popular route for those with little to no programming knowledge. Just because you don’t know how to program doesn’t mean you can’t create a great iPad app. I know of quite a few apps that were outsourced and have become immensely popular.

If you decide to go this route, it’s VERY important that you stay on top of the development process. There are plenty of horror stories about developers in India ripping people off through oDesk and eLance, however there are a lot of precautionary measures you can take to minimize this risk.

Whenever I create a new job on oDesk I only send the job out to those with over 1000 billing hours and 4.5 / 5 stars.

oDesk allows you to choose a flat price for the project, or pay by the hour. Once the project begins, you are provided with a screenshot of the developers desktop every few minutes allowing you to make sure that they aren’t billing you while playing World of Warcraft.

For an iPad app generally it’s better to pay by the project – you don’t want to have the developer back out halfway through because they have another job that is paying them better hourly. I highly recommend offering a bonus as an incentive for meeting the deadlines and this will also help to ensure the quality of the work.

Hopefully this post inspires those who are still on the fence to jump off and make something happen. There are plenty of ways to find success in the world of apps regardless of your technical knowledge or financial situation!

After you sign up, I will hand deliver each new blog post right to your inbox. Actually, Google seems to have that covered for now…. Anyway it will save you some time and help you stay up to date with the latest happenings.

When I was 21 years old I had the opportunity to experience first hand the inner workings of traditional media and the massive scale of cable news.

Arnold Berk is a long time family friend, Korean War veteran, and businessman who built and sold a multimillion dollar tax business.

Arnold called me up in late 2008 during the financial meltdown to discuss a plan he had come up with to help protect Main Street America from Wall Street – he called it “The Berk Plan” (you can see it here). He wanted to know if I was interested in helping him promote it online since he heard that was my world. I agreed to help, I thought his ideas were solid, more importantly my middle name is Burke so I had a vested interest to see it through – even if the spelling was a bit off.

Together we came up with a game plan for marketing, I would handle the online promotion of The Berk Plan and Arnold would take charge of handling traditional media.

To kick things off he decided to take out a $15,000 full page ad in the Washington Post (and paid for it with his own money) to get the attention of our senators and congressmen as well as the major media outlets.

Meanwhile, I managed to get The Berk Plan featured on the frontpage of Reddit.com

After the ad appeared in the Washington Post, we were completely bombarded with comments and emails, as well as inquires from major media outlets. Arnold decided to start giving all of the news outlets my cell phone number and telling everyone I was the official media coordinator (I’m sure he got a kick out of it at the time).

So here I was, 21 years old, getting calls from CNBC and Fox News, having to moderate who gets the exclusive. Arnold was in good hands though because I find myself in crazy situations like this a lot.

After seeing The Berk Plan in the Washington Post, CNBC and was interested in having us on. So the next day Arnold and I went up to New York City, did a press conference outside of the AIG building and then headed to the Wall Street Journal Building where CNBC had a satellite studio that allowed them to stick your talking head on the news.

I can’t quite describe the emotions I felt when we arrived at the WSJ building. It really wasn’t until then that I realized the enormous scale of these major media outlets. Inside the building it was somewhat empty because it was the day before New Years Eve. On our way up to the studio I looked out the window and my heart sank. Literally right next door their was a huge crater where the World Trade Towers once stood.

We were escorted to a room with a bunch of cameras and surprisingly it was just Arnold, myself and the cameraman.

Watch Arnold on CNBC

I’ll never forget standing there watching Arnold, thinking that it’s just the three of us and yet this is going out to literally millions of people on the biggest financial news channel in the world at prime time. Even though I was able to get us on the frontpage of major online social sites like Reddit and Digg, this was so much bigger than that.

About 15 minutes after leaving the Wall Street Journal building I got a call on my cell from a lady with Fox News. She wanted us to come on and talk about The Berk Plan the next day on Fox Business. I explained that we were in NYC now and it would be kind of a hassle to come back up the next day, especially since it was New Years Eve. She assured us that they would take care of everything, and even agreed to send a car down to Philly to pick us up.

Sure enough the next day I found myself in a town car with Arnold heading back up to NYC, ready to go through the whole routine again.

The Berk Plan promotion was a success and it’s one victory we achieved almost exclusively through traditional media. Using new media is great for promotion but traditional methods can be more effective depending on your audience. Although some have already declared traditional media dead, that day I learned that in some cases, nothing could be further from the truth.

During a phone call yesterday, I told him I was thinking about writing a blog article about his saying. He was quick to point out that although he would like to take credit for it – the saying was actually passed along to him when he was first starting out by a very prominent builder at the time named Mayer Blum.

Like many self made entrepreneurs, my grandfather struggled when first starting out. One of his first projects was rehabbing historic homes in a very wealthy area of Philadelphia. Selling high priced items to the wealthy, should make you a lot of money, right? Unfortunately this isn’t always the case, my grandfather found himself putting a lot of effort in but making a very small profit. However his entire mindset and business strategy changed after Mayer Blum took him out to lunch one day and gave him some advice that he would never forget.

About once a month Mayer would call me and ask me to join him for lunch. I never refused since he picked me up in his limo and took me to his private club. This club was so exclusive that I couldn’t have got past the doorman for any reason, by myself. Mayer was nearing 80 at the time and I soon realized that he missed the action of business and simply was remembering his early days through conversations with me.

He gave advice and introduced me to members of his club who were prominent bankers, lawyers, politicians and other major players in the business life of the city.

One day he was complimenting me on a particular house that I was working on, but was making very little money on the project. I expressed my concern and he gave me an answer that shaped my business approach for many years.

He said “Buck your work is good and you are doing an important job for the section of the city where you are rebuilding those old houses. When it comes to the money your father should have explained: When you build for the classes you’ll eat with the masses. If you build for the masses you might be eating with the classes.

- from Bucksays.com (my grandfathers blog)

Traditional brick and mortar entrepreneurs and internet entrepreneurs can both learn from Mayer Blum’s advice. Many of the world’s largest companies found success through applying this very principle.

• Apple & IBM built a personal computer for the masses.
• Microsoft built an operating system for the masses.
• Google built an online advertising platform for the masses.
• YouTube brought online video sharing to the masses.
• Facebook built an easy to use social network for the masses.

These days, iPhone and Android apps are all the rage, and you can see this philosophy at work right in the Apple App Store. 90% of the top grossing apps are simple games that are either free, or $0.99. These companies are building products for the masses – everyone loves games and everyone has $0.99 to blow. What’s crazy is the games priced at $0.99 are grossing more than games priced at $15.

You can see this for yourself, just look at the number of ratings an app has. Right now only around 5% of people who download an app actually end up rating it. This means that if an app has just 6,000 ratings it has probably been downloaded over 120,000 times! As of this morning, my favorite app built for the masses – Angry Birds has 482,000 ratings. Try doing the math on that. It’s hard to comprehend the scale at which the Apple App Store operates however those who were able to master the art of thinking big early on have become the big fish in this enormous sea.

You don’t have to look far to find bad financial advice these days. Many of these so called financial experts will tell you the same thing: Find a steady 9 to 5 job, pinch pennies for 30 to 40 years, and if you’re disciplined enough you will be rich by the time you retire.

The truth is that many of these so called financial experts, like Suze Orman (who is worth $25 million dollars) do not live by their own advice. They haven’t become rich because of their frugality. They are rich because of their entrepreneurship, million dollar book deals, tv shows and seminars.

Popular sites like GetRichSlowly encourage readers to live as cheaply as possible and avoid any kind of debt like the plague. Ironically this site was secretly bought by Quinstreet, a company that focuses on generating new customers for the credit card companies and banks.

I’m a big believer in having a solid portfolio of assets, putting your money to work, and developing a comprehensive long term financial plan. However my long term plan doesn’t include living broke now so that I can live rich when I’m a senior citizen.

Living “broke” doesn’t necessarily mean financially broke. Many people don’t realize that money is not your most valuable asset – time is.

Are you really willing to give away 90% of your most valuable asset on the premise that you will be able to enjoy the last 10% relatively comfortably? You only live once. There is no turning back or starting over.

I have always valued my own time over EVERYTHING else, which is why I’ve never had a 9 to 5 job working for someone else. Most people don’t realize just how valuable their own time really is. I actually wrote about valuing your time and self worth last year.

Let me give you an example of why frugality and the whole penny pinching mentality is flawed:

Dave is browsing the internet and comes across an article about frugality. He decides to take the advice of these financial experts and has given up all of the goods and services deemed “unnecessary”. He is now a slave to his own daily routine, having to spend 5 hours every weekend doing lawn work after firing the landscaping service he used to pay $50 / week for. This means that Dave is now working for $10 an hour on the weekend.

What if Dave continued to pay the landscaping company to manage his yard and instead used that time to start a small online business that made just $1000 a month? This would pay for the landscaping service and he now has an extra $800 in his pocket – a much better return on his investment. Instead of working for $10 an hour on the weekend, Dave is now working for $50 an hour.

The best road to wealth is action. The financial experts will teach you how to die rich all day long but if you want to live rich you need to take a different approach, you don’t have to wait for anyone, or anything.

This update was apparently designed to penalize content farms – the problem is that the web is one giant content farm according to the current definition. One could argue that AOL, CNN, Yahoo and many authority bloggers pump out just as much low quality content as Demand Media.

I’m sure that Google understands this, which is probably why they’ve avoided using the phrase content farm to officially describe this update. Considering the catastrophic amount of collateral damage that has been done to many prominent blogs I expected that the big G would have had some more information for those effected by now.

Instead however many site owners are left scratching their heads. I think it’s fairly obvious by now that the “quality” of a sites content actually had very little to do with this recent update. Just look at askthebuilder.com, a site that was hit very hard by the farmer update. Tim Carter has built a phenomenal site, and become an authority in his niche.

AskTheBuilder has even been featured on the official Google Adsense site as a case study and example of how to build a quality site and monetize it with Adsense correctly.

I found out about AskTheBuilder on the official Google Webmaster Forum. Tim along with hundreds of others have been posting in this thread dedicated to those who may have been impacted negatively by the update. Ironically the Google Webmaster Forum is probably the worst place you can go for help and advice right now. Below I have included an example of the horrible advice being given over there by completely unofficial minions of Google.

SEO101 Writes: “Many are thin affiliates (though I am sure the owners will try to argue otherwise) and have adsense ‘above the fold’ – they are the exact type of sites that Google is targetting with this change.”

News flash – sites like Askthebuilder.com DIDN’T lose half of their traffic overnight because of having too many Google Adsense blocks about the fold, nor did they lose traffic for the “quality” of their content – and if they did then Google needs to do a major overhaul of the metrics they use to determine what quality content actually is.

All it would take to clear up a lot of the confusion, is an official statement by Google explaining some of the new guidelines for search (a little broader than “create quality content”). I think that is the least they could do for the people who made them so very rich.

The solution to this major time sink is a fairly unknown feature of Google Analytics currently in beta called “Intelligence” Google Intelligence allows you to set up alerts that will automatically notify you via email or text message when you have a spike in traffic (or a major decrease) as well as changes in visitors, bounce rate, etc..

If you have an e-commerce site you can automatically receive alerts for an increase or decrease in sales, and if you have Google Adsense linked to your Analytics account you can set up alerts to monitor changes in revenue.

Setting up custom alerts with Google Analytics only takes a few minutes and will free up many hours over the course of a year.

When you login to your Google Analytics account you will see a link on the left sidebar titled “Intelligence Beta”. Once you are in the Intelligence section click on “create new alert”.

Now you need to give your alert a name, select a period, and also be sure to click the box that says “Send me an email when this alert triggers”. You can even have Google analytics send you a text message with the alert although I have yet to try that option.

Now that you have made a basic alert, you can go ahead and set up alerts for almost any variable that you want to automatically monitor.

Here is a link to the custom traffic spike alert I created that you can use with your site.