One problem people of my personality type have is this love of starting things and an inability to finish them. Start new projects, blogs, businesses… anything.

I am very guilty of this, as a quick google will confirm. But recently there have been a lot of upheavels in my life and this has brought this character ‘trait’ (read: flaw) into sharp focus. It is kind of like an illness where you see every moment as having a wide blank canvas before it, enticing you to spill some paint on it. But, in truth you have about 50 canvases behind you, in various states of completion. Life is NOT a blank canvas. It is a single painting, that you can rework. Even DaVinci overpainted – started with something then covered it up, creating something new. But, the point is he was always aware of what went before.

Sometimes I think the easiest thing to do is just start something new. It’s exciting. I am a serial business-starter. (I hesitate to call myself an entrepreneur). But, whereas I do believe that a failed business can teach you almost as much as a successful one, sometimes you have to say enough is enough!

Recently I met a young guy who was driving me from the airport to my mother’s house (a very long drive indeed). He is in his mid 20s. I asked him how he got to be driving this bus and he told me of the path his career had taken. And I was impressed. He had done something that few people do in any field – created a nice evolution. He went from part time with one company, to school runs, to permanent bus driver for an institution and now he was waiting to hear if he would get into the city bus line, with all the stability that offered.

I meet a lot of people, especially in the software business, who don’t do evolution as well as this bus driver. They don’t build on their skills. They don’t move from company to company, increasing their responsibility and pay. (I believe staying at one company too long is death to your upward mobility). This evolution is something I used to do well, but recently have stagnated. This 25 year old bus driver has inspired me to look at that again and see where I can go and what I can do.

Now, you may well ask what is the difference? Aren’t you just finding another justification to start a new business or something else new? No, not really. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with starting a new business. The point is to start something that builds on your knowledge, skills, experiences. Don’t start a bakery, then fail at that and start a day care centre. Take what you learned at the bakery and apply that to something slightly different. It is about evolution!, not one great leap.

So, what does all this mean? I am going to sit down, try to get an overview of my professional evolution, connect the dots and see where that line points. Throw in a handful of dreams and off I will go!

See you soon.

I said before how I am reading (well, listening actually) to Napoleon Hill’s seminal ‘Laws of Success’. The book truly is amazing.

Right now I am on the chapter about developing a pleasing personality. So, to remember the seven steps to doing this I am going to write a sarcastic blog posting, which, while it might help me remember the steps, surely is self-undermining. Oh well.

First: Form the habit of interesting yourself in other people; and make it your business to find their good qualities and speak of them in terms of praise.

Hmm…good qualities in other people? That is going to be tough.

Second: Develop the ability to speak with force and conviction, both in your ordinary conversational tones and before public gatherings, where you must use more volume.

I think I can do that, maybe. Would you believe me if I did…I might be doing it wrong?

Third: Clothe yourself in a style that is becoming to your physical build and the work in which you are engaged.

Fat people – note the ‘style that is becoming to your physical build’. Terrycloth tracksuits, and lycra are not becoming to your physique (in the case of the former, any physique).

Fourth: Develop a positive character, through the aid of the formula outlined in this lesson.

This is a crappy step.

Fifth: Learn how to shake hands so that you express warmth of feeling and enthusiasm through this form of greeting.

Touching people? Yuck!

Sixth: Attract other people to you by first “attracting yourself” to them.

I have attracted myself to Jessica Alba… now what?

Seventh: Remember that your only limitation, within reason, is the one which YOU set up in YOUR OWN mind.

Well, there you go. I knew I couldn’t do it.

I am listening to the amazing audio book version of the update revision to this timeless masterpiece. True, it clocks in at around 20 hours, but it is time well worth spent (and you can’t / shouldn’t listen to too much at a time, you should let it percolate).

If you don’t know who Napoleon Hill is then read this to discover the man who pioneered self-help. All who followed have done little more than rearrange the deck chairs on his mansion.

My problem is that I have fallen at step one! (How embarrassing to admit). Step 1 is: ‘A DEFINITE CHIEF AIM’. i.e. decide what you want to do. How much is wrapped up in those 4 little words?! If I knew what I wanted to do the rest would be easy!

Haven’t been blogging on here at all lately! Things have been quite crazy!

#1 – Toygaroo! My new company is Toygaroo. Founded by a bunch of great guys (and a gal!) in California this company looks set to change the way parents get toys for their kids. Toygaroo is a rental model, like FilmAmora and NetFlix. I came on board as CTO, bringing along the software and experience from years of renting DVDs and FilmAmora. If you live in the US check us out at www.toygaroo.com

#2 – Kyoto! At the beginning of the year we completed our purchase of a house in Kyoto, Japan. After the series of disasters there it has been difficult to not just watch the news all the time. Luckily the house is a long way away from the problems.

#3 – FilmAmora! We’ve taken FilmAmora offline for now. We are looking at changing the business structure. There is a lot of potential in the business, but we need to do it right. I think it was suffering from some problems. When it comes back it will be bigger and better than ever.

I’m trying to get more disciplined about blog writing. I’ve got 3 on the go – this one (ostensibly about business related things), KyotoExperiement.com (about buying our house and spending more time in Japan) and rorramblings (occasional notes on software development).

I’ve never been a fan of blogging for blogging’s sake, but, there is lots going on now and hopefully I can find the time to write coherent articles that might help others.

Recently both my wife and I had our bags lost by British Airways on a flight back from Canada. They have asked us to send a list of contents to help identify the bags.

Surely if they can look at the contents then the bags have been broken open… so we are going to have to buy new bags anyway.

But this is the 21st century. Surely there is a better way?

Why not:

• BA staff organize lost bags by day
• Take photos of lost bags
• create website where we the customers look at bags by day!

Most people know exactly what day their bags were lost. And what their bags look like (they could also photograph any identifying marks).

This solution would put the time consuming process of bag identification onto the customer. And not require the breaking open of bags. It is also relatively trivial to implement!

Even with 1000 bags a day this would not be tough to do.

It never ceases to amaze me at the absolute ripoff policies of the studios when it comes to selling their discs in Spain. The latest – and one of the most shocking – is in the new release of the Lost TV Series. Now that the series is over of course there are some nice ‘complete’ box sets. Including, of course, a BluRay one.

But look at this:

This is the box set available from Amazon UK for £119. Not bad, considering it is 6 seasons!

Now look at this:

This is the same box set here in Spain. Yes, you are reading that right. €284 (from a suggested retail of €299). That is almost 3 times the cost!

The truly amazing thing is that some of the UK BluRay releases have Spanish on them… so there is not even the extra dubbing, subtitling to take into account. It is just pure greed.

Shocking.

Spain has the lowest per-capita income in western Europe – yet the highest cost of consumer goods. (I could do this same example using the Suzuki SX4 car, which is also more expensive here than in the UK). What is going on? Who sets these prices? Why does no one protest? Why does the government not comment on price fixing (maybe because they are too busy screwing even more money out of the Spanish!).

Recently I watched the incredibly long, 2-part, sales pitch from Rich Schefren over at Strategic Profits. Supposedly Rich is a ‘guru’s guru’ (when it comes to internet marketing I guess, not as in a spiritual guru).

So, I made it through the pitch and I have to say there were some things I found interesting. Perhaps even interesting enough for me to join Rich’s personalized training program and see what it could do to enhance Filmamora.com’s sales and profits.

But I had some questions. Principally, had Rich (or his ‘team’) ever dealt with a non-English language focused business. 90% of our customers are Spanish (not surprising, being based in Spain!) and obviously our marketing had to be in Spanish and had to tackle a Spanish approach. Despite what you may have heard, marketing in a different language and country is not just a matter of translating your materials.

So it seemed a valid question.

Now, like almost all of these internet marketing people, getting ahold of them is almost impossible. They want you to buy their product, not waste their time with pre-sales questions. Rich’s company, Strategic Profits, has a support website where you can fill out tickets. So I did. Many days ago. I can log in and look at the ticket progress (none). There is no email address. No way to reach them!

In ‘traditional’ business we focus on getting the customer (and keeping them happy once you have them). I have noticed this trend in online marketing to ‘here’s what we have, like it and buy it or go away’. To them it seems to be all about the sizzle, building anticipation and urgency. That is why they are all in the internet marketing space, and what they sell are courses about internet marketing. It is an incestuous business, creating more people to market competing products.

Or at least that is how it looks from out here.

But the tools are not without merit. And I think that they can be applied to a ‘real’ business… But if you have no interest in answering questions in order to get my money, how interested will you be in answering questions once you’ve got it!

Just over 5 years ago a dear friend and fellow musician Paul Lawton was killed in a horrific industrial accident.

Paul and I played together in ‘The Margraves’ and on some other sessions. Paul moved out to Vancouver in the late 90s and took up with some great musicians out there, including the multi Juno-nominated band ‘The Paperboys’.

An album is available on iTunes that contains songs of Lolly’s – some sung or intro’d by Lolly himself. The songs were found on a MiniDisc after Lolly’s death and were re-recorded.

If you want to show support for his family – or just want some great folksy/rootsy music then I highly recommend you check the album out!

Read more about Paul at: http://www.paullawton.ca/

Buy the album:

itunes canada:

itunes us:

itunes uk:

itunes spain:

One of my pet peeves is when I get emails from ‘Internet Marketing Gurus’ who claim that when I buy their course I will get all these ‘bonuses’ at greatly reduced prices.

Here are some recent ones:

Bonus #1: 1 Ticket To “GURU Traffic School”: VALUE: $2,500

Bonus #2: 1 Ticket To Any Live Event In 2010: VALUE: $5,000

You get the idea.

Newsflash

These courses are worth what people will pay for them. So – if you are giving them away for free, they are worth nothing. If you are selling something for $97 then it is worth, oh, I don’t know… $97? Not $2000 and we get 95% off.

And what is even more annoying that people doing this is people believing it! We have arrived at the point where pretty much we cannot believe anything that comes through our email – thanks in large part to idiots who make offers like this.

If you have read other articles by me you know I hate the whole ‘make a million online’ movement. It is – to be blunt – bullshit. Anyone who has done it could probably have made a million anywhere. They had a great business idea and spent thousands of hours perfecting it and their presentation. They did not buy a domain name, set up a wordpress blog, outsource to an article writer and collect a 7 figure sum.

I would challenge any of these gurus to prove

1. they have in fact ever made the money they claim. A tax return would be nice proof!
2. that any money can be made doing anything except selling the idea of easy money to desperate people
3. that anyone who has bought their product went from zero to hero directly because of it

Anyway, rant over.

Welcome to my blog where I will never sell you anything… though if you live in Spain you might want to sign up for FilmAmora.com – the best way to rent movies in Spain!

In a couple of weeks Lord of the Rings finally makes an appearance on Blu-Ray (the delay caused in most part by legal wranglings).

Fans around the world are complaining that the editions being released are the theatrical editions – not the extended editions that we’ve been able to buy (or rent) for years. (God, has it really been 10 years since LOTR came out?!)

There really only seems to be one motivation behind this: greed.

Paramount knows that LOTR fans have been waiting and will buy whatever edition they put out. And then, in a couple of years, will buy again the extended editions on Blu-Ray. They did this on DVD with good profits, so why not do it again?

Here in Spain, to make matters worse, the LOTR BR Box will cost almost double what it costs in the UK and the USA. And they wonder why piracy is rife. Spain has the largest problem in the western world with movie piracy. And we have the highest average cost – as compared to average income – of DVDs. Hmm. Coincidence?

Do these people never learn? There is panic in the movie industry right now – companies are going out business left and right, people are losing jobs, hundreds of millions of dollars are not being recouped… it is mayhem.

We, as the consumer, of course have to foot the bill where-ever possible…but why?

Rant over.