Business Links for 02/25/2013

The Genius of Raising Brilliant Kids - Forbes http://onforb.es/15KG7Qd

The bazaar, the oldest newest idea for small businesses - http://reut.rs/15KGdYc

Where Future Entrepreneurs Are Living Today? - http://bit.ly/Yt4Fbn

How to Make the Hiring Process Less Painful (Infographic) - http://bit.ly/13KFulU

A Business Plan Doubles Your Chances for Success, Says a New Survey - http://bit.ly/13iBMUI

Managing Different Generations in the Workplace - http://bit.ly/13iBU6W

The Small Business Tax: Government Regulations - http://bit.ly/15KHcrs

3 Ways The Toilet+ Business Model Can Change The World And Your Company - http://onforb.es/Yw29TG

Searching for Angels: The 10 Best Ways to Attract Investors - http://onforb.es/XxkwHy

Confessions Of A Conference Crasher - http://bit.ly/126vSa7

The 5 Biggest Brands on Facebook And How They Do It - http://bit.ly/13KPTOA

Older Entrepreneurs Are Better Than Younger Ones - http://onforb.es/15eRbnE

My Secrets: How I Became a Prolific Writer and Learned to Get Beyond School Essays - http://onforb.es/XxoKyV

Update 2/24/2013

Sorry for lack of posts as of late.. been busy busy busy. shifting some priorities around and doing some streamlining of that paradigm shift. Throw in a few more buzzwords LOL

Seriously been networking, lining up investors and building my street cred. Only so many hours in the day. So much to do so little time to do it.

Crosspost - 5 Ways to Beat Your Competitors at SEO

As anyone who's ever struggled to achieve and maintain high search results rankings can attest to, search engine optimization (SEO) is a constant race to stay one move ahead of your competitors. To win that race, you need to continually improve your own website and monitor your competitors' SEO activity.

If you've watched rivals usurp your top rankings, you'll want to consider these five tips:

 

1. Focus on content creation.
When it comes to digital marketing, the acronym "ABC" doesn't just stand for "Always Be Closing." It should also remind webmasters to "Always Be Creating."

Whether you're pursuing SEO, pay-per-click or any other digital marketing strategy to attract new visitors to your website, the quality and amount of content matters. Adding fresh content to your site makes it more appealing both to the search engines and their automated indexing programs, as well as the people who read your pages. High-value content can also lead to viral sharing, which increases the number of external backlinks pointing at your website and further improves your SEO.

So content creation is a "win-win-win." If you're concerned about competitors usurping your high search rankings, you can't go wrong by investing time in creating blog posts, articles, downloadable products and other content for your site.

Related: The Basics of Using Keywords for Better SEO

2. Plan your keyword targeting strategies carefully.
As you're creating this content, you'll want to pay careful attention to the keywords you're targeting. Just because you've reached the top spot in the Google results for a given keyword doesn't mean that maintaining this ranking is a valuable use of your time.

What you need to focus on are the search queries that yield the highest total traffic. To determine which keywords are most effective and which ones can be ceded to competitors, look at the traffic data for different search queries using Google Analytics or Google's Webmaster Tools program. If possible, use advanced tools like Raven Tools (free, with paid plans starting at $99 per month) to determine which keywords are producing the most conversions.

3. Stay abreast of SEO news.
SEO is a field that's constantly changing. If you're able to jump on a new technique or growing trend before your competitors, you may be able to cement your lead in the natural search results.

Set aside time each week to monitor SEO news websites such as Search Engine Land or Search Engine Watch. If you see evidence of a major change in SEO best practices, take action right away to prevent your site from falling behind in the search results.

Related: Why You Want 'Backlinks' to Your Website (Video)

4. Monitor your competitors' backlink profiles.
While it's important to monitor your own website's backlink profiles to prevent negative SEO attacks, you should also keep a close eye on any changes in the links your competitors are building.

Often, the best SEO techniques aren't widely publicized. Instead, people accidentally stumble upon a winning combination that leads to positive website results. By monitoring your competitors' backlink profiles using tools like Majestic SEO (free, with paid plans starting at $49.99 per month) or Open Site Explorer (free, with paid plans starting at $99 per month), you can both identify potential linking partners for your site and uncover any new linking strategies your competitors may be using to try to beat you.

5. Monitor your competitors' on-site SEO activities.
Also monitor competitors' on-site optimization efforts. If any competitors dramatically change their SEO activities, you could be looking at one of two possible scenarios: They may have discovered a new way to optimize their pages in the search results, or they may be updating their pages in response to a penalty from the search engines.

Either way, it's a good idea to keep an eye on your competitors' title tag structures, use of keyword-optimized headers and other SEO activity. All this information -- and much more -- is available with free, downloadable tools like Traffic Travis.

Crosspost - What it means to be Self Reliance

Source - http://americanpreppersnetwork.com/what-is-a-prepper 

A Prepper is a person who takes Personal Responsibility and Self Reliance seriously.  Preparedness is an important part of life for a serious Prepper.  They follow the Five Principles of Preparedness while theyWalk the Path of the Prepper.

A Prepper is a person who earnestly believes that no challenge is insurmountable with the proper dedication, determination and focus.  A Prepper looks at things that most people would think impossible to survive and says “All you really need is X, Y and some Z!  Preppers are very family oriented people who believe that it is more important to sacrifice leisure and entertainment today so that in a future potential calamity, they will be able to sustain a certain standard of living.

While an inordinate amount of commentary and focus is put on so-called “Doomsday” or Apocalyptic preparedness, in reality this is, or should be, a very minor to non-existent concern for Preppers.  Truly, Preppers focus much more on being prepared for things that will more likely be an issue – such as the family bread-winner losing their job, passing away or being incapacitated.  Other primary concerns for Preppers are: death or serious illness/injury to a family member, all-consuming house fire, flooding or other natural and man-made disasters.  Our current economic environment makes the potential impact of some of these things even more likely.  Indeed, the economic stability of their country is of a huge concern to Preppers because of what it would mean for, not just themselves, but the rest of the country if a severe economic crisis were to occur.

The End Of The World As We Know It or TEOTWAWKI is a common acronym for Preppers to use.  It is perceived from a personal level and indicates the end of a the way we know the world from our own viewpoint.  This can include our viewpoint of the world from a personal, family, neighborhood, town, state, regional, national or world level.  Many people suffer a catastrophic TEOTWAWKI on a family level that their friends and extended family may never be aware of.

A Prepper takes steps to mitigate the long lasting effect of a severe impact on their world.  They do this through stocking items that are critical for their continued well-being – called Standard of Living Insurance.  The most notable and important of these items are Food, Water, and Shelter.  An established Prepper will have large amounts of food stored, will have water filters and access to water established and will have taken steps to create or maintain the livability of their shelter, or home.

Are Preppers and Survivalists the same thing?

A Prepper is not the same as a Survivalist.  A Survivalist typically focuses on learning primitive and other woodsmen skills and have very little focus on actually stocking up supplies and building an extensive repository of every needful thing.  Whereas Survivalists prepare and learn to live off the land, Preppers prepare to maintain their current lifestyle as much as possible.  While they are not synonymous, many Preppers are also Survivalists and are very adept at living off the land.  Likewise, many Survivalists are Preppers and store resources to be able to sustain their Standard of Living.

Preppers typically plan to “Shelter in Place” or “Bug-In” which indicates they expect to ride out any bad situation while living in their home.  Other Preppers find themselves in situations where they recognize that they may need to “Bug-Out” or leave their home for another location, commonly referred to as their “Bug Out Location” or BOL.  A BOL may be a mountain retreat, a home in the country or simply a good place in the woods where they feel they can be safe if things collapse or get really bad.

You don’t want to be at the Superdome!

During Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Government finally got organized enough to set up a refugee camp at the Superdome.  It quickly became a dangerous, even deadly, place to be and the government insisted – and in some cases forced – that you be there.  There are people who literally “escaped from the Superdome”.

When catastrophe strikes – you really do NOT want to end up in a FEMA refugee camp!  Preppers do what they do so they do not have to rely on the government or anyone else to take care of them – no matter what happens.

Myths about Preppers

“Preppers are crazy nut-jobs on the fringe of society”

This is something we hear a lot. It is something that the media frequently attempts to portray us as. Preppers are no more crazy than those wacky people who have home owners insurance. Seriously, why do people have home owners insurance? It’s so that if something catastrophic happens to your house you can get money to buy a new one – and not be homeless. Prepping is basically the same thing – we educate ourselves and purchase items that will be essential to continue our way of life in a catastrophic event, creating a Standard of Living Insurance for ourselves.  Preppers are those who agree with the Federal Government and subscribe to what FEMA has indicated that every citizen should be doing to be prepared.  For the media to call us “nutjobs” or “fringe”is for them to ignore the position of the Federal Government towards citizen responsibility.

There is nothing “crazy” or “mentally deficient” in conceding that bad things are likely to happen no matter what we do and that we should be ready to deal with them.  At the purest level, this is all Preppers are doing.

What really doesn’t make any sense to Preppers is people who refuse to do anything about their personal well-being and safety.  Preppers do not understand Fathers who are unwilling to take extra steps to make sure they are able to take care of their children when something bad happens.  In fact, we consider it down-right irresponsible to be completely unprepared to feed your children and provide them with water and shelter.

“Preppers are Conservative Christians who believe in the Constitution and in smaller government”

This is actually true of many Preppers but is also a generalization – there are liberals and atheists among us and they are welcome.  The Prepper mindset is focused on Self-Reliance and Personal Responsibility, which also happens to lead right into a strong belief in the Constitution and that we need less, not more, government.  Christianity also promotes Self-Reliance and Personal Responsibility.  So, while the a majority of Preppers may be Christian and strong proponents of Constitutional Government – it is certainly not exclusive to that belief set.

The Prepper Movement

Pre-Y2K

Prior to Y2K, Preppers were highly focused on Cold War concerns and how to survive a Nuclear War.  They used the term Survivalist to describe themselves.  Some of their thought leaders included Howard Ruff, Kurt Saxon, Mel Tappan, Jeff Cooper and Ragnar Benson.  There was a lot of discussion of underground bunkers, food storage and water purification.

Y2K Movement

In the late 1990′s there was a resurgence of interest in Preparedness stemming from fears that computer systems would fail and society would collapse due to the “Y2K Bug”.  The Y2K Bug concern revolved around the potential for computers to not be able to handle the year changing back to “00″ which had not previously happened in the lifetime of computers.  While it turned out the the Y2K bug was successfully neutralized, the world stood on edge at the turn of the century, concerned that society would collapse from a catastrophic computer failure.

Concerns during this time were primarily about food, power and fuel because computers controlled all the ordering, shipping and delivery of food and gas across the country as well as the power grid.  The time leading up to the turn of the century saw a huge amount of “mainstream” people rushing out to purchase a years supply of food, fuel and generators.

From a modern Preppers perspective, Y2K was a marketing gaffe which led to millions of people piquing an interest in Preparedness but then throwing everything out when nothing happened.  These people were concerned about a single event and not truly converted to a life of Self Reliance and Preparedness.  This same concern holds for 2012 scare marketing.

Modern Preppers

Terrorist attacks including the 911 plane attacks, bombings in London, Madrid, Bali and many other places, led to a strong online interest in discussing personal readiness and self reliance.  Fueled by United States disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and Ike and international disasters including earthquakes and tsunamis in Indonesia, Chile, Japan and elsewhere, the Prepper Movement gained a lot of momentum without having a particular date in mind (unlike Y2K) which led to many people recognizing a need to change their lives to be more prepared and self reliant.

Spurred on later by fears of the 2012 Mayan prophesies of an apocalyptic nature, the Prepper movement is seeing a lot of growth in late 2011 and into 2012.  The advent of many television shows and movies that are collapse oriented has helped to nearly bring  preparedness to the forefront of societal consciousness.  While it is still considered “fringe” by many, the Federal Government is actively promoting preparedness through Ready.gov and many states are developing specific readiness programs.

Modern Preppers have strong concerns about natural and man-made disasters as well as a major concern about the economic stability of the United States.  Preppers also have a large concern about other countries attacking the United States through means such as an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) and Nuclear attacks in general are still a concern.

The APN and the Modern Prepper Movement

One of the goals of the APN is to help teach those who are acting through fear regarding 2012 issues to broaden their view and adopt a Self Reliant lifestyle versus stashing a bunch of stuff in case the Mayans were right.

Since its launch in late 2008, the APN has seen strong growth through its first couple years.  In late 2011, an effort was launched to restructure much of the APN to help appeal and attract a broader audience, specifically those who were just finding out about and getting into Prepping.  Since the start of that effort, the APN has recognized a significant spike in growth that is expected to increase dramatically through ongoing execution of the restructure.

The APN’s official position is that 2012 is just one potential issue we are preparing for but that it is not more important or more of a focus than a super volcano, massive earthquake, a bread winner being incapacitated or complete economic collapse.  The APN philosophy on Preparedness is simply to adapt your life to be more self-reliant so that you are able to sustain your family through any calamity and come out on the other side safely.

4 Business Lessons from Quentin Tarantino Movies

Source - http://bit.ly/X4JbmK - 4 Business Lessons from Quentin Tarantino Movies

Quentin Tarantino films have reached cult status, with universities now offering courses based on issues ranging from race to his use of pop culture references.

We spoke with Robert J. Thompson, professor of Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, and Todd Dewett, a management professor at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio and Tarantino film fan, about what makes Tarantino films so popular, which business lessons his movies teach us, and what we can learn from his career.

 

"[Tarantino's] characters are so compellingly flawed," Thompson says. "They speak in the language regular people understand, dripping in popular culture references people are going to get." While Tarantino films are controversial for their violence, language and subject matter, business lessons can be extracted from them such as what to look for when hiring, how to work with others, and what to look for in training programs.

Here are four business lessons for Quentin Tarantino movies:

1. Find the right training to get to the top of your game.
In Kill Bill: Vols. 1 & 2, Uma Thurman's character, The Bride, seeks revenge against the group who destroyed her life and left her for dead on her wedding day. Her singular focus on getting revenge against Bill and his team fuels her martial arts makeover and she is transformed into a force to be reckoned with.

While revenge isn't the best motivation in business, Thurman's character shows what's possible when effective training programs are implemented. According to Dewett, many training dollars are wasted each year because businesses don't bring in the right person to train their employees. Companies need to find a great teacher, make sure their employees have the motivation to learn new skills, then provide them with an opportunity to use their new skills.

 

2. Assemble a strong team.
Tarantino creates a team of actors that work well together, Dewett says. Other movie producers believe hiring one major movie star will be enough to carry a film to box office glory and are surprised when the movie flops.

Similarly, many companies believe success is achieved by hiring a marquee talent. A fundamental mistake companies make is they look at a candidate's resume and how they perform in an interview with one executive, when they should really see how that individual fits within the existing team, says Dewett. Many times, companies hire someone who looks great on paper, only to discover later they don't mesh well with the rest of the team.

3. Choose quality over quantity.
Tarantino decided to make one movie every few years, allowing him to be fully invested in each endeavor, Dewett notes. He assembles a stellar cast, develops a script with great writing, and takes his time with each project.

Many businesses are in a race with their competition, and "change too much instead of just enough," says Dewett. "A company has a finite capacity for change," he says. He advises against the impulse to 'keep up with the Joneses.' "The best practice for [one company] may not be the best for your company," Dewett cautions.

4. Surround yourself with top talent.
Tarantino has chosen really good projects, most of which he's generated himself, as writer, director, producer and actor, Thompson says. He's known for quirky, but excellent casting, and he's surrounded himself with a team of top-notch talent and production groups, many of whom he's worked with throughout his career, and with good reason, says Dewett.

Directors like Tarantino love candor, useful feedback, and aren't afraid to have difficult conversations. Likewise, in order to run their business successfully, leaders need to surround themselves with employees they can depend on who aren't afraid of conflict.