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“You’ve got to find what you love”

Published on April 29, 2008 in Uncategorized, business, mom and personal.

I’m sure I’ve written on this speech one, two, or ten times already but for some reason it resurfaced this morning for me. I thought about it a little differently today. Steve pleads eloquently in the speech for us to blaze a path of passion in our lives:

Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

But this morning it hit me: I don’t really know what this looks like or certainly not what this feels like. I’ve heard “follow your passion,” in about a million different ways, but the truth is this notion is really abstract for me. It’s like someone telling me “be a billionaire.” I might have some image in my head of what that may look like, and perhaps some ideas of what it may feel like, but ultimately I know almost nothing about living like a billionaire. The same is true for me when I hear people say “follow your passion.” I don’t know what that means, what that looks like, or where that is. So how do you get directions when you don’t know where you are going?

You get lost. I really want so badly for someone to sit me down and say “go there, do this,” but unfortunately this won’t work. It wouldn’t work for anyone. It reminds me a lot of the story my mom told me about learning to ride my bike. I tried to learn at a very early age, and I was determined to get it very quickly. I didn’t want to screw around with the process, I just wanted to ride. So after an hour or so of falling, I lost it. I screamed at my mom to just “tell me how to balance.” I felt that learning to balance was something you could be told how to do, as if my mom was holding the secret over me for her own enjoyment. That obviously was not the case. You have to feel your own way, fall a few (dozen) times, until it clicks.

The same is true for “finding what you love.” You can’t follow a recipe for success (although there is an enormous industry built on the premise that you can). There is no “one size” fits all here. But there are themes. I think you can read about, meet with, learn from those who apparently have found their way. I’m really interested in talking with and meeting more people who have “found what they love.” I know they can’t tell me how to do it, but perhaps I can learn a few tricks of their trade. This isn’t some ancient secret hidden from us all, this is something real people are doing everyday. I’m going to find my way, I figure I just might have to fall a few (dozen) times. It can’t hurt to talk to some people who already have their balance.

Updating…

Published on December 28, 2005 in Uncategorized.

As you can tell, I’m in the process of updating the design/layout of danputt.com. Since I really don’t have any experience in programming, it’s definitely been a frustrating and educational endeavor. I’m interested to see how this whole thing will turn out, bear with me.

The most wonderful person in the world.

Published on December 18, 2005 in Uncategorized.

My mom, the most wonderful, loving, caring, passionate, curious, life-loving, person I’ve ever known moved on this morning at 916 am. She was 52. She was surrounded by the ones she loved most, and went peacefully while being held, loved, praised, and thanked. She will be remembered always as the woman who loved to learn, loved to teach, loved to read, loved being a mother, her kids, gold finches, the spring, walks in the park, the ocean, the beach, turtles, gardening, the trees, Christmas, chocolate, ice cream, Thanksgiving, bragging about her kids, her car, astrology, the moon, the stars, the weather, and the love of her life, Tom. Without a doubt, she is the strongest woman I’ve ever known. She stared down an overwhelmingly powerful disease that refused to let go, and with an unbelievable amount of strength she held it back and squeezed out all the time she could. She was determined to see her daughter marry in Maine. She was determined to enjoy her daughter’s wedding reception in Cincinnati. She was determined to see my graduation. She did all of those things and more. She always, despite her pain and sufferings, had to put others first, up to the very end.

My mom’s impact on this world by no means ended this morning. Those who knew her will continually be guided by the love and lessons she provided. And the many who were so deeply affected, will undoubtedly share the love and curiosity for life my mom so passionately shared.

I could never write something that would even come close in putting into words just how incredibly my mom was. I owe everything of who I am, who I want to be, and what I’ll do in this life time to my mother. I truly believe that the deep love I feel for my mom could only be the result of a very long, ancient, loving relationship going back hundreds of years. She really believed in reincarnation, and she always said “we’ve been together before, and we’ll be together again.” She herself faced many deaths of loved ones in her life, but she always maintained a positive attitude. She always said, “death is as natural and beautiful as birth.”

She’s moved beyond the body that failed her, but her powerful spirit continues on. I appreciate all the love and respect you all have shared with my wonderful mother throughout her short time here. I can assure you that she valued, enjoyed, and learned from every relationship she ever had. And even if she just knew you for a moment, she cared for you. That was my mother.

Mom, you are the most important person in my life. I love you with all my heart.

The first of several celebrations of my mom’s life is planned Thursday December 22, 2005 (perfect for my mother as it is the first day when the days begin to get longer after the winter soltice) at the Life Success Conference center starting at 7pm, but we welcome everyone at 6:30pm. A map and directions can be found at this link:
http://tinyurl.com/d5236

In lieu of flowers, we ask that you send a donation to the Nature Conservancy, an organization my mom truly loved and believed in. You can make donation in her name, Laurie Putt, by calling (800) 628-6860 or sending your donation to:

The Nature Conservancy
4245 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 100
Arlington, VA 22203-1606

Please feel free to post a favorite memory of my mom below, or by sending me an email:
danputt1ATgmail.com
Thank you again for all you did for my mother,
Dan

$731

Published on December 8, 2005 in Uncategorized.

Best day yet in my affiliate marketing project. Yesterday I generated $1,186 in COMMISSIONS on sales (sales I created for the company I have an affiliate relationship with) of $49,679!!!. My net for the day was $731, which is an annual income of $266,000 (of course it will take a serious amount of effort to maintain this level after Christmas spending sprees die off). Not bad for something I just wanted to play around with. I really have a lot of fun playing with this, and I’ve basically gotten a fairly in depth education in ppc marketing on someone else’s dollar. So now when I’m ready to market for my own businesses in the future, I will have all the tools I need. But I can see that it really is possible to make an incredible living on the internet without buying any goods to sell, paying any programmers, or even owning a website!

I also expanded my little operation by opening a new credit card that has no interests/no fees for 12 months. I’m currently putting my advertising charges on to this card so that I don’t have to worry about carrying an interest bearing balance on cards while I wait for my commission checks to come in the mail (supposedly no later than 30 days from the end of the calendar month). My biggest complaint is that google only extends "credit" of $500 on beginner advertising accounts. Basically they will not let my advertising amount payable go above $500, regardless of time period. So if I spend $500 in a day on advertising (which I’ve done twice), they charge my credit card at the end of the day. This is incredibly annoying. In the perfect world, I would accrue advertising expenses over a 30 day period, and then the balance would be billed to my credit card at the end of those 30 days. Therefore I would have an additional 30 days to be billed for that amount on my credit card, and potentially another 30 days to pay it off. The potential 90 day float would make paying off bills (even on interest bearing cards) a snap. But google denied my request for more credit (too new of an account apparently). Despite that annoying little feature, this business model is incredibly easy to manage financially. At this point the only issue I may run into is not having enough credit.

By the way, my current ROI is around 67%, thus I’m earning roughly .67 for every $1 I put in. Not too shabby.

Niche, Niche, Niche

Published on December 7, 2005 in Uncategorized.

I’ve been struggling lately in developing the next product offering from Call True. I know, I know, you say why not focus on what you have now? I can’t. I’m not happy with it, and I absolutely need a new product with a more defined purpose. I know that we will probably redefine our niche a 100 times over the next few years, but our current strategy of just going after anyone with a website doesn’t feel productive. How can we possibly build a comprehensive product for everyone? My good friend and business partner yesterday told me "we do have a niche, we’re going to become the 1 provider of click to call in the world." Sounds good right? I don’t think so, let’s do a scenario to clarify:

Let’s say you want to create some jeans that will work for everyone. So you create a pair of elastic waistband jeans that fits everyone in the country (from little kids to Big, Big guys). Sure your market potential is enormous, but the reality is you’re not going to really appeal to anyone. For the little guys those jeans will be huge, awkward and uncomfortable. They will only buy those jeans if your price is low enough. For the big guys they’re really going to have to stretch those jeans out to fit right, which will make them tight, awkward, and uncomfortable. They also will only buy if the price is low enough. But you say the big and tall guys are paying $100 for a pair of jeans, why wouldn’t they pay $75 for ours? Well the $100 jeans is the #1 pair for the big and tall market, and as a defined expert in that space they can command a better price. It doesn’t matter if mine are cheaper, they aren’t built exclusively for big and tall.

In the world of Internet commerce building a niche is even more important in determining success. Look at google, yes they are huge but they are still very much a niche play. Their goal simply is to develop and maintain the best search engine in the world. Everything else they do is a direct result of their claim, and delivery of the best search results on the Internet.
My favorite example of defining a niche is one I heard in a recent episode of the fantastic podcast, Venture Voice (it’s nothing but weekly 30 minute interviews with entrepreneurs) with the founder of Fog Creek Software. Fog Creek was started by a former Microsoft employee, his blog, and when he first started the company he set out to be a software consulting company. His goal was to advise companies on software issues, and build customized software for companies. The problem is there are tons of companies out there doing that, including one called IBM. Joel’s company had a few clients, made a little bit of money but never really got anywhere. Until they really get hit hard by the dotcom bust, and were forced to fire all their employees after losing all their clients. He went back to the drawing board, and focused on building good software. He realized that as a programmer he really had difficulty sniffing out the bugs within his code. So he built a little program to do just that. And as the consulting jobs starting coming back in again, he sort of put the debugging program he had written up for sale for others to enjoy. And the orders started coming in, slowly but surely. He was shocked. He thought to himself, "can there be enough programmers in the world to make this worthwhile?" Ultimately he chose to drop everything, and become the number 1 provider of debugging software in the world. Sure there are a lot of ocmpanies with debugging software (microsoft included), but joel’s is the most popular. He is after all the only company that really focuses on debugging software all year long, thus he has a better product he can charge more for, and he has incredible customer loyalty. Did it work? On the morning of that podcast he had sold nearly $10,000 worth of software already! He readily admits, if he hadn’t found his niche he’d be nowhere.

Niche first, expand later. Conquering your industry is a step by step process. Do one thing, really, really, really well now. You’ll be rewarded. For me becoming the "number 1 provider of click to call solutions" starts with one niche, in one industry, with a set customer in mind.

I think I’ve found our niche. I’ll keep you posted.

Intention Update:
intention for $1 million dollars this year: current income since intention - $5,800
intention for mom’s good health: she’s up walking, cooking etc so there is a definite improvement
intention for call true to reach $5 million in 12 months: we’re finding our niche and making connections in that niche as well as connecting with potential programmers.

Advertising as a pure market

Published on December 1, 2005 in Uncategorized.

After reading Fred Wilson’s post on “When is a market really a market?” I really started thinking about the future of advertising as more of a futures market. I completely agree with him in the sense that the current setup, although moving in the right direction, is still definitely lacking in the liquidity and transparency needed for a true “market.” It is really impossible to know how much someone like Microsoft is paying on each ad within their massive XBOX 360 campaign, nor is it impossible for anyone other than publishers to “invest,” (by invest, I mean placing ads pay per performance ads within their website) in this campaign. But after running my recent adwords arbitrage, I am starting to see how online advertising along with affiliate programs is moving us closer towards a true advertising market, or really a market where leads can be bought or sold. I believe that the future of advertising is really this, which is very similar to existing affiliates market:

Walmart wants buyers. So they list on a “leads exchange” that they are looking for buyers of say Product A, and they are willing to pay $10 per sale to anyone who gives them a lead for that sale, up until 1 million of product A’s being sold. They don’t care where the leads come from, or how so and so gets the leads to them, just that they’ll pay $10 for each sale. Anyone and everyone can see this, it’s completely transparent. So Company A knows that they have a lot of people coming into their shop/restaurant/website who would love Product A, but they don’t sell any products similar to it. So they make it known to their visitors/patrons/etc that Walmart is selling product A, and this is what it does, etc, head out and get it. Their cost to promote product A is only $3 per sale in opportunity cost(space, time, etc) or actual cost so they net $7 per lead and everyone is happy. It’s amazing because Walmart doesn’t have to worry about spending money on advertising, preparing the best marketing message, or figuring out how to target their target market. All of the risk is handed off to lead generators, who believe they know more about Product A’s customers, or have access to more of them than Walmart does and therefore can reach them in a more cost effective way. It also gives walmart a sense of the potential success of Product A by providing them a real time glimpse into the marketplace’s willingness to actively promote the product or not. And Walmart knows exactly their cost per goods sold ahead of them actually being sold! There would have to be active players in this market as well providing the liquidity and keeping the active transfer of commissions and lead generators open. I can’t really seem to wrap my head around where the money is made in the middle, and I know there are some holes in this. UPDATE: I’ve been thinking that the value in the middle could be created by middle advertisers. For example I run a website that talks all about Product A. So in addition to making the $10 per sale in my own promotions, I also am willing pay others for just qualified visitors. And I know that most people could get a say 5% conversion of traffic to buyers promoting product A, but I could get 15% conversion from customers. Therefore I’d be willing to pay people a certain amount just to drive traffic to my site/store/whatever because I know more people will buy from me, and they’re willing to send them my way because of the guaranteed return. But the key here is that “affiliate” programs can and will be moved off the net and into the real world. Companies will be able to effectively monetize friendly discussions (you should check out this), just as amazon has monetized book recommendations (blogs and affiliate links). I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and will continue to do so.

Bottom line, big things are happening and I’m excited to see where they go.

Using Gmail to publish on blogger

Published on November 29, 2005 in Uncategorized.

If you’re like me, and I think that you are, you hate publishing posts within blogger. Their spell checker is terrible, and generally I find the system crappy. I realize that it works fairly well if you are posting pictures, but for the most part I think it sucks. So here is a feature I recommend. You can publish posts directly from your email (I use gmail, it’s amazing). Just go into your blogger account settings, click on the email tab and set your blog posting email address. Once you’ve set this address, you can compose and send posts directly to your blog (by sending an email to your blogger email address). I will probably post more often now that I can avoid the blogger interface. Check it out.

For more go here:
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=135&topic=38

updates

Published on November 29, 2005 in Uncategorized.

This intention stuff really does work! Since my last update (I apologize for the delays, it’s been one of those weeks where you didn’t want to write anything), I have done really well on advancing some of my intentions. I have created an additional $1100 in income in a little over a week towards my extra $1 million within 12 months! I have also made some decisions concerning Call True that I know will move us much closer towards that $5 million revenue goal as well. My mother’s health is improving, although we have a long way to go. I have to remind myself that the condition she is in now is a result of the past, and no indication of the future. If we continue to practice healing procedures, maintain a positive attitude, and continually believe in the intention for her recovery to health, she will recover. The key to realizing your intentions is to truly believe in them. It’s one thing to say “I’ll make a million dollars,” but quite another to truly believe it. It’s amazing how easy it is to doubt personal intentions. I doubt there are few people in this country who can look at themselves in the mirror and say “I’ll make $1 million dollars this year,” and truly, truly believe it. Most people have clouds of doubts swirling within them (either consciously or subconsciously) the second those words come out of their mouth. Why is that? What’s the point? Is that a natural safety mechanism to prevent future let down? I feel like those doubts do way more harm then good. They prevent instead of protect. Believing in an intention is like white water rafting without the paddle. Just throw it out of the boat, and let it go. All you can do is keep believing in your direction, keep your eyes, ears, and guts open for changes in direction, and enjoy the ride. I guarantee you’ll get there, maybe not how you originally envisioned, but you’ll get there.

I plan on phasing out intention only posts, but will continue to have updates on my intentions a few times a week going forward.

My list of intentions (a new one):

I intend for an energetic, fearless, innovative, creative, passionate programmer who shares my web interests, enjoys my vision for a better click to call product, believes in myself and the company, is fun, and ready to change the world one customer at a time by the middle of January 2006.

In a natural way I intend for an experienced, excited, ideals driven, fearless, innovative organizer manager who is obsessed with creating a company that makes the world for customer’s a better place.

In an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all, I intend $1,000,000 to come into my life and into the lives of everyone who holds this intention over the next 12 months

For the good of us all, in a happy, easy going, positive, healthy, effective, organic yet rapid way, I intend for Call True to reach $5 million in revenues in the next 12 months.

In a natural, low pain, high growth, care free, happy, healthy, positive way, I intend my mom to make a full recovery to a stronger, healthier, and happier body than she has ever had before in the shortest period of time necessary.

the push towards the $1 million extra income continues

Published on November 22, 2005 in Uncategorized.

Well surprisingly a lot has happened since my last blog post about my intention towards an extra million dollars in income this year. Following up on a fantastic article I recently read about harnessing the power of online lead generation, I have quickly developed a pretty solid money generating system. Basically what I’m doing is lead arbitrage. A big retailer I have become an affiliate for is willing to pay $x amount for a buyer of this product. As long as I’m able to keep my cost under $x per lead, I’ll make money. And thanks to the power of the internet, even if I’m making $.25 per lead, I can easily do that 100 if not 1,000’s of times a day. Well I’ve been able to do just that, and I’ve grossed nearly $800 since last wednesday, and netted around $400. These numbers aren’t going to always be the case, but the big retailer I’ve signed up to work with is paying double commissions on your first month (if you generate over $100 in sales, which is something I crossed in the first hour and I hit $5265 in total sales yesterday). So I have a lot of wiggle room to learn the system and constantly refine my strategy. I have definitely seen how easily you can make, and lose money on this. It can happen in a flash, especially if you are not careful. But I can also see how quickly trends emerge, and how if you track all the data you can you really will start to develop a system. For example, I thought that it would be reasonable to get 10% of my leads convert to sales. I figured if I was doing highly targeted advertising, I would get a higher proportion of people buying. So I set my per lead cost to slightly less than 10% of my commissions. I was definitely wrong about that number. I’ve found with pretty good stability that the lead to sale conversion is pretty close to always 5%. So as long as I keep my per lead cost below 5% of my commission, I’ll make money (which is exactly what has happened over the last 3 days). Now even though I’ve been reading feverishly over this (not to mention working very hard on Call True’s new year sales plan, 50-50 for 50 in 50), I still have so much to learn. But I can say that internet based leads is a remarkable system, and my brain recently has been buzzing with possibilities for all the industries that haven’t even begun using the power of internet lead generation. I really envision a future where leads can be prepurchased or invested in like options and stocks are traded today. You want to buy leads for “a new ford truck,” you can do so with ease. But an early “investor” is rewarded with a head start in refining their plan, improving CTR (click through rate), and thus paying less per lead than a newcomer. I can see massive companies conducting lead arbitrage where they’ve figured out how to maximize CTR for say “First mortgage,” searches at $.35 cents per click and they’re willing to direct those leads to the highest bidding mortgage company (maybe someone who’d pay .45 or even .55 cents a click). There really are endless possiblities, but they all have the same result. More targeted leads for companies, at a lower cost than ever thought possible, more often.

Isn’t the internet fun?

Intention update

Published on November 17, 2005 in Uncategorized.

I’m reviewing the intentions I put out last week for any progress. I believe the real power of intentions is that you become more aware of opportunities around you.

Last week’s intentions:

My mom has made a pretty remarkable improvement since Wednesday evening. The first half of last week she was really uncomfortable, had difficulty getting around on her own, and had terrible headaches. She has since done a complete 180, walking around on her own, taking care of herself as she always had, and feeling better and better everday (other than losing hair). I didn’t really tie this turn around with my intention from last monday, but I believe I’m already seeing the beginning this intention becoming real. I have to attribute some of her turn around to the homeopathic medicine I purchased for her, and she has been taking religiously. I’ll keep you updated, but we’re on the right path.

For the good of us all, in a happy, easy going, positive, healthy, effective, organic yet rapid way, I intend for Call True to reach $5 million in revenues in the next 12 months.

While we have no new revenues for Call True to speak of, I can say that a clearer picture of the company, it’s roles, goals, and development has become visible over the last week. We’ve developed and are initiating a very aggressive sales campaign starting the first of the new year (50-50 for 50 in 50). I had a great meeting with Rich Langdale who provided some guidance on moving the company forward, and possibly helping us. We’re two steps closer to completing the first stage of product development as well (we’re going to have a completely unique product in the marketplace). Again, steps in the right direction.

I’m also going to add his intention as one of my own:
In an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all, I intend $1,000,000 to come into my life and into the lives of everyone who holds this intention

I definitely have seen some action in this intention with my discovery of an amazing article in Business 2.0 detailing a successful online affiliate campaign. I did recognize this article as a manifestion of my intention above, and immediately acted on it. While it took a lot of work to get everything setup, I’m now up and running. I’m running an ad campaign on Google adwords (I love adwords, even though it really can burn through money), and I had over 200 clicks yesterday (my daily budget is set at $60). I estimated my conversion rate would be at 10% (I did highly targeted advertising, only going after people looking to buy the product). Unfortunately for some incredibly stupid reason, my affiliate company takes up to 48 hours to report the results of my campaign (How is this possible? I would think the results could easily be shown in near real time like Adwords). So I don’t know how I did (I may have just blown through $60). I did break even from my first trial on monday where I ran $8.39 worth of ads, and made one sale for a commission of $8.09 (loss of 30 cents) on 34 clicks. That’s a 3% conversion rate (ouch). Based on that, last night I had 224 clicks or 6 sales @ an average commission of $7.50, or $45 ( a $15 loss) (The goal is to hit that 10%, which would put me at 22 sales last night for a total of $165 or a profit of $105) . Well, I guess it will take some tweaking, figuring out which products work and which products don’t, as well as weeding out keywords that are generating traffic, but not sales. Anyway, there is money to be made in this, it’s just a matter of learning, improving, learning, and improving. It sure is fun though.

I guess my point is, when you have intentions, your eyes are more open and therefore you’re more likely to act on things that seem to be in line with your intentions, thus making your intentions more likely to come true. There’s no doubt within you, or the world what you want, which certainly makes it easier to get. Put your intentions out there, listen, and you’ll find your way to it (and it will find its way to you).