Olympic Champion Shawn Johnson told Bob Costas that before her gold medal on the high beam, she was not feeling well because as expected, she pushed herself to her “physical and mental limit”.
Being the best in sport or business takes serious sacrifice and discipline. Whether it is eating 12,000 calories a day like Michael Phelps or eating peanut butter and jelly for weeks like some entrepreneurs– it’s all about hard work.
These athletes have set their goals, created a plan of attack and had coaches and trainers pushing them to stay on track. Their schedules and discipline allowed them to raise to the become the best in the world.
If you want to be the best in the world in business, it too takes coaches to keep you on track. A board of advisers, mentor, or personal assistant can keep you on track just like Johnson or Phelps’ coaches–but the only person who can really make you achieve your goals is you.
Are you pushing yourself to your physical and mental limit?
Twitter is an excellent tool for engaging in conversation with like minded people on the ‘net. Pose a question, give a recommendation, tell your followers what your reading, post a helpful link, hear what your customers are saying about you, get engaged in the conversation with the market–this type of microblogging can prove extremely helpful in your business—@ZaggedEdge
WANT TO JOIN THE BEST SOCIAL MEDIA TWITTER CONVERSATIONS?
I want to help announce the launch of MindFrenzy.com it’s a supercool online thinktank, where you can come with your business ideas and get advice on them. It’s really simple, concise and has huge potential. Take a look and browse through people’s interesting ideas, comment on them, and network!
Founder Jared O’Toole wrote a blog post on the MindFrenzy Blog here’s what he had to say:
My first reaction to this is a simple one, friends. However I realized that there isn’t really another place I can go for advice. Sure family isn’t a bad option but all to often they don’t have the right mindset. What fellow entrepreneurs see as creative/fresh, family will see as odd/risky.
Don’t get me wrong, going to friends with my ideas is a great resource. They generally have a lot of great input and begin that process of shaping and shifting that idea into something great. But there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to access more people that think like this online. There’s forums for entrepreneurs and maybe you have a lot of contacts on twitter that are entrepreneurs. But I feel it’s hard to get some fresh input from people I have never met or contacted.
Now I’ve used sites like HalfBakery.com and CreativityPool.com which are open idea forums. The problem is that these sites not only generate responses to your idea at a crawl but provide no other platform to take your idea or relationship with someone on the site.
This is one of my reasons for creating MindFrenzy.com. With the hope that down the road we can combine a vibrant community of innovative thinkers with a way to form relationships to bring ideas to life. Join the community to help us reach these goals.
Where do you go for advice or input on your ideas?
There should be a better place for your ideas. MindFrenzy.com
Remember the first time you saw this ad? It’s hard to look at it, it struck a cord, you wanted to help. They first started running this 10 years ago on television.
Today, I saw the above ad as a banner, and didn’t even flinch. This proves that consumers are becoming totally immune to traditional advertising. This ad worked on TV the first few times we saw it, but fell of quickly after that. TV provides a captive audience, who are forced to watch commercials. Of course we usually mute them, talk during them, fast forward them with tivo, or change the channel.
Banner ads are even worse! Nobody is immune to a snapshot like that, but with all the garbage on the internet, we drown this stuff out. This ads effectiveness is wearing off because:
I’ve seen it before
I don’t look at banner ads, my attention is focused on the content of the page
It’s hidden amongst the clutter off my monitor, under im windows, popups, streaming stock quotes, skype conversations and itunes. TV ads are fullscreen and you have nothing else to look at while banner ads are the last thing you look at.
Check out the difference, when you maximize this commercial below:
Traditional advertising is dying. We are immune and the non profit behind these ads needs to rethink where they are spending their funds. They should steal a page out of smoking’s Truth campaign creative advertising…
Why not have volunteers go to Times Square wearing masks to raise awareness and hand out fliers. Video tape onlookers reactions and put it on YouTube. Arrange for news crews to cover this. This type of advertising is less expensive AND get’s people talking…I hope this post does too.
Digg and Stumble this in hope for donations to Operation Smile
(NEW YORK) – Brooklyn, NY has always been a place of radical change; in the past decade there have been a number of small businesses that have pledged their allegiance to begin in Brooklyn and thrive in Brooklyn. One of these companies is NYC Freeride, which, is amongst some of the premier mountain biking component companies claiming refuge in the heart of Brooklyn.
As a progressive company NYC Freeride has been open to exploring new ideas and ways to promote their brand as well as streamline their operations. One of these new ideas is a partnership with a radical new company Xpparel. The premise behind the partnership is the delegation of all NYC Freeride branded apparel to Xpparel. NYC Freeride gets to produce their products and Xpparel manages the apparel lines from start to finish; all the while leaving NYC Freeride to focus on what they do best; making components.
Founder and President of NYC Freeride Andrew Grossi commented on the importance of branded apparel saying, “It’s become clear in the extreme sports industry that apparel sales drive a brand. As much as we love seeing our components as a platform for our brand, there’s no doubt that branded apparel builds brand recognition”.
Xpparel founders Matt Wilson and Rob Ianelli are eager to develop the construction and enhancement of apparel lines for the extreme sports industry.Wilson was quoted saying, “We are looking to build Xpparel.com into a one-stop shop to find clothing from your favorite niche action sports company”. Xpparel provides both a streamlined apparel solution for extreme sports gear manufacturers as well as provide a distinct website for niche extreme sports enthusiasts to purchase apparel they identify with and want to represent.
As of now NYC Freeride apparel can be found on their website www.nycfreeride.com as well as Xpparel.com Customers can choose from current styles of shirts and accessories. For more information on Xpparel email direct Matt AT HipVisions DOT com
HOW DOES A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE ON GOOGLE KNOL POP UP BEFORE THE HOMEPAGE FOR GOOGLE KNOL?!
If Google Knol is supposed to be the competitor to Wikipedia how can they let Wikipedia beat them at their own game? Search results are supposed to be organic, but come on Knol’s are supposed to be optimized for google search results! Where is the Knol on Google Knol?! Not on the first page.
A simple google query of “Knol” google’s new competitor to Wikipedia is not so pretty. Sure, Google has bought that adword from its self, but maybe Knol wasn’t such a good choice for a name.
Whenever you name something, you always need to google it first, see what’s out there, how hard it will be to get to the top of the search engine results. When i chose the header at the top of my blog, i figured “lifestyle experiments” was an under used keyword, and now here I am #3 on google right after Tim Ferriss. If anyone should know this it would be Google!
Knol pops up as the sponsored link, which we often overlook, then we see the stock quote for KNOL, then we see google’s blog, then WIKIPEDIA on a knol and finally knol.google.com
“This is the story of a bus full of bad-asses on a mission to break as many of the most insane and ridiculous feats on record as humanly possible.”
SORRY MTV, but this is being submitted to the fail blog. Why? Becuase just like most of MTV, it’s not real and it sucked. A novel idea, but they ruined the concept. How? Just take a look at this garbage:
“Your watching call to greatness and you rock!” ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The stupid dances, the scripted lines. People want to see naturally interesting people like Rob Dydrek breaking records and being himself.
The stupid dances and jalapeno exaggerations can be found here http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1527011&vid=83991
Companies start with a grassroots, viral marketing strategy, but Brendan Lynch and Sergio Salas have taken the idea one step further with their new surf-inspired, eco-friendly clothing company nvohk. The apparel brand, which is still in the design phase, is using a creative business model, known by a variety of names like crowdsourcing, crowdfounding, and community managed, that raises small amounts of money from a large group of members and allows them to shape the direction of the company.
Salas and Lynch met in 2005 in Pepperdine’s MBA program and launched nvohk in December of ‘07 through word of mouth and the projectnvohk.com Web site. They started by getting commitments from interested parties for $50 that would be submitted when the brand had enough momentum to launch a product line. Within two months 1,250 people had pledged support, and by the beginning of May, the tally was at 2,800 folks from more than 20 nations.
nvohk Co-founder Brendan Lynch
“nvohk is challenging the way brands are built and managed and testing the ‘wisdom of crowds’ on a whole new level,” says Lynch. “Before nvohk, consumers could only vote with their wallets, now they can participate in the development and management of the brand they wear. nvohk’s business model starts with member demand and word of mouth marketing baked in before products are even offered for sale.”
