Welcome to Smuggle Me

We just got the call from the management company that rents us our house. Turns out that the owner of the house has stopped making payments. It’s actually really nice of him to do this since most people don’t find out about it until the notice is on the door that the house is in foreclosure. Needless to say we have a lot to think about now as we decide how to deal with this news.

The news was pretty unfortunate since we had kind of settled into the idea of just staying there for a while. We thought that rent was a little high, but we didn’t want the cost of moving either. Well, I guess now we don’t have that choice it seems.

Of course, if you look at people’s comments on Twitter and Facebook they feel so bad for us. I don’t feel bad for us. Sure, it’s a bit of an annoyance, but we’ve already lived in 3 houses in Las Vegas, might as well live in a fourth.

Plus, there’s always a silver lining to everything. Maybe we’ll get cash for keys and make some money out of this change. Maybe we can get them to lower our rent since he’s not paying the mortgage now anyway. Maybe the new house we move to will be even better than the one we live in now and with lower rent. Renting is still 100 times better than if we’d bought 3-4 years ago and would now be $100k+ upside down on a mortgage.

Certainly, there’s plenty to complain about, but that’s not me. I prefer to see the good parts of whatever happens. Sometimes it’s hard, but for me it just comes naturally.

Get your minds out of the gutter. This is the mile high club for bloggers. I’m writing this post from 30,000 feet on a flight from Las Vegas to Atlanta. This is just awesome. I can’t wait until every flight has this available. Not to mention, I’m watching the Olympics on NBC at the same time. The US just won gold in 4 man bobsled.

I just did a speed test and it’s showing 0.97 Mbps download and 0.25 Mbps upload. Not bad for most of the things that I do. I might have to go test out Youtube and Hulu and some things like that and see how it does. Amazing!

Oh yeah, and the best part is that I got it for free. That a baby!!

Only problem is that now I won’t get any sleep on this red eye flight. Tomorrow’s going to be rough, but it will be so worth it.

I’ve been doig a lot of networking lately. What’s been interesting is the more that I network the greater ability and the more opportunities I have to network.

For example, I just won this little business plan competition. From that I was able to network with some really interesting people that I believe can really provide me and my budding business some amazing benefit. The next step is to turn the talk into action.

As I’ve talked with people about my business I think the one thing that differentiates me from some other people is that I just consistently hammer away at something. Networking is an example of that. You have to just keep going out and seeing what you can make of the experience. Plus, you have to be laser focused on why you’re trying to network. Not that you can’t and shouldn’t talk about them and their needs, but always keep in mind how your business could benefit bot people. Then, you’re getting the best of both worlds. You’re focusing on them, but still finding ways to build your business as well.

Life is a really interesting thing. There are so many things to do each day that you could never do all of them. In fact, you are certain to transgress something or someone in life. It’s just the nature of life.

This really isn’t a problem per se, but it does mean that you have to learn to balance your life. The better you are at balancing your life the happier you’ll be. Plus, if you balance it better I believe you can also get more done.

The key to that is that I believe you’ll get more done when you’re happy. That’s not to say if you’re out of balance you can’t get stuff done. However the sum of all the things you get done will be less. That’s why you have to balance.

Of course, it’s not easy to balance everything in life. In fact, it’s extremely difficult. However, the difficult things are usually those of the most worth.

I’ve read a lot of things in my life that talk about the sacrifices that you have to make to be a successfuk entrepreneur. Not the least of which is Mark Cuban who describes starting a business as a 24×7x365 game. He even goes so far as to salute those entrepeneurs who happily choose their business over their family.

I’ve only met one entrepeneur that I think did a great job balancing the 2. I’m sure there are more, but I remember hearing about a guy who did a great job working his butt off at work, but still made it home at a reasonable time to be with the family. He had to plan better and make it a priority, but he did it.

Of course, in true entrepreneurship fashion, when someone tells me I can’t do it I want to find a way to prove them wrong. We’ll see in a couple years how I’ve done, but I think it’s possible to be an entrepreneur and still a good father. It will take a lot of compartmentalizing and planning, but I’m giving it a whirl.

The way I look at it is that the number one key to being a successful entrepreneur is persistence. It may take longer to be successful, but I think concistence persistence can achieve amazing things. Time will tell.

Trying to start your own business is one of the biggest emotional roller coasters you could ever experience. One moment you feel like your idea is the best idea in the world and will be huge. The next thing you know you can see all of the hairy ugly flaws that exist in your idea. .

The hard thing is that this emotion is something that can happen from moment to moment. No wonder they say that you have to be an optimist to be an entrepeneur.

What’s even more crazy is that this roller coaster ride is why being an entrepreneur is so addicting. It’s some of the highest highs you can feel when something you created is used ans appreciated by a lot of people. It’s downright beautiful. That’s why I love being an entrepreneur.

This weekend I had a little bit of fun and installed BuddyPress. YesN I know I’m twisted to think that is fun. Oh well, it is what it is. I must admit that it was super simple.

I’m really looking forward to using it. I’m planning on using it for my next project. I still need to find a good host for it and create some killer plugins. Hopefully I can get it to work the way I need it to work I’m a little hesitant building this project on top of BuddyPress, but at least it can bridge me until I can hire a true programmer to work with me.

I’m doing some research on using Facebook to market. I’m interested to learn more about people’s experience using Facebook to market. I’d love to hear what you’ve found works and doesn’t work.

Some more specifics of things I’ve been considering is the different between a Facebook Fan page versus a Group page. My understanding is that Group pages are kind of the “legacy” pages that Facebook is slowly phasing out and moving to Fan pages. Is this true? If not, why would you use a Facebook Fan page over a group page or vice versa?

From what I can tell, it makes more sense to have a Fan page. If group pages are indeed being phased out by Facebook, then a Fan page is even more important. However, how do you best make the transition from a group page to a fan page? It’s unfortunate to lose all of those followers when you make the switch. Is there a way to keep all your followers and just convert your group page into a Fan page? If not, Facebook should make a tool for this.

One other question is, “does it matter which category your Fan page is in?” I imagine like most people you could put your fan page in all sorts of categories. Sometimes the categories match great, but most fan pages could be in a number of spots. Does it really matter? Seems to me that it would only matter if you were the top Fan Page in that category maybe?

Ok, there is a start for the discussion. Anyone have some other thoughts on engaging people on Facebook as well?

I’m at a really interesting point in my life. I have a decent day job and I’m making a decent amount of money blogging. That is kind of fun to say that I’m making good money blogging. I feel more like a websit guy than a blogger, but that’s mostly semantics. Anyway, I’m quickly approaching a time in my life where I need to make some decisions.

Inside of me I feel like I need to be an entrepreneur. However, I’m likely one the most risk averse entrepreneurs ever.

The nice thing is that I have my blog income as kind of a foundation for doing a lot more. I just wish it was a touch larger and that I could be more certain of its consistency.

I do have 3 possible choices to pursue (at least logical ones). One is fun, but could never be HUGE so that one is out.

The next idea is reliable and could do well,but could likely never go huge.

The last idea has the most potential, but is my least developed.

Now it’s just a matter of deciding how to proceed.

I just got a Blackberry and I’m surprised how much I like it. Today I decided that I’d try out the WordPress app for blackberry. So, this is my first blog post from the blackberry.

I like it since now I’ll be able to do a lot more blog posting during down time. The small keyboard is kind of a pain, but it’s manageable. The only problem I see with blogging like this is that it’s harder to add links to blog posts also.

Are there any other must have Blackberry apps? I already have email(of course) and Twitter. I also use I’m quite a bit as well. I think I want to look into a Mint.com app if there is one. Are there others I should get?