Josiah Mackenzie

In light of all the work I needed to get done this week, I opted to cut my Detroit trip a day or two short. It’s really more efficient shopping for standard commodities online.

So I drove back home late yesterday night — too late to post. But not before seeing one of these bad boys in Detroit:

Pretty sweet. Leave it to the Motor City.

At any rate, after a short night I got up early this morning to assemble the Young Wealth Weekly newsletter. I’m experimenting with a new type of intro. It may look a little less personal, but hopefully it draws the reader into the content. Plus, I need to make it easy for someone else to publish the newsletter if I can’t.

After the newsletter went out, UPS came with my new XM radio. I had difficulty activating (I swear the online activation doesn’t work in any browser on any platform!), and ended up calling customer service. They have the most unique voice recognition system I’ve seen (heard?) yet. You can talk to the system in conversational style, and it (usually) replies. The technology’s a little rough at the moment, but I can see it saving companies big money in the future. Plus, it beats talking to customer service reps that barely speak english.

That makes me wonder about the role of technology in customer service. Of course the best service is provided by a real, native english speaker, but I suppose companies must cut costs at times. I must say that the best service I’ve ever received from a corporation has been from Cingular. Those guys know what they’re doing.

So the rest of the day was spent listening to XM and planning my future — both short and long-term. This summer I’m going to try to meet personally with all of my key business contacts. It’s so much better planning a joint venture in person over a cup of tea than by using cold, impersonal email.

Currently reading:
Rules For Revolutionaries : The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services by Guy Kawasaki

P.S. I want to join the Huh? Corp….

Being the business-minded college student that I am, I’ve been following Facebook for quite some time now. When I first signed up, they provided a very basic, profiles-only, social networking service for college students. But over the past year, they’ve added many more features to the site — presumably to make it “sticky” and keep visitors there longer.

Of course stickiness should be a goal for any website. It’s how to attract investors, advertisers, and eventually, a buyer. But in the quest for stickiness, companies need to also recognize and avoid “bloat” — the dreaded result of adding too many features that do too little and confuse too many users.

Let’s get practical. One of my favorite Facebook features is the photo albums. Photos naturally go well with a profile-based website. But their new status feature? Who’s going to log in every hour to update their virtual friends on what they are doing? Maybe this is a lifesaver for some Facebook junkies, but I’m guessing that most of their user base will find it just clutters their profile.

Companies wanting to make their websites sticky in a bloat-free manner should ask themselves the following questions:

• Will the feature keep visitors at my site longer?
• Does the proposed feature add value to my site in a significant way?
• Does it overlap with something we already offer?
• Is it ultra-simple to use?

Let me ask you this: what features could you add to your website that would make it “sticky” without making it “bloated”?

This morning I began adding Ajax (”Web 2.0″) functionality to PalPad. For you non-programmers, Ajax basically lets you update the content of a webpage without refreshing the page. It makes web applications look like “real” software, which is pretty cool.

Originally, I was going to outsource all the programming for PalPad. But from past experiences, I know that it often takes nearly the same amount of time to create a detailed spec sheet for a contracted programmer. Since time is crucial right now, I thought I better just go ahead and do it myself.

After making some good headway on PalPad, I had to (unexpectedly) drive my brother to the airport in Detroit. But I made good use of the time by listening to podcasts and audio books. I’ll probably be here for the next couple days to do some shopping for my company. I need to pick up some office furniture and tools, so we’ll see how that goes.

Currently listening to:
Decemberunderground by AFI

Inspired by Brian Watkins, I’ve decided to start a daily journal of my own. Hopefully it will allow you to see what it’s like to live life day-to-day as an entrepreneur. Additionally, it gives me some accountability — which is always good.

I’ve configured Wordpress to omit my daily journal entries from the main page. Both sections have their functions, but I want my main site to focus on information any entrepreneur can use.

Enjoy!

And so begins my daily journal. The idea came from Brian Watkins, and I want to use it as a way for letting you see what it’s like to live as an entrepreneur, as well as to keep myself accountable.

Today I got up at 6 — earlier than usual for a summer morning. I’m experimenting with various sleep patterns to see which is most productive for me. It’s all part of my never-ending quest of achieving peak production.

My monthly shipment of new books arrived from Amazon today. Inside were many excellent books I’m looking forward to reading. I read The Power of Approachability by Scott Ginsberg this morning, and found it fantastic. You can see my review of it on the PalPal pre-launch blog.

I’m very tempted to start wearing a nametag 24/7 like Scott, but that’s his trademark contribution to the field of networking. However, I would like to experiment wearing one for shorter periods of time and see what the results are. Maybe I’ll try it at Getting Started week back at Cedarville.

Another anecdote that caught my attention in the The Power of Approachability was that of two people that sit around New York City with a sign that says “Talk To Me.” They have no hidden agenda — they just chat with curious strangers that stop by to ask what they’re doing. I’d definitely like to try that also sometime.

Currently Listening to:
Right of Way by Ferry Corsten

I love writing how-to articles. It helps others, and in turn, helps your company. But the most exciting thing is seeing where your articles turn up. Usually after writing an article, I’ll submit it to several major article databases for others to use on their websites.

Several days ago I found out that EMMIS Communications — one of the largest radio station holding companies in the nation — selected one of my business networking articles for their career channel. This meant that my article was placed on dozens of high-profile radio stations’ websites across the country, including HOT 97 and KISS FM in New York City — stations reaching approximately 1-2 million listeners each day. My website stats tracker was off the charts!

But everything was not all roses.

First, even though these articles brought an amazing number of people to the PalPad website, the majority of them didn’t belong to my target audience. I guess that’s what you get for being featured next to Sean Paul and Ludacris.

Second, the publicity didn’t come at the best time. I wish my website would have been fully completed, so I could have made a decent sales pitch. But publicity is never predictable, and at least I had a pre-launch site up. I would really be kicking myself if I had one of those “Under Construction” pages up right now.

So what did I learn from all this? Any publicity is good, but try to get featured in media that reaches your target audience.

To converse easily with a wide range of society, you need to know a little bit about everything. Having a broad knowledge of life allows you to ask intelligent questions with anyone you happen to meet.

The other day it suddenly struck me how relatively narrow my knowledge of life really is. Though I’ve made a conscious effort to experience new places, situations, people, and ideas — it’s so easy to get stuck in a pattern of repetitious activities. So to further fight this tendency, I’m going to try an experiment.

For the next 90 days, I will dedicate time each day to intense learning of something I normally wouldn’t be involved in. I’ve made a large list of subjects to study, which typically fall into three categories: 1) a hobby, 2) a sport, and 3) a city, state, or country. For example, today I’m learning about Pottery, Archery, and Helsinki, Finland.

My learning technique is simple:
1) I pick 1 item from each of my 3 lists, and spend 20 minutes “cramming” information on the subject.
2) To do this, I read the Wikipedia article, and if time permits, several other beginner/how-to websites.
3) I make a list of 3-5 “insider” questions I can ask someone who is involved in the subject I’m studying.

After a couple days of trying this, it’s been very effective. I’m excited to see where I’ll be at the end of 90 days.

Due to the huge amount of comment spam I’m getting, I have shut down the comment feature on this blog.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to you! If something I write catches your interest, I’d love to chat with you. The best way to do that is to send me an email directly: