AnywhereMan

Things have gotten really busy for me with the release of my WordPress customization service, TweakMyTheme.com, a few months back. Today I discuss why it’s helped my business.

Here are links to a few things I mention in this video:

• How I Started a Business on a Saturday Part 1
• How I Started a Business on a Saturday Part 2
• Give Each of Your Products or Services a Website

By building a website and community around each of your products/services, you’ll have a chance to really highlight the great things that you are doing. Pick one thing and try it!

Last August when I attended BizConf down in Jacksonville, I had the pleasure of meeting fellow attendee Brock Picken. There are two things you need about Brock. First, he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. Second, he’s in phenomenal shape and knows a ton about fitness and nutrition. He even spent a few years doing competitive bodybuilding.

When I met Brock, he told me about a site that was in the works where he and his fiance would share health tips, both in blog and video form. Well just yesterday, Brock and Marta successfully launched their new site, FitForTwo.TV.  It is SO cool to see a creative concept blossom into the final product. It’s a GREAT site!

Last fall I had emailed Brock for some workout tips. What he sent me was so fitting for what I do: The Anywhere Workout. It involves no equipment and obviously you can do this workout anywhere. I really got a kick out of that and made the agreement with Brock that I’d wait to mention it on my site until his was live.

Here are the six pieces of the workout as mentioned by Brock and Marta on their site:

Remember this Acronym:

Some Lucky People Deserve Brock & Marta

Perform the following as a continuous circuit, repeating 3-4 times for a 30 minute intense workout. Do 1 minutefor each station, or to failure, whichever comes first. Try to rest very little between each exercise. The less you rest, the harder it is and the more calories you burn!

S – Squats

L – Lunges

P – Plank/Push-ups

D – Dips

B – Burpees

M – Move! – do anything you can to get your heart rate up! Skipping, running on the spot, jumping jacks, etc. are all good at jacking up your heart rate.

They also put together a video outlining this workout, so be sure to check that out as well.  I need to do this one more myself. Summer is coming, and I need to get in shape for some good canoeing!

Congrats, Brock and Marta, on the launch of the new site!

Lately, the virtual version of me has been hanging out on a few other sites. AnywhereMan.com is my main blogging/video home, but in the past few weeks some very exciting opportunities have been presented.

First, I am on a month-long trial as a contributor for a popular web app/software website called MakeUseOf.com. The site has lots of tips, tweaks, and reviews and I’ll be writing there a few times as they test me out (i.e. until they realize I’m just a wannabe blogger!). My first article was published this past weekend and was entitled “3 Ways To Use Google Reader As An Online Archive.” It’s been a fun experience thus far. I mean, I’m writing about web apps and even getting paid to do it. Perfect!

Next, you’ll recall that last week I did the first AnywhereMan interview with Lisa Kanarek. It was a blast! Much of the process of setting up the interview and recording it was made known to me through Andrew Warner at Mixergy.com: home of the ambitious upstart. Andrew’s a great and super bright guy, and my wife and I were lucky enough to spend some time with him when we were at BizConf last summer.

Well, Andrew took a look at my interview with Lisa and the next day one of his guests was unavailable at the last minute. He graciously invited me on his live program to discuss my interview experience and use it as an opportunity to emphasize to his audience the importance of doing interviews. He gave some awesome tips and I learned a lot from him describing some of the things he’s observed. You owe it to yourself to follow Andrew and his future interviews. He’s interviewed some amazing guests like Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss…and he’s just getting started.

Thank you, Andrew, for the opportunity! Folks, stay tuned for a future AnywhereMan interview with Andrew as he is definitely a fellow AnywhereMan (He’s currently doing all of his interviews from Argentina). Here’s my appearance with him last week:

For the past month or so, I’ve been using ShutterCal to upload a daily photo. ShutterCal then displays photos in an actual calendar format making it easy to look back over the past month of photos. As a person who works from home, I discovered some really neat advantages to doing this that I hadn’t thought of prior to using it:

• It forces me to get out of my PJs and into “real” clothes every day as well as comb my hair. Well, maybe not comb my hair. But I can look back and figure out when I last had a haircut. No more going two months between cuts.
• It acts as a daily journal. I can go back and look at past days and look at the context of the photo for an idea of what I did that day.
• It gets my creative juices flowing…easily. Most of the time I shoot my daily photo simply using the webcam on my MacBook. Easy, but creatively challenging to make each photo different somehow.
• It gets me out and about. Looking back over a monthly calendar of photos, it’s easy to spot trends. If too many photos in a row are me sitting in my house, then it’s time to get out.

These are all great things for someone working from home. If you decide to join me on ShutterCal, you’ll find my calendar here. Let’s be friends!

Here is part two of my first “Startup Saturday” in which I built and launched a new business/site in a day. That site is TweakMyTheme.com.

Please note that some of the steps in this process are simple enough for anybody who has the ability to place orders online to complete, i.e. ordering a domain, ordering a hosting account, etc. You’ll see me flash a link in the video, but here’s a link to my exact steps for launching a theme-based WordPress website fast.

Amazing enough, I just publicized this launch for the first time yesterday and I’ve already gotten an overwhelmingly positive response and some potential business.

What kind of business are you thinking of launching? Would the ability to get it off the ground on a single Saturday motivate you to pursuit it?

I love throwing new business ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.This mentality has led me to practice something I call “Startup Saturday” where I essentially launch new web business ventures in a day. Here’s part one of the vlog for my latest launch: TweakMyTheme.com.

TweakMyTheme.com is a WordPress theme customization service. I’ve customized quite a few WP themes in the past, so the service itself is nothing new. However, lately I’ve felt that it’s important to package certain skills into “products” and give them their own website. Sometimes listing everything I do (design, ASP.NET programming, video, SQL design, etc) on a single site results in a watered-down offering. Maybe I should just focus on one of those skills altogether, but that’s another story…

I spent a Saturday a few weeks ago putting the site, plan, and content together. To further complicate my life, while working on the TweakMyTheme site I also came up with two more startup-in-a-day ideas, so I’m already looking for the next free Saturday to launch another one. It’s a lot of fun and I’m getting good practice, if nothing else.

Am I off my rocker? Is it better to launch a lot of “small” businesses and see what works, or do you think one well-planned venture is more powerful?