As long as you have a web cam, you don’t need any special equipment.

This short video will walk you through everything you need.  Send me your webcam videos – PG only please  : )

Jim

On one side of the spectrum, I’ve heard to brand your name, because this is the only thing you can take with you. on the other side – creating a company name shows your committed to a product or service.

One of my companies, Logistics Modeling Center Inc., was named to relate to a very specific purpose – modeling logistics processes. I wish I can say that’s all we have done. What we’ve experienced is the same scenario that most small businesses that are bootstrapping their operations experience – we made money any way we could. Sure we started with the focus on Logistics, but then it strayed to Supply Chain, Computer Programming, Presentations, and even Marketing. Our name became a liability whenever we were going after non Logistics contracts. Today, we’ve decided to re-brand ourselves LMCI Consulting to circumvent this issue.

So why didn’t we name our company Carrillo and Uribes Engineering? (or Uribes and Carrillo Engineering if my partner is reading this)…. I had a good long discussion with a colleague about this, and we both came to the conclusion that it came down to insecurity. Here’s an example of what I might say to myself, “Nobody will take us seriously if they knew I was the Company Founder.” Seriously, that’s what I think (or thought at the time). Now that I look back, why would a person take LMCI any more seriously then Carrillo? Well, if I was insecure about myself, I might not value Carrillo as much as four obscure initials. So my first realization in figuring out how to name a company was that you have to get past the insecurities.

With that out of the way, I broke the problem down into workable pieces, and came up with these simple questions.

Does the product your selling depend on you? For Public Speakers for example, the content might be what the customer is buying, but they are only buying it because it’s being delivered by a specific person. If the product depends on the person delivering it – brand the company using your name. You can have multiple products, but name the company after the person. For example, “Jim Carrillo’s Practical Technology”, Jim Carrillo’s Social Networking 101″, etc. The company would simply be Jim Carrillo Presents.

If the product doesn’t depend on you, and can be sold without any ties to a person (like a consulting service, or physical product), then create a company name. A friend of mine has a company called Eat My Words. Her company names other companies. Alexandra may own the company, but she has a staff, and I can easily see her opening up multiple offices across the country. Alexandra named the company in a way that is independent of her as a person, and promotes a very specific service. So if the product doesn’t depend on you, choose a catchy name. I am an owner of LMCI consulting, and I only contribute to 10% of our overall income (it operates independent of me).

If you decide to choose a product/service focused name, and not your personal name, how do you figure out the best one to use? That’s a question for a naming company! Visit my friend’s company at http://www.eatmywords.com/

I paid $1000 for my system (AllCapture) four years ago. While it has some features I really like (like being able to cut elements), this one has new features I’ve always wanted, like webcam in video, record audio with video, or separately, etc… If you’ve ever had to walk a client through anything on the computer (even if it’s filling out your order form on your website), this free online system is a no brainer.

Jim

If you would like to download the presentation that was given in Power Point format, please CLICK THIS LINK. It is saved in a format that does not require you to have power point on your computer, and will play as a presentation.

I’ve also recorded an online video of the presentation if you’re interested in hearing my voice and presentation to the slides. Bring your Family, Friends, and Neighbors – gather around the computer with popcorn – and enjoy.

Click for Video Presentation

1. could write posts
2. had member profile page
3. could create private pages
4. be identified in the “list of members”

It took me a good month to find all the right plugins for wordpress to make it humm just like I wanted it to.  I was so confident in the setup, I offered to create a site for a friend of mine for her group.  Oh how the cocky fall hard!

Two days after my offer, she writes me a note saying, “Don’t worry Jim, I have it all figured out.”  Now I know she couldn’t pull the WordPress stuff together that quickly!  She also wrote in her note, “Check out Ning.com”

There you go.  This company Ning is to Social Networking what WordPress is to Blogs/Websites (almost).  Now they do have advertising on the site, and you have to live with the “ning” branding, but then 99% of all social networking sites have ads on them, so I don’t think that matters.  In fact, for $29 per month, you can take control of the ads (or get rid of them).

So let’s do a cost benefit analysis.  It took me a month to figure out how to tweak WordPress (let’s say 20 hours), and maintaining it is about an hour a month.  Even if I only value my time around $20 an hour, that’s $400 to setup, and $240 for maintenance.

Ning - 15 minutes to setup, and maintenance is seemless.  Even if I paid to remove the ads, we’re talking $360 per year.  While it’s a little cheaper for Wordpress, there are 1000 more features on Ning that I could Never code!

As for my opinion on the ads – who cares, leave them.  What about the domain name?  Who cares again.  For instance, look at the following:

Company A has a website:
www.companya.com

Their Blog is at
www.blog.companya.com

Their Social Network/Member site would be
www.companya.ning.com

Ning, Blog, blah blah blah – people aren’t so worried abou that stuff anymore.  I definitely dont’ think you should have ads on your website, but the rules on a social network site are much more relaxed.

Go find your passion, get your members, and go ning!

We took a look at the following sites:
Face Book
Linked In
Twitter
Wordpress
NSA ProTrack

To watch this recorded session, simply click on this link.

1. create a website – once you have a website, customers will find you on Google, and buy everything you have
2. purchase advertising – you just need to accept that a cost of business is advertising, and when you accept this – people will buy your products
3. create a remarkable product – make your product something people will remark on, and you will have the Midas touch

I call BS on these and the numerous things that “I need to do…”  Many of them are rooted in solid truth, but the problem comes from the implication that the one suggestion is “all you need to do.”

Now to prove my point, I’d like to test the third one above – a remarkable product.  This one would seem so painfully obvious, that if you can create a remarkable product, truly you’d be succesfful in business, right?  I don’t think so – I actually think the formula (if one exists) is far more complicated then that.

So what is a remarkable product?  It’s fair to say, one that people would remark to others about.  That the value of the product is so great, people will be better off buying this product, then they would be if they didn’t.

How do you create a remarkable product then?  My suggestion is to sell a twenty dollar bill for $10.  This may sound ridiculous, but you can’t argue the value customers would get for this purchase.  Besides, I’ve spent more money on web design, advertising, and product development in my businesses that I wish I could have limited my losses to only $10 per item in some cases.

So where’s the buy button you say?  When I can afford to pay my web developer to build it, I’ll start selling my first remarkable product.

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1. No Tricks - Like everything in life, cheaters never prosper. Google makes their living on ranking pages effectively on their search engine. Any tricks that can cause their system to put the wrong pages at the top will make them look bad – and they’ll do everything they can to prevent this. Any trick today will become a liability tomorrow. The same goes for links to those web pages, or schemes, just to increase your ranking. Google responds quickly and harshly to this type of behaviors. Google rewards sites with good information that people like. If you keep that in mind, you’ll do fine.
2. META is for People - Meta, a prefix in the English language roughly translating to “about”, is a carryover html tag from the good old days (mid to late 90’s) that web developers used to load with searchable words. Search Engines in the early days relied on these tags, or META tags, to classify sites. This then became one of the biggest tricks people used to fool search engines. Today’s search engines are smarter, and instead look through the text of the website for these searchable words, or key words. Google now only uses the META tag as the description that is show when displaying search results. WordPress manages the creation of META tags for you.
3. SiteMaps are a Must - Not sure what site maps are? You’re not alone; it’s a difficult concept to implement. This is probably the best service a consultant can provide for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A SiteMap is basically a single page that identifies all pages on your site, and a simple way to access them – it’s really only important for search engines to make it easy to find all your pages. There are very simple ways to implement a SiteMap for your site. If you use WordPress, you can install a free plugin, “All in One SEO Pack” that manages all this for you without any skill required.
4. Submit to Search Engines – Once your site is up and running you’ll want to submit your URL to web directories, like Google, Yahoo and other free directories. There are many that will to link to your site and visitors can learn of your site and Blog. To make it easy on yourself, use WordPress, and install the free plugin, “All in One SEO Pack”. This plugin will submit your site for you anytime you update a page.
5. Give Images Descriptions – When most people upload images to their site, they don’t provide a description. Why should you, a picture’s worth a thousand words isn’t it? True – but Google doesn’t have eyes. Google will look at the descriptions of your pictures to help categorize your site. Use those special key words in the titles and description of your picture too, and it will pay off. Many content management systems (CMS), including WordPress, provide this ability by simply filling in a form.
6. Simple Site Navigation – Creating new pages for the sake of creating pages is fun, but if Google can’t find them, they aren’t worth anything (to Google). Make sure each of your pages is either referenced through a menu of pages, or linked to one of your main pages within the text. Special hidden pages can be a fun way to create member only content, but Google won’t be able to find them. For WordPress users, not a problem, all pages are automatically added to the sidebar of each and every page (Google loves that!)
7. Links – This is one of the easiest ways to improve your ranking on Google. Make sure your site links to other sites, and other sites link to you. This can be done many ways, but the easiest is by people commenting on your Blog, and you commenting on theirs. Each comment has a website linked to it. The more comments you make on other Blogs (which have a link back to your site), and vice versa, the better. You don’t have a Blog?, get one.
8. Content is Key - Key words are searchable terms that people type into Google to find sites. As noted above, key words used to be typed into META tags. Today, search engines look through the content, or words of the site, for “themes”. For example, if you’re a painter, and Google sees the word “paint” many times in your content, you’ll be categorized correctly. On the other hand, if you use that word sparingly, you get no acknowledgement. The first paragraph of your home page is very important. It must be at least 200 words long and should contain your keyword up to 15 times. Don’t go crazy though, as the first tip points out, tricks get punished by Google.
9. Static Pages Die – Google constantly checks your site once it finds it the first time. Google is looking to see whether the content on your site is changing, or static. If Google determines that your site is dormant (nobody is updating it), it starts to ignore it – in the same way people will ignore the site. The key here is updating your site often. Use a system like WordPress to make it easy on yourself, and both you and Google will be happy.
10. The Egg Comes First - Do you work on getting your site noticed by Google, or do you get people to visit your site? Isn’t Google necessary for people to find your site? This is a myth!, and as a matter of fact, Google isn’t interested in a site that nobody else is either. Print your site on business cards, and share it with friends. Ask everyone you know to visit your site, and to leave a comment on your Blog. Once you have at least 10 new visitors a day, Google will see this activity as a good thing, and become more interested in your site too.

I’ve been helping people for the past year with this system.  I was a speaker at BizTech Day last weekend, and during one of the breaks, a lady asked me if I was serious about building a website easily.  I sat her down, opened my laptop, and in 10 minutes, we created a brand new website for her.  She’s had one of those “under construction” pages up for over a year, and in 10 minutes, we changed her situation.

I feel empowered when I help people achieve something they thought was out of their reach.  Watch a recorded version of this event, and learn how you can apply this new system to your family, community, or business.

Click to Watch a Recorded version of the Seminar

In this video, I explain exactly how I do this, and I even demonstrate how I cut the cards.  You’ll learn EVERYTHING you need to print quality business cards (none of this perforated junk), and represent your company well.

I’ve also attached two files to this post.

1.  Powerpoint template for business cards  Business Card templates

2.  Exact wording for email to send to Office Max for printing.  Email for OfficeMax