THE SOCIAL MAGNET

The strongest communities have what I call a “social magnet.” The new types of scavenger hunts are a good example of social magnets. Scavenger hunts aren’t just for children anymore. Adult versions have become really popular recently. They’re popping up in every major city.

Here’s how they work. You join the scavenger hunt usually by registering online with a group of three or more people. At the hunt, one person from the group gets a list of activities the group needs to complete. Unlike traditional scavenger hunts from fifteen or more years ago, new age scavengers use their smartphones to take pictures of things, upload pictures to social media, or research the answers to questions. And the hunts don’t end in an hour or two. They can last for up to forty-eight hours.

Why would people give up forty-eight hours, or a full weekend of their time, to do a scavenger hunt? Because of the social magnet. Group scavenger hunts aren’t just fun, they also have a magnetic force that keeps people participating. The scavengers are a team on a joint mission, pulling each other together to keep working like a magnet pulls metal toward it. The team members might have moments where they get bored, lose motivation, or get tired, but they can’t stop what they’re doing because of the magnetic force from the team. That’s a social magnet, and that’s how it creates lasting change.

Take social media. How many of you were reluctant to join Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social network? Remember the first time you got an email from Facebook asking you to join? You might have been unimpressed. Maybe you thought that social media was only for people with too much free time. They could post what they ate for breakfast and who they bumped into during the day. But then you realized that the invite from Facebook was sent by a good friend. Maybe that wasn’t enough to motivate you to sign up, but it was enough to get you thinking about it and to remember the site. Soon enough, your other friends and coworkers started inviting you, too. Some of them began using Facebook instead of email. Now you had to join to keep in touch.By that point, you realized there was a community of your peers on it. Even though you were reluctant to join at first, you joined so that you weren’t left out of this growing community. And you kept using it once people started commenting on things you wrote. That made the community even stronger.

This is how the force of community compels people to keep doing things.

But it’s not as easy as it sounds to build or leverage a community for lasting change. Even if a community is designed for the right purpose, communities also need to have a social magnet. People often attempt to build or join communities that don’t have this social magnet. And they usually won’t work.

Take gym buddies. For many people, it’s easier to keep going to the gym if you have a gym buddy to go with you each time. But what happens when you or your gym buddy gets sick or goes on vacation for a week? The routine typically ends and it’s tough to get started again. That’s because it’s missing the social magnet.

It’s not enough to find a buddy who will go with you to the gym. Building a community from the ground up requires giving to the community to form the social magnet. People do this by setting expectations of other group members, like texting a gym buddy, sending a link to an article on a new type of workout, and expecting her to show interest and reciprocate by responding to it. Calling out a specific person or group of people, for example by sharing a video and tagging a person or group of people, is one way to build that social magnet. But not everyone has the time or energy to build their own community to keep them doing things. If that’s the case for you, then join an existing community. Just make sure it already has a social magnet. You’ll just need to know what to look for, and we’ll explain that soon. But remember this important fact: for the community to continue to have a lasting impact on people, there needs to be enough people in the community who are nurturing it to create a social magnet. I’ve found that for very small communities (fewer than five people) to create lasting change, everyone in the community needs to work on building the social magnet. For larger communities, about 15 percent of the people involved in the community need to be building the social magnet. More about these details later when I describe an example of how to build a community.

         Communities push people to keep doing things that are good for them, like exercising regularly.³ They also push people to keep doing things that are bad for them, like smoking cigarettes.

         But do we choose our communities, or do our communities choose us?

There are few better examples of how communities influence the highs and lows of people’s lives than the story of the actor Robert Downey Jr. Maybe you heard some of his stories about his life when on drugs and alcohol, like when he was found half-naked on an eleven-year-old’s bed after breaking into a house and passing out. Or maybe you’ve heard the success story of how he turned around, cleaned himself up, and has become Ironman 1, 2, and 3. What most people don’t know about him is the story of how communities influenced his journey.

From his early childhood, RDJ was surrounded by people using drugs.⁵ He didn’t have to search for this community; it was brought to him by his father, a long-term drug user. When RDJ was eight, his father offered him marijuana at a party so they could socialize together.⁶ He said, “When my dad and I would do drugs together, it was like him trying to express his love for me in the only way he knew how.” This lifestyle quickly created an addiction. As RDJ got older, he searched for friends who could help him satisfy his addiction. Every night he started by drinking alcohol and making “a thousand phone calls in pursuit of drugs.”

When RDJ moved to Hollywood as an actor, he found himself surrounded by another group of drug addicts. Famous actors known for their binge drinking and drug use like Kiefer Sutherland, Mel Gibson, and Rob Lowe became part of RDJ’s close circle of friends. As his alcoholism and drug use continued, he was arrested numerous times for things like cocaine and heroin use, carrying a .357 Magnum, and for that story of trespassing and falling asleep on a stranger’s bed while under the influence. After going through court-ordered rehab a bunch of times, he finally hit a low enough point where he felt he had no choice but to get clean. That’s when he found a new community to keep himself free from drugs. He believes that the social communities of his family, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), and therapy have led him to kick his addiction.

Amazing Myth

MYTH 1.

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| The Earth is orbiting around the Sun. The Earth doesn't orbit around the Sun, it actually orbits around the Solar System's center of mass, known as the Barycenter. Although this point often falls within the mass of the Sun, it can also be shifted by the pull of other larger planets. Therefore, at least some of the time, everything in the solar system is orbiting around empty space.

MYTH 2.| The tongue has different regions dedicated to different tastes. The tongue doesn't have different regions dedicated to different tastes. Every single taste can be sensed on every part of your tongue.

MYTH3. | Returning baby birds to their nests causes their mothers to reject them. Picking up baby birds and returning them to their nests will not cause their mothers to reject them.

MYTH 4. | Sugar makes you hyper. Sugar doesn't actually make you hyper, and the idea of a sugar rush is an urban myth. According to a recent study done by researchers at Yale University, the entire "rush" is a placebo effect that we get from believing that sugar will make us hyper.

MYTH 5. | Chameleons change their colors to blend into their environment. While chameleons often do change their color to match that of their environment, they do it in order to communicate.

MYTH 6. | Napoleon was very short. According to the average height of a French man, Napoleon was actually taller than the average.

MYTH 7. | Vikings had horns on their helmets. Vikings did not wear helmets with horns on them.

MYTH8. | Ingesting chewing gum will take 7 years to digest. It doesn't take 7 years to digest chewing gum. In fact, it can't be digested at all and will simply pass right through you as is. 

MYTH 9. | People with red and blonde hair are going extinct. Red heads and blondes aren't going extinct, they're just becoming more rare due to the world population increasing. In order for red heads or blondes to go extinct, every single person that carries that particular gene would have to die or not reproduce.

MYTH 10. | Bats are blind. Bats aren't actually blind. While some do use echolocation, they also have excellent night vision which allows them to see just as well as we see in the daylight

MYTH 11. | Life expectancy in the middle ages was low. Life expectancy in the middle ages wasn't as low as many people think. The average age was brought down due to high infant mortality rates, however, most adults lived well into their late 60s.

MYTH 12. | Fingers wrinkle because they absorb water. Your fingers don't wrinkle because they absorbed water, they wrinkle because your brain sends them a message to. While many people aren't sure what the exact cause behind the wrinkling is, many researchers suspect it's to improve our grip on wet surfaces.

MYTH 13. | The Coriolis effect changes the direction the toilet flushes. The Coriolis effect doesn't change the direction the toilet flushes, it only affects very large bodies of water. If your toilet is flushing backwards, it's because the water enters the toilet backwards.

MYTH 14. | The goldfish has a 3 second memory. While the goldfish doesn't remember things like us, their memory is capable to absorb much more than 3 seconds of information.

MYTH 15. | Sharks don't get cancer. Just like any living thing, sharks do get cancer.

MYTH 16. | Cracking your knuckles will lead to arthritis. Cracking your knuckles won't lead to arthritis. In fact, a doctor did an experiment on himself by cracking his knuckles on one hand every day for sixty years to see if it would lead to arthritis. In the end, it didn't and Donald Unger, the doctor, received the Medicine Prize from Ig Nobel Prizes.

MYTH 17. | Dropping a penny from the top of the Empire State Building will kill someone. Dropping a penny from the top of the Empire State Building will not kill anyone as the penny wouldn't be able to reach the necessary force to do any damage to a human being.

MYTH 18. | Fingernails and hair continue to grow after death. Fingernails and hair do not continue to grow after death, however the surrounding skin will start to recede which gives off the illusion that the nails are growing.

MYTH 19. | Dogs sweat through their tongue. Dogs don't sweat through their tongue since most of their sweat glands are located in their foot pads. While panting does help keep them cool, panting doesn't mean that they're sweating.

MYTH 20. | You are born with all of the brain cells you will ever have. You aren't born with all of the brain cells that you will ever have because your brain continues to grow and produce new cells in certain regions. This process is called neurogenesis.

MYTH 21. | The color of the mucus in your nose indicates whether you have a bacterial or viral infection. The color of the mucus in your nose doesn't have anything to do with indicating if you have a bacterial or viral infection as the color can vary due to a variety of different illnesses.

MYTH 22. | Lightning doesn't strike the same spot twice. Lightning can and does strike the same spot multiple times. In fact, the Empire State Building is struck up to 100 times a year.

MYTH 23. | Lemmings follow each other and commit mass suicide. Lemmings don't follow each other and commit mass suicide. This was wrongly created by a 1958 Disney documentary titled "White Wilderness," in which the filmmakers ran a pack of lemmings off a cliff in order to make an "entertaining" documentary.

MYTH 24. | There are people who have a photographic memory. There is no such thing as having a photographic memory. While there are people who have exceptional memories, they still can't recall events with as much detail as a photo taken with a camera.

MYTH 25. | The Buddha was obese. The historical Buddha was not obese, and the "chubby Buddha" or the "laughing Buddha" is a 10th century Chinese folk hero called Budai. In Chinese Buddhist culture, Budai came to be revered as an incarnation of Maitreya, the Bodhisttva who will become a Buddha to restore Buddhism after the teachings of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Guatama.

MYTH 26. | Jesus was born on December 25th. There is no evidence that Jesus was born on December 25th. The Bible never claims a date, but simply implies a date closer to September. The fixed date is attributed to Pope Julius the First because in the year 350 CE, he declared the twenty fifth of December the official date of celebration. The date might have been chosen to correspond with either the day exactly nine months after Christians believe Jesus to have been conceived .

MYTH 27. | King Arthur was a real person. While there are mentions in history of a person named Arthur living in England around the late 5th and early 6th century, there's never any mention of him being a king. He's mentioned in the 9th century Historia Brittonum as having taken part in a bloody battle at Mount Badon, and in the Annalaes Cambriae, but the 6th century writer, Gildas, who wrote about the battle, doesn't mention Arthur at all. He's also completely absent from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is the best guide we have on the happenings of that time.

MYTH 28. | Witches were burned at Salem Witch Trials. The Salem trials in 1692 and 1693 were a terrifying affair, but despite the images of witches being burned, this didn't happen. What did happen is that, most of the 20 people who were convicted, were hanged. Many of those who survived were imprisoned. By that point in time, burning people alive was illegal in England and was also banned in the new American colonies. 

LIFESTYLE ENTREPRENEUR

When it comes to creating a lifestyle that fills you with a sense of purpose and excitement, there are a few guiding principles that can help start the process. The first principle is perhaps the simplest, and that is to live your life the way that feels right and true to You! It is very easy to live a life that someone else has planned out for you, or to feel like the purpose of life is to live up to someone else’s expectations.

So while it may cause some friction in the short run to change gears and re-engineer your lifestyle, if your friends, family and significant others truly value your happiness, they will eventually come around and your relationships will be healthier because of it.

There were plenty of times that I chased an idea so far down the rabbit hole that I couldn’t be sure I was going down the right path. But those feelings of uncertainty, coupled with a drive to succeed and prosper have always helped me persevere until I crossed enough thresholds to be taken seriously in my new endeavor.

        The first principle is perhaps the simplest:

That is to live your life the way that feels right and true to You!

My mother wasn’t particularly supportive of me foregoing college to travel Europe playing rock music in bars and clubs. But that experience led to me owning a record label on Music Row in Music City, Nashville Tennessee. And when my band had the #1 independent rock song in USA she was our biggest fan! It wasn’t that I wanted to disrespect her wishes for me, but rather I wanted to prove that I could make a career doing what I love, even if that meant a lot of setbacks and disappointments along the way.

During three years of playing music and running a record label with my band mate Jake, I had built relationships with people from all walks of the business world; marketers, radio promoters, video producers, investors, management firms and public relations agencies. They all dealt with me as Jesse Krieger, the guitarist for Harsh Krieger that also runs the business side of things. That was my identity for a while and I lived it 100%. But after many years we came to a point where we all wanted to experience something else in life, and we decided to disband and go our separate ways.

That was perhaps the first time in my adult life where I was conscious of the opportunity I had to create a new identity. As I was driving back to my home town of San Francisco I decided to launch a consulting firm and try to leverage all the relationships I made running a label to help other musicians and businesses. That was the beginning of Krieger Consulting Group, which still exists to this day. However the focus quickly grew from just working on music industry projects, to learning all sorts of new industries like VoIP, nutritional supplements and consumer products. I found the experience of building a company in one industry had many parallels with doing the same in any industry.

              I saw the bigger picture: Lifestyle & Entrepreneurship as two intertwined ideas, like DNA strands circling around one another, enabling each other to grow.

It didn’t take long to feel comfortable in my new identity as a business development and strategy consultant to small, fast-growth companies. Whatever I didn’t know, I would stay up late studying and gaining new skills just in the nick of time to apply them to projects. By always trying to go the extra mile for clients, I built a great referral-based business that lead to working alongside 4-time Superbowl champ Bill Romanowski. He hired me to quarterback the launch of his new nutritional supplement business. This project was the peak experience of my early years as a consultant and Bill turned out to be not only the hardest hitting player in the NFL, but also a very driven entrepreneur.

As my client’s businesses began to grow and more people joined their teams, it became clear that the one thing all my clients were struggling with was raising enough funds to grow their businesses. This was a preview into my next lifestyle change as I started to build relationships with investors and investment banks that to help my clients get financing. Once I saw the world of using money to make money up close, I knew that this was where the real fortunes were lost and made, where the real action took place. Before long I was studying for my Series 7 & 63 securities licenses to become an investment banker with a boutique investment bank that offered me a VP of Business Development title in exchange for merging my consulting practice with them. I accepted.

One of my heroes has always been Steve Jobs, founder of Apple and Pixar. In a commencement speech at Stanford University he said that you can only connect the dots looking backwards. That following your passion can lead you to unexpected places, studying or working on projects that seem disconnected or random. But looking backwards, after the fact, there is a common thread that connects all of those experiences together and you’ll find that you got just the right information and experiences to prepare you for the next round of challenges and opportunities.

This advice proved prescient as I embraced my new identity as an investment banker. I went into overdrive; scouting deals, on the phone at all hours, pitching investors, flying in and out of cities on the same day for meetings. I had the pedal to the floor and was making hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions from millions of dollars of transactions I was generating.

But the success was not without cost, as my relationship life suffered and even my family began pointing out that when they asked “how are you?” I would start listing off the current state of prospecting, selling and closing different deals.

Then, in the summer of 2008, I stumbled upon what looked like an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A community of entrepreneurs, dating coaches and health & fitness experts was putting together a pilot program called Project Rockstar.

The idea was to take six somewhat ordinary guys and break all the boundaries of what’s possible in terms of lifestyle. From fashion consults and approaching attractive women in the streets to customized fitness programs and business mentoring, Project Rockstar was 56 days that challenged and replaced every conception of what I thought was possible!

              Think of the most successful person you’ve ever seen. What does he look like? Who is she with? Where are they going and how are they travelling? Despite the specifics, there is a good chance they look happy and radiate a sense of confidence that is born from accomplishment. This is what a Lifestyle Entrepreneur does. They are successful people who do what they want, when they want to, with whomever they please. And they do it in style, making it look easy and inviting in the process.

Endless opportunities present themselves to the successful, as do appeals for help and aid. In both cases it is because successful people are men and women of action who are involved in a variety of lifestyle pursuits and have myriad business interests. The confidence to make the decisions necessary to be successful comes from having a positive self-image and a strong identity. It requires that you know yourself through and through, and trust yourself to make good decisions given imperfect information.

They are successful people who do what they want, when they want to, with whomever they please.

You may already have a strong set of beliefs, or a blueprint for success in one area of life. If decision making comes easy to you, then you’ve got a headstart on discovering, or reimagining, your identity and expressing it through your lifestyle and businesses. If not, then it really is a process of discovering your identity, by removing any covers or filters that prevent you from acting the way that feels right and experiencing happiness in your life.

Success and identity go hand in hand. You can’t act in a way that runs counter to your basic values and expect to feel no guilt or shame, let alone happiness. No. Success is acting in accordance with your core values while pursuing business interests and passion projects with friends and partners around the globe. That is the path of a Lifestyle Entrepreneur on the road to mastery.

Taking inventory of your current belief system and identity is the first step towards becoming a Lifestyle Entrepreneur, so let’s get started!

YOU CAN’T DRAW WATER FROM AN EMPTY WELL

On a busy day, I took my stance in our driveway, preparing to lift all 150 pounds of our gentle giant bullmastiff into the back of my car. Briggs was a young seven years old, but his limbs were weak. He knew the routine, and he placed his front right paw onto the back bumper of my Explorer. Brady waited quietly in his car seat, watching our struggle. I placed my hands under Briggs’s front left paw and lifted it onto the bumper. Briggs scooted closer to the car while I bear-hugged his back legs and lifted him onto the folded-down backseat, which was now broken from his weight after multiple trips to the vet. He circled as best he could in the small space and slowly settled into the car, laying his head on his paws. He was a sweet, sweet pup—an absolute dream with children. I rubbed the big wrinkles on his face, and he closed his eyes, ready for the fifteen-minute ride.
                                               When we arrived at the animal hospital for Briggs’s chemotherapy appointment, Brady slipped his hand into mine, and I took hold of Briggs’s blue leash. We sat on the steps waiting for the train to go by, as it always did at this time each Friday. I saw Brady’s eyes light up as he sat next to Briggs, one hand on the dog’s back and the other waving frantically at the conductor. What a joyful spot in the middle of our difficult visit. We walked inside and hugged Briggs before our vet, perhaps the kindest veterinarian in the world, took him back for his treatment. When Briggs was diagnosed with lymphoma, we’d made the choice to pursue treatment to improve his quality of life for the time he had left with us.

As his appointments continued to mount, I moved into what I call Captain Mode. I knew I could manage the difficult situation we were in. I could make this easier on everyone. In the spring, shortly after we began treatment on Briggs, Bryan’s father was diagnosed with cancer and passed away suddenly—only seventeen short days later. To say it was a difficult time for our little family would be a gross understatement. I saw my husband in tears for the first time in the five years we’d been together. I saw Brady experience the sadness of death and answered big questions about heaven and sickness and why bad things happen to good people (and good pups).

Captain Mode: I’ve got this. I can do this alone. I will save the day and steer the ship.

Still, I worked in Captain Mode, trying to be the glue that held everyone together. I decided to take hold of our crazy life and fix it. For any problems we had, I was determined to find solutions. We’d been in the middle of exhausting fertility treatments, so we decided to take it up a notch and pursue more aggressive options. I’d been considering a big production change with our Simplified Planners, so I pursued it. Grief and sadness mounted at home. Fertility treatments weren’t working. Briggs was getting sicker. The pain of losing Bryan’s dad was real and raw. Work was busier than ever. Without extended family nearby, I found myself taking on more and more to help our family get back to normal and be happy again. I put all my hope and trust in my own two hands. Does anyone see a crash-and-burn coming? I wish I would have.

I skipped meals, lost sleep, and worked harder than ever before as we mourned Bryan’s dad and our sweet Briggs lost his battle with cancer. It was painful for all of us. I powered through with the help of caffeine and a burning goal to simply get to the other side. I was determined. If I work hard enough at keeping it all together, I thought, we’ll get there.

One late summer evening, I sat on my bed looking down the hall at Bryan playing with Brady on the floor. My parents had traveled down from Pensacola to come to our rescue and help with the accumulating housework. I had left the house to them for a moment to catch my breath by myself.

I sat there in a mess of tears, overwhelmed by how much I loved our little family and desperate for something more to give them. Our life was in chaos, and as we dealt with sickness and sadness, the laundry, cleaning, and grocery shopping had fallen by the wayside. I couldn’t find peace in our house because it was a disaster. And I was riddled with worry over what awful thing would happen next. I sat with my legs crossed and rubbed my hands on my feet anxiously. Oddly, the side of my right foot felt completely numb.

I ran my fingers over the bottom of my foot and felt pressure but no sensation. My anxiety grew as I instinctively reached for my phone and began to Google my symptom. The Internet spat back a list of terminal diseases and terrible diagnoses that could explain why my foot was numb. Terrified, I walked around my room, hoping to stomp it out or make it go away. When I realized it wasn’t changing, I walked to the living room to tell Bryan. He shrugged it off and told me it would go away. I told my mom and dad, hoping they’d know some simple explanation, but no one seemed as worried as I was.

                      When I woke the next morning and found that my foot was still numb, I made an immediate appointment with my doctor. He found my symptom puzzling and ordered a battery of tests. Over the next few weeks of blood tests and doctor appointments, I felt a fear like I’ve never known. At every stoplight, after every e-mail, and in the moments before I fell asleep every night, I searched the Internet for answers. All sorts of things could cause intense headaches, vision  problems, weight loss, heart palpitations, numbness, and muscle twitches. Finally my doctor referred me to a well-known neurologist, and the next thing I knew, I was strapped down with Velcro and being pushed into a cold, white MRI machine for brain scans.

As the scanner made its signature banging sounds, I silently prayed and cried, eyes squeezed shut. I prayed for my health and for my family. I wanted more than anything to go back to February—to Brady’s Elmo party, where we celebrated his second birthday—before the hard stuff flipped our normal life on its head. The technologist told me through the microphone that I had one more minute left. I still hadn’t opened my eyes while inside the machine. But as she rolled me out, I knew that whatever was wrong with me was recorded in black-and-white images. We’d soon have some answers. I finally felt a slight lift in the weight on my shoulders for the first time in months.

Five days later, I sat in the neurologist’s office. I hadn't worn makeup that day for fear of the news I might be given. (Who wants a bad diagnosis and streaks, right?) My palms were sweaty, and worry coursed through my veins. He came in and sat down and slowly read through my chart. I studied his face, searching for any sign of concern—some sort of answer to my issues. He put the manila folder down and took off his glasses as he turned to face me.

“You’re perfectly healthy, Emily,” he said. I sat back, almost dizzy from the way every muscle in my body let go of an indescribable amount of tension. Overwhelmed and confused, I let tears fall down my cheeks.

“I don’t understand,” I said. I repeated all my symptoms while he smiled sympathetically and nodded his head.

“You are running yourself into the ground, Emily,” he gently said. “Each of your symptoms is being caused by intense stress on your body. You have to slow down, or you’re going to end up with something much worse than a numb foot. You’re going to kill yourself.”

                           I walked to my car that afternoon somewhat in shock. How had I allowed myself to get to this awful place? How was I going to dig myself out? I’d love to tell you that this knowledge gave me permission to immediately relax and that life was wonderful from that moment on. But I’d stolen the wheel from God while trying to steer our family out of the grieving process toward a happier story, and I’d driven myself straight into a wall. Head on. Crash-and-burn. While the answer felt like a sudden smack in the face, it was an obvious diagnosis. I’d made taking care of myself my last priority. It was going to take some time to bounce back from this one. I determined that recovery from that summer meant saying no, letting go, and learning to take care of myself and let God handle the rest. 

Grace With Yourself

SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY, someone told us we weren’t good enough. We weren’t pretty enough, creative enough, crafty enough, or dedicated enough. Social media feeds, blogs, magazines, and other people began to set the standard for us. And they set it high—unreachably high. We mashed together other people’s highlights and best moments and created this standard of perfection we’re all after. Once I reach it, we tell ourselves, I’ll be good enough. I’ll be a good mom, a good friend, a good spouse, a good professional.

Birthday parties are now judged by Pinterest-worthiness—that picture-perfect quality that people swoon over online. Dress sizes are measures of our physical worth—the smaller, the better. And busyness? Well, that’s just the norm. We run on adrenaline and lattes. If we’re not busy, then we’re not measuring up. At least that’s what we’ve told ourselves. And although the chase may earn us “likes” and immaculate Instagram photos, it also leaves us feeling empty, alone, and just plain not good enough. So we try to do it all: we answer e-mails and push baby swings. We text and drive. We overload, overcommit, overwork, and end up overwhelmed.

Without realizing it, many of us have decided to let the world tell us what the “good life” looks like. And, sister, this isn’t it. The perfectly constructed, magazine-worthy life does not equal happiness. Happiness isn’t found in the prettiest Instagram feed or in a large number of Facebook friends. True joy isn’t found in having it all together. The good life is rich, slow, real, and flawed.

      Forget what the world is telling you. You don’t have to constantly strive to be more. You are enough. You deserve simple, slow, and sweet. You are worthy of happiness. You deserve silly, extravagant joy, belly laughs, and rich memories worthy of being slowly retold in rocking chairs on front porches. This is attainable—where you are, as you are, with what you have right now. And together, through the next few chapters, we’re going to talk through simple, practical ways to attain this.

              IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON, and traffic in Tampa was disastrous. I was racing home to get ready for date night after a big day at work. Hours before, I had nervously and triumphantly handed in my two weeks notice. It was official: I was leaving the corporate world to dive headfirst into the fledgling design business I’d nurtured in the wee hours for the previous two years. It was finally time to devote my attention to the endeavor that had stolen my heart and ignited my passions: designing meaningful paper goods for life’s most special moments. Though I was eager to get home to celebrate, I spied a drugstore ahead and turned in to the parking lot. Twizzlers suddenly sounded like a great idea.

                  This might be where all you mamas giggle and remember the first telltale sign of your pregnancy. Gracious. I should have known something was up! I’m normally a gummy bear girl.

I pulled into my driveway a few minutes later. The Twizzlers were long gone, but a pregnancy test was tucked away in my purse. Without much thought, I tossed my purse on the counter and took the test to the bathroom. I wanted to be sure I could safely enjoy a glass of celebratory champagne that evening. I had learned after months of disappointment not to put too much thought into those tests. Too much thought always equaled too much heartache.

I saw the ink begin to appear and impatiently set it aside. For such a small thing, that test packed a pretty big punch. It scratched at a very raw, painful spot in my heart that I desperately wanted to ignore on that happy day. Our years-long road of infertility had been paved with more bumps and potholes than we ever thought we’d face, and I wanted nothing more than to be a mama. Remembering that I’d purchased an unfamiliar drugstore brand, I picked the box up to read the instructions one more time. 

 Confused and suddenly breathless, I laid the test, the instructions, and the box next to my bathroom sink. I held the test next to the diagram on the crumpled paper and, in an instant, felt my heart begin to race and my breath leave my chest. I looked around the empty room, desperate for someone to run to, to scream with. Memories of pill bottles, doctor appointments, and infertility procedures flooded my head as tears gathered in my eyes. I heard Bryan’s truck pull into the driveway as the tears fell down my cheeks. Though I’d scoured Pinterest for months for the perfect, photo-worthy way to tell him he’d be a daddy, I ran to him—a red-faced, tear-stained mess—and blurted it all out. “I don’t . . . this thing . . . the Twizzlers . . .” I caught my breath through a beautiful, ugly cry. “A baby. I’m pregnant.” It was perfect

Becoming a mama on February 16, 2011, was the most pivotal experience of my life. My heart suddenly existed outside my body in this chubby little ball of all that is good in the world. Every emotion seemed heightened. Food tasted sweeter. Tiredness was now exhaustion. Love was a totally new feeling.

“I love him so much it physically hurts,” I tearfully confessed to my own mom as she folded a tiny blue onesie and put it in Brady’s dresser.

She paused and smiled. “That never changes.”

These new emotions were confusing and overwhelming. I loved Brady with a new part of my heart—with feelings I’d never experienced before. I loved him with an all-encompassing love that I wondered if he’d ever understand.

  I tried for a long time to be the Pinterest-worthy girl with the Pinterest-worthy home and the Pinterest-worthy marriage and the Pinterest-worthy child. I wanted the world to know my life was pretty effortless and I had it all together. I wanted to be the girl people pointed out on Facebook and said, “Did you see that super-cute, over-the-top thing she did for her kid’s birthday?” To me, that translated to, “Did you see how much she loves her child?” Sweet validation! I’m doing a good job! I’d think. I must be—people I don’t know very well approve of and admire me.

  

The Greatest Environmental Disaster

The news stories from China are horrific. The best estimate is that on average, 4,400 people die every day from air pollution in that country. That’s 1.6 million per year. Every time I hear of some tragedy that makes headlines, such as a landslide in Shenzhen that killed 200 people, I think to myself, “Yes—and today 4,400 people died of air pollution and it didn’t make the news.”

This is not the old eye-burning, throat-irritating air pollution of yesterday. Today’s pollutant is known as PM2.5—particulate matter 2.5 microns and smaller. It is produced by automobiles, by construction, by farm work, but the greatest contributor by far is coal, burned by industry and for electric-power production. PM2.5 wasn’t even listed as a major pollutant by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency until 1997. It was present but just not fully proved to be as deadly as it is.

We now know that on a bad day in Beijing, such pollution hurts people as much as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. Bad air triggers strokes, heart attacks, asthma, and lung cancer. Look at the causes of death in China and you’ll see a remarkable excess of such deaths, despite the fact that obesity is uncommon compared with that in the U.S.

We know about the health effects from some remarkable studies. In the U.S., we saw decreases in health problems when factories and coal plants were temporarily shut down (the 1993 “Six Cities Study”). In China, we have the Huai River Study, in which the Chinese policy of giving free coal to households north of the Huai River, but none to the south, resulted in a reduced average lifetime in the north of 5.5 years.

Also remarkable is China’s openness with their air-pollution data. Every hour, they post online more than 1,500 measurements of PM2.5 (as well PM10, SO₂, NO₂, and ozone) all across their country. China may be a closed society in many ways, but they seem to be crying out for help. At Berkeley Earth, we have been downloading all these numbers for the past year and a half, and the patterns of severe pollution are now clear. It is not confined to cities or basins but widespread and virtually inescapable. Ninety-seven percent of China’s population breathes what the EPA deems as “unhealthy air” on average. In contrast, the democracy of India reports few PM2.5 measurements. I suspect they have them but are simply not making them public. They do publish results for Delhi, and virtually every time I look, the pollution there is worse than it is in Beijing.

People suggest a switch from coal to solar, but this is too expensive for China to afford. In 2015, solar power contributed less than 0.2 percent to their energy use, and solar plants are going bankrupt as Chinese subsidies are withdrawn. Wind power is expanding, but wind’s intermittency is a big problem, and the use of energy storage drives up cost. Hydro is hardly an environmental choice; the Three Gorges Dam displaced 1.2 million people (voluntarily, the Chinese tell us) and destroyed 13 cities, 140 towns, and 1,350 villages. Their new Mekong River dam is expected to wreak havoc throughout Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The best hopes consist of natural gas, which China has in abundance, and nuclear power, which is under rapid development. PM2.5 from natural gas is reduced by 1/400 compared with coal—and it reduces greenhouse emissions by a factor of 2 to 3. China is desperately attempting to extract its shale gas but is doing miserably; the only true master of that technology is the U.S., where it has triggered an enormous and unexpected drop in the price of both natural gas and oil. Nuclear power, once despised by environmentalists, is gaining traction in the U.S., with many past opponents recognizing that it offers a way to reduce carbon emissions significantly. China is surging ahead in nuclear, with thirty-two new plants planned. Although such plants are reported to be expensive, the Chinese know that the high cost is only in the capital cost—that amortized over twenty-five years, nuclear is as cheap as coal, and much cheaper when you add in the environmental costs.

Air pollution will be a growing story. China also has plans, on paper, to double its coal use in the next fifteen years. They will cancel those if they can, but they also worry that slower economic growth could threaten their form of government. As bad as the pollution has been so far, I worry that we ain’t seen nothing yet.

The United States is sharing its nuclear technology, and I expect that in two decades China will be the principal manufacturer of nuclear power plants around the world. But we need to set a better example; we need to show the world that we consider nuclear to be safe. And we need to share our shale-gas technology far more extensively. Too often we read the pollution headlines, shake our heads, perhaps feel a little schadenfreude toward our greatest economic adversary, and then we forget about it.

Someday global warming may become the primary threat. But it is air pollution that is killing people now. Air pollution is the greatest environmental disaster in the world today. 

What is energy?

Energy is what makes everything happen. It is involved in every action that we make. It powers your muscles, runs your car, and lights your home. Without energy you could not ride a bike, watch television, or fly in an airplane.

Different types of energy Energy can’t be made, just changed from one type to another. Here are some of the main types.

Light is a form of energy that we can see. Most of the energy on Earth comes from the Sun as light

Heat energy is the energy of atoms or molecules vibrating. The hotter an object gets, the faster and more violently the atoms or molecules vibrate.

Nuclear energy     is stored in atoms. Nuclear energy is used to run power plants that  generate electricity.

Electromagnetic energy   is carried by X-rays, radio waves, and microwaves.

Curiosity quiz Look through the “What is energy?” pages and see if you can identify the picture clues below.

Gravitational energy      is the stored energy in an object that has been lifted but is not allowed to fall. Dams can turn gravitational energy into electrical energy.

Kinetic energy 

 is the energy a moving object has.  The faster a car moves, the more kinetic energy  it has.

Electrical energy    can travel easily through wires. It is the energy we use to power devices in our homes

It’s electric! If you flip a switch to make something work, it probably runs on electricity. Most of the energy we use every day is electric. 

What is electricity? This magical power source comes from electrons—tiny charged particles on the outside of atoms. They move from atom to atom creating electrical energy, and this energy travels on a circuit. 

Simple circuit A flashlight works using a simple electrical circuit. Batteries produce electricity, which flows around the circuit to power the bulb so it lights up. 

Electricity When we talk about electricity, we use the same words over and over again.

The power of magnets

Magnets create an invisible force known as magnetism that repels and attracts certain substances, like iron. Electricity and magnetism have a close relationship. 

Can you field the force? A magnetic field is the space around a magnet where its force can be felt. The force gets weaker as the field gets farther from the magnet. It is strongest at the two poles.

Magnetic Earth The Earth acts like a gigantic magnet. It has a magnetic north and south pole, although they aren’t in the same place as the geographical poles, but are very close. Over the Earth’s lifetime the magnetic poles have switched around a few times.

Race cars

Formula 1 cars are like normal cars in many ways. They have gas engines, gears, and steering wheels. However, they are built with only one thing in mind, and that’s WINNING RACES!

A technical masterpiece
Every bit of a Formula 1 (F1) car is light and very strong. At its peak speed
of 225 mph (360 kph) air flows over it with the  force of a tornado, so it is as low and streamlined as possible.

Pit-stop pressure

 At pit stops, a driver refuels and gets new tires. This is  all done in about 30 seconds. That’s about the same amount of time as it takes to read this paragraph!

G-force 

A Formula 1 driver is shoved around violently inside his car as it twists around the track. A pushing force called g-force, which can be up to six times more powerful than gravity, shoves him backward, forward, and sideways as he races. You see g-force at work in a normal car by watching water sloshing in a cup.

Inertia 

G-force is caused by inertia. The law of inertia says that moving objects try to travel straight at a constant speed. When a car stops abruptly, your body tries to keep going forward. 

Steering wheel 

Because an F1 driver is concentrating so hard on winning a race and because the space he is in is so tight, all the controls for the car are on hand on his steering wheel. He has just two foot pedals—the brake and the accelerator. 

Up to speed

Once you’re on the move, you naturally want to go as fast as you can. But what makes sports cars really fast and tankers really slow? Speed isn’t just about raw power—other factors are at work.

Speed, velocity, and acceleration 

You measure speed by dividing the distance traveled by the time it takes. Speed is not the same as velocity, which is a measure of how fast you are going in a particular direction. You feel acceleration when you pedal your bike really hard. Acceleration measures how quickly your velocity is changing.

Horsepower? 

Engine power is still measured using a very old unit—the horsepower. It is based on how many horses would be needed to provide the same amount of pulling power. An average mid-sized car is equivalent to 135 horses.

Pulling power

 If you have a powerful engine you can accelerate very fast, which is why a sports car will always beat a lawnmower. But if you give a ride to an elephant your acceleration will suffer. That is because it takes more force to speed up heavy objects.

Milk tanker vs. Ariel Atom

 Both have a 300 horsepower engine. A full tanker can weigh as much as  110 tons (100 metric tons). The Atom weighs half a ton. Even though they have the same pulling power, the weight of the milk means the tanker takes 35 seconds to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h). The Atom can do it in 2.7 seconds, making  it one of the fastest accelerating  road cars in the world.

Not such a drag 

Nothing accelerates as fast as a dragster—not even the space shuttle. Dragsters can go from 0 to 330 mph (530 km/h) in less than 4.5 seconds. They use nitromethane as fuel, which provides twice as much power  as gas. The rear wheels have to be really big to  transfer the high power made by the enigne. 

How Things Work

Inventions

Any new idea or product that has been created by a person can be called an invention. Inventions change the way people live their lives—they make things safer, easier, faster, or cheaper.
Knowing your stuff
Technology is the science of how things work. The inventors of these shoes knew that a coiled spring is a source of stored energy. They used this technology to make powered shoes.
Better by design
Anyone can be an inventor. Many successful inventions came from engineers who used their knowledge of materials (such as iron) to try new things.
Modern technology
Today, the phrase “modern technology” is usually used to mean computers. But a few hundred years ago, steam power and mechanical presses were new and exciting technology.
Technology all around us
The use of science to provide new and better machines and ways of doing things is called technology. Every day, you use technology in one of its many different forms. Here are a few of them.

• Mechanical Mechanical

  ---

  Technology is the design, production, and use of machines like wind-up clocks and other appliances that do not use electrical, electronic, or computer technology.
• Chemical

  ---

  When the science of chemistry is used to turn raw materials into more useful things like plastics, cosmetics, or drugs, this is called chemical technology.
• Electrical Technology

  ---

  that deals with electrical circuits and equipment is known as electrical technology. It is commonly used in the design and construction of machines and power grids.
• Digital

  ---

  In digital technology, information is recorded using combinations of 0 and 1 to represent words and pictures. This system allows huge amounts of data to be squeezed into tiny spaces.
  Information.
• Biotechnology

  ---

  This term refers to technology that is based on biology—the study of living things. Biotechnology is commonly used in agriculture and food production. Genetic engineering is biotechnology.
• Medical

  ---

  Anything (like a tool, machine, process, or substance) that is used to diagnose, observe, treat, cure, or prevent people’s illnesses or injuries comes under the heading of medical technology.
  Digital .

Information

---

The study, design, and use of electronic information systems is known as information technology. The term covers machines like computers (hardware) and the programs they run (software) etc.

Simple machines

It’s hard to hit a nail into wood with your hand, but much easier with a hammer. Tools such as this are called simple machines. They help people work faster and better.

How to Speak so People Really Listen

The straight-talking guide to communicating with influence and impact

Paul McGee

Why this stuff really matters.

“We can all talk. The challenge? Getting people to listen.”

Imagine the scene. You’re desperate to win a new job. You’ve completed a lengthy application process. You were thrilled to have an initial telephone interview. That went well. You progressed to the next stage. Your excitement increased. You prepared extensively for your face-to-face interview.

And then the letter came. You’ve made it to the final stage of the process. A second interview at head office which will also include you giving a ten-minute presentation.

You plan for this final interview as if your life depended on it. In some ways, you feel it does. Your years of study and sacrifice look like they will finally pay off.

You’re tantalizingly close.

You’ve never had any training or coaching on giving a presentation before, but you’ve sat through countless presentations.

You know the score.

Polite and formal opening.

A slide showing a list of bullet points outlining your objectives.

Then an overview of your background.

A section that includes an overview of the company and what you’ve learnt about them.

The next section is on the role and what specific skills you can bring to it, followed by a summary and conclusion.

Oh and one more thing. Your final slide.

‘Thank you. Any questions?’

You like making slides. And if the interviewer missed anything, you’ve written down all the details on them, which they can always refer back to.

You’re ready. This is it. The chance of a lifetime.

Fast forward two weeks.

The job went to someone. But it wasn’t you.

The recruitment agency informs you that you were the strongest candidate on paper. You’d made it down to the last three. Your background and experience were just what they were looking for.

You’re gutted.

So what went wrong?

In a nutshell: your presentation.

You bombed. The content on your slides overwhelmed them.

There wasn’t enough engagement with your interviewers.

The panel felt they didn’t get to know the real you. Just a corporate clone that failed to connect with them.

They sensed within 90 seconds of your start that you weren’t the right person. The rest of your presentation did nothing to challenge their initial impression.

You were smart in appearance. Professional, if a little wooden. Polite. Knowledgeable about the company and what the role required. But no thanks. They see dozens of people who are like that.

You didn’t stand out from the crowd. You were, I’m afraid, forgettable.

You needed to stand out.

You needed to grab their attention immediately.

You needed to deliver with energy and authenticity.

You didn’t.

Bye-bye dream job. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.

The deal is:

When you’re bland, you blend.

Trust me, the above scenario happens every single day around the globe. The context may be different. So too might the process. But the outcome remains the same. The person with the strengths and experience lost out due to their ineffective communication skills.

The question is: how can you make sure that person isn’t you?

Now I recognize you might not have an important presentation to make for a job interview. Maybe you’re a charity worker hoping to influence people to support your cause. Perhaps you’re a manager seeking ways to engage and motivate your staff, or a teacher or trainer wanting to make a difference to people, whatever their age. Alternatively, you might want to convince your boss to take a new direction in relation to a particular project. Or maybe you’ve been asked to deliver a presentation to your peers at a conference, or your passion for politics means you want to persuade others that your perspective is the best way to make a difference to society.

Whatever the scenario or situation, here’s the sad reality:

You may have the expertise and experience.

The passion and professionalism.

The competence and the contacts.

But you could lack one crucial thing.

The ability to communicate your message in a compelling way that causes your audience to sit up, take notice and listen.

Here’s the deal:

Your ability to influence others, build your career, and achieve your personal goals is dependent on how effectively you communicate and engage with people.

Recently a colleague of mine was asked to sit on a panel that was responsible for awarding a £90,000 research grant spread over three years. All applicants were asked to present their case for why they should be awarded the grant. 

When you’re bland, you blend.

Trust me, the above scenario happens every single day around the globe. The context may be different. So too might the process. But the outcome remains the same. The person with the strengths and experience lost out due to their ineffective communication skills.

The question is: how can you make sure that person isn’t you?

Now I recognize you might not have an important presentation to make for a job interview. Maybe you’re a charity worker hoping to influence people to support your cause. Perhaps you’re a manager seeking ways to engage and motivate your staff.

So how does this specifically affect you?

Well, potentially you miss out on promotion, or the new job, or fail to secure some new business, and you do so not because the other person is better or more knowledgeable than you.

You lose out because they’ve mastered the ability to communicate more effectively and persuasively than you. They’ve learnt to sell themselves or their services in a better way than you have.

That’s the reality folks.

That’s why I believe developing your skill as a communicator is crucial. Master this skill and it will help get you noticed, get along better with others and get ahead in life. Fact.

You see, the harsh reality is that life isn’t fair. We don’t all start on a level playing field. But there is some good news. Where we finish can be influenced by a range of factors. And one of those factors is simply this:

Here’s the deal:

“Good people with a great message are not guaranteed a captive audience.”

How I know this stuff works

Here’s why I know this stuff works and am confident it will make a difference to you. If you use it, that is. Let me take you back to April 1989. Yes, I know it’s possible you might not even have been born then.

Me? I was on invalidity benefit (now known as incapacity benefit).

When I could walk I had to use a walking stick. But the majority of the time I was housebound. I’d lost a high-flying graduate job with a large multinational organization. The cause of all this? An illness commonly known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis).

At the time, eight out of ten doctors didn’t believe it was a genuine illness. Some still don’t. My own doctor was one of them. His response to my so-called illness? He sent me to see a psychiatrist in Liverpool. If I’m honest, I found it a challenging and humbling experience.

I was ill for nearly three years, but I got to a position where I felt well enough to work part time. However, my next big challenge was this.

No one would hire me.

Why?

I couldn’t pass a medical.

So here’s what I did. I hired myself.

I was awesome at the interview. Stand out candidate, in fact.

I think the technical term to describe my employment status was self-employed. My international headquarters doubled as a bedroom in a small house on the outskirts of Warrington. In my first year of business I earned the princely sum of £2,300. That’s over a whole year. My tax bill was fairly small that year. In fact, it was non-existent.

My accountant dumped me as I was wasting his time.

But despite that rather less than auspicious start, things did gradually improve. My training and development business grew. Over time, my business evolved into speaking at conferences and team events. People started calling me a motivational speaker. (Some also said I had a passing resemblance to Dustin Hoffman – in his younger days, I hope.) 

how to do online business

Launching a business online can be exciting and profitable. It’s a great way to supplement an existing income stream or even to become one’s sole occupation. Many individuals and small businesses have met with tremendous success, some making literally millions of dollars a year, even after starting at ground zero, with no knowledge of the Internet beyond the very basics, if that. There are no guarantees, but it can be done. It does require patience and a willingness to go through the steps to get it right, though. That’s what we’re going to teach you here.
Why Three Services? In this book we explain how to use three different “channels” to build your business online: ■ Selling products through eBay auctions ■ Setting up an online store using Yahoo! Merchant Solutions ■ Promoting your business through Google, other search engines, and various other onlinemarketing mechanisms. Why three channels? There are a number of reasons: ■ Few businesses are simple enough to survive with a single method for finding business. If you sell hot dogs to people who eat hot dogs, you may need only to place your hot-dog stand on a busy street. But if you sell hot dogs to businesses that sell hot dogs to people, you would use many different ways to reach those businesses. ■ What works well for one business may not work so well for another. Using multiple channels to sell and to reach people increases the likelihood that you find the best one.
Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. Click here for terms of use.
 4 How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo!, and Google
■ Multiple channels provide multiple opportunities. If you can find people to buy your products more than one way, why leave money on the table by only using one method? ■ You’ll find some of the things we suggest in this book can be implemented very quickly, in some cases in just a few hours. Having a range of different options helps you get your toes wet and work your way in slowly. For instance, an already established business could begin selling online with eBay over a weekend, gradually build the online business, then investigate other sales channels later. While it’s true that some businesses have done very well by finding something simple that works and doing it over and over again for decades, most businesses are not so fortunate. Thanks  to competitive pressures—other people want your customers too; remember—most businesses have to do many things in order to survive and thrive. What works today may not work tomorrow. Some method you try for finding more business may not work, or may not work well as something you haven’t yet tried. Business is an evolutionary process, with the notion of natural selection replaced by the degree of initiative of the business owners and managers. A business gradually evolves as the people running the business try new things, discard things that don’t work or that  no longer work, and adopt techniques that show promise. The three-channel method outlined in this book provides a great way to get started with an online business, showing you a number of essential techniques for surviving—and thriving—online. In particular, companies succeeding online often use a number of strategies to do so. These are the sort of things you may one day find yourself doing: ■ Selling through online auctions ■ Selling through discount channels, such as Overstock.com ■ Selling through merchant sites such as Amazon.com ■ Selling through a web store ■ . . . or, in some cases, several web stores, for different audiences or perhaps different pricing strategies ■ Buying Pay Per Click ads to bring buyers from the search engines to your store ■ Using Search Engine Optimization to bring buyers from the search engines without paying a click fee ■ If you own an offline business, using various techniques to integrate online and offline operations, pushing business from the offline business to the online, and vice versa ■ Using an affiliate program, paying other web sites commissions for purchases made by buyers arriving at your store through affiliate sites ■ Publishing an e-mail newsletter to keep in touch with customers and promote your products to their friends ■ Marketing through PR campaigns targeting e-mail newsletter editors ■ Promoting your products through discussion groups ■ And many other things . . .
One thing you can say about doing business online is that however successful you become, there’s always more to learn!
What Makes a Good Online Product? Just about any product can be sold online. But let’s be quite clear; some products sell much better than others. Let’s think about some product characteristics that both help and hurt products when selling online: ■ Price:weight ratio The price:weight ratio needs to be high; that is the price, in comparison to the weight, needs to be high. Books have a very high price:weight ratio— a book might be worth, say, $30/lb. Sugar might be around 35 cents/lb. The price:weight ratio issue is why it’s hard to sell sugar, cement, and charcoal online. ■ Availability Less available is good. Available everywhere is bad. That’s why it’s hard to sell candy bars online. ■ Information products Products that are essentially information sell well online. Books, reports, reference materials . . . even music is an information product, really. Why do they do well online? Because online technology provides a very efficient way to deliver information. It’s fast and it’s cheap. It’s no wonder that books were the first major product category online and remain one of the primary categories. ■ Complicated products requiring research The Internet is the perfect research tool, of course. Products that require careful selection—products with many different features— often do well online. ■ Wide selection of specialty products An example is one of the earliest small-biz successes, HotHotHot.com, an online success for over a decade. Sure, you can find hot sauce in any grocery store. But can you find Jamaican Hell Fire, Rigor Mortis Hot Sauce, 99%, or 3:00 AM? (The company provides 100 different brands.) Have you even heard of these? Another example is RedWagons.com. Certainly you can find two or three different Radio Flyer wagons in most toy stores, but where else can you find every Radio Flyer product made—steel wagons, plastic wagons, trikes, scooters, retro rockets, roadsters, and everything else? ■ Deals There’s a class of goods that crosses all classes, and even covers products that you might think of as Not Good Internet Products. If you can sell a particular product at a very low price, you may have a good Internet product. Hey, if you can get the price of sugar down low enough, you might be able to sell that online. ■ “Cool” products that sell themselves through word of mouth There are some products that are just so cool, people tell their friends. One company that gets fantastic word of mouth is ThinkGeek.com, which sells tons of really cool stuff (Figure 1-1). Another example of a great word-of-mouth site is Despair.com. This company sells products that people put on their office walls and laugh about with their friends.
No need to touch, smell, or even see clearly. Products that really require a close view generally don’t sell well online. That’s why it’s hard to sell furniture online and difficult to sell unique works of art or perfume. And that’s why well-known brands can sell  online . . . because people know what they’re getting. In other words, although it’s hard to sell perfume that your potential buyers have never smelled, it’s not hard to sell perfume from Christian Dior.
Okay, so there’s no such thing as perfect online product. But considering what would be perfect might spark ideas of what products are close to perfect. Here, then, is the perfect online product: ■ It’s valuable, with high margins. You’re not making a dollar or two per sale; you’re making dozens, perhaps hundreds of dollars. ■ It’s in demand. It’s a product people want and are willing to pay for. ■ It’s not widely available. Buying online may be the only way to find the product, or the particular variety of the product. ■ It’s a “research” product. People are looking online for this product right now. (Most products are not research products. At this very moment, out of hundreds of millions of Internet users, probably only one or two are trying to find out how to buy sugar online.) ■ It’s light and non-fragile, so it’s cheap and easy to ship. ■ There’s little or no competition online. ■ People love the product so much they’re going to tell their friends about you. ■ There’s no smell or texture, or anything else that makes the product one that “just has to be seen.” ■ You are intimately connected to the product in some way. The product is related to your hobby or passion. ■ Oh, and it’s legal! While a number of illegal substances match the perfect-product criteria, we’re assuming the risk outweighs the benefits.
 8 How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo!, and Google
Understanding the Price Sensitivity of the Online Buyer Online buyers are far more price sensitive than offline buyers. That is, the price of the product is much more important for the online buyer than for someone walking into an offline store. When someone buys a product and has to select a particular merchant, they are “sensitive” to various factors, such as these: ■ The price of the product from that merchant ■ The convenience of purchasing from the merchant ■ The confidence they have in the merchant (whether the merchant “backs” the sale, for instance, if anything goes wrong) ■ The additional costs, such as sales tax and delivery Price is only one aspect in the decision to buy. But on the Internet, the weight given to price is much greater. This is a perfectly natural, and much predicted, state of affairs. Consider the buyer walking into a brick-and-mortar store who finds a product he’s interested in: ■ Many buyers don’t care about pricing much at all. They are more interested in convenience, selection, location, and sales environment. ■ Many buyers want the product now and don’t care too much about price, as long as it’s “in the ballpark.” If the buyer finds the product, there’s a good chance the sale is made. ■ Even if buyers are shopping for price, there’s a limit to how much driving around they’re willing to do. Again, if the price is “in the ballpark,” price may be trumped by convenience. ■ Buyers don’t think too much about how much confidence they have in the merchant; if the business can afford a storefront and take credit cards, they’ve already reached a certain level. We know all this is true, because offline prices are often higher than online prices. And haven’t we all been in stores and thought, “How do they sell at that ridiculous price?” The online sales environment is very different, though: ■ Buyers can jump from store to store very quickly. It’s very easy to find a low-priced product extremely quickly. ■ There are many sites that will even do the price comparison for you. There are the shopping directories (see Chapter 25) and the merchant sites (Chapter 28), where buyers, more and more, are beginning their shopping. ■ Many buyers are used to, and now expect, a low price. Price is a much more important factor for them than for most offline shoppers . . . they are much more price sensitive.  In fact getting a low price is why many online buyers are willing to delay gratification (to wait for delivery).
 CHAPTER 1:  How Your Business Fits Online 9
■ Many buyers now do a little research to settle on the exact product they want, then use a shopping-directory comparison tool to search for the product. Then they’ll ask for the system to show the products sorted lowest-price first and work their way through the merchants one by one. They often won’t even go past the first few low-price merchants before buying. Understanding these concepts naturally leads to a couple of conclusions: ■ If you have a really good price, you’re in a good competitive position. ■ If you don’t have a good price, many of the marketing techniques won’t be open to you; you’ll find it very difficult to sell through eBay, shopping directories, and merchant sites, for instance.
Does this mean price is always important, that you can’t sell a product unless you sell at a low price? No, not necessarily. It means you’ll have trouble with sales channels that compare your product with others based on price, such as eBay, the shopping directories, and merchant sites. But it’s possible to position your business—on your own web site—in ways that are not directly related to price. The lowest price does not always get the sale. ■ The big merchants have a real brand advantage. Many buyers buy everything at Amazon, under the (not unreasonable) assumption that it’s a pretty good price, if not necessarily the best. ■ Selection holds value. Web sites that have a wide selection have an advantage; if people discover a hard-to-find product on your site, they may stop looking. ■ Focus is important. Sites that focus tightly on a particular type of product—and have a wide selection of a very small range of products—have an advantage, too, for the same reason. It makes the unfindable findable. ■ A classy site trumps a trashy site. Trashy sites make buyers feel uneasy. Classy-looking sites make them feel more comfortable. Even if your product, in your trashy-looking site, is listed in one of the shopping directories above a product from a really classy-looking site, it probably won’t matter how cheaply you sell; the classy site is getting some (much?) of the business. ■ Recommendations count for a lot. If a buyer recommends your site to someone because they’re so happy with buying from you, you’ll get sales regardless of price. ■ Simplicity is good. Making it easy to buy helps turn visitors into buyers. AllAboardToys .com, for instance, sells products you could buy on Amazon.com if you wished, but they make it much easier. ■ Brand differentiation matters. Look for ways to make your business stand apart. ShaneCo.com, for instance, a national jewelry chain, doesn’t compete on price directly; it competes on value and unique designs. They’ve positioned themselves as the price leader for high-quality jewelry, so they don’t have to compete head to head.
eBay in particular is a very price-sensitive forum. Your products will be listed alongside other products, the same or similar, so buyers can quickly see the price at which products sell.
 10 How to Make Money Online with eBay, Yahoo!, and Google
To Ship or Not to Ship Here’s an interesting strategy, one that has worked well for many companies yet also represents some risk: Take orders, but don’t ship. No, we’re not talking about scamming buyers; we’re talking about acting as an order taker, not a shipper. This can, in some cases, make perfect sense. You operate the web site, the e-commerce store, the auctions, the shopping-directory listing, and so on. You carry out the marketing campaigns to bring in the sales, and you process the sales. But you don’t ship the products; rather, you send the order to a manufacturer, wholesaler, distributor, or even retailer, who manages the shipment. (This is known as drop shipping; you take the order, your partner “drop ships” it.) This type of business has some huge advantages: ■ Lower initial investment You don’t have to buy your initial inventory. ■ Less hassle Packing, shipping, and managing returns are nuisances you can do without. ■ Tighter focus You get to focus on Internet marketing and sales, not managing inventory, packing, shipping, and returns.
Of course there are different ways to play this game. Another scenario is to put everything from sales transaction to shipping to customer service in the hands of the supplier. All you do is manage the store and the marketing and let the supplier do everything else, including running the transaction through their own credit-card merchant account, almost totally absolving you of all responsibility.
Conversely, there are dangers and disadvantages: ■ If the supplier doesn’t ship it, you get blamed! ■ You get a lower cut of the sales price and profit. ■ You have less control of the quality of the products shipped to your customers.
Watch out for the scams! There are plenty of companies that will be happy to sign you up, to act for you as a drop shipper or wholesaler. Most of these are bad deals, selling junk. Be very careful and only get into business with reputable companies. In fact, you’re probably not looking for a company that touts itself as a drop shipper. You’re looking for a company that already ships products, that is willing to also ship for you.
How would you find an arrangement like this? Keep your eyes open, research local companies, spend a lot of time looking in stores, reading mail-order catalogs, and so on. Then, when you think you’ve found a good opportunity, you’ll have to make personal contact.
WorldWideBrands.com is a well-respected directory of drop-ship wholesalers. For $69.95 you’ll get a lifetime membership to the directory, which contains information on thousands  of actual wholesalers that have agreed to drop ship for small businesses.