Recommended Media
Stanford University Entrepreneurship Podcast
Small Biz Pod Podcasts
Five Minutes with Jack Podcasts
Startups for the rest of us Podcast
Lifestyle Business Podcast
Automate my small business Podcast
Smart Passive Income Blog / Podcasts

Recommended Books
Lifestyle Business Podcast
Crush it - Gary Vaynerchuck
Various books by Seth Godin
Four Hour Work Week

Recommended Applications
O-desk - Outsourcing website
99designs Setup Design Competitions
CoHuman - Team collaboration 
Mailchimp - Free email marketing
Capsule - Free CRM
pixlr - Free online photoshop
Capsule - Free CRM

There are alot of people right now that want to leave thier job and start a “lifestyle business”. The term “Lifestyle Business” was first coined in the book The 4 hour work week. Tim Ferris is very smart and I read the book a few years ago and found it inspirational.

There is alot of useful stuff in there about how to be ultra efficient and get what you want from life. However some people get the idea that it is possible through being clever to build successful a business with little effort. There is alot of hype on the internet that supports this view (mainly from people selling ebooks and training courses on how to get rich on the internet).

Even Tim Ferris didn’t manage to build his first lifestyle business from scratch. He had a business where he spent 70- hours a week building up prior travelling the world and transforming the business into a “lifestyle business”. I have not heard from one credible entrepreneur that really is doing well that hasn’t had to put in alot of work in the startup phase (see recommended media above).

Pat from the excellent smart passive income blog is a good example of someone living that “lifestyle business” but even he admits in his most recent podcast that it took time and effort to setup things to where he is today.

So I guess the message in this post is if you want to build anything thats worth anything it will take time and effort (probably alot more than you expect). Hopefully you enjoy the ride but if you not prepared to put in the work you may as well give up and watch TV instead.

I have been looking for decent plugins to setup some reporting on my wordpress sites for a while. My search is now over I have found the

best reporting plugins for wordpress

They are Adminer and Exports and reports
Adminer gives a way of quickly viewing and running sql scripts on wordpress tables within wordpress. Exports and Reports gives a way of generating reports from those scripts within wordpress. I have not found anything else like them. I was using them to setup some reports and that was when  I came up with my first problem with queries on wordpress tables it was

How to run a SQL Query to show the post details with the category information.

I was trying to join the wp_post table to the wp_term_taxonomy table so I could find
the categories that match the posts. It took me a while. Below is a diagram that shows how the category information is organized in

The code I wrote to do the join is below
select a.id ,b.term_taxonomy_id,c.term_id 
from wp_posts a, wp_term_relationships b,
wp_term_taxonomy c,wp_terms d 

where	a.id = b.object_id and b.term_taxonomy_id = c.term_taxonomy_id

and c.term_id = d.term_id

The image above I had made up for $150 using

The way it works is that you setup a prize action and people submit designs you then choose the one you like. If you don’t get any you like you don’t pay. Below is how I briefed in my design and the ad I put up. I received 2 designs , the one I choose went through 1 iteration.

The project is a Rock Show based upon the movie I imagined- details can be found on www.carolinetowers.com

Below is my brief

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A poster is required for the action movie “Caroline Towers”

Summary
3 Main Characters – Richard Steel (hero), Leader of the resistance, Architect

About

• Huge building
• Lower floors = lower class
• Lower floors being filled in and occupants murdered so the tower can continue to grow.(The big secret)

Poster Style
below are some I like

More Details

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I was absolutely stoked with the results , especially when you look at the awful drawing I did above for guidance! I would recommend the site for anyone after artwork. Anyone else had any experience with 99 designs. As ever any comments are most welcome

Having local copies of useful stuff on the internet is handy when your not online. The internet is also constantly changing which means that just because something useful is on there now doesn’t mean it always be as useful in the future. For this reason I like local copies of some key items 1. How to download the wikipedia I used okiwiki 2. How to Download all your google docs You can now download all your google docs in one go easily. Click Actions -> Download -> All items 3. How to download maps onto your iphone I use offmaps but its a bit annoying. I also tryto zoom around on my iphone in the maps application to put the maps in cache (although is teduios)

I was listening to the Lew Rockwell show the other day and he interviewed a really interesting guy called John Taylor Gatto. John was an educator for 30 years and was named NY States official “teacher of the year” before he quit in disgust. He has written several books and was talking about the problem with the current western education system.

I was impressed and bought his book “Weapons of mass instruction” which I am reading at present. It is a very powerful book and has made me take a second look on some of my preconceived ideas about who I am and how society operates. I would strongly recommend this book.

Teach yourself to Learn

One line of self examination it sent me down was “what good has school done me”. I have been educated to a degree level (I have a mechanical engineering degree). I would claim that I learnt all I needed to know in primary school (age 6-11)  and all my education after that was a complete waste of time. All the important things I know now are not as a result of my schooling but they are self taught. To teach yourself though you need some some skills. The key to this is critical thinking.

How to think Critically

• It is a cliche but reading many books (including source texts)is the only way to really dig into a topic.
• Evaluate the material
• Have the courage to make your own conclusions based on the evaluation

Most people don’t read much, very few people read source materials (even the “experts”).  Most people today outsource nearly all thought to experts (financial advisors, doctors, education). Those “experts” are often lacking in basic critical thinking skills too or where they really know their topic they may also be lying to further their own agenda.

Formal education cannot rate critical thinking skill highly if it did we’d all be much better at them. Worst of all it makes us think we are not capable good critical thinking and it should be left to experts.

My Self Improvement Journey

The biggest single thing for me was probably getting over a fear of big books. In 2003 I read a book on photoreading I have never actually photoread a book but it did change my mindset on how to read large factual books. My reading steadily grew I would regularly fill my 45 litre rucksac with books from the library getting every book I could find specific subject until I moved on to the next one. I would have usually around 20 books out at any one time. In that time I also read the bible, the dead sea scrolls the Qaran and various hindu texts and many history books. I don’t read as much at the moment as I am listening to a lot of podcasts at present. Topics I am researching currently are Permaculture, gardening, internet marketing and anything that will help me with my new property.

Pink Floyds “Another Brick in the wall”

“Weopons of Mass Instruction” got me thinking about Pink Floyds song “Another brick in the wall” and I thought I’d look up what it was actually about. I had allways assumed it was about East Germany but it actually isn’t. It actually was about Roger Waters’s Grammer school. More details about the song can be found on this website Song meaning

Free Education

The Khan Achademy is an example of this in action. It is a free site with tutorials that cover all educational topics for schools and adult courses all for free. Its amazing and its it been put together by one ex stockbroker type.

Other Notes – Jon Taylor Gatto recently wrote an article about education here

I was sent a great tip from Dave Jackson at the School of Podcasting. The site he recommends has a video on recording video quickly for the internet. I have watched it and found it pretty handy. Click the image below.

I just published the latest podcast for my band Jimmy Yukka & His Amazing Band. I thought writing a post about how I did it might be useful. For this episode I decided to try to record a podcast whilst walking around a park. Obviously by doing this you do sacrifice sound quality but if this means I can more easily complete regular podcasts then for me its a sacrifice worth taking.
So heres how I did it.

Step 1 – What You Need

Recording

• iPhone
• iPhone headset (earphones / mic)
• 1 headphone foam (from a larger headset headphone)
• 1 paperclip
• Some cool sunglasses
• A little spiral bound notepad

Mixing

• Garageband

Putting on Wordpress

• Wordpress
• Podpress plugin

Step 2 – Protect Against Wind

After testing walking around the park and recording I realised that although the mic in the iphone headset is pretty good but it does get affected by wind noise in addition when it moves and hits something it made an annoying noise. So the first thing I did was cover the cable mic with a headphone foam and attatched it with a paperclip to the cable. I then wrapped the cable around my sunglasses arm to stop it from banging about. Although it looks quite ridiculous it worked fairly well.

Step 3 – Record Using Some Software

The standard voice recording software on the iphone is a bit annoying. I downloaded italk recorder with italk syncthese are both free and I quite like them. With this software you can change the recording quality and pause the recording. There is a good review of it italk here.

Step 4 – Preparing Podcast notes

I had sketched out what I was going to talk on a paper about the size of a post it pad and then left the house.

Step 5 – Recording a podcast outside

I picked up my iPhone and walked to the park and started to record. I realized that I had to walk reasonably slowly otherwise I would be heavy breathing too much. I also have to slow down by speaking a bit. I recorded the show about 8 times and ended up using the last recording.

Step 6 – Mixing a podcast in Garageband

Some people don’t even do this step. I will have to do a lot more podcasts before I can miss this out. I used to think I was pretty articulate but when I listen to a recording of myself I realised what a  blundering dither I am when I speak. So I think I recorded about 25 mins and edited out 10 mins of waffle and errrrrrr and eummmm and ahhhhhh and sneezes and coughs etc. I edited the podcast in Garageband.

• Go to the “control” menu and turn off auto ducking as your podcast will sound horrible with it on.
• I also use the high pass filter to reduce hiss (to find this hit show track info and then do to track details and it is      one of the effects. Then go to manual edit and experiment with what effect the filter has on a the speech. You          want just enough to take out the nasty noise but not too much as it will make your voice sound nasty.)

Step 7 – Review Podcast and Re-edit

Once I finished editing I then  move my recording to itunes so I can review it on my iphone. To do this go to the menu in garageband called “share” and then “send podcast to itunes”. I then synch my iphone and review the podcast making notes if theres anything that needs to change. If it needs re-editing I then re-edited the podcast and repeat.

Step 8 – Output for iTunes

Once I was happy with the recording I then move my recording back to iTunes. Once the recording is in iTunes right, click on the recording in iTunes and select “get info” to setup the information about the podcast episode.

• Go to options a check “remember playback position” failing to do this will mean listeners have to go back to the start each time
• You should setup the artwork for the podcast episode here too.

Step 9 – Post using Podpress

In order to do this you will need add the plugin podpress and  setup your podcast. This page here has a good overview on how to setup podpress for your podcast and use it for posting podcasts.

Step 10 – Create a post in Wordpress and add the podcast

Podpress (see above) will have installed an extra section in the “add new post” screen that allows you to add your podcast file to the new post (which will be the show notes.)

Final Result

To listen to the final result the podcast “Episode 4″ can be listened to or subscribed to from my bands website www.jimmyyukka.com. Earlier podcasts were recorded with myself and Mick using my macbook pro with the integrated mic and recording straight to Garageband.

Get More Advice

• When embarking on this activity I called The podcasting advisor and he responded to my question and featured mobile podcast recording on his show. So if you want to know more,  listen to the show on:

• I have more resources and related links to this subject can be found on my page on internet marketing click here.

If anyone reviews this and has any better ideas then please comment below.

I have been an avid listener to the “productivity show and was delighted to be asked by Tony Goodson to talk about what I am doing to make myself more productive.

CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO GO TO THE SHOW NOTES

We talked about a range of things about how I have implemented David Allens getting things done process. This was my first podcast so I think maybe I could have sounded a little incoherent at times but Tony helped to keep things on topic and I think we covered some interesting stuff.

For anyone who is interested below is a mind map of my GTD Implementation – My small GTD blog can be found at PaulsGTDBlog

I was goggling ”Jimmy Yukka” and found that I have become somewhat of an internet celebrity without even noticing it