I’m sitting here in the lobby/lounge area of the Davenport Hotel in Spokane, WA. This is absolutely the fanciest outfit I’ve ever sat down and had a drink in. It’s the headquarters/host hotel for the 2010 AT&T US Figure Skating Championships. It’s quiet at 10pm, and I hear classical musical and…a Zuca rolling across the tile.
It’s been a fascinating 48+ hours. My IJS knowledge has blossomed into comprehension and application, and I have developed a sincere appreciation for pairs skating that I previously lacked.
Above all else, I finally have proof that what I want to do with my life is, in fact…THIS. I think I actually worked a half day today, about 4 hours, in spurts, dealing with this and that, doing some code, working on lead generation, product ideas, etc. I spent two hours at the rink doing the judge thing and almost 6 hours in the judge’s school.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been open to some other ideas in my life, too, but much of my evening has been spent in contemplation thereof. And there it is. In all it’s awkwardly wonderful simplicity. 
For me, 2008 was all about starting over, in a multitude of ways – physically, spiritually, financially, career, and relationships. It was a rough year, but in retrospect, a necessary step back.
In contrast, 2009 was about rebuilding, branching out, and trying new things. On the business front, it was a year for testing ideas that are commonplace in my old professional field (real estate) and trying out what might work and what won’t work in my new profession (tax representation). For the most part, things cross over quite nicely. As such, it became a time for testing marketing ideas, creating procedures, and setting up systems. The programming of a web-based practice management system to streamline our operations and improve communication amongst the various business functions (marketing, sales, production, management, payroll, account receivable, etc.) was a crowning achievement for me for the year. While it still has some work to be done, it’s in full production use by our staff and has eliminated several other expensive software programs that didn’t talk to each very well. In addition, it allows most of our staff members to continue providing client service remotely, which before was not possible.
This year, 2010, will have a very different flavor. While the core systems component, the web-based practice management system, will continue being a major factor in my, it will go from being a majority of my day to being perhaps a quarter of my working hours. That will free up substantial time for me to work on full scale implementation of marketing ideas that have accumulated throughout the past two years, as well as enable us to expand the practice into other areas.
We have already started the wheels turning on two major business expansions for us: Offering professional continuing education to other tax professionals, and expanding into the world of business tax return preparation. Last Thursday, I mailed off the application to the IRS to allow us to offer continuing education programs, and will tackle the various state Boards of Accountancy this week. We have also started reviewing tax preparation software options, since we currently prepare tax returns by hand using PDF forms, since we do very, very limited scope tax return preparation for our existing client (most of whom owe back taxes and also have unfiled returns, which their CPA normally prepares). One of my tasks for today is to prepare a postcard mailer for tax preparation and assemble an appropriate mailing list to send out to THIS WEEK.
Back in 1999, Dan Kennedy published a tiny red paperback book that was included in some of his other programs as a bonus item. It was a self-published book, and is not available in bookstores, which is a travesty, because I think it’s the single greatest piece he’s ever written. It’s called “The Ultimate Success Secret. The book is about one thing: action. In a nutshell, goals without action are just words on paper. On top of that, it’s not about just doing SOME actions, it’s about MASSIVE action. That means if you can think of ten ways to grow your business, don’t just do one at a time, DO THEM ALL!
In a nutshell, that’s what 2010 is for me. If I fail to take massive action on all the things I have planned, I will have nobody to blame but myself. And it’s not just in business, either. If I have any real chance of making the U.S. Olympic team, it will take nothing short of massive action. Everybody else has a tremendous head start on me, so I have no choice but to dive in massively.
Speaking of implementation, the past three weeks have been a period of massive action in another business venture. I am happy to say that after many late nights, burning the candle at both ends as the saying goes, the new business is open and productive. The revenue goal for the enterprise is such that it comprises fully 1/3 of my goal income for the year. There is a huge fear factor to me, since I’ve never been involved in a retail operation, as I have always operated service type businesses. It’s also strange for me to be involved in an outright partnership, as I have a difficult time accepting having to rely on other people. However, the partners need this to work out significantly more than I do, as it is their primary livelihood, so there is incentive all around for it to work out.
Now, I have some implementation to go do. ~||~
Make it a great day!
Jassen Bowman
Back in January when I was getting serious about making the trip to Australia, I started looking for ways to keep the costs down. I made some notes about things to look further into, which I never really did. I was cleaning up some old emails and found an email to myself with the following notes in it, so I just thought I’d share. I do specifically remember one of the biggest things I found, which goes right in line with something I’ve been saying for years: Never pay a fee to get free travel — such programs are usually just scams or ripoffs.
Here are the notes:
Check with cruise lines for free cruises in exchange for offering services to other passengers that you do already, such as teaching aerobics, organizing ballroom dancing, doing catering, or, for me in particular, preparing tax returns or hosting marketing seminars
Carry packages and documents – Check out courier.org or call them at 308-632-3273 – clearinghouse for courier services
FreeTravelCenter.com
Participate in archaelogical digs — these often require tons of labor, and they are under- or un-funded digs, so usually need volunteers – PassPortInTime.com
They had some travel savings stuff at the time — CoolSavings.com
Happy New Year to everybody!
Sincerely,
Jassen Bowman
I just completed migrating from the b2evolution 3.x blogging platform to WordPress 2.9. In fact, this is my first post under the new WordPress platform.
I’ve spent time over the past several days consolidating all my b2evolution blogs (dozens of them) down into one site. It was a difficult decision process to consolidate to one domain, and I did so gradually. I will now forward the old domains to specific categories on this blog.
Once I had all the posts and categories cleaned up on b2evolution, I had to figure out how to migrate it all. There are no easy ways to do this. There are instructions out there for exporting b2e data using a Movable Type skin, then importing that into WordPress. However, these methods don’t work with b2evolution 3.x.
After unsuccessfully trying the skins method, I went to wordpress, and used their instructions, actually, including their database import script, located at http://codex.wordpress.org/Importing_Content
Here’s how I did this:
1). Remove domain as a parked domain, added back to my hosting account as as add-on domain.
2). Upload WordPress 2.9 files and configure it, using the database name, login, and password of my b2evolution database. Yes, install the WordPress tables into the b2evolution database.
3). Run the WordPress installer script.
4). Run the WordPress migration script for b2evolution. It worked with b2e 3.x!
5). All my b2e pages imported as posts, so I manually recreated the 2 pages and deleted their post copies.
6). Deleted all my old b2e users.
All my categories (10 of them) and posts (160 of them) look to have imported correctly. The only downside was that the post dates all say today.
I also need to look at my .htaccess files to try and preserve old inbound links. It’s almost 1am, but I’m going to tackle that right now anyway.
Merry Christmas, everybody!
Sincerely,
Jassen Bowman
I first read about hypermiling a little over a year ago. It’s a fascinating concept that purports to drastically increase gas mileage without gadgetry, but strictly through altering your driving habits.
There are a lot of common sense things that you can do to increase your gas mileage. Here’s a brief list off the top of my head:
- Avoid rapid acceleration – the green light isn’t a drag strip.
- Don’t race to the next light – as soon as you see the next red light, let off the gas and coast to the light.
- Learn the street light timing patterns and/or speed settings for your city. Call the city traffic department if you have to, to learn how lights are timed at various times of day and in different parts of the city. Use this information to plan your trips.
- Combine all your errands into the minimum number of trips.
- Park & walk inside rather than idling at a drive-thru.
- Turn off the engine when stopped for a train.
- If you’re going down a hill, kick the tranny into neutral and coast down the hill (this may be illegal in some places, so check your local laws before doing this).
- Travel at a speed that provides optimal gas mileage for your car, even if it’s below the speed limit.
These tips are a start, but hypermiling involves going above and beyond this. In fact, many of the techniques used by hypermilers can be downright dangerous. I’ve tried some of the techniques, especially in regards to taking corners at higher speeds than I normally might in order to preserve kinetic energy. There’s also ridge riding, where you ride the tops of the ridges in the roadway to reduce surface area contact (and friction), instead of riding in the ruts in the middle of the lane like most drivers.
However, many of the more interesting and outrageous methods used by hypermilers are often illegal and, more importantly, dangerous. For example, turning off your engine when you coast down a hill can be dangerous because most modern cars have power assisted brakes that are powered by the engine, and therefore turning off the engine can drastically effect braking ability.
The point here is that there are things you can learn from “professional” hypermilers, and make better driving decisions, but don’t do so at the expense of safety.
For some interesting articles on hypermiling, check these out:
- http://www.hypermiling.com/
- CNN article with tips
- Negating highway traffic jams
- Wikipedia article on hypermiling