However, I am not yet successful though I believe that I am on the right path to success. One thing that I do want to talk about is the fact that most press and publications cover success. We as a human race covet success (although we have failed to collectively agree on what success is)…. yet we all understand it, we know what it means to us, and we know that we want it.

Through the last 11 years of my life I’ve become somewhat an expert in successive failure. I find myself typically throwing myself into fields and tasks that I’m not traditionally qualified for and trying to ‘figure things out’ as they present themselves to me.

In this process I’ve learned two important lessons from failure that I think are a major part in my optimism about my impending success. These two realizations are both simple and profound….

1. Not another hurdle
2. Chain theory

Not another hurdle:

Even though many people think of failure as an everlasting perpetual state, it is more accurately described as a moment in time. The greatest runners at the olympics were one time infants that could not walk. How can they be great runners if they are failures at walking? The greatest chef’s on the planet are alway discovering and experimenting with new ingredients… failing at one recipe only to come up with and try another… the greatest technologies on the planet such as mobile phones, computing, dna research and agricultural crop modifications have all at some point or another been labeled as epic failures.

The insight that a person like myself gains from failure is that failure is finite. It happens in a moment of time, under certain conditions, due to certain internal or external limitations, and in reference to a predefined set of expectations.

Most self help books will take the easy way out and tell you to ‘redefine expectations’ so that whatever it is that you do possess now looks like a success rather than a failure. This is absolute bullshit.

Yes in general people should enjoy life experiences more and covet things less. Yes we should adjust our expectations of things that aren’t really that meaningful to us (like cars that we buy to show off, or clothes that we wear to appease others).

However, lowering your standards so that you can can your current situation a success is cowardice if anything.

The better solution to dealing with failure is to realize that failure is a hurdle. Like a speed bump in the road, it should not kill your momentum. Yes it may slow you down, but ultimately, if you’re doing anything worth doing, then this is not going to be your first speedbump, nor is it going to be your last. Failure, similarly is finite, painful, very obvious (as obvious as driving over a speed bump in an otherwise perfect road), and repetitive in life and in your career.

Taking this point of view on failure does one important thing… something simple, yet profound …

Look at your problems and smile: You are not the first problem I’ve faced, nor will you be the last… and although you look big and strong right now, I can assure you this, I’ve surpassed many problems like you before… through hard work, determination, strategy, creativity, diligence, education, raising my game, trying hard, breaking through, consulting a friend, rallying more troupes and most strategic of all ‘waiting for the winds to shift in my favor’… I don’t remember most of the other problems I’ve been stuck on before, and pretty soon I will pass you and forget you.

I will not yell “Not another hurdle!” in frustration because in fact, you not even another  hurdle. You are an opportunity in disguise and I thank you for presenting yourself….

Chain Theory

We live in a pretty complex world nowadays filled with complex decisions, complex systems and complex repercussions to our actions. Many times when we face failure we generalize the causes of our failure and allow ourselves to exit the arena saying that the timing was wrong, the game was rigged against us, the odds weren’t fair, or that the problem was just unsolvable and that failure was unavoidable.

A better solution in facing failure would be to think about the links that create the chain that is the process that has failed.

Let me give you a single example:

In a typical triathlon the athlete swims through a lake, then rides a bike course and then runs a half marathon before completing the race. This simple event breaks down to three clear stages that must all be completed competitively for a runner to win:

• The swim
• The cycling
• The run

At a very high level, most people do NOT break down their problems or analyze their failures down to their stages. Working on your run, for 8 hours a day, will not enable you to win the Triathlon if the cause of your failure is that you can’t swim to save your own life.

YET, in many aspects of life we find people trying to MASK their failure by OVER-INVESTING in the wrong part of the process. Over-polishing your resume when you have no internship experience will never make you more experienced. Investing in more advertising and marketing will not sell your product if the product itself is horrible or the product concept is flawed. Spending 10 hours a day in the gym will not help you lose weight if you live on a diet of doughnuts and pizza… and so on.

At a deeper level, we can break down every stage in the triathlon to its relevant parts:

The swim breaks down to:

• Your endurance
• Your stroke and technique
• Your breathe and stamina
• Your power to weight ratio

The cycle breaks down to:

• Your lower body strength
• Your transition time on and off the bike
• Your posture and lower back strength
• Your aerodynamic friction and your body and bike profile
• Your ability to pace you performance for hills and valleys

The run breaks down to:

• Your core strength in your mid section and your abs
• Your breathing and stamina
• Your running technique (which parts of your feet hit the ground, how hard, and how you bounce back off the pavement)
• Your average pace and your ability to pace yourself
• Your mental fortitude (as most people quit in pain or exhaustion when they physically were able to push on).

Now that is a list of 15 measurable, bench-markable and actionable items that you can use to analyze the cause and solution to your failure.

The chain theory goes as follows:

Complex processes are organized in a sequencial chain such that a failure in any one part of the chain will result in an overall failure of the process. The right way to deal with these systems is to break them down into smaller measurable and actionable areas of focus, come up with hypothesis for testing that part of the system and diagnosing it and then verify that it alone works as expected. The number 1 mistake people make is to make assumptions about the overall process and continue ‘playing’ with the system trying to create some sort of heuristic relationship between messing with different parts of the system and the overall output.

Professionals on the other hand break the problem down to smaller chunks and work on them with higher focus. This is why a soccer team has separate drills focused on strategy, team work, passing, stamina, running, strength training, defensive and offensive tactics, free kicks, penalty kicks …etc

By breaking down the complex problem of training a player into distinct areas of focus, the coach is more quickly able to identify and address each player’s weaknesses and produce a better system where the entire chain (from goalie, to defense, to midfielders, to attackers to strikers) work together to produce success.

Takeway:

1- Do not be discouraged by failure. Take some time off. Collect your thoughts. Revisit the problem with new energy, new strategy, new ideas, or new tools. Recognize that this is just one of many hurdles on the path to success and that you should never be discouraged… this too shall pass.

2- Never assume that the failure of a complex system is due to the most obvious parts of the system. Break down the problem to smaller measurable chunks. Create a hypothesis about how each part should operate and test it against your assumptions. Identify failing parts of the system and fix them. Once you have done this for all parts of the chain, only then can you expect success to flow through the system from entry point to exit point without getting blocked somewhere in the middle. Elevate your focus and invest in solving problems at their root. A clogged artery cannot be fixed by overcompensating with higher blood pressure or a stronger heart or a higher heart rate. These types of forceful solutions might work for the short term, but in the long run you will have a healthier and better flowing system by removing the clots rather than trying to force blood flow through a clogged system.

Let’s start with basic human behaviour. Most humans think linearly.

If you currently make $1000 a week and you want to start making $2000 a week, most people would automatically think this:

1- I need to work twice as long
2- I need to make twice as much per hour
3- I need a second job

This same linear logic can be applied to any human endeavour. If you want to cover twice as much material before a presentation or an exam, most people will double their work hours.

If you want to finish twice as many features before the deadline, most people will work twice as hard and spend half as much time wasting time.

What happens when you stop looking for a 20% to 100% improvement? What happens when you want to go from losing 0.5 kilo per month to losing 5 kilos per month (a 10 time improvement). …

What happens when you want to go from swimming 30 laps to swimming 300 laps ?

What happens when you want to go from writing 1 page a day to writing 10 pages a day ?

What happens when you want to go from seeing 5 patients a day to seeing 50 patients a day ?

The 10x question is a question that you can apply to your life to force your mind to break OUT OF linear thinking. It allows you to identify parts of your system or process that dont scale. It highlights procedural ineffeciencies and bottle necks and it forces you to prioritize.

The thing about the 10x question is that it is a realistic question to undertake.

Technology, interest, climate change, economic upswing and downsings, your metabolism, your health, your energy, and your psychologicaly state are all natural phenomenon that have the capacity to change rapidly (10 fold, 100 fold or even 1000 fold) in a very short period of time.

One day you are in a good economy, 3 months later the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped 700 points in 1 day and (more than 10 times is daily average) and your country is in a recession.

The people that asked themselves ‘what happens if the economy is down by 20% next year’ will not have had the answers, the preparations or the strategy to overcome a 10x shift in the environment. Those companies end up dying , sold and merged, or bailed out… but ultimately their survival becomes some one else’s decision and their destiny is out of their hands.

I challenge you to use the 10x question to save yourself a lot of time, money and headache.

Another aspect of the 10x question is that it directly speaks to human delinquency.

Would you quit smoking if you knew that it would kill you in 30 to 50 years?

Maybe you’d quit sometime in the future… maybe you’d wait another 5 years before deciding…

What if smoking killed you 10x as fast ? not 20% faster, not 30% faster, not 100% faster … but 1000% faster…

If smoking is going to kill me in the next 3 to 5 years (instead of 30 to 50 years) how much more am I willing to quit ?

Very good question and as you can see your entire paradigm for answering that question, and your motivation to take action shifts from a remote distant future with a low probability, to a high probability eminent decision.

In the book freakanomics the author states that reesearch has shown that human beings are most powerfully motivated by eminent short term catastrophes …. That is to say : if i told you that you would die in 6 months, your decision making process and your outlook on life would dramatically change. Your behaviour will also change accordingly.

Poisitive outcomes and distant future outcomes have less of an impact on people’s decisions. The 10x questions helps makes the distance, eminent and helps you take positive action in your life before its too late.

Now let’s think about this for a minute …

There are good things in life…. little things… but good things none the less… that we let go of because they are little….

There are bad things in life… little things… but bad none the less… that we hang on to because they are little.

What if we applied 10x to your life, specifically to the little things in your life, good and bad …

If you felt 10 times as good about doing a little bit extra at work, would you continue to do that little bit more?? Probably yes.

If you felt 10 times as bad about showing up 5 minutes late to work or leaving 5 mintues early… would you still do it ?

The 10x question employs higher discipline because it amplifies these little aspects of life allowing them to cross the threshold of what you would consider caring about and allowing you to make deliberate decisions to maintain a better life.

So let’s recap:

the 10x question allows you to:

1- Think outside of the box and come up with non-linear solutions that allow you to break out of typical linear thinking.

2- Accelerate time, if you imagine both good things and bad ones happening 10 times sooner than typical, you become more likely to stick to doing the hard work (towards good goals) because they don’t seem as far as they really are… and you are less motivated to hang on to bad habits because you feel that they will destroy you much sooner, soon enough to care.

3- Raise your level of discipline as there are no little things anymore … everything is 10 times as important (good or bad) and so you are more calculated in your actions and more deliberate in your discipline.

Think about the 10x question and work towards a better and more fullfilling life… 10 times as fullfilling in fact

So that was the goal to go from $200 per month in December of 2010 to $2000 per month in July of 2011.

We are now in Mid August 2011 so how did I do?

First let’s talk about the strategy …

Although 10x growth seems like a lot it can be broken down to a simple compounded set of metrics.

If I make $200 selling a product at an average price point of $30 to 8 people per month of my website’s 12,000 visitors then:

If I can double my average pricing (up front sale price) or my customer’s lifetime value (how long they stay subscribed to our service) that’s 2x growth right there.

If I can double my traffic and double the number of targeted visitors to my website then that’s another 2x right there.

If I can doubly my conversion rate, by working on my sale page and my sales offer and by making the free experience in my freemium product more interesting and more conducive to making a customer move to the next step and upgrade their account then there’s another 2x right there.

If I know that on average there is a 10:1 correlation between my free trial customers and my paid subscribers then for the same number of visitors, same price point, same everything else, if I can double my free user adoption then it’s not unreasonable to think that 10% of those new free trial users will result in sales.

More subtle ideas: If I can get my existing customers to enjoy the product more, and double the user engagement (how often they use the product and how satisfied they are with it) that can spawn two indirect effects: 1- they will stay subscribed longer as they will see the product as a more integral part of their life that they use more and more which doubles their lifetime value without having to raise prices…. 2- they are more likely to tell their friends about a product that they use 5 times a month vs one they use once a month so that can indirectly spawn more referral sales.

So now that was the plan

double the traffic times double the adoption times double the conversion times double the upfront pricing times double the engagement ….

Here is the frustration:

Traffic: (2x)

In July I had double the traffic that I did in January. Our rankings across all our targeted keywords went up. Our page rank went from 0 to 2 which means mathematically speaking, even though our site is just one year old now it has 100 times the value in googles eyes as a fresh site. Our traffic on average is up from 12,000 per month to 24,000 per month.

Adoption: (1.35x)

Compared to January 2011, our adoption (measured as the number of new free trial members) is up by 35% … I’ve tested different types of call to action, and different segmentation of free to paid features in the software throughout and the adoption has varied as much as -43% to as high as where it is now of +35% compared to our baseline

Conversion: (1.14)

Our conversion rate is unpredictable …. anywhere from -80% to +14% depending on the month, using the same traffic sources, and the same sales letter pretty much. Conversion is my #1 failure to be honest as I’ve never gotten it to where I want it … but in that 6 month period, in June we had conversion up by 14%

Engagement: (1.5x)

In late November of 2010 I launched version 4.0 of the power calculator.

This was a MAJOR updated because we now supported calculations for ANY power adder and ANY fuel.

The update also included 23 new features that came directly from customer feedback.

Since January 2011 I also followed up by releasing minor updates from 4.0 alpha all the way to 4.0 ultimate which is where we are today. Each update has had 2 or 3 minor edits, corrections, bug fixes, user interface upgrades, better flow, prettier pages, better illustrations …. etc

Lots of product refinements over a course of some 20 updates in 6 months or an average of one update every 9 days! When we read about startups iterating on their product… this exactly what they talk about… I did exactly that … I iterated fast and hard on problems, features, and design

Engagement peaked at 12% in July which means an average user used the product 4 times a month on average , which is up from 8% in January but nowhere near the 24%+ that you see with highly addictive products like farmville and other casual games… but we’re closer.

Also upon close inspection I’m happy to say that I do in fact have customers on monthly memberships at this point that have stuck with us for more than 11 payments, and that is on our 2nd tier payment plan of $15 per month…. so I know for sure that we are delivering value that is worth their payments…

Pricing and LTV (2.05x) and (1.30x)

We still have a high attrition rate of monthly users. I have doubled our lifetime access prices and re-segmented the software to push more people up towards the higher cost monthly plan or towards the lifetime unlimited plan. In march our average up front $ per sale was up by 105% compared to December/January. That is up front sales, not including additional monthly payments from those sales, and with an at the time average customer lifetime of 4 months.

Looking at our engagement doubling and more people staying on for longer on the payments plan… our lifetime value should be up from 4 months to about 5 months as a conservative average estimate though I don’t have exact averages on this yet as it’s difficult to track using our payment processor analytics (have to crunch the numbers and follow the cohorts by hand in spread sheet).

So why am I frustrated?

Theoretically we should now be making:

$200 X 2 (traffic) X 1.35 (adoption) X 1.14 (engagement) X 2.05 (up front pricing) x 1.30 (subscription duration) = $1640 per month

Which for me, living in Saudi Arabia is considered ‘ramen profitability’. Even though shy of $2000 per month (our original target) it does give me better quality of life options, a slower drain on my savings (which ultimately gives me more runway to continue to develop this business) and gives me the confidence to invest more heavily in marketing and outsourcing to continue to free up my time to focus solely on engagement and continue to raise the quality of the product.

The problem is … each of those numbers peaked in a different month… all my efforts, although bringing positive results in each aspect, never lined up to produce the overall peak compounding effect that I was hoping for.

Now I am definitely in a better position than where I started because back in December of 2010 I was not tracking any of these metrics this closely … so at least now I am in fact managing by metrics and measuring the effects of every change I make to the site, offer structure, and product by how it reflects on those metrics… but still I am not happy.

Currently I’m working on 4 things in tandem:

1- I am sorting out Search Engine Marketing. We have a very promising campaign running in google adwords with retargeting enabled… and I’m testing emotional hooks in my ad wording to find out exactly which emotions are motivating for our prospective customers.

2- I have a few more features to iron out in the software and am integrating Amazon Product Advertising API into the software so that we can increase our customer life time value by making a percentage cut on parts that they buy through our software recommendations (in addition to what we charge them for up front sales and monthly memberships).

3- I’m writing a new e-book called intake manifold secrets as a follow up to one of our most linked to and highest ranking articles on the site. It’s also pushed me to do research and assimilation on advanced intake manifold design theory which has already highlighted a few shortcomings in how our software calculations and recommends manifold dimension. So besides being part of our up-sell / lifetime package… it also helps raise the level of accuracy and quality in our software product.

4- Still working on raising our rankings for the search term ‘turbo calculator’ … there is a lot of search competition there, but I believe we are THE BEST turbo calculator on the market. However this is a tough uphill battle as we are fighting a handfull of free calculators (and you get what you pay for)… but hey people like free and if 1% of the people will buy and link to my product, having to battle 99% of the people using and linking to the inferior products is in fact a very tough and uphill ranking battle. The payoff though, from this single keyword ranking is DOUBLING our traffic so you can see why I am obsessed with this keyword.

Long term

Long term I am still bullish on this market. The automotive market is massive and filled with misinformation. Our ebooks and power calculator give professional quality design, knowledge and education all the way down at the consumer difficulty level. Our current customers love us and happily pay for our services. There is at least 20x the traffic out there and we can be about 4x as efficient at monetizing this market…. to me, this is a $5M company…. though I still have a lot of work to do to get there …

But maybe there’s a different way to think about success and that is to look at execution rather than perfection. This isn’t a novel theme of mine by any means, but it is something that is meaningful to me at this moment in time.

The region that I live in is going through a lot of evolution and revolution, at the same time, looking at the news paper today I saw at least 3 different situations in which government bodies of certain countries have abstained from making a decision.

In fast paced times, success is merely making a decision (be it the right decision or the wrong one) for as we live in a connected, fast paced, transparent, digital world…it is very easy to gather enough information to back up or refute our decisions shortly after making them.

If you had that kind of power, to alter the future, then measure it, then realize that you were either truly on-track with that decision or so far off base that you’ve made things worse… then why would you ’stall at all’

Success in my opinion is the courage to make a decision while knowing that you can never be 100% sure that it was right.

Success in my opinion is the foresight to put in place the systems to tell gather information and let you know weather your decision was right or not (after making it, while not holding everything stagnant).

Success in my opinion is the courage to reverse a decision once it has been proven wrong, or to double down on it with even more conviction if the evidence proves in favor.

Waiting around forever while your employees, your family members, or your citizens are boiling over with frustration, and delaying decision making until you are fairly sure you are right is the best way to let things boil over. Sometimes things boil over and get out of hand. Sometimes the price of boiling over is very high. Success is not about making successful decisions. Success is simply making decision to keep the ball rolling. When the ball is in play, you stand a chance to score. Being afraid of getting scored on, and keeping the ball stagnant will piss off your team mates, your referee and the spectators.

Evaluate your options.

Take a decision.

Measure your outcomes.

Evaluate your position.

Correct accordingly.

All successful people know this. In entrepreneurship we call it iterating on your product, business model or strategy. There is nothing that prevents us from iterating, measuring, and correcting other aspects of our life.

Life is built on decisions. Embrace it.

One of the things I’ve been working on recently is revamping our software for better look and feel, higher user engagement and better user experience.

Consumers now are accustomed to nice web2.0 like buttons with solid background colors and white text on top… visit any of your favorite websites and you’ll see what I mean.

gwt out of the box doesn’t support this with the basic button class.

Here is a link to SuperButton.java class that I downloaded online and modified to fit my personal needs.

The original class supported widgetized buttons which allowed me to add widget (Such as a small absolute panel with a label and an icon added to it).

The original buttons like this:

The code to create this button looks something like this:

To explain this simple:

• Create a super button
• Size it correctly
• Create a new panel
• Add any text or images you want to said panel
• Add your panel to the button

This is the ‘out of the box’ superbutton class.

I have further extended it to create buttons that use a single as the buttons background image, including all the CSS modifications required to undo the typical button shading and borders and paddings that would interfere with this. You can also set a second image as your alternate image for when the button is disabled.

Here’s what the new buttons look like:

And here’s what the code to create these buttons looks like:

As you can see , when creating these buttons, I’m passing in either one or two image URL’s.

Buttons that need to show that they are ‘disabled’ or greyed out have 2 images associated with them.

Standard buttons that will always be enabled only need 1 image to create them.

For comparison sake, here’s what the old (and frankly dated) widgetized buttons look like (this image is from my Gimp mockups… it’s always faster to mockup your ideas in Gimp or photoshop BEFORE doing any coding… coding takes time to debug … you want make all style decisions rapidly on mockups, and only after you’ve finalized your fonts, styles, colors, ideas should you move to executing them… always separate the creative from the constructive otherwise you’ll bog down your creative in troubleshooting and coding and debugging).

Hope this helps someone…

The perfect man is a man who lives up to other people’s expectations of him.

By age 30 the perfect man has one or two degrees from college. Has been employed for 5 or more years at corporate. He holds a good position in his company as a middle manager. He has a wife and one or two young kids that look up to him. He spends 90% of his time at work keeping up this perfect life and the 10% outside of work he divides equally between sports, watching TV, maintaining his social obligations to friends, maintaining his social obligations to his wife’s family and extended family, hanging out with his kids, and having nice conversations with the neighbors.

The perfect man’s life is not in any way about himself. He is truly selfless. He lives for his wife, his kids, and his parents. He has sex to reproduce. He works to put food on the table. He reads because his boss handed him reading materials. He takes time off so he can feel good for work. He marries for family.

I on the other hand am a Haitham. A Haitham is a breed of vulture, and is a name not in anyway related to human beings. Furthermore the word Haitham is sexless. I couldn’t be a perfect man, I couldn’t be a perfect woman either.

I am an alternate being. I am an alien truly and wholly.

I believe in working for satisfaction.

I believe in reading for education and for thought exchange.

I believe in sex for pleasure.

I believe in marriage for bonding.

I believe in taking time off for taking time off’s sake.

I don’t believe in middle management because that in itself is an oximoron… a manager by definition manages, and cannot be managed.

I don’t believe in measuring people’s maturity by how many winters have passed by them, nor their resilience by how many zeros are in their bank account, nor their worth by the fictitious title bestowed upon them by the corporate lords, nor their social worth by their ability to take a leap into marriage just to trap a member of the opposite sex to make them look more ‘whole’.

You don’t have to believe in me. After all, most people don’t believe in Aliens.

As with any Alien race my objectives are seen as selfish invasive and destructive…

You can count on me to:

• Challenge the status quo
• Be a fan of technology
• Be oblivious to social and cultural norms and see no reason to maintain them and no harm in breaking them for the sake of the progress of the Alien race
• Try to destroy old constructs in order to assimilate new cultures and technology
• Have inexplicable and independent energy sources including sources of personal energy, sources of creativity, sources of inspiration, sources of intelligence, sources of that thing you humans call money… all without having a ‘corporate overlord’
• Have an affinity to colonise in a group of like minded Aliens and be content in my colony with no ‘need’ for marriage
• Only attempt to reproduce for the continuation of my race… and at the moment that doesn’t seem to be necessary

The business I’m building online is just an Alien front. What do you think TerraFirms really means ? Terra=earth, Firms=companies… We are building a company on earth to colonize…

There you go, my evil plot unveiled.

This is not the first time company founders have referred to themselves as extra-human.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irjgfW0BIrw

http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/31/are-you-a-pirate/

http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP000456

This is all hard work … you are always working up hill, and what makes it seem harder is that I feel , like very infrequently am I working downhill… but rather, always up the hill and it’s always raining.

For example, the google Panda update just took its toll on 60% of my traffic in some of my key converting search keywords… and the blog is now literally a shadow of what it was last month and Google has typically pushed as back about 6 months in terms of revenue.

I have decided that it’s all good. I have decided that I won’t let this get to me. I have decided two more things that seem a bit out there, a bit dreamy, if you will, like rain in August… but:

1- I will defeat the google… I’m going to do what everyone else did and diversify my traffic sources from the safe and steady search … into more social and primarily more referral traffic through a nice forum engagement strategy I’ve been working on recently. Forums are a big BIG collective of engaged fans and these have not yet been displaced by anything out there including facebook groups and and google groups.

2- Google is dying. Yes this might seem far out but google to me is truly dying. You have to understand that the rise of google was the democratization of search, advertising and monetization. Google’s rise to fame was that it enabled anyone to make money blogging… doing so, it pushed for the expansion of the internet. It got more people starting blogs and websites with ‘display advertising’ as their primary monetization strategy.

Ads are dying, at least in the traditional sense … basic banner ads are going away and getting more annoying (when they try to hang on using pop unders and pop outs and flash enabled interactive ads) … and margins on ads are shrinking and that whole ecosystem is dying.

Google knows this, so rather than making their ads better, they too are playing the game of the uphill battle in the rain… launching chrome OS and android OS to get ads out on more installs rather than getting better ads out on existing installs , or reinventing the ad game altogether.

Either way, that is not google’s only mistake, they have also sequentially and efficiently sent mixed signals about ranking factors over the last 2 years that I’ve been doing this. The least of which is index count. At one point having a larger index count was an indication of having a larger website which means the site must be a more authoritative source of content. Recently with the panda update, they have practically reversed this by saying that smaller focused sites that better target a specific topic will rank better than the larger generalist site. A move that forced many , including myself to unpublish the lower quality pages on our site in order to focus the quality level on a smaller number of more important key word targeted pages.

When google as a company no longer has the tools to empower and grow the internet as it did 5 or 10 years ago, and when it continues to confuse and hurt small and medium sized websites by constantly shifting strategy away from spammers… then google has clearly shown it’s loss of power over the internet.

This company has peaked and it will go away eventually.

Here is a simple example:

It is now more important to have social indicators on your site to help it rank than other traditional factors. Social indicators include facebook likes and twitter tweets. If it is cost effective, people are include to purchase display advertising on Facebook and Twitter to gain visits and tweets and likes. This is google FUNDING the competition … and we’re talking competition on multiple levels here:

• Share of mind
• Display advertising (text and image)
• Social networking and ‘networked contacts’
• Monetization empowerment

If facebook likes = rankings and rankings = traffic and traffic = sales , then facebook = sales and google has just undermined itself as the company that empowered the growth of the internet and monetization

If all of this sounds far out, then welcome to my job. Every morning I have to deal with what is far out there. I don’t know if what I’m executing today will be a hit or a miss. I don’t know if new distribution channels will pop up in the future for me to take advantage of. I don’t know if existing channels will die out.

It seems like in my life, it’s always raining … and I feel like … recently… I have adapted by constantly walking around in a speedo

When life gives you rain, wear a thong

2010 has been very productive for me personally, though I have even MORE plans for 2011 (maybe getting to be a shipping addict, even though I turn down 9 out 10 ideas or opportunities that come my way).

Anyway , here is my list for the 2nd half of 2010:

• Lost 7 kilos of weight (now one of the top 5 guys in my aerobics class, though I’m still not that strong physically and there is a huge gap in performance and stamina between myself and the top 2)
• Went from version 3.4 to 3.5 to 3.6 to 4.0 of the power calculator
• Went from superchargerperformance.com to horsepowercalculators.net (and thus went from 450 targeted users per month to 1700).
• Wrote 21 articles for the new website
• Went from a total of 31 registered users in 25 countries to 540 registered users in 36 countries
• Went from an average income of $25 a month to $450 (approaching 4 digits is gonna be fun)
• Went from only being able to swim three times a week (because my knee was killing me) to 6 high intensity workouts a week
• Wrote a book on tuning and sold 36 copies of it
• Became an apple fan boy and bought my first Mac (I never thought I’d actually do this)
• Have been to the desert around Riyadh a couple of times and enjoyed it immensely
• Turned down or walked away from 3 job leads
• Hired my first assistant, paid for by revenues
• Decided never to get emotionally charged about anything that I can avoid getting emotional about (if you ever catch me yelling, it’s because I REALLY care about the mistake I think you’re making right now or about to make) … so excuse my method, but understand my motive.
• Cut sugars and fats from almost all of my beverages (hot or cold) – I can now drink plain black coffee … a miracle
• Dropped down two cup-sizes (yes I almost have pec’s now instead of breasts… it was embarrassing)
• Successfully destroyed 3 laptops (one of them huned from solid aluminum)… gotta give me credit for being a master of Chaos
• Stopped talking about how bad Riyadh is to live in, to run a company from, or to have fun (just turned off that negative mindset)
• Have found myself able to identify people who have a negative mindset (and view the world in a very horrible way) and feel bad for them … I hope you guys find a way out of that… the world does not hate you… lighten up
• Decided that I would one day run a triathlon
• (There are also about 5 different websites that I’ve created as personal favors for friends starting ventures / companies / projects that are on this list)…

There is still alot that I want to work on as far as my health, wealth and relationships go… but for 6 months… I don’t think that’s a bad list to look back on…

Thank you 2010… I’ll keep you guys updated for 2011

www.terrafirms.com/kirix.mpg

…

The problem most people have is that they get lost, disheartened or tired before ‘execute’…and that last bit, is where all the proof is …

Try to think about your process and try to figure out where it breaks down, and that may help you get better results…

For example

If you’ve always wanted to get back into the gym but never seem to make it because you always get stuck on prioritizing going to the gym over doing something else, or you get stuck researching the ‘perfect’ gym that you never end up picking one…

Here is where this begins to get on my nerves (when I see this pattern in other people and how it breaks down)

I hear a lot of people around always talking about a dream but never seeing any execution. The painful fact is as follows:

To get from point A to point B you need to move away from point A and gravitate towards point B. Sitting firmly at point A and planning and dreaming and contemplating and thinking and prioritizing and hedging risks and revisiting your concept and trying to find the perfect angle …etc

When all of that is done, unless some action is taken. You are still at point A!

‘ I want to get healthier, i want to start my own business, i want to quit smoking, i want to further my education, i want to learn a new language’

I hear this a lot, especially in the middle east, when it comes to start a business. Everyone wants to start a business and everyone is an expert on the market…

The first two or three times you bring it up around me I will most likely engage you, give you feedback, try to help you (or even correct you if you’re so blatantly setting yourself up for failure), and give you my perspective on things which *I* think is valuable, weather you listen to me or not.

The next two or three times you bring it up, I will engage you differently by trying to enable you. Knowing that your ‘dream’ or concept will probably change over time, I will more likely try to get you to mentally make that leap over the barriers that exists INSIDE you. There is a reason you’re stuck and not starting. Searching for the ‘perfect business’ or the ‘perfect angle’ to attack a market is more of an internal barrier that you impose (because you’re afraid to start) than one that exists in the market.

For example: If every gym in the city is not up to your standards that means that YOU have a problem, and that the gyms are fine. Get over your fear, get in the gym and start to execute.

(If you read an undertone of self criticism here then you are correct… on so many levels I was that person, who always talked about turbocharging his car but never did, always talked about starting a business but never did, always talked about losing weight but never did …etc)

However, I find that I am extremely lucky in that I have a little too much passion in me, these ideas simmer for a long time, but then, eventually, they DO boil over, and I get to action

• I have turbocharged an engine from scratch, after 3 years of talking about it
• I have started a business from scratch after about 5 years of reading about it and talking about it
• I have lost in different times of my life over 160kgs of weight when things boil over and I get into a gym so even though I have problems maintaining my weight loss, I am somewhat of an expert ON weight loss when i choose to do it
• I have written 3 books now after years of saying one day I will write a book

What I have not done yet is move out of Saudi Arabia, and that may be coming very soon as I’m starting to boil over. Yes I’ve been talking about it for going on 5 years now… and I *think* it’s about to happen soon.

What I realise though, is that most of those things didn’t need that waiting period and that I could have done them earlier…and as you get older, and you lose your direct control of your life, as you integrate your wife and kids and family into your core identity, as you become strapped for time, and as your decisions become truly social (influenced by your family, and directly affecting your family) the odds are that unless your family has the same process that you do:

My process: Dream – Research – Outline – Plan – Prioritize – Execute

Unless they have the same dream, the same plan and the same priorities that you do… the odds are that it is never going to happen. So, the longer you wait, the less chances you get to realize your dream.

Let me close by saying this:

Reflect on the worst part of your life today. The part that pains you. The part that you’re either ALWAYS complaining about, or the part that you hide so deep inside you that you NEVER want ANYONE to know this about you, and how bad it pains you, and how much you wanted it changed….

Take that process and lay it out…. how would you change it, what is the dream, what research have you done ( do you have the right information to make an educated decision already or not?), what is the outline of what you want to do , how do you plan to do so, what are the critical parts of this plan and what things may you compromise along the way and then what would the execution be like?

Where is it breaking down?

Try doing two things….

1- Either rationalize your way around that mental block by knowing that it is immensely important to start walking away from point A to get to point B… so execution overcomes the fear of the ‘apparent’ risk… and by knowing that the dream is worth while (that the reward of reaching point B outweighs the pains of the journey…

2- Make a leap of faith. If you’re reading this you are one of my friends or fans and that means that since you are in my circle that there is some attraction or commonality between us… and that means that you are probably an intelligent, educated, creative, hardworking, lighthearted individual (because those are the kinds of people i like to have around me and associate with)… and know that if you are that kind of person (intelligent and hardworking… compared to other people that are possibly not so wise yet hardworking or intelligent but feel entitled rather than obligated to work for what they want….) so if you are that kind of intelligent,creative, hardworking person, and this is truly your dream… then that leap of faith, will eventually pan out…

Not because you made the leap …. but because you have the inherent qualities that you will need to fix things and get back on track… on that path from A to B… if you were to get misdirected

Make the leap, and trust in YOURSELF … and start executing .