Hello All,

I was paroosing through an old blog that a buddy of mine and I started a couple of years back. The blog was called iDreamBusiness (i don’t remember if we started it with an “i” like everything else at that time, “iPod”, “itoy”, etc. or if we were talking about our selves… I don’t know). There were so many good posts made (at least I thought they were good) and I would like to bring some of them back.

So as DJ’s say “let’s start things off with an oldie”.
“Giving, Getting, & Selling” August, 2007

I just got back from Texas today after visiting my in-laws. We decided to fly on American Airlines there and back. Along the way we learned a lot about companies, marketing, and employees.

The first flight we took went from Omaha, NE to Dallas Fort Worth, this flight was your standard AA flight with your choice of a complimentary beverage. The second flight from DFW to Odessa, TX was on the American Eagle Airlines (owned by American Airlines). This flight was very interesting to me, it was the first flight that I have been on where instead of offering you a pillow (when your tired), a blanket (when your cold), or a bag of munchies (when your hungry), they would only sell them to you. Now I can understand the munchies, that probably does add up with 80 people on a plane at a time, but the pillows and blankets? If I’m cold and tired however, tough luck. I am not a master at business or marketing, but I know my point of view as a customer. I would rather be offered the pillow and the blanket and spend my money on something else, like a portable DVD system (that you can rent for the flight) with 10-20 DVDs to chose from (limited quantity of each disc, first come first serve). I would spend $5 on the player and $3 on a disc to entertain my self and my wife for 2 hours. I realize that not everyone would utilize this service, but I believe it would be a much better option than a pillow and a blanket that you can “Take with you!” for $5. I also would rather spend an extra $3 on my plane ticket for munchies (and feel like it was complimentary) then have to buy it while on the plane.

Take a look around you, if you see something that looks out of place or doesn’t seem to flow very well with that businesses commitments, think about what they could do to change it or make it better in some way. This will help all of us be more creative and look at any future business from different eyes (the end customer’s eyes).
~Chais

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When someone or some business has worked hard to grow a fan base, do they have to work very hard to keep them?

This thought comes to me while watching Nebraska Husker football. Even while the team has sucked it up the last few years the fans remain loyal. They never really blamed the team for being bad, the blamed the people in charge.

Is it the same in business? As long as someone in the upper managment gets the ax or they make a desicion to “improve” the business in some way, will their customers remain loyal?

Does it come down to the perception of making your business or your team better, not really any proof? How long will fans be fans? How long will they hold on for hope for things to change?does it depend on the industry?

Those are a lot of questions…what are the answers?

Food for thought anyway, Have an awesome day!
~Chais Meyer

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I Should be working on a website right now…but I got sidetracked! At least I’m doing something productive!

I’ve been looking for a Show/Hide Hidden Files (Unix Files) Shortcut, to be able to edit hidden development files. For Web Development, Apache, MYSQL,  Wordpress, etc.

I am tired of opening Terminal and running the basic script. So after researching online for a while I found some information about using automator to run this script (thanks to "mmacho () " @ Mac OS X Hints).

I put this script into an application with it’s own icon (to clean it up a little).  So feel free to use as you will and spread the word about this free little shortcut app!

[Note: This is only designed for Apple Systems that are using Automator, it won't work otherwise.]

To Download this App, Click Here!
Hope you enjoy & Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

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It is amazing to me the possibility that Twitter provides for an average person (ME). I dig Facebook because of the networking I can do with old friends, or people I’ve just met. Twitter gives me the opportunity to meet people that I would have never been able to hook up with otherwise. I can catch a glimpse of peoples lives and they can get a glimpse of mine.

I’m stating the obvious if you’re already familiar with Twitter, but for those who aren’t, it’s really worth the time you can dedicate if you want to broaden your horizons personally or professionally. It is crazy how much it is like true friendships…it requires time invested, good dialogue between your twitter followers and you, and the really good people to follow are the people that are real.

For me it is hard not to put on the salesman face and say, "Check out my new product and my new website where you can click on my ads" (not that I have ads on my blog anyway, but…). It shows how the success of real friendships can be duplicated in the online world. Be genuine, kind, and offer advise and constructive criticism (when asked) at no extra cost (stay away from the ‘LOOK AT ME FIRST’…Approach). A couple of people that I am interested in & following might be using Twitter for business and/or personal, but I don’t care either way because of the solid content (and hilarious stuff) the say and provide.

Here are a 4 people that I recommend you follow (if you want to invest the time), they grabbed my attention :

1. Craig Teich
2. Elizabeth McGann
3. Brian Wong
4. Julie Perry

Have a good time messing around on Twitter if you want one more thing to do online!

Have an Amazing Day!
~Chais Meyer

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Multi-Level Marketing, Pyramid Structures, or Pyramid Schemes have a very interesting business dynamic.  Looking at this system of business as a business structure, I believe it is one of the best structures around. If we can apply the MLM principals in our daily lives, we can grow to be extremely successful (personally and professionally).  If you don’t know what this type of business structure is click here to find out.

Why do I believe that MLM is such a great system?

1. If you truly care about providing someone with a worthwhile product or service and helping them (the people that you helped get into your organization) do a better than yourself, you will be rewarded from their successes.
2. You can have an organization / business that doesn’t need to do external advertising to make sales. Is there a better type of marketing in the world than getting a single, excitable, sneezing person pumped up about your product or services? My answer, NO!
3. On the same advertising note, your product or service can reach the unreachable customer. Why? Because they are getting told about your product by their friends, not by your thousands of ad dollars that get sent to the advertising gods, hoping that someone will see your ads and act. [Unreachable Customers: listen to iPods instead of the radio, surf the web for news instead of reading a newspaper, DVR their TV shows and skip the commercials rather than sitting through 5 minutes of ads for their show to get back on]
4. This business system doesn’t require any extra hours on your part, it actually requires less. If I can get 5 people ready to sell my product or service in one month and they can get 5 more people each in another month, we now have 31 people (including myself) in two months that are ready to sell my product or service. Did I have to train all 30 new people? No, I trained 5 people, made sure they knew their stuff and they did the rest of the work. Why did they care about telling more people about this product or service? The answer to that question can be summed up with #1.
5. Anyone can get involved! You don’t need a college education (I hate college! That’s a different story) to get trained on a specific product or service. You don’t need a college education to get others excited about what you are selling or providing for them.
6. People are only as successful as they choose to be. They put in the work and they get rewarded for it (and so do the people that trained them)! This beats paying someone as an hourly employee for them to sit on their butt and do nothing all day.

After hearing the reasons why I like MLM, can you think of the ways we can apply it to our personal and professional lives? Think about it…if we can use this same structure to work for us in our daily lives, we might be able to get a lot more accomplished.

Have an Awesome Day!

~Chais Meyer

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I have been so busy with all of the businesses in my life. Lately I have been really focusing on the business ‘Teach Me Apple’.  Why focus on this one instead of the others? Because I can make $35 - $59 an hour on the training I provide.

What have I been doing to focus on it?

1. Giving the website a face lift , making it easier to follow and cleaner really helps out with business growth.
2. Setting up a referral reward program with local computer businesses that don’t do Apple computer training already. Every time they refer someone to my site and that person signs up for a training session, the business that referred me gets $15 (per session).
3. Creating a Teach Me Apple PDF for businesses to hand out or hang up in their shops.
4. Creating and modifying new sign up forms where I accept a minimum of one hour payment for the customer to reserve a training time.

I hope to update you all soon with more of what’s going on in our lives. Make sure to check out our Calendar page if you want to see exactly what were up to. As soon as we make a change you see it.

Have a great day!

~Chais Meyer

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Here I am, laying in bed and thinking about my life, my businesses, and my future. The crazy thing is, I’m not in my bed at all (my own bed at least). I’m living in a guest bedroom in my parents basement.

Wow, I never thought I would say that. As a married man at the age of 26, I feel like I should be so far past this point in my life. The point of struggling to make the bills, working my ass of just to get by and taking charity because I don’t feel like I have any other choice. Don’t think that I am telling you about a sap story of some poor schmuck, far from it. I am letting you in on a piece of my wife’s and my life (and what some people get to go through before they get what their working for).

Did I just say GET to go through? Yes, and it wasn’t a slip of the fingers while typing. I said it because no matter what happens to Shawna and I, we are still alive! By going through hardships, trials, and struggles we become stronger and are able to handle anything else life throws at us (in our business and/or personal lives).

Back to why I’m not laying in my own bed. Our parents made us a financial offer of sorts that was extremely generous on their part (and they will not have any monetary gain). They see our lives and what happens with our successes and failures and offered us the opportunity to live in their basement and save the money we would have spent on our own utilities and mortgage (about $700 a month in savings). At this time in our lives where we are spending every minute of every day (or close to it) trying to improve ourselves and our businesses, so we need to take advantage of help when it’s offered.

This was no easy decision. Our business sense said "uh, ya…take the offer, you will save about $700 every month" and the personal side said "What, are you some kind of loser, moving back in with your parents?". The status quo says that when someone lives with their parents, they are on a fast track to going no where.

For my wife, this change is more than just living with the in-laws, it is leaving her first home to live with a family she didn’t grow up with, in their basement! It’s not her Home! Yet, she is willing to risk immediate comfort and security for our future growths and successes. [that's my type of women]

This is not only a difficult transition for us, even though my parents offered this to us they will now lose their basement and have 2 new roommates that they don’t even get rent from! What a huge sacrifice to help out their children. Thank you both very much!

Needless to say, we are still adjusting to all of the circumstances. We are working for everything that we will someday have, even though it is uncomfortable at moments. How else can we build our back story to tell our kids someday?

By us choosing to push past the status quo, we are able to focus on what WE need to be the best we can. I challenge you to break down any status quo in your life that might be holding you back from being the best you can.

Have a great day!

~Chais Meyer

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Okay! I am getting into:

1) Building my own blog/websites

2) Learning a little more about the tech of the web.

These two things are one in the same for this post (If your not interested in this stuff right now, you might want to consider keeping it in the back of your mind for future knowledge). I am setting up a website for Computer Hardware, Inc. and therefore I have to learn about stuff I didn’t know about before on the web.

Below (at the bottom of the page) are two links that will guide you through (on an apple computer) setting up MYSQL , PHP , and Wordpress on your computer.

"Why would I want to do all of this geeky stuff?" you might ask. Well, if you install MYSQL and PHP on your computer and you want to design your own website, you can run your website on your computer as if it’s online. Meaning…You can create, edit, set updates to your website without internet access and without the need to have your actual website down while you’re "Under Construction".

There you go, I’ve done it, after a couple of hours worth of work. It should take you a little less time following these links if you know the basics about Apple computers and basic web editing (if you want a good place to start go here or here if you like video demonstrations better).

Here are the links:

Getting Started: http://maczealots.com/tutorials/wordpress/

Help with setting up your config file:  http://wordpress.org/support/topic/160658

If you only want to get MYSQL and PHP set up, follow the getting started link and just go to the Wordpress section and you’re done. I don’t claim to be a genius when it comes to building websites or anything techy, but I will try to help out if I can (since it is fresh in my mind and all). Just shoot me a message in the comment section, and I will see what I can do.

I hope you push yourself to grow daily (in every area of life), have an awesome day!

~ Chais Meyer

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For everyone that might be interested in what new business owners do in a day, check out our calendar page .

We have been wanting to do this for a long time. It’s something that we needed to do to help show everyone what goes on in our lives. We are not famous, and we don’t have our own TV Show or anything, we just don’t think some people realize what it takes to start your own business (and how much time is spent on non business stuff, like earning money to pay the bills).You might be thinking…Doesn’t your business pay your bills? Why do you have to earn money elsewhere? Well…Not all businesses make a profit from day one, some of them takes weeks, months, or years. Ours…well, I’m not sure which one they fall into yet.

This is not what every business owner’s schedule looks like…just ours at the moment. Take a look and let us know if you have any thoughts. Oh ya…have an awesome day!

~ Chais Meyer

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I’m setting up twitter to link with my blog, if you are interested in having more of a following, go to www.twitter.com to create an account. After that go to www.twitterfeed.com to link up with your blog.
Enjoy
~ Chais Meyer

P.S. - If you want to start following my twitter feed, it is here http://twitter.com/chaismeyer

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