I am working on a new website with David Lano. This website is designed to allow us to use our skills and make some money in the process. We have a theory that their are hundreds and thousands of people in our local community that want chores, tasks, to-do’s, etc. done, that they don’t have time to do themselves (or the knowledge or they just don’t want to do them).

We thought of a way to have a business type structure but to allowing it to be more free than a business (this is a new concept to us but happens everyday). Let me explain, we want to work for ourselves but we don’t want to have to pay payroll taxes, unemployment, etc. every time we get paid for a job that gets completed (as you would have to do an any corporate model).

So we developed an organization called "Errand Boy". This organization is just that and nothing more, an organization. "What is the difference between an organization and a business?", you might ask.

Well a couple of things:

1) An organization appears to be more ‘professional’ than a single person doing a job by themselves [If you have the choice of Chais Meyer coming to your house to fix a hinge on your door, or you have Chais Meyer of 'Errand Boy' coming to your house, which would make you feel more comfortable?] . 2) At the same time, the organization is not a business (the checks aren’t being written out to ‘Errand Boy’ for a completed job). They are being written out to me (Chais Meyer) if I do a job or David Lano if he does a job.

Another huge advantage of structuring ourselves this way is that we can set our own hours, prices, etc. I am working for me, and David is working for him. If my wife wants to get involved, she will become an ‘Errand Girl’ working for herself.

This is a beautiful thing if you don’t mind doing the actual work yourself, keeping track of your own income taxes, and keeping track of deductions. We get ours and the government gets theirs, everybody’s happy! If you want to see where we are in our site development, feel free to check out our site "Hey Errand Boy ". Remember it is not completely built yet!

Have an awesome day!

~ Chais Meyer

Hello all,

This is for the people that like to mess with vector programs like Adobe Illustrator , Corel Draw , etc.

I’ve been looking online for Rectangle Vector Stickers for our Control Yours Website , I didn’t find any, so I needed to make some. If you don’t know what to use vector files for, they are mainly for print design like T-shirt graphics, Skateboard Deck Designs, Website images, etc.

If anyone wants to download these vectors they are in a compressed (.zip) .EPS format and downloadable HERE!

Talk to you all very soon,

Have an Awesome Day and Weekend!

~ Chais Meyer

[By the way, use how you wish, no strings attached]

Control Yours is going to try this little slice of heaven called the 4 1/2 day work week. [Note: This sounds like the book, "The 4 hour work week " which has a similar concept but not as realistic for our company.] We got this idea from the guys @ wufoo . They made a blog post about how they started doing this and how well it worked for them mentally as well as for their productivity.

Tomorrow is the first day we are going to try this. The concept of the 4 1/2 day work week is to be extremely productive during the first 4 days of the week (planning out your next week on the Friday before) and then chilling out for half a day on Friday and doing things like writing thank you letters, discussing where the company can go, develop new marketing ideas and so on (and of course, planning for the next week).

Last Friday we spent about an hour or so planning out this coming week and we each have similar broad areas that we are going to be focusing on. They are:

1. Website Development/Account/ (WD&A)
2. Customers and Demos (C&D)
3. Business Growth and Maintenance (BG&M)

Inside the broad areas we have custom items that will change each week (we literally have a hand written list of these items and cross them off when we get them done).

We have even created a little chart to break down our schedule easier for us. [I will add the picture of our chart tomorrow]

I will keep you updated with how it’s going for us, as we are doing it for a couple of weeks. Whether you do a shortened work week or you just do more in the time you have, it feels great to try to be as productive as possible. By the way, Have an awesome Day!

~ Chais Meyer

This blog is about life, business, marraige, God, Finances, and relationships. I feel like I can be honest with most of all of those things…

Most of all of those things? You might ask, and I would reply, Yes. Some of those topics or ideas are more controversial than others. So, I hold some things back because I am concerned about who is reading this and I don’t want to offend people. Isn that a problem, when I am holding back from the virtual diary called "The Blog"?

I want your opinion, If you think I should talk about the controversial topics openly and honestly just type "Do It! " in the comments down below. If you think I should keep the controversial stuff behind my bedroom door just type "Keep It! ".

There I feel better already, we are communicating so well that I will know what I am able to share and what things to avoid. Honestly, I don’t mind criticism. I think it allows me to grow, so don’t hold back if you have more to say than those two word phrases.

We’ll talk soon, Until then Have an Outstanding Day!

~ Chais Meyer

I use the wufoo form creator for all of the forms on our websites. Amazing product and they seem like pretty cool owners.

Just as cool as their product is their blog , they offer some really great stuff. I’ve already walked away with more than I had when I went there, and that is more than I can say about some other "company" blogs.

The guys at Wufoo talk about how they got their initial funding, and what company provided it for them. It is a company called "Y Combinator " and they focus on the brains of people not their age. A very different mindset from the stereotypical bank. Take a look at their site and fill out their application if you think you have something useful and innovative to offer the web.

Until next time, Have an Awesome Day!

~ Chais Meyer

I’ve been calling people these last two weeks (cold calling for new customers) and along the way I have been very frustrated. Not because people haven’t been buying anything from me, that’s part of the challenge. But because people say they will call me back in a couple minutes (if their busy) and they don’t.

I understand that people are busy, so am I. Maybe we all need a little something to shock our mind back awake every once in a while.

I’ve heard of people remembering other peoples names by associating them with an action, an animal, a place, etc. Anything that will help them remember. Here is what I am thinking about doing:

During my next conversation with a potential client and he/she says "Can I give you a call back in just a minute?" I would say to them "Orange!". Why on earth would I say the color orange? If I say the word Orange to the person I’m talking with and then explain to them that the next time they see the color orange they will remember to call me, I am creating a visual association for them (I’m doing their work to get a return for myself).

I don’t know if this will work, and might make me look a little crazy, depending on how I do it. But it just might work. Would this work for you? If someone did this same theory on you would you think of them every time you saw that certain color or shape. Even two weeks later, would you still think of them?

This thought amazes me, I think I’m going to have to give it a try (with someone I know first, just so I don’t scare the potential customer off). If it works, who knows, maybe I’ll go for the fence!

"ORANGE! " The next time you see the color orange you will remember this post and want to check out our newest blog posts… we’ll see if it works. LOL…

Have an awesome day!

~ Chais Meyer

The term fasting usually applies to obstaining from food. What i’m talking about means something very similar, except we are not limiting it to food.

When a fast takes place a few interesting things happen in our lives:

1. We miss what we are fasting from and we realize all of the times that we looked to "it" to fill our needs (or wants). This helps us realize the weak areas that are now exposed as well.
2. We try to push the thought of "it" out of our minds so it doesn’t consume our day, but it is very challenging.
3. We make ourselves determined to focus on something else more than the thing we are fasting from. This causes us to do something much more than we would normally do it and possibly do it better than we would normally do it.
4. In the end it doesn’t kill us! In fact we allow ourselves to take a deeper look at "it" and see "it" for what "it" really is in our lives. Somethings that we can fast from will prove themselves as things that should be in our lives, others…well, if you don’t miss them why go back to them.

I Don’t know about all of you, but I can think of a lot of things that I can try this with (TV being my main one).  I bet, I wouldn’t even miss half of them after I was without them for a while.

Fasting in business is the same principle, you might be able to stream line your business much more if you try accomplishing tasks without a certain step. Even something as simple as speaking while fasting your "filler" words (um, and, uh, honestly, etc.), will increase your fluidity when making a sale or a presentation.

I guess what ever way you look at it (Fasting or ‘Trimming the Fat’) it allows you to become a better human and/or better business person.

Have an Awesome Day!

~ Chais Meyer

Well, I understand more about business than I ever thought I would, especially this week . This week Shawna and I have been shown the reality of what happens when you own your own business and you don’t make a profit (or hit that break even point). Do you think that we can write ourselves a paycheck if our business bank account doesn’t have enough money to allow for it? I will answer that for you, NO!

As I sat there with $85 in our personal bank account (and no liquid assets to our name), I began to think to myself, why is this happening? It is not because I don’t work hard enough. It is not because we aren’t loved by God. It might be because our product (with ControlYours.com ) isn’t what our market demographic is going after (or we have to narrow of a market demographic or region). It might also be that we didn’t make sure we had enough up front capitol to ‘feed us’ and to keep moving forward.

Am I going to give up and say "Well, its been a good time but after a hard month and a half I think we just can’t do it"? I don’t think so. Actually, quite the opposite of that! I believe that sometimes in our lives we need to be broken down before we can be built up. If you build a house and it has a bad foundation, sometimes you need to lift it up and ‘slowly’ build a new one.

The breaking down part sucks, but when you think about it, it happens for a reason. If we were the best business people around, we would have known the things already that we are learning right now (and where’s the fun in that). We are learning things that we could never have learned in school, text books, or from someone saying "Business is hard ;( ". And now is the time to pass the hard stuff we learn on to anybody that wants to listen and/or pay attention.

Things we’ve learned up until now:

1. When times are tough financially, your best asset is your spouse (your spouse can also be a hindrance to success when your not trusting each other).
2. When you feel like there is nothing left to do, that might be a good time to look to God and see what he has in mind.
3. When you know something else can provide you with income during the hard times, DO IT! Don’t be stubborn and try to force a business to work on your own time. I work from 7:30 in the morning until 6PM on Control Yours, and then I do construction, or Teach Me Apple from 6 until 9pm. They make for long days, but they are putting some food on the table.
4. Have a goal to hit your break even point in your business. Goals for extreme profits sound amazing (and they will be) but make sure to set the smaller goals first to build from.
5. I can’t make anybody buy from me in my time. It’s all part of developing that relationship between the client and the business. [When someone works for a bigger company and they say "I should start my own business, this is easy, I just sit here and people come in the door", just remember, they didn’t have people just ‘coming in the door’ when they started either.
6. Struggle together with your business partners. If my partner was living lavishly and not feeling the same stress, anxiety, motivation, and determination that I was, I am pretty sure there would be some resentment towards him. He wouldn’t know what I was going through.
7. When your famous someday (or at least very wealthy), you have to have a good back story about how you couldn’t pay your bills and you barely had enough money to buy gas for your car. We are building our back story right now!

Most importantly, remember that now matter what you try to do or prove in business, none of it matters if you lose yourself and your loved ones in the process.

I hope this shows you some insight to what a ‘real’ business is like. I’ll post some awesome things as they happen as well. In the meantime, Have an Awesome day tomorrow and make it your own reality.

~ Chais Meyer

Below is the link to the Full Course Meal blog, through FeedBurner:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/FullCourseMeal

This just allows you to subscribe to our blog and read it with any of your favorite blog readers. I love google reader , just because I use google for just about everything.

Feel free to subscribe and get updates on our posts as soon as they happen.

Have an awesome day!

~ Chais Meyer

Way to go Evan Eckard!

You designed an amazing looking WordPress theme and we (everyone that appreciates good design) love this one. I’ve been waiting for an Awesome FREE WordPress theme like this for sooo… long. It actually helps me feel like our blog is more complete. Everyone needs to give Evan some Props for this one!

I guess www.smashingmagazine.com deserves some attention too, since that is where I found out about this beaut’.

I hope everyone enjoys the new look.

Have an Amazing Weekend!

~ Chais Meyer