Here’s an interesting thought:

Even though we experienced a not so good business move (on our part), we still received a lot of attention!
Is it true that Negative & Positive attention is good attention? Or is it different when the attention is directed at a business and not someone like a movie star?

Take a look at our Google Analytics Visits from this whole incident.
On average we get about 7 to 20 visits a day to our Control Yours website, and this incident gave us 964 visits in one day!

Food for thought.
Have an Awesome day and a Great Christmas!
~Chais Meyer

This mistake is unfortunately a big one. I’ve learned my lesson and I am moving on to bigger and better things because of it (as long as they don’t sue us). This is the last type of thing I thought I would blog about. Stealing (or Plagiarism) is a big no no in business. Even if someone doesn’t do it with a malicious attitude or mindset, it is still very dangerous.

For the company that my business partner and I created (Control Yours ), we kind of copied a look and feel to someone elses website. It was another businesses website. The worst thing was that we didn’t ask there permission for us to use the look and feel. [We weren't trying to represent ourselves as them, we weren't trying to steal their product line, we just loved the way their website felt and we wanted that feeling for our own site.]

We’d heard of this little computer program called Blue Crab that allows us to copy parts or all of someone’s website to use for your own uses. This idea works really well in an open source world, but not the copyright, copy protected day of today (we won’t do this again).

We copied their site and used part of it, loved the rest and ended up modifying a lot of it for our own use (big mistake).

Panic.com/coda
ControlYours.com

I received an email (10 to be exact) from this company and people of this company (or friends or something). They were all a little perturbed that our site looked very similar to theirs. I now have a choice to make, lie to them about some crazy shit answer or tell them the butt honest truth. I tell them the truth, here is how my email went:

Hello,

Well, where do we start? Yes, we did copy the coda.com website. We didn’t do it as a malicious attack, or an intent to steal panic.com’s business or program sales, just the opposite in fact. We’ve actually purchased multiple products from Panic (Coda and CandyBar). Not that it makes it any less plagiaristic because we are fans of your products. (No, we don’t deserve a pat on the back!)

We are extremely sorry for “ripping off” your beautiful work! Sincerely! At first it started with us falling in love with your JavaScript ‘flow design’ on the main content area. After searching the web for hours to find where and how to accomplish this on a site of our own, we decided to ‘Blue Crab’ the code from your site. “What’s the harm in ‘burrowing’ some code?”, we thought. One thing led to another and we ended up falling more in love with your design, and using more than planned (basically the entire design, minus the content).

We are not proud of not asking for permission. We are not proud of having you find out this way without us coming to you first. We would like to see if there can be some sort of arangement we can make to keep this design or something similar.

Our services we sell, don’t use custom designed website (it is not what we do…obviously!). We are strictly in the market of helping small businesses have low cost CMS websites they can manage themselves. We have a total of two partners in our business with 15 current business clients (not that being a small business makes it any better to be dishonest). Again, we really apologize for using your design to our advantage without your up front permission.

Please let us know what you would like us to do and we will work with you to get that accomplished.
Thank you very much for letting us answer your email questions honestly,

The Control Yours Team.
(p) (866) 574-8820
(e) contact@controlyours.com

Half of me expects a full out retaliation on their behalf and the other half of me expects them to say, we’ll let it slide ‘this time’! What ever the outcome, we have done something that you can learn from. This is the only reason I would blog about this, I almost hid it under the carpet!

Learn from my lesson and grow your business the 100% honest way, with full out integrety and respect.
Bad Chais! Bad!

Have an Awesome Day
~Chais Meyer

Update:
First email response I received back-

Hi-

I do not work for panic. I am a fan of their software and of the people who make. I noticed that one of the founders linked to your page, pinging it as a rip off. I am including the two most vocal Panic-ers (Steven F. and Cabel) on this email so you can clear things with them. Have a good christmas, regardless – at least you have immaculate taste on who to copy!

-Justin

Second email responce I received back:

Howdy,

Thanks much for writing, I appreciate your honesty.

The answer is probably not one you want to hear but you probably already have realized: there’s real no logical way to keep your site, or even anything similar, without it remaining, to be blunt, a rip-off.

There are a million original websites out there waiting to be designed, and a million people on the web ready to help you. It’ll be way more fulfilling for you, personally and professionally, to contribute something new to the web, rather than retread something that already exists. I have confidence you can create a site as good as, or better than, the one we already made.

Best,
Cabel
Panic

Third email response I received back:

Hi Control Yours Team,

Sixty days sounds fine to me. Thanks.

Best,
Cabel

Isn’t this picture amazing…LMAO!

Well anyway…Today my wife and I bonded. Well, at least I think we did. I’m sick and she cuddled with me on the couch. She tore down computers with me listening to techno music. We even went to a movie together! All of that and we both still worked 19 hours together today. It proves that when we put the effort to spend time together, we can!

Did I tell you that I have NyQuil in my system? I do and I’m going to bed.
Have an awesome nights sleep, I know I will, next to my sugar boo boo bear (yes, that is my wife not my cat). (No, I don’t really call her that. Do you think I’m some kinda fag? Goodnight Pookie!)

~Chais Meyer (Shawna says goodnight too!)

As Thomas Requested , Here is what I believe the term Wealth stands for & what it means to be wealthy. (You know that John Wayne had to be wealthy…right?)

My thoughts:

No…It is not that sappy cliche shit about love and to being able to be alive (even though I think both of those things are very nice). I don’t think being wealthy is solely focused around how much money you have. I don’t think of wealth in the items that you have in your house, or even your house itself. It’s not your business, your car, how many wives you have, or any worldly possession.

Alright…What is it then?
To me, wealth is about how you live and it is measured in time. (someday in the future) I will not be $1,000,000 wealthy, I will be 1,000 days wealthy!

No, I’m not high.
Let me Explain:

Anyone can earn money and at the same time, anyone can spend money. If I started 10 businesses and I’m extremely successful, bringing in $10,000,000 a year, that sounds really good. But to everyone that would love to have that $10,000,000, did you ever consider what I might be spending on my Private jets, luxury golf clubs, and new (monthly) 10K earrings for my wife? The fact of the matter is, if I’m spending more money than I am bringing in, I am not extremely wealthy at all. I am poor with an extreme amount of money coming in.

Let’s look a real life situation: Let’s say Thomas Makes $1500 a month from a couple of rental properties he purchased a couple of years ago. If Thomas’ expenses are $1400 a month (for everything), he is infinately wealthy! As long as his living expenses never go up, and his rental income never goes down, he never has to lift a finger to work another day in his life! Now that’s a mind trip.

If we look at this from the point of view of someone that doesn’t have any rental properties, it might look like this: Let’s say Shayne has $10,000 in the bank (Shayne’s a saver!), and he decides not to go to work anymore. (Don’t worry, Shayne is a Pimp, so it’s better he’s off the streets anyway!) If Shayne’s monthly expenses are $2500 a month, Shayne can life for four months before he has to start working again. He is four months wealthy!

My goal is to bring in $$ from my investments (businesses, realestate, stocks, people, royalties, etc.), that will be more than my monthly expenses. Talk about the total freedom that wealth could provide for me at that point…I’m ready for it!

So…There you have it Thomas! A little lengthy, minorly boring, and a real life example (Shayne, "THE PIMP" Raitt) to wash it all down.

Now I just need to apply it to my life!
Wish me luck, and I will give you the same. Have an awesome day and tell me about your wealth.

Currently, I couldn’t even live one month with my wealth…it’s overated anyway
~Chais Meyer

I introduced my friend Mike Nyffeler to twitter and next thing I know he is direct messaging me with this little piece of heaven. Take a couple of minutes and enjoy!

Update: YouTube is no longer allowing this video to be embedded, so Here is the VIDEO!

After watching this I realized a couple of different things:

1. SNL (Saturday Night Live) is Amazing! &
2. If you love doing ANYTHING, you can make a living at it (if you work hard enough)!

Want to be a comic? Work on your stand up! Want to be a model? Work on your fitness and overall sexual appeal.

Don’t stand around waiting for life (or the good parts of it) to fall into your lap, It won’t happen. You will never when the lottery if you don’t go buy a ticket. [And yes...that is exactly what I mean, if you want to accomplish your dreams, go buy a lottery ticket!]

I’m working on being the best, most creative, wealthiest (ask me my definition of wealthy), and happiest business man / father / husband / friend I can be…and loving every minute of it. Even the hard ones.

If there is anyway I can attempt to help you, just let me know.
~Chais Meyer

First off, I love this photo! There were so many cliche “invest in people” type photos on the web, I just couldn’t use them. I don’t want to be a sales person (you know the picture of the group of people huddling together and touching hands…Yipee!). I want to be real, and this lady is definitely real!

The real reason!
I met up with a buddy of mine yesterday night, his name is Mike Nyffeler. Mike is The Man for a few different reasons. The main reason that I have such a high respect for him is his view point on people in his life and how he wants to help impact them in a positive way whenever he can. Every time I meet up with him, he opens up my eyes to what an individual can do and become by pushing themselves to be their best and challenging themselves to break out of their shell.

He believes in the individual person and last night told me that people are the only true investment that pay back in the end. It may sound like mumbo jumbo to some of you, but to me it strikes a cord. So many times in my life, I catch my self being completely selfish and almost childish about helping others out (I DON’T WANT TO!). Slowly that is starting to change. I know that Mike has been a giant influence in helping me grow that area in life (it is a conscious thing, I have to challenge myself to be better).

It’s so true that when you give someone your time, energy, knowledge, or even money that it will come back to you with interest. The positive return that you get back doesn’t have to be from the person you helped out, it could be from someone you just met or someone that you’ve known your whole life, one week from now or 10 years from now. I’ve noticed during the times that I help someone and “try” to benefit from that situation, I don’t seem to be rewarded like I do when I’m being genuinely kind.

I am pushed to a new level of person when I hang around people that are constantly improving their own lives (or at least trying to make improvements). So, thank you all of you progressive friends out there! Thank you for pushing yourselves to be better and in turn helping me push myself! Thank you Mike, I know you will do and be whatever you dream to become, and you will change the world along the way!

Invest in people with a genuine heart and try not the think about what you might get in return. See what happens, I’m sure we will all be surprised.

Have an awesome day, and if I can help you with anything within my power, feel free to let me know.
Thanks for reading!
~Chais Meyer

For those of you out there that know me (Chais Meyer) personally, and you don’t want to ruin your image of the type of person I am, don’t read along!

I was extremely pissed this morning and needed to let of my frustrations. I wrote a nasty blog post that I kept private so everyone would not be forced to ready my nasty rant on corporate America (specifically Wells Fargo, an employee and their policies). If you don’t mind tarnishing your thought of who I am, feel free to read along.

Otherwise,
Have an awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

I could write about this very cool service I found called Jott, I could write about an update on one of my businesses (Face to Face), or an update on another one of my businesses (Teach Me Apple), or some really cool new WordPress plugins I’ve found…let’s see, What else?

Well, the possibilities for today are almost endless, so I will write about the most relevant topic (and probably the most usefull to all of you).
– JOTT.COM–

Jott is something I discovered through another online service called Toodledo. If you haven’t guessed, Toodledo is a ‘to-do’ list and task manager (very helpful for those busy people out there that want to make part of their organizational life electronic and online). Yes…it is a free account to set up and try out.

Enough about Toodledo, this is about Jott! JOTT IS AMAZING! What is it? A Phone/Online service that allows you to turn your voice into text. Okay??? How can I use this practically? I thought you’d never ask. Jott allows you (and me) to call into their provided toll free number from any phone (no it doesn’t have to be a fancy iphone) and:

1. Create a calendar event with Google Calendar
2. Create a To-Do and Task
3. Set yourself a reminder
4. Write a blog post
5. Text and email anyone
6. Update Twitter or Facebook
7. And TONS of other sweet services work with it.

ALL WITH YOUR VOICE! It actually converts your voice into text and works with all of these services. I LOVE IT!

Okay, maybe you can see that I’m a little excited about it…and I am. I’m excited because I can be driving in my car and call into Jott (I have the number on speed dial) and create an event on my google calendar just by speaking all of the details (where, what date, what time, etc). I can call in and say “Reminder, Today @ 5pm, Call Jenny back about the website”, and it actually texts me when I am supposed to call her. If I want to text someone the ‘safe way’, I call Jott and say the person’s name, say my message and it sends them the text!

You have to try it for yourself, it is almost to crazy to be true. My wife wouldn’t believe me so I created a calendar event and texted her a message. She is now a believer.

Go to their site, sign up for the free account and see what you think. If you want to use the calendar and other third party features like to do lists, etc., you will need to sign up for the $3.50 per month account.

I’m in love with this little service.
Try it out and tell me your thoughts (make sure you use it for a little while to get used to it). The hardest part for me was thinking about what I wanted to say and that’s usually never a problem!

I can’t wait to here from you, until then…
Have an Awesome Day!
~ Chais Meyer