As I was running today, I was thinking about the glorified 6 Pack (or 8 for the select few).
Am I talking about beer or soda? (No, that’s why I am running in the first place!)

I am talking about societies definition of what amazing health is, the six abdominal muscles that show because of a low total body fat. WHAT!?! I HAVE TO HAVE LOW ‘TOTAL’ BODY FAT!?!
I thought I could just do sit ups to lose the fat right on my stomach area, That sucks.

I’m assuming this is a lot of people’s reactions when they find out the cold hard truth about our bodies. We get rewarded everywhere on our body (this includes our stomachs, and our asses), when we treat our whole body right (eating healthy, working out, etc.).

A sad thing is (or Great thing, depending on your outlook), this philosophy is everywhere in our world, even in business. We can’t just ‘trim the fat’ in one area of business, we can try, but other areas will suffer. In order to have total business health, we need to look at the business in whole and make sure that nothing is being left out.

Let’s create a small example to make my point (this is a real life example, minus the fitness analogies):
We decide to ramp up sales with Control Yours (our website development business), so we put all of our energy and focus on reaching and closing on new clients. We collect their money, start developing websites for them, and the sales side of our business seems to be ‘firming and toning up’ (at least the sales muscles under our total business fat). We put our other areas of our business on the back burner and focus on just making sales as strong and fit as it can be. The next thing we notice is that a few of our clients want to modify their current plans they have with us, no problem right? WRONG! We’ve been so focused on building our sales muscle that we forgot to work on our customer management muscle, in fact it’s almost deteriorated.

What do we have to do? Just like every other fat person out there that realizes doing sit ups isn’t changing their overall look, START FROM THE BEGINNING. Get the whole system in shape at the same time. And that is where we are right now, building, stretching, toning, and increasing our overall business heart rate. It is a very great feeling, gaining control again (even though we didn’t realize we lost control until we looked in the mirror and saw our business fat folding over our business jeans…that is some funny stuff!).

Don’t forget to take care of even the small aspects of your business. EVERYTHING leads to total health.

Get your cardio on & Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

I was watching a video on TED.com today where Tim Farris talks about smashing fear and ‘how to feel like the incredible hulk’.

See this video below:

His talk started to get me thinking about how, so many times in my life I end up over-complicating things (as many of us do). And It is really interesting to me that we believe ‘what we have always done, has to be the right way’, just because we don’t know another way. Like…Who says having a cell phone with the ability to check/respond to my emails actually makes me more productive? Maybe I’m just wasting more time than anything. If I set up a one hour segment to read and respond my email a day (and that’s it), maybe I would get a lot more done because I would be focused to accomplish the task at hand.

I just love that Tim’s thoughts and ideas have helped me see that not everyone is supposed to follow the status quo, and not everyone has to fit into a mold. Identify your loves to live them, identify your fears and conquer them. I think we all could get a little inspiration from Tim.

Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

I don’t think this image could be more perfect. I feel like sometimes I should be changing and growing personally and professionally at a natural rate (like that of the human body), but it doesn’t always work that way (Sometimes, I have to force myself to grow).

Unlike our physiological makeup, our professions, hobbies, muscles, and sometimes even relationships will not grow to the best they can be without a little extra push from ourselves. I think this is how it should be! If we didn’t have to push ourselves to be the best we can be in all areas of life, everyone would be absolutely amazing at everything. At that point, their would be no competition in life, no reasons to try harder, and life would be equal for the lazy and non lazy alike. I think the ‘Pushing yourself to grow’ mindset works like a filter between the people that want ‘it’ (whatever the word “it” is) but think ‘it’s unattainable (so the don’t try) and the people that will do anything to get their ‘it’.

I feel like this mindset is an invisible field that doesn’t even need to be talked about, we can just tell when someone is either more motivated or less motivated than we are. It says a lot about a person if you know they have succeeded in areas of their life that may not come to them easily. I strive for this mindset everyday (be the best I can, even in extremely difficult situations)! The following example may help explain this idea:

I HATE public speaking…and I am forcing myself to do it, to improve myself, for myself. There are a lot of ‘myself’s in that last sentence, and that’s because no one else is going to make me better, it’s up to me. I have an opportunity right now to contract out with a business that I used to manage the sales team for, Computer Hardware Inc. I am assisting them with their educational sales across the state of Nebraska. The main role that I have for Computer Hardware, is providing group demonstrations (public speaking) about a product called ‘mimio interactive‘ (an interactive whiteboard of sorts for schools and businesses).

Every time I do a demonstration with an organization, school, or business, Computer Hardware gets exclusive rights to sell the mimio products to this customer for life. This is a big deal! It means that the more places I do demonstrations, the more sales Computer Hardware will have forever without doing a lot of additional foot work.

Now this sounds like an awesome deal for Computer Hardware (It is, and I only bill them an hourly rate of $15 an hour), so why am I involved with a company that I am technically ‘working’ for, at an inexpensive hourly rate, doing something that I hate? The main reason is because I HATE public speaking! [The other reasons, they're like family to me and it puts cash in my pocket]
How do people get better at things in life that they aren’t good at…They practice. That is exactly what I’m doing, forcing myself to practice to become a better public speaker.

I don’t have to do this job. There are plenty of people in the state of Nebraska that would like to be hired as a sales rep for Computer Hardware. And I could very easily avoid public speaking for the rest of my life (just making up excuses about “having something to go to” every time it came up).  But, I know that I am going to be someone, someday, that will need to have great communication skills in personal and public settings, and this a chance for me to get a head start on the practice I need.

How long will I do the public speaking demonstrations for Computer Hardware? I’ve asked myself that question many times and I decided that it depends on my public speaking comfort level (if I’m super comfortable, I’ll stop), if the demos stop coming to me (and I’m not getting enough practice, I will need to find another avenue to get the time in), or if I’m ready to find other opportunities that are a bigger challenge for me than public speaking, then I will stop.

To sum it up, I will always push myself to grow and if I sense something stagnate or underdeveloped in my life, I will make the much needed change (no matter how painful it may be). I must be the best I can be, for my businesses, my wife, and myself! I’ll let you know how it’s going in a couple months or so…Until then, push the fears my way (except for the shark attacks, you can keep them…Yikes !

Remember if you do not keep yourself moving, you will become stagnate and rotten.
I Challenge you to have an awesome day & to push yourself to be better in an area that you know you struggle in.
~Chais Meyer

Being that I am just coming out of a rut, I felt like writing a blog post again! So…here it is! My process of getting into a rut and my way of getting out of them (until I find a better way…any ideas would be great).

I have been living my life these past few weeks with a mixture of being overwhelmed, nervous, and uncharacteristically dreadful of the next thing (what ever that might be). I am excited about the next stages of my life (the good ones and the ones that will help spice up of the ordinary items), but I’m not so excited about the monotonous shit.

I believe that I am (or was) in some what of a rut, and this happens to me about every 3-6 months. I get bogged down with my businesses (there are too many, and that might be the problem), family situations, friends that just seem to spin their wheels and never go anywhere, and…did I say businesses? I think my doctor would say I have caught ‘doingwaytomuchandtryingtobeamazingatallofthemosis‘! It is really hard for me to pick just one thing and work with that to its fullest. I want to make every idea I think of be the best it can.

What do I do to fix this problem when it pops up about every 3-6 months? Usually…I do nothing. Literally, I avoid all responsibilities possible in life for about a week (besides the mandatory things my wife says I must do – showering, lifting the lid to the toilet, etc.). It usually gives me a nice taste of bordem, self pitty, self loathing, and a surprisingly renewed energy that I didn’t have before. It somehow also allows me to see what things are really important in my life and what things I can put on the back burner or just get rid of.

This system may not be the most healthy, but until I figure out the root reason all of this happens, I will use my week of nothingness meditation.

As far as right now goes…Well, I’m writing this blog post aren’t I?
Maybe (not maybe, for sure) tomorrow I will get 3 things done on my to-do list.
Until next time, Have an Awesome day and try to avoid the rut.
~Chais Meyer

P.S. I find Hockey amazingly boring and at the same time intriguing and exciting (maybe that’s because of the beer?).

We finally sold our home…well, sort of. (This picture is of our ‘home purchasers’ and myself, my wife couldn’t attend the key hand off).

About 3 Months ago, we wrote a post about our home and how we couldn’t afford to own it anymore. We had the choice of finding some way to sell it or have our mortgage company foreclose on us. My wife and I didn’t want to go down without a fight, so we took the drastic measure of moving in with my ‘rents (that’s the cool term for parents), staying in their basement and out of our home that we loved so much.

We had to call our mortgagor and tell them that we were unable to make our mortgage payments and we needed some help. The gave us a 3 month break from payments so we had some time to try to solve our problem (come up with our unpaid mortgage amount or sell our home…or else). During that time, Shawna and I have been racking our brains to try and figure out a solution that would not only get us out of this mess, but hopefully put some money into our pocket as well (we did put tons of hours into our home, fixing it up from when we originally purchased it 3.5 years ago).

What we did (with the help of God) was have a lawyer draw up a ‘Lease to Own Contract’ (that we are giving to you for free at the bottom of the page) and found a married couple that was interested in having their monthly rent payments go towards the purchase of a home. Along the way I believe we found a short term market niche for real estate investments.

The Details (let’s call the person paying us the TENANT):

• the TENANT will pay a monthly payment to us, (which will include $ that will go towards the principal for them to purchase the house from us, the interest for us taking the risk and acting as their bank, homeowners insurance in case the house catches on fire and the property tax)
• When we receive that monthly payment, we will then pay the bank that we have our mortgage through, which will cover our principal, interest, homeowners insurance and property tax
• The official home ownership (the paperwork that says Shawna and I own the home) won’t change until the TENANT decides to pay us outright for the home or goes through the 20 years of payments as we’ve set up.
• Why would the TENANT want to do something like this? Well, first off there is no need for them to get a mortgage from a bank (which is nice if you currently don’t fit the criteria to get a mortgage). They don’t have to do anything different from paying rent like they normally would (it’s easy). It is their home unless they decide to move or not make their monthly payments (all the money that they’ve payed every month does not go back to them if they decide to terminate our contract).
• Why is this good for us? We make positive cash flow every month $60 a month extra we can apply towards our home principal. We can pay our bills. If the TENANT carries the payments to the full 20 years without paying the home off in advance, we will make $40,000 extra in interest (that’s a nice little investment). We don’t have to do any of the landlord responsibilities because it is their home and they are responsible for everything that breaks down, etc.
• We also had them pay a $3,000 (non refundable) down payment to start this process. This payment goes directly towards the principal of their home and we get enough up front money to pay off our past mortgage payments (the bank won’t foreclose)!

How is this a market niche? When our nation is going through home sale hardships (because it’s hard to get a mortgage), why not purchase 10-20 forclosed homes and duplicate this process? be a landlord without the responsibilities of fixing up and maintaining the property. And if you really wanted to protect yourself, you could create something about a pre-payment penalty in the contract. It could say, if the TENANT pays off the total home value before 50% of the contract term has been complete, there is a penalty of “BLANK” %. Something like that.

We just wanted to let you in on how we got ourselves out of a sticky situation. If you would like to download this contract in an editable (Microsoft Word) format, Please Click Here. Also, if you would like to use an Amortization Chart (like what we used to help create this contract) Please Click Here.

Please note, this document was designed and created specifically for our situation, so not everything will apply to you. We still recommend having a property lawyer look at this contract after you have edited it. It will still be considerably less expensive having them proof it than creating a new contract.

If you can benefit from our experiences, please take advantage of them.
We are thanking God and Enjoying the day! Have an Awesome day yourself.
~Chais & Shawna Meyer

PS. If you don’t have Microsoft Office which is needed to edit these document types, go to Open Office’s website and download their Open Source program for your computer. It’s free and does the same things Microsoft does.

Okay, this is going to be a little bit of a rant along with some praise (just a little fore warning).

I installed Quickbooks 2009 for windows on my mac today (that right there is ironic). The install went great and the video demonstrations were pretty cool. They taught me how to do all the basic crap, customize Quickbooks for myself, blah, blah, blah… The part that I had a really hard time with (meaning I was super annoyed) was registering my product.

I know, I know…registering my product? I’m really growing up in the world aren’t I…no more pirated software. I now have software that I can actually register (without any sort of crack). “Since I have this legal software, the registration process will be a breeze” I thought.

As it turns out, the registration process was harder than setting up my entire company file in Quickbooks and 5 times more time consuming. Here were the steps:

1. You must register to use quickbooks past 30 days, otherwise it won’t function anymore
2. To register you have to call into quickbooks, no more online simple registration (it requires an authorization code or something).
3. I make a call into quckbooks to their “Product Registration line” (a special number for ONLY product registrations…if that’s true why did I wait 20 minutes on hold?)
4. Wait 20 minutes on hold while listening to pleasant Intuit advertisements
5. Finally get through to their AMAZING India Phone support and the man greets me, “Our Ju Habbing A Goojd jDay!?!
6. He and the conversation are very pleasant (despite me having to ask him about 15 times, “can you repeat that please?”).
7. Until…He tries to sell me some additional support options…
8. …He continues to try to sell me additional support options…
9. …He keeps trying to sell me additional support options (I am not even screwing with you).
10. Literally, 5 minutes later (Chais, calm down and take a breath…the phone call is over), he gives me my Authorization #.
11. YAY!!! I Cheer because I can finally hang up!

Wow, I just spent 30 minutes on a phone call trying to register my $199.95 retail legal product (no wonder people steal software, it’s cheaper and they don’t mess with phone crap. By the way, I don’t agree with software piracy!). What has happened to customer service? Oh, I forgot…Customer service is always a phone call away with Intuit, for $69.95 a phone call (or just $39.95 a month)!

Now that I’m registered, I am going to use quickbooks for my sole proprietership business as well as my other businesses. Well it is a pain in the ass the figure out the sole proprieter part of things if you use only one checking account for your business and your personal bills and expenses. I did a little research and found 2 good links that helped me out, hopefully it will do the same for you. Here it is! (the 8th one down)! And here is a link to explain how to set up an owners draw.

I love the product, not the customer service. I love having my finances being organized in such a friendly way, I hate that I rely so much on my computer system. I will do my best with what I have and share what I learn along the way!

Have an awesome day and a great night, and don’t let the Intuit bugs bite. (wow, that was an awesome ryme!)
~ Chais Meyer

Sorry, I can’t show you or talk to you about my new design until I have applied for my patent!

I can tell you that there is a lot of work that goes into researching and protecting an idea that you might come up with. My recommendation, take a little more time than you think it would take and do it right. Save up a little extra money and get a patent attorney (someone you  can physically talk to). None of this online B.S.

I’ve also learned a lot about different types of plastics. Who would have thought that there were so many types and varieties of plastic products? Not me!

My current status on the Coffee Cup Patent:
Writing my description about my product for my patent application. If anyone else wants to apply for a patent, here is the link for the “provisional application for patent” PDF.

I’ll keep you updated as I go.

Have an awesome day and keep thinking of more you can do and become!
~Chais Meyer

P.S. I would strongly recommend this book(or audiobook…it’s more my style), if you want to increase your knowledge in the financial areas of your life. There is some good stuff about protecting the money you will have someday!

When New Year’s Resolutions are created there’s a personal fear hidden inside every one. It seems that ‘stereotypically’ whenever we create a resolution, more often than not it gets broken. It is almost with a superstitious attitude that If I really want to accomplish something I won’t call it a "resolution", I will call it a goal. Do you feel the same?

I’m going to give it a go this year, despite my previous experiences. I will accomplish my resolution goals! [Did you see what I did there, I used the word resolution and goal together, they're bound to get accomplished now!]

Why do I have a sudden change of heart about creating these resolutions, you might ask. Well, a few reasons:

1. I need a new challenge in my life (I feel bored and need to spice some stuff up).
2. I just watched Yes Man with Jim Carry and it was an Amazing Movie!
3. I just read an inspiring blog post by Thomas Hiatt that drives home my thoughts about what I need and want to accomplish.

So here is an incomplete list of what I want to accomplish this year (my New Year’s Resolutions)!

1. Have a 6 Pack in 6 months (no big sweat)
2. Condition myself to avoid High sugar foods (simple carbs)
3. Train to run a 10K
4. Get my clothes ready for the next day, the night before (I just want to do this for discipline)
5. Wake up and get out of bed the first time my alarm goes off (I have a love/hate relationship with my snooze button)
6. Have 100 Control Yours clients in 7 Months
7. Hire a book keeper to keep us in check financially, personally
8. Take 30% out of all income made for savings, tithing, and investments
9. Grow a True Savings account (no spending unless it is a true emergency) to $2000 in 6 months.
10. Move to Europe in 12-14 months.
11. Narrow down the top 3 places we would like to move in Europe
12. Start learning the language together with Shawna
13. Have our passive income exceed our monthly expenses in 6 months
14. Have our passive income double our monthly expenses in 12 months
15. Fill out and send in a patent application for my new Coffee Cup Lid design
16. Talk to SandHill plastics (a local plastic company in Kearney, NE) to see if they can create a mold for the design
17. Sell all of the ad spots to fill our first digital signage system for six months solid
18. Develop an automated distribution system for the Digital Signage System
19. Organize my iTunes audio books with correct album art and titles

What do you have planned for 2009? I’d love to hear.
~ 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!)