Ari Emanuel (the real life “Ari Gold” of Entourage) once thought the idea  that everyone would pay for content at a fair price was crazy. So how crazy is it really?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7-YsOzd4co

With recent events in piracy of content [Senate 968 "Protect IP Act" (PIPA) and H.R. 3261 "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA)], many don’t understand one of the better strategies to combat online piracy. The focus shouldn’t be stopping piracy all together, but to make it cost more to obtain an illegal copy vs. the legal version.

Louis CK’s stand up special comes without any digital rights management. You can freely distribute it and do whatever you want with it. He’s gone so far as to also create downloadable DVD case covers and CD labels for the people who want to burn it on disc and have a physical copy. It only sells for $5. So the time it would take someone to search through a peer-to-peer network, complete the download with a risk of getting a virus, or however you would get it, just doesn’t make that option appealing anymore. The approach is different, and  buy, own it, and enjoy that I directly contributed to the success of someone I am a fan of. Similar to this approach, is the recording artist Ronald Jenkees, who sells his own music through his website with use of Paypal.

One thing Ari was 100% correct on was the shift from distribution being the power to content creators. Now these content creators have the ability to distribute their content directly to the end-user, and cuts out the additional costs of all the people in between.

References:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7-YsOzd4co
https://buy.louisck.net/news

1. Optimism. Think positive.
2. Faith. Believe in yourself, God and your country.
3. Planning. Know what’s important each day; set your priorities accordingly.
4. Determination. Have the courage to stand alone when taking the big risks in life.
5. Vision. Think big, dream big, keep success in your mind.
6. Attitude. If you think you can’t, you’re right. Winners have positive attitudes.
7. Goals. Set goals. Plan how to achieve them.
8. Perseverance. Try and try again until the goal is achieved. Never give up.
9. Knowledge. Learn to accept your mistakes, but make them only once.
10. Enthusiasm. Choose work you like. Enjoy the challenges.

Now get out there and do work!

While driving home on the 101 freeway through Thousand Oaks I saw in the distance an unfamiliar car on the road. My first thought was “wow, that’s exactly what the new Toyota Supra should look like”.

As I got closer, I quickly noticed it was the Lexus LFA.  So I’m curious why Lexus, a division of Toyota, decided to enter the sports car market with a completely new vehicle with such a high price tag ($350,000) when they have the legacy of the Supra to uphold. Just the mention of the release of the Supra would generate enough interest to sale the vehicle with little marketing costs.

It was a random  idle weekday when I received a text from my friend Robert who informed me of a heavily discounted track day put on by Zoom Zoom Track Days called Yamaha Appreciation Day. I quickly rushed to a computer and signed up right away so I would not miss out on this opportunity. A previous year I was invited but was not able to get out of work (you’d thinking working at a motorcycle shop they would have leniency for taking a day off for this, right?) I didn’t want to go entirely anyways, because I wanted to get a newer motorcycle before going to the track. I didn’t want to crash the motorcycle I currently had (2002 Yamaha R6). So now I was all out of excuses and ready to commit to the track after years of friends and other fellow riders encouraging me to take the step.

It was the day before the weekend trip to Laguna Seca and time to make the final preparations for the trip. I shouldn’t have waited till the day before, bad idea. I needed to do an oil change, change my tires, get a hold of tire warmers, motorcycle stands, a suit, boots, and figure out how I was going to get my motorcycle from Fresno, CA to Monterey, CA. I ran around town calling friends to see who had things I could borrow and visited Wilson’s Motorcycles to pick up oil and motorcycle grips. I was able to negotiate a deal with a friend to get some Pilot Power One racing slicks that had about 2 track days left on them and he also had a suit I could borrow.

I made it back to my house with the collection of items I needed. I quickly put my bike on stands, took off the wheels, and headed back to have the racing slicks mounted on the tires. Now I rushed back to my place to start the oil change and any final preps. So after that was all done I started up the bike for a  quick test ride. That’s when I noticed my brakes weren’t working well at all. Kind of an important element of riding a motorcycle at the track. $#%&! My fork seals are leaking with brake fluid dripping down onto the brake pads. The motorcycle shop is now closed and I’ve got to think real quick if I want to still go to the track.

What would the pros do? Just simply ride their backup bike or mount up some new forks. Well I didn’t have that luxury, but I did have a friend with an 06 R6 as well So I made the call to see if I could borrow his motorcycle for the weekend. I got his bike to my house and was contemplating what to do. Do I just ride his bike? No, it’s not insured and he owe’s way too much on it for me to want to be responsible. So I decided on a fork swap.

I have both bikes up on stands in the garage and start taking off the forks from mine to put on to his and vise versa. 45 min later I was good to go. I cleaned the brake pads and calipers and now for another test ride. Everything is great so far… but brakes are still not at 100%. The brake fluid must have compromised the integrity of the brake pads. I simply took the brake pads off of the spare bike and put them onto mine and now I’m finally good to go.

4:00am comes way too soon! I was so excited that I was restless and not able to get much sleep. I quickly awoke from my slumber, since I really never fell asleep for more than an hour at a time. I did load up everything in the truck the night before and just had to wait for my friend to come over and help me put the bike on my hitch trailer. The chaos from the past 12 hours had settled and it was an easy drive to the track.

For those of you who have been to the track, even as a spectator, you know how exciting it is to crest over the peak of the road that leads to the entrance of the track. From this point you can nearly see the entire track spanned out across in the valley.  Since we were a little late getting to the track we quickly unpacked and unloaded the bikes, quickly went through inspection and got out on the track. It had rained the night so the track was wet. This was an advantage to me since there was a pace bike that was taking us around the track slowly because of the wet conditions.

The day continued and the track dried off and with each session I’m starting to get a feel for what riding a sport bike is really like.  I never thought I was fast on the street even though at times I rode faster than the average rider. This was a whole new level of riding. No worries about breaking the laws, getting hit by oncoming traffic, or the many other variables of riding on the street. Which each session of riding I became more comfortable with the track. I was learning the lines and remembering braking points.

Everything about this day was exciting, except the expense aspect that sat in the back of my mind. One of the best parts of the day was knowing that I get to wake up and do it all over again.

The next day wasn’t as chaotic of a rush to get on the track. The bike still needed to go through inspection, but since we had a garage everything was sitting ready to go. Yesterday’s goal was to make it to the next day. Today there was no goal except just to have fun and be safe. I was moved up to the A group and really started having some fun pushing my limits.  I was amazed how fast some of these riders were, or how fast and young they were. I found it amusing to be lapped by a 14 year old Redbull Rookie Cup rider that was on a Yamaha R1. It surely made me wish I had gotten an earlier start in motorcycle racing.

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I think Google’s Wonder Wheel is perfect for finding niche keywords. I find it to be one of the easiest ways to drill down into a niche and find a micro niche when I’m trying to target in on some new markets. It’s a simple and quick way to brainstorm and just get the ball rolling on some possible potential micro niches and keywords. Here is an example of drilling down on some terms related to backup software.

First I search the term “Backup Software” using Google’s wonder wheel. Software is a huge market and backup software can be considered a market all in itself. This is way too broad of a search term and wouldn’t be considered a niche. But with Google’s Wonder Wheel I can instantly see other related searches that are relevant to my term “Backup Software”. This makes finding a niche, or micro niche a lot easier for me.

The term “Backup Software” brings up 8 different related terms. Some may be considered a niche, while others may not. I think it may be safe to say: if Google is suggesting these, they may be considered relevant terms with some good organic search traffic.

As you can see to the right, it will start showing search results, such as NovaStor’s NovaBACKUP in the paid results, or  Wikipedia’s list of backup software. Since this is too broad of a search term I continue on.  I then select on “Server Backup Software” to drill down a little deeper into the niche to give me some more ideas on relevant search terms that are related to the backup software market.

Here I am presented again with some more search terms that are related to my initial phrase “Backup Software” and the sub-topic of “Server Backup Software”. So again, here are another 8 good ideas for possible micro niches. Always take a moment to look at the right hand side search results to see if there are a lot of competitors. Some you will find there are ads, while other times you may find there are not people that are displaying ads for these key phrases. Make note and jump over to Google’s Keyword Tool to determine the amount of traffic any of those terms are getting.

Keep drilling down until you find something you want to pursue. What’ really fun about Google’s Wonder Wheel is that it follows your “train of thought”. You can be 30 links deep into the Wonder Wheel and can always trace back to how you got there. Only if there was a way to do that with day to day thoughts.

twitter.com/rayholt

Something I’ve always wanted to do in addition to traveling abroad and seeing other countries is to go base jumping while I’m there. Base jumping is similar to sky diving, except you jump off of a fixed object like a building or bridge. I’d like to see some of the worlds most popular places to base jump and do it! One of the most notorious places would be the Cave of the Swallows in Mexico, which is the largest known cave shaft in the world. I think the movie Sanctum features this cave as the one that they base jump into.

Watch this video of some recent BASE jumping footage.

Back in 1903 The Wright brothers invented the first gas motored and manned airplane. Mary Anderson invents windshield wipers. Now we have iPad’s and SmartPhones where we can conduct face to face conversations. We never need to go to MapQuest before leaving the house, since we can simply start driving and then enter our destination into our GPS. I wish my GPS had an “avoid ghetto’s” option like there is an “avoid highway” option. This one time I put in Domino’s Pizza and was taken to a location that was like a prison’s visiting room. I had to talk to the employee through a phone next to the glass separation and my pizza was slid under the glass, no joke. Who needs to even drive anymore with Google’s Prius that can drive itself around through the crazy streets of San Francisco?

I then quickly grabbed my computer and my bag. Just as I was getting up someone had made their way to the table and sat down. Those few seconds of hesitating I missed out on that opportunity. Of course it’s not the end of the world. There will be another table available shortly if I wait, but that’s not the point. The point is that I clearly knew what I wanted to do, I knew I needed a table with an outlet, and the opportunity presented itself and I had to take a second to rethink it? Buy why? I think it’s human nature to sometimes over analyze and over think. It takes some training to mentally be clear of what you want to do and then pursue them without worry or fear of failure.

When I was attending college at Fresno State I remember coming up with a saying “A hesitation is a missed opportunity”. That saying was what had inspired me to make decisions more quickly, to really tune into my intuition and go after the things I knew I wanted before fear or doubt could seep in. Once you train your mind to think in this fashion it really allows yourself to take advantage of many opportunities that life presents to you.  Time is of the essence, and not all opportunities will await until you are ready to accept them.

Think of a time you saw someone you really wanted to talk to and you hesitated. You let fear sink in. You started thinking about what you should say, what they may say back, what if they aren’t interested, what if they reject you. Then they end up being approached by someone else or leaving before you had your chance. All those thoughts you just had are now turned into more pointless “what if’s?”. Now you become optimistic in your thoughts once you have missed the opportunity. You’re now thinking “what if they were the one”, or “what if I had gone and talked to them”.

Opportunities like this happen again and again. Some on a small scale and some on a much larger scale. Once you tune into your intuition of knowing exactly what you want to achieve don’t hesitate. Try it out and see where it takes you in life.