Aviation of Business

Fair Winds,
Andrew

Step 1: Read this blog post: www.wpthemesgallery.com/dont-make-the-same-web-design-mistake-i-did/

Step 2: Comment on whether or not you think links should open new browser windows (keeping your blog open but possibly cluttering up your reader’s screen) or whether clicking the link should take them to the next site in the same window (forcing them to leave your blog).

I’ve been using the “open link in new window” option for the most part on my blogs, but if I get an overwhelming response otherwise, I’m willing to change my evil ways…

Let me know what you think!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

I am entering Thor Schrock’s Secret Classroom Blog Contest.

I’ve been reading Thor’s blog (www.thorschrock.com) for awhile now, and he’s got some really great content! I highly recommend subcribing to RSS feed (I did!). If you are looking for an RSS aggregator, I suggest NewsGator (www.newsgator.com) - it’s got an online version which is very easy to use and update.

In addition to the obvious monetary value of the potential prize, I’m also entering the contest because the Secret Classroom information sounds like it has some real substance to it, unlike many other offers out there on the web these days. Some of the infomation that is available on the Secret Classroom DVD set includes:

One of the benefts of having this information on DVD is that you can rewind and watch portions over (instead of missing the information like you might in a live seminar), as well as being able to see it happen (instead of having to interpret what it should look like, like in a book or e-book). Additionally, you get a workbook to make the learning stick even better!

Sounds like being back in school - taking notes, doing assignments in a workbook - but I’d rather have the information and take notes and work at something to get what I want.

What’s the alternative?

Doing the same thing every day - and getting the same thing I already have. And that may not be bad, but I have goals and dreams… and the day-to-day won’t allow me to reach them.

So here’s to learning and doing and building something new!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

I joined ListBandit to help me increase my ability to reach people with my message (won’t it be great when I finally figure out what the message should be?).

ListBandit is an interesting way to take your message to people who otherwise might not hear it… it’s a 3x matrix, infinitely deep (or as deep as you can make it), with a twist.

The twist is this: Every day, the site “shuffles” (or pulls the arm on the one-armed bandit - hence the name ListBandit) the membership, giving you the opportunity to increase the number of people your message may go to. Additionally, if you sign up soon, you’ll get the opportunity to increase the eyeballs your message hits exponentially, just by referring other interested parties to the site.

Initially, your list will be minimal, but as you refer people it’ll build quickly. And every day you’ll have another opportunity to be at the peak of the mountain of people who have signed up - meaning your message will reach everyone below you in the downline.

So start prepping your message - THOUSANDS might get to see it very soon! Click below to sign up and give it a try yourself!

It’s Not Too Late To Hit The List-Building Jackpot. Join
Today, and You Could Be Emailing Thousands … Tomorrow!
http://www.listbandit.com/index.php/ahartley

Aviationofbusiness.com just joined RSShugger - a new web-based program to help bring more readers to your blog. They have a top 100 list of blogs that resets every month, giving you the opportunity to grow your reader base even more quickly!

Currently, RSSHugger only has 269 feeds, so your chances of getting on the top 100 are more than 33%! Also, listing your blog on their site is completely free, provided you are willing to do a review of the site on your blog (such as this one). If you don’t want to do a review, you can also pay a flat fee of $20, or $2/month. This would be a good option for blogs whose readers wouldn’t appreciate a service that will attract more people to their blog.

I will probably be listing my new blog - www.environmentastic.com - on the RSShugger site as well, but since my readers on that site are looking for information on becoming more environmentally-conscious (and not necessarily looking to attract traffic to a blog), I’ll probably pay the $20 for that blog.

On THIS site, however, you are here to learn how to take your business to the next flight-level, so this kind of post is more appropriate for you!

Check out RSSHugger - it might be worth getting registered and listing your info with them!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

The following is a paid review, but is completely my own opinion and is not at all influenced by being paid.

Scan2Contacts (business card reader) Review

If you are an entrepreneur, or even if you just go to very many seminars, you amass many business cards, of which there is no good way to organize and sort in such a way as to be able to find the information when you need it. Besides just throwing them all in a shoebox, I’ve tried those little plastic insert pages where you can insert 12 cards or so and then put them in a 3-ring binder. That works fairly well, but I don’t take the binder with me when I travel, so if I run into someone who could use one of my contact’s services, I have to make myself a note and hopefully remember what it was all about when I get back home, then dig through the binder to find the information, then type it all out in an e-mail and send it.

What a pain!

Scan2Contacts gives another option to add to the shoebox and 3-ring binder solutions. I have seen other business-card scanners, and they all seem to do similar things, but Scan2Contacts is the first one I have seen that allows you to scan the card directly into Microsoft Outlook - which is a great benefit for the vast majority of companies who use Outlook as their email client.

Take a look at Scan2Contacts cute demo, which shows how the system works to get the info into Outlook (as well as illustrating the frustration of users before the scanning solution).

I’ve seen other scanners, and they work well, but if you use MS outlook, Scan2Contacts doesn’t look as if it can be beat for simple efficiency! Use it as a tool to increase your social capital!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

Everyone has heard the importance of business planning. Creating a business plan before you start your business is very nearly a universal starting point for all successful businesses. In fact, Chris Corrigan, an Australian businessman who grew logistics company Patrick Corporation into one of Australia’s most successful companies and owns part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Blue airline, said, “You can’t overestimate the need to plan and prepare. In most of the mistakes I’ve made, there has been this common theme of inadequate planning beforehand. You really can’t over-prepare in business!”

Once again, we find that business and aviation are quite similar! Let’s walk through the business planning process and take a look at the similarities:

The first step in any plan is to know where you are… determine where you stand in your business knowledge and preparation. Are you ready to start a business? Do you really want to? This is analagous to a pilot’s home airport and “I’M SAFE” checklist:

• I: Illness - It is best not to fly while suffering from any illness.
• M: Medication - Pilot performance may be adversely affected by the taking of certain medications.
• S: Stress - Stress from work or from home may distract pilots during important segments of a flight.
• A: Alcohol - As little as one ounce of liquor, one bottle of beer or four ounces of wine can affect a pilot’s skills negatively.
• F: Fatigue - Fatigue affects a pilot’s coordination and alertness.
• E: Emotion - Emotions of anger & depression decrease alertness & may lead to taking higher risks than necessary

If any one of these things is affecting you as a pilot, it’s best to postpone your flight for another time. In business, a lack of knowledge of the industry, a poor work ethic, a bad reason for starting a business, other important obligations, etc. are all good reasons to delay the start of the business until your situation changes. I have come up with the following acronym, similar to the “I’M SAFE” checklist to help you determine if you are ready to start a business (NEW BIZ):

• N - Network: Do you have both a business network and a personal network of people who will support you?
• E - Emotion: Is your desire to start a busines free from emotion (e.g. anger or frustration at your current job)?
• W - Work Ethic: are you willing & able to work the hours necessary to start a new business?
• B - Business Acumen: Do you have experience in the industry you would like to enter?
• I - Investment: Do you have the capital (or can you get the capital) necessary to launch & sustain the business until it is profitable?
• Z - Zealous: Are you passionate about this business idea and industry?

If you cannot answer yes to all of the above questions in the “NEW BIZ” checklist, it might be better to wait to start your business until you can. Answering “no” to any one of them will only cause you frustration and pain in the long run of starting and running your own business.

Can you answer the “NEW BIZ” checklist questions in the affirmative? What other considerations might you want to consider before jumping into the entrepreneurship world? Tell us by leaving a comment!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

P.S. Stay tuned for part two of this six-part series: Where do you want to go?

Most everyone by now has read or seen (or at least HEARD OF) The Secret. It’s a really good book about the power of positive thinking, AKA the Law of Attraction. I read it fairly recently, and liked it quite a bit. If you aren’t familiar with the concept, it essentially says that “the universe” provides whatever you need and want, but it doesn’t understand negatives.

In other words, you can’t think “I don’t want to get sick” because the universe won’t understand “don’t.” So it hears, “I … want to get sick.” And voila, you’re sick. From an entrepreneurial perspective, thinking “I don’t want to fail” all but guarantees your failure.

The answer is to think positively; think about what you WANT, not about what you don’t want. Thinking “I want to be healthy” will help stave off illness; thinking “I want my business to succeed” will help to avoid failure. And I think that this is true as far as it goes. Where it starts to get a little iffy, at least for me, is where the book and the film say that if you act as if you already have a million dollars, and feel like you’ll feel when you have a million dollars, that a million dollars will come to you.

Every result comes from action. And I absolutely believe that saying to yourself, “I want a million dollars” is better than saying “I don’t want to be broke.” But you still have to work toward that goal. If I wake up every day and say to myself, “I want a million dollars,” but then go to work like always, do what I always do, come home and watch TV all night, drink beer and eat Doritos, I’m still going to get what I always got. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

So why do people love the idea of “The Secret?” Because it sounds easy. But it’s not. You have to work as if you already have a million dollars before you will ever receive the money. And the positive thinking part of it is only beneficial inasmuch as it sets your mind in the right direction. If you are running away from something, you’ll stop running as soon as the threat is gone. That is negative thinking - an “I don’t want” thought.

But if you are running toward something, you’ll keep running until you get there - if the goal is motivating enough. This is “I want” thinking. The REAL benefit of positive thinking is that it opens your mind and senses to opportunities and possibilities that you never would have noticed before. The opportunities and possibilities always existed, but your negative mindset had you focused on what you DIDN’T want instead of what you DID want. So things slipped by unnoticed and uncapitalized upon.

Think of it this way - when you bought your most recent car (let’s say it’s a Volkswagen Jetta), all of a sudden you notice that there are Jettas EVERYWHERE! Where did they all come from? They were always there, you just never had reason to notice before. This is a function of your Reticular Activating System (RAS) - a part of your brain that subconsciously notices things that are important to you. And it does not have to be trained. It’s automatic. As an example, I rent small airplanes to do my flight training. I fly different aircraft, which have different identification, every time I fly. But if Air Traffic Control says the ID of the plane I’m flying, my attention is piqued immediately. Not because I am used to the aircraft ID, but because my RAS determined that it was important to me. It’s how you can hear someone whisper your name across a room; it’s how you recognize possibility and opportunity once you’ve told yourself it is important to you.

So even if you can’t bring yourself to believe that The Secret is scientific fact and all you need to do is think positive thoughts and good things will appear out of thin air in front of you, know that there is good evidence that a positive outlook and “positive thinking” can absolutely make your goals more reachable, in a more timely manner, with less frustration and work.

So run toward something good - not away from something bad!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

After nearly four years of no flying, I am again current to fly myself and passengers! 2.1 hours of instruction (over two flights) was enough to get me comfortable in the cockpit again, and my instructor signed me off for both my Biennial Flight Review and to rent aircraft from the flight school with no instructor needed to come along.

Getting back into a plane was a little weird after such a long absence…. I had to read the checklists very closely just to remember what certain things meant - even on the preflight - and I had to repeat several things because I had forgotten to do them… even though they were right there in front of my eyes, in writing, on the checklist!

I had a little trouble starting the engine on the first flight, but the second went smoothly. It didn’t feel very real to me until I started doing maneuvers - specifically steep turns - on the first flight. Once I felt the extra Gs of steep turns though, It started to come back to me pretty quickly. The first landing since October of 2003 was a little ugly - picture a dollar sign ($). The straight line is the runway and the S is the path I was flying the plane trying to land… It didn’t help that it was also at night!

The second flight we did mostly touch and goes at a small airport to the south of the field we departed from - and I started to get my bearings back on landings. By the end of the second flight, my instructor was pretty much staring out the window as I did all the flying and radio calls.

Finally! I’m ready and raring to go at this thing again… I even feel like I’m a better driver when I’m a current pilot.

Anybody interested in helping pay for flight training? I’ll put up a PayPal donation button soon… and tell people about this blog! Every little bit helps.

Fair Winds,
Andrew

The following is a paid review, but is completely my own opinion and is not at all influenced by being paid.

I recently signed up for Pay Per Post, a blog marketing site which has been gaining and gaining in popularity with bloggers as a way to use a blog to make a little (or a lot) of money. It’s also very popular with internet marketers as a way to drive traffic to their sites! If you’re already writing, and you already use products and surf the web, why not make a little money while doing so, right? I’ve been experimenting and learning about online business for a little while now, and have not had much success. To be fair, I’ve also had a lack of focus and not spent my time where it might make the most impact. I’m trying to change that, because - as you see from my last post - I am edging my way back to my original career goal (since high school or college) of becoming a professional pilot.

Since flying isn’t cheap (my first flight in nearly four years lasted nine-tenths of an hour - that’s .9 hours or 54 minutes - and cost $115.64!), I’ve newly refocused my online ambitions to help me pay for the cost of flight training. I figure that if I can make $30 per day, every day, from my online businesses, my flight training will be nearly paid for! With that in mind, I am refreshing my interest in Pay Per Post, starting with this post. I hope to be able to use it to get a good start on my goal of $30 per day. If I am able to make more than that through Pay Per Post (and/or other advertising, donations, etc.), I will increase my flight time commensurately.

Up to now, I have found Pay Per Post to be pretty easy to use. It was very easy to add this blog to my account and get started. I actually got an offer for $30 to review a site - which I was pretty excited about, but then I got distracted and forgot to actually post about the site. The offer was susequently rescinded - unfortunately it happened on the day I remembered and was going to post about it! I ultimately would like to add some of my other blogs to my account at Pay Per Post (blogs like environmentastic! and Teacher’s Forum, but Pay Per Post requires that you have 10 approved posts before you can add any more blogs to your account. I wasn’t aware of this (or I had forgotten), and I was a little frustrated trying to find out how to add another blog to my account… you actually have to do that under the “my posts” tab. That was a little confusing to me, and then frustrating that once I found out where and how to add another blog, I wasn’t able to until I did more posts.

Other than that I think Pay Per Post is a really nice site to work with. It’s easy to learn, use, and navigate, and it has already given lots of people another stream of income! I know Tyler Cruz (visit his blog) has had some success with it… I hope I can make enough to start subsidizing my flight training soon! If you’re interested in making some money with your blog (even if only a little), check out Pay Per Post.

Have you used Pay Per Post? What did you think about it? Let us know - leave a comment!

Fair Winds,
Andrew