First off, sorry for my sudden absence for couple of weeks, normally this time of the year is the craziest for me due to the nature of my businesses. I don't know why the smell of summer has this effect on people and businesses, but you won't find me complaining.
what's interesting about the societies, businesses, and people is that it's a lot easier to patch things up with temporary solutions that more problems than they fix. I seem to be noticing these flaws a lot more than i used to. I was a designer once so i know i still have the open eye to spot the little weird stuff but some of things i see are so obvious that i don't know why they haven't been fixed yet. read on and i'll let you in on some of them...

So far this year i'm finding my self fixing things more than i invent. I've always been a thinker, that's what i do best. You tell me your problems that no one seem to be able to fix and i'll give you several solution you never thought were possible. I invent solutions!

For the last few week, however, i've been working on several project in need of fixing. Not knowing anything in regards to the nature of these projects required a lot of extra work. The more i found out about these helpless projects the more i realized i might not be able to handle the load. They are all too different and located at different location, managed by totally different types of people and not to mention all vary in terms of budgets and forecasting goals.

But without getting into too much details (NDA Agreements) lets talk about the obvious problems i've encountered.

1) Gas problems, since it's very popular these days: cars use gas, a lot!! they have combustion engines with pistons that go up and down, burn fuel to propel the motion so that the car can move. but the technology is not all that different from 100 years ago, sure they've got smaller and more efficient but are you telling me there is no other way for the engine to work on gas? forget about electric cars for this topic, for now.

2) Most people are not leaders, they just don't have it in them yet they insist on being leaders simply because they've got the ambitions for it. Most of these leader-wanna-be's start their own online business you can guest where their business ends. now do tell or even help these people realize the true problems they have.

3) %99.999 of all newly launched web sites (blogs, web 2.0, web infinity...) fail, actually they never get any where even if you don't like to admit you've failed, but if you look deep enough you can figure why you're going to fail, but you never take note of that as something to avoid or to make sure to include. I can tell if a website is going to fail or succeed within 5 min of hearing about it or within 30sec of looking at it!

4) Add yours here...

Ever wonder what this world would be like if it was all peaceful, and perfect. No wars, no chaos, no tension and no racism. I personally would never want to live in that world. It's boring, it's static, nothing interesting ever happens.

To me any type of chaos is an opportunity where we can exceed the beyond traditions and challenge the status quo. With chaos comes innovation, solutions and different wants and needs. People are no longer in the same level, they each live for a different purpose with a different perspective on life. In business and commerce there is an entire philosophy around Chaos Theory where financiers leverage off other's misfortune. Now i ask you "can you feel the chaos? are you going to do something about it?

Every meeting i go to, every pitch i hear, and every person i meet talking about their dreams of making it big online, i constantly ask myself, there are so many opportunities out there yet why are people stuck on the same type of ideas? why is it that they cannot see the silver lining with chaos? that's where the gold is!!

Internet is a big mess, nobody can organize it; it's not user friendly; we're still stuck on the stone age HTML output; as soon as one site becomes a little popular all of a sudden 100 others just like it pop out of every corner you can imagine; we read tons of news sites yet don't know who is telling the truth or what side they are on; trendy ideas come and go but the ones that make it mainstream are probably the crappiest of them all; and last but not least we've given the power of influence to a bunch of people who can't decide what clothes to wear ( Arrington, Scoble, Zukerberg, Rose,...) let alone tell us what we should follow or do on Internet. How we got here doesn't really matter, where are we going next is the question you should be asking your self.

The opportunities are all around you, find a chaotic space and make it even more chaotic this seems to be the secret to making a very popular website.

But seriously, find a problem and give it your 2 cents trying to fix it. Do NOT go after ideas that everybody else is also thinking about, no, just find a simple and easy idea and develop it, launch it and promote it. If one idea didn't work then try another one, you might go through 10, 15, 50 or 100 ideas before one really blows up, so keep trying to solve problems. Don't try to make money, money should always be just a side effect.

Solve people's problems first and they will happily give you all the money you can fit into your pockets!

This week was a crazy one to say the leat. I found out that i've been black listed on twitter because i have too many friends and following even more people which is not ok by a small group of unknown geeks. What's even crazier is the fact that i've become even more popular because i disliked the spam label the black listing people gave me so i went on a ranting. I've been receiving twitter messages, private messages, emails and etc... reacting to my "rantings"

So here i am at a cross road. till now i've been writing about some intelligent and informative articles in which a lot thinking and research goes into and while the readership is growing at a slow pace but the reaction is simply none existent. On the other hand i start talking my heart out by rating about a silly twitter issue and i get not only a lot readership but also a great deal conversation and reaction.

My dilema is i wanted to turn this site into a very smart and resourceful site, but i also wanted to grow the traffic to beyond 100k hits per month by end of July.

I'm going to do some deep thinking this weekend. I have to figure out a way to do both. I simply do not want to lose the respect of the people who have been following me to date and would like to keep them around for many years to come.

Your success in anything you'd like to do is dependent on strategy. Strategy is not about the end result, nor is it about goals or targets. Strategy is basically about HOW you're going to get results, WHAT you need to do, and also WHEN, WHERE, WHY of everything, and last but not least WHO are you really doing it for?

So lets make it quick and sweet:

• Create a road map of getting to your results first
• Find the shortest distance between each step
• Seek helpful link, resources and connections to help you achieve results for every little step
• Measure Everything, if you don't know how your strategy is working out you won't know how to improve
• Measure Twice, Cut once! don't just deploy an idea as strategy consider the pros and cons and readjust the idea then turn it into a strategic move
• Listen to people, blogs, media and everything else! you don't have to act on everything they say but they can give you some great ideas
• Changing strategy or approach is not a weakness so if you face road blocks then it would be a better idea to change the strategy for that process
• If facts don't fit the theory, chance facts! Albert Einstein

Strategy is about clarity; it's about confidence and risk taking. To give you an idea, every time i'm driving around in Toronto, which is full of traffic, i set a strategy for my self on how i'm going to get to where i want to go in the shortest and most efficient amount of time. I basically have memorized the map of Toronto and i can visually imagine it, since i don't have a navigation system. I've done this practice so many times that now a days i do them automatically without thinking, it has become naturally apart of me.

I know the concept of strategizing for every little thing in your life is not only hard but agonizing but after a while when you get comfortable with it you'd wonder how you lived without it.

Now, as my job i have to be on top of strategy. I'm constantly doing consulting jobs for web project, businesses where some have funding and most don't, if i screw up somewhere along the development rout the whole project could go up the flames. I wasn't like this all my life, in fact when i was a teenager i could not understand the concept of time management, planning, consistency, and organization. I was a total mess, but something changed and i discovered new joys of life which were Communication Design, Branding and Strategy and they changed me forever.

Let me know your own thoughts, or if you are strategic in a different way!

It might sound obvious that you should do what you love instead of doing it for money and fame! but i was amazed when i saw the result for a survey that started a month ago that had just recently finished.

In short, majority of new entrepreneurs and web startup developers loved working in the online environment, they loved building sites, they loved designing, they kept up with a lot of blogs and news sites, but when asked if you have a web 2.0 website, how engaged are you in the site from an average user's perspective (none admin tasks)? the answers were alarming. Only %15 were active members and contributors of their sites where as %50 had completed the project and had moved on to another project. %70 of the people with multiple sites said they checked on their older site once in while to see how it was performing, where it lacked, if it needed more features or needed a zing to boost up the traffic.

In another question close to %35, or one third, said they stopped working on the site because it failed right at the beginning, how can you come to that conclusion within the first couple of months is beyond me.

Most importantly, When asked Why they started and built that particular project, %90 of responses had to do with either reputation, money (both funding and ad revenue), and excitement.

Conclusion

Basic philosophy: If you don't love everything about the site you're building then how could you expect other to love it!

Every successful person on planet keeps telling you to live and do things in life with passion. Do the kind of jobs that you are passionate about, marry the person you are most passionate about, learn out of the passion for knowledge... etc... but when it comes to doing business projects, we might be doing the business we are passionate about but the topic of the project has no soul or passion! WHY???

If you are passionate about sports, don't make a site about business that you are not passionate about. Being passionate about the topic and content of project gives your site extra soul and character not to mention that it makes it a personal affair as well. Be passionate about all aspect of your site and everything else will come to you, trust me!