Blog - Page 21 of 24

How to Create a Product When You Don’t Have Any Ideas

“I would create a product, but I just don’t have any ideas.”

It doesn’t hurt to have a few good ideas. You should generate a lot of them – even a lot of awful ones – every day. If you’re out of practice, James Altucher wrote a great post about how to become an idea-generating machine.

While you might not have any product ideas of your own, this is the ultimate copout. The lame excuse that makes all the others almost look legitimate in comparison.

You don’t need original product ideas. Not anymore. Not with the Internet around. People give them away for free all the time. You just need to know where to look.

Why Spock Would be the Worst Salesman in the World

Corey Pemberton

You know Spock from Star Trek?

He’s the (mostly) levelheaded first officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

If you don’t know anything about the series, Spock is from the planet Vulcan. Vulcans are known as the preeminent logicians in the Star Trek universe. They view emotions as a weakness, and their lives resemble a series of deliberate “chess moves.”

Each move is calculated six or seven steps in advance; each decision is mulled over to make sure it’s the most rational one.

It’s cool to watch Spock calculate the statistical probability of different possible outcomes in his mind. The dude is a like a living, breathing computer.

How to Market Yourself (and Why Trying to “Get Clients” is a Waste of Time)

Corey Pemberton

You know your product or service like the back of your hand.

You’ve spent years obsessing over your target market like a zoologist in the Amazon rainforest.

If your ideal customer committed a crime, you could describe their features to a sketch artist without batting an eye.

But do you know how to market yourself?

February 2013 Magazine Covers: A Headlines Case Study

Corey Pemberton

Sometimes headlines can be a bit too effective.

I realized this in the grocery store of all places.

Everything was going great. My stomach growling, I scurried around stuffing items into a basket. Somehow I avoided all the screaming children and wayward carts along the way.

When it was all over I felt like Frogger after crossing a 12-lane superhighway. I had everything on my shopping list. It was time to check out.

The shortest lines were still a few people deep. After I surveyed the scene, I picked one and prayed it would move fast.

And so began an excruciating ordeal…

How to Make More Money: 12 Killer Free Resources

Corey Pemberton

You don’t need me to tell you there’s a boatload of information about how to make more money.

99.99% of it is total hogwash. And with access to the Internet easier than ever before, there’s no shortage of charlatans, wannabes, and gurus spewing nonsense from their little online platforms.

Everyone’s an “expert.” Everyone has an opinion.

Here’s the thing. If you aren’t careful about what you choose to learn – and who you learn it from – you’ll waste mountains of time unlearning drivel when you should be focusing on legitimate advice.