Michel Hogan publishes a weekly blog on both Smart Company called Brand Matters, and her site www.brandalignment.com. For this week’s Brand Matters blog post from Michel, click here.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

This year has been an unusual one for David and I – we wrote a book together in February and March (Niche Content Millionaire), and then we started a blog site, softly around May as a way of producing content that built on and expanded out from our learnings over the past 15 years in the online space.  Most of of which we share in our book.

We also had a need for a new income stream into the family and as luck would have it, a former client who David had written a technology platform for, called him to return and work on the next version of the technology. They had outsourced version two of the platform and had nightmare on top of nightmare, disaster on top of disaster during the experience and just wanted the guy who developed the original thing to come back and sort out the mess.

And that’s what David has been doing this year – sorting out another company’s messy overwrites of his technology and then prototyping up the next version and some new modules that look set to give this company a way to have a really good grab at a rather huge market. Interesting work, and quite exciting now that David can see that what he originally developed six years ago, has been able to lead to something much bigger and way more interesting. As things stand this means that our family is considering the possibility of a move to the US to support David in leading the rest of the technology development with this firm.

What's the one thing you can do that will cut through to the heart of your business and create amazing results?

I’ve also pursued some new strands to my skills set and in February did an intensive life coaching course with the Life Coaching Academy based on the Gold Coast, and have taken on a couple of clients. This is enormously satisfying and interesting for me because it allows me to work with people starting up new businesses and to help them work out the steps required, the order of those steps and how to keep themselves focused and achieving at a time of maximum newness. All things I had to conquer when I was involved in starting up, growing and then selling the Arts Hub business.

But as the year nears its end I’ve been struggling with a ‘to do’ list that never quite seems finished I’m reminded of the days at Arts Hub when I always felt under pressure, under the pump so to speak, to do a zillion more things to bring in new members.

What I learnt at Arts Hub was that when you feel you have to do an enormous amount to get through, then it’s time to simplify your approach and ask yourself the question – ‘what is the one thing I can do, that if I put a heap of effort into it and do it consistently for as long as is required, will lift my business (or life) to the next level up?’

I remember clearly heading towards year’s end at Arts Hub and we had a big outstanding tax bill that would have to be cleared by February, sales were down as they usually are moving into Christmas and all was looking a bit gloomy. Instead of coming up with some vast plan on how to get revenue up, I asked myself the ‘one thing’ question and came up with the notion that if we could get members to renew their membership early for a special benefit to them, then we could bring some cash flow forward and clear our tax debt and set ourselves up for a good start to the next year. We hadn’t explored the potential of an early renewal strategy at Arts Hub prior to this and only having been around for three years, it clearly could be quite risky. However, I think our offer was good (there were prize draws and members got additional free months for renewing early) and our copy was snappy, to the point and got good results.

I go into this issue of good copy in our book, Niche Content Millionaire, in quite a bit of detail. My firm view is that really elegant, well-written copy can help sell your product like virtually nothing else. Great copy reaches out and grabs us and makes us want to get involved – it’s clear and honest and not shouty – and doesn’t claim that if the person doesn’t act on the offer they’ll suffer damnation. Instead, good copy points out a benefit or two, has an offer that has a value, and is good to read, often it can be fun to read and can make people smile as they consider whether or not they’ll pull out their credit card and act on it.

So back to the one thing. Life coaching also seems to be about finding the ‘one thing’ that your client can get on with in the week between seeing them again, that will make a large difference to what they’re doing. What’s really interesting is that the ‘one thing’ is often not difficult, overly challenging or demanding. It’s just if you do that ‘one thing’ instead of a zillion other, less relevant things, you’ll get your results much quicker. It also means that some of the other things you’ve been doing methodically and religiously and that yield way less impressive results, end up falling off your list as you allow your ‘one thing’ to have a primary place in how you go about your business.

I’d like to ask you now to consider the ‘one thing’ you could do either in the lead up to the holidays, or when you come back in the New Year that could make that out-of-proportion, big positive difference to your business in 2010?

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

Incidentally, I did ring Bigpond, our ISP. A nice woman asked “what colour is the DSL light” (red); “do you have a dial tone on the phone line” (yes); “is the modem properly connected to the phone socket” (yes). “OK, I’ll have to escalate this to our Level 2 support, someone will call you within two working days”. Fabulous, given this was a Friday.

This morning’s shenanigans are a reminder of just how dependent many of us are on constant internet connectivity, and our technological tools. Yet how many of us really exploit those tools in a way that truly improves our productivity and organization as entrepreneurs?

I spend my day with my MacBook and iPhone surgically attached. If you totalled up my waking hours, I spend more time on my Mac than I do with Fiona and our kids. It’s a tight relationship, tempered with the occasional outburst when the gadgets seem to be channelling our children and refuse to behave.

I thought I’d share with you some of the software tools and systems that I’ve gathered over the years, and that through trial and much error have proven to offer real benefits.

Please bear in mind I use a MacBook Pro as my primary computer, although thanks to the joy of Parallels software I also have Windows running on my Mac. Also please note that most of these software packages do require you to pay – but it’s generally a modest fee, usually around $US50.

1. Things
www.culturedcode.com

I’ve tried all sorts of To Do systems from Outlook’s Tasks to various task managers, but the one that’s held my attention longest is Things. It’s one of the simplest task managers, but it’s that simplicity, teamed with a delightfully designed interface that’s given it longevity.

Stay organised with Things

I can load up tasks with ‘do by’ dates, tag them, and organise them by project. The entries are flagged and colour coded according to whether they are overdue or not. I can quickly pull up a timeline-based list of tasks and work through in order.

There is an accompanying iPhone application that synchronizes via my Wi Fi network, so I can keep my tasks up to date either from my phone or my Mac. The only thing missing is OTA (over the air) synchronization, where they could stay up to date wherever my phone is located.

2. Evernote
www.evernote.com

Evernote is the newest addition to the stable, and came about through a strong recommendation from a good friend. Evernote is a sort of electronic ring binder and filing cabinet. Essentially you can write notes in a notebook, accompanied by pictures and files. You can have any number of notebooks and any number of notes.

It’s dead easy to use, yet has a remarkable range of functionality. I can type in a note, drag and drop in a PDF or other document, take a photo, clip a web page – and then email the note to someone.

There’s a very good iPhone application as well, with complete OTA synchronization, so everything stays in sync between the phone and Mac all of the time.

I’ve always been one to lug around an A4 workbook and write notes during meetings and phone calls. Now I almost exclusively work directly into Evernote. I’m writing this blog post based on a bunch of notes I wrote in Evernote the other day.

You can even send notes into your notebooks via Twitter and email – brilliant.

3. omniGraffle
www.omnigraffle.com

A great deal of my time is spent interacting with customers and writing and scoping and specifications to interpret their needs into a logically, and technically, based framework.

omniGraffle produces easily produces terrific looking flowcharts and diagrams

omniGraffle is a flow chart and diagram drawing program. There are plenty out there – many people will have met the Microsoft Visio product.

Being a male, I tend to think in very linear fashion – which means I mentally flowchart lots of things. Often if I’m in a discussion with someone about how to go about a certain task, I’ll sketch up the process in omniGraffle, to break down the workflow into manageable and distinct segments.

omniGraffle both has a cool name, and effortlessly produces really good looking diagrams. It has several layers of complexity but even if all you want to do is draw a simple flowchart for a presentation, it offers a great range of stencils and templates, including ones created by third parties – for example, I have stencils created by someone especially for outlining web pages.

4. Skype
www.skype.com

Whilst I realize it would to difficult to find someone who’s not heard of Skype, I’m not sure everyone understands just how powerful a business tool Skype can be. Did you know you can do all this with Skype?

Desktop Sharing – the latest version of Skype allows you at the click of a button show your desktop to the person at the other end of the line. Perfect for presentations, demonstrations – or as with us the other day, me showing Fiona how to do something, despite the fact I was in San Francisco and she was in Melbourne.

Voicemail – yup, Skype has voicemail just like your cell phone. You record a greeting, and if you don’t answer a call, people can leave a message.

Call forwarding – I have my Skype forwarding to my cell phone, so I can be away from my computer but still receive calls.

Skype Out – you can make calls from Skype to regular phones. And their international call rates are terrific compared to the normal phone companies.

Skype In – Skype can provide you with a local phone number in countries around the world. Someone calls that number, and it rings your Skype. I have a local number in San Francisco for example.

5. 1Password
agilewebsolutions.com

Ever forgotten a password for a web site? Not any more. I have LOTS of passwords to LOTS of websites, administration systems and so on. But I hardly know what any of them are. Because it’s all handled with smooth aplomb by 1password. The software creates and stores very secure passwords (eg lots of letters and numbers) that you could never recall in a month of Sundays. You access 1Password with a single password. But then when you return to a web site for which the program has previously saved a password, you click a button and it logs you in.

Never forget a password again

1Password doesn’t just handle passwords, it can also securely store bank account, credit card and other personal identity information.

There you have it, the five tools I use almost every minute of the day, every day. And I can testify that these gadgets really do make sense, and do save time. They help me work more efficiently, they help me interact with the people I do business.

There is a whole other list of little software tools I use for web development (how does any web developer exist without Firebug for example?) but we’ll save those for another day. Don’t want to scare the non-geeks too much.

I should just reinforce that many of these products are for Apple Macs. And I make no apologies for taking a partisan approach. I’ve experimented, and on occasion wasted money, to whittle down to the right combination. Some do require purchase, but even those will offer a free trial so you can give them a go for a couple of weeks and evaluate whether they can improve your entrepreneurial efficiency.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

Her blog post is called “What to look for in a coach” and whilst it is just a short and sharp post, it cracks to the point and wastes no energy on equivocation. Maybe it’s my job to do that.

Basically Kirsty is saying that in a world where the buyer needs to beware when purchasing services, you have every right to ask the person seeking to sell something to you, what their specific experience and credentials are in that area. It’s okay to be cautious, it’s okay to not jump on the bandwagon. Maybe you’ll miss out on the next big thing, or maybe you won’t – but at least you are in control of your decisions and deciding who you will trust.

Dr Wayne Dyer also calls into question this notion of trust in his audio book, Inspiration Your Ultimate Calling – a rather great listen that I had on replay for pretty much the first half of this year. Dyer at one point talks about when you really need to get clear and honest information about or for yourself, who do you go to? Is it someone who will tell you you’re fine, all’s great, just sign here and your anxieties will fade, or is it the person who tells you the truth as they see it? His years as a psychologist led him to the answer that those in need actually want to hear the truth about the reality of things – not someone’s comforting dismissal. That when life counts in large amounts, we can handle the unpalatable truth if it’s what we need to hear in order to change or correct course and get back towards our true purpose.

Trust us - we're experts

As Kirsty highlights, she wouldn’t ever hire a business coach who hadn’t run a business themselves, or a trainer who wasn’t fit. Her point is that with franchise systems, people with no background in an area can simply set up their business and start selling an expertise that there is no guarantee that they truly have. And as someone who loves Twitter a lot, and spends a heap of time there looking for people with similar interests and worldviews, I’m constantly astounded at the claims of some Twitter profiles. I mean, if you are 19 you really don’t have enough real world experience to advise anyone on anything much, let alone really important life-changing stuff. So why claim to be a guru, why not say you’re just starting out and learning?

I still remember the days when I worked with ABC Radio and old hands were endlessly quizzing me on my background and training. In fact, because there was little formal training available in the 1980s, most were gobsmacked that I’d received hundreds of hours of on-camera studio experience while studying in the first intake ever of Media Performance students at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). I must admit it was disconcerting to be endlessly grilled by those hoping to slip up the next generation of broadcasters, but it seemed to come with the patch in dealing with ageing broadcasters who believed the industry was born with them, and would die with them too.

It is quite different now, people with very little training in anything have no sense that calling themselves a master of something actually might require some proof. This is not to discourage anyone who is just starting out online and wanting to make it in the niche they’ve chosen – everyone starts somewhere, but hey, why not be honest about that? If you’re just starting out, say so, and tell us that this is an experiment for you, let us in on the secret of what you find out along the way, and do that in a way that makes sense, has the ring-of-truth to it, and is your honest account, and guess what? We’re probably going to love you for it!

Now, one of the big bugbears in my life is the fact that BC (before children) I weighed a certain amount, did a bit of exercise, ate way more than I do now and was generally in much better physical shape than today. After children, I’m carrying 12 kg more weight, exercise enormous amounts with not great results and get through most days feeling like a sack of potatoes. Don’t get me wrong, with a BMI of 23.1% I am neither technically overweight or obese, I’m just lugging too much extra around the middle to feel truly comfortable. I’m also creaking a lot – bending down is a pain, I can hear my hips crunch when I get up from a chair.

In 2004 at the Adelaide Arts Festival I was having a chat with Stephen Page, the then festival Director and the genius behind Bangarra Dance Theatre. As a former dancer he had a number of moves he used to keep fit. I bemoaned the fact that Pilates was the best I’d been able to come up with and that I really longed for those days in my teens at ballet doing endless matwork. I was sure all those really tough stretches and the resistance involved contributed enormously to a great muscle structure which in turn kept my weight down. He agreed that matwork and barre work were probably all you needed to keep a really limber body and we both moved on and forgot about our discussion. By the way, Stephen is the only person on the planet I have met to date who is born on the same day, in the same year. Our difference was we were born 12 hours apart, I think he was the elder.

Where am I going with this? Well I wish I could say that I’ve tried a million diets and have found the ‘one’ that works. This isn’t true, I’ve not tried many, the only one that worked was the CSIRO Diet, but the problem is there’s a lot of first quality protein involved and that makes it an expensive diet to follow. I lost about 6kg on the CSIRO Diet, but that was it, and it was only halfway to my goal. Since then I just really eat what I like and try not to overeat too often – and I’m 3kg heavier. So, mmmh all the restriction and extra protein, maybe it wasn’t necessary?

I’ve long had the sneaking suspicion that my weight gain is about movement or more correctly, my lack of moving through a full range of movement. In my teens I used to frequent a nightclub called the Red Parrot and many of us would dance all night in the wildest, most alternative ways, I’m sure this is what made me super fit.

So, let’s now intro someone who I do trust and my reason for trusting her. Tracy Anderson is a personal trainer to Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow, that’s it, just two clients. She also runs a dance studio in New York and in the summer of 2008 ran a bootcamp for local women who did a three-hour session with her after work, five nights a week for two weeks. She makes no massive claims beyond saying that in real-life research she’s done on herself and with other women over the past 12 years, she’s figured out how to create a dancer’s body for a woman who’s willing to do the work. That’s right, there’s work involved, this is not done without putting in a serious amount of effort. You can find out more about her story here in the About section, but I’d like to mention that Tracy’s credibility for me is way more than the fact she has famous clients, it’s that her own personal journey in her late teens as a dancer, led her on a mission to find out what the mechanics of creating a dancer’s body were, and developing a system around this. Hats off to Tracy because isn’t that what so many women want? And she figured this out because she was intrigued, curious and needed to sort her own shape out or she could keep her dance scholarship.

I have now purchased two of Tracy Anderson’s dvd’s and have made my way only through the mat work one. It is the closest thing to an extreme ballet matwork session, the sort of thing Stephen Page and I spoke of years ago, that I have come across. It is the real deal, after two sessions I am sore, I can’t get all the way through, it is difficult, but my muscles are pulling back into shape and I feel strength coming back into my limbs and core. I’m going to stick with this because given Tracy’s journey and her quest I believe her when she says if you do the work, her method will help you create your own version of a dancer’s body. Plus, Stephen and I sort of had the same idea back in 2004, so maybe we’re all on the same page, so to speak!

Give me three months and I’ll let you know whether the Tracy Anderson Method works or not. One thing I do know, Tracey Anderson has exactly the sort of credentials I’m looking for when I’m seeking advice from someone. Passion, curiosity, her own skin in the game, some science or discovery learning, and no claims of how easy it will be. It won’t, she’s clear, this method requires ‘hard work’.

I guess that’s my point really, if you’re going to take advice from anyone, make sure they’ve put the work in and got some results to show you.

If you’d like to share the stories of those who you really trust and why, make sure you comment. Likewise if there’s someone with no experience and no track history claiming to be a guru – uncloak them here at www.nichecontentmillionaire.com

Want to test out Tracy Anderson’s excercises? Have a go at this.

Image: Flickr Phauly

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now

So it was about two weeks ago when I had the task of identifying the top 100 cities in the world for arts activity. Now the reason I was doing this, for the time being anyway, needs to remain a bit of a secret, though needless to say, David and I, plus another arts and internet afficianado, Ed Dowling are cooking up a bit of a new venture. As happy accidents go, Ed had the idea of something that David and I had done full business scoping on, way back in the days when we were gelling the business concepts and plans around what was to become Arts Hub. The problem with this other business idea was that we just couldn’t figure out how we could get distribution quickly enough and to our target audience with the technology of the times. Really niche delivery systems were required and David and I could not see a way forward.

Nine years later and we have Twitter and Facebook and other social networks, though these will be the two we use for the new venture. For us, they are channels to our target, intelligent, choice-conscious audience who is interested in a great quality live offline experience, but isn’t interested in paying full whack if there’s any kind of potential for disappointment.

Faced with a research project that wasn't yielding any meaningful results with a basic Google search, I threw my challenge to my Twitter followers and was well rewarded.

In starting my research task I did some Google searches and was pretty discouraged that I wasn’t yielding any readymade lists. Surely in 2009 someone would have compliled a top 100 cities of the world for the arts? Well, not so I found. I was steadying myself for days of wombling around online when I decided I might just ask for a bit of help from my followers on Twitter. I’d completely forgotten about the fact that my tweets automatically feed to my Facebook profile, so was really heartened when not only the tweets rolled in, but also suggestions and whole documents of cities were posted on my Facebook wall. And all within the space of around 8 hours. Friends filed their favourite arts cities, then gave comprehensive rationales as to why these cities should be included in my list.

I was amazed. Then I receive a tweet from the Librarian at the Lonely Planet who sends me a UNESCO list of the world’s top ten arts cities and the reasons along with a request to have a copy of my Top 100 once they were compiled.

Now I must admit, my criteria for selection were rather crude. The cities must be big, and they must have a good amount of live arts activity going on in them on an ongoing and regular basis, that is, not just summer festivals and the like. I wasn’t that interested in ranking them in any kind of rigid order as for business purposes, we really just needed the biggest and most active. How to figure this out?

Well, I did actually do some of the research myself and took a look around various cities that described themselves as ‘creative’ or ‘creative class’ cities. Richard Florida, in his book ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’ had mentioned that really successful cities had plenty of gay people, artists and creative class workers, web developers, IT professionals, media professionals, knowledge workers etc – and all these people expected really good quality arts experiences to be readily available to them. Hence it made sense to look out for cities that could be described as ‘creative class’, there would be lots of arts activity going on there. This yielded me most of my US cities, but for the European ones, it was mainly my Facebook friends’ recommendations that gave me my leads.

Some of the bigger cities, like Brussels, I was told, were boring and whilst they may be big, there was not enough of note going on regularly to make them worthy of being on the list. Other smaller cities such as Antwerp were described as hotbeds of artisanship and bohemianism, with mainstream and alternative live arts activity available every night of the week and through all seasons. That one, though not a big city with a population of half a million, made it on the list.

My most useful contribution though, and I had thought of this, but figured ah, too hard – was from a longstanding friend whose band I used to follow around town when I was a youngster, and who is now an executive at Woodside Petroleum. The oil game must have been a bit boring that day as he found me a list of the world’s biggest cities by population and sent these through on Facebook. When I did a bit more googling I found a rash of arts activity going on in cities I had never even heard of. Fabulous, this list was getting somewhere.

I received responses from Facebook friends in the UK, New York City, and from Twitter followers from all over the world. I know it sounds like such a simple project and a simple request, but I was really amazed at how so many Twitter followers and Facebook friends took my question “Which are Top 100 cities in the world for live arts?” and really got involved.

Thanks to everyone who made a contribution, we’re really grateful. You made my task much easier than I thought it would be. I’d really been beating myself up about this one!

Attached is the list. Just bear in mind that this isn’t ranked or ordered. Also that there is a bias towards Australia and New Zealand in that our venture will focus on these regions first, even though in a global sense some of these cities might not make the cut. Also there are a few cities in India and China that we have on the list because their populations are just so huge, that if they don’t have a great live arts culture now, they are bound to in the future as the growth of a well-heeled middle class proceeds apace in these regions. The GFC has got to end sometime right?

If anyone wants the task of ranking and ordering these cities, by all means, be our guest. We’d love to hear from you! And if we’ve missed a city that you believe simply must be on this list – email it through to me at Fiona@collectzing.com and tell me your reasons.

TOP 100 Cities of the world for live arts

Australia

Sydney

Melbourne

Brisbane

Adelaide

Perth

New Zealand

Auckland

Queenstown

Wellington

Christchurch

Big Global Cities

London -

New York. NY

Paris

Tokyo

US Cities ( scoped on size and creative city ratings)

Los Angeles

San Francisco

Honolulu

Washington D.C.

Boston

San Jose

Minneapolis

Austin, TX

San Diego

Denver

Hartford, CT

Seattle

Miami

Houston

Dallas

Philadelphia

Chicago

Canada

Toronto

Montreal

Vancouver

Ottawa

UK (based on 2007 Theatre Assessment Review – regions indicated – http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/downloads/theatreassessment.pdf)

Edinburgh

Glasgow

Liverpool

Brighton

Birmingham

Manchester

Cambridge

Newcastle

Leeds

Leicester

Europe

Dublin

Marseille (54 theatres listed)

Nice

Lyon

Berlin

Copenhagen

Cannes

Monaco

Rome

Milan

Verona

Naples

Florence

Frankfurt

Hamburg

Essen, Germany

Madrid

Barcelona

Lisbon

Antwerp

Stockholm

Helsinki

Moscow

St Petersburg

Prague

Warsaw

Vienna

Zurich

Amsterdam

South America

Buenos Aires

Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Santiago de Chile

Mexico City -

Guadalajara, Mexico

Lima, Peru

Asia

Osaka, Japan

Hong Kong

Shanghai

Singapore

Kuala Lumpur

Mumbai

Calcutta

Chennai

Hyderabad

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Lahore, Pakistan

Beijing

Delhi

Hanoi

Manila

Seoul

Bangkok

Jakarta

Near East/Middle East/Far East

Cairo

Istanbul

Tehran, Iran

Alexandria, Egypt

Total – 100

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites. Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now