It’s time for a new direction. I’m posting this verbatim on my other sites as well.

For the last two years, I’ve planned and built, tweaked and refined, sold and invoiced, collected and accounted. I’ve marketed and branded and promoted. I’ve written and blogged and spoke and taught. I’ve coached and consulted. I’ve laughed, cried and learned a whole lot along the way.

I don’t regret starting Simplified Solutions, LLC two years ago. It has been the single best business learning experience I have ever had. I made so many mistakes. Too many to list here. I definitely failed forward at times. The best part was that this last two years was a training ground. A preparation if you will for the greatest business opportunity in my life thus far.

As my business has started to succeed the last several months, it’s been in large part due to a company called ithemes- and a open source platform called Wordpress. I owe a lot to Wordpress and to the team at ithemes. Wordpress gave me, and more importantly small businesses, non profits and ministries; an affordable, effective, and attractive way to gain an online presence. Ithemes created some amazing themes powered by Wordpress. That made the rest pretty easy for me.

A few months back my relationship with this amazing company grew a little closer. I always wondered how employable I was after being in sales most of my life and then running a small freelance business. Deep down though I knew I could follow a great leader and be a contributor on an amazing team. Well I’ve found both. The great leaders are Cory Miller and James Dalman. The great team is the team at ithemes and now WebDesign.com.

About a month ago, we started a serious dialogue about me joining a new venture that ithemes was launching. Time passed, many chats and conference calls lined out the details and I flew to Dallas this past weekend to meet the team and join this new venture – WebDesign.com

I am joining a thriving team at ithemes and have become their first sales consultant with WebDesign.com. To say I’m thrilled would be the understatement of the year.

We have a rockin team and we are ready to show the world an amazing model for web design and the customer service that comes with it.

You can follow all the details here at http://webdesign.com

You can also follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/webdesigncom

My new email address is bryce@webdesign.com and the cell phone is still the same.

I have already spoken to most current customers and this transition will be very seamless. I’m just joining the company that I promoted and sold before accept now I have a team of programmers, project managers, coders, designers, graphic designers, tech interns, owners and partners behind me. Way cool!

Simplified Solutions, LLC will still be an accounting entry in Quickbooks. Some things will trickle in and trickle out but I’m putting my 100% focus on making WebDesign.com the best in the world.

Here are some thoughts I have about business and the economy. They are not substantiated by studies or polls just by my gut. Ignore them if you like.

Inflation will be coming. It is off the shores rippling toward the coast. Imagine an asteroid crashing into the very middle of the Atlantic ocean. The waves would take a little while to make their way to the eastern shore of the US but they would make it. We dropped an 800 billion dollar asteroid into the economy the last 6 months. I feel like the hyper inflation will come from foreign investors and businesses gobbling up our products, resources and vacant commercial buildings. Not to mention a glut of new government employees rebuilding our infrastructure. Which I would normally agree is the role of government, if our government was what it was intended to be.

Which brings me to my second thought. Commercial properties and buildings will go through the same cycle that residential housing has been through. All the companies associated with the industry; banks, financial institutions and the businesses that own significant amounts of commercial property- will be hit very hard. I think this sector is more overbuilt than residential housing and they haven’t stopped building yet. Our efficiencies are increasing rapidly, people are working from home and coffee shops, and companies are outsourcing like crazy. These things coupled with the downturn will leave huge amounts of commercial space vacant. Lack of lease income will mean no payments to the note holders and will mean more failing financial institutions or more massive bailouts.

I think getting our butt out of debt and liquidating excess stuff and property in our life is a good starting point. Spending frugally and putting money into reserves is a good idea. Developing business assets that could do OK in deflationary or inflationary environments would be a good idea. Buying gold and other hedges against inflation are key.  Lastly I’ll leave you with General Douglas MacArthur’s quote “security is our ability to produce”.

I’m optimistic that opportunities will abound in a time like this, but I’m saddened that our family and the families of many Christians are not in better positions to lead financially. That’s my mission going forward-won’t you join me.

I’ll be writing about more about these kinds of issues over at grassrootchristians.

fantasy football

golf

Mary Kay

Snow

Word Press

Social Media

Network Marketing

Obama

Green

I’ve found that if you use these words you will be followed in mass. You could also follow Guy Kawasaki and at least 20 people will add you immediately. I like Guy Kawasaki a lot. Just funny how people hawk his follow list.

After tons of emails and letters poured in over the Christmas season, Costco wisely decided to embrace the holiday. They did not just allow Christmas in their stores but they promoted it. This was very exciting to me because I’ve always been a big supporter and advocate for Costco. I love their quality, their customer service and the way they run their company. The AFA had issued a press release that Costco was not just steering clear of Christmas (which I don’t like but can live with their corporate decision) to banning the use of the term in ads or communications. This second position is unacceptable in my eyes. Costco wisely changed their position and took the high road.

It’s never been my position to say that stores must advertise for Christmas, but to ban a holiday that an overwhelming percentage of American Christians and nonchristians celebrate is an exercise in extreme political correctness and like Brad Stine- I hate political correctness.

Yeah Costco! I figured out that the lifetime value of my family to Costco was somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000. If you take that and times it by 75% of American families then they also made a pretty good business decision.

Dear President Sinegal:

I have always admired the way you run your company. I often promote your store to friends, family and business associates. Choosing to not use the word Christmas in your advertising is cowardly but banning the use of the term is unacceptable. We are a Christian family with 3 children under 3. We buy all our food, diapers, wipes and formula from you, along with several hundred dollars in groceries each month. My small business has a membership at Costco and I buy my supplies there. We spend somewhere around $5000 per year or more on your gas, food and wares. I’m 32.

Do you really want to lose $200,000 in sales over the next 40 years so you can appease the Winter Solstice and Kwanzza shoppers? I don’t have any Jewish friends who were ever offended by Christmas.

I can name countless families from my church (20,000 members) that shop at your new store in Louisville. Is appeasing the minority and offending the majority a really good business move?

Let me know. It’s Christmas and we have some shopping to do. I need to know where to do it.

I recently read Seth Godin’s book- Meatball Sundae. It was a quick read and presents a very focused explanation of the new marketing paradigms that the web presents.

The book is another in a long line of hits from Godin. He has also authored The Dip, Tribes, and Purple Cow.

This book is a great insight into how the web, new business models and community are revolutionizing the way business is done. Nonprofits are not excluded from this new model and can actually be affected just as much or more than corporations. The book is great at using real life examples of companies using the new model effectively and companies who have failed miserably. If you want to understand how facebook, squidoo, twitter, youtube and blogs change things-If you want to change your company to fit these strategies, this is a great book. If you want to keep the same company and painstakingly try to use these strategies, you’ll at least learn how it doesn’t work.

Is this a wise move in the permission driven world of Internet Marketing. I’m not sure. I know how I handle the situation. I look to the one search engine that is not requiring me to log in each time I want to scan properties on the market. People on the web only care about how you can provide value to them and how you can serve them. I’m not saying it’s right, but it is what it is. If you’re not creating a community feel or a tribe as Seth Godin puts it, then people will flock to the player who gives them the community, is interesting and provides the features they want. I know that the Real Estate companies want to capture the “lead” from the login form. Then they can send them updates and stay in touch with them. The better way to do this would be to create a blog that helps people solve problems or do research; then people will want to be a part of that community and they will want to hear from you. This is a huge paradigm shift in online marketing and it’s here.

I have posted about Crash Proof- by Peter Schiff on my blog and I included it as the feature book in my ezine about a month back. I bought the book on a Thursday or Friday and finished it by Sunday. It is a great read and it took me back to thoughts I had in college, thoughts I had as a child and occasionally thoughts I have now when I stop and THINK.

In college I loved macroeconomics. I didn’t quite understand the Keynesian theories we studied. I don’t even remember studying other schools of thought like the Austrian School of economics. I just remember the equation to calculate GDP. We never focused on the savings factor in the GDP equation. We just focused on consumer spending and government spending. We didn’t talk much about exports since the US has been a net importer for years. We just discussed how government spending (printing money out of thin air) and consumer spending (debt) could grease the economic engine.

As a child growing up I thought that something needed to be made or manufactured before there would be  jobs. A physical good. I thought to myself everybody can’t be doctors, lawyers and accountants. Today I find myself thinking everyone can’t operate a service business. Humanity has basic needs like food, shelter and clothing. Those three necessities are very recession proof things. Maybe that’s why when things get a little scary everyone flocks to natural resource stocks, commodities, precious metals and energy stocks. The rest of the economy is based on want rather than need.

A couple years ago I used to drive around and think man, there is no way people are going to keep buying all these houses or leasing these commercials properties. It just can’t continue. We have overextended ourselves. My family is as guilty as any other, and it’s even worse since I had the intuition that the party couldn’t continue way back when. Now that we know low artificial interest rates are caused by our fed’s tampering with the money supply, and that all the people who bought huge houses with arm’s and sub prime loans are no longer buying homes; the market has a glut of homes and vacant lots.

Crash Proof confirmed the common sense thoughts I’ve always had. With someone like Peter Schiff shooting straight with me, I took the following thoughts away from the book.

• Our government and federal reserve are inflating goods and services by printing money out of thin air.
• Our money is fiat money- meaning it’s not backed by silver or gold.
• When more money chases the same amount of goods we get inflation.
• When we get inflation and hyper inflation the value of our dollar collapses.
• Inflation is really inflation now is it? The inflation numbers we’re fed don’t include gas and food and might not include rents in the future. That way inflation is always 3-4%.
• Other investments like gold and foreign stocks are good alternatives for this perfect storm.
• When buying stocks good value oriented dividend paying foreign stocks are a good place to invest with a devalued dollar and a banking system that lacks confidence. What good is a dollar if it takes a wheel barrel full to buy milk? What good is a dollar if no body believes a dollar is worth any more than the paper it’s printed on?
• Getting out of debt as a individual is the next best thing to our country getting out of debt.
• If we don’t stop this madness, then foreign investors will stop taking our IOU’s and start buying up all of our goods- causing hyperinflation.
• If we lose confidence in our fractional banking system- we could also experience deflation.
• The longer we put off this recession or depression the worse it will be when it happens.
• If you stomach the tough times we can come out again as a powerful creditor nation that produces and saves. A country that relies on it’s own natural resources.

I’m not an economist, an investor, an investment advisor or a legal expert. This is a book review and I hope most of the summary points are accurate. Forgive me if anything is lost in translation.

I just wanted to promote this book, because I believe it is a must read.

Give me cash and I’ll go to my favorite restaurants or retail shops. Well not retail, we hardly ever pay retail. Makes my stomach turn anymore. My wife gets so many great deals from yard sales, consignment shops and of course, craig’s list, ebay and cheapcycle; it makes paying retail so hard to do. Now we still like to eat out sometimes on our date night and when the 3 little ones are not fully in cooperation with our efforts. In other words when are children are acting crazy. At this point, some restaurants are dropping like flies and I don’t think I want a stockpile of gift cards or certificates. This has already happened to us twice in the last few months. Restaurants we still enjoy haven’t stopped accepting cash yet though. So if we’d had the cash instead of the cards/certificates then we could have enjoyed that free dining experience. This actually hurts the restaurants or retailers that stay in business. Once we’d made the decision to spend, we’d spend somewhere. Once the card or certificate is void, then the option to stay home becomes much greater.

I’m not coming down on the side of all corporate execs here. Are there some lavish spenders and some fraudulent execs with big corporate? Sure. Are there some massive layoffs happening while execs pull down insane amounts of cash via golden parachutes and stock options? Sure. Are there are a lot of corporate execs who show up everyday and work for their employees and shareholders best interests? Sure. Are there corporate execs that earn a fair compensation for the amount of profit and bottom line savings they create? Sure.

So now that we’re back in balance here, the point of my post is not that greed doesn’t play a major role in Corporate America or that execs have no blame in this matter. My sole point is that politicians lecturing and pontificating about corporate greed is the greatest example in history of the pot calling the kettle black. If you watched the congressman and senators cross examining and scolding the CEO of Lehman brothers, and you cheered them on; then you can feel free to take the blinders off.

This guy should have worked for AIG, Bear Sterns/JP Morgan or the other banks getting the bailout dollars. I’m assuming the next video will be of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac execs getting interrogated. Wouldn’t logic say they are next on the hot seat? I have a sneaky feeling we won’t see them. Waxman of all people is handling this interrogation.