At a recent conference hosted by information product guru Fred Gleeck, I was introduced to the Strengths Finder 2.0 book by one of the speakers at the event. The book goes hand-in-hand with an online evaluation program designed to determine your 5 core strengths.

The basic concept behind this is that it is far more productive and rewarding for people to engage in work/activities that mesh with their strengths rather than struggle to overcome weaknesses. Why dedicate your life to being the best basketball player if you are 4′10″ tall with asthma?

Wouldn’t it be better in the long run to place your efforts behind something you might excel in?

The whole thing makes sense to me. The results of the test speak to deep strengths like ‘learning as a motivator in your life’ and not simplified and overly determined things like ‘you should be a research scientist.’

My Strengths Finder 2.0 Test Results:

1. Learner
2. Ideation
3. Activator
4. Achiever
5. Input

Even more interesting to note are the things that are not on my list like: Strategic, Discipline, Analytical, and Consistency.

I still have a lot to digest from the results, but this has been a helpful exercise to locate some areas of strength to focus on as I plan out my work in the future and evaluate potential business partnerships and joint ventures in the future.

The Go-To Guy!

Technorati Tags: core strengths, personal development, self awareness, strengths finder

I just published a new e-book that tells the story of how I earned my first $100 marketing on the Internet. It’s a very simple story and a very simple system. Anyone can do what I did and I explain the process in full details in the e-book.

So, if you want to learn a little more about the marketing/business side of my online life get your free copy of:

How I Made My First $100 Online

Once you read the e-book, come back and leave a comment and let me know what you think. If you have any questions I’ll do my best to answer them here.

The Go-To Guy!

Recently I was participating in a conversation about ‘thinking outside the box’ and shared a story that happened when I first started working on an automotive assembly line. (How I ended up working there after college is a story in itself!)

On the assembly line, stopping production was a very costly no-no! If I remember right, it was something like $10,000/minute to pay for all the equipment and worker salaries when the factory was operating. When you first start working there, they drill it into your head to “NEVER STOP THE LINE!” (Unless it’s a quality issue, of course. )

To keep things moving, there was a person called the ‘Upgrade’ assigned to every zone of the facility who would either follow a car down the line and repair/finish a job that couldn’t be completed, or write up the problem on a tracking sheet to be fixed in a workshop that was located at the end of the production line.

My job (called the rag-joint job) was critical and had to be finished on the spot - I connected the steering column to the steering box. It was a government safety inspected - they had a little computer there that registered every car.) Even worse than that, if you didn’t get it done, they couldn’t drive the car off the end of the line. This was a very bad thing! (Picture people having to jack up the front of a car onto a little motorized carrier and manually wheel it into a repair bay.)

After a while I had gotten pretty good at the job, when I encountered a new problem. There was a small burr on the metal of one of the parts I needed to connect up. When I tried to put everything together, the burr wedge itself in between the parts and the parts stuck in the half assembled position. I tried everything I could think of to muscle the parts together. When that didn’t work, I struggled to pull everything apart and finally panicked as the car moved closer to the end of my work station.

Realizing that I couldn’t figure out how to fix the problem I hollered, “WOODY!” (That was the name of my Upgrade.)

Woody came over and told me to ‘get out of the way.’ He took the large air motor I used to bolt these critical parts together, turned it around, and used the back of the motor to whack the parts and knock them together. He flipped the motor around, bolted the parts together, and handed me the air motor saying, “go get the next car, I’ll finish this one.”

From that point on I never looked at my tools the same way. It didn’t matter what it was designed for, it only mattered how you could envision using it to get the job done!

One interesting side note. At the same factory, they had a group of skilled trades people who earned in excess of $100k/year and spent most of their work day sitting on a little electric cart reading the paper. But, when a critical production machine broke down, they knew how to get it back online ASAP and keep it running until the shift was over. Dollar for dollar, they were one of the best labor investments in the plant.

Just a little something to think about. Re-think the tools you use. What else can they do for you?

The Go-To Guy!

My wife and I have taken the baby and traveled to Michigan to spend the 4th of July holiday week with my family. A number of years ago, my parents bought a house in a little community on the Lake Michigan coast and for the past 12 or 13 years, we gather there in the middle of summer.

I’m sitting outside the public library here breathing in the fresh air and taking advantage of the free WIFI access they provide and it reminded me of one of my goals: create a online business that can be run from anywhere I have access to the Internet so I can spend my time where I want to!

So far this morning, I’ve run a quick check of my affiliate accounts, Adsense, and Amazon.com. I’ve also been able to look in on a PPC campaign I’ve got running over at Yahoo! The income isn’t big, but I’ve managed a few dollars while hanging out here at the cottage.

This time next year, it would be great to spend a month here visiting and enjoying the weather and the beautiful surroundings. All I need to do is build up my online business to an income level that supports our lifestyle and then run it from my laptop - anywhere.

Are you trying to build an online business? What does your dream life look like once you have succeeded? How will you spend your time (and where) once you have more control?

Knowing where you are going is an essential ingredient to getting to your destination. Spend a few of your casual summer hours daydreaming about what you want your life to be like - then write down the dream! The written dream is your roadmap!

The Go-To Guy!

Today I decided to fire up my synchronicity engine and see what it would do for my online business efforts. I made a post on Russell Brunson’s Conquer Your Niche Forum in the Joint Ventures and Special Offers section. The gist of the message was this - I’ve got lots of skills and need to work with other people to create products and businesses using these skills.

Within 5 minutes of posting my message I had 3 people checking out my resume online and inside of 30 minutes 2 more. There may be some emails in my inbox when I get home too!

The point of this post isn’t the traffic that the forum post generated, but that the action of announcing my intentions in a public forum has begun a chain of events that has the potential to change my life. Every time you expose yourself to this type of public discussion a new branch of possibilities opens up in your life.

The prospect of people looking over my resume and work and judging me is a little un-nerving, but the possibilities of what ‘could happen’ far outweigh the fears of rejection.

I’m planning to do this again in other forums to try and find people I can work with. There is no telling where it might take me.

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Have you started a similar chain of events in your life? Leave a comment and let us know what happened.

I was looking through the stats for this site today and saw that someone had followed a Google search for “The Go To Guy” and arrived at my homepage.

Being the curious type, I clicked on the referring link to see what came up on a Google search for that phrase and where www.AndrewSeltz.com placed in the search results.

This site is number 11 (top of the second page) for the phrase “The Go To Guy.” Not bad considering that I have made no specific effort to rank well for that phrase and there were 295,000 results.

The results that placed higher than this site were mostly big news sites and/or referring to well know people, so I’m in good company.

Maybe someday this whole Go-To Guy! thing will stick in a big way?

Andrew Seltz, The Go-To Guy!

“Make Easy Money Online!” “3 Easy Steps To Internet Riches!” “The Secret Money Making System That Google Doesn’t Want You To Know About!”

In Greek mythology the seductive song of the Sirens lured sailors to their doom. Orpheus played his lyre so loud that it drown out the sound and his ship passed on safely. Odysseys had his men stuff their ears with wax to avoid the sound and had them tie him to the mast of the ship so that he could hear their song and resist temptation.

Wading through the world of Internet marketing you sometimes need the strength and cunning of these mythic Greeks to avoid being seduced by the promises of instant wealth.

Yesterday I received an email for a website that promised to show me first hand a money-making site being built and promoted. (they also promised I could make a bunch of money by trying to convince you to watch the videos as well.) A series of videos promised to show me everything step-by step from the keyword research, to building the site, promoting the site, tracking the traffic and profits, and then refining the site for improved performance.

How could I resist such a promise? I look at the stats from my own sites and the slow trickle of income from ads and affiliate sales, and I want to find a new trick that will unlock the secrets of wealth - I watched the videos until 3am.

The system appeared to work. The author collected a series of free articles for content and then used an automated tool to wrap keyword rich material around it and plug in Google ads and affiliate ads. He used social bookmarking sites to bookmark the pages in his own site, and then used another automated system to generate a blog that would automatically add new keyword loaded content every day, ping the blog directories, and link to pages in his main site. Within 72 hours he was getting traffic from the bookmarking sites, Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines. He also made more ad money than I did all last month.

It was all so easy. He didn’t have to write a single piece of content - just plug in the keywords and a handful of free articles and push a button. Out popped hundreds of website pages targeting his list of keywords. I was tempted to buy the software tools immediately and sign-up for membership to his website. I knew I could have a site up within 24 hours and be making easy money online! But I started getting a sinking feeling in my gut. Something wasn’t right.

There is only one way to generate thousands of keyword targeted web pages from a handful of articles - it’s called content spam. Even though this website wasn’t full of keyword gibberish or content scraped from other sites using sleazy tools, it wasn’t adding any value to the web. It was just re-directing traffic and grabbing a little toll money along the way. There wasn’t much trickery involved (no bait and switch content, no site cloaking gimmicks) just another duplicate site that lured visitors in without giving them what they hoped for.

I want to find ways to make money online and build my own business. I don’t believe that you have to suffer for every penny to be a legitimate business person and make an honest living. But, I want to add value along the way. I want to point to the work that I’ve done and be proud of it. This type of ‘business’ just doesn’t feel right.

I’m trying to keep myself lashed to the mast so I don’t fall victim to the siren call of ‘Making Easy Money Online.’ But a part of me still argues that it won’t hurt anything just to give it a try. Nothing but my reputation, that is. Still, I’m straining against the ropes.

Thank goodness I’ve got a good day job. Otherwise the temptation might be to great and I wouldn’t take the time to learn a better way.

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. Don’t give me the last word on this subject - leave a comment and let us know what you think!

I was checking out a home improvement blog today and saw a cool looking video projector on the Entetainment Ideas page. Instead of hanging from the ceiling or sitting on a stand, this one hangs on the wall like a speaker. They must do some funky mirror tricks inside to get it to work, but it looked pretty interesting (specially for people like me who live in a space challenged New York apartment!)

Some day I will have a nice big house in the country (or a hideously expensive apartment) and will indulge my desire for a private screening room in my home. Mrs. Go-To Guy is pretty adamant about my waiting until we have a home large enough for a “guy room” before I go home theater crazy.

A man can dream…

The Go-To Guy!

A project I am currently working on had me doing a little research about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Found in caves near Qumran (on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea), the first scrolls were discovered by a Bedouin sheep/goat herder in early 1947. According to the most frequently told account of the discovery of these ancient religious texts, he threw a rock into a cave into which one of his animals had wandered. The sound that echoed out of the cave was that of breaking pottery. When he went inside to investigate, he discovered the first set of scrolls. They were wrapped in linen and stored in clay pots.

Over the next 9 years, additional scrolls were found in eleven different caves. Most of the scrolls had decayed leaving behind little more than fragments of what had once been a large collection of texts. In total the fragments represent portions of more than 800 texts.

According to scholars who have studied the scrolls, 30% of the texts are from books of the Hebrew Bible. Other fragments are from religious texts and commentaries not included in the Hebrew Bible Canon, and about 15% are from documents that cannot be identified. Those 11 caves were a giant library of sacred texts.

A Giant Library Of Ancient Religious Texts

The library nature of this collection of texts was what caught my interest. Modern people are familiar with the Bible in its post-printing press form. In the minds of the contemporary reader, it is a single entity: neatly organized into books, chapters, and verses. Because of this, many people misunderstand the nature and history of the texts that come together to form the Bible. Add to this the fact that nearly everyone’s exposure to the Bible is in a translated version, and the opportunities for confusion grow.

The Bible is a book of books. Over many years, religious communities, like the one in Qumran, gathered and preserved their sacred texts. Those deemed to be most important were set apart. Over time, the larger religious community collected the texts that were widely acknowledged as ‘essential writings’ and they became the canon - an authoritative list of books that are accepted by the religious community to be Holy Scripture.

Back in the days when the Dead Sea Scrolls were first placed in those caves near Qumran, the Bible was a physically large collection of special scrolls. It is important to note that no part of what is now known as the New Testament had even been written when the earliest Dead Sea Scroll texts were made.

Many more years passed before the Christian community had gathered together an authoritative list of writings that were accepted as Holy Scripture, and which were added to the exisitng texts of the Hebrew Bible Canon.

A New Understanding Of The Bible

The Bible as we know it today did not fall from the sky - indexed, cross-referenced, printed, and bound with a nice leather cover stamped with a gold cross. It grew out of the experiences of a living breathing community of people as an authoritative expression of their understanding of, and relationship with, God.

It is fascinating to imagine the history of these texts and the people who preserved them. Their form, and our understanding and relationship to it, have shifted over time. Knowing this history can open up a new level of understanding of the stories that have been preserved.

Additional Dead Sea Scroll Resources

If you would like more information about the Dead Sea Scrolls, these sites are recommended by the authors of the Wikipedia entry on this subject:

• 25 Fascinating Facts About the Dead Sea Scrolls
• Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
• Basic Facts Regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls
• Timetable of the Discovery and Debate about the Dead Sea Scrolls
• Dead Sea Scrolls & Qumran
• The Dead Sea Scrolls (FARMS)
• Some of the scrolls can be seen inside the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem
• Library of Congress On-line Exhibit
• Guide with Hyperlinked Background Material to the Exhibit Ancient Treasures and the Dead Sea Scrolls Canadian Museum of Civilization
• Biblical Archeology - Articles about Biblical Archeology and Dead Sea Scrolls
• Open Scrolls Project - An ongoing effort to bring all the scrolls online in English translation.
• The Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Significance for Christianity (MP3), by Jim Hamilton (Evangelical presentation)
• The Importance of the Discoveries in the Judean Desert Israel Antiquities Authority
• Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls by the University of Arizona
• F.F Bruce, Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls (1956) On-line book (PDF).

The Go-To Guy

Personal development writer, Steve Pavlina, wrote an article about his experiences with giving up television. When I read it today it reminded me of my own experience of giving up television and some other ‘media vacations.’

I gave up television for far less noble reasons than Steve. I gave it up because I’m cheap!

When my wife and I were still dating, I began to prepare myself for marriage. One thing I felt I needed to do was get my finances in better order. Before we had begun dating, I watched TV whenever I was home. I’d pop it on in the morning while I got ready for work and I’d pop it on when I got home just to have a little noise around the apartment. Living in Manhattan, I had zero reception for TV stations without cable (except for a couple of Spanish channels), so I was spending about $30/month for my television cable service.

After I started courting my wife, I found myself home less often. And when I started looking for ways to save some money, the cable bill was easy to get rid of.

One immediate thing I noticed about giving up the television was that I became more active. When the television was on, I sat and watched it. I didn’t multitask. At the time, my television was next to my computer desk, so I could watch while I worked on the computer - but I didn’t do much work once the TV was on. I became much more productive around the house.

Another thing I became aware of was how much news programming I watched and how it was influencing my perceptions of the world and my daily life.

I’m a New Yorker and my first awareness of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center was on my television. I was getting ready for work and had turned on the Fox Morning show (their news ticker included information about alternate side parking regulations - New Yorkers know what that’s all about). When I got out of the shower there was a close-up image of a burning building with no sound. I continued to get dressed while listening to the news team discuss what was unfolding when one of the team said that another plane had his the second tower and this was no accident. The rest of my day was spent watching the story unfold over that box (I lived on the opposite end of Manhattan and couldn’t see the towers - just the helicopters hovering over the river to capture the news footage.)

In the wake of 9-11 I had become a news junkie. I tuned into the TV and surfed the news online all the time. I was trying to feel more in control by being well informed, but found that my days were actually being consumed with worry over events that I couldn’t control and that, ultimately, had little effect on my daily existence. Losing the constant television coverage broke this pattern.

The real irony of 9-11 for me was that, if I hadn’t known about the events unfolding 10 miles south of me, I could have enjoyed a truly beautiful day in the park - there was not anything I could do to help. All I could do, at the time, was worry.

Later, with the encouragement of my wife, I took up the Roman Catholic tradition of giving something up during the church season of lent. I chose to give up non-work related web surfing. This coupled with the limited exposure to television has profoundly altered my awareness of how news media shapes my world view.

I don’t advocate being ignorant of the world, but realize that the currency of the news industry is fear. There is more than enough aweful stuff in this world to feed the news system - has been as long as I remember. When I was a kid it was the impending ice age, gas shortages, and nuclear holocaust. Today it is global warming, terrorists, and rising fuel rates. My ability to influence these world events is small and my capacity to process all of the horrors is finite.

What I learned is that I have to place boundaries on how much information I let in. I have to select the level of exposure I can manage to keep myself informed, but not become overwhelmed. I have to intentionally connect myself to ‘news’ that is focused on positive events. And, most importantly, I have to stay strongly connected with the people and community immediately around me. There I can make a difference, and there I experience the positive things as well.

Like Steve Pavlina, I found that turning off the TV (and computer) removed my focus from things that were distant and helped me better connect to the people and life that was all around me.

An to think, I was just trying to save $30/month!

The Go-To Guy