The message is that often we leave something that is valuable so we can look for something else that just might be worth more. And usually what we had turns out to be better than anything we might find.

I got to thinking about that when I was looking at some shiny new products that promised instant riches if I would just invest in them.

Now I must be honest and admit that some of those shiny new products intrigue me and more than once I’ve spent too much time and money thinking that they might be valuable.

Until I start realizing that most of those “great wealth building” products are really just wealth building products for their creators. They are offering to tell me how to do something that is no longer on the leading edge. Today the new catch word is mobile marketing. And next appears to be the tablet craze.  Except the value of these “new” markets is probably past… or full of hard work.

One of my early “gurus” called them “separators”…

They separate you from your money

Now I do like to learn so I get some value from following those latest shiny items.

But…

You probably know that I have been making video productions since 1992 and online screen capture videos since 2002. And I started teaching how to make screen capture videos in 2003.

Well, what I found myself doing is not following through with my video trainings… as well as my software tutorials. Somehow I was looking for those diamonds anywhere other than what I know best.

Not a good plan.

So I’ve decided to go back to what I do best…

To focus on my core values!

That’s why I’ve been getting new video tools so I can be creating more videos in the future. I have a new camcorder. It’s a Canon Vixia HF M40 and is perfect for using in the studio. This camcorder has an external microphone plug… something that is very important for any professional video work. Only real problem is they put the owners manual (204 pages) on a CD…

Plus I still have my Flip camera and my Kodak zi8 camera.

And I just ordered a “white” background from Amazon. It’s a 5 foot by 7 foot popup and will let me make those talking head videos with white in the background. That technique is the rage online.

So instead of looking for diamonds somewhere else I’m focusing on what I already know how to do.

How about you?

Here’s an example.

A few days ago I got a call from a telemarketer trying to sell me on changing over to the Dish… the satellite television system.

I told him I wasn’t interested.

He asked if I was using their competitor, Direct TV.

I said no. At which point he asked who was I with?

I said Charter Communications, a cable company.

The salesperson said he had never heard of them.

So he had decided that the business he represented was satellite television. That means the only competition he saw was the other company,
Direct TV.

If the people who trained this salesperson had redefined their market as providing entertainment to people, then my cable supplier would
have been a competitor.

And maybe he would have a plan for getting me to move from cable to satellite TV.

Instead he just hung up!

Remember, the way you define your business makes a big difference with what you provide your customers plus who you competition is.

Let me show you how this works using my business.

I’ve been making videos for nearly twenty years. And screen capture videos for nearly ten years. My screen capture videos show people how
to use software, navigate websites, and use various tools.

So I could define my business as training people how to make videos or even how to use software.

But what if I expand this a notch?

I show people how to build a business with video or how to market with videos.

And that can become “I show people how to make money”.

Notice how each expansion of my mission statement of my business expands what I can include in my offerings to others.

So how about if I define my business as helping people enjoy their life?

Now that would allow me to have just about anyone as my customer. And one of the hardest things to sell is something that fits
everyone.

So now I need to bring my statement in a little.

I’ve checked my stats as to who buys my products and who watches my videos on YouTube and find that the majority of my customers are
between 45 and 65 years old, and 80% are male.

Or basically male babyboomers.

So I can define my business statement as helping male baby boomers enjoy their life.

Now I have a specific niche that I can offer information, advice, and help. I’m no longer just focused on videos but can look at all the
things available that help my target audience enjoy their life.

My next step would be to ask my customers what do they need… what would help them enjoy their life… what are they looking for. Once I have the answers I can use that information to build my business.

See how this creates a pretty simple business plan that uses the techniques of most successful entrepreneurs.

Now if you’re like me you probably know that “admin” is not secure but after you make a blog you have no idea how to change that “admin” to something more secure. It’s the only User that you can’t make a change right on the dashboard. Which is a bummer since it seems like the only way to fix it is to start all over.

Why You Need to Secure Your Blog

And that’s no picnic either. I’ve had to do it more than once when someone hacked my blog in the past. Now I use a backup system so at least I can recover quickly. But still, that’s extra work. And since we only have so much time in the day having to backup takes out other work we could be doing.

And if you’re like me you probably have to watch the videos that come with any backup system to remember how to do it. Right now I’m using two different backup systems. The first is Backup Buddy and the other is WPTwin.

The downfall with Backup Buddy is the license is only for one year. Now my Backup Buddy still works but I get that little notice saying the plugin is out of date. I actually like Backup Buddy best for backing up my blog since it’s real easy to use to recover my blog.

I’ve even used it to move my blog from http://themultimediaguy.com to http://bchambers.com recently. Made moving real easy.

WPTwin also will let you backup your blog plus is easy to create a new blog with all the same information as your original one. This is really a good tool to clone your blog and sell it to others.

You can check out Backup Buddy at http://boblikes.info/backup and WPTwin at http://boblikes.info/cloneit

Secure Your Blog

Now back to the issue of securing your blog… there are a number of things you need to take care of to protect your blog. Changing your login User name is only one of them. I got a program called WPSecure from Jason Fladlien and Wil Mattos. Well worth the cost to have peace of mind when you log off from your blog.

Just one of the things I learned from Jason and Will was that there is a simple plugin for WordPress that allows you to change your “admin” login. Called “Admin Renamer Extended”, I used this plugin to change my user name to something that others are not using. You can find it in your WordPress Dashboard by going to Plugins > Add New > and searching for “Admin Renamer Extended”.

There is a caution since this plugin has not been updated for about two years. It will probably tell you that it’s not compatible for your copy of WordPress. What you need to do is have a test blog that you can use with this plugin to make sure it will work with your main blog. And of course, you will want to backup your blog before making any changes.

If you’re interested in more items to protect your blog you might want to checkout Jason and Wil’s program at http://boblikes.info/wpsecure This is a video training program that gives you step-by-step directions on where to get the tools you’ll need (most are free) plus how to install them.

I hope this helps you secure your blog. Stopping hackers is worthwhile. And if you make your blog harder to hack than others those hackers will move on to easier pickings.

And I do highly recommend some type of automatic backup system for your blog… one that automatically backs up your blog without you doing anything.

According to an article I saw in USA TODAY, exercise along with a good diet will help decrease the odds of developing diseases of aging, including cancer, heart disease and diabetes. In the past I also read where six months of exercise gets your body to about the same level as if you had exercised all your life. So you no longer have an excuse that it’s too late to start exercising.

A new study by Villareal published in the New England Journal of Medicine in March found that diet and exercise together improved physical performance by 21% in obese older adults. The lack of mobility in older obese adults puts them at greater risk for developing high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.

Now that combined with the latest Census data (2010) shows that a number of Americans are living to age 90 and beyond. The number has tripled in the last three decades to almost 2 million and is expected to quadruple by 2050.

But it sure doesn’t make sense to live a long time if you are not healthy… as well as older!

That’s why it’s so important to consider moving and eating right.

Plus I remember an economist saying that if you want to make an extra $500,000 or million dollars in your lifetime then never stop working. Because having something to do is also as important as “moving and eating right”.

So I suggest that if you want to live a long time and still be healthy you do these three things:

(1)    Exercise

(2)    Eat right

(3)    Stay busy

I know that I continue to create products and write my blog even though I “retired” from the corporate world. But recently, even though I have exercise equipment at home, I was starting to get tired and really didn’t feel like working. The problem was I kept saying, “I’ll exercise tomorrow.”

So about six months ago I joined a local gym. I’m a bit frugal and paying money each month for the gym membership makes me want to get my money’s worth. So I go at least once and usually twice a week. Only takes me a little over one half hour in the gym and even with travel time from my home/office I’m done in less than an hour.

But believe me… how I feel is 100 percent better than when I’m not exercising.

And yes, I do eat pretty well… not perfect but better than most people.

So I can vouch for the three elements, exercise, eat right and stay busy, have made a serious impact to my life… all for the better.

Try it yourself and see if you feel better too… and even be making more money. Especially since you won’t have to see doctors.

But just a few days ago I got a copy of Photoshop Elements 10. And I was not too impressed with the Adobe of today.

Let me explain. I use two computers in my business, one is a Windows XP and the other is Windows 7, 64 bits. That Windows 7 computer replaced my other Windows XP computer when the microprocessor died. And guess what… some software will no longer run on that 64 bit machine.

Since my XP computer died right in the middle of some work I just ran down to the local Best Buy and got one of their off the shelf Dell computers… never realizing it was a 64 bit machine.

Anyway, my other XP computer has Adobe Photoshop CS2 which I use a lot… mostly for it’s action scripts. But often I want to change some other Photoshop images without having to move from one computer to the other. So that’s why I decided to get Photoshop Elements. It’s pretty easy to use and while it doesn’t support action scripts, it has just about everything else I want for some quick changes to a Photoshop image. And the price at Amazon was pretty good.

Well, the box had three DVDs and a note on each saying to install Windows start with Disc 1 and to install on a Mac start with Disc 3. Nothing about Disc 2.

But Adobe did say that if you have trouble “See http://www.adobe.com/go/learn_installpse10_en for comprehensive information on installing Photoshop Elements from your installation disc.”

When you go to that page the title is “Install | Premiere Elements | Photoshop Elements | Windows | Mac OS

The thing is that Adobe only tells you how to install Premiere Elements. And then they ask if this was helpful. Since I responded to Adobe’s question: “Was this helpful” they have added a small note that says: “Note: Although this document has screenshots for Adobe Premiere Elements, you can use the same procedure for installing Photoshop Elements.”

My suggestion is that when you offer advice to your customers make sure that it’s easy for them to use. Space on a website is no longer a problem so don’t try to make your customers figure out what to do… make it clear to them.

Steve Jobs basically is talking about the “Golden Rule” that I know I learned when I was a kid at Sunday School. Always seemed like a good idea then and still does.

Recently I’ve heard the “American way” has changed that to read: ‘He who has the gold rules’. And a lot of what is wrong with American business today seems to be caused by that philosophy.

I’ve always found that listening to my customers and either fixing their complaints or finding a way to solve their problems has helped me build my business.

When I was first starting my online business my site had a forum… it was the first forum on my subject which was digital video editing. The site was DVEreview.com and I produced a monthly newsletter. That was way back in 1997.

Anyway, my forum at the time was pretty popular. And one day someone posted his comments… that basically said “he was starting his own forum on digital video editing and invited all my members to move to his site”. Of course if someone did that today they would be censored and you would probably never see that post. But back in those days we didn’t run our business like that… so the post was made public.

One of my members gave that person the best answer possible… far better than I could have. What my member said is “why do you want to start a new forum when Bob already has the best one online”.

That’s the type of response you get when you follow the Golden Rule or Steve Jobs’ advice of “Just do what’s right”.

The worst part of the Zi8 is that Kodak no longer makes the Zi8. Now it’s called the “Playtouch” video camera. But you can still get them on eBay… at a lot less than I paid for mine.

One thing is you will want to add extra memory to your camera. I got a 32 GB chip for mine and it sure lets me make lots of videos and still shots.

Now on Saturday I made two video and then found out I had forgotten to plug in my external microphone. So the sound quality was very low. And when you boost audio usually you also boost noise, something you really don’t want.

Anyway, I got past that issue by writing some simple steps to take each time I’m ready to make a full motion video with the Zi8. Only when I exported the videos to my computer I ended up with some serious noise.

So the initial question I had was is it my microphone or the camera. Well, due to other commitments I couldn’t test until Monday morning. I tested the  microphone going directly into my computer and it was working okay. I even put in a new battery with no change in audio quality.

So next was the test with the Zi8. Now I should tell you that on Saturday I found the battery indicator we low on the Zi8. So I had put a full charge on the camera using the AC Adapter over the weekend.

According to Kodak it takes 2 hours with the AC adapter and 4 hours with the USB Port. Since I had been using the USB I decided to use the AC and get it up quickly.

Well, on Monday morning with a fully charged Zi8 and a working microphone I got the output I had expected. Noise was gone and the camera was working as it should.

So one thing you need to do to get the results from the Kodak Zi8 or the “Playtouch” is to make sure your battery is fully charged when starting a project.

I had heard the Zi8 picks up noise on the microphone when recording and plugged into AC power. However, when I tested the microphone with the
camera on either battery and AC power I didn’t hear much difference. Both setups have some noise. But I was able to remove it using the simple automatic
noise reduction feature in Camtasia. Yes, I use Camtasia to edit simple full motion videos… those that I don’t need special effects. If I need special
effects I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio.

And while “The Multimedia Guy” has been a very useful label for me (I’ve been making videos for nearly 20 years… since 1992), I also do a lot of other things since my background is in engineering and business. And so it’s time to make that change. I decided to use my name in my website since that fits the direction I’m planning for my business.

The interesting thing is that www.BChambers.com is the first ever URL I got back in early 1997. I was following the advice of Bill Myers (who was using www.BMyers.com) at the time and thought that was what I should have as my home page. Well, Bill got me to do the DVEreview newsletter so instead I used www.DVEreview.com for my first website. And since in those days the cost of keeping a URL was pretty expensive I let www.BChambers.com go. Someone else got it so I didn’t get the URL back until 2003.

I was really fortunate to get that URL back since the name “chambers” is very popular. Not quite as popular as Smith but nearly so.

At the same time I also redesigned my site. I found the WordPress theme I was using was very hard to make it do what I wanted. So I moved to Woo Themes and I’m using their Canvas Theme. You can checkout their site at www.woothemes.com

The old page links will redirect to my new website so you can still use www.TheMultimediaGuy.com and get us. And for the time being I’m listing the blog as “Bob Chambers | The Multimedia Guy” for continuity.

Oh, I also added a new membership level… Free. It’s free to join and I’ll be protecting many of my posts for those members.

Basically the product is a series of videos embedded in a PDF book. It comes with a fill in the blanks brander that actually creates the PDF book for you with your information already entered inside.

Plus there is a sales page brander that allows you to fill in a few blanks and have your HTML page created for you.

You basically get three files. One you do nothing with and the other two are fill in the blanks branders that automatically create both your PDF book and sales page.

This is a project that I started a few years ago and never finished. You can see the original concept back then by going to http://flashpublishers.com/ and checking out Videos 1 through 6 in the Featured Articles. Several people have watched those videos and then contacted me to see where they could get these brandable video books. Which made me start looking at that project again.

Since I made those videos things have changed and the whole process is much simpler.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you’re interested in looking at the prototype project at an unheard price then go to http://goo.gl/I8cbC

Those who bought this WSO are saying good things about this new video concept.

Why?

Because I’ve been looking at what my business should become and spending every waking minute trying to figure it out… which may have been a mistake… so I’ll tell you about it.

But first…

As you might know, I’ve been making videos since 1992. I’m an engineer and program manager with a MBA degree. I like to create things. And when I left engineering I decided to start making videos… training videos. In the business we call them Special Interests Videos.

Why videos? Well, when I was in school I was always getting great grades in math and art. And I always got marked down for talking too much… to others in the class and not to the teacher. I always had something cleaver to say and not all teachers wanted to hear it.

Oops, I forgot to tell you… I grew up in Burbank, California (aka in Laugh In TV show as ‘beautiful downtown Burbank’), just over the hill from Hollywood. We actually had more movie studios than Hollywood did. And just down the street from our house was Walt Disney Studios.  Some of my boyhood friends had fathers who even worked in the studios.

So to me making videos is normal and very creative… which satisfies that art side of my mind. And of course, you have to talk on camera, which I’m pretty good at.

But recently the number of “video experts” online has been exploding. It seems like everyone who ever bought Camtasia has become a trainer for that software. And while I don’t always agree with what they teach I wasn’t so sure I wanted to compete with all of them.

Last week I got a mailer from an old friend of mine, Ken Roberts. Ken has “retired” and is no longer teaching how to trade commodities. But he is still in what I call the self-help field. Ken and I used to have lunch periodically and spend time brainstorming ideas. It was truly a magical time for me. Well, over the years we lost track of each other.

That is until last Wednesday. I got a mailer about Ken’s new self-help program, the Ultimate Technique for Success Club. And in Ken’s material he talked about orange cones… the things in our life we want to miss… and how hard it is for us to try to miss them when we are focused on them. Ken’s program is about knowing where we want to go without hitting those orange cones.

And it’s without setting goals and other self-defeating steps.

Want to know more about missing those orange cones… or even what is an orange cone? Or maybe you are ready to take yourself and your business to the next level? Go to http://UTSClub.com. And when you join let me know so that maybe we can talk about our experiences in the UTS Club (you can post a comment here). I’ve worked with Ken before (I’ve known him since 1983) and I know his material is very good.  And that link above is NOT an affiliate link.

Now the reason that trying to figure out what I should be doing was probably a mistake is that Ken says he “teaches you, coaches you… step by step… how to ignore the Orange Cones and ‘aim at something high’! You must learn to be ‘counterintuitive’! And your own, personal LifeStar is what I take you by the hand and teach you to discover, focus on, act upon, and realize.” And it’s all about doing what you love to do. Imagine how much time and aggravation I would have saved if I just waited to Ken’s mailer.

If that sounds like something you want then I urge you to join with me in Ken’s new course.