The biggest source of inspiration for me right now is Steve Pavlina. If you haven’t read any of his stuff, do so right now. His posts are insightful and in-depth. He approaches blogging like he is a genius that is making a living from his blog. There is a good reason for this, as he does have smarts and he is making major cashola. Another bonus is I am sure that you could read his site for a decade and never come across the term cashola.

I was talking to my barber the other week about his recent vacation. He told me that he doesn’t even like taking one. After working as a barber for 20+ years he has found that if he takes a week off, people just wait a week to get their haircut. He knows that any time off means that he will have twice as much work when he comes back.

While I realize that not all service jobs are as literal as this… cutting a head of hair and getting 10 bucks, it is fair to generalize that service jobs do take more direct work or at least management than other jobs.

I love the concept of creating something once and re-selling it multiple times. Microsoft has made billions of boatloads of cash using this model. 37 Signals is a more recent, less evil example of a company that uses this model and applies it over the web. That same analogy also could be made in the publishing arena. With books representing Microsoft and blogs representing 37 Signals.

Right now we all have a tremendous opportunity to create, sell, distribute original ideas and products that have the potential to make us each our own personal boatload of bucks.

So come on kids, stop cutting hair and lets go make an AJAX cookbook.

Lately I have been using NameWidget (or instant domain search) to do all my searches. These new AJAX search tools are by far the fastest and simplest way to check to see if a domain is available. They are also really really fun to play around with. You enter in a search term and you get immediate feedback.

Did you know that flanface.com is available? Can you believe that?

We have a section for each of our active businesses as well as an area that has a laundry-list of all of our potential ideas. Its also a great spot to keep lists of potential domain names.

If you need more info about starting a wiki, wiki books is a great resource. They even have a list of sites that let people create a free wiki. If you want to have a password protected wiki, you could try PB Wiki.

She summed up the reasons for incorporating in two ways:

1. The first reason is for liability. For example, if you ran a day-care business, as a corporation, your personal assets would be protected if your business ever got sued.

This first reason doesn’t apply to any of my online ventures. I can’t imagine a scenario where I could get sued. Plus I don’t really have enough assets (yet) that need protecting If you want my old car or the home I own 1% on, come and get em.

2. The second reason is for tax/financial purposes. Corporations have ways of doing sneaky things with money to decrease their tax burden. The lawyer I talked to recommended that I talk to a financial advisor/tax person to go over the benefits to incorporating. Sadly she didn’t help me with any of the sneaky things. And no, the phrase “sneaky things” was not the expression she used.

Because of this situation, my most pressing short-term goal is to make money. I am focusing my energy on this blog and building businesses to help get myself and my family in a better financial position. It was either this or get a part-time job at McDonalds. Or worse yet, starting to eat there… YUCK

So now what? Should you sit and wait for the perfect idea? No, you can’t. If you hold off investing yourself until the “right” opportunity comes along, you will be stymied forever.

So what’s the solution dad?

They key to overcome this negativity is to early on accept that failure is acceptable. It’s perfectly ok to try something out and see if it works. Even if you decide that the idea isn’t viable, I can guarantee that you will not have wasted your time. You will have at least earned knowledge and strength from the experience.

The only real way you can fail is if you don’t give yourself and your ideas the respect and trust required to give them an honest effort.