Ask me about starting a business.
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Ask me about starting a business.
mrbizplan 1:31 pm on November 13, 2009 | Comments: 6 Open Thread | Reply
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Ask me about adjusting to single life after a divorce
gorby 10:09 am on November 12, 2009 | Comments: 4 Open Thread | Reply
Ask me about adjusting to single life after 11+ years of marriage.
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FreeXenon 10:11 am on November 12, 2009 Permalink
How long did it take you to consider dating again? It took me probably 8 months or so following separation…
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gorby 10:13 am on November 12, 2009 Permalink
I was ready to date right away. I felt my marriage had been dead for a long time. I try and do alot of self realization. I knew that once my marriage was over for real, it wasnt going to take me long. I got my first phone number within 7 days My first date was within two weeks of leaving home.
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erik 11:00 am on November 12, 2009 Permalink
How hard was it to introduce the new girlfriend to the kids? Are there any regrets you have with how the divorce transferred into a new girlfriend so fast?
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erik 5:25 pm on November 12, 2009 Permalink
Oh my god. Also, that avatar is not going to win you any ladies anytime soon. You look like a deer in the headlights.
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Ask me about Esperanto
FreeXenon 10:44 am on November 11, 2009 | Comments: 6 Open Thread | Reply
Esperanto
God do I feel strange bringing this up…. Feel free to ignore me… move along people…. move along… =O
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erik 11:11 am on November 11, 2009 Permalink
What is Esperanto, and why is it important to you?
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FreeXenon 11:21 am on November 11, 2009 Permalink
Good questions…
Esperanto is an artificially constructed language created by a Polish Jew in 1887 as the primary secondary-language for the world. It lacks many of the failings of our natural languages that make learning them so difficult.
My wife is Belarussian and I know quite a lot of foreign people so I have some first-hand experience with people learning English as a second language. I have also tried to learn some Russian and it is not easy. I have no idea how people actually learn English as a second language/ I find it amazing.
Esperanto is phonetic, exception free and lacks homophones, homonyms, and inconsistent pluralization all of which making learning any naturally evolved language difficult.
Esperanto can be learned easily in like 6 dedicated months of study and there are a plethora of resources out there to learn and to be immersed in it.
Little known fact: William Shatner was in a movie in the ’60’s called Incubus which was all in Esperanto.
Esperanto can save the world a crap load of money in translations. It can make the world smaller by allowing people to learn and understand other cultures. Islamic countries still teach that there is a Jewish holiday dish that is made up of jellified Islamic children. Eeek! So many misunderstandings and ignorance can be reduced by having a single secondary language for the world. There is sooo much more…
I have posted a crap load about this on my BLog http://www.ArionsHome.com/esperanto.
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erik 12:45 pm on November 11, 2009 Permalink
Having been around for over 100 years and still pretty obscure, why hasn’t it caught on? Do you expect it’s use to grow?
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FreeXenon 1:05 pm on November 11, 2009 Permalink
It has gone from 1 speaker to over 2 million speakers in the world, which is about the same number as speakers of Lithuanian. Out of 6900 languages in the world Esperanto is in the top 100 languages. That is pretty good progress in my book. =)
People come into the language basically in 4 ways. The most common being that they seek it out either directly or indirectly due it ideals and advantages, or they are linguists, or they just happen to know someone who speaks it, or they happen to run into a small meeting of speakers.
I imagine most people come to Esperanto either through like ideals or through linguistics. As you can imaging, its ideals are lofty and, well, idealistic and not everyone is researching or looking for that same ideal. We are a small minority. I only came to hear of it through the World Service Authority (http://www.worldservice.org). Their Passports are also written in Esperanto. If I would not been researching that I would have never heard of it.
People will have no interest in speaking something that they do not know about. It is pretty popular in Europe and China. In America where we deign ourselves to learn another language at all, let alone one they have never heard of, it not very widely spoken. At some universities there are some extracurricular classes for Esperanto. There is a university in California that is into Esperanto hardcore, but other than that there are smatterings of enthusiasts who try to start local clubs to teach and learn Esperanto, but there are not as many as there should be. I have considered starting a monthly meeting to do just that – raise awareness and teach it.
There is not enough activism for Esperanto and there are also psychological reasons for why people reject it out of hand, and bypassing those mental stumbling blocks are not easy unless their journey has led them to Esperanto in the first place.
Its use will grow as awareness increases. Last year Esperanto was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. This year Brazil has passed a law requiring it to be taught in schools. There is an all Esperanto University in Europe, and many pilot programs in Britain and Australia teaching Esperanto as the first foreign language – using Esperanto as a gateway language which is one of its great advantages.
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erik 12:25 pm on November 12, 2009 Permalink
How does Esperanto deal with new words that come about. Obviously as new technologies are invented there’s a need for new words. If it defaults to taking the English version, as lots of languages to, how do you overcome the pronunciation issues?
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FreeXenon 1:25 pm on November 12, 2009 Permalink
Good question. As far as I have read, Zamenhoff left some guidelines about expanding the language and how to effectively choose root words. There are people who are much more knowledgeable about this than I that could answer this.
Here are the following translations for a few modern words in Esperanto:
Computer – komputilo
Internet – interreto
Car – aĆtoIf the word is ubiquitous enough across languages you can just pick your languages’ root and change it appropriately and hope you are understood:
Computer -> computero
which is very similar to the correct word for it. This would most likely be understood by most. You are also appropriately identifying the word as a noun by changing the ending to ‘o’.
You can also attempt to assemble a word from other Esperanto roots and some prefixes and suffixes to get your meaning across. Unfortunately, I do not know enough to provide a good example, but the following can give you an idea of Esperanto’s flexibility in word formation:
Hundo – dog
Hundido – puppyYou take the root hund(o) and you add the ‘id’ suffix to make it an offspring (of the root).
I hope that kind of answers your question. =)
Translator Sites:
http://traduku.net/
http://komputeko.net/Esperanto Learning Site:
http://en.lernu.net/
http://www.ArionsHome.com/esperanto
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Ask me about my new website!
erik 12:21 pm on November 9, 2009 | Comments: 7 Open Thread | Reply
Ask me about my new website!
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erik 12:26 pm on November 9, 2009 Permalink
Just reply to my post with any questions you have.
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Dr_Mega 7:47 pm on November 9, 2009 Permalink
What inspired you to create this Web site?
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erik 12:24 am on November 10, 2009 Permalink
There’s a message board I frequent where every now and then someone posts an “Ask me about…” thread. They can be some of the funniest and most interesting reads on the site. I wanted to create a space where all of those stories can come together and thrive. Everyone has something to talk about, and I really believe that people would enjoy hearing from you. So log in and start a thread with any topic you want.
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erik 12:50 pm on November 11, 2009 Permalink
Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. See the links to the right.
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FreeXenon 1:12 pm on November 11, 2009 Permalink
I am following you!
Dr. Mega you need to post something there little man! How about poker?? You seem to know a little bit about it, right? =) -
gorby 10:17 am on November 12, 2009 Permalink
I would like to know how to change my pic on this page?
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erik 10:22 am on November 12, 2009 Permalink
Go to the FAQ above, otherwise http://en.gravatar.com/site/signup/
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Ask me about having a good time.
yoadrians 8:12 pm on November 11, 2009 | Comments: 1 Open Thread | Reply
Ask me about having a good time.
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FreeXenon 5:30 pm on November 13, 2009 Permalink
How do I get funding for a down payment to buy a property for my business?
mrbizplan 10:28 pm on November 13, 2009 Permalink
That’s a tough question to answer without some more info…but I can make some assumptions:
Assuming you are already in business, you have good credit (700+ FICO) and the building would appraise for the agreed purchase price, then we can start with some financing scenarios:
Option 1) Assume the bank will finance 80% of the appraised value on conventional financing for 15-20 years which means that you need to come up with the other 20%, which is referred to as an equity requirement.
A few options for that would be:
a) Have the seller finance the down payment on a baloon loan – for example make a contract to have the seller finance the 20% on a 3-5 year baloon with a 15-20 year amortization. You can expect an interest rate somewhere around the bank financing rate +1%-2% to compensate the seller for the risk of having a second position.
b) Depending on the amount you could take a home equity loan, borrow against retirement or sell some other assets.
c) Again, assuming you are currently in business you might have equity in the business that can be used to obtain 100% financing from the bank…this usually is only possible if your business has higher value fixed assets and low debt position (in otherwords you have at least the $$ value of equity needed when you take fixed assets – long term loans on your balance sheet.
d) You could look for a private investor to give you either a personal loan or make an investment in the property for partial ownership. In the case of partial ownership set up an LLC for the property and have the business pay rent about equal to market rates so that you both get a return on the investment. Note though: if the investor owns 20% or more they will need to personally guarantee the loan with you so they may not want to invest the whole 20% needed or you may have to get it from two or more investors.
e) You could look into the SBA 504 program which *can* under most conditions have a 10% down payment requirement. The hitch is it has to be a cash down payment most of the time so some of the above options wouldn’t work.
Now…assuming you are not in business:
All of the above would apply except using current company equity for a down payment.
One final note…the above suggested have worked in practice in the past under a normal lending environment. Currently alternative financing may be fowned upon by lenders.
So there are a few assumptions and a few answers…if you need further clarification I need more details.
Best Regards;
Donovan AKA MrBizPlan
http://www.diybizplan.com
erik 10:26 am on November 14, 2009 Permalink
In your experience, what has been the most challenging hurdle to overcome to make a new business successful?
mrbizplan 11:39 am on November 17, 2009 Permalink
Well they say the number one reason why businesses fail is lack of capital but, if you follow the bread crumbs you might say that it is lack of sales that causes business failure.
Yes many startup companies do run out of money but the reason they run out of money usually is because they planned for higher sales and/or lower cash burn and then when the sales don’t materialize like they thought, BAM…your broke.
So I would say the most challenging hurdle is marketing and promoting your business in an effective and meaningful way on a limited budget. It always takes more advertising then most would think because we are barraged with ads and it is hard to make our own ads stand out.
Donovan
erik 12:34 pm on November 17, 2009 Permalink
So, given a budget of zero (or nearly zero), how would one best promote a fledgling start up business… say, a new website. In other words, what are the best ways to generate traffic to a website without spending money?
mrbizplan 1:26 pm on November 17, 2009 Permalink
Since 65% of all traffic comes from search engines it would make sense that search is where you should focus your efforts. And when it comes to search the number one thing is Search Engine Optimization. Two of the best resources are SEOBook.com and BruceClay.com
There is the obvious like submitting links manually to the search engines and directories. But also use “meta data” should be present but it has little effect on search marketing and page rank. Pay per click advertising can give you a jump start but it is not worth it over a period longer than a month or two at the most especially if your site is static because you get one visit and then it’s done.
One of the best things that can happen to you is getting one way links (not link exchanges) and some of the best one way links are from recommendation engines like StumbledUpon.com – for one of my sites it is my number 4 referer behind Google, Yahoo and Bing. So adding an AddThis button to every page / post may be helpful to generate links.
After that content is what it is all about and you have a great head start/model cause you have user generated content…which is like a massive snow ball…the trick is to get it rolling.
Finally, you can do press releases using PRweb.com and the like it is affordable and the sheer number of pages one press release generates is amazing. But you have to keep it up…so when you add a new feature make an announcement. Or, write an articles about new social trends on the web and reference your website alongside other popular social networks.
That said, there is no silver bullet…traffic is a never ending battle. Mostly it just take time to build content, links and page rank.
Donovan