Archive | August, 2009

Learn Spanish in 5 Minutes a Day (a Location Independent Business Experiment)

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Update: my partner and I have sold the Morning Spanish business. Overall it was a success (profitable from day one, and sold for a nice profit too), but in the end other projects I’m working on simply had a higher ROI. I still recommend Morning Spanish (the woman who took it over is a native Spanish speaker and very passionate about the project). For online learning, I also recommend Rocket Spanish. Read below for the original story of how we built Morning Spanish.

After spending the first six months of this year in Mexico, I’ve become focused on becoming as fluent in Spanish as possible. It takes much more work to practice speaking Spanish now that I’m back Stateside, and I wanted to do something about that.

I’m very pleased today to launch a new product to help you learn Spanish called Morning Spanish.

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What's in an Idea? How to Choose Your Next Business Idea

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How do you come up with and decide on an idea for a new business? If you’re like me, you’ve had lots of ideas for businesses.

The hard part is in deciding which ones to pursue. Here are some guidelines to help you get past the ideation phase and into really building something.

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5 Lessons from a 2-Month Remote Work Experiment

Editor’s note: This guest article is from Tim Leffel, author of The World’s Cheapest Destinations.

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I am one of those travel writers who actually makes a living at what I do, so in theory I can work from anywhere, right? So why am I hitting the 10-year mark in a house in the United States, where my money doesn’t go nearly as far as it would if I worked remotely?

There are a lot of good reasons I’ve stayed put.

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Welcome to Free Pursuits Version 2!

I’m very happy today to introduce a complete redesign for Free Pursuits. When I started the site back in March of this year, it was on a simple design that relied mostly on the great Thesis theme for WordPress. About a month later, I developed a more official Version 1 that the site wore until yesterday.

This new version was built from the ground up, and it better reflects the journey that we’re all on to build a better lifestyle. I enlisted the help of the marvelous designer Andrew Lindstrom to bring the vision to light. The changes you’ll see for now are mostly skin deep, but the site is also ready to serve as a platform for some upcoming new features and sections.

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Which Side of the Passion Debate Are You On?

I-could-just-scream

Maybe you haven’t heard, but there are two schools of thought about what part passion plays in business success.

One side claims that passion is everything, and that without it you can’t build a successful business. The other side sees work as simply a means to pursue your real passions outside of the office.

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