Learn to Throw
Well I spent a lot of the end of this week pushing myself to finish the first book in my how to yo-yo series called “Learn to Throw”. Wednesday I spent a couple of hours writing down what I felt I needed to accomplish to be finished, researched a few website that I could potentially publish on, brainstormed where to take the first book.
Thursday was my hard working day. I woke up, spent an hour focusing on personal development (some audio books I stumbled across thanks to Russell Yermal), and then got dressed for business and headed down to Moxie Java with my laptop. I figured if I was going to be working on my book what better place than a coffee shop to keep me awake and get me into a groove. (My friends think I was being too cliche, I think they need to try and write a book without easy access to coffee.) After seven hours (got there at 11) I left Moxie Java for a Ren Faire Committee meeting (I’m behind on putting together their website, opps!) laptop in hand. Everything I wrote down on Wednesday that I needed to do to feel I was finished I had checked off except for the Acknowledgements page, the copyright page, and the index pages. Today I finished all of that except for the index page which I’m pretty sure I don’t need anyways.
One of my more recent decisions with this book is to publish it initially as an eBook but allow myself the option of selling physical copies if people want one (or two, or five). So I looked around and have been considering using Lulu.com to get started. I am also considering Amazon but considering how I can’t find any links on their website on ‘how to publish your book on amazon’ and how Lulu has a big old button on the top left side that says “publish” I think they’ll be getting my attention first.
Learn to Throw Sneak Peak
There are a few things I’d like to do before I publish it though; I have a friend at the Messenger Index here in town, Erika Harmon, who is their editor who offered to edit the book for me when it was done (she actually edited it as a transcript last year). I’d like to get her the current pdf and make sure I’m not overlooking some idiotic error. Another friend of mine, Adam Haroun who is brilliant with graphic design offered to help me out if I ever needed it and I’d like to see if he can make the cover really pop (since I’d be printing the book too, I want it to catch eyes on shelves 
). He’s amazing by the way and he’s got his own graphic design business started, you should check it out if you ever need help with graphics, I’m pretty sure you can find it through his site http://www.adamharoun.com/.
I do have a few pictures of me in the book that I didn’t take that I need to ask permission to use and I would like to add a few ‘title pages’ introducing different sections of the book and lastly an updated bio that will make clear who I am, what my mission and vision are, and how to get a hold of me for help and such. After that I’m done! I can move on to writing book two for the intermediates and possibly even recording video to go along with the book. I’ve even been told by Justin Burns who I was on the Go-Giver Tour with to record an audio version of the book, he says it’s huge these days. I’m still not sure… Yo-Yoing is a rather visual hobby… I still think video would work better. What do you think?
I’ll be letting you guys know more about the book as I get closer to publishing it, it’s over due, should have been done last year, but I’m happy that I took the advice I’m always getting to ‘just freaking do it’ and that I did it. If you’re interested in buying the book at all let me know, I’ll make sure to email you when I have more info on how to get a copy for yourself or your sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, grandsons, granddaughters, etc Have a great weekend folks!
Freestyle and Biz
Hey everyone! Last night I had the opportunity to perform a yo-yo freestyle (demo) at an event called: “An Evening of the Arts” here in Emmett, ID. It was a benefit event for a local high school student, Tommy Lukrich, who was raising money to help send him to an audition to be in Juilliard. I had a great time performing, the audience was really responsive without prompting (the way it should be) and after the demo I answered a few questions from the audience about yo-yo projects I’m working on (how-to book, clubs, etc) and got to watch some of the other acts for the night.
Just wanted to share the video of my Freestyle (which I got Tommy to record, thanks again Tommy! ).
Also decided to start showing DTIstore.com some love; it pales in comparison to themikemonty.com and I don’t think it should, in my opinion it should make theMikeMonty.com pale. But that’s what I’m going to be doing, getting the site tuned up and ready to fly. I also have a lot of plans for the company to, started a mailing list for the monthly newsletter, member of the list get a chance to win a free shirt once a month. We’re gonna start doing a monthly yo-yo video contest too, we tried it out back around june of 2009 and had a few entries and people seemed to really enjoy it. And the final three irons in the fire for now are yo-yo related. 1) We’re in the process of manufacturing our very own yo-yo that will be called the BaseBoost. We’re looking for quote on production and are moving towards prototyping. 2) We are starting the process of making one yo-yo related shirt per month. and 3) I’m going to be publishing my how-to yo-yo book as an eBook to raise funds for physical printing as well as the yo-yo manufacturing. The book will “published by” DTI.
That’s it for now. Later folks!
Can’t Wait!
Tomorrow the first B3 – Business, Books, and Breakfast meeting ever 
It’s going to be awesome! The facebook fan page shows nine people will be attending and about 20 maybes. The flyer for the event went out to a whole bunch of people via email too, so I’m hoping to have between 10-20 people. The VibesBB book club in Meridian had over 60 people at the first meeting but there were a lot more people promoting it (I think four) that’s why I’m hoping for 20 haha. Anyways, I’m listening to the Go-Giver right now, and trying to get tired; that’s the book for tomorrow by the way. Oh and something kind of cool, I asked Bob and he sent me an autograph to put in a book to give away at the first meeting; I couldn’t get a hold of an extra book in time though so I’ll have to simply give away the autograph. Next time I’ll have to find or get something cool donated to give away, I think it’d be a fun little perk for the monthly club.
Well gonna go and focus on the audio reading Later!
Been Sick
Been sick all last week I think since Monday or so… Been trying to get rest to get better; the book club is tomorrow (Tuesday) and I’d like to be feeling at least healthy when I wake up for it at 6am. Not much else to write, I’m going to be sleeping in today (Monday) once I actually go to bed so I can take advantage of the holiday to get some more rest. When I wake up I plan to clean a little, read a little, and write a little. For now, time to sleep
Laptop is Back
Finally got my laptop back the other day The video I posted yesterday was basically to celebrate that. Didn’t get too much done today though; woke up with a sore throat and basically and entirely sore body. Spent the whole day resting, hoping to feel a bit better by tomorrow since I have three meetings tomorrow Not much to say today because of this, so I’ll not waste your time, later!
How to Untag Someone on Facebook
This video shows you how to untag someone if you were to accidentally tag them in a Video, or picture, or note (It can be used for anything that you tag a person in).
This was requested by mssmeetz1980 on YouTube: “How about if you tagged the wrong person in a video how do you untag them? Please let me know asap? Thanks.”
Quick Post
Got to work all day at Copy+, Did finish the poster for the B3 Book Club and distributed it; hoping the Chamber of Commerce will share it, still need to send it to the Messenger Index and then print some and take them around town. Will be doing that tomorrow. Also planning on removing the history essay from the how to yo-yo book and replacing it with references to books and websites that have better history essays. Finally it sounds like my laptop will be fixed and ready to rumble tomorrow morning so I’ll finally be able to make how to’s and awesome graphics for my projects again 
Did you know my how-to’s have over 2000 views on youtube? Maybe a little more, it’s CRAZY! People are genuinely happy to get the info too, they leave comments saying so That’s all the motivation you need to keep on trucking, people who appreciate you. Well g0tta run, sorry these have been short, once I have my laptop back I’ll throw a little meat on future post’s bones! Haha, Night!
A New Week
Well I took a break from writing my post yesterday and spent the day working, teaching kids how to yo-yo and ended the day by spending it with my friends. Spent a lot of today catching up on sleep from waking up at 5:30am all last week (I’m actually going to continue doing this, but I’m going to go to sleep earlier to compensate for being tired by noon ).
I need to start structuring out my life so I can achieve my 5-year goals so I’m going to take some time once a week to write down and update weekly, monthly, and yearly goals to get me to point B five years from now.
So for this week I will start out with a to-do list, and then move up to weekly goals as I get better at this concept .
- Have the first Giveaway for those who joined the DTI Newsletter and send out said newsletter.
- Promote the B-Cubed Book club at least once a day, distribute flyers around town, and send out emails to people who can spread the word better than I can.
- I need to either revise or remove the history portion of the first How To Yo-Yo Book I’ve written; it’s been a crutch to my getting the book published for too long.
- I need to get a prototype of my Yo-Yo or at the very least make arrangements to have it to me this week, that way it will be here for testing by the middle of next week.
- Sell or giveaway my first set of vending machines.
To me that’s a good stable start, I’ve done daily tasks before but these are all what I feel would be good stepping stones to bring me closer to my goals. In the meantime I’ll try to reverse engineer how to get to where I want to be so I can take more appropriate actions. I’ll also be reading a load of books, wish me luck!
Book Club and Car Fixin
Well the Book Club I’ve been working on (B3) is basically ready to go; Main Street Books has ordered a box of the Go-Giver that will be there no later than Tuesday the 12th of January, and since the book is a good 2-4 hour read I think anyone should be able to have it finished by the meeting on the 19th; if not we’ll just recap the book for everyone and they can finish it afterwards .
Also, my parents bought me a new hood for my car on my birthday and my dad and I put it on today; it looks great! I’ll post a picture later on. Night folks!
On a Mission
Today was pretty interesting; I’ve been waking up at 5:30am all week so far, nothing different about that today. I got myself ready to go and swung by Moxie Java here in Emmett. After a quick order of the house coffee and a short chat with the manager I’d gotten the local Book Club a venue and a time to meet. After leaving with my coffee I headed down to the Gem County Economic Development Association (GEDA) Meeting to listen to what everyone in town was up to and share the Book Club idea with them. Left the meeting with a name for the club B^3 (B Cubed), or Business, Books, and Breakfast.
After the meeting and another cup of coffee I’d decided on using the Go-Giver as the book for the first meeting (taking a leave from Brandon Wright who used the Go-Giver to kick off his book club in Meridian called VibesBB). I realized shortly after that that there had to be books for people to read otherwise there’d be no point to having a meeting, so I swung by the library and put in an inter-library loan order for some books and CDs of the book and then went by Main Street Books to talk with Anita Hendrix and we found a way to order a good quantity of books (Thanks to Bob Burg ) to get the ball rolling.
Finally I set up a facebook group for the club and invited as many local people as I could and put together a flyer for the first meeting. After I verify some info on it with Anita it’ll be off to the paper, GEDA, the Chamber of Commerce, and anyone else who’s willing to take a look. The goal is to fill the coffee shop! The meeting, by the way, will be on the the Third Tuesday of the month, the 19th of January, from 7am to 8:30am if any of your are interested, the link to the group is: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=241248148908&ref=ts
In other news I had a quick instant messaging chat with Landon Balk of 3Yo!3 and it sounds like he’s gonna help me make a Delrin Prototype of my yo-yo so I can finally test out the shape More on this later on. Hope everyone had a great end to their week!
