Now it turns out that moving the company is but a small piece of Hsieh’s plan for Las Vegas. He plans to turn that overlooked area into a new life/work/play destination in the roughly 1.5-square mile downtown area around the Fremont East and Arts District areas.

That’s right, 38-year-old Tony Hsieh is starting up a new city.

Here are some highlands.

$100 million for land and building acquisition.
$100 million for residential development including the building of high-rise apartments.
$50 million dollars to recruit tech startups to the area with seed investments of $100,000 or so apiece. $50 million to draw local small businesses into the area; like bakeries, yoga studios, restaurants, coffee shops and other requisite creative-class amenities.
$50 million for education and the building of a school system.

You can find more details at and you can find assistance with your startup at SusanJamesandAssociates.com. Who knows? Together, we might line you up to compete for one of Hseih’s $100,000 seed investments.

Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing in his groundbreaking book, Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers. His pithy communication style is embodied in the titles of leading business books including Purple Cow, All Marketers are Liars, Small Is the New Big, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick), Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?? and Poke the Box. Portfolio Hardcover. Our new favorite is his latest title: We Are All Weird
.

The Money Talks Café recommends you add to your reading list Seth’s Blog and Seth’s Squidoo. (By the way, Seth was one of the founders of Squidoo, a user-generated website based on the theory, “Everyone’s an Expert.”)

To get you started, here is a little taste of Seth Godins’s thoughts on marketing.

1. Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
2. Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
3. Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
4. Permission marketing is like dating. You don’t start by asking for the sale at first impression. You earn the right, over time, bit by bit.
5. Great brands represent something bigger than themselves. You can create this accidentally if you’re lucky, but you can create it on purpose if you try.
6. Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
7. People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
8. Companies must create remarkable products and services and let consumers do the marketing themselves to generate a buzz.
9. Tap into those ‘listeners,’ as they will always be interested in what you have to say.
10. You won’t get it right the first time. Your campaign will need to be reinvented, adjusted or scrapped. Count on it.

Our view of entrepreneurs is shared by Guy Kawasaki, the entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and irreverent pundit behind the 2004 bestseller, The Art of the Start, which has become the most acclaimed bible for small business.

In another of his books, “Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition,” Kawasaki shares a comparison between heroes and entrepreneurs that we found particularly on target.

Kawasaki references an article called “The Banality of Heroism” written by Stanford professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo and Zeno Franco of the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology. The authors write that heroism requires the presence of a “heroic imagination” which they describe as “the capacity to imagine facing physically or socially risky situations, to struggle with the hypothetical problems these situations generate, and to consider one’s actions and the consequences.”

See the connection yet? Let’s draw the parallels more closely. Zimbardo and Franco say heroes do five things, and Kawasaki ties that to what entrepreneurs do.

1. Heroes maintain constant vigilance for situations that require heroic action. Entrepreneurs are continually on the lookout for opportunities.

2. Heroes learn not to fear conflict because of taking a stand. Entrepreneurs must take a stand and face continual conflict as they bring their vision to life in the face of barriers and challenge.

3. Heroes imagine alternative future scenarios beyond the present moment. Entrepreneurs imagine there’s a better way; they refuse to settle for the status quo.

4. Heroes resist the urge to rationalize and justify inaction. Entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury of inaction or rationalization.

5. Heroes trust that people will appreciate heroic (and frequently unpopular) actions. Entrepreneurs trust that their insight, experience and hard work will result in a product or service that people will appreciate and adopt.

Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition

As a business builder, you will literally be immersed in crucial conversations. You are the leader who is creating a new profit-generating entity in the world. One that will employ people who will create and deliver your product or service – and must do so with passion and excellence and consistency. You will be defining your business, sharing your message and working to gain all manner of stakeholder buy-in, from lenders and funders to partners and employees to your eventual customer.

That said, there’s no question you would benefit from training that
A. prepares you for high-stakes situations,
B. shows you how to transform anger and hurt feelings into powerful dialogue,
C. Makes it safe to talk about almost anything, and
D. Shows you how to be persuasive, not abrasive.

So what is a crucial conversation? It has 3 defining characteristics. A crucial conversation is one in which you have Opposing Opinions, Strong Emotions and High Stakes. Now, as you build your business, can you imagine – or have you already experienced – conversations that fit this description?

Next the book explains how most of us react to the important conversations in our lives. Namely, silence or violence. Either we clam up out of fear or impose our thoughts on others, in both cases, losing sight of what’s really important. Interestingly, it also shares the reason behind these default reactions, explaining how the biology of “fight or flight” kicks in, literally infusing your body with adrenaline and denying your brain of blood flow when you need it most. “Crucial Conversations” then guides you out of those ineffective communication “defaults” and gives you the tools you need to step up to difficult and important conversations, say what’s on your mind, and achieve positive outcomes.

Author and management guru, Tom Peters, listed Crucial Conversations as one of three “must reads for change agents.” #1 New York Times bestselling author, Stephen R. Covey, calls the work a “breakthrough book” and has written the forward for both the original edition and the new updated second edition. Your pal here at The Money Talks Café says “buy this book today, read it tonight, and begin experiencing the benefits by tomorrow.”

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler

McClure has been an adviser for several startups and non-profits including Founders Fund, Facebook fBFund, PayPal, Mint.com, and SimplyHired. Hillbilly VC & Mad Dancing Skillz. For those efforts, he created the company 500 Hats, referring to the many hats entrepreneurs wear as they get a new startup off the ground. He also admits a connection to the Dr. Seuss book “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” noting he has been a fan since about the age of 3.

McClure is now pouring all of his energy into 500 Startups. He described the venture in a recent interview in Fast Company.

“Our big idea is helping startups all over the world make better products and have a great time doing it. I guess we’re a little like a floor wax and a desert topping. We’re both a venture capital fund and an incubator. We make investments in companies all over the country and the world, but then we also run this incubation acceleration program [in Silicon Valley.]”

McClure also pointed out that the venture was almost named “Fail Factory.” Because in his words, “We’re here trying to manufacture fail on a daily basis, because you learn from that. If you’re not willing to take the risk of failing and experiencing failure you’re never going to figure out the right path to success.”

I recommend spending time on the 500 Startups website. From the irreverent job titles – Founding Partner & Sith Lord, Principal & Master of the Hustle, Partner & Chief Pug Herder – to pithy startup profiles, to their blog filled with Insightful, authentic posts from the 500 Startups community … you will learn, gain inspiration, and get the kind of charge that can only come from working with the brightest minds in business today.

OnStartUps.com is a blog that provides advice about start ups, particularly software startups. This week the blog’s writer, Dharmesh Shah, wrote a very entertaining but insightful article about the “Brilliant Startup Lessons from Moneyball”. Please take the time to visit this blog to read the article in its entirety, you will not be disappointed.

A few of my favorite quotes were:
1.) Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins.

Keep an eye on the team, you want a winning team, not a couple of really great individuals.

2.) Hey, its day one of the first week. You can’t judge just yet.

Winning and success takes time and hard work, change is hard. Don’t be quick to throw in the towel.

and My all time favorite

3.) We’re gonna change the game

Go out there and stand out, look at the business another way and think out of the box.

I recently visited Flippa.com and went through the process of selecting and purchasing a website. For disclosure sake I want to tell you that I am not completely clueless about how internet businesses work, I would say I am just slightly above rookie status. That being said, I took some time to look through the Flippa.com site for easy, turn-key operations that I could control, and hopefully learn to monetize. I did purchase a site, fully set up, for $110 called TheRecipeNetwork.info. With the sellers assistance I was able to transfer the domain,transfer the site to my WordPress, and then in trying to transfer the hosting of the site to my hosting account I lost it and haven’t had the time to go find it. My intention was/is to find an attractive website that was fully functioning and to add advertising from Amazon, Clickbank and Adsense to it.

All of these easy advertising methods are free to use and come with pretty clear instructions about adding them to your site as well. My main intent was to drive traffic to the site so I could increase its value and hopefully collect some passive income from the advertising. Not to mention, I wanted to try it out before I wrote about it here.

As in any business venture, proceed carefully. Know how much money you have available to risk, ask a lot of questions, buy into a niche that interests you. No matter how easy it seems, e-commerce takes time, and depending on your experience, can involve a substantial learning curve. But I would advise taking a look at the site (or other sites like it) if you’d like to get your feet wet at an easy startup.

We provide high-quality financial and tax advice and complete accounting services to small business and individuals at a reasonable price. Our complete range of accounting, taxation, and small business consulting services are delivered with a personal touch. You can learn about our full range of services and view our company profile at www.susanjamesandassociates.com.

We welcome new clients!

If you are looking for professionalism and excellence in your financial and tax services, contact our office today. We will be happy to review your situation and give you the best recommendations possible.

Susan James & Associates, Inc.
10061 Riverside Drive #171
Toluca Lake, CA 91602
susan@susanjamesandassociates.com
Phone: (818) 846-1619
Fax: (818) 301-2556

It’s crucial to get the inside tips from people who have already found money-making success if you want to follow in their footsteps.

That’s why you should check out this video:

It’s a bunch of the world’s top young entrepreneurs (like Michael Dunlop and Adam Horwitz) sharing a little bit of inspiration with whoever has a few minutes to listen. Well worth it.

The video was specially made with audio compiled from a brand-new book called “50 Interviews: Young Entrepreneurs – What it Takes to Make More Money than Your Parents.” This book is really important because young people know the internet like the back of their hands – and if you don’t learn how they’re making $10,000 a month while still in high school, then you’re going to get left behind.

Don’t let it happen to you.

Click Here and you’ll land on the web page for “50 Interviews: Young Entrepreneurs – What it Takes to Make More Money than Your Parents.” You can learn more about how to jumpstart your teen’s career as an entrepreneur – and buy the book if you like what you read. I recommend it!