My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This review is not my own personal “Last Lecture.” The temptation is great after reading this book to sit down and create your very own last lecture. All of us have a great desire to pass on our own golden nuggets of wisdom to others. I will use my personal journal for that purpose and leave all of you with a simple book review.

I really enjoyed this book. Not just because Randy had some great things to share with the world but also because this proves that everyone has great things to share. Its not just the muilt-billionaires and mother Teresa that can contribute good advice to us. I’m not trying to insult Randy but simply say that the most extrodinary thing about this book is how ordinary the guy is.

He did some extremely extraordinary things, but hey most of us do! This book was easy to read (listen in my case). It made me want to finish the story and did make me reflect on my own dreams and childhood.

I don’t know if I will ever read it again, but I can say I really enjoyed it.

link: Buy On Amazon Now

View all my reviews.

As you will see by the pictures below Simon & I enjoyed the first day of spring. We celebrated by making our back yard appear as it did in the fall. I used the leaf blower to blow all the leaves off of the back fence area into the grass where we will in turn mow them up. (Way to lazy to rake) We meant to do this in the fall by just were too lazy then also.

The first day of spring was the end to the cold I’ve been fighting for about 10 days. It was unfortunately the first day of Ami getting the cold that I’ve kicked. Simon & I were able to hang out all day while Ami rested. I’m quite glad to be healthy again since I haven’t been able to get out and run for over a week.

I am still on the look out for people who want to run a 1/2 marathon with me in August. Jeff, my brother is still on board and that makes me happy

As for Simon, he is quite energetic these days and wants nothing more than to be outside all day long. He either wants to be walking around the back yard or in his stroller on walks around the neighborhood. His vocab is expanding very slowly. I think a complete list would include: mooo, woof woof, dog, duck, ball, car, dada, mama, and on a single occasion the words Jesus and candy.

As for work things continue to go well. Agel is flourishing & the spring means an increase in my JPTees and JP Squared business. Recently I was contracted by a local reseller of the Magic Jack product to do some self-improvement newsletters and webinars and that has been fun.

Hope you like the pictures of our “fall-looking” spring backyard.

Recently I teamed up with Business partner Andrew James to create a set of tutorial videos on how to purchase a domain, set up a hosting account, install wordpress, and setup your own site/blog. WordPress has proven itself to be the most powerful online tool in creating a fast, user-friendly, website or blog that gets quick results with the search engines.

Many people may think that wordpress is only a good platform for blogging but I have also found it ideal for maintaining a great website. The platform is easy enough for anyone to use but versatile enough to accomplish anything. With millions of people out there designing themes (templates) and plugins/widgets for the wordpress program there is absolutely no reason why you wouldn’t use this program for your website or blog.

The whole idea of hosting, php, and mysql can really give people a technology headache and so this playlist of videos is designed to walk you through it step by step. The links below will give you a discount to HostMonster.com or Godaddy.com depending on where you choose to set up your hosting account. In our tutorial we used HostMonster.

I plan on doing more detailed tutorials later on about different wordpress things but for now this will get people rolling.

This is a compilation of 7 different videos which run a total of 55 minutes

Here are a list of sites that I have created for myself or others using the wordpress platform. (Just to give you an idea of what you can do.)

www.jacobspaulsen.com

www.jpsquaredinc.com

www.carryutah.com

www.webcastrooms.com

www.androidsocialmedia.com

www.vaidiamante.com

Since my interview with Andrew James two weeks ago I’ve received a lot of inquiries about GoodReads.com In an effort to continue my series of tutorial videos about Social Media Marketing I’ve just completed this new 10 minute video about setting up your account on Goodreads.com Goodreads will be the next BIG thing in Social Media. I guarantee it!

Recently I had a marketing friend ask me what I thought was the best service online for “Email Marketing.”  Since email marketing is an important part of what all online marketers do I thought it prudent to do an overview of the different services out there. In the upcoming week or so I will also prepare an article about how to best utilize this technology on your website.

Now I’m going to briefly overview each of the most popular services out there. I have personally used 3 of the 5 services below and will attempt to give you the highlights on all 5. I highly suggest that if you are shopping around you read about each of the services below. At the bottom of this post I have set up links to each of these services so you can go directly to their sites and try out the free trials etc.

• Icontact.com Icontact is among the cheapest programs I have tried out. Their system is very easy to use and I especially like their RSS feed importing tool which I believe is unique to Icontact & Aweber. They do have a free trial you can sign up for to get a feel for the program. Their service starts out at $9.95 per month. That price will allow you to have up to 250 contacts. They have a good number of templates you can use. They allow importing & exporting of contacts and they provide good reporting of your emails.
• ConstantContact.com Constant Contact provides all the same services mentioned above. The only thing I really think they offer than most other programs don’t is there multi-list feature. This allows users to select which types of emails they want to receive from you. Instead of having individual signup forms for each list you have one signup page where users choose from all the options. This could be good or bad for you. I prefer the ConstantContact email creation program the most of all of them. They make it very easy to use their professional templates. Constant Contact is a little more pricy and will charge for an email archive.
• Email Marketer. The Email Marketer program designed by Interspire is my absolute favorite program and the service I currently use. It is the only program I’m reviewing today that has no ongoing monthly fees. You purchase the software for a one time cost and then install it onto your server. You maintain complete control over all the functions since it is installed on your site. It has all the features you could ever want: Stats, Lists, Contact Manager, Professional Templates, SignUp Forms, etc. They even have a spam word search option that is SUPER COOL. This is a large upfront expense but it will save you money in the long run. The other services reviewed here increase your monthly cost as your total number of contacts increases. With Email Marketer you never need worry about a financial burden.
• AWeber.com I have never personally used Aweber. From what I can gather from their website and feedback from fellow marketers that use it the features are similar to icontact & constantcontact. One distinct feature that I was impressed with on their site in potential shopping cart integration. Setting up an easy check out from the email to paypal etc… Sounds cool! Their cost starts out at $19 per month after the free trial but that does include up to 500 contacts.
• GetResponse.com I have never personally used GetResponse. From the looks of things on their website I am once again drawn to conclude they have similar features to the other guys. I do wonder however why I have never found anyone else who uses the program? Are they new in town or simply not as good? Their monthly prices start out at $17.95 per month

Sometimes we have to stretch ourselves a little. How often do we really stick out our own necks to perform? In an effort to both make the goal and publicly declare it I am writing this post. On August 8^th, 2008 I will run a half marathon here in Provo, Utah. The Provo River Trail ½ Marathon is an annual event along the Provo River in the canyon. Even though I’ve always been a runner this will be by far the longest race I’ve ever run. Up until now my morning runs consisted of 2-4 mile jogs and my longest competitive race was a 5K.

I’m pumped. I’m not excited about running 13.1 miles but rather I’m excited about doing something audacious. I’m pumped about bending my own limits and pushing it past the comfort zone. What I’m wondering is what each of you are going to do to stretch yourselves this year? What are you willing to publically declare?

Here is a picture of a stretch of the trail where I will be running my 1/2 marathon!

The purpose of this Tutorial video is not to give you a walk through of how to setup an account on Twitter.com (although it will). More importantly this video explains the most important information you should look for when configuring your profile!

Of all the thousands of different social networking sites out there we can basically categorize them into several main categories such as Social News, Social Bookmarking, Picture sharing, Video sharing, Blogs, mini-blogs, Social Networks, etc.

So far history has shown that the three most effective sites where Social Media experts are spending most of their time are: Facebook, Twitter, & Youtube. Today it is my intention to show you what the next upcoming website is going to be! Here it is:

Goodreads.com

Goodreads is a book review social network. Much like Flixster for movies, goodreads allows people to network together as friends, in groups, etc. Today a good friend and partner Andrew James of andrewjamesinc.com came over to my office to interview me about Goodreads and why I’m predicting its future “fame and glory” among social media. Here is the interview:

This is the view I woke up to on Saturday morning. I went on a ice fishing trip with the young men from the church this weekend. We went to the current creek reservoir which is close to strawberry reservoir in central Utah. The first adventure came when one of the boys informed me that the clothes he had on his back was all that he brought with him. This consisted of tennis shoes, jeans, t-shirt, and pullover hoodie. For camping in the mountains in February this was going to be a disaster. Luckily for him enough boys had enough spare coats, gloves, snow pants, etc to donate to his cause.

Ami made me a phenomenal tin-foil dinner which consisted of diced chicken and potatoes. I was the only one to cook mine in the fire as the other boys either brought subway or cooked their dinners over the propane grill. Back in my day…

Several of the boys were convinced they were going to build snow caves to sleep in and though several made valiant attempts only one 12 yr old was able to craft something big enough for him to sleep in it. The sad thing is that he was the only one who got any sleep at all. The rest of us spent the night trying to dream of warm climates and thicker clothing. Even in my thermals, snow pants, heavy winter coat, gloves, beanie, and LL Bean mummy sleeping bag I was freezing cold!!! We guesstimate that temps reached 20 below that night. It was horrible.

The next morning was exciting as we did a little ice fishing. We shuttled the boys across the reservoir on snow mobiles (my first experience driving one) where we dug small holes in the ice (about 8″ deep) and put in our lines. This was my first time ice fishing also. There were a total of 4 fish caught between the 18 of us. The most excited moment was when one of the boys was reeling in a fish. I got next to his hole to grab the fish when he brought it out and just as it was coming out of the water it managed to jump off the hook and back into the water. I reaching in after him with my right hand and managed to grab him as he was swimming off. I pulled him out and chucked him onto the ice. It was some sort of reaction and I swear I’m not making this up. It was almost ninja like.

Jacob Paulsen

In our rough economic times more and more people and organizations are turning to Online Conferencing solutions. As quickly as possible I want to show you how you can get your own online webcast room in as little as 5 minutes through the VereConference service offered at WebcastRooms.com