The Better Question!

[Phil958]

On the fly I picked up the book yesterday. I am 75 pages into it and have already had numerous "aha" and "exactly" moments of understanding!

Suffice it to say, I have been evaluating and thinking about how and what to do with life for a long time. Not that I have been without a goal or meaning....but I have always looked for more growth and challenge. Taught middle school for almost 20 years, have had a few businesses...the last a restaurant in a small community....most rewarding thing thus far but it OWNED me EVERYDAY (including Christmas) for 3 years. And has left me with a bit if financial responsibility ****debt*** to clear up.

So here I am, huge changes having been made in my life in the last 5 months, asking questions as to what to do next and finding Ferriss' book with the advice to begin with asking the Better Question.....not what are my goals?.....what do you want?....what is your passion?......But, what excites me?!

Looking forward to finding the muse and learning from those here who understand this attitude and how to pursue it.

Phil

[Phil958]

I think I have some possible muses to develop. A common question here seems to be how to find them. Here is what has become clear to me.

You and I have heard it before, but the best chance of finding your muse comes from your interests and experiences. Two of those areas for me that I believe have monetization possibilities are my experiences in teaching middle school and another selling cruises.

So I started thinking about this.

It struck me that a previous motivational service I once subscribed to would be a viable model for applying to a forum for middle school teachers. I will have a mini-site that markets the *product* for the middle school teacher, a forum that builds the feel of community with them and a blog that publishes articles relevant to helping them...which in turn can convert the traffic at the blog toward the service/product.

I am still brainstorming the cruise thing as there is a lot of that out there...but I have an idea to present information on cruising .... and the info is both very informative as well as entertaining. There is also a very select niche within this industry that I think is worth exploring.

My immediate challenge is looking at bidding out the website/blog design at elance....as well as getting help setting up the forum.

Phil

[JSimpson]

The blog idea sounds like it would be hard to develop. Things like that require a community and it is hard to build one. Why would someone join a forum when there aren't other users. I'm not saying it wouldn't work but that it seems like a longer term project.

Maybe something instructional like how to keep unruly kids in line. Establishing trust with students while still maintaining the teacher/student status. I had several teachers growing up that we though of almost as friends and they had a hard time controlling the class as we didn't see them as a control figure. Anywhoo, good luck!

[wildsoul]

Building a blog is easy. (I use Typepad (http://www.typepad.com)) But building an online community forum is HARD. Some of my colleagues and I are top consultants in our industry, sure to pack a large auditorium, and yet our online community forum? Lags WAY behind. Sure, we can find ways to promote it better, but considering our stature in our field, we're disappointed with the # of ACTIVE members.

So my coaching for you is that unless you have a very large platform already, skip the forum route. Do give blogging a spin though!

[seven]

Do you happen to know what Tim uses to do his blog? I love the look of it. I've never seen a blog that looked so nice.

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