Daily Ideas – Turn Yourself Into An Ideas Machine

Ideas are the currency of life. Not money. Money gets depleted until you go broke. But good ideas buy you good experiences, buy you better ideas, buy you better experiences, buy you more time, save your life. Financial wealth is a side effect of the “runner’s high” of your idea muscle. Every day I write down ideas. I write down so many ideas that it hurts my head to come up with one more. Then I try to write down five more.

The 10 Daily Ideas

• 15 February 2016 - 10 ideas for new blog posts/series
  1 – How to run a business without an accountant.2 – Marketing testing. Put a certain amount of money into marketing one of our products and see how we get on then write a blog post about. Maybe even split it into different sections. So first post could be a month of trying google adwords. A month of trying facebook adds. Maybe spend £500 a month on each one. The blog makes that amount of money so it could just be a complete reinvestment.3 – Outsourcing the turning of an idea into a business. 4 – My five favourite blogs and why. 5 – My five favourite podcasts and why. 6 – My 10 favourite books for aspiring entrepreneurs. 7 – What advice I would give myself 5 years ago. 8 – Making money from my travels.. finding a local product and exporting and then selling it in the UK. 9 – How to start a blog. 10 – How to make money while you are on a plane. Ideas and what I did – write a short book for one…
• 7 February 2016 - ideas for how a car parts importer can start their business
  This is an answer to this quora Question.

  1 – Sell through Amazon.

  Check the Amazon listings for each item you want to sell. If you can sell it for cheaper than the competition then start by buying a small amount and list your product.

  Once you get a few orders then you have enough proof that it is a viable business and can start automating the process.

  You can do this by ordering a larger batch and sending it to Amazon FBA warehouses*. Basically, that means that Amazon takes care of everything: order shipping, returns, basic customer service.

  Check out all the fees involved here to make sure you’re making enough money.

  2 – Start an online store.

  Set up an online shop using a service like Shopify. It is very cheap and you can be up and running very quickly. Much cheaper than having to rent, man and manage a physical location.

  Test that you will get sales before ordering a lot of stock. Just order one or two of each item you want to sell and then put it on the website. It doesn’t matter if you need to buy those first few items at retail price and take a loss. You are looking for a proof of concept before you have to spend a lot of money.

  Famously when Zappos (the largest online shoe store) launched, Nick Swinmurn the founder didn’t purchase any stock. He just put shoes online that he could buy at local shops. Then when an order came in he went and bought the shoe and shipped it, making a loss on each sale. Once he had proof of concept he could grow the business.

  3 – Try and sell business to business by building relationships with small-time mechanics.

  If your wholesale account is valuable and hard to get, then you might be able to provide the parts to local mechanics at a cheaper price than they can currently them and still make a profit.

  Just walk into each of them with a small prospectus and price list and ask if they’d be interested.

  If you can’t undercut the competition you could beat them in service, for instance by offering same-day delivery.
• 5 February 2016 - Ideas for self-employment with no social interaction
  This is in answer to this Quora question.

  Any work that has these two requirements:

  1. Self-employed which I will take to mean ‘no boss’.
  2. Extremely minimal communication with others.

  I think that 30 years ago this would have been very difficult, but with the internet I can think of a few areas that tick these boxes:

  Micro-jobs

  You could offer to do micro-jobs on a website like Fiverr. The idea behind it is simple. People offer to do small jobs for just $5 a go.

  The beauty from your perspective is that because the jobs are so small there is no real need for any customisation or back-and-forth interaction As each customer is only paying a small amount, you don’t need to build a relationship or do any schmoozing.

  Not all micro-jobs would be suitable, but here are some ones that tick the boxes:

  • Audio transcription. They send you an audio file. You turn it into text. Literally no need for any communication.
  • Translation. If you are fluent in two languages you can translate people’s text from one to the other.
  • Web/Seo analytics. They send you their website. You send back a report of what they could do to improve it. For $5 they don’t expect more than that.

  Entrepreneurship

  By entrepreneurship I am not talking about building the next Facebook, I am talking about building small online businesses. Provided you don’t want to conquer the world, there is plenty of opportunity to create profitable websites without ever needing to talk to anyone:

  • Affiliate marketing. Promote other peoples product on your website for a cut of the revenue.
  • Retail Arbitrage. Buy items cheaply and sell them for a profit online.
  • Amazon FBA business. A retail business where Amazon takes care of all the warehouses, order fulfilment and customer service.

  Unorthodox or skill based money making:

  Here I am talking about all those slightly weird and wonderful stories you hear about people making money online. If you are lucky enough to have the skills, they are a great way to make money:

  • Online poker. I’m sure we’ve all heard stories of socially reclusive geeks making a fortune from poker.
  • Matched betting. Making money from the free bonuses you get from signing up to online gambling sites.
  • Online video-gamer. Apparently the highest earning make more than $1m!
• 1 February 2016 - 10 Ideas to revitalize Twitter
  1 – Focus on the broadcast angle. The best place for celebrities and followed individuals to talk to their users.2 – TV adverts showing twitter as the best news sources. ‘Forget traditional news bla bla’. Perhaps even write an algorithm for a ‘Twitter news’ site. That data mines whatever is most talked about at that moment.3 – Get people using it instead of yelp/etc. For businesses add in a reviews section or a rating section. Let them upload multiple photographs. Twitter is already the best platform to find out if the place is open/etc. Make it the place to discover restaurants etc as well. 4 – Celeb news. An improved search to find out what people are saying about a certain person. 5 – Focus on customer interaction with companies. The one stop place for everything to do with a company. Including talking to them and interacting. 6 – Offer a way for tweeters to make money. Similar to how YouTube does it with their Youtube Partners. Perhaps give people to option to embed an add in their tweets that earns them money based on how much people interact with it. 7 – Create a way for restaurants to take reservations via Twitter. A simple tweet that is integrated with a reservation system. Create a lot more automated tools like that so as to get rid of the need for customers to use other sites. 8 – Try to encourage tweet quality over quantity by creating a section called something like ‘top trending tweets in your network’. And it basically works on some sort of relative algorithm so that it isn’t just the people with millions of followers that always have their tweets at the top. 9 – Approach academics and instruct them how to use twitter for class interaction and collaboration. Instead of getting students to use a forum/whatever, try and get them using a twitter hashtag. 10 – Offer ‘subscription tweets’. A way for people to pay to access certain people’s tweets or for their ‘premium’ tweets. It would be a great tool for stock pickers or sports tipsters.

• 27 January 2016 - 10 ideas for what to put in an email auto-respond funnel
  I am currently trying to build a series of really good quality emails that a new subscriber to my blog will receive. The aim is to improve engagement, get more people regularly reading and interacting with the blog. I am not trying to sell anything, just get more people interacting.1 – A free kindle voucher.2 – A free audiobook voucher.3 – A vote on what you want to see more of. 4 – My top recommended resources. 5 – My top daily ideas. 6 – What challenge for 2017 survey. 7 – An email competition. 8 – Video interview. 9 – Top Quora content. 10 – Some interesting facts. 11 – I’m traveling – here is my agenda. If you live in any of these places and want to meet up… 12 – My passive income private numbers.
• 26 January 2016 - 10 ideas for what can go wrong while traveling
  In March I am going to South America for a couple of months. What could go wrong?! And then what should be my actions.1 – Get robbed and lose passport, bank cards, money etc. Find out what to do in that situation before going. For instance if it is to go to the embassy. Find out where it is. If it is to call the police work out what the number is and how to call. Make sure every item is scanned and available to access in the cloud.2 – Lose luggage while on a flight. Keep all cards and key items on me. Have an inventory of contents. Go and buy replacements for the stuff I need short term while waiting for the luggage to be found.3 – Lose my computer and everything on it. Make sure that all the files I need are on the cloud or are on svn. Make sure every password that is written down is only written down in a hint form. Change passwords on Google drive/dropbox etc as soon as possible. 4 – Lose my phone. Regularly backup on my laptop and upload the best photos to instagram/facebook/wherever. Make sure the key stuff is synced to google cloud. Buy another phone. 5 – Cannot get into airbnb/hostel that has been booked. Make sure we know where nearby hostels and hotels so that ther are backups we can just turn up at. 6 – Get lost and can’t speak the language. And there is no signal. Just chill out and wonder around. Ask people for directions. Eventually someone will be able to speak English and help out. 7 – Get scammed. Perhaps someone rips me off. -> just deal with it and take the financial loss. In our money it won’t be a lot and chalk it down to a learning experience. 8 – Important calls needed but don’t want to. Get a skype to phone number that will forward to the local phone whenever there is a call. For calling out use skype 9 – Area has no internet access so can’t do any work. Focus on stuff I can do offline – write another book. Practice some drawing. Do my daily ideas 10 – I have an accident/get ill. Make sure I understand how to use my travel insurance and what is excluded. Before going to a new country make sure I understand how each countries health system works. If something happens don’t worry about it. If I start to get quite ill book a flight home.
• 25 January 2016 - 10 ideas for building an ETF comparison website
  Today’s daily idea is on how I would redo a company I have previously started. Back in 2012, we built an ETF price comparison site which we later sold. The story is described in this post. I made a lot of mistakes, if I was to do it again I should:1 – Outsource the design and development to a top-notch team. Give them a rather loose design brief and let them design it themselves.2 – Launch it as soon as possible to the general public.3 – Really push the mainstream media route to get it in various papers. 4 – Really push the business development route. Try and get sponsorship from a major company to portray their brand. ‘In partnership with’. 5 – Have potential buyers lined up for each stage incase we want to sell. Post prototype. Post first 10,000 users. Post first revenue. Post profitability. 6 – Focus on small-medium sized personal finance blogs to push the message. Monevator for instance. Pay them for advertising on their site and ask them to do a review. 7 – Try to get affiliation deals with various brokers and link to their sites. ‘Our partnered brokers’. 8 – Once done in the UK. Build a similar USA one. 9 – Once there is a some revenue or buy in make sure it’s self-sustaining by hiring a VA to constantly update the site and manage it. 10 – Don’t hire any permanent staff or get an office. Keep it lean and completely outsourced. Instead of trying to ‘buy credibility’. Just focus on building and awesome product.
• 24 January 2016 - 10 IDEAS for setting up an 'ideas fund' business
  I am thinking about setting up an investment fund that starts lots of companies.1 – The ideas fund will be a company that builds companies from scratch based on ideas. With quick, cheap MVPs.2 – The companies will all be very lean. Little to no staff. Everything outsourced. Supply chains set up. 3 – Companies are all based online. Whether they be clothing brands, websites, apps etc. Purchases and users are done online. 4 – Companies are built in a way that means they can be easily sold or run by anyone. Basically, no requirement for myself or another founder to be involved for them to continue. 5 – Operational costs come out of profits. Investments are illiquid. Anyone investing cannot just take money out but rather there are regular dividends which are paid out when there isn’t a better reinvestment opportunity available. 6 – Companies aim is not to make a fortune but to generate a very good rate of return. Not looking for one hit wonders, but loads of companies making a decent return. 7 – Each company is treated ruthlessly – if it is not doing well enough it is cut. Or flogged cheaply. 8 – MVPs that we decide not to continue with are auctioned – or sold. Aim to build a list of companies or investors who would be interested in taking on a MVP. When planning out the company a few potential ‘get out buyers’ should be lined up. Given the lean nature of the startups there should always be buyers willing to take the companies at different stage. 9 – Plan out 10 businesses before trying to raise money. Each business should be priced out – with multiple potential exit points and quick route to income. Then effectively raising money to give everyone a small amount of all 10. Each business should have a 50% budget for development, and a 50% budget for marketing. 10 – Each company should aim to be ‘live’ in less than 6 months.
• 23 January 2016 - 10 IDEAS for ways to market a broker comparison site for < £10k
  1 – List the top 30 personal finance sites blogs in the uk that talk about broker comparison. Email each one with a title like “Please can I send you £250?” to get their attention. In exchange we want them to advertise the comparison website for a month. Let’s say 10 agree – £2.5k.2 – Google adwords. Budget £200. To test the waters.3 – Facebook adwords. Budget £200. To test the waters. 4 – Email round mainstream finance media. Offering the opening story as an exclusive. Offer to write a press release/article for them. 5 – Contact some major finance institutions that are impartial to which broker is chosen. But that have a good reach and offer a partnership. Offer to put their branding on the site in exchange for them promoting it. FT, Motley Fool. Etc. 6 – Post on personal finance forums such as money saving expert. 7 – Offline advertising. £500 on each as a test to see if it is worth it: Say £500 in newspaper ads and £500 on tube adverts. 8 – A viral video campaign similar to the Transfer Wire adds. Say £500 on each video, do five total. 9 – Do a Ted talk about the importance of price comparison. 10 – Offer a competition to our email list to promote it. Basically a StackSocial style competition. 11 – Contact the cheapest broker and tell them that they’re currently the best. Then ask for t
• 20 January 2016 - 10 IDEAS for ways to grow our table tennis brand in Germany
  1 – Try and get in touch with as many English table tennis players who are training table tennis in Germany and ask them to leave reviews.2 – Create an auto-emailer to email previous customers and ask for reviews. Get the email translated professionally into German.3 – Do a trip to Germany to promote the bats. Take a bunch with us. Go round a bunch of clubs, play a bit and ask people to leave a review. 4 – Send samples to different clubs. As a bat they can lend to beginners. Ask for reviews in exchange. 5 – Ship some stock out there, rather than sending orders all the way from the UK. 6 – Pay for advertising on german Amazon 7 – By adverts on german blogs. 8 – Create an extra good affiliate deal and offer them to certain blogs. Like a 25% offer. Even if we don’t make any money from it, it will build momentum 9 – Run a competition in german. Use something like stack social to encourages people to reshare. 10 – Buy facebook adverts in German.
• 11 January 2016 - 10 IDEAS for physicall location businesses I could open
  1 – A children’s bar. An inside play area for kids where there are plenty of stuff to sell to parents. Cocktails, afternoon tea, food. Plus memorabilia and toys. Could make it free, or a nominal charge and could do classes for both parents and kids. ‘Mums and tots yoga’2 – A pay what you want resturaunt. See how much people’s natural genrosity (or guilt) adds up.3 – A board game cafe. But where there are set games going on that you can join. Like a casino but not gambling. You pay to enter and can buy foood and drink. 4 – An automated resturaunt. Take out as many humans as possible. You order and pay on an iPads, ingredients are sent the chefs. Foood is sent to the tables (or the customers pick them up at a service point). Only staff needed are the chefs. Everything else is automated. 5 – A ‘do something while you eat’. A resturaunt aimed at people dining on their own with a load of single people activities they could do. Such as drawing. Try to make it not weird to eat dinner on your own. 6 – A cook your own meal resturaunt. You choose the dish you want and the chef delivers you all the ingredients ready prepared by their correct quanitities. Plus the recipe. There will be a ‘ask for help’ button to call over the chef for advice. Tips. 7 – A eat in front of the tv resturaunt.. So you sit down in a reclinable chair (imagine a first class airplane chair) and watch a recent movie. Order your food. Get some nice headphones. And eat your top quality food in front of the television. Have options for both singles and couples. And larger booths for groups. 8 – A eat in front of the tv cafe. Lots it different rooms. Each with sofas and a film on repeat. Go in. Get your cakes/coffee, pay a small fee. And mong out in front of the tv with strangers. 9 – A gambling bar. You bet for your drinks. So you could go and pay nothing or pay double what you would elsewhere. Lots of different games to play for your drinks. 10 – A membership art studio/gallery. You go in and draw something there and after you finish it is put up for sale. Plus you can also buy paintings from other students. Have a pay scheme. Up to a certain level you pay a monthly fee to be able to go and paint. It reduces as you get better. And if you’re top quality you get paid. People can go and watch the painters at work for free. Store gets a large percent of any sales from paintings. Like a gym, but for artists. Could also have lessons and classes.
• 10 January 2016 - 10 IDEAS for experience to do while travelling
  I am planning to do quite a bit of travelling this year, but what should I do?1 – Climb a mountain that you can’t do in just one day. A mountain large enough that it means I need to stay over.2 – Go in a helicopter. Never done it before. 3 – Drive a supercar. Ferrari or lambourghini or the like. Perhaps could rent one for a few days in the French Riviera. 4 – Go to a couple of blogging conferences from around the world. 5 – Go to a retreat. A week where you just chill out and don’t really do anything but detox. 6 – Do a fight camp somewhere. In BJJ or perhaps in thai kick boxing. 7 – Spend a few nights on a yacht. 8 – Try wind-skiing. 9 – Do a bungee jump. 10 -Meet an author or blogger that I follow.
• 9 January 2016 - 10 IDEAS for market stalls
  1 – Have a new type of food each week. Like an experimental kitchen, where we’re forced to innovate each week.2 – ‘Global food’. Create food that is not limited by people’s expectations of what certain countries food should taste like. Cook from a whole world’s worth of ingredients.3 – A presentation based stand. Perhaps doing bento boxes or something similar. Where the food isn’t necessarily the best but the presentation is great and optimised for street food. 4 – A full sensory experience. You get the food beautifully presented. Then you have to listen to some earphones or an iPhone app as you eat. A set soundtrack for each course. Plus distinct aroma for each course. 5 – A drinks bar that is non-alcoholic (ideal for a lunchtime food market) with all sorts of different drinks. From some sodas, to teas, to toddys, to milkshakes, to juices to smoothies. Perhaps one or two options from each category. Priced depending on the effort required to serve it. So a premade cold brew coffee is cheaper than a smoothie made fresh. 6 – Gamified food. Perhaps sharing food designed as a connect four or battleships game. Little one mouthful chunks as the pieces. 7 – Stews. A few big tubs of stew. Make it quick to serve and bulk made, but the best food around. 8 – Wok to wok – style noodles. 9 – A different, unknown country every couple of weeks. Aim to be one of the only places in London serving that counties food. Like food from Bali. Or the Philippines. Or Columbia. These random countries that we don’t eat any of their food 10 – Ethiopian. On that cool bread stuff (Injera).
• 8 January 2016 - 10 IDEAS for ways to improve my Spanish
  1 – Use duolingo everyday. It’s a really good app, but I’m being pretty lazy at doing it at the moment.2 – Put up a note in my apartment block asking if there are any spanish speakers who would like to meet up regularly. One day speaking only spanish. One day speaking only English.3 – Continue watching all the English speaking films or tv shows I watch but add Spanish subtitles. Make an effort to pay attention to what they’re saying vs what’s written. 4 – Aim to spend at least 2 months this year in Spanish speaking countries. 5 – Join an evening class to learn Spanish. 6 – Try and speak with my friends who speak Spanish in Spanish. Say that I’m trying to practice and ask for pointers. Perhaps tell them what I learnt in that day’s duolingo. 7 – Try to translate some of my blog posts into Spanish. Spend the time to get it exactly right. Then ask for feedback. 8 – listen to some Spanish music and try and listen and understand the lyrics. Try and get into it rather than just viewing it as another chore. 9 – While in a Spanish speaking country on holiday. Try to have one day a week where I speak only Spanish. 10 – Try and teach a friend Spanish. It always makes me learn quicker if I have to teach it afterwards
• 7 January 2016 - 10 IDEAS for what a profitable table tennis club could look like
  1 – Get a location in a big warehouse near enough to London. Perhaps near an airport. The idea is to build a really multi-national full-time team.2 – Create it like a normal gym. Plenty of tables in there, along with all the normal gym equipment. Members pay a montly fee and can just use the gym or you can do table tennis as well. Make it quite expensive. £60 to £120 a month.3 – Have 2 classes a day of table tennis. Aim for at least 2 beginner classes a week. Or 1 adult, 1 junior and 1 all ages class. Along with all level classes and with advanced classes. 4 – Have resident couches who also offer 1-to-1s. Take a 50% cut of the 1-1 cost. 5 – Put together a ‘professional’ team and make it the best team in the UK. Pay the players. But on top of training they need to attend certain classes anyone can go to. Like a tennis or golf pro at a club. 6 – Really promote it through Ben’s blog so that if anyone is searching for a table tennis club near London they find it. 7 – Have a bar as well so that people can have a drink and chill after training. 8 – Apply for lots or grants from the government and table tennis england. 9 – Hold regular training camps that people can pay to come and do a ‘residential’ at. 10 – offer ‘internship’ style opportunities for younger players who want to play full time. In exchange for cleaning the place, doing some one-to-ones, they can train for free and have a stipend towards accomadation. 11 – Have regular lectures and seminars from top players, sports phsychologists and coaches that anyone can go to for a price.
• 6 January 2016 - 10 IDEAS for ways to get experience lecturing/giving speeches
  1 – Volunteer to lecture at schools. Call/email and basically say I’m looking to get more practice and that I’d love to an assembly about expert in a year/whatever.2 – Email the entreprenuership societies at local universities and offer to give a talk to the students.3 – Email Christian unions or church youth groups and ask to give a talk or testimonial. 4 – Ask friends if they have any people who come in to their work and give talks. If so ask if they can get me involved. 5 – Email my email list saying that I am booking speaking engagements and will do one for free for the first 10 people who manage to email back and book me in. 6 – Create my own evening class teaching matched betting or something similar. Invite people and market it. Make it free for the first round. Say once a week for ten weeks. Then charge for the second semester. 7 – Record myself giving ‘Ted’ talks. Like 15 minutes each and put them in YouTube. Pretend I am in front of an audience and do them properly like I would if lots of people were watching. 8 – Join a drama group and put on theatre productions where I have to get on stage. 9 – Offer to put on a free course on entrepreneurship skills for local charities. 10 – Create an online course on Udemy.
• 5 January 2016 - 10 IDEAS for topics for the daily ideas
  1 – Ways to improve the wren.2 – Things to reass about my life.3 – Ideas for shops/physical location businesses I could start. 4 – How I’d start a bar from scratch. 5 – Ideas for starting a table tennis club. 6 – Ideas for market stalls I could open. 7 – Ideas for books I could write. 8 – Ideas for ways to improve my Spanish. 9 – Ideas for ways to make a bigger impact on other peoples lives. 10 – Ideas of ways I could get some practice teaching or lecturing.
• 30 December 2015 - 10 IDEAS to business experiences to do in 2016
  Today’s daily ideas are for types of businesses or business experiences that I have never done before and would to get experience with.1 – Sell the foreign rights to the expert in year. Perhaps chinese rights.2 – Start a business in India. 3 – Finally build the clothing apparel brand 4 – Get on the board of a company I didn’t start. 5 – Do some paid for consultancy 6 – Do a talk/lecture/speech. 7 – Get our table tennis equipment into a national retail chain – John Lewis, etc. 8 – Go on tv 9 – Create a video game. A web or mobile game or something like that. 10 – Earn a commission from middle manning a deal
• 28 December 2015 - 10 IDEAS for New year resolutions
  1 – Massively cut down on the amount of alcohol I drink. It’s getting a bit silly. Perhaps one day a week..2 – Massively cut down on the amosite of caffeine I drink. It’s also getting a bit silly. Perhaps even take the whole year off. Hard to do when I own a coffee shop.3 – Go to at least 5 different countries. 4 – Learn a language to the level on conversational fluency. Do my duolingo everyday. 5 – Get my blue belt at Brazillian jiu jitsu. 6 – Aim to phone someone everyday. I’m rubbish at phone calls and need more practice! 7 – Contact 365 different people I want to connect with. One for each day of the year. 8 – Write at least 3 books. One more than in 2015! 9 – Take a writing course to help improve my language skills. Perhaps a journalism course. 10 – Really learn to cook finally
• 24 December 2015 - 10 IDEAS to build an online marketing company
  A friend of mine is looking to quit her job and start an online marketing company. Here’s my brainstorms on what she could do.1 – Split each offering into three stages. A client can have just one, or multiple. Analysis -> strategy -> implementation.2 – Offer personal branding for individuals. Most companies have some form of online marketing, but in a world where you are your own brand, you should really be marketing yourself. 3 – Offer event management. Build online relationships through offline events. 4 – Analysis of who you should be connecting with. Who is in the best position to promote your product and how to connect with them. 5 – Photography of products. If their online product images look rubbish.. which a lot do. 6 – Web development. 7 – Out-of-the-box ideas. Perhaps come up with the standard recommendations and then throw in a few more unconventional ideas. eg. create a video game, create a music video, organise a protest against their products for the press coverage. 8 – A ‘what your customer thinks’ service. Build some software that alerts you whenever someone anywhere on the internet mentions your products. 9 – Competitions and prize draws. 10 – Customer journey creations. 11 – Reactive marketing. People who create adverts on the fly based on current affairs. Great example is orea who created an advert during the superbowl power outage.
• 18 December 2015 - 10 IDEAS for podcasts I could create
  I love and listen to loads of podcasts. At some point I’ll create one of my own:1 – Startup interviews for small land based businesses. Such as coffee shops, galleries, resturaunts.2 – Christian podcast looking at different views on lifestyle. Drinking vs non drinkny. Sex before marriage. Evolution. Syria bombing. Unbiased podcast interviewing people on both sides so you (and me) can make up your mind better. Like freakonomics 3 – Tipsy debates. Debating something over drinks. Set topics for each episode. 4 – Charity interviews with top people at different charities. How they’re doing, what impacts they’ve made. What the challenges are. Help you get an insight into their charities. 5 – a What to do in … city podcast. Basically get a bunch of people from each city to have a chat about what their favourite things they’ve done in the city is. Like a cool modern tour guide but for young ‘hip’ people. 6 – Short stories podcast. No more than 1 hour long each. Find old classics out of copywrite or authors willing to let it be read for free in exchange for the publicity of their other books. 7 – University interviews. Each season take a university and then cover one part of it in each episode. Halls of residence, courses, societies, nightlife, etc. Interview 2 or 3 different students in each one. 8 – Walking tours of interesting areas. Shoreditch, Soho, etc. So that you can wonder round the areas and learn about them without needing to go on/pay a proper tour guide. 9 – ‘What we learnt this week’. A general chat on a variety of subjects that interest the presenter: history, philosophy, phychology, gadgets, current affairs. Whatever. 10 – Comedy show with a point. Set a topic for each episode – for isntance children – and get people to tell funny anecdotes but around each one. Aim should be that you learn from each episode – even if it’s just learning from other people’s mistakes.
• 17 December 2015 - 10 IDEAS for user journeys on a table tennis blog
  My friend Ben has a table tennis blog. Here are some ways to manage the users journey and monetise each step.1 -> Google adds for a table tennis bat takes the user to2 -> table tennis bats on Amazon which leads to 3 -> a sale where you take their email address. When they receive the bat 4 -> in the bat case put a printed message with details for table tennis tips leading to 5 -> the website where there is a free book or guide offered in exchange for joining the email. Where they’ll receive links to 6 -> the table tennis books on Amazon. Which once bought will have 7 -> extra resources offered on the websites. In the kindle version you can even have hyperlinks which lead to 8 -> articles on each essential skill. Serving, physical, mental, basic strokes. With the basic information and then upselling a paid for video course. Which once completed will be upsold 9 -> a course or seminar they can go along to for £50ish which will be upsold 10 -> one-to-one coaching. £200+ an hour. After doing will be upsold 11 -> a getaway or training camp caosting £1k+
• 14 December 2015 - 10 IDEAS for books I should read
  I’m pretty well read, but there’s plenty of books I need to read.1 – The Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith. Like the original book on capitalism! Definitely should read it. I’m not really a capitalist but I should learn more about it.2 – Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand. A story that pushes the philosophy of rational selfisness. Something I don’t agree with but would like to learn more about. 3 – The Politics by Aristotle. Pretty much the founder of Western Philosophy. Should really read it! 4 – The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Always interesting to read about great people in their own words. 5 – Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill: A Brief Account of a Long Life – Gretchen Rubin. The evidence for and against various aspects of Winston Churchill’s personality. Alcoholic/racist/humanitarian. 6 – Catch-22 – Joseph Heller. Classic I never read. 7 – Beyond Wealth – Alexander Green. A book about being ultra-wealthy from someone ultra wealthy. 8 – Guide to the Good Life – William Irvine. Book on stoicism. 9 – Antifragile – Nassim Taleb. Uncertainty is everywhere and most people’s lives are quite fragile. How do you protect yourself from it. 10 – A Random Walk Down Wall Street – Burton Malkiel. A book about investment.
• 13 December 2015 - 10 IDEAS for why you shouldn't quit your job
  My blog is pretty biased towards doing your own thing and quitting your job – so here is the other side.1 – You don’t have any uncertainty as to what you’re going to earn. It’s easy to plan out your future.2 – Sometimes things don’t work out. You could get ill or be an an accident. There’s no sick pay for the self-employed. 3 – If you have a job you can leave at work then you are completely free the rest of your time. No work worries or stress. 4 – You can quit whenever you want. It is someone else’s problem making sure the company doesn’t collapse. If you start your own business or are self-employed that is not always possible. 5 – It forces you to meet new people. If you’re an introvert like me, it can be very easy to spend a lot of time with yourself. 6 – It forces you out of your comfort zone. If you’re told to cold call someone or chase a client for money – you have to. 7 – You have deadlines and targets. You can’t be too lazy! Sometimes I have a week or two where I don’t do anything :(. 8 – It makes you get up each day. I sometimes spend a lot of time in bed… 9 – You can hollow out an empire and autonamity in your job. Become an employee-preneur. All the advantages of being your own boss but with the infrastructure of the big company to help you. 10 – You get maternity leave.
• 12 December 2015 - 10 IDEAS for why you should quit your job
  1 – Working takes up a huge portion of your life. Do you really want to say you spent 50% of your life working? Do something you’re actually enjoy and is a good use of that time, even if it means you only just scrape by. Swapping half your life for some extra comfort/gadgets just isn’t worth it.2 – The extra energy for innovating and building your own thing could well lead to more money3 – There’s a cap on how much you can earn if you work for someone else. Even if you make it to the top and become CEO you’re still only earning a tiny fraction of what the company is making, and everyone will hate and resent you. If you make a fortune being your own boss and creating stuff the sky is the limit and noone can accuse you of being overpaid. 4 – Who wants ‘a boss’? Reclaim your independence. Even if you get to the top you will still be working for someone else. The CEO is still an employee. 5 – If your job is monotonous and doesn’t stimulate you then it will degrade your brain and be bad for your health. If your job is really stressful and hard then it will degrade your brain and be bad for your health. It is much easier to get the balance right if you are your own boss. 6 – There’s a good chance part of your job will involve something that you do not believe in morally. You can’t say no if you are an employee. For instance you might see something ethically wrong with: airline stewards selling scratch cards, fast food workers upselling unhealthy food extras, consultants charging for time when they didn’t provide a good service, stock brokers encouraging clients to churn their stock. I think you’d struggle to find any job that doesn’t have some sort of moral dilemma involved. 7 – It’s hard to think independently or out-side the box when you’re surrounded by a set way of thinking and culture. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with – chances are that is your coworkers. 8 – You can’t choose who you spend your time with. If you dislike your co-worker be very careful! You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with – you might become those people you despise. 9 – If your job is in a very expensive city (like London), then you might actually have a lower standard of living than a mininum wage worker somewhere else. If you move then you could earn a lot less and have a better life. 10 – If you work for someone else you are never the biggest fish in your pond. That means you will be comparing yourself to someone who has more.
• 11 December 2015 - 10 IDEAS on how to improve the iPhone
  I haven’t upgraded my iPhone from the 5s because I’m not excited by any of the improvements. What would I like to see that would make me upgrade?1 – Waterproof. Please!! I actually have nightmares about dropping my phone in a river.2 – Scratch/shatter proof. 3 – A USB cable that doesn’t fray. 4 – Battery saving features. On the pull up bar. For instance, disable network searching, only check messages every half an hour or disable background apps. That sort of thing. Somewhere between airplane mode and normal use. 5 – A light on the front for the selfie camera 6 – A dashboard that shows a breakdown of how much time your spending on different apps/features. To allow you to manage your time better. 7 – A small projector/ hologram. Increase the screen size without increasing the phone dimensions. 8 – Step/height/etc measurer that all those watches do. You keep your phone on you at all time anyway so why not get some stats about how much excercise you do in a normal day. 9 – A much longer battery life. Even if computing power isn’t improved I don’t care. Focus on battery. The phone speed is good enough already. 10 – Free wireless everywhere. Or 4g. Similar to how kindle does it.
• 10 December 2015 - 10 IDEAS FOR TOPICS FOR THE DAILY IDEAS
  I’m running out of inspiration so need some new ’10 daily ideas’ subjects:1 – 10 ideas for books I should read. There’s loads out there I should read but I’ve never really done any research or worked out which ones I should prioritise.2 – 10 ideas for personel research projects. I like the idea of actually doing some proper research into something that noone has looked at before. For instance looking at how many people die per 1kg supply of cocaine to the USA. What is the human cost of being a recreational illegal drug user. 3 – 10 ideas for reasons to get/keep a job. My blog is pretty biased towards quitting your job and doing your own thing. It’s worth thinking about the other side. 4 – 10 ideas for reasons to quit your job. The opposite side to 3! 5 – 10 ideas for ways to improve the iPhone. I haven’t upgraded my iPhone from the 5s because I’m not excited by any of the improvements. What would I like to see that would make me upgrade? 6 – 10 ideas for businesses aimed at children/old age pensioners. Most of my businesses are aimed at people like me, let’s explore a different market. 7 – 10 ideas for ‘we buy any…’ businesses. For instance ‘we buy any car’. ‘we buy any phone’ 8 – 10 ideas for podcasts. 9 – 10 ideas for TV shows. 10 -10 ideas for cuddly toys.
• 6 December 2015 - 10 IDEAS for Amazon FBA products
  I am making a decent amount of money from Amaon FBA and so are a few of my friends. If I want to expand I need more products. The requirements are:

  • Must be easy to quality control. We’re ordering from chinese factories so need to be careful. That removes most electronics or any sort of chemicals/vitamins.
  • Must have a large organic audience. A table tennis bat case doesn’t, but a water bottle does. This is so that even with a small portion of the pie we still get a lot of sales.
  • Must be something that we can get some sales for from our blogs (this one, Expert in a Year, Expert Table Tennis. Doesn’t need to be many but we need enough early sales to get momentum going on Amazon and to start being ranked.
  • Must not be too large or heavy and must RRP for at least £10. Any less and it’s not worth the Amazon FBA fees.

  1 – A waterbottle. Everyone has a use for a waterbottle but we can target it towards table tennis players initially. 2 – A foam roller. Once again can market it towards table tennis players and then get general traffic. 3 – Nice notebook/journal. Could market it as good for keeping your daily ideas in. 4 – First aid kit. Could market it towards brazilian Jiu jitsu fighters or table tennis players. 5 – Excercise/gym mats you can use easily in your home. Again target at BJJ fighters. 6 – Sports microfibre towel. 7 – iPhone/iPad cases. Not sure exactly the best way to do it, perhaps table tennis artwork but in a nice design to appeal to non-table tennis users. 8 – Beer brewing kit. Could link it in with a post about starting a brewery. 9 – Sports based cuddly toys. Perhaps table tennis bat or player. 10 – Socks. A random one but everyone likes socks! And sizing doesn’t matter as much as with other clothing. 11 – Underwear. Market it as sports underwear. Fitted for sports, odourless and sweat absorbing. That sort of thing.
• 4 December 2015 - 10 IDEAS for Christmas presents I'd like to receive
  I never make a Christmas list because I never really want anything. So this year I will try hard to work out what I want! (bonus marks if you can work out what the common theme is?)1 – Timberland rugged boat shoes. Or rugged waterproof boots. Size 9.2 – Socks. Always short of socks! Icebreaker I’ve heard good things about. 3 – Some affordable but good qualiy in-ear headphones. Sometimes it is too loud to hear what is being said on my audiobooks/podcasts while on the London underground. Something like this. 4 – The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry by Christine De Pizan (only if you can find a very cheap copy) 5 – A nice leather wallet. It should be small and should be able to take cards and notes. No need for a coin pouch. 6 – Packtowel ultralite extra large. 7 – Moleskine pocket notebook. One ruled, one plain. 8 – A nice pair of winter gloves. 9 – Boxer shorts from Icrebreaker or Exofficio. 10 – Silk sleep sack. Like this or this.
• 1 December 2015 - 10 IDEAS for skills to learn in 2016
  “The first 20 hours” TED talk by Josh Kaufman got me thinking. Here are 10 skills that I would like to spend 20 hours on in 2016 to acquire some pretty cool skills.1 – Guitar – I don’t know any instruments2 – Spanish (languages) – 20 hours might be pushing my luck! 3 – Backflip – basic acrobatics 4 – Boxing – it would be a nice compliment to my Jiu-Jitsu 5 – Accents 6 – Cold calling 7 – Juggling 8 – Magic tricks 9 – Calligraphy – fancy handwriting – nice signature. Get a nice signature! 10 – Dance – salsa or ballroom
• 24 November 2015 - 10 IDEAS for Haikus
  After listening to a James Altucher podcast I was motivated to try a different writing style. Here’s my attempts at writing 10 haikus.Requirements: 5-7-5 syllable structure. About nature.The commuter wakes The beauty of the country Turns into grey streets The lion hunts her prey But the deer is as fast as day No food she can slay Reading in nature Engrossed in a work of man Missing god’s glory Felling trees for fire A disaster for nature All to keep us warm Loving of beauty Desperate to save nature But consumed with hate Created by God Perfect for millenniums Ruined by mankind See the setting sun Awakening our true fears Until she returns How much can we learn From the tiniest spider As she weaves her silk Greatest love is this To ignore your hopes and dreams To serve one another Believe when I say Nature looks great on tv Shame it is smelly
• 22 November 2015 - 10 IDEAS for marketing/networking this blog
  Today’s daily ideas are on increasing my personal network with other people who could help drive traffic to this blog. Ideally in ways that could also lead to a good blog post.1 – List 100 blogs I’d like to connect with or get featured on. Email them all and write a post about the experience and the responses (if any) that I get.2 – Find a list of the top 100 networking events/conferences around the world for wannabe entrepreneurs. List them and create a calendar. Potentially even set it up as a separate website for the calender. Then go to the ones I can. 3 – Come up with an algorithmic approach to extending my professional network. Introducing people to each other. Perhaps use linked in. 4 – Start messaging other Quora writers who are writing about similar stuff to me. Again write a list of 50-100 and try and get in touch with all of them. 5 – Plant myself at the coffee shop once a week and invite anyone to pop and say hello . A say hello to Sam drop in session. 6 – Put together a list of publications or online news companies and email them all asking to write a post for them. Again could even compile the list and sell it. 7 – For each of my 15 best posts, list 30 websites that would be intersted in it. Then email them all. For instance one about house price. Find websites about house prices or estate agency. Matched betting one – post it on all the forums. 8 – Similar to 1 but instead contact them all asking to interview them. 9 – Put together a list of the top blogs and start commenting on their articles. Set up a google alert to say when a new article has been released and try and be the first. Where appropiate link back to this blog. Perhaps after the fourth comment. 10 – Re-tweet good blog articles. I check everyone who has retweeted my stuff so it might help get noticed. Feels a bit passive though…
• 21 November 2015 - 10 IDEAS for alternative ways to pay for medical research
  My dad is a professor of neuroscience. He has dedicated his life to researching and trying to cure spinal injuries. But he has often said that he has spent most of his time trying to raise money to pay for the invaluable research his team is doing. Here are some alternative ideas for him.1 – Do a Kickstarter campaign.2 – Look to raise salaries through Patreon. Basically people pledge a certain amount a month to help pay you a salary to cover your work. 3 – Write a dummies guide to the research with donation buttons. Most of the research or publications are illegible to anyone who isn’t a professional neuroscientist. 4 – Do a video series from inside the lab. Showing what research is being done, how it is being done etc. 5 – Live stream debates between top scientists in the field. 6 – Do webinars where any old person can pay to log in and ask a question. 7 – Make a lot of the research and results open source. Focus on the data collection and invite volunteers to try and make sense of it. 8 – Do more personal branding for individual professors. Writing on Quora. Build up their linkedIn profile. Write easy to understand articles and aim to get them published in major publications. Try to get paid by journalists for the expert opinions. 9 – Do a podcast interview publicity tour. Go on all the independant podcasts possible with an intellectual slant/but wide audience. 10 – Republish previous grant applications with the results or progress. Make it public and show why it is worth continueing to fund. 11 – Write a blog that gives you a scientist’s perspective on the sensationalist science stories on mainstream news sites.
• 19 November 2015 - 10 IDEAS to speed up blog content creation
  I’m averaging one blog post every 9 days. How can I speed that up without sacrificing quality?1 – Set aside one day a week for writing a blog post. Then finish it off over the next few days.2 – Do some more ‘easier’ compilation posts. Such as a compilation of best ideas from ideas post. Or the first chapter of the Expert in a Year bookExpert in a Year book. Or basic strategy stuff for Amazon marketing. Or my best quora answers. 3 – Do more interviews. Could try for one a week and then outsource the summary write up on freelancer. 4 – Do more ‘top ten’ or ‘my favourite’ posts. Such as my favourite blogs. Favourite quotes. Top ten laptops etc 5 – Do more follow-up posts. How is the book going, How are the bats going. How are the bat cases doing. 6 – Ask some people to write guest posts for the blog. Occasional, on point and well edited ones only. Perhaps opposite viewpoints to what I have previously written. 7 – Post some of my articles from expertinayear.com 8 – Translate some of quora articles into blog posts. 9 – Do some easy planning posts – such as news years resolutions or my plans for the next six months. Or businesses in the pipeline. 10 – Do a question and answer post. Send out emails asking for any questions and then write it up in a single post. A private AMA. Should have a big enough audience to get a good response.
• 18 November 2015 - 10 IDEAS for secret santa gifts
  I have left getting a gift till the last minute….1 – USB Cup Warmer2 – Grow your own Mr Grey 3 –Beer Cookbook – recipes all involving beer. 4 – Stein/giant beer glass 5 – Pirate Corkscrew 6 – Novelty drinks glass – maybe in the shape of a women 7 – Boyfriend pillow 8 – Floating mug 9 – Guitar USB stick 10 – Half-and-half football shirt…
• 17 November 2015 - 10 IDEAS for businesses you can start while at university
  Today’s daily ideas are a response to a question asked on Quora: “Can I have some good startup idea for a collage student studying computer science?”1 – Start a tech outsourcing firm. Effectively become a middleman where you take a native English speaker’s non-technical requirements and turn them into a technical specification. Then you manage a team of freelancers to create the product.2 – Create a review website for the modules of your course. A place where people can leave anonymous reviews and write-ups of the different modules. Let them rate each module for different things: ‘difficulty of the exam’, ‘difficulty of the coursework’, ‘teaching quality’, ‘interestingness’. I remember when I studied CS picking modules was really tough and I think at least half my choices came from rumours and hearsay. 3 – Create a dating app for the university. Only university students allowed, let people mark what societies, sports, subject they do. You can probably find the source code for a Tinder copy somewhere online. 4 – Start a personal blog. Spend a couple of hours a day on it. Provided you stick with it may well have got popular enough by the time you graduate that you can make a living from it. Even if it hasn’t it will make a great online CV and you will have got pretty good at expressing your thoughts in writing. As a computer scientist that will help stand you apart. 5 – Create an online educational resource explaining what you have learnt in your modules. Call it ‘computer science for dummies’ or something similar. Take the really complicated high level instruction you receive and dum it right down. I remember one of the biggest struggles with learning computer science was that all the resources I could find on Google assumed you already had a high level of knowledge. A massive side benefit is that it will force you to really learn the content. Leading to better grades and a business. 6 – Write mock papers for each of your modules. Collect all the previous exams and start to write your own. Then charge people a small fee to access them. Again it will force you to really learn your course content. Leading to better grades and a business. 7 – Start a tutoring business. Basically a website that matches up older students with younger ones to teach them the content of a module the older student has already excelled at. Maybe have some way to verify that the person knows what they talking about. For instance if your looking for someone to help you with your module on machine learning, you should be able to sort the available tutors by what grade they got in that course. You simply provide the platform and take a commission from the tutors using the site. 8 – Start a university gossip news site. Something really tabloidy, like the daily mail but aimed at your university. Lots of gossip, fashion, sport. Everything that people in a university microcosm care about. 9 – Create a really good pdf or online video course that you can sell to new students. An introduction to the university and the course. Tell them about the reputation of all the halls of residence, the best night spots, the best society and clubs. What to expect in different situations. Make it an invaluable guide that all new students will want to purchase before starting the course. 10 – Similar to the last one but make it free and profit via affiliate links. Try to get sponsorship from the local bars and night-life. Link to all the text books from your course.
• 16 November 2015 - 10 IDEAS to generate more traffic for this site
  Wow, 8 days since my last daily ideas…. I have been a bit distracted training hard for a Jiu-Jitsu tournament on the 14th. It paid off, I got my first win!I haven’t put much work into marketing this site but now I have some good articles I probably should… here are some ideas about what I could do.1 – Write more regularly on Quora. It has so far been one of my best traffic generators. 2 – Submit some of my articles to be published on other sites. Such as Entrepreneur, Huffington post etc. 3 – Try Google Adwords for really targeted searches. Such as how to self-publish an audiobook, stuff I have written a direct post about. 4 – Try to get on some entrepreneurial/online businessey podcasts. For instance Smart Passive Income. 5 – Go along to conferences/meetups with other bloggers. Try to get my name out there among some people with big audiences. 6 – Create a beer which is branded like a business card for me and this site. Then send it to a load of influencers. A unique present/business card. Maybe do it with something that isn’t alcohol so that customs doesn’t matter. 7 – Boost on Facebook my better posts. 8 – Run a competition to share a favourite article. Perhaps use stacksocial. 9 – Create a list of sites to post all my articles to. Reddit, MSE, LinkedIn, stumble upon, forums, etc. Keep a record of which ones allowed it and which ones deleted the link for future reference. A bit spammy but not a bad idea. Could do the same as an experiment with the BJJ blog and write about the results in a post here. 10 – Do extensive Googling for anyone asking the question I am answering each post. Then post a link to the post as an answer. Even if it’s old and noone reads it, it should help with SEO.
• 8 November 2015 - 10 IDEAS for brands that Eastfield could partner with
  After my post on how we failed to start selling t-shirts for our Eastfield brand someone commented that we could look to partner with another brand. Here are some ideas for brands we could do that with. We could set it up as a license where we make a percent of each sale of the Eastfield item. Basically dropshipping.1 – Underarmour.2 – Butterfly. 3 – Adidas. 4 – AWDIS. 5 – Kariban. 6 – Gamegear. 7 – Babolat. 8 – Wilson. 9 – Yonex. 10 – Asics.
• 6 November 2015 - 10 IDEAS for Katherine Larcombe's business
  A friend of mine has just started an online store selling her artwork. Here are some ideas on how she can improve and build her new business.1 – Sell various packs of Christmas cards. Rather than just one-off do packs of 10 or 20. Then packs with combinations of different cards.2 – Pop into some fancy card stores and try and sell them some amount in wholesale. See the ideas on 4 Nov for how to do this. 3 – Create a time-lapse video of her drawing a new design from scratch. Start to finish to see the process and how skilled it is. 4 – Send her cards to all her friends and family for Christmas. Inside write something like “ps. what do you think of the card? I designed it! If you loved it I’d reakky appreciate if you could leave a review on my store: www….” 5 – Create an affiliate scheme for the etsy store. 6 – Draw a portrait of a mini celebrity with a good twitter or instagram following. Then send it to them as a card with a nice message inside. Hopefully they’ll upload it to their instagram/twtter. 7 – Try and game the etsy front page. Get as many reviews as possible, and try and get on the editor’s choice. Could try and find out who the editor’s are from linkedin and then send them a few cards. 8 – Try and get on notonthehighstreeet for personalised portraits or cards. 9 – After Christmas do a range of cards for other events. Birthday’s, Easter, Hanukkah, Chinese New Year, etc. 10 – Create an account on Freelancer and offer to do illustrations for books etc.
• 5 November 2015 - 10 IDEAS for books aimed at 3-5 year-olds
  After this week’s Apprentice, today’s daily ideas are for children’s book aimed at 3-5 year-olds. Unfortunately I don’t know any 3-5 year old’s so these are probably going to be really bad/unsuitable.1 – Daddy’s (or mummy’s) day at work. Story of what a businessman does told in a child’s way. Perhaps each page is a different part. The commute. The office. The metting. Lunch. etc2 – Story of all the household jobs the parents do. What it’s like to be an adult. 3 -A story about money. Teaching the importance of saving and how money saved grows over time. Perhaps at the beginning the hero is saving and is getting sad because all their friends have amazing things. But as time goes on the amazing things break and the friend’s never advance. But the hero becomes richer and richer and eventually has the most amazingness of things. 4 – A book about a boy finding his sport. Trying everything out until he finds something he loves. Get the child thinking about what they’d like to learn and teaching them the basics of different sports. 5 – A book about a child travelling the world with their parents. One place is too hot. another is too cold, another is too loud. Searching for a home and then finally realising that home is wherever the family is. 6 – Traditional bible stories retold in modern day. Perhaps about Jesus being friends with the sinners and lowest of the low. Encourage them to be friends and nice to even the ‘uncool’ kids. 7 – A nonsense rhyming story, but where the words get more and more complicated as the story goes on. So that as they get older they can keep coming back and learning more and more words. Also good for the parents. 8 – A story which involves the same words on each page, but with different punctuation so that the meaning changes. “Let’s eat Grandma.” vs. “Let’s eat, Grandma!” 9 – A book about a child learning to dance. Starting off not very good, but persevering and eventually becoming the best. Just because you’re not naturally the best, doesn’t mean you can’t learn it. 10 – A story about food and a child trying lots of new food. Lots of them look nice and are yucky, but some look yucky and are really nice. To encourage them to try different foods.
• 4 November 2015 - 10 IDEAS on how to wholesale to independant stores
  I think that wholesaling is one of the best ways to expand for a small brand. But how do you go about it? Today’s daily ideas are on ways I could build wholesales relationships with small stores.1 – Offer to buy back any unsold stock after 30-days. Make it a risk free purchase for them.2 – Get the best contact details for the decision maker at every shop. Even on failed sales. That way we can check if they want some more stock easily at a future date and can send them a catalog of our newest and bestselling items. 3 – Record the number sold by each place so we can use it for leverage on the next sale. “Well shop xxx sold 24 in just one week”. 4 – Have no minimum order and no aggressive bargaining. This isn’t The Apprentice. Our The aim is to build long lasting relationships. 5 – If the decision maker/buyer isn’t there make sure to push and get their contact details. 6 – Hire a virtual assistant to map out all the relevant shops in central London. Then start pounding the streets. Categorise by what sort of shop they are. 7 – Create a 30 second pitch for each catergory of shop. For instance if selling beer there is a different pitch for a liquor store than a bar. 8 – The pitch should include – problem, our story, solution, why it’s perfect for that shop. 9 – Have a ‘one I made earlier’ to show what the finished product looks both packaged and eventually. 10 – Contact each store 2 weeks later to see how sales are going and then a month after that. Continue to build on the relationships started.
• 1 November 2015 - 10 IDEAS for straight-to-audio books I could create
  I reckon that there’s a lot of opportunity to self-publish audio-books that aren’t just recorded books, but are productions designed for audio.1 – An audio version various of my blog posts. How to create an outsourced supply chain etc. How to plan out a business. The process of coming up with and executing on ideas.2 – A brainstorm into a bunch of different businesses. How they should improve and what they could do better. 3 – A course on setting up a business. Either online or offline. 4 – A course on matched betting. 5 – A simplified explanation of the major philosophies. 6 – How to get into… Interviews with leaders in different jobs and how they got there and what advice they’d give to people trying to make it in that career. 7 – Children stories. Children love being read to. Why not have productions designed by great voice-artists for children to listen to. 8 – Compilations on the best comedy sketches of all time. 9 – A computer science course explanation. Books on the major topics – algorithms, object-oriented programming, functional programming etc. But explained simply by someone who is very charismatic. 10 – Debates about various biblical topics by people from all accross the christian and non-christian spectrum.
• 31 October 2015 - 10 IDEAS to cheer up a friend in hospital
  A friend of mine has recently been taken into hospital. He’s having a tough time and it looks like he will be there for a few weeks. Today’s daily ideas are things I can do to help cheer him up1 – Get a cleaner for their house. Say once a week for four weeks. That means that his girlfriend doesn’t need to worry about housework or anything and it means he’ll have a pristine house to come back to.2 – Buy him the the most epic and cosiest blanket ever invented. Every situation is improved with a blanket. So make it the best blanket ever. 3 – Bring him loads of snacks. Everything someone could possibly crave. From chocolate to Doritos to haribo. Anything he doesn’t want he can use to make friends with the patients/nurses. 4 – Lend him my iPad and fill it full of film and, TV shows. All already downloaded. If he’s without wifi and not doing anything all day then it could really help. 5 – A selection of books and audiobooks. Casual escapism fiction mixed in with some motivational talks by people who have gone through a sudden monumental change in their lives. He’s probably getting too much sympathy, so maybe what he needs is someone to tell him that it isn’t the end of the world and to get on with living. 6 – A selection of games that can be played without much movement and in any place. Such as card games or board games. Stuff that is hands on. 7 – I-owe-yous for all sorts of fun things for when he is better. I-owe-you a trip on Go-ape, or I-owe-you a trip go-karting. Or whatever. Stuff they’d love but can’t always find someone able/willing to do it. 8 – A bible. A bit of a cliche but during hard times it can be really comforting to know there’s a higher power. 9 – A fancy trip home from hospital. In a Ferrari or Bentley or something. Royal luxury. 10 – A recorded audio diary from a bunch of friends and relatives. Like a podcast but unedited and aimed solely at him. So that he can hear his friends outside of visiting hours. 11 – An awesome pair of headphones/earplugs and a sleep mask. Hospitals are loud unpleasant places and everyone likes their sleep. 12 – A drawing pad, plenty of pencils and a how-to guide. Let him spend the time learning to draw.
• 30 October 2015 - 10 IDEAS for 3d print-on-demand products
  I recently came across Shapeways which is a 3d-printing company that allows people to buy your products ‘on-demand’. Think createspace but for physical product. Today 10 ideas are for items I can create to sell on this site.1 – Table tennis figurines. We have a history of selling well in table tennis. We should be able to leverage this knowledge2 – Table tennis phone covers 3 – Table tennis bat handle 4 – Coffee mugs – espresso, flat white, etc 5 – Matcha tea mug 6 – Coffee coasters and table mats 7 – Table tennis necklaces 8 – Plant pot 9 – Cigarette holder 10 – Trophies
• 29 October 2015 - 10 IDEAS FOR business areas I'd like to get into in 2016
  There are some great technologies that have come out in the last few years that can be used to start an businesses. Here are the ones I am most excited about trying in 2016.1 – On demand 3d printing. Basically you create a blueprint for an item and list it on Amazon. Then when someone buys the product a company will 3d print it and deliver it to them. Think createspace but for products rather than books.2 – Creating and selling directly the 3d blueprints for items for people to print in their own home. 3 – Kickstarter… A great business model. Just need to work out a project I care enough about to do. 4 – Outsourced beer brewing. Now with Shipwire combined with contract brewing it should be possible to start a completely hands off brewery. 5 – An e-commerce business that offers one-hour delivery using uber/henchman etc. 6 – A smartphone app. (I’ve never made one for public consumption – I know, I’m well behind the times) 7 – Art printing on demand. Perhaps taking young artists at schools and putting their projects online for people to buy prints of. 8 – A recruitment style business. Perhaps placing coaches in schools 9 – A social media marketing company. Forget seo. Social media marketing and personal branding is the thing. 10 – A personal networking/address book. A combination between a CRM, an address book and a relationships reminder. I haven’t found anywhere that is doing it well.
• 28 October 2015 - 10 IDEAS FOR businesses you can start while travelling
  Here are some ideas for how you can start a business/make a living online while travelling the world.1 – Freelancing… Everyone has skills that you can offer for money. From microjobs on Fiverr to contract work on Freelancer or directly from a company.2 – An Amazon FBA business. Basically this post but using Amazon. 3 – A travel blog. Yes there are a lot of these already, but if you can find a niche it could work well. For instance remote working/doing being a young traveller and trying to actually do some work whenever everyone else is getting drunk. Monetise through affiliates to hostelworld/travel comparison sites. Could even do video reviews of everywhere you stay. 4 – Use the trip as market research for products that you think could sell well at home. Start a store on Shopify that sells random and unique goods from around the world. Then ship to your fulfilment centre a batch of anything you find that looks interesting. From sauces to artwork. 5 – Became a recruiter for outsourced programmers/virtual assistants. Use it to go to a lot of different countries and find the best programming teams in each one. Then take a commission for each client you refer. 6 – Become an affiliate for factories on Alibaba. There are lots of westerners who want to get stuff made cheaply abroad, but they are worried because they have heard a lot of horror stories about poor quality or are worried about the working conditions. Basically go and visit the best ones and write reviews and get paid for referrals. 7 – Same as 6. But instead become a middleman for getting stuff created. People come to you with a product they want made, you find the best factory from the places you have visited and set it all up. Taking a cut. 8 – Do a podcast for a niche. For instance Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Then travel around and interview the best people from all over the world. It’s too expensive for anyone to compete with you and the variety will be really interesting to your target audience. 9 – Try and get paid by your old university to go into the expensive schools all around the world and give a talk on why your old university is the best. My university (Warwick) is trying very hard at the moment to attract international students. 10 – Start matched betting.
• 27 October 2015 - 10 IDEAS FOR why flying in planes is awesome
  I have a friend who is scared of flying. Here’s a list for her.1 – Planes are like a magic box. You go in on a cold wet miserable winter day, and come out in a beautiful sunny paradise.2 – Films! You can watch loads of awesome new films. 3 – You might sit next to an interesting rich fitty. 4 – Everyone back home is jelous of you. 5 – Morning pre-flight beer/champagne. Early morning flights are the only time it’s acceptable to have a beer at 6am. 6 – Duty free handbags. 7 – Free booze on the flight. 8 – It’s a great chance to people watch all those weird folk who are going on holiday to the same place as you. You can make up stories about what they’re up to. 9 – Hen dos/stag dos/uni tours. Watch their amusing antics and take the piss out of their bad nicknames without having them ruin your night out. 10 – Great chance to catch up on your reading/homework.
• 26 October 2015 - 10 IDEAS FOR Halloween costumes
  1 – A posh rich twat. Go as someone from ‘Made in Chelsea’.2 – The Terminator.3 – Giles and Mary from gogglebox. 4 – Go as a group go dressed as one of our friends. Someone who is going to be there and make it a surprise. For instance Therese – bird pins and bat detectors! 5 – A hipster. 6 – An activist. 7 – A banker. 8 – Wolf of wall street. 9 – Twilight – a gliterry vampire. 10 – David Cameron
• 23 October 2015 - 10 IDEAS FOR ways to improve this blog
  1 – Build a series of emails that get sent out automatically to new subscribers. For instance one a week for the first four weeks. Add loads of value in each email.2 – Provide something for free to encourage people to sign up to email list. For instance a book or course.3 – Embed ‘similar articles’ links in each post. Ideally mid way through the post or in a handy location. Currently the topics on this blog are a bit too varied for easy navigation. 4 – Have the email subscribe box pop up after a bit of a wait. Generally I don’t like this as it is a bit annoying, but it could be useful. 5 – Get someone to go through and professionally edit all the article already written. 6 – Add a feedback tool. So people can leave anonymous feedback on my posts. Currently people only tell me what’s good! 7 – Write more about personal/less tutorial articles. Try for a 50/50 ratio. My detailed articles are useful but a bit dry. I get most complements for articles such as the one about learning. 8 – Make the website flow better. Go through all my old posts and seed more links. 9 – Get someone to edit this daily ideas thread. There are too many grammatical errors in it. Plus some of the ideas are written up so briefly they just aren’t understandable. 10 – Put up a voting system for what articles people would like to see me write. Help to organise the drafts. 11 – Write more follow-up or part 2 posts.
• 22 October 2015 - 10 IDEAS FOR ways to monetise this blog
  Todays daily ideas are on ways to make money from this blog. Currently I make hardly anything but traffic is getting pretty good so it may be time to change that.1 – Create reactionary products. See which blog posts get a lot of search engine traffic and then build a product off the back. For instance a matched betting course.2 – Offer one-to-one consultation/coaching via clarity. Basically a call service which allows people to schedule a call with you and pay by the minute. I have an account but never really use. 3 – Write a series of books that repackage and extend on my current posts. 4 – Find and negotiate affiliate deals with the companies that don’t already have ones. 5 – Renegotiate my current affiliate deals and try to improve them 6 – Charge for talks. Post myself on a ‘speaker’ site and link from the blog. For instance Speakers’ Corner. 7 – Do an online course for instance on Udemy. 8 – Write a general book about small businesses. 9 – Get in touch with university entrepreneur departments and offer to do talks using the blog and Quora as credentials. 10 – Create a pay to enter mastermind group.
• 21 October 2015 - 10 IDEAS FOR setting up a micro-brewery
  I thought it would be cool to make my own beer, so today’s ideas are on how to go about that.1 – Find someone who knows about brewing and team up with them. Get them to come up with the recipe.2 – Set a budget for the first batch, say £2k-£5k. 3 – Find a brewery that has spare capacity and negotiate for them to contract brew the first batch. Better to negotite on minimun order requirements rather than price at this stage. 4 – Get a bottle branded on fiverr. 5 – Convince all my friends to buy a crate. 6 – Walk into 50 off-licenses or pubs and try and sell them a crate. 7 – Try and sell the entire first batch. But if we can’t, start gifting it or hold a party. 8 – Set the price in order to aim to break even on the initial investment. 9 – If the first batch is a success, sort out all the legals and tax stuff. Set up a company etc. Then do another batch. 10 – Write a good blog post about it!
• 20 October 2015 - 10 IDEAS FOR services I wish my accountant provided
  Today’s daily ideas are for value adds that an accountant can provide above and beyond tax advice and tax returns.1 – Give some real specific business statistics for startups based on what other clients are dong. Such as how much margin there should be on food, how much would be reasonable takings a day for a business of that size and in that location.2 – Provide a lesson on good bookkeeping. Tell them exactly what they should provide, how to record it etc. Store it all on a cloud system that the accountant can access whenever. 3 – Introduce startups to good bankers or lawyers. Explain what they should look for in a good banker or lawyer. 4 – Network different clients together. 5 – Provide a lesson on supplier negotiation. How much is a reasonable discount to ask for from a b2b supplier etc. 6 – Help with VAT planning well before the VAT threshold is hit. 7 – Advice on the best systems to use for till systems or any other money/bookeeping related software. 8 – An early warning system. A prediction of expenses into the future and how that will affect cash flow. 9 – Security advice on how to protect the company both from employees who have access to company cash and from outside sources. 10 – Predictions on how long it will take the company to become profitable/for the founders to be able to take out any profit. Many founders underestimate how much grinding they’ll need to do before turning a profit.
• 19 October 2015 - 10 IDEAS FOR books about matched betting
  Currently my most read article is on Matched Betting. So today’s are ideas for books about it that I could write to help monetise that traffic.1 – A beginners guide to matched betting.2 – Matched betting, your first 20 bookies. 3 – Arbing and how to make your accounts last. 4 – An Introduction to Sharbing and physical matched betting. 5 – Matched betting at casino. 6 – Taking matched betting from a hobby to a profession. 7 – Ten different types of bonus and the matched betting strategy to profit from them. 8 – Five greatest matched betting stories 9 – Gnoming and muliti-account matched betting. 10 – Ten tactics to get a fraudulent bookie to pay out matched betting winnings.
• 16 October 2015 - 10 IDEAS FOR TOPICS FOR THE DAILY IDEAS
  Today’s daily ideas are for future topics for the daily ideas.1 – ideas for ways to monetise the blog.2 – ideas to monetise Quora. 3 – ideas for blog posts. 4 – ideas for passive income businesses. 5 – ideas for matched betting book titles. 6 – ideas for ways to get more upvotes on quora. 7 – ideas to monetise the expert in a year book. 8 – ideas for minimising my lifestyle. 9 – ideas for novels to write. 10 – ideas for how to network via Quora.
• 15 October 2015 - 10 ideas for Kickstarter campaigns
  Today’s daily ideas are for businesses or creative projects I could do that would likely be popular on Kickstarter.1 – A BJJ documentary following the day-to-day life of a top BJJ competitor. There are plenty of people who spend a lot of money on BJJ and this could be an interesting film. Make it professional level.2 – An action film using only homeless people where 50% of the profits go to the actors. A gritty story about the life of homelessness but based off real anecdotes and using real actors. 3 – A dictaphone that you can use in the shower than automatically transcribes and sends the result to the cloud (ie dropbox). 4 – A sport streaming service. Basically raise money to buy up back catalogues of sports games in various sports. Like netflix but for old sport. Stay away from the expensive licenses or live services. 5 – A global video game e-sports promotion company. Like the UFC but for video games. 6 – An online art gallery where you can buy prints, just showing the work of young people. A large percent of the sale price goes to them and it is used to encourage children from rough or impoverished backgrounds to be creative and potentially earn some money. 7 – A corruption reporting app. Photograph, write about some seeming corruption. People upvote it and the top lot get investigated by a team of lawyers. Basically a filter to clamp down on the injustices you can still find in first world countries. 8 – A 3d printing design factory. You send them a specification for anything and they will create a 3d printable model and can even ship out a prototype. From car parts, to art, to phone cases, to furniture. 9 – A recording device you can have on at all times. Charge it once every other day. Shaped as a card so you can carry it round in your wallet. Then it deletes old audio every other day but you can access and save it to your computer. So that people who think they might be abused by police or by their work colleagues or boss can carry it at all times.  
• 14 October 2015 - 10 ideas for how to earn as possible in just two months
  Given the challenge of making as much money as possible in two months starting with just £200 (or $300), how would I go about it.1 – Get back into matched betting and casino bagging. It’s a very easy way to grow money quickly (up to a point).2 – Apply for contracting jobs on a short term basis – two months. A high daily rate. 3 – Find companies that have high value ticket items and offer to do sales for them on a purely commission basis. For instance mortgage companies, recruitment companies, estate agents, charities, law firms, b2b internet providers. Focus on high net-worth individuals or businesses and hustle hard. 4 – Host social parties and charge people to attend (in advanced). Find a niche, such as London startups, sports communities, foodies, etc – and beg/bribe a few key names to attend. If not enough people sign up, cancel and refund everyone then move on to the next one. 5 – Start raising money for charities on a commission basis – then put on events and invite everyone you know. Go the route of the posh charity event/fundraiser that we see in films in america. Contact loads of companies and get them to sponsor prizes and stuff about the event. Then take your percent of the amount raised. 6 – Come up with an smartphone app or software company that has a competitor with a history aggressively purchasing smaller companies. Create a working prototype very quickly. As a computer scientist I could do most of that so wouldn’t need to hire a programmer. £200 is more than enough for the hosting and domain names etc. If I worked really hard for two weeks I could get the first step app done. Then try and get the competitor buy me out. I’m thinking something in banking. Maybe another EtAdvisor type website. Could probably get £50k-£100k for the prototype and a no-compete. Rinse and repeat. 7 – Do something really stupid/controversial that gets a lot of media attention. Then charge news companies for the right to interview/hear about it. For instance pretend to hang yourself from a bridge in a protest against racism. Block a major motorway as a protest against greenhouse gas emissions. That sort of thing. 8 – Get a job at any big company for a few weeks. Then get yourself fired and claim it was based on discrimination. Sue them. Generally the courts favour the employee and chances are the company will just pay you out as it’s cheaper than the legal/news hassle. 9 – Get arrested for something petty and accuse/sue the police for being verbally abusive (even if not true). Provided you’re not asking for a ridiculous amount they’ll probably just pay out – especially if it was on the street where it’s your word against theirs. 10 – Find a bunch of startups that need to raise money by going to lots of silicon roundabout networking events. Hook them up with rich individuals who want to invest, and take a finders fee cut (perhaps as equity).
• 13 October 2015 - 10 ideas for gifts I can get my mother for her birthday
  It’s my mother’s birthday tomorrow and I need to get her a present.1 – One of the top murder mystery books of 2015. I reckon there’s a good chance she won’t have heard them yet!2 – A signed collage of the stuff I have made – the books, table tennis bat, bat case, etc. 3 – Cook her a meal. Something like Tim Ferris’ Osso Bucco. 4 – Do a surprise visit home – perhaps drag my sister along. 5 – Do a memory book with my sister. Each of us collate memories and stories of our childhood and put it together. That could be a long term project. 6 – Book a family photo shoot. 7 – Get a ‘last will and testament’ written… a weird one but she has been trying to get me to do one for years and I haven’t got round to it yet. 8 – Book the family to come and stay in one of my properties in Malta. They’ve never been.. 9 – The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit box set. 10 – A subscription to Amazon prime or another streaming service.
• 12 October 2015 - 10 ideas for how a lawyer can be useful to a startup
  Today’s daily ideas are for services a lawyer or law firm can offer to be useful to a startup that is above and beyond.1 – Can introduce the startup to other similar businesses, potential clients, potential co-founders or potential investors.2 – Can advise on what other startups have done in similar situations. For instance with regards to equity splits and how much to pay new employees. 3 – Can help value the company based on their experience of other clients who have raised money. “Well this company was at a similar stage to you and they valued themselves at x and had no trouble raising funds”. 4 – Can help the startup find suitable ‘professional services’ providers. Cut through the crap: such as finding a good accountant that isn’t too expensive but can provide for all the startup’s needs. A cash-strapped startup needs to be careful about who they hire. 5 – Can provide feedback on the startup’s pitches, business plans etc. As the firm comes across lots of business plans and hears a lot of presentations, their unbiased input is very useful. 6 – Can help negotiate for the startup. For instance on the finer points of a contract/exclusivity agreements etc. 7 – Can provide in-depth research. Most law firms have teams of expert researchers and can find out most things (for a price). Doesn’t need to be solely law related. Could for instance do research into competitors and their company histories. 8 – International business advice. Can advise on customs and what to be aware of when moving/expanding any business overseas. 9 – Recruitment advise. Lawyers deal with recruitment issues all the time. Based on how to legally hire low paid interns, to how to fire troublesome employees without getting sued. 10 – Damage control/counter-espionage. Although I don’t believe in leading with your lawyers, some industries are still rather nasty and a disrupting startup might run into trouble or be bullied. Counter attacking/responding with a law firm can show that even a small startup isn’t weak and easy prey.
• 9 October 2015 - 10 ideas for adventures
  Today’s daily ideas are for adventures I can go on.1 – A trip where you climb a mountain no one has ever done before. Like this one in Iceland.2 – Swimming with sunken ships. Underwater scuba dive treasure hunt. 3 – Rent a Ferrari/sports car and drive along the french Rivera. 4 – Go out into the English countryside with a waterproof sleeping bag and sleep under the stars. 5 – Rent a yacht with a group of friends and go round croatia. Do yacht week. 6 – Rent a castle with a group of friends and have a themed holiday. 7 – Road trip across the USA in a convertible car. 8 – Wine tour through france. Staying at vineyards and bnbs 9 – Get a hamper and fill it with drinks and cocktail ingredients. Then go out to the country and ahve an awesome liquid picnic 10 – Live off the country experience. Week with an expert in the countryside where you’re taught to scavenge and cook rabbit etc
• 7 October 2015 - 10 ideas for a massage parlour owner to retire in 7 years
  Today’s daily ideas are a weird one. They’re in response to this question I was asked on Quora.In short the question was:

  I’m currently 28 years old, and want to financially retired before 35. What path should I set out with my current skill set? My back ground and skill sets: – Own and operate a small massage parlor. The business make about 70k profit. I take home about 40k a year. Rest goes to my parents. – Fluent with Chinese Mandarin and English in reading and speaking. – Some photography skill, and Sony Vegas editing skill. – Social media savy. I was a social media specialist at a reputable marketing firm for a year. – Pretty good with sales. While I was working at a major retail bank, I had most referral as a Teller for the entire California region. I also worked at a multi marketing company before, and had the most personal recruit in the entire company that consisted of tens of thousands of reps. What I lack: – College degree.

  You can check out my answer here. But I basically worked out he needed to earn an extra 40k a year after tax to retire in just seven years. Here are my 10 ideas on how he can do that: 1 – Work harder and longer at the massage parlour. See if you can double it’s income. 2- Focus on marketing the massage parlour. Come up with some creative/innovative marketing ideas: Like a great refer-friend deal, or a partnership with another company where you share customers. Perhaps see if you can get it in some local newspapers. 3 – Start using and selling your own branded massage products in the massage parlour. It should save you money on the products you’re currently buying in and earn you a bit extra selling them. I wrote a pretty detailed here on how to go about creating your own products. 4 – Negotiate with your family for a larger share of the massage parlour’s income. 5 – Start doing some freelance photography on the side. 6 – Start doing some freelance translation on the side. 7 – Get another part time job in sales. If it’s commission based then the harder you work the more you make – which is perfect as you have such a well defined goal to work towards. 8 – Pack in/outsource the massage parlour and apply for any job that will pay you 80k after tax. Doesn’t matter if you’re not qualified or don’t have a college degree – just apply for as many as possible that sound interesting and that you think you can do well and then convince them why they should make an exception for you. 9 – Work out how to get the massage parlour self-sufficient and still profitable. Get it to a position where you don’t need to be there for it to run safely and profitably. Even if it’s now only making 40k instead of 70k that’s a great result. Once it’s ready, go and set up another one on exactly the same model or franchise out your brand to other people who want to get in the massage business. Build yourself a massage parlour empire. 10 – The total savings needed are $500. Your business is probably worth $200k-$300k. If you can save 24k a year (and live off 16k) for the seven years you should have $200k invested. If you can sell the business for $300k you’re there.
• 6 October 2015 - 10 ideas for businesses that can be built at almost no risk
  This question on Quora got me thinking about what it takes to turn an idea into a real business without ever taking a significant risk. The answer? Validation at each step before you move on and spend any money. But the idea needs to be for the right sort of business where that is possible, so today’s daily ideas are for just that.[EDIT] I have written a post on how to turn an idea into a business.For instance blogging requires you to give it a good go and pump hundreds of hours in before getting any validation or reward. It’s only after all that work that you will see some proof of concept on whether it was worth it. A business selling table tennis bats just needs a few people to buy your bats and give good feedback. 1 – A freelancing business. Programming/marketing/whatever. Start in spare time and slowly build up. 2 – A food cart. 3 – An iphone app for recording your daily ideas on. (build a really cheap simple one first and then scale with the customers, spend on marketing in proportion to the validation you’re receiving). 4 – A simple iphone game. Build it cheap, put it up for free. Then if lots of people download it build paid-for addons to it. Then start marketing in relation to the validation you’re getting. 5 – Any sort of kickstarter campaign. 6 – A novel – start as a short story, expand/improve it with sales or validation. Could either publish it really quickly or publish it on online forums/writer groups. Just because it’s published doesn’t mean you can’t edit and change it. If it’s crap ditch it but get it out there as soon as possible. 7 – An arts and crafts/home-made product business. Make one, put it on Etsy and see if someone buys it. If they do make another and put it for sale. If you start selling lots look to outsource that manufacturing and turn it into a passive income stream, then move onto the next item. 8 – Retail arbitrage. If it goes well start employing people to do the grunt research. Then move into wholesale purchasing of your popular products. Build an empire. 9 – A micro-brewery. Learn how to brew at home. make some beers and see if your friends like it.If they do get some bottled up with a nice label. Wonder round a bunch of pubs and off-licenses and try and sell them. If they do then contact a bunch of brewerys and see if they have capacity for some contract brewing. Scale up as sales come in. 10 – Start a product brand. Create a product prototype. Go round all your friends/family/family people in your niche and aim to get feedback on the prototype. Get commitments to buy your product before putting in the first big order. Aim to negotiate down a low minimum order quantity from the factory. Then only pull the trigger when you have commitments to buy for 30% of the stock you’re purchasing. Selling 30% should recoup your entire initial investment and anything extra is profit.
• 5 October 2015 - 10 ideas to speed up my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu progress
  I am currently training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) 4 days a week and I have a tournament on the 17th October and a more important one on the 14th November. Today’s daily ideas are on how can I improve enough to be ready for it?

  1 – Dedicate half an hour today to study. Reading Jiu-Jitus University or watching tutorial videos. I can easily find this time by stopping reading the BJJ subreddit.

  2 – Paying for an extra, one-to-one coaching session a week. 3 – Building a game plan and focusing on that. For instance pulling guard then working on transitioning from open-guard to closed guard or to triangle/armbar. Try and spend the next month specialising. 4 – Be the last person on the mat after each session. Keep training till no-one wants to train anymore. This should get at least an extra 25% rolling time from the standard training sessions. 5 – Email some interesting BJJ personalities/celebrities and ask for their advice. Talk about the blog/expert in a year and ask for their help. It’s a small enough world that they might be willing to. 6 – Work on some quick win – non-BJJ training. For instance work on increasing my flexibility or strength. BJJ has given me good cardio but in a 5-minute match that won’t be much use. Instead I could focus on some other physical traits I have been ignoring. 7 – Hound the coaches at each training session for advice and ‘quick wins’. 8 – Step up my training intensity. Instead of conserving energy to be able to roll every round, up the intensity to match level and sit out every other round. Go for submissions and use strength. 9 – Look to partner with people who will be at a similar weight to my opponents. Stay away from people who are much heavier or lighter than me. 10 – Improve my diet for the fortnight before the tournament. Go really clean, start juicing (fruit and veg juices – not steriods) and make a massive effort. It’s not something I can do indefinitely but a two-week stretch should be achievable.
• 4 October 2015 - 10 ideas to build an online 'independent financial advisor' firm
  I believe that the next big thing is going to be remote service jobs. One area that needs to be bought forward is independent financial advice.1 – The basis of the concept is a website full of all the information you need for personal finance. Then there is a paid for service where you pay for specific personalised financial advice.2 – All writing must be understandable by a 12-year-old. No buzzwords. No trying to impress with your vocabulary. 3 -The one-t0-one service can be done through clarity.fm or a similar service. Where you book a time and then pay by the minute for a phone call. That way the service looks cheaper – £3 a minute rather than £180 an hour. It is location independent – you can have you staff based anywhere. And it doesn’t require the user to do any travelling to meet you. 4 – The service should be properly regulated. Every financial advisor at the company should have the correct qualifications and it should be regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. 5 – Some of the posts should be in detail case-studies of what we advise someone in a specific circumstance. A back story about the individual and then the exact advice given. 6 – The financial advisors should build themselves their own brand. Posting their posts both on our site but also on their LinkedIn pages. They should be responsible for their own marketing. That way we can charge different amounts for different people. 7 – The financial advisors should be paid mainly on commission. So they get a share of what they bring in to encourage them to build their own personal brand as well as the company. 8 – Could offer free advice to someone in exchange for recording and posting the advice. That way people can hear an example of exactly what they are going to get. 9 – Advice should be broad ranging. From mortgages, to investments, to inheritance to budgeting. Everything that an individual or family needs to know about money. 10 – Marketing should be done through online contribution, personal marketing from individual financial advisors and also through trying to get in as many news sites and newspapers. Push that this is a big a positive change for the industry. 11 – Each advisor needs to write two good posts a week. There will be a full-time professional editor checking and improving their posts.
• 2 October 2015 - 10 ideas for non-technical blog posts
  Some of my most popular posts are the opinion ones: my post on learning and my post on failing the expert in a year challenge. Today’s daily ideas are to come up with1 – A post on great simple things. Such as this Quora answer I wrote.2 – A post of stoicism and the power of negative visualisation. 3 – A post on what I’ve learnt from bjj in a year and expert in a year. 4 – Why you should become a special constable. Learning management, conflict resolution and how to be a business man through working as a policeman. 5 – A post on hedonistic adaption. 6 – A post on why you should get a job and not become an entrepreneur. 7 – A post on dyslexia. You may have a different starting point but that doesn’t mean you can’t get good at writing etc. 8 – A post on creativity. Every business or job is 90% creativity and 10% skills. 9 – A post on being a night person. How it is a genetic disposition and how we’re handicapped by society. Then what you can do to get round it. 10 – A post on making the most of being in a minority. Talk about religion, race, gender. There are downsides, but that persecution can forms a really strong bond. Meaning that you have great networking and mentoring options in your minority. 11 – A post on serendipity. Stuff falling into your lap – being prepared to pounce on opportunities.
• 1 October 2015 - 10 ideas to revitalise The Wren
  Today’s 10 ideas are on ways that I can breathe some new innovation and inspiration into our coffee shop The Wren. It is going fairly well but has reached a tick over point. Let’s take it from good to great.1 – Get in some new young blood who are able to commit the time and have the energy to put in the work to make it that little bit better.2 – Be brutal with some cost cutting. Re-examine every expense we have, from suppliers to professional services to banking. 3 – Revisit the margin on all of our products, make sure that we are making enough. Either cut or up the price of products that aren’t good enough. 4 – Take a look at staff productivity. What is the difference between the most productive and the least productive staff. What is making the difference, how can we train the less productive staff up to that better level. 5 – Work out what is the biggest bottleneck in customer flow. There are often long queues. For instance is it the serving point, is it the coffee machine. Then work out what the impact would be if we removed the bottleneck, price up how much that change would cost and then if worthwhile, do it. 6 – Revisit all the items that we make on site and see if it is cheaper to buy in. 7 – Likewise revisit all the products we buy-in and see if it would be cheaper to make on-site. 8 – Add in extra sizes. We generally only do two sizes, but we could add in some premium massive sizes. 9 – Start doing extras or seasonal drinks. Go Starbucks on their arse. 10 – Get in street food carts on different days and charge them rent or a profit share. There’s lots of space and they could bring their stands into the main hall. Become a street food market in the city.
• 30 September 2015 - 10 ideas for billion dollar businesses
  Today’s 10 ideas are for the businesses that could be the next Uber/Facebook/Twitter.1 – Hitch-hiking app. Similar to Uber but free and you have to be going in the same direction as the driver. Basically to make hitch-hiking safe – couch surfing for cars/trucks.2 – A friend finding app. Like tinder but for making friends. For instance when you move to a big city. Not creepy or at all to do with dating and . 3 – An ‘extra place’ app. Say if you’ve booked a table for 8 at a restaurant and only 6 are able to make it. Invite two strangers to join you. You have safety in numbers but get to meet someone interesting. 4 – An instant micro-job app. Similar to Fiverr or People-Per-Hour but for instant jobs. So for instance you want your menu at restaurant translated into English. You load up the app, see who is available and pay the to do the job. It’s all well and good paying pennies for a simple job that takes a week. But often we want something done now. For instance if I’m uploading a YouTube video and have forgotten to get it transcribed. I’d rather pay more to get the transcription done now than delay launch for a week. 5 – A cheap meals takeaway meals company. They create only one or two meals and deliver in bulk. you sign up on a daily basis and they keep their costs down by delivering to many many houses at the same time. Almost no choice but great economies of scale. Aim to make it a similar cost to eating in and making your own food. 6 – A live opinions site. Similar to Reddit but on ideas. People write an opinion on something and people indicate their support for that opinion. Popular opinions rise up the page. Can be used for subjects as far ranging as what people think of a companies products, to politics. A very good way of gauging the pulse of the population. 7 – A professional services website that provides software-as-a-service. Full-service and does all the basic professional services that 90% of companies will ever use. You enter all your figures and it creates you everything. Your yearly tax returns, employee contracts, pay slips, articles of association. 8 – An airbnb for party venues. Allow people to rent out their houses, yachts, warehouses, farmland, office etc for parties. Really easy. Have optional insurance extras. Plus different levels of parties. For instance someone might just want to rent out a really fancy dining room for a dinner party whereas someone else wants a rave. 9 – A news site that articles are written by professional journalists, but are voted up or down by normal people. So only the peer-reviewed most enjoyed articles go to the top. Strongly curated, intellectual comments section where people comment on the articles bias or accuracy. Try and build a really good quality world news site that is democratic in what it displays. 10 – An on-demand video site, similar to netflix but just focused on sports. Get the live sporting contracts to hundreds of sports. So that at any time you can log on and watch some live sport. Currently if you want live sport your limited to just whats on tv or the mainstream sports. But there are hundreds of professional sporting events on at all time and there’s plenty of people who love sport, regardless of what it is. Get people in with a few expensive, high budget events such as premier league football. Keep them with the library of other sports.
• 26 September 2015 - 10 ideas for living a ridiculous luxury life cheaply
  If you take a slightly different route, crazily luxury life can be pretty cheap.1 – Get a year membership to an amazing spa. Say nirvana for £2,000 a year. Rent a small apartment for £500 a month nearby (£1,000 for the two of you). Just have one meal a day but pig out on their buffet. Then you can work and chill and swim and live in a spa for £8,000 a year each.2 – Stay in an all inclusive hotel in tennerife for £40 a night each. £14,600 each for all you can eat and drink. With a swimming pool in the complex, next to the sea and all year round lovely weather. Ideally would have wifi so you can work by the pool. 3 – Rent a castle in Portugal. £1,525 a month. Split between two that £25 a night. Ok it’s not that cheap as you’d still need to pay for food and drink. But it’s a castle! 4 – Move to chiang mia. Meals out are £1 or less each. So £3 a day budget. £250 a month (£125 each) for a flat in the centre of the city. Food and accommodation for just £2,595 a year. Even better is there’s a great expat and digital nomad community there. 5 – A round the world cruise taking 114 nights. Stopping off at, well everywhere! Full-board only £10,849 pp. Full-board even includes room service…. Unfortunately I ran out of time and had to stop at 5 🙁
• 25 September 2015 - 10 ideas for getting better at drawing
  I’m terrible at drawing, so my daily ideas today are on ways I can improve.1 – Commit 50 hours to trying to improve. Don’t give up until that 50 hours is done.2 – find a drawing style that is quite simple and doesn’t need loads of equipment or setup time. Ie sketching which needs just a pencil and can be done anywhere. 3 – Learn the basic principles. How to draw a face. The dimensions of the body. 4 – Start practising. A mixture of completely freestyle drawing where you let the creativity go wild. And technical drawing where you focus on perfecting just one drawing. 6 – Learn the top 20 shapes that are drawn and do 100 iterations of each. For instance. People. Houses. Cars. Dogs. Etc. 7 – Start making up own pictures but just using combinations of the 20 shapes that have been learnt. 8 – Go to a class for drawing and get feedback from experts. Ask them where the biggest gains would come from the least amount of work. 9 – Post the pictures online. On say and instagram account. It will be embarrassing uploading rubbish pictures which will give the motivation to learning to draw. 10 – Start trying to draw storyboards for businesses or images for my books. Link the drawing to something I’m already very interested in.
• 23 September 2015 - 10 ideas for iPhone or android apps
  Last time I did this I ended up writing my three day book. It just got me so excited!1 – A simple music player with: a sleep timer, fast forward and slow down, bookmarks and that remembers where you are. So if you’re listening to an audiobook you don’t need to restart the app each time. The standard iphone music app is rubbish!2 – A world wide taxi app. Doesn’t do its own matching but is just a front end for all the different taxi apps in different countries. It’s a pain to download a new app for every country you go to. 3 – A Tindr type app but for meeting people in a non dating way. How to make friends in a big city and find people with common interests to you. 4 – A daily habits app. A one stop place that has all the daily habits you should be doing – physical, social, mental and emotional. For instance it would have a daily physical workout. Mental exercises. Social excercise etc. There’s apps that cover each of them but it would be nice to have them all in one place. 5 – A point-to-point travel comparison app. Similar to skyscanner but instead of just doing flights it will do the journey either side. So comparing trains to taxis etc. Would be really useful as some of the really cheap early morning flights go from before the trains start. So when you actually add in those costs they aren’t really cheaper. 6 – A motivational daily app that sends you push notifications with daily motivational content. Could be anything: quotes, articles, videos etc. 7 – A be thankful app. That is full of little studies into other people’s lives. Particularly people going through hardship. The two purposes are to increase your empathy and to make you more thankful for what you’ve got. 8 – An early retirement calculator. Where you put in your salary, yearly expenses etc. And then you can put in the cost of a purchase and it will tell you how long extra you’ll need to work to afford it. For instance you put in the cost of a new sofa and it will tell you need to work a year extra to afford it. 9 – A haggling app. Basically a big database of various goods and services in different countries and how much they cost. So that when you’re in a market stall in Thailand or getting a taxi in India you know if you’re being ripped off. Ideally it would be user generated/updated. You put in how much you paid and a photo. But has an offline version too so that you don’t need Internet access while abroad to use it 10 – A scams app that tells you what tourist scams to look out for in each country or city. Again user updated and allows them to write annecdotes.
• 22 September 2015 - 10 IDEAS FOR novels I would like to write
  Last time I did this I ended up writing my three day book. It just got me so excited!1 – A story about an elite commando force in the future. This is a space age where most of the galaxy is ruled by one empire. Where people are given set times to live – 80 years say. And valuable peoples lives are extended. How skilled would a special forces soldier if they’ve been training for hundreds of years?2 – A story about a dictatorship taking over the world or a first world country and doing things better than the democracy. Not by conquest but by good propaganda and conquest by internal revolution. Benevolent leader. 3 – A historical story about modern people trying to survive in a historical time. How would a bunch of people dropped into Rome affect history? With all their knowledge but no technology and no local know-how. A story where they don’t get home. You could expand it so that it’s a massive epic story. Could be parts about them desperate to escape and get home. And parts where they’re trying to succeed in this new land. 4 – A state where everything is provided for. People are each given a small house. They have enough food automatically delivered each day. The rest is up to them. A mini story. A bit like a black mirror episode where everything is a bit different and messed up. There is still homeless people – but why? When all they need to do is apply for a house. There are still people who work in macdonalds. Why? When they could mope around at home all day. 5 – A story about someone from the future in our times. Trapped and trying to make it through. What would they be like? Would they understand us or would it all be too alien? 6 – A post-apocalyptic place where the main danger is other humans. Lots of death. Lots of weapons. Small communities. Like Fallout. Humans are still dominant. But now they hunt other humans. Communities run through power. 7 – A homeless man who likes being homeless. Pretends to be mad, or drunk. Likes getting beaten up. Likes ‘experiencing’ life. Thinks that everyone else is mad. Doesn’t really beg except for food/when he’s bored. Sits there with his coin pouch out thinking about philosophy. A really complex character. Watches and does nothing to real cruelty. But gives away his last position to people in need. Lived in many countries. Speaks many languages. But you’re never sure whether you like him. 8 – A police story. But about a shift officer. Nothing really happens except that he slowly goes up the ranks. Quite a real life type story in an epic series about someone rising to run the whole police force. A bit like Honor Harrington series but the story of a police man. 9 – A story about a man running a multi-national corporation is in any and every business. No morals and run by a logistical genius with a photographic memory. Entirely ruthless. World arching. Morally difficult. He tries to cut out unwanted murders but is heavily into prostitution and child trafficking. Real twisted stuff. But you like him. Everyone does. He’s your best friend until he has you killed and your body parts sold. 10 – A private school rich child. Family shamed. Disowned. On the street trying to survive. His development. Entering a gang. Progressing to the top of the gang. Pretty dark. Male dominated – violent. Vagabond children developing independently of the system. 11 – A story about getting rich through manipulating events. ‘What is possible with no morals?’ Shooting someone to drop a stocks value and benefit. Becoming a hedge fund manager through removing opponents. 12 – A human as a pet for an alien civilisation. Treating humans as household pets. Can’t communicate but trained from a kid/broken in to become domesticated. What would a normal person be like if bought up as a pet?
• 21 September 2015 - 10 IDEAS FOR TOPICS FOR THE DAILY IDEAS
  I’m running out of inspiration so need some new ’10 daily ideas’ subjects:1 – 10 ideas for stuff I could buy that would instantly improve my life.2 – 10 ideas for tag lines for this blog. 3 – 10 ideas for podcasts I’d like to go on. 4 – 10 ideas for ways to improve Transport For London. 5 – 10 ideas for business ideas. 6 – 10 ideas for novels I’d like to write. 7 – 10 ideas for YouTube films/shows I’d like to create. 8 – 10 ideas for how to get better at drawing. 9 – 10 ideas for skills I’d like to learn and could learn quickly. 10 – 10 ideas for great presents I could buy someone special.
• 20 September 2015 - 10 ideas to get paid to leave your company and go travelling
  Ok this is quite a specific one. The person I have in mind is at 26-year-old marketing manager at a big four accounting and professional services firm. Hopefully there are some takeaways for everyone!Also just because noone in the company or division has done these before, doesn’t mean they can’t be done. Google is full of people who have negotiated seemingly impossible contracts! Provided you ask someone who has the power to grant the request then there are many benefits to being the first and thinking outside the box.1 – Try and negotiate a remote working contract. Probably the easiest of the list, but takes up quite a lot of time on the road and requires daily internet access . Could alternatively negotiate a 50% working week and use the other 5.5 days to explore.2 – Find the part of the job where you are irreplaceable and negotiate a contract role doing that job. Again ideally less days a week but with a higher contracter’s salary: £250-£500 a day. 3 – Be available for conference calls/advice at an hourly rate. Market yourself up as a consultant and charge say £40/50 an hour. That way they can invite you to conference calls and use your expertise but without paying for the full time role. Also allows the freedom to travel etc. They’re most likely to go for this if you’re leaving behind half-finished projects. 4 – Try and get a paid sabbatical. A year for researching your role across the world. Start the negotiation at full time salary and then work down. The pitch is that the knowledge and experience you gain will benefit everyone and pay but in multiples what it costs. They’re also locking you down so you don’t take that experience to a competitor. 5 – Try and get short term roles at offices across the world. Say a month in each place. Could say it is to improve cross departmental communication/networking and create a more synergistic working environment for people in the same role 6 – Come up with a project they really want done and offer to do it for a certain price. Basically become an outsourcer. Doesn’t matter what the project is provided you have the CV to back up that you can do it. 7 – Approach a competitor of recruitment agent and tell them you’ll help them acquire the best employees at your company in exchange for a commission. Chances are you know quite a few really capable people who are unhappy in their current role. 8 – Start a freelancer profile on odesk or freelancer.com with your fancy job title. Can be completely honest – “freelancing so I can travel the world but I still have great contacts and am highly experienced in x,y,z”. 9 – Apply for a sales side job in your firm. One where your pay is commission based and you can do it from the road. If you’re a great sales person and bringing in business you can do whatever you like. 10 – Ask for ‘advice’ from someone high up in the company but who has a friendly face. “I want to travel the world but I can work in the meantime. What do you think the best way for me to negotiate a remote working contract/consultancy agreement is? I know that even on the road I’ll be better at my job than whoever they replace me with.’ If you’re asking for help rather than asking their permission they’re much more likely to help you – plus they’re in a much better position to sway whoever the real decision maker is.
• 17 September 2015 - 10 ideas for what should be in a networking system
  Sorry, it has been so long since my last post. I have been rubbish at doing my daily ideas this month and they have massively slipped. But now, back on the horse..I want to get better at networking. But I am going to approach it in a slightly different way to everyone else. I am going to put together a system for managing my network, then everyone I meet I can add to this system. Basically a CRM but for friends, not customers. Todays 10 daily ideas are on what should be in that system.1 – An online or iphone app that you can access from anywhere, so it would need to be cloud based. Ideally it can be accessed just as easily from your phone as from a main computer. 2 – Every person you meet you add in a new entry. The entry would contain their name, keywords/tags of their specialities, an age guestimate (or birthday date if you have it), where they are based, a short description of what they look like (or photo)/any defining features and a free text box to write notes about them. 3 – After you have created the entry for the contact you can add in time stamped new entries. So if you met them randomly at some point you could add an entry saying what you talked about. To save you having to remember everything about them from off the top of your head. 4 – There should be a search function that allows you to search not just by name but also by tags and the content of the free text boxes. 5 – Ideally there should be a way to link it to the various social media sites. LinkedIn, Facebook etc. That way it can automatically cross-network between everyone in your system. 6 – You should rate each person by how much you want to stay in contact with them. Say monthly, quarterly, yearly, never. Then the system will give you push notifications at the required intervals to get in touch. 7 – There should be a way to cross-compare people. For instance if they have a tag ‘looking for a relationship’ you can find everyone who has that tag and who also meets other criteria. So find everyone who is ‘looking for a relationship’, between the ages of 25-35 and is based in London. 8 – It might be worth having an anecdotes section with all your best stories. And then a way to cross off if you’ve told a certain person that story before. You don’t want to become the person who tells the same stories all the time! 9 – It might be worth having a rating of how much you like the person. Provided noone ever sees your network! As the network builds you’ll forget what the first impressions were like, but they can be a good indicator of how easy it will be to build an ongoing relationship with that person. 10 – Maybe have an influence rating as well. How much power you think this person has to return favours. I’m not normally into that sort of thing, but it could be a good way to manage a massive network as it grows.
• 3 September 2015 - 10 ideas for things about myself I'd like to change
  Today’s daily ideas are for things about my personality, looks or physique that I’d like to change or improve.1 – Hair. Actually sort out a haircut I like so that I’m happy with how it looks every day.2 – Daily diet. I eat out a lot and have many great meals, which is fab but what I cook for myself or snack on really needs work. It’s all processed unhealthy food.3 – Work out what type of music I like and create a playlist. I listen to spotify a lot but I’m never that happy with what I’m listening to. 4 – My networking. I should create some sort of system to network better. Such as a place where I store the names and a few information points about everyone I meet. Work on connecting people I know to each other. 5 – Approach anxiety. I hate and am really bad at initiating conversations – particularly with groups. I’m also really bad at reaching out to strangers online 6 – Phone conversation skills. I’m really awkward on the phone 7 – Handwriting. I’ve literally never met anyone with as bad handwriting as me.. 8 – Drawing skills. Likewise my drawing skills are atrocious :-(. 9 – Sleep. I really struggle to get a good nights sleep. Maybe one night a week. Perhaps optimising: light, temperature, noise or my mattress would help. 10 – Tidying up. I find it hard to keep my spaces tidy. It doesn’t bother me that much but it’s a bad habit I should improve on. 11 – Story telling. Good story telling is a skill which I’d love to get good at. It’s also a great way to connect with people.
• 2 September 2015 - 10 ideas for products I could create from scratch
  Today’s daily ideas are for products I could get designed and then manufactured. A step beyond what I’ve done so far with the table tennis cases. Was doing them on the bus and didn’t get to 10 before the journey ended.1 – A waterproof recording device that transcribes and sends to dropbox. It would have just one button, really simple and you could use it in the shower.2 – An earphone case for your iphone earphone. So you can keep them in your pocket without damaging them.3 – A card keyring. You attach your key and can slide it into your wallet so that you don’t need to carry around your clunky keys. 4 – Emergency phone belt/card. A tiny phone that is never used but you can crack out and call the police if you’re robbed of your main phone. What would you do if all your stuff was stolen? Stranded with no money and no way to communicate. 5 – A herb pouch. For spicing up drinks when out. Take your hip flask and herb pouch. 6 – Traveller shoes. With a hidden bottom for keeping money or other stuff in it 7 – Subtly self defence style items that people can carry around legally. Keyring that can be used as a nuckle duster etc. 8 – Headphones designed specifically for the gym. Work with sweat, waterproof, don’t rattle about a lot.
• 1 September 2015 - 10 ideas for year long challenges I could do
  Today’s daily ideas are for year-long challenges I could do which involve doing something ever day. Similar to Expert in a Year or BJJ in aYear. They could also be called daily habits.1 – Write and publish a book every week (or fortnight) for a year. Set a minimun word limit just churn out words. Use it as a way to get good at writing. Like my 3-day book, but every week! Then in the second year could focus on re-writting one or two books that did the best.2 – Write a poem every day for a year. Similar to the one above in that the aim is to become a better writer, but the aim is to focus on beatiful words and flow of words.3 – Do a daily podcast of random thoughts. Like meditation but musings. Similar to the daily blogging stuff, but a mussings one. Make them 15 minutes each and give each a topic make sure to release each day. 4 – Do a open mic stand-up comedy night every evening for a year. If you can do stand-up comedy then any other public speaking will become so easy. 5 – Travel and live off £25 a day for a year. Including everything. Learn the skills of frugalty. Plus as the saying goes – you will learn more about yourself from a month on the road than from a lifetime of comfortable introspection. Plus going from youth hostel to youth hostel is a great way to improve your social and networking skills. Also my life it too – I need to be dragged back to earth. 6 – Apply for a different job that pays at least £300k ever day for a year. Doesn’t matter what it is, just apply to loads. Chances are there will be a few interviews, a few responses and no job offer. But in that time I’d get great at applying for jobs and should meet some pretty impressive people. I mean how how powered must the person doing the interviews be if the job is for half million a year! If you get offered a job either take it or not doesn’t really matter. Plus being so young there’s no harm in it. It’s easier to take rejection or failure when you’re a massive massive underdog. 7 – Try and contact a different celebrity every day. One a day or 365 in total. Slowly over the year should perfect the technique and chances are you’d be able to get in touch with at least one. Doesn’t need to be a popular culture celebrity, could be a business guru or top CEO. 8 – Cold call at least ten people a day and try and sell something. Plenty of stuff I want to sell (fancy an Eastfield bat case anyone?) or could make stuff up: Business consulting for instance. Or could start a recruiting firm. 9 – Try and connect two people I know every day for a year. People who don’t know each other but who I reckon would get on well/be of use to each other. Build up a database of everyone I’ve connected and who might be willing to do me a favour if I ever need one in the future. “Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me.” If I run out of people – meet some new ones! 10 – Email/text/call someone I haven’t spoken to in at least six months. Keeping a network/friendship group is important. Make it personal – “I see you’ve been doing x, that’s wicked, how’s it going” sort of thing.
• 29 August 2015 - 10 ideas for new blog posts
  Today’s daily ideas are for new blogposts!1 – How to self-publish and Audiobook. Because I’ve just released one…2 – Why you should get a job. The downsides of entrepeneurship and the benefits of being an employee.3 – Credit card churning. Easy money if you can be bothered. 4 – The best way to donate money. Most people either don’t give, or give as a result of tv ads/people acosting them on the street. Most people are never taught the best ways to efficiently and effictively donate the causes they care about. 5 – Amazon flipping. Something I tried, it was boring and didn’t really work out. But it’s easy and can be profitable. 6 – Why I’m most profitable while not doing anything. Serindipity. The power of doing nothing. 7 – Be, Do, Have. The priorities in life. What you should invest in. 8 – Happiness. All things happiness, business and money related. Income vs happiness. Stress vs happiness. Sleep vs happiness. Trustiness vs happiness. Commute time vs happiness. Relative skills. 9 – Medical GEO-Arbitrage. 10 – Cashback sites. How to use Quidco/cashbackkings etc to earn some easy bucks.
• 28 August 2015 - 10 ideas for ways to market this blog
  Today’s daily ideas are on ways that I can grow the traffic of this blog. So far I have done hardly anything except post my articles on facebook. That is a really rubbish way to get traffic!1 – Post each of my best articles on relevant sections on reddit. That’s how we got 1.6 million views on our table tennis video, could work again!2 – Ask my current readers and mailing list to post links to my articles where they think it could be useful.3 – Build the email list by offering a freebie for subscribers and by having one of those annoying pop-up subscribe things. 4 – Write an article about my favourite blogs and podcasts. Then email the people mentioned telling them about it – hopefully they’ll tweet the article. 5 – Write a ‘best matched betting books’ article. Get it ranking in Google and getting a decent number of referalls. Then write matched betting related books with link backs to the blog. 6 – Start handing out business cards to the people I meet with my blog on it. (Cringe!) 7 – Run some sort of competition. ‘If you share your favourite article from this blog on facebook you’ll be entered into a draw for …’ 8 – Try and get on some of my favourite podcasts. SmartPassiveIncome for instance. 9 – Submit my buy-to-let article to various newspapers/magazines/online sites. 10 – Take out advertising somewhere. Perhaps Google Adwords. Or boost the popular posts on facebook etc
• 25 August 2015 - 10 ideas for teaching style businesses
  Today’s daily ideas are for businesses I could start that have a focus on education or teaching.1 – A tutoring company for primary school and younger kids to teach them ‘life skills’. How to socialise, how to speak to adults, body language. All the sort of things that you don’t get taught at school.2 – An online course to teach people how to do matched betting.3 – Business mentoring/consulting. Perhaps using a service like Clarity. 4 – An online course to teach people to self-publish their own books. 5 – Could put together an online university course and try and get it on Coursea or another similar site. Perhaps by offering to represent a uni or by being independant and using it to leverage getting a proper in person university course. 6 – Give lectures on online business/thinking outside the box. Email a bunch of different conferences or universities and offer to do a talk or seminar. Could even pay to do the first few until I’ve got a bit of traction. 7 – A website that explains the major philosiphies in real simple terms and how they apply to you in modern times. 8 – A website to show how great life is in a satirical visual way. Images of the past and present for a bunch of things we take for granted. Like toilets, or television, transport. etc. (not really teaching, but teaching people to be thankful..?) 9 – Tips from policeman. How best to approach being a victim to crime written by serving policeman. What the police response will be, how you can improve your chances. How to stay safe. Also advice on whether you’ve been treated fairly or mugged off. 10 – A bare minimun of the neccessary skills for online business website. Teaching you to do some basic web development, or edit images, or do email marketing etc.
• 21 August 2015 - 10 ideas for ways to promote our book
  Today’s daily ideas are for ways I could market the book we’ve just released (please buy it!).1 – Do a virtual book tour – that means going on all the video sites, podcasts, blogs we can find that have anything to do with table tennis.2 – Do a live Q&A on Reddit. Our viral video success came from Reddit, perhaps we can get book success from there too!3 – Redesign Expert in a Year website into a book promotion page. 4 – Do a big launch party and invite loads of people. We could throw it at Bounce, or even get loads of table tennis tables in and have it at the Wren. 5 – Get the book translated into mandarin/other languages and rerelease in those countries. 6 – Work with Toby to write a betting style series of books. My matched betting article is the most popular post on this blog – let’s monetise it. 7 – Just leave it and move on to the next project. A single book is never going to make that much money anyway… 8 – Put an advert for it in each table tennis bat we sell. 9 – Put advertising for it up on every page of both this blog and Expert Table Tennis. 10 – Send a free copy off to all the influencers in table tennis.
• 18 August 2015 - 10 ideas for concept cafes
  Today’s daily ideas are ideas of weird/cool cafes I could start. There have been loads in London of late – a cereal cafe, a board game cafe, a cat cafe. Let’s get in on the action.1 – Film cafe/bar. Three different cosy rooms all playing films back-to-back. Free to go in and watch the films provided you buy stuff. Like a cross between a pub/cinema/someone’s living room.2 – Cowboy western tavern. Done up just like a old western tavern. All the staff should be in role. The occasional staff members seeded in the audience to start some drama. Make it almost like an interactive show.3 – Jamaican/hippy/stoner bar cafe. Floor covered in cushions. No seats. Chilled music, graffiti. Cocktails and drinks with a rasta twist. 4 – Library cafe. Done up like an old beautiful library. Bookcases with ladders on them. Lots of books to read and chill out. The sort of place you are comfortable going to for lunch on your own. 5 – Be your own barman bar. Like Sampler, but customer operated beer and cocktail taps. Maybe just one member of staff. Make the bars look fancy and fun. Lots of pipes and levers. Make people want to play with it as much as possible and pay more money. 6 – An open mike place where you can tell a story, say a poem or sing a song in exchange for 50% off/a free drink. Perhaps a Roman style thumbs up thumbs down to see if their contribution is worth a drink. 7 – A dog cafe where you bring your dog to play while chilling out with your friends. There are trainers who work there and a dog play area, so you can relax and drink with other dog lovers while your pet pooch is having a great time. A way to replace the daily walk and make it more social. 8 – A darts pub. Lots and lots of darts boards and darts style drinking. ie long tables, pitchers of beer. Encourage people to dress up and lots and lots of darts boards. 9 – A poker pub. Like a casino but only poker tables, and no house edge – just an entry fee and the cost of drinks. Similar to how some pubs have poker evenings, but all the time. 10 – An american style sports bar. TVs everywhere with all the different sports from around the world.
• 17 August 2015 - 10 ideas for first dates
  Today’s daily ideas are ideas of places you could take a first date.1 – A picnic on Primrose hill overlooking London. Homemade cocktails or just spirit + mixer. Take along mint leaves to make it classy.2 – A cocktail bar crawl. For instance Loungelover Ninetyeight bar, Loveshake. 3 – A breakfast date at duck and waffle or one of the other. It’s relatively cheap, a bit different, a great view and less pressure than a dinner date. 4 -Bottomless pizza and booze at Cuccina Asellina. 5 – Byob Vietnamese kingsland road. Really relaxed fun environment. 6 – Broaway market on a Saturday, then sit on the lock in Regents Canal eating and drinking. 7 – Sampler- top up a couple of Sampler cards and then try all the wines. 8 – First Thursdays (thirst Thursdays..). One day a month where all the galleries launch their new exhibitions. (free booze gallery crawl). 9 – The Boundary rooftop bar. Enough said. It’s awesome. 10 – Troy bar in Shoreditch for amazing live music and cheap drinks.
• 16 August 2015 - 10 ideas for topics for the daily ideas
  Today’s daily ideas are for ideas for the topics of future daily ideas.1 – 10 ideas for first dates2 – 10 ideas for affordable yet still fun places to live in London 3 – 10 ideas for people Id like to meet and how I could contact them 4 – 10 ideas for foods my favourite foods 5 – 10 ideas for board games 6 – 10 ideas for concept cafes 7 – 10 ideas for excuses to be paid to go travelling 8 – 10 ideas for combination hobbies (yoga plus jiu jitsu sort of thing) 9 – 10 ideas for teaching style businesses 10 – 10 ideas for ways to improve London public transport
• 14 August 2015 - 10 ideas for TV adverts for an affordable hatchback car
  Today’s daily ideas are for television adverts for a pretty standard car. An affordable hatchback.1 – Hook -> independence. The advert flashes between the lives of different people: an 18-year-old teenager, a young mum, A student living in a flat share. The one common theme is that they are surrounded by chaos in their house and are all feeling claustrophobic. Then they go get in the car and just drive for complete tranquillity and to escape the world.2 – Hook -> how you drive says a lot about you. The advert follows a young woman on multiple dates. Perhaps with her doing a voice over. It starts with her driving and describes what she is like as a person and ow that is expressed by her style of driving. Then it skims through each date including them driving her about. She judges them on how they drive, their style and what that means about their personality. Everyone’s fake on a first date, but your driving doesn’t lie. Ends with her finding the perfect match, maybe a shy date but pefect driving synergy. 3 – Hook -> better than public transport. Focus on commuters. A voice over perhaps in the form of a poem about how rubbish public transport is. The camera is focused on a person on the train, one second separating each day. They’re having a consistently unpleasant experience. Cramped in, smelly people, people eating, getting squashed. As the advert continues the pace of both the poem and the advert speeds up and the experiences get worse and worse. Until suddenly, silence and black. Then the screen fades to a scene of her in her car. Content. Putting the radio on and cruising to work. 4 – Hook -> make your commute the best part of the day. Someone’s commute to work. She’s chilled out, relaxed. People are road raging around her, stressing out, pushing in in their uncomfortable vehicles. Eventually she arrives at her turning for work. Pauses, looks around and then decides to take another lap. 5 – Hook -> remember the simple joys of childhood. The advert is in the form of interviews with children, asking them what their favourite thing about the car is. ‘The sound the boot makes when it closes’, ‘ that you can start it with a button’, ‘the central locking’, ‘being able to control all the windows’, ‘the parking sensors’. As it goes on it gets more and more adult sounding until it’s clear that the kids are driving the car. Then ends with the final kid walking to the car and morphing into an adult as he enters. ‘Unlock your inner kid’. Or something like that. 6 – Hook – affordable elegance. James Bond. Turning up and going to buy his new car. He is at the dealer and looking a ridiculous sports car. Then he checks the insurance: “how much?!” He notices the hatchback. “It costs how much?! It does 0-60 in how quick?! It has all these features?! The insurance is that cheap?!”. Then the next scene is Bond escaping from baddies in his hatchback. 7 – Hook -> surprising better than other cars. Hatchback vs a big four by four, Range Rover type car. Parking space: nip in while the big car is doing 100 manoeuvres. Boot space: optimised to fit the things you really carry. Changing lanes: it nips around but the big car never has enough space. Then finally a crash. Hatchback into the four-by-four. Then a pause. Then the hatchback driver jumps out and runs over to help the still dazed four by four driver. ‘Did you know that the xxx hatchback has a higher safety rating than 85% of four-by-fours meaning it will keep you and your loved ones safe’ 8 – Hook -> misspent youth. Teenagers in the old version of the hatchback in the 90s. Playing music. Car slightly modded up. Focus on one girl. Her youth spent with the car. Getting a few dents. Then over the year the car grows up with her. She gets the next model when she’s at university. Ferrying her friends around. Then she leaves. Driving to her first job. Getting married. Then gets another model. Taking kids to school. By this time the car has properly grown up. Respectable. With the child seats in the back. Could end with her daughter learning to drive in it, passing her test and being given an old second hand one of her very own. 9 – Hook -> humour. The safest car. A family doing their shopping. Suddenly people start screaming. Zombie apocalypse hits. Everyone running. Zombies everywhere. Rush to the car. Get in and silence. The family’s breathing calms. A zombie starts battering at the car but everyone is safe and calm. Then the mum goes ‘is anyone peckish?’ And gets out some food before driving slowly home. Navigating zombies and screaming people while one of the kids snoozes. 10 –> a Top Gear piss take. Parodies of each of the characters being given a challenge. “You need to choose a car that will be suitable for any occasion. To drive accross europe and then navigate the tiny streets of Rome while holding a family of four and their luggage.” They’re perplexed, “What are we going to choose?!” Then it goes to when they turn up with their choices. They’ve all come with the same car! “Well it was the obvious choice but it doesn’t make for a very good TV show. We’re just going to be to have to not show it!”
• 13 August 2015 - 10 ideas for iventions
  Today’s daily ideas are for things I could invent. I went a little off topic and a few are more like businesses, but still I think I can get away with calling them inventions!1 – Vitimin and mineral combinations company. So you go to the website and choose what you want and what weights (fish oil, vitamin c, protein) and we combine it into one capsule and send you a months supply. Work on your own customised balance of supplements without having to take loads of pills each day. Could even conbine it with a consultation. Everyone is different and there is no one size fits all for supplements.2 – A dictaphone that automatically transcribes and sends the transcription to dropbox/drive. Could be a monthly paid service to cover the price of human transcribers – different plans based on expected monthly usage. Also should be waterproof. Just one button. Make it as easy and simple as possible. 3 – Cold brew coffee that could be sold in supermarkets. Not full of sugar like all of the cold coffees you find at the moment are. 4 – Range of health ready meals based on popular diets. Slow carb range. Paleo range. Etc 5 – Range of clothes that focus solely on fit and material. No designs just plain clothing. But with the description describing the benefits of the material and an in-depth description and images of the fit. For instance. “This material makes it very breathable which means that it will keep you warm in winter but will be cool in summer. You won’t boil when getting on the underground on a cold day. But it is liable to shrink slightly during the first few washes”. Due to the simplicity should be able to produce it quite cheaply. 6 – An undershirt that is meant to be light, posture building and sweat absorbing. Posture building could be done through the fit. If you slouch in it, it rides up and feels uncomfortable. 7 – A housework app. Short videos to tell you how to do all the basic household stuff. How to iron. How to use a dishwasher and dryer. How to hang up wet clothes. How to clean a toilet. All the stuff everyone ‘should’ know how to do but where a lot of us don’t actually have a clue. 8 – A laptop to desktop converter. A box that when you plug your laptop in and it transfers control to a monitor, mouse and keyboard. All the benefits of a laptop plus desktop setup. But Saves needing to have a separate desktop computer and all the costs involved. Would be very useful for offices where people hot desk 9 – A bean-to-cup home espresso machine. Why are there no good home bean-to-cup espresso machines?! Bonkers.
• 12 August 2015 - 10 ideas for decade long projects
  Today’s daily ideas are lifetime projects I could start or undertake. Most things I do are short-term. But life is long so here are some thing that would leave a legacy.1 – Police. Making the specials in Tower Hamlets the best (full stop). If I worked on it full time I could really transform the the specials in Tower Hamlets into something really awesome as well as having a huge positive impact on the borough. Saving lives, making an area safer, fighting wrong and helping the downtrodden. What’s not to love?2 – Building a chain of not-for-profit Christian coffee shops and resturaunts. Could turn the Wren it into a blueprint that we could roll out all over London (and beyond). 3 – Start applying for lecturing posts. Get something basic then start building a course. Within a few years I could have a decent position with a good level of autonomy. Then it’s a job and positive impact for life. (check out the coursework ideas in one of the earlier daily ideas for an idea how I’d lecture). 4 – Focus on this website full time and try to make it epic 5 – BJJ. Focus on it pretty much full time. Within 5 years I could be very very good. All the while I would be blogging about it and as I improved could start teaching as well. 6 – Start one of the charities from yesterday’s post and focus on it. 7 – Focus on cooking. Pretty much full time and run my own supper clubs, paid for dinners, etc. 8 – Really build the table tennis brand. Focus on hustling, selling stock and growing the brand. Really focus on the distribution network. 9 – Build a small investment fund aimed at purchasing and then reshaping online businesses and brands. Take companies that are already doing ok. Then make them more efficient. Remove the need for manpower and turn them into cash generators. Build the fund slowly. 10 – become a online financial advisor. Automate as much as possible. Make it cheap but still with human interaction. Put most of the resources and information up for free but then let people contact for a personalised plan at a small charge.
• 11 August 2015 - 10 ideas for charities/social enterprises in Hackney
  Today’s daily ideas are for social businesses or enterprises that I think would be awesome to have in Hackney.1 – Mentorship. Link local artists and creatives up with students from the local comprehensive school. Meet regularly to help offer the kids by providing good role models and advice outside of academia.2 – A youth art gallery. Where local under 18s can submit their artwork. Just like a normal gallery it, the art is displayed to be sold and 75% (or whatever) of the price goes to the youth. The rest goes on running costs and any extra profit is donated. An outlet for kids and teenagers to pour their creativity into that actually has a chance of making a bit of money and supporting them and their families.3 – Youth entrepeneurship seminars. Free to go to and very practical teaching on how to create and monetise a website. Stuff they can do from home that has potential to support them and their families, while learning skills that will be useful forever. 4 – Homeless story telling. Lectures that people can go to to hear stories from homeless or near-homeless people. Small entry fee and then the speakers get paid. Could be stories about their lives or stories they’ve heard. Film and put online. Tedx but for people at the bottom of the heap. Plus it’s money for a service rather than just charity. 5 – A community kitchen. Bring what you can and then everything is russeled up into a big meal each evening. It’s not a canteen you get stuff for free from and it’s not means tested or anything. Everyone is welcome (no matter your income) and everyone sits together. Encourage everyone in the area to attend to encourage the growth of community. Finish with games or music or dancing. No alcohol. Just food and comradery. 6 – Free laundry/shower/haircut place for anyone who is homeless or really struggling. Basically a free makeover. The idea being that one of the first step to bringing people back into society is to help them to feel human again. Focus on re-building self-respect. 7 – Guaranteed paid work for people who have been out of work for 5 years plus. Help build up the CV and more importantly get people back into to the habit of working again. The job would be for a set period of time, 4 weeks say. There would be no interview, but perhaps a waiting list if too many people apply. The jobs are extra – not-needed jobs but that are nonetheless helpful. From office jobs to outdoorsy jobs. Could be anything: social checkups, helping paint the houses of pensioners, groundswork in the public parks, writing news articles for the charities websites, etc. Get people into the habit of working again. 8 – Try and build local comradery through group supporting of a football team. Have an area where the football is shown on a massive screen, that is free for anyone to go to and you can bring your own food and drink. Make it a ritual that people go to every week and try to encourage people to mix and make friends. Perhaps through putting on some sort of quiz at the end where you’re teamed up with other groups. 9 – A 24/7 games club anyone can go to. Board games for free and there will always be volunteers there that you can play with. Also a place where you can get taught easy games that can be played at home or on the street. The aim is to combat the youth boredom that leads to so much anti-social behaviour. There is always a place to go for entertainment and to meet good positive influences. 10 – Local radio station with a aim of bringing together the community. Interview loads of people from all walks of life. Play local music, sponsor and promote local events.
• 8 August 2015 - 10 ideas for ways to profit from my gambling expertise
  Today’s daily ideas are on ways I can leverage my knowledge of professional gambling to make money (other than by gambling).1 – Create a documentary series about advantage a bettors with a focus on arbitrage and bonus abuse. There have been loads of films about gambling and professional gambling, but I’ve never seen one about matched betting or arbitrage. Even though it is the most accessible!2 – Get in touch with all the major bookies and offer my expertise as a consultant on bonus abuse and sports arbitrage. Get the details of the top people people from linkedin, work out their email addresses and blanket email them all.3 – Write a series of self published books about different parts of matched betting. 4 – Do a series of audiobooks on matched betting. 5 – Create an online service that people pay for and it pushes matched bets and guides on how to do matched bets to them. 6 – Release to the public and charge for one of our arb finders. 7 – Create a tipping service and charge for it. 8 – Create and release a Sharbing app for use at the track and in shops. 9 – Go and try and replicate what I’ve done in the UK, but in America, Australia, China. Huge markets and lots of opportunities. 10 – Write articles on a blog and linkedin. Become the goto place for all things matched betting.
• 6 August 2015 - 10 ideas for adventures I'd like to go on
  Today’s daily ideas are for stuff I could do/go to if I went travelling.1 – Carnival in Venice2 – Carnival in Brazil 3 – Holi festival in India 4 – Tomato throwing festival. 5 – Go to some really geeky tech show. Like e3. Or one of the vegas ones. 6 – Yacht week. 7 – Go to the Olympics in Brazil. 8 – Climb a proper mountain. 9 – Scuba diving in a place where they have sunken ships and hidden treasure for you to find. 10 – No gravity experience. You go up in a plane and it drops and it feels like you’re floating.
• 2 August 2015 - 10 ideas for food related online businesses
  Today’s daily ideas are for online businesses that I could start that are to do with food.1 – A podcast where you interview the founders and chefs of the cool restaurants and coffee shops around London. Places like shoreditch grind and the food carts etc. Should be fairly easy to get them on. It’s free publicity and there’s not many foodie podcasts about.2 – A YouTube channel of budget cooking in London. How to cook in a small flatshare kitchen. Aimed at foodies in their 20s or 30s living in London. How to do flash, cool food cheaply for dinner parties etc.3 – A compilation style site. That brings all the information on the ‘cool’ places to one place. Ccollate data, links and picture from all over the web. For instance what timeout says, what the bloggers say. Instagram pics. Foursquare reviews. Get all the reviews and tips in one place. Could have some sort of auto-webscraper that gets the information automatically, which could then be checked and uploaded by a human. 4 – A recipe site for stuff you’ve had in restaurants or foodcarts. Want to create a lucky chip burger at home? Here’s how to do it. Look up the stuff you love the look or taste of on the site and get the recipe. If the chefs want to keep their recipes secret could be get the best closest guess by an expert chef. 5 – Foodpartner.com. A website to find companions who want to go to restaurants. Like online dating, but you’re looking for people with a shared food passion. The you go to cool restaurants or pop-ups together. Like the couch surfing communities. A great way to meet people that isn’t weird or awkward. Plus if you’re a massive foodie and your current friends aren’t or don’t want to spend the money, it’s a way not to look like a loner. 6 – Amateur chef lessons. Like an airbnb website but instead of a place to stay you find a chef who will give you a lesson. Full range of teachers from professionals who can put on lessons at their restaurants, to local mums who want to make a bit of extra money from their home. Also can play on the global nature of London. So you can find teachers from every country in the world. 7 – An instagram/Pinterest account solely aimed at taking cool photos of food. ‘A professional food photography’. Try and monetise by selling the most popular pictures to the restaurants and cafes to use. License it – for £100 you can use this picture which 10,000 people liked. Basically crowd-sourcing the best pictures of your venue. 8 – Similar to the one before, but become a broker. Find the most popular images of food. Contact the photographer and ask if they’d be interested in licensing it. Then get in touch with the restaurants and take a middle-man cut. 9 – A recruitment style site but for cool food related stuff with a focus on volunteer work. Give places the opportunity to hire volunteers to work in their kitchen or food cart. And a place people who want to get into seriously good food can go to do some volunteering at the best places. Pretty much all top chefs went to France to work as dishwashers in the best kitchens in the world. This could be the food cart/creative food version. Could review the volunteers and resturaunts as well. 10 – A crowd funding place for food carts and pop-ups. Like a local version of Kickstarter. Awards can be invitations openings events, menu items named after the funder, free food for life, the opportunity to have the food cart come to your event/birthday party etc.
• 31 July 2015 - 10 ideas for improving jury service
  I am currently on jury service, it’s really boring so today’s daily ideas are on ways they could improve the experience.1 – Free wi-fi for the waiting jury.2 – Cases streamed to the jury waiting room so that those that are waiting can see what’s going on. The sound would be annoying so put on subtitles instead. If there are no subtitles available then have the sound on low so that it isn’t too disturbing. Just background noise. 3 – Give updates on how many cases are left each day. Make it clear under what situations people get to go home early and what happens if they don’t get picked towards the end of the week. Generally more communication. 4 – Have daily newspapers delivered to the jury rooms. A bunch of metros and stuff like that. Wouldn’t cost much but would go down well for staving off boredom. 5 – Have organised games that anyone can get involved in. For instance a game of monopoly, or poker, or trivial pursuit. A way to encourage people to socialise together. As reserved English people we need a push! 6 – Put up artwork. Could even get local artists to help decorate it. Just generally make the room a bit more vibrant and interesting and less like a hospital canteen. 7 – Have more jigsaw puzzles and if they are missing pieces chuck them out and get new ones! Should be checked regularly. I bet there are machines that can easily count puzzle pieces. 8 – A microwave to reheat homemade meals 9 – Discounts negotiated with the local cafes. Basically negotiate some sort of deal – the court will basically advertise the cafe in exchange for a 20% discount for jurors on presentation of their summons letter. 10 – A map on the wall of local places of interest: nearest supermarket, any nice parks for sitting out in. Any interesting sights really. Something for the jurors to do on their long lunch breaks and help them explore the local area. 11 – Provide charging ports for iPhones etc. Not being allowed to use your charger is a real bummer.
• 30 July 2015 - 10 ideas for defeating ISIS
  Today’s daily ideas are on ways that Nato or the West could defeat the Islamic State.1 – Offer free and easy asylum for anyone who wants to escape. A lot of people are trapped there. Could set up new cities specifically aimed to support and help anyone who wants to escape. Make them as comfortable and luxurious as possible to encourage people to leave. Could even use the area to recruit and train resistance fighters learning how to take back their homes while providing a safe refuge for their families.2 – Offer bounties on the regional leaders and senior leadership of ISIS. Give rebels and mercenaries financial incentives to take action. 3 – Create celebrities out of specific freedom fighters. Find big personalities who are directly impacted by ISIS to become the face and voice of the resistance. Think Fidel Castro or Nelson Mandela. A big local character that everyone can get behind and the western powers can support. Do lots of videos, impassioned speeches, etc. People would much rather have local heroes than foreigners trampling over their customs trying to ‘save’ them. 4 – Really glamorise the freedom fighter lifestyle. Create movies, Hollywood, music, social media stars. Really encourage people to join the resistance forces. Think Star Wars – with ISIS being the empire. 5 – Look for scandal among the ISIS leaders. Find anything from their past or rumours that have been heard and spread them further. Particularly anything hypocritical. They build their reputations on their holiness and sanctity, one publicised blunder can ruin all that. 6 – Really highlight the abuse of women and the life that defectors to ISIS are subject to. A panorama type episode talking about abuse people receive. Including interviews of people who moved to ISIS and have since escaped back to the West. The aim being to stop the flow of people leaving their countries to join Isis by exposing the hypocrisy and abuse they’d be subjected to. 7 – Set up strategic fortified bases deep inside ISIS territory. Heavily fortified and completely supported by air. A place for refugees to go and get airlifted to safety, but so fortified that ISIS wouldn’t be able to take it. Basically keep the UN troops in very much a defensive position so they aren’t responsible for the local areas – that should save on the bad press that was so evident with the western occupations of Iraq and Afganistan. But it would still be a thorn in the side of ISIS and provide bases for large offenses by freedom forces. 8 – Provide air transport for freedom fighters. Don’t deploy western troops, but use our air dominance to drop local troops and set up permanent splinter cells, all over ISIS territory. Provide them armed air support if required. 9 – Create educational videos and put them online for people inside ISIS to watch. ‘How to subvert Isis from your own home’. Tips and tricks that local people who are trapped and can’t leave to do. For instance not sending the kids to school where they will get brainwashed but educating them yourselves through the free educational resources. Or anonymous ways to safely post online about ISIS troop movements. 10 – Focus on saving and defending the tribes that are being whipped out. Genocide is being committed so there is plenty of remit to defend them. Deploy troops to defend, supply, train them so they themselves can take back their land. Transport out the vulnerable or young to a safe place (if they’re willing to go).
• 29 July 2015 - 10 ideas for police training sessions
  Today’s daily ideas are for training sessions I could put on for the special constables I supervise.1 – In the yard do full role plays. From the call going out and the officer putting up for it on the radio. To the first contact. To the investigation. To the arrest. To the asking for space. To custody. To booking in. To doing all property. To handing over. To doing the paperwork.2 – Story telling from more experienced officers. Talk about interesting calls they’ve been. Give the information and then let the group talk through what everyone would have done in the situation. Then say what the officer actually did and what happened as a result. Pausing at each step for input. 3 – Officer safety training. Re-enact situations we’ve been in and see how everyone would react. Then talk about what happened. Would someone have hit the panic button. What could potentially have gone wrong etc. 4 – Get in local police officers to give talks about specific areas’ issues and what to look out for. Get everyone up to scratch on local knowledge. 5 – Teach a lesson on speaking to members of the public. What to do if someone shouts abuse at you. What to do if someone asked you a point of law question. How to deal with non-crimes and how to diplomatically tell people you can’t deal with the issue. How to deal with people with mental health issues. Could do it in role-play scenarios once again, but with feedback afterwards. 6 – More in-depth chat about powers. Cover what we’re legally allowed to do and some nice legislation which grants us extra powers in certain situations. Such as the right to ask for name and address when anti-social behaviour is suspected. We can talk through what our most used and go-to powers are. 7 – Training on the rank structure of the borough. Who’s who and what everyone does. What the special departments are and what sort of shifts they work. Also worth talking about individual regular officers, who is friendly and who you can go to for help. Like who is the crime advisor, where do they sit, who is ht1/2/3 etc? 8 – Basic dress code chat. Talk about when you need a tie, high vis and the different hats. 9 – A lesson teaching people how do deal with things when they are out of uniform. When to jump in and when not to. How to stay safe and plenty of stories of what people have dealt with. 10 – Paperwork guidelines. Examples of how to fill out all the forms. CRIS, CRIMINT, 5090, Report-book, PND, Statements.
• 28 July 2015 - 10 ideas for other table tennis items we could create
  Today’s daily ideas are for other items we could use to expand our table tennis range.1 – Tables2 – Balls3 – Rubber protectors 4 – Towels 5 – Hold-alls 6 – Shoes 7 – Clothing 8 – Supplements. Specific table tennis designed vitamin combinations 9 – Mini-nets – turn anywhere into a table 10 – Speed watch. A watch you put on your playing hand to count the number of strokes and the speed and acceleration when you hit the ball.
• 26 July 2015 - 10 ideas for negative visualisations
  Today’s daily ideas are for scenarios to imagine when doing negative visualisation. The idea is one popular in stoicism and revolves around the idea of ‘learning to want the things you already have’. You basically imagine being in a situation that is worse than what you are in, imagine what day-to-day life would be like and how you would not only deal with it but also how you could live a happy life. Then come back to real life and realise that your life is AMAZING!! Mental visualisation is great not just for appreciating your life, but also at mentally preparing yourself for the unvavoidable changes to your life.1 – Close your eyes and imagine what it’s like to be blind. Think about how tough life would be. Imagine cooking blind, or getting public transport, or even just walking down the street. Imagine how you would adapt, how you would make the most of it and how you could still be happy. Then open your eyes and voila, you can see! AMAZING!2 – Imagine what it would be like to bankrupt and jobless. Imagine living on just benefits, £50 every two weeks. Think about all the luxuries you’d have to give up, your iphone, designer clothes, nice flat. Then think about how you could still have a great life: all that extra free time to spend with the people you love, the chance to get amazing at cooking on a budget. Then wake up and realise how awesome life is when you don’t have to live through that hardship. AMAZING!3 – Imagine losing your passport abroad and having no money. Imagine being stuck in a strange place where no-one speaks your language. Then think about how’d you deal with it, how’d you’d communicate to ask people for help. How you’d have to find and get to the embassy, which could be on the other side of the country. Think about finally flying home and all the great stories you could now tell. Then wake up and realise it hasn’t happened. AMAZING! 4 – Think about what it’s like to be paralysed. Only able to communicate through moving your eyes. Then think about how you’d still live a happy life. How technological advancement means you could still use the internet and communicate with those you care about. How you’d have so much time to your thoughts and the great meditations you could have. Think about how you’d be able to work, perhaps get a job online. Or do something like motivational speaking. Then wake up and realise you still have all these amazing abilities to have a great life, but you also have full use of your body! AMAZING! 5 – Think about what it would be like to live through a zombie apocalypse! Think about how you could make a good life in the aftermath. Foraging, learning new skills, surviving. The relationships you would make and your thankfulness at being a survivor. Then wake and realise that there was no zombie apocalypse! AMAZING! 6 – Think about what would happen if you lost a loved one. How you’d remember them and honour their memory. Then how you’d adapt, move on and still live a full life. Then wake up and realise that they’re still with you! AMAZING! 7 – Imagine getting arrested and sentenced for a crime you didn’t commit. Think about what it would be like going to prison. That first day. The nerves, the fear, the unknown. Then think about how you’d adapt. How you’d make the most of it. All that free time to develop skills, perhaps work on a book, get to know yourself. How you’d never have to worry about hunger or shelter, that all your needs are taken care of. Then wake up and realise you’re not in prison. AMAZING! 8 – Imagine if there is another riot and your house and all your belongings were lost. Think about not having any physical possessions. Not even a toothbrush. Then imagine how you’d deal with it. What you’d do. Where you’d turn. Become content, happy with your new life. Then wake up and realise it’s not true! AMAZING! 9 – Imagine being kidnapped and taken into slavery. Forced to work on a farm with no contact to your old life. Imagine the hardship the beatings. Then think about how you could still be happy. How you’d make friends, survive, get on with life. How it is possible to be happy when under the unfair rule of another. The wake-up and realise it’s not true, you have your freedom. AMAZING! 10 – Imagine being a drug addict. Everything you earn you have to spend on an addiction that’s destroying your body. How would you adapt, how would you be happy when your life expectancy is unknown but short. Think of the amazing, caring people you would meet who give up their free time to help people like you. Think about the knowing there is nowhere lower to go and that you are still surviving – the freedom from fear that would give you. Then wake up and realise your not an addict!!! AMAZING!
• 25 July 2015 - 10 ideas for channel 4 documentaries
  Today’s daily ideas are for documentaries that would be a hit on Channel 4. They’re always creating weird and wonderful shows.1 – Dating with and without alcohol. A show similar to the fly-on-the-wall blind dating shows that we all know and love. But where some contestants are allowed to drink alcohol before and during and some aren’t. A show that highlights our dependants on alcohol as a mood relaxant and social lubricant. It could also be hilarious as you get the awkward stuff with the sober people, and the stupid stuff from the drunks.2 – Travellers. Follow around some people who travel full-time. The mid-twenties drop outs who are travelling the world to ‘find themselves’. I imagine similar to club reps but with hostels and guitars and people trampling local culture thinking they’re being really enlightened.3 – Hostel reps. Similar to the travellers show but centred on one hostel. A bit like those shows on Magaluf and other party destinations, but where the tourists are gap year students and travellers. 4 – Homeless shelter workers. Fly on the wall series. Like ‘Educating Essex’ but based in a homeless hostel. Just like how ‘Educating Essex’ followed a few naughty kids and the teachers attempt to help them. Same with serious problem homelessness and the hostel worker’s attempts to help them. 6 – Frugalists. investigate the people who have dropped out of the rat race to live life on barely anything. Hardly spending any money and without any care for cash. 7 – Bodybuilders. Investigate the extreme hobbyists who spend all day in the gym and life revolves around their bodies. 8 – Commuters. CCTV footage with sound of commuters in the morning. A bit like chicken shop show. Could call it ‘the northern line’ or whatever. Fly on the wall and focus on a few characters. 9 – Secret life of yuppie partyers. All anonymous and focused on the civilised, young professionals in respected jobs that spend all their weekends partying till the early morning and taking copious amounts of drugs. Teachers, technology workers, office workers, bankers, accountants, etc. 10 – Grad scheme. Follow one of the biggest Grad schemes over a two-year period and see what life is like. Could even get the company to pay for it as advertising.
• 24 July 2015 - 10 ideas for new table tennis related products
  Today’s daily ideas are for new products we could create and sell that are table tennis related.1 – Tables2 – Balls3 – Rubber protectors 4 – Towels 5 – Hold-alls 6 – Shoes 7 – Clothing 8 – Supplements. Specific table-tennis designed vitamin combinations. 9 – Mini-portable-nets that can turn any flat surface into a table tennis table. 10 – Table tennis watch/wristband. A watch that you put on your playing hand to count the number of strokes and the speed/acceleratin when you hit the ball. Sort of thing that is crazily popular in running.
• 21 July 2015 - 10 ideas on ways to brighten up someone else's day
  Today’s daily ideas are for daily habits that if done each day, will improve the lives of those around you.1 – Text someone you’re close to saying how much you appreciate them. Or if that is too cringey, thank them for something they have done for you.2 – Find an old facebook acquaintance and compliment one of their pictures. There’s plenty of people on fb who I now barely know, so for them it would be like getting a complement from a stranger.3 – Write hand written letters to relatives/friends/people you care about. Doesn’t need to say much, but everyone loves getting post that isn’t bills/spam. 4 – Bring in some chocolates/donuts croissant to work. 5 – Buy a colleague a birthday present. Someone who you wouldn’t be expected to get them anything/or even remember it was their birthday. Something small, a token present. 6 – Have a good chat with one of the support staff. Ask them how their day has been, take an interest in their lives and remember some facts about them. The sort of people who often get ignored most of the day: cleaner/concierge/postboy/doorman. 7 – Buy or make a sandwhich for a homeless person. You probably pass a few a day. If the first one doesn’t want it, give it to the next. Something wholesome like food is good. It is probably better to stay away from just giving money so that you don’t risk supporting an addiction which is keeping them in that life. 8 – Sincerely thank a public service worker for the work they are doing. Someone like a ticket inspector, TFL worker, binman, policeman, bus driver. Someone who is doing a necessary job that is tough where they regularly receive abuse. 9 – Call your mum/gran/aunt. 10 – Email an old teacher/lecturer/coach. Someone from your past who you haven’t seen or spoken to in years and tell them what a big impact they made on your life.
• 20 July 2015 - 10 ideas for how to start a street food cart
  Today’s daily ideas came after watching the film “The Chef”. They are how we could live out that life and what steps are needed to start a street food cart.1 – First step is to come up with the food concept. The key requirements are that the food needs to be straightforward to make and quick to serve. There won’t be loads of equipment so the more preparation able done at ‘home’ the better. Let’s assume for these ideas that we want to sell Cuban sandwiches.2 – Nex step is to come up with an epic name and related branding. If you want people to hunt you out the name and branding is really important. It needs to be unique, catchy and get accross the feel of your brand and at least hint at what your product is.3 – Price up the equipment needed to prepare and serve the food on the street. For the Cuban sandwiches we need:

  • A panini grill – roughly £600 for two industrial ones that can press 8 sandwiches simultaneously.
  • A generator to power the electronics – £700.
  • A griddle £500.
  • Portable fridges £400.
  • Hand washing facilities: £500.

  So to do it cheaply on an tables set up £2,200. Say another £400 for branding, chalk boards, miscellaneous. Another £200 working capital for ingredients and £200 spare for unforeseen costs. Total cost £3,500. If want to get a cart and do it from there, say another £5,000. 4 – Sort out all the legals and licenses:

  • Street trading license (£75 application fee).
  • Food hygiene certificate level 2 or above.
  • To have completed a safer food better business pack.
  • To have submitted food registration forms.

  5 – Do some market research on your cooking. Buy the ingredients and invite lots of people round to test your food and give anonymous feedback – say you don’t want to embarrass anyone but you’d really like people to drop their thoughts into a feedback box. Emphasise that you really want constructive criticism. You want people to be honest and not flatter you. Keep a record of all costs involved. 6 – Contact suppliers and get quotes for the ingredients – assume serving 50 people in a sitting and so quote for that quantity and then work out the cost per serving: Bread, 50p a serving.Pork, 80p a serving. Glazed ham, 50p a serving. Cheese, 10p a serving. Pickles, 5p a serving. mustard, olive oil, butter, 5p a serving. Total ingredient cost: £2 a sandwich. Sell for £6 (industry standard 1/3rd food cost). Other costs: VAT: £1.2 (won’t need to pay it till your turnover hits the VAT threshold, but it needs to be counted in). Banking charges: 20p. Waste (20% of food costs): 40p. Profit per sandwich without human cost: £2.2. Fixed costs- 2 people working for 8 hours at £10 an hour – £160. Market fees £50. Gas, wear and tear, electricity £10. Total costs: £220. Number of sandwiches that need to be sold a day to break even: 100 sandwiches. 7 – Research to see if the numbers add up. How many sandwiches will be sold? Contact other food vendors to find out, or ask the managers of the markets you are interested in. If the market is open 5 hours and you expect to sell one sandwich every 5 minutes (note you still need to pay for 8 hours of staff time to cover all the setting up, transportation, packing up etc). That is only 60 sandwiches – not enough to break even. If research suggests selling 150, that is a profit of £110 a day. If you only operate one day a week it will take 32 weeks to cover the initial £3,500 investment. That sounds fine. but probable not worth paying for the full cart at that level. If your research suggest you will sell 200 a day, then the extra £5,000 investment for a proper cart is probably worth it. 9 – If the number add up, then it is time to start raising money. You could get a loan – £8,500 paid at 8% interest over 2 years would cost £726 in interest. Assuming doing 40 weekends a year, that is £9.1 a day. Or 5 sandwiches. Could alternatively do a Kickstarter campaign. If that route is chosen it could be worth raising quite a bit more as you don’t need to pay it back, and pumping the extra money into the look and feel will be well worth it, 9 – Try and get a contract with the market you want before doing the investment. Then take the plunge and buy the equipment. Check out second-hand equipment to bring the cost down. If they don’t want to do a contract before you’re set up, then just buy the equipment. If it doesn’t work out there is still good resale value in it all. Especially if you purchased everything second hand. 10 – Look for alternative venues. For instance at friends’ work events. At pubs (doing a residency), at festivals, at sports events, at fates. Anywhere where there might be paying customers. Think as much outside the box as possible and then start contacting people. Doesn’t hurt to ask and you might get a good deal. Could do a profit share with them instead of a rent. 11 – Contact as many local publications or bloggers as possible, saying that you’re launching and why that is so exciting. Try and get a bit of a buzz. Invite all the journalists and bloggers to your launch event and lavish them with plenty of booze and good vibes. Worth spending a bit of money on it because they will be rating you not just on the quality of your food but also on the feeling they get being there. 12 – Hit social media hard. Lots of posts, cool pictures and interact with the other food-carters around. If it’s anything like the coffee community, everyone will be really supportive.
• 16 July 2015 - 10 ideas for coursework I would set if I ran a university course
  Today’s daily ideas are for courseworks I would set if I was ever able to realise my dream of running a course on ‘outside the box entrepreneurship’ at a university.1 – Write and self-publish a book on Amazon using CreateSpace. The book needs to be at least 50 pages and can contain pictures.The aim is to sell as many copies as possible by the deadline. 50% of the mark will be based on your sales ranking compared to everyone else. 50% will be based on our opinion of your strategy and book. Assessed via 30 minute interview/chat.2 – Create a YouTube video and drum at as many views as possible by the deadline. The mark will be 50% based on the viewership ranking compared to other coursemates and 50% based on our opinion of your strategy. ‘Cheat’ or paid for views will be discounted/penalised.3 – Create a ‘contractor’ style business and sell your services via oDesk. The person who ‘earns’ the most before the deadline wins. Can be anything as long as you can do it remotely – from translation, to editing, to consultancy, to tutoring. 50% mark on sales ranking, 50% on our opinion of your strategy – minus marks for poor service or bad reviews. Plus marks for good ethical business practice. 4 – Set up with a local factory. A challenge to invent a product and turn it into a dropshipping business. You can only communicate with the factory remotely. You will then need to design, price up and create a dropshipable product. Then create a shopify shop and get selling. 25% of the mark on our opinion of your product and pricing. 25% on a peer vote on what is the best business chosen by way of presentations to all the class. 50% sales. 5 – Networking challenge. You need to get in touch with an officer (CEO, CFO, COO) of a FTSE 250 or S&P 500 company. 2 point for getting a personal email response. 10 points for getting a 15-minute phone call arranged. 20 points for arranging a face to face meeting. No lying or fraud allowed in order to get the meeting. 25% of mark to go on your strategy 75% on the points. 6 – Click-bate challenge. Each person needs to create a click-bate article on a set website. The aim is to get as many views as possible. Doesn’t matter what it is on but you need to push it hard. 50% grade based on our opinion of your marketing strategy, 50% based on number of unique views. 7 – Affiliate earnings challenge. Find a product you like on Amazon. Sign up to Amazon associates. Write an article which encourages people to click through and buy the product. Market the article, hard. 50% of grade based on the amount of affiliate earnings. 50% of the mark on our opinion of the strategy employed. 8 – Fund-raising challenge. In groups create a Kickstarter campaign. Aim to raise at least £200,000. The group that gets closest wins. 50% of mark based on how much raised. 50% on our opinion of the strategy etc. If any group hits the £200k target they need to do the project! So make sure it’s viable and not just a blag. 9 – Outsourcing challenge. As a group you’re to create a one-off magazine. You come up with strategy and then you outsource all the different parts. You can outsource to writers, designers, editors. You need to find the outsourcers, can do it any way you want but the one rule is you’re not allowed to do any of the work yourself! So it is very important to recruit the right people and give a good enough brief that they can do their jobs. Each group gets a £2,000 investment. Once the magazine is ready the team needs to head onto campus and sell the magazine to passers by. Choose the price or get advertisers and give it away for free. Each group needs to sell enough to recoup the initial investment. Any extra profit is split 50% between the department and the team. Grade split 50% for how well the outsourcing went. 50% for sales. 10 – The pop up challenge. In groups you are to run a pop up stall. Sell whatever you want – food, drink, books etc. But you need to get the licenses, source the products, do all the health and safety and get the permissions. Then a 50% ranking for the group with the most profit and 50% on our opinion of strategy and implementation
• 15 July 2015 - 10 ideas for how PWC can improve their image
  Today’s daily ideas are on how Price Waterhouse Coopers can improve their image. The strategy is to make them a place of trust among regular people. You want companies to think that simply by hiring PWC their reputation will improve. Unwavering honesty with a massive focus on the normal person. PWC doesn’t make any money directly from normal people – but it does get its reputation from them. It won’t be quick, but baby steps over many years will lead to dramatic change.1 – Offer free financial advisors at a drop in centre. Open full time where anyone can drop in to have an expert look over their accounts and talk about debt, saving and pensions. Totally pro-bono.2 – Launch a small business consultancy branch. Offer free advice for any company up to a certain size. Two 1 hour meetings a year with a consultant. Buy a bunch of small business accountancies and have them under a different, less prestigious brand. Then funnel the small businesses into them. When a business grows too big it gets funneled back to PWC. Build brand loyalty and help grow businesses from the ground up. 3 – Write an open letter to the government with detailed researched ideas and strategies on how to clamp down on tax evasion. “We at PWC think that everyone should pay their fair share. The problem is too many people are finding loopholes. As experts in tax, here is how to close them”. Put the emphasis on the government for not doing enough. Talk about how by doing this pwc is losing money but think that it is their duty. 4 – Aim to brand auditors as the ‘police of good/honest business practice’. Do a bunch of research and marketing campaigns pushing the honesty and need for clear/transparent auditing. Once the reputation is built you can do campaigns urging normal shareholders to check that the companies they’ve invested in are audited by pwc. ‘Is you company audited by pwc? If not then who knows what skeletons are in their cupboard. We’re here for normal shareholders – not for the fat cats’. Could do TV or tube adverts. Make it so that all the major stock exchange companies need to be using PWC or else people will assume they are dishonest. 5 – Create an online tool that allows normal people to look into any FTSE 250 company. Tells you all the dirt – how much the CEO is paid. How much is paid out in bonuses. Do they pay the living wage. Male to female ratio. Male to female ratio in management positions. How much money it made in the last few years. Percent owned by the tax-payer. Make it an easy infographic format. Might piss off a couple of people but it’s a long-term strategy – will build a strong trustworthy brand in the long run. ‘PWC – keeping the city honest’ 6 – Do a big campaign on how the government is giving up on people and removing the retirement safety nets. Say that companies should take up that slack! Big push to bring back end salary pensions and encourage long-term careers at one company. Point to all the research that says that long term employees make the best senior managers – not the people who dip in and out of different companies, loyal only to themselves. 7 – Put on free training courses on networking, office politics and accounting. Say two weeks full-time course for motivated but underprivileged school leavers and sixth formers. Aim to build contacts and fond memories with next generation’s leaders. Then keep in touch – provide mentorship throughout their careers. 8 – Provide mentoring programs where all grad schemers are teamed up with a state school kid who they get time off work to meet every other week. Hearts and minds! 9 – Buy moneysavingexpert and have it continue running exactly as it is but with some PWC branding. The go-to place for the best, unbiased advice on everything financial. 10 – Create a separate website/company that is PWC branded but that has very clearly nothing to do with PWC’s B2B business. That website is the company that does all the research and write ups they want normal people to read. Become the goto place for stuff like a breakdown of the budget with infographics and videos. Anything city/money related that people want to hear about should go on there.
• 14 July 2015 - 10 ideas for number/list stye table tennis books
  Today’s daily ideas are on books that would be useful and go down well, but that we could write relatively quickly. The number based format helps frame reader expectations.1 – 10 fundamental table tennis pieces and how to maximise their effectiveness.2 – 10 strategies for creating an unreadable table tennis serve. Chapter on deception – chapter on daily training – chapter on serves that can generate multiple spins off the same movement. 3 – 10 fundamental table tennis styles that you need to be able to play against. Different type of rubbers. Pen hold. That sort of thing. 4 – 10 greatest table tennis points in history broken down. 5 – 10 best extra training that will improve your table tennis no end. Yoga – deadlifting – ice skating – meditation. 6 – The remarkable stories behind the 10 most influential table tennis players of all time. 7 – 10 ways to get sponsorship to fund your child’s table tennis career. 8 – 10 best visualsation techniques that you can use to take your game to the next level while you sleep. 9 – The 8 fundamental shots of table tennis. Drive, touch, dig, loop, open-up, flick, chop, counter. 10 – 5 ways to master the tournament setting. – Get in early to knock up – warm up before each match – watch your opponents matches – keep fuelled and hydrated – psyche yourself up – prepare for the settings(are the courts to small? Is the floor damp)
• 12 July 2015 - 10 ideas for how to improve the Metropolitan police
  Today’s daily ideas are on ways that the police service here in London could be improved.1 – Have the operator assign people calls based on their GPS location. Rather than putting the call out over the radio and asking people to volunteer for jobs, it should be sent straight down to the computers. It would cut down on slacking and also the person closest would get the call reducing response time.2 – Integrate the special constabulary so that they work alongside regulars and aren’t self-managed. They will learn a lot better alongside regulars.3 – Have a training course with set check boxes for how to deal with all the common situations. From dealing on the street, to arrest to processing. Rather than the learn by trial and error system we currently have. 4 – Likewise have regular ‘local’ training sessions. Where the gang squads or intelligence departments show you all the wellknown faces and tell you a bit about them. Then a round table for officers to brainstorm their experiences. Helps to get to know the community and shares local knowledge between officers. 5 – Help change the reward mechanisms. Set up a way for officers to hand over easily arrests that they get just before the shift ends. It’s crazy that they are so motivated not to arrest anyone in the last couple of hours of their shift (no overtime pay and will be there long after their shift is meant to end doing paperwork) 6 – Focus on getting as many officers as possible on the street. Research shows that the best way to drop crime is to increase the number and visibility of officers. Deterrent is better than crime solving. We could re-design a lot of the back office jobs to involve some front line policing. Perhaps cut all desk jobs so 1 day a week should be on the street. That sort of thing. 7 – Put in place rules stating the minimum for how much a crime should be investigated – then relate those steps and the results to the victim. No good just focusing on making sure the victim feels safe, they also want to feel like the police are investigating and solving crimes. 8 – Better media relations. Encourage police to be more human – rather than advise officers to never talk about their jobs on social media, do the opposite. Encourge positive social media posting. Take a look at the Ukrainian ‘photogenic police’. Focus on the stories of the indiviual police officers and why they do it. Especially the newer officers who have had to go through so much in order to get in. Be a lot more transparent – if people knew what it was really like in the police, 90% of the distrust would disappear. People trying hard to do their best with little training, bad systems and while understaffed with the constant threat of legal liability and social sensibility drummed into their heads 24 hours a day is a lot better than a seemingly racist, brutal and efficient old boys club. The downside is that it would remove a lot of the fear from criminals – but I’m not sure that that wouldn’t make a big difference – once you’ve been arrested 5 times and seen how well you’re treated and how gentle the sentences are, all fear goes anyway. 9 – Equip everyone with cameras and use it not just for dealing with complaints and evidence – but also to minimise paperwork. Officers add comments to the video explaining his motivations and feelings. Rather than writing whole statements. Then the CPS would view it and decide if the crime is worth prosecuting. 10 – There should be a big push to help improve morale in the police. As Starbucks will tell you – grumpy or tired staff will lead to bad customer service. Lots of congratulations for jobs well done, rewards based on performance – such as driving courses or better roles. And a big focus on welfare – not overworking, not cancelling holidays. That sort of thing. Tired police is a massive no-no. 11 – Work closer with charities. So that officers can refer people to the relevant places. Homeless, or children, or isolated wives. Currently, if it’s not a police matter – the police don’t always know who can help! 12 – Store the transcript or voice recording of the 999 call and send it down to officers before the attend the call so that they have a better idea of what is going on. There is a lot lost in translation between the caller, the operator and the frontline officers.
• 11 July 2015 - 10 ideas for countries I'd like to visit
  Today’s daily ideas are for places I would like to visit. The reason for doing today’s ideas is to get me excited about travelling!1 – Brazil. Bring back my roots! See the places my mother grew up and also visit the home to Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu. The Olympics are there next year…2 – Argentina. Or more specifically Buenos Aries. Meant to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world and full of beautiful people. Also cheap and a chance to practice my Spanish. They also have really good cheap steak!3 – United States. Or more specifically Texas or some other state that’s a bit rednecky but really welcoming to British foreigners. Lots of food, lots of space, cheap, and Cowboys. 4 – A Scandanavian country, Norway perhaps. Because it is so different but still very first world. Would be interesting to see. 5 – Canada. Everyone is meant to be really nice. Like us but different. 6 – Mexico. The foood!!!! Also could practice a bit of Spanish and there are meant to be some amazing all inclusive resorts. 7 – Germany – Berlin. Heard so many great things about it but have never been. Could also go for Octoberfest. 8 – Italy. Or more specifically a coastal beautiful town. Great food, great wine, cheap and by the sea. 9 – Laos. A better version of Thailand (or so some travellers told me). 10 – South Korea. Weird, fantastic, crazy and yet still first world.
• 10 July 2015 - 10 ideas to market the expert in a year book
  Today’s daily ideas are on how best to market the book we are writing about the Expert in a Year challenge.1 – We need to get a lot of early sales and reviews in order to move up the Amazon sales rankings and start getting organic sales, which means the first 24-48 hours will be critical. We need to get the momentum rolling.2 – Send out to all our email lists. Expert table tennis, expert in a year, arbing. Asking people to buy the book. Be pretty clear – hi, everything on our site is free, we’ve written a book. Please buy it or show your support with a good review.3 – Send the book out to a bunch of people and ask them to leave a review on Amazon. The aim is get a massive push on Amazon – not to get lots of reviews on different websites. The people reviewing don’t need to be anyone special. Just people who like table tennis. Ideally we want to give them some sort of discount code so the review appears as an Amazon verified sales review. 4 – Put the book up for preorder a week or two before we launch so that it can build sales before release. We want as many sales as possible in the first 24 hours and preorders count. ItaAlso gives us a chance to tweak the listing details and get into the best categories. 5 – Do a virtual book tour. Go on any podcast, forum or website that we know of that is to do with table tennis. Basically do an interview and talk about it. Could also do an episode on Ben’s podcast. 6 – Buy advertising on keywords to do with table tennis once we have a few good reviews and blitz the spending for 24 hours after launch. The aim is to get as many sales as possible in a short space of time – even if we lose money on those sales. We’d be paying to build momentum. 7 – Straight up ask other influencers if they would push the book. Anyone with an email list or table tennis facebook friends. We could send people an extract of where they’re referenced in the book to help make them feel involved and a part of the project. 8 – Put the first chapter, or a couple of random chapters, up for free. Hopefully a sales funnel that will hook people in to buy the book. Will have to think carefully about which part we put up and where to tie it off. 9 – Tell anyone who is in the book about it. They might buy it out of the curiosity/fame factor – “look, I’m in a book!!”. 10 – Straight up ask all our personal friends and family to buy it. “I know it’s bad. But we’ve just released our book and are really excited about it. Please buy it! We’re trying to get up the Amazon sales rankings and this first 24 hours is critical.If you buy it I will love you forever if you do”. Be really honest about the motivations.
• 09 July 2015 - 10 ideas for jobs for my sister
  Today’s daily ideas are on jobs that my sister who has recently graduated with a degree in a early childhood studies, can do.1 – Women’s worker at church2 – Mums and tots club worker – a socialising role where new mothers bring their babys to meet other mums.3 – Market researcher at mothercare. 4 – Events organisers for yummy mummys and their kids. Put on events for them. 5 – Primary school teaching 6 – Nursery/playschool teacher 7 – Marketing – b2b or event organising 8 – Charity work based in the UK. Similar to what my mum did. Talking to people – writing grant applications. Schmoozing 9 – Relay worker – Christian union organisation supporting universities. 10 – Tea shop propieter
• 08 July 2015 - 10 ideas for how to save money in London
  Today’s daily ideas are on how the average young Londoner can still get the most out of London but save money at the same time.1 – Budget per home cooked meal – for instance a max £2 per portion. Buy only from large supermarkets, cook large portions and freeze leftovers. £2 is enough to eat like a king with a little bit of planning.2 – Set up a standing order to take out and put into savings account x amount the day after payday. If it’s not in your account you won’t think you can spend it.3 – Stop going into overdraft. You get charged interest and debt is crap. If you don’t have the money – don’t spend it. Everyone in London understands the “sorry I can’t go out, I’ve run out of money till payday!”. 4 – London is full of great things to do, and many of them are cheap or free! Choose a free museum vs a £75 supper clubs. BBQ in the park vs Bodeans – even with awesome butcher’s meat it is miles cheaper per person. 5 – Do dinner parties but ask for a £5 contribution from each person to cover the cost. Just because you’re hosting doesn’t mean you need pay for everything. Or if you don’t want to do that, parcel out the high cost ingredients to be bought. X brings wine, y brings the chicken. As your doing the cooking most people will be more than happy to cover the cost of the ingredients. 6 – Buy big purchases second hand on gumtree. Any furniture, crockery, electronics. It will be 10% of the price as new, plus you’ll be meeting people and improving your skills of chatting and negotiating with strangers. 7 – Sell stuff you don’t need on gumtree rather than throwing it away. 8 – Share Netflix/amazon prime membership with your housemates and split the cost. 9 – Don’t buy any takeaway coffee or food. Get an aeropress and make coffee at work yourself or make it at home and take thermos flask. Or get into caffeinated teas and store some nice teabags at work. 10 – Cut down on extravagant presents. You might know the difference between Hotel Chocolate and Thorntons, but most people don’t. The stuff young hip londers turn their nose up at are the height of luxury for most people. including Londoners who don’t have that ridiculous lifestyle. Going a step down will save a lot of money and still have the same effect on the recipient’s life. 11 – When choosing where to go for a meal out, rank cool places by price and choose the cheap ones. There’s plenty of amazing places where a main is sub £10. You may really want to try out tramshed – but you also probably want to try out a cool vietnamese on kingsland road or La Hore or any one of a hundred other places. A BYOB vietnamese that costs you £8 can be more fun than a £30 a piece meal with drinks at andinas. And you’re still getting the full London experience. 12 – Go for the cheaper drink at the bar – a glass of wine vs a gin and tonic. Aint going to have much affect on you and it will save few quid a go. Also at restaurants go for the house wine. It’s normally better than the second, third or fourth cheapest options. 13 – Put on a range of interesting themed evenings at home. Fancy dress/cocktail making/eurovision/house parties/tequila night (everyone needs to bring a different bottle of tequila). And don’t end by going to a club! Set the start time for slightly later so there is less expectation for food, and just provide nibbles. Then get everyone to provide the booze. After you have put on a couple you’ll have so much booze left over that you won’t need to buy any for the next ones! Make the most of London, by making the most of the fun loving and diverse people in London.
• 07 July 2015 - 10 things that everyone believes that I disagree with
  Today’s daily ideas are on ‘common wisdom’. Stuff that everyone believes is true, but that I disagree with.1 – Everyone needs a job. Infact the opposite is true – most people don’t. We’re at the point in society where the few can provide for the many. There’s no point people being given a job just for the sake of having a job.2 – Renting is throwing money away. No, it’s not. If you buy a house and live it you’re still ‘paying rent’. You’re paying whatever you would have rented it out for to someone else as you’re not getting that money as income. It can be cheaper to rent or it can be more expensive.3 – Everyone should go to university. Nooo, we have plenty of education before uni. It’s not needed and unless it’s a top uni it won’t really add anything to your job prospects. 4 – You should treat everyone equally. No, everyone is equal in society but everyone is not equal to you. Your family should come before strangers. 5 – Politicians are out for money or are controlled by corporations. No one goes through all that shit for a little bit of money. Politicians genuinely want to help. Granted they are incentivised to align their beliefs with their financial/power rewards. But that is subconscious and a problem with the system, not the individual politicians. On average their hearts are in the right places and they’re doing to job for the greater good. 6 – Life was better in the olden days. Nooo, for most people life is much better now that it ever would have been at anytime in before. Both here in the UK and globally. People are paid higher in real terms than ever (earnings in the UK adjusted for inflation are double what they were in 1975. And back then that was enough to support a family with just one person earning…). Almost everything is cheaper – particularly entertainment and holidays. Education is at it’s highest ever (world illiteracy halved between 1970 and 2005! 37% to 18%). Ok yes house prices are more expensive in London, but they’re cheaper or pretty much the same outside of London. But even so that’s just one part that’s ‘worse’ – on average life is much better. 7 – Income inequality is bad. No poverty is bad. Just because there’s a big difference rich and poor doesn’t mean the rich are taking bread out of the mouths of poor people. It’s not a zero-sum game. As long as the poor are getting richer, who cares about what happens to the super rich? Instead of focusing and hating on the super rich. Let’s focus, love and help the super poor. Also earnings above about £50k a year doesn’t equate to any extra happiness. And at the super rich level it’s actually more likely to equal unhappiness. So I have nothing to be jealous or annoyed about. 8 – Small independent places are expensive/a rip off. No, they’re not. That’s just how much it costs. In fact most small independent business lose money or are only able to pay the owners less than minimum wage. 9 – A big house is better than a small one. No big houses are a pain to clean, a pain to maintain and will just get filled up with junk. Plus they’re more expensive. Much better a smaller, miniminist house with the savings invested and earning you a wage. 10 – Retirement is something you do at 65 and is a fantasy we won’t be able to afford. Pretty much anyone on an average middle class income can retire at 35 if they really want to and plan it from 20. That’s 15 years of work vs the rest of your life at leisure!
• 05 July 2015 - 10 ideas for jobs I would like to do at some point
  Today’s daily ideas are on jobs that I would quite like to do. Generally I’m a massive believer of being your own boss – but there are a few jobs that I would sacrifice my cherished freedom for…1 – Senior leadership position in the police. Perhaps being a borough commander or some other quite independent role with a lot of responsibility. Alternatively I could continue working my way up the MSC and perhaps become an area commander for that. For a full-time role, I could apply for the direct to superintendent route then spend another few years working up the extra rank to borough commander level. Climbing the MSC would simply involve continuing to do what I’m doing.2 – In charge of some department or project at a massive company. Perhaps in a bank or a some sort of professional services. Could get in by doing some more networking and playing the whole ‘modern day digital entrepreneur card’. It would be interesting to be able to take the risks and play with a big structured company full of talented people – without having the weight of responsibility of being the overall boss.3 – Work at a creative agency. Probably on a marketing type thing but on the creative side rather than the arty side. A cross between Leo and mad men. 4 – Video game designer. Again on the creative big picture side rather than the nitty gritty/administrative side. Preferably at an organisation with the processes already in place to streamline the creation. Could get into it perhaps through working on indy projects personally. I could do a kickstarter project. Or I could go a totally different route and work on creating the ideas, story boards and then selling the concept to a big game house. Similar to how writers will sell scripts for a film. Video game ideas could be another daily ideas topic… 5 – Asset management/wealth management/hedge fund management. Probably easiest way to get involved would be start my own and raise all the cash. Franks could be a good person to help. My angle could be to look at online investments. So stuff like blogs or product lines. Buy them out, streamline and automate the process. Turn them into a revenue stream. Bit of a small business version of what warren b does. 6 – Politician. Maybe run for local election – either as an independent or as for one of the parties. Could ask Pav what the steps are. Maybe look at some sort of alternative marketing strategy. Online, Kickstarter, that sort of thing. Wouldn’t want to be prime minister, but it would be interesting to be in the midst of it all. 7 – CEO of a Fortune 500, FTSE 250 company. Some sort of big organisation with a lot of people and a structure already in place. A job for many years down the road but again I would need to get it through contacts. It’s much easier to get such a job if I am able to create an awesome track record. 8 – Food reviewer. Enough said. Lol. Get in by offering to write for some foodie sites or newspapers. Or I could even do it on my own through blogging. It would be great to do it for a big site or newspaper because it would be an in with the restaurants. I would definitely do it for free with expenses covered. 9 – Have my own sketch/comedy show. Personality/silliness based. No idea what it would be about – maybe that’ll be another daily ideas list. I could do a few YouTube videos as a pilot and see how they do. If successful I could then pitch the ideas to a tv channel or production company. 10 – Professor/lecturer. Where I could teach thinking outside the box/online entrepeneurship. Set really cool courseworks: for instance write and publish a book, do a YouTube video, create a Kickstarter campaign. That sort of stuff. The grading would be on how successful the campaigns were. Perhaps ask peter about it. Or my dad. Ideally it would be a part time role. I could get in touch with a university and offer a single course and then work from there. Like what peter does with his maths stuff. I could even do an online course, get some traction from there and use it to get a place at a university.
• 03 July 2015 - 10 ideas on becoming a digital nomad
  Today’s daily ideas how I could leave London and sustain and indefinite life living and working remotely. ie become a digital nomad.Dropping/managing current responsibilities:1 – Take a career break from the police – that should be easy enough. Might need to take a demotion and lose my sergeants stripes – but oh well.2 – Resign/ take a step back from the wren. To do that I will first need to clear the debt liabilities to our current investors or get them into a much more stable state. To spread the responsibilities we could increase the board – and delegate out my current financial duties to some of the paid staff. To solve the debt issues could have the loans set up to be paid off monthly by standing order. 3 – Come end of September I need to work out what to do with my tenancy. Ideally I want to continue living here – but if I can’t work out a short term more flexible agreement I could always end the tenancy and then rent somewhere on a short term monthly deal. Need to be close to the police and the bjj gym – so Dalston makes sense. That would mean selling a lot of my stuff and downgrading. Good practice for travelling! Minimaliseee Other thoughts 4 – Could be a good time to sell and take the profit from my Maltese companies. If I’m abroad for over 6 months I could get paid tax free! 5 – Book a round the world ticket where there are no dates for the flights. So can move on whenever ready. Or start in Europe and then decide where to go next. 6 – Create a monthly budget (be more strict with my finances than I am now) and assign a certain number of hours a week to work. Then make sure I stick to it and don’t get carried away having too much fun. The aim is to make the lifestyle sustainable and not just have an extended holiday. In particular I should continue working on my writing and obviously keep doing these 10 daily ideas 7 – I could get in touch with churches in the area so there are people ready to welcome us and help us settle in immediately. Or I could stay the first few nights in a hostel, explore the area and then get some help finding somewhere to rent. 8 – I could get involved in the online digital nomad/remote working communities. Find out where people like to go, make contacts. Meet people – get deep into that sub culture. 9 – I should come up with some goals for the year. Perhaps something that ties in with Expert in a Year – for instance I could learn a language. Or a couple of languages. 10 – I could go help out with some start-ups. Contact companies that I like the idea of with the proposition: “I’m the country for a month – this is what I’ve done, blah blah blah, I would love to come and help out for a bit”.
• 02 July 2015 - 10 ideas on how to raise money for phase two of the wren
  Today’s daily ideas on how best to be able to pay back all our debt on our coffee shop, The Wren. It is due at the end of January 2016…1 – Ask the current lenders to roll their loan over but on a different scheme. Ideally a slightly lower percent and where it is paid back monthly over a five year period.2 – Set up an own-run crowdfunded loan. A high percent – say 9% but with no minimum lend. Then put a sign up outside the front, like Taylor street did, and get as many people as we know to lend. They used crowdcube.com and raised 3 mil, I am sure we can get the much lower amount needed for 9%.3 – Go to a Christian fund and ask them for a loan. Talk about the good work we’re doing and explain why we can pay them back. They normally donate money but should be up for a loan. 4 – Go to a bank and negotiate a loan. The catch is that we give no guarantee. We could try a bunch of different banks and shop around, including the Christian bank we’ve heard about. 5 – Offer a sellout to St Nicks for the price of the outstanding debt. That gives them a fully functioning and profitable coffee shop with zer0 dependencies. 6 – Put more money in myself (or with my partners) 7 – Try and raise donations (rather than loans) through the churches and members of the talks. It would leave the Wren dependent free and able to grow, but it would be a big shift from our standard business approach to a more charitable one. 8 – Do a Kickstarter campaign. The sales pitch is so that we can get away from stifling high interest payments so we can stay alive. Save the wren style campaign. In exchange you get a free coffee/day as a barista/an item in the menu named after you/free coffee for life. Try and raise the full amount or nothing. 9 – Put on fund raising events operated by the wren. Coffee cupping etc. Our own run events where all profit goes straight into a ringfenced pot to pay back out debt. 10 – Do a funding circle loan. We’d definitely get the funding but it would probably be at a rate more like 12/13%… The last option if we’re really desperate.
• 01 July 2015 - 10 ideas to salvage the Expert in a Year book
  Today’s daily ideas are on how best to use the work we have put into the Expert in a Year book. We have been working on it for six months and the book is finished, but after advisement we have been recommended to write a series more directly table tennis focused. That means we have a finished book about our experiences which we are unsure what to do with…1 – Just release the book as it is and don’t market it that hard. We can turn it into a book and release in a couple of weeks for under £100. It would salvage our last 6 months and help build our reputation.2 – Release the book as a series of blog posts for free on the Expert Table Tennis blog. One week between each chapter and then once we’re done we release the whole lot as a book. You can read it here or you can buy it in in kindle/paperback format off Amazon. Same as what ‘The Martian’ author did.3 – Send it off to a bunch of book publishers and agents, with a book proposal talking about all our marketing plans. See if any of them want to take it on as a proper project. Given our track record selling table tennis related stuff they should want to, and then they can pay and put the work into making the book much more epic. 4 – Use the final chapter (not the epilogue) as a conclusion post for the challenge on Expert Table Tennis. 5 – On Expert Table Tennis do a write up of Sam’s first month of table tennis (chapter 2 of the book) and backdate the post. 6 – Pimp up the table tennis page on Expert in a Year taking the best parts of the book. That page still gets a lot of views and we could make it really gripping. 7 – Turn a chapter or two into an article and send them off to newspapers as a short ‘interest’ piece. Bit extra publicity and gets in the door to become a contributor (to huffington post or bbc). 8 – Write a post on Expert Table Tennis describing my first tournament. What to expect from your first ever table tennis tournament…. 9 – Write a post on Expert Table Tennis describing the summer of camps. What to expect from your first table tennis camps. 10 – Use the introduction for an article behind why we did the challenge.
• 30 June 2015 - 10 ideas to consolidate all our expertise related brands
  Today’s daily ideas are on how to bring all our different expertise related brands under one roof.1 – Come up with a unifying name for everything. Such as ‘expert’. Then we can brand each one as an ‘Expert’ brand: “Expert in a Year, an expert brand”. “Expert table tennis, an expert brand”.2 – Link all current websites together. Big footer at the bottom with all the other site and adverts for the other brands in the sidebar. Including adverts for any products we’re selling even if it from a seemingly unrelated brand.3 – Write a vision statement for the overarching brand and put it in the About section of each site. Same vision on each site but with extra text added linking it all together. 4 – Have the same look and feel on all the sites so without needing to be told people realise they must be linked in some way. That means the same theme and branding style but with a targeted images and layout. Get someone good to sort it out as it will be quite a complex job threading them all together. 5 – Do an ‘expertbjj’, ‘expertrunning’. With links to our Expert in a Year sub blogs. Then we can write articles such as ‘the best GI’s for new jiu-jitsus or ‘the best knee pads for bjj’. That sort of review type post. If we do a bunch of different ones and then wait a few months to see which articles end up ranking on Google and get good daily traffic. Once we’ve got that natural traffic we can then build a product for that article and sell it globally on Amazon. Basically build the audience first then build the product. Exactly like we did with the table tennis bats. Rinse and repeat with each expert in a year style challenge. 6 – When we release a book or, anything that we want to push, we should do a ‘virtual book tour’. Get interviewed as much as possible on podcasts and blogs about the products but then use that opportunity to push all the brands. Try and web together the different sites as much as possible. 7 – With the email lists for the different sites, we should create a stock template that is used for every email. At the bottom it should have something along the lines of: ‘Enjoying expert table tennis? You might like …..’ And then list all the brands 8 – We could keep Eastfield as the product branch of the brand. Just like Nike does loads of sports so could we. That way we can build eastfield as an independent brand which has value to people who know nothing about or have no interest in the Expert group. That will be an advantage for getting into John Lewis and to retailers. But still ties in well with the rest of the brand 9 – The overall brand could be about becoming an expert at becoming experts. Using ourselves as guinea pigs for each specific skill. Then we build out each skill we’ve found and make the advice and tips very relevant. 10 – Franchise out the smaller brands… So get people to do a challenge build a website and then we work on the monetisation. We put together a recipe for a good website which is pretty much product reviews plus the public interest posts: ‘this is my challenge, here is how I’m getting on”. We also build any products they might need and then do a revenue split. 11 – We should brand all our products in such a way that it pushes people online. Either with a website or a QR tag or whatever. Don’t limit our traffic flow to one directional.
• 29 June 2015 - 10 ideas to help ETF Securities grow their business
  Today’s daily ideas are for a city firm called ETF Securities. They create exchange traded funds. Doing these ideas because a good friend is head of retail there.1 – Team up with some of the popular blogs with big retail reach and knowledge of what that market is looked for (such as monevator) to design the best low cost ETF for passive investors. Something to rival the vanguard funds. Basically answer the question of what do they want that we currently don’t have here in the UK? (they’re always complaining that there are better choices in the US)2 – People need to get a better understanding of ETFs. Perhaps a short video advert explaining exactly what they are in really basic terms – pre college level. Then put them as the video adverts on any investory related YouTube videos.3 – Do an advert series on trains. Should be cheaper than tv and you get all the commuters. Could go the route of taking the piss out of people who don’t use ETFs and are still using high expense funds that aren’t exchange traded but do pretty much the same things. 4 – Come up with some way to get rid of the broker – a good passive investor doesn’t need a broker. He wants to just regularly invest in his pool of ETFs. 6 – Offer some sort of promotion if any tracker funds beat our ETFs then we’ll refund the difference. No lose bet 7 – Convince people to have a go at their pension manager. ‘Is your pension manager using Etfs? If not this is why you should be pissed’ type article. Click baity, get people worked up. ‘Your pension manager is wasting your retirement money by his high cost choices;. 8 – Build a group of ‘world’ ETFs. ETF of ETFs with everything you want. Split by what percent are commodities/bonds/stocks. A truly diversified portfolio should contain everything in it. 9 – Make ETFs a lot more simple and transparent. Lots of choice but simple. And with leverage choices to counteract the argument that housing beats the stock market because you can get a pension and leverage your return. 10 – Organise a big study where you sponsor some professors and university departments to do an indepth study on all ETFs. If/when they come back saying that your ETFs are the best available for retail investors then get everyone to publish it and talk about it 11 – Run an AMA on reddit.
• 28 June 2015 - 10 ideas for new businesses that will instantly make money
  Today’s daily ideas are for businesses that bring in profit from the word go. Most of my businesses are focused on passive income but take a long time to build. These are active but earn money immediately.1 – Email as many schools as possible offering to do an assembly or a one-off talk. Motivational speech about thinking outside the box and online business. The alternatives to a normal job and how they can be building their future online businesses now. Could do the same with entrepreneur and computer science societies at university. It could be very cheap – say £50-£100 an hour but will be getting in some cash while building a CV for the big bucks later.2 – Same as above but with Expert in a Year. Even better opportunities once we have a couple of books out there and have done the same in BJJ. Teaching the value of hardworking and not giving up. Blah blah – I was so unsporty, blah blah now I can play table tennis! Use Dan’s mate for the first one and then request contacts or recommendations for other schools. Also ask all friends who are teachers for the ‘in’.3 – Offer social media/viral marketing services to mid-sized city businesses. People like Frank. Teach ‘The value of a personal brand’ in financial and professional services. How you should now be building your online presence. Creating your own online CV. Both to help gain clients and also for your own career progression. Charge city rates. £200 an hour. 4 – Email round loads of BJJ or MMA clothing/accessories companies asking for sponsorship. The sales pitch is that I have a big audience. 1.5 million views on our last video. Building their online presence while also promoting BJJ to non-grapplers. 5 – Provide one-off business consultation. 30 minutes free then £100 an hour going forward. Meet for a coffee and then go through and properly formulate their ideas – like I’ve been doing recently for free for people. Keep doing that but if they want a follow up after coffee number one, then they need to pay. Change it to my job description on LinkedIn/Facebook. Spread the words to my friends or anyone who’ve I’ve given advice to before. Might actually see an upswing in the number of people asking for advice as it’ll be ‘OK’ to ask. 6 – Start betting again. 7 – Come up with ideas for products for specific companies. Such as toys or online courses. Patent them and then license them to said companies. Just as the guy from SPI 126 does. Can use the daily ideas for coming up with them. 8 – Become a coaching agency. Take people who want to coach (for instance in table tennis) and get them jobs. They get paid by us and the school/wherever pays us. Say 30% margin. Talk to Renee or some other person in recruitment on how best to set it up. 9 – Email loads of online businessy conferences asking to give a talk. There’s so many about might as well stock email them all. Either about Expert in a Year or about the stuff on this blog. Even if the few are disasters it’s good for CV and helps to get more in the future. Once you’ve got your foot in the door.. 10 – Find young companies and ask for a position on their board or as non-execs. Either a yearly salary or small equity. Go to board meetings, give advice. Tell the CEO what needs to be done. Help with growth. Could do for say 2% equity. Or if they’re well funded for a set amount a year. Or perhaps small equity and then a set amount per meeting. Plenty of small companies who would be happy to have me – it’s very confidence boosting having someone who has done it all before. It will be fun and if one blows up my stake will be valuable.
• 27 June 2015 - 10 ideas to market Eastfield Co
  Today’s daily ideas are on how best to promote and market our new table tennis sporting goods brand – Eastfield Co1 – Offer influencers a set amount to write a good post about our stuff on social media. Either Facebook or Twitter. Anyone who gets a lot of post interaction from the table tennis community. After a few attempts, we can work out what the conversion rate is.2 – Go straight department store buyers. Particularly friends of friends who might be contacts in certain departments. The sales pitch is that we have a very good track record with the Palio bats, know the market and that these are wanted.3 – Start selling on Amazon as well to try and drive their organic traffic. Get reviews and try and become number one for bat cases. Either still using Shipwire or by moving to Amazon FBA. If we do Amazon FBA with the next batch we can stock in the US as well which will work out slightly cheaper. 4 – Really push our affiliate scheme. Reach out personally to people we think that it will suit. Market it as a job – “you can make a living just by promoting our top end products”. Potentially up the commission. Get clubs in on the action and offer them a deal. 5 – Write about it on various table tennis online locations – forums, Reddit, facebook groups. Basically anywhere where we can hit a bit more of an audience – get a link back – and not cost us any money. Why aren’t we doing this now? Fear of rejection/scared of looking ‘spammy’ to our potential customers. 6 – Offer to sell tickets for competitions through our affiliate connections. Just build more traffic to the site. 7 – Spend time learning Google advertising and the Google shopping algorithms. 8 – Perhaps make it free delivery rather than offering discounts. People seem to be put off by the delivery especially when they have got so used to free delivery from Amazon. 9 – See if we can get the emails of the 1,000s we’ve sold table tennis bats to on Amazon and reach out to them. 10 – Ask people to write reviews for us. Particularly the competition winners. If we can find three or four different review sites and get them to post it on there that should help with both SEO and for getting our brand out of just our Facebook reach.