I love to read. I read whenever I have even the slightest opportunity. I almost always have a book on me, in my purse. I keep one in my car, in my bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom, you get the idea. At any given moment, I’m probably reading 6 books at a time.

Well, make that 7 now.

I just discovered the coolest tool online. It’s a site called DailyLit which emails you short installments of books you choose to read. You can set the schedule and frequency– whether you want to receive excerpts daily, every other day, just weekdays, or whatever. If you receive an installment and you happen to want a little more that day, you can get the next portion right away. Plus, most of the books are available for FREE!

Kudos to the folks, Susan Danziger and Albert Wenger, who created the service. At this point, there are just over 1,000 book offerings in a wide range of categories. While the majority of books are classics, the list is sure to continue to rapidly grow and expand.

With manageable 1,000 word posts regularly sent to your inbox, you’ll have War and Peace finished in no time!

Happy reading!

Think of all the obstacles that bombard you on a daily basis. Add to those the incidents or circumstances that truly test your strength and will – which inevitably force you to make a decision. Do I take the path of least resistance and give in to my situation? Or do I choose perhaps, to push through, face things head on, and take a shot at winning?

Even though it certainly doesn’t feel like it when we are facing it, adversity is what defines us. It is easy to have a great attitude, a strong work ethic and a positive outlook when things are going great. But how do we stand up during tough and seemingly unbearable times?

Consider the phenomenal achievements and life stories of Jim Maclaren and Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, who chose not to take the path of least resistance, when faced with tremendous adversity.

Whether our life on earth lasts 20 years or 110 years, we are guaranteed to not make it out alive. So, if your life today isn’t exactly going exactly the way you’d hoped it would be, how about taking a different approach? Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

We become what we think about. This is one of the greatest laws of the universe. If things aren’t right in your world, change your thoughts. Change your life. And why not? The worst that can happen is you will die trying. Just do it. Quit going through the motions and start designing your life the way you want it to be.

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” ~T. Roosevelt

So, you’re all pumped up to start blogging. You know what you want to write about. You’ve got your domain name (URL). You’ve got a hosting plan. You’ve even gotten your hosting configured for the URL where you want your WordPress blog set up.

Whew! Now all you have to do is install WordPress but, whoa! You’re finding that their “Famous 5-Minute Installation” guide is, shall we say.. not-so-simple? Well, a while back, I was right there with you. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. That’s why I put this tutorial together, which will hopefully help demystify the process so you won’t have to go through what I did to finally get to your desired end - blogging right away!

Step 1: Set up the database
Right out of the gate, this is where things can get a little funky. So let’s tackle it FIRST. We’ll be using cPanel for the example. When you login to your cPanel account, you should see something like this below.

Different versions may differ, the important thing is to navigate to the MySQL® Databases page. You should now be at a page which looks like this.

On this page you will create the MySQL database, and the user that connects to it. Please note that this is not related to the WordPress admin login, we’ll get to that in a bit. First, type in the name you want to call your database. For this example, we’ll simply call it wordpress. The next step is to create a user which will connect to the database. For purposes of the example we’ll use dbuser as the username and you can create whatever you wish for the password. Please be sure to write down or remember the password you use, because it will be needed later on. You’ll then need to add that user to the database you just created with “all privileges”.

After you click on Make Changes, notice the prefix of yourusername_ in the database name and username. This is your username for your hosting account. You will need to use the database name and username as you see it on this page, or it won’t work. Next we will actually start installing WordPress via the web-based installation script.

Step 2: Download WordPress
Head on over to the download page at WordPress.org. Make sure you download from Wordpress.org and not another third party site. This way, you can be assured you’re getting the latest stable version direct from the official site.

You can choose to download either the .zip or .tar.gz file. Both contain the same files but if you are a Windows user, you probably want to download the .zip file.

Step 3: Extract the files
Extract all the files in the latest.zip or latest.tar.gz and have them all ready to go in a directory on your local computer. I use Windows XP, and it should look something like this.

Please note some of the icons may look slightly different for you depending on the default programs you’ve chosen for the file types.

Step 4: Create a wp-config.php file
If you were to upload all your Wordpress files now, WordPress wouldn’t know how to connect to the database you’ve just created. So, before we upload everything, let’s take care of this now. You’ll need to create a wp-config.php file. To do this, go into your wordpress folder. In it, you’ll find a file named: wp-config-sample.php. Open it in Notepad and you should see this:

Enter into the listed fields, the database name, user, and password information you created when you set up the database earlier. Remember, your database name is not just “wordpress”. It would be “username_wordpress” and same, “username_dbuser” for the database user.

When complete, save the file as “whp-config.php”.

Now you’re ready to upload the files to your web host. You’ll need an FTP client to do this. I use FileZilla which is free and relatively straightforward to use. Make sure you download the Client and not the server.

Step 5: Upload files to your host
Using FileZilla, it’s easy to upload files directly from your computer to your hosting account. Open it up, type in your login details at the top and click the Quickconnect button.

So far you should have a screen like you see above. Make sure you’re uploading within the public folder, which is usually called /public_html/. If you want to install to a subdirectory, that’s fine as well.

Step 6: Install WordPress …Yeah!!
We’re just about done now. You’ve already uploaded the WordPress folders and files to your hosting account and set up the database. Now it’s time to navigate to the URL you’ve installed it on via your web browser. If everything was uploaded properly, you’ll arrive at the welcome page.

Just type in the title of your blog, your e-mail, and you’re done! Your username should be admin and your password will be automatically generated for you.

Congratulations. You did it. You’re a rock star! Woot! Woot!

In this video, Gary discusses the importance of embracing who you are and pumping out great content as being the key to building a business. He says that whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, it really doesn’t matter. It all boils down to what you bring to the table.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Gary pumps out great content. I love watching him and listening to him speak. But, what is it about Gary Vaynerchuk that draws so many people to him? Is it really JUST his content at the end of the day? In my humble opinion, the answer is no.

Even if you’ve never seen or heard of Gary before, you can gain a lot of insight into what really makes him the true, charismatic leader that he is, just by watching this 3 minute video. Take a look.

He leaves us several clues:

He loves and accepts who he is (he loves his own DNA).
He works ridiculously hard.
He connects with people.
He talks to people.
He helps people.

He cares.

The bottom line is no one will care about how much you know until they know how much you care. When your words match what’s in your heart, people will find you authentic, real and yes, someone who possesses the “IT” factor.

Even though he has an in-your-face personality, he’s NOT a jerk. Whether you realize it or not, he lifts you up. He speaks positivity into you. His focus is consistently on YOU, and not in selling himself.

By doing this, he has achieved a position of power, authority, and influence all the while bringing everyone within his reach up with him every step of the way.

He’s right when he says it’s not about being an introvert or an over-the-top extrovert. But it’s also not just about your content. It’s a bit more.

When he asks, “Do you have the Chops?” He’s asking you if you have the SPINE to consistently mean what you say and say what you mean and in doing so, leave a legacy behind? As simple as it sounds, doing such takes a conscious effort. Gary does this. He made the decision one day to be an alpha leader and practices his discipline of truth everyday.

Are you doing the same?

So, you’ve all probably- at some time or another, received an error message when you submitted a credit card for purchase. A pop-up generates stating the card number you entered is not valid, please try again. Perhaps you miss-typed a digit, or maybe left one out.

Have you ever wondered how the heck the computer could know this so fast? Obviously, it didn’t process the number- it happened nearly instantaneously. So how does it know?!?

According to my programmer, there is a mathematical code that the computer calculates once you hit the submit button. If the formula doesn’t check out, you get the error message and it doesn’t even bother to send it to through the payment gateway.

Here’s the formula:

Starting on the left, isolate every other number in the string. Multiply those digits by 2. Then add those results up along with the numbers you left alone. If your final number is divisible by 10, then the computer will deem your credit card as valid.

Here is a cc number, for example, that will pass:

Visa: 4111 1111 1111 1111

Or this:

4444 3333 2222 1111

Why am I sharing this? No, it’s not so you can try to go and hawk things online (obviously, these numbers wouldn’t pass at the authorization point).

But from an implementation standpoint, often times you will need to run many tests to make certain that everything is functioning properly. So instead of using your personal credit card or your programmer having to use his, you can actually have him use one of these dummy card numbers which will be considered valid by your computer all day long. Makes life a lot easier for everyone.

Pretty neat, huh?