I have noticed over the last year or so a huge boom in online financial comparison services. From the likes of Money supermarket who started comparing loans to confused.com and now gocompare.com that lets you find a range of prices for car insurance. Its a booming market and is effectively just affiliate marketing on a national mass market scale. I like the idea, I mean its a win win deal. All the companies using them to sell get more car insurance sold, the middleman gets a cut and the customer gets cheap car insurance, I mean that’s pretty mutually beneficial for all parties. Its rare that on such a large scale something can work so well. I cant help but think that if the insurance companies were dynamic enough they would have started their own equivalent sites, or sold more successfully to avoid the need to use these middle men sites. But then I suppose they may well do, and even if they do perhaps the extra sales are always welcome so they can never have enough outlets to sell insurance.

In that way I cant see that a well implemented version of a comparison site can fail. Provided it is run well, set up with flare and allows you to easily compare car insurance or another financial product then it cant really fail, the moneys there!

Some times being an entrepreneur can be a daunting pursuit. Hardwork, lonely and an uphill struggle it can take a lot of work to get an idea off the ground.

I’ve found myself spending little amounts of time on a vast amount of skillsets including video editing, php, graphic design, photography, selling, economics, journalistic writing, development plans, strategy, driving, drawing, seo, sem, printing, training - and that’s just off the top of my head.

This irritates me for two reasons: 1. I could be doing what I am good at, but perhaps doing the above is leadership? and 2. Someone who is more professional could be doing it and getting it a lot more precisely mastered. This however is a toss up. I would always lean towards the professional approach, because someone who has mastered an art is much better at it than an amateur, if even just because of practice.

But with start up companies this is not always possible. To start a small web based firm on a shoe string is possible - but not if you started with a professional marketing manager, accountant, web developer, strategist etc. So on a start up financial basis alone the entrepreneur is almost force to be a jack of all trades. But as the maxim goes - Jack of all trades, Master of none - so attention should be paid to how much of your time you devote to skilled work. After you start getting a little sales in or get some sort of funding - be able and prepared to give up certain control of the business. Be ready to employ a marketing professional - professional designer or what have you.

Half of the art of being an entrepreneur is people, learning when to employ who and for what job, term and intention. So perhaps entrepreneurship, if anything is mastering several skills, just on a different level. We just need to have exit strategy’s, plans for handing down control and progressing onwards. Because we have more important things than mastering video editing!!!

Caffeine is good, useful and addictive. It can help you get through the day - but only if you’ve done something unproductive the night before…like getting too drunk. Use of caffeine wisely can be beneficial, that extra boost when needed.

But I would recommend, if your trying to cut down on the coffee - lemon juice! literally cut a lemon in half and stick half or a full lemon worth of juice - squeezed into a cup, pour not boiling water in it then drink like coffee. I have been doing this for almost a year and swear by it. Its good for several reasons: 1. it can slowly wean you off your harder drinks, 2. it cleanses your liver (and probably a lot more), 3. its probably 1 of your 5 a day fruit and veg (as long as you don’t boil it - which would kill half of the useful parts of the juice.)

It might sound obscure but for me it works, it seems to replace tea or coffee perfectly. Also try it with green tea - it nulls the rank taste of green tea - allowing you to get the beneficial metabolism boost without the twisted face.

Note * if you don’t like the sour taste just use less juice - don’t counteract with sugar…otherwise you might as well drink tea temperature coke *