Christian Capitalist

Almost ready to go....

Filed Under: Shirt Site

The Solo Tees site is almost ready to go. Gathering together a couple more shirt designs then it'll be time to launch.

I'm pretty excited as I have three pretty big time bloggers ready to push the site when it is up and running.

I hate waiting, but it's currently the best thing to do.

Posted by Tim on October 06, 2005 | 467 Comments

God's Control

Filed Under: Musings

What exactly does it mean to "give things to God"?

Most Christians would agree that everything belongs to God anyway, but I think it's a head/heart thing.

I tend to hold onto things as "mine" and have a fear of telling God to do what he wills and I'll be ok with it.

It comes from putting the attributes of powerful men onto an all powerful God.

People in charge do things to prove their power because they're scared of losing it.

So I have this fear that if I release things in my life to God's control, he will exert his power in some way that isn't good just to prove he's in control.

Isn't it funny how silly the way we think sounds when it's put into words?

Everyone I know that holds onto things to tightly has ended up either being miserable in failing or being miserable in success.

I prayed Sunday night with a good friend that I would learn to trust God and allow him to give and take away as he sees fit.

He's got my best interest in mind after all right?

Posted by Tim on October 05, 2005 | 28 Comments

New Project

Filed Under: Shirt Site

Back a few months ago I sent an email to a certain big time blogger we all know and love pitching an idea for a shirt with his brand on it.

He tentatively went for the idea and said to put a shirt design and web design together and show it to him.

Well he gave a thumbs up to the shirt and a thumbs down to the site, so I tried again and dropped a couple hundred bucks for a buddy to design it for me.

This blogger liked the new site design... but decided he didn't like the overall idea so he squashed it.

The light at the end of the tunnel is that he said to come up with another shirt idea and he'll push it on his blog.

So Solo Tees is almost finished. The site is up and most of the functionality is there. And yes, I am changing the tag line. It's just a place holder for now.

I hoping to launch it this weekend then use some of my contacts to get the word out.

Stay tuned...

Posted by Tim on October 04, 2005 | 25 Comments

Conference for my "Real Job"

Filed Under: The Office

Traveling for the day job this first half of this week. We are having our big bi-yearly conference at the Opryland hotel in Nashville. Super busy but leaving tomorrow for my bike conference.

Be glad when the eight to fiver is just a "remember when..." in my life.

Posted by Tim on September 27, 2005 | 24 Comments

Pete on Pimping

Filed Under: Musings

Any good blogger has a blogroll that provides way to much information then you could possibly consume in a days time. Unfortunately, in the last couple of busy weeks, I find myself hitting that "mark as read" button on way to many entries.

It is almost physically painful to mark posts as read that I haven't gotten around to reading. I just know the post that will change my life is in there somewhere.

That being said, I always have my top five or so blogs that I will stop what I am doing and make sure I read the new posts.

PC4media has recently gained one of those slots.

He is pimping and pushing his new product, Whizspark, to every blogger contact he has, and talking it up on his blog. It's a lot of fun to watch.

Ahhh I see his evil plan for starting a blog in a first place. Make nice with a lot of bloggers then ask for their help.

I feel used, but in a good way.

He's gonna help me plan and pimp Crooked Cog in '06.

Help each other, says he. Sounds good, says me.

Posted by Tim on September 23, 2005 | 808 Comments

Busy Week = No Clear Thoughts

Filed Under: Musings

I gotta a lot on my mind today and have erased and re-written today's post a half a dozen times cause I can't seem to form any one of my thoughts into a full post. So here's some random thoughts:

My local church, Grace Evangelical Free, seems to have the highest concentration of entrepreneurial minded people then any other group of people I have been in. I think it's cause our church chooses to answer many of the inconsistencies that are ignored in other, ahem, Baptisty churches.

Two of my good buddies, Dan Portnoy and John Gauger, have started Intake Media and are focusing on the Dropcast, "a 30 minute bi-weekly podcast featuring popular culture – those who create it and those who discuss it." Download it. Listen to it. You won't believe it was put together in some dude's basement.

There is streamlining then there is taking shortcuts. Streamlining makes life easier. Shortcuts don't exist.

Why was I raised on a grace-veiled, works-based Christianity? And why do people think it's all about do's and dont's? I'm so bitter at the people that have caused this shift in the cultural view of what Christ came here to do.

I'm done.

Posted by Tim on September 21, 2005 | 51 Comments

Interbike Next Week

Filed Under: Mountain Bike Biz

The biggest conference in the bike world is Interbike. It's held once a year in Las Vegas and a ton of bike companies show up to pimp their goods.

The real point of the show is to bring retailers and manufacturers together, but then you have all the leeches like me show up to find a way to make a little cash somewhere in the cracks of the industry.

Carl and I will be touching down next Wednesday night and attending the show Thursday and Friday. I found a super cheap room a half mile from the convention center, so there will be a lot less walking then last year.

Here's my goals for the show:
1. Have more pictures on BlueCollarMTB.com then any other blog.
2. Get on people's contact list for new 29er stuff. I want TwentyNineInches.com to be THE 29er gossip site.
3. Get a lot out of the bike blogger meetup that's been put together on Thursday of the show.
4. Maintain many of the good relationships we have built the past year.
5. Make some new relationships.

How I plan to accomplish these goals:
1. The conference has wi-fi internet. Both Carl and I will be sportin' digital cameras with wireless laptops. I installed a new plugin on Blue Collar yesterday that's builds a picture gallery by pulling the pictures straight out of a directory on the web host.

   String these together and you have me and Carl running around taking as many pictures as we can then stopping and uploading them all straight to the website and they are automatically "posted". Does it get much more streamlined then that?



2. I have a list of almost all the companies that deal in 29ers and I will be hitting their booths and talking to their marketing people to get on their press release list. I'm FREE marketing and publicity... why don't people make bigger use of that??? That's a topic for another post...


3. Jon Maus has put together a meeting for all the bloggers that are gonna be at the conference. Don't know what attendance will be like, but it should be a good time no matter what.


4. I have booked up well over half my time at the conference with difference companies, along with having a long list of booths I need to hit when I can. It's so amazing this year to just meet with these people and maintain the relationship.


5. I have a few contacts I should be able to meet new people through. Also, I have set up some appointments with a few companies we haven't talked to much, so it'll be cool to talk up Blue Collar and Crooked Cog.

I'm very excited about this year's conference. Hope it meets my expectations.

Posted by Tim on September 20, 2005 | 215 Comments

Comments on posts

Filed Under: Mountain Bike Biz

I wrote an extended entry about how reviews are done in the bike industry yesterday. Jon Maus picked it up on his blog. What cracks me up is that the post on my site didn't get one comment while there are already five comments (including mine) on Jon's post.

Different crowd with different habits I guess. My blog is made up mostly of outbound links so I have trained my readers to read and click. While Jon's readers are used to getting original content that is easily discussed, along with the fact that a lot of them are also industry people.

Posted by Tim on June 30, 2005 | 0 Comments

My First Solitude Retreat

Filed Under: Musings

With all the crap I've been trying to keep up with, I had been telling my wife that I needed a break. I was planning on taking a night to go off with a tent and a bike and just be alone for about 24 hours. Instead of that, I ended up going on a solitude retreat with my church last Friday.

This was one of the most refreshing and rewarding things I have done to further my Christian walk. From Friday night until Saturday afternoon my home was a small room at a Catholic retreat here in Lynchburg. Bare walls, plain furniture and stiff bedding. I spent my time reminding myself what Christ did for me on the cross and working my way through a couple hundred verses on adoration of God and personal forgiveness.

Along with the solitude we practiced the discipline of silence during the day on Saturday. Pretty awkward eating lunch with ten other people while not saying a word.

Both solitude and silence are disciplines many people in church history (including Christ) practiced to draw closer to God, however they have, unfortunately, been left behind by many of the modern day Protestants due to their withdrawal from anything that could be remotely deemed as Catholic.

Once the retreat was over I, of course, had to jump straight back in to me crazy life, however I still feel a calmness at my core that wasn't here last week.

My goal is to withdrawl to solitude at least once a month in order to keep focus and priorities straight.

Posted by Tim on June 21, 2005 | 0 Comments

The Network Grows and I Get to Play with Wordpress

Filed Under: Mountain Bike Biz

Crookedcog.com is up and running and doing well. I have already seen a spike in bloglines subscribers to the different blogs. I've also seen a spike in Adsense revenues. Still not much, but it is at least going in the right direction.

I'm also helping Jon Maus out on a Portland Bike website/newswire. My plan currently is to take a page from Peter Caputa's book and do the whole thing in Wordpress. I'm pretty excited about this project as I actually get to test some of the limits of Wordpress and what it can do.

Besides that I'm just letting the new network grow some as I'm still looking for people to help me blog so I can get some new ones going. Tell your friends!

Posted by Tim on June 17, 2005 | 0 Comments

The Bike Industry and Blogging

Filed Under: Mountain Bike Biz

Well my offer to Johnathon Maus of the Just Riding Along Blog and Box and One Communications turned down my offer for joining the Crooked Cog network. I can understand his reasoning as, well, he is already a 'somebody' in the bike industry and sure as hell doesn't need my help. That aside, I got to talk with him on the phone some last week and we are both on the same page as far as blogging, long tail, Godin, etc. This page being the one that about 95% of the rest of the bike industry is not on. So his goal is to drag as many people as he can into the 21st century.

I think this is a brilliant move on his part. He already has a ton of contacts in the industry and as people start to see the light for the new age of marketing, he will have positioned himself as the expert in the field. I look for him to eventually get a windfall of business as a result of his evangilizing and blog.

What does this mean for Crooked Cog? Well it is currently, from what I know, the only bike blog network out there. Google 'mountain bike blog' and Blue Collar pops up first. So as the industry realizes the importance of blogs, I will be a front runner in their interest for advertising.

Apart from Crooked Cog, I let John know that I am interested in helping him out with Box and One. I am pretty good with web programming and I am pretty durn familiar with blogging and what it entails so maybe I could be some kind of consultant or something that could help out.

Don't know where all this is leading but I'm looking forward to finding out.

Posted by Tim on June 13, 2005 | 0 Comments

Leaders and Followers

Filed Under: Selling Ad Space

It cracks me up how so many companies out there are just followers and they can't figure out why they can't break ahead of everyone else. A student is only as good as his teacher.

I've been selling ad space on the Business Opportunities weblog for a few months now and only gotten a few people to sign up. But two of the three seem to be companies that are already doing well while everyone else is content to just list their companies on websites where EVERYBODY ELSE is listed. Which means... they get drowned out. Does this make since at all? But it does follow the logic, the companies that are willing to try something new are the ones that are doing well.

So we have a couple bigger companies signed up to start their advertising in the next month and I am content waiting for them to get started so I can contact some more of the followers and show that the big dogs are doing it and so should they.

Posted by Tim on June 09, 2005 | 0 Comments

New Sites and Advertising

Filed Under: Mountain Bike Biz

Im still trying to decide on a layout and design for the CrookedCog.com site. Right now it's just a themed wordpress blog.

I'm trying to get another blog to join Crooked Cog. So far I own all of the blogs and I like it that way so I get to call all the shots, however I think this blog would be a great addition to the network and at some point I probably gotta loosen my control a bit in order to let it grow.

Still thinking of a solution to sell advertising on Blue Collar. I'm thinking of taking a page from the Craigslist Manifesto and sell posts on the blog (clearly marked as advertising of course). I like this idea so far as it won't hurt the look and flow of the site to much and I can offer them at a great price and, in my opinion, it will have a bigger effect then big flashing banners because of SEO and such. I'm still trying to figure out a payscale and how to balance it so I don't harm the site. I'd rather have no advertising and keep the site the same then add advertising that would turn off the readers.

Posted by Tim on June 09, 2005 | 0 Comments

First Content Management Post

Filed Under: Extra Stuff

Check out my first post up as guest blogger on Darren Rowse's Content Management blog.

Posted by Tim on June 07, 2005 | 0 Comments

The Bike Blog and Advertising

Filed Under: Mountain Bike Biz

The new blog is up and running at TheBikeBlog.com. That makes four blogs in the Crooked Cog network. Now all I need to do is design and setup CrookedCog.com.

I'm also still trying to figure out if I want to sell advertising on Blue Collar. And if I do, how am I going to implement it? I have a few ideas but I'm still working them out.

Posted by Tim on June 07, 2005 | 0 Comments

New Blog

Filed Under: Mountain Bike Biz

Just purchased TheBikeBlog.com. I was pretty surprised it wasn't taken yet. BikeBlog.com is taken but it one of those that somebody bought and is trying to sell for WAY to much money. Now if I were that guy... I would by the .net, .org, thebikeblog.com, .net, etc. Buy all variations and offer them all for one set price. Would have made the package a lot sweeter. Instead I can add "the" on the front of it and save myself a good chunk of cash. Most of my traffic will come from links and search engines anyway.

So the new blog will soon turn http://bluecollarmtb.com/network/ into it's own site. I added on a plugin to Wordpress that pulls feeds from other sites and makes each post a new post on my blog. I got permission from three of the best bike blogs out there to stream their content into one blog and I'll split any ad revenue with them. It's pretty sweet cause I just set it up and it runs automatically so 1) I get another blog for the network and 2) I don't do jack to keep it updated. KISS at work again.

Posted by Tim on June 06, 2005 | 0 Comments

Bring It

Filed Under: Ideas

New idea I am forming for a new blog. Ever wonder if all the big mouth authors and "consultants" could actually make it in the real world?

Posted by Tim on June 06, 2005 | 0 Comments

New Ideas

Filed Under: Musings

Dane and I were chatting today about starting a new podcast for young entrepreneurs. Maybe kick around new ideas that we don't have time to implement or help people put legs to ideas that they have.

I don't know much about podcasting, but I keep seeing more and more about it so I might as well jump in and try it out.

I read Hugh MacLeod's "How to be Creative" for the second time over breakfast this morning. Such a good read, especially for those of you waiting for "the big idea".

Speaking of "the big idea"... if you aren't 29, it's gonna be harder to come up with it. I still have five good years left though, so I'll be ok.

Still thinking on the faith thing... My wife and I had a good conversation a couple evenings ago. More on that later.

Posted by Tim on June 03, 2005 | 0 Comments

Problogger Linkage

Filed Under: Day to Day

I received my first link today from ProBlogger.net since I'll be guest blogging on one of Darren Rowse's sites in June.

For the new visitors, this is what my blog is about:

Being a capitalist and entrepreneur in today's world is a constant struggle to stay ahead of the game, keep up with trends and some how come up with something worthwhile to get people to transfer money from their wallets to yours. Add on to that the additional requirements of morality and ethics that comes with being a Bible believing Christian and that path narrows.

This blog will journal my travels through the business world as I stumble through it and hopefully, one day, come out on the other end successful.

My current projects include selling ad space for the Business Opportunties Weblog, building up a bicycle blog network based on the (relative) success of Blue Collar Mountain Biking, helping out here with the Niche Blogs Network and whatever else I can get my hands into.

Posted by Tim on May 31, 2005 | 0 Comments

Guest Blogging for Darren Rowse

Filed Under: Musings

Well it's official. I'm guest-blogging for Darren Rowse of ProBlogger fame. He has God only knows how many blogs and I will be mainly helping out on his Content Management blog while he is traveling during June.

Since I'm learning more and more that it really is who you know (as opposed to what you know), I jumped at the chance to help him out. I got hooked up with Dane doing the guest-blogging thing and it has worked out better then most. Not only do I have a new source of revenue but I've gotten a friend out of it as well.

I'll let you know the official start date when I get going so you can visit the site and leave comments on what a great knowledge I have on the subject of content management.

Posted by Tim on May 27, 2005 | 0 Comments

Christian Business is an Oxymoron

Filed Under: Musings

A few days ago Dane sent me an article about the huge money that is in the evangelical industry. Christian music, Christian fiction, Christian self-help, Christian conferences, etc, etc. Since my day job is for a company that sells products to Christian counselors, I have gotten a first hand look at the industry and have no desire to get my hands dirty in it. And I definitely mean "dirty".

In my opinion the Christian industry is the hardest industry to keep your morals in check. The reason is simple. At some point you have to make a decision of what you are in business for... to help people or to make money.

If you choose to help people over making money, it means that your company will suffer and constantly and consistently have money troubles. "Sure we could sell this book about Jesus for $49.99, but most people won't be able to afford it so let's cut the price to $19.99 and only profit $2 off of each one."

If you choose to make money over helping people, it means you are seeking to line your pocket off of Christ. If you're comfortable with that, you better check your heart and do some reading in James. "Sure everyone could benefit from this book about Jesus, but we can make a lot more money selling it for $49.99."

You say you can do both? I say you're full of it. At some point making more money will be justified. There is no way around it. People are people and to have a viable company you need to have a goal of making as much money as possible. And trying to make as much money as possible in the name of Christ... no good.

I say you have two choices:

1. Start a non-profit or


2. Start a "secular" company and use what money you can for charitable deeds and needs

Combine the two and you have a recipe for compromised morals and a scarred testimony.

Posted by Tim on May 24, 2005 | 0 Comments

The Network

Filed Under: Mountain Bike Biz

The new sites in the network are growing pretty steadily. As I expected I think I am a little ahead of the game on the 29er blog. There are very few 29 inch specific sites and I am already getting a good number of hits off of search engines and the site has been up just five days. It's not yet getting as much traffic as the new commuter blog, however I am not doing as much geurilla marketing as my writer for that blog is.

Still kicking around the idea of building up a network of 6 to 10 blogs eventually. Also trying to figure out how and when I can sell ad space for these things. I am having lunch with a guy from my church on Wednesday. He recently sold off a subscription site that he built and did very well with. I'm gonna get his input on some of my ideas.

Posted by Tim on May 23, 2005 | 0 Comments

I'd Rather Be A Hungry Wolf Then A Fat Sheep

Filed Under: Musings

The above cartoon is from the great Hugh of gapingvoid.com. It got me thinking about goals in life and what people do to try and tell themselves that their life really isn't meaningless. I think the two categories of wolves and sheep is a good metaphor.

What makes this cartoon strike such a resonating chord with me is that the boredom of being a sheep (go to school, get a good job, work there till you retire, etc, etc) is what scared me into being a wolf. It was about a four to six month transition of realizing that there was no way in hell I could spend the next forty years sitting in an office pounding a keyboard for someone else. At that point money, status, etc all took a backseat to living a life that I enjoyed living.

At the point that what you are doing for "work" becomes the interesting part of your life, you don't become one of the sheep that buy new cars, new bass boats and new plasma TVs to keep telling themselves that their life really isn't a desert of boredom.

More to come on this subject I'm sure.

Posted by Tim on May 20, 2005 | 0 Comments

Crooked Cog Full Speed Ahead

Filed Under: Mountain Bike Biz

The two new bike blogs I launched a couple days ago are doing pretty well. I have started sending out emails to some of my contacts at Gary Fisher, Surly, etc to get the word out. Also, another influential blog posted a link to Twenty Nine Inches so that should help as well.

The stats yesterday afternoon also showed that both sites had been hit by both the Google and Yahoo search spiders. Hopefully the pagerank of Blue Collar will help push them into the search engines quickly.

I'm still not sure how all of this is going to work. I know that I want to start at least three more blogs in the network, but I have to get some more help in order to do that. We'll see.

Posted by Tim on May 18, 2005 | 0 Comments

New Network

Filed Under: Mountain Bike Biz

Last night I launched two more mountain biking sites to start building up a bike blog network. To supplement Blue Collar Mountain Biking, there is now Commute by Bike and Twenty Nine Inches.

I have settled on the name Crooked Cog for the network and will continue adding more blogs to it. The problem I am having now is finding people that I can trust to consistently blog and do it well. I'm not really soliciting for writers as you never know what kind of cooks you may get, but I am keeping it in prayer and waiting for God to bring along the right people. We'll see how it goes.

Posted by Tim on May 17, 2005 | 0 Comments