Today we start Act 2 of the blog challenge.  Here Natalie’s going to help us focus on building our business.  As with Act 1, you have got to start with a vision.  Hence, today’s prompt:

• Whose online business do you admire most and why?

My first thought here was to focus on Pat Flynn over at http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/.  I found Pat at the beginning of 2013 and have digested all of his podcasts and blog posts since that point in time.  Pat provides a huge wealth of knowledge, seems to be a really nice guy, and has helped me immensely.  Thanks Pat!  However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I don’t “admire” his business in the sense of wanting to emulate/model it.  In particular, Pat’s focused on helping people to build their on-line business.  While that’s great, my picture of a business is to help folks outside of simply how to build their online business.  Side note here, in addition to Pat, you should check out Caleb, Chase, and Corbett over at “The Fizzle Show” podcast for some additional great ideas on how to build your business.  These guys put out a weekly show that’s both insightful and fun.  Although a warning up front, they can be a bit irreverent (and funny as hell!) from time to time.

So if it’s not Pat, who?  After racking my brain for a minute, I came to the conclusion that the business I most admire on-line is that of Seth Godin.  I only stumbled on to his blog a couple of months back; however, I’ve come to look forward to his daily posts.  He provides thought provoking insights each day that make me evaluate how I’m doing things.  While I don’t change each day as a result of his posts, I do make subtle shifts from his influence.  That’s a model that I’d love to emulate!

Now there’s a bit of irony here.  I have absolutely no idea as to how Seth monetizes his business and/or how he even structures his business!  That’s quite amusing given how much of a “facts and data guy” I am:  the guy I most admire is based on feel versus data?!?!?!  Probably a good yin to my yang that’s driving the appeal!

The next two step here are very obvious:

• Spend some time researching Seth’s business model to understand what he has built.
• Evaluate the model for potential opportunities for me to emulate (although I’m not shaving my head anytime soon!)

If you want some more information on the challenge, check out the post on day nine at:

http://suitcaseentrepreneur.com/blogchallenge/blog-challenge-day9