Latest

Moving to Spring Hill, TN (one year later)

Almost one year ago (October 2021), my family (me, wife, two children under 3, and two dogs) moved from Portland, Maine to Spring Hill, TN. It was a massive decision leaving friends and both sides of our family, moving 1,200 miles away to a city we had never spent

Chapter 22: our favorite software for working from anywhere

In this final chapter of the Anywhere Operating System [https://friday.app/anywhere], we’ll share our favorite software and tool recommendations to help you work-from-anywhere. We’ll break this section down into three parts; for you, your team, and for your company. Try Friday? We’d love it if

Chapter 21: 12 principles for working from anywhere

In this chapter, I’m going to share 12 mental models for working from anywhere. Think of this chapter as a collection of key principles that were scattered throughout the book. If you don’t know what mental models are, it’s a short and memorable phrase used to describe

Chapter 20: How to stay productive and avoid burnout

I recently had a conversation with someone who was new to remote work. I asked him what his biggest personal struggle was. He replied: "I have so much more free time because I don't have to commute anymore, but I waste so much time, so I finish

Chapter 19: what about hybrid work?

This chapter originally appeared on the Zapier blog [https://zapier.com/blog/hybrid-work-model/]. As a byproduct of the pandemic, many companies have decided to implement a hybrid approach where people work from home a couple days a week, with the option to visit the office 1-2 days/week for collaborative

Chapter 18: how to lead from anywhere

Now, let’s talk about how to run a team from anywhere. Over the decades, countless books have been written on how to manage a team and be a great boss. Most of these books assume that the team is all together in the same location, which is clearly not

Chapter 17: How to onboard a new hire from anywhere

In the previous chapter, we discussed hiring from anywhere. After you hire someone, the next step is to onboard and bring them up to speed as quickly as possible. If you can refine your onboarding process to ramp someone in three months instead of six, that creates a massive efficiency

Chapter 16: how to hire from anywhere

Let’s now talk about another key ingredient to growing your business from anywhere. Hiring. The promise of WFA means that you can hire amazing people, no matter where they live. The reality is that it can be tricky to identify and find talented people, especially if you are used

Chapter 15: how to hold company meetups

One mistake people make when considering a work-from-anywhere model is assuming that meeting up in person is out of the question. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, every single leading remote-first company I can think of (i.e., Zapier, Automattic, GitLab, etc.) would meet up in the real world at least once

Chapter 14: How to stay aligned

Similar to accountability and trust, alignment is a vague word that means different things to different people. When I think about alignment, I think about a sports team. The coach is responsible for coordinating the entire group and achieving a high level of performance, but each player has a specific

Chapter 13: how to build trusted work relationships

Now, let’s talk about another pain point that you may feel but may not want to admit - trusting your team. You may read advice on how you need to build trust with your team when working remotely. What does this even mean? Does this mean you should do

Chapter 12: How to create accountability from afar

As your organization learns to work-from-anywhere, you may wonder how you can create a sense of accountability. You want to believe that your team will work on the most important things and that you can be hands-off. At the same time, you need to create an environment where everyone feels

Chapter 11: How to feel connected to your team

Another issue you will need to confront is feeling disconnected from your team. Before, you could walk into the office and feel the energy as you walked around. Now, you may try to engage the team through Zoom and it feels different. Sometimes you may try to be engaging on

Chapter 10: How to build company culture from anywhere

The number of ping-pong tables at the office does not create a healthy company culture. In a remote-first world, a Slack channel where employees can talk about their pets is not your company culture either. If we want to truly understand how to build a strong company culture when remote,

Chapter 9: how to cut internal meetings in half

If you consider a flexible workplace where your team can do its best work at a time that makes the most sense for the individual, one of the biggest roadblocks in our way is unnecessary meetings. External meetings tend to be higher value conversations as you are working with a

Chapter 8: How to create a company handbook

If you want to be successful from anywhere, you need to create a single source of truth for the most important stuff that everyone should know. Many people call this repository a company handbook. The idea of a handbook has been popularized by all-remote organizations like GitLab (they have a

Chapter 7: How to go async-first

One question I hear all the time from leaders is, “how can I shift my company to a remote-first model?” It’s easy to talk about, but it’s much more difficult to create habits and workflows to operationalize these principles. In the rest of this chapter, I’m going

Chapter 6: That meeting should have been an email

If the key to working from anywhere is to work asynchronously by default, what should we do next? When should we share a written update instead of jumping into a Zoom call? When is asynchronous communication most appropriate? If we want to become an expert communicator, we need to know

Chapter 5: The #1 ingredient to working from anywhere

If the work-from-anywhere movement is about a more flexible work environment that gives the individual autonomy to decide when and where they work, we need to dig in and see what’s preventing us from making this change. This transition is still in its early innings for many of you,

Chapter 4: The not-so-secret to remote work

Let’s talk about the secret to the work-from-anywhere movement that’s hiding right out in the open. This secret is one of most important concepts you need to know if you want to unlock a better way to work. To kick things off, let’s examine a seemingly simple

Chapter 3: The office vs. remote work

At this point, I hope we’ve convinced you that there’s a major shift underway in our world. This shift has the potential to change the way we live and work. Now, I’d like to discuss the pain that you may feel as you adapt to this new

Chapter 2: is working from anywhere a fad?

Major movements in society arrive like waves crashing on the beach. For the work-from-anywhere (WFA) movement, the wave was like a tsunami when COVID-19 arrived in early 2020. Our world changed overnight. A huge wave is formed by a variety of factors – Wind. Underwater disturbances. Volcanic eruptions. Earthquakes. Similarly, the

Chapter 1: What if the office is the new invention?

Let’s establish the foundation of this book by outlining the history of the office and from where it came. It’s important to ask the question: “Is working from anywhere a new idea or are we returning to a way of working that was normal in the past?” What

The Anywhere OS: Preface

Hey there! I’m Luke. I want to kick things off by sharing why I wrote this book. My story (2013-2019) My experience working remotely started almost a decade ago. At the time, I was a recent college graduate who moved to Boston, Massachusetts, in search of finding an “interesting”

"Not your keys, not your coin" (or why you should get your Bitcoin off Coinbase)

The first time I purchased Bitcoin was back in 2014 on Coinbase. At the time, I thought it was "funny money." The only reason I bought Bitcoin was because I wanted to convert it to Dogecoin and send it to the Jamaican bobsled team in the Sochi Olympics

Inverting Norms

Back in 2013, when I first started working remotely, it was not a popular idea at the time. Very few companies offered it. People thought it was weird. I've had to take pay cuts to work for remote-first companies. It was difficult to pitch my startup before the

What inputs drive product development?

Earlier this week I participated in a webinar with other product leaders. During this conversation, I shared a rough outline of how I think about product development - specifically, what inputs drive product development? It's easy to build product for the sake of it. After all, shipping code

Michael Saylor's Bitcoin Discussion on Tucker Carlson (Full Video, Free)

On November 29th, 2021 Michael Saylor [https://twitter.com/saylor], the Founder/CEO at MicroStrategy [https://www.microstrategy.com/en] (a publicly traded company) appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to discuss Bitcoin. He did a great job explaining why Bitcoin matters, how it works, and why you should own

What problems does Bitcoin solve?

In a previous post, I shared why Bitcoin exists [http://bitcoinsforamerica.com/why-does-bitcoin-exist/]. In this guide, let’s talk about the problems that Bitcoin solves. I will share the high-level idea, but get into specifics and how people use Bitcoin on an everyday basis to solve a variety of problems

Why does Bitcoin exist?

Why does Bitcoin exist? If you think about the reason someone starts a business or works on a project, it’s caused by some type of pain (or a problem) that someone wants to solve. For example – a gas station exists because people fear running out of gasoline. McDonalds exists

So you want to start a startup city?

I recently found an interesting article [https://1729.com/miami/] on Miami tech week and about the rise of startup cities, so I figured I'd share a few thoughts. Oddly enough, this is something I've thought about for years and have run small-scale experiments on. A

What happens if TikTok is banned in the US?

What happens if TikTok is banned in the United States? In this post, I break down potential second order effects.

Coronavirus: the reset button

Right now, we're in the middle of the coronavirus outbreak here in the US. I've been following this pretty closely since early January, not because I'm a genius, but because I thought there may be implications for my business, Friday [https://www.lukethomas.com/

Bootstrapping to $10k/month with a day job

The inside story of how I bootstrapped to $10k/mo (and why we went the VC route)

What's your unfair advantage?

My son is sleeping again, so I thought I might be able to write a quick post. One thing I've been thinking about recently is the concept of an unfair advantage as an entrepreneur. What unique advantage do you have that others don't? The idea is

Cold Showers

Cold showers are way better than you think. See why.

The Counter-Positioning Strategy

See why counter-positioning is awesome.

Write Words & Code

A few months ago, I saw this tweet from Naval Ravikant. > Code and media are permissionless leverage. They're the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep. — Naval (@naval) May 31, 2018 [https://twitter.com/naval/status/

A Circle of Competence for Generalists?

Does sticking to a circle of competence mean you should specialize? Kind of....

Digital clarity as a competitive advantage

I've been reading a book on Benjamin Franklin, and I found his daily routine [https://thefocuscourse.com/franklin-schedule/] to be fascinating. It got me thinking about my daily routine, especially how it relates to technology use. As the internet continues to grow and permeate our lives, the amount

Freemium vs. Free Trial (why not both?)

If you're trying to pick between freemium vs. free trial...why don't you pick both?

Manufacture local

Why "Made in USA" and "Buy Local" are two sides of the same coin.

Downside protection when running growth experiments.

> "Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Don’t forget rule No. 1." - Warren Buffett I'm in the middle of a months-long deep dive into value investing [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valueinvesting.asp]. For those unaware with this strategy, the

Customer-focused product development

I've recently been watching video interviews of Jeff Bezos on Youtube. Over the years, I've spent way too much money on Amazon, yet I've never fully realized how customer-focused they are. This might be because I've never had to email or call

Storm the Gates

If you didn't see the Elon Musk/Warren Buffet back and forth [http://fortune.com/2018/05/05/warren-buffett-elon-musk-trolling-sees-candies-moats/] over the weekend, it was a bit entertaining. To bring you up to speed, Warren Buffett is a big fan of investing in companies with long-term economic moats [http:

The hidden cost of property taxes

Over the past few months, I've spent way too much time scouring real estate listings, both in Maine and beyond. It's a common occurance to spend most of my time thinking about the mortgage payment, down payment, and renovation costs. What frequently flies under the radar

A simple way to measure the health of a region

Last week, my wife and I took a road trip from Portland, ME to Austin, TX. As you can imagine, we passed through quite a few cities on the way. I love exploring new places and tend to go a bit crazy with research. For fun, I will dig into

A capital shortage for Portland, ME startups?

Over the past several months, I've heard on several occassions that there's a lack of capital available for early stage startups in the Portland, ME area.

Career/Role Fit - a key aspect of being a great leader

This post won’t be very long as I feel strange even commenting on what great leadership looks like, but from my past experience, some of the best bosses I’ve had understand the idea of career/role fit. For decades, leaders inside an organization would hire people exclusively based

My Outlook on Investing

I’ve had this conversation a few times in the past month, so I figured I’d write a quick post on my thoughts on investing. I’m using the term investing loosely, but I’m specifically referring to exerting energy or financial resources with the hope of achieving some

Why I moved away from a booming tech ecosystem (Boston) to Portland, ME

In early September, after a few years living/working in Boston, my wife and I made the decision to move to Portland, Maine. For us, we both grew up in Maine, so it was a chance to get back to the “motherland.” For the most part, we enjoyed our time

The impending downfall of Maine newspapers

(Above photo: one of the funniest news blunders of all time) I grew up with my face buried in a newspaper. I would visit my grandparent’s house and read the paper with my grandfather (yes, the comics mostly, but that still counts right?) For some bizarre reason, I have

A/B testing: a comprehensive guide to getting started

Over the past few years there’s been quite a bit of hype regarding A/B testing. From Obama’s election campaign [http://kylerush.net/blog/optimization-at-the-obama-campaign-ab-testing/], to Veggie Tales increasing revenue by 38% [http://blog.optimizely.com/2014/04/28/ab-tests-that-increase-revenue-per-visitor-for-veggietales-by-38/] , I believe the hype is well-warranted and something

Why User Testing Services are Useless

Building software that people enjoy using isn’t  an easy task, and it takes a ton of effort. It’s critical that you get consistent, honest feedback to help you create a better experience for the end user. In an effort to create this feedback loop, user testing sites have

The Growth Team: The most impactful team the Enterprise doesn't have.....yet

It’s been about a month since I started working at Safari Books Online, and I’ve told a few of my close friends that I doubt I will ever work at a startup again…unless it’s my own (which I have no plans to do at the moment.

More Accurate Acquisition Funnels with Mixpanel

I’m a big fan of Mixpanel for analytics. I’ve written about how I do A/B tests in Mixpanel [http://lukethomas.com/tracking-ab-tests-mixpanel-using-url-parameters-rails-application/] , but over the past week I learned some really important things that I’d like to pass on. Imagine a typical registration process from a

Growth/Marketing Interview Tips: My Learnings

Over the last few weeks I finished up my time at YesGraph [http://www.yesgraph.com], and have been exploring other opportunities and doing some contract work in my free time. I’ve had the opportunity to connect with several companies here in Boston and SF, and the demand for

The Startup Marketer's Experimentation Process

Over the past month, I’ve really tried to take a hard look at how I personally do marketing online. Specifically, I’ve been trying to create processes that I can use at any company as I progress through my marketing career. I wrote about how I onboard myself at

Republic Wireless Moto X Review (and why I'm ditching my flip-phone)

Last year I wrote a post explaining why I do not have a smartphone [http://lukethomas.com/why-do-you-need-a-smartphone/]. In a nutshell, I work in front of a computer all day (am constantly near wifi) and think spending $100/month is insane for something I truly only need for a few

Tips on finding a Marketer for your Startup

Two months ago I started working at YesGraph [http://www.yesgraph.com/?utm_source=lt-blog&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=marketing-roles] . It’s a team of 7, and we’re launching our paid tier in the near future.  My role is what I’d classify as a startup

The Remote Worker's Onsite

I’m currently on week #3 of working remotely for YesGraph [http://www.yesgraph.com/at/lt_blog], and last week I had the opportunity to travel to Palo Alto, and work with fellow remote employees on-site. At first I thought this would throw a wrench in my plan to

Working Remotely: Stats on Week #1

If you didn’t have a chance to read my first post [http://lukethomas.com/working-remotely-tracking-progress/], I’m working remotely for YesGraph [http://www.yesgraph.com/at/lt_blog], and attempting to document the entire process with data from Rescuetime and Fitbit (as well as keeping detailed logs on what

I Started Working Remotely, Track My Progress

Today was my first day working remotely. It’s been a goal of mine for a while to live wherever I want, and not be tied to an office. I expected this to happen much later in my career, so it’s a pleasant surprise to say the least. Update

Tracking A/B tests in Mixpanel using url parameters (Rails Application)

Update January 2015: I wrote a 3,000 word introduction to a/b testing [http://gainbits.com/ab-testing], and I’d love it if you checked it out! So you have a Rails application, and you’re trying to setup A/B tests. You probably also aren’t in the

Thoughts on Remote Work (Before Reading 'Remote')

Today when I get home from work, I’ll have the new 37 signals book “Remote” sitting in my mailbox. This is a book I’m pretty excited about – one of my career goals [http://lukethomas.com/about-me/] is to work remotely, so naturally it’s something I’ve thought

Marketing your Tech Company is getting SaaSy: Here's how to avoid problems

It seems like there’s been a large increase of software over the past year  to help online marketers. There’s software to help avoid churn in billing [https://bestunning.net/], there’s software to help with lifecycle emails [http://customer.io/index-video.html], and plenty of options for everything

What A/B testing solution should I use for my Rails App?

Update Jan 2015: I wrote a monster guide on getting started with A/B testing [http://gainbits.com/ab-testing], which you may find useful. So you probably visited this page in your quest for an A/B testing solution for your Rails application. There’s a plethora of options, but

Crowdfunding for Startups (a normal person's outlook)

Today the “ban” on general solicitation was lifted, enabling startups to publicly advertise that they were fundraising at a certain valuation. It’s the first time this has happened in 80 years, and I can’t help but be optimistic about what this means for early stage companies. It’s

Jumping into SaaS Marketing? Focus on Tactics, not Strategy

It’s not easy to prove your worth as a marketer at a startup, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. From my own personal experience, I’ve seen low hanging fruit that must be talked about. It’s the tactical stuff. You know, the nitty gritty…

Growth Hacking is B.S. Follow these Marketers instead

For those of you who didn’t read this earlier post on hacker news [http://joelandren.com/2013/09/05/its-time-to-call-bs-on-the-cult-of-growth-hacking/] ,  Joel Andren wrote an awesome post on how “growth hacking” is being used a vehicle to promote oneself. As someone who’s been talking about this [http://lukethomas.com/

Website Visitors are People Too

I visit quite a few websites over the course of the day, and I’m amazed at how bad most of them are. I’m not very picky about design (although I appreciate good design), but instead, I’m dumbfounded at how pushy they are from the very beginning. Buy

How I used technology to find (and close) an apartment rental in Boston

I just graduated and moved from Maine to Boston in June. I’m currently living in a sublease with my wife [http://www.alirenythomas.com] until the end of the Summer….and there’s been a nagging pressure to find an apartment. It’s annoying, and I’ve spent countless

Marketing Skills that Matter

The tech community is in love with “growth hacking.” I’m not. Marketing has never been more important for early stage tech companies – with enormous competition online from every angle there’s a massive need for talented marketers to use online channels to build businesses and make money, but instead

Minimum Viable Marketing

In high school, I hated science. I despised memorizing terms, labeling body parts, and dissecting frogs. Over the past few years, I’m realizing that there’s one aspect of science that I find myself using on a daily basis. It’s the scientific method [https://www.boundless.com/biology/

A College Student's Guide on how to Start Blogging

Looking back at my four years of college, there’s one thing I wished I had started earlier. Blogging. Not the Tumblr style blogging, full of memes and animated gifs, but writing interesting articles that challenged me to become a better writer and thinker. I remember the first time I

How to use Amazon to Buy and Sell Books on the Cheap

I grew up reading books all the time – I love the feeling when learning something new. For the past few years I’ve been in college, and have done the majority of my book shopping on Amazon. Whether it’s a textbook, or a book on business, Amazon is a

Increase Sales by understanding the Funnel (and why building trust is so important)

Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing research on how to convert more website visitors into customers.  I’ve received leads for my consulting work largely because I write blog posts, and somehow people read them (and apparently enjoy them). Most of the people that email me are

The Problem with Inbound Marketing (and how to fix it)

Over the past few years, Inbound Marketing has become very popular. Companies like Hubspot are building full-scale applications around providing ebooks, blog posts, and white papers on topics in order to drive leads. Compared to cold-calls, inbound marketing is gold, but there’s a better way. It’s called premium

How to Land a Job at a Startup (Even if you live in the middle of nowhere)

I’m graduating in a month, and packing my bags and moving to Boston for a gig at a tech startup [https://www.boundless.com/]. It’s a dream job for me – I’ll be doing a mix of marketing and development work while going after a greedy industry that

Tips to Find and Validate Potential Customers

A couple months ago I wrote an article on simple ways to find potential customers online [http://lukethomas.com/simple-ways-to-find-potential-customers/], and it picked up some traction, so I decided to expand and write a few more tips and tricks I’ve learned recently. Enjoy! Find Demand If you break down

Running Marketing Experiments with Purpose

Over the past few years, marketing on the web has become way too much fun. I remember trying to figure out what “hits” on awstats [http://awstats.sourceforge.net/] meant in high school, and I distinctly can recall how disappointed I was when I found out the true meaning. Nowadays,

Designers & Developers have Style Guides. Marketers should too

I’ve been learning to program for the past couple years [http://lukethomas.com/thoughts-while-learning-ruby-on-rails/], and I’ve been exposed to style guides. For those of you who don’t know, a style guide is a framework of how code is organized. It’s also used to onboard new hires,

From Sublime to vim. I'm Starting to Believe

Over the past couple years I’ve been trying to teach myself how to program. It’s not easy, but I’ve also found that my experience working my way through a file was subpar. Jumping lines, selecting and deleting lines of text. I used my mouse. It was slow.

Verizon HTC Droid DNA Review

After reviewing the Samsung Galaxy Siii [http://lukethomas.com/verizon-samsung-galaxy-s-iii-review-from-an-average-user/] , I had the opportunity to test out the Droid DNA. At first I hated it. I thought it was useless compared to the Siii. I’ve been testing this phone for a month now, and my opinion has changed slightly.

Stop wasting your time at Career Fairs

It’s the time of year when college seniors start getting antsy about the post-graduation job hunt. There’s a fear of the unknown, and a fear of being unemployed. Numerous colleges hold career fairs, and it seems like there’s unspoken pressure to attend these events. I’ve been

Vine is for Storytelling

I downloaded the Vine app [http://www.vine.co] yesterday, and have been amazed by how simple and powerful the service is. Put simply, Vine is a storytelling app. It’s easy to use, and in my opinion, will grow faster than Instagram [http://www.quora.com/Instagram/How-does-Instagram-user-growth-compare-to-Facebooks] . Let

Simple Ways to Find Potential Customers Online

I’m a big fan of learning everything I can about Customer Development – it’s fascinating to see the progression from an idea to a viable business. Authors like Steve Blank [http://steveblank.com/], Ash Maurya [http://www.ashmaurya.com/], and Eric Ries [http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/] each have valuable

2 years to build a simple Rails app, and my learnings along the way

This post is a little embarrassing, simply because it shows my 2 struggle to learn the basics of programming. Especially when I read about people building their first app in 30/60/90 days. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been trying to learn Rails. My journey

Interviewing Children? Really?

[http://lukethomas.com/interviewing-children-really/1215a_shooting2rst100p/] The media reared its ugly head around the events of the Newtown shooting. News organizations falsely publicized the brother of the killer [http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/i_am_facebook_friends_with_ryan_lanza/], publishing factually incorrect information in an attempt to

Why do you need a Smartphone?

Update: I’m building an app to make taking a break from your smartphone easy and effortless. Check out Digital Detox [http://www.digitaldetoxapp.com]. Over the past few weeks I’ve have the opportunity to test the Samsung Galaxy S iii [http://lukethomas.com/verizon-samsung-galaxy-s-iii-review-from-an-average-user/] . It’s a great

Verizon Samsung Galaxy S iii Review (From an Average User)

So you’ve been thinking about purchasing a smartphone, yet have no idea what to pick. The market is full of phones, each loudly proclaiming why they are the “best on the market.” The purpose of my product reviews is to review a product as accurately as I can. The

Learning to Program, Learning to Slow Down

I’ve been trying to teach myself programming for over a year – I’ve learned how to write code, but I’ve also learned about my tendencies as an individual. I enjoy marketing, so programming isn’t something that comes easy for me (yet). Over the past week, I realized

The Best Marketers are Humble

> A modest or low view of one’s own importance; humbleness I’ve been thinking recently about what characteristics separate an average marketer from a greatmarketer. It seems like great marketers have superhuman tendencies; they somehow understand EXACTLY what the customer wants. What I’ve realized is that the

In Search of Actionable Marketing Tutorials

Everyday I’m on a hunt for a great, practical article. I’m the type of person who loves reading, and then turning around and applying what I’ve learned. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m trying to teach myself how to program [http://lukethomas.com/thoughts-while-learning-ruby-on-rails/], and there’

The Textbook Industry & Greed: My Story

There’s nothing more upsetting than knowing that you are being taken advantage of. I have four classes until I graduate college, and every semester the same thing happens time and time again. I’m required to spend hundreds of dollars on the latest college textbooks and three months later

Ed-Tech Platforms Need Improvement

It’s been about 6-8 months since the big PR launch of online learning platforms like Udacity [http://www.udacity.com], Coursera [https://www.coursera.org/], and edX [https://www.edx.org/](well, actually edX was launched recently), yet I still haven’t completed my first class. I signed up

The $100 Dollar Ikea Stand-Up Desk

Over the course of the day, I spent way too much time sitting. I’ve been looking for a standup desk for a while, yet I don’t have the budget for a Geek desk [http://www.geekdesk.com/]. A couple weeks ago I was reading an article from Boundless

The College Education I wish I had

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m pretty disappointed with the majority of my college classes [http://lukethomas.com/looking-back-is-college-worth-it/] over the past few years. I’ve spent quite a bit of time working on creating a sample curriculum that I wish I had in college; after all,

Looking back, is College worth it?

It’s nearing the time when school starts back up again, and I’m nearly done my four years of formalized education in a college setting. Over the past few years I’ve learned quite a bit, yet most of this learning has taken place outside of the classroom. I

Enough of this "Growth Hacker" Talk

The term “Growth Hacker” has been circulating around tech [http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study/] blogs [http://bostinno.com/all-series/hardest-startup-hire-in-boston-is-an-online-marketer-not-an-engineer/] for the past couple months, and I think the overall discussion around creating scalable, long-term growth is extremely important. As someone who is a current marketing student, with

Free Resources to Learn Ruby/Rails

Over the past year I’ve been trying to learn Ruby on Rails. Being a college kid on a budget, I don’t have a lot of money to devote to learning Rails. Thankfully, the Rails community is constantly pushing out new tutorials, aimed to teach newbies how to program.

Thoughts while learning Ruby on Rails

It’s been over a year since I first picked up a book on Ruby on Rails. It’s been an interesting time, full of failure and learning. I’m still far, far, far away from being a competent web developer, yet I’ve learned some very important life lessons

Can Innovation be Learned?

There’s an increasing need in today’s economy to be innovative. Everywhere I look, I see the “I-word” and it’s getting old [http://ideas.economist.com/blog/stop-saying-innovation-scott-berkun]. The art of coming up with great ideas is extremely important, yet misconceptions run rampant. Many individuals believe that certain

Help! Maine US Senate Candidates are having trouble understanding New Media

Disclaimer: I worked for the Paul LePage campaign [http://lukethomas.com/portfolio/paul-lepage-campaign/] in 2010, and I do freelance work on the side [http://lukethomas.com/portfolio/]. I am not working for any of the candidates… Disclaimer #2: I like marketing, and my opinion is strictly based on what I

Getting Outside the Building (The Startup Owner's Manual Thoughts - Part 1)

Despite my relatively young age of 20, I’ve had my fair share of business ideas [http://mainecampus.com/2010/11/03/budding-inventors-pitch-ideas-to-expert-panel/] . The majority have remained ideas, yet others I have invested hours and hours of my time into [http://www.asmainegoes.com/content/givemesportsorg-new-me-hs-sports-web-site-needs-you] , with the intention of

Timeline for Businesses: It's Time for a Change

Facebook recently released Timeline for business pages [http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/29/how-to-use-timeline-for-pages/], and I’m pretty ecstatic about it. I had a feeling that these changes would be similar to the personal profile updates [http://mashable.com/2011/09/22/new-facebook-profiles/] released a couple months ago, but I

Dear Small Businesses: Stop outsourcing Social Media Management

So you’re a small business owner. There’s not enough hours in the day, and you’re constantly wearing different hats and playing different roles. One minute you are the marketing guy, the next, a cashier. It’s stressful, and you don’t have time to spend on social

The Startup to Watch in 2012 is Simple

At the moment I have a Bank of America account. I’ve probably been hit with about 3-4 charges by accidentally overdrawing more money than I have (at least in that certain account). I’m pretty tech-savvy, yet I absolutely hate the online dashboard. It’s slow, confusing, and makes

Technology and Higher Education: Big Changes are Here

Over the past thirty years, technology has transformed the way we live our lives. From tablets to social media, life is changing at a rapid pace, leaving many in the dust. One area that still seems resistant to change is education. Education is big business, spending over $597 billion dollars

Ways to Rank Pages Quickly on Search Engines

Over the past few weeks I’ve dedicated time to learn how sites can be indexed by Google. Why wait for weeks to index your pages, if this can be accomplished in a couple days, or dare I say, hours? Naturally, website owners want to see results….fast! Let me

Link Building for College Students

There’s some days when you just get lucky. I’ve been working on switching content from one domain to another. I’ve been going back through old websites I’ve designed, trying to make these updates. It’s pretty tedious, but I’m trying to maximize “link juice” to

Lean Startup Principles in the Classroom

Classes just started again. Oh joy. There’s nothing exciting about sitting in a classroom for a few hours everyday, especially when most of the material being taught is already outdated. Today, instead of counting ceiling tiles, I began to think how lean startup techniques could be applied to a

Amazon vs. Librarians (Why Kindle will Win)

I grew up going to the library. They are a wealth of information, and there’s nothing like perusing a shelf of old, worn-out books for a diamond in the rough. I still don’t understand the Dewey Decimal Classification [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification] system, but

Have a Great Idea? Start Prototyping your Business Model

So you wanna start a business. An awesome business. You have an idea, and it just might work. What happens next? Start drawing. Seriously… I’m not going to lie; I’m a horrible artist who draws stick figures like a five-year-old child, yet you need to start prototyping your

Trying to Build Entrepreneurs in Maine? Focus on Technical Education

As a current college student, the University of Maine is my first taste of traditional education. Growing up, my educational experiences consisted of private schooling, homeschooling, and technical education at the United Technologies Center in Bangor, Maine [http://utc.mainecte.org/]. Even though I never attended a public school, I

Personal Branding while in College

College is a time of excitement. There’s always new people to meet, activities to partake in (both on and off campus), and time to rest and relax. According to a study in 2003 (before the time of Facebook and Twitter), college students studied for an average of 27 hours

How Maine Businesses can use Inbound Marketing

It’s been nearly two weeks since Hubspot set the World Record for the largest online marketing seminar [http://www.hubspot.com/blog/bid/23564/HubSpot-Breaks-World-Record-For-Largest-Webinar] with 31,000 registrants, and Inbound Marketing has exploded. A few months ago, I had the exciting opportunity to check out Hubspot HQ [http:

How to: Engage College Freshman at UMaine

My life was very different two years ago; it was the summer before college, and I was excited to embark on the journey of higher education. I was nervous, excited, and I spent my free time dreaming about the college experience. New friends, new experiences, and no parental supervision. How

Why Higher Education Needs to Reward Entrepreneurs

It’s the month of August, and the dreaded UMaine school bill has arrived. The cost of tuition is about 12,000 dollars per year, and thankfully I am receiving some financial aid. After transferring to UMaine, I currently have over a 3.5 GPA, yet I am not receiving

2011 Higher Education Goals

School at UMaine starts in less than a month, so I created a outline of what I want to accomplish during the school year. 2011 UMaine Higher Education Goals: * Organize a meetup in the Bangor area for Entrepreneurs [http://www.startupsmaine.com] * Learn Ruby on Rails, HTML5, CSS3 and develop

Maine Graduates' Debt after College [Infographic]

According to the Project on Student Debt [http://projectonstudentdebt.org/state_by_state-data.php], Maine graduates rank third in the nation for student debt [http://bangordailynews.com/2011/01/24/news/maine-college-debt-among-the-highest/] . As a current college student, I find this data alarming, yet with the median household income in 2009

Latest Project: White Noise Video Productions

For those of you who don’t know me, I have an older brother who is a year-and-a-half older than me (I’m 19). Last summer he decided to be a whitewater guide in Jackman, Maine, working with Windfall Rafting Company [http://www.windfallrafting.com]. This past November he decided

Wufoo Form Facebook Tabs (The Easiest Way)

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post explaining how to create Wufoo Form Facebook Tabs [http://lukethomasmedia.com/blog/wufoo-form-facebook-tabs-the-easy-way/]. The process involved creating your own Facebook application and took approximately 15 minutes to complete. Since that post, I have found a much easier way to complete the

Target="_blank" and Blogging

Okay I confess – I am always online reading blogs. All day. Sometimes all night. I’m reading Techcrunch [http://www.techcrunch.com] or Mashable [http://www.mashable.com], and the author is making a brilliant point, including outbound links to relevant articles [http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-role-of-outbound-links]. I click

Google Adwords vs. Facebook Ads - What's the Difference?

In my daily conversation with clients [http://lukethomasmedia.com/portfolio/], online advertising [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_advertising] is mentioned, yet many are unaware of the measurable actions they can take to target their niche effectively. Online advertising allows measurement that traditional media cannot compete with. In my opinion

Innovation vs. Entrepreneurship (The Difference)

I love researching and learning about startup businesses, and when I began attending UMaine I heard about a new program called Innovation Engineering [http://www2.umaine.edu/innovation/inv/intro.html]. The tagline for the program centered around developing “Meaningfully unique ideas” and the curriculum is straight from UMaine alumni

How to Spot a Social Media "Clown"

Last week, Gary Vaynerchuk [http://garyvaynerchuk.com/] was featured in a Techcrunch interview [http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/13/gary-vaynerchuk-social-media-clowns-tctv/] in which he explained that there is a “social media bubble” and that many people claim to be social media experts, but lack business sense. As someone who sees this

The Death of Bin Laden and Traditional Media

As I got ready to fall asleep, I checked my Facebook for the last time to see the words “Osama Bin Laden is dead [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/01/national/main20058777.shtml].” No way. As I continued to scroll, I quickly realized that the news was correct

Why Facebook Deals is the Future of Group Buying

As I wrote in an earlier post, Facebook has a huge opportunity to bring group buying to the masses [http://lukethomasmedia.com/blog/why-facebook-can-dominate-group-buying/]. At the time I wrote the article, exact details concerning Facebook Deals [https://www.facebook.com/deals/business/] were not released, yet the potential of a

Do College Students Deserve Unpaid Internships?

Okay, I get it. College students generally aren’t responsible individuals, but do we really deserve an “exciting internship opportunity” that’s unpaid [http://news.university-bound.com/2011/04/04/the-dangers-of-an-unpaid-internship/] ? After being in school for nearly fifteen years, I assumed that we knew enough to make minimum wage, possibly

Five Simple Rules of Social Media

Many businesses think that creating a social media presence is a difficult task, full of dangerous pitfalls. I will be the first to agree that businesses need to have a plan before jumping into the mysterious world of social media, yet it’s not nearly as difficult as you might

Wufoo Form Facebook Tabs (The EASY way)

Update (June 19th): visit my new post for an EASIER way to embed your Wufoo form on Facebook! [http://lukethomasmedia.com/blog/wufoo-form-facebook-tabs-the-easiest-way/] (it takes about 5 minutes). On March 11th [http://alphacomputer.ca/wpactc/2011/02/facebook-to-stop-fbml-march-11-2011/], Facebook dropped FBML integration with its fan pages. Many people are disappointed

Startup Business Resources in Maine

Over the past few years I have had the exciting opportunity to work with a few startup businesses in Maine [http://lukethomasmedia.com/portfolio/]. Frequently, they contact me in need of a website [http://lukethomasmedia.com/website-design/], yet they are unaware of the many organizations that are willing to help

Why UMaine is losing at Facebook

I have been attending the University of Maine at Orono [http://www.maine.edu] for the past 6 months and I absolutely love it. It’s great being close to home (20 minutes), and learning in an relaxed environment (I went to college in Boston last year). One thing I

Nine Reasons why I Love Being Self-Employed

Many college students my age are beginning to consider what life in the work force will be like; for some, it is an exciting opportunity, yet many find it to be scary (after all, who wants to work the typical 9-5 job after partying for 4 years straight?). Fortunately, I

Reasons why Higher Education has Failed Me

I have heard from multiple sources that college is the best days of one’s life. The endless parties, enjoying the company of friends, and making memories is what makes school special – or so they say. Although I do enjoy college, I believe it has failed me (personal opinion). Many

Making Sense of the New Facebook Profiles

Good ol’ Mark Zuckerberg and Co. is wreaking havoc on the non-conformists again with the new profile changes. I began to suspect that something was happening when I saw a Facebook Page with a skinny newsfeed and the tabs were located underneath the profile picture, but I had no idea

Full Circle Social Media

Many businesses and organizations are finally beginning to realize the importance of social media. Facebook is growing rapidly – over 500 million people are now connected. Many of these businesses are under the impression that establishing a Facebook presence will magically lead to more business activity, sales, and increased awareness in

Social Media - The Aggregation of History

While spending time on Facebook have you ever taken the time to scroll through your past interactions? The amount of information and insight that is leaked on a daily basis online is enormous; you share your thoughts, feelings, and activity to your friends. Have you ever paused and thought about

Facebook Deals

Facebook deals is a game changer for  many small businesses. Utilizing the power of social media and converting “passive” fans into real-world customers has been a concern for many business owners, yet the missing link has been found! Facebook Deals incorporates mobile “Check-Ins” with special deals. Just watch this video