Welcome to this video, I'm Tom Koster and today we're going to talk a little bit about reflection. With reflection, I mean looking back at what you are doing. I'm currently in a hotel room in Amsterdam at the Schiphol airport at the Ibis Hotel. This is a place where I come to a couple of times a year, just to reflect. For me, this is a great way to step out of my comfort zone, out of my office, out of my home, just to reflect on what's been going on.

It's important for me as an entrepreneur, it might be the same for you as an entrepreneur to take time off and reflect and see what you are doing. Now in these kinds of sessions, I look back from the past couple of months and I'm asking myself a couple of questions. Number one is have I achieved the goals that I set out to achieve? Question number two, what went right? And question number three, what went wrong and can do better. What can I do better in the future to reach my goals faster or reach my goals at all and what has gone well...

Welcome to this information session, I'm Tom Koster, and today we're going to talk about a topic which is very active in the media at this moment, and that's the Facebook security topic. 

And if we take a look at what's going on in the news media, then there's a lot of attention about privacy in Facebook. And a few days ago I read that Mr. Elon Musk deleted the Facebook pages of Tesla and SpaceX. And there's a lot of stir in the media whether business people and private people should delete their Facebook profile. 

And I have been thinking about that a lot, whether or not I should delete my Facebook information, and I've decided not to do it. And in this short information session I'm going to explain why I don't.

And the reason why I do not delete my Facebook and my Facebook pages and my Facebook profile is the reason that I basically use Facebook as a medium to communicate with my clients and with my prospects. And also I'm using it for my clients purposes, marketing...

Welcome to this video, I'm Tom Koster, and today we're going to talk about one of the most boring topics of doing business. And the boring topic is called bookkeeping. And bookkeeping is also one of the most important topics in business, because with bookkeeping you know whether or not you are making a profit, and to be in business is all about making profits.

And in doing bookkeeping, you have two choices, choice one is to have someone else do the books for you and pay that person, and have that person tell you whether or not you are doing a good job. And the other one, my preference, as you may know, is do it yourself. And the reason is that I'm doing my books myself since a few years now, and my wife used to do the books for me, and she did an excellent job, the only challenge was that my wife told me how my business was doing. And what she told me was sometimes in contrast with the feeling I had of how my business was doing.

So the books were actually telling that the business...

Welcome to this week's video. I'm Tom Koster and today we are going to talk about time management for our kind of people. Our kind of people, we are people who work in digital marketing, in web and in IT. What we do is we help end user customers, which are small business owners with their marketing, with their websites, and with small IT projects.

Time management for our kind of people is something else than time management for other entrepreneurs or for people who work for other people. The way I advise people in our industry to do time management is to work in blocks of uninterrupted time. You see, when I'm with a client, and my client is asking me questions then my client deserve my undivided attention. It's not respectful for me to my clients that I get interrupted by phone on every occasion that someone else thinks he or she needs me.

That's what I also share with my clients. I share that whenever I'm with you, you get my undivided attention. Most of the time my phone is on...

Hey, it's Tom and welcome to this video.

Today we are going to talk about Facebook, a book from Facebook, and also a book from Google. These two books, they came in the mail last week. I ordered these books from a Dutch service called Bol.com. This book, the Google AdWords book, The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords is the fifth edition, written by Perry Marshall, Mike Rhodes, and Bryan Todd. And the Facebook book here, it's the third edition, also written by Perry Marshall, Keith Krance, and Thomas Meloche.
                      
The reason why I show you these books is that number one, I'm a student of good information, and Perry Marshall has excellent books on Google AdWords and Facebook. But that's not the first version. I actually just saw it's the fifth edition. Let me show you some other books, too, here. I not only have the fifth edition, I also have the fourth edition, and the third edition, and also the second...

Hey, it's Tom, and welcome to this video. In my teachings, I teach a five-step process to grow your business, called The Pattern. The first step is infrastructure, second step is marketing, the third step is sales, the fourth step is evaluation, and the fifth step is optimization. In the second step, marketing, that's what I want to talk about with you today.

Two weeks ago, I was in San Francisco for a sales seminar, and there I met a very nice lady and during lunch, we started talking, and it appears that she has a wellness center. She had two wellness centers, and she was not satisfied with the results with her sales and with her marketing. In talking to her, I asked her a question, "Okay, can you tell me how do you spend your marketing dollars at this moment?" And she told me that she only advertised on radio, so I asked her, "Do you use Facebook?" "Yes, I use Facebook." "Do you use Facebook Advertising?" "No, not at this moment," she told me.

I started talking with her and...

Hey, it's Tom. Today we are going to talk about infrastructure, and basically your websites. More specifically, HTTPS.

I recently read that Google Chrome browser is about to make some changes in the way they display non-HTTPS websites. An HTTPS website is a so called secure website. People with HTTPS websites have invested in an SSL certificate. That's very important, because that gives certainty that the website is safe for people who visit the website.

Now, not all websites have HTTPS, and maybe that's the case for your website too. My advice is that you check your website in order to see if you already have an HTTPS certificate, and if not, then I advise you to go to your internet person, to your web guy or girl and talk about HTTPS to be added to your website.

It's not only for you and for your visitors, but also for Google. Within a few months Google Chrome is about to tell the visitors that non-HTTPS websites are not secure anymore.

If you only have HTTP and you do not have...

Welcome to this video. I'm Tom Koster, and at this moment, I am in the Google store in Mountain View and just found some nice merchandise here, a coffee mug and a bag, easy bag, $5 and $13 for the mug.

Why do I tell you this? It's because these things have emotional value to me. I've been in the IT business since 1988, since the late '80s. I've been doing internet marketing since the late '90s, and Google has always been very important to me.

I first heard about Google in January of the year 2000 at a Jay Abraham seminar in Los Angeles, California. And since then, I've been using it. I've been following it, and I've been using it for my business and also for my clients' business.

Now, being in this very nice environment here and in this Android store here, Google merchandise store, to me it's important. And just to keep the good feeling, I have decided to bring along these things to my home.

So every time I use the mug or I use the bag, I think about a time that I was here at...

Welcome to this video. At this moment, I am in Cupertino and I'm here at the Apple Visitor Center, and we're on the rooftop together with Leon. That's Leon. Hi. On my previous podcast, I asked the question, "What will be the weather like in San Francisco?" and the weather is quite nice. Today it's 20 degrees Celsius and it's quite a nice temperature here for the end of January. I'm here in San Francisco, Cupertino, so we can visit a seminar in San Francisco later on this week. It'll be on Saturday and Sunday, and Eric Lofholm will be presenting at the seminar and it's all about sales.

We just went down one floor. Below here is a big shop, an Apple store with all the Apple products that they sell. We just talked to one of the representatives here, a very excited young man. Apple products are great, but they also need to be sold, and Apple products do not sell themselves. They also have to be sold, and they are sold by young, ambitious, excited people like the guy we just talked...

Welcome to this episode. I'm Tom Koster. Today I'm wondering what the weather will be in San Francisco. The reason is that I'm going to San Francisco next week. My son, Leon, my oldest son, is coming with me and it's his first time to the USA. For me, it's the 20th, 30th time, whatever. I've been going to the US since January 2000, so for more than 18 years now. He's going to join me now. He's 20 years old.

When I first went, he was just two years old and I can remember very well how that was. For me, also, as a dad, going all the way to the United States was not easy, leaving a small kid behind, but I knew I had to do it in order to grow my business and to provide for my family.

I remember quite well that the seminar that I went to in January 2000 took place in Los Angeles and it was an internet seminar by Jay Abraham and there I saw the light, I saw the big possibilities that internet marketing would bring. It was obvious for me that the people who were on stage sharing their...