I am extremely happy to see an interesting phenomenon taking place in the web industry today: people are talking about money. It’s surprising to say something like that but it’s true. Web 2.0 was definitely somewhat of a bubble in the sense that there have been a number of venture capitalists that invest in ridiculous business concepts.

As a few of us concluded last night following Tech Cocktail DC, the source of this may just be the wild west mentality in which people have visions and dreams of success even though they don’t know how they’re going to get there. They have solutions to problems that only exist in the virtual world. The problem with this is when you start creating solutions for products that are already free. An example of this would be someone pitching, “I’m going to create a better version of Facebook.”

Somehow people have started thinking that these crazy ideas that occasionally attract large waves of traffic will suddenly turn into sustainable businesses. Unfortunately they are not and I am starting to see an increasing number of people that actually realize this. This is healthy but it also means that the days of throwing ridiculous parties involving drunken revelry as Caroline McCarthy calls it, may just be slowing.

We’ll all show up to a great party but it doesn’t mean that we are the ones that will fund it. As we read more articles about doom and gloom in the economy it wouldn’t be surprising to find less funding for parties and crazy ideas. The high risk VCs out west that will fund any Stanford grad with an idea are in for a surprise when funding dries up for their “investment fund.”

O.k. so enough of the doom and gloom. The best part of all of this is that people with real businesses are the ones getting funding. Now we can start talking about real entrepreneurship which is about managing cash flow, building client lists through business development and all the nitty gritty details about running a business. We can also talk about how are passions help get us through the hard times.

This is the real story behind entrepreneurship. People that manage to generate real businesses out of their passion. So what’s your passion and how are you going to make money from it?

Around the country people are discussing how they can build more entrepreneurial communities that in some ways represent what Silicon Valley has. While each city has its own uniqueness the bottom line is that we want companies and entrepreneurs with more funding, investors that are willing to take risks and media that boasts about the local companies. Frequently the only thing that’s lacking is an echo chamber that can amplify the signal of that city on a national scale.

So how can your city duplicate things that are going on in Silicon Valley and San Francisco while retaining its own personality? The answer is simple: build an echo chamber. So here is how you can build an echo chamber for your city and avoid businesses resembling the “web 2.0 social media eyeball-collecting applications,” that “don’t want to worry about boring details like revenues, and hope to either flip to Google for an early $20 million or get that Facebook billion-dollar valuation” as Robby Russel describes.

1. Create a linking love fest - The first trick to building an echo chamber is to act like nothing goes on outside of your city. That’s why with every post you write, you should be linking to bloggers in your city. Create a list of all local bloggers that are in your city that talk about similar topics (even if not identical) and find a reason to start linking to them.
2. Make everyone blog - They say it takes a town to raise a child. I would say that it takes a city to create an echo chamber and the center of that echo chamber takes place on the blogs. How does this differentiate from a linking love fest? Not everybody blogs and it’s your community’s duty to make sure everyone starts writing so with every opportunity you have make sure that you find out what the people around you are blogging about and if they aren’t blogging make sure they begin.
3. Build central station - One of the largest challenges for cities looking to unite is the lack of unity. Building a central place with job listings, discussion, links to community members and resource guides is extremely important. If people outside of the city don’t have a single place to see what’s going on in your city, then there is no way to convince them that there is a lot going on.
4. Make up lingo - This is an awesome way to build buzz for somebody in your city while also putting your city on the map. Example: “Web 2.0″. People still have trouble describing what it is because it took Tim O’Reilly 5 pages and a chart to explain what it is. People still don’t know what it is but thousands of people still flock to Web 2.0 Expo and Web 2.0 Summit every year to find out more about it. Have one of your people come up with a phrase and have everyone in your city’s blogs start using the phrase on a regular basis. The more people use it, the more it becomes ubiquitous and finally your city has coined a phrase.
5. Make the media listen - If your local media companies aren’t paying attention to what’s going on in your community, make sure they start listening. Contact them at every opportunity and let them no what’s going on. If nobody is doing PR for your community then the mainstream outside of your community knows nothing about it.
6. Talk about your community - Publicity is the battle of noise and whoever is making the most noise frequently gets the attention of others. There are local companies that are creating new innovations everyday and while the same thing is going on in Silicon Valley, most people know about the Valley but don’t know what is going on in your community. Tell the world as much as possible about where you live and the companies that shape your community. It honestly doesn’t even matter what your opinion of those companies are it just matters that you are talking about them.
7. Promote local events - Is your city made up of a bunch of bloggers that sit behind their computer and write all day and have nothing else to do? No! There are events taking place around the city everyday and many of them pertain to your industry. Get out to as many events as possible and make sure that you promote them heavily. How do you this? Blog about the event, take photos, upload the photos to your blog, Flickr and Facebook. Put tags for all the pictures, etc and then go and bookmark those photos on social bookmarking sites. Everybody needs to know that if you are looking for a fun time, your city is where it’s going on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at photos of events going on in other cities and have wished I was there. The same thing happens to the people in other cities and they are going to want to come to come visit your community.
8. Make others feel like they missed out - Anytime something happens and people aren’t there, tell them they missed out. This way they have to come the next time. Even if the event had only two attendees, you need to make people feel like they are missing something. If you paint a picture of a community for others, then the community will slowly begin to build itself in their minds even if it doesn’t exist. Grab random people and take pictures with them, especially attractive people. Like I said in the last rule, you need to make people feel like they missed out on an awesome event. Take pictures of people having fun or looking like they are having fun and you are good to go!
9. Support Others - Even if you think somebody is wrong, it doesn’t matter how wrong they are as long as they say it convincingly. Promote those that you think that make convincing arguments even if you disagree. It shows connection within the community. It doesn’t matter if others think you and the people you are supporting are wrong, all that matters is that they hear you. Take every opportunity to support those in your community no matter how ridiculous their arguments are (this is for all communities outside of political communities).
10. Be a Superstar -Building the echo chamber requires that everybody in the community is a superstar in their own right. Be optimistic, help connect others and take every opportunity you have to support others when you can. Building an echo chamber requires the help of a city and everybody in it. That’s why you need to take every opportunity to help not to hurt. If you have nothing good to say then go move to a different city in another country far, far away (just joking). Seriously though it is your duty to help your city, so help it.

There are plenty of other ways to help but this is a great way to get a headstart. Once you begin living by the 10 commandments of an echo chamber city you are well on your way to helping build the next Silicon Valley in your town! While it won’t be the same as Silicon Valley, it will be a loud city that people around the country know about and that’s all that matters.

Two nights ago I had the opportunity to speak on a panel held by the entrepreneurial club at the Kogod School of Business. Big thanks to Robert Neelbauer for putting the event together. We had the opportunity to speak with a large group of entrepreneurs at the university and it was the first time that I was involved in a local university event. Following the event I was engaged in a number of discussions about how universities can play a larger role in building entrepreneurial communities and what role they should play.

Andrew Wright attended the event and told me about some of the challenges he had faced when working with one of the local universities in trying to build engaging events and getting the university to play a larger role in the community. Ultimately there is a conflict of interest that I see at universities. They frequently invest more heavily in the brand name of the university then in the students. Case and point: bringing large keynote speakers that students find it difficult to relate to.

In my own opinion it is best to have local universities involved with the local professional event producers to get jobs for students and to increase the likelihood of students finding mentors. While I’m not quite sure what the role of a local university is, I believe that investing in the students should be a priority over investing in the brand name of a university. When those students become talented individuals in the professional world, it will come back to benefit the university when those individuals return to speak.

How do you think local universities should be involved in building entrepreneurial communities?

Earlier this week I wrote a post asking if work/life balance exists for entrepreneurs. Well, for me, the balance doesn’t exist. 90-hour work weeks have become standard. My desk is around the corner from my bedroom (fortunately I have a large apartment but it’s still in the same relative space) and every morning I wake up and walk right over to it and start searching for more content to post about or find more emails to respond to.

Last May I launched the AllFacebook blog and quickly experienced substantial success with the blog. It’s not the next Techcrunch, but for a few weeks (or a couple Months) I thought it would be. I was getting story leads, responding to all inquiries and traveling around the country to attend events where I thought more stories would be taking place. The site still does well but it’s not going to be the next Techcrunch. At least not anytime soon.

Secretly, I’ve come up with a solution to win while producing less content but I won’t share that now, that story will unfold on this site over the coming months. This afternoon Jason Calacanis wrote a less-sensational post about the New York Times article from last week. He struck a cord with me this time and it has led to the post I now write. When you are in the Tornado, a phase thoroughly described in Chrossing the Chasm (and a book I frequently refer back to), it’s easy to lose sight of things.

Think about what it would literally be like to be in a tornado and you start to get a picture of how organized things are. The key thing to success during the tornado is not running around and trying to grab ahold of all your scattered pieces. Instead, you should believe that the scattered pieces will eventually realign them self and things will be as you had planned in the end. Perhaps my analogy isn’t the most accurate, but a key lesson is learned and it is the lesson being described by Calacanis.

Balance in life is key. Trust me when I say that I understand how out of whack things can get when you are trying to keep your business under control and on the right path. In the market of breaking news, balance is practically impossible. Just look at Mike Arrington. Howard Lindzon recently tweeted that the breaking news market has become commoditized. I would have to agree.

When it comes to commodities, you make a lot if you have a lot. Adding up a million pennies eventually adds up to something. The problem with breaking news is that you are constantly running around trying to get the scoop or confirmation on stories. I was getting good at it for a little while but then I began to see myself burning out. If I had continued to try to focus on breaking news, I would have gone crazy. Fortunately for me, I’ve realized that the bottom doesn’t just drop out when you stop or slow the frequency of breaking stories. You are actually building a base.

Regardless of the future of blogs and breaking news, the story will be repeated across industries. Frequently we work continuously around the clock to try to build our projects of passion. Often times people think that we’re crazy for doing it but the entrepreneurs respect it. While everyone doesn’t build a business the same way, just as they wouldn’t build a desk the same way, there is one rule that stays the same no matter what:

If you put down the tools and walk away for a little bit, your project will be there just as you left it when you get back.

There may be some dust on it if you leave for too long but for the most part, it will still be there. Over the past 10 months I have found a way to create more stress for myself and then devise systems for managing the stress. Unfortunately my system has been flawed and part of it I have not tried to fix. While stress is necessary for a business, it isn’t necessary for you … at least not 24/7.

I had learned this lesson before and I used to live by it but by late in the summer last year I stopped living by my own rules. Fortunately, I’m not 5 years down the road and looking back at this. It’s a only a few months down but for some of you, I’m guessing that you are in a similar place and for others you are years in. There is never a better time to fix the problem then today.

While we can’t build our businesses, stress free, we need to regularly free ourselves from the stress. I am most definitely going to take the first step to removing some of the stress from my life by hitting the gym on a regular basis. What are you going to do?

This past week a news article in the New York Times circulated the blogosphere. The article, titled “In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop,” discusses how technology blogging is ultimately bad for your health. My initial reaction was that I completely agree. To some of my friends, I’ve become a work-a-holic. To others, I’m simply living the life of an entrepreneur. I think Danah Boyd, says it right, “those who are passionate about what they do do it to extremes.”

I couldn’t agree more with Danah. I do on the other hand think that there is a point which is crossed which is when the thing you are most passionate about becomes an addiction. I think that workaholism has become embedded in our culture and while I see successful entrepreneurs build businesses while working 90 hours a week, I’ve seen others that launch businesses through partnerships and spend less time focusing on the day-to-day routine of things.

Honestly, I think it is different for each business and ultimately the life of an entrepreneur will always be challenging. For me, I always appear to be one step away from having a life free from the bondage of work but there is always another step ahead. I know this isn’t a good thing but sometimes it’s difficult not to be working on something that you want to grow. Then again if you feed a plant too much water it will drown, sometimes you may just have to watch it grow (and possibly hit the gym).

What do you do to handle work/life balance? Is there balance in your life? What techniques do you find useful for adding more balance?

There’s a discussion place on Techmeme today about the impact of the problems being created by these pesky venture capitalists that are funding businesses with no revenue model. Now Hank Williams (the other of the SAI article) isn’t known for always being optimistic. As his article bio states, “SAI Contributor Hank Williams is a New York-based entrepreneur. He recently launched a new blog: Why Does Everything Suck? Exploring the tech marketplace from 10,000 feet.”

Well Hank, everything doesn’t suck … even in the world of the free! While giving away content or services for free forever is not always the best business model, even the free model can generate revenue. Even if the VCs are the ones funding your business, there are people that work for free just out of passion. While this model isn’t sustaining there are plenty of people that can survive for months without any pay.

I’ve been able to live off keeping my blogs going for free. Are the blogs generating a substantial amount? Not really but I could care less how much the blog itself is making. What’s more important is how much value it generates and that’s where there is money to be earned. Matthew Ingram writes a more thorough article also explaining the value of a “freemium” approach. Give a little for free and charge them for more if they like it. Kind of like an ice cream sample.

The free model is extremely challenging because you are competing heavily just to make enough to get by. Eventually you need to charge for something though. A few lucky individuals (who are also the hustlers in society), are able to generate a substantial amount of revenue from building a free base that eventually generates cash flow. Those that can’t get by end up working for the people that were able to build a business. It’s the nature of business. So stop reading this article and get back to hustling Oh … in the meantime leave a comment and let me know if you think the free model works?

Yesterday in a phone call with the amazing Leslie Bradshaw I asked a question: “What did people do to brand themselves before the internet?” Her response wasn’t what’s important (although all of her words are always words of wisdom so follow her on Twitter). What was significant is the fact that we have just witnessed a transformation in the ability to brand yourself.

Gary Vaynerchuk is the epitome of personal branding and if you watch his daily insights you will be handsomely rewarded. The main point is that the new technologies have enabled us to reach a large number of people that we were never able to reach previously without promotions via fliers, radio ads, personal publicists and a number of other methods. The bottom line is that we now have the capability to reach exponentially more people than ever before.

My good friend Rachelle Lacroix says that “it’s no longer branding my consumption, it’s branding my creation.” This means you create the content and promote it to others rather than let people judge you based on the purchases you make (you probably didn’t need that explanation though). Last night I finally the realized the significance of the revolution taking place. You can instantly set up your brand via a blog, cross promote it on social networks and suddenly you have distributed brand you to the masses.

There are millions of job opportunities that surround this new market. You don’t need to be the center of the brand that you are promoting but you should still promote brand you no matter what you are doing. Even your publicist should be known for being the most amazing publicist around. How do they do that? Set up a blog and start writing about publicity on a daily basis! The social web is furthering this transformation and it is our job to embrace it.

Do you agree? Do you think personal brands are extremely important? What are you doing to further your brand? When is self-promotion crossing the line?

I’ve been working on designing and developing a platform for the Social Times that will embrace and support entrepreneurial communities. The more I think about the concept, the more I realize that the platform is ultimately open-source entrepreneurship. What do I mean by that? No single person can build an entrepreneurial community. Also, no single system can theoretically be designed by a group of two or three people that will effectively build the community.

For proof of that go read this PDF on “Building Entrepreneurial Communities: the Appropriate Role of Enterprise Development Activities.” This is a study that spanned twenty years, close to one thousand entrepreneurs and more than one hundred entrepreneurship assistance providers. I highly recommend taking the time to read it if you want to learn more about building these communities.

In the report, one paragraph stood out to me because I felt it most accurately described the flaw with having a centralized entrepreneurial platform.

We have repeatedly observed ambitious public entrepreneurs who take on these assignments with the primary goal of establishing model programs that would bring accolades to themselves and their sponsors. These initiatives then become competitions for attention, fueled by a talent for publicity, not performance. In these situations, such individuals act alone, under the belief that they can do it better than and without the help of anyone else in the community and under the need to do so in order to garner all the glory.

If anybody is concerned that this is what will result from the Social Times, I can assure you this won’t happen. The new tools that we will be adding to this site enables “the community” to build content that helps everybody. We will also be highlighting the community members and their content on a regular basis. It is our job to help find and support the superstars in the community and help them to leverage social technology to achieve success beyond our own.

We will also be creating programs that help to support those enterprising individuals that want to host events or create other programs that support the community. We want to help the community, not compete with it. We will start by adding a community directory as well as a business directory organized by metropolitan area. The first area will of course be D.C. but we will be expanding rapidly.

I hope to have these two directories up within a week but as you probably know, estimating when a project will be complete is more of an art then science. Is there anything that you would like to see us add to the site? Any other thoughts?