Whenever you buy anything online, it’s always a good idea to do a quick search for coupons or discount codes. You can often easily find 10% off, 20% off, and free shipping. Many times the values are even higher than that.

With many purchases or just large ones, these discounts can add up quickly. Whenever you are checking out and see a box for a promo code, it’s always prudent to take a quick look for some codes before submitting the form.

You can find some great discounts with Adobe coupons. (Although university students can get very cheap education packages from their campus bookstores) If you need to get a copy of Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Acrobat, or any of Adobe’s other products, then you should check it out

You can get discounts with Kohls coupons or Macys coupons. This could save you a chunk of change, versus shopping at their department stores. And if you wanted, you could even go take a look at the items in the brick and mortar stores beforehand.

Hopefully you will be able to find some great bargains and codes that will save you money today and down the road.

This post has been sponsored by ‘Coupons for Everyone’.

During the past couple of years working with Aridni we have accumulated and checked out our fair share of books. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. And quite frankly, some of them haven’t been read by us yet.

In the Aridni Library, we have…

“Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist” by Roger Lowenstein

“The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness” by Linda Kaplan Thaler

“Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead… But Gutsy Girls Do: Nine Secrets Every Working Woman Must Know” by Kate White

“The Warren Buffett Way, Second Edition” by Robert G. Hagstrom

“The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith

“Beating the Street” by Peter Lynch

“Screw It, Let’s Do It: Lessons In Life” by Richard Branson

“Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time” Howard Schultz

“Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services” by Guy Kawasaki

“The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money” by John Maynard Keynes

“The Art of the Start: The Time -Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything” by Guy Kawasaki

“The Master-Key to Riches” by Napoleon Hill

“Meatball Sundae” by Seth Godin

“Your Limited Liability Company - An Opeating Manual” by Attoney Anthony Mancuso

“Whoops! I’m in Business - A Crash Course in Business Basics” by Richard Stim, legal editor & Lisa Guerin, senior legal editor

Of course, We both have a collection of books themselves as well. Books, articles, bookmarks, conversations, and loose ideas have all helped shaped our business ideals. While it isn’t easy to categorize everything, doing it with books isn’t so bad. Here are some of the books that Katie and I own.

Todd’s books…

“The Richest Man in Babylon” by George S. Clason

“The Coffeehouse Investor” by Bill Schultheis

“At work with Thomas Edison - 10 Business Lessons from America’s Greatest Innovator” by Blaine McCormick

“Ben Franklin’s 12 Rules of Management - The Founding Father of American Business Solves Your Toughest Problems” by Blaine McCormick

During the first meeting, I learned that I was talking to a sort of affiliate marketer.  I also learned that there was a startup fee, as well as a monthly fee for the program.  Once you are in the system, you can make money in two ways.

First, by selling stuff and collecting an affiliate fee.  Secondly, you can recruit others to sell the junk and collect a referral fee.  And it’s only going to cost you a set up fee of $126 and a monthly fee of $50 to keep your website running.  I don’t know about you, but this has bad idea written all over it.  Especially when I got to the second meeting.

This time there were two people involved in selling me this system.  The same person from the previous meeting, and someone higher up the food chain came to talk to me.

They began talking, and half an hour later they were repeating themselves profusely; however, their circumlocutory speech was not the real issue.  They mentioned that setting up your business, and getting sales would pay for itself in the first month.  “Okay,” I asked, “So how do you get sales on your site?”

The two looked at each other, then at me before saying, “Well, how would YOU get sales?”

I mentioned I would find some relevant keywords and bid on them in Google Adwords to direct people to my targeted pages.

The two looked at each other, then at me.  They had no idea what I was talking about.  So I asked again what they did.

The way they get products sold from their site is to buy it themselves.  Now at 10% to 50% commission that means they are buying somewhere between $100 and $500 on their sites each month.  All this was to gain some sort of PV (or Point Value in their strange little world) witch somehow gets transformed into cash back.

The money with this is made of course once you get enough noobs under you to buy their own products.  Then you will get a small chunk of change from their sales.

I asked to see the backend of one of their sites.  I wanted to take a look at how much control the pupetmasters gave them.  But of course this must lead up to another meeting!  So I’ll let you know what happens if this meeting ever does.

I feel bad for all of the people who drink the koolaid without knowing what they are getting themselves into.  Which sounds like a lot of people are doing with their ‘pie in the sky’ wishful thinking.

Not very long ago, I listened to an audio-lecture on NPR about shopping and investing locally. This was from a man named Michael Shuman, he is the author of the book ‘ The Small-Mart Revolution.’ In this book he talks about the benefits of a locally owned and operated businesses. During his lecture he talked about these issues as well as some of the problems involved in attracting local investors in a fiscally responsible way.

Each community needs to develop its own self reliance and maximize the opportunities presented. This will help them to grow in a sustainable and reliable way.

Michael currently runs the site Smallmart.org and I found this article. About halfway down he has a list of things that will help you appear attractive to local shoppers.   This list includes…

1. Being locally owned - The most needed part of the equation!
2. Develop a local identity - Let people know that you are local and be proud of it.
3. Behave Responsibly - Respect the workforce and the environment if you want anyone to respect you.
4. Give back to the community - Let them know your business cares.
5. Maximize ‘Local value added’ - Do more than locate your headquarters here, put your factory or do your business here as well.
6. Cater to local markets - You can still sell to the rest of the world, but make sure you sell to those around you first.
7. Develop local partners - This could be contacting other businesses for one time events, or perhaps shopping in local stores for any supplies you need.
8. Grow deep - Expand your offerings to the local crowd.
9. Avoid predatory behavior - Just because you offer some of the same goods or services doesn’t mean that the other company is your enemy, just your competition.  Perhaps possibly even a local partner in the future.
10. Exit locally - When you close up shop, who will take over your business?

I really enjoyed the lecture that he gave, but I think I’ll need to pick up the book in order to extract as much of his ideas as possible.

I just read an article over at ‘Smart Money‘ about how couples often make similar mistakes in regards to their finances. It brings up many good points and issues.

“Most of us don’t know how to talk about money,” says Mary Claire Allvine, a certified financial planner (CFP) and co-author of “The Family CFO: The Couple’s Business Plan for Love and Money.”

“People tend to be emotional and reactive about money, not strategic,” she says.

When emotions run high, people tend to make fiscal mistakes. Allvine’s solution: Approach family finances as if you were running a business. “If you put a business metaphor into the picture, you’d be surprised how much more methodical people are.”

In this article she talks about 6 common pitfalls that could arise if issues are not properly resolved.

1. Merging finances
2. Controlling debt
3. Spending habits
4. Investing Wisely
5. Money Secrets
6. Emergency Planning

Give the article a read, I think that you will find it full of good ideas and perspective for you.

Now that you have seen a couple of games that are great for developing strategy in groups, what about good old ‘one on one’ games? Well there are some great ones out there, just waiting to be discovered and played.

1. Hive - In this two player game you control half of the hive, a collective of insects and spiders buzzing, jumping, and scurrying around. You’re goal is to surround your opponent’s queen bee completely.

   Each insect has a different movement path that it can follow. Grasshoppers can jump over clusters. Ants can march around the perimeter. Beatles can crawl over the top. You can never break the hive into two parts, so everything is connected at all times.

   You will be able to either move one of your pieces, or place a new one on the table. The game is quick, and it jams in quite a bit of thinking into that time. I like to compare it with chess, every piece has specific move it can make, and the goal is to take out one piece.

2. Carcassonne Hunters and Gatherers - While this game can be played with up to 5 people, it really plays well with only two. So I have decided to include it here as well.

   The idea in the game is to control different sections of the land as they are ‘discovered’. Each turn you draw a tile and have to fit that into the game in a way that all the edges match. (Forests on Forests, rivers on rivers, and plains on plains) Then from there you have an option of placing one of your ‘meeples’ (miniature people) onto the board. Once that section is complete, you will score the points of it and get your meeple back.

   The game isn’t huge on strategy, you are at the mercy of which tile you draw. But there is quite a bit of tactics in where you place that tile, and if you do add a meeple to the board. It is defiantly worth a play.

3. Scrabble - Now Scrabble is a game that you have to have heard of before. Because of that, I’m not going to go into much details on it.

   Simply use your rack of letters to play words on the board in a crossword like manner. Placing the letters so that you get to that triple word score is key, but creating good words is also going to make a big difference.

   Like Carcassonne above, this game can be played with more players; however, Scrabble plays the best with only two.

I hope that these will be able to challenge you, and whoever you decide to play against. As in most games, the more you play the better you get, and the more ideas you can try. So give them a shot, and see what you think.

Do you have a favorite two player game that forces you to think?