Aside from taking his place in history as an industrial titan, Henry Ford left a lot of inspiring quotes, as well as an enduring legacy.

• "It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste."
• "There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something."

We all have dreams and plans for what we want in life, and how we want ours to turn out, but not all of us are putting ourselves out there -- working and hustling to make our plans bear fruit, or turn our dreams into reality. I know this. You know this. Doubtless we've all had grand plans that we drew up, all excited and eager, only to have them quietly die on paper, stillborn.

It goes like this: we're intelligent enough and glib enough to come up with at least 3 reasons off-the-cuff on why it a) never happened, b)  would never have worked out and/or c)  was doomed to fail. We 're crazy-smart that way.

Chris Guillebeau (of the popular blog The Art of Nonconformity) guest-wrote for ZenHabits early this month, and shared his thoughts on how he made his "very small business" succeed.

His advice in that post isn't for everyone. After all, it's mainly for --and from -- the sole proprietor running a one-man business, and a deliberately small one, at that. But the outpouring of support he's built up from the quality of his work (he has thousands of fans and followers on his social media network) shows that he has a truly inspirational approach to life.

Guillebeau's goal was, and still is, "to make a good living without simply creating a job for (him)self." He's been doing so for over ten years. What follows are some issues that rose after reading his post.

1. Hire no one. If your business can get by with just you at the helm, ok. Some professions lend themselves to one-man operations. There are free-lance writers and CPA's, for example. It's also an enormous help if a) you're the type to go it alone and enjoy it, and b) you've got the stamina for dealing with the requirements of the business, i.e, being the Chief Bottle-washer as well as the CFO/CEO/tech support, etc. --for as long as you want the business to succeed. And that can take a long time. Even Chris admits it can get tiring, as he explained in this post.

So many things have been written about how the financial crisis has brought the people's faith in the government (not to mention big industries and banks) to new lows that we won't even be coming near that any more. There's too much information on how things went wrong, and not enough on how to start making things right, even if just on a personal level. Instead, let's focus on what security we can build for ourselves now.

This article was inspired partly by a post regarding Social Security on GenXFinance, explaining just what Gen-Xer's (the people born between 1965-1980) can expect from it, and how they can and should prepare for their futures themselves. The advice was to keep planning as if Social Security won't be enough to fully support you in your retirement, which is an unsettling realization. And quite possible.

No one expected the current  meltdown to hurt to this extent, or how it impacted everyone: people who thought their jobs, homes and families would be safe, believing the government and big companies would be able to take care of them, trusting that the system was stable. Now everyone's had a taste of bitter medicine:  Guarantees are only as strong as the institution backing them up.

Spot-check, guys! How are things going?  Hit any milestones lately? How about those resolutions, yeah, still going strong, or did they fall by the wayside?

Any way you slice it, some of the big goals you set for yourself this past New Year would just about expire right now. And there's actually solid research backing up why that happens.

• Why New Years Resolutions Don’t Work
• Why New Years Resolutions Don’t Work (an entirely different article)

Resolutions are common at the end of a year, because the promise of a brand new year, one all to yourself, one with which to start anew, makes it conducive to grandiose, inflated expectations and promises. "This year I swear I'll lose weight, quite smoking, save more, break up with that jerk, quite my job, etc...And then I'll be happy."

See what we did there, that little thing at the end? "And then I'll be happy." That's where people trip up most, thinking that doing, having or being X (whatever X may stand for) is the only key to being happy, the fail-based formula being X = goal, and achieving X = happy.

When I think of the word "agenda" the image that comes to mind is of two groups of people looking at each other over a long table in the board room. Think Wallstreet, with Gordon Gekko, or that scene in American Psycho where Patrick Bateman and his colleagues try to one-up each other with, of all things, the fonts on their business cards.

When we think of agenda what pops up is the idea of a meeting or a discussion -- sometimes a heated negotiation or a nefarious plan ("I don't trust that guy, he's got an agenda...."). While the latter covers some of the more emotional connotations of the word agenda, what it boils down to is: an agenda is a list of things to talk about. So, you discuss the items on the agenda in a meeting. I hope that's clear.

An agenda is not a To-Do list. Those are personal and task oriented. An agenda can be seen as a program of sorts, listing topics and issues presented for of discussion.

(Quick insert: An agenda is also not a credenza, even though they sound somewhat the same. I once made the mistake of confusing the two, in writing. It wasn't pretty. And a credenza is not a place of discussion, although you can have a quick chat beside one. Remember, you can put the notes for your agenda on the credenza, but not the other way around.)

To recap, the first two steps to successful change are1) paying attention and realizing that there is a need for conscious change, and 2) choosing to change. Or not.

The next three steps on the way to successful change moves you from the contemplation stage to the analysis stage. This second stage will involve you weighing your options and calculating just what it is you need to give up to get what you really need and want for a better life.

After taking stock of your life in the first two steps (hopefully you took very good notes),  now is the time to pull up all the information you came up with and use them.

3. Check out the options.
What else is out there? And don't just use your opinion as a guideline for what's good enough. An opinion is an emotional judgment on an issue based on your feelings, your experience and knowledge on a subject. Emotions can cloud judgment, and the experience is all on your side, so you won't know the other side of the issue. Be cool. Don't lock the possibilities out first off.

Ask around, ask for other people's opinions (they're not as involved as you are and that distance can help. But prepare a few grains of salt, just in case.) When you ask people for information, you're multiplying your brainpower effortlessly, tapping their experience and knowledge base to amass a more comprehensive picture of the options open to you, a picture you can't make based only on your own experience.

The year's almost over, and now is the time to think about what you did well in the past twelve months...as well as the other things that didn't quite go the way you planned. The dying time of the year is the traditional time to remember and reflect on that year's triumphs and mishaps, so you can learn from them and strive to do better in the coming year.

Here are the first two of seven steps to making a successful change, and make for an awesomer --yes, we know it's a made-up word -- new year.

1. Recognize a growing discomfort with what is, with the status quo.

As a rule, we are never fully satisfied with what we have for long. Once the shine wears off our eyes go back to looking over the fence, wondering what we're probably missing, and checking to see the particular shade of grass on the other side...

It's also ironic, and completely true, that we also tend to stay in uncomfortable situations for far too long.

Lest the two seemingly unrelated ideas confuse you, here's where they connect: We often stay too long in uncomfortable situations because of various reasons, and in an effort to deal with the pain, we look to getting new stuff to 'fix it'.

Only, the new stuff is new only for so long, and the makeshift solution only masks the discomfort, not address it. So, to deal with the dissatisfaction, you keep getting more new stuff ("It didn't work, there must be something wrong, better go get a better thingamawhatzit..."), not seeing to the root cause.

Every e-marketer knows the importance of discovering good and profitable niches. It's like mining for gold -- only the mine in this case is the world wide web and the 'gold' trickles in through e-transfers for products sold or services rendered. A lot of the people who make their living educating other people to 'mine' the internet have a very simplistic way of teaching niche discovery -- finding the richest 'veins' in the gold mine, so to speak. The gist of their advice on finding your niche often boils down to the following:

• Pick a subject or topic that you're passionate about, one in which you have experience or are interested in.
• Use the main keywords from this topic and plug it into a keyword research tool.
• Look at the search count results. If it's about 30,000 per month, it's a good bet. Below 30,000 searches, it's a very tiny market, so no money there. If it's way above 30,000 searches, you'll have too much competition, so your risk of failure is higher, and therefore unacceptable.

That's it. Based on those three steps, you are supposed to find yourself a profitable niche.

What's missing from this picture?

Every now and then you may find out that you need to pick up and migrate your blog or site from one hosting service to another. Your reasons may vary: You found a sweeter deal with more space, better customer and technical support, for the same amount, or even cheaper. Maybe your old hosting service couldn't survive the recession. Whatever the reason, your decision to move the results of your hard-wrought work from one service to another shouldn't be cause for alarm, or anxiety.

You have to keep it in mind that moving a blog isn't quite like moving a static HTML site, which you can just upload to the new host. A blog or more complex site comes with databases, scripts and other things that need to be transferred as a whole, keeping the internal links intact. Thankfully, this isn't as hard to do as you fear.

Note, though, that if you're moving from a Linux/Unix server to a Windows server, or the other way around, the procedure can be a little more awkward given the differences between the two systems. Talk with the tech support people from both hosting services to see what needs to be done to ensure as snag-free a move as possible; they should be able to help you through the rough spots.

When you're just testing the waters with your first website as a hobby, you may rely on the recommendations of a few of your friend with sites of their own, or go with your ISP's free services. But when you're looking to share your expertise with others and establish a business and profit-oriented presence on the Internet, you need to push past your worries and current knowledge, and look for a professional web hosting service, one with certain features and services. You don't have to worry about the technicalese and terminology, you just have to have what these terms describe. Know what you need, comparison-shop and do the research as part of the search process.