So, you’ve decided that taking control over your financal future is ovr to you. Fantastic.

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Earlier this year my wife and I flew  to New York. Despite 22inch fall of snow overnight (yep, you read that right), we had a fabulous weekend and in between the various snow showers, my wife and I escaped into Barnes and Noble on 86^th & Lexington Avenue, just down from Bloomingdale’s, for a coffee.

Whilst we were in there I was browsing the magazines rack and I picked up a copy of Inc Magazine. I’ve long been a fan of the Inc.com website, but as far as I’m aware you can’t buy Inc magazine in the UK (not that I’ve found anyway).

Inc’s a great magazine full of very inspiring stories about people who’ve done amazing things and built up businesses from nothing. It even features some unusual twists like the interview with Lorraine Earle of Johnny Cupcakes, the doting mother who runs the back office on behalf of her son, the business’ founder.Very inspiring stuff.

Towards the back of the magazine there’s a whole section on Franchise businesses and reviews of types of franchise business, articles on financing franchise businesses, plus pages of adverts for franchises for sales.

A franchise for those not aware, is where you buy a business blueprint from a successful business (think McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Doughnut’s, Chips Away (car paint repair and Countrywide (grounds maintenance) etc) and in return for the cash you basically get the premises, equipment, training and stock.  In return you buy the stock from the franchisor and typically pay an annual license fee, which can be either a fixed amount or a percentage of your turnover.

For many people they get the opportunity to buy into a proven success story.   If they become successful they can buy more franchise outlets and replicate their success.

You’ll probably find it easier to get funding too. As banks love lending on Franchise businesses because they have a proven success story and they can see the results that other francisees have achieved.

But hold on a minute

Successful businesses are successful because they follow a plan, execute it and repeat. Which means you get to follow the plan. If you buy a McDonald’s franchise for example, the exterior signage will be specified by McDonald’s, the colours of the walls, the furniture, the cleaning products and of course the way you make the burgers and of course how you “have a nice day”.

Oh yes,  the clothes you wear will be specified by McDonalds too. It’s called a uniform.

Last time I worked in an environment like this it was called a job.

But with a franchise, not only do you get to have a job, but you pay for the privilege by investing in the franchise, mortgaging your home or sacrificing your redundancy payment.

With some of the smaller franchises you’re also reliant on the master franchisor or license owner (the business that sells you your franchise) not to go bust or to continue to provide you your stock and invest in marketing the business and passing you leads.

Before you know where you are you’re on the treadmill again, but you’re paying for the privilege by investing your savings in it.

Now, as we discussed in the what kind of entrepreneur are you? Having a job does not allow you to fund your lifestyle, it takes away time from your family or doing what you love. It  stops you taking a holiday or vacation whenever you want, you loose your freedom.

A franchise fails all the tests of doing business the Tomato Way. We want your business to generate income regardless of the hours you work – we don’t want you trading your hours for $’s.  Above all, we want your business to work without you. We want you to be generating passive income.

Tell us what you think in the comments below. Have you ever invested in franchise businesses?

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Today we’re featuring a guest post from Eduard Ezeanu from PeopleSkillsDecoded.com. Eduard is a communications coach from Bucharest, Romania.

You can follow Eduard on Twitter, on his blog or on Facebook.

Today’s Friday Follow (#FF)  is Eduard.   Over to you Eduard:

When I started working as a freelancer, many people who found out about it told me they think it takes a lot of courage to do that and they couldnít handle the whole stress of it. The responsibility, the risk, the simple thought that youíre on your own can create a pretty big emotional turmoil for a freelancer.

I have felt this turmoil myself, manifested in sleepless nights and days without being able to eat almost anything. Fortunately, I found ways to manage it effectively and keep going as a freelancer, following my dream and my plan.

I believe that in order to be a successful freelancer, you need to make more than a career shift or a schedule shift. The most important shift you need to make is a psychological one. Itís mentally embracing the costs and benefits which come with freelancing, so it does function as an emotional burden on you. Here are some of the essential things which will help you do this:

1. Realize that you can handle it. One of my favorite mantras is ìI can handle itî. I recommend that you use it every time you start to worry about how you freelance work is going and think that you will screw things up.

Thousands of people before you have managed to be successful freelancers; there is no reason not to think that you will be able too. The path is largely laid out. What you need is to follow the road signs, think on your feet, take action, adapt when necessary and eventually, you will get great results as a freelancer. The vast majority of worries people have in this area come from underestimating themselves for no good reason.

2. Realize that all failure is learning. One of the main sources of emotional turmoil as a freelancer is the somewhat big possibility of failure associated with this kind of a career path. However, instead of possible failure being a source of negative emotions, you can make something positive out of it.

How? By making a shift in perception: by realizing that all failure contains within it the possibility of success. Failure is feedback. If you seek to understand your failures, you gain valuable knowledge from it. And you can use this knowledge to get success. Most freelancers fail a lot at first, when they are in the experimenting phase of their work. But those who learn from it and move towards mastery, eventually get tremendous success.

3. Have a plan B. Most people instantly drop a lot of the anxiety they have working as freelancers if they know they have a backup plan. Because with a backup plan, they know that even if things go really bad in their freelancing, they can absorb the negative impact and they wonít end up out on the street or something like that.

A lot of things can be a plan B: a regular job you can get, a different type of work you can do, a family member which can support you financially. Look around, think things through and discover what your plan B can be. When you have it and you know you can rely on it, you get a lot more courage as a freelancer.

4. Take time off to relax. The thing about emotional stress is that it tends to build up on itself. Many freelancers make the mistake when things are uncertain and theyíre worried, to work on them night and day trying to solve them. But as this process can take months and even years, their stress levels go through the roof.

This is why itís very important to take time of periodically, and use this time to defocus and to relax. The best way to go is to make sure you have time off every day, days off every weeks and vacations every year. And you use them to actually do relaxing things. When you return to your work, you will be much more efficient.

What those people told me was probably true: they couldnít handle the stress of being freelancers. But it was not because itís impossible. It was because they lack the knowledge to do so. When you understand the way your emotions work, you have the power to manage them effectively, and you can work any way you see fit.

Eduard Ezeanu is a communication coach with an attitude-based approach. He helps others to improve people skills they find relevant and get top notch results. He also writes on his blog, People Skills Decoded.

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Wednesday Wisdom is all about articles which will help you in three things, Better blogging, Better business, and finally more importantly a Better  life. This week I have selected some articles which I am sure will help you in one of these areas!

This week let’s start with the articles which will help for Better Blogging.

Better Blogging

I noticed last week that many of the blogger sites that I regularly comment on haven’t been updated for a good few weeks. So, this article by Thomas Sinfield How to Fast Track ‘Blogger Burnout’! is very timely. Thomas identified 3 causes of burnout, which anyone who has been blogging for a while will have felt the symptoms of. Is it time to re-evaluate your blogging schedule?

Two posts from DavidRisley.com caught my attention, the first  How I Make Money Blogging: 2010 YTD is interesting, as unlike some bloggers who share their income David also talks about expenses, which of course is makes for a more rounded story, although he doesn’t share any actual figures. The reason why I share this particular post is really as a note of caution: whilst sources of income and ‘how much I made blogging’ are interesting, you should remember that for people who make their money telling people how to blog, sharing income reports is good for business.

A more useful post, also from David Risley, especially for those looking to monetise their blogs from Ebooks,  is his excellent post on providing extra value from your ebook, which might make you rethink how you do your next launch for maximum sales.

I’ve become a bit of SEO Junkie since Alex Whalley educated me that there are around 166 million searches on Google every hour. With all those searches going on, it makes sense that the all seeing Google sends at least some of them my way.  A great guide to SEO that I’ve come across is Glen Allsop’s over at Viper Chill. He has posted a straightforward  guide for lay people – WordPress SEO – The only guide you’ll ever need Well worth checking out.

Better Life

Ashley Ambridge’s excellent blog – The Middle Finger Project featured a great post, where she shares that love have taught her patience, compromise, dedication and intimacy. Here’s the  excellent article on Life not being as serious as you  make it

Not to be confused with our own article on entrepreneurship, Jeremy L. Knauff guest posted on Men With Pens asking the question – what type of entrepreneur are you? great inspirational post for those looking to lead an entrepreneurial life.

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This weekend it is my birthday. I’m celebrating it with my wife, my new son and two of my best friends.

One of the highlights will be spending some time going indoor skydiving with my best friend (more about this next week!), ironically a present they bought for me last year!

In my opinion, birthday’s are a little like New Year’s in that they are a time to reflect on the past year and look forward to the future.  Mind you if you said to me last year that this time next year you’ll be getting up in the middle of the night holding a 9 week old I’d have laughed, so you can’t predict everything!

However, I’ve been thinking a lot about this site, how it generates traffic and of course how it will provide an additional income for my family.

Some of this has come about following feedback from readers, my friends, my wife and my business partners. But also from the time that a newborn takes up (how much stuff they come with is another story).

I have 1000’s of ideas.  I recently went through my drafts folder and realised that I’d got 56 articles in draft and I must have at least that number stored in Evernote on my iPhone.  The problem I have is channelling these ideas.

Sometimes I can’t decide what to write about on the blog, because there’s so many things I could cover.

So, I started with the basics:

The Big Red Tomato Company blog is a site for entrepreneurs. Whether they are business owners, or they work for someone else. It’s for people, like you, who want to make a difference, start a business,  grow their business and make more money.

So to make my life easier and hopefully yours, here’s what I’m planning  to do to structure my writing week….

Saturday/Sunday – articles about this site / The Big Red Tomato Company or Me

Monday – general business advice / saving money / reducing costs

Tuesday – Start up School – advice for start up’s

Wednesday – Wednesday Wisdom

Thursday – advice for employees / careers / life hacks

Friday – is for Guest posts (a nod to Twitter’s Follow Friday #FF)

I’m not promising that we will post every day, or that we’ll follow this schedule every we’ll post when we have something to say, which will be most days(!), but I want to ensure that we focus on quality articles, that you can action.

I’m also tentatively going to try video posts. You can see my first effort on the ABOUT page, please be kind…

As someone  said to me the other day, “That bl***y Tomato gets everywhere!” – we continue to do so and will post regularly on Facebook – cool articles or videos from around the web that you should see, so make sure you become a Facebook fan so you’re the first to know.

Of course, we will continue to comment on other sites and if you think that we should check out your site, please do let me know in the comments below.

As to how we monetise the site, will continue to put together products or services which we think can benefit your business or your personal development. If we are promoting a product or service we won’t do it for money. We will promote it because it’s a good product or service that we use in our business. If we earn a small commission if you decide to buy it, that’s great, but we’re not doing it for the money.

We will continue to offer the popular 1 hour brainstorming / consulting hours and we will do the occasional joint ventures. (More about that in a few weeks)

One thing I can promise you, is that this next year will be even more exciting than the one we’ve just had.

So what do you think?

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Back for his regular slot after a brief holiday to the Welsh countryside, 6aliens.com author Ben Lumley is back with another guest post on 10 brilliant ways to make a difference for nothing.

You can catch Ben over at his Blog on Facebook or on Twitter

Ben is today’s Friday Follow (#FF), over to you Ben:

So Matthew’s post on Monday inspired me. That’s not to say that his posts don’t normally, they do, but this one was a bit different and really made me rethink what I wanted to write about today.

When Matthew first asked me write regularly here, we talked about kicking off things with a series of posts about how to “make a difference” and that’s exactly what we did. Some of them, posts like How to make a difference using Twitter and How to make a difference whilst making your fortune are still some of the most popular posts on the whole site and I’m very proud of that.
What I’d like to do today, inspired by Monday’s post (The $100 Start – Up) and with a little help from my friend El, is to drop back into one of those early posts and look at what you can do today, for no money at all, to make a difference to someone. And you never know they might make you smile and feel good about yourself at the same time!

In my post, How to make a difference whilst making your fortune, I touched on the idea of Acts of Random Kindness and very wisely (even though if I do say myself) said;

When did you last do something kind for someone just because you could? We often get so drawn into our lives and making that first million that we forget the joy of doing something nice for another person just for the sake of it.

Put your neighbour’s bin out for them on bin day. Offer a lift to a stranger who’s getting soaked in the rain whilst waiting for the bus. Make breakfast in bed for your partner. You get the idea (I hope).

I remember hearing a story about a boy whose parents had sent him out to shovel the snow off their drive. The boy, feeling in a good mood, decided to not stop at just his drive but in fact cleared the driveway of every house on the street. Now that’s a random act of kindness!

Well today I want to give you 10 brilliantly simples Acts of Random Kindness that will make a big difference to someone else and put a smile on your face too.

1. Take out the trash – ok this was in the example last time but it’s still a great act to do, especially if the person you’re helping is someone who really struggles dragging their bin out once a week or who always forgets.

2. Babysit – want to do something really nice for a parent? Give them the night or day off so they can be a human being again. Give your time up and have an evening playing mum or dad for them. They’ll love you for it.

3. Pack some shopping – ever been in a queue in the supermarket and the pregnant lady behind you is also wrestling a 3 year old who’s been on skittles all the way around the store? Why not stay behind after you’ve done your packing and help her pack her bags? It might just make her day.

4. Hold a door – we live in a door slamming society where, when we walk through an entrance, we don’t stop to think about who’s coming the other way or who is behind us. Hold a door open for someone. You don’t even need to go through it yourself but it will sure make a difference.

5. Say a kind word – all too often we don’t say nice things to people. Why not give someone a compliment? Thank them for a job well done. Tell them you’re grateful they’re around. It only takes a few seconds.

6. Smile at a stranger – why? Because they are some miserable looking strangers out there aren’t there? Maybe they’re having a bad day, bad week, bad year or bad life. Your smile might be the only one they see all day.

7. Let someone out in traffic – I love doing this one. When you’re queuing let someone in who’s trying to join the traffic. Don’t be one of “those” people who nudge forward and shut you off and pretend like you’re invisible. Go on, be nice.

8. Ask how their day is – it’s easy getting caught up in what we do so try to break that pattern by randomly asking the waitress how her day is going. I recently did this in a clothes shop and the girl behind the counter didn’t know what to say because she wasn’t used to being talked to.

9. Wash the windscreens of all the cars in the street – got the old bucket and sponge out to do your ride? Got some water left over? What are you waiting for? Go make that windscreen clean! A good alternative for this is the winter version, where you scrape the snow off of other people’s car when you know they’re leaving for work shortly after you.

10. Send an email to someone you’ve lost touch with – we all lose touch with old friends and sending a letter cost money right? Well drop them an email or message them on Facebook to get caught up and tell them you’ve missed them being around.

Acts of Random Kindness don’t need to be like little Billy’s where he shovelled the snow from an entire street! They can be in the little things too but they always add up to make a big difference in the quality of people’s lives.

Be nice to people today – what will you do?

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For this week’s Wednesday wisdom, I hope you will find some interesting articles which will improve your business, blogging and your personal life. If you’ve missed some of the previous posts, from Wednesday Wisdom, you can catch up here.

Let’s start off with a post by our good friend Ben Lumley:

Life is a race, we keep on running without even giving time for us to grow and develop, on our way we should stop to collect information for our own growth. Ben over at 6aliens.com suggests 3 ways to spot that we are running rather than growing and developing in our terms.

Joshua opens our eyes to uncovering marketing assets in our business which we might fail to notice. If we can squeeze these assets, then you will grow your business, even in these tough times. Over at theinfopreneur.net, Joshua posted 5-Ways to Squeeze free money out of your business which has some great ideas for no cost methods to grow your business.

‘Maren Proof’ Guide to Finding Your Best Keywords’. This post helped us with finding the keywords to use for our website, which I’m sure you’ll find helpful, she calls it ‘Maren Proof”, go and see what we mean.

One of our favourite books of all time is The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. I’ve personally read this cover to cover twice, but I frequently ‘dip in’ to various chapters. Thomas over at Standoutblogger, as I’ve said before, one of my favourite websites of the moment, published a great review of Tim’s exellent book. You should check the article and buy the book!

If you’ve been reading Wednesday Wisdom a while, you’ll know that  we are big fans of the TED Talks. For those that don’t know about TED, it started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual TED conferences, in Long Beach/Palm Springs and Oxford, bring together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).   To attend TED conferences costs $’000′s – but helpfully the videos are posted for free. Steve Scott, from SteveScottsite pointed me in the direction of this round up from Tech Guru Marketing featuring videos from the likes of Tony Robbins. Excellent stuff go and check it out!

So tell me, what have you found in the blogosphere this week?

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Last week on the blog, we talked about the need to escape from the treadmill and taking control. This is something many of your related to, especially in these uncertain times.

Being an employee is of course an honourable and sometimes enjoyable way to earn a living, but the downside is that you’re restricted to earning money only 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

In this post, I’m going to encourage you to think less like an employee and more like  an entrepreneur.

A 100 years ago about 90% of us were entrepreneurs. Now that number is 10-20%.  In moving from farms to factories and offices we delegated our financial freedom to others. At the same time we got a little lazy, put on a few extra pounds and lost our entrepreneurial skills.

This post is about getting off that corporate treadmill and taking responsibility for your own financial freedom and getting those entrepreneurial skills back.

Start by thinking  of yourself as Me Inc or Me Ltd, where you hire out, on a temporary basis, your brain, your experience or your skills to a specific organisation  in return for a ‘fee’.  Stop thinking of yourself in a job, think of yourself as a contractor woring on a short term assignment.

See, you’re already starting thinking like an entrepreneur.

But until you’re in a position to obtain all your income as a full time entrepreneur, you need to  focus on being able to create your own financial stability by investing 10% of your earnings in money generating opportunities.

Most entrepreneurs who own businesses don’t really own a business, they have a job. Think about it. The window cleaner, the pool guy, the gardener, the cleaner. They all have jobs. They are no more free than those stuck on the corporate treadmill.

What we are trying to create is residual income – lifetime streams of income which we don’t have to manage. We want to create income streams which flow to you whether or not you get up in the morning.  We are looking at what Tim Ferriss called The 4-Hour Workweek.

If you can recognise the difference between creating a job and creating an income stream, and start with this goal in mind, you’ll be quickly able to evaluate oppportunites and focus only on those that create income streams.

If you look through the ‘Business Opportunities’ section in your Sunday paper, you’ll see lots of ads for carpet cleaning businesses, car valeting business or scratch removal. All of these are jobs which are going to sap your energy and require you’re physical presence. You’re not going to achieve your goals of spending more time with the family or spend time travelling by pesrusing these ‘opportunities’.

Unless you can figure out a way to turn these ‘jobs’ into income streams, you need to keep looking.

What kind of entrepreneur are you?

There are 4 different types of entrepreneur:

• Intrapreneur
• Extrapreneur
• Infopreneur
• Autopreneurs

An Intrapreneur is someone who is good of influencing the decisions of others, people who give advice and like to share ideas. An intrapreneur is someone who works inside an organisation, not as an employee, but as a freelancer or consultant.  Examples of intrapreneurs insurance agents who get residual commissions.

An Extrapreneur is someone who enjoys creating things or entertaining others. eg a writer gets royalties as does a songwriter or app designer.

An Infopreneur is someone who is good at teaching and expalining complicated subjects easily. Infopreneurs make money selling information such as from courses or books.

An Autopreneur is someone who owns businesses which generate automatic streams of income for example landlords or investors in shares.

So, what sort of entrepreneur are you?

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Last week the Wall Street Journal published an article on the costs of starting a business. Citing Babson College, who have made a study of the costs of start ups who has estimated that on average it takes about $65,000 to start a business, a figure that can include everything from buying equipment and inventory to paying employees. Some industries come with even higher price tags, according to the Kauffman Foundation—$82,000 for construction, $98,000 for retail and $175,000 for manufacturing, to name just a few.

But the truth is to start a  small business, you don’t need anything like a large cash outlay. In fact, I’m a firm believer that you can start a business for less than a $1000 easily, because you don’t need anything like the things you think you need.

You don’t need:

• an office, you can work from home
• business cards
• fancy furniture
• Employees, you can rope in friends or famiy or outsource stuff you can’t do yourself
• A 99 page business plan (just a clear idea of what you’re going to do and how)
• qualifications
• Large capital

You don’t need any of these things, at least not at the begining.

All you need to do is this:

Meet a need and someone willing to buy

It’s as simple as that. It really is.  Many people starting out for the first time get hung up on the trappings of ‘being in business’ that they don’t actually get started and never actually get their business off the ground.

How to get started in two easy steps:

1. Do something: Meet a need

If you start out by meeting a need by having something to sell, then you’re half way there.   But don’t spend forever either trying to come up with something or over developing a product, adding features that aren’t necessary.  Start small and meet the need. You can always add extra features at a later date.

3. Have someone willing to buy

If you start out by meeting a need, then you’ll have people willing to buy. But you need to be able to identify people who are in a position to pay for your product or service.  Generally speaking when starting out (especially if you have a small budget) it’s best to target people or business who have a need that is currently not being met.   If people have a need, but they don’t know it then you’ll have to spend a tonne of time educating them in why they need your product. If you’re a good salesman you’ll probably pull this off. Maybe. If you’re not a good salesperson, then the chances of you pulling it off are remote.  So you’ll end up wasting time and money and not getting anywhere fast.

Where people recognise that they have a need, you don’t need to spend a lot of time selling your product – the product or service will sell itself.

For example, if you had a car that was dirty and someone offered to wash it for you for $10 you’d probably say yes.

But if someone offered to replace your car’s brake pads with ceramic ones,  you’d probably say no (especially if you knew the price).

So, the key question to ask for anyone starting out in business is this:

Who will buy my product or service?

If you can’t answer that,  then you don’t have a business.

Here’s some ideas of businesses you can start on a budget:

• A car washing or valeting business
• internet marketing
• cake baking
• become a personal assistant  to the busy homeowner (dog walker, gardener, collector of parcels from the post office)

So, if you were to start a business today, with less than $1000 what business would you start – could you manage on even less, say $100?

If you were looking at this being a permanent replacement to your current income, would the answer be different?

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Today, it gives me great pleasure to welcome back Jill Chivers from I’m Listening Now for this excellent guest post about listening.  You can read Jill’s bio at the bottom of this post.   If you like what you read you can join subscribe to her excellent eZine or follow her on Twitter.

If you’re a regular reader here, you’ll know that we feature guest posts on a Friday in line with Friday Follow #FF on Twitter.

So it gives me great pleasure to welcome Gill as today’s #FF is @JillChivers over to you Jill:

I was watching a quality documentary the other night.  The show I was is part of a 4-part series, each show is an hour long and it’s a British production.  The show I watched focused on contemporary and divisive issues around body image, self-esteem and the rise of cosmetic surgery.  The presenter is an attractive English woman who has been a practising psychological for nearly 20 years.  I’m sure she was chosen deliberately, TV not being known for too much intentional randomness.

In one interview, the presenter is in Los Angeles, speaking with a cosmetic surgeon.  This surgeon is performing thousands of procedures on women as young as 16, right up to women in their 70s.  He performs what seems to be a rather delicate surgery that many of us wouldn’t even know existed, let alone knew there was such demand for.  The presenter was clearly astounded that this surgeon was performing so many surgeries, on women with such a large age range.  It showed in her body language, in her facial expression and in her questions.

Argumentative. After asking, for the nth time, about the social and cultural pressures that put women in a position where they feel there is no choice but to go under the knife to conform to a pre-determined standard of acceptable beauty, the surgeon finally demanded “Why are you trying to oppress women?  Why are you—“He didn’t quite get to finish his question before the presenter jumped in with “I’m not trying to oppress women, I just think that for women to feel they have no choice but to go under the knife to conform to a pre-determined standard of acceptable beauty is…” when she was cut off by the surgeon who repeated his question, more vehemently this time “Why are you trying to oppress women?  Surely it’s their choice as to what surgery they have?”  That particular sequence of loaded question-blocked response-interruption may well have continued for some time, but we, the viewers, were fortunately spared and the show moved on to another segm

Too full to listen. What I noticed about the presenter in particular was how ‘full’ she seemed of a set of ideas and beliefs around the issues she was presenting on.  Perhaps her years as a psychologist gave her good reason to feel she knew a lot of the answers.

Purpose. I wondered how intentional her style of questioning and her overall way of being was.  I wondered if the show’s producers had discussed her tone and approach to each interviewee, or whether she was left to go it au naturale, unimpeded by any change in her natural style.  I wonder what they collectively were seeking to achieve with that interview with the LA surgeon.

Combative. The LA surgeon interview had a combative style to it.  Two opposing positions appeared very early in the short discussion we saw on screen.  The presenter was not open or receptive or actively seeking to understand.  She was standing there with her metaphorical sword and shield, ready to do battle with this obnoxious and greedy surgeon, preying on the vulnerabilities of countless women (at least, that’s what I imagined she might have been thinking, based purely on what I saw of her behaviour, facial expression, questions and questioning style).

Maybe they got what they wanted out of that interview.  Television, after all, has a primary purpose to entertain, no matter whether its secondary purpose is to educate or inform.  And that segment was attention grabbing.

But if their intention was to understand the perspective of this surgeon, then the presenter failed in her duty.  Her cup was already full before she got to the interview.   She was “full” of her own viewpoints, her own beliefs and her own knowledge.  There was no room for any other perspectives, especially not those so far away from her own.

What about you? When have you been ‘too full’ to listen?  What impact did that have on the interaction, the relationship and the conversation?  Let us know in the comments.

About the Author: Read more about Jill’s fascination with the power and magic of listening in everyday lives by visiting her website where you can also sign-up to her weekly ezine

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Entrepreneurs often wear many hats, from sales, IT whizz and bookeeper. PR is just one of the many hats. All areas which compete for your time.

Good PR can make the difference between your launch making a mighty dent or making a ripple.

The good news is that the media (and we’ll include bloggers here) are much more likely to want to deal with the founder or business owner than a PR professional. So, don’t think you need a big budget to get good PR.

Here’s 7 low cost tips to help you do your own PR and help your next product launch or your business become more noticeable.

1. Start small

No matter how good your product,  it’s unlikely that you’re going to appear on the front page of the national newspapers when you announce your product.  So start by building up your credability by working with your local paper or free paper to feature a profile of your product.  That way the nationals are more likely to take notice of what you have to say as you’ve established credibility.

2.  Become an ‘expert’ source

You can establish your credibility as an ‘expert’ by helping reporters answer questions about your market or solutions for their problems.  One such site for bringing reporters and sources together is Help A Reporter. This is a free resource which lists media opportunities and sends out daily round ups of stories needing sources to subscribers.

Another way to connect to reporters or bloggers covering your niche is by following them on Twitter and keeping upto date with what their doing.  That way when you here them mention what they’re doing you can helpfully help them out.

3.  Be Timely

Reporters by and large are looking for newsworthy stories ie current. So consequently it’s no good telling them about your Christmas products in February.  But do bear in mind that some printed magazines start putting together their editions several months before publication, so that means that if you want coverage in time for Christmas, you need to be contacting them in September /  October.

4.  Be Different

Just think of your own email account and how many messages you get which you delete without opening.  In all honesty it’s probably going to be the same for reporters and bloggers.

So if you want to be noticed, you need to be noticed.  How about sending postcards or greetings cards instead of emails? For many  people getting something in the mail is something of a novelty and if it’s personalised, rather than ‘junk’ mail it’s more than likely to get you noticed.

5. Get on YouTube

Personality is a big thing in PR – Just ask Gary Vaynerchuk – make your own videos and talk aobut the product. They don’t have to be Hollywood directed and produced just good quality and make sure your personality shines through.

6. Share your press

Whenever you get press be sure to shout about it on Twitter, Facebook  and your blog.  With retweets ans shares your publictiy can snowball.

Don’t forget that by posting links to your media coverage can help you get more press.

Consider putting together a media kit on your website whcih includes photos, links to you videos together with contact information.

7. What to do if it all goes wrong

First thing is to keep your cool. When someone does write aobut you show your manners and thank  them. If facts are incorrect or if important information is missing contact the reporter or editor and ask for a correction. Don’t come out all guns blazing as that never looks good. But if something is libelous or contains serverly damaging information you may wish to seek the advice of a lawyer and maybe more specialist PR advice.  But that, is almost certainly not going to be cheap.

The most cost effective  solution is to write a response politely correcting the facts and Tweet it like mad and tell your biggest fans your existing customers who may well come out and defend you.

What do you think? Any ways you’ve got cost effective PR?

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If you’re visiting here from my guest post on theInfopreneur.net welcome.  Wednesday Wisdom is all about sharing  information which you  can act on before the end of the week – so that you can grow your business, make more money or build a better blog.

This is what I’ve found in the blogosphere this week:

Better Blogging

Don over his excellent site donpower.me, posted  Blogging for business? In this article Don have suggested basic 3 questions to consider answering before starting a business blog

Yarro Stark over at Entrepreneurs Journey posted a really useful checklist for getting more people to sign up for your all important email newsletters called 14 Tactics to attract new email subscribers.  Really useful checklist post to get more subscrbers.

Agent X wrote a guest post over at menwithpens.ca  about how to create guest post guidelines for your blog – very useful!

Better Life

Steve Scott writes a great guest post for ameaningfulexistence.com on how to get your personal freedom where he shared some wonderful thoughts on why he took control of his own life and how you can too – inspiring stuff.

Talking of  ameaningfulexistence.com, Karen, a fellow member of the TIP Team wrote a great post on theifopreneur.net on  Four Ways To Beat Feeling Overwhelmed – essentially a post to help you get more done and be more effective. Well worth checking out.

Finally, here’s a great video to make you think from TED featuring Seth Godin on Marketing sliced bread!

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This week is Birthday Week here on The Big Red Tomato Company blog – it’s the celebration of our 1st birthday, and we’re very excited.

Each day we’re giving away gifts to mark the occassion – check back each day to see who has won!

Monday – Crush It and Cash In On Your Passion

On Monday we gave away 2 copies of the book Crush It!: Why Now is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion in return for explaining why you wanted a copy of the book. I’m very pleased to announce that Jennifer Jinright (aka Gurl) and Eric (Bluepop13)  are  winners of Gary Veynerchuk’s excellent book. Congratulations to both of them – Amazon Gift Cards on the way to them.

Tuesday - How To Achieve Your Dreams The Tomato Way

On Tuesday we gave away 2 copies of How To Achieve Your Dreams The Tomato Way in response for commenting on the post and becoming a Facebook fan. Congratulations!

Congratulations to Christine Livingston (Aka Coblyn ) and Caileagh

Wednesday - The Four Hour Work Week

On Wednesday we gave away a copy of  The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content just for commenting on the post and becoming a Facebook fan. Congratulations go to Eric at My Four Hour work Week

Thursday – The No1 Product Launch Checklist

On Thursday we gave away a copy of  The No1 Product Launch Checklist just for commenting on the post and becoming a Facebook fan. Congratulations go to Eleanor at Heavenandel.com and Steve at Stevescottsite.com congratulations to you both.

Friday – E-Myth Revisited

On Friday we gave away a copy of one of our favourite books. Ben Lumley (@6aliens) asked for a copy of The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It in return for commenting on the site during Birthday week. I’m delighted to have Ben as a winner as I’m sure it will help take his business to the next level.

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At end of last year, Corus, Europe’s second largest steel manufacturer announced the ‘mothballing’ of plants in the North East of England with the loss of 1700 jobs in areas with already high unemployment.

Realistically many of these people will never work again due to difficulty in finding alternative jobs, skills and age.

Imagine the 1700 conversations that took place when the workers learned of their fate about whether they could afford to live in their house, whether they could afford to keep the car or whether they could afford to go on holiday this year.

It’s a very sad situation.

The truth of the matter is though that it was due to no fault of the workers, and no fault of the Corus really. The axe fell after a consortium made up of Marcegaglia of Italy, Dongkuk Steel of South Korea, Duferco Participations of Switzerland, and Alvory of Argentina decided unilaterally in April 2009 to terminate a 10-year contract signed in late 2004 to buy 78pc of the production of the businesses.

In jobs today, we basically depend on everyone else not to mess things up.   As businesses outsource the stuff they aren’t good at we become more and more dependant on others.

We depend on the boss to give us our next rise. We depend on the marketing department to do a good job promoting our stuff and the Sales Teams to sell the stuff. We rely on the suppliers to deliver on time, what we ordered and of good quality. We rely on the people who run the business to act in a responsible way and not to commit fraud or act financially irresponsibly and we rely on customers to stay solvent long enough to pay for the stuff they ordered. Most of all we rely on the competiton not to develop a better product for less money.

But, it doesn’t stop there. There was a time where we could rely on the money that we had saved in  our company pensions or the investments we had made in stocks and shares.   But, how many people have seen their savings and investments disappear over recent years with recession and are now forced to abandon plans for early retirement?

We have got stuck on the treadmill of life

It wasn’t always like this

In years gone by we grew our own vegetables, we reared our own chickens and sold what we didn’t need ourselves at the side of the road. Somewhere along the way we stopped doing this because we got jobs in the local factory and some who had saved enough went to college and university and ended up working in offices.

Because we had jobs we were rich.

Then we bought the TV, the car and went on holiday twice a year and instead of being self sufficient, we spent more than we could afford and ran up debts.

We run faster on the treadmill.

To earn more money, get promoted and buy more stuff. We’re stuck on the treadmill and have to run faster to keep going. But then suddenly the treadmill stops. The supplier stopped supplying quality materials, the competition made more competitive products, the customer hit financial difficulties and suddenly we are being laid off.

Then suddenly we are having to make choices. Pay the electricity or  pay the rent. Walk instead of drive. Maybe you make do with the old car a little longer.

The Rich On The Other Hand, Avoid the Treadmill

The rich diversify their income streams so that the economic downturns don’t hurt them. The treadmill dramas barely effect them.

But when our paychecks barely covers our expenses let alone giving us enough left over to build a diversified portfolio. But if you had any spare money would you invest it all in one company’s shares?  Would you bet it all on one horse?

Would you sink it all into something you don’t understand, has no guarantees and you have to wait 5 years for an outcome, to which you have no control?

No? So why do you do this with your family’s income!

If you find yourself on a treadmill that’s stopped and you can’t find a job, you’re going to have to reinvent yourself, but when everyone else is trying to do the same thing it’s virtually impossible.

But just imagine if you’d found a few hours each week, when you weren’t on the treadmill to diversify your sources of income?  Maybe you were good at Do It Yourself and earned a few extra £’s / $’s each month repairing other peoples houses.

Perhaps your other half found time to write a blog or promote affiliate products and over time they provided useful 2nd and 3rd incomes. Suddenly the picture starts to look a little bit different.

Now when you hear rumours that the treadmill at the factory is slowing and your friends are starting to worry, you don’t need to worry so much. You now have options.

You have choices.

You have leverage.

You have security and you have freedom.

All because you turned off the reruns of NCIS and CIS and started looking at diversifying your income.

You would be following the path of the rich and diversifying your income.  You don’t  need to have office space or new computers or fancy desks and chairs.

Over the next few weeks we’re going to show you how you take financial responsibility and start diversifying your income.

Whether you’re a single person, a factory worker, a cubicle warrior, a business owner, or someone just looking to pay off their credit cards, there is time to take control

Over the next few weeks we’ll look at how you can start to take control of your life, right now all for free.

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Over the last few months I’ve heard and read a lot about Gary Vaynerchuk (Pronounced Vay-ner-chuk).

For those who don’t know Gary, he spent years building his family business from a local wine shop into a US national leader taking sales from $4m a year to $50m in  just 8 years.

Crush It!: Why Now is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion is the story of how Gary leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine.

Although Gary started with a succesful business which his father gad built up, Gary has been instrumental in taking the business to this much higher level.

Gary is very much the early adopter, having taken launched Wine Library’s retail website in 1997 and Wine Library TV in February 2006.

His lesson and thoughts on the use of social media and growing your personal brand are well worth looking at.

Gary starts with his 3 rules:

1. Love yout family
2. Work superhard
3. Live your passion

Ok, so we can’t argue with that as they are pretty good rules to live by. Gary talks about building a brand and basically being out there on all social media sites you can think of.

He’s a big fan of video blogging (which suits his personality) – apparently he’s dyslexic, so video works well for him and is very much an extension of his personality. What works for Gary may not work for you, and unless Gary’s style is your natural sytle, certainly don’t copy it. If you’re not being yourself you won’t look natural and you’ll look false and awkward. Gary’s videos work well and he generates a huge following by being himself,  but there are lessons here which you can (and should) adopt.

He gives some great tips about how to build link juice and reveals his  formula for building traffic  post to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and every social networking platform and keep doing it (i.e. rinse and repeat)

Interestingly enough he talks about delaying monetising your site, which considering most people turn to the Internet thinking that they are going to make their millions is well worth considering.

He splatters his text with some great examples of the opportunities that arise from just one visitor. In fact he’s very much of the build the community one step at a time approach, which is very much in keeping with being social.

He shares a great story from his work at one of his wine stores where a customer ordered a bottle of wine for  Christmas but it had missed the delivery run. So Gary took it upon himself to drive to the customer’s house some 3 or 4 hours away just to deliver the bottle of wine.  Do you think that the customer told all her friends about the service? You bet she did.

Gary prides himself on answering all his emails personally. He doesn’t hide behind assistants, which is an amazing work rate for anyone.

Is the book worth buying? It’s certainly interesting and has some great nuggets to take away so on the whole yes. You can read it in an evening or two and one of the nuggets may pay big dividends for your business.

For example I would never have set up a Facebook Fan Page for The Big Red Tomato Company  if it hadn’t been for Gary.

You can find Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion on Amazon.

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This week is the first anniversary of The Big Red Tomato Company Blog. It’s the anniversary of when The Big Red Tomato Company static website and The Better Leader Blog came together here at www.bigredtomatocompany.co.uk.

A lot has happened in the last year, the blog has changed enormously thanks to great comments by fellow bloggers, hints and tips we’ve discovered from around the blogosphere.

We’ve launched two information products – How To Achieve Your Dreams The Tomato Way,  The Number 1 Product Launch Checklist and our one hour consulting and brainstorming service.

Not only that, The Big Red Tomato Company has moved up the blog rankings on Alexa and now stands 2m positions higher than it did this time last year.

So there’s  a lot to celebrate – check the blog later in the week to see how you can join in with the celebrations!

What do you think?

Now,  we don’t like to rest on our laurels so there’s a few things that we want to change on the blog to make it more interesting and exciting.

Here’s some of the things that we had in mind:

• The ability to tab to Previous post  at the bottom of the home page
• Swapping the Welcome text on the home page for a featured post
• Better access to archives relevant to the posts

But what I’d really like to know today is what you think. What would you like to see changed, added, blogged about or stopped over the next year?

How do you think bigredtomatocompay.co.uk can be improved?

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Superheros. Don’t you just love them? I grew up with the likes of Batman and Robin and Superman, so they were very much a big part of my life. In fact,  I think we all love to have someone to look up to and looking out for us.   But when that person is you, things aren’t quite as  good are they? It’s hard work and high pressure looking out for folks.

So, today you don’t need to be a superhero, as we’ve got our own, just for the day,  in the form of Thomas Sinfield from StandOutBlogger, a website I’ve only recently discovered, but I’m a big fan of.  You can follow Thomas’s adventures on Twitter or on Facebook

. So, today Thomas is our Friday Follow (#FF) …. Over to you Thomas:

I don’t know if you have noticed, but most business owners seem to act like superheroes!

• They Work Insane Hours
• Try To Do Everything Themselves
• They Won’t Except Help From Anyone
• Yet They Continue To Do It – Day In, Day Out!

Just reading that list makes me tired, yet millions of small business owners
are doing this every single day – and they don’t see a problem with it.

But We Are Not Superheroes…

The problem with all the people currently in this recurring cycle is that they are NOT superheroes and you can only keep up such a hectic workload for a short period of time – before you burn out!

Suddenly the ’9-5 treadmill’ isn’t looking so bad after all.

It Doesn’t Have To Be Like That!

The thing that I don’t understand is why people continue to work this cycle, when there is a much easier way!

1. Focus On The Important Tasks

Most business owners try to do everything themselves and the problem with this is since you are spreading youself so wide – you are not able to focus on the more important tasks (because it is usually the small things that are the most time consuming!). So start by writing down a list of all the jobs in your business, and list them from most important to least important.

Start to focus on the top selections of this list!

2. Outsource The Rest

Now I know you are thinking ‘but I can’t just drop the rest of my jobs to focus on 2 or 3 tasks!’ and you are right! Instead I want to tell you to LET SOMEONE ELSE HELP!  I know that this is a hard step for most business owners, but it will be hard for your business to ever grow if you do not allow others to do some of your work. Depending on the tasks you can easily and economically outsource jobs overseas through one of the major freelance marketplaces – or if that seems like too big a step, why not consider hiring some part-time help?

3. Remove The Dependence On Yourself

Small business owners like to be in charge, but when it comes time to sell your business this can become a costly mistake. The problem with having a business that is dependent on you is that YOU BECOME THE BUSINESS.  So why not start releasing your businesses dependence on you and give others some more responsibility – it will pay off in the long run!

These three steps are some of the hardest for small business owners to take, but are also some of the most rewarding.

So stop trying to be a superhero and watch your business grow!

Thomas Sinfield is an Australian blogger who is always looking for ways to simplify ‘complex’ processes! He blogs at StandOutBlogger and is currently working on creating a free video course teaching small business owners how to build their own website for under $100!

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Right now I have 326 connections on Linked-in. This gives me an awesome 2.9m people in my network, i.e. the total number of people connected to all the people I’m connected to.   According to my Linked-in stats page there are 75 million people in the Linked-in in Network.

With numbers like those then you should be paying attention. But if you’re not familiar with Linked-in it’s basically a social networking site for professionals.

Linked-in has been described in various ways, but the easiest way to describe it is as Facebook for professionals. But the big difference is that all the content is in a standardised format eg “Profile Headline”, “Summary”, “Education”, “Company”, etc. So consequently, it’s a lot easier to search upon.

Oh yes, and theres’ no dodgy photographs of people falling over drunk outside night clubs!

Convinced now?

Here’s 5 ways you can boost your business and your prospects of getting a job from Linked-in.

1. Complete you online profile.

I’ve lost track of the number  of people who don’t fill in their profile in full. I think that this is big mistake, especially if you’re looking for your next job or client.  If you’re an employee looking for your job you should be aware that a lot of recruitment consultants and headhunters search on key words or experience to find suitable candidates to call or shortlist for roles.

Similarly whether you are looking for business or looking for work make sure you populate your specialities and experience.

Because of the rich search capabilities  you should be capitalising on this functionality by completing your profile and experience. But don’t just rehash your CV or Resume either!  Make sure that you write about your achievements or the projects that you’ve worked on and the contribution that you’ve made. Making sure that you include plenty of keywords and verbs covering your field of expertise.

2. Join Groups and Participate

I am personally a member of 32 groups on Linked-in, which I visit regularly.  However, there are literally 100′s of of groups you could join.  Groups are a great way of building your profile, so start by joining relevant groups in your industry or niche or in your professional field and contribute as often as possible by asking questions, answering questions and generally being helpful. Be memorable, but not pushy or self promoting.

As a guide, t’s fine to respond to a question with a link to a relevant article on your blog which answers a contributor’s question, but not so good to post in the forums ‘just launched a new product, go check it out’ – that’s spam and could get your posts censored or rejected and maybe get you expelled from the group.

A good way to start adding groups is to see what groups the people you are connected to belong and join those.  Linked-in helpfully sends you a summary of the activity in the group by email, which you can choose to receive daily or weekly.  Just be aware that if you do choose to have the email summaries sent to you daily, you could be in for a lot of emails if you join a lot of groups, especially if they are very active groups.

3. Customise your web links

Customising my web links is something I’ve only recently started doing – most people just add the title of their blog or website, but you can add  up to 3 sites or links on your blog.  You should put keywords about your website in the ‘website title’ field on your profile. For example, on my linked-in profile I have ‘advice to grow your business’, ‘Tips for Leaders’, ‘Tips for Entrepreneurs’. These links take people straight to my website, but you could segment it by sending people to relevant pages.

4. Connect with people

Probably the most overlooked opportunity on Linked-in! If you’re on Twitter or Facebook you’ll be used to adding friends or followers. But many people when they get on Linked-in add only a handful of people. When you meet new contacts at a networking event add the people that you’ve met and customise the note that you send them by reminding the prospective connection where you met them and what you discussed. This could be the start of a very valuable relationship.

The only thing I would add here is that only connect with people that you know on some level, although others may disagree, I think that the power of Linked-in increases by being able to help people in your network. For instance, I’ve passed on job opportunities to my contacts or helped people get in touch with one another. I’d  personally not feel comfortable with doing this if I didn’t know them.

5. Integrate your blog

Linked-in has a number of Apps including the WordPress App where you can integrate your WordPress blog and show the latest posting directly on to your profile – if you’ve got a blog it’s another way of getting traffic to your blog and also shows prospective employers, agents, or customers your work.

Linked-in is now linked to Twitter, which means that you can update your Linked-in connections on your musings each time you post to Twitter – which is fine if you don’t post too often or if you post highly relevant stuff you’d want your connections to know and not ‘it’s Friday, got drunk (again) fell over’, which could be detrimental to getting a job or getting new clients.

Whilst I have integated my linked-in profile to Twitter, I personally have my Twitter connection set to only post if I tag a Twitter post with #in

So that’s some of the tips I’ve learnt from using Linkedin. But what about you? What have you learnt?

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If you’re visiting here from my guest post on theInfopreneur.net welcome.  Wednesday Wisdom is all about sharing information which you act on before the end of the week; so that you can grow your business, make more money or build a better blog.

Here is what I’ve found in the blogosphere this week:

Better Blogging

Eric over at Blue Pop 13 wrote an interesting article – Three Reasons To Absolutely Start Blogging where he explains how having a blog can take your business to the next level – you should go and check it out.

If you struggle with SEO, Keywords etc  like I do, you should do what I do and turn to Alex at www.AlexWhalley.com – Alex has  put together some of his best ideas in an awesome eBook – The Ultimate Keyword Research Resource,  which he’s giving away from free in exchange for your email address. You should go and check it out, then you’ll understand how you can leverage key words to get more trafific.

Better Life

Ashley Ambirge from The Middle Finger Project wrote the 2 Minute Guide to Getting a Grip & Reclaiming That Thing Called Your Life. In this article Ashley suggest that we take time out for ourselves! She aims to inspire readers to flip a cordial bird to the should, and live how they want.

Chris Ducker over at Virtual Business Lifestyle has published  a list of his top 12 Lifestyle Design Blogs. There are some really good blogs here, which has  got to be a must read for those looking to live the virtual life.

Better Business

Alexis Neely wrote a great guest post for  www.jonathanfields.com where she shares some great insights on how to avoid getting stuck in business, in her post Too Smart for Your Business? . Is being smart what  holds you back in getting the results you want to achieve?

Grandma Mary wrote the article Four Ways Social Media Can Help Your Home Business for 2chicksathome.com, she suggests ways how social media can help our home business.

Finally, I’d like to say a very big thank you to Jazz Salinger for sharing some great blogs with me – I’m sharing below an extract from  the email from Jazz with the links and the reasons for their inclusion, in Wednesday Wisdom.

I really like Danielle LaPorte at White Hot Truth.  I think she’s got an awesome way of getting her point across and she seems to genuinely care about people.

I also like Erika Napoletano at Red Head Writing.  I find Erika a little confronting.  Okay, a lot confronting.  She uses a lot of words I would never dream of using.  But, there’s a lot of fantastic stuff amongst the things that horrify me.

Finally, I like what Scott Stratten is doing at Un-Marketing.  Scott’s notion of stop marketing and start engaging is brilliant.  It seems so simple and yet I don’t find it easy to do.

So, what about you? What have you found this week we should be looking at?

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A few weeks ago Karen at A Meaningful Existence pointed me in the direction of a great eBook  called Cloud Living by Glenn Allsop – awesome book about how to get started in affiliate marketing and make a living from it (incidentally there’s a half price offer on it for the summer, go check it out).

Anyway, more importantly, Karen and  Cloud Living introduced me to Glenn’s website Viperchill, which I’ve been reading with interest over these last few weeks.   Glenn is an internet veteran but only in his early 20′s and has built up a huge following on his viral marketing website, originally from the UK but now living in Cape Town, South Africa.

Glen’s latest post on Viperchill is  The Viperchill Business Plan which has given me an idea and I’m asking you to get involved.

Here’s the idea:

If you’ve had a look around this site you’ll have noticed that it’s very image heavy. Several reasons for this;  the main one being that I wanted a ‘magazine’ look to the site when it was created and I really do love great images. In fact, a little know fact about me is that for several years I used to be professional wedding photographer and  I’ve taken 1000′s of photographs in the time before digital photography, so photography is pretty much in my blood.

The vast majority of the images I use are from Flickr under the creative commons license (ie. images that are free to use and are copyright) however, sometimes I purchase images from sites like istockphoto.com

Anyway, I know a lot of people love taking photographs. Some of you will  have expensive digital cameras and others maybe just taking photos on their iPhones.   The idea which I’d love to introduce on this site, is to feature great images from our readers as a showcase for their work and make less use of stock or the creative commons images I’ve been getting from Flickr.   For example, here’s a photograph I took on my wedding day

Of course there would be a few ground rules….

1. obviously we aren’t going to feature pornography or other images that may be considered offensive
2. participating is no guarantee that your image will be used, it needs to be relevant to the post
3. there will be no payment for the use of your image (although credit will be given to you and a link to your site or Flickr Album)
4. you must be the copyright holder of the image (ie you must have taken the image yourself)
5. if you show images featuring people, then they must give you permission to do so
6. image would have to be of good quality and in focus!

There’s just one hitch….

I’ve no idea how we could make this work, simply.  I think it would make good sense to use a site such as Flickr so the images can be shared, but there may be a better option.

If you have any idea how we could make this work, please share your thoughts in the comments below!

If you’d love to get involved please let me know in the comments below and we’ll start sharing your beautiful images.

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photo credit: joanna8555

On a Friday we feature a guest post post by a cool person changing the world one step at a time. One such person is Eleanor Edwards who quite literally is looking to change the world and spread a little happiness with her charity Giveabrick.com.

Today’s Friday Follow (#FF) is Eleanor Edwards. You can follow Eleanor on Twitter at either Giveabrick or HeavenandEl

Over to you Eleanor:

On Saturday afternoon, for the first time in over 20 years, I went for a bike ride. The new contraption arrived with the postman and, after wrestling with the gears, seat and front wheel for three hours, I was finally ready for my first solo flight.

All went well. Yes, I was a little wobbly, corners were terrifying and I lost several layers of skin off the back of my right heel after a fight with the pedal. But I didn’t fall off and no animals were injured so, for a first attempt, that was good enough for me.

However, as I wound my merry way home, up in the distance I saw something completely unexpected. You know how things look a bit odd when they’re a long way off? And as you get a little closer, the scene starts to look clearer?

Up in the distance I saw two figures on bikes. The one on the left was wearing a black leotard and little else apparently. As the space between us shortened, it became obvious that the leotard was in fact accompanied by black fish net tights and closer still, I could make out a white bunny tail and ears.

You have a picture in your mind now don’t you? Is she hot? With the usual clichéd gorgeous flowing locks?

As I got even closer I could hear snippets of conversation. This bunny’s voice was at least an octave lower than the character in your head. With Saturday afternoon stubble and strong, firm looking calves, the proverbial penny finally dropped.

Right about now you’d be forgiven for wondering what this curious ensemble has to do with your business. Isn’t The Big Red Tomato Company the place for important how to techniques, practical tips and other serious business type stuff?

Of course. But stick with it. I haven’t told you about the guy on the right yet.

Are you ready?

Set?

OK, here goes:

He was male. And was wearing a deep red velvety type number.

And? That’s it. I can remember nothing more about this gent. I was too taken with the duel effort of processing the bunny and not falling off my bike!

I’m sure he thought he looked great and spiffy and worthy of a cheeky smirk but on this particular Saturday afternoon he paled into insignificance beside his bunny clad pal.

Is your business a bunny? When people see your stuff, what do they remember?

This information super highway of ours is a busy place. Your people are busy folk, easily distracted and often, more focussed on doing their thing (like not falling off their bike!) than remembering your USP.

I’ll bet you think your stuff is pretty special don’t you? You may have spent your hard earned cash on paying someone else to get it looking lush and reading like the greatest epic known to human kind. Or if you’re the creative type (or on a tight budget), you’ll have invested precious moments of your life writing stunning content, learning new skills and prettying it up yourself.

However it came to be, it’s your baby and you love it.

But here’s the killer: if you’re baby’s not a bunny, it’ll be instantly forgotten.

You don’t have to dress yours in fish nets and a pair of ears but you do need to find the thing that makes you you and share it with the world.

Gone are the days of boring, bland, beige landscapes of sameness. Thanks to the playing field leveller of social media, you don’t need oodles of cash and an A-list address book to be successful.

But, if you’re going to get heard in this noisy arena, you need to first get noticed. And that starts with injecting your personality into your business. Find your thing and start painting your business with all the beautiful technicolour of your life.

Unless you’re HRH The Queen (and if you are, greetings your majesty. Might I take this opportunity to ask you to Give A Brick?) throw out the rule book and start telling the stories of your business in your own words.

Your business is fantastic. It excites you and wakes you up in the middle of the night with new ideas and exciting options. These are the ears and tail that make your bunny special so instead of being a chicken and leaving the ears on your bed side table, be a bunny and before you know it you’ll have customers hopping their way over to your place ready to invest their carrots in you.

Eleanor Edwards is the founder of UK registered charity Give A Brick where she is working to empower unconditional love whilst on her personal blog, Heaven and El, she’s on a mission to spread happiness and rid the world of boring words. Say hello to her on Twitter, subscribe to her RSS feed or even just Give A Brick via Paypal. Whatever you do, just smile. It’s Eleanor’s favourite currency.

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Last week, whilst waiting for my wife, I was browsing my emails on my trusty iPhone and came across a great article by Chris Guillebeau on How to Conduct  Your Own Business Audit.

I thought this was a timely reminder to have a look at my own business  and here I’m going to share the results with you:

Business owners and entrepreneurs should regularly undertake a business audit.  A business audit for those unfamiliar with doing one, basically means taking a closer look at your business and making improvements. (Sometimes it’s called a business review).

So, I thought with my first year of the blog approaching I’d start the month with a review of some of the business aspects of The Big Red Tomato Company – the intention is that we revisit this each month to provide an update.

The Big Red Tomato Company splits into two components – physical activity (Interim Management and consulting) and virtual activity via the blog.  The purpose of the two components are to support each other.

Although the business splits into two components these aren’t equal,  as 99% of all The Big Red Tomato Company income comes from physical activity. However, a major objective for me personally over the next year is to move towards a more equal balance of virtual and physical income.

As the business is in this transitional stage I’m taking some time out in this post to analyse the virtual side of the business.

If you work in a regular job you’ll be familiar with the annual review process. Indeed,  we subjected ourselves to at the end of last year!  However, for this business audit, instead of doing it at the end of the year,  I’m  conducting a smaller review to focus solely on this subject of generating  external passive income.

Building the foundations

The Big Red Tomato Company Blog in it’s current form went live in August 2009. Although articles were being written from this date at the rate of 1-2 a week,  I made no real effort to drive traffic until January 2010 when my Alexa ranking stood at around 1.7m. Then I upped the number of times I posted to around 5 times per week  and spent more time driving traffic – with  benefits to the Alexa ranking  – it’s now standing at 153k.

Over the last few months I have developed a number of strategies for growing my site trafficl which range  from commenting on other sites to guest posting and using social media (Twitter/Facebook and Linkedin) – the use of which was in no small part to Gary Veynerchuk’s excellent book Crush It!: Why Now is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion

Anyway, the benefits of my efforts in driving traffic are definitely paying off and will be the cornerstone of driving the passive income streams going forward.

The sections I’ve used from the audit  below are taken from the first lesson in my series How to Grow Your Business series.

Products

My first information product was How To Achieve Your Dreams The Tomato Way which I pre-launched in May and again in June and launched fully on 1st August.  This product sold very well  at both the Pre-Launches and I expect big results later in the year when people start to plan for New Year resolutions.

My second information product which I launched on 19th July was the No.1  Product Launch Checklist – this is a bit of a niche product for those looking to launch information products, so it has a less broad appeal. Although it hasn’t met it’s initial sales targets, it has continued to sell post launch  – this product will be kept under review and may ultimately disappear from sale and be bundled with another product.

Competition

I’ve not personally come across a direct competitor for the Big Red Tomato Company Blog. This is mainly because the niche we’ve defined -  is aimed at entrepreneurs whether they work for themselves or someone else with advice to grow their businesses,  is quite defined, but that’s not to say that competitors don’t exist!   As there’s competition in most of the subject areas where we write, if not just for reading time!

All the products were compared in value terms with what could be purchased on Amazon, but that’s not to say the products are directly comparable, especially when the bonus extras are thrown in – so I think the offers have been good, offering a fair bit for the money.

Ask the Customers

I spend a fair bit of time interacting with the commentators on the site and in replying to the questions I get either by email or Twitter.  However, one area where I could make more use of is in reader surveys. I’ve ran one for the original eBook launch and I’ve ran another about Facebook landing pages. They gave me some good insights, which is why they are going to be part of the strategy going forward.

Other Products

I’ve had mixed success with affiliate marketing – I know a lot of people have big success with Amazon affiliates – but I don’t think I’ve made £25 since I’ve been a member – I think that’s mainly becuase I’m a UK affiliate and I know a fair amount of readers are located in the US or overseas, so they are probably ordering any recommended books from their local sites – I don’t know if I can have a US affliate memership, but I will definitely look into it as I personally get a lot of value from books and I know, from the comments I recieve, that our readers do too.

Our other Affiliate Products (E-Junkie, Aweber, 31 Days to Build a Blog Etc), I’ve had much better success with becuase these are products that on non geographic (priced in $ and delivered digitally) and I know people like to use the products we use ourselves.

Undoubtedly, one of the best things that I have done this year is to recruit  our affiliates to help promote our products – what could be better than multiplying the potential market by the readership of each affiliate?

Opportunities

The good thing is that I learn more about the blogging platform and ‘the business of blogging’ I see a big opportunities for this site, not least as an extension to the physical business, with consulting/one hour brainstorms and supporting of The Big Red Tomato Company as a brand, but as a virtual income source too.

Here’s some of the opportunites that I see in coming months which I hope to be updating you on very soon:

• webinars or conference calls
• recruiting more affiliates
• finally launch the ebook on ‘How to Write an eBook’
• run a start up school – membership site
• grow the email list substantially
• partner with photographers rather than use stock images

Before I close, here’s a great quote by Chris Guillebeau when looking at opportunities:

Just because you have a big opportunity doesn’t mean you should pursue it. I pass up a lot of things because they aren’t a good fit for my overall strategy.

Great advice have a plan and stick to it. Overall though I follow the maxim of Tom Peters – Try Stuff.

So, that’s my audit, I’m going to update you on the progress each month. Stay tuned.

What about you? What are the plans for your business?

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If you’re visiting here from my guest post on theInfopreneur.net welcome.  Wednesday Wisdom is all about sharing  information which you act on before the end of the week; so that you can grow your business, make more money or build a better blog.

Here is what I’ve found in the blogosphere this week:

Better Blogging

An interesting article this week on TheInfopreneur.net by Kiesha who gives some excellent guidance on avoiding being penalised for publishing duplicate content on sites like Ezine Articles – 2 Tips For Publishing Duplicate Content Without Being Penalised by Google.

James from Menwithpens.ca Business Lessons from Equestrians compared blogging to being an equestrian in her own inimitable style!

Maren Kate from Escapingthe9to5.com  reflected upon 8 Ways to Come of Age as an Entrepreneur and the attributes that have marked her coming of age now she’s turned 25

David Risley identifies 5 reasons why you may fail as a blogger . Just make sure you avoid all of these!

Better Life

Two great articles  from Thomas Sinfield from Standoutblogger.com  on How To Make Your Goals More Achievable and a related post about turning failure into success in 3 simple steps.  I’ve only discovered Thomas’ blog in recent weeks and I’m already a big fan due to the really useufl content he posts. Go and check it out!

So, that’s what I’ve found. What about you? Share what you’ve found in the comments below and let us know what we’ve ben missing.

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Three months ago we launched our first information product here on the blog – How To Achieve Your Dreams The Tomato Way. Then one month later, on the day my son was due to be born, we did it all again.

Today, it’s going out again. But this time it’s going to be permanently available! Yay!

You can read more or get started achieving your dreams.

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photo credit: ecphaff

“You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight” Jim Rohn

As an Entrepreneur and Business Owner, it’s important to plan properly, to create action steps and set deadlines. If you own your own business you know that these are just a few of the important steps you need to complete when trying to get a business off the ground and run it successfully. Business owners know this because they understand that to make a success of a new venture you have to know how you’re going to turn the dream into a reality.

When you’re working towards a big goal, one that’s a game changer, treating it like a business and becoming really structured with it can pay off massively, potentially knocking weeks, months or even years of your achievement date. Why? Because you’re approaching it from a position of great strength.

So here are my 3 simple ways to treat your goals like a business and rocket to success.

Get a Plan

When an entrepreneur starts a new business or sets up a new venture, they get a plan. They work on a concrete business plan that gets them thinking about every aspect of the business, allowing them to really get clear and focused.

By writing down the goals they want to achieve within their business, entrepreneurs tap into their subconscious mind and set it to work on their dream. By writing down YOUR goals and creating a plan of attack you to can tap into this powerful resource.

If you haven’t got a plan yet, get one. Get a sheet of paper, write your goal down and make it clear how you want to achieve it, potential pitfalls that might get in the way and how you’ll overcome them. Think from the start what help you might need along the way and who can help you. Once you have your plan and it’s written down, get going.

Get Organised

Business owners aren’t sloppy (well successful ones aren’t at any rate.) One of the keys to business success is organisation. A really successful entrepreneur will be organised beyond that of your average worker. They’ll know what needs to be done and by when. Now some write it all down, others use software to record it all while some simply store it up in their heads.

You need to do whatever works for you. Personally for me, that means writing it all down and using software to help me.

When you can become organised in your goals you can wade through the slow stuff that most people give up on.

Set Deadlines

One of the main reasons that people don’t achieve a goal in life is that they don’t give it a deadline. They drift along with no sense of urgency or momentum and this can kill a goal outright.

If you want to achieve your goals effectively you need to set yourself some deadlines to work to. Otherwise, the part of you that is scared still of putting yourself out there and achieving it will reign you back in and make you give up.

Set a deadline, stick to it and get to work.

Treating your goals like a business and thinking about them in a formal and professional way can make a world of difference to the results you get. Try it today!

Ben Lumley is a Success Coach and Speaker from the UK who writes about self development at his blog 6aliens.com. Why not connect with him on Twitter @6aliens or if you liked this article then why not subscribe to his RSS Feed?

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On April 20th 2010, an explosion on an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico gave rise to the biggest ecological disaster in history.  The company operating the oil rig, BP, has been much maligned by the media, the US Government and the US Senate House Committee on Energy and Commerce, with the BP board allocating $20bn towards clean up and compensation payments to those affected by the disaster.  Criminal charges may well follow.

No one can be more maligned than the former Chief Executive, Tony Hayward, who lost his job earlier this week.  A person that The New York Daily News describes as the most hated and most clueless man in America, but at least he only lost his job.

The subject of Tony Hayward’s handling of the disaster will be the subject of Business School Case Studies for years to come, as a ‘how not to lead in a crisis’, where at times he appeared insensitive and at others completely out of touch.

Maybe he followed some ‘anti management’ school of leadership thought in how to manage?

This post is written not with any particular insight into Mr Hayward, BP or the disaster, but on observations based on interviews in the press and on TV.

Here’s some lessons you should apply whenever you’re in crisis, or road rules if you aren’t:

• If you’re going to say sorry, don’t make it about you
• Stay true to your values – when Mr Hayward came to his job 3 years ago he made it clear that safety was a top priority for him
• It’s a team effort – introduce the team and put the team at the forefront of what’s going on
• Acknowledge the victims and do what you can to help them
• If you get criticised take the feedback and act on it

I have read in the press that Mr Hayward should have resigned earlier. Personally I’m not so sure about this. In my opinion resigning when the problem appears to be fixed (at least temporarily) was the sensible thing to do. Leaving a job half finished is like leaving a boat without a rudder and labling yourself as a quitter.

Good leaders must face facts, prepare for the worst case scenario, draw on the whole team, show constant concern for others acknowledge mistakes and not make the same ones twice, and do the honorable thing if getting in the way of company progress.

No one knows whether BP did a good job or not – the technical difficulties in resolving the problems so deep below water are hard to imagine. Investigations by the authorities will be the judge of that. But whils BP mobilised thousands of current and former employees from around the world, Mr Hayward became the main attraction.

Jim Collins in his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t introduced the concept of Level 5 leaders. These are the leaders in an organisation which help differentiate the performance of the truly great companies from the also rans.  Here’s a summary of the attributes of a level 5 leader:

* Level 5 leader is an individual who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will.

* Level 5 leaders are the one who takes companies from good results to great results

* Getting right people and creating a culture of discipline (which consists of disciplined people, disciplined thought & disciplined action) are important factors along with Level 5

From the evidence in the press and from interviews it would appear that Mr Hayward is not a level 5 leader. But, for the sake of the shareholders and the employees and the other stakeholders in BP, we hope that Bob Dudley, Mr Hayward’s replacement, that he is.

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If you’re visiting here from my guest post on theInfopreneur.net welcome.  Wednesday Wisdom is all about sharing  information which you act on before the end of the week; so that you can grow your business, make more money or build a better blog.

This is what I’ve found in the blogosphere this week:

Better Blogging

Darren Rowse over at Problogger introduced the concept of the 7 Link Challenge – the main purpose of which was to build a list post that highlights posts in the archives, so that you get to showcase some of your older stuff to new readers – with the creation of a ‘sneeze’ page.  Not only did we take part in the challenge, but so did a number of other great bloggers: Karen at A Meaningful Existence, Eleanor at HeavenandEl, Ben at 6aliens.com, Mark at Ice Blue Banana, Adrian at Adrian Swinscoe to name but a few. If you’ve not taken part, you should consider doing it – if you have, showcase your work below.

You may have seen that the world and his dog have been talking about pop up domination. If you already know all about it, please skip over to the next section.  For those not in the know, pop up domination is a WordPress Plugin that lets you create great looking forms that work with your email newsletter provider (eg Aweber, MailChimp etc) to collect email addresses.  It works, quite literally as a ‘pop up’ ie the form appears over the top of the web page you’re reading. In fact, if you’re visiting this page for the first time,  a pop up will appear in the next few seconds.  The reason why I draw your attention to pop up domination is because it has proven to increase email opt in rates by c250-300%.   You can find out more in by checking out the website pop up domination or watching the excellent video by David Risley below:

Ps. One little tip, if you decide to buy the plugin,clck the link pop up domination then either press back page or close the page, you’ll be able to get it for $10 less.

Better Business

Tim Ferriss over on his excellent site The Four Hour Work Week, posted The Way of the Dodo — How to Sell 10,000 iPad Cases at $60 Each (and Other Lessons Learned) which is a review of the competition Tim ran in conjunction with Shopify to build a suistainable business in 6 months. Here’s a review of the business models of the winner. Anything you cna learn here?

Better Life

Whilst on Karen’s site checking out her 7 Links Challenge (see above), I was taken with her collaboration project co-ordinated by Raam Dev – where 40 bloggers got together to share how small ways can make a big differeence. – you can read the collective wisdom with a free download.

Just for Fun…

If you’ve seen the Jay-Z and Alicia Keys Empire State of Mind Video you’ll be familiar with the ode to New York. An enterprising music producer and a few friends produced this spoof video tribute to Newport, South Wales (UK) – in two days it had over 200,000 hits on YouTube. Just imagine if one of your products or services could be marketed like this?

So,  what about you? What have you found? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below:

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This is the last post in the series How to Grow Your Business. You can catch up with the previous posts in the series here.

In times of change, you need to be aware of the environment in which your business operates and be ever vigilant to changes. In this final post we look at how your business can position it’s self t take advantage of opportunities as they arise:

Seize opportunities

As the economy starts to strengthen, opportunities will present themselves suddenly and without warning. You need to find ways to evaluate these opportunities and assess the impact to your business both now and long term.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Which parts of the business generate the highest return on investment? Which generate the lowest?
2. Would these areas benefit from increased (or reduced) investment?
3. Do you have a clear view as to the impact that your product pipeline will have on your business?
4. Is there an opportunity to re-engineer your business to make you more competitive?
5. How do you compare with your competitors?
6. Do you understand what businesses or assets you need if distressed sales came your way?

How would does your business shape up? Are you ready to seize opportunities if they present themselves?

Let us know what you think about this series of posts in the comments section below – we’re going to produce this as a down-loadable PDF, would this be useful?

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If your business grows to such a size that you need to recruit people, you should think of it like  the process of making friends. Choose well and your business will be all the better for it. Choose poorly and it will bring you (and your business) down.

But, it’s even more important to choose employees well, because you’ll spend a lot more time with people that you work with than those you socialise with.

Some firms recruit ‘talent’ before they actually need them. But the greatest disservice you could do to your business and to the people you recruit is put them into non jobs. Talented people want challenge and work on meaningful things. Giving them a job because  they’re good is not good for you and it’s not good for them and before long they’ll get up and leave.

Other firms wait until they absolutely need to recruit new people, ie they get to the point where they  just can’t go on any longer without recruiting someone.   Those organisations tend to improve business processes and avoid unnecessary complication, not only simplifying their business (out of necessity) but avoiding costly mistakes and expensive processes.

But, when the time actually comes to hire, chances are you’ll be shortlisting the candidates based on the CV.

In a world of automation where jobs can be applied for at the touch of a button and CV’s can be sent out to many potential employers, how do you know that the person applying for your job actually wants to work for you?

How do you sift the Jamie Varon’s of the world who created the website Twitter should hire me from the ones who just want a job?

A covering letter

Cover letters are the equivalent of the Jamie Varon website. They separate the applicants from those who want a job and those that want any job.   Cover letters also do something else that CV’s don’t do, they distinguish those that can write from those that can’t.

Spell checkers of course can help with the spelling, but they can’t help with the writing. So on two competing CV’s the smart money goes with the one with the best covering letter.

At the interview

It’s good to have inquisitive people on board, those that ask questions and have a genuine desire to make things better. The best way to do this is by noting  the types of  questions that potential new recruits asks. Those that ask ‘How’ types of questions tend to be people who need directon and will generally need much more support. As a small business, can you really afford to provide high levels of support to that person?

Far better is the candidate that that ask why, not how. ‘Why do you do that?’ – why is good, it demonstrates and inherrent curiosity in the subject matter than the potential new hire has.

Test drive

Just like you take  a car out for test drive, wine sellers give you taste of wine before you buy it and Deli’s let you try a sample of cheese, wouldn’t it make sense that you do this with employees before you recruit them?

You could do this by taking people on a 1 month trial or ask them to complete a particular peice of work  which you pay them for.  If the potential newhire already has a job then maybe they could do the work a few hours  a week.

Either way, test driving before hiring could save you a some expensive mis-matched employees.

There’s good employees everywhere, you’ve just got to find them.

What do you think?

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Almost every Friday now we are featuring guest posts from really great people who are changing the world one step at a time. Some of our guest writers are 1 person businesses, some have a small team, but back in his second guest post is Chris Ducker from Live2sell who is the CEO of a 200 person outsourcing business based out in the Philipines.

Chris has the goal of becoming a full time virtual CEO by the end of this year. You can follow his progress over on his blog Virtual Business Lifestyle or on Twitter.

Chris is today’s Friday Follow (#FF)

In this video post Chris has prepared especially for our readers, Chris focuses on the steps to take to become a Virtual CEO. Whether that’s full time or part time, or you want to spend more time working on the business rather than in the business,  Chris has some really great tips in this 5m video.

So you don’t have to, I spent a few minutes making some notes and transcribed the video:

Hey Everybody I’m Chris Ducker and welcome to The Big Red Tomato Company – Matthew Needham’s Blog.

Matthew asked me to do this guest post for his readership and viewers in regards to entrepreneurship and taking yourself out of the office as an entrepreneur.

Myself I’ve been in business 20 years and running my own companies, on and off, for about half of that time.  But solidly over the last 5 years I’ve been building up an outsourcing company based here in the Philippines from the ground up. We started off with 7 employees and now have over 200 as of yesterday.

So within that space of time particularly in the last year or so, I’ve started to take myself out of the business slowly but surely as processes get put in place and delegation goes up through the roof across all departments very quickly.

Matthew asked me to do this post for you guys very quickly to give you a few tips which maybe you can put into practice to take you out of the office with maybe the ultimate aim of doing it full time.

There’s  3 main tips that I can give you straight off the bat:

1. List down tasks that don’t need your physical presence

List down the tasks that don’t need your physical presence in the office  for. You’d be amazed! You’d be amazed when you write that list down how many tasks you do each day which you don’t need to be in the office for.  From checking emails to taking phone calls You name there’s a whole bunch of tasks that people do in the office because they feel that they need to be in the office.

Fact of the matter is that we live in a wireless world, so you don’t really  need to be in the office to get those kind of things done anymore.

The other thing is to list down with the things which really do need your physical presence in the office for whether or not you can:

2. Delegate your ‘required to be in the office’ tasks!

IF you can delegate those things if you can delegate those things (and obviously you’d delegate them to people you trust), but if you can delegate those things why not do it?

Why not? You’re the boss right? You’re the owner? Why are you doing all of the work yourself?

Get a little lazy, get a little conceited and delegate that work out to other people so that you don’t have to do it.  If you have to hire one more person  to be your dedicated delegator . Then go ahead and do that because the money you will spend on their salary on a yearly basis will be far smaller than the things you can do with your time that you have saved.

3. Try it! Start small and become more comfortable!

The third thing is to try it.  Just try it out. I did that. I started about a year ago not coming to the office on a Friday and I started working from home on Friday and I’d still do a full shift ‘so to speak’ and I would still be in front of the computer 8-9 hours a day.

As the year has gone by the last over the last 12 months  or so of me doing that I have done less and less work on the Friday and over the last few months I have done no work at all on a Friday. So fundamentally I work a 4 day work week, not quite a ‘4 Hour Work Week Mr Ferris’ – unfortunately. But a 4 day work week is pretty good none the less.

So try it out. Take yourself out of the office bit by bit. You can do it half a day to begin with, if you’re a little shaky about not being around for a full day.

But you go from half a day for a couple of weeks, to a full day for another couple of weeks for a month, then see what you can do.

Ultimately I’m still building my business now, so I do have to be here pretty regularly. But, by the end of this year, my goal is to be a full time virtual CEO, with no desk, no chair, no office, nothing at all in my company premises.

And I will achieve it because I know it is very, very do able.

So, until next time, thank you very much. Matthew, I applaud you on doing such a great job on your blog here, it looks like you’ve got a great community building.

It was a pleasure being in front of you guys for a few minutes.

If you want to learn more pop over to the blog www.virtualbusinesslifestyle.com

Have a great day everybody.

Chris C. Ducker is CEO of a 200+ employee Outsourcing company based in the Philippines and an entrepreneur at heart. He is also an advocate of the mobile entrepreneurial life that he calls the ‘Virtual Business Lifestyle’ and author of the FREE eBook “Saving the Day, the Virtual Way”, which is available for download at his blog VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com. Follow Chris on Twitter to stay up-to-date with his projects and activities.

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