CameronMathews.com

Multitasking Without Multitasking

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 13:00:00 +0000

We all have much to get done. If we didn't, I would not spend as much time as I do writing about productivity and how to accomplish goals. Then again, maybe that's just my projection as I try to do a ton of things and assume you do, too. And often, that crammed schedule may cause us to stray into what was once considered a valuable activity: multitasking.

I mean, with so much to do, it makes sense to work on multiple things at once, right? Wrong.

"But I'm good at multitasking," you might say. You're wrong. But don't believe me, go read a fun article by a neuroscientist from MIT (Earl Miller) explaining how your brain is wired against it. Multitasking will kill your productivity, from the inability to actually finish tasks to the wasted effort switching between them, to the lack of ability to focus and follow problems to creative rather than reactive solutions.

I'm terrible at multitasking, anyway, as something always gets dropped on the floor. Here are a few things I try to do instead.

Multiprojecting Over Multitasking

Just because we are not great at doing multiple things at the same time does not mean that we don't have multiple things we have to do. So I like to think of those as multiple concurrent projects, and then work on a particular project at a time.

It's probably semantics, but it fools me.

Instead of thinking about the minutiae of a single task that I am working on, which I could easily get distracted from, I ratchet it up a level and think about the project as a whole. I then can complete a few tasks on that project without constantly feeling pressure to jump over and switch to another project.

It doesn't always work. I still struggle and drop things and have to play cleanup, but it does make the time working on a particular project more productive. It also helps to give a drive to a finish occasionally, when I am getting close to the end of a particular project. I can put in just a little more effort and complete it out, which really gets your productivity amped for the next project on your list.

Respect The Flow

Multitasking breaks the "flow state," which causes your productivity to break down. When I was a software developer, I could get into coding a function or application feature and just keep going and going until it was completed. Sometimes I would be oblivious to everything going on around me and realize that I had been typing possibly for hours. I also felt that way when I wrote fiction, as words could just pour out of my head and onto the page and there were times when I would crank out over two thousand words per hour.

I find writing a bit more difficult now, because I need much more thought and analysis into what I am writing on a particular topic, and therefore, I can't just dump words onto a page like I could when I just described the world and events swirling around in my head.

But still I chase that flow.

The flow state will provide the highest level of performance, so I try to take steps to get myself into simply typing the words in my head as quickly as possible. For example, I try to plan out my writing session in advance and outline what I am going to say. That way, when the time comes to write, I just type out the thoughts as I work my way through the outline. I used to consider myself a "pantser" as in, I write by the seat of my pants, but now I am most definitely evolving into a "plotter" where every point is already thought up before the words hit the page.

The result? I can sit down and write and write without taking a ton of breaks to plan what's next or scratch my head for example stories and narratives that drive home the thought I am trying to make. Because I already planned that.

Take whatever steps you can to try to get yourself into that flow state. If your job is one that you can crank out a ton of work if you are dedicated and focused, then this option is for you. Eliminate distractions and refuse interruptions. Don't start two tasks at once where something is bound to happen.

I failed this test when I was writing something earlier today. The reason? I had boiled some eggs.

See, I put some eggs on to boil and then cut them off after a few minutes and went to sit down and write. But then a timer went off for me to get up and remove them from the heat and ice them down, so I did, lest they continue cooking past hard boiled to rubbery in that extremely hot water. By the time I got back, I had forgotten what I was writing. But I had left myself a clue in that I had been mid-sentence when I stood up, so I was able to pick back up where I left off. But even that illustrated to me the importance of not breaking that flow, as my writing had a slight stutter as I tried to get back into the zone.

But are you struggling staying in the zone? Put a fence around it.

Batch Batch Batch

To keep from getting sucked into the multitasking vortex, batch similar activities together and put guardrails around it to keep other thoughts and activities out of it.

Set time limits.

Put a clearly defined goal on your desired outcome.

Then work to crank that out.

I've talked before about separating planning from doing, like this article on social media planning, but the idea of batching goes well beyond that. Take similar activities even in the "doing" space and clump them together in a single time window.

For me, that means that the social media planning might be a 30 minute window where I crank out ideas. Some of that goes into this week's calendar, some into next week. Some might be parked four weeks out.

Where I am not as good is with batching writing. I have outlines for my next probably ten blog posts, but I tend to write in chunks and have not yet reached the batching of content like Mark Guberti describes in this blog post. It also doesn't help that I generally have time available in 30 minute blocks for batching, and not multiple hours, which is what it might take to create all content for the month. Still, the tips in that article are great and apply across the board.

Time limits are important not only because they will keep you from running over, but more because they provide an internal boundary to keep other tasks out until the time limit is up.

Basically, you can put any interruptions off, telling yourself, "That's not an emergency, I can get to it when I am done with this batch work in 18 minutes," or whatever it is.

Fences are meant to keep bad stuff out just as much as keeping good stuff in.

Not only do batch sessions allow you to create isolation between tasks, they help minimize the loss of productivity due to task-switching. I've heard this once referred to as "pick up and put down time." Basically, every time you switch from doing one task to another, there's a small bit of transition time lost, sometimes physical and always mental. Batching tasks keeps you in the same toolsets doing the same or similar tasks for longer and without the interruptions causing you to waste those transitions.

Prioritization

In the end, you might not be able to get everything done. That isn't the outcome you're looking for, but sometimes it's the outcome you get. So make sure you are working on your highest priority projects first.

Seems simple, but sometimes the highest priority is also the highest level of work, which can cause you to avoid it.

Don't procrastinate important things.

Look, by reading this, you now will stop procrastinating, right? Wrong. Just hearing "don't procrastinate" won't make you stop, but taking your own perspective and framing importance can help you prioritize correctly.

We all have a ton to do. That's already a given. But if you have five hours to do eight hours worth of work, you have to make it count. And the way you do that is focusing on the biggest return for the time.

What do you get out of completing your projects? You should know that and have an idea of their relative value. Spend your quality time on the important projects to make the biggest impact.

Getting It Done

In the end, any work strategy has to find a way to compensate for having too much to do in too little time. While you can find all types of tips and tricks to help, the most important way to maximize your productivity is to avoid waste.

Waste appears in form of task-switching time, interruptions, and dead spots.

Working to prioritize your work effectively, block out time to batch similar activities, and then push yourself until you can get into the flow of producing can certainly help reduce that waste. I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas, so feel free to shoot them my way.

How to Keep Your Goals Without Stupid Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 13:00:00 +0000

So we've reached the point in the year where most of us have abandoned our resolutions, the gyms have started to empty out, and the first twenty or thirty pages of the wonderful novel we set out to write have started collecting dust. No problem! We can just Google "how to keep goals" and find an easy 1, 2, 3 method with all kinds of gimmicks and tricks for making sure we are back on track.

In fact, I have a lot of tips and tricks on this site that I use to try to hit my goals.

And sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't.

So as we round the middle of February, I started to wonder, how can we go about keeping our goals, when all the lists of quick and easy methods have failed to keep our interest and we've failed to make progress? As I've come to grips with why I've missed some of my own goals, I think I've figured it out for myself, at least: it comes down to some tough truths.

Drop Kick The Stupid Goals

When wondering why you are not hitting your goals, first ask yourself, "Is this goal stupid?" When setting a ton of goals in some annual resolution or planning session, we tend to have lofty opinions of what we can get done and how much we can transform in a year. Maybe some of those are too ambitious. Maybe some of them are just plain dumb. Give yourself permission to boot anything you deem stupid and unimportant off of your list.

If you have not been working on your goal or really trying to keep it, perhaps it isn't that important to you.

That may hurt to hear, because you know deep in your heart that you were destined to be a concert cellist, and so you set that goal to learn twenty pieces of music on the cello this year, but here in the middle of February, you cannot honestly say you have practiced once. Or even purchased a cello.

There's a quote on my desk from Gandhi that says "Action expresses priorities." I used to have a boss that would say "You vote with your feet." Both express the same thing. What you determine to be important actually gets your attention and action.Take a few seconds on the goal you are not accomplishing and ask yourself if you have not spent time on it because it just is not that important.

If it's not, kick it to the curb and focus on better goals.

You only have 8,760 hours in a year, and I'm guessing that you'll probably sleep for 2,000-2,500 of them. So don't waste time on goals that you do not really care about. Focus on things that matter. And focus on things that are important to you. The clock does not stop ticking.

Stop Making Excuses

"I've been too busy to focus on this" means "this really is not that important to me." "This other activity got in the way" means "I chose to work on this other activity first." "I need these things from other people to be able to start my goal" means "This was an unreasonable goal with dependencies outside my control to prevent me from taking accountability."

If you want to accomplish your goals, you have to stop making excuses.

Ask yourself why you have not made progress on your goal. Write your answer down. Read it and realize it is an excuse. Either it is a reason that you made an unattainable or bad goal to begin with, or it is a little story you tell yourself to make you feel better for failing.

Excuses are lies that hide our accountability in failure.

If you want to keep your goals, you have to stop allowing yourself to excuse the behavior. Have you ever been on the end of a "non-apology apology?" I know I've received and given them. Take this scenario. Bob says to Jane, "You look horrible today." Jane gets her feelings hurt. Bob says, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings." Do you think that apology makes it less hurtful to Jane? No, it doesn't. It doesn't matter what Bob meant, the results matter.

You know why that is? Reasons for behavior don't change the results of the behavior.

Knock that through your head, and then think about excuses. Does it matter why you didn't work on your goal? No. It doesn't. What matters is that you didn't do it, and that you start working on it instead of not working on it. So every time you justify it in your head, you absolve yourself somehow of blame and make it easier to skip working on it next time.

As an exercise, try to reframe your thoughts about your progress on goals with a total accountability mindset. Accept accountability for the choices you made that led to these results. So instead of "I did not have time to work on it last week," you should say "I chose to go out to a long dinner and watch seven hours of television instead of working on it last week." Just that change in thinking lets you view your actions in the context of their impacts on your goal. And you might just decide that your goal is not important. If that's the case, go back and drop kick it. Otherwise, change your behavior.

Do The Work

This next sentence will sound dumb, but it is not only true, it is the core understanding you need to start accomplishing things on your goals: The reason you are not making progress on your goals is because you are not working on your goals.

Got it?

If you want to make headway towards completing something, you have to work on it. Again, this sounds like something that you should follow with "duh," but it's worth reading it here in print to try to let it sink in.

This also means that you have to stop talking about your goals so much.

I'm not going to go to the extreme that Derek Sivers does in this TED talk about goals and say that you can't tell anyone about your goals, but you do need to spend a disproportionately larger amount of time working on your goal than talking about it.

Writers often like to talk about their novels, because they have this world and swirl of ideas careening around their head so much they feel they will explode if they don't talk about it. People obsessed with other goals or ideas do the same. But the outlet needs to be work, not talk.

Talk doesn't get that book written or exercise done.

This may also mean you need to stop reading about why you are not completing your goals. I'm OK running the risk that you stop reading right now and go work on your goal. But if you aren't going to go do that and you will get distracted by Facebook and that episode of your favorite show on Hulu that you haven't watched yet, then keep reading (and then go work on your goal).

One last excuse-buster for you. If you are thinking you don't know where to begin, just begin.

There's an old joke that is supposed to explain the concept of conquering giant goals. It goes something like this:

The moral here is you have to break your larger tasks into smaller and smaller ones until the impossible seems (and is) doable. Sometimes the magnitude of tasks can scare us, but it's easier to think not of "how I can do this" but instead of "where can I start" and "what can I do next."

Even individuals that get that concept of decomposing goals down and working smaller chunks can get stuck wondering where to start. Do you start at the head of the elephant or the tail?

In the interest of getting away from consuming endangered species, I'll switch to another metaphor, eating a 20 ft x 20 ft pizza. So what happens if you get stuck wondering where to begin consumption of 400 square feet of Italian pizza pie? Just start eating. And then stick to it. And if you stop, start again.

It does not matter if you eat the crust first and work your way in. It does not matter if you slice it into bite size pieces. It does not matter if you pick all of the pepperonis off the top first and eat those. Or even if you roll it up like an area rug and start gnawing on a giant burrito-end of the thing. What matters is you start and don't stop.

So long as you move from one task that makes progress onto the next task that makes progress, you keep getting closer to the goal.

Seems simple, right?

It's not as easy as it seems, but you have to get out of your own head. Just keep going. And if you miss a date or deadline or task, just pick up where you left off and keep going.

Want one more example? This post was supposed to hit the blog on a Monday. After all, I had a goal of putting posts out at a certain interval. But I got started late and editing took a while, and so it did not go out until later in the week. But it went out. And that's the important thing. I kept writing and editing until I could publish it, so you can read this exact sentence.

So, the time has come. Stop reading. Stop talking. Start doing. Get out there and make some progress. Then let me know about it!

How Do You Build a Social Media Calendar?

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 13:00:00 +0000

For today's post, I decided to get back to basics and look at creating a social media calendar, particularly as I have been a little bit lax of late at sharing my articles across my various accounts as well as just managing that presence overall. I have a little automation that I will talk about, but for the most part, a strong social media presence requires active engagement, at least on a weekly basis if not daily. Sitting down in front of the computer to post, though, can be daunting, like sitting down to the blank page when starting a new book. So how do you keep the social media anxiety down and the productivity high? Build yourself a social media calendar.

What's a Social Media Calendar?

If you have never built a social media calendar, you might be wondering what exactly it is. At its simplest, it's just a way to track all of your content across your various social media and other content outlets. Basically, you want to keep track of each of your social networks, the posts you plan to drop out there, and then the time and date when you want to schedule them. Most templates for social media calendars use Excel or Google Sheets to keep a simple, spreadsheet tracker across each platform.

I use Workflowy for my content ideas for blog posts, but for this exercise, I'll be using Google Sheets. You can create your own, or you can find a ton of readily available social media templates available for downloading. Here are several options that might help you get started:

I have given thought to plotting out social posts in Google Calendar, but keeping a spreadsheet has some advantages in that some platforms or tools will allow for bulk uploading (I'm thinking Hootsuite and Buffer here), where a spreadsheet format can be reformatted into an upload template to make those scheduled posts easier.

Where to Post?

With so many options out there, you can easily overwhelm yourself with 500 different networks and trying to tailor content to each one. Between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Quora, Medium, YouTube, Google +, and various dead social networks or new ones that may pop up tomorrow, the choices are vast.

My initial recommendation is to pick one or two, and stick to that to start. As for me, I feel most comfortable on Twitter, but analyzing the last three months of stats on Google Analytics, I found that I got more referrals from both Facebook and Google+ than Twitter. That surprised me, given the increased amount of effort I spend on Twitter versus the other platforms, but it gives me important insight.

I need to work more on Twitter driving traffic, and I can't neglect Facebook and Google+.

If you have analytics on your site, you can use those to also determine where you receive the most traffic and make sure that you are tending to that as well as where you feel like you want to be.

Given this insight, I need to plan my calendar to have specific curated content for each of these three platforms. For anything else that I might want to share to by default, I can use a little bit of automation. I use IFTTT (If This, Then That) to share some of it, and then manually post anything else I want to share. But the primary focus (for now) has to be on my three primary platforms.

When to Post?

Again, there's no shortage of research out there on the ideal time to post to specific social networks. I did some similar research across a bunch of top marketers to figure out how to specifically post effectively on Twitter. Several packages like Buffer or CoSchedule can even let you optimize based on their data. Driving your schedule cuts two ways across your schedule. One is the specific times for you to post, where the other is the frequency with which you post. Then there's the frequency with which you repeat evergreen content or promotional content.

As I started working out a schedule for Twitter, I have a general rhythm for new content, linking back to my blog. I'll post it on the day it comes out, then one week, three weeks, one month, three months, and six months out. If the content is particularly evergreen, I may schedule something twelve months out as well or longer.

For more time-crunched topics (like posts on New Year's Resolutions or other seasonal items), I may compress this schedule and post several times over a two week period, then let it expire. Chances are that nobody wants my end-of-year advice in July, or discussions on Black Friday marketing in March.

The timing of posts, though, has to be spaced enough to allow different types of content in between. I hit Twitter most mornings, so I generally don't worry about scheduled content repeating without a personal tweet in between from me, but I need to do a better job about posting on Facebook pages and groups in between as well as varying the type of content that I post. I don't repeat posts on Facebook, though, so while it might be a stream of links to posts here, it would not be repeated like Twitter would.

As I start figuring out what and when I'll be posting, I just plug all of that into my calendar. It should provide a visual schedule that allows me to see an overview of how and when everything posts.

What to Post?

Here's where analytics can help as well. Looking at my Twitter stats over the past month, I can tell the type of content that gets the most response. For me, that was live photos from an event I attended, but I also saw some of the links that I posted to my article on SMART goals on Medium got a good bit of attention as well.

What I noticed most, though, was that my tweet content has not been particularly varied. At some level, that is OK. I primarily post links to my posts and then reactive commentary around other articles or tweets on current events. Since these seem to be driving responses, there is something there. But what I wonder is whether or not other types of content might not also get high interactions if I were to share it. The good news is that Twitter analytics allow me to monitor the performance of other content over time if I go share it. But what kind of content could I share?

Fortunately, I stumbled across this article from Larry Kim on 31 Social Media Content Types to Fill Your Social Media Calendar. It's a great list to fill in ideas when I'm totally stumped. Whether adding some inspirational quotes into the list, sharing some additional content from articles I have read, or creating repurposed content via infographics or lists or templates from articles I have already written, I can experiment with some other content, and a social media calendar with all of its vacant, judging holes on the calendar longing to be filled drives a need to brainstorm different types of content to fill those blanks.

In addition to varying content, you need to make sure that the content provides value to your audience. I've added Gary Vaynerchuk's book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook to my reading list, but I already know the premise: provide value over and over again before asking for anything in return. If you do that regularly, you can start to get into a rhythm that makes sense across your calendar, and you'll even begin to see it and evaluate whether your rhythm is working or not.

How to Post?

What you don't want to do is become a robot. Don't use automated services to retweet or curate content that seems false. For starters, it lowers your authenticity with your followers. The more you seem like a robot, the less someone is likely to engage with you in a meaningful, human way. But it also causes you to lose control of your content. If you automatically retweet content within a particular topic, for instance, what is to prevent your service from retweeting offensive or objectionable comment before you can catch it.

But you can't sit on five social media sites all day long and stare at your phone every moment in between.

Instead, find useful content that you want to share and schedule it. You have to consume in order to share. That means reading a little bit in your topic area regularly, though you should be doing that as it is anyway, to help yourself grow. Scheduling allows you to fill a calendar, but without losing curative control over what you are sharing.

I personally use a combination of HootSuite and Buffer to schedule content in advance, but there are several services that allow you to do the same. Facebook even lets you schedule it directly within their own app. Find what works for you and allows you to pre-plan content then schedule it out. Or for a more organic and low-tech option, simply set reminders for yourself and work through your social media calendar that way.

Separate Planning from Action

I'm a believe in this one from goal-setting to other actions, and social media is not really an exception. How many times have you cracked open your phone, ready to craft the perfect post, only to either sit scratching your head on what to post or get lost for twenty minutes reading the posts of others? For me, that happens a ton.

But if you spend quality time planning out what you are going to post, you're doing that without actually being in the app, thus resisting the temptation to consume before creating. You can plan and create in your own vacuum, using data to drive what you are doing instead of indecision. You also don't have the self-imposed immediacy of needing to post something to craft your content.

I've found this technique to increase my speed of writing, when I dedicate time to sketching out the next chapter of a book before sitting down to write it. But for social media, it can totally change the game. Not only am I sketching out the content, but I am writing it and planning it completely, leaving nothing except to actually post or schedule it. It's much more akin to meal-prepping, something I have recently started doing, where all the heavy lifting of chopping vegetables and measuring spices happens in one bulk session, leaving me only to drop something on the grill or dump a bag in the crockpot on the day I want to eat it. Batching work helps to put it in a time box and keep a level of flow in a planning session that can increase your own brainstorming abilities. You may have to split some initial planning activities from searching for images or videos or consuming potentially shareable content, but you can batch each of these activities into a time window of their own and get into a regular rhythm.

You Can't Plan Everything

Social media calendars help provide structure and schedule around content that you can pre-plan, and will ease the burden of attempting to manage multiple platforms and content. They cannot, however, help you anticipate every possible news cycle or buzzworthy topic. You still need to maintain a heavy level of engagement with media to prevent potential PR disasters from too much automation.

From a negative perspective, you need to be ready to pull the plug on any automated tweets if they could be perceived as insensitive to current events. In the wake of various tragedies of the past several years, various outlets have accidentally posted content that gave them somewhat of a black eye at being insensitive to tragedy. In most cases, this resulted in brands having to apologize and explain scheduling and automation to audiences who do not, for the most part, utilize that automation and only saw it as if someone had typed that content in real-time. If you're successful in disguising your automation as authentic, this is even more dangerous as your audience may be unwilling to believe that you pre-scheduled the content.

But on the flip side, you also need to be able to respond to trends that are relevant and timely and capitalize on the conversation that you can engage in around them. What that absolutely does not mean is to start hijacking hashtags or spamming content around current events. I saw one guy a few months ago who would just tweet links to his book with ten hashtags that were trending (but totally unrelated to his book content). All that served to do was to irritate anyone engaging in conversations around those particular topics. Many even openly criticized him on Twitter for this practice. But what it does mean is to keep an eye out for topics that you need to respond to or engage in that are relevant to your own content. The more you give to these topics in true, valuable content, the more you can engage with potential followers who are already interested in what you have to say.

I've got a ton of work to do in this regard, and I plan to get my calendar cranking this week. It seems like a little extra overhead, but it does provide the structure and visual necessary to help keep myself on track. I hope you can get your schedule ready to drive you as well. Let me know if you want to bounce ideas off around how best to schedule your own content.

Looking Back at 2017

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 13:00:00 +0000

Annual review posts tend to get a little bit self-indulgent or serve as a navel-gazing exercise, but still, they are a good way for me to take stock in what I did over the past year. For you, they may be totally boring and you might skip this in the feed or click delete in your email. But it might also give a little behind-the-scenes view into what's been going on that you might be interested in, so I'll go through it and you can choose your path.

On the whole, 2017 was a long year, and for many, a trying one. In my review of 2016, I talked about how I felt like 2016 dragged, but in the end, it almost seemed like 2017 was twice as long.

Granted, we didn't lose as many cultural icons, it seemed, as we did in 2016 (though I will miss Tom Petty, for sure). But we did see a cultural change in our landscape, primarily fueled by social media. My twitter feed, for example, has become more and more political, which at times can be fatiguing just to read. Though much of that is of my own doing as I have been searching for more and more information on various topics and end up following more and more influencers.

So how'd I do in 2017 across my various projects? I'd probably give myself a C or C+ overall. I got a good bit done, but not necessarily in all the areas I wanted to. Let's dive through each area.

The Blog

I did do a little facelift on the overall look and feel of the site, but there are additional features that have yet to be implemented. One on the homepage, in particular, I likely won't do until or unless there's something to sell, and it might require a lot more maintenance than I can commit to.

Overall, I did write eleven posts, but did a pretty poor job of consistently dropping content out here. Part of that was my distraction with other projects. Part was poor planning. Part was not seeing the results I wanted to see from it. But in the end, this is a writing outlet, and that only works if I am writing.

The most popular post of the last year, if you are keeping score, was How To Maximize Your Sales and Revenue Potential with Subscriptions (And What's the Rule of 78). If you haven't read it, go ahead and drop over there. Basically I explain how a subscription model can maximize your revenue intake with lower focus on new sales and customer acquisition and use a lot of data and examples to actually explain how it would pile up.

I also started straying a little from the mass-produced listicle type of article, though there's still some of that floating in there.

Analysis

I mentioned last year I wanted to get some analysis out to the audience, and that's one that I actually was able to do. I published a big pdf with the results of the analysis I did on over 50 top marketers on Twitter to try to understand how they operate. It goes into details of what time of day they tweet, how long they have been on the platform, what tools they use, and more.

But that one was delayed a bit longer than I would have liked, partially from losing about three pages of graphs and research when I ran into a problem with my backup software. The rest of the delay was certainly my fault, so I wasn't able to get to the second analysis project I wanted to do. Still, you should download and read my free Twitter marketing analysis if you are on Twitter.

Course

I wanted to build one - was going to be a how to in setting up your analytics and using tools to build yourself a marketing engine, but I didn't really do that. I had a first module built out, but other projects took priority for me and I lost track of that one. Ultimately I would still like to put something together, but I need better refinement on what it will be. Time for more Workflowy brainstorming.

Books

I did not finish my book on corporate transformation that I had been working on - but I did more than quadruple what I had written on the first draft. Far from done, but getting closer.

I did, however, decide to write a totally different book. That's a dangerous proposition, starting a new book without finishing the previous one, but I was able to crank out a first draft in just under 30 days with an interesting new method that I have started using, leveraging speech-to-text on my phone to do quite a bit of the initial drafting. Hopefully I will get through a first large editing pass on that book this year.

The good news from that is that I learned how to crank a quick draft out faster than I had previously, which may help me with the other book that has been dragging.

But I also need to try to figure out how to juggle the other parts of writing a book to get on a schedule that could actually start producing finished product, rather than just first drafts. We'll see how the editing goes and what I can learn from that.

The book-writing also squeezed into two month-long writing challenges, which provided me an easy excuse to not do too much blogging, because of course my words needed to be plugged into the book. The reality was that those were simply excuses for not writing ahead and scheduling posts.

Other great excuses used were the lack of ideas, which was really just a failure to plan, and a potential desire to write a different style of narrative, which is not exclusive - I can do both, and intend to this year, to give me some different things to work on.

Change for this year is I plugged in all my ideas into Workflowy (affiliate transparency: that link gives me something in Workflowy-land but not cash, I'm honestly not sure what it is but I think it's basically just extra space to store my lists) and sketched out topics for blog posts, essays, and book topics as a giant to do list that I can just start checking off one after another - which eliminates the lack of ideas excuse. We'll see how a year of that goes.

Other Random Stuff

If you've followed for a while, you know one of my hopes is that one day I can open a brewery. I love making beer and have spent a lot of time in the last two years working on recipe formulation and tweaking. A couple of years ago, I named that future brewery, and this year I started setting up a website for it. It's super rudimentary right now, but you can go visit if you want, at Blue Shadow Brewing Company. While it's not a real brewery today, so I can't sell you any beer, I've been working on a merchandise store to sell t-shirts, etc. At some point, I might do a little breakdown on how I got that all set up and how you can build a store of your own, we'll see.

I've been reading a lot, and some of that has been essays and memoir type stuff. Of course, every time I read a different style of writing I want to try it, so I wrote one essay last year around travel. It's in draft and needs an edit or twelve, but it let me know there are a bunch of other stories I might like to write. I've got 20 or so sketched out to write in 2018. We will see if I enjoy it as much as I think I might. The good news: I surpassed my target number of books read in 2017. Upping the target this year.

I did some automation using IFTTT to help share my blog posts even more - we will see how well that works, but automation in that department is always a good thing. Basically I have it sharing to Pinterest and Pocket now, where before I did have some automation out to Twitter and Google+. It still doesn't cover how I post over to StumbleUpon and Facebook or schedule follow-up Twitter posts, but any help is help.

So that's it! My 2017. A year of doing things and planning things yet to do.

Let me know what you did in 2017 by popping over to Twitter and tweeting at me. Have a great 2018!

New Year, New Resolutions

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 13:00:00 +0000

Well, it's here. 2018. To be honest, 2017 felt in many ways like a decade more than a year. My 2017 resolutions did not survive all that well into the year, either. I did update the site and get a few things out there, including a planning guide and my report analyzing Twitter marketers, but I did not get that course built (only module one), and I didn't finish the book I was working on. I did, however, write a first draft of a completely separate book and added another 15,000 words to the other book (only 50,000 to go). I'll do a year-in-review post in a few weeks to see how I hit in other areas.

But since it's a new year, I'll review some of the things I'll try to do to hit those goals a little better this year.
Maybe this list of things helps you, maybe it's trite advice. I don't know. But for me, at least, it's worth a review as I look at 2018 ahead and see how best to try to tackle it.

Focus on Action, Not Outcome

You often cannot control all variables of a given scenario, so if your resolution has outside dependencies, then you have either set yourself up for failure or provided yourself an excuse to bail on your resolution.

Focus on actions you can control.

So, instead of "I'll get my book published with a million dollar contract" (which would be lovely if you know anyone that can help make that happen), perhaps "I will complete edits on the final draft of my book and submit it to agents in an attempt to get it published" is a more controllable target.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't stretch. Push yourself. Have that end outcome of a million dollar contract in mind, but don't make that the benchmark of your success or failure. There are too many others that you have to depend on to make that happen.

I read an interesting parenting article recently in Time (even if you are not a parent, bear with me, I'll summarize quickly). Basically, some researchers at Stanford and the University of Chicago found that kids do better when you focus your praise on their "process" rather than their "person." So, basically, encourage them by cheering their effort and hard work rather than their innate skills or talents. Do not tell them they are great because they are brilliant, tell them they are great because they worked hard on a project.

Same theory is what I am applying here.

I can feel like I've accomplished what I wanted to if I focus on the action that I plan to take and call it a win when I have completed that action rather than keeping sights on a longer-term goal that may or may not be within reach as the only standard for success.

Write Stuff Down

I make lots of lists. Lately, I've focused just about everything that would fall on most of my longer-than-one-day to-do lists into an app called Workflowy (that's a referral link - I don't get paid if you click it, but I do get some sort of vague Workflowy perks if you sign up). It is a completely stupid app that might as well be just a hybrid of a bullet-list in Microsoft Word and the ability to mark those things complete. But it also has the ability to focus into different areas, and use tags and hashtags to organize your thoughts and items. And my ability to access this list anywhere makes it a brilliant app.

I've even got blog posts planned out in there, which lets me start fleshing them out just as I might in an outline, and then check stuff off as I complete it.

Let's be honest, there's also a satisfaction in hitting a "mark Complete" button that draws a line through that item. That little dopamine hit can really keep you on track.

I used it to outline the book I drafted out in November, and just ticked my way through chapter after chapter. Worked pretty well, and I could break each item out into a smaller and smaller sub-item until I got to the point that I was pretty much writing the book in the outline, so I needed to stop outlining and start writing.

Whether you use Workflowy (there's that pesky link again) or Microsoft Word or a notepad does not really matter. Just write stuff down. You'll need to refer to it later. Just like I reviewed my 2017 list of goals (while wincing painfully) before writing this post.

Don't Be Afraid to Fail

OK, obviously I don't fear failure, since I didn't hit every cylinder on my prior goals, but this is an important one for me in some areas, and possibly for many people in others.

If you fear failing, you may never start. It's that simple. And starting is one of the most important steps in accomplishing something (the other might be finishing).

Part of your goal is better than none of your goal.
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Let's take this book that I am taking way too long to write. I had planned to finish it last year. Instead, I wrote somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 words on it. If I had feared failing that goal enough to not start on the process, I might still be sitting on the same 5,000 words I started the year with. Instead, I'm now closer to 25% of a first draft than I was January of last year. Sure, there's more left to do, and I didn't finish the goal, but I didn't let that stop me from starting, and those words are the product of that.

The moral of that story is that part of your goal is better than none of your goal. Just because you can't make a million dollars doesn't mean you should turn down the opportunity to make an extra $20,000.

Don't chase failure, but don't let fear of it prevent you from winning, either.

Set Checkpoints

This year I am popping a couple of checkpoints in my calendar. Hold, please, I'm chunking them in there right now.

There, I now have a reminder at 8:00 AM on the first day of every month from February to December to take a look at my list and see where I am. And, via the magic of asynchronous blogging time, you didn't even have to wait on me to do that.

Part of the issue from last year was lack of reminder to check in to my goals. It's a good excuse at least. If I am not reviewing what I set out to do for the year, then I may forget those objectives, or at least lose the momentum I had in December and January when I set those goals. I'm always really eager to get rolling in early January, just like everyone else, and that wanes if I'm not reminded. So for 2018, I'll be sufficiently reminded.

You should too.

Set some reminders in your favorite app or with twelve or twenty Post-Its on the fridge, or whatever works for you. But do it somewhere you won't ignore it. Push the snooze button on that reminder at your peril. You'll be snoozing the reminder, but really you're building up a callous to the nuisance that nags at you when you don't finish your goals and it's your fault. Because it is your fault. Nobody else can take the blame for your failure (if you set your goals correctly around target actions and not magic dependency goals).

Scale Back Your Expectations

One of the best pieces of advice I pulled from Jon Acuff's book, Finish, was to scale back the scope of your goal. (Side note, if you buy his book via that link, I get a few cents in affiliate cash). Basically, he says we should give ourselves permission to hit a smaller goal than the more grandiose one we initially set out to do.

Once upon a time, I wanted to blog every day.

What that resulted in was massive amounts of guilt when I didn't publish a post, which spiraled into longer and longer gaps between posts. That made my goal seem less attainable, and I ended up bailing on it. The end result was long gaps between posts and justifying it based on the idea that my initial goal was unattainable.

For 2018, I'd like to write a post every two weeks. That's only 26. Substantially fewer than the 260 or so that every business day would account for. But more attainable. Still, given my track record, my official goal for 2018 isn't even 26, it's 18. 18 posts for the year.

That's a pretty scaled back goal.

But it takes into account the reality that I have other things that come into play. I have other writing that I like (and want) to do, and every keystroke on those other projects is a keystroke not happening here on the blog. That, and 18 for '18 is nice and catchy and an easy way for me to track my progress.

Keep your goal meaningful, but scale it back. Don't expect to do a million things your first year. Work your way into it.

Take Your First Baby Step. Now!

Break your goal down into chunks. For my blog post goal, I've listed out every two weeks and tagged 20 of them so far with a topic that I can tackle that week. Once you do that, you should have manageable items that you can tackle pretty quickly.

Go do the first one now.

For me, that's drafting my January 1 post, which I am doing on December 28 (I know, I broke the magical appearance that I wake up and hover my finger over the "Publish" button on Monday mornings at 7:00 AM and somehow send a bunch of emails and tweets simultaneously, but hey, this is how it works). In the background is the TCU and Stanford game (don't tell me who wins, it's not over yet), where TCU is down eleven points in the second quarter.

But the important part is that I am doing this small piece now. Because I still will have editing to do over the weekend (this will be odd to read when I am editing both because of the weird time-shift in the writing, and also because I will know whether Stanford held onto its lead - Spoiler Alert: now that I am editing this post a couple of days later, the game is long over, and I am aware TCU came back and won by 2 with a huge second half performance) to get this post out by the 1st.

In fact, after this, I may draft out yet another post. It won't be done, but it will be drafted, and that's a third or so of the battle (maybe a quarter, if we count social media posts, etc.).

But getting that first step is important for two reasons. First, though perhaps less important, it gives you that momentum that you need to carry you through the rest of the goal. Seriously, though, when you start a new project, the enthusiasm you have is like a turbo boost when playing that motorcycle game my kids play at Dave & Busters where the rider does handstands and crazy stuff when going over a ramp. But that turbo boost can push them ahead of the guy with the mohawk who didn't do the handstand.

Most importantly,though, it let's you get something done.

When you take the first baby step, you will have accomplished some of your goal. And that's more than none of your goal. By the time I add images and social media schedules and all of this for this post, I will have completed 1/18 of my blogging goal for the year. And that's about 5.56% according to my math.

Read that and weep. I will have accomplished 5.56% of my 2018 blogging goal BEFORE JANUARY 1, 2018. Because I'm that awesome. Or just because I took my own advice on this one and knocked out the first baby step.

My Resolutions

So, in the spirit of resolutions and all that good stuff, here are my goals for the new year. Since I like writing, most of them are writerly sort of goals, but they're goals, nevertheless. Don't criticize, just go do your own goals. But I'm putting mine out there so I have something to measure against and you, my accountability partners of random internet strangers.

18 in '18 - Write 18 blog posts. By the time you read this, I've done 1. So 5.56% complete. Boom.lo
18 in '18 - What? A second one? Yup. I am looking to write 18 essays (a new genre for me) with some little non-fiction narratives in 2018. Again, I WANT 26, but I will try for 18.
18 in '18 (part 3) - Read 18 books in 18. I usually target 12 (so a book a month) and end up easily kicking that with 15-20. This is not a stretch goal, but it is one that ups the low low bar from my previous reading goals. If you're interested in playing along, I'm currently working my way through Neil deGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People In a Hurry (oh look, another affiliate link)
Edit the book I wrote in November - I plan to crank through the first draft of the book I wrote in November and work out all of the missing notes and research points that I tagged through the draft, as well as give an overall structural assessment of it and fix any elements there. Move everything to second draft status.
Draft another book - I'm not sure if this is finishing my IT Transformation book or drafting out yet a third, but I look to end 2018 with a second draft to go edit.
Take some health challenges- I'm looking at 3, so one every 4 months, as my conservative target. I get all these reminders on my phone for 30-day challenge apps that I've downloaded (30 day pushup challenge, 30 day plank challenge, etc.) to start the challenge, so I'll knock a couple of these out in the new year.
Monetize my writing somehow - However fun and entertaining I find writing, it is time consuming. While I could treat it as a free hobby that could continue indefinitely, at some level, I would like it to at least pay for itself in terms of keeping a laptop that works well, and hosting fees, a better mailing list, and a PO box for "real" mail, if possible. So that means finding a way to make some money through the blog. I'm not sure I have the time yet to invest in building out a great online course, but I will look at a few options. One's certainly submitting a book and trying to get that published traditionally, but also quick e-pub things may help, and affiliate links within blog posts (did you notice those, because I tried to be 100% transparent on that?). I also intend to write a few longer posts (though difficult to get longer than this) for Medium, which allows you to put certain content behind their paywall to try to earn a little scratch for the writer. If you want to help with this goal immediately, go buy one of the books I link to above, and boom, I have a few cents I didn't have before.

So there you go, a giant post to kick off the new year. You're welcome. Or I'm sorry. Honestly, I don't know how you view it.

But either way, I'm 5.56% complete with one of my goals. Where are you?

Hey, here's something else for you - I'd love to connect and try to keep each other accountable on these things. I'll give you three options. If you're a writer, and a Facebook kind of person, you could join my writing group Crushing the Writing Thing. If you're a Facebook person, but not a writer, follow me on Facebook. And if you're more a Twitterer (like I am), follow me on Twitter.

Taking a Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 12:00:00 +0000

This is an avocado.

Probably not the first thing you thought you would see in a post about taking a challenge, right? Well, let me explain.

Last month, while exploring the wonders of my phone (Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge if you want to copy me, which I am sure you do), I stumbled across a new feature, or at least one that I had not seen before, inside of my S Health app: challenges.

I have been tracking steps on my phone for some time now, mostly just so I can get a brief moment of happiness on the weekend or rare weekday when I hit 10,000 steps. Why 10,000? Well, I guess someone, somewhere, said that you should walk 10,000 steps per day, so that's my goal.

Anyway, last month I found this challenge in the phone that asked me to walk 200,000 steps in the month of August. It was called the Avocado Challenge (I have no idea why avocados, other than the background image on the little walking challenge tracker had koala bears, a juggling man, and a ton of avocados).

At first, I hesitated. 200,000 steps seemed like a ton. On a weekday, I often don't make it past 4000.

And what if I failed?

Then, something happened. I mentioned the idea to a friend of mine. He convinced me that 200,000 really wasn't that much. If you break it down, it's just over 6400 steps a day. If I had any big weekends in there, I could hit 200,000 without changing my routine at all.

And if I failed, who would care? It is only a stupid app on my phone.

My outlook changed and I clicked to join the challenge. The app even had the ability to rank yourself versus others in the challenge, which I quickly discovered to be futile, as some guy had over 3 million steps by the end of the first week, leading me to believe he was either a hamster on a wheel or a talented phone hacker. Instead, I just started competing against myself - to see if I could hit the finish.

Then I did something else. I showed it to my kids.

After that, my kids would ask me, "Did you get your avocado yet?"

I didn't bother to explain that there was no physical avocado at the end of this virtual journey, instead just telling them that I was continuing to work on it. And in the end? I walked 261,232 steps in the month of August, finishing the little avocado track and even swimming out into the sea. I didn't win, but I finished in the top 30% or so of people in the challenge. But I did complete it. And I even ended up walking a little more here and there than I probably would have on my own.

So this month, after signing up for the Beach Challenge (again, no real rhyme or reason except for the fact that the background is a beach), I started thinking about challenges in general. I've issued some before, and taken several. But why exactly do they work and how can you make them work better for you?

Reasonable Goals

If the Avocado Challenge had been to walk 310,000 steps in August, I would not have taken it. I already know that I don't walk 10,000 steps per day, and to do so would be a big stretch. But 6400 steps a day? Much less of a stretch.

When jumping into a challenge, assess how big of a leap it will be from your daily life. I know several writers who won't do National Novel Writing Month because they can't commit to writing 1667 words a day to hit the 50K mark in November. But the NaNoWriMo folks have other challenges through the year when they allow you to set your own goal for the month, which might be more their speed.

Too big of a change from normal will prevent you from starting and give you excuses when you quit.

Make sure you pick something that stretches your abilities, but doesn't push you over the edge. I saw a "push-up" challenge that attempted to get you to go from one to fifty pushups in a single month. I don't even think muscles work like that, where you can magically just do more reps every single day, though maybe if you spaced it out across multiple sessions. But who has the time to do pushups twelve times a day?

Pick something reasonable and dive in.

Be Social

My friend at work pushed me to get involved in the challenge when I mentioned it to him. My wife and kids pushed me to finish by casually mentioning it to me throughout the month. However little nudging they gave, it all helped me to complete it.

Tell friends about the challenge, and they can help keep you accountable.

Don't bore them with a long story about your challenge every time you see them. That will likely just make them avoid you, and anyway, that time would be better spent completing the challenge, right?

But if you mention it casually to several of your close friends, some of them will bring it up later to you. Use that part as your "challenge fuel." I always think of Henry Winkler in The Waterboy, telling Adam Sandler to use the idea that "water sucks" as his "tackling fuel."

Take what you can, from wherever you can, and use it as your fuel to succeed.

Compete Only With Yourself

If I had competed with the leaders in an effort to win globally, I might have been discouraged. After all, he appeared to have a computer-generated name and had walked over 6 million steps. Considering FitBit was wowed by this guy walking a million steps in a month, I'm not sure the 6 million is legit.

Not to mention, if I do some math, that number falls apart. 6 million steps falls between 2400-3000 miles (4200-4800 km or so). If I run fast, I might can run 6 miles per hour, or a 10 minute mile. Work all that out, and someone doing 6 million miles in August must have run flat-out top speed for 16 hours a day. If that's true, I'm never competing with that, since I've got a life away from running.

So instead, I competed with my own step counts and the challenge itself.

The result? I did not get discouraged by the ridiculous achievements (or falsehoods) of others. I couldn't verify how they were doing their steps, but I could mine. I knew what days I was getting high counts and which ones I sat at my desk all day. And I could try to take the long way around the office if I needed to go somewhere and boost that.

Compete with your own best and make yourself better. Forget the rest.

Compete with your own best and make yourself better. Forget the rest.
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Do One Challenge

A few years ago, I took on three different November timeframe challenges. I may have finished one, but I doubt it. The reason? Lack of focus.

Challenges are difficult for a reason, they are supposed to be a stretch of your daily life. But if you try too many at once, you'll stretch in too many directions.

Here's a fun metaphor. Take a rubber band, and wrap it around several items to hold them together. Those items represent everything you normally have in your life, like family, work, activities, etc. Now stretch that rubber band and add one more large item to it like a coffee mug or Yeti cup or softball. That represents your challenge.

The rubber band holds when you add that one huge item to it.

Now add three more huge items. One of two things is likely to happen. The rubber band snaps and breaks, or all of your original items fall out to make room. Same thing happens if you overstretch yourself with too many challenges.

This metaphor can stretch (see what I did there) a bit further, though. If you leave the big object inside the rubber band long enough, it loses some elasticity. It is less likely to snap back to its original form, and eventually you will need the large item in there to keep everything together.

As you take on a challenge and keep it up, eventually it becomes part of what you do. A habit. And then it is more manageable. Especially if the challenge was not too large to begin with. Maybe the rubber band analogy breaks down here, because in your life, the habit is usually going to be a bit smaller than the challenge, or your rubber band gets larger as you learn to manage more things. Either way, you can reach a comfort level where you are ready to add more. Only then should you.

In The End

It really does not matter what type of challenge you jump into. Find something you want to improve and go after it, whether it's a writing challenge, something for your health, or some way to better your work.

Or pick something silly if that suits you as well.

Whatever it is, challenges can stretch our limits and test our abilities. If you succeed, you may find you have talents and skills that you did not know you had or rarely get a chance to exercise. If you fail, you might learn something, whether it is how to succeed in the future or that a particular style of challenge isn't for you. That's fine. Learn and pick up the next challenge.

What type of challenge interests you? I'd love to hear about it. Click this link to hit me up on Twitter and tell me what your challenge is.

Being Authentic

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 17:00:00 +0000

I haven't written much lately, and I can blame that on several reasons (I think reasons is a great synonym for excuses). First, a lot of my summer time has been spent in the pool rather than at the computer. And what time I have been spending at the computer, I have generally been devoting to working on a book about transforming IT departments in the new digital age.

Aside from that, I've also struggled with looking at some of my writing and wondering whether or not it is coming across as authentic as it should.

No, I don't mean that any of it is inauthentic in terms of I don't believe that it's true, but rather whether or not I'm falling into various traps that I've seen a lot of other bloggers fall into. By the way, choosing what appears to be the most fake diamond picture in the world for a post about authenticity was intentional. I promise.

Whether it's worrying about whether my headlines are clickbait worthy, fretting over fluctuations in Google analytics results, we're making sure I have that easy 1-2-3 solution for every problem that I address, I'd like to look for a better way. Maybe it means more informal posts like this, maybe it means gaps in time between posts.

Part of this feeling certainly comes from researching and writing the book. As I break down the steps that our organization went through (the book centers on organizational transformation), and spend some time researching what other organizations have done to make their transformation successful, I realize that that content is a lot better and more well-defined then a good number of my old blog posts. More importantly, it flows better in a lot of ways.

Some of that is obviously because I have more research behind it. Some of that is because I'm spending a little more time on the content and have lived through revision cycles on it before it finally finds a place in the book. But a lot of it is because it's really coming authentically from me and not from a self-imposed timeline of posting once a week, within a certain blog framework and a simple answer ("Three easy ways to hustle more").

So while I may switch back and forth between blog posts formatted with 3 subheadings and a great closing and one that just rambles on and on, I'm looking for a way to make sure that what I'm writing has value and purpose and is something I actually want to write instead of just putting something out there. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully I can focus on what makes sense to blog about.

Other times, I might just curate and edit old posts to make them better. Add to them what I've learned since then. Link things together that make sense to create a longer narrative.

I know lots of folks are stepping away from the traditional blog route these days. One guy I subscribe to has switched to a pure email format, no blog posts at all. I'll keep trying a few different things, and maybe some weeks you get giant articles, and some weeks you'll get a random thought from me. Some weeks you might get nothing at all. But I hope that what you do get adds value.

If you want to follow along and see where we go with all this, join my email list and interact with me to let me know what you'd like us to learn more about together. If you're already on the list, thanks, and feel free to reply and let me know what you think.

Interesting Idea: The Failure Resume

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 13:00:00 +0000

If you don't already visit Dan Pink's site on a regular basis to view the Pinkcast, I recommend you change that habit. He posts short, insightful videos that can help you improve yourself or think about things slightly differently. A few weeks ago as I was catching up on episodes I missed, I came across this quick one with Tina Seelig around her concept of a "failure resume." It's an interesting concept, and I urge you to take the 124 seconds required to watch and do that, then come back here for a quick 2 minute read with my take. I promise, I'll wait.

Back already? Awesome. So maybe you agree that keeping a failure resume sounds like a good idea. Let's break down how I think you can make it a success.

Schedule It

I find that the best way to keep something like this updated is to schedule some time regularly to do so. Find some time that is convenient to you to do your reflection and jot down the recent failings and your lessons learned and takeaways. Then put it on your calendar and treat that time as sacred. If you do have to intrude on it with other things, move it. Think of it as something you must do, like eat. You can postpone it, but inevitably, you have to get it done. Whether weekly, monthly, or quarterly, set aside enough time to reflect and take the appropriate introspection to learn from your mistakes.

Centralize It

Tina Seelig in that Pinkcast video makes a reference to sometimes keeping it in her head and sometimes writing it down. But she also says that writing it down makes it more likely that you don't repeat your mistakes. I say take that piece of advice and find a centralized place to write it all down, whether a journal, a file on your computer, or something else that works for you. By keeping it all centralized, you will not spend time looking for a place to update the next time it falls on the schedule, taking up valuable introspective time. It also gives you one place to come back to when you need to review your notes. Whatever your poison, I suggest you find a methodology that works, keep it in one place, and keep it secure and backed up.

Flip It

While Seelig's idea of the failure resume has novel implications for avoiding your mistakes, you should also take some time to track your successes. I used to work in a department where, at least semi-annually or annually, a Powerpoint slide would show up in a review with tiny print of all the successes that our department had accomplished in the year. Some of the projects were often questionable successes, but it was a powerful visual reminder of everything we accomplished throughout the year. All too often, when we update our actual resume, we don't have the meat ready to fill out any updates on our current position. Keeping a success log lets you have that ammo at the ready the next time you make that broader update.

Conclusion

The failure resume can be an interesting way to document and begin to learn from your mistakes. If you want it to work for you, I think you have to treat it like any other priority for you. Schedule time to make sure that you have a block to work it. And find a way to centralize it and keep it handy. I generally use Google Drive for things like that, but you can choose whatever method suits you. Then try to take a 360 degree approach to it - marking down your successes and how you could improve them alongside (or in a separate file from) your failure list. That way, you won't let the downs overwhelm the ups. Good luck!

Spring Cleaning Your Mental Clutter

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 08 May 2017 12:00:00 +0000

Can I confess something to you?

I have a tendency to clutter things up. My office, my desk, my phone, my email inbox.

But it has been several weeks now since Spring has officially arrived, with sunny days interrupted by occasional rainstorms. Flowers are in full bloom and trees have filled out their foliage to provide some shade for summer.

It's a symbol of rebirth and new growth, and a fresh time to take a look at your life and world.

It is also the time for spring cleaning, decluttering the household and giving the home a once-over deep clean. But it can also be a great time for spring cleaning your digital and mental life as well, getting rid of all of the mental baggage and clutter that have piled up over the past year.

So how do you (and I) take some time to walk through and cut all of the clutter and junk out of your life and breathe freely for a while? I've talked a little about getting rid of weeds before, but in this post I'll show you in detail how I do it by setting myself some guidelines and rules.

Apps

Let's start with apps. Chances are your phone has gotten cluttered with a bunch of apps, which gobble up your data as they update needlessly since you don't use them. But what if you need that app again? You can always download it and install it one more time. Deleting apps doesn't really cost you much in opportunity cost and can simplify your phone.

Statistics say most of you are likely reading this on your phone. If not, go grab your phone. I'll wait.

Now, open up the Play Store or App Store or whatever store you buy or download your apps from and look for a way to sort them. On Android, you can go under Installed and sort by Last Used. I'm not an iPhone guy, so if you figure out how to do it in the App Store, shoot me a quick note or tweet and I'll update the article here.

Once you've sorted by Last Used, kill any apps you haven't used in over 6 months. Uninstall them.

Don't worry. Again, if you need them in the future, you can always download them again. Chances are you won't, if you haven't used them in over half a year.

But wait! You found an app that you forgot you had that could save you a bunch of time on something? Use it now. Go ahead. Now it's within your six month window.

All in all I deleted twenty apps, one for toddlers which my kids outgrew years ago, and a whole bunch that I just never used.

Feels freeing, huh? Let's keep moving.

Email Lists

Ah, email lists. The best way for content publishers to stay in touch with their audience and keep them engaged. But how many of those email lists have you signed up for, just to get that one download, and now you wish you hadn't?

Day after day now, you go through your inbox and delete out five or ten or twenty emails that you legitimately signed up for but now never read. Time to purge!

Go through your inbox (if you use Google Inbox, it might already sort your mailing lists into Promos or Updates), and unsubscribe to any email list you have not read a single email from in the past two months. Hopefully mine isn't one of them, but if it is, finish reading this post first!

Sometimes this process will take a few days, because not everyone sends you an email every day (unlike some political candidates I have donated to that will send me twenty emails a day). That's OK.

Your inbox will start to lighten up and give you time to deal with the really important emails.

I only managed to drop off of three email lists, but that's because I just did this purge last year (and it felt so good then).

NEXT!

Backlogged Emails

OK, now that you have slowed the intake of clutter, time to clean house on that inbox. I'm not saying you have to chase the elusive (but sometimes attainable) Inbox Zero, but I am saying you need to do some housekeeping, right?

I'll warn you: this one is going to hurt. It will hurt because I am calling you out. If you are like me, you have a bunch of emails in your inbox, read or unread, that you are saving because you are "going to do something with them."

For me, I have recipes that I "plan to make one day." I have all kinds of marketing tips and tricks that I "want to try out." I have blog post ideas saved. I have blog posts to read. I have receipts I want to review before I mark them Done.

In all likelihood, I am not going to get to most of these things, and neither are you. So here's the painful challenge. Delete or archive any email in your inbox over three weeks old.

But, but, I have all these emails saved to go and do something with, you plead. OK, I'll budge on this but just a little. Do the thing you were going to do with it, schedule time to achieve that this week (that means add it to a specific time on your calendar, not your to do list), archive it, or delete it.

Pay that bill. Add the recipe to your upcoming meal plan. Review the receipt. Read the blog post. Do whatever it is that you intended to do when you saved that email the first time, then get rid of the email or archive it. Get it out of your inbox. It is taking up space where new work needs to exist.

How did you do?

I did not get to Inbox Zero, and struggled with several emails that I just didn't want to archive yet (so I scheduled some time to work on them). I did, however, get rid of over one hundred emails in my inbox. In my "Recipes" folder, I used the handy little "Mark all unpinned items as done" button in Inbox to kill over 25 tasty emails that I was just sitting on. Even now, the pain of not completing all of those things I thought I would do is fading, and I'm moving on to complete other things. Deep breath and move on.

To Do Lists

Another area of clutter for me? To Do Lists.

I create to do lists all of the time, and they just seem to get larger instead of smaller. This pile of clutter is a little harder to cut through with a standard rule, though. Chances are, most of your to do list items are things you actually want or need to get done. But we will try.

For starters, find a way to organize your list. It doesn't matter if you use a fancy software solution or sticky notes, but get a way to organize.

For me, I find Habitica is a fun game-style to do list for basic daily stuff.

Trello is my detailed project go to. Join with this link and you'll get added to my team. It's basically a giant board for tracking your progress on things.

Then of course for my big goals that I adjust on a weekly basis, I'm using my 2017 goal planner spreadsheet, which you can get through this link. If you've already filled that out, look for any to do that is behind and move it down enough weeks that you can start on it today. Repeat weekly.

Once you have a way to organize the list, block out time on calendar this week to complete items. Don't just add to the list, add to specific times and dates that you will do them.

Split out anything that's a wishlist item, where you think "Maybe I will do this one day" to a separate list and track it as such. Don't let those things you would like to do someday get in the way of things you want to do this week or needed to do yesterday.

Ongoing, try using the two minute rule to keep your to do list minimized. Anytime you are about to add to the list, consider if you could complete the item in the next two or three minutes. If so, go ahead and do it rather than adding it to the list.

Files

Now we're moving from digital clutter to physical clutter. Do you have a bunch of files and papers lying around the house or office? Time to kill that paper, too.

Several years ago, I stumbled across the IRS recommendations for keeping records, which is a great resource when trying to decide if you should keep that piece of paper or shred it. There are also some great guideline lists out there for how long to keep other things, but if it isn't tax-related or banking-related, you can likely toss it or shred it.

If you don't have a shredder, you should get one. This one might be an option, but it is not exactly the one I use (though if you buy it with that link, it does support this site). I've killed a shredder or two before, but my current one is a Staples beast that has stood the test of time for several years.

If you are buying a shredder, I recommend you get one that takes several (8+) sheets at a time, has a big wastebasket so you aren't emptying it out all of the time, and has the ability to shred credit cards and even CDs. You might not need the CD-ROM shredding piece if you've already moved everything to the cloud, but if not, it comes in handy.

Then set aside a day (or two) as shred day and clean out those old files. Make yourself some mail-mulch out of all of that paper. You'll feel better.

Books

The last thing to declutter this week are your books. Do you collect leadership and management books like I do, thinking you'll plow through them next week? Is your nightstand a mini-library of tomes unread?

If so, clear them out. Decide which ones you are going to read in which order, and start reading them. Meanwhile, take all the rest and donate them to a library or your favorite charity.

We pretty much moved to mostly ebooks several years ago, and my Kindle is now the clutter place for books, but it is also much easier to sort them into readable piles. If you need another way to track your "to reads" I recommend Goodreads. I use it to tell me what I am reading next.

Find What's Really Important

The moral of this humongous post is simple: get rid of your clutter.

Find out what's really important and then decide whether or not you can make it actionable. Otherwise it is just junk taking up space in storage.

Take action and move yourself forward without being surrounded by junk, both physical, digital, and mental. You'll breathe easier.

Need help clearing the clutter? You can use my goal planner to try to help organize your big goals for the year.

Whom Do You Take With You When You Leave?

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 12:00:00 +0000

When a new executive arrives into a company, we often expect them to bring a crew along with them. It's normal and expected. As high-performing people get hired into new positions, often a team is hired in reality. The leader of an excellent group recognizes that the team makes her or him successful, and looks to bring them along for each new exciting journey.

But what kind of people make up that team?

Have you ever thought about what kind of people you would bring along with you to a new role? Sit down and take out a pen and paper and write down the five people you would bring with you if you got hired into a role where you had the freedom to bring some staff along with you. Then let's walk through and see how it lines up with these thoughts on it.

Who You Select Creates The Culture

Did you pick people that agree with you most of the time? Did you pick friends that you enjoy working with? Did you pick hard workers for skills alone or those that would just follow what the boss asks? What about loyalty?

The type of people and the reasons that you selected them can tell you quite a bit about the culture that you would look to set up in a new role. You can use your selections and step through the questions above to see what traits you value in people and how you view your business relationships. How would your new peers view the people that you choose to bring along with you?

Would Your People Follow You?

One real question when trying to figure out who you would take with you is whether they would even follow you. This might play into the loyalty question on why you selected them, but it also involves taking into account all of the individual motivators that different team players have. Are they looking for career advancement? More money? More time at home with their children? Can you provide that, or would they prefer staying with their current job?

This examination not only provides a different point of view for you on a new position before you take it, but also can help gauge your level of influence. If you can name off the top of your head five people that would immediately follow you to the end of the earth because you are a great person to work for, then you have likely found five very loyal individuals. Are all of them on your list or only some of them?

Can You Handle the Wake?

When a boat cruises across a lake, the motor cuts the water and creates waves emanating out from the back of the boat called a "wake." When a new individual comes into an organization from the outside, he or she creates ripples through the organization as well. Perhaps she is replacing a manager who left and supervising several individuals who thought they would get the job. Perhaps he is taking over for a beloved leader who decided to retire. Either way, it creates an emotional ripple through the organization.

Should you choose to bring in additional people, they magnify the effect of the wake by causing their own ripples across their respective pools. Are you prepared to handle that? Learning and navigating a new position requires finesse and patience. Bringing in your own people can both provide you some comfort, familiarity, and security, but also creates excess political waves to navigate.

Conclusion

If you get the opportunity to take a new position and bring some colleagues with you, choosing whom to take can be a tricky decision. If you aren't in that position, you might still benefit from surveying your peers, colleagues, and friends to evaluate whom you might want to bring along, and then do some self-evaluation on why you would choose those individuals. You might learn as much about how you view work and what you value as you do about your ability to assess talent.

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How to Maximize Your Sales and Revenue Potential with Subscriptions (And What's the Rule of 78?)

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 13:00:00 +0000

Here's your warning: this post may ramble on and include lots of math. It has charts and tables to help.

Now that I've got that out of the way, I thought I'd share with you what seems obvious but might not click until you can actually walk through and visualize it: subscriptions are more powerful to your revenue model than single sales.

I'll say that one more time in case it is revolutionary to some of you: subscriptions are more powerful to your revenue model than single sales.

Well, duh, you might think. Of course, subscriptions are better because you get money over and over again. But did you know that they are seventy-eight times as powerful? It's a little phenomenon that in the utility industry (or presumably other service subscription industries) goes by the name "rule of 78s."

To illustrate this process at work, I'm going to walk through some examples. Let's start with a product that sells for $1000. If you make one sale a month, then you have brought in $12,000 in your first year. Here's a very simple representation of that.

Looks easy. But convincing 12 different people to part with $1000 in a single sale is not easy work. Every additional zero on that price becomes exponentially more difficult to convince someone to buy with a single stroke of the pen or swipe of the credit card.

But what if you could somehow redesign your product as a subscription product? How much would you have to sell in order to make the same $12,000?

The answer is $154. And if you sold twelve subscriptions at $154 each, you actually pull in an extra 12 bucks over the course of the same year.

If you look closely, you may notice that Sale 1 there actually causes the customer to pay you $1848 out of pocket instead of $1000, but since it is broken into nice $154 payments, it may cause less pain to the customer in terms of an individual monthly purchase or budgeting perspective.

Think about your own budget. Are you more likely to buy something for $1000 this month? Or sign up for a subscription that would only cost you $154 this month? Chances are the latter.

As you can see, you can generate the same $12,000 in revenue over a year with a price point of $154, which is roughly 1/78 of the total annual revenue (hence the name - rule of 78s).

If you want to figure out your price point to convert a single month sale into a subscription sale and hit the same annual revenue, divide your price point by 6.5 (that's 78 divided by 12 months). $1000/6.5 = $153.8462 or $154.

The untold story of this subscription model may come in year two, pictured here:

This is a chart of the second year for the same 12 subscriptions. So, as you can see, without making any additional sales, the revenue for the second year is almost double the first year.

Even if you lost a few subscriptions year-over-year, the ongoing power of the subscription means that as time goes, your snowball will grow and grow and you can continue to grow the business with fewer reliance on new sales.

But what if you could sell your product subscription closer to the original price? You got it, your revenue would soar - 6.5 times higher in fact.

Now, if you are struggling to sell your product once at a $1000 price point, selling a subscription at that price point may prove near impossible. But if you can convert your product to a subscription model, then you can play with the range (between $154 and $1000 in this example) to maximize revenue.

Still reading? That's it: the magical power of subscription models to maximize revenue while reducing the pressure on sales teams to make huge new sales monthly. Hopefully it helps explain the math behind how it works and gives you some ideas as to how you can maximize your own sales revenue by retooling some of your product design.

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Fighting Off The New Year's Breakdown

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 13:00:00 +0000

As we approach the end of January, the gyms start to empty out. If you regularly work out, you might find it easier to grab a treadmill or elliptical the next time you go. Credit card balances across the nation have already ceased to decline. And all that personal time pledged to family and friends has begun to be eaten up by other activities and priorities.

But why is it that only a month into the year resolutions fall apart and people revert to their old ways? Part of the reason is that resolutions are just wishes unless they have a detailed plan behind them. The other reason is that change is difficult, and most people pick radical changes to their lives as their resolutions. But how can you keep your resolutions despite the odds?

Write It Down

Have you written your resolution down somewhere yet? This is one of the old tropes of goalsetters, often citing "studies" that say your chances of completing a goal are some ridiculous percentage higher if you write it down. But regardless of your impact on the outcome, writing your goals down can be part of a process that helps you rationalize and then realize it. Once you have it committed to paper (or digital paper like I do), then you can stop thinking about the actual end goal and start thinking about how to break it down into chunks.

Chunkify It

I'm pretty sure chunkify is not a word, but it should be, meaning "to break into chunks." Even if it were a word, I am not sure I would use it in any context other than chunkifying your goals into smaller, more bite-sized pieces. But you should definitely chunkify it. Goals seem so much harder when they are nothing more than the end result. But the first step of a plan to achieve those goals can seem so much more achievable.

Commit to It

Even if you fall off track with your goals, you can always come back to it. Set your mind and commit that you will accomplish the goal. Confide in someone else that will keep you accountable. Whatever you need to do, do it to commit to achieving what you set out to accomplish. After all, this is a willpower game. You are the one that you have to answer to if you stop accomplishing what you want. You live with the regrets. So you should be your most ardent supporter.

Need Help?

If you need some help breaking your goals down and checking those smaller chunks off the list, or just don't know how to organize it, you might want to download my 2017 goal plan and get to work. It's not too late to turn those resolutions around.

Entrepreneurs: You Probably Think This Post (And Your Business) Is About You

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 13:00:00 +0000

As an entrepreneur, you might live in a world where your business completely revolves around you. After all, your expertise and hard work built the business to where it is today. Your capital likely went in to start the business in its infancy. You might even think the business is your baby (hint: the business is not your baby).

But what happens when you are no longer part of the business? Can the business survive without you? Can it continue to support your family if you are gone? Can you sell the business to someone else and have them successfully lead it? Your business has potential to grow bigger than you, so you can and should prepare for it. But how?

Get Help

If you run every single aspect of your business, then either you have not grown to the point to need to scale, or you work harder than you need to and should find avenues to sacrifice total control. Maybe both of those are true for you. But if your business has grown large enough that there are activities that you could get help with, then by all means do so.

Beyond help with operating the business, though, you may need help with your strategy. No shortage of consultants exist for that very reason, but if you are a small business, you may find that all you need is a close friend or family member that you trust (and would trust with your family's financial future) to bounce your ideas off of. Either way, you can benefit from gaining additional perspective on how to create a plan that would allow you to separate yourself from your business, should the need arise.

Diversify

For a lot of small businesses, the owner is part of the product or service being sold. Authors, craftsmen and women, public speakers, and artists all have their personalities integrally tied with the value proposition being offered. If the owner were to disappear in many of these instances, the product would also cease to exist and the business would, as well. So how could these businesses diversify themselves to tie their success less to their own being?

The answer may require some creativity. But the end result has to be that some money-making portion of the business can and will be created by someone other than the owner. A public speaker may take some of their ideas and have workshops and handbooks based on those ideas that others could facilitate. Or perhaps she could manage other speakers and put together conventions around a central theme. Some successful authors, like Tom Clancy and James Patterson have created a sort of franchise, where they partner with co-writers or even just put their name as a brand on series written entirely by others. They may seed the ideas and help with structure, but other people create the actual product.

Brainstorm some ideas for products or product lines that you could license, franchise, or otherwise have others create on your behalf that ties in with your primary theme and purpose of your business. This can create different income streams that don't require you at the center to generate money for you and your business.

Plan Your Succession

In the days of monarchies and feudalism, when a king would die on the battlefield with no clear heir to take the throne, chaos would ensue as different sides fought over command or divided scraps of the kingdom. Without a clear successor and transition plan for your business, the same thing could happen in modern times, between your employees, family, and others. To prevent this, you need to develop succession and transition plans to transfer the business either to an heir in the event of your death (or retirement) or to another, should you sell the company.

The plan will fail if you are still the sole product being marketed, but if you are able to put people in charge of separate ideas and product lines and have them running them independently of you, then you can create plans that include exiting any product or service that requires you to operate them. You don't necessarily have to exit any of those before you are ready, after all, your central products may be the reason your business is successful in its current form, but you need the plans to be able to execute that exit strategy immediately if necessary and still pivot the business.

Once you have the plan in place, telegraph it transparently to everyone that you need to. Indicate when it will be executed and under what circumstances, and then walk everyone through your intent.

Be prepared to change. If your heir apparent doesn't want the role, or if the acquiring business wants you to stay on board as a consultant for a while, or for whatever the reason, circumstances may change. You need to maintain some of that flexibility that likely made your business a success to be able to transition effectively.

Conclusion

While you may be the center of your business's spokes currently, your business isn't completely about you. Others, whether customers, your family, or employees, depend on your business to operate, even if you have decided to move on. As such, you should develop a plan for a "post-you" company. The owner-as-brand-name companies that survive don't operate as single-person businesses. They diversify their offerings beyond those that require the founder at every single event. And they create and communicate a transition plan that shows how they can exit parts of the business (those requiring the owner) swiftly and painlessly while continuing to turn a profit.

Like this article? You might want to plug "Create Transition Plan" into my FREE downloadable planning guide for 2017. It's a simple spreadsheet with step-by-step instructions on how to break your goals down into achievable bite sized pieces this year. I'd love to hear how it is working for you. Download it today!

The Problem With Affiliate Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 13:00:00 +0000

Affiliate marketing can be a useful tool for getting some recognition and spreading the word about your products. After all, it allows you to connect directly with a substantially broader audience via someone that they already may have a trusted relationship with. By leveraging the power of the network of others, you can get your products or services in front of many more people that you might can help. Sounds like a no-lose situation, right?

The problem I have with affiliate marketing is what I call the "shared circles" problem. Instead of reaching new markets, you end up beating people over the head with products and services that they don't want, or even if they were interested, won't buy after being blasted. Affiliate marketing works best when it feels like a personal recommendation and it doesn't feel like you are being marketed to. Yet with the shared circles problem you might as well be running television commercials. Let me explain how this problem comes about.

We'll take a single individual. Let's call her Julie.

Julie gets exposed somehow to a really sweet offer from James via his Twitter feed around a topic that Julie has been searching. She goes to James' site, downloads his materials, and gets added to his mailing list. All good so far, and Julie really starts to enjoy content from James on a regular basis.

Now James has a blogger friend who is really trying to build up a mailing list so she can start selling her online course. We'll call her Amanda. So Amanda asks James if he can do some affiliate marketing for her via his mailing list. Maybe she pays James for the privelege, maybe there's an affiliate kickback, whatever. Either way, Julie gets an email from James promoting Amanda. Julie trusts James' opinion and decides to check Amanda's stuff out. In the process, she ends up on Amanda's mailing list and starts getting emails from Amanda.

Hey, the affiliate marketing worked exactly as it is supposed to! Amanda was able to leverage the trust that James had from his mailing list to expand her own reach and get Julie interested in her content and potentially products. It's all great. That is, until Amanda and James are talking with their friend Michael, who decides to try the same tactic. Only this time, Michael uses both Amanda and James as his affiliates. Since Amanda has marketed her own list subscriptions through James, there is significant overlap in their lists. This isn't particularly a bad problem, since those people are willing to sign up, right? But it does mean that a large portion of their lists, including Julie, got two emails recommending Michael, not just one. Still, our heroine here (and potential customer), Julie, actually likes what Michael has to offer and downloads three different offers from him. Unfortunately, the way Michael's customer segmentation works, he has multiple mailing lists tailored to different topics and doesn't merge them, so Julie gets added to all three of his lists.

Beginning to see the problem? Just wait. In comes Brian. Michael, Amanda, and James all praise and preach the success of their affiliate marketing efforts. In fact, Amanda might even start teaching a class showing how well it works and how she utilized it to build a massive email list and generate huge sales! Brian is sold. He creates a product, and utilizes all three affiliates to market it.

This time, however, Julie receives five emails promoting the same product from James, Amanda, and Michael. She even gets one from a different list she signed up for (since Brian is ambitious and really shooting for the moon, he went in search of a bunch of related topical lists). Not only does she get those five emails, but she's getting entire launch sequences of emails (build interest, set a timer, open cart, close cart, etc.) from all of the different sources. Oh, and one more thing. Brian sent "swipe copy" to the affiliates, so occasionally, Julie is getting the same email asking her to trust their recommendation from multiple people.

In the end, Julie starts to feel like she has been spammed and starts hitting unsubscribe links like it is going out of style. She ends up dropping off of James and Amanda's lists. Eventually she leaves Michael as well once this happens another time or two.

So how can you prevent that?

Honestly, you can't totally avoid it. If you are using affiliate marketing at all, there is a good chance you will have some duplicates on the list. However, there are a few ways to make it feel less of a beating for the recipient.

Don't Send Your Whole Launch Sequence Through Affiliates- it might be tempting to keep that launch sequence going through the affiliates, but as demonstrated above, this can overwhelm and flood your potential customers with spam. Save the good sequence emails for those that expressed interest to you directly.
Don't Use Affiliates of Affiliates - Ask your affiliates who they use to do their own affiliate marketing, and then feel free to contact them, but don't use multiples from the same circles. Pick whoever has the biggest list and go from there.
Ask for Sample Emails - I'm not sure many would go for this as it's pretty common to keep email lists private. I don't and won't ever share email addresses of anyone that signs up on my site. However, it doesn't hurt to ask. If they say no, respect that (and your potential future customer's privacy as well).
Keep Your Affiliate Marketing Infrequent - Save affiliate marketing for the big launch. Set a frequency that makes sense (once every year or two) and stick with it. You might get a little greedy and feel tempted to use it with every launch, but that becomes an email nightmare for the recipients. I know of at least one marketer that does a launch every four or five months, and for a while, I was getting launch sequence emails for every one of them through four affiliates of his (I have since unsubscribed to most). Make the marketing count, and count in the right way. Space it out.

After all this, you may still annoy some potential clients and miss out on some sales. But as Amanda, James, and Michael above will tell you (if they existed), affiliate marketing can be an effective way to get the word out. Just do it with caution.

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Make Your 2017 Goals Happen With This Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 13:00:00 +0000

So, here we are, one full week into 2017. Got those resolutions and goals accomplished yet? If you're like me, you have scratched the surface of a few, but the majority still need a lot of work. So I thought I would share how I am breaking down my projects and goals for the year to try to keep them on track and make them happen.

Making Projects

First off, I like to think of these goals more along the lines of projects. Projects to me have a discrete start and end date, an objective that I can measure, and I can break it down into steps along the way. That breaking it down (and breaking it down again) is the best way I've got to keep myself on track, and to also tell where I am slacking or falling behind due to overzealous planning. For example, this week I know I am already behind a little writing on my big project for the year.

I created a project template (if you want a blank one you can get it for free here) and started plugging in my projects across the top in the rough sequence that I want to get them done. There are some ongoing ones that will likely last the whole year (blogging, etc.), and then some with dates I would like to hit (we will see how overly ambitious I may have been).

On the next row, I plugged in target launch dates across the projects, trying to be as realistic as possible, knowing what other home and work obligations that I have and also trying to space out those launch dates so I was not overlapping too many things at once.

Goal plan broken down into projects with launch dates targeted (probably too ambitious, I can already tell)

So, once I have those launch dates penciled in across the top, I've then gone through and started marking those dates in an orange cell down through the year. This lets me visually see where and how I am hoping to get things done.

Breaking Down The Work

From there, I started working backwards, putting in a smaller broken down goal or two a week that if I accomplish, will position me to hit my launch date. Then it's easy, right? Just check everything off, and all your goals magically happen. Of course not.

Once all the individual week goals are plugged in, I can see across everything I am trying to do and decide how ridiculously aggressive I am being. If I have more than three or four non-home, non-work tasks to try to accomplish in a week, chances are I will fall behind (something I am already seeing one week in). Which, actually, is fine because I can then adjust the plan accordingly using my newfound knowledge of what my capacity really is instead of what my underestimating planning side thought it would be.

Weekly tasks are great, but even those likely have two or three different steps for some of them, and the spreadsheet doesn't provide the level of granularity I am looking for all the time to get the satisfaction of saying "Done Done Done" when I complete small things (All I do is win win win). So next, I break those down. You could use another spreadsheet, a paper to-do list, or your favorite productivity app. Personally, I like using Trello. It works similar to a Kanban board (if you don't know what that is, you can look it up), which fits with the concept of treating my project backlog like an IT scrum team.

Here's my early 2017 Trello board

As I get those items completed, I move them across to my "Done" column (you can name your columns whatever you like in Trello - I like Done and Done), This lets me track it on a more granular level.

Finally, when all of the "sub-items" for a weekly task are completed, I head back to my spreadsheet and mark those grey (or strike through the text, or both, whatever makes me feel more accomplished). Then, starting this week, I am looking at whether my lack of accomplishing a weekly task puts my entire project at risk, or if I think I can make it up, and adjust the plan (the plan is being adjusted, I can tell you).

Summary

For me, accomplishing big goals generally comes as a result of breaking down the work into smaller, more bite-sized pieces. And the satisfaction of checking those items off of my to do list keeps the motivation flowing as I chug along towards the bigger effort. It's a positive reinforcement scheme, I think, both to trick my brain into not thinking the big goal is so huge that I will never get there and also to give me the small satisfaction of ticking things off the list. That little feeling of accomplishment goes a long way towards hitting the next one. But tracking the goals physically in a list or workplan also lets me see progress and understand where I was overly ambitious with my planning. I fully expect that through the year, I will realize that I thought I was going to do more in a given week than circumstances allow, and will have to adjust. You should expect that too. It's not failure, it's just life. And life throws obstacles at you that might delay your goals, but only give them that - a delay. Don't let it knock you so off track that accomplishment is off the table. Because it's not, if you just make whatever adjustment you need and get back on the plan.

Good luck, and hope my template helps you out. Let me know via Twitter if there's anything you need help with on it, and I'll see what I can do.

2016 Year in Review

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 13:00:00 +0000

First off, Happy New Year!

I don't know about you, but to me, 2016 did not just fly by like some previous years. It seemed to drag on and on and on. I've heard similar sentiment from others, and I can't put my finger on it. Perhaps it was the prolonged political season, perhaps just the series of events, perhaps because it was my first year in quite a while to not be a dog owner. Either way, it was a year, and now it is over.

We lost a lot of pop culture icons this year, too, from David Bowie and Prince to Leonard Cohen and George Michael to, most recently, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. Their loss will have a lasting impact on our culture at large, but the bodies of work they left behind leave a far larger mark.

So how did I do in 2016 versus 2015? Here's some thoughts from a year in review.

Kept Blogging

At times I thought I might stop, but I managed to keep up the blog now, entering into its third year. There were some posts that were less than great, but others that I really enjoyed writing and I hope that you enjoyed reading. If you are interested, my most popular post of the year was How to Make Long Range Plans the Easy Way which got more than double the normal number of readership I generally see.

Increased Facebook Engagement

I don't have a ton of folks that keep in touch on my Facebook page (just over 70), but if you are a Facebook type of person, you can jump over there and Like it for me. That will keep my posts in your news feed so you can stay updated.

Blew Up Twitter

I went from 1864 Twitter followers last year to 3321. This year I want to top 5000 and start working on more engagement with them. If you don't follow me on Twitter, you should. I post more than just articles, sharing thoughts on beer and football as well. I got over 13.9K tweet impressions in December, a little down from last year, but then again, I'm writing this just a little before the end of the year, so there's still time to catch up.

Started a Book

The company I work for went through quite a bit of change and transformation this year, which became a natural topic for me to write a book about. I'm currently a couple of chapters in, but it is fully outlined and fleshed out.

Wrote Some Stuff

I only wrote 34 blog posts in 2016, down a bit as I went to a "generally once a week" formula and trailing off towards the end of the year. But I also wrote over 5000 words to start the book, generated a white paper on a digital transformation case study, and created a Twitter marketing analysis guide and another workbook that I hope to make available to you guys soon, if you are interested.

Did Some Speaking

I did not line up the huge paid stadium speaking tour that I would have loved, but I did do some corporate speaking to well over 600 people this year, and lined up a speaking gig in January talking about IT Transformation, which ties in with the book I am working on. Should be fun.

I have plans for 2017. Not sure if it will be better or worse than 2016 (let's hope better and then work to make it so where we can). Here are some things that I hope to get done this year.

Give the site a facelift. I know it won't change much, but I have a site redesign that tweaks the look a little bit.
Get some of my analysis out to you guys. I have two things I would love to give you, I just have to put the finishing touches on them. I would expect one comes out earlier in the year, and the other maybe towards the end.
Finish the book and start on the next. As it stands I am only about 7 or 8% done with the first draft, but I hope to finish this one and get cranking on the next one soon.
Look into creating a mini-course. I have an idea based on some of the different marketing tracking that I have been doing online, but it still requires actual course creation.

What are your goals for 2017? How do you plan to get there? Drop me a note on Twitter and we can start talking about your plans.

5 Things to Do This Week to Wrap Up Your Year

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 26 Dec 2016 13:00:00 +0000

If you have been giving any gifts the past couple of days, you might have thought you were done with the wrapping well before now, but it is time for one more present - this time for you. Let's wrap up your year by doing some little things the last week to prepare you for the turn of the calendar.

If you are working this week, chances are that there are fewer people in the office, giving you a little more breathing room and free time. If you are at home, you might want something to do in between standing in gift return lines that gives you a little something more back. Either way, find some time to do these five things this week and you will start the new year on a good foot.

1. Clear Out Email

If you are anything like me, your inbox is an overflowing mess most of the year, and when it has been left alone for a few days over the holidays, it grows to an unmitigated disaster. Clearing out that inbox can be a great way to digitally declutter and prep for 2017.

Mine will probably take a few hours of actually going through and replying to the things I need to reply to, actually reading the research emails I have saved and dropping them into an appropriately filed research folder, and deleting things that are just clutter.

The deleting can be totally cathartic. Whether using Inbox's trash can to just obliterate entire folders of email or going one-by-one in a rapid purge, now is the time to admit that I don't need those four recipes from 2014. I am not going to watch that saved webinar (it expired anyway). I can archive those bank statements sitting there in the Finance folder.

If you can't bring yourself to delete, archive. Drop your whole outlook file from 2016 into an archive .pst file. Hit Google's checkmark for the whole year. That email will stay there if you really need it, but most likely if you haven't dealt with it since March, you aren't going to.

And last, but not least, take time to unsubscribe from those newsletters that you never read. You know the ones. You signed up for them once because there was something interesting you wanted to download. You may have even read one or two of them before deciding to put them on your auto-delete list. Just unsubscribe now (hopefully not from mine, but if you must, I will miss you). You will save those extra three seconds of deleting over and over again in the new year.

2. Update Your Resume

Lots of people tend to start new jobs in January, and others may decide that it is the right time to start looking. Even if you are content with your current role, this last week of December is a great time to update your resume. That way, if and when you do decide to apply for a job, your resume will already be relatively current, minimizing the work you have to do on it then.

I like to keep a "current year" version of the resume, where I add in the most relevant new bullet points about my most recent accomplishments, meanwhile deleting out some of the less relevant items from older positions. This helps keep the resume at a readable length. You can leave all the details of every job out there on LinkedIn if you want to manage a full-length professional autobiography.

Updating that resume also gives you the benefit of putting some finality to reviewing your year and personal accomplishments. Once they are on paper, you can call them complete and start looking ahead to next year. You can also see the gaps on the resume and start deciding how to close those gaps when you get back to it in January.

3. Set Your Goals

This one seems like a no-brainer, but you should take some serious time this week (maybe longer than you spend on your email) to identify the four or five most important goals for the year. I generally try to identify goals in a few different categories (business, health, family, etc.) to balance it all out and keep from dropping all my goals in a single focus area.

Write the goals down. This helps to make them more concrete and committed, and gives you a handy reference to look back to and remind yourself of your objectives. It also provides a handy checklist to strike through the goals with glee and satisfaction when you complete them.

Once you have your goals, go one step farther. Write down the two or three key steps to accomplishing the goal. These mini-plans will break the larger items into manageable chunks that you can work with (and get checked off the list faster).

4. Declutter (for real)

Just like clearing out that inbox can give you a clean workspace in your email app, clearing off your physical desktop can give you room to think and work in the new year. I know the old "messy desk is a sign of genius" line (trust me, I justify my desk clutter that way all the time), but once a year, you might want to clean it up. You can mess it up again tomorrow, but this time with new projects and work.

You can also purge some of your old files as well. Get out some of the fire hazard file boxes from the attic and go through the IRS guidelines for document retention and toss or shred everything older than you actually need. Your file folders can breathe easier.

5. Relax

January will create a flurry of activity and all new frenzy around work and home, as you look to start the year off with a bang. You will be working to kick off all of those goals and New Year's resolutions. On top of that, though, your boss or customers will have their own sets of goals and resolutions to get started on, and you could quickly find yourself overwhelmed.

There's one week left in the year. Make sure to take a little time for yourself to relax and recharge before this frenzy begins.

Conclusion

The last week of the year can be a totally dead time for you or it can be an opportunity to position yourself for success in the upcoming year. With lower pressure and fewer obligations that most face this week, it is a unique time to jump ahead.

By decluttering (both physically and digitally), reflecting on the year past and planning for the year ahead, you can enter January with a roadmap to hit your goals. Finally, taking a little time for yourself to relax will make sure you are recharged and ready to go.

What is your favorite thing to do the last week of the year to get ready for the future? I'd love to start a conversation about it over on Twitter, so click here and let me know.

Reflecting

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 13:00:00 +0000

December always sparks a reflective spirit in me. I think it is probably a natural feeling, given the year is coming to a close and January represents all kinds of goal-setting and activity. Couple that with the fact that I generally have a good bit of downtime from work in December and my mind wanders into reflection when trying to keep occupied.

Reflection can certainly be a good thing, but it can also become obsessive if you spend too much time on it. So here are some thoughts if you find yourself spiraling into endless reflection. I try to tell myself these things to mixed results.

Timebox It

As Parkinson's Law notes, "work expands to fill the time available," likewise reflecting on the year's events could take a whole year to process, particularly if you are like me and think about the same pieces over and over again. Set a block of time around the activity and try to limit yourself to that box. If you find yourself daydreaming into the joys of last summer or why you didn't get your TPS report turned in on time that once, remind yourself that there is a time and place to be going through and processing the year. Once your time is up, wrap up the activity.

You can only learn so much looking backwards. You need to look forwards and sideways as well. So if you spend more than, say, four hours reviewing the previous year (and I mean your activities, not your accounting), you are probably in overkill land. Start with a one or two hour limit and go from there, but try to knock it out in one sitting. You don't want to leave some of the items unresolved to tempt you to daydream and work on (repeatedly) in between sessions.

Put an Objective On It

Why are you doing this? To improve yourself? Set a concrete goal for what you want to accomplish by reviewing the year and you can make it more productive. Maybe you want to generate an action plan to address a specific skill gap in the new year. Perhaps you want to sit down and benchmark progress against your goals and year-over-year improvement in various areas (this is what I will do in my year in review post coming soon). Whatever the reason, setting a specific reason for the activity helps focus on a goal instead of random reflection and wandering.

Future-Test It

Pro-tip: You are not going to relive last March 12. Or May 19, June 28, or October 1st either. So the only point of thinking of things that happened on those days is to improve yourself moving forward. Ask yourself, "will this help me be or do better next year?" and if not, move on to something else. Spending excessive time on history without a forward-looking approach to it will just frustrate you and waste time. Spin everything towards future goals as opposed to maintaining a backwards-focus and you can leverage those memories for your own benefit.

Forget About It

At some point, you're just wasting time. Stop what you're doing and start making future plans. Knock something off your to do list. Build something. Write something. Or go spend some quality time with your family. Whatever it is, doing things now are more important than reviewing the past for inordinate amounts of time. Enjoy yourself. Accomplish something. It is never too late to start on that.

Conclusion

Reflecting on your year (or even farther back) is fine and natural at this point of the year, but if you put a goal around it like any sort of productivity exercise, you can limit its ability to be destructive or counterproductive. I hope you have a happy holiday season and I'll catch you soon for the year in review.

Start Something

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 13:00:00 +0000

In the face of adversity, some quit. After all, when insurmountable odds or even defeat crushes your hopes and dreams, how can you continue on? I've seen several lately who have thrown up their hands, whether as a result of the election, career change, or other seemingly huge concerns with dwindling options. But I have also seen another side of people lately. That which says fight in the face of adversity. Bet against huge odds. Climb the impossible wall. The only way to make that happen? Start something.

Start Something Already

November always inspires me to kick off new projects. Partially, it's due to the fact that I used to participate pretty regularly in NaNoWriMo, a 30 day challenge to write a 50,000 word novel that various aspiring writers crank through every year. The exercise inspires many to start (and finish) short novels in an impressive amount of time, proving the power of a deadline and that all many need is a reason to start something. Partially, the close of the year imparts a sense of urgency, like a ticking clock counting down to the end of the year and the self-reckoning over what goals were achieved or not this past year.

As you sit with just under fifty days remaining in the year, what new projects do you have that you can start? Show some initiative and create something. What have you been putting off all year? Take some time (but not too much - it's running out) and figure out what you can still get kicked off this year. Don't worry about whether or not it will finish this year, but try to project when you can finish it so that you can start setting a deadline for yourself. Then go get started on it. Today.

Finish Something, Too

Got something that you have been dragging along for way too long this year? Finish it. Started twelve projects and you currently list them all as "in progress?" Pick one and knock it out. Starting new things can be exciting and energize you as you move towards the new year, but come January 1, chances are you will be making lists of accomplishments (if you don't, you should) that you finished in the previous year. You have enough time. Go and add one more to the accomplishment column. Maybe two.

I talked to several individuals at work over the summer and challenged them with this: Add one item to your resume every month. Just a bullet under the current job description, but one with a story behind it. You've still got a month and a half left, so go and get yourself two more resume bullets, or items off the ever-growing to do list, or whatever you think you can complete. Just do it. Twice.

I've heard the expression (which I will likely butcher) along the lines of, "Ideas are free, execution is expensive." It's important in showing that an idea, without execution, remains just a thought, a concept, a freeform floating mass of nothing. Likewise, you might find execution, without completion, to be worthless. One step further, execution without completion is actually negative effort, waste in pursuit of no end, as working on the idea expends potentially tremendous energy, and without completion, it sees no results.

Most Of All, Help Someone

While you might find it wonderful to complete some projects or start new ones, none of that really matters as much in the grand scheme of the world as helping someone else to complete their goals. The greatest gift you can give someone else is your willingness to help them solve a problem that they are working on, or complete their unfinished project, or teach them something that they want to learn from you.

In your last fifty days of the year, try to find at least three people that you can help. It might be monetary help or legitimate emergency help (like a roadside assistance), or it can be listening to someone and teaching them something in return.

Sometimes we think that we know all of the answers, but that is impossible. We don't know all of the questions yet. However, those older and wiser than us might have thought of a few. Spend some time with people with more life experience than you and see what questions they are asking. Help them find the answers or use a portion of your life to chase those answers down. And come back to share the results.

Helping others benefits them, for sure, but it is the strongest way for you to make an impact on the world. Go and change it for the better. You'll learn something in the process.

Conclusion

In the end, you have forty-seven days left in the year. That is still over ten percent and enough that you shouldn't waste them. Find a new project to start. Complete a project that has dragged on for too long. Help someone else complete their project. Whatever you do, make something happen and make a difference. Then commit for next year and do it all over again. You can make the world a better place every day if you try.

You Can't Sell a Product

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 24 Oct 2016 12:00:00 +0000

You have developed the best product in the world. You can't believe your own brilliance at its invention. And yet, you can't sell it. In your opinion, it is the most brilliant invention this century. So why can you not start shipping warehouses full of it right away?

You may have the best product ever, but you will never sell a product. Instead, you have to sell a solution to a problem. The greatest solution in the world has no market if no one has the problem it solves. So how do you match your wonderful product with the right problem?

It Starts Before You Do

Before you even have a product, you need to start understanding your market. Ask questions. Get to know your audience before you spend time developing a product. Why waste six months developing something that nobody wants? Start in with your research early. Look at things similar to what you want to make and understand the gaps and limitations that your new product can fill. Then ask people whether or not they actually need you to fill those gaps.

Amazon (and its reviews) can be a great starting point for your research. You can discover a wide world of products and whether or not similar competition to yours exists, as well as how well it performs. The reviews provide insight into potential customer challenges and desires that you can look to address with your product or service.

Don't Overbuild

Another problem that can plague product developers is overbuilding the product, spending too much time developing the product, often to create excess feature functionality that nobody actually needs. Here we can steal a process from agile software development - the concept of a "minimum viable product." The idea is to define the least possible functionality required to create the marketable product.

For sure, some of your feature ideas may be wonderful, but they can't delay the release of the product. Instead of spending excessive time developing additional features, focus initially on getting out a good product that solves a customer problem, and make sure that it has a market. Then, you can work through your backlog of features, making sure that each of the features has a market, much in the same way that you discovered the need for your product - research and interrogation. Thus, you can avoid wasting time developing unnecessary features and create only what your customers want.

Never Finish, But Get to Done

No product ever reaches perfection. Once you have launched your minimum product, you likely will have many more features to add to continue to build it out for your customers. This phase is important and can solidify the product greatly, as you have actual users and customers of the product that can provide you the most valuable feedback in terms of enhancements and needs. But the enhancement cycle can become an endless loop.

To prevent this infinite chase for perfection, set a concrete goal that means you are "done." Maybe you want to sell a certain number of items or hit a specific number of customers. Maybe you need to limit the total time you spend on a single product. Whatever the test, create and write down some outer bound on product development for a given initiative. Once you reach it, force yourself to move along. Work on something else and get that to done as soon as you can. Certainly, you can keep enhancing the previous product, but you need to move your focus towards creation rather than enhancement.

Conclusion

Instead of developing products, you evolve them. They start by identifying an actual need that exists in the marketplace and matching your product to fill that need and close gaps. Then, you need to determine the minimum product you need to be able to get sales started and begin to receive feedback from your customers. From there, you have the ability to enhance and modify the product to move forward, though you should define your criteria for being done and prepare to move on towards your next product. Lather, rinse, repeat and build a portfolio.

Pokemon Go's Lessons for Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 12:00:00 +0000

You probably know someone that plays Pokemon Go. Over the summer, the game became somewhat of a pop phenomenon, and it has been downloaded over 100 million times according to Engadget. The game hit the market as many pundits had begun predicting the "death of the app." This summer's biggest hit game proved them wrong, though. The app isn't dead.

In addition to the implications on mobile app developers and digital strategy in general, the app has some interesting messages for marketers and digital marketers as well. Through an ever-growing combination of tactics and techniques, Niantic (the company that makes Pokemon Go) has guaranteed themselves a good connection with the audience for some time.

Free Hooks

Pokemon Go costs nothing to download. You can go get your phone right now and download it for free. I've talked before about using freebies to lure in your customers (Scott Sigler does it), but in this instance, there aren't required upgrades. You can actually download the game for free and play the full-featured version.

If you are developing a marketing strategy for your business, you might not be able to give away the entire product. But you might be able to look at what you could give away to hook potential customers before you ask them for their money. Niantic has proven that model out among others, and it is worth investigating how that might apply across various business models with a variety of products.

Existing Fans

Pokemon did not magically appear this summer. In fact, the franchise was created back in 1995. So over the past 21 years, it has developed quite a varied following, finding some adults in 2016 nostalgic for the cartoon they watched as kids and kids in 2016 just as excited as ever. This large existing fan base provided a huge opportunity for the marketing of Pokemon Go, as every one of these individuals with a phone could potentially be a customer.

Businesses with existing bases of support often overlook those loyalists in favor of obtaining new customers, but with the right pitch, you can capitalize on the faithfulness of your true followers and sell to them again and again. The opportunity has to be new and different enough that it provides a new value to them and does not ask for more money for the same product they have already purchased, but repeat sales can catalyze huge growth in your business.

Co-Promotion Opportunities

Pokemon Go's placement of "Pokestops," or places where players can recharge and collect game items, created lots of location-specific tie-ins between the real world and the game. This sparked businesses with the good fortune of being selected as a virtual game destination to capitalize and offer specials for players of the game, as well as host special events centered around the game. This marketing formed a win-win between the local business and the game itself, as more people were encouraged to play and check it out.

As you look to launch new products or even market your existing products, consider how you might be able to create cooperative opportunities with other businesses to cross-promote products in a genuine and mutually beneficial way. Are there products that complement yours? Could you tie discounts together with others when purchased as a set? Figure out how you can take advantage of another business's client base and share truly good offers with your own, and you can expand the reach of any of your marketing efforts.

The Right Price Point

Pokemon Go is free. But in the game, players can get some items faster by buying them in bulk instead of visiting hundreds of Pokestops. The game makes it easy (and inexpensive) to purchase a small increment of game coins, starting at $0.99 and ranging up to $99.99. While some might want to continue to play the game for free, most would look at a few dollars as a relatively low investment to enhance the game. The low price point allows those same players to make the low dollar purchases time and again, creating an ongoing revenue stream for the product as opposed to a one-time buy.

This strategy can be used to set price points on a variety of other products, particularly if there is a way to generate smaller, repeat purchases as opposed to a single large buy. This can generate a more constant revenue stream with better longevity than a few instant-hit purchases. In addition to just price, setting up products either in graduating packages or in smaller pieces allows lower commitment to entry, gaining new customers, as well as repeat business to create that ongoing stream of revenue.

The Magic of Exclusivity

Pokemon Go's premise, if you don't know, is to allow players to collect various Pokemon (little monster creatures) and then use them to battle other players. Anyone can download the game and catch various Pokemon, but the game creators limited some creatures to certain geographical areas. In addition, they made certain creatures appear less frequently than others. The result? Players who have rare Pokemon get a feeling of exclusivity, like they are part of an elite club. Others want to join that club, so the only answer to them is to keep playing.

The lesson for other businesses? Create a VIP element to your product or service. Create the ability for your customers to get to some elite status through repeat purchases or continued contacts throughout your sales funnel. Everyone should be able to attain VIP status, but it should require substantial commitment to your business in some way (think airline mileage programs).

The Importance of Fun

Finally, Pokemon Go is fun. Fun for adults. Fun for kids. Fun for just about anyone in between. And deceptively simple. Niantic did a great job of capturing the spirit of the franchise and create a fun game that people want to be a part of.

In your business, look for the enjoyment in what you do. Create a fun environment for your employees, coworkers, and especially customers. When you enjoy work, others will notice.

Conclusion

Through a combination of tactics, Pokemon Go spent the summer becoming a viral worldwide phenomenon. Your marketing efforts can borrow or steal elements of their success, whether combining low price points on distributed products, creating elite status for your customers, leveraging an embedded fan base, or seeking cooperative partnerships to cross-market products.

The biggest key of all? Don't rely on a single marketing method. One size does not fit all when it comes to marketing. Creative combinations of various methods create a stickier product and better environment for creating ongoing revenue streams.

Keeping Focus

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 12:00:00 +0000

The last few weeks have been full of a good bit of activity for me. I've started planning a site redesign which will make the pages here more responsive, especially on mobile and tablets (though that might be a 2017 thing). I've outlined a book that I will start writing shortly. I collaborated on a case study paper that hopefully will be out soon. I sketched out topic ideas for the blog for the next month. I took a certification class to get some new initials to drop on the LinkedIn profile.

You know what I didn't do? Post much to the blog.

I could say that all of these other activities got in the way. I could say I was not inspired or didn't have time. But the truth is, I was able to watch several old episodes of Arrested Development and Key & Peele (thanks, Hulu, Netflix, etc.) and catch the premiere of Westworld on HBONow. So there evidently was some time in there. At least three hours.

And, like I said, I have three or four topics picked out already, so the whole "inspiration" thing really isn't an excuse either.

The truth? Lack of focus and prioritization.

Writing a decent blog post can take a couple of hours. A not-as-good blog post can take thirty minutes. Both of those could have fit in the schedule. The reason they did not is simple. I did not focus and make that a priority. So what could I have done?

Determine What's Important

In order for something to be a priority for you, you have to actually believe that it is important. I've previously written about "voting with your feet" and how what you do actually shows what you think about the importance of competing interests. But how do you determine what is really important?

First you figure out what is the impact of not taking action and the cost of delay of that action. For me, not posting on the blog means that the content starts to get dated and the more I delay, the longer the gap comes between posts. I may shuffle it up at some point, but for now I had been trying to drop a post weekly. Delay of more than a week means that regularity falls down. Also, while I might be writing other things, the blog keeps me in a habit of writing, which keeps the juices flowing. Again, if I am cranking 1000 words a day on a book, I might be in that habit, but the blog can even help to break up that single topic focus and give me a little breather.

So to me, the blog posts are important.

What's important for you? What activities should you do that provide the most impact? And is there any sort of cost (real, opportunity, or otherwise) if you delay? I'm not going to say that urgency necessarily generates priority, but if the impact of the action is reduced by delay or the benefits start to disappear, you might look at that first.

Focus Only On That Action

Once your priority item has been determined, go do that. I decided this morning that I had to get this blog post done (and not miss another week), so in my first free minute, I sat down and started writing.

Do just that.

Once you have a free second (and again, you are showing what is really your priority by doing other things instead of creating a free second to do the "important" thing), do the task. Get it done. Eat the Frog and all of that (though if every important thing is a frog to be eaten, you might want to go back to prioritizing and make sure you enjoy some of the things you do with your life - or try my take on Eating the Hot Pepper).

I won't kid you. This is actually the hard part. You know why? Because you need self-discipline to actually get yourself up out of the chair and go do whatever it is you need to be doing. Action is hard. Passivity is easy.

Pretending that you are a victim of the circumstances ("Time got away from me" or "I just had so much on my plate I couldn't get anything done") just lets you hide your inaction. So stop whining and go do something about it.

Did you do it yet? I am OK if you pause reading right now and go actually do the thing. Then come back once you are done. I'll wait.

How about now? Are you done? Great. Now what's next on that list?

Set A Deadline

This works for thousands of folks every year for NaNoWriMo and other month-long challenges. The premise is simple. Set yourself a deadline and challenge yourself to make it. Deadlines are powerful.

Douglas Adams had a saying that I find humorous, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." It's funny, but not how you get things done.

That quote does illustrate one point, though, and that is to make those deadlines realistic. Will you write a novel in a day? Probably not. A month? Maybe. If you commit to it.

Make sure that you give yourself reasonable time to accomplish the task. Once upon a time, I tried writing daily blog posts. It was overkill and led to a ton of really thin and not-fully-baked ideas. Once a week ends up being enough time to come up with a good idea, write it, edit it, and get it out. Sometimes. In an event, it is a reasonable amount of time. Do the same with your deadlines.

Don't Defeat Yourself

The last thing I'll talk about here is this: don't kick yourself for being down. I missed a week's blog post. You know when? September 26. But once I missed it, it became just a little bit easier and less guilt-forming to miss that next post. Don't do that.

Don't use your inaction of the past to justify inaction of the future. We tend to create these internal monologues that start telling us that since nothing catastrophic happened by delaying just a little bit, then procrastinating a bit more won't hurt.

Inaction does not solve problems. Only action can solve your problems.

So don't let your little voice in your head trick you to believing that you can wait just a little longer because you have already waited. You will spend more time arguing with yourself over whether or not you should do something sometimes than you would actually completing the job. Tell the little procrastinating voice to shut up for a few minutes, then go do the task while it stays silent. Take away the topic of discussion.

Conclusion

Staying focused on your priorities requires effort. Nothing that you want to do really comes without work.

When we make a mistake or lose focus, all too often we can get sucked into this little inner discussion that justifies procrastinating just a little bit more. To succeed, you need to shut that down.

Set your priorities. Put a due date on it. Then go do it before you do anything else.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So there. I wrote a blog post. I probably should get started on next week's. What are you going to do right now?

The Myth of Being Busy

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 12:00:00 +0000

So I have been reading Drive by Daniel Pink over the past week (fair warning - the Amazon links are affiliate links if you buy it, it will add a few cents to my account). While the book focuses mostly on extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation and what really drives us, I stumbled across a passage talking about the way we work and it made me think about how we're really busy nowadays.

For years, when people asked, "How are you doing?" the stock answer "Fine" would come back as a high percentage response. Lately, though, people tend to answer "Busy" instead almost as often. Articles have examined whether or not this phenomenon is good or bad, with our collective thinking that being busy says something positive about a person.

But I started thinking, when you say you have been busy, it can definitely convey some extremely negative characteristics as well. So be careful who your audience is. They might just be busier than you. Or they might ascribe one of these less-than-flattering traits to your "busy" response.

Busy Means Inefficient

I knew a guy several years ago who was always "busy" and proud of it, but when pressed on all of the things that he was working on, I discovered he was just very inefficient. Tasks that would take his peers hours to complete would take him almost a full day, and a week's worth of work might occupy his time for close to two.

This all created a tremendous sense of being busy to him, but it really meant his supervisor had assigned him equal work to his peers, and he was just unable to complete it in an appropriate window of time.

Busy Means Disorganized

Running hand in hand with inefficiency, disorganization also causes someone to feel busy. Not having a system to keep track of the things that you need to do can make every little task seem overwhelming.

You can't keep work items in context with your total to do list or set priorities appropriately when you don't have them organized.

Disorganization also means that you don't know what to do with new requests, which can lead to the next perception.

Busy Means Overcommitted

You have an inability to say "no" to new requests, even though your plate is entirely full. That may be what you are conveying when you say you are busy. If you had great control and understanding of projects you have already pledged to complete and what level of effort you would spend on a new project, you could easily keep yourself from getting overcommitted.

Want to avoid this perception? Make sure you know how to say "no" when faced with a task that will overcommit your time. Then use that skill to avoid getting too busy.

Busy Means Lazy

You might be surprised, but your busyness could be perceived as laziness. If the person you are talking to feels like she is busier than you are, then your claim to be "busy" may give her the impression that you are lazy. Obviously, in her mind, if you are "busy" but you aren't as busy as she is, then you must be a slacker, complaining about your light workload.

Busy Means You Lie

Lack of communication could have your busy state perceived as a lie by others, meant to make yourself look more important. If you claim to be busy, but nobody ever sees what you are actually working on or completing, others may think you are lying about how much work you do.

In a world where some value being busy as a badge of honor and importance, claiming to be busy without any tangible proof looks like bragging, when you may or may not even have anything to brag about.

Conclusion

If you typically answer "How are you?" with "Busy," perhaps you should rethink that stock answer. If you really are not that busy, don't act like you are. If you are busy, though, perhaps you could think about the root cause of why you let yourself get so swamped.

Then again, you could always think about how you actually are doing and answer appropriately. Communicate instead of reacting automatically to others, and you might manage to build a layer of trust between you and your coworkers.

Your Business Is Not Your Baby

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Mon, 29 Aug 2016 12:00:00 +0000

I will start out here by telling you something that you need to hear. Your business (or product, or project, or work product) is not your baby. Nope, it's not. In fact, it's not a sentient being at all, because it's a business (or project or something like that). Shocking, eh?

When I phrase it that way, you probably think I am stating some obvious fact and being ridiculous. I am. But if as you read this, you start defending the position with statements like, "Well of course I would never mean that the business was a real baby," then you are exactly who needs to understand why this thing you work on isn't even a figurative baby.

You Made It, and You Still Are Making It

Sure, you make babies, too, but when it comes down to it, contribution of your genetic material is pretty much the "making" part on that end, and for the rest, the baby grows itself.

Your business, on the other hand, owes its entire existence to you. When you refer to your business as "your baby," you tell everyone that you are deeply connected to the inner workings of its growth. On the other hand, people who drop an idea for a business out there and let it organically grow without their heavy involvement don't refer to the business as their baby.

What if you treated your business really like a baby, though? You would let it grow on its own. You would guide it and reward it when it does the right things, scold it when it doesn't, and foster the types of behaviors that lead towards independence. You would allow it room to make mistakes.

In the past few years, the term "helicopter parent" has come about to describe parents that continue to involve themselves in their children's lives in areas where the child (or young adult in some cases) should be making independent decisions.

Similarly, small business owners and particularly passionate project leaders can have a difficult time separating their need for control from development of the teams into independent entities capable of making their own intelligent decisions.

You Can't Just Walk Away From It

Try leaving a baby on the sidewalk and walking away from it once you have decided it is not working out for you (OK, really don't try this, and if you were considering it, then I have more to worry about for you than just how you are running a business).

But seriously, you wouldn't leave a baby alone just based on how it affects you, because not only would that endanger the infant, but police and other would soon be after you, and you have an obligation and moral responsibility to the baby.

You don't have the same sort of obligation to your business. It is not a person who will starve if left unattended. It might cease to function, but you could start it back up again if you truly wanted.

Too often, business owners stay in a business longer than they need to because they feel some sort of obligation to the business. A need to see it through to the finish or to continue to chase success no matter how much the real performance trends away from it.

You don't have a responsibility to stay on the sinking ship. You may have obligations that require you to close up shop or shut down a project in the appropriate way, but you actually are a person (who needs to eat and all of that), and you need to make sure that this inanimate business does not drag you down with the undertow. In the overquoted and always accurate words of Kenny Rogers (he's an old country singer from probably before my time if I am being honest, but throwing this description in here for anyone younger than me who is scratching their head), "Know when to walk away, know when to run." OK, go listen to it on YouTube or something. I'll wait.

It's More About You Than The Baby

When you are a parent, you are obligated to the child. You should sacrifice for yourself in order to get the child what he or she needs.

Again, a business is not a baby.

When you spend too much time sacrificing yourself for a business (particularly one that underperforms), the business does not necessarily benefit. In fact, it's more likely you are just grappling with one thing: pride.

Sometimes pride as a business owner makes us deluded into thinking that we can't fail, or that if the business doesn't make us millions, that perhaps we, personally, are failures. Nonsense.

Some business revolve around a really crappy idea. Some businesses have no market for their product. Some businesses have bad luck with timing to market. Some businesses try to start in the wrong point of an economic cycle. Some businesses enter an overly saturated market.

Businesses fail for hundreds of reasons. The blame does not always fall squarely on the owner, founder, or manager. So stop thinking it is a personal reflection and move along. Do things that benefit the business, but don't kill yourself trying to make something from nothing.

Know When To Let Go

You want to take care of your baby? Raise her up, teach her well, and send her off to college.

You want to take care of your business? Build it up, instill great business practices, and sell that puppy to someone who will scale it well.

Look at your business as something that you grow and sell and repeat. Learn from your mistakes. Granted, this doesn't work for all business models, but if it can work for yours, try it. Sell your business and build something else.

Have you ever been to a farmer's market? The guy selling tomatoes out of the truck does not put great personal investment in each red juicy tomato. He may focus on quality, and he may have pride in his work, but he is not personally invested in a single tomato. You know why? Because the intent is to sell that tomato so he can go grow more tomatoes the next week or next season.

This step particularly applies to those individuals that are heavily invested in their products. Stop and realize, the more time you spend tweaking and perfecting that product, the less time you have to come up with something completely new that may yield ten or a hundred times the performance of the current product. Finish it, sell it, repeat.

Conclusion

People often get caught up taking care of their "baby" projects or businesses. In reality, babies and businesses don't have a ton of similarities. And business owners should take advantage of those differences when they can. Learn to leave a failing business alone. Realize your pride and not the needs of a baby tie you down.

And maximize the similarities as well. Grow and teach your business to operate independently. Let it scale beyond you. Learn to be pleased when the business no longer needs you. Smile as you sell it off and start the journey again.

Maybe instead of calling it "my baby." try calling it "my teenager." It might put everything in a bit of perspective.

Hooray! It's the First Day of School!

noreply@blogger.com (Cameron) — Tue, 23 Aug 2016 12:00:00 +0000

Do you remember the anticipation you had as a kid of the first day of school?

School started yesterday here in Texas, and parents the state over probably shouted for joy, either at the idea of getting the kids out of the house or (as is our case), settling back into a solid routine. Kids also exploded with excitement over what the new year would bring.

School to a kid always meant new opportunities, new clothes, new friends, new teachers, new things to learn, and a fresh slate to start the year. While I always lamented the end of summer, the adrenaline and freshness of a new experience usually won out.

We can learn a lot from how we felt as kids and look at the approach of Labor Day as an opportunity to reflect and refresh our outlook. It's a great annual reminder to take stock in where we are (like New Year's Day, birthdays, or other milestones).

New Opportunities

The new school year always offered new opportunities. What opportunities can you take for your business or career starting now? If you started your year now, looking forward to the next nine or ten months as the time to make an impact, what could you accomplish?

Take a few minutes today to think about what you could tackle this school year. Double your sales. Take the training class that you have been putting off. Crush that next project.

Challenge yourself to do something in the next sixty days that you have never done before. Remember when you learned something totally new in class? Doing new things keeps you moving and growing. Do something new. Then find something else you haven't done and go do that. Keep moving. Keep growing.

New Friends

When you walked in the first day of your new class, you most likely gravitated towards the few friends you already knew, but also looked around and found a few new faces that you could connect with. Sometimes, reaching out to the new kid in school could result in a lifelong friendship. One of my oldest friends was new to the school in fourth grade and we met in a reading group. A few decades later, we can still trade emails and reminisce.

As adults locked into our work environments, the opportunity for an entirely new crew of friends diminishes, but we still have several options for reaching out and building a network with new people. New employees, vendors, or customers all present opportunities to interact.

I love a quote I stumbled on a few weeks ago from Bill Nye (the science guy) - "Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't." Think about that for a minute. Every single human on the planet has a unique set of experiences and knowledge that contributes to who they are. What can you learn from them?

Engage people in conversation. See what you can learn. Respect their experiences. Sometimes it may be personal, sometimes academic. Whatever it is, connect. Truly connect with people.

Clean Slate

New school years also offer the ability to start over, in some respects. No matter how your prior year went, starting a new school year granted you a blank report card. The idea of starting fresh meant that your actions from the first day forward were the ones that would shape your future.

All too often as adults, we get caught up in our history. We relive our mistakes. We let our history with projects and people plague our interactions day to day. But what if we could start over?

Every day offers you the opportunity to start over, though. Just like a new school year, your actions from today forward shape the remainder of your future. Continuing to focus on the negatives of the past will only prevent your ability to move forward and move your business forward.

All of this amounts to little more than armchair psychology, but when you focus on the present day actions that can shape your future instead of worrying about how past events shaped your present, you can make a change. You can make a difference. You can wipe the slate clean.

Conclusion

It doesn't matter if it is the first day of school, the first day of June, or halfway through February. You can take any opportunity to reflect briefly and seize all of the opportunities you have to reboot your situation.

Look for opportunities to improve yourself, your career, and your business.

Meet new friends.

Take the opportunity to start fresh and focus on the future.

Whenever you decide to start your new year, take the opportunities that await you and jump on them. What are you going to do with your new year? Drop me a line and let me know.