A young mother feeds her baby. In a short while, she will feed him again.

A gardener removes all the weeds from a flowerbed so that flowers have room to bloom. Next week, he will do it again.

It’s likely that you, like most others around the world, just returned from a job where you worked hard, thought well, and produced something of value. Tomorrow, you’ll do it again.

The point of this repetition is to satisfy urgent human needs, create beauty, and contribute something of value that others can consume. The never-ending tasks share a common characteristic: they are other-directed. They are about making life more livable for others. They are not designed to create pleasure for ourselves.

In the process of repeating our endless work, we sometimes feel used, depleted, and discouraged. We forget that our tasks meet vital needs for others around us. Perhaps if remember that our work serves others, we can see our tasks as our greatest contribution. What we sometimes consider drudgery is the very thing that helps us connect authentically with the world around us. It is that hard work that lets us encourage, equip, and feed others physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Moms are building the next generation. Gardeners are creating beauty that feeds our souls. Employees are teammates, builders, and creators of value.

Whatever your role, do it with all your heart. Then, get up tomorrow and do it again.

The post Why repetitive tasks are often important appeared first on Harvey's Blog.

Nearby, a man dressed in hip waders and a sweatshirt was fishing from the shore. I wandered over to where he stood and asked a few questions about our surroundings. I soon discovered that Mike is a veteran charter boat co-captain and avid fisherman who loves to teach. He readily shares the knowledge he has gained during a 30 year career on the waters off of Cape May with anyone who is interested.

My family joined us and participated in the conversation as Mike pointed out schools of fish swimming offshore, a pod of dolphins, and the Delaware shoreline. He hooked and landed a skate, and he turned that event into a biology lesson before he released the unharmed shark-relative back into the ocean. He rooted under water in the sand, found a sand flea and placed it in my enthralled son’s hand. In the course of just a few minutes, Mike thoroughly acquainted us with the beauty and mystery of our surroundings.

Mike mentioned his fishing charter service in passing, explaining what he offers in broad terms, but quickly returned to orienting us to our Cape May Point surroundings. His enthusiasm was genuine, and his interest in us, his work, and the local ecosystem was nearly boundless. He enriched us with his knowledge and single-handedly made our visit to the shore a spectacular success. We were so engrossed by his presentation that we forgot to take pictures, much to our disappointment when we later realized this oversight.

Enthusiasm is contagious

As Mike illustrates, enthusiasm pushes us to share, to empathize with others, and to help them see the world as we do. It helps us close the distance that separates us. In business, it prevents us from slipping into egocentrism and focusing solely on the “bottom line.” Wherever others see enthusiasm in us, it is magnetic. They wonder, “Why is this person so obviously alive?”  It is contagious. When we communicate it to others, they want to share it.

Because it is so uncommon, enthusiasm provides a platform to tell others why we are so passionate. In fact, enthusiasm demands explanation. In the case of our fisherman, he offered information and a nearly priceless experience of the Atlantic shore. As a result, I was curious about him, and this enabled him to explain a bit about what his business can do for those interested in a more immersive offshore fishing experience.

Mike’s enthusiasm is why I’m sharing this post with you, and it’s why I can offer an unsolicited endorsement of the fishing charter service he provides aboard the Cape Queen.

What are you enthused about? Are you sharing it?

The post How enthusiasm can hook new customers appeared first on Harvey's Blog.

Read on for some good reasons to help you keep going amid discouragement and financial setbacks:

1. Remember that this is an event, not the sum total of all of your experiences in business. Your business is not a failure. As Zig Ziglar is fond of saying, “Failure is an event, not a person.” Failure does not characterize your business either.
2. You may be able to prevent this from happening again. If the problem was caused by fraud, what can be done to screen customers more thoroughly? What additional security measures can you implement?
3. Your business is probably still healthy. Put this episode in perspective. Assuming that there is a monetary loss, divide that amount by your yearly or monthly sales to see how significant it is statistically. While it may feel disastrous and deeply hurtful, it may have no measurable impact on the health of your business.
4. You are in business for some really good reasons. Remember your mission. Most business owners are not solely working for financial rewards. Good businesses are driven by a compelling mission. What is it that your business does that makes customers happy and keeps them coming back?
5. Giving up may make you cynical. Keep trusting, and keep going. You may need new security measures, but business is all about people. It is personal. It is about building relationships and creating value. It leaves both the business and the customer enriched. That is worth a few losses along the way.

When you face such setbacks, how do you keep going? If you have advice for other small business owners, leave a comment at the bottom of this post.

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I can accept failure but I can’t accept not trying. — Michael Jordan

We want life to be perfect. And easy.

If we can’t have perfect, then we’ll settle for the path of least resistance. This path seems most inviting when we are discouraged, weary, spent.

There is an alternative to “easy.” It requires perseverance. And imperfection.

Find something to do that makes you feel alive — something that provides value to others.

Do that life-giving thing.

Ignore the critics.

Never give up.

The post No more waiting for perfect appeared first on Harvey's Blog.

1. Coffitivity plays coffee shop background noise to help kickstart your creativity. Personally, I think it works best when accompanied by a steaming cup of fresh coffee. I’m not sure if it’s the coffee or the noise that helps.
2. Rainy Mood helps you concentrate with the gentle sounds of rainfall and optional background music.
3. Simply Noise offers a selection of background noise: white noise, pink noise, and brown noise. It also offers Simply Rain, a site that allows you to configure the intensity and variability of your own rainstorm.

If you need help focusing, these services just might do the trick. Try them and let me know what you think.

Do you use these or other services to block out background noise and help you focus? If so, leave a comment and share your favorite.

The post Background noise for creativity appeared first on Harvey's Blog.

Sometimes employment requires relocation. Friends can drift apart. Places fall into disrepair.

Things change. But we don’t want to let them. We hold on. We try to prevent the world from spinning out of our control. Sometimes, we succeed in holding on. Other times, treasured things come to an end.

When we feel overwhelmed with change, it reminds us we are not in control. Perhaps the chaos provides an opportunity to look away from ourselves — a gentle nudge that points us towards God as our stability.

The post Abandoned places appeared first on Harvey's Blog.

Regardless of the season, it seems to me that “singing loud for all to hear” may be a an effective way to spread ideas of all kinds. It combines the authenticity of your natural voice with vulnerability in a way that demands acknowledgement and respect.

Authenticity

When engaging your whole person in song, it’s difficult to hide. Who you are is readily displayed for all to see. Some will reject you; some will accept you. If you believe in an idea, cause, or innovation, and you advocate for it passionately, you will not be able to hide. You will be authentic. Open to criticism. And open to connection.

Commitment

Singing loudly doesn’t require perfection. However, it does take a wholehearted commitment. Once you take a stand and open your mouth, you can’t take anything back. It’s all out there. Commit to your beliefs. Own your ideas. Share.

Vulnerability

Taking the stage to perform your art, or to speak publicly, is frightening. My instinct is to hide, to be anywhere else, and I’m not alone. Americans would rather do anything than speaking (and perhaps singing) publicly, except for encountering snakes. Effecting change, convincing others, forming honest relationships, these all require that we overcome our fears, open our mouths, make ourselves vulnerable, and speak.

Acknowledgement and respect

Everyone is afraid of something. The act of overcoming fear earns respect. This gives you a platform to share your message, to propose your change. When you set out to do something daring, there is no guarantee that you will succeed. If you are trying to change hearts and minds or create a successful product, you may not reach your goal this time. But the people who count will acknowledge your effort and give you the respect you deserve. You will have the experience to increase your chance of success next time.

For now, this blog is my attempt at “singing loud for all to hear” and encouraging others to do the same. What makes a business successful is money and market share. What makes a human successful is meaning and connection along with enough resources to make a life. It’s easy to focus exclusively on the money, but as Zig Ziglar says, this is inverting the order of things.

You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.

What we want is relationship with real people who care about us — people who create products and services based on our real needs, dreams, and passions. If you want to create something that will connect, it will require your unique song.

How are you “singing loud for all to hear?”

At the end of the movie Jovie, the reluctant singer, leads a revolution in Christmas Spirit by taking a stand and leading a crowd in song. If she could do it, so can you. You’re more powerful than a fictional store clerk aren’t you? Here’s a clip from the movie to inspire you:

You can also watch the video on YouTube.

Find your voice. Start singing.

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On Friday, I listened to a thought provoking Pat Flynn podcast about the Entrepreneurial Mindset, and I am reading Seth Godin’s book, The Icarus Deception. The book and the podcast share a similar theme: that creating worthwhile work requires vulnerability, openness, and human connection.

Adopting an open, generous attitude may require us to reconsider some of our long-standing assumptions. If we believe that business opportunities and good ideas are scarce, we will be reluctant to share our best ideas freely. However, if the best ideas are simply iterations on already proven concepts, they are abundant – not scarce. In that case, we should share our best ideas freely to gain something even more valuable: trusting and open relationships with likeminded professionals.

As Seth points out in his book, this generation is experiencing a growing dissatisfaction with material wealth. Corporations continually push towards standardization and efficiency, and the jobs they provide rarely provide an outlet for individual expression and creativity. We buy more things than we need, but an abundance of physical artifacts does not bring lasting satisfaction. As a result, many of those entering the workplace are seeking to find connections through meaningful work and relationships based on shared purpose.

Here is what I want you to consider: I think that the business of the future will be built on authentic human connections made by generosity, creativity, and shared ideas. Shared ideas bring us together. In his book, The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis says, “Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself…’” If you want to build a team that will create value, sharing your best ideas freely is well worth the cost of creating lasting connections. With a connected team and a shared vision, nothing will stop you from iterating on ideas, improving them, and testing them in the real world.

Do you find it easy to share your ideas? Do you agree that this might create trust and long-lasting relationships that could be of great value to your business?

The post Give away your best ideas… appeared first on Harvey's Blog.

Below, I’ve outlined everything most businesses need in order to create a professional Web site affordably, and to begin marketing on the Web. If you want to have a custom design, you will also need to plan to hire a designer and/or developer to do some work for you.

1. Register your domain name

I have used GoDaddy to register my domain names for the past eight years. Though I dislike their advertising tactics, I haven’t found a more user-friendly or affordable domain registrar (learn about domain registrars). I do not recommend them for Web site hosting, as I believe there are better solutions available. I also hear very good things about NameCheap’s domain registration service. Check out each site and choose the one that looks best to you.

• NameCheap – Get a .com domain for less than $11/year 
• GoDaddy – It’s a BIG Deal! $1.69* .COM from GoDaddy.com!

2.  Get a Web site online

WordPress

WordPress, the open source blogging platform, is available at no cost and with thousands of low-cost, high-quality themes that you can often customize with little or no technical skill. I recommend self-hosting WordPress rather than using the WordPress.com hosting service. This is because as your site grows, you will be able to customize your site more easily without bumping into the artificial constraints that WordPress.com imposes on users.

Setting up WordPress self-hosting shouldn’t take more than about a half-hour if you have done your research, and WordPress provides a handy Quick Start Guide to help you get started.

Self-hosting

If you choose to self-host your site, you will need to purchase a Web hosting account that is usually renewed yearly. I use RackSpace.com personally, but that is a bit more technical than necessary for someone getting started. Lately, I have been hearing great things about BlueHost. Blogger and author Michael Hyatt has created a screencast that will help you get started with WordPress on BlueHost.

Website as a service

While there are many other website-in-a-box companies in the market, two stand out based on their quality and reputation. These are Wix and Squarespace.

Both services offer hundreds of templates that let you create an “almost” custom website. However, Squarespace offers an e-commerce solution, a focus on search engine visibility, and what seems to be a more flexible templating engine. Wix boasts attractive templates using the latest technology to provide a mobile friendly site.

If you choose to use this sort of service, I personally prefer Squarespace because it focuses more on the e-commerce and seems to have more features that let you grow without moving to another platform. Take some time to evaluate those services, and choose the best fit for your business.

• Wix – Affordable mobile friendly websites
• Squarespace – Powerful business websites at a reasonable price
• BlueHost – Cheap, powerful hosting with personal service

Receiving and sending e-mail

I have been using Google Apps for about five years, and I would never want to use a different email hosting service. Google does an excellent job of filtering SPAM and delivering messages to others without getting lost in their SPAM folder. It is easy to use, and easy to set up. In fact, if you chose to host your own WordPress site on BlueHost, they make setting up Google Apps easy with an easy-to-understand guide.

3. Spread the word with e-mail marketing and social media

MailChimp allows visitors to your website to subscribe to your e-mail newsletter. With this low-cost service (there is a free level), you can choose from existing themes to style your messages, or you can design your own and upload it for use. MailChimp offers tools that help you optimize your content to avoid being seen as SPAM. It even offers an auto-responder service that lets you send a series of prewritten messages. Another advanced service that has been in use even longer than MailChimp is Aweber. I don’t personally use that service, but I have heard others recommend it many times.

• Google Apps – Send and recieve email with the most stable, SPAM free email service available.
• Aweber – Advanced e-mail marketing tools and resources
• MailChimp – Fun, easy-to-use, e-mail marketing tools for your business

In case you’ve missed out on all the social media action, here are some excellent books that will help you learn to use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest for your business. A recent book introduces social media for business in an easy to understand format.

• If you want a fairly advanced intro to online marketing, a favorite of mine is The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly
• What helpful online marketing books have you read? If you think any of them would help others, please leave suggestions in the comments below.

4. Track your website performance

Once you have a website, it is important that you keep track of how well it is doing to reach your customer. The most important way to track your website is to monitor your sales and customer contacts, but beyond those basic metrics you will need Web analytics. Fortunately, one of the best website analytics products, Google Analytics, is available for free. It is easy to integrate as well. If you choose to use a self-hosted WordPress site, there is a user-friendly, free plugin to integrate Google Analytics.

5. Secure your site (optional)

If you choose to collect personal information or sell products on your website, it is likely that you will need to enable encryption to protect that data from theft. This will require an SSL certificate. Buying one from the major providers (Thawte, Symantec, or GeoTrust) can be quite expensive, but SSL certificate resellers such as NameCheap can help you do so much more cheaply.

• GoDaddy – We’ve Got Your Site Protected! $5.99 SSL Sale!
• NameCheap – Secure your site for less than $10/year with their GeoTrust RapidSSL

Some of the links above are affiliate links. What this means is that I receive a small commission if you follow one of my links and buy a product through that link. If you found this article helpful, please use the links provided to support me. Thanks!

If you’ve read this far, you probably have something valuable to contribute to the conversation. Are there products I should have recommended? Are there categories of tools/products that I should have included? Let me know what you think. Please leave a comment.

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False scarcity

Gimmicks like false scarcity are hangers-on from a bygone era. Most people will see through them. This is especially true when you are selling a digital product. Computers are always on, copies are effortlessly produced, and digital bits are never depleted. How could a digital product ever truthfully be scarce?

Scarcity is not always a gimmick. Physical products are sometimes scarce. If your products actually are running low, feel free to point this out. It is doing your customers a service. Those who procrastinate may have a longer wait as more products are procured.

Limited time offers

Artificial limited time offers might work with a couch potato watching late-night QVC, but they won’t budge customers on a typical website. Your online visitors are likely to be proactive and in control of their experience. They will abandon your business as soon as they sense anything duplicitous.

You may object that sale prices sometimes work well, but if you put things on sale too often it establishes the expectation of a discount. Instead, why not price things fairly and focus on the value your products create? If you expect your visitors to become customers and friends, treat them with respect. Give them the truth. Ask them to decide.

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