Those of you that subscribe to the newsletter, will be wondering where the hell I’ve been…then again maybe you won’t

Those of you that follow the blog, perhaps thought I’d run off to a nice desert island somewhere...must admit the thought of that is quite appealing!

Well, obligations and new projects have kept me hopping from one thing to the next for the past few months, and I honestly don’t see that letting up anytime soon.

I’ve been beating myself up for not being able to do all the things that I think I should be doing, and feeling like I’m letting myself and others down on a few other fronts.

Truth is, I can’t fricken do everything.

Who am kidding, trying to squeeze into Wonder Womans costume? it’s just wrong on sooo many levels. Besides which I fancy myself as more of the Lara Croft tomb raider type (yeah I know I’m dreamin’ again).

What I’m trying to get at here, and its something that I know a lot of other people suffer from too, is that we berate ourselves constantly when we feel we’re not living up to our ridiculously high, self imposed standards of what we think we should be achieving.

We would never place the expectations on others that we place on ourselves. We are all human.

Its okay to pull back and reassess. It’s okay to change directions. Its okay to say NO.  Hell it should be mandatory especially if its putting you under strain.

Promises of course have to be fulfilled. Outside of that you are answerable only to yourself.
I really believe most of the time it’s ourselves that are the biggest problem we have to overcome?

So does this mean I’m about to run off to the aforementioned desert island? or should you?

Yes, Maybe, No of course not.

You have to assess what you need to let go off to focus on the things that you should be doing.  Not trying to spread yourself thin trying to do everything…ring any bells?

I’d be an ‘A Grade’ hypocrite preaching this without following my own advice, so I’ve made a few decisions that I know are the best for me at this point in time.

After this post, I’ll be putting the blog on the backburner for a while.

I’m not taking it offline, but there are changes that need to be made and projects that will be incorporated to the current structure, so don’t expect to see any posts from me, while I focus on these things.   Oh yes, and comments will be turned off too.

It may seem counter intuitive to turn away from something that I have spent so much time building, but it is an absolute necessity for now and will only make for a better end product once the changes have been made.   Some of you will stick around to see what I’m up to, some of you will hit the road.  Either way do what works for you.

As a consequence the newsletter will also go into hiatus until I resurrect the blog in its new format.

I haven’t been spending a lot of time on social media of late, but I have been assessing how and what I want to do there.  So the next thing in the bag of tricks is that I’ll be deleting my facebook page for Respectfully Disobedient in the next week or so, and I’ll be running everything through my personal profile from now on, so if you’d like to connect with me be sure to add me as a friend.

Of course there’s a method in my madness, and it will all be revealed in good time.  In the meantime the superwomen outfit is being put into mothballs and I look forward to sharing more with you as it transpires.

All the best, and thank you for being part of the journey thus far

 
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This week for the final post of the year, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve enjoyed this year, and I hope you do too.

I’d like to take a moment to say thanks.    This year has been an interesting ride on a number of levels. The support of each and every one of you that reads, comments and shares my work I am truly grateful.  You encourage me, challenge me and drive me to be the best I can be.

I hope you enjoy this selection

I Love Books

I’ve just received a new shipment of books that will no doubt make an appearance on My Bookcase next year.  But here’s a trio that you might like to pick up for some holiday reading.

The $100 Startup – Chris Guillebeau

Power Stories – Valerie Khoo  

The Lean Startup – Eric Ries

Making Life Easier

We all need a few tools and resources to help us get the job done, or at least stay on top of things.

Here’s some Google Analytics Features you may not be aware of cause what we measure we can change right!

Wondering if that special email you sent has been received?  Did you know you can check to see if your gmail been opened

Dropbox is an awesome addition.  It makes me wonder how I ever functioned without it.  But add some automation to the mix, and it sends it to another level.

If you missed all the initial information overload on Pinterest, here’s a quick reference point to getting a grip on Pinterest

Smart, Inspiring, engaging, & Motivating

I have a lot of blogs that feed my reader, keeping me topped up with the best the Internet has to offer.    Some hold my interest consistently and some I just dip in and out of.

I have my favourites of course, like Marie, Danielle, Seth, Julien, and Derek, but when I look back over my reading this year, these four that follow have produced some of the most interesting, inspirational, motivating and engaging content I have read, watched or listened to.

You should check them out.

Mark Schaefer

Marks blog GROW, is a commentary on marketing and social media, here’s an post to whet your appetite  Six elements of human behavior that drive social media.  You can find him on twitter @markwschaefer

Lea Woodward

Lea’s expertise is in business advice and online tech.  You might like to read – How to build the business online that you really want to run.  Lea can also be found at  Location Independent  and  Startup Training School.  Catch her on Twitter @leawoodward

Srinivas Rao

Srini can be found at both the Skool of Life where the focus is on questioning and challenging conventional wisdom and as the title implies learning from the skool of life, & Blogcast FM  where he interviews a diverse mix of inspiring and successful people.  There’s something there for everyone.  Find him on Twitter @skooloflife & @blogcastFM

Jonathan Fields

Jonathan’s latest venture the Goodlife Project  is a weekly web show capturing conversations with entrepreneurs, thought leaders and artists.  One of the most engaging series of interviews I’ve watched in some time.  Catch him on Twitter too – @jonathanfields

TED

Now unless you’ve been hiding under a log somewhere, I would think you’re already hooked up with the TED feed.  There are so many good videos that I’ve watched this year, but this one stuck in my mind.  Enjoy Seth Godin with Stop Stealing Dreams

Wishes For You

Finally my one wish for you this coming year, is that you believe in yourself…in all that you have to offer the world.  Take it.  Own it.  Rock it.

If you feel like your failures seem to be stacked disproportionately to the successes, here’s a little pick me up for you because some of the greatest successes are born out of failures.

I wish you a very happy, safe and peaceful holiday season, and I look forward to being back with you again in 2013.

 
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So grab a cuppa, take a load off and enjoy.

January

We took a look at website design.  There’s a bucket load of information and opinion on what works and what doesn’t out there on the interwebz, so I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring and talk about what makes a good website.  This post is part one in a series that that you might like to explore further.

February

Now business is about the relationships you build with your customers and making the sale, so this one’s a fun little quiz that asks…How do you rate on the Customer Love test.

March

If I presented you with three envelopes of cash $10,000 $1000 or $100, you know which one you’d choose right?  Well this post is going to get you looking at whether Gratification is killing your business.

April

This was a bumper month with a lot going on, and with so much going on its easy to let things slide and make excuses.  Which can lead us to be pretty hard on ourselves.  In those moments its best to remember that You don’t suck but your excuses do.

May

Blogging, some days you’re just in with the flow, and others well the blank screen is only matched by the blank expression on your face.  If you feel like Blogging is sucking the life out of you, you may be following too many ‘rules’ imposed by others.

June

Making the sale comes down to one thing.  Providing the outcome the customer wants.  At the end of the day It’s the experience we crave.

July

How do you feel about comments on your blog, do they inspire you to do better, or could they be influencing the content you put out.  Are you a comment junkie.

August

Well I’m going to cheat a little here.  You see I took the whole month of August of, so I’m pinching a post from earlier in the year which I got a lot of personal email contact on.  It certainly resonated with a lot of people. Do you feel like a failure when you give in?

September

Fear.  It affects us all in different ways, and there are many variations.  How do you handle Fear, Love and the fifty shades of grey in between.

October

Traffic, Traffic, Traffic.  Really, is that the only answer?  I doubt it and I want to challenge you to look at some other options.  Ask yourself…Do you really need more traffic.

November

Hey if its not traffic that everyone is telling you, you need.  Then its content right?  Well take a look at What Goldilocks can teach you about content.

December

I suppose this one’s a little tricky as we’re only half way through the month, so you can either count my last post about Courage, Discipline and Fun, or I’ll throw in one from earlier in the year, which you might find interesting on JV’s and lessons learned.

So there you have it, my favorites from 2012.  I hope you enjoy them and share them with your friends.

See you next week for the final post of the year…..
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The idea behind this is to form a focus around how to base your decisions and their alignment with your longer term goals, so that you don’t drift off track.

My words for this year, as you can see were courage, discipline and fun.  (yes I know discipline is misspelled in the picture, blame it on the wine at the time)

All in all I tried to keep these words at the forefront of my mind when faced with choices, and yes I’ve drawn on courage and discipline heavily this year.  Fun probably could of got a bigger slice of the action, but overall the words seemed destined to be a good fit for the events of 2012.

As we’re coming close to the end of 2012, its time to start thinking about next years words, and what the focus will be on.

I wanted to share this with you to get you thinking about doing an exercise like this for yourself.  Pick your theme words for the year, just three of them, and stick them up big and bold so they are there as a constant reminder of the commitment you have made to yourself.  Oh yeah and try to get the spelling right

If you’d like to share you words, let me know in the comments below.  If not, that’s just fine and dandy too.  But maybe you’d like to share this idea with your friends, and give them a kick start into 2013 with some powerful focus.
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When you work for someone else, you turn up, do your work, and get paid..week in…week out.  Yes even when you’re not being productive (I don’t think youtube and facebook are part of most peoples job descriptions).

There is no measure of financial reward against productivity or output in most employees lives.

Self employment.  Ah now that’s a different kettle of fish.

We set our work calendar, define our hours.  Suddenly you realize that all those hours don’t equate to money.

A good deal of time is swallowed up on the small stuff that goes unrecognized.   Suddenly you’re 40 hour week has shrunk to 20, effectively halving your earnings capacity.

If you’re not earning what you would like, I suggest that you take a look at where your time is being eaten up to see if you can’t squeeze some more billable hours into your time schedule.

Here’s a shortlist of some areas that might be eating into your paid work time.

Administration

Poorly organized or piecemeal tasks may be causing you to spend more time in this area than needs be.  Systems will streamline your ability to get things done, as well as setting time aside to tackle admin requirements in a block, rather than doing tasks here and there.  You could also look at outsourcing your admin too.

Meetings

Are they necessary.  If they are can they be less frequent.  Or perhaps shorter more on focused on a particular task, rather than trying to solve world issues in a single sitting.

Could you meet virtually instead of traveling, can you combine meetings with individuals to making them more collective.  Can you be more selective with your meeting attendees, eliminate the ramblers if you will.

I mean, really… a lot of these “meetings” really turn out to be completely non productive time sucks.  Be well guarded of your time on the meeting front.

Client Acquisition

This too could fall under the meeting scenario.  Obviously time has to be allocated to this function of your business, without clients there’s no one to bill, right?    But take a look at how your are doing things in this area.  Are you minimizing the impact on your time, maybe by running your client meetings or calls in particular time blocks or are you “on call” which can be really disruptive to your productivity.

Do you have a system in place to lead the potential client efficiently through the process of becoming a client?  Can you replicate all elements so that you’re not having to reinvent the wheel each time you take on a new client.  Can you put in a filter process to take you out of the loop until a certain stage.

Teams

You may be fortunate enough to have built a team to support your business, in which case you should have more billable hours at your disposal.  That is, unless the team is now taking as much time out of your day as it was to complete the tasks you’ve given them.  I would hope not.  But it does happen.

Assess the time you’re spending on team functions, meetings, project management, training etc.  How can you streamline the time you spend on team management. Create evergreen trainings, work wiki’s, reference or swipe files for your team to fall back on rather than you.

These are just a few ideas to get you thinking about how to make your business lean, and efficient, and optimize those billable hours.  Hope you find them helpful.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it, and why not join the mailing list to get more great tips to your inbox.  Sign up below.
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