Hardly a week goes by that I don’t field the “How do you find time to write so much?” question. Until earlier this week, I wasn’t comfortable answering that question or even quite sure how to answer it. It turns out the answer is simple: I make time to write, I don’t find it.

Making time to write

Writing has become the marketing cornerstone of my business interests. I never really set out or planned to be a content marketer, but that’s what I’ve become. With content creation as the key piece of marketing myself and the ventures I am involved in, making time to write is required, not optional. A content marketer not making time to write would be like a salesman not finding time to sell.

Creating content is a critical business task for content marketers. When you don’t feel like writing, just stop and ask yourself if you don’t like eating as well. While one day of not writing will not destroy your income stream, becoming lazy and skipping days frequently will certainly have an adverse effect on your bottom line.

Know when you write best

I’ve learned over the last several years that I write best first thing in the morning or just as the work day is winding down. That’s when I carve out time to write. Sure, there are times I have to write late at night or in the middle of the day, but that’s not ideal so I work to avoid it. By having two times a day that work for you, you can skip the first but if the second time slot is fast approaching you’d better choose to write before the day slips away.

Writing comes before…

You get to fill in the space after the ellipse because it will be different for you than me. I put writing before reading and watching TV. That does not mean I deprive myself of either of those pleasures, but they come after I’ve made time to write. I find time for relaxation and enjoyment in my life. I make time for critical tasks like writing.

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The obvious exception to the title above is if you’re in the space vehicle or model rocket business. When talking about businesses, products, ebooks and the like, what is frequently termed a “launch” is just the beginning of another frantic work cycle.

What launch really means in business terms

The moment in time we refer to as “launch” is actually when, for a week or a month, the frantic work begins to promote that the product is ready to go. You need to generate interest and revenue quickly to cover the costs of bringing the dream to life. So while you might be tempted to think of the launch as the completion of the project, it’s really just one stepping stone in the development of a business venture.

Somewhere in the middle of this frantic promotion cycle, you will realize that several things are broke and need fixing. You’ll also realize that some features you thought could wait are going to be needed to reach the sales goals you expected. Now you are managing sales and development aspects of the project all post-launch. It’s right about now that your project or business is not feeling very complete.

It’s never done

The heading above is the key point of this post. A business that produces a sustainable income stream for you will never really be done; not until the moment you choose to pull the plug and retire the product. So there are touchdowns; that moment when it’s all over. You’ve had your fun and hopefully made some money along the way, but now it’s time to shut the venture down. That’s done. That’s a finish line.

It’s more likely you are “launching” what will become an ongoing concern. Sure, go ahead and have a launch party and enjoy the moment of having achieved some level of commercially acceptable product. As the party winds down, however, realize that the real work has just begun. Perhaps it’s the realization that you need an affiliate marketing module to reach your sales goals. That’s what I’ve spent a fair amount of time figuring out over the last six months. If all goes well, and with a little luck, we’ll add that module to our ProofPass.com product line in the next couple of weeks.

It’s never really cheap or easy

If bringing products and services to market that provide sustainable revenues streams was cheap and easy, everyone would be doing it. Plan on multiple months of hard work and multiple thousands of dollars of investment before your product will be market ready. Then plan on years more of hard work and tens of thousands of dollars reinvested in your dream.

Once your project is in orbit it gets a bit easier, but even an orbiting space station needs maintenance and an occasional course correction to make sure it doesn’t crash back to earth. Smooth orbits and soft landings – that’s the goal.

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I thought about entitling this post “How to make more money,” but the reality is the techniques discussed here are about closing deals that may not have direct monetary implications. Sometimes closing a deal is as simple as setting out to meet and have coffee with an influential person in your chosen industry or profession. Other times, you might need to close a $10,000 sale to make your year. In either case, the same tools and techniques are utilized.

Clear your decks

While I was preparing The 2012 Plan, I came to the realization that I needed to devote more time to the growth of my business interests. I also realized that before I could do that, I needed to free up time by automating repetitive tasks and further empowering the various teams I am part of to act more frequently without my input.

If you allow yourself to get stuck managing people and engaging in repetitive tasks, you will end up making money like a babysitter. You will be paid by the hour; and that is rather limiting. Instead, as you free up blocks of time by automating and offloading work to teams, set aside the time saved for business growth.

The tools you’ll need

A top notch LinkedIn profile – If you think you can call on a prospective customer or client and they won’t Google you, then you can stop reading right now. Your LinkedIn profile does not need to be perfect, but it does need to be complete. Let’s start by making sure you have a picture. A solid LinkedIn presence will also help you search for and find the influencers and decision makers in companies you are pursuing.

A CRM that works for you – CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and it’s the cornerstone of closing more deals. I’ve opted for a fairly easy-to-use and simple solution, Highrise from 37signals. Find a CRM that matches the complexity of your deals, the size of your sales team and the number of customers you have. The ability to connect with your email marking system and social networks are nice features as well. Highrise links to LinkedIn and Twitter so before I pickup the phone to call a customer or prospect I can quickly take a look at their most recent status updates. Sometimes those updates give me a clue that today is not a good day to call. Other times, the update lets me know we have a solution to their problem.

Dedicated time – I block a minimum of four contiguous hours each week to engage in what I call “Highrise catchup time.” I check who I should be calling or emailing. I enter notes about important events that may have happened with clients that week. Four hours may not sound like a lot, but I generally make about 10 phone calls in that period of time.

A “sales force” bigger than just you – I’m one person, and can only manage so many customer relationships at one time. By adding an affiliate marketing option to our ProofPass.com site in February, I’ll allow a group of trusted consultants to also sell our products and profit from that sale. By having sales reps and raving fans, our voice is magnified in the space we work in.

The technique to follow

The tools above are just that tools. A CRM is only as good as the person utilizing the tool. The four hours you set aside is only as good as the use you make of the time. Your LinkedIn profile needs to be updated frequently. Your sales force needs care or people will grow bored of you and your company. Then they will sell the products of your competitors.

Do the follow up your CRM tells you is due when it’s due. Don’t let your four-hour time block be used for anything else. Sales followup is the lifeblood of future revenues for your company. Let social media be your friend. LinkedIn profiles and Twitter streams can tell you a great deal about the timing of you call.

How it wraps up

In short, use the tools. Automate as much of the process as you can with a CRM that fits your needs but never forget it’s about humans buying and selling to each other. It’s not about the products but the personalities.

The proof is in the pudding. I wrote this post because it was pointed out to me that I’ve got more sales call scheduled in the first three months of 2012 than in all of 2011. I went back to the basics I was taught 25 years ago and updated them with these new tools. If you want to close more deals, you need to spend more quality time seeking out those deals. I know, it sounds simple. But simple is almost always what trips us up.

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Earlier this month, I shared The 2012 Plan and one of the cornerstones of the plan is “Automate.” In that post, I siad: “A task worth doing manually is worth automating. If it’s not, then stop doing the task entirely.” It was with that thought in mind that I began to look at the servers on which we host our websites and those of our clients. I found some real opportunities to automate the support and maintenance of the servers and sites.

Sorting the hosting by bits and bytes

We’ve hosted several servers for awhile now with slicehost, a company acquired by Rackspace last year. We’ve always been happy with the quality of service coming out of slicehost. However, it’s just a bit of a self-service shop. Once you spin up your virtual server, it’s yours to manage and keep up to date. If you need a firewall, you’ll be installing it on your own while following their expert tutorials. Today, we have four virtual servers left with slicehost and soon, they will disappear into two Rackspace-managed cloud servers.

Rackspace-managed cloud automates hosting

While it’s not the least expensive hosting option you’ll find, the managed cloud (affilate link) automates almost every aspect of hosting your own virtual private server. Once you are a subscriber, almost every aspect of hosting can be handled with a phone call or entry of a ticket into their system. Instead of worrying about the details of hosting, you can focus your efforts on producing the best web-based applications and websites. That’s what our core business is at ColorMetrix.

In addition, by hosting with such a large and reliable company, support coverage is an honest to goodness 24/7/365 operation. With monitoring software in place, they will be investigating a site that is down before you even know it’s down. So while the hosting plans are on the expensive end, you won’t need to have techs on staff to manage your servers. It will feel like the solution is only a phone call or support ticket away. Response is always, quick, professional and thorough.

ZippyKid takes the headaches out of WordPress hosting

In Humanization of Social Media, I talked about the AAA+ customer service that ZippyKid.com provides. When I wrote that post, I was just getting started with them. Since then, I have taken three sites live on their network: this one, ColorMetrix and SheHe Media. For the ColorMetrix site, I took advantage of their full-service migration services. In less then one day, they moved the site from one of our servers to theirs.

It’s about fewer headaches. I don’t have to worry if the WordPress core installations are up to date. I don’t have to worry if the hosting is configured to minimize page load times on my WordPress site. If you have questions about plugins, they will gladly answer them. You also get access to a few premium plugins, such as Gravity Forms, for no additional charge.

Best of all, ZippyKid likes you guys too and has provided me with a coupon code good for a free 30-day trial of their service. Just enter JIMRAFFEL in the coupon code area when you sign up. (Yes, I’m a proud affiliate of ZippyKid and will be compensated if you continue on with them.)

Speaking of WordPress and deals …

I just found out that Genesis, the premium WordPress theme we utilize on SheHe Media, will be increasing the price of their Pro Pack All Themes Package on Tuesday, Jan. 31. Until Monday, you can still get all 44 StudioPress (affiliate link) child themes, plus every child theme they design in the future, for only $299.95. And until Monday, you can use discount code TEN to save 10% off a Pro Plus purchase.

Back to the hosting story

Hosting and managing servers is not really that easy and while we’ve got our servers pretty well-tuned, that is not what I should be doing in 2012. By moving websites and web applications to managed and specialized services like the Rackspace managed cloud and ZippyKid, I’ll be freeing up hours of time each month to focus on growing my business interests.

What can you automate?

I met her on Twitter. Okay, that’s not really fair since it’s Shelby’s line, but it’s the truth. If you’re looking for a top-shelf social media manager for your organization, start your search in the social media universe. I wasn’t looking for an expert. I was looking for a person who utilized social media the way I did – to communicate with people.

Social media is NOT social selling

When the time came to find a social media manager for ColorMetrix, the last thing I was looking for was someone who knew how to schedule broadcast tweets. If that had been what I’d wanted to do, I would have purchased ads in the few remaining print trade journals that still exist. What I was looking for was someone capable of holding conversations online with our customers and potential customers.

By conversations, I don’t mean answering questions about quality, price and delivery. I already know how to do that and most of the answers to those questions already exist on our website. No, I wanted someone who gave ColorMetrix a voice online. Sure, I had a strategy in mind; but I was looking for someone to blow holes in my strategy and thereby make it a better strategy.

We already know how to sell at ColorMetrix. What we needed help with was communicating, engaging and telling our story. That is the role of a social media manager.

Engage and tell the story

Anyone can schedule a tweet to promote products or new blog posts on your company blog. Not just anyone can track down a Twitter chat called #PrintChat and participate almost every Wednesday at 4 p.m. for a year straight. Not everyone can write a post about the 17 years she spent in the newspaper industry and spin it as a tale about the decline of color quality in that segment of the print industry.

Your social media manager will need to be on board with the company. I’m not in the camp that thinks your social media can be managed by an outside agency. Sure, Shelby is a 1099 contractor to ColorMetrix; but she does more than social media. She manages our trade show exhibits, our email marketing and even projects with some of our largest clients. She understands us and has her finger on the pulse of the company.

Clone yourself

If you’re the senior executive charged with finding a social media manager, look for someone like you. While Shelby and I don’t agree on everything (and have actually made a business out of that disagreement), we do see pretty much eye-to-eye on what a company’s social media presence should look like. You should be arguing the details – not the big picture – with your chosen individual. Also, you should be willing to trust them. I still see no value in our Facebook page, but Shelby insists it’s valuable. I’ll trust her until I have rock solid evidence to the contrary. Just as I trust my gut feelings, I need to be willing to trust hers as well.

That’s what it really comes down to: Trust your gut and then trust the gut feelings of the person you pick. You can’t do it all yourself and grow at the rate you want.

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Up until yesterday there was something I hated almost as much as going to the dentist: Completing my monthly expense reports. I disliked it so much that each year I’d start out keeping up and by December I’d be at least six months behind. Yesterday, all that changed when I discovered Expensify.

The search for Expensify

In January of 2011 when I found myself in exactly the same place as yesterday, I searched for an Android app that would do essentially what Expensify does. I tired out a few and couldn’t find one that had good user experience and a reasonable price. Yesterday on my iPhone 4S, I went to the App Store and searched for “Expense Reports.” The third or fourth entry down the page was Expensify, listing a price of free. I read some of the reviews and it looked darn promising. (Before you Android fans start screaming, yes there is an Android version as well but I can’t speak to its functionality.)

The Expensify iPhone app is an extension of the web-based service. So I started out on the website and liked what I saw. The site has good user experience and I confirmed that for an individual like me the service is virtually free. The only part of the service that costs money is their automated scanning of receipts from an image you capture with your iPhone or scanner. After the first 10 scans each month, the cost is 20 cents per scan.

The features that rock the most

Automated receipt scanning – Hands down, this is the best receipt scanning software I have ever used. Some of my receipts are 6 months old and have faded. On a few of them, I had written the tip amount but not totaled it on my copy. Expensify was able to read my chicken-scratch handwriting and even totaled the receipt correctly. Of the 25 or so receipts I scanned yesterday, only one did not scan completely. For that one, I just filled in the couple items it had trouble catching. With Expensify, when the clerk hands you a receipt, you can just scan it with the iPhone app and throw it away. There’s no more paper to lug back to the office.

Map-based mileage calculations – Keeping track of mileage can be a real headache. However, the Expensify web interface makes it easy. Just enter all the addresses you visited in one day and the app will calculate the distance for you. You even have the option of creating a map-based receipt to archive. If you already know the distance of a trip, you can enter the miles without having to go through the map interface. So far, my one negative on Expensify is that you can’t track mileage on the iPhone app. Hopefully, I just have not figured it out yet or it’s a feature that is coming.

The expense report – It’s a true work of art with a financial summary page, thumbnails of the receipts and high-resolution images of the receipts. I plan to store each report in the cloud and shred all the receipts. Should I ever face an audit I’ll simply email or print and send the reports requested to the IRS.

There is so much more

I’ve used the app for about 6 hours today and have just scratched the surface. For organizations and enterprises, there are many advanced features, such as integration with Freshbooks, QuickBooks and probably more. There is the ability to route a report for approval and then payment. Google apps integration is available for $5 per user submitting reports each month.

Here’s the features page so you can figure out for yourself if Expensify will help you organize your business and personal expenses.

Authors Note: I have no affiliate relationship with Expensify. I was not asked to review them. I wrote this based on my own personal experience.

I have a confession. This was not the blog post I had planned to publish today. That in itself is a good reason to blog. Yesterday morning’s events impacted me so much that I decided to capture the moment by writing about it and sharing it.

A quick blog story

Yesterday morning I woke up around 4 a.m. and couldn’t fall back asleep. Like many social media addicts, I grabbed my phone and took a look at my Twitter stream. In my mentions stream was a conversation that included Brandie McCallum. I know Brandie because she participates in #PrintChat every Wednesday on Twitter. We also periodically engage on Twitter in mostly fun conversations. The more I got to know Brandie the more I liked her and started to wonder what it is that she does for a living.

Brandie’s Twitter profile links to her Lttlewys blog. So there I was at 4 a.m. wide awake reading her blog on my iPhone. Brandie’s blog is similar to this one in that she mixes business and personal stories. On her “About” page she even admits to not being very good at separating business and personal. I suffer from the same thing. I like what I read, and while we may never do business together, I bet we’ll help each other’s businesses. I also learned that Brandie likes to connect people, which is another condition from which I suffer.

Your blog is you

Using the sub-headline above scared me for a minute because I don’t want it to be your permission slip for your blog to be a personal journal. It shouldn’t be if your goal is for your blog to represent you online. Your blog can and should be the center of your social media universe. Sure, I can get a glimpse of who you are in Twitter, but it’s by diving deep into your blog that I can learn how you approach the world, business issues and other human beings.

Somewhere in that 25 to 50 post range, it becomes difficult to fool us anymore. By then your blog will be a pretty clear reflection of who you are and, more importantly, who you are striving to become.

Keep it real. Keep writing.

Today’s post on the ColorMetrix blog was repurposed from a 2007 post that first appeared here. There is one significant difference: The re-purposed post on ColorMetrix has a picture accompanying it that Shelby Sapusek spent about 30 minutes staging. She’s damn creative in the visual arts and that image (which I’ve also included with this post) is powerful for the target audience. It was so powerful that I picked up the phone to call her about it before I even read the heavily edited post.

What makes an image powerful?

1. It relates to the post with which it’s published. In the case of Shelby’s image, the post on ColorMetrix.com is entitled “How to stop printing bad proofs” and right below that headline is a jar full of change with a sign stuck to it “$$$ Saved on Proofs!” As a reader, I can infer that not only will I learn how to stop making bad proofs, but I’ll save money doing it.
2. It speaks to the reader. Who among us hasn’t had a jar for spare change? There also is the surprise when you take that jar in and the little bits of change you’ve emptied into it each day add up to $50 or $100. This could tell the reader that what the article will present is not a quick fix solution, but it’s going to work over time.
3. When it matters, own the image. On your personal blog, creative commons images from Flickr and other sources are fine. On a company site, it is preferable to own the image. It’s worth 30 minutes of Shelby’s time to have our own image created specifically for this purpose. Sure, our competitors can “copy” the idea. What they can’t do is use the image without our permission, which we’d be fools to grant.
4. Google will like you more. There are plenty of articles, such as “Feeling Sandboxed? How You Can Get 53% More Searches with One Tweak,” that have been published to substantiate this premise. If you include a properly tagged image, it will improve your search results with Google. Lots of people use Google to search for images and will find your post by finding the images.
5. And here’s the granddaddy of them all … The image makes the reader/site visitor want to read the post. It’s one thing to get them to the site; it’s quite another to get them to actually read the post. A good headline  paired with a strong image will increase the likelihood your site visitor will turn into a reader.

So, there you have it: Five good reasons to spend some time including appropriate images with all your blog posts.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll publish a new post each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. With the startup of SheHe Media, Shelby and I will publish our weekly “She Said, He Said” posts to the blog on that site. I’m also committed to write one or two posts each month for the blog on my ColorMetrix company site as well.

Sign up for “She Said, He Said” posts

Before I go further explaining these changes, I realize many of you consume the content on this site via an RSS feed delivered to either your email inbox or an RSS reader. In order to make sure you don’t miss our “She Said, He Said” posts, I suggest you sign up for the SheHe Media RSS feed by clicking one of the links below. Please do it now before you forget.

SheHe Media RSS feed delivered by email.
SheHe Media RSS feed delivered to RSS Reader.

There are only so many writing hours in the day

Writing has become a passion for me, but at the end of the day I’m seldom directly paid to write. So to some extent, I need to limit the hours spent doing so. Also after some experimentation over the last three years, I find four or five quality posts a week is optimum for me.

Addition of guest posts

While there have been a few guest posts published here in the past, beginning today I’m going to actively seek them out. The posts will need to fit with the general themes I’ve stuck to for the last few years: business, social media, writing, WordPress and gadgets.

If you are interested in guest posting, please submit your post or idea on the contact form. We are looking for posts between 300 and 800 words. Your post will be edited by Shelby for content, grammar, etc. An author’s bio with a link back to your site or profile will need to be provided.

As a reader here, what type of guests posts would you like to see? Take a moment to let us know in the comments below.

And traffic may increase

In 2011 when I scaled back from publishing seven days a week to five, traffic ended up doubling over the course of the year. I’m hoping the combination of three quality posts from me and one or two guest posts a week will make this site increasingly useful to you over the next year.

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Lately, I’ve noticed people using words like “serial entrepreneur” or “solopreneur” to label and describe their personal brand. It’s not that I don’t like those words. I think both are quite catchy. My problem is that when I think about some of the folks using those words, I think that they’ve missed the mark and sold themselves short. What if we tried something like “Jim Raffel – Enterprise Me?”

The enterprise of one

Grabbing hold of the “Enterprise Me” label does not mean you are going it alone. You could still surround yourself with many smart folks you partner with on your various ventures and projects. You can build some highly functional teams that create amazing products and services whether you are involved or not. That work would have your fingerprints – and theirs – all over it.

“Enterprise Me” is about having your hand in many projects because you’ve come to realize what you are best at is getting things started and motivating the troops. You can connect those who need the ideas with those who can turn the ideas into reality.

“Enterprise Me” is not heading off to the cubical farm to do the same thing you did yesterday and the same thing you will quite likely do tomorrow.

Connecting the dots

It’s easy for you to look back at the ventures you’ve been involved in and see how you moved from one to another. There are connection points; be they people or business interests. The pieces of your enterprise puzzle fit together well and interrelate with each other.

That’s not to say that every once and a while you don’t get off track and end up with a venture in your portfolio that doesn’t quite fit. Fortunately, you know when to let those ventures go.

You’re not that different than a multi-national corporation

The significant difference between you and a large corporation is the size of your puzzle pieces. You also know that you are better at staying focused on your market niche and staying profitable.

Each of your ventures has to stand on its own two legs. There are no charity cases in the portfolio. Sure, there are startups and projects in the incubation phase; but that’s different. The ongoing ventures all turn a positive cash flow or get turned off. Yes, the enterprise supports charitable causes and endeavors to be socially responsible.

The key to “Enterprise Me”

The keys to a successful “Enterprise Me” are automation and building successful teams. Systemized and automated processes can easily be turned over to teams who can then manage and grow a venture with increasingly less involvement from you.

Are you an “Enterprise Me?”

• If so, how does that look for you?
• If not, does it sound like a life you’d like to live?

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