By the time you read this, I will have changed every online profile I can find from “businessman, writer, and public speaker” to “businessman and content creator.” This refined tagline is more descriptive of what I actually do and easier to say when someone asks what I do. It’s about understanding my current position and shifting that positioning so the world has a better idea what it is I do on a daily basis.

Position and positioning

Before I start throwing buzz words around, let’s settle on a couple of definitions. For our purposes, “position” is where we currently are. Think of it as reality. You may not like it, but you and your audience know and understand your position. It’s neither good nor bad at this point. It just is. “Positioning” on the other hand is the act of shifting your position from what it is to what you want it to be. So there is not such thing as a bad position; just bad positioning.

If you are going to make the effort to shift your position, it’s important to know where you are and where you want to be. For example, I love creating content of all kinds. That can be blog posts like this, videos, public presentations and even private, small group presentations for our customers. While that can all be called content creation, the terms writing and public speaking don’t encompass all I do. My position is content creator, yet I was telling the world I was a writer and public speaker. That means my positioning statement was inaccurate.

Align your position and purpose

Your purpose is what drives you. It’s what makes you want to get out of the bed in the morning and kick some ass on a daily basis. On a personal level, my drive is to stay self-employed for the rest of my life so I can be a disruptive innovator without having to justify myself to others. One level down from that purpose is my current business goal of promoting open color systems in which no one business or individual “owns” color. It’s a color democracy of sorts.

A lifelong purpose of disruptive innovation requires that I spend a great deal of time evangelizing change. That requires communication and communication requires content creation. Putting it all together, lifetime self-employment dictates that I be a decent businessman, and being an evangelizing disruptive innovator requires that I be a content creator.

Labels vs positioning statements

If you are like me, then you are not a big fan of labels. A personal tagline is a type or label, but it’s a necessary one. If you can’t tell people who you are and what you do, how on earth do you ever expect them to want to work with you?

What’s your current position and is your positioning statement properly reflective of that position?

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Telling people what they want to hear and what they already believe to be true will not inspire action. Promoting new thinking and ideas requires you to tell folks what they may not want to hear or even believe.

Selling a new concept

Think about the early days of social media. Ten or even 15 years ago, not very many people thought blogs and online chat (which is what Twitter really is) would change the way we communicate both personally and professionally. Sure Twitter, Facebook and WordPress are only tools; but they are tools that quite frankly changed the world.

Your product may not have as big a potential footprint as FaceBook or Twitter; but if it’s innovative and challenges the current paradigm you are going to face the same challenges these technology startups once faced. You need to explain to the potential audience for your good or service why they would want to change the way they currently do whatever it is your technology is going to give them a better way to do.

In the case of FaceBook, Twitter and WordPress, that meant showing that communication could have greater reach over the internet. Communication could be richer and multi-channel. For some, that could just be knowing that with an internet connection you’d never have to feel alone again. I’ve utilized social media tools to build support groups that have helped me change my life. That’s a powerful message you don’t achieve without getting folks to think outside the current box they are living in.

Disruptive Innovation

The changes social media have made to human communications are disruptive in nature. For example, phone calls have become less important and fax machines virtually unneeded. When you are part of the disruptive innovation process, you need to let people know change is coming. You also need to let them know that this change is for the better and will change their world in big and small ways.

I’m lucky to be in the middle of some disruptive innovation right now. We spent three days last week sharing a message that many may not have wanted to believe or hear quite yet. In every case however, they listened and responded positively. The message worked because we presented it along with a higher purpose. We were sharing a way to fix something in our industry that is broken.

Think about human communication. It’s still broken, but I feel social media makes it better. When used correctly we can create virtually instant conversations including hundreds or even thousands of people. We’ve democratized the dissemination of information. No longer do media outlets have a stranglehold on the distribution points of knowledge. Sure that means we have to do more vetting ourselves but I’m up for the task and I sure hope you are too.

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I just returned from the Successful Online Business Conference (SOBCon) and I have far too many takeaways to even try and share them all in one post. Instead, on the drive home today I searched for the most significant takeaway; the one that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Big Hairy Audacious Obstacles

Perhaps you are familiar with the term Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG). The folks who attend SOBCon have achieved and are striving for BHAGs. I was struck by the fact that most of the goals in the room are focused on a higher purpose. Sure most of us are there to figure out how to make more money, but that doesn’t mean the goal can’t be non-financial.

If you are striving for big goals, then you are going to run into big hairy audacious obstacles. Stories were told in the SOBCon room over the weekend that made the problems I have faced seem small. The specifics aren’t mine to share but I can assure some of the most successful people in that room had overcome very large obstacles.

Maybe it’s as simple as “if you aim high, you’d better be prepared to fall far.” This is a feeling I know and my story, unlike those of my SOBCon friends, is mine to share. So here’s what my big hairy audacious obstacles can look like.

The rut and losing my way

In the 26 years since I graduated from college, I have only collected a paycheck six of those years. I realize now that the goal I set at the age of 16 to be a millionaire by the time I was 30 was in fact the wrong goal. My personal BHAG has really been to stay self-employed forever. That’s it.

Simple as that sounds, I’ve had to shut the business down once and go back to collecting a paycheck. I’ve had to face, embrace and confront my own personal demons that threatened to destroy everything I’d built with the help of some pretty awesome people. I’ve faced near financial ruin multiple times and enjoyed a few really good financial runs.

About three and half years ago at what I now realize was a low point in my life, my father passed away. I was already on a downward course and that event pushed me to the brink of failure. The rut bottomed out in the summer of 2009 and, from that moment on, I’ve had my eye on never working for someone else again because with that freedom I can strive for goals that change the world.

Finding my way and recognizing the BHAG

It has been the obstacles in my life that have guided me to understand the goals I want to achieve. Now that I clearly understand not working for others is important to me, I’m reenergized and am treating ColorMetrix like a startup again. A few days at SOBCon have helped identified the BHAG for us and I’m excited to share this goal with the team.

So don’t ignore your problems. Embrace them and use them to help you understand what you really want to be doing and who you really want to be. The path to success lies in owning your own problems and working through them.

You are difficult to scale. A brand you create, on the other hand, is fairly easy to scale. Don’t get me wrong. It’s cool having a blog with my name on it, but you come here to read me, not guest posts. On the other hand, those who visit the ColorMetrix blog are looking for information about color, color verification and color process control. I don’t need to (and I don’t) write all the posts there.

The power of a non-personal brand

If you can make a living being you, then a personal brand will work. It will also work when you are looking for a job and have the time to spend building the brand of that person looking for a job. The problem with a personal brand is that once you are successful, it becomes difficult to continue to devote the time to the brand that got you where you are. Then what?

Scale up, of course. Oh wait, the personal brand is you. What are you going to do? Have someone tweet as you and post Facebook statuses as you? Well, golly that doesn’t seem like a personal brand anymore. I want to talk to you, not someone paid to tweet as you.

On the other hand, I look at what we’ve been able to do with the ColorMetrix brand over the last year. We brought in a professional to manage the Twitter account. She does not do it alone but she’s the primary person responsible. So the tweeting over at ColorMetrix happens even when I am busy running the company or driving sales.

A non-personal brand should be more than one person

When I look at some brands – both large and small – that have done a good job with social media, I find more than one person behind the avatar. That team may only be two or a dozen or more. As long as the team agrees on a voice and lets those engaging with them know that there are real humans behind that voice, it works much better.

The key is to be responsive. I think folks understand that I spend time on airplanes, in meetings and even sleeping sometimes. During those times, the expectation of a quick response to a tweet are low. Brands can have business hours, but during those hours the account should be monitored. To do that, you need more than one person and an understanding of who will be listening when.

While it’s cool to have your name in lights …

While it’s cool to have your name as the URL of your blog, maybe it’s not the right decision if you are just starting out. You can reserve that name if it’s available just in case you want it someday. For now, consider a name for your blog that is more indicative of what you write about. For example, I might have called mine CoffeeShopCEO.com (just tried to but it appears to be taken) if I had to do it over again.

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Finding an innovative problem solver

The trick to finding an innovative problem solving piece of technology is to watch trends in your chosen industry. For example, right now I’d love to be a salesperson for a company making high definition, low-energy flat panels displays of a size suited for mobile devices. In hindsight had I been paying attention, I could have told you who the players in that segment would be 10 years ago. They were investing research and development dollars in that technology and displaying it as leading edge (but not ready for sale) technology at industry events I attended a decade ago.

Another approach is to recognize a need your customers have that is not being filled by any available technology. This was the approach we took over at ColorMetrix about two years ago. One of our customers presented a problem that was holding back full implantation and roll out of a key strategic project they had been working on for a few years. We looked at the problem and said we’d love to take a stab at solving the problem. Eighteen months later, we did and we now have a piece of unique technology that is opening doors and landing appointments I need. It’s not only the new technology, but our existing products and services as well.

Build a unique value proposition

Lead the sales process with your new and innovative problem solving technology. Once the potential client realizes they can’t live without that technology, build an ecosystem around it with your existing products. You don’t have to reinvent all the wheels -  just the ones that are broken or missing from a complete solution to your customers’ problems.

In business there are two main activities: thinking and doing. There is a tendency to place too much value on doing and not enough value on thinking. People like doctors and lawyers, who first and foremost we perceive as thinkers, bill for their services by the hour or procedure. Most value exchange occurs based on the doing and not the thinking. So how do you value your thinking time?

What does thinking look like?

We know what doing looks like. You take your car in for service and the mechanic works on you car. You can peek back in the shop and see them doing things to your car. Thinking looks different.

Recently, I sat down and started the doing part of pulling together the bits and pieces for a marketing campaign we were about to launch. About an hour into the work, I paused because it felt like I was going in the wrong direction. I grabbed the piece of paper pictured with this post and over the next couple hours changed the entire May marketing campaign for ColorMetrix.

That’s right. It took two hours to do the thinking and pondering needed to fill that paper. It looked like me sitting in a coffee shop, sipping coffee, staring at the ceiling and about every 10 or 15 minutes jotting a note on the paper. (It was a Friday afternoon and the week had been long. That could account for the slowness of my thinking.) My point is that I’m never going to be directly compensated for those two hours.

The payoff of thinking time

The time you spend thinking could be spent doing tasks like answering emails, processing orders, calling customer and things of that nature. So how do you justify two hours spent mostly staring at the ceiling? The trick is to be honest with yourself and realize that thinking time is not screwing off time. Sure, your thinking time could be spent doing other tasks. But what are those other activities worth? When you figure out the answer to that question, that’s the opportunity cost of your thinking time. Whatever you’re thinking about should have a return on investment in excess of the value of those other tasks.

In my earlier example, that means my new campaign has to have more incremental value to ColorMetrix than those two hours of my thinking time is worth. Otherwise, I should have just gone with the original campaign idea and completed the tasks associated with it.

What’s your return on thinking?

If you are in any way connected to the digital scene, there is probably no better way to spend $20 than buying a WordCamp Milwaukee ticket. That $20 will get you two full days of learning and sharing WordPress-related knowledge. You’ll get that and a pretty cool after party Shelby and I are planning.

It’s a community experience

In January of 2011 while attending my first WordCamp out in Phoenix, I experienced firsthand the friendly sharing attitude of the WordPress/WordCamp community. Everyone came to learn; even those there to share their knowledge presenting or helping out at the knowledge bar. Since then I have attended three more WordCamps (Chicago, Detroit and back to Phoenix) so Milwaukee will make my fifth camp and it’s going to be the most special as it’s in my hometown.

Lots of different topics and reasons to come

There will be three tracks at WordCamp Milwaukee: user, developer and an unconference. The list of speakers is coming together as well and it’s an impressive one (present company excluded). The point is this conference is for everyone from the writer with little technical knowledge all the way to developers working on the next version of the WordPress core.

I’ve met journalists, developers and social media gurus at WordCamps. It’s a place where all the disciplines of the digital landscape come together to freely and openly share knowledge with one another.

And you can get a shirt!

If you sign up by May 1, you will be guaranteed to get a shirt that fits. If you’re local, there is really no reason to delay and if you’re not local, don’t worry. I hear we are working on some good hotel deals for you guys too.

I’m hoping to see lots of my WordCamp friends from Chicago and Detroit as the drive is not too bad for you guys. Oh and here’s a little teaser: The picture with this post was taken inside the Milwaukee Brewing Company, where our after party will be held Saturday night (June 2). That’s right. In Milwaukee, a town made famous by beer, our after party is being held in a brewery. It’s also a brewery that happens to be walking distance from the event venue.

If you read the title and thought you’d find information about how having weekly, monthly and annual sales goals keeps you pushing and working, that’s not this post. I’m talking about the sense of urgency you have to instill in your own team.

There are always three sides in a sale

I suspect you’re thinking there are not three sides to a sale and that there are two: a customer and a person or company selling the product or service. Stop and consider that the first person (or side) I have to convince of the value proposition I’m presenting is me. That’s side number one.

Then you have to work with the prospective customer to agree on a value proposition that works for both sides. Depending on what you are selling, this part can takes months or years. So while successful selling requires a constant sense of urgency, it must be tempered with patience and perseverance.

The last, and often times most difficult party to instill urgency in, is your own team. These are the players who have to deliver the agreed upon value proposition on time and on budget. Because the customer is energized and excited once the value proposition is agreed upon, your own team often ends up being put in the difficult position of staying fired up and feeling the same sense of urgency.

While it may not be perfect …

Here’s the crux of the issue: While the solution your team has built by deadline day might not be perfect, it’s certainly better than what the customer has. If for some reason it’s not, your business has deeper issues than we can solve in this post. While I respect the pursuit of perfection, I’ve also seen it close the doors of far too many businesses in my time.

“Good enough” can be an elusive term to define. I’ve come up with this simple definition for our own business.

1. We’ve consumed all the resources allocated to the project.
2. The promised due date is upon us.
3. The solution is functional and better than what the client now has.

It’s as simple as that. Put what you’ve created in the hands of the client and let them work with you to make it better. Who knows? They might even start asking for more features and functionality that increase the size of the ongoing value proposition.

Delivery matters

If you are not consistently delivering your projects on time, on budget and meeting specifications, then it’s time to reassess your team’s internal sense of urgency. There is not a private sector job or business I am aware of that stays in business long without constant and consistent productivity. Coast when you must to regain perspective, but make sure you don’t coast right past a promised deadline.

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It’s been about four weeks since I published a post here. I’m just going to spill why and hope it makes sense to you and that you can take a nugget or two away to use in your own life and business.

At the end of March, I was overwhelmed. I’d bitten off more than I could temporarily chew and revenue needed time to catch up with the ambitious marketing plans upon which I had embarked.

I frequently explain to people starting out in business that you won’t always make good business decisions, but you can’t stop making decisions.

I made a decision to do less. I took a critical and analytical look at where revenue was coming from (or could come from quickly) and that’s what I decided I would concentrate on for the next month. Everything else was on hold for awhile. Then, I wrote “Hiatus.” In the last two years, that’s the most difficult post I have ever written. I had committed to writing on this site each week. While I had already reduced that commitment from seven times each week to three, I still knew I’d be letting some folks down by not writing at all.

Cash flow matters, however, and I/we didn’t have enough of it. My blog generates very little direct revenue. My businesses ColorMetrix and SheHe Media are both much more reliable revenue streams.

That was then and this is now

Here I am, approaching a month later, and the strategy has paid off. Cash flow is improving, sales are catching up with marketing and projects are getting finished. On the surface, it all looks great.

But … I miss writing

Over the last three or so years, I’ve grown to love the writing I do. Sure, I’ve written a few posts for SheHe Media and ColorMetrix over the past month, but those are strictly business posts with specific focuses and I’m able to tackle a wider variety of topics and share more personal and professional insights on this blog.

A couple of weeks ago, I was out having drinks with friends and one of them – who I was talking to about this subject – grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me in the eye and said, “Jim, stop writing about EVO batteries and start writing about business topics! And while you are at it, be vulnerable. Let me know when you fail. I learn more from that.”

So … Yes, I made a mistake

While the whole marketing strategy over the last year was not flawed, the amount of financial capital I committed was too much. I took on debt to grow my businesses. After three years of running a very tight ship, I made a misstep.

Here’s the thing: I’ve been doing this long enough that I caught the misstep early enough to fix it. Soon we’ll have the debt repaid and we’ll be chugging along again. In the meantime, we’ll be keeping a close eye on our expenses.

And the writing …

JimRaffel.com will come last. ColorMetrix will come first. We’ve spent a very long time and a lot of money putting together an amazing stable of products and services. It’s time to use my content marketing skills to let the world know. I’ll be the main contributor on the ColorMetrix blog, and that started last week with “Measure Twice, Print Once.” I’ll write there at least once a week. Hopefully, Shelby will contribute a couple of times a month and maybe we can even get some guest contributors. I’m excited to write there again. I’d lost my mojo because I’d let our products become stale. They aren’t anymore. There’s a lot of storytelling to do and I’m going to be the one responsible for doing it.

Meanwhile, Shelby and I will continue to grow SheHe Media. We’ve got a unique chemistry that can’t be ignored. The clients we are helping are seeing results.

Focus …

Right before execution comes focus and right before that comes strategy. Build a strategy, define your focus and execute.

Most of all, get out there and have some fun. That’s my plan.

You might have noticed that I didn’t publish a post on this site last Friday or Monday of this week. There’s a good reason for that. At the moment my schedule is what can only be described as “over-booked,” and my content creation skills are required in other areas of my professional life.

Letting go of some things…

For awhile now, I’ve been a fan of Peter Drucker’s “Not to-do list.” That list requires you to plan for things you will stop doing.

I’m not going to stop writing, and I’m not going to shut down JimRaffel.com, but…

I am going to take a break from the weekly grind of creating three posts for this blog.

At the moment, I’m not sure if this hiatus will last a week, a month or some length of time in between. What I am sure of is that I will be back. And if this hiatus is like any in the past, the writing will improve from the time off.

Until then, you can find my weekly post on SheHeMedia.com and a couple of posts a month over at the ColorMetrix.com blog.

I’ll see you back here sometime in the next 30 days or so.

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