Image via Wikipedia

Perhaps counter-intuitively, I believe getting more done in the long run means taking breaks every once in a while. This is essential to preventing burnout and general insanity (or, worse, misery). The key to becoming successful is in working smarter, rather than harder, and part of working smarter requires mindfulness and awareness. These are limited resources and they will evaporate in time if you let them become exhausted. Thus, vacations provide an excellent time to be productive – by recharging your batteries.

However, taking a break does not always have to mean doing nothing.

Here are some things you can do to feel like you’ve done something.

• Stimulate yourself through media. For example, by reading a book that interests you or pushes you. I like to read trade magazines and memoirs, but it’s up to you. This is a direct contrast to what most Westerners do on the holidays – veg out in front of the tv, so it might be a challenge in and of itself just to find a book.
• Stimulate yourself through conversation. Holidays are meant to be a time spent with family and friends. In between presents, eating, and catching up, I encourage you to have a conversation that pushes you and your relatives. I don’t mean politics and religion, either. Simply asking how they stay organized can work wonders by giving you new ideas and insights for your own system.
• Go shopping with awareness. Try this exercise: go to the store (any store) and try to write down 10 ways you’re being targeted by the products you see. Sales, colors, and even smells… there are a million ways to target a consumer. How are you being made the bulls-eye?

This is by no means an exhaustive list, so I’d love to hear how you get things done over the holidays – whether that’s my method of pushing your own envelope and recovering, or through traditional methods, like working.

No related posts.

Image via Wikipedia

Jim Breyer, interviewed by Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch, is quoted as saying,

“It is the best time over the last decade that I can think of to be an entrepreneur. The collision of mobile and social platforms and the need to build these companies from the ground up—whether it’s a game, a healthcare application, an education application—building these from the ground up is what allows entrepreneurial activity to be unleashed. And it’s as good an opportunity from a time standpoint as I’ve ever seen.

The entrepreneurship he’s referring to, of course, has to do with the tech industry – apps, sites, services, and so on.

However, not all entrepreneurs work in the tech industry, nor do they want to. Thus, he is neglecting a large part of the demographic of “entrepreneurs,” meaning his statements aren’t entirely valid. Based on my experiences of small business work and looking into news on venture capital (even within the tech industry), I also beg to differ that this is a Golden Age of launching. Rather, I think the successes of businesses and larger companies is based on the mother of invention: necessity.

I think most companies are not thriving because they’re brilliant or advantaged – I think they just have to, or they’ll die just like the rest.

I’d like to hear your opinions on what he’s said – regardless of where and in what industry you work. Do you think this is a good time for start-ups? A bad time? Why?

No related posts.

Image via Wikipedia

I feel the need to be excruciatingly honest (or hopelessly pessimistic, depending on who you ask) with myself a lot. I check in with myself, with my family and friends, and with other people I respect to see how I’m doing from time to time. Okay, so it’s more compulsion than reason.

From time to time, we all get a little insecure and decide to check in with other people. We ask, “Would you buy my product?” “How could I improve my marketing?” And, of course, “Do you love me?”

Okay, so maybe that last one has a hint of undertoned craziness. It doesn’t make it any less pressing when you’re feeling insecure.

Insecurity and checking in are two human limitations that keep us from ever becoming our businesses. Your business doesn’t cry. It doesn’t feel hopeless or scared. It doesn’t feel anything. You do, though, and remembering and recognizing that make up the first step.

Fortunately, I have a lot of people in my life that can help me through basically everything that gets thrown at me. I have a wonderful supportive husband and parents, insightful and intuitive friends, and knowledgeable colleagues. I want to say thank you for all that they do, here.

In this time of Thanksgiving, I want all of you (even the non-Americans) to take a moment to think about your so-called Oh Shit Bar (You know – that bar in automobiles that you can latch onto to keep from bouncing around)… Who in your life do you turn to when you’re having issues? How do you stay sane? How do you keep your cool, so to speak, and get back to your happy place when the going gets rough?

No related posts.

Image by nep via Flickr

To sum up the entirety of this post concisely: if someone’s laughing, scared, or almost in tears, you’re doing your job. Of course, if you’re a kindergarten teacher, not all of these ring true. What I mean is: if you have become the butt of your competition’s jokes and your clients can’t sleep at night, then you’re a great creative. Why? Because you’re one step away from making your clients laugh and your competition cry.

Let me share a story: I have been posting ads on Craigslist (in addition to trolling writing job posts) every few days for the last few weeks in an effort to gain more visibility in Denver.

Recently, I crafted this little masterpiece:

I’m Michael. I’m no longer a business student, and have now turned belly dancer. I’m also a writer.

I don’t really come with a lot of perks, because I’m not a car or an executive position. But I like to write. I like to write almost as much as I like to think I’m good at it.

This advertisement should catch your eye because it’s short, sweet, and sounds fantastic when you translate it to Russian (I’m serious. Give it a try).

As for me… I’m a web developer, choreographer, teacher, muse, purveyor of shiny things, and possibly a Roman czar (though I can’t confirm that). You can get all the gory details on my sparsely-padded resume, when you email me. Now. Before the competition gets me.

It was a success for a couple days and got me a few emails (Though not nearly enough). And then, the unexpected. It was flagged for removal.

Someone out there thought my charm was obscene, irrelevant, or otherwise improper. I was hurt. Then I realized the truth.

My competition is scared.

Some writer out there decided I was intimidating enough to flag my advertisement for removal. I would be stealing business from them otherwise.

You can rest on the assumption that I am over the Moon happy about this. It means I’m not talking out of my ass and I can indeed be a writer, professionally.

If you’re a creative, or if you want to be successful, continue to push the boundaries on your business and your thinking. Challenge yourself daily. Evolve constantly. Defeat stagnation. Maybe soon your competition will be scared, too.

No related posts.

Image via Wikipedia

Or, You can bet your sweet ass you know what to write about

Because I do not write nearly enough, I have become rusty at coming up with topics. Indeed, though I have been venturing into blogging for a couple years now, I still have a lot of trouble pulling ideas out of my head. While the follow through is strong when I do have a topic, it’s not the writing itself that is at an impasse. This became remedied, recently, through a couple different variations of the same method. Some people apparently call it riffing. I prefer to call it the genius method. As in, “talent borrows; genius steals.”

That doesn’t mean I want you to go out and steal peoples’ content – or even their ideas. Rather, I want you to build off of content others have created – using theirs as a platform for yours. This isn’t necessarily stealing, but it is definitely appropriating, perhaps recklessly, toward your own goal.

What You’ll Need

1. StumbleUpon.

That’s it. No, really.

You can also opt to use a major search engine, or even a niche search engine, but StumbleUpon (and randomness) is my preferred method because it tends to look more organic

How You Do It

Click the Stumble button. Granted, you’ll need to set up your account to include your interests first, but you won’t have too much trouble doing that.

Now stumble until you find an article that piques your interest. It doesn’t have to be relevant to you or your message. It just has to be interesting.

Read the article. Find a piece of content that is somewhat relevant to what you do. For example, I found a segment about riffing that basically says it’s the foolproof end-all be-all of inspiration. It’s intriguing. It’s strange. It deserves a comment.

Or better yet, a post.

Appropriating appropriately

As bloggers, we are sometimes timid about using other peoples’ ideas for our own, while other times we throw caution to the wind and use content lackadaisically. Neither is right, nor is it a way to do justice to the journalist side of blogging.

When you decide to use others’ content to inspire your own, always pay attribution to those who you are taking from.

Also bear in mind that you need to do the original justice. Try not to misquote or use inaccuracies to further your point. Always link to the original source – not only so your audience can read the original, but also because the other person spent the time developing the idea, and thus should get the credit for it.

Related posts:

1. Nerds Debate: Is Article Marketing Still Relevant?

Image by .nele via Flickr

No such thing exists as the silver bullet to being successful. In personal finance, one becomes successful by making more money than is spent. In business, the principle is the same: make a positive return on your capital investment (preferably while paying your own bills), and you can be seen as successful – at least, in a financial sense.

But back to basics: there is no magic silver bullet that solves all your problems. Regardless of how much money it makes, your business can still be failing if you’re losing money on sales, or through overhead. Basic accounting: you have to make enough money to cover your expenses.

So how do you go about getting to that point, especially when you’re starting up?

It’s quite simple, really: self-discipline, and a bit of insight.

Insight, by the way, can be bred through a bit of time and thought.

Now, let’s say I’m starting a web development business, as I once did. What might be some necessities?

• A computer
• Some form of editing software

You might also think, “Business cards! Fliers! Direct mailing lists! Oh my!” As a matter of fact, if I were being really strict I could say I don’t need anything at all (other than clients and expertise!) and could just go produce websites on a computer at the library.

In start-up, very few things are necessary and drawing the line before purchasing unnecessary items and services is where success lies in the initial phases of business.

Next time you’re ordering business cards, buying a new cell line, or purchasing a piece of expensive software, take a moment to think of whether the expense is necessary. Most of the time, it won’t be. Sometimes, you will need it, in which case you still need to ask for the best deal (After all, paying full price is rarely necessary, right?).

No related posts.

Image via Wikipedia

Although some people are particularly gifted when it comes to sales and pitching a product, others are mystified by the process. As sales are important in business, I plan to cover sales quite often. I won’t claim to know everything about sales, or even that I’m good at it, but I do know one thing my managers and educators have taught me continuously: when it comes to selling, sell your product, not your price.

Imagine yourself as a consumer (which shouldn’t be too difficult, right?). You’re booking a room in a hotel for three nights in a town you’re not familiar with, and you’re looking for a good deal. In the process of shopping around, you found a mid-priced hotel in a good location, so you call them to offer your business and make the reservation.

In the first scenario, the front desk agent answers the phone, gets your situation, and then offers you a room for a slightly above average price.

In the second, the front desk agent answers the phone, gets your situation, and then asks, “If you’re interested in our standard rooms, they do still come with jacuzzi tubs, a mini-fridge, and access to the pool and fitness facilities. Our suites offer larger room space as well as a kitchenette,” and then quotes you a price for both – one is slightly above average, and the suite is about $30 extra per night.

Which hotel are you going to stay in?

Even people on a tight budget can appreciate amenities, and that is what hotels are selling: amenities. If one hotel offers a pool and the other doesn’t, if they’re the same price, it’s likely families (and some other travelers) are going to offer their business to the one with a pool. Granted, each situation and customer is different, but this is the trend.

In the meantime, when you start by selling your price and then move into negotiating based on amenities and features, you’re going to be rejected quite a bit. Why? Because arguing your price by justifying it after suggests that you think your product is not worth the price you have set. This opens the door to people questioning the value, and also instills a sense of mistrust.

(Another thing you may notice in a hotel situation is where they ask, “Would you like the standard room or the suite?” which shifts your line of thought from “Should I stay here?” to “Which room should I book?”)

So remember: start off selling your features, your amenities, your excellent customer service, or even your guarantee. Do not sell your price until you are ready to have them negotiate for a lower price. When they do ask for a lower price, sell your features again. Be willing to bend, but not to break.

No related posts.

Well, for right now.

This means any number of things from day to day, but mostly it means I have a hell of a time trying to find paying work, and that I have a challenge ahead of me for keeping business separate from family and home life.

Granted, it doesn’t mean I’m not successful with what I do, and how I do it. It just means it’s more of a struggle – or even more an active effort – than working at a regular job with a regular company.

In my time as a self-employed individual, I have learned a couple different things about decision making. I have also never dogged my way through the 9-to-5 lifestyle as a long-term employee, so I have a fairly pristine outlook on goings on when working from home.

What is decision making?

Decision making is exactly as it sounds – choosing between two or more alternatives and sticking with it. In decision making, we make our way through a number of different stages – research, evaluation, choosing, and monitoring – and along the way, we learn a lot about new things we never imagined having knowledge of and take major steps and, at times, risks.

Decision making as a manager is different from decision making as an owner. As a manager, you are spending someone else’s money, leading you to be prone to taking on more risk. As an owner, you are essentially making decisions for your child, meaning life-and-death choices are harder. Of course, very rarely is a decision life-or-death for a major corporation. Wal-Mart can open a failing store and operate it for years to come, and it will survive just fine, so long as other stores make up for its shortcomings.

As a small business, especially home-based, choices are often tougher. We cannot fail for an extended period of time in any area, or things are going to start to go south in our personal finances.

Additionally, small businesses are often in the market for investors and other forms of financial help. If a home-based business owner shows a history of poor choices, getting a credit card or loan in a time of hardship is bound to be more difficult.

Fiscal decisions

When it comes time to make a choice, money often plays a major role in business activities. Sometimes, the choice is between a bad option, such as a loss, or a good option, like a positive return. Other times, we are choosing between good money and better money, or a short-term boom as opposed to a long-term boom. Yet other times, we choose between two evils: an extreme loss of money, or a moderate loss of money.

Money, unfortunately, is going to be at the root of almost all business decisions. Regardless of how we personally feel (which is almost bound to be an emphasis on money anyways), we also have to take into consideration our stakeholders – any employees we have, our families, who rely on our income, and potential investors and creditors.

Ethical Decisions

Sometimes a decision isn’t strictly financial, or can even be completely non-financial. In almost every situation, we will have to come up with an answer to an often challenging ethical dilemma.

While ethics is a topic I plan to cover somewhat frequently and deeply over the years to come, I only want to get into a basic discussion right now. When it comes to ethics, you will need to keep your ethical viewpoint in mind, such as being an enlightened egoist, keep your utilitarian (or not) values in check, and go for a good that you will stand behind. It isn’t always going to be what other people think is right – indeed, we all have different views of ethics – but if you act ethically and in such a way that you view as right, people will respect that.

And now we come to the bottom of the barrel…

Personal decisions

In the meantime, you’re going to be making personal decisions for your own life and your family.

Sometimes, these decisions will involve your business. Often, they reflect on your personality, and come with a public reputation attachment as well.

In making personal choices, you will often influence those people around you who pay attention to you, or even look up to you, or are out to hurt you. Competitors, fans, friends, and visitors will all be looking at your history – including your personal decisions – to determine if they want to give you their business or if they can destroy you.

One key to remember: do not act in a way that betrays you. What I mean by this is that there are difficult decisions and there are easy decisions. Regardless of the level of difficulty, and regardless of what other people think about it, make decisions in a way that you agree with personally. As the owner of a business, you have many reputations to care about, and many stakeholders, such as employees and your family. This means they will try to influence you. If you do not act in a way that you agree with, you will be unable to defend that decision if anybody asks, and you will begin to resent yourself – to feel like you’ve “sold out.” Do not do this.

No related posts.

Image via Wikipedia

If you read pretty much any career/small business blog ever, or – god forbid – you’ve paid attention to this blog, you’ve probably been ranted to about the importance of networking.

As an example:

Promoting yourself

Another benefit of networking is the ability to promote yourself and get your name out there. Especially if you are new to a community or new to web design or development, networking allows you to link to other people in your profession, which can help you get more well-known in the field.

Unfortunately, that’s approximately where the detail ends. Usually the post then goes into the gritty details of how to actually go about networking (hand out business cards while spouting your elevator pitch and asking if they know anybody who needs your services…) because nobody actually knows how to do that naturally.

I’d like to meet the person who first came up with this process. So I can smack him. No, seriously.

Google for “how to network” (optionally with “like a boss” attached to the end of it) and you’re bound to get just shy of a Brazilian results for it. Each of those articles will say the same thing I just said. I promise. Go ahead – test me. I’ll wait.

What’s your point?

Some people know how to network naturally. Do you know what they do? They make friends. They talk to people. They establish relationships. They avoid presuming anything about their friends’ needs and desires and don’t spout off a sales pitch in the first 30 seconds of their new friendships.

You know what we call these people?

Successful.

Why?

Because they are.

How to Network like a Boss

If you truly want to network like a boss, then go to any one of the thousands of events in your industry.

Now find someone that you think seems interesting – a person you know from an advertisement, or a wallflower, or the center of attention.

Talk to her.

Just talk. Say, “Hey there, I’m Michael. How are you doing?”

Listen. Continue with small talk. Exchange business cards when it’s natural. Shake hands, and be on your way.

Email her a couple weeks later to say, “It was very nice to meet you. It’s too bad we didn’t have time to talk very much.” Ask how things are.

This is what networking really is. It is establishing a relationship.

Eventually, maybe she’ll need a service that you just so happen to provide, or maybe one of her colleagues will and she’ll ask if you know of anybody. Until then, don’t sell anything – especially yourself. Walk the fine line between being a friend and being a salesperson.

Why?

People don’t like to get sold to. That’s how it is. People don’t like to feel like they’re being pitched on something. They don’t like to have things shoved down their throats – whether that is religion or what you can do for them.

So make this a natural process. Return to the days when things were organic and flowed without force.

And I promise, you will be that much happier with your relationships.

And probably with your clientele, because you’ll know them before you work with them, which eliminates clients from hell, more or less.

…

Your wallet will also be happier, because more people will want to work with you. I know I would.

Introduce yourself.

No related posts.

Image by Scott Ingram Photography via Flickr

Things become overwhelming. I’m not being negative; I’m being honest. And what do you do when things become overwhelming? Besides cry, that is… You ask for help! And no, I don’t mean seeing a psychiatrist and asking for a healthy dose of Xanax (although, you could do that, too). Today I’m here to talk to you about outsourcing your work.

By outsourcing, I don’t mean off-shoring operations to India.

I mean hiring a marketing company to do your SWOT analysis. Or hiring a copywriter (did you know I’m one?) to help you in establishing a relationship with potential new clients. Or possibly having a personal assistant around to answer simple emails, fetch your coffee, and update your website with your newest products. Or even giving someone else administrative duties over your 401(k) plans.

There. Outsourcing doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?

We all outsource from time to time. If you’re not a website developer, you probably gave someone else the task of creating yours for you (or maybe you just used a point-and-click-to-make-a-design service, in which case… I have no words). If you’re not a writer, you probably had someone else write your copy for you – and unless you’re incredibly confident, someone else edited it.

Sometimes, things can get a little hairy when we’re running a business. You’re not just thinking about your product. You’re thinking about customer relations, public perception, marketing, advertising, design of your website, copy, sales, employee and human resource management, bookkeeping and accounting, benefits packages, revenues and profitability, accounts payable, accounts receivable, customer service, order fulfillment, and then, on top of that, your own personal life. It can be overwhelming.

So what do you do when you’re overwhelmed? Outsource.

If you’re not an accountant, you have no business preparing your own taxes completely by yourself – send those returns to a CPA for confirmation that you’ve done them right and haven’t missed any deductions you could be taking or glaring errors that will get you into trouble. If you’re not into websites, have a web designer run an audit on your website and make sure everything works, everything’s usable, and everything is moving you toward your goal. If you’re not a writer, have an editor check for inappropriate content (hint: there’s more to it than cleavage and innuendo).

Of course, some people do take this idea to the extreme, and such is Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek. I don’t advocate outsourcing to an extreme because I have not tried it for myself. However, in a world where we look at self-reliance as best by default, sometimes, try giving somebody else a chance to surprise you. You may find that your life becomes a lot easier and you get closer to operation without headaches.

No related posts.