Five for Friday is a regular feature here on MatthewHooper.com. Five for Friday features five pieces of content that I have come across on the web throughout the week. It is most likely posts from other blogs that I have found insightful or meaningful. It may also be a quick video or a piece of audio, such as a podcast, that has intrigued me.

1. How to Write a Pitch that Works

This article gives some insights on what makes a great pitch. It mainly focuses on email interactions, which is how most of us make contact these days.


2. Innovation Over Tradition

An intriguing look at how the gap is widening between those that know, understand and adopt new technologies versus those that use technologies solely because they’re cool.

3. Don’t get Caught up in the Ego-Driven Pursuit of a Life that Looks Good on Paper

This is a bit of an older article but I just came across it this week. The nucleus of the article is about how we shouldn’t get bogged down while trying to pursue a career that looks good on paper.

4. Too Smart For Your Business?

An insightful look at how it is important to stop over analyzing and just push forward on your main focus.

5. Discomfort and Growth

It’s too easy to get comfortable doing something that is boring. This article suggests ways to breakout of the boredom.

Your Turn

So what have you uncovered this week? Post some of your gems in the comments.

__________

Image Credit: cc licensed flickr photo shared by Sërch

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On this site, I usually write less about myself and more about my insights. This post is more “me” centric but I hope you still find it useful. The following is how I got to Taiwan and I will post about why I am still here in the near future.

Pre-Y2K

During the late 90s I was a post-secondary student caught up in the hype of the education system. The hype I’m referring to is the idea that as long as you get an education, you will end up with a great career. Although this is true for some, I’m sure most post-secondary graduates find their professional lives quite unfulfilling. I was the latter.

I graduated from an engineering and design program with a focus on building sciences. After I graduated, I left British Columbia. I headed to Calgary, Alberta looking for a career in the oil and gas industry, since that was where the money was.

I started in the design department of a company that manufactured moveable buildings. These buildings housed electrical and mechanical equipment for use in the oil sands project in northern Alberta. I drove a nice car and I wore nice clothes to work.

Monotony

After about a year I grew tired of the mundane routine of office life. I gained contacts and contracted my technical services to other companies. I did this work on my own during weekends and evenings. I wrote more about my early contracting experiences here.

One of my main clients offered me a full-time contract, I took it and stopped chasing clients. The following year they nearly went bankrupt. My contract wasn’t renewed and I hadn’t maintained other clients.

I called contacts in the construction industry and got a job doing project management with a company that specialized in pre-engineered steel buildings. The company was mismanaged and the owner decided to replace the whole project management team. This included myself, even though I had just started.

Jaded

These experiences left me jaded so I abandoned the construction industry. I had a few flaky sales jobs hawking coupon packages and the like. This got tired fast.

I wanted more sales experience so I took a job at a large big-box computer electronics retail store. This was early 2000s and I knew a lot about computers when they were just hitting the mainstream.

Headhunted

While at the store, a headhunter visited me. A previous client told him to talk to me. The headhunter trained people to use Solidworks — an unknown, at that time, 3D CAD program — and then placed them in jobs. He bugged me for a bit, but I relented after the Christmas buying season when commissions were terrible.

Back in the construction industry and working for a company specializing in aluminum and glass curtain walls. It was a good company with good people. Half were senior level, in their mid to late 40s, that had been with the company for awhile. The other half were junior level, in their early to mid 20s, like myself. This time I was convinced I was going to climb the ladder to success.

After about a year or so I realized that the guys sitting next to me were doing the same thing as I was. They did it better and faster due to their experience but it was the same thing — day in and day out. I was already getting bored and I was looking down the barrel of another 30+ years of the same thing. I was bored.

Taiwan Came Calling

While getting bored to tears at my comfy desk job, a friend had moved to Taipei to teach English. I chatted with him on MSN intermittently and I would tell him how bored I was, he would tell me to move to Taiwan. After a few months of this and almost two years later, I did. I gave away or sold most of my belongings, moved some stuff to my parents’ house and packed my bags for Taiwan.

I’ve been in Taiwan for over six years. I found my wife and a life that has more freedom. I won’t be here forever but my situation in Taiwan allows me to explore new projects and businesses that I would have never been involved in if I had stayed at my comfy desk.

The Moral of This Story

What brought me to Taiwan was a sense of adventure and a need to escape the rat race. Maybe I’m wired differently, or maybe I am unemployable by conventional standards. What I do know is that when something isn’t going right then maybe you need to walk away from it. Even if it is a job, a career, or even a hemisphere. Don’t be nervous about starting something new and avoiding the herds.

What’s your story? Have you ended up on the other side of the world? Are you, literally or figuratively, thousands of miles away from where you thought you would be? Leave a comment.

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Canned Responses Labs

I am really surprised at how many times I tell people that I use Gmail’s built in canned responses and it’s followed by a blank stare. Canned responses have increased my productivity by at least tenfold.

Canned Responses Menu

To use canned responses you need to first enable it in in Gmail’s labs section. After it has been enabled you will see an extra drop down menu below the subject field when you compose an email.

Write out the email that you would like to save as a canned response. Click the canned responses menu and then select save/new canned response. That’s it!

Your Tips

Do you have any quick tips that you would like to share? Post some of your favorites in the comments.

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1. 500 Million Stories

This week Facebook anounced that it passed the 500 million user mark. Love it or hate it, Facebook is huge. To put it into perspective, the population of North America is just less than 529 million.


2. Flipboard

Flipboard is a fantastic new iPad app. It’s a unique way to display shared items from Facebook and Twitter, as well as, around the web. It’s still a little flaky since it was just launched this week and it is getting overwhelmed with traffic. It’s worth a look.

3. Carry Questions Around With You

A short but useful post about conversations.

4. How To Learn (Absolutely Anything and Everything)

A post about conquering goals by taking action. Obvious, but sometimes we all need to be reminded of this.

5. Forrester: If You Think Social Media Marketing is Worthless, You’re Doing it Wrong

A good article about the importance of looking at the big picture when it comes to social media.

Your Turn

So what have you uncovered this week? Post some of your gems in the comments.

__________

Image Credit: cc licensed flickr photo shared by YaniG

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Some cynics will tell you that all WordPress sites look the same. That’s because when they look at a trully unique implementation of WordPress they don’t even know it. Still doubting? Take a look at what some talented designers have done with custom themes at the WordPress Showcase.

There are even skeptics that claim you can’t use WordPress as a full CMS (content management system). There is some truth to that — until you add some of the 10,000+ free plugins, this doesn’t even count the uncountable number of premium plugins.

Now that we’ve established that WordPress is as flexible as it is useful, let’s take a look at how you can use as your small business hub.

WordPress Destination Site

I’ve talked before about how to use social networking to help promote your small business. In that article I wrote about how all of your social media efforts need to direct people somewhere. This somewhere is your website.

A website that is always full of new and interesting content. A website that you can update and publish content to that involves as much effort as writing an email. This is where WordPress comes into play.

Always Up To Date

How many times have you gone to a website and saw old and useless information? Is that your website?

The key to keeping people coming back to your website and staying engaged is to have a constant flow of information. With tools like Facebook and Twitter, you can really interact with your audience. When they want to know more about your small business they are going to start looking for your website. Don’t disappoint them!

This is just as relevant to an organization or a charity group. Your website is the place where all of your organization’s past events and interesting endeavors are showcased. Show your potential members what is in store for them. This is not accomplished on a website that was last updated five years ago.

Spokes in the Wheel

After you have have got your hub established it’s time to start adding spokes. Branching out using different social media and social networking tools is a great way to expand the reach of your small business.

Your main goal is to engage your audience which will leave them wanting more. Their natural inclination will be to explore your website and see what else you have to offer them.

So, have you done this? What were your results? Leave a comment.

__________

Image Credit: cc licensed flickr photo shared by Thomas Hawk

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Wacchen Screenshot

By now, a lot of you have heard about Instapaper and it’s “Read Later” bookmaklet. Well, Wacchen is doing for video what Instapaper did for the written word on the web.

With Waccen, all you have to do is sign up for an account and add the read later bookmarklet to your bookmarks. I added it to my custom Quix list. The next time you go to a website with a video that you don’t have time to watch, just click your bookmarklet and it’ll get added to you list of videos to “Watch Later”. It even works with Google Reader!

This is great idea, however I am pretty sure that I heard about it once before.

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Five for Friday is a regular feature here on MatthewHooper.com. Five for Friday features five pieces of content that I have come across on the web throughout the week. It is most likely posts from other blogs that I have found insightful or meaningful. It may also be a quick video or a piece of audio, such as a podcast, that has intrigued me.

1. They’ll even go back in time to steal your money…

This article is useful for people looking at being location independent. It just goes to show you that the old adage about death and taxes is true.


2. Debate: Does the world need nuclear energy? (video)

A very interesting debate about whether or not we should be looking at nuclear energy in order to move away from fossil fuels.

3. Foursquare vs. Gowalla vs. MyTown: Which Is Better for Business?

I wrote before about how destination (e.g. restaurants) businesses can use social media to promote their businesses. I did briefly mention location based services but the article above goes very in depth into this subject.

4. Where You Start Isn’t Where You End

I wanted to try and keep Five for Friday limited to posts that were released this week or close to it. However, this post is something that I came across a month or two ago and it was very apropos to my week so I thought I would share it.

5. How To Transfer Files With Your iPad | FTP. Wireless. Bluetooth.

This is a quick round up of FTP tools for your iPad. If you are someone that is shooting for mobility then having a chance to manipulate files on an FTP via the iPad is almost a necessity.

Your Turn

So what have you uncovered this week? Post some of your gems in the comments below.

__________

Image Credit: cc licensed flickr photo shared by Michael | Ruiz

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The average person recieves about 75 emails a day and spends 49 minutes managing those emails. Now, the problem is that we don’t get all those email all at the same time. We receive them spread throughout the day and we get them when we are the busiest.

So what is the secret for managing all of these emails and keeping your inbox at zero? Don’t answer your email!

Don’t Answer Email

If you don’t answer your email then you won’t get distracted from the task at hand. I’m not saying that you should never answer your email but don’t keep checking it every five minutes.

Like most of you, I used to have notifications sent to my iPhone, notifications on my computer and even carrier pigeons following me around. This is like having someone tapping on your shoulder at all hours of the day and expecting answers. Maybe not the thing about the pigeons, but you see where I am going with this.

I shut off all those notifications. Now I only check and respond to email between 9am and 11am. I like to do it in the morning because this gets it out of the way and then I am free to focus on what the day has in store for me. Pick a time that works best for you.

Check, Process, Move On

Most experts will tell you to only look at each email once. This means that you should not open an email and then leave it in your inbox.

I use Gmail so I have my own system to reach inbox zero. First, I open and read the email. If the email warrants a reply that I can answer immediately then I do that. I write out the response and then hit the “send and archive” (Google labs feature) button. The email is dealt with, out of my inbox and I am on to the next email.

If the email is something that I will need later or want for reference, I just star it and then archive it. Again, out of my inbox.

In the rare case that I can’t deal with the email right away, I tag it using a label in Gmail I have called “Follow Up”. I still archive this email but I also send myself a reminder to follow up. I then ignore my inbox until 9am the next day.

Set an Email Auto-Responder

There are people that I deal with that always want an immediate response. They’ll send me an email and an hour later they will send another email asking why I hadn’t responded to the first email.

The best way to head this off is to set up an email auto-responder. If you’re unfamiliar with auto-responders, they are an automatic reply to an email that lands in your inbox. In my auto-responder I let people know that I have received their email and the time I’ll respond. So far, so good. However, my mother didn’t like it too much but she forgave me, I hope.

In Gmail I set my auto-responder up using a canned response (also a labs feature). A canned response allows you to write up responses to emails that you get often and keep them for future use.

I then created a filter that gets applied to all incoming email as long as it doesn’t have words like noreply or new comment, etc. You can do this by adding OR (uppercase) between each excluded word and put phrases in quotes. This makes sure I don’t send my auto-reply to notification emails.

The filter sends a canned response and applies the label “Auto-Responded”. The label just lets me see which emails have received the auto-responder.

That’s It

However, if I have a few extra minutes and I am not busy then I might go through my inbox and try to clear it out a bit. This gives me a jump on the next day. This is part of being proactive instead of reactive.

Do you have any tips or tricks for managing emails? Post your suggestions in the comments.

If you liked what you just read then please send it to your friends on Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere. Thanks!
__________

Image Credit: cc licensed flickr photo shared by DVS

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