• Tips on maximizing your ROI
• Real-life stories from entrepreneurs like yourself
• Case studies with real hands-on advice
• and more!

Along with this new kickstart to the economy, I’ll be relaunching several of my sites, including this one. I took a long time off from writing to give birth to a beautiful baby boy (he was born just before Halloween), and to move out of state (I am loving Oregon, thank you), and now it’s time to get back to writing! This site now features:

• A sidebar with the most popular posts, features, comments, and tags;
• A Flickr feed widget;
• A links section for me to share the stories I think will benefit my readers;
• Updated bookmarks to my favorite sites;
• and An updated look, courtesy of a theme by WooThemes that I modified for my own purposes. (If you would like your own custom-modified WooTheme WordPress theme, please contact me.)

Along with this relaunch, I am now dividing my posts into more places. The content will now be divided as follows:

• Small Business Essentials will have all of my business, marketing, sales, and other small business content.
• The NHG Consulting News blog will contain all the company, project and portfolio updates.
• The Web Technology for Entrepreneurs blog on StartupNation will feature all my technology posts.
• The blog at my new site, That PHP Girl, will contain all programming- and WordPress-related posts.

To stay updated, you can subscribe to the RSS feed of each individual blog, or follow the nhgnikole Twitter feed which reposts links to all my articles. I’m also working on some sort of newsletter or Small Business Mashup feed, but I’m not sure when I will have that ready.

So … Hello again! Welcome back! And let’s all get through this together with some solid effort and some outside-the-box thinking. If you are still in business or looking to start a new one, Congratulations! Small businesses truly are the backbone of our economy, and we can all make it through this together!

image by Wendy Piersall

For most people, purchasing a template for your site saves money through reducing programming and graphic arts costs.

For a developer, it may save money if you don’t do the artwork yourself, as you save yourself from having to pay an artist, but it ends up costly in terms of changing an already-designed theme around.

When I started out with this redesign project, I wanted to try a lot of new things—purchasing my first theme (instead of custom-designing) was one of them. The thing about purchasing a theme is that it has pros and cons. As I said before, one of the pros is reducing costs through skipping a graphic designer and/or decreasing your development time. One of the cons is that I am a perfectionist and I’m using someone else’s work.

Which gets me back to right now … I am basically going over every single page of this theme I purchased to make the code 100% up to my standards in terms of structure and functionality. While that’s nice for someone like me, what it means is that the project also took me twice as long as it would have, had I just written it from scratch, because I not only have to make it mine but I have to get inside someone else’s head to understand each section and function in the code.

To add to that delay, I am also experimenting with a new version of Wordpress (2.5.1) and new plugins (such as wpSEO and this Flickr Photo Dropper plugin where I’m finding all these deliciously random pictures for my posts), learning as I go, and having to reformat all of my old posts to work with this new theme and structure.

So, while I am getting closer, I am still working on it … and I will have a full list of add-ons, plugins, techniques and so forth when I am done, in case you feel crazy enough to spruce up your own existing blog.

Greater Lessons

What can the non-programming entrepreneur learn from this?

1. You may save on graphics costs by buying a template, but you may also end up paying increased development costs to get a custom site out of a template.
2. You have to watch out who else is using your template. I happen to be using one that is popular in the sports arena, so I am unlikely to find another business blogger using it. I like the theme, and it had Tom Brady on the demo, so I was sold.
3. Buying a template does not mean you are stuck with what you have. A well-designed template is modular and can be easily changed around to suit your needs. Also make sure the template you are choosing validates, or you will be spending a lot of time bringing the code up to par.
4. Quality templates are available for around $50-150 for the bootstrapping entrepreneur who is trying to get launched without a large cost upfront. I found some nice ones in the Revolution Theme family and over at BlogOhBlog. (I also found many, many bad ones which I will not be naming here.) For a bit more, you can find someone to help you tweak your purchased design to your needs.

photo credit: DeaPeaJay

I’m sorry if you show up on the site in the next few days and things seem out of sorts or they keep moving around. I’m building a new theme for the site and it might take a few days before regular activity is resumed. Stay tuned!

P.S. The ads are not real—they just came with the theme. And no, don’t worry, I haven’t changed my tune and decided to serve up ads (if you are seeing the new site with fake ads right now). They will be replaced by something else.

photo credit: ryanharne

So what do you do when this happens? I’ve basically come up with a plan to get myself out of this productivity funk. It’s worked before in the past, so I’m hoping it works again. (I’ll let you know in another month if it worked this time!)

The Bad Habit Breaking Process

Have you found yourself in a low-productivity time? Try these tips:

• Go through the motions.
  I may not be writing my best material at this moment, but the time I am spending just going through the motions on a daily basis will help to get my mind working in that manner again. This is true for any task: whether you have been neglecting your calendar, not replying to e-mails promptly, or letting your voicemails pile up, going through the motions will get you back into good habits.
• Start a new, energizing habit.
  As we’re having some toddler schedule issues over here, I stopped walking in the afternoons. I think this lack of exercise was contributing to me feeling drained. So I have started walking her to the sitter in the mornings, letting the fresh air wake me up and get me ready for my day. I can also listen to business-related podcasts on my iPod after I drop her off, so that helps me to be in the right mindset by the time I get home. You don’t need an hour walk to help you start a new habit—perhaps just take a brisk 10-minute walk in the morning to get the fog out of your head and get yourself ready to start the day. Or, if you are a gym person, try going to the gym in the morning vs. the evening to increase your daytime productivity.
• Reduce or eliminate procrastination and distractions.
  For more on this, check out my ongoing special Less, the Series.
• Take a mental minute.
  If you feel your mind starting to get clouded, try a one minute, eight minute, or three minute meditation to bring yourself back into clarity.
• Eat power foods.
  Sometimes bad habits include dietary changes as well. I know that when I get particularly busy, I start relying more on convenience foods instead of making myself nutritious meals when I am alone here during the day. By getting back to healthy summer fare, like fruit from the farmer’s market, vegetables from my garden, and whole grain products, I can increase both my energy level and my productivity. You don’t have to start your own garden to enjoy this benefit—perhaps try reaching for a salad or a smoothie instead of a greasy burger next time you stop somewhere for lunch.
• Switch gears if you need to.
  If you’re really stuck on one project, there’s just no sense staring at your screen for hours. Go on to the next thing on your to-do list (or, just some easier thing on the list) and come back to the harder task later. Sometimes the action of doing work will get you in the right mode to work on harder tasks, and sometimes that boost of happiness from checking off something on your to-do list gets you motivated to tackle the hard stuff. Either way, you’re getting things done.

The Bottom Line

For your business to succeed, you need to make sure that temporary dips in productivity are just that—temporary! Good luck, and if you find any other tips that work for you, please leave a comment below to let everyone know!

A while back, I had a bit of a rant regarding the idea of the Location-Independent Professional, the person with no ties who could work anywhere in the world without responsibilities. The concept of the "responsibilities of the entrepreneur" took on a whole new meaning for me in this past month, with my business being on reduced work and this blog being pretty much shut down. What these 2 things, the "Location-Independent Professional" and me shutting down this blog, have in common is that they both are entrepreneurship based on a strong Life Plan.

The Life Plan

There are many thing that will come up in entrepreneurship that have a potential for changing your direction: you may be offered a position with another company, the economy might change, or you may be presented with new opportunities. This is why creating a life plan as your first action as an entrepreneur is vital. When a new opportunity comes up, I can look back at my life plan and decide if this new direction fits with my life plan, first and foremost.

I found that the hardest part of creating a life plan was the soul-searching involved in deciding what it is in my life that makes me truly happy. For example, everyone would like more money—but does more money actually make you happy? Speaking at a conference also sounds nice in print, but it would be nerve-wracking not only to speak in front of a large group, but to have to leave my daughter and get on a plane. So the important part is to look inside yourself and decide what truly makes you happy in life, and then put that into words to create your life plan.

Your Life Plan in Action

I didn’t really believe in the power of having a life plan until my first test of it came. Once you have created your life plan, how do you use it? Well, you can use it in several ways:

• Use it to create your Business Plan
  Does your life plan include a lot of time spent outdoors? Then don’t create a business that requires many hours spent in an office, or find ways to delegate those tasks which would bring you inside. Does your life plan include picking up your kids from school every day? Then use it to shift your business hours in your business plan.
• Use it to weigh opportunities.
  I was offered a job at nearly twice my salary a while back, but it would have required me to spend several hours a day commuting and about 60-70 hours a week in the office. As my life plan includes family issues (including stopping work at 1 pm to play with my daughter) and environmental issues (like conserving gas by not driving), I was able to reaffirm my goals and pass up the job despite the temptations of the salary.
• Use it to set long-term goals.
  Some budding entrepreneurs find themselves stuck in their current job for financial or other reasons. Having a life plan helps you to keep focus as you set intermediate goals to help you achieve the life you eventually want without getting discouraged by your current situation.

People Matter

I was reminded of all this today when I was reading Rob May’s changes in business thinking, where number 1 was "Relationships, relationships, relationships". While he was talking about business relationships, it is the people in your life that really make life worthwhile. I have had a lot of great projects since 2005 when I went into business for myself, but the money I made pales in comparison to watching my daughter grow from a tiny egg to the smart, capable 2-year-old that she is today. Twenty years from now, taking the time to be with her instead of working a 70-hour week will still be the best thing I ever did in my life. I am glad that, despite the opportunities I was given to do other things in life, I stuck with my life plan and didn’t miss out on moments like these:

(laughing in bed, in the dark, march 2008)

Additional Resources

• Creating a Life Plan from StartupNation
• The Life Plan Worksheet from Inc.com
• Personal Goal Setting from MindTools

Reader Questions

Do you have a life plan? What does it include? Has it helped you?

Editor’s Note

Sorry for my "extended vacation" from this blog. Hopefully I’ll be around more now, but I can’t promise anything!

To hear the complete series, follow these links:

• Marketing your Website #1 of 5: Focus on Content and Code
• Marketing Your Website #2 of 5: Participate and Network
• Marketing Your Website #3 of 5: Build Your Word of Mouth and Viral Marketing
• Marketing Your Website #4 of 5: Create Press and Write Articles
• Marketing Your Website #5 of 5: Sync Up with Search Engines and Online Tools

If you would like to download the podcast series directly, you can control-click (or right-click on a PC) these links and save them to your hard drive:

• Marketing your Website #1 of 5: Focus on Content and Code (mp3)
• Marketing Your Website #2 of 5: Participate and Network (mp3)
• Marketing Your Website #3 of 5: Build Your Word of Mouth and Viral Marketing (mp3)
• Marketing Your Website #4 of 5: Create Press and Write Articles (mp3)
• Marketing Your Website #5 of 5: Sync Up with Search Engines and Online Tools (mp3)

I switched to Mail, the e-mail program that comes with Mac OS X. The program itself works fine, but that’s not the point of this post. While I was cleaning up my mailboxes and transferring them, I realized how much e-mail I had just sitting around, not being deleted, that were completely unnecessary. The problem, I decided, was my use of filters—I had nearly 50 filters to sort e-mail into various boxes. What this meant is that I could just push aside e-mails instead of actually dealing with them.

Nikole’s Inbox, Unfiltered

Before you start laughing about my inbox problem, you have to realize that I have domain ownership or webmaster control over many domains, including my own and those of my clients. This means I get a few hundred legitimate e-mails a day. So what I did to deal with these e-mails in a more efficient way was to create a set of rules for myself to deal with my e-mail:

• Turn off all filters
  In my case, I just didn’t import them. What this did was to make all e-mails go directly into my inbox, every time.
• Implement spam filtering.
  Before switching all of my e-mail accounts to Google Apps for Small Businesses, I used to have to sort through thousands of spam messages every day. Google now catches about 95% of the spam. The flip side of this is that it also catches maybe 2% of legitimate emails, so I go through my spam folder on the Google Apps website once a week to read headlines so that I can send through any non-spam e-mails.
• Answer e-mails as they come in.
  I invoked a bit of Charles Green’s rules for e-mail on this one: As each e-mail comes in, deal with it. This doesn’t mean I have to do the work immediately. It means that I respond with an answer, whether it’s an immediate answer or just a "I’ll do this at such and such time".
• Create actions.
  If I can answer an e-mail immediately and there is no reason to keep the e-mail, I delete it! I know this is a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many e-mails I found cluttering my box that I should have just deleted. If the e-mail contains important information for the project, I put it in a box for that project. (Alternatively, you can just put the information in your project management software or contact management software.) If the e-mail requires work to be done on my part, I add it to my task list.
• Archive e-mail.
  When a project finishes, I put the entire project inbox into an archive folder. This way, if I need it 6 months from now, I can find it—but it’s not cluttering my e-mail program on a daily basis.

So how is this going? I started out with an inbox of about 2,500 e-mails. I’ve now been able to maintain it under 100 for over a month, so I think I’m doing pretty well!

Reader Question

What do you do to keep your inbox under control? Do you delegate like Tim Ferriss? Respond to everything like Charles Green? (For a review on the difference, see here.) Or do you have your own set of rules for your e-mail?

This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists for January 29, 2008 is up at Bizosphere. This week’s host is cehwiedel from One Man Band. Of note in this week’s CotC:

Sharing the Wealth

Top Experts Dish with their Best Kept Marketing Secrets

The article some great insider tricks from 25 top marketing experts. As a bonus, you can also read and share your own secrets in the comments. I think the most important take-home lesson is the inferred secret, though: let 25 top people talk about themselves and they will link back to you! (I actually saw this piece the first time on Guy Kawasaki’s twitter feed, before seeing it here.)

Worms in my Apple

Apple’s Achilles Heel

I shared a lot of the author’s thoughts while I was listening to Steve Jobs’ keynote speech this year. As a long-time Apple user (I’m writing this on my MacBook right now), I have often thought "HUH?!?" when hearing some of the things Apple has announced. I mean, come on, Apple TV? I’m still upset that Apple blocked the development of instant-view movies by us Mac-based Netflix subscribers to pave the way for their own movie download service. I curse Steve Jobs every time I see the error message telling me to visit from a Windows machine in the Netflix instant viewing section.

If you would like to download the podcast directly, you can control-click (or right-click on a PC) this link and save it to your hard drive.

Stay tuned to Small Business Essentials (perhaps by using the convenient subscribe buttons to your right, if you are viewing this at the website!) and I will update you weekly as each one is released.