Did you quit your full-time job in order to pursue a dream of indentured servitude — or even slavery?

Would-be entrepreneurs always think life will be better without a boss or a 9-to-5 schedule. We plan to work on our own time, set our own priorities, and pursue the projects we’re passionate about.

And then one day it hits you: “I’m working from 5 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., my weekends are non-existent, I never see the people I love, and I’ve gained 2 inches around the middle.”

Wait, you didn’t add 2 inches? Maybe I’m projecting. The point is, we all have our own warning signs that things have gotten out of whack. Exercise was a big one for me: The gym is just an elevator ride away, Central Park jogging paths are right outside my door, and I still managed to pack on the pounds. I have skinny genes, but I can’t get into my skinny jeans. Clearly it’s time to re-calibrate.

When you’re the boss, there’s no one to shut off the lights, remind you to take lunch, or urge you to enroll in the office wellness program. Instead, you find yourself pushing harder, taking on new projects and working longer hours until …

Until what, exactly? How do you know that business has taken over your life and it’s time to get back into balance?

I put that question to some of my favorite bloggers and business thinkers. Maybe you’ll recognize yourself in some of their responses.

You know it’s time to re-balance when …

1. The only question your friends ever ask you is, “How’s work?” (Amy Tobin, Ariel Marketing Group)
2. You show up on time for a family dinner, and everyone wonders what’s wrong (Tim Berry, Bplans/Palo Alto Software)
3. You’ve been dying to see the premier of a new movie, and you suddenly realize it’s already playing on HBO (Rieva Lesonsky, Small Biz Daily)
4. You forget to kiss your wife goodnight, but you’d never sign off Twitter without saying goodbye to your tweeps (Mark Babbitt, YouTern)
5. You can’t remember the ages of your own grandchildren (Annette Penney, Inspire & Acquire)
6. Your spouse asks “Are you all right?” more than 2 times in any given day (Rick Manelius, RickManelius.com)
7. You would lose your entire sense of identity if your work were taken away from you (Christian Hollingsworth, Smart Boy Designs)

Tim Berry adds another point that’s worth mentioning: “When you pretend you’ll make it up to your family later, after the business is successful, then it’s time to re-balance.”

That flies in the face of many so-called “experts,” who insist that entrepreneurs owe 100% of their attention to the business in its early days. “Make the sacrifice now,” they argue, “and you’ll have more control of your time later on.”

In reality, it rarely works that way. Priorities become habits, and habits are notoriously hard to break. If we can’t make time now for the things that really matter, chances are we’ll never get around to it.

With that, I think I’m going to turn down a lucrative white paper job that was offered to me yesterday. I have friends I need to re-connect with. I don’t want to resort to a dog-walker. And it’s not like the gym is going to come to me.

What about you? What are your personal warning signs that work has taken over your life? Please join the conversation below.

{Photo credit: CraftyGoat via flickr CC}

But on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, my neighborhood was awash in firefighters in full dress uniform. I live around the corner from the 1927 Firemen’s Memorial, and firefighters from the around the world had come to pay their respects.

Early this morning, I went out to snap some pictures, read the tributes, and meditate on bravery and sacrifice.

I’m still not going to write about 9/11, but I hope these photos are worth 1,000 words … 1,000 thank-yous, to be precise.

The other day I was sitting in a restaurant (okay, it was a Dunkin’ Donuts, so maybe “restaurant” is too highfalutin a word), when the guy beside me got up, dropped a half-eaten doughnut back into the bag, and headed for the door.

Outside, he strolled past a mentally disturbed woman who sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, loudly demanding contributions from everyone who walked by. As he stood at the crosswalk waiting for the light to change, my fellow diner dropped his Dunkin’ Donuts bag into the metal trashcan on the corner. In a flash, the woman jumped from the sidewalk, dug through the trash, and pulled out the crumpled bag like some sort of buried treasure. The rescued leftovers disappeared into her mouth in a single bite.

I quickly gave thanks for my double chocolate iced doughnut, fat grams and all.

Until that moment, I had taken my breakfast completely for granted — something that’s easy to do when you’ve eaten three meals a day for 40+ years.

A few days later, as I was sending out my monthly invoices, I realized that clients are like doughnuts: After a while it’s easy to take them for granted, and there’s always someone out there who’s hungry enough to pounce on your “leftovers.”

I like to think that I’m grateful for the clients who provide me with a steady stream of work and allow me to maintain an independent lifestyle … but am I truly thankful? I do believe there’s a difference. Gratefulness is in the heart, but thankfulness is on the lips. You don’t just feel a thank-you; you have to say it. And mean it. You have to sell it, even.

Rejoicing over Invoicing

It was the routine “thank you” line on my invoices that made me think of that hungry woman outside the Dunkin Donuts. She made me realize that I probably wasn’t expressing my thanks like I should. My invoices change monthly in terms of hours, projects and total due, but the “thank you” at the bottom of the page? That’s an afterthought. It never changes.

Well, not any more. Every invoice now gets a personalized thank-you every month — something that shows some thought and some heart. Something that says “I never want to take you for granted.”

I’ve also started designing some custom cards that I’ll send out for the holidays this year. Who knows if they’ll make any impression at all. Maybe they’ll just get tossed without a thought. But the point is, there will be some thought on my end — some thought and some thanks. It’s the least I can do for the folks who are helping to make this a banner year, despite the tough economy.

Oh, and there’s one more thing that I’ve never done before: I’ve never said a public thank-you to the folks who keep me well supplied with doughnuts. Without CouponNetwork, ERF Marketing, Inspire and Acquire, Health Planning Source, AllBusiness.com and SmartBrief, I literally don’t know where I’d be.

Thanks for putting your trust in me. Thanks for allowing me to help tell your story.

Thanks for keeping me out of a cubicle — and out of the trashcan.

{Photo credit: 5thLuna via flickr CC}

• Adventure?
• Comedy?
• Horror?
• Romance?
• Tragedy?

I got to thinking about this last night while I was watching Master Class, Terrence McNally’s wonderful play about the twilight years of Maria Callas. Master Class is a funny, moving, insightful ode to music and beauty, but it’s also the study of a diva in decline.

During the 1950s, Callas was the most famous and successful opera star in the world. Though her career lasted just over a decade, she remains to this day one of the best-selling Classical recording artists of all time. She was rich, glamorous, haughty, tempestuous and controversial. (Think Madonna, but with a great voice.)

As a self-proclaimed fat, ugly child who was reared in poverty, Callas’ meteoric rise should be the stuff of fairy tales. But McNally tells a different story — one that could serve as a warning to any entrepreneur consumed with success at any cost.

In her later years, after her voice had gone and Aristotle Onassis had left her for Jackie Kennedy, Callas was reduced to teaching the occasional graduate glass at Juilliard in NYC. This is the setting for Master Class, as Callas reminisces her way through several coaching sessions. The students are her pupils, her imitators, but also her rivals — each one a potential star who could push the diva deeper into history and irrelevance.

“I don’t want to sing like you,” snaps one student, reminding Callas that she’d ruined her voice after just 10 short years onstage. “I hate people like you. You want to make the world a scary place for everybody, because it was scary for you.”

Callas insists that bitter rivalries, broken hearts and deep loneliness were simply the price she had to pay for her art and her career. But when the footlights dim and the crowds go home, she’s left to question her choices in a world that has passed her by.

In a business world with a single-minded obsession for growth, I couldn’t help wondering how some of today’s most famous entrepreneurs might fare as the subject of a McNally play. If he stripped away the trappings of success, what sort of human being would he find underneath? What sort of life?

Amy Tobin nailed this issue recently in a blog post entitled “One Thing That’s More Important than Work“:

I try to find one moment each day that is more important than work. I’ve completely accepted the fact that I am a workaholic and I will never be able to take a vacation without sneaking in some form of ‘productivity’ everyday. I know this is WHO I AM. But I refuse to be only that: a hard working, ‘successful’ person.

For Amy, the key to balance is her 4-year-old daughter, plus a conscious effort to find meaning in the seemingly mundane details of life, whether scented candles or good towels. “I still have the insatiable need to be productive,” she admits, but “now I just work around it.”

Success, growth, productivity — they’re a big part of what it means to be an entrepreneur, but only a small part of what it means to be human.

We’re hard-wired to want more. The question is, more of what?

{Photo credit: magro_kr via flickr CC}

Half the time, I’m met with a long pause and a blank stare. So I’ll put it another way: “What impression are you trying to make? How do you want the reader to feel about you?”

Those are questions worth asking, because readers always feel something, even if it’s not completely conscious – and even if it’s not what you intended. For instance, maybe you’re trying to show that you know your stuff, but the tone comes across as pompous. Chances are, the customer will be less inclined to work with you.

To help my clients think through the issue, I developed the following checklist. The rule is, pick up to three terms describing the tone you hope to convey, and rank them in order of importance, 1-2-3. It’s an important exercise, because words, photos and design elements should all be chosen with your goals in mind.

Is your writing tone-deaf?

• Authoritative
• Accomplished
• Businesslike
• Caring
• Creative
• Friendly
• Funny
• Helpful
• Humble
• Ironic
• Inspiring
• Personal
• Quirky
• Smart
• Snarky
• Sophisticated
• Understanding
• Upbeat
• Visionary
• Warm

It’s one thing to know what you’re trying to convey, but interpretation can be a funny thing. That’s why I like to use the checklist a second time to see how my message actually came across.

Try this simple test: Ask a friend to read your homepage or your latest blog post, then give her the checklist and ask her what tone she was picking up on. If you were going for “sophisticated,” but she reads it as “snarky,” then you may need to go back to the drawing board.

Go ahead, grade me

The checklist is a nice tool because many readers might otherwise have a hard time putting vague impressions into words. Feel free to use it any time you want to focus your thoughts for a new writing project or gather feedback on something you’ve already written.

What have I missed? Can you think of a term I should have included on this list? I’m always looking to improve my diagnostic tools.

Also, I’d love to take a dose of my own medicine, so please use the checklist to provide me with feedback on this post. What tone do you think I was trying to convey? I do have three items in mind, and I promise I’ll answer truthfully after I get a few guesses.

Nothing like brutal honesty, right?

Photo credit: clogsilk via flickr CC

The day after his surgery, I had a packed calendar, so I dropped by the hospital early in the morning, well before visiting hours. “I’m sorry,” said the guard at the front door, sounding more irritated that apologetic. “No visitors before 10 a.m.”

“I’m going to 11 West,” I replied, per my friend’s instructions.

The guard perked up immediately. “Oh, I’m sorry. Second set of elevators on your right. Enjoy your visit.”

On the VIP floor, I was greeted warmly by a receptionist in the wood-paneled foyer. I turned down her offer of coffee or a newspaper, and she pointed me toward my friend’s room. I opened the door and stopped in my tracks. His room was nearly the size of my apartment, perched directly above Central Park with New York City views that seemed to go on forever.

Even with a second bed for his overnight nurse, it felt like there was enough space for a pick-up game of basketball.

My friend’s wife was perusing the three-course breakfast options from a leather-bound menu, while my friend paced the floor in an embroidered waffle-weave bathrobe.

At the risk of sounding like a country bumpkin, I had to comment on the luxurious digs.

“Please,” my friend snapped, “this place is a joke. They advertise Frette bathrobes in their brochure. I’m telling you, this is not Frette.”

He was half kidding, of course, and I was glad to see that his sense of humor survived the surgery intact. Still, he went on to list a half-dozen ways that his VIP room fell short of its price tag. “They just lost his business,” I thought to myself — but I was wrong.

When a complication forced him back into the hospital a day after he was discharged, my friend once again whipped out his credit card and checked right back into his VIP room. Turns out he wasn’t concerned about floor space or Frette linens on fluffy omelets served on china.

The big selling point for him didn’t actually cost the hospital a thing: He simply didn’t want to be alone, and that required an exception to the rules.

When was the last time you looked at your company policies as a marketing tool? No doubt there’s a perfectly good reason for every rule you have in place, but think how much loyalty you could gain by granting exceptions to your best customers.

Freebies, discounts, special packaging — they all cost real money, and they might not be appreciated in the way you expect. But bending the rules? It doesn’t have to cost a penny, and I’ve never met anyone who’s immune to a phrase like, “Okay, we can do it just for you … ”

Sure, it’s important to have Standard Operating Procedures — but aren’t there some customers who should feel anything but standard?

Is this a hidden marketing opportunity?

Photo credit: liber via flickr CC

Even in niche fields like cupcakes or gluten-free cooking, you can find more recipes in one week than you could possibly make in an entire year. The supply is endless and the price is free, making the “recipe industry” quite possibly the world’s most competitive commodity business.

So how does one lowly blogger keep readers coming back again and again? In any competitive field where the product is much the same, personality becomes the key to forging relationships — and Brooke McLay had me at “Hiya!”

A voice I can’t forget

It’s been months since I combed through literally hundreds of recipe sites on behalf of a client, but Brooke’s distinctive voice still stands out in my mind. She grabbed my attention with that friendly, familiar greeting and held me through eight breezy paragraphs of introduction to her Cheeky Kitchen blog.

If you’re hungry for a more effective “About” page, you might try adapting Brooke’s successful recipe to suit your own tastes:

• Show some personality, even when talking business. There’s not much life’s story here. This “About” page is focused mainly on the mission of the blog, yet Brooke still manages to convey her personality through word choice and writing style. When she declares that life “should taste pretty dang fantastic” or that meals should be “a celebration every, single, stinkin’ time,” you get a strong sense of the gee-whiz enthusiasm that’s being served up with every recipe.
• Be choosy in sharing personal details. When Brooke does get around to her personal life — way down in paragraph 7 — she introduces her “four fabu kids” and her “one sexy man” mainly to show that she understands the way real families eat. Her kids don’t like Brussels sprouts and her husband doesn’t like “Spicy Tomato-Glazed Eggplant Fritters with a Caper Reduction Sauce,” but those aren’t just random, cutesy details. Instead, they explain Cheeky Kitchen’s mission to be “a resource for food that everyone will actually eat.”
• Be relatable. Some food bloggers love to show off their drool-worthy “test kitchens” or name-drop their conversations with celebrity chefs, but Brooke maintains a laser focus on keeping it real and relatable. When she says, “I know what it’s like to wake up on Monday and have $40 to feed the family for the rest of the week,” you know foie gras probably won’t be on the menu here.
• Soft-sell success. Brooke has written two cookbooks, won international cooking contests, hosted a cooking show and published hundreds of recipes, but you won’t find her touting those achievements on her “About” page. In fact, when she does make an oblique reference to her resume, she manages to turn the spotlight back on her community: “I certainly didn’t think I’d one day have a blog that would trip me around the nation, land me fantastic gigs, or introduce me to a world of lovely, kind, uber-talented readers, fellow bloggers, and friends.”

A pinch of this, a dash of that

In an interview, Brooke compares her “About” page to the family room of her home, a place where “good friends are invited to kick off their shoes and sprawl across the couches.”

Turns out, making people comfortable is actually hard work: “I studied a lot of other bloggers’ About pages,” she says, and even now, she continues to keep notes all year long for an annual re-write.

“On any one day when I’m feeling passionate about it all, I’ll sit down and type it out, edit it, and post it. I try to let it be a very organic process. I don’t want a highly stylized About page, I just want it to really show what my site is truly about.”

Brooke wants most of the site feels like “a chat over lemonade and tea, but I’m not always living that voice.” When it’s time to talk business with potential sponsors, for instance, the “family room” didn’t seem like the proper setting. That’s why Cheeky Kitchen includes a separate “resume-type page for companies interested in hiring or working with me.” It’s like the difference between a family room and a formal living room, she explains.

What do you think of the “About” page at Cheeky Kitchen? Does it make the same impression on you that it did on me? Are there any other elements you could adapt to your website? And who else would you like to see included in this series?

• For last week’s post featuring Aaron Biebert, please click here.

I’m not writing about business today — not much, anyway.

Instead, this is a post about death and life and words and memories. It’s about a guy named Mike Perillo, whom I never met, and his widow, Jennifer, who wrote a tribute I can’t forget.

Mike died of a heart attack on Sunday, Aug. 7. He was a young guy with a kind face and deep laugh lines; you can see his picture here. He and Jennie had been together 16 years. They had two young daughters.

Jennie dealt with her loss, as any writer would, by putting it down in words. She wrote about Mike’s wedding ring, his busy schedule, and his favorite pie. For several weeks, Jennie had planned to make that pie for him “tomorrow,” and now the chance had passed. But there was still time for others:

For those asking what they can do to help my healing process, make a peanut butter pie this Friday and share it with someone you love. Then hug them like there’s no tomorrow because today is the only guarantee we can count on.

Twitter and Facebook lit up with the challenge. Within a matter of hours, more than 300 food bloggers responded with recipes and photos and, presumably, lots of hugs. “I’m not sure there have ever been this many variations of one recipe in the history of food blogging,” wrote Phyllis Grant on her blog. “Or maybe in the history of time.”

That’s an amazing tribute to Mike Perillo and to the power of social media.

But if you go back a little further, it’s also a tribute to entrepreneurship and priorities and the pursuit of a dream.

The rest of the story

In 1999, while the two were still dating, Mike handed Jennie a Newsweek article about becoming a personal chef. Jennie had just lost her father to a heart attack at age 49, so “I figured it was time to get cracking on my dreams since there’s no guarantee of tomorrow,” she recalls.

That same year, Jennie started Time to Eat, a Brooklyn-based catering service that garnered a good bit of local press coverage. Her successful catering gig launched her into the New York restaurant scene, working with top chefs like Tom Colicchio and Alain Ducasse.

Then came her daughters — and decision time.

“After working long hours in the restaurant business I decided it was time to focus on motherhood — after all they’re only kids once,” she writes.

Jennie made the choice to work from home, setting up a test kitchen in Brooklyn where she develops recipes for Cuisinart and Working Mother magazine. She also launched an award-winning blog, attracting a slew of advertisers as well as mentions at Oprah.com, Time.com and more.

In other words, she chose to do what she loves, surrounded by the people she loves — a classic lifestyle business.

The disciples of growth would argue that her choice didn’t make economic sense. After all, she could have made a lot more money and created more jobs by opening her own restaurant, maybe even a chain of restaurants.

Over the years, as she read about the hot new spot in Manhattan or watched the latest celebrity chef on the Food Network, there may have been moments of doubt in Jennie’s own mind. It’s human nature to second-guess, to wonder what if?

I’m sure any such doubts have now been laid to rest last. Several weeks ago, when Mike got a day off work, Jennie’s lifestyle business allowed her to make time for what would be their final date:

The moment I heard he was taking off, I cleared my work schedule. Deadlines were the least of my priorities. We finally had the chance to walk, hand-in-hand, during daylight hours—the fact that it reached 102ºF didn’t matter to me.

Too many business owners live every moment of their life pursuing a bigger slice of the pie. Jennie Perillo decided to pursue something else. Now, when it matters most, she has hundreds of pies — and years of sweet memories — to show for it.

Photo credit: matthileo via flickr CC

The perfect formula?

Remember the mad scientists of the Middle Ages who thought they could turn common elements into gold if they just got the chemistry right?

To a certain extent, marketers are still practicing alchemy today, and nowhere is the formula more elusive than it is on your “About” page. This is the ultimate laboratory, where words and images are supposed to produce a chemical reaction in the visitor’s brain. When it works — pure gold. But it doesn’t work very often.

With that in mind, I thought I’d start a weekly series on “About” pages that do work, hoping to analyze some of the ingredients that go into the perfect page. I won’t cover my own clients, since that would be a conflict of interest. If I include someone here, it’s because their page worked its magic on me — and might just serve as a model for you.

First victim: Aaron Biebert (@biebert), whom I just discovered this week on Twitter. His whole blog is intensely personal and revealing, and the “About” page is no exception. If your business depends on a deep, personal connection with customers, then Aaron’s page could well serve as a template:

1. He starts with an attention-getting lead: “I’ve dedicated my life to giving away a Billion dollars and making a difference in the world.” Stops you in your tracks and practically forces you to click on the link, right? Aaron’s actually taking a bit of a gamble here. His claim could come across as braggadocio, but he quickly tempers it with a welcome dose of humility: “Since I didn’t start with much, I’ve got a long way to go. That’s why I usually work until 2am each night.”
2. He respects his readers’ time. Above the fold is an executive summary that’s barely 100 words long. If you’re in a hurry, you get the quick version of what drives Aaron and what his blog is all about. The typical “resume” section gets pushed to the end. Very smart, very efficient.
3. He writes from the heart. Some “About” pages are cool and impersonal. Some are actually written in the third person, which is downright frigid. By contrast, look at the warmth of Aaron’s page. He chooses words that convey his personality: love, passionate, optimist, inspired. Admittedly, that won’t appeal to everyone; cynics may find the tone annoying. But Aaron doesn’t want cynics in his tribe, so that’s okay. Attraction and alienation are two sides of the same coin, and it’s always better to focus on the former.

One other thing: Notice that Aaron breaks the oldest rule of selling by never asking for the sale. Other than a simple link to “like us on Facebook,” there’s no call to action here. He alludes to writing, speaking and consulting, but you won’t find a button to “Buy my e-book!” or “Schedule your consultation!”

“My goal for this page is to let people inside what I’m thinking and give them a vision for where I’m going,” Aaron told me. “I intentionally don’t sell anything because I’m trying to connect with people, not sell them anything. If they really like what you’re about, they’ll call themselves to action. That’s what I was going for.”

Is that a good thing? I’m not sure it’s a smart strategy for every business, but the low-key approach does help Aaron stand out from the crowd. By not asking for the sale, he helps to lower my defenses and raise my curiosity.

Personally, I just want to buy the guy a cup of coffee and pick his brain. And after the coffee, I’d probably sign up for whatever he’s selling.

By the way, Aaron is a terrific writer, so he makes this look effortless. But don’t be fooled. The current page is “version 3.1,” and he spent about 2 hours perfecting what you see here.

The lesson: A good “About” page should grow and mature — just like the person behind it.

What do you think? Does Aaron’s page make you feel connected to him? What is it in particular that really works here? And what do you think of his soft-sell approach?

Finally, I need your help in identifying other “About” pages that work. Please drop me a line or post your links below. We’ll be back next week with another installment.

Photo credit: petercat.harris via flickr CC

This is going to hurt

For 15 minutes yesterday, I lost every shred of human dignity. I was stripped down, manipulated, violated, ordered about and condescended to.

In other words, I had a doctor’s appointment.

Now, I happen to like my doctor for any number of reasons, including the bottled water, private bathroom and excellent selection of magazines. On the other hand, I can get all those things at home, without enduring the needles, latex gloves and embarrassing questions.

So why would I schlepp downtown and put myself through all that? There’s only one possible explanation: I was in pain.

You don’t need to know where it hurt, exactly. The point is, it hurt bad enough that I would do just about anything to get better.

As I sat at home last night, nursing my ego and a cup of tea, it occurred to me that pain can be a good thing, both personally and professionally. I’m 44 now, so I know I’m supposed to go in for regular tune-ups, but that doesn’t mean I do so. Instead, I generally wait for the pain to drive me out of my comfort zone and into one of those paper gowns.

The same thing happens in business: We chug along, doing our thing, until we experience the kind of pain that raises some embarrassing questions and forces a thorough examination. All of a sudden, we discover that the business isn’t as healthy as we thought — and it’s time to “get better” or die.

What are some of the aches and pains that might be worth a closer look?

• Missed deadlines
• Negative customer reviews
• Erratic quality
• Spotty financials
• Loss of a longtime customer

The problem with pain is that we’re tempted to avoid it until it’s absolutely excruciating (and possibly too late). For every ache that we experience in business, there’s a form of aspirin to mask the pain, allowing us to maintain the status quo rather than undertake the more radical therapy that might be needed.

Cash flow looks bad? Focus on margins, instead. Quality is slipping? Blame the suppliers. Bad reviews on Yelp? It’s probably an orchestrated campaign by the competition.

Enough with the aspirin already. Pain can’t teach us anything when we block it out. It’s time to strip down, answer the tough questions and get serious about the treatment options.

Customer surveys, financial audits, peer reviews, professional consultations — they’re all potentially embarrassing and uncomfortable.

But it’s always better to visit the doctor than the undertaker.

Photo credit: hitthatswitch via flickr CC