One Year… and Counting

As of today, it’s been one year since I struck out on my own to pursue BizzyWeb full time. It’s been a fantastic ride full of  new clients, networking, new business opportunities and countless new friends.

As I said the day I launched: “I’ve got entrepreneurism in my blood. I always wanted to have my own business, and growing up seeing my father work for himself certainly left an impression. When I got my MBA in 2003, it was in “venture management,” which is a fancy term for entrepreneurship.”

The tools I learned while working for my MBA at St. Thomas have been invaluable at helping me manage cash flow, run projections, market effectively and keep the big picture in mind. I also owe a huge debt to Tim Ferriss and his book “The Four Hour WorkWeek” for getting me off the fence and into the game. I’m not working four hours per week just yet (more like 60), but I’m definitely enjoying the benefits of answering to no-one but my customers.

At times it’s been tough, and I’ve worked far harder than I thought I’d need to in order to keep cash flowing in, but I don’t regret a single second of it. Knowing that every decision I make is going to directly affect the cash in my pocket has definitely sharpened my focus, but it’s also been incredible fun. This company is my baby, and its first steps — though rocky at times — have been forward.

The company has expanded to include another employee (twice the size!), and there’s bandwidth for more. My biggest challenge now that the dust has settled is to find ways to round out my talent, hand off the things I’m not good at and do what I do best more often. That means more client visits, more strategy sessions, more networking and more speaking engagements for me, and more of the back-end stuff to my trusted partners.

There’s also room for improvement, and I’m getting better and smarter every day. Associating with fantastic people who push you all the time to do more, better, smarter will do that. And that’s why I’m so glad I took on the role of President at IABC Minnesota. Without the encouragement, advice and example of some fantastic IABC connections I’m certain I would never have made it this far in just a year — people like Kare Anderson, Steve Crescenzo, Mark Schumann, Barb Gibson, Mary Ann McCauley and Cindy Schmieg have either made a lasting impression, offered me incredibly helpful advice or nudged me in the right direction (and a few even became clients!).

I’d go into a long list of highlights of the year here, but (though it may seem corny) every single day is an achievement that I’m proud of. My favorites run from every new client site to being on the Blue Ribbon Panel for IABC’s International Gold Quill Awards to speaking to hundreds of people on social media topics. I’m standing on my own two feet, making a go of it, and I’ve never been happier, “Bizzy”-er, or more successful.

Thanks for a great year! Here’s to the rest of my career doing the same thing.

4 Successful Ways We Achieve More Together Than Alone

Tired of self-promotion? Would you like to make work and life easier, more productive and fun – with others? Here’s four ways others accomplish more together than you can on your own – and sometimes forge friendships
Moving From Me To We.com » Blog Archive » 4 Successful Ways We Achieve More Together Than Alone

My friend Kare Anderson has some great suggestions on how to use social networks to benefit everyone in a group.

I’ve found that the real benefits of social networking are mainly getting in touch with those you normally wouldn’t reach, and streamlining the process of thinking as a group. Some of my most pleasant surprises in social networking have been the connections and discussions I’ve shared out of groups on LinkedIn and Facebook — for those who actually take the time to add their thoughts to a discussion and try to contribute in a meaningful way the possibilities are endless.

Of course, the flip-side of the ease of social networking tools is that the folks who are trying to make “quick hits” and plaster their message everywhere find it easier to do so as well. My biggest frustration with the groups I contribute to is the avalance of “I’m looking for work” or “buy my widget” posts. None of them provide any value at all — which is a huge disappointment because if the submitters took a few minutes to pose a meaningful question or provide helpful information to the group it would get them exactly what they’re looking for (enhanced reputation, more leads, sales, etc.). The tendency for far too many is to be lazy and transparent instead of helpful and collaborative.

The Cab Ride I’ll Never Forget

Via Zen Moments, and Dooce, a great story from the author of Letters To My Son, Kent Nerburn. A great read to remind you about the little moments and deeds that make all the difference:

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

The Cab Ride I’ll Never Forget | Zen Moments

If you’re a dad and you haven’t read Letters to My Son, you should check it out.

52 Creative Ideas for Finding New Clients: Bootstrapper

You should be able to tell where my mind has been recently.

As a bootstrapper, you know that clients equal business. Without them, you’d just be another one-man (or woman) shop with an office trying not to go into debt. Fighting for and retaining clients against your competition can be a struggle, just like recruiting new employees or searching for a job yourself is a frustrating battle.

Bootstrapper » 52 Creative Ideas for Finding New Clients

How To Increase Business While Beating The Summer Heat: Freelance Folder

Start a marketing blitz, or a newsletter with your church, check in with old clients, contact your local chamber — all sorts of great ideas here.

How To Increase Business While Beating The Summer Heat | Freelance Folder | A Blog For Freelancers And Web-Workers

PMBA: Make 2008 Your Most Productive Year Ever by Creating a Personal Master Plan

Some things to remember as you’re getting through the crash from your un-done New Year’s Resolutions, and perhaps get yourself back on track:

To achieve anything you want in life, you absolutely must to do three things:

1. Identify what you really want (vs. what you think you want) and create a positive, immediate, concrete, and specific goal that captures that desire accurately.

2. Focus your energy by deciding what’s most important right now and what can be done later.

3. Create a simple plan to ensure your daily actions will ultimately lead to the accomplishment of your most important goals.

Each and every one of us has a few things we’d like to improve about our health, our relationships, our career, our business, and our opportunities for relaxation and fun. Creating a “Personal Master Plan” is the best way to stop dreaming and start doing.

Make 2008 Your Most Productive Year Ever by Creating a Personal Master Plan

12 Filtering Tips for Better Information in Half the Time: RSS, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon

 Tim Ferriss’ blog is about to help me once again — this time, cutting out some of the “surf time” for information I use every day using RSS, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon.

In a digital world, the race goes not to the person with the most information, but the person with the best combination of low-volume and high-relevancy information. The person with the least inputs necessary to maximize output.

I admit I used to use RSS, but I stopped using it as soon as I started using tabbed browsing in Safari (and now Firefox). It’s so simple to just call up all my favorite sites by “opening all tabs” that I just stopped using RSS altogether. However, I’m missing the key timesaver of RSS feeds now –the ability to only read new posts, and skim content on multiple sites simultaneously.

On to the tips, from Ryan Holiday:

Using RSS Effectively:

1) Don’t Use Categories
Organizing all your feeds by genre is tempting but will burn you out.

2) Don’t check it on the weekends

3) Clean House
If an author isn’t delivering consistently, cut them out. If they ever improve enough to be worth reading again, you’ll probably hear about it.

4) If it Piles Up, Throw it Away
Just click “Mark All As Read” and move on. If you’re utilizing Delicious and StumbleUpon correctly, both later in this article, all the important stuff will come back to you.

Stumble Upon Tips

I haven’t used StumbleUpon yet — but from these tips, I think I will:

StumbleUpon is a valuable tool as a reader or a blogger. As a reader, it allows you to hierarchically rank the Internet–thumbs up or thumbs down, Gladiator style. Based on your voting history and interests, it lets you “stumble” on to pages that you’ll like…

1) Actually Joining the Community
… your votes won’t mean anything if you haven’t voted often and voted well for other pages you actually think are worthwhile.2) Guide, but Don’t Direct
…go through your archives and make sure anything that has been submitted is in the right place. By keeping up on this, you can optimize your site for the traffic it deserves.

3) Dial in Your Interest, Let Computers Do Your Work
Every time you vote, tag, and review a story, the Stumble Upon algorithm gets to know you that much better. Start by voting in all your favorites, sites who’s feed you subscribe too, and writers you read everyday…

4) Use Only the Essentials.
…Go to “Toolbar Options?Position Options” and place it anywhere you want …  thumbs up, thumps down button– [is] everything that you need.

Del.icio.us tips

Although (IMO) stupidly named, I actually used del.icio.us for awhile as my personal bookmark aggregator (before I started using Google Browser Sync to handle the same task). When I was using delicious, seems I missed the social part a bit:

Delicious, if you use it right, not only makes your bookmarking system [highlighting good pages for later reference] portable but it hires all your friends as personal news shoppers for you. If you were looking to outsource your morning read, but didn’t want to pay those Indian MBA’s, this is how you do it.

Making your Bookmarks Del.icio.us:

1) Use the “Links for You” section
Delicious’ killer app is its ability to facilitate sharing. When friends read a story they think you’d be interested in, they tag it to you and it shows up in your account to be read at your leisure.

2) Give to Receive
While you’re doing your regular read, keep your friends in mind. If you see an article that’s relevant to a friends business, tag it “To:UserName” and it shows up in their account.

3) Mark them “To_Read”
When you see something that you know you have to read, but don’t have time for now, set up a category that delineates that you’ll go back to it. Think of it as a DVR that saves the stuff you need to watch but didn’t want to be chained to the clock for.

4) Be Simple
Use the Classic Del.icio.us buttons and nothing else. In Firefox, it puts them right next to your navigation bar, one for tagging and the other to view your bookmarks. Use as few tags as possible…  And lastly, only befriend people who provide quality material. The last thing you need is the website equivalent of chain-emails showing up in your account.

Here’s to more efficient browsing!

DO-based resolutions: DO more/less, start/stop DOing

Thinking about what I want 2008 to be like, it occurred to me that there’s some real actions I can take, or shouldn’t take, and that would be an easy way to keep it all manageable. The goal is to make the list more task/next-action oriented, and therefore easier to stick with. Here then, are a few things I’ll be doing more or less of, start or stop doing.

START DOING

1. Work out every day — starting small, then building the habit
2. Implement GTD fully — next actions, 2-minute rule, projects lists
3. Implement a 4 Hour Workweek “muse”
4. Blog regularly here

STOP DOING

1. Procrastinating

DO MORE OF

1. Reading business books
2. Eat healthy foods
3. Play with the kids
4. Go on dates with the wife
5. Visit with friends

DO LESS OF

1. Snacking on junk food
2. Surfing the web without a specific purpose
3. Taking on projects with little/no ROI

Have any others I should add, or care to weigh in on what you would DO? Let me know!

Shave Ten Hours Off Your Work Week

From Where I Sit: How to Shave Ten Hours Off Your Work Week

It takes a ton of time to do the routine things if you don’t keep close tabs on what you’re doing. In light of Tim Ferriss’ brilliant “Four Hour Work Week,” here’s some suggestions from Michael Hyatt to bring big time savings into your day without jumping off the grid or hiring a company in india to do your taxes. My favorites:

1. Limit the time you spend online. In my experience, the Web is most people’s #1 time suck. Yes, I know it is a wonderful tool for research, blah, blah, blah. But I often catch myself and my family members mindlessly surfing from one page to another with no clear objective in mind. Before you know it, you can eat up several hours a day. The key is to put a fence around this activity and limit your time online. Set a timer for yourself if you have to.

I’ve taken to timing my web surfing into 15 minute slots, often as “reset points” between big projects. It’s way too easy to burn an hour or more if you don’t stay mindful of what you’re doing.

2. Touch email messages once and only once. Okay, let’s be honest. How many times do you read the same email message over and over again? Guess what? The information hasn’t changed. That’s right. You are procrastinating.

One of my biggest challenges — I still tend to keep things in my inbox as long as they’re “undone” — leads to way too much rework. GTD and do/delegate/defer, along with the 2-minute rule of handling (“just do it if you can complete the next action in 2 minutes or less) would save me hours a week. My big challenge for ‘08.

4. Stop attending low-impact meetings. If there’s one thing we can probably all agree on, it’s that we go to too many meetings. Either the meeting organizer isn’t prepared, the meeting objective isn’t defined, or you can’t really affect the outcome one way or the other.

I still have a lot of these on my calendar — and am actually getting rid of three of them as a result of this thought.

5. Schedule time to get your work done. This is crucial. As the saying goes, “nature abhors a vacuum.” If you don’t take control of your calendar, someone else will. You can’t spend all your time in meetings and still get your work done.

Instead, you need to make appointments with yourself. Yes, go ahead and actually put them on your calendar. Then, when someone asks for a meeting, you can legitimately say, “No, I’m sorry, that won’t work. I already have a commitment.” And you do—to yourself!

Biggie. I have some dedicated slots — mainly at the beginning of the week, mid-week and then at the end of the week to check in with myself and then hammer out next actions.

7. Engage in a weekly review and preview. Part of the reason our lives get out of control is because we don’t plan. Once a week, you have to come up for air. Or—to change the metaphor—you have to take the plane up to 30,000 feet, so you can see the big picture.

Keeping control and planning can seem like a lot more work, and if you’re already strapped for time and stuggling to keep up it can seem insurmountable to take on “one more thing” in your calendar. But if you don’t plan for completion and add some structure to how you handle your tasks, it’s only going to get worse.

Today

Look to this day
For Yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today, well lived,
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.

- Sanscrit proverb

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