business
In Business, It’s All an Experiment
Feb 10th
To paraphrase from “The Joy of Living,” a bird needs two wings: the wing of wisdom and the wing of practice.
I wouldn’t want to learn from a teacher who never experiences and only theorizes, nor would I want to learn from one who never reflects on his experiences and, therefore, never gains wisdom.
When you’re trying to run your own business, I think you need time to experiment and try new methods and approaches to your systems and your work. But you also need time to reflect on what’s working and what’s not so that you can modify your direction as you go.
I’ve talked with several business owners in the past few months who have recently become known as experts in their respective niches, and they all have said that even though they know that they’ve been at it for, in some cases, 10 years or more, it’s still hard to feel like an “expert” at what they do (or maybe it’s just strange hearing themselves called that). The truth is, though, they have been doing their work, learning their trade, figuring out how to be successful for years and have earned that title, even if it is strange to hear it themselves.
No, they still don’t get it right all of the time. They still flounder and figure things out as they go, just like the rest of us, but I still personally value their insight very much. By learning from their wisdom, even as they continue to practice, I save myself some steps here and there, and sometimes I even save myself a lot of headache and heartache from side-stepping mistakes they’ve made and that they’ve been so kind as to help me avoid.
Certainly, you want to figure out how to get it right so that (sooner rather than later) you can do the things that will help you succeed in your business, but you also have to save room for experimentation and for failure. It’s how we learn, it’s how we grow, and ultimately, it’s how we succeed.
What have been the greatest experiments of your business, whether they ultimately failed or succeeded?
Photo by Flickr user mikebaird, licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Keep Your Business Running Smoothly
Feb 2nd
What’s the one thing you need to do on a regular basis to keep your car running? It needs fuel or else it stops running. Every car needs refills — just like every business needs clients to bring in income.
However, a car runs better and more efficiently when you maintain it regularly. It’s the same with your business –business needs similar care and attention to keep running as smoothly as possible.
Scheduled Maintenance
Like changing the oil in your car, a business needs regular maintenance. That comes in the form of administrative tasks, which include paying quarterly taxes, creating monthly invoices and reviewing bank accounts. Some people have time tracking processes in place to see where they spend their time and use that data to improve their work.
How does this apply to a web worker, especially a solo one? For example, I’m a freelancer who works with a diversity of clients. My core process is producing content. I still have to do maintenance otherwise I don’t get paid and the Internal Revenue Service will come after me for not paying taxes. Failing to handle this will crash my business. I also need to market my business so my gas tank remains full, which I do primarily with social media.
Unscheduled Maintenance
We never know when a flat tire might happen; I had one a few weeks ago. Tires also need topping up with air, but you never know when. A headlight could go out leading to a costly fine unless you fix it before the cops catch it.
No matter how proactive you may be with your business, unexpected things happen forcing you to react. Unscheduled maintenance for a business could be an an illness, computer problems, a changed deadline, a client complaint, a late delivery or missing parts. Some things you can prepare for and some you can’t. Car accidents and other unexpected things happen and you can’t have a solution for them of them in advance. Not that you’ll wreck your car, but you can prepare by buying a car with safety features, wearing a seatbelt, carrying your insurance card and having a cell phone handy. For your business, this means creating processes to minimize damage while keeping everything else running smoothly.
Staying Clean and Shiny
Everyone has different rules for how often their cars receive a cleaning and polishing. Keeping your car clean doesn’t just temporarily improve its appearance, it also protects the paintwork.
For your business, you can help to keep it similarly clean and shiny by reviewing goals on an annual basis, and always doing continuous process improvement. In other words, step back to look at your current processes and projects to see if they’re on track, or if they could use some improvement and streamlining. Dawn recently shared her task management secrets and how she made changes to her processes to better manage her work.
Things change, so continually reviewing your processes is a must. For instance, we recently redesigned this site to improve the integration of social media and showcase our content. The new design didn’t just come about because the old one was tired. When the original design went up, social media wasn’t yet as integrated in web sites as it is today. Goals change. Technology changes. New tools come out. If we didn’t update our technologies and tools, we wouldn’t have the new safety features in cars, and we’d be stuck in Windows 3.1 without the many elements that make our computing easier.
How are you taking care of your business to keep it running smoothly?
Be Willing to Put Yourself Out There
Jan 26th
When I was fourteen I was falling fast
For a blue-eyed girl in my homeroom class
Trying to find the courage to ask her out
Was like trying to get oil from a waterspout
What she would’ve said I can’t say
I never did ask and she moved away
But I learned something from my blue-eyed girl
Sink or swim you gotta give it a whirl.
- John Michael Montgomery, “Life’s a Dance”
I’m surprised sometimes by business owners who turn down opportunities for promotion. We can all feel intimidated by the thought of putting ourselves or our ideas out there, but whenever that happens to me, I stop and ask myself, “Are you serious about this?”
If there’s one thing I’m figuring out, especially lately, it’s that you have to be willing to make the approach. You have to be willing to ask for what you want. Ask the person to be a guest for your blog or podcast. Ask to be covered on another person’s site or radio show. Ask someone to join you for lunch or coffee. Just ask.
Maybe they’ll say yes. Maybe they’ll say no, but who cares? There are a million other people to ask.
It’s nerve-racking, spine-numbing and absolutely intimidating to get out there and tell the world about yourself and your business, but at some point, you have to ask yourself just how serious you are and how willing you are to let go of your fears and inhibitions and just do it.
The point is, you’re not going to get anywhere by staying holed up behind your computer screen tweaking, thinking, lurking or waiting. You have to take the initiative. Marketing, promotion and publicity – it’s all intimidating, and very few people are comfortable with it. That’s OK, though. If you admit that you’re nervous, people will be quick to support you and will actually see you as a real person who messes up and has feelings and is just like them, and that’s what you want — to make a connection with others.
What’s the best thing you ever accomplished by putting yourself out there?
Image from Flickr by geeknerd99
