Part 1: Sue Berk of Sue Berk Designs

Sue Berk Designs, founded in 2002, makes painted ceramic crosses, frames, and baby blankets. Sue Berk had no formal art training, but always had a love for it. Her background includes a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas, working in high tech marketing and product management, renovating houses, and making her own tiles for home renovations.

I think the most important thing that Sue Berk did was make the jump from a service-based business (where she was hand-making all her own ceramics for customers) to product-based business (where she could replicate her product in mass quantities). Service-based businesses limit your income because you can only make as much money as you have hours in your day. Sue could only paint so many items in a single day, and the more she painted, the less time she had to live the life she wanted. Switching to a product-based business allowed Sue’s income to take off while still allowing her to enjoy the rewards of seeing her designs in customers’ hands.

Website: Sue Berk Designs

Read the whole article at How to Make Six Figures

Part 2: Mike Koenigs of Traffic Geyser

Mike Koenigs got started at an early age, teaching himself how to program at the age of 14. His first company, Digital Café, a multimedia agency that produced games, movie websites, and other interactive experiences. He’s created over 300 web sites and more than 30 products, and has a quite impressive list of clients under his belt. Mike is also credited for inventing the "Internet Infomercial" for marketing and selling products or services with video on the web.

Mike Koenigs does two things that I really like:

1. He solved a problem in his own life, and then went to help other people like him solve the same problem. For every niche entrepreneur out there, there are many others who are in the same boat and have the same struggles you do. Being a DIYer who solves a problem for yourself puts you in an excellent position to solve that problem for others in your situation. Also, by serving people similar to you for your product, you already have an excellent understanding of your target market.
2. He takes a lot of notes. Whether you use a notebook or a mind-mapping program, I have found that jotting things down serves a record of my ideas and helps me process or refine an idea. Sometimes I see my notebook as a business colleague that I am bouncing ideas off — the ideas are inside me and I have the power to bring them to market, but I need a sounding board to help me refine and clarify them.

Website: Traffic Geyser

Read the whole article at How to Make Six Figures, Part 2

Part 3: Matt and Emily Griffin of Bakers Edge

Matt Griffin came up for the idea for his specialty brownie pan in 1998, but didn’t launch the company with his wife until 2002, and didn’t get the pan to market until 2005. They followed a very unconventional path, from winning an ideas competition (and $25,000 in cash from VISA and MSN), to being picked as one of Oprah’s Favorite Things.

I think Matt and Emily Griffin are an excellent study in perseverance — their product took 5 years of thought and processing to come to the market, but they still did it. Many people think they have to be first to the market to have any success, but a solid idea with a strong plan will make it whether it takes 1 month or 10 years.

Website: Bakers Edge

Read the whole article at How to Make Six Figures, Part 3

Part 4: Steven Woolley of ooTunes

ooTunes doesn’t have an exciting website or celebrity endorsements, but it is the #2 iPhone app of 2010 on CNET and one of Tech Digest’s Top 10 apps for 2009. Steven Wooley’s one-man software development team created an app with an average of 4 stars on 798 ratings with raves on both the app’s functionality and on Steven’s customer service in adding new features and addressing problems.

Steven Woolley is proof that you don’t need heavy funding to launch a serious business — he got started with nothing but a laptop and iPod, both of which had been given to him as gifts! You also don’t need many products to keep your business running strong, as Steven only really makes money from one. The important part is that he works hard on the one product to make it the best it can be, so that his customers keep giving him rave reviews and the sales of his app continue.

Website: ooTunes

Read the whole article at How to Make Six Figures, Part 4

Part 5: Rob Walling of Software by Rob

Rob Walling has been building web applications professionally for 10 years, working as as a consultant, a freelance developer, the development manager for the City of Pasadena, and a team lead for the world’s largest prepaid credit card company. His current "internet portfolio" includes sites like Dot Net Invoice, Wedding Toolbox, and Apprentice Lineman Jobs.

The thing that stands out about Rob is DIVERSITY. He doesn’t rely on any one income stream to meet his monthly numbers, which softens the blow to his finances if one of his sites doesn’t do well in a given month. I think Rob should also be applauded as being one of those small business owners that keeps the economy strong, as he not only pays himself income, but also employs virtual assistants (VAs) to help him run his day to day operations.

Website: Software by Rob

Read the whole article at How to Make Six Figures, Part 5

Part 6: David Wood, author of Get Paid for Who You Are™

David Wood is fast becoming one of the foremost voices in online marketing and lifestyle design, having built a rewarding hobby into a million-dollar online empire that allows him to work and play from anywhere in the world. His book and website helps entrepreneurs turn their passions into rewarding careers by building internet businesses. He breaks his launch plan into five simple steps, and incorporates giving back into the overall vision of building a business.

I think David is spot on when he describes his only limit as being himself now. When you work for yourself, as I do, I have the choice of launching my idea today or one year from now. All I have to do is decide to "feel the fear and do it anyway" (as David says), push through it, and get it done.

I also like that David had so many coaches assist him along the way. So many solopreneurs think they have to do everything on their own, but that isn’t true. It is important to build your own tribe (colleagues, friends, coaches, or financial advisers — whoever it may be!) to see you through your business. Just find the key people who you need to succeed in your business and surround yourself with them.

Website: Get Paid for Who You Are

Read the whole article at How to Make Six Figures, Part 6

Courtesy of ContactMe.com

Starting a Small Business

• How to Write a Great Business Plan
  Sure, you might be able to start a simple business without a business plan if you are not looking for funding, but writing out a business plan is an important step to help you clarify your offerings and goals with your business. I have seen many businesses fail from a lack of focus and direction.
• How to Choose the Right Colors for Your Brand
  From your website to your business cards, the colors you choose shape the opinions people will form about your business. Even if you are hiring someone else to create your branding, you should read this article to know what to watch out for.
• 10 Things to Do Before You Start Your Start-Up
  Planning is an essential part of starting a new business, so do your research before you start your business to save you from a lot of costly mistakes down the road.
• How to Write a Marketing Plan
  Even the most innovative products on the market can die a slow and painful death from a lack of sales. The difference? People who meet their sales goals have a clear marketing plan, which enables them to make the right move at the right time.

Your Home Office

• The Basics of Home Office Design
  Some people can just grab a laptop and go, but I find that I am more productive when I use a space that is designed for working. Mine happens to be in half my bedroom, which would kill some people but it is a good location for me. The goal is to design a space that works for you and meets the needs of your business.
• How to Set Up a Home Office
  This one goes into detail about tax deductions for home offices, which is an important consideration for those who work at home.
• Deducting Your Home Office Expenses
  Knowing what you can and can’t deduct off your taxes before you set up your home office will empower you to make more financially sound decisions for your business setup.

Running a Small Business

• How to Run a One-Person Business
  If you’re looking to run a one-man (or one-woman) show, you’re going to need a variety of skills to get the job done.
• 25 Ways to Jump-Start Your Business
  Has your business become stagnant? Get it going again — fast! — with these hints and techniques.

Sales and Marketing

• How to Improve Your Cold-Calling Skills
  I know that I generally do well on a sales call, but I only make warm calls (and I dread those anyway). The ability to turn a call into a sale without seeming like a pushy salesperson is a valuable business skill that everyone should have.
• How to Manage a One-Person Sales Force
  An efficient system is vitally important to a successful solopreneur business. This article will show you how to get there.
• How to Make Money on Etsy
  Are you a crafty person? You can make a great living on Etsy, selling your handmade goods, if you start with some sound business principles and some marketing know-how.
• How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business
  The key to successfully using social media is to drive sales for your business is creating an efficient system so that you are not wasting all of your valuable time online.
• 7 Common Sales Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them
  By learning from others’ mistakes in sales, you can set your business up to be more successful from the start.

Your Web Site

• 7 Deadly Website Sins
  Before you spend money (or hours of your own time) on a web site for your business, read this article to educate yourself on the issues you should avoid.
• How to Design a Great “About Us” Page on Your Website
  This article is a great read for two reasons: 1) The About page is an important piece of your web site; and 2) The process of writing the About page will get you thinking about your marketing messaging, business goals, and how you will sell yourself both on- and offline.
• 10 Vital Items You Should Give Your Web Designer
  I’m not a big fan of the term "web designer" being used here, but gathering this type of information and handing it over to your designer/developer/marketing lead will save you from having to redo the site a day after you finished the first version.

Small Business Inspiration

• And the Money Comes Rolling InMarkus Frind started Plenty of Fish out of his home, in his spare time, and now his site serves up over 1 billion of pages a month and he pays himself $5mil USD a year.
• How Would You Like to Make $6 Million Sitting on Your Couch?
  Paul Mann runs Fetch! Pet Care, a service with thousands of employees all across the nation that brings in over $6mil in revenue yearly — and he does it all from his home.
• How to Make a Million in Your Pajamas
  If you think you can’t make "real money" working from home, think again — not only are entrepreneurs making sustainable income from their homes, they are increasing their profits by saving on overhead for their business.

I came across the article Guidelines for Going Self-Employed on workawesome this morning, and it feels like they are leaving something out. Sure there are disadvantages to being self-employed, but they are not as bad as the article makes it seem. Here’s the reality of self-employment from my own perspective:

Salary

A guaranteed paycheck is just not guaranteed anymore. I started out my working life in the days of the dot-bombs in Silicon Valley, and I was out of a job every 4 months or so. Today’s economic environment is equally volatile, but it is more widespread across all industries. The problem with working for someone else right now is that you are relying on their decisions at a time when only the fittest are surviving. Is it really "job security" if you are relying on someone above you to make the decisions that are best for you and your family?

I also think it is a myth that you need several years to turn a profit. If you are a smart entrepreneur, bootstrapping your own business, you can turn a profit right away. I made a profit my first month in business because my business model has very low overhead, and I kept my investments smart. There are ways of testing the water and earning income without having to dump large amounts of money into a business that you won’t get back for several years.

Benefits

Benefits for group plan insurance are no longer cheap, nor fully paid for in most companies, so a "regular job" is not a guarantee of benefits. Small businesses also have new offerings in insurance because insurance companies finally got smart and pooled smaller businesses together to look like one large group plan. To get around this problem entirely, just get married to someone with a regular 9 to 5. It has worked well for me for about 7 years now.

Vacation

The article makes it seem like taking a vacation is impossible, but I don’t think that is true at all. I manage to go on daytrips and longer vacations with my family throughout the year, and I’m the only employee in my business. In fact, I don’t know one self-employed person that doesn’t go on vacations. Being self-employed makes vacations easy because I don’t have to ask for time off in advance or get permission to take a trip from anyone. If you are self-employed and finding you can’t take a vacation, try some of these strategies:

• Find another you.
  I’ve made a lot of friends in the business over the years, so I have someone I can call if I need some help with a client while I am gone.
• Take mini-vacations.
  Instead of spending a month away from home, break it up into several trips throughout the year.
• Go wireless.
  Handheld devices are getting smaller and more powerful, and wifi networks are widely available. With tablet PCs, smartphones, iPads, laptops, and other wireless devices, there’s no reason why you can’t check in with work from the road or respond to an emergency if you need to.

Freedom of Schedule

I can’t really just take off half a day whenever I want, as the author made it seem, but I do have the option of picking my kid up from school, taking a park day, and doing most of my work from 9 am to 1 pm and 9 pm to 1 am. That flexibility is what made me decide to work for myself in the first place, so that I can have the family life I wanted and be there for my kids.

In Conclusion

While working for myself is not always a walk in the park, it is really not as scary as the author made it seem. I love it and have been doing it for over six years now. It really has been the best choice for me and my family. I wouldn’t want it any other way!

Flickr photo by ShashiBellamkonda.

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!

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?

In the end, it had nothing to do with the aesthetics or the influence, but with clarity. I simply felt the ads were distracting me from my true, internal reasons for having this site, and I couldn’t let that happen. The ads were removed, my purpose for this site has been reaffirmed, and all order has been restored.

Which brings me back to my continued goal of Less for 2008: Less Noise. By taking the time to reflect on my true goals and eliminate outside influences in my decision, I came up with the right decision for me—and that is what "less noise" is all about.

What is noise? Noise is the activities going on around you, the distractions hiding your message, the things keeping you from your focus, clarity, and true self.

Reducing Actual Noise

I don’t know how anyone works from a coffee shop. I suppose if I had some sort of writer’s block, I might head to one to energize myself to get going again—but for the most part, that amount of action and sound is completely distracting to someone trying to work. Instead, I work from home, where I can have the house as quiet as I want and not have to worry about my silence being invaded. If controlling your environment is not possible, try these ideas:

• Don’t listen to music.
  I know someone is going to come on here and tell me how their music makes them work better, but for the most part, it does not. (The one exception might be music without lyrics, played softly, but even that is not always effective.) What happens in reality is that your brain is going into overload trying to stay on task while also processing the words to the song and whatever else is going on. This kind of mutiltasking actually makes you slower and more prone to mistakes. So turn that music off and learn how to enjoy the silence.
• Wear earplugs.
  If you have no choice but to work in an office or a noisy location, bring some earplugs with you. Of course, don’t use them in any situation that might be dangerous, such as while riding a bike or driving a car, but feel free to use them when your yackity cube mate just won’t shut up.
• Soundproof your home office.
  Even if you don’t live near an airport or a busy freeway, reducing the noise in your environment can help you concentrate better and reduce your stress levels. There’s strong evidence to support the idea of noise inhibiting learning and causing stress, such as this study on children and noise done by my alma mater, Cornell University.

Quieting the Noise in your Head

External noise isn’t the only thing distracting you. For many entrepreneurs, the constant swirl of ideas and passions makes concentration nearly impossible. To clear your head so that you can concentrate more, try these new habits:

• Use a notebook system.
  It doesn’t matter if it’s an actual notebook with a pen, 20 notebooks, bits of scrap paper, or a file on your computer: writing things down will get them out of your head and make room for you to process the things you are currently working on. Think of it as a mental filing system—by putting your thoughts on paper, you allow your mind to free itself of the burden of trying to remember them. Many people love the Getting Things Done system for this.
• Find a quiet place.
  Some people go for walks, meditate, or practice yoga; I do all my best thinking in the shower. The purpose of this is to find a space in which you are free of noise and distractions in order to internalize your thoughts and solve your current challenges. When I am under the greatest work stress, I have gotten a great deal of clarity out of hot shower or a extra-long run.
• Listen to yourself.
  Many times, a struggling business owner will seek out the answers to get through the next dip by hiring consultants, callings colleagues, or spending hours on Google. These activities often add to the noise and stress, not reduce it. Instead, try internalizing your search and reflecting on your current progress and goals. You may find that you have more of the answers than you think! This process also allows you to adapt your business to current challenges while avoiding any "me too" behaviors or opinions that will draw you away from the core of your business.

Taming the Electronic Noise

All of the electronic devices we depend on can add to the noise in our lives that is keeping us from greater productivity. To tame that beast, turn it off! You can live for an hour or 2 without checking e-mail, IM, Twitter, or your phone messages. There are very few times in life where picking up the phone on the first ring is actually important.

Eliminating Behavioral Noise

In my next post in this series, I will go more into the nuts and bolts of eliminating unnecessary activities and actions from your daily life. For now, focus on time management and wasting less time as a way of eliminating behavioral noise—by removing unnecessary actions from your daily life, you will help eliminate the noise from your business as well.

Filling the Noise Void

What happens when the noise is gone from your life? Your signal to noise ratio increases, making the message and path of action more clear for you. That is the goal—to help your brain eliminate or reduce the noise in your life in order for the true message to come through clearly. The entire process of eliminating noise from your life will help you to achieve clarity and confidence in your business strategy and execution.

A Note About This Series

In case you missed it, this series started with Less, Part 1: Time.

Photo by BarelyFitz.

Part 1: Wasting Less Time

When I think of time management, I don’t think of scheduling every minute of my day. Instead, I think of eliminating the things in your daily activities that don’t hold meaning and making room for the things that are important to you. Eliminating time wasters will make you a better and more productive entrepreneur. I’ve processed through my own life and the stories I’ve heard from colleagues, and identified some time wasters that I do during the day. Some of these may be funny to you, but I’m trying to be as honest as possible in order to help you identify and eliminate the time wasters in your own life.

Phone Calls

I once had this guy call me who went off for nearly 45 minutes—and I swear he did it without a single breath. As the conversation was really only good for the laugh I had retelling the story to a friend of mine, I found myself wishing I could have redone that hour of my life and let the voicemail pick up the second time around. Don’t get sucked into that trap. Your time is precious and you don’t have enough extra to be wasting with useless people or telemarker sales calls.

Action items: Keep important phone calls on task and schedule them to not interrupt your work flow. If you work alone, don’t pick up the phone for a number you don’t recognize; let it go to voicemail. Learn the art of ending a conversation better than I can, and get off the phone when you get stuck talking to a blowhard.

Personal Tasks

When you work from home, like many of my readers do, you can easily get caught up in personal tasks that suck up your work day. Don’t. Save your cleaning, shopping, decorating, laundry, childcare and other personal tasks for non-work hours. Those dishes will still be there in 2 hours when you call it quits for the day, so don’t use them as a reason to procrastinate on a project.

Action item: Set regular work hours, and use those hours only for work-related activities.

E-mail

Tim Ferriss (author of The 4-Hour Workweek) says that you can triple your productivity by eliminating your e-mail overload. If elimination isn’t possible, perhaps you can take advice from Scoble on how to process all of it better. The connection between these two is that e-mail is a horrible time waster, and the only way to gain back that time is to tame the e-mail beast without hurting your business.

Action items: Become an e-mail ninja. Don’t send e-mail first thing in the morning. Schedule times to check email throughout the day, but not every 5 seconds when you are trying to procrastinate. If you need to write a long explanation, maybe it’s faster to pick up the phone and do it verbally.

Craigslist

Now, there are many reasons to use Craigslist: I have used this site to find new homes for my daughter’s outgrown toys, hire an artist, and look for freelance writing jobs. But if you can spend an hour laughing at the "Best Of" or half a day in one of the forums, then you’ve really lost sight of the big picture.

Action item: If you must use Craigslist, just find what you are looking for, and get out.

Bargain Hunting

I always laugh when I see someone go to purchase a new piece of office equipment, such as a scanner, and they go to 10 different stores to try to find the lowest price. In the amount of time you spent trying to save $5, you could have been spending 4 more hours working. I love a good deal just as much as the next guy, but not if it’s going to suck up my entire day.

Action item: Use tools such as Google Product Search, PriceWatch, or PriceGrabber to know what prices are before you buy, even if you are just going into the store. Many brick and mortar retails also have online versions with in-store pickup so you can compare pricing before you get into your car.

Daydreaming

I’ll confess: I actually spent an hour today looking at housing for a place we may not be living in for another 6-12 months. While daydreaming is nice, it’s not very productive.

Action item: Table that daydreaming until the day when you are actually able to put your plan into action. If you must do it anyway, use a timer to keep it short or you may spend all day playing on the internet.

Learning

I have heard from many entrepreneurs in the initial start-up phase that the learning curve is very steep. The real question is, are you really learning anything? I’m sure you can easily spend a few hours on a tangent surfing the web for affiliate marketing on the internet, but will that help you or your business in any sort of way? If not, don’t do it.

Action item: Delegate tasks when you can: Hire a bookkeeper instead of teaching yourself accounting, for example. If you need to educate yourself in a topic, find one or two sources that can be a regular source of information in that particular subject matter and use that to get answers instead of spending hours searching Google.

Blogs

Robert Scoble reads hundreds of blog feeds every day, and I think he’s nuts. I’m with Rob May when he says that you just don’t need all of that information—it isn’t really making your life any better anyway.

Action item: Look at your list of RSS feeds. Which ones have really helped you in your business, and which ones just produce a lot of fluff pieces? Use your RSS program to sort the ones that are regular must-reads or just eliminate the non-useful feeds out of your program.

The All-Encompassing Question

There are some valuable time wasters, such as when I take a shower to clear my head when I find myself mentally stuck. The trick is knowing whether or not that activity is hurting you or helping you. If you find yourself wasting time at any point in the day, just ask yourself: Is this activity going to add value or meaning to my life? If the answer is no, don’t do it.

Photo by FABIOLA MEDEIROS.

The ability to reschedule work when my child needs me is one of the best things about working from home. I made the decision to work from home before I got pregnant because I wanted to have the flexibility of being there for my baby when she needs me. This perk has downsides, however, which are frequent problems for many work-at-home parents. Your family calls asking for favors, your spouse expects you to be able to do the shopping during the day, your friends think you can do playdates and long lunches, and your kids ask you to volunteer for every field trip and class project.

The key to success is to be able to establish boundaries and say "NO". To illustrate this, here are some of the myths about being a parent who works from home, and how to handle each of them:

• Working from home means no child care expenses.
  This is only true for a short period of time when you have one child, or when your child enters school full time if you work part time. When my daughter was younger than a year, I could reduce hours and get away with working while she was asleep, with occasional phone calls while we were on a walk. As she grew older, napped less, and got into more trouble, this became impossible. I started hiring in-home nannies when my daughter was about 18 months old, and then moved on to sending her to childcare part-time. While it is tempting to watch your child and work at the same time, they both deserve your full attention. So focus on work when it is time to work by finding other things for your child to do, and when your child comes home for the day, you can give 100% of your attention to him/her.
• Working from home means that you are available.
  I had to stop taking most personal calls during the day, because my family did just not get it. I could not be paying for childcare and doing their favors at the same time. Just as you would not take an excessive amount of personal calls during the day if you were working somewhere else, limit your personal calls while you are working from home.
• Since you’re not doing anything …
  I don’t know why working from home means you have the time to volunteer for every school function or club outing. If it’s important to you and you can work around it, by all means do so. Otherwise, learn to say no, because your clients are counting on you just as much as the school’s bake sale is.
• You can be it all: Suzy Homemaker, Super Mom, Career Woman.
  Speaking of bake sales, it’s okay to let yourself off the hook and show up with store-bought cookies, or to admit that you don’t have time to clean the whole house with a looming deadline. You wouldn’t take off the day to help your son with the project he procrastinated on if you worked outside the home, so why do it for him just because you work from home? You don’t have to be everything to everyone—just set reasonable expectations for yourself and stick to those.
• You can multitask home and work life.
  It’s better to separate the two and be fully present in each at the appropriate times. Set aside a space and time for you to do your work, do it during that time, and then walk away and be full present with your family. I do understand that some juggling will occur, but try to not make it a regular habit.

Additional Resources

• Balancing Work and Family as a Home-Based Entrepreneur
• Family Issues Facts, Balancing Work and Family
• 6 Tips for Balancing Entrepreneurship and Family
• Balancing Work and Family from About.com Career Planning
• An examination of the role of emotional intelligence in work and family conflict (a research report)
• 40 Mom-Tested Tips for Balancing Work and Family from iVillage
• Balancing Act at BlueSuitMom

Reader Question

How do you find a balance between work and home life? Do you have any tips to share?

]]> http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/im-taking-a-family-day/feed/ 0 http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/carnival-of-the-capitalists/ http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/carnival-of-the-capitalists/#comments Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:50:37 +0000 Nikole Gipps http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/07/23/carnival-of-the-capitalists/ Carnival of the Capitalists for July 23, 2007 ]]> Hello, and welcome to the Carnival of the Capitalists for Monday, July 23rd, 2007. I, Nikole Gipps, am your host for today. I maintain 2 blogs: the one you are reading this on, Small Business Essentials, and another one, Web Technology for Entrepreneurs, which is hosted at StartupNation. I also run a web design and marketing firm, NHG Consulting, which mainly works with small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Two notes before I get started:

• If you like this Carnival, you can see others at the CotC homepage. The founders of the CotC have also taken this "best of the best" concept one step further, creating the site MBA by Blog, which showcases the most educational posts of all time. I’m very excited about this concept, and I invite everyone to contribute to the project so that we can truly reward those who are making some really great content out there.
• Continuing on with our "best of the best" theme, I invite you homepreneurs out there to check out and enter the StartupNation Home Based 100 Contest. This is an annual ranking of the best home-based businesses and a great opportunity to show everyone how great your business is!

And now, on with the Carnival!

MANAGEMENT

Adam Pieniazek provides us with a terrific academic case study of Intuit as a shining example of good leadership and strong corporate culture. I had to call the TurboTax people once for an issue with their online small business product. Their customer service really did exceed my expectations, and now I see that my experience was a reflection of their internal culture and goal to put people first.

Rob May wanted to tell us all that he got an A on his paper, so he wrapped it in a great story about separating personal views from facts in making business decisions over at Business Pundit.

Inspired by Rob, Jim Stroup wants to remind us to Avoid Group Think at Managing Leadership.

Ann Bares gives us insight on Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards, and offers her own take on poorly conceived rewards systems, at Compensation Force.

I started working for myself so I didn’t have to deal with all the managers I once hated—and then I became one of those tyrants myself. If you need a little improvement yourself, check out Wally Bock’s How the Great Supervisors Do It.

Pawel Brodzinski offers us 20 quick pointers on how to build a team.

BUSINESS

Fuqua is a funny name, but I am hoping they can help those Duke boys out with their football program. It’s funny how we all quickly forget that sports is a business, even in college—and that it sometimes takes solid business knowledge to get a team back on track. (Just look at what businessman and lawyer Theo Epstein did for the Red Sox!)

Charles Green shares with us some interesting statistics on trust and how people view certain professions. I didn’t see "web designer" on his list, but from the horror stories I hear from clients about their previous experiences, I’m pretty sure the profession will be in there with "psychics, car salesman, and politicians" soon enough. I’ll have to be careful though—he also mentions that there are consequences to changing perception too quickly.

I wrote an article a while back called Saying No to Non-Ideal Clients. Matt Crandall at Voodoo Turle takes you that next step by telling you to get rid of those current clients that are bringing you down.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

We can learn 20 ways to finance a business startup from Raj Dash at the Bootstrapper. A client of mine, Mark Bebout, recently mentioned that most startups fail from a lack of funding—something I can completely agree with. So when you are bootstrapping your new business venture, finding creative sources of funding is a MUST!

Life Learning Today asks "Should You Start Your Own Work at Home Business?" For me, the answer was a really obvious YES, but you can make this call for yourself after reading these pros and cons.

As a mother, I often give thought to how I can encourage entrepreneurial spirit in my own child. This is why I have included the entry Kids and Entrepreneurship, to remind us all to encourage entrepreneurship in our children. This also seems like a good time to plug Entrepreneurship USA for their contributions to encouraging entrepreneurship in young people across the country.

ACHEIVING GOALS

I know personal issues are often excluded from the CotC, but as I’m a homepreneur myself, business and personal achievement are often one and the same. That is why I have chosen to include these select few off-topic entries:

When my daughter was born nearly 2 years ago, I pretty much had to give up TV because she would never let me make it through a single show. I thought I would miss it, but I haven’t—and now I feel so much more enthusiastic and product. Apparently Jeffrey Strain over at the Saving Advice Blog would agree with me—although I doubt he still manages to watch 42 minutes (no commercials!) of Grey’s Anatomy online every week at ABC.com.

Over at Free Money Finance, we learn that "soft" skills are sometimes more important to learn in college than actual book knowledge. I’d agree that a lot of the technical knowledge I use now was learned outside of the classroom during my college years—but I’m still trying to justify that $120K price tag to myself! This may be something you’d want to take into consideration before heading back to school, although I am the last person to discount the value of a good education and the opportunities that are presented to you while you are there.

This is an article I found while looking through today’s submissions, and it is good advice that I really should be following up on: Optimize Your Work-at-Home Time With 22 Simple Schedule Tweaks So read up all you homepreneurs, and be more productive!

Thanks to the Millionaire Mommy Next Door, I feel richer already. I think her commenters took the exercise a little too litteral though, as I understood it to be just a simple exercise in dreaming big and visualizing your goals. Not a crafty person? You could probably just write your business goals on paper and tape it to your wall.

THE MARKET

Dax Desai gets the award for the most creative investment tactic I have ever heard of. You can learn about it in How to earn 12.28% in a 4.5% World.

James Hamilton at Econbrowser asks "Is OPEC Relevant?" (He thinks not.)

Michael Dawson is going to help you offset the increasing price of food by investing your money wisely in 100 Stocks to Combat Rising Food Prices.

BOOK REVIEWS

Blog Business World offers this interesting review of Funny Business, an even more interesting-sounding book. Thanks to Wayne Hulbert for that one.

LEGAL / GOVERNMENT

Now there’s a public perception problem I wouldn’t want to tackle: Leon Gettler has a terrific article on how government bureaucracy is creating a PR nightmare for some US companies thanks to outdated information at Sox First.

John at QueerCents would like us to Save Internet Radio. Quite honestly, the royalties they are trying to charge are insane for what those stations take in for advertising. The math just doesn’t add up!

AN INVITATION TO READERS

Have you read anything great in the past week that you thought should have appeared here? Feel free to add it in the comments below!

If you would like to be considered for future carnivals, you can submit your entry here.If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please link to it!

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