photo by rhettmaxwell 

European countries tend to have at least 6 weeks of vacation per year.

Actually the more important point – not only do they have that much vacation time, but they actually take the time off and use it!!!

By contrast, the US is averaging about 16.6 days of vacation (according to a study in 2004) with at least a 1/3 of the people surveyed not planning to use all of that.  My guess is that for a lot of small business owners, the reality is even more restrictive than for employees.

According to a different study in 2005, Americans are working 389 hours a year more than their European counterparts, but overall the US is less productive even with 10% – 15% more time on the clock.  (I assume that also takes into account siestas, croissant breaks and late, late dinners – which would make it even worse…!). 

I’m going out on a limb here, but I would have to guess that all work and no play tends to make you unproductive and more likely to go postal.

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One of the blogs that I’ve followed for several years now is Pamela Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation – I first found her blog when I was trying to figure out what I was going to do as I was leaving the corporate world and I’ve kept reading her because she is interesting, entertaining and best of all, she’s very real (caveat – I haven’t actually met her or talked to her, but she certainly comes across as a real person that you’d enjoy having coffee with!).

Anyway, I had a real flash of déjà vu when I read her latest post – Do you and your lizard live in a van down by the river? .   I can vividly remember several conversations I had with my wife on facing the fear that if I didn’t get something figured out soon, we were going to be homeless. 

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photo by woodleywonderworks

As a small business owner there are probably a lot of times when you feel like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.

The reality is that you can’t do it all – at least not for the long run, and if you ever want to take your business to the next level, you are going to have to go out on that limb and get some help.

I’ve had a lot of conversation this week (several of them in BANG! Sessions) with business owners that are struggling with finding help.

In several cases, they’ve been burned previously by hiring someone that over promised and under delivered.  In other cases, they were struggling with the right kind of person to bring on board – the low level assistant that can get the grunt work out of the way?  Or should they bring on the sales lead that can take a real leadership position and really get some responsibilities off their plate? Read More…

There is an ‘X’ factor when it comes to product and marketing success.  There are those products and ideas that make unprecedented leaps to popularity.

They generate buzz and make people talk about them.  Think about things like the iPhone or the iPod.  How about the Nintendo Wii? 

Those products are Dramatically Different!

Note: this is 2nd in a series about supercharging your marketing message by leveraging some of the ideas in Jump Start Your Business Brain by Doug Hall.   This is an excellent book with some really practical strategies and ideas for enhancing your marketing message.  The other post:  Overt Benefits

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There’s always something new on the web, so I thought I would share some updates from a couple of clients of mine and a contact I met a few weeks ago.

Math Monkey going Guerrilla (marketing that is…)

Chris Kutenkuler is the owner of the Math Monkey franchise here in Kansas City and he’s been doing a lot of cool stuff lately.

Not only does he have a great summer camp option with Carver Reading and Mad Science and a new Blog, but he was also just featured on Fox 4 – which is a great way to generate some buzz about your product .  Anyway, check out the blog and a link to the Fox 4 video.

Brain Bucket is starting something new

My friend Toby is doing some additional definition on his business.  He’s still helping business owners develop a really cost-effective web presence, but now he’s adding in the option to get the training and coaching you need to really start building that presence into a marketing tool that can drive your business.

You can read more about his approach on his new creation – the Bucket Blog!  I had a chance to go to his introductory workshop last week and really enjoyed the discussion on real, practical enjoyable ways you can develop your web presence (and why you would want to).  He’s going to be doing them every couple of weeks, so check out the next one on May 30th.

Start navigating with Social Radar

I had a chance to meet with Adam Coomes from Infegy a few weeks ago (we met on the KC Online Community site – you should check that out as well).

Anyway, Adam and his business partner have created a really cool product called Social Radar that can let businesses tap into the ‘buzz’ that’s in the blogosphere.  As an example, if you were running the Democratic National Party, you could use the tool to see which candidate is being talked about the most, who’s talking about them, what the related keywords are and how that’s trended over time.  There’s dozens of ways you could use this information to be more strategic, more informed or better equipped to market your product (or candidate…).

Anyway, Adam and Justin have created a new blog that’s going to start featuring ideas from Social Radar that they can share with the world – they’re doing some pretty cool stuff, you should check it out!

Have a great week – let me know what you think of the new blogs!

Shawn Kinkade www.aspirekc.com