Photo from Library of Congress collection 

Do you ever feel like there’s not enough time in the day to get everything done?

Sometimes you just feel flat out tired.

As a small business owner, you’ve got it worse than most.  You’re wearing a bunch of hats, a lot of times you’re covering new ground and ultimately the buck stops with you (to paraphrase President Truman).

There are a lot of strategic ways to work smarter, you can work on systemizing your business, you can get a coach to help you focus and prioritize or you can hire the right people and delegate stuff.

But your first step should probably be to work on your Personal Effectiveness and finding more effective ways to getting things done.  Here are 10 ideas / resources that might help to get you started.

1.  Get Motivated 

A big key for most people in regards to working hard and being focused is finding and keeping the right level of motivation.  That might mean having a clear idea of why you’re doing what you’re doing and what the big picture vision / goal is for you.  Is it financial independence?  Buying a new house / car/ boat?  Whatever you would find motivating as a reward should be clearly tied to whatever you’re doing.

This post on the top 20 Motivation Hacks has some great ideas on things to try for those projects, goals or activities that you know are going to be challenging (or just take a lot of time).

I especially like numbers 12, 11 and 5 – and of course number 9! 

2.  Look into Productivity Tools

There are a lot of really cool things on the web – here’s a huge list from Mashable on all sorts of productivity applications that are out there.  It can be overwhelming, but start with something that you know you could use and give it a try.

How about an online list / to do manager like Remember The Milk?  You can access the list from anywhere you can get web access (including your phone) and get reminders sent to you in a bunch of different ways.  There’s lot of other applications – check it out and see what you think.

How about a mobile voice activated note taking service like Jott?  Have a great idea in the car?  Call Jott and leave yourself a note that will get emailed to you or to someone else.

3.  Get a Virtual Assistant

There can be a bit of a learning curve on how to use a VA effectively (and how to find the one that’s right for you and what you want them to do) but there are a lot of resources on the web that can help you out.  Here’s a good article from Entrepreneur magazine and here’s a helpful post from Zenhabits on Tips for Working With a Virtual Assistant (and Why You Might Want One).

On the same topic, I’d like to recommend Sundi Hayes at My Office Zilla (best logo ever…!).  She’s smart, professional, hard working and really easy to work with.  She may not be the perfect fit for everything you need done, but she can probably point you in the right direction if she can’t help you.

4.  Become more effective with your email

I would say almost everyone I talk to has experienced some form of email overload, and most of the time, they are waging a constant battle against it.

In a lot of ways, it’s a necessary evil, but there definitely are ways to be smarter about how you use email.

Here’s a good summary of easy changes you can make from 43 Folders:  Five Fast Email Productivity Tips.  Here’s another one from Lifehacker:  Top 10 Email Productivity Boosters.

Finally, at a minimum you should consider the tip from Timothy Ferris in the 4 Hour Work Week about only reading and responding to your email 2 times a day (or less).  The other posts above refer to this as well, but if you can make this a habit it will really free up your focus and time.  (you should also read the book – it’s well worth while).

5.  Read some good Productivity Books

I already mentioned the 4 Hour Work Week above as a place to get some good ideas (although it’s not strictly about productivity).  My other top recommendations would be Getting Things Done by David Allen and Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

You don’t have to use them word for word, but they will likely inspire you to make some changes and try something new (and hopefully better than what you’re doing now).

6.  Consider Using Send Out Cards

If you are in a business that includes any kind of relationship basis to it (relationships with customers, prospects, referral partners, etc.) then you should be sending them hand written notes from time to time – as thank you’s, as invitations to events, as a way to keep in touch or just to say hey.  Email is great, but a physical card or letter has a lot more impact.

So now that you know you should be using cards or letters to stay in touch, then you should sign up for Send Out Cards.  I can pick out a card online that matches whatever I want to say (out of thousands to choose from), type in my personalized message and have it mailed in less than 3 minutes at a cost that’s less than it would cost me to mail from home.

I’m a distributor for Send Out Cards, so if  you think you might be interested in checking it out, I can let you try the service out for free and you can see what you think – just contact me or send me an email and let me know.

7.  Use Aggregation Tools for gathering information.

This might be redundant with the productivity tools, but I think it’s worth it’s own section.  We tend to forget how incredibly fortunate we are to live in the current day and age of super abundant information.  You can find anything and everything on the web and if you’re going to succeed in the long run, you should be learning new stuff all the time.

However, all of that information makes it really hard to find and read the worthwhile stuff.  That’s why you should use RSS Feeds  and readers to keep up with blogs and websites you really like.  A lot of times, you can also sign up to Blogs and have updates sent to you via email (generally check the sidebars towards the top of the blog to find out how to sign up).

You can also check out an aggregation site like Alltop which is kind of a ‘best of’ of the web in a bunch of different topics and categories. 

8.  Start using the 80/20 Rule

Everybody has heard of the 80/20 rule, but very few people actually use it in a way to be more productive.  At the highest level, the rule states that 80% of your productive effort comes from only 20% of your work.  What if you could just focus on that 20% of your work that actually is productive and reinforce that or just free up a lot of your time…

Here’s a great post with some ideas on how you might be able to apply this to your work environment:  World’s Best Productivity Hack – the 80/20 principle.  Here’s another one from Scott Young that’s a little broader but has some good ideas:  Twenty Unique ways to use the 80/20 Rule today.

9.  Recharge your Brain

Sometimes your lack of focus problem is actually physical, not mental.  Have you ever felt sluggish, tired or just plain out of it when you know you have to get some things done?  A couple of simple suggestions that seem really obvious, but most people don’t do:

• Get up – take a walk and get your blood circulating.  It doesn’t have to be lengthy, just get moving.
• Build in some planned breaks and then use them to do something completely different than what you were doing before.
• Get enough sleep…(easier said than done).

Here’s a good article that has more ideas along these lines:  14 Simple Ways to Super Charge your Brain.  I don’t have any data to back up the diet recommendations they make, but their reasoning makes sense.

10.  Laugh and have some fun

Even when you are in total crunch mode, sometimes the best thing you can do is to have some fun. 

Take a break and go check out something that’s funny.  I’m a big fan of Comedy Central and Despair.com, but there’s lots of other funny stuff out there.

Another way to increase productive by having fun is to make your project or task more of a game.  You can either compete with yourself or you can setup some sort of competition with others.  It should be more about making it fun than the competitive part, but it’s a great way to put a twist on stuff that you might not ordinarily enjoy.

There’s more where that came from!

So that’s my list for today, I know I just scratched the surface but it should give you some new ideas.  Let me know if you’ve got some great personal productivity ideas that I might have missed (I’m sure there’s a lot).  Maybe you know of some great books, tools or websites that I didn’t mention.  Share them here in the comments section.

Now go out there and be (more) productive!

Shawn Kinkade  www.aspirekc.comSimilar Posts:

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If you’re in the market to sell something (product or a service), you know you’ve got a huge competitive advantage when you can give your customers a unique experience.  Just this last weekend, the Kansas City Zoo offered up an opportunity to see and experience something totally different.

If you live in Kansas City, then you know that the Zoo has had a rough go of it for quite a long time – including most recently a lot of issues with funding.  However if you haven’t been for a while, you ought to go check out the recent improvements (with more on the way).  The changes to the front entrance are mostly cosmetic, but they do a great job of streamlining entry into the Zoo proper and really add to the overall welcoming feel.

More importantly, the addition of a nice North American Otter exhibit right at the entrance is a great step in the right direction.  Everyone likes Otters and they’re usually doing something interesting and playing with each other.  It now feels like there’s stuff to look at throughout the Zoo, not just the far corners.

What’s the Marketing Opportunity?

On top of the new additions and the landscaping / architecture changes, a donation was made recently for enrichment for the Cheetahs – see the story at the Kansas City Star on

Zoo Cheetahs taken for a chase (don’t miss the video on the right hand side).

We went on Saturday morning when they duplicated the process described in the article as the start of their planned monthly program.  They were going to run the track twice, but the Cheetahs managed to break the line (or take it off the pulleys) so they could only do it one time on Saturday.

However without any real advertising (outside of the story in Star that was on the 3rd page of the Local section) they were past standing room only at the exhibit 20 minutes before the planned start time (which is when we go there).  I would estimate there were at least 50 people waiting for an extended period of time on a pretty hot morning – all for a 2 – 3 minute exercise burst from the Cheetahs.

And you know what – it was totally worth it!

How many times have you had the chance to see a Cheetah run, even at 1/2 speed 20 feet away from where you’re standing?

We go to a lot of zoos, and I can safely say that this was the most animated, interested and excited I’ve ever seen zoo animals.

Even after the chasing was done, they were intrigued by the lure and they didn’t want to go back into their ‘barn’ so the keepers could fix the problem (that’s why they didn’t end up re-running it).

We hung around for at least a 1/2 hour and the Cheetahs did more interesting things during that time than all of the other times I’ve seen them combined.  (you can see more pictures on my flickr account).

Considering the turnout and the general feedback I heard from people around us, this is the type of thing that would be perfect for a word of mouth marketing campaign.

Here are a couple of thoughts that the Zoo could pursue to take advantage of this opportunity:

1. Consider doing this more than once a month.  As they mentioned on the video, it’s a lot of work to get it set up, but if it can become a real drawing card for a Zoo that’s starved for attendance, I would have to believe it would be worth it.  (The obvious caveat is to make sure it’s okay for the animals, but I would have to believe that there is some frequency more than once a month that would be okay – they ran it on Thursday and again on Saturday, I imagine it’s good for them to get that energized).
2. Build a campaign around the ‘Cheetah Girls’  (they might have to get permission from Disney) but the Cheetahs are all sisters about 2 1/2 years old – kids would love to be able to relate to that.  Note – a campaign doesn’t have to be expensive (see next point).
3. Figure out a way to start leveraging the web and the energized loyal fan base that the Zoo already has – i.e. how many Friends of the Zoo have a blog  or an account online somewhere where they could post a story about the new Cheetah campaign?
4. Figure out if it would be possible to use the same system with other animals (the Lions are right around the corner and I’m guessing they like to chase stuff too…).
5. Figure out if it would be possible to do something like this with other animals – as an example, if you’ve ever seen Kangaroos hop at near full speed, it’s an amazing sight!  You don’t want to turn this into a circus, but if it’s good for the animals and really give people a view into more of what the animals are excited about, then it’s got a plus all around.

I’m sure there are other ideas out there – there’s a lot of great potential at our Zoo, but we have the reality that we are surrounded by at least 3 world class zoos that I’m aware of (Omaha, St. Louis and Denver are all amazing…and have a lot more funding).  So the bar is high, but with some creativity, cross metro funding and the right approach, the Zoo could be a real drawing card for the metro.

My big complaint with the Kansas City Zoo

In general, I think the changes going on at the Zoo are great, but something has to be done about the Tiger exhibit.  As it stands now, I would rather not have a Tiger exhibit (my favorite animal to see at any zoo) than to continue having those 2 Tigers cooped up in a 40 foot cage.

By contrast, we recently got back from Orlando and spent some time at the Animal Kingdom Park, which has by far, the best Tiger exhibit I have ever seen.  Not only do they have 6 or 7 cats, they have areas that are close to 1/2 acre in size (and feel bigger than that) but you can still get great views from several different vantage points.

I know the Disney corporation has a lot more money, but there’s got to be a way to use all of that empty space in the Kansas City Zoo and give the Tigers some room to stretch their legs.

Here’s a picture of one of the Tigers from the Animal Kingdom, imagine being able to see something like that in our own backyard!

Have you been to the Zoo lately?  Maybe it’s time to check it out.  Share your thoughts here on other things they could do to improve the experience.

Shawn Kinkade  www.aspirekc.comSimilar Posts:

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Push versus Pull

Which one of these options sounds better to you?

Option 1:  You develop an extensive advertising and marketing campaign, complete with direct mail, ads in the local media and maybe even a radio campaign.

Your name, your message gets pushed out (hopefully primarily to your target market) and you get a response rate of 1 – 2%, filling the top of your sales funnel.

Option 2:  You create an interesting website that has a lot of useful information.  You publish some articles online and maybe get something published in a local paper.  You do workshops and seminars and people start talking about what they’re learning from you.  It happens slowly, but people start finding you and putting themselves into your sales funnel.

Historically, when people have talked about marketing, they generally are referring to Push marketing (option 1 above).  That’s still a very valuable strategy to use depending on the circumstances, but the evolution to Web 2.0 and the continued decreased effectiveness of mass media means that Pull marketing (option 2) may be a more effective strategy for a lot of small business owners.

It’s not that simple

Of course like most things, there isn’t an easy black and white answer on how you should market.  Most people would agree that you should be using a combination of approaches to really be effective.

As an example, here’s a great post from DoshDosh on Push versus Pull Marketing for websites.  As you’ll see on the post, Pull is all about creating an identity that people will seek out holistically and Push is more targeted on a particular product or service.

Not to further complicate things, but as Seth Godin points out – Push can become Pull (and vice versa).  That may be important because the style of how you communicate across the strategies is likely different.  If I’m trying to pull, I might be more focused on getting the right keywords mentioned so the search engines will pick up my post.

Pushing is generally more direct.

Having said that, I think the really important point is that it probably makes sense to adjust your overall mind set to a Pull first mentality.  You’ll still need and want to use Push strategies and tactics, but the bigger picture goal is to get people to seek you out.

To become known.

Or as Scott Ginsberg puts it – Be the bulls-eye, not the arrow!  I think Scott makes a lot of great points and I absolutely think it’s important to adopt that philosophical approach.  It’s a real uphill battle (that’s also expensive) to continually keep pushing yourself at your prospects.

It’s not easy to create a personal brand and it takes a lot of time (which is one of the main reasons to use both strategies -especially at first).  But if you can create an identity that stands out, that’s different in some way than everyone else, if you can be Remarkable, then you’ve suddenly got a marketing machine that runs mostly by itself.

Isn’t that what you really want?

So what kind of marketing are you using?  Are you pushing or pulling?  Share your thoughts here.

Shawn Kinkade  www.aspirekc.comSimilar Posts:

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I had a great conversation the other day with one of my BANG clients about the need to get some systems in place to help automate processes.  It’s a pretty common problem faced by a lot of small business owners, but before you can really make a call on what the right solution is, you really need to start thinking about a different question.

How big do you really want your business to be?

That may sound like a silly question, you might be thinking “I want my business to be HUGE!!!”, but do you really want that?

Your business is just a tool for you to get what you want out of life!  Nothing more, nothing less!

When I was talking with my client Oliver – owner of Truog Construction, he was telling me about a guy he met recently that used to own a flooring company (and was now a sales rep for a flooring vendor).

This guy used to have a very busy business – he was running 3 or 4 crews installing floors on a full-time basis and had more work than he could handle.

He was also working more than 60 or 70 hours a week.

Finally he took the time to do the math and figured out that he was clearing just about the same amount of money with 3 crews as he had with just 1 crew a few years ago when it was a lot less effort / risk / oversight.  He had increased his revenues, but his systems and processes weren’t scalable and he hadn’t created an organizational structure that could do the work without his direct involvement.

If that’s what you mean by wanting to grow your business and get bigger, you might want to rethink that goal.  I don’t know of very many happy and successful business owners that can hang on to that kind of model for the long run.

A lot of business owners got into their own business because they wanted to be their own boss, call the shots and ideally build something that had some long term value.  However, if you pressed them on it, most of them would also say they would like to have a business that gave them time with their family, a chance to take a vacation or two every now and then and something with the ability to continue to make money whether they were there or not.

What are your choices?

Oliver is off to a great start with his business.  He’s a smart guy, very likable, conscientious, trustworthy and knows what he’s doing when it comes to building and remodeling (and smart enough to know when to get help if it’s something new).

He’s building up a great reputation based on satisfied clients, doing what he says and not trying to sell more than needs to be done.  He’s developing a strong network of expert resources that he can use as subcontractors to get the big and hard jobs done right the first time.

He needs to grow his business at least some so he can get to the appropriate income level, but beyond that he’s got some choices to make. 

1. He could be more of a boutique ‘specialist’ builder, specializing in certain neighborhoods, types of houses and / or certain types of projects.  This approach would allow him to charge a premium for ‘special’ work and keep the overall size of his business down.  This is what I would call the artisan approach.
2. He could perfect his processes and products, making it fairly easy to plug in new employees and teams of people.  He would focus on more of a mass production approach to solutions and cater to specific problems but do it in a very cost-effective, value added way.  This would allow him / encourage him to grow as large as the local market could support (with potential for opening in other markets using the successful model).  This is how a lot of franchises get started.
3. Money permitting, he could kind of split the difference and really just do what he enjoys in terms of jobs and make it more of a lifestyle business.  This tends to be a tradeoff of time for money, but depending on your financial needs it might be a great option.

Technically he also has the choice to be the low cost provider or to brute force an operation together like the flooring guy he was talking to, but I don’t think those are really longer term alternatives.

Whatever choice he decides to make will greatly influence how he goes about building and investing in his business.

What are your thoughts on growing your business?  Do you know what you really want to get out of your business?  Are you actually getting what you want out of your business?  If not, we should talk – give me a call or drop me a line.

Shawn Kinkade   www.aspirekc.comSimilar Posts:

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Photo by fabio_pinheiro 

This is a bit off the beaten path of a regular post, but it does illustrate the kinds of things you can learn as a business owner (and if you’re not learning something new all the time, you should be…).  Specifically I have learned how to infuse Pineapple (pictured above) into Vodka to make a tasty and different type of drink!

Here’s some background:  I’m having a client appreciation Open House / party this week – by the way, if you would like to be invited to future such events, I would be happy to talk to you.  I’m not saying that people would or should become clients just because of things like this, but I’m certainly open to the proposition…! 

Actually it’s just going to be a nice get together to learn more about these great folks that I’m working with, meet their significant others (and vice versa) and just relax for a couple of hours.

Having said that, I wanted to do something a little different in addition to kind of ‘standard’ entertaining fare, so I decided to try creating a Vodka infusion. 

Infusion Confusion

In case you’re not familiar with it, Vodka Infusion is the process of flavoring the base alcohol by extending soaking of fruits, herbs, spices, candy – almost anything you can think of.

Here’s the definition from Wikipedia:

A vodka infusion is a flavored liquor created when vodka is flavored by one or more other ingredients. Vodka infusions may be homemade or purchased commercially; the latter are generally called flavored vodkas. By definition, vodka infusions do not contain added sugar; such beverages are called liqueurs.

It’s a pretty straightforward idea, but clearly the devil is in the details as you’ll find out if you google ‘Vodka Infusion’ and find thousands of pages on the topic (or at least related to the topic).  What’s interesting is that many of the recipes and ideas contradict each other in terms of what works best, how long it should take, etc.

I decided to go with pineapple and generally follow the process outlined at Infused-Vodka.com.  They list pineapple as needing 1 – 2 weeks for proper infusion, but several other sites suggested the appropriate amount of time was a few days.  Since I don’t have a couple of weeks, we’ll be going with the shorter duration and we’ll see what happens.

A lot of the infused Vodka drinks are variations on martinis, but I think we’re going with more of a punch – probably a combination of the Vodka with cranberry and 7-up.  I think it will turn out well, but I have a feeling that the process is more of an art than a science and we will learn things we could do to improve things for next time.

If you’re curious on how things turned out, leave a comment and I’ll fill you in.  In the meantime, what’s something new that you learned recently?

Shawn Kinkade www.aspirekc.com

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