Life’s too short to…

I’m sure you’ve heard that hundreds of times – maybe a bumper sticker or quick comment about the quality (or lack of quality) of a beverage.  “Life’s too short to drink bad beer!”.

If you think about it, it’s a pretty deep thought (maybe not Jack Handey deep, but thought provoking).  I was meeting with someone last week and they had an interesting business related take on it:

Life’s too short to work with people you don’t like.

What a great (and powerful) way to point out the values that are really important to you.  Imagine a small but pointed list of rules that you followed because life is too short not to follow them.  So with that in find, I brainstormed a potential list for you to start with – some of them are mine, some of them came when I did a finish the sentence exercise with a couple of my Peer Group Advisory Boards – let me know what I missed:

Life is too short to…

get stuck in an 8 to 5 job.

(especially one that you don’t enjoy).

worry all the time.

Stop stressing, it’s not like you’re saving lives (please disregard if you are in fact saving lives…).

worry about what other people think.

Live your life on your terms of success – not someone else’s (easier said than done).

not to do what you love / what you’re passionate about.

I don’t really buy into the ‘do what you love and the money will follow’ idea but I do buy into the idea that you will be exponentially better at doing something you enjoy as opposed to something you feel like you have to do.

grow up!

As my client explained ‘Never take your life too seriously – it’s not like any of us is getting out of this alive!’. 

not take risks!

This one is especially appropriate for business owners – it’s all about taking risks, without risk you’re not going to succeed, and if you’re not going to put it out there, you might as well not even try.

hang out with people who don’t challenge and encourage you.

There’s a saying that you’re only as good as the people you spend the most time with.  I’ve seen clear evidence that successful people hang out with other successful people – are your acquaintances bringing you up or down?

work with people you don’t like.

Michael Port writes about a Red Velvet Rope Policy (you have to wait through the ad) in his book ‘Book Yourself Solid’  – basically how ineffective it is to work with people you don’t fit with (and it’s not much fun).

not take vacations.

If you’re a business owner who hasn’t taken a real vacation in at least a year, something is wrong (and we should talk).  I know you’re busy, but if you can’t carve out a week of time to really get away, you’re on the downward slide to closing up shop whether you know it or not.

not have some fun.

Lighten up Francis.  A sense of humor and a willingness to smile will go a very, very long way towards building up fans of your business and employees who like working with you.

What’s your rule?

There’s not really a right answer on this, but I’d love to hear if you’ve got a rule to live by (or if you’d like to have a rule to live by but haven’t been willing to really enforce it yet).  Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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I had a great opportunity to speak on a distinguished panel last week for a Business and Economic Summit put on by the New Landings Job Club here in Kansas City (and before you ask, I don’t know why I was on the distinguished panel either…). 

This wasn’t just any panel discussion, not only were there 10 9+1 sharp panelists – there were 400+ in attendance and focused for 2+ hours!

The purpose of the discussion was to talk about what’s going on in Kansas city with jobs, the economy and what job seekers should be doing and looking for as they work to get into their next opportunity.

There was a lot of great discussion (it was primarily a Q&A format) and I believe the job seekers got a lot of great ideas and good advice…what was interesting to me was how much of that great information and advice also applied to business owners.

We talked about the importance of stalking (done the right way), relationships, professionalism…lots of great points – here are the highlights that I took away:

(photo by Jesse757)

Relationships…I sound like a broken record

I talk a lot about the importance of building relationships because people do business with people that they Know, Like and Trust.  One of the central themes for the evening was a strong confirmation of that fact.  Brad Justice – Owner of Team Office made this point very strongly: whether you’re looking for a job, looking to collaborate with a partner or sign a prospect up for business it all starts with building a genuine relationship.

It takes time…you can’t rush relationships.  It takes effort and a sincere desire to help and connect with someone.  It’s work, but the fact of the matter is most jobs aren’t found through job postings and business isn’t done without some kind of connection.

Add Value

Another common theme was the importance of adding value.  Chuck Vanasse, CEO of Prio, Inc. made a great point about the best way to make a positive impression on somehow when you’re meeting with them…is to simply ask:

“What can I do to help you?”

Approaching anyone with a genuine interest in adding value, solving real problems and helping them will quickly put you at the top of their list – from a job perspective or from a potential client perspective.

Things are looking up…really

We’re not out of the woods just yet when it comes to economy, but the Kansas City metro is doing better than a lot of areas and in some pockets, things are actually going quite well.  This was more than just a gut feeling – Andrew Nave – an economic developer with Overland Park has real data that shows we’re on the upswing and overall it painted a fairly bright picture.

Michael Rapken – the COO of Genesis 10 Consulting reinforced that positive message with the discussion on his company’s growth (and focus on finding quality local resources to work with).  There are opportunities out there.

You’ve got to have Passion and a positive focus

Jon Schramm – owner of The Purple Guys did a great job describing his company and one of the things that sets them apart (besides wearing purple).  They’ve had great success which he attributes (in part) to having a lot of passion about what they do and why they do it – I love their concise Mission, Vision and Values page.

Elizabeth Allen – owner of Marketsmartz was the moderator for this whole event and she covered a lot of great points, but the one that stuck most with me was her message about the importance of getting excited about what you do and keeping a positive approach…even when times are tough.

Stay Educated, Stay Fresh

The world is changing – arguably there’s been more changes in technology and how people live in the last 10 years (internet and mobile) than we’ve had in the previous 100 years!  But if you want to be successful and stay successful you’ve got to keep learning.  Sam Atieh – CEO of the American College of Technology is seeing his clients / students really benefit in tangible ways from going back to school…or even just getting the training needed to stay up on things.

David Longstreet – the President and Owner of Longstreet Consulting took the idea even a bit farther with a great point about how you’re only as old or out of date as you think you are.  To back that up, he shared the story of getting a cool new tattoo as a way to celebrate his 50th birthday.  Take some chances, do things that you have always wanted to do!

The easy way out would be to check out on all of the changes…social media is for kids!…what’s with all of these new-fangled mobile devices, I just want to make a call?  But if you go down that path, not only are you missing out on some amazing things that are going on, but you’re also putting yourself at the back of the line when it comes to business and opportunities (there is a real impact for not participating in what’s going on in the world).  Get excited about learning what’s possible!

Get Found Online…but be professional!

You might have noticed that everyone who was on the panel is not only really successful, but every one of them has a Linkedin Profile and most of them are using Linkedin in a big way.  (Coincidence?  I don’t think so).

What ever you do for your business or your job, people are looking for you.  Can they find you?

If you’re interviewing for a job or meeting with a prospective client, it’s almost certain they are going to look you up on Google, LinkedIn and Facebook…do you know what they’ll find?

As Marquita Miller – owner of Five Start Tax and Business Solutions pointed out…it’s important to be out there, but it’s equally important to be professional about it.  She used a great example about the mistake of posing with a bottle of Grey Goose on your profile picture.  That is almost a guarantee that you’re not going to get that interview…or the follow-up sales
meeting!  (nothing wrong with Grey Goose, but you know what she means!).

The Art of Stalking

Finally – Don Jalbert, VP Sales and Marketing with CTI Solutions had some great advice about sales and prospecting.  The best way to build a relationship and add value is to get know a lot about your prospects (whether it’s the hiring manager or a prospective client).  Online tools like LinkedIn give you an amazing amount of information including telling you people that you know in common…who could introduce you.

Friendly stalking (he doesn’t advocate hanging out around their house), gives you the chance to learn what your target’s interests are, where they went to school, what they’ve worked on in the past, what they write about and who they know.  In short – it’s immensely valuable information…if you take the time.

Great session!

All in all, it was a very good night – lots of great discussion from very smart people and a lot of positive interaction – it was a lot of fun.  I’d love to hear other thoughts – if you were in attendance, please leave a comment below and let me know what you got out of the evening.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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I continue to be surprised with some of the cool applications and sites that pop up… a lot of free stuff and generally pretty innovative!  From a business standpoint, free may not be the best way to go, but I think the developers are in a tough situation.  If you want people to find your stuff, try it out and talk about it, your best bet is to make it free and get it out to a lot of people.

So that’s what I’m doing here – talking about 3 interesting, useful and free sites that you should check out today.

Check out Soluto

The first surprising new site is the recent winner of the Tech Crunch Disrupt contest held this past May (it’s a Silicon Valley review of new technology related start-ups).

Israeli based Soluto is billed as Anti Frustration Software and targets users of Windows who are frustrated with how long it takes to boot up their computers (and why they bog down over time).

Soluto’s approach is an app that runs in the background of your computer during the start-up sequence and measures how long (and what) is running when you’re computer is chugging away.  Once you’ve done the initial load and analysis you can fine tune what runs, remove anything that’s not needed and delay other things that aren’t critical.

I saved about 40 seconds on my start-up (of a fairly new computer), but I can really see the value over time as things get loaded and added in over time – Soluto gives me a way to see what’s actually going on and a way to do something about it (and it’s free)!

Build some Rapportive

Over at Duct Tape Marketing this weekend, John Jantsch suggested a helpful app called Rapportive.  Rapportive works with Gmail and adds in Social Media background on who ever sent you email (into your Gmail inbox).

It has some of the same functionality that Xobni offers with Outlook (also a worthwhile free app that I’ve written about before).  Primarily a quick and easy shortcut to a lot of information on who ever you’re interacting with (links to Social Media profiles, etc.).  It also has the capability for you to record notes, giving you some simple CRM functionality as well.  Simple, but useful.

I believe the trend on this kind of functionality is only going to accelerate – at some point this will be built into all most applications and sites, but until then it would be silly not to take advantage of it now where ever you can.

Go to Market

Finally you should also check out the Google Apps Enterprise Marketplace.  I knew there was  a Google Apps marketplace out there (there’s another one focused on mobile devices similar to iTunes App Store), but I didn’t really know much about it.

It turns out there are hundreds (if not thousands) of free and paid apps available to be checked out at your leisure.  I quickly browsed through some of the accounting and finance apps and found Expensify (an app to help your company streamline expense reporting) which could help out a couple of my clients.

The Market is still evolving, you may or may not find anything useful right now – but keep looking!  This is another big up and coming trend.  Find applications based on what other users think, how well they work and how popular they are…for whatever problem you’re trying to solve.

What cool apps or sites have you discovered recently?  Share your thoughts in the comments below – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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Picture this – you’re in the middle of a 10 day vacation at a cabin in a beautiful resort area.  There’s no cell phone coverage, the weather is great and you haven’t even turned on the TV in days.  You are in a stress free state – nothing you have to do right now, nothing to think about, nothing to remember…you’re practically floating.

What if you could take that feeling into your day to day work filled world?  How much more productive would you be if you were truly focused only on the task at hand?  Not thinking about phone calls you need to make, errands you need to run, stuff that you have to get done…not only would you get more done, you’d feel really good about it as well!

The key to that feeling of relief that you get on vacation or when you’re mind is empty because you’re concentrating and ‘in the zone’ is getting all of the stuff out of your head!  You need to clear your mind.

Previously I had talked about the ‘Dark Lord of Productivity’ being the overwhelming volume of collection points that most people have to deal with when it comes to action items and stuff you need to do.

One of those collection points that you absolutely don’t want to keep using is your head…and unfortunately for most of us, it’s filled to bursting with stuff we should be doing sometime and it causes a lot of problems. 

I’m pulling together workshop material on Productivity and one of the resources that I’m using is Take Back Your Life! by Sally McGhee and John Wittry.  They do a great job of explaining concepts and giving you the background so it makes sense…such as why it’s so difficult to use your head and remember all the stuff you have to do.

Look out…science stuff

One of the reasons that keeping stuff in your head doesn’t work well is due to how your brain works.  All of us use a combination of short term conscious memory and long term unconscious memory.

The short term memory is always top of  mind (no pun intended) and very specific…but you can only hold 4 to maybe 10 things in your short term memory at any given time.  If you add something new to the list, then something else falls out.

Your long term memory on the other hand is theoretically unlimited, but it’s not top of mind and generally won’t come to surface when it’s needed (how many times have you gone to the store only to not be able to remember what it is you’re supposed to be buying?).

So here’s the scenario – you’re in your car and get a call asking you to send a critical email to a client.  You don’t have anywhere to write that down and by the time you get to your desk, something else has come up and knocked it out of your short term memory…end result?  You forget to send the email, client leaves, your cash flow suffers, you can’t make payroll and you end up having to close your business!  (not likely to be that dire, but you get the point).

Clear your Mind

The way to combat the use of your head as a collection point is to first clear your mind of all of the accumulated tasks that are in there and not somewhere where you can use them.  Using Microsoft Outlook’s To Do List or using other tools that help you track things, find a quiet space and time and empty your head of all the things that you need to do.  Don’t worry about when, or how important or with who…just make a note of every that you can think of that you need to do.

Then go step by step through all of the facets of your work life, your clients, your employees, etc. and see if you can drum up some more to dos.  Now do the same thing with your personal life. 

Odds are you’ll come up with a really big list…and likely feel overwhelmed…but it’s the same amount of work that you previously thought you needed to do, the difference is all of that baggage is now out of your head and onto a list where you can at least analyze it.

Going forward, you’ll want to develop a system that will keep things out of your head. 

If you’re in the car and something comes to mind, leave yourself a voicemail or a Jott. 

If you see someone out and about and they ask you to do something for them, ask them to send that to you in an email so that it gets collected into your system (and not in your head). 

If you’re in a meeting, write that to do action item down and get it into your inbox (or on your to do list) as soon as you’re back to your desk.

Your brain won’t literally feel lighter, but there’s a good chance that you will if you can truly clear your mind and free yourself up to focus, relax and really think.

Have you tried clearing your mind?  Do you trust yourself to remember things?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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photo by photos8.com

A lot of people are looking at Social Media marketing as some kind of ‘silver bullet’ for their marketing woes.  As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, there’s good news and bad news when it comes to marketing for Business to Business opportunities.  The bad news is that Social Media is no more of silver bullet for small B2B business owners than any other single marketing tactic that’s out there.  The good news is it can be a very effective tool for helping you get found or established – especially when it’s used in conjunction with other marketing ideas.

In Part 1 we talked about using new media tools as a great way to establish expertise by creating content.  Today we’ll look at couple of other ideas that might be a better fit if you’re not into publishing as much.

Become a go-to source

Some what related to demonstrating expertise, there is a lot of value in acting as an editor and re-publisher of great information.  Whatever your industry is, you are likely spending time keeping up with what’s going on, new thoughts, new ideas and discussions in general.

A lot of that information would also be valuable to your clients, prospective clients or partners, so start sharing and establish yourself as someone to go to for great information!

Twitter is a great way to learn things and to share – check out @GuyKawasaki as someone who takes this strategy to an extreme.

You can also do something the same thing with status updates on LinkedIn (or even Facebook…but it’s likely that your high school friends don’t care!).

Spend 10 minutes a day sharing great information and you will get noticed and followed (ideally you should be also establishing connections and relationships with your target audience when you do this as well – if you’re sharing and not connected with anyone it doesn’t work well!).

Stay top of mind

Another way to look at using Social Media is as a mechanism for communicating and staying top of mind.  What could you do so that you stay top of mind with your key contacts (this could be prospective clients or great referral partners)?  Obviously sharing information and expertise is one way to do this, but it could also be as simple as engaging people and asking questions or giving updates on events (yours or someone else’s).

If a networking partner posts something online – respond back and ask them a follow-up question.  Just like in off-line relationships, you need to actually be interested in them and their situation or this could backfire on you.

Another approach is to ask great questions that relate to what you do.  Maybe an opinion poll on a recent industry trend?  Maybe a question on resources or tools that others use?  There are likely lots of ways to start a conversation and engage attention.

Twitter is probably the best place, but LinkedIn status updates or group discussions can also work well.  Again it doesn’t have to be a lot of time…maybe an hour or two a week spread out over time and you would be very visible (and top of mind) with a lot of people.

My experience has been that if you use these tools and go into with the idea of adding value and helping that you will be pleasantly surprised at how much leverage you can get from your time.  You have to build connections and be consistent, but this will get you found and remembered…which is the first critical step towards making a sale!

Great Resource

One great resource to help you brainstorm and see some real life examples of how Social Media is being used effectively is Mashable’s Real Results Series.

What experiences have you had with Social Media in a business to business environment?  What strategies am I missing?  What questions do you have?  Respond in the comments below and let me know what you think.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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