Sometimes a big hammer is the best tool for the job, but only if you’re using it the right way!

This past weekend I headed down to my parent’s house to meet up with my brothers and do some ‘clean-up’ around the house.  It was great to see everyone and other than the 95 degree heat and the 95% humidity it was a good weekend to get some stuff done.

One of the big jobs that needed to be done was taking down an old metal shed building that was out behind the house.  I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing that shed was close to 40 years old – it was primarily made of aluminum with an all metal frame on a concrete base.  After that much time, it was full of all sorts of junk, old wood, lots of spiders and a couple of other critters.  It took a while, but we got everything out and then it was time to start demolition on the structure.

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  photo by Nina Matthews Photography

Free your mind…and the rest will follow!

If you want to be more successful you have to open up your mind and be willing to keep learning!  Obviously there are a lot of great books out there, SmartBriefs are an invaluable tool, there are a huge number of great blogs and if you haven’t checked out TED by now you are really missing the boat.

Along the same lines, another resource you should also check out is MindTools.  Mindtools has been around in some capacity since 1996 and they have a strong focus on helping people develop leadership and management skills…which is something everyone can benefit from.

Mindtools is a membership site (with a very reasonable cost structure) but they also have a lot of great tools and articles that are completely free.  Stuff ranging from Running Effective Meetings to a Burnout Self-Test.

You can eventually find anything on the internet, but MindTools gives you a great place to start if you’re looking for help or just some new ideas.  It’s a well done site with a lot of helpful business (and personal) development ideas – definitely worth checking out.

Have you used MindTools before?  What did you think?  What other sites are out there like MindTools?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

The Cloud…it’s everywhere!  You can’t walk down the street, check your twitter feed or shop (at Amazon) without hearing about the Cloud!  The Cloud of course is cloud based computing…basically it’s the ability to do stuff online without knowing the physical location of where all that computing magic is happening.

Cloud capabilities can include services (Google Apps is probably the most well known), data storage (I previously told you about Dropbox) and Entertainment (Netflix anyone?).  The Cloud is getting bigger every day and it’s opening up a bunch of amazing opportunities.

Check out these 2 really cool, cloud powered applications that will really rock your business productivity!

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  photo by randysonofrobert 

If you want to use social media for your business, you’ve got to be consistent.  Your social media presence is a garden and if you want your garden to look good and grow, you’ve got to routinely maintain it. 

You need to water your garden, trim and prune the plants, create new beds, add more plants – there’s lots of work to do.  But to keep that garden healthy and growing, you can’t do a burst of work, then wait a month before you do something else and expect to have much staying alive.

The first thing you have to do is have a social media plan that you can live with – don’t sign up for more than you’re going to be able to live up to on a regular basis.  The other thing you need are some tools that can help you stay on top of things.  The good news is there are a lot of tools that can help you maintain that consistent presence.

Here are a couple that I use:

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In the spirit of the season, I wanted to share some really cool ‘gifts’ that I ran across this week – fascinating, helpful, interesting and fun.  I don’t know if you’ll get stuff this cool at home during the holidays (apologies if I’m spoiling you). 

Gift 1 – the Gift of Challenge

Hopefully you’re familiar with Seth Godin – his approach is unlike anyone else on the internet.  I’d suggest that more people should emulate him, but I’m not sure it would work – he’s interesting and unique and he does some really cool things that are just him.

His latest cool thing is organizing a free eBook he’s giving away on his site.  It has some ties to promoting some charitable organizations, but mostly it’s a series of 1 page essays written by a very diverse group of authors and experts with a general theme of what they are all thinking about and doing now.

It’s called What Matters Now and it’s well worth the download – go check it out.

I especially enjoyed Hugh MacLeod, Howard Mann, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell, Daniel Pink to name a few – who challenged your thinking?

Gift 2 – the Gift of Tech

Special thanks to Don Rossberg of KCDataworks – he was the first to point out Seth’s eBook to me and he also wrote a great blog post recently on the 12 Days of (free) Tech where he shares 12 online tech tools / gadgets that are free and more importantly really helpful stuff.  He covers everything from Xobni (check it out – highly recommended) to a way to print things easily and quickly to a PDF format.

By the way, if you are a business owner who’s struggling with the appropriate tech support and you’d like to work with someone you can trust, someone who can actually talk to you like a person AND knows what they’re talking about – you should meet with Don.  He’s a great guy and would be a huge benefit to any small business owner!

Gift 3 – the Gift of Ooooh and Aaaaah

One of the reasons why I like Twitter is that it’s a great way to find stuff that you’d never come across on your own.  It’s like walking along a beach and getting to see all sorts of interesting stuff wash up.  One of the things that washed up this afternoon was a really cool photography site that will grab your attention and make your jaw drop.

The first post is a set of 360 degree panoramic photos from stunning locations (like the top of Mount Everest)!  I’m not sure how they got some of these shots, but it is very cool (make sure to click through to get to the actual 360 shot).  You can find the panoramic gallery here.

As if that wasn’t cool enough – the same site has a set of extreme macro photos of Snowflakes, which are amazingly beautiful and a lot more varied and interesting than I would have thought – check out the Snowflakes here.

What cool online things are you sharing these days?  Share them in the comments below – I’d love to check them out.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach