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.

We quickly found out a few things: 

-  For a really old shed, it was in remarkably good shape with very few weak points. 

-  Saws that cut metal are pretty cool, but really loud and tend to burn through blades quickly.

-  A sledgehammer – used properly was the easiest way to bring the shed down in pieces!

My brother had brought along a really cool metal saw that seemed like the best tool for the job.  However we found out the saw worked but it was tricky and had a tendency to get fouled up.  What worked best was a well placed swing of a sledgehammer  – that could quickly knock out the bolts holding the panels together.  Knock out 3 of them and the panel came free.  It was hot, dirty and tiring work, but once we figured out the trick of it, things moved along pretty quickly.  (And there was something cathartic about swinging that hammer…!).

What does this have to do with anything related to business?  A few things struck me as we were working on this shed (not literally, but you know what I mean…):

Find the right tool if you really want to get the job done.

We cut our time in half once we figured out how to use the hammers vs. using the saw. 

Are there things you’re doing in your business where you’re not using the right tools?  Could you leverage a different approach for stuff that takes you a long time?

Even the right tool won’t help if it’s not focused.

Swinging the hammer wildly didn’t do anything (other than wear you out).  You could easily take a dozen swings in the wrong place and not make any progress…but if you took your time and focused in on what you were trying to do, a single well placed swing could pop a panel right off. 

Are you or your team swinging wildly at things or are you focused in on high leverage opportunities?

Anyway you go, it’s still hard work.

Even with the right tool and using it the right way, it was hard work.  But if you really want to get something done, that’s what it’s going to take. 

Do you have things on your to do list that you want done, but aren’t getting the effort needed to make it happen?

Bottom line – I’ve talked about it before, a recurring theme for success is the need to focus your efforts.  Be clear on what needs to be done and don’t try to do to many things at once and before you know it, that shed will be down and you’ll be on to the next big thing!

Have any stories about finding the right tools, or the right people to get the job done?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

photo by The National Guard (a guy who’s working way harder than I did…)

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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

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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!

Free and Simple Online Meetings

First up is Join.me – a clear cut, simple screen sharing tool.  Here’s a description from their site:

So what is join.me exactly? It’s an impromptu online meeting space that happens wherever, whenever. It’s getting a second or third pair of eyes on your presentation from across the hall or across the continent. It’s instant screen sharing with anyone or everyone to get stuff done, quickly.

It supports up to 250 people at once, allows you to take control of a remote computer (think tech support) and doesn’t require a big download and application to stay on your desktop.  All that and it’s free and easy to use!

Even cooler – you can also use Join.me on your mobile device, letting you check out a new slide, document or whatever while you’re not at your desk!

File Sharing, backup and more

The other cool tool to check out is Egnyte.com.  Egnyte is an online file server, online storage, an FTP site (File Transfer Protocol), a file sharing tool and an online backup solution.  And it’s all in the cloud (no hardware needed) and it’s built for business!

I learned about Egnyte from a client of mine who needs to share lots of files with lots of different clients in a very secure and specific way.  A year ago, she would have needed to buy an expensive server and get it set up and maintained by a professional.  She was expecting to pay several thousand dollars to solve this problem

Instead she’s paying less than $50 /month and she gets a complete and fast backup solution as well!  It’s convenient, it’s fast, you can access all of your stuff (and all of your clients can access their stuff) from anywhere, all of your employees can be working from the most up to date document, you have built in version control and you don’t have to worry about a hardware crash losing stuff that can’t be replaced!

If you’re not sure how you’d set up Egnyte (it can be pretty tricky), you can contact my friend Mike Hill at MicroNetKC – he’s a local reseller and has helped other folks get it configured.

It’s pretty amazing what’s possible these days!

What cool cloud stuff have you seen lately?  Share your thoughts in the comments below – I’d love to hear them.

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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:

Keep profiles in front of you

One tool that I’ve found to be really helpful is Xobni  (www.xobni.com ).  It’s great for helping out with email – the search tool is invaluable, but the other big benefit is that the tool pulls profile information from LinkedIn or Facebook on whoever sent you an email.  It’s a quick way to research someone and get quick additional background – all triggered from you in-box.

It’s also a good reminder that other people can see your information for any email that you send (another reason why it’s important to have a quality professional photo and updated information).

There’s a free and a paid version of Xobni (inbox backwards by the way), but either way it’s an easy way to build consistent access to social media into your day to day routine.

Pull it all together

The other tool that I’ve found to be really helpful is Tweetdeck (www.tweetdeck.com ).  Tweetdeck is a free desktop application (or for the iPhone) that was initially developed as an easier / better way to interact with twitter.

If you’ve only tried to use Twitter using the web www.twitter.com interface, then you have to give it another try with Tweetdeck.  The default online twitter interface is terrible – it’s difficult to use, it’s not convenient and a huge reason that a large percentage of people don’t make any headway with Twitter is because of that interface.  If you’re interested in getting started with Twitter (or giving it another try), then you should check out this quick Twitter Guide.

Tweetdeck on the other hand is very convenient.  It runs in the background on your desktop, and you can segment people you follow into convenient categories (i.e. friends that talk about sports in one column, local business owners in another…whatever works for you).

The other big change that Tweetdeck made recently is also including updates from LinkedIn and Facebook.  You can add your profiles to tweetdeck and have separate columns that show you those updates all in one place.  It makes it a very easy way to check up on all of your social media activity from one place.

What tools have you found to be helpful with Social Media?  I’d love to hear your thoughts (or questions) – just post a comment below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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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

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