Rethinking / Refocusing
I read a couple blog posts over the last few weeks that have me thinking. The first was written by a pretty successful blogger who writes on the topic of professional blogging. His point was not to look at the “A List” bloggers for inspiration or ideas on how to make money on your blog. His point was that those folks had so many resources, so much more support, etc. that you shouldn’t use them as your model as how to be successful. Instead, this blogger (whose opinions I respect) advised going deep instead of wide and tightening down your topic content to be much more focused: become an authority, write from your heart, take a stand.
Shortly after that I read a post by another blogger I follow. He was recounting a lunch he had with a friend of his. When his friend asks him what he’s been up to and he says blogging, his friend rolls his eyes and says “you’re still blogging? When are you going to give that up? Are you making ANY money?” The guy took it as a challenge and read his recent blog posts, asking the question “If I wasn’t me and just happened across this blog, would any of this stuff mean anything to me?”
His answer was no. (Kudos to that guy for the brutal self-honesty).
Well, I went through the same process and honestly – came up with the same answer.
I’ve had plenty of distractions, both personal and professional, over the last year to blame for both both the lack of quality and quantity of posts, and in some cases validly so. But a quick review of my last couple months of blogging has really convinced me that not only have I been playing it safe, but I’ve spent way too much time on topics, or at least contexts within topics, that I’m either not passionate about or knowledgeable about.
So, some things are going to change. First – I want to re-focus on what I’m truly passionate about and can speak from authority. So while that will still include plenty of business and personal topics, I’ll be mixing in a fair dose of technology articles, re-focusing most of my business writing on small to medium-sized companies, and speaking on Leadership more from the point of view of the individual, as opposed to corporate leadership. I’m also going to write a little bit more about things that may be considered off-topic, but are interesting nonetheless.
Extending the conversation
If all this post did, was recap some personal musings on this little blog, then it would be of little value to you. I think the bigger point is that if you are committed to continuous personal and professional improvement, then it helps to:
- Stick your head out of your shell once in a while and take a look around,
- Be honest with yourself about where you’re at, and
- Change course if necessary.
So what do you all think? Make sense? Is this something you do, and if so what’s the process you go through? I’m interested in how others think through what they are doing in the moment versus the path they set out on and where they want to get. How have you changed course recently and why?
10 Questions With… Rich Fialkoff of Chide.it
I’ve written a couple times before about a one question survey, even investigated different customer surveying models. Obviously, I’m a self-admitted fan of customer surveys. There are also different kinds of surveys for different audiences. On this blog I’ve mostly talked about surveys that fall in the “customer satisfaction” heading, but your customers are only one of your audiences and their satisfaction is only one measure of success (and frankly of interest to a limited, but important, audience).
I manage an incubator for high-growth technology companies. As a good portion of my funding comes ultimately from public sources, it’s important for me to be able to show the success of my program – what my funders might call “leverage”. So while I do some satisfaction surveying here and there, the majority of the surveys I perform with my customers (the entrepreneurs in my incubator) is geared toward capturing information to help prove the success of my program and the leverage on the public dollars entrusted in my program. I, along with my sister incubators across the State of Ohio, use something called Table 3. Table 3 captures a myriad of relevant growth statistics on our tenants, but for many the stats on revenue, investment and job creation are important metrics on how much leverage an incubation program has created with their funding. (If you’re interested, I recently published my 2009 year-end statistics.)
All this is to say – “I know me some surveying” – and have used a number of offline and online tools over the years. When the National Business Incubation Association announced a strategic partnership with chide.it, offering a free account for their FluidSurveys product, I was eager to sign up. I was happy with my current provider (PollDaddy), but it’s hard to argue with a free basic account, which is what FluidSurveys was offering any incubation program through the partnership with NBIA. That said – so called “free” programs sometimes aren’t worth it, so I did a little homework before signing up.
I’m happy to say that not only is the free account chide.it offered to us incubators was really free, it was also a fully functional account, limited only by the absence of some advanced features that I don’t use. The best part is chide.it has agreed to renew our incubator’s free account every year. Thanks chide.it!
The person in charge of the partnership between chide.it and NBIA is Rich Fialkoff. Rich was included in all the introductory E-mails NBIA sent out and responded promptly to all the questions I had about the tool and the partnership. Given that Rich is responsible for the U.S. introduction of chide.it products, this responsiveness was even more impressive. After getting to know a bit more about chide.it (somewhat of a start-up themselves) and Rich (created and led several start-up business within larger companies and founded a consultancy focused on software startups), I asked Rich if he’d be willing to participate in my 10 Questions With… series.
If you run an incubator and you’re a member of NBIA, be sure to check out FluidSurveys – not only is it free through the NBIA partner program, but it’s a great tool and just makes it so darn easy to create a survey. (If you’re not a member of NBIA, then you really should be. It’s a great organization with extremely helpful members and two very useful conference every year.) Chide.it is offering it’s second product, MyReviewRoom, at a discount to NBIA members. MyReviewRoom helps teams facilitate application acceptance, evaluation and decision making. I have an application process for the incubator that would be greatly facilitated by this product and I’m looking forward to the demo Rich has promised me.
So, on with the interview…
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How to be Lucky in Business
Chris Brogan answers whether he’s been “lucky” in business. I love his challenge at the end of the video for all us to examine how we spend our time and whether we are getting what we want out of the business side of our lives. If you’re not – how about that old cliche I think of from time to time in these situtations:
Luck favors the prepared.
How to be successful AND stay married
I’m a huge fan of Inc. Magazine. I love two things about it. First, it just works – the magazine is laid out intelligently, offers great content and just looks good. More importantly, and the real reason I’m such a fan, is the real-world context that permeates almost all of the articles, whether written by guest columnist or staff writers. This pragmatism is in effect across the entrepreneurship spectrum – whether it’s a lifestyle entrepreneur writing about her five figure business, or executives discussing businesses with a couple additional zeros – I rarely read articles tainted by the arrogance of intellect or success.
I especially liked a quick little article in the recent December 2009 issue entitled House Rules: Ten gentle suggestions for keeping the domestic seas tranquil. Written by Meg Hirshfeld, writer and wife of Gary Hirshberg (who just happens to be CEO of Stonyfield Yogurt), the article lays out a list of simple suggestions Meg and Gary developed together for “entrepreneurs who aspire to a happy marriage and thriving family life.”
I’ll bullet the list here, but I highly suggest you click over to the article for Meg and Gary’s more complete thoughts for each suggestion. It’s a quick read.
- You are not the boss at home.
- Set the bar low. But set it somewhere. (As in, make time for time together. As Meg so aptly puts it “Being together reminds you that you enjoy being together. And that reminds both of you why this enormous undertaking is worthwhile.”
- Please, turn off the Blackberry.
- When a big business decision looms, give your spouse a seat at the table.
- Enter your spouse’s universe from time to time.
- Make her communications a priority.
- Don’t squeeze her in.
- Treat your spouse like she’s your most important client.
- Acknowledge her role.
- Take frequent inventory.
My thoughts
I’ve been doing a lot of research over the last year on the topic of interpersonal relationships: why certain people gravitate together, the dynamics of relationship stages, and the difficulties in developing and maintaining long-term, constructive, meaningful relationships. This focused research has taken place on top of my normal business reading, both books and magazines.
What’s surprised me a bit is not just how much both bodies of work have in common, but how applicable each is to the other. While Meg’s list above is written from the context of keeping your marriage happy when one spouse is a workaholic entrepreneur, the suggestions are just as applicable for any couple. Likewise, all the material I’ve been reading about interpersonal relationships contain a wealth of actionable thoughts on developing and maintaining authentic relationships based on respect and trust at work. Something I think we can all agree is often in short supply.
Perhaps my thoughts are colored by the stage of life I’m at. Being later in my career with much more responsibility than I had in earlier jobs, the line between my business and personal life has blurred quite a bit over the years. But while it’s a fair question to ask, I would suggest that the answer really doesn’t matter. If we can strengthen, even deepen, our relationships at work and at home, who cares what aisle of the bookstore helped us?
Comments are open
What do you think? Do you agree that relationships, whether at work or at home, follow similar “rules”? Is there a relationship lesson you’ve learned professionally that you applied in your personal life, or vice versa? What suggestions would you offer entrepreneurs to keep a happy marriage and a thriving family life?
Just in Time – Destressing the holidays
One of the “rules” I always read relevant to professional blogging is to subscribe to lots of blogs that stretch you in different directions, or you just find interesting. I follow that rule, and one of the blogs I follow is called Simple Mom. Her blog’s tagline (I assume “her”, but these days who knows) is “Live simply, stay sane.” I like that.
Simple Mom recently published a post on tips for handling “extended family holiday stress”. That’s a very polite way of expressing what most of us know to be a truth during this time of year, and what is succinctly described by the post’s author in the opening paragraphs:
My father-in-law aptly stated it this way: one of the best things about the holidays is seeing the headlights of family members coming up the driveway to visit. The second best thing about the holidays is seeing their taillights as they drive away.
I think we can all relate!
The post is much more than just inside jokes about family relations though, and offers some practical, and positive tips on coping with can be stressful family situations during what should be a joyous time of year. I particularly like the author’s point of view on what ultimately is most important, as tip #1 is “Your Spouse Comes First”.
This is a great little article and I highly recommend you check it out: 8 Tips for Handling Extended Family Stress During the Holidays.
Stay sane. Stay positive.
3 Customer Satisfaction models
I’m always amazed by the number of companies that don’t do customer satisfaction surveys. And yes, I consider independent consultants “companies”. There is only upside to satisfaction surveys and very little downside, in my opinion. Among a myriad of benefits, post-project customer satisfaction surveys:
- Are a source for great testimonial quotes. Put these on your website, in your brochures, on your resume. Nothing helps make your delivery claims real like a quote from a customer.
- Offer yet one more touchpoint for your sales and/or marketing folks to ask for referrals, cross-sell and up-sell, etc.
- Present a chance to capture honest, real-world feedback on your products and services – potentially identifying opportunities for improvement or growth.
I am very bullish on customer satisfaction surveys and strongly feel they should be a component of every company’s sales and marketing strategy. For those of you who feel differently, I’d love to hear your thoughts via comments. In this post, I’d like to share three very different customer satisfaction survey models I’ve seen over the years and where each might be used most effectively.
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10 Question With… OPT Solutions
I’ve known Laura Pettit Rusick for quite a few years now. I was originally introduced to her through the regional IT Leadership group I sit on the Board of. Eventually Laura was also recruited to the Board and she and I ended up co-chairing the Programs position. If any of you have ever been responsible for pulling together a schedule of high quality speakers for monthly meetings, you know it can be quite a chore and take a lot of hard work. Laura was a pleasure to work with and shared my passion to “go the extra mile” to program the best speakers and the most interesting topics we could come up with. Our planning meetings were often held at her house, and there was always ample red wine to help the planning process!
After holding a number of senior management positions at a handful of companies, it was a natural evolution for Laura to start her own company and use her expertise to help small- and medium-sized companies on complex business process and technology issues. While I was aware of Laura’s technical and business expertise, I wasn’t aware that she had the entrepreneurial fires burning. So in looking for my next 10 Questions With… interviewee, I didn’t have very far to go.
So, on with the interview…
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Amen, brother!
Seen on a sign outside a church on the way to work this morning:
We believe in the separation of church and hate”
Submit your Leadership qualities
I’m putting together a post on qualities of Leadership you don’t often find in the popular literature. Nothing against those books – there are some fantastic authors out there writing on the topic of Leadership and the qualities that leaders possess.
Along the way however, as I watch the leaders I respect and admire, I’ve noticed some qualities I don’t see mentioned. One day it dawned on me that these qualities were more on the “softer” side. I’ve been jotting a couple of them down here and there and I’m close to having a decent post about them.
I’d be interested in hearing about your undiscovered leadership qualities. What have you noticed in the leaders you admire that you’ve never seen covered in a Leadership book?
Progress
Finally had the first brainstorming meeting on the smartphone application I surveyed you all on a while back. It was a really good session. Not only did the company I’m working with say that my original design could be fairly easily programmed, we came up with an entire new “other half” to the application that really complements the overall goals of the application quite nicely.
Next steps are for the consultant to put together both functional specifications (for development costing), and wireframes (for user interface design and review). The ultimate deliverable for this phase is a cost to develop the application – basically so I know if I can afford to do it or not!
Plans at this point are to develop for both the iPhone and the Blackberry out of the gate. This is still open for discussion as all the phone platforms have their own development language, so every platform you develop on adds cost to the project. As it stands right now, there is no code translator or utilities to facilitate cross-platform development.
Also up in the air is the business model. Add tons of value to the application from the start and charge for it, or offer a “lite” version for free to drive adoption, then charge for advanced features? There is quite a discussion going on between the consultant and myself on this issue – we are definitely split on the topic. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
The first cut of documentation is promised for next Friday. I’m really excited to finally be moving forward!!
