Archive Page 3

Hopefully you brush your teeth. You floss. You use anti-bacterial mouth rinse. You chew sugar free gum between meals. But if you don’t go to the dentist, you might end up having to get gum surgery like me. Go to the dentist regularly, it is worth the money even if you don’t have insurance.

As I did not have dental insurance, and personally have no love for the experience of visiting my dentist, I let it go for the first few years of running my business. I was broke after all. When I finally did get dental insurance last year and popped in for a visit, the hygienist looked at me with an aghast expression and asked how long it had been since my last visit. FIVE AND A HALF YEARS, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!? Needless to say, it wasn’t pretty. Two gum surgeries later, I am doing better. In retrospect, a $50-75 teeth cleaning visit, even just once a year, would probably have been wise.

Short blog, important thought. If you are running a small business or an independent contractor, make sure you fit in a few small preventative health care visits.

From the horses mouth.

I often find myself people watching as I work in coffee shops. A parent trying to explain to their toddler why it is not okay to scream at the top of her voice. The owner showing his employee how the coffee has to be brewed in a certain manner. The teenage girl offering coy glances to the guy next to me all dressed in leather and tattoos. The man in a suit to my right, chatting on the phone with a potential client, answering their questions. The puppy at my feet staring at me patiently hoping I might drop some crumb.

Too often, as contractors, we associate sales with the slicked back hair, polyester suit of the hollywood 70’s car salesman, when in fact you and I sell each and every day of our lives. When my wife and I decide to go to a movie this evening, I really wanted to go see 10,000 bc. I spent 10 minutes carefully steering us towards the movie I was excited to see. Any time you have an interest in the outcome of a situation, sales comes into play.
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Our good buddy Jonathan Fields has a pretty awesome book (Cash In On Your Passion®) coming out through Random House next year. After a bit a of cajoling, his editor has endorsed a competition for the cover. If you have the time, it would be a pretty sweet portfolio piece to have designed the cover of a NY Times Bestseller. Turns out though that the general Independent community decided he was trying to pull off some evil diabolical scheme. So sadly, no luck for you. That said, if you ask me – I’d still go to his site, chat him up and send him an email. It would be a sweet opportunity to get your work on the cover and now that all those grumpy people have removed themselves, it might be yours. But that’s my 2 cents. I happen to know the guy and drink beer with him.

Help Jonathan create the cover of his new book (and win big bucks and cool prizes!)

Lately we have been investing a lot of time and energy into sproutwire.com instead of sales. Meanwhile, our team has often been idle, developing their side projects, as we hunt for work. One great benefit and risk of working with independent contractors is that they are required to have other sources of income. This is great because it means we are not responsible for keeping our team working full time, but it is dangerous because it can easily lead to attrition. Eventually we all need to get paid. So how do we manage to keep together?
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pos·sum·ist [pos-uh-mist]
noun

1. a person who habitually disappears, passes out or feigns death at the nearest sign of trouble.
2. a person who consistently pretends ignorance of key critical issues
3. an adherent of the doctrine of laissez fair school of project management.

Examples: As a natural possumist, it took all my courage to click the answer button on my cell phone and work the issue through with the client.

One of the great challenges of working with a team of remote independent contractors is that there is no central office. People often say that by working with a remote team that is spread halfway across the globe, we are essentially missing hallway chatter. In other words, we’re missing a bond because we don’t run into each other and chat about things on a daily basis.

Since we don’t have a central office, we’ve decided to try a strategy of meeting with some of our most active team for a week in a Casa de Mar, a tropical resort in El Salvador (more photos to be uploaded when we get home and have a better connection). So far, I must say, the results have been spectacular (why don’t we have all our meetings in tropical resorts?)!

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Hi everyone,

A lot of you probably know that Peter & I have been passionately working on our next adventure, stealing moments of time between clients, travel and family. I am excited to announce that the beta has finally arrived! I hope that you will check it out and give us your feedback. I love the community we have developed along with our blog and couldn’t think of someone I would rather hear from. I trust your opinion and want this to be the best it can be.

Sign Up for the Beta!

So here is what have we been doing off in the bat cave:

Sproutwire came about because I love to read but I am far too busy to go hunting through the internet for the few gems. My RSS reader was overflowing and most of what was in there frankly was underwhelming. In fact, a lot of you know that I quite vocally renounced the use of an rss reader. In the end, I was only reading the links my friends were sending me and started asking them to do it regularly. And so Sproutwire was born. A favorites list from an editorial team of writers and entrepreneurs who really get what it means to launch a startup, grow a small company, run a microbuiness and work freelance.

Peter & I went off and collected a team of up-and-coming and renown business owners and bloggers, who will review and select the best fresh content we can find on the Internet for small business. Blogs, newspapers, ebooks, presentation slides, journals, video, newsletters, anything that we think will help you be better at what you do and live a happier life. Those items that make the cut will be summarized and linked to. Our goal is to keep it fresh, smart and personal.

Sproutwire offers you a daily dose of the best small business articles that the internet has to offer.

We are looking for leads on great content to review, so if you run into something cool that you think truly stands out, email it to contribute@sproutwire.com. If we pick it, we will give you a shoutout and link to your site so include a link.

I want to send a huge thanks to our starting team of expert editors/reviewers: Jarrko Laine, Sara Smith, Jonathan Fields, Naomi Dunford, Christine OKelly, Eric Davis, Brandon Jones. A special thanks to Brandon for the branding and design and Eric for beating the code into submission and late night business chats. Go check out their blogs and leave some intelligent feisty comments for me!

Also, if you know someone you think might be stoked to check it out – please feel free to pass this invitation on.

Now I am off to go work and play in the sun for a long week with our business team in El Salvador! I’ll post pictures when we get back.

-S

I’ve always been a firm believer of you are what you eat. It is true with food and more so with social environments. The thoughts, ideas and media you consume shape the way you think. I remember listening to Mike Murdock at a business conference share his passion for books. His friends were giving him grief for having paid $140 dollars for a small 80 page book. Through poor genetics and a short attention span, I’ve pretty much forgotten every word he said that day. And yet over the years, I cannot forget this statement:

The author of this book took his time to put all the lessons he has learned in life into 80 pages. All his frustrations and agonies as well as his joys and tribulations. Wisdom comes from two places mistakes and mentors. If I can learn from this book and avoid one mistake, that was money well spent.

Now I have to admit that I didn’t buy his book that day, but the idea behind his statement is a powerful one. What is the wisdom of a man’s life worth? I’ve been obsessed with reading since I was a child and that obsession has grown to encompass listening to speakers. Today, I had the pleasure of listening to Carly Fiorina as she discussed change and the fundamentals of leadership. Then, I switched over to Scott Kriens, exploring the question of trends and market timing. Two amazing business talks for free.

I was meandering on itunes and finally noticed the iTunesU link (I know its been there forever). What a treasure trove! Access to some of the worlds greatest business minds, their personal stories and insights, all for free. I can’t wait to learn more. I’m so excited I just had to share.

My two favorite series so far:
Business Leaders & Entrepreneurs (38 Episodes)
Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (53 Episodes)

Personal Note: I apologize for the slow posting rhythm. We are getting close to the beta of our new project, and also happen to be dragging some good friends, a client and part of our team down to El Salvador for an off site annual business meeting and social gathering. We will be gone from Friday though President’s Day and probably won’t post during that time. Have a great time you all – I’ll catch a wave in your name!

I was meandering through technorati, checking what people out there in the world have to say about us (at least those who have the courage to link back) and saw WAH(Web)Mommy expose her weirdness to the world. A little off kilter, I had almost relegated her to the OCD kookie bin, where she would be pleasantly surprised to find about half the women I have ever loved including my wife, when dear god, she called me out to lift my skirts too. Never one to back down to any kind of challenge, I bring you seven more pathetic quirks to add to this ever growing rash of personal exposure making its way across the web.
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Peter & I talk all the time about which idea do you pick and run with. We love innovating and since we happen to work with the IP of a number of the world’s largest and fastest growing companies, we constantly are exposed to amazing ideas. Our problem isn’t coming up with them, it is choosing the one to stick with.

I’ve always believed there are two types of entrepreneurs. Shotgun entrepreneurs take a large number of ideas and try many at once trying to see if they can get something to stick. They believe if you throw enough mud at the wall … eventually one of their ideas will come to fruition. Rifle entrepreneurs focus their energy on one careful enterprise at a time. I am very much in the second category. As a result I tend to be extremely cautious about the ideas I commit myself to. So first thing, if I am already committed, then I pretty much ignore all ideas even good ones.

If I am in the looking zone, I have a shortlist of four criteria that I use to select my direction:
1) Does it line up with my personal goals, beliefs and definition of happiness
2) What problem does it solve?
3) What trends play a role – what is the industry timing?
4) Who is on the team – are there people with success who have a vested interest?
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