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Visual Aids On Napkins
At the Intersection of Your Perfect Marketing I’ve talked in this space before, given speeches, and written a couple books about how enjoying your marketing is the key to doing it consistently, and doing it consistently is the key to it working. As I’ve thought more about it, the picture is more nuanced than that statement above suggests. I’ve come up with a new model that shows these nuances (see below). Your perfect marketing is the intersection between your personality, your business purpose; and two factors about...
read moreThe Joy of Resistance
I just moved. Picture a little kid jumping up and down when she finds out you’re taking her to Disneyland for a week. That’s how I feel about my new place. But, and it’s a big but, moving is among the top five most stressful events in life. So in between jumping for joy over my new digs, I’m grouchy because I can’t find things, and I’m not sleeping very well because the gremlin in my brain would like me to wake up at five a.m. every day until everything is perfectly stowed and in order. In the face of...
read moreWhining is Sacred
Sacred Change Barometers I’ve written before about anti-fragility, an idea elucidated by Nassim Taleb. Anti-fragility is the quality of certain things to become stronger under (not massive, but some) stress. Your bones are a good example. They need stress to function well, as long as it’s not too much stress. We small business owners are sometimes like this: when things change in our businesses (which is inevitable); clients leave, or die, or technology changes, or we wake up one morning and want to try something new,...
read moreMarketing for Introverted Writers
Leslie Keenan and I are launching an 8-week live teleclass beginning on May 7th for Introverted writers who are ready to market their work in a way that’s congruent with their personalities (and also FUN). You can listen to the recording of the first class and still make it into the rest of the class if you send me an email (cmssmallbusinesswarriorcom) today. If you decide to take the class, here’s what you’ll learn: ◦How to understand your own time rhythms ◦How to get your work out to book...
read moreMoney Is Dirty, Marketing Equals Lying
I spent last weekend going to Enneagram class. The Enneagram is a personality classification system that helps you understand your unconscious motivations the things that drive you that you aren’t aware of. You can read about it here. What I’m realizing is that the real reasons we as small-business people don’t market or understand our numbers also starts out being unconscious. It’s not because we’re stupid, or even the standard reason everyone cites; too busy with the day to day operations to do the important,...
read morePurposeful Noodling
I have written three whole books. I’ve led all kinds of groups in which people wrote their business plans, marketing plans, sales plans, numbers forecasts, and even all four over the course of a year. I’ve coached hundreds of small business owners. I’ve amassed a huge amount of curriculum, knowledge and experience over the past eight years. And now I need to do something different with all this information. I’m just not sure what. So I’m doing what I would tell a client to do who knows it’s time to...
read moreDisruption, Death & Dessert
I have experienced a lot of death in the last four months. A client was involved in a triple murder-suicide, which left me reeling with disbelief and grief. Then, two people I love dearly passed away. Although my former client’s actions are on a totally different planet than the other two deaths, I noticed that I am profoundly affected by all of them. Because of my age, I’m beginning to experience death more frequently. I thought this would mean that when another one came along I would “handle it” because the...
read moreWhy All The Buzz About Introversion?
I’ve been pondering and writing about blind spots and how they’re installed at the factory. How we can’t avoid them, but when they lead us to commit disastrous, or just plain painful mistakes, we become motivated to explore and even get help to mitigate them. Nothing like a two-by-four to the head to motivate us to change our behavior. Sometimes it’s the only thing that gets us to change. Perhaps societies and cultures are like this too. They swing too far to one side, and need to re-balance. For decades, maybe since...
read moreFragile Enough to Be Strong
I read a lot. Scattered across my nightstand and coffee and kitchen tables right now are books about resilience. My favorite so far is Anti-Fragile:Things that Gain From Disorder by Nasim Nicholas Taleb. Taleb’s premise is that everything is in one of three states: Fragile, i.e., breakable Robust, i.e., strong. And a third state that he had to invent a word for: Anti-fragile. Something anti-fragile gets stronger under stress (within reason). Bones are anti-fragile. They need weight-bearing exercise, i.e. stress, or they become...
read moreWhere My Money Went Last Year And How I Felt About It
I just sent my taxes to the accountant. For fun, I ran a report on all my vendors and how much money I spent with them over 2012. Then I rated each expenditure by how much I enjoyed spending the money. Toastmasters dues (at $136.00 for the year) got the prize for best outcome for the smallest price. I got great value from that $136.00. Julia McNeal’s book editing services were hugely useful for a very reasonable amount also. I got a great book cover from the Book Designers. I got great coaching from Lee Doyle and Leslie Keenan. My least...
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