Posts filed under 'Miscellanea'
I have been reading some new-to-me blogs of late about business and entrepreneurship. Yaro Starak’s Small Business Branding is one of them. Today he posted on Steve Pavlina’s, 10 Stupid Small Business Mistakes. If you are self-employed and running your own business, you will invariably have made one or more of these mistakes — I certainly have.
Steve’s article dovetails nicely with Guy Kawasaki’s recent article on The Art Of Customer Service. Guy talks about turning the customer experience into a one of perpetual positivity.
April 11th, 2006
I have had this blog up and running for a week now and have had a little traffic but no comments. For the second time, Canadian blogger, Julian Rickards has let me know that I forgot to enable subscriber registrations in the WordPress administration panel.
This is really quite a big duh as I had hoped people would post comments to enter the Name This Blog contest. The contest us still open, by the way, I just plan on awarding the prize to the name I like best — if one comes in. If it is a really cool name I might use it anyway.
Thanks Julian, hopefully the comments will begin to flow now.
March 16th, 2006
“I had pretty much given up on you…”
That is a phrase I won’t ever hear from a client again. His words are real and honest. It is an expression of frustration. My saving grace is that he did in fact express them at all.
The reason my client is rightly upset and nearly gave up hope is that I failed to communicate, failed to keep promises and failed to handle simple time-management and prioritization. I have learned though that those are merely surface symptoms of a greater ill — ego and sef-centredness. I didn’t give my client the respect and time that I would expect from others for me. I pushed work onto the back burner and rode my hobby-horse projects far too often.
As someone who has worked as an employee for most of his life, I faced being the boss — being in charge of scheduling, being in charge of time-management, being in charge of when things got done and in what order. It was difficult to admit that I wasn’t in charge of anything. I found that I was not only ignoring and disrespecting my clients but also jeopardizing any of the good that I was doing in the process.
Lesson Learned:
Treat people better than I would expect from them. (Hmmm… sounds familiar.)
I wish to show the journey to becoming a successful entrepreneur — the entire journey. What most people leave out from their story is all the stuff they do/did wrong. The acknowledgment of failures and misteps is the only way to move past them and to become a better person and better in business.
March 16th, 2006
As mentioned in my last post, I said I would forego the worry about the “Name This Blog” contest and just go ahead and name it. I think that this name fulfills the spirit of the purpose of this site. It is inspired by my recent reading of Michael Gerber’s E-Myth Revisited
.
March 14th, 2006
As I mentioned in my last post, I may have jumped the gun on this “Name the Blog” contest. I have decided to just go ahead and name it later today. If I get a name entry that I like better, I will award the prize whether or not I rename the blog.
Lesson Learned: The launch of a new blog is insignificant. The launch of a new blog that provides meaning to people is worth talking about. See Guy Kawasaki’s Let the Good Times Roll.
Back to you soon.
March 14th, 2006
Just an update on the contest to name this Blog.
I have received two indirect entries from the Small Business Brief Forum post where I made an announcement on the naming contest but have not yet seen a potential winner.
The first is “BizRocket” and the second is “Jay Talking”. Hmmm…
If you are interested in entering check out my original post.
March 13th, 2006
For those of you in Nova Scotia I just received an email from the Bridgewater and Area Chamber of Commerce regarding the Geared for Growth 2006 business conference. Not sure if I will attend as their website offers little in the way of information about anything other than the three “money” keynotes and the subjects for the panels. There is no information yet about the panelists. The site also offers me no reason to go — a site for a site’s sake. We’ll see what happens.
March 9th, 2006
It’s day one and I am just getting things started for my new blog. I have been blogging on and off on the SmashingRed Blog for about a year now but I felt it was time to split hairs. In this new blog I plan on sharing my experiences, wins, failures, points of inspiration and other thoughts as I build my website development business.
I am offering a yet undetermined prize to one submitter for naming this blog. The prize value will be at least $25CAD and likely be a book or some other business reference. I am open to suggestions for the prize as well. Submit your entries as often as you want. One entry per comment. Contest closes at the end of March.
I am also trying to figure out a way to give out a prize for getting the most new links into my blog. That will be an even bigger prize. A $5USD Amazon gift certificate to anyone who can give me a solution.
March 8th, 2006
To all of you who have read my posts at SmashingRed.com I have decided to move my more personally related posts over to this new site.
For those of you who have never met me — welcome.
I am planning to turn this site into a hub for my thoughts on business, entrepreneurship, ideas and more. I will be sharing experiences, wins, losses and more over time and hope that this new more focused blog will be a great resouce and inspiration to those in the world who are making a go of self-propelled business.
March 8th, 2006
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