1. Forget your goal – Why did you first start writing your blog?  I started mine as an outlet for my thoughts and experiences on creating/running a business.  Beyond that main goal, I think its good practice for gathering your thoughts and looking back on where your views were at a certain time.
2. Stop reading blogs - I stayed quite insulated in my niche after we pivoted towards Groupon in May.  I gave up RSS a couple years ago, but this past year I just didn’t read many blogs on a consistent basis (sans industry Twitter feed links).  I stay up with a few (very few), but mostly specific posts were sent to me asking my thoughts on something.   Reading other blogs makes it easier to write and being away from content makes it harder to create your own.
3. Get discouraged by the numbers – Maybe your site has very few comments or re-tweets (like mine)… so what.  If you know the answer to #1, you’ll realize numbers may only be a part of your success formula.  For me, the numbers aren’t the key, but it’s easy to get discouraged when they drop.  And they will continue to spiral down if you don’t keep up the posts.
4. Fear your writing isn’t good enough -  I know I’m no Jason Falls (the best writer I know) or Rob May (the original super blogger) and I don’t need to be in their league to accomplish what I want from this site.  The truth is I can’t crank out great content like others, but I can give my perspective and use my own style.  We each have our own writing voice… find yours and sing out loud.
5. Spend too much time window shopping -  There are some very popular blogs with ugly designs and with little “added” functionality.  Content makes those (and our) sites interesting… not your fancy retweet/like/share/post/bleep button.  FYI… I looked at literally hundreds of cool themes for my blog.   Good design won’t make your content create itself.
6. Stay on a content free island -  Much like #1, if you aren’t around those who create content it’s not top of mind you also need to create your own.  I spend time with startup folks regularly because it’s what I’m living and relevant to me.  If you want your blog to be a part of your life it’s easier when you’re around those who have it top of mind.  Note: around doesn’t have to be physically… just checking in with email or IM can do the trick.
7. Write about what’s popular -  I’ve found blogging to be a burden and not something I enjoy to do frequently.  Some of my old posts reflect that as I wrote the same thing you can read 40,000 other places… Twitter, Facebook and the rise of the new web.  If you aren’t passionate about your topic and can’t add value to an old one, spare yourself the time and don’t write the post.  Instead make a comment, link it up on Facebook or retweet someone else’s content.  When you do have something to say it will come much easier.
8. Focus on the micro – I shifted most of my social efforts to Facebook last year and my Twitter stats show I’m going away from there too (less than 50 tweets in Q4).  Posting to those mediums is NOT content creation in my opinion.  Even if you’re super creative, you can’t say too much in 140 characters (hence the MICROblogging name).  If you want to really create content, I believe most social sites don’t give you the means to do so.  Here’s to being a little more macro focused.
9. Create analysis paralysis – I did some super cool stuff in 2010 and had some great conversations with people about many topics.  I’m sure you did too.  Just a recap of what you did, what you said/heard is a great way to kick start your content groove.  One of the reasons I personally don’t write often is I try to compose something big.  I write, edit, re-edit, then save as a draft because it’s taking too long.  Don’t forget you can score a few runs by hitting a few singles.
10. Run the sprints – If you haven’t ran in a long time, I wouldn’t suggest a 5k race.  In the past I’ve written a flurry of posts for a few days/weeks in a row only to not post again for 90 days.  Decide what consistency is needed to reach your goal and you won’t hurt yourself getting there.
11. Bonus… Don’t just do it – I get very frustrated with people who say they’re going to start a business or have an idea and make no progress.  For every resolution, we must make the effort.  Last year, I just didn’t do it.  Plain and simple.  We could all stand to stop the excuses and just hit publish every so often.

I’m sure you have your own reasons why you don’t stick with blogging, but I’ve tried to outline what’s been stopping me.  Hopefully you can relate to a few.  Will I suddenly start posting each week here?  Probably not.  Instead, I’ll likely re-think my goal, determine my consistency and THEN I’ll add a new theme!  Don’t talk about it… be about it.

(Note to my Facebook friends… if you’re reading this as a FB note, it’s because I linked this archaic web site called my blog found at ToddEarwood.com a few years ago to FB.  I used to write stuff over there and just might add some more of these this year.  Don’t stress, I’ll continue to primarily post pictures of my nephew and random things I see, make fun of your Farm Mafia and click “like” on your funny statements.)

Hopefully you didn’t spend this day working and instead enjoyed time with family, friends or loved ones.  And maybe, you had something that surprised you as much as seeing our old stuff.  The perfect visualization of that surprise factor was shown by my nephew when I snapped this photo.  Here’s wishing you a very, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or whatever December 25th means to you.

FYI... this has to be the best Christmas picture I've ever taken

]]> http://www.toddearwood.com/2009/12/25/a-holiday-surprise/feed/ 1 http://www.toddearwood.com/2009/12/17/style-your-way-to-financial-freedom/ http://www.toddearwood.com/2009/12/17/style-your-way-to-financial-freedom/#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:44:31 +0000 Todd Earwood http://www.toddearwood.com/?p=978 Sometimes when you hear of a business concept you have to look twice, but this one was for all the wrong reasons.  I mean what woman wouldn’t want to use a coin-operated machine to style her hair in a club, restaurant or mall bathroom?  For those interested in creating a passive income stream, feel free to learn about their “amazing” business opportunity.  Here’s their pitch…

GlideHair vending and business opportunities are genuine low cost, low risk investments providing you with the ability to grow a large network of units with limited capital thereby creating real passive income.

For those who can’t “get” sarcasm, please re-think what you might ask in the comments.

Fire hose outside our office

Twitter has been referenced as a waste of time, pithy non-sense and a time suck.  However, it’s best description for my use is drinking from a fire hose.  There are so many people typing so much information and even with just 140 characters it can be hard to manage.  I’ve written before about my struggles with the Twitter stream, but one benefit the fire hose does provide is tapping the collective knowledge of Twitter.  I agree with Micah that this is NOT necessarily crowdsourcing.  It’s just searching for information or asking a few (or many) people a question and getting an almost instant result.

In the past few months, Twitter has helped me find new restaurants, backup software, news sources, software, home improvement contractors, immediate sports updates and new music.  Why would you search Google for an answer to a question others might immediately give you?   Google has to crawl all those web sites and although its fast, Twitter is faster and I usually know who I can trust.  There is a much bigger discussion over the ascension of real-time search and Twitter’s fire hose provides that too at search.twitter.com.   For detailed research the fire hose may only give you a start, but almost every time I need a simple answer I can poll or search Twitter.

Our society seems to only increase its need for convenience and immediacy, so how do you find quick information?  Do you search online?  Look in a phone book?  Read the local newspaper?  Call or text message a friend?  I’m curious to know.

Since we’re now actively seeking sales pros right now (please forward to others), I figured I would post a few things I consider as non-negotiables.  (Hint: If those who are applying are smart, they’re search my name and find this blog, read this post and reference it in the interview.  Just sayin’.)

1. Attitude – In a small any organization, attitude will affect others negatively.  Pessimism can’t be tolerated and let’s be honest, we prefer to spend time with happy people.  Getting excited about working with good people is infectious and I’m thrilled we have that in spades today.
2. Resourceful – I may value this trait over all others.  To be able to “MacGyver” something with limited resources is critical for our business.  We have to solve problems that can’t just be searched on Google and sometimes with no budget for a customer.  It’s a tough thing, but keeping to look Learn to do things on your own and not wait on your co-worker to complete a task.
3. Customer love – I’m not talking about being cordial or pleasant (that’s a given).  My friends, Deryl and Rusty share this sentiment with their company, DormBuys.  Both of our companies are committed to a level of customer service unmatched by others.  We both MUST have people who love serving others.  Not everyone wants to do this and I truly get that, but don’t apply with me.  For us, I’ve seen the challenge of some geeks love the tech toys, yet hate the users.  I’m happy to let those types stay in the ivory towers of corporate tech because small, nimble companies need and WANT the customer to be first.

I found even just this small list helpful as we filtered through too many resumes.  I recognize I haven’t covered things like integrity, morals or honesty, but I’d hope those are a given for any candidate.  So what are your top traits you seek out?  How do you stay true to those even when someone looks great on paper.  Please, please share your thoughts in the comments below.

I recognize some would prefer a calculator to work out the numbers, but I’ve always liked math and let’s be honest… we focus a great deal on numbers.  Balance sheets, weight scales, account balances, pant sizes, tv channels and bill amounts each can impact our daily lives.  We struggle to find what these numbers mean or rationalize how we feel about them.

A big number will be celebrated by my family this weekend as my Dad turns 60.  For me, it’s hard to believe he’s that age as I’m old enough to realize as he ages, so do I.  While I never worried about Dad reaching this point, I know that number affected him as my Grandfather didn’t make it that far.

We seek out numbers to compare ourselves to others, gauge our progress and even to choose what’s important.  I’ve been thinking less about the comparison or progress and loads more on the importance.  One number I’m recently pondering is the number of days left on earth.  I know it’s a “heavy” topic, but it’s a fact that figure is finite and the catch is we (typically) don’t get advance notice if our number is nearing zero.  I suspect no matter what its size we’d almost all agree… it’s insufficient.  So rather than debate the afterlife (yes, I believe in heaven), I think the real challenge is how we act/react given we know our number exists.

If you tell me I’m only on this earth another 12,654 days (which is exactly the number I’ve been alive today), I’d tell you it’s not NEAR enough.  There’s so much I want to do.  So much I need to say to the right people and so much I’d change, wouldn’t you?  My guess is you could be like me and you ignore your number not because of awareness of its existence, but you may struggle (like me) with accepting it is a reality.  And just to avoid the debate of extending one’s number through healthy changes, medical advances etc… I’m saying the bigger issue is what we each do given we HAVE a number, not how to change it.

If you’ve read this far and are hoping I’ve had some divine intervention about your number or mine, I’m sorry… I haven’t.  Don’t think I haven’t asked God to give me some hints, but nothing has come through yet.  Instead, he’s given me a healthy does of perspective lately and I’m making changes accordingly.

In case you wondered, my running “number” last night was twenty-two seconds per mile faster than my last three runs.  The challenge is not to let the number distract me from a better run.

P.S. – I’m posting this on 11/11 and unless you’re a numerologist… that number shouldn’t matter either.

There’s no question during this economic downturn business can be very serious.  Just recently, I’ve heard work compared to war, a long slog, a roller coaster and a daily grind.  These arduous cliches and somber overtones quite frankly are unnecessary.

It’s my contention work doesn’t have to be so negative.  It CAN be fun and productive.  We add to this pessimistic view by stereotyping job roles such as HR, Legal, IT and Accounting as rigid and yes, sadly some people encourage that view.  However, there are some that refuse to fit that mold despite their discipline.  Which is one reason, I love Christy, the Accounts Payable (AP) person from a client’s company.  Not only do they pay regularly (which is HUGE), but she (an accountant by trade) does her job with flair and humor.  Christy’s entire department was recognized yesterday in a meeting for being a pleasure to work with.  Yes, you read that correctly… an Accounting department is dare I say, FUN!

We each have to make a living, but we have to also live.  Seriousness at work is just overrated and I believe it won’t get you ahead.  Don’t confuse dedication or professionalism with being rigid and hiding your personality at work.  I’ve saved a few of Christy’s emails and pasted them below to remind us all to lighten up at work and enjoy the people.

Quarter til 5:00, with plans to go to the TRC Bash,
Wouldn’t you know, my computer decides to crash!
Void the checks, re-start the process,
Such is the life of an AP goddess!

Three nearly-deaf old men sat on a bench. The first one said “It’s windy” to which the second replied, “No, it’s Thursday” causing the last one to say “Me too, let’s go get a beer”.  If any of you are “Thursday”, come get your check and go get a drink.  Have a great night!

Sorry I fell behind
but want to keep it “above the line”
No excuses, blame or gripe
I’ll just bid you a quick “Good Night”

Waiting on your check . . . well wait no longer! Your ship has come in, your egg has hatched, your gift has arrived . . . your check is now awaiting you on the sunny 5th floor! Now aren’t you glad you worked late!!!!

I returned home late in mid-October 15 from a sales trip down to Atlanta.  I came into work the next day and was eager to tell our team about our promising meetings, but I ran into a snag.  When I arrived at the office, I found 72 balloons all over my desk held in place with streamers, a poster with a Michael Scott quote, brownies, cookies, Todd’s Raving Fans t-shirts and a card… for National Boss’ Day.   I was stunned and thrilled.

For some reason we’re connected to the idea of celebrating people upon certain dates or worse yet at their funerals.  My advice is don’t wait for a holiday, birthday or some special occasion.   Boss’ Day truly caught me off guard as you can see in the video below and surprise birthday parties are great, but everyone likes to be appreciated.  People need to know you care and there’s no better time than today.  Make it special.

Image credit: sideshowtoy.com

It was 10 years ago today I incorporated my first business. To me, it seems impossible how time has flown by so fast. I’ve been blessed with many great experiences, some hard-to-swallow lessons from colossal failures and a couple good wins.

Now, I’m elated to find myself back at my original business, focusing on two of my strongest areas… technology and membership groups. I’ve always run revenue through this company and for the past six years, it’s been very, very stable while I learned and experimented with several tech and non-tech businesses.

I’m going to keep this short as I’m spending the rest of today reflecting not on what could’ve been, but what a decade of entrepreneurship has meant to me. Then I’m going to finally write a few posts answering what I seemingly always get asked… how did you get into business and startups? We each have our own career story and my next few posts will cover some key observations during this time.

My topic was “Navigating Social Media” and as I frequently do, I use text polling to find out how the audience feels about the topic we’re to discuss. The first question was “How do you feel about social media?” I felt very prepared for a range of answers since I run a technology company and have worked in a very large IT department in a large corporation.

However, as the first text results came in, I was quickly reminded my how much I differ from Big IT. The first result used profanity which made several in the audience gasp. I responded with, “Ohh, did I not mention there’s no filter? If you want to be silly, go ahead!” As more results flowed in, several said “waste of time” and “huh”, but overall the popular response was networking. You can see the tag cloud of responses here.

I told the audience I agreed many times social media can be a waste of time, but there are some things to be learned from it for us as professionals and for our careers. At this point, I still didn’t have the audience. I could tell there was resistance to the topic, but I pressed on. I talked about the shift in the web from one-way to two-way conversations and what were the latest trends. I tried another text poll which brought on a few more less than desirable responses. I thought humor might win them over and offered a prize to one of the off-color remarks, but no one would claim it. At that point, I knew I had to change course.

While being as tactful as possible, I told these folks how the local twitter community “bashed” their company for communicating so poorly during the ice storm, how I use Twitter first for news and my local tv station second (at best) and how we’re never going back to the way the web was. I explained how several national brands are getting “murdered” online about their products, culture and customer experiences and some (like @mystarbucksidea, @Comcastcares and @Ford) are doing it right.

I can’t say that I won everyone over with the examples, but I did notice many sat up a little straighter and the overall room seemed to change. I re-focused on my original three points and decided to tell some personal stories about my social web mistakes and usage. If you’ve seen me present, I stuck with the same format of funny pictures, lots of screen shot examples and a lively pace. As I moved through the presentation, I realized these folks weren’t against the social web, but were more likely to be fearful or challenged by it’s growth and direction.

Even after some challenging crowd reactions, I still consider myself one of them. Sometimes Big IT is about control and my view of the social web doesn’t jive with that mindset. I also realize Big IT has to have more rules, structure and policies than my company to protect company’s assets, but I still think there’s some middle-ground for them to actually take advantage of these social tools. For now, I eagerly await the survey results and I’m hopeful some folks learned the social web is more than networking and a waste of time.