The 2 Reasons Your Life and Business Aren’t Expanding, Part 1: Waste

“Even the pros get this one way wrong.”

Have you hit the ceiling with your own personal production or income? Are you ignoring your friends, not walking the dog and skipping meals just so you can get more work done? If so, this post and the next in the series are for you.

Writers can only write so many words in their allotted time, and a bricklayer can only lay so many bricks, right? So, how does one continue to make even more money and achieve one’s dreams no matter how lofty?

The unhealthy solution we’re always taught is just to work more hours. Be the first one to get to the office and be the last one to leave, right?

No way. I would never write a post for Ye Olde Readers that said, “Don’t have the money you want? Simple, just work harder and longer and all your dreams will come true.” How many millions of cubicle rats are never going to be financially independent, or even comfortable? Most of them.

The time/money combination, I am happy to say, is BS.

The beauty about what you’re going to read here is that it will work for you regardless of how much time you actually have for work. If your ideal scene is to spend 30 minutes a day working, this advice will work for you as well as for the guy who loves to work 16 hour days.
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The 2 Reasons Your Life and Business Aren’t Expanding, Part 2: Delegation

Even if you don’t have teammates, you can still have a team

In Part 1, Waste we talked about how wasted time and actions (same thing, really) make it appear that you just can’t expand.

You feel you can’t work any more than you do, can’t make any more money and you’re tied to the desk with no relief in sight. Even if you’re making killer dough, you can just feel that you’re busier than you should be and can’t seem to make even more dough. And that is our Constitutional right, as stated in Article XII which reads:

“We the People can and should make as much dirty smelly filthy lucre as is humanly possible. Can I get a hell yizzle?”

The problem with waste is really a very simple equation:

If you give yourself 7 hours in a day to do your actual work and waste two of those hours, you’ve now got to work 9 hours instead of 7 to make up for the 2 you wasted. Then you’re late to pick up the kids, your wife and/or husband is pissed and now you’ve added stress to your life.
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Anti-GTD advice: Managing your email and good customer service

You may be productive but your customer service blows

I don’t check my email every hour or four as GTD specialists seem to recommend.

I never check it at all because my email is always up and it checks itself every minute. I use the Gmail/Google Notifier combo and when someone writes, a little window pops up and tells me who’s writing and shows the first couple lines of their email. I hear a beep, glance up from my work for approximately .00003 billiseconds, see who wrote, decide if it’s important and respond or not. If it’s a client or potential one, I usually respond immediately.

“But Charlie,” you’re surely saying right now, “it takes time to glance up from your work. And I’ll bet by the end of the day, you’ve wasted 5 or 6 minutes doing so.”

Well, guess what. I’ve got 5 or 6 minutes. I don’t run my life or my business where I’ll implode if I check one more email. When I was in the corporate world that’s how things were. And that’s why I got out.

One of the things that bugs me about the GTD system, or rather one version of it I guess, is that email accountability goes out the window. Productivity specialists often recommend very intermittent email checking. They say check it only in the morning, or only in the evening, or every four hours.
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Life Myths #1 - Do what you love and the money will follow

Do what you love and the money will follow

The first time I heard this I was about fourteen and all I really loved were Victoria’s Secret catalogs. I envisioned a grand future where all I had to do to make money was steal my mother’s mail, but alas my passion never earned me a dime. Mowing the lawn and weeding, though, made me quite a bit of dough. And I hated them.

Years later, after I’d been writing and drawing for more than a decade, I realized that I was again doing something I loved and still making no money at it. I started to fear I’d been duped by this old cliche and was a little worried that money and enjoyment were different sides of the same coin. Or worse yet, that they were different coins altogether.

Why I don’t buy it

Here’s a little story to illustrate it what’s wrong with this moth-eaten adage.

Billy Bob and his brother Cletus really love to sell fish. Every Saturday they fill up their rusty ol’ van with salmon, park it on the side of the highway right in the baking sun, put up their plywood sandwich board that reads “Samin. 5 dollurs a pound.” They stand there all day, trying to sell their product to passersby. They really really really love it. And they never make any money.

Why not? Is it lack of love? No way, they’re as passionate as the next guy. The problem is their nasty van. The awful sandwich board that nobody can read as they drive by. The fact that all their fish is caught down river from a nuclear plant and glows in the dark. Not to mention that buying salmon just off the highway is a somewhat frightening idea.

It doesn’t matter what you’re passionate about. It matters what the customer wants and whether or not you’re supplying it.

The only equation that really makes money

The only real equation you need to know to make sales is a very simple one. And contained within this equation is pretty much everything you need to run a successful business. The equation is:

The customer wants/needs something + You show the customer you have that something at a reasonable price + The customer pays you for it = The End.

In that formula love and passion never make an appearance.

The truth is your customer doesn’t care much what you think about your job or your product, insofar as the quality doesn’t suffer. As long as your product or service is what he needs, and is available at a price he can pay, you’ll make sales.

True Story Alert: The guy I bought my car from was an ass. About 12 seconds after meeting him I was thinking, “This dude obviously hates life, hates me, doesn’t believe in Santa Claus and would like to drive a stake through my temples.” After 3 hours of torture at this guy’s desk, spent mostly in silence or with me trying to crack his exterior with awful jokes, I had my car and I left happy. I’ll never let him sell me another car, that’s for sure. But I’ll be damned if his attitude keeps me from getting what I want in life.

True Story Alert #2: I recently bought an iPhone. It’s a brilliant brilliant product as I knew it would be. But the one thing I didn’t research before buying the phone was whether or not Steve Jobs was passionate about it. I never asked if the guys who put it together on the assembly line really loved it. I can assume they did because obviously a lot of people put in the time to make this phone just about the coolest thing ever. And when it comes right down to it, I don’t really care.

I wanted a phone that did X so I bought a phone that did X. The same will be true for your customers. They want what they want and they’re not going to check your pulse first to see if you’re excited.

Yeah, but isn’t this still good advice?

And now for a complete contradiction:

This is great advice!

Just because this saying isn’t true is no reason not to believe it, at least part of it. The do what you love part.

If you do what you love, the assumption is you’ll make a better product. You’ll put in more time building an intelligent business. You’ll create something new and unique due to your constant submersion in the field. And you’ll also be happier in the process because you actually care about what it is you do. You’re better at doing the things you like. Simple.

You can certainly look at your passions to help you choose a field to enter or a product to develop. Use them to pin down something you’ll be happy to put in the time to develop, to blog about consistently, to R & D until it’s perfect.

But after that, don’t rely on passion alone to bring in the bacon. It’s about sound business principles, providing valuable services and products, good marketing and the like.

Passion itself isn’t going to make you rich, but it greases the wheels and sure makes the trip more enjoyable.

Disclaimer for those about to make comments about my disillusionment

No, I’m not disillusioned.

Yes, I love what I do.

I design and write because if I didn’t I’d probably die of unhappiness. But I loved those things for a long before they ever made me a dime. They started making money only because I marketed myself, told everyone I met what I do and what I could do for them. The passion has been there since the beginning, but the money only showed up once I applied business to my passion.

This post is not advising to concentrate on cold hard cash with the dispassion of Scrooge. The salient point is to find something you love, do something amazing with it, create a product you can exchange for money and then apply intelligent business to it.

Don’t wait for people to find you. The world and the internet are too damned big for that. Speak what you do and speak it loudly. People will find you. When they do, that’s the time to win them over with your passion.

How to take criticism like a champ. Or not at all.

“Think of how dumb the average guy is, then realize that half of them are dumber than that.” - George Carlin

Opinions and criticisms. They’re a dime a dozen. And they’re not always welcome.

Sometimes they change things for the better and sometimes they make someone seem like a useless windbag.

But you’re going to encounter criticism, often in regards to your handiwork and best efforts. This can get the raw emotions flowing even if everything is said with the best intentions.

What do we do about this? We can’t go around slapping people just because they have an opinion, even if they do have all the tact of a belt sander.

Well, what we do sort of depends on what kind of criticism it is and how it’s directed. There are two main types of criticism:

The kind that intends to help
The kind that intends to belittle

How do you know which is which?

Before we do anything about the criticism we receive, if at all, we have to recognize each type for what it is. The following lists will hopefully keep emotions in check and give you some analytical firepower to defuse the situation.

Constructive criticism indicators

It is calm
It’s often preceded by a moment of silence in which actual thought and observation are occuring
It’s not snarky, sarcastic, mean, antagonistic, evil, belittling or anus-like in any way
It’s often accompanied by concentration in the form of chin rubbing and thoughtful frowning (not to be confused with mean, jerk-frowning)
It is on-point and on-purpose, meaning it directly applies to the project at hand
It is not personal or directed towards a personality (yours or anyone’s)
It is results-oriented
There more nouns and verbs than adjectives
It is more fact based than opinion based
It is often accompanied by good conversation whereby further solutions and ideas are ironed out
There is usually a lot of head nodding and often a smile and handshake at the end
When it’s all over you know what the next step is and are excited to carry it forward
You usually feel like saying, “Thank you” at the end

The traits of nasty criticism

It’s antagonistic, covertly hostile and sarcastic
It usually comes faster than constructive criticism because the person giving it hasn’t really thought about anything before running off his fat mouth
It is often personal or directed at a personality and not the project
It is not results-oriented and makes you more confused than you were to begin with
It takes the wind out of your sails and makes you wish the whole project were dead
It leaves you with a feeling of mystery and confusion on how to move forward
You sort of wonder if maybe you were just insulted
Lots of adjectival opinions will be expressed
You say stuff about yourself afterwards like, “I’m not good at taking criticism,” or “I need to lighten up a bit,” or “Nah…I’m sure he didn’t mean it like that.” (He did.)
Instead of thank you, you feel like saying “I hope a Portuguese Man-of-War slides itself in your left eye socket. While you’re being hit by a bus. In hell.”

How to take constructive criticism

My best advice in two handy parts:

1. Be quiet
2. Listen

Preferably, if you can swing it, do both at the same time.

If you’re on the road to greatness yourself, excellent criticism can certainly help shorten the runway.

That’s how you take constructive criticism. Constructive criticism sucks sometimes. Even with the best intentions behind it, criticism can make you feel defensive, or like your project or skills are no good. A whole gamut of emotions can result, but if it is indeed well-intentioned, you should take it in stride and glean whatever you can from it.

You could decide instead not to listen, not to learn anything, not to pay attention. Those are options for sure. But they’re the ones that won’t get you anywhere. Whatever your station in life, whatever your career, there’s a lot to learn. There are a lot of people out there who are great at what they do. If you’re on the road to greatness yourself, excellent criticism can certainly help shorten the runway.

How to take nasty criticism

My advice on taking nasty criticism is also very neat and tidy:

1. Don’t

Seriously, I’m not being flippant. For a change.

If someone has nothing to offer the conversation but his bad attitude, excuse yourself. As I said earlier, we’ve all got a lot to do to achieve our goals. There’s no reason to waste our time.

This seems anti-social. “Everybody’s entitled to share their opinion,” is the politically correct thinking behind this. “You should give everyone a kind ear.”

But why? If you lived next to a factory that endlessly belched out carcinogenic smoke into your living room windows, you’d move. Why can’t you move if some jerk is belching out insults? It’s understood that people have the right to communicate. That means there must also be a right to not communicate if you don’t wish to.

And besides, there’s nothing as anti-social as trying to cut apart another person’s handiwork with the intention of making them feel awful.

Yes, everyone has the right to talk. And everyone has the right not to listen to a word of it.

How to get away from a jerk

It’s really up to you how you do it, but what’s worked for me is to just end the conversation by getting up and leaving, or by making it fairly obvious that I’m done listening. How do you do that? Just acknowledge them. Sternly. Just give them a nice “thank you” with that tone of voice that says “I’ve met bread mold that was more intriguing than this.”

Short of getting into a pointless argument with them (because they’re not really listening anyway) you can say pretty much anything. Try these:

“Thank you.”
“I understand.”
“Wow. I’m gonna go check my shorts.”
And my favorite of all time. “Dad, I’m not having a good time.” I stole this from a Leo Kottke CD. I actually said that to a guy who was really going to town on me. I walked away while he was working that one out.

Well, smartass, what if the nasty criticism has constructive bits in it, huh? What then?

My viewpoint on this is simple: I learn whatever I can from wherever/whomever I can. I don’t discriminate when it comes to getting better at my craft. Just take what you can and get the hell out.

Luckily for you and I, usually the people who give the best advice are like you and me. They have put in a lot of time to get better at what they do. They’ve probably put in thousands of hours of study on their own, outside of classrooms or on the job. They know the value of work ethic, good advice and help. They too have traveled over quite a learning curve and will be more than happy to help you over yours. Plus, they’ll be so good at what they do, they won’t be worried about you becoming successful too.

That concludes this post, which must make you very very sad. Luckily, I’ll be back soon with another post that’s just as ~~brilliant~~ ~~intelligent~~ written in English as this one. If you subscribe now you won’t miss it!