The truth about paying your dues and “getting lucky”

| Published 4 May, 2009 | 6 Comments

success“Thanks for the offer, but I really just want to make it on my own steam.”

Have you ever heard that one before?

Better yet, have you ever felt like that or maybe even said it yourself? Ever feel that maybe you’d be abusing a relationship if you used it for a business connection?

It’s time to disabuse ourselves of this idea.

I say milk every connection, every network and every opportunity that comes your way.

You have to pay your dues.

This is true. Honestly, I think it is, and you’ll see what I mean in a sec. I’m not just trying to contradict myself.

The thing is that the cliche is not even slightly applicable when you’re confronted with the opportunity to network and really use your connections. People who think you’re taking the easy way out or having life handed to you are missing one very vital truth:

Paying your dues is done way before opportunity starts knocking or people take notice of you.

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Posted in Business Essentials | 6 Comments

How to write a tagline way better than Microsoft

| Published 15 March, 2009 | 13 Comments

Microsoft proves why traditional marketing still doesn’t work
lifewithoutwalls
I can picture it now. It’s early morning and the marketing reps of Microsoft are gathered in a room to discuss the new tagline that will grace their commercials and billboards over the coming months.

The lights in the room are dimmed and there’s a PowerPoint slideshow glowing on the front wall.

The room goes dark as each new slide fades in.

“Great computers. Great possibilities,” reads the first slide. This gets some nods.

“Even lettuce likes Microsoft,” reads the next. “Interesting,” says one of the marketing guys, “but too…mmmm…organic. Next.”

“Where would you be without Microsoft? Eff’ed, that’s where!” reads the next slide. “Aggressive, bold…I like it,” says one exec.

“Life without walls” reads the next slide. “Wait!” says the lead marketer dude. “This one’s got real promise!”

And thus a new tagline is born.

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Posted in Business Essentials, Getting Traffic, The Lighter Side | 13 Comments

To School or Not to School

| Published 2 February, 2009 | 6 Comments

Deans, Principals and school administrators, I apologize for this. But not really.
mortar

Back in the day, we all used to learn our trades by apprenticing. Cooks would cook, painters would paint and blacksmiths would pound real metal next to some old-timer with calloused hands and spiders in his beard. He probably smelled like the devil and was rude to the passing ladies, too. But at the end of a few months the blacksmith knew how to blacksmith. If he didn’t, the old dude would keep smashing his head against the anvil.

But now we go to school. Yawn. We look at slide shows, get lectured at and read books about our industry, instead of being actually in the industry. Yawn again. Then we graduate, only to realize that all we really learned was how to do homework, but not how the nuts and bolts all go together.

Doctors and lawyers and other people who wield scalpels need real school certificates of some sort. In these disciplines, practitioners just won’t make it unless they’ve proven they really know what they’re doing.

And I’m fine with that. If you’re going to be playing with my liver, I’d much prefer that you were in school for 96 years and have a very large certificate with signatures on it.

But what about the rest of us? What if you want to be a writer? Or an artist? Or a business person? Or a consultant?

I’ve had a few life-consulting gigs (for lack of better term) of late. In two cases the person I was talking to was very busy putting off a dream of theirs because they didn’t have an education in the subject. I asked, “Do you mean you don’t have training or you don’t have an education?” Because they’re different.

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Posted in Business Essentials, The Lighter Side | 6 Comments

Are you one of the tractionless?

| Published 28 January, 2009 | 6 Comments

Caution : Integrity-check ahead
traction
Most of us spend a good deal of our lives (if not all of it) going with the flow, being part of the crowd, meshing in with the world around us. It feels comfy, it feels safe and it feels social.

But fitting in is mostly useless.

If you want to be noticed and build something of your own that succeeds, you’re going to need to buck the trend and get out of the universal comfort zone.

If the crowd is going one way, you need to change direction.

Changing direction requires traction. Traction is guts. It’s initiative. It’s courage.

If you clock in at 9am, go to your cubicle, do your day’s work and then quietly leave at 5pm, how visible are you? How much attention are you grabbing?

It’s way harder to speak to a group than to be in the audience. It’s way more uncomfortable to cut a new path than follow the crowd. It feels like you’re going out on a limb when you prove to people that you’re not just like them.

And you are, but that’s a good thing. There’s plenty of room out there for your personality.

Posted in Business Essentials, Happy Living | 6 Comments

The “secret” of lasting web traffic

| Published 26 January, 2009 | 7 Comments

If this post teaches you anything, I’d be very very surprised
busystreet
The most important element in getting lasting web traffic…

I’m gonna tell you what it is even though I guarantee you already know it.

And, no, it’s not nude celebrity pictures or videos of Britney Spears accidentally hitting her baby with a tire iron.

Okay, I admit it, I’d probably have to go check that one out. But I guarantee once I left the site, I wouldn’t be able to find my way back if you paid me. That’s not a successful business model.

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Posted in Getting Traffic | 7 Comments