Pick a Direction - Page 10 of 28 - How do you expect to finish if you never start?Pick a Direction

“Do you have a card?” (word-art)

My mind was drawing a blank about what to write. I am usually a fountain of ideas when it comes to topics on which to blog… Maybe it’s cause I’m so busy. Maybe it’s cause I tried to write at night instead of the morning. Or maybe I just felt like it was time to push my creative limits.

Either way, this is what happened.

I’ve spent a ton of time responding to requests and prospecting for projects the past few weeks. This B2B terminology is everything that’s been rattling around in my head. If you’ve ever done sales of some sort, especially B2B, you’ll see where I’m coming from. Feel free to leave me a comment with anything I missed!

—

B2B sales is a whole new world for me. But in some ways I’ve been prepared for it through my time in retail: I’m used to talking to people. I know that not everyone is going to buy. I have know what makes people tick and how to be patient with them.

But in many ways it’s a new skill that I am still very much learning.

Anytime you go into a new challenge, it takes a while to sift through the process. This exercise has helped me sift through the sales process and identify the individual pieces. Now it’s time to put these thoughts into a logical order and continue working on closing more sales.

P.S. There is a small bit of rhyme & reason to this, can you figure it out?

—

Leave me a comment or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear from you. Have a great week!

—

Sign up for Posts via Email below

Your Mom Wasn’t Lying When She Said You Were Special

Every Kid in America ^^^

Everyone gets a trophy.

That’s how it’s been for a few years now. We’re starting to see some of the repercussions entering the workforce with entitlement stamps on their resumes. Just because you earned a piece of paper, doesn’t mean you get to make $60,000/year in your first job.

Aside from little league sports, trophies are not given for participation.

You don’t get A’s for showing up to class. You don’t get to start on the team just because you came to summer workouts. And success doesn’t come just because you do what is expected of you.

Everyone is expected to be to work on time. Everyone is expected to sacrifice on occasion. Everyone has lofty goals.

But not everyone achieves success. It’s the individuals that separate themselves from the pack that win the trophies.

Everyone thinks they’re special

Everyone is an amateur writer – blogs, an amateur photographer – Instagram, an amateur comedian – Twitter, and an amateur political buff – Facebook. The key phrase here being amateurs.

We’ve got a lot of professional amateurs. People that think they’re doing special work, but they’re just following the crowd. The only difference is they expect to be recognized and paid specially for their mediocrity.

Because we’ve grown up being told everything we do is great, we now expect to be patted on the back for standard protocol. That’s not why you get a pat on the back.

Pats on the back, congratulations, and hi-fives should not come to people doing their job competently (and they don’t in most places). Those types of recognition come with extra effort or exceptional performance.

Competent ≠ Recognition | Exceptional = Recognition

We are all special

…in our own way. Where people get confused is thinking they’re special in every way.

Just because you pick up a hobby, doesn’t mean you’re going to be good at it. Sure, it’s fun to dabble. But you’d never expect to become a pro beach volleyball players just because you beat Uncle Larry and your 12 year-old cousin at a family reunion.

Yet, we insist on thinking this way when it comes to our work.

If we’re all special, that put us all on the same playing field. Back here in reality, that’s called being average. We’re all average in most ways.

But we all have some sort of God-given talent that can separate us from the pack. For some, it’s physical talent. For others, it’s the ability to create (music, sculptures, businesses, etc.). Still for some, it’s our ability to make connections.

We all have something that makes us special. Personally, I don’t want to be special in every way. That’s way too much to handle.

In order to truly be special at something, you have to work for hours and days and years to to master that craft. I don’t have enough time to be great at everything. I’d rather put my eggs in a couple baskets that I enjoy and become the best I can be at those few things.

—

How do you differentiate yourself from the crowd? What makes you special?

Leave me a comment or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear from you. Have a great week!

—

Sign up for Posts via Email below

Giving to Gain

Click the Cover Page to Download

I went ten months without a job.

I spent most of that time lost and confused, not knowing which path to take. And when I finally chose one, I didn’t know if it was the “right” one.

All I could do was forge forward and trust that everything was going to work out. I put my story into a book. This is how I gave my way to two jobs without a resume.

It wasn’t easy, and I’m still working hard at it. But I’ve learned some valuable lessons by taking this path.

The book is filled with my experiences, stubbornness, mistakes, and successes as I attempt to do things my way. I’d love for you to read it. Just click the cover page and download the PDF.

You don’t even have to signup for my email list, but I’d love it if you did you can signup on the right sidebar 🙂 .

How Painters & Sculptors Affect Businesses

There two kinds of professionals in this world: painters and sculptors.

Not necessarily in the traditional sense, but in how they approach their work.

Painters

Take a blank canvas and fill it. Their imaginations drive them to build, they are able to create something out of thin air. They imagine the colors, the shapes, and the depths of a finished piece of work even before they start. They know what their end-goal looks like and they add to a blank canvas to make their work come alive.

In today’s economy these might be engineers (traditional & tech), copywriters, chefs, or entrepreneurs that see an opportunity and start tinkering in their garage.

Sculptors

Start begin a block of granite, wood, or another element. Then they chip away at it to make it smooth in all the right places and sharp in others. Their work is not easy. It takes a real craftsman’s eye to see beauty locked inside a slab of plain.

The first thing that comes to mind here is a entrepreneur that has an idea, but doesn’t know how to make it come to life. Other professions might include managers or business owners that hire someone to build their website.

You’ve seen them both. You know who they are and you’ve come in contact with them. Many of the sculptors I have worked alongside don’t know what they want. Rather, “they know what they don’t want.”

Many times it’s my job to help those sculptors find out what it is they want. They can’t create out of thin air, but they can critique. They can’t build, but they can refine. They don’t have originality, yet they have taste (or so some of them think).

Painters sound like this

“Try it”
“Why not?”
“See where it leads us”
“It doesn’t have to be perfect”
“Nobody has done this before”

Sculptors sound like this

“I don’t like that”
“Change that color”
“Let’s move this here”
“Can you make that larger?”
“This isn’t what I pictured in my head”

Painters add. Sculptors remove.

But in order to remove, there has to be something from which to take away. The sculptors need the painters. Without them, they have nothing.

There is no shortage of people with ideas, and there’s something to say for simplifying an idea as a great sculptor can do. But if you can’t add, it’s hard to bring value. If all you do is take away, you’ll never be able to start from scratch.

Entrepreneurs see opportunities and they create. I challenge you to find a solopreneur that is a sculptor. There aren’t any, they all have painters helping.

This is not to say that sculptors are bad people or useless. I was a sculptor for a long time, and in some ways I still am. But we need to learn to create, not just take away.

When you know how to create, it helps you understand what can be taken away. It helps you know the struggles of the painter when you ask them to take something away from their work.

“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively”
– Dalai Lama XIV

On the other hand, many painters have the abilities to create, but don’t always have a vision for what to create. For example, I met with a guy that doesn’t know what he wants to do next in his career, but he has the abilities to create his future product(s). Skills without vision.

He’s been a sculptor for a long time, now he’s having to learn to paint. When you can do both, you’ve got an unfair advantage.

Not all sculptors have vision

And not all painters have the ability to create masterpieces.

The most successful companies are the ones that pair the painters with the sculptors most effectively. They will have the vision and the design of the sculptors paired with the engineering and creativity of the painters.

If you’re a painter, learn to simplify a piece of work – take something away.

If you’re a sculptor, learn to add value – create something.

See how the other side lives and you will take your craft to the next level.

Are you painter or a sculptor?

—

Leave me a comment or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear from you. Have a great week!

—

Sign up for Posts via Email below

The Difference Between

When you’re bored there are too many distractions to be productive
When you’re busy there is just enough time for everything
When you’re bombarded you can’t focus long enough to get the important things done

Bored is uninteresting
Busy is exciting
Bombarded is overwhelming

If you’re bored, you’re lazy
If you’re busy, you have initiative
If you’re bombarded, you’re foolish

Avoid bored
Stay busy
Don’t let yourself be bombarded

Find your busy place today 🙂

—

Leave me a comment or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear from you. Have a great week!

—

Sign up for Posts via Email below

When You Should Hire a New Employee

I was hired too early. The guys at SOUTH weren’t ready for me to join the team when I did. There was no shortage of ideas on their part, nor ambition on mine. It just wasn’t the right time.

It happened because I’m in an independent contractor’s role, not an employee’s role. See, I don’t get paid on salary or by the hour. I get paid by the work I am able to do. There wasn’t work for me at the time, but they knew they wanted me to on their team.

Fortunately (for both parties), I was in a place where I could afford to be patient as things have developed.

But not all employers are lucky enough to find someone they want without having to pay them. So today, referencing my current situation and my previous life, I’ll be diving into when you should hire a new employee.

Who to Hire (Steps 1 & 2)

When it comes to hiring, most people are lost. They’ve never done it before, they don’t really know who they want on the team, and they typically start off with Craigslist. Yes, there are some Craigslist success stories, but they are few & far between.

The first thing you need to do when considering hiring a new person is decide what role the person will play.

You must decide if they will assist your existing team, if they will be your side-kick (aka your first hire), or if they’ll be a rainmaker and bring in sales. Sometimes you’ll even have to hire people for a brand new role, but that’s often for larger companies who know when they need to bring some talent up from the minors.

P.S. I am a huge advocate of promotion from within if possible

You don’t have to give them a title or decide salary just yet. You just need to lay it out there and decide what role they’ll play.

If you don’t know what role they will play, you can’t really move to Step 2. Do not justify a new hire by saying, “I didn’t even have time to think,” that will only lead to more headaches.

The second step is to determine what tasks they will perform. I highly suggest you do this BEFORE you hire them.

I’ve seen many people hired and have their list of responsibilities thrown together on the first day of work. Things done in panic mode, and for a business owner there is no greater panic than an hourly employee wasting time, rarely turn out like you intended.

This doesn’t have to be a neat and tidy job description. It just has to be something you can reference. The key here is to write it down.

When you do this before you hire someone, you know what you’re looking for during interviews. If someone is going to be answering phones, make sure they’re nice to speak. If they are going to be helping in a warehouse, make sure they are able-bodied.

At the same time, this gives you the chance to disqualify people if they are “above” some things you think you’ll need help with (cleaning around the office, unloading trucks, etc.) during the interview process.

If you’re having trouble writing out what tasks you will have someone perform, you probably don’t have great standard operating procedures in place. Check out this Tropical MBA podcast episode on SOP’s to get you moving in the right direction.

When You Should Hire a New Employee As you get a list of tasks together, it can be refined and tweaked later. Most importantly, it can be lengthened!

The key point here is that if your list looks like this guy’s –> than you don’t need an assistant and you’re going to be overwhelmed when you do. Instead, find specific tasks that you (or anyone whose load you’re trying to lighten) can take off your plate and add it to their list.

Once your list is lengthier than the one this guy has, you can start thinking about hiring. And that fancy new list you started, that will eventually turn into their job description.

When to Hire (Step 3)

Adding a new person should bring value to your team. So make sure when you hire, your new person brings you value and not burden.

Yes, it will be hectic trying to train that person in the early days. But, I’m not referring to the training process. I’m referring to constantly making up new things for people to do.

Ex: I saw a talented woman get hired before the furniture company was ready for her. She had many talents and she could handle more than was thrown her way. She was a “shared” assistant for the me and a few other people.

Personally, I gave her all that I could delegate (and it was awesome having her around – I was 10X more productive). But that only gave her about 4 hours worth of work each day. Since she was hired too early and nobody else thought about what they would delegate to her, she ended up cleaning offices nearly every day – hardly something that helped us make more money.

As you can imagine, she wasn’t very fulfilled and took another position months after she started. We were so upset with how things transpired that we never hired a new assistant.

The final step is to prepare yourself to LET GO.

When you’re about to hire someone, they are most likely going to be taking things off of someone’s (probably your) plate. If you never let them own those new responsibilities, you’ll never have less to do.

Double checking every single thing a new hire does can be an incredible waste of time. Plus it’s insanely demoralizing to the person you’re trying to welcome into your company. If you have to check every bit of their work you probably did a bad job of screening people in the hiring process.

That or you have a little problem known as micro-management and that new hire won’t last long unless they’re desperate.

Your Turn

In short, many of you feel like you need to hire someone. But you don’t know when you should hire a new employee. That can be a painful process, especially if you don’t have a plan once they arrive.

Be prepared and know what tasks you’ll have them take over before they start working. Having a list of tasks and a role in which they will play helps you solidify how they can help your organization. When you know their role, you can articulate it to them. Once you can clearly show them your expectations, they will have the chance to blow past them for you.

These are my experiences with hiring new people into an organization. How do you know when it’s time to bring a new person into your organization?

—

Leave me a comment or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear from you. Have a great week!

—

Sign up for Posts via Email below

How to Stick to Goals and Knowing When to Ditch Them

It all starts with Why. Simon Sinek explained that in 2009. Why do you do what you do?

It’s a question not all of us can answer. For a long time I couldn’t. I just sort of put my head down & worked my tail off. I was rewarded for it, but in hind sight I was just following orders like a good worker bee.

In the past I’ve written about quitting on your goals and when that’s an honorable thing to lean into. But recently, I have found myself sticking with some goals that I may have quit in the past.

There’s a big difference in quitting because you’re uncomfortable and quitting because you don’t want to commit.

It comes down to your WHY

Knowing why you set your goals and having conviction about them will make all the difference. If you’re not in love with a goal, why would you push through hard times to achieve it?

If you’re not in love with a goal, why would you sacrifice anything for it?

If you’re not in love with a goal, why are you pursuing it?

If you’re not in love with a goal, why bother?

Answering these questions before you ever put a goal down on paper will help you decide whether or not it’s worth sticking to when times get tough.

Pro football players decide whether or not a season of brutality is worth a potential Lomdardi Trophy in the off-season while life is calm. They don’t decide whether it’s worth it during pre-season camp while their bodies are aching (unless you’re Brett Favre of course).

If you know why you’re getting yourself into something, you will have more conviction to stick to it than if your goal is randomly plucked out of the air. Or worse, if you’re setting certain goals for the wrong reasons.

The Why Behind My Goals

In January I published a few of my goals to make them public knowledge and keep myself accountable. I picked these because they matter to me and will help shape me into who I want to be. I have other financial and personal goals, but these are a couple that I want to put meaning behind to illustrate my point.

Build a TV Stand –

I used to work in the furniture industry and my company sold “cookie-cutter” furniture by the truckloads. Literally AND figuratively. All the furniture in my house came from that company and now that I have divorced myself from them, my furniture reminds me of those days.

Since I want to move on and really enjoy expressing my creativity through wood-working, I am in the laborious process of building a TV stand.

If I give up on the TV Stand before it’s finished, it’s like I’m still attached (yes, that may sound cheesy to you) to the company I’m moving away from. Plus, as a creative person, I do not get satisfaction from starting a bunch of projects without finishing them.

I get satisfaction from shipping finished works.

I talked about creating quality work with this project and it has given me it’s share of headaches to smooth over. But ultimately I’ve stuck to this goal now I’m almost ready to finish it.

Write an eBook –

I have a BHAG to write a book. As in, a hardcover book that tells a very specific story I was fortunate enough to experience. The problem is, I’m an average writer at best (if you agree, you don’t need to tell with me in the comments, just silently nod your head). I need as much practice as I can get so I don’t botch the opportunity I have to share it with the world.

Writing, editing, & publishing an eBook is nowhere near as big of a feat as publishing my book.

However, it’s like the kid who starts out surfing 2 foot waves. Once he masters those, he can move on to the 3-4 footers. And then he can take a trip to Costa Rica and attack some 6-10 footers. He doesn’t just jump into Pipeline on his first day paddling out.

I started really small by journaling. Then I began to publish my work for the world to see on this blog. Now I’m getting into the eBook. They’re all baby steps.

I have to get this under my belt to continue building towards publishing my big book next year.

This too has given me plenty of doubt and frustration. But after I got the ball rolling, I’m able to crank out a page every day I sit down to write.

What you won’t see is the nearly 10 pages of scrapped work left in my journal. I didn’t give up because this is important to me and I know WHY I’m pushing through those dips.

Quitting My Own Company

I see now what Seth Godin was talking about in The Dip. He spoke extensively on why is’t OK for us to quit. Quit the things that don’t make sense, quit the dead-ends before you waste anymore time.

In the early part of 2014 I had goals to start my own company, hire sales people, create an awesome service, and forge my own path. I started with current clients and laid out prospects, revenue goals, hiring goals, and even put a business plan on paper (and by paper I mean a marker board in my bedroom).

Within 45 days of making all those plans and carefully setting all of those goals, I quit them – all. I was offered a position that had more upside than my current path. The best case scenario in both situations looked completely different.

I weighed having my own company versus working as an independent contractor for an established company.

My business plan was held together by shoelaces & duct tape. Although I knew the business could evolve in the future, there were a lot of dead ends on the horizon.

On the other hand, the company I currently work with has unlimited potential and I entered in on the ground floor of a budding powerhouse. The guys respect me and they’re the kind of people that follow the Jim Collins train of thought, they just want the right people on the bus right now.

To them, I’m one of the right people. And on my end, I’m pumped about where that bus is headed.

Good thing I was willing to quit my own goals to work with guys that care about me and want me to be part of something so cool.

I could see I wasn’t in a dip, my situation wasn’t going to get better, and this wasn’t just a hard time I had to push through. I was on a dead end road.

Just like so many of you, I was on a path that I knew didn’t lead anywhere I wanted to be. I hopped off that train, why haven’t you?

—

When was a time that you stuck with a goal? Leave me a comment or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear from you. Have a great week!

—

You can Sign up for Posts via Email below

Exploring New Ideas – Bikers’ Insurance

I ride my bike to work. On the way in, it gives me time to organize my thoughts for the day. On the way home, it gives me time to decompress and get out of “work-mode.”

It also gives me time to inhale this beautiful city in which I live and just think. These are some of those thoughts that occur somewhere between East Bay Street & Lockwood Drive.

Epiphany

So as I’m riding my bike to work one day I realized that if someone opened their car door on me, I could be seriously injured.

Here in Charleston, cyclists have to follow the same laws as motor vehicles. The sidewalks aren’t wide enough for people & bikes. Plus the cobblestones would make for a miserable ride…

So we have to ride on the street, amongst the cars and in the thick of traffic. We have to ride past rows of parked cars parallel parked in meter spots throughout the city.

If a driver opened their door without paying attention and a cyclist couldn’t avoid them, the biker would help that driver get their door all the way open… with their front handle bars.

Yes, it’s kinda scary and it’s almost happened more than once to me. The more you ride, the more you learn to look for the potential doors being opened. But there’s still the tourist or the new driver that doesn’t think to look for cyclists in this town.

What would happen if I got hit? Whose fault would that be? Who would pay for my mode of transportation and for their door to be fixed? Or worse, any injuries?

Opportunity

Image Courtesy of Bike Safe Boston

Of course I researched this because it’s too good of an idea not to already have some attention.

But all the bikers’ insurance I found seems to be only for people who are serious racers, not necessarily people like me who casually ride to work. It covers high end bikes for people who race on the open road and have the potential to get side-swiped, not the ones who might have a door opened up on them.

Nor is there anything for the college kids in this town whose (in some cases) sole mode of transportation is a bicycle. Most of it is too expensive for college kids and/or their parents who are already paying tuition.

So they’ve already got type A Bike Insurance: expensive and made for serious open road racers. But our opportunity is type B Bike Insurance: affordable and meant for city-cyclers who have to stick very close to cars.

I wouldn’t be surprised Type By existed somewhere, but I couldn’t find it after a quick search online and I’ve never seen it marketed here in Charleston. That and the fact that bikes are illegal on sidewalks here make for a great opportunity.

So someone with a website that was optimized for the right keywords has a great opportunity, just like someone who is willing to do some guerilla marketing and find the bikers around downtown areas like mine!

No Shortage of Ideas

Everyone has ideas. Not all of them are great, but everyone has ideas. I wanted to share some of mine so that maybe, just maybe you’ll share some of yours.

I love hearing new business ideas, talking strategy with people, and encouraging people to go for something that they’re not sure about. Heck, that’s how I got started with my work. Just talking it through with a few people, exploring possibilities, and getting some feedback helps to get ideas off the ground

I want to encourage you to think because it’s still OK to do that.

We’re brought through schools in a manner that encourages us to be cogs in a wheel and many of our youth don’t know how to think for themselves anymore. It was a tough spot for me when I realized I had to start thinking and acting differently than when I had a steady income. I didn’t really know what to do after I quit, so I floundered around until I’m doing what I do now.

Had I been more comfortable thinking up business ideas and had the confidence to go after them, my entire course could have been altered.

I want to encourage each of you to explore those ideas you’re unsure about. You can do that with me here in the comments section, on twitter (@mikemccan3), via email (mikemccann3 {at} gmail) or with someone else who wants to listen.

Just do me a favor and explore some new ideas, you’ll be amazed at what comes out of it!

—

Have a great week!

—

Want posts sent directly to your email?

Fill out the form below and check your email to confirm

Older Posts

Newer Posts