This morning I was catching up my reading – it could consume my entire day if I let it – and took a much needed detour from work related topics to something FUN.  Jo-Lynne’s post about end of summer / fall fashion got me thinking about how much I like to wear high heels, but don’t.  As a “work from home / stay at home / work for myself at the office outside the home” mom my wardrobe is *VERY* casual.  I have three main modes of dress – meeting clients, casual work, and cat vomit.  I tend to hover around casual work, which means a nearly stain free tee, capri jeans, and flip flops.  You don’t even want to know what the cat vomit days look like…

After reading Jo-Lynne’s post, and thinking back to the times I’ve met her in person – she always looks amazing.  She has one more kid than I do, and seems much more put together in home and fashion than I am.  After thinking about it, I realized I need to wear high heels more.  Casually.  Usually heels are reserved for the meeting client days, because besides being professional, they make me feel more ‘grown up’ as if being nearly 40 didn’t already.  I’m getting better with makeup, but not my hair (the fact that it falls out in huge nasty clumps isn’t exactly inspiring to take the time to style it).

So if I can add this one little thing – wearing heels on a casual basis – to my life it may just give me a bit of a confidence boost.  Maybe it’s the small simple things in life that make all the difference…

Lately I have been so busy spinning my wheels at work there is no time for anything else except for family.  All I do is chase business and work.  No conferences, no networking, no meetups, no book writing – nothing.  There can be no growth if there is no exit from my cute little office.  While I love our existing clients, every business needs a healthy flow of fresh new client faces.  Running lean on staff, as most small businesses do, doesn’t leave me much time to cultivate and nurture new relationships for business like I should be doing.  Right now I’m running fast as hell in place and getting nowhere.

I want need to start soliciting the book proposal that I have been sitting on half finished for over a year.

I want need to travel to conferences to meet new people and make new business.

I want need to work with a few high-profile clients that actually agree to let me use their name publicly instead of keeping my company behind the curtain.

I still want need a vacation with my family.

I cook when I have to – not because I want to.  I envy people that love to pop into a (sparkling clean) kitchen and whip up an amazing meal all while humming the theme song to the Martha Stewart Show.  I’m a decent cook.  I just don’t enjoy the fact of preparing three meals a day for the rest of my life.

One of my go-to recipes is pancakes.  Yes, I start with box mix, but then add my own culinary flair – along with a can of ginger ale and chocolate chips – and every sleepover my daughter has leaves her girlfriend’s asking me to share the recipe with their mom.

Today was a sleepover-morning and I woke up to find there was no (NOOOOOOO!) pancake box mix in the house.  How hard could it be?  Turns out there are a lot of pancake recipes on the internet, and now I felt compelled to add one more.  Because it ROCKS and it is deceptively healthy.  My inspiration came from Stacey Snacks (shout out to a fellow Jersey Girl!), but I’ve twisted her version so much that I felt it deserved it’s own place in the world.  Funny, I don’t have a NAME for the pancakes, maybe I should get on that…

• 1 cup all-purpose unbleached flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 tablespoons ground flax seeds
• 1 teaspoon Penzey’s blend cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon Penzey’s orange peel
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons sugar

Mix dry ingredients together & add:

• 2 cup 2% milk (use any % you have)
• 2 eggs
• 3 Tablespoons vegetable oil

Pour onto a hot skillet. Turn when bubbling.  Nom.  (I add chocolate chips and / or fresh New Jersey blueberries to the pancakes after the first flip.)

This is doubled from Stacey’s recipe, but I like to make extra and freeze them for weekday breakfasts.

Now I need to go clean my kitchen that looks like what Food TV Network stages look like after a 24 hour cooking marathon and  MAKE SOME COFFEE!!

After three and a half years on Twitter, my account is overdue for a purge. It’s bloated and is not as useful as it could be. For the first year or so on Twitter, there weren’t that many other people around, so we ALL followed EVERYONE. Before I knew it, wedding DJs and garage bands from around the world followed me and I followed them back. Having the last name Radio is a hazard because every band looking for radio play wants to be my BFF until they realized I don’t work at a radio station.

I knew it was time to clean house because I was no longer reading my Twitter stream, but reading my Twitter lists or visiting people’s Twitter page directly. Part of me didn’t want to ‘offend’ anyone by un-following after I had already extended an olive branch. You know what? Chances are I’m not providing value, entertainment, knowledge, or a service to a good number of their accounts either. After finding TheTwitCleaner.com, I have started the process of the purge. While I have no hard and fast rules for keeping a follower versus un-following, there are some general guidelines I have in my head as I visit each page TwitCleaner recommends to un-follow. Of course as they will state, these are suggestions, it’s up to you to visit each account and make your own judgment call.

I’m sharing my fast and loose guidelines for un-following a Twitter account here. Now you understand why I don’t follow you anymore — or why I still DO.

Un-Follow Guidelines:

• You tweet in another language. It’s not you, it’s me. Sorry.
• You offer no original content. If your entire Twitter stream consists of ReTweets that tells me you have no original thoughts or opinions of your own. If you are a business on Twitter, I will sometimes make exceptions, but not many.
• Your Tweets are nothing but links back to your blog. Again, certain businesses I expect this from and are saved from the cut (@CNN this mean you) but as a HUMAN with a Twitter account, I want you to talk with me, not vomit links to your content. That’s what RSS is for.
• You don’t have anything interesting to say above the fold. That’s right, I’m lazy. While the scroll wheel works fine on my mouse, I choose not to scroll to find conversations of value. You’re only as interesting as your last 10 Tweets.
• You like to kill things. I am not joking here. Somehow I managed to follow a good number of hunters and fishermen. I’m not against hunting or fishing, but not a fan of shooting wolves from helicopters or details about breeding night crawlers let alone reading messages about it.
• You are overtly pornographic. Trust me when I say I’m no prude, but honestly, I don’t care about YOUR *personal* life, I care about MINE. And mine is not on Twitter.
• You are selling something. Listen, we are all selling. All day, every day, we all are chasing coin. I am not interested in getting more Twitter followers, losing weight, getting whiter teeth, or higher rankings in Google. Well, actually, I am interested in all of those things, just not from YOU.
• Anyone trying to sell me what my company already does. Seriously, did you even READ my bio before you started spamming my DM? I work at a social marketing and technology firm. I really don’t need to hire you to teach me how to use Twitter to increase traffic to my website.

Follow Guidelines:

• You are a friend. A real life in the flesh friend that I would invite to my house for dinner. Even if you Tweet about your goldfish all day, I still love you and value the insane babbling you publish on Twitter.
• Rockstars in my profession. Yes, it’s the popular kids thing to do, but they wouldn’t be rockstars if they weren’t providing value. Chances are a lot of them are my friends as well (I am a very famous Internet D-Lister after all…)
• You provide a valuable community service. @RedCross and @InstantAmber are perfect examples. I will never drop an account where there is the possibility that just one message can save one life.
• You are a business that ‘gets’ IT and knows how to use social media / social marketing to build community. Trust me, I have private lists for those of you that don’t get IT, as well as some slides in the conference talks I do.
• You are a client or business industry I have my eye on. I’m a very good businesswoman. I know how to use the information that comes out of the magic box and onto a computer screen to work my business. By the time I walk in your front door, everything there is to know about your firm that’s in (digital) print has already been implanted on a chip in my brain.
• You are a person that behaves like a human. Sometimes I just like to follow people because I find them interesting, or know other people that would find them interesting or valuable. Being a connector is just as important as being connected. Expand your circle, your interests, and maybe you will grow with it.

For now, this is what will get you kicked out of my club or in the door with a handshake. Don’t take it personally, it’s my club, not yours. You have every right to un-follow ME. Of course if you think I’ve un-followed your account in error and you are about to Tweet the meaning of life or the next PowerBall winning numbers, feel free to @ me and get my attention. But DM the PowerBall numbers to me, don’t make it public, I really don’t want to split the prize. I need a vacation and could use the coin.

NOTE: I am finding myself un-following a good number of people/businesses but categorizing them in lists instead.  This is a GOOD thing (for me anyhow).  Filling up my Twitter stream with pages of links to Etsy items or makeup tips is counterproductive to me.  By having you on a list, I can still consume your ideas/content/links but on a better schedule for me.

Twice in the past two weeks I was asked if I’d ever sell my company and roll up in a larger social media / social marketing firm. I’m not sure if I would. I have friends that have sold companies and get absorbed into the new structure, and it seems to have worked out just fine for them. I don’t have any offers on the table for a buy-out or have ever been offered one. I’m just really starting to notice small firms and independent business people being picked up by larger firms that I have a lot of respect for. I know the answer to this – I live my days in the trenches with clients and projects, and don’t get great ‘face time’ with people from those firms (and get forgotten about).  Another part of it is that I completely don’t understand the value of purchasing a company when all of the assets are intellectual (client roster aside) and probably don’t give off the vibe at all that I’d be interested in a merger.

What it comes down to is the idea of a business partner sounds really appealing, but I’m a bit of a control freak. For better or worse, I pretty much lead the direction of the company. This is not the first company I’ve owned, and I have always been the only person ‘running the show’ as far as decisions etc. It’s EXHAUSTING. Becoming just another employee or cube farmer is not appealing to me at all. Finding a business partner is.  I have no prospects for that, and it is very difficult for me to trust someone else to handle my business and clients.  (See ‘control freak’ above.)  It’s more thinking out loud and wondering what other people have been though – or if I’m alone in this…

I landed three clients in the last week alone, and a few more came on board I thought drifted to sea.  I should be thrilled (I am). Maybe I’m reflecting on this because I nearly ran myself into the ground getting these contracts.  It’s mentally exhausting wearing every single hat in a company while sewing some more to wear.  Employees aren’t the answer, it’s not a matter of finding someone to complete tasks.  Employees almost never have the same level of passion, commitment, dedication, or skin in the game as an owner/partner does.  In that hierarchical mode of employer/employee, the hired gun backs down more easily not to piss off their boss and risk losing their job.  It may sound a bit strange, but having someone to challenge me and push buttons from time to time is actually a good thing.  Although I’ve never made a list, there is a laundry list of attributes I would look for in a partnership, and to be quite honest, I’m not sure my company looks all that appealing to gobble up from the outside.  Going back to the ‘eating your own dog food‘ theory, I spend most of my working time for clients and never using my own skills to promote and grow my own firm.

What would you need to ‘sell out’ or take a partner?  Is it money, division of responsibilities, a sounding board?  Just like so many 9-to-5ers dream of their own business and the freedom it brings, how many small business owners dream about being a water drop sucked into the puddle?

Maybe all I need is a good night’s sleep and maybe a four night vacation in St. Thomas – or an amazing business partner.