Ahhh, the joys of summer. Kicking back, reading poolside, listening to the laughter.

I remind myself that time off is a GOOD thing, not to be frustrated or wasted.

Yes, I am on vacation. I call it vacation. Some call it being unemployed, or “between jobs”. Vacation sounds more… intentional. More relaxing.

But that’s the life of a contractor, right? Or should I call it “Consulting”?

Unfortunately (or fortunately, however you might look at it), contract jobs are just about the only source of the facade of employment nowadays. In my field of Engineering, anyway. Of course I’d rather full time employment – I believe people become far more involved, secure, and dedicated to a job with a good solid future. Contractors, though, do tend to work harder (or so it seems), but know the job might end at any moment.

Does it matter what you call it? Vacation or unemployment? I say nay; enjoy it while it lasts.

Hopefully it won’t last too long.

I tend to look at starting a new job as a brand new opportunity to take it to the next level – to make a name for myself, and show my new boss how it’s done.

A new job is a new opportunity – a time to put into action all of your experience, and to improve the place that you now work.

When starting a new job, you should act – and present yourself – as a consultant. Basically, you are selling your services to the position that you now hold – they need you for your experience and knowledge, and you need them for – basically – a paycheck (and a workplace to call home, of course).

What is involved with being a consultant? A few of the major points are:

• Be professional in how you act
• Be formal with your presentation of knowledge
• Keep track of everything in writing or a daily log
• Keep communication open, correspond daily (via email)
• Keep the flow of new ideas running
• Take initiative on new ideas, after getting approval

And remember – you are getting paid for the work you do, so do the work you are getting paid for.

So does everyone have their motivation on for the new year?  Come on!  It’s a new year! 2011! Where are the resolutions!

Yeah, I didn’t make them either.  I have realized that I make many of the same ones year after year.

BUT…

If you have that dream… desire… discontent with your career or job (or lack of one) – all I can suggest is that you try.  Give it a shot.

Although – as Yoda said “Do or Do Not.  There is no Try.”

That is very true.  But I believe that to start off, you have to consider it a try. I mean, why not? Throw your hat over the fence. Then you have to go and get it, and try doing what you’ve always thought and dreamed about.

I have a friend – a brilliant artist – who decided to try selling some of her artwork (see it here). Why not? It is great art. Friends love it. So she posted a web site / blog about it. Minimum cost and effort.  Easy enough – why not?  Might as well try.  Won’t hurt anything. She started selling art through an online store, cafepress.  Again, easy to try, low risk.

Now for the new-year exciting part. She is going to throw her hat.  It’s time to DO.  Renting out space in an art gallery.  More risk – sure – but much more gains!

Entrepreneurs, in general, do not see failure as a possible outcome.  Of course we know there will be problems and hurdles.  We know it is going to be tough, many hours working and marketing, headaches, sleepless nights – but we have no doubt that we can make it work.

NO DOUBT.

Do or Do Not.  There is no Try.

And best of luck to my friend Shelley – we are all behind you 100%!

My Year in Review

Wow. It has been quite a while since I’ve written on my blog – over a year! I took a much-needed creative break. It’s been quite a year for me.

And how, you might be asking, am I going to relate my personal year-in-review to entrepreneurship? We’ve heard it before – you have to work on yourself first. If you are not in good shape – both mentally and physically – then your life won’t be in good shape.

Without going into a tremendous amount of detail as to how, where, or why, I will say that I had the best of intentions to have a great year in 2010. Resolutions were set, plans were made, and happiness and joy abounded.

Then, about halfway through the year, I hit bottom.

It didn’t come upon me suddenly – that is, I did have my bouts of bad days and depressions through out the year.  I had gotten separated from my wife late in 2009, and thought I had gotten over the worst of it.

Seems people in process of getting a divorce, while going through the five stages of grief, do slip back and forth in the process.

I took a far slide back.

I was coming to the realization that everything changes when getting a divorce and being single.  Friends change, attitudes change, lifestyles change.  It is coming to grip with an entirely new way of life.

But, as we know, sometimes it takes hitting bottom to make changes for the better.

Working under the guidance of a dear friend I worked with, I set the stage to turn my life around.  For some reason, I started on the Atkins diet.  We were all talking about it, and I was gripping around for anything to change.  So a diet it was.

I then quit smoking.  THAT was really difficult, but a change that needed to take place.  I won’t lie to you – it was not pleasant.  The main reason I didn’t start up again is that I don’t want to have to go through the pain of quitting again!

Whatever works, right?

To help me quit smoking, I read a tremendous amount of information about the process of quitting.  I read scientific studies, individual experiences, and internet forums.  I read about everything involving the emotional part of it, as well as the physical and mental addiction and withdrawal process.  I ran across a post about depression and codependency.

Wow.

I read about codependancy, how it effects a person and those around him or her.  I bought the book “Codependant No More”.  That book was written about me, it seemed.  It explained everything that I thought, that I felt, and that I lived from day to day.  It opened my eyes to what the problem was, and where it came from, and how it controlled my life.

Yes, it was another thing for me to pile on the heap to work on, but – this realization was, by far, the best change that I set upon making with my life.

Next up – getting in shape.  Along with my diet (that was going well, by the way), I joined a fitness gym with another friend from work.  Even though he quit going a week after, I continued (and still continue to) go every day.

I have not been in the frame of mind to think about buisness, or working for myself, in quite a while.  But I have hope, and I continue to fight the good fight every day, realizing that I have to improve myself before I can improve what is around me.

I recently posed a question on LinkedIn (a great business networking site – if you’ve never checked it out, you really should!):

• If you were given two job offers at the same time, one is a job that you would love but didn’t pay much, and the other is a so-so job that payed much better – which would you take?

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of the answers were “take the job that would make you happiest”.

In a perfect world, of course that would be the best answer.  But is it that straightforward?  We are all in business to make money, and if you can make money doing what you love – that is the perfect situation.  Well, I suppose the “perfect situation” would be if you were independantly wealthy and didn’t need to work at all, but I digress…

Choosing the best job – be it freelancing, a contract job, full-time job, or the next project for your business – is not always that easy.  Other factors might include location of the job relative to where you live, your current financial and personal situation, resources at your disposal – just to name a few.

Your goal should be to be in a position where you can do what you love, and make a good living at the same time. But sometimes we have to take steps to get there – take some projects that don’t pay much in order to impress a customer, take a higher-paying job that might not be what you really enjoy to build up your financial position – as long as you keep your goal in sight, and always work on achieving your goal in the long-term.

In the past 20 years or so, people had the luxury to switch jobs on a whim, getting a nice pay increase each time.  Now with high unemployment, some of those people realize that their choices were short-sighted.  If they had stayed at a job longer, they might be in a better position to have kept their job longer through the layoffs that hit so many companies.  Then again, maybe not.

What are your thoughts?  Take the job for satisfaction, or take the job for the money?

It always strikes me as interesting the relationship of employment.  It is so similar to a marriage, or dating, that sometimes I have to laugh.

employee: “Boss, do you have a minute?  I need to talk to you.”

boss: “Not right now, I have a meeting coming up.  I have some time next Tuesday, say 9ish?”

employee: “Well, I’ll just make it quick.  I’m leaving – I found someone else”.

boss: “What? All of a sudden?  I thought everything was going great!”

employee: “It’s me, not you… I’ve been unhappy and… unfulfilled”.

boss: “Well, let’s talk about it.  What’s wrong exactly?”

employee: “No, it’s too late for that.  I’m going, here is my resignation.  My last day is Friday.”

boss: “Wait!  I need you!  I can’t do this without you!  Come back!”

Another sudden breakup.  It’s a common problem with employees / employers – there is no communication, no feedback, no caring.  It doesn’t take much, just a quick “thank you”, or “I’m very impressed on how you handled that” kind of statement.

I’ve heard people say to run a marriage like a business.  Maybe it’s time to run a business like a marriage.  What do you think?

Finding yourself with too little time on your hands?  Yeah, me too.

When I leave work, I put on one or many of my other hats, Mom, Wife, Volunteer, Jazzerciser, etc and don’t think about work until the next day.  I want so badly to read more books in the business and technology (in the web seo/design/marketing) arena, but time gets away from me.

That’s why I recently recalled a website my company created a while back (it was sold off, so Radius3 no longer hosts or maintains it now): www.BusinessBookReview.com.  They have a staff that reads the books for you and provides a 300, 600 or 900 word synopsis for you.  It’s not as good as reading the whole book cover to cover, but it sure saves some time!

I’m considering joining for $195/year (Individual membership; cheaper if your company signs up 1-many employees).  If I were to buy the books (library is an option too but I know I can’t finish a book in 2 weeks and I’m bad about renewing), they would cost approx $15-ish each at at one/month, that would cost $180/year.  What if I bought a book and never finished it?  Wasted money!  I despise waste.

Now if I were to read one review/week = 4 books per month => $60/mo =>$720/year value AND I could talk intelligently at business gatherings.  No more… “so what do you do?” rather “I’ve just read the book [insert book name here].  … ” and hence an intelligent conversations and business partnership starts to blossom.

Maybe it’s worth a look into if you have a short attention span, short amounts of time free, a wanderlust for information gathering…

I signed up for the newsletter to get a taste: Newsletter Signup – Business Book Review

Tell your company about it or call BBR at 1-800-653-2726 (x2218) - tell them that someone at Radius3, their original programmers recommended it; maybe I’ll get a free subscription for a year before I decide to join.

-NotesFromKris (Twitter)

For those of you who want to dig in deeper.  Tiny URL:  http://ow.ly/j9mu – See this guy’s post for examples on the differences between different methods of css. (Long URL: http://designorati.com/articles/t1/web-design/1041/basic-css-inline-embedded-external-whats-the-difference.php)

The next articles will bring SEO up a few levels; typically I’ll try not to get too deep.

Ok, so you’ve been told you need SEO work so your site can get found.  Prerequisite: read this before continuing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

What types of SEO are there?  Short answer: 2.

1.  On-Site / Internal / Natural / Organic

or

2.  Off-Site / Link-Building / Pay for Service

On-Site optimization is when you pay your web developer to update your meta tags for each page, align your content copy with your keyword strategy, update your page names/images/alt text/variables to all align with your keywords and keyphrases.  That’s the short of it.  You have (depending on your content management system) direct control over this and the search engine “spiders” and “robots” will find you and draw you into their database of 1 Trillion other sites.  More later on local advertizing on the search engines.

Off-Site optimization is when your website development company determines keywords and phrases and then pays a service to push your optimized landing page (select one page and optimize the heck out of it) to searchers searching for a specific targeted key word or phrase.  Then, you pay this third party per click (PPC).  Downfalls:  if you don’t target the right audience, you’re paying for a click to your site for a customer that won’t produce a conversion (won’t buy anything/call you).  This is a tweaking process and you should not expect immediate or one time fees.  It’s like finely tuning a recipe; you take some stuff out, you add some more stuff, taste it and go back again.

Off-site optimization also includes linkbacks, search engine submissions and the ever growing social media-sphere.   The more links you have back to your sites – the more RELEVANT links – the higher your site will rank.

You could try it yourself first for a few months – the key is tracking tracking tracking.

For example, I’m on this nutritional cleansing “diet” (for lack of a better word) and I’m losing more inches around my body than weight.   If I hadn’t been measuring, I would have been discouraged about my 2-3lb weight loss.  But, since I’m taking the time to measure 15 parts of my body, I have a baseline to start with.

So…learn how to add the Google Analytics code to your site.  Start here:  http://analytics.google.com – watch the tutorials and be prepared to be overwhelmed.  Don’t worry about learning how to use all of the features – your first task is to just add it to start your baseline.  Kind of like getting a mammogram at 35…

I was recently at the airport, waiting for the announcement to start boarding the aircraft.

Casually sitting on the floor, since all of the chairs in the waiting area were filled with half-awake restless people waiting for the same plane, I overheard the customer service clerk speaking to an irate “potential passenger” that was unable to board the overbooked, sold-out flight:

clerk: I am sorry ma’am, this flight is sold out and we do not have space for you.

irate customer: I bought a ticket for this flight!  Now you WILL let me on this flight!

clerk: Actually, you bought a RESERVATION for a seat on this flight.  You did not actually purchase a guaranteed seat.  That’s how all the airlines do it nowadays.

irate customer: That’s not right.  I will never fly this airline again.  Let me speak to your manager!

There were also some choice words spoken, which I have left out.

I will say that the clerk was very calm and professional, even though the customer was making quite a scene.  It was, after all, not his fault – that is the way the airlines are set up to work these days.

They overbook all flights.

I understand WHY they overbook the flights – there are a statistically calculated number of passengers that will not show up for the flight for whatever reason, and the airline needs as many seats filled as they can.

Of course, hopefully they understand that they do this at a risk of losing customers when everyone shows up for the flight.  And, if everyone does show up, as did that day, they gave out four free round trip tickets to people that volunteered to take a later flight, which was not until six hours later.

So, not only did they manage to lose a customer, but they also had to give away four tickets to other people, round trip, which equates to eight seats on their airplane.

But in reality, what choice do we, the customers, have?  There are only so many airlines to chose from, and they all pretty much go by the same rules.

Unless….

Enough people complain about the rules, and they make a change (I am guessing that not many people will actually call and complain enough for anyone to listen) – or – an entrepreneur comes along and starts an airline company with a solution to this problem.

I know, starting a new airline does take a bit of money, and is all near impossible nowadays.  But the point is: be very careful how you treat your customers.  If you manage to anger enough of them, you will find yourself on a downward slope of sales and, and upward slope of negative publicity.

Comments?