You would think with a headline that said Right vs. Left this would be a political piece. You’d be wrong. This is the battle between your right brain and your left brain. In my experience there is no greater battleground than in marketing communications.
Essentially it is the battle of the artist versus the engineer. It’s passion versus logic. It is a battle with no winners unless you can work together as one for the greater good. Leaning to far the right or the left breeds mediocrity and bad stuff. Just like in politics.
Some years ago I worked at a corporation that was very interested in developing managers. If you happened to be on the manager path then you were given many options to learn in different disciplines within the company. A fantastic idea if you didn’t pit left brain versus right brain. But that is exactly what happened in marketing.
Management felt it needed to send an engineer to run the creative side of the marketing department. While on one hand, having someone with those kind of organizational skills is needed, he just couldn’t understand why the artist would stare off into space or sketch ideas instead of completing projects when he thought they needed to be completed.
This mix of oil and water came to a head when he tried to institutionalize project timelines. For instance, if you have five days to complete the company magazine and you get the copy at 8 am on Monday morning, by Tuesday at 2 pm you should be working on page 5. When asked how long it took to design a logo, the answer “somewhere between an hour and 30 hours” sounded to him like no one wanted to cooperate. And it does sound like that. When the creatives pushed back he said, “people die if I don’t build the bridge correctly!” Great guy, too much of a disconnect.
It goes both ways. Creatives want to keep working a project until they feel it is perfect. Good for them, do your best work and the client get’s what they paid for. This really only works on your personal projects and not when you company is trying to make budget. Too often creatives will push back when the business side of the agency will come down on them. Often the budgets are not shared with the creatives and most times they don’t care what the budget is.
I can’t tell you how many stories I have heard of agencies missing deadlines because the creatives wanted to make the job perfect. They kept tweaking and assumed that the extra work would make up for the missed deadline. Not only are they adding non-budgeted hours to a job, but they are destroying goodwill the client gave them when choosing them over many other agencies. Most of our clients are these engineers. They want it to work AND ship on-time.
I love listening to productivity podcasts and read articles from leaders in business productivity such as David Allen, Seth Godin, Stephen Covey and the list goes on. My skills as a business person are creative and I crave any kind of productivity hack that will improve my ability to be more creative and to profit from that.
Luckily I have found that middle ground and I even feel there is some creativity in productivity, moving a project from the first meeting through completed project, on-time and on budget. Big agencies have whole departments called trafficking to do this for them.
If you want to do your best work and be a successful business person then you must have your Right Brain work with your Left Brain. Do you best, most creative work and then ship!
Any self employed or small business owner knows that if you are not working then you’re not billing and not making any money. Any time spent growing the business happens at night if it happens at all. Considering that most of us are probably not natural sales people, prospecting for new business usually gets pushed aside and I am no exception.
I recently finished the book “Book Yourself Solid” by Michael Port and came away with some really great ideas to help me grow my business and reach out to others. The best thing about this book is that it is written for those of us in the service industry, a refreshing perspective.
One of Michaels tools is his Book Yourself Solid List of 20. In a nutshell you make a list of 20 people you would like to develop a professional relationship with who can help you get booked solid. Every day you will contact the next person on your list and then move them to the back of the list, 20 work days from now. This is very simple and ensures that direct outreach activity occurs every day.
There are probably many ways you can do this electronically including the yet to go live www.solid.ly by Michael Port. It can also work well in an analog world. Paper and pen that is. This idea of your list of 20 is perfect complement to 43 folders.
43 folders is a fancy name for a tickler file. It is a system of 43 folders consisting of 12 month folders and 31 day folders. I first learned of this through David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Merlin Mann’s blog of the same name 43Folders.com.
The way it is organized is that on January 1 the first folder in line is January and the second folder is 1, followed by 2, then 3. After 31 there will be February followed by the months in order. On January 2 the folder 1 is moved behind the February folder.
If you have a piece of paper or something that you don’t need until later in the month you place it in the folder on the day you need it. Tickets to the football game might go in the folder 21, the day of the game. Each day you look in that days folder and process that days information. If you have information farther out than 31 days then just add it to the month folder and distribute it when the date comes around.
So back to your Book Yourself Solid List of 20. Write the contact information on a piece of paper or large card. It needs to be large enough that there is room to write notes each time you contact them. Once you have made contact just move the card 20 business days out in your 43 folders. Tomorrow you start on the next one.
Too often we get hung up on not doing something because we don’t have the perfect system or the right app. There are many other people who are terribly intimidated by technology and use this as an excuse. This is a great example of how you can keep moving your business forward with a simple plan and simple tools.
I love the white board. I didn’t think I would at first. I had been held captive in too many meetings where the presenter scribbled away as he spoke, thinking we would be able to decipher his frenetic chicken scratch. More than likely he did not have fresh pens and he used a wide tipped green pen that barely left an image. It’s almost as if a ghost had been there.
I didn’t think I would like the white board after spending 16 years of school staring at a chalk board. While the teachers wrote well enough the scratches still make my skin crawl just thinking about it. Some teachers used the overhead project and would write on a film overlay with the same pens I mentioned above. I remember this overhead from my geometry class. I don’t like remembering my geometry class.
One day at work I realized I needed a white board. I can’t remember the project or the reason but it became apparent that I needed to buy a white board, and I did. It was 6 foot by 4 foot beauty that had a metal back so you would use magnets to hold up project printouts. I moved that board to two offices where it had a prominent space on the wall by the conference table. At the third office space I didn’t have a wall but I gladly gave up natural light and covered a window with it. At my current office I had to turn it on it’s side and now I work from floor to ceiling.
I don’t give presentations on it, I work on it. If I need to come up with creative ideas or map out a story or project I get out of the chair and go straight to the white board. There is something liberating about standing up and moving about and letting the ideas flow out of the pen. It’s almost as if it’s a dance.
At the computer I get too wrapped up in the technical part of the program to really let the ideas flow. Don’t get me wrong, I depend on technology and will eventually move my ideas to the appropriate software.
Generally there are two ways I work on the white board. The first is by outling an idea. I use Omnifocus on the mac where I flesh it out but by starting on the board I can really let the ideas flow.
The second way I work is by mind mapping. I start in the middle of the board with a central word or idea. Then I link outward to new words, ideas, tasks or other ideas and start fleshing out the idea. Sometimes I am suprised where I end up.
Once I have taken the idea as far as I can on the board I move it onto the computer. As a backup I take a picture with my iPhone, move the image to iPhotos and can refer back to it later.
There is no shortage of stories about the benefits of standing at work. Standing desks are all the rage and blogs promote the physical and mental benefits. There is also a lot of talk lately about the benefits of regular breaks on your work productivity. No one at the water cooler is arguing that.
I have my own theory. There has got to be something about standing up and letting the blood flow. Maybe it goes straight to your head and flushes out the brain. Whatever it is in my office the white board is here to stay.
I have worked at home many times since the last time I received a W-2 which was back in 1990. I have worked at home because I couldn’t afford the rent for an office and I have worked at home because it made more sense. In other words, I have been a captive and I have been commander of my home office.
When I first moved my office home I always seemed to get pity from friends, family and customers. Everyone had this perception that I must have fallen on hard times to have to work at home. Now if you tell someone your office is at home there is a genuine sense of jealousy from those still commuting.
Technology has made this change possible. 20 years ago you still needed two or three phone lines to cover your home phone, office phone, fax machine and dial-up internet. When you met someone you had to get in the car and meet somewhere else and any kind of teleconferencing would be done at a Kinko’s that rented out video conference rooms. Today you can have staff and customers all across the world connected by the internet using Skype, GoToMeeting and any number of other bits of technology.
Technically speaking, having an office at home is an no-brainer. The problem is all mental. Based on my experiences here is my manifesto for the at-home worker.
1. Work Starts at 8 am.
Your customers and suppliers are rolling into work and want to speak. You should have finished breakfast and be ready to go at 8, not 8:30. You don’t have a commute.
2. Shower and Shave
If you truly want to feel like a human being then shower, shave and brush your teeth, Whatever you would do before going into to the office. Do it now, before your work starts. If you don’t want to shave, grow a beard. You never know when you will have to leave for a meeting or video chat.
3. Dress in Comfortable Clothes
Lucky you, you don’t need to wear a suit or live up to some dress code. Dress in what you are comfortable in. Keep in mind that with video conferencing you still need to look professional at least from the waist up. I tend to look like an Eddie Bauer model most days. An old Eddie Bauer model.
4. Wear Shoes
I have found that I seem to focus better when I am wearing shoes and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. It just seems that I am taking things much more seriously in shoes. Granted my shoes are slip-on Sanuk’s that look good with khakis if I need to meet with someone.
5. Have a Dedicated Workspace
There is nothing worse than spending the day in the same room as where you spend the night. If you have your desk in the bedroom then two-thirds of your day could be spent there and that is no way to live. Besides, having the bed that close is not good when you start getting tired. Find another place in the house you can setup a desk and can keep your papers. Someplace you don’t have to tear down when it’s time for dinner.
6. No TV
You are working for your clients during the day, why even bring the temptation of a tv into your workspace. If there is something on that is important get a Tivo and record it.
7. No Laundry or Dishes before 5 pm
When you walk through your house you are going to notice all those things that need to be done. The same things you wouldn’t think about if you are at an office. I have a rule that the laundry can’t be running during office hours because it is close enough that I would have trouble hearing my clients on the phone. Same thing goes for the dishes, yard work, etc.
8. Lunch Away From Your Workspace
Take 30 minutes to get away from your work and go to the kitchen or the patio and have lunch. It’s been proven that workers need breaks. This is a perfect time to get away. Load the dishwasher when your finished so you won’t think about it that afternoon.
9. Get Out of the House
How about lunch away from the house? Your saving a good bit of money by eating at home, not to mention rent savings, but why not meet a client or prospect for lunch? If not lunch how about meeting them for coffee?
I hope these tips help you as you struggle to work at home. As I mentioned the stigma of working at home is gone and is now an acceptable way to work. All it takes is to do the mental work and make it work for you.
I needed a better way to hold my iphone when I was at the Homewood Christmas Parade. I was trying to shoot video but it was too shaky and I never felt comfortable holding the camera and chasing the Cub Scout float my son was on. That experience sent me to the web in search of a steadycam so that I could continue to use my iphone, which is a really great video camera.
My search led me to multiple sites with expensive commercial units and some diy options. I thought the diy options were good but not quite what I wanted. I came up with my own idea using pvc pipe and a universal smartphone holder. I thought the design was good enough that I should share it with others and what better way than to produce a video and post it to YouTube.
I used the video option on my Cannon G11 to shoot video of myself building my steadycam. I used the new release of Final Cut Pro X to compose my video and uploaded it to my YouTube channel.
This video was a way to continue to build community and to help others who might need a solution similar to mine. It is also a way to build my own personal brand. A way to get my name out there and drive traffic back to my website. I am already doing that through LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. Each of these groups have different demographics. YouTube for instance is the most popular social media site for 20-35 year olds.
Think how you or your company can use video to build brand or how you can use it yourself. What stories can you tell your customers and even employees? The entry-level is low if you are a Mac user. You can publish videos just by having a copy of iMovie and a camera or phone with video.
Good luck with your next video project. In the meantime if you are having trouble holding your camera I have a video you might want to watch.
I take pride in being able to process the email that comes into my system every day. Not seeing hundreds of emails in my inbox has a very calming effect and lets me get to the business at hand.
Somehow I came across Merlin Mann’s article on Inbox Zero and his speech he gave at Google. In a nutshell Inbox Zero takes the spirit of David Allen’s Getting Things Done and applies it to your email. In essence you should process what is in your inbox and put it somewhere. If you can do it in 2 minutes or less then do it right then. If it’s junk delete it. If it’s and actionable item move it to an action folder. If it is something you want to read someday but is not important, move it to a review folder.
The action folder is what you work out of. It is your todo list, the things you need to do today. That folder is much smaller than the Inbox you have been staring at. But this post is not about InBox Zero it’s about the spam.
I had the same email for 13 years and when I started a new company the new email was just an extension of the old one. I have now started third company and I am tired of getting all that spam email. I must be on everyone’s hit list.
The first thing I did was make the spam filter a little more aggressive. I am not worried about losing work emails because I make it a point of scanning the spam folder every day. If spam gets through I move it to the spam folder which helps teach the filter what is good and what is bad.
For years I worked under the rule of thumb that if you unsubscribe to an email then they will know you are there and will send you more stuff. That’s not the case in recent years. Laws such as the CAN-SPAM act have required marketers to add unsubscribe options to their emails. Email marketers who use services such as Constant Contact, MailChimp and others have unsubscribe features built in.
This week I have been hitting the unsubscribe button to remove myself from emails that don’t apply to my business or are annoying in general. And you know what, It’s been working. The amount of unwanted email has dropped dramatically and it makes my email much more manageable. Add that to InBox Zero and I’m going to Get Things Done.
We are always looking for a way to work smarter and be more efficient in our work. In a perfect world I would be billing for every hour I work but that’s not possible. The amount of administrative and sales work I have really cuts into the time I have for work and making money. To help with this my first thought would be to hire an assistant, but who has the money or time to deal with that?
In the virtual office there are many more options to help with your workload. An option I turned to recently is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. This is a crowdsourcing internet marketplace that coordinates the use of human intelligence (people around the world) to do tasks that computers are unable to do. This could be tagging photos, writing product descriptions, identifying peformers on cd’s or any of a host of other things.
The reason I am using the Mechanical Turk is that I needed email addresses. I am getting ready to so some prospecting and I plan on using emailings for part of it. I have a list that I built that I want to contact but I have no emails. I could search for them myself but how many billable hours would I burn doing that? I could spend hundreds of dollars in billable hours but instead with the Mechanical Turk I am spending about $25. That’s right, for every email address I am paying about 5 cents.
Business hacks like this are a smart way to do more in your business day. It is my goal to find more ideas to help improve my own productivity and to pass it along on in this blog.
On a side note, the mechanical turk was an infamous Turkish automaton that could play chess. The Turk won games against many people for nearly 84 years including Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. Only years later was it revealed that a human was conceled inside.
Note: This was the last post written at Resolutions Post before Resolutions was moved into the newly formed MarketCloud. This will be the first post in the MarketCloud blog that will focus on marketing, advertising, productivity as well as sustainable business practices. — Shawn Wright
The genesis of Resolutions LLC was started back in 2007 as Atticus Green, an offshoot of Atticus Communications, my former company. Keith and I had been talking for years about how our two disciplines could come together. His in environmental management and community relations and mine in marketing and advertising. One day it hit us, sustainability consulting, it was that chocolate in the peanut butter moment. Not long after that we decided to take Atticus Green full time and we changed the name to Resolutions and put out our shingle.
It has been a very exciting three years to say the least. Sustainability has been a growing field because businesses realize that this is not a trend but a way to find find value and to be more competitive. The C-suite was driving the growth early on but with the economy faltering back in 2010 we saw these champions moving to other matters and leaving sustainability to departments within their companies. Increasingly the department leading the charge has become marketing and communications.
Now we are coming full circle. We have decided to roll Resolutions into a new company, MarketCloud. MarketCloud is an integrated marketing communications firm that is devoted to helping emerging businesses grow. We will offer clients a wide range of services from marketing and advertising to creative services and social media. We’ll also be one of the few marketing firms that offer sustainability as a core feature. If you truly want to be competitive in today’s market you need to have sustainability built into your strategic and marketing plans and we’re the company to do it.
Resolutions and this site are not going anywhere. We have the same phone number and we hope to post from time to time on this blog. You can also follow us on twitter at @shawngoesgreen and @resolutionspost. If you have a moment we would appreciate it if you would check out our new site, marketcloud.us, and help us spread the word. Like us on Facebook and follow us on LinkedIn. We look forward to moving sustainability forward. This time we are coming in through the back door.
