The Secret to Success In [whatever]
January 2, 2009 in Happy Links, Happy Quotes, Killer Advice
Chase Jarvis, if you haven't heard of him, is a very successful (by most any measure) commercial photographer. He's also a true mensch -- and as such -- the object of great admiration by many serious photographers.
He is frequently asked the secret to success in photography. I think his answer applies 100% to whatever you're trying to find success in. His answer?
- Be undeniably good (quoting Steve Martin).
- Dedicate at least 10,000 hours (quoting Malcom Gladwell from his new book Outliers: The Story of Success.)
Happy Quote
December 28, 2008“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
—Andre Gide
Google's SEO Starter Guide
November 13, 2008 in Happy Links
A quick guide to SEO best practices (i.e. things you should do on your site to be viewed favorably by Google such that you show up high in their organic search listings), only this one is put out by Google proper. Nothing too revolutionary here, but it's worth a careful review given the source. It's a nicely put-together 22 page PDF.
Happy Link
October 26, 2008 in Happy Links
Inside the Entrepreneurial Mind: Great little collection of videos with the ever-wise Seth Godin and Tom Peters. With genius responses like this one from Seth on "is social networking good for small business?", plus some commentary on the current economic turmoil and (US) national election cycle, there are some real gems here. You can bang through them all in about 30min.
Elance
August 8, 2008 in 4 out of 5 stars, A service, Collaboration, Hiring, ProductivityElance: A place to (primarily) find freelance help, and also to find work as a freelancer. Elance, Inc. Elance has been around for a while (at least since 2002) and serves a wide range of businesses. I won't speak to their breadth, just their value to me as a non-Fortune-500-level entrepreneur. Elance's real benefit is in finding inexpensive (many of their providers are in Asia and Latin America) help for more specialized tasks that I can't afford the time to do myself, or that I don't have the skills to do myself.
For example, I have about 1,000 product images that I need the backgrounds removed from in Photoshop. My friend needed a customized Flash video player designed for his site. A quick (relatively simple) post on Elance, and we found the help we needed within 24 hours.
I like how careful they are about vetting businesses and providers to ensure everyone is the real deal. They also have an escrow service (free for businesses), and a fairly robust messaging and agreement system to make sure everyone knows what's expected and how the project will pay out. My results have been very satisfactory. The site is pretty complex, and as such, it's a bit cumbersome to use (I did muddle my way through without reading much and just guess-clicking and did ok however). Some of the communication structure feels more like insulation designed to make sure Elance gets their commission than a way to make my life easier. Most of their project management constructs are far too elementary to be useful. Free for businesses, providers pay 4-6% plus a monthly fee depending on usage. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Google Sites
July 23, 2008 in 4 out of 5 stars, A service, Collaboration, Free, Hosted "Office", Hosted software, Issue trackers, Productivity, Project managementGoogle Sites: A poor man's (pretty darn good) intranet. An online, Google-hosted wiki-meets-project management software service. Google gobbled up Jot Spot (a hosted wiki service headed by Joe Kraus) before it even really got going, it was later re-born as Google Sites. Google I have a growing and widely dispersed team for my latest venture. I've set up a Google Sites website which is serving as an "intranet" for this team, and it's working quite well. It's like a wiki in that anyone (whom you allow) can edit or add pages or documents. It also has several built-in tools to help you create things like, a file download repository, a todo list, an issue tracker, or an announcements board. Most anyone can set one up and manage it, it's not difficult, there are no HTML skills required. You have some limited control over the look and feel; for example you can easily brand it with your own logo and colors. They've made management of the site very simple. You can invite others as owners, collaborators or just viewers. You can also optionally make the site visible to everyone on the internet. You get 100MB of storage space for free, and can bump that up to 25GB per account for their paid version which costs $50/user/yr. They even have an API. My primary beef is no discussion forum built in. That would make it twice as valuable for us. Even if they just took Google Groups and married it in, we'd have a winner. This is a huge omission. I would also like the option not to have previous versions of all my pages available to everyone. It's not a huge deal, but I don't need the last umpteen version of a page viewable forever, and there's no facility to disallow this. Free for most everything, $50 per user per year for the deluxe version with lots of storage space. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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There are also many more options available through "Gadgets" like a Google Calendar, a Presentation (read: Microsoft Powerpoint-like document), or a Spreadsheet. Plus hundreds of third party gadgets like maps, weather, games, news feeds, and chat. Not to mention a million other useless things no one would ever want (Woody Allen quotes?). Fortunately it's easy to ignore that stuff.What could be improved?
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RescueTime
July 2, 2008 in 4 out of 5 stars, Hosted software, ProductivityRescueTime: A time management and analysis program. RescueTime (3 guys rocking it with some YCombinator funding to start) Because it achieves the holy grail of being fun to use, and darned useful too. It consists of two parts. An application (software) you install on your computer (PC or Mac) and a website which reports on your time usage. While it's pretty helpful even with zero configuration effort (just install and let it go), you can really make it come alive if you spend a little time telling it about the things you do through simple tagging, and rating for productivity. It's an intuitive process that unfolds as you want it to. The usability is solid. The first benefit to me was realizing just how much time I was frittering away with useless garbage. It was troubling information. Well, harrowing is more like it. And it has already changed how I use my time. As an entrepreneur, being accountable even if only to RescueTime is proving to be very valuable. The old "what gets measured gets improved" adage once again proves true. I'm rigorous about measuring so many other things, it's a little embarrassing I haven't applied that better to my time until now. I guess I just needed the drop-dead simple "do it for me" solution that RT provides. In addition to measuring time, RT lets you set up goals, which it then tracks for you. Some example goals might be "spend more than 3 hours per day working on my secret project" or "spend less than 1 hour per day on email." They also have some paid features that allow groups to use it together so you can compare how you spend your time versus the average member. I haven't dived into that. Everything I'm using is free. I've really resisted having a big crush on RT, but have so far failed. I love it. This is still immature software, and it's important to know that going in. I sincerely hope they can make their revenue model fly so that they can evolve this to the point where they build on the killer progress they've made so far. In fact, if they would address the issues I'm about to outline, I would be perfectly happy to pay a modest fee (say, $4/mo) to keep my records indefinitely (right now they only keep a 3 month backlog) and have the following features: 1. I'd like to do intra-application tagging. For example - if I'm writing a poem about my dog in Word, I'd like to tag that differently than a work proposal for a new client. As it is today, they only break things out that way for the web browser. 2. I'd like to be able to manually enter time. Right now it only tracks your time at the computer - which it does spine-tinglingly well. But if I have an off-site meeting, I'd like to enter that in as productive time to gather a more accurate picture. My other lingering concerns are privacy, and support. Privacy: You're sending some potentially pretty sensitive information up. They've got some mechanisms in place to limit what you send if you want. For example, they've got a web site whitelist so you can say "only send specifics from this set of websites" so you'd specify the top 20 or so websites you frequent, and everything else would be sent as generic web use. You can also easily turn off logging for a period of time, you can tell it to ignore certain data (which is claims to delete and ignore), and finally if you have a panic attack, you can delete your account and all data, which presumably deletes it all from their servers. However, even with all this, the privacy policy still feels a little weak. Essentially stating, "we'll never look at your data, unless we need to" [link]. Mint.com for example says something more like, "we won't ever look at your data, and couldn't if we wanted to" [link]. Obviously Mint.com deals with more sensitive data - but for many users, that doesn't matter. Support: This is a pretty minor concern, but I'll mention that I ran into some odd logging times, sent an email to support, got an almost instant personal reply (under 1 min) with some information, and a request to send some debugging logging information to them, which I did, but I never heard back (it's been about a week now). It wasn't a critical issue, it's free software, and it actually seems to be behaving properly now (I may have just done something stupid) so I didn't push it. Free for individuals, unlock some groupy/teamy goodness starting at $7.95/mo for the first 6 users, and $7.95/mo more per user after that. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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The software logs the applications you use (a plain text log). By default it logs in two-second increments to paint a pretty accurate picture. Then every 30 minutes it beams this information up to the mothership. The mothership is a glorious reporting site you can pull up to see how you're using your time. It features all manner of reporting graphs and charts. It shows you how productive you're being, where you spend your time, how you're doing on your goals, and more. What could be improved?
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Happy Quote
June 25, 2008 in Happy Quotes"There is nothing that drives a team forward like the fear of public failure, debt, and starvation. Leap off the cliff and start building the airplane on the way down and you might be surprised with what you can pull off.
—Tony Wright, founder and CEO of RescueTime (review eminent)
The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
June 19, 2008 in 5 out of 5 stars, A bookThe Dip: A book dedicated to a simple, but powerful and inspiring idea. I'm struggling to decide if it's Seth's best or not. It's certainly a contender. Seth Godin First of all - it's short (80 pages). And as anyone who writes can tell you, shorter is harder. And in this case, it's also better. The writing is focused, the idea is well developed, and the impact, at least for me, was very, very powerful. A buddy of mine and I were whining the other day about how hard it was to invest significantly in creating something that should be great, but realize that creating it was not enough. Not nearly enough. We thought it would be hard to go from concept to reality, and it was. But how surprising it was to realize that the really hard part had just begun. Taking that reality, and becoming a market leader, taking that hard-won reality, and turning it into the success we dreamed about when we started, that was the hard part. The really hard part. And boy, those early dream-filled days were great. That dream motivated us to tear into our projects with vigor and excitement. It was novel, and fun, and a fresh start, and endless opportunity. And that dream pushed us on in that way only the entrepreneurially-minded can appreciate. Past hurdles, and challenges, and finally our hard work and investment bore fruit. And there we stood at the great unveiling, the shroud lifted from our creation, and the response? Awkward and empty silence. Because while creating the thing is required (you can't get anywhere without doing that) it's not enough. It's not nearly enough. Because many have done that. But only a few — a very successful few — have pushed through the next stage to actually realize The Dream. And then I remembered that Seth had named this period we were starting to push through, he called it "The Dip." And suddenly the genius of the premise of his book struck me. I hadn't read it yet, only read about it. So I started here, my appetite was whetted. The idea had taken root, and then I bought the book and read it carefully. Letting his persistent presentation of the idea seep into me deep enough to last. And then I closed the book, carefully inventoried my situation, and made some drastic changes. I don't want to oversell this, because your experience may be different from mine. But I can honestly say that this book, perhaps because of the timing of when I read it, has had a dramatic and positive impact on me. In it, Seth defines "The Dip." He discussed the value of pushing through it (because so few are willing to do it, the competition at the other end is thin, and the rewards are enormous), how to do it (over-invest, quit everything else taking your energies), why we don't do it (his list of excuses stung with familiarity!), how you can quit a tactic, but retain a strategy, and how to recognize when you're not actually in a dip, but just think you are. Oh, and inspiration. Did I mention it was inspiring? There were sections of this book that had me clenching my fist in determination to make it through. And he ends with some probing and
through-provoking questions. Like this gem: "If I'm going to quit
anyway, is there something dramatic I can do instead that might change
the game?" So I finished the book a few weeks ago, and now I have a new perspective. I see with new eyes those around me who have pushed through The Dip. Here are a couple examples: Ira Glass - world-class host of This American Life. Here he talks about pushing through the dip. He doesn't call it that, but that's exactly what he's talking about. And Dean Kamen. Is there any question that he pushed (and pushes) through The Dip? Sure the Segway was a joke, but you watch this and tell me he isn't one of the greatest examples in the world for pushing though the dip. When the Dept. of Defense needed the best in the world to tackle the most difficult of jobs, I suspect the list was pretty short, and now Dean is truly changing the world. (And don't forget this awesomeness too). And there are more. Just from this week's news: Tim Russert and Tiger Woods. And someday, maybe, you. And me. $10.15 Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Get FogBugz for free for two users with "Student and Startup Edition"
June 12, 2008Alert reader John Sheehan points out that FogBugz has an un-advertised offer for students and startups allowing you to get FogBugz On Demand (that's the hosted variety) for free for 2 users.
To get it, sign up for FogBugz On Demand 45 day trial per normal, then in your "Settings > Your FogBugz On Demand Account" page, you can switch it to the free edition.
