Into The Great Wide Open

If I could have written a blog post that day to my future self, I’m sure it would have been filled with hope, tinged with apprehension, and full of the hubris of the newly self-employed. God bless that hubris! Without an almost irrational expectation that everything would work out in my favor, I would never have had the courage to take the leap, even after 2 years of careful preparations, a business plan, money in the bank, and 10 years of well-honed skills at my disposal.

I must say, that after 16 years of self-employment, everything has always worked out in my favor. It’s not always been the solution I wanted or expected, but it’s been good for me. Every step has taken me closer to where I wanted to go, even when I changed directions, or tried new things out.

I carry the battle scars from the hard times like body art. The dot com bust. The current financial meltdown. But each time I’ve been through a rough patch, I’ve learned a little (or a lot) about how to do it smarter in the future. Each rough patch, I’ve been pleased to see I was better prepared than the last time, even while I can see ways to be even smarter going forward. There’s no way to know what life will throw at a person or a business. You can only do what you know to do at each point along the way. Hard times have a way of expanding what I know so I can do better the next time.

So today, with the luxury of hindsight, I’m writing a blog post to my past self, full of the wisdom from lessons learned, challenges met, and observations from the road. These are the things I wished I had known with confidence when I started out.

A Letter To Myself

Dear Charlene

Through the miracle of quantum physics, I’m writing to you from the future. In fact, I’m you and I’m writing to tell you some things that will greatly help you/me/us going forward.

Congratulations on making the jump to self employment! It’s a huge step and something you will always be proud for doing. Many people want to take charge of their lives in this way, but hesitate to actually make this break. You’ve done it, and for you, there is no going back. Many people will be jealous of you and you’ll lose people along the way. But you have the skills and the perseverance to make this journey. You can do this! And you will.

You will find that working for yourself provides you with all of the benefits you imagined. And then some. You are free to care deeply about your work and your clients. You can impose your own quality standards on your work. In fact, those quality standards are going to get you repeat work with clients. They will want to incorporate your work into their products because you deliver excellence.

You will build up a network of professionals in your industry and related industries that allow you to offer even more complete and comprehensive products and services to your clients. You already know how to identify the people who care about excellence. And you will quickly get good at identifying the people who can deliver products through contracting. Some people just don’t thrive in the unstructured world of working from home, and you’ll soon know how to spot them at 100 yards.

Right now, the scariest part for you is taking on the marketing of your services. But don’t worry. You will figure out how to do that. And in fact, you will get so good at it that other writers will ask you to find work for them. But more than that. In the future, you will teach other small businesses how to market their services, and will consult with them about marketing issues. This is a new part of you that will sprout and thrive through this journey.

You sometimes worry if your curiosity and need to explore and master new bodies of knowledge is a healthy thing in your life and for your business. Stop questioning yourself like that. Let your curiosity drive you. Don’t hesitate to learn something new that interests you. In fact, the time you spent learning HTML is going to serve you very well in the future. That one skill will make all the difference for your business going forward. Not because people will hire you to code things, but because you can create your own websites. It’s going to give you a huge edge. Even as the technologies change and websites become more complex, your basic understandings will empower you to take charge of your online presence.

Your instincts are so good that there is very little advice I feel you need. However, there is something I can give you today that will make a difference. Trust yourself. Trust the unfolding of your journey before you. It won’t always be comfortable, and it will be confusing much of the time. If you can find the faith inside yourself to believe that everything is always working out for your benefit, it will make those rough patches smoother and faster. You’ll learn to relax and trust the process of your life when you stop needing to understand the “how” of the journey. Have faith that the road leads to the destination you chose, especially when it’s dark or lonely or scary. Especially then. Because as I look back at your/our/my path over the last 16 years, I can clearly see the wisdom in everything that seemed at the time to be an interruption or a mistake. There have been no mistakes. The universe is a supportive, nurturing place.

There will be times when you need to take it on the chin. You’ve never made excuses for yourself or blamed others, and that quality will get you through rough times with your soul intact. It’s always better to take the punch without flinching. It’s the fastest way to learn and improve and adapt. And most of the time, the people delivering the punch will respect you for it and allow you to rebuild whatever was broken. And we all break things from time to time.

Mostly what I want to say to you today is that I’m proud of you. Proud doesn’t being to encapsulate the depth of emotion I feel when I look back at you, standing there at that cross road. I’m writing this through tears of joy. I’m having a magnificent life, and being self-employed is the backbone of my experience. It’s the platform for every bit of self expression and self realization in my life. And it starts today, with you giving your notice and going to work in your first home office.

Your dreams are the engine to create anything you believe is possible. So dream big! Trust yourself. Keep the faith.

It’s a grand life waiting for you. Savor every moment.

Love,

Charlene

I’m not usually a person comments on a dry spell in a blog. But this has been more than a dry spell. It’s been an entire change in direction.

Since the last blog post here, I’ve launched a new business, the Social Media DIY Workshop. If you look back through my last 20 or so blog posts, you can clearly see the birth of the new business. Or at last I can. Not only was I writing a lot about social media, but I was also writing about being in the midst of a change. When I finally realized that the change meant another business, I took off in that direction without letting anything distract me. Even this blog.

Starting A New Business

The new business is just a refocus within my existing business. It uses the same skills, and has many of the same deliverables. However, most people don’t see that. Most people see social media as marketing. I see it as software that needs training materials. And it lets me incorporate what I’ve learned in the last 16 years about customer relationships and marketing. It requires a lot of bottom-up analysis of the tools. It requires a thorough understanding of the job of the client. In other words, it’s just a twist on a traditional software user assistance project.

And I love it.

Adjustments

There have been a few major adjustments I’ve had to make along the way.

• I’m running a product business. In the past, I created and delivered products, but under a service model. I’ve had to rethink how I organize my work, and think about how I design my products in a different way.
• I’m the primary SME. In the past, I’ve had the expertise of experienced employees and other experts to fill in the gaps of what I needed to know. Now that job is on my shoulders. If I want to know how a Facebook feature works, I can check their help center, but mostly, I’m on my own.
• I sell my products to unknown customers. In the past, I’ve developed deep relationships with my clients so I know a great deal about who will use my products. Today, I’m selling to strangers. But they don’t stay strangers! Thanks to social media, I can engage my customer base. I can ask them questions about what they need, and how I’m doing. It’s much more interactive. And fun.
• I don’t get paid by the hour or project. In the past, I’ve usually known how much I would be paid for each project well in advance. I worked a lot on fixed price bids. But today, I never know how many webinars or ebook will sell in a day, a week, or a month.
• I’m no longer responsible for the project execution. In the past, people hired me to deliver a solution that worked. My reputation was built on results. Today, I’m offering information and tools that people embrace and incorporate as they see fit. To the best of their abilities. My job is more about coaching than performing the solutions.

Overall, it’s an exciting change and one that I’ve embraced. There have been some tough patches. It’s not always gone the way I anticipated. But the surprises have been good. And my path has been filled with people who have offered me help and guidance, often out of the generosity of their heart. I’ve been very fortunate to build a community around me who wants to see me succeed.

Is your life calling out to you to change what you are doing? Is there more meaningful work that you want to do? I offer my life as an example of how satisfying it can be to really let go of the past and build a new path for yourself. And if I can do anything to encourage you along the way, don’t hesitate to reach out to me!

An illness let me see my schedule and priorities with fresh eyes.

In the midst of my normal end-of-the-year crunch, I found myself with the flu. Nothing as dramatic as the swine flu. Just the regular, everyday, common flu.

When I realized I was getting sick, I did everything I could to prepare. I made a grocery run to make sure I had enough juice, soup, fruit, and easy to fix meals to get through a few days of not feeling well. I fortified the house in anticipation of shifting priorities, and stocked up on things that could make my life easier for a few days.

A few days. Those turned out to be famous last words because my flu is still with me more than a week later. In spite of my best management skills, my best efforts to work with the healing process, I found myself ticking off days of greatly reduce productivity beyond my expectations.

Reduced Expectations

I started by reducing my expectations for those first few days. I didn’t push myself, but allowed myself to nap and rest each time I felt tired. I triaged my unfinished holiday presents, and started calling the family members at the end of the list to apologize in advance for not being able to complete their presents before the new year. Of course, they took this news well. I was proud of myself for adjusting to the new situation and shifting my own expectations accordingly.

But as the flu lingered, I found myself having to repeat this process a couple more time.  I realized I had just started operating under a radical triage. I postponed what I could postpone, but I also found myself cancelling things. I cleared my social and professional calendars. I canceled projects I had planned to complete. Blog posts were eliminated as well. In fact, I soon realized I was living under a skeleton of my normal workload and expectations.

Radical Triage

The weirdest thing happened next. I realized I was okay with this reduced workload. I was okay with postponing some things and canceling others. That realization led me to take a fresh look at what I’ve assumed as routine and normal tasks. What does it mean that I’m completely comfortable letting go of these things? Were they just perfunctory items in my schedule, items without any connection to my passions? Or was this just my complete acceptance of my situation and my adjustment to it?

These turned out to be great questions. Here I was, adjusting my expectations of myself in a radical way from what I had scheduled, and I was totally at peace. What was the lesson I could learn from this radical triage?

New Vision

I’m still examining this situation, and I don’t have the final answers. But I do have some new guidelines I’ve created for myself. I have fresher eyes now to look at my routines and habits, and I’m using them to give everything on my schedule the once over. I’m no longer assuming that standing events and appointments are essential. In fact, a new acid test I’m implementing is this: What if I cancel this? How do I feel about that? Would I really miss it?

In fact, I suspect that much of my day is actually filled with habits instead of the things I really feel are important. Things connected to my future vision and plans. Things connected to my passions. I really want my life, every day of it, every hour of it, to be inching me closer to being the person I want to be. To living out my dreams and visions for the future. Anything less is, well, less.

I’m grateful that my life has given me the opportunity to see myself through a new lens. What I’ve seen is that what I thought was essential was really just a nice to have. Which means that I have plenty of time and energy freed up to fulfill my new dreams and passions. What an exciting way to start a new year.

So what about you? Are you filling out your 2010 calendar with events that are connected to your own passions or are you filling your days with routine events tied to you only by habit? I challenge you to apply a radical triage to your own calendar and see what you learn about yourself.

Related posts:

•  Rethinking Everything
• A Few of My Favorite (Little) Things
• Where’s Your Tribe?

Money and abundance are very different things.

I have a secret weapon. It’s not the kind of secret weapon that I conceal in my clothing and pull out when I need it. It’s the kind of secret weapon that I use in my personal development when I think it will help me develop new superhero powers.

It’s the abundance game.

Before I tell you any more about it, let me ask you a question: What would you do if you won the lottery today and had $1,000,000 to spend? Or more?

I’ve asked many people this question, and most responses fall into two categories. Some people start rattling off the things they would buy and do with the money. They’d pay off their mortgage, cars, credit cards, travel, and help out family. But the things they rattle off don’t add up to much. Other people get excited and start talking about buying a house here, a vacation home in several exotic locations, expensive sports cars and more. And these items add up to much more than one million dollars.

So I ask you: What would you do if you won the lottery today and had $1,000,000 to spend? Or more?

Spending Money

Everyone has a unique relationship with money. No two people use it in the same way. Your relationship with money is a complicated issue that is influenced by many factors, including:

• Your parent’s relationship with money and the budget of your childhood home.
• Your earning power and the sense of entitlement that comes with your budget and work choice.
• Your sense of happiness and contentment in your life.
• Your priorities and what you want to accomplish now in your life.
• Your values and the importance you place on things that money can buy.
• Your dreams and aspirations, including your life list or bucket list items.
• Your spiritual orientation and what you believe you deserve in this life.
• Your financial history, especially if you have been through either a financial hardship or a time of an unexpected financial windfall.

In our society, we categorize people as either spenders or savers, but this system really oversimplifies how people relate to money. And it has nothing to do with the how a person experiences abundance.

Money vs. Abundance

Many people don’t separate money from abundance, but they are actually very separate and distinct things.

• Money is currency, a way to exchange goods and services between people based on perceived value. Money can be counted and measured, which also means it can be gained and lost. Money requires management and protection.
• Abundance is a sense of well being, a feeling of appreciation for the things in our lives. Abundance is an outlook, a way of looking at life, that anyone can have no matter their financial situation. Abundance creates a real freedom to enjoy and participate in life.

Money can't buy happiness no matter where you shop.

Money and abundance don’t always go together. A person with a lovely home, a new luxury vehicle, fashionable clothes, and a large bank balance can look at the world and feel a sense of abundance because of these things. But having money doesn’t automatically give you a sense of abundance. That same person with all of these things could feel a sense of lack because a friend just moved into a nicer neighborhood, or a neighbor has a new sports car in the garage, or their wardrobe is one season out of fashion. They may have the sense that they are never rich enough to afford what they really want.

In the same way, a person of very modest means who gets by without many of their desires and some of life’s conveniences can look at their life and feel angry that they didn’t get enough from life. They can feel that life owes them something, and get angry when they see people who have more and do more. Or, that same person can have a sense of abundance that allows them to appreciate the things they do have, and find a deep sense of joy in them, even though the facts have not changed. A person with a sense of abundance can see the wealth of others and feel joy without having to possess the same things.

The Abundance Advantage

Whatever your financial situation, you can develop a sense of abundance right where you are. You can have a way of looking at the world that gives you joy and allows you to appreciate the richness of your world without gaining a single dollar of income or savings. The formula is simple, but not always easy. A sense of abundance comes from focusing on the benefits you already have, appreciating the good things already around you. Many of them are things that money can’t buy. It’s about seeing the wonder in life, the miracles that happen every day around you. It’s about taking your eyes off the things that you don’t like and letting go of ideas that make you sad or angry, and shifting your focus to things you appreciate. It’s about changing from looking at the glass half empty to seeing the glass half full.

Gaining an abundance outlook isn’t something you do once and you have forever like a college degree. It’s something that you must constantly adjust to stay on track. It’s about taking a series of steps toward that goal each day, or each time you realize that you don’t feel abundant in the moment. It’s a lifestyle. It’s about choosing the person you want to be and then being that person every hour of every day. The best part is, it doesn’t cost anything to develop an abundance outlook. It’s available to everyone who wants it and who invests the effort to seek it.

Maintaining My Own Abundance

Like many people, I have a long and interesting relationship with money and abundance. I’ve had lots of money (relatively speaking). I’ve been broke. I’ve had a sense of abundance when my bank account is empty, and when it is full. I’ve had a sense of desperation (a lack of abundance) with money and without money. Through these experiences, and through my choice to be a glass half full gal, I’ve found my path to abundance. Sure, it needs adjusting occasionally, and I get some surprises that show me the chinks in my abundance armor, but these are part of the abundance lifestyle. I get that. And the benefits of feeling abundant most of the time are worth so much more than any of the petty costs along the way.

One tool I use to build and enhance my sense of abundance is the abundance game I learned from a teacher many years ago. This game challenges me to feel more abundant without changing my income. I’m playing it right now, and I’ve been talking about some of my experiences on Twitter. Some of you have asked me about the abundance game. So I’m sharing it with you here.

The Abundance Game

The abundance game is something you play by yourself using paper. It challenges you to spend increasing amounts of money each day. The abundance game is really easy to play. There are only a few simple rules.

1. The first day, you spend $1,000. Every day, you must spend one thousand dollars more than you spent the day before. So day 1 is $1,000, day 2 is $2,000, day 15 is $15,000, etc.
2. What you don’t spend carries over to the next day.
3. You can’t spend more than you have any day. But you can save up money over a few days to have enough to purchase something.

To make playing easier, I’ve created an Excel spreadsheet that keeps track of the daily income, what I spend, any money carried over, and a running total of what I’ve spent. You can download my spreadsheet, or you can keep track in your own spreadsheet or on a notepad. There are no special tools required. I’ve filled in a couple of examples for you in the spreadsheet. Just delete my entries and start filling in your own.

Spend the money in any way you want. Indulge your every craving. Be generous with others. Do whatever you feel inspired to do. There are no right or wrong ways to spend this money. You will not incur any karma or anger any of the people in your life. Go for it!

Game Strategies

Your strategy makes all the difference in how you succeed.

I’m going to be totally honest here: Until now, I’ve never gotten past 15 days of playing the abundance game. I’m currently on day 49 as I write this which means I’ve spent over $1,200,000. In other words, I’ve had a huge breakthrough in my own sense of abundance. Here is some of what I’ve learned in this round of the abundance game.

1. Make it fun from the start. In the past, I always was practical. I paid off my bills first, and that took many days, even weeks. While I was waiting around to accumulate enough money to pay them off, I got bored with the game. It lost it’s thrill. I don’t recommend this strategy.
2. Don’t be too practical. This time, I decided that I would splurge first and be practical later. I figured out the bills I wanted to pay off, and scheduled them so they would be covered in the first month. But that first month also allowed me to buy lots of items and experiences that I’ve always wanted. That made it fun and kept it juicy for me.
3. Break out of your small expectations. Very quickly, I realized that my real world budget had trained me to only want so much. I realized that I had a hard time remembering the things I had wanted over the years. It took some effort to start remembering things. But once I found that groove, more and more things came rushing back to me. So don’t give up! Keep a running list of the things you have wanted in your life. In real life, you have to be practical. But in the abundance game, the sky really is the limit. Go for it!
4. Create a wish list of items separate from the game. I started using the side columns of the spreadsheet to figure out things I wanted to buy in the game. When I was in the mood, I’d go out online and research the cost of the items or experiences. I’d record these in a column (cost and description) and sort them in cost order. Then, each day playing the game, I’d start with my wish list and buy the items that fit the day’s abundance budget and seemed the most exciting. Separating the cost research from the game really improved my experience.
5. The sky is the limit! In real life, you have practical budget concerns, but in the game, you can splurge. For example, I decided to fly my entire family to Phoenix for the holidays. But I didn’t research coach seats for the flight–I got them all first class seats. I also booked each family a suite at a local resort. I included money so they could ship their presents here, and gave them spending money. I also rented each licensed driver a car they would love for the week. Think big! Don’t skimp!
6. When you find something fun, buy more of them. My purchases run in themes. A few times, I’ve stared at the spreadsheet and wondered what in the world I could buy next. Once I got a single idea, I used variations of that to keep me running for a while. There are definitely times when new ideas are easier than others. I just refused to give up when it got hard to spend more money.
7. Think of things to give other than just cash. I’ve given away a lot of money. Apart from a few favorite charities, I haven’t just given cash. Instead, I’ve found creative ways to give money. I purchased Visa gift cards with $250 credit and handed out 50 of them to students in the ASU bookstore each semester for a year. I figured out the cost for a family of 4 to attend a Diamondbacks game, buy hot dogs and drinks, and a shirt for each person, and put the cost on a Diamondbacks gift certificate and handed out 50 of them at the Arizona Mills mall. Don’t just give money, do things that enrich the lives of others and lets you interact with them. I felt the joy of handing out those gifts to people (even in my imagination), and without spending a dollar, I felt amazing.
8. Help fund great causes in your own backyard. Look for people and organizations in your community who are doing good work and fund them. In the game, I funded an Ignite Phoenix event, a TEDxPhoenix event, and sponsored the next PodCampAZ afterparty. I funded St. Mary’s food bank and ran the St. Vincent de Paul dining room for a month. I contributed to organizations working to make downtown Phoenix a better place.

Keep it fun! I’ve set a goal for the number of days I want to play the game. When I reach that number, I can stop or I can decide if I want to keep playing. If it isn’t fun, shake it up a bit before you quit. And when you quit, think about what you learned and prepare to dive back into it in the future.

I’m really excited to hear what you do with the game! Please share your experiences and the kinds of things you buy here with this community.

Later, I’ll blog about the life lessons I’ve learned from this round of the abundance game. Stay tuned!

Related posts:

• The Hidden Value of Irritation
• A Few of My Favorite (Little) Things
• Stoking Your Creative Fire

I'm enjoying the journey as I redefine my business, priorities, projects, relationships and goals.

Over the last few months, I’ve had a slow time in my business. Rather than think of this as a shortage of income, I’ve seen this as a rare opportunity–a surplus of time. I’ve been investing this precious time in projects that normally never make the jump from my “good idea” list to the “to-do” list. It’s been an amazing time, a productive time, and one that has changed the way I look at, well, everything.

Rethinking Goals

It’s been so nice to be able to block out an afternoon to just think about things. To set aside a portion of a day without interruptions where I can focus on one thing and see it through to the end. Normally, I’m in the midst of producing deliverables for one set of client deadlines while I’m preparing for the next wave of deadlines about to hit. The goals for my business have been related to the work at hand: to produce quality products while reducing costs when possible, and to work as efficiently as possible.

With a little time, I’ve been able to take a step back from the daily business activities to ask myself bigger questions. Like what do I want to do now, which services do I want to promote going forward, and how do I want to leverage my current business to create the business I really want to run. It’s been a huge exercise is breaking out of the box of current thinking, to dream big dreams, and to set new expectations for the future.

I don’t want to make this sound like it was a simple process, that I simply blocked out an afternoon and suddenly had a new vision and goals for my business. Oh no. It’s been a process of looking back at history, sorting through the parts I have loved, identifying the parts that have taught me the most, and piecing together the lessons learned. It’s been a real process of discovery that continues today. But through this process, I’m considering new things: new services, new directions, new types of clients, new products to produce. Each baby step in a new direction gives me a new vision of the future, and I’m loving the process of seeing a new future for my business.

Rethinking Priorities

I have been self-employed for 15 years. During that time, I’ve been a pretty good employer to myself. I’ve constantly improved my own working conditions, and found myself more and more interesting work to engage me and develop my skills. But with some time to reflect, to look back on my history, I can see some glaring gaps.

For me, the perpetual challenge has been to find the work/life balance. Like most self-employed people, I seem to always be working. I’m not sure if working from home makes it better (no time spent in commutes) or worse (no barriers to working all hours). I mean, I’m writing this blog post at 3 am because I woke up in the middle of the night! Work is the first thing on my mind almost every hour I’m awake.

As I’m thinking about my priorities, I realize that I’m grateful that I love my work and I know it needs a high priority in my life. However, I’m ready to make a radical change in how to manage my daily living. I’m ready to set new priorities for my personal life so work isn’t taking up so much of my time and energy. I’m eager to embrace new priorities that give me more time to explore the world around me, to enjoy my friends, and to bring more people into my life.

Rethinking Projects

In the last 18 months, I’ve been volunteering on various community projects including Ignite Phoenix. I’ve been speaking at conferences and to community groups. I’ve spent time developing personal projects, things that are for me and my business instead of just doing client projects. It’s been invigorating to try new things, to learn new skills, and be a beginner in new disciplines. It has brought a spark back to my life that I hadn’t realized was missing.

Now, I want to make these non-client projects a permanent part of my weekly life. I have created a new way to keep track of things I want to try, and I want to have a block of time each week where I can work on them without any pressure from other projects on my plate.

I’ve also decided to drop a few projects from my life. There have been things I’ve taken on because I felt obligated, or because no one else had the skills to take them on, or because I had failed to say “no” when I was asked.

Rethinking Relationships

This has been a rich year for me to explore issues related to work and personal relationships. Some of you reading this, people who know me well, probably snorted at that last sentence because it was understated. I’ve had the grand opportunity to meet and engage with people who have pushed buttons that I didn’t know I had, people who have challenged me to the core to really put into practice the things I believe, and to take some big steps in how I manage myself and how I set boundaries with others.

It’s funny, because the outcome of this education process, this trial and error learning, has been unexpected. In some ways, I’ve learned to really be more open and more accepting of the differences in people. I’ve really grown in my ability to embrace diversity in the people around me. At the same time, I’m more clear than ever about the qualities I look for in the people who I choose to have in my life in my inner circles. So while my outer circles are expanding, my inner circles are tougher to join.

The greatest thing I’ve learned from this is how to keep my heart open even wider and keep it open with people who I had trouble embracing in the past. This has been the most gratifying part of my recent journey, because that is exactly the kind of person I want to be. And I see real growth towards that goal. It makes me feel grateful every single day for being a person who wants to have an open heart, and for choosing to experience my life in a way that teaches me how to open it even further. Everyone in my life helps me learn this lesson, which also makes me grateful for each one of you.

Rethinking My Business

As I process each of these things I’m learning, it is sending me off in a new direction. I’m definitely in the midst of a course correction. I am facing a different direction than I was a year ago, I’m thinking new thoughts, and I’m pondering new dreams. I have some ideas for how this is changing my business, but I won’t know the real impact until I have more time to travel down these new roads for a while.

In the meantime, I look at my website and I realize it doesn’t reflect where I am and where I’m headed, but I’m not sure how to bring it into focus. I look through my blog posts, and I don’t know yet how to articulate the changes I am making and what they mean for my business. But I’m patient. I know that with some time, with some new thoughts, with a handful of new projects, the vision for my business will unfold. Everything happens in its own time. I’ve been so amazed by the journey so far. I trust that when the future starts to become clear, I’ll be so happy that I’ve invested my time this way.

So, what are you doing to rethink your own life?

Related Posts:

• Where’s Your Tribe?
• Talking About Yourself
• Why I’m Optimistic In This Economy (Or What I Learned From The Dot Com Bust)

Mignon Fogarty with Oprah Winfrey.

There are only two groups of people who don’t know about the Grammar Girl juggernaut: people who have been living under a rock for the last year, and people who don’t love the foibles of the English language. If you don’t use English in your every day life, if you think in JQUERY or SQL or Ruby some other non-English language, this blog post won’t interest you. You can stop reading now. (In fact, I’m wondering how you landed here at all.)

However, if you write or talk in English to share ideas with other people, whether you blog, tweet, engage on Facebook, video blog, or podcast, you need to know more about the wonders and surprises of our home-grown, immigrant-influenced, pop-culture addled English language. And Mignon Fogarty, AKA Grammar Girl, is the person who can best guide you along your journey.

Whether you prefer to listen or read, Mignon has you covered. Her podcast, Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, provides an ongoing education in the rules of English language finesse, along with a dose of humor, history, and lots of great examples. Her first book, Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, became a New York Times bestseller and landed her on Oprah.

Her latest book, The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl, is a sort of grammar fact-a-day calendar content organized into a book for easy use. It’s a brilliant tool for giving yourself a small dose of practical language trivia each day. Or, if you lack the patience for that (like me), you can randomly open the book to any page and just start reading. The book is smaller than most paperbacks, making it the perfect size to tuck into your bag for casual reading in spare minutes throughout your day. The index organizes the content found on its 234 pages and makes it useful as a reference book as well. However, if you are just looking for a grammar reference, I recommend you also pick up Mignon’s first book because it was designed for that use.

Attention Phoenix area readers: If you missed Mignon speaking at PodCampAZ last weekend, or if you can’t get enough of her, she’ll be back in town on November 20th to talk and sign books at Changing Hands Bookstore. Don’t miss her!

Here’s a video that introduces Mignon and her work as Grammar Girl to the world.

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Understanding your follower style explains your leadership style.

I spoke last weekend at PodCampAZ, and after the session, someone asked me a very interesting question. During my session, I pointed out what was my opinion and where others would disagree with me. And during my session, someone in the audience took issue with one of my positions and talked about why I was wrong in my position.

Dealing With Hecklers

The person who approached me asked me how I kept my cool with this audience heckler. The truth is, I didn’t see that person as  heckler at all. I walked into the presentation the same way I walk into all of my work. Much of what I do, what I choose to do, is based on my experience and my philosophies about the work. I welcome divergent view points. In fact, I could have made the same argument against my opinion as my alleged heckler audience member.

I found my peace with my personal experience very early in my professional career. I keep an open mind about ideas and competing theories about things because I test everything in the crucible of personal experience. I try things out. I see what happens. I might have a preference going into a situation, but I don’t take a position until I have experience that shows me the truth for me. I am willing to do several tests, and repeat tests over time, but it is the outcome that determines my position, not my hoping or wishing for an outcome.

Leadership Experience

I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to become a leader early in my career. I found myself leading a team of seasoned professionals who were older and had more years of experience. Talk about jumping into the deep end! From the start, I had to be open to other ideas and be willing to try things that perhaps were not my first idea of a good strategy. I learned much about the process of leading and how to earn the respect of my team. Those lessons formed my leadership style.

Being A Follower

The challenge that I have now in the middle of my career is that I expect the people who lead me to be the same kind of leader I am. I expect them to appreciate my suggestions for improvement. I expect them to recognize my dedication to the project and that my effort earns me their respect. But that isn’t always the way it works out. I often find myself counting the days until a project ends because the project manager’s leadership skills exhaust me or provide me with a constant stream of minor irritations. I sometimes joke that I should offer a basic leadership course as a way to fix my leadership issues, but I know that would not really solve anything.

Instead, I try to adjust my follower style so I don’t crash into the rigid leadership walls put around me. If I know my suggestions are not welcome, I do my best to keep my mouth shut. I also take the risk of doing what I feel is best under the guideline that asking forgiveness is sometimes more effective than asking permission. That’s not my favorite follower mode, as you might guess. If I feel I must resort to that strategy, my days on a project are numbered.

The truth is that I don’t want to run everything I participate in. I am very happy having a slice of a project, of limiting my personal responsibility to something I feel I can manage and keep the balance of the rest of my life. I’m happy being a follower. But I’m most happy when I support  a leader who appreciates an assertive, self-determined follower.

Leadership vs. Follower Styles

Today, I ran across a video blog that suddenly shed new light on my challenge. Bret Simmons believes that our experiences as followers determines if we will be likely to get a chance to lead, and forms our leadership style long before we actually do lead. The good news of this is that we can make choices to change our follower style that will make us better leaders.

In my community, I see people who want to contribute to the community and are frustrated because they are in follower positions. I see some of them lash out against leaders in what I see as unproductive ways: criticism, backstabbing, and negative comments. After watching this video, I have a new framework for processing this behavior and understanding its importance. I now understand that their follower style isn’t likely to develop a productive leadership style. Now, I’m wondering if there is a market for a course to teach people how to become independent or partner followers like Simmons describes.

See for yourself the brilliance of his observations.

Simmons points out the differences between dependent vs. independent leaders and followers. I encourage you to take his observations to heart, and decide which kind of leader you want to be. Then set out to be that kind of a follower.

P.S. To any leaders out there who find me volunteering for your project or working on your team for a while, you are forewarned. I’m an independent follower. Embrace it, or expect that we will have a rocky road while we figure things out.

I’ve posted my slides today, but because I follow the presentation philosophy of ideas vs. words on my slides, they are not all that helpful alone. I have some other ideas for how I’m going to share this content in the future, so stay tuned for more about that. In the meantime, I can provide you with some of the details that we discussed yesterday.

Ebook Fonts

I was asked what font I use for text in my ebooks. I explained that sans serif (plain) fonts are best for online while serif (letter attachments) fonts are best for print. That is all true. However, when I cracked open Microsoft Publisher this afternoon to get the name of my font, I remembered the whole process I went through to select my font. And I’m not using a sans serif font. I’m using Californian FB.

Originally, I had alternated between several san serif fonts (Tahoma and Verdana are the most common ones I use) but I didn’t like the way they looked with my titles and headline font, a stylized old-fashioned typewriter font. So I switched to try a few serif fonts. I had a few friends do a screen test for me, and they helped me to select Californian FB, which is a very light and open font compared to other serif fonts like Times New Roman.

Creative Commons

My apologies for not being better prepared to answer your questions about Creative Commons licenses in the session. I sometimes forget that the things I take for granted are new to many people. So here’s a bit more about this.

Creative Commons is a license that you can apply to your copyrighted works that allow people to use your work in ways that legally they cannot do with copyrighted materials. You keep the copyright to your ebook, but you allow people certain liberties, like the ability to distribute your work. The Creative Commons site has an interactive tool that allows you to choose which actions you will allow your ebook readers to take, and based on your choices, it places you into a specific Creative Commons license. It’s really slick. Give it a try.

David Meerman Scott

David gives out some of the smartest advice I’ve found anywhere online. A guy with a serious marketing background, he understands the shifts that traditional marketing must take to adapt to the new social media world. I’ve followed him for many years. I’ve listened to his revolutionary ideas and tried them out for myself, all with great success. That’s the best advice I can give you. Listen to what he says, give it a try, and see for yourself what happens.

The first advice I tried from David was about press releases, and he has revolutionized the way I use press releases for my business. His ebooks inspired my own ebooks. He’s written best-selling books because his blog has introduced his ideas to a lot of small businesses who have had great success like me.

More Questions?

If you attended my session and have any further questions, don’t hesitate to post them here or contact me by email.

David Billings, Mr. Sparky Firepants came to Phoenix to conduct a client management workshop.

Last week, I had the opportunity to take the Rock Your Clients workshop with Dave Billings, the genius behind Sparky Firepants Images. This half-day workshop covered the important client management issues for people in creative businesses.

I met David through email when I heard about the course. He immediately struck me as a white hat cowboy, one of the good guys. After spending most of a day with him, I can confirm that my first impressions were dead on. David is practical and all about doing smart business, but he comes from his heart. That’s a high recommendation from me.

Workshop Details

The workshop covered some unexpected and interesting ground. David didn’t just give us a list of things to do and things to never do. He explained a strategy for understanding your client’s real needs and how to fit that into your business relationship. He covered lots of practical things, too, like guidelines for making yourself accessible to your clients by phone and email. He covered thorny topics like project scope creep, and what to do when your project slips into limbo.

Not only did David share from his own client experiences, but he engaged the class to share their challenges and solutions. It was great to hear people from a wide range of creative businesses talking about the business challenges that we normally don’t discuss in polite company. In other words, it was real and honest and quite helpful.

Workshop Lessons

I was excited by some of the new ideas I heard in the workshop for handling specific client management issues like scope creep. I’m a small business owner, and many of my clients are small business owners. When there is a gap between what was contracted and the reality of what needs to happen, of course I’m going to collaborate with them to create the solution. But some of the tips I learned will help me make smarter negotiations with my clients, which can only improve my business bottom line while I’m keeping my clients happy.

If you ever get the chance to take this workshop or any workshop with David Billings, I highly recommend it. In fact, if you ever get the chance to just hang with him at a tweetup or creative meetup, do it. He’s a great guy, and you’ll be happy to add him to your business network. I only wish that he spent more time in Phoenix so I could spend more face time with him. But who knows. Maybe I’ll get to spend more time in Portland in the future.

Experience the advantages of being part of a passionate community.

Here in Phoenix, we are in the midst of Geek Week AZ, a project designed to schedule several independent creative and technical events into a short time frame.  Our “week” started on November 3 with Ignite Phoenix, and ends on November 15 with the final day of PodCamp AZ, with many other outstanding events between these bookends.

This is the first time we have attempted Geek Week, and it’s been a resounding success in the community. I’m personally finding myself challenged by it because I want to participate in, not just attend, too many events. There isn’t enough room in my schedule to let me do all of the fun stuff available at the same time. That’s where priorities come in.

Observing Brilliance Brings Inspiration

I have attended many Geek Week events, and I’ve been inspired by several things I’ve seen. In fact, I would say I’ve been more inspired because I’ve seen so many things close together rather than spread out. I’ve seen patterns in things, spotted trends, and gotten a pulse on what the cool kids are thinking from this experience. Most of this information isn’t new, and it confirms what I had observed from a distance and over time. However, seeing such great examples of specific things crammed together has really inspired me in an unexpected way.

I’m always looking for new ways to market my services, things that are not routine, things that take advantage of my natural interests and abilities. For example, when I got on Twitter, none of my friends and peers were on it. That let me be a leader, and set the stage for my Twitter for Beginners ebook (which is undergoing an update to version 2 as I write this). I used my instructional design skills along with my experience teaching people to use software to help business people find their footing on Twitter.

Creative Business Solution

One of the greatest challenges I face in my business is educating my clients and potential clients about the value added by my services. I’m not talking about converting people who don’t get it. I’m talking about explaining the processes and principles I use in user assistance design so my clients can talk to their clients about the value added by these products. I’m talking about empowering my clients to engage their own clients in a new way so they sell their products more effectively and efficiently.

So, I’m noodling about my next client education project when I get this new idea. A new idea inspired by things I’ve been watching take place in my community during Geek Week. In just a few minutes, lightening strikes and I’m inspired to take something I’ve seen and apply it to my situation using my skills and my take on it. It’s genius, even if I say so myself.

I’m not prepared to day to spill the beans about my new project. Some in my community will be hearing about it as I will need some collaborators to pull off my vision. I’ll be posting the finished project here within a few weeks.

Sparking Brilliance

The whole point of my post today isn’t to tell you that I’ve got a new top secret project in the works. It’s to tell you the unbelievable value I get from watching my community showcase it’s members, and engaging with individuals who are truly expressing their personal brilliance. Your brilliance and passion have stirred me to find new ideas and new ways to express my own brilliance and passion. I’m changed because I’ve engaged with you. I’m better because I am part of an amazing community.

Can you say the same thing? Are you surrounded by a community that puts value on self-expression, passion, and excellence? If not, find yourself a new community, because being part of a great community can only make you better at what you do.