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7 signs it’s time to re-balance your life

September 15, 2011 By rjones 18 Comments

priorities, time management

Did you quit your full-time job in order to pursue a dream of indentured servitude — or even slavery?

Would-be entrepreneurs always think life will be better without a boss or a 9-to-5 schedule. We plan to work on our own time, set our own priorities, and pursue the projects we’re passionate about.

And then one day it hits you: “I’m working from 5 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., my weekends are non-existent, I never see the people I love, and I’ve gained 2 inches around the middle.”

Wait, you didn’t add 2 inches? Maybe I’m projecting. The point is, we all have our own warning signs that things have gotten out of whack. Exercise was a big one for me: The gym is just an elevator ride away, Central Park jogging paths are right outside my door, and I still managed to pack on the pounds. I have skinny genes, but I can’t get into my skinny jeans. Clearly it’s time to re-calibrate.

When you’re the boss, there’s no one to shut off the lights, remind you to take lunch, or urge you to enroll in the office wellness program. Instead, you find yourself pushing harder, taking on new projects and working longer hours until …

Until what, exactly? How do you know that business has taken over your life and it’s time to get back into balance?

I put that question to some of my favorite bloggers and business thinkers. Maybe you’ll recognize yourself in some of their responses.

You know it’s time to re-balance when …

  1. The only question your friends ever ask you is, “How’s work?” (Amy Tobin, Ariel Marketing Group)
  2. You show up on time for a family dinner, and everyone wonders what’s wrong (Tim Berry, Bplans/Palo Alto Software)
  3. You’ve been dying to see the premier of a new movie, and you suddenly realize it’s already playing on HBO (Rieva Lesonsky, Small Biz Daily)
  4. You forget to kiss your wife goodnight, but you’d never sign off Twitter without saying goodbye to your tweeps (Mark Babbitt, YouTern)
  5. You can’t remember the ages of your own grandchildren (Annette Penney, Inspire & Acquire)
  6. Your spouse asks “Are you all right?” more than 2 times in any given day (Rick Manelius, RickManelius.com)
  7. You would lose your entire sense of identity if your work were taken away from you (Christian Hollingsworth, Smart Boy Designs)

Tim Berry adds another point that’s worth mentioning: “When you pretend you’ll make it up to your family later, after the business is successful, then it’s time to re-balance.”

That flies in the face of many so-called “experts,” who insist that entrepreneurs owe 100% of their attention to the business in its early days. “Make the sacrifice now,” they argue, “and you’ll have more control of your time later on.”

In reality, it rarely works that way. Priorities become habits, and habits are notoriously hard to break. If we can’t make time now for the things that really matter, chances are we’ll never get around to it.

With that, I think I’m going to turn down a lucrative white paper job that was offered to me yesterday. I have friends I need to re-connect with. I don’t want to resort to a dog-walker. And it’s not like the gym is going to come to me.

What about you? What are your personal warning signs that work has taken over your life? Please join the conversation below.

{Photo credit: CraftyGoat via flickr CC}

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Doughnuts, clients & other things I’m thankful for

September 7, 2011 By rjones Leave a Comment

thanks for your business, thanking customers, business thank-yous

The other day I was sitting in a restaurant (okay, it was a Dunkin’ Donuts, so maybe “restaurant” is too highfalutin a word), when the guy beside me got up, dropped a half-eaten doughnut back into the bag, and headed for the door.

Outside, he strolled past a mentally disturbed woman who sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, loudly demanding contributions from everyone who walked by. As he stood at the crosswalk waiting for the light to change, my fellow diner dropped his Dunkin’ Donuts bag into the metal trashcan on the corner. In a flash, the woman jumped from the sidewalk, dug through the trash, and pulled out the crumpled bag like some sort of buried treasure. The rescued leftovers disappeared into her mouth in a single bite.

I quickly gave thanks for my double chocolate iced doughnut, fat grams and all.

Until that moment, I had taken my breakfast completely for granted — something that’s easy to do when you’ve eaten three meals a day for 40+ years.

A few days later, as I was sending out my monthly invoices, I realized that clients are like doughnuts: After a while it’s easy to take them for granted, and there’s always someone out there who’s hungry enough to pounce on your “leftovers.”

I like to think that I’m grateful for the clients who provide me with a steady stream of work and allow me to maintain an independent lifestyle … but am I truly thankful? I do believe there’s a difference. Gratefulness is in the heart, but thankfulness is on the lips. You don’t just feel a thank-you; you have to say it. And mean it. You have to sell it, even.

Rejoicing over Invoicing

It was the routine “thank you” line on my invoices that made me think of that hungry woman outside the Dunkin Donuts. She made me realize that I probably wasn’t expressing my thanks like I should. My invoices change monthly in terms of hours, projects and total due, but the “thank you” at the bottom of the page? That’s an afterthought. It never changes.

Well, not any more. Every invoice now gets a personalized thank-you every month — something that shows some thought and some heart. Something that says “I never want to take you for granted.”

I’ve also started designing some custom cards that I’ll send out for the holidays this year. Who knows if they’ll make any impression at all. Maybe they’ll just get tossed without a thought. But the point is, there will be some thought on my end — some thought and some thanks. It’s the least I can do for the folks who are helping to make this a banner year, despite the tough economy.

Oh, and there’s one more thing that I’ve never done before: I’ve never said a public thank-you to the folks who keep me well supplied with doughnuts. Without CouponNetwork, ERF Marketing, Inspire and Acquire, Health Planning Source, AllBusiness.com and SmartBrief, I literally don’t know where I’d be.

Thanks for putting your trust in me. Thanks for allowing me to help tell your story.

Thanks for keeping me out of a cubicle — and out of the trashcan.

{Photo credit: 5thLuna via flickr CC}

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Mastering the business of the everyday

September 1, 2011 By rjones Leave a Comment

If your life were the subject of a movie or a Broadway play, what genre would it be?

  • Adventure?
  • Comedy?
  • Horror?
  • Romance?
  • Tragedy?

I got to thinking about this last night while I was watching Master Class, Terrence McNally’s wonderful play about the twilight years of Maria Callas. Master Class is a funny, moving, insightful ode to music and beauty, but it’s also the study of a diva in decline. business priorities, lifestyle entrepreneurs

During the 1950s, Callas was the most famous and successful opera star in the world. Though her career lasted just over a decade, she remains to this day one of the best-selling Classical recording artists of all time. She was rich, glamorous, haughty, tempestuous and controversial. (Think Madonna, but with a great voice.)

As a self-proclaimed fat, ugly child who was reared in poverty, Callas’ meteoric rise should be the stuff of fairy tales. But McNally tells a different story — one that could serve as a warning to any entrepreneur consumed with success at any cost.

In her later years, after her voice had gone and Aristotle Onassis had left her for Jackie Kennedy, Callas was reduced to teaching the occasional graduate glass at Juilliard in NYC. This is the setting for Master Class, as Callas reminisces her way through several coaching sessions. The students are her pupils, her imitators, but also her rivals — each one a potential star who could push the diva deeper into history and irrelevance.

“I don’t want to sing like you,” snaps one student, reminding Callas that she’d ruined her voice after just 10 short years onstage. “I hate people like you. You want to make the world a scary place for everybody, because it was scary for you.”

Callas insists that bitter rivalries, broken hearts and deep loneliness were simply the price she had to pay for her art and her career. But when the footlights dim and the crowds go home, she’s left to question her choices in a world that has passed her by.

In a business world with a single-minded obsession for growth, I couldn’t help wondering how some of today’s most famous entrepreneurs might fare as the subject of a McNally play. If he stripped away the trappings of success, what sort of human being would he find underneath? What sort of life?

Amy Tobin nailed this issue recently in a blog post entitled “One Thing That’s More Important than Work“:

I try to find one moment each day that is more important than work. I’ve completely accepted the fact that I am a workaholic and I will never be able to take a vacation without sneaking in some form of ‘productivity’ everyday. I know this is WHO I AM. But I refuse to be only that: a hard working, ‘successful’ person.

For Amy, the key to balance is her 4-year-old daughter, plus a conscious effort to find meaning in the seemingly mundane details of life, whether scented candles or good towels. “I still have the insatiable need to be productive,” she admits, but “now I just work around it.”

Success, growth, productivity — they’re a big part of what it means to be an entrepreneur, but only a small part of what it means to be human.

We’re hard-wired to want more. The question is, more of what?

{Photo credit: magro_kr via flickr CC}

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Love, loss and peanut butter pie

August 15, 2011 By rjones 5 Comments

I’m not writing about business today — not much, anyway.

Instead, this is a post about death and life and words and memories. It’s about a guy named Mike Perillo, whom I never met, and his widow, Jennifer, who wrote a tribute I can’t forget.

Mike died of a heart attack on Sunday, Aug. 7. He was a young guy with a kind face and deep laugh lines; you can see his picture here. He and Jennie had been together 16 years. They had two young daughters.

Jennie dealt with her loss, as any writer would, by putting it down in words. She wrote about Mike’s wedding ring, his busy schedule, and his favorite pie. For several weeks, Jennie had planned to make that pie for him “tomorrow,” and now the chance had passed. But there was still time for others:

For those asking what they can do to help my healing process, make a peanut butter pie this Friday and share it with someone you love. Then hug them like there’s no tomorrow because today is the only guarantee we can count on.

Twitter and Facebook lit up with the challenge. Within a matter of hours, more than 300 food bloggers responded with recipes and photos and, presumably, lots of hugs. “I’m not sure there have ever been this many variations of one recipe in the history of food blogging,” wrote Phyllis Grant on her blog. “Or maybe in the history of time.”

That’s an amazing tribute to Mike Perillo and to the power of social media.

But if you go back a little further, it’s also a tribute to entrepreneurship and priorities and the pursuit of a dream.

The rest of the story

In 1999, while the two were still dating, Mike handed Jennie a Newsweek article about becoming a personal chef. Jennie had just lost her father to a heart attack at age 49, so “I figured it was time to get cracking on my dreams since there’s no guarantee of tomorrow,” she recalls.

That same year, Jennie started Time to Eat, a Brooklyn-based catering service that garnered a good bit of local press coverage. Her successful catering gig launched her into the New York restaurant scene, working with top chefs like Tom Colicchio and Alain Ducasse.

Then came her daughters — and decision time.

“After working long hours in the restaurant business I decided it was time to focus on motherhood — after all they’re only kids once,” she writes.

Jennie made the choice to work from home, setting up a test kitchen in Brooklyn where she develops recipes for Cuisinart and Working Mother magazine. She also launched an award-winning blog, attracting a slew of advertisers as well as mentions at Oprah.com, Time.com and more.

In other words, she chose to do what she loves, surrounded by the people she loves — a classic lifestyle business.

The disciples of growth would argue that her choice didn’t make economic sense. After all, she could have made a lot more money and created more jobs by opening her own restaurant, maybe even a chain of restaurants.

Over the years, as she read about the hot new spot in Manhattan or watched the latest celebrity chef on the Food Network, there may have been moments of doubt in Jennie’s own mind. It’s human nature to second-guess, to wonder what if?

I’m sure any such doubts have now been laid to rest last. Several weeks ago, when Mike got a day off work, Jennie’s lifestyle business allowed her to make time for what would be their final date:

The moment I heard he was taking off, I cleared my work schedule. Deadlines were the least of my priorities. We finally had the chance to walk, hand-in-hand, during daylight hours—the fact that it reached 102ºF didn’t matter to me.

Too many business owners live every moment of their life pursuing a bigger slice of the pie. Jennie Perillo decided to pursue something else. Now, when it matters most, she has hundreds of pies — and years of sweet memories — to show for it.

Photo credit: matthileo via flickr CC

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In a world of rulers, how do you measure up?

July 21, 2011 By rjones 1 Comment

When I was a kid, my mother used to stand me up every so often against the doorframe in the kitchen, press down with a ruler on top of my unruly blond hair, and notch my growth over the past several months. Next to each hash mark she carefully wrote the date, then got out the yardstick to record my exact height.

Measuring success in businessWithout fail she’d say something encouraging like, “Oh my, look how you’ve grown!” and when I looked at that yellow-painted doorframe, tattooed with hash marks and numbers, I could see that she was right.

My sense of pride was usually short-lived, however. I was a scrawny kid and not an especially fast grower, so my progress in the kitchen was quickly forgotten when I stepped onto the playground. Cary and Bill and Robbie towered over me. Heck, Susan and Marcia and Missy towered over me, too.

Fourth grade can be murder on your self-esteem.

Some people say that nothing really changes after high school, but I find that my own insecurities go back much further. As a business owner, just when you feel like you’re growing at a nice clip, along comes another newfangled ruler to remind you that you’re still the littlest kid on the playground:

  • Klout
  • Blog Grader
  • Google Analytics
  • Facebook fans
  • Twitter followers
  • Feedburner subscriptions
  • Blog comments
  • Likes, retweets, shares, stumbles, diggs …

The list goes on and on, the comparisons are inevitable, and the “badges” keep multiplying.

Suddenly it’s fourth grade all over again. I’m no longer taller than Rich, Melissa just hit her growth spurt, and I never get picked for basketball.

Mommy!!!

The good news is, all of those kids who were once my rivals are now my friends. We weren’t actually competing at all — just groping toward maturity, finding our way, establishing our true selves. It’s hardly a race when everyone is headed in a different direction, and you can’t measure happiness in inches or pounds.

I have to remind myself of that lesson frequently, because there’s always another score, grade or graph offering to measure my progress against some perceived rival. I’m as competitive as anybody, but I’m slowly learning that “winning” is all about how you count. I can’t eat Klout or pay my mortgage with Likes. Analytics are helpful for some things, but no one bothers to chart how often I smile each day — or how often I make my clients smile.

By the way, my parents still live in the same house I grew up in, and my mom has steadfastly refused to repaint that kitchen door. Every time I go home, I can see exactly how far I’ve come, and all those notches remind me of the growing pains along the way. At 5’10″, I didn’t turn out huge, but I’m healthy and happy and I don’t have to shop in the big-and-tall section, so life is good.

When someone finds a way to measure that kind of satisfaction with my business life, I’ll be the first to sign up, because that would be a badge worth displaying.

Photo by flickr user Mike Miley

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The “socially conscious” lifestyle business

June 15, 2011 By rjones 1 Comment

I’ve been doing some consulting work recently for CouponNetwork.com, and the project has taken me deep into the world of mommy blogging. (Those who know me will want to insert their own joke here, so I’ll pause just a moment to let the laughter to die down.)

If you’ve never read some of the top mommy blogs, I think you’re missing an eye-opening experience. Yes, there’s a slight obsession with breast pumps and spit-up, but there’s also a lot of really polished writing, smart monetization and sense of community.

socially conscious businessThese moms are living the definition of lifestyle entrepreneurs. Many of them had glamorous, high-powered careers that they abandoned in order to raise a family. They made a conscious choice to put their families first — and in my book, that qualifies them as socially conscious business owners.

Socially conscious? I know the term is generally reserved for “big causes” like the environment or fair trade, but that definition seems artificially limiting to me. After all, a functioning society is constructed from many different building blocks, including:

  • Family
  • Religion
  • Education
  • The arts

… and the list goes on. If you’re an entrepreneur who has made a conscious decision to commit yourself to one of these causes, then yours is a socially conscious business — and you should never be shy about publicizing that fact.

I realize that advice runs counter to the conventional wisdom. The business press is obsessed with “high performing” or “high potential” companies, and admitting that you have outside interests is viewed in some quarters as a lack of commitment or professionalism.

Fine. If your goal is to ring the opening bell at the NYSE or make the cover of BusinessWeek, then maybe you should keep your outside interests to yourself. But if you want to grow your business, make a comfortable living, build a community, attract like-minded customers — and just maybe make your corner of the world a better place — then don’t be shy about what’s important to you. Make your causes a part of your story and a part of your company.

There’s absolutely no reason to be self-conscious about being socially conscious.

Need some inspiration for working your passions into your own business biography? Check out the “About Us” pages from some of my new favorite mommy blogs. (Don’t be fooled by the cutesy kid pics; these are serious business owners with national advertisers, publishing deals, packed speaking schedules — even their own iPhone apps!)

Oh, if you know of any other great mommy blogs I should follow, please share links in the Comments section. My work continues for CouponNetwork.com … and I can always use parenting tips for my 7-year-old Schnauzer.

(Photo by flickr user summations)

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The problem with business (super)models

June 8, 2011 By rjones Leave a Comment

Chances are, you know someone who’s at least mildly afflicted with body dysmorphic disorder, or BDD. No matter how strict their diet or how intense their workouts, they can never be happy with how they look. Some psychologists believe the rise in BDD can be attributed in part to the impossible ideal of physical beauty that we get from the modeling industry. (Let’s face it, no matter how often I hit the gym, I’m never going to look like Antonio Sabato Jr.)

Don't distort your business imageThe funny thing is, some entrepreneurs suffer from a similar affliction — business dysmorphic disorder, for lack of a better term. Facebook, Groupon and other fairy-tale startups are the supermodels of the business press, and venture capitalists are the tastemakers who decide what a beautiful business plan looks like. Instead of cheekbones and chest measurements, we obsess about pre-money valuations and product/market fit. If you don’t have a billion-dollar exit strategy, it’s easy for a lifestyle entrepreneur to feel ugly and unloved.

When hyper-growth is the model that gets all the “oohs” and “ahs” and catcalls, some entrepreneurs try to project an image that doesn’t really fit. They tell their story in such a way that they look bigger or more ambitious or more aggressive than they really are. After all, isn’t that what customers want?

In most cases, I think the answer is no. Big and fast-growing is what the press wants. It’s what venture capitalists and policymakers want. But customers generally want to deal with someone that they’re comfortable with, someone they can relate to.

When telling your story, don’t be ashamed of humble beginnings or modest ambitions. Don’t pretend that your business is the sum of your life. Resist the urge to create a myth. Instead, acknowledge the help you got from others, or the boost that you got from dumb, blind luck.

How does that look in practice? Take a look at Tim Berry’s account of why he started his business:

When I left a good job at Creative Strategies and started on my own, in truth it was not because of something I wanted to build, not because of a creative vision, but rather because I thought I could make enough money to keep my family whole and do what I wanted.

In other words: “I was running away from boredom, not building castles.”

Humble, charming, open — this is someone that you want to cheer for and someone that you’d consider doing business with. It’s not the kind of story that gets you in front of VCs or onto the cover of Fortune magazine, but it’s precisely the kind of story that attracts new customers.

And that’s a model worth emulating.

Filed Under: Communications, Lifestyle Business Tagged With: , , ,

Why a great idea won’t make you rich

March 15, 2011 By rjones Leave a Comment
name tag

Is this the extent of your business plan?

Maybe I’m just cranky because I’m in New York for a few days, where my thin Miami blood leaves me ill-equipped to deal with freezing temperatures and 20 mph winds off the Hudson River. (It doesn’t help that I left my shearling coat in the back of my closet, so I’m facing those winds in a thin cashmere sweater and a scarf purchased from a street vendor.)

In any case, something I received this morning has me gritting my teeth — when they’re not chattering.

It was an email from somebody who wanted me to help turn his million-dollar dreams into reality. Evidently this person is giddy with anticipation because years ago he registered a URL that ends in “pon,” like the word “coupon.” Now that Groupon is a multi billion-dollar success, he has visions of dollar signs dancing in his head.

I’ll delete the name itself, because I’m not into public humiliation, but here’s a part of the email:

We think the very name of our website is a highly memorable and definitive name for a coupon business. Therefore, we think a coupon business using [name here] may very well have a potentially powerful competitive advantage in a very crowded field of coupon firms battling for market share … We think [name here] has the possibility to be a very successful player in the dynamic coupon industry.

If it weren’t for my annoyingly strong guilt reflex, I’d take this guy’s money and write up some kind of plan for spinning straw into gold. But the fact is, he doesn’t have a business. He doesn’t even have an idea. He has a name, period.

I’m sorry, but a word ending in “pon” does not somehow have “the possibility to be a very successful player in the dynamic coupon industry.” For instance, if you start with “tam” and end with “pon,” what do you get? Not a serious Groupon competitor, that’s for sure.

Look, business naming is one of the services I offer, and I happen to believe that a name is extremely important. But a clever name doesn’t equal a successful business, any more than a clever idea does. Don’t believe me? Check back in a year with all the hopefuls currently peddling their ideas at SXSW. Only 1 in 100 will ever turn a profit.

Names and ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s the execution that counts, period.

I’m not trying to be harsh here, just realistic. In fact, it’s a lesson I learned the hard way. Back in 2006, I registered the name condopinion.com and spent thousands of dollars building a site where condo residents could discuss issues pertaining to their building. The South Florida condo market was hot, hot, hot, and the idea was that potential buyers would pay for access to see what current owners really thought of their building and its management.

It started out great, with users signing up left and right, and Realtors sponsoring discussion forums for specific buildings where they had lots of listings. But then, almost overnight, the market turned cold, cold, cold. Prices plunged, Realtors stopped advertising, and consumers stopped buying. Everyone wanted to complain about their condo boards, but there was no way to monetize the gripe fest, and I eventually pulled the plug.

That’s how it works in business: A great name and a great idea are no guarantee of success. Rather than dreaming of your millions, focus on making the first dollar … then the next, and the next, and the next after that.

Oh, and if you still think a great name will make you rich, I’ll be happy to sell you condopinion.com. I hear the housing market is coming back …

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Is it good business to be anti-social?

February 10, 2011 By rjones Leave a Comment

The always sensible Tim Berry has an excellent post this week about a small-town baker in Oregon who’s perfectly habaked goodsppy — and perfectly successful — with zero presence on the Internet. That’s right:

  • No Facebook
  • No Foursquare
  • No Twitter
  • No email marketing

Here’s Berry’s take on her business:

She makes a good living, it’s in a small town she loves, she knows all of her customers, and she enjoys her days. She loves the actual work. She enjoys the baking and she enjoys the interaction in the shop.

In other words, she’s a classic lifestyle entrepreneur. She earns a good living, enjoys her life and provides a much-loved product to her small-but-loyal customer base. Everyone’s happy, right?

Actually, no. A commenter named Michael takes the baker to task, comparing her to a slacker who never goes beyond the ninth grade in school. “If I am happy to be mediocre, is that ok with those that push the limits constantly trying to improve and or expand?” he writes, suggesting that she has some sort of obligation to go online so “non-regular” patrons can find her.

I doubt the Oregon baker will ever see this post, but here are three observations for other lifestyle entrepreneurs who have experienced similar scorn from the apostles of growth:

  1. The ones wagging a finger at you typically want to get that finger into your pie. I suspect that Michael is some sort of social media “expert” who has an economic stake in urging people to “push the limits” of their business.
  2. By definition, a bigger business is not the same business. If there is any moral obligation in business, it is to provide the best possible product or service to your loyal customers … not to acquire new ones. Even if Michael could help double the bakery’s business, would that be in the best interest of existing customers? Not if it meant that the overworked baker could no longer greet them by name or take a personal role in creating their cakes and cookies.
  3. Your story is your own; tell it the way you want it told. For our baker friend, high quality, personal interaction and old-fashioned service are the elements that make her business what it is. Change any of those plot lines, and the story could have a very different ending — and not necessarily a happy one.
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From lox to jocks, a “Groupon” for every niche

February 9, 2011 By rjones Leave a Comment

Three times in the last three weeks, I’ve written about a new group-buying service that claims to be “like Groupon for ______” (insert niche market here).

  • There’s jdeal, which targets Jewish consumers in New York and signed up 5,000 members in just six weeks.
  • Newer still is the Big Gay Deal of the Day, which offers gym memberships, underwear and other goodies to a gay male clientele.
  • And then there’s Office Arrow, with discounts of up to 90% on supplies and services for small business.

Groupon would probably dismiss such efforts as derivative, but the proliferation of these buying services proves once again the central truth of our consumer culture:

gay cupcakesGroupon is the darling of Silicon Valley because its potential scale appears to be limitless. But that strength is also a weakness: By seeking to appeal to everyone, giants like Groupon miss the chance to tailor their offerings in ways that might appeal to narrow — but intensely loyal — target markets.

Does the world really need a 50% discount on “Boy Butter” personal lubricant? That’s up to the market to decide. The point is, so long as big companies try to be all things to all people, smaller companies will thrive by adapting the grand vision to a smaller niche. Venture capitalists may turn up their nose, but the strategy is a sound one for lifestyle entrepreneurs who aren’t looking for a $100 million exit.

And here’s the kicker: Because marketing is about telling stories, you have a built-in advantage when you piggyback on a well-known success story like Groupon or Amazon or whatever. Don’t believe it? Search Google News for “jdeal,” and notice all their free publicity. If you’re not getting that kind of love from the media, it’s enough to make you say “Oy!”

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