Effectively Organized: Insanely Organized

Gasp! I'm not reviewing a creative book! I've been starting to create some Personal Challenges to myself to conquer areas of running a small hobby business more seamlessly. I've been wanting to go about making the challenges so that they are a combination of doing the business side of things in a more fun, engaging, and creative way. For the activities that usually
make me want to run screaming for the hillsare a challenge for me, I plan to create a challenge to make the activity that I have a hard time with. Bookkeeping is my personal nightmare. It's more about the dull routine than not understanding. Once I dig in and start doing, I'm fine. But...routine is so...well, boring! (This is when all the years of practice at procrastination come in handy.) But, I have some creative projects in mind that I'll share that I think will make it more fun for me to do. Or at least less annoying.

I was going to dive into the Bookkeeping Challenge, but I needed to step back and lay a foundation by getting organized... or as the book I'm reviewing states, "Getting Things Done." Let me just qualify my review by saying that I love organizing things. I could do that for days. I love creating systems, trying out every planner and calendar, playing with Outlook tasks, creating my own databases, using a Palm Pilot, making lists, using Post-It notes. It's the follow-up and maintenance of the lists that lose my interest.

The other thing worth mentioning is that I have a day job as a girl geek project manager. I've been running projects for years without the formal training. (Mr. Allen's definition of a project is something that has more than one action associated with it...a tidbit I totally agree with.) Then gained more formal training which really gave me a set of tools for many situations. The latest method I studied really boiled things back down to simplicity...all the rigorous documentation isn't going to help you if you don't follow through. For some of my projects, the simplest approach of post-it notes and a notebook work best! (More on that in another post.)

I had heard about "Getting Things Done" for a while. It didn't seem like I really needed the book. I've always been very on top of accomplishing my task list. My last year in the US I was on a mega-project, remodeled a house, and planned a move across the world. I did have to amp up my game during that year. Interestingly, the practical suggestions given in this book are exactly how I modified my activities to accomplish the maximum possible. Rigorous task management, ruthless email editing, a folder for everything, all helped me manage through the hurricane that was my life for a year.

My caveat to the book is that his philosophical approach differed from mine. However, his point of view and experiences have also been different. As a time management coach, he has been assisting people who have become overwhelmed with everything they need to accomplish. His practical bottom-up approach makes sense in that context. He criticizes the top-down (life priorities, values, then task priorities) as more amorphous and less tangible. I disagreed with his thoughts as I've lived my life very well with this principled, top-down approach (concepts captured in books like 7 Habits for Highly Successful People by Stephen Covey). I did have to step up my game when I got swamped, but my top-down approach helped me manage my priorities and learn to say no (finally!) when my plate was overflowing.

Aside from the philosophical difference, I found some value in the practical application of his suggestions and tweaked my task management practices. I am finding it is working very well for me. Right now, I'm using a a freemium service called Remember the Milk for managing my tasks and have categorized generally according to Mr. Allen's suggestions, but with some additional folders that meet my particular needs.

So, are you organizationally challenged with Getting Things Done? Take the challenge: read the book and see what you think of implementing his suggestions. I do have some projects/ideas for making the implementation of Getting Things Done more fun.

Effectively Organized: Top 10 Principles for Success

I am a big fan of my Artfire marketplace store. The CEO and COO produce a weekly podcast. I have become addicted to it. Here is the official blurb about the podcast, "CEO, John Jacobs and COO, Tony Ford give handmade sellers an inside look at best practices and tips for promoting your business and your handmade brand. Marketing techniques, business tips, upcoming and new features."

Personally, I geek out over the technology things they cover that relate to growing my business. (Example: they covered Google Wave. I'm drooling over the potential.) They cover marketing ideas, SEO, and social media suggestions that help me grow as a small business owner. They aren't just owners of a marketplace for artisans. They also share their own personal experiences with running online businesses and use these examples in relating to the artisan audience.

Their 12/24 podcast summed up the "best of" their podcasts for the year and distilled it into a useful list of Top 10 Principles for Success. In fact, I found it useful enough that I wrote it down in my journal. They had a good dose of "reality" sprinkled into this list...yes, we're going to deal with difficult customers, yes, the business activities will sometimes make it hard to carve out the creative time, yes, we need to make products the buyers want. With John and Tony's permision, I am summarizing the Top 10 and giving a few links to the page with the 12/24 podcast.

1. Decide if you are running a business or a hobby.
2. Make products the buyers want.
3. Try hard to compete on value, not price.
4. Take magazine style pictures.
5. The business activities of a successful business will take more time than you expected.
6. Make your own marketing mix. Test and measure every channel you use and invest in the ones that work and keep testing.
7. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - make friends with Google by understanding your buyers, running your own tests, and getting links.
8. Utilize social media by having frequent and unique content, engaging in the community, and by being entertaining and teaching and not being only sales-focused.
9. Hang up your customer hat and put on your merchant hat.
10. What happens if your business becomes successful? You will have more work, stress & complexity than you thought possible.

I'm three years into my creative journey and just over two years into running a creative business. I left the bullet points deliberately generic because the podcast itself is worth the time to get more in-depth thoughts from John and Tony. The link again.

Thought it was worth sharing!

Effectively Focused: Building the Fenceposts of the Creative Corral - Part II

More advice: the additional bit of advice I have at this point, is to start putting some fence posts around your Creative Corral. I have friends whose creativity is a steady stream and it's easy to focus. However, some might be like me: the creativity was unleashed in a blinding storm and may want to go off on a variety of tangents. When you think about what you dream in, it may be a huge list. I picked up the book, The Martha Rules - 10 Essential for Achieving Success as You Start, Build, or Manage a Business. I'm a glass-half full person and I focused on the bits of wisdom that I thought would help me. In particular, "When you are starting out, it is wise to keep your ideas focused on manageable. You do not want to become overextended. It is far better to start out slowly on a firm foundation with one great idea and build from there." (Page 34)

With that in mind, as you are establishing yourself, narrow the list down. You can add your other dreams later once you have a solid base and foundation. For me, that meant holding off on soldering and metalsmithing until I have a solid foundation in glass, wirework, stringing, and chain maille. And I'm NOT going to explore knitting, colored pencils, photography, or sewing for business purposes.

What I can't stop thinking about: how to interpret that cute little pair of shoes into a set of glass. Oooh! That skirt makes we want to try this technique in glass and then make that into this piece of jewelry. And since I'm asked advice from very new artists, how can I interpret my experiences into something useful for them?

This little paragraph is a slightly different version of my mission statement. These are the things I dream in.

What medium fires your dream, drives your imaginations, and ignites your creative fires? This is your mission statement.

Effectively Focused: Building the Fencepost of the Creative Corral - Part I

I had been starting down the road of helping to translate some of the business experiences I have had into useful articles for the artistic person launching their own business. This particular article was going to be on breaking down some of your lofty ideas into activities that will help you achieve your goals.

However.

I started reading Modish Biz Tips and found she was already creating some fantastic business advice. One of the exercises that I'm looking forward to doing is writing my business plan for my business, Kanna Glass Studios. So, I've decided to continue my "A Business Bite" section but focus on my experiences as a project manager and translate stuffy business terms into "artish" (a term coined by the lovely Ms. Plume.)


Dreams and Imagination
What do you dream in? [Stuffy business term: mission/vision statement.] Do you look at something and think of how you can express that in: glass, silver, yarn, fabric, paint, words, poetry, a play, a photograph, a story, music? What is it you do that you would do freely simply because you love it so much? What do you do that money isn't an object...you simply must do? This is your passion.

Additional food for thought: when I started my newsletter, I was looking for help to create a newsletter that was useful and inspirational. On the newsletter service I use, Constant Contact, I found a link to Blue Penguin Development which is a very specific service of helping you write a good e-newsletter. I perused his archived newsletters and found this little gem on writing a vision statement. (Note on semantics: mission statement or vision statement...that's the stuffy business term...we're going to go with what do you dream in.)

Part II Next Monday!

Effectively Organized: Translating Your Personality and Values into an Online Presence - Part III

I have also made the following promise to myself. I think this point is a hard one for women to keep, but, in business, "Don't be afraid to say no" when:

• You don't have time
• You examine your priorities and find the opportunity doesn't match
• You need to manage expectations and cannot provide as quick a turn-around as is being expected
• Or, if you examine an opportunity in light of your personal values and you find they conflict with your value or belief system.

Think about what will be acceptable vs. what won't be acceptable to you. Use principles (which are flexible based on the situation) vs. rules (which are made to be broken anyway). For example: If you receive a custom order for an object you don't feel comfortable creating, it's helpful to understand that

• It's not necessary to convert everyone to your way of thinking
• It's not necessary to be defensive--often a simple explanation will suffice
• It is good social and business sense to show respect and kindness for the other person's point of view

There may be a potential future article on the art of saying no, but women (especially mothers) are often extremely accommodating. However, successful business is sometimes an art of saying no to the wrong opportunity or saying no to the right opportunity that presents itself at the wrong time. It is also about creating boundaries around what you will or will not convey in your online presence.

The main point I would like to convey, is to give at least some consideration to the forms and ways you participate online and how they reflect you and your values. Let your online presence be a genuine reflection of the pieces of you which you choose to convey in the online format. So, who are you in real life? How does that translate into your online presence?

Effectively Organized: Translating Your Personality and Values into an Online Presence - Part II

Something that helps me to make decisions regarding my online interaction is by trying to correlate my online presence as to what it would be like if I had a little boutique store in an adorable town like McKinney, Texas.

• My blog is the conversation I have with customers
• Flickr is the eye-candy and window-dressing
• Artfire is the functional shop
• My website is the historical store of conversations and information

There are constantly new activities and things to do on the web (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace). When evaluating a new "thing to do", I use two basic questions to guide me:

• What is the IRL equivalent of this online activity?
• How would I behave IRL (in real life)?

Personality-wise, I'm introverted, so I evaluate a scenario or situation from all angles before making a decision. In a nutshell, I don't jump on every online bandwagon that is happening. For example: I'm still trying to figure out whether Twitter has value for me. My initial thoughts were, "what's the point?" However, I said that about phone texts a few years ago. Why would you ever text when you can just call them? Now I rarely call and almost exclusively text. Regarding Twitter, I don't have a lot of time for extras or time to figure out whether it works for me. I'll let the kinks get worked out of the format and let the dust settle before I decided whether or not to participate. Right now, Twitter doesn't fit into my online presence. However, it may have a place in the future.

The other part of doing business that can have a potentially discouraging or downer effect on your business and online presence: negative feedback or complaints. My goal is to be a good business citizen and do whatever is within my power to create a positive satisfied customer through honesty, integrity, quality, and genuine concern for my customer's happiness. However, at a certain point, you do have to realize you can't be everything to everyone. It helps to plan to be accommodating yet firm. Small businesses who exemplify this are the small businesses I mentioned in the opening. I've watched their blogs, their public interactions and they consistently convey a kind, respectful, yet firm, attitude toward the public.

Another consideration: I have made a conscious decision to NOT participate in areas that can breed negativity. Etsy forums are touted as a good way to bring in new customers. Unfortunately, I find the minimal moderation a breeding ground for negative situations and train wrecks. Just as I don't put myself in a situation where a barfight might break out, I don't participate in unmoderated or poorly moderated forums.

Effectively Organized: Translating Your Personality and Values into an Online Presence - Part I

As I have begun exploring my online presence, I realized it was important for me to take a step back and consider how to translate my in real life (IRL) personality and actions into an online presence. First, creating a genuine reflection of yourself is an important activity in creating a connection to potential customers through an impersonal format. Also, there are various aspects of conducting a business that require forethought, planning, and wisdom and really are a reflection of you: your personality and your values. Giving this some thought as you establish your online presence will help you create a genuine connection with customers you may never meet in person. It will also prepare you for various scenarios that you will undoubtedly encounter in the course of doing business.

I have observed some valuable characteristics of successful artists and small businesses (Noisy Plume, Kelly Rae Roberts, Urban Maille) such as an unflagging positive attitude, kindness, and respect. On the other hand, I have read blogs or other forum conversations and observed some behaviors I decided I want to avoid. This is not a definitive article of "should and should not"...it's more of food for thought for how you can translate your IRL presence into your online presence and some examples of how I arrived at some of my decisions.

One of the major aspects of the web I have given considerable thought to was the impersonal and anonymous nature of the web. For this reason, there are reasonable precautions that one should consider when establishing an online presence. There is a seedy side of the internet that you can and should take precautions to protect against: copyright infringement, design copiers, hackers, scammers, stalkers, and trolls. For example, don't put yourself in harms way of an unmoderated forum, document your ideas and words to protect your copyright and original designs, change your passwords frequently, use robust passwords, spend the money on anti-virus programs, invest in a secure website, use a post office box for your business address, and ignore the internet trolls.

Beyond the seedy side, there are additional considerations that should be considered regarding the impersonal nature and potential anonymity of the internet. One of the main things to keep in mind is that the internet removes a significant layer of communication--the non-verbal aspects of body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. In the years since I've been online, I have made mistakes in communication assuming that my humor (which can sometimes be sarcastic) or genuine concern would be conveyed in an email. It's not. The context that comes from a personal conversation (body language, facial expression) or voice conversation (tone of voice) is completely removed. All communication is completely dependent on message and message only. Because of past mistakes, I now read and edit over and over until I feel my message is clearly dependent on the words alone.

Also, the internet has a long "memory." Even though the internet is dynamic and fast-moving, whatever you post online is a form of documentation. If you don't want something to come back and bite you, it's worth taking the time to make sure the message you convey reflects the image you want to present.

This is the first is a series of articles that I publish as part of my newsletter. If you want to read the rest sooner, sign up for my newsletter. The next two installments will be published the next two Mondays.