I was recently talking with a friend who said he'd be scared to try to start his own business because it seemed so insecure. I asked, "How is that any different than what you do working for someone else?" After a moment's pause, he admitted that it really wasn't. When it comes down to it, you work for yourself, regardless of who is the owner of the company that cuts your check. It is your responsibility to market yourself, develop your skills, identify trends and position yourself to profit. Abdicating these responsibilities doesn't somehow put you into an "employee" category where you have more job security. Most successful people see their jobs like this. They are in a business … [Read more...] about You Are Self Employed
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5 Simple Networking Tips
As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, the importance of who you know keeps going up. Here are five tips for cultivating and growing your network. Note: I don't advocate doing any of this to simply take advantage of other people. Networking only works if you are genuinely interested in the people you are trying to connect with. If you try to fake it just to get favors from people, everyone will know. 1. Use Social Networking Tools Sites like Facebook and Linked In make it easy to find people you've known in the past. In particular, the ability to look at the friends of your current friends can save you a lot of time in hunting down acquaintances from school or previous … [Read more...] about 5 Simple Networking Tips
On the Job MBA
A Master of Business Administration degree is designed to give a broad set of skills needed in running a business. A good deal of what you would learn from an paid, formal MBA program can be gleaned from on-the-job experience if you are paying close analytical attention resulting in a free MBA level education. This article is going to explore some of the ways you can leverage your job experience to develop many of the skills you'd get going through an MBA program. In fact, if you apply yourself to this type of education, your free MBA skill set would put you well ahead of some state school MBA's I've had to work with. Business is not rocket science. A lot of what you need to know is … [Read more...] about On the Job MBA
Income Diversification
Most people make money from their job working for someone else, and that is it. This is an extremely precarious situation, because if the job goes away, it takes away 100% of their income. The ideal situation is a number of different income sources that can all be ramped up, if necessary. In this post, we are going to look at several different sources of income. Job This is where most people make their money. They work for an employer that pays them for their time. An advantage of this type of income is that the employee doesn't have to know much about running other parts of the business. They can concentrate on their portion of their job. A janitor at Google doesn't have to … [Read more...] about Income Diversification
Powerful Presentations
I recently gave a presentation at a business. After the presentation, I was waiting for my plane at the airport when I ran into the president of the company and his teenage daughter. We talked briefly about what their company was wanting to do. Then he said, "You have a very engaging presentation style." He then turned to his daughter and said, "You would have really enjoyed hearing Mark talk." Now that is a pretty significant compliment, in my opinion. It is often hard enough to get businesspeople to sit through a presentation. If the president actually thought a high school student would have enjoyed it, I must be doing something right. Here are some of the principles I try to … [Read more...] about Powerful Presentations
Your Employer Owes You Nothing
I see many people working a normal job with the idea that if they work hard they will be rewarded for their good service. That isn't the way it works. Your employer owes you nothing. It doesn't matter how long you've worked at the job or how loyal you've been. In the end, your years of service aren't going to turn into some valuable investment that you can cash in. Just the other day, a friend of mine was let go (along with all the other employees) at a business where he had been working for the past several years. The sad part is that, he had several offers over the past few months for jobs that he really wanted to take, but he decided to stay out of loyalty to his current … [Read more...] about Your Employer Owes You Nothing
Why You Need Personal Capital
I've been exploring several business opportunities recently, so I've been thinking a lot about capital. If we want to do X it will take $1500 of capital. If we want to do Y it will take $4000 of capital. Our options in business greatly depend on the amount of capital we control. Capital represents the ability to do something. Better yet, it creates an option for you to choose a particular path. Without enough capital, that particular path is not available to you. When it comes to our personal performance, capital is an important concept. True, we don't usually call it capital, but if you think in terms of that which gives you options, it functions in the same way. You have to … [Read more...] about Why You Need Personal Capital
Networking in Large Companies
Nokia has an interesting culture for promoting informal mentoring. When someone new comes on staff, their manager sits down with them and makes a list of the people they need to meet. The manager helps give the new employee an idea of what they should discuss with each person on the list and explains why building that particular relationship is important. Nokia then supports this practice by giving the new employee time to visit with each person on the list--even when that means traveling to other company locations. The result is a very strong collaborative culture that gives new people a jump-start on building relationships that might take years to identify and build in a … [Read more...] about Networking in Large Companies
Paperless Infrastructure
Businesses have much to gain by moving to paperless communication with their customers. Just think how much money credit card companies could save if even 5% of their customers switched to paperless communication. The problem is that most companies seem to get the whole idea of "paperless" wrong. Their solution for people who want to be paperless is that they will send you an email notifying you that you have a statement. Then you can log into their website and download the statement as a PDF. This is about equivalent to having a mailman who knocks on your door to tell you there is a letter for you at the post-office. This reflects a type of arrogance (or stupidity) that is typical of … [Read more...] about Paperless Infrastructure
Mind Your Own Business
Begin Unrelated Story: I was talking with an employee who works for Mind Your Own Business--a company that makes small business accounting software. She was relating a time she had been pulled over by a policeman who asked her the standard questions, "where are you going?", "where do you work?". When asked where she worked, she replied "Mind Your Own Business". The cop was kind of surprised and started to explain that it would probably be better to cooperate. She had to pull out her business card to prove that she, indeed, worked at Mind Your Own Business. End Unrelated Story Okay, back on track. When you do work, you are providing value to someone. Actually, you are providing … [Read more...] about Mind Your Own Business
Two Links for Managers
Do your employees have a "day job"? talks about how to keep your employees from seeing their job as something they do just to pay the bills. The Definition of Management looks at a number of management definitions and discusses how those may influence your role as a manager. … [Read more...] about Two Links for Managers
Scientists and Magicians
In an interesting experiment, scientists showed individuals photos of two female faces and asked them to pick which one was more attractive. Then using a slight of hand trick learned from magicians, the scientist replaced the chosen photo with the one that was not chosen. So, the individual was handed the photo that they had decided was less attractive. Only 26% noticed the switch. The other 74% accepted the rejected picture as the one that they had chosen. Now possibly that could be explained by saying that they just weren't paying attention to the photo once it was handed to them, but the scientists went one step further. After handing over the photo, they asked the individual … [Read more...] about Scientists and Magicians
Your Own Business
In a previous post I mentioned that if you are the type of person who focuses on personal productivity, you probably shouldn't be working for someone else. I wanted to explain why. Many people focus on being highly productive, but no one seems to talk about how to actually benefit from being more productive. Sure you can make your boss really like you, but just because you are helping your employer be more efficient doesn't mean you are going to see any personal benefit--other than being well liked. How Businesses Make Money Businesses make money by selling items or services for more than it costs them to produce those items or services. The dry cleaner may charge you $2.00 per … [Read more...] about Your Own Business
How Good do you Look
In the perfect world, our opportunities would be directly tied to our skills. Luck wouldn't play any part in our successes and our looks would most certainly not be a factor. We don't live in a perfect world and no matter what we do, there isn't a single thing we can do about it. In the real world, luck plays a big part in success and good looking people are picked for promotion over their more skilled peers. You can fight the system, but it won't make a difference. What people think of you is at least partially dependent on how you look. In some ways this isn't so unfair. If you are looking to hire someone, would you be more likely to hire the person who hasn't cut his hair in 6 … [Read more...] about How Good do you Look
Streamlining your business
Owners of small businesses are particularly concerned about productivity. For a small company the difference between being highly efficient and moderately efficient can be the difference between profit and going out of business. Most efficient practices are also applicable to personal productivity as well. However, with businesses, small productivity gains can be replicated over many people multiplying the gains well beyond the benefits you'd get just for yourself. A focus on productivity can let you cut your costs so you can make a profit even when your competitors are losing money. Here are eight key points to consider when establishing productive practices for your … [Read more...] about Streamlining your business
Trademark Webinar
Legal Andrew is doing a webinar that covers trademark issues. If you have a company this would probably be well worth your time to check out. If you are a reader of Productivity501 the webinar is free. (Ok so it is actually free for everyone.) … [Read more...] about Trademark Webinar
Michigan’s Big Bet
Recently the state of Michigan made a big bet. The government decided that they could spend money more efficiently than businesses could, so they raised business taxes. I don't understand the logic making it harder for businesses when a good percentage of your work force is looking for jobs. The result is that businesses are moving out of Michigan. This along with a number of companies simply shutting down is putting a strain on the economy. The thought of "if we only had more money we could fix our problems" is prevalent in government, business and personal life. If your focus is on getting more money you will often overlook solutions that actually solve the problem. Worse still, … [Read more...] about Michigan’s Big Bet
Paperless Office – The Components
I've been doing a lot of planning as part of my Paperless Office Experiment. The comments on my first post have been very helpful in guiding me in the right direction. If you have any suggestions or experiences, please share them. The biggest portion of my planning has been in trying to identify the components necessary to make a paperless office workable. Simply adding a scanner won't make you paperless. You have to have a system that works together as a whole not just a few random pieces of technology. Here are the components I've identified as being necessary so far. I'd be interested in any input on things I may have overlooked. Scanner Most people start with a scanner when … [Read more...] about Paperless Office – The Components