A Great Motivational Tip
Jason Womack shares a tip he received when he asked the audience at a recent workshop for their productivity tips. Jason asked, "How do you stay motivated when the project outcome is a long time off?" The best tip:
Label the project in terms of what I will receive when I'm done. Make it one I "want to" complete.
Illinois Bar Journal Article
I made the cover of theMay 2006 Illinois Bar Journal (sort of, I’m sure that’s a graphical depiction of me on the right). Helen Gunnarsson writes the cover story on Blogging. I’m quoted, along with a bunch of blogging friends. Check it out here.
What's Your Premium Plan?
The folks at 37 Signals share a pricing lesson: Don’t forget the premium plan. Here’s what they have to say:
We launched DropSend (a service for sending large files you can’t email) last November and it’s been ticking along nicely, picking up about 3,500 users per month.
We always planned on offering a premium version for businesses that was brandable and multi-user, but we couldn’t get it done in time for launch, so we decided to launch that feature later.
Well, two weeks ago, we finally finished the new DropSend Business Plan. It’s $80 more than the Pro plan ($19 vs. $99), and we were worried that it might be a bit too expensive. Holy crap, were we wrong.
In two weeks, we’ve increased our total revenue by 30%! Two weeks. As I write this, I’m still finding it hard to believe. The Business Plan is now responsible for the lion’s share of our revenue from DropSend.
What we learned from this is that people will pay for quality. Offer them something really good, and they will go for it. Our premium plan is aimed at businesses who have the need for a high-end solution, and of course, they are the ones who can afford it.
If you are struggling with pricing, think about a “premium” plan that includes extras your “regular” plan does not. Give your clients a choice. You may be surprised at the plan they choose.
Training for Big Law Management
This is tounge in cheek, of course, but if your goal is to run a MegaFirm, then I humbly present to you The Evil Overlord List. There you’ll find 100 tips, tricks, and bits of advice for the Dr. Evil wanna be. Here are a few of the more serious ones:
When I’m an Evil Overlord …
12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
24. I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)
27. I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.
40. I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.
45. I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.
46. If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.
48. I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.
50. My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.
52. I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.
60. My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.
61. If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.
74. When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.
85. I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Push the button."
90. I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.
There are a lot of good lessons here. Of course, there are just as many like these:
63. Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.
72. When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.
89. After I captures the hero's superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.
links for 2006-05-11
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Roll your own.
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A pretty decent list.
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Whew! A list of things that won't destroy the earth.
The Simpsons Live
Not sure how I missed this, but waaaayyy cool. The Simpsons intro, with live actors.
Are Your Best Clients Those Who Pay Fastest?
Wells Fargo’s Small Business Roundup Newsletter features an Albuquerque printer APC, recent winner of a SBA award. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve seen in a while comes from APC’s owner, Pedro “Tony” Fernandez. Mr. Fernandez explains how his business focused on cash flow to stay in business after 9/11:
To regain momentum, Fernandez turned to his customer base. “Rather than concentrating our marketing on high-revenue or high-volume clients, we went after our best payers,” he notes. “We looked at those who paid their bills consistently and quickly. Revenue dropped, but the method helped us strengthen our cash flow, which brought us back to pre-9/11 profit levels by 2004.”
Your biggest clients aren’t always your best. If you are looking to focus certain marketing efforts on your existing clients, think about trying APC’s approach. Focus on your best payers, not your biggest accounts.
Total Client Awareness
Here’s a simple tip from Personal Tech Pipeline (via LifeHacker) that all lawyers should take advantage of:
Let's say you have a friend who lives on the other side of the country. Let's call her "Janet Birkenstock." You can set up a Google Alert using quotation marks around her name that searches both news stories and web sites. Then you can just forget about it. From then on, whenever Janet runs a marathon, gets promoted, is quoted in the local newspaper, or does anything that someone mentions in the news or on the web, you get an e-mail with a link to that page. You can always be the first to congratulate her, or whatever. The point is that you're staying in touch with and remain aware of your friend without any effort at all.
Now imagine setting up similar searches with all your friends, family members, former colleagues and others -- and, of course, yourself (to find out what others might say about you).
You can set up dozens or even hundreds of these Alert searches, and they will work for you forever, finding information on people you care about and letting you know what's new with them.
Now set up searches about your neighborhood or small town. If some developer is planning to bulldoze the local park and build a shopping mall, you'll be the first to know (and can visit the local city council meeting in time to provide input).
Easy, cheap, and your clients will wonder how you know everything about them (and their industry, competitors, etc.) before they do.
Keep Your Cell Phone Number Private
Here’s a great tip (via a LifeHacker reader) to keep your cell phone number from showing up on caller ID:
With your cell, just start the number you are calling with the *67, as if the phone number begins with those three digits. The important thing to remember is that you will need to put the 1 in before the area code, as cells don’t normally need the 1.
For example, enter *6719175551212 before hitting the talk button will lead the receivers caller id to read “restricted.”
As Johnny Carson would say, “I did not know that.”
My Attempts at Better PowerPointing
Over the last several months, I’ve done quite a few presentations. Since I have been reading great blogs like Beyond Bullets, Presentation Zen and Powerpointless, I find that I am focused more than ever on using PowerPoint as a complement to my speech, and not as a replacement for it. In other words, I don’t want people to be able to read on a slide what I’m about to say. I’d rather them look to me for the information instead of the screen.
In my PowerPoint journey, three interesting things have happened. First, the more tuned in I am to the importance of “good” PowerPoint, the more offended I become by “bad” PowerPoint — I’m told former smokers experience a similar reaction to cigarette smoke after they quit. Second, I’m emboldened to try even more radical presentation experiments (my BlawgThink presentation in MindManager is one example). Finally, I’m amused at how others, only familiar with the “traditional” way of powerpointing, are mildly offended when I suggest my way may be better (or at least more fun).
If you attended my BarCamp or Techshow presentations, let me know what you thought. For everyone else to see what I’m talking about, I’ll attach my three most recent presentations to this post later today for your feedback. I look forward to your comments.
UPDATE: Here are the slides from my BarCamp presentation, as well as my two Techshow presentations, 60 Marketing Tips and Beyond ROI. All are in .ppt format.
More Smart Moves for Business
Here’s a list of Ten Smart Moves to Improve your Business that had a few gems:
On writing:
… take a topic that everyone has already written about but add a new twist to it. Children and Accessibility: It Matters was one such piece for me. It was well received and got some attention, which has ultimately led to people contacting me for other work because they saw something different.
On expanding:
Stay as small as you logically can: Small is flexible. Small can change direction in an instant if needed. I’m sure at some point my company will get bigger, but it won’t happen without good reason. Small is where it is at, baby (at least that is what all the other small companies are saying)
On pricing:
Raise prices every year: Just do it. Tell people about it beforehand so that they are expecting it. I’ve heard before that if you have never had push back from your clients telling you “that’s too much” then you aren’t charging enough. I’m not sure how true that is, but I look at it this way: I get better every year, and with more experience I can provide more value. Higher value = higher rates. Just do it.
Tips for Timely Replies
Here’s a good (and simple) tip from Email Overloaded for making sure you reply to all of those e-mails each day:
- Need to reply but don't have time right now? Drag the message into a special folder, entitled "Reply", that holds all the messages that need replying to.
- Schedule a couple of times a day, every day, in which to crank though the Reply folder, during which you shoot off the necessary answers and file the messages elsewhere.
If you don't have time to formulate a reply to a complex or time-consuming issue, use this method to keep the other side's faith until you get the chance to reply.
Quote of the Week.
“You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.” – John-Coltrane
(from this amazing list of Jazz Quotes at Presentation Zen)
links for 2006-05-04
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“People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”
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Absolutely 100% true.
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Too cool.
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Doh! I wish I'd seen this two weeks ago.
Deposition Tips
It has been over 18 months since I’ve taken a deposition, so I’ll pass this one on for what it is worth: Take Great Notes from LifeHacker. Some great tips for general notetaking, and a few that would work well for depositions. For instance:
[U]se a simple system of symbols to make off 4 different information types in the column space left in the margin.
- [ ] A square checkbox denotes a to do item
- ( ) A circle indicates a task to be assigned to someone else
- * An asterisk is an important fact
- ? A question mark goes next to items to research or ask about
After the meeting, a quick vertical scan of the margin area makes it easy to add tasks to your to do list and calendar, send out requests to others, and further research questions. (This method is the brainchild of Michael Hyatt, someone who clearly has mastered the art of attending meetings.)