The One Secret To Keeping Your New Year’s Goals
At the beginning of each year people make a lot of plans for resolutions. I don’t believe in waiting or starting around a specific date, but the new year does bring a sense of hope and newness to many, so it can be a good time. In a few months some of these new plans never come to fruition, mainly because of one thing: no measuring. A good recipe for success is measuring progress and tracking the status. Goals need to be specific (“I will get 3 more clients this week” instead of “I’m going to try to get more work”) but they also must be trackable to allow progress to be charted.
Is Your Brand Just a Technical Service or is it Emotionally Compelling?
There is a big difference between a brand and a service, a brand is more of a story and a service is more of a task. So when you do networking with potential clients, how do you describe yourself? Do you stick to talking about the task? I have always disliked the term “freelance”, I always prefer that people position themselves as a company, even if it is just them. But freelancers, especially when they are just starting out, often stick to just describing the tasks they do. For example if they do web work, they will mention they can do all the coding, host the site on a server and maintain the site on an ongoing basis. They sometimes just stick to the technical side, just the facts. The problem is they have no leverage. Another person could describe the same exact thing. Just rattle off the list of tasks. There is no compelling reason to go with you as opposed to the other person. Even if you both do good work, it is tougher for the client to choose, and then it becomes more of a coin toss.
Sharpening the Saw – Close the Web Browser and Open Your Mind
We’re all busy, we all have lots of tasks, projects, things going on. We are focused on growing our career. This could mean networking, gaining new clients, making things happen. But what about you personally? What about your skill set? Your talents? Self-improvement and self-growth? Author Stephen Covey covered this in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, in fact it’s the 7th Habit, sharpening the saw. You are the saw and you are always engaged in keeping things improving, growing and sharper. This could cover many areas including your mind, spirit and physical body. Pertaining to your career, it is often essential to learn new skills, become better at things. But who has the time?
Schedule the time.
Are You Ready To Perform The “Is This Helping Me Grow My Business” Experiment?
Are you ready to try an experiment? It can be fun and it can show how effectively you may be running your own business. The truth is too often we pour enormous amounts of energy into items with little to no payoff. Take a look at your to-do list and then examine your next week, next month and someday to-do list. Chances are you may have hundreds of items. You’ll sort and analyze them at some point, but how you do that can be the difference between stagnation and success.
How Desperate Decisions Can Destroy Your Business
One of the most powerful skills you can master is decision making, especially when it comes to your career. Many books have been written supporting the fact that impulse decisions, that is going over the facts and then deciding rapidly and affirmatively, is a good way to proceed. The argument is that even if you spend hours going over the pros and cons, ultimately the best path is the one you initially lean towards. We all know people who can decide quick and move on, who don’t second guess themselves. One of the things we hear more often is that to get better at decisions, just make more of them.
When is it Time to Stop Networking?
When is it time to stop networking? When it no longer is working for you. Networking, meaning in person, runs a spectrum from uneasy to comfy. You may attend a regular networking event for the first time and you may be a little apprehensive. Lots of people you don’t know, the location is unfamiliar, you have to make fairly cold introductions. But you get to know people and it becomes easier. In fact perhaps you attend the meet or function on a regular basis. You have now gone to it for months and you know everyone. You have made a lot of great connections, gotten new clients, but now it’s more like meeting with your friends.
Embrace Your Ego and Become a Rockstar for Your Business
It’s funny, I almost think everything I learned about egos I learned from doing fashion photography. I mean the whole industry is rich with egos, both in front of the camera and behind the camera. But that’s half the fun. It’s talent mixed in with a lot of posturing. Sometimes it’s about attitude, sometimes it’s about confidence. Often both. But how does that apply to your business? Well a lot of it can directly apply, especially there days where “you are your business”.
Everyone has an ego. Some are humble about it and some want to shout everything from the rooftops. Some have alter-egos. Superheros for example. That is when you have a plain, more generic, ego or identity and then you have one that is really out there, powerful for the world to see. If you start to examine people who have really achieved a lot in their career, you start to see a lot of egos on display. These could be business people, sports figures, entertainers, notable web people and so on. In fact you may see some who have more ego than talent, they are driven to the spotlight so relentlessly that the spotlight becomes the mission.
Media Artist Secrets TV #6 – Connect and Rattle Cages
Connect and Rattle Cages – This episode we discuss making connections by rattling cages, checking in with previous contacts for new projects and clients – hosted by Franklin McMahon
This video is partially based on this blog post - How to Grow Your Business by Becoming a Cage Rattler
Watch the show in HD on YouTube or on Facebook
NEW! – Subscribe to “Media Artist Secrets TV” in iTunes
This show is all about the business of being creative, advancing your creative career and ramping up your empire. Each episode will feature creative career development advice and inspiration, cool guests, new thoughts and ideas. Join the conversation by leaving a comment, let me know what you think.
Thanks for checking it out.
http://www.FranklinMcMahon.com
http://www.fmstudio.com
http://www.Facebook.com/FranklinMcMahon
http://www.Twitter.com/FranklinMcMahon
How to Grow Your Business by Becoming a Cage Rattler
Cage Rattle Tuesday! Actually it doesn’t have to be a Tuesday, but a great business technique is to plan one day a week to check in with some of your contacts, rattle their cages. Why? Because most of the opportunities that happen will come from keeping yourself on the minds of others. If you are like most entrepreneurs and creative producers, you network in person, make connections on the web, add peeps to your address book and have stacks of business cards. If you initially follow up with people, you may leave it as a “let’s keep in touch, I am sure there are some things we can collaborate on”. Perhaps then the weeks go by, maybe months, and there is no contact. The other person has dropped off your radar and you have dropped off theirs. But try to reboot the connection.
You could come up with a list, nothing fancy, just a list of people you want to revisit. I have a few categories in my management software named “brewing” and “connect”. Brewing is for projects and people that are more simmering, we may not have an immediate plan to collaborate, but down the line there may be some stuff. I also have a connect category, which are people I have met online or in person. Initially there may be no immediate reason to be in contact, but I do like to check in with them periodically to see what they are up to.
If you mark on your calendar to once a week go through your contacts and just rattle a few cages, you may be quite amazed at the response. You could hear “oh I was thinking about contacting you recently” or “I wanted to get your advice on something”, often they will be glad you are back on their radar. You may hear of a new project they have coming up that you both could collaborate on. If nothing else you’ll get a scope of their current projects.
Everyone is usually working on so many different things that if you don’t talk to someone for a whole month, you miss a ton of developments. Developments that could, or should, include you.
Are you a cage rattler?
Business Cards – It’s Better To Receive Than To Give
A lot of you reading this network, you go to functions, perhaps you give speeches, you make connections on a weekly basis. Business cards still continue to be a pivotal part of what you do. You may think giving out your card is the most important aspect, but I feel that getting business cards is sometimes more essential. When you give your business card to someone you’ve just talked to, what are the chances that they will contact you?
It’s up in the air.
Some will immediately send a note within 24 hours. Some will add it to a pile of cards on their desk that they may never get around to. Your continued conversation with this person is left to chance.
Let’s look at it the other way. You ask for a business card from them. Now your continued connection jumps in theory to 100%. You have control over the next step because you now have their contact info. You don’t have to wonder if the connection will continue. Of course this all depends on you, dropping a friendly note to them, conveying that it was good to meet, adding your signature in the email so they can check out your site and ensure they have all of your contact info.
Of course passing out business cards is important. Everywhere you go you should have a small stack ready. But start to think about collecting and processing cards. Perhaps make it a goal to get a business card or contact info from everyone.You can write down their info or at least their email if they don’t have a card. Then followup that night or the next business day with a friendly note.
How do you currently handle the business card scenario? Do you give them? Do you get them?
Do you collect them from everyone and focus on processing them in a timely manner?
Redefining The Success Of Your Creative Career
Look we all want to be successful. We all want to feel like we have achieved what we set out to do. The problem arises when we benchmark our success against others. Instead of creating our own goals and celebrating the success of achieving them, we look at other’s careers and measure ourselves against them. Of course our career path never aligns with anyone else, so that’s when disappointment starts to move in. After that comes resentment, instead of celebrating your own career path you may look to someone else who is seemingly doing better and then get very grumpy. This can then cause you to give up.
For example, let’s say you are a singer. You work to craft your songs, play live around the city, promote, etc. You have all the elements in place. But then you notice your nemesis, another local singer, who seems to be playing bigger clubs, who gets a bit more press coverage, who is aligning with some talented producers. If you examine your career through your own eyes, you can get a lot of joy out of the progress you have made. However if you look at your career through this other person, it does not measure up.
Unfortunately it can then multiply. You look at 5 other artists, or 10 or more. Seriously, it can start to become a major bummer!
Redefining success means to shift the focus of calculating and measuring career steps on yourself if it is directed towards others. You have no control over other’s career paths and it makes little sense to constantly measure yourself against them. Healthy competition is fun sometimes, but obsessive angst and focus on where others are going can completely deflate any and all progress you make on a weekly basis.
How do you measure success? Is it based on your goals? Or is it based more on what others are doing?
Are you driven by your own actions or through competition?
Media Artist Secrets TV #5 – No More Starting Monday
No More Starting Monday – This episode we discuss goal creation and then immediate action, don’t delay the start until Monday, build the momentum when the idea first starts to take shape – hosted by Franklin McMahon
This video is partially based on this blog post – No More Starting Monday – Don’t Delay Success
Watch the show in HD on YouTube or on Facebook
NEW! – Subscribe to “Media Artist Secrets TV” in iTunes
This show is all about the business of being creative, advancing your creative career and ramping up your empire. Each episode will feature creative career development advice and inspiration, cool guests, new thoughts and ideas. Join the conversation by leaving a comment, let me know what you think.
Thanks for checking it out.
http://www.FranklinMcMahon.com
http://www.fmstudio.com
http://www.Facebook.com/FranklinMcMahon
http://www.Twitter.com/FranklinMcMahon
Your Career: If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It
If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It.
This is one of my favorite quotes (from Tony Robbins) and one that can apply to just about anything, from career goals, to daily tasks, to projects, to new missions, to everything you want to make progress on. Athletes often write down reps at the gym, they take out a pad and note the amount of repetitive exercises they perform. For some it’s the only way to track the progress, because as you get better you can perform more reps.
Measuring can be seen as tracking the progress of your goals. It’s one thing to create projects and daily to-do’s, but often it’s not until you start measuring that you can really see the progress you are making. The element often left out of the career of many creative artists is to step back and chart the progress, look at the bigger picture to see what directions you go and how far you’ve come.
For example, let’s say you wanted to gain some new clients. You network, make some connections, send out some inquiries, pass out cards, the usual. You may get some or you may not. But what if you wrote down that you wanted to connect with 5 new potential clients this week? And as you connected, you marked it down. Or perhaps to give out 5 business cards a week. Suddenly it not only becomes a goal, but there is some added pressure to achieve it. In addition, you can now track the progress, 5 this week, 5 next. Soon you will be seeing 10 targets accomplished, then 20, then 50. You won’t be looking back over a month and fishing around pondering how you did, you’ll have it all written down.
Give the measuring / tracking process a try. Again this is much different than writing down goals, doing tasks and checking them off. Most of us do that now. Try measuring and charting your actions, steering them towards specific outcomes. Create some targets. You may find that weekly hectic work cycles suddenly become more clear when you can see your progress and more importantly feel like you are making progress.
Can you measure it? Can you manage it?
Media Artist Secrets TV #4 – Daily Creative Career Inspiration
On this episode of Media Artist Secrets TV we discuss Daily Creative Career Inspiration. Getting a daily mental workout is key to building up your career. Here are some tips on how to make time to incorporate development into your work week, as well as some author suggestions including Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, Timothy Ferriss and David Allen.
This video is partially based on this blog post – 4 Expert Tips From 4 Career Development Gurus
Watch the show in HD on YouTube or on Facebook
NEW! – Subscribe to “Media Artist Secrets TV” in iTunes
This show is all about the business of being creative, advancing your creative career and ramping up your empire. Each episode will feature creative career development advice and inspiration, cool guests, new thoughts and ideas. Join the conversation by leaving a comment, let me know what you think.
Thanks for checking it out.
http://www.FranklinMcMahon.com
http://www.fmstudio.com
http://www.Facebook.com/FranklinMcMahon
http://www.Twitter.com/FranklinMcMahon
