Have you ever started a diet? Working out, eating right. What do you do almost daily? You weight yourself. You look to see your progress. You advance in your goal, you slip back, you have a bad day, you have a really great week. Along the way you are monitoring to see the results of your efforts. Now imagine starting a diet and never weighing yourself. Ever. How could you know how you are doing? How would you find out if you are matching the expectations you set for yourself?

People make goals all the time and never “weigh in”. They don’t track, they don’t measure, they don’t write down the progress, nothing. How do they know if they are even in the ballpark of accomplishing what they set out to do?

It does not matter what day you start your goal, it only matters that you track it. This could be via a spreadsheet, whiteboard, notebook, anything. Your resolutions are important enough to you to be created, keep them important daily by charting your progress.

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A brand on the other hand, has some depth to it. It puts the technical side in the background and puts the human side up front. Describing your brand and what you do becomes more cozy and inviting. You could describe how what you love to do is help companies achieve their goals and grow their brand. You work to put the best elements of what the company does out in front. You discuss how things will be marketed, best use of design to get the main message across, what kind of feeling should people get when they discover the new website, new ideas to keep the site fresh and inviting, and so on. You are still, in the end, creating a website.  But you are describing it in personal terms. You are also highlighting what makes you different from the competition.

Is your brand just a service? Do you describe it in technical terms or human terms?

Schedule the time.

It’s important to be busy and productive but it’s also very important to become better. It’s an investment. It should be near the top of your weekly to-do list, but often it is on the bottom, or not on it at all. Also many people substitute knowledge gathering for skill development. You could spend an hour a day on the web looking through news items and keeping up with your industry. But in the end you are looking at what everyone else is, in addition to the news not being very relevant going forward. There is little leverage.

Now imagine spending an hour a day learning a new skill, a new piece of software, a new creative task, something that makes you more compelling over your competition. Your career and often your income range directly ties in to your skill set. However your skill set could become dull and stagnant unless you grow it weekly. Outpacing the competition often involves being smarter and more talented than the competition.

Surfing the web you may find some good nuggets, going to a seminar may spark an idea or two, but nothing will give you a higher bang for the buck as good old fashioned learning of a new skill.

Crack open a manual. Take a class. Watch a training video. Listen to an educational audiobook. Grab some coffee. Dig in.

Close the web browser and open your mind.

It’s a time investment that pays off big. But it has to be scheduled and you have to make time for it. Or your skill set may not grow.

Ask yourself how much more talented you are now than last month, or last year.

Do you schedule time each week to learn? Do you sharpen the saw as often as you need to?

If you look at successsful people who run their own successful company, and then review their to-do list, you’ll see that just about every item is laser pointed at growing the company and gaining clients. From networking to advertising to new sales to taking care of exisiting clients, the list is designed to make things happen and make things grow.

You’ll also see some to-do lists that are all over the map. Interesting ideas, note to check something out, hey how about this, new random thoughts, doing some stuff that others are doing. It’s diverse and has a lot of variety, but you could go through and trim out half of the items because they ultimately don’t tie in to the main mission. As a result some people work an incredible amount of hours, more than the norm, just to fit in the important and the not so important.

Try an experiment I suggest to my clients: take a sheet of paper and write “Is this helping me grow my business?” and lay it on your desk. Go through your normal work day, sit down at your computer, take calls, do whatever you normally do.

But keep an eye on that sheet.

And ask yourself, throughout the day of tasks, the question on that sheet. If you are around others and you don’t want a huge sign sitting on your desk, you can use an object to remind you, a toy, a fork, an unusual item that sits right in front of your computer or phone. Start to track. You may find yourself working on a lot of things all day that actually are not helping your business grow.

What counts and does not count? Direct tasks. Answering an email inquiry to a potential client counts. Constantly checking emails to see if something came in or popping in to websites to see if something is new, does not.

Writing the sheet in the first place? Counts.

Try the experiment. Start to measure your performance in this small way. Look at the results. Work to improve them and grow your business.

But the bottom line remains: decisions are tough. But why are they hard? Because most of the time, people don’t have a lot of options. For example, say you are a web designer, you have built up your business through marketing and networking. Several businesses are actually courting you, they want to work with you. You have three potential clients who want you to design a high-end site for them. But you only have time to work on one of the three projects.

This is a great position to be in.

You have options. You may pick the highest paying client. You may choose the company you will learn the most from by doing their project. It does not matter who you choose..it only matters that you have three options.

Let’s look at a different scenario. You have not been marketing too much, clients are few and far between. Finally the phone rings. It’s a potential client. They want to work with you. They don’t have a real budget to speak of and they want stuff done immediately. You do a quote and they can only afford a fraction of what you typically charge.

But you take the job.

What choice do you have? Things are slow and you really don’t have any other options. The problem is this can easily snowball. You take on several new clients that are low paying and they encompass huge amounts of your time. Clients you would never take if you were busy. Problem is, these clients take up so much time they prevent you from marketing and networking for good clients. This cycle can often continue and repeat.

The key is when you have one option, decisions will always be hard. If you have two or three options, decisions not only get easier but the benefit to you and your company dramatically increase. Marketing, ramping up your empire, networking, advertising, spreading the word about what you do…all of that work provides more options.

Decisions won’t always be a piece of cake, but you can definitely move away from constantly being backed into a corner, taking low paying jobs and being dragged down by needy clients.

If you are reading this blog right now, or blogs like this, reviewing many of the articles and implementing the ideas and concepts, you are taking steps in the right direction. Most of these articles tie in to spreading the awareness about your empire. Getting out there and letting the world know what you are doing in unique ways. This expanding scope will typically provide an increase in options, allowing you to make decisions based more on your preference and not by desperation.

Decisions are hard. But they don’t have to be.

Is it easy for you to make decisions? What can you do to make decisions easier?

This is when the networking can stop being efficient. Now that it is comfy and you know pretty much everyone, you know their story, you have gotten contacts, it can become dramatically less productive. Granted it still will be fun, but don’t automatically count it as “networking time”. It is at this point when you may need to move to a new group, one where you don’t know people and it takes a while to connect with everyone.

Your networking should always be rebooted periodically. It is very easy to get into comfy grooves. But when you find you are spending 3 nights a week meeting with your (now) friends “networking”, you may notice your new client opportunities have slowed to a crawl. It may be time to mix it up a bit. Find a new group, look for a different event or opportunity. Expand your range. You’ll be amazed when you hit a new group that you suddenly make a lot of new contacts and acquire a new batch of potential clients.

If your current focus has run its course, it’s time to shift it.

How can you move out of your networking comfort zone? Can you find at least one completely new event to attend this month?

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.

What you will also see is a lot of people out there with more talent than ego. This seems to be the majority. You will see someone who is very talented on so many levels, however their ego takes a back seat. They stand in the back when they should be moving to the front. They are humble when they should be front and center. Where do you draw the line? How much of what you convey should be all about you?

Perhaps more than you do now?

A good way to look at it is “stepping out in front of your brand”, you become the cheerleader for your company and brand. You are not humble, you are excited and enthusiastic, you are eager to step up to a spotlight or up to a microphone. You love to convey that passion, tell the world a little about yourself and what you do.

However most of us are not wired this way.

We tend to be a little more demure. We tend to sit back and be a little more reserved. Why? Because we want to be liked and accepted. And the fact is when you start developing yourself as a spokesperson you feel that there will be many who really don’t care about you and your brand. And you would be right. There will be those who don’t want to hear it. But that does not mean you should avoid it.

Start to really become one with your ego. Embrace it. You are amazingly unique and no one in the world has the skill set that you do, no one is making a difference like you are. Get used to that feeling. Get used to getting out front. Get used to conveying the passion and telling the world about what you do. You owe it to your audience. And no one else will do it for you. Only you can reach a bigger audience.

We are living in a digital age where there has never been more ways to get “you” out there. It’s staggeringly to think about the different avenues you can reach people. But while you may be reaching out for your business, try reaching out and telling about you. People like to connect to others. So step out in front of what you are doing. Become the spokesperson, become the cheerleader, develop the brand that is you.

How comfy are you with your ego now?

The term “rock star” is thrown around a lot in business, and for good reason. Rock stars know that it is talent but more about the performance, the persona.

Can you become the lead singer of your brand?

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

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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?

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?