by Gwen Bortner | Office Productivity, Show Your Work
Yesterday on my knitting blog I posted about having more ideas than time to get them done. It happens to creative types (including entrepreneurs) quite often. This week I have been trying to pull it all together.
The sabbatical I took for re-focusing my efforts on this business endeavor officially ended on Sunday, so Monday I was back at my regular desk with all of the regular distractions. The time away allowed me to break some unproductive habits, opened space for some creative thinking and allowed me to focus on a bigger plan. So all-in-all I would call the sabbatical a success even though it got off to a rough start. The result is I have lots of ideas I want to implement, but a limited capacity due to the normal constraints of time, money or both. Even so, this week I was able to make serious strides in pulling it all together before the end of the year by utilizing a variety of tactics. Confirmed success remains to be seen, but I remain confident.
by Gwen Bortner | Office Productivity, Show Your Work
One of the biggest challenges in managing your business on an ongoing basis is deciding when it is time to make a change, particularly when it comes to selecting the software and apps we use every day.
It is so easy to get comfortable with something we use every day that we will often overlook the challenges or work-arounds that we have in place to truly make it functional. Also, researching alternative products takes time that may not produce any useful results. Or, when you find a new option, then you need to take the time to make the migration, learn the new tool and implement new processes based on new capabilities. Much of the past week I have been doing all of the above. As such, I have been thinking about the criteria that I use when evaluating new software options. Ultimately the final criteria used for each evaluation will be slightly different, but even so, there are 5 questions you should ask before making a change in software.
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by Gwen Bortner | Show Your Work
The steps to starting a sabbatical that is much needed are simple. 1) Pick a date to start. 2) Sketch out a plan of how to use the time. 3) Start the sabbatical and immediately get extremely sick, throwing everything off!
Of course, this might not be how it works for everybody, but it is consistently how it works for me. Within a few days of of taking much needed time away, I become very sick. I am sure it is just my body’s way of saying “I told you so,” and you would think that after multiple instances of this happening over the years I would learn to expect it. But alas, I am apparently a very slow learner.
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by Gwen Bortner | Show Your Work
If you are anywhere near my age, you remember the old Wendy’s commercials with the little old lady asking, “Where’s the beef?” It is an iconic commercial of the 1980’s.
For the last few weeks, the question I have been asking as I work through starting a new business is, “Where’s the market?” I know they exist. I see glimpses of them all around the Internet. I read snippets of their stories on Facebook, Twitter or various blogs. But interacting with them in a meaningful way just isn’t as easy as the various marketing gurus make it sound.
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