supernikole!

I was listening to an awesome audio recording from Amber McLean, The Launch Chick tonight, as part of her Launch Fest program, which discussed business models based on teaching others your craft. Essentially, the model is set up so that people enter your programs learning how to do what you do at the basic level. You give them more and more advanced options for learning. At the top level, some of them will want to just hire you to do this thing for them — and they will be willing to pay a premium price, because they appreciate your skill in your profession now that they have tried to teach themselves what you know. Not only have you created a market of lower-tier users who pay your monthly fees to learn from you, but you have also created a market of higher-tier customers willing to pay you premium prices for your services.

I wrote it down in my journal to remind myself of this dynamic while I plan my product.

Cheers to you Amber!

If you are someone who knows me and you are reading this post right now, looking at my blog design for the month of February, you are probably cracking yourself up. To the rest of you — I am so not a pink sort of girl. I am the sort of girl who wears jeans and t-shirts, who gets dirty, who equates strength of body with strength of character. I can quote you lines from Transformers and Star Wars, change the oil in your car, and teach you how to build your own Window desktop PC. My nails don’t reach the end of my fingertips. I don’t own a blowdryer. I have not worn makeup in years … and even when I did, I was pretty bad at it.

But this is 2011, and I can be different.

I’m not saying that I’m going to start wearing pink, shopping in the same department as my tutu-wearing 5-year-old daughter, or something crazy like that. I’m just saying that if I want to be something different, if I want to be the person I want to be, I can do something outside my box. I can grow a little. I can stretch against my confines.

If dabbling in pink-themed design makes me see the world in a different way, changes my frame of mind, or helps spark a new idea in my head, then it will be MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Until then, let’s bring on the month of love and enjoy it … and stop laughing at my pink site for a moment.

This is part of a series I am writing as I go through the entire e-book 31 Days to Build a Better Blog by problogger Darren Rowse. Today’s mission was creating an elevator pitch.

When I write for Small Business Essentials, I keep my clients in mind. My average clients are small business owners/solopreneurs/entrepreneurs/bootstrappers. They are short on time and cash. They have computer knowledge but are not high-tech nor programmers. They are smart and savvy, but not business school types. They generally have a talent, skill or knowledge that they want to share with the world, but they aren’t experts at business. They learn on the go, taking bits and pieces of what they learn that they can apply now. They generally don’t spend a lot of time reading blogs or doing social networking, but they appreciate quick tips and points of interest that applies to them. They tend to be the kind of people inclined to do things for themselves, and they appreciate complex concepts that are broken down into terms they can understand.

So with that in mind, this is the pitch I developed: Small Business Essentials offers practical advice in simple terms that entrepreneurs can use now. What do you think — is it specific enough?

Sorry, having some Tweet button issues here. The Facebook button works but not the tweet button. I’m working on it!

I used to be a prolific writer. I had several sites I was involved in writing for, along with guest posts, blogging carnivals, and other activities. I averaged 1-4 posts a week for nearly 2 years. I’m not sure when it all stopped, but it did all stop, and quite abruptly. Maybe it was the birth of my son, maybe I just got really busy with work that month, maybe I just wasn’t leveraging it into a paying gig, or maybe I went to redesign my site and it took longer than I had anticipated. In any case, the end result was that I got out of the practice of blogging and was never quite able to restart myself on that path again.

Enter Adventures in Manifesting. This week, part of my assignment is to teach myself discipline by meditating every morning for 30 days straight. (This is not the exact assignment, just my take on this particular part of it.) The problem with this assignment is trying to do something for a month without seeing the personal benefit of it. I mean, if you told me to have a glass of wine every night for 30 nights, I’d be all on it. Eat a salad every day for a month? Sure thing. But meditate? I don’t really like meditating nor get anything out of it, so it’s sometimes difficult for me to make it through a single session even if I try really hard. I just don’t think meditation is the best task for me, as I would have to overcome both my disinterest/dislike in the activity and my lack of discipline in forming a new habit.

I’m a goal-oriented person. I joined this program to help me establish and reach my goals, so it makes more sense to me to pick something to do for a month that involves my goals for 2011. I’ve decided to go through the entire program 31 Days to Build a Better Blog by problogger Darren Rowse, and do every single task in the program. This will be my discipline goal from now until February 28th. I’m allowing a few days extra beyond the 31 for mishaps, as I do have a family and other responsibilities — I want to be both ambitious and realistic on this project! I will update on this site with my progress, in case you’re curious to know how it turns out.

By the end of this period, my minimum goal is to double my current level of subscribers and traffic on the Small Business Essentials site. I have already redesigned it and added subscription capabilities, which puts me ahead of the game for my goals. Additionally, I will have established a routine for writing and re-taught myself writing discipline. As an added bonus, I am reading an entire e-book — and although it is only 94 pages, the extra work involved in completing all the tasks qualifies me to check off one of the 3 books (minimum) that I need to read this year.

So who is with me?

(in no particular order)

• I’m tall (for a girl).
  I used to have mixed feelings about my size, but now that I’m an adult and it doesn’t much matter, being 5’8″ is pretty cool. I used to look at myself and think "awkward," but now I think "capable."
• I’ve worked for myself for most of my post-college career.
  My current role is the superhero behind That PHP Girl, which I’ve been doing since the beginning of 2005.
• I can be picky about language.
  I reread, edit and update my posts an average of 10 times before I finally publish, and that is on my personal blog. I don’t think I could have physically made myself call this post 10 Things About Me because I would have cringed at starting the title with a number instead of writing it out. Here’s a tip: If you want me to buy your product, never send me a PDF in the welcome e-mail with typos in it.
• I have brown hair.
  I have had more than one person tell me they thought I was blonde before they met me. I’ve been a brunette my whole life, and I haven’t dyed my hair in the last decade. I’ve also been known to do weird things with it, like snip off pieces that bothered me and chop off 10 inches of hair on my lunch hour because it was a hot day.
• My degree is in animal science.
  Everyone assumes I went to school for engineering or business, but no — I have a BS in Animal Science from the New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. (I did, however, start out as a biology major in Arts & Sciences, but switched about halfway through.)
• I write my posts out in HTML.
  I don’t use a visual editor. I don’t use WYSIWYG. I don’t write it out in a word processor and then translate it into code later. For me, the words and code are one as they emerge from my brain and manifest in this WordPress content window. Sometimes, I also use TextWrangler (after the initial content is written) to edit posts that have more complicated markup in them or when I want to see it all at once.
• I don’t label myself as a type of mom.
  I’m sure someone can come up with 50 terms for what kind of mom I am, but I don’t play that game. I’m just a mom — their mom — and that is all that matters to me.
• I miss soccer.
  I used to play in several leagues, co-ed and women’s soccer, but something went wrong with my hip when I gave birth to my first child. I haven’t played soccer since. It took me nearly five years after the birth of my first child to even try running again, but I haven’t been able to get back into it regularly.
• I no longer have "native" status.
  I grew up in California, went to school in New York, and then came back to Silicon Valley after graduation. The Bay Area in the year 2000 was an interesting place — I was sort of a rarity because I was one of only a few people in my circle and/or industry that was actually born and raised in the area. Then, I moved. Now I’m the out-of-state transplant up here in Eugene, Oregon.
• When I look at the world, I see it in terms of HTML and CSS.
  I often catch myself staring off at a wall or out the window, trying to position things I see with code in my head. Apparently I process my real world into divs, floats, positioning and z-index — for entertainment and personal amusement.

This post was inspired by Dagmar Bleasdale’s 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Me post.

In the process of trying to come up with a vision board for the Adventures in Manifesting program, I went back through my list of goals that I had made a few weeks ago. What I noticed is that several of the top New Year’s resolutions were missing off this list — exercising, losing weight, and taking care of myself were no where to be found on that list. In fact, what I had written in was permission for myself to not take care of myself, and to focus my priorities elsewhere. What that leaves me with is this:

Making Choices

My children come first. I usually end up spending some portion of my day (typically around bedtime) reminding myself that they are only small for a short time, and that someday they won’t want to hang out with their mama anymore. I do my best to meet their needs, I schedule fun when I can, and I try my best to enjoy the moments I spent with them.

After the kids comes work. The problem with it coming after the kids is that any time they need something (going back and forth to dance lessons, the big upcoming dentist visits for two Mondays in a row), my work hours get cut short for the day and I have to compensate in other ways. I find joy in providing for my family though, so it makes up for the lack of sleep or whatever else I do to compensate.

The rest of it is somewhere after this, and this is where the real juggling act comes in. I am doing this program right now, which seems to be occupying 1-3 hours of my day, every day. I am supposed to be working on my big product for the year, but between work and the program, I have run out of time and energy. My only time to exercise is between 10 pm and 12 am, but it’s hard to do at that time of night when I am tired and cutting into my evening work hours. I showered when I got up this morning (on work time, GASP!) so even that seems like a constant struggle for balance. And of course here I am writing this post, when I should be doing X, Y and Z instead but I really just felt like I needed to casually enjoy a cup of tea this morning.

Shaving Off The List

So where does that leave me? I’m not saying I have any of this worked out, it’s just that I didn’t make any me goals. When the simple act of showering is both a chore and a miracle, it seems OK to leave things off the list. I know that people say your health is the most important thing, but it just isn’t right now. I have other things I need to do, other things I need to take care of. I know that exercise would be good for me (and would solve my whole inability to meditate because I could just zone out while I’m doing it), but I’ve tried and I just can’t work it into the schedule. I know I should eat better but something quick isn’t going to kill me. I know I should find myself some quiet time for reflection but if the act of looking for it causes more stress than it relieves, it is no longer worth it.

Some year I’ll lose that 20 lbs, get 8 hours of sleep, and find my zen … it’s just not this year. Busy isn’t bad, it’s just busy — and letting go of things that should be important is OK too.

Readers: What do you leave off your list in order to find some sanity in your schedule?

As part of the Adventures in Manifesting program, I was recently asked what theme I was going to have for 2011. I sat down last night and thought about this for a long time in silence. What wrong am I going to make right? What bad habit am I finally going to break through to have my best year ever? I couldn’t come up with the answer.

After some deep thought (and a few beers), I discovered the problem is not with the question, but with the timing of it. If I had been asked this question in the beginning of December 2010, I would have had a long list of everything I was doing wrong and all the bad habits I was perpetuating on a daily basis — but this is not December anymore. This is after I started my transformation during #reverb10, which started me on the path of manifesting. This is after my first two weeks in the AIM program, which was so outside my original comfort zone but I dove in head first anyway. This is after my personal revelations, after my leap of faith, after my commitment to myself (and my family) to be something more.

At this point, I’m just so happy about my progress that I can’t think of anything bad to say about myself or the direction my life is taking. In the first two weeks of this program …

• I have put myself on track to be more financially successful in January than I have been in any single month for the past 5 years;
• I have come up with an idea for the information product (and supporting services) that I always wanted to create;
• I have finally stepped up to the plate to design, develop and launch my product;
• I have redesigned and relaunched three of my websites;
• I have changed my outlook and become such a positive person that people around me have noticed;
• I have ramped up all my social media and networking efforts;
• I have let myself off the hook for my past of slipups, bombs, not following through, and whatever else;
• I have allowed myself to let go and enjoy things without self-punishment or guilt;
• and I have completely started playing a much, much bigger game.

If you consider all that, what more was I really going to fix? I see myself even talking about progress above and realize what a changed person I am right now, because the "old me" was not someone to praise process, only the success or failure of the end result. I have come so far that I’m not even sure I want to think about what is wrong anymore — I just want to keep moving forward on to amazing things.

This was part of my desk-decorating effort this week. When I bought them, they both stood up. A day later, they were in a V-formation like this. I’m not sure why. The desk lamp light maybe? Regardless, they smell fantastic.

Have you ever seen the Supernanny Jo Frost give a time out to a small child? She basically sets the amount of time, say 1 minute, and then places the child into the time-out location. Every time the child moves, the timer is reset as the child is placed back into the location. She will do this as many times as she needs to until the child gets the idea.

While my problem may not be drawing on the wall in crayon or hitting my little brother, I have decided to use her technique of refocus in my own life. You see, I have chronically multitasked myself out of the ability to focus on one thing, and now I actually have to retrain myself to focus again. We have been told to meditate for 15 minutes as part of the Adventures in Manifesting program, but to be quite honest I suck at it. If I can’t make it through a single on-page article, how am I going to control my mind for 15 minutes?

This is my approach:

• When I am doing something, I am going to do only that thing.
• If something else comes in, I will resist the urge to click off the current screen until that thing is done. (Hopefully this will also cure me of windowitis because I constantly have 30 half-read browser windows open.)
• If my body starts to tense up as my mind moves on to other things, I will close my eyes, focus on one 4-count inhale, hold for 2 seconds, focus on a 4-count exhale, and open my eyes again. Then I will get back to what I was doing.
• I will remind myself to stay present to be more productive.
• I will stop skipping ahead and skimming. If it is important enough to read, I will read it. If not, I will skip it.

How do you stay focused?