One of our favourite clients is a business training centre at a local college. For the past few months, we’ve been working with their team to find out what small business owners want most from training, and how they want to receive it.

We began by doing a telephone survey. It was illuminating to see how extremely satisfied the training centre’s clients are with the great customer service they get from the staff, and a bit daunting to think that we could help grow such a well-established business even more.

We could have asked a standard question like, “Is (subject) of interest to you?” or “Do you or your employees need training in anything?” …but our work with entrepreneurs has shown us that the answer to this question is usually “No. I don’t have time.”

We ended up asking “What topics would be worth taking time off from your business to learn about?”

Small business owners told us they would indeed take time off work if they could learn: a better way to find new customers; stay ahead of their competition; and spend marketing money more effectively.

This was a great start. But these topics cover a lot of territory and the training centre wisely wanted to do further research to hone the new offerings. To do that, they decided to offer a series of free seminars to businesses in three separate regions, teaming up with partners in each area.

The seminars will be samplings of the broader courses they are considering offering at the centre. They will gauge interest in the topics via the number who enroll for the seminars, and circulate a questionnaire to gather even more information. They will also ask for permission to continue sending information to participants.

The results should provide guidance on what courses to offer and what kind of businesses will be interested in each. Further, the seminars will kindle interest in training in those companies that participate.

Sampling is a standard strategy in package goods marketing. This project by a training centre shows how the same technique can be used to develop or improve a product and build new business.

I would think that this title pretty much sums up one of the major dilemmas for someone trying to run a small business. Actually it’s not so easy even in the corporate world. It always seemed to me that busy times at work always coincided with busy times at home, and times when it was pretty laid back at work… no, wait, that never happened. At any rate, the problem facing many of us is balancing a pile of things that have to get done with a pile of things that you want to do.

Back in March, I wrote about To Do lists, and one item was “realise that you need different strategies to handle lists of mandatory tasks and lists of optional tasks”. I’d like to expand on that thought today.

For a long time, I thought that the thing to do was to have a single list with everything on it in priority order, and work my way through it. Fairly soon, I realised that priorities were not that easy to assign; they kept changing and different stakeholders had different opinions. For instance, my wife and my boss often had different opinions regarding what I should be doing. Just becoming your own boss doesn’t get rid of this problem, it just puts a different spin on it.

It doesn’t matter whether you assign priorities with a complicated algorithm which assigns weighted values captured from your goals and objectives, the political clout of the various sponsors, the ROI on the project and the phase of the moon, or if you just put things under “must do”, “want to do” and “nice to do” - in my experience, “Organise a ski trip with friends” and “Increase profits 10% by November” just can’t coexist on the same list.

My conclusion - or at least my conclusion for this month - is that if you want to be fairly sure you are making the “best” use of your time right now, and if you are the “list type” then you need different types of lists. Some of the lists that I like are:

• The Outlook “To Do’ Bar: great for dated lists - Back up the PC, water the lawn, buy a new transit pass, write a forum article…
• Checklists: for things which have many details and don’t get done that often, like packing for a vacation
• Goals, Objectives and related Tasks: sorting this out is a whole project unto itself, and probably something which each individual tackles differently, and
• “My Projects” which are the things that I want to do

Isn’t it funny that that “My Stuff” comes at the end of the list of lists? Pretty typical, too, I’d imagine. I’m still not the greatest at working this part, but some of the essential parts seem to be - have a list, written; find a way of organising it so that at any time you have some spare time, you can select a doable, relevant and important task, so that you’re not just frittering the moment away; and update it often, because just like your other lists, priorities change. A neat idea which encompasses some of these ideals, one I found at www.blackandwhiteparrot.com, is an iPhone applet called Spinning Plates. It doesn’t nag at you with deadlines; it just reminds you when you haven’t made any progress on a given item in the time frame you set, by changing its background colour on the list from a nice healthy green through a number of steps until its glowing fiery red. As long as you keep “feeding” your items with attention, two things happen: they stay green on the list and they get closer to becoming a reality. These days, maybe that’s the best we can hope for - making sure the good things don’t get lost in the chaos, and continued progress towards your goal of a balanced life. Don’t spin your wheels; just keep spinning those plates.

I always used to wonder how a colleague of mine would work an nine hour day and still be as productive as I was working fifteen. He wasn’t especially smarter by his own admissions, and I had cut my Facebooking time down to 10 minutes in the morning. So how did he do it?

Rocks. Big Rocks.

Okay, so my colleague happened to be the Co-CEO of the company. He had a lot of qualities that could dwarf my own most any day of the week, but time management wasn’t one he considered to be a science (although he did refer to it as a discipline).

He put me on to a theory about “Big Rocks” coined by Stephen Covey (author of ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’). The theory suggested that everything I was doing, I could have done anyway - along with much more critical tasks - had I just reversed the order in which I approached my day.

You see, my approach had been to deal with the noise first thing in the morning - the email, the follow-ups, the project plans, the checklists etc. I wanted it all out of the way so that I could tackle the big ideas free from the weight of lingering “to-do’s”. I was the same way at home. I cleaned my living spaces, did my laundry, some banking and so on… and then I would sit down to my wonderfully clean and clear desk. What was so wrong with that picture?

As it turns out - quite a bit.

Think of your checklist. How often do we load it up with lots of little nuisance tasks and eagerly cross them off the top of the list? Then, as we make our way to the middle of the page, we start to slow - right around the time the tasks require more thinking, more steps, more time. On one hand, we’ve crossed a lot off the list. On the other, we’ve crossed off those things that haven’t pushed our roadmaps and we find ourselves waking up to the same set of circumstances the next day.

The “Big Rocks” theory suggests that you prioritize - at the top of the list - 3 “Big Rocks” for the week ahead. Put them at the top of your list and commit, come heck or high water, to move them forward this week. They may not get completed, but consider it a fail if they haven’t moved from one step to the next. From there, you can sprinkle in the pebbles (semi-critical tasks) and the sand (the obstacle that we previously assumed was keeping us on our toes).

My CEO colleague also commented on how he managed to apply the “Big Rocks” theory as the leader of an entity. He said - and I’m paraphrasing, “If you want my job, make sure you bet on the right rocks.”

One thing that Small Business owners can’t get enough of, is time; so anything that makes us more productive is generally a good thing. Back when I was an IT Manager, I pushed for bigger monitors, and established a standard that made a 17” monitor the minimum. Things have changed since then, and now that my clients tend not to work in cramped corporate cubicles, I can recommend larger monitors, especially if they are flat panels.

For my own work, and for those who use computers to make their money, I go further, and recommend dual monitors. I gather Bill Gates uses triple monitors, and I could happily live with that!

So is this just “boys and their toys”? Well, there’s always an element of that, but the productivity comes from how much of a situation you can see at one time. About a hundred years ago, as a mainframe programmer, I expressed the thought that a program subroutine would be more understandable if all of the code was brought together on one or two pages - what a programmer could see in one go on fan-fold computer printout. By having all of the elements of a concept visible at one time, it was easier to follow the logic, understand it and change it. One of my colleagues back then, Kirk Hansen, called this the Powell Principle and to this day he reminds me of this at each staff re-union!

In today’s world, the Powell Principle still makes sense. The more screen real estate is available, the more one can see of a problem or a solution. You can have the application open and see the “Help” entry at the same time. Open an attachment and read what the e-mail says about it. See a large preview of a photo as well as a bunch of thumbnails from the same photo shoot. Open two versions of a document and compare them, or cut and paste from one to the other with both in view. Or finally have enough room for all the palettes in your photo editor. In all of these cases, by seeing more of the job in hand, it makes it simpler to work on it.

While a single large monitor is better than a small one, two medium monitors seems to allow me to organise windows better, is probably cheaper per square inch of screen, and gives me backup if one should fail.

Many PCs, and most laptops, already support two monitors (or the laptop screen plus an extra). Get some advice before you go out and buy a second monitor, to ensure it will work. You may need a new, or second, video card. Two things to watch out for: often the built-in video card (integrated on the mother board) will not work at the same time as a separate video card, so while you may see two video outlets, that is not an option. Second, some video cards have one DVI outlet and one VGA outlet. These will probably allow you to run two monitors, just make sure that the monitors accept the right inputs (for instance, two DVI-only monitors would not both connect to such a video card).

So give it a shot; the first time you drag a window from one monitor to the next you’ll wonder how you ever worked without multiple monitors. It’s like magic!

In my volunteer business advisory role, I often see or hear of small businesses where little or no planning is taking place, and the primary reasons seem to be the difficulty of doing something, or the time it takes. While “proper” planning can be complicated and time-consuming any planning is better than none, and decent planning can be done fairly easily and quickly.

Keeping It Simple is the answer to getting it done when you have no time.

The first thing to tie down is your goal. At the end of your planning period, what, specifically, do you want to have achieved? Write this down clearly, with no weasel words like “if” or “try”. Include measurable parameters and time frames. “From now until 31 Dec 2009 I will generate $120,000 in gross sales” is a good example. At this point, this is a target only, because you don’t know if it’s possible.

Now write down all of the things (or projects) which would have to happen to achieve your target. Do you need to increase manufacturing capacity, do more marketing, get more credit to buy supplies, hire staff, or what?

Time for a reality check: is your list reasonable? There are many ways of doing this, but my favourite is categorise and sort. Think up some positive and negative categories which apply to your type of business. You might have just two, or quite a few. However, remember we’re trying to keep it simple, so not too many categories. For each project on your list, rate it on each category. (Putting them all in an Excel sheet and having one column per category is one way to go, with a numerical rating system.) By sorting on different categories you will hopefully see some patterns. For instance, suppose your categories are “value in achieving the goal” and “risk level”. It’s pretty obvious that the low-risk, high-value projects are the ones you should do for sure, and some high-risk, low-value ones should get dropped! The others need some more analysis to see if they can be modified to reduce the risk, combined to increase the value, or just prioritised.

Other things influence your list as well. Money and resource allocation are prime examples. Also, some projects will depend on other projects, or external factors, such as the date of a Trade Show. You may need a special skill or machine. These extra factors can be added as extra columns to your spreadsheet or just used as a reality checklist. A good way to sort out scheduling and dependency issues is to put each project on a sticky note and move them around on a whiteboard, with lines joining projects which depend on other projects.

What you want to end up with is a workable list of things you have to do, with dates for when you have to do them, and a really good idea of what resources you will need to get each one done. You should be able to check that no two projects need a unique resource at the same time and that your cash flow or line of credit will pay for each one as it starts up. You will know why you are doing each one, and which projects you can drop or delay when you hit that inevitable snag. Don’t necessarily get married to your original goal, either. This process may have made it clear that it’s not realistic, and you may have to change it. The important thing is to have a goal, and a plan for achieving it. Then work your plan!

While I can’t tell that this approach will make your fortune, I can pretty much guarantee that no planning will eventually lose your business for you. By keeping it simple, you will at least have made a start.

Continuing with my theme that telling you how to solve a real-world problem is better than listing what each menu item does, here are three tips that I’ve discovered where OneNote solves a problem better than other methods I’ve tried.

Creating “How-To” Documents for PC procedures

A picture is worth 1K words (as we computer types like to say) and explaining a complicated set of steps is helped enormously by showing intermediate results so the reader can verify that he’s following along successfully. I used to do this with the print screen button, pasting into an image editor, cropping and finally inserting into the Word document. With One Note, the Clip function allows you to select only the area you want, so the cropping step is eliminated. If you want, the entire document can be created in OneNote, or the screen shots can be copied into other programs. The image captured is immediately placed at the cursor location in OneNote, but is also in the clipboard, so you can paste it into whichever program you want to assemble the pictures in. Other uses for this are capturing error messages, logs or other data to report program bugs or clipping part of a website to send to someone, without having to send the whole page.

Providing Design choices to a client

A slightly different use for the Clip is to take repeated snapshots of a design (like a logo, for instance) to present a client with a number of choices. Rather than print a copy of each variation, I now “clip” multiple times, after changing to different fonts or colours or element placement. I can arrange the small clips in a OneNote document and annotate each with the font name or the colour choice so that I can reproduce it later. Finally I print to a PDF straight from OneNote and send it off to my client. An alternative would be to save the OneNote document to a Word document and send that. Sometimes, I clip a representation of the colour palette as well to show what colours are being used overall. Taking snapshots of the work in progress is a lot faster than reproducing multiple “finished” versions. Just be sure to “clip” the image without any selection markers present in the part you want to show.

Changing the order of elements

I don’t know about you, but when I’m free-thinking or brainstorming, I never get the ideas down in my draft in the right order first time! Moving lines around to get them in the right order has always been a pain. I’ve done things like add a column in Excel and sort on that, but in OneNote, you can drag and drop to your heart’s content until the things are in the right order. Cut and paste between Excel and One-Note is well designed, so you can move data to OneNote, get them in the right order and copy and paste them back with no problems. I recently created a web-site development estimating template in Excel, changing the order of tasks in OneNote until they made the most sense. When the work starts, I copy a section back to OneNote to keep track of the actual hours spent, using the timestamp method I described last month.

Meanwhile, I’ve tried to get the two high school students in our household to use One Note for their essay or other homework research, where OneNote’s practice of annotating each web-site clip with the URL makes life so very easy, but without any luck. Isn’t it the old fogies who are supposed to be beyond learning new tricks?

In many program, the formal documentation or help tells how to use each menu item, but there is no proper explanation of how, given a real world business problem, your new, wonderful software can be persuaded to solve it.

To give OneNote its due, it does come with a number of tailored pages and templates to give you some ideas of what to enter to be useful. Even so, I went through the initial free trial period without coming to the conclusion that it could become indispensible. This is all a long prelude to say that some programs need to be played with for an extended period before one finds where it can be used. OneNote was this way for me and only after I had made a commitment to it did I find some really useful ways to use it which have now entered my regular workflow; here’s one.

How I use it is still evolving, but I tend to create a separate notebook for each major client, plus a general notebook for the rest of the clients. Within these, I use sections and pages as required. When I’m starting a new task for which I need to track billable time then, somewhere on one of the client pages, I set up a four column table (Table menu | Insert Table). It doesn’t need many rows, just enough for any items which need to be recorded immediately, because typing ctrl-Enter creates a new row under the cursor, so it’s really easy to add more.

I put the task name (i.e. a short description) in the next empty table row, first column, and then in column two I use the shortcut which makes timekeeping a breeze: alt-shift-F. This puts the current date and time in that column as a start time. When I’m done, or get interrupted, I put the stop time in column three, using the shortcut again. If I restart the same task, I can add a row beneath and put in an extra start and stop time. This way, as long as I remember to punch my time clock in and out, I can come back later and work out all of the time I have spent on each task, even if the task was interrupted multiple times. I work out the calculated task times in the fourth column. One nice by-product of this method is that if I forget to clock out of Task A and clock into task B, at least the total for A and B will be accurate.

If there are multiple tasks, I pre-plan them in the table, and punch in times or add extra rows for interruptions as I go. For unplanned tasks like a phone call, I might add a row in an existing table, or create a new table.

Finally at invoice time, depending on how complicated it is, I can either copy the table and paste it into Excel, or just do some mental arithmetic. Of course, once in Excel, I can categorise, summarise, sort and sum to my heart’s content.

All of which begs the question: why not just have Excel up all the time? That was the conclusion I came to at first. I thought: OneNote doesn’t do anything I can’t already do in other programs I already own. What I found is that OneNote brings enough of the basics from other programs into one program, which starts almost instantly and doesn’t seem to bog down my PC if I leave it running while I do other things. It just makes things so darn convenient!

Next time: documenting “How-To’s” from your PC with OneNote.

Quick story…

I was at The Fireplace Shop on a recent Saturday night. My good friend Daniel, is the GM there. They were celebrating with beer and high fives. They had just completed the 3rd version of a set of forms (yes, paper-based forms) that they had worked on for well over 2000 hours.

These forms detail what goes into any and every installation of a mantle or fireplace. These forms train installers on 10 years worth of scenarios in 1 year’s time. These forms give outside sales teams the ability to build quotes on site and subsequently, sell better services to the customer. These forms have even become a new revenue stream for the business – consulting.

They’ve become speakers at trade events.

They’ve reduced screw-ups and increased margins.

They’ve cut training costs by 80%.

They’re selling the filing of the forms as peace of mind to the customer ($95). And if you like their approach, it rolls right into your purchase price too.

Dan says they wouldn’t sell these forms for less than a very big number. They are his company’s processes – his competitive advantage. They are 8 pieces of paper. Anyone could have made them, but anyone didn’t – he and his team did. Now the rewards are theirs.

One of the biggest hurdles I face when helping businesses stand out using social media, is capturing what story they want to tell about themselves. What do they do that is exceptional? Where can they educate and share? And how can all of this drive business?

8 pieces of paper may not make for ground-breaking marketing collateral, but most times we forget that the best marketing return depends on how you deliver on a promise. In other words, the process can be marketed in many different ways. Which is more than can be said for an agency crafted story that 'strokes the ego' or ‘tugs on the heart strings.’

In previous articles, I’ve alluded to needing to stay in control of your web site property. If you’re not technically inclined, or if you’re too busy to stay on top of everything, it’s easy to leave the details to someone else, but in the wrong set of circumstances, you can get burned. Imagine buying a house and years later when you go to sell it, you find it’s registered in the name of a real estate agent or a lawyer, or maybe it’s in your partner’s name. Unlikely? Probably. What if you found your domain name doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to the developer who set up your web site, and that developer refuses to transfer control to someone else?

If this has happened to you already then you may need legal advice specific to your situation. Whether you decide to fight or fold depends a lot on your tolerance for a whole lot of hassle, because however right you think you are, it’s possible that, legally, you’re wrong. The purpose of this article is to save some of you from that hassle in the future. Here are some of the points you would be wise to consider:

1. Get the domain name registered in your own name. Probably the easiest way to ensure this is to do it yourself. It’s very easy to do. For a .ca registration, the important thing is that the administrative contact e-mail address is one you control. Then if anyone else tries to change details of your account, that e-mail address will get an e-mail from CIRA (the Canadian registration authority) asking if this is OK. Unless you respond positively, nothing happens. (This means it’s very important that CIRA has an up-to-date e-mail address. Don’t cancel this address without changing CIRA’s contact point first, or you’ll find yourself in a catch-22 situation!) For more information about protecting your .ca domain registration, click here.
2. Know where your site is hosted and what the administration password is. For .ca domains, you can find out the first part from CIRA, by logging in and looking at your account. Any responsible hosting company should provide access to your site once you prove you are the owner. They might do this by e-mailing the information to the Administrative contact. Your developer has to have access to the host server to make changes to your site, but should not change the password without your approval.
3. Make sure you know which content is yours. Sounds obvious? Maybe not. Suppose the developer provides a photo from a stock photography company. Does he have the rights, or do you? Or, maybe the developer included some fancy code to protect your e-mail address from being “scraped” by a web-bot. If you move to another developer, can you still use that code? The moral and logical answer is of course, “yes” — the developer should provide you a licence to continue to use all of the content provided in your website regardless of who maintains it, but I’ve heard of cases where there has been conflict. (Of course, you should not take that developer-supplied code and re-use it in a totally different site unless it was developed specially for you.) I can hardly perceive a context in which the design and words would not be yours to take away, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of a problem some day.

As a consultant to small businesses, I’ve had to take over maintenance of existing sites on several occasions, and usually the relationship is extremely professional and even cordial. However, it appears that I have a potential client whose developer is making life very difficult, and from what I hear is refusing to allow the site to be relocated. In effect, this site is being held hostage and that’s what inspired this article — wish me luck!

The marginal cost of taking a digital photo is essentially zero. There are very few such bargains to be had in today’s business world, yet I wonder how many of us take advantage of this wonderful opportunity.

When I was in the corporate world, one item that stayed in my briefcase (or, when I was toting a laptop, my backpack) all of the time was a small 4MP digital camera. When I brought it, 4MP wasn’t a bad size, but it turns out that it’s plenty for most of the tasks I’m going to describe, because the print or screen size doesn’t need to be that big. Just about every week I found a use for it, and once word got around (a tactical mistake on my part, perhaps!) it was often borrowed by fellow managers.

Here are some of the uses I put it to:

• Recording the state of something before a change. Take a picture before you pull all of the connecting wires out of that piece of equipment so you can put it back together later on.
• Evidence of shipping damage. A picture can be worth a thousand words, and can be e-mailed quickly, and save time in resolving a situation. You might also need it one day in your car if you get into an accident.
• Portable photocopier. A photo can be easier than arranging small receipts on the bed of a copier if you want a record of expense receipts just until they are approved, or need a quick document copy away from your office. Just be sure to preview the image and zoom in to make sure the focus was OK, while you have the chance to take another if necessary.
• Produce better documentation. I remember one time we had to arrange for every branch office to switch their old router out and connect a new one which had been shipped to them. A few close up photos of the back of the same models, before and after, with arrows and labels edited into the image made the instructions super simple.
• Staff photos. When your staff talk daily on the phone to out-of -town clients (internal or external) and especially if they are in a support position where tempers can flare, it helps immensely when their clients know them as people, not just a voice on the phone. Another use is to stick photos on vinyl magnets and use them as signposts outside offices or cubicles. It might be corny, but my staff loved the surprise and recognition, and in an otherwise nameless organisation, it often proved useful for navigation.
• In an emergency, with the USB cord, a camera can often serve as a portable flash memory drive.
• Inventory and record keeping. A photo of someone’s office can record the major items such as chairs, desk and filing cabinets. Digital photos have a built–in date as well. It’s a lot easier to snap a close-up of a serial number and transcribe it from a zoomed-in, rotated image on your screen than to peer into dark corners and try to read numbers upside-down. You can also record product keys for your software in case the original packaging goes missing and you need to re-install.

So that’s a flavour of the kinds of things you can do when a camera is readily available. Makes you think your cell phone camera might have some use after all, doesn’t it?

Best of all, I came up with enough ideas for this article that I didn’t have to mention the possibilities when you get candid snaps of your boss at the Christmas party!

Happy snapping!

First, a little history lesson. In the beginning, there was DOS, and green monitors. Well, there were earlier beginnings, but that’s as far back as we need to go today. When things got a bit more graphical, programs began to try to reproduce on the screen what the output would look like on paper, and the acronym WYSIWYG – “whizzy wig”, or what you see is what you get – was adopted. These days, computer users tend to take that for granted, but back then, it was quite something.

Fast forward to today, when everyone and their dog professes to be a web-site developer, and guess what? WYSINNWTG. Not necessarily what they get. From the view in the development program the designer uses to the end users’ browser, there are a number of factors which make changes to the look of the final display.

• Older browsers may not support all of the functionality that the designer may build in
• Even a new browser may be used by a user who has chosen not to download a particular plug-in, like a Flash viewer
• Browsers from different makers and different versions of browsers interpret the same HTML and CSS in different ways, sometimes with hugely different results
• The size of the viewer’s monitor will affect the largest window the browser can run in, and the size the viewer decides to make the browser window will affect the layout of the page
• The fonts installed on the viewer’s machine may not include a specific font used in the web design; the browser will substitute something similar, but still different.
• Users with very slow connections will get a very different experience than users with broadband connections.
• At a more esoteric level, the viewer may decide to set up the browser with a different size of character display, or even provide an overriding set of CSS. Options to not display images, or Flash output, or to run JavaScript are all available. Users with poor or no eyesight rely on hardware or software which translates text to speech and “reads” it to them. Text in images will not be part of the output.

A web site designer tries to balance these and other considerations to provide a web site that conveys a positive image to as much of the audience as possible, but there will be hundreds of minor variations in what people experience. In many cases, the KISS principle works well, because the more complex the design, the more options there will be to manage.

For the small business person who is getting a new web site, or changes to an existing one, the important take-away from this article is that part of the web-designer’s job is to make sure the client’s web site looks and works as intended on the majority of popular platforms and secondly, that what you see in a demo is not necessarily what your customers will see. Try to involve a number of people in testing the site, and take the time to view it yourself in several different browsers; most importantly, view it on a large monitor using a variety of smaller window sizes—as the window changes shape, what happens to your content? Is that what you expected?

Remember, this is the way the whole thing is designed to work. The site designer describes the content using a markup language, and the browser decides on the “best” way to display the content to the viewer. It’s just that when you want to sell an idea, one feels the need to have better control. Get used to the idea that you can’t control everything, but make sure the design works for the majority of your potential clients. And give thanks that these days you don’t have to worry about too many customers looking at your new masterpiece on monochrome green monitors!

As it turned out, most of the work I have done since leaving the Corporate fold has been for organizations whose staff are volunteers. As pretty much everything was new to me when I started out, some characteristics that these organizations shared didn’t really strike me for quite a long time, so I’m passing on some revelations to help others who have similar clients.

Time doesn’t run at the same rate for a volunteer. In the corporate world, if someone asks you to do something, and you send them the results, then you can expect them to take a look at it and get back to you. Maybe not the same day, but soonish. Usually. I recall creating a database application for a client which appeared to be eagerly anticipated. Finally the product was ready and I sent it off. (One nice thing about creating things on a computer is that shipping is not a major issue!) Then I waited. And waited. I began to imagine that there were terrible problems and my client was agonising over how to break the bad news. I waited some more. They even paid my invoice, and still there was no feedback. Finally, I heard back — almost everything was fine. What I hadn’t realized was that while the project was important to my client, it wasn’t as important as his own business. Making your living comes first, and your volunteer responsibilities — especially if they can wait for a while — come second. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, it was just that other things took priority for a while.

Volunteers look after their organizations’ money. Recently, a new client asked me to take over some work which another consultant had been doing. We talked and corresponded; we hit it off and eventually got down to talking about money. Apparently, my rate was higher than the previous person’s and furthermore, they had had a discount for non-profit. So I expounded on my virtues, years of experience and so on, and said my rate was my rate. I got back an e-mail saying I was hired with a “sort-of” apology for being careful with the money, but he had a responsibility to spend the money wisely. He still is careful with the money — to this day, this is one client where I never have any doubts as to what the budget is for each task, and actually, I find that useful; I know when to stop perfecting something. At least, I know when to stop billing.

Volunteers come to life on weekends and evenings. Think about it. They have day jobs! This means that if you need a decision from your volunteer client which involves her reading the 20-page analysis you prepared, then you’d better think about delivering it on Thursday or Friday, because she’ll be reading it on the weekend. By the same token, if you need to discuss something, 10 am Monday isn’t going to be a preferred time. Prepare to keep your schedule flexible to accommodate theirs, or your projects are going to run forever!

No doubt I’ll have further insights into volunteer clients as time goes on, but one misconception I might have had has been thoroughly dispelled. If you think that office politics has no part in a volunteer-based organization, or if you think I’m going to illustrate that with some juicy tales —you’re wrong! I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with the volunteers in my client organizations; I hope these few insights will help you to do the same.

In this world of electronic communications, many small businesses never meet some of their clients. Some might keep in touch only by e-mail so the entire client file is (somewhere) on your PC. In a way, those documents are your clients, and being able to find the right one in a timely fashion can determine how successful your relationship becomes.

The system I use is always evolving, but revolves around three things, folders, naming and search tools.

Folders: When I first used personal computers, about a hundred years ago, I and everyone I knew used to populate folders with a certain type of file. All of my spreadsheets were in a folder called Spreadsheets, or maybe I called it Excel. That came about because the open dialogue defaulted to one place, and there was one place to save. Today, I recommend project folders: every file related to a project, be it a Word document, an Excel document or a bunch of jpg pictures is filed in a project folder. That doesn’t mean it can’t be subdivided in sub folders, and maybe all those pictures should be in a folder, just to keep them tidy, but only the pictures relating to that project would be there.

I have a business folder, with client folders within that, and project folders inside them. If a project needs some files from another project, I copy them in, and edit them to remove extra information that doesn’t relate to the new project. If there’s some data which is common to many projects, I might set up a “Common” folder, or put shortcuts in the new folder pointing back to an original.

In Outlook, I store e-mails in a similar structure. If an attachment will only be used for a couple of days, I tend to leave it in Outlook. If it’s more permanent, I do a “Save Attachments” or a “Save As” and copy the file to the project folder.

Naming: I will name (or re-name, if it came from elsewhere) a file or an e-mail (in Outlook 2007, change the subject line and save) so that I can tell what the content is. If several versions will exist, I include a revision number. I try not to call something “Final” because it never is! As everything will be in a folder belonging to a client and a project, I don’t need to put this information in the file name, although if the file is going to travel, I might do so. Depending on the files you’re collecting, it might make sense to consider naming them so that similar files names sort together, or maybe you should use a sub folder. (It’s possible to overdo the sub-folder thing, to the point where it takes 5 minutes to click down to the file you want, so give it some thought!)

Search Tools: Even with the best conventions, a document or e-mail sometimes decides to hide. When this happens, there are many ways to dig it out. Windows Explorer can search for partial file names or text in the document. It can also sort files by filename, type or date, so if you’re looking for a spreadsheet you changed in February for a particular client, you can narrow it down quickly. However, more and more, I find myself using a local content search tool which works like an Internet search on your hard drive. Choose a unique set of words and you should find your document in the results page.

So, that’s the basics. On some projects, at a milestone, I send all of the files to a compressed folder, name the zip file with a date, and write the file to a CD which I file in the paper folder. While I also do full backups to a USB drive, that don’t keep past versions, and sometimes having a previous version has saved my bacon.

It was about 10pm last night when the fire alarm went off in my apartment building. I run my small business from my home, so a threat to my home is also a threat to my livelihood. No fear, however, since I exited the building in an orderly fashion, along with the scores of other occupants, to wait in the frigid Ottawa winter night for the arrival of blaring fire engines.

Now, I've lived in apartment buildings in many cities, and tend to travel to some fairly unstable regions. So I've endured many a hasty exit, due to fires, earthquakes, etc. I have the calculated exit down to a science. First, I put on generic adventuring clothes (denim or something equally as tough... this can be useful if fleeing a crumbling building in the Third World, just in case you have to sleep outdoors for a couple of days).

Second, I grab the important documents: passport, wallet, credit cards, ID, etc.

Third, I snatch my beloved smartphone, which, of course, is both a communication device and a data device. This way, no matter what happens to my home, I can call someone and have access to all my contacts and key personal data, including encrypted financial information and passwords, all of which I keep well protected within my PDA.

Fourth, I usually grab one of my laptops. I have a few lying about. You never know how long you'll be absent from your home, and it's useful to have a method of both entertaining yourself and getting some work done.

Fifth, and possibly most important from a business standpoint, I grab a backup medium. See, I learned the hard way to never trust my computers to hold data securely. Computers fail regularly; external media less frequently. I keep several backups of all my data on external hard drives. In more responsible days (i.e., grad school, when data represented one's entire thesis!) I would keep backups in the freezer, under the questionable assumption that should the house burn down, the safest place is also the coldest place.

I also keep backups of my most vital data on a 2 gigabyte USB flash drive key, which I encrypt and typically keep in my pocket. By "most vital data", I mean client-specific information for my business, and student-specific information for the classes I teach. This way, those data that most affect other people are the ones I keep best protected.

Sounds good, right? Problem is, my system broke down last night. Somehow I neglected to grab ANY of my backup media. I spent the night in the diner across the street, nervously waiting for the fire department to give the "all clear" sign before returning to my apartment to --thankfully!-- find all my data intact. A split second of oversight nearly caused me to lose all of my client files, the manuscripts of the books I am writing, studies and analyses yet incomplete --all the work I had done and was doing, all the records of everything I had created and worked on since the advent of the computer. It was a terrifying prospect.

The lesson? As anal as I am about backing up my data to a variety of physical media, I neglected to consider the possibility that all the media could be destroyed simultaneously together, as in a fire. There are many possible solutions: online backups to a website or to a third party provider, or simply walking a DVD over to a friend's place.

So if you haven't done so already, invest in an offsite backup solution. It will save you several sleepless nights, and might save your entire livelihood!

I am currently enjoying a very rewarding consulting stint within an agency of the Canadian federal government, where pretty much everyone else is also a consultant. (Actually there are only two bona fide civil servants in our office; everyone else is a contractor). This is not atypical of a new agency that must rush to get its procedures, budgets and mandates in line before formal, permanent hires can take place.

I really enjoy contracting for the federal government... at this senior level, I mean. People are surprisingly committed to the work; and, if your agency is wealthy enough, sufficient resources can be thrown at a given issue to address it wholly and satisfyingly.

Being surrounded by so many other consultants, most of whom are former senior bureaucrats themselves, has afforded me a very unique opportunity... to compare business cards. Yes, literally, I've been examining the business cards of my colleagues (and perhaps future competitors) to see how our aesthetic and communicative tastes overlap and diverge.

Most are quite basic: black printing on white, with name, title, address written along the long axis of the card. A couple have a logo. One even has a motto italicized at the bottom. One thing they all have is a mention of their consulting services, for example:

• Joe Blow, MPA
  President, Blow Policy, Inc.
  Health Policy Analysis and Corporate Communications
  joe@joeblow.biz

You get the idea. Then I took a long, hard look at my own card. It's various shades of blue, with a giant, multicoloured human eye taking up most of the room. In one indiscreet corner is my name and email address. That's it. It's eyecatching and pretty, and useful for giving to tipsy women at cocktail parties, but otherwise not exactly a great advertising boon for my business. After all, anyone finding such a card might incorrectly conclude that I'm an optometrist or graphic artist.

So now the debate rages in my little monkey brain: do I go with boring and corporate, or do I embrace artistic and fun? And this is where I conclude that while I will probably always be comfortable, I will likely never be stinking rich; because, in this subtle, small way, for me, being interesting is more important than being businesslike.

Some of the least productive and most frustrating times of my IT Manager career came just after those fateful words, “I need to create mailing labels for 400 envelopes, and I can’t get it to work.” Unfortunately, these projects usually started when someone sat down and typed in 400 names and addresses on their computer, and ended (for them!) at my door because the format of the data was all wrong.

It might have been a beautiful mailing list to the person holding it-nice columns, and everything lined up and fitting a maximum number of addresses on a page, but to anyone who has had to re-format or re-enter it all so that it can be manipulated as data, well, it’s just plain ugly.

Computer programs like to be able to recognise data boundaries. Where does the first address end, and the second begin? Which part is the postal code? What happens if there are two e-mail addresses, or none? The most elementary way many programs do this is to say that an entity ends at the end of a “line”. Typically that’s a paragraph in Word, or a row in Excel. If someone has entered addresses so that each one flows across several paragraphs or rows, then many advantages are lost. Within a line, it’s really nice if there’s an unambiguous way to separate the pieces of data: first name, last name, the pieces of the address, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and so on.

If you have data in an ugly format, it’s probably worth your while to make it readable. If you’re just starting out, enter it the right way first time.

Try to imagine all of the ways the data will be used: mailing labels, a printed directory, a page on the internal web-site, emergency call list etc. Some of these uses will require extra data, which should be added from the start. For instance, the people on the emergency call list should be uniquely identified. If you want to address the envelope “Dr. John Smith”; have a personalised letter which starts “Dear John”, and the internal directory listing “Smith, Dr. John”, then you should separate the salutation, first name and last name.

If thinking about all of this is making your head spin, now may be a good time to buy your favourite IT person a coffee, and get some advice. If you’re hanging in there, the coffee thing may still pay off, because (a) it never hurts to have a friend in IT and (b) there might be some things you haven’t thought of.

Want to go further? OK, fasten your seat belt.

• Decide on which program you will use. Access is most flexible, but it has a learning curve, and not everyone has a copy, so if you’re sharing the data, others may have problems. (It’s beyond the scope of this short article to go into details on Access.) Excel is next best as a data repository , but may not be good for presenting results. Word presents well, but has less data handling. A good combination which most people can relate to is storing data on Excel and creating output with Word. In a pinch, create the data in a Word table; but someone will need to copy and paste it to a Excel spreadsheet before you can use it in a mail merge.
• Each row of data should refer to one and only one set of data. For example, one address.
• Each column should contain only one type of data. Don’t put a fax number in an e-mail address column because the person only has a fax. (You may want to add a “Notes” column for this kind of exception.)
• Make one column for each data element (e.g. Salutation, First Name, Last Name) that you will need and never enter more than one data element in a cell. If the person has two phone numbers, enter only the main one, and put the other in Notes. If you want to capture an unlimited number of possible phone numbers (home, business, cell, fax etc.) then you’re reading the wrong article. You need a database or contact manager!

If you follow these rules, you’ll be in good shape for your next step. Your IT guy will be impressed with your formatting if you go there for help, or if you start to delve into the “Mailings” tab in Word (2007) you won’t find that you’ve already shot yourself in the foot and wasted two days entering data in the wrong (ugly) format.

As an administrative professional I receive many documents, emails, presentations and the like on a daily basis, but I have to admit that it often bothers me to look at these pieces of electronic copy. Electronic copy when its received from clients and business associates in the right format with good presentation are supposed to impress me, excite me, move me, present me with a call to action, in short make me want to do something but most of the time it does exactly the opposite. Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, poor sentence structure, and a total lack of consistency and presentation make me glance at it and if possible delete the electronic copy altogether. “Bad document days” are becoming all too common and here’s the catch, it doesn’t matter if the documents are coming from big businesses or small businesses, they are just showing up in my inbox practically pleading to be deleted and making me wonder if I really want to do business with any of these companies.

To Fluff or Not to Fluff? That is the ultimate question for any small business owner. Often times we as small business owners are in a hurry to “get things out the door”, but often we are so busy meeting deadlines that we forget everything that leaves our office is going to be seen by potential clients and business associates. Lest we not forget, some of our competition, we also forget that these documents are going to be speaking volumes about who we are and what we do. So, you need to ask yourself before sending that all important presentation or e-mail should I fluff the document or not.

Document Fluffing is easy and you don’t really have to do a whole lot to achieve an eye catching document or e-mail you just have to take an extra 5 or 10 minutes before you hit the send button.

Here are some easy and fast tips to help you fluff your way to document bliss:

• Ensure your document has proper page numbering, headers and footers including proper footnotes;
• Ensure your document has consistent alignment i.e. justified, left aligned, et al.;
• Ensure your document is using the same font set including the color of your font and in addition ensure that your font size is consistent including spacing between lines and paragraphs;
• Use paragraph markers to ensure that you have don’t have unwanted spaces and hard returns between words and paragraphs;
• Ensure bolding, italicizing, numbering and the like are consistent throughout the document, i.e. if you bold sub-headings make sure all sub-headings are bolded;
• Ensure that you do a full spell check before saving the document, reading documents with spelling errors can be difficult and uncomfortable for the reader;
• Think Global Changes when your fluffing your document.

Happy Fluffing!
“Fluffing a document is equivalent to finding true document happiness”

Do you feel lucky?

"I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity."
- Oprah Winfrey

Do you feel lucky? Are you one of those people who good things just happen to? People enter your life exactly as you need them, good opportunities are bubbling up all around. Or, maybe you're like the mother in the movie "Hollywood Bollywood" who is constantly throwing her hand to her forehead wailing "I'm so unlucky!" You find that people are out to get you; you always end up with the short end of the stick. Well, whatever you believe to be true for you - you're right.

The truth is that you make your own luck. While it is possible to bring more luck to your life, it is not as simple as finding that four leaf clover and keeping your fingers crossed. There are some specific steps you can take to make every day your lucky day.

Set your intention
What do you want to create in your life? If you had no limitations, what would your ideal life be? Think about all of the different pieces that would be in place. What would your career look like? What about your family life and your health? Would you be traveling? What contribution would you be making to the world? What would you be doing and who would you be doing it with? Think about all of these things and write down your ideal situation.

Assume you'll get what you want
Whatever your assumptions are, you'll gather evidence to prove yourself right. If you assume that people want to help you, you will find people to be especially helpful. If you assume that you deserve to be happy, successful and fulfilled, you will find yourself there in no time. If you assume that your dreams are totally possible, you will see fewer roadblocks along the way.

Follow your fears
Take a look at your current reality and ask yourself what the gap is between where you are and where you'd like to be. What are you afraid of? Commit to doing one thing that scares you every day. Set some boundaries at work that you're afraid to set. Have a tough conversation you've been avoiding having. Get off the couch and take up a new activity. Call up a role model and ask for some help. Tell 3 people every day what your dream is. The direct path to the life of your dreams is directly through your greatest fears

Open your eyes
Assume that opportunity is all around you. Stay open to new people, ideas, information. You will be amazed at the amount of synchronicity that begins to occur when you keep your head up and notice what's going on.

Once you have articulated your intention, chosen assumptions that serve you, taken regular leaps towards your fears and kept your eyes open to new opportunities all around you, you will very quickly find yourself taking major steps towards your ultimate life. Before you know it, you be surrounded by people saying "Your life is so great. You're so lucky." Then, you can simply smile and say "Thank you - I am lucky."

“Whatever happened to the values of humanity?”
- From the Black Eyed Peas’ song “Where Is the Love”

I just returned back from running my new favourite workshop called “Ignite Your Sales: Coaching to Results.” We had the national sales team of a hot media company gathered from across the country. After a powerful day of articulating their core individual purposes, examining the fears that stop them from playing their biggest games and articulating the vision for what they wanted to create, it was time to play with some powerful perspectives to help them achieve their goals. I really wanted to challenge them to step out of their comfort zones, so I asked;

“What if you fell in love with each and every one of your clients?”

We have Valentine’s Day upon us and we will be bombarded with images of love all around. For some reason it is acceptable to talk about the “L” word in our private lives, but it is considered taboo to mention it in professional settings. I think this is nothing short of tragic.

I invite you to use the plethora of pink and red around you this month as a reminder to find the love in the places you’re least expecting. Look at the people around you and see their humanity, rather than their title. Instead of “direct report,” “boss,” “potential sale,” or “thorn in my side” try looking for the humanity beneath the details of rank and role.

As you challenge yourself to find something fascinating and interesting about the people who surround you, you just might surprise yourself into discovering “funny,” “well-traveled,” “volunteer hockey coach” or “new best friend.”

The aches and pains you get after hours of working at your computer may be more hazardous than you think. Whether toiling away during a shift at the office or just surfing the Web, if you're not prepared you could slowly be doing damage to your body. Ergonomics has become a computer buzzword, and for good reason. Reports of Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI) have escalated over the years, as computers became a fixture in workplaces and homes everywhere. These injuries can create in problems in the neck, back, chest, shoulders, arms and hands.

But if you use a computer for eight hours a day you aren't necessarily destined to sustain an injury. Taking proper precautions can prevent pain and suffering down the road.

Your chair should give you good lower back support and be adjustable enough to permit you to keep both feet planted on the ground. This reduces pressure on the underside of your thighs and allows good blood circulation in your legs. Chair adjustments should also allow you to type with your upper arms hanging straight down from your shoulders and with your elbows bent at a 90-degree angle. A good chair isn't cheap, but considering the hours you're going to spend in it; it's worth investing in one that's comfortable and adjustable to meet your needs.

Your eyes will be one of the first things to feel strain after time in front of the computer. If they become irritated, get up and take a break for a few minutes. To help reduce irritation, keep the screen clean and adjust brightness and contrast as warranted. Set your monitor up at least two feet away and adjust it so that it is slightly below eye level. If the monitor cannot be positioned to avoid glare, you may want to purchase an anti-glare filter.

Finally, your hands and wrists are perhaps at the highest risk of fatigue and injury. Carpal tunnel syndrome is not specifically tied to computer use but is being diagnosed among computer users at an alarming rate.

When hands and wrists are subjected to repetitive strain, swelling may result that impinges on the median nerve, which runs through the bony carpal tunnel in the wrist. Early warning signs can be tingling or numbness, even hours after computer use, and they can lead to severe and debilitating pain. CST can sometimes require surgery.

Again, the key to avoiding such problems is keeping your body properly aligned. An adjustable chair can help keep your arms at a 90-degree angle in relation to your keyboard. But your wrists also need to be straight to reduce the possibility of injury. An adjustable computer desk or a desk with an adjustable keyboard and mouse tray can help, as can wrist rests for your keyboard and mouse. Wrist rests may take some getting used to as unnecessary stress is put on your wrists when you have to bend them to type or to use your mouse

Even if you are perfectly set up when you sit down at your computer, allow yourself breaks. It is repetitive actions and static positioning that cause strain or injury. Take a break at least once an hour, even if it's just to grab a beverage. Don't stay frozen in the same position or routine all day.