The First 20 Hours

At this point in all things internet and entrepreneurship most people have heard about the 10,000 hours rule. It's a mantra that says that to be an expert or a master in anything it takes 10,000 hours worth of practice and experience. That's a lot of hours. It ends up being pretty close to about 10 years if you break it up evenly per day. 

When you are running your business, starting a business or even just trying to be savvier about your personal finances - it's tough to think that you might not be an expert for 10 years. While I agree that within that time you will definitely achieve that "mastery" status and that it's absolutely possible to love something enough to throw that many hours at it, I don't think it's efficient. Not only is it not efficient but when it comes to trying to learn new things or develop new skills to offer as a service let's say it's not very feasible. 

This is why I loved Josh Kaufman's TED Talk about The First 20 Hours. In a nutshell he says that if you practice something, dedicated practice, for 20 hours you can be proficient enough to be a real resource. Anything from playing an instrument to bettering your SEO skills as an internet marketer. It's in those 20 hours that we develop the skills necessary to have command over a new skill set. 

As you can probably guess this week has been a big week for me in terms of my consumption of TED Talks. Also HBR's podcast the Ideacast. Give Josh a watch today because watching something is way better than reading and see what you might be able to add to your tool-box-of-awesome with an extra 20 hours of practice. 

Beat Your Entrepreneurial Funk

I’ve been getting a lot of questions around motivation lately from entrepreneurs and small businesses. The most common issues are around finding motivation when you’re feeling a little down. When you are an entrepreneur or a solopreneur emotional swings can have a huge impact on productivity. I know that personally when I was first starting out it, feeling down was sometimes borderline paralyzing after a really bad day. Feeling down could be from a missed sale, feedback that wasn’t great, or maybe you are falling behind on a schedule. This post has 5 tips to help you beat a funk and keep you focused so that you don’t miss any opportunities with your business.

1. Avoid Isolation! If you are in a funk the worst thing you can possibly do is sit staring at your computer alone in your office, or wherever it is that you are doing work. Isolation makes it easy for negativity to linger and fester which increases stress, makes you more prone to distractions, and even just walking away (mentally and physically) from your responsibilities. If you have deadlines to meet and you need to get to work then get to a place where other people are. coffee shops, co-working spaces, or even a colleague's office/work space. A bad day emotionally can have a real impact on productivity so think back to those elementary school field trips and utilize the buddy system.

2. Make a list. In order to get through a tough day it’s important to try to get to the root of why it’s a tough day. An emotional funk can be hard to kick if you don’t try to tackle it objectively and analytically. You need to be able to articulate your expectations and analyze how what you're actually doing is or is not contributing meeting your expectations. Use that list to figure out what you might need to work on and then go do it. The idea is to combat those bad or unmotivated feelings with small actions that will continually build to outcomes that you want to see. Plus everyone loves a little momentum.

3. Learn something new. I’m not saying that you need to go out and be an expert in something new. And this is not supposed to distract you from the really important stuff. The idea here is to use your funk to help you figure out where you might benefit from getting a little learn on. Learning new things helps to jumpstart your brain and can arm you with a new trick or two to tackle any obstacles that contributed to your funk. When we learn new things or take time to do a little investment in ourselves we work on moving ourselves closer to self-actualization which is a big deal for the entrepreneur or solopreneur.

4. Do not compare yourself to your colleagues, competitors, or even mentors! This is a big one and one that I have to stay hypervigilant of for myself. When you are in a slump it’s easy to jump on the web, distract yourself, and compare yourself to other people. Doing this has definitely got the best of me once or twice. All it does it perpetuate the bad feelings and make it easier for more unmotivating stuff to creep in. It will only prolong the funk! You’ll start measuring your success or perceived lack of it against people you may know or know of and that will definitely keep the winds out of your sails. We all make choices and are presented with different resources, opportunities, and challenges. How you get to where you want to be will be a very different path than anyone else - even if you are looking to achieve the same things.  What you can do is think about your vision or goals and work on a plan to help get you from what you are experiencing now to where you want to be. Focus on you!!

5. Watch this Ted Talk :) Just in case the first 4 points weren’t enough here’s an awesome Ted Talk all about helping you get motivated.

Go Blog Or Go Home!

Blogging is big business these days. It’s not just big business but it’s crucial to connecting with your stakeholders. Social media is always going to be an incredibly useful tool but it’s through longer form blogging that you will get to know people better. It’s in this reader/writer relationship that people get the opportunity to get to know and like you. People have to like you before they trust you and they need to trust you before they will ever consider buying from you. Speaking personally I’ve been blogging here for over 3 years before I launched my first ebook. It was important for me to establish myself as a trusted resource and information source before offering to give more specific advice and actionable business solutions through After the Honeymoon: Success After the Start Up.

I am by no means a blogging expert. I would love more of my living to come from blogging but I can honestly say that I’m still learning as I go. I should have probably started by saying that. I blog because it gives me the opportunity to share really interesting and useful information around personal finance, budgeting, and entrepreneurship. My Big 3.

You’ve probably noticed that I don’t put nearly as much time as I should into SEO and making sure that my keywords are perfect for search engines. It’s not that I don’t want to, I would rather spend the time looking for cool stuff to share. This post is a resource for me and something that I thought any blogger could use to help better establish their voice and their brand. Without visitors actually coming to the blog it can be tough to help people.

I came across another infographic that I thought was definitely worth sharing because it’s a great resource to help you spread the word about your blog. Like I said, just creating amazing content isn’t going to be enough you have to work on getting people there. Something I have been learning the hard way! I’ve made my way through this infographic and even checked out some of the resources it lists to help spread the word. Definitely worth a few minutes and a little exploration.

After you take a look I would love to hear about any tips or tricks you have that might not have been in this infographic for getting your blog out there? What tools do you use to help spread your voice?

Home Energy Savings

It's summer time in the US and that means that A/C's are going to start cranking all over the country. At the very least I'll have a few running - I blame the poor air circulation for that. Poor air circulation and the amount of heat that my hardware generates in my office. That is inevitably going to lead to a spike in some utility bills this summer. For you today I present a great infographic with some tips to help you curb your utility spending this summer and still save for the things you really want in your financial plan. 

I can't stress this kind of planning enough. Budgeting and creating spending plans are great. But one of the things that we, as consumers, overlook is the impact of small changes in our "fixed" expenses. Just because you know you are on the hook for your water, electricity, and gas/oil bills doesn't mean you can't chip away at them. The goal is to free up as much cash as possible to help your financial plan or budget do what it was really supposed to do! 

Enjoy!! 

Enveloping and Budgeting

Today’s post is a little personal. I thought I would change it up and show you all how I’m changing gears a little bit in my own financial planning and budgeting.

I love my budgets and the financial systems that I have in place to help me keep track of my personal finances but I need a change. I started to find myself slipping with my savings. I would rationalize purchases and found myself going into accounts more and more and making little transfers. So, I’m going back to enveloping for a bit.

We are into June now so I took this opportunity to really re-evaluate my personal financial plan. I think everyone should take some time to do it now. In fact, I recommend it! I went back through my early year resolutions, goals, and systems to see if I was still on track. For the most part I was but like I said; I felt myself slipping.

Enveloping is a way to budget that can involve physical envelopes. If you are digital you can think of it as separate bank accounts for various goals and expenses. I’m sticking with the tangible envelopes. I’m not totally throwing away all my hard work from earlier in the year though - the systems I have in place will stay but they will be modified a bit. My goal is to add a few extra steps in my financial plan and budgeting to hopefully curb my rationalizing and to help keep me honest.

What inspired me to use this method was an app I’m using to keep track of my daily food and calorie intake. The extra steps of having to record what I eat and seeing what that effect is on my daily, weekly, and monthly health goals has seriously been a bad habit breaker. (If you’re wondering it’s called “My Fitness Pal”.) I have a few goals that I would like to achieve by using this method and I really encourage you to set some for yourself:

1. Increase my savings rate by 10% - 20%. I’m hoping that this system will be a bit of a deterrent as it’s going to add steps to the availability of my liquid funds. Even though I have adjusted my budget to a bit I still want to squeeze just a little more out of my savings.

2. Long Term Reward Envelope. I was doing some leisurely reading via a few behavioral economics white papers and kept seeing points made about instant gratification. Behavioral Economists believe that sometimes, even though we rationally know that waiting might mean a higher payout, we take the lower payout if it’s an instant one because it satisfies us on a psychological level. I know that recently I’ve had a habit of looking for the quick payouts so I’m hoping this envelope will help me curb that and help me treat me to something nice!

3. Spend more with cash. I love my instant and automated transfers and using my debit card but I think it desensitized me a bit over the last half year. I know this might sound silly but I’m looking forward to using cash a little more with the hopes of traumatizing myself. I know that physically parting with cash will have a much deeper impact on my spending than just swiping a debit card.

Those are my goals for enveloping and if you are trying to shake things up in your budget it might be something fun to try! I would love to know if you are doing anything different for the summer or if you have revisited any earlier plans you set in motion? Let’s chat about it!!