Most Recent Blog Posts
When You Shouldn’t Be Spending Time In *Or* On Your Business
I don't hate the E-Myth. In fact, I think it was a groundbreaking book when first published in 1985. However, these days, I think business requires a new paradigm.
It's not enough to work *in* your business. But, it's also not enough to spend time *on* your business. All the systems in the world, no matter how well-designed (or justified), won't give your business a soul, and they won't create a business that serves your customers well.
So, instead of spending time on your business or in your business, start spending time *with* your business. You spend time with your kids (if you have them). You spend times with your spouse/significant other/favorite people. You spend time with your dog/cat/iguana. Introducing Thrive Your Tribe
I've been working under The Write Exposure name since 2000. Originally, I was doing a lot of ghost writing for client newsletters. Within about 6 months, I'd moved into HTML email newsletter design.
By 2001, the business was more than 50% design, but by then I was attached to the business name. I had business cards, after all ;-).
So, I continued building a business called The Write Exposure. But, the name proved hard to spell over the phone, so I registered DesignDoodles.com so that I could give people an alternate, easy-to-spell name.
Making it Rain Inspiration: Kill Perfection
Welcome back to the imperfect series on finding inspiration when you're out of inspiration. Today's tip is short and sweet: Let it be imperfect.
All too often, we get caught up in the refinement stage, in the making things right, fixing them, perfecting them. It's easy to do--after all, we want to do our best work and we want things to be "just so" for other people. We want our readers to think well of us, but more than even that, we want to communicate clearly and not be misunderstood, we want our readers to have an easy time reading our articles, and we want our writing to make a mark on the world--all of which, we believe, only happens when we do "good work." How Taking the E-Myth too Seriously has Smothered the Economy
According to the E-Myth, there's no such thing as too many systems. But, here's the thing: creation requires chaos. When we strive to be too regimented, too systematized, too simplified, we give in to the illusion that any job can be done by any person and that skill, talent, and personality play no roll.
After all, can't anyone put Tab A into Slot B?
This plowing under, recycling, recession we're in has come about as proof. See, for too many years now, we've given in to doing things exactly as we're told. We tore out our kitchen counters and replaced them with granite, because the home improvement shows told us to. We tore down our businesses and restructured them so that "the people didn't matter." We "managed *around* the people." How to Write 20,000 Words in a Weekend
Last month, I won NaNoWriMo (participants write a 50,000 word novel in a month). While I'd decided to participate on the 1st of November, and even made a bit of progress throughout the month, on the final weekend, I was 20,000 words away from the 50,000 word goal.
So, I did what any sane, sensible person would do: decided I would write those final 20,000 words over the weekend. And then I did it.
Along the way, I learned a few lessons about writing faster, so read on to find out how you, too, can write 20,000 words in a weekend. Why Monitor Size Doesn’t Matter
You've heard the rumor: web users like 'em bigger. I use a 22" widescreen for design work. It's pretty great. But, it's also too much real estate for any one window so I usually use it as I would a dual monitor setup, which I've never been willing to make room on my desk for.
So, here's that that means: I'll give your site 800 pixels or so; if it doesn't fit, I growl (and either close your site or work around it, depending on how important that site is to what I'm doing). The good news is that most sites fit within 800 pixels. The bad news is those same sites are seeing my stats in their visitor logs and thinking, "Hey, should we be designing wider?' Making it Rain Inspiration: Be Honest
Think your article topic is a challenge? Try promising people inspiration and see just how quickly the writer's block sets in. And that brings us to our first two tips:
1) Get really, really honest. Have you noticed lately how much people are swinging between "Things are great!!" and "Times are hard." Sure, "the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function," (F. Scott Fitzgerald) BUT when it comes to creating content and staying inspired, you'll find integrity of thought goes a long way to ensuring output. Making it Rain Inspiration: Get Busy
If you're in an inspiration drought, there's one obvious way out: Make it rain. But how do you make it rain? Especially when you want not H2O to fall from the sky but big drifts of lovely, ready-to-go articles and content?
If all you need is a bundle of enjoyable exercises for getting creative in your writing, you're not in a drought, and you'll find these tips to be way too much work. Instead, get a copy of my tiny guide and ignore these tips. But if you're in a full-on, desperate drought, you're going to have to buckle down and sweat a little. The tips that follow won't be easy, if you do them right, but they will bring the rain when applied repeatedly. Are you suffering an inspiration drought?
You're as tired as I am of all this talk about the economy and what it means to small businesses, no doubt. And I bet you've rolled your eyes at that 60% of Americans think a depression is likely statistic that's been bandied about (and more or less made up/misquoted).
But that doesn't change this fact: you might be mired in your own inspiration drought. I was. And many of my clients are. So, know that if you've been feeling a lack of inspiration and enthusiasm in your business, know you're not alone.
The economy is hugely different today than it was in 1929. And these days, inspiration matters far more than it did back then. Face it, when people worked in factories, they didn't exactly have to be inspired to do their jobs each day. But, as more and more of us work in creative jobs, inspiration becomes a key commodity. 
