Your small business is like your car. It needs regular servicing to keep it running smoothly.

With the year rapidly drawing to a close, now’s the time to give your business a tune -up.

Here are 8 tips that’ll have your company running like a Rolls Royce in 2013.

1. Evaluate

Take a hard look at what’s  not working in your business and drop it.  It might be a marketing approach that has failed to generate leads. Or it might be fees that are too low to sustain your business.

Similarly, look at what’s working. How can you do more or improve on your success?  Maybe your  speaking engagements have been a great way of getting new clients. Consider offering more.

2. Declutter

Finding it hard to find the surface of your desk? Are there file folders and books stacked on the floor? Actually, it’s beginning to sound a lot like my office.

You’ll feel more organized and on top of things once you get rid of extraneous stuff. You don’t have to be a fanatic about it. A little order and spaciousness can go a long way.  Set aside a few minutes  a day and you’ll be surprised how much you can accomplish.

Just to let you know I’ve started my own decluttering. I do have a desk!

3. Bookkeeping

If you keep your receipts in a shoe box, it’s time to consider a bookkeeper or an accounting software program.

It’s critical that you have a clear picture of income, expenses, and profit. Without an ongoing snapshot of your financials you’ll never be able to accurately assess your company’s health.

4. Learn

Being a successful small business owner requires constantly upgrading  and learning new skills. Look for webinars, tutorials, expert speakers, and courses that will make a difference to your performance  in 2013.

For some great online training sites of interest to personal historians click here.

5. Connect

There’s a wealth of information and support to be found in professional  and small business associations.  For example, if you’re a personal historian and haven’t yet joined the Association of Personal Historians, make sure to join today.

6. Plan

Without a road map you’ll never know where you’re going.   Look ahead at the coming year and write down your goals. Keep them realistic. Grandiose plans are sure to fail and will leave you discouraged.

Check out Really Simple Goal Setting   for some excellent help.

7. Website

If you don’t have a website or blog, get one. If you have one, it’s time to take a critical look at it. How fresh is the content? How easy is it to navigate around the site? What’s missing? What can be discarded? How professional does it look?

You can find more on building a successful blog here.

8. Self-care

A healthy business needs a healthy owner. It’s easy to neglect your own care  when working hard to make a success of your business.

Make certain to schedule time for you in your day planner.  Whether it’s going to the gym or for a walk, meditating or reading a book, you need to give yourself permission to relax and recharge.

For more articles on taking care of yourself check these out:

• How to Stop The Clock And Make Time for Yourself.
• How to be Self-Employed and Stay Motivated.
• Are You Part of “The Great Vacationless Class”?

What are the things you do to get yourself and your business ready for a new year?

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If you’re a second-hand bookstore fan, you’ll enjoy reading Why second-hand bookshops are just my type in this week’s Monday’s Link Roundup.  And for an  evocative and highly original look at a slice of World War II history, be sure to view Ghosts of History: Dutch Artist Eerily Superimposes Modern Street Scenes on World War II Photos.

• Interactive Art Installation Encourages Writing In Library Books. “At Dixie College‘s new library in St. George, Utah, German multimedia artist Christian Moeller has revived the interactive nature of physical books in an increasingly digital age. Through his latest installation dubbed Clouds, Moeller has created a living work of art that aims to continue changing and growing by leveraging the ideas contributed by library-goers.”

• The Making of Motherwell. [Video] “If you love beautiful books, check out this marvelous video from the Dedalus Foundation, in which we see the production of Robert Motherwell Painting and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941–1991.”

• Why second-hand bookshops are just my type. “As bookshops are displaced by the internet, the author of a new work on serendipity describes the joys of delving in dusty shelves.”

• The Best Illustrated Children’s Books and Picturebooks of 2012.”On the heels of this year’s best science books, art books, design books, and philosophy and psychology books, the 2012 best-of reading lists continue with the annual roundup of the year’s ten-or-so most delightful children’s and picturebooks.”

• Before Passing Along Valuables, Passing Along Values. “Why legacies and life lessons are an increasingly important part of estate planning.” [ Thanks to David Adelman of Reel Tributes for alerting me to this item.]

• Ghosts of History: Dutch Artist Eerily Superimposes Modern Street Scenes on World War II Photos. “We all have our fascinations. Some of us are enamored of a particular historical era…Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse takes her interest in the 1930s to extraordinary lengths. She wears vintage clothing and attends 1930s-theme parties. She is also a historical consultant and expert on daily life from 1930-1945.”

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It gives me great pleasure to announce my fourth annual listing of the best personal history blogs of the year.

I’d like to pay special tribute to two blogs that have consistently shown up on the “best” list since 2009. They demonstrate what it means to be a dedicated blogger.  Please give a rousing cheer to Sharon Lippincott, The Heart and Craft of Life Writing, and Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnet, Women’s Memoirs.

My listing of the “Top” blogs  is based on each demonstrating:

• Frequent, consistent, and reliable posting.
• Personable and clear writing.
• Short scannable articles.
• Uncluttered pages.
• Use of graphics, photographs, and video.
  
• Intriguing and descriptive headlines.
• Useful content.

Without further ado, here are my picks for the top seven personal history blogs for 2012, ranked in alphabetical order.

Congratulations to everyone!

• DMB Picture. Owner  Debbie Mintz Brodsky describes her company as “a boutique video production company specializing in producing broadcast-quality personal stories for families, non-profits and small businesses.”

• The Heart and Craft of Life Writing. Owner Sharon Lippincott describes herself as  “…passionate about all forms of life writing, especially memoir and journaling.”

• The Memoir Writer’s Blog. Owner Denis Ledoux describes his blog as “helping people write family and personal stories…”

• Reel Tributes. Founded in Philadelphia, PA in 2010 by David Adelman. Reel Tributes describes their objective as, ” [delighting] our clients with a film that surpasses their expectations.”

• True Stories Well Told.  Owner Sarah White says, “Here’s where I share the thoughts I might bring up for class discussion. Here’s where I post the writings of my fearless, peerless, workshop participants. Here’s where I share stories from my own life, as well as my pet peeves, pointers, and personal observations. I hope to create the atmosphere you find in my classrooms.”

• Verissima Productions. Owners are Rob Cooper and Pam Pacelli Cooper. Pam says that she and Rob have a, “shared love of preserving history. .. we work to bring… stories to life so vividly that anyone watching will feel they are in the midst of the story as it’s being told.”

• Women’s Memoirs. Owners Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnet have put together a wealth of information that includes writing prompts, book reviews, and more. Women’s Memoirs is not strictly speaking a personal history site but there’s a lot of useful material  here for anyone involved in personal histories.

Photo by Kevin Dooley

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With Christmas near  I couldn’t resist including 1937-1966  ‘Post Early for Christmas’ posters in this Monday’s Link Roundup.  If you’re a nostalgia buff, don’t miss these. I’m a big fan of simple words when it comes to conveying a message so I was delighted to find this short animation, The Power of Simple Words.  If you’re planning to launch your business in 2013, take a look at  The Entrepreneur’s Handbook: 101 Resources for First Time Entrepreneurs. It contains a wealth of information.

• Can Immigrants Heal Through Storytelling? “Renowned journalist and storyteller Ira Glass says “Great stories happen to those who can tell them.” Newcomers to Canada have some of the richest stories of all;…Pah Wah was born in Burma (now Myanmar)…Her story was created in an innovative program from NYCH [North York Community House] called digital storytelling that captures the stories of newcomers to Canada.”

• 8 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Business From Home. “Launching a business from home can provide tremendous flexibility and the kind of work-life balance that we all crave. But the reality is that home businesses bring their own set of challenges, says Caroline Daniels, lecturer for entrepreneurship and technology at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. For example, “doing your business on your own from home can get stale. It’s hard to keep feeding the imagination all on your own.”

• 1937-1966 ‘Post Early for Christmas’ posters.  From the folks at Retronaut. Always fun!

• The Power of Simple Words.[Video] “Long, fancy words designed to show off your intelligence and vocabulary are all very well, but they aren’t always the best words. In this short, playful video Terin Izil explains why simple, punchy language is often the clearest way to convey a message.”

• Library of Congress releases 1,600 brilliant photos of America’s World War II-era past. ” A government photo album is giving viewers a rare invitation into America’s colorful past. The Library of Congress has released over 1,600 color images of American society, all snapped during the World War II era.The nostalgic photos, taken between 1939 and 1944, give viewers a look at different slices of life in the then-48 states, from women working at an airplane plant in California to farmers surveying their property in New Mexico.”

• The Entrepreneur’s Handbook: 101 Resources for First Time Entrepreneurs. “Are you looking to take the leap into starting your own business in [2013]? If you’re just starting to think about it, or if you have been planning it for a while, you still may have lots of unanswered questions. The following 101 resources will help you learn more about entrepreneurship, startups, small business, and much more.”

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If you don’t know where you’re going…you might not get there. ~ Yogi Berra

Recently I walked a labyrinth. I don’t do this regularly. But I was attending a silent weekend  Buddhist retreat and outside the retreat center was a large labyrinth.

You can find business lessons almost anywhere.

I became aware that walking the labyrinth was akin to establishing and running a successful personal history business. There is a beginning with all the anticipation of the journey ahead. And there’s an end goal of a flourishing business.  And the distance between these two points  is not a straight line but a series of intricate interconnecting paths.

What does a labyrinth  have to teach us about running a successful personal history business?

Have a plan

You need to know where you’re going and how to get there.

In a labyrinth, just as you’re about to reach your destination,  the path veers off and you find yourself moving away.  But you trust if you keep following it, you’ll eventually reach your goal. And you do.

Similarly,  in your personal history business you need to have a clearly marked path. It starts with having in place a workable business plan that will give you confidence to get through through the inevitable twists and turns your business will take.

Don’t give up

Like the twisting path of the  labyrinth, you’ll  encounter setbacks in your business. It’s easy to get discouraged. But if you have a solid business plan and are committed to reaching your goal, then you’ll be encouraged to continue, knowing that success can be yours.

Take time for reflection

Walking a labyrinth is in part an exercise in reflection. The mind is focused on the path, allowing some of the busyness of your life to settle. You can see more clearly.

Running your personal history business can  seem overwhelming at times. There’s so much to do and so little time to do it. But  successful business owners take time to examine where their company has been, where it’s going, and what changes need to be made to keep on track.

Make time to reflect on the health of your business.

Conclusion

Having a sound and wise path to follow in life and in business is the trick to  happiness. There is no one path. You’ll need to determine what’s right for you. Once you’ve chosen your path,  set out with joy, courage, and humbleness.

And remember what Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you’re going…you might not get there.“

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Photo by Jim Champion

In this week’s Monday’s Link Roundup, if you’re an introvert like me, you’ll want to read 5 Ways an Introvert Can Build a Thriving Audience Online.  And for a unique perspective on capturing personal histories, take a look at Photos of Very Old, Very Loved Teddy Bears.

• The Dual Lives of the Biographer. “The biographer has two lives: The one she leads, and the one she ultimately understands. The first is a muddle of misgivings and misapprehensions, hesitations and half-chances, devoted to the baggage carousel or the Netflix queue or wherever the empty calories of existence are served. The second — the life the biographer pins to the page — has themes. It has chapters, a beginning, middle and end. Intentions align with actions, which bloom into logical consequences.”

• Why Low Self-Worth Drives Lower Wages for Women Freelancers — and What You Can Do About It. “…female freelancers earn more per hour than do their male counterparts at almost every rate level from $20 to $59. And, at $60 to $99 per hour, men and women are just about equal. But as soon as you get to the $100, $150 and $200+ per hour ranges, men are consistently outearning women.” [Thanks to cj madigan of Shoebox Stories for alerting me to this item.]

• The Best Design Books of 2012. “From Marshall McLuhan to Frank Lloyd Wright, or what vintage type has to do with the evolution of iconic logos.”

• Pranks, Ghosts, And Gore: Amazing Photo Manipulations Before Photoshop.”New York’s Metropolitan Museum is the largest (and at 150 years old, almost the oldest) museum of art in America, exhibiting some of the best examples of pre-Modern art this side of Europe. Which makes it a fascinating stage for a current exhibit examining the legacy of Photoshop, a tool that has done much to undermine traditional thinking about photography over the past decade.”

• 5 Ways an Introvert Can Build a Thriving Audience Online. “Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, clarifies that introversion is different from shyness, which is a fear of social judgment. Introversion simply means you are more energized and at your best in less stimulating and quieter environments. So, how can introversion help you achieve world domination, how can you — the introvert — capture the hearts, minds, and trust of an audience?”

• Photos of Very Old, Very Loved Teddy Bears. “For his MuchLoved series, photographer Mark Nixon has shot minimalistic portraits of some well-loved stuffed toys and collected their stories. Spotted by Laughing Squid and on view now at the Mark Nixon / STUDIO in Dublin, Ireland, here are some of plush friends loved a little too well. I mean, seriously, some of them are missing limbs and have their woolen little guts spilling out. That’s, uh, some lovin’ right there.”

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At 86 Tony Bennett is an inspiration. Besides his  latest album Viva Duets and just published memoir Life is a Gift , Bennett continues to tour.  How does he do all this without getting burnt out? The answer comes in an interview he gave Jacob Richler in Zoomer magazine. He said,…Read more.

The other day I was asked if I had any ideas about writing the biography of a dead family member. This struck a responsive chord in me. For some time I’ve wanted to write  about my mother’s father, my grandfather. He was only thirty-two when he died in 1920. A Winnipeg fire fighter, he succumbed to the great flu pandemic that was sweeping the world. My mother was only two when he died and she had few stories about him…Read more.

In this week’s Monday’s Link Roundup, don’t miss I Will always be there with you. If you teach Ethical Will writing or are thinking of composing your own, this letter from an American soldier is a must read.  Given the recent destruction brought on by Hurricane Sandy, you’ll find some timely advice in Emergency Salvage of Flood Damaged Family Papers. Finally, someone has touched on what is missing for me with an e-reader. If you feel the same, take a moment to read Out of Touch: E-reading isn’t reading.

• Joan Didion on Keeping a Notebook. “As a lover — and keeper — of diaries and notebooks, I find myself returning again and again to the question of what compels us — what propels us — to record our impressions of the present moment in all their fragile subjectivity. From Joan Didion’s 1968 anthology Slouching Towards Bethlehem (public library — the same volume that gave us her timeless meditation on self-respect — comes a wonderful essay titled “On Keeping a Notebook,” in which Didion considers precisely that.”

• Social Media Isn’t Dead: It’s Boring. “Social media are a set of tools. They’re not all that interesting to talk about in and of themselves. The “gee whiz” has left the station. We want to talk about action– or if you’ll pardon the self-reference, impact. There are details and technologies you must master if you want to succeed. But that’s the keyboard-level and tactical part of what you’ll do. We wanted to give you something more encompassing.The strategies around and behind The Impact Equation boil down to 5 Cs.”

• Emergency Salvage of Flood Damaged Family Papers. [National Archives] “During the mid-west floods of 1993, the staff of the National Archives developed some technical tips to guide individuals in emergency stabilization and salvage of damaged documents, photographs, books, and other personal papers. It is important to note that flood damage to some items may be irreversible. The treatment of objects of high monetary, historic, or sentimental value should only be performed in consultation with a conservator.”

• New eBook: Bring Your Ancestors to Life Using Newspapers. “EasyFamilyHistory.com has announced a new e-book by Paul Larsen called Bring Your Ancestors to Life Using Newspapers. The announcement for the new book states, “Archived newspapers allow you to tap into a reliable source of hundreds of years of history, and give you the remarkable ability to see it through eyewitness accounts. You can easily explore your family tree and bring your family history to life for free using historical newspapers… if you know where to look.”

• Out of Touch: E-reading isn’t reading. “Amid the seemingly endless debates today about the future of reading, there remains one salient, yet often overlooked fact: Reading isn’t only a matter of our brains; it’s something that we do with our bodies.”

• Google engineer builds $1,500 page-turning scanner out of sheet metal and a vacuum. “For the past eight years, Google has been working on digitizing the world’s 130 million or so unique books. While the pace of new additions to the Google Books initiative has been slowing down, members of the team have come up with a new automated scanner design that could both make the project much more cost efficient and give everyone with $1,500 and a little know-how access to a page-turning scanner of their very own. In the video below, Google Books engineer Dany Qumsiyeh presents the prototype design that he and other teammates created during the “20 percent time” that Google (and now Apple, among others) allocates for personal projects, showing the design challenges he overcame along the way.”

• I Will always be there with you. On May 1st of 2003, just weeks after being deployed to Iraq, Army Pfc. Jesse A. Givens, of Springfield, Missouri was killed when his tank fell into the Euphrates river. He was 34-years-old. Shortly after his death, the following farewell letter was delivered to his bereaved wife, Melissa, and his 6-year-old stepson, Dakota (“Toad”).

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In this Monday’s Link Roundup I couldn’t resist Photographer Turns His Grandmother Into a Not-Yet-Retired Superhero.  Forget the video and book legacies. It’s time to break out the spandex! And speaking of grandmothers, take a look at Arlington’s Martha Ann Miller, 101, publishes her autobiography, just as she said she would.  Now there’s no excuse not to start writing your memoir. If you’re working up a sweat over your work, take a look at Effortless. Seth Godin always seems to say so much in so little a space.

• Untrack: Letting Go of the Stress of Measuring. “There are a few old management adages that seem to run like a current through our society, powering our work and personal lives: “You can’t manage what you don’t measure” and “You are what you measure” and “You get what you measure”. And I’ve fallen for it myself…Measurement and tracking are tools, and there’s nothing wrong with using them. I’ve obviously used them many times, and still recommend them to most people. I just think we should consider whether there are alternatives, and question our dogma, and experiment to see what works best for us.”

• Effortless. “Sometimes, “never let them see you sweat,” is truly bad advice. The work of an individual who cares often exposes the grit and determination and effort that it takes to be present.”

• Photographer Turns His Grandmother Into a Not-Yet-Retired Superhero. “When most people try to lighten their grandmothers’ spirits, the effort often takes the form of Sunday afternoon phone calls and perhaps the occasional visit. Not so with Sacha Goldberger, however. After the French fashion and advertising photographer found out his nonagenarian grandmother was feeling blue, he came up with a rather adventurous solution for restoring her good cheer: spandex. He decided to enlist her to save the world, or at least depict her doing so on film.”

• Arlington’s Martha Ann Miller, 101, publishes her autobiography, just as she said she would. “When a 100-year-old woman tells you she’s writing her autobiography, you nod politely and think, “Yeah, right.” So here’s Martha Ann Miller of Arlington, now 101, and here’s her polished, published autobiography: 255 pages with great photos throughout, featuring the inside story of how Arlington became the first district in Virginia to desegregate its schools. And how Miller was one of the first teachers to participate in that desegregation.”[Thanks to Pat McNees of Writers and Editors for alerting me to this item.]

• Baby boomers are obsessing publicly about their mortality. “Not only are baby boomers getting old, many of them are hearing bad news from their doctors. And as with everything else that has happened to them – careers, marriage, children, divorce – they are obsessing about their mortality, and often in public. Many of them are even preparing pre-death testimonials so that they can control their posthumous images.”

• Personal memoir as social history. “[The World in Our Time]… is a memoir par excellence. It recaptures the life-experience of one of India’s leading historians, who experienced the mutation of India’s rural society under colonialism and then witnessed his country’s birth as an independent nation, associated as it was, with some of the most painful facets of human experience. But each turning point in the author’s life is presented with a historical hindsight, which also makes the memoir a history of his time.”

• Famous Canadians, revived by their obituaries. “As cub reporters, we felt sorry for the veterans of the newsroom when they were relegated to writing obituaries, presumably as a preamble to their own professional demise. Globe and Mail features writer Sandra Martin’s Working the Dead Beat: 50 Lives that Changed Canada, thoroughly demonstrates how wrong we were: Capturing the landscape of an entire life in a single column, on deadline, is among the most challenging – and sacred – of assignments.”

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