Tag Archives: home business

Monday’s Link Roundup.

There’s some excellent practical advice in this Monday’s Link Roundup.  Because I have a home office, I found How to Set Personal Boundaries When You Work From Home a useful reminder of how to cope with the competing demands of work and domestic life.  C.J. Hayden’s article What if you were wrong about marketing? is a great method of challenging assumptions about the subject.

  • Words in stone and on the wind. “After I wrote, in a recent Wall Street Journal article, about the malleability of text in electronic books, a reader asked me to flesh out my thoughts about the different ways that “typographical fixity” – to again borrow Elizabeth Eisenstein’s term – can manifest itself in a book.”
  • How to Set Personal Boundaries When You Work From Home. “…the challenges of working from home can sometimes make life/work balance seem unattainable. You may feel like you are constantly being pulled towards both family and work commitments–a bit like being in the middle of a tug-of-war. One answer that can help you achieve better balance between your work and personal life is boundaries.”
  • What happened to the former slave that wrote his old master? “You know that letter from former slave Jourdon Anderson to his old master that’s been going around? First of all, it’s good and you should read it…David Galbraith poked around a bit and found a record of Anderson still living in Ohio at the time of the 1900 census as “Jordan Anderson”…At the time, Anderson and his wife Mandy were in their 70s and had been married for 52 years. Mandy had borne 11 children, six of whom were still living…”
  • In the Footsteps of Giants. “Biographer Michael Scammell has devoted much of his long career to writing about two of the 20th century’s foremost intellectuals, whose impassioned writings defined in human and moral terms the stakes in the struggle against communism. Scammell’s book about the Nobel Prize–winning dissident Russian writer Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, published in 1984, was the first major biography to shed light on this towering yet secretive figure. Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic, which came out last year to much acclaim, revived the reputation of the protean Hungarian writer Arthur Koestler, best known for his 1940 anti-totalitarian novel Darkness at Noon…Writer and translator Michael McDonald interviews Scammell about his life and work.”
  • How to Become the Person Everyone Wants to Interview. “You need to establish yourself as an expert, and getting interviewed by radio, podcast or TV hosts can help you do just that. So, here is how you can help speed up the process by positioning yourself as a subject matter expert.”
  • What if you were wrong about marketing? “Lately, I’ve been playing the “what if you were wrong” game with my coaching clients…questioning your assumptions about marketing can lead to designing a much more solid strategy. You can try asking yourself what if you were wrong, but it can be even more powerful to have a friend, colleague, or coach ask you.”

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The 3 Keys to a Successful Personal History Business.

A successful personal history business is like a three-legged stool. Take away one leg and you fall on your butt.

So what are the three legs? Simply put, they’re passion, perseverance, and planning or the 3P’s as I like to call them.

1. Passion

Merriam-Webster defines passion as a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept.

You’ve got to have a strong desire to tell people’s stories. It’s what makes you want to get up in the morning and get to work. It’s what gives you that extra boost to push you through the hard times. And believe me, there will be hard times.

Without passion you’ll find your work  becomes a chore. Your lack of enthusiasm will inevitably lead to fewer and fewer clients finding their way to your door.

Passion is the juice that keeps you going.

2. Perseverance

Perseverance is that ability to keep going in spite of setback and difficulties. It gives your passion its backbone.

Research from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that “most failures of American startups will occur in the first two years of their existence.”

If you’re expecting to turn a profit within a year, you’ll be sorely disappointed. It’ll take at least two years or more to get your personal history business up and running.

Without perseverance it’s all too easy to give up when the going gets tough.

3. Planning

Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. (Sir John Harvey-Jones)

There’s wisdom in Sir John’s  tongue-in-cheek put down.  It’s true that  doing something is much more fun than planning. That’s why I suspect many small business owners don’t have a business plan.

But if you don’t have a business plan, it doesn’t matter how much passion and perseverance you have, you’re rudderless and you’ll almost certainly run aground.

I’m not suggesting you have to take a year to write a 40 page monster plan. What you need is something that’s relatively simple. According to WiseBread your plan should address such questions as:

  • What’s my product or service?
  • Who are my clients?
  • How will I reach my clients?
  • What are my goals over the next 3, 6, and 12 month period?
  • What are my fixed, variable, and capital expenses?
  • How much do I have to charge to make a profit?

For more help on planning check out these resources:

Conclusion

I see newcomers who go into the personal history business, full of passion for helping people tell their stories. This is  good but it’s not enough. It’s just one leg on our three-legged stool. Without the other legs of perseverance and planning some of these same people sadly give up their dream.

What leg on your personal history stool is wobbly? Please share your thoughts by writing a line or two in the comment box below.

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Monday’s Link Roundup.

Laughter is therapeutic. In this Monday’s Link Roundup you’re sure to brighten your day by watching, Who Says Machines Must Be Useful? Another whimsical piece to make you smile and think is The Bookshelf Rethought: 5 Innovative Designs.  Be sure to check out Master brings books back to life. Paul Tronson, a master bookbinder, has spent 30 years trying to bring traditional bookbinding back as an art form.

  • A social media update from beyond the grave. “While virtual memorial websites have been around since the mid-1990s, traditionally they’ve helped the living venerate the dead. The latest crop, including I-Postmortem, a Silicon Valley start-up launched last fall, encourages the living to commemorate themselves, essentially writing their own obituaries.”
  • How To Work From Home Like You Mean It. “I’ve been working from home, a few different homes, since late 2007. And the biggest thing I’ve learned during those four years is that working from home doesn’t have to change how you get work done, but it does change nearly everything else about your gig.”
  • The Secret Bookstore. “Watch this beautiful video about Brazenhead Books, a secret bookstore that’s been tucked away in Michael Seidenberg’s apartment on the Upper East Side ever since the rent for his original retail space in Brooklyn was quadrupled.”
  • Who Says Machines Must Be Useful? “On the roof of a small row house in Brooklyn, a black powder fuse flared brightly against the gray sky. Hissing and sparking, it burned through a platform installed inside a repurposed Ikea bookshelf, sending four colored balls into action, lighting camp stoves, swinging fly swatters and knocking over books in a frenetic burst of organized chaos. In less than a minute, the final ball had dropped to the ground and was pocketed by Joseph Herscher, 26, the kinetic artist behind this real-world Rube Goldberg machine.”
  • An Author Explores Unique Codes to Enhance Memoir Experience. “Last week, Women’s Memoirs published an interview with memoir author Jenny Lynn Anderson, author of Room 939: 15 Minutes of Horror, 20 Years of Healing. When we looked at her book, we loved the innovative use she made of Quick Response codes.”
  • The Bookshelf Rethought: 5 Innovative Designs. “We love books. We love design. And we love the intersection of the two. Some time ago, we looked at five examples of public library innovation. But what about the personal library? Today, we’re turning to five gorgeous bookshelves that put a twist on your home library with ingenuity and design innovation.”
  • Master brings books back to life. “At the top of a narrow staircase on Sidney’s Beacon Avenue is a studio filled with vegetable-tanned leathers, tall glass jars of fermented dyes from plant extracts and a handcut lay press dating to about 1540.These are the tools and materials that master bookbinder Paul Tronson uses to bring rare books back to life.”

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12 Ways to Ensure Your Personal History Business Fails.

[A tip of the hat to Laura Spencer at Freelance Folder for inspiring this post.]

Ever get a “teensy” bit tired of all those gung-ho blogs dedicated to productivity and success? It’s time for some balance. Let’s talk about good old-fashioned failure. For all you personal historians who are  run off your feet with  clients’ demands, here’s your escape plan. Follow these 12 tips and you  can’t help but fail successfully.

Do you have some great failure tips? Let me know.

  1. Don’t listen to clients. This is perhaps the most important step. You’re the one with experience, not your clients. Forget what they think they want. You know best. The sooner you turn a deaf ear to their wishes, the quicker you can lose them and fail.
  2. Keep clients waiting. You don’t want to look too eager. Leave that e-mail reply and return telephone call until you feel in the mood. It’s less stressful and gives the impression you’re too busy to get back to them. Remember the longer you wait, the better the chance of failure.
  3. Stop marketing. It’s not fun anyway. If people don’t know about you, then you won’t be bothered by pesky clients. Failure is guaranteed.
  4. Enroll in courses, workshops, and seminars. The trick here is to load up your plate with as many educational opportunities as you can squeeze into a day. This not only makes you terribly busy but leaves absolutely no time for clients.
  5. Rate yourself with other more successful business owners. Nothing can make you feel more depressed than comparing your own efforts with successful entrepreneurs. The more despondent about your own business, the quicker you can give up.
  6. Watch daytime television. Who says there’s nothing on daytime TV? It’s jam-packed with entertaining shows. Better yet, find a few programs with an educational bent. You know, the ones about home makeovers and cooking. That way you can convince yourself that you’re gaining valuable knowledge while glued to the set for hours on end.
  7. Fake competence. Assure clients that you’re capable of delivering on any type of personal history format their heart desires.  Never produced a video biography? No problem. Never created a book? Piece of cake. The results  will inevitably disappoint your client and ensure that bad word of mouth will drive others away.
  8. Fail to meet deadlines. People are much too obsessed with deadlines. Not to worry. You’ll deliver when you can. No need to add stress to your life. As a bonus client killer, don’t bother returning their calls. They probably just want to find out when their project will be delivered.
  9. Spend your day on Facebook and Twitter. It’s so important to keep abreast of your friends’ activities and let them know your latest news. Working on your client’s project really eats into important social networking time.
  10. Attend to household chores. Working from home allows you to see what needs to be done. Your office calls out for a major clean-up. The kitchen could use a new paint job. Put your client’s work on hold. After all, your needs are just as important as theirs.
  11. Over promise and under deliver. Clients can be far too picky.  When you told clients they could include as many photographs as they wanted in their book, you didn’t literally mean that. Really, it just takes too much time to scan all those images. Select a sample of ten photos. This is sure to disappoint your client.  Bingo! Someone else who’ll help drive people away from your services.
  12. Don’t ask for referrals. Why do you want more clients? You need time to work on your hobbies and household chores. There’s no room for more clients. Besides, asking for referrals just seems so needy.

Photo by James Jordan

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