This is Week 30 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week here and at the Marketing Mix blog.
Nothing will show you what is and isn’t working about your habits like throwing the bright light of travel on them.
I spent the last 10 days on the road, in Chicago, teaching people about marketing (and, irony of ironies, focus and workflow management) while learning even more about myself.
Before I dump on myself about what isn’t working—and really, I hope I can doing without dumping on myself!—I’ll go over what astonished me by how well it worked.
Stuff that went really, really well
Scheduling appropriately It seems I may have learned my lesson from my brush with severe exhaustion and illness earlier this year. Ordinarily, I would have slotted in three times as many appointments as I did on this trip. In addition to my work-work—this time, a consulting gig and the workshop with Pamela Slim (which was AWESOME, and I’m sorry you missed it, if you did)—I always have plenty of people I want to catch up with in town, since I grew up in Chicago and also spent some of my adult work life there. But because these were big, important gigs and because I’d gotten sick on my last big trips, I decided to scale way, way back and leave plenty of time for rest, for getting around and for taking care of my other, regular work: writing, blog posts, development phone calls.
As it happened, over the first weekend, there was an unexpected death in the family of a close friend. Because I’d left a little maneuvering room for myself, I was able to devote most of one day to attending the memorial service a couple of hours away in Milwaukee without being a nervous, overextended wreck (something I’m sure everyone appreciated, under the circumstances).
Overall, I was pleased both at how much I was able to accomplish and the quality of the work, and I think it was directly attributable to my not being a crazed nutcase.
Putting money in the right places Because I’m from Chicago and because I have generous friends with spacious condos there, I generally have my lodging covered when I’m in town. However, after doing the time math (the day before I was scheduled to leave!), I opted to pay a hefty price for the convenience of staying in the hotel where the 8:30am workshop with Pam was going to be held. Trust me—like you, I hate parting with a dime that I don’t have to. And technically, I didn’t have to: my friends live a short cab ride away, doable in the morning. But when I pictured myself tweaking the presentation the night before in the quiet of a private room vs. late-late at night after my host had gone to bed, I busted out that Visa card and did the right thing. Which I’m so glad I did. I was rested and refreshed and as confident as I could be the next day, rather than frazzled and/or with a split focus.
Sometimes it pays to invest in your business even when you don’t strictly have to. (Hint: if you’ve been on the fence about signing up for the Creative Freelancer Conference next month because it’s a “non-essential” item, you might want to reflect on the investment angle.)
A little insistence on the planning end Okay, I confess: I’m a convert to this cold calling/asking for what you want thing. Well, medium-cold calling.
After all, a huge part of the reason I had a rewarding trip both from a financial and growth perspective is because I basically talked my way into both gigs: when I read about Pam’s workshop, I reached out to her about the possibility of c0-teaching it with her; when I realized I’d have a lot more time than income-generating activity to fill it, I reached out once more, this time to a prospect whom I’ve wanted to work with since I met her last fall. And then, when communication got fuzzy, rather than give up, I followed up with our mutual acquaintance (my former prom date from high school!) to gently push things along. The result? For the first time since I quit advertising, I had a work trip that covered my expenses.
Plus there are the residual benefits of meeting a slew of new people and gaining a great deal of confidence. Not bad, eh?
Stuff that presents—uh, opportunities for improvement
Better systems and equipment After having a few calls get screwed up because I didn’t realize which time zone I was dealing with on my calendar, one outrageously expensive one because I hadn’t checked to see that it was an international call, and having a moment—okay, several moments of panic because I was afraid I’d left a critical document or dongle elsewhere, it’s become painfully obvious that my organizational methods could use some reworking. I’m really excited about applying the methodology outlined in Sam Carpenter’s Work the System, which I reviewed on my blog a couple of weeks ago. (Interesting aside: my review led to a lively email exchange and call with Sam, and the possibility of us working together—gotta love the Internet!)
I was also surprised and not a little frustrated by how hard it was to get my work-work (writing, marketing, client review, etc.) done on my old 12″ Mac PowerBook. I love that little machine, and I don’t love the thought of laying out the cash for a new one, but if I’m going to travel and be effective, I need to have the means of doing my job on the road. That may mean sinking some cash into a new MacBook Pro, although I will probably ask around and see if I can get away with a lower end MacBook, since it won’t be my primary machine. Anyone have experience running Photoshop, PowerPoint and a million open windows in Firefox at the same time on a MacBook?
On a more petulant note, I think I’d also like to put “Kindle” on that shopping list. As much as I love old fashioned dead tree reading, it is tiresome and tiring carrying around multiple books for a long trip.
More planning (and maybe insistence) on the planning end Yes, I got my gigs; now, the bar has been raised. I have another trip to Chicago in September I want to take, and I’d like to fill it up with work, too. Is there time to do it in a two-month time frame? Time to read up on Deidre’s experience with cold calling for inspiration!
Asking for help This is a corollary of the above opportunity. There are so many wonderful people out there who want to help point me in the right direction; a few more research calls in the form of purely asking for help would be incredibly productive at this point. And hey, as long as I’m asking, if you know of a Chicago-based organization, workplace or school looking for enlightenment in a fun, pain-free way around right use of social media, the finer points of branding and networking or how to get people to spread the word of you, please let me know! They’ll love you even more after meeting me, I swear (although I’ve trained myself not to swear in mixed company!), and I’ll be eternally grateful.
I’ll sign off by asking for even more help: what brilliant resources for road-warrior travel have you found? I’ve learned a lot from my friends Jason Womack and Peter Shankman, extreme road warriors both, but if you have any tips, insight, books, etc., I’d love to know about them. That way, maybe I can get to a city near you even faster!
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