Streamlining continues at a steady pace since my freakout of a few weeks back.

I’m continuing to move toward my stated goals of clearing backlog and implementing systems that support my work. Of course, I’m also doing my work while all this happens, plus these are some pretty baked-in habits, so I won’t give the false impression that all is hunky-dory here in the Land of Perpetual Change. Or even that the change, while perpetual, is always deliberate.

One thing I thought might be useful would be to show how I’ve structured my calendar to create some of this room and order. I really enjoy seeing and understanding how other people manage their workflow; I’m hoping that videos like these might prove useful to others, as well. NOTE: if you click the little button on the bottom right-ish, you can make this sucker go full screen. And if you click through to watch it on Vimeo, you can view it in HD:

gCal (Show me your rig!) from communicatrix on Vimeo.

There’s a lot more I can do with this screencasting software (Screenflow, for the Mac, for those who are interested): zooming, adding text, bumping up the size of the Colleen screen, etc. Right now, I’m just trying to familiarize myself with the tool from a “performance” and storytelling standpoint.

But does it basically make sense? Or make so much sense that you’re all “DUH, Colleen.”? Is there stuff I should do more of? Less of? Ways to make this more useful?

Would love your input, in the comments or via email (colleen AT communicatrix DOT com).

xxx
c

Marketing round-up for this week:

• 6 blog posts (four at the main blog, one here)
• targeted mailing to LinkedIn, address book and Facebook about upcoming Pam Slim seminar
• first in-person meeting of a new chapter of the Mutual Admiration Society
• first virtual meeting of new semi-regular marketing/workflow support partnership (I’m supplying the marketing support, they’re supplying the workflow support)
• email, obviously
• morning and afternoon checkins with Facebook and Twitter
• revised one page on my website

I attended two completely different events this week.

The first was a dreadful, infuriating waste of time. The people I talked to were mainly unfriendly, unreceptive and not people I was at all interested in meeting. The panels were tedious and poorly planned; I got nothing valuable from them. Even the traffic was bad. I left early, in a foul mood.

The second was a wildly illuminating and energizing investment in myself. The people I talked to were mostly lively and engaged—so much so that I found it difficult to pull myself away from our conversations to get back to the program, which was filled with great ideas that inspired me. Even the traffic wasn’t too bad. I left early, in a great mood.

The trick, of course, is that these were two different days of the exact same event and, with the exception of Tony Robbins as a presenter the second day (he really is exceptional!), nothing changed—except me.

The first day, I woke up later than I wanted to and had a slew of things hit me sideways, out of nowhere, via my inbox. I’m not sure how many of them were genuine emergencies, but somehow I got caught up in them. Before I knew it, I was leaving a full hour later than I’d intended to the previous evening, which put me square in the middle of hideous morning rush hour traffic. Figuring I’d beat it with surface roads, I instead ended up on a long, frustrating, bumper-to-bumper tour of Los Angeles’ West Side. I showed up in a horrible mood

The second day, I woke up slightly later than I wanted to, but much earlier altogether because the night before, I prepped myself for bed earlier. I limited myself to an abbreviated version of my habitual, obsessive-compulsive, morning digital check-in (comments to the blog, items of excessive delight or despair in my inbox, quick scan of Daily Beast/Twitter/Facebook), made myself eat a light breakfast and hightailed it over.

Traffic was ass, as is the fashion of my adoptive city, but I picked a good playlist, got in the far left-hand lane and—surprise!—my freeway experience was just fine. Arrived early enough that the exhibitors were just setting up with no one to talk to, so I talked to them and got a lead on some PR writing work for a friend. Got a seat close to the stage for Mr. Robbins, then moved up to the half-empty front row: good karma (I’m a speaker, too) and more practice at putting myself out there. During his (TWO-HOUR LONG!) speech, he singled out a woman who was a 22-year entrepreneur with annual revenues of $22 million. I made a point of seeking her out later and we had an amazing talk.

I could go on and on (and on, although not as long as Tony Robbins!), but I have things I want to do today and so do you. And that’s my point, really: what am I doing to make the things I want to do happen? Or, to paraphrase my way more organized and fit and, let’s face it, financially successful friend Jason Womack, “How do I want to show up for things?” I can create the room I need, devise and implement the systems to support my work and stay tuned in to what’s really happening (as opposed to what I wish was happening, or any number of other things). Or I can blow it off and continue to live in chaos, making stuff but not making significant advancement toward my heart’s desire.

The point of the calendar is to help organize what I need to do, and to focus on doing those things one at a time, but at its heart, it’s a system for dealing with stuff. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff—possibly too much stuff—but I’ve not been doing it systematically. The daily blog posts are ingrained as a practice, as is this weekly one (although this week, I fell behind.) Ditto with networking: in my brain, I know that I need to be hitting a networking event per week, so as I plot out my weeks, I make sure that an event is slotted into each one. It works like magic, just chipping away at this stuff*. I need to introduce those kinds of systems and that kind of order to all my work, I now see, if the marketing stuff is going to be effective. After all, if I’m running a crappy, broken-down business because of lousy practices, all the marketing in the world ain’t gonna help it.

I’ve already started implementing some new rules and regs here at communicatrix HQ, and I intend to devote a significant chunk of time to getting my house in order for the balance of 2009. As much as I’d like to do a million other things, too, focus is the cure. If I can restrain myself a bit now, I sense that the payoff down the road will be huge.

Have you had some kind of breakthrough in this area? What made it happen? Which systems—small or large—did you put in place that significantly shifted things for you?

xxx
c

*I playfully call it pushing the c*cksucking boulder up the motherf*cking hill. If you need a shot of inspiration and can handle some seriously blue language, you’re welcome to sing along.

xxx
c

Marketing round-up for this week:

• 6 blog posts (four at the main blog, one here)
• 3 free consultations (1 was donation from last week’s speaking gig; 2 were to make up for poor planning!)
• met with another client and one of my colleagues on a cool new project
• attended the Twitter 140 conference
• submitted proposal for blogger’s pass to Le Web 2010
• email! email! email! (others complain, but I love it)
• informative, supportive, entertaining behavior on my social media outlets
• sent actual hard copy thank you notes
• revised two pages on my website

The calendar is a living document.

Which is to say, it’s meant to be adapted to yours need rather than you blindly following it.

Since, as I mentioned last week, I’m rejiggering the posting schedule to somewhat lighten the burden that having multiple deadlines on a Monday creates, I thought I’d take this piece to do some adapting of my own. (Show, don’t tell, as Mrs. Kent used to say.)

So to break things up—and maybe put something out there to reflect upon as we here in the U.S. get ready to call summer quits for the year and gear up for the “back-to-school” stretch of work before the holidays kick in and dump eggnog all over us—I thought I’d do a bit of reflecting on what’s happened over the course of the year, and how it’s going to affect the way I move forward for the rest of the year: which big projects will I be tackling, where will I be focusing my attention, etc.

And because I’m a creative type, I’m doing the damned thing as a Q&A—where I both ask the questions and supply the answers. Self-involved? Maybe. Efficient? YOU BETCHA.

Q: Looking back over the year, what’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned?

A: Without question, the value of incremental work done methodically and, for the most part, executed against some kind of a plan. (Is that one thing?)

Q. Close enough. What exactly do you mean by “incremental” and “done methodically”?

A: Ah. Well. I’ve always been sort of a workaholic-type, willing to spend any amount of energy on a project I’m enthused about. But I wasn’t so good at the drudgery (see how I look at it?) of mundane, daily tasks. I like to say I’m a starter, not a finisher, and the overflowing plate of commitments still requiring my attention for that last 10% of work attests to that. Although I have managed to knock a few things off of it.

The big work spurts are fun for those of us who dig that stuff, but it’s the daily wax-on/wax-off that strengthens the muscles that move you forward.

Q: Do you think that the overflowing plate you speak of might also have to do with an inability to say “no” often enough?

A: It’s like you know me!

Yeah, definitely. I have a problem with disappointing people, plus a dash of God Complex. And it’s taken me a looong time to gain any sort of realistic grasp of how long things actually take.

Q: Sounds familiar. So how have you gone about getting a grasp? Has the calendar helped at all?

Definitely, the calendar helped. At the most basic level, the idea of “one networking event per week” and x amount of time with social networking, etc., was useful. I started to see just how much those things took, plus a sense of what they took out of me.

Q: The energy drain was bigger for certain things?

A: Oh, yeah. I’m an introvert. Cold calling and in-person networking and speaking all take cave time afterward. I’ve learned the hard way not to schedule things too tightly around them.

Also, I’ve gotten a much better grasp of how my brain and constitution work in general. Now I schedule client work for certain days and times, writing everyday for a certain time, marketing and paperwork-y stuff for other times. It all makes more sense now, which I think is a combination of both doing it a lot and turning my attention toward it.

Q: Interesting. Have any other patterns emerged as a result of the work that you can share?

A: Tons. Well, some, anyway.

I’ve learned that I need to chunk up some of my tasks better. Like adding little bits to the newsletter as I find them, so I don’t have a knock-down-drag-out once monthly. (There were a couple of close calls, but I’ve only gone off the schedule once.)

I’ve also learned that I need to schedule downtime: for rest, play, reading, etc. Lame, maybe, but it’s the way I’m wired. Why fight it?

And I’ve started adding features to the blog, both to spice it up and reduce the load on me. It’s pretty hard cranking out a good, 1,000-word essay four or five times per week. Writing reviews and (ulp) poetry gives my brain a break, while it also trains me to write different kinds of things in my own voice. I’m the communicatrix—why shouldn’t I be able to write a Referral Friday review of a great t-shirt shop as well as a diatribe about change?

Q: Why, indeed?

A: Exactly!

Q. So with two-thirds of the year behind you, how do you see this final third shaping up? And how has the calendar work gotten you there?

A. Great question!

The rest of this year is going to be about prepping some huge projects: a book proposal, a secret publishing project for the holidays, an under-the-hood overhaul of my website.

Doing all this marketing work is directly responsible for my vision of what the future holds, as well as for my having gotten to this new point of doing so much more consulting and speaking. I want to keep doing the consulting and speaking, but at a higher and higher level, and that means I can’t put off the book any longer.

Q: How did the calendar affect things, exactly?

A: The more I wrote and spoke and put the word out there about my writing/speaking/consulting, the more feedback I got from people. And it was the feedback that was so directly responsible for showing me the next steps: what do people want? What is resonating with them? What problems do they have that I could help them wrassle to the ground?

I got a little feedback before I got so serious about putting myself out there, but it really increased as I did more of the marketing and networking.

Plus, my network just kept expanding in exciting, unexpected new ways that opened up other avenues of opportunity. I’ve got a collaborative project for actors that’s started to take shape; my increased networking and visibility is what made that possible. And I have so many more resources to draw from, things just feel more possible than they did a year ago.

Q: Wow—that’s fantastic. Anything you’d like to leave people with?

A: Yes. Get the support you need. A group, a buddy, a coach, a mentor—whatever. And be prepared to provide it for someone else. Support and accountability are the final keys to making this work. Having my accountability group—not to mention the commitment to posting my progress here every week—really made the difference between wanting to get things done and actually doing them.

Q: Thanks for your time, Colleen. I’m really looking forward to seeing what you do next.

A: Me, too. Including this week’s podcast—that oughta be interesting…

I’ve tried (and failed) setting up a workable scheduling system a dozen times over—at least.

Among the various things I’ve tested and abandoned were:

• Scheduling like a lawyer, where I slotted myself down to the 15-minute “pod”
• Scheduling like a dentist, where I parceled my time out in 40/20-minute increments
• Scheduling like an actor/cowboy/hobo, where I plugged in my major, must-do’s & deadlines, and just did everything else around them

The problem, of course, is that scheduling like a lawyer, dentist or actor works best when you’re working in one of those professions; for me, in my new capacity as solopreneur wearing many hats, it was disastrous. I got a lot done when I carved my time up in tiny slices, put them in my calendar, and adhered to the program, but I quickly began to resent it. I didn’t go into business for myself to boss myself around. And the actor/cowboy/hobo-style of scheduling, where I basically went where the gig was (or the free meal and ride, in the case of hobo-style scheduling), was wildly inefficient for managing the many, many things I’ve got stacked on my plate.

Obviously, if you’re interested in a marketing calendar, you get that maybe there’s something to this scheduling thing, and to doing work incrementally. But the work still needs to happen in a way that fits your specific needs. The marketing calendar this project is centered around may be the result of years of experience and lots of hard work, but it’s still a serving suggestion, or a rough outline; even Ilise says adapting it to suit yourself is a good idea, provided you’re not adapting your way out of the work altogether.

After wrassling with my calendar for years, I’m finally starting to settle into a kind of rhythm, and an understanding of what works and what doesn’t. What works for me may not work for you, but maybe you’ll find some new ideas, or some reassurance that you’re playing in the right area for your own rhythms.

Rhythmic scheduling

My good buddy, Peleg, and I were talking about rhythmic scheduling this week at one of our occasional brainstorming breakfasts. He mentioned that since moving from a hard-core, 9-to-5-style approach when he was running a design shop with employees and had clients on the same kind of schedule, he’s had to adjust to the vast expanse of time available by looking at it from an energy perspective: when does he have the most, and when the least? How much energy does it require for certain tasks, and when should those be slotted in to maximize efficiency?

I’ve found myself asking those same questions this year with my move into consulting (takes LOTS of energy for me) and my commitment to expanding my writing practice (takes a very specific kind of energy for me). Tim Ferriss, who’s made a big project of “lifestyle design”, has noted in more than one place how his optimal writing hours are wee ones—between 1 – 5 am. My own optimal writing time happens roughly 3 hours after rising and lasts for about 4, so earlier this summer I began “firewalling” 10am – 12pm for writing. I’ll reschedule if I must (I had an old dentist appointment on the books, and travel can interfere), but basically, that’s it: no appointments for me until 1pm.

This is a bit of a conflict with consulting, since I have East coast clients that doesn’t always work for. My solution for now is to reserve a couple of Friday mornings per month, although I’m also looking at giving up a Thursday morning, as I get better about batching tasks like writing, and planning ahead for big deadlines like my monthly column for actors and my monthly newsletter.

Batching tasks

This is nothing new in the land of time management. It’s pretty much a given in productivity circles that processing all your email in batches, grouping errands and the whole “like with like” philosophy make up the path to freedom, time-wise. I’d long resisted it with the blog, though, since I like my essays to be fresh: I use my own life and travails as fodder, so it feels right to report them in as close to real time as possible.

My new commitment to writing 5x/weekly was killing me, though. The site started to feel like a hungry beast that had to be fed, rather than an outlet for my creativity and a way of sharing my knowledge with my people. Finally, about a month ago, I caved and wrote a few posts at once. The unbelievable freedom and ease I felt—the room it created—were so amazing, I became an instant, if slightly guilty convert.

I also have gotten much better about drinking my own Kool-Aid and keeping a sharp eye out for topics, capturing ideas when they happen, and all the other stuff I’m constantly telling other people about. Why I thought I could apply the rules to my own workflow only when the spirit moved me is anyone’s guess; I’m done with that tomfoolery, though, and ready to get stuff done.

On/off, open/closed

A companion to the rhythm & batching techniques is a nifty trick my friend, Adam Kayce, describes in an interview he did about Inspired Scheduling for the Business Oasis, Mark Silver’s membership support community. Essentially, it’s a methodology for approaching your calendar with your heart more than your head. I won’t get into specifics here, but you do a couple of passes where you decide which times feel like they should be devoted to work and which not, and then which feel better as time spent with others and which with solo time.

I was already doing a modified version of this with my own time. Mondays and Fridays have never really been my peak extrovert days, and I like using cave time on those days to get other, more introverted types of tasks done then. Ditto with late morning and writing: it’s a much more efficient use of my time to spend that chunk writing and use later in the day, when I’ve siphoned off all the crazy into my writing and am feeling more expansive, to focus my learning on client needs.

Calendar in action

Just to give you an idea of how this stuff applies in real life, here’s what last week looked like:

• Sun (I know, I know), Mon, Wed a.m.: writing for 2 – 3 hours (blog posts for Virgo Guide and communicatrix)
• Mon night: my weekly accountability group meetup
• Tue a.m., Thu p.m.,  client calls (note the one a.m. slot for an East coaster)
• Tue late a.m. – COB: dentist appointment and recovery time
• Wed p.m.: finish old client job; miscellaneous marketing tasks, including monthly Biznik meetup
• Thu a.m.: Brainstorming Breakfast, followed by client prep for calls
• Fri: catch-all day of phone calls, puttering and marketing tasks (redoing my business card for the upcoming Creative Freelancer Conference)

Some stuff I learned from this week’s scheduling:

• I need even more quality time for writing. I missed Tuesday’s communicatrix post, which was disappointing. These marketing calendar posts have gotten more intricate, and they “drop” on the same day as my big essay post on communicatrix. Something’s gotta give! (Looking for ideas, here, so lay ‘em on me.)
• I need to schedule my dentist appointments for late in the day. I’m worthless afterward—she’s VERY thorough, so the experience is a bit traumatic—so I might as well plan it for veg time after.
• “Mellow time” helps. The days I’ve taken my breakfast and lunch outside to eat on the patio and read a book have been far more pleasant, as have the days I managed to knock off before 9pm. (Again, I know, I know—it’s a work in progress!)
• I can do a maximum of one Full Monty per day. I love them, and so do the people who’ve done them. They’re a little intense for both of us, though, so I think the opportunity here is to raise the price, increase the time from 60 to 90 minutes (so hopefully, it can be less like a fire hose for the unsuspecting) and add some value in the form of screen sharing, audio recording and the like. As Peleg and Ilise say, pricing is a marketing tool, too, so I’m not really concerned about raising it; I just want to make sure I do it right, which is going to mean carving out some time to rephrase the offering, test some new collaboration tools and do a little promotion. (If you’ve been reading me for a while and are on the fence, I’m going to do the first bump in September, so you might want to sign up now while it’s still $250.)
• I still have unrealistic expectations of how much can get done in a day. I thought my business card revision would take an hour, tops; instead, it sucked up a half-day. My posts, this one included, usually take longer than I expect they will. Even email replying isn’t so simple, since a simple “yes” or “no” rarely suffices (and is kind of off-brand for me). Not sure how to deal with this beyond more trial and error. Again, suggestions welcomed and encouraged!

To head you off at the pass, I’m guessing that a few people might suggest I just do less. I know that’s true, and have been overworking a bit to get lingering stuff off my plate. I also gave notice to someone I’ve been subcontracting for that I was getting out of design entirely. I’ve committed to this project through the end of the year, but I’m rethinking delivery dates, and whether a Tuesday or Wednesday “drop” might not be better for my schedule.

In short, I’m probably fail-fast-ing like everyone else, figuring out as I go along. It’s still a great ride, and I wouldn’t trade it to go back, no matter how much effort it is.

So help me out here: what am I not seeing? What tricks and tips have you found that I might try and apply?

Ilise and Peleg describe the process of creating and maintaining a steady flow of customers to your business as building and running a marketing “machine.” The machine has many working parts, or smaller machines within it: networking, cold calling, Internet marketing, etc.

Another way of looking at it is that your business is a system made up of other, smaller sub-systems: your billing, your distribution, creating whatever products or services and of course, your marketing, all of which in turn are made up of even smaller sub-systems. (I came across this “systems” framework via a wonderful book called, appropriately enough, Work the System, which I reviewed last week on my main blog.)

I love these mechanical ways of looking at business because I tend to very romantic, airy-fairy notions about work and one’s “calling”—all well and good, but at some point, stuff has to get done and in such a way that customers are happy while you are still able to keep body and soul together. And maybe just a smidge of sanity.

Being here in Chicago this week (and part of last) has also given me a keen appreciation for the magic of mechanical systems worked and tweaked systematically. Not just because a system allowed me to get enough work done in advance of my trip that I was able to give my full focus on the workshop I was co-presenting with Pam Slim last week (and it was a riot, lemme tell you!): having systematically worked my systems also meant that there were people who showed up at the workshop who already knew and liked what I have to say, and that people who were just meeting me had a long, long rabbit hole of my stuff to fall down once they met me (provided they, too, liked what I had to say).

I am starting to see tangible results of the systems I’ve put in place from a financial perspective, too. Without having done any specific push or sale, the inquiries and consultation bookings are noticeably ramping up—this despite the rather crappy state of our current economy. Of course, it may be a fluke; time will tell. But 29 weeks in, it feels like I’m standing on much more solid ground than I was at the beginning of the year.

If you’re just getting started with the newly-released, Start Anytime calendar, that should be of some encouragement, I hope. And if you’re working the regular calendar and have hit a dip (as I did a month or two ago), that should be of some encouragement as well. There are ups and downs with every aspect of my life, but getting out and networking regularly, publishing my blog(s) and newsletter consistently, tweaking my websites for better functionality, taking classes and reading books/blogs/magazines, communicating with fellow travelers (both the client and colleague varieties) via social media have made a significant difference not just in my confidence level but in my business itself.

In other words, the work actually works!

And if things continue in this direction, whho knows—maybe I’ll get re-inspired to take up cold calling with renewed enthusiasm…

Well, the second half of 2009 already feels different than the first half, and it’s only been a week.

Small joke, but really, there’s more than a little truth to it.

For starters, if I was Q1/Q2 me, I’d be hyperventilating over all the things I did not get done thus far, as it would mean that:

1. I am a failure
2. I have a DOUBLE crap-ton left to do if I want to accomplish the goals I established for myself at the beginning of the year

Strangely, I neither feel like a failure nor am I fretting over the prospect of all I have to do if—and I do mean “if”—I want to meet the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year. Instead, I’m pretty pleased that not only have I downshifted a bit, but that I’ve reordered my priorities and even bumped a few up to the head of the list that weren’t on it at the start of the year. Like taking a full day off once per weekend and attending to uprooting and examining some crusty, old habits rather than spending that slice of time dreaming up new ones.

And what’s really amazing is that in one week of focusing on this one-two punch, I’ve already made some significant progress not only on these crusty, old issues, but I’ve dreamed up a slew of ideas for re-focusing my business and for creating some stuff I can actually sell for cash money.

In short, if you’re a Type-A who questions the ROI on downtime, I’m here to tell you, it’s significant.

Accountability

As I mentioned a while back, I recently joined a Master Mind-like group that meets once weekly. It’s a big time commitment—there are four of us, and with each person getting 20 minutes of attention, plus chatter, it can run on for three hours if we’re not careful. For now, though, I don’t care, because it’s been profoundly transformative: I’ve moved ahead two projects that have been stalled for over a year!

Even bigger than that, though, has been the many-minds idea generation and support around gently changing some habits that are no longer serving me, like working my goddamned ass off until I turn into a big crank and everyone hates me. I took a whole day off this weekend, and half-days for the two weekends before, which has done wonders for my mood and the mood of those near and dear. I also got support for getting more support, which has made my experience of being in class more enjoyable and fruitful; my homework assignments have been fun and I’ve met three outstanding fellow travelers, to boot. Win/win!

Speaking of which, I cannot stress how much having baked-in check-in times helps. One thing we do for each other in the group is offer to call someone on the phone to gently nudge them about a hated (but necessary) task; we also do bookending, where the person who has the Hated Task gets to call a designated buddy before (for support) and after (for celebrating). It is a slice of heaven, having this luxury of support. I’m also doing scheduled calls with my homework buddies for class. Seeing the calls in my calendar helps me get the thing done.

If you’re having trouble getting something done, see about buddying up with someone else. Because everyone has something she’s avoiding!

Flexibility

I am not my to-do list. And while my to-do list helps keep me on track, when held up against life, it is a serving suggestion.

This weekend, I’d scheduled some writing time to start at 1pm Sunday. (Before you squawk, writing time is not a hardship, but a pleasure—at least, this type is.) But the opportunity to spend some quality time with an awesome 9 1/2 year old and our beloved dog came up: how could I say “no”? I could not, nor did I want to. Writing was gently pushed back, the three of us are the better for it, and no one missed that I spent less time writing.

Similarly, a few pretty important things came up on Tuesday that conflicted with my usual newsletter prep time. After struggling with it a bit—okay, it was me, exhausted, at 11pm, giving up—I decided the world would not end if the newsletter went out on this coming Wednesday, instead. Which it will, and it will be more awesome, as I came up with a MUCH better, more helpful theme. Seriously. If you’ve been on the fence about subscribing, you should do it now.

Room

The new idea for the newsletter and the slew of ideas I came up with for products, workshops and services are not accidents. They’re the outgrowth of leaving a little breathing room, something I seem doomed to forget. Or blessed to be able to remember, over and over again. (Here’s me, lookin’ on the bright side!) I’ve loved my morning walk with Arnie for a long time; now I’m excited about building in more space. For now, that means tricks and hacks like accountability partners and calendaring, but I know that eventually, it’ll be second nature.

Right?

Don’t forget: Workshop! Chicago! July 17! Me and PAM FREAKIN’ SLIM. Escaping your hateful day job. Be there or be employed in the salt mines!

In hindsight, some years or months or weeks seem to take on themes, and this was one of those weeks.

I was a bit hobbled and fuzzy-headed from a cold, but it had cleared up enough by Friday afternoon for me to identify it: support. This week was all about support, both learning the difference it made for me personally, and realizing what a difference it would make if I applied some of the lessons to my own business in general and my marketing in particular.

It’s funny, because behavior-as-marketing is a concept I talk about to clients one-on-one and to groups during presentations. (We have an interview with Jonathan Baskin, who literally wrote the book on brand as behavior, both yours and your customers’, right here on the Marketing Mix.) I lean medium-hard on the idea before I launch into my new media marketing spiel because I’ve noticed that in the face of tools as glittery, new and (seemingly) free & easy as social media, we tend to dismiss things like follow-up, thoroughness, kindness and creating a feeling of safety as old fashioned or beside the point. Maybe they are, but I’ll tell you, just like getting a heartfelt, handwritten thank you note in the mail—not to mention an unexpected gift—real support is rare and feels amazing.

This week was a bonanza of lessons about the joy of support, and the difference it makes in the way I feel about products, services and people. How, exactly? Let’s enumerate…

Accountability as support

Attending my first meeting of a small accountability group (they don’t call it a master mind group, but it’s the same general idea), I feel like I’ve found both a lifeline and an ongoing tutorial on the far-reaching benefits of support.

Not only is it a relief to know I have three people who will help me to stay on track with my stated next actions, it’s also great to enter into this relationship knowing of the tangible successes the other group members have achieved from this collaboration.

Structure as support

Odd for a Virgo, I know, but most manifestations of structure—9-to-5 jobs, marriage, brassieres—have felt as much like prison as they have support. While I have gone back to more rigidly calendaring my day (and pretty much sticking to it), I can’t say that I’ve enjoyed it.

A new teleclass that I’ve been taking is slowly changing my mind about the role structure can play in making you feel supported, and how in turn that support can motivate you to take the actions necessary to grow and change. The architects of the class have done nothing less than a stunning job structuring the entire course, from web pages to automated email updates to follow-up PDFs. This, on top of the spectacular job they do with the actual teleclasses themselves.

What’s more, I have a sense of how much care and work has gone into building this structure, and that, too, makes me feel supported and motivates me to do my best with my work. Mark Silver is the master at making clients feel seen, heard and taken care of; if you have the opportunity to take a class from him, I’d highly recommend doing so.

Timely attention as support

I’m notorious for not returning phone calls quickly…or ever. I’m better at email, but far from consistent.

I’ve begun a work relationship with two people recently—one, a fine artist and the other, a web designer—and both have impressed me with the simple courtesies they’ve shown around checking in and following up in a timely fashion. At this Saturday’s PresentationCamp LA, one attendee, Jason Womack, not only took it upon himself to transcribe all of the attendees’ contact info into a GoogleDocs spreadsheet, he emailed it to us while the (un)conference was still in session. All welcome surprises that made me feel good, feel supported, and feel more likely to recommend them to other people as useful and trusted resources.

Snacks and treats as support

PresentationCamp LA was a gigantic lesson in the value we place on feeling supported and cared for. Cliff Atkinson, who led the core group of us facilitating the event, encouraged us to do what we could to make sure the day would be comfortable and pleasant for attendees—stuff that included procurement of food and beverages (and books, and other treats!) as well as a comfortable place to hold the event—BLANKSPACES, which was awesome.

We worked hard to find sponsors who’d help us with our budget and needs (thank you, sponsors!), and the results were spectacular. The attendees loved the event, and are excited about doing another. (Me, too, although I need some serious recovery time. This kind of support is hard work, until you build up your muscles.)

Translating it to my own business

If my lackluster performance with working the calendar has not been a dead giveaway, I’ll come right out with it now: I’m ambivalent about my business, and have been for a few months now. While I can see the advantages to throwing myself more fully into marketing and promoting myself as…well, a person who helps people market and promote themselves, there’s a part of me that just plain likes writing—enough to consider seriously the idea of scaling way back and taking a non-challenging job to free myself up to write.

But another part of me feels like I may still have learning to wrest from it, as well as service to deliver to people who need it. I’ve already got some ideas in place about supporting both prospects and plain, old readers with improvements to the website, the newsletter and yes, even my phone process.

We’ll see how it works. In the meantime, I’d love to know your experience with support from either end: as a provider or a recipient. What have you come across that’s made you feel great? What have you created for your clients that’s made them feel great?

What can you teach me about how to make you feel great?

Short weeks can be incredibly instructive when it comes to pointing out the value of planning, especially when your short week is someone else’s regular one. What the heck am I talking about?

Well, I started this calendar project a week ahead of everyone else, so that the week I’d be reviewing would be the one that everyone working the calendar would be doing that week. If you feel like Alice right now, stepping through the looking glass, that basically means that my “week 22″ (June 1 – 5) actually fell on the previous week (May 25 – 29)—a holiday week here in the U.S., so we had no Monday. Or we did, but most of us spent it doing something other than working.

While it’s great to have the extra day off from an R&R perspective (especially because I took almost a whole day off), it’s kind of disastrous in terms of non-essential project work. This past week I had scheduled a slew of free, fifteen-minute consults for attendees of a webinar I’d given the previous week. It’s important for me to try out these things as I refine my sales pipeline (boy, there’s a phrase I never thought I’d type), but it cut into the time I’d have spent on “regular” marketing tasks: I missed a day of posting to my blog in addition to the day I took off on purpose and I didn’t do any of my own cold calling or follow-up (although I did do some for PresentationCamp LA, the unconference I’m helping out with—if you’re in L.A. or traveling through on June 20 and you’re interested in any aspect of presenting or speaking, please check it out and consider joining us!).

Short weeks also point out some of my, um, areas for improvement. When I have so much less time available, it becomes glaringly obvious where my “leaks” are usually. I do best on a schedule, even though I resist it, and when I spend some time up front planning things out. Last week’s calendar was crazy-crowded with appointments, one after another, from the free consults to a speaking gig I needed to do some prep and rewriting for to two networking events (my bonus-extra was a surprise meetup with Peter Shankman of HARO fame; as I said to another attendee, “If a guy as busy as Peter can make time tape himself from an airport lounge and get it to me within 15 minutes of my asking so I can make a crazy video, I can make the time to come see him when he flies through town.” It was a great meetup, as they always are, and I highly recommend both that you sign up for HARO and make it a point to meet him the next time he comes through your town!)

I know it sounds a little ridiculous to say, 22 weeks into a project that’s all about the importance of scheduling, “Hey! It’s important to schedule!”, but sometimes, it takes a while and some real-life experience to drive things home.

So this weekend, I spent some time reviewing my list of goals AND scheduling stuff into my calendar. My hope is that a little more discipline with this will help me spend the time I should in Covey’s magical Quadrant Two, and help me realize more of the big-time goals I’ve set for myself in life and in business.

Happy summer, everyone! (I know, right? How the hell did that happen!? One day at a time, of course, just like our marketing or anything else gets done…or doesn’t, sometimes.)

This was the first fun week I’ve had since getting sick over a month ago. Because I’m all about post-game analysis—mostly because I have gotten kind of tired of repeating the same mistakes, and also because, as I approach 50, I’m more and more aware of how little time I may have left—I spent some time analyzing why. Since this week is about NEWSLETTERS for anyone working the Veteran’s Calendar, I’ve included a bonus-extra analysis about my most successful newsletter mailing to date.

Hopefully, the lessons I’ve come away with will be useful to you on your own marketing (and other) journey.Reason #1: I felt good

Yes, I can work through pain or fatigue just like anyone else. But I am happier, more productive and more delightful to be around (hence, a better ad for me and my services) when I am healthy. My ill health forced me to sleep extra-long hours for a few weeks; now I’m knocking off and getting to bed in time to get 8 hours, no matter what. I get that it may not be an option for those of you with young children, but for me, especially at my age, sleep is the number one secret to my success. Crazy, but hey—at least it’s FREE.

What’s not free but equally important is eating well. Not richly, but well. Now that I’m back on the special diet to control my Crohn’s I’m feeling much more energetic. This does require me taking time out of each day to prepare food (the diet, while really good for you, is notoriously labor-intensive), but I think I’m making up for it in both quantity of usable work time and quality of the thinking I get during it.

Finally, as part of my new & improved attitude towards work/life balance,
I almost treated the weekend like an actual weekend. Which is to say, yeah, I worked some, but only on stuff I wanted to and only for half-days.

Reason #2: I was doing stuff I loved, work-wise

I got to do another one of my webinars on marketing with social media, which I love doing almost as much as talking about it live and in-person. The further I get away from design, the more certain I am I made the right move. And my own work in consulting, writing and speaking continues to evolve as I discover what I’m best at and what people actually need and want to hire me for. Deidre talked about this in last week’s post, and I think it’s truer than most of us want to think about most of the time. Life is about fluidity and change, not stasis. Yes, it’s all supported by a thorough understanding of our own fixed givens, or at least of values that change less frequently or quickly, but ya gotta keep moving forward.

Reason #3: I challenged myself a wee bit

I didn’t make my cold calls BUT…I made some terrifying (for me) calls—actual CALLS on the actual TELEPHONE—trying to put together more consulting work while I’m in Chicago this July. I may write a bigger post about my preconceived notions going into the calls and how wrong wrong wrong I was about them, but the topline is this: I’m much closer to having a couple of days of work, plus more in the future, and nobody hates me for asking.

I also started making fundraising calls on behalf of PresentationCamp LA, the unconference Cliff Atkinson, Lisa Braithwaite and a few other presentation nerds are getting off the ground. (It’s all day June 20 at BLANKSPACES, it’s only $10, and it’s gonna be AWESOME—if you’re in L.A. or can make the trip, get your tickets now, or check out our planning wiki.)

Now, if there’s one thing I hate even more than cold calling it’s calling asking people for money. But I started by talking to a couple of product evangalist friends (whose products I love and evangalize all the time, anyway)—Tara Anderson of Lijit and Jean MacDonald of TextExpander—was totally upfront about using this as an opportunity to connect, and ended up by having terrific chats (something I never do, since I’m so anti-phone) and maybe scoring a bit of dough for a great community project. I also had a terrific conversation with my new best friend from MindJet, Michael Deutch, and reconnected with one of my idols, Nancy Duarte, via email and Twitter.

Bonus Lesson: Stuff I learned about my newsletter that might help you

I’ve been sending out my newsletter for just over two years now (hey! second anniversary!), and I’ve learned a lot about what does and doesn’t work in that time. My open rates have been consistently in the 50-55% range since leveling off in February of 2008 (before then, it was a small list mostly friends and a much higher rate, probably out of curiosity as anything else), and I could always count on a certain amount of click-throughs for some stuff—usually the very first “useful” link—but I was having trouble getting people to forward it.

This past month, I did two things:

1. I changed the call to action, making it snappier, shorter and more “me” (i.e., making it more obvious without, I hoped, making it appreciably more obnoxious)
2. I nestled it into a small list of other quickie, possible “items of interest” at the end of the main article

Result? Four times more forwards than any newsletter campaign to date! Just for making it obvious what I was asking for. D’oh!

So what does all this add up to?

The past month has been a real source of frustration for me on a lot of levels—I wasn’t able to do half of what I normally want or even don’t want to do—but it’s also been a rich source of learning, and I’m determined to carry on what I’ve perceived to be the most important lessons as I move forward into a new and hopefully more healthfully energetic month…or year…or balance of a lifetime, however long that may turn out to be.

And however long it is, it’s gonna be a helluva lot more enjoyable if I’m in reasonably good health for the bulk of it!

I hate to disappoint you—believe me, I do—but my physical recovery is happening much, much more slowly than I’d like (for the record, what I’d like is “immediately.”)

This means I’m doing pretty much everything on less of an as-needed basis than a “how much is this on fire?” basis, which from a marketing standpoint translates to:

• Minimum blog postings I can get by with I’d been posting 5x/week on my blog, plus once weekly here and at the Virgo Guide (a double-posting, but a little bit of work to reformat for WordPress).
• Minimal 2-way social media involvement I’m still checking in with everything—in fact, because my energy is so low, I’m probably checking in more than usual—but I’m posting less stuff on Twitter and Facebook. When my energy is this low and I’m feeling punk, I’m loathe to post much, since I’m pretty sure it won’t be up to my usual standards.
• Swapping in-person for online contact where I can I’ve missed two weeks of in-person networking events in a row, which really bums me out (especially since one had been paid for!). But the wear and tear on me is too great to do much mingling in the real world, plus I tend to turn into a pumpkin at around 7pm these days—no kidding! I’m getting 10 hours of sleep per night, but those hours are coming out of somewhere.

I did manage to get my monthly newsletter out last week, catch up on podcast recordings, and consult with a colleague on best practices for mounting an unconference. (Have I mentioned that while I was still feeling pretty good, I volunteered to help organize the first PresentationCamp here in L.A.? It’s gonna be great: check it out and buy your tickets now!) And I’ve definitely been catching up on my reading, since it (and sleeping, and watching old episodes of the Rockford Files on Hulu) is about all I’ve got the attention span for these days.

Lessons I’ve learned from this? I’m really, really grateful that I already had some kind of marketing machine in place.

In the same way that having products or books for sale can keep earning you money when for whatever reason you’re unable to take time work, having a machine in place means that there’s still stuff out there pulling in new people: blog posts, newsletter archives (two years as of this month!), articles, presentations and podcasts. I’ve been at this long enough that I feel like having to cut back to half- or quarter-speed won’t have me starting from zero when I finally feel better.

That said, while I’m going to keep a closer eye on my work-life balance in the future, I’m really looking forward to feeling up to doing all that in-the-trenches work I sometimes groaned about in the past. In the same way that I’m storing up recipes for food I can eat once my insides are up to it, I’m quietly stacking away ideas for projects I can’t wait to hit when my energy is back.