AnywhereMan

The eternal “underdog” Minnesota Twins have made the playoffs five of the past eight years, recently signed arguably the best hitter in baseball (Joe Mauer) to a long-term deal, and just played their first regular season game in their brand new ballpark, Target Field. I’ve been a Twins fan all my life and looking back at their history, specifically the past 10-15 years, a person can learn a lot about what it takes to succeed.

1) Success doesn’t happen overnight

Obviously. Most of us realize this.

While the Twins achieved something that may appear to be success by going from worst-to-first in terms of being horrendous one year and winning the World Series the next (1987 & 1991), their overall success as an organization and business was just not there. After a few slumping years following the ’91 Championship season, talks of contracting the team began heating up. It didn’t help that they played in a bubble (the Metrodome in Minneapolis).

It’s only been through a commitment to build their team from within, spend within their means, and exercise patience in the face of criticism that the Twins organization has now become a success and powerful brand.

2) Flirting with failure makes success that much sweeter

The very-real possibility of contracting the Twins organization at the turn of the century is what makes their story so great. While the outlook on the business side wasn’t good, the team continued to focus on trying to win…on a budget.  They opted to develop solid everyday players through their own minor league system instead of spending big money on established stars, and it started to pay off. They started to win. They started to make the playoffs.

They continued to win. People started attending more games. They started building a reputation as a team that played baseball “the right way.” And in the long run, they were able to establish their business so much that the public voted to help them build a brand new, outdoor ballpark which will allow them to be even more successful and profitable.

I can only imagine how good it must feel to go from folding altogether to becoming what people are calling the “model team” in baseball.

3) Trust your instincts

In 2001, coming off an awful 69-win season, the Twins had the first overall pick in the major league draft. With that pick, they chose local high-school hero Joe Mauer and sent him straight into their minor league system to develop. The Twins had an excellent track record of developing talent, and developing Mauer would be no different.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Cubs had the second pick and chose Mark Prior who rapidly established himself as a dominant starting pitcher. Critics constantly harped on the Twins for choosing Mauer instead of “overnight” star Prior.

Fast forward nine year to the present day, and Mauer is coming off of his first AL MVP season, won his third batting title, and has two Gold Gloves to his name.

Mark Prior? He’s battled injuries throughout his career and has never had a season as good as his rookie year. His most recent contract was a minor league deal and I’m not sure if he’s even playing or not right now.

The Twins trusted their instincts and refused to listen to critics, and it paid off big-time.

4) Luck happens to those who work hard

When the Twins eventually started posting consistent winning seasons in the 2000′s, it wasn’t due to power hitting or a dominant pitching staff. It was due to playing small ball. Picking up hits here and there, moving runners into scoring position with bunts and bloops, or simply taking runs away from the other team with incredible defensive players like Torii Hunter.

And sometimes, they just got plain lucky. However, I’ve noticed that often people that experience the most luck and the people that consistently work hard and do the little things that make a difference.

5) You can use your status as the “little guy” as an advantage

This is directly related to your status as a freelancer: Being the “little guy” is not a bad thing – it’s an advantage.

While other teams spend millions more to build their teams for the short-run, the Twins have spent less and gotten much much more over the long-run with the players they’ve developed. Even with the huge long-term contract awarded to Mauer last month, the Twins still aren’t spending like Boston, New York, or LA.

And that’s why they are popular. People LOVE cheering for a team that has been built, developed, and continually has an underdog feel to them, even if they have a very strong roster.

Likewise, I think people love entrepreneurial spirit, and I think people love working with a freelancer who has developed their skills and turned down full-time positions with established companies. I think it’s the go-getter attitude of freelancing and lack of a corporate safety net that gives us an advantage.

Go Twins!

Today, MBOPartners asked the following question to freelancers and consultants like you and me: “Why do you love working for yourself?”

My answer: improvisation. I love making it up as I go. I love doing things a little bit differently each time. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a vision for things, but I love making adjustments on the fly.

Why do YOU love working for yourself?

Things have gotten really busy for me with the release of my WordPress customization service, TweakMyTheme.com, a few months back. Today I discuss why it’s helped my business.

Here are links to a few things I mention in this video:

• How I Started a Business on a Saturday Part 1
• How I Started a Business on a Saturday Part 2
• Give Each of Your Products or Services a Website

By building a website and community around each of your products/services, you’ll have a chance to really highlight the great things that you are doing. Pick one thing and try it!

Lately, the virtual version of me has been hanging out on a few other sites. AnywhereMan.com is my main blogging/video home, but in the past few weeks some very exciting opportunities have been presented.

First, I am on a month-long trial as a contributor for a popular web app/software website called MakeUseOf.com. The site has lots of tips, tweaks, and reviews and I’ll be writing there a few times as they test me out (i.e. until they realize I’m just a wannabe blogger!). My first article was published this past weekend and was entitled “3 Ways To Use Google Reader As An Online Archive.” It’s been a fun experience thus far. I mean, I’m writing about web apps and even getting paid to do it. Perfect!

Next, you’ll recall that last week I did the first AnywhereMan interview with Lisa Kanarek. It was a blast! Much of the process of setting up the interview and recording it was made known to me through Andrew Warner at Mixergy.com: home of the ambitious upstart. Andrew’s a great and super bright guy, and my wife and I were lucky enough to spend some time with him when we were at BizConf last summer.

Well, Andrew took a look at my interview with Lisa and the next day one of his guests was unavailable at the last minute. He graciously invited me on his live program to discuss my interview experience and use it as an opportunity to emphasize to his audience the importance of doing interviews. He gave some awesome tips and I learned a lot from him describing some of the things he’s observed. You owe it to yourself to follow Andrew and his future interviews. He’s interviewed some amazing guests like Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss…and he’s just getting started.

Thank you, Andrew, for the opportunity! Folks, stay tuned for a future AnywhereMan interview with Andrew as he is definitely a fellow AnywhereMan (He’s currently doing all of his interviews from Argentina). Here’s my appearance with him last week:

Here is part two of my first “Startup Saturday” in which I built and launched a new business/site in a day. That site is TweakMyTheme.com.

Please note that some of the steps in this process are simple enough for anybody who has the ability to place orders online to complete, i.e. ordering a domain, ordering a hosting account, etc. You’ll see me flash a link in the video, but here’s a link to my exact steps for launching a theme-based WordPress website fast.

Amazing enough, I just publicized this launch for the first time yesterday and I’ve already gotten an overwhelmingly positive response and some potential business.

What kind of business are you thinking of launching? Would the ability to get it off the ground on a single Saturday motivate you to pursuit it?

I love throwing new business ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.This mentality has led me to practice something I call “Startup Saturday” where I essentially launch new web business ventures in a day. Here’s part one of the vlog for my latest launch: TweakMyTheme.com.

TweakMyTheme.com is a WordPress theme customization service. I’ve customized quite a few WP themes in the past, so the service itself is nothing new. However, lately I’ve felt that it’s important to package certain skills into “products” and give them their own website. Sometimes listing everything I do (design, ASP.NET programming, video, SQL design, etc) on a single site results in a watered-down offering. Maybe I should just focus on one of those skills altogether, but that’s another story…

I spent a Saturday a few weeks ago putting the site, plan, and content together. To further complicate my life, while working on the TweakMyTheme site I also came up with two more startup-in-a-day ideas, so I’m already looking for the next free Saturday to launch another one. It’s a lot of fun and I’m getting good practice, if nothing else.

Am I off my rocker? Is it better to launch a lot of “small” businesses and see what works, or do you think one well-planned venture is more powerful?

“It’s not a pink slip. It’s a blank page”

Last night I finally sat down and watched “Lemonade,” a documentary about several different advertising professionals who were laid off by their respective agencies and used the opportunity to focus on turning their passions into careers. The 35-minute film itself was produced by one of the professionals in the film.

If you have any entrepreneurial spirit whatsoever (which I think many of you do), you need to see this film. Whether or not you have a job with an employer, the spirit and passion that these people used to turn a seemingly negative situation into motivation to succeed at their own venture is incredibly inspirational.

It’s a quick film (35 minutes), but it packs a lot of punch. It’s almost like watching a film version of Gary Vaynerchuk‘s “Crush It,” which is a short book but really pumps you up to chase your passions. I think there are so many different stories in the film that you’re bound to relate to at least one of the featured individuals. The guy who created the film itself started a blog/job board for laid-off advertising pros called Please Feed the Animals, and I found myself really relating to him. Now, I haven’t been laid off before, but I am passionate about blogging and video.

My Response

One thing my wife and I discussed after viewing this: People with a marketing background definitely have a leg-up when it comes to starting their own venture and making it known to the world. Many of them are web-savy and know how people respond to various approaches of advertising. Many times the business ideas are the easy part. It’s getting the ideas/products out to the general public that takes the most creative muscle.

With that in mind, one of the things I’ve recently started doing in my spare time is starting “mini-businesses.” These are basically products/services for which I can create an entire web presence in a day or less. I’m also looking at offering this type of service to clients (especially startups like the folks in this film, but not necessarily advertising pros) through yet another mini-business.

I’ve been doing some video documentation on this process, so be sure to come back soon for details on how I’ve been starting these mini-businesses in a rapid deployment manner. I’m a big proponent of throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. This is my attempt at forcing myself to do it on a regular basis.

Two Thumbs Up

I definitely recommend seeing this short film. In fact, you can watch in right now, right here! Here’s an embed of the full-film from Hulu:

Take the time to watch this film, be inspired, and then report back with your thoughts. If you’ve seen it already, what did you think?

SPOILER ALERT: One featured individual used his layoff as an opportunity to turn himself into a woman, but I’m guessing most of you won’t go down that path.

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• Lemonade: a short film about creative unemployment (core77.com)

My accounting process is kind of a mess right now. It used to be awesome, not to mention effortless. I was using Quicken Home & Business which worked great for a single-member LLC like mine. Importing data from my bank was seamless. But then the Quicken software started to get super buggy and I couldn’t even open it without it crashing. This may have been a Windows issue or a Quicken issue. Either way, this is not good, especially when tax time rolls around. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

I’ve decided that I want to look at something else for my 2010 bookkeeping. I’d prefer to stay away from any of the Intuit products including Quicken, QuickBooks, etc. Even Intuit’s TurboTax gave me problems last year as the website crashed the day I had a payment due (though I’ll still probably use it this year and hopefully they can avoid that situation).

My other problem with Quicken is that it sits on one PC. I’d love to find a good web-based system, but at the very least I’d like a Mac-based option. I’ve got that thing with me at all times.

So today I’d like some advice. What would you recommend? How do you keep your books up-to-date? Share your tips with us. I have nothing to offer here, but I need some help!

Working from wherever we want means we spend a lot of time on the phone. In fact, I personally have very few in-person meetings since so few of my clients are local. Most of them live in places much much warmer than the northern regions of Minnesota. But that’s another story…

Phone skills are essential for maintaining a level of confidence with the person on the other end of the line. They might be a prospective client, co-worker, boss, or current customer, but whoever they are it’s going to help your career to carry a phone conversation with the right amount of command.

Essentially you need to communicate not only what you are saying clearly, but also that you understand what the other person is saying. In person, this is a lot easier. A head nod or simple grin can do the trick. However, on the phone you are invisible to the other person.

Here are six little tricks I’ve learned for having effective command of phone communication.

Delay your excitement

It’s important to start the conversation off right. When you pick up the phone and answer, use a friendly tone but save your most excited tone of voice until after the person states their name. Make the person feel like you were happy before they called, but hearing their voice was a nice surprise. Don’t overdo it, though.

Make sure the other person is receptive

If you are the party placing the call, make sure you ask the other person if it’s a good time to talk. I am notorious for diving right in and forgetting to check with them first. Getting permission at the very start of the call lets the other person know that their time is important to you, and as a result they’ll likely be more engaged in the call. Some have referred to this concept as the Golden Rule of phone communication.

Another tip with this one: if you something in the caller’s background such as a phone ringing, baby crying, etc., make sure you ask them if they need to tend to that. Again, this communicates that their time is important to you.

Make sure you are receptive

You should also make sure that YOU have time for the call. If you’re trying to get something else done while talking on the phone, it will be obvious to the caller. If someone calls you in a whirlwind moment just let them know that you’d like to call them back when you can give them full attention.

Wait for the pause

This is a tough one for me because I like to give verbal feedback to people as they are talking. If they are describing something to me, I’ll nod along with an “okay” here and a “yeah” there. Sometimes this works on the phone, but I’ve noticed that a lot of phone systems, especially mobile phones and Skype, will delay your words just a little bit and actually cut the caller’s signal to your phone for a split second. The caller will then stop talking a lot of times and wait for you to finish, but you have nothing to finish because you were simply giving quick verbal confirmation.

Instead, wait for the other person to finish what they are saying before you try to give any sort of confirmation. Imagine you’ve got duct tape over your mouth and the other person has to tear it off once they’re finished with what they are saying.

Use their name

Sprinkling the other person’s name throughout the conversation gives confirmation that you are focused on them. Don’t overdo it, but doing this will make the caller feel like you are much more “connected” to the conversation. Really.  Think of conversations you’ve had where people say your name once in a while versus not saying it at all. Which one made you feel more connected? It’s a simple, easy method that makes a huge difference.

Imagine you are on the radio

The big wall of phone conversations is the fact that you cannot see each other. I use a lot of hand gestures, but those do no good on the phone.  One thing I’ve learned is to imagine that you are the host of your own radio show. The person you are talking to is your guest and (this one will really inspire you to be interesting) there are people listening in on your call.

This will totally change the way you approach a conversation. You’ll ask better questions, you’ll ramble less, and you’ll use a tone of voice that is much more interesting. You’ll sound much more professional.

If you’re a user of a phone app such as Google Voice, you might even try using the in-call recording option to record a few of your phone conversations. Go back and determine the things that would or wouldn’t work for a radio conversation.

Getting better at communication in general

Many of the tips I post here are the result of reading “How To Talk To Anyone” by Leil Lowndes a few years ago. It’s an excellent resource for brushing up on the ways that you communicate. The book is mainly focused on communicating in person, but there are a few chapters on phone communication as well.

If Kermit was a teleworker, being green might be a little bit easier.

I was recently approached by the folks at Broadband for America to see if I would be willing to write a post about the environmental benefits of teleworking. Without hesitation, I said “yes” as I think the conversation of telework with regards to the green movement is just one of those things that makes sense (regardless of your political position, pollution is bad, right?!).

I’ve mentioned this before, but when I lived in the Twin Cities I made the daily commute to work each day. Not only did sitting in my car for 45 minutes drive me nuts, but so did the idea of wasting gas to sit in front of a computer all day. A person can sit in front of a computer at home, the library, the coffee shop, a co-working location, or Anywhere…right?

Now that I work from home, not only do I save on gas, I save money from having to pay for gas. And by not driving to work each day, that is one less car on the road to slow traffic down. Think of how quickly traffic would move (and save gas by minimizing stop-and-go traffic) if even 25% of daily commuters converted to telework.  Obviously, not everyone can perform their job in a telework arrangement so some people would still need to make the daily drive.

In order to push this movement towards telework, one of the main requirements is fast and dependable broadband access.  I am lucky enough to live in a region that is not only beautiful, but has fantastic options for broadband access. Grand Rapids has three primary choices for broadband service providers and there’s actually a local grant devoted making sure everyone in the area has access to broadband.

The provider I use has installed fiber optic cable right up to my house, and though I pay for a 1 MB up/down line, I’ve never clocked it at less than 3 MB up/down. We also have numerous dependable public wi-fi locations and a growing tech-incubator location.  It’s awesome to live in an area where I have access to the great outdoors, yet I’m still able to work like I’m in a metro area.

Telework and broadband-availability are positioned to have a tremendous effect on conservation and the decrease of greenhouse-gas emissions:

“According to an American Consumer Institute study, over the next 10 years, broadband applications will decrease greenhouse gas emissions by one billion tons. That study attributed this environmental savings to several broadband applications, including telecommuting, distance learning, teleconferencing and e-materialization.”  (“Telemedicine: Helping Consumers And The Environment,” The American Consumer Institute, Posted 3/4/08)

Switching to a telework arrangement with your employer does not have to be an abrupt, all-or-nothing change. You can start by suggesting a teleconference instead of a drive across town (or flight across the country) to meet with someone in person. You might try to attend a training session online instead of in-person.  By continually thinking along these lines, you may start a movement to telework and save on greenhouse emissions at the same time.

The question to ask is “Do I really need to be somewhere else to get this done?” Basically, do your computer and internet connection allow you to do here what you were intending on doing somewhere else?

Chime in with your thoughts, and take a look at Broadband for America whose mission is “to make broadband access to the internet available to every household in the nation; to provide data transfer speeds to make that broadband experience valuable to users; and to provide the bandwidth necessary for content providers to continue to make the internet a cultural, societal, and economic engine for growth.” Sounds good to me!