Overcoming Your Own Constraints
Personal constraints are the things that hold you back in your life, your career, and even your relationships. Let's identify and resolve as many of your constraints as we can.
How to get more done, be more productive and make your projects come in on time and budget
10 things I have learned about business and start-ups over the last 10 years
Anniversaries are a good time to reflect and look back. What have I learned from the online business startups I have been a part of? When I wrote this in 2017 I was working at Copyblogger/Rainmaker-Digital, a short time afterward Rainmaker was sold, and then the StudioPress division was also sold to WP Engine so …
The Key to Attention and Engagement
What is the secret of getting a person’s attention? Why do some people seem to be able to get anyone to take their call, while other people seem cursed with obscurity? I have been asked this question twice, recently. I’m always uncomfortable when I have multiple answers, none of them satisfactory. So I mulled over …
5 Essential Skills for Today’s Online Marketer
What are the most important skills for an online marketer, blogger or professional? I am going to list my response to that, but I would be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comments. I’m intentionally keeping this one short so you can dive in and tell me where I am wrong! This post came …
How to Avoid Cold-Feet Killing Your Progress
Today, I want to talk about what happens when you give in to your fears. I want you to learn from my mistakes so you can have the courage to do what you need to. I have a lot of fears. That’s just part of who I am. I’m risk-averse, and I tend to focus …
Course-Correction and Your Half-Year Resolutions
We are half way through the year. How are your new-years resolutions working out? Are you closer to achieving your goals? A lot of my coaching clients feel bad when I ask this but I want to encourage you to not feel like a failure if you have not achieved all that you had planned …
Breaking the Rules for Fun and Profit
I joke that I am the most conventional unconventional guy you might ever meet, but it is true in a way. When we think of unconventional we often think about specific things. Going off to live on a commune might be a big one, having tattoos and piercing might be smaller “bucking the system” type …
Feeling Anxiety in Business and Moving the Fear Line
Fear and anxiety dominate if we allow it, but we have to keep working and striving. How can we succeed despite fears, panic, and anxiety?
The Strange Art of Achieving More by Doing Less
If you feel like you are working too hard, or working too many hours, this might give you some hope for a solution. I’m not saying it would work for everyone, but it has certainly given me a new perspective on my own business. Over the summer I achieved something I thought was unlikely at …
Saying No.
One of my clients was telling me how they feel overwhelmed because of all the commitments they feel they have been guilted into making. She knew I had wrestled with this lately and wanted to know my solution. I think she was disappointed to find out my magic bullet was to simply say “No” more. …
Interview with Julien Smith on Fear
Fear is a huge deal in our lives sometimes. It can stop us making progress. I recently had an email conversation with Julien Smith, one half of Trust Agents and all round cool dude. We talked about fear and how to manage it. He had some wise words for us: Chris: In your blog you …
Is it Time for a Work Detox?
Have you noticed how most of your day goes to stuff that is not related to what is really important? I am not even talking about the obvious things like dealing with spam, hanging out in Twitter, and people hanging on the telephone too long. There are lots of things that demand our time and …
7 Ways Social Media Helps With Business Networking
I’m a firm believer in networking. In fact I credit my network with a great part of why I have achieved my goals in the last five years. My journey from intention through to completion just would not have been possible without my friends, mentors and contacts. Many of the people responsible for where I …
Why People Fail
I have been putting a lot of thought into why some people succeed and others fail. It’s easy to put success down to luck or natural talent, but while there will always be an element of that, it does not seem to be “the answer”. There seem to be some ingredients that a lot of …
Why I Sucked at SXSW So You Don’t Have to
SXSW is a fixture on many a geeks calendar. It’s the biggest and wildest conference on the scene, encompassing “interactive”, film and music. My coolest friends in the UK thought it was the music festival I was attending, I didn’t have the guts to tell them I was only going to the nerdy bits, ha. …
Do you dare put down the mask?
My first experiences online came before the web, and before most of the modern “nettiquette” was written. It was the days of ultra nerdy folks (like me), librarians, and academic PHD types in lab coats. When people were not doing serious science type stuff there was a lot of socializing going on. There were hippy …
Why Positive Thinking Doesn’t Work for You and How to Fix it
I was reminded on Twitter by a quote how life coaches and gurus often talk about how sports people visualize victory. They say if you use positive visualization, then your outcome will improve. Then there are the people who tell you that if you use the “Law of Attraction”, that is if you ask the …
Defeating Procrastination: Become a Finisher
Analysis paralysis is just one of my procrastination challenges. A couple of other things have caused me to have to make an effort with my productivity. See if they are familiar to you and your own productivity issues: I have a compulsion to fix things I never think I have done enough Do you have …
Why you owe it to the world to be your true awesome self
What is holding you back?
Are you afraid of what people will think of you?
I bet you have skills, knowledge, experience or time that you could share with others, that you could offer to people to help them, but something is holding you back ...
Just Like Breathing?
What is so natural to you that it is like breathing? What aspect of yourself, which behavior, skill, activity, talent, is so part of you that you could not imagine yourself without it? Answer this question and you could make yourself so much happier and successful, ignore it and you could be making yourself and …
Thriving on Social Media Network Effects
Benefiting from social media network effects requires you to be vigelant about who you are connecting with.
Benefits of Growing Your Social Media Network
In general the more contacts you have, the more you will benefit from social media, or any network for that matter:
More opportunities
Greater access to expertise, information, news
Frequent, valuable feedback
Accelerated growth through …
Reciprocation Works Both Ways
Reciprocation is often talked about in terms of what you can get out of it. You might be forgiven for thinking of it purely as a tactic to get other people to do what you want them to do. But, as common sense would tell you, that is not the whole story, in fact it is just a simple human trait of "give and take".
I do something for you, you do something for me. Simple, but often abused. If you …
To Trust or to Test?
You might have seen, if you are visiting my site and not reading in email or feed, that I have one of those pop-over email sign up forms appearing right now.
Yes, it's because of Darren. Blame him, heh.
Thing is, I don't actually like these pop-overs much. While I think the way I am doing it with only showing it once per person is not as bad as every visit, I still believe people have popup …
Is Social Media a Waste of Time?
What do you think about Social Media and all the buzz around these services?
Last night I was on a Six Apart telephone conference with Andy Wibbels and Darren Rowse and the topic of how much time and effort social media takes up was raised. Andy made the good point that the people who discuss social media most are the people who need to, people like me who make our living being on top of these …
Making Plans for the Summer
As I have written before, we are now heading into the blogging summer slump time when the intertubes slow down, people go on vacation, some businesses put off projects, readers spend more time outside and not so much in front of the computer. Of course the first thing most of us think of when things …
Causality and Correlation
Causality and correlation. Ah, the scientist's friend. Mixed up so many times, the cause of so many arguments, the rock on which we stub our intellectual toes.
What is this concept and why should bloggers care?
Causality is the relationship between cause and effect. That is, for a given effect, you could find the cause.
Correlation is the degree to which two events are related. That is, two …
The Productivity Secret of Positivity and Gratitude
Lately I have been finding inspiration in some unusual places. One thought that has stuck in my head was inspired by Stephen Hopson and his Gratitude Theme Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can …
That Magic Ingredient
Whenever I achieve something in my life, two things often occur. One, the first, is I have to silence that small voice in my head that says "If I managed it then it can't have been all that hard". The second is I seem to attract people who say to me "I could have done that if only I _____" or "You see it's easy for you, because ______".
It seems if I am not going to pull down my achievements I …
Do You Need a Social Media Power Account?
Front page Diggs, Stumble traffic, and so on is not just a blogger obsession any longer but big business. If you are selling product online then you need search rankings, and to get those rankings you need links. Right now, everyone is getting into link bait. Conventional wisdom is to build up a power account …
Some Times You have to be Prepared to Fail
A couple of events have made me think about how people perceive failure lately. I don’t want to draw your attention to the individuals but the basic sentiment I am seeing a lot is that people in the public spotlight shouldn’t do something unless they are sure of success. I’m worried about that. Personally I …
Follow the Leader or Forge Your Own Path?
There are so many sources of conflicting advice it is difficult to know who to listen to. Each new piece of advice can be as convincing as the one that came before it. What should you do? How do you choose who to listen to? Do you take the word of the most influential, the …
How to Get There From Here
With any project the idea is to get from where you are now to where you want to be. We all understand that, but sometimes we don’t act like this is the case. How many times have you looked at your situation and wished that it could be instantly different? Or looked at a competitor …
Your Feedback as a Mirror
I was at Starbucks yesterday waiting for my caramel macchiato when I overheard a conversation that went something like this: “So I just put my handbrake on and sat there. There was no way I was moving, school or no school.” “What did they do then?” “They had to drive around me. One mounted the …
A Perfect Editorial Calendar for Your Desk
I have mentioned editorial calendars a couple of times here but I have always been thinking of something electronic. As it turns out there is a company who has developed a physical planner almost designed for the job! What you need in an editorial calendar is days laid out calendar style with space to write …
Tips for Better Skype Meetings
Since leaving the world of marketing agencies to work from home, my meetings have gone from mostly physical to mostly virtual. The vast majority of my clients over the last few years have been overseas. Whereas before I would hop on the train and go see clients, now I spend most of my time conversing …
The 80/20 Rule of Effort
The end of the year is approaching so I am looking backwards and forwards as I do every year. As I am sure many of you do too. One conclusion I have to draw from this year that I will take into the next is how I have squandered my time. Squandered might be too …
Working for Your Goals
Much as we would all like to have magic wands that put us instantly right where we want to be, in the perfect situation, surrounded by the right people, in reality we have to work towards it. I read a lot of biographies and find that the majority of so-called overnight sensations take many years …
Are You Ready For the Unexpected?
As I write this I have my family falling ill with a sickness bug all around me. This week we move house. I have work to deliver for a project today and another ongoing project kick-off happening in parallel. On top of all that I have my usual day to day tasks. It’s not going …
The Risks and Benefits of Giving Your Stuff For Free
The other day I wrote about how you can swap services to get help rather than think you have to pay people all the time. This morning I read Jacks My worst nightmare post and it made me realize how they are very related. Rather than write the post I was going to I had …
What Was I Thinking?
I just looked through my domain name accounts. There are over 30 unused domains in there. What on earth was I thinking? The problem is I know I will have yet another “brilliant” idea soon and do the self same thing. Get inspired, find a perfect domain name (or maybe not perfect), then sit on …