So many people I know sit down at their desks and mess around for an hour or two – reading news or catching up on email. Others grab a cup of joe and jump right into the project they left on Friday.

If you’re in business for yourself, mornings are often crucial to your workday. A well-spent morning can often mean the difference between a productive workday and not.

But what about Mondays?

Over the years I’ve tried lots of ways to get the most out of Mondays. I’ve tried to do first things first or focused on getting done that one thing that’s most important. I’ve taken a relaxed approach to Monday and have jumped right into working. I’ve even used techniques like visualization or meditation to try to set the tone for my week.

Many of the things I tried were helpful. Sometimes I’d jump right into the most important project of the week and try to get as much done as I could. This would be great because it would set up the week for me to make lots of headway on a project.

But nothing I tried was really setting me up for success – either for Mondays or for my week. So I sat down one Monday morning and forgot about getting things done. Instead, I decided to focus on how I wanted my days and my weeks to look. How did I want to manage my client’s needs, their projects, their communications with my needs to continue to develop and grow my business?

I looked in many directions. What I realized was that I’m most effective when I’m clear about what I need to get done. I keep a pretty good log of where I am on each project and where my client’s are in their process so that’s seldom been a problem.

What was a problem was decerning when to do what.

So I decide that every Monday morning I would take the first 60-90 minutes of the day and lay out my week. I started by looking at deadlines and comparing the progress on each client’s work I was doing. Then I started placing what needed to get done for the week into which days I needed or wanted to accomplish the next pieces for my clients. Then I leave those project parts attached to those days – and move on (I organize the day for 15-30 minutes each morning).

After I have a rough roadmap of my week, I then turn to Monday in general. Monday’s I seldom schedule calls with clients. I use Mondays to do various task that are important to my business – like accounting. I also use Mondays to working directly on my own business – where my business is my client. While I do work on my business throughout the week, I often don’t have as much time to work in blocks as I make on Mondays. This way, I make time for my business to grow and develop.

So for me, Monday mornings are all about setting some organization for the week. This has been so effective for me that I’m wasting less time and getting more done each week – which means more client work getting done – which overall means generating more revenue.

So how do you make your Monday mornings most effective?

(note: image from Teo on Flickr)

Many small business owners focus on creating the best products and services based on their skills, knowledge and abilities. Then they go out and find people who need or want what they have to offer. Sometimes it works and you build a successful business around it.

But more often, especially, it seems, with small business owners in either service-based business or who are just starting out, it doesn’t work. They create services, for instance, that they would want or that they believe other people would need. They build some structure around their ideas, create a marketing message, build a website and off they go – feeling like they’re going to change the world.

Then reality sets in. Few people visit their website. Fewer, yet, contact them about their offerings. If they don’t get discouraged and give up, they often go looking for either a business coach, or take courses in marketing and copy writing. In turn they get sold the idea that if they were just clearer in their marketing message, people would flock to their business.

Now that’s true, to some degree. The the clearer your messaging and the better your copy writing, the better your overall marketing can be. So it’s not a poor plan to use a business coach (some consider me one, so I can’t knock it), or focus on your copy writing. But that doesn’t always relate to selling more of your services and making more money.

What’s missing is your audience.

Now when you take a good marketing or copy writing course you should get plenty about identifying the demographics and psychographics of your audience – and that’s good. You likely get as well a hefty dose of customer-focused writing – and that’s certainly helpful. It’s just both are premature.

The question so few small business owners ask themselves is – what do the people in my target audience know they need? Let me repeat that – what do they know they need? That’s the key to marketing – finding out what they know they need. Not just what they need, but what they know they need (I’m repeating this on purpose).

So is there any reason not to develop your services and products around what your audience knows they need?

How would meeting your audience where they are change your business?

Let’s talk about it!

(note: image from Sidereal on Flickr)

Yet what we seldom hear about are the business lessons that led to that success. Lessons that weren’t born from knowing exactly what to do and succeeding. But business lessons that were forged out of trying something and having it not go the way you want. Business lessons that come out of failure.

Failure provides an immense opportunity. Sure, success provides opportunity as well. But I’ll venture to guess that if you consider the most valuable lessons you’ve learned in your business, they come from things that didn’t work. Or at least didn’t work the way you expected.

The opportunities failure provides are much different than the opportunities found in success.

First off, when you’re successful it’s easy to get complacent. It’s easy to stop learning, to rest on your laurels, or to just try to repeat what made you successful over and over again. But when you fail, you’re forced to changed. You’re forced to evaluate and reevaluate why what you tried didn’t work. The lessons you take away from trying something and having it not work can be invaluable to your business.

Secondly, success provides stability – which can be great – while failure provides uncertainty, unease and hunger. Have your first major setback in your business and you’ll find out how much you really want to be in business. And that’s a good thing to know.

Lastly, failure is what leads to success. Before you can succeed, you have to try. And in the trying comes a likelihood of failing. But failure simply means you tried. Everyone’s heard the famous quote by Thomas Edison when he talked about all the failure that led up to inventing the incandescent lightbulb:

“I didn’t fail ten thousand times. I successfully eliminated, ten thousand times, materials and combinations which wouldn’t work.”

I don’t his outlook as some trite sound bite about how sexy failure is. Rather, I see the brilliance in setting a goal and working toward that goal, regardless of the odds. I see the perseverance it takes to be successful – as a parent or spouse, in life and in business. I see the hope that Thoreau expressed so well when he said:

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

The key here is ‘advances confidently in the direction of.’ That’s how to approach your business. That’s how to fail well. And that’s how to meet with ‘success unexpected in common hours.’

What are your thoughts?

(note: image from eyesplash Mikul on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Larry’s work was extraordinary. But while he managed a few customers in those first couple of years, he was barely making a living. It was just too hard to find people who really wanted a custom table.

Yet, for Larry, his heart wasn’t in it. He enjoyed the design and the crafting of these pieces of art, but he wasn’t sure this was his calling.

So he moved back to Ann Arbor from Seattle and began a home renovation company with a long-time friend. They niched themselves doing upscale remodels and additions and made their focus about quality and customized solutions. Larry did the design and custom woodwork – banisters, closets, trim work, etc. Yet he excelled in designing and remodeling kitchens and bathrooms.

I went with Larry once to a job site. It was amazing to watch him walk around a kitchen and develop a layout. In minutes he could come up some incredible ideas. I once asked him what he saw when he walked into a space. He told me that he completely ignores what’s there. He pictures the room completely empty – no cabinets, no appliances, no sink, etc. Then he considers where the doors and windows are and how the family will use their kitchen. He also takes into account unique features and shape of the space he’s in. Then he just imagines where things should go. The sink needs to go here, the stove there, etc. It’s remarkable. The day I went with Larry he had the outline for a design mapped out in about 15 minutes.

Now he’s working with $150,000 and more kitchen remodels, so people are spending good money. So he takes measurements, talks to his clients, and then enters all the room information into a computer program that generates a three-dimensional representation of the room. Then he begins placing the cabinets and appliances as he imagines them. This way he can show his design to his clients. It’s pretty neat.

Anyhow, Larry has designed some absolutely beautiful kitchen out of what was once ugly, unusable space. The project I went with him on, he opened a wall and found a chimney made of old brick. His team cleaned the brick, glazed it and made it the centerpiece of the design. When finished, it was stunning.

What’s happened for Larry is he found what he loves doing. He loves taking spaces in people’s homes and redesigning and then building them so they become the most loved rooms in the house. We had lunch after I visited the job site with him. We spent an hour talking about design. As he paid the check, I told him, “you’re not a woodworker, you’re a designer. It’s just you have the skills to create your designs.”

He’s never thought about it that way before. He’d always thought of himself as a woodworker. So he stopped and thought about it…”you’re right,” he said, “Boy that changes things a bit, doesn’t it?”

And it did. He began marketing himself, and hence his remodeling business with is partner as a design firm who could also build. Pretty rare combination. Yet it’s making them more successful every year.

Plato once said, “All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.”

Larry has definitely found how he can make a living, a pretty good living, from his natural gifts. How are you using your natural gifts in your business? How do your gifts give you an advantage in the marketplace?

And if you’re not fully using your natural gifts, or if your not doing what you’re naturally great at, why?

Let’s talk about it.

photo courtesy of Meadowlark Builders.

Think about it for a second: you find something you do well and offer it to people who you believe need it. That’s it. That’s all you have to do to have a semi-successful business. Doesn’t matter whether you’re selling toothbrush holders or marketing advise. It basically comes down to what you do well and who needs it.

Most small businesses get this – at least partly. They almost always understand the ‘what’ part of the equation They know what they do. And they can go into great detail explaining it to you. But most forget the second part of the equation – the ‘who’ part.

Who is so important that I’ll go out on a limb and say that if you’re not focused, highly focused on who – that is who needs what you have – then you’re likely not very successful. Moreover, if you have been successful without focusing on who, then you’re lucky. And luck means one of two things – either your business will dry up or you’re only getting a tiny portion of what could be an enormous business. Either way, the solution is to focus on who – who does your business serve?

So let’s look at a couple of different approaches to how we might go about finding who:

1. You can ask a question like, “who is it that needs what you have to offer?” Ligitimate question, right? You sit down and consider where the people are who need what you have. You might ask friends or colleagues. You might even hire a marketing expert to help you ‘find them.’ You can take this approach and you can be fairly successful. Though I have to say there are more obstacles to finding out what your audience really needs. Not to mention the time you spend trying to find the people who need what you got, can be daunting.
2. Another option is you can ask people what they need. If you’re clear on what you can offer, then find out what people need. You do this by asking them directly. Find people who might be among your target audience and ask them a few questions about what they believe they need. On the web you can do this easily with a short survey. Drive people to the survey and capture the results. People will almost always tell you what they need. Then, adjust your offer so that you’re meeting them where their need is.

The second option is the one that saves time, effort and resources. It helps you position your business to create more sales faster and for a more sustainable time. Knowing what your audience actually wants creates a familiarity between you and your prospective customer by them feeling as though they’re needs are understood a bit by your business.

Marketing has always been about placing what you do in front of the person that needs it when they’re in a position to buy. You can give yourself a leg up on the process by finding out what people need – from their own mouths. Doing so, you remove a large portion of the guess work. And then, you can truly deliver the product or service that they know they need.

How have you learned what your audience wants? Have you asked them directly? If so, how has this changed your development process?

And if you’re not asking your audience directly for what they need, what’s one thing  you can do today to begin?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from anyjazz65 on Flickr, some rights reserved)

I remember much from our conversations – though truthfully, he was often doing most of the talking as I’d just try to absorb what he was teaching me.

One of the things he said again and again is, “what you focus on expands.” He said it often, in many different ways. But the core message was always the same – whatever you think is – is.

Now I’ve seen this hold true in just about every instance in my life. If I thought something was a certain way, it would almost always show itself to be that way. Just think about how many times you’ve miscommunicated with someone because you were focused on one perspective while they were focused on another.

How you think about your business is no different. What you focus on in your business is what will expand. It’s what you believe that you’ll put effort into. Hence, where you put your focus is where you’ll put your energy which is where you’re business will evolve from. Think that you can’t get the clients you really want, and it’ll be pretty difficult too. Think that no one wants your service and you’ll become prophetic by putting your efforts into proving yourself right. That’s just human nature.

But moreover, it’s what your brain does. Your brain sees the world, sees your business, through the filters of your beliefs. How you think your business is, is what you’re business is – or what it will become. The interesting thing is seeing how easy it is to trick your brain. Just watch:

Pretty incredible, huh? See how easy it is to trick your brain?

Now consider how your your brain, your throughts, your beliefs are affecting your business. How is what you believe affecting your bottom line? Are you limiting the growth, the potential, of your business because of something you perceive about it?

Would you consider seeing it differently?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: both images from skippy13 on Flickr, some rights reserved)

The answer is always quite simple, really. So simple that it can be answered in one word – change.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.“

Yet how many of us can say that we’re not doing something insane with our business? How many of us keep trying the same things again and again hoping that somehow the results will be different than before?

Well, the only way to different results is to do things differently than before. If you want to grow your business, you have to introduce something new into it. You have to do something, even ever so slightly, different. In other words, you have to change.

My dear friend David Bullock gets this. Not only does he get it, he’s an expert at finding what you can change in your business to give you better results.

Below is a short video (1:20) of David talking about how to take your business to the next level. Here’s an excerpt:

“So if you’re in your business and it’s not working for you, guess what! You have to step back from it and look at it from a very different level to get it to work. If you don’t do that your business just kind of sits where it is.”

[youtube W_GViSHTuL4]

David continues: “Going to the next level really means you really have to do something differently, but not different. So you may have everything that you need right now to make your business do exactly what you want it to do. But it’s a matter of you packaging and repackaging what you already have; putting a different a different value on it for it to go to the next level.”

So if you look at your business, what changes, even little ones, can you make right now that will affect your bottom line? What can you do differently right now? And how would you see your results changing?

Let’s talk about it.

(note: image from red betty black on Flickr)

But there’s a third question that I see rarely answered. That question…how! How do you actually do what and why?

For instance, if you have a business, you need to market your business. Perhaps you learn what types of marketing would work best for your business. You even learn why those types of marketing can help you be successful.

But when you get to the most important part – how – often it’s not as clear. Yet how is about implementation. How are the detailed steps you take to put into action, measure, assess and refine your efforts. So how is about getting it done – it’s about actually accomplishing in your business what you set out to do. It’s about taking your vision, your dream, your ideas and making them into reality.

So why is so little spent these days on how?

If you could ask Seth Godin, Tom Peters, Andy Sernovitz, Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan (insert any name you consider an expert) any one question – wouldn’t it be ‘how? Wouldn’t that one question be – ‘how do I do…(whatever)?’

So what are the questions you’d ask about how to implement some piece of advice in your business or on you blog? Perhaps we can find some answers together.

(note: image from TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ on Flickr)

Most methods for productivity include making various to-do lists of the things you want and need to get done. Whether it’s David Allen, Stephen Covey or Jerry Seinfeld, everyone suggests making lists.

But do you ever find that your lists keep growing? Or do you get discouraged looking at a never-ending list of stuff that needs to get done? Or worse, do you find yourself not getting things done because you’re overwhelmed by your to-do list? So, what happens when your to-do lists start doing you?

What happens when the to-do lists you make begin getting in the way of actually getting things done?

Personally, I make lists all the time. I live by lists. While I’m not a fan of Getting Things Done, I do appreciate and use some of David Allen’s approaches. For instance, I do write my to-do lists in order of urgency. I also get the things done immediate that will only take a few moments so they never end up on a list in the first place. And one of the more helpful suggestions I’ve taken from GTD is getting everything out of my head and onto a list so that my mind isn’t tied up remembering things.

But to-do lists can take over your business – and your life. They can grow out of control, making it difficult, even overwhelming to getting things done. Just spend a few days writing down all the business ideas and tasks you face and you’ll quickly see what I mean. How could you possibly get all that done.

Well, in truth, you’re not supposed to get all that done. What you’re supposed to do is get all that stuff out of your head and onto to-do lists so that it’s not taking up mental space in your mind. But the second function of to-do lists is being able to sort what needs to be done, what should get done and what could get done:

• What needs to get done – These are the items on your to-do list that are essential. Either they are the next step in a project for a client or the development of a course or product. Or they are any item that must get done as soon as possible.
• What should get done – These are the items on your to-do list that do need attention, just not immediately. This list is sort of a master list that stores everything that I will eventually need to get done. I create a to-do list for each part of my life – work, home remodeling, personal projects, etc. It’s from this to-do list that items move to the ‘needs to be done’ to-do list. For instance, the next ‘must do’ steps in my client work.
  note: I’m realizing only as I write this that this to-do list is the master to-do list for my business (never thought about it this way before). It holds the full picture for all my client and project work. So, in essence, this is is rather large and segmented by project. It’s also the most dynamic to-do list since items are constantly coming and going.
• What could get done – The items on this to-do list are more larger, big vision-type items. It could be an idea for a new product or service or some brainstorm of a joint venture I want to look at. Basically, this is a list of the items that are not necessary in my day-to-day/week-to-week work load.

These three basic to-do lists make up the bulk of how I work. The ‘needs to get done’ to-do list is where my immediate action steps live. This is my ‘gotta get it done now’ list. I look at it multiple times daily and often only do the items that are on this list. I usually try to build this list out on Monday mornings to be done for the whole week.

As I mentioned, the ‘should get done’ to-do list is my master list. As items are completed on my ‘need to get done’ list, new items from the ‘should get done’ list move up to become ‘need to get done’ items. For example, the once one step in a project is completed, the next step on that project moves from ‘should be done’ to ‘needs to be done.’ I go through this list on Monday mornings, again on Wednesday and then near the end of the day on Friday – making sure the right items are being promoted.

The ‘could get done’ to-do list, for me, is where I house all my ideas, brainstorms, brain dumps, and creative thoughts. Often it holds the overall vision of my business. Since I vision on my business a lot, a few times a week, actually, this to-do list tends to also become a development ground for ideas and new directions before it officially becomes a project. If you saw this list, it’s often mind maps, outlines and sketches.

The flow of all these to-do items is what keeps my to-do lists working for me. These days I seldom find myself in a situation where my to-do list is doing me. Instead, I get things done – in an orderly, efficient and effective way.

What do you do to get things done? Is there a method that you’ve found works best for you – if so, what? And where is the biggest gap in your to-do list system?

Let’s talk about it…

(note: image from alykat on Flickr)

Yesterday I share my opinions on what to do when a commenter isn’t hearing your correctly. The conversation that arose was interesting and stimulating about how our commenters can sometimes take us out of context or comment on things we didn’t say. What I didn’t consider was that it extends beyond the comment box as well.

A short time ago I wrote a post that I titled, Are You Thinking Outside The Box. The point of the post was to open the awareness that we really can’t live outside the box. Even if we believe we are, we’re not really. Why? Because there is no such thing as living outside ‘the box.’ It’s a made up idea; a buzz phrase to help us express that we’re thinking differently than everyone else. And that’s fine. But it’s not true.

You see, we live in constructs based in a combination of our experiences and the collective consciousness. Sure, we can challenge our beliefs on something. We can even change our approach to how we do things. But the truth is we can never escape the box. It’s not possible. The best we can do is expand the walls of the one we live in. In other words, build a bigger box.

And that was my point. Not that we should strive to live outside the box. But rather, we should think about how we can expand the one we have.

Controversial, I know. But it’s true. Just think about it for a minute. You may be able to overcome your history, you ideas, and your beliefs. You may even think of new ways to express your gifts and knowledge to the world. But that doesn’t mean you’re living outside a box. It simply means you’re expanding the walls of your box to live in a larger one that can contain more.

That’s what my dear friend Alex Shalman didn’t get when he asked can you handle yourself outside the box.

For me, this is really a moot point. Of course you can’t handle yourself outside the box because there is no outside the box. It’s just not possible to escape all the boundaries of living. If you could come up with a new idea – something revolutionary to the world – you’d still have all the baggage of your life. And if you could let go of all that baggage, you’d still have the collective consciousness for things like the effects of gravity and the solidity of walls. And if you could overcome that, you’d have to expand beyond the confines of the universe…of creation, really. Is this really possible?

It seems Alex chose to focus on my statements of what it feels like to live without boundaries – to live outside a box. That’s fine, and it may be on purpose to create interesting conversation. But I was still misunderstood. See my point?

So I’ve said a lot on this topic. And it is rather deep. But I want to know what you think. And there is no wrong answer – just answers from within a box.