Escape from Cubicle Nation

What to do when you have the "good problem" of client overload

On this month's group coaching call, I was surprised to find that most of the participants were not cube dwellers getting ready to leap, but rather seasoned entrepreneurs who were overwhelmed with the amount of details they were juggling in their thriving businesses.

Michael Port, who I have mentioned many times and interviewed for my old radio show, has written a very thought-provoking and useful follow up to his first best-seller, Book Yourself Solid.  The book is called Beyond Booked Solid : Your Business - Your Life - Your Way - It's All Inside.  It covers how to plan for the inevitable "good problem" that happens when you work diligently to build up your business:  before long, you are overwhelmed with details and the quality of your life (and business) suffers.

This graphic, which came with the preview copy of the book and I hope is included in the final version, sums it up nicely (click on image to enlarge):

If you were to replace this business guy with a woman in jeans with two kids hanging off her hips, this could be me.

To put it bluntly, if you want to grow your business without systems, you are screwed.  There is simply too much to plan, do and remember to do it all yourself.  And this is the case even if you want to stay extremely small.

If you want a little free taste of the book as well as listen to what promises to be an interesting conversation, tune in Monday, April 28 at 12pm Eastern to hear Michael, my good buddy Rich Sloan of StartupNation and Howard Behar, former President of Starbucks discuss the book.  Even if you miss the live conversation, sign up here to get the recording.

I really enjoyed the book and hope you will too.  If you read it, please share your thoughts here!

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Update 4/28:

Since this post went out late, my friend Elizabeth Marshall of www.AuthorTeleseminars.com who hosted the calls was generous enough to share the download link with everyone.  I just listened to it here and it is a really interesting conversation. 

http://www.marketingmarshall.com/recommends/beyondbooked1

Note: this link will lead to a blank page and open a pop-up box
for you to click save and download the mp3 to your computer

Required reading for those that work on the web: Connect! by Anne Zelenka

I have been meaning to write a review of this book for a long time.  It has sat in my coveted spot by the bathtub, and as a result, has water stains on key chapters. Once I spill coffee on it, it will join my short stack of truly great reference books.

Connect!  A Guide to a New Way of Working from GigaOM's Web Worker Daily by Anne Zelenka with Judy Sohn is a really mind-opening book about  working through the web.  Much more than a collection of "lifehacking" tips and tools, it frames the fundamental shift in the world of work as a result of pervasive internet access.

The book introduces concepts like the difference between busy work and bursty work:

• Busy work uses step-by-step progress towards established and crystallized goals using top-down command and control management processes.  It focuses on face time, standard working hours, and adherence to organizational standards.  Busy work tends to focus on creating information goods and components mainly from scratch.
• Bursty work achieves discontinuous productivity and finds new opportunities for success by connecting with a distributed network of humans and computers that make up today's web.  it emphasizes results rather than attendance or face time, openness to new possibilities rather than following only traditional pathways, provisional rather than fixed goals, and experimentation rather than prediction of the future.

In my experience, this is where the dissonance exists in corporations who bristle at offering flexibility to their workers, for fear that if they don't see their butt in a chair that they are not working (which I elaborated in point #8 of my Open Letter to CXOs).

I immediately saw myself in the bursty workstyle description and felt like someone finally understood me!  For years I thought that my  wandering mind, inability to follow a structured plan and interest at putting great people and ideas together instead of creating all my own from scratch was a character flaw.  Now, thanks to Anne, I see that it positions me perfectly for an open source world where the ability to dream, imagine and connect is rewarded.

There are so many interesting things discussed in the book that I can't do it justice.  But one concept that really got me thinking was the discussion of Mind in the head vs. Connected and extended mind.  Philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers suggested in 1998 that the mind extends outside our head and onto the devices and tools that participate in its thinking action.  Details are in their paper The Extended Mind or more accessibly in the Wikipedia version.

In a nutshell, if you consider that your mind extends outside of your head, you no longer need to cram as many facts in your head as possible to be a "learned" person.  Instead, you just have to know where the information lives "out there" for future reference.  Search engines facilitate easy access.  I feel less stressed already, just thinking about it!

Connect strikes a really nice balance between explaining conceptual ideas simply and clearly and providing specific examples of tools and resources you can use to implement the ideas immediately.  Practical advice includes:

• Preparing for Web Work
• Productivity tips using a bursty style
• Rethinking your relationship with email (lots of examples of alternative tools)
• How to surf better (the web, not the waves)
• Blending your personal and work life (which can be a challenge in the "always on" mode of web working

I will be so bold as to say that this book should be required reading for anyone who works.  Even if you choose to work in a more traditional manner as an employee, you will learn ways to be more productive and creative with techniques and approaches discussed in the book.

And it provides how-to guidance and structure for entrepreneurs who agree with Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae premise that you can't put hot new marketing and social media tools on top of an old school business structure.  This book will help you to structure your new company so that it takes full advantage of the tremendous opportunities provided by working through the internet.

Great job, Anne and Judy!  I will definitely be using some of the material in my book (with due credit) since I think any new entrepreneur today is crazy not to take advantage web work, regardless of their business.

And as an added resource that arrived in my email box serendipitously last night, here is a list of 100 Niche Job Boards for Web Workers.

Come discuss "Meatball Sundae" with me, Andy Wibbels, Tim Sanders and Seth Godin 1/29

I have been enjoying my copy of Seth Godin's latest book, Meatball Sundae.

It discusses fourteen marketing trends that we all face this year, in  thought and action-provoking signature Seth style.

The Meatball Sundae metaphor refers to boring company brands (meatballs) throwing whiz-bang new marketing strategies (ice cream sundae toppings) on top of their business, and expecting "magic" results.  The intro to the book says:

"Maybe this is familiar.  It is to me anyway:

    You go to a marketing meeting.  There's a presentation from the new Internet-marketing guy.  He's brought a fancy (and expensive) blogging consultant with him.  She starts talking about how blogs and the "Web 2.0 social media infrastructure" are just waiting for your company to dive in.  "Try this stuff," she seems to be saying, "And the rest of your competitive/structural/profit issues will disappear."

The same could be said for the brand new entrepreneur.  There is a stunning array of marketing tools to choose from, many of them free, but all time-consuming. What should you implement, in which order?

And sometimes, new entrepreneurs, groomed by "meatball" culture, think they have to create complex operational structures in order to be a "real" business. Examples like:

• A former Deloitte consultant believes he has to create obtuse 150-slide "decks" to impress his new clients (we should sic Garr on him)
• Former HR bigwigs, setting up shop as independent consultants, spend 6 months and $30,000 for a website that gets them zero clients.  (Meanwhile, a colleague setting up the same business uses LinkedIn one evening and gets 10)
• Talented and sincere bloggers spend endless hours creating wonderful content that no one reads

Last year, I tried to dip my hand in every New Marketing, social media, Web 2.0 bucket I could find, including  Facebook, LinkedIn, Podcasting, Internet Radio, YouTube, Blogging, Vlogging,(ok, I did one poorly recorded video greeting) and Squidoo .  I put a lot of effort into it and learned a lot, but didn't do anything besides blogging justice, creating a rather stretched and anemic web presence.  It is also not sustainable ... at least the way I have been doing it.

This year, I want to be more deliberate and effective in the tactics I use to reach out to my "peeps," frustrated corporate employees who want to break out of their cubes.  I would love to do fewer of the right things that serve my core objective:  bring people to this blog. For here is where my heart lies, and what I will continue to do regardless of any other distractions. {edit 1/22:  by "fewer of the right things" I mean fewer things, and the right things.  When I re-read this in the morning light, it sounded like I didn't want to do the right things. :)

So next Tuesday, January 29 at 1pm Eastern I am delighted to participate in a call about Meatball Sundae with Seth and the following cool cats:

* Tim Sanders, author of Love is the Killer App and The Likeability Factor
* Andy Wibbels, expert blogger and author of Blogwild!

I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Tim yet, but Andy and I are buddies.  I harass him every few days on Skype with a whole bunch of Meatball Sundae-esqe, Web 2.0 questions, on everything from writing a book to technical blogging questions.  One of these days, he is going to realize that our friendship is just a thinly disguised way for me to get free consulting, and will stop returning my calls. 

If you haven't yet grabbed your copy of the book, go to your local bookstore and buy it, get it from 800CEORead, or Amazon.  (The last time I reviewed a book, a kind reader who owns an independent bookstore reminded me that I should encourage people to "buy independent."  It was a good point, given the topic of my blog, but also a good question for the call, since I am not totally convinced that Amazon is the evil empire.  To prove it, I used an affiliate link.  What can I say, diapers ain't cheap! Byron, if you want to weigh in, please do!)

Do you have any specific questions or topics that you want me to cover on the call? I can't promise to get to all of them, but I would like to come prepared with a good synopsis of what my blog readers worry about when marketing their emerging businesses this year.

Drop your comments here, or send me an email.

If you can't attend the live call, sign up anyway because it will be recorded.

Hope you can make it!  Sign up at www.sethgodinbooktour.com.

New design book for the ages: Presentation Zen

There are few books  I have read  that give me goosebumps.  Presentation Zen:  Simple ideas on presentation design and delivery is one of them.

By means of context, everything about the book is a "sweet spot" of my interests and attractions.  I adore photography, and the images used in the book (from my favorite image source istockphoto) are truly stunning.  The ideas on presentation and communication fit squarely with my taste and experience.  And the author, Garr Reynolds, has a wonderful narrative voice, which is all at once calm, wise and powerful.

Here is a taste from the introduction:

"A teacher for one who seeks enlightenment would say the first step for the student is to truly see that life is somehow out of sync or off-kilter, that there is "suffering" if you will.  And that this "out-of-kilterness" is a consequence of our own attachment to things that are inconsequential.  Likewise, the first step to creating and designing great presentations is to be mindful of the current state of what passes for "normal" PowerPoint presentations and that what is "normal" today is out of sync and off-kilter with how people actually learn and communicate.

Each situation is different.  But we all know, through our own experience, that the current state of presentations in business and academia causes its own degree of "suffering" for audiences and for presenters alike.  If we desire to communicate with more clarity, integrity, beauty and intelligence, then we must move beyond what is considered to be "normal" to something different and far more effective.  The principles I am most mindful of through every step of the presentation process are restraint, simplicity, and naturalness:  Restraint in preparation.  Simplicity in design.  Naturalness in delivery.  All of which, in the end, lead to greater clarity for us and our audience."

As one who has suffered through years of excruciating PowerPoint presentations, all I can say is "Hallelujah!"

This book was born from Garr Reynold's blog of the same name, Presentation Zen.  It contains context and instruction for great presentation design from Garr and other experts, how-to information for putting together great-looking visuals as well as lots of samples of real-world slides.  Although designers will appreciate its detail and focus, it is a book for anyone who uses images and words to communicate.  Which is pretty much everyone.

And a bonus too juicy and sweet for me to imagine, I am featured in the book, using the sample slides from my mini-movie My Declaration of Independence.  Given the caliber of some of the people in the book like Seth Godin, Nancy Duarte, Guy Kawasaki and Merlin Mann, I feel like a first-year drama student called on stage to act with Laurence Olivier. I am humbled and very thankful to be included in what I think will be a design book for the ages, which will be perched on bookshelves around the world, alongside weathered copies of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style.

So to follow the advice from the "the first forward in history presented in a book as PowerPoint slides," by Guy Kawasaki (which will delight and amuse you when you see it):

So open your wallet and buy it.

Then open your mind and read it.

Then open your heart and do it.

It is supposed to ship from Amazon starting today, December 17.

Congratulations Garr on creating a truly useful and stunning work of art.

Book to read for generations from any letter of the alphabet: Brazen Careerist

Awhile back, I took off my earrings, smeared vaseline under my eyes and challenged my smart blogging counterpart Penelope Truck to a virtual smackdown over a blog post.  I got interesting responses from my readers, and she was very civilized in her reply, much to her character and credit.

I promised to write a review of her book Brazen Careerist:  The New Rules for Success which I have been enjoying in short bursts over the last month and a half or so (I catch up on my reading late at night in  the bathtub ... which means it takes awhile to get through a whole book, especially if I fall asleep while reading it, getting it wet, then having to dry the pages). 

This book is written as the antidote to tired, old-school career "experts" like me who keep hammering the same advice over and over to the new generation of 20 and 30-something workers.  As Penelope says, "the rules to success have changed."

I think it is the aim of each new generation to provoke and challenge the next.  I catch my breath when I find myself saying things like "When I was their age, I had already been working for 6 years!" or "You really need to pay your dues before you ask for so many perks."  As much as we try to act "sick," "phat" and "tight" to prevent ourselves from appearing old and boring, we will have different opinions on work and life than the generations that proceed us.

Penelope organized her book in two parts: Part 1 "Relish the Path from Starter Job to Dream Job" and Part 2 "How to Get What You Want from the People You Work With."  Within each section are a number of new "rules" that guide and shape new workplace behavior.

There are many rules which I clearly embrace and endorse, like:

• #3:  Grad school will not save you
• #18 If you are a mess at home, it shows at work
• #21 When you are mudslinging, you are losing ground

There are others which give me pause, and some which I outright disagree with:

• #28 Use harassment to boost your career
• #33 There are no bad bosses, only whiny employees
• #36 Differentiate yourself by staring at the wall (undecided on this one, really)

I got the greatest chuckle from Rule #35, "How to Manage a Boomer Boss."  Excerpts:

"Managing up will not be easy.  You're dealing with someone so different from you that he sits through PowerPoint presentations about emoticons."

"When a baby boomer says 'Do you realize how many years of experience I have?' the baby boomer means, 'Do you realize how long I have paid my dues?  Why do you think you are entitled to challenging, interesting work immediately?'"

If you see nothing wrong with the last statement, it would benefit you to pick up and read this book. The more we understand each generation's perspective on work, the more likely we will all have a better work experience.

Feel free to virulently disagree, as do many Yahoo Finance readers who pick apart Penelope's posts on a regular basis.  I find it a fascinating example of generational differences at war.  And you know who always loses?  The generation who fails to adapt.

Great reviews of the book have been written by Bob Sutton, Guy Kawasaki (with a follow up post, based on popular demand) and Ramit Sethi (who writes for a 20-something crowd, so check out his 71 comments on the post, and compare them to Guy's).

As a slight aside, for those of you interested in parlaying a blog to a book as Penelope did should check out her post on the topic: "How to get a six figure book deal from your blog."  It has really great insight, which I scribbled furiously in my notes since I am attempting a similar thing.

It is great to watch Penelope develop and grow her platform, both through her very informative blog, and now recent syndication on Huffington Post.  If you measure the "new rules of success" by results, clearly Penelope knows what she is talking about.