Tag Archives: Business

Shooting Arrows in Business

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My wife and I were cooking dinner for our family last night and doing our usual exchange of, “So, how was your day?” I began telling my wife about running into a friend of mine who has his hands in many little startup companies and is really embodying the entrepreneur’s spirit. She shook her head, smiled, and gave a bit of a chuckle, implying that my friend has bitten off more than he could chew.

And then it occurred to me: doing business and coming up with (and executing) new ideas is a lot like archery. Now I haven’t picked up a bow in many years, but hear me out. Let’s say you have a quiver of arrows on your back, and in your lifetime you only take one arrow and shoot it down range, fully expecting a bulls eye. Slim chance unless you’re an expert archer and marksman. What’s wrong with being the type of archer who is grabbing multiple arrows and taking lots of different shots, sometimes at different targets? Which archer is going to have a better shot at the bulls eye. That bulls eye could be the next big thing.

Whether you apply this to business or even spending time doing something new with your family, I think we should shoot many arrows. Many will be a hit, some will be a complete bust, but at least you had the courage to try.

[This post is also published on SoulFoodRevolution.com, where I am going to begin doing a semi-regular guest column.]

A Note on Productivity

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These days, I’m as busy as ever, a mixed blessing in some situations. While I don’t have a lot of free time to play more Mario Kart on the Wii, I do have a lot of fun projects and clients to keep happy. Here’s a brief list of some of the stuff I use to stay productive:

  • Cashboard: Cashboard is a slick little web application, complete with integrated Dashboard widget for Mac OS X, that I use for managing tasks and time tracking on projects for clients. They even have a free version that lets you manage up to two projects. Subscriptions are nicely priced in different tiers depending on the amount of projects and contacts you need to manage.
  • anxiety-iconAnxiety: Anxiety is the best, most minimal To Do list I’ve used on the Mac. I’ve tried other apps like The Hit List, but keep coming back to Anxiety. It’s lightweight and very well integrated with iCal.
  • Mozilla Thunderbird: Don’t get me wrong, when I’m on my Mac, I’m a full-blown Apple Mail fan, but at work, we run Windows and Outlook is not my friend. I’ve got Thunderbird configured with a theme that closely matches the Mail experience on OS X, and a minimal folder/filing system that lets me use my inbox as a task list of pending projects. And speaking of email, I’m also a big fan of Merlin Mann’s “Inbox Zero” philosophy. Check out his great presentation here.
  • ical-iconiCal/MobileMe: I may be one of the few who doesn’t have constant troubles with Apple’s MobileMe, a service that syncs my desktop calendar and email with the cloud (online), so that I can pull up my schedule, emails, contacts, and more via web browser. I find the web apps very easy to use and stay connected with my main email account and calendars all day long.
  • chrome-iconGoogle Chrome: Quite possibly the best web browsing experience available on a Windows PC. I love its minimalistic user interface and speed most of all. Sure, Firefox has dozens of great, powerful add-ons, but when you want a browsing experience that is fast, Chrome is where it’s at! Chrome works great with Apple’s online web apps for MobileMe that I mentioned above.

Coming soon: A Note on Unproductivity (or better known as the fun stuff I distract myself with)

Soapbox: Customer Service (When it Stinks)

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Perhaps it’s the former customer service agent in me coming out, but I got pretty fired up this morning and had to send a polite-yet-nasty email:

In the past year, we have done a lot of business [COMPANY NAME REMOVED]. I wanted to write this morning and share with you my frustrations of your customer support agents. I strongly believe they do not represent your company’s best interests, as they always answer the phone sounding very uninterested in any problems that we may have. Their answers are short and attitudes are curt. This is not an isolated incident based on a call placed this morning, but a trend I notice when I have to call and speak to your agents on the phone. It makes me dread picking up the phone to call you, imagining the next person to answer who sounds like they’re having a bad day at work and is genuinely disinterested in helping me with my issue. 

Ironically enough, we were speaking about this very thing this morning before we had the need to call. Please do whatever you can to insure your customer support agents are willing to help the life of your business–your customers. They should match your other five-star services to a tee instead of tarnishing your reputation.

There’s nothing that bugs me more in business than seeing customers get treated poorly. I’ll hop off the soapbox now, time to enjoy the weekend!