Could you use a little more... time? I've never bumped into a small business owner who said, "My biggest problem is that I have too much leisure time."
I'm currently reading the book Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud. It was a kind gift from a friend who thought it might be helpful in my work advising owners of family owned small businesses. The premise is that we sometimes struggle or just plain get stuck, in life and in business, with "endings" - - stopping or bringing an end to activities, relationships and businesses. We pursue good things but not the best, try to rehabilitate people and enterprises that are never going to succeed, or try to revive situations that are long, long dead and gone. Essentially, we waste time in areas that rob us from pursuing our very best.
How productive and effective could you be if you spent most of your time on the very best things in life, both personally and professionally? To focus there, you have to decisively choose to bring some things to a necessary end.
One of my all time favorite books, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey explores the principle of "First Things First". Dr. Covey urges leaders (as well as business owners and all individuals) to focus on the "not urgent and important" things in life. Don't you sometimes get the feeling that you are spinning your wheels addressing urgent situations throughout the day, only to reflect back in your exhaustion to realize that the things you pursued really weren't that important in the long run? Stephen Covey would encourage you to spend less and less time on urgent situations, which will allow you more and more time to address important aspects of life and business.
Perhaps the way to "make more time" is to consciously choose to stop doing some of the things you currently do. Wisdom says to the weary, to those who dream of a 30 hour day, stop doing the urgent and unimportant, bring these things to a necessary end.
Quick quiz: What will you stop doing TODAY to allow more time for the very best in your life?
Thanks for sharing 117 seconds of your day,
Smitty
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Steve Jobs Died This Week; So...
Steve Jobs died this week; so did the parent of three different friends of mine.
Three friends of mine lost a parent this week. No, the world won't pause to reflect on the lives of my friends' parents. Others across the planet won't post on Facebook or write a blog about these three. The public won't share videos and quotes of my friends' parents.
In one video I viewed, Mr. Jobs said: "Those people who think they are crazy enough to think they can change the world, those are the people who actually do." My friends' parents changed the world, my world, simply by making the lives of my friends possible.
Like George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life, we all leave our imprint on this world. Yes, when you're gone, "they" will talk about you in the funeral home. What would you like them to say? Perhaps this is the most valuable thing the passing of a celebrity like Steve Jobs provides: it causes us to pause from all our "busyness" to reflect upon the meaning of our lives.
What would you like them to say about you at the funeral home?
For me, it's simple. I'd like to be remembered as a man who knew God well, because my belief and faith in Jesus Christ is really the most important element of my life. I heard a sermon about "The Rest of Your Life" last Sunday. My plan is to spend the rest of my life on that. I know that I won't change the world, but I'd like to make a difference for a few dear people.
How about you? I hope you're crazy enough to think you can change the world. Get busy, the world is waiting for you.
(enjoy the brief video)
Thanks for sharing 77 seconds of your day,
Smitty
Three friends of mine lost a parent this week. No, the world won't pause to reflect on the lives of my friends' parents. Others across the planet won't post on Facebook or write a blog about these three. The public won't share videos and quotes of my friends' parents.
In one video I viewed, Mr. Jobs said: "Those people who think they are crazy enough to think they can change the world, those are the people who actually do." My friends' parents changed the world, my world, simply by making the lives of my friends possible.
Like George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life, we all leave our imprint on this world. Yes, when you're gone, "they" will talk about you in the funeral home. What would you like them to say? Perhaps this is the most valuable thing the passing of a celebrity like Steve Jobs provides: it causes us to pause from all our "busyness" to reflect upon the meaning of our lives.
What would you like them to say about you at the funeral home?
For me, it's simple. I'd like to be remembered as a man who knew God well, because my belief and faith in Jesus Christ is really the most important element of my life. I heard a sermon about "The Rest of Your Life" last Sunday. My plan is to spend the rest of my life on that. I know that I won't change the world, but I'd like to make a difference for a few dear people.
How about you? I hope you're crazy enough to think you can change the world. Get busy, the world is waiting for you.
(enjoy the brief video)
Thanks for sharing 77 seconds of your day,
Smitty
Monday, October 3, 2011
Scary or Just Another Trillion Dollar Company?
I ended my post on September 30th with:
I'm running out of time for today, but I wonder how valuable a company would be if they were the major player worldwide in music, movie entertainment, TV, news media and book offerings and distribution. And how influential. One thread of 145 comments that I read about the Facebook changes contained three comments from German individuals. Essentially, they said we witnessed about 80 years ago what can happen when the control of media and information is willingly relinquished to a single source.
Luckily, today we still have a Congress that sits under a Constitution and Bill of Rights that require our government to protect freedom of speech. We do, don't we? Not even a trillion dollar company can change that. Can it?
A trillion dollar company that is the major player worldwide in music, movie entertainment, TV, news media, and book offerings and distribution? In the video below, the last person interviewed, Co-Founder/CEO of Friend.ly Ed Baker, thinks Facebook "has the best shot at being a trillion dollar market cap company in the next few years".
Clara Shih, Founder of Hearsay Labs who is recorded on the video below prior to Mr. Baker, thinks that the new Timeline Facebook format (not yet available to individuals - yes, there's a ton more changes coming) will be helpful for small businesses. Small businesses and their owners will "really be able to connect at a much deeper level with their customers" and enjoy "a new level of authenticity and customer loyalty that will result".
Ed Baker also says that "users always have mixed feelings about change....in the long run people are going to love this a lot more than what they did before". Facebook users have noticed that the News Feed of information is no longer chronological, and they aren't seeing the information that they used to see. This is because the artificial intelligence running Facebook, called Graph Rank, is making decisions about content and filtering the information that Facebook users see. According to Bret Taylor, Facebook's CTO, Graph Rank looks for patterns and its main job is to figure out what's most interesting to the individual user.
Why would the individuals from Germany be concerned about the influence of a trillion dollar company deeply engaged in the music, film and TV media, print, news, and journalism industries, with control through artificial intelligence over what 800 million people see? I don't get it, do you?
Thanks for sharing 117 seconds of your day,
Smitty
I'm running out of time for today, but I wonder how valuable a company would be if they were the major player worldwide in music, movie entertainment, TV, news media and book offerings and distribution. And how influential. One thread of 145 comments that I read about the Facebook changes contained three comments from German individuals. Essentially, they said we witnessed about 80 years ago what can happen when the control of media and information is willingly relinquished to a single source.
Luckily, today we still have a Congress that sits under a Constitution and Bill of Rights that require our government to protect freedom of speech. We do, don't we? Not even a trillion dollar company can change that. Can it?
A trillion dollar company that is the major player worldwide in music, movie entertainment, TV, news media, and book offerings and distribution? In the video below, the last person interviewed, Co-Founder/CEO of Friend.ly Ed Baker, thinks Facebook "has the best shot at being a trillion dollar market cap company in the next few years".
Clara Shih, Founder of Hearsay Labs who is recorded on the video below prior to Mr. Baker, thinks that the new Timeline Facebook format (not yet available to individuals - yes, there's a ton more changes coming) will be helpful for small businesses. Small businesses and their owners will "really be able to connect at a much deeper level with their customers" and enjoy "a new level of authenticity and customer loyalty that will result".
Ed Baker also says that "users always have mixed feelings about change....in the long run people are going to love this a lot more than what they did before". Facebook users have noticed that the News Feed of information is no longer chronological, and they aren't seeing the information that they used to see. This is because the artificial intelligence running Facebook, called Graph Rank, is making decisions about content and filtering the information that Facebook users see. According to Bret Taylor, Facebook's CTO, Graph Rank looks for patterns and its main job is to figure out what's most interesting to the individual user.
Why would the individuals from Germany be concerned about the influence of a trillion dollar company deeply engaged in the music, film and TV media, print, news, and journalism industries, with control through artificial intelligence over what 800 million people see? I don't get it, do you?
Thanks for sharing 117 seconds of your day,
Smitty
Friday, September 30, 2011
You May Not Care About Facebook. You Should.
After watching the F8 Developers Conference keynote address by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (total play time an hour and forty minutes) several times, and then slowly reviewing while taking notes, I've come to a conclusion:
We all need to pay attention to what's going on with all the Facebook changes. Regardless as to whether or not you personally or professionally use Facebook, or even if you don't use it at all, there's a whole bunch going on here of which you need to take note.
Future Facebook Domination: The Music Industry
Remember the days before Napster and iTunes, when a friend would show you his music album or cd collection and that was how you "shared" music, hand to hand? Somewhere along the way, with the help of Napster and Apple, the entire music industry was redefined, reinvented, rethought......irreparably changed. One friend bought the cd, shared it through computers and mp3 players like Apple's iPod, and the music industry and recording artists stood on the sidelines and thought: how do we make money now?
Facebook is planning to rethink and reinvent the music industry, obviously to their financial advantage. Collaborating with a dozen partner businesses, the most prominent being Spotify, Facebook plans to share music between friends automatically through Timeline (see Friday September 23 post of this blog). According to Mark Zuckerberg, the key is to help you discover so many songs that you end up buying even more content than you ever would otherwise. Cha-ching$$$ ! Want to buy that song your friend is listening to for 79 cents without leaving Facebook rather than logging on to iTunes to buy it for 99 cents? Cha-ching$$$ !
Facebook users on Spotify listen to more music and a greater variety of music, and according to Spotify CFO and Co-Founder Daniel Ek, Spotify has 400 million playlists to back up that statement. Question: where did Spotify get access to 400 million playlists? Hint: Facebook has 800 million users and for the first time they reached a milestone of having a half billion individual users log on in a single day.
Didn't realize your personal playlist of songs was so valuable, did you? Or maybe you didn't know it was being shared? Do you also not realize that, after you personally log off Facebook, Facebook continues to track every website you visit and every page that you view?
Future Facebook Domination: Movies, TV, Books, News
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings sits on the Facebook Board of Directors. He was initially uncomfortable with sharing Netflix user info with Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook team. But after he realized the value of doing so for Netflix users and the company he heads, Facebook is now pioneering movies through social media with Netflix and a dozen other companies. According to Hastings, Netflix is in 44 out of 45 countries on Facebook. Hasting explained that there seems to be an outdated privacy law about video disc companies, but luckily the US Congress has a bill today in Congress to update that old privacy law and will allow Netflix to "turn on" in the US through Facebook.
Hmmm. Even the US Congress is willing to help Mr. Zuckerberg and friends.
So What?
I'm running out of time for today, but I wonder how valuable a company would be if they were the major player worldwide in music, movie entertainment, TV, news media and book offerings and distribution. And how influential. One thread of 145 comments that I read about the Facebook changes contained three comments from German individuals. Essentially, they said we witnessed about 80 years ago what can happen when the control of media and information is willingly relinquished to a single source.
Luckily, today we still have a Congress that sits under a Constitution and Bill of Rights that require our government to protect freedom of speech. We do, don't we? Not even a trillion dollar company can change that. Can it?
Thanks for sharing 198 seconds of your day,
Smitty
We all need to pay attention to what's going on with all the Facebook changes. Regardless as to whether or not you personally or professionally use Facebook, or even if you don't use it at all, there's a whole bunch going on here of which you need to take note.
Future Facebook Domination: The Music Industry
Remember the days before Napster and iTunes, when a friend would show you his music album or cd collection and that was how you "shared" music, hand to hand? Somewhere along the way, with the help of Napster and Apple, the entire music industry was redefined, reinvented, rethought......irreparably changed. One friend bought the cd, shared it through computers and mp3 players like Apple's iPod, and the music industry and recording artists stood on the sidelines and thought: how do we make money now?
Facebook is planning to rethink and reinvent the music industry, obviously to their financial advantage. Collaborating with a dozen partner businesses, the most prominent being Spotify, Facebook plans to share music between friends automatically through Timeline (see Friday September 23 post of this blog). According to Mark Zuckerberg, the key is to help you discover so many songs that you end up buying even more content than you ever would otherwise. Cha-ching$$$ ! Want to buy that song your friend is listening to for 79 cents without leaving Facebook rather than logging on to iTunes to buy it for 99 cents? Cha-ching$$$ !
Facebook users on Spotify listen to more music and a greater variety of music, and according to Spotify CFO and Co-Founder Daniel Ek, Spotify has 400 million playlists to back up that statement. Question: where did Spotify get access to 400 million playlists? Hint: Facebook has 800 million users and for the first time they reached a milestone of having a half billion individual users log on in a single day.
Didn't realize your personal playlist of songs was so valuable, did you? Or maybe you didn't know it was being shared? Do you also not realize that, after you personally log off Facebook, Facebook continues to track every website you visit and every page that you view?
Future Facebook Domination: Movies, TV, Books, News
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings sits on the Facebook Board of Directors. He was initially uncomfortable with sharing Netflix user info with Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook team. But after he realized the value of doing so for Netflix users and the company he heads, Facebook is now pioneering movies through social media with Netflix and a dozen other companies. According to Hastings, Netflix is in 44 out of 45 countries on Facebook. Hasting explained that there seems to be an outdated privacy law about video disc companies, but luckily the US Congress has a bill today in Congress to update that old privacy law and will allow Netflix to "turn on" in the US through Facebook.
Hmmm. Even the US Congress is willing to help Mr. Zuckerberg and friends.
So What?
I'm running out of time for today, but I wonder how valuable a company would be if they were the major player worldwide in music, movie entertainment, TV, news media and book offerings and distribution. And how influential. One thread of 145 comments that I read about the Facebook changes contained three comments from German individuals. Essentially, they said we witnessed about 80 years ago what can happen when the control of media and information is willingly relinquished to a single source.
Luckily, today we still have a Congress that sits under a Constitution and Bill of Rights that require our government to protect freedom of speech. We do, don't we? Not even a trillion dollar company can change that. Can it?
Thanks for sharing 198 seconds of your day,
Smitty
Monday, September 26, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Introducing Timeline From Facebook
Here's one announced change on Facebook - - Timeline. In less than half of a day, the views of this video leapt from 102,193 to 555,456. It will cost you 91 seconds of your day, but it may be worth it. What do you think?
Changes On Facebook
Among other things, two items caught my attention this week: Facebook made some changes to the way News Feeds function, and eMarketer predicted that Facebook's ad revenue will double this year from $1.86 Billion in 2010 to $3.8 Billion in 2011. Unrelated information? Perhaps, and perhaps not.
All week long there were posts:
"The Facebook Nazis are at it again!"
"I hate the Facebook changes!!!"
"It's time to move to Google+" (which I applaud)
In some ways, this reaction just sounds like a pack of Old Dogs refusing to learn a few New Tricks. We have all come to embrace the concept that "people hate change" despite the fact that we rejoice in the pleasure of driving a newly purchased car, love to go on vacations and celebrate the birth of a grandchild.
Embracing new things can be a simple matter of changing one's perspective. This past spring, I was diagnosed with a gluten allergy. I can't eat wheat, rye or barley - - no pizza or hot pretzels, and a laundry list of other products you wouldn't believe contain wheat. Friends express sympathy, but my reaction is: it isn't so bad. Compare that to last year when my son was in heart failure prior to his heart transplant and avoided salt like arsenic and could drink one, maybe two, thimbles of liquid a day, or starving individuals around the globe who would beg for food to which they are allergic. See? It really is a matter of perspective.
Back to Facebook
Why the changes in the Facebook News Feed? I'm certainly not an expert, but let's remember that Facebook is a business, not a charity solely interested in offering a free service. Some of the changes are genuine improvements for the end user, in part brought on by a response to Facebook's competition, Google's social media platform Google+.
Controlling the way that people see and absorb information also impacts the effectiveness of businesses using Facebook, and can enhance the attractiveness of investing in paid advertising on Facebook. Before I stopped checking the astronomical figures, Facebook's valuation as a company grew from $35 Billion in December of 2010 to $70 Billion this past spring. Stagnating at a couple billion in ad revenue isn't going to help the value of the company to continue to grow, particularly with a viable competitor like Google+ roaming the social media terrain.
Facebook is rapidly moving toward an IPO, an initial public offering of their stock. They're getting ready to cash in on all their hard work and effort. Additional ad revenue, and the promise of future growth, will ad to their wealth. Long after Facebook users cease complaining about changes in the News Feed, those selling their interest in Facebook will still be counting their money. How long do you think it takes to count $70 Billion?
The small business owner is keenly aware that there is much beyond his control. Facebook, or any other social media, can and will make changes that adversely impact their small business. More on how to deal with that reality in a future post. Until then, do your best to figure out how to take the greatest advantage possible of the new changes on Facebook.
Thanks for sharing 187 seconds of your day,
Smitty
All week long there were posts:
"The Facebook Nazis are at it again!"
"I hate the Facebook changes!!!"
"It's time to move to Google+" (which I applaud)
In some ways, this reaction just sounds like a pack of Old Dogs refusing to learn a few New Tricks. We have all come to embrace the concept that "people hate change" despite the fact that we rejoice in the pleasure of driving a newly purchased car, love to go on vacations and celebrate the birth of a grandchild.
Embracing new things can be a simple matter of changing one's perspective. This past spring, I was diagnosed with a gluten allergy. I can't eat wheat, rye or barley - - no pizza or hot pretzels, and a laundry list of other products you wouldn't believe contain wheat. Friends express sympathy, but my reaction is: it isn't so bad. Compare that to last year when my son was in heart failure prior to his heart transplant and avoided salt like arsenic and could drink one, maybe two, thimbles of liquid a day, or starving individuals around the globe who would beg for food to which they are allergic. See? It really is a matter of perspective.
Back to Facebook
Why the changes in the Facebook News Feed? I'm certainly not an expert, but let's remember that Facebook is a business, not a charity solely interested in offering a free service. Some of the changes are genuine improvements for the end user, in part brought on by a response to Facebook's competition, Google's social media platform Google+.
Controlling the way that people see and absorb information also impacts the effectiveness of businesses using Facebook, and can enhance the attractiveness of investing in paid advertising on Facebook. Before I stopped checking the astronomical figures, Facebook's valuation as a company grew from $35 Billion in December of 2010 to $70 Billion this past spring. Stagnating at a couple billion in ad revenue isn't going to help the value of the company to continue to grow, particularly with a viable competitor like Google+ roaming the social media terrain.
Facebook is rapidly moving toward an IPO, an initial public offering of their stock. They're getting ready to cash in on all their hard work and effort. Additional ad revenue, and the promise of future growth, will ad to their wealth. Long after Facebook users cease complaining about changes in the News Feed, those selling their interest in Facebook will still be counting their money. How long do you think it takes to count $70 Billion?
The small business owner is keenly aware that there is much beyond his control. Facebook, or any other social media, can and will make changes that adversely impact their small business. More on how to deal with that reality in a future post. Until then, do your best to figure out how to take the greatest advantage possible of the new changes on Facebook.
Thanks for sharing 187 seconds of your day,
Smitty
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