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No Excuses in 2014

January 9, 2014 By Tiffany Sunday

Each year during the holidays, I think of a theme or word that will define my focus for the next year.

For 2014, my theme is “No Excuses”.

As I was reading through an article over the break, the author said any time we make an excuse we are really lying to ourselves.

His comment stayed in my mind and I mentally chewed on his comment while running. How many times had I made excuses to myself and others? The more I analyzed the excuses, I realized they costed me money and wasted my time.

Excuses delay our decisions which create more problems in the long run.

Last year, I read Dr. Cloud’s “Necessary Endings” which was an enlightening book, it also made me think about my actions and excuses.

My goal for the year is to stop and think about the real reason behind the excuse then make a decision to act or not act at all. Many times we make excuses to delay other people or to avoid a confrontation.

There were many excuses surrounding this blog. I felt constrained that I could not freely express my thoughts on a range of topics. I wanted to have a blog where I could mix both my business and personal life together because that how I live.

My career and life are intertwined woven together by interesting threads of events and people. Being a small business owner, writer, and single parent everything I do is intertwined which always leads to a funny story or two.

In November, I started a blog on Google called “Just for Fun” because I made an excuse to myself that I needed a platform, a different place to write about fun topics that were not related to business. Creating another blog to my already packed schedule didn’t make sense either. I realized it was me and my internal excuses preventing me from writing what I wanted to write in this blog post.

My question to you for 2014 is what excuses both internal and external are holding you back or preventing you from doing something you really want to do?

Excuses are traps that keep us from taking action. We feel the need to delay an action or decision so we make an excuse.

Or maybe there was no decision to be made in the first place but we feel pressured from family or friends to make a decision. Maybe family habits or traits are obsolete because life is different now than when we were kids.

Whatever may be the case, excuses gain nothing and in the end are just a waste of time.

Purging Superfluous Content

November 4, 2013 By Tiffany Sunday

Every day we flood the Internet with an enormous amount of data from article postings to tweets and photos.

Most of the content we dump onto the digital highway is Internet litter; we cannot see this litter because the Internet and the data we produce is invisible.

We’ve become obsessed with stuffing the digital white space with useless words and images, as corporate brands and marketers generated content every minute of each day.

How many times have you experienced information overload?

We fear white space; it feels uncomfortable to have less information instead of more. Producing generic meaningless content is easy; working to simplify your company’s message takes time.

Peter Coughter said it best “beauty is the purgation of superfluous. Quality content occurs when everything that is superfluous is removed.”

Cutting through digital chatter requires strategic thought and the patience to take time to curate the words.

Our brains need empty white space to allow us time to think, a quiet moment to process our thoughts and solve problems.

We’ve become a society who believes more is better, creating simple effective content that speaks directly to the individual; feels out of place. Elegance is moving past purgation of superfluous words to creating content that matters and has long term value.

Beauty is achieved by telling the reader a good story that explains your purpose and why you seek their attention.

Humans remember stories; we base the majority of our buying decisions on feelings and emotions.

Rudolph Schindler was a great architectural designer and understood the importance of purging content. “We are what our environment makes us and if our environment is such as to produce excellent health, beauty, joy, and comfort, it will reflect immediately in our lives.”

We are creating our digital lives and environment. From the view of my Facebook page it is filled with mindless ads for products that I never use or would ever consider purchasing.

We click, share, and like without thinking, we repeat the same the information over and over to the point no one listens anymore.

Read, Share, or Delete?

Ask yourself; is your company stuffing customers’ email accounts with junk mail or flooding them with an endless sea of useless content? What would you personally do with the content? Would you share the information or delete it?

What is the purpose of the content? What is the message you are seeking to send to your customers? Can you define the message in two or three sentences?

Pretend you are talking to the customer – what would you say? Could the content be edited down and still maintain the story’s message?

Think about the content that you read in your personal time. What do you like to read and what stories do you feel compelled to share?

When in Doubt, Purge, and Edit Instead of Adding More.

Does your content include a hard sales pitch that could potentially turn away customers? How much time do you spend purging and editing?

Place yourself in the individual’s shoes. Think about when and where they will be reading this information and will it help solve their problem.

Curate the information and focus on what matters to your audience. Have you engaged with your customers in person or online? What are they telling you and are you listening?

Purging information and crafting a simplistic message takes time and discipline. SEO marketers have brain washed us into believing we need to add as many words as possible to our digital content. Yet, when we add useless words, we create information overload for the individuals we are seeking to reach.

Will Your Content Stand the Test of Time?

Everything changes and everything stays the same. Our products and services evolve over time, yet how we communicate with other humans remains the same. We connect through authentic stories.

Think about the content you create, if it was an art piece would it be placed in a museum? Would the story and message still resonate six months or five years from now?

Digital technology is just a tool we use to communicate and send information. What we create must have value, if not we are ust tossing more digital litter onto the Internet highway.

Your Most Important Asset Is Your Digital Reputation

August 7, 2013 By Tiffany Sunday

Digital technology is changing every aspect of our lives from how we conduct business, to securing new clients and finding a job.

Every industry including our children’s education will be impacted by digital technology.

Learning how to manage our digital transformation and understanding the importance of our digital profiles is crucial to staying relevant in the Digital Era.

Our digital profile and real life are now one, everything we have done and everything we will accomplish is digitized.

Recruiters spend hours on LinkedIn and Twitter searching for the ideal candidate. Schools and colleges are using digital profiles to review applications and determine who is accepted.

Professional and personal reputations have and always crucial in determining life’s important decisions. Digital technology has digitized our reputations for the world to see. Both good and bad posts can be viewed by everyone leaving us with less control over what others say and post.

Many believe we are diluting our personal value with each Facebook post.

Your Digital Reputation is your Golden Goose – without the Golden Goose securing new business or landing the job of your dreams will be difficult in the Digital Economy.

Be mindful about the content you post and the friends you circle because in the end – our reputation is all we have.

Related Blog Post:

Digital Profiles Have Made Resumes Obsolete

Interview with Scott Ewert on How Technology and Creativity Impacts Your Career Options

Easy Part (Writing a Book) – Hard Part (Learning the Self-Publishing Process)

July 11, 2013 By Tiffany Sunday

Since junior high I have been writing poetry, short stories and articles for local community papers. I started blogging three years ago about startups, concept development and digital technology.

My goal is to complete “You Posted What! How to Help Your Teen Use Social Media For Future Career Success” by May of 2014.

The Internet provides a unique freedom for creative individuals; we can develop and share ideas with others around the world. I am grateful for this freedom and opportunity.

Deciding to self-publish was a no-brainer since my chances of securing a publisher were slim. Secondly, my goal is to write more books in the future and knowing how to self-publish early in the process would save time and money later.

In the past six months, I’ve discovered that writing the actual book is the easier part of the process. Learning the intricacies of self-publishing has become a daunting task. Lack of consistency in information from “how-to” books and marketers has not helped either. Several friends have recently published books and were generous with advice and recommendations.

In May, I was reading about Kickstarter and begin to toss around the idea of launching a Kickstarter campaign to pre-sell the book. I’m curious about Kickstarter and would like to be part of the experience.

What I Have Learned So Far–

Writing the Actual Book

“Word” is the program of choice for many reasons, it is the most popular, easy to use and your files can be sent to editors and publishers with ease.

PressBooks is a new platform that offers the ability to write and publish an eBook using the WordPress platform. For individuals who are bloggers and already use WordPress, this is an easy program to use.

I created an account to test drive PressBooks. What I like best about platform is that you can visually see what your eBook will look like when it’s published.

Being a visual learner and thinker “seeing” the book in a digital format helped establish a visual image of the book I was writing.

Secondly, you can cut and paste from Word which is a nice feature. The down side to PressBooks is that you have been online to add content to your book. The information is stored in the cloud; therefore, you must be connected to the Internet to work on your book. There are times when I write on a notepad, scrap paper or on the laptop away from the office. Writing is a process and I always print a hard copy to edit.

Just like WordPress, you can select your book theme from a template or you can create a custom theme.

Publishers

Hyperink provides publishing services to well-known bloggers and business experts. Brad Feld and Penelope Truck have published eBooks using Hyperink’s platform. The down side is that you must be an expert or high profile blogger for Hyperink to publish your book.

Secondly, most of the book themes are very similar which makes it hard to differentiate the subject matter and the company requests that you complete your book in six weeks.

BookBaby is a unique publisher; the company was started by artists, writers and musicians as an alternative way to sell their art. When I visited with the BookBaby representative she was helpful and happy to answer my questions.

However, she was unable to provide specific information about Amazon’s policies. I thought the pricing was reasonable for the services which included registering the ISBN number and book distribution.

Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch wrote “APE – Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur – How to Publish a Book” for first time authors. Guy offered free copies via Google+ following the release date. The book is worth reading if you are first time author, I found some of the sections useful and skimmed through the rest of the book.

EBooks Thumbnails Matter

Two bits of advice that I heard multiple times is to budget money for a good graphic artist and editor.

For eBooks, a strong thumbnail book cover will differentiate your book from the thousands of other listed on Amazon. Second, the cover is used to market and sell your book.

Edit, Edit, Edit and Then Edit Some More

You may be an excellent writer; however, having a second set of eyes is worth the money. Behind every successful author there is a really good editor. I have written this advice twice because good grammar is crucial. I spend hours editing my blog posts and know there is still room for improvement.

Make sure you include a good editor and graphic artist in your budget. After you have spent hours working on your book, why skimp and sell your book short.

One more thought on editing, ask your business associates, family and friends to read your draft and provide honest feedback for improvements For book reviews, ask several business associates and thought leaders in your industry to review your book. These reviews will be used on the book’s Amazon profile page and in your marketing materials.

Funding – Kickstarter

Kickstarter offers a unique platform to pre-sell your book. Writers at all levels have used this platform to generate interest and sell their books. The money raised from the campaign depends on the topic matter and public interest.

Right now, I am planning on launching a Kickstarter campaign in September to pre-sell both the book. I am excited about the potential of the Kickstarter campaign and understand that I will need to market the campaign to ensure success.

Market Your Book Now

Start marketing your book before the initial draft is finished. Start building your community now. Establishing an audience early is important and will help sell your book when it published. The general consensus is to market the book about year prior to the published date.

Currently, I am in the process of securing a graphic artist to create a poster and eBook cover for the Kickstarter campaign. I will continue to share the information I learned as I work my way through the self-publishing process.

Redesigning Education – An Interview with Tom Segal of Rethink Education

May 1, 2013 By Tiffany Sunday

The Internet and digital technology is disrupting education at all levels. Just like the publishing and music industries, education is undergoing an evolution.

Today, students regardless of age can learn a wide range of topics beyond the four walls of a traditional classroom.

Our kids think and learn differently than previous generations and have access to more information and collective knowledge than prior Presidents and Heads of State.

What is fascinating about this generation is how they are using this knowledge to launch their ideas early instead of waiting until college or afterwards.

When I was a kid, we had to earn money the old fashion way – babysitting, washing cars or mowing yards. Today, kids can raise money for startup projects on Kickstarter, earn royalties from YouTube videos or resell server rack space. They are tech savvy and can navigate the Internet and Social Media with ease.

Each day, I read about a new iEducation startup that offers alternative method for teaching coding, problem solving and skill building for the next generation. Both Code Academy and Tynker, offer innovative methods of teaching science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

I believe future employment will require a blending of several critical skills: problem solving, programming and creative design. Digitization is spreading across all industries and we know that any job that can be automated will be in the future. Conversely, we will also witnessing a shortage in highly skilled trade employees.

So how do we prepare our kids for the future?

Progressive schools understand that education must be redesigned to prepare our kids for the future. Classes are being tweaked so that students learn to solve difficult problems in groups, to find hidden opportunities and to understand the intersection of technology and humanities.

Rethink Education is an investment team that seeks to reinvent education by investing in ideas, people and concepts that will change education. Last month, I visited with Tom Segal who is an Analyst at Rethink Education.

Our conversation was thought provoking as we discussed every aspect of education. When talking about the team’s vision, Tom stated “we are looking to disrupt across the entire education spectrum with a focus on lifelong learning. We believe in the promotion of good ideas.”

Our conversation moved from disrupting education to taking responsibility of our own career and education needs. Penelope Trunk blogged last year about “Age of Responsibility” which lead to a discussion of how we are entering into a new era where we are responsible for our children’s education and our ongoing career development.

Tom said “purchasing a diploma is no longer sufficient today. We must all continue to reinvent ourselves and constantly learn new skills.”

Taking education one step further, Rethink Education has backed EverFi; a company that teaches financial literacy to high school students.

Each and every student should have a solid understanding of real life financial skills from knowing how to balance their checkbook to understanding fees assocated with their 401k accounts. Clay Piggy is another startup that focuses on teaching kids good money management skills.

In our parents’ generation, having a diploma was a sufficient stepping stone to securing a position for life. Our generation and future generations will be required to pivot frequently to meet the demands of the changing economy.

Leland Stanford set guidelines for the University that he created. Education must offer “personal success and direct usefulness in life” that professors must understand the relevance of education.

Relevance of education does not involve excelling at standardize tests. Relevance matters when teachers and educators offer skills that will meet future business and employment demands.

Other Related Blog Postings

Why Digital Profiles Matter

Digital Profiles Have Made Resumes Obsolete

Opting Out of Busy Work

March 18, 2013 By Tiffany Sunday

What is the purpose of busy work?

To keep individuals focused on mindless tasks to prevent them from questioning authority?

Busy work is a time filler that is used everywhere from education to non-profits.

Need to make a decision?

Let’s form a committee, two sub committees and a tiger team to find a solution.

Why?

We have been trained to believe that decisions cannot be reached without a committee.

Precious time is spent discussing the original problem to the point it becomes so watered down that we lose sight of what we were doing in the first place.

Wasted time that could have been used to find a solution and seek new opportunities.

Busy work is the norm in our public schools.

How else can the teachers keep the students focused when PE is eliminated?

Busy work accomplishes nothing.

Choose to Opt Out.