Biz Break | 48 Days to the Work You Love

Wow. What a book! Dan Miller killed it with this one. For real. 

"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." - Henry David Thoreau. 

See that word confidently? I think that is the key in this quote. You can't just go 'willy-nilly' in the direction of your dreams and expect success. You've got to be confident in setting goals and making a road map to achieve them. In 48 Days to the Work You Love, Dan gives you a step-by-step plan to gain the confidence you need to advance in the direction of your dreams. He turns concepts into action items.

My review: 5 out of 5 stars

This book is for anyone that is going to do some sort of work in their life. I am doing 'the work I love' and it helped me create a plan of action to reach my life goals.  

Nuggets form this book...
What is success?
"Success is not a future event--it is the 'progressive realization of worthwhile goals.' Thus, either you are successful today or you are not."

ALL of Chapter 3: Creating A Life Plan.
"Everyone has a vocation or calling. It's not something reserved for a chosen few who end up as pastors, priests or monks."

In life, there are 7 Areas of Achievement: Family, Physical, Personal Development, Spiritual, Career, Financial and Social.
An unbalanced life does not lead to success. "Make the decision now to have success in all 7 areas. Learn to recognize when you are making a withdrawal or a deposit physically, spiritually, etc. Without clearly defined goals in each of these areas, the activities of your life will reflect the desires of those around you."

My Opponent

"I'm so paralyzed with fear of making a bad decision that I often make no decision." - Donovan Fannon

I just watched the winning entries for the Tamara Lackey Business Workshop on CreativeLive and when I heard Donovan say that I was all... f'real know what you mean dude.

In 5th grade I swam on the Wiesbaden Wahoos swim team. We had this awesome shirt that had a picture of a stop watch on the back and read, 'This is my opponent'. Super sass right? It said 'talk to the hand' to the swimmers on the other team. They might have been swimming along side us but we were racing the clock, not them.

Sometimes I feel like I need a shirt with a picture of my own face that reads, 'This is my opponent' so that when fear creeps in I can tell it to 'talk to the hand'. Fear might be swimming along side me but I'm racing myself. Sometimes, I need to push myself out of the way and make a decision.

P.S. Tamara's FREE business workshop will be streaming on CreativeLive Sept. 9th & 10th.

Biz Break | Purple Cow

You can be the absolute best at what you do, but if no one knows you exist does being the best matter? Nope. If you give your clients what they expect, nothing more or less, will they be satisfied? Maybe. Will they tell other people how great you are? Probably not. So, how are you supposed to get noticed? Be remarkable. Be a purple cow.

The Purple Cow was in the list of recommended reading I made during the Gray Photography Workshop. Being remarkable was a theme for the business portion of the workshop and it resonated with me so much that I made it part of my mission statement.

Seth Godin begins the book telling a story of his family driving through France and being amazed by the picture perfect cows but after seeing them for miles they all grew bored and started ignoring them.

"Cows, after you've seen them for a while, are boring. They may be perfect cows, attractive cows, cows with great personalities, cows lit by beautiful light, but they're still boring. A Purple Cow, though. Now that would be interesting. (For a while.)"

My review: 5 out of 5 stars
Where the E Myth was a crash course in business, the Purple Cow is a crash course in marketing. Godin explains the basic concepts and then gives scores of examples of how they used to work. He then presents case after case where following these traditional concepts is failing miserably while being a Purple Cow leads to success.

Nuggets from this book...

• Among the people who might buy your product, most will never hear about it.
• Stop advertising and start innovating.
• Don't try to create a product for everybody because that is a product for nobody.
• In almost every market the boring slot is filled.
• The opposite of remarkable is very good.
• Being safe is risky.
• If you just do what you are supposed to do no one will care. Be remarkable! 

Godin has challenged me to re-think the how's and why's of my business. Maybe the next time you see me you'll see a little bit of a purple glow ;)

Cliffs Notes of a Book Report | The E Myth

"Highly successful business people read, on average, 3 business related books a year. That means I'm going to read 3 a month." -Zach Gray

Ok, that may be more of a paraphrase than a quote but I figured it was close enough. When talking about executing the dream at the Gray Photography Workshops Z&J encouraged us put down our cameras, take a break from reading photography blogs and dig into some business books. I made a list (imagine that) and filled up my amazon shopping cart as soon as I got home.

Confession [Mom, please skip this part]: Senior year in high school I skipped writing a book report because I knew I'd still pass the class if I got a zero on the report. AND I did pass... with a C.

That's really bad and I can't believe I told you but I feel that my book review series needed a little preface. See, the bookworm gene skipped me. When I sit down to read my mind comes up with 100 other things I could be doing. I usually pick one and forget where I left the book. It's torturous because I've always wanted to be described as 'well read'.  Oil meet water.

So, why would I set myself up to write a series of book reviews on the blog? Because I believe in Zach's theory THAT much. Also, because I'll be writing them more like cliffs notes or top ten lists than as actual reports.

First on the list is The E Myth by Michael E Gerber.

"E-Myth n 1: the entrepreneurial myth: the myth that most people who start a small business are entrepreneurs 2: the fatal assumption that an individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does that technical work"

My review: 5 out of 5 stars.
This book is crammed with information but it doesn't come across as a text book. It's written as a story of Michael meeting and consulting a woman who owns a pie shop. He doesn't say that if you do A or B and C that you'll be successful, but he gives a formula for you to figure out what will work in your business.

Nuggets from the book...

• Know your primary aim. Focus on it. Determine what you want your life to be and define how your business will get you there. 
• Go to work ON your business, not in it. 
• Set standards for how everything should be done. 
• Use these standards to create your operations manual. 
• Use your operations manual to set up your business as if it were a model for a franchise.
• Think of your franchise prototype as a 'dojo'. A place you go to practice being the best you can be. 

I've been super busy putting the formula to work in my business. If you've read it I'd like to know how it's changed your business too.