Advice Entrepreneurs Would Give Their Younger Selves

Here's a really great article posted by Scott Gerber at Mashable: The advice 13 entrepreneurs would give their younger selves.

"While inexperience can have certain benefits (like fearlessness and confidence), a seasoned businessperson with no regrets is incredibly hard to find. With that in mind, I asked 13 entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) what they would tell their younger selves when first starting out."

You Have to Say No

I am very fortunate to work with a very talented group of people who are teaching me the value of no.  The value of no is having the resources to say YES to the really cool stuff.  This applies in life personally and professionally.

No is essential

If you believe that you must keep your promises, overdeliver and treat every commitment as though it's an opportunity for a transformation, the only way you can do this is to turn down most opportunities.

No I can't meet with you, no I can't sell it to you at this price, no I can't do this job justice, no I can't come to your party, no I can't help you. I'm sorry, but no, I can't. Not if I want to do the very things that people value my work for.

No is the foundation that we can build our yes on.

Set a Date

Good advice from Seth Godin: Set a Date

If you haven't announced a date, you're not serious.

Pick a date. It can be far in the future. Too far, and we'll all know that you're merely stalling. A real date, a date we can live with and a date you can deliver on.

If your project can't pass this incredibly simple test, it's not a project.

Deliver whatever it is you say you're working on on the date you said you would, regardless of what external factors interfere. Deliver it even if you don't think it's perfect. You picked the date.

And as a professional, the career-making habit is this: once you set a date, never miss a date.

10 Life Lessons to Master in Your 30's

Mark Manson recently posted a blog about the top ten life lessons everyone should focus on in their 30's.  This is probably related to the fact that Manson just broke through the glass ceiling of his 20's and was feeling the urge to settle down, straighten up and get serious about his life.

Despite the fact that I'm still a 18 months away from hitting the big 3-0, the milestone is creeping into the back of my mind every so often.  I especially find myself wondering what I want to do next in my career - is public relations really where I want to be?  Do I want to stay in an agency or go back in-house?  Should I take on more clients or focus on doing the best possible work for the ones I have?

The list goes on and on.  But regardless of what career path you're on, this is great advice that everyone should consider:

http://markmanson.net/10-life-lessons-excel-30s

Enjoy!

Gradually and then Suddenly

Every so often, as I have said before, Seth Godin posts something on his blog that perfectly captures my current predicament in life.  He's done it again.

I'm finally catching on to my new job, almost a month after being hired by one of the prestigious Marketing & Public Relations agencies in Orange County.  And although I've been feeling really overwhelmed as I learn a new corporate culture, team, agency mentality, I find myself realizing that if I focus on one day at a time, suddenly things aren't so tough.

Today I gave a presentation with our Agency Principal, Agency Director and Account Director.  They trusted me to draft and present some of the PowerPoint slides.  And it wasn't that scary.  Yes, I obviously had a couple of butterflies since it was my first time, but I had my ducks in a row and I knew what I was doing.  I would never have thought I'd be able to do that a mere 4 weeks into a new job.

Just like Seth says,

"Trust is earned, value is delivered, concepts are learned. Day by day we improve and build an asset, but none of it seems to be paying off. Until one day, quite suddenly, we become the ten-year overnight success."

It's Not Personal

Seth Godin blogged a very valuable thing to remember when you're pitching yourself, your product or your services: it's not personal.  

Read his blog post, What "no" means.  

Difficult Clients

I have never voluntarily ended a business relationship with a client because they were too difficult from a project management standpoint.

I have heard stories that separating and discarding bad clients from your CRM, you will be able to focus more time and energy on maintaining the good clients that you have.

Seth Godin has some experience in this arena so I invite you to check out his blog post, Unreasonable Clients, to hear his story.

What Marketing Is Really All About

Boy, do I wish this were true... and that my life was really like Mad Men without the blatant sexism.

The Secret to Digital Marketing Success

The famous line from Field of Dreams applies to digital marketing success:

If you build it, they will come.

You have to continually create content that is interesting, useful and relevant to your audience.  Sometimes your content can be humorous and sometimes you can do some blatant self-promotion, but for the most part you need to provide your audience with information that's relevant to them and easy for them to digest.

And creating content isn't enough, because if content is king, then context is queen.

There's plenty of content out there in the ether that we never see.  Making the right content available to the right audience at the right time is the context that makes marketing successful.  There are so many platforms in digital marketing - websites, social media platforms, blogs, etc. - and it's important to pick the right context for your message so that it hits with the biggest impact.

Working For Free

To work for free, or not to work for free. 

To over-service, or not to over-service.

Nobody wants to give away their secret sauce for free, but if you give a little of it away along the path to securing new business is it worth it?

Mitch Joel seems to think so.  

In his Six Pixels of Separation blog post, You Should Work For Free. You Should Not Work For Free, he makes a statement I wholeheartedly agree with: 

I don't believe in working for free, but I sometimes do.