When I was young, I needed help to get over them….I didn’t always want, but needed it.
When I was a teen, they were challenges, keeping me from having fun, hiding the places I wanted to explore.
When I had a family, I thought often about them. I even put one up to keep others out.
And now I’m old and I would give anything for help in climbing. One last chance to conquer it.
Oh look, a gate.
Sometimes being a business owner is very rewarding, and not just financially. Seeing your employees, many whom I call friends, mature in their rolls within the company is great. Watching as their careers progress, whether inside or outside of Fat Atom, and thinking that possibly I had a little part in that progress…well, it does feed my ego a bit. Then there are the times when it isn’t so great. Telling prospective applicants you decided to go a different direction, losing that client you thought loved you and the worst thing…having to let an employee go.
We all have to sleep at night and I try everything to make sure that my conscious is clear to do so. I am always thinking, “Am I doing everything I can to help the person, team and company get succeed.” When problems arise, and they always will, the person needs to be talked to like an adult. They need to know where you stand and they need to be given a path to rise above the situation that got them in the hole to begin with. The team needs coaching, and learning that no one person is bigger than the team and that the team will go on without the star is an important lesson everyone on the team needs to learn. And then the their is the company. Every decision I make, has to be best for the company and the 20+ people that rely on me and what my team has helped me create.
Am I perfect…Hell no. I make more mistakes in a week than most people make in six months. But the one thing I do better than most people I believe, is to learn from my experiences and improve upon those situations the next time they transpire. As the saying goes, “Punch me once, your bad, punch me twice…mine.”
While up in Canada last month, my friend, and client, let us stay at their private fishing reserve. While there, I sketched this with colored pencils and left it in their guest book. If you ever want a VIP fishing get away, check out www.beauchene.com …it simply is a slice of Heaven.
Brenden Martenson , a summer marketing Intern at Fat Atom accumulated a bunch of my quotes and sent them back to me on his last day…cudos to you young man…a job well done. And now for your reading enjoyment…quotes from Todd Muffley, summer 2011.
Someone put paper towels in the bathroom. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but now that I “think” at the hand dryer it really is a dilemma…let me explain. While drying my hands, I timed how long it took to get my hands dry; it took over one minute, about 80 seconds to be exact (using paper towels takes approximately five seconds). If you are like me, you use the bathroom at work 3 times a day on average. Calculating the time out, over the course of a year, I will spend over 17 hours in front of the hand dryer in 2011. Wow! I guess I never thought of it that way. Most of the time you just assume that a hand dryer is faster, until you take a closer look at it…the number is startling to me.
Now my problem is this: what will I do with the data? Will I continue to use the hand dryer or rip it off the wall for being the time sucking device it is? Switch to paper towels and forego my “green” ambitions? Or buy new hand dryers that are faster? These claim to totally dry your hands in 10-15 seconds: www.exceldryer.com. These bad boys run about $650, plus installation of $50. If I value my time at $250 per hour, the math works out that I should have these ordered and installed this week. Adding my employee’s bathroom habits into the equation, I am grateful that someone put paper towels in the bathroom, it just saved my company tens of thousands of dollars.
Wow, my first guest blog. It isn’t on sales, marketing or entrepreneurship, but on spirituality. I would like you to read it and let me know how I did!
Today, like most days, I went to the bathroom at the office. Since we went “green” a little over a 6 months ago, sometimes I find not having paper towels or something similar can get annoying. So instead of being annoyed, I decided to take the time that would otherwise spent irritated and think.
While using the hand dryer, I decided to not rub my hands together. Don’t ask me why, it’s just what I do. What happened you might ask, lots. My hands didn’t get dry because they got so hot on top I had to move them. They were still wet, so I put them back under and didn’t move them again and to no surprise, it happened again…they got hot and I had to remove them from the air to avoid 2nd degree burns.
Now I know that the hand dryer says to place hands under air and rub together, but who has time for that right? So what is the lesson I took away from this hand burning/marketing exercise? Sometimes, things need to work together to get the best results. Just like rubbing your hands together not only dries them faster, it also keeps them from getting to hot. Your marketing is the same way. A pay per click campaign by itself could be a disaster if not combined with a proper landing page, optimized content and analytics. Or think about the company that builds a website and doesn’t use the site as a sales tool. And then there are companies that think a Facebook strategy is all they need and don’t tie the campaign into their email, print or other online communications.
It sounds simple but yet so many companies don’t take the time to do it right…just like those gross people who don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom…but that’s another story.
Washing my hands today I noticed something. When the electricians installed my hand dryer over six months ago, the scraped the wall by the outlet. A minor paint chip no bigger than half a tic tac in size; caused I am sure by an errant screwdriver lifting the face plate of the wall socket. I have looked at this minor blemish now for six months and think about it every time I use the bathroom.
I admit it, it bothers me. It bugs the heck out of me actually. Why couldn’t they have noticed it and painted it? Why couldn’t they have just been more careful? I don’t give the electricians credit for the excellent work on the hand dryer install, just blame them in my mind for scratch….which brings me to the lesson. People notice the small stuff. I know the book says to don’t sweat it, but I believe, in business, it’s the small stuff that makes the biggest difference.
Empowerment does not mean letting everyone do whatever they want.
So I really started getting into RSS, or Real Simple Syndication for everyone who cares. I am using Google Reader as my foundation with Reeder(in beta) on top of it, which BTW, has a great iPhone app that works like imap email.
Anyway, RSS is worse than email and more addicting than porn. I feel like Neo in the Matrix when he says, I know Kung Fu, after hours of being fed information. Just so you don’t fall into a RSS trap, here are three hints:
1) Subscribe to feeds often, but don’t be slow to unsubscribe. It’s not like email where they know you did, and there is a threshold where you can have TMI.
2) Throw in some fun or hobbies. You will get sick of reading only work related posts, trust me!
3) Know your “reboot” limit. When you are gone for a day, or two and come back to your feed, if it is over 300, just reboot and start over. Again, it’s not like email, you won’t lose anything valuable and I promise you more will come tomorrow.
If you are using RSS, let me know what works or doesn’t for you. If you are not using RSS feeds, ask yourself why, and remember, he who has the knowledge, has the power.
