FeedBurner Won’t Publish to Twitter?

A few suggestions on how I syndicate content and the tools I use. Continue reading…

DIY Google Apps Migration Workshop

I’ve put together a step-by-step guide on how to migrate to Google Apps. Continue reading…

What’s Missing From Google Apps

A look at what isn’t included in Google Apps and how to close the gap. Continue reading…

What is The Cloud

A simple translation of what the cloud is and how it is a significant shift in technology. Continue reading…

Text Messaging in Gmail Makes Life Easier

A quick how to guide describing how to use Google Apps GChat. Continue reading…

(Photo via Mike Lewis)

So for the people that wonder whether I like working from home, the answer is yes. And for those of you that want to know how, keep reading…

Start your engines…early

9AM is when I officially start work…no later…every day…without question. I’m not a friendly person any earlier than 9AM. There is no need or usefulness in speaking to me within the first 90 minutes after I wake up. I’m an early riser but when I wake up my mind is set on overdrive and it takes a couple hours for my body to catch up. By 9AM I’m hours into my schedule and hitting my stride. By 9AM I’ve made key decisions and started weaving a tapestry for the rest of my work day.

Not getting the munchies

Gordin Gekco said it best, “Lunch? Lunch is for wimps.” My freshman year in college, I worked 3rd shift in an emergency room as a patient registration clerk. During one agonizingly slow night I calculated how much money and time I could save if I didn’t have to eat. Some people find the refrigerator to be the biggest challenge when working remotely but for me it’s the opposite, I have to remind myself to eat.

Silence is golden, so pump up the volume

I used to find it easier to concentrate when there was background noise. Coffee shop clatter provided the right level of noise and helped me focus while tackling loads of work. Over the past few years I’ve reconditioned to work better and faster in silence. Occasionally, when I’m feeling a little restless or need a change of scenery, I’ll head out to a co-working office or meet a colleague. I still love the bustle of the coffee shop but if I want to get something done, I cuddle up to my desk and shut the world out.

Does this chair make my butt look flat?

After years of sitting in crappy plastic chairs, I unknowingly was given an Herman Miller Aeron chair. I didn’t realize what it was at the time but when I had to give it back I was sad to see it go. A couple years ago, I bought a used Aeron on Craigslist for $400 bucks which was by far one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. Now, I can’t imagine putting my hinie in any other chair. Oh yah, I also did the stand-up desk for about a year which I got bored with and found I tended to walk away from the computer too often for “a think” and would get distracted.

Yes, I wear (no) pants

The idea that people working from home shuffle to their office in their pajama’s is completely ludicrous. Getting dressed is a must. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an unscheduled meeting pop up on Skype or in person and avoided the panic of needing to put clothes on. I bend the ‘attire rule’ when it comes to footwear and shaving. Wearing shoes in a home is something I stopped doing in China. Not because of cultural reasons but because it’s just cleaner. As for shaving…a chore I absolutely detest with every whisker on my face…I avoid it at all costs. I’d rather have whiskers than razor burn any day of the week.

So there you have it, a few ways I work from home. Fortunately, it’s getting easier, cheaper, faster and increasingly more excepted than ever before.

“Today, Shooting, Processing, Marketing and Selling are all verbs in a Professional Photographer’s vocabulary. We have better equipment in our camera bag and studios than ever before. These tools are intended to make us better, stronger, faster and more successful. To often, the problem is the tools that are supposed to help, end up cluttering our business and our life. Simply knowing when and how to use them while trying to grow our businesses, please our clients, and live life, can be problematic at best.” Read more…

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Similar to learning Chinese, as my vocabulary grew, so did my appetite. I didn’t just want to understand the language, I wanted to DO something with it. When I get an idea in my head I tend to beat the life out of it and then jump head first into the deepest part of the pool – a bona fide INTJ. Whether it’s software, Chinese, juggling, business, triathlons or rock climbing…

1. Deep thought.
2. Right now.
3. Head first.
4. Don’t look back.

When I went back to work in China I promptly changed my Chinese to Ma Shang which is a legit Chinese name but sounds like “right now or immediately”. Business Case Example: Hi Mr. Yang, I’m Ma Shang a.k.a. Mr. Right Now, as in lets get this thing done – right now!

Out’ing Ruby on Rails

After a bit of wrangling with Rails books and learning the basics of building a web app with Rails, I had a basic understanding of the benefits that Ruby on Rails offered. I wasn’t, however, bold enough to try building my own app. Instead, I started dabbling with open source apps by learning to install and tweak them on my local machine. To be totally honest, it wasn’t very fun…in fact, it was down right frustrating because I wasn’t (in my opinion) learning fast enough or going far enough. What made matters worse was that I came up with an idea for an app that I felt really strongly about but my learning curve just wasn’t working in my favor…or at least I didn’t think so. So instead of learning to code and building my own app, I decided to leverage my background in outsourcing development and commissioned a team to build the app I had dreamed up.

I wont bore you with the details of outsourcing something like this because quite frankly, I could write volumes. I will say this though…if you’re a non-technical entrepreneur, small business or dude with an idea…don’t go down the freelance/outsourcing path without having someone on your side to guide you through it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big proponent of the freelance, outsourcing and contracted scenarios. Hell, my entire professional career revolves around outsourcing in some form or another. But if you’re going to do it, take my advice and make sure you have someone that knows the industry, technology and your idea.

However, last fall I decided that it was time to get a better handle on Rails because I wanted to play a more prominent role in developing my application…i.e. I want to build it. So I enrolled in a ‘learning ruby on rails’ class taught by Sarah Allen in order to get the hands-on guidance that I had been. Sarah and her team of assistants produced a great class and gave me just enough of a nudge to get me to the next step.

I Got Next

Well earlier this week, I passed an important milestone in my Ruby on Rails experience and launched the beta version of the app I’ve been working on. In it’s current state it’s a snippet of what I envision but for now that’s all I need to drive me forward. While the user front-end website and user interface are rather drab that can be remedied with a little time and effort. Functionally it consists of a baseline that will serve it’s purpose for the time-being but I’m excited to get moving on some of the more enticing features. If you know of anyone in the fitness industry, feel free to have them take a look at MyFitHub.com where they can sign up for a free beta account.

There are two types of motorcyclists, those who have been down and those who are going down.

I heard this saying repeatedly after buying my third bike, a 2006 Harley Davidson Road King Classic and I count myself fortunate for never having felt the unforgiving impact of pavement (close only counts with hand grenades and boccie ball).  Today, I wondered aloud to my partner in crime whether being a motorcyclist is similar to being an entrepreneur. It was pretty easy to come up with all sorts of similarities; freedom, responsibility, risk, protection, speed, strategy, navigation, balance, vision, execution. Off we went to do a little research…

Stop the presses…statistically motorcyclists are NOTHING like entrepreneurs! Mainly because in 2007 over 5,000 people died in motorcycle accidents and I can’t recall the last time I heard of an entrepreneur dieing as a result of being an entrepreneur. Perhaps we had conjured up a poor comparison to begin with but after a bit of research the similarities were down right disturbing.

Statistics Leaving Bugs in My Teeth

1. Only 21 states have universal helmet laws requiring all riders to done lids
2. 31% of motorcycle fatalities are related to alcohol impairment, 27% of which were over the .08 blood alcohol content legal limit
3. $230.6 billion a year – impact on US health care system

Thinking that perhaps I was being a little too literal, I decided to see how many small businesses “go down” each year since my search for “entrepreneur+fatalities” wasn’t giving me much info. Sadly, those numbers aren’t much better;

1. Two-thirds of SMB’s survive at least two years – Translation: 33% go down
2. 44 percent survive at least four years – Translation: 56% go down
3. 31 percent survive at least seven years – Translation: 69% go down

On second thought, maybe our idea of comparing motorcyclists and entrepreneurs wasn’t as far off track as I originally thought. Granted, I couldn’t find an entrepreneur that died as a result of being an entrepreneur but entrepreneurs typically have a significant personal investment in a business, so for argument sake we could say that an entrepreneur ‘is the business’ and vice versa. The track record for motorcyclists and entrepreneurs may not align as nicely as we might have liked but we managed to draw a couple comparisons worth mentioning.

Motorcyclists & Entrepreneurs Take Heed

1. Enjoy the freedom of the ride and take responsibility for your actions
2. Accept the risk while getting as much protection as possible without limiting your ability to operate
3. Speed is crucial but fast is not always better, you have to have a strategy
4. Sharpen your navigation skills and learn to balance distractions
5. Have a vision of where you want to go and execute on it

Lingering questions: How can we reduce the increasing fatality rate of motorcyclists? Likewise, can the number of businesses/entrepreneurs going down be remedied?

Click the image, watch the video and decide for yourself

“Are You an Inventor or an Entrepreneur?”

- Harvard Business Publishing

I am most definitely not an inventor but an entrepreneur…

Over the past couple years I’ve given a lot of thought to whether I consider myself an entrepreneur. Sure, I’ve started a handful of businesses but is that indicative of being an entrepreneur? To some perhaps but it takes a lot more than “starting” a company to be considered an entrepreneur. So I decided to see what the world has to say about the characteristics of an entrepreneur; vision, tenacity, sensibility, progressive, calculating, individualist, planner and the list goes on and on. I did, however, learn a bit about the history of the entrepreneur and how the view of an entrepreneur has changed over time.

History At A Glance

Jean-Babtiste Say, a 19th century economis, is believed to have been the first to coin the term “entrepreneur” around 1800. The definition of entrepreneur stems from the French word entreprendre to undertake and when broken down; entre “to enter” and prendre “to take”.

To summarize, over the past 20 years or so there has been a lot of research on the characteristics of an entrepreneur. Generally speaking there was a fixation with predicting whether an individual would be a successful entrepreneur based on their personality characteristics, cultural influences and life experiences. What I found particularly interesting is the fact that recent research has shown results that counter the “person-centric-cowboy characteristics”, instead research is shedding light on the fact that entrepreneurs don’t work in soloist silo’s but in collaborative social environments. As I mulled it over it seemed quite obvious; while individual personality characteristics certainly play a role in defining entrepreneurship, equally important are the social aspects that are oftentimes overlooked (For more info Read Characteristics of the Entrepreneur: Social Creatures, Not Solo Heroes). Why that wasn’t readily apparent from the start is beyond me because I’ve grown up and was educated in the “there is no ‘I’ in team” system. That said, culturally the U.S. is one of , if not the, most individualistic environments in the world, so it makes me wonder what characteristics of entrepreneurship exist in a place like China.

Common Definition of Entrepreneurship

“Entrepreneurship is the process of creating or seizing an opportunity and pursuing it regardless of the resources currently controlled”      — Timmons, J.A. 1994. New Venture Creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century.

Despite what you may have heard or think about China or Communism in general, I think China as a country is hyper-entrepreneurial. If the essence of entrepreneurship, as Timmons points out, really is about creating or seizing opportunity regardless of resources controlled, then China is the entrepreneur poster child. Oddly what is striking about Chinese entrepreneurs isn’t that they’re soloists, on the contrary, the fabric of their society revolves around relationships, far beyond anything we have here in the U.S. Due to China’s sociopolitical and legal environment Chinese entrepreneurs are anything but individualistic. Sure, there some soloist characteristics but at the root Chinese entrepreneurs understand that being well networked is an absolute requirement for success. My intent isn’t to drag you into a scholarly examination of Chinese entrepreneurship (Read Liao and Sohmen’s “The Development of Modern Entrepreneurship in China”) but simply to draw the parallel to the concept of ‘social creatures‘.

After a couple hours of research and a lot of thought, I was still contemplating whether I’m an entrepreneur. If popular opinion was any indication there would be a resounding “yes, Shawn is an entrepreneur”. I guess the issue I see is on a broader spectrum, I’ve always taken issue with categorizations regardless of how accurate or far flung they appear to be. Categorization to me is akin to wearing a wool sweater, comfortingly warm but boy does it itch, so with the phrase “If the shoe fits kid” ringing in my ears, I’ll submit albeit with some trepidation, yes I am an entrepreneur and most definitely not an inventor.

If you’re looking for a professional photographer or you’re a PRO, take a look at what Eric O’Conner is up to over at mylife-pages.com. Eric has created a fantatstic tool for professional photographers that provides the ability to create custom websites for their clients. The beauty is in the applications effortless approach in creating an event specific site. In a matter of a few minutes you can have a site up and running with professional pictures. Another interesting feature is that the client has full editorial control over the content!

Here’s how it works in 3 Steps; 

1. Photographer takes pictures
2. Photogrpher clicks through site creation and loads pictures
3. Client creates content

All you software geeks in the room will be happy to know it’s built on Rails!