Outsourcing your work is NOT about cost-cutting. If you believe it is, you have a 90% chance of getting exactly what you paid for. Garbage. Business success starts with having the right people. And outsourcing is about finding people who can do something better than you can, (and that’s where the cost savings really come … Read more
Mentors are important. They can fast-track the learning curve with experience and insight that you just can’t get out of a textbook. But there’s some things they can’t teach you. Sometimes, you need an anti-mentor. An anti-mentor teaches you what NOT to do. They lead by example and so their lessons are very powerful. We’ve … Read more
There’s a new dog in town, and even though he’s just a puppy right now, he’s got huge paws, so you know he’s gonna be big! Freelance Folder has just launched. It’s a new blog about freelancing, entrepreneurship, and working from home. Jon from SWR has assembled a group of great writers (including himself) for … Read more
First, click Refresh on your browser to view the new theme correctly. Working on a new theme for Zoomstart is just one of the “little things” that has consumed a lot of my time lately. Other things include Summer and studying the art of blogging. Currently I’m also reading a brilliant book suggested by a … Read more
Sooner or later we all come to the realization that we’re human. And there’s only so much that’s humanly possible. And when we’re stretched to the breaking point and need a break, the worst thing to do is to take one without a plan to restart the fire afterwards. All our momentum is gone. And … Read more
When I was about 10, we flattened a bunch of bottle caps with a hammer. Then we trimmed them down to the size of a quarter with some heavy-duty scissors. We took a pocketful of these slugs down to the local coin-op car wash and had the waterfight of the century. For free. We gamed … Read more
Maybe your business is up against heavy competition. You’re not the biggest. Or the most well known. And you don’t have the cheapest prices. But you know that if people compared apples to apples, they’d see that you’re the best. And still, everywhere you look, the chips are stacked up against you. Every day you’re … Read more
Every time you turn around there’s another article about how poor a revenue source Google AdSense is for most blogs and websites. The truth is, it’s great for very large and well known sites that get a lot of competitive bidding on site targeted ads. And if you get bigger than big, you can negotiate … Read more
I went out to Hicks Lake with some friends this weekend to get some very important things done. What I noticed along the way is that our world insulates us. And that insulation has a nasty side effect … It can make us too comfortable. Too intolerant of anything remotely uncomfortable. Too wary of taking … Read more
It’s true, there’s no amount of work or investing that equals the earning potential of having your own business. But business is hard. And risky. And a lot of the worst stuff that happens will happen during the start-up. Not might happen. Will happen. One of the ways you can avoid all that bad stuff … Read more