Hey everyone – I’m experimenting with Google Website Optimizer on WordPress on this post, so apologies for the ‘noise’. I’ll try to share anything I learn.
Meanwhile, if you’re bored, can you please click on the following link to my profile page? Google Website Optimizer is going to randomly rotate the text and I’ll check which one gets more clicks :)
Jackson said his first real words yesterday. I was giving him a bath and Candy, our ballerina like cat, sauntered into the bathroom. Jackson looked at her, pointed and said ‘at!’.
Whoa. I was dumbstruck.
That simple action reminded me that he’s a person, not just a ‘baby’, and my duties as a father are very important and very real. I know it’s important that I spend real time with him – time where I’m not distracted by work or other things.
I, like many of you, absolutely love what I do at work. Running Carsonified is tremendously fun, challenging and exciting. Often, without even knowing it, my mind will wander back to what’s happening at work. However, I’ll be damned if I’m one of those work-a-holic dads who is always staring at their iPhone, answering emails or talking about work.
I believe that the key must be putting the needs of your family before your own – becoming more selfless.
So how do you do this? How can you practice selflessness on a daily basis? Any dads out there have experience in this area that want to share some words of wisdom? What’s the best way to make sure you’re giving your family the time they deserve and yet be passionate about your work?
Everyone knows that times are tough financially at the moment. A lot of businesses are finding it hard to make it and many are closing their doors forever.
At Carsonified, we had to make the really tough decision to let some of the Team go. It was very hard, but it was the right thing to do. In addition to that, we’re generating brand new revenue (and profit) by doing new things.
Thankfully, we’ve established a good reputation in the web design and development industry, so we decided to start doing design, development and consultancy for the web industry. We’ve established three exciting partnerships that are generating over £80,000 of brand new revenue (which is mostly profit, as we have the capabilities in-house).
We’re also changing our sponsorship model for our events. Instead of just creating value for sponsors at the physical events, we’re starting to work with them throughout the year to help them reach new customers and generate excitement. Sponsors need more value in order to justify spending their marketing budgets, and we’re delivering that by being more creative and working harder.
Bottom line: Evolve or perish
If you aren’t prepared to update and evolve your business model, you might be in trouble. It’s important to create new profit that didn’t exist in 2008.
In the comments below, please share any ideas you’ve had for creating more profit in 2009.
We were heading into town on Friday and I wanted to make it memorable. There’s so many times when someone says “What did you do over the weekend?” and I answer “You know, I can’t really remember. Just hung out, I guess.”
With that in mind, I decided to bring our camera and my mission was to try to spot unusual things in Bath that I hadn’t seen before. It was amazing the amount of detail that jumped out at me.
Gill bought me some Geo F. Trumpers shaving soap over a year ago … and I’m still using it. Compare that to your typical crappy can of Gillette Shaving Gel that is just as expensive, last a couple months, and is bad for the environment (aerosols, metal/plastic can, etc).
Instead, my little wooden bowl of soap from Mr. Trumpers is completely bio-degradable and, if I do say so myself, looks pretty cool.
I think there’s a lot to be said for products that last a little longer, are a little more environmentally friendly, and maybe don’t work quite as well as their super-modern-ultra-efficient counterparts.
We all have things we want to do, but we struggle to find the motivation or time. This is the constant relationship I have with working out. I hate working out. I know it’s important, but I just hate it. So after reading the chapter Why we don’t do what we want to do in Predictably Irrational, I had an idea:
I would withdraw my monthly budget of spending money, in cash and then I’d then give it to my trusty wife. I asked her to dole it out to me in 12 chunks (three times a week for four weeks) and I’d only get it if I worked out. Here’s the kicker: if I didn’t go to the gym, I instructed her to burn the money.
Nothing good could come of me not working out – the money couldn’t go to charity, my wife, a savings fund … nothing. It had to be burned.
Guess what? I’ve worked out three times a week since the beggining of January, without missing a single day. It works.
I’ve really been enjoying Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. There is a particularily interesting section from the chapter The Three Lessons of Joe Flom that I’d like to share:
Those three things – autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward – are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that ultimately make us happy between nine and five. It’s whether our work fulfills us. If I offered you a choice of being an architect for $75,000 a year and working in a tollbooth every day for the rest of your life for $100,000 a year, which would you take? I’m guessing the former, because there is complexity, autonomy, and a relationship between effort and reward in doing creative work, and that’s worth more to most of us than money.
Work that fulfills those three criteria is meaningful.
I really enjoy running Carsonified because it meets those three criteria. One of the main reasons I quit my last job as Lead Web Developer at Fingal Design, was because there was no connection between effort and reward. I remember we worked 48 hours straight to launch barF1.com (now defunct) and my boss handed me a beer at the end and a pat on the back. That’s when I knew I was going to leave. I didn’t want money, I just wanted to be appreciated.
Gill and I decided to spend a week of holiday at home instead of flying somewhere. Gill got the idea from watching 1940’s House, a show about what it was like during World War II in Britain. It wasn’t safe or affordable to travel for holidays during the war, so the government encouraged people to stay at home.
How it works
Chores and all normal duties are off-limits (great excuse to dodge household tasks).
Make a list of ideas for each day. This keeps you from sitting around in your pants and browsing the web all day.
Plan your meals ahead of time and buy all the food you need (this is where grocery shopping online makes perfect sense). This makes it more fun as you have gorgeous food all around during the week.
Why it’s great
It’s cheap.
It encourages you to explore new things around the area where you live.
It’s much less stressful than flying to a holiday location.
Little Jackson Bee (he looks like a bumble bee when we swaddle him) was crying this morning, so I thought I’d take him for a spin in the Baby Bjorn (or ‘Front-loading-baby-holster’ as Keir calls it). It was a stunning morning so I thought I’d shoot some photos and share a little video. The music is from the soundtrack of Pride & Prejudice which I was playing on my iPhone speaker while we walked around.
My new son + beautiful music + stunning countryside + crisp morning = happiness.
