Ride Like A Penguin, Nicole Donnelly [the beginning after the end read novel txt] 📗

What Do Your Dog, Dentist, and Dad Have in Common?

They all need and deserve your time.

So how do you, as busy as you are, go about making sure that all the people and projects in your life get that valuable time with you? The answer seems simple, even obvious, make a calendar. But it is more than just a calendar that you need to create. To maximize your time, efficiency, and happiness you need to create a living schedule that integrates business and personal elements.

By sitting down and planning the year out at as a whole, it can help you stay motivated by reminding you of big deadlines or great events coming up. A big picture look at the near future can help keep the daily grind from wearing on you too much.


As you lay down the foundation for the year, fill in each month and week with growing detail. If you do this as accurately as possible, you will be left with a visual picture of your upcoming year in life. You can see how much time you have set aside for personal things, for family, for marketing, for your dog, for anything and everything.

If you don’t like the way it looks, maybe it’s a little heavy one way or another, or it just doesn’t make you excited to move forward, you can change it. The key to remember when you build this living calendar for yourself and your business is to leave time for the people around you. Ultimately, business is all about people and they need to have their time with you. It will keep you motivated, them on track, and build toward a collaborative, well connected, and positive working environment.

On a personal level, a calendar like this will minimize your stress, give you dedicated time to recharge, ample time for loved ones, and the big picture firmly in sight.


Heart on Paper: The Style Guide

Business, despite what it can turn into, the greed that can invade it, the corruption that lurks always, the ruin it may reap, or the lives it can destroy, came, at the very least at some point in its infancy, from someone’s heart.

Every business was at one time, someone’s dream, a physical manifestation of their mission, vision, and values.

Remembering these roots, the core of good business, what is the backbone of companies that change the world, is tantamount to helping you and your professional relationships stay consistent and in constant progress. Being that it is so vital to remember all the things that make up your company, it is critical for you to create a ‘style guide’.

A style guide is simple: it is a physical, portable, and personal tool that you can use to clearly define everything about your company. It should have goals, values, mission, the story, key customers, key messages, a promotional calendar, vision, and product information. It will be a physical representation of everything your company is about, clear as day, presented in visual and written elements.

It will serve as a guide for ethical decisions, design projects, even marketing campaigns. It acts like a super definition of everything you want the company to be—past, present, and future. Done right, a style guide becomes a living document that keeps everyone aligned with the core of what your company stands for.

It is an invaluable tool and one with enormous internal motivational powers. It is your heart—your business, on paper. Take it with you always.


Finding Your Perfect Customer

Everyone knows that in order to make money, you need customers. How many, how often, and where they are from should, and will look different for every business.

The old rule that the top 20% of your customers will bring in 80% of your revenue has never been more true. Of course, you want to sell to everyone you can, the more people you reach with your product and the more revenue you generate, the better. However, capturing that bottom 80% is significantly tougher than the first 20% that will more actively seek your product.

To better serve your business, cultivate something called your ‘perfect customer’. The perfect customer is that person who your product was made for, the person you know you can count on to spread the good word about you, and who shares the core values your business was founded on.

Identify this person, doing so also shows you the people that are not your customers, allowing you to avoid wasted effort on them and build fantastic relationships with the core patrons of your business. Knowing your customers, especially the perfect ones, will allow you to even better serve them.

Additionally, truly serving these customers will keep you focused on the mission you originally set out on, not allowing it to get watered down trying to cover everyone. A perfect customer is like having another employee, an ambassador even, out there for you and you can count on them to keep you in line with the values you founded your business on.

Who are your perfect customers? How can you get to them?


How to Get What You Want

Ask. Answering a question is one of the easiest things to do yet so many people fear asking. As a person who has dedicated themselves to a business, a set of values, and a mission, you cannot afford to avoid asking questions.

Chances are there is someone out there that knows more about something than you do. There is no shame in asking questions of those people. When you consider where to go to school, who to take a martial class from, where to get the best sushi, you are looking for a people who know, maybe even experts in their field. Why should it be any different in business?

Not a single person knows everything. Don’t act like you do. Utilize those around who are willing to help, seek out the best and put their knowledge to work for you. The vast majority of people are going to be extremely willing to help you. If a person is an expert on a topic, they are most likely very personally vested in it, they will want to share and you should be there ready to hear what they have to say.

When you approach someone you hope to gain knowledge and wisdom from, do your best to be prepared. Have one or two questions you want to ask, even email them ahead of time, and have a specific goal for you meeting. While people will usually be willing to help, you don’t want to push it by wasting their time; if you do they will likely avoid you next time you need help. In addition, acknowledge them when you have put their knowledge to good use, with thank you card or public mention.

If you say, "I'd love to pick your brain about something", it's like saying, "Hey, I'd like some free consulting." Be specific and direct in the answers you seek.

Above all, when seeking answers, be passionate and persistent. If you really want answers, you will get them, you just have to be truly hungry to learn. People respect a person that is willing to do what it takes to get the knowledge they need.

In business, you have to always be learning and growing, why not seek out the best to teach you along the way?


To Infinity and Beyond: Creating Your ‘Mini-Manifesto’

As I sit here in my room, trying to remain productive I keep getting status updates, tweets, and even a text or two mentioning the new Toy Story and just how amazing it is. Being as I haven’t seen it yet, I am growing increasingly jealous of what seems to be every other person in the universe.

Luckily, one of Toy Story’s favorite heroes gave us a quote for the ages: “To Infinity and Beyond!” While not necessarily a manifesto, it at least offers a glimpse of how and what Buzz wants to accomplish. In your own businesses you need to create something of the same thing.

Simply, a manifesto is a declaration of what you want to do, how you want to do it, and where you want to end up. It should be a written document taking into account your core values, the things you do to live those values, and a set of questions for each that you can ask yourself to make certain you are holding to them.

In creating this document, you have made a mini-manifesto with which to keep yourself on track. A clear definition of direction and a set of questions that hold you to them, is a powerful tool with which to anchor yourself and your employees. It will, however, be rendered useless if you don’t commit to it in every way. The second you ignore one of the values in your manifesto, you lose the respect of your team and the repercussions of that are detrimental.

Use your manifesto to guide your decision making, behaviors, firing and hiring practices, client relationships, and your personal life. If you find yourself at odds with your manifesto it should be a warning sign and you should carefully examine the disconnect.

The most important part of a manifesto is the commitment, you have to fully dedicate to it and its values or it becomes useless.

“Act with conviction and so will the rest of your team” – Nicole Donnelly


Online Marketing: Star Trek, Groupies, and Hogs, Create Your Own Virtual Street Team Now!

Trekkies, groupies, H.O.G.s: all groups of people united by a shared passion. Whether it be a sci-fi show, band, or louder than necessary motorcycle, the power of fan groups like these are undeniable—just ask Walmart about a little site that cropped up a while back call walmartsucks.org.

So what does this mean for you? It means you need to go out there and find your super fans, the people who will spread you story simply because they love what you are about. Corporations know the power of consumer groups; H.O.G. or Harley Ownership Group is one of the largest groups of this kind in the world with over a million members. These members spend more, act as ambassadors, and have created an entire sub-culture around the Harley’s they identify with and love.

The brand loyalty is invaluable to a brand and is something you must begin cultivating in your own business. Having a group of supporters like this gives you friendly platform to make announcements, get opinions, and promote new products. The goal is to create a community in line with your company’s values that you can call on to mobilize in support of your projects. In the digital age this is called a Virtual Street Team, or VST.

A VST should contain people that have a higher than average dedication to your product and are essentially willing to spread the word for nothing but the personal satisfaction they get from spreading a message they identify with. To cultivate a powerful VST, you should acknowledge the group often, recognize members, offer special privileges, create content for them, and seek their opinion. Doing so will validate their efforts and increase loyalty.

With a powerful VST and online community, you have a great place to monitor your reputation and customer satisfaction. It is a way to communicate on an individual level and maintain a