Imagine waking up every morning and feeling like you have been hit by a freight train. You take naps throughout the day, but to no avail — you feel worse when you wake up than when you went to sleep! Every time you eat, no matter what you eat, you feel as if you’re slipping into a coma.

It’s hard to concentrate for more than a few seconds; writing anything more than two sentences is almost too much effort. You can’t remember anything and begin to slip on making appointments because your brain is so foggy. You find yourself constantly glancing at your calendar for fear you have missed another appointment. You are invited to social events, but can’t muster the energy to go. Even taking a 20-minute walk makes you feel like you need another nap. (more…)

How to choose a business.Ben writes in: “One of the issues I struggle with is focus. I have too many ideas and dilute my time pursuing several of them. What process do you use to choose which business idea you’ll run with?”

V also has a similar question: “I’d like to hear your thoughts about involving in many businesses at once. I’m mostly interested in web-based projects with a high requirement of up-front work (but not necessarily up-front money investment) and ‘passive-income’ potential.”

Instead of some boring stats and humdrum analysis, I thought the best way to show how I chose web hosting — and became successful in it — was to tell you my story.
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Since I sold my business in September 2007, I have been on a journey to define who I am. A significant portion of this journey has been trying things that work for other people and seeing if those things work for me. Think of it like trying on new outfits. Some are so crazy that you take them off right away and never look at them again (like washing my own car was for me.) Some of them work so well that you can’t imagine how you lived without them (that was setting up my own budget.)

The problem with trying on new attitudes and new ways of doing things is that you invariably run into those you feel should work, but they don’t for you. And, being human, instead of simply saying “This doesn’t work for me” and doing something else, you think “But everyone else is successful with this!” and continue, for months, to beat your head against the wall and try something that clearly doesn’t work. (more…)

Trouble finding a job?
Consider changing your perspective. I hired a personal assistant earlier this year after running the numbers and realizing that I was spending a lot of time doing housework — time that I could be using to grow my business. She spent approximately 8 hours a week doing everything from filing papers to working on Quickbooks to doing our laundry.

Unfortunately, my assistant had major family issues in August, and quit to deal with them. Last month, with tasks that I didn’t want to do stacking up, I decided to hire a new assistant.

With all that I read in the media about people being out of work, I thought it might be easier than earlier this year to find someone who wanted to work a few hours a week from my house.

I was wrong — and what I discovered from a hiring manager’s perspective will help you, if you’re currently looking for a job, or even if you’d like to do some consulting to make some extra money on the side.
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Your customers are speaking
a different language than they were
a few months ago…We, as business owners and marketers, have failed to realize that the game has completely changed.

Our customers are speaking a different language than they were even 3 months ago. The sales tactics that worked a few months ago won’t work now without major tweaking. Furthermore, I don’t see any business that has really picked up on our customers’ new language. (more…)