Posted on

Five Easy Steps to Achieve Work/Life Balance

August 1, 2004 was a very significant day for me. It was the day I became an official business owner and took over our new business. That same month, my husband and I found out we were expecting our first child. And seven “short” years later, our second child came along in August of 2011. As a business owner and a mom, It has been and continues to be a quite a ride.

Autonomy was the biggest reason I decided to become a business owner. I wanted to be there for my kids when they needed me—at the bus stop, at school concerts, play dates, sick days, or anything else that required my attention during work hours.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the amount of energy (and stress) that business ownership required. In the first few years, I struggled with guilt that I should be spending more time with my family. However, I later encountered something quite unexpected—I actually enjoyed working and wanted to come to work.

You see, I always believed that I would be a full-time mom. Career was never that important to me. And so I was in a quandary. I already felt that I worked more than I wanted to, but I enjoyed my work. In my quest to reconcile this dilemma and find a work/life balance, I again discovered something unexpected: work/life balance doesn’t exist. It’s a myth. Just like there is no “five easy steps” to anything, there is no such thing as work/life balance. 

Like all truth does, this truth set me free. When I stopped berating myself for not holding to some preconceived notion of balance in my work and my family/personal life, not only did my business flourish, but our family dynamics improved as did my overall sense of satisfaction and happiness.

Don’t get me wrong. There were and continue to be many challenges, frustrations and even failures. But who needs the extra baggage of “this isn’t how my life SHOULD be” thinking? As a good friend once told me, stop “should-ing” all over yourself and enjoy the life you have.

Instead of five easy steps, let me share with you five truths to shatter the work/life balance myth:

  1. Trust yourself that you will make the right decision with the information you have right now. Do what you can with the resources/money/time you have now. Don’t wait for perfect clarity, don’t wait for the right moment.
  2. Stop overthinking things and making 1000 “what if” scenarios. Acknowledge, you will fail in some things (and refer to any one of the thousands of motivational quotes you see on social media about failure).
  3. Your character and your life are shaped in the journey, not when you reach your destination. Let go of unrealistic expectations. Refer to #1 and make course corrections as needed.
  4. Don’t use #3 as an excuse to not plan, not set goals,  or make bad choices. People who set goals (even small goals) and strive to reach their goals are happier and more content people. 
  5. Have the courage to make difficult decisions and tough changes when required. Sometimes it’s small changes like waking up an hour early every day to exercise or meditate. Or big things like changing careers or where you live. With any change, there is a period of discomfort and even pain. But once you make the change, you’re usually better off. Ask yourself, do you prefer endless slow suffering or a short period of intense suffering that you know will end?

Like unicorns and rainbows, work/life balance sounds fun and happy, but it’s elusive because you will rarely reach it. Have you ever tried to get close to a rainbow? It just goes POOF!

The next time you’ve got fifty things competing for your attention, take a minute and focus. If at work, focus on work. If with your family, focus on them. You’ll never balance the fifty, but you will balance the one that you’ve chosen to focus on.

Posted on

How Big Is Your Wrist Watch?

When researching and writing my book, Five Ways Your Design is Sabotaging Your Sales, I rediscovered how extremely vulnerable people are to being influenced by visual stimuli.

For example, when something looks nice, people assume it also works well.

Apple has gorgeous design. But there are other phones, laptops, and computers that work just as well or better in terms of functionality. Nonetheless, Apple is perceived to be the market leader in innovation and technology. (In reality, they’re #2 behind Microsoft).

As another example, tall men are regarded as being smarter or stronger than short men. Slap a giant, expensive watch on their wrist and they are perceived to be successful and powerful too. Seriously.

If a $10,000 wristwatch is not in your budget, consider this:

As a professional, your prospects and potential clients haven’t a clue about the actual quality of your service. Those things are unmeasurable and indeterminable by the average person.

If you have written books, have a good newsletter, a good website and regularly connect with your prospects, then you are miles ahead of your competitors.

If not, then your potential clients will get their cues elsewhere. Usually, it’s perceived by how your marketing looks. Their decisions about how competent and successful you are will be based on how you present yourself.

At my company, Zine, we firmly believe your marketing should look like you know what you’re doing. If it looks haphazard and sloppy or just average, then your services will be perceived as haphazard, sloppy, or average.

Investing in your image will give your prospects the confidence to invest in you as well.

Posted on

When Ugly Gets All The Chicks

There is this phenomena in direct marketing called “the ugly postcard.”

In test after test, when a plain, “un-designed” postcard was tested against a slick, shiny postcard, the ugly postcard out-performed the shiny one hands-down.

I bet you’re saying, “Yeah! Explain that, Miss Fancy Pants Designer!”

Well, maybe you’re not saying that. But I’ll explain anyway.

Did you read the post about giant wristwatches? Aesthetics (visual appearance) is not so much about how beautiful something is. It’s about the response that is elicited. (You might want to read that sentence again).

A lowbrow design has power equal to a high-end design in influencing perception.

That means an ugly design can elicit responses such as “easy to work with,” “affordable,” or “honest.” Or it could be part of your brand (like Craigslist’s look). Or it could just be that it stands out from all the shiny, “smart-looking” marketing competing for attention.  

So what’s an aspiring entrepreneur to do? Ugly or slick?

First, don’t go all ugly on yourself unless that is part of your message and your brand.

This concept is more powerful in direct marketing efforts, but much harder to pull off as a brand message.

If you’re sending a postcard or a sales letter, try a plain, undesigned look and see what kind of results you get.

Good marketing hinges on testing. So be bold and try different things.

Posted on

Do This One Thing, and Prepare to Shock People

I visit the post office a lot. A lot.

You see we do a lot of mailings, both for our own marketing and for clients. So I’m often at the post office getting postage rates, picking up stamps, or mailing stuff.

Sometimes, well, just about every time, there is a lonnnnnng line. Having nothing better to do in line, I observe the people in line. Or I observe the clerks behind the counter. Or I observe the people interacting with the clerks.

One day, while noticing how robotically most people treated the postal clerks who were usually very courteous, I decided to do something different. I decided to take 4 seconds (literally, that’s how long this takes), greet them with a warm smile, look them in the eye, and ask “how are you,” and wait for their response.

I don’t know why I decided to do that. Maybe I felt bad for the clerks. Maybe I was in a particularly happy mood.

The change in the clerk’s demeanor when I did this was striking. I left hoping he was left in a better mood, happier, and more peaceful.

I decided to do this as much as possible.

I did it with the young man behind the concessions counter at the movies. He restrained a laugh, not in derisive laugh, but one of surprise. I noticed his eyes beamed a little too. Seriously.

I do it when I’m paying for my groceries, or at the mall buying stuff.

I find it often takes people aback. And it always allows them to take a deep breath and be human.

So try it next time. Take 4 seconds, put on a genuine smile, look them in the eye, ask “how are you” and wait for their response.

Even if they don’t respond (rarely), you will be the better for it.

Posted on

The Unglamorous Life

Do you remember the second Indiana Jones movie “Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade”? Indy is in a race against the evil Nazi’s to find the cup of Christ, the Holy Grail, which is said to give eternal life to whoever drinks from it. When both Indy and the Nazi’s are in the cave that is full of “false” cups, with the single real one among them, the evil guy picks the flashiest, most bejeweled cup “fit for a King”. Drinking from it triumphantly, he shrivels up and dies. Oops.

Of course, Indy picks the right one. When they asked him how he knew, he said, “Jesus worked as a carpenter. He wouldn’t have owned a glamorously bejeweled cup. He would’ve owned a simple, humble cup.”

Smart guy, that Indy.

In the 10+ years that I’ve been a business owner, I’ve learned that the keys to success aren’t the flashiest, latest, most glamorous or magical this-and-that’s. It’s not winning the lotto or having a rich uncle. It’s not winning American Idol, nor is it going to a fancy school, or having fancy things.

The keys to success are often are the most basic, humble, and frankly, simplest of principles.

In a study reported in the January/February 2010 issue of the The Atlantic (www.theatlantic.com), this principle unexpectedly came to light. The study was done to find out what makes a great teacher, with great defined as having a high percentage of students move up grade levels in learning.

They debunked the typical things you would think: prior teaching experience, educational background, and even school and student demographics. They even claimed it has nothing to do with having a dynamic personality or dramatic performance.

Among the four or five characteristics of effective (and successful) teachers, the one that they found as the most consistent predictor of teacher effectiveness is (ready for this?)…Persistence. Yep. It is how much grit, relentlessness, and stubbornness they have to hang on and not give up in the face of adversity until they reach their goals.

In Napolean Hill’s popular book “Think and Grow Rich”, Persistence is number 8 on the list of the 13 essential characteristics of what creates success. Hill states “if one does not possess persistence, one does not achieve noteworthy success in any calling.”

Dan Kennedy, marketing guru and millionaire consultant to businesses, has observed how highly successful entrepreneurs aren’t markedly superior in talent, intelligence, education or resources. What they seem to have in common is a very profound sort of stubbornnness. It is this stubbornness and persistence that is needed to pick yourself up after every failure and keep at it until you achieve success.

There may be no heroic connotation to the word “persistence”. It’s not sexy and glamorous, and it’s no magic bullet for anything. It’s a day-in, day-out, no make-up, fall down, get up, dust yourself off, and keep-on-trucking connotation. So the dusty old cliché is true: winners never quit, and quitters never win.

Perhaps the Bible says it best, when it says “tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

So, go ahead, bring on the day-to-day drudge, the challenges, the failures, and the obstacles. It’ll help develop the grit and stubbornness which brings long-term, lasting success.

And I’ll take that over short-lived glory any day.