How to Build Your Business Through Building Yourself
by Joshua Odmark
This article will help you in both mind and body. Your mind refers to the consciousness of making important decisions on a daily basis, whether it be cutting back expenses, or selecting the company budget for 2004. The body refers to your physical body with respect to its significance with your work. In retrospect, this is an innovative way to look at not only your business model, but to look within yourself for the person you need to be.
Let us take a look in the mirror. Shall we?
Lesson One:
Take 45 minutes each day to think.
Your mind is your pathway to success. Take time out of every day to think about business concepts, cutting costs, marketing, and anything else relevant to your personal business. This should be done in an atmosphere away from the TV, radio, or any other distracting noises. The 45 minutes of thinking is meant to be done alone for a continuous period. Avoid a pencil and paper, just let your creativity flow.
Lesson Two:
Create a Wisdom Journal.
Yeah OK, so wisdom journal is not the greatest name in the world, but you get the point. You can name your journal 1967 Shelby GT500 if you would like. The point is to create something that you can use to write down all of your thoughts. If you open up my journal, you will find discourses on religion, marketing techniques, drawings of mythological characters (I am not kidding), comic strips, and much more. Make an attempt to put your train of thought onto paper, you will be surprised with what you write down and you will be even more surprised at the doors it opens for ideas.
Lesson Three:
Separate your work area.
Have you ever spilt a drink or some kind of food on your keyboard/mouse? You should never have any type of food or drink near your work area. Not just because of the damage that can be done to important documents, but because of the simple fact that you need to separate your work area from your leisure area. Never have a TV, radio, or magazine near your work area. If you look into my office, you will find a bookcase, a desk with desk supplies on it, and a computer. I work in simplicity. The more distractions there are, the less work you will get done. Stop making excuses and get that TV out of your "office", NOW!
Lesson Four:
Always wear a suite and tie when you work.
Call me old fashioned, but I firmly believe that in any business atmosphere, in any location, one should always properly dress for the occasion. I proudly admit that I have dressed up to go to work in my basement at home. It sounds ridiculous I agree, but give it a try. I dare you…
Lesson Five:
All work and no play means disaster.
About a year ago I took a two-week vacation to Clearwater Beach, Florida. I left a software package midway through development, and I was coming back to two corporate clients waiting to place their orders. I returned home with innovative ideas for our software package, and I had interesting concepts to run by my new clients. A book, a chair, and a cold drink lead to plenty of self-discoveries, many of which still make my business a lot of money today. Your mind needs to be let out, it needs freedom, and it needs variety through experiences. Your mind is what makes you unique. It is what makes you the valuable person that you are. Think of a vacation as simply a treat for your mind. Now there is some food for thought… Get it?
Take these first new steps with diligence, and you will start to see a significant increase in your work efficiency.
Are we still looking in the mirror? Indeed we are. Let us take a look at our physical body.
It is very important to develop a routine that outlines your day of work. It is a well known fact that everything outside of your working environment, the type of car you drive, the woman in your life, and books you read, are a direct reflection of the type of person you are. Therefore everything has an indirect effect on your business.
Do you own a planner? You do not… do you…
A planner is the basis of everything that is routinely important. You should make it a habit to write everything down in a planner, relevant to your business. You can organize your important phone numbers, business meetings, calendar events, and much more with a planner. Why am I telling you this? You know what a planner is for. So why is this important? Because both you and I are human, we forget important things on a daily basis. I have so many daily repetitive tasks that when something is quickly added in I sometimes forget to complete the task. We all do, it is human nature, hence the significance of a planner to our "oh so important" lives.
The planner will now play an important role in our new, improved image of ourselves. You now have the ability to write things down, it is your mobile Wisdom Journal. Your planner is more of a memory tool used to keep your daily routine in tact. The ability to look at your actions, review your goal, process your ideas, organize personal information, and connect with colleagues allows you to consciously build upon all of them after you record them. Yesterday's idea will become today's building block.
If you do not own the following things, you need to take some time and acquire them.
t Necessity Number One:
Go buy a planner.
This is the building block of a business owner. It is like the composition book of a musician. You have got to incorporate a planner into your daily life. While it may not seem important to your current situation, it is imperative for the future. Are we not all working for a better tomorrow?
t Necessity Number Two:
Contact Organizer- separate from your planner organizer.
One of the single most important aspects of being a business owner is establishing connections. What a shame it would be to lose the contact of someone who would be extremely beneficial to you at a very critical point. Take thirty minutes out of your day and five bucks out of your pocket to purchase a contact organizer. The next Bill Gates could be on the 32nd index card in your neatly organized contact list.
We have gone over a lot together in this article, five lessons for your mind and two things that every small business owner should have. I think it is safe to say you have your work cutout for you. Take what you have read, and put it to use. Change does not occur all at once. It takes progression to get from point A, your current position, to point B, where you need to be. This article has pointed you in the right direction, and planted your first step. It is up to you to complete the next step by following through with the advice given in this article.
Biography
Joshua Odmark is an entrepreneur in every sense of the word. He is the owner of Jeoworks Advanced Technologies, a website development firm based out of Michigan. Take a few minutes and say Hi over at http://www.jeoworks.com.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
More Online Business Help Articles
More By Developer Shed
 developerWorks - FREE Tools!
|
This demonstration gives you an overview of IBM® Rational® Build Forge Express Edition, a global offering that provides a framework to automate and execute software processes. Rational Build Forge provides a software assembly line that can support all of your tools, technologies, and platforms so you can achieve a repeatable, reliable, and traceable build and release process.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
<a href="http://zeus.developershed.com/shonuff.php?blackbird=3853&zoneid=442&source=&dest=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibm.com%2Fdeveloperworks%2Fspaces%2Fjazz%3FS_TACT%3D105AGY31%26S_CMP%3DDEVSHED&ismap="><img src="http://images.devshed.com/corp/img/news/jazz01.gif" alt="developerWorks Jazz space" align="left"></a>You've heard the buzz about Jazz... want to know more about it from a developer's perspective? Check out the Jazz space on developerWorks. This space is an up-to-date resource for developers, including technical information about Jazz and products built on Jazz, like Rational Team Concert Express. The Jazz space includes content from a wide variety of sources, including links, feeds, and comments from experts.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
You'll get answers to many questions and more from David Barnes, Lead Evangelist for IBM Emerging Internet Technologies. David will discuss aspects of Web 2.0 that bring value to corporations, academia, and government. He'll also discuss IBM's vision around Web 2.0, including the importance of remixability and consumability. The discussion will culminate with examples of various IBM Software Group solutions you can use to get ahead of the Web 2.0 adoption curve.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial version of IBM Rational Business Developer V7.1. Rational Business Developer offers rapid and simplified development of business applications and services through Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) tools, generating Java or mainframe solutions while shielding developers from technical complexities.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Join this webcast to see how IBM Data Studio Developer and pureQuery can take the pain out of Java data access. uApplications developed using both Java and SQL have become a common requirement. Database connectivity using Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) to create an application is a multi-step tedious process, and tooling that covers both SQL and Java has been unavailable, until now. IBM Data Studio introduces the pureQuery platform: a high-performance, Java data access platform focused on simplifying the tasks of developing, managing, and optimizing database applications and services.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Join this webcast to discover the key requirements for successful change and release management. Learn how to extend your .NET environment to improve productivity and collaboration, and address core problems afflicting team development. In this webcast, we’ll review typical challenges faced by customers and how to resolve them with the IBM Rational Change and Release Management solution, including Rational ClearCase, Rational ClearQuest and Rational Build Forge. Replay is available for 9 months.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
As businesses grow increasingly dependent upon Web applications, these complex entities grow more difficult to secure. Most companies equip their Web sites with firewalls, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and network and host security, but the majority of attacks are on applications themselves – and these technologies cannot prevent them. This paper explains what you can do to help protect your organization, and it discusses an approach for improving your organization’s Web application security.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Join this Rational Talks to You teleconference, to hear how Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) eliminates the need for tedious and error-prone low level coding, so developers can focus on business requirements. EGL extends the Rational software development platform with a simplified programming language that enables developers who have little or no experience with Java, Web technologies or Service Oriented Architecture, to create enterprise-class applications and services quickly and easily. It also allows developers who may have little or no mainframe programming experience to quickly create traditional mainframe components.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Attend this launch webcast with Scott Hebner, Vice President of IBM Rational Marketing and Strategy, where he will overview Rational’s new offerings and programs to help customers accelerate software innovation on System z. He will discuss how these solutions help organizations extend their core business processes toward modern architectures such as SOA and web technologies to deliver business improvements that stand the test of time.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
WebSphere Process Server delivers a unique integration framework that simplifies existing IT resources. Often, as IT assets grow to support business demand, so too does their complexity and manageability. In this webcast, we’ll discuss how WebSphere Process Server helps deliver an SOA infrastructure that provides a common model to orchestrate, mediate, connect, map, and execute the underlying IT functions. Discover how WebSphere Process Server simplifies integration of business processes by leveraging existing IT assets as reusable services without the complexities of traditional integration methodologies.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
All FREE IBM® developerWorks Tools!
|
