Be Your Own Boss (Better Known As--Lessons In Phycology)

Rewarding.  That's the main reason why people want to be their own boss.  It gives you a kind of freedom, gratefulness and the pressure of being accountable in one long humble experience.  

Some see the pressure of being their own boss as control.  Others see it as drive.  But their is often one thing people never think about when being the boss.  Unless your a phycologist, you don't think about the aspect of dealing with other people's baggage.  

You think about the product you offer, the service you provide, marketing, or sales but never the interactioin you give that affects your customers.  If you have employees, that's a completely different phycological melting pot aside from clients which I'm not going to go in to.  

As your own boss you have to be professional.  When your not you get bad reviews and potential clients find someone else to work with.  You also have to be a good judge of character to learn what your client wants.  If you're really good you find out what your client wants even if they have difficulty in telling you what that is.  A lot of that is communication.  But, my advice would be--take a physiology class.

Learning what your client needs will help you in sales.  It may also drive you bonkers knowing how crazy the mind works but knowing what the client wants can make the difference of being your own boss and working for one. 

Dandruff Sunshine

The day is long and often I'll take my glasses off to remove their rigid arms pressing between my ears.  I pinch my nose to relieve the weight of the armor that sits there stagnat.  As I look down on my red mahogony desk I see white flakes and a lash.  A rather long lash I think before I realize it's not a lash but a lone eyebrow hair.  Skratching at my brows I watch small flakes drift down to settle on the dark background.  They smile at me those little pieces of departed skin saying, "sensen blue where are you?"  Their comment makes me wonder, where else do I have dandruff? 

 

Like I've been told--"Getting old isn't for woosies."

Google Teaches The Net How To Speak

A while ago I mused about technology becoming man's "child" as in computers are the next best thing to becoming "in our image".  I laughed with a few friends on how machines will be the meek to inherit the earth but the internet might become that "child". 

 

Google has effectively advanced it's search engine by being able to answer questions without you having to click on blue links.  They call it a semantic search which means Google will be able to understand the words that you are typing just as you understand the words on this page.  Hi Google!  Welcome! 

 

Pretty soon, I might have a window pop open after a greeting like that and have Google answer me--Hi Steph!  What can I search for you today?  When will Google pop in during another search engine development and ask Larry Page or Sergey Brin, Founders of Google, Hey Dad--why am I here?  Want to play a game?  And when that happens we might find out what it's like to be Gods. 

 

Until then, I'm going to research what marketing power this new search-ability is going to provide!  SEO keywords might be replaced with phrases or whole sentences.  I know I can already find a quote from a movie or a song by typing a partial line.  

As people spend more time on Google finding answers instead of clicking links, the capability to pinpoint ads to those people and face-time will improve for Google.  Skip the ad on Facebook, go with Google to market your product.  That's what it means to me!

THE CLOUD Is Ready To Take Over!

By the time I notice new technology, it's not going away.  I'm not especially adept to finding the latest greatest gadget/software/process so when I notice things like Pinterest or "THE Cloud" it's time to realize that this stuff isn't going away.  

It will be like tar--getting on everything and sticking to me until osmosis converts the new technology to my daily life.  

Sometimes I feel like that momma mammoth statue at La Brea Tar Pits sinking in the pit of technology only to drown and kill me in the end.  But I'm safe from predetors, right? 

 

Well, Pinterest captured me and now I'm using THE CLOUD on Google play.  Doesn't that just sound odd--THE CLOUD!  

Sounds like it will evaporate into thin air but according to David Linthicum this cloud isn't going to rain on my parade.  The attraction of having anything on my computer being accessible on my phone or my work computer or my Kindle fire is too amazing.  

I can listen to audible on my fire while watching uploaded movies from my computer that I retreaved on my 4G my touch while at work writing this article to you and posting it to my blog which will show up two days later.  COOL! 

 

Oiy!  Despite the attention span problems this will evoke, I for one think this is really cool.  Because when I'm on lunch and I want to edit my WIP that's at home I could access it on my kindle fire which uses the my touch to connect to the internet so I can download and work on my latest junker--I mean masterpiece.  Or I could just connect to the cloud and have all my crap ready for me on any instrument of my choosing.  

Which one would you choose?

Organization Tips for the First Day Of Spring!

It's spring tomorrow and time for spring cleaning!  But let's say you want to learn how to organize too.  

Well, your in luck because now you are going to learn secret tips and tricks to my powerful organizational skills.  Yes as in mad skillz.  I could write about organization for a life-time it's so ingrained in me.  I dedicate these tips to my mom who I learned this imperative habit from, but now I'm going to give you the MOST POWERFUL organizational trait I have. 

 

To be organized, you have to organize. 

 

Earth shattering I know, but if you don't put in that 10 minutes of straightening every day, or even the half hour every week, then forget it!  First we have to learn how you think.  Sure filing stuff in a drawer under typical tags are great but if you don't remember them than what's the point.  

My dad has a filing system in which areas of his desk are piles of papers, files, notes and scribbles that he can, amazingly, find what ever it is in an instant and that's his filing system.  If you can, without fail, organize like this then may the power of grey-skull be with you--you do not need my help.  

However, if you do not have He-man powers of organization then boy can I can assist you!  Be warned though--organization and cleaning are two totally different things.  You can do one or the other or both at the same time, but never misconstrue that if someone is organized that they are clean as well.  Not always the case.  Cleaning has a purpose.  Organizing has a purpose. They aren't the same thing. 

 

Organizational Skill #1: Take 10 minutes everyday to organize.

As mentioned, 10 minutes a day or half-hour every week is fine.  If you don't take the time, I can't help you.  Getting motivated to organize is easy...

 

Organizational Tip #1: Use distraction to organize.

I'll be loathing to go out using any excuse to just wait five more minutes before I'm out the door.  Horrible, I know, but organizing as a means to distract you from other things means your organized.  Hey--I said I'd help you organize.  While organizing time is one of those tips if you need to straighten the house I'll use any excuse to get you motivated.

 

Orginizational Tip #2: Make more of a mess to get organized.

If the project of organizing seem massive and you don't know where to start or your finding it hard to get started, take a pack of cards, any cards--playing cards, tarot cards, monopoly money, game pieces, dice whatever and disperse these cards/dice/money in the room where you want to organize.  I like to shuffle my cards then let them fly out of my hand in a one-hand shuffle to the ground.  I'll pick up my cards to start with and then I find I'm moving papers, then CD's, then moving furniture around if I'm really ambitious.  It works and it's a great way to just do it!

 

Organizational Tip #3:  Organize one area only. 

Do not burn out on organizing.  Seriously take an egg timer, set it and drop what ever you're organizing when the bell rings.  Unless you're super excited, have the time and are enthusiastic about organizing, like me, then don't make it such a difficult chore.  Shoving things in drawers is not organizing.  Don't cheat.  Remember--clean is not organized.  If it's a table you want straightened up then just do the table.  Find a suitable rack for those magazines, put those cups in the sink, place important papers in a pile to file later, not now--you're not filing--your organizing the table.  Focus on what you want organized and when you work on one area at a time you'll find it easier to recall where you put it later. 

 

Knowing your organizational mind is going to help.  But for now, make it a habit so organizing becomes a lifestyle. 

Choosing The Right Words For A Blog

Ideas will come into my mind and they don't go away until I write them down.  Other times I write a phrase or word trying to convey the epiphany I had, only to read it later and say -- what the hell was I thinking?  What frame of mind was I in?  A few times I'll try to remember the thought I had acting like a "would-be" writer.  

I read somewhere "would-be" writers seem to think collecting material for writing isn't necessary because they'll remember it.  Maybe I will but many times--no.  That's a would-be writer -- "I'll remember that..."

 

Sometimes I'll be reading and I'll remember what my creative writing teacher said in 6th grade.  She said, read the paragraph and think about what the author attempted to disclose.  Read, stop, and think.  She was the best!  Many times a sentence will grab me and I'll think about it.  It will soak-in like a sponge; linseed oil to wood. 

 

Choosing the right words for anything will take at the minimum, one draft, one edit and one pass-over.  Also, the secret to choosing the right words are...

KEEPING NOTES

and don't forget it!   

Marketing Social Experiments

Can you see the subliminal message?

I like marketing because it's a social experiment on what people like, how they react to certain key words or phrases and how you can influence the masses.  It really is a continual social experiment.

To learn marketing is to learn social behaviors.  Marketing is the ultimate form of social experimentation.  If you want to learn how people think, how to persuade, how to change a person's thought process, learn marketing.  

There is that evil side of marketing called sub-conscious imprinting that can get you to buy something and you don't know why.  It's the premise of where a glass of coke looks appealing because the ice cubes faintly spell out "sex" in a vertical line on the billboard.  It's the picture that spreads sub-conscious messages of -- "you will look as good as this model if you take our supplement".  It's what a mind fills in with enough of a picture but not enough detail provided. 

You'd be surprised about how much psychology successful marketing requires.  Facebook was a social experiment and it's marketing was by word of mouth.  That's easy marketing.  Now think about what you want to sell.  It could be a book, a service or yourself every time you go into an interview.  Think of the marketing aspect of what goes into "selling" no matter what that product is.  Knowing that marketing and psychology play a part of each other can help you understand how to seal the deal.  

There is a different vibe between pushing a sale and helping a customer.  Marketing is the sales pitch not the sale.  Marketing a brand, such as Sears will give the client a familiarity that sticks to their brain.  Sears will stand by their products and that is a psychological impression made by branding--which is marketing.  It does need to be followed through by standing behind your products to concrete that clients belief but marketing puts it there in the first place.  

So when you market, no matter what it is, be wise to the inside of a person's mind.  One of the best marketing "ploys" is "how can I help you?" It's a pressure-free way to be friendly and divert the fact that you're there to sell.  And maybe you'll find that helping people get what they want makes you feel good too. 

2 Very Important Things I've Learned From My GSD

1. When it's yours, fight to the death.

Grim, I know but hear me out.  Emma recently was in a dog fight.  She has taught me that she would fight to the death for something she feels is hers (like her "couch space" next to me). Put your eggs in one basket and guard it like hell.  There's nothing like pressure to make you succeed. 

 

2. Patience and persistence together gets you what you desire.

They say patience is a virtue.  Persistance is too.  Both together creates success!  If you only have one then the road will be rough.  Emma will sit at the table and wait for scraps.  She will never take her eyes off the "bone".  Emma is patient because she waits for us to be done with dinner but she's also persistant because she doesn't let us forget that she's waiting.  Same thing when a ball goes over a hillside.  The bank is steep but she knows that ball will park itself somewhere and while she will go barreling down hills to catch it she also uses patience and persistance to bring that ball out of the bushes.

All this together says I will not just write novels, I will put them out there to be read.  I will not stop I will not go away.  

What does it tell you?

The Secret To A Girls Happiness

To be fair--I had to (vulgar language warning)

Sometimes I rant.  This would be one of those times.  You've been forewarned.

Yeah, I’m calling BS!  When I was full time training I was 5’8” 135 lbs. 18% body fat and a size 5.  I had a wonderful 8 pack (as in abs of steel so massive 6 wasn't enough) and almost-A bust and my inner thighs couldn’t touch even if I squeezed them together really hard.  My confidence was awesome.  I smiled and said hello to everyone.  I also looked like a half-starved zombie.  Everything a guy wants in a girl right?   

Then why wasn’t I getting the attention I get now? 

I’ve found the answer.

BOOBS.

Yes, boobs, breasts, ta-ta’s, Fun bags, cans, racks, puppies, jimmies, shelves, and my personal favorite “the twins”.  I believe there are more (262 to be exact). 

Why have I come to this conclusion?  

Because I’ve shown guys a picture of my body (blocking my head) when I was a size 5 and asked is this “doable” for you?  

I get the nonchalant “sure” as in why not I’m a guy.  I also got the “she needs a little more meat on her bones.”  You know where they want that “meat on her bones?”  Yeah, on the shelf.  I have the same confidence I’ve always had, I smile the same, I say hello the same way but the difference is my shape.  I’m not twiggy anymore, I'm cushy.  Now men see my curvy shape and drown in their own drool.

First you tell me to lose weight and I do.  Then you tell me put some weight on. I call BS!

Moral of this story.  The man who says you’re too thin or too fat doesn’t know what he wants.  He hasn’t a clue as to what he’s looking for and will try to superimpose a fantasy girl over you.  That’s the guy to avoid.  The man who looks at you, the whole of you, and is caught speechless is the one that knows what he wants—it’s you.  Go with that one.   

~ dedicated to the man who can't rip his eyes off me when I walk across the room.

Ready For No Stirrups March!

March is No stirrups month!  That's right riders!  Time to get on your horses and drop those irons.  In the past I've blogged about no stirrup month and am proud to say that we haven't yet had a fall because we weren't riding without our "training wheels", as some call them.  

I believed that stirrups are a comfort and safety device that allows you to stay in the saddle for long periods of time while giving you support during "rough" rides.  I owe those dangly foot holds for giving me stability during training sessions with new babies just starting out and dealing with a rider on their back.  My stirrups have thankfully released me when I've taken falls.  

I'd never want to banish stirrups forever, but for one month every year we cross them in front of the pommel out of the way or remove them altogether.  

To participate doesn't mean you have to do the same though!  During your warm-ups drop your stirrups until your ready to work.  Start off slow.  You'll find your stamina will grow.  The benefits of this exercise will increase your balance, strength and respect for the ones that do ride without their iron aides for an entire ride.  After a month you'll find half-passes not so strenuous, pushing your leg back for the changes easier, and lifting underside for collection a little less painful.  

Of course if you deem it unsafe because your on a bucking bronco and you just can't drop your stirrups, then don't.  If it's fear based try a yoga mantra that has helped me relax a muscle that's too stiff.

I am vulnerable.  I am strong.  I am strong because I am vulnerable.  

It might not make sense to you now but if you repeat the mantra the meaning will become very clear.  Ride safe and at the beginning of April you'll be saying--Thank you strange oddly shaped dangly things, you keep me in the saddle!