Freelance work is inherently cyclical. Colleagues in corporate jobs often ask if the cycles make me crazy. The answer is no, but that answer has come with time and experience. Rather than fight the cycles and worry about when they will start or end, I’ve learned to relax and ride it out.
January is a mad [...]
Clarifying Complex Ideas
Tag Archive: work
All or Nothing
Fast, Good, Cheap: Pick Two
There’s the old saying that you have to pick two of these three choices: fast, good or cheap. With the economy being in the state that it is, it’s no surprise that “cheap” is high on most people’s lists. What has been surprising is that they seem to have less interest in “fast” or “good,” [...]
Summer Doldrums
It doesn’t matter if you work on-staff or if you work as a freelancer, summer is the slow time. Just try to find all four people that need to review and approve your project once their kids are out of school for the summer. Things languish in review for weeks, if not months, [...]
It Takes Focus to Fix It
I had an interesting call with a potential new client today. This director of sales and marketing discovered me through LinkedIn and told me that he wanted to speak with me about some projects. When pressed for detail, he declined to go into specifics, so I went into this meeting only knowing the [...]
The Most Unexpected Call Ever
This morning, I got the most entertaining call of my professional career.
“May I speak with the decision maker in your organization, please?” asked a kindly voice with a southern twang. There’s nothing quite like asking for the decision maker to immediately identify your call as phone spam. Yet somehow, I felt compelled to [...]
Even the President Works from Home
This morning, I stumbled across an article about Michelle Obama talking with People Magazine. She was talking about the dog (never has a poor pooch gotten so much attention before its existence) and life at the White House.
The First Lady told the magazine that family life in the White House is better [...]
About the Economy…
There’s a terrible thing happening around me. That thing is being known as The Economic Crisis. Friends are descending into downward spirals of clinical depression. One is in foreclosure proceedings for a modest house that they’ve owned for nearly a decade. Others are losing their jobs and understandably terrified about their [...]
My HARO Experience
For as many people who have called and emailed to ask about my experience with sponsoring the HARO email blast on January 20, I’m guessing that there’s an equal number who wondered, but didn’t call. Here are the answers to the most common questions.
How many clicks?Three days later, my web counter tells me that [...]
My Love Affair with Paper
Back when I was in college, everyone was heralding the end of paper. Offices would become paperless. Newspapers would be published exclusively online. Books would become a thing of the past. It all sounded so bright, shiny and futuristic, like an exhibit in Tomorrowland.
Years have passed, and where are we? [...]
