You spend every waking hour (and some sleeping ones, too) working on your precious business – it’s your baby, your lover, your ever so slightly co-dependent best friend.

You spend so much time and energy on it that your real baby, lover, and best friend complain that there is nothing left for them.

But you can’t help it – you are obsessed. You are determined to share what you got with the world.

And sometimes people love what you’ve got, love you, and shower you with roses and orders and blog comments and 83% organic dark chocolate.

And sometimes? Sometimes, not so much.

Sometimes it’s dead quiet out there and you feel a tad exposed. You troll Twitter and everyone’s tweets are so peppy, all about how great their businesses are doing, you start to feel a tad bad. The story line, “What was I thinking?” starts sucking you in.

Add to that the overwhelming number of things you could be doing for your itty-biz– split page splitting, strategic partnership partnering, product launch launching – and, if you’re anything like me, by Friday at noon you’re under the covers sucking down an endless pitcher of margaritas and fantasizing about putting an application in at the post office.

Suddenly, a job comprised of very simple, very repetitive actions sound very appealing.

At least you wouldn’t have to explain to your Aunt Edna what you do and have her not understand you – again.

Every self-employed lunatic ittybizzer faces moments like these – and the more your business is connected to your heart, the more you’re selling something that matters to you — the more overwhelming and depleting it can all be.

That’s why I’m here to tell you that the single best thing you can do for your business – besides buying all of Naomi’s products — is to become the linchpin of your own support system. If you are to succeed in this wacky self-employed world, you have to befriend and care for yourself.

But self-care is tough. It can seem self-indulgent and whiny, rather intangible, and you usually put it off until you’re hiding under the covers swilling that pitcher of margaritas again.

Or if tequila’s not your thing, maybe you find yourself:

• Surfing the Internet until your butt goes numb and your heart grows stiff

• Buying another Platinum-Plated-be-an-Internet-Billionaire program

• Imitating your favorite blogger, sure that if you could write like Naomi (or Darren or Seth) you would be rich and loved (and therefore safe)

• Raiding your kid’s brittle Halloween candy

• __________ (fill in your favorite avoidance technique here)

These avoidance techniques are what I call “Shadow Comforts,” things we turn to for fulfillment, but which don’t really fill us up.

It’s natural to turn to these pseudo-fulfilling tidbits because they familiar, numbing, and accessible. But to truly be filled up, you MUST go beyond the bags of Cheetos, the all-night Twitter marathons, and the three-hour naps.

You probably knew that already. Most people know intuitively that renewal and comfort are not found at the bottom of a bag of Oreos, even if they are organic. But knowing something and putting it into practice are two very different animals.

Fortunately for you, having written more than my fair share of self-help books and magazine articles and snappy speeches, I have a few nifty ideas on how you can translate what your heart and soul already know into action and end that crispy-fried vibe you may be feeling:

Nifty Tip #1. Accept that ittybiz burnout happens. Your aim is not to stop the cycle entirely but to interrupt the cycle sooner.

Nifty Tip #2. To successfully implement Nifty Tip #1, you must develop the habit of noticing your mental state and intervening before your self-talk and mood tank. It’s what Seth would call taming the Lizard Brain. Charlie Gilkey calls it metacognition. I say “witness consciousness.”

Mindfulness meditation, having your computer beep at you and checking in with yourself, keeping a time/activity log, using the Life Organizer process — develop ways to witness your choices.

Nifty Tip #3. Keep remembering that you get to choose. Your stress level skyrockets when you think you’re boxed into a corner and don’t have a choice. Watch out for words like “I should,” “I have to,” or “That’s what they told me to do.” (Sidenote: Don’t ever take the advice of “Them” or “They” over your own intuition and knowledge. If “They” were so smart about everything, there’d be end to war, hunger, and Jersey Shore.)

Nifty Tip #4. Go on a retreat. When you are too far into burnout, you can’t stop the cycle yourself. You can’t find – and you might not even believe there is — another way. You need someone else to help you feel safe enough to relax, fill up, and maybe even see how you are making your life a bit harder than it needs to be.

Need a really easy way to retreat? (Trust me, you do). My 2nd annual Virtual Retreat comes to you Valentine’s Day weekend with 13 world-groovy teachers. Get the benefits of self-care without getting out of pj’s. Which is as it should be.

Nifty Tip #5. Tell yourself it’s going to be okay. You don’t have to figure it all out today. Relax and take the rest of the day off. Or at least let yourself go pee. I promise the World Wide Web will still be here when you get back.

Bio # 1, written by Jen: Jennifer Louden is a best-selling author of six books, one of which helped Naomi through a really bad time. When Jen’s not swigging tequila, she plots how to help people do what they love without burning out.

Bio # 2, written by Naomi: Jennifer Louden is one of my all time personal heroes. (One of the nice things about having a blog is that sometimes your personal heroes offer you a guest post.) Out of the blue one day, she friended me on Facebook and I called my mother in England at three in the morning to tell her.

Once, when I was living in a homeless shelter, I spent perfectly good cigarette money on one of her books and it was an integral part of me not killing myself. If there was no Jen, there would be no IttyBiz, no Dirty Talk Marketing School, and no delightfully entertaining stories of toplessness disguised as marketing advice. Also, she was on Oprah, which she is probably SO over, but I am SO not. Based on all of this, don’t you think you should at least take a LOOK at her retreat?

Few people actually like writing sales pages, and it doesn’t matter whether they write long sales pages or short sales pages – there are plenty of things we’d rather be doing. When you think about it, though, it’s easy to see why we hate it: writing your sales page causes a lot of overwhelm and Stuck because you know that the success of your sales is riding on that one page.

All of your hard work is resting on that page.

Your mortgage might be resting on that page.

Your credibility is resting on that page.

All of your Resistance and creative doubt is manifested in that sales page.

If you’re a creative, compassionate entrepreneur, your heart is on that page. You want to help people and you want them to get your Stuff, and people not buying it can feel like a complete rejection of who you are.

So, yeah, it sucks. Going into a process with all of that built into it is gut-wrenching, and it’s no wonder that so many people bail out on selling because they know they’ll have to write a sales page. It’s not just you.

Since it’s such a onerous process, many of us try to get through the process as quickly as possible. We write the sales page and have a few people look at it really late in the process because we really don’t want the feedback. We want it to be done already.

Moving Beyond Crappy Sales Pages

Here’s what you have to understand: the people who actually sell their stuff write their sales pages multiple times.

Let that sink in for a second.

Your first draft of a sales page is rarely good enough. It’s a start, but you’ll have to do it again.

You probably won’t focus on the benefits of your product, and you definitely won’t place your benefits up front.

You probably won’t be talking to the people who need your Stuff.

You probably won’t be clear about what comes with it.

You probably won’t walk people through the buying process.

You know what? That’s okay. It’s not just you. The sales page I had up for the product I just released didn’t do anything of these things, either, and I know better.

You Can’t Press Rewind, But You Don’t Have To Press Pause

Let’s get real here: your sales page is just a web page that can be rewritten just like anything else. Yes, it would have been better for it to be right the first time, but you can fix it now. And, if you’re serious about getting your Stuff out in the world, you should fix it now.

And three months from now, you should fix it again. Three months after that, you should fix it again.

Do you see a trend here?

Add that killer testimonial. Change that word that snagged people. Answer the objection that caused someone to return your product. Talk about why the product excites you.

Once you accept that your sales page will never be perfect and that there are always things you can do to make it more effective, maybe you can let go of all the overwhelm, Stuck, and anxiety and actually get your gift out in the world. Sure, when you release your next product, you’ll probably fall down all over again – but it’s a hell of a lot easier to get up as you do it more.

Our sales pages are as much of a continual work in progress as we are. Whether you accept this and do something about it or fight it doesn’t matter; it’s the way things are.

About the Author: Charlie Gilkey writes about meaningful action, creativity, and entrepreneurship at Productive Flourishing. Follow him on Twitter to get bite-sized slices of mojo.

1. How to Write For New Readers
2. How to Write For Regular Readers (at Remarkable Communication)
3. How to Write For Expert Readers (at Productive Flourishing)
4. How to Write For Three Audiences At The Same Time (at Copyblogger)

Whether you love or hate Shakespeare, you’ve got to respect the influence he’s had on Western literature. But today, we’re not going to sit back and respect what he’s done for Western literature – we’re going to see what we can learn from him about blogging.

One of the reasons that Shakespeare has been so influential is because his works are understandable at multiple levels; every mature reader can get something out of reading his works. This is no accident, though – he was first and foremost a playwright, so he had to craft his works so that people from the different levels of Elizabethan society would enjoy them. After all, they were paying to be entertained, not educated.

Shakespeare’s challenge, then, was to craft his work such that the uneducated, the educated, and the artists of the day would each get their money’s worth for a show.

While the differences between our readers are no longer drawn along lines of education, we still have three basic groups of readers that we have to think about: 1) new readers, 2) regular readers, and 3) readers who are experts in our areas. Our challenge, then, is Shakespeare’s: how can we write in such a way that each group gets rewarded for spending their valuable time and attention reading what we write?

We all write for new bloggers, so let’s start there today.

How to Write For New Readers

Every one of our readers is new to us when we start, but it’s easy to forget that our blog’s growth depends on a steady stream of new readers. To bring in new readers, we have to write approachable posts that don’t assume that they have some background knowledge of what we’re talking about.

The trick to writing for new readers is that they’re the least patient with our content. They might not know you from Adam, and unlike regular readers, they may not hold out long enough to get to the juicy part of our posts; they may also gloss over the subtlety in our writing. We have selectively conditioned blog readers to want to get the most value out of posts with the least amount of work and time, and it’s through that lens that a new reader views your blog.

The problem, of course, is that new readers only indirectly affect the growth of your blog. Having a high reader count plays a role for social proof, and new readers eventually become regular readers – the people who have a much more of a direct influence on the growth of your blog.

That said, writing for new readers is something you’ll always want to keep in the back of your mind because:

New Readers are the Easiest to Help

Since they’re new, sound content that helps them can give them a huge boost in their ability to do whatever they’re trying to do. Think about how much easier it is to teach someone how to add than it is to teach them calculus and how much more global benefit they get out of the foundational information than the really specialized information.

A simple way to help new readers is to give them suggestions and advice that 1) can be implemented quickly and 2) produces an immediate benefit. For instance, if you’re writing a post about how social media increases traffic, give your reader a quick action step that will increase traffic to her blog. Prompt her to compare her traffic stats before and after she implements the step so that she can see the effect – when she sees the difference, she’ll be happy, but she’ll also remember that you helped her.

New Readers Can Be the Easiest to Write For

The key word here is can – asking yourself simple questions about your area and explaining them is something that you can do pretty quickly if you’re in a pinch for content. However, sometimes we get so deep into our own area of expertise that we forget that other people don’t know what we know, and what we think is obvious and not worth talking about is not nearly so obvious and is worth talking about.

For instance, we bloggers often forget that people don’t know what RSS is since it’s something that we don’t think about often, so we say things like “subscribe to my RSS feed.” Apply the grandma test here, though: if you said that to her, would she have any idea what you’re talking about? When she hears “subscribe,” she probably thinks that she has to pay since you have to pay for most subscriptions. She also probably doesn’t know that the benefit of subscribing to your RSS feed is that she gets notified when you publish something new – for free.

Granted, you’re probably not writing for your grandma, but my point here is that something that’s so simple and obvious to you could probably bear to be explained. Answering “simple” questions or problems is easy to do, and don’t forget that sometimes people who aren’t new readers need to be reminded of obvious and simple things.

Let me be clear here: new readers may not know your area very well, but they’re not stupid. Your job is to provide value to smart people who don’t know as much as you do – not to show that you’re smarter than they are.

New Readers Help You Grow Your Blog

New readers present a great opportunity because they likely have friends that don’t read your blog, too, and it’s natural for people to share good stuff with their friends. If you’re consistently producing content that helps them, you’re fostering a win-win relationship between you and them: they win because they’re being helped, and you win because they’re likely to share your content with their friends.

Instead of thinking in terms of growing your blog one reader at a time, think about growing it one network at a time. Establishing a relationship with new readers is part of the way to establish access to their social network. The more access to hyperconnected networks you have, the easier it’ll be to grow and maintain the size of your blog.

Keep Bringing In New Readers

Every blog will reach a plateau if it doesn’t have people spreading its content, so one of your goals is to write approachable, helpful content that new readers learn from and want to share. You’ll reach a plateau because, for every new reader you gain, you’ll lose one. So, yes, you’ll always need to write for new readers if you want to grow your blog.

You don’t want content that people have to explain before they can share it, as that just puts up barriers to transmission. Ever seen one of those weird movies where you didn’t know how to explain it to someone besides saying that you liked it? Make it as easy as people to talk about your content as possible by writing in a way that’s approachable, useful, and relevant.

One of Shakespeare’s goals was to get as many people to pay to attend his plays, so he laced even the most serious of his works with comedy, romances, and action. The reason for this is obvious: everybody gets comedy, romances, and action, so people are entertained and will talk about the fact that they were entertained. Would Milton’s Paradise Lost be so lost upon many people if it weren’t so hard to get into and explain? I doubt it. As a Miltonesque writer myself, trust me: it’s more effective to write like Shakespeare.

That said, one of the non-secrets of Naomi’s success is that she’s both an incredible writer and an amazing storyteller. If she just had another boring business blog, she’d write information that was as boring as all the other business content out there. There are people who love that boring stuff – but I doubt you do. You’re here because she’s entertaining as hell, and, oh by the way, you learn about business while you’re laughing your fool ass off. That is, until she lets me guest post. (Just remember that it took her a while to find that voice.)

This is not a blog about blogging, so why should you care? The same principles that apply to writing for new readers applies to writing for new customers. And if you’ve been paying attention, you know how instrumental a blog can be for your business, so being a better blogger will help you grow your business.

In the next part of this series, we’ll talk about what regular readers want and discuss some ways to write for them.

Action Steps

• Find one topic on your blog and explain it in a way that people who aren’t familiar with it can understand it. Ask an 8-year old, your next door neighbor, or your grandma if they understand what you’re saying.
• Give a tip, suggestion, or advice that can be implemented by a new reader quickly. Make sure that they get nearly instant positive feedback for implementing your tips.
• Ask your readers to share your content with one of their friends.

About the Author: Charlie Gilkey writes about meaningful action, creativity, and entrepreneurship at Productive Flourishing. Follow him on Twitter to see how it does at the whole brevity thing.

I hate spam. I receive something like 250+ emails every day, most of which is spam. Fortunately my spam filter kills most of it before it gets to me. And then there’s the emails that aren’t actually spam, but should be. Because they’re marketing without permission.

Permission Marketing is when a person says “Hey, I want you to email me and tell me about all the cool stuff you sell”. Do you see the connection here? This person gave permission for you to market to them.

If they don’t outright give permission, if the person hasn’t actively said “Yes” then you don’t have permission and your emails can be considered spam. Spamming is a really good way to get your itty biz blacklisted and have all your emails, both good and bad, sent automatically to a spam blocker or deleted forever. Clearly this is very bad for your marketing and sales.

Here’s how NOT to do permission marketing, a real-life example:

In mid 2007 I attended an Expo as a stall holder and had business cards sitting on the table for people to pick up. In early February this year (2009) I received this email (names and business changed to protect the guilty, email paraphrased for brevity):

Hi Melinda,

My name is ________ and we met at the Expo last year. My husband and I are expanding our business and wondered if you would be interested in joining us.

Our business is xyz and we sell “blah blah products” within Australia and internationally.

If you would be interested in joining us, please email me and we’ll set up a time to connect.

Now, I have no problem with this email. She’s told me who she is and where we met, where she got my business card from.

Unfortunately she got a few facts wrong as well – such as the fact that the website listed on the business card no longer existed and hadn’t for close on a year when she emailed me. She obviously hadn’t checked her facts to see how current the contact details were.

Did you read her comment “If you would be interested in joining us, please email me and we’ll set up a time to connect” I didn’t email her, ever. I’m not interested in joining her business or selling/using the products. However, she appears not to let a small thing like lack of response or permission stop her!

In the two weeks after the original email I received at least four more emails inviting me to the business launch and to join. It’s now seven months later, and I’m still seeing the occasional email from her – only now it’s sitting in the spam section of my filter to be deleted. Yes, I marked it as spam and blacklisted her.

I’ve had someone try to tell me that, under Australian law at least, permission can be implied rather than specific. That if I hand you my business card then I have implied that you can add me to your list and market to me. Sorry, no.

This same person tried to tell me that if I have my email listed on my website, publicly available, then I’m also implying permission to be added to a list and marketed to. Again, no.

Permission has to be intentionally and specifically given. Not implied. Not assumed. It has to be clearly stated.

And the moral of the story is this: If a person hasn’t specifically stated that they would like to hear more about your products and services – you don’t have permission to market to them.

If you have asked the person if they want to be marketed to and they either said no or didn’t reply – you don’t have permission to market to them.

Just because you have a person’s business card in your hot little hand, even if they handed it to you personally at a networking event – you don’t have permission to market to them.

And when it really comes down to it, would you prefer a smaller email list that has interested, eager people on it, who have stated that they’re interested in buying your products and services, or would you prefer a huge list of people who have no interest in you whatsoever?

I know which one I want.

Melinda Brennan is a Business Coach who helps Work at Home Mums find clarity and direction amongst the enjoyable chaos of working at home. You can find her online at WAHM Biz Builder or come and say hello to her on Twitter.

I don’t know you, but I’m willing to bet that you have some project that you’d love to get completed.

Maybe it’s that back-of-an-envelope idea for a business that you spent an evening discussing with mates in the pub … and that you think you just might be able to “make it” with.

Or that new direction for your current business, that you need to research and plan for … and which you’re still no closer to than when you first thought of it.

Or perhaps it’s a skill you want to learn, which will require twenty or forty hours of study.

Whatever it is, all you need is a few clear days, perhaps a week or two, and you could do it. You know that. You’ve known that for months, maybe years.

Trouble is, you never get those few clear days. And you also know, somewhere in the back of your mind, that you never will.

There’s never going to be a perfect time to start a business/write a book/change your career/learn a new skill. Life keeps happening. But you can achieve your goals – much more easily than you think.

Here’s what you need (and as Naomi would say, cue big ass red text):

A daily, no-excuses target.

So what the hell is that?

It’s DAILY. That means you do it every single day. Seriously. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

If you absolutely only work on weekdays, and this is absolutely only related to your business, you can do it on weekdays only. But it’s easier to make it stick if you do it every day, without fail. Without excuses.

Start crossing off days on the calendar. You’ll be loath to break the success-chain.

It’s NO-EXCUSES. That means you need to decide on an absolute minimum target. Something that you can do when you’re busy, stressed, feeling (as we say here in the UK) that you “can’t be arsed”.

Make it something you can do in half an hour. You have a spare half hour every day. If you really, truly don’t, get up earlier. Eat faster. Make someone else do the washing up.

It’s a TARGET. By that, I mean it’s something you can count.

If your goal is “a completed ebook”, your target might be “five hundred words per day”. If your goal is “learn PHP”, your target might be “read one chapter of this book and try out the exercises”.

For some goals, you’ll have to stick with “spend half an hour working on Project X”.

It’s as simple as that.

If you’re reading this and thinking that an itty bitty, no-excuses target won’t let you progress fast enough – ask yourself this. Are you any nearer your big goal now than you were a month ago? How much closer could you be if you’d spent fifteen solid hours working towards it?

Exactly.

And just to prove it works – here’s what happened for me.

I’m writing a novel. I wrote about 6,000 words of it between October and December last year, mostly when I had one of those rare free afternoons.

From January 1st, I set a target of 500 words, minimum, per day. I write fast, so this is a “no-excuses” level . I’m kidding myself if I can’t find time and energy for 500 words.

So where am I now? In forty five days, I’ve written 34,000 words. Bit of an increase, I think you’ll agree.

What’s your big goal? What “daily, no-excuses target” can you set to ensure that you reach it?

Ali is a freelance writer, specializing in online articles, blogging and website copy (see www.aliventures.com if you’re interested). When her early ambition to rule the world started to look unlikely, she began writing fiction, where she not only gets to rule a world, she gets to create it too. She gets over-excited about her projects and other people’s. If you need a hand with something wordy and webby, drop her an email (ali@aliventures.com).

So you are thinking about starting your own business? Wouldn’t it be grand…you can earn as much money as you want as long as you put in the hard work. You can create the life that fits your style.

I see these grand dreams floating in my head and I know they aren’t as perfect as I imagine them. I’m lying to myself (in a good way). A business owner’s stress is higher. (I have put myself through it and seen many friends and family take on more stress than the average job.)

The simple fact is that business owners are more invested in the outcome. When you care about success you care more about failure. The upside is that a business owner may create more risk, but they also reap larger rewards.

They are fulfilling their needs by chasing their passion – while making money doing it.

We all know the positives and negatives to starting and running a business, but most new business owners lack an important skill. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve lacked this core building block.

Aim

What are you aiming to accomplish? And why are you trying to accomplish these goals? The two most important questions for any entrepreneur. It’s better than any business plan. Because screw the business plan. You need a plan to make money, but you don’t need twenty pages of crap that is only trying to sell yourself on the fact that you are making a wise choice.

Naomi said it best in her recent post, Things, Chains, and Changing the Fucking World.

“And I have the change the fucking world thing.”

Damn that’s a huge goal, but it makes Naomi work like crazy. She is on a mission to help that lady in a studio apartment make her homemade scarves a thriving business, the massage therapist separate from the crowd, so he can do what he loves, and help me figure out a way to sell my work happiness message to businesses.

You need to know what you want to accomplish, otherwise you’re just floating in the breeze.

Set an Aim

You must hold yourself accountable for your desires. You can wish that your business takes off in the near future, but wishing won’t bring in those buyers.

So really think about what it is you want to do to help people because that’s what a business is all about. It’s not easy and it’s taken me 12 years to figure it out. Right now it’s past my bed time, but I’m on a mission to be a guest blogger on Ittybiz, so it sends some traffic to my blog. I’ll be up at 5am, trying to do it all over again.

Not Sure What Will Keep that Fire Burning?

Test the Waters

If you aren’t quite sure what you want to do then take baby steps that will bring in small amounts of revenue and see what happens. Does your desire pick up? Does it make you want to start a business even more? Naomi over at IttyBiz has a fantastic program Online Business School that might help you make the decision. I think it will be worth the money to help you decide.

Your Passion

My belief is that if you are passionate enough then good things will come, but the problem is that not enough good things will come if you don’t have an aim of what you want your business to look like in six months, one year, and five years. All entrepreneurs must be clear in their thinking, otherwise the idea will flounder. You have to know what you want to do and how you want to accomplish this dream or you won’t thrive.

You have to want it so bad that if someone dared to deny you your dream, you would rage and fight until the Gods gave in and granted your wish.

It may take 1 year, 5 years, or ten, but the only thing that matters is you are building on your passion. The world will eventually see it and reward you.

Karl Staib writes about unlocking and kicking open the door to working happy at his own blog: Work Happy Now! If you enjoyed this article, you may like to subscribe to his feed, follow him on Twitter or read one of his most popular articles, How Does Google Create a Great Atmosphere?

Editor’s note 2: This is a guest post from Hunter Nuttall, the “stop sucking and live a life of abundance” guy who thinks he knows a thing or two about personal development. He assures me that his site now contains no trans fats.

All good things must come to an end. That includes the pet rock, parachute pants, America’s credibility on the world stage, and even your ittybiz. (Cue ominous and foreboding music.)

Yes, your ittybiz will eventually end, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After so many years, it’s perfectly understandable if it just doesn’t hold your interest the way it once did. You may even become wildly successful and sell it for a king’s ransom.

But when it ends, however well it worked out, you now have a problem on your hands. You need to answer your inner voice’s dreaded question: “OK, now what?”

What’s your endgame? What will save you from boredom? You should be working towards something that will make you say “This is what I did it for.” Here are some ideas about what that might be.

Happiness

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, said that the purpose of life is to be happy. That’s it. We want happiness, we don’t want suffering, and neither social conditioning nor education nor ideology ever changes that.

Pros: This keeps things nice and simple. Millions and millions of people are chasing happiness, because when all is said and done, what else do you really need?

Cons: In other news, the International Dalai Lama Association continues to report a critical shortage of qualified applicants. Is this guy serious? The purpose of life is to be happy? For God’s sake, hamsters are happy. Perhaps you could aim a bit higher.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

OK, I’ll see your happiness and raise you life and liberty. You know, from the U.S. Declaration of Independence? It said that we’re endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. But the list is kind of fuzzy, listing only these three while hinting at others.

Pros: I’m sure that Thomas Jefferson put forth his best effort on this, and he must have had a very good reason for picking these three things. Then again, quill pens didn’t have erasers, and parchment cost an arm and a leg. Anyway, the 55 other delegates approved it, and that must have been one tough crowd.

Cons: Any jerk can come up with three things that sound good together.

John Locke had life, liberty, and property. The ancient Greeks had good order, justice, and peace. The ancient Romans had harmony, health, and peace. Canada has peace, order, and good government. France has liberty, equality, and fraternity. Germany has unity, justice, and freedom. The Bolsheviks had peace, land, and bread. The FBI has fidelity, bravery, and integrity. West Point has duty, honor, and country. Notre Dame has God, country, and Notre Dame. Lincoln had people, people, and people.

It just goes on and on. “Wine, women, and song,” “sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” “location, location, location,” “fish and chips and vinegar,” “chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry,” etc. Just because someone says three things, that doesn’t automatically make them your personal motto.

Truth, love, and power

Personal development guru Steve Pavlina spent a whopping two and a half years trying to define personal development, finally putting a horse in front of his cart. He concluded that we’re all here to bring ourselves into ever greater alignment with truth, love, and power. (For people who are into all this meaning of life stuff, click that link for my interview with him.)

Pros: When you can attract 2.5 million monthly visitors based on your insight into three words, those must be three pretty goddamn important words.

Cons: Why truth, love, and power? George W. Bush built a stellar career on lies, hate, and incompetence, using the U.S. Constitution as toilet paper.

Excitement

When Tim Ferriss achieved his 4-hour workweek, he suddenly had all the time in the world. And he found that he couldn’t think of anything more interesting to do with his life than getting a sandwich.

Eventually, he decided that he should be chasing excitement, which he considers a more practical synonym for happiness. Excitement brings happiness, but happiness doesn’t bring excitement.

Pros: He’s one of the world’s most prominent lifestyle designers and they call him the Indiana Jones of the digital age, so you might want to listen to him.

Cons: Some people are on pacemakers and don’t want to be excited. Others are on Viagra and don’t want to be excited for more than 4 hours. And others just don’t think excitement is meaningful enough.

Your one big thing

In The Matrix, Neo spends his whole life wandering without direction, in search of purpose but finding only subtle clues here and there. At last, his purpose is clear: he’s supposed to infiltrate the Machine City and bargain with Deus Ex Machina to save the human race from extinction. Well, when you put it that way, how can he say no?

Pros: Knowing you’re working towards your one big thing that will change the world keeps you focused and inspired. When you finally see it happen, you can enjoy a state of complete serenity and inner peace, and perhaps have a cookie.

Cons: When Neo finally gets to the Machine City and announces his grand purpose, he’s told that they don’t need him. To which he replies, “If that’s true, then I’ve made a mistake and you should kill me now.” Bummer!

When you let your whole life satisfaction ride on the achievement of something in the future, you’re letting the present pass you by. And then if your big thing falls through, what have you done with your life?

Your kids

To hell with you, children are the future! Why not cut your losses and make sure your kids get it right? You’ve racked up a lot of life experience that can steer them in the right direction. If you create the best possible environment for them, they’ll go on to great things.

Pros: With even minimal parenting skills, you can make the world a better place for at least two people at the same time. There’s also bound to be a big ripple effect. Besides, you have to do it anyway, seeing as how they live with you and need food and such.

Cons: This only works until they turn 18. Then what? Get a puppy? Anything to take the focus off of you, right? What if everyone lived just for their kids? Doesn’t the whole thing become pointless if nobody ever does something for themselves?

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Grab a couple of crazy friends with some time to kill. Take a meticulously restored 1961 Ferrari GT California out for a joyride. Lip-sync “Twist and Shout” in the Von Steuben Day Parade. Impersonate Abe Froeman, the Sausage King of Chicago. Repeat every day as needed.

Pros: Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Cons: What are you, 16? Go away, I’m done talking to you.

So, does this have a point, or what?

Yes, thank you for asking. The point is that there is no one right answer for everyone. But you’d better have some kind of answer in mind. If you don’t, and you’re subconsciously afraid of being bored in retirement, fear of success will seep into your skull and melt your brain. Try getting a prescription for that.

Things started out great. You had this creative thing that you loved to do. It was fun. And then you figured out that other people wanted your thing, too. YAY!! So you started selling your thing.

Then things went to shit.

In The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber tries to address why things went to shit. (Naomi’s note: E-Myth is one of those books everybody tells you that you absolutely must read before you start a business or your wife will leave you and your dog will die.) He talks about Entrepreneurs, Managers, and Technicians; he discusses who should be doing what and when, all told using Sarah’s “All About Pies” as a case study. It’s a great read, but it leaves one not-too-small question unanswered:

What if you just want to make pies?

A traditional business coach would tell you that you never should have got in the business of selling pies if you just wanted to make pies. But, since you are selling pies, you’d best hire some folks to help you make the pies, then a manager to help you manage those workers, then hire some marketers, then…then…then…until you’ve got this huge group of folks around you selling your pies.

If you sold remarkable pies in a good location and had the rest of your business infrastructure in place, you’d probably make a lot of money selling pies. But you – as in the business owner you – still wouldn’t be making the pies.

Thanks for nothing, coach!

HaHa! That’s Why I Got Into Online Business…

Unfortunately, many online entrepreneurs find themselves in the same situation. An online business is still a business – meaning you have to sell stuff that people want to buy. It’s still something that takes time to build, as it takes a while to figure out what people want to buy, how to create that stuff, and then how to sell that stuff to them, although Naomi’s doing a great job making this a lot simpler for the rest of us.

For what we’re talking about here, there’s not much difference between brick and mortar businesses and online businesses; whether your pie is a physical pie or an informational pie, you’re still in the business of selling pies. But there’s a dark side to all this marketing and business-growing jazz that a lot of people don’t talk enough about: in the process of figuring out what people are wanting to buy and getting that stuff to them, it’s really easy to forget about the stuff you want to make.

You’d be surprised how many successful online entrepreneurs get to the point where they start asking themselves that same question: “What if I just want to make pies?”

If You Like Lemon Pie, Make Some Lemon Pie

Luckily, I’m not a traditional business coach and I’m not going to tell you that you never should’ve got in the business of selling pies. I’m also not going to tell you that you shouldn’t worry about the pies your customers want to buy. What I am going to tell you is that you have to make some pies for you.

I will warn you: the pies you make for yourself may not sell. That’s fine. No one else may want to try them. That’s fine, too. And it will seem like an incredible waste of time and energy that you could be spending on making pies that will sell. That’s not fine. (It is important to not beat yourself up for feeling that way, though.)

If you lose the pie-making passion you started with, it will start to creep into other facets of your business, in time.

Your correspondence won’t carry the energy it once did.

Networking will become a chore and not a chance to talk about pies.

Your mind will change about giving away free pies because each pie will have a price tag associated with it.

You won’t want to make the pies that you’ve scheduled yourself to make.

In short, you’ll go from making a living from making pies to selling pies as a job.

The only thing it costs you to do what you want to do is time. You’re in a type of business that’s particularly well-suited to changing things up when needed – it’s not like you have a storefront, physical inventory, a boatload of employees, and five-figure monthly overheads. Making some pies for you will cost you a few hours a week, but it’ll reward you with a renewed passion and energy in your work.

So yes, sell the pies that your customers want. Build a team around the process, if (and only if!) you need them to help you with other things so you can make your pies. But remember that the single most important asset of your business is you, and your wants and needs are more important than the wants and needs of your customers. You need to make the pies you want to make. You need to enjoy what you’re doing. You have to be your first customer in the morning and the last customer at the end of the day.

The condensed version: Remember that you got into business because you liked making pies. You will have to sell pies – some of which you don’t want to make – but you’re selling pies so that you can make the pies you want to make.

Charlie Gilkey is my creativity coach. He is also just about the coolest and smartest person I know. Read his blog to find some sense in the crazy fucked-up madness that is being a creative businessperson. Seriously, read it. The only one who loses if you don’t is you.

What a pleasure to be guest posting here at IttyBiz, where finally I can say “fuck” without needing the slightest hint of a reason.

I’ve always thought that recessions are bullshit, but this time I happened to lose my job during one, when my company eliminated every single one of their “safe and stable” jobs. Fuck.

After the shock wore off, I decided it was actually a welcome transition. I had been given the freedom to redefine my life. Lots of free time means lots of possibilities.

But without the structure of a job, I fell victim to one of the deadliest entrepreneurial traps: complete and utter lack of focus. While trying to find something that not only matches my talents, but that I find meaningful, and that other people will pay for, I considered many options, and split my attention between all the ones that seemed appealing.

Too many rabbits

You know the old saying: if you chase two rabbits, both will escape. I don’t know about you, but I’d love to just have two rabbits to chase. Instead, many of us are chasing a sprawling herd of manic rabbits that continue to reproduce while we’re chasing them.

Do you want to have a full time job by day and change the world on nights and weekends? Those are two really big ass rabbits. You’re likely to find the former to be a monstrous distraction, while you pursue the latter with what little energy and mental clarity you can muster at the end of the day. Even if you somehow manage to do a good job with both, there’s a very high risk of burnout.

Do you want to plunge into a home business full time? OK, but what exactly will you do? There’s no shortage of medium sized bunnies to chase. Will you become a world class copywriter? Will you master the latest internet marketing trends? Will you dominate the search engines for an array of carefully selected keywords? Will you become a life coach? Will you build a better mousetrap? There’s so much to consider.

(Here we see one of the unsung benefits of Online Business School. When you learn about the six online income streams, you’ll not only learn what to do, but you’ll also learn what you don’t want to do. When you can rule out income streams that don’t appeal to you, you’re more able to focus on the ones you like best.)

Even when you decide to pursue a single medium sized bunny, you’ll still find yourself chasing an army of elusive fugitive microbunnies day by day. Should you write that guest post, answer that email, work on that new product, spend some time on Twitter, go commenting all over the place, or what? (I wrote about this dilemma in my free ebook Why We’re Failing The 4-Hour Workweek.)

There are more rabbits out there than you could ever hope to catch in a lifetime. You have to carefully pick the ones you want to chase.

Not enough rabbits

The opposite problem is spending too much time chasing one rabbit, only to eventually find out it was the wrong one.

Many people freaked out when Seth Godin said maybe you can’t make money doing what you love. He said, “That blog you’ve built, the one with a lot of traffic… perhaps it can’t be monetized.” It made people think that if they don’t happen to love something that traditionally pays well, then there’s no hope.

But I think Seth just meant that big traffic doesn’t necessarily mean big cash flow, if you’re stubbornly attached to a model that doesn’t work. He had previously given the example of a 14 year old kid who had 45 million views on YouTube, yet YouTube wasn’t able to monetize him.

If you love writing, great. But maybe blogging about blogging and trying to make a living from AdSense is the wrong bunny to chase. However, if you’re creative and flexible enough, maybe you can figure out how to express the same talents in a much more viable way.

So what to do about the rabbits?

It would be ideal to only have to chase one rabbit, but you might not know which one it is. So listen to people who know what they’re talking about. Different people will have different perspectives, but take it all in, then decide what resonates with you.

You want to be focused enough to make great headway on something, but also open minded enough to consider what might be better ways. Concentrate your efforts on what appears to be the best use of your time, but be ready to change your plans when necessary.

They say that if you chase two rabbits, both will escape. Maybe. But in a world where you’re often forced to do that, you at least want to do your best to pick the right rabbits.

As any of you that work from home know, trying to fit everything into a day is an incredible challenge. Add in a few kids who aren’t yet in school and you are guaranteed a hectic schedule that can easily rival anything your old fluorescent-lit cubicle ever threw at you.

As an Austin, Texas photographer, about 20% of my time is spent actually shooting. The rest of my schedule consists of image-editing, marketing, accounting, and the like. All of the things that us home-business types have to manage. I also have two boys, both of which aren’t old enough for school. My home is rapidly becoming a testosterone-dripping lair of insanity that neither my wife or I are ready for.

In an attempt to deal with this craziness, we’ve come up with some techniques to improve our productivity and save our minds. Here are 5 things that we’ve learned that you might be able to apply to your own household:

1. Get Used To Working In Blocks of Time

It has become a bit of a pipe dream in our house for me to work a 9-5 shift without any interruption. Actually, 2-3 hours at a time is closer to reality. It has taken a while to get in a mindset of working in blocks of time, but once I did I was able to become super-productive for those blocks. When something comes up, I immediately start mentally planning what I want to accomplish in the next block.

2. Evening Work Time

After the kids are in bed and considered to be ‘asleep’, I have another block of time to work with. However, this is a dangerous work time because I risk working too late and killing my motivation for early in the morning. You need to decide if the tasks you are working on during those evening hours warrant you being wiped out in the morning. Usually, the answer is ‘no’, so it’s important to step away and catch some sleep.

3. Scheduled Family Time

We’ve found that scheduling family time has worked really well for us. Usually it’s the time right before and right after dinner. It’s a good break between my earlier work and the evening session that will happen later. It also helps tire out the boys before their bedtime. We also try to make it happen outside as much as possible, because I heard a rumor once that sunlight was a good thing for you.

4. Organizational Tools

You can easily score your own ‘information paralysis’ session by studying all of the various tools and methodologies to organize your time. I came across a book/process called ‘Getting Things Done’ that has worked great for me.

In a nutshell, you organize your tasks by project as well as by the place that they are to be done. For example, the ‘Car’ grouping might have ‘Go to bank’ and ‘Get dry cleaning’ listed. This helps you be super-productive when you are out and about. Since I am way too lazy to manually keep track of all my tasks, I use a program called Omnifocus on the Mac to do this for me. The developers are about to release an iPhone version shortly which will be a great addition!

5. Taking Care of Yourself

You can’t do anything I’ve listed above effectively if you aren’t taking care of yourself. For example, that minimum amount of water you’re supposed to be drinking everyday (take half your body weight, drink that many ounces daily) does work! I’ve noticed a significant difference in how I feel when I haven’t had enough water. And unless you are looking for a midday food coma, avoid big, heavy lunches where possible and opt for eating smaller meals more often. Yes, it’s not always possible when your kid yells out ‘ice cream!’ in the middle of the day and you just wrapped up a big project, but give it a try (especially with the water) and you will feel better.

Eric Doggett is a photographer in Austin, Texas. He has a site specifically for beginning photography tips for your family at ShootTheBaby.com, as well as BoxOfficeBaby.com, a site where you can order incredibly unique children’s birthday party invitations and birth announcements. You can reach him at babydaddy -at- ShootTheBaby.com.