Jul
07
Working with Bug Bites and Sunburn: 3 Things I’ve Learned About Location Independent Business
First, thank you to the handsome and charming Copyblogger for running a delightful review of How to Launch the **** Out of Your Ebook. I am now 23% rich and 23.5% famous. As always, if it’s good enough for Copyblogger, it’s good enough for you. Click here to read the review or click here to just buy the damn book.
Once upon a time, I got it in my head to take my business and bring it to Canada for a big ol’ chunk of the summer. I could hang out with my kids, swim in the pool, see the in-laws, and revel in the difference between the dollar and the pound. Life was good.
Then I got to Canada and it all went to hell. Here’s what I learned.
Define, define, define.
In 13 days, I’m running a phone and internet based course called Summer Camp. (HELLO PEOPLE! 13 days till Summer Camp! Is your equipment in order?) In order to run it, I’ll need phone and internet. So when I was looking for accommodations, I was delighted to see that my dream digs offered:
* My own phone!
* 24/7 internet access!
* Bacon every day!
Obviously, I was in heaven. My heaven, though, was short lived. Turns out “your own phone in your suite” means your own phone. Not your own phone line. So when the proprietor needs the phone, off the phone you go. Not exactly ideal when you’re taking 50 grand from people to be, you know, on the phone.
Then the internet. 24/7 internet access does not, in fact, mean wireless internet. It means the family’s personal computer could theoretically be used any of the hours of the day, as long as nobody else is using it and nobody’s sitting there watching Barney reruns with their 9 year old. (And while we’re talking about it, wtf?)
I figured it wasn’t a big deal since I could go to my in-laws. Good in theory, except their internet goes down too, sometimes. And by “sometimes”, I mean “Sunday, the day I was planning to descend on their technological office of bliss”.
You don’t want to be a cheap ass. You don’t want to nitpick when you’re picking your place. You don’t want to be the kind of person who says, “OK, what KIND of internet? What KIND of phone?” You want to make believe everything will be hot tubs and bacon breakfasts, but sometimes it won’t. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Define, define, define.
The Fine Art Of The Back-Up Plan
This one doesn’t bear a whole lot of explanation. For God’s sake, figure out what you’re going to do when it all goes to hell (and it will.) There are two kinds of back-up plans you’re going to need:
First, figure out what you’ll do when any individual element of your great master plan goes wrong. What will you do if you drop your laptop in the pool? What will you do if someone breaks the internet? What about the phone? USB key gets crunched in a freak stiletto accident? All the Dora DVDs you brought for “child care” don’t work in a European machine? What’s your big plan, Einstein?
Second, figure out what you’re going to do when everything goes wrong. Like, a coup d’etat. Or someone dies. Or your rental car breaks down half way up a mountain and you have to camp there for three days because nobody can come and get you due to the aforementioned coup d’etat and you find yourself eating your upholstery to survive.
(This is an especially important rule when you’re travelling with a spouse and business partner who has the tendency to worry just a smidgen. Not that I would know anybody like that.)
Reconsider your definition of urgent.
There’s a great story about an old movie star – John Wayne? Elvis? someone like that – who was hanging out in his trailer, ignoring his assistant. His poor PA was trying desperately to tell him how incredibly urgent and important a list of phone calls and requests were, and our hero was resolutely ignoring them. Finally, the assistant reached fever pitched and screamed, “But it’s URGENT!!!” His priceless reply?
“Urgent for me, or urgent for them?”
Right now, I’m in a Starbucks. My son Michael is sitting beside me, and we’re nearing the end of our time limit in the wireless section. I just plain don’t have enough time to do all of the stuff that people want me to do, no matter how urgent they think it is. I can’t even make a dent. So I have to prioritize.
I wanted to come here today to get 25 or so of the most important emails dealt with. (Important to me, not the recipient.) I wanted to write a batch of Get Off Your Ass emails for the SpeakEasy members. And I wanted to write this blog post.
Will I upset people? Absolutely. Will people be offended that they didn’t make the top 25? Of course. Will I lose money? No doubt about it.
But my boy is here and we’re about to go look at a book on the making of the Twilight movies and that’s more important than anything else.
Oh, and one more thing?
THIRTEEN DAYS TILL SUMMER CAMP!!! It’s going to be AWESOME! I even have a phone and internet access lined up! What more could you ask for in a course?
In all seriousness, if you either don’t have a clue what to do or you don’t have a clue how to start or you just know you want to start a biz one day soon but nothing else, Summer Camp is for you, baby.
Now if you will excuse me, I have to go investigate some vampires.
I’m a huge fan of back-up plans so I enjoyed this post.
And I will never drop my laptop in a pool, I’m scared of water so I stay away from it. So that one’s taken care of.
Having spent much of a trip around Europe using wireless in coffee shops (often paid for at some outrageous price, thank you T Mobile), I get hte prioritizing thing. Though I ended up writing a lot of e-mail and blog posts beforehand and just uploading and tweaking.
Spending time with your kid is ABSOLUTELY more important. Hope that side of things is going well. (P.S. I now have pigs. And chickens.)
Ever wondered what would happen if you took a real vacation? Yeah, I wouldn’t know what that would be like either, lol.
Seriously though, spending time with your boy is most important. Everybody else can wait.
Or, maybe I shouldn’t be commenting on anything today. I spent half the day balling about MJ’s daughter’s speech at his memorial service. Gawd, that was heartbreaking. If I had kids, I’d be holding them tight today.
I learned from this Canadian guy that all Canadians steal shit because they feel the government is screwing them and they’re entitled. “It’s party of being Canadian,” he said. “I don’t like to pay for things.” So can’t you steal these things you need? I’m thinking park outside someone’s house and jack their internet connection. As to the phone, I’ll bet you could rob some old lady.
You also owe me like a dollar or something for using Get Off Your Ass. Because, you know, I’m the first person to ever use that phrase.
You know what would complement Summer Camp really well? Johnny’s “Make the Internet Your Bitch.” You know it would.
Oh, God. I so sympathize with you. I had so many stupid ridiculous don’t-have-the-money-to-fix-this-damn-problem internet problems these past few months. They’re sorted now, but AUGH! Makes you feel stupid, like your clients think you’re stupid, and like you should have had a BACK UP PLAN.
(Obviously!)
And even though I’m one of those eleventy-billion people who emailed you wanting something from you, I’m just so excited and happy to see you’re alive and posting that I don’t even care that I’m not anywhere near the top 25 things you needed to do. :)
Here’s hoping the rest of your summer is WAY more awesome than what led up to this post. Heh.
I love that. I’m just now learning to focus on what’s urgent for me…but what *is* that? I don’t even know half the time. After coming down off of a busy-busy-busy-working-non-stop high, I feel like nothing’s urgent for them, so nothing’s urgent. But I’m so wrong.
My own projects have been put on the back-burner for so long that they have become urgent. Urgent for my future health and happiness. So yay for doing things that are urgent for you! And for encouraging me to do the same. :)
See, this is why it’s good to take vacations in Denver, because then you can just come to my house.
Enjoy Michael time. Super mega yay for time with the short folk.
She’s aliiiive!
Good to hear from you. Good thing about back-up plans. I should think about some of that. Hm..
Don’t you just love Canadians? :D And being back on Canadian soil?
I was going to tell a rambling and semi-long story about how they’ve plastered NB with “high-speed” province wide, but… eh, go spend time with your son and enjoy it like a dog enjoys rolling around in poo. :)
Them ids grow up and have, like, lives and stuff.
I have the world’s flakiest system for backing up stuff I work on, but everything on my “doing it right now” list goes into Backpack. So if my entire state is flattened by a meteor and somehow I escape, I can theoretically go to an Internet cafe in Prague and start rolling again.
Yes, you need a backup plan and a backup plan for your backup plan. I keep stuff online so that I can go anywhere and get to it, but if there’s a worldwide meltdown, I’m scuppered. Great post.
There she is. Lost in Canada, as I suspected. Yes, I know Canada is not entirely a wilderness refuge, but it works out the same when people don’t understand that 24/7 Internet Access is not a claim about potential capabilities but actual capabilities.
What you’re describing in the first part of “prepare for a shit sandwich” is can actually be split into two different categories of things.
The first category is what is sometimes referred to as a single point of failure. These are the type of things that will single-handedly keep you from doing whatever you were trying to do. Single points of failures always need to be eliminated, because they have a nice way of manifesting themselves at the worst of times. Like when you have 50k on the hook.
What I find interesting is how the second category – which I don’t have a name to right now, so I’ll refer to it as “the stuff that happens to Naomi at an alarming rate” – becomes single points of failure. A kid running wild because he’s bored seems to be normal; a kid jumping on your lap because he’s bored while you’re teaching 50 people how to prepare for a business calamity becomes a single point of failure. The difference is context. I know, I know…maybe I should go write about this stuff on my blog rather than harassing you on yours.
I know a guy that can help with this type of stuff. Just sayin.’ :p
Enjoy your time with Michael, Jack, and Jamie. We’ll be here whenever you find some civilization.
So, when things go wrong what do you do about the people who have already paid? You say, yes you’ll lose money but what about pissing off the people who have already paid?
I ask because of the line: it’s always easier to sell to an existing client than to a new one. And while many of our clients will understand, many others will only see the lack of customer service. Do we say “oh well!” or do we have create an emergency customer service backup plan as well? And what would that look like?
Alex, I’m not Naomi, but I’ll take a stab nonetheless.
You do the same thing that you do when you mess up with anyone else you have a relationship with. You say you’re sorry, you pay attention and see how mad the other person is, and if you need to, you make amends.
To some extent, you have to say “oh well” to the clients who get mad and go away. The alternative is to be perfect, which a) isn’t possible, and b) will drive you insane in the attempt.
That’s my opinion, anyway.
(But p.s.)
While a person is making backup plans, a customer service one certainly would make sense.
“The alternative is to be perfect, which a) isn’t possible, and b) will drive you insane in the attempt.”
What? Perfection isn’t possible? No wonder I’ve been feeling slightly loopy recently… ;)
Hey Alex and Sonia,
Good question and good answer. The reality is, if we don’t take risks with growth, we don’t go anywhere. If we wait until we have 100% of the bandwidth we’ll need for any potential eventuality, we’ll never get anything good accomplished. So you do your best. Absolutely, you need backup plans for customer service, just like you do with technology. But saying we need backup plans is great in hindsight after the baby dropped the iPhone in the hottub and the wife used the contract to wrap the day’s catch.
Every business that grows goes through that phase of the cycle, and trying to avoid it is like trying to avoid the sun rising. It comes. You can manage it as well as you can, but you can never avoid it completely. To avoid it completely you would have to take your business’ level of conservativism to the point of being laughable.
I guess my short answer is, you don’t just say “oh well”, but you do say it. You can’t decide to solve the problem by working 20 hours a day, handily ensuring you burn out and give shitty service to everyone, instead of just the originally affected few.
“Reconsider your definition of urgent” – very insightful.
But it sounds like the “bacon every day” held up? This would still kinda be heaven…
Naomi, I had to rush over to share the results of a groundbreaking UK medical study: swearing is GOOD for you. Now, you, in your wisdom, indubitably already know this. I just wanted you to know that medical science has begun to vindicate you!
http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/13/bleep-that-hurts/
Regarding your post, next time you head to Canada, move to Vancouver please. I always have a good internet connection and a spare computer, so I’d be honored to be “Plan B”.
Lovely! Glad I got to talk to you before you left for the land of the bug bites and sunburn. Funny thing about that Canada place: my haven on Pelee Island, ON has that EXACT problem with phone and internet.
And we have bacon — if we bring our own.
@ Paul — The bacon every day totally held up. Thank God for THAT.