Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Life skills = Business skills (Persistence)
I'm tired tonight. I've spent a lot of time in front of the computer this week doing a lot of dull, repetitive stuff that I need to do to promote my client's site, my site, my weblog, and my newsletter. I need a break.

I'll take one tonight and probably step away for the most part tomorrow, too. But dealing with all of the dull stuff reminds me of one more life skill that applies to business: persistence.

Successful people do things that they don't necessarily want to do. Successful people do things that push them outside their comfort zone. Successful people see the appealing results that the task will bring them closer to eventually accomplishing and persevere when others would see only the unpleasantness of the task and find an excuse to chuck it.

Hmm... Maybe on second thought, I'll push on a little farther tonight.
Jeff

Life skills = Business skills (Confidence, Part 2)
Another thought on confidence. We often face opportunities that require us to step out into areas that are outside our comfort zone. And when we do, the path of least resistance that is so easy for us to follow can easily lead us into rationalizing all sorts of reasons why we shouldn't take that opportunity and step out on it.

When we enter unfamiliar territory, we never can see all the way to the end of our path. So our self-protective instinct kicks in and finds reasons to decline.

It takes confidence to step out. Confidence leads us to believe that we'll be able to handle what we find out there once we get beyond those first few, visible steps. Confidence leads us to quiet that voice of rationalization that would hold us back.

But confidence is not a characteristic that is born into some and missing in others. Like muscles that grow stronger the more we exercise them, confidence grows stronger the more we turn to it. Keep taking small steps out of your comfort zone. Watch yourself successfully handle the situations that your rationalizing mind wanted to keep you away from. And you'll find your confidence growing able to handle even more.
Jeff

Submitting to Blog Directories
I started submitting this blog to blog directories today to increase its visibility. If any of you have a blog and are planning the same, here are some directories I started with:

• Blog Search Engine (requires reciprocal link)
• Blogarama (requires reciprocal tracking link)
• Blogdex
• Blogwise
• Daypop
• Feedster
• GetBlogs (but don't submit to them if you've already submitted to the Open Directory Project)
• Globe of Blogs (must display the following button on your blog. See? I'm official!)

• Blogstreet (ditto for Blogstreet)

• Open Directory Project (need to search for an appropriate category for your blog and submit from that page)
• Popdex (requests a reciprocal link and will move you to the front of their queue if you supply one)
• Technorati

Hope this helps you get started!

Jeff

Business skills = Life skills (Confidence)
Sometimes things don't go according to plans. That's when confidence comes into play. You see, you don't have to have every detail planned out in advance in order to move forward. There are times when you simply come up against an obstacle with no direction evident.

Does that mean stop? Not necessarily. Sometimes you just need to plow ahead and figure out what to do off the cuff and trust your abililty to make something out of nothing.

I sat down tonight thinking that I had run dry on my recent Business Skills = Life Skills theme. As a matter of fact, I couldn't think of anything to write tonight. So I sat down and just started writing.

I know in the past that a lot of times when I had drawn a blank for that day's blog, I just started writing about anything that came into my mind -- gripes, random thoughts, even writing stuff like, "Well, I guess I have nothing to write about tonight." And before long, an idea would start to emerge from my stream of consciousness and take shape -- often into some of my best entries.

So when faced with a blank screen -- and an equally blank mind -- I just started writing. I wrote about how I had run out of gas on the Business Skills = Life Skills theme and had nothing more to write about it. I started writing about how I had decided to just start writing and see if anything worthwhile would come out of it.

And before long, I realized that I was drawing from another life skill essential to business -- confidence. Now, I'm not talking about the smugness or self-promotion that people sometimes mistake for confidence. I'm talking about a willingness to trust yourself to improvise when you hit a dead end.

Not everything in life or in business can be planned out. But you can make choices and move forward in any situation you face -- even if the situation is something you never planned for.
Jeff

Business skills = Life skills (Focus)
It's ironic that I cover the necessary skill of focus today on a day when I've struggled mightily with distractions. But hopping around from one thing to another is a sure killer in business as well as in life.

You don't end up where you want to be by merely starting. You end up where you want to be by following a clearly laid out path from where you are to where you want to end up. Starting in one direction... and then another... and then another again doesn't get you there. It just keeps you flitting around ineffectually near where you already are.

The ability to take one step after another after another, all going forward toward your goal is the only way to get there.
Jeff

Business Skills = Life Skills (Accountability)
In life, there is no such thing as going it alone. When we do things on our own, we tend to procrastinate and take shortcuts that result in our lives being less than they could be. We need to see our efforts through the eyes of others who are willing to hold us accountable for being our best.

The same goes in business. Sure, maybe you decided to start your own business to get away from bosses looking over your shoulder to make sure you get things done. Maybe you decided to go into business because you like the freedom that working from home promises.

But the fact is, we're social creatures. We need human contact. If you're going into business online in the hope of making a living while avoiding human contact, you're doomed to failure. With no one to measure our work against, our work gradually deteriorates. Distractions become more urgent than the work at hand. Quality slips. And worst of all, we start rationalizing away the deteriorating level of our work.

I've seen it happen in me and I've seen it happen in others.

We need others who will hold us accountable for meeting our self-imposed deadlines and milestones, someone we can bounce ideas off of, someone who can see the blind spots we're developing and call us on them.

It's not a sign of weakness to seek out mentors. Even the most successful business people have mentors. And it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that ALL successful business people have mentors.

We just aren't made to go it entirely alone.
Jeff

Favorite links (webmaster forums)
Tonight is Sunday and it's time for me to share a few of my favorite links again. Tonight let's look at webmaster forums.

Webmaster World
If it means anything to you, Webmaster World is the site I've made the default page that opens when I open my browser. That means that I've set it to be the first thing I see whenever I go onto the Internet. Just shows you how highly I think of it.

It has a wealth of info and opinions on just about all topics related to webmastering and running an online business with input for thousands of people who make their living (or are trying to make their living) on the Internet.

High Rankings Forum
The High Rankings Forum is another one I consider a must for anyone serious about running a business online to join. It has long been a gathering place for some of biggest names in online marketing to gather and help each other (and anyone else who joins, no matter what level of experience they have) improve their online businesses.

SiteSell! Forums
This forum, unfortunately, isn't open to everyone, but it's a great one. You get access to it only if you've purchased SiteBuildIt! or if you're a SiteSell! affililate (of which I am both). It brings veteran users of SiteBuildIt! together with new users to help them succeed at building their businesses online. There's a great comeraderie on the forum; people are genuinely eager to help you succeed.

And considering that SiteBuildIt! owners have a much higher success rate than do users of other site-building solutions (35% of a randomly selected samply of 1000 SiteBuildIt! sites ranked in the top 1% most popular sites on the Internet and 62% ranked in the top 3%), help from members of this private forum means a lot! I'm very high on SiteBuildIt! and all of SiteSell!'s info products. If you're considering starting a business, I encourage you to look into it. The helpfulness of the forums is just another positive about a great site-building solution that is constructed specifically to help you every step of the way toward success.

Cre8asite Forums
Another excellent forum that I check out when I get a chance.

Search Engine Watch Forums
Another highly respected forum that I check when I get a chance. It's a chief alternative to Webmaster World, although I'm still not convinced that they're in the same league with Webmaster World yet. Although, with the heavyweights they have contributing to it, they're not far behind.
Jeff

Business skills = Life skills (Courage to explore)
Here's another life skill that is also a crucial business skill. One of the biggest obstacles that I've seen hamper attempts to start a business is business owners' fear of exploring outside of their comfort zone. I've described in previous blog entries numerous traps that are easy to fall into. Most of them stem from that fear.

There's no way around it. When you start a new business, you are stepping out into territory you've never explored. Even if you've started businesses in the past, each one is still new territory because every business you start will force you to learn new things and overcome new obstacles.

And wishful thinking that we can somehow bypass all this exploration and jump straight from our starting point to a point where we suddenly enjoy all the success we hope for is as unrealistic as is thinking that we can find a way to magically transport ourselves instantaneously from New York to Los Angeles. Just as a physical journey requires us travel one step at a time toward our destination, the journey from our business startup to established, successful business requires that we travel one step at a time toward that desired destination as well.

There's no avoiding it. Yet I've seen so many people starting small businesses (and I've had to fight this in myself) with an unwillingness to venture beyond what feels safe and familiar. Dreams get lost as we fiddle with minutae that keep us in our comfort zone and protect us from those big, bad new experiences that we're unable to predict and have solved before we even encounter them.

Believe me, I've seen in my life what retreating into a narrower and narrower world, trying to protect yourself from all unpredictibility, can do—and it's not pretty. And doing so in business is just as self-destructive of your dreams of success.

Exploration is a basic part of life. It's what enables us to grow beyond what we currently are into what we are capable of being. And the courage to explore the new world we embark into when we start a new business is what enables us to grow our business—and ourselves—into everything we hope they will be.
Jeff