Publicly Scolded... At least I was Anonymous

It is a strange feeling to hear yourself being talked about in a public forum. You know what I mean... you're in a meeting and the boss talks about an error and you know it's you but he doesn't mention you. You can feel your face turning red with embarrassment wondering if everyone else knows it's you that is the target of a well-deserved scolding. Well, I got a scolding yesterday in front of an audience of a few thousand people though I didn't here it until my commute this morning. Jack Spirko has a business podcast, "5 Minutes with Jack", in which he offers tons of awesome advice with a catch. You have to do something with it. In an email to Jack recently, I filled it full of excuses on why I haven't taken some steps forward with my ideas:

I know if I had spent some $$ to get dillonallen.com, was hosting on Hostgator, and had installed Wordpress that SEO Smart Links would handle this for me. That is my plan, just can't justify the $$ since I don't even have a detailed plan for a business yet.

I'm still sitting on Blogger and planning a move to actual hosting/domain following the outage I'm working right now and better formulation of my plan

In yesterday's Episode 91, He basically ranted on the subject of excuses and not having an "I can do it, so I AM doing it NOW" attitude and it seemed he was reading directly from my email. If not, some other dude wrote in with the exact same words, since Jack read off the excuses listed above - in that order - with a few generalizations. ACK! The point is, there will always be a reason or potential issue to stop you from moving forward if you don't step up and attack the future. I deserved my scolding and I acted... http://www.dillonallen.com is now in existence (though it won't show up until tomorrow some time) and I will be posting there in the future. I will run my main blog at dillonallen.com/blog as well as my photography page, Ka-Click, within the dillonallen.com domain. I also have a few ideas for both product and ebooks that I want to market. They will be available there by summer and I can remove myself - if only for a while - as a source of self-inflicted ridicule. Jack, thanks for the push.

Great Podcast for Small Business Owners

If you own a small business, you should be constantly pursuing improvement in your methods to increase the margin on the hard work you put into the thing. I have become a fan of Jack Spirko both from a preparedness standpoint and as someone who would like to eventually own a small business. I also want to help my family's small business - Art Supply grow in the same spirit of "word of mouth advertising" that has put the business where it is today. To that end, I have been listening to Jack's business podcast "5 Minutes with Jack". At FMWJ, you can get tons of information and drill instructor-like encouragement to get in gear and make your business more of what it COULD be regardless whether you're selling soft product, hard product, or even if you're still in the Brick & Mortar Age. He will tell you what he has done that works and also what he has done that just doesn't. He will also tell you that if you continue to do the things that don't work that you are a dumby. Some people can't handle being told that what they're doing is dumb. If that's you, you will not enjoy FMWJ. You might try to push through the pain and improve yourself, though. I know I still can.

PS - As direct evidence of the fact that I have room to grow and quite a few "don't be a dumby"s in my future, I still haven't bitten the bullet and spent some cash to register an actual domain name for Art Supply or bought web hosting for it. So I'm still using the free Wordpress site I created. I feel like Spirko would tell me I'm dumb for that, but I don't get the write off. I can only lead the horse to water on this one. The response would probably be, "Well why isn't there a dillonallen.com yet? You should be blogging and establishing your personal brand." Touche, sir.