“The best things in life are free
But you can keep ‘em for the birds and bees
Now give me money, that’s what I want
That’s what I want, yeah
That’s what I want”
–The Beatles

When I was a kid I wanted to be rich.  Not a football player, not an astronaut; rich is what I wanted.  I grew up in the era of Gordon Gecko, Alex P. Keaton, and that bad ass Scrooge McDuck with the swimming pool full of money.  Of course, there are people who tell you that money doesn’t buy happiness.  Ironically, only my broke buddies say that.  That’s like having a fat person tell you running is bad for your knees.

But, I have to admit that, to a certain extent, they’re right: money doesn’t buy happiness.  It buys all sorts of other crap that usually just ends up sitting around gathering dust.  I remember when I first had enough disposable income to buy something fancy.  One of my first extravagant purchases was on a high-end watch – pretty ironic since I’m never more than 5 feet away from four clocks at any given moment.  It looked good, but keeping time wasn’t really its forte.   A $20 Timex could’ve done the job, and adding a few zeros to that figure didn’t make it any more accurate.   Hell, for the price I paid for it, it better be able to turn back time.  But hey, it’s a status symbol.  People need to see how well I’m doing.  Or do they?  Who am I trying to impress?  My broke buddies don’t care.  My business associates have even nicer ones, crusted in enough jewels to make Liberace drool.  Maybe that gold digger at the club will give me some luvin’ if she sees me sporting a flashy time piece.  Great, that’s just what I need, some parasitic plastic playmate.  Now that we’ve checked off all the possible uses for the damn thing besides telling the time, what good is it?  It’s too nice to wear every day, so it now sits in a safety deposit box gathering dust.   I see it every six months when I put my renewed insurance papers in there.

All is not lost.   My childhood mentors were right about the importance of money; I just overestimated how much happiness would cost.  Take the purchase I made at the Maricopa Animal Care & Control department.  For $25 I bought a little black cat.   She’s an ordinary house cat that likes to play with string, stare out the window at birds, and shed on my nice clean folded clothes.  She was a hundredth of the cost of that fancy watch, but that little cat makes me happy every day.  No one’s ever going to be impressed with my mutt of a house cat. The only thing the gold diggers would get out of her is an allergy attack.  Yet I’d have to say she’s the best purchase I’ve made with my new found “wealth.”

Utility and cost are not always equal.  If you make your life about chasing after money, ask yourself: what exactly are you going to buy with it?  I’d advise against fancy baubles… unless of course you’re up for some gold digger luvin’.

For many years my business has been doing internet marketing for my own portfolio of web sites. In the past year I’ve expanded my business by providing SEO consulting services to the automotive industry. The transition to helping others has had a steep learning curve, especially since I’m used to calling and executing the shots. As a marketer, my job is to get my clients traffic, and do everything I can to make sure that traffic converts into an actionable lead. So, what happens after that lead is generated is now out of my hands? It’s up to the company to turn that lead into a sale.  Hey, it’s not rocket science I’m talking about here.  But, what do you do when you as a consultant provide spot on advice but that client doesn’t convert that sale for reasons beyond your control?

I’m a firm believer that caring about the welfare of your customer is the number one priority.  If you truly want them to succeed, you are going to do everything in your power to achieve that goal. That way you spend your time analyzing and solving problems, not just counting up billable hours. In my field it’s pretty easy since I treat clients as though they are part of my own portfolio. With this philosophy in mind, it’s hard not to look at your client and advise them in ways that are outside the scope of your job when the company starts to struggle. Needless to say, this is the absolute WRONG thing to do. For starters, the client pays you to fill a function and only that function. If you go beyond that, you run the risk of looking like a complete idiot since you as an outsider don’t understand all the ins and outs of their business. Because of the complexity of any business, you could miss the mark entirely.  Your advice, although well-intentioned, could be just plain wrong.  That’s especially awful if it’s your job to be the one with all the right answers. Even worse, implicating an individual or methodology as the source of the problem can cause some hurt feelings (that could be someone’s pet idea you’re trashing).  You are treading in an area where you aren’t the star and you can cause all sorts of problems that you aren’t capable of fixing. And finally, you aren’t getting paid any extra for giving advice in an area where you have a strong likelihood of being wrong.  You could be hurting your client and, even worse, you are spending your precious time without compensation.  If that doesn’t drive the point home, I don’t know what will.

So when it comes to consulting, care about your client, do what they hired you to do, but keep your opinions about how they should run their business to yourself. You’ll be a much happier and wealthier consultant.

“If I could have my wasted days back,
Would I use them to get back on track?”
–Metallica

Frantic. That’s the name of the song where I pulled that quote and, besides being a damn good song (yes, I was one of a handful of people that liked St. Anger), there is a pretty important message in those lyrics. Whether you are a business owner like me or work for someone else, the idea of doing more with less isn’t just a catch phrase, it’s a reality. There are only 24 hours in a day and the To Do list grows every week. If you want to get a hold of a schedule spiraling out of control, I propose you do an audit.  That’s right: those five letters that cause so much fear when uttered by the IRS may in fact be a time saver when you do one yourself.

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It’s a running joke amongst my friends about just how freakishly pale I’ve gotten from working indoors for so many years. When I do go outside, it’s usually in the evening. If it wasn’t for the minute and a half walk to the mail box I, probably wouldn’t have enough Vitamin D. So when I saw this photo I just had to post it.

At the business college at ASU there was no way you could escape the zealous use of charts and graphs. Somehow they always looked familiar. While I was surfing the net, I came across this picture that I know everyone has noticed at one time or another. Now, if there was only a way to make a graph in the shape of one of the little ghosts.

Google is the search engine I use the most. 9 times out of 10 they return the most relevant search results. I guess that’s why they are on the top of the search engine heap. Today I searched for my domain name to see if has been spidered by Google. It’s only a few days old. When the engine doesn’t find what you are looking for, it will suggest a phrase of what it thinks you wanted. Below is a screen shot of what the all-powerful Google thinks I’m looking for. Wouldn’t it be funny if Jenna Jameson searched for herself and my web site came up?

No matter what you do or what industry you are in there will always be someone out there that has more money, more education, and more resources. The only equal playing field is time. Yes that’s right time. We all start the day with 24 hours and cram as much stuff into as possible. How efficiently you work that time separates you from your competitors. This is the reason why I’ve become and efficiency junky. As the word implies, the more efficient you are the more you get done in the same amount of time. More work equals more money, which gives you the ability to chase bigger and better opportunities.

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