6 Ways Young Treps Can Make Time for a Vacation

When was the last time you took a vacation? For many young entrepreneurs, the answer is probably, “That's a joke, right?” But you just might want to rethink your aversion to time off.

To run a successful company, you’ll need to be there, of course. But you’ll often need to also take time to clear your head or even distance yourself from the business in order to think about how to grow more effectively. Plus, it’s good for you. Working long hours without taking time off to renew yourself can beat up your immune system, making you vulnerable to any mal-intentioned germ that comes along. It's much nicer to take a vacation and enjoy yourself than spend time recovering from not taking enough care of yourself.

In the end, time off can be just as vital — if not more so — as actually running the show. Here are six ways that even uber-busy start-up entrepreneurs can make a vacation work:

• 1. Take a tax deductible vacation. Attend a conference on a topic related to your business. Spending time with other professionals in your field can be incredibly energizing. You can learn something, deduct the cost and skip enough sessions to make a vacation out of it too. Or if there's a company, supplier or customer based in a potential vacation spot, include a visit, giving the tax folks a rationale for deducting some or the entire trip.

• 2. Take a short vacation. Start with a three-day weekend — or even the July 4th Holiday. Place an automatic response on your email, turn off your cell phone and let yourself have most of the day with no work on your plate. Even if you stay home, you can take in a movie or hit that new restaurant everyone's talking about. Consider a trip to some place of interest within a half-day's drive.

• 3. Take a family vacation. How long has it been since you saw Uncle Bob, Aunt Geneva or your brother in grad school? Take a few days and visit them. They'll want to hear about what you're up to, and they'll probably feed and house you — all except your brother, of course. You can relax and not spend too much money beyond transportation.

• 4. Take a road trip. Pack a cooler, grab a map or GPS and cruise the back roads around your home. Pick a destination but get there slowly. Stay in cheap local motels, B&B's or camp out. Time in the car will be good thinking time. You can stop anywhere you want, for as long as you want.

• 5. Stay connected to your business. With smart phones and wifi all over, you don't have to lose touch with your business or your customers. Designate an hour every day to checking messages and emails. Then turn your phone off and enjoy your vacation. After all, you earned it.

• 6. Start slow. Does even a three-day weekend seem like too much right now? How about an hour? How about an afternoon? Take a walk, go to the gym or see a movie. Think about doing something you haven't done in a long time — or ever. Visit the best park in your community and walk through the woods. Even if it's only for a short time, you're giving yourself the sense of what a vacation can do for you. It may give you an incentive to take more time for a real vacation soon.

Remember, one of the reasons why you chose to be an entrepreneur is so that you could be in control of your own life. If you let your business take all of your time and energy, you will soon lose sight of one of the best reasons for being an entrepreneur, the ability to fit your business to your lifestyle. Even as you grow your business, a vacation can be an excellent reminder of the good life you're working toward.

6 Ways Young Treps Can Make Time for a Vacation

When was the last time you took a vacation? For many young entrepreneurs, the answer is probably, “That's a joke, right?” But you just might want to rethink your aversion to time off.

To run a successful company, you’ll need to be there, of course. But you’ll often need to also take time to clear your head or even distance yourself from the business in order to think about how to grow more effectively. Plus, it’s good for you. Working long hours without taking time off to renew yourself can beat up your immune system, making you vulnerable to any mal-intentioned germ that comes along. It's much nicer to take a vacation and enjoy yourself than spend time recovering from not taking enough care of yourself.

In the end, time off can be just as vital — if not more so — as actually running the show. Here are six ways that even uber-busy start-up entrepreneurs can make a vacation work:

• 1. Take a tax deductible vacation. Attend a conference on a topic related to your business. Spending time with other professionals in your field can be incredibly energizing. You can learn something, deduct the cost and skip enough sessions to make a vacation out of it too. Or if there's a company, supplier or customer based in a potential vacation spot, include a visit, giving the tax folks a rationale for deducting some or the entire trip.

• 2. Take a short vacation. Start with a three-day weekend — or even the July 4th Holiday. Place an automatic response on your email, turn off your cell phone and let yourself have most of the day with no work on your plate. Even if you stay home, you can take in a movie or hit that new restaurant everyone's talking about. Consider a trip to some place of interest within a half-day's drive.

• 3. Take a family vacation. How long has it been since you saw Uncle Bob, Aunt Geneva or your brother in grad school? Take a few days and visit them. They'll want to hear about what you're up to, and they'll probably feed and house you — all except your brother, of course. You can relax and not spend too much money beyond transportation.

• 4. Take a road trip. Pack a cooler, grab a map or GPS and cruise the back roads around your home. Pick a destination but get there slowly. Stay in cheap local motels, B&B's or camp out. Time in the car will be good thinking time. You can stop anywhere you want, for as long as you want.

• 5. Stay connected to your business. With smart phones and wifi all over, you don't have to lose touch with your business or your customers. Designate an hour every day to checking messages and emails. Then turn your phone off and enjoy your vacation. After all, you earned it.

• 6. Start slow. Does even a three-day weekend seem like too much right now? How about an hour? How about an afternoon? Take a walk, go to the gym or see a movie. Think about doing something you haven't done in a long time — or ever. Visit the best park in your community and walk through the woods. Even if it's only for a short time, you're giving yourself the sense of what a vacation can do for you. It may give you an incentive to take more time for a real vacation soon.

Remember, one of the reasons why you chose to be an entrepreneur is so that you could be in control of your own life. If you let your business take all of your time and energy, you will soon lose sight of one of the best reasons for being an entrepreneur, the ability to fit your business to your lifestyle. Even as you grow your business, a vacation can be an excellent reminder of the good life you're working toward.

The Manufacturing of Ideas

For hundreds of years, the definition of productive required that there be a manufacturing line taking a product from raw materials to goods for market. Wealth was measured in tons and footage and inventory. Banks loaned money based on how many assets that you had. Our education system prepared our youth to show up on time, get in line to do a job, and the workers were split… blue color got their hands dirty and white collar supervised.

Our politicians lament that we’ve lost the manufacturing jobs… that they’ve gone overseas to areas with cheaper labor and no regulations. They’re all scrambling to bring them back. Bring them back to whom? Our children are deep in debt after financing the best educations on the planet. They’re graduating directly into unemployment. Businesses aren’t hiring… they’re still laying off people.

The manufacturing of goods is not returning. Even with that truth becoming a reality, our banks, our leaders, and our system still judge success based on how many widgets they deliver and the demand for those widgets. Whether it’s mobile phones or lines of code, productivity is still based off of a product. But manufacturing products is no longer what we’re great at, nor can we do it affordably given the wealth of our country.

Concurrently, with the advent of digital media, we’re witnessing a new market. The marketplace of ideas. Inexpensive computing and connectivity has created the highways for us to transport those ideas. At DK New Media, we have clients as far as Switzerland, designers in Romania, researchers in India, and we’re manufacturing ideas here in the United States. We’ve developed a unique and productized means of auditing, implementing and measuring inbound success with our clients.

We tend to think of ideation as one step leading to a product. That’s doesn’t need to be the case at all. Ideation can be the product. There are plenty of companies, including many of our clients, that invest in our ideas. Sure, there’s often a tangible deliverable that comes along with those… audits, infographics, analysis, blog posts. But many times, it’s simply an idea. And when we’re able to take that idea and convert it into a customer, that’s a business result that was worth the investment.

Our production line is packed, and the demand is growing. The problem, of course, is that the system doesn’t recognize the demand nor the product. The system still calls this a service. The system still believes that if I want to grow my business, that the only means of doing it is to grow my number of employees. There’s no loans for manufacturing ideas, no investment firms for manufacturing ideas, and no recognition on the results that were generated by those ideas.

This isn’t a complaint, this is an observation and a call to action. Everything we’ve been investing in all these years in Silicon Valley and in every University was to prepare us for this time… and we’re blowing it. We’re packing our children’s brains with the best educations but they lack the inspiration and the resources to take their ideas and run with them.

There’s no better time to do this. We have a global economy where we can manufacture our ideas with incredible efficiency… gathering resources from every corner of the globe, utilize a host of free and cheap tools via the Internet to build our production lines, and deliver our ideas to sell in the market… not in months or years… but in hours and days.

Many would guilt people into thinking that, with almost 40 million people unemployed, this is the worst time to off-shore jobs. It’s not the worst time, it’s the best time. If you can take your idea, develop it, and deliver it with off-shore resources, you can get it to market and sell it faster and cheaper. If you can sell it, you can then reinvest that revenue and grow your business. That growth is what’s enabled us to hire an entire team here in Indianapolis.

In a couple weeks, we’re going live with a content system that will allow us to connect all our clients to over 160 resources throughout the world. Our team will build the workflows, assemble the teams, curate, and publish the content that’s developed through it. The end result is the highest quality product built quickly and affordably. We’re building our manufacturing lines!

It’s time for the political powers, financial powers and business powers to recognize the opportunities we have right in front of us. It’s time for our education system to inspire and educate our students – not just on how to think, but on how to bring their ideas to market. The marketplace for ideas has no limitations, it’s the largest marketplace there is.

We need to continue improving the tools for this market, fully utilizing the information superhighway that’s in place with more social, collaboration, workflow and teamwork tools that span the globe. We need to encourage and inspire the idea market. We need to invest in the idea market. There’s no better time than now than to get in the manufacturing industry… the manufacturing of ideas.

Read more: http://www.marketingtechblog.com/manufacturing-of-ideas/#ixzz29y3prUHz

How to grow your network

When my business partner and I quit our jobs to start our own business, one of the unexpected challenges we faced was the lack of a network with which to share ideas.

We turned to social media, and in particular Twitter to fill that gap.

We have successfully used Twitter to grow our network of peers, suppliers and customers and discovered that just like real-world networking the know, like, trust process still applies… it’s just that social media accelerates that process.

KNOW: FIND PEOPLE TO FOLLOW

One of the best places to start is with journalists in your sector. Most have a Twitter account these days. Follow them, then look who they are having conversations with. Those people are also likely to be good people to follow – either important people in your sector or people who have the ear of journalists – in either case, good people to know.

Next, look for key local people, local business leaders, large local companies and trade associations. Follow them too.

LIKE: OLD RULES, NEW TOOLS

It’s 60 years old now, but Dale Carnegie’s classic principles from How To Win Friends and Influence People apply just as well in the new world of social media as they did in 1950s America. Introduce yourself to people you follow. Tell them why you followed them, and ideally, pay them a sincere compliment. Say hello to new people who follow you and take a quick look at their bio and timeline. What are they talking about? If it’s their cats, ask how they are; if it’s a business trip, recommend your favourite restaurant. Tweet things of interest to people you want to engage.

Look for conversations in your timeline where you can add value. Share your own insights and Retweet insights of others. Make others look good.

Find excuses to get back in touch. Keep an eye on your contacts’ status updates. Even small status changes can give you something to start a conversation.

Proactively link people together. Don’t wait for others to ask for an introduction. Review your contact list and look for ways to add value to them.

TRUST: TAKE IT OFFLINE

When you are ready, start to take your new network into the real world. Most people will be flattered that you want to take the time to meet them face-to-face. Keep it informal. Suggest a catch-up over coffee for instance, the next time you are in the area.

Try to position yourself at the centre of your new online network. Use industry events to arrange group meet ups when many of your contacts are likely to be around. One of our biggest successes came from organising a real-world meet up (a Tweetup) that grew to the point where conference organisers began asking us how they could get involved in our event.

One final thing: Don’t let social media become a drain on your time. Time box it in a way that works for you. Check it for 5 minutes every hour for example; while waiting for a train, bus or taxi; or schedule some time around lunch time or at the end of the day.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt Raps Apple on iPhone Maps, Floats Yahoo! Search Pact

Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt was in Tokyo Tuesday, and he used the occasion to express his frustration with Apple’s decision to yank Google Maps off the new iPhone 5. That move prompted a minor furor in the tech world, because Apple’s map application is inferior to Google Maps, which is generally viewed as the gold standard for mass-market mobile mapping products. Schmidt, who served on Apple’s board of directors until 2009, when Steve Jobs kicked him off over the obvious Android conflict-of-interest, asserted that Google would like to remain partners with Apple on a variety of mobile fronts, including web search, but acknowledged that the ball remains in Apple’s court. Schmidt also made some eyebrow-raising remarks about the possibility that Google, the undisputed web search leader, might link up with its erstwhile competitor Yahoo!, which is now run by a well-respected Google alumna.

The iPhone 5 maps dustup is just the latest front in an epic battle between Google and Apple for supremacy in the mobile computing market. Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs went utterly ballistic when Google launched its Android mobile operating system. He was convinced that Android was ripping off Apple’s iPhone features. So he kicked Schmidt off the board, launching an increasingly bitter rivalry between the two tech giants that continues to this day. Apple’s worldwide intellectual property (patent) campaign against Samsung, HTC, and other Google partners (including the search giant’s newly acquired Motorola Mobility division) is really a proxy fight against Android, which Tim Cook continues to wage on behalf of his departed mentor.

Apple and Google’s mobile models are diametrically opposed. Apple has succeeded with end-to-end control over the iPhone process, from hardware to software to mobile apps. Google’s model is to unleash the Android system for free to the hardware and developer community at large, in order to leverage the power of developers and builders worldwide. The result is that Apple makes vastly more money on each iPhone it sells, while Android has chalked up astonishing market-share gains, growing to lead the global mobile OS market in just 5 years.

Apple’s decision to yank Google Maps off the new iPhone is a classic Apple maneuver — using its market power to favor its own products. Unfortunately, in this case, Apple’s map product is inferior to Google’s, which has caused significant agita in the tech community. Speaking to reporters in Tokyo Tuesday, Schmidt’s frustration with Apple’s map decision was palpable beneath the surface of his relentlessly wonky demeanor.

“We think it would have been better if they had kept ours. But what do I know?” Schmidt told reporters in comments cited by Reuters. “What were we going to do, force them not to change their mind? It’s their call.” Indeed it is. This map flare-up is a consequence of Apple’s ironclad control of its flagship iPhone product. At the end of the day, Apple CEO Tim Cook is responsible for his own company, but the decision to boot Google Maps off the iPhone 5 in favor of its inferior product has triggered a sour reaction from the tech community, because it comes from a company — Apple — that ostensibly values the user experience above all else.

Schmidt went on to say that Google hopes to remain a partner with Apple on mobile web search, but admitted that he has no control over the Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant’s decision-making process. “I’m not doing any predictions,” Schmidt told reporters in comments cited by Reuters. “We want them to be our partner. We welcome that. I’m not going to speculate at all what they’re going to do. They can answer that question as they see fit,” he said. Google has somewhat more leverage on this front, because it dominates the web search market. What is Apple going to do? Strike a deal with its mortal enemy Microsoft to make Bing (which powers Yahoo! search) the default iPhone mobile web search provider? I don’t think so.

Schmidt also took a dig at Apple’s mobile strategy, and chastised the tech media for being ”obsessed with Apple’s marketing events and Apple’s branding,” and ignoring Android’s success. He added that his rival’s world-beating publicity machine is ”great for Apple but the numbers are on our side.”

Finally, Schmidt made some rather startling comments about the possibility that Google might link up with its one-time rival Yahoo! on a web search partnership, as picked up by Eric Jackson over at Forbes. This is not going to happen — regulators would never allow it. Jackson, who is a smart tech-watcher (and Yahoo! shareholder), seems to think this is a plausible idea, and he makes a good point. Times have changed: Yahoo! has largely exited the web search market, thanks to its deal with Microsoft. But it’s not going to happen. Google controls 70% of the web search market. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will never allow a company with that kind of market power to assume control over the search business of the number three player in the space. (At least I hope not.) But the fact that Schmidt raised the possibility of a Google-Yahoo! pact is a reflection of how quickly the big-tech ecosystem is evolving.

Ultimately, we’re watching an epic war between two tech icons — Apple and Google — over control of the smartphone market. Everyone agrees that the locus of competition in the Internet space is shifting to mobile devices. This is the next great battle in the war for the Web. The recent iPhone maps flap is just one front in this conflict. Intellectual property is another. Competition between these two powerful tech companies has been a huge boon to consumers — innovation in the mobile phone and tablet market is proceeding at break-neck speed. This fight is incremental, global, and increasingly bitter, as Schmidt’s thinly-veiled jabs at Apple illustrate. Both companies are sitting on massive stockpiles of cash, and pouring billions of dollars into research and development. As we head into the fall, the war between Apple and Google is the hottest game in town.