Aviation of Business

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Oct 23

The following is a paid review, but is completely my own opinion and is not at all influenced by being paid.

Scan2Contacts (business card reader) Review

If you are an entrepreneur, or even if you just go to very many seminars, you amass many business cards, of which there is no good way to organize and sort in such a way as to be able to find the information when you need it. Besides just throwing them all in a shoebox, I’ve tried those little plastic insert pages where you can insert 12 cards or so and then put them in a 3-ring binder. That works fairly well, but I don’t take the binder with me when I travel, so if I run into someone who could use one of my contact’s services, I have to make myself a note and hopefully remember what it was all about when I get back home, then dig through the binder to find the information, then type it all out in an e-mail and send it.

What a pain!

Scan2Contacts gives another option to add to the shoebox and 3-ring binder solutions. I have seen other business-card scanners, and they all seem to do similar things, but Scan2Contacts is the first one I have seen that allows you to scan the card directly into Microsoft Outlook - which is a great benefit for the vast majority of companies who use Outlook as their email client.

Take a look at Scan2Contacts cute demo, which shows how the system works to get the info into Outlook (as well as illustrating the frustration of users before the scanning solution).

I’ve seen other scanners, and they work well, but if you use MS outlook, Scan2Contacts doesn’t look as if it can be beat for simple efficiency! Use it as a tool to increase your social capital!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Oct 19

Everyone has heard the importance of business planning. Creating a business plan before you start your business is very nearly a universal starting point for all successful businesses. In fact, Chris Corrigan, an Australian businessman who grew logistics company Patrick Corporation into one of Australia’s most successful companies and owns part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Blue airline, said, “You can’t overestimate the need to plan and prepare. In most of the mistakes I’ve made, there has been this common theme of inadequate planning beforehand. You really can’t over-prepare in business!”

Once again, we find that business and aviation are quite similar! Let’s walk through the business planning process and take a look at the similarities:

The first step in any plan is to know where you are… determine where you stand in your business knowledge and preparation. Are you ready to start a business? Do you really want to? This is analagous to a pilot’s home airport and “I’M SAFE” checklist:

• I: Illness - It is best not to fly while suffering from any illness.
• M: Medication - Pilot performance may be adversely affected by the taking of certain medications.
• S: Stress - Stress from work or from home may distract pilots during important segments of a flight.
• A: Alcohol - As little as one ounce of liquor, one bottle of beer or four ounces of wine can affect a pilot’s skills negatively.
• F: Fatigue - Fatigue affects a pilot’s coordination and alertness.
• E: Emotion - Emotions of anger & depression decrease alertness & may lead to taking higher risks than necessary

If any one of these things is affecting you as a pilot, it’s best to postpone your flight for another time. In business, a lack of knowledge of the industry, a poor work ethic, a bad reason for starting a business, other important obligations, etc. are all good reasons to delay the start of the business until your situation changes. I have come up with the following acronym, similar to the “I’M SAFE” checklist to help you determine if you are ready to start a business (NEW BIZ):

• N - Network: Do you have both a business network and a personal network of people who will support you?
• E - Emotion: Is your desire to start a busines free from emotion (e.g. anger or frustration at your current job)?
• W - Work Ethic: are you willing & able to work the hours necessary to start a new business?
• B - Business Acumen: Do you have experience in the industry you would like to enter?
• I - Investment: Do you have the capital (or can you get the capital) necessary to launch & sustain the business until it is profitable?
• Z - Zealous: Are you passionate about this business idea and industry?

If you cannot answer yes to all of the above questions in the “NEW BIZ” checklist, it might be better to wait to start your business until you can. Answering “no” to any one of them will only cause you frustration and pain in the long run of starting and running your own business.

Can you answer the “NEW BIZ” checklist questions in the affirmative? What other considerations might you want to consider before jumping into the entrepreneurship world? Tell us by leaving a comment!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

P.S. Stay tuned for part two of this six-part series: Where do you want to go?

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Sep 25

Most everyone by now has read or seen (or at least HEARD OF) The Secret. It’s a really good book about the power of positive thinking, AKA the Law of Attraction. I read it fairly recently, and liked it quite a bit. If you aren’t familiar with the concept, it essentially says that “the universe” provides whatever you need and want, but it doesn’t understand negatives.

In other words, you can’t think “I don’t want to get sick” because the universe won’t understand “don’t.” So it hears, “I … want to get sick.” And voila, you’re sick. From an entrepreneurial perspective, thinking “I don’t want to fail” all but guarantees your failure.

The answer is to think positively; think about what you WANT, not about what you don’t want. Thinking “I want to be healthy” will help stave off illness; thinking “I want my business to succeed” will help to avoid failure. And I think that this is true as far as it goes. Where it starts to get a little iffy, at least for me, is where the book and the film say that if you act as if you already have a million dollars, and feel like you’ll feel when you have a million dollars, that a million dollars will come to you.

Every result comes from action. And I absolutely believe that saying to yourself, “I want a million dollars” is better than saying “I don’t want to be broke.” But you still have to work toward that goal. If I wake up every day and say to myself, “I want a million dollars,” but then go to work like always, do what I always do, come home and watch TV all night, drink beer and eat Doritos, I’m still going to get what I always got. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

So why do people love the idea of “The Secret?” Because it sounds easy. But it’s not. You have to work as if you already have a million dollars before you will ever receive the money. And the positive thinking part of it is only beneficial inasmuch as it sets your mind in the right direction. If you are running away from something, you’ll stop running as soon as the threat is gone. That is negative thinking - an “I don’t want” thought.

But if you are running toward something, you’ll keep running until you get there - if the goal is motivating enough. This is “I want” thinking. The REAL benefit of positive thinking is that it opens your mind and senses to opportunities and possibilities that you never would have noticed before. The opportunities and possibilities always existed, but your negative mindset had you focused on what you DIDN’T want instead of what you DID want. So things slipped by unnoticed and uncapitalized upon.

Think of it this way - when you bought your most recent car (let’s say it’s a Volkswagen Jetta), all of a sudden you notice that there are Jettas EVERYWHERE! Where did they all come from? They were always there, you just never had reason to notice before. This is a function of your Reticular Activating System (RAS) - a part of your brain that subconsciously notices things that are important to you. And it does not have to be trained. It’s automatic. As an example, I rent small airplanes to do my flight training. I fly different aircraft, which have different identification, every time I fly. But if Air Traffic Control says the ID of the plane I’m flying, my attention is piqued immediately. Not because I am used to the aircraft ID, but because my RAS determined that it was important to me. It’s how you can hear someone whisper your name across a room; it’s how you recognize possibility and opportunity once you’ve told yourself it is important to you.

So even if you can’t bring yourself to believe that The Secret is scientific fact and all you need to do is think positive thoughts and good things will appear out of thin air in front of you, know that there is good evidence that a positive outlook and “positive thinking” can absolutely make your goals more reachable, in a more timely manner, with less frustration and work.

So run toward something good - not away from something bad!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Sep 17

The following is a paid review, but is completely my own opinion and is not at all influenced by being paid.

I recently signed up for Pay Per Post, a blog marketing site which has been gaining and gaining in popularity with bloggers as a way to use a blog to make a little (or a lot) of money. It’s also very popular with internet marketers as a way to drive traffic to their sites! If you’re already writing, and you already use products and surf the web, why not make a little money while doing so, right? I’ve been experimenting and learning about online business for a little while now, and have not had much success. To be fair, I’ve also had a lack of focus and not spent my time where it might make the most impact. I’m trying to change that, because - as you see from my last post - I am edging my way back to my original career goal (since high school or college) of becoming a professional pilot.

Since flying isn’t cheap (my first flight in nearly four years lasted nine-tenths of an hour - that’s .9 hours or 54 minutes - and cost $115.64!), I’ve newly refocused my online ambitions to help me pay for the cost of flight training. I figure that if I can make $30 per day, every day, from my online businesses, my flight training will be nearly paid for! With that in mind, I am refreshing my interest in Pay Per Post, starting with this post. I hope to be able to use it to get a good start on my goal of $30 per day. If I am able to make more than that through Pay Per Post (and/or other advertising, donations, etc.), I will increase my flight time commensurately.

Up to now, I have found Pay Per Post to be pretty easy to use. It was very easy to add this blog to my account and get started. I actually got an offer for $30 to review a site - which I was pretty excited about, but then I got distracted and forgot to actually post about the site. The offer was susequently rescinded - unfortunately it happened on the day I remembered and was going to post about it! I ultimately would like to add some of my other blogs to my account at Pay Per Post (blogs like environmentastic! and Teacher’s Forum, but Pay Per Post requires that you have 10 approved posts before you can add any more blogs to your account. I wasn’t aware of this (or I had forgotten), and I was a little frustrated trying to find out how to add another blog to my account… you actually have to do that under the “my posts” tab. That was a little confusing to me, and then frustrating that once I found out where and how to add another blog, I wasn’t able to until I did more posts.

Other than that I think Pay Per Post is a really nice site to work with. It’s easy to learn, use, and navigate, and it has already given lots of people another stream of income! I know Tyler Cruz (visit his blog) has had some success with it… I hope I can make enough to start subsidizing my flight training soon! If you’re interested in making some money with your blog (even if only a little), check out Pay Per Post.

Have you used Pay Per Post? What did you think about it? Let us know - leave a comment!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Aug 15

I want to thank anyone who helped Third Floor Cards for their commitment in voting in LifeBlue’s “Get a new Design” contest! If you were following the action, you’ll know that after a short stint in third place, Third Floor Cards ended up finishing a strong fourth! While that means that Third Floor Cards did not win the contest, LifeBlue offered a “second-chance” drawing for anyone who posted a review of the LifeBlue website on their blog and sent them an e-mail telling them so.

You can find my review of LifeBlue’s site at the following URL:
http://www.aviationofbusiness.com/AoBBlog/lifeblue-web-design/2007/08/06/

And the result was:
Third Floor Cards was selected at random in the second chance drawing! Also, check out the rest of the contestants on LifeBlue’s Wall of Shame…

So even though we didn’t “win” the contest, Third Floor Cards will still receive a redesigned website! We couldn’t have done it without all of your help in the voting portion… and all of your good thoughts and hopes for Third Floor Cards! So, again, thanks so much for your help.

Come soon to see the redesigned website at http://www.thirdfloorcards.com - I don’t know how long of a process it is to do a professional redesign of a website, but you’ll know when it’s done… it won’t suck anymore!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Aug 12

I’ve been kicking around some business ideas for quite awhile now. Third Floor Cards is a site that I started and then put off for a long time… and it’s one that I would still like to see up and running with a decent site and some good business running through it.

But the most recent one that I have started is The Teacher’s Forum. Currently, it is a dull yaBB forum with a generic look, but it is functional and up and running. So far the only registered members are me (administrator) and my wife, Jill. There are three posts. Two are introductions in the “Break the Ice” section.

We’ll be continuing the design of the site to make it look less generic and more eye-catching when people first come to the forum, but this brings up two questions:
1) Is yaBB (a freeware forum software) the right software to use for this forum, or should I use something more “well-known” throughout the forum world like vBulletin? I’d have to buy a license for the vBulletin software.
2) What is the best way to encourage people to be the first ones to post on a new forum? I’ve thought about using a service like ForumShock to jump start it, but is there a better way?

In beginning to answer number 2, I will be offering free “upperclassman” membership to the first 50 people to register and introduce themselves (in the “Break the Ice” section) on the site. However, I don’t have any kind of paid membership level (yet), so they’ll be taking it on my word that the site will, in the future, have that capability. Which begs the quetion laid in 1, above again - is yaBB the right forum software for the site?

I also spent some time yesterday listing The Teacher’s Forum on search engines and free site-listing web-pages to help bring up the site’s “link love,” as so many search engine optimization (SEO) gurus (like Rae Hoffman and Jeremy Schoemaker) call it.

Any other suggestions and help would be appreciated! Leave a comment if you have any ideas…

And if you want to register and be among the first 50 people to get your free lifetime “Upperclassman” membership, I certainly won’t shed any tears over you posting and helping to get the site active!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Jul 16

Hooray! My first tag! I must be a real blogger!

Now that that’s over, on to the game:

Rosa Say, from Joyful Jubilant Learning, challenged several bloggers to come up with one song that makes their hearts sing.

Difficult? For me, yes. But not impossible. So I racked my brain and came up with a song that could be used both as one that tugs on my heart AND that expresses some business wisdom in the vein of my earlier post on Finding Business Wisdom Anywhere.

The rules of this tag-game are simple:

1. Post about the one song that makes your heart sing, and uplifts your spirit every time you hear it.
If you can provide a link to lyrics and/or audio that would be fabulous. But it’s not essential, so don’t worry about it if you can’t.

2. Include a trackback to this post

3. Tag three others and ask them to include a trackback to your post and this one when they post.

Rosa’s post was brought on by Rich Griffith’s. Rosa chose the song My Front Porch Looking In, by Lonestar. I’ve never heard the song, but the lyrics she posted were beautiful. Rich chose I’m Walking on Sunshine, which, he admits, may not be the world’s “deepest” song. It certainly cannot be argued that it is a downer, though.

I picked a song that many will think is a little odd, I think. Change by Blind Melon (find the lyrics here). This section of the song epitomizes the feeling of it for me:

When you feel your life ain’t worth living, you’ve got to stand up and
take a look around you then a look way up to the sky
And when your deepest thoughts are broken, keep on dreamin boy cause
when you stop dreamin its time to die
And as we all play parts of tomorrow
Some ways we’ll work and other ways we’ll play
But I know we can’t all stay here forever
So I want to write my words on the face of today

While I have not heard a live version of the song I like quite as well as the album version, you can find a YouTube acoustic video of the song here. In every live version of the song I’ve heard, Shannon Hoon changed the lyrics to “’cause when you stop dreamin’ you know you’re gonna die / and I don’t wanna die….” If you know anything about Blind Melon, you know that these lyrics are pretty ironic, since Shannon Hoon died of a drug overdose only a few years after releasing this first album, on which you’ll find the song. Most people remember the “bee girl” from the video of “No Rain,” but I suggest buying this whole album, as every song on it is worth your time.

I love this song because it reminds me that no matter where you are in life, no matter what your circumstances, you have a place in this world - we all “play parts of tomorrow.” And as long as you have dreams and goals, your life is worth living…

The business link is that dreams and goals are absolutely required to build a business, and each business and each person affects the world and the future, for better or worse. And often the only thing standing in the way of building that business and changing the world is a fear of change. This song starts with Shannon Hoon singing that people say “hey look at him; I’ll never live that way / and that’s okay… they’re just afraid to change.” And then it ends with people saying, “hey look at him, and where he is these days / when life is hard, you have to change.”

And that’s exactly how it is with business - people think you’re crazy when you start, but they envy you when you start to reach your goals. They seem to forget all the work in-between…

Now I’m supposed to tag three other bloggers, so here goes (I picked some of my most admired):

Verna Wilder @ Out of the Cube
David Askaripour @ Mind Petals
and
Tara Hunt @ HorsePigCow

Have fun - I did!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Jul 12

A long headline for a short request:

One of the online businesses that Jill and I have never yet been able to get off the ground (because of our lack of time/funds and my lack of knowledge) has entered a contest for a free website redesign.

Please click the link below to vote for Third Floor Cards (www.thirdfloorcards.com) as the worst designed website in the contest… the winning site gets a free re-design. If 3rdFC wins the contest, it’ll be a redesign for a site that never quite got designed completely in the first place.

If you comment that you voted (and leave your e-mail) - and 3rdFC wins the contest (please vote every day) - 3rdFC will send you a coupon to buy a card for $1.00 (including shipping - THAT’S 80%+ off!) from the newly designed site!

Web Designers

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on May 29

I haven’t done this in several months (though I did post on the first one ever - in the comments sections of the post itself), but I think it’s a good idea and a great way to reflect on what one has learned in the past month (and if you can’t say that you’ve learned at least five things in a month, no matter how trivial it seems to you, there’s something wrong with you!).

 So, in the manner laid out by the Joyful, Jubilant Learning Blog, here are my top five “learnings” for the month of May:

1. No matter where you are, no matter what you think, you have friends near you.  My wife and I were at a beautiful wedding over Memorial Day weekend in Clearwater (Dunedin), Florida.  It was the wedding of a very good friend of ours who Jill met while working in Theatre in Columbus, Ohio (and who now lives in New York City, NY, but whose family is still in Florida).  We didn’t expect to know anyone at the wedding or the reception except the bride and groom themselves (whom we expected to be rather busy, for some reason); however, once we got to the reception, we were almost immediately approached by two other couples who knew us (though we didn’t know them immediately).  It turned out that Jill had met the women while they were the bride’s roomates in college!  And at the end of the reception, one of the bridesmaids was another friend of the bride’s whom Jill had met previously!  Another of the joys of networking… in Florida, we ran into people who we knew from Columbus, Cincinnati, and Kentucky!
2. A business can survive through almost any length of “down season” if the “busy season” is busy enough!  A small shop in Clearwater, FL makes 1/2-pound cookies and homemade ice-cream - and was pretty much empty except for while we were in it (eating a chocolate-chip cookie with two scoops of vanilla ice-cream and hot-fudge on top… whoa!).  The man behind the counter said that spring break is always his best time.  Planning ahead for the rest of the year is of utmost importance!
3. Related to the above, a business can survive without a business plan or without good leadership if it’s in the right location.  If you serve alcohol and pizza, and are located on a beach where college students frolic during spring, you could leave your business i the hands of a monkey and still survive.
4. Love bug season in Florida SUCKS.  Those damn bugs were EVERYWHERE and they were ANNOYING!  Jill and I took to calling them “Fuck Bugs” for two reasons - 1) they were fucking, and 2) we were constantly saying “Fuck, bugs! Get away from me!” I buried as many as possible in the sand, alive. 
5. Business is just breaking down a large “problem” into small, actionable parts.  The “problem” is your business and the small, actionable parts are your goals and plans to reach where you want the business to go.  This is basic - but I constantly need a reminder of it.  I’m reading Robert Allen’s Multiple Streams of Internet Income, which breaks down internet business quite well.  I’ve already taken 13 pages of notes and I’m not even halfway through it.  I’ll buy a copy for myself (I’m reading a library copy) so I can highlight and underline and take notes in the margins…

Hope you enjoyed this, and I encourage you to do the same thing on your own blog… (what?  You don’t have a blog?  Leave a comment on this one or on JJL’s!)  or at least in your own head so you reap the benefit of reflecting on the month behind you!

Next post will be back to our regularly scheduled programming (the sacred six flight instruments & how they relate to business)!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on May 20

 The Directional Gyro - a.k.a. Heading Indicator - is used by a pilot to determine an aircraft’s heading.  It actually uses a gyroscope, which allows it to maintain its position in space as the aircraft “rotates” around it.  This allows the Heading Indicator to always show the correct heading to the pilot. 

Why not use a compass?  All aircraft are equipped with a standard magnetic compass as well; however, these compasses are nearly impossible to use while maneuvering.  Want to experiment?  Grap any free-floating compass (in an aircraft they are actually liquid filled - they used to be called “whiskey compasses”), then manuever it like an aircraft turns, leaning (or “banking”) it to the left as you turn it left (or leaning it to the right as you turn right).  See how the compass doesn’t want to “lean” with its container?  This causes false readings during turns or accelleration/deceleration.  The Heading Indicator doesn’t suffer from these limitations.

So what does this have to do with business?  Well, Mahesha hit it right on the nose in her comment to last week’s post.  All business is planning - just like aviation.  You plan your flight - you plan your business (or at least you SHOULD).  To have a successful flight, you need to know ahead of time where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.  It’s the same in business (and anything you do in life) - as Lawrence J. Peter said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you will probably end up somewhere else.”  So the heading indicator helps a pilot who knows where she is going make sure she is still on course to reach her destination.  Just as a business plan helps an entrepreneur get where he is going.

Let me clarify before I end this post - if a pilot does not look at the heading indicator, it doesn’t do him any good.  On the same token, if an entrepreneur doesn’t go back and reference her business plan to make sure she is still on the right track with where she wants her business to go and what she wants her business to be, it won’t do her any good either. 

Other ideas?  What do you see as YOUR “Heading Indicator?”  Tell us by leaving a comment!

Fair Winds,
Andrew