posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Jun 19
Okay, so I’m learning to not make promises before I am sure I can follow through. I’m having a bit of writer’s block on the posts I’m trying to write about the “sacred six” instruments. I want to make sure they are interesting for you, the reader, while still making them as accurate as possible and as “real” as possible. I thought that laying out that pattern for myself would make writing easier, but I’ve found that it constrains more than anything, and makes it MORE difficult to write about them. So, while I will no longer promise that the sacred six will be the next five posts, I will promise that - eventually - I’ll get to them.
Perhaps I’m trying too hard to write posts that are substantial (read: longer) and not just short little blurbs - I don’t want to waste your time if you’re here reading my blog. On the other hand, shorter posts written more often will bring more visitors, which is a goal I have for this blog. So I’m a little torn.
So leave me a note in the comments telling me whether you would prefer shorter posts written more often or longer, more substantial posts written less often. In return, you have my thanks, and the short story in the following post.
Namaste,
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:
- 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!
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on May 12
So - comparing running a business to flying an airplane is a pretty big stretch, huh? It’s all really a crock - I’m just trying to link two of my passions together so I can feel like when I’m doing one I’m not ignoring the other, right? For the last three or nearly four years, I have not been in an airplane that I was flying myself, so I have really stretched the limits of feasibility to convince myself that I have not actually given up flying for so long. I’ve actually been keeping it in my head and using what I learned through my pilot training to help me start and run my businesses.
How’s that sound? Convincing?
Because it’s crap. Aviation and business are strikingly similar - and the next six posts will help convince anyone skeptical (and will help me gel my thoughts about the subject for myself as well). So keep in tune over the next few weeks as I post about how each of the “sacred six” instruments in an airplane coincide perfectly (or nearly so) with ways that people judge the performance of a business. The pictures below are examples of the “sacred six” instruments… take some time and think about how they help a pilot better understand the performance and activity of her aircraft - and how they might be similar to the way business performance is judged.
I’ll post again soon and explain one of the above instruments. Leave some comments if YOU have ideas about how these instruments might tie into typical business performance tracking!
Fair Winds,
Andrew
