Aviation of Business

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Dec 21

Fair Winds,
Andrew

posted by Andrew Hartley - Business Consultant & Entrepreneur on Dec 18

I am entering Thor Schrock’s Secret Classroom Blog Contest.

I’ve been reading Thor’s blog (www.thorschrock.com) for awhile now, and he’s got some really great content! I highly recommend subcribing to RSS feed (I did!). If you are looking for an RSS aggregator, I suggest NewsGator (www.newsgator.com) - it’s got an online version which is very easy to use and update.

In addition to the obvious monetary value of the potential prize, I’m also entering the contest because the Secret Classroom information sounds like it has some real substance to it, unlike many other offers out there on the web these days. Some of the infomation that is available on the Secret Classroom DVD set includes:

One of the benefts of having this information on DVD is that you can rewind and watch portions over (instead of missing the information like you might in a live seminar), as well as being able to see it happen (instead of having to interpret what it should look like, like in a book or e-book). Additionally, you get a workbook to make the learning stick even better!

Sounds like being back in school - taking notes, doing assignments in a workbook - but I’d rather have the information and take notes and work at something to get what I want.

What’s the alternative?

Doing the same thing every day - and getting the same thing I already have. And that may not be bad, but I have goals and dreams… and the day-to-day won’t allow me to reach them.

So here’s to learning and doing and building something new!

Fair Winds,
Andrew

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

I joined ListBandit to help me increase my ability to reach people with my message (won’t it be great when I finally figure out what the message should be?).

ListBandit is an interesting way to take your message to people who otherwise might not hear it… it’s a 3x matrix, infinitely deep (or as deep as you can make it), with a twist.

The twist is this: Every day, the site “shuffles” (or pulls the arm on the one-armed bandit - hence the name ListBandit) the membership, giving you the opportunity to increase the number of people your message may go to. Additionally, if you sign up soon, you’ll get the opportunity to increase the eyeballs your message hits exponentially, just by referring other interested parties to the site.

Initially, your list will be minimal, but as you refer people it’ll build quickly. And every day you’ll have another opportunity to be at the peak of the mountain of people who have signed up - meaning your message will reach everyone below you in the downline.

So start prepping your message - THOUSANDS might get to see it very soon! Click below to sign up and give it a try yourself!

It’s Not Too Late To Hit The List-Building Jackpot. Join
Today, and You Could Be Emailing Thousands … Tomorrow!
http://www.listbandit.com/index.php/ahartley

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 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 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 Apr 3

A very close friend worked his last day at the company at which I worked for nearly six years today. He had been there for eleven years (count ‘em - 11!). It’s an aviation company, and as such it has seen its share of ups and downs. Over the past year or so, however, the company’s leadership turned to layoffs and generally bad management of its people to turn its financials around. Temporarily, I think it’ll work. Long-term, I think it’s a mistake. Regardless, I recieved the following message from my friend today. Talk about leaving with class!

This final message is to a select group of people who are particularly dear to me…

You are special to me, and I’ll miss you. [Our CEO] has said “it’s the people that make the difference” and I couldn’t agree more. [Company Name] is unbelievably volatile with change, and it has its share of corporate problems, but it’s as good as it is because of the folks who show up every day committed to doing a great job and never giving up on making things better. Each of you is one of those people and each of you has influenced me for the better.

While my career here is coming to a close and a new chapter is opening, yours continues. And like mine, your time with [Company Name] will continue to add to your skills, open up new opportunities, and give you many more chances to make that difference. Despite the setbacks, I look back fondly on almost 11 years of growth and development here, and I’m thankful that I’ve moved into the world of training through opportunities that came out of this company. I especially want to thank [Name Removed], who in 1998 took a chance and asked me to join him in training [employees] – that little effort forever changed the course of my career, and brought me into what I believe I was always meant to do: educate and develop people.

I’m also thankful for the countless projects and teams I’ve been a part of, for the learning I’ve done, and for the many areas of the business I’ve been in contact with. There was rarely a dull moment, and I don’t doubt that will continue. In that I’ve learned to seize the day, and take every chance to make the most of it. We must remain committed and determined – these are always rewarding whether in the company or somewhere else, no matter what the endeavor.

I also continue to learn not to let external factors determine my mood, attitude, or mission. It’s worthy to be true to yourself and even more so to your purpose – I believe there is a plan for every life and a benevolent God who created it. No matter what the world does or says, these things transcend it. Work is just work, and no company is perfect, nor can it provide the deepest meaning and purpose our hearts long for. So no matter how tough it gets, we can always look back and see benefit in our work and the companies that provide it. Even more so with the relationships we build.

May your career be blessed as mine has, even with the difficulties that come along the way; may they help us along as we mature and build character, all the while gaining valuable experience to contribute to our futures and the world around us. Thanks to [Company Name] for my career, and thanks again to you for being a part of it.

Best wishes,
–[Name]

We should all take a cue from my good friend and his departure message - learning to separate one’s self from one’s job and to look to many things for self-worth, mission, and attitude, as well as to use the good and the bad to build a worthwhile character and mature into who we are meant to be.

Fair Winds,
Andrew