Instigator Blog

Failure is a fact of life. We all fail. And The Great Big Small Business Show is tackling small business failure with some insight, advice and inspiration.

I’m particularly excited by the addition of Phil Gerbyshak to The Great Big Small Business Show team. He’s contributed his thoughts on how to define both success and failure, using some inspiration from President Theodore Roosevelt.

As well, Zane Safrit of Conference Calls Unlimited drops in with a guest appearance titled, “The Biography of Failure.”

It’s a great episode, talking about a hugely important small business and entrepreneurial issue.

Embrace Failure. Recognize Your Key Failures. And Keep On Trying!

For a rare few, networking comes naturally. For the rest of us, we need help. And lots of it!

That’s where Laura Allen steps in with her business 15SecondPitch.

Can you describe what value you bring to the table, your experience and what makes you unique in 15 seconds?

Me neither. Not until I got some help from Laura.

Click to continue →

The occasional hallucation or two might not be a bad thing. But when I get a fever it often results in my brain’s inability to control my streaming thoughts. It’s like my brain’s filters are inneffective, and while trying to sleep a raging river of thoughts overwhelm me. Usually they’re tied to whatever I was thinking about or focused on before. Once, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about information products (sad but true!)…the thoughts aren’t clear or ordered, they’re like a waterfall.

Perhaps our brains are always controlling our thoughts like this; and things like fevers are able to short-circuit them. I’m far from a brain specialist. But, the point is that even when we don’t have a fever overwhelming our brains, our thoughts are very often torrid and noisy, and we need to turn them off.

This is particularly the case when going to bed. I do some of my best thinking just before going to sleep, but that also means I need a way of wrapping up and telling my brain “enough is enough.” I use a few techniques that have helped me reduce brain chatter.

1. Focus on Something Simple. Have you ever read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins? There’s a character in it (a Japanese escapee from internment camps) who is part yoga-instructor, part philosopher, part spiritual leader (and there are a few other parts thrown into the mix, not appropriate for this blog!) He uses a “circular breathing” technique where he gets other characters to think of their breathing not as “up and down” or “in and out” but in a circular fashion. The character also tells others in the story that you should never fully expend all your air or fully fill your lungs. Is it all mumbo jumbo? Probably…but the act of focusing on my breathing, something simple, and remembering the information in Cowgirls helps to chill out the brain.
2. Focus on the Inside Darkness. It’s hard to sleep without closing your eyes. So go ahead and do that. What I try and do is focus on the darkness inside my head. Try and “look” at the insides of your eyelids, or try and “look” inside a point in your head. This works the same way as the breathing exercises, although I find it’s easier to focus on this than breathing, which means it will relax you even more.
3. Tell Yourself It’s Time to Shutdown. I think humans are masters at lying to themselves. But that’s a debate for another day. Once I’m in a more relaxed state, I find it’s effective to just tell myself, “Think and worry about it in the morning. It’s over for the day.” Don’t repeat this to yourself obsessively; you’ll just work yourself back into a frenzy.
4. Give Your Brain One Final Instruction. Try giving your brain one last instruction as you “stare” into the blackness. Most often I ask my brain to wake me up at a certain time the following morning. “Ok brain, I need to be up at 6am to write this blog post, so please kick back into gear at that point.” My brain doesn’t always listen, but the act of focusing on a single thought in what now amounts to a vaccuum of darkness helps. It’s like your brain needs a little nugget of something to chew on before it says, “Ok, I’ll stop racing around like a headless chicken, you’ve earned some sleep.”

Click.

That’s your brain turning off.

We need to turn off our brains from time to time in order to re-energize, rest and recuperate. Sometimes we need to just “veg” in order to survive the intensity of daily living. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, small business owner, employee, student or anything else for that matter, your life is extremely hectic, chaotic and overloaded. Learning to turn your brain off is going to help.

Good luck!

[tags]brains, sleeping, getting rest, meditation, tom robbins[/tags]

Image by abanesta.

My first BarCamp experience was a blast. It was held at l’Ecole de danse swing Cat’s Corner. They graciously donated their space to the event, and although we could have used a few separate conference rooms, it was a nice venue.

Really it comes down to two things: people and ideas.

What happened at BarCamp Montreal was really a sharing of both (although “sharing of people” could be construed the wrong way.)

People introduced people to other people. People connected in an extremely easygoing environment. I think that’s the key; it’s not a giant conference with thousands of people where you feel overwhelmed and can’t just walk up to others and start talking. This was intimate and open. You just sort of milled around and got into conversations.

I was surprised by the diversity. Sure, some might say it’s a “geek fest” but that’s not entirely the case. Plenty of business folk, entrepreneurs, hopeful entrepreneurs and yes, some pure, unadulterated geeks too.

I met a number of very interesting people and I plan on contacting them all in the very near future (if you’re reading this - Ed, Jonathan, Craig, Fred, Ian, Peter and Simon, that means you.) If I forgot anyone’s name, I apologize, but I’ll find you soon enough.

As for ideas … well, they were just as diverse as the people. You had Zeke talking about contemporary art, The Kokoromi Collective presented about their upcoming event, GAMMA O1. Kokoromi is all about developing experimental, artistic games. Their demo showed a game they were working on for GAMMA 01 that was completely affected by the music playing. I’m not doing it justice; just go check out their site.

Jonathan Karpfen presented his newly launched FreakJob, which is a job site that lets users rank the popularity of jobs. It’s like digg for jobs. His story about how he got a job at Airborne Entertainment was hysterical.

Evan Prodromou showed us WikiTravel which I’m going to use as much as I can for Where Is Basil? and Hugh McGuire talked about his project, LibriVox, which is attempting to audio record every book in the public domain.

There were plenty of other good presentations. I didn’t stay all day (I had to get home for my son’s 2nd-ever hair cut…it was a momentous occasion…) but I’m sure the rest of the afternoon went very well.

If I had one suggestion for next time it would be to find a way to shorten the presentations, leave more time for questions, and leave more time to let people talk amongst themselves. More space will help with that, and time management for these kinds of events is damn near impossible, but I know people wanted to connect even more. There were plenty of people I missed…next time!

I want to thank the organizers, it was definitely worthwhile. And I look forward to future BarCamps, CaseCamps, DemoCamps and hopefully a PodCamp for good measure.

And go check out all the pictures done by Simon Law.

I do my best thinking while I’m lying in bed, just before I fall asleep. I finally get the necessary peace and quiet needed to ratchet through the swirling chaos in my skull. I often have to get up quickly to write down my ideas before I finally get some rest. (I used to do my best thinking on the toilet - come on, others can admit to this - but now my son is always opening the door and walking in…it’s just not the same…)

Most of the time while I’m lying there (in my bed, not on the toilet), drool starting to form around my mouth, I rerun through the day’s events, thinking about what was accomplished, what I didn’t do, and looking to connect that with past stuff and future to-dos.

How Buddha is that baby? (No, that’s not me!)

I think it’s important to give yourself “thinking time” every day. Our lives are crazy - work, more work, toss in a bit more work for good measure…oh wait, side project…side project…finish another side project…work, go home, feed family, clean up, sneak in a bit of work when the wife isn’t looking…

It’s to the point where many people just “try and survive” their days, without being able to step back and focus on anything but the fires they’re putting out and the immediate “must do” to-dos. But there’s more to business success and life than that.

So give yourself a few minutes each day and think. Brainstorm in your own head. Argue with yourself (Not to the point of pulling a Gollum…) Get creative!

WHEN do you do your best thinking? And WHERE?