JMPR Communication

Archive for February, 2009

Are you doing what you REALLY want to be doing with your life?  6 months ago, I wasn’t.  Don’t get me wrong, I liked my job.  I valued the experience I was getting at the large and prestigious company I was working for… but I wasn’t REALLY doing what I wanted to be doing.

For me, it took a rather large kick in the booty to get my life going in the direction I wanted: a layoff.

I’ll tell you something that’s weird.  The second I got laid off, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude.  I knew I was ready to start working for myself, but I ALSO knew that I didn’t  have the strength and courage to walk away from my paycheck.  More importantly, I don’t think I REALLY TRUSTED that I could run my own business.  After all, wasn’t that kind of activity for seasoned experts?  You know, people that have worked for the “man” for 20+ years?

So I took the leap.  I started my own consulting company.  But the biggest challenge for me as been as follows:

Trust yourself.  You know more than you think you do. -Benjamin Spock

Image by NickyFern

I imagine most entrepreneurs jump out of the corporate world because they DO believe in themselves.  And because they believe they can do the work better than anyone else.   Don’t get me wrong, I started my business for the same exact reasons.

But is there something called entrepreneurial doubt?

Here’s what I’ve learned in the last 6 months:

1) Ignore everything anyone has ever said to you that was negative, and non-constructive about your business performance or dreams.

I used to talk about starting my own business with some of my peers prior to my new venture.  I would hear comments such as: “Really?  I wouldn’t do that.  You need like 15 years of experience.”  OR “Who would hire someone for social media related PR?”  Usually negative comments aren’t about you.  They are usually about fear- because you might know something they don’t.  (This past conversation in particular was re-sparked when I read this post this week: here.) Ignore naysayers and move on.

2) Consider every piece of constructive criticism you’ve ever received and strive to improve in those areas.

I’ve often been told that timeliness is not one of my strengths.  Now that I am working on my own, I find that I WANT to be on time.  In fact, I have shown up to work before 7 every day this week.

3) Consider you personal strengths, and figure out how to apply them to your daily tasks.

When working at my prior job, I found myself going home, having fun with social networking, and trying to determine how to apply it to public relations (my job).  I am now running a business where I have the opportunity to combine my skills (public relations) with my passions (social media).  Fun!

4) Consider your personal weaknesses and make improvement of them priorities.

I dislike anything administrative, and I will put it off to the last second, often to the detriment of my other work.  I am now rewarding myself for applying the same enthusiasm to these tasks that I give my more meaty tasks.  I am my boss AND the worker.  Rewarding myself is important!

So here I am, 6 months since being laid off and I have a healthy roster of clients.  I feel VERY blessed to be where I am today, working for myself and doing what I LOVE.  Today I TRUST that not only CAN I run my own business, but I WILL do a great job.

How about you?  Share your stories!  Are you working for yourself, or do you want to?  What made you take the leap?  If you haven’t, what’s stopping you?

As always, thanks for stopping by.

I pride myself in being willing to learn ANY new social media application or technolgy.  More than that, I genuinely WANT to learn anything social media related.  But honestly, I am not awesome at everything I try out.

This month I stumbled upon one such social media beast.  Maybe you’ve heard of it.  Wikipedia.  Let me preface this blog by saying: I LOVE Wikipedia.  It’s my favorite tool in all the land.  I can find out anything I want to know just by “Wikipedia-ing” it.  But this is where things get scary: ANYONE can edit it.  Let me repeat that: EVERYONE can edit Wikipedia.

Why Wikipedia?
I have an amazing client who wanted to be on Wikipedia.  I was forthright with them and said, I can learn how to do it for you, but I am not a programmer, and I have not placed edited a Wikipedia page from scratch before.  (It’s important to be honest, I think.)  They said that was fine, and off I went.

Important things I learned from the get-go:
If you think you’re going to get onto Wikipedia, create an account and just type in the information about your client, click save and be done:

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

No.  That’s not how it works.  Your article will VERY quickly be marked for “speedy deletion” as it will look like spam to either the administrators or spam catcher robots that run Wikipedia-land.  This is not good, because when you try to re-enter your article after following the RIGHT steps, it will already have the scarlet letter A stamped on it as prior, it was “speedily deleted” when you had no idea what you were doing.

So what do I do?

I spoke with Tony over at Airdale Brewing Company who has a fantastic Wikipedia Page.  He gave me the advice that in order to create your own page, you must first become an “autoconfirmed user” of Wikipedia.  This means that you have to contribute to (edit) ten other Wikipedia pages before you can create one of your own.  In part this makes sense.  This proves that you are not a spammer.  This proves that you care about the Wiki community.  And really, this process teaches you HOW to edit.

This was also one of the most humbling experiences ever.  You think you know a LOT about stuff in general?  Yeah, go edit 10 Wiki pages.  I’ll wait.

People already know (and added) a lot of the information you thought you could add, huh?

So needless to say, editing 10 pages took me an embarrassingly long time.  At long last, I finished it.

Editing your page

This is not a place where I can teach you a lot.  I suggest you look at the templates of others.  Read LOTS of articles like this one. But be prepared to fight.  Within 10 minutes of my page going up, it was RE-tagged for speedy deletion.

I can tell you this:

• My page did not promote my client with links.
• My page DID include links of their partners in the appropriate external links section.
• My page DID include many references/news articles.
• My page DID link to many other places around Wikipedia.

The Good News:
Upon being re-marked for speedy deletion, I sparked a conversation with the administrators. (Whose names are so secret they don’t even know each other.  I’m not making this up.) I have received some helpful advice and it looks like my client’s page will be active shortly.  Ironically Wikipedia’s editing page is acting up right now, so I’ll have to try later.

But it reminds me: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again.  And don’t be afraid to share you’re failures with your friends so they can succeed.

What about you?  What Wikipedia advice/stories/lessons do you have to share?  I’d LOVE to hear them.