Tag Archives: business

Balancing Rocks by viralbus

What is Balance?

Thoughts, , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been thinking a lot about “balance” this week. I’ve had a lot of difficult decisions to make over the last three weeks due to a series of events that happened in January, and I’ve realized how much of my time and efforts I spend thinking about difficult decisions or dealing with emotions at arise from them.

I’ve been co-parenting for two months now. I have committed to be partially responsible for certain things for a 14 year old and a 10 year old. It’s been an amazing adventure for me and I really love it. Instant family is what some of my more cheeky friends are calling it. I’m learning so much about myself, other adults, and the world through this experience.

Shortly after that I went off into my own business and have been working to produce quality code for my clients and get everyone on a consistent schedule. For a few weeks everything was running smoothly, until we hit a bump and I feel as if its been in a slow slide since then.

So this week my mission was to find balance again and get moving on with my goals and my life and leave the drama where it belongs. I feel a bit like a hand-pushed lawnmower that takes a few times of pulling the string to start up.

My inbox is filled with newsletters I’ve signed up for. I get at least 10 a day. I read at least half of them and the others I only read if the subject catches my eye. There’s once newsletter that I get that I always read now, from a company called “Savor the Success“, a premier business network for entrepreneurs owned by a woman by the name of Angela Jia Kim. And in watching the latest youtube video in the newsletter, I saw one from the past that caught my attention that talked about balancing work and life. So I watched that one, and I haven’t felt this inspired all week so I thought I’d take the time out really quick to capture the inspiration in a blog post so as to remind myself of the moment I felt inspired… a way I use to motivate me forward.

So I thought I’d share the video with everyone else!

The reason why this felt so inspiring to me was because I loved the concept of work/life integration and have been considering the question of what if I’m wrong that any balance needs to be achieved? What if I am better off just accepting life as it is and working with what I’ve got? In my own organization (or attempt to do so) attempts, I started working with Google Calendar, assigning all of my clients a calendar so I can keep track of proposed due dates and hard due dates, etc. So far its been okay, although a bit time consuming to use.

By the way, I’m not a premium member of “Savor the Success” yet, but as soon as I can get steady on my feet I will be signing up. It is an inspiring series that has a promising and active group of women. I’d love to meet up with Angela some day. I’m also really impressed with what I see of her husband’s involvement in her life and her companies.

Either way, I’m inspired, and I hope some of you feel inspired too.

Love,
Tabby

Small accomplishments

About Me

“The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play. “ ~Arnold Toynbee

Ahh, it’s 1:45 in the morning, and I have just finished setting up the first computer in my new office network. I spent several minutes trying to think of the most important element to any office… the computer naming scheme, and I have come up with what I think is pretty clever and can easily expand as the business grows; a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” theme. I’m giving all of the servers and computers names from characters or places from the tvshow. We have “Willow” for my macbook, and I’ll wait to name my other computer until Heather picks a name for hers tomorrow.

Note to Heather: VERY IMPORTANT TASK!

Aside from the office network, it’s now 1:49 in the morning, and I’m listening to the bittersweet lyrics of Vienna Teng. I’ve decided to write my own WordPress plugin to accomplish a task one of my clients wants for her site. Why not? I need to contribute more to the online world, so this will be a great start for me. This plugin will be very useful for teachers or professors wanting to work with students, allowing them to pass different things to each other using the blog. I’m very excited and am hoping to get version .01 done this weekend.

I’m still swimming in business plans and financing information, but I know I’ll have more time next week to finalize everything. So far, the transition is going smoothly, save the impending removal of the regular salary. I’ve got a lot of support from everyone around me, so I have no doubt I’ll succeed… Even if it means some long long hours and many meetings.

I don’t think I have very many readers on this blog yet, but for those that are keeping track, I have a question for you to think about. Much of my journey to this point has been a lot of observance with regards to what is “good” business practice and what is “bad” business practice. I’ve got a lot of ideas, but I always welcome more. I figured I’d open this entry up to discussion with regards to “good” and “bad” practices. Try to think of things that happened in your company that you wish could have gone differently, or that would have made things so much more efficient. Think of those times where you may have perceived some malevolence in a co-worker or in upper management, and how that could have been dealt with differently.

I know one of my biggest weaknesses is attributing malevolent intentions to people, which is very strange because I believe that ultimately all my projections are a sign of something within myself… and I don’t really see myself as a particularly malevolent person. I’ll have to explore that a bit.

It’s now exactly 2:00am, and my favorite Zero 7 song of ALL TIME is on, so that’s a good sign that I should try to switch my brain off and get some Zzzs. I want to be nice and happy and fresh for my last day of being an employee!

Love you peoples!

PS. Read up on Tornybee. One of the things I like about him is that he thought just slightly outside the box, and I can relate to that! What can I say? It’s one of my strengths, depending on who’s point of view we’re looking through!

The American Dream

Projects

“You don’t like your job, you don’t strike. You go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.”

~Homer Simpson

It’s been months and months and perhaps even half a year since I last posted in this thing! I can explain that! WORK!! Having a full-time job while running a business has been one of my greatest challenges in my entire adult life. It’s been a difficult journey between keeping clients happy while not violating ethics at work and coding there. Occasionally, I am allowed the freedom to do something on an emergency basis, but any substantial pieces of code would have technically belonged to my full-time job rather than my clients, and I wanted to avoid that as much as possible.

I am now in week two of my last two weeks as a employee– hopefully forever! Yup! In my months of silence on this blog, I’ve figured out how to do quite a bit of the tasks I was looking for and should be getting my LLC papers in the mail today or tomorrow. I now am CEO of Prestige Interactive Network, LLC. We also have a CFO as well; my partner, Heather Shirk, has stepped up to the plate. All these fancy titles, and I honestly don’t really even know what they mean. I’ll just continue to do what I normally do, except all of the paperwork and money issues, which now Heather will take care of.

So, the last two weeks of working at any job is always either going to be SUPER busy, or not at all. It seems the last two weeks at my current job has been the latter. I can’t start any major projects since all of them will likely take a week or two. So, I’m just given light tasks. It’s driving my overly-active mind crazy because I’m the type of person that usually has to be doing 12 things at once. I think I am one impairment away from being ADHD– my mind needs to be THAT active.

So, starting Tuesday, November 21st, I will be full time into Prestige. I’ve got so many fun projects coming up to work on that I can’t wait for that date to come to be able to just dedicate myself to those projects. I’ve got SO much left to learn about running a business with the legalities and taxes, etc. But it’ll come!

And so, thus starts out my regular weekly (or so) blog about running a business. I’ve decided that this is just going to be where I’ll talk about either business concepts that I’m learning, projects I’m working on and releases, coding issues I’m trying to overcome or have found a fix for, and sometimes there might be a bit of business philosophy mixed into the bag as well.

I still like to think of Prestige as one of the more unique and beneficial companies. We’re objective-based, rather than time-based, meaning there are no set hours to work, just set objectives to meet. Many employees can’t deal with that at first. I know I couldn’t. But once you get used to it, it’s fantastic.

Well! Time to get to my full-time; another five business days left there!

“There’s been a breach of insecurity, sir!”

Projects,

In my “ample” days of “modern employement”, as I like to call it, I’ve been able to glean a few ideas about running a business. I call it the “when I’m a parent” method of learning. It’s very difficult to really peg what you don’t know, but very easy and efficient to analyze what you do know. I’ve experienced just as much as any 28 year old woman has in the workplace, especially given my chosen career in the primarily male-dominant industry of Computer Science, and one of the biggest faults that seem to plague several of my positions is the feeling of insecurity.One of the fastest ways to generate slower productivity rates in an employee is to make them feel as if they could mess up at any moment, and if they did, they could be easily replaced. The truth is that everyone knows their replacement status anyway… we have colleagues and coworkers to remind us of this truth on a constant basis. Employees don’t need to be reminded of something they already know. Creating an insecure feeling amongst your team degenerates the processes to a point where many employees can no longer function on their task and getting it done, but rather who sees what and how they’re interpreting it.

This is a serious situation in many companies, and a sad predicament, to be sure. Why run a company if your primary goal is to keep people feeling insecure and down? Wouldn’t it be a better idea to run a company where all of your employees feel like they WANT to reach their maximum potential on the job?

For me, personally, I’ve found that I work best given rules, guidelines, and goals. I work least given micromanagement and over-reporting. It’s draining and a grand interruption in the flow of my work day to be constantly stopped for a status report.

In putting that “when I’m a parent” method into practice, knowing what I know about how I am most productive, I tend to want to treat those who work for me in the same manner. I feel I have been very successful thus far, and hope to continue to have the same respect I wish from others for those that I employ.

It’s a simple concept. Treat your employee like you want them and appreciate their hard work, and they’ll respond like-wise.

The Slogan Never Changes

About Me, ,

“I’ll keep it short and sweet — Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.”

~Mr. Burns

For three years now, one of my personal mottos is “It doesn’t have to be a dog-eat-dog world.” In my short post-BA stint between the gown and now, I’ve seen a lot of negative reactions to success; primarily other people reacting to someone else’s success, and it always greatly concerned me. I’ve always firmly believed that one should gain success and prestige through one’s own merits, and through support from others if it’s available to them. What does it gain a person if their goal in getting to the top of the life-latter is by dumping everyone off of it and removing the bottom run each time. It doesn’t make the success any greater, it just makes the latter shorter. Or at least, that’s how I view it.

Ebenezer Scrooge learned that very lesson in business after he was frightened into it by some ghosts and hauntings of how his behavior effected everyone else around him in most horrific ways. I tend to believe that every well person, no matter how “business-like” he or she comes across, has some kind of compassion inside of them for something, be it children, or flowers, or death, or poverty, or employees, or… there’s always something that makes a hard heart go goo. That’s really my point. It’s always better to focus and be compassionate about life than to lose focus of your goals and forget what makes you goo.

I’ve had four full time jobs post-baccalaureate, each had a completely different lesson learned from it, and I’m still continually learning from the fourth one. In two of those jobs, I’ve been able to glean great and successful ways in how I want to run my business, once it gets fully up and running. The other two jobs have taught me more about what I don’t want to do, and has helped me distinguish what I feel is so important in running a successful business; compassion for those involved.
I know all of these ideas that I’ve picked up along the years, such as “That’s something I’m (not) going to do when I have my own business” is the same vague prediction as a 12 year old girl’s already-planned wedding, but I hope that I’m able to fully exercise what I’ve learned in order to make the best experience possible for my business, my employees, and my consumers.

It doesn’t have to be a dog-eat-dog world, whether in the world or in the workplace. If you’ve got your stuff together, and you get support and focus on your own business, there’s plenty to work on there without having to bust anyone else down.
There’s too much building up to worry about tearing down, and quite frankly, I think there’s more success to be had in the building up feature. It gets you closer to the goal, and keeps you happier. Really, it’s a win-win.

Obligatory First Post

About Me,

“Do you have a business women special? You know, like, some places have a lunch special, for like, business women?” ~Romy

I moved to Los Angeles, CA just over two and a half years ago, with hopes and dreams that I’d be a star. The glitter and gold and shiny things, and the hair dressers and the makeup artists and the fabulous fashion… I couldn’t get enough of it in my small college town in southern Idaho; the market was dead up there unless you wanted to do commercials for insurance companies. I knew I had to break away from my comfortable life in the small city and move to the coast; the land of the stars.

Just kidding! Honestly, if there’s a spectrum of skills from “I’m VERY good at that one!” to “wow, okay let’s not do that again” acting is very much in the latter end of that scale.

Why did I make this trek, you might still be asking. Or perhaps you might not be asking since not many people even know who I am unless I’ve sent you to this blog. It’s simple. I’m in the field of Computer Science. Like acting, the market is in a higher demand here in Los Angeles. Unlike acting, I’ve never had a hard time getting work, which is why I’m here writing.

For many years now, including those long years in college, I have been running a freelance lifestyle on the side of my fulltime jobs. In LA, I’ve taken the “must find low paying jobs at all cost” route, which included a job change with a rather hefty paycut and the tagline “I believe in the product I’m creating, I believe it’ll sell and payoff.”

I’m still in sell mode with that one, but in the mean time I’m finding that my freelance lifestyle is attempting to bleed over into my full time jobs, and that never goes over well with bosses. So my grand scheme to solve this problem is to turn it into a business now, and enhance later, after “my ship comes in”. Problem is, I know next to nothing about business. On top of that, aside from being well associated with technology, I have somehow fallen behind in the skill of “THE GOOGLE SEARCH” and somehow it never gives me the information I’m looking for. So, it’s really an intresting experience, trying to get a small business started with no idea of what I’m doing, no real money to hire a CPA at the moment, and no CLUE where to find a reasonably priced lawyer to take care of those pesky business needs… like changing from a sole proprietorship to a S-Corp.

So, I figured I’d start a little blog, and write about my journey as an unexperienced business entrepreneur, an experienced software engineer, and a woman.