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Posts from the 'Lessons Learned' Category
August 6th, 2007 by Allen Voivod
Here’s how Lani explained the concept of bad karma this morning to our four-and-three-quarters-old son:
It’s like if you yell at someone, and then, not even a minute later, you get conked on the head by a flying duck.
Okay, maybe it doesn’t happen exactly like this in real life. But the idea of karma is closely linked to the Golden Rule, which we’ve also been talking to our son about recently (you know, the “Do unto others as you’d have them do to you” rule). And that all ties back into the Law of Attraction, and focusing on what you want to get out of life, business, love, etc.
The reason I’m blogging about it this morning is because I know more than a few people who don’t give any credence to the Law of Attraction, because it hasn’t appeared to work for them or people they know. And the amazing thing is, we’ve been taught similar things to the Law of Attraction for our whole lives.
I think the Golden Rule is universally accepted as a moral starting point. So if you’re going to act in ways you want to come back to you, why wouldn’t you also think in ways you want to come back to you? Or dwell in the emotions you want to come back to you?
For me, sometimes breaking out of anger is a huge struggle. Sometimes it just feels good to be angry. But I’m finally starting to learn how to step out of my anger, flip my perception of what’s going on around me, and make the active choice to focus on the positive. I’ve probably made that process much more difficult than it really is, but 2007 is the year I’m finally making progress there. I’m by no means perfect at it, but life and business have been much better this year.
Just a deep thought or three for a rain Monday morning.
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June 29th, 2007 by Allen Voivod
 Love him or hate him, Donald Trump has a few lessons for all of us. (For the record: He makes me laugh in ways he probably doesn’t intend.) And one of them kind of slapped me in the face upon waking the other morning.
Lani and I had fallen off The Apprentice bandwagon until about the middle of this last season, when we tuned in again. What I belatedly realized was that many (in not all) of the tasks seemed to be marketing-related. Create a sales brochure and video for Trump’s new Veags condos. A Sunday newspaper advertising insert for a mouthwash. Make money with a car wash. You get the idea.
“So why are the tasks all marketing focused?” I wondered out loud. One of the benefits of working with your spouse is, regardless of business hours, you get your questions answered. “Marketing’s the whole game,” Lani said. “Trump knows it. Everything he does is all about marketing. His show is nothing but marketing for him, his businesses, his lifestyle, and all the brands they feature on the show. And it’s GREAT marketing!”
I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist of it. You can build the coolest product, offer the most desperately-needed service, or run the most efficient business in the world, but if no one knows about it, you’re dead in the water.
Conversely, you can have a crappy product, and if you’re a savvy marketer, you can rake in the dough. At least, you can until the word of mouth on the crappiness kicks in. 
So if you’ve been putting off that press release, stalling on that article, or gotten stuck in planning a workshop, take today and get a marketing piece out there. And tell ‘em Trump made you do it.
For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business, sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com!
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April 2nd, 2007 by Allen Voivod
This realization struck me as I was kind of helping teach my son to ride a bike without training wheels (I say “kind of” because in truth I was just shouting advice - he had the tough part figured out in mere minutes).
So after a couple of times of him yelling “Watch out!” and a couple of ankle contusions for the grown ups who didn’t get out of the way, I said to him, “Stop looking at us. Look past us, where you’re going, and you won’t hit us.”
And it worked! The next day, when he decided he was going to slalom between the parking cones at nearby Gunstock Mountain, I told him not to look at the cones, but look betwen them. And that worked, too.
That night, talking over the day with Lani, I remembered something similar I’d read in Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins. He told a story about learning to drive a race car, and every time he looked at the wall, he drove right into it. His instructor told him to look where he wanted to go, and the car would follow, and it did. So much for my original bike-riding instructions.
Lani brought up a great point - that this instruction has a lot to do with goal setting and achievement. Namely, if you want to reach a goal, you have to keep your eye on it and head straight for it. If you want to fail, keep looking at all the negative consequences of failing at whatever you set out to do.
No, reaching your goals is never as simple as that. But #1, it’s more fun to think about what success looks like, and #2, in my experience, it’s more likely you’ll succeed keeping an eye on the positive.
For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business (and get creative AND effective with your own marketing efforts), sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com!
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March 19th, 2007 by Allen Voivod
 For the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of attending Karyn Greenstreet’s marketing planning teleclass (don’t look for the link on her site as of today’s post - since the class already started, you can only find this link about it on her blog). It’s good foundational stuff, and I highly recommend it.
Though there are any number of great tidbits to quote from it, the one that really resonated with me today was this suggestion from Karyn about what to do with all the emails you receive from information marketers (I’m paraphrasing):
When you sign up to receive someone’s emails, don’t look at them right away. If you use Outlook, just put them in a folder until you have about 10 of them.
Then take a little time to read all 10, right in a row, in one sitting. If you’re not getting the kind of information you want, or if you’re not feeling a connection with the author, then unsubscribe yourself immediately.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve got Outlook folders for about three dozen info marketers and their emails. And who knows how many more gurus I’ve got lurking in the “Grab Bag” folder I set up, because I was sick and tired of setting up new folders.
So that’s what I’m going to do - start weeding them out. Besides, if you believe in the Law of Attraction, then you must know that you don’t have to be an information pack-rat, keeping everything you ever received until the piles of email overflow so much that you crash your Outlook with every boot-up.
Trust that when you need to know something, the answer will come to you - even if you unsubscribed from the source years ago.
For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business (and get creative AND effective with your own marketing efforts), sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com!
Posted in Dances With Gurus, Lessons Learned | No Comments »
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January 29th, 2007 by Lani and Allen
So the other day, Margot Thompson - our fab friend and former VA - emailed us about a gentleman named Dale Buss. Turns out Dale’s been quite busy, writing for such fine publications as The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur magazine, and BrandChannel.com, to name a few.
Now Dale’s looking for “practical advice for spouses who are considering becoming co-entrepreneurs or who already have.” What’s more, he’s looking for this advice on behalf of Forbes.com.
Well, we figure we fit the bill as well as anybody. And maybe we have a thing or two to say on the subject of being in business with your spouse. So here’s what we sent to Dale this morning:
We’ve been married since 2000, parents since 2002, and officially incorporated as a business since 2004.
We’ve “evolved” from freelance writers to content specialists to content strategists to “business owners who market our talents and services to our ideal audience.” (That last evolution is thanks to a series of boot camps and mastermind group adventures we undertook last year with an online marketing guru named Adam Urbanski.)
We share a home office, divvy up work, tag team assignments, split our time among local business groups and networking events, and are booked for workshops, both together and separately, this year.
Coming at you from the eye of the proverbial hurricane – of life, parenting, and business – we often don’t know which end is up. We’re shooting for a place in the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Hall of Fame, even if we have to invent the prestigious recognition vehicle ourselves.
We even created a special “Married – With Business” category in our business blog (the “A-Ha!” blog), which you can find here: http://www.epiphaniesinc.com/blog/category/married-with-business/.
Below are five bits of non-platitudinal advice we hope serve your purposes. If you’d like to connect further, please don’t hesitate to call or email us. We’d be thrilled to help you out any way we can.
- Schedule – and KEEP! – Weekly Business Meetings…During Normal Business Hours. Project Creep is a toxic reality for spouses in business. We found ourselves jotting down deadlines on car trips, using our precious pillow talk time to discuss client issues, and writing to-do tasks for work right under our grocery lists. It wasn’t pretty, and definitely didn’t work for our business or our marriage.
- Divide and Conquer. There was a time we treated each other more like 50% of a whole, rather than two fully-functioning business owners. Once we started splitting work according to our strengths, and holding each other accountable for specific duties, things looked more promising, and less impossible. Plus, we got more done in less time, thus upgrading our profitability.
- Outsource the Finances. Allen has his MBA with a Finance concentration. He’s managed the books for non-profits and small businesses. He also worked in the banking industry for several years. Heck, even Lani worked as a bookkeeper for a multi-million-dollar company for a year. One would think we could handle our own books. One would be woefully mistaken. Stress around finances is a killer for any married couple, so the danger is doubled, if not octupled, for spousal-preneurs. Ever since we hired a third party to keep us on track and honest about budgets, cash flow, performance targets, and small matters like payroll and taxes, we’ve crossed divorce off our list of things to do and have enjoyed focusing on our growth as a team and company.
- Embrace Standardized Tests. We each recently took a DiSC assessment for a client. It’s designed to evaluate and analyze communication preferences, work skills, behavioral styles, professional motivations, etc. We were shocked by how different our natural and adaptive styles are. In fact, we’re polar opposites in most – if not all – areas and abilities. Comparing the reports side by side helped us identify some of our biggest communication challenges, and see why they exist in the first place. It’s changing our expectations, exposing gaps, and inviting empathy into our business at long last. We plan to take the Myers-Briggs test as soon as possible.
- Don’t Be All Up in Each Other’s Grills. Space, people. Space. When you’re working, living, breathing, sleeping, parenting, eating, doing laundry, washing dishes, and Tivo-ing favorite TV shows together, all in the same square footage, you have to give each other time to remember you actually like and value your business partner. And your spouse. Solo excursions. Girls and Guys Nights Out. Even mini-vacations and/or business trips without the better half tagging along. Absence doesn’t only make the heart grow fonder – it often reminds you to schedule that long overdue, closed door and candlelit “lunch meeting.” Which in turn reminds you of the perks of being in business with your spouse.
Hope the above tips help you or anyone you love who’d like to remain married while pursuing the American dream under one Tax ID number.
For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business (with or without your spouse), sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com!
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January 16th, 2007 by Allen Voivod
Imagine 11 solo professionals and small business owners in a hotel conference room, all with the fierce determination to improve what they offer to their clients and prospects.
A mentor revealing the secrets to killer presentations even as he weaves one or three of his own.
Improv exercises that train you to link any image - and I mean ANY image - to your main marketing message.
That, in a nutshell, was day 2 of Adam Urbanski’s Platinum VIP Mastermind Retreat in sunny Garden Grove, CA. And if you want an even smaller nutshell, try this one: A 3 minute, 44 second audio recap of the biggest insights from the eventful second day.
(And, no doubt, partially fueled by the wine I had at dinner that night. Thanks for being the founder of the feast again, Adam!)
Posted in A-Has in the Ether, Dances With Gurus, Lessons Learned, Masterminding | No Comments »
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on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 5:20 pm and is filed under A-Has in the Ether, Dances With Gurus, Lessons Learned, Masterminding.
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January 16th, 2007 by Allen Voivod
Two days locked in a room with a marketing mentor (that’s Adam Urbanski) and a select group of savvy business owners. Free-form firestorms of ideas, strategy, and executable plans. Coffee, cookies, and concentrated advice.
Lani had to stay home with our beautiful, increasingly energetic son for this one, so Allen (that’s me) filed this audio dispatch (2 minutes, 19 seconds) from deep inside Adam’s Platinum VIP Mastermind Retreat, revealing the big insights from Day One:
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on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 4:18 pm and is filed under A-Has in the Ether, Dances With Gurus, Lessons Learned, Masterminding.
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November 27th, 2006 by Allen Voivod
 I like my pop culture as much as the next guy. And probably a heck of a lot more. So when Giant Magazine debuted a while back, I was pretty thrilled. Though it was a bi-monthly (and, thus, didn’t address the pop culture fix I needed the way Entertainment Weekly did), Giant more than made up for it with a deeper level of detail, the luxury of the every-other-month schedule.
And then they went through some sort of editorial shake-up, which resulted in an entirely new look, feel and focus. I’m sure there was a reason. I’m sure it had to do with money and circulation numbers or some such accounting. I was certain I was going to be annoyed that the magazine I liked had been wiped off the face of the earth.
 Here’s the first issue of the new-look Giant (they’re three issues into the re-design now). I would have rebelled against it entirely if not for the words of new Editor-in-Chief Smokey D. Fontaine in his first editorial letter, quoting Editorial Director Scott Poulson-Bryant as saying “hustle is the new talent.”
This, needless to say, is catching some flack from people who are picking the definition of “hustle” that means to con someone. And who don’t like the new-look Giant.
But despite being initially put off by the new design, I read their use of “hustle” in the positive - to act quickly and forcefully, especially in getting things done.
And as evidence that my take is the correct one, their back page feature is titled “Hustle” and subtitled, “How You Can Be…”
So far, they’ve featured Marc Ecko, Dallas Austin, and Stephen Stoute. Would these three ever have crossed my radar otherwise? Doubt it. Am I thankful to Giant for changing their format for this reason alone? Oh my, yes.
The big idea? Look for inspiration in places you aren’t expecting it - places that might even turn you off at first blush. That’s a good place to find ideas that might otherwise have never occurred to you.
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November 16th, 2006 by Lani Voivod
Ever heard of a spunky gal named Amanda Congdon? 
She’s a modern-day fairy tale of what it means to “A-Ha Yourself!” After six painful weeks in a post-college cubicle plopped in the middle of a major NYC ad adgency, she took the stand that being surrounded by push-pin friendly walls was NOT her bag, baby.
So what’s a girl to do?
Well, this moxified chick decided to launch her own videoblog, Rocketboom.com. Three minutes. News, culture, riffs, intertviews, new media rants, and LOTS of color commentary with a smart, comedic slant.
 Her audience grew from 700 peeps in 2004 to 70,000 in 2005 to a whopping 300,000+ by the time some big wigs in old media offered to buy her self-made enterprise. Unfortunately, when the suits were nodding their heads and agreeing to her terms - radical suggestions like creative control, keeping a sense of integrity about the show, and maintaining cultural relevance to her standards - they had their fingers crossed behind their backs.
Amanda “UnBoomed” in July, 2006.
You never have to worry about the risk-taking creative ones, though. Amanda’s off to bigger and better things, vlogging her way across the country with an “old media” crew…on her OWN terms.
Don’t miss this truly great 10-question interview of Amanda by Guy Kawasaki. She’s been there and back again and offers a great perspective on just how powerful new media can be for your own starry-eyed ambitions.
Have YOU ever considered launching your own vlog? Her clips were pretty darn basic when she started them, back in 2004. No reason why YOU couldn’t be the go-to talking head for your niche or industry. (I personally think it was the rough, unpolished, authentic content that drew fans by the hundreds of thousands, but that’s just me.)
Rock on, Amanda!
For FREE articles, tips, and strategies designed to catapult your content and electrify your business, sign up for our ezine, “The Inciter,” at EpiphaniesInc.com!
Posted in How do you "A-Ha Yourself"?, Lessons Learned | No Comments »
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on Thursday, November 16th, 2006 at 9:02 am and is filed under How do you "A-Ha Yourself"?, Lessons Learned.
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September 21st, 2006 by Allen Voivod
Lani and I drove our son to pre-school this morning, bringing birthday goodies to his class (he turned four today, the little man did). As we did, we saw our local church spire stretching above the trees, with their leaves already changing colors.
As for the church, it reminded Lani and I of an article we once read about how the tallest buildings in the world reflected what was most important to a culture.
- When a country’s culture centered primarily around religion, churches were the tallest structures.
- When it was government, then government buildings were the tallest.
- When it was business, skyscrapers were the tallest.
And now…the world’s tallest structure is (drumroll please)…
A radio mast in Blanchard, North Dakota.
Yes, you read that right. In fact, of the 20 tallest structures in the world, the overwhelming majority are radio, TV, or cell phone towers.
So, what does that say about us? That communication is now the most important element of our culture. Sending ideas, stories, thoughts, hopes, dreams, and plans across the miles to each other.
And this communication can be about religion, or government, or business, or none of these. Making information flow faster, more freely, more efficiently, with more people - that’s what life’s all about these days.
And a kid who turned four today. It’s all about him, too.
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