There is a recent book out that I am looking forward to reading called One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success by Marci Alboher about how many of us juggle multiple careers (sometimes simultaneously) and slash our way through multifaceted lives. I can't officially recommend the book yet since I haven't actually read it but I will in short order because this describes me, and I would imagine many of you, pretty well.

The reason I felt it important to bring this up, even before I read the book is because so many of us juggle so many things all the time and often feel a bit abnormal for the extent to which we do so. It has long been my belief that we can me a master of many things and that rounded effect benefits us in many ways. However, there is a word of caution in being multifaceted ...focus. Focus is a hallmark of all seriously successful people, though they all seem to do many things dot they? The Donald makes a good target for that discussion. He is a Real Estate mogul first and foremost but also a TV personality, author, speaker, ... but they all focus back on making his core business even more successful. It is easy, as I alluded to in an earlier post, to be easily distracted by the things we do but I'll reiterate my earlier point because I think it's an important concept for "slashes" to keep in mind. You can maintain a multifaceted life while eliminating the distractions which keep you from accomplishing your goals by focusing the peripheral things you do on your main objective. Only you can decide what that main objective is but if you are starting a business then I would suggest it is that. If for some sick reason (like me) you are starting more than one at the same time be VERY careful, it is easy to get distracted and always be busy but never accomplish anything. The best bet is to find a way for those businesses and activities to work together to accomplish a common unified goal. If you are dedicated to very disparate, unrelated activities, keeping focus on your primary objective will be difficult unless you make them work together.

I can't give away too much about what I am working on just yet but I will tell you that one of my "activities" is actively learning the ins-and-outs of how advertising and marketing really work on-line (side note: a lot of it is common sense, a lot of it is counter intuitive but more on that topic down the road). What's interesting is that there is a world of people building businesses doing nothing but on-line advertising and marketing (think niche), and while I could pursue it as they do, I can also use that knowledge and expertise to the benefit my other efforts.

That is just one of many possible examples but the point is the same. Find the relationship between the different things you do and the benefit of getting them to work together on will be exponential on all fronts. Are you an amateur/recreational photographer who wants to start a business selling candles? Then apply photography to your business idea. You might come up with some creative and cool photographs for your product which might otherwise not seem that interesting in pictures. Your camera just became a business write off and your creative fun time working (but it won't feel like working, a HUGE bonus). Now you have a marketing edge and get to be the artist all at the same time. So remember in your pictures that emotion sells (better than anything) and cool pictures which elicit emotional responses will help!

This might sell candles, but this is better.
Add some candles to this and it might be perfect. *Interesting that as I was searching for pictures depicting people and romance and candles I didn't find squat when "candles" were the primary part of the search. Talk about a niche opportunity. Cool pictures of candles might be too small (though you never know unless you do the analysis) but this is how ideas happen! Of course this isn't a blog entry on sales and marketing so we'll end it here.

Last note and little disclaimer, keep a something in your life unrelated and hugely distracting from business because we all need a break from time to time.

Labels: personal strategy