Yesterday, I started writing a post to put right here. It was about all those posts that instruct us to be amazing, epic or otherwise phenomenal, and how they make me feel. You know the ones I’m talking about – they encourage ust to go out and do big things, to change the world, to make a difference. They always include some examples to inspire and to demonstrate that it’s possible, if you’re willing to sacrifice enough and to follow your dreams with enough dedication.

 

Writing it brought me to the realization that I prefer stories that are amazing on a personal scale. I like knowing about people who change their own worlds, whether the rest of us know about it or not. “Average” people put forth Hurculean efforts just to get by, and those stories are special, too.

 

People who give up jobs to care for aging parents may not be doing something that the rest of the world stands up and applauds, but you can bet that, to the parent being cared for, the sacrifice is huge. Contributing food to a shelter might not be worthy of the national news, but for the person who gets to eat dinner, it’s plenty important.  Overcoming addiction or losing weight or getting a higher education are the most personal kinds of accomplishments, but for the individuals who do those things, the world becomes a different place and thus, they have “made a difference.”

 

Have you saved a stray kitten recently? Provided dinner for a neighbor? Loaned a friend $10? Contributed to a charity? Donated blood? Complimented a stranger? Let someone go first in line at the store?

 

Everyday kind gestures and actions might not rock the world on a grand scale, but they do make a difference. Good deeds on a small scale deserve recognition and appreciation. Leave a comment and tell us about something small you’ve done or observed lately and let us applaud it.

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You know those people who never quit smiling? Who sugar coat even the worst news and serve it up with a vacant mask of a smile? Those people are just icky. Equally intolerable, though, are the ones who  always expect the worse, can’t stand kids or puppies, have innumerable health problems that they don’t mind talking about, hate their jobs and their spouses – should they be so lucky – and whine about how they just don’t have any good luck, ever.

 

Most of us fall in the middle of the miserable to happy spectrum and tend to lean to one side more one day than the next. In my life, I’ve been lucky to know two people who were able to gently remind everyone around them to look on the bright side. One was my mom and the other my aunt Betty. They were sisters-in-law, and passed away years apart, but both of them had amazingly wonderful attitudes without being falsely cheerful.

 

The world is a less shiny place without the two of them in it, but they did leave some lasting reminders to pay attention to the good stuff. People share their favorite stories about those who are gone and a couple that I’ve been told about these two cross my mind regularly. Stories about Mary Ann and Betty almost always bring smiles, just like the two of them did in actuality.

 

My mom and one of her friends, Nancy, had been shopping one afternoon and were on their way home.  Nancy said that as they were riding

along, she was complaining about all the stuff everyone always complains about – kids, bills, work, all the things that make life hard. It was right at sunset and my mom interrupted her to say, “Would you just look at that sunset? Have you ever seen anything so pretty? Wow. Just look at that!” We lived on a mountain, so no doubt, the view of the sunset really was stunning. Nancy told me that now, every time she catches herself complaining, she thinks about that day and remembers to look up and see what kind of amazing beauty she is missing.

 

Just yesterday, someone told me that Betty gave her a similar reminder. Our entire family, probably 60 or more people, took a camping trip to Dauphin Island one year on Easter weekend. A trip like that is rare for us – in fact, it’s the only one I remember – so it was really special. Nellie, another aunt, said that she got up on Saturday morning, and walked to the bathhouse with Betty, complaining about how her tooth brush got flattened in her bag, how a pine cone poked her through the tent floor all night, how yukky showering in a bathhouse is, and on and on. Betty looked at her and laughed and said, “Well, Nellie, you’re just not a happy camper today, are you?” Nellie said just that simple question reminded her of how nice it was to be with her family, at the beach, camping with a bathhouse and everything else that was good about that moment.

 

Right now is an easy time to be angry. Most of us have something to legitimately complain about. The ridiculousness of the United States congress, the insanity of the stock market, the fear of a “double dip” recession, and so many more events happening all over the world have many of us on edge. If your business is down, your income is down, and it’s possible that your attitude is down, too – with good reason.

 

While I don’t suggest that you slap a fake smile on or pretend to feel something you do not, I do firmly believe that your business will benefit if you take some time everyday to appreciate the good stuff. When you do your work fully cognizant of the beauty all around you, every person you interact with notices. It is seriously doubtful that either Mary Ann or Betty was aware of the lasting lessons they taught us just by being themselves.

 

Small talk is inevitable. What does yours say about you? Are you fearful or angry? Do you have a positive outlook that your customers or prospects can pick up on and feel good about? No matter how tough things are there are still sunsets to appreciate.

 

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Last weekend, I did something out of character that pushed me so far out of my comfort zone that it was almost laughable. I participated in a weekend startup event called 48 Hour Launch. I pitched an idea, put together a team and then did everything I could do to get a company ready to launch over the course of one weekend.

 

Now, thinking up an idea is not the part that is out of character because I’m a veritable fountain of ideas. Telling people about them, acting on them, doing something with them – now that’s a different story. Usually, I just voice these ideas, do a little research and discard them pretty quickly.

 

Here’s what my idea was: an online bookstore that only sells books by independent authors. I love to support small businesses, and to me, an author that self-publishes is basically running a small business around her book. Besides writing the book, the author has to handle all the marketing and selling that is involved in getting it in front of the eyes of readers. I applaud the entrepreneurship involved, and besides, there are some really good self published books out there.

 

My teammate, the incomparable Chanté Newcomb, and I created a plan, put together a site through a store front template, scrapped it, built an ecommerce site on WordPress, contacted some authors, and found out…writers probably wouldn’t want to list their books in a self-published only store.

 

What we learned is that there are plenty of places to buy self-published books online, and that writers still fear the stigma of self publication. Plus, writers make more money through direct sales on their own sites.

 

At this point I had faced two potentially idea-killing blows: Chanté and I were the only two working on this project and the people I wanted to help didn’t like my plan.

 

Instead of quitting – which was tempting – I decided to change it a little and turn it into something that would appeal to writers and that would help them make more direct sales of their books. While authors may not need another outlet for sales, what they do need is help in marketing their work.

 

Writers need information about where people who view their pages and sites are coming from so that they can make informed decisions about how they will market. They need a way of separating themselves from the crowded slush pile that (in some ways) the Internet has become. They need assistance in getting in front of the eyes of people who would read their work – if they knew about it.

 

So, my idea went from building an online bookstore to creating a directory of independent writers, where readers could also purchase books if they wanted. Each writer would be given an author’s page, where they could blog, or host contests, or present trivia, and generally promote their work. Most importantly, readers would be encouraged to click through to authors’ sites to make direct purchases.

 

Besides giving the author access to and control of his or her own space in the directory, we would also do interviews, produce pod casts and feature different writers on the home page and the Facebook page. We would send the authors statistics about their traffic on our site – how many visitors, where they were referred from and so on, so that they would have an additional tool for finding their target audience.

 

All of these changes came about on Saturday night, approximately half way into the 48 hours. Right about the same time Chanté decided a storefront template wouldn’t work for our project.

 

If you ever want to work with someone who will dig into your project and be committed to making it work, get in touch with Chanté. She worked throughout the night Saturday night (I know this because she was posting on Twitter at 6am Sunday morning) to put together the WordPress site, making sure we would have something to demonstrate Sunday evening.

 

Although we didn’t win in the most traditional sense of the word, we did come away with a viable plan to pursue, a site that we will continue to polish and build, and a really amazing feeling of accomplishment. Every project presented was a potential viable business. Some, like ours, will need more work to get there, but certainly success is foreseeable for all nine projects that made it through to the Sunday night presentations.

 

There are lots of people I’d like to thank for helping me (in no particular order):

Chanté Newcomb of The Mane Scene – I wouldn’t have even attempted the project without Chanté’s input and invaluable assistance.

The Company Lab – Sheldon  and Enoch lead an amazing resource for Chattanooga in general and people here who are interested in starting businesses specifically.

Jon Moss of Moss Media Labs - Jon’s amazing networking abilities certainly came through in a pinch, not to mention several excellent, practical suggestions he offered over the course of the weekend.

Carlos Aleman, independent writer of As Happy As Ling – Carlos let us put his book up for sale on the site and offered extremely useful critical feedback from an author’s perspective.

Josh Davis of Churchsurfer – Josh brainstormed with us for several hours on Friday night and his suggestions and thoughts helped spur the project forward.

Lauren & Wade Honeycutt of TripRaiser – We shared a “station” with this lovely couple, who could have viewed us as competitors but instead consistently listened to problems, made suggestions and helped us over hurdles. They drove all the way from Nashville to be there and I’m so glad they did.

Yosef Hamadeh of Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel – Yosef was there to offer legal advice and listened to my plan at a critical moment on Sunday, gave great feedback and made me feel much better about the presentation in general. Plus, he told me what sort of legal documents we would need to be in place down the road.

David Niall Wilson, Jenn Mattern, and Evelyn Lafont who are all experienced in writing and publishing and who took the time to evaluate our idea and identified pitfalls and obstacles and issues we were sure to encounter. Constructive criticism is the best kind and all three of these people went over and above by taking the time to help.

 

There were so many others who dropped by and made suggestions, listened to my presentation and offered feedback, reached out to people they knew who could help and much more. I don’t know everyone’s name, but thanks to every person who even put in an appearance over the weekend. And, definitely a huge thanks to all of the restaurants, individuals, Velo Coffee Roasters and Chattanooga Brewing for keeping us supplied with food, coffee and excellent beer.

 

 

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Last week, a regular client asked if I would mind helping him address some post cards for an open house.  This is a retainer client, one who is particularly easy to work with, so of course I said I’d help.

No problem.

 

It turned out to be a few hundred post cards to be addressed by hand. My husband asked how much extra I was being paid. I said “Nothing, it’s part of his regular fee.” My husband raised his eyebrows and said, “Well, that’s really nice of you.”

 

Fantastic customer service is important to me. I want my clients to be glad to write me a check every month.

 

What I’d like to avoid is being thought of as a catch-all, dava-will-do-anything, door mat. The occasional favor to help out a client? I’m glad they thought of me. The weekly request because they think I’ll do it for free? No, thank you.

 

The trick, the puzzle, the difficulty, of course, is figuring out where that line between helpful and door mat is drawn.

 

I think that the key is about respect and perception. You can be perceived as a person who is willing to go above and beyond or you can be perceived as someone who stinks of desperation, and it is the level of respect you are accorded that determines the perception.

 

It isn’t enough to provide outstanding customer service if you are not first providing something of extreme value. If whatever you are providing is viewed as something anyone could do, then you are likely to be seen as a commodity that is easily replaceable. Hello there, Ms. Desperate.

 

On the other hand, if you bring something unique, useful and otherwise unattainable to the table, you are going to be more respected. When you have respect every little extra you provide makes you seem magnanimous and even more valuable.

 

Complicating the whole thing is the fact that clients are unique individuals. The amazing work you do  that makes you a hero to one might look like something a monkey could do to another. It’s even worse if the work you do is somehow creative in nature, because the value of creative work is subjective to some degree.

 

A past client asked me to do extra work frequently – and never said thank you. He seemed to think I should feel lucky to be working at all. When I explained I would need to charge extra for a particularly time consuming project, he offered a scathing “review” of my work.  It was painfully clear that the client respected neither my work nor my time.

 

So for me, that line between helpful and door mat moves, depending on the client. The client with the post cards (like almost all of my clients) is unfailingly respectful and appreciative of my work, so I will continue to provide perks and go the extra mile.

 

Do you have a door mat story? How did you handle it? Have you ever offered substantially more than you charged for? When is it okay to do so?

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For the last few years, I’ve been making a concerted effort to worry less. It is not easy for a natural worrier to stop. In fact, since I’ve been trying to worry less, I’ve been having worried dreams.

For instance, a week or so ago, I dreamed my husband had a heart attack. The dream went from the call to 911 all the way to the days after the funeral. This is how my mind works. I’ve visualized the horrific deaths of everyone I love, my house burning to the ground, the deaths of all my pets, even various end-of-the-world scenarios and what might happen.

At one time, I was worried obsessively about having a car wreck and I couldn’t drive. I got so nervous behind the wheel broke out in hives and got sick to my stomach.  Eventually, we got some pretty good insurance, a safer car and I’ve been driving since.  It would be extremely difficult to live where we do, raise two children and not drive.

Living in fear just sucks. Constant worry wears away creativity, pushes up stress levels, and generally makes life harder. When you are busy worrying about what might happen, you don’t notice what is happening.

Of course, if you are a born worrywart you aren’t going to be able to just stop, cold turkey. And sometimes, worry is useful, especially if causes you to do things like get good insurance and a safer car

Following is a list of a few things that have helped me worry less – and it seems to be working. I’ve only broken out in hives twice since being laid off, and both times it was an allergic reaction to privet and not a result of being worried!

1. Writing a grateful list.  Just a simple acknowledgement of how many things are right and good helps stop the worries.

2. Being aware of my tendancy to worry. For years, I looked at worrying as my job – no one else in my immediate family was worrying, somebody needed to! Faulty logic.

3. Marrying a non-worrier. You may not be able to pull this one off, but it has probably been the most important for me. It took about 15 years for me to stop resenting the fact my partner wasn’t stressed out and worried and to realize nothing in his life was the worse for it.

4. Taking as much control of whatever worries me as possible and doing whatever I can. If I’m worried about the house burning down, I unplug the hairdryer and move things away from the heater. If I’m worried about money, I put some stuff on ebay to sell and try to work out a budget.

5. Trying to keep in mind that life is short and that spending it worried is not the best use of my precious time. I used to worry constantly about getting a stomach virus. I fear throwing up more than any other sickness. When I remember that throwing up sucks, but if it happens it won’t last long it’s easier to stop worrying about it.

I’m not sure how to deal with the worried dreams; they may just be something I have to live with or maybe they will eventually stop. Do you have any specific ways to ease your worried mind?

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