One Approach to Get Hours of Your Life Back

by Scott

I’ve gotten hours of my life back over the past year by borrowing a practice employed by customer service departments.

For whatever reason, people approach me with the same questions over and over again. How do I get a job in business development? How do I get access to the SinglePlatform API? Is it free? How do you break into startups as a non-technical person?

Instead of continually answering these on a one-off basis, one approach to enhance productivity is to create assets that address your life’s F.A.Q. At SinglePlatform, these take the form of PDF’s that address many preliminary questions potential partners may have. Outside of SP, I try to write blog posts or canned email responses about anything I’m continually …
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BD Best Practice: Send A Meeting Agenda

by Scott

Meetings can be a colossal waste of time especially in a field that harbors speculative conversations like Business Development.

 

When appropriate, one practice I use to maximize meeting efficiency is to email the meeting attendee(s) an agenda 2-3 hours prior to the meeting. These emails typically contain the meeting objective, an outline of what will be discussed, and any questions that I know that I’ll be asking. An example might look like this:

Subject: Meeting Agenda For Today’s Call

Hi Scott,

I just wanted to send you an agenda prior to our 2pm call so that your team has an idea of what to expect.

The goal of this call is to see whether your team is ready to implement our solution within the next …
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The Problem With To-Do Lists

by Scott

To Do Lists are great for making you feel productive, but they’re not always an effective way to accomplish your goals or lead your best life…at least the way that I was approaching them.

Until about 2 weeks ago, I always approached to do lists in a linear fashion. I’d prioritize my list by putting the most important and difficult tasks at the top. Few things gave me more satisfaction than drop-kicking tasks off my list one by one until I’d accomplished every single thing I set out to do. Three cheers for feeling productive!

But what I realized is that although this method is very good at helping me to get things done, it doesn’t always lend itself to getting the …
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There’s No App for That?

by Scott

Apps make our lives easier…but they aren’t going to actually do the heavy lifting for us. 

One of the attendees of my last skillshare class expressed some disappointment after I described how I manage my network. My personal CRM methodology is built on Google Docs. Specifically, I use a spreadsheet to keep track of the last time I connected with select people amongst other notes).

“I was really hoping that you had some type of app that you used for managing your network. Spreadsheets don’t work for me” he said.

Like anyone who takes pride in their work, I took some time to chew on this comment during my subway ride home…

The reason the spreadsheet “didn’t work for him” is because he wasn’t willing to …
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Rethinking Nights and Weekends Projects

by Scott

I talk to a lot of people who have “nights and weekends” projects. Sometimes these are things they’re working on for fun. Other times these are products that people think they’d like to form a company around some day. People in the latter camp often say they’d leave their day job if their nights and weekends project was further along. But they can’t leave the day job they’re not too content with until they reached a certain milestone.

If I found myself in this situation, I’d have a mornings and weekends project. Here’s why:

Mental Freshness

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m wiped after my foots been on the gas for an …
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I’m Reading 850 Books in 2012: Part Two

by Scott

In the first part of this post, I defined inputs and outputs in the context of progressing your career. The main point is that you should consider the degree to which inputs enhance outputs when evaluating how you spend your time. Reading 850 books might sound cool, be fun and make you feel good, but it might not yield the highest return on your time if you looking to become the startup sensai you set out to be.

I think a much more effective way to become a badass is to focus on outputs. Here’s why:

Real Learning and Behavior Change Occurs

Consuming content (inputs) in terms of building skills allows me to familiarize myself with things. I can learn what …
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I’m Reading 850 Books in 2012: Part One

by Scott

Amidst the barrage of publicly broadcasted New Year’s resolutions I’ve consistently noticed the aspiration to read a ton of books. Reading is awesome. I thoroughly enjoy it. But I wonder if the people that are planning to take down a small library this year aspire to do this for the right reasons. This trend is in direct alignment with a pervasive behavior I’ve decided to leave behind in my journey to progress my career.

I like to think about how I spend my time professionally bettering myself in terms of inputs and outputs. 

Input noun definition: something that is put in. In this context, I think about inputs as things I consume ranging from blog posts, …
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How 2 Months of Notebooking Has Changed My Life

by Scott

Its been just over 2 months since I’ve started carrying a small moleskin notebook everywhere I go.

 

I have it on me at all times to record ideas, thoughts/themes I want to remember, and action items. This practice has been profoundly enriching and I’m proud to say I’ve devoured 2 1/2 full books over this time period. In the process, I’ve made a few observations about the practice that I’d like to share:

Creating Room to Think
 
One of the amazing things about using a moleskin to capture fleeting thoughts, is that you give yourself permission to stop focusing on something. Often we think of something that we don’t want to forget and spend an unnecessary amount of time focusing on remembering it. This …
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