I came across Immigrants big in tech startups, an article in the Seattle Times. The article discusses a study conducted by Duke University on the founders of tech startups in the last ten years. The study found that one quarter of technology companies founded during this time period had at least one foreign-born senior executive.
Having recently started at a new client site I found myself sitting at a fresh PC. With an empty machine, I suddenly realized how many productivity tweaks I use. It was daunting trying to remember all of the tools that were seamlessly integrated into my workflow. By the end of the first day, I had most of the tools installed, but it was only when I realized I was missing them that I remembered what they were.
As I crossed the parking lot at the end of that day, I offered a quick wave and a curt “See Ya” toward my former employer’s office building. It was August 25th, 2006, the last day I let a single entity control my income and future. Dan Miller would have been proud.
I spent the following Monday visiting the accountant, the bank, and the attorney. By the end of the day the wheels were in motion of what is Red Bit Blue Bit, LLC. The first two weeks I spent making phone calls, working on a small project and getting things going. Thirty days later I had a full time consulting role.
Taking a tip from web designer Cameron Moll, I thought I would summarize what I learned in the first 30 days of my new venture.
I’m finishing my first week as a business owner. President, no less, of Red Bit Blue Bit. I hate to use that title, but its a marketing thing (for the record, the title doesn’t buy me anything at home). Last night, I whipped up some business cards:
There’s just something about business cards. I’ve been set up as a business for two weeks, I’m working on a website (not much to see there, but its at http://redbitbluebit.com/), I’m making client calls and getting everything in order. It wasn’t until I created some quick business cards that I really felt like I’m in business. Granted, they are by far from a graphical masterpiece. There is only so much you can do with Word, after all.
Back in the day when I actually interviewed potential programmers, a spelling error on a resume was almost always grounds for a “no thanks” from me. This was particularly true for programming languages, such as spelling “COBOL” as “Cobol”. If you really knew the language, you could at least spell it in the right case.
Now I’ve been schooled. In an interview, it was pointed out to me that I had not one, but TWO spelling errors on my resume. Not just the wrong word, but an actual, bona fide typo. “Framwork” instead of “framework” and “documens” instead of “documents”.
I ran the spell checker on my resume as I thought I had before sending it out. It didn’t find it. I ran it again. Nada. I ran through the settings in the spell checker. On a whim I turned “Ignore words in UPPERCASE” off and tried the spell check again. Bingo. It seems that sometimes Word confuses Small Caps with UPPERCASE and ignores words it doesn’t want to spell check.
Moral of the story: Don’t get all funky with the formatting on your resume, it will only bite you in the end.
I had to register a couple of domain names through GoDaddy. I got a 10% off coupon code from ScoreADeal.com (GoDaddy coupon page).
Dwight D. Eisenhower:
Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.
I have been using email for over 13 years. In that time, I have seen it go from a little used but useful tool to the primary way of delivering information in the business world. What amazes me is the volume of business email created every day. My wife, for example, returns from a day of vacation to find her mailbox swamped with over a hundred emails. She spends most of the morning back at the office weeding through the pile.Now I don’t have nearly the volume she does, but often the email I do receive is of poor quality. The message isn’t clear and I have more questions when I’m finished reading than before. I hate email that wastes my time. I can’t imagine dealing with ten times as much of it.
Other than being obnoxious, there really isn’t anything I can do to make others write better email. I’ve tried to improve the quality of the email I send, hoping others might catch a few of my good habits and improve the email world a little bit. I would like to offer a few tips of my own.
Currently I am reading The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun. It’s a great book so far and not nearly as boring as it sounds. In it, chapter 10 is “How not to Annoy People” and covers processes, email and meetings. Some of his thoughts on how to be effective via email are really good, and will be something I add to my repertoire. This post should lay out a number of my thoughts about email.
Message Recipients
Smaller, specific recipients
When I write an email, I attempt to minimize the number of people getting the email. There just isn’t a need to involve everyone in a thread that may be only peripherally relevant. If there is a reason someone should be added, I like to send a separate email (or a forward) outlining the reason I think it is important to him or her.
To:
When I add someone’s name to the to: box, its because he or she is directly involved in the email. It either contains information or a request for action on his or her part.
CC:
I try to avoid cc:-ing people if I can. Generally, carboning somebody means its an FYI, and that’s just clogging up their inbox. Unless somebody is micro-managing a process, they don’t need every little detail in an email thread. If someone is intimately involved in the topic, however, I add him or her to the cc:.
The one exception I do follow is when I mention somebody else in an email. I like to give the person a heads up that they’ve been involved in a conversation. Typically this happens when I’m solving a problem for somebody and I’ve consulted with a third person. The third person at least can see what I’ve said about our conversation. Since they are mentioned, they may be contacted and I want them to know why.
BCC:
I never use blind copy. The recipient of a bcc: is one mouse click away from “Reply to All”. When this happens, I’m usually embarrassed and the to: recipient will feel like I don’t trust them. If there’s a specific reason I would need to send it to a third, uninvolved party, I will forward it to them with a separate note explaining why.
Subject:
The subject line is the most important detail of the email. It separates the good from ugly from spam. Because we work with multiple clients on multiple projects, its critical to distinguish the types of mail I send. My approach is to always list the project name or initials as part of the email. For example CE2 - Weekly Status Report Would be my weekly status report for the CE2 project. Typically I don’t need to add the customer name as everyone receiving the email know to which customer I’m referring. Its would also be a bit odd as a client to receive an email with their company name in every subject. After all, they know who they are. I’m not as successful at consolidating the email message in the title as I’d like to be but the point should be to give as many of the relevant facts as part of the subject as I can.
I continue to improve in this area by focusing the subject line on direct action statements rather than generic topics. “Which source control product to use” is much less useful than “I recommend Subversion for Source Control”.
Replying and Forwarding
Ever get one of those emails where its nothing but Re: re: re: re: re: Status in the subject line? Yeah, me too; and pretty soon the subject line is a bunch of useless crap. I trim any extras down to the last two (re: re: Status) and call it a day. I try to keep the cruft down.
Thread changes
When the topic of an email has changed, I denote this by providing a new subject line. The old subject is denoted with “was:” for a single response. If I reply again, I remove the was. For example: New Equipment [was: re: Status] This continues the flow for any recipients, and provides a new starting place to follow the thread. When I reply again, it becomes re: re: New Equipment
Body
The message body is where everything really happens.
Email I send is always formatted as plain text. Because of varying recipients and email applications, this is the only way to go. I’ve seen horrible, eye-searing html email formats. The powder blue backgrounds and 16 font variations do nothing but distract from the message being sent. It screams wannabe FrontPage web developer instead. ASCII is the only way to go.
Replying and Forwarding
Snip
When replying and forwarding email, I snip out any irrelevant text or very old email messages. It saves a bit of bandwidth and those old posts with six forward marks (> > > > > Hi.) don’t add value. Anything I cut from the email I’m replying to are marked with [snip]
Reply in Context
When replying to an email from another person, I always cut and paste what they said, preceeding it with a “>”.
> Do you want to go out for Sushi? This provides the reader with the context I was in when replying to their questions or information. The more I can improve their comprehension of my message, the better.
Yes, let's go at 11.
Don’t reply inline
I was working once with a third party consultant. I would provide him with my list of questions (clearly deliniated). His response was always “See answers below”. He would then add his responses into my message. It was difficult to read and to follow. I had to search through all of my questions to find the answers I needed. Often my questions went ingored
Edit
Before I send an email, I wait a minute and then re-read it. I should start reading the email aloud, if possible, to catch any awkward phrases or sentences. I check for the tone which comes through and ensure I haven’t written anything fatal. Often I end up just trashing the message if it will add no value.
Edit more
I try to reread the email once more and edit out any final errors.
Hyperlinks
Because I work on a software development team, I am often required to send email containing a number of links to white papers, resources and samples online. There are several things I do to ensure the most success with hyperlinks.
My first trick is to double check the links. Sometimes, I’ve found that the cut and paste or editing can mess up a link destination. By clicking on the link, I make sure the intented page can be found.
If I get a long link (MSDN, I’m looking at you!), I run the risk of frustrating my recipients by cutting and pasting these links wholesale. Instead, I head to sites like TinyUrl to build a shorted link. By using TinyUrl, I eliminate the problem of line break trashed links.
The third tip for adding hyperlinks goes back to the idea of context. A page with 4 or more links starts to waste the time of the reader. There is not a good way for the reader to process all of the links without opening each one of them. This problem is actually compounded with TinyUrls, where all context in the URL is lost. If there is any ambiguity in the URL, I add a descriptive comment. The reader can determine for him or herself what emails are important enough to warrant their attention.
Attachments
Don’t attach documents if they’re not needed. Human Resource departments seem to love this one. They send an email sent to everyone in the company with an attachment. Opening the attachment I find a memo only a paragraph or two long.. It would have been much more efficient to cut and paste that information into the body of the message instead.
Follow up.
Assuming that any one has read the concise literary masterpiece I crafted is pretty silly. If I don’t hear back from the recipients within a business day, I will follow up with another email, or a more personal interaction. On the other side, I try to respond to email within 24 hours of receiving it. Sometimes its simply an email stating I haven’t even looked into it yet.
“Reply to All” is the Spawn of Satan. Its particularly bad when Reply To All is used on a company-wide email. I once instigated a company-wide spamathon by replying to all after receiving several snarky comments to the original email. It was finally killed by the HR department informing us it was a waste of company resources to continue the thread. I apoligized for my involvement in that one.
Encourage good emails
One tip I learned from Mr. Berkun’s book is to reward good emails. When a short, concise email arrives in your inbox, take 10 seconds to respond with “Good email”. The goodwill and encouragement will do wonders. The writer will start writing more email that way.
Other email tips
- Harvard Business School has some Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload.
- Ironically, while I was drafting this post, Guy Kawasaki posted his tips for being The Effective Emailer.
- Another Ten tips for better emails.
I keep coming across these “kids” that have made themselves tons of money in very entrepreneurial ways. Most of them are under 25 so while they have the utmost of my respect, they make me ill at the same time. They make or have made more money than I have and their still 10 years younger than I. It certainly gives me the feeling that I’ve been wasting a whole lot of my life up until now.
Mouseketeer
Jupelo is 19. He’s graduated from high school and is taking a year off before heading off to college. What’s he doing for that year? Spending $100,000 at Disney World. He’s going to spend six days a week at the theme parks in Orlando while staying at the resorts. In addition, he’s spending some of the money to build a collection of Disney memorabilia that he’s going to use to create a children’s charity.
Where did Jupelo make his money? According to his site:
The money came from 3 business I have owned and operated since I was 13 (well, 2 were started when I was 15).
When I was 15 I was busy trying to skateboard away from the cops and trespassing on all the good skate spots. At 13 I probably wasn’t doing much of anything.
Spacer Gif
The Million Dollar Homepage‘s owner has finally sold out the final 10×10 pixels on his page. Alex Tew is the site’s host and the idea came to him while considering ways to finance college. He’s gotten quite a bit of viral marketing and a significant amount of mainstream press as well. With the final pixels sold on eBay, he’s made about $1,037,000. It must be one nice university he’s attending.
Mr. Tew wins the prize for the dumbest idea most brilliantly executed. The startup gurus out there are always talking about how ideas aren’t worth the trouble of signing a non-disclosure agreement and that execution is everything. Mr. Tew’s idea was probably thought of and rejected by thousands of people. Even I’m kicking myself for not thinking of something so simple.
Revenge of the Bean Bag chair
Finally, Justin D’Angelo has been reviewed by CNN Money for selling Poof Chairs which are simply next-generation bean bags. He makes $150K per year and works about 1 hour per week. His products are outsource manufactured and drop shipped directly to his customers, so his business doesn’t require much of his time.
There’s no such thing as stupid ideas
A friend and I were discussing these entrepreneurs, and we wondered when they had time to play video games. I quipped they could play when they’re 33 and retired. Meanwhile I’m 33 and just thinking up some ideas. I’ve learned from reading about these businessmen is that there are no bad ideas (just some that are better than others) and that it is never too late to start.
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