Feb

Patience Pays Off Every Time

It has been two weeks since my last post and I feel like I’ve been starving for air. Because I’ve been writing consistently for a year, it has become one of the things that allows me to form clear thoughts and execute my plans effectively. I also have to find a time when things are relatively calm and quiet to write. I can’t communicate effectively in writing when I am surrounded by distractions. I have to be patient, and wait for the right time to write.

Patience has not always been one of my virtues. I used to act irrationally out of emotion and not think about the consequences that might be felt by those around me. Now I do my best to carefully and methodically think through what might occur when I make a decision. I remember something my grandfather told me years ago that comes to mind more and more as I get older. I think it is the only “crude” thing I ever heard my grandpa say, but it really illustrated his point better than anything else. He said:

There were two stallions at the top of a hill looking down into the prairie at a herd of mares. The young stallion looked at the old stallion and said “I’m going to run down there and make love to that beautiful mare!” The old stallion looked over at him and said “I am going to walk down there and make love to all of them.”

Patience, consistency, and strategy pay off. You might be dealing with something that you think you just can’t handle anymore but that might not be true. Just because you feel like you won’t be able to be patient any longer doesn’t mean you can’t take a deep breath and hold on a little longer. I am the biggest proponent of swift action, but there is a time when you need to be patient and wait for the right time to move ahead.

“Patience is the companion of wisdom.” ~ Saint Augustine

Today I want to encourage you to take a step back, take a deep breath, gain perspective, and be patient. Your patience will pay off, I promise you. Here’s to a successful start of your week!

460 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Inspirational/Small Business Resources

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Feb

Cloud Flare

Today I had the honor of being featured on Cloudlfare’s blog. I use Cloudflare for this blog and many of my sites.

Here’s an excerpt of the post:

Tell me about yourself

I run a small technology firm and write on my blog GabeArnold.com I focus on techniques and technology that help small business owners grow and succeed in a rapid and measurable manner. CloudFlare meets my criteria as a reliable tool for small business owners and freelancers.

How did you hear about CloudFlare?

I heard about CloudFlare from my friend Lane Campbell. He has been studying CDN’s and ways to improve page load speeds since around the time Google changed to their instant search algorithm.

Why did you join CloudFlare?

After seeing the page load performance and blocked attacks that Lane showed me from one of the sites he had enrolled I decided to try it after a few weeks. I ended up joining one day because after reviewing what it takes to put a site in CloudFlare it was so simple that it literally
took 5 minutes. Basically all a user has to do is change their name server records. I also like knowing that attacks have been blocked from my sites. Using a CMS like WordPress for many of my projects presents a general security risk, so having my sites protected at another layer gives me peace of mind.

One of the other reasons I joined CloudFlare was because I had to find a service that helped me start out my projects on an affordable hosting service and grow from there. CloudFlare has allowed me to use budget hosts while… read more

470 days ago Short URL Comments

Small Business Resources

cloudflare/performance/security/website

Jan

Why Numbers Mean Everything: Part One

Patterns, numbers, equations, those are the things that I believe very brilliant business people study. The old adage “You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure” is definitely true. How do we manage things? We measure them. How do we measure them? By counting them. When looking back over my successes and failures I can definitely tie my successes back to multiple attempts. I can see the number of tries, number of attempted solutions, and number of times that I got up and tried again. I saw this quote this morning and it reminded me of numbers once again:

“I will never quit. I persevere and thrive on adversity… If knocked down, I will get back up, every time.” ~ U.S. Navy SEALs

Success often depends on how many times we are willing to try something. Thomas Edison supposedly answered this way when he was asked about the thousands (3 thousand according to some people) of attempts he had made at finding the right fillament for the incandescent light bulb:

“I didn’t fail 3,000 times. I found 3,000 ways how not to create a lightbulb” ~ Thomas Edison

That may sound like a comedic answer to mask the sting of failure, but I believe that that attitude was the secret to Thomas Edison’s successes. If you can see today’s failures as just positive learning opportunities that bring you closer to the success you are seeking then you’ll find each single attempt to be worthwhile. It’s just one of the numbers you have to cross off on the journey of success.

Part One: Youtube Optional Interactions

This weekend while I was watching some of my favorite artists on Youtube I started “liking” some of the videos using the Like button under the video player. I noticed something interesting after checking it out on a few dozen videos. The ratio of likes to views was basically the same no matter how many views they had gotten.

For example, take a look at a video that has relatively low views How To Get More Followers On Twitter. As I write this, the video has 18 likes and 6,712 views. I drop that equation into finder and here is what I see:

18 divided by 6,712 = .002681764005 or in simpler terms, .27%. That means for the almost seven thousand viewers, only .27 percent took action on “Liking” it. Liking of course is the optional action that they can take if they want to take some soft action on their enjoyment of the video.

Now take a look at Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire. As I write this, the video has 11,886 likes and 4,117,092 views. Once again I calculate the likes versus views and here is what I see:

11,886 divided by 4,117,092 = .002886989166 or in simpler terms, .29%. The numbers are within 2 hundredths of a percent even though we are talking about 4,110,380 more views. I started running this equation on all the videos I was watching and found that overall most videos fell in the .002 range. Here and there you will find one under .002 or over .004 but the pattern is to have .002 percentage of likes to views.

Alright, now that you know this, what does that have to do with anything? This could mean absolutely nothing to you, or lead you to realizing that the numbers involved in day to day social media, sales, management, and the technical work that you do all have a pattern if you do them consistently.

For me, looking at this data about how many “likes” are received versus views made me want to investigate more how many people share a video after they watch it. I’m certain the ratio is much higher. I hope to find this information soon. I did realize that optional interactions like this that users can choose to do or not do are pretty low compared to views. Comparably when I look at a recent posting on my Facebook page as the administrator I can see that I’ve had 135+ impressions on most things I’ve shared there, but rarely any likes. If the math holds true for this social media site as well then I would have to get over 500 impressions to get a single like.

Why Does This Matter?

The fact that I can show you the ratio of views to likes may or may not affect your life today directly as it relates to Youtube or Facebook. It should make you consider anything you work with that involves numbers though. If you can take a step back and look at the numbers that are involved in your day to day business and life you can see patterns in anything that you do on a consistent basis. You can look at you the patterns of numbers and sequences around you and learn to expect what you’ve determined from your study of the numbers.

Today, think about the adage “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”. Schedule some time to sit back and take a broad overview of your business. Learn to see the patterns in what is going on around you. You’ll be surprised to see what you find.

474 days ago Short URL Comments

Finance/Instructional/Small Business Resources

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Jan

Twitter is Over Capacity

For those of you who have seen this message “Twitter is over capacity” you know how humorous or frustrating this can be. If you aren’t a frequent Twitter user then you may not have seen this before. I don’t know who came up with the concept of the “Fail Whale” but it’s a great visual that makes me think about the small business owner’s potential for personal overload whenever I see it.

Twitter fails when they get too much traffic to load the page you were looking for. The servers fail because of too many requests. Sometimes we can feel overwhelmed personally or in our business lives when we don’t properly plan ahead. This image of the Twitter fail whale makes me laugh and reminds me that I need to always pay attention to the load of requests that I receive. When requests are handled properly everything hums along perfectly, when they aren’t handled well requests can be the cause of big crashes both personally and professionally.

Overwhelming Requests

Somewhere in our minds there is a tipping point that is crossed when being busy becomes stressful, which then leads to avoidance, and ultimately can cause shutdown. I think that the load of requests can easily escalate and cause stress when we don’t take time to relax and think. Waking up an hour early, or finding that quiet place end of the day on your way home will make the difference in clear and effective thinking.

To handle a stressful or challenging position or project be sure to:

Schedule consistent times alone that allow you to reflect thoroughly on what’s going on.
Mix it up by changing your scenery from time to time.
Ignore unimportant requests and focus on your objectives.

Which Tweets Are Important?

When you view the stream of micro posts on Twitter, the world’s leading micro blogging platform, it can be overwhelming. I realized the other day that Twitter is a global active conversation. It’s similar to when you go to a big party and you walk up to a big group that is talking to each other. Some of their conversation isn’t relevant and doesn’t matter. Other parts of the conversation you jump in on and comment on and then sometimes you make your own comments that others respond too as well. When we see so many tweets passing by it’s not possible to respond to everything, and it wouldn’t make sense to do that. In life when we have an overwhelming amount of requests being brought to us, what should we do? I try to use filters in my priority inbox that help me focus on what’s important in my inbox.

In the real world I use the tools I have available that help me:

Quickly determine if a request is related to my goals.
Move unimportant requests out of site.
Focus intently on my priorities for the day.

Today you will be faced with a lot of requests. If you’ve already started your day and feel you are over capacity, then take a break. If you’re just starting out be sure to take that extra time to properly prepare yourself. Think about your day, align your priorities, and follow through. When you’re faced with numerous new requests get in the habit of quickly sorting them and move on. Focus on your objectives and use the tools around you move quickly and effectively.

It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about? ~ Henry David Thoreau

Gabe Arnold