I am a man who is very involved in my convictions. My political and spiritual beliefs are very important to me so I have had to learn to keep them in their place.

When interacting with other business professionals, clients or customers it is important to keep politics, religion, war, and any other touchy life convictions out of your small talk. Small talk is important but raising these subjects can lead to assumptions, arguments, and lost relationships and profits. The world of business is not the place to discuss and debate these subjects.

Instead here are a few really easy things that will break the ice without completely melting it.

Sports. Though there is still much room for debate in sports it is more friendly and in most cases you are dealing with people in your region with similar sports teams.

Weather. It is always an easy subject when speaking in person and can fill the needed time very well because you will not get into much detail like with other topics so getting down to business is not difficult to transistion.

Business. If you are speaking to others in the business profession you have an easy in with this common interest. You are all in business so it is a well flowing topic.

Current Events. This one is tricky because it is hard not to sway into politics and religion but keeping it within the facts about big things happening around the world is good to show that you keep up with the times.

Dining. Great food is something almost everybody can get behind. Recommending a good restaurant can really impact the person’s perception of you.

Cars. Who doesn’t love cars? Men and women in the professional world have a lot to say about motor vehicles so it is a common interest for nearly all. Make sure you don’t sway into alternative fuels and oil companies though. That would be a no no.

World Travel. Speaking of great places to go shows you are cultured and interesting. Also you would be surprised how often others you are speaking to have been in the same places you have been. It’s a small world after all.

Anything else without beliefs. The key is to keep it off the subject of belief that can lead to argument or assumption. Keep it light and fresh. Business talks are not the place to debate or evangelize what you believe.

This has been quite a week for me. Busy busy busy. Here is a round up of what has happened.

Biz. The Biz completed the Anthony Zahner Photography website. He still needs to add his artwork but our job is done. It was quite a journey. You would never realize how hard it is to keep something so simple.

Biz. We are also putting together DJ-PHICTION’s website. It will be quite a different look from our past work. That will be up soon so stay tuned.

Life. My buddy Steve (studying to be a chef) made me an amazing quesedilla. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it was a simple dish. He knows how to spice up any food. It was delicious.

Biz. We have a snazzy new website design coming for Clarity. There is always room for improvement and this will be a nice step up. I think our clients will appreciate it.

Life. Took a mini vacation with my family and girlfriend to Seymour, Indiana, the home of John Mellencamp, to visit the Eagle (my Step Grandfather Robert E. Swaney) on his 85th birthday. He is such an amazing guy who touches everyone he meets with his wisdom and personality.

As a testimate to his character, a former employee of his from twenty five years ago drove 6 hours from Michigan while under kemotherapy to see him on his birthday.

Played some golf with my father while down there and did awful but it was still a lot of fun.

School. Still doing that College thing.

Biz. Working hard on developing a cms system for creative pros. I am hoping to beta test by january.

Life. Ron kicked my butt in b-ball.

Life. Love you Val

Today is a day I have been waiting for since August when I found out about the revolutionary concept of Blog Action Day - a day when blogs from all around the world discuss a singular topic. Blog Action Day is here! And the topic is the Environment.

Why does the world need changing?

For centuries now, in our ignorance, we have been using up the world resources that can never be brought back once they are gone. In doing so, our consumption has lead to pollution and destruction of earth’s fragile structure.

Now that all this has occured we are faced with a big question mark where tomorrow used to be. For years now we have ignored the vital signs and brushed it off with the excuse of being to busy or not stopping progression.

I say We in all of this because We are the problem. Not the Bush administration alone, not big corporations, not the wealthy elite. It is us. All of us. And it will now take all of us to fix the problem.

What is being done?

We are at a time now like no other in history. Today there are a growing number of people fighting, not for money or power but instead for a better world to live in.

There are now activist groups and scientists working together to get active about climate crisis. Our former vice president, Al Gore, and his governmental council have just won a Nobel Prize for their efforts to inform the world about this major problem that effects us all.

The people are speaking out and companies are listening, making products and services that are more eco friendly. Governments and nations from around the world are doing their part to become more earth conscious in efforts to preserve their futures and all of our futures.

What needs to be done?

The United States Government, along with several others have neglected this problem and still do. They need to take initiative, regardless of any personal reasons they may have not to find alternative fuel sources and build a better society to coincide with the earth we all inhabit.

People need to get smart fast. Schools, Workplaces, Media should all press onward in educating the populous in doing what needs to be done. They will not do it unless there is a great push by the people who already know enough to understand our crisis.

People don’t like change so it is difficult to get the world to make a difference for the next generations of man kind. It must be stressed that this is not a matter of inconvenience but instead a matter of life or death for our grandchildren, children, and even ourselves.

[Moment for a deep breath]

We can all do something to change. Use recycled products, walk or bike instead of driving short distance, turn the lights off when we leave a room, don’t buy from companies known to pollute, vote canidates into office who want to make a change, etc. If each person just pushed themselves the smallest bit into common sense changes to make the world better, it would be better for all of us.

Here are a few links related to this topic.

Clarity Multimedia: Greener Business Article
Environmental Protection Agency
Clean Power Now
Blog Action Day
Live Earth

My first website was frankly a travesty. It was mainly a grand experiment of mine to learn how to do everything I needed online. It was also unfortunately my first company website.

The first business venture I attempted was selling art. My Company name was Trent Company and I invested a fair amount of personal fund into it, as did my two business partners. The company and our web enterprise was a complete failure and one of the largest reasons was the name of our website.

Today I want to talk about just that; getting the right domain name for your company or professional skill. It is not very easy now a days with the high demand for domain names but can still be accomplished. Here are some important questions to ask.

Is it available? When Naming your company in the first place check to see it the domain name is available. This seems silly but success in business today mean having a website so add it into consideration.

Is it short enough? Keep the domain name short. If your company name is Hanson Industrial Complexes Incorporated then you may need to shorten it to be easily accessed by visitors. People are lazy for the most part and don’t want to type a long name and in most cases cannot spell efficiently. So instead make it something like hansonindustrial.com, hansonind.com or hansonindinc.com. This will be much easier to type by your patrons.

Do I need more than one domain? Buy multiple domains. You can have one domain name hosting your site and have multiples forwarding to it. If your name or parts of your company are available (as domains) then buy the names and forward them to your main domain. That way when people don’t know your official web address, their guesses will probably forward them to it.

Is is marketable? A very important question to ask yourself when selecting your domain name is just this. You need to be able to easily have it added and recognized in advertising efforts as well as be able to verbally communicated it. Make it memorable and easy to pronounce and spell.

Are there any odd spellings? Our first website address had the word “premiere” in it. The problems were two. One, we found that many people did not know how to spell premiere (weird huh?) and we also found that premiere is spelled two different ways; premiere and premier. This caused a lot of confusion and made it impossible to market verbally and hard to do it even in print.

When choosing your domain name for your business enterprise do not tread lightly. It is very important and cannot be changed in the future without concequence. Once you build popularity, your site will inevitably be linked to and picked up by search engines. By changing your domain at any point you are rendering that build up useless and basically starting over again.

Take the time and consideration necessary to bring your company to the world wide web.

Just wanted to do a round up of some of the things happening in my life and business. Nothing really that amazing but I still gotta get it out there. If your looking for my amazing advice feel free to skip this post.

My biz, Clarity Multimedia, is just wrapping up our largest project of the summer. You can see Anthony Zahner’s new website for his Photography and Architecture in the next couple of days at www.azahner.net.

My sister Emily turned 7 years old on the 27th of September. Though we are 12 years apart we are closer than ever. She has also been recommended by a gymnast coach to try out for an advanced competing gymnastics team.

I am due to be an uncle at the end of this month. My brother and sister-in-law are having a baby! No word on whether it is a boy or girl but judging by the Greeley genes (generations of all boys) I am thinking I better invest in a new baseball glove.

I have begun co-authoring a book about my field of business. More on that soon.

Clarity is putting together a hefty spin on the social networking and professional world. Creative Pros, ye be warned. Great things are on the horizon!

I have been working on this social experiment. I am still planning it out and my first clue to you is it has to do with writing.

Got a Haircut.

Kicked Ron’s butt in b-ball.

That’s about it.

A while back I was made aware of a great opportunity by my friend and associate Ron Johnson of CyberOptik.net. He dropped me an email about a Guy Kawasaki contest on his blog. After participating by adding the Truemors Application to my Facebook I sent an email to Guy and I was one of the lucky first 200 to receive a free autographed copy of The Art of the Start - The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything.

My overall opinion of The Art of the Start was that it was a book written with true personal experience from a business veteran. In reading the pages and absorbing the information as best I could (I am dyslexic so my reading takes a while) I really felt like the thorough advice I was receiving was from a man who knew what the hell he was talking about. This is a growingly uncommon feeling in reading Business books now a days.

Briefly, here is a history of Guy Kawasaki’s career. He started out working as a Mac Evangelist for Apple Computers, Inc. in the 80’s and grew a reputation as the key Apple Fellow in spreading the word about this great machine to programmers and engineers in the infant stage of the Personal Computer.

After getting out of Apple (once he had established the brand enough to move on) he took on several ventures and then went back to Apple in the 90’s with the intention of recovering the damage done by an idiot CEO and Board of Directors (the guys who let Steve Jobs go). Once Guy left Apple again he co-founded his current company called Garage Technology Ventures, a Startup Capital firm.

In his latest book (of 8 written) he addresses exactly what the title implies, the excitement and pure chaos of starting a new venture from scratch. He runs through all the types of practice a person will need in starting their venture and gives a lot of great insight into the world of starting something new in pursuit of Changing the World.

The fundamental aspect I took away from this book over everything else is that one should not go into business to make money but instead do so to make Meaning or in otherwords make the world a better place. If a person can accomplish this, money will come (it is almost inevitable).

Most will give a star, number, or letter rating in their reviews but I have to say I think it would demean a book’s intentions to rate it in such a simplistic way so instead I am going to use a sentence to show my rating of the book.

Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start is an excellent read for people starting a new business venture because it gives the reader the fundimentals but leave room open for them to make personal meaning in their new Startup, whatever it may be.

To check out more about Guy and his new book go to…
www.artofthestart.com

A good business practice is something that cannot be defined in stone. There are countless ways to make a business successful but when forming your biz (or organization, club, group), there are key aspects needed in order to get the job done. The most primary aspect of starting off is the choice of one or more. You need to decided whether you are going to go it all on your own and be a lone wolf or if you are going to share your company with others and be a team player.

Let’s face it. There are huge advantages and disadvantages to both. Either way there are going to be perks and problems that may have been overlooked when starting out. Today I am going to compare to cases. The Lone Wolf vs. the Team Player.

Advantages

Disadvantages

Realities

Whether you choose to go it alone or to bring in people to join you on your journey you will face trials and tribulations that will define the type of business man (or woman) you are. There is no solution to managing your company that will not come with advantages and disadvantages. And above all you must face the realities of your situation. For me, my business partner keeps me in check and we balance each other. For some it is easier to do it all on their own. The choice is yours but don’t just dive in. Weigh your options and really think hard before you take the big leap.

Thanks to Ron Johnson for the help with this post. Thanks to Mind Petals for the inspiration.

Got others ideas about this topic? Leave a comment.