Lauren MacEwen — Lauren MacEwen

Fred is a Symptom of Happiness: Book Review of Fred 2.0

03/19/2013 by Lauren MacEwen

Fred 2.0, by Mark Sanborn, releases today. This is the book following the New York Times Bestseller The Fred Factor. I was one of the lucky few who received a copy of the book prior to release. Maybe it is because I am a Fred or maybe it is because I write thorough book review. Likely the latter is the case.

I finished the book this morning and found myself with mixed reviews.

The Fred

We all need inspiration. We all need reminders to be the best versions of ourselves. That is what Fred it all about. To paraphrase Hedwig, “[Fred] is an idiom working in America and Canada.”

Fred has become a philosophy to live better and to be better. Fred guides us to be the best versions of ourselves. 2.0 reminds us not to live life to the fullest but live it to the best. So many philosophical life guides direct our focus to the big picture, to not get lost in the minutia. Fred says to focus on the minutia. Make each moment count because it it the little moments that add up to make the big picture good.

This is not particularly different than most self help philosophies. However, differentiating from the mantra of every other life coach, Fred is a symptom of happiness not the cause of it. Living the life in the Fred philosophy will not make you happy, being happy will make you Fred.

When people are happy they are more likely to go out of their way to help other people, to be polite, to go the extra mile. They are more likely to whistle while they work. 2.0 tells us not to fake it until we make it but to do our best until we are our best. Then you don’t have to fake it.

What makes a Fred is more than just doing a good job and being nice to people. It is about extending a sense of pride in being more into everything you do, and then helping others to do the same.

Is Fred 2.0 revolutionary? No. The Fred Factor was revolutionary in the sense that it brought people to an ethos of personal betterment for the sake of being better. It said that the end result is not the goal, it is the process. It is not the thank you of opening a door for someone, or the praise for giving everyone on your mail route a turkey at the holidays. It is the act of opening the door, regardless of the appreciation, or giving the turkey whether or not the person even knows it was from you. The act is what elevates the soul, not the result. If you are looking to have the action make you happy you are looking exterior to yourself to find happiness. Fred 2.0 reminds us to look to ourselves. If we are happy then we don’t need the external praise to validate us. Ironically, the book is filled with stories of Fred, but that is more spreading the Fred than spreading the praise.

Critically, the book was not revolutionary. It was a good reminder of a philosophy of which I was already aware. Was it inspirational? Not for me. Realistically it was more motivational. It reminded me to live the passion I have for my own work.

By the middle of the book I was pretty tired of reading the word Fred. By the 3rd paragraph of this review, I was tired of writing the word Fred. That aside, the book was a nice read and a reminder to:

Live your passion
Bring the extraordinary to the mundane
Be process driven and results oriented
and to be happy because we are better people when we are happy.

If Fred is a symptom of happiness then I welcome it.

Go to www.fredfactor.com to read more about the Fred philosophy and to buy Fred 2.0.

I’d like to thank Mark Sanborn for sending me a copy of Fred 2.0 to review.

Filed Under: Book Review

Simplify your Business Life with Simple Productivity Tools

12/28/2012 by Lauren MacEwen

Time yourself for efficiency

Many people tend not to refer to themselves as minimalists. We simply buy, use, and collect too many things to think otherwise. Yet with all our gadgets, trinkets, and supplies, we usually find the most value in minimalist tools and methods that help increase our productivity.

Despite the appeal of multi-featured products and multitasking, I’ve found that having fewer tasks and options to focus on at a time makes getting things done a whole lot faster and easier. Here we’ll talk about three incredible tools you can use to simplify your business life, home life, and possible even your social life.

They are simple tools that focus your attention on very little at a time, and yet make sure that you excel at the little you set out to do. You’ll be able to accomplish what you need to do first, finally making time to do what you enjoy as well.

Evernote

Evernote has grown significantly since it was launched back in 2008. Reaching more than 11 million users last year, it has easily become one of the most popular productivity tools of our time.
Evernote is an organization tool for iPhones, iPads, and other mobile devices. The application can also run on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and various Internet browsers. On your computer Evernote can copy selected windows on the screen, including web pages if your browser supports it. You can then mark these copies with titles and organize them into notebook, archiving them in a number of ways.

On mobile devices, items you’ve copied can be synced directly to the Evernote cloud service, so you’ll never lose any of the information that you’re organizing. You can also take pictures from your smartphone or tablet and save them directly onto your Evernote account. You can also add GPS tagging and audio comments to each of the pictures you save.

There are hundreds of ways you can use this tool to your advantage. Many companies have switched to Evernote as their central filing system, abandoning physical paperwork altogether. Students use it as a great way to take written notes and keep track of their school work. Families use it as a cheap way to store their photos through a cloud service, versus an unsecure hard drive.
As you begin to use it, you’ll notice other little ways you can be more productive with this tool. For example, let’s say you’re going to a major mall, airport or other commercial area. Before you leave the parking lot, take a picture of your car, GPS tag it, and then you can use the GPS on your mobile device to walk right back to it later.

Evernote can be a valuable productivity tool if used correctly and consistently. Give it a try for a week and see how it works. There’s no downside and its basic service is completely free.

Pomodoro Technique

Developed back in the late 1980s, the Pomodoro technique is an incredible time management system that involves working in short focused waves. The basic idea is to use a timer and work on a single task for 25 minutes without any interruption, and then take a short break for 5 minutes. This takes a lot of pressure off a particular task while discouraging unnecessary multitasking.
The Pomodoro technique allows you to make calculated progress on all of your tasks by encouraging deep concentration without distractions instead of tackling it all at once and feeling overwhelmed. It’s simple, but very effective, and keeps you focused on what’s most important.

Steps:

Select a take you need to accomplish today.
Set a timer for 25 minutes and begin working on that task.
When time is up, take a short 5 minute break.
Repeat.

Every 4 cycles, take a 25 minute break.

You’ll notice after trying it that the Pomodoro technique is very easy to remember and follow. It doesn’t require any special software, lists, or other medium. You can practice it with anything.

Zendone

Zendone is complementary software to Evernote. It further explores the organization and productivity features that Evernote offers by creating a task management system for you.
When you connect Zendone to Evernote, you’ll choose one of your Evernote folders as your main task inbox. In the future, anything that you upload to that Evernote folder will also pop up in your Zendone inbox as a task. So with Evernote you have a fantastic way to collect and organize vast amounts of content on one digital interface using text, pictures, and audio recordings.

With Zendone, you can now designate what you want to do with this information and prioritize it in the form of daily tasks. If it’s just information for the file then you can archive it for reference, but if it something you need to get done at a later date, like paying a bill or taxes, then you can title it and organize it as a task in your Zendone inbox.

Try utilizing each of these three productivity tools to your advantage. Collect and store information on Evernote while using Zendone to organize it into tasks. Then use the Pomodoro technique to accomplish those tasks. Rinse and repeat. It’s a simple way to maximize your productivity while lowering your stress. Give it a try and let us know how it worked for you in the comments below.

Vincent H. Clarke is a Marketing Analyst for USB Memory Direct, a wholesaler of promotional USB drives. While he mostly writes about marketing and branding, he also enjoys writing about personal improvement, productivity, and start-up culture.

Filed Under: Contributors, Featured, Success Tagged With: organization, time management, tools

Cost of a Voter [Infographic]

11/07/2012 by Lauren MacEwen

Article first published as Social Media: What’s a Voter Worth? on Technorati.

Filed Under: Featured, Politics, Social Media Tagged With: election, election 2012, facebook, infographic, obama, romney, social media, twitter, voter

Social Media Value of a Voter

11/04/2012 by Lauren MacEwen

It has been a matter of discussion for a long time. What is your follow worth on social media? As business owners we are constantly trying to tabulate what a followers monetary value is. But what about the value of a voter?

PC Magazine answered some of these questions for us and assigned the monetary value we so desperately crave.

Twitter Follower: $2.05 Facebook Like (Fan): $8

Tweet: $5 Facebook Share: $14

Cost per Follower: $2.50-$4.00 Cost per Like: $1.07

Cost per Engagement: $0.75-$2.50 Can’t proactively engage

However, these numbers drastically change when you look at the value of a vote. A new tool is out that can tabulate the value of your social media presence to the Presidential nominee’s.
Read more at Business 2 Commuity

Filed Under: Featured, Politics, Social Media Tagged With: election, election 2012, facebook, obama, romney, social media, twitter

Where are You Registered?…Facebook! -Collections the New Facebook Shopping

10/16/2012 by Lauren MacEwen

Getting married? Having a baby? Having a birthday? Updating your wish list? Have you registered on Facebook? Ok, so there is no official Facebook registry for shopping, but a new feature is being tested that might change that. Taking their lead from Pinterest, which is currently the 4th largest traffic driver on the web, Facebook is creating a pin style photo display designed to drive sales for retailers. This new feature they are testing is called “Collections“.

Originally posted at Business 2 Community…continue reading.

Filed Under: Facebook, Featured, Social Media Tagged With: business development, facebook, facebook app, facebook collections, pinboard, pinterest, sales funnel

The Technology Money Drain

09/24/2012 by Lauren MacEwen

Is your money going down the drain? If you are a small business, especially if you are a start-up small business, your cash flow can make or break your success. The problem is where do you spend your cash? With a finite amount of money available, this becomes a big decision and one that most small businesses struggle with. The question is, where is your money drain? and where should you be putting your money?

Technology is one of the easiest money drains and my personal favorite. I have to keep myself on a short leash when it comes to technology. No surprise I am a tech junkie. But I am sure many of you are as well. When we are getting started it is easy to say I need the following 10 pieces of equipment to get my business going. I need 2 computers, an iPad, a printer, a fax machine, a smart phone, etc. We have a picture in our mind of what operating our business looks like and it is easy to get into the trap of “I can’t operate without…” But the reality is we tend to shoot big instead of looking at what can your business operate on NOW vs. what will your business operate on in the future.

You don’t need 2 computers and and iPad and a fax machine and a printer and and and. Boil it down the the very basics. Find alternate solutions to your tech/equipment needs.

Alternate (online) solutions:

efax.com: allows you to fax (send and receive) online. You even get your own fax number.
Skype: With skype you can make phone calls on your computer. This is a great replacement to a office phone. Save yourself the cost of a monthly phone line and just get a skype number. People can call you, leave messages, and you can even use it on your smart phone.
Dropbox or Soonr: Don’t go out and buy a big fancy external hard drive. If you use a service like Dropbox or Soonr you can not only back up your important files, but you can access them from any computer with internet access or even your smart phone.
Logmein.com: Need something from your computer? Logmein is one of many services that will let you remote access your computer. This means you can go to any computer, log in, and use your home/office computer remotely to do anything from run software to download files.

Alternate (offline) solutions:

Personal Computer: Use your personal computer until you can afford to buy a new computer just for your business.
Mobile phone as your office phone. You don’t really need multiple phone numbers. Use 1 phone for all your needs and cut down on your operational overhead. If you really need a fax and office number, use a service like Efax and Skype.
iPad vs. Notepad: By notepad, I don’t mean a notebook computer or an iPad alternative. I mean a pad of paper. Of course a pad of paper does not meet all of our iPad needs, but if you are using it to take notes, write blogs, jot down business ideas or write your to-do lists then a pad of paper will suffice. Once your cash flow improves, you can buy the fancy tablet and play angry birds while you take notes and do quick photo editing for your next blog post.
Save as PDF: Ask yourself, do you really need a print out of that receipt or do you just need a record? I have found that saving a website, receipt or document as a pdf to keep for your records is just as good (if not better) than having a print out. For one, you are more green by printing less and two, if you only need a record then why not keep that record on your computer rather than in a filing cabinet.
Filing cabinet vs. digital records: I personally hate filing cabinets. I also hate filing. That being said, we still need to keep records and therefore need files. Instead of buying lots of expensive filing cabinets that take up valuable space, get as much as you can via digital records like online statements. If you have receipts, you can scan them and create digital files (one small scanner can be as cheap as one filing cabinet). By keeping your files digital, you not only save space and tree’s but you also have a safer filing system because it is backed up digitally and safe from accidents that can befall paper (ie. fire, flood, shredders).
Home Office: A lot of people like to get an office so they can present themselves as professional. Ask yourself if you really need an office or just an office space. If you meet with customers, consider going to them instead of asking them to come to you. You can save a lot of money every month by setting up a home office instead of renting office space. Plus, it is really nice to work from home instead of doing the morning commute (well, it is my preference).
Business Apparel: Looking the part is important, however it is easy to go over board. Lets face it, we all like to go shopping for great clothes and the corresponding accoutrements (ok, most of us). Realistically we don’t need much to look the part. You don’t need 5 power suites and a fancy leather briefcase and an expensive watch and a classic pearl necklace or cufflinks. To start, instead of buying a lot of different outfits, buy one but make it versatile. So get one pair of slacks and a few shirts. Get a couple different pieces of jewelry or ties, so that way you can change up the look. But instead of spending thousands on multiple outfits. Take one outfit and turn it into 5.

So let’s look at the numbers. How much money are you actually saving in the first year?

efax: $14.13/mo (169.56/yr)

fax machine: ($50)

Phone line: $35/mo. ($420/yr)

Skype 4.99/mo (59.88)

Phone line: $35/mo. ($420/yr)

Dropbox: free

External Hardrive: $100

Personal Computer (already have)

New Computer $1000

Notepad $1 iPad: $500

PDF: free Printer $35

Digital File: free

Filing Cabinet $40

Home Office: free

Rent an Office $500/mo ($6000/yr)

Business Clothes: Pants: $150; 5 Shirts $200; Jacket $200; Business Clothes: 5 suites; $1250 (5@ $250)

Total Alternate Solutions: $780

Total Expensive Solutions: $9765

Total Savings: $8985

Not everyone will need all of the things listed above, however this gives you an idea of what you can save with just a little create problem solving. When you are getting started it is important to save your pennies so you can invest them in things like marketing and business development.

Don’t your business expenses be a hole in your financial bucket.

Read original post at Business 2 Community

Filed Under: Featured, Strategy & Business Tagged With: amount of money, business dollar, computing, drain, dropbox, easy money, efax, fax, ios, ipad, itunes, money, money available, money going, money wise, multi touch, skype, smartphone, software, spend your money wisely, technology money, videotelephony

1 Billion Facebook Users: Now or Later

05/01/2012 by Lauren MacEwen

Article first published as 1 Billion Facebook Users: Now or Later on Technorati.

Facebook has been projected to hit 1 Billion users in 2012. That projection is still on target, however the time frame keeps changing. In January, Mashable was predicting that Facebook would hit 1 Billion users by August. Now the actual growth figures are changing that prediction.

This chart shows actual growth in solid blue and projected growth in the dotted line. However if you notice their growth trajectory, what they are not accounting for as severe a decline in the growth rate as actually happened. According to this Mashable chart, they should have hit 900 million users in February. However, it has taken them until the end of April to hit that number.

Since February of 2010 until August of 2011, Facebook has had a growth rate of 8.01%. When the original prediction was made they anticipated the decline in growth rate to be 1.7%, therefore slowing it down to 6.3% growth . However, it seems that the current actual growth rate has slowed by 2.47% leaving the current growth rate at 5.54%.

A nearly 3% drop in growth rate is significant for the social network.

Facebook has been approaching a terminal saturation rate for some time. It is not a sign that the social network is declining. It actually speaks the the fact that most of the people who are interested in Facebook are already on Facebook. Is it possible the new growth rate will continue to slow? Yes it is. But it is not likely that it will drop off entirely.

After 6 years of aggressive growth, we might be about to see Facebook’s steady growth rate emerge. After all there are kids turning 16 every day, anxious to hop onto the worlds most popular social network.

Filed Under: Facebook, Featured Tagged With: 1 billion, billion, facebook, growth rate, mashable, rates, users

Blog Contributor

04/24/2012 by Lauren MacEwen

Filed Under: Blogging Icons

3 Tips for Political Campaigns on LinkedIn

04/19/2012 by Lauren MacEwen

LinkedIn is a powerful social network for political campaigns. Like other social networks, candidates can get value from sharing and engaging with their network on LinkedIn, but where LinkedIn really shines is data analysis and mining.

From a bird’s eye view, there are more than 61 million users on LinkedIn in the United States all of voting age. The most popular age demographics are ages 35 to 54 (39.9%) and ages 25 to 34 (31.2%).

Candidate Fundraising

According to a Consumer Electronics Report, 49% of LinkedIn users have a household income over $100,000. That’s leaps and bounds over Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, you name it! Candidates can raise some serious campaign cash by connecting with and contacting these professionals with significant financial resources.

What’s more powerful than the average numbers, however, is your campaign’s ability to craft precise asks for each fundraising prospect using the intelligence that you can gather from a contact’s profile. Once you open an account and connect with all of the people that you already know by using your email address book and your social graph on other social networks, click on “Advanced” on the top right hand portion of the screen.

On this advanced search screen, you will be able to search through your first order connections and find other possible contributors. Some of the filters to get the best fundraising prospects on LinkedIn that you might consider are:

Location: To start, target the lowest hanging fruit. The people that live in the district that you will represent, are more likely to contribute than others in your network that live far away.

Industry: Depending upon the issues that you are talking about in the campaign, focus on educators, government employees, the financial services industry, or other verticals.

Groups: If you haven’t already joined groups on LinkedIn, be sure to join groups related to the industry in which you work, groups that would be impacted by your campaign, community or religious groups, and alumni associations. For example, connecting with old college buddies, crafting an appropriate fundraising ask based on their profile information, and asking for a contribution to the campaign is really effective if done right.

You just created a profitable and a detailed fundraising list in a few clicks of a mouse! Check out each profile, determine an ask, and if there isn’t a phone number, Google the contact’s current employer and call the general line.

Endorsements

In addition to using strategies similar to fundraising on LinkedIn, there are other tactics to get endorsements on the social network for professionals:

Companies: Click on “Companies” and follow the organizations that you are most interested in getting endorsements from. Use the information that you glean from following the company to effectively make your case to the organization that you deserve the endorsement and to better understand the resources the organization has. If, for example, you were endorsed by an organization who has a talented designer on staff, why not make the ask, albeit unorthodox, to use the designer’s talents to design an upcoming mail piece?

Keyword search: On the advanced search screen, try searching for specific keywords or keyword phrases to find individuals or organizations to reach out to. In conjunction with the keyword search, choose second order, or third if need be, to identify people other than the usual suspects for endorsements. It’s one thing to get an endorsement from your political party or known politicos, it’s quite another to get endorsements from business, civic, and religious leaders who, after connecting with you, are excited about your candidacy in its own right.

Political campaigns can use LinkedIn to get meaningful endorsements and leverage those endorsements in unique ways.

Hiring staff and interns

While there are many affluent professionals on LinkedIn, there is also a large pool of talent looking for work. In addition to going to the traditional political job boards and tapping known local talent, post your campaign job on LinkedIn too.

Don’t stop there; however, use the search functionality to proactively identify possible candidates and direct them to the position announcement on LinkedIn. More often than not, when a campaign is ready to hire someone they are ready to pull the trigger as close to now as is possible! LinkedIn is an excellent tool to help speed along the hiring process while increasing the quality of applicants.

LinkedIn is different

LinkedIn is too often overlooked because it’s so different than other social networks and requires a different approach than Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest because your campaign’s purpose and objectives for LinkedIn are so different than these other social networks. LinkedIn takes some time and effort because you will need a separate strategy to get the most out of the social network for professionals, but the reward is a steady flow of fundraising prospects, endorsements, and quality campaign staff.

This is a guest post from Ben Donahower, experienced campaign operative and LinkedIn power user, who blogs about campaign signs at Campaign Trail Yard Signs.

Filed Under: Contributors, Featured, Politics Tagged With: fundraising, linkedin, political campaign, political parties, social media, social networking, sponsorship opportunity