Posts by Chris
Pursuing Relevant Replication
If you are a certain sort of person, with certain sorts of exposure to the idea of creating “passive income” or freeing yourself from the possible poverty of running a coaching business, or freelance business, or therapy business one client at a time, you have probably come across the idea that you can create online…
Read ItConsiderations when creating an online course or membership site
This is a video I made to summarize the basic considerations when you want to create a membership or “courseware” site using WordPress. The key here is this:
* Almost nobody will tell you about most of this
That’s kind of funny, right? But it’s true. In the real world, there are a series of major considerations I have come across in the real world. Planning for them may save you a lot of frustration later on.
Read ItA guide to delegating
Delegating is hard; yet it is the crossover point in your business, between being having to “wear all hats” (no matter how poorly they fit), and starting to take the freedom of doing what you are good at, and letting others do other parts of the work. Here is a highly distilled, step-by-step practical guide on how to delegate effectively.
Read ItPhones for minimalism
This is a beautiful movement. As we become more and more aware that more is not always better, people have begun to innovate in the other direction, by asking: How can we do less? As all productivity folks (or, spiritual teachers) have pointed out, our attention is a critical resource. The mind’s temptation to expend attention everywhere only dissipates…
Read ItAll Horses Are Red: WordPress CSS for Everyone
CSS is the formatting language of the web. If it’s mysterious to you, it needn’t be! No longer do you have to be beholdin’ to the whims of web developers—learn what this CSS thing is all about, and how YOU can apply it with simple techniques that can transform the look of your…
Read ItBrilliant cartoon about mental models
I love this! He’s managed to encapsulate an important (and oft-ignored) truth about design, in such a way that it will be accessible to everyone: http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/23/mental-model-diagrams-cartoon/ Here is another one he did about personas (again—important idea, hard to explain and sell to your team): http://thinkvitamin.com/design/how-to-understand-your-users-with-personas/ I’m thinking this is really a key—cartoons. Encapsulate everything easily Make it…
Read ItWho Makes Up for Ambiguity in Client Agreements?
Photo credit: CowCopTim When your idea of what the agreement was, and your client’s idea of what the agreement was, differ, how does that get resolved? [Disclaimier: This scenario is a montage of experiences, and does not represent any one client.] An unsophisticated client generally sees their website project in vague, feeling terms–something that will…
Read ItWhen You See Untapped Potential, by Definition You Have an Unpopular Idea (Don't Seek Approval)
These are from some notes I made while reading Blue Ocean Strategy. So, they have a bit of the feel of notes, but are interesting. Reading about innovation in Blue Ocean Strategy. It’s a great book (with a lot of business-y jargon), all about finding untapped markets, how to go about it, and how to seize…
Read ItA new business is a new system, Part III
Photo credit: TANAKA Juuyoh (????) To be successful a business needs to contain certain qualities. (In place of business, you could substitute any system you want to create that has to interact with other systems.) In living systems terms, these qualities would be called sub-systems, or in the terms of Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language,…
Read ItA new business is a new system, Part II
Photo credit: Digital Sextant The important thing The important thing, is that the idea you have, of the business (or something else) you could create, could quite possibly be a great thing. An amazing thing. A wonderful thing, that could bring you happiness. Or, creative fulfillment. Or, money. Or, fame, or whatever. And it could…
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