Longer Days » Reviews

The Best Business Books You’ve Never Heard Of

Brian Gladu — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 20:43:07 +0000

There are more great business books than you have time to read and I’m sure you’ve heard of them: The Fifth Discipline by Peter M. Senge, The Goal by Eli Goldratt, and anything by Peter Drucker.

But what about the books that don’t become popular because they didn’t have the right publisher, didn’t time things quite right, or didn’t have the right buzzwords in their title?

Here are three great business books I never would have heard about were it not for dumb luck (and yard sales)…

The Six Disciplines for Excellence by Gary Harpst

Amazon.com sales rank: #118,701

Why this book hasn’t been at the top of the business category – and stayed there for a very, very long time – I’ll never know. On Amazon.com it is ranked 118,701 while “Who Moved My Cheese,” arguably the worst business book ever written ranks at at a frightening 166 (Does anyone read that book after buying it? It’s the only book I’ve felt was a waste of time to read).

Perhaps its cover isn’t as eye-catching as others or maybe its title isn’t obscure enough. Perhaps it should have thrown in a tantalizing subtitle about social media and Web 2.5. Whatever the case, if you own a small business you need this book.

It is about how to create a defined business strategy and then execute on it. If that doesn’t sound sexy… well… it isn’t. But, it’s a necessary thing and even a beautiful thing once you wrap your mind around what a difference it would make to be at the helm of an organization with its eye on the ball and all its resources pursuing a competitor crushing, money-raking strategy that cements your company as the market leader.

The guys have an excellent small business blog going as well…

The Wizard of Ads by Roy H. Williams

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #240,939

If you have a Kindle reader you can buy it (and the other two in the series) for only $2 each. A thought-proking, fun read. Rather than focusing on data and numbers, Roy presents anecdotes and stories that remind us of core marketing principles we easily forget but should always keep in mind when we communicate with our market.

Peak Performance: Aligning the Hearts and Minds of Your Employees by Jon Katzenbach

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #468,973

This is the opposite of the One Minute Manager. This is for people serious aboutgetting the most out of their employees by helping them get the most out of their job. It’s about aligning people with their work and helping them find intrinsic motivation to do their best. The author argues that setting financial goals (numbers) based on company growth goals are difficult for employees to connect with and presents five “balanced paths” to helping people connect with their work.

What are some underrated, unpopular business books you’ve only found by chance?

18 iPhone Apps for Small Business Owners and Entrepeneurs

Brian Gladu — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:51:31 +0000

Notelife – A flexible repository for: the miscellaneous information that we encounter throughout the day but don’t have time to process, great ideas as they strike (notes, audio, and pictures), and even getting work done on the move (draft emails, blog posts, etc.).
Omnifocus – After trying, literally, every task management app on the iPhone, I have decided on Omnifocus because of its location awareness. Being a small business owner I do work at home and work at the office and having a task management app that excludes irrelevant work is priceless.
Dropbox – Have all the files you need with you at all times and peace of mind knowing they are safely stowed away on your computer and backed up in the cloud. (Integrates with many of the following apps…)
Quickbooks Online – Not technically an iPhone app, they have a web-based iPhone site that gives you access to your books if you use their online service – which, as an aside, I find quite capable relative to the desktop version after recent improvements.
Bills ~ on your table – Never miss a payment again. Keep track of upcoming payments due to vendors and government agencies. Organize by category, view stats, beautiful interface, cloud sync, and more.
Carbonfin Outliner – Perfect for planning, syncs with the cloud, and is easily accessed for later transfer to your project management solution of choice.
Dragon dictation – Dictate and then email it. Great for when you are driving or just need to get something short out of your head fast.
Calengoo - The best app for accessing your Google Calendar (trust me on this one – head and shoulders above the competition).
Documents to Go Premium – Edit and create Office documents on the go. Geek bonus: Google Docs access.
ScannerPro – If you keep receipts in your wallet long enough, the ink rubs off and the IRS gets angry. Immediately scan them and, geek bonus, store them in your Dropbox.
PomodoroPro – I’ve already discussed the specific benefits of the Pomodoro method – this app keeps you focused, motivated, and productive by timing your Pomodoro’s and keeping a daily total.
GoodReader – They have perfected the PDF reading experience on the iPhone. Geek bonus: keep your PDF library in Dropbox and connect to it through this app.
1Password – You’ve got enough to worry about it… tracking down your log in information shouldn’t be burning any time or brain cycles.
Lynda.com – Downtime? Learn some new software.
Lumosity Brain Trainer – Sharpen your mind.
Breathpacer – When you are relaxed and calm you can focus and do your best work.
Momento – Keep a business journal and use tags to group threads of important information you have documented such as hires, new clients, predictions, ideas, etc.
LinkedIn – What app list would be complete without social networking?

Looking forward to the iPad…

Is “Live Chat” for your website effective?

Brian Gladu — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:59:17 +0000

Yes, extremely. We get just as many leads through our website’s live chat feature as we do from phone calls. It also seems that the visitors who chat with us are further into the buying process for whatever reason.

Live chat offers a number of advantages over the phone for us:

It’s really nice being able to think through what you are going to say. “Delete” just isn’t possible over the phone and being able to read through a response before hitting “submit” is sometimes priceless.
You can still multitask. Talking on the phone requires more attention. Prospects on our live chat can ask questions as needed and we are free to work on other things in the meantime.
We can offer after hours support without being at the office. The particular live chat client we use, Alive Chat, can send chat notifications to our mobile phones. In fact, I’ve had a number of chats on my iPhone. One of the major reasons we went with Alive Chat over its many competitors is that it has a great Mac app.
The chat history is saved and becomes part of the clients file. We are collecting information that stay with the client throughout the buying process and after. Notes taken during phone calls on paper tend not to make it that far.
Auto compilation of frequently asked questions. Our chat history gives us data on what information we need to better integrate or highlight on our website.

I recommend putting a live chat on your website to all our clients – especially if your site has a medium to low volume of visitors. You’ll connect with prospects you otherwise wouldn’t.

ActiveCollab versus Basecamp: A web-based project management solution comparison

Brian Gladu — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:52:58 +0000

Basecamp is the subscription-based, hosted 100 pound gorilla – everyone’s heard of him and he’s a crowd favorite. ActiveCollab is the one-time fee, open source, server-side, up-and-coming contender.

Distinct but balanced pros and cons make this battle too close to call in advance. It will depend on what fits the needs of your organization as one isn’t clearly better than the other.

We’ve been using Basecamp since 2007. From the beginning, Basecamp wasn’t a perfect solution for us. In our line of work as virtual assistants, clients want frequent updates on their time usage. Basecamp doesn’t allow clients to see time entries in a project – the option just doesn’t exist. So, we are forced to use a script to generate these reports for each client every evening. This is a $250/month fee in addition to what we already pay for Basecamp.

That’s frustrating in itself, but we started running into a lot of problems with Timepost which posts time entries into Basecamp. This is the only solution available for Mac OS X (we are 100% mac) so this is a major problem.

The combination of spending more than I felt we should have to and being inconvenienced by manually entering hundreds of time entries onto projects each day got me looking into other solutions. I stumbled into ActiveCollab, tried out the demo, and ended up becoming enamored with it. We are in the process of (slowly) switching our entire organization over.

Here’s a pro – con comparison to explain why:

ActiveCollab by A51 d.o.o:

- CON: You run the risk of hosting it. Your server goes down for some reason, your clients get upset.

- CON: Those clients who are already familiar with Basecamp may be annoyed with having to learn the (minor) differences between the two.

- PRO: You pay for it and you have it. No subscription fees.

- PRO: Much greater control over permissions and roles. Basecamp is extremely limited by comparison.

- PRO: “Modules” allow you to extend functionality versus more closed, Basecamp.

- Recurring tasks

- Fast planning

- Detailed reports

- Billing

- PRO: Very similar functionality is going to make it easy to switch.

- PRO: “Tickets” functionality is useful and a definite advantage over Basecamp – though not yet robust enough for larger organizations.

- PRO: Clients can access time entries and run their own reports (unlike Basecamp)

- PRO: Mobile/iPhone version means clients on the go can easily access their Client Area (project). Do note that the iPhone version allows you to access project information but not add or edit tasks, pages, tickets, etc. I was disappointed by this. It’s nice that they have it but the mobile version is crippled in terms of functionality.

- PRO: “Themes” allow you to match the look and feel of ActiveCollab to your website (Basecamp only allows you to change colors).

- PRO: Invoicing module for service based businesses and Subversion module for programmers.

Basecamp by 37signals:

- CON: No modules means you are limited to what they deem “necessary” and “unnecessary” in terms of features and functionality. Their minimalist approach means you can expect them to error on the side of “less functionality and features” in favor of “ease of use and simplicity.”

- PRO: OpenID log in and your login can be linked to other offerings in the 37signals ecosystem.

- PRO: iPhone apps can interact with it.

- PRO: Some clients are already familiar with it and so can “get up and go” with us right away.

- PRO: They host it so I don’t have to worry about getting SSL, backing it up, etc.

For our company, I like knowing that we can modify ActiveCollab’s code if needed and add new modules to extend functionality. If the functionality of Basecamp perfectly meets your needs, and you don’t mind paying a monthly subscription, the hassle of self-hosting may not be worth it.

Zealog versus Daytum: A Review of Apps That Help You Keep Track of Things

Test and Review of PRWeb Press Release (updated)

Brian Gladu — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:57:06 +0000

Today we submitted our first press release on how a virtual assistant can help small businesses during a recession.

As I was preparing this press release, I found the reviews and information on the effectiveness of PRWeb to be sparse so I’m going to try to make this as useful as possible to someone who is trying to decide whether PRWeb is worth the money when there are so many free press release sites out there. I will update this post often over the next several days as it all plays out with stats, media response (will there be any?), incoming links, etc.

For more information, please see the only review of PRWeb with much substance (from SUGARRAE’s blog).

Purchasing: PRWeb offers a number of different options. To truly test out the service, I opted for the most expensive option which guarantees distribution to the Associated Press. It was a lot of money to spend if this doesn’t end up producing any results but I didn’t want to look back and wonder “What if…?”

I think we’ve got a pretty good angle here and I’m optimistic that it will do well.

On the submission process: PRWeb gives your press release a rating after it is submitted to them. Initially, our release got a rating of 2 on a scale of 5 which means that it would not be fully distributed! As you can imagine, this ticked me off a bit because the justifications for this were off-base. I made a few minor edits and resubmitted (not changing anything about the actual release but removing our company logo) and it was then given a rating of 4 – which is good enough.

Our press release is scheduled to go out at 5 a.m. EST tomorrow. I’ll update in the morning with the initial response.

UPDATE: 02/24/09 9:02 a.m.

I got an email at exactly 5:00 a.m. confirming that the press release had been distributed via the “Online Distribution Engine.” Here are the stats so far, 4 hours in:

From the search engines, we have gotten one Google hit each for the keywords “recession” and “recession update.”

UPDATE: 02/24/09 9:18 pm

Traffic and views have increased dramatically:

I still haven’t heard from CNN yet but I expect I’ll have a voicemail waiting for me in the morning…

Another metric not reported here, the YouTube video I threw together for this release (the package I purchased allows you to attach a video) has about 28 views. It’s impossible to say whether that traffic is from the release.

UPDATE: 02/24/09 10:34 PM

I just received the Google Alert I have set up for “longerdays” and we got a link as a direct result of the press release. It is coming from a Pagerank 2 website… but I’m just thrilled to start seeing a result. On the plus side, the link does come from a website that is pretty closely related to our niche – same neighborhood I would say.

Just as a side note, I am not linking to the press release itself or any of the sites that link to it or us simply because I don’t want Google to think this was a reciprocal link trade. Perhaps I’m overly paranoid about what Google might “think” but I’d rather play it safe. Inbound links are the ultimate goal here so I’d hate to do anything that would negate them.

FINAL REVIEW MONTHS LATER: No noticeable increase in pagerank, two incoming links, no sales as a result of the release, and no media attention. We won’t be using the service again for a while. Could be a good service for some businesses but it’s not for us.

StumbleUpon Ads Review

Brian Gladu — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 05:25:25 +0000

For those unfamiliar with StumbleUpon, according to their website, it is a service that “discovers web sites based on your interests. Whether it’s a web page, photo or video, our personalized recommendation engine learns what you like, and brings you more.” Essentially, you install a toolbar to your browser, you tell StumbleUpon what subject matter interests you, and then when you click the “Stumble” button it takes you to a website related to those subjects which you can then rate as “I like it!” or thumbs down. There are currently 6,562,756 StumbleUpon accounts.

StumbleUpon generates revenue by allowing advertisers to purchase “stumbles” for $.05 a visitor. Getting started is so extremely quick and straightforward that you will probably be wondering if missed something important along the way… that is until the visitors start coming. They will start coming very quickly and there will be many of them.

You are able to specify what gender, age, country and state you want your visitors to be in. Unfortunately, they do not have time zone targeting and you cannot, as far as I could tell, select multiple states.You are also able to specify how many visitors you want a day in 100, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, and 3000 increments. Somewhat unique to online advertising, StumbleUpon allows you to see whether viewers liked or disliked your website. This aspect makes it extremely interesting to check your stats (if not addicting).

You can choose in which category your site will appear. There are too many to list here, but for our virtual assistant website, I chose the “Entrepreneur” category as our service appeals most to micro and small business owners.

To give you an idea of how quickly the traffic comes, I purchased $25.00 worth of traffic at 4.37 pm. Visitors started coming to my site within a few minutes and I got an email at 12:04 am letting me know that my funds had been depleted. So, in a little over 8 hours, I recieved 500 visitors to LongerDays.com.

Now, to get down to the nitty gritty, as far as I am aware, none of these 500 visitors signed up for our virtual assistant service – at least not during the time that StumbleUpon was driving traffic. Whether the site was bookmarked for later reference and will at some point yield a client is difficult to tell as StumbleUpon does not provide any kind of tracking code a la Google Adword’s Site Stats.

I monitored the vistors as they came to the site and could see how many of them got past our main page and explored the site and how many of them quickly navigated away. As you would expect, most navigated away within 20-30 seconds but an impressive number lingered past the one minute mark and went 2-4 pages deep into the site. I would estimate that around 5% made it past one page. This may not sound like much but at $.05 a visitor, it seems like a good value to me.

In spite of the fact that we did not get any new client’s, I would have to say that I definitely recommend the service. I think that I will probably be using it differently in the future, such as driving traffic to a specific blog post (rather than our main website on virtual assistance), as this more closely aligns with the type of content one typically finds on StumbleUpon and I think it would be better received. For instance, a blog post on “Four ways to leverage a virtual assistant to boost your small business” would probably do very well in the “Entrepreneurship” category.

In my mind, this is a great online advertising tool if you are looking to generate some buzz around a specific piece of content on your site that others would find interesting, unique, or useful – these seem to be the three things Stumblers, like Diggers, are drawn to.

Testing out Squidoo