DISQUS

Based of luck with AwayFind, Carl! Let me know if I can ever help at all :-).

Cheers,
Jared
jared AT setconsulting dot com

Based of luck with AwayFind, Carl! Let me know if I can ever help at all :-).

Cheers,
Jared
jared AT setconsulting dot com

Wow, some businesses just don't get it. I'm dumbfounded by how poorly they handled this--something that they ought to be thanking you for. They understand neither business nor personal etiquette.

But rather than just be negative, I'll recommend CMD Outsourcing Solutions, a Baltimore call center company I've worked with. They mostly target middle-market businesses when it comes to lead generation and the like, but their people are super friendly and I'm sure they're happy to turn away any not-a-fit prospects politely and with a thank you!

I'm very anxious to see if an official representative from Oreo responds...or thanks Chris for this, etc. While it may be tricky to monitor a brand as popular as Oreo, this should get the attention of anyone monitoring those airwaves.

Then again, a Google Alert for Oreo would probably lead to way too much snacking.

Best of luck getting out of the muck of all that email--it happens to the best of us. I think it surprised some of your writers that you'd write this, since you *are* the best of us when it comes to writing back.

Anyhow, you'll get out of your ditch soon. Someday I look forward to a post about the mixed blessing about being a thought leader...

And Kat, way to lay the smack down. Yes, we all are ADD...

Thank you for posting this interview, Steve. I appreciate your taking the time, and I hope it provides value to your readers.

If any of you want to try AwayFind, you can click this link, which will get you into the Private Beta right away (limited to first 25 people):

AwayFind Beta Access Link
(https://www.awayfind.com/register_user.php?code...)

It's a fun design, but the homepage is SEVENTY-EIGHT PAGES LONG. That's what happens if you try to print it--I stopped at Print Preview fortunately. So that's my bit of advice: offer fewer posts, for load time and sanity. Just imagine how long 78 pages would take on a mobile browser...and her poor server!

This is powerful, accurate, and extremely relevant stuff, Clay. I hope your readers will take it to heart.

I guess there's a silently implied message here--that maybe you got sucked in a little in the beginning. I know I did.

I don't mention this in a negative light, I mean it in that the most sincere rants come from the heart, from learning something the hard way, from seeing whether there is a light at the end of the tunnel...and realizing whether there's another way out.

Social media is an incredibly valuable tool for amplifying one's voice, for helping one to get paid attention to when they're seeking out certain ends...but there's a plateau we all reach where the gains are mere incremental...and they're purely about influence or vanity rather than success (however we define that...).

We want to make an impact--we want to be important--and that's often a more deeply rooted desire than making money. But what we forget sometimes is that there's a minimum amount of financial success we need for us to have enough freedom to really define our lives in the light we'd like. There's a certain level of comfort that can really empower us to make better decisions.

We have to try to draw the line between vanity and real outcomes. Social media levels the playing field...but it also removes all constraints on how much time we spend there.

Thanks, Clay.

Is it distractions that we need, or balance? We should never be monomaniacally (next time, Gary, it's Scrabble, and we're kicking ass) focused...but we should divide our time between different things that give us value.

http://pleasedress.me/ is a good escape from all the wine stuff, just like this site shows another side of you. It's just that when the distractions have no value (and people can usually judge whether something is a pure waste of time or at least marginally valuable) that we have to stay away from them.

But throwing in a few distractions is what helps us stay living, balanced, and true to our DNA as you put it.

Needless to say, you've got a unique set of DNA : ).

Chris,

Great job getting your messages down! Not only have you done an amazing job sorting/organizing...but you've more importantly managed to do while still respecting your contacts and responding to people in a timely manner. That's a heck of an accomplishment.

I've been trying out a lot of the advice in Stever's audiobook as well--as someone who prides themselves on all sorts of inbox-shaving techniques, I'll echo that he has some advice I hadn't even considered, especially regarding categorizing messaging before processing them.

As for AwayFind, later today we're releasing videos and a bunch of new default text that tells people explicitly how to screen out "did you get my email" messages. I'll send you a note personally when the videos are up and with some text that should get across your goal.

Looking forward to your how-to articles that are coming soon...congrats on finishing the social media 100!

Shoot! Me too! I lost about a third (31%) of my subscribers. I wonder if it was a separate update and the numbers are more accurate...or just a huge fail.

Thanks for aggregating some of our experiences here, hopefully we can get an explanation soon.

Thank you for the link to AwayFind! And I second the recommendation to Stever's audio program!

Some other applications that I find very helpful for my productivity include:
* TimeSnapper - PC Only, keeps track of everything I do by holding onto screenshots of those activities. Similar to RescueTime (PC+Mac) but not only does it offer reporting, it gets me out of a jam every time I accidentally close a window with unfinished data or my computer has trouble, etc. Also makes time sheets a breeze.
* GotVoice & PhoneTag will transcribe your voicemails

I have other apps I recommend, but I'm very anxious to see others recommendations as this list will be near and dear to my interests...and probably my sanity (these little tools can help!).

This was my first PodCamp Boston, and it couldn't have gone smoother or been full of warmer people. You all did a fantastic job putting this on and I'll keep spreading the buzz. Hope to be back next year!

You raise two very prescient points--that much of generation Y relies more on social networks to manage their contacts than traditional address books, and that most of their electronic communication is not through email but social networks (or SMS). As such, why aren't all the organizational features more commonly found in a personal information management (PIM) application in Facebook? People are spending their lives there, why not make it easier for them?

I think these features are on the way. I don't see serious contact portability, but I would imagine a contact list that doesn't require two-ways acceptance would be a huge help. If FB doesn't create it, it seems like an awesome opportunity for an app (if it doesn't already exist).

I don't see FB as the open platform for contacts (Plaxo, maybe? nah), but I see them at least making it easier to work with them. We can all hope...

Marina,

Google Apps only charges you for if you want 25gb of storage. Their free version (of 6.75gb) should work for most people.

That being said, it's very easy to get all your aliases sent to that one email address with Google Apps...but I can see your frustration with trying to get the correct From address in there--because then you'd be back to where you started with "on behalf of" business. An easy workaround would be to use a desktop client when sending messages from those other domains--Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc would all do the trick without the "on behalf of"...

I continue to recommend Google Apps to small businesses, but you're right that it's not for everyone. Especially if one wants support. Sorry you had such a bad experience.

You always have such thorough guides, Chris! If only it were so easy to blog once per day... I don't know how you do it.

One addition: if you're a Windows person and you want to compose offline, I'd highly recommend Windows Live Writer--I'm a geek who likes the source view at times, but with Live Writer you can actually see how it'll appear online while you're still offline. Basic image editing and embedding of things is much easier than with a separate batch of tools. More on the new release is here .

I suck at Cranium. And I'm sorry.

I think having Deva involved would be valuable, as well. I'll be heading to IORG next month as it should be a useful and diverse group of folks --and all of your viewers could benefit from any new knowledge and ideas that are shared there.

Plus I'm sure he'll have plenty of insight to offer around the most popular "productivity tool" within the business community (for better or worse), which is still MS Outlook.

Great catching up in DC this past week!

Absolutely agreed! I don't even know if I see "cheers" there. Who knows, maybe we'll see them both soon...

Great how-to video, Torley! Thanks for passing along the Lifehacker article, and I'm really glad to see how you're using Windows Live Writer :-)

Amen, anyone who hasn't checked out this article needs to! Thanks for sharing it with your readers (as someone who teaches and uses batching as a huge part of his job, I think the world would be better off with this advice!)

I'm anxious to hear the rest of your take on this. I'd add to this but the comments here have already been so valuable. The nuance of branding and focusing within a niche fascinates me.

I'd be curious to hear your take on the differences between building a brand and positioning yourself as a thought leader. With the exception of Madonna, or maybe not, I'd say all your examples have an element of thought-leadership in them. Certainly you and Gary.

I look forward to the next posts.

Hi Mark, I'm sorry we didn't get chat at the event, but I'm glad you liked the productivity talk. Hope to see you when I'm back in the Chicago area again (or you're out in DC)! (by the way, the whole presentation is up here if you want it). Now to browse a bit more of your site...

Very curious to hear folks responses to this--thanks for posting this, Chris! We use QuickBooks for both accounting and payroll, and we use Basecamp for tracking our time (which we then port into QuickBooks twice per month). QuickBooks does a great job with expense management and various reports and exporting options...but it's definitely a big application with a huge learning curve (if you want to really use it to its fullest) (Note: it's easy to use it wrong and then have to go back and fix a lot of things so you can get improved reporting--I don't fault QB for this, but it's still a pain that it took so much effort to get things to the level they're at with us now).

So yes, I'm very anxious to hear people's thoughts on FreshBooks!

I think this approach IS more efficient. Rather than leave a bad taste in the mouth of an influencer, it has the chance to make an impact both on him and his audience. Sort of like the 99:1 rule or something--if 1 message takes 99x as long but get 99x the results then who cares if the other 99 people don't receive it?

There's nothing efficient about a bad practice. Efficiency isn't about scale, it's about impact.