The Tin Shingle Blog

It was love at first tweet. Sabina and I were having our weekly “digitally in-person” meeting over our computers, and I was skimming our Twitter stream. Fox Small Business had just tweeted an article, “Capital One Launches ‘I Am Small Business Proud Campaign’”, in which award-winning independent director and producer, Trisha Dalton and  editor and cinematographer, John Sears, embark on a 10-week journey across the country to explore the true fabric of America’s economy – small businesses - all of which are shared on the official website: www.iamsmallbusinessproud.com. Sponsored by Spark Business from Capital One, the “I Am Small Business Proud” campaign shines a spotlight on the backbone of this country’s economy.

Within an instant, I was hooked. Watching my first video was like falling down an amazing rabbit hole filled with suck-you-in, inspiring and motivating brand stories. The first #SmallBizProud story I discovered was John and Trisha’s first documentary about The Salty Paw, a groomer in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport and their owner Amanda Byron Zinc who illustrates how she started the store, and how her business survived Hurricane Sandy.  By the time I finished it, Sabina and my meeting had very much turned into a desire to share these stories and the coast-to-coast journey with all of you.

As to the origins of the movement, Buck Stinson, Senior Vice President for Spark, says this about why they created this project:  “As a leading financial resource for small businesses, we understand the value of getting close to our customers.  This is a great way for us to capture a true representation of small business owners and celebrate what they do every single day.”

Everything that we have discovered about this campaign aligns with what we do and support at Tin Shingle. That’s why we have joined Capital One Spark to help Team Trisha and John shine the light on small businesses from North Carolina to New York City, Scranton, PA to Sacramento, CA. We are now official #SmallBizProud groupies in a partnership with Capital One Spark!

For the next five weeks, you will see highlights of some of the most important take-aways from the #SmallBizProud campaign and anecdotal business lessons (not to mention bucket-loads of inspiration) from each business owner.  You’ll also get to know Capital One Spark a bit better, and discover their reasons for the campaign along with why they have such a soft spot in their hearts for small business!

From the pharmacist Mat Slakoper of Mat’s Pharmacy, who after working in a pharmacy spent two years looking for one of his own to buy, only to buy his hometown pharmacy and work for months until finally seeing profit which he hasn’t stopped doing in his 25 years of business...
 

...to the owners of the NIRO boutique, who not only design their own clothes, but teach fashion and entrepreneurship to youth in their community as part of their business model.

You can follow the filmmaker’s journey and check out past videos by state right now here, and stay tuned to our blog for our take-aways as they come! As of this blog posting, Trisha and John are traveling from New Orleans to Baton Rouge and Shreveport in Louisiana. You can follow their path and pictures via their Instagram and Twitter as well as Capital One Small Business Facebook page, as well as through the hashtag #SmallBizProud.

Disclosure: The #SmallBizProud content series is sponsored by Capital One Spark. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of Capital One.
 

As you are making the rounds to get included in Mother's Day and Father's Day Gift Guides, if you are part of our private membership program, you can now list a gift idea from your business directly into Tin Shingle's online gift guides! Gift ideas can include products, classes, memberships, services, etc. We all know that gifts to make Mom's life easier or prettier are good, and that Dad tends to love golf, BBQ and food. :) Buzz happens when our members fill up our gift guides, including:

• SEO: When gift ideas about a similar thing are grouped together, they have stronger value to search engines. It's like "safety in numbers", but in this case, it's "power in numbers".
• Tweet! We tweet your gift ideas.
• Blog Roundup: We publish a blog roundup based on your gift ideas and we feature that in our free newsletter, #SmallBizGoodness.

How to Enter if You are a Member:

• Log into your Member Account Center.
• If you're on the Home page, click on the "My Benefits" button. If you're on any other page, look at the right side column and click on SHOWCASE (add/edit) under the "CONTENT MARKETING CENTER"
• Add a picture, and be sure to put a link to exactly where to make the purchase of your item, or to learn more information. Include a description about the product or service. A description really helps with good SEO so that it gets found in Google and other search engines.
• If you're not a member yet, click here for more information.

PS: These online gift guides are different than what we are collecting in the PR Leads. Please continue submitting to the PR Lead calls for Mother's Day (click here) and for Father's Day (click here).

So you want to be a less busy person?  Good news, we're here to help.  Like anything in life and business, creating successful habits is something we get better at by practice, and if you're in a not-so-happy place feeling overwhelmed and perhaps even less productive than you should be, you may want to try a few of these solutions on for size.

Can We All be Less Busy?  YES!

Though there is no magic pill to swallow or switch to flick to add more than 24 hours to your day, the good news is that becoming a person who doesn’t feel overwhelmed, busy or unable to complete your to do list doesn’t have to be your description anymore.    

Becoming less busy is all in your control and we’re going to give you strategies and changes you can begin doing now and when you do, you’ll start seeing more pockets of time open up in your day almost immediately. Let the strategies begin!

Strategy #1: Break Bad Habits That are Making You Flustered and Over-Busy

1st Step: Use a Time Log
Assess your current schedule via a Time Log to identify "time wasters," discover when you work best, and observe interruptions. Keep a time diary in the same way that people who are trying to lose weight keep a food diary.  There’s a reason these tactics are such a staple of Weight Watchers – they work.  Keeping a time log for a week and include everything that works its ways into your schedule will immediately draw your attention to where you’re wasting time. You will begin noticing your “Peak Productivity Patterns” when you feel like you’re on your game and you work the best.  These are the moments you’ll want to schedule your most difficult work and really pack in tasks.

2nd Step: Do the Hard Tasks & Things You Don’t Want to do First
We spend countless hours in our weeks by procrastinating and avoiding tasks that seem like they’ll be stressful or unpleasant.  Here’s the trick:  they are usually MUCH worse in our mind than they are in real life, and you add  too much time to your already packed schedule by doing other things instead of them.  We often create work instead of doing immediate the work we need to do, that could benefit us the most in the long run. The more you make doing your hardest tasks first and make it a habit this a habit the less stressed and less busy you’ll become.

3rd Step - Stop Multi-Tasking
Sure sometimes there are moments when multi-tasking is the answer, but overall you should try to focus on only one thing at a time.  Multi-tasking not only causes brain fatigue but it often results in 7 or 8 half finished tasks (that can stretch on as half finished for weeks) as opposed to 1, 2 or 3 complete tasks a day.  Giving up multi-tasking will actually save you time, and save you from stress and mistakes due to “brain splitting”.

Strategy #2 – Learn How to Say No in Three Steps – it will be the Most Powerful Lesson You Ever Master

1st Step  - Say No
Say no like a good handshake: politely and firmly, without an apologetic "no" (which is like a weak handshake), and without a "no" that is accompanied by with excuses or lies.  Remember - this means saying no to requests directly and  not agreeing to unrealistic timelines on projects (from work to kid’s bake sales) that will cause you to shuffle your schedule around and become more busy.

2nd Step - Is The Request "On Goal"
Ask yourself if the request is in tune with your personal or professional goals.  If it is not, and you are feeling pressed for time in general, say no.  No debate.  Agreeing to do things we don’t have time for, don’t have interest in or things that don’t further our personal or professional desires simply sucks time out of our lives that we don’t have to spare.

3rd Step - Stop and Think
Learn to pause before answering anyone’s requests, and tell them you’ll get back to them.  This is a great baby step on your road to saying no. We have become a society that is used to instant gratification and fast answers but I encourage you to take time to breathe, think clearly and answer emails, texts, or in person requests at a later date.

Strategy #3  Become a Master & Commander of Your Time

1st Step: Eliminate Interruption
We are on interrupted on average 8 times an hour which can lead to a loss of up to three hours a day of doing whatever it is we love!  These comes from social media, phone calls, emails, unnecessary meetings and so forth.  Find the culprits in your life and stop them! Whether you decide to turn your phone off or take the email alerts off your home screen and only check them once an hour, you need to find ways to make your time sacred, and stop the constant interruptions.  

2nd Step: Create a To Do List the NIGHT BEFORE
Studies of highly productive and low stress people find that they do a couple of powerful things.  

a)    They plan their day out the night before, so that they can dive in first thing in the morning and not waste time and stress out planning in the morning when they should be accomplishing things.

b)    They are realistic and accept that even on their to do list, things will change, things won’t always get done, and life will go on.  Don’t lose time freaking out if you have to amend your to do list

FINALLY - Schedule in time for yourself and time for the things that relax and re-energize yourself
Stick to these as if they were important board meetings or doctor’s appointments.  Machines and athletes need to rest and recharge and so do you.    You’ll often find that you get more clarity and more done when you’re spending less time at your desk or pounding the idea repeatedly in your head.  The brain at rest is a powerful thing while pushing yourself too much will only lead you to illness, mistakes and other things that in the end will work against your quest to be less busy!  

Go forth and be LESS busy!

Just like our Tin Shingle members, I peruse the PR Leads that come in daily to Tin Shingle, looking for media opportunities that might be a fit for our business. When I saw a lead from Reva Seth, looking for working mothers who felt that their children actually helped their careers, I was hooked. Usually the media feature stories on the opposite, so I was eager to contribute to this theme. The book is called The MomShift and it was published this year and has a companion website following more career success stories of women.

My children have helped my career, in that they have forced me to make career decisions I was putting off or avoiding. This included forcing me to let someone else do something that I am quite capable of doing (ie delegating and not drowning in my todo list), being more selective with clients and thus happier, closing a door of my business that was bringing me more stress than joy, only to open a door to another area of my business I'd had on the shelf for years.

However, running a business with children is not easy. One has less time that one's competitors, and traditional things like maternity leave will be different for an entrepreneur than for a mom with a 9-5 job who may have an official maternity leave policy written into her employment contract. During my interview with Reva, we discussed maternity leave, as it was something I was going through at the time when I was pregnant with my son, who is now 2 years old. I'd written an article about it for Tin Shingle, and Reva ended up publishing my thoughts from that article in her book.

It's quite an honor to be included with so many other important and eye opening stories of how women have found career success after having children, and how they approach it differently and in ways that work for their families. Reva guides the reader through the stories with gentle yet spot-on insight from her own observations and experiences. This book is my new best mom-friend. It is a comfort to read, and I don't want to reach the last page! Always a sign that I have a good book in my hands. :)