Kansas City SEO and PPC

Startup Life and Work Balance.

Alternate Title: Calcanis and I actually agree on this one.

I was especially excited to read Jason’s Blog today (although he is taking a bit of heat) - as I am one that is neck deep in startup life (except when I’m neck deep in agency strategy or consulting) - and he makes some really good points in his previous post, How to Save Money at a Startup.

There are a few points I’m iffy on (like, I think you can make a case for PC’s saving you money as well - guess it depends on your personality type).  However, there are some that are absolutely brilliant, and I’d like to add a bit of my flavor to each of those:

Buy Second Monitors for Everyone - HECK YES!  Go one better - by HUGE extra monitors for everyone.  Especially for your coders.  I can’t tell you how much time I save having an email window, browser window, and “work” window (DreamWeaver, Photoshop, etc….) open.  Plus, I’m just happier.

Cheap Tables, Expensive Chairs - Really good point here.  I figured this out for my home office long ago.  Currently, we have pretty nice versions of both, but the deal on the desks was silly.  Thanks to Sam’s Club Closeout sales!

Use Google Email - this is a no-brainer.  However, depending on your host, you can do xyz@yourdomain.com on the cheap as well.  Thanks to Gmail - you can connect the two pretty easily.  Avoid exchange server at all costs.

Avoid People that don’t love their work - originally, this was fire people that don’t love their work - but if you’re doing your job, you shouldn’t have hired them in the first place.  Around here, we keep a pretty strict time line - people don’t stay too late or work too much on weekends - or at least they are expected not to.  Most of them still do.  Because we love what we’re doing.

Stay away from meetings - a recurring theme.  Meetings typically are a gigantic waste of time, unless there is some sort of deliverable coming out at the end.  If you’re just meeting to talk about what you’re doing - you’re wasting everyone’s time.  If you’re meeting to go over a report - you’re wasting time, stuff like that can be discussed over IM.  If you’ve hired smart people who love their work, they should be able to move forward without too much hand-holding.   In short- you need less talking, more doing.

Go over there to read the rest - I actually have to get to work!