Entrepreneurship

7 Entrepreneurial Secrets of Survivorman

Les Stroud is Survivorman. If you don’t watch the show, you may have seen ads for it on the Discovery Channel. Les Stroud is a documentary filmmaker and survivalist. In each episode of Survivorman, he strands himself in a remote location, away from civilization, and survives for 7 days. All the while, he documents his […]

Here’s Why It’s Good For a Consultant to Tell the Employees How Much He Makes

I swear I had decided to write this before reading Pam Slim’s latest post about earning more by working less. But her thoughts dovetail so perfectly with mine. Recently, the hiring manager at a client company reluctantly agreed to my rate. But he asked me please not to say anything to the other people on […]

Ten Things That Are Different Now That I’m Self-Employed

My first day as an entrepreneur, I got sick. Seriously. It was Thanksgiving. And I got a virus, which grew steadily worse through that day and the next. Immediately, I got to experience two differences about working for yourself: No paid holidays, and no paid sick leave. By Friday evening, I was completely incapacitated and […]

I Just Realized How Miserable I Am

Recently, Alexander Kjerulf, the Chief Happiness Officer, asked, “What makes you happy or unhappy at work?” I pulled part of my answer from an old post from my LiveJournal, “Things to Make My Life Perfect.” This list of things I actually wrote in response to a writing prompt for the (now defunct) Alchera Project. At […]

Is Consulting More Stable Than Employment?

It occurred to me several weeks ago that consulting could be more stable than employment. So I asked someone who’s had much more first-hand exposure to the subject than me. I asked consultant Pam Slim, author of Escape From Cubicle Nation and the Get a Life eZine, what makes a consultancy stable.

Five Things Software Teams Can Learn From Build-A-Bear Workshop About Customer Relations

I never would have bought this book for myself. I won it in a drawing at InBubbleWrap.com. I’m not sure what made me enter the drawing. Maybe it was, Eh, it sounds moderately interesting, and it’s free. Or maybe it’s that I have a soft, cuddly spot in my heart for Build-a-Bear Workshop. And as […]