Holy Crap. I haven’t updated this blog since September. See, I told you I sucked at blogging! I do well for a couple months and then PUFF I’m gone for a few months. So, here I am back in action. I have been reading a lot, working a lot and relaxing a lot. Not much else to update right now but will certainly come back to it in the coming week. I promise!
Cheers,
Erik
In life, as we know, things happen. Some believe everything happens for a reason, others don’t. As I have embarked on several new journeys in the past year or so, I have come to believe that “everything happens for a reason.”
In the past year, I really started ramping up business, working at it everyday. I moved it from the house to an office, hired someone and doing what I never thought would actually come to fruition. As life goes on, you will meet many people. Some of these persons will become friends, colleagues, business partners, advisors, mentors… The list goes on. The important thing is to always try to take at least one thing from that person. Everyone has something to give.
You’ll meet these people doing all sorts of things. You’ll meet a person doing the things you love, the things you hate, and whatever else you may be doing. Just remember to never talk bad of someone the first time you meet a person. Why? What if that person you’re talking to is a friend of the CEO and the CEO is friends with the one youre talking bad of and friend with the new acquaintance. Now you’ve just blown every possible chance to close the deal. In the recent months I have met many people doing the things I love. I met the one who I wake up to everyday with a big smile on my face, I’ve met people who have given me the opportunity to bid on incredible business opportunities, people who just want to talk, people who want to listen and so many more. Each one of these persons has left me with something.
As we go through our lives we make these decisions everyday to chose what we want out of life. If you wake up in the morning and say to yourself “Today is going to suck, I hate my job, I have no money……..” then generally, that’s how your day is going to be. However, if you wake up and say to yourself “Today is going to be great, I may not like my job, but at least I have one, I may not have a lot of money but at least I have an income………” then generally you’re day will be good, if not great. Opportunities come to those who are willing to open their eyes, close their mouth, and listen to what’s happening around us. As many have said, that’s why god gave us two ears and 1 mouth. Those who talk a lot, often talk themselves right out of a deal, those who listen, get what the clients needs are and aren’t too busy focusing on what their next statement is. Or tacky sales pitch.
It’s about making the decision everyday to better yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to better yourself in terms of income, it could be as simple as learning something new. Often times, people relate bettering themselves means having to get a better job and make more money. I don’t believe that. You can have a $10 an hour job and become a millionaire. You could better yourself by starting a new routine, or sticking to those new years resolutions. I finally started doing this. And when I did, things came in abundance. I quite smoking, started a new diet and went back to the gym. I decided to take a new road in life and start doing better for myself. I stopped listening to what everyone else wanted me to do, and focused on what I wanted to do.
If we all did this everyday you would have a much more fulfilling life, in my opinion. So how does this relate to business? Simple, if you believe that you can sell a package to x client then you will, if you wake up with a good attitude, good things will come your way. If you’re a business owner, maybe it is time to re-focus and change how your company does things. If you are that business owner, don’t forget to take care of your employees, they are the ones who make you your salary more times than not!
May you all wake up tomorrow with a big smile on your face!
Until Next Time, Cheers! -Erik
So I am still trying to figure out what to blog about. Since I have not quite figured it out yet I figured I would just tell you about my past day.
It’s actually not very exciting. I woke up, went to work. Trying to fix this computer, the same one from last week. It’s still frustrating me, all I need is to be able to read a hard drive. Unfortunately, I can’t. So, I am continuing to sip on coffee and rack my brain on how to get this had-drive into a readable state. Any ideas? Anyone? Bueller… Bueller…
Good morning from the boat! I am down here in the beautiful state of CT relaxing, sipping my coffee and writing about something.
I haven’t figured it out yet, but according to research, bloggers are supposed to post at least once a day to keep their readers interested. Well, I’m blogging today to get my stats up. That’s really it. I am sure I’ll think of something to write about in the very near future.
Over the course of the past few days I have been blogging a lot more. Definitely not about anything specific.
It’s been a very interesting past month for SDG. We have immersed ourselves in new ways of business. We have opened our ears more, listening to the customers and what their needs are; more than opening our mouths with an immediate plan of attack. We are willing to go the extra mile to ensure customer satisfaction, even if that means the late night, weekend, or work on vacation to make sure the job gets done.
My partner and I were talking the other day and we often discuss about life, ideas, business amongst many other things. But one thing that hit home was the realization of how hard work now will pay off in the future.
I bring up a story of a friend of mine who busted his ass for many many years, now he is able to live a more “free” lifestyle. I can look at my brother and how his business after ten years is now really starting to evolve and will certainly bring him that “free” lifestyle. Then my mother, her business is flourishing, even in a down economy. When I talk about “free lifestyle” I do not mean it as you will never work a day in your life again. But, at the very least, you can make the choice everyday to go in late, sleep in, or take off for the day on a random road trip just for the hell of it.
Why do I mention all this, because I’m tired of hearing people say that “their are no jobs and no money to be made” or “the economy sucks” etc.
Now is the time when you should be out building business, not worrying about how bad the economy may be doing. Granted, it may be more difficult to build business today than it was a few years ago, but their is still plenty of it to be had. You just have to find it.
That’s what we are doing everyday at SDG. Yes, it can sometimes be a slow journey, or take forever to close a new account but at least we have something to look forward to everyday.
Until Next Time, Cheers!
-Erik
They’re terrible. We all know that. They develop viruses all by themselves, they decide not to work at random, and you get mad at them at least once a day. Sound familiar? This is the shit I am dealing with this morning. Resurrecting a computer to salvage a file for someone else’s company. Unfortunately, windows is sometimes a necessary evil in order to get certain things accomplished. Even in our “Mac only” office here at SDG, we still have one evil little windows machine. It’s purpose, solely for the bookkeeper who only will use windows.
It’s a glorious day outside. Time to get this machine fixed, and then off to a few clients and appointments. Oh yeah, and to get my eyes checked, again. I think I have the wrong prescription.
Until Next Time, Cheers!
-Erik
Here it goes. Phone calls are great. Simply put. Whether or not it is a phone call that is about bad news or good news, if your phone is ringing in your office, at least someone is thinking of your company. Even if they’re upset, they still thought in their head the name of your business.
I got off the phone with a gentleman who may or may not need a website. I hadn’t talked to him in about a year give or take. The point is, he remembered myself and my company. Whenever your phone rings, PICK IT UP! Have you ever called a company and the phone just keeps ringing and ringing and then it eventually goes to voicemail?
Of course we all have experienced that! It’s so frustrating, especially in this world of technology. Or how about the businesses who don’t even have voicemail? Why do I say PICK IT UP!?!?! Because every time you do not pick it up, is a potentially lost sale. What if the person on the other end of the phone, on the morning you spilled coffee on yourself, slipped in the shower, dog peed on your shoe and the lady at Starbucks slammed the door in your face, was the biggest account you could have signed? And you didn’t pick it up because you were having a bad day, or you just didn’t feel like it. I was almost going to let it roll to voicemail, instead I picked it up. I was right in the middle of a project, instead, I took 24 mins and 52 seconds to talk with this person.
Now here I am writing about it. Why? Because it’s to help you realize the importance of seizing every opportunity that comes your way. All opportunities have a shelf life, seize it before it expires.
Until Next Time, Cheers!
-Erik
So I just replied to an email that I received back in July. July 7th to be exact.
I wrote in the context of giving advice to this seemingly helpless individual. I don’t mean to sound rude, but I am an honest and upfront person. He was upset with me because I chose to not get between him and a big problem he was facing in his life. It was a rather interesting reply in the fact that I had compared him to another individual I was helping go through a similar issue at about the same time.
What’s absolutely amazing is that one chose to take the high road and the other chose to take the ” woe is me, life sucks” road. Can you guess which one took which road? Can you guess which one has a rewarding career and is living a much more fulfilling life?
The purpose of writing this, (as it seems I like to state the purpose of my writing), is that you have the ability to chose where life can take you. Everyday we are given an opportunity. Some days are good days, some are bad. So when life hands you lemons, it what you chose to do with the lemons that matter. Not all lemons have to be sour…
All of this is written as a ” In My Opinion” point of view.
Until Next Time, Cheers!
-Erik
What the heck… Go For It.
If only that were said more often than not. Often times I find that people tend to put another person down when they come up with a seemingly good idea. Or they say, hey that won’t work anyways so why bother trying.
After a few years in the world of sales, to be more specific: Copier Sales, a whopping month in Advertising Sales, Coffee Sales, I began to realize that it was not the life for me. I left sales and went into managing a sports store. A seemingly good idea at the time. Part of changing to that job was for personal reasons, another was to see if I could make it work. A quick story…
I went to work for this new “startup” company. I knew the owners for years, I was told constantly to not take the job. Common questions/phrases after I took the job: What are you doing with your life? Why did you leave your previous job with full benefits, 401K, a great income? You’re making a mistake was the most frequent one said. I was so tired of hearing this. But I knew that their was a reason why I was to take that job. I still had to do sales, but it was a different kind. I had a quota to fill. I knew that I had to increase sales from $0 to at least $10,000 a month. Holy crap right? It was easy. I figured it out within the first week. I started calling up and emailing every single sports arena, venue, store in the area. Then I started hitting up every sports team, whether it was children’s, high school, tournaments… It didn’t matter as long as they agreed. You’re probably thinking, agreed to what? I had them agree that I could send someone to the place of business (IE: Tournament), set up a tent and sell sports “crap.” By week three I had booked 2-4 events per weekend from CT-NY. I talked the owners into buying a box truck and having the logos put on. It was a home run, my idea worked. Next was ramping up Internet sales. Unfortunately, the owners didn’t want to put any money into this portion. That never worked. A year later, I left the company and started Twisted Promotions which morphed into SDG.
okay… So maybe that was a little longer than a quick story. The point is that we can’t be afraid to jump off the deep end. If you’re afraid, you’ll likely never reach your goals/dreams or it will just take you a heck of a lot longer to get their.
The first company I started was a production company, I sucked at running it but was great at the entertaining end of it. I sold it to my brother, in the form of a handshake and… a steady paycheck. Years later I knew I wanted to own another business. I worked for the big fortune 500 company, and everything in between. I wanted to taste that freedom again. I wanted to know that my financial success depended on me doing what is necessary, not worry about fluffing some CEO’s pocket in the Netherlands. Even when I dove feet first into this company I was once again hearing the same b.s. I ignored again, after nearly two years at it I am still growing the business, and loving every moment of it. Although I may not have the steady income that someone with a 9-5 job has (btw, job is an acronym for just over broke), I have freedom.
So why the picture of google? Well, I could also put a picture of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and many others. If they listened to other people instead of actually going for it then where would we be as a society today? Would we have computers, iPads, social networking? Think about it…
Until next time Cheers!
-Erik
So I got an iPad. Yes, I finally did it! I got the 32gb 3G through Verizon. Why? Because I have found through seeing so many other of my colleagues that my business could run much smoother by having everything at my fingertips.
In fact… I’m blogging from it right now. I can now store my contracts, sign contracts, process payments, email… The list goes on… All from this nifty device, which btw lasts 10 hours on a single charge!
Since buying the iPad this past Saturday, I have almost gotten through a 2500 page book by utilizing the amazing Kindle app. It is simply fabulous and I love reading again. I’m actually reading a book by Robert Kiyosaki, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” If you have not read it I suggest you read it immediately. I am so addicted to his book I am purchasing more of his. I can’t seem to put it down.
I am excited to say that times are changing, companies are growing and by reading we only help ourselves understand so much more. I wish I had read this book years ago when someone told me to. I wonder what I would have done differently?
Until next time, cheers and have fun!
-Erik
Springfield Design Group 