Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

Become A Closer

Starting projects, coming up with great ideas, solving world hunger; all these are great, but if you can’t deliver there’s no point to them. You need to finish, you need to become a closer. Now when working with a team hopefully you have one of these people. You’ll have your great thinkers, your innovators, and your work horses, but if you have one guy (or gal) that can organize and keep the team towards the final goal you’ll “get ‘r done.” They may get a good chunk of the credit from the outside, but these types of people are invaluable.

The reason I am writing of this is because during this past week my direct boss sat me down and had a discussion about this very topic. (I don’t believe he reads this blog so I won’t hold back on any of my comments.) As I mentioned before I work as a biomedical engineer for a research and development company called Tissue Genesis, Inc. The company is 4 years old and 4 years into development of a perfusion system for cell culture in the research and clinical areas. I came in a year ago with the hopes to take what an outside engineering group built and designed and redesign it so it would work and be able to be brought to market. I came in and redesigned the disposable part (there is two disposable parts and two durable) within the first 4 months and one of the durables within 6. It took a lot of work but I learned a heap load in the process. Our goal was within 8 months of my arrival to bring it to market. Way too lofty of a goal considering all the molding and testing that needed to be done. To make a long story short it has now been a year and a half and we still don’t have the product to market.

Many other things were wrong with the product and we have been working feverishly to weed them out as best as possible, but we still don’t have a sale as a company. Now I’m not going to sit back and take all the blame here. I was a new engineer fresh out of college and to expect me to come in a completely redesign a product and deliver it for sale is out of the question. I also don’t think anyone expected that. However I do think I missed an opportunity to do just that, deliver big, and I could have taken better approach to capitalize on it.

With that said my new goal of 2006 is to become a closer. What do I mean by that? Let me steal the analogy my boss used. It’s like in a football game where your workhorses, fullback, tightend, and lineman, have gotten you all the way down to the 2 yard line. They sprained their ankles, gotten bruised and bashed, and smashed their ribs over the middle, but they’re unable to punch it into the end zone. That’s where you bring in your stud running back who knows what the end zone tastes like. He passes the goal line and everyone remembers the score. The thing that rang in my head was closing. I have worked really hard over the past year but have only delivered some decent ideas and an almost saleable product. There’s a good chance TGI will bring in an engineer with a little more experience to close it out and get the product to market.

HELLO OPORTUNITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If I haven’t woken up to smell the roses now is a good time to do it. I have to close the deal, close the product, and make TGI some money. I have a great opportunity and work with some great people whom can help us make this happen. I just have to realize that,…. realized.

I. Noticing the opportunity

Like I just said, you have to realize the opportunity is there and take it. A lot of people might think this is the most important step to becoming a closer and I sort of agree. There may be many chances to see it but realizing the opportunity is there is not the same. You could be working on a project for well over a year, know that something has to get done, try to take hold of the situation many times and still not realize the opportunity (sound familiar). I was given sort of a second chance to deliver. Literally. My boss took me aside and said, hey, “I don’t have time to be chasing down all the loose ends on this project. We may bring in someone to do just that, another higher-up, but you have a chance to close the deal you might say. You have a chance to be the guy to deliver the product.”

That was too easy, but finding your opportunity could be just as simple. Signs to look for it are:

1. Disgruntled people saying “when will this end”
2. A current leader that is being pulled farther and farther away from a project- here’s where you can kindly say “Let me take some of the burden”
3. Something that gets you excited - not always a winner but at times will coincide with opportunity
4. Listen for the words, “It would be great if…”
5. Things nobody raises their hands for

Opportunities are all over the place. If one passes you by don”t sit a lament over it. There will be more. Jack Welsh wrote about this in his book Winning. He said that if the deal of a lifetime comes along and you pass on it, don’t sit and talk about what could have been, get back out there and look for the next one.

II. Seize the moment

When the moment comes along and you realize it you have to go for it. Jump in and go, go, go. Don’t sit back and wait for the people around you to help you become the leader, the closer. Just do it (thanks Nike.) Don’t, however, leave those people by the side, they’re who will be helping you close. This is the point where you have to get excited. Jump right into everything the opportunity has to offer. You will need to begin writing list, figuring out who will do what, or what block of time you need to devote to which portion of the project.

Organize. You need to organize everything, the only way you are going to get anything done is by organizing. Microsoft project is a great way to get the organization going and engineers use it a lot for product development. We at TGI have used it off and on and may go back to it. It allows you to show which items are critical to the end result and who will need to do what. You don’t necessarily need MS Project, but it helps. You could instead just write lists of what people are doing on a week to week basis and make sure your team is getting them done.

Most importantly you need to stay enthusiastic about what you are doing. If you’re excited you get other people excited, and you get more done. That’s the best way to seize the opportunity, stay on track and get to the prize.

III. Close it out

Now I myself am learning how to close. If I knew and was good at it I wouldn’t have had a “discussion” with my boss. So I’m not going to sit here writing a lot about how to close. I can say this though, closing is all about keeping that enthusiasm straight through to the end. This blog is basically about all those things I’ve started and tried to become good at in the past and just fizzled my enthusiasm for before I got to the end.

You have to be able to see that the end is right around the corner and don’t put off the little things that could make the close happen. One more phone call to a manufacturer, one last control document, one last run, a few more forehands. Whatever it is just keep at it. If you’ve gotten close there’s a good chance you’ve done way harder or more creative work to get there than you would ever need to finish. You just need to take the plunge and do it.

In closing just remember to always be on the lookout for and opportunity, organize and be inspiring, and keep your enthusiasm to the end. Don’t stop short (a classic Mr. Costanza move). See it through to the end, whatever it takes, remember you’ve probably taken harder steps before that last little bit.

Today I joined the Tivolution. I struggled, but I joined. For those of us who are under the age of 30, don’t reside with our parents and actually live in the year 2006 we don’t have a landline. Apparently I didn’t get the memo that you needed a “regular” phone to setup tivo (supposedly they put it on box but more on that later.) My decision to get Tivo was helped by the fact that my parents use it and you can pay one fee for the life of the box. With a 4 year warranty from Best Buy it’s cheaper in the long run than Time Warner and I can take it wherever I may move to next.

The down fall is you can’t order movies off of it like you can with Time Warner DVR, and I’ve also heard the picture quality is worse (so far so good, I think). There’s also a little thing called convenience. Time Warner is an out of the box, DVR, not so much (see below.) They don’t tell you what a pain it will be on the “Tivo Box” and they don’t give you much customer service as to why your Tivo doesn’t work with what the site says it should. (Que a nice FAQs section rather than cheesy music and a great color scheme). However, I think it’s a great invention that I will be able to use to manage my time better and still, complete the crazy amount of stuff I want to do, and still be able to watch the shows I enjoy. I do have a few things I am planning to do and very little time in the day to waste.

Skip to How Tivo will help me Manage my Time

Muses with setting up the BOX

As I mentioned I bought the Tivo box from Best Buy, it was easy and convenient and I thought I could get a little help while purchasing it. Not so. Best Buy out here in Honolulu may rank as one of my worst customer service spots (right up there with any CompUSA and everything Sprint, I mean everything.) Anyway, as I was looking at the Tivo I began to walk towards a fella in those lovely blue shirts who promptly walked away and towards doing nothing. We made eye contact so I know he saw me. Anyway, once I realized I wasn’t going to get any help I did what I usually do, jump on in with both feet. I looked the 40 hour box over and walked with it to the check-out.

Once I was home I cracked open the box and began to browse the instructions. A telephone line?, this can’t be, my father uses his Ethernet at home? That’s not on the box, I don’t see it anywhere. Oh but it is, right behind the conveniently placed Honolulu locational sticker, good work Best Buy. Not to mention, who reads a box these days, but that’s not the point. I guess it’s there.

So I did what any person who doesn’t have a landline does, used my futuristic Ethernet cable hooked to this box that beams futuristic signals to my foldable display machine with a keyboard, and Googled it. Google told me, “As long as you have version 7.1 or later you can use Ethernet to do guided setup.” OK, look up the version at Tivo.com, serial number starting with 504 = version 7.2. That’s better than 7.1, great, I’ll use my crazy USB witch cord to plug into my crazy internet modem box. Nope. Google also says “it doesn’t work with a direct modem connect, no driver for that with any of them.” Naturally.

The next day I got myself a wireless adapter, USB style. Plugged it into the tivo, nothing. Sweet. Oh wait, the wireless adapter is the wrong one. You mean the guy at CompUSA who sounded like he knew everything gave you the wrong one. You mean even when you said, “but that model number has a US at the end of it and tivo doesn’t say that one will work?” “Oh that just means it’s for the US,” says the unhelpful man. Guess what, it didn’t work. Back to Best Buy the next day for another wireless USB adapter. Still doesn’t work, break box, go to work, use phone line, download correct setup info. WE HAVE TIVO. Take home, plug in wireless, doesn’t work, break box more. OK by this time I am a bit upset with Tivo. How could you make such a product with so little support and not useable with Ethernet. Wrong version that’s how. I guess the 504 serial number only meant I can get 7.2 not that it has it on there. Back to work, update version, plug in wireless.

We have Tivo on a network.

OK, so now that I bored you half to death, onto how Tivo will help me manage my time.

Tivo on Time Management

DVR in general is a great invention. Although the VCR has been around for a while, the convenience just doesn’t match up to a DVR. I can digitally setup to record only new shows for the whole season, never having to remember to be sure to set the recorder up a few days in advance. Tivo will save my lists and make sure it happens. I don’t have to know the exact date and time of any of the shows. I don’t even have to know their names. I can search for shows that have to do with an actress, a subject, or a sport and Tivo will list what it has for the next couple of weeks allowing me to set up to record it.

Becoming an online entrepreneur as well as holding a full time demanding job, not to mention the many goals I have set for myself, I don’t have a lot of time to waste during the week. Being active, my girlfriend and I will be able to use our Tivo to schedule TV around our activities rather than our activities around TV. Sure we could setup the VCR for certain days, but we’d always have to remember to rewind the tape, change tapes if we didn’t have enough room on one, and otherwise be inconvenienced by the process. Not worth it, we usually just changed some things around or missed a show worst case scenario.

Moving into the new year one of my resolutions is to organize my life a little better. Tivo should help me do that because, (I don’t care if this is lazy man talking) I like to watch certain TV shows and that’s that. Now I will be able to Tivo it and forget about it. Also the fact that I can watch half hour shows in 23 minutes(ish) is a great thing as well. No more commercials getting in the way. I set up the 30 second channel skip, which by the way is:

30 Second skip allows you to easily skip through commercial blocks which are usually 30 seconds long (1 minute, etc). I hear ad companies really don’t like this about Tivo. Looks like they’ll have to think outside the box. Like making references to Coke and Hanes during your favorite sitcom. Be creative I say.

Overall… Well I don’t know yet. This was just my announcement that I am part of the Tivolution. The nice little jingle at the beginning made me feel like I was joining quite a momentous group. Let’s hope it doesn’t’ stink. Aside from the horable setup procedure I don’t have any complaints past that, but I’ll keep you posted.

Recent Related Articles:

Using Audiobooks to learn while you waste time
Setting Intermediate Goals
Skiing and Microsoft

Much to my surprise I just received an email from Cesar telling me about getting honorable mention from Success Begins Today. This year they gave out Blog Success Awards and named erikvossman.com one of three Honorable Mentions for New Blog Interface in ‘05. Some of the top blogs were ones like Steve Pavlina’s, Yara Starak’s, and a fellow Aloha State resident Rosa Say. Those are some pretty heavy hitters and to be named with them is quite an honor.

I actually linked through to the article early last week from Yaro’s post about it. I got through the first four awards and was interrupted by the arrival of company we had invited for the holiday’s. I completely forgot to finish it and missed my name in there. (Thanks again Cesar for pointing that out.)

Acceptance Speech

I guess I have to give a short little thank you or shout out to those that helped me create my blog. Most of all thanks to Cesar for tipping me off to the next thank you of Steve Pavlina’s blog. His was the real inspiration behind starting a blog. From there it just snow-balled and I began reading success stories all of the internet, mainly through linking. Yaro Starak’s has also been a huge influence and help on my internet adventures. I have jumped into the online entrepreneurial world with both feet. I plan on 2006 being a huge year in terms of online audience growth; both for this blog and for my other sites I plan on launching.

A big thanks also goes out to my girlfriend who puts up with my nose being in a computer the second I return home from work. She keeps me well rounded gently coaxing me out into the beautiful place we call home, Hawaii. Without her help and support of crazy ideas I am sure I would be just spinning around crazy like.

Family of course, they think I’m nuts but have always thought that and keep saying it sounds like a good idea. Also a big thanks for Chris, you know who you are. He visits me daily and offers great feedback. I wouldn’t forget you Jeremy, bro, our quest to take over the world, well not really, maybe just pinky and the brain style.

The several people who visit my site either through Google, MSN, AOL, or Yahoo, and especially those who come back regularly.

And last but not least SuccessBeginsToday.org. I had came across the blog about a month ago through Yaro’s and really enjoyed reading all the archived articles. This was also the time I was exchanging links and kindly asked them if they would do so. 2 days later we linked exchanged and as they say the rest is history. Thanks for continuing to check my blog and my progress, as well as posting some very interesting and informative reads. Keep up the good work and best wishes in ‘06.

Aloha,
Erik Vossman

What a great Community

Now on to the goods. As you can see from my archive dates I am fairly new to the blogosphere. I jumped in when I began to get interested in earning an income online about 2 months ago. I had started a website the newly launched Aloha Update using dreamweaver when the next day coincidentally friend of mine had just read Steve Pavlina’s article about his million dollar experiment and forwarded the address on to me. By the end of the week I was up and running with a blog of my own. I have continued to work on both of them launching Aloha Update last week and building readership in erikvossman.com.

As I have been writing and promoting and searching through the volumes of work others have created I have began to see what a great community the blogosphere can be. A lot of people are out there ready to help you with whatever you are trying to accomplish. Be it, financial independence, kicking a habit, finding a great cell phone, or just learning about anything you can find it in a blog. The thing with blogs is that 99% of them are very personal. People relaying their personal experiences, not some other guys just to make a buck. That’s the greatest thing, you get to know someone and their ideas. More times than not, they’ll help you without even knowing it!

Take for instance my blog. In its early stages it has some direction but not a ton. It doesn’t have a huge number of daily visitors and it doesn’t have a really large repeat readership. Still, through link exchanges (not just a one-way street I will point out), mentions in blogs like Success Begins Today, Yaro’s, and a few others, people have visited. Those blogs didn’t have to write about me, but they did, and it helps. Every little bit helps, every link, every mention helps you build more traffic and then like a pyramid you build a “fan-base.”

Of course other blogs don’t have to link to your blog especially if you have no traffic and are just starting out. If that’s the case they’re helping you out and not the other way around. Most do, because most have been there before. They realize that if by chance you do build some traffic you’ll send it their way sooner or later. Just like jumping on the pyramid. As an example, both Entrepreneurs-Journey.com and SuccessBeginsToday.org took me in and linked to my site. The lader even quoted one of my write-ups. As I track my referrals and exit links through my stats company I have seen an increase in referrals through both of those blogs as well as exit links to them. We both win.

Another interesting thing that I just found today checking my referral links that Yaro posted about me in his forum as well. He just surpassed the 1000 mark on his feedburner RSS tracker and decided to bring the forum back. In one of his most recent threads Name 3 favorite blogs, what are your favorites I show up as one of his. That’s a big link since the post is on his blog in his forum. This has the potential to mean a lot of visitors and possible some more links from those visitors. The reason being is because they’ll see that a popular blog like Yaro’s is sending me some traffic and they’ll possibly want to exchange links with me because of it. Thanks Yaro.

Overall I have enjoyed my first month and a half as a blogger. It has taught me a lot about the world that exist online. A world that I have been a visitor and user of for some time but not a big contributor. My hope and goal over the next year is to help people accomplish goals and learn a thing or two in the process. From that I may find financial gains, new connections, or maybe even some new goals to accomplish myself. Whatever it may be I’m sure it’ll be new and exciting.

Aloha,

Erik

With the launch of my site about things to do in Hawaii www.alohaupdate.com I have become obsessed with Google and Yahoo and whether or not they are indexing my sites. This one, erikvossman.com, is going into its 7th week online and got 145 people to visit through search engines this past week. 124 were from Google and 2 from Yahoo, with the rest from MSN, AOL, and some other generic ones. Not bad for a month and a half of being online.

Quick Side-Bar

Have you ever wondered, “How do I know if my site is getting indexed by Google or Yahoo?” Simple, go to your recent visitors section and check for googlebot.com for Google or inktomisearch.com for Yahoo. If they come to your site a lot they should be in your top visitors section. The other search engines have crawlers that index sites but don’t have names associated with their IP addresses, that I know of. You can however do a search for crawler IP addresses and see if all of them are indexing you site. These statistics are available with my hosting company, Netfirms. Only trouble is they offer webstats for all of my sites as one not individual. That means I am not sure which site is being indexed. The free service I am using, addfreestats.com doesn’t show googlebot and only shows inktomisearch once a day if it visits. There are some out there that do but now all of them. Look around and give them a try or check out my article on web stat services.

…Back to it

As I was saying, I check my stats about 5 times a day looking to see if anyone was referred to my site through Google or some other search engine. Submitting them is only half the battle, getting them to index you is the key. In order to build traffic through Google or Yahoo I have been working through strategies such as links, content, and site map submission. One site I have found extremely helpful for SEO (search engine optimization) is entrpreneuers-journey.com. If you need some tips I suggest paying him a visit.

My other method of Blogclicker, blogxchange, etc, I have basically stopped. I am going to stick with Google and quality links as my source to develop traffic. This has brought my overall hits down but unique visitors is climbing every day. I will keep you informed of both sites stats. For now I call out to googlebot to index alohaudpate.com. Let’s hope it happens.

Aloha,
Erik