The more inbound links your website has the better.  This raises your visibility in the search engines. (SEO)

You link to us, we link to you and everybody wins.  It’s not rocket science.

It’s with great pleasure that we announce PROJECT INBOUND - the more the merrier Link Fest.  Calling every Big Ooga member - whether you are a small business, entrepreneur or professional.

Calling every Chicago small business, Chicago entrepreneur or professional who would like to share the love.  Join Us too… but join us first.

We’ll have further details at the Feb 2nd. meeting - which is tomorrow night at the Victor Hotel.

See you then!

https://www.bigooga.com/community.html

Image by kevindooley via Flickr

I worry about myself when everything is in order.  Isn’t a neat office the sign of an empty mind? How is it possible that my accountant and bookkeeper have overcome my chaos? How is it feasible that my efficiency expert has delivered on her promise to “get more done so I actually have more time?”

This means I actually have to go to a higher level of efficiency OR have a LIFE.

Maybe I don’t know HOW to have a LIFE.

Maybe chaos WAS a way of life!

Oh sure, tell me to read, learn, listen to music, contribute, work, write, go to the gym, go to toastmasters and find the beauty in simple things.  Fine.  Tell me to take a brisk walk and freeze my face off. Great Idea. Pass! Now that the kids are raised and the dog is dead - and I already DO run the hubby ragged.  Now that the desk is clean and the mail is answered…..then what?

That’s when it hit my friend Loretta.  She gave me a Zither.  Every busy entrepreneur with a clean desk NEEDS A ZITHER.  Now I have an entirely new adventure to look forward to. Giving it back!

Have a great week-end!

Image by Ioan Sameli via Flickr

After reading countless stories about deals that fell through -  I want to share with you a famous story that I resented reading, but in retrospect have found comforting.

Ping - A Frog in Search of a New Pond by Stuart Avery - tells of a frog who needs a new  pond and finds an owl who agrees to be his guide and mentor.  For years the frog trains with the owl to make his great leap over a vast waterfall to a bigger pond.

The owl gives the frog wisdom, discipline, tough and cryptic challenges - they bond, the frog gets stronger and better and you think it is going to turn out like the Karate Kid but it doesn’t.

On the day of the great leap the frog bounds in the air with perfection. As he is sailing across the great waterfall with the Owl watching proudly a hawk drops from the sky and swoops the Owl away digging its great claws into the Owl’s back.

The frog sees this in horror, loses his balance and crashes into the gushing waterfall.  Fighting to live, his little body crashes against rock and water - gets banged and submerged and suffocated. Then the frog suddenly thinks of the Owl’s lessons and lets go as his teachings would remind him.

He stops fighting and struggling, stops flailing against the current and lets the experience wash over him as painfully as it might be .  His instinct kicks in and then he lives.  End of story.

This is entrepreneurship and the struggle of small business to survive.  Sometimes you leap and sail, sometimes you leap and crash but as long as you live and learn, you’re good to go.

It’s his birthday and I want to celebrate without letting him know.  He was a Varsity athlete loved by the students,  a sweetheart..OMG.   I went to every game even though I’m not a sports fan and recently he was inducted into the HPHS Hall of Fame.

Everyone at our high school was invited to the induction and there was a party scheduled afterward.  I left work early, picked out the outfit, got my girlfriend on board and left for the event.

It was like a romantic comedy and I could see it unfolding.  A sweet celebration after a lifetime of separate happiness, lots of old friends and Mr. Terrific.

The only problem with playing the lead in your own romantic comedy is that when everything that can go wrong does go wrong - it happens to YOU.

Traffic was in gridlock going into the city - topped off with traffic in gridlock going out of the city. After two hours in the car and only still at Navy Pier, we knew we’d miss the induction, get stuck at a high school basketball game and it would take 3 hours to get there.  So we did the only thing we could do.

Head home and go out for Sushi.

I just emailed him Happy Birthday saying I’m sorry to be a day late - but then tomorrow turned out to be today and I was on time.

Then they lived happily ever after until the next act where I get stuck at Sears Tower or break a leg getting hit by a cab.

Happy birthday SB.  May you live to be 101.

If you want new business and wonder what to do next - we hear you.

If you want to do it by not going anywhere - don’t budge, keep reading.

If you wish someone would just TELL you what to do….here’s what to do.

Change the content on your website regularly with key words that people search for.  Key words are used in SEO to raise your visibility in the search engines.  To get found you need to say the right words.  On February 2nd the best Chicago SEO expert is coming to the Big Ooga to tell you how to do.

Do you have a blog? If yes, write stuff with your key words - then learn to link your blog to other blogs.  We have the best Chicago blogging expert coming  to the Feb. 2 Big Ooga program and then he’s offering a free class the following Tuesday morning to teach everyone who comes how to link their blogs together.  Not so hard!

Invite your friends and Chicago business associates to become your friend on Facebook. It’s social media. Then you can Wallop - (Wall Hop) visit people without leaving your desk and comment on what they think is important.  I like Walloping. I visit without being invited and go without going. I talk without speaking and listen with my eyes. You can too. This begins conversations and conversations lead to relationships.

Tweet - apparently about anything that moves you or anyone else. Tweet about what you’ve learned. Tweet about what you know - Re-tweet what someone else knows.  If you don’t know how to do this, Big Oogan, Jean Pickering is going to teach us at a Free Tuesday afternoon class following our blogging class. All you have to do is sign-up and show up with your laptop. (not so hard)

Reach out to other Chicago business entrepreneurs. They will get to know you and you will get to them virtually - and then everyone can come to the Big Ooga on Feb. 2 and meet face to face.

We’re here to help each other.  Chicago entrepreneurs - specifically the Big Ooga business community - is comprised of some of the most generous, accomplished people in the world.  Don’t suffer silently because you don’t know stuff.  Have a cocktail, come to Big Ooga and learn stuff.  Not only will you have a great time but you’ll meet people who will help you drive new business.

https://www.bigooga.com/community.html

Image via Wikipedia

Whether you are embarking on the entrepreneurial journey by choice or destiny- the method to entry is simple. You have a vision, skill or identify a hole in the market. You learn a bunch of stuff from people, courses, groups, schools and research. Then you put it into a business plan or not.  You may sit on it, adapt it or forge on.

For those of us who Gung Ho it - we do it with unmitigated optimism, energy, courage and will.

And then, 50% will fail. If this was medical school and we killed half our patients - I think they’d change the system. But this is the Entrepreneurial School of Life and WE must change the system.

Just learning stuff - does not prepare us for using the stuff we learn.

The way the system works now, people are competing with each other to TEACH us stuff.  What we need to know FIRST, is what we need to KNOW that directly applies to our own personal entrepreneurial experience.

Who prepares you to be your own assistant?

To learn how to barter?

To filter the unspoken language of a creep?

And one of my favorite lessons from the entrepreneurial trenches - how quickly can you recover when someone throws you under the bus? (which happens occasionally)

And the costs— Just knowing we need Insurance isn’t enough - having competitive rates isn’t enough.  Do you know if your biz insurer and your home insurer are both covering your home office?

Being a great professional does not make you a GREAT Marketer.And being a great marketer does not make you a great business analyst.  But as an entrepreneur, we need to at least have a handle on all these things so we can understand what the people who are helping us are doing.

Let’s face it!!!!!! We’re exhausted!!!!! AND we’re in the 50% that is succeeding.

If you’ve been thinking about how to solve these challenges and have creative suggestions - WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!  We’re building the Big Ooga specifically to change the ratios of success and TILT them in our favor.

You know the days when you get to your desk and you think it’s there somewhere? When mess is not a hall, it’s your environment, which is actually your brain?   When your secretary calls and says she’ll be late because her Mercedes has a flat tire, but still shows up unruffled with a yummy cappuccino in a sparkly jogging suit in a good mood because the dealership has such great service.

And you greet her with your hair sticking up, one earring missing and a crushing deadline that you’ve been noodling for days and now it’s zero hour.

Then it gets worse.

The computer blows up with a big flashing virus and quietly locks you out.

If you’re an entrepreneur like me - you make the only decision possible –  to meet this deadline, no matter what.   So you kick out your coffee drinking, Mercedes driving “helper”, devote yourself to recreating all the work you’ve already done - and find that in your state of steel resolve, your brain, heart and every fiber of your being - refuses to budge an inch.

This is the moment every entrepreneur faces - the moment when everything you want is at odds with everything you’re not doing and no inner pep talk on the planet is going to help.  So what DO you do?

Ignore yourself. Forget acceptance, denial, rebellion, introspection and discipline. Forget attitude, desire, ambition and fear. This is the moment of sheer force…and this moment can last for hours.

Then 3 PM turns into 8 PM and the doorbell rings. It’s the computer genius who tells you how bad this is for the two hours he’s trying to fix it.  And at 10:30 you only have one and a half hours left to meet the midnight deadline but the blue screen returns to the flag screen and you run to your beloved computer on your beautifully messy desk and sail through the proposal like a kite in summer and at 11:58 you stop where ever you are, read it real fast and push send!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is the moment when perspiration meets agitation and yes, Lord, it is a miracle.

What are your stories of suddenly making it happen?

Image by ecstaticist via Flickr

Enjoy the brilliance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh7D2g5v-Sg

For each of you who clicks this link, a small donation will be made to fight AIDS in Africa.

Work, love & celebrate!

Image by Francesca Tronchin via Flickr

I can see not wanting to keep meeting overhead - but lowering overhead to meet the future.

I can see my current business tools are not sharp enough and that sharpening them means finding new ones.

I can see that the power and depth of my relationships are as meaningful yesterday as they will be tomorrow.

I can see that those resistant to adopting new methods of communication will struggle more than those who embrace them.

I can see that fear and courage can live in the same conversation,  but strength must guide decisions.

I can see that forging impossible new alliances are now possible and that requesting new requests are now feasible.

I can see that economic stress makes some people more generous.

I can see that although honesty is freeing, good editing is critical - and that it is harder to say what has to be said than not.  But it makes you new.

Happy New You, Happy New Year and may you take the best of yesterday with you into tomorrow!