Jimmy Z

I believe that most innovation comes from the question “How would I rather do this?” It seems pretty simple and obvious, but I can’t imagine a scenario where that question wouldn’t have been asked before something great had been created.

Just a thought to keep in mind.

Tagged with: innovation

While I’m in the mood for promoting great services and products, I have to throw in a recommendation for Slimtimer. One way great businesses create meaning and a loyal following is by solving a pain better than anyone else. I believe Slimtimer has done that.

Slimtimer makes time tracking easy and painless and produces powerful reports. If the recording of your time isn’t made easy, then recording the time is usually put off to another day and the records will be mostly based off of memory and will be inaccurate. If the reports produced are not useful, then all of your effort in tracking your time will be in vain.

During my time as a web developer for BYU’s Creative Marketing department we used time sheets where we recorded how we spent our time in intervals of 15 minutes. This was usually a drab process that you “had to get done” at the end of the day. We did this on paper, and I’m not sure how well the information was actually used. It seemed like a waste of time.

In one startup company that I worked for, time tracking was completely neglected all together. This led to lots of wasted development time and left no good way for management to guide efforts in more productive tasks. It seemed that management had to make blind decisions.

Another startup I worked in tried to track time with a custom-built time tracking software, but it was so complex and difficult to use, that we often put off recording our time to the end of the week, which led to bad data. We ended up abandoning the practice of time tracking altogether.

In my current work as a freelancer, I’ve been empowered by Slimtimer’s simple time recording widget. It allows me to simply click on the task that I’m working on and the timer begins to track in the background. If I forget to start the timer, I can easily edit my entries in a beautiful time editing interface.

Slimtimer has very powerful reporting capabilities. Tasks can be tagged so you can segment your reports in the ways that you need them whether it be by ‘billable’ or ‘non-billable’, by client, or by project, or even by task. You can also share tasks and time entries with co-workers, so you can build reports for your entire team.

If you are tired of filling out timesheets, and would like to have a better understanding of how your team’s time is spent, I strongly recommend you check out Slimtimer.

[Note: I am NOT an affiliate marketer for Slimtimer.]

Tagged with: business, productivity, webApps

This is Part 2 of my E-Myth vidcast series. The past few days I’ve had a lot of fun documenting processes and practices as Brian and I have focused our work on our business rather than working too hard in our business. We’re already seeing some results. I share what we’ve done in this vidcast.

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Seriously, I’m interested in knowing how your company/organization documents its processes, procedures, etc. What kind of “operations manual” do you use?

This is my first video blog/vidcast entry (even though I accidentally call it a screencast in the video). I hope you enjoy watching.

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Yesterday, Brian and I were given an opportunity of a lifetime. We were able to go and hear Seth Godin speak about his new book, The Dip, in person. I was really excited about this, and grateful for all of the work and effort that Phil and the Word Mob team had spent to make it happen.

I thought the event was handled really well, and it was great to mingle with other Utah professionals that share similar interests. Before Seth arrived, Patrick Byrne - the CEO of Overstock, and Judd Bagley gave a small presentation on Omuse and the goal it has in bringing together communities that are protected from sabotage.

When Seth came into the room, it was cool to see Patrick Byrne’s face light up and say with a smile, “Here’s Seth.” Patrick was standing off to the side of the stage at that time.

Anyways, Seth gave an awesome presentation on overcoming mediocrity and becoming a superstar by becoming the best in the world at what you do. I’ll write a little more later about my thoughts on the presentation, as I compile my notes together and put more thought into it.

As Brian and I were leaving the Salt Palace, we saw Seth on the side of the road flagging a taxi, and Phil pushing a Mercedes SUV out of traffic. We quickly turned around and offered to help out. Seth and Phil hopped in my humble little Honda Accord, and we raced off to the airport. It was pretty crazy in the car at first as we disputed about the best route to the airport. Read Phil’s story, it will give you somewhat of an idea of what went on.

The coolest part of the whole experience is that we got about 5 minutes of advice time from Seth pertaining to our new little company, Apriux. If hearing Seth speak live was an opportunity of a lifetime, I don’t know what I’d call this. It was incredible. Thanks Seth!

I feel bad that Phil’s day finish off as well as he’d hoped. He did pull off an extraordinary event. Hopefully he’ll get some more time with Seth another day.

Guy Kawasaki recommends that you don’t ask men about business ideas or business models. This is because men have a fundamental genetic flaw: they want to kill things. “It is socially acceptable to want to kill the competition, ” states Guy. Any idea that is a Google Killer, Yahoo Killer, YouTube Killer, would be seen by other men as phenomenal ideas because they enjoy seeing competition crushed.

Lesson learned: If you want sound advice or validation for a business idea, ask women. Also guys, don’t be lured in by sales pitches that promise that X product/technology/service will help you kill your competition.

Side note: Veotag’s bookmarking is once again helpful, enabling me to link directly to the portion of Guy’s keynote in which he talks about asking women for business validation. Thanks Veotag!