BBB mentioned on podcast
I was having a listen to the latest SmallBizPod podcast today and was thrilled to hear Brilliant Business Books mentioned. Thanks Alex!
I was also interested to hear the first book review sent in by a reader. It was a brilliant review of The New Philanthropists
My second week of brilliance
I’m at the end of the second week of my 90 days of brilliance. The highlight of my week was joining the A1 Business Forums and I already feel like I’m settling in there. I’ve stuck to my plan pretty well - I’m not always doing everything on the day that I’d planned to do it but everything on the list seems to be getting ticked off. One of my tasks for today is to plan the next 7 days. Must remember not to cram too much into each day.
The most ‘non brilliant’ thing this week is continuing problems with the bloomin’ car. I’m hoping to try a speed networking event next Friday, so fingers crossed that we’ve managed to get it fixed in time.
Confident Networking for Career Success and Satisfaction
The book easily passed the ‘easy to read’ test - it grabbed me straight away and kept me interested throughout. I liked the way that it didn’t jump straight in with the ‘you need to talk to as many people you don’t know as you can’ kind of stuff that usually goes hand in hand with networking advice. It acknowledges that not everybody is comfortable in networking situations and offers practical advice for how you can feel less daunted by it. I was also pleased that the authors recognised the value of online networking and offered some advice specifically about that (though best to ignore their description of ‘forums commonly known as blogging’).
What I wasn’t so satisfied with is that I didn’t feel like I came away from the book with a solid plan of action. I could go back through it and work through the different pieces of advice to slowly increase my confidence and skills, but the book doesn’t offer a particularly structured approach to this. Maybe I’m wanting to have my hand held a bit too much, but I do like it when practical books set you particular goals to achieve.
Rating: 
Great business forum
Over the last couple of days I’ve joined A1 Business Forums. I’m really impressed so far and am gradually getting to know how it works. Every forum seems to have its own personality and the feeling I’m getting from this one so far is that it’s very friendly and accepting - great if you’re a bit shy about going on and introducing yourself. I got a really warm welcome which made me want to stay and explore a bit more.
One for ‘business communities’ on the resources page.
Pay attention to where you save
Here’s top tip for you. When working on your computer pay attention to where you save your documents. I’ve just spent ages trying to track down some work that I did for a client last week (on my time, not the client’s…). I was about to give up when I stumbled across it in a completely random place. I don’t know what I was thinking! Thank goodness I found it or I would have had to start again from scratch.
So, to save wasted hours always save your documents in a sensible place.
Are you in the zone?
Whilst doing working today I was listening back through some old podcasts and came across a brilliant one about working from home which I had forgotten about. Actually it’s not that old - only from June this year. It’s one of Mind Your Own Business’s and is called Staying in the Zone. It’s a great listen so if you work from home or are thinking about working from home I would highly recommend it. I particularly enjoyed the different ways of making sure you get work done as practised by Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope - most entertaining.
The podcast contains some really useful advice about making sure you give yourself space to get work done - both physically by having a defined work area and in terms of time by giving yourself set working hours (also one of my tips in 10 tips for staying motivated when working from home).
Blogroll added to resources
The latest addition to the resources is a blogroll. I will be looking out for other small business blogs and adding them to this section. To start us off I’ve added the SmallBizPod blog. Do you know any good small business blogs? Give me a shout with your suggestions.
A brilliant week
Yesterday was the end of the first week of my 90 days of brilliance. Ignoring the breaking-down-car incident it was a pretty good week and I’ve come to the end of it with my motivation still nice and high. One of the things that I’m working on is my networking skills and confidence (so expect some book reviews on these subjects…). I feel like I’ve made a positive start with this:
- I’ve identified various opportunities for networking in our area and signed up for the first few of these.
- I’m half way through a book on ‘confident networking’.
- I’ve been working on stretching my comfort zone by actively looking for things to do that I’d usually be nervous about.
- I’ve joined a local book club - the aim of this is to help me be more confident in talking in a groups. I’m reading the book at the moment and will have the first meeting next week.
Hopefully I’m on my way to feeling more confident in a networking situation.
Small business podcasts
When I’m working on a task that doesn’t take too much brain-power I like to listen to some podcasts aimed at small businesses. I’ve added a couple of my favourites to the resources:
- SmallBizPod: Business Podcast for Entrepreneurs, business owners and start up businesses
- Mind Your Own Business: Business Podcast for Entrepreneurs, business owners and start up businesses
I’m sure I will be adding more in the coming weeks, so if podcasts are your thing do stay tuned 
Manage Projects
It introduces the subject of project management in easily understood language and provides many useful tools. It’s made me feel quite inspired to try out the process on our projects.
The one criticism that I have is that I would have liked a checklist bringing together all the different parts of the process in one place. I was hoping to be able to put one together myself but going back through the book found it difficult to extract the flow. However, it’s definitely worth persevering with and I plan to do some further reading to help me achieve my goal.
Rating:
