We often hear that an idea is only as good as it’s execution but we rarely hear that execution is only as good as the investment in the idea. The beginning of any project begins with an assessment of satisfaction. “This is good but could be better.” “This is terrible.” Or, “This is no longer relevant.” Whatever the present state of the project — something, or someone, ultimately decides that change is necessary.

This is your fork in the road. This is your opportunity. Do different to get different.

—Ian

1) Make mistakes.

Lullabot prides themselves as an awesome place to make mistakes. When an employee made a terrible data error, co-founder Matt Westgate told her, “You made a giant mistake, and you really screwed up here. That is why you are now Lullabot’s data import expert.” The company also bought her a massage.

Environments where people can’t admit mistakes become very hostile and dishonest work environments.

Fess up to your mistakes. Make them a highlight of your weekly team calls.

2) Room for stupid.

Smart people can ask stupid questions. “Take your stupidness and help other people become less stupid.”

3) Give it away/Have faith

Find out the awesome things you do and give it away. (But not all of it.) Have faith that by giving it away, you are making the pie even bigger.

Out-teach. Out-share. Out-contribute.

(Props here to 37Signals)

//

But one of my favorite parts was how they select clients.

When a potential client comes to Lulllabot, they need to meet 2 out of the 3 criteria:

1) They are a nice person.

2) They have a healthy budget.

3) They have a fun project.

“And one of them has to be that they are nice.”

How’s that for a rule to live by?

–Britta

1)  An easy 20 min drive to Union Square or a 30 min express train to Grand Central Station.

2)  In person collaborations with our outrageously talented network of freelancers are more frequent.

3)  The orange couch fits, barely.

4) From our window, we can see the Hudson River/Palisades, the NYC skyline and the remarkably kind Parking Control Officers.

5)  The Hastings-on-Hudson train station sells superb coffee and pastries from Balthazar.

6)  Seth Godin is our (supposed) neighbor. (We have begun The SethCount to document sightings. Current count = 2.)

7)  There are no chain or fast food restaurants in the entire village of Hastings-on-Hudson.

8)  Commuter watching/Not commuting.

9) Our office used to be the extended dining room for Buffet de la Gare — the top rated French restaurant in Westchester County.

10) It’s New York not Florida.

*Bonus 11) The volunteer Fire Alarm siren always adds a little auditory pizzazz to conference calls.

—Ian

That worked out especially well when I was fresh out of school and working in advertising in NY. The options were endless, and my company footed most of the bill. I took portfolio-building classes at School of Visual Arts, teaching English as a second language at New School for Social Research, fiction classes through Gotham Writer’s Workshops, summer writing sessions at Sarah Lawrence. I took Susan Shapiro’s legendary “How to Write for New York City magazines and Newspapers” at the New School (she started the class by handing out a three inch thick stack of articles her former students had published as a direct result of taking her class. Talk about a selling point). Then I tried online courses—creative nonfiction through Naropa Institute, travel writing and a bunch of others through MediaBistro.

When the market tanked and I got laid off, I did what any reasonable person would do—I let the government lend me money while I got a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction. (And surprisingly, I use the skills I gained from that degree every single day.)

In the past five years, I’ve been too busy rebuilding a 1920’s cottage, growing a business and having babies to take classes. These life ventures have commanded all my research hours. But I’m happy to say I’m back on track, and this time I’m taking something I’ve never done before.

Tennis.

I am a complete tennis novice. The first day of class, I felt like a ridiculous tennis bunny imposter walking out of my house in my little getup and the racquet I dug out of the basement slung over my shoulder.

I’m such a novice that one of my hour-long lessons consisted solely of my instructor trying to show me how to throw a ball straight up for a serve. “Put the ball in your fingers like this…” My excuse for this pathetic lack of ball manipulation skills is that I was never allowed to do sports or dance or art in school because I was so busy kicking ass on the violin. But anyway.

In today’s lesson, after the miserable faux pas of whacking the ball into the players’ court next to mine—FIVE TIMES, and getting run ragged by a set of forehand topspin/backhand drills, the instructor left me with a little gem.

“It’s never about your opponent,” he said. “It’s only about the ball. Once that ball crosses over to your side of the net, it’s about what the ball is going to do, and nothing else. All you have to worry about is getting that ball back over the net.”

As I drove back to my desk all revved up and flush-faced, thinking about the challenges I needed to solve before picking up the little ones from school, that line really sat with me.

It’s never about the opponent. It’s only about the ball. It’s about getting that ball back over the net with the best form possible—no matter what condition it was in when it landed in your court.

—Britta

Hiring is easy on paper. I am usually really good at hiring but this year I selected an employee that wasn’t right for our team. In retrospect I knew he wasn’t right after a few days of working with him but I had deadlines around the corner and no other candidates on the radar. After a month of deadline chasing it was crystal clear it wasn’t going to work—he knew it, I knew it and the rest of the employees knew it.  I compounded an already bad problem by keeping him on a project because of an impending deadline. Nothing makes a potential employee watch You Tube all day quicker than the combination of being paid hourly and knowing you aren’t getting hired FT. This mistake on my part led to: two late/micromanaged projects and  lots of do-over’s.

Scope Management involves more than saying, “that’s going to cost you extra.” I want our company to do great work. I want us to work on projects that allow our employees to shine and leave our clients thrilled. But the reality is when you are starting out you:

a. Need to build up your reputation and pay your bills

Which leads to…

b. Going above and beyond

And…

c. Sometimes doing too much out of scope work.

Scope definition at the outset of a project is usually clear if you did your homework. Scope-creep near the end of projects is the silent resource/profit killer that isn’t always as obvious. I said yes to out of scope work on a number of projects this year that neither made the client happy, saved time or made the project better.

A few times this year I let my frustrations become visible to clients and employees. When I give 100% and my 100% isn’t good enough I get flustered. When I should have given 100% but was pulled in too many directions I get frustrated—see the difference. There were a few meetings I was on where clients changed their mind, or vendors came unprepared, and my tone went to absolute shite. Passion may beget perfection. But unburnt bridges beget friendlier drivers. Ya know?

Not committing enough time to marketing and handshaking. I wear many hats at Eat Media, such is the life of a business owner and such is the life of business in its 2^nd year.  There are long-nights, business lunches, fires to douse, servers to reboot, proposals to re-do and credit card machine salesman to say “Please take me off your list,” to. During the past year I have been in one of two places—my desk and the whiteboard wall—good for work, bad for the sales pipeline. Face-to-face marketing and handshaking are absolutely necessary and I did not do a great job of being out there in 2009. I relied too much on our blog and Twitter and not enough on meeting people and creating relationships in person.

Not sticking to my strengths. Creative/CS and big picture strategy are my strengths. Content Strategy forces you to make many disparate pieces fit together and that jazzes me.  Unfortunately great Content Strategy takes time and time management can be a start-up’s worst enemy. You need to have laser like focus but be able to drop and roll for a fire at any moment. Once you have the fire under control you need to hand off the hose. I spent too many nights in 2009 editing XML, making love to Photoshop and making sitemaps.

Growth requires honesty. What were your 2009 mistakes?

—Ian

@eatmedia

Here is Gary Vaynerchuk’s call for “good people” on Good People Day
—Ian

Some of the many lessons I’ve learned from working with Joey:
-    Write out an org chart for where you expect to be in the next year.
-    Rent an office space large enough to accommodate this org chart.
-    Keep a minimum of three months operating costs in a separate bank account.
-    When interviewing potential employees, look for those who ask “vision questions” rather than “how much” questions.
-    Speaking of employees, most of the time, young and hungry trumps experienced and set-in-their-ways.
-    Keep a running spreadsheet of your projected sales, labor costs and monthly operating expenses. Organize it by month. At the end of each quarter, plug in your actuals, and adjust your budgeting accordingly.
- It might take an hour to write out a process for an action that could take you five minutes to complete. But that hour you spend documenting a process will be your LAST hour working on the task (vs. a lifetime of five minutes).

Yesterday, Joey told us about a few things he’s been doing at his own business—things we hope to do someday soon:
-    Time blocking: Schedule one day (or one morning) a week to work on your business.
-    If, as a business owner, you’re not taking at least as much vacation time as you’d get working for someone else, it’s time to re-evaluate.
-    Even better, decide how many vacation days you want to take this year, and block off the time. If your time is billable, figure out how much you need to increase your billable hours each week to make up for your time out of the office.
-    Make updating operations manuals part of your employee’s jobs. This applies to everything from documenting their daily processes to keeping their job descriptions up to date.

For a goldmine of more small business tips, check out Joey’s blog.

—Britta