Pariah Burke's List: __Business Preschedule

I needed a better way of getting what I wanted to keep in Evernote, but at the same time, keep Evernote clutter-free. Eventually, I came up with a process that has been working very well for me. In involves using Pocket. Pocket is a “save for later” service like Instapaper for Readability. It allows you to grab links, images, videos, etc. and save them for later review. Pocket also strips out the clutter from the articles and presents them in an easy-to read fashion. Lots of applications integrate with Pocket, making it easy to send articles and other items. Best of all, Pocket integrates with Evernote, allowing you to send items from Pocket to Evernote.

If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world.

Decks are death.

By sending a deck to an investor you are the snowflake in the blizzard.

Now, if you take the time and you make a mockup of your idea? Well, now you’ve separated yourself from 9 out of 10 pitches an angel gets.

Whilst each new app is great in its simplicity (just like Basecamp), none of the tools quite do the job either. Combining them together (whilst paying 3 times) almost gets you there but the integration between Basecamp, Campfire and Highrise is far from perfect and you are left still lacking in key functionality. 

If you have no idea how much you might earn from your skills this month, running the business becomes a source of stress. And we don’t want that. We want to be working on engaging projects that we know will pay us well beyond our expenses.

You can get in control.

Imagine you could predict, and know with a high amount of confidence that you will bring in $10,000 next month with your creative craft?

Here’s how you can gain control, and be in a position to predict what you earn each month:

Sites like AOL and Yahoo did exist — and were popular. But the easiest way to make that point is to share with you this graphic, which shows the 20 most popular sites in December of each year, according to comScore. More interestingly, what it shows is when certain sites became and then stopped being popular.

In this article, we introduce the remaining three considerations:

How do you identify and protect your competitive differentiators?
Do you have an idea or solution that is eligible for patent protection?
What is your IP strategy?

As we’ve written about previously, the freelance movement is in full swing as businesses and workers engage in more flexible, on-demand work arrangements. And while this labor transformation has been well discussed during the last year, the real question is what will the future look like? What should companies and workers expect in 2015 and how should they plan accordingly?

From productivity-amping morning and nighttime rituals, to Jerry Seinfeld’s daily procrastination crusher, to the hyper-efficient habits of the world’s wealthiest moguls, we’ve got you covered. Here’s a countdown of our top 10 most-read articles about productivity in 2014. Read them and tweak.

While trade secrets cannot fully replace patent protection in all respects, they do offer a viable alternative to patents for protecting intellectual property in some cases. In addition, while the value of patents in protecting IP has been under attack this year, trade secret protection has been on the rise with, for example, the California appellate court decision in Altavion, Inc. v. Konica Minolta Systems Laboratory, 226 Cal.App.4th 26. 171 Cal.Rptr.3d 714 (1st Dist. 2014) that broadened the definition of what information can qualify as a trade secret. Moreover, there is a real possibility that Congress will finally pass a civil trade secrets protection law, which will mean that trade secrets will not be considered patent’s ugly step sister any longer.

Having had a good deal of experience now as a self-employed illustrator, and having interacted with many other freelancers in my time, I’ve put together a list of what we all need to make it work. My view is that if any of the following are missing, your maintained joy and success will be compromised.

To do this, we must rediscover the art of brand marketing and put these five ideas to rest:

LastPass was born from such a need, as Joe Siegrist and his co-founders needed a way to manage their own passwords out of necessity. They set out to create a platform for managing randomly generated, secure passwords, regardless of when and where you need to log in to your sites. The service has evolved over the years, becoming available on as many platforms as they LastPass team can manage, and continues to escalate security measures for the benefit of users. We spoke with Joe to learn more about how it all came together and how they manage their progress.

The importance of body language is stressed from an early age: watch those around you, and you'll know what they're thinking. While you might be skilled at deciphering the messages of crossed arms, slouched sitting, eye movements, and hand gestures, the key to understanding those around you is a little less obvious.

Rather than looking at the faces and postures of others, look towards the ground. The feet don't lie, and you'll learn a lot more about the people you're chatting with just by the position of them.

The problem we were trying to solve is that if you only have one Experience section for your freelance work, you might not reap the full benefits of LinkedIn search. However, if you list them all out individually, your LinkedIn profile is hard to read.

Turned, out, we all seemed to agree on the following four-step strategy:

Thumbtack, in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, has released the results from the third annual Thumbtack.com Small Business Friendliness Survey. The study, drawing upon data from over 12,000 small business owners, provides new insights into state and local business environments across the nation.

Of course, printing from your mobile is not always as easy as printing from a computer. But it can be, as long as you have the right tools for the job. Check out this handy infographic that shows you eight different ways you can print from your mobile with ease.

“When people trust you, have confidence in your brand, see you constantly going out of your way to answer their problems and dilemmas, then they start to like you.”

A few months ago, Jimmy Wilson got in touch and asked me a bunch of questions about publishing. They were great questions and, as many of them were ones that I get asked a lot, I said I’d publish my answers as a blog post. It’s taken me a while to get round to it (sorry, Jimmy), but — hot on the heels of Lagom’s launch — here they are:

Digital is often mistaken for mere technology. But like the printing press, factory line and automobile, it’s a social phenomena. A phenomena that is changing our behavior and how we do business.

Brian Solis described this new generation of users as the connected consumers. Consumers shaped by mobile, social media and the web. These are a new generation of empowered consumers that have different expectations.

So how do we keep this new generation of customer happy?