Boy have I been busy. Let me tell you about it~!
I currently have three active client projects – one is almost finished, one is mid-way, and another is barely started.
I’ve completely redesigned LowGenius.Com and added a HUGE bunch of tools and processes. Unfortunately for readers of this blog, 99% of it is for client visibility only – project management, task tracking, helpdesk, etc. Eventually I’ll have a user’s guide for all of it that is publicly visible – I can think of few better advertisements for a service business then letting your customers read the instruction manual for the tools and services you’re offering.
But in the middle of these projects, I also have the following things going on:
* Building the helpdesk system
* Building the project management system
* Keeping up with new content on LowGenius.Net
* Getting Netograph.Com up and running, and creating content for it.
* Creating blog-ish content for LowGenius.Com (which I’ve thus far failed miserably at)
* Getting MYSELF organized…and this is the key.
I’ve been doing the ‘independent web designer’ thing for a long while now. I’ll save the details – or more likely write about them in a blog entry over at .com – but I’ve been taking huge steps toward the “web design, marketing, publicity, music, and new media” firm that I want to be, away from “I know a guy that does websites.” To that end, I’ve made some pretty big changes recently. Again, I’ll save the technical esoterica for more involved posts at .com, but I’ve moved or am moving all of my existing sites into one of two “engines.” One of the engines, DotNetNuke, is a portal system itself – I can run one site as the main portal and then build as many domains within that portal and manage them all from there, but they’re independent sites with their own domain names and e-mail and the whole nine yards.
I use a different engine, called “DotNetBlogEngine,” for LowGenius.Net and TessaRawlinson.Com. This is a blog engine. DNN is a content management system.
I invested in some aftermarket tools for DNN from a guy called Chris Onyak and his site, OnyakTech, that allow me to build a full-fledged Client Relationship Management system, without having to do all the coding by hand. From the time I see a potential new job until the point that it’s live and I’ve been paid for it, I can track the progress of each one and the progress of all of the sub-components of those jobs right down to the level of designing a certain graphic or writing a given section of a web page. Plus I can track all of the jobs collectively under the larger task that is my business. It’s got billing systems; I can build a primitive accounting system with it as well.
So it’s not just a business organizer, it’s an entire lifestylel organizer LOL. Every time I do something on a job, the system e-mails the client to let them know what I’m doing, how far along I am in doing it, if I need anything from them, and now important it is.
In order to most effectively use this new tool, both for my own benefit and that of my clients, it requires that I spend a great deal of time thinking ‘big’ on the fly – every decision I make about the design of a certain form or page or process may ripple in multiple directions. Now that I’ve got two working clients in the system properly, I can take a break at more adequately defining a template for new work and for the entire life-cycle of a given business relationship or project. There are certain steps and materials and processes that you perform or use over and over again on all kinds of levels, and the more you can standardize and systematize those steps, etc., the more time you can spend actually producing things of value (i.e. customer work).
The down-side is an enormous investment of up-front time to standardize and systematize everything…and that’s where I’m at now, in between the sites I’m working on for clients (and the other work that still needs to be done!)
I’m really on fire with this whole thing right now. On the larger level, it allows me to have a level of personal organization that I have never really enjoyed. If I have an idea for something to put on one of my sites, I jot it down in the system and I’ll get back to it when I can…but I don’t lose it or forget it. When you’re telling people you’re going to do things – when they’re paying you to do things – it ill-behooves one to be forgetful 😉 Now I can not only prioritize my work for my clients, I can prioritize the clients themselves, and even work itself, within the larger context of how I’m managing my life…and I can do it all with this tool, and I’ve only scratched the surface.
The best part is, I can re-sell parts of this tool, too 😛 I guess in a way I am, if you count the access my clients get to project management and helpdesk functionality.
In a stunning concession to irritating trends, I’ve named the whole thing – helpdesk, personal account management, user account management, project management, billing, etc., “MyGenius.” I may get really nuts and call the project management subsection “iProject” or something LOL. There’s also the “GeniusBase,” which is the user manual I mentioned before (it has all of one short article in it right now!), but which will eventually expand beyond just client tools and into larger, related subjects like good web design principles and so on, over time. I may even use it to reconstitute the low “LowBrary” with the MusicBase and all that stuff, if I get around to it. That’s kind of more appropriate for this space than for the .Com, but then it’s about time I started treating my musical life more like a profession and less like a hobby, too. I bring a lot to the table from my experiences as a musician, and even in the wrestling business, and there’s no reason I can’t “institutionalize” that knowledge as a part of the larger “professional me.”
[Sidebar] One of my pending experiments is going to be to try and set up a BlogEngine site underneath a DNN site – BlogEngine has better tools for blogging.[/Sidebar]
And the “professional me” is what sort of led to this blog entry, because I sort of followed the branches back to the trunk and then followed the trunk back out, considering just how many “me’s” there are, and how I can best get them organized and working in synch with each other.
I’ve determined that there are at least four “me’s.”
There is the one, all-encompassing me – Me. Within this Me are three other me’s.
There is the private “Me.” This is Me, inside my own head, where only I know what I’m really thinking. This is where things like my sex life and most of my religion go, although some of the religion (and I guess to a lesser extent some of the sex?) also bleeds over into the public “Me.”
The public “Me” is personal, but not always professional. This blog is the public “Me” – not private, but not always the kind of discussions you want to have with your clients, either. Some of the public “Me” may very well be about business, but it’s also about relationships and feelings and ups and downs and moods and opinions. The third “Me” is the professional “Me,” which is what you see – or will soon BE seeing – over at LowGenius.Com.
Of course, I’m single right now. I suppose if I were in a relationship there’d be another me – “me when I’m with my partner” who is, for most people I think, an area between “private” and “public.” Then there will be five “Me’s” and I can start a basketball team.
(Random psychotherapy thought: perhaps this pyramid of Me is a key to the understanding of MPD-presenting disorders? The “Meta-Me” isn’t present, so you’re left with all those employees and no management.)
(Random grammar note: trying to pluralize a first-person singular with referring to the singular itself kinda sucks. A pyramid of Me? A pyramid of “Me’s,” which violates apostrophe rules for plurals, but is more easily understood than a pyramid of Mes, which is gramatically correct but will lead people to go searching for the ancient god Mes (there isn’t one)? A pyramid of Us? What if I’m talking about YOUR Me’s, do we then discuss a pyramid of Thems? Shall we just take the southern way out and call ’em “Y’all?”)
In the middle of organizing myself, I find that certain parts of those smaller “Me’s” are shifting around between each other – what used to be more personal is now more professional, what used to be more public is now more private. For instance, I’ve been a professional musician for twenty-five of my thirty-eight years, but somehow it’s always been personal to me. I guess my current situation of not having any kind of instrument has left me feeling like I had nothing musical to contribute, but I’ve done a whoooooole lot of reading and experiencing of music over the years and am familiar with artists and songs across nearly every genre. I’ve played most genres, from classical to funk to metal. I’ve spent significant time recording and performing, every time a unique experience that I can draw – and share – memories and knowledge from. There’s no reason that I can’t write that information down and make it part of my public body of professional work, but I’ve just never thought of it.
This new tool is making me think about it, and in the process making me get a whole lot of things together that I frankly should have learned when I was younger. So that feels good, but it’s tedious and time-consuming, kind of like this blog entry is starting to be, and in the mean time I have clients with work they want finished and done with, and I need to get this CRM system in order so I can make that happen.
But, I’ve barely spoken to anyone this year, period (Seriously, if I’m not working on a client site or this CRM system, or posting to this blog, I’m asleep…and I’ve been getting about 5 hours a night all year), so I did want to poke my head in and let my friends and readers (all three of you!) know what’s up. That’s what’s up 🙂 I’ll do my level best to get at least two blog posts a week in here, outside of everything else that’s going on. Fortunately, I can use my new tool to set a reminder to make sure it gets done 🙂
Please, love, and chocolate-covered raisins,
PS: My mood seems to have improved 😉