SFNaim - The nth Guides

One of the critiques of my reading is the question around how much information could possibly stick if I’m reading more than 52 self-help, business books in a year. The truth is that many of them don’t stick. A bunch of the books feel like repeat information and have a single chapter that stands out […]

I wrote about what my routines are recently, one of the reasons I started with them was because I wasn’t getting to my review process. When I didn’t get to my review process I found that I’d spend the night flustered or the weekend with some nagging feeling like the whole house of cards was […]

Convenience, however, often comes at the expense of understanding. The less time you spend examining things, the less you know about them. When it comes to understanding how you spend your life, it’s important to slow down and take the time. – The Bullet Journal Method In 2018 I launched a new podcast called Should […]

One of the books I’m working through is The Bullet Journal Method. Early in the book as Ryder Carroll started to talk about why you use the journal he had three great questions you need to ask yourself with your tasks. They are: Where are you now? Do you want to be where you are? […]

A few weeks back I wrote about 6 tips the Overwhelmed Creative can use to get control again. In response to that my friend Rafal sent me some of his tips for bringing focus back to your life. Rafal runs Sandbox Rim and it’s a great site that I have in my RSS reader. Here […]

Last week I talked about the planning you need to do with your spouse and your life if you want to run a successful freelance business. Today, we’re going to dive into what it looks like to be in control of your time so that you can run the business you want to run. Projects […]

So you want to go freelance. I get it, running your own business can offer so much freedom. It can also crash and burn if you don’t have a plan. Today I talk about these things that you need to have in your plan before you get going: Plan some savings, ideally 6 months Get […]

After talking with Adam Warner a few months back I’ve had a number of people reach out to say that they enjoyed the interview and Adam’s perspective on moving from Foo Plugins to Sitelock. Today we’re continuing in the same vein as I talk to Matt Medeiros. Matt is a founder of Slocum Studios along […]

I was listening to The Tim Ferriss Show on my morning run and the interview with Howard Marks continually made me think of how often we get over confident when we talk to clients. We do this because we want to win the work, but are we doing them a disservice? What should we be […]

I had a question come in and it went: Should I brand myself as me, or should I get a company name that’s really just me? I’ve done both actually. My coaching is under my own name and my WordPress Membership Development Business is under SFNdesign. Watch or listen to today’s episode as I go […]

Sept 15th I ran my second 50km race, commonly called an Ultra Marathon because it’s longer than a marathon. Unfortunately this year I fell off a cliff at the end of July and messed up my ankle. That meant I was coming in to the race with two months of mostly no training. I had […]

In Clockwork they have a metric called ACDC and inside those 4 areas you need to track one thing to make sure that your business is running smoothly. Today we’re going to talk about what ACDC is and give a few examples of things you might track to make sure that your business is running […]

In my reading recently I came across the three articles linked below all of which have me thinking about the hamster wheel that we all participate in to some extent. This is the hamster wheel of content creation. Image/brand building. Showing our life off to others in an effort to … what? I’ve been killing […]

First the question is, when is the right time to become a freelance developer? start working for someone else to learn the basics of your industry build out a plan to move out on your own negotiate with your spouse if you have one specialize and keep refining what you’re going to do Watch the […]

https://youtu.be/yRl0a6igKnA6 I get why people ask this question, they just don’t have a name yet. No one knows that they provide their services. The thing that Upwork and similar sites provide is clients looking for people to do work. Drawbacks to Upwork and similar sites clients often racing to lower pricing you’re competing with lots […]

Today is an early/extra episode of The Smart Business Show. I’m excited to announce the launch of my new book The Art of Focus. It’s free today on Amazon at: https://curtismchale.ca/recommends/the-art-of-focus We’re talking about the things I did as a rest in the midst of a book launch because resting is one of the most […]

Of course the answer starts with “it depends”. What software is the default option in your desired field of work? If you need to use Photoshop, then you’re on macOS or Windows. If you mainly need terminal then macOS and Linux are Unix based systems so you have a good terminal. I think that this […]

I encountered this question in a Slack channel recently: Do you schedule time for social media? The short answer is no, I don’t schedule time for social media. social media is so much more noise than marketing now social media is not good creative work social media sucks your time away from stuff you should […]

I get why people wonder what type of job they should be having at any stage in life. Are you ready to be a CEO, not at 24, but how do you position yourself properly to win well later in life? There are some advantages to working for someone else. learning on their dime don’t […]

When you’re just starting to get out there on your own it’s a hard road to get profitable. To do that you need to start bringing in clients. Today we’re going to talk about the best ways to find clients as a freelancer. Who do you want? The first questions are actually, who do you […]

In my upcoming book The Art of Focus, I do some of my most serious writing. In fact I wrote about my thoughts of suicide before I told my wife where I was really at. I tried to have that discussion over and over again and there was just never a right time to become […]

I recently had someone reach out to find out what my daily hours looked like. Here were the questions specifically. How many billable hours do you aim for in a day? How many hours of exercise per day? How do you handle disruptions to your schedule? (e.g. do you plan for some leeway in your […]

This is based off an answer I gave on Quora. Figure out what you’re going to do. – what are you good at now? – what will people pay for? – what is the target market you’re looking at? 2. Where will you offer your services? – is Upwork worth it? – what about testing […]

Without action, knowledge is often meaningless. As Aristotle put it, to be excellent we cannot simply think or feel excellent, we must act excellently. Yet the action required to follow through on what we know is often the hardest part. That’s why even doctors know better than anyone the importance of exercise and diet, 44 […]

I was reminded of this fact this week. Here you can see where I was. I sat there for a few hours and read then sent some emails and did some writing on my phone. I broke out my journal and thought about my business without listening to any music unless it was provided by […]

Bad clients happen. They still happen to me and I have a long developed client vetting process. The thing is, each time it happens it’s your fault. You missed something about them that should have tipped you off. You rush through to the proposal so you didn’t have time to get to know them. Don’t […]

Rather than scrambling to meet an impossible deadline, work to your normal pace. The amount of work you can do is constant — the only real question is which work to do. – Extreme Programming I had a coaching client who worked every weekend. He always felt like he couldn’t get ahead so kept spinning […]

The new definition of success is not about the most revenue, employees, and office space but the most profit, generated through the fewest employees and with the least expensive office space. – Profit First How have you define success in the past? For me it’s sometimes been owning the latest and greatest Apple product. Finding […]

Sure, some of the people in a market have considered you (and even rejected you). But most of the people in the market have never even heard of you. The market doesn’t have just one mind. Different people in the market are seeking different things. – The Dip They haven’t heard of you because you’re […]

Today I’m talking about the achievements we have. Don’t gauge them against what others are doing. Gauge them against where you are and your goals. Stop minimizing your achievements. Celebrate them.

Today we’re going to talk a bit more about a post from a few weeks back when I examined the comparison trap that most of us fall in to when we look at those who are slightly ahead of us. My long post on comparing yourself and why it kills your business

Welcome to The Smart Business Show, now on a Wednesday. Moving forward, this will be the day that we launch the show. Today I’m talking about your 10 constraints. These are the 10 things I think you need to dig into if you want to get more stuff done. Far from being something that holds […]

I got an email from a local web agency recently. I’ve done work for them in the past and it’s been okay to work with them. Nothing outstanding, but nothing terrible. Recently we were talking about more work and when I talked about my limited schedule the owner took a bit of exception with that. […]

The greats you look up to are just like you. They made hard decisions in the midst of odds that others faced. They kept going when it was hard. That’s what you must do “No,” Merridy continued, her face looking thoughtful, “I think he was probably not much different than us. He was a hero, […]

Today I’m talking about a set of emails from Mario. Mario emailed me and said: I started my business (development shop) last year and hired two developers to help me with the projects, I want to grow my business. Lately I’m getting trouble to get more leads (and projects) and now most of my revenue […]

The problem that a lot of businesses have is that they always want to assume that everything is going to go aces all day. That they’ll be maximally productive all the time. Oh and don’t forget the unicorn tears that they drink at their fancy desk in the glass cube that happens to be dog […]

I’ve known Adam around WordPress for a few years but when we met at WooConf, I was very intrigued with his story. He is a cofounder of FooPlugins and ran that as his only job for 4 years. Most people would say he was living the dream, but then he went out and took a […]

Today I’m going to keep going on the theme of being more “me” and tell you a bunch about the rest of the things I enjoy and do. The links to my other “places” online are below if you’re interested in following up with me in many places. I can see why you would be, […]

To achieve an extraordinary result you must choose what matters most and give it all the time it demands. This requires getting extremely out of balance in relation to all other work issues, with only infrequent counterbalancing to address them. – The One Thing Tom and his social media sabbatical Say no to the hustle […]

Your bland. Heck I’ve been bland. I’ve been watering down my content even when I’ve said that I won’t water it down anymore. Today I’m going to talk about how you stop watering down your content and why you should wear yourself out there where your customers can see it.

Some questions about your business: What is your favourite thing to do and sell? What part of your work gets you jumping out of bed with energy? What thing in your industry do you hate? What do you hate about how you currently work? What is the most profitable thing you do and sell? Who […]

It’s been a tough week. My dog of 12 years was put down on Monday. I’ve had all manner of technology problems. My wife has been out with work a bunch and I’ve had to be there for three grieving kids. Today I’m going to talk more about mental health and how to make sure […]

When people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its length — a phenomenon called “duration neglect.” Instead, they seem to rate the experience based on two key moments: (1) the best or worst moment, known as the “peak”; and (2) the ending. Psychologists call it the “peak-end rule.” – The Power of […]

Finding a good productivity system is so much more than the mechanics of whatever tool you use. In fact, almost every tool is more or less the same. They have due dates, and start dates. You can organize things into projects and sub-folders. Some of them allow collaboration and some don’t. Some follow Agile methods […]

I just finished reading Michael Hyatt’s, Your Best Year Ever. Yup the review is coming. Today I want to talk about one of the ideas in that book. Most times we measure the gap. The distance we have to go till we reach…success…or whatever we’re striving for. Till we match the success of someone we […]

Too many people avoid any sense of hardship in their lives. They fear they can’t handle it or that they’ll be judged or rejected. – High Performance Habits …and… Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. – The Subtle Art of […]

When you see to improve yourself as a leader by following the popular approach of trying to adopt certain personality traits or even mimic leadership styles of successful leaders, you’re heading out on a divergent path away from the outcome you’re actually seeking. That’s because transferring an attribute like “charisma” from one person to yourself […]

Today I talk to Mark Schinnerer about his book The Success Grower. I read the book the week it came out, and I very much enjoyed the content. The 8 Elements might be something you’ve heard before, but the way Mark threads story through the book, sets it apart from the standard ‘business’ or ‘self-help’ […]

Welcome to the last Smart Business Show episode of 2017. Thanks for all the fish. I’ll be taking at least two weeks off so no podcast next week and no podcast in the first week of January. During that time I’ll be doing a few things. hanging out with my kids and wife spending an […]

We’re getting closer to the end of the year, what are the things you struggled with this year? What is your plan for 2018 to fill those gaps? In this show we’ll talk about: The best books of 2016 I just released A quote from a friend’s new book The Success Grower The question about […]

How do I score my 12 week year? That is the question from Youtube. This is one place I’m still a bit rocky on. I don’t do a bunch of scoring and really need to dig back into the book to figure out how to score properly. Here are the 4 questions I ask myself […]