Alright so I love outsourcing. I think outsourcing is perhaps one of the best things that could have ever happened to small business. For a lot of my work I use GetFriday and they are great and for the rest of my work  that I outsource I use Freelancer or ODesk.

In outsourcing I have started to notice a trend that quite frankly has shocked and a little bit worried me. The cheaper bids on my projects are often coming from Americans, meaning people for the US, not India, not anywhere else. The gap is huge too. For the same project i get $200 bids from India and $30 bids from the US.

I am not sure what to make of this… It could be said that it is because of the lack of jobs in the US… but why such high prices coming from India? Curious…

My personal believe, many people believe other things, is that for the most part people are born as a clean slate with a tendency towards good and innocence. I have a lot of faith in people and I genuinely love and care about people. This is wonderful because I get to be deeply connected and loved by others, and I get to contribute from my heart.

However, there is a boundary that I have put up in my relationships with people. I ask myself is this person beneficial, unimportant or detrimental to my life.

I ran into a situation this morning when I seriously asked myself this question about someone who had been in my mother’s and my lives for some time. This person was willing to be our “friend” while we were down and couldn’t afford to put food in the refrigerator, though to be clear they didn’t do anything to help us then either. But when we started to pick ourselves back up they tried to hold us back down.

This is when my mother stepped up and did something inspirational. She was unafraid and spoke her mind in an honest and authentic way. She didn’t lash out she wasn’t a victim, she just told it like it was… plain and simple. She stood up for her honor and integrity. It rocked. It made me feel very proud to be her daughter.

So parents… just FYI your kids love being proud of the things you do… even if we don’t always express it.

If you want to read more about my mom and her story go here

Everyone knows that spam is really annoying… don’t get me wrong, the first couple hundred times I got emails telling me I could enlarge my penis by 3 inches was pretty funny. But that is the kind of spam that you know is spam. I certainly do not have a penis… and if I did I am sure I would not need to enlarge it because it would probably be epic.

The kind of spam I want to address today, however, is the more clever spam… like the kind of spam that kind of looks like it could be real. I would like to give you an example of the type of spam comments I, and other bloggers, get.

“Sorry for requesting you this request on this post, but I couldn’t find a contact page on first sight so I thought I ask here. What is the hosting provider you use, mine won’t back wordpress for some reason and I actually want to switch to wordpress from blogengine since wordpress has so many more features and themes on hand for download. I for one hope you can support me on this one, this is a wordpress blog right? Sorry for my English btw. Best regards, James”

Ok so seeing as I do use Wordpress and hosting provider has to host this blog site, at first glance this sort of sound legit, sort of. But if you are going to pretent to be real you might as well put a real name because “patient monitoring system” in the name column just screams “I’m trying to spam you and your readers!!!!” Next hint… the very next comment for me to moderate is… oh what a shocker, the exact same post with 3 or 4 words changed… wow I am REALLY not going to figure it out now!

If this brilliant piece of spam didn’t have enough working against it the email address was awesome “Emmanuel@aol.com” Really? wow what is the likelihood that this awesome patient monitoring system guy who’s name is James would have been the first to pick Emmanuel on AOL! Not to mention the second comment with a different email address that I am sure James was also the first to nab.

Moral of the story… don’t spam! Spend time doing legitimate things… otherwise your comments will get put in the spam folder

Distraction and being spread too thin… is not a good thing and is super ineffective. When doing the start-up company thing it is almost a given that being spread too thin is going to happen. The reason is that for the most part, nothing is set up and you have to start from scratch. Ugh… Also, like in my case, I have to grow and stretch every single day in about 10,000 ways and get out of my comfort zone regularly. In fact I would say I live outside of my comfort zone. Now, you will hear a lot of public speakers say how great living outside of your comfort zone is for you! I agree, however, it is certainly not the easy way and I am not the biggest fan of discomfort. Straight up, sometimes outside of my comfort zone sucks! But the value of stretching and growing and living outside of my comfort zone is that I get to have things like personal satisfaction, joy, pride, trust, success, accomplishment… lol you know little things like that!

There is a difference between living outside of your comfort zone and being distracted or spread too thin. I like to control things, that isn’t all that great sometimes. I tend to want to take on everything because “I can do it the way I want it done!” Good thing I have a brain or I would do stuff like that all the time. Spreading myself too thin keeps me: 1. super stressed, 2. totally ineffective at everything, 3. guilty like nobody’s business because I can’t actually do everything in a timely manner and well.

So this is what I do (note: I am SO not perfect at this, also don’t expect perfection from me, it won’t happen, in fact I don’t even want to be perfect I would rather be effective so if you feel like telling me I’m not perfect, stuff it!):

1. Educate myself on what I’m doing. This doesn’t have to be super hard, just go online and read about it.

2. Do it myself the first time- This I learned from E-Myth by Michael Gerber- that way I know what it is that I am getting myself into when I pass it off to someone else.

3. Pass it on! Find people to do take this on. Ok here is the other part of this though, because finding good staff isn’t always easy. Manuals! Create manuals so that anyone stepping into the job is clear on what they are doing. Give them freedom to think, people have good ideas, often better ones than you.

I don’t like checking email for the most part and I don’t like writing email for the most part. I have a lot of filming bookings to do and a lot of people that I meet at events to schedule for various things, like coffee meetings. I don’t like managing that kind of thing, not because it is unpleasant but because my time is spent in more productive ways elsewhere. For example, I would rather hang out with my brother Ross than check and manage emails and schedules.

A lot of people outsource their emails to their personal assistants, so I figured “why should I be any different? My assistant should do it too!” Well, I am someone who is pretty particular about how things that represent me, like me email, gets handled and it freaked me out a bit to give that to task to someone else. But, seeing as many people have done it with success, I figured I should try.

Here is what I did:

1. Created templates for particular types of emails. So for example, if I meet someone, find them interesting and want to meet with them further, there is an email template that I created for that called Coffee Request.

2. I send my assistant an email with the names and email addresses of everyone I just met and label each person with one of the email templates that I have created.

3. I shared my Google calendar with my assistant and inputed “Preferred” times already inputted into the calendar so he can just fill in the blanks. No room for failure there. Nice.

4. The email my assistant uses is actually an email address for me it is EStewart@WomanAnew.com so that people know who on earth is emailing them and BCC my personal email address so I can see what is going out.

5. Instruct my assistant to create a manual using my preferences that he learns along the way, so that any assistant after him has very little room for error.

So far this method has worked pretty well and the best part is that I don’t check a whole lot of email or schedule much myself. The hardest part for me about doing this was creating a solid structure for my assistant to work off of. I needed to be super clear as to what he was doing and what he was to say. Organization and structure here was king. I am slowly giving more and more responsibility to my assistant, with clear instructions of course. The outcome of this is I am happier. Epic win.

With the web, TV and other digital distractions being so prevalent it is pretty easy to think “I don’t need people.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Deep down as a culture, we in the US have lost faith in our relationships. I know that for a long time I did. I had been hurt enough times to know… I don’t need people. Enough romantic relationships that end in heartbreak, enough broken trust by friends, enough to let the thought “I’m better off alone” enter my mind…

Thankfully, I am wiser than that. Deep human relationship, from what I can tell, is all that really matters in this world. It matters far more than material things and it matters more than being safe and alone. Deep human relationship can fill the void in your heart, it can light up your life and make you feel alive, it can give you purpose, it can connect and anchor you to being and it can teach you more about yourself than you could have ever hoped to learn alone.

Genuine people have the deepest relationships, in my experience. I tend to share my life, even with complete strangers. For example when meeting someone for the first time I share something important about myself that is relevant. I share something that I am struggling with, like networking events sometimes make me feel awkward, or my goals, like I intend for Woman Anew to be a place where woman can authentically share their wisdom. It is scary for me to share these things because I am worried about what people will think of me, and sometimes they think I am weird. But, I have found that for the most part, people appreciate honesty and authenticity and they will reciprocate.

But deep human relationship comes at a price. It requires honor and respect, not only for other, but for yourself. Positive and uplifting people help with that, the more I find that I am around positive and uplifting people, the more I am able to accomplish and the happier I am (that is why I am very grateful for my friends, I love you guys, you know who you are). For positive people, keep being positive! People very often put down or dislike positive people because they are so angry on the inside, but secretly everyone wants to be happy even if they say they don’t.

Happier people tend to have better relationships because more people want to be around them.

Action Items: Pay attention to:

1. Your internal conversation, is it positive or negative most of the time?

2. How many times a day you verbally complain vs. how many times a day you say something positive to someone else or                                                                           yourself.

3. Commit to being 3 times more positive than negative and go out of your way to say something nice to yourself or someone                                                                     else. Work your way up from there, so tomorrow be 4 times more positive than negative, etc…

Ways I have seen people sabotage relationships, including ways I have sabotaged my own relationships. In fact I have used every single one of these ways to sabotage a relationship.

1. Be out of contact. This means not picking up the phone when people call and not reaching out to friends, family or anyone else for support when it is needed.

2. Being fake. When people are being fake, you know it. So just FYI people, when you are fake, people know it even if they won’t say it. The people closest to us, and often strangers too, can see our weaknesses, no matter how hard we try to conceal them. I see this a TON with business people, in fact I have done it. I tried a network marketing company once and I was fake with so many people to get them to join, but I felt dirty doing it, so I stopped. Since then I have gotten tons of calls from friends I haven’t heard from in years asking me to come over and “hang out and check out what they are doing.” Lol Karma. (just as a side note I happen to think network marketing works, not for everyone, but for some people, so don’t take this as network marketing bashing because it has done a lot of good for a lot of people)

3. Withholding. This is probably the biggest cardinal sin in relationships. Withholding love, compassion and yourself from those who care about you is like not watering a plant. Eventually the plant will die.

Action Item:

1. Write down the relationships that are the most important to you. Be honest with yourself about each one as to the state of affairs that each is really in, meaning how are they doing, realistically. Then decide what you actually want to do with that, are you committed to having something different in that relationship and if so, what? Finally, what actions can you take to make sure that happens and doesn’t just stay a nice fantasy?

Relationships take work, but they are very worth it.

I have two Facebook pages that I currently manage, because I want to not because I have to mind you. One is my mother, Ania Stewart’s, and the other is mine. I also have two Facebook pages, one for my business Salsa Dance Underground and the other is for the internet TV network my mother and I started, Woman Anew.

That is quite a bit to manage, but Twitter and Facebook came to the rescue of many who have both types of accounts and linked them! Brilliant guys!

That means that when I go to Echofon (the iPhone app I use to update and read my Twitter accounts) and update my status it posts directly to one of my Facebook pages (each page is linked to it’s appropriate Twitter account, ie the Woman Anew Facebook page is linked to the Woman Anew Twitter, genius right! lol).  Thank you Twitter and Facebook, if only the rest of the internet were this efficient! Since in many cases different people follow individuals on different venues it allows me to give the same, quality information to two groups of people at the same time. Wicked cool.

I found a really helpful blog post by a guy named AJ Vaynerchuk, the brother of esteemed wine and tech guru, Gary Vaynerchuk, that provides links as to how to link twitter to facebook.

Enjoy!

Today I leave for Beijing, China, to continue to Seoul, South Korea. My state of mind is hard to pinpoint, I have been to 9 different countries so far, but never before on my own dime and as an adult. This is the first me-caused excursion.

I am nervous because I don’t speak either language and have never been to that part of the world. But more than anything I am proud. I have wanted to do this for years, in fact I left my first college, St. John’s in Santa Fe, NM, because my intention was to study abroad. Now I’m finally leaving.

This morning I had a chat with my father, who when he was about my age went to Germany and lived for a year. He told me that it caused a major shift in his life. Before he went to Germany he was just someone who watched other people do things and live fully. When he returned he, he returned a man who lived life fully. He was no longer someone who just watched on the sidelines, he was now a player in the game of life.

My major life shift is different than his. I have always been good at playing the game of life and have been on the court for as long as I can remember. My shift is that now I am a results producer. I produce results, and the ones that I want. Big results that are life changing, big results that most people never get to have.

Avisash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0, said it best, it is about conversion. Producing results. The result may be a relationship with your father that you have never had, or it might be a trip to China and South Korea. Regardless of the result, you can produce what you set out to cause.

… but you should use it anyway. I had a personal shift in my way of thinking about a year ago. I used to be very concerned about people liking me. That sucked, because no matter what I did, it was inevitable that someone wouldn’t like me or be mad at me or something that sucked equally as bad. Through some very sage guidance from a teacher named Michael Strasner I was able to change being concerned about being liked to being concerned primarily with being respected.

Now, this is not an easy shift, might I add. But, if you talk to any sane person who has made something extraordinary for themselves or others has very clearly left being liked by the side of the road. I will take Bill Gates as a prime example of this. How many people hate him or hate Microsoft? I mean really, that is how we have Firefox, Openoffice, etc… It all stemmed from people who hate either Bill Gates or Microsoft… or both.

But no matter if you like Bill Gates or hate his guts, you have to respect what he has been able to create. He is inarguable one of the most influential people of our time, has made more money than any of us could imagine ever having, and more than anything he has been changing the world in different and drastic ways for decades!

I bet at one point he cared if people liked or disliked him. But if he had let that stop him he might be working at a Taco Bell drive through and not saving the lives of countless people through his foundation. Now you may even be saying, “Well Bill Gates isn’t a good example! I don’t like him or what he’s done through Microsoft!.” Guess what? Bill Gates, his money, his charity, and his world changing ability don’t care!

So what lesson should you take from all of this? Don’t let people’s opinions stop you from achieving your dreams and goals. It is just silly. I understand it can be hard to take the heat, I tend to get a little mushy and sad when people don’t like what I have to say or what I am doing. But when it comes down to it, they have their own reasons (more often than not jealousy is at the root) and it is their right.

Focus on being respected, it will change what you are willing to do and how far you are willing to go to have what you want in life. There are a lot of people who want their dreams, but not a lot who are willing to have them.

Very often I see people save their good dishes or their good cups or their good clothes for special occasions. I guess this is a mentality that was very prominent in my parent’s baby boomer generation that got passed down (that is once we got old enough to afford anything “good”).

I on the other hand, use my good Polish crystal drinking glasses and my hand made dish set and my good silverware every day. It is because I couldn’t imagine waiting to use things that made me happy and made my life better only on special occasions. That is part of my choice to not wait to live until I retire, which may or may not ever happen. The mentality to wait to live until retirement is dying out with the hope that my generation will ever get Social Security.

In light of that… I use my good crystal drinking glasses every day life is now!