Obviously, whenever possible, I make tools I like into Simplifilm customers, as I’ve done with RescueTime, Yesware, Clicky, and ScreenFlow.

Anyway, I have a sales system that I’m more or less happy with at the moment.  It’s certainly working now, and I can sell films and run the company in a more or less streamlined manner.  I’ll get into what I’m doing to do that at some point.

Here’s just a snapshot in time of what I’m using right now.  Remember: the Tools don’t matter.   Each of these adds 2-5% to my efficiency.  Nothing is life and death.

To run my life:

RecsueTime.Com.  I use this in fits and starts.  This week I’ve been sick, so my productivity goes to hell (think: playing Civilization V).

Before I Sell You:

GoogleReader:  I have a tuned set of alerts that help me find people.  I am enthusiastic at heart.  I love to ping people out of the blue.  I have some blogs I follow that are off-the-beaten-path with insight as to tech stuff.  I can go through this.

Search.Twitter.Com  I use a refined version of This Method, to help sell more stuff.  I’ve had some ways of getting better at doing that than I had been in the past so, there’s that for you.

Batchbook:  This is my CRM.  I’m more or less happy with it.  Nothing’s perfect, not even Batchbook.  However, there are events that it handles fairly well, and it’s better than anything that I’ve found (for me, at least).  It’s got some better capacities than I’ve used, but it helps me stay on track with lists of things that I might want to do.  I do the ones that I want.  (My to-do list is a suggestion list. Nothing more.  GTD is over.)

Yesware: Fabulousity. Our video is in production.  When I email you, I can know when you open it, if you forwarded it, if you clicked the links and more. It’s a mean and brutal tool.  What I’ve already done with it has been to call the people that were interested in engaging us.  I’m developing a library of sales and process messages.

Clicky: We’re gearing up to take over the world on the Internet.  Clicky is a big part of that.  We see how the customers get here, what they do and how often.  There’s a concept in marketing called a scent trail.  Beacons of competence at every place.

Screenflow: We like to make movies.  We use Screenflow to a fair amount, and we’ll be doing some more with it especially now that they are customers.

Google Docs: Frictionless collaboration FTW. We do our scripts on a yellow pad at first, andthen we move into google docs at some point.  I use a ton of “comments” and “notes” in my writing- there is often a way of saying something…we have to note what we don’t love.  I’m a mediocre writer but a great editor.  The form of the “Explainer” is suited for me.  150 words, and largely, it’s about editing.

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The first part of the last list was to rethink my categories, so I’ve done so here.  This is probably too many, but it’s consolodated from about 40 ID/Statuses from ACT.  I’ll  keep banging on this list.

Heap Categories/Tags:

• VIPs Anyone that’s important and rare: No more than 50 people can have this category at any given time, and it’s meant to be the 50 people most important to my business.  They can be anything: vendors, service providers anything. This tag is for other people to know that these folks get whatever we can do for them.  A VIP vendor is someone that has my back.
• Prospects: People that may buy something and are in the category of likely to buy at some point some day.  This is people that have or haven’t bought from me.
  • Never Bought: Someone that’s never bought from me.
  • Have Bought: People that have bought something from me.
• Big Time: Anyone that’s a megaprospect or hugely good at what they do.
• Met/Talked To
• Unmet/Never Talked To
• Competing Services: Just so we watch it.
• Social Media
  • Found Me - If someone randomly follows me on Facebook, I get to market to them.  They came to me, so it’s all cool.
  • I Found. I have to tread carefully here.
  • FB-
    
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter (how they got added)
• Aweber Opt In: Someone that opted in to AW and became part of a database (scrub against Aweber unsub list before sending mass emails).
• Personal: Primary source is personal.  Friends and Family.
• Refered By Other
• Advocate: Whenever someone refers me someone, closed or not, whenever someone has helped.
• Prior Bad Acts: So we don’t see it as a big deal when they are brusque.  Should be rare that we tag them.
• Live Lead: Took action to call on purpose.

Loads of fun.

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Still, it could be fun to have a ‘pro’ version.  Screenflow isn’t about slick transitions and effects, it’s about being easy to make good videos.

With that said, here’s what I want:

1. Usability: Open file -> creates new file.  Right now to make a new file, you have to record 2-3 seconds of video.  That’s dopey.  It’s tolerable, but just have a ‘create new file.’  I often use screenflow as my NLE when I’m doing stuff that I don’t need to putz with final cut for.
2. Autosave when finished recording: this is a feature I want because if you start working (and it’s easy to just start working) you can lose data if the mac goes to sleep.  Autosaving on a mac isn’t part of the norm, but I’ve lost work catastrophically 2-3 times because of this, and it’s an easy (enough) fix.
3. Bring In Media (pack & go) if you want to, it should do what Audacity does and bring in all the files it’s searching for and using if you want it to.  This will increase the file size, but it will also mean that it’s not a PITA if I move some file to some other part of my hard drive or delete an old version of something.
4. Chroma Key: Look, with today’s webcams starting to kick ass (my Eyeball by Blue) why not use this thing?   It could be an awesome, gamechanging feature since you guys are so far ahead of the field.  doing a chroma key/greenscreen video right would make you beat the TAR out of your competition.
5. Crop Different: I’d like to make different shaped videos.  I’d like to cut around someone when possible, instead of being limited to square shapes.  If I want to cut out the space over my shoulder, let me.
6. More Precise Editor: The editor’s habit of ‘snapping to’ is an irritant, and it should be able to be just a little more precise than it is if we set it to be that way.
7. Save Effects: If we’ve made an effect that brings a video in, and then makes it fly away from whence it came, we should be able to save the effect/effects as something so we can save time creating it.
8. Hotkeys: Evetything that Screenflow CAN do should be done via hotkey.  Insert text box, for example
9. Text Boxes: Let’s do a better job with those.  Let’s be able to save text box styles and apply them correctly, and precisely.  Font size and stuff are there, but having to mouse around to make all of our changes is a bummer.
10. Colors: Being able to make things B+W or sepia or whatnot can’t be that hard, and if I’m a talking head, I want to be in black and white?  Damnit make me in black and white.  Or red.  Or whatever.  The current workaround is to export out into imove, make black and white and bring back in.  Doable, but why?

That’s it for now.  This would make an excellent ‘pro’ product, and I’d kill to have it.  The distance between Screenflow and Snapz would get wider.  Still, this said, there probably isn’t any better value in software than Screenflow at the present time.  Amazing NLE and amazing what CAN be done.  Let’s make it just a little easier.

Note: Transitions and peel aways would be great, but that doesn’t impact workflow that much.

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I also hate HATE the KKK.  Of the organizations they are 1 and 1a in terms of “totally evil, but sadly, must be legal.”  That whole libertarian streak

I’m going to use these vile organizations to help me lose weight.  Stay with me here, I know it’s a stretch.

How To Use People You Hate For Goals You Want:

I’ve been in an accountability group for a while.  I’ve been focusing on selling 100 blogs.  That goal is on pace.   The one that’s not, though…I’ve gone through it in fits and starts, and it’s been an interesting journey for me.  Right now, I’m trying to lose 40# in 100 days.  About 40 days in, and I’m only down about 9 net pounds, and all of that was from a couple of weekends.   I’m doing better-but-not-great at the dinner table.  I’m doing badly at getting to the gym.  Flat out badly.  I need to work out more.  Nothing has worked–my intentions are good…but between sleep training Ruby and everything else, I’m just not making it.  So let’s fix it with something that MUST work.

So, I had an idea.  What if a kitten would die if I didn’t work out.  Sadly, both PETA and I agree with the premise that kittens shouldn’t die if I don’t work out.

So, I had another idea: what if I lost money from not working out.  (Note: when you’re less attractive, you lose money)  So I wrote out a check to a few friends, and told  them the score:  I don’t work out, they cash the check. Still, it doesn’t have the STING that I want.  Because I’m helping friends out.  And it’s a perverse incentive.

So, I thought: first, time I miss the gym it’s a warning.  I get a check written out to a couple of friends and they cash it.  The SECOND time.

Well, let’s just say that I become the Grand Wizard of NAMBLA.

So, 4 checks.  All with instructions: Cash this if I don’t prove that I got to the gym.  First check goes to my friends.  The second check?  That goes to NAMBLA or the KKK.

They BETTER do it.  Phil?  Jesse?   Counting on you.  They’ve been sent SASEs.  I gotta go to the gym man.

I’ll probably up the ante a little bit and make a picture of my ‘food diary’ become necessary.

Anyway, the rule is this: I gotta prove that I was at the gym, or these puppies get cashed.

I gotta do this  till October 1st…then the checks I will void.

Bottom line: I get one day off a week, either Friday or Sunday, but not both.  I’ve got to post a video by 1am the next morning on Youtube proving that I was at the gym.  I don’t know of a practical way to prove a workout, but this is good.  I’ll also be taking a picture of what I ate and putting it here.  All this is in the sidebar to the right.  Please subscribe.   Rat me out.  I’m tired of the excuses.

My Gym is urban active, and here’s the first video I got:

These little accountability videos will show up in the side bar.  I’ll do the vids with my crappy Blackberry.  I would rather have a PXL 2000, but this will do.  Join me at http://www.youtube.com/user/accountachris to track my progress and encourage me not to deal become the Grand Wizard of Nambla.

Oh, also: if I go to run at the woods, that counts, too, but I gotta find a stranger to say what day it is and go on video.  Should be fun.

Fight Racism: Encourage Me To Get To The Gym.

I made a badge since Ryan wanted one.

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Sometimes you can’t.

Sometimes you write posts tha don’t need to come out ant any particular time.

I’ve been having this WordPress dream for years.  That I’d have the ability to have a blog that runs itself.  When I create a content surplus, I can file it away.

That’s what Mat @ Dagon Design did.  He’s got a wicked collection of plugins.  The one that I love is this:

Scheduled Post Plugin.

Category driven, you can make it post in the future ONLY when you don’t post within x hours.

Think about that?  You then post every morning at 9, no matter what.

And you can do more in batches.

Friggin’ cool tool if you ask me.  Go get it and let me know if it has any issues.

WP Pumpkin photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericmmartin/

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Disgusting.  That’s What my auto responders are at the moment.  Foul and nasty and…just plain bad. I’ve gotta fix it this week, and I will.  Its one of those things that fell through the cracks.  Writing autorespoonders is not hard work. it’s not particularly time consuming.

But, mine blow.  I have not done the job I wanted to do because I haven’t REALLY decided what strategy I’ve wanted to execute.  I’ve kind of been in transactional mode because I have been working my ass off to get the IRS out of my life.  And that’s going to be something that I’ll do this week.

Autoresponders work.  I’ve set them up for many people.  Mine?  Won’t do anything but confuse people.  I have 3 set set up with a great plugin that Keith built for me.  Really slick.  Pulls people into aweber in a great way.  Then when they get there?  They hear nothing.

So it’s time to change that, and I’ll let you know what happens when I improve my campaign.

You’ll hear back from me Monday or Tuesday.

First:

A mea culpa to my list.

Then:

Notes that matter, and I’ll add the autoresponders to my daily tasks/tabs.

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One of the things that went wrong was the book I wrote.  I abandoned it because, well, I have acute IRS problems, and I can’t bonzai something to perfection when I need money now.  The thing is, I do and did have the time to get stuff done with regard to FT.   But I didn’t get things done because, largely, t wasn’t in front of me.

So I decided to fix that a couple of days ago.  I made some firefox tabs after my wife and I improved communication by sharing a Gdoc ToDo List (I know, I know, Remarkablogger is cringing as we speak).   But, I needed to do some easy things on an iterated basis.  And since I switched to FireFox 3.5.1b, Morning Coffee (a good plugin) ceased to work.  So, I made tabs:

Chase-  I check my bank balance every day, mostly to make sure I have not been levvied recently by the IRS.

Analytics- I’m just keeping an eye on stuff, and as my coffee brews, looking at numbers helps.

Twuffer: I have underused Twitter.  Twuffer help me keep current.  I do a mix of broacsast + connections, and it’s working.

GenuineChris – So I remember to post.

F#@% Therapy: So I remember to post.

Guerrilla.ME Again, so I remember.

LinkedIN: Answer whatever questions are in my wheelhouse, and look around for people to connect with.  I’ve been on LinkedIn for 2ish years, and have underused the site.  So it’s time to get after it.

Facebook: Kinda the same deal.  FB is more about broadcasting than any of the other sites I deal with, but yano, I need to pay more focused attention to my groups etc.

YouTube: I’ve not used this NEARLY as well as I can, and I need to make sure I’m actually making a video once or twice a day.

Then it’s my MDAs- Minimum Daily Actions,

My @todos and @projects

My family budget/expenses.

And finally, my Greader. I don’t keep up with feeds like I used to, which isn’t a bad thing.  I’m using reader now for alerts that I need to pounce on.

This gives me enough to do without being bored or distracted, and it is reasonably portable.   If you’re on the web, almost all browsers have home tabs these days that you can set, and this is a handy way of getting done.  Remember: GTD is mostly a collection of kludges and tricks that’s design is to make you better, faster, smarter.

[Time spent on blog post: 9 minutes]

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So, to date, I’ve sold 12 Blogs, delivered another $3500 in freelance projects, and gotten INCHES to the goal of getting extricated from the IRS’s clutches.  By Inches, I mean it should happen in or before June.  then I can hammer the rest of the stuff out.

But let’s be honest–I’ve barely made it to the gym.  I’ve not gone much this month, and I’ve gained 2-3 pounds.  That’s gotta change–today.  Monday kicked ass, I hit the gym early. I pounded out some great work.

So, to get where I need to be, I gotta hit the gym every day–preferably in the morning–this week.

And I gotta use the Wii Fit every day at night for 30-40 minutes.

But the good news is this: I can still hit the goal of 8# gone this month, it’s nto too late if I hustle.

So it’s time to hustle.  First day this week I miss the gym I’ll have a new fun challenge for y’all.

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I read it, implemented half the stuff he suggests on half my posts.  I was going to go nuts with it, but meh, why.

This is what happened

So, this is where YOU go to buy it:

Remarkablogger’s WordPress SEO Secrets

He also knows his stuff with regard to this new THESIS theme we’re using.

Now, it could be improved.  It needs more checklists, and more “just do it now,” stuff, but it’s perfect for most people.  You write good content, and you make it sing.

GO buy this today.

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