Dave Caolo

Telegraph lets you import RSS or Atom feed into your Basecamp account. Why would you want to do that?

• Track buzz about your project on the net
• Get a feed of your bug tracking system
• Whatever else you can think of

Pretty cool. Get more details here.

It’s a hot topic, and a real dilemma for me.

Brand as an individual or brand as a business?

When I sat down last winter to consider a career as a freelancer, I thought, “What services will I offer?” Well, I had been working as an IT director for a Mac-friendly school for six years, so that’s what I knew how to do. Not to sound immodest, but I know my way around a computer, and I enjoy working with them.

I had also been blogging professionally for three years (and personally for eight). Blogging is what I genuinely love. It’s in my heart. I could do this all day, every day. If there’s a passion in my life, this is it.

Blogging is so much fun, so dynamic, so immediate and accessible. Who benefits from blogging? Families, small businesses, chambers of commerce, schools, churches, coffee houses, college students, Marines, authors, nuns … everyone!

I don’t care if you’re in it for fun or profit, business or pleasure. Your experience will be enhanced with blogging. Hand me a soap box and I’ll go off on why this is a phenomenally fantastic thing to do. And that’s the truth.

Again, I’m not being obnoxious, but I know a lot about this medium, and sharing that knowledge with others makes me all giddy. I <3 blogging.

So, I found myself on brink of self-employment with two quasi-related skill sets: IT and blogging.

Back to my question.

What do I want to do? Well, the honest answer is “both.” The practical answer is “pick one.” Obviously, that “one” ought to be IT. Saying, “I’m an IT consultant” is respectable. Saying “I’m a blog consultant” sounds like “I have a professional lemonade stand.”

As I learned several weeks ago, that only leads to confusion and uncertainty for the customer. Saying, “I do IT consulting for home and business — including repairs, network design, software installation, software training, backup system creation — plus professional blog coaching” leaves customers thinking, “OK, here’s a guy who can’t make up his mind. Which does he do well?”

Now, I’ve got evidence of people who pull this off successfully. I know a woman who is a very talented and successful career counselor. She also speaks to banking corporate types on best business practices. Those skills are related but different.

So, I went with that. I’ll do both. The next step was deciding on a name, a logo and a website.

It begins

As a person who has never had to name a business before, I found it agonizing. Everything I came up with sounded either trite, over-used, too “corporate” or too immature. Plus, what word or phrase conveys the services I described?

Finally, I decided that it’s my skills and knowledge that I’m selling. So, I registered DaveCaolo.com and bam! That was it. I was Dave Caolo at DaveCaolo.com. The company is me. The brand is me. We’re one in the same.

On the front page, I created an introductory paragraph as well as three “sections”: One for blog coaching and two for IT, one home and one business. For a logo, I put up my face. Me, me, me.

“Great,” I thought. “Potential clients will land on the home page, see the section they’re interested in and click through.”

Now I’m second guessing that decision.

It changes

Today I read an article at Copyblogger which put the fear of God into me. Entitled “Are you in personal branding prison,” it states in no uncertain terms that what I’ve done by focusing on myself as the brand is exactly the wrong thing to do. “What if you want to grow or take a break? You can’t,” says James Chartrand. When I leave the business, either to sell it or do something else, it dies. No me = no business.

Plus, I can’t ever hire employees*, because the clients don’t want John to show up, they want Dave. Dave is what they’re paying for.

Now I’m re-thinking the whole thing, and it’s exhausting. Perhaps I should brand my freelance efforts as “Kaylow” or even “Kaylow Media.” Perhaps I should leave it as it is. Perhaps I should say “F this” and get a real job like a regular person and reduce a tremendous amount of stress for my lovely wife.

What do you think, dear readers? I hope you’ll leave a comment.

*That thought is laughable, as I’m not exactly on track to become a millionaire with this venture.

Last Monday, I posted my professional goals for the week. With a little focus provided by David Seah’s Concrete Goals Tracker (CGT) forms, I did well. Here’s an update

• Order new business cards (2 points) Score! +2
  
• Complete website (2 points) Score! +2
• Publish WordPress video (2 points) Score! +2
• Write new blog articles (2 points per) Score! +8 (4 articles x2 pts. each).
  
• Draft new video series (2 points) Score! +2 (this is going to be awesome, by the way. You’ll just have to wait a couple weeks more).
• Pitch my presentation “Blogging for Artists” to local galleries (2 points) Score! +2
• Connect with local members of the tech community (1 point)
• Mail proposal to Client A (10 points) Score! +10
• Land Client B (10 points) Score! +10

That’s 38 Productivity Points for the week. Awesome. Here’s what I learned.

If you need a list of concrete actions, create one.

I’m a dutiful little worker, as long as I know exactly what needs to be done. My wife gives me Honey Do lists on the weekends, and I secretly love them (don’t tell her). Why? Because they describe in no uncertain terms what I’m to do.

My old day job followed a similar model. I knew exactly what needed to be done each day.

1. Backup the server
2. Confirm the Filemaker Pro backups
3. Check voicemail
4. Print Report X and Report Y …

Unexpected tasks popped up, sure, but I can deal with those. Now that I’m working on my own, it’s easy to sit down at my desk at 8:00 AM and think, “OK, what do I do first?” I need a Honey Do list, and creating one for myself has helped tremendously.

Reward successive approximations

I tend to prevent myself from feeling good about a project until it’s complete. Last week, I rewarded each small step towards the goal. Filling in the little circles on Dave’s form was a part of that. You probably know how satisfying it is to strike through an item on a to-do list. Imagine if you could then “win” points for doing the same thing!

It sounds kind of silly but it was effective. So, instead of thinking, “I haven’t released the podcast yet … drat,” I can think, “So far, I’ve scheduled the podcast, gotten everyone together, registered WireTap Studio, created my outline and recorded the podcast.”

I’ll post my goals for this week soon … it’s on my list.

Brad Bird:

“You don’t play it safe — you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.”

Awesome.

[Via DF]

Today I started a new feature at davecaolo.com — blogger weekend projects. A new project each Saturday designed to improve your blog. This week, it’s Pimp Your RSS Feed.

Over at my professional site, DaveCaolo.com, I describe the three simple ways I manage those infuriating office interruptions. It’s easier than you think. And no, “run screaming from the building” is not on the list.

Just yesterday I posted my professional goals for the week. Credit good karma, motivation or that giant bag of crystal meth I smoked this morning, but I’m beating this sucker up like Iron Mike Tyson. Here’s an update

• Order new business cards (2 points) Score! +2
  
• Complete website (2 points) Score! +2
• Publish WordPress video (2 points) Score! +2
• Write new blog articles (2 points per)
• Draft new video series (2 points)
• Pitch my presentation “Blogging for Artists” to local galleries (2 points) Score! +2
• Connect with local members of the tech community (1 point)
• Mail proposal to Client A (10 points) Score! +10
• Land Client B (10 points) Score! +10

Plus, I got five posts up at TUAW today. Sweet Mother of Mary, I’m on fire. Here’s to organization, discipline (turn Twitter OFF once in a while) and the motivation offered by a monthly mortgage.

Grammar Girl offers a Twitter style guide. I love it.

I use Backpack by 37signals for personal project management (the electronic arm, that is). Recently, I completed a project (go, me). However, I didn’t want to delete the project page and all of its files. Nor did I want to stare at it in the middle of my projects list every day.

So, I decided to “archive” it. By renaming the page with a “z” as the first character, it dropped to the bottom of the list in my sidebar. This is how I’ll deal with all archived projects in the future. The page continues to exist as it was when the project was open — all files, history, communications, etc. in place — but it’s no longer grouped with my open projects.

As David Seah points out, CEOs focus primarily on actions that move their companies forward. As an easily-distracted freelancer (New iMacs are out? Cool!), I need assistance in identifying and accomplishing these goals.

So, I use Dave’s Concrete Goals Tracker (CGT) forms. Each Sunday, I sit down and list the actions I’ll take in the next six days to move my business forward. The CGT makes that fun by assigning point values to different categories of activities.

For example, life-sustaining billable work (like signing a new client or contract) is worth 10 points. Concrete planning or accounting is worth 5, acts of self-promotion are worth 2 and relationship maintenance is worth 1.

I thought I’d share the goals I’ve created for this week with you. This weekend I’ll tell you how many points I scored.

• Order new business cards (2 points) Score! +2
  
• Complete website (2 points)
• Publish WordPress video (2 points)
• Write new blog articles (2 points per)
• Draft new video series (2 points)
• Pitch my presentation “Blogging for Artists” to local galleries (2 points) Score! +2
• Connect with local members of the tech community (1 point)
• Mail proposal to Client A (10 points) Score! +10
• Land Client B (10 points) Score! +10

Check back this weekend. Now, back to work!