Saturday Six Word Memoir

This week was characterized by persistent efforts targeted at a number of different fronts.  I’ve been working on an additional project to market my freelance paralegal business and also to solicit more referrals from colleagues, and former co-workers and employers.  I’ve been seeking out more local arenas for meeting attorneys and fellow paralegals with whom I can begin to build relationships.  I’ve embarked on a crash-course education program to learn more about expanding my freelance paralegal business into the virtual world, which has led to making connections with virtual paralegals and virtual assistants from whom I hope to learn, and with whom I hope to exchange ideas.

I’ve also been working on developing a little prototype for the second business I want to develop relating to wine and food pairing.  So I’ve been doing a lot of reading about wine, writing event plans, and brainstorming with friends about my first trial wine event coming up soon.  (Read more about those efforts on my sister blog, Sonoma Sip.)

So here is the next in my series of Six Word Memoirs – a memoir to encapsulate my week:
 

Pushing multiple projects forward at once.

Got your own Six Word Memoir?  Feel free to share it in the Comments!

Technical Note: RSS Feed Subscription Repaired

I repaired my RSS feed Subscription.  It had apparently not been working.  Thanks for reading.

Care and Feeding of Your Whuffie

A)  Kid’s toy?  B) Foreign curse word?  C) Porn name?  What in heaven’s name, you ask, is whuffie?  Well according to Tara Hunt,

Whuffie is the residual outcome – the currency – of your reputation.  You lose or gain it based on positive or negative actions, your contributions to the community, and what people think of you.  The measurement of your whuffie is weighted according to your interactions with communities and individuals. (at 4)

Originally coined by Cory Doctory in his sci-fi novel, “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom,” (free download – very generous, very cool), who envisions “whuffie” as the currency that replaces money and better reflects the “personal capital” money once represented, whuffie is gained – or lost – by the helpfulness of your deeds - or lack thereof.  Quoting Hunt again,

In the gift economy, the more you give away, the more whuffie you gain, which is completely opposite from currency in the market economy, where when you give away money, it’s pretty much gone.  (at 5)

Hunt uses this metaphor to discuss building a business through building relationships with customers and the communities they are part of via digital, social networks (Facebook, Twitter and blogging are but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the various tools discussed by Hunt for building these relationships).

Hunt focuses primarily on businesses selling products on line, and her book is packed with interesting stuff.  However, reading the book has stimulated thought for me in a somewhat different direction.  After all, we’ve talked about my reticence at embracing social media tools.  Instead, I find myself thinking long and hard about ways I can connect and build relationships in my physical, local, “real” community.  After all, while my adorable town of Sonoma and surrounding environs are certainly not the only - or even primary - markets for my fledgling virtual and freelance paralegal business, they are the likely arenas for that part-time job I’m hunting for and the wine/food business I plan to start soon.  The people I bump into in my travels about the Sonoma valley could well be the ones with whom I will interact in those businesses some day.

So I’ve been making more of an effort to meet folks locally.  Mind you, I’m pretty good at that already – after only seven months here, I’ve made a number of friends due to my penchant for striking up conversations with folks I meet in restaurants, bars and tasting rooms.  Recently though, I’ve taken to wandering into the shops and businesses on and near the Plaza, less to shop than to talk.  I’ve been chatting with the business owners.  Meeting fellow shoppers and guests.  I want to know who they are, how they came to Sonoma, what they enjoy doing, what businesses they are in, what they hope for the future.  I want to find out what we have in common, whether I have information to share, whether there is a way I can help.

And if, in so doing, I manage to increase my “whuffie” within my local community, well, so much the better!

Got your own “whuffie” story?  Feel free to share it in the comments.  And meanwhile, if you see me wandering around the Plaza in Sonoma, be sure to stop me and say hi.

The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business, by Tara Hunt.  New York: Crown Business (2009)

Good Karma

I recently got a phone call from a very pleasant woman who asked if I could help her finalize bankruptcy paperwork for filing.  She had found my number on the internet, on a directory website I don’t use much, but on which I’m now grateful I have a profile.  

Well, the fact of the matter is, I can’t help her finalize her bankruptcy paperwork.  As a freelance paralegal, I am only authorized to work for an attorney, and under his or her supervision; I cannot work for the general public.  Therefore, even if I were a bankruptcy specialist, which I am not, I couldn’t legally help her with her bankruptcy.

So I proceeded to explain to her that in lieu of hiring an attorney, the kind of person who might be able to help was a Legal Document Assistant (LDA).  LDAs are registered with the State (in California, anyway) and are able to help individuals prepare legal documents in many fields such as adoptions, divorces, bankruptcy, etc.  I took down the woman’s name, phone number and email address.  I ran a quick Google search and found three websites where this woman might be able to find a qualified LDA who could look over her bankruptcy papers for her, and I emailed them to her, and wished her well.  It all took about fifteen minutes of my time.

I’ll never make a dime from this.  I don’t even know this woman’s last name or what city she lives in.  I doubt I will ever bump into her, and I don’t expect she will ever be in a position to refer me any business from local attorneys.
 

I just wanted to try and help her out a bit.  Be a good citizen.  Be a contributing member of my local community.  Build my “whuffie” (about which, read more in my upcoming “Whuffie” post.)   I just wanted to be the nice person Mom and Dad raised me to be.

Got any “good karma” stories of your own to share?  Feel free to leave them in the comments!

Multiple Profit Centers

If I had to choose one idea from all my self-employment research that has had the most influence on my thinking, it would have to be Barbara Winter’s discussion of Multiple Profit Centers.  In her wonderful book, Making a Living Without a Job, she says,

"Rather than thinking in terms of having a single source of income (as we are trained to do when we see our income tied to a job), the savvy entrepreneur thinks about developing several income sources.  With planning – and an openness to additional opportunities as they come along – you can create as many income streams as you desire."

Diversifying my income streams has been on my mind a lot this week.  While not wishing to detract from my efforts at building my freelance paralegal business, two important things are true.  First, I don't fill up 10 hours of every day on my freelance business; there are days that I spend that much time on it and more, but there are other days when I don’t have  client work, I’m caught up on my marketing projects, and I don’t have a networking event to attend.  Second, I embarked upon this entrepreneurial journey with a number of other dreams I wanted to pursue in addition to freelancing as a paralegal.  My passions for food, wine, cooking, entertaining were big determiners of my choice of location; these and other passions are things I would love to turn into a series of businesses some day.  Hence, I’ve devoted a lot of time this week to laying plans for the Multiple Profit Centers Barbara Winter talks about.

For example, I’m looking for a  local part time job.  One obvious reason is supplemental income, but there’s another even more important reason.  I want an arena in which I can interact with people in the community (outside of the legal field), provide customer service, learn as much as I can about an angle of business I haven’t had an opportunity to experience yet, having spent most of my working life in big law firms.  I want a chance to closely observe another successful business owner, and see what lessons I can apply to my own future businesses.  I’m the first to admit that there is a big learning curve for me in being an entrepreneur.  I believe that any part-time employment experience in a field other than law will be invaluable as I seek to build a series of successful home businesses for myself.

I also have another small business idea I’ve been toying with for a while now.  It’s too new and nebulous to discuss much yet, but it involves my passion for food and wine pairing.  So I’ve been bouncing this idea off of my foodie and wine-loving friends, and putting plans in place for some practice runs for my idea.  I realize that I will need to develop a sound business model through trial and error, and develop both the skills I will need and some expertise in the field before I can hope to earn income from it.  Fortunately, I can’t think of anything more enjoyable than putting on “practice” food and wine events with friends.  It’s quite energizing to me to think about and plan this, and having an ultimate goal of turning something I love so much into an income stream gives a sense of urgency to the project.  (Look for future blog posts about this on my sister blog, Sonoma Sip.)
 
And just yesterday morning, I dreamed up another idea for a possible small business involving another of my long-term passions for plants and gardening.  Who knows where that idea eventually will go, but I’m enjoying the creativity of the brainstorming process.

I didn't set off on this journey merely to create an income for myself.  I want to create a lifestyle, one in which I am doing what I love, utilizing all my skills (paralegal skills to be sure, but not only those), enjoying my life.  I look forward to seeing where it will all lead me.

Sunday Six Word Memoir

You will recall that I was recently challenged to begin a project of distilling a memoir of my life - or a segment of my life - into six words.  Here is the next in my series of Six Word Memoirs - a memoir to encapsulate my week:

Many interests means many possible businesses.

What does this mean, you ask?  Tune in to my upcoming blog post on Multiple Profit Centers to find out.

Meanwhile, got your own Six Word Memoir?  Feel free to share it in the Comments! 

Being Goals vs. Doing Goals

Paul Hawken in his book, Growing a Business, describes a concept that stimulated a lot of thought for me.  He tells the story of a large oil company that undertook a study of companies that had endured for centuries, even though their main business had changed over those years.  One of the conclusions they drew “was that these companies survived the upheavals of the marketplace and the world-at-large because they had ‘being’ goals instead of ‘doing’ goals.  Their business was centered on a way of interacting with the work, not on providing one specific product or service.”  

Hawken goes on to provide an example of a given company’s goals involving either “doing” – such as providing white diapers – or “being” – such as providing excellent assistance to mothers of newborns.  The “being” goal is so much more open-ended and versatile; such a goal will enable a business to morph with the needs of mothers over time and to change as technology changes.  It enables a business to last, because it can continue to find new means and mechanisms of meeting its primary goal.
 

I find this concept fascinating and challenging when I think about my own fledgling business.  I’ve begun to rethink both my marketing copy, and my so-called “elevator speech.”  What is the most open-ended, versatile business goal I can state?  I want to be able to provide any type of assistance litigators need over time, even as the technology of meeting those needs is changing rapidly right now.  I don’t want to think of my role too narrowly.  These differences may be subtle, but I’m finding it helpful to refocus the way I think and speak about my business, from “doing” language about tasks I’m capable of performing to “being” language about excellence and competency and reliability.  

What's your "being" goal?

Growing A Business, by Paul Hawken.  New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1988.