I scripted my cleaning routine and reduced the process by 15 minutes. Cleaning, like many tasks in your business is simple and with a little thought & tweaking you can increase energy & time dividends.

For now, I just started with the bathroom. Many cleaning & life hacker blogs post how most maids are taught to clean from top to bottom and left to right. So, Looking at my bathroom I scripted the actions I was going to take.

Gather my cleaning supplies and an empty caddy.
Supplies: disinfectant wipes, magic eraser, 2 bleach cloths, old newspaper, glass or multiple purpose cleaner & toilet bowl cleanser.

I started by applying toliet bowl cleanser and let it sit. Moved to the mirrors, wiping them clean using old newspapers and glass cleaner. Next I threw all my toiletries into a basket, trash to the waste basket. Used the magic eraser to clean the counter and faucet. Used a bleech cloth to clean up excess water. Reorganized my toiletries, wiped the toilet, brushed the bowl, and finally swept. Done 15 minutes. Normally takes me about 30 minutes due to unorganized actions.

So what? If I can save 15 minutes a week; imagine what your business can save and reallocate in cost & labor? All by thinking through and tweaking the “simple” stuff. Look at your business and find the processes that seem easy and make them so dead simple they can be completed in half the time.

I’m new to the whole notion of open book management concept. The company I work for, Amy’s Ice Creams, practices open-book management and The Great Game of Business. I’ve begun reading the book of the same name by Jack Stack.

Standouts from the introduction:

…[the] idea is to create an environment in which people can continuously learn & grow.

After all, numbers are simply a way of telling stories about people, as well as a means of keeping score.

I can’t stop thinking about examples of how true this is. The artist in me wonders what art would be like told through the story of numbers. I fear, for myself, the truth that it may reveal and am I ready to accept that truth. No.

*Just a few notes I wanted to share.

Cleaned Up

Facebook for better or worse has always tried to enhance the user interface to benefit their users. It’s almost always meet disdain until people get used to it and go back to enjoying their daily interactions on Farmville.  I’ve loved almost every single iteration of the user interface, as each has been a much needed face lift; until now.   I don’t like the new user interface for one reason: Fan Pages are ushered to the back of the bus to quietly rot away — and groups have prominent placement? (Groups will be an entire other post. Fail.)

Small Business Fan Pages Sample Use Case

For most small businesses fan pages were used to connect user with that businesses product & brand value. Pages status updates, links & photos could be shared with the entire community and slowly but surely you could keep constant interaction with a growing fan population.
For the business I work with we would update our status almost daily. We would talk to our clients and provide tips and tricks to enhance the service they received or will receive soon. Each of these interactions generated a news story on Facebook and in turn generated pages views and more fans.
We asked current clients to join our Fan Page on Facebook, most had already joined and they informed us that, “because stories were created in my news feeds I was reminded to make an appointment.” Awesome.
Great, now we are generating revenue & brand awareness…then things change.

Change Is Good?

I was excited when Mashable broke the story regarding the UI change. Without testing it I thought it would help put Pages (FB Mail) Updates in a more direct location. After a week of waiting I finally received the update and was astonished to find that most of the pages I fanned seemed to be missing from all of my feeds. I could only see random Fan page updates inside the home page under “Most Recent.”
I am a highly organized Facebook user, in fact, I have over 25 friends lists to organize who I interact with. However, I know that I am in the minority of people who even use friends list. Which means that if your clients, customers or users want to catch a fan page update they must be on the “Most Recent” tab on the home page OR create a friends list for your pages, assign pages to the list and remember to check it for updates.

Those two solutions won’t fly. Users are not going to change their browsing behavior. =( If you’re a small business you are going to see a large dip in traffic to your page and perhaps to your website from Facebook until something changes.

Possible Solutions.

So here is my solution for small business owners who need to promote their goods and services on Facebook.<

1. Redefine your marketing goals with Facebook put greater emphasis on generating action outside of Facebook.
2. Continue to update trying different peak times for your target audience so that they’ll see you in the “Most Recent” column.
3. Create an App or Interactive Page to move people to your website
4. Focus on using Facebook Connect to facilitate communication interaction on your website.
5. If you create a Facebook App — make sure it has a Bookmark feature for easy access on the left Dashboard.
6. Focus on getting user to sign up for Email Campaigns or RSS updates. (ugh)
7. Encourage Brand/Business Employees to bring your message to their circle of friends and clients.
8. Talk to your Marketing folks, I follow a lot of them and everyone has a few good ideas.

Facebook’s 400 millions users can’t be ignored and FB ad’s only go so far. I’m interested to hear your ideas or to see what your business’s fan page is going to do. Good luck.

Before we begin, I’m angry with Dan Pink or ignoring me on Twitter. I saw him in the lobby. I was going to say something to him but he was preparing for his speech and I wanted that to be ateast good.

You get a pass today @danpink but ignore me again and it’s on! Now, on to the show…

Our Hotel’s Little Surprise:

Morning Breakfast in the Roosevelt

Oy!

Posted via email from @aaronmclay

via wegame.com

Love this. I

Posted via web from Aaron M. Clay via [Posterous]

  
Download now or listen on posterous

Memo.m4a (466 KB)

>

Posted via email from Aaron M. Clay via [Posterous]

I’m trying to decide between Tumblr and Posterous. Why? I am moving away from Wordpres as a blog and want to use www.aaronmclay.com as a Business Card type site w/ a link to my “blog.” Let’s list the pro’s and cons for each shall we?

Posterous – Pros

• Autopost Feature !!!
• Commenting Feature (with autopost to twitter/facebook)
• Multimedia Support
• Nice Picture gallery
• Email seems pretty easy
• Google Maps intergration makes my heart happy.

Posted via web from Aaron M. Clay via [Posterous]

I finally got around to watching Leo Laport’s MacWorld Keynote. Leo has some amazing insights into the current state of mass media. If anyone is into Market, Advertising or content creation you definitely need to check this out.

I specifically like his statement at 15m 25s where he says:

What advertisers are starting to realize is that they can’t come to an audience as a salesman…a pitchman. They have to come to the audience as a member of the community. An equal member of the community.

*I should mention that the quality is subpar as someone was recording this using their cellphone camera and the Qik software. The content is well worth the listen until and IF MacWorld puts his keynote up on higher quality.