I think that it is so important now days for businesses to listen to their customers. If they don’t, they will eventually die.
If one employee is intentionally blocking the customers voice from making its way to the man or woman in charge (Which happens daily) that can be detrimental to a business!

Let’s (as leaders of a department or a business, owners of a company, or managers of what ever we manage) allow our customers to have a direct connection with us. It’s the only way to truly become a better organization! I truly believe this and that is why I am working with all of the different businesses that I own or am involved with to use “User Voice“.

User Voice gives that direct customer connection to someone that is actually paying attention. It is free and it is easily put in place on your company or personal website. How about you try ACTUALLY listening to your customers and ACT on their recommendations. Majority rules in the business world, and that’s how User Voice works, on the majority votes of your customers ideas or suggestions. Check it out and give your business an advantage, even though it’s scary to talk to the customer.

Have an awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

Hello All!

We have recently redesigned our website for our business Control Yours. And as we went through and created new images, we also changed our pricing structure. We went a couple of different routes before we decided on the final one (if you want to see it, click on the details tab after you click on the link above).

So…Here are some vector boxes that were trial and error. Have them, use them, enjoy them…Just don’t sell them! Click on the sticker below for your download to start.

Until next time…Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

I started this blog with the mindset that I would tell everyone about the good, the bad, & the dirty of business (starting a business specifically). This blog slowly developed to much more than that. It started containing stories about our life and our connections with businesses and people. The tough part about sharing situations from OUR life is what people in our life think of when they read a story that may have to do with them (or at least a situation that involved them). And let’s face it…There is irony in honesty! Most people can’t handle the truth.

If I choose to be completely honest about any situation or real life example, some part of me chooses not to care about how others (the people that are in the stories) are affected or what they’re feeling. If I’m not completely honest with myself or you, why even have a blog in the first place? I’m not the national media that filters what they do or don’t say (sugarcoating or distorting the truth). In fact, I despise national media just for that reason. I am sharing my true situations with you, no matter what the comfort level.

So…for any or all of you out there that would prefer not to read a story that references you or a situation that involves you, it may be best if you stop reading from here on out. This blog is about my wife and I, and how we go through OUR lives, personally and professionally.

For Everyone Else…
…Have an Awesome Day & we’ll talk soon!
~Chais Meyer

When we go through life, every positive situation that happens with individuals or groups of people (AKA Businesses) helps build bridges that connect us together. Social Networkers (among other types of people) know that this connection is extremely powerful and sometimes even leads us to places or people we would never imagine.  We hear about people that burn bridges (sometimes on a weekly or daily basis) and these people are eventually left alone (in every aspect of the word). This brings a question to my mind, What does it take to keep our bridges strong?

Some relationships, business and professional, can be very poisonous to our life and they can actually harm us more than they can help us. In these cases, I completely agree with nuking the bridges and burning all connections to the poisonous people. The majority of the time however, I have noticed that it really pays to invest in people and see how we can help benefit them to help create a solid connection. Maybe that’s the answer for keeping the bridge strong (helping others, without bad intent).

I’ve been working with the company Computer Hardware for the past year as a contract employee. Whenever they needed assistance on random projects, I would help them out and bill them at a rate of $15 an hour. For them, this was a blessing, having extra help when needed but not requiring me to be on the payroll and to be looked at as an employee. Also, I ONLY billed them for the time I actually worked. Probably one of the most efficient business relationships that a business owner can build.

I’ve recently been asked to help Computer Hardware in a way that could dramatically impact their future and my wife’s and my short term life. They’ve asked me to assist them as the Head of the education sales for the state of Nebraska. Why is this such a good opportunity? Several Reasons:

• Because of the money they will be paying me - It is not a huge amount in its own right but it does include 20% commission (of all profits) from  every sale I make.
• Because of what I’ve learned in the last year - I’ve learned to batch my tasks and get a lot more things done in less time.
• Because I make the rules within the education sales - I decide what I focus on, I decide on the hours I work, I decide on the best solutions for the Educators problems.
• Because of the potential for long term reward - I will get rewarded with a part ownership or a percentage of my final results. (an investment of my time and creativity)

What this equals for me is an opportunity that will pay me well (subsidizing the hours I would’ve been working to pay the bills), while putting very little time in (comparatively, it will be between 10-20 hours a week), and giving me the freedom to focus my remaining daily energies on our other businesses that need to have time spent on them in order to grow. Because I’ve kept this business relationship strong, I’ve been given an opportunity that will put me months ahead of schedule of where my businesses would have been (since I can now invest the extra time needed). [Side note: I also have to the responsibility to avoid abusing or damaging any/all of the connections that will come along with this. I will be meeting with hundreds and possibly thousands of educators during this 1 year time period and these connections could very well benefit my own businesses.]

By helping to benefit others, I in turn will be rewarded. It has paid to keep this bridge strong, just think about that the next time you want to avoid helping someone in your life.

Work Hard, Work Smart, Work for Your Future.
Oh ya…Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

As I was running today, I was thinking about the glorified 6 Pack (or 8 for the select few).
Am I talking about beer or soda? (No, that’s why I am running in the first place!)

I am talking about societies definition of what amazing health is, the six abdominal muscles that show because of a low total body fat. WHAT!?! I HAVE TO HAVE LOW ‘TOTAL’ BODY FAT!?!
I thought I could just do sit ups to lose the fat right on my stomach area, That sucks.

I’m assuming this is a lot of people’s reactions when they find out the cold hard truth about our bodies. We get rewarded everywhere on our body (this includes our stomachs, and our asses), when we treat our whole body right (eating healthy, working out, etc.).

A sad thing is (or Great thing, depending on your outlook), this philosophy is everywhere in our world, even in business. We can’t just ‘trim the fat’ in one area of business, we can try, but other areas will suffer. In order to have total business health, we need to look at the business in whole and make sure that nothing is being left out.

Let’s create a small example to make my point (this is a real life example, minus the fitness analogies):
We decide to ramp up sales with Control Yours (our website development business), so we put all of our energy and focus on reaching and closing on new clients. We collect their money, start developing websites for them, and the sales side of our business seems to be ‘firming and toning up’ (at least the sales muscles under our total business fat). We put our other areas of our business on the back burner and focus on just making sales as strong and fit as it can be. The next thing we notice is that a few of our clients want to modify their current plans they have with us, no problem right? WRONG! We’ve been so focused on building our sales muscle that we forgot to work on our customer management muscle, in fact it’s almost deteriorated.

What do we have to do? Just like every other fat person out there that realizes doing sit ups isn’t changing their overall look, START FROM THE BEGINNING. Get the whole system in shape at the same time. And that is where we are right now, building, stretching, toning, and increasing our overall business heart rate. It is a very great feeling, gaining control again (even though we didn’t realize we lost control until we looked in the mirror and saw our business fat folding over our business jeans…that is some funny stuff!).

Don’t forget to take care of even the small aspects of your business. EVERYTHING leads to total health.

Get your cardio on & Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

I was watching a video on TED.com today where Tim Farris talks about smashing fear and ‘how to feel like the incredible hulk’.

See this video below:

His talk started to get me thinking about how, so many times in my life I end up over-complicating things (as many of us do). And It is really interesting to me that we believe ‘what we have always done, has to be the right way’, just because we don’t know another way. Like…Who says having a cell phone with the ability to check/respond to my emails actually makes me more productive? Maybe I’m just wasting more time than anything. If I set up a one hour segment to read and respond my email a day (and that’s it), maybe I would get a lot more done because I would be focused to accomplish the task at hand.

I just love that Tim’s thoughts and ideas have helped me see that not everyone is supposed to follow the status quo, and not everyone has to fit into a mold. Identify your loves to live them, identify your fears and conquer them. I think we all could get a little inspiration from Tim.

Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

…we started doing things with our day (small things) that could really change the way we live our life?

Like:

• Stop watching standard TV programs during the day and replace that same time with informational videos from TED.com.
• Stop eating on the go, and replace that with making meals together and investing in relationships while we eat.
• Start to writing letters again instead of only communicating through our standard form of electronic communication (email, facebook, twitter, etc.).
• Deciding to actually listen to people for one day & not be so concerned with having our own voice be heard.
• Befriending an individual that people seem to avoid, just to get their side of life.
• Dedicate an entire week to donating our free time to help others and/or organizations out.
• Take a summer job in another state (or country) just because it’s something you want to do.

We only have one life, so why don’t we do what we want to with it? We have to decide what type of person we want to be (and hopefully we won’t look back on our life and say “What did I do with my life?”). Live with inspiration!

I love to talk to my Friend Zach Liibbe about what he is doing in his life. He inspires me by never letting fear get the best of him and actually doing the things he wants to do. When someone like Zach talks about spending his summer taking a tracking course just for fun, and spending a month assisting at a wilderness treatment camp , he is showing us the types of things that we can & should do with our own lives to make the most of it.

Another person that inspires me to live with excitement is Mike Nyffeler. By surrounding ourselves with these types of people in our life, we can see how goals can become reality. Because of this, my wife & I have decided to move to Key West, Florida for a month and work remotely, because we can! Our businesses our being built to be operated anywhere, so why not ‘operate them from anywhere’ (especially a place as gorgeous as Key West)?

If we don’t spend our lives enjoying our talents, living for our dreams, or working for more, where does that leave us? I always challenge myself to be the best that I can be, and I want to challenge you! Make your own list of things you might be able to do or change for this summer and make it a reality. Who says you can’t work in Hawaii for the summer, at a job you might love? Just because you live in Kearney, NE (or whatever that place is that seems boring to you right now), doesn’t mean you have to work their for the next 4 months. Call around and make your own life happen, don’t expect something to just ‘fall in your lap’.

We’ll be pushing ourselves, we hope you do the same!
Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais & Shawna Meyer

I’m working on my blog today and I created a fun download image that I am going to use with WP-Download-Monitor. This specific download monitor is designed for WordPress (if you have your own blog or site with WordPress, it works amazing). If you don’t have or use WordPress, You can still use this image on any other website or blog (as long as you know basic HTML code & if it fits the style that you’re looking for that is.

I hope you enjoy it and if you have any questions about how to make wp-dowload-monitor work with your version of WordPress, let me know. I will send you some screen shots of my settings.

Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

Oh ya…Here is the download link for this graphic (almost forgot).

I was talking with my business partner today David Lano about how we have been putting 10 - 15 hours a week into one of our businesses (Control Yours), and how that would be considered part time or less than part time. Normally when you invest only a small percentage of time into something (a hobby, business, relationship, etc.) you can’t put 100% of your focus on it. And not putting 100% in immediately sounded like a negative thing with us, like we weren’t trying hard enough or something, but was it really like that?

As we dug deeper into this topic we realized that if we would have put 100% of our focus on this one business (going after sales everyday, Building a lot of websites right away, etc.) we could have very well damaged ourselves more than we were helping ourselves.

With our business Control Yours, the online technology business that it is, there are a lot of little things that need to be just right before we jump the gun on other things. An example would be that we just found and are working out some kinks with managing our customer’s monthly subscription payments (being able to downgrade or upgrade our customer’s subscription services fluidly and easily for the our customers and us). If we would have sold 100 websites in the first month we were in business, it would have been a nightmare to transfer all the subscriptions to our new customer management system (mainly for our customers). Looking at this example, we see that we couldn’t have noticed this problem immediately and it had to be noticed by time and testing. Working part time on this business is allowing us to build a very secure and steady foundation (all marketing, financial, investment, and management aspects), and being that a lot of businesses fail because they don’t have a solid foundation…this seems pretty important!

Working for our businesses part time has actually allowed us to grow in business maturity and not be rushed into making rash decisions that might have haunted us for a long time. In that way, I am so glad that we have done things the way we have.

Don’t be afraid to start up slow…As long as you are progressively becoming with your life and your business, you’re always moving forward!
Have an Awesome Day!
~Chais Meyer

I don’t think this image could be more perfect. I feel like sometimes I should be changing and growing personally and professionally at a natural rate (like that of the human body), but it doesn’t always work that way (Sometimes, I have to force myself to grow).

Unlike our physiological makeup, our professions, hobbies, muscles, and sometimes even relationships will not grow to the best they can be without a little extra push from ourselves. I think this is how it should be! If we didn’t have to push ourselves to be the best we can be in all areas of life, everyone would be absolutely amazing at everything. At that point, their would be no competition in life, no reasons to try harder, and life would be equal for the lazy and non lazy alike. I think the ‘Pushing yourself to grow’ mindset works like a filter between the people that want ‘it’ (whatever the word “it” is) but think ‘it’s unattainable (so the don’t try) and the people that will do anything to get their ‘it’.

I feel like this mindset is an invisible field that doesn’t even need to be talked about, we can just tell when someone is either more motivated or less motivated than we are. It says a lot about a person if you know they have succeeded in areas of their life that may not come to them easily. I strive for this mindset everyday (be the best I can, even in extremely difficult situations)! The following example may help explain this idea:

I HATE public speaking…and I am forcing myself to do it, to improve myself, for myself. There are a lot of ‘myself’s in that last sentence, and that’s because no one else is going to make me better, it’s up to me. I have an opportunity right now to contract out with a business that I used to manage the sales team for, Computer Hardware Inc. I am assisting them with their educational sales across the state of Nebraska. The main role that I have for Computer Hardware, is providing group demonstrations (public speaking) about a product called ‘mimio interactive‘ (an interactive whiteboard of sorts for schools and businesses).

Every time I do a demonstration with an organization, school, or business, Computer Hardware gets exclusive rights to sell the mimio products to this customer for life. This is a big deal! It means that the more places I do demonstrations, the more sales Computer Hardware will have forever without doing a lot of additional foot work.

Now this sounds like an awesome deal for Computer Hardware (It is, and I only bill them an hourly rate of $15 an hour), so why am I involved with a company that I am technically ‘working’ for, at an inexpensive hourly rate, doing something that I hate? The main reason is because I HATE public speaking! [The other reasons, they're like family to me and it puts cash in my pocket]
How do people get better at things in life that they aren’t good at…They practice. That is exactly what I’m doing, forcing myself to practice to become a better public speaker.

I don’t have to do this job. There are plenty of people in the state of Nebraska that would like to be hired as a sales rep for Computer Hardware. And I could very easily avoid public speaking for the rest of my life (just making up excuses about “having something to go to” every time it came up).  But, I know that I am going to be someone, someday, that will need to have great communication skills in personal and public settings, and this a chance for me to get a head start on the practice I need.

How long will I do the public speaking demonstrations for Computer Hardware? I’ve asked myself that question many times and I decided that it depends on my public speaking comfort level (if I’m super comfortable, I’ll stop), if the demos stop coming to me (and I’m not getting enough practice, I will need to find another avenue to get the time in), or if I’m ready to find other opportunities that are a bigger challenge for me than public speaking, then I will stop.

To sum it up, I will always push myself to grow and if I sense something stagnate or underdeveloped in my life, I will make the much needed change (no matter how painful it may be). I must be the best I can be, for my businesses, my wife, and myself! I’ll let you know how it’s going in a couple months or so…Until then, push the fears my way (except for the shark attacks, you can keep them…Yikes !

Remember if you do not keep yourself moving, you will become stagnate and rotten.
I Challenge you to have an awesome day & to push yourself to be better in an area that you know you struggle in.
~Chais Meyer