The conductor-teacher noticed some timid students squeaking quietly on their strings. She stopped the drill, took up her violin, and tore across the strings in song — strong, controlled, beautiful. “If you’re going to make a mistake, I want you to make it LOUD!”

My big business mistake last year was a real bomb! But I fixed it. I learned from it. I’m a big believer in the fall seven times get up eight approach to life, to sports, to business. Can you lose the fear of mistakes and gain the ability to move your business in the right direction? What mistakes have you learned from?

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3/26/09 Update

Panelists Christine Cupaiuolo and Kay Daly did an awesome job packing in a ton of advice during our light-speed, 30-minute moderated discussion, followed by a Q&A with the audience. Christine generously recorded our panel, “Innovative Marketing: Building on Your Success,” for all to hear. Act quickly; the link expires in less than two weeks. Meantime, I’ll work on getting it uploaded to my site for long-term listening pleasure.

Some resources I promised to look up and post include the following.

E-mail marketing and survey tools

• www.ConstantContact.com
• www.myemma.com
• www.MailChimp.com
• www.surveymonkey.com

Volunteer organizations

• iamepic.org
• www.createathon.org
• www.volunteermatch.org
• www.idealist.org
• www.chicagocares.org
• www.onebrick.org/eventdetails.asp?EventID=5850

Free press release distribution tool

• www.free-press-release.com

Finally, here’s a question that came in over the transom: “How can you avoid pricing yourself out of a project?”

You can’t! Let’s be honest. There’s no way to know exactly what you’re up against in a bid. I would make a few suggestions.

+ Don’t worry so much about pricing. Worry about what you are delivering above and beyond your competitors and make that happen. Consistently. Emphasize this in your bid.

+ Ask your colleagues how they price. For example, the Independent Writers of Chicago is currently surveying rates of its members.

+ Ask the potential client what s/he is looking to pay before you bid.

Try these and let me know if they helped. Feel free to post other ideas you encounter and more questions, too!

Not to be confused with the nanobots of the imagination that can do molecular-level surgery, a nanobot also describes people who work somewhere other than a cubicle or office. Read more about the use of nanobots and contribute to the research study. Visit the researcher’s university page for nanobot study contact information.

I participated in the study; if you’re a virtual worker of some sort, you may qualify. Interviews are great times to reflect on and articulate your business and mission!

3/27/09 My big business mistake revealed in interview for Examiner.com’s Chicago Business Skills Examiner

4/09 Thoughts on storytelling for Q&A at A Storied Career

“Especially in today’s business climate, anything that differentiates you from the crowd and emphasizes your commitment to your profession is career critical,” says Kent Johnson, partner for Davinci Search, a Minneapolis-based recruiting firm.

Differentiation = good. But then you go on to say:

“As hiring managers pore over the multitude of résumés for an opening, their eyes will naturally pick up those with the all important initials that trail their name.”

The point of confusion for me as a reader was the teaser link from your home page read:

Stand out from crowd

Now, as I’ve posted previously, what makes us stand out from the crowd, what differentiates us is, well, how we are different. And I’ll talk about this more in my upcoming Compelling Storytelling(SM) teleseminar. But it’s important to note that what you say to stand out should change based on the person you’re talking to! Yes, Googlebots, resume scanners, and HR professionals love acronymns. But anyone else, as you note in the intro:

Have you ever seen “CMP,” “CQM,” or “PMP” behind someone’s name and not had a clue what it meant — or if it meant anything at all?

may not recognize those acronyms. Please, how many people really know what a project manager does even if they recognize the PMP designation? So, though I think the article is useful, I think the teaser and hook are not quite as tightly tied to the title of the piece as they could be.

Bear in mind that as we network — particularly for the jobs and opportunities that are hidden, not posted — we need to converse with people in their language, not our own.

What do you think could improve writing on the Web? For example, is it possible to write keyword-rich copy and sound authentic?

On a more recent post, 37 signals discusses user interface design, or in normal language, how the look of a website makes it either easy or hard to find what you’re looking for. A related subject is information architecture, or how the subject matter of your website gets organized and labeled. Interestingly enough, someone asked me last week if his website should use unique words in the navigation menu instead of standard words like “home” or “about.” Would this be a good way to demonstrate his company’s different approach? Not missing a beat, I said, “No!” Please, don’t make your visitor think twice about where to click.

In a world of chasing that high Google ranking, where do you think user interface design and information architecture fit in?