Blog - Page 5 of 15 - Mike Arnesen

Unplugging: My Holiday Gift to Myself

Being an entrepreneur and solo founder is hard work. Captain Obvious is obvious, right?

It’s not a complaint. I love what I do and if I won the Oregon Lottery tomorrow, I’d just keep doing this. However, I think that the only way I can manage to say that is because I work hard on supporting balance in my life. I’ve never worked over 10 hours in a day since I founded UpBuild and I rarely work more than 40 hours per week. Is that lazy? Hell no. It’s smart.

Consider the startup founder who nearly kills himself with his “hustle” and his drive to work 60+ hours per week. He wears that like a badge of honor. Until he burns out, freaks out, or sells out. That’s nothing to aspire to.

In a few hours, I’ll be leaving from São Paulo, Brazil to go off the grid for over a week. [Read more…] about Unplugging: My Holiday Gift to Myself

Complexity is not the goal

Company Culture, Startups

Firm X specializes in complex implementations of blah, blah, blah…

I read this on a company’s website today, but I know they’re not unique in wanting to plant their flag in their ability to be “complex”.

This was in relation to a company’s web analytics offering. While I’m sure that by “complex”, what they were trying to say is, “super smart” and, generally, “better than other companies”, I also think that many tech companies honestly believe that by making things that are complex, they’re making things that are better than the alternatives.

I think they’re missing the mark on describing work (especially analytics or any web-related work) done well. [Read more…] about Complexity is not the goal

Snow Day! Everyone work from home!

Company Culture

It’s 8am on a Thursday and what’s normally a busy intersection at this time of day is nearly empty, covered in white. My name is Mike Arnesen, and I’m one of the survivors of the PDX Snowpocalypse.

PDX Snow Plow — Almost 8 years in Portland and this is the first time I’ve **ever** seen a snow plow. We have one of those?!

I have no big insights to share today. No witty commentary (is my commentary ever that witty, though?). I’m just feeling appreciative that I don’t have to leave the house to go to work today. And I didn’t yesterday. I work from home, everyday.

Every time it snows here [Read more…] about Snow Day! Everyone work from home!

The Lifecycle of an Agency Recommendation

SEO

Earlier this week, I was speaking with a potential client and she was telling me about the types of SEO recommendations that she’d been getting from her agency parter over the last few years. As our conversation was wrapping up, I realized that the common thread between all of those recommendations and the reason why she was understandably frustrated was because each recommendation died much too soon.

It was tragic.

I love the sales calls that really make me think and I cherish the ones that cause me to ponder something hours after I hang up. As I kept thinking about this person’s experience, I had a realization that every agency recommendation has a cycle that it needs to go through if it’s to have any impact at all. [Read more…] about The Lifecycle of an Agency Recommendation

Switching to Dvorak, Cold Tofurky

Nerd Life

On October 23rd, I ditched typing the QWERTY layout for Dvorak. Cold tofurky.

If “Dvorak simplified keyboard” doesn’t ring a bell, you can read all about it on dvorak-keyboard.com. I’m not going to get into a history lesson here (at least not in this post) and I won’t go that deep into the reasons why I switched.

The short version is that I found sufficient evidence to suggest that switching to Dvorak would be a significant optimization to how I work. I dove into it and never looked back. [Read more…] about Switching to Dvorak, Cold Tofurky

On Inbox Zero

Nerd Life

Inbox Zero is that special time of day when I can rest in the knowledge that I’ve taken care of everything critical and I can focus on one of two things.

What’s really important to my business – the 20% of effort that creates 80% of the results.
What makes me happy outside of “work”.

On a good day, I’ll achieve Inbox Zero twice. Yet, somedays, I won’t hit it at all.

There are plenty of schools of thought on Inbox Zero and I’m by no means an IB purist. For me, it’s not about answering every email; it’s about acting on every email. [Read more…] about On Inbox Zero