Business & Domain Name Compatibility

When choosing a business name, with very few exceptions, it’s very important to make sure that you are picking a name that can be represented well as a domain as well, ideally a .com. It’s not like putting your name on a business card anymore. Most businesses now require a web presence, and easily locating that URL should be considered. An example would be our own business name, Pearse Street Consulting, Inc. Thankfully Dublin’s Pearse Street was still pretty underdeveloped when I took my first entrepreneurship plunge, so the domain www.pearsestreet.com was available. If it hadn’t been, I would have likely looked elsewhere for name inspiration.

Short and Sweet

The next challenge of course is finding a viable domain that is easy to remember, i.e., short and sweet. For example, www.pearsestreetconsultinginc.com is not what I would consider short and sweet, so you won’t find our website there. Finding catchy domains is easier said than done with dwindling free domains, and you may find better luck purchasing domains from sites like Afternic and BuyDomains, but expect to pay more than a few dollars for them. When recommending names, I try to go with two words or less, words that are not commonly misspelled and combinations that roll of the tongue easily.

Get Even Shorter with Extensions

It’s always a good idea to buy up the common extensions to your domain, including the .net, .org and if you are feeling ambitious, the .us and .biz. It ensures that someone else won’t snatch it up and try to sell it to you when you start making your millions. Another cool trend is to explore tiny URLs as secondary domains, utilizing international extensions. For example, we have pearse.st, which we haven’t done anything ingenious with yet (wait for it!). The .st is the Internet country code top-level domain for São Tomé and Príncipe. Go figure! A few things to consider here is that these domains are typically a little more expensive than regular .coms and .nets per year, they take longer to purchase and activate, and there is always a level of uncertainty with how reliable or stable the country of origin is, which is why it’s good policy to have his as a secondary versus primary domain.

Here are some helpful sites for your domain name search, and I’ll add to these as I come across more:

-Yahoo Small Business: Great site for researching available domain and related suggestions and purchasing domains in bulk at good prices

-Panabee.com: This is a fun site to find unusual names using word combinations

-Afternic.com: My go-to spot to find premium domains

-101domain.com: One of many sites that sell international extensions

Happy hunting!

Photo courtesy of Therese Kay Photography

No matter who you are, it’s hard not to feel a personal transition each time you witness summer fade away and start preparing for the impending cold weather. I remember sitting on my front stoop in Florida in the middle of October and having a “whoa” moment as I realized that it was autumn. My favorite season had become unrecognizable to me, drenched in the persistent heat and humidity of the south.

Experiencing the seasons was something that our family was looking forward to coming home to when we moved back to Massachusetts, and every year I find myself appreciating the opportunity it gives me to note the passing of time, thinking about where the last three months have taken us and contemplating what the next few (or six, in the case of winter) months will bring. With winter staring us down after our Halloween Nor’easter, I’m already finding myself anxious about Christmas plans, New Year’s Resolutions (both business and personal), and strategies to survive the long winter.

How does one prepare for the holiday hubbub, the usual business that needs to be taken care of, and also grow and elevate life beyond the daily grind? This has been my new challenge. Now that I have mastered the highest levels of spirit-crushing productivity, I have resolved to take advantage of some of the results of that productivity–extra free time and a finished basement–and create a space separate from my office and every other place in our house that is overrun with toys and within reach of grabby toddlers. In this space I would really love to get back into some actual hands-on artwork.

Before I became a business owner and a mother, art played a huge role in my life. Watercolor, oils, pastels, collages and sculpture, all relics of my past life. As spread thin as I felt in my college days, I always made time for art in some capacity. Eventually that manifested its way to graphic design, and ever since then I’ve had a monogamous art relationship with Photoshop. Well, I’m sorry, Photoshop, it’s me, not you. I want to see other peop–um, media. Very simply, I need to explore other outlets. I’ve had a slab of wax in my basement for five years and it’s begging for some molding.

Right now my five-year-old has more focused artistic time than I do, and that realization, among others, has pushed me to get back to the basics of who I am (or once was) as a creative person. So on that note, I’m going to get off of my computer and get to it.

Enjoy these last moments of fall, friends!

This was the first time that I had interviewed for an entirely new position in a long time. I am used to hiring designers and developers, which I have down to an exact science at this point. Interviewing for a management role forced me to assess different backgrounds and qualities in the candidates, and with each interview I found myself forming the position around that person for the moment, imagining each person’s potential for growth in our small, growing company.

For some reason this whole process, in addition to the other usual annoyances of my week, had my head spinning with indecision. Indecisive is not usually a word I use to describe myself, ever. I usually get an idea, deliberate, consult with trusted peers, deliberate a wee bit more, and then act. That process can take an hour or a few days, but rarely more.

Choosing the right employee isn’t something that should be rushed, however draining the process can be. It is so much more than picking an impressive resume out of a haystack. Education is good, but not always paramount. Personality and confidence are great, in the right quantities. Willingness to be passionate about the job at hand and embrace the start-up mentality, priceless!

As you can imagine, after much deliberation, I did make a decision. At the end of the day, the best advice I can give to any business owner is to trust your gut. Not your desire, or the popular opinion, but that tiny voice that says, Let’s do this, or, This doesn’t feel right. You just need to have faith in that voice, and keep listening to it even when you think you’re moving in the right direction, because the winds can change very quickly. So, here’s three cheers to the tiny voice and the joys of delegation!

1. Willingness to consider expert advice

When a client can appreciate your expertise as a service provider, listen to suggestions and ideally accept at least some of them, it is an absolute breath of fresh air. Having the openness to marry their ideas with our expert advice keeps our team invested, and typically keeps their project closer to the cutting edge. Knowing that we have the opportunity to make a good idea great can be very motivating.

2. Fully funded with a plan

Embarking on a project without short and long-term goals and a plan to meet them is a recipe for disaster, and adding a shoe-string budget on top of that is guaranteed to be problematic. If overages occur as a result of unplanned needs, or when a post-launch plan is lacking and requires additional support, clients are usually left trying to squeeze additional work out of their development team without the proper budget, and consequently straining the working relationship.

3. Professionalism

It goes without saying, but working with a client who can express concerns and work through project challenges with professional courtesy earns a lot of points in my book. Nothing is ever easy, but staying on the same page with effective communication is possibly the best quality a client can have in my opinion. Appreciating that this is very much a team effort and one that requires frequent and civilized conversations is a must!

The cost of not having an ideal client is simply having to work harder to keep everyone happy. The reality is that the “perfect client” is like Prince Charming, he or she or it doesn’t really exist. So while I wouldn’t turn away work to everyone who I didn’t consider ideal, there are tell-tale signs of an impending problematic working relationship. The extreme opposite of an ideal client will invariably end up costing you money, not making you money, which is important to consider when taking on new business.

On the flip side, the chance to work with someone who has all their ducks in a row and can trust you to do what you are best at is a great experience, and it’s why we do what we do.

With my summer commitments safely in the past, this seemed like a great time to jump back into the thick of things. Then I got sick for a month. After a few weeks of feeling horrible, I did some WebMD’ing and decided to go to the doctor with my findings. I met with him and his army of medical interns to discuss my symptoms, and following a barrage of tests, my findings were confirmed, mostly. I had started to suspect that I had a stomach ulcer, when in fact it is only inflammation. It is what I refer to as a “baby ulcer” because telling people you have duodenitis sounds scary.

Taking some strong antacids and curbing my desire for caffeine and spicy food has certainly helped bring me back to about 95%, but it’s clear that this will take some time to fully heal, and in the meantime, I also need to keep a handle on stress which has been an interesting challenge considering everything that I have on my plate. I think I’m actually getting the hang it of though. The prospect of inviting searing stomach pain if I get too worked up about something is pretty motivating to just shrug and say “Oh well!” and let life go on. That is not to say that I don’t care about things, but I am getting better about skipping the “upset” part and moving right into “let’s just deal with it” part. The only time I’ve noticed “upset” sneaking up on me is when I’m driving (or in some cases, being driven). As long as I live in Massachusetts, I’m not sure how I can avoid this.

In any case, there’s nothing like a health scare to make you take a good and serious look at your life. All of this has forced me to slow down–which is nearly impossible for me to do otherwise–and reassess many things in my life and at work. While I would have loved not being sick this past month, I am actually looking forward to challenging myself to work differently, and ideally creating some long-term solutions that will prevent any baby ulcers sneaking up on me in the future.

I read this among a host of other critical comments on my Facebook feed this morning. Yet another wave of negative reactions to Facebook rolling out new features. It seems like Facebook usually does this in smaller doses, but I have to admit that today I was even a little overwhelmed.

Over the past few days Facebook users have been met with new friend grouping features, profile subscriptions, notifications galore and a new feed layout. There are also rumors circulating that Facebook will be rolling out a new profile layout within the week. After trying to absorb all of this with the news that I would otherwise be looking for within my friend feed, I was feeling not so open to change.

I think what is unusual about this particular set of updates is the volume of changes that we are seeing at once and how these features are mimicking competitors. Many of these upgrades are clearly a response to features that set Google+ apart and set membership growth records for that competing social network. There is even the Twitter-esque “Subscribe” button now to follow people instead of two-way friending.

In any case, I’m sure most users will be fully adjusted to the changes in another couple days and just like every other update, the uproar will be forgotten before long. A part of me does wonder how user-friendly all of this is for those few people who are new to Facebook though. If there is so much happening on my home page right now that it’s making my head spin, I can’t imagine what non-veteran users must be thinking and feeling. That said, Facebook gets props for forward-thinking and versatility, as always. If it were to remain stagnant, I’m sure we’d be talking about Facebook the way we talk about the recently deceased “MySpace” right now.

(Special thanks to Makanga Njagi for the inspirational quote of the day).

This week my husband decided to take me on one of his annual hiking trips to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I will preface this entire story by saying that I am not really a very physical or outdoorsy person. The office is my natural habitat, and while Jonathan did not drag me there kicking and screaming, I was definitely apprehensive about the whole thing.

Within the first hour of the 5,367 feet climb to the top of Mount Madison, I was silently cursing myself, my husband and everything holy as the terrain became increasingly difficult to negotiate. My feet hurt, then my neck, then my thighs, rounding up with my hips feeling like they may simply disconnect from my body. Annoyance turned to exhaustion, then to pure frustration, then to anger. It’s amazing how many phases and emotions are experienced on a journey like this, resulting in my absolute determination to reach the treeline in as short a time as possible.

Two and a half hours later, we crawled out of the mountain forest, into the cool blue sky of the mountain top. The views were spectacular, I made friends with a moose and enjoyed some creature comforts at the hut (including warm meals and a legitimate bed). We proceeded to climb two mounts, including Mount Adams which I have officially renamed the Mountain of Death and Rocks, namely because I thought I was going to die a few times and after coming off of it, I never wanted to see another rock ever again. That was followed by what I was told would be an “easy” descent off the mountain on a different trail which was actually just rocks, more rocks and a means to excruciating knee pain.

After everything was said and done, I can say that the entire experience was extremely challenging. I wasn’t pushed to my physical limits, I was pushed past them, leaving me asking my husband and myself, WHY on earth do we continue to challenge ourselves so dramatically. To the point of delusion, screaming pain and total emotional chaos? Was the view worth it? It’s hard to say because I can’t even ascend the stairs of my house at the moment, but I left the mountain feeling thankful for the experience with my husband, the great photos that I was able to capture, and of course knowing that I conquered two mountains without crying.

So, what did I learn?

I learned that I probably could have covered twice as much ground as I did. I probably wouldn’t have my toenails or a tear-free hiking record, but I would have found the physical and emotional fortitude to keep going. People definitely underestimate themselves. If you challenge yourself to a goal just beyond what you feel is possible, it’s likely that you are very capable of achieving it despite personal fears and doubts.

I learned that climbing mountains is very much like living an ambitious life, where your end goals seem this close but take forever to fully achieve. For the record, the very top of the mountain is never where you think it is. It’s always 10 minutes further away. I spent the majority of the trip feeling 10 minutes away from everything, counting down the miles to the end.

I learned that reaching the top is satisfying, but fleeting. It is important to enjoy the journey, because the high of achievement soon wanes, and you will soon be off on the next journey.

A project manager brought up an interesting analogy today. It’s like hiring a financial advisor, and then telling him or her exactly what stocks to buy. Isn’t that what Etrade is for? Why on earth would you hire a consulting firm with years of experience in a very specific field, and proceed to dictate every detail of how they should plan, design and develop a project? I don’t know the answer to this, but I can say that when someone says that they trust our creative judgment and actually seek our input as a team, it’s like angels calling down from the heavens, light shines through the clouds, and my heart skips a beat. Yay for teamwork!

While we rarely “partner” with clients on a project in terms of investment, we do consider ourselves vested in each project’s success and taking on a custom social network project is very much a team effort. And a huge part of what we do is take a rough concept, a kernel of a great idea, and turn it in to something that not only looks good but is also compelling and fills a void in the social media space right now. It becomes exhausting and infinitely discouraging when it gets to a point where we are simply “taking orders” and developing in a way that goes against our better judgment.

What some people fail to realize is that as passionate as they are about their project, they may very well be the least important person on their site. After all, isn’t the whole point to engage hundreds, thousands, ideally millions of users? How do you harness the collective opinion of the masses and incorporate those preferences into your site? Step one, ask someone’s opinion who is not yourself. Step two, don’t ask close family members who have limited knowledge of social media and industry standards. Step three, ask someone who knows social media inside and out. (Ahem, me.) The ideal solution? If you don’t believe us, create a small but targeted focus group and get their feedback.

Pardon the rant, but I will say that clients who welcome our input, in addition to being passionate about their own, are hands down my favorite clients, and I personally baby their sites like none other. Because a piece of our creativity and genius goes with them when they meet the eyes of users, and that is why we do this. At the end of the day, it represents thousands of pixels and keystrokes and brainstorm sessions, and putting our name on it actually means something.

Here are a handful of social networks that are engaging their communities with unique, interactive groups.

www.yourgroups.com

YourGroups is an original social network allowing members to create one or more private groups. The site structure and group privacy ensures that your group experience will give you the privacy that Facebook lacks. Whether its your closest friends, family, work group, sports team or school connections, yourgroups provides a private place to support those day to day communications. Here are some of the features it offers:

• Immediately contacting all or a part of your group via push messaging
• Sending a location and time for the group to meetup via push messaging
• Setting up future events for the group to attend
• Check-in to events once you arrive and see who has checked-in
• Posting a message for your group to see
• Sharing pictures relevant just to the members of the group
• Using your phones GPS to set destinations to meet

All of your communications are private to just the group. There are no public profiles or sharing of data among groups. yourgroups puts your social circles privacy as our #1 priority.

www.golfswingfreak.com

Golfswingfreak.com is the first website of it’s kind, focusing specifically on the viewing and rating of one’s golf swing by web and mobile video. Members simply upload their swing, join and submit to online tournaments, and rate other user swings to see how they can be the best ranked site-wide, within their personal network, or by their specific golf swing groups. The purpose of GolfSwingFreak.com is to use video and the connectivity of a social network to improve your swing and your game, have fun, and pursue your quest to win with your swing.

GolfSwingFreak.com is for anyone that is passionate about the game of golf or cares about someone else that is a Freak about Golf. As a member you can capture your swing on video, connect with other golfers, and compete in Tournaments by receiving votes for your swing. Tournaments include Opens, Invitationals, and Fight Club (Head-to-Head). You can also purchase freakish deals on GolfSwingFreak.com.

www.returninghomeproject.org

Returning Home is an online interactive resource that creates a welcoming space to share stories of our men and women in uniform—from those who served in the first World War to those returning from the current conflicts.

The resources provided on the Returning Home site will allow family and friends of our uniformed men and women, as well as those supporting our troops during the war effort, to have a place of their own—to be honored and remembered.  One key resource on the site are the Community pages, which are essentially online groups that celebrate, commemorate and support specific groups within the military community. Members can join, follow and contribute to these pages for an experience tailored to their areas of interest.

Returning Home is a politics-free site designed to help troops and communities open the lines of communication and begin to heal and support each other. Medical professionals, historians, and schools will be utilizing this site as a resource to help others heal as well as teach others about the duties and sacrifices of those in uniform.

www.wiseoldmen.com

Wise Old Men was created specifically for the 60+ community to find each other in the ever-widening social space. Groups are central to the site’s purpose, allowing users to search and join specific interest groups and related sub-groups. Users can also suggest additional groups to be added by the website’s administrator. Once within the group, users can receive updates new group wall posts, submit discussion topics and comments. Users can also submit links to related external websites as well as post events associated with groups.

While the site is equipped with many other core social network functions, most of the user’s experience surrounds the community’s interest groups and facilitating the relationships within those

Contrary to trending beliefs, having childhood princess fantasies did not crush my self-confidence and it did not infect me with the idea that I needed a man to wisk me away into some kind of royal domestic bliss. I remember when a new Disney movie would come out and how all I wanted was to hold that shiny plastic VHS case in my hands so I could watch The Little Mermaid over and over and over again. But believe it or not, my thoughts on female role models and romantic relationships were almost entirely shaped by those I witnessed in real life. I remember from a pretty tender age seeing women who were in my family, or friends of our family, who felt really trapped in their marriages, unable to make independent decisions, unable to speak freely, unable to spend their own money and generally feeling pretty oppressed. Maybe they weren’t the breadwinners of the family, maybe their relationship had just degraded to this sorry state from years of neglect, there were hundreds of factors in play. For some reason, I don’t think that watching Cinderella as a child was one of them. Because I freaking loved Cinderella, and I knew exactly what kind of relationship I didn’t want with whatever man I chose to be in my life.

I have seen a lot of women choose to de-feminize their bodies and images, sometimes as an outward demonstration of their sexuality or gender orientation, and conversely, I have to say that I feel more than justified celebrating being a feminine woman. It doesn’t mean I’m a disillusioned diva who thinks that new clothes makes her a better person or that I expect Prince Charming to pay my bills (I do expect him to mop though). Embracing some stereotypically “female” interests does not mean that I was culturally forced to do so, or that embracing them makes me a dumb broad. Labels are so annoying. What do we really know about Cinderella anyways? She had a crap childhood, she wanted a better life, she looked amazing in glass heels… and for all we know, “happily ever after” means that she’s wearing the pants in that castle. Her and Prince Charming could have a mutually respectful relationship, full of healthy disputes and compromises, and I have little doubt that Prince Charming spends plenty of time in the doghouse too. Just sayin.

Anyway, after witnessing my two boys terrorize the house pretending that they are both Spiderman, an experience which I would never deprive them of, I really honestly cannot see how pretending to be a princess as a child is so harmful. Will dressing my sons in pink mean they’ll turn into drag queens? I doubt it. Am I going to buck society and dress them in pink anyways? No, unless they start dressing themselves in pink, which they are more than welcome to do. I know that as long as I’m not fanatical about what they are exposed to or not, and if as a parent I offer consistent and healthy guidance, my children will ultimately make their own choices about what they want to and who they want to be. Sure, Mattel may make a few bucks off me, but hey, that’s business.

Eva doesn’t even know what a princess is, even though every morning Aedan wakes up and says, “Hello, Princess Eva” and gives her many kisses on her feet and she thinks that’s delightful. One day I’m sure she’ll wear sparkly pink dresses and (gasp) put lipstick on, and within reason, I will let her. Because I know that she’s not going to want to grow up to be Cinderella. She’s going to grow up and want to be like the strong women around her.

(And as long as Eva’s the princess, I’m the queen!)