Business updates, business opportunities, and how to properly run your business, plus a little AI, and hidden technology addiction. Heavy topics this week so hopefully you have some time to dig in.

Here’s the full list:

• divs.money

• divs.consulting

• More Founder Advice

• LinkedIn’s AI Pipeline

• Hidden Technology Addiction

divs.money

It finally happened. divs.design made some money! After sending the link last week, I saw the Stripe payment notification on Wednesday.

It’s exciting and a little scary that the business is now real. I’ve started a few businesses in the past but this is the first one to actually make any money, so we’re on the right track with this one.

I’m looking forward to working with the current client and continuing to earn that payment, but I’m also excited to search for the next client and the next payment.

I may have a new lead for the next gig but it will be considerably more complex and also a considerably bigger payment. More below, but for now Divs made some money!

divs.consulting

Strangely enough, twice in one week I’ve had 2 different friends talk about Salesforce consulting.

The Salesforce consulting route is something I was considering along with the design service. I listed the “enterprise” plan on divs.design with Salesforce and software development in mind, but I was still debating if I wanted to jump back into full-time development.

At this point I like the idea of software consulting, so now I have to consider another spin-off. If I’m going to focus more on software consulting, I think I need to rethink the “design” moniker.

I have 2 main candidates:

• divs.consulting

• divs.cloud 

Using “consulting” in the name makes it pretty unmistakable what it is, but honestly I’m leaning more toward divs.cloud.

I feel like I could get away with general software consulting under that name, plus it’s a nice nod to the blue cloud in the Salesforce logo. And everything is in the cloud these days anyway so it would cover the inevitable AWS integrations that come with any project.

Let me know what you think, though. Direct with consulting? More creative with cloud? Any better suggestions?

More Founder Advice

I’m reluctant to take on the title of founder, but I suppose I’ve already done it since I technically “founded” a business.

I should probably embrace the title though, because I am always drawn to founder content, which is why I ended up watching this presentation by Jason Coen from 5 years ago that is still full of great advice for founders and leaders in any business today.

Two major points I got from this were:

• Be decisive on the action, kind on execution

• Hire for results not actions

Being decisive on action but kind on execution really boils down to deciding quickly that it’s time for someone to go, but be as kind as you can in how you let them go.

Although, that principle can apply for most project situations. If somethings not working, it’s better to take action sooner, but don’t be a jerk about it.

Also, his point on hiring for results was eye-opening for me. I’ve interviewed a number of candidates in the past, but they were primarily engineers. A handful of times I was included in a product related position just because I’d be working with product frequently, but I wasn’t core to that hiring process.

I’ve mostly interviewed by asking about actions, not so much results. I can usually get a sense for how much experience an engineer has by how they talk about the projects they’ve worked on.

But, if I had to hire outside of my area of expertise, such as hiring a marketer, I wouldn’t really know the marketing actions to ask about.

Jason says, if you ask about results instead of actions, it makes it much easier to determine what this person actually gets done. The candidate may take a bunch of actions, but if it’s just busywork then they may not be the best fit for the role in moving the company forward.

Both of Jason’s points above are valuable pieces of advice that he provides power examples of in the presentation, and there’s more advice beyond that packed into about 30 minutes. I’d say it’s worth the time:

LinkedIn’s AI Pipeline

In one of these Deep work sessions where I supposed to be working and ended browsing instead, I stumbled on this article from LinkedIn on how they implemented their own AI chat bot.

It was really fascinating to see how they use AI to make decisions on which other AIs to use in the process.

Depending on the question, the answer would come from different sources so they had an AI model trained on finding the best source for the answer so that the next step in the pipeline could go ask the appropriate model for the answer.

It’s a great example of the future of AI: smaller and more specialized AIs that are experts at one particular area.

Coming from a more technical person, the article seemed fairly approachable, but it is certainly engineering material. If you want a more in-depth example of how a large company uses AI, this is a great explanation:

Hidden Technology Addiction

Not the first time I’ve thrown in a Dr. K video, but it has been a little while.

This week, I listened to Dr. K explain to Mel Robbins how invisible technology addiction has become, comparing it to an invasive species that hides in your everyday activities.

Mel had a surprising moment of clarity when Dr. K corrected her for saying that browsing TikTok was “relaxing”.

At first Mel defended it, saying that it felt like relief after a stressful day of work to sit and stare at her phone for a while, but Dr. K pointed out that it might be relieving but it’s probably not actually relaxing.

After explaining a little more, Mel realized what he meant, saying that putting her phone down and going for a walk is a different, or more relaxing, feeling than sitting on the couch, mindlessly browsing social media.

That was highlight of the conversation but the entire podcast goes quickly. Dr. K is clearly passionate about the topic and explains it well. I’d highly recommend a listen, even at over an hour, it probably won’t feel like it.

And that’s it for this week! Divs made some money and may be expanding, business advice, AI and technology addiction. What more could you ask for.

Those are the links that stuck with me throughout the week and a glimpse into what I personally worked on.

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