Firstly, a bit about my short-term plan for this website. It is primarily to achieve two goals:
b) as a first stop for people that have been referred to me and want to learn a bit more before meeting me; and
b) as a place to keep my friends and clients informed of what's going on with the business and to share some of the information I come across during the time I spend on the web each week.
Importantly, for now at least, I do not intend for this site to be a place that will attract new clients (particularly via Google searches, etc). It is me that my clients will be hiring, not a company, so I hope to only take on new clients based on referrals from mutual contacts.
So back to the blog. This will be a place to share some of my thoughts and plans, as much for my own benefit as that of my clients. Why for my benefit? Here's a great quote from French businessman, Michel-Edouard Leclerc:
Blogging is thinking in front of others. It is accepting that you are open to their comments, their suggestions and their criticism. This ‘exhibition’ in front of the public leads to two attitudes. First of all, humility. You need to be prepared to make amends, to review an argument or to reformulate it. Then, intellectual strictness. When you lead a … company… it is up to me to be as credible as possible, coherent and not to contradict what I say in my blog with the concrete practices of the company.”
So the idea is that if I post something in a blog about my plans, it will help me follow through with the plans.
A similar reasoning is expressed in this quote from the book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini:
Whenever one takes a stand that is visible to others, there arises a drive to maintain that stand in order to look like a consistent person. Remember… we described how desirable good personal consistency is as a trait; how someone without it could be judged as fickle, uncertain, pliant, scatterbrained, or unstable; how someone with it is viewed as rational, assured, trustworthy, and sound. Given this context, it is hardly surprising that people try to avoid the look of inconsistency. For appearance sake, then, the more public a stand the more reluctant we will be to change it.
So the thinking is that if I put something in my blog, I’m more likely to stick to it… including writing this first post about how I’m going to post in the future!
Of course, the delete button is only a step or two away, but let’s just forget that little detail.
