Business Insights From a Bay Area Snowman

I’m often asked how I’ve generated so many connections and followers on LinkedIn. Is it my reputation as a management guru? Is it my keen business-world insights? Yes, most definitely it’s those two things. So, the journey I took to create a tiny snowman from the ice I scraped from my windshield this morning offered the perfect opportunity to provide everyone some valuable business tips. Oh, and just to head off the naysayers (they’re always lurking when you have a mind for business like I do), this post is DEFINITELY NOT just an excuse to share a picture of a tiny snowman I made from my windshield scrapings. This is a cruel world! It’s all about business and careers! Not tiny snowmen!

It’s been cold here recently. Cold by Bay Area standards that is. Waking up daily to frozen windshields, we’ve been taking the hose to them or pouring water from the sink as we get ready to go in the morning. Today I tried something different and scraped the windshield with an old putty knife. Pretty manly, I know. The shavings were like snow and I piled them up pretty high on the putty knife (which everyone knows is the manliest knife of them all).

Being a good dad, the only reasonable thing to do was to take these shavings to my little ones and show them the magic of weather. After I did that, I plainly told them that I was going to make a snowball out of it and throw it at them. That is when the real magic started. My kids had a suggestion that I make a snowman instead. The wonder of youth! The glory of self-preservation!

That leads me to my amazing life and business tips.

1. Try a new approach to old problems. By NOT using water to clear the ice, and instead using the manly putty knife, I ended up with a cool snowman and this valuable LinkedIn article!
2. Work the odds. Even though I didn’t throw a snowball at unsuspecting elementary-age kids, I have to say that I was feeling good about my chances in that fight. If you have a snowball fight, and there’s only one snowball, and you are holding it, YOU WILL PROBABLY WIN. I’ll let you make the obvious business analogies here.
3. Challenge your underlings. By threatening cold doom on my children, they rose to the occasion and suggested something better! I was shocked there was anything better than cold doom! So in your work life, always challenge your underlings! Here’s another bonus pro tip: always call your co-workers “underlings”… they love it! Even if you are not a manager or the owner of a business… just call everyone an underling! You’ll thank me later!
4. Take risks. I used two toothpicks for this snowman knowing that my wife would quite likely get mad that I’m wasting both time and toothpicks (spoiler alert: that’s what happened). But she didn’t see the WHOLE PICTURE. The WHOLE PICTURE being the chance to write this LinkedIn article and get upwards of 10–13 likes! Everyone knows the toothpick-to-like exchange rate is currently 1 to 4. That means I’m likely to come out WAY AHEAD on this exchange! (Side note: please like this article so that I come out way ahead on the toothpick-to-like exchange).
5. Just do it. If you have a cool picture of a two-inch snowman and you want to post it on LinkedIn or Medium or wherever, just go for it! You can retroactively come up with some dumb justification! Trust me! This probably has some work-related analogies… let me know in the comments!

OK, that’s it. Hope you like my snowman.

#business #managementtips #snow #toothpicktolikeratio #underlings #puttyknife

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.