Identifying The Job Your Customer Wants Done; Why Survivors Of Dysfunction Make Good Entrepreneurs; Where We Fail In The Cycle Of Entrepreneurship; And The Cultural Relevance Of The Internet: Takeaways From Startup Grind 2013

Thanks to my fellow mindful-tech entrepreneur Pamela Day for the invite to Startup Grind conference this week in Silicon Valley. It's a 40-city event series in 15 countries to inspire, educate and connect entrepreneurs.There were many takeaways, from practical to philosophical, out of mouths of founders and incubators and investors, including The Lean Startup Method's Steve Blank, entrepreneur-turned-VC Mark Suster, and Udemy's cofounder Gagan Biyani.

Below are some of the big ideas I jotted down:

On selling: Harvard biz prof and author of "How will you measure your life" Clayton Christensen talked about achieving product/market fit (a core aspect of selling) as being able to identify what job your customer wants to get done.

Never mind the purchaser personas "who's my customer" issue, what is it that your thing serves their need by being, by doing?

Example: I need something to do during my commute that I can do with one hand, something that fills my stomach, something that doesn't spill or make a mess in the car, something that takes the whole 45 minutes to consume. This is the job done by a milkshake bought by a guy first thing in the morning. He's not buying it and comparing the price, or the flavor, to other milkshakes. He's comparing it to options like a banana (too fast, smelly, the peel!) and a donut (sticky fingers, not filling). When you know why they choose you and your product or service, you can better get that message out there about it. "So thick it takes 45 minutes to drink". (Or, develop product to get the job done).

Enter with great products, competitors will eat you. If you enter with slimmed down specs, they flee upmarket.  (This is good to know, since many of us are in that boat of not being able to compete with established players...)

Here's Fast Company about the Clayton Christensen talk with a link to the video.

On founding a venture: ventures fail when they run out of $ -- and then can't keep going.

(The money thing is not the end itself!) They fail when the founders run of out energy to keep doing it. We need to take care of ourselves so we can keep doing this.

Also, survivors of dysfunctional families can operate at chaos, which makes them successful entrepreneurs.

Same was said about ADHD people. Regarding the psychological conditions for entrepreneurship, see this article on PandoDaily about the link between bipolar spectrum and entrepreneurship --"Building businesses can be a great way for hypomanic entrepreneurs to apply their energy and creativity."

Entrepreneurship is not job, it's a calling. Like being an artist, composer. We're driven to make something happen out of nothing. We need to make decisions out of passion, not fear.

From a now-billionaire who started by tutoring ppl at his house after work: Think big start small. Portion of your earnings belongs to creation of your future. You can only earn if you save.

The cycle of entrepreneurship, Carlos Martins says, is: Strategy->Plan->Execute->Assess->Correction->start again.

That correction -->strategy part is where businesses fail since what worked yesterday may not work today, what works today may not work tomorrow.

And from the brilliant guy behind icanhascheezburger: cultural relevance is resonance.

Creation no longer binary, says Ben Huh, my favorite speaker of the conference since he's talking about my culture-view of the Internet. It spans a spectrum of create, curate, remix. Internet culture will make the rock stars of tomorrow.Being weird doesn't mean you're alone. Internet and social media is matchmaking, surfacing connections previously unavailable.

Relationships are now matched to your interest. Let your fans tell their story not yours. There are more of them than us, Huh says. Don't try to outshout them.

Rather than big social where we get our cues from big brands, ICanHasCheezburger is little social. We stand for something little and let our users build messages around our brand.

Embodiment of Internet culture is user driven, rather than transactional. I want you to understand me. We want to express our best selves and expression allows you to do that. It's like we're playing SIMS with our own identity.

I participate therefore I am. Now we can consume a world that is more personal and more real, have real convos with real people, our world view tweaked and challenged by our peers.

Other speakers let us know that people will try to discourage you.

Listen double hard to people who disagree with you on a particular point, you might be missing something. Otherwise, only listen to people who have successfully done this thing you want to do. Disregard other status signifiers like power & prestige & pedigree, these aren't good reasons to follow their advice.

There was also talk of outgrowing your mentors, and not giving away your power to partners and investors just to be "fair" or because you're flattered they want in on your thing.

Led Cisco's Connected Women Roundtable on Personal Branding

I was pleased to facilitate a table of women in a discussion about using your online presence to create and sustain your personal brand. Held at Cisco's San Jose campus, the event was  part of Cisco's Connected Women series of professional development gatherings for women from Cisco, Citrix, Intel and EMC.

My top 3 take-aways:

1.  a personal brand is what you want people to know about you to help connect you with the opportunities that are right for you 2.  embody your brand -- show-it-not-tell-it -- on a daily basis, using your online presence at social sites 3.  demonstrate your expertise, your thought leadership, the talents you bring, how you operate by sharing news and information and being helpful

My GlobalNiche team member Tanya Monsef Bunger joined me at the event, pictured here.The roundtable event aimed to provide actionable insights into specific topics while enabling attendees to meet other women who are interested in that particular topic.

There were 10 tables of 10 people, each with their own topic, so the evening was like attending a miniworkshop at a conference. Work-Life Fit. Mentoring. Thinking Big. Developing Cool Designs. Thinking Outside the Box. Career Development. You can imagine I made my table all about Twitter. Twitter is my answer for everything. I’m joking.

I wanted to make personal branding all about Twitter — and social media in general — since it’s the most effective way to form and communicate your brand widely.

But many of the corporate women at my table weren’t on Twitter and had their reasons for not wanting to show themselves and their expertise much online, including in company bulletin boards and chats.

That’s a different blog post for a different time. It’s a serious issue.

I got a lot of questions about stalking and security, but none about the opportunities of being optimally online.

What's A Digital Nomad?

Would consultants or other professionals who are constantly traveling be considered digital nomads? This is my answer to the question on Quora.

I think the main definition of digital nomads is being people who make their nomadic lives work through digital means.

Those techniques are being picked up more and more by people who are not really nomadic, but merely in transit, or location independent in general.

Like me.

I live in a particular place, but I partake of a wider world of opportunity through digital means, and envisioning myself as independent of my surroundings.

We all have the potential to be digital nomadlike, or use digital nomad strategies to make our lives more seamless.

Elections When You're A Digital Global Citizen

This appeared in The Displaced Nation, November 7, 2012. Global citizens follow the US elections closely; some even see American politics as a spectator sport. For today’s post, we asked Anastasia Ashman, an occasional contributor to the Displaced Nation, to tell us how she felt about the 2012 elections. An expat of many years and an active proponent of global citizenship, Anastasia recently repatriated, with her Turkish husband, to her native California.

Rather than drifting away from the American political process when I was far from my fellow citizens, it was during an expat stint that I became most deeply involved.

My involvement had a displaced quality, of course.

I have always been on the edges of the American experience, hailing as I do from the countercultural town of Berkeley, California. The first time in my life I owned and brandished an American flag was after 9/11. It felt like a homecoming after a lifetime of being the outsider.

Even now that I’m back in California, my political involvement continues to have a displaced quality because I know what it’s like to be a citizen on the front lines of our nation’s foreign policy. For most Americans, the issue of how the rest of the world perceives our country is distant, amorphous, forgettable — but not for those of us who’ve lived abroad.

Clark for President!

I’d discovered Wesley Clark on television after 9/11. A four-star general, he was talking about the world we’d suddenly plunged into like a polished, collected and thoughtful world-class leader. It was easy to feel a kinship with the philosopher general even though I’d grown up in a household that vilified the military. Instead of activist or escapist pursuits, I chose to join him in geopolitical chess.

During the months between September 2003 and February 2004 when Clark competed in the presidential primary to become the Democratic candidate, I campaigned for him from afar. My email inbox soon filled with security warnings from the U.S. Consul urging Americans to keep a low profile.

If I had been able to get my hands on a campaign poster back in 2003 and 2004, I wouldn’t have displayed it publicly in my Istanbul apartment window. We were invading Iraq, and Istanbul was the site of four al Qaeda-related terrorist bombings that November. Avoid obvious gatherings of Americans, the emails cautioned. No mention of red, white, and blue “Clark for Democratic Candidate” campaign posters plastered on your residence — I had to extrapolate that.

Instead, I became active in online forums and wrote letters to undecided voters and newspapers in numerous states for my choice, the former N.A.T.O. Supreme Commander Wesley Clark. That was all I could do.

Obama for Re-election!

I’ve now been back in the USA for a year and have followed this election cycle, like the last one, mostly via social media. Online is an ideal place to become disconnected from echo chambers you don’t resonate with, and to stumble into rooms you don’t recognize. Both have happened.

But for the first time in the American political process, I don’t feel displaced. I feel like I am right where I belong.

Maybe it’s the San Francisco environs, which, although they may not match my concerns, don’t rankle too badly. At least I’m not in Los Angeles being asked to vote on whether porn actors must wear condoms. (They should, obvs!)

I feel less displacement in this election because of the resonant connections I’ve made online in the last four years or more. I’m in open, deep geopolitical conversation with Americans, American expats and with citizens of other nations, all over the world.

During this election I’ve been using my web platform, my digital footprint, to gather political news and opinion, enter discussions, and raise awareness. I’ve been reconciling my patchwork politics by weaving together who I relate to, and what I care about, and what sources I pass on to my network and what conversations I start. I now know that I am

• A woman from an anti-war town who campaigned for a general!
• A Hillary supporter who’s backing Barack, and
• An adult-onset Third Culture Kid who understands how and why Obama’s Third Culture Kid experience confuses the average American.

What I have chosen to share on social media during this election cycle is a processing of all that makes me a political animal. I feel I have participated in this election cycle as the whole me, and that is all I can do.

I’ve shared that I care deeply that

• Independent New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed President Obama, citing climate change as a top issue of our time.
• A top Republican pundit spanked Mitt Romney’s cynical talk of 47% of Americans as freeloaders as the talk of a shallow campaign operative rather than a necessary sophisticate at the top of national politics.
• Certain business owners have felt they could tell their employees how to vote and threaten that a vote for the wrong candidate would jeopardize their jobs.
• Women’s rights were under attack.

I am buoyed that these abominations are leaking out and being countered. I was edified to hear others share my disapproval of eligible voters who choose to throw their votes away.

I have been able to be an active digital world citizen during this election cycle, someone who votes for the bigger picture, not just at the ballot box, but in everything I do. And that feels like home to me.

Being A $100 Changemaker With Other Digital Nomads & Global Entrepreneurs

Natalie Sisson of The Suitcase Entrepreneur asked me to be a $100 Changemaker in her $100 Change Program. It's an ecourse designed to get you to take action on your dream idea, project or business to make it a reality in 100 days or less.

I’m joined in the program by 100 other entrepreneurs, digital nomads, thought leaders, TED speakers, authors, and artists from around the world, to share what it really takes to start something, make it happen, and create real impact and success.

Other changemakers include Chris Guillebeau, Danielle LaPorte, Janet Hanson, Chris Brogan, Michael Stelzner, Cameron Herold, Steve Kamb, Laura Roeder, Jonathan Fields, Clay Collins, Pamela Slim, Amy Porterfield, Corbett Barr, Lewis Howes, Pat Flynn, Nathalie Lussier, Dane Maxwell, Christine Kloser, Adam Baker, Johnny B Truant, Pam Brossman, Derek Halpern, and Alexis Neely.

 Here are my answers to the $100 Change interview.

If you had $100 to start a creative project how would you spend it? Get Internet access. If I had that already, then invest in more access (like wi-fi, or a mobile device to facilitate using the web for more things, in more places).

What is your daily ritual for setting yourself up for success? You may not be ready but you'll be so much further along (and figuring it out!) if you simply get started right NOW.

You'll also be in community with your peers, and your clients will be lining up when you launch.

Build those relationships years before you "need" them.

What I'm doing now with my startup GlobalNiche I've actually been doing for years but didn't make it available to as wide an audience as I could have way back then.

Get started, go wide. Share the process. Don't wait til it's perfect, or when you know everything you need to know. That day will never come.

What is worth paying for? I'd pay for nitty gritty details and big picture advice from professionals who specialize in certain areas.

Legal advice, accounting guidance.

The opinion of a high level editor on a massive writing venture.

A consult with a brand messaging expert.

These kinds of things can unfreeze you, set you on the right path, and help you avoid lots of pain in the future.

What's a saying of yours we can put on a poster? A nugget I can offer from GlobalNiche's combo of microbrand building, creative entrepreneurship, global community development: polish your ideas in public.

That's how you're going to build a borderless community you love, and tap into a deeper sense of yourself.

What key methods do you use to stay focused on your priorities? Committing to making sense of what I do.

I'm finding the last mile of taking my ideas to market has been about GOING BACKWARD to meet my larger community.

Letting go of the coinages and jargon I love but that confuse the uninitiated.

For so long I've been pushing forward and existing on my own leading edge -- which is necessary to evolve in your field -- but now I need to make sense of how I got here and why any one else might want to join this journey.

I think of it as leaving a trail of bread crumbs they can follow.

In committing to simplifying my message, and charting a path others can follow, I am both getting to the heart of my thinking, and reaching far more people.

How do you stop fear from allowing you to do your best work? Do your thing in public, and invest in yourself.

Volunteer to get access to opportunities no one is offering you otherwise (for instance, if you want to go to a conference but can't afford it and Twitter-attending won't suffice, ask to work there. You'll make contacts and open new doors.)

Don't keep your best ideas on a shelf -- you want to be known as the person with all those good ideas.

Keep them flowing, more will come and they'll be even better developed.

Learn the basics of pitching your ideas to people more established than you are. If you nail that etiquette (know their work, which part of your idea is right for them, and you're able to be brief), you're going to find success.

Your Content Adds Up. Now Make It Discoverable, Too.

We're born content producers. The more prolific among us are literally volcanoes of content.

Yet, what you’ve generated probably isn’t working for you.

It’s probably not laid out as a path where you want to go, nor presented as an invitation to other like-minded souls and interested parties to join you in your journey. It’s not contributing to the discoverability of you.

Do you have shelves full of:

• paper, boxes and binders, clippings, photos, slides, sketches and notes
• memorabilia and scrapbook materials

What about in the hall closet, and all that stuff in the basement?

• floppy disks
• hard drives
• external drives
• CDs, cassette tapes, video tapes

I bet you have a bunch of content stored here, there and everywhere. There’s a reason you haven’t gotten rid of it.

That mountain of stuff represents your effort and interest, and independent research. 

That mountain represents the things you chose to do because they make you feel alive.

Think of all the activities you’ve poured yourself into and how you’ve retained the evidence of them.  Anything that represents your experiences, your thinking and feeling on certain topics. All those photos of people and places and things that hold meaning and jog memories, yet haven’t seen the light of day in practically FOREVER. Some of it may represent creative failures. False starts. Ancient history. That's okay. Include it.

Maybe now you’ve got a mental image of your piles of creation, content associated with the life you’ve lived and the things you’ve loved (or hated, who knows).

At GlobalNiche we believe it’s forgotten gold. (Don’t feel too badly. We all have similar piles that we haven’t used for much of anything. YET.)

So, next question.

Are you sitting on that mountain of content -- and also wondering how you’re going to make ends meet, effect a career change, or achieve a goal?

Maybe you’re thinking you can’t do what you yearn to because you live in the wrong place and don’t have the right contacts and there’s no opportunity to pursue that interest where you are. As an expat for 14 years, I spent a lot of time wondering if my location was a disadvantage to what I want to do. The answer was "yes" most of the time. But no longer.

If we consider that earlier output and experience not as failure or a waste of time, but instead a chain of events that make us who we are today, then we can start to get an idea of the arc of our lives and how what we’ve done in the past can help us get where we want to go in the future. No matter where we are -- with the help of the web and the platform we build on it.

What if you were prominent and findable in your chosen field of interest or activity? 

How might your opportunities change if you let your content support your aims? <---Tweet that.

Whether you’re positioning yourself to land jobs or funding or a book deal, or you’ve got a completed book or other product or service to sell, it will make a difference to your results. If you’re findable and well-represented, you have a chance. If you’re unknown, unfindable, and a jumbled mess when people DO happen to stumble on you, you won’t make much of an impression.

Whatever you want to do, you’ll need help and support. An important part of gathering support is going public with your process, to attract likeminded people to your cause and to involve them in your journey. The kind of people who are interested your vision and your way of thinking and feeling, parties who can help you develop your plan, the kind of peers and confidants and guides who will form the basis of your network.

We've entered a golden age for content creators. Do you know how to wrap your arms around your content, see the story it tells, and link it with your goals?

A version of this post originally appeared at Kristin Bair O'Keeffe's Writerhead, September 7, 2012

Tech Makes The Global Citizen, or Repatriation = Relocation With Benefits

San Francisco may be a tech-forward location but that's not why I've increasingly been turning to technology to help me be where and who I am today.

As a globally mobile individual, I rely on tech because of all the moves that came before this one. I rely on tech for my total, global operation.

++++

This originally appeared in The Displaced Nation, August 22, 2012.

Today’s guest blogger, Anastasia Ashman, has been pioneering a new concept of global citizenship. Through various publications, both online and in print, and now through her GlobalNiche initiative, she expresses the belief that common interests and experiences can connect us more than geography, nationality, or even blood. But what happens when someone like Ashman returns to the place where she was born and grew up? Here is the story of her most recent repatriation.

I recently relocated to San Francisco. Three decades away from my hometown area, I keep chanting: “Don’t expect it to be the same as it was in the past.”

Since leaving the Bay area, I’ve lived in 30 homes in 4 countries, journeying first to the East Coast (Philadelphia Mainline) for college, then to Europe (Rome) for further studies, back to the East Coast (New York) and the West Coast (Los Angeles) for work, over to Asia (Penang, Kuala Lumpur) for my first overseas adventure, back to the USA (New York), and finally, to Istanbul for my second expat experience.

My daily mantra has become: “Don’t expect to be the same person you once were.”

With each move, my mental map has faded, supplanted by new information that will get me through the day.

Back in San Francisco, I repeat several times a day: “This place may be where I’m from, but it’s a foreign country now. Don’t expect to know how it all works.”

What a difference technology makes (?!)

Today my work travels, just as it did when I arrived in Istanbul with a Hemingway-esque survival plan to be on an extended writing retreat and emerge at the border with my passport and a masterpiece.

I knew from my previous expat stint in Malaysia that I needed to tap into a local international scene. But I spent months in limbo without local friends, nor being able to share my transition with the people I’d left.

This time is different. Now I’m connected to expat-repat friends around the world on the social Web with whom I can discuss my re-entry. I’ve built Twitter lists of San Francisco people  (1, 2, 3) to tap into local activities and lifestyles, in addition to blasts-from-my-Berkeley-past.

I’ve already drawn some sweet time-travely perks. To get a new driver’s license I only needed to answer half the test questions since I was already in the system from teenhood.

After Turkey’s Byzantine bureaucracy and panicky queue-jumpers, I appreciated the ease of making my license renewal appointment online even if the ruby-taloned woman at the Department of Motor Vehicles Information desk handed me additional forms saying: “Oh, you got instructions on the Internet? That’s a different company.”

One of the reasons my husband and I moved here is to more closely align with a future we want to live in, so it’s cool to see the online-offline reality around us in San Francisco’s tech-forward atmosphere.

It doesn’t always translate to an improved situation though. Just as we are searching for staff to speak to in person at a ghost-town Crate & Barrel, a suggestion card propped on a table told us to text the manager “how things are going.”

So, theoretically I can reach the manager — I just can’t see him or her.

So strange…yet so familiar

It took a couple of months to identify the name for what passes as service now in the economically-depressed United States: anti-service. Customer service has been taken over by scripts read by zombies.

When I bought a sticky roller at The Container Store, the clerk asked me, “Oh, do you have a dog?”

“No, a cat,” I countered into the void.

He passed me the bag, his small-talk quota filled. He wasn’t required by his employer to conclude the pseudo-interaction with human-quality processing, like, “Ah, gotta love ‘em.”

What I didn’t plan for are the psychedelic flashbacks to my childhood. I may have moved on, but this place seems set in amber. The burrito joints are still playing reggae (not even the latest sounds of Kingston or Birmingham) and the pizza places, ’70s classic rock stations (Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like An Eagle,” anyone?). The street artists are still peddling necklaces of your name twisted in wire. Residents are still dressed like they’re going for a hike in the hills with North Face fleece jackets and a backpack.

A bid for minimalism

The plan is also to be somewhat scrappy after years of increasing bloat. My Turkish husband and I got rid of most of our stuff in Turkey in a bid for minimalism. We camped out on the floor of our apartment in San Francisco until we could procure some furniture.

If it was a literal repositioning, it was also a conscious one — for a different set of circumstances. We’d expanded in Istanbul with a standard 3-bedroom apartment and “depot” storage room, and affordable house cleaners to maintain the high level of cleanliness of a typical Turkish household. In California, I intended to shoulder more of the housework.

I was soon reminded of relocation’s surprises that can make a person clumsy and graceless. I should have kept my own years-in-the-making sewing kit since I can’t find a quality replacement for it in an American market flooded with cheap options from China — and now have to take a jacket to the tailor to sew on a button, something I used to be able to do myself.

When the lower-quality dishwasher door in our San Francisco rental drops open and bangs my kneecap, I recall the too-thin cling wrap and tinfoil that I ripped to shreds in Istanbul, or the garden hose in Penang that kinked and unkinked without warning, spraying me in the face.

New purchases

“We’re getting too old for this,” my husband and I keep telling each other as we shift on our polyester-filled floor pillows that looked a lot bigger and less junky on Amazon. (We were abusing one-day delivery after years of not buying anything online due to difficulties with customs in Istanbul. Cat litter can be delivered tomorrow! Pepper grinder! Then I read about the harsh conditions faced by fulfillment workers in Amazon’s warehouses and cut back.)

One of our first purchases Stateside was a television. Not that we’re going to start watching local TV, but we did flick through some satellite channels. It’s something I like to do upon relocating: watch TV and soak up the local culture like a cyborg.

Since I last lived in the US, reality shows like COPS — where the camera would follow policemen on their seedy beats — have gone deeper into the underbelly of life, and now there are reality shows about incarceration.

The Discovery Channel has also gone straight to the swamp. That’s where I caught a moonshiner reality show featuring shirtless (and toothless) men in overalls called “Popcorn” and “Grandad.”

It’s an America I am not quite keen to get to know.

But I can take these reverse culture shocks lightly because my repatriation is part of a continuum. It’s not a hiatus from anything nor a return home. I’m not missing anything elsewhere, I haven’t given up anything for good. Being here now is simply the latest displacement. Today is a bridge to where I’m headed.

Talking To Cigdem Kobu's Creative Solopreneurs

Excerpt from a profile in Cigdem Kobu's A Year With Myself program for introverted creative solopreneurs.

Are you location independent by choice, or necessity? Why?

Both!

First by necessity when I lived very far from my culture, removed by thousands of miles by people who knew me, who spoke my language, dislocated from my professional fields. Swallowed up by my foreign-to-me surroundings.

Then, as I realized the power of location independence, I became location independent by choice.

I believe that we all can tap into that same power no matter where we happen to be. If you think about it, we’ve all felt like a fish out of water at some point in our lives, and for too many of us, that’s an on-going feeling we have today. It doesn’t have to be that way.

That’s what GlobalNiche.net is about. You could say we teach people how to be globally unbound -- by choice.

Although expats and international types have more reasons than most to find a way to operate independently of where we happen to be physically, I see now that we don’t even have to leave home to do it.

It’s not about being mobile physically (and working on a beach in Thailand, as many in the location independent and lifestyle design movements talk about).

It’s about being okay with where you are, and setting up your life so you can be fufilled and, unlimited by your surroundings.

With today's economic uncertainties no matter who or where we are, we all have to embrace an enterprising view of ourselves -- a way to operate unlimited by the options around us.

We’re really lucky to be part of a trend toward entrepreneuring and indie creative careers, as well as using the social web and mobile devices to help us achieve what I call “psychic location independence”.

We don’t have to be a tech expert or social media guru to build a micro-yet-global base of operations with a professional web platform and virtual network for continuing education, professional development, and a close-knit but world-flung set of friends. We can be digital world citizens and achieve a cutting-edge state of being.

You believe that our metamorphoses choose us. Can you explain that a little?

I said this after a year on Twitter, back in 2009. I noted that the major undertakings of the year hadn’t rated a 2008 resolution. I didn’t plan any of them.

Nilofer Merchant, a cutting-edge entrepreneur I admire and author of The New How and the upcoming book Social Era Rules, recently tweeted, “Once you find your purpose it pulls you effortlessly into the future.” That’s definitely what happened when I opened a Twitter account and followed the trail of my interests out into the world of all possibility.

I was on soul-auto-pilot. Suddenly I took charge of my own web presence, an intention I hadn’t held, a vision I didn’t see, and a plan I don’t recall making.

All it took was that first microblogging step that lead to a curated-webpath to what I now recognize as my specific interests and larger intentions. I was pulled into my future, effortlessly, and without warning!

I was virtually attending conferences on publishing, interactive media, women’s issues, and participating in live webchats on branding, innovation, and literature.

I became a joiner and a beta-tester, signing on for an experimental blogging course before I even had a blog, and volunteering for a life design course for expat women entrepreneurs that helped me hone my vision and introduced me to my present day business partner, Tara Agacayak.

I experienced a reawakening of my inner student to learn exactly what I needed to know, and fresh direction on how I might contribute to the future of my communities.

I have seen this same thing happen with other people on Twitter too, so if you’re willing to dive in and let your metamorphosis choose you, that is the first place I’d recommend you go.

How do you help other women change their lives?

By sharing my own journey, and how I’ve combined my talents, interests and experience to create solutions for myself.

The largest solution I have to offer is the power to change our own lives by building a custom platform to operate from.

Also, by seeing in them what they could be, and telling them, which gives them the opportunity to see themselves and build their own place in the world.

The Native American Medicine Wheel card for hummingbird really resonates for me. The hummingbird is an agile creature which withdraws nectar from flowers and pollinates them at the same time, making them productive and viable.

I would love to be that force for the women in my life.

Mapping Your Complex World

Have you tried mapping the complexity and richness of your life (and career) with an overlapping Venn diagram?

Here's what turned up when I did one for GlobalNiche -- you can see all the relationships of our personal and professional influences and communities as we operate at the intersection of content, culture, and identity.

There's power in your diversity, how you combine your worlds, and the hybrid result!

If you've attempted a Venn of some part of your life, you're invited to share it on the GlobalNiche Facebook page here.

After Four Years, Analyzing My Twitter Audience

This week is my 4th year on Twitter. To "celebrate" I put my account through several of these Twitter measuring tools collected at Social Media Examiner: "ways to discover more about your audience with social media."

I appreciated Followerwonk's details about the longevity of accounts I follow and that follow me. Very few newbies on either score, in fact this was one of the only results that wasn't a bell curve.

This bears out two Twitter behaviors I am aware of.

1) I have always been hesitant to follow accounts that don't provide high value (because, why?) and

2) developing the instinct to provide high value on Twitter doesn't happen overnight for most of us.

Among the information about my overall usage of the service, I liked these piechart details about who I follow (high value users who've been on the service at least 2 years, ppl who follow 500-5k ppl, and are followed by 1k-50k, and have these words in their bios: writer – author – media – creative – life – social – world – editor – global – business – founder – technology – design – women – tweets – entrepreneur – marketing – book – news – ceo – people – blogger – culture – digital – science – ideas).

It was also interesting to see that Tweriod contradicted the info Followerwonk suggested to me about when my followers were most active.

Next up: find a tool that removes inactive follower accounts. That'll give me a better idea of who's actually my audience.

Entrepreneurship & Social Media As The New Women's Movement

I'm seeing mainstream articles tackling my topics, especially at the intersections of women/invisible groups, entrepreneurship, platform-building, work/life and social media.

Like this "social media is the new women's movement" at the New York Times, last week's "entrepreneurship is the new women's movement" at Forbes.com, and the power of networked reality at The Atlantic last month.

As Tara Agacayak says, "What I'm seeing is the trend toward more customized, flexible, personally fulfilling work with the technology to facilitate it."

There's this "Why work-life balance is a crock" at CBSNews.com: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500395_162-57342505/why-work-life-balance-is-a-crock/

Women leaving mismatched corporate culture for work on their own terms:http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/06/08/entrepreneurship-is-the-new-womens-movement/

Seth Godin calls platform building "a longterm shortcut": http://archive.feedblitz.com/720389/~4194314

Microsoft buys Yammer for $1.2B for the same reason GlobalNiche urges us to enter the conversation on our topics:

"You cannot underestimate the power of "working out loud" with social tools. So many conversations get trapped in the one on one world of email and instant messaging. With open sharing, new ideas emerge, experts are found, and teams are formed from the groundswell. Serendipity happens when conversations become public and others are encouraged to listen and contribute their ideas, all within the safety of the company walls."

http://socialmediatoday.com/jimworth/559907/why-yammer-worth-12b-microsoft

people "who reluctantly socialize via online methods due to skill or cost or personal disposition may well find themselves *left out* of conversation." http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/social-medias-small-positive-role-in-human-relationships/256346/

Plug in better (includes "unplug from disconnection"):http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/plug-in-better-a-manifesto/252873/

(altho the below link is hardly mainstream, it's exactly what GlobalNiche is all about): "disadvantaged groups have tools to reach out and organize across geographic boundaries" http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/04/23/sherry-turkles-chronic-digital-dualism-problem/

And thanks to global women's health doctor Nassim Assefi for noting that the forward-looking approach to life and "the American Dream" mentioned in this article is what I show people how to do in my GlobalNiche program and in general! We are way on the cutting-edge. http://www.more.com/women-new-american-dream

Gauging My Team's Working Style & Ambitions With Camille Smith

Great Google Hangout session today with Santa Cruz-based Camille Smith from WORK IN PROGRESS COACHING and the GlobalNiche team. Camille's our September 2012 guest in the GlobalNiche video chatroom, and will be offering a special performance, possibilities & authentic relationships program for our community.

We were guinea pigs today so we can demonstrate in September how Camille’s assessment and counseling has revealed our own diverse working styles and ambitions and shown how we can work best together.

Formulating My Own Future Of Work

Talking about GlobalNiche with someone considering producing a Future-of-Work-themed TEDx in the Bay Area...this is what I told her.

I'm currently working on putting years of theory and practice into a marketable solution.

Basically, positioning the life hacks of internationals and other operatives who have found themselves at cultural disadvantage as an approach that many many people can benefit from -- from those who've never left their hometown but have dreams they think are impossible there, those who've been retired prematurely or otherwise lost their jobs, to those who just graduated and face a bleak job market, to WAHMs and others in nontraditional work settings.

Life Hacks Of Mobile Progressives Can Inform Everyone Else's Dislocations & Transitions

Location independence begins at home! ...some informal notes from a discussion I had with a TEDx future-of-work organizer, Joan Blades, the founder of moveon.org

At global niche, we're currently working on putting years of theory and practice into a marketable solution. Basically, positioning the life hacks of internationals and other operatives who have found themselves at cultural disadvantage as an approach that many many people can benefit from -- from those who've never left their hometown but have dreams they think are impossible there, those who've been retired prematurely or otherwise lost their jobs, to those who just graduated and face a bleak job market, to WAHMs and others in nontraditional work settings.

There is also the  dislocation of favorite identities, ppl close the book on them when they no longer are convenient or the prevailing culture. The lost aspect then gets buried as if it can no longer be alive, like ppl who enjoyed salsa dancing in college, or reading poetry all summer -- and no longer do. But with a global niche they can keep a toe in/reenter that conversation, follow the latest news and advances, meet up with ppl who are more active in these areas than they are (on travels, or in their current location).

When we speak of all the different worlds we belong to, for non-expat types this could be gap between work and life balance...you are not in the worlds and cultures you feel you belong. But you can be, regardless of where you are.

Mobile progressives come at social media from the side of really needing it to live our lives with possibility. not as a plaything. Our globalized selves easily use/adopt tech to continue to be global. But learning to be global is what people who come from the other side are struggling with.

Who Needs A Global Niche?

i see the need in my friend about to be laid off but completely absent from the web and personal and prof development communities. i see the need in another friend who altho prolific and talented, he's technophobic and barely making ends meet. he mentioned a dream of designing/owning a specialty bar -- i got him started on interest posting his encyclopedic collection of those kind of specialty cultural images which may help to get him there. (it's a place to point ppl to show he's capable of doing that work, and discoverable too)

Talking Sociotech Advances, The Value Of Our Content, & Going Paperless

This is an excerpt from an interview by John Zipperer for Northside, a San Francisco neighborhood newspaper, April, 2012

So tell me about Global Niche. What is it? Who is the audience/customer?

Global Niche is my startup with my partner Tara Agacayak based on our combined 20 years of expatriatism, my experiences as an author building her publishing platform (that’s where you demonstrate your expertise, your reach, your ability to draw an audience) and the rising notion of creative entrepreneurship (which is where who you are is what you do best -- doing what you love).

Global Niche is a life-work initiative for global citizens, mobile progressives, cultural creatives, independent professionals and any one who finds themselves in a situation mismatch. In this day and age we should be able to operate independently of traditional limitations like geography, time zone, culture, language. I call that achieving “psychic location independence”.

There’s a place in the world just for us, where we can be both as unique as we want to be, and as big as possible. We don’t even have to leave home to find it, and build it out -- and our progress in doing so is reflected in a professional web platform. That’s where the world finds you. It’s about making ourselves a global microbrand.

By combining recent sociotech advances that digital nomads take advantage of, like mobile devices, online education and the social web, the Global Niche philosophy supports your effort to make your life work in straitened situations. To live a globally unbounded life.

I call it “creative self enterprise for the global soul” but our audience don’t have to be expats, world travelers or professed globalists to tap into a bigger view of themselves -- and gain access to a wider assortment of opportunities for community, lifestyle and work.

Anyone in a disadvantageous situation -- for instance, recent school graduates who are discovering a thin resume doesn’t get their foot in the door, corporate refugees, stay at home parents and people forced into early retirement -- can also use Global Niche’s “creative self enterprise” approach to build a more empowered life and livelihood.

You've mentioned a new product or service you're rolling out in April. Tell me about it.

It won’t be launching in April, but we’re close!

It’s a content packaging program inspired by the content marketing movement (and once again, a concept borrowed from the publishing world, of a building an author platform -- you don’t have to be a writer, just think of yourself as the author of your life).

That is, letting your content support your aims, whether you’re positioning yourself as an expert in a field to land jobs or funding, or you’ve got a product or service to sell.

Whatever you want to do, you’ll need help and support and part of that is going public with your process, to gather likeminded people to your cause. The kind of people who are interested your stuff, can help you develop your plan, the kind of people who will form the basis of your network.

Many of us have generated a lot of content in our lives which is not actively working for us. Hobbies we’ve poured ourselves into. Independent research we’ve done (and no one around us thought was a good use of our time!). Things we alone are very knowledgeable about. The older we are, the more boxes of stuff we’ve got that we’ve never used for anything. Photos that haven’t seen the light of day. Artwork in the basement. Things we may consider failures.

I imagine many of us are sitting on a mountain of it, at the same time wondering how we’re going to make ends meet, or finally leave this job we hate. Or actualize that dream we’ve always had. But if we consider that earlier output not as failure or a waste of time, but instead a chain of events that make us who we are today, then we start to get an idea of the arc of our lives and how what we’ve done in the past can help us get where we want to go in the future.

At Global Niche we’ve created a 6 week group program to help you wrap your arms around your content and link it with your goals. We’ll also be releasing a self-study guide.

Describe a typical day for Anastasia Ashman these days.

After breakfast with my husband, we both settle down to work. We’re on the dining table with our double monitors at the moment.

I’ll scan my emails, which I have almost down to nothing by judicious pruning of subscriptions and automatic filing rules.

If I receive things that aren’t personal, I’ll adjust my email rules to make sure I don’t see that kind of correspondence again. I’ll peruse, bookmark and participate on my Twitter account (my favorite social media platform to swim in deep, intellectual waters. I’ve been a top ten user in Istanbul in 2009, top 20 women entrepreneurs according to Forbes.com in 2010, and this year a top 50 follow according to another business personality).

I’ll have a Skype call or two with people in other time zones about collaborations or a Webex call with a TEDx Women Entrepreneurs group in Silicon Valley (we’re creating a pitching support group after TEDxBayArea), and maybe an hour-long Linqto video chat with my Global Niche partner in Istanbul, a guest expert on creativity coaching or women’s leadership like Tara Sophia Mohr along with all the members of our community who also log on for these live monthly events.

Throughout the day I’ll share links relevant to my field and interests and my own work, at multiple Facebook pages, Twitter and Google+. Reading news and other links I’m directed to by my Twitter network.

I’m building out my Pinterest account too, a place to visualize my handful of cultural projects in a fresh light, as well as discover more likeminded people.

I’m going through my research and web bookmarks to find ways to bring more previous work to light and familiarize myself with sources after a hiatus. Most of this is preparation for what’s coming: as this relocation displacement comes to an end, I’m preparing to begin a huge memoir rewrite based a plan devised last fall with my editor and agent.

If I met someone the day before I’ll connect with them on the social media platforms and then throw out their card. No more paper!

What's ahead?

Just further along on the path and projects I have simmering now. Offering life-work solutions for the globality of us, through Global Niche.

Running a transmedia production house for all my cultural entertainment projects like my Byzantine princess art historical soap opera about the forgotten woman builder who spurred an emperor to beat her with the Haghia Sophia, and my Big Fat Greek Wedding meets Meet the Parents tale of culture clash at my Istanbul wedding.

I can see having the staff to enact some of the ideas I’ve had for producing the work of others. For instance, having a stable of illustrators working on digital graphic novels based on unproduced screenplays, that’s an idea whose time has come and with a huge amount of polished writing lying fallow due to the high barriers to entry of the past.

Speaking at storytelling and innovation conferences, producing retreats and summits of my own.

At that point I hope my memoir is released, and optioned for film, so I may be involved in book tours and writing the screenplay, or involved in the production.

Talking To Intel Free Press About Early Adopters Of Tech In Turkey

"Turkey is a very young society, I told reporter Ken Kaplan in an interview for Intel Free Press for his article "Turkey Bets on Tech, Youth to Grow Economy". "One early adopter can get a group or whole family into a new thing almost overnight,"  which drives quick adoption of computers, smartphones and Facebook.

Expatriates Are Experts In Resilience

A few excerpts from interviews I've given and articles I've written:

Being an expatriate, you’re naturally a person in transition.

Your worst days can leave you feeling unmoored and alienated. Your best days bring a sense of your agile nature and the qualities that make you unique from the people who surround you and the people back home.

Working toward an understanding of what it will take for you to feel your best in your environment I think is extremely worthwhile. Your answers perfectly define you and the more closely they are incorporated into your business plans the better chance you have of career success abroad.

After five years in Malaysia and 8.5 in Turkey, I've made the limbo state of expatriatism (not belonging to your surroundings but having to navigate them in culturally appropriate ways AND honor the truth of who you are at the same time) a strength instead of a weakness.

With my career disrupted by international relocations and watching the traditional media business being disrupted by digital and social media, my particular m.o. has evolved into gate jumping. That’s a combination of reaction to obstacles in my environments, and a commitment to not be hindered by “what is”.

Gate jumping can work for expats of all kinds.

Here’s how I do it: Fearlessly operating without borders instead of accepting my off-the-grid, situation-mismatch as a paralyzing disadvantage.

Time zones, language barriers, geographical distances, old-school thinking and collapse in my industries of media and entertainment, these things don't stop me.

Being an early adopter of Twitter, I use it for continuing education like virtually attending conferences and entering high level discussions in my topics of interest, to networking and meeting my peers around the world.

One of the reasons I founded GlobalNiche.net is that I have noticed that the majority of expats disappear when they go abroad rather than come to local and international prominence through their expat lives as I have done.

Even fewer women expats accomplish this in Muslim countries or have managed to raise the voices of multiple other women in a country known for its censorship. See the details of this particular adventure in my piece The Accidental Anthologist.

I don't think any of this is easy to achieve. But I do think it's integral to surviving, and thriving.

+++

Linda Janssen has written a book on this topic called The Emotionally Resilient Expat. Jo Parfitt's Summertime Publishing is releasing it in 2013.

Migrating My 2-Year Old Creative Entrepreneurs Facebook Page & LinkedIn Group To GlobalNiche

After two years, Tara and I are closing our Creative Entrepreneurs Facebook page. Members of this group are scattered all over the globe. We are working in a variety of areas and are hybrids of some sort. We identify with being suspended between multiple worlds and find ourselves challenged by culture, geography, language and time zone. But we believe that limbo state is our secret weapon.

We are looking forward to more discussions about how you turn disadvantages into springboards, and how you flourish in the niche you create for yourself.

What we've been doing here and at our LinkedIn group we've been taking to the next level at our GlobalNiche page for more than six months. Come join us there and keep evolving your creative enterprise...

Our mission at this page and at LinkedIn since 2009 is to aid creative entrepreneurs poised to maximize the benefits of social networks by actively connecting with each other and pooling resources and inspiration.

Creative entrepreneurs tap into their own skills, talents and circumstances to develop work tailor-made to their interests and lifestyle.

Social media provides creative professionals the ability and opportunity to leverage web technologies to build and grow their projects and businesses.

Recommended By Top Expat On Twitter In Telegraph UK

Thanks to former banker, veteran expat and expat coach Evelyn Simpson for recommending me and my GlobalNiche partner as top expats on Twitter to readers of The Telegraph UK.

Simpson suggests following me on Twitter if you're interested in knowing more  "about using technology and creativity to get the lifestyle you want wherever you are."