The last couple weeks have been BA-nanas (with Rachel Zoe inflection). In case you’re wondering who she is, she’s a personal stylist with a reality show. I seriously need a stylist. Most days I dress like a boy; in wifebeaters and jeans except with makeup. This is probably weird, I don’t feel productive until I have makeup on my face even if I’m just sitting in front of the computer all day. I like to think that the makeup hides my red eyes from screen fatigue.

So yes, back to the last couple of weeks being crazy. I’ve been working until 4 or 5 am most nights because in between working during the day and consulting, there are the kid errands and events. My body likes to remind me that I need sleep when I can barely keep my eyes open or when I can’t wake up to save my life. Last week, I had early meetings on Monday and Wednesday, with Wednesday ending a with dinner meeting. Two alarm clocks and lots of coffee kept me alert and productive for both meetings.

Good news is the month is starting to wrap-up and the workshop I ran for Social Media Club Phoenix on How to Develop Your Persona and Brand was well-attended. We didn’t announce that people would need to break into groups because we didn’t want to scare them away. In hindsight, we probably should have mentioned the group work. It was a good learning experience to try a format other than a panel discussion and at least everyone was talking to each other. There was also too much content to cover with the worksheets in the time allotted for the group exercise, I have content for at least a 2 hour workshop for online personas. I’ll create separate post with the worksheets attached on How to Develop your Online Persona or Brand.

On the technical front, I’m super-excited my co-founder got the Hand Things Down app approved in iTunes. It is available by invitation only (10 invites with the code “bananas”). This has been a milestone I’ve been looking forward to since we graduated from Founder’s Institute at the end of March. The trouble with reaching milestones in a startup is once you get there, the journey towards another milestone immediately begins.

I finished updating our landing pages to include the upcoming Android app. They are connected to our email campaign software and I’m creating rules to auto-respond based on whether or not someone has an invitation code or if they’ve been invited to Hand Things Down by a friend who is currently using the app.

I sometimes feel like my head might explode with all the things I’ve learned in the last few months. Blending social media with landing page optimization and an email campaign to run a beta has taken some of what I’ve done before and mashed them all together. I’m hoping some of the work in the last couple of weeks will make it easier for us to get the app in to our consumers when it goes public.

This coming Friday, I am hosting a networking event for women entrepreneurs for Women 2.0 and I was up all night to get some of those invites out. I’m nervous about attendance, event planners make everything look so easy!

Alright, it’s about 4:30 am so I need to go to sleep. I have a pile of legal docs I need to read through and send to the lawyers. I will need to work away from the home office, since the kids are on summer vacation and I need every ounce of focus to read legal agreements.

This infographic is an interesting take on how Facebook affects self-esteem. I personally don’t like being Facebook friends with anyone I’m dating or previously dated. I feel that takes the fun out of getting to know each other and certainly speeds the demise of what could have been. If they are busy Facebook or Twitter stalking you then they aren’t really getting to know you, only a portion of yourself you allow the world to see. When you stop dating, should they be privy to the details of your life? What are your thoughts?

Collaboration between All Facebook and Online Dating University

I have had the iPod Touch 4th generation and the Virgin Mobilr MiFi for almost a week. My experiment to turn the iPod Touch into my cell phone has had some challenges which I’ll go into in a separate post.

The first thing I needed to do was to download apps so I can send and receive text messages, my fingers might break off if they miss a single day of vigorous texting or instant messaging.

I’ve had the AT&T iPhone for the last year and I love it for browsing the Internet, texting, & IMing (when it actually gets service). In Arizona there were dead zones in the house that it didn’t even register missed calls. The worst was sitting at lunch with 12 people in Vegas and the only people who could actually talk or text were the ones on Verizon. They had service, while the rest of us watched in envy as our iPhones became iPod Touches before our eyes.

This year, I’ve decided to get a 32 GB iPod Touch and a Virgin Mobile MiFi card to see if I can use this solution for my primary communication.

I received my Virgin Mobile MiFi on Saturday and tested it on Superbowl Sunday. I connected my iPhone, my netbook (HP Mini 1000), my cofounders iPad, and his MacBook. The MiFi just worked after we entered the wifi password into the aforementioned devices. The MiFi gave all of the devices Internet access for about 3.5 hours, it almost lasted to the end of the game and I was a little bit impressed. It was $149 for the Virgin Mobile MiFi card which uses the Sprint network and $40 for unlimited bandwidth. Did I mention there’s no contract? Sweet!!

I just received the iPod Touch in the mail today, I will write or create a video blog of the first 5 apps I downloaded to use it for calls & texting. I will blog about this experiment periodically for the next month.

I attended the Front Runner Alumni Reunion at Infusionsoft in Gilbert, Arizona. The keynote speaker was Clate Mask who is one of the co-founders of Infusionsoft and the co-author of Conquer the Chaos: How to Grow a SUCCESSFUL Small Business without Going Crazy. He talked about the growing pains of a small business and getting caught up in the daily details of doing what you can to make money. While that is a good goal for a small business, sometimes that activity is so distracting that business owners don’t sit back to strategize about how to build a company.

The two main themes he talked about were mindset strategies to achieving a balance and systems strategies to control speed. I am joining a book club with other business owners to discuss this book and see what strategies we can implement to grow our businesses. Clate said in his keynote, to achieve the right mindset, business owners need to invest in emotional capital, disciplined optimism, and entrepreneurial independence. In order not to become consumed, the three systems strategies are to centralize, follow-up, and automate. He also mentioned it’s important to read business books and he goes over techniques of speed reading in Conquer the Chaos since most entrepreneurs think they are too busy to read a book.