Let me tell you a “secret”

Shortly after I published the post titled You are not alone out there, I received an email from a reader in Boston asking me to cite an example of a recent business owner who has recently ‘sat by my fire‘. I’ll get to that in a second, but let me first say this:

Successful business owners know that even a single consultation can help them un-clutter ideas for clear direction. But here’s the kicker: Many business owners don’t hire consultants.
They take the “do-it-yourself” route.
And sometimes those who take the “do-it-yourself” route get lucky. Everything works out well.
Often, however, the ending’s a little different.

Successful business owners hire consultants all the time. (That’s the ‘secret’ I’d planned to share).
They appreciate the value of working with experts who help guide them to the most effective approaches.
To these people, consulting is a business investment.

Now, about that business owner who had recently ‘sat by my fire‘ — here’s one: Yuri Arcurs.
Who’s Yuri Arcurs? How much time do I have? Not much? OK:
PDN magazine voted him as one of the top most influential photographers of this decade (see the list here).
– He is the world‘s most successful microstock photographer.
– He recently joined a small group of handpicked photographers officially sponsored by Hasselblad.
He licenses over 10 million individual images per year.
– In addition to thousands of small and medium size companies, his clients also include Time Magazine, MTV, Sony, MSN.com, Microsoft, Canon, Samsung, Hewlett Packard, Tyra Banks Show, Late Night Show, Scientific American, Der Spiegel and many more.

Yuri just launched a brand new online platform for his business. I have been providing my humble input to Yuri and his team about it for some time now. So how did I do? Don’t take my word for it—here’s what Yuri had to say about the experience:

Jenan has worked as an external advisor for the development and userbility testing of peopleimages.com – the world’s highest selling collection of stock images. Jenan has displayed excellent taste, is exceptionally skilled at putting together good feedback, and poses a very up-to-date and in-depth knowledge about what it takes to built an IT project today. I would recommend him any day and am in fact already doing that.

Yuri Arcurs

May 21, 2012