05Mar 2026 by Allen Smith

Systemize, Organize and Prioritize!

BI/DW Projects, Business, Featured, Uncategorized
Good ideas about management and productivity often come from unexpected places. One of the most practical lessons I ever learned about getting work done didn’t come from a boardroom or a business school. It came from a manager at a 24/7 truck stop where I worked in the 1990s. Truck stops are controlled chaos. The doors never close, the customers never stop coming, and corporate headquarters is always sending new directives. In that environment, priorities change constantly and problems appear without warning. One evening, while things were particularly hectic, my manager shared a simple framework that has stuck with me ever since: "Systemize. Organize. Prioritize." At the time it helped us survive the chaos of a busy truck stop. Over the years, I’ve found it works just as well in…
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27Apr 2023 by Allen

Digital Re-Branding Guide for Churches

Ministry
With many churches across the country currently re-aligning denominations, this guide will help you in renaming and digitally rebranding your church. When you start this project, you will find the sprawl of digital content across not only your church website but also across the interwebs. I'll use the word church, but this guide will be useful to nonprofits as well. Let's get started. Table of Contents: Name and LogoNew Denomination BrandingChurch WebsiteFinding Social Media AccountsFacebookOther Social MediaGoogle Business EntryPhysical PropertySummary Name and Logo Before starting work across the interweb, be sure your church board had firmly decided on a name, tagline, and logo.  There is nothing more frustrating than building everything only to find out the board wants to change the name or logo.  It saves time and money to…
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02Feb 2023 by Allen

Reimagining Your Brand for a New Vision and Mission

Business, Ministry, Websites
Sometimes we start with a good plan and later get a better plan. That may mean renaming and rebranding your business or non-profit. I've been there with my own business and worked for businesses that went through the process. I'm helping a non-profit through this process now. It takes a lot of planning to do well. Naming and Re-naming In grad school, I was fascinated with naming and wrote a marketing paper about "The Art of Semonemics." I've got it on a 3.5 floppy disk somewhere. Semonemics comes from Greek "Semon" for sign and "nemeon" to appoint. It is the art and science of the creation of company names using marketing factors. In short, the business name itself needs to communicate some of what your business means to the customer.…
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19Dec 2022 by Allen

Great benefits for Non-profits with WordPress

Ministry, Websites
Even though I'm retired, I often find myself helping non-profit organizations set up websites. My recommendation to most of them is to set up a WordPress site. Very few need the demands of more complex sites. The non-profits I help are usually Christian-based, which is not popular in some tech communities and outright targeted in some parts of the world where they operate. Using WordPress is accessible in all languages, stable and very affordable hosting is available. Overall, this allows me to remain useful and focus on work with purpose.Why WordPress? To start, over half of all new websites on the planet now are based on the WordPress platform. That means it is actively supported, has lots of choices for themes, and most commerce platforms provide supported plug-ins. WordPress will…
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01Dec 2021 by Allen

Retire Early, Find Purpose (Part 2)

Featured, Ministry
In Part 1, I talked about retiring early. It is a matter of planning, math, and a little psychology of delayed gratification.  Now, the work of finding your purpose takes some introspective digging with questions like: If you knew you could not fail, what would you do? If money was no object, where would you invest your time and energy? What accomplishment are you most proud of and why?  How or where could you do that again? What is the one thing you cannot NOT do? Each of these questions is a variation on a theme of finding what drives you.  My IT career was right on track but on the WRONG track.  At some point in my IT career, I was re-writing a program I had written several years…
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25Oct 2021 by Allen

Retire early, find purpose in life

Ministry
Part 1 When I retired in my early 50's, people either ask "Aren't you too young?" or "How did you do it?" To the first question, I say you are never too young to retire from one career to find purpose in another. My career was right on track, but it was on the wrong track for where God wanted to lead me. To address the latter question, start by living debt-free and saving like crazy.1. Live under your means. When my wife and I married when I was 30 and still had student loans and bad credit. Then I heard about an author named Larry Burkett who taught Christian Financial Concepts based on the advice of Proverbs and parables of the bible. Later on, Dave Ramsey started teaching similar…
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01May 2021 by Allen

Art of a Graceful Exit

Business
Sooner or later most of us make a decision to leave a company, so leaving with tact and dignity is important for all. Whether we leave due to conflict, better working conditions, better opportunities, or retirement, a little grace can help. I've been employed by several companies and contracted at many more, so here are a few tips on the exit.Giving NoticeAs a professional, always consider two weeks the absolute minimum and be prepared to stay longer if requested. When I gave notice for retirement, I proposed two-weeks but added "I've never retired before." I was asked to stay longer for project meetings, co-leader ramp up, granting access to systems and other hand-off. I'm glad I stayed because I care about the people I worked with and truly want them…
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03Apr 2021 by Allen

2020’s Impact on Habits and Worship

Ministry
"It takes 40 days to build new habits." We've heard that from experts for so long it has become internet truth. Actual studies show it can take from 18 to 254 days to shape habits. Whether you believe 18, 40 or 254 days, we need to recognize that the 2020 year of COVID-19 lock-downs forced churches to adapt new technology to reach people. Those people, in turn were building new online habits for worship and connection. Businesses and churches had to adapt quickly to survive. Parking lot church, outdoor worship, and even huge crowds worshiping on California beaches. Businesses adopted curbside pickup for anything. Medical clinics built drive through testing and mobile shot locations.Meanwhile people, including me, built new habits. I like picking up a hot gourmet meal at my…
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12Mar 2021 by Allen

From Software to Seminary

Featured, Ministry
It started in 1979 with "Hello World." I was a kid learning Basic to program a text based adventure game on a TRS-80 and I was hooked.  I wanted to take a game apart and make it better, so I did.  I learned programming and ended up having a pretty good career in IT, focused on database systems and business intelligence.  Now, 42 years later, it is time for a new adventure. The industry has changed a lot in those years.  Back then we learned programming BASIC by buying magazines at Radio Shack.   The magazines were full of pages of of code for each popular brand of home computer like TSR80, Apple, Commodore 64 and Atari.   The author would then walk through the code and teach how it worked and…
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11Oct 2019 by Allen

Rowing as Teamwork in Action

Featured, Uncategorized
I just completed 12 weeks of rowing with the OU Corporate team 'Row U' which culminated in a 2 minute, 500 meter race. While I did learn a lot about rowing my first crew season, I learned even more about teamwork. The twelve weeks were spent teaching the basics of rowing. For me as a landlubber, that meant starting with terminology like what is 'port' and 'starboard', 'bow' and 'stern', and seating order in the boat. Rowing is more than just arms rowing a boat.   Our coach, Carolyn, helped us each learn and work on our personal rowing technique.   She started with the basics of 'legs, body, arms, arms, body, legs'. Most of the season in a corporate league was spent getting everyone rowing as a team.  That meant starting…
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