Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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February 15, 2012

Invest or Pay off Debts in Today’s Economy?

matt wrote this at 10:40 am

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While the stock market seems to have settled down, many individuals can’t help but question whether it is best to invest while there are some good stocks available or should they pay off debts, especially credit cards?

Even though there is no set answer, individuals need to realistically look at their own situation to see which financial decision is more prudent for their case.

Issues to Confront

In the event you are weighing which road to travel, you need to determine the larger number, the return on investment or the interest you are currently paying for your credit cards. For those people who are paying greater interest than they could earn, they are advised to pay down their debt first.

When it comes to paying down debts, some financial experts will advise you to place your debts in order, from those charging the largest interest rates to ones charging the least.

On the flip side, others will advise placing them from smallest to biggest, paying off the smallest one first and making at least minimum payments on the others. Some view this as not only getting a debt paid off, but giving a consumer something to feel good about when the debt is removed.

Know the Tax Implications

With tax season here for the next few months, another factor for individuals to consider is what tax implications will befall them.

Individuals should look at whether the interest on their investment is taxable, along with if the interest on their debt is tax-deductible. When investing in items like traditional IRAs and 401 (k) plans, you can decrease your taxable income, so those investments can assist you.

Individuals should also take into consideration that investing is best done when finding returns that significantly top the interest on their debts.

Over time, individuals will be able to pay off high-interest obligations, while likely tracking down save investments that offer a better return on their money as opposed to paying more on their lower-rate debts.

Preparing for the Future

Finally, while credit card and other debts are something you can’t run and hide from, remember that your future financial picture is even more important today, given the questions about the strength of Social Security when you retire down the road.

If you’re able to eliminate high-interest consumer debt, start saving as much as possible. The best place to kick things off is a 401(k). The next best choice is an IRA.

Along with placing money in a retirement account, you will need to have a “rainy day” fund that’s readily available in an emergency so you do not rely on credit cards.

You should put aside enough funds to hold you over for three months if your paycheck suddenly ceased. If you have less-than-steady income, think about putting aside six months of income, potentially through a high-yield savings account or money market fund monthly basis until reaching a desired amount.

As noted earlier, each situation will warrant its own analysis, but paying down debts and investing in your future are both win-win scenarios.

Do the Math

If you’re still not sure about the best avenue to take regarding your financial situation, consider this example:

Let’s say you’re behind $15,000 on a credit card and your savings account contains some $15,000. Throw in a credit card interest rate that is at 10 percent and the bank is compensating you less than 2 percent on your account.

While your first inclination is to pay off the credit card and move that debt behind you, make sure there are no investment opportunities that could arise. Yes, investing in pretty much any product or brand is a risk, but the rewards can be great.

Should you come across an investment option or find some stocks or bonds that are providing good returns, you may think twice about putting all that money towards the debt, rather doing some investing. Perhaps you should do both?

As someone who has had to deal with debt due to a divorce and job layoff, I can tell you from firsthand experience that paying down a debt is a great feeling, even if it takes some time to do it.

In the event you’re still having questions as to which road to take (debt or investments), consider a few questions:

  1. What if the proposed investment does well after you’ve paid off your debt?
  2. What happens if you postpone paying down the debt and put the money towards the investment and the investment tanks? Where does that leave your psyche?
  3. What if you put half the money towards your debt and half towards your investment? Can you live with not fully paying down the debt and continuing to carry a balance?

As you can see, there are a number of roads to travel when deciding on paying down debt or investing those dollars.

Whichever road you head down, map out your plans ahead of time so you don’t get lost.

Dave Thomas, who covers topics such as starting a small business, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.


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February 14, 2012

25 Secrets to Live and Work Intelligently from the Heart

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 7:31 am

Dynamic Tension Is the Art

On Valentine’s Day, 2008, I wrote How to Write Intelligently from the Heart. It explored how to create the dynamic tension between structure and expression that makes our writing live on.

We can think and write. We can craft our sentences to be clever. We can make sure that each part is factually, structurally, grammatically correct. But clever and accurate only go so far in satisfying readers. If we want our writing to resonate long after, our words need to come from the heart.

As I read that post today, it leads me to think about the dynamic tension between head and heart that are part of any successful business and any successful life.

In the same way, our work needs to come from the heart.

How to Live and Work Intelligently from the Heart

We can think and plan life. We can think and plan a business. We can build brilliant business strategy and savvy life design. We can make sure we’re on budget, we manage our time, and delivering high ROI that sees to the needs of work, friends, and family. But savvy and brilliant only go so far. If we want build a lasting business inside a meaningful life we need our head hardwired to our heart.

Here are 25 secrets I’ve learned about living and working intelligently from the heart.

  1. Decide who you want to be and what you’re building. It’s not a process. It’s a decision. We don’t have enough future. See it and be it now.
  2. See it as a quest and a mission. Just having a goal keeps that vision and mission in our head. A quest is noble requires us to invest our heart. /li>
  3. If we don’t believe we’ll get there, We’ll give up as soon as it gets hard. No one else will believe in us either.
  4. When we align our mission with our values, we attract people who share them and want to help. Work and life get faster, simpler, and more meaningful.
  5. When we speak the hard intelligent truth gently from our hearts, we never regret it. When we don’t, we always wish we had.
  6. We can’t love and punish someone, anyone, in the same moment. See with intelligent love and you might be surprised with the response.
  7. Know what’s at the heart of the quest before building the campaign to move it forward. An idea still being formed by a heart won’t survive the plan being built by an intelligent brain. A brain can forget how that plan impacts the people we care about and who care about us.
  8. Make a heartfelt commitment to yourself. That’s how integrity starts. Integrity makes us safe, predictable, and easy to trust. Being trustworthy is intelligent.
  9. Except when a life is threatened, wanting to run fast is a signal to slow down. Knee jerk responses rarely deliver as we expect.
  10. The less time we have for the people we care about, the more that making time to be with them would do us good.
  11. When we want want to hold things tightest is when to let go … Holding something tightly is a sign of fear.
  12. When we most want the light to shine on us is the best time to let someone else go first.
  13. When we want anything we don’t need, it feels better to give something away.
  14. Whenever we feel righteous, we’re wrong. Righteous means angelic, godlike, and saintly. Taking that view is bad from the start.
  15. The universe does not need us to keep it going. The stars do all right without us.
  16. People are made of the same carbon stuff as stars. Even the humblest star shines. We should too.
  17. Everybody cries, but not everybody cares. The best people do both.
  18. We win ourselves when we choose our opinion of ourselves over what we want other people to think.
  19. Gratitude is a giving, gracious attitude given from strength. We never have enough gratitude, but we can be too needy.
  20. Every act of generosity goes both ways.
  21. Everyone wants to look forward to something and needs a safe place to stand. Remembering that can deliver it to us.
  22. Everybody gets lost sometimes, but most of us find our way home. Helping someone who wants to find their way is easy. Helping someone who doesn’t want to move is difficult.
  23. Life is about what things are worth, not what they cost.
  24. To know who we are all that we have to do is look at our friends.
  25. We can’t separate work from life. We’re spending the time of our life when we work. Trying to balance work and life is like trying to balance your head with your body can’t pull them apart.

People who live and work intelligently from the heart share the humanity of who they are. It’s the in the humanity that we connect to them with our minds and with our hearts. They have boundaries to structure their work and their lives but their hearts touch other people. And it shows in the way that their lives and their work are art. You see the intelligence from the heart in the thoughtful unexpected gesture at the moment it’s needed most, in the compassion and forgiveness offered by a human with strong sense of self, in the way they seem to breathe an intelligent heartfelt belief that people are meant to be all they are. Head and heart together make meaning in a way that intelligence alone cannot.


It’s the style, the color, and the light — the playful feeling that took skill and thought to express — that makes this photo more than a heart in a frame.

How do you recognize someone who lives and works intelligently from the heart?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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February 13, 2012

Do You “Get” How Important Your World View Is?

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 7:37 am

What You See Is What You Are

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Once I thought other people had a better view of the world than I ever could …

I suppose that’s reasonable the people around me were worldly, experienced, and smart. I great parents, great teachers, and outstanding friends. When it came to some of my bosses and boyfriends, perhaps I thought ideas through before I bought in.

It was as if he were a prince with insight beyond my own and for a moment I believed in his view of the world.

He always thought that only mountains could be beautiful. I heard him proclaim it. Yes, proclaim is exactly what he did when he spoke of them. He found his own thoughts worthy of public decree. He’d announce that flat lands had their use, but then ask what possible beauty could a man proud as he ever find in a place with flat air?

No matter the metaphor I couldn’t convey the lovely feeling and the wide open space of the grassland without trees only blue skies above it. The green is so green and blue so blue, that the clouds must show off for fear of being thought to be boring.

A sky like this, with no mountain in view, would mean nothing to him.

So today as I look out over the lake as wide as the world, I watch the cloud ballet and think of the adventures, of the characters we might have invented had we been here when we were kids.

I watch the changes, breathing in every minute. I drink in gratitude for a world that is made like this. I’m particularly glad I had the good sense to quit dating that proclaiming brat before I left college. I can’t imagine what a different person I would have become if I’d adopted a world view like his.

No one guy’s view is better, further, or more beautiful than my own.

Do you “get” how important your world view is?
The way you define your world reflects how you define yourself.
In business and in life, what you see is what you get and we slowly become what we look at most.
Surround yourself with colleagues, friends, family — worldmates — who share your view. Fill your life, your heart, and your mind with images and ideas that define what you love and admire.

Don’t take my point of view … “get” your own.

The succcess of your business and your life depend on it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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February 12, 2012

This is the secret to success

molly wrote this at 3:00 am

What is the secret to success? That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it? (BTW, adjusted for inflation, that’s actually closer to the $498,134.81 question). From the dawn of time, people have been trying to figure out how to succeed, and usually in the quickest and most painless way possible. For example, depending on the source cited, Americans spend between $18 and 40 billion (that’s with a B) on diet and weight loss aids. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is playing on Broadway and every day, new digital charlatans pop up on the internet to explain how people can make money over the web while they sleep.

However, shortcuts seldom work and usually backfire.

Real success is systemic, painstaking work that requires diligence, focus and effort. That being said, according to Knowledge Is Power Program founder Dave Levin, there are eight common characteristics found in successful people. There IS a secret after all.

“At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.” ~ Jean Houston

Humor ~ A sense of humor helps in a number of ways, chief among them is the ability to ease tension. Laughter literally breaks down stress hormones in the body and enables people to relax and see things from a new perspective. Humor helps individuals to not only realize the absurd in any given situation but also to not take themselves too seriously.

“Everything in the world we want to do or get done, we must do with and through people.” ~Earl Nightingale

Social intelligence ~ Sometimes generally referred to as “people skills,” social intelligence incorporates many complex and subtle interaction skills while making it appear easy. Being able to interact with, inspire and motivate others is essential to achieving success. No one ever succeeds alone.

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.” ~ Anne Lamott

Hope ~ I had mentioned hope in an earlier blogpost. Hope is the ballast, the base and the pull from an unknown source of grace that keeps us hanging in there when “reality” tells us to give up. Without hope, goals are empty. Hope is linked to promise ~ the promise of what can be, the promise of our dreams. Without the underpinnings of a reason (the seed of hope), none of us have the driver for improving our behavior.

“Love is work made visible.” ~ Kahlin Gibran

Love ~ Love is the highest vibration of excellence that exists. It is so pure, so elemental, that we cannot define it; we can only sense when it is present. Have you ever teared up at the sound of someone’s voice while singing? Had a lump in your throat when witnessing a kindness? That’s love made manifest, and it’s the most galvanizing force in our reality.

“Life is slowly passing us by. Without a genuine sense of enthusiasm, a zest for life, and a lighthearted spirit, we take our problems and obstacles too seriously. People are seen as burdens instead of gifts. Challenges are dreaded instead of seen as opportunities.” ~ Richard Carlson

Zest ~ The spice of life, zest is more than happiness. It is a winsome enthusiasm for the experiences of life, both good and bad, that provides energy for the journey. Zest is also usually “found” as a contrast to whatever is being experienced. Using a food analogy, if oatmeal can be called bland, then a dash of cinnamon is the spicy-sweet zest. So if you are going through a particularly oatmeal-y time in your life, look for the cinnamon. It’s there.

“Two kinds of gratitude: The sudden kind we feel for what we take; the larger kind we feel for what we give.” ~ Edwin Arlington Robinson

Gratitude ~ Possessing and expressing gratitude is a means for keeping the “giving and receiving” channel open and “unclogged.” Awareness of our blessings magnifies them. I included the second half of the gratitude quote because when we give from our abundance and recognize that we give from strength, isn’t that success?

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward.” ~ Amelia Earhart

Grit ~ For me, grit is both a noun and a verb, with one begetting the other. I have a pair of silver leather ballet flats that I wore to Lake Michigan one summer for a film festival. We had visited the beaches while touring lighthouses. That was four years ago, and I STILL have sand in the crevices of those slippers. The “grit” of those grains has persevered and clung to the inside of my shoes and will never be fully eradicated. The tenacity to endure and persist in the pursuit of a goal is elemental to reaching success.

“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage – pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically – to say ‘no’ to other things. And the way to do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside. The enemy of the ‘best’ is often the ‘good.’” ~ Stephen Covey

Self control ~ Of the eight, this is probably the most difficult to attain, but not impossible. What’s interesting is that when we wish to be successful, we’ll keep our word to the external world and people in our networks, because we don’t want to be thought a liar or unreliable. However, we’ll “cut ourselves some slack” because, we rationalize, *we’re* the only ones who can tell that we’re not holding ourselves accountable. When we fail to discipline ourselves, we haven’t built a firm center from which to grow outward. Our facade is simply that: a veneer that won’t hold, ultimately. Through self-control, the seeds of true success are sown, regardless of your field or endeavor.

Which one of these “secrets” have you figured out? When and how did you realize it? Which ones would you like to focus on this year?

——-

Molly Cantrell-Kraig is a woman with drive. Possessing an innate sense of purpose and a pragmatic, solution-based approach to empowering people, she fused these two traits in order to establish Women With Drive Foundation. Based upon its founder’s personal history, Women With Drive Foundation is a means through which Cantrell-Kraig may effect change on both a micro and macro level. By providing women with something as essential as personal transportation in order to transition them from poverty to prosperity, she, through Women With Drive Foundation, seeks to empower women to help them help themselves. Through this action, the individual applicant benefits, as does society as a whole. Follow Molly on twitter as @mckra1g or @WWDr1ve (Women With Drive Foundation) or “Like” them on facebook.

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February 11, 2012

Where to Find Me During Social Media Week Toronto

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 12:22 pm

Thanks for Asking

It started with a question, “Liz, are you coming to Toronto for Social Media Week?”
The question led to a conversation and a few introductions and the next thing you know I’m making reservations.
Yes, I’ll be there!

As it turns out I’ll be there, and there, and there.
Here’s where you’ll find me.

Monday, February 13 at 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Creating Wildfires, Focus like a Sensei, Be Irresistible

Location: MaRS | Event Page
@SeanMoffitt, @SamFiorella and I (@LizStrauss) are coming together for an interactive debate on the myths and realities of Social Media’s impact on the business’ bottom line. We’ll be inviting the audience to participate during this rapid fire and highly interactive session.

Tuesday, February 14 at 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

An Empire Avenue evening with the Irresistible Liz Strauss! #SMW12

Location: The Vault at One King West Toronto, ON M5H 1A1 | Event Page
It’s going to be a small group, a cool venue, and an evening of enlightening conversation, cocktails, snacks and fun!! Come meet the engaging Empire Avenue team, including CEO, Duleepa “just call me Dups” Wijayawardhana and me and let us buy you a drink or two. :)

Thursday, February 16 at 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM – Networking to follow.

Accelerating Small Business Growth in our Economic Times

Location: BMO Bank of Montreal, (Manulife Centre – 55 Bloor St. West)| Event Page
Sean Stanleigh of the Globe and Mail moderates a panel of social media professionals, which includes , Julie Howlett, Account Director, Global Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn Canada and Chris Eben, Partner at The Working Group.

Then, Ian Portsmouth, editor and associate publisher of PROFIT magazine, moderates a second panel discussion with business owners sharing insights on the issues affecting business growth in Canada. Networking to follow.

And Other Places

Who knows where else I might show up?

So if you’re in Toronto next week, come on over to say hello!
Register for an event and let’s talk!

See you there!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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