Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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Good, Great, and Irresistible Marketing Businesses

Filed Under Marketing, Successful Blog | 2 Comments

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When I pay attention to your message… when I watch your commercial, read your ad, listen to your presentation, can you assume that you’ve reached me?

Only if you define reach in the most literal sense.

And trust me, you’re reaching to believe if you believe that attention is synonymous with trust.

Trust isn’t a numbers game. Trust takes time to be established — it always did.

Good, Great, and Irresistible Marketing Businesses

We talk with thousands of people throughout our lives. Now that the social web has amplified the speed and reach of communication, it could be argued that some social folks online “talk with” thousands of people in a week. Certainly many businesses talk with thousands of people in a day. Some corporations easily talk with millions in a day. Still the fact remains that the ability to reach millions with our message means hardly anything if those millions don’t trust the people or place the message is coming from. Communication only helps a business when people trust what we’re saying.

The best form of attraction is built on trust — consistently proving that your business does business even better than any customer might think business would be! Business moves faster and with fewer micro-decisions when we can depend on people we trust. With trust like that customers tell your best true story for you.

Reach out to meet needs is not nearly as powerful building values-based relationships. Values-based relationships aren’t nearly as irresistible as the attraction of being a first trusted resource who consistently surpasses the standard.

Have you found your irresistible offer yet?

Be irresistible.

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

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The Top 7 Ways to Motivate Yourself Even on Mondays!

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 8 Comments

How to Own Every Day

I used to not like mornings. Monday mornings were the worst. I liked them so little that I thought of Sunday as the impending doom … that made my weekends even shorter.

One day it dawned on me that if I lived to be 70 holding on to this feeling about Mondays, I’d have discounted 10 whole years of my life. Ten years — 520 Mondays lost, crashed, and burned — due to a bad attitude. I had to find a way to get and stay motivated. I had to get back my Mondays. I was pretty sure that I didn’t have enough future left to be throwing away 10 years like a fool.

Monday mornings made feel like a giraffe — all gawky and spotted, all sleepy eyed and too tired to chew my food. I needed motivation. But I wasn’t sure I knew how to do it. It would take some experimentation. I got down to it.

Who wants to sleepwalk through life? I had things that needed doing.

The Top 7 Ways to Motivate Yourself Even on Mondays!

Motivation, without it, we move slower. We’re susceptible to distraction and procrastination. Inside a company or working from home, what fuels our success is motivation — that reason, that determination to make something good happen.

I figured out early that it wasn’t such fun to be unmotivated. In fact, it was both stressful and boring. I didn’t like myself much and maybe that is what struck that match that got the home fires burning. Once I made it a quest to motivate myself, the rest was mostly easy. Here are 7 ways I found to motivate yourself even on Mondays!

  1. Feel all of your senses with amazing experiences. Give yourself the luxury of time to enjoy your shower. Wear clothes that feel good on your skin. Drink delicious coffee. Eat lovely food that smells good while you’re fixing it. Look at fabulous colors. Listen to amazing music. It’s hard not to feel alive when you put your whole body into the experience. Don’t just bring your head into the day show up with every cell of you. Let your DNA have a chance to be part of what you’re doing.

    It’s no accident nature puts on such a great show at sunrise – it inspires, invigorates, and motivates human beings. Try to see it. Don’t just look at walls, windshields, and buildings.


  2. Live every day as a quest. Work is work, but a quest is valiant and noble. Don’t just brainstorm, conspire. Let your fingers dance on the keyboard as you type. Smile while you think. Enjoy your food. Don’t just walk, stride — feel the ground beneath your feet. When you stop for a break look at the sky. Dare yourself to find everything easier, faster, more fun, and more meaningful.
  3. Work at your best learning level — your challenge sweet spot. Beak down your challenges to meet your skills set. Challenges that are too easy are boring. Challenges that are too hard cause anxiety. Neither state moves to action. Challenges that fall equally between anxiety and boredom inspire us. They catch our attention and feed our need to grow.
  4. Know that almost any work can be motivating. Whether you’re copying documents or cleaning up after a party, devise a way to put the task in your challenge zone. Time it. Measure it. Set a standard for your personal performance. Turn the work itself into art form. Make it a game.
  5. Get curious and confident. It’s hard to think of a knot as a problem when you curious about what holds it together and confident that you’ll find the way to unravel it. Be alert. Be aware. Notice things. People who notice things know more than people who don’t. Then choose the things you notice energize you. Let them fuel your day. Ask new questions. Rather than asking, “What will I do to fix this problem?” try “How can this situation be a strength?” “How can go with it and end up with a better than what I had in mind?”
  6. Stop listening to the voices in your head. Those voices undermine determination and focus. Tell them you might have needed them once, but you know what you’re doing today. Lock them away and get on with being productive. You know how.
  7. Appreciate your ability to choose to be in a good mood AND appreciate the people who respond to that good mood in good ways! You’ll get energy from doing both. Let it fill you up. Be liberal with your smiles and your thank yous. Give a few extra smiles and thank yous to the folks who try to steal energy from you. Be confident that they’ll enjoy their bad moods even more if you leave them alone.

The trick to motivation is knowing that every bit of it is in our control. Even if we start to go off track, we can go back to number 7 and choose again to be in a good mood. Then start all over at Number 1 … No day is lost until we give it up.

It’s your day. It’s your life. You’ve got 7 ways to own every day.
Why would you spend a minute in unmotivated and boring?

Be irresistible.

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

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How to recognize miracles

Filed Under Guest Writer, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 2 Comments

I blame Charlton Heston.

When I was a little kid, the yearly Easter screening of The Ten Commandments was anticipated in our household for a number of reasons. The first of which was its role as a rite of passage to, if not adulthood, at least Big Kid Status, proved through the ability to stay awake through the entire thing. Alas, for many years, my brothers and I would consistently conk out on the living room floor somewhere around Yul Brenner’s “So let it be written; so let it be done” edict.

We yearned for the year when we could finally last until the second reason: the special effects, chief among them the parting of the Red Sea. THIS was a miracle!! Epic. Sweeping. Monumental. Supernatural. Seeing Chas up there on the rock, serving as the conduit for what God wrought below spoiled me for quite some time where miracles were concerned.

I’m not alone in this misperception, however. Most of the time we need big and flashy, or at least it’s what we’ve come to expect from our miracles. The quiet ones like breathing, flowers blooming or a choice parking spot opening up on a rainy day? Meh.

“Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,” ~ Walt Whitman

Folks who follow my twitter stream will note that I sign off most evenings with #poetry as my #goodnight tweet. One of my favorite poets is Walt Whitman, and this poem is one of the reasons why. The poem lists a number of every day miracles: events, observances and experiences, all of which exist within a confluence of everything: “The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.”

As an example, speaking to the women with children reading this, when you were pregnant, did it seem as though every other woman on the planet was pregnant? This perception grew from your awareness stemming from your own pregnancy. You were attuned to pregnancy and everything that involves bearing a child; hence, you recognized this experience in those who surrounded you.

Same thing with the awareness of miracles. The more you see, the more there are.

“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” ~Albert Einstein

I like this quote. Although it’s a reconstituted version of Whitman’s more poetic observation, Einstein put it pretty succinctly. And it’s true. Which way would you like to live? Which world would you rather inhabit?

“There is no greater miracle than our conscious efforts to become good human beings.” ~ Sri Chinmoy

As I understand Chinmoy’s quote, this is where we internalize and externalize our worlds; we sync the inner and outer environments. Through the symbiotic action of improving ourselves, we improve our environs by default. In so doing, we effect change and provide the catalyst for miracles.

For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that miracles are evidence of the Divine. When we take active steps to nurture and develop our higher selves, are we not engaging the divine within? Taken a step farther, by engaging the divine, are we not giving it the opportunity to flex itself and to manifest itself in our lives?

“I am the miracle.” ~ Budda

You are the miracle. DNA, tRNA and other helix models aside, the fact that you DO exist is, in and of itself, a miracle. Your thoughts, desires, mechanical dexterity and talents are all finely orchestrated cellular wonders. You are a carbon-based life form with sentience, a conscience and an ability to decide what your life is going to be. Every morning you have another 24 hours to make something happen.

“So let it be written…” ah…. you know the rest. What miracles would you like to create in your life?

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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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Thanks to Week 327 SOBs

Filed Under SOB Business, Successful Blog | Leave a Comment

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

Purple SOB Button Original SOB Button Red SOB Button Purple and Blue SOB Button
and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

3 Writing Mistakes that Erode Trust in Your Small Business

Filed Under Successful Blog, Writing | 2 Comments

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Careful or Careless?

In today’s social media-driven society, where more interpersonal interaction takes place on the Internet than ever before, one of the best things a small business can do to steer themselves toward success is develop a strong Internet-based presence. From a functional webpage to well-managed accounts with top social networking sites, consumers need to access and learn about your business from their laptops and smart phones during their busy and often Internet-focused lives.

Your website should be a snapshot of your business, introducing clients and consumers to your brand and influencing them to trust in your services. Because of that, it is imperative that you avoid these common, easy-to-make writing errors that may broadcast your business in the wrong light.

  1. Incorrect or no punctuation. A missing or improperly placed comma can change the entire meaning of a sentence, and over-zealous use of exclamation points may read as campy or unprofessional to your website viewers. Have a member of your team who is well-versed in the rules of punctuation look over any copy before you hit “publish.”
  2. Mixing up homophones. They’re, their, there. Two, too, to. Than, then. Your, you’re. Affect, effect. When typing, especially in a hurry, it can be easy to mix up these homophones and use the wrong one. When you do that, not only does your sentence take on a new meaning, but also, people notice. For many, mixing up those words is the visual equivalent to running nails across a chalkboard.
  3. Writing chunky blocks of text without any visual appeal. Though not a grammatical error, improperly forming paragraphs or not minding the visual structure of a paragraph can be just as irritating for a reader. We tweet in 140 characters, update our statuses in a sentence or two, and skim the book jacket before opening up to the first page: we’re busy, and we want our information quickly. When visiting a business’s website, readers don’t want to read a novel. They want quick, accessible information that gets to the point and tells them what they need to know without searching through blocks of text to get there.

The problem with these errors is that they send the message of carelessness or neglect to your readers. While we’ve all made mistakes, such as misplacing an apostrophe or writing who’s instead of whose, consumers want to bring their business to companies who take care of the details of their brand. It isn’t uncommon for consumers to even leave a webpage after finding a few of these errors.

The subconscious thought process for many consumers is that if the business can’t even proofread their webpage, why should I trust them to give me the best service possible?

To ensure your small business’s website and online content is presenting potential clients and consumers with the best possible image of itself, take care to avoid seemingly small writing mistakes and blunders. People will see how much you care about your presentation as an indicator of how you will care for them if they decide to bring their business to your company.

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Author’s Bio:
Amanda Valenti is a writer and content editor for College.com She also writes and publishes for a variety of other blogs/websites on the topics of traditional campus schools as well as accredited online colleges

Thank you, Amanda.
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Be Irresistible

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

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.
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