4 Essential Elements to Deliver Consistently Repeatable Success

Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Marketing, Successful Blog | 4 Comments

Can You Articulate What Makes Success?

Once, at least once in your life, you succeed at something big. You learned to read. You graduated. You built something, won something, proved you could do something well and elegant. You stood up for something believed in. You held a friend’s hand through the night. You were part of a winning team. Your team brought in a project in a way that only your team can.

You know the feeling of succeeding. Everyone does.
But can you articulate what made that success?
Can you repeat it, consistently achieve it, and deliver success with confidence?

4 Essential Elements to Consistently Achieve and Deliver Repeatable Success

Success relies on a four important characteristics to be realized – the right mind, the right heart, the right skills and talents, and the right focus and passion in the right direction. How do we align all of these “rights” in a truly successful combination?

• The right mind – The decided outcome was clear. Success was defined in clear concrete terms. You named it and were determined to claim it.
• The right heart – The currency was trust not fear. The idea that you or your team wouldn’t succeed wasn’t even on the radar. Getting to the goal was just the plan.
• The right skills and talents – The chosen challenge was at the right level. Peak performance comes when the challenge stretches us just enough to keep us from being bored without causing anxiety.You played to your strengths. You took advantage of opportunities.
• The right focus in the right direction – Obstacles, distractions, and roadblocks were irrelevant. When we have our entire focus and passion on the prize, those things that might have sabotaged, undercut, or sidetracked was simply another detail to deal with or ignore on the way to success. If we look back, every roadblock and obstacle to a true success seems like a learning experience, an adventure, or a quest that made the hero’s journey more valuable in our eyes.

Let me say that as clearly as I can. I’m willing to bet that …
Every time you succeeded, just as many obstacles and roadblocks found their way to your path as every time you tried something and left it unfinished.

Those four essential elements of success are all you need to repeat the success that you’ve enjoyed in the past. Everything else — the people, the resources, the money, the business plan, the whatever you might mention — depends on the four that I just named.

We have to know a few things, believe a few things, and take on our path fearlessly. It’s a matter of commitment of head, heart, talent, and focused passion to achievement. Or as my husband just said, “No victory is won by the side that is only willing to fight until it hurt a little bit.”

Which of the four essential elements do you need most to achieve and deliver consistently repeatable success?

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

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Be a Magnet Not a Missionary

Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Marketing, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

When Your Values Are Baked Into Your Value Proposition

At SxSW this year, I enjoyed a deep conversation with Dave Fleet @DaveFleet about the new offer that Terry St. Marie (@Starbucker) and I are launching. I was telling him how we’re applying the SOBCon models and masterminds method to build high-performance leadership influence teams who

• guide their decision making with high loyalty customer values and a high ROI value proposition.
• get to innovative ideas through that balanced customer-company foundation.
• can make that innovation reality through influence — by showing the benefit of doing it to peer employees, senior managers, and customers

Needless to say I was quite passionate. I’ve been working on getting this enterprise offer exactly right for about 3 years.

Then Dave said something like this to me, “So who will be your key market? I would think that with so many companies in Chicago you might never have to leave.”

I said, “My market will be people, like you, who get what I’m saying as quickly as you did.”

Be a Magnet Not a Missionary

What being in an emerging market like social media and building an event like SOBCon has taught me is that I’d rather be a magnet than a missionary.

According to Dictionary.com, a missionary is “a person strongly in favor of a program, set of principles, etc., who attempts to persuade or convert others.” He or she has to educate, evangelize, relay information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs.

A missionary considers every person in a given group or location a possible client and thus, has to turn disinterested folks, nonbelievers, and skeptics into converts. The very nature of disinterested, nonbelieving, and skeptical folks is that they don’t value or trust what the missionary does. They aren’t likely to pay for what they didn’t want, don’t trust, and didn’t value from the start.

The missionary has to offer a new belief system that gives disinterested folks, nonbelievers, and skeptics a reason to want to convert. At the same time that missionary has to establish a relationship of trust and communicate the value of his or her work. If the missionary succeeds, it’s a sale, but that’s only the first battle. Converts don’t always stay converted especially in times of stress. When a crisis occurs or difficult decision crops up, the missionary has to do the conversion work over again.

A magnet has a much easier time. According to the World Dictionary, a magnet is a person or thing that exerts a great attraction. We find people who think in the same ways we do attractive and smart (and those who don’t think as we do are less attractive because they seem to be not so smart or are being difficult.)

When we have an offer we believe in our bones that we can deliver with highest standards to the benefit of the people we serve, the folks who understand their needs and value what we offer will recognize it immediately. No conversion necessary. If you take the magnet metaphor seriously, it’s our unlike poles — our solution to their need — that forms the true bond. However it’s the magnetic field of immediately clear communication, like values, aligned standards and goals that attracts the ones that fit and repels those that don’t.

A magnetic person only shares his or her offer with people he or she respects and trusts. When someone of value joins the conversation it’s easy to mention there’s a new offer and let the other person open the door. Then the conversation isn’t about conversion or education, it’s an invitation. The magnet can learn more about the valued friend’s needs and goals, and the valued friend can learn more about what the offer is. The trust and open communication leads to a variety of connections that might be moving forward on that offer, new introductions and referrals, or entirely new ideas that spark in the moment.

Magnets Win

If you have to convince or convert someone to work with you, you’ll be convincing and converting every time you make a decision. If you have to explain why what you do is valuable and worth the price more than once, move on.

It’s easier, faster, more meaningful to be a magnet. And the people attracted to what you do actually value your work. A magnet starts with a bond of trust that a missionary doesn’t. The client who values and trusts you will value your work and trust your decisions. That’s why the client who doesn’t value and trust you is always more work (and never worth the price of admission no matter where you set it.)

Is your business thinking like a magnet or a missionary?

Be irresistible.

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

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Will you live in fear or in faith?

Filed Under Connecting Dots, Guest Writer, Inside-Out Thinking, Motivation/Inspiration, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, Survival Kit, The Big Idea, leadership | 5 Comments

Faith isn’t faith if you know the outcome. We’ve discussed in previous posts the importance faith has when living an independent life. Whether expressed as comfort with flux; or taking a managed risk, entrepreneurs have to take a leap of faith in order to reach their goals. And, in a brief reference to even last week’s post, it’s a leap that we must each ultimately make alone.

Many times, my point of reference is the movies. When I think of ‘leaps of faith,’ one of my most vivid examples I can think of is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In order to save his father’s life, Indy must recover the Holy Grail by deciphering riddles – clues to avoiding the deadly devices designed to prevent seekers from finding the Grail.

After successfully clearing two devices, Indy finds himself facing a chasm, across which their appears to be no bridge for him to safely cross. Reading from his father’s notes, Indy says to himself, “Last is the breath of God: Only a leap from the lion’s head, shall he prove his worth.” He then steps into nothingness and is rewarded by stepping onto an invisible, narrow span which allows him to cross.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Action. Action begets opportunity. Opportunity begins with taking a step.

Key to independence is taking that first step. The staircase is there; but even if we COULD see each step leading to the doorway at its zenith, we can physically only take one step at a time. Our job is to take the step immediately before us. Our responsibility is to step.

Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.-Gail Devers

This is the hardest part. Another blogger called this time between steps “The Middle.” I truly wish that I could remember which one wrote it for proper attribution. However, it’s true: The Middle is where we are tested.

While we are taking our steps toward our goals, The Middle is the part where our friends and family may doubt our sanity. Leads may not pan out. Financing may dry up. We may even begin to doubt ourselves and our ability to reach our goal. When we are feeling unsure, we must revisit our plans, focus on what it is we hope to achieve and examine our motivations. Once you have had a chance to take this time to review, and all your instincts affirm your actions, press forward.

When you have come to the edge of all light that you know and are about to drop off into the darkness of the unknown, Faith is knowing one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.-Patrick Overton

This is what it all comes down to, doesn’t it? Do you trust yourself? Everyone who lives life on his or her own terms has come to this crossroads. Is it fair? Absolutely. We are each the product of our choices and convictions. Making choices like this one is the price of admission to a full and rewarding life.

I usually refer to this moment as the ‘put up or shut up’ moment. We are called to live out our values. Again, faith is not faith if it’s based on the known, no matter how much we may wish for guarantees. In order to achieve independence, we must step out in faith. When I’m feeling small and more than a little crazy, I am encouraged by the words of a pioneer in her field:

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.-Marie Curie

It is worth it. You are worth it. Decide. And then take that step.