Does Your Business Style Connect or Make People Cringe?

Filed Under Branding, Marketing, Successful Blog | 4 Comments

Get Serious Attention

In Amanda Valenti’s recent guest post here about Common Writing Mistakes, she made many important points that I encourage small businesses to take to heart.

If spelling, grammar, and homophones are not your strong suites, find someone who can edit what you write. It IS worth it because Amanda is absolutely correct – these types of errors will cost you visitors and business.

There is something more serious you must be aware of as well and that is what kind of image you are presenting to the world. Specifically, what you consider acceptable regarding profanity, off-color humor, suggestive images, etc. may be anything but appropriate to your potential customers.

Most people over fifty will know exactly what I mean, but those who are significantly younger may not realize that what is normal to them – whether that is dropping the f-word, cursing God, piercings or tattoos or pink or green hair – may cause many to not take them seriously.

One day I was at my ISP when an intelligent, clean cut young man walked in and asked for a job. He didn’t know anything about computers so there wasn’t anything he could do there; however, I did make some suggestions to assist him in finding work.

He was wearing shorts, sandals, and a backpack but what made me cringe was that he had a ten penny nail in each ear. I explained to him why my immediate reaction was to cringe inside (possibly visibly) and think “ouch, that must hurt”. I suggested he dress as though he was going to work there when inquiring about opens and especially to lose those nails before asking for work.

I ran into him at a local coffee shop later that week. He had found work – and I almost did not recognize him without the nails. While his peers might find that normal, the owners, managers, and customers where you might seek work may not.

That applies to tattoos, hair styles, piercings, what you wear, etc. While I am not saying you should not have your own style, I am suggesting that you consider what is truly important to you and that you ask yourself, is this REALLY me or am I doing this for some other reason.

—-
Author’s Bio:
Gail Gardner writes about why small businesses and bloggers should collaborate to improve the economy and create a better world for all at GrowMap.com (). You can find her on Twitter and other major social media networks as @GrowMap.

Thank you, Gail! You’re irresistible.

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

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Finding the Right Talent Mix For Your Start-Up Enterprise

Filed Under Marketing, Successful Blog, leadership | Leave a Comment

A Mixture of Key Personality Traits

For the entrepreneur, the early months of developing a start-up are some of the most hectic and arduous: you need to secure financing, explore legal limitations, and forecast your financials for the years ahead. You need to take your idea and turn it into a product or a service, along the way keeping a close attention to quality, profitability, and logistics. You may even need to start thinking about your personal financial future; you may want to open an IRA, for example, or conversely consider how much of your funds you can afford to allocate to the venture.

Amidst all of this commotion, moreover, you find yourself in the position to make one of the most important decisions a new business can make – the decision of hiring employees, in the process surrounding yourself with the best talent possible designed to help your start-up grow.

While different businesses and different industries have a wide variety of talent needs, the most successful start-ups usually share several commonalities. They possess drive, motivated individuals. They hire people who are truly passionate about their work. And they assemble a diverse mixture of several key personality traits and personal attributes.

That last point is an oft-overlooked one. Unlike Abraham Lincoln, who assembled a “Team of Rivals” in his Cabinet in order to maximize diversity and individual talents, few entrepreneurs hire their start-up team with such an outlook in mind. Don’t make this mistake if you’re starting a business, or plan to do so in the future. Instead, look to creative a mixture of the most important personality traits and personal attributes necessary to get a new company up and running. I believe that the most important of these are charisma, having a mathematical mind, creativity, and possessing the ability to network. Here’s a quick breakdown:

Charisma: This person can be the face of your start-up and an excellent salesperson.
Mathematical Mind: This person can oversee your budgets and all your financials. A good start-up doesn’t need a full accounting department – just one talented employee.
Creativity: Whatever your product, this person is the one best equipped to turn it from an idea into a reality. They should be incredibly hard-working and driven.
Ability to Network: Along with our charismatic leader, this employee has strong inter-personal skills. However, they operate more behind the scenes and use their connections and networking abilities to market the business and secure investors.

While you certainly may possess one of these traits, don’t lull yourself into thinking that you could do all of them better than a team of specialists can. To this end you want to diversify as you seek quality talent; even if you don’t end up with a team exactly like the one above, insure that a variety of strengths and capabilities are exhibited in your force. Your start-up’s long-term prospects will be much rosier as a result.

—-
Author’s Bio:
Alex S. writes about education and business at theeducationupdate.com

Thank you, Alex!

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

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Seriously, How Credible Can You Be?

Filed Under Marketing, Successful Blog | 8 Comments

You Don’t Even Know My Name

Many years ago, when telemarketers began the annoying practice of interrupting dinner, I decided to change the name on all of my credit cards. Since that day the cards read with two initials and my last name. It’s been fun to receive the “personalized” calls, direct mail, and email that comes to me with a hello that has been chosen just so the sender can’t call me by name.

Then a friend told me how, whenever she is asked to give up her contact information, she customizes her name in such a way that she will know who sold her name to that business spamming her when she never opted in.

Do you think those business count my friend and I when they quote their reach?

Yet,the basis of relationship — inside or outside of business — is credibility.
The offers that succeed are those in which our credibility is at least as big the size of the investment we’re asking.

Buying my information and marketing to me isn’t that different from starting a first conversation with “I think you’re sexy. Will you sleep with me?”
Who knows if you’re a theif, a slasher, or someone with some pernicious disease?

What good is reach if you don’t even know my name? Credibility is what makes the sale, not reach. Reach is not credibility.

How Credible Can You Be?

It’s no longer about only about how far our message can reach. Has it ever been or was that the only measure we could think up then? It’s not even about how many people will receive our message and consume it. Just because I understand what you said, doesn’t mean I’m inclined to do as you ask or even remember the message when 10 minutes have gone.

The question is whether a clear, credible message can travel far and still be believed.

Steven M. R. Covey, who wrote, The Speed of Trust, points to 4 Cores of Credibility — integrity, intent, capability, and results. Together they carry the four reasons we trust ourselves, our friends and the people and companies with whom we choose to work.

Integrity. A guy runs up to you on the beach, opens his coat and says, “Wanna buy a watch?” Your response is likely to be negative. It’s hard to believe that watch is the deal that he says it is. A man of integrity probably wouldn’t choose that form of approach. Integrity is the ultimate of walking your talk. The etymology of integrity is “wholeness, soundness, uncorrupted virtue.” It’s a person’s character who gives “his word,” shakes a hand. makes a promise, and signs a contract. Integrity is the conviction to always choose for your values no matter what people are around you.
Do you show up as the same person everywhere people find you?
Do you live your message with the people you work with and with your customers?
Do you keep promises to yourself, your friends, your family, and your colleagues?
Do you tell the hard truth as easily as you tell your best stories?

How do your actions demonstrate what you believe?
BE what you believe. Stand for something.
Intent. Ever get an email or a request from a friend that sounded as if it was sent just to you, then realized that he or she send the exact words to a whole list of people with a personalized greeting? A situation like that can make us wonder about what his or her someone’s intent. Intent is the reason we do what we do. It’s good intent to understand the power in partnership that is forthright and mutually beneficial. People and companies with good intent build relationships before promoting self-interest. Think of the respect Warren Buffet has earned. He’s a great combination of integrity and intent. Through demonstrations of good intent, Warren Buffet accomplishes many things that benefit others and his own companies.
Do you reflect on what motivates you and how that might work for others?
Do you move yourself outside the center to get a more balanced view of world?
Do you make the success of other people mission critical to our own success?
Do state your true intentions to yourself and to others before you act?

How do you make it easy to see what you’re up to?
Share your plan and your purpose. Focus on mutual benefits.
Capabilities. Think of leaders who inspire. They have knowledge, talent, skills, ethics, attitudes, and identity. It’s not simply that they’re intelligent and visible. They attract us to follow because they are good at what they do. They have means and the confidence to do the job and the way they talk about their capabilities raises everyone on their team.

Do you know your strengths, talents, what comes naturally, and why people follow you?
Do you have the expertise to do what you set out to do?
Does your style attract and encourage relationships and learning?
Do you establish a culture that is open and supportive?

How do you use your abilities to inspire confidence and leadership?
Know what value only you can bring. Do the same for others.
Results. Talent and skills are nothing, if we don’t do, produce, and respond to the right things. People and companies we trust focus on delivering right results that meet the highest expectations. They fulfill their promises — faster, easier, and more meaningfully than anyone might expect. Their record for results precedes them.

Do you show up, make clear decision, and put your best work into all you do?
Do seek out a team of people who are smarter and more experienced than you?
Do you focus on delivering outstanding satisfaction to every customer?
Do you look to consistently raise the bar higher?

How do you make outstanding and successful things happen?
Be engaged. Take responsibility with intent to win.

The difference between reach and credibility is the difference between Handing out flyers to every person who passes on the street and developing relationships with people who who value integrity, shared intent, competent commitment, and consistent performance.

Credibility is trust without fear or worry of the wrong results. Credibility means we don’t have to prepare for consequences because positive outcomes don’t hurt us. Credibility relieves us of the burden of having to build extra safety nets because we know that you’re looking out for our best interests — you’ll still be there if something goes wrong. Can’t say that about the guy on the beach offering to sell us a watch.

Reach is only valuable if it stands on a foundation of credibility.
Seriously, how credible can you be if you bought my information and you don’t even know my name?

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

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The Problem Isn’t Not Knowing What You Want to Do …

Filed Under Business Life, Marketing, Successful Blog | 12 Comments

I was researching in my archives when I came across this post. I thought I’d update it. But it was hours later and I’d almost rewritten it totally. So on that note. I offer you this new, old post — published once, in another form, January 30, 2010.

Do You Have It Backwards

Every day we wake up to the time of our lives.

When life is going well, it’s easy to take the day with a flying start. But that second that the ground starts to freeze over. The bed starts to seem warmer and our feet can get a little cold. That’s when we need to be invested. We need a meaningful reason to get up and make progress.

It takes a strategy to live a life that isn’t just passing time.

Don’t try to rule the climate, but use the opportunities it holds. Enjoy when the sun is warm. Fill your sails when the wind is going your way.
Study the terrain to choose the most efficient, least dangerous roads. Highways weren’t made for bikes. Cars don’t belong on train tracks.
Enlist help and advice from those who have gone before us. Ask the people who’ve been where you’re going.
Employ systems that keep things going without reinventing what works. Maintain what supports you.
Have a mission to reach a vision on the horizon. Decide where you’re going before you go.

The last one is critical to a life strategy.

We live as if at the end of our life, we’ll know …

who we are.
what we’ll do.
where we will end up.

Somehow we have it backwards. We’re supposed to decide those things first. Then we can start down our path.

What’s Most Critical to Living Life?

Strategy is a realistic plan to advance by leveraging opportunity over time. In order to advance you have to know who you are where you’re advancing to.
Like any business, a life with a strategy has a better chance to succeed.

What Other People Don’t Know

If you ask opinions about what you should do, other people will have plenty of them. Don’t wait for other people to tell you. They don’t have to live your life. They won’t lose if you waste time chasing down a future that isn’t yours, and they won’t mind if you give up your life living it for them. Even the most well-meaning people run the risk of giving you advice better suited to them than to you.

Who knows more about you than you? Who ever will? You know what you think, dream, desire, and need. You know what you fear. You know what it would take to move you from here to there. Listen to that inner guidance system that tells you when you’re doing well, you’re learning, you’re doing something well. The one person who has a vested interest in how your life turns out is you.

Vision and mission are critical to living life. They are identity, intention, and direction. Without them, how will you wisely invest your time? It’s a shame to waste a whole life.

How do you know? How do you decide?

Rarely is the problem not knowing where we want to be. It’s admitting that we’ll have to make a commitment to get there.

Decide and Commit

Decide. It matters less what you decide than that YOU decide and that you make a commitment to that decision. Listen to the truth you know about yourself, decide what the purpose of your life will be, and know why that’s meaningful to you. Pick a vision the future that would be the best use of what’s been given you — your talents, your skills, your personality. What should you be doing more of to use them well? What life that would use your skills, the problems you can solve, and the value you have always brought to the world? Decide on a future – a vision — and make it your qiest — your mission — to get there. In other words, choose to be your best self and make a commitment to that.

You can always decide to adjust your decision.

Vision is who we’ll be and where we want to go. Vision is the context that gives each life decision intention, direction, and identity. Mission is the compelling reason that will get us there. Mission makes every minute and every decision worth getting up and investing in. Vision and mission turn living into a meaningful cause worth a life’s campaign.

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere you never intended to be.
If you don’t know why you’re going, you’ll give up when the smallest obstacle appears.
Set your intention on a vision that describes your best identity — down to your DNA.
Put your head, heart, and feet into your mission. Make it a quest. Nothing will stop you.

Every day, every hour, every minute will keep passing whether you know where you’re going or not. Wouldn’t you rather own the hourglass than sit on the sand as ir drops through? You have to live your life. Shouldn’t you be the one who decides what it will be about?

Have you got a strategy to live a life a that isn’t just passing time?

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

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Good, Great, and Irresistible Marketing Businesses

Filed Under Marketing, Successful Blog | 2 Comments

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.

Good marketing businesses know how to reach customers. The marketer shows how the product offers will solve a customer’s problems, how the offers will take care of the customer needs and desires at the right price in satisfying ways. Satisfying solutions at a good price will get people to buy in. Price is an important part of this mix.
Great marketing businesses know how to reach ideal customers and build values-based relationships. They find the people who share the marketers’ values and never make an offer larger than the trust they’ve built. The shared values make it easy for new customers to trust what the marketer says, to see the value in what the business makes, to value products and services that incorporate those values in everything. What we value is always worth more than the price.
Irresistible marketing businesses know how to reach ideal customers, build a values-based relationships and show customers that it is always easy and safe to work with that business. They invite ideal customers into a relationship bigger and better than simply a customer-fan. The business trusts and values customers by involving them in future plans — customers participate in having ideas, building content, sharing products, access to feedback loops that value bad news — and and holding customers in the highest esteem because they help the business thrive. That’s where the deep trust and irresistible attraction comes in.

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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Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You're only a stranger once.

Get Serious Attention

A Mixture of Key Personality Traits

You Don’t Even Know My Name

How Credible Can You Be?

Do You Have It Backwards

What’s Most Critical to Living Life?

What Other People Don’t Know

Decide and Commit

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Good, Great, and Irresistible Marketing Businesses

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