Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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Beach Notes: Being Open to Opportunity

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

One morning recently at the beach we were reminded that in life as in business one needs to be open to opportunities.

As we walked onto the beach we saw the at the waters edge fisherman’s boats and trucks. One of the trucks had other walkers gathering around. As we got closer we realized they were buying fish fresh from the sea, the first time we have seen this happen in 5 years.

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The still live fish were being offered for a ridiculously small sum of $1 a fish. All we needed was a bag and $1 for a fresh fish breakfast!

One bag less but enterprising woman with her newspaper money spread her jacket on the sand in lieu of a bag.

We don’t take money to the beach and missed the opportunity for fresh fish for breakfast.

Now days we keep spare money and bags in the car. Next time the fisherman appear we will be ready.

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Read-Only Web 1.0 Blog: What I Learned Outside the Signal and the Noise

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 18 Comments

The Story

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It started with server downtime, a WP upgrade that rewrote the database, and something that went wonky. It was almost fixed; then it wasn’t. No one could find the problem that caused my home page to want to download a file or why the database decided to allow only one-way communication with my blog.

Everyone who worked on it — WordPress gurus and geniuses, Server sages and savants — said they had never seen anything like it. My husband kept repeating his mantra, “When someone says ‘one in a million’ they are talking about YOU!”

In this case they were talking about MY BLOG.

Perhaps the database had decided it was done with social media. It would talk, but it wouldn’t listen. My blog could fetch information from the database, but it could not send any to it.

I was the proud owner of the singular READ-ONLY WEB 1.0 blog.

Fired by My Blog

I’d been busy preparing for the Blog Potomac and 140conf trip. So much to do before I left … suddenly I couldn’t do anything about any of it.
What future posts I had done were scheduled to run. I wouldn’t be adding any more.

It was as if a snow day, an unexpected vacation was forced on me –except it was the snow day that wouldn’t end. My blog refused to recognize me for more than a week.

What that meant to you was that it looked like I took time off. What that meant to me was that my dashboard didn’t work. I could log in, but every attempt to change, post, edit, or write was returned with a white screen message that said “action unknown.”

I’d been fired by my blog.

A friend asked if I used the time to get on Twitter to push out content.
Is that what I should have done?

I’m an introvert. I actually went to Twitter less. I didn’t feel much like talking about what was going on. An endless stream of support tickets got written to explain the problem. Friends were helping. Hours were invested by so many. Nothing was working. I did client work — I could put that in order before I left town.

DAY FIVE the feeling of being fired by blog started to sink in.

Every morning I logged in and clicked “Edit Post” to see the same no response. I started thinking of the investment my blog represents, what it take be to recreate it — yeah we had a backup, but who trusts that? — I had started to relate to my blog the way I used to relate to my job.

The same friend said, “But did you post on your other blog?”

I didn’t want to start posting over there. It would have been like admitting that this blog wasn’t coming back.

Weird. Huh?

Outside the Signal and the Noise

I decided to ride it out. I wanted to see what would happen if I lived outside of the signal and the noise. It wasn’t a clean experiment because I had uploaded four future scheduled posts. Still I didn’t add any new content for two weeks … I lived that.

Eight thoughts about what I learned …

Though I was traveling and couldn’t comment, the future scheduled posts helped my blog keep moving. I soon snapped back to where it was tracking before it shut me out. Now I just have to show up again when folks stop by to comment.

It’s sort of like starting a new job … I’ve gotten used to like the habit of having time away, still I’m ready, so ready, to be back.

Weird huh?

What would happen if you had ten days locked out from your blog?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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Beach Notes: Nostalgia Trip

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

This long weekend is the focus of a big event held in and around our “twin towns” of Tweed Heads and Coolangatta, here on Australia’s Pacific coast

Wintersun (yes, it’s officially winter here right now) is a nostalgia festival focused on Rock ‘n Roll & cars of the period.

One site declares Wintersun to be Australia’s and "possibly the world’s" biggest Rockabilly and RocknRoll Festival.

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Some streets are lined with bands and some often very skilled dancers, and others with hundreds of lovingly maintained or restored cars on display, mainly from the 50s and 60s. For a couple of nights there is a parade of cars, driven by mature age rockers.

Not everyone goes to the extent of dressing for the era as the women in our photo have done, but many members of the various rock ‘n roll groups who come here en masse are obvious patrons of the stalls along the beach front dedicated to selling the shoes, the special petticoats and skirts, the leather jackets…

We took a day off from the computers, Twitter, Facebook and all that yesterday and spent some very enjoyable hours wandering among the thousands of visitors who descend on this relatively sleepy beachside joint for these few music filled days each year.

Seeing so many people so happy in their deliberate nostalgia was very heart-warming, even if a lot of them would know more about what the door handles on a ‘59 Eldorado look like than what a Twitter handle is.

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Do You Know the Six Stages of a Dysfunctional Project?

Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

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Sometimes it’s nice to do work things on the weekend–to use the free time you have to get a jump on the next week.

Some projects raise the bar to meet our ability to put in extra time. Don’t give up your life to make your work go faster. You could find yourself living less and less and working more and more instead. And in the end, you might end up a wreck rather than feeling like you’ve done something worth accomplishing.

Project problems can seem like one-of-a-kind things — certainly they’re only related to this awful project, this difficult client, this inexperienced team member. But if every project has it’s problems, then something dysfunctional is happening.

The Six Stages of a Dysfunctional Project
1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment to the Innocent
6. Praise and Glory to the Non-Participants.

How do you spot a dysfunctional project on the horizon?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Beach Notes: The Power of Mother Nature

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh


The Power of Mother Nature

There is awesome power in the raging storms

The wild waves and the churning seas

The sideways rain and relentless winds

That have lashed the coast these past few days

We venture out to peek at what

Mother Nature has left in her path

We see magic in the sun rising

Over the white still churning, sea

Then we see the fallen trees,

The debris the storm has left behind

The once sandy beaches now covered in foam.

Flotsam and jetsam.

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

keep looking »