Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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

What’s at the Crossroads of Your Skills and Your Most Passionate Challenges

Filed Under Marketing, Strategy, Successful Blog | 13 Comments

Doing What You Love

We’re always hearing that to live the life that we’re meant to live, we should be doing what we love.

Easier said than put into practice.

Sleeping on the beach in Caribbean won’t find most of us getting enough income to keep the life moving forward.

Yet, every one of us has had some experience with success, with that optimal experience when we’re so sure of where we’re going that we know we’re on the right path.


Strategy always starts with our own unique position. What better way to strategize a great life than to start with who you are and what you love?

If we make a connection with where our skills are perfectly matched to the challenges that fit our passions, we’ll find that we’re already loving where we’re going.

What’s at the crossroads of your skills and your most passionate challenges?

I dare you to claim it in the comment box. :)

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Connect to yourself!!

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Extreme Hesitation and Extreme Strategy: Are You Willing to Own Your Life?

Filed Under Business Life, Motivation/Inspiration, Strategy, Successful Blog | 27 Comments

I've been thinking . . .

about hesitation and strategy.

I was painfully shy as a child. If you’ve been there, then you know. Painfully shy is literally painful — it scrapes at your being. You know who you are are, but for some cloudy reason, a wall prevents you. You can’t let the world see you. All you are or all you can be stays tucked away .

It’s what today would be called Extreme Hesitation.

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Yet leaders outgrow those childhood fears and walls, don’t we?
Do we?

I was faced with a situation last winter. What was awful was that — even to me — the question looked so trivial, but it had to do with what I had named “visible authenticity.” They said wear this. I said “no.” They cared more than I did. But we had agreed that I would be dressing to reflect the essence of my personality. “This” wasn’t me.

I felt painfully shy once more … I recognized the conflict, but now I was grown enough to put words to the feeling.

I knew me better than they did. Authenticity was my choice, and choosing for me was my responsibility..

I learned about owning my life.
I think of it as Extreme Strategy.

Choose your own path, but always choose wisely.
Leaders don’t need to follow, nor do they choose the road that will draw the most followers.
They don’t say “yes,” when their hearts and their feet are telling them to say “no.”

Traveling other our path is what makes being shy truly painful.

Leaders don’t hesitate in moving forward.
People who are afraid do.
Leaders don’t look for approval.
They know.
They go where their head, their heart, and their purpose compels them to go.

And people follow.

Because deeply knowing where you’re going is irresistibly attractive.

Authenticity is the key to leadership strategy. Own what you know and find the opportunities. The rest is just learning. We’ve been doing that since we started school.

Are you willing own your life?

I make connections.

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Is Your Strategy About Winning Opportunities?

Filed Under Strategy, Successful Blog | 12 Comments

Strategy

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I’ve been having conversations about strategy and tactics lately. Projects are launching soon and I’m planning for SOBCon2010 — Strategy and Tactics are going to be a big part of the content. That’s sent me on some blissful research and some not so lovely mind searching — realizing I had some strategic work of my own to be doing.

As strategy became my main topic of conversation, I came to the following realizations:

Tactics are interesting. The accomplishments they bring can be thrilling. But the bigger picture that a strategic mission lays out is powerful and amazing thinking.

Is Your Strategy About Finding Opportunities?

Strategy isn’t a plan, a decision, a goal, a destination.
It’s a tool for leveraging who you are, what you know, where you are, the environment, and how people think and respond to each other. Strategy is a system for improving your position.

  1. Have a Mission — set an ultimate philosophical, economical, and / or political purpose
  2. Assess Your Position — Look, listen, measure, test your current situation, climate, resources, opportunities
  3. Move Forward Tactically in Increments — Size, choose, and commit to campaigns that reflect obstacles, goals, and prizes
  4. Celebrate and Record Your Winnings — All progress is good.

Strategy is based on the idea that you have a unique place in the world. All opportunities flow from that position. — Gary Gagliardi

All strategy is discovering, choosing, taking advantage of, and winning opportunities.

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Strategic perspective can light unique and unexpected pathways.

Have you looked at your strategic mission lately?
Is your strategy about winning opportunities?
Are you leveraging your unique position?

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to do some strategic thinking?

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How Will You Find Opportunities Today?

Filed Under Strategy, Successful Blog | 13 Comments

Motivate Yourself to See Beyond the Situation?

We can be so task oriented that we miss the opportunity in the person that we’re meeting. Every person represents all of the people that person has ever met or might introduce us to.

That person might be an interviewer or a taxi driver or a server in a restaurant. When you say hello don’t just think about the person think about the opportunity.

If we make a connection with a person, even if that person has nothing that might align with our goals … he or she might represent a connection to someone or something who does.

People are the opportunities

How will you find opportunities today?

I dare you to claim a way in the comment box. :)

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

Buy the eBook. and Register for SOBCon2010 NOW!!

Building A Powerful Personal Developmental Network - Is Your Next Teacher on Twitter?

Filed Under Business Book, Strategy, Successful Blog | 12 Comments

Great Networks and Partners Are Where You Find Them

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Last week was an exciting example of how Twitter has moved seamlessly into our lives. I left for D.C. on Wednesday stayed through Monday. It was the most productive week. Ideas were flying. Plans were being made.

How could so much happen in a city where I’ve hardly spent time?

It started with a quick conversation on Twitter with @SweetSue about her blog. Next thing you know, Susan Kuhn Frost, and I were planning an Association conference over several long phone calls, twitter DMs, and emails.

Susan had reached out to her networks — online and offline. I did to mine too. By the time I arrived in the capitol city. We had a week of meetings planned that made the conference and the content come together in record time. In the process, I think we both taught each other a lot. I’m delighted to have her in my network.

But I bet the story isn’t that unusual.

Building Your Powerful Personal Developmental Network - Is Your Next Teacher on Twitter?

Most of are great at seeing others, but it’s hard to see AND be the one we’re looking at. Whether we’re a company or an individual, it’s easy to find reasons that we made our successes, but that our failures were due to other circumstances. That’s where a powerful personal developmental network can keep things real.

In his new book, “Who’s Got Your Back?” Keith Ferrazzi talks about lifeline friends. They’re the sort of friends who hold us accountable and won’t let us fail. He suggests we build a handful of relationships based on vulnerability, generosity, candor, and accountability that’s reciprocal, constant, and intelligent.

Take Keith’s qualities and roll them into my definition of a Personal Developmental Network — a group of incredible people, individually chosen because of their unique abilities and their genuine interest in your success.

Imagine the power of that. It’s a personal board of directors time ten to the 23rd power!

Every day I touch base with people I trust — like Susan — to check my thinking and to stay accountable. Staying consistently in touch with my partners keeps the projects we’re working strong and able to move with action when opportunity arises.

My partners are a core part of my Personal Developmental Network — intelligent, incredible people, who help me stay on track with my most important goals. Many of my closest advisers are right there in my Twitter stream.

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Building A Powerful Personal Developmental Network - Is Your Next Teacher on Twitter?

Success for me, is when my whole life — head and heart — are focused on the same purpose. So my network helps me grow as a human meant to achieve something. I also believe that a network that grows with me will offer priceless depth and support.

To do that, build from the ground up.

1. Start with a foundation of concrete not sand.
– Qualitative Observations: Ask people who know you to describe your strongest traits — those that serve you well and those that get in the way. Make list. Then make a list of the kind of teachers who can teach you.

Use Twitter to ask questions and to find people who know what you’re looking to find out.

On Twitter, you’ll recognize the people who know you best by the way that they receive you. When we’re communicating people who know us, we don’t need to edit our behaviors for fear they’ll be misinterpreted. Explain why you’re asking and offer them more than one way to give you feedback: directly to you via DM, via email, or through an interview by a mutual friend.

– Quantitative Assessment: Check every test, performance appraisal, and personality measure you’ve taken. Ask your twitter friends for others that might offer a fresh view of your online persona. Learn what you can from all of them.

Use Twitter to find friends who have experience working with the tools or tests you choose. You might try a combination of Strengths Finder, the Enneagram, and the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory.

– Personal Reflection: Spend an hour / day for a week thinking about personal and business successes in your life. Look for traits and strategies that show up throw all of them.

2. Lay out a path.
Look three years down the road. Where do you see your best self? If you can’t pick a path, that’s a great place to start.

Pull it all together. Then look for online and offline partners who might help you define and refine what you found.

3. Wisely choose unique and valuable guides.
Choose people you would bet your life success and your reputation on — people who share your standards and your values, and who care enough never to let you fail. Choose people strong enough to tell you when they disagree. A strong network might include:

— a close friend who knows you and your history, both business and personal.
— someone from your business industry who knows you less well
— two or three someones who are from other industries
— two or three someones you respect and admire, but don’t know well

Use Twitter to choose people who can see the “you” people online see.

4. Check your bearings regularly.
Decide how you’ll meet with them. Will you call when you have questions or meet regularly? Will you meet one at a time? Check in with your network by asking, “How’ve I changed that you can see?”

Demand they hold you accountable. Do it by trading ways that you might hold them accountable for something they need to accomplish of their own.

5. Don’t Leave Out Learners.
People who are learning often teach us just by the questions they ask. Invite a learner to join your network to help you on your quest. That will make it easier to be a learner yourself.

When someone teaches you a skill, ask how you might use that skill to help that teacher. Ask questions, listen actively, and be first to offer a favor without strings. People remember sincere curiosity and true generosity. Add vulnerability and accountability and the combination is unstoppable, just as Keith Ferrazzi says.

6. Ask for Help — Communicate. Let your network know when you need help, when you have questions, or even when you need to vent safely. A developmental network that doesn’t know where we are can’t help.

A developmental network is not made from casual friending or among random followers. It’s the people who understand why we’re passionate about our calling. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find the right folks on Twitter and getting to know them well.

Wise teachers show up in all sorts of places.

Watch for and welcome every wise teacher you encounter. Wisdom and experience are a prize. True teachers show themselves by offering advice, expecting nothing in return. Mentors who come your way, offering experience and connections, see something in you. Let them help you discover what that is and what it could be if you let it grow.

Welcome all wise teachers into a Powerful Developmental Network, wherever you find them.

Nobody likes to go it alone, and it’s not a good idea. We need each other for information, insight, and inspiration.

Is your next teacher on Twitter? You never know.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Liz can help you find focus or direction, check out the Work with Liz!! page.

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