Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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

When Anything Is Nothing Next to Something … One Sentence that Will Keep You Stuck

Filed Under Business Life, Strategy, Successful Blog | 8 Comments

People Who Need Help

In my business and though my conference, I meet people and businesses who are looking to move forward. I love helping people be successful. I love building businesses. Some make easy to help them. It’s a pleasure to help them get what they need or want. Some think they they make it easy, but in reality they do not.

One sentence I’ve heard too often lately has made me realize that it has the opposite effect of its intent. The sentence is …

I’ll do anything.

That sentence doesn’t win clients, doesn’t gain partners, doesn’t attract friends of the very best sort.

When Anything Ix Nothing Next to Something

Attraction happens when we know who we are. Whether we’re an organization or an individual, we need to attract people. Nothing attracts like focus. Focus draw others to us in the same way our eyes will follow a shining light curving through the dark.

That focus says they know where they’re going. They’re predictable. They’re productive. They’re positively contributing. Even when they aren’t in our business, we can learn something from them while we’re helping them.

Focus drives people and organizations to know things. You can bet they’ll know what sort of help they need. They’ll also know what values and skills they have to offer. When they ask for assistance, they’ll make it a conversation about working together. You’ll meet on the same side of the table.

People with focus offer something — they offer best of what they’ve got.

Focused people and organizations are easy to work because they come with an offer, a package put together with some thought. They do the work before you meet, which shows a high possibility that they’ll deliver. If the offer doesn’t match perfectly, it’s a place to start.

“I’ll do anything” is nothing next to something.

“I’ll do anything” leaves it to you to decide the offer. It leaves it to you to think up what the package might be and how to construct the relationship. It’s your time and it’s your thought put to work guessing at their values and their skills. Not a good idea. How can you be sure that they will deliver? It’s like saying “Here’s a tool you’ve never seen. Use it for anything you want.” The anything offer is nothing, because you have to decide everything about it for it to work. You do the work of thinking. You take the risk. They’re delegating up.

Turning Anything Into Something Valuable

Anything might only seem like something to the person who is offering it. Anything is nothing if the person getting the offer doesn’t know what to do with it. To turn an anything into a something think it all the way through. Be able to say exactly how your finished work will make what they do

Then you’ve got something valuable — something worth talking about.

Ever taken someone up on an “I’ll do anything” offer. How easy was it to figure out what that anything would be? Would you take the offer again?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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A Barn Raisers Guide: 7 Ways to Leave the Field of Dreams to Build a Thriving Reality

Filed Under Strategy, Successful Blog, The Big Idea | 26 Comments

Field of Dreamers and Barn Raisers

For quite a while, I’ve been working with businesses who have or are preparing to build or expand a web presence or social community. They ask me to help focus their strategy and to help bring people to their communities. They want to attract, impress, and ultimately engage fiercely loyal participants.

If you’ve been online for a while, you’ve probably noticed that a percentage of new arrivals get a key strategic point of community sites out of order. Field of Dreamers are sure if they build their idea their way the people will come. Except the people don’t necessarily see the same thing.

More strategic folks Barn Raisers avoid the risk by building the community as they build the site. They believe that people will help build a powerful idea. Barn Raisers invite collaboration from the people they’ll be serving and so what they build is often a gathering place for people even before it’s fully finished.

A Barn Raisers Guide

Here are 7 ways to leave a field of dreams and get people to help you build a thriving reality.

If you invite folks to be part of a powerful idea, you’ll find that you suddenly have a knack for making spaces where people collect, connect, and start conversations. It might have something to do letting people help form the environments that they’re going to inhabit. It’s like painting a house that we’re going to live in — pride of ownership.

Barn raising has always been a brilliant strategy — building the relationships while you’re building a site.

It takes a little practice. And it takes leadership to let go enough to get the good stuff without getting the chaos. The best results always calls for the best from each of us.

I’m hoping as we build barns we might bring some Field of Dreamers to work with Barn Raisers on a community site. I thought maybe they might like the process. Do you think the two together would have a chance of success?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Social Networking: The Garden Analogy

Filed Under Guest Writer, Marketing, Strategy | 12 Comments

Guest Writer: Todd Jordan

Networking withPurpleConeflowers_by_Liz_Strauss

Do you take your network seriously? How do you keep it and treat it? Is it cared for like a well maintained garden, or is it overrun with half grown connections and weeds? When’s the last time you bothered to nurture and prune it?

Sounds funny at first, but the truth is our social networks are an extension of ourselves. They speak volumes about us and our attitude towards ourselves and others. Like flowers, your contacts can wither and drop off. A once vital connection, bringing you many interesting tidbits or even work, can stop bearing fruit if you don’t pay attention to it.

If the overrun garden sounds like it might be your network, then it’s time to get to work on it. It won’t be pleasant at first, but the work soon pays off.

Yes, the analogy seems silly but these simple steps are no joke. If you can implement these in your networks, you’ll see things begin to change. With the dead weight gone, the rest of your contacts will begin to stand out. Good growth will begin again. You might even find some old friends you’d forgotten. But once things start blooming, don’t forget to keep the pruning sheers handy. A good garden requires consistent tending.

How’s your garden?

The Secret to Making Money Online — or Anywhere!

Filed Under Business Life, Strategy, Successful Blog | 27 Comments

The Secret to Making Money Online — or Anywhere!

Working Plans logo

It works like this, and you don’t need to be famous.

1. If,

you have a product or service
that people with money actually want to buy

2. and . . .

you’re willing to do what it takes you to engage that group’s attention

3. and . . .

you can offer that group irresistible buying opportunities

4. and . . .

for which they are willing to pay more than it costs you to
research, make, build, buy, offer, advertise, sell, serve, and otherwise deliver
what they buy

then,

you will make money.

BONUS:

If you want to make more money:
Follow the above formula with more things they want to buy and more opportunities to buy them.

That’s the secret of how to make money anywhere.

Which step do you see people leave out most frequently?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Lasting Relationships and 15-Second Friends — Are You a Solo in a Social Media World?

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Strategy, Successful Blog | 17 Comments

15 Days, 15 Seconds

relationships button

At dinner last Friday with Beth Kanter, the scholar of social media and tech for nonprofits, used the phrase “a solo in a social media world.” That phrase has stuck with me. I wonder whether social media is changing the relationships I have with my friends?

Beth’s statement came at about the same time that Maki sent me to a study that explains the nature of relationships.

Some friendships are short and fleeting, while others may last years. Although a wide variety of factors go into determining the strength of our relationships, the long-lasting ones seem to share a number of the same characteristics, according to a recent study of a cell phone network.

Lasting relationships have these things in common. The most important of these is reciprocity.

It’s a simple thing. When someone calls, writes, comments, links, or asks for help, do we respond or do we let it ride? Lasting relationships last because we are persistent in nurturing them.

By knowing the characteristics of persistence, the researchers could look at the features of the network for the first 15 days, and predict what the network would look like in the future.

Now we have access to a world of online and offline relationships, but we still only have so much time for reciprocity. Does social networking put us in danger of making vast communities of fast 15-day friends — folks we meet today and hardly know in a year? Is social networking causing us to neglect the reciprocity that made our relationships last?

Social networking offers us access to start and spark incredible new relationships. People connect, relate, and do business, who would otherwise never have met. Together we accomplish, build, create, innovate, solve, fix, and nurture. Some of us even fall in love and get married. Social media can have powerful, important, and lasting effects.

BUT, a 140 character touch within 15 seconds isn’t the same as a conversation within 15 days.

Friday, Rick Wolff said, “Someday, somebody’s REALLY going to plead for help on Twitter. . . . ”

Will that tweet be recognized?

Lasting Relationships in a Social Networking World — is that the new balance we have to find?

I don’t want to be a solo in a social media world.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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