Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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

Starting a Low-Cost Business at Home

Filed Under Guest Writer, Successful Blog | 4 Comments

The theme of SOBCon09 is the ROI of Relationships. To underscore the importance of relationships in business and to have a chance to make and celebrate a few while we’re doing that, I’ve opened up this series by successful and outstanding bloggers like you.

Starting a Low-Cost Business at Home
by the writers of Bizymoms.com

An increasing number of people today are opting to work-at-home. This is understandable – especially with the rising costs of living and all the problems associated with the recession. Work-at-home jobs make it possible for people to save hundreds of dollars every year.

It’s obvious that those who work away from home will incur additional expenses in comparison to those who work-at-home. And most of these expenses are incurred on an almost daily basis. This is especially true today; with the rising costs of gas, most people find that the “daily commute” is becoming increasingly expensive. Traveling expenses aren’t the only ones you’re going to incur if you don’t work at home. Consider additional costs such as food and clothing. For those who work away from home five days a week (or more, in some cases), extra costs for food and clothing can mount up.

Some work-at-home jobs, such as writing, can start with near zero investment. The internet is a valuable resource for writers of every genre. If you’ve got good writing abilities and a command of the English language, you can take on a variety of work-at-home writing-jobs that might appeal to you. Having your doubts? Conduct a search online. You’ll see that online, the services of freelance writers are in constant demand.

For more information on freelance-writing and freelance writing jobs, visit:

www.freelancewritinggigs.com

www.freelancewriting.com

www.freelancewrite.about.com

A “rising-trend” is that more and more moms are opting to work-at-home. Most work-at-home jobs are great for busy moms because they allow great time-flexibility. This time-flexibility factor allows mom to be more “available” for their children. Work-at-home moms save a lot of money – especially on day-care expenses!

For more information on work-at-home jobs, visit:

www.entrepreneur.com

www.work-at-home.org

Advancements in technology and the widespread use of the Internet have given hundreds of thousands of people the chance to work-at-home. The truly global use of the Internet has made it an invaluable marketing tool; one that most businesses will want to use. This offers lucrative work-at-home opportunities for people around the world. These work-at-home options will allow people to save hundreds of dollars a year – especially on traveling expenses.

Atya Shakir is Manager of Webmaster Relations. he arranged for this article written by the writers of Bizymoms.com , which has been dedicated to helping women work from home for over 10 years! Visit their interactive message boards, informative articles, help and advice from the Bizymoms’ Home Business Support Team and achieve your own work at home dreams with our home business start up kits.

Register for SOBCon09 NOW!!

Experience the ROI of Relationships

Be There Before the Sale

Filed Under Guest Writer, Marketing, Successful Blog | 6 Comments

The theme of SOBCon09 is the ROI of Relationships. To underscore the importance of relationships in business and to have a chance to make and celebrate a few while we’re doing that, I’ve opened up this series by successful and outstanding bloggers like you.

Be There Before the Sale
by Chris Brogan

Greg Cangialosi is one of the very best salesmen I know. He hasn’t sold the biggest dollar product ever (I think that would be David Bullock). He doesn’t sell thousands of accounts a day. Instead, he gets the title from me because he taught me a powerful sales technique, so powerful that Julien Smith and I wrote about him in our upcoming book, Trust Agents. He taught us to be there before the sale.

Greg was one of the very first confirmed sponsors of PodCamp, long before anyone knew that we’d have an international success story on our hands. When we called Greg, we had never run an event, didn’t really know what sponsors wanted, and had no idea how to communicate professionally about the give-and-take that is event sponsorship. Greg was kind, friendly, and supported our event. He didn’t ask for anything unreasonable in return.

Since that point, I’ve run into Greg at several events. He uses another trust agent move, be one of us, quite often as well, by hanging out at our events, by creating content and contributing to our space. He’s not some company owner; he’s a guy who spends time with us, has drinks with us, and who we know and care about.

The ROI of Relationships

Greg also gets the sales. I am personally a customer. I bought another account for my company. PodCamp co-founder Christopher S. Penn is a customer, and has sold the service to his company as well. Both of us refer Blue Sky Factory to anyone asking about email marketing. We love the service, and it’s cost-effective and all that, but most important to us, we have a relationship with Greg, and his service is the product of record for us with regards to email marketing.

Given Chris’s audience, my audience, the people who will buy Trust Agents, and all the time between now and the end of his business, Greg gets free, passionate advertising all the time from a growing legion of fans. For the price of a few beers here and there, Greg has an army.

If that’s not a return on investment, I don’t know what is.

Chris Brogan blogs at [chrisbrogan.com]. He is president of New Marketing Labs.
His twitter name is: @chrisbrogan

Register for SOBCon09 NOW!!

Hear Chris Brogan speak in person!

When Language Fails to Communicate

Filed Under Business Life, Guest Writer, Successful Blog | 8 Comments

A Guest Post by Christa Miller

I recently had a disturbing experience: a misunderstanding with a dear friend during which I began to wonder if language could be too communicative.

The cop and the writer

I’ve been a professional writer for almost eight years. My friend has been a professional cop for over 25 years. I tease him about his “trust issues.” He teases me about my “big words.” Our misunderstanding centered, of course, on both.

Some of his words had hurt my feelings. My response hurt his. His communication began to resemble police radio traffic: terse, brief. I went in the other direction, apologizing profusely, multiple times, as clearly and yet as eloquently as I could. I wanted to convince him how deeply I felt my regret, how much I wanted to put it behind us and move on.

Still he didn’t budge, and I finally gave up. He did not seem able to trust what I was telling him. So I agreed with him that professional communication was best for the time being, and I too backed off.

Is my word my bond?

Most of us who blog as part of our businesses have some facility for words. We may not write with Liz’ poetry or Chris Brogan’s sensibility or Amber Naslund’s passion, but we trust our own ability to use the written word to communicate most accurately what is on our minds.

So whether writing is one tool in an arsenal of many, or the form of communication we rely on most, the idea that someone can’t trust our words is a reason to stop and evaluate. Why did the words fail? What does it mean? Was there too much of “us” and not enough of “them”? Does a fundamental communication gulf exist that threatens the whole relationship?

In my case, my writing may have been too honest, too desperate in its quest to be taken at face value. It was based on what I have learned: to use words to clarify. I never stopped to think that in my friend’s world, words are used to conceal. In fact, veteran cops will tell you that the longer someone tries to convince you of something, the more likely it is that s/he is lying. Needless to say, this was not the message I wanted to send.

Doing it their way

Not everyone trusts strong written communication, forceful speeches, or social network websites. Marketers know that the key is to find what people do trust, then use the appropriate tool. So too with individuals and words. This is harder than it looks. Writing and analysis are my strengths, but to talk to my friend the cop, I now need to emphasize using the phone and humor—two of my worst weaknesses.

This is a strong friendship, and I’m willing to make room for an opposite style of communication. But where’s the line? How do you decide when to accommodate, and when to cut your losses?

Christa M. Miller writes content and talks about social media at Christa M. Miller. Her twitter name is @christammiller

Register for SOBCon09 NOW!!

Invest, Learn, Grow!

————————————————–

What The Wizard of Oz Taught Me About Business Success

Filed Under Business Life, Guest Writer | 29 Comments

A Guest Post by Amy Derby

As a kid I loved the part of The Wizard of Oz movie where Dorothy’s having the ruby slippers made the guardian of the Emerald City say, “Well that’s a horse of a different color. Come on in!”

The other kids liked the lollipop dance. My mom liked the message that everything Dorothy ever needed had been inside her the whole time. I was fascinated with the ruby slippers, because at five years old I already felt it was important to ponder someday owning that one valuable thing that would make people want to invite me inside their magical world.

Sometimes we allow what we don’t have to define us.

Whether the thing we lack is money or a home or a heart, it’s easy to become so obsessed with what we don’t have that we think getting it will bring us all the happiness in the world. We set out on a path to get there – even if it’s the wrong one — and become determined to reach our goal at any cost. (Sometimes we even have to kill a witch in the process.)

At 18, I bought a bunch of shiny shoes and entered Corporate America. Someone who promised she was a good witch held the glass doors open for me, and I got sucked in. Once inside I quickly woke up to the fact that I didn’t like what that world was made of. Flying monkeys, screechy munchkins, and green ladies who needed houses dropped on their heads gave me nightmares. I had flashbacks of elementary school, where every time someone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, all I could visualize was the yellow brick road and the little man pretending to be a big bad wizard shouting “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

This wasn’t the dream I wanted to live after all.

Someone else’s yellow brick road might look like a promising path, but sometimes it’s just a really long way to get to where you want to go.

That doesn’t mean the path is worthless. I took everything I learned in my scary nightmare land of Corporate America with me to build the business I have today.

Just as I spent hours as a kid glued to the television watching The Wizard of Oz until my mother swore she would give our VCR away to some poor kid in China who didn’t have one, I spent many hours observing the green ladies and flying monkeys of big law firm life. I got to know a lot of different types of folks, and in doing so I made mental notes of everything they had and everything they lacked. I watched the ones who failed and the ones who succeeded — some of them did both — knowing that I wasn’t so fundamentally different from any of them. (After all, they grew up longing for magical shoes too.)

Watching them reinforced a few things The Wizard of Oz taught me:

You’ve gotta have a brain.

Scarecrow: I haven’t got a brain… only straw.
Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven’t got a brain?
Scarecrow: I don’t know… But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t they?

You’ve gotta have heart.

Wizard: As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don’t know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
Tinman: But I still want one.

You’ve gotta have courage.

Wizard to Lion: You, my friend, are a victim of disorganized thinking. You are under the unfortunate impression that just because you run away you have no courage; you’re confusing courage with wisdom.

You’ve gotta have a home.

Dorothy: If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.

And sometimes… it helps to have shiny shoes.

Dorothy: Oh, please! Please, sir! I’ve got to see the Wizard! The Good Witch of the North sent me!
Guardian of the Emerald City Gates: Prove it!
Scarecrow: She’s wearing the ruby slippers she gave her.
Guardian of the Emerald City Gates: Why didn’t you say that in the first place? That’s a horse of a different color! Come on in!

Of course, it also helps to know where you’re going and why you want to get there.

It helps to remember that there’s more than one path, and sometimes the best path is the one you pave yourself. Sometimes everything we need really is inside us the whole time. Other times, the stuff we need is only a friend (or a twit) away.

I left the corporate version of Oz in 2004. I’ve been paving my path since, building a business that helps other folks like me succeed — with the help of an awesome network of folks, many of whom I’m happy to call my friends. I can’t say I’m living happily ever after yet, but I’m a lot closer than I was. Meanwhile, I’ve given away most of the shiny shoes I bought, because I don’t really feel like I need them anymore.

What was your favorite book or movie as a kid? What lessons did it teach you that have helped you succeed?

Amy Derby is a law blog consultant and highly caffeinated social media addict who twitters — @amyderby — more than she sleeps.

7 Ways to Check … Is Blogging Your Dream?

Filed Under Basics, Business Life, Guest Writer, Successful Blog | 15 Comments

A Guest Post by Lisa Newton

For me, the answer to this question is a total, unabashed YES. I live, sleep, and breathe my blog, Travelin’ Local.

1-3 Do You Live, Sleep, Breathe Your Blog?

Live. I live in California, and became a resident two years ago; but I’ve fallen in love with it, the people, its beaches, the cities, the mountains—and so much, much more. However, being in California is only part of what I live for. I also live for my other passion which is photography. Many years ago, I played with a 35mm camera, but four kids, a family, and work interrupted my love of photography. A few months ago, thanks to a Christmas gift, my passion for photography was reactivated.

So what better way to express my two passions than creating my own blog where I am able to feature my deeply personal interpretation of my local neighborhoods, with photos, prose and stories, and research about “all things” California? Thus, Travelin’ Local was born.

Sleep. How does one sleep with their blog? Because I’m thinking about it as soon as I wake up, and right before I go to bed, and even (although it’s only happened twice), when I wake up in the middle of the night—burning with an idea, or thought, which I quickly wrote down on my notebook next to the nightstand, before going back to sleep.

Breathe. I breathe life into my blog, and it gives life back to me. Like yesterday. After working for 10 hours at my “day” job, I arriving home, glanced at the sky, and knew right there right then, that I had to go right back out. I happened to see the one of the most beautiful and stunning sunsets I’ve seen in many, many years. So grabbed my camera and started shooting photo after photo, before the sun quickly set—with one of the pictures featured here. Like a bricklayer who uses bricks to build a wall, I choose words as a wordsmith, instead, to construct a story about the sights and sounds of what I see and experience. And because blogging is an instantaneous and spontaneous endeavor, I immediately wrote this to share my story.

4 - 7 Is Blogging Passion, Connections, Dedication and Goals?

Passion. Don’t confuse passion with unrealistic dreams of grandeur. With our newly wired world, it’s easy to get caught up with things that aren’t realistic. On the other hand from the gems of ideas, do spring captains of finance, information technology, publishing, arts, science, and writing. I have a great family, wonderful friends, and feel good about where I’m at. But my love of blogging has taken me to the next level, just as blogging itself fuels my passion.

Meaningful Connections. Another very important reason my blog is important to me is that it affords me with the ability to meet interesting and inspiring people every day. Lance is a tremendous talent and great person who writes about life with uncanny depth and persuasion of conviction. And with her divine photography; Diane C. takes me right into her “home” with her photo blog of the intricacies and fascinating Arizona desert and habitats; and Henie creates art every day, sharing it with her readers. These are just three examples of the wonderful and talented people that I’ve made friends with at my Travelin’ Local community.

Dedication. Even before I started my blog, I spent quite a bit of time doing my homework by reading other blogs, blogs about blogging, joining communities, fastidiously responding to other’s comments, and enjoying countless hours looking at the huge amount of photography on the Internet. I learned about writing, reading, design, and life.

Setting Goals. I created Travelin’ Local because it’s my passion and inspiration. I did so with a very specific creative and publishing model in mind—I wanted to show and share with the world California; but from my own perspective. But along the way, I literally stumbled upon a “name your dream” contest for photographers and photojournalists, to name their dream job—so for me the decision to participate in it was instantaneous. My dream job is to keep doing what I was already doing—which was Travelin’ Local–but taking it to the next level with more and more content and photojournalistic stories. The chance to win $50,000 didn’t hurt my want for the assignment, either.

I looked at it, and of course — California Dreamin’ was my submission. I entered the contest, aware that I don’t yet know as many people online as I want to, but both in degree and kind requesting votes isn’t considered spam. (Yes, I do read Chris Brogan ……………………….:)

Is Blogging Your Dream? I’ve told you all a lot about myself, along with the where’s, why’s, and when’s of what drives me. So back to the original question posed in the title. My blog is my dream which I made a reality, because I live for it, and it in turn inspires me and others, which, in turn, inspires others and others, creating something that will hopefully be passed on to future generations. If you’re so inclined, please take a look at my contest entry, California Dreamin’. It only takes a few minutes to register. To be considered for the next stage of judging, California Dreamin’ needs to be in the top 20 of all entries. I’d love to get a little blogger help, and I know that Liz’s community would totally understand how to help my dream turn into a reality.

What about you? Do you dream your blog? Is your blog a dream? Do you Dream Big?

Lisa Newton writes content and talks about social media at Travelin’ Local . Her twitter name is @LisaNewton

Register for SOBCon09 NOW!!

A Goal with Action Is a Wish!

————————————————–

« go back — keep looking »