Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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May 13, 2012

What have you learned from your children?

molly wrote this at 3:00 am

I can remember distinctly the first few minutes of my oldest daughter’s life. She arrived at 7:04 p.m. after 18 hours of labor and every hour since then has been changed by her arrival. My very first recollection was that I had never felt anything as soft as her skin.

“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.” ~ Rajneesh

I remember also something that I believe has shaped not only her childhood but that of her sisters… I somehow innately grasped and internalized that she was an autonomous Being. …That her choices would be hers and that, although I could shape them by the upbringing and environment that I provided, she would be capable of making her own decisions.

This comprehension of her independence from me has made all the difference in the way I’ve interacted with the three people who have come into my life as my children. Rather than think of them as three extensions of me and proxies of my life experiences, they have given me lessons and made me a better person, and here are just a few:

1. Take ownership of your choices. This can also be framed as “If everyone else ___________ (jumped off the bridge, stayed out past curfew, set fire to their underwear) would you?”

2. Mean what you say. There are fewer mirrors as unflinching as a three year old who takes you at your word. They expect you to walk your talk.

3. Decide what’s really important. Whether a budget item like band camp over a Coach bag or time (like a recital instead of one more meeting squeezed into the end of your day), priorities take on new dimensions when you become a parent.

4. Build efficiencies. When the girls were very little, my closet had three “Emergency Ensembles” hanging on hangers within. Each held a complete outfit, including jewelry in the pocket and shoes to match. When the occasional oversleeping morning hit our household, I could still make sure that we left the house on time.

5. Admit when you are wrong. I am so grateful that my daughters have the perspective and courage to even now point out when I am missing a greater Truth. Ceding ground when faced with a nuance or understanding that I fail to see creates children who trust their gut and who are not afraid to voice opinions.

6. Always be learning. I think I finally understand the saying, “Those who can’t do, teach.” The only way I’ve learned how to be a parent is to teach myself the lessons through my children. The neat part is that I’ve actually turned out to be the student (and that I’m still learning)! I’ve had three very loving, patient teachers who have helped me through the iterations.

What are some of the lessons your children have taught you? What are your thoughts on being a mother? A parent?

Happy Mother’s Day to you all!
——-

Molly Cantrell-Kraig is a woman with drive. Possessing an innate sense of purpose and a pragmatic, solution-based approach to empowering people, she fused these two traits in order to establish Women With Drive Foundation. Based upon its founder’s personal history, Women With Drive Foundation is a means through which Cantrell-Kraig may effect change on both a micro and macro level. By providing women with something as essential as personal transportation in order to transition them from poverty to prosperity, she, through Women With Drive Foundation, seeks to empower women to help them help themselves. Through this action, the individual applicant benefits, as does society as a whole. Follow Molly on twitter as @mckra1g or @WWDr1ve (Women With Drive Foundation) or “Like” them on facebook.

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Filed under Guest Writer, Successful Blog | 3 Comments »


May 12, 2012

Thanks to Week 343 SOBs

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 9:12 am

muddy teal strip A

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

Purple SOB Button Original SOB Button Red SOB Button Purple and Blue SOB Button
and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A


They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

deep purple strip

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss


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May 11, 2012

What Every Small Business Needs In Their Toolkit

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 7:21 am

The Lifeblood of American Economy

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Statistics provided by the U.S. Small Business Administration organization indicate that small businesses in the U.S. make up a staggering 99.7% of all employer firms. The almost 30 million companies of this size provide employment to half of all private sector employees, generating 44% of the total U.S. private payroll in the process. With statistics like these, it’s clear why small businesses are said to be the lifeblood of the American economy.

Despite their contributions to the economy, the sad truth is that a high percentage of small businesses will fail in the first five years of trading, if not the first. Industry professionals have long since speculated on the reasons why this happens with suggestions like insufficient capital, poor credit arrangements and unexpected growth commonplace. If you are just starting out, you’ll be keen to ensure that your venture doesn’t become a statistic. Let’s take a look at three tools the small business owner can call upon to bolster chances of success.

1. Social Networking

A social media presence is of utmost importance to business. A third of respondents to a survey of SMB owners conducted by Zoomerang and GrowBizMedia plan to use social media as a primary means of attracting new customers in 2012. Business Insider puts that figure at more like 75%. Whichever statistic you think is closer to the truth, there’s no getting away from the fact that 98% of the U.S. online audience use social networking. That’s a considerable audience for any small business owner. If you’re wondering where to start, consider these:

Facebook is undoubtedly the leader of the social network pack. With a user base that is rapidly approaching one billion members worldwide, it represents an excellent place to start your venture into social networking for business. It’s free to join and the new Timeline style pages make it easier than ever for businesses to connect directly to customers. Once a user likes your page, any content you post will appear directly in their newsfeed, where they are between 40 and 150 times more likely to consume your targeted branded content.

LinkedIn boasts over 50 million members in the U.S alone. A social networking platform aimed at promoting networks and connections, it is an excellent resource for business. The site also represents an excellent opportunity to find new talent. The Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey 2011 found that 94% who recruit through social networking have successfully hired via the LinkedIn platform. It’s an interesting and viable alternative to using costly recruitment agencies.

Twitter should also be considered. Don’t be put off by the 140 character limit of tweets. Think of it as an opportunity to show your creative side. Blackbox Social Media reports that 67% of people on Twitter follow a brand in comparison to just over 50% on Facebook. If nothing else, Twitter represents a chance for you to promote your business by linking to your other more detailed content.

Cyberlawcentre image: Licensed under Creative Commons for commercial reuse.


2. Cloud Computing

Cloud computing essentially refers to services such as office applications that are delivered over the Internet. In a report commissioned in February 2012, Microsoft reported that a quarter of companies with between two and ten employees are currently using paid cloud services. This figure is expected to triple to 76% within the next three years.

Cloud computing presents a number of attractive benefits to small businesses:

  1. Cost savings on business applications: traditional technology applications and platforms can be costly and complicated for small businesses to adopt and maintain. With cloud computing, there is no need to allocate capital to expenditure to business applications. Services such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps are sold on demand, typically by user. Prices do vary but a few dollars per user per month are typical. Google Apps affords organizations with less than ten users with access to their services for free.
  2. Cost savings on IT infrastructure: the very concept of cloud services mean that business is conducted in the cloud. There is no need for the small business owner to invest in costly dedicated servers, since all of your data will be stored securely on the cloud network. The removal of the need to store employee email in-house can alone represent significant savings in terms of disk storage space on a server.
  3. Collaboration: data stored using this technology remains in the cloud. All of your employees access the same documents and have visibility of any changes immediately. This can significantly reduce mistakes brought about by outdated information and, in turn, improve the service you are able to offer to your customers.

3. Professional Membership

Last, but by no means least, comes membership to a professional organization aimed at helping small business weather the economic climate and succeed. In the U.S. there are many of these organizations so it’s worth devoting some time into researching which of them are best suited to your business. The following organizations are worth checking out.

- U.S. Small Business Administration (http://www.sba.gov)

- National Small Business Association (http://www.nsba.biz/)

- U.S. Chamber of Commerce (http://www.uschamber.com/)

- U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (http://usasbe.org/)

- National Association for the Self-Employed (http://www.nase.org/BenefitsHome.aspx)

- Small Business Benefit Association (http://www.sbba.com/)

- America’s Best Companies (http://www.americasbestcompanies.com/)

Adopting these various tools may not serve as a guarantee that your small business will succeed, but they will certainly go a long way towards helping you avoid some of the most common pitfalls.

—-
Author’s Bio:
Linda Forshaw is a Business Information Systems graduate from Liverpool in the United Kingdom. She is a full-time writer and published author who writes for several sites including Degree Jungle (http://www.degreejungle.com/rankings/best-online-colleges) specializes in social media, technology and entrepreneurship. You can find her on Twitter @seelindaplay

Thank you, Linda!

You’re irresistible!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Filed under Successful Blog, Survival Kit, Tools | No Comments »


May 10, 2012

Reasons I like Successful-blog.com and what Other Bloggers need to learn from Liz

rahil wrote this at 4:04 am

It may look like that I am trying to butter up Liz, but honestly, that’s not the reason I am writing this post. I felt like writing on this topic yesterday; when I was doing some research for one of my clients that required surfing through the blogosphere. After some hours of surfing, I felt utterly and totally aghast by the amount of SE optimization and monetization going on at these blogs. There was an insane focus on the keywords, and some evidently desperate attempts at cashing in on each and every visitor who lands at the blog. The thing is, I’ve always preferred blogs over any other type of websites when it comes to reading, mainly because the quality of content, the variety, and most importantly the personal touch even if it is biased, but sadly, all of these characteristics are vanishing, and blogosphere is getting tainted by all sorts of malpractices.

Thankfully, there are some veteran bloggers like Liz who have managed to avoid being a part of this frenzy. Their blogs continue to educate and at times entertain the readers, instead of serving as bait for people searching at Google, to lure them into clicking on one of those ads.

Following are some reasons why I like Liz blog. Remember that I might be an average writer, but I am a hell of a reader, and if this blog has managed to make me come back and go through the posts every once in a while, there must be something right about this blog and its content. In other words, this post is not just a flatter; I am writing this while hoping that some other bloggers will also go through these points and opt to change their priorities.

Posts are not influenced and drenched with keywords:

One of the worst outcomes of bloggers getting aware of the SE optimization is the obsession with the keywords. I have seen reasonable bloggers turning their blog into a spam fest by trying to write posts targeting some keywords or key phrase. That’s certainly not the case with successful-blog, where the posts are not heavily infused with keywords. A big majority of posts were jotted down solely because the writers (Liz, in particular) felt like writing on the topic, and that is what a blogger should be doing.

Something to take home:

When the bloggers write on a topic that’s close to their heart, chances are that the readers will be able to relate, and there will find many points to take home. A big majority of bloggers are writing on topics which are in demand, even if they don’t know jack about it, or even when they have nothing to add. As a result, the readers can’t help but feel dismayed after reading the posts, which are more like a hodgepodge.

Lessons for All and Sundry:

The blog doesn’t cater to a particular niche, the lessons in most of these posts at successful-blog.com are meant for everybody, from students to Internet Marketers, and small business owners to social media experts. If you are looking to be more successful, and a little more productive, in almost any walk of life, you will surely find a lot of doable advice that actually works. The

No emphasis on Making Money:

How many popular blogs do you see nowadays with the posts having no ads whatsoever? I have seen many bloggers starting with a good intention, developing a thriving community and then losing the plot altogether, and deciding that helping out others is not enough. What follows is a drastic makeover, with the blog transforming from a helpful resource to a money-making machine. It’s quite the opposite at successful-blog.com, so much that sometimes I feel that Liz is letting go some easy bucks by not monetizing it sufficiently well, but maybe that’s the reason this Blog continues to stay unpolluted, serving as one of the very few resorts for a quality-content starved readers like me.

__

Rahil is an Internet Marketer, he shares prweb coupons and g neil coupon code for online businesses. If you are looking to save, you will find these prweb and f neil discounts and coupon codes of use.


Filed under Motivation/Inspiration, Tips | 2 Comments »


May 9, 2012

Is Your Business Pinched at the Pumps?

matt wrote this at 12:58 pm

It isn’t just the everyday consumer that still gets anxious when they pull up to the gas pump these days.

Since reaching $3.94 a gallon in early April, the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded gas has dropped to $3.75 as of early May, according to the AAA national motorists club. Despite prices heading in the right direction, many motorists are still bleeding at the pumps each time they fill up.

That issue also holds true for many small businesses that rely on one mode of transportation or another to remain in business. Whether it is transporting goods, going out on service calls, or having employees like salespeople meet in person with current and potential clients, a large number of companies are seeking ways to trim their gas expenses.

Businesses That Have to Deliver the Goods Feeling the Pain

Some small business owners most feeling the pinch are those such as florists, eateries, cleaning services and more that have to deliver products and services in order to remain profitable. While it might have cost $100 or so for weekly deliveries only a few months back, that expense has easily increased to double or triple that for many businesses across the country.

If high gas prices seem to be more common than rare, that is because both consumers and businesses have had to deal with them more often the last couple of decades.

It was just as recent as 2008, when the cost for a gallon of regular gas ballooned to a national average of $4.11. Even though the recent AAA report indicates prices have been dropping, the summer driving season is right around the corner, meaning they could just as easily rise as quickly as the summer heat.

If your small business has been feeling the pain of the prices at the pump, there are ways to bring the costs down and still meet the needs of your customers. Practices to think about for your business plans include:

As politicians and the oil companies blame one another for high oil prices, it is the consumer, including the business owner that gets caught in the middle.

Photo credit: app.com

Dave Thomas, who writes on subjects such as office equipment and supplies, writes extensively for San Diego-based Business.com.


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