January 31, 2012

Seriously, How Credible Can You Be?

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 7:27 am

You Don’t Even Know My Name

Many years ago, when telemarketers began the annoying practice of interrupting dinner, I decided to change the name on all of my credit cards. Since that day the cards read with two initials and my last name. It’s been fun to receive the “personalized” calls, direct mail, and email that comes to me with a hello that has been chosen just so the sender can’t call me by name.

Then a friend told me how, whenever she is asked to give up her contact information, she customizes her name in such a way that she will know who sold her name to that business spamming her when she never opted in.

Do you think those business count my friend and I when they quote their reach?

Yet,the basis of relationship — inside or outside of business — is credibility.
The offers that succeed are those in which our credibility is at least as big the size of the investment we’re asking.

Buying my information and marketing to me isn’t that different from starting a first conversation with “I think you’re sexy. Will you sleep with me?”
Who knows if you’re a theif, a slasher, or someone with some pernicious disease?

What good is reach if you don’t even know my name? Credibility is what makes the sale, not reach. Reach is not credibility.

How Credible Can You Be?

It’s no longer about only about how far our message can reach. Has it ever been or was that the only measure we could think up then? It’s not even about how many people will receive our message and consume it. Just because I understand what you said, doesn’t mean I’m inclined to do as you ask or even remember the message when 10 minutes have gone.

The question is whether a clear, credible message can travel far and still be believed.

Steven M. R. Covey, who wrote, The Speed of Trust, points to 4 Cores of Credibility — integrity, intent, capability, and results. Together they carry the four reasons we trust ourselves, our friends and the people and companies with whom we choose to work.

Integrity. A guy runs up to you on the beach, opens his coat and says, “Wanna buy a watch?” Your response is likely to be negative. It’s hard to believe that watch is the deal that he says it is. A man of integrity probably wouldn’t choose that form of approach. Integrity is the ultimate of walking your talk. The etymology of integrity is “wholeness, soundness, uncorrupted virtue.” It’s a person’s character who gives “his word,” shakes a hand. makes a promise, and signs a contract. Integrity is the conviction to always choose for your values no matter what people are around you.
Do you show up as the same person everywhere people find you?
Do you live your message with the people you work with and with your customers?
Do you keep promises to yourself, your friends, your family, and your colleagues?
Do you tell the hard truth as easily as you tell your best stories?

How do your actions demonstrate what you believe?
BE what you believe. Stand for something.
Intent. Ever get an email or a request from a friend that sounded as if it was sent just to you, then realized that he or she send the exact words to a whole list of people with a personalized greeting? A situation like that can make us wonder about what his or her someone’s intent. Intent is the reason we do what we do. It’s good intent to understand the power in partnership that is forthright and mutually beneficial. People and companies with good intent build relationships before promoting self-interest. Think of the respect Warren Buffet has earned. He’s a great combination of integrity and intent. Through demonstrations of good intent, Warren Buffet accomplishes many things that benefit others and his own companies.
Do you reflect on what motivates you and how that might work for others?
Do you move yourself outside the center to get a more balanced view of world?
Do you make the success of other people mission critical to our own success?
Do state your true intentions to yourself and to others before you act?

How do you make it easy to see what you’re up to?
Share your plan and your purpose. Focus on mutual benefits.
Capabilities. Think of leaders who inspire. They have knowledge, talent, skills, ethics, attitudes, and identity. It’s not simply that they’re intelligent and visible. They attract us to follow because they are good at what they do. They have means and the confidence to do the job and the way they talk about their capabilities raises everyone on their team.

Do you know your strengths, talents, what comes naturally, and why people follow you?
Do you have the expertise to do what you set out to do?
Does your style attract and encourage relationships and learning?
Do you establish a culture that is open and supportive?

How do you use your abilities to inspire confidence and leadership?
Know what value only you can bring. Do the same for others.
Results. Talent and skills are nothing, if we don’t do, produce, and respond to the right things. People and companies we trust focus on delivering right results that meet the highest expectations. They fulfill their promises — faster, easier, and more meaningfully than anyone might expect. Their record for results precedes them.

Do you show up, make clear decision, and put your best work into all you do?
Do seek out a team of people who are smarter and more experienced than you?
Do you focus on delivering outstanding satisfaction to every customer?
Do you look to consistently raise the bar higher?

How do you make outstanding and successful things happen?
Be engaged. Take responsibility with intent to win.

The difference between reach and credibility is the difference between Handing out flyers to every person who passes on the street and developing relationships with people who who value integrity, shared intent, competent commitment, and consistent performance.

Credibility is trust without fear or worry of the wrong results. Credibility means we don’t have to prepare for consequences because positive outcomes don’t hurt us. Credibility relieves us of the burden of having to build extra safety nets because we know that you’re looking out for our best interests — you’ll still be there if something goes wrong. Can’t say that about the guy on the beach offering to sell us a watch.

Reach is only valuable if it stands on a foundation of credibility.
Seriously, how credible can you be if you bought my information and you don’t even know my name?

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

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Filed under Marketing, Successful Blog | 8 Comments »

January 30, 2012

The Problem Isn’t Not Knowing What You Want to Do …

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 7:21 am

I was researching in my archives when I came across this post. I thought I’d update it. But it was hours later and I’d almost rewritten it totally. So on that note. I offer you this new, old post — published once, in another form, January 30, 2010.

Do You Have It Backwards

Every day we wake up to the time of our lives.

When life is going well, it’s easy to take the day with a flying start. But that second that the ground starts to freeze over. The bed starts to seem warmer and our feet can get a little cold. That’s when we need to be invested. We need a meaningful reason to get up and make progress.

It takes a strategy to live a life that isn’t just passing time.

Don’t try to rule the climate, but use the opportunities it holds. Enjoy when the sun is warm. Fill your sails when the wind is going your way.
Study the terrain to choose the most efficient, least dangerous roads. Highways weren’t made for bikes. Cars don’t belong on train tracks.
Enlist help and advice from those who have gone before us. Ask the people who’ve been where you’re going.
Employ systems that keep things going without reinventing what works. Maintain what supports you.
Have a mission to reach a vision on the horizon. Decide where you’re going before you go.

The last one is critical to a life strategy.

We live as if at the end of our life, we’ll know …

who we are.
what we’ll do.
where we will end up.

Somehow we have it backwards. We’re supposed to decide those things first. Then we can start down our path.

What’s Most Critical to Living Life?

Strategy is a realistic plan to advance by leveraging opportunity over time. In order to advance you have to know who you are where you’re advancing to.
Like any business, a life with a strategy has a better chance to succeed.

What Other People Don’t Know

If you ask opinions about what you should do, other people will have plenty of them. Don’t wait for other people to tell you. They don’t have to live your life. They won’t lose if you waste time chasing down a future that isn’t yours, and they won’t mind if you give up your life living it for them. Even the most well-meaning people run the risk of giving you advice better suited to them than to you.

Who knows more about you than you? Who ever will? You know what you think, dream, desire, and need. You know what you fear. You know what it would take to move you from here to there. Listen to that inner guidance system that tells you when you’re doing well, you’re learning, you’re doing something well. The one person who has a vested interest in how your life turns out is you.

Vision and mission are critical to living life. They are identity, intention, and direction. Without them, how will you wisely invest your time? It’s a shame to waste a whole life.

How do you know? How do you decide?

Rarely is the problem not knowing where we want to be. It’s admitting that we’ll have to make a commitment to get there.

Decide and Commit

Decide. It matters less what you decide than that YOU decide and that you make a commitment to that decision. Listen to the truth you know about yourself, decide what the purpose of your life will be, and know why that’s meaningful to you. Pick a vision the future that would be the best use of what’s been given you — your talents, your skills, your personality. What should you be doing more of to use them well? What life that would use your skills, the problems you can solve, and the value you have always brought to the world? Decide on a future – a vision — and make it your qiest — your mission — to get there. In other words, choose to be your best self and make a commitment to that.

You can always decide to adjust your decision.

Vision is who we’ll be and where we want to go. Vision is the context that gives each life decision intention, direction, and identity. Mission is the compelling reason that will get us there. Mission makes every minute and every decision worth getting up and investing in. Vision and mission turn living into a meaningful cause worth a life’s campaign.

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere you never intended to be.
If you don’t know why you’re going, you’ll give up when the smallest obstacle appears.
Set your intention on a vision that describes your best identity — down to your DNA.
Put your head, heart, and feet into your mission. Make it a quest. Nothing will stop you.

Every day, every hour, every minute will keep passing whether you know where you’re going or not. Wouldn’t you rather own the hourglass than sit on the sand as ir drops through? You have to live your life. Shouldn’t you be the one who decides what it will be about?

Have you got a strategy to live a life a that isn’t just passing time?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Filed under Business Life, Marketing, Successful Blog | 12 Comments »

January 29, 2012

Making wishes a reality

molly wrote this at 3:00 am

Wishes get a bad rep sometimes. Wishing is seen as a dreamy-nonsensical foray into ‘la-la land” and not very practical. “If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,” as the saying goes. Dreamers don’t live in reality. They need to get their heads out of the clouds and snap out of it. Right? Wrong.

Wishes are where the seeds of possibility are sown. A life without wishes would be a colorless, dismal march through a series of mundane, rote tasks en route to a quiet, unassuming death. Without wishes, no expansion would happen, no exploration would occur beyond the Known and the Seen.

That being said, merely wishing doesn’t make anything so.

If wishes are the seeds, they also provide the fuel that propels actions.

“You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.” ~ Richard Bach

There is a significant step between wishing and action, without which you cannot hope to succeed: belief. You must believe that you are capable of attaining your wish. Most of the time, when we first have a wish, we have no way of making it come true immediately. Our wishes are usually outsized and unrealistic compared to our skills and resources we have initially. However, making your wish come true is a process. One of my takeaways from SOBCon11? Believe, then act.

By opening yourself up to possibility, you have changed the nature of your reality. Furthermore, through the combination of wishing and belief, you will have a source of energy that sustains you when your spirits flag and doubt creeps in. Believe, then act. Your options will increase in direct proportion to your actions.

Another central element of making your wishes come true is determining the motivations behind your wish.

“Are you fit company for the person you wish to become?” ~ Unknown

When I was a little kid, I would wish for the dishes to wash themselves. I would wish for a teleporter to materialize at the school so that I didn’t have to walk through the rain to get home. These are “tissue paper wishes” based on immaturity, the desire to escape and are ephemeral, silly exercises in futility.

As you mature, take note of the reasons behind your wishes. Are they selfish ones? Do you wish to better another’s life or experience? What do you ask for? Power? Money? Fame? Why? Having the answers to these questions helps you to make your wishes come true.

We cannot attract anything for which we do not have the capacity to receive.

When we wish for something, we must examine our thoughts and our actions. If they are out of alignment, our desires cannot be fulfilled. From this skewed perspective, we will not recognize the answer to our wish, even if it is wrapped in neon tape and standing before us, covered in blinking lights.

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

Anything that currently exists was once a wish. Take a moment today and jot down some of your wishes. See if there is a pattern. Have any come true? Which ones remain to be granted? What steps can you take today to help bring them to fruition?

——-

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, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | No Comments »

January 28, 2012

Thanks to Week 328 SOBs

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 9:17 am

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

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

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

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

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.

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

Filed under SOB Business, Successful Blog | No Comments »

January 27, 2012

Be Your Best Self, Stupid!

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 7:44 am

The Best Personal Branding

I admit that most ideas of personal branding in the virtual world somewhat disturb me. It’s not the idea of self-promoting that bugs me so much as how most guides talking about “personal branding” give the most obvious solutions that would make even the most interesting man or woman in the world appear safe, humdrum, and perhaps not even human.

Why Personality Matters in the Online Space

When it comes to personal branding, everyone advises to put your best foot forward, be clear, and be brief. These tips are all good and well, but I’ve found that, after reading article after article emphasizing these safe and simple approaches, the result of this advice produces a guarded and uninviting profile.

One of the most underutilized tools in online marketing appears to be having a personality. With everyone focused on putting their best foot forward, online brands are starting to look the same. And if your “online brand” appears as fake, stiff, or scripted as the next, what’s the point of having one anyway?

While employers and clients are definitely interested in people who take their work seriously, they also like to know that they’re dealing with an actual human being. Which is why, for most social networking profiles, it’s good to have a couple candid or conversational bits here and there available for the public eye.

Walking the Line

While it’s great to show some personality in your personal brand, you don’t want to come across like a seven year-old, internet troll, or a menace to society. So what is the right mix of business and personality?

Treat your online actions and interactions as if you are making acquaintance with a friend of a friend. Be friendly, approachable, and interesting without being phony or overeager to make a good impression. Describe yourself naturally. Avoid being too formal or sounding like a press release.

A bit of humor can go a long way. Of course you don’t want to be all jokes (and you definitely don’t want to offend people), but light-hearted language is a natural way to draw people in and even gain their trust. If humor isn’t your specialty, grace, warmth, or measured humility (you still have to appear valuable and competent) may help bring out your personality.

Be your best self, and people will automatically be that much more interested in you.

—-
Author’s Bio:

Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. You can follow her @MarianaAshley.

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

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Filed under Branding, Successful Blog | 3 Comments »

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Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

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

January 31, 2012

You Don’t Even Know My Name

How Credible Can You Be?

January 30, 2012

Do You Have It Backwards

What’s Most Critical to Living Life?

What Other People Don’t Know

Decide and Commit

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

January 29, 2012

January 28, 2012

Want to become an SOB?

January 27, 2012

The Best Personal Branding

Why Personality Matters in the Online Space

Walking the Line

Search

SOBCon 2012 - Register NOW!!

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