When Is Being Good Not Good for Business?

Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Successful Blog | 20 Comments

Good Isn’t Good Enough

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A good friend of mine is a designer. His ideas are good. His service is good. The artwork on his blog is good and the information is easy to access. Everyone I know thinks he’s an all around good guy.

He’s the guy everyone invites to every event. They ask his advice and solicit his input. His reputation is impeccable. He has a pile of references. Everything about this guy is good, except his business. No one chooses him for their projects.

Could it be that he’s the wrong kind of good? Can being good be not so good for business?

When Is Being Good Not Good for Business?

In a blogosphere of 80 million blogs, being good isn’t enough to get noticed — that’s something folks might not recognize right away, but eventually we all tune in. This conversation is bigger than that. Some folks I know are more than good and it’s that very fact works against them in at least five ways.

  • Good makes some folks think they don’t need to be nice. Having the skills to do a job well doesn’t go far if folks don’t like to work with them.
  • Good makes some folks think that the world will eventually come to them. It’s naive to think that the rest of world has time to find out what we don’t have time to tell them in a compelling way.
  • Good makes some folks focus on perfection. They end up adding quality only they can see. That drives up their costs and lowers their understanding of how clients see their work.
  • Good makes some folks unable to talk about the price of their work. They feel that a true artist or a “good person” shouldn’t ask for money.
  • Good keeps some folks from being great. It’s hard for some folks to take risks when they’ve achieved a place of some stature. Thoughts turn to defending against what might be lost rather than what could be won.

What good is being good if it’s not good for your business? Being centered on those we serve is more fun and less complicated to do. Deciding how to offer a unique value to the people we work with and for makes a whole slew of “good” issues disappear.

In what ways do you think being good can be not so good for business?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Analyze whether you’re getting in your own way. Work with Liz!!

SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!

25 Ways to Love What You Do So That the Money Follows

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 15 Comments

Do What You Love — Love What You Do

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Often I work with service professionals to focus their businesses. We identify their unique value proposition — what they bring that no one else can. In that way, we develop a service that they love offering and their clients love too.

Doing what we love can’t be infatuation. After the first congratulations about our new job, other folks might care, but they have their own work to do. They won’t be paying attention to whether we love what we’re doing. Many will take for granted that we’ll get over that that “love thing” in a week or two. Yeah, we need to keep the love alive on our own.

They say, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” I might suggest that it could work better to say

“If you want the money to follow, do what you love and love every bit of what you do.”

25 Ways to Love What You Do So That the Money Follows

It’s the love that gets us up in the morning. On some days, it takes gut-wrenching love to keep us going. Start each morning with these 25 ways to love what you do, and success with be always in view.

  1. Love your clients and everything they care about, even when they’re unreasonable.

  2. Love thinking things through so that they don’t have to worry at all.

  3. Love the clients who change their mind more often than they change their underwear.

  4. Love promoting your work so that folks can find you.

  5. Love the fact that you’re always learning, mostly by doing things wrong.

  6. Love the challenge of figuring out how to pay the rent.

  7. Love the hours you’re working, and working, and working.

  8. Love the accomplishment that makes your client look like a hero.

  9. Love the calls from people who think you have free time to talk to them.

  10. Love that you solve problems before clients even see them.

  11. Love the clients who offer you a chance to learn.

  12. Love that you can sneak in a nap or a movie break now and then.

  13. Love your successes and your failures.

  14. Love the 13-foot commute to your computer.

  15. Love the folks who love you, but don’t “get” what you’re doing.

  16. Love everyone who offers you a chance to show what you can do.

  17. Love the folks who get paid vacations while you wish for a free minute.

  18. Love the chance to be your own boss working for clients who hire you.

  19. Love the chance to do work for free to build your portfolio.

  20. Love the chance to get intimate with your credit card number.

  21. Love deciding for yourself which clients are not a good match for you.

  22. Love meetings when folks wish they could leave the building with you.

  23. Love the feeling of being slightly out of control.

  24. Love that you’re adding your unique value.

  25. Love going to sleep tired, knowing you’ve been doing what you love.

We all define love and success differently. Yet is seems that success comes more easily when we full-out do what we love and love every part of what we do.

What’s your experience with doing what you love? Has it really been easy for you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz to focus in on what doing you love to do!!
SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!

How to Know If You’ve Lost Track of Your Vision

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 14 Comments

Where Do You Want to Be?

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It’s well-thought business wisdom that we need vision for a business or a career. Knowing where we’re going makes our daily decisions easier, quicker, and more lasting, because we’re building a road to a specific destination. Having a vision for our work is the same as having goal we’re saving our money to enjoy — a vacation or a great retirement.

I’ve not met anyone who disagrees with the wisdom of doing that. Yet, when I ask folks about their vision, most people have to stop, find some long ago thought, and dust it off. Holding that vision in the sunlight, they see how long it’s been set aside. Real-time issues and day-to-day decisions have taken all of their attention.

Many folks have lost track of their vision and don’t realize.

How to Know If You’ve Lost Track of Your Vision

If we don’t keep our business vision in our sights, we lose direction. A business vision is the energy that fuels our decisions, especially when situations get trying, and we’re learning new things under new conditions. With no clear focus to guide us, we start to compromise. Here’s how to know if you’ve lost track of your vision.

  • If you wake up in the morning thinking the day is going to be boring, you’ve probably lost track of where you’re going.
  • If you look at your life in the future and what you see is more of what’s right here, you’re not heading anywhere certain.
  • If you’re watching other folks get places and your response is that could have been mine, you’ve set your dream aside.
  • If you think that having a vision for your business is too [put your word here] for a serious person like you, you’ve given up trying.
  • If you cite the roadblocks and barriers to making your vision a reality and consistently stop there, your vision is just a story.

The road to making a most amazing vision happen is paved with our thoughts, our passion, and our decisions. No outside barrier can stop a person who’s willing to stay fully invested in getting where they want to go. Winners keep their vision in front of them, adjusting and tweaking it to fit reality and their changing skill set. They do the work and stay the course, holding onto the future they see, even when other choices come along.

That’s the purpose of having a vision — to guide us to where we want to go.

Is time to take out your vision and dust it off again or are you on the road to making it happen? Do you know where you’re going?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you need to refocus where you’re going, let’s talk.

Is My ‘Work With’ Page Doing What It’s Supposed to Do?

Filed Under Marketing, Successful Blog | 9 Comments

Work with You or Work for Them?

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Last night, I enjoyed a delightful, long conversation with Shama Hyder from After the Launch. We talked about how her business and mine match up. Shama”s strongly drawn niche is in marketing. She offers service professionals a six-month marketing makeover plan. My background is product, community, and strategy. I help businesses and people find their vision, develop compelling new products and services, and write irresistible offers about them.

During our conversation, we talked about that topic I mention so frequently . . . that you can’t be inside the thinking and outside it at the same time.

Our conversation got me wondering whether my ‘Work with Liz’ page is doing what it’s supposed to do as well as it might.

Is My ‘Work With’ Page Doing What It’s Supposed to Do?

So often I say, “Everything needs to be about THEM — the customer, the reader — not YOU (or in this case, me). It’s time I took a look to make sure that I’m following my own advice.

Section 1: Outstanding and Irresistible

Outstanding and Irresistible
This section is most certainly about the clients I want. It’s a little sparse on words. In the world of needs-benefits selling, this puts forward the needs. The subhead might be stronger if it said, Outstanding and Irresistible Business, because that’s what the three questions are about.

Connector and Performance Manager

Connector and Performance Manager
This section is about the features and benefits of the “product,” which is me. [Each phrase in bold is a feature -- something that is delivered. The words that follow are the benefits that each feature offers the "buyer."] The execution could be more tightly done. The YOU in each benefit phrase is hidden. I need to state it outright as I did in the fourth bullet. This whole section could be a whole lot more YOU.

Connecting All Parts of You

Connecting All Parts of You
This section does what the section above should do. It’s interesting that I added it several days after I wrote the rest of the page. Distance from what I write helps me.

What Folks Have to Say about Working with Liz

What Folks Have to Say about Working with Liz
This is the proof and the call to action. If I don’t ask, people don’t know that we seriously want them to buy what we’re offering. I think this does that clearly enough.

Overall, in most places I seem to be selling the right things. My heart says I could do it more concretely.

What changes do you think would improve things?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

How to Think a Way Out of a Losing Situation

Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 35 Comments

Stuck and Going Nowhere

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Have you done an evaluation of your situation lately? When you think about where you are and were last year, are you gaining ground, losing ground, or standing still?

A small company client was hit hard by the changes that came out of September 11, 2001. Since that time, their business has been stalled or declining. Even they described their situation as “stuck and going nowhere.”

When I started asking about the problem, the answers formed a curious pattern. Reasons they offered included:

  • Their customer base had dwindled.
  • The “no call” law on telemarketers had hurt their sales.
  • Direct mail no longer worked.
  • They couldn’t get funding because they didn’t have connections.

Do you see the pattern? Every cause — every wall, pothole, and barrier — they offered was something outside of them. Other companies had faced the same things and found solutions, but this company was focused on the causes — they only saw what they couldn’t control.

A fine company and some great managers were stuck for 6 years because they got thinking in the wrong direction. They had painted themselves into a losing situation. Their view was that they were unable to fix their problems.

How to Think a Way Out of a Losing Situation

Not a person, not a business, can get to success without a few failures and losses. It’s the downs that build the skills to keep us climbing upward. At the center of winning is the ability to look at a losing situation and think a way out. Here’s how to do that.

  1. Think back to when you were last winning. How long has it been? What about you or your business was different then? Look for the differences between the you or your business then and now.

  2. Think about the hidden payoffs of losing. If you’re truly stuck and can’t see a way out, you must be getting a hidden reward for being where you are. Is that you’re able to lay down responsibility? Is it that people give you attention? Is it that you don’t have to try winning again? Whatever put you in the situation, you’re the reason that you’re still there.

  3. Think away from the center. Get some perspective. You’re not the first or the only to have been there. Thinking you are keeps you focused on the wrong things.

  4. Think yourself out of the fairy tale you’ve bought into. Are you waiting for a knight, a mentor, a patron to fix it? Needing help and waiting for someone to rescue you won’t change where you are. Knights, mentors, and patrons are attracted to people who show signs of winning.

  5. Think about a far off future unchanged. If that doesn’t motivate you to find a new answer, maybe you like where you are.

  6. Think up one small positive action. Then MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Walls, barriers, and potholes don’t stand a chance of holding back a winner.

Can you think your way out of a losing situation?

Of course you can.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!

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