Liz, Author at Successful Blog Page

Has a CFD Experience Cost You Business?

November 28, 2011 by Liz

In 2007, I proposed an adventure on my blog. I invited bloggers to submit five bits of information that would promote their blogs:

the name of the blog
the blog url
the tagline
what makes the blog worth visiting
one bit of advice for new bloggers

and I gave them 2 days to submit the information, clearly stating that the deadline was Friday noon Central and pointing out the clock in the sidebar of my blog.

How hard could it be to gather and email me those five bits of information?

Yet …
82% of the entries came in with information missing.

Which led Small Biz Survival Owner, Becky McCray, and I to describe a new syndrome — CFD: Can’t Follow Directions.

Is CFD Hurting Your Business?

In the case of that blog promotion, perhaps no one was hurt by the fact that if enough information was missing, I didn’t bother to hunt down the sender. That the entry wasn’t included might not have made a difference to their potential blog traffic. We’ll never know.

But I can tell you that it happens regularly that when I’m looking for help on a paying project, the presence of CFD makes a huge difference. Let me explain why …

CFD means that I can’t trust the work. I’m telling you what I need and how I need it delivered, if the business can’t follow directions, then I’m going to get back something other than I requested.
CFD means that things will take more time. When I have to repeat what I need, that second iteration means it takes twice as long to get the work done.
CFD means more cost. Guidelines and directions are meant to make the work easier, faster, and less costly. Whether something was missed because it wasn’t read or because it wasn’t understood, it adds up to corrections or adjustments. Corrections and adjustments cost time and money.
CFD means missed opportunities. What I might have been doing with the time it took to do things over is a huge hidden impact of CFD.

So I’m hugely biased toward people who listen, read directions, and ask questions if they don’t understand for certain what we’re trying to do together. They get my loyalty and my repeat business.

I run from people who show signs of CFD.
CFD not only hurts your business, but it hurts mine too.

Has a CFD experience cost you business?

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

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Thanks to Week 319 SOBs

November 26, 2011 by Liz

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

You are not nuts and other important stuff

November 25, 2011 by Liz

about things I don’t say enough to other people.

Someone today reminded me of a note I wrote in my newsletter not long ago.

I’ve been going through the email replies I’ve sent to people who’ve asked for help over the past 5 years. I’m not surprised to find that, although the people seem of every age, size, background, ability and economic class, the problems they bring to me seem to be the same kind — problems of connecting the space between our heads and our hearts, problems of believing in what we know about ourselves.

And I find some lines repeating. So I share them with you for when you might need them.

You are not nuts.
God is in heaven.
Angels are everywhere.
People are made of the same stuff as stars.
We’re not supposed to have the answers.
Love will draw a circle around you.

You don’t need to worry about drowning tonight.
You can sleep.
We’ll still eat tomorrow.
I love you.

Be you.
You are already irresistible.
Keep your head wired to your heart.

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How I Got from Gratitude to Grace

November 24, 2011 by Liz

about gratitude.

I understand the power of the words, thank you.
I understand them so deeply that as a child I was afraid to say them.
I would watch how some people use them frivolously, I was afraid that people wouldn’t hear how much I meant them.
I was afraid they wouldn’t see in my eyes or hear in my voice that I meant them.
I feel the words, thank you, like a frog hears, deeply from his tiny ears into his lungs.

As I considered Thanksgiving, I thought it’s time I learned more about what powers those words.

I did a search for the etymology of the word, gratitude, and found myself wandering through a world of connections.
Our word gratitude may have from the 15th Century Middle French word, gratitude which means “good will.” If it came from the Latin word gratus which means “thankful, pleasing,” it’s a cousin to the word grace.

Good will.
Thankful.
Pleasing.
Grace.

In some families, grace is a prayer.
In some, it’s a ritual and a tradition.
Some have chosen it to name a child.

But when I saw that word, grace, … it was all of those and more.

Grace …
Immediately my mind heard music, my heart saw this photo, which has been a friend since 2006.

So I went looking for the word, grace, in my own writing.
It appears twice in these ways …

… I wish for my friends to be around me. I wish for the courage to face where I’m going, to know what I know — that I’m unprepared for what I’ll be doing. … Then I breathe. Then I breathe. Then I breathe once more…. I ask permission without words, but through the grace and gentleness of my movement. I ask for faith from sky and angels who are everywhere. I need the wisdom of one who has conquered fear. … Inside the fear is the graceful wisdom I was seeking. —The Rhythm of the Rowing

and

Head and heart together. Head and heart â it took so long to know.
When head and heart come together life is a dance.
Head and heart together . . .
grace. — Head and Heart Together

I wandered back through my life to find a conclusion. I wrote it years ago, but only realized it now.

Thank you is best offered filled with trust — breathing in life without fear.
With grace and gentleness, head and heart come together in gratitude.
That’s how I got from gratitude to grace.

Wishing you your family and friends around you.
May you move in gratitude and grace.

Be irresistible.

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What’s the YOU in What You Do?

November 21, 2011 by Liz

Your Strategy Is Uniquely Yours Alone

I spend most of my days thinking about, reading about, writing about and talking about strategy for individuals, small businesses, and huge corporate brands. When you look closely at what I do, it will soon become apparent that like snowflakes that every strategy is uniquely different and in that way they’re all the same.

True strategy draws from who you are, where you’ve been, what you know, what you’ve experienced, and decisions you’ve made. So even though an individual, a small business, and a huge corporation might all have the same vision, mission, and goals. The opportunities that come to them are as different as who they are and what they know.

A solid brand is like your character. Build on who you are, not on a strategic plan.

It’s a serious risk to invent a brand that isn’t you or the values that your business is built upon. What happens when you do is that the brand becomes a bad facsimile of what you really are. And sooner or later the true you leaks out in some way — you don’t live up to what you invented.

You can’t write my blog post. You can’t give my talk. You can try to copy me, but you’ll always be a copy.
The value in what you do you is your own version of the way you do things.

I can’t be Copyblogger Chris Brogan, Oprah, or even my own mother, but I’m one heck of a Liz Strauss.

The closer we get to understanding who we are and what we value, the more people trust us to show up in ways that we say. They see, feel, and respect that we are living what we’re saying and they know they can trust that. It resonates with others when we ARE who we ARE, not just how we act.

And within us, our businesses and our corporation, the integrity and confidence of know who we are offer rich context that telegraphs itself to anyone who hears any one of us talk or anyone talk about us..

Don’t reinvent yourself. Don’t re-engineer new ways of reaching out.
Reconnect to your values and be what the best version of you is about.
That’s how you’ll attract the people who share those value with you.

It’s the YOU in what you do that makes the brand, the business, and the team work the way it does. No one can compete with that. People can join in, adding to the story and enhancing the mission.

The you in what you do is the ultimate barrier to entry. It attracts opportunity, but defies replication.

Read that sentence again. Information, products and services are all over the world and all over the Internet, but there’s only one YOU. No one can do, see, think or add the difference you make in exactly the same way you do. Anything that isn’t you … isn’t your brand – it’s discounting your true value and values.

That unique YOU is the part that people love, protect, stay loyal to, and bring their friends to experience.

You are the value. You are the difference.

Have you figured out what’s the YOU in what you do?

Be irresistible.

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

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