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Who Are the People Who Won’t Let You Fail?

October 9, 2012 by Liz

Influence

Choose People Who Influence You to Succeed

cooltext443794242_influence

At SOBCon NW this year, I started the day with two stories one about a success and another about a fail. They were these:

The Success in the U.K.

Before the Internet, I was charged with building the strategy to turn around a small publishing company that was failing. In that noble quest, I contacted a friend and colleague in the U.K. My friend, Richard, was just what I needed to help me execute my plan. I’d known him and worked with him on multinational products for years. We respected each other’s work. We respected each other’s values. We respected each other.

Richard held sway in the U.K. publishing world. He taught Oxford’s prestigious Brookes Publishing School. He was a member of the community of publishers and shared their respect too. He also looked the part — curly, wiry grey-white hair, ruddy complexion, button down shirt, and patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket. I was American, unknown, and there to offer a different sort of deal.

Richard set up meetings at 18 publishers, introduced me, and came along when we met. He was my credibility, translator, and sounding board. He made it easy for me to layout my Venn Diagram, to say CEOs and SVPs I just met, “Here’s what I see. You publish in this circle. We publish in that circle. In this place the circles overlap. Why don’t we publish together. I can offer you this, and this, and this. What I want in return is that.”

Those meetings were outstandingly successful. We built a business on relationships made that way. Many of the relationships I made on that first trip about 20 years ago still survive today.

I didn’t realize how much Richard and I accomplished in that single trip until the time came that the small publishing company was put up for sale. Another friend and colleague on a team sent to evaluate whether to buy us said, “Do you know what it was like to follow you into the U.K.?” After a moment considering that new thought, I replied that, I’m pretty sure even I wouldn’t have wanted to do that.

The Failure that Followed It

Many years later, I found myself back in the U.K. on what was a similar quest. I was there to make relationships to move my business forward, but I was trying to do it alone. I met Richard for tea. We talked about old times and laughed. We walked the exhibit floor at the London Online event. But this time I was doing something he knew less about and he was far removed from my online world and we’d only reconnected for a short bit.

I was just as competent. I had just as strong an offer as I had years before, though on a smaller scale. But when the time came for me to set up meetings, to say hello, to make an offer, I couldn’t do it. I wandered the exhibit floor talking myself out of talking to anyone for two days.

It was a total deer-in-the-headlights fail.

As is my way, I sat myself down after and considered both events. How could the same person who blew the doors off the publishing world be unable to start a conversation about business?

I realized that on the first trip I’d been talking to those CEOs and SVPs as colleagues and partners and on the second trip I’d been putting everyone in the room on a platform above me.

It’s hard to offer value when you feel smaller — when you put the rest of the world above you.

That’s why we all need a Richard — a person who won’t let us fail.

Who Are the People Who Won’t Let You Fail?

That person who won’t let us fail doesn’t have to do the work for us, doesn’t have to have the network that Richard did. What that person needs is an undying belief in us and fierce determination in seeing us succeed. Setting up the meetings with his colleagues and attending them with me were tactics Richard chose that helped me — no question. But the difference was that he knew what I could do and steered me to play to my strengths. He wouldn’t let me be less than I could be and would let me see myself as less either.

A person who won’t let you fail

  • makes it easy to tell your dreams and goals.
  • answers with the hard truth told gently when you’re vision is skewed.
  • points to your strengths when you start to feel your weaknesses take over.
  • helps you find what you need to get past what’s thwarting you.
  • and

  • refuses to let you get in your own way.

I have a few now — some who want to remain anonymous. Richard still. Nancy too. And Terry Starbucker, of course.
A couple more have claimed the role in the last week or two.

Want to know how to find yours? Dusti Arab has that covered.
How to Find The People Who Won’t Let You Fail

Then consider what Glenda did … What Impossible Idea Would You Attempt If Surrounded by People Who Won’t Let You Fail?

Surround yourself with people who won’t let you fail. Make them your advisors, your teammates, your partners, your mentors, your interns, and your customers. Invest in them, value them, and let them invest in you.

Who are the people who won’t let YOU fail?
Are will to write their names for the world to see?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Filed Under: Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, LinkedIn, people who help you succeed, people who won't let you fail, small business

What’s the WHY of Your Business?

October 8, 2012 by Liz

Influence and Attraction

Purpose, Mission, and Vision

cooltext443809602_strategy

Whether we’re working with a new businesses, a project, or a team that needs rebuilding, it’s typical to start with purpose, mission, and vision.

You have to choose your future before you can make it happen.

Though we might not fully agree on the exact definition of those terms, a true strategy will investigate, establish, and articulate these foundational ideas of mission, vision, and purpose before …

  • before auditing market share and position;
  • before studying current trends, cycles, and conditions;
  • before making product or customer service decisions,
  • before choosing a core community;
  • before considering processes and systems.

This list represents the “who” “how” and “what” of a business.

What’s the WHY of Your Business?

Making any key decisions without agreeing on mission, vision, and purpose is dangerous. It’s an invitation to hidden assumptions, shallow thinking, and miscommunication. Without clarity, everyone who might help you, your team, or your business — employees, vendors, partners, customers, friends — will construct their own definition of your mission, vision, and purpose.

Next time you want to influence people to support your idea, project, or business venture, next time you want to attract people to participate with you, answer these four basic question sets:

  1. Who are we? / What do we value?
  2. Where are we going / what are we building?
  3. How will we get there / how will we build it?
  4. Why is this quest important? / Why are we uniquely suited to meet this call better than any other?

These foundational questions require priority attention because they build they WHY of your business.
They underpin your best true, compelling story — the calling and commitment — that fuels your business and the people who want to help it grow. Yet, the last of these, the “WHY” fuels is of what moves us and the people we serve to action.

The WHY of your business is the bedrock of influence and attraction.
The WHY attracts people who share your values and believe in what you’re building.
The WHY calls the ideal employees, customers, vendors and partners to pitch in to help you build it.
The WHY is irresistible reason to join you in making something you can’t build alone.

What’s the WHY of Your business?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Filed Under: management, Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, influence, influencing others, LinkedIn, loyalty relationships, mission, small business, vision

Thanks to Week 364 SOBs

October 6, 2012 by Liz

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

Filed Under: SOB Business, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, blog-promotion, SOB-Directory, SOB-Hall-of-Fame, Successful and Outstanding Blogs

Thanks to Week 363 SOBs

September 29, 2012 by Liz

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

Filed Under: SOB Business, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, blog-promotion, SOB-Directory, SOB-Hall-of-Fame, Successful and Outstanding Blogs

Who Are You to Do Something Like That?

September 24, 2012 by Liz

how to happiness

Who Are You to Do Something Like That?

cooltext443809437_relationships

I leave Wednesday for Portland and SOBCon NW 2012. It’s our 10th event since the first. I’ve been thinking about that first event.

The week before the first SOBCon in 2007. I was filled with the excitement and doubts that come from taking on a huge endeavor such as I’d never taken on before.

It wasn’t like doing something for school or for the place where I worked. Doing things for them always had certain people who defined what we would do. Papers were written to the standards of the teachers. Reports and projects fit the expectation of the manager assigning them.

This was something we — our team — were doing ourselves for the people who would come.

Whose approval and applause was I looking for now? I was comfortable with what we had built and still, I had this doubt. It took a while for me to identify what was lingering there to hold me back.

It was the kids in my 3rd grade class saying something like “Who are you to do something like that?”

Why was a bunch of 8-year-olds from my past still getting real estate in my head?
Why should I care about their approval now? It didn’t make sense.

I’m the One Doing It!

Once I admitted a bunch of kids were the doubters I feared, I could let them know that I’d outgrown their shouting. They couldn’t knock me over with their disapproval now. I have more skills than I did when I knew them at 8 years old. Their power isn’t nearly so big now that I’m grown. So I moved those doubters and shouters out of my head. I’m not sure why they had power then.

I was afraid of childhood events. They doubters and shouters were barely memories at best.
So the next time I thought, “Who are you to do something like that?”
I said out loud, “I’m the one doing it!” and I got on with doing it.

Half the battle is knowing who are the doubters and shouters you’re letting undermine success.
The other half is telling them they don’t count.

Being big enough to tell the doubters and shouters to go doubt themselves is irresistible.

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Filed Under: management, Motivation, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, failure or success, LinkedIn, positive self-talk, positive thinking, small business, success

Thanks to Week 362 SOBs

September 22, 2012 by Liz

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

Filed Under: SOB Business, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, blog-promotion, SOB-Directory, SOB-Hall-of-Fame, Successful and Outstanding Blogs

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