Business Life Archives - Page 102 of 187

7 Ways to Carve a Path to the Future of Your Dreams

February 26, 2008 by Liz

Perceived Leadership

How do some folks always seem to know where they’re going? Are you one of them?

We learn in school the ease of having our time and our next steps arranged by someone else’s plan. Our limited decisions decide our rewards and failures. So we feel we’re some part of the system. Yet, through necessity we have no real controlling decisions. We learn perceived leadership that has no real risk and no real power.

Following a preset path is great if it goes where you want to end up. It’s not so great when we find ourselves on a path leading to somewhere we don’t really belong. Unfortunately, no one tells us when to switch over to our own power.

7 Ways to Carve a Path to the Future of Your Dreams

We graduate as leaders who might be excellent at following the larger plan. But there’s no official transition from doing that to carving our own path. Some of us jump in naturally and start walking. Some us follow what’s laid before us until we find ourselves out of a job. It’s easy to be swept along without ever owning our decisions, but that’s a risky business and ultimately not fulfilling.

Here are 7 ways to carve your own path to the future of your dreams starting now.

Have a purpose. It’s powerful and attractive to have a defining direction. Without a purpose, circumstances decide where and how you land. The wind or the world can blow you anywhere. When every road leads to nowhere, who bothers to choose?

Get determined. It’s your life. Breathe for it. Eat for it. Keep the folks who support you close. Disregard those who shoot you down.

Speak for yourself. Speak with care and carefully, but say what you mean as clearly as you know how. Don’t discount what you’re saying. Say the guy was wrong, even a jerk, if you solidly think so. Tell the real story — respectfully — without fear of how you might look. Stand for what you think by saying it out loud.

Have a strategy. Char said it well, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Wishes are granted. If you’re wishing, you want someone else in control.

Hold your own hand. Be your own teacher. Don’t stop your progress until someone has time to show you how. Plan a way to what you need to know. Do the research. Write your own lesson. Then do the homework. That’s incredible power.

Pay attention to your intuition and instincts. You years of experience didn’t all get recorded as words. Some things your body knows. Trust that your post decisions have taught you how to respond to those now.

Decide what success looks like to you. Seek out opinions and value them for exactly what they’re worth. You’ll always have more experience and more information about being you than anyone else can know.

It’s totally in our power to reach our dreams and our destiny — we can start on our way right here and right now. We can turn off the voices that tell us what we’re not . . . , what we should . . . , who’s supposed to . . . they’re not in charge of what we do with our lives. I offer this bit of wisdom to their noise.

My future is at the end of the path that I follow. I’ll carve it myself.

What do you need to decide to start toward your future?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Take charge. It’s not as hard as you might think. Work with Liz!!

Patricia Martin Wants You to Kiss and Tell

February 10, 2008 by Liz

Remember Your Best Kiss?

In honor of February 14, Patricia Martin, author and marketing expert, wants you to tell about your most memorable kiss. She’s hosting a “Kiss and Tell” booth online at her Culture Scout blog.

The ideas is that people submit stories of their most unforgettable kiss. Each submission will be returned with an electronic valentine to share with a loved one. The top three winners with receive a free copy of John Stark’s new book, Dictionary of Love. I’m one of the “distinguished panel of judges.”

Ms. Martin described the effort this way.

Our team hatched this idea out of a desire to do something positiveâ€”make people recall what it feels like to be loved. I always tell our clients that small gestures of human kindness are what people crave in times like these, not the bellicose claims that just contribute to their anxiety. We decided to take a spoonful of our own medicine we give our clients.

The rules are clear and easy. You can even enter anonymously or more than once. So head on over and have a great memory.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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The Business of Connecting and Doing What We Need

February 4, 2008 by Liz

Okay, Rodney, I Finally Gave In!

It was about a year ago that I heard these words from my friend, Rodney Rumford. You’re a connector! That’s what you are . . . like in the Tipping Point.

I thought, Yeah, I can see why someone would say that, but I’m not one word.

Yesterday, Rodney said, “How’s business, Liz?”

I said, “Rodney, I finally gave in. I’ve taken on the title, Connector. Try as hard as I might to say that’s not what I am. When I looked around, all I saw was me connecting — people, ideas, relationships, steps in a process.”

I have to admit that since the day that I connected with the word, connector, my whole life has made more sense. I’ve connected all of my strengths. I’ve connected all of my values. I’ve sorted out my major disconnects. I know my unique purpose. I know what I bring and what I need for success.

The Business of Connecting and Doing What We Need

Have you noticed how easy it is to be with folks who know where they’re going? The energy that we lose trying to focus on too many things gets released when we set our sights on purpose number 1 — what we most need to do for ourselves is what we best do for everyone else.

Every bit of me needs to be connected — relational and whole. Fragments frustrate me. Loose ends nag and aggravate me. I’m best when I connect parts into meaningful big ideas. The business of connecting is right for me. I see relationships — among people, ideas, and things — that are are relevant and whole.

What does every bit of you need to be? . . . at peace, in service, authentic, useful . . . what word drives you? What business are you really in?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Are you looking to get unstuck?

Success Can Come Right Out of Nowhere

December 20, 2007 by Liz

Next in the the b5media Business Apprentice Team Challenge . . . This week’s challenge? Everybody loves a success story. New business owners find them inspiring. Tell Kay a success story that inspired you – it could be a famous person, a company, a family member.-

Some Successes Only Look that Way Later

Can you imagine?

A singer songwriter David LaMotte, had to cancel a weekend of shows. He asked a friend, a young writer, singer, aspiring performer — who was working as a waitress — if she would fill in for him. Filled with anxiety, she agreed.

The young singer pulled together what courage she could muster to sing her way through songs other people wrote. All the while, she sang around her fear and did her best to disregard her self-doubt.

Thoroughly exhausted, the young singer was stopped at the end of a set. There before her was an actor from a traveling theater production. He was amazed to hear this was her first performance in a club. The actor reached in his pocket to hand her a $100 bill with the words, “never give up.”

And we know her. She’s a wonderful writer, songwriter, and singer. It’s five CDS later. I’m proud to call her a friend. Her name is in my sidebar and has been for almost two years.

â€œIt was an endorsement from the angels,â€ Christine Kane said about that night when she was handed that $100. Sometimes you don’t see your own success coming.

It makes me smile to think that one of my favorite lines from her songs is a lot the same.

When courage finally comes you never see it coming.

I wonder that night is what the song was about.

You decide.

Right Outta Nowhere the words and the song are waiting behind that link.

Sort of makes me feel like a success just listening to her sing.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Traveling on the Living Web: Which Line Do You Take?

December 19, 2007 by Liz

A Bicycle or a Subway?

A few months ago, I was inspired by a conversation with Doc Searls to write a piece for the Blog Herald. I wrote about the two Internets in which we live — the one of information and the one of relationships.

A few months later, Doc quoted a discussion at IS2K7 at the Harvard Law School.

We’re building a new bicycle while we’re riding it here.

That metaphor explains beautifully what we do every day.

Recently, I encountered this visual that shows the 200 top sites on the Internet as of last summer.
You might enjoy seeing how to get around this new civilization we’re creating. Thank you, Michael’s Blog, for finding it. Click to go to the source at information architects.

This place we meet every day . . .

It’s our thoughts; it’s our dreams; it’s our reality shared in a virtual space.
It’s our business to know how it works. It’s the bicycle, or the subway, that we’re buidling while we’re riding it here. It’s time to start exploring the Living Web.

On which line do you spend more your time?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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The Best Business Advice Ever . . . in 50 Words

December 12, 2007 by Liz

Have you been following the b5media Business Apprentice Team Challenge? Up to now, two teams have been advising a fictional entrepreneur called Kay on her business decisions. Last week, while I was gone, my team — the Aces — won again. They are a brilliant group. You can catch up on what’s happened so far at b5media Business Apprentice updates.

This week it becomes every blog on our own.

Our Task: Give Kay the best business advice we’ve ever heard . . . in 50 words. –Liz

Some Advice for Kay

My father listened more than he talked. After a large sit-down at our house, a friend once remarked, “That meal was over an hour. The only word I heard your father say was bread. He didn’t even ask for the butter.”

When I told my dad, his reply made me laugh. He said, “I don’t like butter much.”

My dad left home and school in 1919. He was 12. Everything he knew about business and life he learned from paying attention to the world around him.

It was my dad who taught me to view the world as a lifelong business school.

The Best Business Advice Ever . . . in 50 Words

Each morning when he drove me to school, my dad would point out people we saw and tell me what he observed. When we got the place where he dropped me off, we had a small ritual — a sort of script we would go through. I can’t say quite how it started, and I no longer remember it word for word. But it went something like this . . .

Dad would park the car, turn to me, smile, and ask, “What’s the score?”

I would answer the same every time, with words I had learned from him — bits at a time — over the years. To this day it’s the best business advice I’ve ever heard.

Learn your business from your customers. Understand their minds, their hearts, and their lives. Do what you do to make their lives easier. When a problem comes, leave them a place to stand and stand tall beside them. . . . And remember, everyone is your customer, even your dad.

Then his eyes would light with smile. He’d offer his huge, work-worn hand, shake mine, give a nod, and say, “It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”

I’d answer something like, “Oh dad, you’re too cool.”

All I would add is cherish the rituals and traditions. They make moments remarkably unforgettable.

What’s the best business advice you ever heard? Is there a story that goes with it?

If you think my dad’s advice would serve a young entrepreneur, would you give Successful-Blog a vote in the poll in the sidebar at TAXGIRL?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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