Bad Strategy Deserves Bad Poetry

April 10, 2006 by Liz

Bad Poetry Night on Successful Blog

If you’ve got some bring it over.

I’m watching more than one company do everything they can to tell their customer to go away. Too many companies leave today’s customer sitting alone, while they try to think up “strategies” that will bring them new ones.

S-T-R-A-T-E-G-I-Z-E

They said the latest thing
and I came to realize
This company couldnÃ¢â¬â¢t strategize
They chased trends
like fireflies

Like kids loose in a candy store
they search every candy drawer
and shake every magic door
pinning hopes on that one big score

They’re on the corner preaching
to customers who don’t their need teaching

They see the world with tiny eyes
and let their wishes hypnotize
They can’t even spell strategize

No wonder they always talk about customers with fear.

Strategy in the hands of those who can’t spell it is even worse than a really bad poem.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

5 Sure-Fire Ways to Break the Promise of Your Brand

April 10, 2006 by Liz

Brand YOU Common Sense

All of this Brand YOU conversation really does come down to common sense. In order to make a strong place for yourself in the world of business, you need to know yourself. You need to capitalize on your strengths and shore up your weaknesses, to find ways to let people know how you add value, and to think deeply so that you can speak to the unique assets that you bring to everything that you do.

Being able to do those things puts you ahead of most folks–if you keep the ideas in perspective–because most follks don’t quite understand the concept of brand versus product or store. Keep in mind your brand is a promise you make. Not everyone will take you up on it. Some will look for you to break that promise. One day, in some way, you probably will.

5 Ways to Break the Promise of Your Brand

Here are 5 sure-fire ways to break the promise of your personal brand.

1. Build a brand on what you wish you were instead of what you are. You’ve taken time to build a brand. You’ve gathered the attributes and strengths that you want people to see as yours. But they’re really just pipe dreams–wishes instead of realities. Your promise was made on false pretenses. People recognize soon enough when you’ve oversold yourself. They see it in what you can’t do. You not only lose your brand. You lose any credibility you might have had. It’s exponentially higher, if not impossible, to win back trust, than it is to earn trust you never had.

2. Crack under pressure. Sail along smoothly as a calm and charismatic leader until the chips get down, then lose it all and fall apart. It doesn’t matter whether you whine and shake, or yell and stammer. Lose your humanity, your leadership skills, your sense of humor and your brand is lost right with them. You broke your promise when it counts.

3. Change with the weather. A brand is a promise that you’ll always be there–you, the you that folks have come to know. Your coworkers and business relations don’t want to get to know you every time they meet you. They want a brand they can believe in. Consistency is a cornerstone of any brand. If you’re not consistent you don’t have a brand. Folks don’t make promises with the wind.

4. You don’t believe you. You know what you want to be, and in your heart you want to be it. You just don’t believe you ever will. If you don’t believe you, why in the world would I? It’s not good business to bet on a promise that starts with I’m not so sure, but I want to try.

5. You think Brand YOU is an entitlement. Whoa! Slow down cowboy. This isn’t a rodeo, and you don’t have the silver buckle yet. You see Brand YOU isn’t really about you at all. It’s about the customer, and the customer is every person who is NOT you–the folks you work with and those you serve. Brand YOU is merely a way of communicating to them what you stand for in shorthand so that you can get on to the relationship of working together with some common knowledge of each other as already established ground. The promise should be that you’re there for THEM.

Just like any broken promise, no personal brand at all is better than a broken personal brand.

Turning Brand YOU Upside-Down

Now that you’ve identified your personal brand and you know what it’s there for. It’s time to turn it upside-down. It’s time to add the most crucial part of it. ME–Well, me the customer. The customer is the reason you made a brand in the first place. The customer is the one who lets you know what your brand really is.

Now Brand YOU becomes Brand YOU & ME. Two is a lot more fun. Just wait I’ll show you why and how.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Critical Skill 3: Fluency: with Ideas

April 9, 2006 by Liz

Stop Not Having Ideas

The first part of fluency with ideas is having them–LOTS of them. There she goes again. What is she talking about? She might have lots. Right now I’d be happy with one.

The trick is get to learn how to stop not having lots of ideas.

That’s not a typo. You can stop not having ideas.

Open the Valve

Ideas are being stimulated constantly in your subconscious so often and at such a rate that, if you let them all in, you wouldn’t be able to pay attention to anything else. You would literally be aware of stimuli that you have no need for, such as the feel of your shoes on your feet or the chair that you’re sitting on. That’s why we come equipped–at no extra charge–with a filtering unit, a valve-like screening device at the base of our brains–the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS allows us to filter out most of that unwanted stimuli. It serves as a closed door allowing only life-skill information into our consciouness. Unfortunately with the door closed we don’t have access to some great ideas.

The good news is that the RAS can be trained. Firemen can make it let through the sound of the fire alarm. You can can use it to access things you forget that are still in your brain– great ideas when you put them together again. Ron Daugherty offers some ways to expand and explore your ability to open the RAS in his article, Understanding the Mind: 5 Keys to a Writer’s Creativity.

With Access Comes Fluency

With a little practice you’ll be able to access more and more ideas. Seriously, believe that they’ll come. Relax and make room for them, and they will. Getting them is just the first step toward fluency with ideas. To follow a language metaphor, the ideas are just your vocabulary. Now you have to be able to use them–pull ideas to match three basic scenarios. Here are ways you can practice to build up your fluency.

Brainstorming wild lists. When you have a few minutes waiting in traffic, pick an everyday object such as a plate. See whether you can come up with 25 things you might do with that object, silly or otherwise. As blogger, you should be pretty good at this. After all bloggers know a thing or two about making lists. Don’t edit. Be as wild and creative as you can. When you reach 25, try for another 10.
Freewriting. When you’ve got a few minutes and some paper and pencil, write without stopping about a simple pleasure, such as drinking coffee or running. Explain all of the impacts and outcomes it’s had on your life. Try to write 15 minutes without stopping.
Problem solving. The next time you or your child has a problem don’t begin to address it until you’ve identified at least five solutions. Not every solution needs to be doable or practical, but all of them need to fix some aspect of the problem, using facts that you know. Allow for an outrageous solution or two. Outrageous solutions often lead to extremely solid ones, once the outrageous solutions have been talked about. Think through what the impact of trying every solution would be and name all of the possible outcomes that could occur if you tried each one.

If you want to be truly future skilled, you’ll do each of these things verbally and in writing too.

Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking the Language of Ideas

The more you practice with your vocabulary of ideas. The more fluent in the language of ideas you will be. That means you’ll not only be good at speaking and writing your own ideas. You’ll also be good listening and reading other folks’ ideas too. You’ll get really quick at telling a great idea from a loser when someone else offers one.

Imagine the time and money a business might save when they know you can tell a solid idea from pipe dream that just sounds really good. AND that you can explain in writing how you know. Now there’s a concept on which you could promote your business and yourself. That would be an added value idea plus.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

One Degree Extra

April 6, 2006 by Liz

At 211ÃÂ° water is hot.

At 212ÃÂ°, it boils.

With boiling water, comes steam.

Steam can power a locomotive.

The one extra degree makes the difference.

–Sam Parker and Mac Anderson, 212ÃÂ°, the extra degree, Simple Truths

One degree makes the difference. One degree that’s all–one degree. Are you willing to invest that extra degree in yourself, in business, in your brand?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Brand YOU–Handling Problems

April 4, 2006 by Liz

Brand Integrity

People say, Ã¢â¬ÅDonÃ¢â¬â¢t judge a book by its cover.Ã¢â¬?

In any relationship of substance, there comes a moment when things go wrong. Often folks can simply adjust and move forward, occasionally the damage is large enough that things need to stop before progress can be made. Problems need to be fixed. How these moments are handled can mean the end of a relationship or just the opposite an even stronger bond of respect is forged.

Integrity, graciousness, and the ability to deal in times of problems are key indicators of brand strength and viability. People look to see who you and your business really are when troubles come your way.

Handle Yourself, Not the Problem

Problems are opportunities . . . make lemonade. . . yeah, yeah, we all know that. The truth is. They don’t look or feel that way, when they’re happening and we don’t feel like drinking lemonade. In business, ignoring problems or running away from them usually isn’t an option, at least not for long. So instead, we rush in and try to handle them–be the hero, adrenaline pumping. That’s when we make wrong decisions–knee-jerk reactions happen. Words get said that aren’t our usual, in tones that aren’t our own.

The key to solving problems with grace and brand integrity is NOT to handle them, but to handle ourselves instead. Try these steps the next times a crisis hits to keep your head safely wired to your heart.

When I give my soul a little breathing room . . .
everyone I know gets nicer.

I try to remember, when problems come, that if I don’t feel taken care of myself, I’m not going to give a very good showing. So the first thing I do is a personal check. When was the last time I ate, slept, saw something beside flourescent lighting or a hotel room? I walk outside to see sky and trees if I can. It’s hard to take any business stress over-seriously when I’ve just been confronted with the scope of nature and taken a moment to breathe.

2. The more that you want to run, the more that you should walk instead. Forcing myself to think slowly keeps me from knee-jerk reactions It also leaves space for other folks to talk.

3. The minute you feel righteous you are wrong. When I feel a crusade coming on, I find someone to tell me what I’m not seeing. There is no problem with only one side. I know I need balance. I need somone to tell me what I’m about to get wrong.

4. When you have balance, THEN gather facts to make an informed plan of action.

5. Execute the plan with confidence and calm.

No Need to Be Pollyanna

No, you don’t have to look forward to problems, nor do you need to think the sun is always shining. The world can only take so many Pollyannas. Still, it is nice to have the confidence of knowing that when a problem comes, you can handle it with grace and be a credit toyour brand.

You’ll know you’re there when folks start asking how you stay so cool under pressure. They will. When they do, just smile and paraphrase my sentence for them

I find that when I give myself a little breathing room, everyone gets nicer.

I won’t tell them where you got that from.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

New Flat Screen–I Can See the Words!!!

April 2, 2006 by Liz

Should I Have Let the MSM Provide Tools?

I guess when you’re going blind, you don’t really notice, especially when dyslexia runs in the family. Still it was getting hard to miss the fact that I was correcting mistakes over and over. Then my editor–yes, I have an editor–was finding even more. I had started to think of my writing as chili–better on the second day.

Cash flow can be a bit of a problem, especially when a most deserving son is wowwing them at an expensive school called Georgetown. Laptop blogging was my only answer–that and squinting–until I knew I was doing harm to myself and to my brand. Credibility means a lot to this writer. How could I promote my blog, my business, and my brand, when I preach one thing and deliver another?

All of you have been most gracious and forgiving of the repeated repeated repeated and ~~mispelled~~ misspelled words that have been the bane of my writing–your reading–existence. Alas, I was looking like what Tom Glocer and Trevor Butterworth would call a “citizen journalist.” Ew. I lacked the tools for these over-used eyes to see the words. Perhaps I should have spoken to Tom and Trevor about their suggestion that the mainstream media provide tools and editors? Hmmmm. No.

New Computer, New Flat Screen

Instead, waited and waited until this past week when–my tax return check arrived and THEN within what was a matter of minutes a new desktop with a wonderful flatscreen display arrived in my office. And . . .

My God! I Can Actually See the Words!!!

My thoughts on why this took so long

Only my family comes before my readers.
This new computer was an investment in my brand.
I put my brand at risk by not doing it sooner.
This is a textbook example of managing to make a decline happen.

Don’t be me. Spend the penny and save your brand. Not the other way around.

I finally followed my own branding advice. At last, I have fixed the problem. In my opinion, far later than I should have. As my friend, Nancy, often reminds me, “Liz, sometimes you’re so fast, and sometimes you are sooooo slooooow.”

My apologies to everyone who has read through the errors and skipped the multiple corrected posts in their feeds. Hopefully, this new purchase make my visual weakness a little closer to irrelevant. You should also know that transitioning computers is incredibly easier and way less painful than it was a mere six months ago.

BIG CHESHIRE CAT GRIN!!!

I’m thinking of taking a typing class next. Do you think that might be a good idea?

Smiles,
ME “Liz” Strauss