Successful Blog

This Shoemaker Has Decided the Ratty Shoes Have to Go

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To Be Seen, Heard, and Understood

Yessir, Chris Brogan, I have ideas. Thank you for linking my ideas to yours. I’m good at ideas and when they connect, my ideas light fires.

It’s the connecting that makes the ideas take off.
Connecting happens when people see, hear, and understand our ideas.

I’ve decided this year I want my connections working online and off.

Meet Vince

I’ve enlisted the best designer, Vincent Franco, to bring out the hidden content on this blog, to get it ready for where we’re going. The concept is rolling. We’ll be making room for new features, a bow to the past and a long look to the future. I’m taking over my dad’s saloon once and for. The new look will focus on what this blog and the successful and outstanding bloggers who hang out here are about.

  • We’ll be rolling up the categories into key locations. As we get going the content become more focused around the main topics of web strategy, how communities form, communication, social media, blogging / writing, and creativity / ideas.
  • I’ve already invited Kathryn Jennex to write a column called “Practical Communication.” Have you been reading what she writes every Thursday? She constantly hits it out of the park!
  • My dear friends from OZ, Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh will still challenge us to reflect as they share coastline of tomorrowland.
  • If you’d like to participate email me. It’s always been a community blog.

Meet The Image Studios

The most professional soft skills, image communication consultancy in Chicago, The Image Studios, has agreed to show me how to leverage the best of my head, heart, and purpose so that people can see, hear, and understand who I am — at first glance.

  • This is not a TV makeover. This is a serious quest to be recognized. The operative term is visible authenticity. You’ll be hearing more of that from me all year.
  • I had my first meeting with image team last fall. My meeting with Kali Evans-Raoul, the founder, brought out a baseline that is firmly grounded in who I am and where I want to be. The plan is to get what doesn’t work out of my way, not layering new things on.
  • I’ll be blogging. We’ll be taking photos and video. Most importantly I’ll be trying to track the thoughts behind the decisions and changes.

The why of this is simple enough. Social media, social business is about connections. Connecting starts long before we talk.

2009 is the Year to be SEEN, HEARD, AND UNDERSTOOD.

This shoemaker has decided the ratty shoes have to go.

How about you? Are you ready for visible authenticity?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Register now for SOBCon09

Invest in your business. Invest in yourself.

Beach Notes: Advantage of a Bird's Eye View

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by Guest Writer Suzie Cheel

In any business there is an advantage to be gained in every now and again stepping away from the details of what we are doing and all our tasks, however essential and urgent, so that we can look at our challenges and the business itself from a more “elevated” perspective – a bird’s eye view.

Not an original thought, but how many of us do it? And if we do it, do we do so often enough?

The thoughts and the questions were prompted by seeing a new structure – a kind of observation platform made of scaffolding materials and a sheet of corrugated roofing – at our local beach, Rainbow Bay.

Every year about this time we have the week-long spectacle of the Quiksilver and Roxy Pro surfing championships at Rainbow Bay , or as surfers probably think of it, the famous Snapper Rocks break. The whole end of the beach, in the area surrounding the Rainbow Bay Surf Lifesaving club building, becomes a kind of instant tent city, with temporary shops, cafe, exhibition space, media center, and what appears to be a large chillout area for competitors. The event brings champion surfers, men and women, from around the world, and pumps large sums of money into the local hospitality industry.

We love it!

It also brings hordes of photographers, who set their tripods or other camera props up on the beach or on the rocks, to capture the performances of the competitors.

The observation tower at the other end of the beach is a new development this year. We spoke the other day to the guy in it, who was set up with still and video cameras, in a position commanding a totally uninterrupted view of the whole beach and looking straight down to the area where the surfers are doing their stuff over the coming days.

There is no question that he will have a better overall picture of what is happening than will his colleagues/competitors on the beach. Some of their photos and videos might be more striking than his, but he will be able to take pictures that they can’t take from the level of the beach or the rocks.

He has a bird’s eye view.

Have you been able to get a better picture of your business by stepping back and getting a bird’s eye view?

Any tips you would like to share, about how to do that most effectively?
Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

What Do You Do Because Sometimes You Know How?

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This morning I had my morning all laid out. I knew exactly what I was to get done. I was ready prepared and willing, until I turned computer and Tweetdeck served up this short note.

3 things that stop me from doing… “Over Coffee…”
(http://twitthis.com/8ln6i4) Inspired by @lizstrauss

Who would I be not to see something like that? What I found were thoughts that started like this …
I love to write and doodle. So why don’t I do more of it? What am I afraid of? And how do I stop the fears and get going again?

And my head and my heart answer, “Yeah, I know. I get those feelings too.”
I read that post. Then I read the next — the one with the beautiful painted in drawing, the one I only wish or dream I could make myself.
Who would I be not to respond?

Because Sometimes I Know How

Every writer gets stuck for words.
Every writer gets caught up
or lost looking for an idea to explore.
Every writer has an ego that pushes words out
and a critic that tears them down.
We all have time that we hope
and fear that will never write again.
If only I could draw and paint a lady so lovely,
But I write I write instead
because sometimes I know how.

What do you do because sometimes you know how?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Image: Barbara Hartsock
Work with Liz!!

It's Easy — Go On Try It!

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I've been thinking . . .

about being down and lifting up.

Look at that flower facing the sun.

It’s a flower. It catches the sunrise, the sunset. It gets nutrients from the ground.
It’s beautiful. You and I didn’t do that. No piece of code made that happen.

No guy or lady driving in traffic to get to some desk made those petals.
No argument over words on a page, no conversation about behavior made that light on that color.

Because bringing each other down isn’t what we were meant for.

When we stop to breathe, when we look at the light around us, we know we were meant to lift each other up.

What are you doing right now in this moment to raise someone higher?
Not only is it easy, it feels good. Go on try it.

Liz's Signature

Are you going to experience SOBCon09?

Beach Notes: Model of Service

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by Guest Writer Suzie Cheel

Our beach notes today are inspired by the 100 year commemoration of the first surf rescue on our local Coolangatta beach, by the all-volunteer Surf Life Saving Club.

Four women – clad in the neck-to-knee swimming costumes dictated by the times – and one man – swam out to sea, to then “get into difficulties” with the surf and have to be rescued by the volunteer “lifesavers”, to use the traditional term now being supplanted by the imported American term “lifeguard”.

It was an inspiring moment, thinking not just about that particular rescue 100 years ago today, but of all the volunteers, at hundreds of beaches around the country, turning out every weekend, rain or shine, to watch over their fellow citizens and regularly risk their own safety, even their lives, to save people from drowning and to resuscitate those they can.

Not all those stories end happily, but many have over the years been plucked from the waves by these courageous men and women in their distinctive red and yellow caps and spared the fate of a watery grave. Two years ago the Australian Surf Life Saving Association estimated the number of lives saved at over 500,000.

Yes, we do have some paid lifeguards, provided by local councils, during the week and even – in our part of the country – through the winter months, at the more popular tourist-oriented beaches.

But without the dedicated service of those thousands of volunteers of the Australian Surf Life Saving Association, a cherished part of life for many Australians – “having a surf” – would become a much more hazardous pasttime.

And it’s not just in Australia. The movement started by a few people in Sydney, Australia, some 103 years ago, has spread also to other countries, including South Africa, the USA, Great Britain, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Sri Lanka, Ireland and New Zealand.

The motto of the Surf Life Saving movement? “Vigilance and Service”.

We salute the dedication and heroism of our lifesavers, past and present.

A model of service, an inspiration.

What do you say to commemorate 100 years of people serving the world?

Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

Rituals, Glituals, and Success – How Will You Turn Things on Today?

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FAIL NOT!!

This morning I got up.
I followed my path that gets things rolling.
I walked through the kitchen. Gotta have coffee.
I went to my office space. Gotta have connectivity.
I head on back to the shower. Gotta be clean and clear thinking.

It’s my ritual to hit the ground running.
I like the thought of everything firing up at the same time.

And every morning, I walk back through the kitchen, get my coffee, sit down at my computer. and start right in making the world mine.

Except today.

Today my ritual was a glitual.

My computer wasn’t running.
I forgot a critical key to success.
Whether it’s the coffee, the computer, or yourself …

You gotta turn it on to get things going!

How will you turn things on today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!