Successful Blog

How to Deliver Yourself to Your Dream Everyday … in Small Amounts

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What Are You Doing

When I was young my dad used to say, “If you’re going to be a teacher, own the school.”

I’d explain that’s not how schools work — that schools provide a place to do what I want. I’d tell him about what I’d teach and how what kids would learn would change the world.

He said I had my dreams in the clouds.

1237681_moon-and-clouds

My dad proposed.

  • In our own ways we can make any place our own by filling them with ideas that turn into action.
  • It’s the action not the ideas that make the difference, the difference that wouldn’t happen without us alone.
  • People who do things build their future by delivering value that would be missed if they weren’t there..

Whether we work in the most obscure company, or work for ourselves at contract jobs. People notice value added contributions. People look for folks who offer them unique value.

Value added is an irresistible contribution and it brings surprising opportunities as a reward.

Don’t wait for your dream to deliver … deliver yourself to your dream everyday … in small amounts.
It’s easy to get where you’re dreaming by always showing up with your dream work. Every little value will bring you closer to that dream you’re after.

How do you add a little of yourself to what you deliver today?

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

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Are You Overwhelmed by Internet ADD? What to Do …

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Everyone Else Is Doing So Much More

Do you see everyone around you getting where you want to be and wonder why you’re standing still? Have you given yourself over to that new generation of Internet ADD … ADOS – AD oh Shiny!! ?

The answer is inside yourself and in what you’re not doing.

Talk and move. That’s what every person with a success story has done to achieve it. Only two things — talk and move. It’s the essence of doing.

Want to get somewhere? Do something.

What will you do today to build your success story?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your web presence!!

Delegation: How Do You Scale Up and Still Do Your Best Work?

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DELEGATION 1

No One Can Do This Like I Would

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The single social media questions I hear most is:

How do I find time do it all?

I usually answer, “You can’t and I don’t think you’d want to, even if you could.”

We all can only do what’s humanly possible.
We all get the same 24 hours in the same day.

So what’s the best way to get things done in the time that we have?

How Do You Scale Up and Still Do Your Best Work?

Communication might be easier, even quicker through technology, but more people further apart take longer to communicate with. Take, for example, a simple request for information. One message might get to 20 friends, but not all of them will get and respond to that message at the same time in the same way. Not all of them will respond completely. Some will not respond at all. Some will misread or not read the directions and send information that doesn’t help.

Time is an unrenewable resource. We can’t make more. So how do we make the best use of the time that we have?

  • Analyze the work you do to find your high impact value and core compentencies. Why do people hire you? What do you do that makes the most difference? Isolate those tasks and skills. No one is expert at every step of the process. Decide which steps are where you add the highest value. Is it planning, service, execution, design, management, writing, administration? Choose no more than two.
  • Identify the skills and tasks that you do least efficiently — those that you like least, those that you don’t do well, those that anyone can do.
  • Change the way you work to offer those tasks to someone who does them better than you do.

That’s right, the way to offer more of our best work is to delegate. It’s easy to think that no one would do it like we would. And it’s probably true.

But different isn’t the same as wrong and sometimes different is better.

The trick is knowing what to delegate and knowing that we don’t have to delegate the WHOLE task. We can delegate chunks.

Start with the obvious stuff. Let fresh eyes read your work for errors. Ask another person to key in the changes. Those are tasks that are easily isolated and executed by someone who’s probably more proficient at them than we are. We can check the final before it goes out.

When we pass on the tasks that we don’t like, don’t do well, and don’t need to do, we can put the best of our time where it makes the most difference — doing what only we can do.

How so you offer more of your best work when you’re scaling up?

Part 2 tomorrow … Delegation 2: I Can’t Let Someone Else Do That!!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Buy the Insider’s Guide. Learn how to write so that the Internet talks back!

How Do You Exercise the Perspective You Need?

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The theme of SOBCon09 is the ROI of Relationships. To underscore the importance of relationships in business and to have a chance to make and celebrate a few while we’re doing that, I’ve opened up this series by successful and outstanding bloggers like you.

Exercise the Perspective You Need by Karen Sampson

These days it seems like everyone is worried about their money, the economy, or any number of things. What’s wrong is always available for you to focus on and a little perspective may be all you need to stop turning your worries into monsters and start breaking them down into bits you can tackle.

What Perspective Really Means

In order to get real perspective wherever you seek it, the answer is always the same: take a step back. There’s no way to inspect the box you may have found yourself in if you are sitting in a corner inside it. Perspective means looking at your problem in a different way, but it doesn’t take 20 years to have hindsight. It’s funny, but we all need to be reminded of this from time to time. So much focus can lend itself to entrapment, even a few minutes away from whatever is troubling you can shed light on ways to deal with it.

Take a Deep Breath

It sounds cliché’ sure, but researchers have established that your breathing patterns affect your body chemistry. Ever notice how you are breathing when you are worked up about something or something is frustrating you? Chances are you’re breathing shallow ineffective breaths. This not only charges your body with tension but changes your state of mind. Your mind goes on alert and only sees answers in its immediate path. Slow down, take a breath and get away from the problem. While it may not be possible or practical to forget the problem for too long, even a tiny break will help you make the most of future time spent on the project.

Do You Really Need an Excuse to Exercise?

Sometimes perspective can mean talking to other people who have faced the same problem, but in other cases those alternatives simply aren’t available. Take a walk. This simple and relaxing alternative always lets your mind reset itself so that you can come at your problem from a different angle. Do you really need an excuse to exercise? Think of this one as a double duty alternative: you’re increasing your fitness while decreasing your stress load. Both important if problem solving is going to happen on the long term.

Setting Goals and Translating Them

Breaking your problem into a bunch of smaller chunks can be a great way to pick away at it. Is there a portion of your question that you can answer? Then let that tiny tidbit be your guide and break up the rest of what you don’t know. It may be that as a whole the problem seems insurmountable. Think of things in the past that you have already conquered that you felt this way about. Your psychology will play a huge role in how effectively you can deal with any given situation, and if you have a relaxed confident approach you’ll find anything is within your grasp.

The view will be blue as far as your mind’s eye can see.

How do you exercise the perspective you need?

Karen Sampson writes about the online degrees. She welcomes your feedback at Karen.Sampson1120 at gmail.com

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Experience the ROI of Relationships

Social Networking: Do You Need a Memory Upgrad . . . ?

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What Was the Question, Again?

Personal Identity logo

Someone writes a comment, sends you IM, or walks up to you at a trade show and makes it clear he’s met you before. He’s acting like you’re the best of friends. But you have no clue who the guy is.

Been there . . .

Do You Need a Memory Upgrade?

Does that mean we’re losing our memory? It’s probably not memory loss, but it could be sure sign that we need a memory upgrade. Forgetting people and information can be a seriously liability to success these days.

Relationships are build on experiences that went before. We have to remember the experiences for the relationships to move forward in a good way.

Here are three ways we forget . . .

  1. Fading: We meet someone and forget his or her name seconds later. That’s called fading. We didn’t move the name from short-term memory into “working memory.”

  2. Interference: New information can interfere with old information. Old information can also mix up with new information.

  3. Distortion: When we have vivid recollections of events only to find later that the events happened differently.

Ten Ways to Upgrade Your Personal Memory Bank

We all have the power to rebuild our memories by doing simple things when we’re learning new information.

  1. Think about what you’re learning and be sure you’re clear on it. Try to restate when you know in other words

  2. Associate new information with something you already know. “Oh Joe, you’re a friend of Joanna Young! So is Bob Hruzek!”

  3. Being fully present when you lrarn new things to keep old information separate from what you’re learning. Don’t be playing on Twitter the first time you use Plurk.

  4. Break big blocks of information into smaller chunks. Practice one point on this list until you have it as a habit.

  5. Involve as many modalities — visual, auditory, kinesthetic — as you can. See things. Talk about them. Touch them while you’re at it.

  6. Overlearn things by teaching someone else.

  7. Apply the information quickly. When you’re introduced, use the person’s name immediately.

  8. Repeat things that you think you might forget. 2+3=5, 2+3=5, 2+3=5 . . .

  9. Debrief and retell important events with people who were part of them as soon as you are able. That was a fabulous podcast! Let’s debrief on what happened!

  10. Blog your experience. Last night I met Eric Benderoff at the blogger meetup hosted by Gas Pedal.

Doing what you can to “defrag” your brain is also a great idea.

First impressions are important as ever, but they sure lose their glow if on the second go we can’t place the person we met.

Having a great memory is powerful way to demonstrate we value relationships. Everyone likes to be remembered. Nothing beats a second meeting that easily moves the first meeting forward. People respond when we invest in them — they invest back.

How do you keep your memory fast and functioning?

Click for more information on Memory and Information Processing.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Buy the ebook and find out the secret.

MinuteFix: Computer help is only a click away

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I’m pleased to announce that this week while I’m in the UK,

Phil and Diego will be hosting
Tuesday Open Comments
Come Ask Them Questions!!

Minute Fix and Diego Orjuela
Guest interview by Phil Gerbyshak

Recently I had the opportunity to spend a few minutes chatting with my friend Diego Orjuela, founder and CEO of what will hopefully the world’s greatest tech support company, MinuteFix. Full disclosure: I got to know Diego at the 2007 Successful and Outstanding Blogger Conference, and have been working with him at MinuteFix since December of 2007 as the Customer Experience Officer.

I wanted to share this interview with the audience here at Successful Blog because a service like this can really help you out if you’re in a pinch working at your home office and you need tech support. If you don’t want to pay $50 or more to take your computer into your local computer shop, give MinuteFix a shot.

Without further ado…

Tech support from MinuteFix

An interview with Phil Gerbyshak and Diego Orjuela

Phil Gerbyshak: So tell me Diego, what is MinuteFix?

Diego OrjeulaDiego Orjuela: MinuteFix is the first provider of tech support that is powered by a community of experts. Think of it like a Geek Squad combined with the power of a community model like Wikipedia or eBay. Customers can get help for any computer problem, no matter how big or small, 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. The service is very affordable, at only $0.99 per minute. It doesn’t matter what the problem is, our certified community technicians will do
their best to fix it. And, if we don’t fix your problem, the session is free.

PG: Wow, why didn’t I think of that? Seems like it could be very useful for anyone working at home or with a limited budget.

DO: Absolutely! Imagine you are at your computer and you are having trouble with a
simple task like downloading an image from the Internet. MinuteFix can help you complete such a simple task in a few minutes, which otherwise might have taken you an hour to figure out on your own, all the way to more complex issues like virus or security problems. One customer last week lost her entire iTunes music library. We were able to help her recover it, and get her on her way, saving her tons of lost time and money.

PG: I hear you guys are very big on customer service. Why is that so important to you?

DO: Well, we are a company built by a passionate community of technicians who love what they do. With tech support from MinuteFix, we empower technology experts to work from home, at the hours they choose. Because they do what we love, we can offer a superior service. We deeply believe that technology should help us to interact seamlessly with the people we care about, produce tremendous results while making us more productive – and not get in the way in the process. We are your friend, and maybe even our neighbor, so we want to treat you as that. All Certified MinuteFix Technicians are thoroughly screened and tested, and must pass a customer service exam. Great customer service is the foundation of MinuteFix. [Read more…]