Successful Blog

Is It Time to Reassess What You Think?

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STOP

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In most companies, employees are asked to participate in a yearly performance appraisal. In the good situation, the employees actually take part in evaluating their own as well as hearing what their managers think. It’s a tiring, but important process. It gets us to STOP and look at where we were and where we are now — something we often forget to do unless we make it a priority.

If we don’t stop now and then, we get stuck in thinking things that aren’t necessarily true … about ourselves and about the folks we know.

Resorting and Re-evaluating

Meet Carol. Everyone at the company thought she was a pain. Seriously. If you asked her for a phone number she’d tell you to get a pencil and paper, then spend 7 minutes reciting out 7 digits. Any sane person could have walked 7 miles to talk to the person that the phone number led to. Carol loved details. No else like details of her specific brand.

Then one day I went to work, thinking that everyone had put Carol in a box. No one liked her. People often made her a topic of conversation.

It dawned on me that I’d been going along with the wisdom of the crowd on that….

One day I decide to wipe the slate clean. I pretended I’d never met Carol that I’d never heard a word about her before. What I found was both unsettling and amazing.

I actually liked her a lot and found her affinity for detail valuable to me because I don’t like details at all.

I’d let other folks put Carol in a box and I’d kept her there.

My loss.

One reassessment and now she was a friend and a resource to me. Challenging assumptions is a great strategy.

Is it time to reassess what you think?

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to do some strategic thinking?

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Do You Tune Your Goals to Get Maximum Opportunity Attraction?

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You Don’t Need Luck

My blog and my business changed when I wrote my blogging goal. Thing is I should have known that. Setting goals is one of those life lessons that I keep learning over again.

Sometime in college, I figured out that whenever I made a goal that was tuned tightly to who I am and what I do well, it easily became a catalytic action. Goals became my way of saying …

I don’t need luck, if I can make things happen.

What I realized was that goal set As Antoine de Saint-Exupery said …

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Every successful and outstanding business, every well-conceived campaign or action becomes an opportunity magnet with goals that are

  • clear, concrete, and intentional — What will you accomplish? Why will you be doing that? Who or what will help yo?
  • measurable — How will you know you got there? What will count as a good score?
  • reachable — The strategy can be to get to the stars, but the goal should be the next step. What will you do to get there next?
  • matched to your skill set Great goals make us stretch enough to be challenged an interested. What will will you need to learn or put in action to achieve this?
  • time dependent — Place a time frame on what you’ll be accomplishing. Goals need focus and urgency to keep momentum. What is the end date?

(skills x passion) + problem solving = opportunity magnet

For a goal to be an opportunity magnet, it’s got to have some actionable attraction. Great goals use what’s uniquely our own — the strength of skills, the leverage of our situation, and the momentum of our passion.

Do you tune your goals to get maximum opportunity attraction?

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!

Great resources:
Effective Business Process Solutions To Achieve Business Goals
Make good on new goals this year
If I Were Launching a New Small Biz Web Site Today
True goals are SMART.

What Are You Doing to Keep Your Garden Growing?

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Gardening and Social Media

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I didn’t start gardening until I moved to Austin.

That’s me I waited until I left the rich black dirt and found the wet brown clay and hot dry sun to figure out growing things could be soul building. By the time I got to Massachusetts I was a regular flower farmer. I spent a hours, days, seasons living in a dormant three-acre spread. In the fifth year I was rewarded to a winding, spectacular show of color.

What Are You Doing to Keep Your Garden Growing?

As a beginning gardener, I learned that just plopping pretty plants into the ground got pretty darn expensive — not to mention time-intensive — It didn’t make lasting beauty. The scratches and the itching sometimes lasted longer. Plants that don’t have the right nutrients or climate are hard to keep thriving.

Soon I was learning what made solid ground for things to grow. Gardening takes strategy and strategy is knowing what you know and knowing what you can and can’t control.


Gardening and social media have a lot in common.
What are you doing to keep your community growing?

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Change your thinking with Liz!!

Buy the ebook. Learn listening.

Could You Be a Chief Executive Social Gardener?

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Enter the Chief Executive Social Gardener

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Recently a friend asked me how we might get big brands to think more like entrepreneurs. I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe we should get the C-suite executives to start a gardening community.

Gardeners follow time-tested strategies and tactics. Gardeners

  • have a goal — whether it’s a garden or community we’re building, we know what we’re setting as the mission.
  • know their field — we need to understand the qualities of the playing ground, the terrain, and the creatures who live there.
  • understand the systems and cycles, rhythms and patterns — we see our own habits, the natural paths of outside factors, the effects of climate, the weather, and unexpected events
  • consider the units (plants or people) that match those circumstances, how they work and compete, and which of those we can manage most easily
  • determine what we know, what we want to know, and watch out for what we need to learn

Gardeners talk to each other about what works and what doesn’t. What you know about anything is what applies to making plants happy and thriving. If you’re good at that, you’re gold.

Gardeners also:

  • watch and listen. We are constantly testing the information we think we know. We talk. We listen. We read everything. Not a gardener with any experience thinks that he or she can outwit the variables that nature can bring together.
  • remove weeds, trolls, and competitive threats, while finding opportunities. When gardens fail, great gardeners look for learning and new solutions, when they thrive we look for the same things.
  • amend what’s failing and care for what works — so that threats can’t take hold. Gardeners know that little problems grow, in the same way as beautiful fields do.
  • know that life cycles peak and know what works to extend them. We’ve been watching our gardens. We get to know when they need boosting and when they don’t.
  • realize what we don’t control and we’re careful about when and how changes and new ideas are introduced.

Every enterprise should have a Chief Executive Gardener to be a true partner in getting the Chief Bean Counter more beans to count.

Could you be a Chief Executive Social Gardener?
What seeds are you planting now?

More about social media gardening tomorrow …

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Grow your community with Liz!!

Buy the ebook. Learn listening.

What's at the Crossroads of Your Skills and Your Most Passionate Challenges

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Doing What You Love

We’re always hearing that to live the life that we’re meant to live, we should be doing what we love.

Easier said than put into practice.

Sleeping on the beach in Caribbean won’t find most of us getting enough income to keep the life moving forward.

Yet, every one of us has had some experience with success, with that optimal experience when we’re so sure of where we’re going that we know we’re on the right path.

Strategy always starts with our own unique position. What better way to strategize a great life than to start with who you are and what you love?

If we make a connection with where our skills are perfectly matched to the challenges that fit our passions, we’ll find that we’re already loving where we’re going.

What’s at the crossroads of your skills and your most passionate challenges?

I dare you to claim it in the comment box. 🙂

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Connect to yourself!!

Extreme Hesitation and Extreme Strategy: Are You Willing to Own Your Life?

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I've been thinking . . .

about hesitation and strategy.

I was painfully shy as a child. If you’ve been there, then you know. Painfully shy is literally painful — it scrapes at your being. You know who you are are, but for some cloudy reason, a wall prevents you. You can’t let the world see you. All you are or all you can be stays tucked away .

It’s what today would be called Extreme Hesitation.

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Yet leaders outgrow those childhood fears and walls, don’t we?
Do we?

I was faced with a situation last winter. What was awful was that — even to me — the question looked so trivial, but it had to do with what I had named “visible authenticity.” They said wear this. I said “no.” They cared more than I did. But we had agreed that I would be dressing to reflect the essence of my personality. “This” wasn’t me.

I felt painfully shy once more … I recognized the conflict, but now I was grown enough to put words to the feeling.

I knew me better than they did. Authenticity was my choice, and choosing for me was my responsibility..

I learned about owning my life.
I think of it as Extreme Strategy.

Choose your own path, but always choose wisely.
Leaders don’t need to follow, nor do they choose the road that will draw the most followers.
They don’t say “yes,” when their hearts and their feet are telling them to say “no.”

Traveling other our path is what makes being shy truly painful.

Leaders don’t hesitate in moving forward.
People who are afraid do.
Leaders don’t look for approval.
They know.
They go where their head, their heart, and their purpose compels them to go.

And people follow.

Because deeply knowing where you’re going is irresistibly attractive.

Authenticity is the key to leadership strategy. Own what you know and find the opportunities. The rest is just learning. We’ve been doing that since we started school.

Are you willing own your life?

I make connections.

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