Successful Blog

I Can Show You How to Do That in Less Than 20 Minutes

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All you have to do is ask.
People say that every day.
But you ask and it doesn’t work. Why is that?

I remember when I wanted to learn how to set up an ebook, I asked and asked and asked. You might think with the group of friends and connections that I have i might have been able to find one, two, or twenty, who already had dome something like that. In fact, I did.

And I asked.

But what happened next … became 6 of the most frustrating weeks of my life.

The 7 or 8 people I asked all told me the same things …. things like

  1. what a great idea
  2. it’s easy to do
  3. I can show you how to do that in less than 20 minutes.

Then they talked about random things for over an hour and still never showed me how.

I’d see them on Twitter and say hello. We’d chat. We’d update each other on progress. I’d mention that I’d still not figured out my way through the ebook maze. And again I’d hear something like

  1. what a great idea
  2. it’s easy to do
  3. I can show you how to do that in less than 20 minutes

But they never did.

All you have to do is ask.
It’s more complicated than that. What I’ve learned since then is that

  1. people like to help people who help themselves first.
  2. when you help yourself first your questions are specific and answering them doesn’t feel like work
  3. helping someone is even more meaningful when it moves our own cause forward too.

Now, before I ask, I learn all that I can learn on my own — read all my friends and connections have written about what I’m trying to figure out. Then when I still have question I can start with

I’ve read your blog and there’s one part of this process I don’t understand. Could you help me with it? You might get an idea for a new blog post out of it. I might even offer to write that blog post in return for the advice that I’m getting.

It’s always more attractive to help someone who has started by helping herself.

Be irresistible. Help yourself first and show how helping you will move them forward too.

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

Thanks to Week 341 SOBS

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

How to learn from your mistakes

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Rosemary O’Neill

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What? You’re not perfect? Nah, me neither. But here’s a little secret: it’s what you do after a problem, crisis, or failure that really counts.

As an entrepreneur or small business owner, every day offers new opportunities to learn, grow, and strengthen your enterprise. When you take the time to document your learning experiences, you’re getting leverage for the future. I’m the child of an Army officer, so I refer to these as “after-action reports.”

Once you’ve weathered the storm, and the dust settles just a bit (not too much), do the following:

Bring together all of the players
It’s essential to get together in an atmosphere where there’s no blame assigned. It should be in the spirit of doing things better next time.

Figure out whet led up to the crisis and whether it could have been avoided
Was there a broken process that led to the problem? Perhaps you’ll decide that the problem could not have been avoided, and focus on how to respond next time.

Assign someone to document and make recommendations for change
Ask someone on the team to write a summary, and suggest ways it could be done better next time. If you’re a solo entrepreneur, this would be an ideal time to tap into your mastermind resources or your mentor. It’s possible they have already been through a similar situation.

Share the recommendations
Be sure to share the recommended changes with everyone on the team. Sometimes retraining or new training is necessary. Reinforce the training with some roleplaying if it’s helpful.

How do you formalize your “lessons learned?”

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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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3 Avenues to Safe, Reputable Business Advice

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Safe Advice for Smart Business Decisions

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If you already have your own small business you probably know that finding sturdy, credible business advice can be a tricky task. If you’re just looking to start a business, beware, for there is an endless sea of websites and business “professionals,” willing to give you the “latest and greatest” advice on how to start and run your company. The following tips should help lead you to some safe advice, or at least get you started down the path of making smart business decisions.

Personal, Real-life Advice

Although this can be a bit more expensive than the do-it-yourself route, the quality, personal poignancy, and accuracy afforded by this option is often well worth it. Hiring or meeting with a personal life coach or business coach is an effective way to get good personal business advice without wasting your own precious time searching high and low for it. These professionals will take the time to sit down with you and go over virtually any business concerns or questions you may have. They’ll make sure that the advice they offer is specific to your personal needs and take much of the guesswork out of the equation.

Good Websites

Much like the site you find yourself on now, there are plenty of trust-worthy business sites out there offering quality information. Finding them in the midst of all the clutter now on the net is the tough part. Here is a link to a helpful website offering a top 20 list of the best business websites for Entrepreneurs and CEOs in 2010. The list is still quite relevant for us here in 2012.

Friends and Relatives

If you know any personal friends or family members who’ve started their own successful (or unsuccessful) business ventures in the past, absolutely solicit some advice from them. This is as good an option as any, and one that usually casts a safety net over any intellectual property and personal business ideas depending on your level of trust with said acquaintance. People are usually very willing and often eager to discuss their personal models for success and business experiences with a fellow entrepreneur, especially one they already know. Don’t overlook the enormous potential that your personal connections may hold.

In this dog-eat-dog world, which currently hangs loosely in the balance of a delicate economy, sound advice can be the difference between a successful idea coming to fruition, or fading back into the ethos for someone else to find and successfully develop. Make sure you take the necessary time to research before embarking on any financial endeavors. You never know when or where that last missing link may be hiding. Using the right tools, in any case, surely gives you a better chance of finding it.

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Author’s Bio:
Alex Brown: Alex is a prolific writer with specialization on various aspects of financial finance. His articles on debt, mortgage industry and personal finance are offer valuable guidelines to the readers.

Thank you, Alex!

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

Time Waits for No One

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As the saying goes, just about all of us are just one job layoff, illness or other unfortunate happening away from major financial turmoil.

For me, that day of reckoning came some six years ago when I was laid off from my job of five and a half years. Once the initial shock of getting laid off by an e-mail died down, my first thoughts turned to how I would pay my rent, buy food, meet my car payments etc.

I was fortunate in that I had a pair of very supportive parents, not to mention a can-do attitude, reminding myself I was going to see this layoff as a challenge and not the end of the world.

Fast Forward Six Years Later

As I today celebrate my one-year anniversary with another employer, I am thankful that the layoff six years ago did not entirely derail me. While some may just brush off a layoff, I took it personally, especially given what I would discover were the true reasons behind it. As they say, however, move on and move up.

Today’s job finds me working with some extremely talented people, many of whom are quite younger. I see some of myself 10-20 years ago in them today, knowing that they have a ton of opportunities ahead of them.

While I am far from retirement, I am also not foolish enough to not be putting money away for that day.

Yes, I often live paycheck to paycheck like many others I know, but I do my best to take a little from that bi-weekly check and dump it into my 401(k). I also set up my own retirement account a number of years back. While it is certainly nothing to brag about, it is comforting to know that I’m more of a saver than a wild spender.

Lessons Learned Over Time

As I look at the faces of a number of younger co-workers these days, I admire those that pay close attention to how they handle money.

For those putting money away for a rainy day and for decades from now when they retire thumbs up. Although I was by no means careless with my money when I first started working, I would have definitely done some things differently financially if I knew then what I know now.

One of the cool things about my profession of writing is that unlike other jobs that require major physical efforts, something many of us “older” folks will see dwindle in the decades to come, writers need only be of sound mine, have a trusty Internet connection, and an audience desiring to read their content. Until the day comes that I am not physically able to write, you can bet I will be banging out article after article on my keyboard.

If I could offer just a word or two of wisdom to those younger folks, think about your futures, especially from a financial point of view. Be smart with your money and think about how you would get by should your world as you now know it be suddenly turned upside down.

I never envisioned 23 years of work having flown by so quickly, although I am very grateful for some of the opportunities that have been presented to me. The difficult times too were good learning experiences, something that allowed me to grow as a person.

Now, however, I would not mind if things would slow down a little, although we all know that time waits for no one.

Photo credit: Facebook

Dave Thomas, who covers among other items workers compensation and small business loans, writes extensively for Business.com.

Investing: Even Fixed Income Products Have Risks

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Investment Risks in Fixed Income Products

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One of the key things to understand when investing in fixed income products is risks associated with this asset class. Contrary to popular notion, fixed income products are not devoid of risks and you need to be aware of them before investing in these products.

Investment risks: The Basics

Risks fall under two broad categories – Systematic risk (also called Market Risk and cannot be mitigated) and Unsystematic risk (this can be mitigated through appropriate portfolio strategies). Systematic risk impacts the entire market. Examples of this include change in government policies. Unsystematic risks are specific to a particular investment and can be mitigated through portfolio diversification. Within a fixed income portfolio, you can diversify your holdings across a number of products and minimize the risk. We will look at the unsystematic risks and see how you can avoid some of them.

Sources of Risks in Fixed Income Asset Class

Interest rate risk: This is caused by movements in interest rates. The value of bonds is inversely correlated to the interest rate and hence an upward movement in interest rates in the market will cause the value of bonds to dip. The Federal Reserve is holding the interest rates low for a prolonged period to spur credit demand in the economy. Once there are visible signs of the economy picking up, the Fed will announce an increase in policy rates which would cause the prices of bonds to decline. While you continue to receive your periodic interest payments on the bonds, the capital value of the bonds that you hold would decline, causing a capital loss. However, if you hold the bonds to maturity, you will not suffer a capital loss, as the bonds would be redeemed by the issuer at the face value.

Re-investment risk: This is the risk that you may not be able to reinvest the proceeds from an earlier investment at the same rate (as the original rate) at the time of maturity. If interest rates go up, you would gain and lose out in a declining interest rate scenario. You have to consider this risk when the maturity profile of the instruments you hold is less than your time horizon for investment. Laddering is a popular technique that helps reduce re-investment risk. What you should do is to invest your money in a staggered manner and vary the maturity profile of your investments. This would help you ride out the volatility on the interest rate front.

Liquidity risk: This is the risk that you may not be able to sell your holdings when desired. Or you may end up selling your holdings far below their intrinsic worth. Certificate of Deposits come with definitive lock in and are not liquid instruments whereas bond funds can be bought and sold on the exchange and carry minimum liquidity risk (the bond funds that are listed heavily traded). Always keep in mind your liquidity needs when you decide to allocate your funds to fixed income instruments.

Exchange rate risk: You would be exposed to exchange rate risk when you invest in instruments denominated in a currency, different from your domestic currency. You may find interest rates attractive in emerging economies and choose to invest in bond funds that hold these securities. What you should also remember is that this investment has an inherent risk of currency exchange rates. During uncertain times, an adverse currency exchange rate movement may offset the interest you earn and even cause a capital loss. One way of mitigating this risk is through currency hedges; however, these instruments are not available to all. And the cost of these hedges may outweigh the returns and make the whole exercise not worthwhile.

Credit risk: This is the risk that the issuer of the instrument may default on the obligations to pay the periodic coupon payments and/ or the principal. You should look for those instruments that carry a high credit rating and not get swayed by attractive coupon on offer. Instruments with good credit ratings carry a lower coupon as a general rule. Sticking to highly rated securities would protect you from this risk.

Summary

If you are looking at building a fixed income portfolio, it would be worthwhile to understand that this asset class is not devoid of risk. The objective of fixed income investing should be to generate steady income without taking undue risks. And understanding the risks in this asset class and ways of mitigating them would help you plan your allocation to this asset class.

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Author Bio:
George is a full time financial adviser and blogger. His interest lies in trading, investment, portfolio management and business finance. He also owns a couple of finance blogs which provide valuable information to intellectual readers.

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