Successful Blog

Are You Using History Strategically … to Claim Your Business and Life Future?

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History Invents Itself

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The town I grew up in had a population of 20,000 people. The school I went to kept the same kids in the same classes all through 8 grades … then many of us went to the same high school.By third grade the first week of school held few surprises. I suppose that way good in some ways.

But in one way that situation made for a terribly skewed view of how the world worked.

We grew up in a universe where the people rarely changed. That was true in too many ways.
We rarely changed in that

      we were the same individuals with the same names.

 

      we were the same in our relationships to each other.

 

    we were the same in that we couldn’t change or outgrow the stories we knew about each other.

The “kid who wet his pants in first grade” was still that “kid who wet his pants in first grade” on the day he graduated high school. And I can still tell you his name today.

Anyone who’s ever attended a family or school reunion knows what this means. We live up to the stories that define us and sometimes when we get back to the people who were there when those stories first came to be, we revert to being who we were when the story happened.

We believe that our history defines our present.
Don’t believe that. Claim the right to define your business and your life.

The Place of History in Business and in Life

We’ve all heard that history repeats itself. That those who don’t pay attention to it’s lessons are bound to end up learning them again. But not all of histories lessons remain important and relevant. And staying tied to them when situation, skills, and experience change isn’t always a good thing.

That boy who had a bathroom accident at age 6 is now quite successful business man. The people he meets today never see him as that “kid who wet his pants in first grade.” Part of the man’s success is that he knows that story from the past might be true, but it’s irrelevant. He doesn’t let it define the person he is today.

The gorgeous cheerleader named “Cookie” who had straight As, personality, and the coolest crowd going for her in high school is now working as bartender in that small town of 20,000. She still tries to live the old stories, but they’ve faded.

History can be dangerous in it’s ability to keep us stuck in the past. Like a fifteen-year-old hairstyle, if you’re still telling a story from the past to define why your life or your business isn’t good — the story isn’t working for you.

Wisdom comes when we learn from history and use it to write a new and more successful story now. That’s true of business as well as life.

Using History Strategically to Claim the Future

Once SEARS was the World’s Largest Store and named a radio station WLS to celebrate that. The catalog won that title is gone. ABC bought WLS in 1960 and the SEARS Tower was sold in 1994.

Sears story of past success is irrelevant, unless they look at how a future SEARS might apply what they did in the context of a 21-century Internet environment. Even with the same vision and mission, Sears is in a new position with new conditions. They’ll need to make new decisions, build new networks, and new systems to find the unique opportunities to build success — much as they did in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Numbers are important and useful, but they are not as deep as the questions we ask. All numbers we have — sales numbers, revenue numbers, even responses to commercials, ads and blog posts — report history, the success or failure of we did in the past. We can set new goals and build new plans with numbers to measure them, but once we execute to where the measurement occurs that action is past. Those mile markers on the road, at best, show us how far we’ve come.

History can’t drive the present into the future. The right questions will lead to our best true story now. A typical view of history and numbers will inform that, but the right questions will ask:

  • what were missed opportunities.
  • what behaviors always led to your successes.
  • what you’ve learned from wrong turns.
  • and what you want to learn to make your future stronger, faster, easier, more meaningful.

In other words, use history to benchmark how you’ve grown and to guide your path. But make your one true story about who you are and where you’re going and why your history doesn’t draw the picture only adds nuance to the colors.

Research and mine your history to know what was and might have been true once. Then interpret and reapply that lesson to the new situation, skills, and experience to use history to invent a new future — combining what you wish you knew then, what you know now, and the two offer unique future opportunities for you to go.

Are you using history to claim your business and life opportunities?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Thanks to Week 326 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

Using Foreign Languages to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

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By Adria Saracino

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Connecting Globally

One of the single greatest aspects of the Internet is the ability to connect with people from all over the world. Social media and blogging have quickly created an environment conducive to erasing the distance between people. Now more than ever, information can quickly spread within a matter of seconds.

This global market is great news for website owners, as it means there is opportunity for more people to visit your site. However, you may not be capturing as many of those visitors as you think.

This graph shows that only one fourth of all Internet users are English speakers. Since ¾ of Internet users are not native English speakers, disregarding this audience on your website could mean a missed opportunity for more traffic.

So how do you make sure to capture non-English users? Cater to their native language.

For quick results, using programs like Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/translate_tools?hl=en) to translate your site content will give your international readers—who may have come to your site via English search terms—the option to view your content in a much friendlier environment. This shows cultural sensitivity, and as a result could encourage brand loyalty.

However, note that using free automatic translating services tend to produce very literal translations, which is often free of colloquialisms and common slang. Such literal translations oftentimes come off as poor grammar, so if your translations are faulty it could turn off potential foreign visitors.

Thus, more traditional methods of language learning (http://www.pimsleurapproach.com/) and translating your own content is probably the best way to ensure your site is suited for an international audience. Investing in programs like pimsleur French (http://www.pimsleurapproach.com/learn-french/) and pimsleur German (http://www.pimsleurapproach.com/learn-german/) are great for learning the fundamentals of the common languages you are hoping to optimize for. Whichever route you decide to take, make sure your site content is carefully edited for accuracy.

There are other benefits to catering to an international audience besides showing cultural understanding and sensitivity. Translating your site to popular languages also optimizes your site for international search engine results, since onsite factors are a major indicator of how well you will rank in search engines. This should give you a unique advantage over many of your domestic competitors who otherwise might not optimize for the often overlooked foreign web community.

As translation software improves and the web advances, translating your site should get easier. Until then, invest the time and resources needed to get your web properties optimized and into the search results of foreign visitors before your competition.

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Author’s Bio:
Adria Saracino is the Head of Outreach at Distilled, a creative internet marketing agency in Seattle. When she’s not connecting with interesting people on the web, you can find her talking about style at her personal fashion blog. Follow her on twitter @adriasaracino to stay in touch.

Thanks, Adria!
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Be irresistible!
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Make Your Own Opportunities

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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The only way to know for certain that you won’t win the Publisher’s Clearinghouse is to
not enter the sweepstakes.

The same principle applies to just about every opportunity out there. The successful
entrepreneurs, A-list bloggers, and business leaders all made it because of two things:
?rst, they had radar for opportunities, and second, they seized them.

Think about it. What might have passed you by in the last week or so because you
thought it was too dif?cult, you didn’t have time, you didn’t have the skills, or you just
plain thought “I’ll never make it.” Instead, you should be opportunistic in a good way.

Here are some tips:

  • Recognize your little voice – when it starts telling you why you can’t grasp that chance, don’t listen. Tell it to take a break while you submit that guest post inquiry.
  • Train yourself to see opportunities – you need ?nely tuned opportunity radar. Notice the call for speaker submissions and recognize it as a chance for you to shine.
  • Remember that if you don’t ask, you don’t get – the only reason I am blogging here right now is because I summoned up the guts to ask. Take a deep breath and do it.
  • Don’t get discouraged – the other differentiator for successful people is that they use every rejection as a springboard to the next opportunity. They move on quickly to the next one until they are successful.
  • Always have “lines in the ocean” – you can add so much excitement to your life if you have several things out there, waiting for a response. Will you get accepted to that course? Will your panel proposal be accepted for the conference? Will your photograph win the contest? How much fun to go through life waiting for exciting news!

How about an assignment this week? Go right now and ?nd an opportunity, then just go for it without fear. Tell them Rosemary and Liz sent you.
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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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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Company Meetings Cutting in on Productivity?

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Company meetings serve a wide array of purposes. That being said, can too many meetings be a bad thing?

Having worked at several companies now over a 23-year period, I have seen a variety of approaches to this subject.

Some companies have had a normal approach to in-house meetings, some have had too few meetings, while others have gone overboard and seem to be meeting on an almost hourly basis, whether through onsite meetings or teleconferencing.

I’ve always tended to believe that falling somewhere in the middle of the above-mentioned descriptions is best.

On the one hand, it is important for your team to know what one another are doing; without occasional meetings that is hard to achieve. On the other hand, meeting too often always leads me to wonder how any work is getting done. Too many meetings can lead to micromanaging and a feeling among employees that their every move is being scripted and watched.

If you’re not sure how often your company employees should be meeting to talk strategy, keep these things in mind:

  • What are you trying to accomplish with the meetings in the first place? – Are they held to share strategies, ideas, ask questions of where projects are going? If the answer is yes to any of those things, then by all means meet. If the answer is no to one or more of those things, then you need to rethink why you’re getting staff together;
  • Where does real productivity rank in your company? – While meetings can certainly be productive, they also pull employees away from the tasks they were hired to do in the first place. If you’re team is having to get together on a daily basis to meet even for half an hour, think about the loss of actual productivity time that half hour means to you and your business. I once worked for a company that required its writing team to meet on a daily basis. In lots of the meetings, we repeated what we said the previous day as far as updating our status on projects. In the meantime, I and some others sat there and thought about the wasted time going by when we could have been producing another article, conducting interviews, reaching out to new clients on the phone etc.;
  • Are we getting the same message over and over again? – Another risk factor with having too many meetings is that you will turn off some of your brighter employees. Going over the same message over and over again begins to lead to some tuning out both the message and the messenger. Let’s be honest, some company folks like to hear themselves talk. While that may be great for them, those listening are sitting there thinking about all the real work they could be getting done while listening to something they heard just a week ago. Constructive meetings are one thing, sitting there listening to lectures over and over again are another;
  • Are we stifling openness among employees? – If you’re having too many meetings, you may not even know it. In most offices, employees are not going to raise their hands when polled to respond yes if the company is meeting too often. For most employees, such a move in their minds would rock the boat, painting them as an uncaring employee. In reality, a good office culture is one where openness and the ability to speak one’s mind should be promoted. Without the ability to speak one’s mind in a professional and courteous manner, you are fostering a dictatorship at work, where one and only one voice is heard. Be bold and ask your entire team if they feel the company meets too often. If the answer is yes, take the time to think about how less meeting time can translate into more production time.

 

At the end of the day, each company and its management must decide what is in its best interests.

In my 20+ years of employment nationwide, I have yet to see the perfect meeting environment.

In the meantime, I’m going to meet with myself and see if I can come up with some solutions for this issue.

Photo credit: Markdenham.com

 

Dave Thomas, who covers topics such as starting a small business, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.