Successful Blog

How to Build the Deeply Connected Network that Is Key to Any Strategy

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The Magnetic Attraction of Values

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When we were writing the press release for the first SOBCon, I said,

Every business is relationships, and relationships are everyone’s business.

Our networks are relationships with people who help our businesses thrive.

If you look to your network, what will you find? What moves you to follow up when you collect a business card or meet a new contact? What brings you to invite a new company or a new person into that network that keeps your business alive?

It’s been said that …

If you want to know what you stand for, look at your friends.

It’s true in business as well as in our personal lives. It’s not what you say. It’s what you do that counts. We define and describe our values by the relationships we make. The values of the company we keep attract other people who keep those same values. We trust people who value what we do. We know they’ll choose as we choose and decide as we decide.

It’s an almost automatic, magnetic attraction.
The attraction occurs so naturally that we often don’t notice our common values until we grow our network without attention. Then like a bad download, we add a relationship that corrupts and we feel the loss we get an unexpected and negative response that doesn’t match our values set.

Trust relies on having our values aligned.
Trusted sources are foundational to strategy.

How to Build the Deeply Connected Network that Is Key to Any Strategy

They say …

Information is power.

The most powerful information isn’t published in Wikipedia or available to the masses via simple research. The best jobs never make it to the job boards. The best partnerships don’t get offered to everyone. Competitors don’t advertise their disadvantages or their future plans. It’s impossible to know about every startup about to launch and every web application that could expedite what you’re currently developing. Yet that scarce information is the rocket fuel that drives a brilliant strategic plan.

Strategic information like that depends on a deeply connected, values-based network of relationships. Access to prized information is what advances your position more quickly than any other resource can.

Developing a deeply connected network that brings that information to you is key to any strategic plan.

Here’s how to build a power network like that.

  1. Know your values. Identify the values that need to be present to determine a “go” or “no go” decision in your business. Those values represent your brand and the foundation of the relationships that will help your business thrive.
  2. Use those values to identify the network relationships you want to establish and cultivate. The people and businesses who share your values will be predictable and easy to trust because they will make the same decisions as you would even when the situation is not clearly black and white.
  3. Become an information magnet and filter. Develop a sense of what information is available to everyone and what is not. Put to use what informs your position. Capture and catalogue scarce information that is irrelevant to you.
  4. Pass on to others in your network information you’ve captured that will improve their position. If you share a trend building, a competitive initiative, or a new tech development about to be announced that could change their strategy, you’ll soon find they are sharing similar information with you.
  5. Treat your network as highly valued. Offer them the same regard you would offer a world leader you admire. Hold them in the highest respect. Keep their secrets. Make time for them. Value their time even more than you value your own.
  6. Show your clear appreciation. Point out their great work. Have gratitude not expectation. Realize and appreciate their achievement by filtering the connections you offer them.
  7. Choose them wisely and trust their truth. Enlist only those willing to invest to equal depth. Seek a comrades that “won’t let each other fail.” Ask them often to challenge you to see and know the truth.

A deeply connected network isn’t measured by numbers, but by commitment. Five people who hold us to a true north outweigh 500 who say we’re always right. Reach for one or two who are willing to grow your mind, your heart, your resolve, and your vision as well as your bottom line and you’ll find that many more of the same kind will find their way to you.

A deeply connected network like that is irresistible.

On what values do you deeply connect?

Be irresistible.

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

Thanks to Week 310 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

Imagining a Cutting Edge Online College Course for Blog Writing

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Guest Post
by Riley Kissel

Imagine the Best

Blogs are in no short supply these days. The World Wide Web is packed with them and you could spend your entire lifetime going through the annals of amateur online journals, posts, articles, and musings that exist and continue to be published every day.

Unfortunately the majority of blogs are mediocre; there are a few solid initial posts when the energy was there, and then they fizzle out into oblivion. Personally, there’s nothing more depressing than reading an awesome blog entry then seeing that the author hasn’t updated their site since early 2007. If they aren’t given up on, then the blog itself typically falls flat. The subjects aren’t interesting, the ideas aren’t insightful, and the writing itself is poor or poorly edited.

It’s bad. But blogs are incredibly popular. In order to cut down on all this content clutter throughout the Blogosphere, there should be a cutting-edge academic way to teach people how to blog properly. If it were up to me, places like online college courses would develop solid courses aimed at teaching students how to be a state-of-the-art blog writer.

Think about it. There’s a reason we have English majors, Journalism majors, and countless other college programs geared toward educating students in the art of a language or particular writing style. It’s the reason that’s been driving the entirety of education since the dawn of time: we want to streamline eagerness into better performance. Knowledge and the opportunity to perfect yourself are what classes are all about.

So what I’m saying is that since blog writing has become such an immensely popular subset of the written word, our universities need to start offering focused, accredited courses that teach students how to be better bloggers. Assuming half of every one of such a classroom’s students would be bloggers or aspiring bloggers, this would be enormously beneficial in improving the quality of blogs.

Hopefully, traditional universities would embrace such a program. But in the meantime, I see online colleges as the likely place where we could see new blogger classes being introduced as course options. Consider it a sort of beta phase. I don’t doubt for a minute that such a course wouldn’t be immensely popular with current generations of students.

Imagine what such a class could be like:

*Students could be taught on ways to stay inspired when the amount of ideas start to run flat.

*Classes could impose a daily blog entry, so students could get adjusted to churning out content on a daily basis.

*The basics of good writing can be reiterated, but with particular attention paid toward the need for blog writing to vivid, to-the-point, and insightful.

*The nature Blogging itself – with a capital B. Blog writing classes can present to students the (what I believe to be correct) idea that the blog is it’s own separate entity apart from journalism, diary-keeping, and so forth.

Once upon time every established art form had to break away from former foundations. Sculpture broke away from carving, film broke away from photography, and now the blog is breaking away into it’s own definition. This will include new rules, new concepts, and new beliefs when it comes to judging quality. These rules, concepts, and beliefs are all being worked out as we speak, and could finally be presented to writers in a digestible fashion if blog writing were taught within an academic setting.

I’m completely confident in the idea that one day universities will start offering blog courses to students. My only hope is that it will be implemented sooner rather than later. There’s a whole lot of clutter in need of getting cleaned up when it comes to blogs.

I want to see a day when the average blogger is confident, creative, and consistent. While offering college courses for blog writing won’t eradicate the enormous amount of junk out there on the Blogosphere, it’ll certainly help to make blog writers more creative, consistent, and confident.

What would you like to see in a course for bloggers?

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Riley Kissel is a freelance writer who covers many industries with style. You can find out more about him at RileyKissel.com

Thanks, Riley, for new insights on a critical topic.

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

Balancing Work and Life to Stay Healthy Working at Home

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A Guest Post by
Rachel Carlson

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When you first start working from home, you probably know all of the basic rules. Try not to work in the same room where you sleep; don’t work a 9 to 5 shift. But you also have to remember that your daily commute is no longer there. When you work from home, you might spend the entire day sitting in the same spot, without even the minimal exercise you used to get strolling to the water cooler to catch up on office gossip.

Balancing Work and Life to Stay Healthy Working at Home

Working from home requires a great deal of discipline, and staying healthy is just as important as any other aspect of being a productive “work from homer.” Balancing work and life is much more difficult when you work from home, but it’s not impossible by any means. You probably know that alance doesn’t look like this …

But it still takes only a small effort every day to keep you healthy, lean, and productive.

Take Frequent Breaks

It’s an unfortunate fact that sitting is actually killing us. According to an infographic called “Sitting is Killing You”, the adverse health effects of sitting for any amount of time are numerous:

  • Electrical activity in your legs stops.
  • Your calorie burning drops to about one every minute.
  • After about two hours, your good cholesterol drops by 20%.

While it might not be possible to start working on a treadmill, you can certainly lessen the adverse health effects of sitting by getting up and taking a break every 30 to 60 minutes. I normally wait to clean, do laundry, and do the dishes until my normal work day. Then, I have something mildly physical to get up and do every hour or so.

Set a Time for Exercise Every Day

One of the great ways you can save time and stay healthy when working from home is to use your normal lunch period for exercise, and eat while doing some light work (like writing emails or doing research for an article). But joining a gym can mean a time intensive commute in the middle of the day, and that’s what you were trying to avoid by working from home in the first place. Instead, consider checking reviews of elliptical machines to see if there’s a machine that fits both your space and your budget.

Some people like putting the exercise machine right in the space they use for their office – which can work for some people as long as it’s not too distracting during the day. If you’ve never been the exercising type, try taking a short walk during your lunch to get blood flowing back to your legs, and keep a lifestyle more similar to your old office commute. Try sticking to this walking plan for at least a month before investing in a machine. While paying several hundred dollars for an exercise machine might seem exciting, it’s best to make sure that you’ll stick to the exercise plan before making the investment.

Exercise Helps More Than Your Waistline

A study performed by the American Psychological Association found that increased physical activity in people ages 15 to 71 had a direct correlation to improved focus and cognitive function. Based on this study, exercising makes it easier to focus in a distracting environment, multi-task, and focus on a single task for a longer period of time. This same study also found that exercising helped lower the risk of dementia in older participants, even if they didn’t start exercising until later in their life. In effect, exercise slows the aging of the brain, helping you work just as many hours at 50 as you did at 25.

You don’t need to set aside three hours of intense exercise every day to stay healthy when working from home. Instead, it takes a small, consistent effort to stay healthy and focused. If you have a dog, walking it every day is perfect for the type of exercise you need. If you live in a well populated area, you can even walk to a lunch spot (rather than taking the car) to get a bit of exercise during your lunch hour. And, of course, simply cleaning the house during break periods throughout the day is much better than doing nothing.

Plan Your Meals and Eat Healthy Foods

It might sound like a no-brainer, but it’s very easy to just grab a quick snack when you work from home. Nobody is around to ask if all you’re having for lunch is a bag of potato chips and a candy bar, and it seems to be the best strategy when you have a tight deadline to meet. However, unhealthy snacking is one of the biggest threats to people that work from home – because it’s so easy to do.

Really focus on what you eat for lunch every day. While it might seem like a good idea to grab a snack bar and keep working through lunch, this can be harmful to your body in several ways:

  • By supplying you with empty, sugary calories.
  • By keeping you sedentary for yet another hour of the day.

There’s nothing wrong with taking an hour to make a healthy lunch during the day. In fact, if you can’t spare an hour to get up, stretch, and enjoy a healthy meal, you might need to reevaluate your productivity and finds ways that you might be wasting time during the day.

While not being able to slide into your favorite jeans anymore is a fairly obvious sign that your work from home lifestyle might need a bit of tweaking, the more subtle signs can often be just as dangerous. Staring at a computer screen for hours every day, sitting in the same chair, and drinking caffeinated, sugary drinks are all activities that increase your chances for heart disease, diabetes, and a host of other adverse health conditions. But simply eating a healthier lunch, taking frequent breaks (at least once an hour), and resting your eyes by looking away from the computer screen once every 20 minutes are all it takes to offset the ill health effects of working from home, and properly balance work and life.

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Author’s Bio:
Rachel Carlson is a writer and student that works from home. While she spends a lot of her time writing, she also helps different companies like Clear Wireless with gaining exposure through various blogs and websites. She has recently started a new Twitter account and is finally going to give it a real shot. She can be followed at @carlson_rachel.

Thanks, Rachel. I think that guy in the picture used to work for me.

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

Where do you get ideas?

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by Patty Azzarello

Imagination

Many things set highly successful people apart, but the one I want to talk about here is where they get their good ideas.

Short answer: everywhere and from anyone!

One of the most critical factors in creating big success is Imagination.

What if the thing that will create your biggest success is something you haven’t thought of yet?

What if the best solution to the problem you are working on is something you are not likely to think of?

How will you think of it?

Learn from everyone

Highly successful people are always ready to learn from anyone.

They seek out good ideas everywhere, all the time, and when they find one it doesn’t matter if it comes from a highly paid consultant, a board member, or the person that comes in to clean up the catering after lunch.

They recognize good ideas, they adopt them, and they thank people for them.

This generosity, appreciation and acknowledgment makes people want to help them.

So, they have a bigger and much steadier source of good ideas than people who either don’t think they can learn from others, or refuse to acknowledge when they do.

I have worked with many people whose ego prevents them from every saying, “Wow, that’s a good idea, I never thought of that, thank you”.  These are not the people whose careers are soaring.

How are you building your pipeline of good ideas?

Here are some things you can do:

  1. Create a habit of talking to people before you get to the end of the process of what you are doing, or before you feel like know all the answers.
  2. Start conversations assuming you know LESS than the other person. Even if you are certain that you know more, take some time to listen anyway.
  3. Catch yourself from saying, “We tried that already” or “We already thought of that” – that shuts off the flow.  Instead ask, “In that case, how would you deal with this complication?”
  4. Talk to people you don’t ordinarily talk to.  Ask them them what they think about – you’ll be surprised how many new ideas this will generate.
  5. Ask around for people who do similar work and seek out best practices – this is a great way to ask for help without looking like you don’t know what you are doing!
  6. Specifically seek out people who think very differently from you and meet with them regularly to discuss your work, your plans and your goals.

My most inspiring successes have almost all started from the ideas and encouragement of others.

They were things that were not in my imagination before someone else helped put them there.

It doesn’t matter where a good idea comes from.  Just be sure to put yourself in the stream and recognize them when they come along!

Follow Liz!

Liz Strauss is one of the most prolific share-ers of ideas I have ever encountered! As a start on your idea bank. Follow Liz!

What about you?

Do you have a story about something you were able to accomplish because someone helped you with your imagination? Do tell! Please share in the comment box below.

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Patty Azzarello is an executive, author, speaker and CEO-advisor. She works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. Patty has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello. Also, check out her new book Rise…

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Did You See the Netflix Movie that Bombed?

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As a business owner, you oftentimes have to put things out there and see what sticks.

What does stick can prove profitable, while other attempts can fall on deaf ears. Anyone remember the new Coke?

For business owners, effectively communicating with your customers and potential customers can mean the difference between turning a profit, breaking even and even going under.

Upset Customers are bad for Business

As many of you know, Netflix alerted subscribers a few months back that it was going to employ separate prices for its DVDs-by-mail and streaming video plans.

The end result would be a significant price increase for its customers, with the least expensive bill for customers who sought both services going from $10 to $16 a month. While $6 a month doesn’t sound like much, that is $72 a year that could go for other indulgences.

With the price increase kicking in this month, many Netflix subscribers indicated they would be turning elsewhere for their DVD and streaming video needs. Upset customers bombarded the Netflix site with countless comments, along with a barrage of tweets via the hashtag #DearNetflix.

According to the most recent data, it appears a significant number of those subscribers are holding true to their word.

Netflix recently trimmed its subscriber forecast for the present quarter, reporting it now expects to conclude the period with 24 million customers, some one million less than it had forecast just a few weeks back. When Netflix ended its second quarter at the end of June, it reported having 25.6 million global subscribers.

So, how did Netflix respond to this issue in hopes of righting the ship?

In yet another public relations nightmare, the company said it was separating its DVD mail rental and video streaming services, renaming the new DVD service Qwikster (the streaming service will remain under the Netflix name). Individuals who choose to both rent and stream videos will be required to log in to a pair of different sites and get two different credit card charges.

Research Ahead of Time Potential Fallout Issues

Not only have many subscribers expressed their dismay with the price increase, but they also were probably left scratching their heads as to the new name for the service.

As it turns out, Netflix apparently did not do enough research on the name Qwikster ahead of time, or officials would have known that the Qwikster name on social media venue Twitter is currently held by a male whose avatar is that of Elmo displaying a joint. Oops!

So not only now do you have a company upsetting many of its subscribers by hiking the costs for its popular service, but now you leave them confused with the name change, not even apparently taking the time to check and see who might hold that label on one of the most popular social media sites. Again, oops!

Due to the company’s recent gaffes, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings issued a statement to customers upset with the price increase for the service in recent weeks. “I messed up,” he remarked on the company blog and in an e-mail to subscribers. “I owe everyone an explanation.”

Running a successful business takes time and effort, but above all, the ability to always be one step ahead of the game.

In this instance, it appears Netflix and the changes it enacted, are getting tuned out by a large percentage of customers.

Photo credit: benzinga.com

Dave Thomas 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. Among the topics he writes about is business cash advance.