Successful Blog

What’s the ROI of Relationships All About? Ask David Sherbow

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David SherbowWe asked SOBCon alumnus David Sherbow what the ROI of Relationships meant to him — here was his reply:

“I’ve been in the urban independent record promotion business for 15 years. Many would say that I am one of the best if not the best at what I do. Everybody thinks that getting records on the radio is all about money. Every big record company has money. The great differentiator is the type and quality of relationships you have built. I worked for the VP of Marketing and Promotion of Def Jam Records for 10 years. For the first 5 he taught me everything he knew and passed on his relationships. For the second five years I ran his business by myself and became better at it then he was. When we parted ways it is only because of the relationship he passed on or allowed me to make on my own that has allowed me to survive profitably in what is an extremely difficult business for the last five years.”

David blogs at MusicBizGuy.Com , and you can find him on Twitter @MusicBizGuy. Also, his new website, MPTrax.Com, the first user generated music booking utility, just went up. Check out his 3 minute video presentation on MPTrax.

So what does the ROI of Relationships mean to you? Let us know on a comment to this post, or put up a post of your own and link to us.

See you in Chicago – register for SOBCon09 NOW!

SOB Business Cafe 02-06-09

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

The Buzz Bin explains the burden of listening.
Our ears are always on, sometimes to our chagrin. But although we listen non-stop, we often don’t hear. Therein lies the challenge and opportunity associated with assessing an online environment.

Listening requires depth and patience regardless of the situation.

Remarkable Communication explains the value of slowing down
A few days ago, Mara Rogers wrote a post for Copyblogger about SpeedBlogging. Her post had a lot of smart tips for writing blog posts more quickly and efficiently, and I don’t disagree with any of the advice she gave.

But I’d like to propose another way to approach your posts: SlowBlogging.

Drew’s Marketing Minute explains what we have to do with “it.”
I was talking to a friend of mine who owns a small business last week. He admitted they’re having a fantastic start to the year and everything looks good moving forward.

He went on to tell me that he needs a new company car. He has the money to pay cash for it. Car prices have never been lower. But he’s holding off.

ripple explains how lingo and lines.
“Peppers?” I was California perplexed.

“Yeah, sweet or hot giardinare.” Mario barked.

(Someone in my new found social community chimed in and suggested the sweet peppers. And to have Mario spoon the beef juice rather than dip the sandwich. Too soggy otherwise.)

Login + Emotion explains what we do what we’re teaching.
Imagine someone comes up to you at a cocktail party. And they’re wearing a mask—while everyone else isn’t. You don’t know much about that person because they’re not really telling you a great deal about themselves. How much would you tell them about yourself in return?

Related ala carte selections include

Todd Smith Photography shows where he is.

Twittersheep shows what folks who follow me say about themselves. Click the image to go there.

My twitter name is @lizstrauss . What else would it be?

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

The Importance of a Compass … to Going or Staying Anywhere

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When Your Only Transportation Is a Bike

Steve Goodman wrote a song, “City of New Orleans.” I can’t hear it without thinking about the Rock Island tracks that went to Chicago alongside my dad’s saloon.

Behind my dad’s saloon was narrow leanto right next to the railroad tracks. By “right next to” I mean not more than fifteen feet away.

I can’t fully describe it to you. I only saw the inside once when I was a very little girl. It made me curious. I remember thinking “It seems like my hideout in my closet.” My hideout was magical. I didn’t realize that for a grownup this probably wasn’t.

It was made of some grayed-out wood, laminate — cheap stuff — shaped like a shoe box. It had holes I could see through — all the way to the gas station across the tracks. Inside was a cot, a table, a chair, a dirt floor. The door on the shack flapped in the wind and only had a weird wood thing that turned on a nail to hold it closed, kind of like what you find in a bad bar’s bathroom stall.

The man who live there, they called him “Seewall,” walked tall. He was always smiling. I see him at my dad’s saloon. Sometimes he’d be moving a mop. Sometimes he’d be running errands. Sometimes he’d be carrying boxes. Sometimes he’d be talking to me like Donald Duck and making me laugh. As shy as I was, as much as he owned the space he walked in, we were friends.

He’d given up riding the rails. His only transportation was a simple wide-tired bike. It had a basket for carrying bags and stuff. No bell or brakes or anything that cool bikes had. Every night a 10pm as a ritual, he would pedal around the saloon and take down the stairs in the floor behind the bar. It was safe there. To me it seemed like that bike had one home and he had another.

Most importantly, he was happy.

I was almost six feet tall and the man who lived in shack by the tracks was long gone, before I found out from my younger, older brother that his real name was something like Sewell Southward Sebastian Fleming, the Third. It’s a name that sounds like he had something before the Great American Depression. Some might say that the man lost everything.

He always acted as if he found it.

Guess a shack by the rails might mean something different to a guy who took on life as a true hobo. He always had access to his freedom. But he never went. He talked to me once about a compass. I never asked where his was. I just knew that he had one.

Have you found your compass? He said you need one if you’re going or staying anywhere.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Social Media Fatigue (SMF)

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Do you suffer from Social Media fatigue (SMF?)

Unless you’re aware of your goals and understand why you’re using the many social platforms you may be involved in, it’s easy to get caught up in the sharing of links, music and personal tidbits. Everyone has had an hour fly by on Twitter when they’ve just meant to pop in for a few minutes right? Was there anything specific of value that you found during that time or did you just get caught up in the flurry? Blasting about in social media can take a lot out of you.

If you spend time in the stream on Twitter,  Face Book, Friendfeed  (or on any of the myriad of social platforms ) you form relationships with people. These relationships may be based on business interests or friendships or both. Last week, a close friend and I both noticed a friend was in trouble. His tweets tweets were sporadic and talked of being in ill health. We checked in. Our interaction had brought us beyond our keyboards into a real sense of human empathy. When you see someone tweet about a bad day, a mis-hap, or a loss do you check in – DM a little message? visit their blog and leave an encouraging comment?

Recently, I read along as Seth Simonds held a discussion on Twitter about how many users felt like they could freely admit to having a bad day in a tweet. Then, without warning, he asked everybody to “tweet” ME with a bowl of curried lentils. I love curried lentils! My screen was suddenly filled with tweets from strangers “giving” me a hot bowl of lentils. It’s random and silly, right? Then why did it put such a bright spot in my day? Because it reflected that brightness of empathy and community that brings me back into social media time after time.

The next time you sit down for “just five minutes” in social media, make a point to lift up another person. You don’t need to attempt profound conversations on deep subjects at every turn. Just try to stay open to the signals we all give when discouragement, loneliness, and fatigue set in.

Only you can prevent SMF! 😉

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from: Kathryn Jennex @northernchick

photo: Vito’

Anita Roddick's "The Body Shop" Was Built on Relationships

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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.

Dame Anita Roddick, Business As Unusual
by Gerald Neo

“The old views of business as a jungle where only the vicious survive will, I hope, soon be giving way to a new view of business as a community where only the responsible will lead. If yours values are heralded and if your heart is in the right place, if your feeling are recognized and your spirit at play, I believe there will be footprints out there for all of us.” –Anita Roddick — Business As Unusual

The late a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Roddick”>Dame Anita Roddick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Roddick) is one of those few business person whom I always admired. She had built a business empire The Body Shop not just on making profit out of producing cosmetic products but also an ambassador for fair trade, environmental awareness, animal protection and respect for human rights.

Anita had always being known for her campaigning work on social and environmental causes. And through campaigning, she had caused multi-national companies like Shell and government to take remedial action on the things which they have done wrong.

In one of her books “Business As Unusual”, she mentioned the following reasons as how The Body shop maintains their identity in a business environment that usually alienates humanity in every way.

  • We didn’t know how to run a conventional business. We had never read a book on economic theory and had never even heard of Milton Friedman.
  • We valued and respected labour as fuzzy and cuddly, nerdy as that sounds. We understood that life was no more complicated than love and work.
  • We had no money. Every original was based on reusing everything, refilling and recycling we could.
  • We were naïve. We didn’t know you could tell lies. That grace has stayed with us to this day.
  • We loved change. We believed everything was subject to change.
  • We had a secret ingredient called euphoria. We shared an extraordinary level of optimism, and we still do.

Finally – and this was the main ingredient – we couldn’t take a moisturizer seriously!

Anita had built every business relationship on those reasons. And those reasons had also become the foundation for the values, which every employee of The Body Shop used to guide them as they worked with each other.

In the ever-changing business world, companies can only be successful if the people running it are true to their values. And usually how are they being judged on that? It’s not based on their bottom line but how they maintain their business relationship with everyone from business partners, customer, vendors and even their employees.

Gerald Neo can be found at geraldheralds where he
writes about anything from leadership managment and organizational
managment to online marketing and social media.
His twitter name is @gneo

Register for SOBCon09 NOW!!