Successful Blog

Cool Tool Review: Aquent & crowdSPRING

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Small Business

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in a small business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Aquent & crowdSPRING
A Review by Todd Hoskins


(Disclosure: I currently work with Aquent)

The free agent revolution predicted by Fast Company more than a dozen years ago never fully happened. The rising costs of healthcare, along with our collective drive for security as a result of war and economic turmoil made many people choose employment rather than a life of freelancing.

For reasons of choice or necessity, there are still a lot of independent workers looking for the right gig. Large businesses often will use contractors to provide flexibility, cost savings, or to rent skill sets they do not have. Small businesses should use freelancers more often.

I recommend a couple companies that match talented people with organizations in need of help: Aquent and crowdSPRING.

Aquent has been in business for 24 years. With offices around the globe, and specialized practices in online marketing, interactive design, user experience, traditional marketing, and graphic design, they find the best people either offsite or locally to fit your culture and need.

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It works this way. You have a project, or perhaps someone is taking a one month vacation. You contact Aquent. They assign an agent who will select some candidates from their talent pool based on budget, skill set, and working environment. You interview one or a few, and make a choice. Aquent pays the talent and bills you. The whole process can take less than a week.

For a small business, this gives you access to the most talented designers and marketers for a time period and cost that you dictate, without needing to screen a bunch of people or take on a full-time employee.

crowdSPRING offers logo, graphic design, and writing services, with a much different approach. You post the project on their site, including deadline and a price. Then you wait for the creatives to submit their entries. In addition, crowdSPRING has one of the best small business blogs out there. They are smart people, now with a network of over 60,000 freelancers.

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Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 4/5 – Revive the Free Agent Revolution. There is great talent ready to help. Compelling alternative to paying agencies to do execution work.

Entrepreneur Value: 5/5 – A 2 week SEO engagement, site redesign, or copy rewrite can make a big difference

Personal Value: 2/5 – if you’re a freelancer, these companies can help you

Social Media Book List: #PARTNERtweet and Endless Referrals

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A Weekly Series by Teresa Morrow

I’m Teresa Morrow, Founder of Key Business Partners, LLC and I work with authors and writers by managing their online promotion. As part of my job I read a lot of books (and I love to read anyway!). I am here to offer a weekly post about one book author I am working with and one book I have put on my reading list. This week I will be highlighting ‘#PARTNERtweet: 140 Bite Sized Ideas for Succeeding in your Partnerships ‘. and ‘Endless Referrals’ by Bob Burg . The books will cover topics such as social media (Facebook and Twitter), organization, career building, networking, writing, self development and inspiration.

#PARTNERtweet

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#PARTNERtweet is written by Chaitra Vedullapalli.

Here are few of the tweets from #PARTNERtweet:

~Smart Partnering helps you to deliver functional solutions.
~Smart Partnering provides you access to valuable resources (technology, money, and education).
~Smart Partnering provides you the arsenal to compete on an ongoing basis.
~Smart Partnerships provide a gateway for international expansion.
~Your relationship to the customers does not end with the sale of your product. It begins there.
~The best way to know what your customers want from your products is to ask them.

About the Author:
Chaitra Vedullapalli is the Senior Director of WW Sales and Marketing Communications, where she oversees the information workplace for Microsoft Sales Force. Past work includes shaping the Microsoft Customer and Partner Self Service Experience which touched over 10M Customers & 1M Partners. She was also an integral part of creating the Service Culture at Microsoft and an architect of the Microsoft-IAMCP (International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners) innovation program. Chaitra has also served as Director of Licensing and PartnerNetwork at Oracle where her projects drove licensing simplification and enabled state of the art innovations in Partner Self Service Experience.

Chaitra holds a Patent in WebMethods and Bachelors of Electrical Engineering from RVCE, Bangalore, and is currently active in community efforts to help children in need.

You can purchase a copy of #PARTNERtweet online at ThinkAha books or at Amazon.

This blog post is part of a virtual book tour done by Key Business Partners and I have received a complimentary copy of #PARTNERtweet by the author.

Endless Referrals by Bob Burg

Now I would like to highlight a book on my “review” reading list–Endless Referrals.
I have to admit before I go any further. I have read some of this book and I enjoyed what I have read so far.

I would like to share a bit of this book that I feel has great points (and believe me there are many more in the pages of this book) about the six essential rules of networking etiquette.

1) Don’t Ask for Immediate Repayment – Yes, so true. Don’t go into a networking event with expectations of getting (or asking) for something in return.
2) Treat a mentor like a mentor – When I see this, it reminds me of “do to others, what you would like done to you”.
3) Keep an eye on the clock – Don’t overstay your bounds…with the people you are getting to know. Be sure to allow yourself to meet people within the event you are attending.
4) Follow through on your promises – If you offer to send an email or offer to someone, do it.
5) Be extra careful not to offend a referred prospect – Don’t offer to refer someone to someone else without knowing it is a good fit.
6) Say (and write) a Thank You – still one of the greatest and simplest ways to create lasting connections.

About the Author:
Bob Burg shares information on topics vital to the success of today’s business person. He speaks for corporations and associations internationally, including fortune 500 companies, franchises, and numerous direct sales organizations.

Sharing the principles contained in his bestselling books, Bob has addressed audiences ranging in size from 50 to 16,000, sharing the platform with notables including today’s top thought leaders, broadcast personalities, athletes, and political leaders including cabinet secretaries and a former United States President.
*courtesy of Amazon.com

You can purchase a copy of ‘Endless Referrals’ on Amazon.

I truly hope you will check out these books and please comment and let me know your thoughts on them.

How to Be Good Greedy for Your Brand, Your Business, and the People Who Help You Thrive

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Attracting Minds

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IT BEGAN with a conversation right after someone had handed me a glass of wine. The vibrant Sally Hogshead walked up and began telling me a story that showed me she livesher life. Fascinating is what Sally calls it. Irresistible is my word for for it. Some folks call it influence or attracting like minds.

It’s a pair of eyes filled with the curiosity and fearless hear of a beginner that’s out test-driving what wisdom and models and learnings already collected to try new ideas on for size. Kind of like when we all were captivating unself-conscious children asking questions like “Would a chair still be a chair if it only had two legs?” And everyone knows it’s not a test or meant to make folks crazy.

Appetizing. Appealing. Outright attractive … you pick the word that means “can’t keep away” to you.

Makes us good greedy for more.

What brand what business wouldn’t want to have and share some of that?

IT CONTINUED the next day with more smiles, more questions, more answers, more ideas. And there it was another single glass of wine. Hers this time.

The excitement grew as more and more people discovered the fascinating, irresistible fun of just being who we are and then tweaking that toward the people who help us thrive … customers, clients, friends, family, sort of everyone who know it’s not about taking a test or giving one.

THEN IT BECAME A PLAN when we met on Twitter the next morning and knew that we’d be in a different city, but the same city as each other again. So we set up a lunch meeting to be fascinated by the irresistible ideas again.

And in an email as we were blocking out the time. How much time could we set aside for such kind of thing? Sally would be on her way to the airport — so our meeting would be a risk of the very best kind — an airplane on a schedule versus a chance to have a truly unique, meaningful mind-growing experience.

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I wrote: You know what kind of risk taker you are and what kind of risk I pose. heh heh

She responded: Yes, I’m a risk-taker but ALSO I’m greedy, so if I get time with you, then I want more more more!

I chimed: We are so the same. You get all of my time you want … for the same reasons.

And then I added: Topic of conversation over a bottle of wine — they have a wonderful Sancerre — and title of a blog post:

How to Be Greedy in a Good Way for Your Brand, Your Business and the People Who Help You Thrive

She said: I’m so In!

Of course, I called ahead to order the wine. There would be two glasses this time.

And here’s what we gathered from that meeting …

How to Be Greedy in a Good Way for Your Brand, Your Business and the People Who Help You Thrive
by Sally Hogshead and Liz Strauss over a nice wine

We had left everything to chance. Well, not really, the atmosphere was outstanding; the food was delicious; and the wine was as promised. The conversation was ideation, sharing, and good greedy — filled with everything that is fascinating and irresistible.

Here’s a few things that came home with me about how to get good greedy for your brand, your business, and the people who help you thrive over and over again.

  • Get good greedy about offering the best quality experience you can so that folks can relax and trust that you care about them. When an atmosphere is well cared for, we can’t help but feel that we’re cared about too.
  • Get good greedy about trusting yourself and trusting that good intentions will win. Trust telegraphs itself as confidence and safety. Fear or insecurity have a hard time putting up barriers to communication when true trust is in the room.
  • Get good greedy about anticipating the company of smart people whenever you you get to meet one or two or two million of them. Anticipation heightens an experience and prepares us to take it all in. Smart people recognize the smart in you.
  • Get good greedy about making space for great ideas and have rituals for celebrating the heroes who bring them to you. Great ideas expand into more great ideas, but ironically they get simpler the more space you give them to breathe.
  • Get good greedy about gathering up curiosity and asking questions. Explore the mysteries of why we do what we do by talking about them … don’t just measure behaviors or deep down-inside you’ll be in the shallow end of the pool. Meaning inspires and moves people to action.
  • Get good greedy about telling your stories over and over again and inviting other people to do that too. Hearing a story gives us something to capture, cherish, and share. It helps us belong and feel part of a common history. Oral histories, parables, fairy tales, fables, stories are how we take ideas out of our heads and learn from them. Let us learn what it’s like to be you. Powerful relationships happen when stories are shared. .
  • Get good greedy about the urgency of your story and tell how much you rely on the folks who believe in you. When we’re greedy generous about sharing our vision, our goals, and our plans, people share theirs too. Passion is urgent even when the goal is long-term.
  • Get good greedy about finding ways to be your highest standards and raise up folks who share those standards with you. Live what you want your customers to value. That will attract people who want to invest their loyalty in you.
  • Get good greedy about playing and enjoying every minute of what you do. Don’t seek the hard road when the playful road will invite people to join you. People who are having fun doing something intelligent and meaningful are fascinating and irresistibly attractive.
  • Get good greedy about playing and enjoying every minute of what you do. People who are having fun doing something intelligent and meaningful are fascinating and irresistibly attractive.

And don’t forget the power of the simple invitation, reminder, excuse to reach out to a customer, a client, a friend to say “thank you.”

What ways of being good greedy are part of what you do to take care of the people who help build your business for you?

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

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What if FDR’s Ideas Ran the C-Suite and Your Social Media?

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These Times Ain’t So Different

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As part of a my quest to move outside my dad’s story, to learn from it as a business case of a growing business in a bad in economy, I’ve been studying the climate, conditions, and character of the people who lived through the terrible economy after World War 1 through the 1929 Stock Market Crash and the Great American Depression.

One hero, a pivotal leader in changing the world, was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, the only president to serve more than two terms, the man married to the famous Eleanor Roosevelt, also called FDR.

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He’s of particularly interest because he was elected in 1932, at the height of the depression and took office in 1933, the year prohibition was repealed and the year that my father opened his saloon.

What if FDR Ran the C-Suite and Your Social Media?

FDR was faced with a jobless population and a world that was preparing for a second war. I don’t wish to devalue the power or gravity of what he said then, but as I read his speeches and his conversations, I can’t help to think his words and wisdom might serve us all now as we look for leaders — not dreamers — to change the world and get growing again.

1: Try Something.

To the students of Oglethorp College, he set this challenge in 1932, but every commencement speaker knows the audience is more than the graduates and as a presidential candidate he was speaking to the country as well as to those before him.

The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

2: Don’t Wait.

The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.

3: Connect with Young Hearts — your own and others

We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely. We need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer. We need the courage of the young.

In his first inaugural address , FDR laid out the challenges we face and pledged himself to leadership for change in ways that resonate to this day.

4: Speak the Truth

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

5: Fear paralyzes.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

6: Confidence requires deep commitment.

Confidence… thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.

7: Achievement and creativity are joyful and thrilling.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

And from his speech at the Citadel in 1935 …proof in his relentless, fearless, strategic leadership.

8: Our strategy will save us.

Yes, we are on our way back— not just by pure chance, my friends, not just by a turn of the wheel, of the cycle. We are coming back more soundly than ever before because we are planning it that way. Don’t let anybody tell you differently.


9: Leaders embrace change and value social justice.

Throughout the world, change is the order of the day. In every Nation economic problems, long in the making, have brought crises of many kinds for which the masters of old practice and theory were unprepared. In most Nations social justice, no longer a distant ideal, has become a definite goal, and ancient Governments are beginning to heed the call.

In his speech before the Democratic National Convention in 1936, he summed up our mission.

10: Leaders rise to the call.

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

It’s good to have heroes. It’s good to learn from them and carry their wisdom forward with us.

The tools may change. The speed of connections may get faster.
But the values that move and motivate people to great things are unchanging, authentic, and core to our species.

These new social tools are only as good as the leaders who pick them up and the strategies and cultures they choose to bring to them. This new reach, this new speed the tools offer can help us, our friends, our clients, and the people we meet grow our businesses to get our economy rolling again … we are the difference in whether that happens.

What if FDR’s Ideas Ran the C-Suite and Your Social Media?

How will FDR’s words guide you to grow your business? How will you his wisdom to enlist those around you to join you to bring the economy back?

Start small. Raise a barn. Don’t build a coliseum.

We can change the world … just like that.

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

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SOB Business Cafe 05-14-10

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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

Sticky Figure
Now, there are lots of ways to find suppliers. You can Google, make phone calls, field incoming sales calls, sit through capabilities presentations, go through an RFP process, vet vendors, pick one and hope it works….you know the drill. Inefficient, time-intensive, risky.

Life as a Literary Agent
Too often, people sit down and nervously launch into some kind of story and I find myself dizzy with confusion. I sit there like a deer in the headlights and then I say something like, “Let’s back up. What’s your name? And is this fiction or nonfiction?”

Steve Farber
So, imagine my surprise (really, really great surprise) when I started to hear from educators–teachers, principals, administrators–about how they’d been applying the principles of Extreme Leadership in their buildings, in their schools, their classrooms. I’ve written about several of these amazing educators on this blog.

OPEN Small Business
While social media cheat-sheets and short cuts are available almost everywhere you look, the truth is that we have some work ahead of us. To help, I’ve assembled a list of five best practices to help you build, cultivate, and measure success in the new web right now.

Blue Sky Factory
If I could give you one piece of advice to make your email marketing efforts optimized, it would be to make sure you are fulfilling these 3 integral factors for email deliverability:

Media Post: Research Brief
Traditionally, PR has focused on reputation, earned media, third-party validation, and awareness-building – while marketing has been generally focused on advertising, sponsorships and lead-generation. The conversation has centered on how these two disciplines should be orchestrated to increase the overall effectiveness of outreach.

Social media contains elements that both disciplines find appealing and complementary to their existing efforts, so the debate has shifted towards who should “own” social media and, more importantly, how best to integrate social media with broader marketing or communications channels.

Related ala carte selections include

Digital Dads
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am the farthest thing from an uptight prude. But, as I sat there in the audience and watched the 6 & 7 year old teams shake things they didn’t have and perform moves that were more appropriate for a stripper pole then a school stage I had to stop and wonder. Why are we letting our kids do this?

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

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Cool Tool Review: Dabbleboard

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Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Small Business

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Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in a small business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Dabbleboard
A Review by Todd Hoskins

The dreaded dial in . . .

I had a colleague who referred to virtual meetings as “pajama business.” It is only within the last few years that we have gained the luxury of clipping toenails during a CEO update, or making egg salad during a development team scrum. The gain in freedom has often been offset by a loss in engagement. When I can’t see your smirk, or feel your trepidation, or witness your enthusiasm, I am less connected to you, my client or co-worker.

A few weeks ago I reviewed Prezi, my favorite tool for visualizing a presentation. There are plenty of collaboration tools out there for bridging the visual divide in virtual meetings, from screen sharing to video conferencing. This week I want to highlight a simple digital whiteboard called Dabbleboard that can encourage participation, and aide the visual learners and thinkers among us (like me).

The visual component of any meeting is important. Dan Roam received considerable attention a couple years ago for solving problems and selling ideas in pictures in his book The Back of the Napkin. Dabbleboard provides the necessary functionality to place a blackboard or napkin in front of anyone with whom you want to share.

For a sales pitch, a site redesign, a strategy meeting, even reviewing financials – all of these situations improve with pictures and shapes. A different part of our brain gets activated and you’ll keep the attention of your people or prospects.

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I have also tried Scriblink, which worked fairly well. Both tools offer chat, real-time sharing, and phone conferencing. I like Dabbleboard’s personal image library – you can reuse graphics you’ve made. I also like their commitment to their users, evidenced in their blog and the creation of a toolkit.

A Pro (paid) version is available that includes customization, permissions, data portability, and security. If you’re going to create highly confidential drawings, you may want to pay the monthly fee. Discounts are also available for not-for-profits and educators.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 3/5 – Adobe and Microsoft lack the whimsy of Dabbleboard

Entrepreneur Value: 4/5 – excellent, though the UI could be better. AlmostMeet in beta (Please, please change the name).

Personal Value: 2/5 – great for school projects