Successful Blog

What Could You Achieve If You Had a Dream Team Working On Your Business?

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TIME and 144 People Looking in the Same Direction

TIME.

People say time is money.
People wish for time to focus, expand, and true up their business.
People dream of time to fortify the infrastructure and prioritize with wisdom.
Yet, time is the great equalizer.
If Time is money, it’s because TIME is only resource we can’t get more of.
We can’t make more. We can’t go back and re-live it.
And in that way, how we spend our time is proof of our commitment.

What Could You Achieve On a Working Retreat to Fuel Your Business?

Suppose you could take a weekend retreat away from the noise of running your business. What could you do with a weekend devoted to articulating your most attractive mission, identifying the exact strengths of your unique position, analyzing how to leverage current conditions to support your growth, applying command decisions to raise your returns and attract ideal customers, and analyze the networks and systems that will create your strongest communities,

It’s not just a supposition. We do it every spring at SOBCon.

A few folks have asked me to outline what they’ll find when they walk into the room that is SOBCon. The first thing you’ll see is 36″x72″ rectangular meeting tables with executive chairs around them surrounded by a tenth floor view of Michigan Avenue. Then you’ll see lots of people smiling with the excitement of knowing what’s coming, because it’s something special to share a weekend …

  • to focus entirely on your business strategy and action plan
  • to work with the support of a mastermind team who is serious about doing the same thing.
  • to get quality time to interact with the best names in online business
  • to hear connected strategic content AND get twice as much time to immediately work out how apply it
  • to share ideas with sponsors who share your commitment
  • in a room that only holds 144 people — all focused in the same direction — growing successful businesses
  • with highest efficiency because it’s free of commercials and the food and the wireless provided are outstanding.

It’s a one-of-kind chance to grow your business exponentially and explode your network.
But don’t believe me, ask the folks who’ve been there. You’ll find them at the #SOBCon hashtag on Twitter. Check the SOBCon program.

A weekend with Chris Brogan, Tim Sanders
Angel Djambazov, Liz Strauss, Terry Starbucker, Rick Turoczy, Carol Roth Gary W Goldstein, Laura “@Pistachio” Fitton, Steve Farber, Rick Calvert, Charlie Gilkey, Kathy Burdick, Les McKeown, Shashi Bellamkonda and so many others. — 144 person dream team.

Are you serious about succeeding?
Are you ready to start Creating and Leveraging Opportunity?

SuccessfulOnlineBusinessCon

What could you do if you had a dream team working with you on your business?
We’re all coming for the same reasons — the lasting returns of deep networking relationships with other successful businesses.

Hope to see you there!
Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Register for SOBCon NOW!!

You’ll be enjoying the return for years. SOBCon is sponsored this year by GotoMeeting, DexOne, TheSafeCig, GMC, Mojaba, and … ? We love our sponsors.

Start in the Middle on Your Report, Blog Post or Presentation

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Put a Sock in It, Julie!

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Who hasn’t heard Julie Andrews sing it?

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.
When you read you begin with ABC, When you sing you begin with do-re-me.

–the character, Maria, sung by Julie Andrews in
The Sound of Music by Rodgers and Hammerstein

Put a sock in it, Julie.

Starting in the beginning might work well when you know the story, but when you’re first forming your ideas it can really screw you up. By the time you figure out that clever beginning you might forget the what the story was going to be about. After all, when planning a special occasion, it’s not usually the best idea to start with what you’ll say on the invitation … we have to know what the gathering will be about.

Turn off, Julie Andrews and the tape recordings in your head that tell you what you’re supposed to do. They just get in the way. Unique problems require unique solutions.

Beginnings Have a Part to Play in Setting Up Your Conversation

Who cares about how the fire began if you need to get out of the building NOW? Get the facts and worry about how it started later.

When you’re creating something new, problem solving, or envisioning what could be, information is nebulous and coming from many directions. The challenge is to order it and give form–not to find the beginning. Here are some tips on how to get your idea going before the blank screen and the beginning knock you down.

  1. Write your idea as a compelling question you want to answer. Then write the answer as – bullet points.
  2. Describe an action that you’re looking to make happen.
  3. Write the list of important points that you want to share.
  4. Outline the steps of the how-to.
  5. Lay out the key point of the product review.

If you do one of those first, you’ll know what it is that you want to say.

Then, you can consider one of two things key to context:

  1. Connecting to prior knowledge: What will most of your audience already know about what you’re going to tell them? How can you connect that to what you’re adding to the conversation? That connection is the place to start.
  2. Building background: It might be a fair assessment that most of your audience won’t have experience with what you’re about to tell them. What information or analogy will give them a setting in which to place your conversation? Make that setting the beginning.

Now the beginning is an integral part to play in setting up your most important statements.

Do you ever start in the middle when you’re preparing a report, a blog post, or a presentation?

Be irresistible.

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

How to Manage Your Finances in the Cloud

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Once upon a time, personal finances were relegated to stacks of messy piles that would often find its place next to a trashcan. Then came software packages like Quicken that allowed families and individuals to crunch financial information and make sense of it all through simple templates.

However, limitations soon become evident, as software’s ability to help users set budgets and manage personal finances day-to-day only went as far as the user’s own limited expertise.

Now there is a wave of new personal finance websites and applications like Mint that not only perform the tasks of conventional financial software, but that also serve to help individuals and families make day-to-day decisions about their finances.

This is the primary difference — and advantage — of these new cloud-based financial sites. While financial software passively absorbs the banalities of one’s utility bills and investment portfolio, sites like Mint actively advise users—effectively acting as a personal financial manager, helping users stick to monthly budgets and achieve long term financial goals.

Getting started with a personal finance site is also much easier than installing and inputting data into a software package. Logging in, a new user will be asked to provide either a bank account or credit card account number, the website then takes over to import all the relevant information about this primary account.

Many Americans already pay most of their bills through automatic payments drawn from their bank accounts, so sites like Mint are designed to prompt and actively acquire this information as well.

Users will be prompted to add more and more information about their financial lives to their personal page. This can include mortgages, investment portfolios, automobile payments, loans, and also things like projected spending on necessities, as well as the not so necessary.

What makes sites like Mint so extraordinary is that they not only process and aggregate this information; they also make sense of it and then take action.

Mint will calculate average spending and then lay it against a projected budget, providing comparative analysis with the deft and accuracy of a CPA with a Masters in Accounting . The site will not only alert users to the potential for overdraft fees, but will also alert them when spending threatens to overwhelm a budget or when expected income falls short.

Some still have lingering concerns about managing personal finances in the more ethereal realm of the cloud, where a faceless entity directs our most important financial decisions. But, of course, herein lies the true genius of sites like Mint.

Daily finance, budgeting and investing might seem like the more cut-and-dry, analytical parts of our lives, but actual personal finances are bound up with the most emotional decisions we make for ourselves, including how we support our families, and how we imagine our future. As such, these decisions are often made through the haze of our anxieties and desires rather than with a cool head, rationally calculating factors with an eye on the future.

Personal finance sites like Mint not only organize and simplify the various machinations of our financial lives; they also gently disengage monetary decisions from the sometimes-tumultuous emotional world of daily life.

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Author’s Bio:
Tony Radford writes for Accounting EDU, an online resource for individuals interested in career advancement, education, business, and finance tips.

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

Be Flexible

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

“The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.”
— Confucius

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The last few years have been rough on everyone. It seems that just when you think it’s safe to poke your head up and take a chance, another wave of economic bad news hits. But if you look around, there are some who are continuing to thrive despite the bad economy.

Those who have been brave enough to be flexible in their approach have come through in good shape, while those who stuck rigidly to their original plan are out of business. How can you be a flexible entrepreneur, or a flexible business?

Signs of flexibility:

  • Willingness to put aside rigid “policy” when dealing with a customer complaint
  • Freedom given to employees to innovate and think outside the box
  • Constant review and tweaking of methodology to accommodate changing conditions
  • Acceptance of new industry realities
  • Ability to change perspective based on new information
  • Comfort with new ideas, whether they’re from within the company or external
  • Persistence in the face of roadblocks; seeking another way around
  • Keeping the goals solid, but the path toward achieving them fluid
  • Leaving space to dream and create without limitations or boundaries
  • Actively seeking information from different sources

Maybe we should all be doing a bit of corporate yoga.

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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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Five Sayings from Olympic Athletes showing you how to reach the Top

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I’ve always been fascinated by the athletes participating in the Olympics … such dedicated beings, so focused, and so no-nonsense types, you look at them and you know they mean business. They’ve lived in the same world, and they’ve grown up with the same circumstances, in fact some of them have lived a more troubled life than the majority of us, and still they go on to achieve a lot more than what we can dream of achieving, a hell lot more.

To quote Sir M. Iqbal (a poet I’ll strongly recommend you all to read) …

Both live and fly the same skies

But Eagle lives in a different world from that of a vulture

How true is that, these athletes actually live in a different world from all of us, they dream differently, they breathe differently, they eat differently, they sleep differently, that’s precisely the reason why we see only one guy standing on the podium, only one winner who takes it all, while all of us will spend our lives thinking, how does it feel to be the best in what we do? But wait … we can still have an idea as to how does it feel, or more importantly, what does it take to get there, and that is to listen when they speak. And that is what I do every now and then, going through the sayings of these elite sportsmen … following are some really rich ones, that will impart a lot a lot of invaluable lessons, but only if you are ready to learn.

1. The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.

The essential thing in life is not conquering, but fighting well … how true, how incredibly true … but what do we do? We fight miserably, lethargically, half-heartedly, yet we expect to be a winner every day, and in whatever we do? Remember, even if you are the best of the best athletes, there will be very few moments when you can stand still and wait for the life to hand you a medal, but what really matters is nothing but fighting, and that’s the life for you.

Oh, and that quote wasn’t from an athlete but Pierre Frédy, who is regarded as the founder of modern Olympics.

2. The first thing is to love your sport. Never do it to please someone else. It has to be yours.

Again, Peggy Fleming has hit the nail on the head (and you can expect nothing less from a three time world champion). The take-home point is, if you are looking to be anywhere near the top, it is important to do what you love to do. Because you cannot excel at something you were not made for, let alone becoming a world-beater. So, as soon as you’ve discovered something you love doing, don’t look at others for the approval, just do it with all your heart, and the approval will come when you’ve become a “great” in doing that.

3. As long as Morceli is in the race, it is always a race for second place.

The next on our list is not one but two quotes, the first one (the aforementioned one) is by Venuste Niyongabo, and when you see such a quote coming from a guy who happens to be in the list of top ten fastest milers ever in the history of mankind, you should know that Morceli has got to be someone very special. So why not take a look at what was the approach that took Morceli to such heights, here you go …

I run to be known as the greatest runner, the greatest of all time. I could not eat or sleep for a week after I lost in the 1992 Olympics. I have to win or die.

I really can’t think of anything to add, just read it again … I could not eat or sleep for a week after I lost, I have to win or die … No wonder, he won quite comprehensively in the following competitions.

4. When anyone tells me I can’t do anything, I’m just not listening anymore.

Florence Griffin is dubbed as the “fastest woman of all time”, setting two world records that no one hasn’t even come close to beat. And the “someone” in this quote isn’t necessarily a person; it can very well be some statistics, past records, the beliefs, and the likes. You will get the “you can’t do it” message in a hundred different words, and a hundred different sources (the worse being your own self) but as long as you’ve got that whisper coming from your heart telling you that “you can”, you can simply stop listening to the naysayers.

5. I got a bronze medal and I can’t complain about that, the only African-American to get a medal in the Winter Olympics.

Another very important message coming from Debi Thomas i.e. when competing or striving to achieve a target, you must remember that getting the gold is not the only form of success, there are many times when you’ll fail to reach your targets, while missing by a small margin, when it happens, you must look at how far you’ve come and cherish your achievements, instead of sulking over the small distance you’ve failed to make.

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Rahil writes for a coupon code website, where you can find london pass discount code and world soccer shop coupon, and a lot more discounts and vouchers in addition to London Pass and World Soccer Shop.

Influence: Don’t Take My Point of View

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Speaking Louder Doesn’t Make Them Right

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Once I thought oter people had a better view of the world than I ever could …

It was as if he were a prince with insight beyond my own and for a moment I believed in his view of the world.

He always thought that only mountains could be beautiful. I heard him proclaim it. Yes, proclaim is exactly what he did when he spoke of them. He found his own thoughts worthy of public decree. He’d announce that flat lands had their use, but then ask what possible beauty could a man proud as he ever find in a place with flat air?

No matter the metaphor I couldn’t convey the lovely feeling and the wide open space of the grassland without trees only blue skies above it. The green is so green and blue so blue, that the clouds must show off for fear of being thought to be boring.

So today when I enjoy the open flat lands. I might lay back in the grass that is wide as the world with a sky that goes on forever. I watch the clouds dance and think of the adventures and of the characters we might have imagined when we were children.

I laze on the grass, enjoying, breathing in every minute. I drink the gratitude for a world that is like this. I’m particularly glad I had the good sense to quit dating that proclaiming brat before college was over.

No one guy’s view is better, further, or more beautiful than my own.

Don’t take my point of view … stop, stand, see what you love about your own.

Then share it.

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