Successful Blog

GenConnect’s Laurel House and Liz Strauss Talk Owning It

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Who Gets You Where You’re Going

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In a lovely conversation with GenConnect’s Laurel House at BlogHer in August, we explored the questions:

  • How do you choose the people to be your team?
  • How do you move from behind the screen to behind the microphone?
  • What does it mean to “own it”?

Take a look …

How do you recognize the people who won’t let you fail?

Check out GenConnect – the place to connect with life’s experts.
You’ll find Laurel on Twitter as @QuickieChick

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

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!!

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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Irresistible Consistency: Are You Suited Up for Soccer When Golf Is the Game?

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Right People, Right Positions, Right Game

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In the NYTimes bestseller, Good to Great, author Jim Collins laid out the foundation of an outstanding enterprise class organization. When I heard him speak, last October he said that the winner is the one with the best team. To achieve the best team,

  • A leader has to identify the right people who are the smartest.
  • A leader has to put them in the right positions.
  • A leader has to value, reward, and celebrate teamwork.

Those who change the world are enormously consistent in how they do it. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency. – Jim Collins, World Business Forum, 2010

It’s my experience that Mr. Collins’ short list brings constant improvement in situations where the game never changes. The hidden assumption is that the playing field, the conditions, the climate, the trends, and rules of business remain the same.

They didn’t. They don’t. They never will. They won’t.

Are You Suited Up for Soccer When Golf Is the Game?

I don’t doubt for second that Mr. Collins knows that and chooses his people to match the game that’s currently in play. Yet, when I work on strategy with big corporations and small business, too often I find their still suiting up and running the plays for the game that was on the field yesterday. It doesn’t work if you’re suited up for soccer and golf is the game.
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The Internet has moved the field, changed the rules, disrupted conditions, upset the culture, sparked new trends, shifted the playbook with new models and more flexible teams, and relocated the executive locker room.

The consistency that was a strength also built silos, sales scripts, and standard procedures that has lead some of those “smartest people” not to see what they see and not to know what they know in deference to rules build to ensure one-size-fits-all consistency.

Those companies suited up for a highly consistent playing field are finding their sales numbers and their service reports frustrated by customers who value responses that are custom-made for what they need. Because to over-value consistency is to focus on process, when it’s people who help a business thrive.

So how can we use Jim Collins’ Good to Great research and insights to leverage the opportunities of the new people-focused game — the social business culture, changes in the way companies and customers communicate, constantly moving metrics and toolkits, trend shifts, and elastic team dynamics of the 21st century online and off?

What Are the Highest Values of Your Business?

For 21st century organizations to move fluidly and fluently through multiple platforms and cultures, we need to look at the old short list in a slightly new way. The winner will still be the one with the best team, but now to achieve the best team, leaders will ignite communities of like-minded leaders at every level inside and outside the organization — employees, partners, vendors, customers, evangelists, friends, and fans who also want to invest in taking something from good to great.

Long-term, loyalty — trust — is a value-based relationship.

  • Live your highest values.
  • Be able to recognize the people who share them.
  • Invite those people to help build your business.

Consistency will win — a consistency of valuing the people who share your highest values is irresistible business strategy.

What are the highest values of your business?

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

Right People, Right Positions, Right Game

How to Use Strategy to Build Opportunity into Your Life Now!

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Making Random Decisions Is as Reliable as Luck

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Get up in the morning, get working, solve today’s problems go have fun is that the way life is working for you? Facing each day with a single-day view will get you through a life or a career, but at the end you may find that many of those days might have put to better use.

If you think of it making random decisions probably has about the same long-term results as relying on luck.

Strategy is a longer view, a stronger view, and a more useful way of leveraging opportunity too.

20 Everyday Situations That Strategy Could Turn to Opportunity Right Now!

With a mind toward strategy, you can leverage the opportunity in any situation, fix the problem your facing, open the door that isn’t moving and get things working FOR you. Strategy is not some high-falutin’ sort of thinking that only great minds do.

It’s a method of solving problems. Did you ever want to …

  1. be more visible in your circle?
  2. become the first, trusted source at what you do?
  3. settle a conflict without becoming part of it?
  4. help solve a problem with friend, family or coworkers?
  5. enlist powerful people to your cause?
  6. get sponsors for an event or meeting?
  7. quit a bad habit or change unhealthy thinking?
  8. get out of debt or pay off a loan?
  9. negotiate a new or better position?
  10. get upgraded to a better hotel room?
  11. change how people see you?
  12. raise money for your cause?
  13. get a meeting with someone you admire?
  14. find a new career that fits you?
  15. organize a group trip?
  16. motivate people to join you in something cool?
  17. get a raise you deserve or raise your rates without worry
  18. start doing what you were meant to do with you life?
  19. do damage control?
  20. start investing in a retirement you look forward to?

Too often we walk into all of the above situations without putting together a system for finding success. A clear strategy could turn any of those 20 (or most other) everyday situations into an opportunity rather than leaving the outcome to instincts and chance.

What Isn’t Strategy and What It Is

We use the word strategy as a synonym for the word way or the word plan. It’s not right, but it sounds cool. Bet you’ve heard people say things like this …

  • I’ve figured out how to use two tools to offer a new strategy for making money online.
  • My strategy is to say “yes” and then do whatever I want.
  • Our strategy this year is to focus on growing by 50%.
  • It was a bad strategy to spend money on that vacation.
  • Our long-term strategy is marry well and have a house with a great view.

Those are not strategies. Some aren’t even decisions or plans.

Strategy is more and more useful in our lives than most folks expect.

Strategy isn’t a business tool. It’s not a single goal, or a choice, or good idea, or a description of what we’re going to do. Strategy is a practical system that changes how we view and interact with the world.

Next time you have a situation that offers a change of any kind bring some strategy with you before you respond. Here’s how to do that.

  • Think about the outcome that you want to achieve — your goals.
  • Think about the people involved and what motivates them — their goals.
  • Think about your position and what you bring that adds value to THEIR goals.
  • Think about what you might offer to align your goals with theirs.
  • Think about how you can turn your what you want — your opportunity into a benefit for them.

Start by listening to what you know and asking questions to hear more about what they know. Offer a few suggestions that are unfinished, allowing everyone to participate in defining a great outcome. Call the group to action. Then claim and celebrate the agreed upon result! The hardest part is thinking it through before you begin.

How have you used strategy to build opportunity into your life right now?

Be irresistible!

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