Successful Blog

If You Don't Know What You Love Doing . . .

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It’s Natural

inside-out thinking

Here’s how it often works. He says. She says.

I say, “Sure you do. You’re just not seeing it.”

If you’re stuck finding out, sorting out, what you love doing, my experience is that what you love doing is so obvious that you can’t believe it is worth counting. Let me tell you about Martha.

Ah Martha, her desk was like it belonged in a magazine. If she wasn’t in her office, folks thought she was out for the day. Everything had its place, and you could bet it was there. Soft-spoken, gracious Martha had a smile that lit up the department of 32 people and thousands of pages she kept track of. Marha was a sea of calm in a world of publishing paper clutter.

For her performance review. I asked Martha to do a self-appraisal. Martha reached outside herself to find many things that she did well and wrote them up in excellent fashion. All of the qualities I described above were missing.

When I asked her about it, she said, “Oh, anyone can do those things.”

I replied, “No, Martha, folks aren’t nearly as organized as you are, nor are they as calm and gracious.” That turned on her room-lighting smile.

I said “You love organizing things and all of us, don’t you?” Her larger smile told the story.

Martha didn’t see what she loved or her most valuable qualities. She discounted them because they were was something that was a natural talent. We tend to discount what comes naturally to us as not as valuable because we didn’t “earn” it. Yet, Martha’s talents were what kept my department working smoothly and without friction. To this day, I miss her.

She didn’t see it because it was obvious and so natural to her.

Yet everyone else knew how valuable her talents were to them.

Look to Your Second Nature

If you don’t know what you love doing, ask those folks who rely on you. Look at what you do as second nature. Think of those defining qualities and the things that you always do and would be nervous or bummed if you could no longer do them. I can’t imagine Martha not being allowed to organize things.

What can you not imagine yourself not being able to do?

Not long ago when talking with the other founders of SOBCon, I said, “I have to be the keeper of the vision.” I explained it in this way, “it’s not ego. It’s not about control or the name of my blog. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at. It’s in my DNA. I can’t NOT do it.”

What’s the thing you can’t NOT do? What’s imprinted on YOUR DNA?

C’mon and say it out loud.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

One Wicked Sentence and One Whole Person

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You Are . . .

relationships button

Yesterday I met with a new friend. At one point in the conversation, we were talking about that one “wicked sentence.” It’s the sentence that people say about us — an observation that is so off the mark — but it’s one that a whole group believes is true.

For years mine was, “You think you’re always right.”
My answer, “No, I know what’s right for me.”

Hers was, “You’re a phony.”
Her answer, “No, I’m sorry that you feel that way.”

I mentioned a friend who often heard, “You are manipulative.”
I said, “She isn’t at all. She cares about people. She never makes choices for them. She only offers to pass on information they might need. She won’t even gossip.”

My new friend told me, “My daughter came home from school at 5 years old asking whether she’s fat.”
She said, “She’s not, and I told her. I said, ‘You’re beautiful,’ but I knew my daughter would have to get to believing that from inside herself.”

Everyone seems to have at least one “wicked sentence” that people try to hang on them. Mine finally fell off my radar a few years ago. It faded when I learned to show up with more than just my thinking. When I put my heart in it my thoughts, people heard who I am.

That one “wicked sentence” doesn’t stand a chance against a whole person.

What wixked sentence is/was yours? How do/did you answer it?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package Work with Liz!! Liz can unstick you and make your business sticky. You can afford it. Really, You can’t afford not to.

121: What's the Key to a Promotion Strategy?

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one2one blog post logo

A Strategic Conversation

Where we left the conversation, DAWUD MIRACLE asked me (and you),

What do you feel is necessary to create an effective strategy to promote a business?.

Wow! I’m grinning. Okay, Dawud, you’ve got me now. Strategy and promotion in one question. Hmmmm. I bet my readers will do better than I do on this one. Maybe I’d better unpack the question first.

Strategy . . . I’ve always liked the idea but forth in the book, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant. Much of why I like it is in the title — find an uncontested space where competition is not. The idea is simple. . . . Why swim in the shark invested blood-red ocean where the fight is always on? Why not swim in the calm blue ocean where I can be a category of one?

For once in my life, maybe the fact that I’m different (you are too — right?) can be a fabulous plus if I turn it to my advantage. That’s a strategic thought!

Strategy for promotion . . . As I look back I see a two-part blue ocean-type strategy that has been a part of tpromoting the business I’ve built behind Successful-Blog.

A great product is its own promotion. I’ve created unique value my ideal customers love. The Perfect Virtual Manager — even the concept that we all deserve a personal manager as a rock star might have — has been helping entrepreneurs, small businesses, and a corporation or two take a new look. We’re working as partners to focus their business and find their ideal customers. The PVM is a one-of-a-kind business support structured around a foundational plan I’ve built during 22 years of training people who teach.

The new series, Inside-Out Thinking, in like manner, is unique in an Internet of “me too” content. It promotes itself. The series is something readers need and hasn’t been offered before. The series provides the hows and whys about building a solid business foundation and finding the ideal customers who love what we love to do. By conceiving and designing from my own experience and proven track record — yours might not be where mine is, but you have yours — I’ve created something others cannot also create. They can follow, but they can’t duplicate it.

Open Comment Night, the Virtual Conference last March, this one2one conversation that we’re sharing are all value offerings that I can create unique customer value. Soon enough as I focus my content in the areas that reflect what I’m particularly good at discussing, my competition begins to fade.

Promotion. Promotion is easiest when you ask cusomters to choose between two options:

  • A. YOU
  • B. Everyone else in the world.

Here’s my most effective promotion strategy.

Set up a choice between me and the rest of the world. Then promote the rest of the world.

And since this is a one2one conversation… to Dawud, (and you too)

How important is strategy to your business? How does your strategy get built?

If you’re reading this, I’d love to hear your answer too.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

One2One is a cross-blog conversation. You can see the entire One-2-One Conversation series on the Successful Series page.

1.2 WHY Doing What We Love Is Solid Business Thinking

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Not Self-Indulgent, Good Business

inside-out thinking

Did I really mean to say the word? Yep.

Love. Not like, enjoy, or get kick out of, but have a passion for, live for, hold in highest esteem. Every person needs a quest, a cause, and a purpose.

That’s right. One — that one simple question.

What businesslike thing do you love doing?

is critical to your business.

Why?
Because it’s how we’re wired as humans. We bring our best to whatever challenge we face. We’re better when we’re inspired by deep feeling. We’ve known that since we were kids.

Any less is inauthentic, second-best, didn’t try, plan b, was absent that day, ho-hum, phone it in, stand in right field and let that pop-fly pass us by instead of saying the game . . . we might as well be out!

There’s a reason that so many folks — on TV, in IT, in academia, in every career — say the same thing. . . . find your passion, do what you love.

They’re not promoting self-indulgence. They’re supporting solid business sense.

WHY Doing What We Love Is Solid Business Thinking

What makes loving our work solid business thinking? Why is it more critical now than before?

In his book, A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink points out that “high concept” and “high touch” values (design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning) have become as important as linear thinking, detailed analysis, and spreadsheets.

On his blog, Doc Searls recently said this about how business is doing. It was part of an interview with Shel Israel.

In the original website version of Cluetrain, Chris Locke wrote, “we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it.”
Recognizing a situation and dealing with it, however are two different things. The “dealing” has barely begun.

In this Internet, global economy we deal direct — no middle man. Conversation and relationships matter as much as schedule and budget do.

In plain and simple words, thinking and doing what everyone has thought and done no longer work. Now it’s think and love what we do — That’s the only way to draw customers to us.

Think hard. Thinking alone doesn’t solve every problem. Some problems are human. Some require empathy and finesse. Some situations call for more than intelligent reasoning. Before you talk yourself out of what you love doing . . . think about the reasons we need to bring all of yourself to your business — head and heart.

7 Reasons WHY Doing What We Love is Critical

When we bring all of who we are, full engagement of head and heart, we bring 7 deeper values and higher outcomes to our work.

  1. Complete presence — focus. We’re all there — the all thinking business is no longer sufficient. Computers can’t smile. Computers can’t listen to the spaces between words. People buy what we sell.

  2. Peak performance — productivity. We invest more, do more, go further for the work we love.

  3. Tolerance — perseverance. We have more patience, time, and energy for problem solving when we directly reap the benefits.

  4. Value and Appeal — compelling story. To compete a product or service has to be useful and beautiful. Simple and elegant, for to the adult and the kid in each one of us. Bringing logic and emotion to a business outdistances the world view of logic alone.

  5. Total Differentiation — identity. The uniqueness of our being shines through in concept and execution when we start from what we love.

  6. Fully Invested and Worth Investing In — market value. Rolling all of the above values into one, nothing beats the 360 degree investment of brains, money, and dreams all in the same direction. Any VC worth his or her salt looks for that combination when funding a small business.

  7. Sense of Worth — authority. We value what we earn and what we love.

Can you see why it’s only sense that a strong business is built on doing what we love?

Got questions yet?

Next: 1.3 WHAT IF you don’t know what you love to do?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

No Mission Statement: One Simple Question

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Enough

inside-out thinking

Last week a Dawud Miracle and I discussed the problems faced by businesses. We mentioned entrepreneurs, small businesses, even corporations. So much of what came up was not encouragaing — bad messages; bad service; empty offers; no customers; not unique or remarkable; broken promises; clueless and out of focus. Not much most folks would take a risk on.

It’s as if some folks “get,” and the rest don’t get to know.

People rush after productivity tools and use them to further confuse their issues. People wait for customers, and no one comes. They talk about the chances they never got, but that that doesn’t get them. They’re stuck.

Why should anyone be stuck? . . . overwhelmed and out of focus? Why are there problem solvers without problems to solve?

It’s a disconnect. A swiss cheese hole in the available information.

Voices across the Internet say . . . Find your passion. . . . Choose your target market. . . . BUT, they stop there. No one says HOW to do that.

It’s got to be frustrating.

This connector can’t stand to watch problems going unsolved. I’m for breaking OUT of this paradigm starting now — with tools, models, and some basic Inside-Out Thinking.

Inside-Out Thinking

What is Inside-Out Thinking? Plain and simple, it’s starting from you — head and heart — who you are, as a person or as a company. We’re going to the core to find the values on which to build a concrete foundation.

I’m not talking hours parsing words on mission statements that gather dust. Their pretty, but they don’t pay the bills. I’m talking key, core terms that tell about DOING.

Don’t think heaven or humanitarian honors. Forget making money or impressive words.

Please, answer to one simple question.

As a company, as a person,

What businesslike thing do you LOVE doing?

Here’s how to answer that:
Forget any thought of money. Don’t you dare devalue or discount what you love doing. Not sure? STOP. Quiet yourself. Remember your successes. Here’s where to look for them.

  • Look to the future. Three years from now, if a wealthy patron financed you, what would you be doing?
  • Look in the past.
  • Look at last Saturday or the last time you were with friends. What were you doing that might apply?
  • What about your favorite job? What did you love about that?
  • What were you really good at in school?
  • What are you good at? What would you miss if you couldn’t do it?

You get the idea.

If you don’t know how to complete the picture of you. Ask a friend to tell you what you love doing. Ask quite a few. They know. Truth is, so do you. Once you find out what you love doing, that’s when the thinking starts.

I’m getting jazzed about this.

So, go ahead, give it a shot . . . what do YOU love doing?

It’s not hard. It’s just different — there wasn’t a model before. There will be now.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

The Idea Dude Is Connecting Dots . . . Connecting Us

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Introducing logo

a writer I admire, the.idea.dude, Vernon Lun — Successful Blog’s newest arrival.

Behind the curtain at The Good Blogs, you’ll find, Vernon — and his partner Tony — reading every good outstanding blog that makes it into their amazing directory. The blogs that Vernon selects are a reflection of his values — quality, heart, intelligence, and spirit. I know. I’ve been talking with him since before SOBCon07.

Vern has natural insight and wisdom. Gosh he gets my brain going — check this post about his personal blog’s first birthday for proof.

Did you see that list of what he says he’s learned?

Vernon is not one to let the world know of his talents. But I am.

Did you know that . . .

  • Aaron Brazell, Director of Technology at b5 media said, . . . Vernon Lun . . . actually created the tool that allowed us to clone the design with unique colors and logos across all the [blogs.]
  • Vernon’s got a Ph.D. from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. In his thesis he formulated a framework for distributed real-time intelligence.
  • Vernon’s words are sticky. See how Vern’s idea stuck with Haydn Shaughnessy. I hope the debate over collective wisdom is not over because every time somebody else puzzles over it we stand a chance of writing what Vernon Lun recently referred to as a digital sociology. Few writers can do that.

Vernon’s elegant thoughts and generous heart make such things happen. They also have me jazzed to announce Vernun is writing for Successful-Blog beginning today!!!

Connecting Dots logo

Vernon’s column, Connecting Dots, is exciting and something uniquely Vernon. Vern’s a master at perceiving relationships that take us from one thought to another. So Vern’s going to take us with him as he travels the living web on that silver thread that connects us all.

The Idea Dude is connecting dots for our reading pleasure.

Like peanut butter and chocolate, it’s time we got together.

On a rare occasion, the reality is better than the vision.

Liz's Signature

For the sake of continuity, I’m publishing Vern’s first column right below this one . . . It’s called Connecting Dots.