Successful Blog

It’s Not Your Passion, But Your Purpose

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Everyone feels lost sometimes.

Everyone feels lost sometimes.

I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t been lost in their head at one time or another — even those folks overachieving all over the Internet. We all find those moments that we wonder about who we are and what we want. But the question is not whether everyone gets lost, but how we get ourselves back on the road to the life we want.

Ask everyone how to get back to moving forward, and soon enough someone will say, “Follow your passion.” Follow your passion? What if my passion is sitting on the beach, listening to music?

When faced with the questions of who we are and what we want, the road to moving forward follows your purpose. Passion is only half the story. However you define success in business or in life, a critical component is finding your purpose — your unique ability to help others that involves both your mind and your heart.

Purpose is both credibility and passion. Credibility is at the heart of knowing who we are. To find your credibility, ask yourself what you’re already known for, what you’re good at, what you’ve accomplished. Passion is at the heart of knowing what we want. To find your passion, name what you talk about, think about, and do every day — without payment — simply because it makes you feel like you’ve got a contribution to make. In other words, concentrate on combining what you do well with what you really like.

If you’re an ex-lawyer fascinated by marketing. You might find your crossroads showing lawyers how to market their business. If you’re a mother who wants to start a small business, research small businesses for mothers or by show mothers how they might get started in business. Then help others who feel lost find their unique space.

It’s hard to feel lost when you’re helping people find their own way.

Be irresistible,

Liz

Put Your Mind to It

Set your mind to find the crossroads of your credibility and your passion. You’ll find a problem that you have solved for yourself in your own, unique way. Consider how you solved that problem for yourself. Then go solve that problem for everyone else.

More from Liz . . . about Not Passion, But Purpose:

Are You Seeing the Things that Make a Difference to Your Business and Your Life?

Choosing and Deciding: How Do You Sort a Path to Opportunity?

What is Missing? Are you Working Smarter – Not Harder?

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By Deb Bixler

Entrepreneurs are a determined group of people. A home based business owner will work to the point of exhaustion to make her business successful.

The thing is that entrepreneurs who learn to work smart are the ones that find much more success than the ones who just work hard. When you know how to add what your home based business is missing to make it successful, you can spend more time growing that business and less time worrying about how much money you are losing.

Word of Mouth

The fastest way to make your business successful is to get other people talking about it.

The best way to do that is to talk about your business every chance you get without being pushy. If you do it right, you will get people to ask you about what you do and open the door for you to discuss your business.

For example, if when someone asks you what you did over the weekend, you tell them that you had a blast, made some money and met some wonderful new people at your direct sales event, then you may create curiosity.

Curiosity is what gets them to ask you how you did it. After that the door is opened for you to talk about your business.

The goal is to sprinkle one liners in your conversation all the time that are generating interest so that people ask you to tell them more. That is smart!

Create Your Business Internet Presence

Is your small business missing the complete internet presence it needs to make it successful? A complete Internet marketing program for your company should include your own website, a page on each of the top social networking websites and a blog.

Once you have all of these in place, you need to add new content and work on these sites every day. The more work you put into your internet presence, the more return you will get in the form of new customers and more revenue.

Even if you are affiliated with a direct sales company that is well branded on the web, you should be consistently putting time into using the internet to connect the web for YOU!

When an independent home business consultant connects the web they become more powerful.

Business Urgency With Seasonal Products

home business urgencyThere are a lot of ways to keep people interested in your business all year round, but the most effective way is to offer full lines of seasonal products that people need and want.

Everyone loves Christmas decorations during the holidays, so you need to carry them. During the summer, people want to cool off and things they can put in their yard or garden to make them unique.

There are many ways to establish your business urgency that you can tap into:

  • Do your specials reflect the seasonal urgency?
  • Do you have expiring products?
  • Is a new catalog coming out?
  • Is there a different business theme each month?
  • Or can you create a new theme each month?

Your Passion and Enthusiasm

Nothing spreads word of mouth advertising faster than a business owner who is enthusiastic about what she does. If you are in the home sales industry, then you need to be enthusiastic about each of your events.

It is true that enthusiasm is contagious and that people will talk about you and your business in a positive way to others if you make them feel good about what you do, but think about what sets you apart and how you can convey that passionately to everyone you meet.

Sometimes it can be the smallest details that make your business attractive to customers. If you want your business to be successful, then you need to analyze it to find out what is missing and then fill in the empty spaces. The more smart work you put into your business, the greater the financial returns will be.

Author’s Bio:
Deb Bixler retired from the corporate world using the proven business systems that made her a success working for others by incorporating them into her home business. In only 9 months Deb replaced her full time income with the sales and commissions from her home party plan business. Find her on Twitter at: http://www.Twitter.com/debbixler

SOB Business Cafe 05-04-07

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Lorelle on WordPress delineates the minefields of trying to market to bloggers as a class, a group, or a generic list.

thomas r. clifford has a beginner’s mind and I thank him for this blog post sharing it.

The Blog Studio has some advice on process.

Design Your Writing Life has a series we make need to make it a goal to read.

Passion Meets Purpose has a few re-minders.

Manage To Change answers a key question. Be sure to read the comments.

Related ala carte selections include

Black in Business explains the critical difference.

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

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

SOB Business Cafe 02-16-07

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Start Up Spark offers Ten Ways to check our identity.

Daily Blog Tips has a strategic plan for goal setting.

Hillbilly PhD has a question that we need to consider.

Finding the Money has the lowdown on A GLObal COmmunity.

Genuine Curiosity saves us from extensive acrobatics.

Related ala carte selections include

Passion Meets Purpose picks up where Emoms At Home left off.

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

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Kammie Kobyleski Is a B.A.D. Blogger!

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Blogger A Day Call: Hello is Kammie there?

Imagine being a junior in college. You walk into class on the first day. You open a notebook and talk to your roommate waiting. At the front of the room are two women laughing and telling jokes about communications. Then one leaves and one woman say, “Welcome to communications! You guys are in the most exciting major in the school!” You’ve just met Kammie Kobyleski, your professor.

That’s a bit like our conversation began. Even on the phone, Kammie’s excitement is a powerful and appealing. She fills the space she occupies with energy. Anyone near can’t help but be filled up with with the same excitement.

It was so easy to picture Kammie teaching when she talked about it. Her enthusiasm for the kids in her class was coming through the telephone. She was telling them they were the luckiest kids on campus. She said that they were often new to blogging and that they thought it was uber cool that she knew so much about it. We talked about how much fun it must be to have a roomful of students ready to try new things. We talked about sending them out explore new techonolgies, to find out how they work. She made sure that I knew that they were just the kind of kids who were ready to do just that kind of thing.

That part of the conversation drifted over into how fast technology changes. Kammie wondered whether bigger schools had an easier time preparing their students to know how to use it. She explained that her department was grappling with the issue that too much focus seemed to be on theory and not enough on the real action. I pointed out that I had recently worked on a book for the the department of Astrodynamics at MiT and that they were wrestling with the same issue — how to prepare studenst for an industry that needed graduates who not only understood the techology, but also had personal and interpersonal skills. We agreed that big schools didn’t have it any easier after all.

Then we got to the heart of where we were going, making books. Kammie and I talked the book that Phil and I are making from his blog. She mentioned that she might like to make a book one day maybe. I told her she was in a lucky place to know now that was her plan. My point was that when you start out knowing you’re going to make a book, it’s much easier, that you can set up your blog to become a deep expanded outline. I talked her through how a blog can be a stronger outline than one she might write as a standalone.

Kammie and I tinkered with the idea of how she sketch the rough outline of chapers she would cover in the book-to-be, setting up blog categories for each. We discussed how a series of posts under the chapter/category topic would organize the information automatically as she writes — one at at time or all in a row. Kammie and I visualized an entire book coming together from daily blog posts that Sunday afternoon as we talked together leisurely on the telephone.

It was so exciting!

I have a feeling that just about everyone who experiences time with Kammie has that very same thought.

B.A.D. Blogger Quote

Blogging is open access to people. You reach out and there they are, receptive, open, and gracious . . . If it were a live networked event, you might be intimidated —Kammie Kobyleski

Stop by Kammie’s Blog, Passion Meets Purpose, and say hi!

Thanks, Kammie, you B.A.D. Blogger!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to be a B.A.D. Blogger see the. . . a B.A.D. Blogger? page in the sidebar.