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4 Steps to Declare Your Independence

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INDEPENDENCE


Yes that’s me.

My birthday is July 3. The country’s birthday is July 4. I have a cousin who’s 361 days younger than me.
Those three facts added up to personal birthday celebrations that were often combined and moved around because of the holiday and the idea that one party — usually a picnic — meant less disruption for everyone.

As I got older, I reached adult birthday status much earlier than my much older brothers — whose birthdays fell on days that had no competition with other events. They got their private parties well through high school. My birthday more quickly became a piece of another event rather than my own day. We’d go see fireworks or a parade to celebrate, but those events were bigger than my birthday.

4 Steps to Declare Your Independence

The fact that I was born on the Eve of Independence Day was never lost on me. I was already saying “My birthday is the day before 4th of July.” when I was kindergarten. My birthday couldn’t compete. I was never at the center of my birthday. Being a painfully shy child, I have to think that worked for me.

But there comes a time in any life that we have to claim our own independence. We have to learn how to make ourselves the “center of our own life’s plan,” or we’ll end up spending the time of our life without actually living it. Here are 4 steps to declare your independence right now.

  • Decide who you are. At first it seems natural to let the people around us define us. Our family teaches us how to be social. Our teachers and peer groups tell us what they see. The universe is larger than the thoughts and images those groups put in our minds. Our potential is too. Don’t rely on the observations of the world to tell you who you are. They haven’t lived your life. The world can’t get together to take a vote on who you are. Choose your own best true story. Decide and show them instead.
  • Be that person now. Don’t try to be that person. Don’t work toward some future date when you’ll know you are. None of us have enough future to waste on getting there. You know what you value. You know who you admire. Define yourself with those and be what you’ve defined immediately.
  • Surround yourself with people who recognize you. Use your values to choose the people you trust. Shared values reinforce themselves. Time is unrenewable. Spend your time with people who make you feel proud to be who you are. You’ll know them because you’ll never have to focus on what you want or need. Being with people who see, hear, and understand us, frees us from having to highlight, underscore, or prove who we are. It move us away from living through self-consciousness, self-centeredness, and a conflict of selfishness with selflessness to consciousness, centeredness, and a balanced view of ourselves.
  • Own the good things about you. Influence yourself. Get to know and value what others see and value in you. That’s how you’ll grow what’s good in you naturally. You can’t share or give what you don’t truly own.

Somehow we have it backwards. We live as if at the end of our life, we’ll know …

who we are.
what we’ll do.
where we will end up.

Decide those things first. — The Problem Isn’t Not Knowing What You Want to Do …

Before I found my own independence, sharing my day always felt a bit disappointing. Hearing folks say, “enjoy YOUR day,” didn’t resonate with me. Yet once I decided who I am, began to live that, focused on people who truly see me, and learned from them what I offer, sharing my day — any day, any amount of time — became as easy as breathing. That’s how I learned to live the moments of my life.

Once I declared my independence, I learned how irresistible the people in my life truly are.

Have you declared your independence?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Related: Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life

Are You Building a Birthday Cake or a Business?

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The Difference Between a Plan and a Strategy

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Do you know the difference between a plan and a strategy? Every strategy is a plan of sorts, but few plans are strategies. Thinking strategically takes a broader view and considers more variables than the planning that most of us do. Some ventures and adventures require a plan. Others require strategy.

Knowing which is which can mean the difference between watching the game and owning the team.

Are You Building a Birthday Cake or a Business?


BigStock: Birthday Cake

When we build a birthday cake, the plan — a recipe — takes place in a closed system. The birthday cake builder controls all of the key circumstances that will affect successful achievement of the goal.
And so the result is predictable.
We start building a birthday cake and we end with the birthday cake we set out to build. Rarely does an economic downturn affect it. It’s unlikely that another human unexpectedly tosses in a cupful of ketchup. A failure is a problem with execution or a flaw in the plan.

A plan is set of action steps to achieve a stated goal. Plans usually assume a closed system.

Birthday cakes can be build in a closed system.
A business can’t.

Building a business takes place in an open system. The business builder has inputs from outside the system and far less control. A business grows in an open system of change. It takes more than a plan to take advantage of the opportunity to grow that every change represents. That’s what makes a strategy the better road to growth.

Strategy is a realistic plan to advance over time by leveraging opportunities uniquely available to you.

  • Have a Mission — set an ultimate philosophical, economical, and / or political purpose
  • Assess and Reasses Your Position Every time You Gain Ground — Look, listen, measure, test your current situation, climate, resources, opportunities
  • Use Changing Climate, Conditions, and Trends — Find the advantage in interruption and unexpected — use change as a ally to grow.
  • Move Forward Tactically in Increments — Size, choose, and commit to campaigns that reflect obstacles, goals, and prizes

Don’t just plan to grow. Leverage the opportunity that shows up everywhere you are.

Do you use and leverage only resources you can control?
Could be you’re building a birthday cake not a business.

Be irresistible.

Be irresistble.
—

5 Tips to Start Your Small Business in the Strongest Way

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by
Abby Evans

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Your dreams of starting your own business may be the result of one or more factors; a life –long desire to make a career out of something you’re good at or a need to supplement your current income are two very popular reasons. The jobs we have may not always be the jobs we want and starting your own business, be it small or medium sized, may provide you with the career enrichment or financial autonomy you’re hoping to achieve.

Your Input Determines Your Outcome!

But don’t be fooled…don’t think that starting your own business will be any easier than working for someone else. The only way to guarantee your own success is by hard work. Sometimes the input required is more arduous than jobs(http://www.jobs.ca) you’ve had or have. At any rate, it requires dedication, thoroughness and a follow-through attitude. Here a five key tips to give your business starting efforts the jump start they need to be rewarding and triumphant!

1. Give The People What They Want!

It is a regular occurrence that when starting their own business, many people center it around a product or service they think will be successful rather than on an already existing idea that has a proven and functional market. Think about it – it’s much better to grab a slice from a large, thriving market than from an industry with no market standing at all.

2. Keep Your Costs As Low As Possible

Stimulating a steady cash flow will be moot if you’re spending more than you’re making. Especially where starting a new business is concerned, you don’t want to spend the formative portion of its inception in debt. One simple standard to adhere to at any stage of your business’ development is – Don’t Pay Retail! Wherever possible try to source wholesale prices on your purchases and always try to negotiate a discount. Trust us, it adds up.

3. Too Much, Too Little…

This one’s pretty basic but is a useful maxim to apply when you’re starting your own business – overestimate your costs and underestimate your revenue. Being conservative in your incoming revenue expectations isn’t saying that this is what you’re hoping of aiming for; at the start of your own business it just gives you a greater wingspan with which to maneuver. Likewise, overestimation of your expenditure is just plain smart – how many times have you PLANNED on spending XXX amount of dollars on something and by the end you have to shell out three times that amount?

4. Testing Testing!

Whatever you spend your money on must directly and consistently prove and maintain value. Don’t let emotion or tradition be the rationale behind what you fund within your business. Test that what you’re paying for is actually commensurate with a real, functional value. For example, don’t spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on a marketing scheme that isn’t bringing customers to your door for the sake of it. Constantly evaluate the return statistics of every level of investment you make in your business.

5. When In Doubt, Ask!

If you’re worried about making a certain move or you just plumb don’t know what something will mean to your bottom line, seek professional help. There are a plethora of free SMB mentorship programs available that can pair you with seasoned professionals. These people provide valuable advice and perspective and can save tons of money and prevent you reinventing the wheel.

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Author’s Bio: Abby Evans is an avid blogger who writes on everything from how to find jobs in Toronto to outlining the principals of how to write a killer blog post.

Thank you for adding to the conversation!

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

Be Weird

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by
Rosemary O’Neill

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When I was in fifth grade, my mom sent me to school with my lunch in one of those silver ice cream bags from the grocery store. I was already “the new kid,” so this cemented me as “Silver Bag.” It started as a put-down, but grew into a term of endearment. I was weird, but weird-good.

As a new person encounters you and your business, do they think you’re weird? Do you allow them to see your weirdness?

It can be a secret weapon that throws people off-guard, especially in a purchasing situation. When people approach a new company, or new business contact, they try to put it in a bucket they’re familiar with. If you refuse to be categorized easily, their brains will keep processing you, trying to put a button in you.

Seth Godin’s book “We Are All Weird,” seems almost contradictory…if everyone’s weird, how does weirdness get recognized? And yet we are in a time now where off-beat is celebrated. How else to explain the rise of Nyan Cat?

One of the defining characteristics of Instagram is that you can do odd things to your photographs. They are also weird because they don’t have a web component—it is strictly a mobile application (we’ll see if Facebook removes some of that weirdness, I hope not).

Most businesses actively try to suppress their weirdness; I say “let it out!” Your target audience will have a much easier time finding you if they can see and relate to your particular brand of strange.

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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 the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Influence: How to Attract Maximum Support for Your Business Idea

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IRRESISTIBLE BUSINESS: Network Building

Ask Everybody

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I had THAT conversation again. You might be surprised how often it happens. It’s basically the same conversation with entrepreneurs, small businesses, and career professionals who have a new idea they want to present to their corporate team. The conversation goes something like this one.

I ask someone what he or she is working on.
I hear about a new product, service, or idea that has that someone truly interested, invested. and intrigued by possibilities.
I ask few questions and get some answers such as:

  • Why are you the best person / team / business to make it real?
  • Who do you know needs this idea?
  • What core group of people will find your idea absolutely irresistible?

Whenever I have this conversation, it’s rare that people answering these questions offer much detail. They seem to know far more of the intricacies and inner workings of their brain child than they do about the people who will actually use it.

That’s not good.

If you’re going to solve a problem, the better you know the people who have that problem the more likely you are to be able to attract those people to you.

Influence: How to Attract Maximum Support for Your Business Idea

Attraction is the power of evoking interest or drawing something to another. Mere exposure can build familiarity, but it takes some compelling similarity — something that reaffirms ourselves and our values — to build a true and lasting attraction.

Start with your existing network. Don’t ignore the people who love you to chase the people who are ignoring you. Find your first support in your existing network. Look at the people right next to you, they’re the people you have already attracted.

To build the deepest influence build out your business idea, product, or service by starting with start with what has attracted other people to you on the deepest levels — your core competencies and values — to what you want to see happen — your business idea, product or service.

Use the first question to qualify your business idea.

Why are you the best person / team / business to make it real?

  • Know your value. Who are you with respect to your business idea? What competencies, skills, and talents qualify you?
  • Know what attracts you. What about this idea attracts you emotionally? Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
  • Be invested. Why would you choose this idea over all others as where you invest your time?
  • Identify your unique attractiveness. What unique value and values will you bring to making it real?

Use the second question to qualify your core community.

Who do you know needs this idea?

  • Know who already values your competencies, skills, and talents. Who in that group will be most interested in what you’re doing? Who knows others who would be interested? How does your idea solve an important problem for them? How will you get their best thinking?
  • Know what attracts them. What about this idea will attract them emotionally? How seamlessly does it fit what they’re already doing?
  • Be worth investing in. What unique value and values will they see? How much time / money / resources are you asking? What’s their payoff for participating — what makes their work / life easier, faster, more meaningful?
  • Identify their unique attractiveness. Who in your network will increase the attractiveness of your idea by participating? How will you identify them?

Use the third question to combine the first two and refine them into an irresistible offer.

What core group of people will find your idea absolutely irresistible?

  • Name and claim your core group. Maximum support stand on deep relationships. 12 apostles can do more than 1200 subscribers. Who are the 20% who will give you the 80% of your support always? Who will spend the most time / money / resources on this idea? Focus there. Build your first offer to show you know them deeply.
  • Raise the value in your value proposition. What does your core community love most about your idea? How can you enhance that, refine that, and deliver it more seamlessly?
  • Lower or remove the irrelevant details. What does your community not care about or find irritating? How can you limit that, lower that, or remove it completely?
  • Be uniquely satisfying. What would delight and surprise your core community? How can you introduce something only you might add to the idea that would uniquely satisfy the community because you know them so intimately?

Keep the community in the process. Constantly talk to people about what you’re thinking and seeing. Ask them if they’re having the same experience. Whenever community members offer valuable insight, think of ways to bring them closer to what you’re doing. Encourage your fans to ask their friends what you’re wondering. Tell them how you’d like people to think of you and ask if that’s what they’re saying about you. Solicit their suggestions, insights, and corrections.

None of us can be inside and outside a system at the same time. As you stay inside the thinking on your idea, product, or service, find ways to share what you’re doing. Invite your influence network or community bring you news of what they’re seeing. That outside point of view will raise their investment and prove your assumptions.

The closer you get to your community, the closer they’ll be to you.

And that’s irresistible.

Be irresistible.

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

What Makes an Irresistible Business?

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Do You Make Sure the Customers Who Want to Love You Can?

Irresistible is what attracts new customers and brings them back again and again. When you’re irresistible, you become unique. The competition becomes irrelevant, because they aren’t you. Irresistible combines solid business with great relationships to

  • Remove what customers don’t want.
  • Enhance what customers love.
  • Add something unexpected they would die for.
  • and offering options that fit easily into customers’ lives.

Making sure customers who want to love you CAN is the best way to grow a business.

What Makes an Irresistible Business?

Irresistible Business is the game changing strategy that defines great business growth in the context of a marketplace that is now customer controlled and both online and off. It reaches inside the business to check the models for irresistibility with questions such as these:

  • On Execution: Does your model / process match your business, your partners, your vendors, and your internal customers? Does it work for them and for you?
  • On Engagement: Does your model match your market? Does every interaction make customers’ lives easier, faster, and more meaningful? Does what you do fit easily into their lives?
  • On Extraordinary Value: Do you add a unique value proposition that only you can deliver. How can you make your business model itself a barrier to entry?

The statistics prove that customer investment and word of mouth marketing are most effective business development initiatives any company can have to build a brand, to build sales, to build lasting value.

In this new customer-driven, attention economy, every business – corporate to company of one – needs a serious focused strategy designed to raise them to class of their own. Huge investments in low ROI advertising and clever SEO won’t work if the company can’t be found above the noise or can’t adequately engage customers in an irresistible relationship. The game of business has become one of building lasting communities of fiercely loyal fans.

It’s no longer if you build it, they will come, now it’s if you let them help you build it, they will bring their friends. What company wouldn’t want a community of fiercely loyal fans?

How are you making your business irresistible to the people who want to love you?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss