Successful Blog

Lisa Petrilli Loves #SOBCon

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Lisa PetrilliSOBCon is a truly unique and exceptional experience.

I attended my first event in 2010 and it not only opened my eyes to the power of online business, but it exposed me to a myriad of people who encouraged me to think bigger about my own business.

The people who speak at SOBCon and who attend SOBCon are leaders in their field and the kind of people who understand the power of relationships. Those I met and brainstormed with at SOBCon 2010 have come to be some of my best collaborators, partners, and even some of my best friends. The tradition continued at SOBCon 2011 where friendships made in 2010 deepened and new connections were formed.

To say that SOBCon has changed my life is not an understatement!

SOBCon is an experience – not just a conference – and an entirely new way of thinking about your business. I strongly recommend it to anyone who is passionate about growing their business, their network and expanding their life in beautiful new ways!

Lisa Petrilli is the CEO of C-Level Strategies, Inc. and you can find her at LisaPetrilli.com or follow her on Twitter @lisapetrilli.

12 Blog Posts that Tackle the Problem of Self Promotion

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No Need to Be Shameless

A while back, Mack Collier, raised the question Is ‘no self-promotion’ the great unwritten rule of social media? I don’t believe it is.

Though promoting the great work going on around us is the fastest way to get positive recognition, sometimes it’s we’re called upon to let people know what we do and how well we do it. A solid business person, especially someone in social media, needs to be fluent and facile in discussing the skill with which he or she can get the job done.

What follows are some articles I’ve written on the subject that you may missed if you recently tuned in to my blog.

  1. Branding, Self-Promotion, Selling: Are You OverDoing?

    2. We know those times well, when we try too hard to convince others of our brand, apologize for our writing, ask links instead of earning them, or quote text when we should analyze.

  2. Branding: A Tagline Is Not A Brand — How to Build a Positive Brand in 3 Steps

    3. Everyone has brand.
    Your brand may be as simple as You are unknown.
    Not everyone has a unique and positive brand identity.

  3. Two Important Ideas in a Brand Identity and Why We Have to Live Our Brand

    4. People have a way of letting us know we forgot to consider them. They do that by redefining what they think of us and telling each other the new definition.

  4. Shameless Self-Promotion: What Makes It Shameless?

    5. Shameless Self-Promoters see only the game — not the relationship or the other person’s needs. Shameless self-promoters are focused on getting, not giving.

  5. Self Promotion: A Winning Answer Every Time — Why is That?

    6. No one got tied up in the confusion that usually hangs around self-promotion.

  6. Self-Promotion: How I Learned to Stop Shooting Myself in the Foot

    7. As a result we often shy away from any attempt to talk about what we do — fearing we’d be mistaken for the opportunists that we’re not. I used to be the poster child for thinking about self-promotion like that, and it found me getting myself tangled in knots

  7. Self Promotion: Telling Stories for the Painfully Shy

    8. People looking at me make me very self-conscious. Many folks find that a surprise. I write this post for everyone who is shy.

  8. How Too Much Thinking Used to Screw Me Up

    9. I said something about the “ME” in self-conscious. I’ve always thought about it. RK came back and put to words in a pair of comments that said exactly what I always had wondered about . . . am I shy or am I egotistical?

  9. 3.3: Three Steps to an Intriguing Answer to “What Do You Do?”

    10. Many folks would tell you this is the time for your “elevator pitch.” I suggest that term might not be the best way to look at a relationship. Why don’t we say that an authentic conversation is our goal?

  10. Social Media and Promotion: How to Get Your Network Pulling for You

    11. A friend emailed me asking if I would pass along information about a product just coming out. The email was a sale pitch I could pick up and pass on. The rest of the message was over the top for me — kind of pushy and kind of “wink, wink, nudge, nudge — you help me and I’ll help you later.”

  11. Talking Decisions and Self-Promotion with JenChicago

    12. see video

  12. Mind if I Ask Your Network to Help Me Beat Your Car with a Sledgehammer?

    13. Just because you say you’re going to do it,
    doesn’t make it right and it doesn’t make it any more appealing.

Self-promotion is important to a business. If we don’t tell the world we exist and what we do, soon enough we won’t. Hope you find this helpful.

Let me know if you think a favorite is missing from the list. Thanks!

What do you find is the best way to promote your business?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Thanks to Week 301 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

My Experience with Cliffs and Decisions

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2016 GeniusShared Read from Liz StraussI’ve been thinking about falling off cliffs.

I’m fairly sure I was born with a fear of heights.

My uncle, the photographer, didn’t have such fear. And as I recall, the rest of my family didn’t either.

And my uncle — the one with all of the expensive photography equipment — would find every opportunity to take pictures that involved standing my cousins and I near dramatic scenery.

I was always the one who ended up on the cliff side. It was always impossible to find my smile.

Even now, I can’t walk up to the edge of a cliff without thinking that the stone will give way. My imagination has me tumbling, down, down, down . . . even though, I’m fairly certain that’s not meant to be a scene in my life.

I used to have the same experience with decisions. Choosing any option would leave wondering whether the choice would fall out from under my feet. Then I realized the only thing between me and every success I every won was a decision that I would succeed.

Maybe it’s the awe inspiring beauty of the world that sets me on my heels.
Maybe it’s the awe inspiring idea that I can determine the course of my life.

I still respect cliffs and decisions, but now I place my feet firmly in where I stand so that down, down, down isn’t on mind.

Loyalty 3.0 with @ChrisGarrett @CarolJSRoth @LizStrauss #SOBCon Webinar

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Carol RothJoin host Chris Garrett as he interviews Small Business strategist and SOBCon co-founder Liz Strauss and New York Times best-selling author Carol Roth about the idea of Loyalty 3.0 and how it can improve your bottom line.

Speakers:

  • Carol Roth, Business Strategist & New York Times Best-Selling Author of The Entrepreneur Equation
  • Liz Strauss, Small Business Strategist
  • Chris Garrett, New Media Consultant, Chrisg.com

Attend this webinar to:

 

  • Learn what Loyalty 3.0 is and why it’s the future of customer loyalty.
  • Understand how to identify both the senders and spenders for your brand.
  • Learn how to identify your company’s key pillars of customer loyalty.
  • Discover why old-school loyalty efforts are not effective in today’s marketplace.

Wednesday August 10, 2011 at 2 PM EDT

Register today for the Loyalty 3.0 Webinar.
GoToWebinar Brought to you by your friends at GoToWebinar and SOBCon

The Leadership Role of Blending Work, College, and Family

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The Audacity of Tenacity in Leadership
A Guest Post by Val White

I had finished an Associates Degree in Business when I was younger and pre-children. When my first child came along, I found a way to work from home while participating in my young child’s life. Two years ago, I felt it was time for me to go back to work and rejoin the corporate world.

I quickly discovered that a lot had changed in the 10 or so years that I had stepped away to care for my family. My skills needed refreshing. I wasn’t interested in the same things. I had changed and so had my choice of careers. I knew I needed to go back to school. I also needed to tend to my family and contribute to the family budget with a full-time job. After much research and soul-searching, I settled on a state college that combined virtual program with a “brick-and-mortar” college experience.

Today, I’m in the last course before I’ve fully earned my Bachelors degree in Information, Networking, and Telecommunications (with an emphasis on Web Development). Getting here wasn’t easy. I still have to get that degree to payoff in new career opportunities.

But I can easily say that I’ve achieved a lot.

The Innovative Leadership of Blending Work, College, and Family Life

A favorite article at NewandImproved.com, The Way of the Innovative Leader resonated with me as it laid out five leadership traits found in those who live and inspire great thinking in the people around them. (© 2006 New & Improved®, LLC. Mailto: info@newandimproved.com) And as I read the article over, I came to realize that those same traits were what I came to value as I grew into the role of non-traditional college student, who also had both a family and a job.

These are the five traits I relied on to keep going when I might have stopped. Whatever your situation, these five will serve you well in getting you to your goal.

Integrity:

Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don’t make promises that you can’t or don’t intend to keep. In the lifestyle challenges of family, college, and job, you may find yourself overwhelmed if you haven’t developed the ability to say “no” to things that will add more clutter and demands on your time. Inevitably, something is going to fall off the edge if you fill your to-do list with too much. It’s easy to get your priorities mixed up in the attempt to do it all. The lines easily become mixed: family, college, job – college, family, job – dreams of future career, college, family, umm…job. If things get out of hand, it’s best to stop everything for a moment, a day, or a weekend and reevaluate your priorities.

Tenacity:

Wiktionary.org defines tenacity as …
“The quality or state of being tenacious; as, tenacity, or retentiveness, of memory; tenacity, or persistency, of purpose.”

I also love this definition:
“The greatest longitudinal stress a substance can bear without tearing asunder, – usually expressed with reference to a unit area of the cross section of the substance, as the number of pounds per square inch, or kilograms per square centimeter, necessary to produce rupture.”

I’ve endured a few semesters where I truly felt I would “tear asunder!”

There will come days that it’s all you can do to put one foot in front of the other and make sure the essential tasks have been completed. Truly, keeping a firm and unshakable picture in your mind of your goals and purposes is so very important in order to withstand these days when they come.

Curiosity:

As a non-traditional, adult student with some life experience, I found learning much more of an adventure than I did in my earlier years. Instead of just coasting through a class to get the credits, I found more benefit in finding ways to apply this new knowledge to my career goals and asking myself how it applies to right now or 5-10 years from now.

Being curious will surely expand your vision and enlarge your understanding of your world.

Courage:

What will others think and/or say to me when I tell them I’m going back to college? Is it really a waste of time and money? After all, I have more lost career years behind me than I have ahead of me. Will I really be able to apply what I’ve learned?

It takes courage to face your own demons and plunge into the unknown. For some, it’s an ongoing battle or one they don’t even wish to start. I’ve found that whatever it is that you’re afraid to start or when you want to give up, remembering one simple truth is a great motivator: you’ve got something to contribute that is uniquely you and nobody else can do it.

Humility:

Referring again to wiktionary.org, the definition of humble is,

“thinking lowly of one’s self; claiming little for one’s self; not proud, arrogant, or assuming; lowly; weak; modest.”

This doesn’t necessarily appear to be an attractive trait, does it? In reality, when approaching this lifestyle of family-college-job, there will be many opportunities to practice humility … and come out stronger from it. Simply entering a college program is a statement that you don’t know it all and you’re in need of help in achieving your future goals. You’re going to need to engage with instructors and other learners in discussions that might prove that others will have better ideas than you do. But more than this, you’ll find humility when you reach out to others around you for support, advice, and help with daily tasks.

So, how did these experiences and traits contribute to my job of being a role model?

Quite simply, my husband and children watched me – day by day and night after night of late night homework. They cheered with me when I reported my test and homework scores. They listened to my frustrations and they helped lighten my load when they could. I hope that I offered my family.a chance to see and develop these essential leadership traits to serve them in throughout their lives.

You have no choice about being a role model. You are one … it comes with the job. The only choice you have is which role you’ll model. – The Way of the Innovative Leader

Those concise three sentences are the sum of the reasons I chose to finish my college aspirations as an adult.

And why I know I’ll also achieve all of my goals.

What is your leadership role?

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Val White is a mom, web developer, and student at FHSU fhsu.edu. She is just now venturing out of the safe confines of the FHSU online class discussion board and looking for new opportunities to contribute on the web. You can find her portfolio at valwhitewebdev.com.

Thanks, Val! Amazing story. 🙂

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