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You Might Be the Problem If…

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By James Ellis

Sales sluggish? Traffic down? Conversion rates dipping? Boss seeming a little gruff with you lately? Fewer smiling customers? More customer comments than you’d like?

They all have a root problem and a root solution, but sadly, you’re not going to like it.

The problem is you.

Not the editorial you, the plural you, the groupthink you, or even the royal you. You. The person reading this. You’re the problem.

That’s not 100% true. You didn’t cause the housing crisis and the fiscal cliff. You didn’t create all the public uncertainty slowing economic growth. But you are still the problem.

Why? Because the only person you can control is you. If you claim it’s your boss’s fault, that means you get to pass the buck. If you decide lower conversion rates are because your customers are dumb, that’s an excuse to not try and fix it.

But you can’t just “fix it,” can you. Especially if you believe that the fault lies with someone else. Making it your fault and your problem means that you get to do something about it, not just blame and move on. Making it your fault means that power lays in the one place you can use it: within you.

And that’s not just some self-help/new age/zen-esque notion. The problems with your business and site are usually you, in that you haven’t figured out how to build a site for your customers. You built a site for you.

The joke among web designers and graphic artists is that the client always wants to logo bigger. Why? The logo doesn’t ever help the customer, it’s bigger to stroke the ego of the client. Every pixel of space added to the logo is a pixel taken away from something the customer might actually want. Every interstitial ad is ten seconds you stole from your user. Every home page that touts how much you appreciate your customer is a another click the customer has to slog through to get to their order status.

When you send marketing emails, do you fill it with junk that you want the customer to know, or do you fill it with what the customer actuality wants? Is your web site showing products that you want the customer to know about, or the products your customers came for?

Do you even know the difference?

Don’t you love it when two airlines merge and they tell you that they did it for your convenience. It wasn’t to lower operating costs and increase margins while bringing standards of customer service to ever-falling levels? This is what a company calls convenience?

Do you know the difference between “important customer emails” and “spam?” I bet the standard you have for your personal emails and those your company sends are different.

And that’s why you are the problem. Because you are the only person who can stand up for what your user wants and actually give it to them. They will reward you later with more sales and better word of mouth. But for right now, as the calendar changes over, the burden falls on you to fix your problem.

How will you become the solution?

Author’s Bio: James Ellis is a digital strategist, mad scientist, lover, fighter, drummer and blogger living in Chicago. You can reach out to him or just argue with his premise at saltlab.com.

Start Doing

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Rosemary O’Neill

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“First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.” Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Stop messing around and just throw the grenade already!

King Arthur, Galahad, and Brother Maynard wasted a lot of time debating the proper way to hurl the hand grenade while the killer bunny escaped unharmed.

What are you doing that is sidetracking you from your real purpose? Your 200 blog subscriptions are useful, but only if you do something with the information you’ve read (and the ones you aren’t reading…I give you permission to delete them). The teetering stack of business books on your nightstand might contain ideas that will launch your business to the stratosphere, but only if you have a way to implement the ideas (and yes, they still count if they’re clogging up your Kindle instead of your bedside).

Instead of counting to three over and over again, take action that will get you closer to your ultimate goal.

Here’s how to toss the grenade:

  • Every time you read a blog, article, or book, write down the “action items” you pull from them. Keep a notebook handy so that you can remember what you decided to do.
  • Check off the hardest task first thing in the morning. That thing you’ve been delaying because it’s hard or unpleasant. That thing you need to tackle in order to get to the next step. Didn’t do yours yet today? Go do it right now!
  • Find something that will snap you back to the original goal. Some people keep a dream board, or a written “big picture” list that they refer to at least daily. Keep your eyes focused on the prize, and feel free to turn off your social network notifications in order to do it. (Note to self: read your own blog posts, lady.)
  • Spend some time mentally considering how you will feel once you’ve taken action. Give yourself the mental image, how it will look, feel, taste. Savor that feeling and it will give you the power to start moving.
  • Take one bite at a time. Often, inaction or indecision is the result of feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of a project. If that’s happening, you need to stop and break the project down into manageable pieces. Then, you can gain momentum as you check off each task.

What strategies do you use to get yourself to take action?

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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 their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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The Five Traits that Motivate People to Support a Strategic Decision

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Every Great Motivator Has Its Failing

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As I look back on every SOBCon event, a continuous them is …

Decide and Do.

Decide literally means to kill off all other options. But how do we choose the motivating strategic decision — the one that not only moves us forward, but also enlists, engages, and motivates people to join us in executing that decision?

Strategic decisions are built on understanding position and predicting.
On the most quantitative level, people are part of both position and prediction.
Yet too often we make decisions without considers how the decisions might impact the people who we want to keep closest to us.

How Do You Make a Strategic Decision that Moves People to Action?

Too often when we make decisions — especially important and urgent ones — our thinking narrows too tightly. We lose sight of the people and focus only on facts and information. We see the problem, but lose sight of the people who will help us achieve it.

Our decision is only an half strength if we don’t consider the people who execute it. Each of those people brings his or her thinking, traits, perceptions, and responses with individual goals and personal intentions.

How does a leader motivate people to support a strategic decision? A leader looks to the characteristics of the people he or she wants to move to action. Motivation is 100% about aligning goals — being mission critical to THEIR mission. Once we set our course and direction, the next strong step is to consider what fuels the people who will fuel our mission. The key to moving people to action is in how we communicate that decision. It’s important to reach out to the higher values that drive the members of the community.

The Five Traits that Motivate People to Support a Strategic Decision

The people we try to motivate will have have these five traits in differing levels. Addressing these traits when you communicate a strategic decision will increase your success in motivating people to move to action. Before you announce your decision, review these five questions.

  • Dedication: Do they care? Commitment and caring are deep strong motivators. Know which people care and invest their commitment deeply for the goal. People of commitment dedicate themselves to reaching the goal. Tie the goal to commitment and you’re likely to capture their deep and unswerving investment in the mission. .
  • Intelligence: Do they learn well and understand and deeply? Sharing the sound thinking that drives a decision will motivate the community members who value deep thinking. Don’t be stingy with communication.
  • Courage: Do they respond well to change and in times of uncertainty? Acknowledging the risk and the reward of the decision allows the brave ones to step forward to protect and serve and to know how to shore up the possible vulnerabilities.
  • Discipline: Do they value the systems and the rules? Chaos is uncomfortable and change can be confusing. A few clear rules of what will guide the strategy to success can enlist those who most need clarity of action.
  • Trustworthiness: Do they trust your decisions without explanation? Explain your thinking anyway. Trustworthiness is demands that you value their trust and respect it, especially in times of change.

You’ll know you’ve communicated well if your community starts selling you on the validity of your decision as they move to action.
you form strategy and make decisions that help you enlist the right team of people to carry out your life mission.

What do you consider when you want to motivate people to action?

Be irresistible.

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

Make Your Own Opportunities

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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The only way to know for certain that you won’t win the Publisher’s Clearinghouse is to
not enter the sweepstakes.

The same principle applies to just about every opportunity out there. The successful
entrepreneurs, A-list bloggers, and business leaders all made it because of two things:
?rst, they had radar for opportunities, and second, they seized them.

Think about it. What might have passed you by in the last week or so because you
thought it was too dif?cult, you didn’t have time, you didn’t have the skills, or you just
plain thought “I’ll never make it.” Instead, you should be opportunistic in a good way.

Here are some tips:

  • Recognize your little voice – when it starts telling you why you can’t grasp that chance, don’t listen. Tell it to take a break while you submit that guest post inquiry.
  • Train yourself to see opportunities – you need ?nely tuned opportunity radar. Notice the call for speaker submissions and recognize it as a chance for you to shine.
  • Remember that if you don’t ask, you don’t get – the only reason I am blogging here right now is because I summoned up the guts to ask. Take a deep breath and do it.
  • Don’t get discouraged – the other differentiator for successful people is that they use every rejection as a springboard to the next opportunity. They move on quickly to the next one until they are successful.
  • Always have “lines in the ocean” – you can add so much excitement to your life if you have several things out there, waiting for a response. Will you get accepted to that course? Will your panel proposal be accepted for the conference? Will your photograph win the contest? How much fun to go through life waiting for exciting news!

How about an assignment this week? Go right now and ?nd an opportunity, then just go for it without fear. Tell them Rosemary and Liz sent you.
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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 their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

What is He Talking About? Chris Cree on Ideas

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“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.” –Howard Aiken

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The other day Liz posted about having dreams and how challenging it can sometimes be turning those dreams into reality.

About that same time Chris Brogan tossed out a phrase over at Twitter that caught my attention.

Lots of visionaries and not enough princes of execution

So which is it?

Do we need more dreamers or more doers?

Honestly I think we need more of both.

Too many of us are sitting on the couch, eating Klondike Bars, and watching American Idol. We’d rather complain about how unfair Simon is than allow ourselves to think about possibilities and potentialities.

And God forbid we ever get off our butts and actually start making something happen!

Now don’t get me wrong. Most of you know I’m a huge fan of Klondike Bars. (Mmmmm…)

Dreaming Can Be Scary Stuff

But the point is this. For far too many of us the idea of dreaming about what could be in the future is too frightening. We let the what ifs overwhelm us without even giving our dream a chance to take root, much less produce any fruit.

What if I fail and am disappointed?

Or worse yet, what if I succeed beyond my capabilities, can’t manage it and then in the end fail in a spectacularly public way?

Would you just take a moment and listen to the junky thoughts you let run through your mind?! If you heard someone else say that sort of stuff out loud you’d be all over them like a baseball manager on a umpire’s bad call.

Then There’s the Doing

In our instant gratification, microwave, atm, cell phone society far too many off us have developed an amazingly unhealthy aversion to a little effort.

We’ll drive around the Wal-Mart parking lot for 10 minutes trying to find a parking place up front instead of just parking out a little and walking a few extra steps. Even though deep down we know we’d get in the store faster if we did.

One of the biggest reasons so many of us are unwilling or unable to dream any more is because we think we’ve tried it and it didn’t work out. So we’ve given up.

But the reality is all we did was wish. And that’s not the same thing as dreaming.

A wish is something we think we’d like to have or see but don’t really think will ever happen. To many of us do that and think we are dreaming.

Dreaming is seeing something that isn’t there yet as though it was real already. When we seriously get to dreaming, there will come a moment when action is required to turn that dream into reality. With a wish we never have to worry about that step because we won’t get to it.

Turning our dreams into reality will require us to put down the Klondikes, turn off Idol, and do something.

Change is the Rub

Here’s the thing about that quote up there at the top. Watching our dreams become reality will require change.

And change? Fohr-ghet-ta-bow-tiht!

If your dream, your big idea, is truly different that what has gone before you won’t have to worry about anyone stealing it. The overwhelming majority of folks out there are so unwilling to change, even when they know the change will be a huge benefit to them.

Don’t believe me? Try to convince a smoker to quit.

Your dream, if it is truly unique to you, is relatively safe. Use appropriate caution and protect yourself wisely. But don’t worry too much.

Most folks aren’t going to be willing to make the changes necessary to steal your dream.

But that’s just the Way I C it.

–Chris Cree, SuccessCREEations.