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If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, You’ll Never Get There

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By Jennifer Dunn

Where is your business headed in 40 years? Yes, that question probably sounds ridiculous to you right now. You’re busy trying to survive another year, month, week or day, or even attempting to get your business off the ground in the first place. At what point are you supposed to think about 40 years in the future?

Honestly, you should be thinking about the future, because it will be here at some point. While you may not have to specifically worry about 40 years ahead, you should be considering where you want your business to be. If not, it could lead to some pretty bad situations for you that could lead to the demise of your business.

If you don’t have a plan for your company, it’s like it’s a plane without a destination – you can fly high for a while, but at some point you have to come down. If you don’t know where that is, you could be in for a rough landing.

Goals and Vision

Everyone has a vision for their business as well as a reason for getting into business in the first place. This reason could be absolutely anything – you wanted to spend more time with your family, or had a great idea for a product, or wanted to escape the rat race. It could even be to prove to yourself you could do it.

There is no wrong or right answer here. Your reasons are your own. The point is you have to honor those reasons and your vision for your company. If you don’t, you could end up with a monster you can’t control.

For example, let’s say you wanted to never compromise your product line as you believe it can change the world. It’s a lofty goal, but a great one nonetheless. Now let’s say you have an opportunity to sell your company to a bigger company. At some point you may realize the big conglomerate wants to change your product. Now you have a big problem – do you choose the money or the reason you went into business in the first place?

Find Your Destination

While this initially may not seem like such a big deal, eventually moving away from your original goals could lead to a point where you abandon your business. If you struck out on your own to spend more time with your family but you let your company get so big that you no longer have no time for them, you’ve defeated the entire purpose of starting your company.

This is why it’s important to look toward a destination for your company. If you have a place in mind for your company to land, you can make better decisions that will keep you happy and invested in your business. Even if something unexpected pops up you’ll be able to handle it with ease as you know where you want to end up.

Keep in mind this destination and your goals may change. You may start out wanting to make a ton of money and get rich but switch it later on to just being comfortable and being happy working on your own. Again, there’s no wrong or right answer – just make sure it’s what you want for your business and yourself!

Where are you heading?

Author’s Bio: Jennifer Escalona Dunn is the owner of Social Street Media where she writes about small business, tech and finance for sites like WePay and Outright. You can find her on Twitter @jennescalona.

10 Step Half-Year Blog Checkup – How YOU Doin?

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It’s almost the halfway point of 2013–time to take stock and make sure you’re putting your best foot forward. Remember those shiny dreams and goals you came up with in January?

To quote my favorite Friend, Joey, “how YOU doin?”

Let’s find out by running through 10 quick checkpoints. There’s still the whole second half of the year to do a course correction and kick butt.

10 Step Half-Year Blog Checkup

  1. Go into your Google Analytics and find your most popular post. Use that as a jumping off point for more content. Update the topic, do a “part two,” or simply re-promote it via your social channels. You might be able to get more juice out of it.
  2. Run a poll or send an email to get feedback from your readers about what they need. Use the results to guide your writing for the rest of the year.
  3. Make sure you are up to date with your software and plugins. When’s the last time you updated your WordPress? Are there better plug-ins you could be using? Do you need to renew any licences?
  4. Check current best practices for your sidebar, ads, and extra content. Is it time to delete some of those old conference badges, test removing your social profiles, or add a promo for your new e-book? There’s a great blog/community review video at Live Your Legend.
  5. Do you need to update your logo, tag line, or branding? When is the last time you refreshed your graphics?
  6. Is your editorial calendar set for the rest of the year? You don’t have to have a headline for every day of the week, but it might be good to sit down and come up with broad topic areas for each week or even each month. You’ll be sitting pretty if you feed your stockpile of headline ideas at the same time. How is your blog draft “slush pile?”
  7. Check in with your goals from the beginning of the year. How have you done? Do you need to make any course corrections? Pat yourself on the back if you’ve checked any big goals off the list already. It’s so important to take time to celebrate your wins. If there’s something on the goal list that you haven’t accomplished, think about whether it was a good goal to begin with.
  8. Update your social sharing tools and make sure you’re taking full advantage of new developments. All of the major social networks have undergone major changes since January. There are now verified Pinterest pages for your business, Facebook has changed its cover photo policy to allow more text, and Twitter now has interactive “cards” available to embed in blog posts. Have you looked at List.ly yet?
  9. Get up to speed on disclosure regulations. Are you compliant? It might be time to take a moment and read the updated FTC guidelines.
  10. Is your mobile experience optimized? Check your Google Analytics again and note how much of your audience is reading your blog on a mobile device. My guess is that it’s a big chunk! Take time to ensure that your site is mobile-ready.

Let’s use the rest of 2013 to inspire each other to success!

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

Will achieving your life’s dream make you happy?

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When I was 10, I wanted to be an archaeologist. Something about the King Tutankhamen treasures touring the country inspired me, and I desperately wanted to find dinosaur bones. Then at some point, I found out that archaeology involved a lot of fruitless sweating, kneeling in the dirt, and being bitten by insects. I moved on to dream of becoming a children’s book writer, which involved none of those things.

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Are you working toward a specific life’s goal, either personally or professionally?

Have you stopped to analyze the reality of achieving your goals?

For example, if one of your career goals is to become a famous speaker, giving keynotes all over the world for big-time fees, have you considered the travel involved? Time away from your family, hotel rooms, TSA inspections? Yep, that’s glamorous.

If your corporate goal is to bring in 10 Fortune 500 clients, have you thought through the realities of servicing an enterprise customer? Massive bureaucracy, expectations, slow decision-making…and reliance on a few large customers can be risky as well.

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

The homework today is to review your goals, both written and unwritten. Take a half hour to visualize what your life would be like if you achieved them. Is it the life you want?

If not, you need new goals.

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

Image via Flickr CC: Mediocre2010

“The Secret” for Bloggers

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You’ve heard of The Secret, the system that applies the laws of attraction to fulfill your wildest dreams?

Basically, you write down or make a tangible representation of your goals and then let your subconscious mind do the work of drawing those things into your life.

I do think there is magic in documenting your dreams, but I have a slight twist on The Secret that I’d like to share.

Step 1: What do you want?

Make a list of all the wonderful things you’d love to happen for your blog. For example:

  • 20 comments per post
  • 100 social shares
  • TV interviews or appearances
  • Asked to guest post for influential blogs
  • Linked from other blog sites
  • Listed in top blogs roundups
  • More than 200 subscribers

Step 2: Give it generously.

Start doing all of those things for bloggers you admire. Sincerely get out there and comment, share, ask them to guest post for you. Ask them to do a video interview on your blog. Write a big list of bloggers you feel need more attention. Subscribe to new blogs.

Then watch what happens.

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 Twitter as @rhogroupe

Genius is made, not born

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By Andy Crestodina

Laszlo Polgar started with a belief: “geniuses are made, not born.” The Hungarian chess teacher felt this notion so strongly, he wrote a book called Bring Up Genius! The book was basically a how-to guide for raising brilliant children. And through his children, Polgar had a plan to create a chess champion.

It was basically a social experiment. First Laszlo found a woman, Klara, to be the mother of his future champions. He married her, and together they had three daughters: Susan, Sofia, and Judith. From the age of three, the girls were immersed in the game of chess.

How did it work out? Today, the Polgar sisters are chess legends. Sofia is an International Master, and both Susan and Judith are Grandmasters. Judith actually became the youngest player to ever achieve that title. She was 15 years old. To this day, she is one of the strongest living chess players, male or female. She has defeated World Champions with names like Karpov, Kasparov, and Spassky.

Mr. Smith goes to Hollywood

Actor Will Smith is another example of planned success. He set out with a deliberate purpose to not just be an actor, but to be the most successful actor in the business. His manager James Lassiter said to him “Listen, if we’re going out to L.A., we probably should have a goal.” Smith replied, “I want to be the biggest movie star in the world.”

So together they looked at a list of the 10 top-grossing movies of all time. “We looked at them and said, O.K., what are the patterns? We realized that 10 out of 10 had special effects. Nine out of 10 had special effects with creatures. Eight out of 10 had special effects with creatures and a love story.”

In minutes, Smith and Lassiter had deconstructed the formula for Hollywood blockbusters. Smith’s conclusion? “Independence Day, no-brainer. Men in Black, no-brainer. I, Robot, no-brainer.” He pursued opportunities that would lead him down a specific path. It wasn’t an accident. It was a plan.

Vision + Work + Environment.

Success requires vision. In the case of Judith, that vision began before she was born, with Laszlo Polgar’s dream of raising a champion. With Will Smith, he started by analyzing the greatest successes in his field. They both understood Stephen Covey’s principle of “beginning with the end in mind.”

Success requires work. You must put in the work! You may have heard the “10,000 hour rule” made famous by Malcolm Gladwell. It takes 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to become an expert. They both started early, but both Polgar and Smith have pursued their goals with intense determination.

Success requires the right environment. All that practice has to happen somewhere, so a favorable setting is critical. Polgar himself said, “Genius equals work and fortunate circumstances.” But your environment and circumstances can be controlled. If you’re not in a good situation for reaching your goals, change it.

Make your own genius

Your goals may not be as lofty as chess Grandmaster or Hollywood movie star. Success at this level requires almost total dedication. But all accomplishments at any level require these same ingredients. Whatever your goal, set your sights, create your environment, and get to work. Great things await you.

Author’s Bio: Andy Crestodina is the Strategic Director of Orbit Media, a web design company in Chicago. He’s also the author of Content Chemistry, An Illustrated Guide to Content Marketing You can find Andy on and Twitter.

How to Wow with Your First Resume

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Ana Rose

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In these days of online job sites, it may seem the resume is dead. In reality it’s far from that. Whether it’s a traditional hiring process or one that starts on the Internet, you’ll find that having your goals and what you can offer organized will make any job search easier.

How to Wow with Your First Resume

Resumes always tend to make a candidate jittery for basically two reasons, viz., if the proper format is not known to them and secondly, if they do not have any experience to show and I mean the voluntary kinds. A candidate also gains advantage if he or she is involved in some extracurricular activity. At the entry level resume, one has the liberty to mention about the activities that are not totally related to the job profile.

Resume – Tricky Document
First resumes are the easiest and at times the trickiest to write, depending on the job field and the profile of work. Since freshmen have no substantial experience in the practical field, they need to pay special attention to the presentation of their credentials in the resume. The resume thus functions like a document that represents the candidate to the recruiter and employer. To ensure there are no chances of getting rejected in the initial selection rounds, the entry level resume template will come to your rescue.

Purpose of Resume

The following will tell you what to include in the resume, but before that it is important to know and be sure of the purpose of making the resume, i.e. to get a job or to secure an internship. In case of the former, we will see the points below, but in the latter case one needs to highlight the interest in the subject, marks scored in those subjects, hobbies or special efforts taken in order to learn more about it.

Tabular Format for Systematic Presentation

Entry level and college resume templates focus on the academics; make sure you present your details with respect to what subjects you have studied, which college, the university, the academic duration, specialization subjects, etc. Do make use of tables (tabular format) for putting in your details systematically.

Special Sections to be Highlighted

Extracurricular activities of the candidates are something which they can cash in on. In case the candidate has interest or some experience in their choice of line, then it should be highlighted right after the education section or just before it, if one has something of outstanding nature to mention related to the same.

Skills

A dedicated section for mentioning the special skills set and abilities, technical competencies, etc., is advisable. Use bulletined points and include two line elaboration with details like where did you participate in the activity, what you are competent in, for example, computer skills, using some particular software program, etc.

Creating a good impression is important whether you’re new graduate, a college freshman, or someone re-entering the workforce after a long absence. Use these tips to create a strong image.

Author’s Bio:
Ana Rose is a freelance writer who writes on various career related subjects and she keeps her interest in writing about resume and cover letters. For more info visit bestsampleresume