Successful Blog

Here is a good place for a call to action.

Entrepreneurship Isn’t a Solo Activity

by

By Rosemary O’Neill

“It’s a way more fun world when we’re all winning.” Liz Strauss, at SOBCon NW 2012

Attending SOBCon NW last year was a highlight for me (and you can still get in on SOBCon Chicago), and one of the most memorable quotes was the one above, from Liz herself.

She didn’t mean it in a “kid sports team where everyone gets a trophy” way. She meant that when we help each other achieve, we often find ourselves achieving our own goals along the way.

Give Your Gift Generously and Without Reservation

Of course, everyone has competitors. Particularly in the online arena, it’s exceedingly difficult to provide a service or create a product that’s truly unique. But you know what can’t be copied? You.

Your personality, your style, and your experiences don’t belong to anyone else in the world. Your gift to your customers is your unique approach, based on your life and perspective. That can’t be copied.

So it’s OK to share your ideas, suggestions, and support with those around you. Give a leg up to your fellow entrepreneurs, and you’ll be surprised at how great it makes you feel.

Embrace Your Competitors

I have several people I count as friends who work for companies that compete in the same space with me. My daily task is to create a huge pie—so huge that we can all have big slices together.

In fact, if I’m dealing with a potential customer who will be better served by the services of a competitor, I’ll send ‘em over. Call me crazy, but if I’m the instrument by which someone achieves their vision (even if it’s with a competing product), then it’s all good.

You’re Not Alone

It can seem as if it’s you against the Internet sometimes. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are so many smart, funny, generous people out there who are ready and willing to share their time and treasure to help you get unstuck. Since SOBCon Portland last November, I’ve stayed in touch with a lot of my fellow participants, shared business leads, offered support, gotten support, and kept my tank full!

Want to meet a huge group of amazing entrepreneurs and doers who will help you win? Register for SOBCon Chicago 2013.

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

Influencing Decisions Part 1: 4 Things to Know Before You Propose an Idea

by

IRRESISTIBLE BUSINESS: Influencing Decisions

Be Prepared to Influence the Results

cooltext443809437_relationships

The CEO was a great thinker. He made his decisions on the facts. As I watched him in meetings as people presented ideas with their best efforts to win him over, I learned a lot about what influences the decision making process.

One of the most important things I learned was what I should know to hedge my bets.

Influence is built on trustworthiness and connection.
To achieve those and meet our goals, it’s important to finely focus on the roads that will take us to our goal and the ways of inviting people to join us that move their mission forward as well.

4 Things to Know to Move Forward Before the Abyss of Next Steps

Whether we work for a huge corporation or sit at a desk in our living room, we can’t be successful without tapping into the influence of others who can help us make our ideas and our projects become real. Yet, we all also know the experience of leaving a meeting or ending a phone only to find that the decision we wanted fell off the table into an abyss called “Next Steps.”

Knowing a few things before we go into those meetings can influence the results significantly by building foundational trust in our competence and connecting our goals to how those we want to help will benefit.

    1. Know your short term purpose. Who are you and what are you building? Too often, we enter a meeting, write a blog post or email, or walk into a meeting without a specific and thoughtful goal in mind. Why are you there? Are you trying to rally support for a new idea? Do you want to change a plan in progress? Are you exploring ways to work together? Are you after funding to research the idea? Will you share something new you’ve discovered? What do you want to be true when the conversation ends?

    2. Know how this project will make the answer you want clear. Know how you’re going to make the project happen. Ask yourself before you meet, “What would be next if the answer is yes.?” Sketch out a plan of action and reasonable estimates for the costs and the resources needed to execute that plan. Do the thinking so that they don’t have to. Present a simple plan that can stand on its own.

    3. Know how your plan will bring relevant and positive results faster and easier. Establish context that makes your goal relevant to the audience you want to enlist. Why are you pursuing this goal and why would the audience want to align their goals with yours? Are you informing a large audience or a small one? How deeply do they need to know the details? ?How will you connect what you want to happen to what already is? How will the proposed project fit into what they’re already doing? How can you make your proposal mission critical to THEIR goals?

    4. Know how your experience will add value and mitigate risk. How will you establish your knowledge base as an expert? If possible, tie the proposed idea or project to something you’ve succeed at in the past. If you can’t, know what you’d expect based on your experience and be able to explain why you’re confident that together you can make this innovative approach a success. Research similar ventures. Be prepared to speak to one or two you know well.

Ideas are fun, but they’re not the genius that builds an economy. For no matter how ideas — genius or not — that get set on the “business table,” it’s the ones founded on solid thinking, realistic plans, and influential support from the right sources that develop into the next awesome technology or killer app we own.

If we do the strategic thinking and develop credible plans before we propose the idea, attracting the influential support of the right people is faster, easier, and more meaningful. In fact it could be said to be irresistible.

Be irresistible.

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