Search Results for: questions

3 Avenues to Safe, Reputable Business Advice

April 26, 2012 by Liz

Safe Advice for Smart Business Decisions

If you already have your own small business you probably know that finding sturdy, credible business advice can be a tricky task. If you’re just looking to start a business, beware, for there is an endless sea of websites and business “professionals,” willing to give you the “latest and greatest” advice on how to start and run your company. The following tips should help lead you to some safe advice, or at least get you started down the path of making smart business decisions.

Personal, Real-life Advice

Although this can be a bit more expensive than the do-it-yourself route, the quality, personal poignancy, and accuracy afforded by this option is often well worth it. Hiring or meeting with a personal life coach or business coach is an effective way to get good personal business advice without wasting your own precious time searching high and low for it. These professionals will take the time to sit down with you and go over virtually any business concerns or questions you may have. They’ll make sure that the advice they offer is specific to your personal needs and take much of the guesswork out of the equation.

Good Websites

Much like the site you find yourself on now, there are plenty of trust-worthy business sites out there offering quality information. Finding them in the midst of all the clutter now on the net is the tough part. Here is a link to a helpful website offering a top 20 list of the best business websites for Entrepreneurs and CEOs in 2010. The list is still quite relevant for us here in 2012.

Friends and Relatives

If you know any personal friends or family members who’ve started their own successful (or unsuccessful) business ventures in the past, absolutely solicit some advice from them. This is as good an option as any, and one that usually casts a safety net over any intellectual property and personal business ideas depending on your level of trust with said acquaintance. People are usually very willing and often eager to discuss their personal models for success and business experiences with a fellow entrepreneur, especially one they already know. Don’t overlook the enormous potential that your personal connections may hold.

In this dog-eat-dog world, which currently hangs loosely in the balance of a delicate economy, sound advice can be the difference between a successful idea coming to fruition, or fading back into the ethos for someone else to find and successfully develop. Make sure you take the necessary time to research before embarking on any financial endeavors. You never know when or where that last missing link may be hiding. Using the right tools, in any case, surely gives you a better chance of finding it.

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Author’s Bio:
Alex Brown: Alex is a prolific writer with specialization on various aspects of financial finance. His articles on debt, mortgage industry and personal finance are offer valuable guidelines to the readers.

Thank you, Alex!

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

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Influencing Decisions – Part 2: 4 Things to Let Someone Know Before You Ask

April 23, 2012 by Liz

IRRESISTIBLE BUSINESS: Influencing Decisions

Not Everyone Has the Context You Do

A few days ago I got another phone call from a person I met several months ago. He said his name and then said,
I’m launching a new product and I’m wondering if you’d like to see a demo.

“What?” was all that I could think of to say.

When he’d called, I’d been knee deep in writing a proposal. I was well into the context of the strategy I was developing and that strategy had no connection to the name or the random question that had just interrupted it.

After an uncomfortable few minutes of asking questions of my own, I managed to find out who the person was and why he was calling me — he wanted to enlist my help. After all, we were connected.

The disconnect in this “connected” thinking is that I can’t help everyone with whom I have a conversation, much as I might be inclined to be the helpful one. My life, my family, my friends, and my landlord demand their own part and parcel of my time. So I can’t stop my own goals to pursue others’ quests just because they ask.

No one can.

It’s hard enough for any one of us to determine where to lend our support to the most noble of quests within the time we have in our lives.

If you’ve got a quest that needs support, help yourself and the people you might ask by being able to tell us the information we might need to make that decision before you ask.

4 Things to Tell Before You Ask

Lead with relationship and context. Let me know who you are. Your ask or offer will get turned down if it’s bigger than the trust in the relationship. Set the context for your conversation by establishing what that relationship is and why that trust exists. How do I know you? Why are you an expert at what you’re about share?
Be clear on what you have. Let me know what your quest is. Tell me what exactly you’re talking about. be able to say it in 25 words or less. If you still need paragraphs of detail, you don’t know what it is.
Connect your me to your quest. Let me know why you’re asking ME and not every turnip that that falls off the truck. Tell me why you’re asking me — why you believe my expertise will be a valued contribution to your success. That will pique my interest in your quest. If you’re asking everyone, you haven’t considered what any one person might offer and that anyone can do what you ask.
Make helping easy, fast, and meaningful. Let me know how little I have to do to help. the facts. Don’t tell me about your disappointments. Think of what I might expect the product to be and then make sure I know if something in that definition is missing.

Anyone with more than one friend has to find a way to decide which friends to help and when. When you move beyond close connections, it sure helps if the “friends” asking lets us know that they’ve thought enough about their quest to start with trust.

Asking isn’t easy. Saying “no,” isn’t either. But time is the only resource no one has enough of.

Take the time to understand and prepare for the four points above and you’ll save time because you’ll contacting the right people with the information that they need to answer faster with a yes.

How do you make sure you’re ready to ask?

Be irresistible.

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

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Business on the Move – Literally – (Our next #SOBCon chat)

April 16, 2012 by SOBCon Authors

Bradley Gauthier So many of us are constantly on the move as we go from meetings to conferences to offices…many spend more time on the road than they do at “home.” Even while traveling, we stay connected to our business, keep on top of strategies and tasks and continue to move towards our professional goals. Bradley Gauthier will be joining us on April 19th to discuss how you can: stay productive while traveling, be more effective at using technology and continue to move your business forward while you are on the go.

Bradley has he been a serial entrepreneur for 13 years. Starting with a tech handyman firm, then building a successful website design firm during dot.com era, and then another successful Internet marketing firm, he had built what most entrepreneurs would see as a successful business. But he realized that these ventures were also sucking the life out of him. So in early 2011, Bradley said goodbye to it all, giving away most all of his possessions, and pursued a life of travel. All while building an education software company with the goal of improving the lives of others for current and future generations. He is now living the life of a Digital Nomad.

As a serial entrepreneur and a digital nomad, Bradley is the perfect person to share insights of building and maintaining a business on the move.

We’re sure you have a lot of questions for him. But specifically we’ll be focusing on these on the chat:

How do you prepare for business while traveling? What are the necessities?
What are your top tips for effectively using technology, especially while on the go?
How do you insure that your productivity continues while traveling?
How do you sustain your team’s productivity when you are traveling?
Are there apps or tools that you would recommend?

Ready to know more about becoming a Digital Nomad? Join us for the SOBCon Twitter chat on April 19th at 1pm ET.

DO it Scared

April 11, 2012 by patty

by Patty Azzarello

Recently, I keep finding reasons to think about being scared. Or more specifically, getting reminded that being scared is OK.

Successful people spend as much (or more) time being scared as they do feeling confident and comfortable.

The difference is that they do it anyway.

My worst moment…

Here is the story of what might be the worst moment in my career.

I was in my early 20’s and I was a sales engineer. My job was to demonstrate technical products during the sales process.

It was my first week on the job after being trained on one of the two products in our product line. The sales force was not supposed to schedule demos for me for the second (more sophisticated and specialized…”scarier”) product until I had a chance to get the training. So much for “supposed to”…

I found myself in a room of customers who demanded that I do a demo of the product I didn’t know. I told them that I could show them the product, but I wasn’t prepared to do a full demo. So I launched the product and they started firing questions at me. I must have said, “I don’t know, I’ll have to find out and get back to you” at least 30 times. It was humiliating.

Talk about uncomfortable. I don’t think I knew the answer to a single one of their questions. I didn’t even understand the questions. It was painful. I was used to being seen as smart and competent and prepared. I was SO embarrassed. Then it came…

One of the customers said to the sales person in a frustrated, angry tone. ” Why did you bring HER? She doesn’t know anything!”

You know what happened?

I didn’t die.

Yes, it was very painful, and beyond uncomfortable, but it didn’t kill me.
What it did do, was give me a list of 30 important questions customers have about this product.

The next day I sat down with the product manager and asked him to explain to me what those 30 questions meant, and how to demonstrate them in the product.

Within a week I was the second most competent (and in demand) sales engineer to demonstrate that product. By contrast, there were other sales engineers at the company who stayed scared to demo that product, so they never even tried. Their careers did not advance.

Scared is OK

That one experience allowed me to be scared for the rest of my career, but to also know it’s OK. I was genuinely scared every time I got a promotion. I was scared many times in big presentations, meetings or negotiations.

That man’s voice was in my head saying, why did you bring HER. She doesn’t know anything.

But that lesson allowed me to realize:

1. That you can be scared, screw up, even fail, and you will survive.
2. That failure-learning cycle is far more valuable than the safe, not-doing-it approach, where you learn and accomplish nothing.
3. Over time it get’s easier. If you force yourself to act when you are scared, every time it gets easier to act when you are scared.

In brief — do it scared.

Scared and Successful

Ultimately, I was able to be scared, and still perform really well most of the time. My way of working would be to push forward, be scared, and do it anyway.

I still cringe sometimes. I am not perfect. I forget things, and get thrown off sometimes. But now when that happens I always think about what I learn from the minor embarrassment and feedback. It makes me better next time, and forever after. I would not improve without some amount of trial and failure.

If you never put yourself out there, you never get the feedback, practice, insight, and ideas to tune what you are doing to be more successful. You just stay stuck.

And it’s also important to realize that if you mess up a few times in dozens or hundreds of outings, it has no impact whatsoever on peoples’ impression of you. Those moments just fade away as you replace them with the improved, excellent ones.

Fear and Competence

People who are not held back by fear have broken the link between fear and competence.

What I mean by this is that some people when they feel scared, have a tendency to think that is a sign that they are not worthy. They think…

If I am scared and I feel vulnerable, that must mean by definition that I am not good enough to be in this situation.

This is not how successful people think. Successful people break the link and say something instead like…

I feel scared and vulnerable, so it’s going to be harder than I expected to put myself out there. Damn, I guess I have to do it anyway.

It breaks my heart when I see gifted people hold themselves back because they are too nervous to step forward.

One woman in particular I am thinking of did some breakthrough medical research, but was not comfortable being the one to present it. Guess what happened.
The presenter claimed the credit and she got pushed aside. What should have been a breakthrough moment in her career turned into a setback.

The invisible risk

Staying in the background because it is more comfortable, does nothing. It adds no value, you don’t learn, and you fade into the background. In terms of being vulnerable, in reality you are much more vulnerable if you are invisible, than if you are out there.

Being out there and being imperfect, trying to move things forward, and committing to contribute is actually a much less risky way to behave in your career.

Leaders Step Forward

It’s not about being flashy or having a big personality. Leaders drive outcomes and then they communicate about them. Even the most humble, introspective, introverted leaders put themselves out there when they need to. And it is very powerful.

The power comes from showing that you are taking ownership for the outcome of the communication, not from the song and dance. Leaders step forward and show others that they care.

I saw a TED talk by Dr. Brene Brown about Vulnerability and Shame. I’ve included a link below, it’s really worth watching, but I wanted to point out a couple of things that really struck me on this topic of fear and success.

1. Everyone feels vulnerabilty and shame

Everyone. Not just some people. Not just most people. Everyone. If you are human you feel shame (unless you are a psychopath).
So there you have it. Vulnerable or Pshcyopath.

I found that very comforting. To think because I feel scared, I am not good enough, makes no sense – because everyone is in the same boat. Another reason to do it anyway.

2. There is no Creativity or Innovation without fear

There is no success without failure. Great ideas and big successes come from people who are willing try, fail, and keep going. Good ideas stem from bad ideas. Failure is necessary to progress.

Do it scared, and you might get someplace.

The words she uses, which I really like are “Daring Greatly”.

Here is the link to Dr. Brene Brown’s talk “Listening to Shame”.

Her research and her talk are about much more than these two points. It’s worth the time…

What about you?

When have you been scared or failed, built success out of it. Please leave your story in the comment box below.

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Patty Azzarello is an executive, author, speaker and CEO-advisor. She works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. Patty has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello. Also, check out her new book Rise…

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The Five Traits that Motivate People to Support a Strategic Decision

March 28, 2012 by Liz

Every Great Motivator Has Its Failing

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!!

4 Points of Clear Thinking in Social Business Times of Fleas and Mosquitoes

March 27, 2012 by Liz

Don’t Let the Adrenalin Cloud Your Thinking

The biggest part of my business life takes place offline. For as much as I’m visible on Twitter and my blog, I’m most often on the phone or in offices listening and talking about how people think and respond in business situations — how we buy, how we create communities, how we rally to cause, and how we are moved by influences.

In those ongoing business conversations, people I work with and for sometimes bring up cases of negative social business behavior. I bring up a four points that we often lose sight of in such situations.

It’s rare that someone dies or company goes bankrupt because of comment made on Twitter. From the words “Dell Sucks,” through the first time prominent bloggers chose to use and post about K-mart gift cards, to the Motrin ad about “babywearing,” and every iteration large and small debated in the online social business — none that I recall were a life and death situation. And some were obvious attempts by individuals to gain visibility and attention.
Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see. Find out more about everyone and everything before you respond. It’s rare that we work with complete information. Every story has many layers and it’s human nature to lose sight of or devalue the parts that don’t support the position that we favor. If you haven’t considered the restraints and possible good intentions of what you’re criticizing, if you can’t offer a possible way to solve the problem, if you can’t articulate your own version of the same behavior you’re criticizing, if you only have third party access to what happened, then you probably don’t know enough about the situation to call what you’re thinking an informed opinion. It’s impossible, arrogant, and dangerous to think you know other people’s intentions.
Consider the reliability of the source and what the source’s purpose might be. Who brought the first complaint and what might be their gain for complaining? I’ve seen someone ask “innocently curious” questions on Twitter to start a debate, designed to raise his own profile by rallying folks to kick and scream about something that was really none of his business. Very soon a pile-on occurred. If the questions were really so innocently curious, I wonder why they weren’t asked via email? The difference between innocent curiosity and manipulation in this case was the intent of the asker — he wasn’t interested in the answer. He was interested in the debate and gaining more followers.
People can see what you do, not why you did it. Stick to your values and your actions will prove them true. Each time an issue occurs I watch social business experts lose sight of how social media tools work. We tell people to listen. Then we forget that they’re listening. What CEO wants to work with the guy who claims on Twitter to be the only person who understands business? What C-Suite executive or small business owner who’s listening will trust the opinion of a person who tears down a company or rants unmercifully on an individual’s opinion? If you know how the tools work, you don’t lose that perspective to join a witch hunt because someone choose to write an ebook.

What to do about negative social business behavior?

Try the rule of fleas and mosquitoes.

What do we do with fleas and mosquitoes? When they keep their distance, we don’t even think about them. They’re irrelevant. When they bite us, we build environments where fleas and mosquitoes don’t thrive and flick them away on occasions we must. Then we get on with what makes our lives worth living, not bothering.

It’s easy to have a knee jerk reaction in a situation where many have tools to reach a few thousand people. So those fleas and mosquitoes, who choose to suck bits of blood for their own advantage can appear to be powerful. But only have the power that we give them. Be aware of what feeds them and remove it from your environment. Starve the fleas and mosquitoes of attention. Gratefully thank them for their wisdom and move on. The folks you want in your community don’t like fleas and mosquitoes either.

Focus your attention on giving food to what keeps you strong and protects you — the folks who already love you. Give the folks who love you even more attention. They’re the ones who deserve the explanations. Give them your commitment to continue doing what they already love about you. Let them know your trust won’t be bent or broken by voices who yell louder than they might. Invite them to be closer to you. Reward them. Celebrate them as heroes.

You’ll never go wrong by valuing the people who love you more than the fleas and mosquitoes.
Keep your head, your heart, and your adrenalin on the mission of the people who share your values.

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

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