Before the Internet, things were different. We didn’t realize it but we were confined by geography. Geography organized us into narrow niches. People found us by proximity. The limits of transportation were the niche boundaries. We put our stores at the corner of State and Main where the traffic would be sure to see us.

But the Internet blew those niches apart. People no longer need to walk, drive, or take a bus pass the corner of State and Main. We’re now competing with businesses and attracting customers from Alabama to Zimbabwe. Without the geography to define us, we look like everyone else who does what we do.

Those geographic niche that focused and limited our market gave us an advantage. We could be “the only” or “the best” book store in town. But now “the town” is the world. Were unlikely to be the only book store. Who’s to decide what’s “the best” book store? The way to stand out at the new State and Main — the front page of Google — is to replace that old narrow geographic niche with a new one. A narrow niche takes back that one-of-a-kind wider opportunity.

Why Customers Love Narrow Niche-Brand Marketers

Narrowing your niche is about quality over quantity. As you narrow in on a smaller group of people to serve, the job of serving that group becomes easier. We see the same problems played out over a variety of situations, so we get to become expert on those problems. We can design our work and our place of business to better serve them. They recognize that we know what makes them tick.

Nothing beats that.
Here’s how to build a narrow niche brand.

• Define a niche for your business. Choose a niche you truly care about. Find a place to stand. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Do one or two things that play to your strengths and passions. Do those things better than anyone else.
• Find out everything about the customers in your chosen niche. First and foremost, make sure that said customers exist. Then don’t just get information. Fall in love with everyone of them. Figure out how to crawl into their skin and feel their pain. Know their loves and their wishes. Find their needs and desires. Learn to read what they’re not saying.
• Define your brand through your customers’ world view. In reality, you don’t define your brand, your customers do. When you understand your customers intimately, find a way to state your brand–what you and your customers stand for–in less than one sentence. Write those words everywhere your customer will see your name, your blog’s name, or your business name. Let them know you mean it.
• Use your brand to test every decision you make–large or small. Be your brand. Live it. Make your brand show in every detail, every action, every move you make. If you live your brand, and test every decision against it by asking, Will this help my customers see my brand? your customers are more likely to buy into the brand you’ve chosen on their behalf.
• Be authentic; never skimp on quality; never go against your brand; and you will set the standard. You won’t just be different; you will be unique, irreplaceable. Authenticity cannot be “knocked off and done more cheaply.” Attempts to copy you will only be poor facsimiles. Quality and authenticity are the birthplace of brand loyalty. Customers will know where to find the real thing. Once they find it. They stick with it.
• When your customers recognize that you care about their needs, value the relationship that you have with them. Relationships will always be everything in any human endeavor. Relationships are the connections that build our businesses.
• Never lose sight of the fact that you and those you serve are people. Businesses serve people — not users, not clients, not eyeballs, not numbers — but people with thoughts, feelings, and ideas that make our businesses better. Talk to them one person at a time. Listen to them the same way. When we find someone who tries to solve our problems and who values us. We’ll go out of our way to do business with you. It’s just not that often that we get that kind of service.

That’s how small niche-brand marketers get to be great niche marketers one customer at a time. That’s how to make relationships with other really great people.

We think that people who think the same way we do are smarter than other people. So when you choose a niche that we care about, we think that you’re highly intelligent. We trust your judgment in other things too.

We are a fascinating species. When we don’t know where to go, we’ll go where everyone else goes. But give us a meaningful reason to come to you, and you’ve made a customer–a reader–possibly a friend forever.

How will you narrow your niche to widen your opportunity?

Be irresistible.

Liz

Do the Mighty Ones Have to Crash and Burn?

The bigger they are, the harder they fall … what makes them that way?

We’ve all the rise and fall of “that guy.” He was intelligent, savvy, and a leader in anyone’s book. He also cared about things like integrity. People invested in him with their hearts, mind, time, and money. He was a great leader until … he wasn’t. At some point it quit being about the cause and became about him.

The rise and fall story isn’t always about a “he.” Many a mighty “she” has made the same fall.

What Happens When the Mighty Fall?

According to the Harvard Business Review, 2 out of 5 new CEOs fail in their first 18 months on the job. It appears that the major reason for the failure has nothing to do with competence, or knowledge, or experience, but rather with hubris and ego and a leadership style out of touch with modern times.

Why is this leadership crisis happening? One reason may be the gaps between how leaders see themselves and how others see them. –Why Do CEOs Fail and What Can We Do about it? Psychology Today

Jim Collins, author of the bestselling books, “Good to Great” and “Built to Last” is a knowledgeable compelling speaker who offers the learning from thousands of hours of research on the best companies and what separated them from the “almost best.”
If you’ve read Collins’ books, you know that leaders of great companies are humble, willing to do the hard work, and willing to make the unpopular, painful decisions to do whatever it takes to support the cause of the business.

Collins pointed to five stages of decline in a great business. The same five stages also could be named the state of decline in individual leadership career.

• Hubris born of success – the belief that the business or the leader can’t fail; the arrogance of acting as if all of our decisions are good.
• Undisciplined pursuit of more – too much growth, too much adventure, too much big risk.
• Denial of Risk and Peril – disregard for warning signs or reality checks.
• Grasping for Salvation — when things begin to crumble, rather than going back to discipline, the leader looks for a savior. He or she wants someone to put things back – to fix what went wrong.
• Irrelevance – the business or the leader bites the dust. No cares what happens to them.

Leaders are people who want to build something they cannot build alone.
The sheer ability to be mission critical to a bigger mission than oneself is at the core of leadership.

It’s good to celebrate success, to claim our rewards and leverage them. It’s even better to understand how much of our success is dependent on skills and influence of those around us. Choosing people who hold us to our best values is important. Doing that for ourselves is characteristic of leadership.

How do you know when a leader has lost sight of his or her best leadership?

Be irresistible.

Liz

It’s always confused me.
Why is it that we ignore the people who love us while we go chasing after the people who ignore us?
That’s not great strategy.

Look right next to you.
People with your values, who value what you do, are investing in you and your business. They have a unique point of view. They can see what you do from outside the system and they’re already on your team.

You can’t be inside a system and outside at the same.

Don’t overlook that rich resource.
Build on it.
Let those people be smart for you.
Ask them what see.
Invite their ideas.
Give them a reason to talk about you!

I’ll be talking about this in the Learning Lounge at the PCMA National Convention this week.

Be irresistible.
Liz

When I Got My First Big Job

Thirty some years ago I started working for a Fortune 500 Corporation. I was the first female sales trainee in Chicago and the second in the nation. I was about five years out of college and ready for a real career. I smart, savvy, quick on my feet, great at presentations, and strong on building relationships. I was also the youngest and the quickest to pick up the new computer system. Let me tell you, I was pleased with myself and they were pleased with me too.

Then three or four months into my tenure a reorganization occurred. I was offered a choice I was unprepared for. I could stay in Chicago knowing that my job would probably be phased out by the end of the year or I could take a transfer to a new city where I’d have a territory of my own.
I was 27 years old. My mother had died nine months earlier. The move would put me four hours further from my 72-year-old father who was living alone.

Even in those glory days of great corporate training, a few months learning in a seasonal business of complex relationships is no learning time at all. I’d hardly learned what business we were in or how to talk to a client. I was more trainee than sales rep. I couldn’t spell the word “close,” let alone design a multi-store deal with major client.

Yet, I said yes I would go, though in my heart and every cell of my body I knew the right answer was no.

Part of it was moving to the next step on the success path, part of it was never having failed at anything, part of it was thinking this was what “the company wanted” and that what I thought didn’t count. I hadn’t thought through the risk or the reality. I hadn’t thought through whether I had the skills or the will to do the job. I was simply doing what we learned in school – do what the teacher says and it will work out.

I negotiated a nice deal. I kept my condo in Chicago. They paid for my new apartment in the best neighborhood. I moved down to that city and into a huge showroom with a separate office downtown where I worked alone. I was a business person now. I paid my office rent. I bought my samples that sat on the shelves. I booked my meetings, took my orders, and for six weeks twice a year, I packed my car and drove to hotel rooms that 13 sample cases and I called home.

I came face to face with who I was and who I wasn’t. I didn’t figure out what I’d loved about my job in Chicago until it was gone. I didn’t figure out what I needed to do this new one until I didn’t have it. I longed for someone to teach me and someone to be with me, but the guy who had been there before me had moved on. The information didn’t feed me. The competition depleted me. The lack of people and feedback made me feel small, lost, and alone.

I missed the thinking and connecting of ideas. I missed interactions with people and the relationship building that are so much of who I am. I missed being part of something that wasn’t just me. Everything about me has always been a teacher, a community builder, and a designer of ideas. I did my best to pretend I was happy, but I hated my job and I didn’t like myself for doing it badly.

Soon enough it was obvious that the move was a bad choice all around. I learned a lot about what works and doesn’t work for me at the expense of a territory that went nowhere. Luckily a bad economy covered some of what I’d not done.

And I’m grateful to that Fortune 500 company who saw the situation for what it was and who generously moved me back home.

Stories Like That Happen Every Day

My story was expensive for me and for my company. Every day, I hear stories of how many of us learned to be leaders on someone else’s path. A little too ready to fit ourselves into the job description set out without thought to what we already are or are suited to be.

Thirty years ago, I didn’t have the wisdom, the courage, the leadership to think through that first decision and to answer with what I already knew – that I should have said no.

They didn’t pay me to think then, but they do now.

Now I see what I see and know what I know — and I’ve figured out what I add. The rest is about aligning goals to build something together that we can’t build alone.

Still the start of it all was going down the wrong road to learn that…

our best strengths, talents, and skills often seem easy because they are naturally ours and
we often don’t recognize our best strengths, talents, and skills until we can’t use them.

Inside our successes is the key to our path. Inside each of them is what we naturally do well.
Look at your successes to see what you see and know what you know about yourself.

When you name it and claim it other folks will recognize and value it.

What comes so naturally to you that you’re not yourself if you’re not doing it?

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

Risk Mitigation

When I was small, people often called me a “natural born teacher.” At a young age, they gave me a class to teach the 5-year-olds who couldn’t “get” the hang of reading. By 13, I was delivering whole lessons to classrooms while supervisors sat in the back of the room. Eventually I grew up to become the VP of Product Development and Chief Strategist of a educational publishing company. Teaching has always been part of my personal success formula. Even at this very moment, teaching — sharing what I’ve learned — is critical to what I’m doing.

Yet of all of the advice that people have shared, offered, and pressed upon in my quest to reach the best that I might be. The sentence about teaching that keeps coming back to me lately is one that my dad said when I was still small.

“If you want to be a teacher, own the school.”
My father’s idea about owning the school was that a teacher needs to teach with competence and integrity and with the wrong person in charge the rules can change frivolously and issue irrelevant to great teaching can make the job difficult, if not if not impossible.

I would answer that school systems weren’t build for people like me to own them.
He would answer that I should find a way to make a system of my own.
I learned later that what he was talking about is called risk mitigation.

Facebook: Go Where the Fish Are, But Wear Boots and Know What the Risks Are

Facebook: it’s where the fish are … but before you put your houseboat in that water, know what what the risks are.

When Facebook first opened their doors to more than students, a lawyer friend wrote a deep and thorough blog post about the Facebook Terms of Service. One section made me decide to never put my blog posts on their platform. Last night discussion in the esteemed Twitter Chat #blogchat (held weekly on Sundays 9EST) the discussion was about Facebook versus blogs. This morning a NYTimes article describes a young man, Michale McDonald who used to post his videos on a blog, but now he uses Facebook.”

“I don’t use my blog anymore,” said Mr. McDonald, who lives in San Francisco. “All the people I’m trying to reach are on Facebook.”

And I want to say to him …

If you’re going to build and share online content, own the url where you house it. Put the link on Facebook, but the content on your own URL.

I understand that we need to go where the fish are. I also understand that we need to wear our boots and know what the risks are before we wade into the water.

Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Blogspot and other free platforms make it easy to build and share content so quickly. But what are we risking by building and sharing in places where we don’t own the “land” where we’re building? Free isn’t free when you think about it.

Some reasons to consider storing your content on your own url …

• We don’t hold the keys. I first found out the problems with being a “renter” on someone else’s land in 2006 when blogspot went down and I couldn’t access my own content — Google Blogger–403 Forbidden–How Could You Let that Happen! I woke up one morning years ago unable to reach my “free” blog because Google owned the server. I wasn’t paying them to serve me. My content was at the mercy of their willingness to keep their tool working and accessible to my readers.
  

  I realized last night that, as a Blogger blogger, I am a guest in your home or should I say a captive visitor. Darn, I thought I was a welcomed customer. What made this clear was when you locked me in my room and forbade me access to my stuff.

• We give up our rights to part of what we own. We have to be. The sites couldn’t function without that sort of IP permission. Have you read the Facebook Terms of Service? It means anything you put there is no longer yours exclusively until you remove it and then …. Just this much of it means I find it dangerous – that I’ve turned over my right to who can use it.
  

  You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:

  1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

  2 When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).

  I’m not sure I want Facebook to be able to use my intellectual property or to be able to transfer it whomever might buy Facebook next. I’m careful not to post what I love most and what I want to keep exclusive to my brand and my business on my own url.

  Other sites — free blogs, Flickr, YouTube, SlideShare, have similar Terms of Service, know what you’re giving them them you put whole content on their sites. Sometimes the trade off is worth it in the circulation it generates. Sometimes you can achieve the same results in stronger ways. Knowing what we’re giving while we’re getting is always a great way to manage that risk.

  Maybe you don’t want to do that with all of your Flickr images, but anyone who’s had they’re entire photo collection deleted bacause they labeled them wrong, knows the value of understanding the agreement before you start.

• If we leave, our community can lose their identity as well as their home. It would be unreasonable for a landlord to take the names of all the people who visitor your home or business. It would be even more unreasonable for a landlord to offer to keep that list for you and refuse to share when you move … ever try to export a list from Yahoo groups, Facebook, or Linkedin?
• We can’t design a space the same way as we might if the property is our own. LinkedIn pages decide how your content looks. Facebook decides how much you can bring your design into their space. Flickr and YouTube don’t allow much customization because they want your visitors to know you’re on their property.

Of course, every online tool has to have it’s own rules to protect itself and to maintain its identity. Some of those rules make it deliciously easy to do it their way rather than put in the work to build a “home” of our own. Even the power of their longevity can make the Search Engine listings seem stronger to stay with them.

But the pride and power of ownership allows us to tell our own story in our own way. We can use those other tools to support us in building a powerful presence that is truly our own. But relying on them alone they can become less support and more “just an easy way.”

And in a crisis we may find that we want a home base that is within our control.

Should a time comes that you might have to protect your reputation from a jealous sort or someone with a grudge, people will look for a response from you. You’ll want to have that url that you own to tell your story in the truthful, authentic voice that your friends and fans have come to respect. You’ll want the power of your own content to carry you to the top of the search listings when folks go looking for you.

Do you find it’s important to own your content url?

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

Do It For the Folks Who Love You

With the advent of social media, it’s easy to lose focus and find ourselves building our marketing initiatives around the newest, biggest, or most popular tools and the coolest, hottest, most talked-about venues. Yet, in a moment of clear thinking, we all know that any message we send is only as strong as the number of right people it reaches at the time that they’re most ready to listen. in fact the goal is not only reaching those ideal people in a way that they’re listening but also willing to act and delighted to share that they did.

Before you fire that great idea, before you tell folks about that perfect offer, use these questions to check that it’s whole, complete and totally about the people you want to listen and pass it one. Use these questions to connect your message with the social media sweetest spot — the heads, hearts, and perfect timing of the ideal customers and fans who can help your resonate through the Internet.

1. 1. Who are you talking to? Did you make a decision to talk to your most loyal fans? If you want folks to listen, they need to know the message is for them. Talking to everyone is like talking to no one. Every great message is specifically tailored to the listener.
2. 2. Where are they? If you’re reaching out to your most loyal fans, you know where they are. Those are the places, tools, and the venues where your message will most resonate. If your fans text all day, don’t be tweeting them.
3. 3. What one thing do you want them to know? We often get so interested in the details of our message that we cover it up with too many marketing words. Trust your fans to appreciate your most simple message delivered in your most authentic way. Talking about what we love to do with enthusiasm is natural — trying to sell our friends is not. Are you saying what you want to say as simply as you can?
4. 4.What do you want your fans to do? Information is wonderful. Are you telling me to keep me in the loop or do you want me to act in some way? Don’t forget to tell me what you want me to do. Ask.
5. 5.Why should your most loyal fans care? Take a minute to see things from your fans point of view. People ask us to do things every day and as much as we care about those people, we can’t do all of them and do our own stuff too. Give me a reason to care and to be proud to act on your behalf. Let me know how I’ll live a better life, have more fun, or be a hero if I do what you ask.
6. 6.How easy did you make it to do what you asked? Package up the action you want so that all it involves is a quick thought and something simple — a click, a shoutout, a retweet, perhaps — that’s filled with tons of satisfaction for sharing it with my friends. The easier and more satisfying you make it to share, the more like it is that folks will.

Building the message is only the first step. Making sure that the message is perfectly tailored and routed to your fans is what makes up all of the rest. I dare to say that if we do the work that would add one more quality step …

Be fun, entertaining, interesting, compelling, creative, surprising, or amazing enough to talk about.

… we might even reach that mysterious inexplicable traction called viral. Do everything for the folks who love what you do. They’ll do the rest.

Can you answer these questions for the next message or promotion that you want to send?

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

I Think I’m in Love for the Very First Time

I just finished cleaning out my in box. I won’t mention the number of strange pitches that show up there daily, except to that if you’re someone who sent one, you might get the idea that I don’t want to work with PR people. You would be totally mistaken.

I love my friend Charlene Blohm who is a consummate professional in the PR field. She knows what I do and what I’m good at. Now and then she sends me something that fits what I’m doing. It’s a pleasure to pitch in and work on it. Then too, she’ll send a release of an accomplishment her company has achieved I’m thrilled to pass it along so that folks know what her work is about.

And that Gini Dietrich, one might wonder, whether she only plays a PR person and really works as a marketer. I’ve never received a real pitch from her. But when it’s been appropriate and mutually beneficial she’s asked if I might help. We’ve even discussed where our skill sets meet up.

Whenever I meet a new PR person who thinks like those two I get the same feeling. I think I’m in love … for the very first time – again.

Dear PR Person Can I Tempt You By Saying How Much I Want to Work With YOU?

I’ve learned a lot from great PR people. I’ve learned the importance of having a clear message and remembering to repeat whenever people see me. I’ve learned how to talk with the media and how to answer with confidence and clarity. I’ve also learned that I don’t necessarily have to tell my whole life story every time people say, “Liz, tell me about you.”

I love working with good PR people because great PR people don’t just see my name on a list, my Twitter follower count, or my blogs, you see me and I see this about you …

• you work hard for your clients
• you’re relational
• you’re smart and creative
• you’re aware of who’s doing what’s interesting
• you’re connected to other smart people
• you’re often the first to know about new things
• you also have clients who might want to learn the strategies at SOBCon, meet the entrepreneurs in my network, and find out about the other things I do.

What I’ve found is a great PR person makes a great partner and understands the value of strategic relationships. If you’re one of those, email me anytime you want to about something more than your latest book or speaker pitch.

I want a relationship not a blog post offer.

I be we could make “beautiful music” together.

Music, strategy, and relationships come in many forms, but in a form letter.

Want to try a real conversation instead?

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

OMG! I Didn’t Sign on for This!

Many decades ago, when I was as younger, but not shorter, I was executive editor for a newly appointed Vice President of Product Development in a publishing company. Shortly before the yearly sales conference, she called me into her office to ask my advice about our editorial team.

“This is the first time we’re taking the entire editorial department to sales conference. I have certain expectations of what I think they should be doing there. Do you think I should tell them what my expectations are?”

What?

I felt transported back to conversation of the kind that my younger older brother used to use to tease me as a kid and I was so tempted to say what he used to say to me.

“I can’t tell you because then you’ll know.”

Instead I answered with an emphatic YES! and I followed it with a few words on how much easier it is to get the behavior we expect if we simply explain what it is and why we value it.

Sounds like a crazy conversation – eh? But it really happened.

Expectations and Drama

Think about the last “high drama” business situation you observed or were pulled into. Someone was seriously complaining about something that didn’t go the way he or she thought it should.

What he or she expected out of the situation is not what actually happened.

Consider this scenario …

You and I are asked to move a cart of apples down a dirt road to neighboring farm in a limited amount of time.

We expect our apple carts to go down the road smoothly to our destination and suddenly one tips over. Apples everywhere. It’s a bad surprise, extra work, and unplanned stress. It’s almost a crisis.

Now suppose that someone said before you started that about halfway through the assigned apple cart trip, you’ll hit a rut, tip the cart, and have to collect the apples again right the cart to continue. It happens to everyone. Now there’s no surprise, no extra work, and the stress is planned. It’s not a crisis. It’s part of the quest.

Knowing what’s going on makes a difference, doesn’t it?

Herein lies the moral of the story. Plan the work and share the plan. Let everyone know what to expect and the drama in your event, project or business will be a whole lot less.

Have you seen any situations lately where lack of planning or communication turned into drama instead of great business?

PS If you want less drama in your business, stop being dramatic yourself.

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

Twitter Talk

I’m a fan of Twitter. Nothing beats it for quick, agile, and brief. Twitter is the king of networking at the Internet speed and reach. Want to share something? Want to get a quick problem solved? Twitter lets us tap into our linked networks and pass information along, but you can’t send a Tweet to someone who’s never signed on.

Twitter Talk is great for a fast moving volley around a narrow idea or collecting the opinions of a crowd. But the very speed and compactness keeps the rich and telling details out — the details that explain why and how. If an idea or a problem takes exploring or discussion, Twitter doesn’t measure up.

If I’ve made assumptions about you, the message I get won’t be the one that you sent. If we use language differently our communication can go woefully wrong.

Sometimes whole conversations are important

• to get something done.
• to clearly state a position.
• to define a project and outline expectations.
• to participate in a negotiation.
• to coax, cajole, or romance.

and in many other situations.

Twitter doesn’t do whole conversations well. Some interactions require other tools.

Where do you go when Twitter needs to change to a whole conversation?

Liz Strauss

Want a strategy to be irresistible to your core audience? See the Work with Liz.

Who Influences the Influencers?

In my most favorite keynote I tell a story about my husband the engineer, Google, and his Blackberry Bold that happened a couple of years back. He was stuck in a loop trying to figure out how to remove flickr from his app set. The brilliant “I’ll do it myself” engineering mind kept reloading earlier versions of the firmware – he wouldn’t use the Internet to find how to do it.

At the peak of his frustration, I Googled uninstall flickr from my Blackberry, got some advice, and he was in business. The smartphone was now back to where he wanted it, but the relationship between man and smartphone was never as emotional as it had once been. They’d had their first conflict and now the infatuation was over. His Blackberry had become a nice gadget — the wonder was gone.

I hated to see that as any married person who travels, texts, and Twitters might. I long for my loved one to enjoy my passions.

Then …

This week at BlogWorldExpo I was privileged to be invited to meet with the people from Research in Motion, the makers of Blackberry and as part of that event, they gave me a Blackberry Torch to take home. (It was a generous gesture. Thank you.) I couldn’t wait to share it with the man I’ve been a huge part of my life with.

He opened the box with some anticipation. With a gadget guy’s delight he held it in his hands turning it this way and that way again and again. He read every word in the documentation. Then he loaded it up with all of his applications. Once the lovely little smartphone was rolling I started tracking what he was saying. Blackberry was back in the game again.

• This is one powerful machine.
• It does so much.
• Love the rotating screen.
• I’m loving this touch screen.
• The video is beautiful and it rotates sideways!!
• It’s the perfect size too. I’ve got my phone in my pocket and don’t even know it’s there.
• I know this sounds silly, but it smells nice like new cars do — new “gadget smell.”
• I’ll be on it all day getting information.
• Can’t wait until tomorrow until I have to call you.

You might have thought it was his birthday, Christmas, and his first promotion. He couldn’t stop talking about it and still can’t wait to bring out at the local pub where we share our dinner / date night with friends. The Blackberry Torch review at Blackberry cool gives the hard details.

It was a fun and beautiful experience to share something that captured his heart and his attention. It’s delicious to bring out the passionate, playful kid in any grownup. I think that the best testimonial might came later in the evening when he said …

The only thing I love more than this Blackberry is my wife.

That caught my attention.

Now Blackberry has two love-you loyal fans in the Strauss house.

Make my family and friends happy and you’re sure to influence me.

Ever use that idea that when you’re trying to influence an influencer?

Be Irresistible.
Liz Strauss

Want a strategy to be irresistible to your core audience? See the Work with Liz.