Yes, you are a big-time investor. Like, Warren Buffet big. What? You don’t see it?

Every morning you wake up with 24 hours to invest. You’re rich beyond compare.

That 24 hours has a value that can’t even be measured. When you stack up a whole week of those, you’re talking about 168 hours!

Will you invest in Facebook? (No, not the stock shares, the status checking). Will you invest in your children? Your business? Will you choose to invest in yourself?

There’s a reason it’s called “spending time.” It feels like an unlimited resource, but it’s truly not. We all have an unknowable limit.

Sometimes people get caught up in believing that social media is “free” because Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ don’t charge our credit cards. But in fact, you are investing a far more precious resource when you use social media—your own time or that of your staff.

Furthermore, by choosing to invest your limited resource in social media, you are de facto choosing not to spend it elsewhere. Should you ignore your customer newsletter to post pictures on Pinterest? Only if it’s getting you an outcome you want. Should you cancel your sponsorship of the local 4th of July fireworks display so that you can record a YouTube video?

When you manage your time, whether it’s putting together a life plan or a business plan, remember that it’s all about where you choose to invest.

If you invest wisely, you’ll see dividends!

_____

_____

Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

If you are about to start a blog, and you’re inspired by the stories of bloggers who started blogging as a pastime some years ago, and now they are making hundreds and thousands of dollars from their blogs (if they are to be believed), please beware that it is not going to be the case when you launch a blog in this time and age. Sorry to break it to you, but while it was easy to hit the jackpot with little or no effort some time ago, now the internet in general, and blogosphere in specific is turning more and more vicious, and jumping into the red ocean (read: Blue Ocean Strategy) and coming face to face with the big fish is going to be quite tiresome, if not destructive.

To cut a long story short, full time blogging, especially when you are doing it for the sole purpose of making money, can be quite stressful and unhealthy for following reasons.

• A succession of Panda updates have disposed all of those easy content generation techniques (e.g. spinning or re-phrasing news or others’ articles) and now you need to spend quite some time, and do a lot of thinking to create fresh and unique content on regular basis. And all that time in front of PC with little or no physical activity can result in obesity, weight gain, poor diet, and bad health in general

• Getting your blog to the top of Google’s results for your desired keywords (AKA SEO) is getting more and more difficult

• To make the most of your blog, you will have to promote it on all available platforms including(but is not limited to) Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, optimizing for search engines, and other blogs via guest blogging, and again, it can take quite some time and efforts

• Staying in front of your PC or laptop for long hours and pushing your mind all the time for more and more ideas can contribute to stress and even mild depression in some cases

• Sitting all the time in front of your PC or laptop will result in bad posture and a seriously out of shape figure, you might even end up gaining weight, and all these ailments will definitely add to your stress

• Going through your fellow bloggers’ experiences and success stories (even if some of them are nothing but hyperbole), you will feel quite disheartened, especially if your own blogging experience isn’t as fulfilling as others

Taking all of the above in consideration, we can safely declare that modern blogging is a job full of stress, and if you are not taking your mental and physical fitness seriously, it can cast quite negative effects on your overall health and well being.

So here’s the two-way approach to stay fit and deal with the stress built by blogging.

Goal One – Stay Physically Fit:

As earlier suggested, full time blogging will require you to spend more and more time in front of your PC, because you need to be online for everything, from finding new topics to researching for the material, and writing your posts to doing the marketing, and spending all this time while sitting in a bad, bad posture can’t be good for your body. You need to make up for this lack of physical activity by fitting in some exercise routines or sports to your daily schedule to make sure you are not putting up excessive weight. Secondly, if you are looking to take up blogging as a full time job, try to do more work on a standard PC instead of a laptop or notebook, because the smaller screens and keypads will put extra strain on your body parts like eyes, wrists, and shoulders. Lastly, for Bloggers, it can become even more important to maintain a healthy diet program, for example, a big part of your work will require mental labor, therefore it is recommended that you are consuming food which is good for healthy brain, for example salmon, avocado, or walnuts (of course after consulting with your physician).

Goal Two – Stay Mentally Fit:

A healthy body will eventually result in a hale and hearty mind, plus you need to provide your mind with some respite and lots of breaks, mainly because in blogging you are making it work harder than the routine jobs. Ideally, all full time bloggers must be having some sort of a hobby or pastime Away from the computer or TV screen. It will help if you can go out and meet your friends and have some good laugh to wash away the tiredness accumulated from hours and hours of blogging. Lastly, (and this one is going to be tough), try not to be too greedy, because unrealistic expectations or goals will result in more and more stress.

__

This post was by Rahil, who offers fitness related coupon codes like  nutrisystem coupons codes and weight watchers online codes at his website. You will find many more discounts in addition to nutrisystem and weight watchers.

No matter which side of the fence you find yourself on with such a debate, one thing we can all agree on is that our respective email folders do not take very long to get filled up. In fact, go away on vacation for a few days without computer access and see what your business or personal email folder looks like when you return home.

For those individuals that are in charge of email marketing campaigns for their respective companies, it takes a delicate touch of finding the right amount of emails to send out to current and prospective clients so that you do not come across as a spammer. Making matters worse than spamming, a bad email campaign can dampen your company’s reputation, leading consumers to go elsewhere for the products and/or services that you offer.

So, how can you put together winning email marketing solutions that not only keep you out of the doghouse with search engines, but allow your company to get its message across at the same time?

• Avoid having a spam reputation – The last thing you want your business to come across as with current and potential clients is that of a spammer. We all have junk folders in our email set ups that allow us to filter out all those sales pitches that we neither have time nor interest in. Make sure you are emailing individuals that have opted-in to receive messages from you in the first place. If you’re randomly emailing consumers about your business without their approval, you are breaking cardinal rule 101 of emailing, you are a spammer;
• Avoid the same message to everyone – It should be obvious, but don’t send out a mass emailing to individuals regarding benefits for senior citizens if they are not 55 or older. Break down your list to make sure the people you are targeting are of that age and would actually find your message of value. Sending such an email to someone in their 30s is not only a waste of your time, but also their time. Yes, you could argue that their parents or someone they know in the 55 and older age range would find your message of value, but then it should have gone to those people in the first place;
• Avoid a mixed message – Another faux pas is to have an email where the headline and the content do not match up. In the event you are trying to push information on auto insurance quotes, don’t have a headline that touts life insurance. You may think you are killing two birds with one stone by mentioning both forms of coverage, but it comes across as an error and could hurt your reputation;
• Avoid not having solutions – Your email message should provide a solution for the party it is being sent to. Make sure your email shows how you can help the client, giving them a solution and not more questions. At the end of the day, you need to show the individual how you can assist them and why this email should be saved and not junked;
• Avoid not providing a way out – All of your email messages should include an opt-out provision, even for clients that have been on your email list for some time now. It is as simple as providing clear details on how the individual can opt out of mailings down the road;
• Avoid being too cheap – Just about everyone likes deals and promotions, so offer some up in your email marketing campaigns. The incentives you provide individuals are a great way to respond to your pitch, leading to added business or a new client down the road;
• Avoid mistakes – Last but not certainly least, avoid having typos in both your headlines and the body of your message. If you think grammatical issues are not a big deal, think again. Would you consider doing business with a company whose email marketing message was sporting typos, run-on sentences, incorrect information and more?

Email marketing is still a prime player in a company’s efforts to attract and retain business these days.

If your email marketing campaigns seem a little junky these days, don’t automatically mail it in on failing.

Photo credit: websiteexpert.com

Dave Thomas, who discusses subjects such as direct mail advertising, writes extensively for San Diego-based Business.com.

CEO of Me, Inc.

Early in my career at Accenture, I didn’t get promoted when I thought I should have. I didn’t have the necessary skills to perform as a consulting manager. This prompted me – with the help of my mentor – to realize the following: I needed to undertake the responsibilities of the position I wanted before I could be promoted to it. I had to take responsibility for myself … I needed to figure out who I wanted to be and how to make it happen. Ultimately, I became the CEO of Me, Inc. This professional epiphany opened the door to a promotion as Senior Executive, the Office Managing Partner of Accenture’s Philadelphia office and the Managing Partner of the Office of the CEO at Accenture.

Changing roles in the workplace isn’t always easy, but I facilitated my new roles through my Make-it-Happen (MIH) Model, which consists of four easy-to-follow steps:

1. Set a clear vision

Just like the CEO of a corporation has a vision for their company, you need to have a vision for your company (You, Inc.). Take a moment to think about your future. What are you doing in five years? For example: “I am a partner at Accenture, in the Government Services practice, and my team just won a contract with the Department of Defense to implement a new human resources system.” Send an e-mail to someone, describing what you wish to be doing, and date it five years from today. By doing this, you’re talking with others about your aspirations and you’re committing to make it happen.

2. Build a team that supports you

You know what they say: two heads are better than one. Your team will serve as the Board of Directors of You, Inc. They will help you gather the necessary resources for you to achieve your vision. Your team should include people who: you admire, will open doors for you, and will recommend you for the opportunities you need to gain valuable experience. These people can be experts, mentors, advocates, executive coaches, stakeholders, etc. When I was at Accenture, my team included my peers, my clients, people I admired, and people who were in positions that I aspired to have (in addition to others in senior positions).

3. Develop a detailed plan

What do you need to do to obtain the promotion you want and how will you do it? What kinds of skills, experience, and knowledge are required to achieve your vision? Think of your plan as a roadmap or a GPS. You’d never leave for a long road trip without one of these, right? Developing a detailed plan will get you from where you are to where you want to be. Be clear, be concise, and set goals with dates. This way, you’ll always know where you are and what you need to do next.

4. Navigate the journey

BigStock: The Winding Journey

Once you have your vision, your team, and your plan set in place, it’s time to put You, Inc. into motion. Be aware of your product and its packaging. You should also be aware of how you’re presenting and marketing You, Inc. As you navigate through your journey, monitor what’s going on around you. Which parts of your plan are successful? How about the parts that didn’t work out quite as you planned? Learn from any possible mistakes and move on. Look back at your original plan and make adjustments as needed. I proactively change my plan every 3-5 years. My end goal is to make myself indispensable. As the strategy of your organization changes, you need to change, too… to be indispensable.

Ultimately, to make change happen, you must embrace these four steps and proactively seek opportunities for yourself. As I always say: make things happen for you, don’t just let them happen to you. Take responsibility for yourself. If you do this, you’ll be well on your way to achieving your goals and becoming the CEO of You, Inc.

—-

Thank you for adding to the conversation!

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

by
Jason Phillips

A Checklist for Starting

While perhaps not as “sexy” as other forms of small businesses, kiosks offer a viable and practical way to earn a great living, all without dealing with the substantial challenges required for many small businesses operating out of traditional brick-and-mortar storefronts.

Yet even thought kiosks offer greater flexibility and less red tape than traditional businesses, they still provide their own laundry list of steps to complete before you can get your new enterprise up and running.

• First, you need to decide between purchasing or leasing your kiosk business. For many business owners, the seasonality of their market settles this decision for them. The more seasonal your product, the better of an option leasing appears. The more “evergreen” your product, the greater chance buying will appeal to your bottom line.

  Whether buying or leasing, keep in mind the price you pay for your kiosk depends on a variety of factors, including the time of the year and how much foot traffic your location receives. The higher the potential of your kiosk’s desired location, the more you will pay for it.

• 
  BigStock: Kiosks at Shopping Mall
  

  Determine the right size for your kiosk, and find the perfect location. When it comes to the size of your kiosk, you should select the smallest location you need to sell your products. While brick and mortar stores can make good use of extra space, kiosks benefit from a focused, efficient layout.

  Choosing a location for your kiosk seems like a no-brainer, but there’s more to profitable positioning than simply selecting the highest traffic space you can find. Heavy foot traffic passing your kiosk is good, but only if that traffic is composed of your product’s primary demographic.

• Run the numbers. Compared with brick-and-mortar stores, kiosks require relatively low overhead, but that doesn’t mean you should approach your financial analysis and planning with a cavalier attitude. Factor in every cost associated with not just setting up your kiosk, but also running your kiosk from day-to-day. Be conservative with your cash flow estimates and then decide whether taking the plunge and establishing your new business is fiscally sound.
• Acquire your financing. Kiosks represent a smaller financial investment than brick and mortar stores, but you still probably won’t be able to set up your business with whatever free cash you have on hand.

  Once you have the details of your kiosk in line, along with your financial projections and your anticipated expenses, you will be ready to apply for the credit you need to launch your business and keep the lights on as it establishes itself.

• Finally, you need to round up all of the necessary paperwork, complete it, and file it. If you’re starting a kiosk business in a space that has already been highly developed and already provides a home to many kiosks, such as within a mall, then your new landlord will likely be able to help you breeze through the red tape as quickly and as easily as possible. However, if you’re trailblazing a new location, prepare yourself for a potentially frustrating bureaucratic slog.

  The volume of licenses you need to apply for depends almost entirely on what you’re selling. For example, a food kiosk needs to abide by far more legal regulations than a kiosk selling something as inert and harmless as sunglasses.

  Once you’ve acquire all of the licenses and forms of insurance you require, you will be ready to finally launch your business and move forward with this next step of your professional life!

Congratulations, now it’s time to get to work.
—-

Thank you, Jason!

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

If you’ve been developing a business online in the last few years, you’ve probably heard statics regarding the brief amount of time we have to get and keep the attention of first-time visitors. What was almost 20 seconds in 2005 now is being described as something between 8 seconds and 10.

Getting folks to arrive is the first step, of course. In that, an attention-grabbing, killer headline is everything.

Click image to access complete podcast at The Onion.

Whether it is something completely original and novel, ultra-specific and geared towards a niche, or just incredibly compelling, good headlines on the Web always win.

They always win, except when they don’t.

If a headline delivers traffic, but the traffic immediately bounces away, can you say the headline wins?

A killer headline will get traffic, but what keeps folks reading?
We have to deliver great content to give that headline legs or that traffic will bounce away.

Be Irresistible! 5 Ways to Deliver Content and Lower Your Bounce Rate

Strong businesses are built on strong relationships. What transforms a headline clicker into someone who hangs around? What turns first-time visitors into people who want to stick around? What makes them stay and already thinking about their return? Here are five things you can do to make it more likely they get what they came for.

Five Ways to Deliver to the Clickers Who Follow a Headline to Your Blog …

1. Deliver what your headline promises.
2. Deliver it in short paragraphs using subheads surrounded by lots of white space so that people have room to think and breathe. Add a picture that supports the text and illustrates the content. First impressions count.
3. Deliver it without making folks jump over ads or through hoops to get to the prize that the headline promises. Decide whether you want me to stay … there are other ways to get me to buy.
4. Deliver it by responding to the people who take time to comment.
5. Deliver it by making it easy to find more of what brought people to your site.

It’s not the visitor who never came that’s a loss. It’s the visitor who comes to find that we’re not what he or she thought. A great headline followed by something less doesn’t win. It doesn’t even finish.

The most important thing is deliver — do what we say we’re going to do.

Click image to see complete article from The Onion.

If what you deliver is easy to access, faster to enjoy or employ, and adds value and meaning to a visitor’s life, you can bet that visitors will be glad they came and ready to come back. Easier, faster, more meaningful is irresistible. That’s a fact.

Great headline, lame blog post — who wants to deal with that? You’ve been there. What’s your response when you end up on one of those?

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

about the meaning and seeing.

Every year on Memorial Day weekend my mom would put flowers on the graves of soldiers who had fought for us and were gone. Even when I was tiny,she would take me along to participate in this ritual, not that I understood what it was about. Never did she tell me about a single soldier only the story about soldiers fighting for freedom.

BigStock: Flowers and Cemetery

I’ve known people who have lived through war. I know people who have fought in them. I have heard true and personal stories of those who went to war and never came home.

At this moment I’m reminded of the flowers my mom would put on the soldiers’ graves, telling me “they fought for what we have now. The flowers say thank you and that we remember.”

None of the soldiers in the graves could see the flowers, but I could.
See the flowers and every other good free thing this weekend.
Remember the soldiers.
Value the freedom.

Be irresistible.

The Past to the Future

Markets are a particular feature of London which gives the city something vibrant, something that you cannot feel without living it. Have you ever asked yourself where London’s oldest market is – where it all began? Let’s go down memory lane, let’s turn back the wheels of time and return to the past.

Image: AntiquePrings.DE

When did it start? The first London market was set up around 1680. That’s pretty dated, isn’t it? Anyway, who started it? Sir Edward Hungerford had been authorized to hold a market three days a week who then gave his name to the market calling it ‘Hungerford market’.

Where was it? It was set up at the stretch on a street called the Strand going from Trafalgar Square to the Temple Bar, near the current Charing Cross station which by the way opened in 1864. It was not an open market but a covered one, housed in two different buildings. One has to wonder if the weather in London was similar back then – did it rain in the summer – maybe it did!

What did they sell? Basically grain was sold in the market. Well, it’s not very exciting when you think of the authentic and unique items you can grab now, but there’s a first time for everything — such as the groovy vintage fashion of Oh, I’m So THEA.

Image: I’m So THEA at Camden Market

The future: London had already demonstrated that she has a real flair for wares much to the delight of everyone. What’s more? Now there are about 70 markets in London – large and small, established and fledgling. Good thing is – now it can all be found in one place – myMzone. myMzone is a savvy collective who noticed our love for London’s market culture and developed it to a globally inclusive level, effectively bringing the quirky markets of Camden Market, Spitalfields, Portobello, Bricklane, Sunday Up Market and many more to our front doors.

Thank you, Julien. More small local businesses could find solutions like that.

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

I grew up in the 1980s, when cable television was pretty much in its infancy and was All The Rage. I watched the first MTV video and can still remember when VH1 and MTV played videos. Another staple in my household that arrived through the cable airwaves? Chicago sports on WGN, which meant Cubs baseball in the summer and Bears football in the fall.

If you have any awareness of professional football in the 80s, you will be familiar with one of the NFL’s greatest running backs of all time, and arguably one of the most talented men to ever grace astroturf. I am, of course, referring to Number 34: Walter “Sweetness” Payton.

If ever an athlete could be said to embody poetry in motion, this is the guy. He was simply moving art. Don’t believe me? Watch this. I’ll wait.

Some of the takeaways I get from his life and career can be summed up as follows:

1. Adapt. Being nimble and agile keeps you in the game and keeps you moving the ball downfield. Learn how to convert your energies and redirect when you must in order to fulfill your over-arching goal.
2. Integrate your actions with that of your team. Understand that holes in the offense do not appear from thin air. Your opportunities may oftentimes occur due to the diligence and teamwork of others. Thank them and do not take them for granted. Work together.
3. Build your endurance. This is a derivation of “adaptability,” but in my mind, it is a contributing and supporting factor and therefore warrants its own line item. Walter’s ability to think on the fly and move the way he did to seize opportunities was predicated on the fact that he invested in his health: mentally, spiritually and physically. He had perfected his Shell to the point that it could be a Conduit for something we seldom witness.
4. Love what you do. Look at his smile! Holy cats, this man lived in joy and celebrated what he brought to the game. As I’ve said in previous posts, love is the ballast that anchors achievement in any field. When you love what you do, excellence is a natural outgrowth.

These are four *very* brief lessons from a man whose life inspired and touched many.

Apart from his sports career, his legacy also includes both investing in neglected, abused and underprivileged children and an awareness of organ donation, which arose from his battle with the rare autoimmune liver disease known as primary sclerosing cholangitis. Learn more about his compassion in action that lives on through the Walter and Connie Payton Foundation and the University of Illinois Walter Payton Liver Center.

Do you have any stories to share? How do these lessons apply in your own life? career?

——-

Molly Cantrell-Kraig is a woman with drive. Possessing an innate sense of purpose and a pragmatic, solution-based approach to empowering people, she fused these two traits in order to establish Women With Drive Foundation. Based upon its founder’s personal history, Women With Drive Foundation is a means through which Cantrell-Kraig may effect change on both a micro and macro level. By providing women with something as essential as personal transportation in order to transition them from poverty to prosperity, she, through Women With Drive Foundation, seeks to empower women to help them help themselves. Through this action, the individual applicant benefits, as does society as a whole. Follow Molly on twitter as @mckra1g or @WWDr1ve (Women With Drive Foundation) or “Like” them on facebook.

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss