You’ve got talent; use it.

If you haven’t witnessed Jack Carroll yet, let me introduce you…

I love when he said; “In comedy, a lot of the time, you’re weaknesses are your strengths.” I believe this is true for many areas in life; that every hardship, difficulty, and disappointment in life can be turned to work itself back together for our good.

This got me thinking on how knowing your strengths as an individual, as a business, or even as a brand is crucial to achieving good success. Whilst good success is great, and many people subscribe to the dream of obtaining good success; very few are aware, or go after great success. There is a difference:

To obtain good success you must have some awareness of the value you hold, but to achieve great success you must understand how to use it, and use it effectively. …Just like Jack.

 

 

Being a light

Being a light to the world requires action, requires energy, requires substance.

I could go on, and probably will in posts to come; however, today I thought I’d like this cool little fella share a word that if you press play will surely speak to you. Now it’s great to be inspired and encouraged, but go do something with it.

‘Create something that will make the world awesome!’ Are you doing so already? Well what can you change, what can you do to make your team, company, life, relationship better? Remember what is great today, will be good tomorrow if you let things go and don’t continue to invest in staying fresh.

#kidpresident

What does your environment say about you?

Today’s observation is again extracted from a personal experience. Two words:

Language

and

Environment

It astounds me how quickly we absorb the culture around us. Culture in our work place, in our peer group. We become who we are around.

Now this is not a newsflash to me, but knowing and understanding something are two very different things. To be honest, we need both to be successful.

Have you listened to those around you? There are certain buzz words that your peer group use that if someone, or a few from that group say them long enough, they become ingrained through-out that particular circle.

So if you want to know where your heading today in life. Stop and listen to the words, phrases and actions of your friends, colleagues and teammates.

Like what you hear? Don’t like what you hear? Do something to change it today. It’s not personal if you discover you need to make some changes to your environment. If you want to be an eagle, you can’t hang around with the chickens. If you want to speak French, you don’t go to Germany.

There is no shame in either, it’s simply a matter of choice to be who you are created to be.

To coin the phrase of a good friend; if we want to think outside of the box, we must first know where the box is.

Know who you are, be very careful what you listen to and what you say, and keep believing. A simple, but effective recipe.

Happy Burns Night to all my fellow Scots. 

Have a great weekend folks!

 

What does your walk say about you?

Inspired on way to work this morning, I saw a guy with a black jacket and swagger like he was fresh out the hood that just happened to catch my attention. And that got me thinking…

What does our walk say about us? Not just your psychical walk, although that does share something about where you’ve been.

In psychology they say body language is 80% non verbal.

So what about your life, your business, your relationship?

How do these areas affect your walk in life? And how do you choose to walk?

Do you walk with confidence? Do you walk in faith believing that the best is yet to come and you have the power to change whatever needs changing, or the power to be thankful for what you’ve got on the way to where you’re going?

Not everything in life needs changed btw – which is Scottish for by the way.

Maybe you should stay and work at that marriage instead of chucking it in the bin at the first sign of work. It doesn’t have to be marriage either, it could be any relationship or business. Yet, for some chucking it may be the key adverb. Life is not a dress rehearsal. As Michael Jackson would have said; THIS IS IT.

The truth is, and this is a true reflection on my belief, and my thoughts today that in order to be who you want to be, you have to become who you want to be, before you see it.

So if you’re not quite there yet, then learn to walk the talk.

Don’t just talk the walk.

As they say, ‘action speaks louder than words.’

How is your walk today?

Why I love Pocket.

I’ve recently discovered a new app that has made saving webpages of interest 100 times easier to keep tabs on. What app, do I hear you say?

No, it’s not WhatsApp.

It’s a little magic gem called Pocket.

Pocket is a fairly new app that allows you to save an article, or page of interest by the click of one button. Rather than fiddling about with drop down menus, and moving your mouse across the computer screen, only to yet again click another button. Pocket, asks no questions. It just saves.

Integrated with over 300 apps, including Flipboard – One of my favourite ways to sift through a bunch of content. Pocket certainly makes life easier, and simplifies a process that computer makes complicated.

Who has time to wait four seconds before a page can be saved, or cares enough to title every page they want to save and decide where on my overcrowded desktop, it should go.

In some respects this is similar to Evernote, however; I find pocket a tad more user-friendly, with a better finish. With pocket you can also access your bits of information and pages later, from any smart phone or tablet device.

Well, I’ve found a new love. What about you? Have you heard of Pocket before? If not, you can check it out right here. Let me know your thoughts on this newbie.

Two important standards for Entrepreneurs

As an entrepreneur I have faced and continue to face many challenges in life. Solving problems, is one of the areas I thrive in regardless to whether those problems are successfully solved, or not.

Here are a few thoughts and challenges that help me in times when a desired outcome seems uncertain…

What standard have you placed in your life? What expectations do you have? Good, or bad? What level of excellence have you decided to incorporate in everything you do, if any.

Standards are really a set of decisions that are not based on your circumstances, but on the level or goal you put in place before-hand.

A building is only as strong as the structure you surround it with, so ask take yourself back to the beginning of this post and ask yourself:

What are my standards in life?

The reason new business owners are encouraged to write a business plan is about more than grabbing the bank managers attention. Writing a business plan or indeed the social media strategy, as I tell my clients, is for your benefit.

Without a clear understanding of:

• who you are?
• where you are going?
• what are you going to do when you get there?
• why you do what you do?

The chances of reaching your full potential are simply capped.

It’s extremely hard to go somewhere you have never been before with no directions. Have you tried jumping in your car and visiting a friend in their new home 30 miles down the road? It doesn’t take much to get lost when you have no clear directions or roadmap to assist you in an emergency.

So how do you get there? How do you go somewhere you’ve never been before in business terms?

• Design your thoughts.

There is a proverb that says, as a man thinks, so is he. You are what you think, so to go somewhere you’ve never been before you must close your eyes and imagine.

• Get along someone who’s made the trip before.

When I get lost in the car, I call a friend who is good with directions, cars and knows the area. This applies to anything you want to achieve in life, get along someone who already has achieved your goal and hang around them long enough, and glean from them.

About the author

Starting business at the age of 12, I built my very own newspaper round, when there was no newspaper rounds for sale at that time. From knocking on people’s doors I built a newspaper round with over 120 customers paying me to deliver their newspaper daily. By the time I sold my newspaper round on I had over 160 customers enlisted. As a published writer I continue to write articles, reviews, opinion columns, blogs and other promotional and targeted material for local news, business and media agencies. My latest project Tailor Made Social is a reflection of my passion for social media, brand marketing and helping business owners to be better communicators and improve the over all quality of customer service, whilst helping business survive globalization.  If you would like to find out more, or attend one of my workshops, check us out here and here.

Surfing for content

Picture supplied by the National Archives and Records Administration.

 

How do you surf content when there is so much of it going around? With social bookmarking websites like Digg, and Redit losing ground, where are we ‘the consumer’ looking for information?

 

Are we looking to flasher, more socially adapt aggregator apps like Flipboard, Hootsuite, Timeline and Twitter for content of interest.

Brian Solis, a fellow social media expert is famously known for the following statement, ‘News no longer breaks, it tweets,’ and this is true. However; what if I’m not looking for the latest news story; but the top trending outfits, or some true life story like the kind of articles you get in a woman’s glossy magazine (i.e. Marie Claire, Company and so forth).

 

And how do we make our decisions about where to shop online when there are thousands of online shops to choose from? Do we take them largely from the recommendations of friends and family – like Facebook tell us, or do we venture out and find new shops to shop in, new books to read, and new photographs to like?

 

I’d love to hear how you go about finding the content that interests you?

 

  For example, I am a huge Marie Claire fan, but I very rarely buy their magazine for multiple reasons, at the moment. Still, I enjoy reading their articles and in a moment I decided to look for something interesting, I found myself overwhelmed by choice.

 

  Looking to my iPhone and flicking through my apps, it seemed Flipboard was the obvious choice. It’s neat display, magazine style app is easy to share and combine with several of my key social networks allowing me to stay in touch with various magazines, blogs and networks at any one time – This is great, but it is only one app. Have you found others?

 

  How do you locate interesting content? Do you have to do anything at all, or do you find it’s all laid out in front of you via Timeline, and other newsfeeds?

 

  Leave your thoughts below, or on @leemac85

An idea to improve your social influence

Simply posting on timeline what you had for dinner, or items of clothing that you wish to buy are all great if you wish to do so, on your own personal profile. However, the same principles that you use when posting on your personal profile do not apply when posting from a Facebook page; or through any other  business-related social media channel for that matter.

We must learn to engage and move away from the spectating side of social media – Myself included. I don’t claim to be anything more than a work in progress, but I do have a fair idea about how things should be done and aim to hit those standards continuously.

Some ideas on how we could all improve our social influence online;

1. Start using our networks to connect and engage. We use those words way more in speech than in action.

2. We are all human and despite, the fact that we are interacting via a computer screen of sort; we need to be willing, open and honest as a business to say, ‘I suck at this, but I can help with this.’ People want to know there is a real human behind the profile and no matter how great you are at your job, we will all make mistakes, so have a little grace.

3. Not every negative comment needs to be a crisis, some can even be constructive. At least then we can learn, change and help someone else avoid making the same mistakes.

Let us inject some of the resilience that we require in every day relationships into our teams.

A man who has skill and experience is skillful, but a man of great intelligence is worth far more.

Don’t forget if your reading this and you have a question, or what to find out more. You can chat to me @leemac85 on Twitter too.

Start Small, Think Big

So in the interest of sharing, helping and learning myself I thought I’d share my early morning doodle, in preparation for the week ahead. I honestly believe that if you don’t already think like this, then this will add great value to you; And if you do, well there’s no harm in being reminded, and encouraged of a good thought leadership principle.

It doesn’t matter if your Richard Branson, or Joe Blogs down the road. I am learning through experience that with everything there is a time and a season, and a process in between that no amount of wishing will take away – Nor do we really want it too.

If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed a tweet of late which read:

“Focus is the key to progress, perseverance is the key to success; And all four are required in every endeavor.”

There is nothing quite like the feeling of accomplishment when you set yourself a goal for the day, week, and year, commit too and achieve that goal.

Best word of advice I ever got was, start from the desired end result and work back, and make the commitment to see your specific step reached.

If this was helpful to you, I’d love to hear so please feel free to share, subscribe, leave a comment below or come chat to me on Twitter!

Improve your growth strategy and business development plan with three gold nuggets

If I had to choose one word, it would be GROWTH

A business who stays the same year in year out and refused to change with the times, misses out on reaching their full potential because they never dared to step out and see what would happen if they…

So here’s a few points that I think are important when it comes to growing in an area that is of importance to you – Be it business, or life.

1. Growth requires vision – Without a vision for where you want to go, or what you want to see happen you can grow, but without a clear vision or strategy, you will grow wild and grow aimless. Think of the tomato plant, (I’m not a gardener so I could be completely off here, but my uncle has his own garden, which is where I get this analogy from). The tomato tree has to be encouraged in its growth, by inserting a vertical bamboo stick to support its growth. According to my tomato plant advisor, they also need a bigger plant pot – room to grow.

2. Growth requires pain – In addition to having the ability to see the end result first, you must also understand that growth requires pain. From the moment a baby is conceived in the mother’s womb, the baby begins to grow and grow, and grow until he/she reaches the age 21. Growing pains are a part of life, and they are also a part of any healthy growing business, project or relationship. I hear personal trainers all the time say, ‘No pain no gain’ – And they’re spot on. So in any kind of growth, be prepared for some muscle pain.

3. Growth is intentional

Growth doesn’t just happen. It’s intentional and it often requires a group of like-minded people.

When you feel stretched, your natural body wants to give up, but your mind can pull you through. Making changes in a department that has remained the same for the last twenty years will be tough, and in some cases will be too much if you are the one person in your business that has big vision – It takes a team in most cases, sharing the load means the pain is equally spread on impact, which will enable you to keep pressing through the resistance.

If you found this post useful, and you have a business, project or plan that you would like to see growth we recommend you jump on over to our sister teaching/training course Tailor Made Social, who specialize in helping small businesses grow online. Online is one of the booming areas in our economy, so if you own a business, or involved with a charity, or would even just like to invest in your own personal development, then we highly recommend that you check this site out for some great cost effective help with your online profile.

Alternatively, you can talk to one of our guys over at @TailorMSocial who will do their best to answer any questions you may have.