… in a blog on Huffpost.com contributing writer Flynn Coleman

Asked this question…

Why are stories so powerful?

Well, they are more memorable than facts. Our brains are wired to respond to stories. Metaphors and anecdotes help us relate ideas to our own experiences, providing richness and texture. Stories bring you and your listeners into a multi-dimensional world, full of colors, sights, smells and emotions, making us feel as though we are actually living the story

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

… in a blog on Huffpost.com contributing writer Flynn Coleman

Asked this question…

Why are stories so powerful?

Well, they are more memorable than facts. Our brains are wired to respond to stories. Metaphors and anecdotes help us relate ideas to our own experiences, providing richness and texture. Stories bring you and your listeners into a multi-dimensional world, full of colors, sights, smells and emotions, making us feel as though we are actually living the story.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1. Get to know your team: Understanding the temperament of each member of your team is critical in building a rapport with them. That rapport leads to buy-in
2. Spend as much time explaining “why“ as “watch“: remember people rock with you because of why you do what you do not because of what you do. Your team needs to understand the implications and rationale for doing the work.
3. Focus on the goal but be flexible with the initiative. Goals indicate where you want to go. Initiatives indicate the path to get there. Clarity is key

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Before we dive into anything else, let’s understand what a community actually means.

Be it offline or online —  a community is a place to interact with people of similar goals or interests, learn and grow, and build real connections.

Virtual communities and other community meetup platforms aid these interests and serve many purposes. They are used by brands, research organisations, changemakers, for medical purposes and numerous such applications.

How to nurture and engage your community

1. Content for conversation: Content is a community manager’s best friend! Post interesting and compelling content that is food for thought and conversation. 

A proven way that gets members to respond is — asking questions. Post a few relevant questions or seek opinions on relevant matters. These techniques act as catalysts and get conversations going

1. Participate regularly: Don’t be the occasional visitor to your community. Be a part of it. Read posts, review them and respond to them at the earliest. Remember a timely and appropriate response from the community manager will garner interest among your members.
2. Make members feel valued: Listening and asking are two ways to make your members feel valued. Listen and take into account their feedback and suggestions.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1. Develop a Targeted Marketing Plan.
2. Review the Plan, and Make Adjustments.
3. Test Your Product and Your Message
4. Establish Goals and Measure Progress.
5. Understand Communications Channels

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In his blog post 11 “Habits of successful business leaders” you probably haven’t heard of

Justin Biel writes…

If your goal is to become a successful entrepreneur or advance a corporate career, then it’s wise to study the habits of legendary business leaders.

However it’s not good enough for you just to listen to them but to take actionable steps.

1. Be a deep practitioner in a business skill. Gary Vaynerchuk, the chairman of Weiner ex and CEO of the inner media, recommends going deep in a particular business scale until you become an expert.
2. Listen for as many minutes as you speak. Richard Branson (founder of Virgin Group) doesn’t think he has all the answers. The business magnet is constantly listening and learning.
3. Ruthlessly prioritize. Ariana Huffington, the founder of HuffPost and CEO of thrive global tout the importance of ruthless prioritization in her business activities. According to Huffington, reckless prioritization means “relentlessly asking ourselves what’s essential to be completed today“

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a 2017 LinkedIn article Aaron Agius writes:

Stagnant organic traffic is the last thing you want to see when reviewing metrics, but it’s an issue that every marketer deals with at some point.

Those dips and plateaus in traffic can come from industry changes, how your audience digests content, the amount (and quality) of new content you’re producing, or how relevant your older content is.

Sometimes, all your content needs is a little refreshing and repurposing to keep your audience interested.

3 Power Plays to Consider

1. Reaching new audiences… Although your target quiet can be found and some primary places. Repurposing Content helps you to discover them in other places. Think about yourself just because you’re a professional doesn’t mean you don’t have a social life.
2. Reinforcing your message… One of the biggest challenges that many entrepreneurs have is staying on message. Once you identify who you are, what you do, why you do it and who you do it for. It is important to remember that message needs to be reinforced in different ways creatively on different platforms.
3. Improved organic Visibility…Years ago I realize that every social media platform caters to authenticity. When you show up organically as who you really are on brand and on message it increases your invisibility. The same piece of Content here on Clubhouse can speak volumes to a person in an email blast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bootstrapping is likely to be part of the history of nearly every successful company. In many cases, these companies are entirely bootstrapped before management accepts venture capital (a form of private equity and a type of financing that investors provide to start up companies and small businesses that are believed to have long term potential growth or other means of outside funding.

Bootstrappers take an idea—and using talent and professionalism—build a worthwhile business without the backing from investors and having little or no starting capital.

It takes great dedication, sound work ethics, and pure single-mindedness to achieve success this way.

5 Bootstrapping Methods

• Owner Financing: The use of personal income and savings.
• Personal Debt: Usually incurring personal credit card debt.
• Sweat Equity: A party's contribution to the company in the form of effort.
• Operating Costs: Keep costs as low as possible.
• Selling: Cash to run the business comes from sales. 

3 Stages Bootstrapping Companies Grow Through

1. Beginning Stage 

This stage normally starts with some personal savings, or borrowed or investment money from friends and family, or as a side business—the founder continues to work a day job as well as start the business on the side.

1. Customer-Funded Stage 

In this stage, money from customers is used to keep the business operating and, eventually, funds growth. Once operating expenses are met, growth will speed up.

1. Credit Stage 

In the credit stage, the entrepreneur must focus on the funding of specific activities, such as improving equipment, hiring staff, etc. At this stage, the company takes out loans or may even find venture capital for expansion.

Last Thought 

To run a successful bootstrapped company, an entrepreneur must execute a big idea, focus on profits, develop skills, and become a better business person.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is a Business Coach?

Business coaching is not consulting, and it’s not therapy. One common misconception is that business coaches will act more like consultants and do the work of developing your business for you—they won’t.

3 Things You Should Know about Business Coaches Before Hiring One!

1. Coaches help set direction, and provide feedback, tools, guidance and perspective. They’re also the accountability factor, which is what we find to be the thing most business owners need—someone to help them stay focused on their goals.
2. A good business coach is someone you can trust—someone who has the ability to diagnose specific and systemic issues in your business, and knows that you have to implement the solutions yourself in order to get real results.
3. Great coaches are patient. Their job is to help you clarify what needs to happen next, but they wait for you to take those actions. And of course, they hold your feet to the fire on your goals.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Multitasking is not a Thing but Focus Is ….

3 Ways to Achieve It!

Excerpt from Gary Keller’s

(The One Thing)

Multitasking is a lie. It’s a lie because nearly everyone accepts it as an effective thing to do. It’s become so mainstream that people actually think it’s something they should do, and do as often as possible. We not only hear talk about doing it, we even hear talk about getting better at it. More than six million webpages offer answers on how to do it, and career websites list “multitasking” as a skill for employers to target and for prospective hires to list as a strength. Some have gone so far as to be proud of their supposed skill and have adopted it as a way of life. But it’s actually a “way of lie,” for the truth is multitasking is neither efficient nor effective. In the world of results, it will fail you every time.

“Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.” —Steve Uzzell

MONKEY MIND

The concept of humans doing more than one thing at a time has been studied by psychologists since the 1920s, but the term “multitasking” didn’t arrive on the scene until the 1960s. It was used to describe computers, not people. Back then, ten megahertz was apparently so mind-bogglingly fast that a whole new word was needed to describe a computer’s ability to quickly perform many tasks. In retrospect, they probably made a poor choice, for the expression “multitasking” is inherently deceptive. Multitasking is about multiple tasks alternately sharing one resource (the CPU), but in time the context was flipped and it became interpreted to mean multiple tasks being done simultaneously by one resource (a person). It was a clever turn of phrase that’s misleading, for even computers can process only one piece of code at a time. When they “multitask,” they switch back and forth, alternating their attention until both tasks are done. The speed with which computers tackle multiple tasks feeds the illusion that everything happens at the same time, so comparing computers to humans can be confusing.

Now that you’ve had a history lesson…

Let’s talk about (3) Ways to Show Up Laser Focused!

Ask yourself Focusing question three times a day…

“What’s the ONE Thing I can do / such that by doing it / everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

1. “WHAT’S THE ONE THING I CAN DO... This sparks focused action. “What’s the ONE Thing” tells you the answer will be one thing versus many. It forces you toward something specific. It tells you right up front that, although you may consider many options, you need to take this seriously because you don’t get two, three, four, or more.
2. “...SUCH THAT BY DOING IT” This tells you there’s a criterion your answer must meet. It’s the bridge between just doing something and doing something for a specific purpose. “Such that by doing it” lets you know you’re going to have to dig deep, because when you do this ONE Thing, something else is going to happen.
3. “EVERYTHING ELSE WILL BE EASIER OR UNNECESSARY?” Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough and I could move the world,” and that’s exactly what this last part tells you to find. “Everything else will be easier or unnecessary” is the ultimate leverage test. It tells you when you’ve found the first domino. It says that when you do this ONE Thing, everything else you could do to accomplish your goal will now be either doable with less effort or no longer even necessary.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.