47 Life Lessons – Business and Personal

I celebrated my birthday this week and I thought I’d share with you 47 lessons I have learned in life. Some are business lessons and some are personal lessons. They all have impacted my life in a profound way:

1. What people say about you, says more about them than you.

2. When you learn to quiet your mind and manage your thoughts, you will then begin to know yourself.

3. Praise publicly. Hash out issues in private.

4. When leading or helping someone find their answers, it’s important to lead them back to themselves.

5. Never accuse. Always give people the benefit of the doubt.

6. You can’t grow if you are not willing to step out of your comfort zone.

7. Laughter is medicine.

8. Have an insatiable curiousness about the world.

9. People matter more than things.

10. Always set clear expectations and understand what is expected from all parties before signing on the dotted line.

11. Don’t invest in something you don’t understand.

12. If it comes in wrapping with a bunch of words that are hard to pronounce, it’s most likely not a healthy food choice.

13. Take responsibility for the choices you have made in your life.

14. Ignore your naysayers.

15. Surround yourself with people who support your vision, dreams, and goals.

16. Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

17. Change is constant.

18. Never make a hasty decision when it comes to business. Always read the fine print.

19. There are always two sides to every story.

20. Understand how your target audience thinks and how they make purchasing decisions.

21. Our thoughts determine the outcome of our lives.

22. Focus on people’s good qualities.

23. Be a problem solver, not a complainer.

24. Don’t blame, judge, or criticize.

25. Don’t let your ego get in the way of doing the right thing.

26. Relinquish the thoughts that no longer serve you.

27. Give without expecting anything in return.

28. You can’t control how others think and behave.

29. You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

30. Just because that’s how it has always been done, doesn’t mean that’s how it should continue to be done.

31. Be inclusive, not exclusive.

32. Ask not what others can do for you, but what you can do for them.

33. Set healthy boundaries in relationships.

34. Dance wildly. Sing out loud. Hug humans.

35. Lift others up and promote their work.

36. Stay Human.

37. Feel grass blades on your feet and the sun on your skin.

38. Take time to do NOTHING.

39. Step into your POWER.

40. Be present. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not arrived.

41. Look deeply into the eyes of your pet dog or cat and connect with them.

42. Be humble. Be grateful.

43. Plant. Grow an organic vegetable garden.

44. Ask the question: What are my intentions?

45. Hug a TREE and feel the energy of Mother Earth pulsate through your body.

46. Just because you don’t understand something does not mean you need to be afraid of it.  Ask questions.

47. Forgive yourself.

Feel free to add some of your favorite Life Lessons in the comments below!

Envision Plan Act Track Adapt

Here is a 5 step social media marketing plan presentation I put together for my local business community. Feel free to share it with others by posting it on Facebook and re-tweeting it, etc. I would love your feedback and comments below. Thanks!

Are You Giving Platinum Service To Your Customers?

Why The Platinum Rule Matters Beyond Your Customers

We all know the golden rule, “Treat others the way you’d like to be treated.” Well, I have been thinking a lot lately about another rule. I call it the Platinum Rule. The Platinum Rule is about treating others the way they want to be treated, not the way you think they want to be treated. For a high volume business this may be hard to achieve, but may well be worth it. Look at Zappos, the successful  online shoe company. They have a reputation for “Platinum-Like” customer service.

For the professional service-based business, the Platinum Rule is definitely achievable and an all-around win for everyone. Think about it. Your customers are happy because they are being treated how they want to be treated. And, happy customers tend to refer more customers your way. More customers = more sales and revenue.

I think the best way to find out how your customers like to be treated is to ask them. I am a big fan of SurveyMonkey.com. I think you can also apply the Platinum Rule to your vendors, employees, and partners. After all, isn’t the Platinum Rule really about being considerate of others? Isn’t it about understanding what their needs and wants are and empowering them to succeed by meeting those needs and wants?  When you empower those around you, it makes for a positive and uplifting environment. Who doesn’t want to be in a happy workplace?

What are your thoughts on the Golden Rule versus the Platinum Rule? Are you already using the Platinum Rule? Please leave your comments below.

I had a moment of pure ecstasy  while consulting with a client the other day. We shared laughter together. Deep, belly laughter. Wide open mouths of teeth and tongue displayed for all to see. Nostrils flaring open and eyes shutting tightly as we exhaled our emotions of happiness. It was what I call a human moment. One my favorite musicians, Michael Franti calls it Staying Human. Are you in the business of another transaction, sale, proposal, or deal? Or are you in the business of Staying Human?  Are we letting go of the fear and ego that prevents us from engaging and interacting with authenticity and transparency? What is our relationship with our clients like? When we connect with them, do we recognize your own humanity? Are we Staying Human?

Yosemite Falls

What Yosemite Falls Taught Me About Business

Yes, it was perseverance, passion, and purpose that got me to the top of Yosemite Falls, the tallest waterfall in America.  I recently took a vacation to Yosemite where I hiked 2,700 feet of steep vertical terrain up the Yosemite Falls trail. It was a steep 8 mile and 8 hour round trip hike. The last hour to the Falls was brutally steep. The sun was pounding on my back. My feet were screaming at me and my muscles were beyond tired. To say it was a grind would be an understatement. Did I mention how steep it was? Look, I am not going to tell you that I was holding a VISION of getting to the top. Nor was I using any kind of mind over matter mental strategy. It was just 3 things; perseverance, passion, and purpose. I began thinking how these three words can easily be applied to business:

1. Perseverance

I wanted to give up and turn back.  Instead I took a lot of breaks along the way. In business, sometimes we may need to take a time-out and reassess our game plan. Don’t be afraid to pause and reflect on what you need to do next in order to keep moving forward versus throwing in the towel or worse, taking action with no results. Isn’t that called chasing your tail? Or, throwing stuff at a wall and seeing if anything sticks? Staying the course and focusing on your goal is what perseverance is about.

2. Passion

I was intent on getting to the top, but there is no way I would have made it to the top if I did not have a passion for moving my body within nature. With every step I took I grew weary, but at the same time I became increasingly ALIVE! I was grateful for my legs for propelling me forward. I became aware of my breathing. I felt my life-blood pulsing through my veins. I could see and smell the water fall cascading down the stunning sheets of granite. I was conscious of how nature was dancing all around me. I witnessed the beautiful rhythmic motion of wildlife as I climbed the mountain. Are you passionate about your business?  I believe it’s that passion that will get you out of bed in the morning when times get tough. It’s the passion that is going to motivate you when you feel stuck.

3. Purpose

I  had one purpose in mind. It was not getting to the summit of Yosemite Falls. It was to move my body within nature on a beautiful trail. That day was definitely all about the journey, not the destination. An added bonus was reaching the top, but my main purpose was to connect with nature.  Are you clear on the purpose of your business?  Does your business have some kind of meaning or purpose for you? Yes, we all know that the purpose of business is about making profits or else they cease to exist. Pardon me for stating the obvious, but beyond profits, why are you in business? What is your purpose?  Are you clear about your purpose?

Is this your first time reading Hware’s (HumanityWare) Blog? Hi, I am Brenda Tello Horton. I write most of the blog posts for Hware. I invite you to join me by subscribing. I share small business tips and strategies about once a week right here.

Does Your Target Audience Know Your Brand?

Here is a short exercise I often share with my clients about brands:

1. Quickly. Think of a car. What image comes to mind?

2. Quickly. Think of an airline. What company comes to mind?

3. Quickly. Think of a Realtor. Who comes to mind?

Whatever answer came to mind is the company that owns your mindshare. The brands that own the largest real estate (mindshare) in your head are the ones that have been most successful in infiltrating your subconscious mind. Now I am no brain research expert, but there have been thousands of studies done that explain how people make purchasing decisions. Advertising agencies and marketing firms spend approximately 6.8 billion dollars annually on market research.  They use the information to analyze buying behaviors. Have you ever had a musical tune stuck in your head from a commercial?  That’s branding. Have you ever bought something just based on the logo?  That’s branding. Have you bought brand name shoes, accessories or clothes because they were popular? That’s branding.

Perception Realities and Truths

It’s important to understand how your target audience perceives your brand because their perception is their reality and one’s reality is what they believe to be true. Whether their reality is right or wrong, good or bad is irrelevant because you can’t control what your customers will believe to be true or false. In other words, you cannot control what or how your customers think. However, you can influence their thoughts or perceptions of you, your products, services, and your company. It is from their perceptions and thoughts that they will base their reality and formulate what they believe to be true or false about your brand and your business.

Is Your Perception your Reality?

To make the point of perception clear, here is an example.  Ever heard of a guy name Ralph Lauren? He is known for his famous Polo clothing brand. What most people don’t know is that his real name was Ralph Lifshitz. Well, when Ralph was a young man, he had aspirations of becoming a gazillionaire. Understanding the psychology of perceptions and realities, he knew that he’d have a hard time convincing the world to buy anything with the word Lifshitz on it. So, he legally changed his name to Lauren. Well, Lifshitz’s dreams came true. As of 2010, Forbes estimates his wealth at 4.6 billion, which would make him the 173rd richest person in the world. Did changing his name attribute to his overwhelming business success? I think not.  It takes a lot more than a name change to grow a successful business, but I think it certainly helped him along the way.  One thing is blatantly clear about Ralph Lauren. He understood the power of perceptions.  He built an empire from images and ads of affluent lifestyles. Even though his target audience did not represent the super affluent that were portrayed in his Polo ads, they nevertheless perceived a strong a connection with them. Now, I am not here to promote manipulative advertising or disingenuous marketing. We all know that most ads are designed to exploit human insecurities. The point I am making is that if you are crystal clear on the message you are sending to your target audience, then you have a much better chance of building a successful business. Ralph Lauren was clear about his brand. He wasn’t selling clothes in his ads. He was selling a lifestyle that people aspired to live.  In other words, he was really good at influencing the perceptions of his target audience.

What Motivates Your Target Audience To Buy?

A few years ago, when I started using Twitter, I kept getting the #Follow Friday hashtag on Twitter as the person who is sweet, inspiring, and nice. Well, that was fine, but the problem with that was that no one was thinking of me as the person they looked to for business advice.  As the owner of an online business training company, that was not good. I then realized that I hadn’t really been paying attention to how I was being perceived on Twitter. I just assumed that everyone who was following me on Twitter knew I had an online business training company because it said so on my bio. What that experience taught me was that I needed to change the type of content I was posting on Twitter. I then began to post less of the inspirational and uplifting quotes I loved to share and more useful small business and entrepreneurial related information. Within six weeks, I began to see  much different commentaries for the #Follow Friday hash tag under my name @BrendaHorton. The comments were more in alignment with my online business training company. I knew that my changes were effective when a Hewlett Packard representative contacted me on behalf of their small business division to discuss a product they were launching for the small business community.

At the risk of oversimplifying the psychology behind marketing and brands, I hope you found my explanations relevant and useful to your small business. Do you know how your target audience perceives you? Is your company the first name that pops into the mind of your target audience when they are thinking of buying what they need in your industry?  How can you improve upon your brand?  What are your thoughts on brands, perceptions, and realities?  Please leave your comments below. I’d love to hear from you. If this is your first time stopping by, be sure to subscribe to my blog.  I write a blog post about once a week on business tips and strategies.

CARE About Them

I used to work in the real estate industry and for many years the Brokers held the keys to the kingdom, meaning that only THEY had access to the listings. Today, the power lies in the hands of the customer with access to mountains of information on the internet.  Yes, the business world is continuing to change at lightening speed. With information being indexed, categorized, organized, systematized, ranked, tweeted, posted, podcast, videoed, etc., it is the customer who now sits on the almighty throne with access to all this data. Not a day goes by that I don’t receive a comment from a small business owner trying to understand how to make sense of all this.

It starts with VALUES

Zappos, the online shoe company understands this very clearly.  They VALUE the art of caring. Their customer service department lies within their marketing department. In other words, what most companies would spend on marketing and advertising, Zappos spends on taking care of their customers. It’s one of the reasons why they were able to scale so quickly and position themselves to be sold to Amazon for over a billion dollars.  One of their customer service phone calls lasted six hours. Yes, it’s built into their business model. Paying an employee to chat with a customer is a lot cheaper than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on manipulative advertising. You know the deceptive formula. Pay famous celeb or athlete millions of dollars to promote, use, and wear, product and YOU (customer) will begin to feel, look, think, and act like that famous celeb or athlete too.  Zappos is way ahead of the curve, an early-adopter. They know that customers are tired of the non-stop bombardment of ads. That’s why TiVo is so popular. Actually, Zappos is just displaying good old-fashion customer service built into a profitable business model. Let the customer try as many shoes as she wants and send the ones she does not like back to Zappos.  Good old-fashion customer service — seems to be working for them.

Best Buy gets it too. They too VALUE the art of caring.  That is why you see a Best Buy greeter at the entrance of every Best Buy store.  They know we want to be acknowledged when we enter their domain. Their employees are trained to validate our egos every step of the way as we ask the endless train of questions on the latest geek gadget of the month.  They even take back our broken electronics when bought from a different store location without a receipt. Why? Because they know how fast geeky guys and gals communicate online and tell all their geeky friends. True story. Happened to me a few months ago.  It was the most positive retail experience I have ever had in my entire life.  In today’s business environment, happy customers tell their friends online. Unhappy customers tell the world online. Take CARE of your customers.

What about YOU? What are you doing to take CARE of your customers? Do you VALUE the art of caring? I think we all have room for improvement. I know I certainly do. Any thoughts? Please post your comments below.

Hware’s Top Picks: Some Old, Some New, Some May Surprise You.

As an online business training and coaching company, people often want to know where we go for our business resources and who we turn to for advice, tips, and strategies.  While we have been offering business and technology consulting services for over 25 years, we believe in the importance of being students of life. That means that we never stop learning. We have a huge library of online resources, personalities, brands, and strategic organizations that we tap into daily and weekly. It was hard to narrow it down, but we finally came up with the BEST websites to help you build your small business. So grab your favorite drink and check out the  top 15 websites that made the cut! Please leave your comments below and let us know what you think:

1. Altimeter group: A research-based advisory firm.  This is where I go to get a lot of data driven info on business strategies.
2. Chris Brogan: If I had to pick one industry expert on social media and business. It would be Chris Brogan. His book, Trust Agents is a must-read!
3. CopyBlogger: Copywriting tips for online marketing success.  This site has a ton of valuable FREE resources and tips on blog writing.
4. Gena Livings: For inspired living.  My dear friend, Gena Livings is changing the world with her lifestyle modification services. Be sure to download her free e-book. It’s inspiring!
5. Green Festivals: If you are a “Green” business who sells B2C, you cannot afford to not be an exhibitor at this event.  Co-founded by my good friend, Kevin Danaher, Green Festivals is on the leading-edge of bringing all things “Green” to the mainstream. Four events are held throughout the year in Washington DC, Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco.  We have been attending since the first Green Festival and this event just keeps getting better every year, especially the after parties!
6. Mashable: The most popular Social Media News blogs on the internet.  Take your time absorbing the information, it can be overwhelming for newbies. You will want to bookmark a lot of the material and use it as a reference later.
7. Michael Franti & Spearhead: (Okay, this has very little to do with growing your biz online, but I could not resist plugging my fave band. I fire up this music to keep me motivated and inspired for my biz.)  As entrepreneurs, we all need music to keep us motivated, inspired, and happy! We LOVE to dance to Spearhead music! If you ever have the chance to see a live Michael Franti and Spearhead concert, you must GO! It’s life altering!  What’s your favorite music that keeps you going?
8. Mixergy: Andrew Warner interviews CEOs and Founders of successful companies . I love his in-depth questions of business leaders. He is young and bold and he asks really good questions.  I love to go hiking on my property while listening to Mixergy interviews on my iPhone.  I always learn something new from this twenty something year old.
9. Read Write Web: This is a technology analysis news blog.  I like referencing this site because while the focus is on technology, the writing is not filled with Geek and Coder jargon. It’s written for people like us ordinary folks.
10. Seth Godin: One of the top marketers in the world.  I have read many of his books and have had the opportunity to see him speak live. He has a way of making his point very succinctly.
11. Small Biz Survival:  A rural and small business resource blog. We live in a rural area in northern California, and while our business is internet and technology-based, we are nevertheless interested in what’s happening in small town businesses.
12. Small Business Trends: An online news blog with a focus on small businesses trends and over 122,000 subscribers.
13. Social Media Examiner: A guide to social media. This site has a lot of useful “How To” articles on social media, well written content and easy-to-understand.
14. Triple Pundit: As many of you know, our personal lifestyle is oriented towards most things “Green” and “Sustainable.”  We did build a straw bale home many years ago and enjoy living in it. Triple Pundit is a great online “Green” business news resource.
15. Work Awesome: A resource for the worker on productivity, time management and all kinds of other awesome stuff.  I recently found this site and I can’t say enough awesome things about it!

I hope you found great value in our top 15 BEST websites to help you grow your small business. We invite you to add some of your favorite small business websites too, even if it is your own and you feel it will help a small business owner.  Don’t be shy! Go ahead and post!

Small Business & Entrepreneur Seminar

It Takes Time To Build Trust

It was a full house at the Nevada County Small Business and Entrepreneur Seminar where I had the privilege to speak on one of my favorite business topics —- Social Media! Online relationships are a lot like offline relationships.  It takes time to build trust. People buy from people they know, like, and trust. The focus of my presentation was on social media and how to build online relationships. Here is a link to the short presentation.

Social Media Strategies For Beginners

I also gave this much longer presentation in a live webinar in September of 2009 where we had over 130 online attendees. While some of the material is outdated, most of the principals still apply.

Oftentimes, business planning is about picking a path.

The Give-As-You-Grow Sales Model

My business partner and I just went through an in-depth business planning retreat a few weeks ago, and while the session was grueling at times, it was a process that I am grateful for.  We needed to get clear about the direction of our company. We needed to make some big decisions. So we spent a week putting together financial projections.  We looked at our SWOTs (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.) We acknowledged that we both tend to be perfectionists and overly optimistic at times. The retreat was a huge break-through for us.  We hashed out our differences of opinions and we gained a lot of insight about each other and our business model. However, the biggest “take-away” we came up with was our revenue based charitable-giving model. For most of our adult lives, we have always contributed our time, money and resources to charitable causes that we were passionate about. However, we also felt that we were limited in our capacity to give in that manner.  There is obviously a finite amount of  time, money and resources from two people.  As we continued to discuss our business model, we both agreed on how important it is to us to build into our business model what I call a “GIVE-as-we-GROW” sales model. Here is an example of how our charity-giving model works and why we decided to go down this path.

How Charity-Giving Is A Cost Of Doing Business

For most small businesses, their charity giving usually comes from their profits. The problem with that model is that those numbers can easily be skewed, especially if it is a privately-owned business. For example, the owner of a small business can pay herself a large salary (expense), and still not show a profit on the company profit and loss statement.  On the other hand, a public company has an incentive to show huge profits for their stock holders and their charity giving is great for their public image. There are also hybrid charitable-giving models as well from large companies such as Salesforce. However, we decided to make our charity-giving model a revenue based model. It’s a lot harder to skew sales numbers. For example, let’s say we sell 100 widgets at $10.00 each and we give 1% of revenue to charity. 100 x 10 = 1,000 x 0.01 = $10.00.  Now let’s say we sale 1,000 widgets where we give $100.00 to our favorite charity. As we grow our sales to 10,000 widgets we can now give $1,000 to our favorite charity. Do you see how this charity-giving model is built into the the revenue model versus a profit charity-giving model? I look at it as a cost of doing business. Being a good business citizen is a lot like being a good individual citizen. Individuals make contributions to their communities all the time.  They volunteer, donate, get involved in Little League, PTA, Boy Scouts. However, have you ever thought about how your business is making a contribution to the community just by its mere existence?  The fact that your business exist should have a positive impact on society and your community just like an individual’s existence. Now let’s say we want to increase our charity-giving by increasing the revenue sales percentage from 1% to 3% or 5%.  You can see that as sales continue to increase we may also want to increase the percent amount as well and give even more to our favorite charities!

Doing Good By Doing Business

We are passionate about our VISION for Hware and how we can use our business to make a positive difference in the world and we hope to inspire other small business owners to do the same. We want to encourage you to think about how you can “Do Good By Doing Business.” As small business owners, we can be consumed with our business and not have much time for the charitable causes that we love. Over the years, I have enjoyed how meaningful my life has been from my involvement in causes that I deeply cared about. And, by deciding to go down this path, I feel like I can now make a greater contribution to causes that are near and dear to my heart. If we all participated by giving back in a way that we can feel proud and bring meaning to our lives, I believe we will find additional joy from our businesses…profound joy!  That is why Hware is  launching our “Doing Good By Doing Business” program on our Facebook Fan page. Hware wants to acknowledge small businesses that are making this world a better place.  If you are a small business owner that gives back to your local community, we want to hear from you! You don’t necessarily need to contribute the way we decided to go about it, we just want to encourage other small business owners to give back as you grow your business versus waiting to accumulate your wealth before you do so.  We invite you to post a link to your business on the comments section below and tell us how your business is giving back to your community. We also invite you to join our Facebook Fan Page where a few times a month we will recognize and highlight a small business who is making a difference in their community.

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