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Why Online Friends Make the Most Delightful Friends

May 18, 2017 By Carol Stephen 14 Comments

Why Online Friends Make the Most Delightful Friends

By now, many of us have met people in real life whom we first got to know on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. We’ve had coffee with them, or seen them at meet-ups, or recognized them from their online profiles. Online friends really are the best friends, as Lynn Morrison outlines in this Huffington Post article: 6 Reasons Why Online Friends Are the Best!

There’s That Guy!

Heck, sometimes I even recognize people walking around my neighborhood from their online profile. “There’s that guy from Facebook who always posts about his dog!” I might say. Or “there’s that guy who’s always ranting!” someone says as we avert our gazes and pretend to be checking our phones for something important.

Some People Are Far Away

We’ll never meet some of those online friends, as they are too far away, or meeting would be too inconvenient, or schedules never seem to mesh. It’s funny how some people will make space for you in their lives, and others always seem too busy. Some we promise to meet during a trip overseas, like Kittie Walker or Larry Mount (follow them on Twitter!), both in England.

Sometimes It’s Awkward

Some people seem awkward even online, so the idea of meeting in person isn’t so compelling. And others are super easy to talk to online, but then meeting in person is awkward. In the world of extroverts and introverts, that sometimes happens. I’m not including any examples here, as I’m sure you have plenty yourself! There are ways to deal with those awkward conversations, by the way.

Some People Aren’t Funny

That would be me. I’m way funnier online, where I can edit jokes and make them much funnier. In person? Not so funny. Oh, well. Others who aren’t funny at all online are hilarious in person. If you’re an introvert, the unfunny factor might come into play more often than if you’re an extrovert. And you might like: Six Facts About Introverts and Social Media That Will Impress Your Friends.

Others seem so interested in real-life meetings, that they’ll bend over backwards to so that you can meet in real life. My besties Bridget Willard (go follow her blog, by the way!) and Amy Donohue (follow her on Twitter!) both fall into that category. Others like Justine Pretorious I haven’t met, and yet she is already a good friend.

Many Become Best Friends for Life

When you meet someone online, you can talk about what’s really going on before you ever meet them in real life. You can choose how you appear to them in order to deepen the conversation. And that leads to better friendships, in my opinion.

Distance Becomes Irrelevant

When you’re online friends with someone, you can check in with them whenever you like. You don’t have to have an appointment. Just show up, and start tweeting, commenting, etc. And you can continue to keep in touch through the magic of social media! My friends Beth Staub and Pam Ann Aungst, though they live in different states, are that way.

Tell Me About Someone You’ve Met Online

Have you driven conversations into the real world? Or is there someone you’d like to meet? Tell me about it in the comments! I’d love that.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: awkwardness online, introverts, online friends, social media bridges the distance

How to Get out of a Dismal Social Media Rut

May 11, 2017 By Carol Stephen 2 Comments

How to Get Out of a Dismal Social Media Rut

How to Get out of a Dismal Social Media Rut

Admit You Have a Problem

It does sound like a self-help program, doesn’t it? Admitting you have a problem is the basis for delivering yourself out of social media ruts. And it could be a relief to admit it to yourself. Now you can work on your escape plan!

Baby Steps to the Answer

Could you spend 30 minutes brainstorming some answers? How about if you paid someone for half an hour of their time to help you brainstorm? Then you’d use that 30 minutes for sure! Now write down all the ways you could escape your rut.

Focus on Passion

Tiny Buddha has a nifty article for Getting Out of a Rut and Working on a Passion. I really like the focus on a passion as a means of getting out of a rut.

Create a Road Map

A road map doesn’t have to be a complex chart with 28 different colors and circles and arrows going all over the place. It could be three steps, or maybe eight steps that lead you to your goal. Simplicity can be elegant, as long as you know what you need to do to reach your goal. Did you know that you could do social media in as little as 60 minutes a day?

Three Examples of Road Maps

If you’ve never seen a social media marketing plan, here are three examples:

HootSuite’s road map includes S.M.A.R.T. Goals: How To Create A Social Media Marketing Plan In 6 Steps and I particularly like the audit.
Search Engine Journal’s article includes goals and purpose: Creating Your Social Media Marketing Road Map
Social Media Examiner has a 3-step process, which is pretty thorough. And, although it’s from 2012, it’s still relevant today: 3 Steps to an Effective Social Media Strategy

Refocus

Once you have a direction or a road map, if you will, that sense of burnout will diminish. With everyone on the team working together, a clear destination will appear. And if the team is just you, then find a friend (or a pro!) to help you. Ahem! I might know of someone.

Implement

Implement your new strategy by writing down the everyday tasks you’d need to complete. Some of the tasks might be once or twice a week, and others might be daily.

Get a Notebook

If you like to write things down, old-school style, get a notebook that you’ll enjoy. Here’s How to Buy a Paper Notebook That Will Bring You Joy! Personally, I like a stitched binding with ruled lines for daily tasks. What’s nice about notebooks is they’re always charged, and if you’re a tactile learner, they’re more satisfying than creating something online.

How’d You Climb out of Your Rut?

If you’ve ever been in a social media rut, or experienced burnout, how did you respond? Let me know in the comments. And thank you!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: brainstorming, focus, get notebook, road map, social media rut

How Tired Business Owners Save Time: 10 Terrific Ways

May 4, 2017 By Carol Stephen 4 Comments

How Tired Business Owners Save Time: 10 Terrific Ways

We all have the same amount of time in every day, yet we all want to save time, too. Isn’t that the universal problem? Maybe the question is what do we do with the time we save?

Plan the Day Ahead of Time

When you know what you have to do, doing those chores goes a lot faster. Then checking everything off your list is satisfying, and almost like a game that you can play. Like the Gamification of Social Media, the gamification of your to-do list can move things in the right direction.

So spending 10 minutes to plan doesn’t have to be a big deal. For those times that your iPhone timer isn’t enough, here are some other timers you might like. I love that there are specific ones for coffee and grilling (that’s what you can do with all the time you save!).

Sharpen the Ax

As Abraham Lincoln didn’t say, “If you have six hours to chop down a tree, spend four hours sharpening the axe.” But it’s still a great statement anyway. What whomever said this probably meant was to prepare for whatever task you’re going to do and have all the right tools. Don’t have a tiny, dull knife and try to cut up a tree. Have a seriously sharp axe!

Tell the Truth About Limitations

This one seems so simple. Keep your commitments. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. This includes not overcommitting to be on a task force, or committee. Know how much energy you have to commit to new tasks. Here’s an article I enjoyed from The Wall Street Journal: Are You Too Busy? How to Know Your Limits. The takeaway? Don’t wait until you have a stomachache, or worse, to realize you’re doing too much!

Eat the Frog

This is one I don’t necessarily agree with. Eating the frog means doing the hardest thing first. But why? Why not do the easiest thing first so you have a sense of momentum? Forget about eating that frog first! Drink your coffee, finish something easy, then eat the frog! And why does it even have to be a frog? How about if we reframe it as something just a little more appetizing?

Work at Your Strength

Even without the CliftonStrengths assessment (formerly Strengthfinders), doesn’t it make sense to focus on what you’re good at every day? And if you’ve never read the book, I highly recommend it!

Delegate Everything That’s Not Your Strength

As a business owner, this one is the hardest for me. I have to realize that others aren’t as interested in my business as I am. They won’t do as good a job (maybe), so I have to settle for maybe 80% getting done and forget about the rest.

Photo by lorenkerns

Shut the Door at 5:00

If you work for yourself, this is a tough one. Client meetings often leak over into the evening hours, and that’s not always a good thing for your work-life balance. By the way, here’s why Work-Life Balance is the Unicorn of the Working World.

Photo by Dirk Förster

Learn to Make Decisions Quickly

This one has come about naturally for me. One of my friends who owns his own business can hang up on a caller within two seconds. “Not interested!” he barks, and hangs up. Are you turning into that person, too?

Photo by jurvetson

Stop Multitasking

We all know by now that there is no multitasking. We can’t drive and text any more than we can listen to YouTube and pay attention during a meeting! Tell me you’re not doing that right now!

Photo by Ruth and Dave

Take Breaks and Get Outside

Getting outside into nature is what is going to make your brain work the best, after all. That may seem counterintuitive, but it does work.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Business, delegation, focus on strength, planning, preparation, time management

Quick, Easy, and Free Ways to a Fantastic Twitter Avatar

April 27, 2017 By Carol Stephen 2 Comments

Quick, Easy, and Free Ways to a Fantastic Twitter Avatar

A few days ago, I got into my Wayback Machine and traveled to 2012. Back, back, back to my first blog post about how to create a Twitter Avatar. Kind of amazing how quickly five years flies by, isn’t it? And while researching for this post, I found this great article about the people behind the Wayback Machine (an Internet archive). But I digress. Ahem! This post is about how you can get a quick, easy, and free Twitter avatar.

Pick Ten Avatars You Like

Get on Twitter and start looking around. Search on something similar to your business, to begin with. Say you’re in a particular area, such as Santa Cruz. You could search on the hashtag #SantaCruz. Or just the words Santa Cruz.

Narrow the Field

Of the ten avatars you find, choose the three you like the most. For example, here are three accounts in the Santa Cruz area that I admire. Follow them and check out their tweets (but come right back! I’ll wait here.).

Bookshop Santa Cruz Avatar (@BookshopSC)

Santa Cruz Hilltromper Avatar (@HilltromperSC)

Sempervirens Fund Avatar (@SempervirensFnd)

Ask Yourself Some Questions

Notice how all three images easily identify the organization. Now, ask yourself a few questions. For instance:

Why do you like the avatars?
What specifically do you like about the images?
Do you prefer a photo or a drawing?
Would you use similar colors in your own avatar?
What traits identify you or your brand?

Brand Identity

This post is not about brand identity. However, if you have no idea what brand identity means, read this thorough article by Clement Lim: Creating a Kick-Ass Brand Identity.

List the Traits of Your Top Three Favorite Avatars

My top three have a few things in common. Namely:

They’re all images, not photos.
They’re clutter-free.
Each one tells a story.
Each one is monochromatic (black, green, and brown).

Incorporate Those Traits Into Your Avatar

If I were redoing my avatar, I could start with a photo and convert it to a drawing. I take a lot of photos (don’t we all since the invention of smart phones?). Then I could clean up all the extraneous lines, unnecessary stuff until it was more like a line drawing. I’d want to make sure that the image told a story about my business.

Color is Critical

Next, I’d choose a favorite color. Here’s a good article about What Your Logo’s Color Says About Your Business from Fast Company. For instance, did you know the following:

almost 85% of consumers cite color as the primary reason they buy a particular product, and 80% of people believe color increases brand recognition.

Create Three Draft Avatars

After that, you could create a few mockups of avatars, with slight or not-so-slight variations. Okay, maybe three. Or two! You could have just two, to keep it really simple.

Photo by Das Fotoimaginarium

Ask Your Friends

The really fun part is having a little branding-your-Twitter-avatar party. Have snacks and bubbly drinks and have your friends give their opinions. They’ll surprise you with some of what they say.

How Did You Figure out What Your Twitter Avatar Would Be?

What would you tell someone else who needed an avatar? I’d really like to know! And thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Avatar, color, design, drawing, image, Twitter avatar

See Why Work-Life Balance is the Unicorn of the Working World

April 20, 2017 By Carol Stephen 6 Comments

See Why Work-Life Balance is the Unicorn of the Working World

Work-life balance is one of those phrases that people with way too much time on their hands talk about. Usually they have their own yoga studios, grow all their own food, and can afford really swell vacations on Martha’s Vineyard. And that’s not even a generalization!

When Is There Ever Balance?

Never, that’s when! This is the week of Easter and tax returns. Many people with businesses are filing at the last minute instead of being involved in an Easter egg hunt. Unless, of course, you call looking for business deductions in a huge pile of receipts an Easter egg hunt. Then, yes, there’s an Easter egg hunt.

We Strive for Balance

We dream of balance during those nights when we don’t sleep enough because we were up late worrying about whether everything for that upcoming conference got finished. Was there one last person to call, or a piece of paper that didn’t make it to the right place?

Finding Time

By the way, if you need to find a little more time, here’s my article on Social Media: Time Management for Busy Entrepreneurs that you might like. Finding a bit of time here and there in your day can be cause for celebration!

Photo by todd.vision

Vacations Are for Sissies

If you’re involved in a startup, do you ever really go on vacation? Or is your idea of time off working a couple of hours less on the days you’re strolling on the beach? And speaking of strolling on the beach, here’s a brilliant idea from Forbes: Want a Brilliant Idea for a Startup? Go on Vacation!

“…ideas emerge when someone frees their mind up to wander – this often doesn’t happen in day to day life,”
~ Jessica Livingston, founding partner Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s best known incubator

You Can Sleep When You’re Dead

Who among us has not heard this pithy bumpersticker-sized statement? Startups have a reputation for fueling sleep deprivation. Startups have also begun to fuel new ideas about sleep, as outlined in this nifty article: How Tech Startups Are Waking Up the Sleep Industry. In fact, new startup Cereve has a Sleep System to cool the forehead and soothe “a racing mind.” Something many in the startup world suffer from.

Is Balance Possible?

How have you created balance? While I’d love to believe in unicorns, maybe we are better off believing they don’t exist. Or are we all resigned to being comfortable being uncomfortable? Tell me in the comments! And thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: balance, Business, Startup, Startups, work life balance

What Happened to Quality versus Quantity on Social Media?

April 13, 2017 By Carol Stephen 8 Comments

What Happened to Quality versus Quantity on Social Media?

Whatever happened to good quality social media posts? In the beginning, there was the Facebook, and it was good. Reach was fantastic, everything was free, and everything got good reach. You could post a picture of an old rotten lemon, and your friends would make a million comments. “Great rotten lemon!” they’d say. “Where’d you get that lemon? I want one!” “That lemon reminds me of the ones my grandma used to grow!” And so on. An out-of-focus picture of a dirty sock might do even better.

Photo by Skley

The Good Old Days

Those were the good ol’ days. The Internet seemed smaller and quieter. Now lemons have to be ripe, and if you make lemonade, you even have to know how the best recipe for ice cubes. P.S. read the comments, but then come back here!

Suddenly, everything changed.

Suddenly, Everything Changed

Now that out-of-focus dirty sock picture and the image of the rotten lemon don’t get such great reach, do they? Nope! Suddenly, socks have to be woven using gold thread, and the gold has to be mined in ecologically and socially responsible ways. And the picture even has to be in focus! What is this world coming to?

Et Tu, Branding?

Not only does the sock have to be gold, but it has to matter to your audience now, too. Holy target audience, Batman! The person in the center of that elusive bulls eye has to care about golden socks! By the way, here’s an article about rebranding for startups that you might like.

Is Quality An Issue?

When someone wants you, as a social media manager, to do something that’s clearly unrealistic (like posting a picture that will bring in 10,000 followers in one week), you might say “Is quality an issue? Do these followers need to be real people?” Because if they don’t, then you could just plunk down $20!

But heck, now that quality does seem to be an issue, everything has to be on point! That is, you can’t just post more. The stuff you post needs to be even better. So if you’re on Twitter, for example, then you must focus on awesome quality if you want to get the best followers.

Better Images

Yes, you’re going to need better images that actually connect back to your text and pictures that are in focus. Also, the text has to make sense and be grammatically correct. And you can no longer steal images! Sheesh!

Lemons & Glitter

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: quality, quantity, Social Media

For the Best Success, Pretend You’re Offline When You Network

April 6, 2017 By Carol Stephen 4 Comments

For the Best Success, Pretend You’re Offline When You Network

If you’ve spent any time at all online, you realize that spam comes in all shapes and sizes. You can follow someone on Instagram, not knowing that they’ll follow, then immediately unfollow you. It’s kinda like the early days on Twitter.

Pushy Marketing

There are still articles about how not to network online (such as this one: Entrepreneurs, Beware This Terrible Way of Networking on Social Media) that tell people not to shove their product down someone’s throat the first time they meet them online. You wouldn’t do that offline, so why do it online?

Don’t Exceed the Boundaries of the Relationship

One thing I really like about the “Entrepreneurs, Beware… article is about not asking for something that exceeds the boundaries of your relationship. It’s not realistic and won’t go over well.

Timing is Everything

Some marketers still think it’s a good idea to send direct messages the millisecond someone follows them on Twitter saying “let’s connect on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube!” It’s not terrible to ask this, but the instance you’ve met someone? It’s a matter of timing. Same thing has started happening on Instagram, though not as often.

What Does Work, Then?

If broadcasting messages to follow, follow, follow, don’t work, what does?

Generosity Works

So just as in real life, be generous first. Share other people’s content. Comment on their posts. Say something nice, or shut up, as my parents would say. It’s even possible that you’d want to use a little gratitude in your marketing. Here are my posts about Gratitude Marketing and How to Develop Your Gratitude Muscle, in case you missed them.

Small Talk

Small talk goes a long way towards establishing the first steps of trust. All those little conversations that begin with How are you? and How’s the weather? can lead to great things. But they start small.

Act As If

Do you go to the bank before you have a bank account and ask them for money? No. Would you walk up to someone in real life and ask for a favor before you knew them? No. Would you call them by their childhood nickname before really knowing them? Again: No. If you act as if you just met them in real life, you have a much better chance at being cordial and then later marketing to them.

Photo by Bautz Adventure

It’s a Long Game

Being known and trusted doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and energy and attention. But if you pretend that the person you’re chatting with online is really right in front of you, maybe you’ll behave a bit differently. I know I would (and do). Here’s a wonderful post about why content marketing is the long game from Copyblogger.

Come Say Hello

I promise you, I’ll say hello back! Thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Business, failure, network, Networking, offline versus online, success, what not to do

How to Develop and Unlock a Tremendous Gratitude Muscle

March 30, 2017 By Carol Stephen 10 Comments

How to Develop and Unlock a Tremendous Gratitude Muscle

People have written countless blog posts, articles, and books about gratitude marketing, being thankful for those who mentor us, and loving those around us. But is gratitude more than something we think about on Thanksgiving Day? Hopefully, yes.

Start with Ten

If you’ve never tried gratitude before, start with writing down ten things that you’re grateful for. Go on. I’ll wait. Then write another sentence about each of those first ten things. For example, let’s say you’re grateful to your mom. Well, of course you are. She gave birth to you. What other things did she do for you? She probably protected you. Maybe she made you cookies or helped you with homework. If you have trouble with this exercise, here are 100 Things to Be Thankful For, from Real Simple magazine.

Strengthen the Muscle Daily

Here’s a great article: The 7 Habits of Grateful People. I like that one about mindfully using social media. And being grateful every single day, even for the little things. Do you appreciate your pillow? Having clean air and water (actually pretty big things when you think about it). How about your pet hedgehog?

List Some Unexpected Things

You may not even realize what you have until you look around and see what someone else doesn’t have. How about that roof over your head? How about your health? What about being able to breathe? Having your vision? You get the idea!

Gratitude Journal

A gratitude journal lets you track, and, as you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), you may think of even more things to be grateful for. You might want to add pictures. You might want to set up a secret board in Pinterest to keep a visual reminder of what makes you grateful. Here’s a Pinterest primer if you need to get started!

Photo by romana klee

Letters of Gratitude

Reconnecting with old friends through letters is a perfect way to flex that gratitude muscle. How many times do we spend an hour just telling someone how wonderful, inspiring, and intelligent someone is? And sending a handwritten note is becoming more and more rare, according to this article from Harvard Business Review: Handwritten Notes Are a Rare Commodity: They’re Also More Important Than Ever. If you’re thinking of picking up your pen again, after a hiatus, handwritten letters are also a very good way to reconnect with yourself, besides creating a deeper connection with long-lost friends.

What Are You Grateful For?

When you get more specific with what you’re grateful for, you might be able to think of even more things. For instance, not just your car, but that your car gets 45 miles per gallon and does 75 mph downhill with a tailwind. (Well, that’s my car!) Are you one of the 25% of people who name their car? I’m surprised that the number is so low.

Thank You!

To the readers of my blog, I thank you. I appreciate the comments and your taking the time to read my words.

Photo by CasparGirl

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: gratitude, Gratitude Marketing, letters of gratitude, thankful, thankfulness

How to Create a Quick and Easy Slide Show on Pinterest

March 23, 2017 By Carol Stephen 6 Comments

How to Create a Quick and Easy Slide Show on Pinterest

To tell the truth, I’m only writing this post because it took me so gosh darn long to figure out how to do this recently, and I deal with Pinterest all the time. But even Pinterest’s own Frequently Asked Questions didn’t really explain how to create a slide show. And they call it a showcase, too–not a slide show. No, that would be too “’70s,” apparently.

Note: You must have a business account to take advantage of the showcase feature.

Pinterest’s Showcase Lets Businesses Rotate Five Boards

Anyway, it is a slide show, and you can make a pretty good one in about five minutes! Pretty cool, huh? Mine (a screenshot) is above.

Step One. Click the big plus mark that says “Set up a Showcase.”

Note: If there is no big plus mark, either your business account isn’t set up correctly, or there’s a bug in your Pinterest. One of Pinterest’s experts helped me find it, since the showcase edit page appeared to have been missing temporarily. First, log into your Pinterest account, then access it at https://www.pinterest.com/showcase/settings/.

Step Two. Choose your five best boards for the showcase. You may want boards with at least eight pins on them.

Step Three. Edit the boards some good pins appear on each of the boards. Choose a good cover for each board. Make sure to save after each edit.

Step Four. Have yourself some of the best DIY Lemon Iced Tea! You may want to reduce the sugar if you’re on Whole30, like I am, though. :D

That’s it!

Did I leave anything out?

Tell me if you set up your slideshow! Leave me a comment below and I’ll go take a look! Thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: DIY, how to build a showcase on Pinterest, iced tea, Pinterest, slide show

How Much Confidential Info Do You Share On Social Media?

March 16, 2017 By Carol Stephen 4 Comments

How Much Confidential Info Do You Share On Social Media?

Recently, I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing happen. When you work in the social media realm, people expect certain things. They expect you to share. And yet, although some of my best friends knew about the terrible event, I did not share it widely.

Connection Does Not Always Equal Friendship

Being “friends” on Facebook does not mean that someone is truly friends, despite the saying that a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met. If you are squinting at someone’s image, wondering where you met them (or if you met them at all), maybe it’s time to cut them loose if Facebook is your “safe place.”

Being a Private Person

Are you a private person? Now, I’m not necessarily talking about being an introvert because that’s different. But are you private in your communications online? Would you be ready to share something and then have a relative stranger come up and say “oh, hey, I heard that you fell off the roof while on vacation!” If not, then you might consider not sharing that tidbit, although it’s easy to forget that 100s or 1000s of people could potentially see what you post.

How to Decide What to Share

Here are a few questions you could ask yourself before you share something:

Will this hurt me later?
Will this expose a friend?
Will sharing this get back to the person I’m sharing about?
Could this have any negative impacts?

And here are 9 things you should never share on Facebook, from Post Planner.

Where to Share

Certain people have places that are more private than others on social media. For instance, I consider Twitter to be the most filled with strangers of all of my platforms. Yours could be Facebook. Or LinkedIn. At any rate, there’s a hierarchy of places for all of us. I might share something in a closed Facebook group before I share it on Twitter.

Some would say that you could share more safely on Twitter, since it doesn’t ask you to share your own or your friends’ information as much. See Facebook vs Twittter: Privacy Issues.

Photo by ijclark

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Social Sharing

There are many good aspects of sharing. For instance, you could share a picture that you want all your friends to see. It beats emailing it to everyone! And you can create an album on Facebook or a secret board on Pinterest for those images. By the way, here are Ten Ways to Be Social, from the archive.

Photo by ZZ Bottom

The Bad and the Ugly

There are also many, many ways to fail on social media. For instance:

Photo by Dvortygirl

What’s Something You’d Never Share?

I promise not to tell! Leave me a comment. Thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: confidential, Facebook, LinkedIn Pinterest, oversharing, privacy, sharing, Social Media, Twitter

There’s That Guy!

Some People Are Far Away

Sometimes It’s Awkward

Some People Aren’t Funny

Many Become Best Friends for Life

Distance Becomes Irrelevant

Tell Me About Someone You’ve Met Online

How to Get out of a Dismal Social Media Rut

Admit You Have a Problem

Baby Steps to the Answer

Focus on Passion

Create a Road Map

Three Examples of Road Maps

Refocus

Implement

Get a Notebook

How’d You Climb out of Your Rut?

Plan the Day Ahead of Time

Sharpen the Ax

Tell the Truth About Limitations

Eat the Frog

Work at Your Strength

Delegate Everything That’s Not Your Strength

Shut the Door at 5:00

Learn to Make Decisions Quickly

Stop Multitasking

Take Breaks and Get Outside

Pick Ten Avatars You Like

Narrow the Field

Ask Yourself Some Questions

Brand Identity

List the Traits of Your Top Three Favorite Avatars

Incorporate Those Traits Into Your Avatar

Color is Critical

Create Three Draft Avatars

Ask Your Friends

How Did You Figure out What Your Twitter Avatar Would Be?

When Is There Ever Balance?

We Strive for Balance

Finding Time

Vacations Are for Sissies

You Can Sleep When You’re Dead

Is Balance Possible?

The Good Old Days

Suddenly, Everything Changed

Et Tu, Branding?

Is Quality An Issue?

Better Images

Pushy Marketing

Don’t Exceed the Boundaries of the Relationship

Timing is Everything

What Does Work, Then?

Generosity Works

Small Talk

Act As If

It’s a Long Game

Come Say Hello

Start with Ten

Strengthen the Muscle Daily

List Some Unexpected Things

Gratitude Journal

Letters of Gratitude

What Are You Grateful For?

Thank You!

Did I leave anything out?

Connection Does Not Always Equal Friendship

Being a Private Person

How to Decide What to Share

Where to Share

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Social Sharing

The Bad and the Ugly

What’s Something You’d Never Share?

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