Being passionate about your business is a good thing – right?

I know lots of people who are passionate about their business. It’s a good thing and no more than I would expect from the people I mix with, given that most of them have chosen to do what they do.

However, I am constantly puzzled by the need that many folk have to “tell”  me they are passionate about their business. Maybe you are one of them.

Telling me you’re passionate doesn’t do a thing for me.

Would you tell me you are funny in order to make me laugh or say that you’re sexy in the hope I might introduce you to a friend looking for a fling? Would you start a business conversation by telling me you’re honest?

No? I thought not. So why tell me you’re passionate about what you do?

Do you think by declaring your passion that I’m more likely to buy from you?

Here’s a newsflash. I’m not – and neither is anyone else.

I don’t care how you feel about your business

Actually I don’t care how you feel about your business. You could be bored to death by it but if you supply what I want at the right price I’ll buy it.

I understand the whole thing about buying decisions being emotional ones but if I’m the buyer, its my emotions that are in the equation not yours. How you or your product make me feel is important but will your declaration for being passionate about supplying me affect my emotions?

No – and here’s why:

I’ve been asking this question for a while and this is one of the best answers I’ve had so far. Its from Jeremy Marchant  http://www.emotionalintelligenceatwork.com I’ve edited his words slightly for context.

Jeremy says: “I think it is tendentious, at best, to suggest that (potential customers) will be convinced that you can supply what they need just because you have told them how passionate you are about supplying it.

Yes, the decision to buy is an emotional one, not a rational one. That’s because all decisions are made emotionally, not rationally.

But it is a mistake to believe that, if you tell me how you are feeling, that is a conversation at a feelings level, at the level of emotions. It’s not. It is a rational, “thinking” conversation.

A description of how passionate you are about what you do is not an emotional experience for the listener. It is a factual monologue, which will have the inevitable consequence of keeping them in their thinking mode, NOT getting them into their feelings – in other words it precisely does what you don’t want it to do!

The way out of this impasse is … to convey your passion by HOW you talk. How you are. “

In other words, its better to let people see and feel how passionate you are than to tell them!

Getting people to connect with you on an emotional level is the key to any transaction but simply telling them how you feel doesn’t work.

Don’t tell me – show me

If you want me to buy from you, stop telling me you are passionate and start demonstrating your conviction that you have the solution to my needs.

Getting more done with less stress, effort and frustration is what many business owners wish for.

At a recent presentation, Steve Hoare (Management by Reflection), explained why, if we want to grow a business, have a home life and enjoy what we do with the minimum of stress, it is important to spend our time doing the things we are good and learn to appreciate the contributions made by people who have different strengths to us.

To illustrate the point, members of the group were asked to put themselves into one of three groups that they most identified with while acknowledging that there may be some crossover.

The Blue Group identified most with the words:

Thinking, creative, problem solving, strategic, discerning, self starting, single minded.

The Yellow Group with:

Inclusive, mature, communicator, diplomatic, co-operative, enthusiastic

The Red Group with:

Challenging, dynamic, action, perfectionist, reliable, efficient, conscientious

Each group was given the same task and assigned an observer.

The idea was to show what happens when people with the same strengths work on a task, compared to when people with a whole range of strengths work together.

The result is that people adapt to fill the gaps but usually feel uncomfortable in these roles. This is OK for a short while (our experiment only lasted for ten minutes) but the longer it continues, the more the cracks begin to show.

The ensuing discussion focused on the importance of not seeing the absence of a particular type of behaviour as a weakness but on playing to people’s strengths.

It is equally important not to let the ‘weakness’ become a crutch or an excuse, e.g. “What do you expect? I’m this type of person not that type.”

In terms of identifying the people most likely to produce the best results we often look for skills first followed by personality but profiling the behaviours needed to complement a team can often improve the way everyone works and reduce the stress, frustration and effort while getting much more done in less time.

There is a huge amount of research that shows that we are really poor judges of others and relying on ‘gut instinct’ is the worst possible way to select people to work with.

When employing people, Steve recommends the Belbin Team Role profiling tool be used along with a suite of other tools for assessing personality and aptitude. Many tools on the market have no scientific validity so it is best to check this out and use an accredited practitioner to analyse the results.

Any double about the value / cost ratio will be quickly dispelled by a calculation of what it costs to make the wrong decision!

I’ve just returned from a seminar on Social Media – the Next Generation and was flattered to be asked to field the question,

“What does it take to be successful in Social Media?”

implying that

a) I am

and

b) that I knew.

My first reaction was that if anyone sets out ‘just’ to be successful on SoMe, that’s probably a bit sad. Does it mean you have a big network, a big klout score, that lots of people know who you are?

Maybe, but what’s the point?

Having pondered this weighty question I clicked on my Twitter stream to find one of my contacts (who runs a very successful business) looking forward to watching a particular popular teen vampire TV programme and drawing all sorts of other folk out of their closets to admire the (in my opinion) rather drippy hero. A riotous exchange of tweets followed with me extolling the virtues of ‘real’ men who smelled of whisky and tobacco and thought personal grooming was a close shave while the, admittedly, much younger faction swooned over waifs with gelled hair.

No contest

There were several laugh out loud incidents and then we all went back to work. I suppose this is what the SoMe experts call a ‘water cooler moment’.

What does it have to do with being successful on Social Media?

Quite a lot.

a) we were all being our authentic selves

b) it was fun

c) we all learned a bit about each others values and what makes us tick

d) nobody was trying to sell anything but we found out a bit about what we do

e) it was probably amusing to the several thousand potential observers (Twitter being a public forum) and revealed a lot – none of it bad – about all of us.

At the start of the excellent seminar mentioned above, the opening question was “What’s the most important thing in any business?” and the answer is, of course, people.

People (whether owners, employees, suppliers or customers) want to be noticed, to be valued, to be acknowledged as people with different values and ideas because that is how we all relate to each other. The roles we play may be important but its who we really are that enables us to form relationships that work.

Some big brands have spotted how important this is in SoMe and use it to their advantage, getting individual members of staff to engage with people on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn Groups while maintaining the brand presence. Some get it spectacularly wrong and simply spit out sales messages, expecting the ‘brand’ to speak for itself.  It doesn’t.

Owners of smaller businesses have the biggest advantage on SoMe

People who can BE their brand either have to truly live all the qualities they talk about or be extremely good actors because being bland doesn’t work. Trying to appeal to everyone doesn’t work. At some point your sense of humour, your values and beliefs will reveal the real you and just like in real life, some people will like you and some won’t.  However, that’s OK because its better to find out before you do business with someone than after.

There are all sorts of tools and analytical devices you can use to see if your messages and links get clicked, liked, plus oned, forwarded, favourited or re-tweeted. There are tools that tell you who to ditch and who to follow and when your followers are on-line and if they are real or robots. You can track your numbers in every combination and format and there are people who use all these devices very successfully.

Can the numbers be used to measure ROI?

These numbers are sometimes used in an effort to prove return on investment (ROI) but some of the algorithms are less than effective. No-one can say that 100 followers, fans, contacts or clicks will produce x% return because no-one can assess the quality of these connections, many of whom are there because of the ‘social’ aspect of the media rather than for business and many of whom will effortlessly pass on interesting details to their own connections. It is impossible to measure ‘influence’ by numbers so at best, these tools are guides and at worst, downright misleading.

No-one can measure the effect of me praising the work of a  New York artist or the effect of him telling his contacts about my work on business development. It is too random, in some ways too bizarre and unexpected and the threads that are created are too tangled to prove any real return. The only certain thing is that it is possible to make contacts through social media that would otherwise have been impossible and that once the contact is made it is the quality of your content that will keep them and help them to grow.

The strategy that delights one person will dismay another. Most people have to try it for themselves and find their own style of doing things.

So, my answer to “What does it take to be successful on Social Media?” is, you need to understand people. You need to know who you want to attract and what will attract them. You need to understand yourself and what you stand for. Most of all you need to know how to communicate.

Good content, whether in a 140 character tweet or a 500 word blog post will carry more weight than anything else. It builds trust in your expertise, your skill and your knowledge but above all, in you as a real person with values that others can relate to.

Before you can write good content you need to know not only who you are writing it for but who YOU are to those people.

It was 1937 when Dale Carnegie wrote his wonderful book, “How to win friends and influence people”.

The medium may be different but the message is the same.

What do you think?

Why do we need to know how to be happy?

Why is happiness so important? Are we born happy and then lose it? What has happiness to do with business success?

I recently became aware of a number of business owners who work such long hours that they neglect all the things that make them happy, except their work.

Because I believe that most of our best ideas come to us in the downtime when we are playing or relaxing, and because I believe that we are all so much more than our businesses, this bothered me a bit so I decided to conduct an experiment.

I asked people to list ten things that they DO that make them happy and then to schedule into their diaries every day something they looked forward to doing and then actually DO them.

Over 130 people shared their lists with each other on-line and about 30 turned up for a meeting to discuss their ideas on happiness, led by philosopher John Turner (www.metathink.co.uk)

These are some of the ideas the people in the group expressed:

To be happy we need to focus our minds, not drift along without being aware.

To be happy we need to be in the flow with an absence of distractions

To be happy we need to be creating and doing

To be happy we need to feel valued – by ourselves as well as others

Happiness is our life’s purpose and nurturing friendships is a major part of this

We need a verb: “to happy” (apparently, in ancient Greek, there is/was)

On one thing everyone was agreed: If there was a machine that could make everyone happy all of the time, we wouldn’t want to turn it on. There are times when we need sadness, and happiness is something to be worked towards.

The second part of the experiment is still ongoing but these are my own thoughts on happiness:

“Happiness depends on ourselves.”

2500 years ago, Aristotle enshrined happiness as a central purpose of human life and a goal in itself.

2500 years later neuroscientists came to pretty much the same conclusion.

The Nature of Happiness 

Despite the fact that many human beings live their lives believing that they will be happy if they get everything they want, both ancient and modern wisdom shows that this is far from true. Tests show that we are notoriously bad at predicting what will make us happy (or unhappy) and we prove ourselves wrong time and again. Rich people are not happier than poor people and yet much of our society is geared to the pursuit of material possessions and fleeting pleasures.

There is a school of thought that says that happiness cannot be pursued or sought and we just need to be open and wait for it to alight in our lives  but this too is disputed by both philosophy and science. This is because happiness is not something that can be gained or lost in a few moments, like pleasurable sensations. It is about the ultimate value of a life, measuring how well we have lived up to our full potential as human beings.

Aristotle tells us that the most important factor in the effort to achieve happiness is to have a good moral character — what he calls “complete virtue.” He argues that virtue is achieved by maintaining the balance between two excesses – reminiscent of Buddha’s Middle Path.

Neoroscience shows that happiness is inextricably linked to the faculty of attention.

Attention systems that lack focus or have become habitually trained on feelings of poor self worth or criticism lead to emotional states that are out of control and lead to anxiety, depression and other distressing states. Studies show that contemplative practices such as meditation are wonderful ways to train the brain into new habits of paying attention to subjects or feelings that enhance self-worth and strengthen new neural pathways.

The language is different but the message is the same.

Happiness takes effort.

Aristotle advocates the education of the whole person, including one’s moral character, rather than merely learning a set of skills. He taught that developing a good character requires a strong effort of will to do the right thing, make difficult decisions, not give in to immediate gratification and that through training and practice we can achieve our full potential and the enrichment of human life.

Neuroscience shows that we can change our brains, not by intervention with medication or stimulants but by practicing new thought patterns. The basic structure of our mental life is habit and, just as we strengthen muscles in our bodies by practice, so we do the same with our brains.

Qualities we admire in others, e.g., kindness, generosity, humour, patience, compassion are not innate qualities but are skills that we can learn with practice until they become new habits. If we admire these qualities in others we can aquire them for ourselves by paying attention, repeating behaviours and becoming the kind of person we most want to be.

So, happiness is about human flourishing and thriving not about feelings of pleasure and it is an activity rather than a state.

What does this have to do with business?

Building a successful business, especially when you are working alone, requires great discipline. Doing the right things at the right time, even when we don’t feel like it, making difficult decisions, turning away from the quick fix in order to stick to a long term plan, staying focused on a task, being mindful, keeping the promises we make to ourselves are all important.

If the pursuit of happiness is about human flourishing and thriving, applying the same principles to business can only be a good thing. Happiness is not something we take time off to do and then feel guilty about, it becomes both the reason and the way in which we do everything.

Rather than say “I’ll be happy when ….” (I’ve got to x turnover / this job is finished / that client is satisfied / I have some reliable staff), and recognising that these things are not what makes us happy and that we don’t have to wait for them to happen, creates the freedom to make the pursuit of happiness an habitual activity that leads to real fulfilment of our potential as human beings.

Take part in the experiment

If you would like to take part in the happiness experiment simply schedule into your daily activities things that you DO that will make you happy and then DO them and share your ideas with the rest of the group either by leaving a comment below or on the LinkedIn discussion here:  http://lnkd.in/4MM6ca

This week I’ve had three good examples of why Power Point presentations should be banned.

We’ve all heard the expression ‘death by powerpoint’ and yet professional people who should know better are still subjecting unsuspecting audiences to presentations that are utterly boring, banal, condescending, overly-complicated, time wasting, mind-numbing, bum-numbing, yawn making …. well. you get the picture.

The ONLY reason for making a presentation should be to move your audience in some way; change their thinking or perception, their attitudes or behaviour.

To move an audience a speaker needs to make a connection by creating chemistry but so often all they create is boredom.

Don’t do this:
The first example had university lecturers not only reading every word on their slides (power point as script) but giving us all a USB stick with the bloody slides on as well just in case we didn’t get the message by seeing it and hearing it simultaneously!

If a slide needs to be read out loud it has no business being in a presentation.

The second example was a boring man who should never have been allowed near the business end of a microphone who actually left his lectern to cross to the other side of the stage and reach up to point to a number on the slide (one among hundreds) and explain what it meant. Thankfully we couldn’t hear what it was because his microphone was attached to the lectern on the other side of the stage.

If you want to give a report – print it and mail it. Its not a presentation.

The third was a woman who said she was going to tell us some stuff from last year, this year and next year and paused while the dates 2010, 2011 and 2012 appeared on the screen just in case we weren’t sure.

Don’t treat your audience members as though they are idiots

All of these people earn high salaries. All of them have help in their fancy offices from people who should know how to put a presentation together. All of them should know better.

Don’t hold your audience hostage just because they’re too polite to leave

If you expect people to give their time and attention to a speaker at your event, do us all a favour and make them deliver the presentation without Power Point first. If they can pass the test and hold an audience with what they SAY, then and only then, allow them to add slides that illustrate and punctuate the presentation and NEVER, EVER duplicate the script.

Good presenters practice. They plan and prune and work out how to make an impact. If there was a power cut they would still deliver a great presentation. They don’t need the prop of Power  Point.

If  you’re not a good presenter don’t think Power Point will save you.  It won’t.

This post was written by Mike Johansson in Social Media Today. You can sign up to this useful blog and read the original post here: http://socialmediatoday.com/

Here are Mike’s useful tips for getting a good start on using Twitter for Business:

1. Make your profile public: You want to connect with people so keep your account open.

2. Choose a Twitter name that is your entire name or at least your first name and last initial or a variation of your name. Be sure your real name is somewhere on your public profile.

3. Fill in your location with your real location: This will connect you with others in your area with whom you can network in real life.

4. Work on your bio so that it says something about your professional activities and aspirations but also displays a little of your personality. You’ve got 160 characters – choose them wisely.

5. Choose an avatar photo that is more face than anything else: Avoid the temptation to try to be too cute. Your genuine face shot is part of who you are.

6. Choose your link URL wisely: If you have a website or blog link to that or to you Linkedin or Facebook Business Page.

7. Start following others slowly: Find relevant people in your business or with related interests and follow just a very few at a time. There is no science to this but try not to follow lots more people than those who follow you.

8. Don’t just follow anyone: Following people just because they follow you is not a requirement in Twitter. Following back should be reserved for people you are genuinely interested in learning from and about.

9. Pay attention to others’ tweets: You will learn a lot by just “listening.” When the time is right (you see something you want to comment on or you want to thank someone for sharing something send them an “@” message. These tweets are the beginnings of real conversations with people who may one day become part of your professional network.

10. Retweet judiciously: When you read something that really means something to you or you think some of your followers might appreciate retweet (RT) it. If there is room add a comment to explain why you like it. (My addition – you can’t add comments if you RT from from the twitter webpage).

My additional tip: Start using Hootsuite or Tweetdeck asap as they make using Twitter much easier.

Have a comment? We’d love to hear them below:

Whenever  something “always” happens to you, you can relax. Because it means that you are completely in charge of that situation.

Always late? Hmmm, let’s see now… From near or far, summer or winter, rush hour or not, alone or with others and to various destinations, and you “all-ways” manage to neutralize all of the variables so that you arrive late.
Again.

Just managing on the income you have? Hmmm, let’s see now … prices go up, prices go down. Things go on sale, appliances wear down and break. Cars need repairs. And so on. Yet you just just manage to get by on your income.
Again.

NOT managing on the income you have? Hmmm, let’s see now… Are you always managing to be down a certain amount of money each month. And then something happens to make up the difference at the last minute
Again.

People always treating you in a certain (un)acceptable way? Hmmm, let’s see now.. that would be old people, young people, good people, people you hardly know, people with different backgrounds and so on. What do they all have in common? You.
Always you.

You are so flexible that you can actually stay in the same state. You neutralize all the variables in an unconscious way. So unconscious that you don’t even realize the subtleties of you own actions. Yet there is simply no denying the repetitive-ness (and effectiveness!) of your own actions.
Always.

Choose one of the more obvious “always” things in your life. Determine the benefit of continuing it. Then give yourself that benefit (without judging!!) and that “always” will vanish.

Quotations and aphorisms are generally just verbal Christmas presents; enticingly done up in pretty paper and ribbons, but once you get them open they generally turn out to be just socks. Tom Holt (2007)

I frequently have a rant about the uselessness of quotes on Twitter. Not ‘quotes ON Twitter’ as in “He who tweeteth quotes shall be deemed as wise as the person he tweeteth” because that’s just silly and most of the people who are quoted were dead many hundreds of years before Twitter came into being.

There is nothing so ridiculous but some philosopher has said it. Cicero (106-43 BC)

No, I mean the endless, indiscriminate parade of stuff that is so saccharin it makes you want to throw up, has no interest or meaning for most of the people who receive it and in many cases is just bullshit.

Some recent examples are “Thoughts become things so choose the good ones.” This is an example of such sloppy thinking that I’d like to slap the originator but instead devoted a separate post to it.

She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit…W. Somerset Maugham (1926)

The next one was something along the lines of “Before starting a journey don’t ask advice of someone who has never left home”. Now, I get the idea of this but, you know, there are circumstances when the person who has never left home might be exactly the right person to ask. They may have studied the place you’re going to or they may have the best maps. Hell, they might have invented Google Earth! Does anyone really believe that the only person to consult on anything is someone who has had personal experience of it? (Pause until the screams of many coaches has died down). Frankly, I’d rather consult a doctor who is healthy than one who has the same illness as me.

At all events, the next best thing to being witty one’s self, is to be able to quote another’s wit. Christopher N. Bovee (1857)

Another was “The person who wants to demolish a mountain starts by moving a few stones.” You know what? If I wanted to demolish a mountain I’d hire a bulldozer. Even taking it literally, if I had a job that seemed insurmountable, I’d get help. Wrapping things up in allusions and metaphore doesn’t necessarily make them more powerful.

In a pinch, any orphan quote can be called a Chinese proverb. Ralph Keyes, “Nice Guys Finish Seventh”:

Then there was a quote from Einstein. Now Einstein was a great scientist but deeply flawed in other respects. He was widely regarded as oversexed, immature and lousy at sustaining meaningful relationships so forgive me if I don’t follow his advice unless it’s directly related to science.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Oscar Wilde (1905)

Quotations can be used to great effect when used in articles or essays. They serve as really good hooks or attention-grabbers and can give emphasis to a particular point but on their own, with no reference point to their significance, they are just brain fluff.

Given all this, why do people feel compelled to share a quote, apropos of nothing, with their whole list of contacts?

Famous dead people make excellent commentators on current events. Ralph Keyes, “Nice Guys Finish Seventh”

I guess its because something in that quote spoke to them, which means that they probably need to take action on something that’s happening in their lives. It most likely doesn’t have any significance to anyone else unless they are sharing the same issues.

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well. Elias Canetti (1942–1972)

What would be interesting would be to hear what folk did as a result of reading a quote but sadly, I expect the answer would be not a lot except nod wisely and pass it on.

Meanwhile nothing changes. Its thinking for ourselves AND TAKING ACTION that changes things not taking someone else’s thinking and believing it can change anything.

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (May 1849)