Posts in Strategic Communication

Personal Strategic Plan

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How do you create a personal strategic plan? How do you live your life with purpose and direction?

1️⃣ Determine what you ultimately want to do with your life. My Want: Travel first class, sightsee, and play golf.

2️⃣ Determine how you could get someone to pay for that, so you don’t have to. My Plan: Companies pay for a day-long visit of coaching, speaking, and training. I stay in that area for a week, sightseeing and golfing.

3️⃣ Determine what you have to look like for someone to pay for that. My Expectation: Companies will pay for a published #author and accomplished #speaker with a #PhD, strong business #experience, and #certifications, who had a strong #network of connections.

4️⃣ Determine the gap between where you are and how long it will take to get there. My Gap: No degree, never published, only experience in the military, strong military network only, just starting out with Toastmasters, and no certifications. Estimated time to close the gap: 20 years.

Developing your personal strategic plan is really just that simple.

20 years ago, I started on my journey — a journey of living my life with purpose and direction; not on autopilot.

Interested in learning more…message me.

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants

Breakthrough Silos

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Breaking ⛏ Through Siloed  Organizations  First Requires Leadership Awareness! 類

Silos exist in practically every company, business, and organization. For profit or non profit … doesn’t matter. I’ve even identified silos in solo proprietorships.

The natural tendency of leaders is to “tear down the silos.”

Oh, I’m sure you’ve heard it all before … maybe you’ve even said it.

Everyone knows silos are bad!!!

Right?

Unfortunately, very few know why silos exist in the first place.

Unfortunately, very few understand why and who created the silos.

And, unfortunately, very few understand why playing “whack a silo” in your company doesn’t work!

The first step in dealing with silos in your organization is to learn why they formed in the first place and why you’ll NEVER get rid of them.

I challenge you to read Overcoming Organizational Myopia and learn not only why they form, but how to deal with them.

Increase your awareness!!!

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants
#overcomingorganizationalmyopia

Being Curious

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Being Curious 獵 might be one of the most important ♟ skills someone can possess!!!

Are you naturally curious?

When someone says something, is your first instinct to ask, “Why?”

Asking, “Why,” versus simply accepting the response 樂  can be a very powerful tool.

How do you build 料 this muscle?

Do you find people who ask, “Why,” all the time annoying?

What shuts down curiosity mire than anything for you?

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants
#curious

Mask Shaming

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Well, it looks like Mask Shaming has become a thing…

I’m hearing from people personally and seeing posts on social media of people shaming others not wearing masks in public.

So, when all this started, the governments were like, “Don’t go out and start wearing masks, they don’t work.”

Then the governments were like, “Stop buying up all the masks, you’re depleting the supply for health care workers.”

Then the governments were like, “We don’t have enough masks for health care workers and we’re engaging companies to adjust manufacturing processes to make them.”

Now the governments are like, “We recommend everyone wear a mask when in public.”

This week, Laredo TX, the first in the US to do so, made it illegal for people to be in public without a mask — up to a $1K fine. LA in CA instituting the same rule today.

Oh, by the way, Laredo only had 18 confirmed cases when they passed that ruling.

Suddenly, anyone not wearing a mask has become a pariah in the community.

Good luck finding a mask!

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants #change #coronavirus #covid19

Connections on LinkedIn

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Do you have a lot of connections , but not a lot of interaction? 

Not all connections are created equal.

What type of person are you on LinkedIn?

隸‍♂️ Super User. You are online all the time. Posting at least daily; like, comment, and share all kinds of stuff; and you respond to messages and comments.

履‍♀️ Lurker. You read other people’s posts, but hardly ever post or respond. You’d rather be a silent participant on LinkedIn than active.

 Absent. You have a profile, but you never use it. Occasionally, you might update it, but you don’t look at your messages or your notifications and you have no pulse online.

Ways to identify what type of connections you have.

1. Send them a birthday greeting or congrats on job changes and promotions. See if they ever respond.

2. Look at their Activity on their profile. If the section is blank, you can see this person doesn’t participate much.

3. Check the recency and completeness of their profile. No picture, limited details, etc. Probably not active.

4. Number of connections. Less than 500? Obviously not using LinkedIn to connect with the world.

Who cares?

Are you using LinkedIn to connect with people on a deeper professional level or just to build a connection count.

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants

Contingency Planning

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How important is disaster and contingency planning for your business … now? 

In 2016, my wife and I opened our horse farm. We also started an equitherapy-for-vets nonprofit.

One of the requirements for accreditation of the nonprofit was to establish contingency plans to mitigate potential risks.

After 21 years in the military and 7 years as a war planner, I fully understood the importance on risk mitigation through disaster and contingency planning.

Even though we’re a small business, we have plans in place for Flooding, Freeze, and Fire. The Flooding and Freeze plans have been used every year since we opened.

We never imagined that Pandemic would be on the list!

However, what we found is that we were able to pull out our plans and were able to quickly pull key aspects of the existing plans to create a quick response to deal with this crisis.

Did your business have any formal contingency plans going into this? Have you ever considered business risks and devised mitigation strategies.

No one could have planned for a Pandemic, except maybe the World Health Organization. However, planning is still quite important.

If you don’t have any contingency planning, what are you going to do about it today?

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants

Leadership After COVID-19

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How will your leadership  behaviors change after COVID-19?

I’ve seen some pretty sad displays of business leadership during this crisis.

Governments hiding the truth. Business owners forsaking their people.

By now, most have seen the story of Chili’s in the Atlanta airport, where they had all their workers come in to clean the store and then laid them all off directly afterwards.

As a leader, have you taken a hard look at yourself in the mirror and witnessed how your behavior had changed in this crisis? Are you self-aware?

Jobless claims soared to 3.2M.

This week, I heard of a business leader moving all their sales staff from partial salary to 100% commission. This in a company that can’t sell anything right now. Might as well lay everyone off.

Then I’ve seen leaders that eliminated their entire salary and all the executives took a pay cut.

Some companies have cut all salaries in half during this crisis to keep everyone on staff and protect their jobs.

While others have used this as a way to eliminate people they wanted gone from their company all along.

Imagine what people will look for in a leader after this crisis? Especially at a time where companies will be hiring in the droves.

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants

Success takes time

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True Success … for most of us … takes time! 🏅⏰

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” Vincent Van Gogh

This is not a brag fest email–just sharing a personal success story. It’s about being consistent and constant, while focusing on things bigger than yourself.

For 30 years, I’ve been building my knowledge, skills, and experiences in business improvement. For 16 of those years, I’ve been following a personal 20-year strategic plan.

Three years ago, I had great conversations with a company that was doing incredible things and was faced with incredible opportunities. Our timing wasn’t right.

However, I followed this company for the past three years, watched their progress, and stayed in touch.

Two months ago, the company reached out — they had been watching me on LinkedIn too. Our conversations three years ago made more sense now — they were ready.

This week, I started working with them on a strategic engagement and it is so incredibly exciting! My 30-years’ experience is coming to bear on a company that truly appreciates me and what I have to offer.

I am looking forward to huge successes with them!

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants
Crosscutter Enterprises
www.crossctr.com

What’s going on here?

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⁉️ Why don’t more people employ a content marketing strategy? 🧐🤔

If content marketing is so effective, why doesn’t everyone use it? 🙉🙈🙊

⏰ Time!

🏋️‍♂️ Work!

📜 Knowledge!

Let’s face it…content marketing takes a lot of time, work, and knowledge!

Someone can easily put together a sales AD LinkedIn message in about the same amount of time it takes me to craft this one LinkedIn update.

Then, they can cut and paste this advertisement, sending it to 100s to 1,000s of connections on LinkedIn in the amount of time it takes me to write another couple content pieces.

The AD route was simple. This is why people do it.

Content Marketing requires:

1️⃣ A great deal of time. Providing great content that engages an audience is built over several months of consistent and constant sharing.

2️⃣ A great deal of work. Every week or every day, you’re continuing to build and share valuable content and you’re engaging with your audiences.

3️⃣ A great deal of knowledge. Let’s face it, if you’re going to provide a lot of great value, you need to really know what you’re talking about.

It’s no wonder why so many people choose the quick and easy route over the hard.

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants
Crosscutter Enterprises
www.crossctr.com

Nobody’s watching your videos!

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If you think your videos are being watched … You’re wrong!

I did some analysis on Video Performance on Facebook. Business Pages on Facebook provide a great deal of data on their Insights tab.

Below are the deeper insights of just one video post, viewed by over 250 people. However, I researched several videos from multiple Business Pages and the trend was the same.

Guess what…

The average time someone spends watching your video is between 5 and 8 seconds! You heard me right — SECONDS!

You lose close 50% of your audience a measly 3 seconds into your video!

Are you trying to get your videos below 3 minutes? Try harder! If you’re over 30 seconds, you’re too long!!!

This was very enlightening for me … is it enlightening for you?

In the comments, leave your thoughts and discussion on how we possibly deal with this short attention span trend.

Crosscutter Enterprises
www.crossctr.com