Adventures in Awesome Living

by Sunil Bali, 29-01-12

Have you ever watched little children after they’ve just learned to walk?

They take a few steps away from Mum and Dad before toddling back to them, to a place they know is safe.

The next time they may wander a step or two further, before returning. As their confidence builds they venture further away, but often look back, seeking reassurance that they can return to their place of safety.

My experience of working with leaders of multi-nationals to one man bands has convinced me that as adults we still need that “safe place” if we’re to flourish and reach our highest potential. A place where we can make mistakes without fear of embarrassment, where we can learn and be supported by others.

The media feeds us examples of solitary hyper achievers who have single-handedly defied the odds by ploughing a solitary furrow. The reality however, is that these hyper achievers invariably have a close team around them: It’s only when they’ve got their team together that their dream comes together.

Social media, on-line networking and the internet are essential tools but not the answer. The likes of Linked In, Twitter, and Facebook allow us to have more “friends” than ever, but when it comes to confidants who will support us to be successful, research shows that we’re often in a relationship vacuum and quite lonely.

Since the days of the caveman humans have needed each other. Just because we’re now wearing suits and holding briefcases, it doesn’t mean that anything has changed.

The evidence is clear: You have to do it on your own, but you can’t do it alone.

Who’s in your inner circle helping you to be all that you can be?

Quotes

Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75 – Benjamin Franklin

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t – Richard Bach

Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong – Peter McIntyre

He who lives in harmony with himself, lives in harmony with the universe – Marcus Aurelius

Humour

Tease the frog and…..!! (27 second video)

…..and finally, from the late, great Tommy Cooper:

The Rottweiler

A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet. ‘My dog is cross-eyed, is there anything you can do for him?’

‘Well,’ said the vet, ‘let’s have a look at him.’ So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then he checks his teeth. Finally, he says, ‘I’m going to have to put him down.’

‘Why, because he’s cross-eyed?’

‘No. Because he’s really heavy.’

Great parking

‘You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen.’

It said, ‘Parking Fine.’

My arm hurts

A man walked into the doctors and said, ‘I’ve hurt my arm in several places’.

The doctor replied, ‘Well, don’t go there anymore.’

To your success,

Sunil

Adventures in Awesome Living

by Sunil Bali, 22-01-12

Sometimes life can become a struggle because we’ve forgotten a few simple truths.

Here are 27 things worth remembering:

1. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

2. Do what you love and play with whoever turns up.

3. Believe in miracles. 250 years ago Man couldn’t get off the ground, let alone walk on the Moon.

4. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

5. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.

6. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

7. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

8. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

9. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.

10. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.

11. Take a deep breath and be still. It calms the mind.

12. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear the colours of the rainbow.

13. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.

14. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ‘In five years, will this matter?’

15. What other people think of you is none of your business.

16. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

17. Get outside and keep showing up every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

18. Have one hour of totally uninterrupted conversation with your partner or a friend every week. Give yourself permission to be warmer – people love it and no one will think you’re weird or intense.

19. Spend some time every week doing a hobby or activity which completely absorbs you and time seems to stand still.

20. Don’t be a party wallflower. Self-absorption undermines happiness because it stops you from being brilliant at developing close relationships.

21. Have a good laugh at least once a day. On a bad day, give yourself a break. Listen to a comedy station, CD of stand-up comedy or read the humour section of this column.

22. Take half an hour of exercise three times a week and your general feeling of happiness will improve by 10-20 per cent. It doesn’t need to be anything too masochistic: anything that gets you moving. A brisk walk will do.

23. Be your own best friend. Check your internal dialogue. The way we talk to ourselves is often worse than the way we talk to those we dislike.

24. Be grateful for what you have and be generous. In the game of life givers gain and takers lose. It’s one of life’s great paradoxes that you can’t give without receiving.

25. Don’t wait for your boat to come in – swim out to it.

26. Don’t live your life – live your dreams.

27. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

Quotes

A man is only as good as what he loves – Saul Bellow

The more you say, the less people remember – Francois Fenelon

Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement – Barry LePatner

If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough – Mario Andretti

Humour

More from the inimitable Tommy Cooper:

1. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly. They lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving once and for all that you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

2. I visited the offices of the RSPCA today. It’s tiny: you couldn’t swing a cat in there.

3. Two blondes walk into a building………you’d think at least one of them would have seen it.

4. This cowboy walks in to a German car showroom and he says ‘Audi!’

5. I was driving up the motorway and my boss phoned me and told me I’d been promoted. I was so shocked I swerved the car. He phoned again to say I’d been promoted even higher and I swerved again. He then made me Managing Director and I went right off into a tree. The police came and asked me what had happened. I said ‘I careered off the road.’

6. I bought a train ticket to France and the ticket seller said ‘Eurostar.’ I said ‘Well I’ve been on telly but I’m no Dean Martin.’

7. Our ice cream man was found lying on the floor of his van covered with hundreds and thousands. Police say that he topped himself.

To your success,

Sunil

Last week I met with a wonderful lady who helps people when they need to find balance and hit periods of exhaustion. Her name is Stacey.

Stacey knows me well, we met in the school playground several years ago. I love it when I go to her ‘clinic’. She works from home, has adapted her sitting room to a clinic during the day and she lives a balanced life around her home, children, friendships and work. he is a great role model for many of us.

Last time we met she told me that she had decided to go ‘networking’ and that she had been to a ladies networking event locally in Guildford. Taking herself out of the comfort of her home life, she decided that she would investigate the ‘networks’. She said she found the ladies incredible and that their networking fever was rubbing off on her. They had confronted her about what online networking she was doing and when she said ‘none’ they persuaded her that she MUST, so she booked herself on a half day Social Media Workshop with someone in Guildford.

While she talked to me about this she had a frown on her face and her energy was very different. She appeared stressed and out of her comfort zone. On further investigation over a cup of tea I discovered that she had been taught to ‘hunt’.

Her ‘role models at the networking event were ‘hunters’ and the Social Media Course she went on was about achieving ‘transactions’. There lies the rub – this was not her, it did not reflect her values or her way of operating. We then had a conversation that changed her whole attitude, I physically saw her shoulders drop and a smile return to her face.

I said to her, the Internet is 24/7 and yes, it can be seen as a MarketPlace, this means you can ‘hunt’ like a savage 24 hours a day and never sleep, and I agreed that sadly some people are like this, a fever takes over and addiction sets in and they see their lives as a big Car Boot sale with loads of ‘punters’. I conjured up an image of a lion out hunting – imagine how exhausted it would be if it hunted all day and night… and some people do!

I explained to my friend that the online world is about being a ‘friend’ that is all, no more and no less. That when you are online you are ‘connecting’ randomly, openly and with a supportive attitude. The trouble is with it is that there are hunters and they are terrifying to their ‘prey’ and the ‘prey’ learn to hide from them.

We agreed that we all have to calm down online, this is not a 24/7 marketplace, it is a social network where business people meet and chat and share. Not where ‘prey’ are stalked and brought down.

I guess the morale of my story is be careful if you are hunting all the time online, you will destroy yourself, your energy and ultimately your ability to eat. You will also exhaust yourself and time online will be a ‘task’ and a duty to your business, rather than the way it should be – the online world should be an enjoyable part of your life, a place where you make friendships and find and give support.

I worry about the expectations of some people from this new digital world. I think it will blow up and then burn out for many people who use it and abuse it. No one can keep hunting constantly. I am sure you are not like this, but perhaps you know people like Stacey that are scared of the online world for this reason, maybe you could help them to see it in a different way.

and… perhaps this week, think about this and ask yourself – am I hunting? or am I being a friend?

warm regards
Penny Power
Founder of Ecademy and Ecademy Digital School
Learning, Networking and Business Development in the Digital Age

Follow @pennypower

Over the last 12 years of building a network I have found that I have increased my awareness, increased by connections, increased my learning, increased my global listening, increased my happiness, but I have decreased my possessions, my material property and my dependence on physical assets for security. I am now a Digital Thinker and a Digital Business with Digital Assets.

It is not easy being part of a shift, some of us can move with it and follow leaders that we trust, some of us fight it, and some of us are part of it, choosing to embed the change in our lives, embracing it and seeing its merits.

I have been reading more and more conversations around the subject of a ‘cult of less‘. The concept and reality of the new world where we can hold our possessions in the digital world and not seek the same material comforts that bind us to physical places and possessions.

As a business person I have very little paperwork around me. I hold my knowledge in the form of Blogs, Video’s and my network and I can move around the world with all my contacts held inside Ecademy, Twitter and Google.

From a leisure point of view, what do I value? My photo’s are now held electronically, so are my memories in my online diary. Do I really need a TV? I certainly don’t need a record player or library of LP’s! When we see our children go to University now, they can take their possessions in a single bag. Complete with their ipod and BlackBerry/iphone they are ‘complete’, apart from some clothes, but even those have become mineralized, clothes are not critical for self esteem in the same way that fashion has dictated someone’s belonging in the past.

Houses, are they an asset now? Do they really offer the security that they did in the past. Of course they do, if you own them, but not if they are tied to mortgages and give a monthly stress to the ‘owner’. The growth in renting is unprecedented. A liberating way to live if you have been controlled by a mortgage in the past and the fear of ‘losing’ your ‘home’, renting provides the opportunity to ‘outsource’ your property management and stress!

In 2007 Thomas and I chose to sell our family home and rent. We decided that our money would be best utilized in a different way. To adjust the family to this we went to California for 5 weeks and rented an RV (Recreation Vehicle). This was a stunning experience. As we traveled around, visiting over 20 locations, living in RV parks, we met ‘Nomadic Internet Business’ people who had decided to move around America and visit clients, run event and even educate their children on the move. They appeared to have such a sense of adventure and freedom. As a family we learned great things living like this for 5 weeks. In fact, I remember on the day we were coming home, I woke up at 4.30am, went down to the grass square in the middle of the park, sat on a long swing that was tethered to a high branch of a tree and wept. I had missed my parents, siblings and friends, but I was terrified of returning to the world of feeling trapped in a struggle to ‘survive’ rather than live. When we returned home we took with us our learning and to this day we remain more free in our minds and lives.

I guess I am writing this to give hope, I sense small businesses everywhere trying to live a life that they held dear for so many years but fighting to achieve that life in a world that is in a massive shift. This shift is not one that we can fight. We need to evolve, listen, adapt, understand our own values and think about the world we want not the world we have necessarily created. Home is always important. Your ‘spiritual home’. a place where you can relax and be yourself with people you love. Home, Sunday lunches, relaxing with family, these are my most treasured moments, but perhaps the expectation of owning and controlling your home is not realistic and not always the route to happiness.

Letting go is tough, but in letting go of some of the things that trap you can actually liberate you. I suggest you think about this ‘cult of less’. Perhaps it is just the return of the 1960′s and ‘free love’, VW Vans and the desire to escape, or maybe we are in a more fundamental change. The Digital Age and the birth of the Digital Nomad.

I write this as part of my series of Blogs about having a Digital Mindset. A Digital Mindset is ‘Open, Random and Supportive’ and shifts thinking from transactional to supportive behaviour, giving us all a new perspective on living and business.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this chage on the life that you feel is changing around you.

Warm regards
Penny Power
+447771 543478
Founder-Ecademy
Supporting Business People

When I took on my first leadership role, my team were there with me.  I looked them in the eye everyday and we got to know each other (regularly) in the pub!  It was a work hard, play hard environment and we were in each other’s pockets.  If only life was as simple now.

Increasingly teams are remote – if not all of the team, at least some of them.  So leading effectively from a distance is critical to business success.  But leading remotely often takes a greater level of skill and sophistication than leading the people who we sit with every day.  We have to find ways to engage with them; inspire them and most importantly get results down a telephone and the internet.

When I first had to lead someone down a telephone I used to get frustrated.  Whenever she called I’d roll my eyes as it felt as though this was someone who was taking up my valuable time when in reality I needed to be focusing on delivering results.  It also felt as though she did a disproportionate amount of complaining – and so she became the bane of my life!  When I look back I realise that this was someone who was crying out for the personal touch – something that comes much more naturally when you sit with a person every day.

Some years and a lot more experience later, I now find myself training other people to lead in all sorts of different situations.  As a learning and development specialist I’ve used many of my own leadership experiences to formulate a very personal approach to leadership.  Personal doesn’t mean soft.  It just means focusing on the individual; taking the time to understand what motivates and drives them; and taking the time to find out what their hopes, fears, challenges and successes are – even if it is down the telephone.

I’ve recently been working with a company who have people dotted all around the world.  They face the additional challenge of different cultures and time zones, which means that they must be even more flexible in their approach to leading.  Without exception they all recognised that they tended to ignore the people who were remote, focusing instead on the people who were around them.  And funnily enough it was these remote relationships where most problems were occurring.

In another example, one leader always asked his remote workers to travel to the Head Office where he was based for meetings.  He suddenly realised that by making the effort to go to them sometimes, it would make a strong statement of ‘you are important’.  Sure enough, the relationships have already improved.

There is no substitute for spending time with someone.  However it isn’t always possible as much as we’d like.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t build relationships with people that are based on trust, openness, honesty and respect.  It’s becoming easier and easier to have relationships with people that are based on remote communication.  Facebook, Twitter, blogging – all of these innovations have made the world feel smaller and have opened people’s minds to building relationships over a distance.

But just because people are more accessible, it doesn’t mean that we can take relationships for granted.  It still takes time and care.  And I believe more and more that shared experiences which are emotionally engaging help leaders to lead effectively from a distance.  After all if you’ve faced a real challenge together, you know more about the other person and how they respond under pressure.  So the key to leading through remote communication is to make it less remote and more personal.  Easy it’s not but if you put in the time you’ll reap the rewards….

Ruth Moody is Director of Learning and Development Company Farscape Development.

Most of us have learned our business skills during a transactional period of history. When business was based purely on a trading relationship and the Suspect, Prospect, Customer model worked well in our marketing strategy.

The subtle change we are experiencing in the new Digital World can be very hard to adapt to for this reason. In all my speaking at events and conferences, training courses I have run, workshops I have been privileged to deliver, it is never the technology of the social media world that throws people, it is the new culture and philosophy of attracting Followers.

We have now moved into a world that is social. With this social world comes the expectation that you should actually care about the people you want to transact with. Think about this. Business now needs to be about delivering support and customer care BEFORE you transact, not just after.

The business model for this is extraordinary, we not have to build a cost of supporting our prospects as well as supporting our customers.

You can call this the Freemium model of business:

“Give your service away for free, possibly and supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc., then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.”

I first heard of this explanation through reading Chris Anderson’s Blogs The Long Tail

Online businesses and business people are seeking ‘followers‘. People who have decided that they want to ‘sign-in’ to getting updates from the companies and individuals that inspire them. This is very powerful. a process of ‘turning strangers into friends and friends into customers‘, the brilliant journey that Seth Godin talked about in his book ‘Permission Marketing‘ which I read over ten years ago and loved.

What intrigues me is the way business people are trying to over lap their early knowledge of business and how to achieve sales onto the new models of today’s economy and the tools we now have online. Many mindsets are still transactional and so they broadcast a message as ask people to ‘tell others’ or hope that it will be retweeted across the world. I often get contacted and asked, ‘Penny, can you tell your network about this…” my thoughts always turn to ‘why would they be interested?’.

What is missing in this thought process is that to gain an advocate or a ‘follower’, which is the gold at the end of the rainbow they need to be ‘Known and Liked‘ and then perhaps, and only perhaps, they will ‘follow‘ them’. To be known takes a great deal of visibility and use of Social Media, to be Liked requires you to be engaging and interested in them through conversing within the social networking world.

But why would any one follow your financial dream or desires, as Tony Heywood so brilliantly taught the world ‘it is not about you’. He lost his job at BP for saying the famous words ‘I want my life back‘, making the ultimate error in today’s world of implying that we should care about him. I guess this statement is his legacy to the world, a moment in his life where is highlighted the need for all businesses to care only about others.

To gain followers you have to communicate a vision, a mission, a shared purpose, a dream, a goal. Something that can become a shared effort. You cannot communicate you own personal desire for money or sound remotely transactional in your desires, unless of course you are driven to build wealth for a cause.

Never assume someone should follow you, you gain real followers because you deserve them, not because you asked or you pushed. Once you have those ‘followers’ serve them, care for them and nurture them with your words and deeds, they are your biggest asset and they took time to gain, don’t lose them.

Take a look at yourself and your business and ask one thing “why should anyone else care if my business survives and is successful?” if you can see that people rely on you, your thoughts and your business for their lives to be richer, happier, improved, more fun or inspired then you have created a tremendous asset and that is the asset of ‘followers’.

If you have achieved this then I congratulate you and would like to ‘follow’ you‘.

Warm regards
Penny Power
+447771 543478
Founder-Ecademy
Supporting Business People

Big corporates such as BT, Easyjet and Carphone Warehouse are using software to trawl the web for unhappy customers grumbling about their service online. Critics of this CRM strategy say it’s tantamount to spying, in a recent report in The Daily Mail, a BT spokesman likened the policy ‘to having a conversation in a pub… it’s just a very large pub.’ 

I for one commend the big guys for looking to right what customers perceive as their service wrongs. There’s no such thing as a lone complaint in cyberspace and businesses of any size and sector should take note.

It has never paid to disregard a disgruntled customer – the often bandied word of mouth statistic around customer service considers one upset customer likely to tell seven others.  But think on. In the modern world of social networks the viral effect of a complaint can have an irradiating impact.

In the new media age – a happy customer tells a friend, an unhappy customer tells the world. They don’t just retell their story to immediate family and friends – they Facebook about it, they blog and they tweet. So their complaints are shared amongst their network, and their networks’ network etc etc.

Consider for one moment – the amount of news coverage both online and off generated by a 25 year old bride to be who was so cheesed off with the service she received from a travel firm that she changed her name by deed poll to – Mrs Lorraine Darla I hate Thomas Cook and its associated big shot companies treading on the little guys Leeks.

Or plug in BP to Facebook or Youtube to see the amount of bandwidth  devoted to the criticisms expressed by a diverse and global community of social networkers linked by their disappointment at BP’s handling of  the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

But take heart dear readers – the arrows of your downfall can be weapons in your armoury. By its very nature Twitter is the ultimate customer service tool – its restriction to 140 characters means comments and response must be brief and direct. The nub of the issue is quickly made apparent. All a business needs to do is add speed and authenticity to the delivery of the solution for the customer’s gripe and there’s a good chance that you can turn opponents into brand advocates. If not, at the least you’ll nip the impact of the bad noise they are capable of generating about your business and brand online in the bud.

It’s a lesson, that will see BT continue unrepentant to trawl the net for gripes – for their search and solve policy has not only ensured that they have won The world communications award for customer service, but that in a crowded and competitive telcoms marketplace they’ve gained new customers and kept existing ones. In the virtual pub of cyberspace, the next round’s on them.

Community is one of those words get bandied about too much for the wrong reasons by the wrong people. I twitch when I hear managers talking about “forming communities” or “managing communities”. People behave communally if you are very lucky and have done all the right things. They form communities – not you. By their very nature communities are more influenced than managed – more lead than controlled. You can’t expect to throw in some technology, dragoon some staff and wade in acting like a conventional manager.

The skills required to cajole a group of people into engaging with each other, trusting each other, and beginning to work out together how to behave together are subtle and complex. They are very unfamiliar to those brought up in command and control cultures and won’t be learned over night. The instincts you develop for how to build up trust online can be taught but are difficult to put into practice without time served watching and understanding how online life works.

These challenges are mirrored in the “real” world. As the implicit contract between staff and corporations shifts from a job for life stability, to a look after yourself and build your networks mentality, the way we enlist the willing support of our staff is going to have to change. The web isn’t the cause of this shift, it was happening anyway, but arguably the web is reinforcing the changing behaviours and making their impact wider, faster. The move from “command and control” to “engage and support” is going to happen and learning the skills, and the right words, is going to matter more and more.

Yesterday we saw the diversity of the Blogs on Ecademy which really highlighted the Social Business aspect of this community. I was told by Demos that his social blogging brings him more lead generation that his business blogging (although that is not his only intention), and this comment from Norman Feiner this week shows the fact that some make business contacts in very obscure ways.

From Norman Feiner on his recent social Blog

So I thought we could all help people who have never Blogged to feel comfortable with doing it. It is terrifying for some people, like the first time you speak in public on stage!

So any suggestions for Blog titles and themes for people would be great today…. Throw them out in this blog – could be fun! Plus this would show the randomness of your minds (and hearts) – business and social!

This video clip I made to help people learn to Blog may also help some new people

Warm regards
Penny Power
+447771 543478
Founder-Ecademy
Supporting Business People

Recently I was at a Student Conference and at the end of my talk where I say ‘Friendship is the killer app for business‘, a Student put his hand up and said that he was lonely and isolated despite being friends with hundreds of people on FaceBook.

We, Ecademy, have always stood for depth of friendship. We stand for people going out of their way to help others and notice other people. Friendship is about supporting people and having a relationship that is much more than just a connection – the hype around FaceBook and Twitter needs to calm down so that people see this decade and the technology that we are exposed to as more then just futile conversations.

This article ‘ I’m free of FaceBook and it’s good to talk’

…….are the beginnig of a new rumbling…. Many have been obsessive connectors and forgotten to just be a ‘friend’

What are your thoughts, are you making more friends? Or are you just connecting?

Warm regards
Penny Power
+447771 543478
Founder-Ecademy
Supporting Business People