What is holding you back? Are you afraid of what people will think of you? I bet you have skills, knowledge, experience or time that you could share with others, that you could offer to people to help them, but something is holding you back. For most people the first stumbling block is fear of putting yourself "out there". Feeling exposed and vulnerable. The fact is though that most people would LOVE for you to help them! If you have a problem and you know someone has a solution, … [Read more...]

What is so natural to you that it is like breathing? What aspect of yourself, which behavior, skill, activity, talent, is so part of you that you could not imagine yourself without it? Answer this question and you could make yourself so much happier and successful, ignore it and you could be making yourself and those around you miserable. This is something I have been pondering since my recent trip to SOBCon. Something strange happens when Terry Starbucker and I get together. It seems we … [Read more...]

[flv:http://chrisg.com/video/perfection.flv 480 292] I love to get feedback in everything I do and I do get a lot of feedback. People tell me when my spelling is off, my grammar is wrong, if my pictures are bad, when my layout breaks in their browser, or if for some bizarre reason they disagree with me! Sometimes people are even kind enough to be polite and offer suggestions for how to fix things, rather than just tell me all the bad things I am and where I can shove my blog. Fear of … [Read more...]

Benefiting from social media network effects requires you to be vigelant about who you are connecting with. Benefits of Growing Your Social Media Network In general the more contacts you have, the more you will benefit from social media, or any network for that matter: More opportunities Greater access to expertise, information, news Frequent, valuable feedback Accelerated growth through viral effects Lower cost and better quality attention There can be downsides of course, … [Read more...]

Reciprocation is often talked about in terms of what you can get out of it. You might be forgiven for thinking of it purely as a tactic to get other people to do what you want them to do. But, as common sense would tell you, that is not the whole story, in fact it is just a simple human trait of "give and take". I do something for you, you do something for me. Simple, but often abused. If you want a good reputation, you need to be a generous "giver" and not a "taker". Reciprocation needs … [Read more...]

You might have seen, if you are visiting my site and not reading in email or feed, that I have one of those pop-over email sign up forms appearing right now. Yes, it's because of Darren. Blame him, heh. Thing is, I don't actually like these pop-overs much. While I think the way I am doing it with only showing it once per person is not as bad as every visit, I still believe people have popup blockers for a reason, and that reason is people don't like popups, no matter what the technology … [Read more...]

In a previous post I wrote about constraints and I promised in the comment area I would return to the concept. When looking to write about it I realized there were both internal and external constraints in business that I would need to address. In this article I will talk about the constraints that begin with us, often the biggest constraints of all. The Buck Stops With You It's easy to blame external factors when we are our own biggest enemy most of the time. We need to fix ourselves … [Read more...]

What do you think about Social Media and all the buzz around these services? Last night I was on a Six Apart telephone conference with Andy Wibbels and Darren Rowse and the topic of how much time and effort social media takes up was raised. Andy made the good point that the people who discuss social media most are the people who need to, people like me who make our living being on top of these things so we can advise others. If you follow all the advice on blogs and forums, took part in … [Read more...]

As I have written before, we are now heading into the blogging summer slump time when the intertubes slow down, people go on vacation, some businesses put off projects, readers spend more time outside and not so much in front of the computer. Of course the first thing most of us think of when things slow down is to take the opportunity for a rest. We all need a break, in fact I just got back from vacation (did you miss me? :) ), but there is also an opportunity here to give your goal progress … [Read more...]

There are two things you need to know about me. One is I am quite good at getting people unstuck with their online marketing or blogging problems. It's one of the ways I make a living. The other is I am no different from any other and need a kick in the butt once in a while myself. For me my problem is "analysis paralysis". Recently Tom and Sheila from Centell had me do a behavior questionnaire. When they analyzed me they pretty much came to the same conclusion. If you know what holds you … [Read more...]