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Be a Success Faster

Written on November 3, 2011 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Relationships

Bigg success is life on your own terms. There are five elements of bigg success – money, time, growth, work and play.

The BIGG idea behind BIGG success is to create synergy so we reach bigg success faster. We do that by finding ways to get the five elements working together rather than against each other.

One way we do that is by building trust. Today, we’ll discuss four ways to build this critical element for BIGG success.

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Your interests = my interests

It begins with an attitude – placing the interests of another person equal to your own. This equal consideration of interests allows the two of you to search for win/win alternatives.

You won’t accept losing so the other person will gain. At least you shouldn’t. To create synergy, you also shouldn’t accept winning at the expense of the other person either.

This attitude forms the foundation of trust in any relationship. Now we can start bringing the attitude to life.

What you see is what you get

To build trust, you must practice authenticity and transparency. Be your true self because you can’t fool most of the people most of the time.

Who wants to fool people anyway? That’s not a BIGG goal-getter mindset! Always align your actions with your attitudes.

Transparency means putting your vision and your values out there. If the other person does the same, you are more likely to reach the solution that works best for both of you in the shortest amount of time.

Anything short of this leads to disappointing results for at least one of you. When you’re operating with an equal consideration of interests, that means it doesn’t work for either of you.

Easier said than done

Say what you’ll do and then do what you say. This old saying packs some punch when it comes to building trust.

If you say it, you better do it.
Write it down.
Put it in your billfold or purse.
Stick it on your mirror.
Stamp it on your forehead!

Do whatever it takes to do what you say you will do.

Otherwise, shut up!
Don’t say it at all.

You may have good intentions, but good intentions without the actions to support them tear down trust.

Follow-through, follow-through, follow-through.
It’s easy to say, but not always easy to do. But it’s one of the secrets to building trust.

Building takes time, imploding doesn’t

Picture the construction of a skyscraper. It takes a lot of time to build floor after floor until the building is ready for occupants.

Now picture blowing up a tall building. You’ve probably seen the implosion as layer after layer falls one on top of the other.

It may take several years to build a skyscraper. It takes seconds to tear it down. If you’re not careful, it may even damage buildings around it.

That’s how trust works. You built it by doing a lot of little things right over a long period of time. It can be destroyed by a single silly act which may spread to relationships with other people.

Trust is one of the most precious assets you can have. Once you’ve built it, be sure to maintain it.

Trust leads to BIGG success faster

So what does trust have to do with synergy? You can capitalize on your strengths because you trust the person who fills in the gap created by your weaknesses.

Trust leads to accomplishing more with your work. All of these things, working together, may lead to more time and money for play.

We have a business that’s built on strategic alliances. We have a great deal of trust in, and with, our partners.

As we’ve responded to the current economic situation, we’ve been able to adapt quickly because of the trust that exists between us.

We’ve arrived at solutions that are much better than we could have found on our own. Trust creates synergy which leads to BIGG success faster!

How do you build trust?

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Tags: audioblog, authenticity, bigg success, critical element, five elements, george krueger, mary-lynn foster, podcast, synergy, the bigg success show, trust

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Are Twitter Retweets Authentic? Which Content is King?

Written on March 29, 2011 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Networking

Warning:
The names in this post have been omitted to protect the guilty (i.e. we didn’t see any value in revealing the people who inspired it).

Disclosures:
(1) We are not without blemish. However, we strive to live up to the ideals expressed here. (2) We love Twitter, the sharing that occurs and the great people we follow.

Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's topic on The BIGG Success Show! Click the player to listen to the podcast [7:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We recently saw a tweet and a series of retweets that made us question Twitter’s value. The tweet was about social media and small business so it grabbed our attention.

It was retweeted a number of times in a very short period of time. In fact, this tweet soon got retweeted enough to be designated a “Top Tweet”.

There was just one problem – the link didn’t work.

Are retweets recommendations?
We often hear about the importance of authenticity. Heck, we talk about it ourselves. So here’s a question …

If authenticity matters, aren’t retweets recommendations? Aren’t our names, our reputations and our goodwill attached to every retweet?

Is it authentic to recommend a post you haven’t read, a podcast you haven’t listened to or a video you haven’t seen?

Admittedly, we don’t know what actually happened to garner the retweets mentioned above.

People may have copied the url in the original tweet.
Once at the site, they may have watched the 37 second video.
And then, they retweeted it.

However, there were 3 retweets within a minute of the original tweet. Maybe we’re just slower than most…

Which content is king?
It raises a question, though. What are retweets based on – the information in the Twitter stream or the quality of the piece to which they refer?

If content is king, which content is it – the keyword-rich headline in Twitter or the underlying post? Should people spend time trying to craft a meaningful post, a quality show or video? Maybe not … maybe there’s a better way… (we say sarcastically)

Is the underlying content even needed?
If the underlying content doesn’t matter, why not just focus on just writing great tweets?

We don’t even need websites.
We don’t need to write blog posts.
There’s no need to make videos.
We can stop doing our podcast.

Think of all the time we could all save. And we can take that same time, effort and energy and just spend it on Twitter.

We can tweet and retweet to our heart’s delight. It doesn’t matter that there is nothing behind it all.

Is the conversation about nothing?
When we have conversations with real world entrepreneurs who are trying to get social media, they often say, “I don’t care what you had for lunch. It’s conversation about nothing.”

We tell them social media is more than that. But is it?

If the quality of the content underlying the tweet hasn’t been reviewed, how can it be recommended? Is it of any greater quality than a conversation about lunch? If we follow the logic, isn’t the conversation about nothing?

Isn’t this how we create value?
If we want to have conversations that add value, don’t we have to consume the underlying content?

Don’t we owe it to this great platform we call Twitter?

Don’t we owe it to our profession as bloggers and podcasters and new media creators?

Aren’t we obligated to our followers to actually filter the content we retweet? Isn’t this how the truly great content rises to the top?

The value lost in retweets about nothing
Shouldn’t we highlight the newbies of our trade who are doing great work? We can’t if our streams are cluttered with retweets about nothing.

Shouldn’t we give notice to the overlooked people in our profession putting out quality content? We can’t if we’re busy retweeting about nothing.

Shouldn’t we continue promoting the A-listers who don’t rest on their laurels? It’s hard to do if we constantly retweet about nothing.

The correlation between value and success
We realize we’re taking a risk with this post. We may piss some people off. We may lose some tweets or retweets. So be it.

We plan to continue putting time, money, effort and energy into creating content. We hope it makes an impact on your life and business. We hope you find it worthy of a tweet or a retweet.

We plan to follow others who do the same. We plan to tweet and retweet them so their great work gets the attention it deserves.

We still believe authenticity really does matter. We still believe in the power of quality content. We still believe that BIGG success is directly correlated with the value you create for other people.

That’s what we think … how about you?

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