bizsolutionsplus Featuring Solutions to Grow Your Business

Marketing = Stress

Image by Miles B. via Flickr

Each of us experiences stress; nevertheless, we recognize that some stress is good (i.e., the kind the makes us better at what we do).

However, when stress negatively affects our mental and physical health, that is a bad thing that can lead to disease. In my experience, marketing and communications as profession and as my chosen entrepreneurial business stresses me like no other vocation or advocation from my past (student, construction worker, military service, journalist, teacher, editor, publisher, author, free-lance writer, executive editor, and corporate manager). So what's up with that?

Here are some of the possible reasons that I believe the marketing/communications business equals stress not experienced in many other careers:

• It is personal.
• We are always striving to please others.
• Our creative sides are always on stage and rejection hurts.
• Intangibles make up a portion of our results.
• Other than sales and top-line executives, we are the only corporate professionals (excluding Wall Street) required to deliver ROI as measured in dollars and cents.
• Success is fleeting.
• We are only as good as our most recent production.
• We are seen as a cost center, not a profit center.
• We are expendable.
• Every business knows marketing is necessary but many resent that fact because they don't understand it and it scares them to communicate with their customers and potential customers.
• Because our creativity is visible, we are vulnerable.
• It is assumed that many of us don't understand how to make money.
• We wonder where the next client will come from.
• We are not magicians.

Here are ways that I handle the stress:

• I practice Yoga.
• I take lots of deep breaths.
• I take my wife out of dates to the local tavern, a good restaurant, NYC or Boston, the mountains, and rock concerts.
• We take long weekend drives.
• I have a beer or open a bottle of our favorite wine for dinner.
• I care deeply about my clients. (Law of Reciprocity.)
• I love my work but sometimes need to remind myself.
• I often remind myself that I am among the best at what I do and that those clients I serve benefit from my efforts. (Love thyself.)
• I choose my clients carefully.
• Everyday I do something to find my next client.

So there you go. What's your story? Reactions? Recommendations? Thoughts?

Related articles

• Team Chemistry, Stress, and Success [via Zemanta]
• Author Spotlight: "Chill: Stress Reducing Techniques for a More Balanced Peaceful You' by Deborah Reber [via Zemanta]
• Stress reliever: Peugeot/Citroen adopts new plans to prevent suicide [via Zemanta]

Life Choices Matter

Following a 7-plus year stint in the Air Force, I made a life choice that has affected every minute of every day since. I promised myself to exchange security and retirement for living every day as an adventure. Thirty-five years later, when most of my friends and peers are either retired or soon will be retired, I continue to run a business, labor finding new clients, diligently commit my business to exceeding client's expectations, and reap the consequences of that decision made the day after I left the military.

The results: A lifetime of adventure, a lifetime without financial security, decisions made based on taking chances and wrestling with new opportunities, and a future that does not include retirement. In brief, that decision mapped my life. That journey looked like one charted by a nomad.

• A journalism degree from the University of Florida, where I met my wife of 34 years this August.
• A brief stint as a reporter then a sports writer with the Gainesville Sun.
• Two weeks as a life insurance salesman. (Yuck! Hated it.)
• Substitute Teacher.
• Moved to Wisconsin, completed post-graduate work in Education.
• Moved to Illinois, taught 4th Grade.
• Took work as an assistant editor at Scott Foresman, a text book publisher.
• Moved to Seattle.
• Founded New Horizons Publishers, wrote four travel books, wrote dozens of freelance articles for magazines and newspapers throughout North America.
• Took Executive Editor position overseeing several travel magazines.
• Traveled Europe and spent lots of time in Hawaii for one of the magazines.
• Became Supervisor of Communications at Puget Power.
• Recruited by Starbucks and became Manager Internal Communications.
• Entered Master's program in Theology.
• Founded Lewis Green Communications.
• Recruited as VP Marketing with a Connecticut software business.
• Founded L&G Business Solutions.

And, here I am today, fifth book recently published, running a small marketing/communications firm, still married, still working every day to earn a living, and loving my life, despite the future of no retirement and the struggle all owners and executives face to grow a business.

Did I make the right decision 36 years ago? Who knows? I took the road less traveled, and never looked back or spent much time looking ahead. Instead, I chose to keep my eyes open for new opportunities. And that, my friends, is the story of one entrepreneur who put happiness before profits and people before revenues, and lived a great life.

There are billions of stories measuring and recounting the lives of decisions made early on in our lives. My life's experiences suggest one recommendation: Whatever decisions you make in life, but especially in youth, be prepared to live them to the end of days.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Choosing Between Clinton and Obama

That funny thing was that I wrote the previous post before this one, muddling my mind with questions about "isms."

My previous post was about staying young at heart and mind by aging consciously, realizing we are moving up in years but we can still look ahead with great anticipation to new adventures, new roles and responsibilities, new learnings and new insights, maybe even new careers. I used old and young as metaphors for the way we might act and think, not as things represented by numbers, which when it comes to being young or old in spirit means so very little. Anyway, some took offense and thought the comments bordered on ageism and that my metaphors were loosely constructed. (The latter may be true.)

David Reich and CK contributed some comments (my original post was inspired by one written by CK a day earlier) that made me rethink what motivated the criticism, which I loved by the way because nothing is more thought-provoking than differing opinions on the subject. (It is important to note that David and I are both 60-something and CK's post was trying to get us to think differently about what old means. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, thinking in new ways is the most important task we can take on both in business and in our personal lives.)

Anyhow, some months back I was accused of being sexist because of a post I wrote to discuss a list of women-only bloggers. I didn't get it, as I am anything but. Nevertheless, after much sharing back and forth between my accusers and I, we understood each other much better, Now the ageist word appears here. Wow! That really makes me think, "What in the world is going on to raise the 'ism' issues?" I think I know. And I owe the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine a thank you for an assist on this thinking.

Two days ago, Sunday, February 3, the Globe ran a story about the disconnect between young women supporting Obama and older women supporting Clinton. The disconnect between the two groups of women is generational, not political: Younger women don't see sexism as the sort of thing likely to prevent them from being who they want to be and that a woman will become President and it doesn't have to be now; older women remember the women's rights struggle well and believe Clinton is entitled to be President because she is a woman and the time is now.

Yep. That's me. The second one. I get the older women better than the younger ones, and continue to see the world through my experiences--civil rights, assassinations of two Kennedy's and King, Vietnam, Women's Rights, and so on. Therefore, when I react against a woman's only group or list, I do so as if it is still the '70s. Except it isn't. Times are different. And it is time for us to think differently. We need to think about those generational differences and not be so quick to judge other's motivation when they see things differently. Instead let's listen, engage in conversation and try to learn where each other is coming from. And can we please, please do that before we toss an "ism" at someone?

Here is my plan to learn about the world being changed by those younger in age than I, but not in spirit. I pledge to hang with anyone under the age of 45 who will let me. In other words, if I refuse to become better acquainted with the generations following, who are about to take their rightful place of leadership, I am thinking old. But if I open my heart and my mind to my younger brothers and sisters, I will learn what their world looks like, and that is a good thing. In return, maybe they will learn what my world looked like. That's a good thing, too.

Let go of what was, and grab onto what is. But don't forget the past; just don't live in it. A good business rule and a good personal one.

Do You Fear Getting Older?

Yesterday, while standing in line to self-check my groceries, an older man seemed perplexed by the process. I offered to help, and his excited response was: "I have done this a 1,000 times: Just take it easy."

His anger surprised me, and I thought about it much of the afternoon. I concluded that he wasn't angry, he was frustrated that something so simple seemed so hard and that others could see his internal struggle. That made me think about aging. In point of fact, the gentleman at the grocery store wasn't much older than I, chronologically. But he was frightened beyond belief by aging. And that brings me to Sunday morning, where I stopped by CK's Blog to read, You're too young to be (acting) so old. Her primary point in her words is, "I don't have the time to learn anything new," actually equates to "I'm OK getting old."

Now the fellow in the grocery store was willing to learn something new but it frightened him. I suspect that also is the primary motive preventing some of CK's friends from learning something new. They fear the process and/or question their capability to continue to experience personal growth through learning new things. While I sympathize, I wonder aloud if that fear isn't more about aging and dying than it is about learning.

I recently took on a new client to help him grow his personal brand. He is a psychologist moving into a relatively new specialty called "Conscious Aging." What is that, you ask? Let me explain by sharing his words with you from an unpublished article about a day in his life:

"Something died that day, but something else was born, something that could only have happened by my letting go of what had been and surrendering to the new. I had transitioned from a front line player in the thick of the action into a new role, one that my advancing years was thrusting upon me. I was becoming an elder, a background supporter of the next generation, mentoring and celebrating their achievements, much as my elders had done for me. Sad for the loss of what had been but joyful also.  My new role was no less important. Just different."

"Something died that day, but something else was born." Many of us are reborn throughout our lives;  others not so much. Those of us who welcome change and rebirth likely fear little about the aging process. Those who grasp constancy and security may be in for a rough ride as they enter their later decades. I want to share this bit of experiential wisdom with you. Perhaps it will help.

Old has little to do with chronology. In college, many of my peers seemed old beyond their years, as they clung to what they knew and seldom ventured beyond the green grass in their own front yards. No matter your generation, you know who they are. In everything they do, they measure the results before doing it. They often weren't happy inside by their own admission but believed stubbornly that they were doing the right things. It was likely they would become successful in their chosen careers but reach a point where their lack of happiness became evident even to them and then they might feel nothing could be done to change the fear that gripped them from within. Wrong! It is never too late to grasp happiness. But first you must let go of what had been and see the possibilities of what can be.

Fearing aging or death is a crippling disease. And although we can do nothing about our eventual deaths, we can let go of the fear, engage life and others, and go after happiness by reaching out to strengthen old relationships, building new ones, and learning things that always fascinated us but we never did because we were too busy growing careers and making money.

We could have done both, if we had allowed our hearts to influence our logical sides. Happiness and success do not need be contradictory. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Go for it! Whether you are 20 years old, 40 years old or 60 years old, time is your friend, not your enemy.

Become an entrepreneur. Launch a new business strategy. Make a bold and innovated business move. Take your kids or your grandkids on a great adventure. Write a book. Travel to far-away places. Love your family and friends to the extreme. Grab onto life and don't let go until it lets go of you.

Get Unstuck, Now!

After 33 years of marriage, one would think that I would get used to my wife's morning ritual. Soon  after she awakes and puts on her socks and some intimate apparel, her face goes blank, she leans forward slightly and stares at her knees. This can go on for several minutes.

At some point, my curiosity comes calling, and I interrupt her stupor with, "Are you stuck?"

"Yes," she replies, as that is what we've come to call this momentary escape from consciousness.

Recently, I've noticed that she is not alone. Look into the eyes of someone passing you on the sidewalk or sitting in a nearby cubicle. What do you see? Darkness? Emptiness? A deep pool of nothingness? More often than not, I see my fellow humans walking in a daze; sitting in a cubicle wishing they were somewhere else; staring at their keyboard, trying to write the first word; walking along, surrounded by thousands but completely unaware; washing their dreams away with music plugged into their ears; doing nothing but marching to the steady beat of dullsville.

How can that be? How can we not see the spirit within those around us? How can we not want to arouse that spirit, smile at each other and say, "Hey, great day, isn't it?" Hear the birds, see the clouds, look at the towering creations of WoMan. What gives?

Whatever it is, get over it! We owe it to ourselves and to each other to love the moment. Forget yesterday, it's gone. Don't worry about tomorrow--it, too, will soon be gone. Appreciate your life and the lives of those around you. Get to know someone new today. Join a book club. My God, read a book. Do something to make a difference in someone's life. And stop making everything so complex. Live simply, speak simply, write simply, love simply, create simply, work simply. Just enjoy the moment simply because it is now. Get unplugged and instead get plugged into life.

Create happiness and everyone and everything benefits. Life is too precious to get stuck.

Love Yourself, Love Others, Love Earth: Use Social Media to do Good

It seems that every day I read a question asking about the value of social media, from ROI, to building relationships, to changing the world. None of us have the answer, and it is too soon to tell where this packet of media tools will lead us. But there is at least one thing we can use the packet for, and that is to do good. The following is a from a Catholic book of Constitutions:

"For Catholics, public virtue is as important as private virtue in building the common good. In the  Catholic tradition, responsible citizenship is a virtue, participation in the political process is a moral obligation. Every believer is called to faithful citizenship, to become an informed, active and responsible participant in the political process…Every voice matters in the public forum. Every vote counts. Every act of responsible citizenship is an exercise of significant power."

I share this because I am Catholic in my religion. But I am universal in my faith and in respecting whatever spirituality you practice. Here is the key message, the important takeaway:

Every vote counts. Every act of responsible citizenship is an exercise of significant power.

Change vote to voice, apply it to social media, and watch goodness, understanding, sharing and love expand exponentially.

Evil Lurks Nearby and Poised to Strike

Once again, evil-doers are using the Internet to take advantage of American's hearts, using California fire  victims as their ploy to rip you off.

According to CNN.com today, the "Internal Revenue Service is warning Americans about an e-mail scam that claims to be from the tax agency and asks for donations for wildfire victims. Anyone who clicks on the donation link is taken to a fake Web site that asks for the person's bank account numbers."

This is disturbing and I pray the perpetrators of this scam are caught, found guilty and sent to prison. It hurts all of us who use the Internet for personal or business reasons, as these scams make us more and more likely to distrust what we receive and what we read online. It is particularly harmful to legitimate nonprofits who use Internet for fundraising to help those who need it most.

Please share the scam news with those in your circle of contacts. And if you learn about scams, please share that with us. Of course, if you discover the names of scammers, turn the @##@@##@ in.

How Do You Measure Success?

Maybe Twitter does offer value. It is my muse for this post, and that's value to me and I hope for you.

Geoff Livingston just asked the following: "How do you know when you are a social media success?" My   answer: "This might sound trite: But I measure success by my own happiness. I measure clients social media success by business growth." And that's the truth, whether or not the topic is social media or anything else.

To understand what I mean, you must understand my definition of happiness. This from the Introduction of my newest book, Lead With Your Heart, Sell Happiness and You and Your Business Will Flourish.

"This book is about such change. It is about creating an environment where business leaders lead with the heart, take a hard look at their values, implement and live by those values, and then build value-driven businesses in which people are more important than overzealousness to earn money. In this book, we talk about creating happiness, and by doing so, we change the world in good and right ways. Defining happiness is not an easy task.

"This book is dedicated to painting a picture of what happiness looks like from a business perspective. Briefly, when I define happiness, I am talking about meeting and exceeding people’s wants, needs and desires by creating great experiences for employees, customers, and citizens that our businesses touch. I am talking about putting the “who”—people—first, not the “what—profits. And by doing so, we will create happiness, we will contribute to better living and we will create and deliver products and services that people want and need at prices that deliver value.

"I often wonder why American businesses don’t spend more time strategizing around happiness. It is true that many companies are customer-focused and invest lots of energy in meeting customer needs. Responding to those needs should result in happy customers, happy employees, and a healthy bottom line. Unfortunately, the efforts being made by too many businesses to create happy and loyal customers fall far short of what is necessary. We explore why that is throughout this book."

How do you measure success? In life? In business? In those you touch?

P.S. Lead With Your Heart, Sell Happiness and You and Your Business Will Flourish may be available as soon as next week. It has been printed and we await only the specific availability date at my publisher and Amazon.com. As soon as it is available, I will let you know. Review copies are available now. Contact me if you want to review the book.

Hurt People, Hurt People

In the past week I have been privileged to hear Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint discuss their new book , Come on, People! You can decide for yourself whether or not to read the book: This is not a book review. Instead it is my personal plea to each of you to make one of your life goals the changing of America. My inspiration for this plea comes from Cosby and Poussaint.

As many of you know, I am a firm believer in personal responsibility. However, to be personally responsible someone needs to teach us how and why. That job once was the first responsibility of parenting. When that responsibility was expected and encouraged by our culture we were a different country; we were a place where parents received lots of help from extended family and neighbors. Today, with so few people at home during the day, teaching values and personal responsibility seems to have fallen into the hands of our schools. I don't believe that schools either have the time or the skills to be parents who teach children values, ethics, manners, responsibility and the differences between right and wrong.

In the interviews with Cosby and Poussaint, Cosby borrows and repeats the phrase, "Hurt people, hurt people." And they do. When children suffer rejection, when they are ignored, when they must raise themselves, when they are hungry and when they live in fear, they become hurt people. And they most often grow up to hurt others. In a society where 70 percent of black women have children out of wedlock, where 50 percent of black men drop out of school, where music honors violence and sexism, and where schools are no longer safe havens for learning, America has a problem. And it is not exclusive to Blacks. They just happened to get a head start in our declining culture, partly due to racism, partly due to the breakdown of the church, partly due to poverty but mostly due to a break with their past, when Martin Luther King had a stronger voice among the community than does 50 cent today. At a time when education was revered as the way out. When hope trumped all else.

We are losing a generation, perhaps two. And the hurt is spreading across all cultures, races and ethnicities, affecting both boys and girls. The hurt must stop and everyone of us must be held responsible and accountable for stopping it. The best first step is to be involved in our schools, our communities and our neighborhoods. We who have the most must share with those who have the least. And our more precious possessions lie in role modeling and parenting, whether or not we are a Mom or a Dad. We need to be involved, we need to teach, we need to model acceptable behavior and we need to take personal responsibility for our culture.

We need to stop the hurt. To quote Mahatma Gandhi, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."

What to do on the Bad Days: Get Over It!

We are entrepreneurs, business managers and leaders, consultants, marketers, sales people and those  interested in learning about marketing, including social media. We are not super-people, which means we have bad days when the prospect of getting out of bed seems a horrible idea. However, we owe it to our customers, our clients, our employees and ourselves to get out of bed, to put on a happy face, and to get out there and deliver the goods. The questions is "How?"

You might have guessed that I began today by having one of those days. Hence, I faced that very question, and my answers to the challenge are coming as I write this, and writing is the primary way I solve most of my inertia issues and get on with the work of running a business and wearing a smile. Inertia is a serious problem in the business world, as on any given day it crops up in every business, risking productivity levels and sales. So, here is how I overcome inertia, and am now working hard to complete today's tasks in ways that will produce results.

1. I get out of bed, shower, shav and exercis. Obviously, this has to happen. I find the best way to make it happen when faced by inertia is to scream at the top of my inner voice: "You have no other choice. Get out of bed and get to work!" Your inner voice might say something else, but if it's saying don't worry about it, you need a new inner voice.
2. I ate a good breakfast, fed and petted the cat, chatted with my live-in mother-in-law, made a huge cup of coffee and went to work. In other words, I followed the routine of an otherwise good day.
3. I arrived at work on time. Grouchy, but on time. For about an hour, I isolated myself with e-mail and my daily newspaper and online headlines.
4. Then, knowing only one thing would get me out of this dark mood, I wrote a post that isn't due until Monday. I know it will need editing, as my writing slips some on these bad days. But I will tackle that tomorrow. For now, I can feel good about being ahead of schedule on my task list, even if it is but one article. I'm feeling better.
5. So much better in fact, that I contact two potential clients that have been dragging their feet pulling the "let's do it" handle. Both need me, both want to use my firm, and both will eventually sign a contract with us. But the sales cycle is dragging on. So I climbed onto the back of the bull and stayed on. Wow! It's not even 10 a.m., and I have already made sales calls. Now I'm really feeling good.
6. I am writing this post; the final step in exorcising the demons. Look out! Here comes that smile. Before I know it, happy Lew replaces morose Lew.

I share all this with you not only to get my mind and heart in shape for the day's challenges but because every year inertia costs businesses billions of dollars in lost productivity, sick pay, workplace conflicts, work errors, and lost sales. Yet I have never seen a business conduct training or offer its employees help to overcome what everyone of us is sure to face on any given day. Shouldn't this be an issue that needs a solution? Shouldn't all of us discover a process to overcome inertia? Don't we owe it to ourselves and all those we touch? And, finally, what do you do to resolve this issue in your workplace?