So earlier this year I posted some New Years BLOG resolutions.

G0al: Increase frequency of publishing here on the blog as I had only posted five times in eight months after setting up the blog and getting the design how I wanted it.  

Response: In the three months following that post I published as many articles as I did in the previous nine months so I was happy with the increased frequency of posts.  While I was happy with the increased publishing pace I always think that I can do better and so, starting May 10th, I have increased my publishing frequency to three times a week. For me, that is tough but I am really enjoying the process and I hope you are finding value from the posts.

I thought I would take this time to share with everyone some other New Years Resolutions I had as well, along with my progress towards those goals.

1. Goal 1 – Lose 50 pounds – While this looks like a huge goal I am a big guy While I could benchpress 300 lbs just over a year ago I wanted to focus on shrinking my waistline and increasing my overall cardiovascular system.  I am fortunate that I don’t have any diabetes issues (runs in the family) or high blood pressure (very normal). Through May 9th I had dropped 13 pounds without much effort.  All of the results were due to small diet changes I had made (primarily cutting back on starchy carbs and overeating).  Since May 9th I REALLY kicked the workouts into high gear and I am happy to say I’ve dropped another 13 pounds, putting me on track to accomplish this goal in 2011
2. Goal 2 – Continuous Learning – This has never been a problem for me. The biggest element has been the type of learning I end up accomplishing.  Through Success Magazine Book Summaries I get 3 book reviews per month or 36 per year.  Through Executive Book Summaries I get mp3 book summaries and more book reviews via pdf.  All in all I don’t see any issue going on here.  I wish I could read more FULL BOOKS each year but due to time constraints, I find this is the best method for me.
3. Goal 3 – More Personal Travel - Vegas Booked, Skiing planned for Spring next year (Beaver Creek) and trying to nail down a vacation for my 2nd year anniversary later this year.  This doesn’t count the normal “family” trips we do such as San Antonio in March, Port Aransas Texas for Memorial Day (coastal trip) and a trip to North Carolina we’ll make for the holidays.

To Your Business Success in 2011 and Beyond,

Dan  Ross

As always, I am reading the papers, watching CNBC and trying to get a pulse on the economic recovery going on since the financial crisis late in 2008.

1. Small businesses are slowly but surely recovering.
2. Large corporations are exporting their way back to growth since the U.S. Dollar is cheaper than one or two years ago.  This makes their products cheaper to buy for foreign buyers.  As a result, we see the S&P500 index rebounding to levels approaching late 2008 (1340 as of May 6th, 2011 – Was 1300 in August 2008).
3. Banks have been rebuilding their balance sheets but continue to take charges or write down assets related to the mortgage mess and some are still taking hits from the credit crisis.  Some banks haven’t repaid their TARP money!  I heard that SunTrust and Regions bank, two large regional banks, still haven’t paid back their TARP money as they continue to try and rebuild their balance sheets while writing down mortgage related losses (they were apparently heavily exposed to lot deals, commercial real estate and the mortgage crisis).
4. Inflation has taken hold.  We can see it in our grocery bills and will soon see it in the prices of other products as companies begin to price in commodity price increases they have absorbed up until now.  They now have to pass these costs onto consumers or risk declining margins.

So, given the above pessimism (not doom and gloom like late 2008) I thought it was important to post the below video that Darren Hardy of Success Magazine produced back in early 2009.

Why Now? from SUCCESS magazine on Vimeo.

As Darren pointed out in the video some of the greatest companies of our time were born during recessions or depressions:

• Hyatt Corp., Sports Illustrated – recession of 1950s.
• Microsoft–recession of 1970s.
• CNN, MTV – recession of 1980s.
• 16 of 30 Dow Companies – started in recession or depression - Procter & Gamble, Disney, Alcoa, McDonald’s, General Electric and Johnson & Johnson are examples cited.
• To make this point resonate a bit more, lets share some RECENT success stories. I am talking about companies we see today that didn’t exist in the last 10 years like Google, YouTube, and Facebook that were all developed during the last recession.
• Think about how many social networks have really been born and thrived during the whole “social media” and IOS / Android growth in recent years.

Key Point: When we see the media/news each day we have to remember that others have thrived during this most recent economic downturn and so can you and your business. Our success story can happen in 2011 and beyond.  All we have to do is keep on taking progressive steps towards our goals and dreams each day. We can’t let anything stop us.  We most overcome any adversity along the way while maintaining a focus on seeking answers / solutions to our customer’s problems and needs.

Failure to accomplish our dreams is NOT an option.

To your business success in 2011 and beyond,

Dan Ross

In the last year I’ve really discovered that Twitter is my primary publishing platform via bit-sized comments, quotes, links to articles, etc.  The reason for this stems from my career and the time constraints that it places on information discovery and free time for writing.  Additionally, I think I’ve been too focused on creating “remarkable” blog posts rather than “swinging for a few singles” so to speak.  I am dedicated to resolving this blog conundrum in 2011 since I am roughly 50 days into the year 2011 and my publishing on the blog has been languishing.

Here are a few of my observations on Twitter I’ve come to in the last few months.

1. Twitter is great for sharing but not for publishing. Thoughts, articles, links, etc will fly by and 90% of my followers (or your followers with your tweets) may never notice each tweet since they likely aren’t online at the same time.  Information flies by quickly on Twitter and can become obsolete / yesterday’s news in 10 minutes  It is the difference between live television (Twitter) vs. having a DVR (blog).  Blogs live on and can be read later.  Tweets are rarely read later by many later on (especially more than 2-3 days after publishing).
2. Twitter is great for listening to customers via push notifications (mentions/questions/comments to @BetterBizIdeas that I can respond to quickly).  FYI, if you have an Iphone the BoxCar application is great for getting notifications across a wide array of social networks.
3. Twitter is amazing for networking with like-minded people, discussing events, etc
4. I find that overall responsiveness on Twitter (via my click through rate stats on Bit.ly) declined in 2010 vs 2009.  I don’t think that the value I linked out declined but I do think that the overall amount of noise on Twitter increased exponentially in 2010.

Given the above observations / opinions I am focused on creating a regular blog posting schedule here in 2011.  Publishing won’t happen without trying to add value to you but the content shared will be across various mediums (audio posts, screencasts, weekly recaps of Twitter Posts (interesting discoveries).  So what can readers expect?

Have you set any goals for your SMB’s blog in 2011?  How are you coming along with them?  If so let me know below!

To Your Business Success in 2011!

Dan Ross

I came across this quote recently by Warren Spahn, a former MLB player (pitcher).

Twenty games is the magic figure for pitchers – .300 is the magic figures for batters. It pays off in salary and reputation – Warren Spahn

Twenty wins by a pitcher is a phenomenal season, not an average season.  Today pitchers start less than in prior years but those are very good seasons.   Hitting .300 (hitting the ball three out of ten times and getting on base) over the course of a career would get a batter into the Hall of Fame and, based on Warren’s comment, presumably quite rich.

Lets translate the above quote into business:

(1) The comments above are RESULTS-ORIENTED.  He isn’t saying “throwing 2000 pitches” or “swinging at 2000 pitches.”  He is commenting on the END RESULT, the end outcome that teams care about.

(2) The team owners know that winning games or hitting enough baseballs will, over time, help them attain division titles and championships.  Team owners want championships and pay the salaries of the players.

(3)  Great results are what matter in this case, not average results.  Most importantly, the “great” results have to be in the eye of the person who is paying for the service.

I thought about this the other day when I was re-reading a short parable called Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles.  While reading the book I had some thoughts of previous videos / books read pop into my head.

• Below is a video I watched about a year ago where Seth Godin talked about being remarkable. In his book, Purple Cow, Seth describes how a product or service being “remarkable” makes it worth talking about, worth paying attention to. Boring stuff quickly becomes invisible in today’s age, where consumers are inundated with marketers trying to get their attention. You have to be remarkable to stand out from the crowd. With social media being “word-of-mouth marketing on steroids,” as a few marketers have claimed, it REALLY makes sense to have a remarkable business, service, product, brand image (product or personally / professionally).

• I recall similar comments made by John Maxwell in “Put Your Dream To The Test” where John commented, “No one cares about average.  No one wants an average table, at an average restaurant, served by an average waiter.”

So, given the above comments, I am doing some personal soul-searching myself and I’d encourage you to do so as well.

What would it take for you or me to be a remarkable:

• Husband / Wife
• Citizen / Community Member
• Business Owner / Employee
• Website Owner / Blogger

I guess the next questions to ask are?

• Am I currently remarkable?
• Do I need to be remarkable to this person / constituency?
• If I am not remarkable am I willing to make some of the sacrifices to become remarkable?

I ask the above questions because, from what I’ve encountered in life, success doesn’t happen overnight and remarkable doesn’t happen quickly.  Becoming remarkable, in any endeavor, typically is dreamed by many but few are willing to make the sacrifice required to be remarkable.  As a former Supreme Justice once said:

Nothing is so commonplace as to wish to be remarkable – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

If you choose to become remarkable I’d highly suggest buying Purple Cow or Raving Fans.  They provide some good roadmaps on what it takes to get there.  Once you get there, be prepared to fight for it.  As Fast Company said in a book review of Seth’s book:

If you’re remarkable, then it’s likely that some people won’t like you. That’s part of the definition of remarkable. Nobody gets unanimous praise-ever. The best the timid can hope for is to be unnoticed. Criticism comes to those who stand out.

To YOUR success,

Dan Ross

Over the last year I’ve come across some amazing examples of breathtaking work (articles, quotes, infographics) specifically on this topic.  I thought I would share them with everyone in one spot.  I will update this over time if I come across further examples but here is what I can share with everyone right now.  If you have some other great examples please post them in the comment section. I’d always enjoy reading more on the subject!

• Store growth (infographic) of Walmart from 1972 to 2009 in the United States.  Time-elapsed map to 4300 + stores
• Store growth (infographic) of Target store growth from 1968 to 2010 in the United States.  Time-elapsed map to 1600 + stores

The key takeaways for me from the above two infographics was:

1. Target is nearly 20 years behind Walmart regarding the number of U.S. stores.
2. Both stores have experienced remarkable growth over the last 48 years.
3. While Target has a smaller retail base than Walmart (roughly 40% as many stores) Target’s growth rate has been steady and their overall growth rate in the last decade exceeds Walmart.

• Another great resource I came across regarding overnight success was Chris Brogan’s great blog series “What it takes to be an overnight success.”  Chris shows the early morning routine, the travel involved with business success, he talks about not making excuses, assessing competition, etc. Rather than summarize all the great points Chris makes I’d encourage you to read this blog series if you haven’t.  It is solid stuff!  In it Chris had a great observation about success by saying “You rarely win a race by looking sideways.”  That quote reminded me of a a great quote from Warren Buffett:

“In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield” – Warren Buffett

• I recall a great comment from Seth Godin’s blog that goes something like this ” The challenge for marketers is to figure out what daily progress looks  like and obsess about that.”  The same thing can be said for all of us regarding our “success”, both personally and professionally.  What is success for us? What are we trying to measure progress towards. Can it be measured, tracked, etc?

• The next resource I’ve enjoyed over the last 20 months or so has been Success Magazine.  The Publisher, Darren Hardy, recently released a book (or audio CD) entitled The Compound Effect where Darren directly addresses the sensational marketing messages bombarding people in today’s society. “Get rich, get fit, get younger, get sexier… all overnight with little effort for only three easy payments of $39.95.” As Darren says “These repetitive marketing messages have distorted our sense of what it really takes to succeed. We’ve lost sight of the simple but profound fundamentals of what it takes to be successful.”  Darren’s book is full of timeless success strategies and I highly recommend it.

• Another resource I came across this amazing infographic (bottom of post due to length) the other day via Guy Kawasaki and his Twitter account.  Obviously, I retweeted it to my Twitter followers but I thought it was worth sharing with everyone who missed it.  There are truly some amazing statistics on Walmart and their size relative to some of their competitors.  As I read/watched thes infographics a quote from the very wise personal development leader, Jim Rohn, popped into my head.

“You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight” – Jim Rohn

The above quote is quite refreshing because we can’t attain success overnight (professionally or personally) but we can decide to take firm actions that will put us in the direction of success.  Typically it isn’t one action that generates success; rather it is the compounding of daily actions towards a goal that enables longer-term success.  How many economic upturns/downturns do you think Walmart and Target had to go through since 1962? How many changes did they have to make in their first 15 years to attain “overnight success” in the 1980s and 1990s?

• The final resource / article I want to share with everyone is an an article by Martin Zwilling (aka @StartupPro on Twitter who has over 200,000 Twitter followers and tons of readers) in which he shows numerous examples of how long it took various technology companies to become “overnight successes.”  Examples provided were Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google and Facebook.

To your success,

Dan Ross

Michael Jordan commented “I failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”  That very quote has become a marketing campaign for Nike as seen by the below 30 second clip.

Sports provide great insights into failure because each year every individual, competitor or team is trying to win a contest/match/game/race, then their respective league/division  and eventually championships.  Inevitably, there can only be one champion crowned each year.

Here are a few nuggets of wisdom on failure I’ve read and heard over the years.  I hope they are valuable to you and help you overcome your next failure in business or life. They cover a wide array of successful tips including Fear, Planning, Quitting and Attitude.

• Seth Godin, a best-selling author  (My favorite books of his are Unleashing the IdeaVirus and Tribes) encourages people to not be afraid of bad ideas because you have to incur some duds as part of the process of finding great ideas.  He also encourages people to “Try something different, not harder.”  Examples of smarter business would include using sales analytics, Google Analytics or Woopra for your website or perhaps, if your company is big enough, having a dedicated financial analyst to look for trends in the business).

• One of my personal favorite quotes comes from the legendary professional cyclist Lance Armstrong.  Lance won the Tour De France, a 3-week 2,000 mile race a record 7 consecutive times in the Late 1990s and Early 2000s.  His mindset is amazing when he comments on quitting, something I’m sure his body has screamed out thousands of times during training or the race itself:

“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever” – Lance Armstrong

Technology entrepreneurs provide some great insights as well:

• Kevin Rose, Founder and CEO of Digg, provided entrepreneurs this sage advice when he said “Build, release and iterate. Make a list of the features you want to create over the next six months and get going! For small companies, once a week; for larger companies, maybe twice a month.” via ReadWriteWeb

• Loic LeMeur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic, a social networking publishing platform, gave some similar thoughts in his speech on Social Media in Marketing at the Standford Business School (8 minute video).

Personal Development Leaders can provide some nuggets of wisdom regarding failure and the path to success:

• Earl Nightengale, a leader in the personal development industry in the 50s through 80s, told people “20 ideas a day towards your goal equals 100 ideas per week.  Try  some of them and move towards your goal.”  Earl Nightengale’s “The Strangest Secret” was the first Gold Record record for ANY genre back in 1956.

• Harvey MacKay, best selling author/speaker recently posted to Facebook “To triple your success ratio, triple your failure ratio.”

The 2nd half of the year has begun here in 2010. What will each of us do (professionally and personally) to learn from our previous failures, dust ourselves off, and begin another attempt at greatness?  What are we capable of accomplishing if we push ourselves and don’t quit?

Dan Ross

P.S. Below are three more great videos regarding failure. The first one asks “What are you capable of doing if you give it push towards your goals with EVERYTHING you have?”  The second video is about some famous failures and how the people overcame them. The third and final video, by Honda, embraces failure as the route to success in their engine development.

Today we operate in what Peter Drucker, a great business philosopher, called the “knowledge economy.”   We have shifted from an agricultural economy, to an industrial economy to one that is now driven by education and knowledge.  Technological, pharmaceutical and nano innovation comes from ideas as they didn’t exist in any “natural form” on this Earth 30 years ago.  These segments of the economy stem from people’s education and their ability to think, create and then share their ideas with others. With that in mind I thought I would share some great quotes about ideas I’ve shared on Twitter over the last year as well as a few that couldn’t “fit” under 120 characters

You will find that the quotes come from a wide array of reading/topics/authors.

No man was ever wise by chance-Seneca

Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams-Ralph Waldo Emerson (poet)

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible-David M. Ogilvy (advertising)

Any ideas, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought-Napoleon Hill (personal development pioneer)

You can dramatize your ideas in business or in any other aspect of your life. It’s easy-Dale Carnegie (personal development)

The best ideas are common property-Seneca (philosopher)

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people-Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962)

Only the wise possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them-Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)

It is useless to send armies against ideas-George Brandes

No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come-Victor Hugo

A mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions- Oliver Wendell Holmes

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on-John F. Kennedy (former U.S. President)

There’s no good idea that can’t be improved on-Michael Eisner (former CEO of Disney)

Some of the best ideas come out of the blue- @RichardBranson (Chairman of Virgin Group)

You can have brilliant ideas but if you can not get them across, your ideas will go nowhere-Lee Iacocca (former CEO of Chrysler)

There are not that many original ideas out there-Steve Wynn (CEO of Wynn Resorts)

You can kill a man but you can’t kill an idea-Meg Whitman (former CEO of E-Bay)

I think that it’s always possible to have a great company if you have great ideas-Jerry Yang (former CEO/co-founder of Yahoo)

We bring together the best ideas-turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies- @Jack Welch (former CEO of GE)

A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go farther than a great idea that inspires no one-Mary Kay Ash (businesswoman)

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game-Goethe

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple, learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen-John Steinbeck (author)

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost-Thomas J. Watson (inventor/businessman)

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds-John Maynard Keynes (famous economist)

Did the above quotes intrigue you?  If so, I would greatly appreciate it if you would re-tweet the post or comment below.  Have some other great quotes about ideas/thoughts to share with everyone?  Please post them below, send them to me at dan {at} BetterBizIdeas.com or tweet them & make sure to denote 4 @BetterBizIdeas, so I can re-tweet

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