Becky Robinson's Blog, page 74

Losing Fitness

After running a full marathon this spring, my discipline disappeared.

With a half marathon (or two) on the calendar this fall, I am running again, although not without moments of regret about all the fitness I’ve lost.

A summer’s worth of neglect — that’s all it takes.

My choices this summer, choices that did not include running, have determined my current (compromised) fitness for running.

My lost fitness is mostly cardio-vascular. My legs are okay. Running six miles isn’t so bad; my legs aren’t sore at the end. But carry on a conversation while I run? Sprint for more than a few paces without being winded? Nope. Nope.

The only way to recover the fitness is to recover the discipline.

While thinking about lost physical fitness, I realized that it’s crazy easy to lose fitness in other areas, as well.

You may be able to identify with these other areas in which I can easily lose fitness/focus.

Without discipline, I can lose my fitness for perspective. My friend and client Linda Freeman is leading a service group to Cambodia. She leaves next weekend. Over lunch last week, we talked about the living conditions of families in Cambodia. She shared the startling fact that many families sell their daughters, as young as age 5, into sex slavery, out of desperation, in order to support other family members. They sell their daughters for as little as $150 US Dollars, less than the price you would pay for a pig. I spent twice that much money yesterday at a back to school shopping trip (a last minute one to pick up a few things!)  Linda and her group will visit and help the folks at She Rescue Home, people who are daily sacrificing to meet the needs of people whose poverty I can only begin to imagine. In order to maintain perspective, I must be disciplined and awake to life outside my comfortable experience.

Without discipline, I can lose my fitness for gratitude. Tim Sanders calls gratitude a muscle, one that must be exercised daily. Without daily exercise of the gratitude, I can easily lose my ability to see and appreciate all that I have.  I have to practice, making a thousand small choices a day to cherish the blessings of my life. I can be grateful for the comfortable bed that I slept in last night, for clean, abundant water in my taps, for a safe community in which to raise my daughters, for free public education, for the 2006 dented minivan that reliably carries me anywhere I want to go.

Without discipline, I can lose my fitness for serving others. It’s far easier to focus on myself than to focus on others. Serving requires disciplined focus on others and their needs. If my wants, needs, and comforts are my primary concern, I will serve myself. If others’ needs are more important to me, I will serve others. Serving others requires, like gratitude, a thousand small choices every day. In the moment, I can choose to serve myself or I can choose to serve others. My choices determine my fitness for future service.

Without discipline, I am not fit to live the life I want to live and run the race I want to run. I must choose to discipline myself, physically and mentally, every day. A thousand small choices every day: perspective, gratitude, service.

photo credit Gemma Styles

Featured on Friday: Mark Babbitt & Ted Coiné

It really is a social world. Back in early 2012, a friend talked me into getting a Twitter account, and my husband forced me into an upgrade to a smartphone. A month later I was tweeting to some woman named @beckyrbnsn and she was asking me what kind of job I was looking for. A few tweets, a couple of DMs, and a Skype call later, I found myself working as a freelance contractor with Weaving Influence.

Becky introduced me to the idea of TWIRL, and I watched as she gathered a virtual team using various avenues: Twitter, Facebook, blog posts, personal recommendations, real life friends. As we grow, our social influence expands and we start opening doors for others. Before you  know it, you’re “friending” people you’ve never met, and developing deeper relationships with strangers online than you do with people in real life. We do live in A World Gone Social, as so well explained by today’s featured authors…

Meet Mark Babbitt & Ted Coiné

If you’ve ever visited Switch & Shift, you may know those names already.  Did you know they’ve written a new book together? Learn more about this great duo, then continue reading to learn more about their book, how you can get a copy, and where you can catch up with them next month.

Mark Babbitt is a keynote speaker, blogger, father of five and a grandfather. In his “spare” time, he’s also the CEO of YouTern, a community that enables those in career transition – from college students to workforce veterans – become highly employable by connecting them to high-impact internships, mentors and contemporary career advice. He also serves as President of SwitchandShift.com, and is CMO and a co-Founder of ForwardHeroes.org, a non-profit that assists military veterans successfully transition into the civilian workforce.

Ted Coiné is a three-time CEO, Chairman and Founder of SwitchandShift.com, and keynote speaker. He’s also one of the most influential business experts on the Web, top-ranked by Forbes, Inc., SAP Business Innovation, and Huffington Post for his leadership, customer experience, and social media influence. In addition to speaking at conferences, Ted consults with owners, CEOs and boards of directors on making their companies more competitive by making them more human-focused. 

Connect with Mark & Ted Online

Mark on Social: Facebook (YouTern), Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+

Ted on Social: Facebook (Switch & Shift), Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+

Get Ready to Get Social - September 22 – 26!

Our team is joining with Mark and Ted to celebrate the September release of A World Gone Social, and we’d love for you to join us! There are many ways to be involved in the launch, including joining Mark and Ted for a FREE webinar, hosted by Becky Robinson. If you don’t have plans, you’re invited to join them on September 19 at 12 pm (ET). Don’t miss this unique opportunity - sign up today! 

Want to get social and share the launch with your friends? Check out the resources found on the book’s website, and start spreading the word. Do you use Pinterest? Don’t forget to pin images directly from the website, so anyone who clicks through to them will also be able to learn more about the book. What are you waiting for? Let’s get SOCIAL!

You Tell Me! What’s your favorite social media channel? Are you on Twitter? Follow me @cgkoens!

 

What Evidence Do Your Choices Create?

Yesterday, I started the morning with a happy discovery. I thought I had my whole day booked with calls.

When I looked at my calendar, I saw, instead, that I had 3 open hours in the middle of my day with 90 minutes blocked to work on a strategy for a client.

Having a block of time for work feels like a gift, but the truth is, I get derailed very easily.

What would I choose during those 3 hours? Would I spend, as intended, 90 minutes focused on my client, as my calendar read?

Or would I get distracted and unconsciously shift to other more urgent/pressing matters as they came into my email? Would I consciously make another choice, depending on the day’s biggest needs?

At the end of each day, looking at the choices I make provides indication of what I value: it’s evidence, data.

Here’s what happened: a meeting with my company’s directors extended nearly 30-minutes beyond the allocated time due to a staffing issue. I needed to make two more phone calls as a result of that team call. That urgent, but important, need, consumed nearly all of the open time on my calendar.

What evidence did my choice create? In my mind, the choice created important evidence about what I value.

I value my team. If someone on the team is hurting, I must attend to that pain. If our company as a whole is suffering, I must attend to the root causes and make powerful steps forward.

Our company’s health and each individual team member’s effectiveness is absolutely primary. Without healthy team members, we will not be able to serve our clients.

Without effective team members, we will fail on our commitments to clients. If we fail in commitments to clients, we will not retain clients for long. Without clients, our company would not exist.

What evidence will you create with your choices today?

How you use your time, both at work and in off times, is evidence of what you value. If there is a mismatch between your stated values and your choices (or if there is a mismatch with mine), it’s time to re-evaluate. The best way to re-evaluate is to go back to your values. What do you value? Do your choices create evidence of those values?

As you live life in general, you want your choices to align with your personal values. Have you ever written them down? In my company, I want to be sure that our choices reflect our company’s values: growth, responsiveness, generosity, partnership, integrity, flexibility.

I am challenged this week as I choose to be mindful of my values, personal and company. I choose to be mindful that my choices create evidence about what I value.

Tell me something! What choices are you making today? What evidence of your values are you creating? How will you be mindful of making choices that align with your values?

Hat tip to Whitney Johnson for quote image.

Featured on Friday: Back to School Webinars!

You’ve probably caught on to the fact that the team members of Weaving Influence are scattered from Michigan to South America, and from California to the Carolinas. As a virtual team, we have a lot of ways we stay in touch. There’s the obvious: emails, phone calls, texting, and the occasional real-life meeting. And then there’s the not-so-obvious: secret Facebook groups, Google Hangouts, Basecamp, and Twitter. The Bottom Line: Communication is key.

I’ve recently been involved in more team and client meetings, and as a self-proclaimed introvert, I’ve been surprised to discover that I prefer video calls to faceless phone meetings. I like to see the reactions (though I have a terrible poker face myself), and I appreciate being able to avoid talking over someone as so often happens on conference calls.

This process of discovering what works best, how people learn, and what I can do to communicate more clearly has been evolving – thanks in part to getting more experience on my resume, but also to the clients that I have the privilege to work with and learn from. And now it’s your turn to hear from them!

We have some amazing FREE webinars coming up this autumn, and I am so excited to share three of them with you today…

September Webinars – 100% FREE to attend!

SPEAKER: John R. Stoker, author of Overcoming Fake Talk

WEBINAR: September 11 @ 12 pm (ET) (SIGN UP)

TOPIC: John Stoker built on his 20 years of training experience to write Overcoming Fake Talk, helping those who read it master the nuances and skills for holding REAL conversations for results. In celebration of his September 8 – 12 Book Buzz Week, you’re invited to join John as he shares principles and ideas found in Overcoming Fake Talk, and what it means to have a R.E.A.L. conversation.

 

SPEAKERS: Mark Babbitt and Ted Coiné, co-authors of A World Gone Social

WEBINAR: September 19 @ 12 pm (ET) (SIGN UP)

TOPIC: 5 Keys to Success in the Social Age. Mark and Ted will spend an hour sharing how many brands are still getting social wrong, and how your organization can avoid (or get out of) that trap. They’ll cover the idea of why size really matters, and how to reach within your organization to identify your brand champions and internal advocates. Discover the “Power of OPEN”, as well as how to become the MVP on any Social Age team – The Social Leader.

 

SPEAKERS: Ken Blanchard & Mark Miller, co-authors of The Secret: 10th Anniversary Edition

WEBINAR: September 29 @ 2 pm (ET) (SIGN UP)

SUMMARY: When Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller collaborated on The Secret, it was based on simple insights that had the potential to make a major impact. Listen in as Ken and Mark join Becky Robinson for an hour long webinar. Discover what inspired them to write The Secret, and how the principles they shared ten years ago are still relevant today.

 

One hour, no cost, Q & A opportunities – come join us!

If you’re looking for ways to continue your education, come to our Weaving Influence FREE Webinars and learn from these amazing “professors”, experts in their fields, and worth spending your lunch hour with. Hope to see you there!

The Big Reveal Isn’t Always Big

He plugs away for countless hours, through discipline and focus, to move things forward.

Early mornings, weekends, late nights, from a vacation beach-side in Aruba, my often-unseen collaborator, John Marcello, executes website development magic for our clients.

Our websites look fantastic, due to the creative designs of the talented Rachel Royer, our head designer. But they function well, with user friendly content management systems, because of John’s painstaking work.

Over the past 15-months, since John joined us at Weaving Influence, we’ve delivered so many websites that I’ve stopped counting. In the past week alone, we’ve launched 4 new book marketing microsites with a 5th one coming by week’s end.

In the midst of completing micro-sites for our busy fall book launch season, John has been attending to the finishing touches on the now-live fully mobile responsive GreatLeadersServe.com, including our first custom e-commerce solution.

The site may not look different from the original site at GreatLeadersServe.Org, but it is vastly different, with a new photo blog and massive functionality which poises our client, Mark Miller, to offer more of his valuable leadership content to the world.

I think I work hard but John matches or exceeds me. He is disciplined and shows up daily, delivering on his commitments.

John is so busy, in fact, that he hasn’t taken the time to add his bio and photo to our team page, despite my kind nagging.

As a result, he may be invisible…we don’t typically unveil our websites with a big reveal. We work virtually, so there are no pizza lunches at crunch time or toasts with bubbly when we complete a project.

But the value John brings in providing competent, caring services to our clients is not unseen by me.

John, I would not be able to do half of what I do without you. Thank you. I look forward to all the great work still ahead of us!

Now, go write your bio and add yourself to the team page, will ya?

Want to see more of John’s great work? Check out this just-launched book marketing micro-site for Hello, My Name is Awesome.

Interested in hiring the Weaving Influence team to design and develop your website? Contact me today!

Featured on Friday: Ken Blanchard & Mark Miller

Late in 2013, a large box arrived on the doorsteps of several Weaving Influence team members, myself included. Within the box we found a thank you note, a gift card, and a giant cow. Once pictures were taken and the laughter subsided in our respective homes around the country, we all compared gifts on the team Facebook page.

While I don’t know what the others did with their unexpected family addition, my cow became a mascot in my home office. A daily reminder of why we work so hard as a virtual team to launch books and support leaders, and how blessed I am to be able to be able to do work I enjoy, from home… with an enormous stuffed cow close at hand.

If you’re wondering, “Why the cow story?” Well, half of today’s featured team cannot be talked about without associating that cow with him.

Meet Ken Blanchard & Mark Miller

Do those names ring any bells? You might have heard of them. If you asked them what they do, one would probably say he’s written a few books over the years, while the other would quip that he sells chicken.

Ken Blanchard has written more than “a few” books – at last count it was more than 30! Ken is the “Chief Spiritual Officer” at The Ken Blanchard Companies. In 1979, Ken and his wife Margie started their own management consulting business, which eventually grew to employ more than 300 people, with offices around the world. In 1982, Ken co-wrote The One Minute Manager which sold over 13 million copies and has appeared on business best seller lists for more than 2 decades.

In 2004, Ken teamed up with Mark Miller to co-author The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do.

Mark Miller began working as an hourly team member with Chick-fil-A in 1977. He joined the corporate staff a year later, starting in the warehouse and mailroom, then working his way up through the leadership levels in Corporate Communications, Field Operations, Quality and Customer Satisfaction, and Training and Development. Today he serves as the Vice President for Organizational Effectiveness, and has written three more books based off of the characters found in The Secret.

Connect with Ken & Mark Online

Ken on Social: Facebook, Twitter,  (company page), Google+, Website

Mark on Social: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Website

Join the 10 Year Celebration – September 1-5!

Our team is joining with Ken and Mark to celebrate the September 2nd release of the 10th Anniversary Edition of The Secret, and we’d love for you to join us! There are lots of ways to be involved in the launch of this book, including joining Ken and Mark for a FREE webinar, hosted by Becky Robinson. If you don’t have plans, join them on September 29 at 2 pm (ET) to learn more from these two great leaders. Sign up today! 

Also, take a moment to check out the resources found on the book’s NEW website, and start spreading the word through your social media channels. Do you have a Pinterest account? You can pin images directly from the website, which means anyone who clicks through to them will also be able to learn more about the book. It’s a win-win!

You Tell Me! What’s your favorite book by Ken Blanchard? What’s your favorite book by Mark Miller?

 

Featured on Friday: Bill Bliss

We have the opportunity to get to know a lot of amazing leaders, coaches, and authors through our work at Weaving Influence. Since I started with Becky in 2012, I’ve learned a lot – not just about the business, but about myself. No matter what the project or who we are serving, I have walked away with some new piece of knowledge to use again in the future.

My role with Weaving Influence has shifted many times over the last 27 months, but has most recently landed me in more of an oversight and training position. At times I feel like I’m just trying to stay afloat, which is usually when I recall some piece of wisdom from a client’s book. Though I will never have “CEO” after my name (I know my own limitations), I found that reading through Success in the C-Suite provided a number of encouraging ideas, which is one of the many reasons why I am so thrilled to introduce today’s focus of Featured on Friday.

Meet Bill Bliss

Bill is an executive coach who founded Bliss & Associates Inc. in 1996. He and his firm coach business owners and leaders to become BETTER leaders with greater influence and impact. He has worked with CEOs, presidents, vice presidents, and Directors at a variety of companies, and recently completed the e-book that I mentioned earlier, Success in the C-Suite, in which he pulls from his years of experience and provides steps to take to promote positive leadership change.

Bill is also a founding partner of the John Maxwell Team, and a John Maxwell Certified Coach, Trainer, and Speaker. In 2004 he wrote Your Journey to Success: 10 Steps to a Success Transition, and in 2009 he published Leadership Lessons from THE BOOK (available on Amazon).

Find Bill Online

First thing you’ll want to do is connect with Bill on LinkedIn and Twitter. Then bookmark his blog, look around his website, and learn more about his newest e-book.

A Special Offer

As you will have caught by now, Bill has a new e-book out (Success in the C-Suite), but he’s offering a condensed whitepaper version of his book for free to anyone who is interested. All you have to do is click HERE and then share your name and email address to receive the free download. Having read both the book and the whitepaper, I can assure you that you will walk away encouraged and excited to move forward on your leadership journey.

You Tell Me! What’s the most important leadership lesson you have learned? What is one piece of leadership advice you think others could benefit from knowing?

How Do You Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be? (Four Career Transition Tips)

Daily, unrelenting headaches. Doctor visits. Medication. Exercise. Chiropractic care

My husband experimented with every reasonable treatment offered for the headaches that plagued him for months. With no cause determined except stress, he made a big decision to make a major career change.

Everyone who hears his story of transitioning from full-time ministry as a pastor and church planter to “what he does now” laughs and wonders.

How did that happen? How did my husband go from ministry to _____ ?

What he does now is so far removed, on the surface, from what he did before, that people shake their heads, widen their eyes, and listen intently.

If you knew my husband, the similarities of what he does now to ministry would become clearer. He likes to right-wrongs. He wants to make a difference.

How do any of us land in the careers we have? Behind every career, there is a story.

Carrie’s career changed with one good morning tweet. Mine changed with a Facebook post. Alexandra Watkins found an unconventonal path to success. My husband’s career changed with a decision to “do something, anything, different.”

If you want to make a change, how does it start? How do you get from where you are now to where you want to be?

Be open to the unexpected. I didn’t expect to become a business owner and entrepreneur. My husband didn’t expect or plan for his current career. But we both stayed open to possibilities and ideas and we both ended up in jobs that we love (usually). Whitney Johnson calls this dating your dreams — you may need to try out several paths before you find the right one.

Show up every day. You will not get where you want to go without working very hard, with disciplined, focused, consistent effort. To get where you want to go, keep moving forward. To land his current career, my husband persevered through two years of interviews, a hiring freeze, and extensive digging into his personal background. In each phase of the process, he had to show up with his very best, which required personal fitness and readiness, both physical and mental.

Expect challenges. There is not a day in my business that I don’t face challenges. Some are larger than others. I have wanted to quit — more than once. Nothing about starting and growing a business is easy. Quitting is not an option. Instead, I daily choose to believe that what I am doing is absolutely worth it.

Stay focused on what truly matters. If you are transitioning to a new career, you may feel discouraged and wonder what’s ahead. Even after you are settled, you may face setbacks. The only way around them is to remember what matters most.

Apart from my faith,  people motivate me most. My husband. My three precious daughters. Our life now. Our life in the future. The talented people who choose to work with me in this business. Our amazing clients and the good work they are doing in the world. All the people our work touches. If you are reading this, you are among them. It is for each of you that I do what I do. You are the reason I am here. You are the reason I persevere.

How do you get from where you are to where you want to be? Keep walking. Keep trusting. Don’t give up.

Tell me something! Which of these four tips resonates most with you? What will you do, today, to move closer to your desired future?

 

A Wake-Up Call: Thoughts from Day 2 of a Water Usage Ban

Few of us care about issues that don’t impact us directly, at least not in sustained or action-producing ways.

In fact, I brushed off a family member’s concerns about the drought in California when I visited her last  year. She didn’t want help with the dishes from the “midwesterners.” She thought me far too free with the flow of water.

Honestly, I felt irritated. I just didn’t get it.

After only two days of a water usage ban in my hometown, I understand more fully her care in conserving water. Southeastern Michigan, where I live, gets water from Toledo, Ohio. In our area, more than 500,000 people are affected by a water usage ban (do not drink, do not boil) as the result of an algal bloom in Lake Erie.

For our family, it doesn’t feel like a crisis — yet. We have plenty of bottled water to drink; we have friends with wells who have shared gallons of water for washing dishes and who have welcomed us into their homes to take showers. We can do laundry with cold water. If we were brave enough, we could shower (but not the kids!)

Necessity being the mother of invention, I figured out how to wash our family’s dishes with very little water. When washing dishes has a real and felt price tag ($1 per gallon of distilled water), it would be crazy NOT to conserve.

We are also using lots of paper plates and plastic cups, not an earth-friendly choice, but one that helps offset the inconvenience of living without running water.

When clean water is available in abundance, it is far too easy for us to take it for granted.

Yes, I have been careless in using water. I have not ever considered the source of our water supply or its sustainability. I like to take long showers and fill the bathtub extra full. I am not strict with my kids when they change clothes multiple times and I do countless loads of laundry each week as a result.

Unlike my family member in California who is in tuned with the water crisis in her area and mindful of its source, I will admit — I was happily oblivious before this.

As those in my area await the results of another round of results from tests to our water supply, as we wonder and wait to see how long this ban will continue, we have more questions than answers.

How long will this crisis last? What can be done to create a safe sustainable water source for our community? Who will lead this effort? What can individuals do to help?

I am more awake to these issues than before, but for how long? When we get the all-clear on our water, will I go back to carelessness? (I hope not.) Will everyone else in our area?

My plan for now is to stay mindful and grateful for the water we have, to help others as I can, and to stay informed so I can get involved in appropriate ways.

Tell me something!  Are you happily oblivious to water issues, or mindfully conserving? If you are affected by the water ban, how are you faring? How will you be different after the crisis passes?

 Here’s a blog post with instructions about how to contact Ohio politicians — a great way to get involved.

Of Course I Blog

Talking to some collaborators, they expressed surprise that I blog regularly. Really?

My business involves consulting with people about strategies to grow their influence online. The core of my message is that the most important part of anyone’s online presence is their own domain.

Your own domain is the only place you own and control. Regularly creating fresh, relevant, value-adding content on your own domain is the most important way you can build your online influence.

If I didn’t blog regularly, how could I encourage others to do so? If I didn’t regularly show up on social channels to make true relational connections, I would have absolutely no credibility to tell others to do so. If I didn’t practice what I preach, would anyone be listening?

I have had some people tell me that they can’t do what I do because they are busy running a business, serving clients. I am doing the very same thing. It would be easy for me to coast, but integrity demands that I do the very things I encourage my clients to do. I blog regularly. I tweet regularly.

My online presence is far from perfect (please don’t look at my neglected LinkedIn profile), but showing up online consistently and helpfully is an important part of every work day for me.

I have created efficiency – scheduling content in the early morning and spending brief moments checking on channels in real time to interact. I also have support – a team who manages our company channels and helps in marketing our company in the exact ways that I would recommend to my clients.

But, of course! Of course I blog.

To write this post, I set my timer for 12-minutes. I typed furiously, clicking away from the edit screen to distractedly send some tweets. I finished a first draft with two minutes to spare.

I will spend 5-10 minutes adding a photo, meta data, adding links and copy editing the draft. I will publish. I will spend 10 minutes scheduling a few tweets. I will move onto the business of running my business.

What about you? Do you blog? If not, do you have 10-minutes to start a draft?