Posts Tagged ‘business’

Can you provide an answer to ALL of the following questions:

• What is your business strategy?
• What is your blog strategy?
• What is your twitter strategy?
• What is your facebook strategy?
• What is your branding strategy?
• What is your personal strategy?
• What is you financial strategy?
• What is your conversation strategy?
• What is your networking strategy?

If you can’t answer them, you need to take some time out of your schedule and come up with an answer. Without these answers, you don’t have a strategy. Without a strategy, you have nothing.

What say you?

In light of the recent article from Wired.com - 10 Years After: A Look Back at the Dotcom Boom and Bust (really awesome article) – I want to open the floor to you, and hear where you were then and where you are now.

Then, I was in High School, waiting for December to roll around so I could finally get my driver’s license. I worked part time after school with the Parks and Rec’s department in Los Gatos (my home town). I dreamed of going to Northeastern University to study International Business, working for the CIA in European espionage and becoming a best selling author by the time I was 30 writing CIA romance thrillers.

Now, I am happily married in South Orange County, driving an ‘08 Mustang GT. I am a proud alum of Cal State Long Beach with a degree in Rhetorical Communications, the owner of Wright Creativity, and the writer of this blog. I love my business, and am excited every day to see where it will take me. Someday I still dream of becoming a best selling author, but of just plain romance novels and definitely not by the time I’m 30.

Your turn!

What would happen if the original 8 Disney Princesses started their own business? Who would do what? And how would they work together?

Here are my thoughts on their roles and behaviors…and whether or not it would be a successful company.

(Described from left to right)

Jasmine - Foreign Relations: Being the daughter of a Sultan, she has a lot of experience with foreign dignitaries. Add that, with her strong personality and cleverness, and she will be great negotiator. Of course, the fact that she keeps a tiger as a pet might help convince them to deal with her business as well…

Snow White – Human Resources: If she can handle seven obnoxious men with Napoleon complexes, I think she can take on hiring and managing an entire staff. She is strong willed and as long as we keep her away from the (apple) juice, she’ll do great.

Mulan - Chief Financial Officer: She was well educated by her tutors as a young girl, and her time as a man in the military will give her great insight for dealing with the tough world of finances. Her bravery and strength, mixed with her lack of focus on love will allow her the freedom to work late (and odd) hours that money business demands.

Aurora - Chief Executive Officer: The only one of the women who was a Princess by birth, she will use that station to gain the upper hand and her daddy’s money to finance the company, making herself the CEO. While the rest will worry at first, her mellow nature and love for all people will prove her to be a fair CEO.

Cinderella - Operations Manager: After running an entire house for a bunch of demanding step siblings, she finds it easy to slide into the role of operations manager, directly below Aurora, making sure that everything runs smoothly. Other than her occasional conversations with a supposed “fairy godmother”, everyone respects and appreciates her hard work.

Pocahontas - Eco-development: She is independent and a free thinker who loves nature. She would be in tune with the other women because she is caring and compassionate but would also be tough on the rules. She would require that the company be green and promote health – benefiting as many as possible with their product.

Belle - Marketing Manager: If this woman can turn a beast into a man, there isn’t anything she can’t do with some serious marketing. Give her the products and free space to go promote it, and she’ll have those shelves emptied in no time!

Ariel - Product Development: Look at what she did with a fork, a sheet and some rope? She is resourceful, driven and will stop at nothing to get to where she needs to be. She can survive without talking, and definitely knows how to make a splash. If she were in charge of product development, she would be sure to create incredibly useful products.

All in all, I think these women would run a killer company – and would definitely take the world by storm.

Today is the last two-words of 2009…and as much as I have enjoyed the series, it will be the last two-word tuesday [insert scary music] EVER!

It is being replaced with a very fun and exciting new weekly short, that will be showing up starting [insert exciting music] THIS FRIDAY!

So, for the final two-words I want you to tell me:
Your Favorite

Holiday Traditions?

I want to go on a little journey of thought…the goal is to get it around to business, so stick with me here.

Last week, my husband and I went to a piano bar in Mission Viejo. We were having fun, drinking and listening to music. We had planned on attending with some of our current friends, but they got busy, so we went just the two of us. I love my hubby, and we have fun together, but after awhile, we tend to want to talk to people around us (we like chatting). Anyway, we were seated by 2 people who were on (what we found out to be) their second date. They had known each other in HS but just recently reconnected. They were fun, seemed really nice and we exchanged names, but that was it. After we left, both my hubby and I made the comment that we wish we had more time to talk with them as it is tough to meet other couples/people once you’re out of school. In order to meet people now, you must make a conscious effort to talk with people at friends events, your children’s friend’s parents or with work colleagues. It is tougher and tougher to find people who are in the same place in their lives and who want to build new friends.

How can we connect this to business?

First, meeting clients is much the same way – unless you go out to events and make it a goal to introduce yourself to other people, it is difficult to find new clients just in everyday life. You must work hard to connect with people in a way that you can share what you do, and learn what they do, so that you may connect each other to other people as well as yourselves. Second, just like you don’t meet someone and ask them to marry you – you don’t meet someone and immediately ask for their business. It takes work, repeat visits, and time to connect in order for someone to trust you enough to want to work with you. Finally, we need to think about business like we do friendships in that we need to treat business contacts with respect, sincerity and honesty. People want to work with people they like, so it is important to be likable as much as a business persona as a friend.

Do you find it easy to make new friends? What about finding new clients? What tools do you use or events do you attend in order to make it easier?

Oh, and if you’re and Orange County local, looking to connect, I would love to see you next Wednesday at the Fairmont in Newport for the Gingerbread Village Holiday Tweet Up from 6-9pm on December 16th.

Today we wrap up creativity through the years with my 25th birthday, and the reason that I decided to delve into my past.

Recently, I have encountered a lot of people who wonder why I started my business, or when I knew I wanted to. And I didn’t really have a good answer. Honestly, I started it because when faced with attempting to find another full-time job in a down economy or taking the risk and taking my freelance business full time – starting Wright Creativity seemed like the better idea. Now, I am beyond happy that I decided to make that choice, but still don’t have a great answer as to why I chose it.

If you had asked me 3 years ago, I never, ever would have imagined that I was going to own my own business at 25. I would have figured I would be working for a marketing agency, working my way through the ranks, and a basic 8:30-5:30 career. I figured because both my parents were entrepreneurs, I would want something different, I would want to take my own path. Even today (prior to my experiment), I still thought that the fact I ended up starting Wright Creativity was pure happenstance due to the situations from the last 2 years, not the last 25.

Luckily, I decided to take the risk and delve through my life. It wasn’t an easy decision to put it on my blog, though. First, I worried about what I would discover or what others would think when I shared. Second, I wondered if anyone would actually care (I mean, it really was all about me). But, I realized it was the best way to do it, and also hoped that my readers might learn something about themselves too in the process.

What I did know when I started this experiment was that I was not created in a day; I had 25 years of experiences, challenges and life that led me to where I am now. What I didn’t know was how much looking back through it all would open my eyes.

When is the last time you looked through your choices, your history, and your life? What about talking with your parents about when you were little? Or talking with your children now and helping them to be creative and take a risk for their future starting early? I think that even if you don’t turn it into a long process, it is really worth thinking past the last few years, back to your youth and see how it truly influenced you.

Finally, for a little bit of fun!!

Over the next 25 posts, ending on my birthday, I will be covering an incredibly creative moment or idea from a year of my life AND one creative moment in either the marketing, advertising, technology or media world.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post – I started this blog in July of 2008 and really, nothing has been the same since. I often love to look back at my first few posts (Creativity is in the eye of the beholder) and compare them to now (Using what you have to motivate you). Both posts are similar in topic and conclusion, but entirely different in word choice and the way they are written. Doing this helps me in two ways. First, it gives me a little glimpse back to why I decided to start this blog in the beginning (which can sometimes get lost in the craziness of life). Second, it reminds me how much I really enjoy what I do and motivates me to keep going and strive to improve.

While I dislike the outcome, the 2008 presidential election was the first to use social media platforms as a large part of their messaging strategies. Without the use of social media, it is suggested that the election could have turned out very differently…

Over the next 25 posts, ending on my birthday, I will be covering an incredibly creative moment or idea from a year of my life AND one creative moment in either the marketing, advertising, technology or media world.

In 2007, I left the first job I had out of school (sales…yuck!) and took my first steps into the marketing world (yay!). But, those first steps were not easy ones. When I realized that I was not enjoying the company I was working with, I sat down with my husband and we talked about what I wanted to do (marketing) and the options I had (companies, etc). The problem was, while I didn’t like the sales job I had, I was good at it, and making really good money for just graduating. We had just gotten married, I had my appendix taken out and we needed the strong income. But he also knew how miserable I was coming home from work every day and wanted me to be happy. So, he gave me the green light to take the risk. After that, I spent a couple weeks sending my resume and information to every marketing firm in Orange County. Most didn’t respond, a few gave interviews, and one wanted to hire me. Unfortunately, they could only take me on part time at first, but it was still worth the opportunity…and quickly it became full-time. It was scary, intimidating and I was in over my head from the start, but I knew I had to make it work. And thank goodness I took the risk, since this was the company that made me realize how much I loved social media, blogging and working with others to build a message for their business. While I was only there for a year, that year changed the way I saw business and gave me the drive to start this blog and put myself out there (this blog will be covered in tomorrow’s post!).

In the media world, the final Harry Potter book, which sold more copies than any other book ever into a 24 hour period, released on July 21st, 2007. I spent from 1am-9am on that day reading the entire book, crying through the ending.

Which job did you have that changed your future?

Over the next 25 posts, ending on my birthday, I will be covering an incredibly creative moment or idea from a year of my life AND one creative moment in either the marketing, advertising, technology or media world.

I spent 2005 writing. A lot. Seriously, papers analyzing word choices in public speeches by celebrities, articles by famous journalists and monologues from plays pretty much every week. And then of course, starting my (90 page!) thesis paper on the study of the rhetoric of the NRA and the role they play as both a protagonist and an antagonist to the American government…Almost every day was spent in front of my keyboard, writing as much as I could about everything I read and heard, in hopes that it would come in handy for a paper down the road. While I didn’t see it then, the time that I spent writing down everything was great training for now, where I can turn real life thoughts into future blog posts.

While I was writing like crazy Millionaire Steve Fossett broke the world record by completing the first non-stop, non-refueled, solo flight around the world in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer. (okay, so I know it isn’t media/tech or advertising…but it’s really cool!!)