For those of you who know me well you know by now that if there is a cause that I feel needs fighting for I am your woman. You probably also know that before I succumbed to breast cancer twice I worked 3 jobs, all of those jobs involved dealing with people, clients, customers, and sales. Me a sales person – no way! But I am not a sales person, honestly, what I am is a great, no fantastic people person, I relate to them and I know how people think. Ultimately when we are dealing with people it comes down to customer service and, even when I was waiting the first time for my results to tell me whether my breast cancer had spread, I had a smile on my face and my customers had no idea what was going on inside my head. Why would they? I had cancer so they had to suffer too? No way. I carried on working until I knew what treatment my doctors and surgeons suggested and when it was over I went back to work.

This week has been pretty stressful for me, and yes I know I created my own stress before you say it. The thing is I like to be treated with respect, I like people to consider my feelings and I am a good person. I treat others how I wish to be treated and that is fair. Unfortunately I do not always get treated fairly, but in the comfort and safety of my own home I do have choices. When the home telephone rang at lunch time a few days ago I answered politely and was subjected to what I first thought was a recorded message. A woman was offering me information, I had no idea who she was, and then she was barraging me with questions and I still had no idea who she was. I finally managed to ask who she was, and she shared her first name and place of work but could not care less who I was because she had no idea of my first or last name.

What eventually happened was I was so angry and upset with this call from someone who was very rude and nasty to me I spent my time finding out who she was so I could ask for an apology. Eventually I did track her down, but was met with more rudeness and the third time I talked with someone who apparently was her spokesperson who denied the calls ever happened and pointed me in another direction.

There is no point me telling the whole story, as it is still an ongoing drama, but I wanted to share with you all how this can impact not only the innocent people like me who answers these kinds of calls but also the organization these people are working for. When I worked the 3 jobs I was for all intents and purposes representing the company, and their brand and their reputation. Ultimately if an employee does not act in the best interests of the organization they are employed by not only does it mean customers could be lost via word of mouth, but the employee could face dismissal.

No matter how badly we want the sale, no matter if we detest the job we are employed to do, we have taken on the responsibility and trust of the person who employed us and I believe we should never abuse that gift. In this day and age with the economy not being the best it can be everyone is struggling to keep their heads above water and make a decent living.

Where customer service is concerned I am the best! I treat everyone I come into contact with equally, with respect and the best I can offer and I expect the same back. I do not blame the organizations for employing people who do not treat the customers with excellent customer service. But I do encourage other people to do what I do, let the organization know there is a problem and maybe, just maybe they can save one customer.

Today is another day, I have another cause to fight, and I will move on, one voice may be deemed a whisper, but one whisper can be heard by many.

Have you noticed how stores dress their windows? They want to show off their products so arrange the dresses, shoes, purses, etc nicely in the window for all to see. Some stores have taken to putting curtains in the windows and not showing people what they sell until the customer walks into the store. I think once you have taken the leap of faith and walked into one of these stores to see what they sell you probably know straight away if you are going back or not. I notice the younger generation clothes stores definitely are popular with the curtained window idea. I think this is because the brand is trustworthy, well known and customers have confidence in the brand.

Another example for a long time would be websites, we think of our website as a window to the world, so we dress our web site appropriately, or not, whatever takes our fancy! My point is some well known brands do have more choice than the lesser known ones, and it is OK to take a chance and gamble with an idea but be careful you don’t lose credibility or clientele.

That brings me nicely to the idea of dressing our social media windows. What you may ask is that? Well, when you sign up for a Twitter account you are asked to provide a name, a profile, a photo/logo and this is in essence your window dressing made easy. The social media sites provide you with a template and you add the bits you want to and leave out the bits you chose to.

On the other hand the clever window dressers will do their best, even with a template of sorts to dress their window in a unique and interesting way to draw more attention to themselves. This could be in the form of a really wow profile that compels people to want to know more about the person, or a photo that is friendly and welcomes people to connect to them.

We do have the lazy window dressers who prefer to stay anonymous and this will work in some cases, especially if your brand is well known, but in most cases people walk straight past your window. Remember when you went to look for that shiny new car you wanted to buy and you got to the dealership and found out that they were closed early so all you could do was stare at your dream car through the window? Imagine if the car was dirty, and scratched and looked sad and falling apart? Would you be temped to buy it? No is the answer.

It may seem like I am always talking about being dressed when writing articles about successful social media efforts, whether you are naked online or have not dress your social media window, it all comes down to how you want to be perceived.

I love to dress my social media windows and I always look my best and that draws people to me and they want to find out more about me and connect with me.

Here I am again with my thoughts:)I wrote an article recently discussing quality over quantity and by that I mean no disrespect. My thoughts are how important is the number of people in a group or the number of connections you have versus what you actually do once you have those connections?

As a business development coach I wonder why people focus so much on making a certain number of connections versus taking the time to actually connect with fewer connections and building the all important relationships we talk about all the time.

My article asked if you are a trophy hunter and how many trophies you have on your wall. This could be taken to mean Facebook in particular because we do have “walls” there. Once we have our trophies do we polish them and leave them be?

So you now have 500 members what happens next? What would be wonderful and very beneficial to everyone with groups here on Facebook would be for us all to connect via email, Skype, face to face etc and find out how we can help each other. We may not actually want to connect with everyone in the real sense of the word, but doing nothing other than displaying our trophies really leads to nothing.

Are you full of ideas, and decide to act quickly and just do it? Or are you one of those people who seem to like other peoples ideas better? They do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but surely you want to be your own person, and make a success of your own ideas?

Next time you are inspired by someone who is successful in their business look at how they did it, what they did and ask if they will mentor you, but do not decide to become them! We all have our own unique and special gifts but some of us do not believe in ourselves or have the passion to work hard to make our dreams a reality.

An example could be if you admire a business who offers printing to small business owners, and they are successful, have found a way that works for them, but part of their success is who they are and how they treat their customers. They offer excellent customer service, follow up and like to connect with their customers on a regular basis. Obviously you can take whatever works for you from that, but if you are not excellent with customer service, or do not like following up you will not achieve the same success the other business did, in the same way, because you are not like them.

Make your branding YOU, make your branding your own, make your uniqueness stand out, be yourself! So when I said do you have your own Bandwagon or are you jumping on someone elses, the question I am asking is, do you want to build your own business, or do you want to make it easy by trying to be like a successful business you know!

Today I am talking about how my personal philosophy, The APE Philosophy, can help you grow your small business to the next level of success you are working towards.

Awareness:         Being able to plan ahead, write a business plan with short and long term goals.

Prevention:         Knowing how to prevent some of the major challenges many small business owners encounter.

Early Detection:   Dealing with known challenges early enough before they get out of hand.

If you are aware of the steps to take to ensure your business has strong foundations this will save you time and money.

If you know how to prevent loss of revenue, credibility and even clients in the early stages of your business this offers you more opportunity to move forward.

Detecting any problems early enough to deal with them can mean the differende between success and failure.

So how are you made AWARE in the first place. One of the steps people sometimes like to skip when planning a small business is market research. Being aware of what is out there, who your competition is, how much financial backing you have or do not have are crucial elements within your business. If you decide to miss this step out and jump forward too fast you may find your small business does not succeed. Being aware is quite simple, visit your local small business centre and find out how they can help you. You may have friends who already own a business and they raise your awareness by offering tips and ideas how to build strong foundations for your future sucess. AWARENESS is a vital tool which, if utilised and used properly can benefit you on a daily basis.

How can you PREVENT certain challenges impacting your business. Prevention works hand in hand with AWARENESS, by practising both Awareness and Prevention you can definitely ensure your success. Let’s use your office computer as an example of practising prevention. You may not be able to hire an IT consultant in the early days so you decide to set up your business computer yourself. You can prevent the loss of data, and other serious issues from occuring by being Aware of the consequences in the first place. If you do not have a firewall are you preventing the bad guys from breaking into your computer and stealing all your client information? Prevention means you are aware of the relevant facts and ensure you act accordingly to prevent challenges to the best of your ability.

Does EARLY DETECTION mean you failed to ensure your business was adequately protected in the first place or does it mean that you detected a challenge early enough to ensure less serious conequences? Early detection means that there is a challenge, which you discovered early and you can deal with it before it gets out of hand. It may or may not be that you were not Aware, or practised Prevention, but ultimately, the goal here is not to be perfect but to do your best.

APE is a tool you can use in every situation every day of your life, I do and it works for me, so try it and see what you think!

I am very active on social media sites and I see the value of connecting with like minded people. What I find many people are doing today, and let’s take Twitter and Facebook as a good example, is connecting to as many people as possible and announcing to the world they have 5,000 plus followers, connections etc. Well good for you! Now what are you going to do with thos people?

The purpose of connecting with anyone at all is mainly to get to know them, build a relationship and see how you can help them, or they can help you. Before you run away at the word – help – think about it in a non business respect. Remember when you were a student at school or college and you were the new girl or boy and you wanted to make friends and also, you wanted to be popular. I am almost positive you did not run up to everyone and state your name, where you lived, and then asked them to help you with your homework  or drive you home from school or even buy you lunch. What I think you did do is ask if you could hang out with them, slowly listen and learn and get to know them, and work out who you did want to be friends with and who you did not. Obviously if you are super popular you are friend with everyone, but juggling school, part time work, eating and sleeping probably means a lot of your friends did not get your attention 100% of the time. Once you had built up a relationship with other students you would have friends in your inner circle you wanted to help, either with homework or even a ride home from school. But, once in a while you would come across someone who needed your help who was not exactly a best friend, but you felt you could help because they were good students and you liked helping others. You may even have found that by helping others you could be deemed as an influencer at school and may even become Head Girl or join clubs at school in a leadership capacity.

Flip this scenario over to the world of social media networking, and imagine you are friends with 1,000 or more people on FB or Twitter, how much time would it take you to connect with them all, via a phone call, email or a word or two on twitter in private message? Not possible, not if you are working the social media sites properly, and know why and how to be successful and how to use these sites as a tool and not let them become like a rock around your neck dragging you down!

Now I am not saying don’t connect with as many people as you want, what I am saying is don’t go around bragging like you bagged a new trophy, people are people and we all like to be thought of as special and not part of the herd so to speak. So you announce you have 1,000 followers, what will this give you? how do they know who you are, what you do, how can you help them all? By all means bag as many trophy followers as you like but long term you could end up with nothing, the same as you started. People are latching on to this pretty quickly and choosing not to connect to just for numbers.

I have a lot of followers on Twitter and not quite so many on other social media sites, this is a calculated decision and I know my reasons and the whys and wherefores.

Enjoy your trophies on your wall:)

I wake up around 7am and I am always hungry, my favourite breakfast is Porridge, which my lovely husband DaveOJ lovingly prepares for me, he is normally half asleep, and I make us a nice cup of tea. My laptop is open and ready to go so as I read the newspapers online I check my emails too and make some comments on Twitter, Facebook, Sprouter, to name a few of my social media sites.

After a shower if I am working in my office and not speaking at an event I reply to emails and note which newspaper articles are worthy of showcasing on my social media sites. Due to the amount of emails I receive regarding the Small Business Community Network, which I co-founded with DaveOJ 7 years ago, and the emails regarding Motivational Steps, I am normally stuck at my desk for hours replying to people who I feel deserve a reply. Obviously like most of us I get a lot of spam email, some of which I send to Junk if our spam filter did not catch it first. Others I keep as my way of doing lazy market research, useful to know what works and what does not in this area.

I normally speak at conferences across Canada and if I am not opening Keynote Speaker I am closing Keynote Speaker, this is my passion and joy and where I feel I reach so many people and help them in many different ways. DaveOJ and I are very happy to be able to travel to these events together and most conference organizations invite us to enjoy the whole conference and this means meeting so many wonderful people and build relationships. Most of the  events I speak at are during the week, but if the odd conference happens to be during a weekend, Dave and I make a short holiday off it and take a few days extra to explore the surrounding area.

I know the benefit of a healthy lifestyle so I break around 10.30 for a coffee and a healthy nibble and stretch my legs and give my eyes a break from the computer screen. If the telephone is quiet and no one bothers me with calls I get to work on my articles, blogs, new keynotes or finding information & tips for my groups on LinkedIn, Facebook and other sites.

Networking face to face and attending different and diverse networking events takes up a lot of my time, but the benefits are tremendous.

After lunch if it is quiet I watch videos, read blogs and seek out people I respect who I can learn from and take notes or connect with them to ask questions or gain new mentors.

My newsletter, Stepping Stone is published once a month and I am always looking for articles from subscribers to publish in my newsletter. I also offer the Motivational Moments Podcasts at least twice a month and like to interview people from all walks of life for my podcast. I am often invited to be interviewed on radio stations and local t.v. shows which is great exposure for me.

The Small Business Community Network offers meetings once a month, for which I find speakers and also guests and members are encouraged to attend as much as possible. The SBCN also offers a couple of special events a year so I am always looking for seminar leaders.

I am also a business development consultant and take on 4 clients a year and that fits into my schedule nicely as I tend to keep those clients for early morning appointments.

As a successful business owner and member of a wonderful local community I offer mentorship to people who I feel need my help and this is on a complimentary basis. If we do not speak on the phone I meet them at my other office, which is located at a local Williams Coffee Pub.

Volunteering is very important to me so I make sure I leave space in my calender for my duties with various organizations.

When 5.30 arrives, I look at the clock and wonder where the day went! After supper DaveOJ and I can often be found at our laptops working on new ideas, marketing plans or just relaxing chatting on line.

It seems like I have a busy day, which I do but I would not change a thing, I love what I do and I love my life!

We all have dreams to follow, unfortunately some of us only dream about our dreams and never actually turn our dreams into a reality.

I know I sound like an irritating Miss Perfect sometimes, but I am not, honestly, saying that I always follow my dreams and make them my reality. You all know my story by now so I won’t bore you with it, but after living through all the challenges I have I know the only way I came out the other end is by following my dream. Yes, it is OK to dream, the problem arises when we fail to take action!

I have a new dream, all shiny and sparkly and it’s all mine. My dream is to be discovered in the UK, I was born in Birmingham, so I am working towards making that dream my reality. It will happen, I know because I believe in myself, and I work hard to make my dreams come true.

My plan is to be engaged to speak at as many events as possible, so that I can reach all the people who want to live their dream. I will start off in Birmingham and work my way to all the other cities until I have connected with and helped all  the people who want to listen to me.

By the way, just in case you think  I am asleep and dreaming at this moment, I am wide awake and already moving towards making my dream my reality.

When I published my second book a year ago, The APE Philosophy, For Everything Money Can’t Buy I knew I needed to share with everyone what they already knew, but failed to realise that fact.

My book is set in the Town of Simple. Notice the word *SIMPLE*.

4 main characters appear to have the perfect life. They have created an illusion – but not made it into their reality.

As the story continues you will discover that eventually the townspeople of the town of Simple have to come to terms with the fact their lives are not perfect and find ways to deal with their challenges. Challenges they either knew they had but would not admit to them, or challenges they had no idea they were experiencing. Both worst case scenarios.

I notice all around me that people are taking on my philosophy. They are striving to go back in time, they are realising that simple is the way to go. A couple of instances of this could be the large organizations who hide behind complicated policies and procedures and no one undesrtands them. No wonder that these policies and procedures are not always followed!

Another example is the way we network and build relationships, it really is not rocket science it is simple. We can hide behind the elevator speech and portray we are perfect, or we could display our real, unique being, the real us, and keep it simple. An example would be rather than spouting off the perfect spiel when you meet someone at a networking event, would be to simply introduce yourself and tell them you would love to get to know more about them. SIMPLE!

I hope you can take the time to check out my book on my website and then offer me feedback on my comments in this article, thanks. http://www.motivationalsteps.com/the_ape_philosophy/ my email address is linda@motivationalsteps.co