Archive for the 'Priceless Thoughts' Category
As a business owner, you’re hoping for huge success! Most entrepreneurs can identify with that desire. If you believe in your products or services, your goal will be to proudly introduce the masses to those products or services.
When you start to taste that sweet, exciting flavor of success, the feeling is indescribable. However, as you grow your business and become more successful – beware the bloated ego. Here are some of the dangers of letting your success go to your head!
Getting Too Comfortable In Your Success –
While success is the thing every entrepreneur, business owner or company hopes for – gaining it also increases vulnerability. It’s very easy to become comfortable in your success and when this happens, you’re not far from forgetting that you can fail. One success after another and before long, a business individual can feel invincible.
When you become comfortable and feel invincible, this opens up a weak spot for the competition to feed on. At the beginning of a business or a new deal, most individuals work tirelessly to achieve success and are excited about what the future can bring. At this point, it’s easy to see how success can be drawn to those individuals. When you let that fire go and become too comfy cozy, a host of problems can threaten to overtake you.
Becoming Closed-Minded –
If you ask my grandmother why she mixes her bread from scratch and lets it rise for hours before baking it, she will say, “Because that’s the way I’ve always done it and it works.”
It does work (and is delicious, by the way) but for just a few dollars she could purchase the frozen bread that rises in an hour and tastes just as good. She would shave several hours off of her preparation and would be a lot more efficient with her time. Becoming closed-minded about the way you do things is another danger of letting your success go to your head.
If you refuse to see the advantage of trying new ways to complete a project or sell your products, your business will never stay on the forefront of your industry. There are other businesses that are doing things more efficiently and you must stay competitive if you want to stay successful. By staying a step ahead of the competition and keeping your processes and methods innovative, you can hang on to that success!
Forgetting about the ‘Little Guys’ –
I’m one of those people who will brag and brag about a company I love and if I’ve had a bad experience, I will tell everyone! For instance, recently my family went out to a nice restaurant for dinner. After our drinks came, we waited more than an hour for our waitress to come and take our dinner order. There were two other parties there besides ours – and we waited an hour! Assuming there was a crisis in the kitchen that demanded all available hands, we went ahead and ordered dinner.
After a mediocre meal with no drink refills, we left the restaurant. A few days later, I discovered that my credit card had been charged not once, not twice but THREE times for the same meal. When I called the owner, I received an attitude and a half-hearted offer for a free meal. It was a terrible experience and we never went back. My entire family and all of my friends had to live through this story of the restaurant from hell and not a single one of them visited. Knowing my family and friends – I’m sure the story was passed around.
Your customers should never be forgotten. As you’re experiencing your success, don’t forget about the people who have helped you get there. Without your customers – you are nothing, so take it to heart when they purchase from you or remain loyal to you. If you truly appreciate their business, let them know with great customer service and rewards! Losing one customer may not hurt your business, but word of mouth continues to be the most powerful form of advertising – so make sure that advertising is good and not bad!
In closing, success is wonderful but it’s a double-edged sword. Stay on your toes with your business and refuse to allow success to force you into complacency. Keep in mind, there is always another company with services similar to yours waiting to fill your shoes and do the things you neglect to do!
Don't let Microsoft Spell Checker create lazy habits in your writing!
The inspiration behind this post comes from the red-squiggly line that greets me every time I type ‘positivity’ into a sentence. Let’s face it - Microsoft Spell Checker is not our best friend, especially when we’ve become too dependent on using its services. Oftentimes, this popular feature provides a false sense of security, from stressed-out college students to the best of writers. Spell Checker makes it much easier to skimp on proofreading or glance over similarly spelled words.
Spell Checker also makes us lazy and less adept in our writing. We start to form habits impossible to kick - like ingrained spelling errors that we’ll use whether we’re typing a blog comment or drafting a handwritten thank-you letter. I’m guilty of it - when I email friends or engage in a bit of Instant Messaging, my spelling is sometimes comical. I find that I’m usually misspelling some of the same words over and over again, but instead of grabbing the dictionary and committing these common flaws to memory - I brush it off because I know Spell Checker will serve as my attentive companion.
However, we are often placed in everyday writing situations where the computer does not come to the rescue, like:
- Completing college exam essays
- Typing directly into online forms
- Sending a postcard to loved ones
- Writing a simple school sick-note for your kids
Where is Spell Checker then? Nowhere to be found and in the end, your spelling accuracy and grammar suffers. Then, there are the people who rely on Spell Checker to not only catch their spelling mistakes, but to also correct their grammar bloopers. What happens when they encounter a Web editor that doesn’t offer this feature?
Don’t Weaken Your Image
For the freelance writer, typos are not only embarrassing, but they often suggest unprofessional work when you’re guilty of the blunder more than once. Clients are not paying for mistakes and errors. While we are all imperfect humans and occasional slips of the proofreading process are to be expected, many clients in the business world are unforgiving. And please, please, please - whatever you do - don’t overlook a typo on your resume.
Recommendation: Always manually proofread your pages and when dealing with a large amount, print out your work and edit away from the computer. Sometimes, the strain of looking at a bright screen when going over your writing can contribute to overlooked misspelling and grammatical errors.
We’re All Victims…
Just the other day, I sent an article in for a second round of proofreading and was alerted to a rather embarrassing slip of the eye. Apparently, I had substituted “pubic” for “public.” I reread the article several times, yet did not pick up on the mistake. Sometimes, you just have to step away from a piece for a few moments to give your eyes a chance to refocus. There is a fine line between knowing what you want to say and actually accomplishing it without error. At times, we are truly blinded when it comes to proofreading our own work, especially if it’s regarding a piece we’ve spent a great deal of time on.
However, that’s why at Priceless Writers, clients not only have one sweep of the proofreading wand, but at least two once-overs by fellow partners. We keep each other on our toes, pointing out the glaring and not-so-obvious mistakes that appear hidden in text.
And, we don’t rely on our not so best friend, Mr. or Mrs. Spell Checker.
The next time you post a blog, you might just want to take a minute and consider whether or not it’s breaking any laws, or has the potential to break any in the future. Far from being just a harmless medium for posting thoughts and opinions, there are many legal issues that you have to keep in mind not only as a blogger but as a reader as well. From copyright issues to slander and libel, not to mention the problems comments can cause – there’s more to blogging than just throwing a few sentences together.
For example, if you’re a business blogger and you’re posting an opinion on the latest business news from a company or organization, you have to make sure that your post is based on fact. If you have an error in there, you could find yourself facing a lawsuit (although more than likely, most companies will settle for an apology and correction). Depending on your post, you could also be liable for a libel or slander claim – so make sure you know what you’re talking about and you have the facts to back it up.
Copyright infringement is also a hot potato, especially with the ease that blogs can be picked up by external sources. This can be down to your RSS feed, or something as simple as your blog turning up on social media sites like Digg or Technorati. The next thing you know, your blog is appearing elsewhere online. While this can be beneficial as far as links back to your post (which helps your ranking with the major search engines), it doesn’t help if you aren’t being credited and the post is being passed off as someone else’s. Of course, the flip side of this is if you use sections of other people’s blogs without crediting them as the source. Sure, it’s nice to bring a news story to a wider audience, but make sure you link back to the owner – not only is it professional and courteous, it could save you a big copyright theft case.
Another surprising area where you need to watch what’s going on is the comments area on your blog. While the legality of who is responsible for comments left on a blog is still a little patchy, the general consensus is that the company hosting the blog is responsible – after all, they are the ones allowing comments to stay public. Therefore, any defamatory or hateful statements will be blamed on you if you leave them for everyone to see – the best idea is to moderate all comments and post the ones that you feel don’t break any ethical, moral or legal issues. You can even place a disclaimer on your blog stating that all comments are approved at the discretion of the blog owner.
At the end of the day, blogging is a fantastic medium for sharing both personal and company news quickly and efficiently. This doesn’t have to change – but just make sure that the next time you’re about to open up to the rest of the world, it’s not going to end up being the last post you make for a long time.
As a business owner, you’re hoping for huge success! Most entrepreneurs can identify with that desire. If you believe in your products or services, your goal will be to proudly introduce the masses to those products or services. 
If you ask my grandmother why she mixes her bread from scratch and lets it rise for hours before baking it, she will say, “Because that’s the way I’ve always done it and it works.” 
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