Communication

Reliability and Finding the Right Expert for Your Business

/ Jeff Hora / 1 Comment

During a fruitful first meeting with a new colleague and collaborator this week, she mentioned something that really disturbed me.  She has a very healthy graphic design and publishing business and works with a broad array of customers.  She focuses on what she does very well and gives referrals, like any good business, to other businesses that she works with and trusts. However, in a couple of instances she has had to give referrals to customers for solopreneurs she didn’t know as well, particularly in the digital and social media marketing areas.

Sadly, both she and her customers “got bitten.” Although I haven’t gotten the complete story, apparently the solo businesses gladly took the referrals, promised the moon, seriously under-delivered and then disappeared. My colleague looked bad and her customers had a less than wonderful experience, as well as losing money and time.

Wow.  Just Wow….

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There’s Simple and Then There’s Simple

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Does simplicity limit understanding? I have been going back and forth on this question for awhile.

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Get out of your way

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment
Ego suspension. There it is.  What does it mean?

listening

listening (Photo credit: Leonard John Matthews)

I have been doing quite a bit of research and consideration of the skills required to be a truly effective listener, collaborator, influencer (more on that later) and generally a better human being. It turns out that ego suspension is critical to this direction of growth and one of the hardest things to do. Ever.

Listening is Visual

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment
Recently I had the privilege of spending several hours with some new members of the community I work with.  The scenario was a bit backwards, as

Listening

Listening (Photo credit: elycefeliz)

their particular community is a couple of decades old and I’ve only really known them for several months, but we are “new to each other”, so to speak.  It was a LOT of fun and extremely educational.

The first part of the meeting consisted of time set aside for me to make a presentation that I had worked on for a couple of weeks and spent some time rehearsing. I went over it again on the plane to the meeting and once more for good measure a half hour before the meeting began.  Upon entering the meeting room, I noticed no projector….um…..OK. The lead at the meeting told me that, since I was the only person with an actual presentation, they had decided not to have a projector.