Writing & Publishing Archives - Page 21 of 28 - Sonia Marsh

How to become a leader in your field

August 18, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

We all have a desire to be successful at what we do, whether it’s professional, personal or simply making the best of the 24 hours we have been given each day.

In these times of uncertainty we have many questions:

How can we achieve our goals?
How can we take charge and change things for the better?
Where is our world heading?

If you are willing to think unconventionally from a business perspective, you can apply there tools to your own personal growth.

The following article “5 ways to fuel leadership in your organization” was written for business leaders, however I think it applies equally to those of us who are self-employed, have goals to publish our work, or start a business.

So what is the one thing we all need to succeed?

Leadership.

Not just old-fashioned leadership but, bold, gutsy and ambitious leadership.

Now if you’re doing it alone, just like a large business, you must take action and align yourself with other people who are willing to shake things up. A quote from “5 ways to fuel leadership in your organization.”

“Leadership is a bold, confident and deliberate choice you make because you want to add value and make a difference. Take note, the organisations filled with gutsy, bold and confident leaders, those willing to shake things up and charge the hill, will find that the field is uncrowded. Success belongs to those organisations willing to invest in leadership.”

I believe the 5 ways to develop leadership within a company apply equally to us as individuals.

1. Choose to think big and act bold

You need to take charge, connect with others who can help move your small business, publishing goals, or your future in the right direction. Always try to do your best, and don’t allow others to stop you.

2. Define a big, inspiring cause

Perhaps you already have a cause that you’re helping with, and this is fueling you to gain more personal satisfaction with your work. I wrote a previous article on “How Can I Turn My Passion into a job” with Alissa Everett, whom I shall be interviewing shortly about her profession as a photographer, and the non-profit she created: Care Through Action, as a way to contribute and make a difference to our world.

3. Choose to be Gutsy

Just like a large corporation needs to make tough decisions and focus forward, ask yourself:

What can I do?
Where do I want to head?
What do I want to achieve?

4. Celebrate people and projects

Celebrate others and show and tell the ways they are doing this by starting a “Brag Blog.” Success breeds success.

5. Lighten up and start having fun

Just as many companies have become way too serious, so have people. Kevin and Jackie Freiburg state:

“We’ve lost our passion for balancing work and fun… Fun is a major form of differentiation; fun creates energy, stimulates creativity and boosts productivity! Fun makes doing even mundane tasks more pleasant. When people are having fun at work, it’s like adding fuel to a fire.”

One example of someone who decided to become a leader and take charge of her writing career is Amanda Hocking, one of the most successful self-published, indie authors in recent history, who was offered a $2 million book deal. You can read her a summary of her publishing goals in this blog interview.

For my writer friends, I asked Jerry Simmons some specific questions about book marketing, e-books, self-publishing and distribution. He has answered my questions in his newsletter WriterReaders newsletter, which I subscribe to and recommend to all writers.

Do you feel the uncertain times we live in today are affecting your outlook on the future? In what way?

Photo Credit Above Sergio Castro

Social media addicts take worlidays

August 15, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

I admit I’m an addict, a middle-aged social media addict. How do I know? Because of two things I did while on vacation last week with my husband and youngest son.

It’s our 25th wedding Anniversary and we’re checking into a nice hotel on Pensacola beach, Florida. The first thing I ask before we get our room key is, “What’s your Internet access code?” Then I start thinking, perhaps we can order a bottle of champagne and say cheers in front of our laptops. The good news is my husband is an addict too, but not the BA kind (blogging addict), no he’s an FA (forum addict) the kind where people discuss cameras.
My husband finds a great restaurant within walking distance from our hotel to celebrate our Anniversary. He’s dressed and ready to go and I say, “Let me just finish commenting on this friend’s blog and then we can go.” Is that sad or what?

Now that I’m back home, with no excuses to not get back in the swing of posting, I discovered this article, “Scrap holidays, bring on the ‘worliday’,” which made me realize that perhaps I should quit criticizing social media, and those who participate in it, and simply accept that, old-fashioned holidays are gone forever, and we now have to call them “worlidays.” Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times, invented this word. Another term is the “workation.”

“Worliday is a bit like holiday and a bit like work. It’s the future for most professional workers – and actually, contrary to what most people would have you believe, worliday is really rather nice.” says Lucy Kellaway.

I think most of us are programmed to believe that vacations are about de-stressing and spending time with family, not checking our FaceBook, Tweets, or whatever else we do. Some experts believe we cannot recharge our batteries unless we “disconnect,” completely from work.

But Kellaway brings up a great point by claiming that we don’t:

” always respond well to a sudden cold-turkey immersion in idleness with the family in a strange place.”

I feel better after reading her article where she points out that prior to Internet days, it would take a good week to “unwind,” and relax and stop worrying about work. Since most Americans take a week or less off, I guess they never have enough time to “unwind.”

Benefits of taking worlidays

There is no stark transition between work and holiday
You can get away more often, since you’re still (sort of) working

Obviously this more flexible system may not work for professionals with fixed holidays and hours, however, certain companies like Netflix, allow their employees to go on vacation when they feel like taking one- no-one keeps records.

So are the good old-fashioned board game days of family vacations gone forever?

I think so. When people sunbathe with their i-phones and eat breakfast with their laptops and tablets, perhaps the newspaper is the only thing left of the good old days.

Are you in favor of worlidays or the traditional pre-Internet holiday?

Are you capable of a complete disconnect? If so what is your maximum time to stay away from the Internet?

Worliday man Photo credit

How authentic are we online?

August 1, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

The more I learn about social media, the more I think there’s one huge contradiction.

The biggest problem I see is with authenticity.

I’ve heard time and time again that the secret to being a successful blogger is to:

Write great content
Solve a problem for your readers
Meet some specific need or desire for your readers
Differentiate yourself from the 1,000’s of other blogs out there
Be yourself

We know that blogs with massive numbers of subscribers follow the five guidelines mentioned above, however, I would like to focus on the last one: be yourself, and here’s where I see the problem. How authentic are we online?

We’re told that the best approach is to:

“Be yourself. Don’t pretend to be something you’re not; people can tell if you’re a fake.”

Before I go one step further I have to admit that I’m not 100% myself either (Gasp!) because if I were, I wouldn’t be spending hours producing a how I made my blog welcome video where I sound perkier and livelier than I would at a martini party with my closest friends. And since my article is about being authentic, let me say right now that I wouldn’t spend days and weekends blogging, Tweeting, FaceBooking and commenting on other people’s blogs if I didn’t have a book coming out? (Gasp again!)

I do this because I’m Sonia Marsh and not Sarah Palin. Unfortunately, that dirty word, “self-promotion” for unknown people like myself is what’s expected in the 21st Century. I feel like my online world has sucked me into become one big self-promotional tool and that if I step off and enjoy good old-fashioned phone, and face-to-face conversations with my human friends, I might be “forgotten.”

I know I’m not alone. A popular blogger, Jen Gresham from Everyday Bright wrote about her two-month online sabbatical in her July 5th post: When Wonder Woman Isn’t Feeling So Wonderful.

“Part of me (and I’m sure some of my fellow bloggers) thinks this is crazy with a capital C. There’s this idea that if you stop writing, the crowd will disperse and never, ever come back.” (From Jen Gresham’s blog.)

So what’s wrong with us? It’s like we think, if only I put in more hours into my social media, I can grow my blog. For whom? For what reason? Is that because we want fame? money? more subscribers to feel better? Get people to follow us because we’re more popular than they are?

I think some of us need a reality check. Do you feel like you’re truly yourself online? Come on, be honest with me.

Here’s a list of things most of us are guilty of, and yes, I admit, I’ve done these myself.

Saying, “Loved your post, or great post,” because we want to be liked.
Skimming through headlines, because we don’t have enough time to read as many blog posts as we feel we should.
Trying to read and make a comment of value on certain posts, especially if we know that blogger is popular and hope he/she will notice us.
Retweeting something because once again, we hope to be noticed.

So what’s the truth here? Are we phony?

You know something’s off kilter when your social media takes precedence over your own family. I remember feeling guilty as hell when my 23-year-old son called and asked me to check airfares for him to come home, and before I did that, I had to check my social media responses first. Sick, sick, sick… What has happened to us? Have we become so self-centered and competitive because of social media, or are we getting sucked into it because if we don’t do it, we’ll never make it.

Of course there are several reasons, one of them might be a problem with addiction to social media. But in many cases, it’s either about making a living, becoming rich, famous, getting exposure, getting more readers, fundraising or sharing what we do with others.

So I invite you to comment, e-mail, Tweet, FB and “like” me, and there’s always the telephone, if you have time to go out for a real cup of coffee and we can be ourselves.

Photo credit Thomas Hendele

My 7 links post for Tripbase

July 21, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

Sonia at Crystal Cove, Laguna Beach, California

Tripbase is running a My 7 Links project to unite bloggers (from all sectors) in a joint endeavor to share lessons learned and create a bank of long but not forgotten blog posts that deserve to see the light of day again. Sounds good doesn’t it?

Miss Footloose from Life in the ExpatLane, and Annabel Candy from GetintheHotSpot. I feel very special thanks to both of you.

1. My most beautiful post

Did I cry when I said “Goodbye”

Emotionally, it was tough for me to say Goodbye when my second son left for college. This post was picked up by More magazine .

2. My most popular post

What does number 11 mean?

Never realized how many people also see # 11, and read this post, although it has a twist.

3. My most controversial post

Pregnant at 53 (my video)

Many thought this was real. What about you?

Why do we let young girls dress like that?

4. My most helpful post

Creating an Awesome Blog

It gets you thinking about your goals. It’s a simple post that gets to the core of what’s important in blogging.

5. The post with the most success that surprised me

Is education a right or a privilege?

I discuss how my sons were influenced by what they heard from our Belizean caretaker about how lucky they were to get an education.

6. A post I feel didn’t get the attention it deserved

Do schools kill creativity?

I am very much into comparing educational systems around the world.

7. A post that I’m most proud of

My Italian Lover (my video)

A story I wrote and was filmed reading at Dime Stories in Laguna Beach, California. I got way more laughs than I expected.

6 (I’m only supposed to ask 5 but like to take a risk) Hot Bloggers I’d like to nominate to participate:

Satisfying Retirement

Zero to 60 and beyond

Blog in France

Prolific Living

Always Well Within

THE BIG RISK***The Art of Non Conformity (Chris Guillebeau) It never hurts to be Gutsy and ask a tribe leader to join.

(Comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading and sharing.)

Is Work/Life Balance a Myth?

July 11, 2011 by Sonia Marsh

Work/Life Balance

How often do you hear about the importance of finding balance in your life? And what exactly does that mean?

We hear “experts” talk about the secret to achieving the perfect work/life balance as though there’s a “magic formula” hidden in some secret cave that some people have access to but most of us are struggling to grasp.

What if I told you that secret doesn’t exist.

Take Barbara Walters for example, a highly successful career woman. In Dr. Lafair’s article, “Does Being Gutsy Activate Being Guilty,” Walters admits there is a tricky balance between work and family. As a Gutsy woman, Walters put it succinctly when she said “Just do not expect balance.”

Obviously if you place too much emphasis on family, your work suffers, and if your work takes priority your family suffers.

It’s almost as if the work/life balance can only be achieved once you take work out of the equation, or raising a family out of the equation. Am I oversimplifying? Perhaps, but why are we so focused on defining everything and questioning whether our work/life balance conforms to the magic formula?

I think the problem stems from guilt, especially the guilt women express when they have a full-time job and are raising a family. A friend of mine has three children and a very successful career. I envied the fact that she always seemed in control of her work and her kids’ activities until one day she confessed, “I feel like a failure as a wife, a mother and at my job. I can never give 100% of myself to any of my roles.”

Women are experts at feeling guilt, why is that?

Dr. Lafair, the author of Don’t Bring It to Work: Breaking the Family Patterns That Limit Success brings up the issue of women and guilt and suggests that women have an intimate relationship with guilt.

“It is harder for us to compartmentalize emotions and thus we worry about how our behavior impacts family, friends, community and with the worry comes self-doubt.”

So I asked my husband, “Do men feel the same guilt as women when it comes to balancing work and family?” His response:

“Men feel it too, but the expectation is different.”

Some of you may disagree with his statement, but even today, where women are often the major bread-winners, most men still feel a sense of wanting to provide for their family. What do you think?

Some men manage to step out of their “crazy” corporate life when they realize their whole life revolves around work, and they rarely see their kids. Take Nigel Marsh for example. In a previous post I wrote about his views on How to Achieve the Perfect Work/Life Balance. He quit his high pressured corporate job in an advertising agency to stay home with four young children.

I think when we feel overwhelmed we realize that we’ve lost that sense of balance which is a personal thing, not a one-size fits all magical formula. I also believe that Barbara Walters suggestion to “Just do not expect balance,” is quite liberating especially for us women who have a tendency to feel guilty.

I’d love to hear your thoughts from both women and men on this topic.