The Blog of Lisa Morosky

Because of what I do, I spend a lot of time talking with people who are new to blogging (like “Can you tell me what blogging is?” type new). Let’s be straight here: it’s hella confusing to navigate this whole blogging thing successfully if you’re completely new to the concept. All you know is that you want to make money online and (apparently) you need to have a blog to do that. And you better “do it right” before you completely mess up your chances of having an online business.

Right? Wait – that’s not right? Huh. Could have fooled me, because it seems like that’s what people are telling you (when you boil it down).

The first thing most people do when they come to me and say they want to start a blog or add a blog to their site or whatever is send me a list of links.

“I found this online. We should do this.”
“This person says I need to be active on all these sites.”
“According to so-and-so, you have to write this many times a week and posts should only be this long.”
And the link list and commentary goes on.

I spend the first portion of my email exchanges telling people that everyone is different, and everyone’s market is different, and everyone’s blog is different. So thanks for the links, but who the hell cares? We’re still going to have to start from the ground up and see what’s going to work for you. You can’t just copy and paste someone else’s business plan.

The problem is that everywhere you look in this market there’s a list of do’s and don’ts. Labels and rules galore. I say – buck the labels and rules. They’re more like opinions anyways.

Labels and rules put a stop on creative thinking. That’s pretty much a historic fact. Some of the greatest minds in business are those who disregarded the standards and the rules. You can’t hand me a list of duplicated do’s and don’ts, then tell me you want to be unique and stand out. It just doesn’t work that way.

Labels and rules help you play it safe. It’s easy to look at someone successful and copy the way they did it and what they’re doing. That’s safe. That’s not trying something different to see if it’ll succeed and taking the chance of failure. When people fail doing this they often realize they failed because you can’t really copy the biggest contributor to someone’s success – who they are. It’s not the business portion of an online business that fails. It’s the “you” portion. You weren’t dedicated enough, or didn’t want to work hard, or didn’t put in the time and effort.

Labels and rules help to trap you in a box and create internal conflict. The rule says that you should only have one topic per blog so you don’t alienate your audience. But what if your experience and logic and wishful-thinking tell you that phasing in a new topic into your blog would be a success? Hello, internal conflict. I’ve felt this a lot throughout the past couple years, in various ways. Every time I’ve decided to go with what I think is best. And every time it’s been a good decision. Literally, every time.

See labels and rules as examples of one successful method. There are always 100 ways to go about any 1 thing. It’s about finding the way that works for you.

What are some of the labels and rules you hate the most?

I’ll go first. I hate that people feel like they need to choose between the “blogger” label and the “Internet marketer” label. I’ve gone with “blogger”. Simply because I think it sounds better. I know what I do.

And I hate when people try to outline rules for social media engagement. I don’t need guidelines on how to communicate with others, thank you very much. I’m a woman. I’ve got the communication thing down.

Your turn.

I’m sure some of you guys have heard about this five love languages thing. It’s basically a quiz you can take to determine what your love language is. The quiz is in terms of husband and wife, as it’s a pretty marriage-centric idea. The idea here is to learn what your love language is so you can see how to better relate to and better love your spouse.

Your love language options are: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. You can read about them here.

My love language is Acts of Service. And the percentage was overwhelming – none of the other love languages even came close.

Here’s what the website says about this particular one:

“Can vacuuming the floors really be an expression of love? Absolutely! Anything you do to ease the burden of responsibilities weighing on an “Acts of Service” person will speak volumes. The words he or she most want to hear: “Let me do that for you.” Laziness, broken commitments, and making more work for them tell speakers of this language their feelings don’t matter.”

Again, it’s in terms of your marriage here. And frankly, I took the quiz because I was wondering in that way as well. I told my husband the other day that my love language was Receiving Gifts. Turns out that was only my love language for that particular day (because I wanted him to buy me something).

Anyways. Back to business.

After I took that quiz, this ridiculously stereotypical lightbulb went off in my head. Suddenly, I understood myself in terms of my business. Allow me to share some of my insights.

I’m more appreciative when someone does something on my behalf to move my business forward, than when they just say I’m awesome.
For example, I glow when someone shares my material with others, or when someone writes me a really nice testimonial, or when someone buys a product of mine. These things move my business forward in a tangible way – and I didn’t make anyone do it. They did it on their own.

That’s not to say that I don’t cherish when people take the time to say nice things about me. I certainly do. But it really grabs my attention when people willingly go out of their way for me.

I’ve found that I measure my business success based on pretty much only one metric: how much and how often people are evangelizing for me.
Sometimes I feel weird saying that out loud. Most people measure their business success based on more concrete things, like numbers. And I look at those things too. But what matters most to me is how much and how often people are sharing me with others. I do good work –> people share my ideas, practices, products, services, and whatever else with others –> money. It all works out in the end.

I have a hard time being lazy. So much so that I often bite off more than I can chew. And boy does it annoy me when I see other people being complacent and lazy (or, in my eyes, being lazy).
I think this is kind of where my cynicism and critical thinking of the typical 9-5 job comes in. In my mind, I see that lack of willingness to get yourself into a happier life situation…as being lazy. And I know that can be skewed thinking, so that’s something I’ve had to check myself on.

Lightbulb. Gee, I wonder why the whole virtual assistant thing is so rewarding for me.
This is like the biggest lightbulb of them all for me. I really enjoy being a VA. Aside from the paying my bills satisfaction I get, I also add to my life the joy of completing “acts of service” for others. People are really grateful when you can help them out. I like to feel like I’m contributing to something. I get now why some people would never in a million years do what I do. They’re not motivated by “acts of service” like I am.

It really bugs me when I’m not 100% efficient.
Because that means I (or a client or someone else) created more work for myself than necessary and I’m wasting time. I can’t function properly if I’m not working within some sort of process.

This was an enlightening exercise for me. On a bunch of different levels.

If you want to see and understand how you relate to clients or customers, take the quiz and draw some metaphors for your business life. We just go through life sometimes without sitting back and thinking about why we do what we do. If you’re more self-aware, I believe you have the ability to be more aware of others and how you can positively impact them.

If you do it, I’d love to hear your results and what you think it means.

Photo Credit: le vent le cri