Section TED OF THE DAY: Programming your mind for success by Carrie Green

About the Section: THE TED OF THE DAY

Personally I consider TED one of the most powerful, insightful, inspiring and awesome initiatives for knowledge sharing. So many times I have been inspired for this talks and each time that this happen the minimum think that I can do is sharing it, this is the why I have created this section. I hope you enjoy it I do.

About TED

It is a non-profit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED is a global community, welcoming people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world. It believes in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. 

Programming your mind for success | Carrie Green | 

Carrie Green started her first online business at the age of 20, whilst studying Law at the University of Birmingham. Within a few years she took the business global, selling throughout the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Europe and receiving over 100,000 hits on the website every month. In 2011 Carrie launched the Female Entrepreneur Association as a way to help inspire and connect female entrepreneurs from around the world. The network has grown to over 140,000 women and they now produce a digital magazine, This Girl Means Business, weekly videos, free online classes and more.

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Professional career advice Step 2 - Set goals

What is a difference between a goal and a dream? Think for a minute.....

A dream is an Idea, It is a wish, it is generic, it is in your mind: "I want that dream job", "I want to travel around the world!"  "but I am not doing anything towards it, maybe it could happen or maybe not.... it's OK. finally it is a dream..."  A goal is a desired result, it implies a course of action, It's specific, it has a dead line and It is in the "Paper", "I am going to get this job in this company/start my international journey in this country, I will get done this before February 28 of the next year!, Tomorrow I'm going to start to look for opportunities which match with my profile and objectives, I'll track my progress weekly....." So just keep in mind this huge different between a dream and a goal but remember also that  If you put a dream on paper, and start to set a plan and specific actions for this, it becomes in a goal.

Our Job is the most time demanding activities of our life, researches reveals that we will spend about 99.127 hours of our life at work, so better to do this time the most worthy possible and bet for BIG  career goals! you must feel proud of what you want to become,  it has to be challenging, this journey have to be exciting!, Remember the Advice 1 - Set a Vision. 

When you have a huge dream which you have set as a goal, what you have to do is to plan the how and when to reach there, this will be a long term plan with short term and mind term goals that will let you get closer and stronger to catch  your Big goal.

The following questions will help you to start setting your Professional career goals: 

• What is my Personal/Professional Vision?  Advice 1 - Set a Vision. 
• Where am I now regarding my big goal?  (Self awareness)
• What do I have to learn, improve, strengthen? (Learning - development goals)
• Which goals do I have to reach before that big goal?   (Short term & mind term goals)
• Which opportunities there are around me? , what do I need to know? (Environment awareness)

Now that you have a clear picture about what you have to do,  is your decision to start! Once you have started you must push yourself to your vision and for that you need to set deadlines and check points, to analyse and make decisions regarding how is going your career plan.

Good look in your journey.

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Professional career advice 1 - Set a personal Vision

Consider the following before to start, do you remember this time when you read,  listened or saw something that have made you think about changes/goals in your life? That is called inspiration! Now think, how many times did you get to accomplish that changes/goals? I guess that the answer is not 100% of the times, unfortunately the most of us use to start personal projects so often but we do not get finish all of them. Conclusion: Inspiration is good it is the energy to start! but without your personal decision, actions and discipline you will never  improve or change anything!  So I really hope you get inspired with this post in some way and then work until the end of your life for your personal vision.

PERSONAL VISION 

This is the most important step that you have to take in order to set a successful professional career. Without knowing your destination, you will never reach it. Thinks that you are like a ship in that huge sea called life and you have to set your final destination and know the different stops (Experiences) that will let you reach there. 

Action step 

Take a couple of minutes of uninterrupted time. Take a piece of paper and a pen and write down the answers for the following question. Do not skip this! This is most likely the hardest part of this guide this will be your motivation and source of inspiration for the next steps!

- Who do you want to become (Your Vision)? 

Be your own wonderful creature. Think in your final destination

- Which are your biggest  Professional achievement? Dream Job?  Entrepreneur?

- What do you know or do better than anyone? Identify your strengths!

- What make you happy? Identify in your passion

- Which are my core values / Miles tones? What behaviours will lead you to your vision

- How do you want to be remembered after you die?

Seriously you need to really think about these questions and answer them. Do it now. As long as you've taken those few minutes on your time, you are already on the right way. You've already done more than 99% of normal people do. You are taking actions! and ownership! Feel great about yourself! 

The next post (The step 2) will be related with GOALS! So far the step 1 give us a self diagnostic , a dream, a big picture about what we want, with that we have the general objective to pursuit and starting a plan. 

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The best productivity tools!

Personally I have been using the following tools for years and each one have helped me a lot to bust my personal and team performance.  If these tools are new for you, my advice is that you should give you the enough time to know them and then according to your personal and job needs use the different features and solution that they offer.

Remember that to master any kind of tool you  have to read about them, watch YouTube tutorials, ask for advises to your friends  and of course use the tool as much as you can, include it within your routine of work and you will see how with the daily use you start discovering new and amazing ways to use it. In my case the following are my personal top 3:

Top 1  Google Docs

Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides let you create different kinds of online documents, work on them in real time with other people, and store them online. You can access the documents, from any computer, anywhere in the world. — and all for free, you just need a Gmail account. 

To know more about google Docs visit the followings guides

Google Sheets  started guide

Google Docs started guide

Google Slides started guide

Top 2  Evernote

It is a really powerful tool! Forget the paper sheets and pencil and shift to the digital notes, but Evernote is much more than that. You will never lost again any paper with some important stuff that you wrote down! Now you will have a tool that give you quick access to your notes in any computer, at anytime and anywhere.

It really has became indispensable in my routine I wrote everything over there: Check lists, daily reminders, meetings outputs, thoughts, I also save links, docs, articles everything!

To know more about Evernote visit the followings link

Evernote.com/getting_started

Top 3  Trello

You will love this tool to manage projects,  It is flexible and visual way to organize anything with anyon.

Trello is a free web-based project management application. it uses a paradigm for managing projects known as kanban, a method that had originally been popularized by Toyota in the 1980s for supply chain management. Projects are represented by boards, which contain lists (corresponding to task lists).

To know more about Trello visit the followings link

Trello.com

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Boosting the result of your landing page!

To start let me share with you a really useful and nice graphic representation that I found today in the blog of HubSpot in my research time of the day. So let's start:

First of all,  what optimization is?  

The graphic above can help us to get a clear idea about it, but let me also help you to develop this idea. I want to clarify that the "Desired action" and the landing pages itself will be different according the objective and strategy that you have defined. For instance if you are a B2B company and you are using  LEAD generation into your marketing strategy to accomplish your sales objectives, then the desired action would be to get the further contact information of potential customers. As more visitors you get  filling your LEAD form, more conversion your landing page will have.  

Now, According the above, you have to consider the following check points to ensure a killer landing page:

• Set a clear goal, and ensure you don't distract your consumer from it.
• Simplify to get better results: One message, One objective, One page, one action!
• Be sure to know your audience and adapt the landing page according your potential costumer profile
• Use a clear and outstanding call to action (Buy now! Register now! Get start) This should be the first thing to stand out on any landing page.
• Use Social proof (Testimonials, Reviews): This will give you credibility 
• Include contact information: Adress, website, Phone, Emil
• About costumer forms (If any) ensure to keep it super simple
• Consider give freebies:  Coupons, Ebook, Whitepaper, Trial.
• Use mobile responsive desing, you won't want to lost customers because they can't access through their mobile devices.  
• Choose a testing method: For example A/B testing. 

If you want more Ideas, Here you will find 8 great landing page designs  for your illustration. 

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There aren't better books than these which inspire you.

I want specialty recommend  and share some thoughts about this amazing book which while I was going through each page it really got inspiring me so many times.  I just finished it the last moth its name is; La ruta de la Seda / The Silk Path (2nd book) by Bernard Ollivier (I read the Spanish version)

12.000 kms afoot through the mystic silk path! This is the "crazy" goal that Bernard Ollivier a french journalist decided to carry out!  At this time he is 62 years old! (Yeah 62!), he travels alone with only something of money, his bag-pack, his camera and a notebook. 

Just to help you to imagine why this is so amazing and exiting book and to give some kind of context to my final thoughts in this post, I did this roughly map that shows what this guy did only walking, (Green line is the first book and red line the second one) basically he crossed 4 countries walking;  Since Istanbul (Turkey),  Iran, Turkmenistan  to finally reach Samarkand (Uzbekistan).

  

Things that the book made me think

Follow your dreams! It doesn't matter what crazy this could be, Bernard has walked about 8.000 kms just because he set this as personal goal and he has this amazing wanderlust and craving for walk! 

The power of start with the end in mind, with the clear picture of what you want to reach, this will be enough to carry on. When all was going really bad, tough and looked like it will be impossible to finish that was only what Bernard thought to continue! 

Wherever you are going, you will find unbelievable kind and friendly people, Bernard had countless stories about how the people help him, I think without them he wouldn't  be able to reach his goal.

We walk the toughest paths don't with our body but with our mind and esprit, Bernard mention this in different parts of the route; "I don't walk with my legs I walk with my mind"

what we can reach  when we have self confidence and  willpower  is simply unimaginable!

To finish I left  you one of the last quotes of the book....
  

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The "what, why and how" of Employee Engagement

Keving Kruse in his articule "What Is Employee Engagement" published on Forbes, define Employee Engagement  as "The emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals... This emotional commitment means engaged employees actually care about their work and their company. They don’t work just for a paycheck, or just for the next promotion, but work on behalf of the organization’s goals".

Have you felt engaged or disengaged as employee? Have you felt happy in your job?, Have you felt the commitment and will to make the best of you? Have you worked more hours, arrive earlier or leave later your office, just because you felt fine to do it? I'm sure every of us have felt it in some point of our professional career. Let's do a short exercise; Try to recall these feelings of when you were  engaged and disengaged in your job and comparing both situations tell me how did you perform better? You should already got the answer, indeed engagement increase productivity, quality and costumer satisfaction, these are some of the reason because you should be concerned about how your employees or team members are feeling in the company, are they engaged or not?

So now that you know the "what" and "why" let me tell you about the "how" you could get this emotional commitment of the employees, you must take care of the following:

• Select people that fit with your organizational culture (Values, believes, behaviors)
• Since the selection and induction process be clear, transparent and set the right expectations
• Train and develop your leaders, "People quit their boss, Not their Job"
• Give them a clear vision about what your company/team is working for
• Give them a "why" they must understand their roles within the organization and why this is so important to reach the vision. 
• Clarify the objective and priorities of the company
• Listen to them, ask them how they are feeling, what they think. 
• Reward and recognize them for their outstanding performance and contributions. 
• Let them clear the "how" they can grow into the company.
• Take care of their personal and professional development.
• Challenge them, each one of us have a giant inside, show it to them and help them to get awake it.  

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