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When I ran into mutliple-time Brainzooming guest blogger Alyssa Murfey at TEDxKC, she mentioned her recent passion project. Her excitement as she described it was infectious. As a result, I asked her to share why it’s important to have a passion project with Brainzooming readers, as she’s done today. When not working on her passion project, Alyssa is a social media analyst and email marketing manager for emfluence, a Digital Marketing Agency. A native Kansas Citian, Alyssa is a regular on the local food, event, and, and music scene. Here’s Alyssa!

The Importance of a Passion Project

Just as the transition from college to the real world teaches you, applying the skills I learn from my job to creating a passion project on my own continues to be an eye-opening learning experience. My passion project, a blog called House of Femme, is a work in progress. A co-worker/friend and I developed the blog together and pushed it live about six months ago. We aim for House of Femme to be a healthy living online magazine about being a modern gal that works and plays hard. It’s our way of sharing and exchanging knowledge.

In some ways our “house’ is like a fixer-upper: we’re constantly turning a corner to find something else that we want to improve. There are ups and downs, but my pride in sharing ownership in the project never changes. The lessons I continue to learn from this experience make me want to shout from the rooftops:  if you have a passion project opportunity, pursue it!

And if I were to shout from the rooftops about how you would benefit from tackling your passion project, it would sound a little like this…

Learn the Potential of Your Strengths

In my job, I may wear a hat or two as I work on various marketing campaigns, but never do I touch all aspects of the horse and carriage involved. When you (and a partner, if you’re lucky like me) have to manage everything, you can get lost in the abundance of the details. There are so many tiny pieces that play into making the puzzle whole. I have to take on many roles to make sure things are a success: photographer, copywriter, event planner, etc. As a result, I have to extend beyond my usual comfort level and knowing my strengths and discover what my strengths could be.

Find Your Own Resources

When working for a company, one is often blessed with an abundant supply of resources. Sometimes, as in my case, you don’t realize how many resources you have until you are forced to find the connections and talent on your own. There’s no, “Well, the blah blah blah department handles that.” You handle it!

Recognize The Skills of Others

When forced to find your own resources, you begin to tap into what’s available around you. Doing so, you start to realize the strengths of your friends, your colleagues, and your family. I’m constantly amazed by the people around me. Some of these people I see every day and yet, had no idea what talents they possessed. For instance, when we discussed during a blog meeting we were lacking hair and beauty posts, my little sister’s perfectly coifed fishtail popped into my mind. She styled her hair for a couple posts, and now she’s our youngest “House Guest Contributor”! I was honored to showcase her talents on the blog and as a middle schooler, apparently, it’s pretty cool to be featured on a blog. Win-win.

Have Passion

“If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.” – Benjamin Franklin

Passion makes the world go around, and if you love what you’re doing, the hours just fly by . . . happily. This final reason doesn’t require much explanation. A life full of passion is gold. So, pursue your passion project, stretch your boundaries, and find out why it’s worth it. - Alyssa Murfey

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I hadn’t planned to live tweet the first presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. As with many things Twitter and TV event-related, however, I couldn’t help myself. As a result, I live tweeted snark and observations about the trappings of the presidential debate.

Here are some thoughts about the evening’s festivities:

Somebody Didn’t Get a Nap

President Obama seemed off his game all night (and his grumpy face didn’t help), even stumbling into his closing comments. It was as if taking away a crowd reacting positively (and a teleprompter) made him a less compelling speaker than one would expect. Not having a positive and effusive crowd seemed more familiar ground for Romney.

Romney did keep telling stories early on about specific individuals he or his wife had met who wanted help. Before the debate was over, someone had already leaked the Romney debate story structure. You can’t get anything past the Internet, clearly.

It was an interesting TV juxtaposition with Romney on the left and Obama on the right. I’m not sure if that was that one of the things they drew for beforehand, or it was someone’s inside joke. Either way, with the higher altitude & thinner air in Denver, those two should have been able to drop kick each other 10 yards further than normal, but neither seemed up to the task. Clearly there was way too much smiling, handshaking, and arm patting between themselves and their families for it to get too down and dirty in the debate.

You Only Have 5 Seconds

Timing and sticking to the rules was a problem all night.

Part of it was the candidates. Both Obama and Romney treated the debate time limits just like they treat our tax dollars: no matter what anybody says, they act as if there’s always more to be used up. It really came down to the first rule of Presidential Debate Club, which is “You do not QUIT talking during Presidential Debate Club.”

The other part (and maybe most) of the timing and debate control problem was on the shoulders of moderator, Jim Lehrer. Lehrer, who suffers from a pre-existing condition (an inability to control a conversation between two big egos), was represented by grunts and stammering in his attempt to control the debate. While letting the candidates go created more opportunity for some snarky comments (both within the debate and on Twitter), he was completely at a loss to control the conversation.

Listening to Jim Lehrer talk, I kept waiting for the Jim Lehrer mask to be ripped off his face to reveal Ross Perot as a surprise moderator. It got so bad at one point, a rumor was circulating (and by “circulating,” I mean “I tweeted”) that Jim Lehrer had been doing a stint as a temporary NFL ref until last weekend given how little he seemed to understand about two-minute warnings.

Clearly, we needed a person standing next to each candidate to bonk them on the head when they went long or spoke out of turn.

The Twitter Crowd

Not surprisingly, the Obama campaign had a promoted tweet on the #Debate hashtag, but I was surprised it also showed up on the #DebateEXP hashtag. I had started using #DebateEXP for live tweets even though Mr. EXP, Jim Joseph, elected to skip live tweeting the debate. Since Obama had bought #DebateEXP, I also checked #Snoozefest for a promoted Obama tweet, but there wasn’t one, much to my disappointment.

When it came to other folks tweeting, there were a number of memorable laughs, including:

• From Tim Dreyer ‏@Timbotown early in the debate: “If you are playing the Debate drinking game, you’re already drunk. Welcome wastoid,” and “They should have the podiums slowly move towards each other so they end up touching 5 minutes before the end.”
• From Ramsey Moshen @rm: “At what point will they address how to fix the iOS Maps issue? ”
• From @CarriBugbee: “How many swigs do you have to take when St. Reagan is invoked in the #debate drinking game?”
• From Cheryl Harrison ‏@CherylHarrison: “DRINK EVERYTIME EITHER CANDIDATE SMIRKS. You are drunk. #debate  #debates #debate2012 #morehashtags #HiMom”

Rope-a-Dope

Ultimately, the debate reminded me of a late career Muhammad Ali fight: it was all rope-a-dope, went 15 rounds, and didn’t result in a knock-out for either presidential candidate. – Mike Brown

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Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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If you find yourself getting into the same negative personal situations again and again, and it never turns out very well, it’s time to ask yourself:

• Am I really learning from mistakes I’ve made?
• For whatever reason, am I failing to see my personal role in creating challenges for others in working with me?
• Have I failed to work on myself in a productive way that leads to changed outcomes in my career or life?
• If I’m being honest, would I admit I’m more “talk” than “do”?
• Am I failing to accurately see myself as others see me?
• Is my sense of timing a problem in that it leads to hesitation when needing to act, spouting off when needing to keep my mouth shut, and passiveness when I should be leaving a situation?
• Am I going back into similar unsuccessful situations again and again because they feel familiar?

I read these seven questions to someone, whose reaction was, “Wow, those are harsh questions!”

The seven questions may sound harsh, but if you see the same negative patterns repeating in your career, it’s about time to ask yourself some harsh questions. Or even better, ask these questions of someone who knows and can be objective about you and see what that person says. Big personal change is possible - it’s tough, but it is possible.

If you’re in a bad situation, are you ready to work on the real changes you need?  - Mike Brown

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The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at  816-509-5320

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Listening to a radio call in show hosted by Dr. Ray Guarendi, he was talking about following a conversation. It’s not a new concept, but it was for me a new way to describe an idea that many people don’t practice. As Dr. Ray Guarendi describes it, “following a conversation” involves truly listening to another person, and instead of just biding your time until you can take over the conversation to talk about yourself, actually following the other person through the points he or she is making.

Getting better at following a conversation involves:

• Asking a next question that allows the other person to keep talking on the topic
• Making an on topic comment directed at the other person’s perspective and not what you think or have done on the topic
• Giving the other person space (i.e. nods of encouragement and you not jumping in saying something) to keep talking
• Not expending your mental energy thinking about what you’ll say next
• Elaborating on something the other person said in the direction of what the person is talking about
• Turning the conversation toward the other person and away from yourself whenever possible

Again, nothing new on this list – there’s a lot of Dale Carnegie in here (affiliate link) – but think about how much you enjoy talking with someone who does this. And how much you DISLIKE talking with someone who doesn’t follow these practices. I had a phone conversation with a blog reader recently who was a master at this. I was interested in finding out more about him and what he does, but his very earnest and rich questions about The Brainzooming Group made me feel like I was dominating the conversation, although it was in response to his lead.

For whatever reason, Dr. Ray Guarendi’s discussion about following the conversation has me paying a lot more attention to how others do at this, and importantly, how I can personally get better at following a conversation. – Mike Brown

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Does your organization have good ideas, but lacks the project management technique to bring them to reality? The Brainzooming Group and our collaborative, implementation-oriented project management techniques will quickly move you toward success. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call 816-509-5320  for a free consultation on how to get started.

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Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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We’re back . . . sorta.

The website – and others at our web host – were hit by a hacker on September 4. Suddenly, we made the Google “don’t go there because it’s a bad place” list. That notice effectively brought an end to the Brainzooming blog, creating a blogging exile  for nearly two weeks until we could get the issues cleared up, thanks to Mike Whaling at 30 Lines, whose expertise got us back up and all Google approved.

It was the longest break from blogging since I started the blog in November of 2007.

What did I learn during my forced blogging exile?

• I enjoyed not having the pressure to publish a post daily. This was especially true when I had 8 hours in the car that was effectively dead time driving to and from a client strategy session.
• The time away made me think about what a different approach to our social media strategy might look like. I even published a post to Google+ when the urge to write something became too strong! Though I thought about the list of guest posts I owe folks, none of those got written.
• Potential blog post topics kept occurring to me, but few of the ideas were ever written down, so they’re lost . . . unless they pop back up in the near future.
• The traffic declines on the website were dramatic. When Google tells people to not go to your website, people really get the message. Yet once Mike Whaling got everything moved to a new host, visitors came right back. I think all of you for your support in returning!
• While it was a distraction to know what was (or wasn’t) going on with the website, it couldn’t afford to be my central focus. With other changes going on, there was too much travel and too much client work to get moving on getting the website fixed any sooner than it was.
• Since much of what I share on Twitter involves links to new and previous Brainzooming articles that appear relevant for questions people are posing any given day, my other social media activity dropped dramatically as well. When I was unable to readily share content in an effort to be helpful, my enthusiasm for social media waned . . . in a big way.
• Finding the blessing in the curse, I typically have to be forced out of something major to start something new. It seems like this may be the “something major” when it comes to social media . . . or maybe not.

And to paraphrase Forrest Gump, when it comes to my blogging exile, “That’s all I have to blog about that.” - Mike Brown

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Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Monday’s post was a list of creative inspirations behind Brainzooming blog posts. The creative inspiration for this blog post on providing help and support when dealing with difficult people is similar to number 30 on the list: You have relevant pictures to share.

I saw this cactus receiving ample help and support to remain standing at The Buttes Resort in Phoenix. It immediately triggered thoughts about what it’s like to help and support difficult people at work (think “difficult” = “prickly”).

Dealing with difficult people isn’t typically what any of us would volunteer for in a work assignment. Until you can remove yourself from having to help and support a difficult person at work, however, you simply have to manage the situation as best you can.

16 Articles on Help and Support for Prickly People

Since we’ve written about having had to help and support a variety of challenging personalities, the cactus picture created an opportunity to bring them all the content on dealing with difficult people together in one place. These sixteen articles provide advice dealing with difficult people of various types, including handling yourself as the difficult person in your work life!

Undependable People

• Corporate Amnesia – 9 Ways to Prevent and Avoid 
• Assistance Unwanted – 5 Management Style Signs Helping Is Futile

Harmful People

• Corporate Sociopaths and Horrible Bosses – 7 Ways to Survive Them
• A Corporate Sociopath and How Dilbert Handles Bad Behavior from One
• You Can Learn From Anybody
• Random Inputs Week – 5 Keys to Innovating Amid Conflict

Inappropriate People

• 3 Strategies for Navigating a Political Environment
• Protecting Your Creativity in a Culture that Doesn’t Value It
• 3 Keys for Job Candidates – Have Your Own Interview Strategy

Ineffective People

• Beware of Morphfiends – Foes of Solid Strategy
• Great Leaders – 12 Ways Great Leaders Turn into Bad Leaders
• 5 Things You Can Learn from a Bad Boss
• 98 Pound Name Dropping Weakling
• Career Preservation Advice – A “Gotcha” Strategy Will “Getcha”

When You’re the Difficult Person

• Discovering the Toughest Boss I’ve Ever Had
• Frustration? To Hell with It!

Mike Brown

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The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at  816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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In the previous post, I shared five reasons (there are actually a few more not shared) for why I always try to delay a technology purchase whenever possible. While I used to be a much earlier adopter of new technology (heck, I had a Fujitsu tablet computer in the early 2000′s) and have purposely slowed my acquisition of the latest and greatest gadgets, it doesn’t mean I’m immune to the pulls of cool new technology. Now, I simply try to stay away from technology departments, stores, and websites that pose too much in the way of technology-based temptation.

5 Regrets when I Delay a Technology Purchase Too Long

All that means that despite my five very sound reasons for delaying a technology purchase, today, in an amazing coincidence, there are also five reasons why I ALWAYS to seem to wish I had NOT elected to delay a technology purchase:

• When I finally get up and running with new technology, there are ALWAYS unexpected efficiency and effectiveness gains – For instance, finally investing in a sales / business development system for The Brainzooming Group has definitely kept our business development efforts more organized and on-track. We should have made the move in this direction much earlier.
• It’s not hard to look like a dinosaur at conferences and events when you’re using old technology – When you go to a social media event, it’s no surprise the attendees WAY over index on early adoption of new technology. What can I say? I do my own thing. Despite that, there’s a reason dinosaurs do not still walk the earth. Similarly, there are reasons you don’t want old technology to suggest you’re nothing but a dinosaur when it comes to new technology.
• You miss new applications that are not backward compatible – I have been off Foursquare for some time because the app would not work on my Blackberry anymore unless I downloaded Foursquare each time I checked in. How disconcerting my absence from Fourquare was did not become obvious until I checked into our Church last Sunday on the new Droid phone, and Foursquare told me it thought I hadn’t been to Church for two years!
• You don’t realize the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness you compensate for with workarounds and frustration – My 4-year old HP laptop was complete junk when its display stopped working in January. Before it stopped working, however, I had endured multiple heart-in-mouth moments when the computer failed to perform as expected. My new Asus laptop, however, is lighter, works better, and has saved me so much frustration this year!
• The learning curve is never as bad as expected – For as much as I angst over the learning curve with new technology, I’m always all over what the new hardware or software offers. Sure the new Motorola phone is different than the Blackberry. I’m up and running with it, however, and it’s probably a good thing its size and user interface aren’t nearly as conducive to one-handed, in the car operation as the Blackberry! As for the iPad, I haven’t had time to spend much time with it yet. It was more of a strategic impulse buy, and I’m still figuring out where it fits into my professional lifestyle.

At least I’m big enough to admit my regrets!

What about you early adopters? What else am I missing by being slow to make new technology purchases? Have you met people waiting in line outside Apple stores that have changed your life? Let me know! - Mike Brown

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If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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