The Blog Stalker

When I first started exploring the idea of sharing my thoughts through blogging one of my networking buddies recommended that I visit the blog of a well known tech blogger. He made that recommendation because I said I didn't want to write about facts and events, I wanted my blog to be about ideas, notions and random connections and to invite people to agree or disagree but mostly to inspire them to think and challenge their own perspectives. It may seem odd that he thought I should read a tech blog but that was exactly the point - it wasn't purely a tech blog, it was a blog by a techie who wrote as much about the impact technology was having on our lives as she did about the technology itself.

But when I did visit her blog the last several posts weren't about technology at all. They were about her traumatic experience with a stalker. This person started with comments on her blog, progressed to emails, then to written letters. It started with derogatory raving and went to death threats and explicit pictures. It ended with her being under police protection and having to cancel an appearance at the Emerging Technologies conference, which, ironically, my friend and client Wendy Gauntt of CIO Services (read her humurous and informative tech blog here) attended.

I was horrified, I was sympathetic, but I wasn't scared. This stalker wasn't taking these actions because of anything she'd written, he was obsessed with HER. Therefore, I reasoned, this wouldn't happen to me. And it didn't, at least not to that extent. But earlier this month I found out there is someone out there who IS monitoring me through the internet, someone who pays attention when my name or company name shows up in new content, someone who is interested because it's ME.

It's freaky. My first response was to do some online searching, what kind of content was this person able to get to? (check out Wendy Gauntt's blog post about Twitter and Seurat's art - I think the minutia of our lives do form a picture.) My next response was to do some soul searching, how comfortable was I sharing my stories and random ramblings, not only with strangers but with this very interested party?

I quit writing. I second guessed everything I thought about writing. I berated myself for not writing, for my completely unreasonable response. And I asked myself a couple of questions; "What are you really afraid of?" and "How much of your life are you willing to surrender to fear?"

And then I second guessed the answers, but ultimately I got to the heart of it. My answers aren't the point, those weren't even the right questions. The right question was this: "How do I live a life that is not compromised by fear?"

Because we all have fears. Lots of them. We fear loss, failure, pain and death. We fear ridicule, loss of face, weakness and being alone. We fear being backed into corners, making promises we can't keep, not having choices, the list goes on forever. And all of our fears are reasonable because all of those things are possible (and some are inevitable extensions of living.)

Living a powerful life does not mean living a life that is free of fear, it means making your life choices regardless of your fears, building enough personal strength to have the confidence to face your fears and, every bit as important, it means surrounding yourself with enough nurturing elements that when the fear seems overwhelming you have a safe harbor to rest in until you are ready to set sail again.

So here's to reaching our destinations, regardless of shallow water, storms and sharks. The threats may be real but the prize is just as real and worth the risk!

What Really Happens When All Things Are NOT Equal

In my last post I quoted Bob Burg’s line of “all things being equal, people do business with, and refer business to, people they know, like and trust.” I then hypothesized that “all things NOT being equal, people will STILL do business and refer to people they know, like and trust.”

A quick flurry of emails later Bob put it back to me that there are a lot of reasons that all things would NOT be equal and people would NOT do business with, or refer business to, someone they know, like and trust. And most of those reasons fall under the trust category. For instance, what if people know, like you and trust you personally but your product really isn’t competitive? What if they know, like and trust you personally but your company policies are so stringent they just won’t just through all the hoops to do business with you. What if they know, like and trust you personally, but your company’s customer service just stinks? You get the picture.

On the other hand, I’ve seen people continue to refer business to people they know, like and trust after they no longer do business there. Take the healthcare field, I’ve seen patients of a dental practice that offered great service continue to refer people even after their insurance changed to a “proffered provider only” plan. And I’ve seen patients return to that practice even though it meant paying a higher out of pocket cost because they realized the value offered by the doctor and his staff.

I’ve seen a client continue to get referrals from an office manager after she moved to a new position where she was no longer in control of vendors because he had taken such good care of her in the past.

Just remember that when we put our trust in you as an individual we expect that we will be able to trust you AND the product and company you represent. If you and your product and company deliver on that trust you’ll likely still be getting business from us even when all things are no longer equal. If we experience a “dis sync” between what we can expect from you and the value we receive from your product and your company you may not be able to count on our business or referrals because that “dis sync” is all it takes to shift the equation to “all things NOT being equal.”