Lisa Nirell is the author of the new book, Energize Growth Now: The Marketing Guide to a Wealthy Company. This book intelligently blends mindset with proven marketing strategies to help you create a strong, focused business.

I caught up with Lisa to discuss small business marketing, how to stay focused, and what that all means to your bottom line. She’s a treasure trove of information and I know you’ll love how she delivers her practical wisdom.

(If you’re reading this post from a reader outside the Viva Visibility Blog, you may or may not see the audio file link. If that’s the case, click here to listen to the interview with Lisa Nirell).

To learn more about Lisa’s upcoming Road to Recovery live event in San Diego, click HERE

Not your typical vision board

The Curiosity Trek is an invitation for you to examine where your curiosity is leading you. Why is it important to stay curious? Because without curiosity, you won’t try new things, think creatively, or explore new innovations.

The path to enhanced creativity and a fuller life is through staying curious.

This video series chronicles my pondering the question “Where is your curiosity leading you?”

When I stay curious, I poke my nose into things that turn out to be interesting, educational, illuminating… and that helps me as a person, as an entrepreneur, and as a thought leader.

In this episode, I share a vision board I co-created with my 6 year old. Her section of the board is where I learned a big lesson and now I get to share it with you.

(If for some reason you don’t see the player below, CLICK HERE)

What are your thoughts? Would love to know what this episode does to your curiosity!

In a recent class I taught on creating profitable relationships via social media, I emphasized (more than once!) how important it is to have a community of well matched followers in your online social networks.

Social Media Purge: Size Isn’t Everything

Too many people are gripped by the fear of “missing out on something” or “not being taken seriously” if they don’t have 5 digit followings. The number doesn’t equate your success in business. You may look cool or popular, but at the end of the day, if it’s not making you money, inviting opportunities, or enriching you… what’s the point?

My pal Lou Bortone, who wrote a great post on this topic last week, agrees that it’s important to sort through the muck. I want to add to the conversation and put you to a dare.

DARE, DOUBLE DARE…

I dare you, no make that DOUBLE dare you, to go into your Twitter, Facebook and other social media followers and do some purging. Want a peek at how I do it? Here’s my uncensored list of who to purge.

1. No Avatar

If the person has no avatar (that’s the photo of you that accompanies your posts), then remove him or her.

2. Not a Real Person

If the person isn’t even a person but rather a puppy, a teddy bear, a slot machine, or my personal favorite- a flashy dollar sign-  then delete. I also put pin-up type pics in this category, especially ones with user names like “MakeLotsaMoney”.

3. Uneven Follower/Following Ratio

Twitter accounts that have thousands of followers but are only following a few people need to go. Those are usually spammers.

4. Humongous Language Barrier

And this isn’t meant to be politically incorrect, but if a person posts in a language you don’t speak and it’s obvious there is a humongous language barrier present, then delete. I have many international friends but we can at least communicate in the same language and understand each other (fortunately I’m bilingual so this works for me). It’s the people who you are virtually pantomiming with who aren’t a good match.

5. Peeps Who Never Post

If the person rarely or never posts, then remove. Unless of course it’s your 83 year old aunt who somebody created a Facebook account for… give her some time.

6. Haters- Don’t Wantcha!

Mean people suck and they aren’t fun to be with. I take the haters off with very little to no mercy. Believe it or not, I watch the stream and unfollow and even BLOCK people who delight in being mean or negative. Don’t even mess with the haters on Twitter, they eat their young and will go at your throat if you aren’t careful.

Great Tool to Purge Your Twitter Followers

A good tool my friend Maria Reyes McDavis recently blogged about is Tweetblocker. This is a great one for deleting people from your Twitter list. But be sure to watch out for your 83 year old aunt, you don’t want to block her. I actually scan the list thoroughly to make sure I’m not locking someone out who I know for a fact is still learning. Read Maria’s blog post for a complete tutorial on how to use Tweetblocker.

The reason you want to purge your social media followers is the same reason you prune a fruit tree: so you have big, juicy contacts who are full of opportunity and win-win potential. Less can be more – much more- when you keep your contacts on purpose and aligned with who you are.

What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear if you’re up to take the dare.

Master Your Fears
By Brian Tracy
Perhaps the greatest challenge you will ever face in life is the conquest of fear and the development of courage. Fear is, and always has been, the greatest enemy of mankind. When Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he was saying that the emotion of fear, rather than the realty of what we fear, is what causes us anxiety, stress, and unhappiness. When you develop the habit of courage and unshakeable self-confidence, a whole new world of possibilities opens up for you. Just imagine-what would you dare to dream or be or do if you weren’t afraid of anything in the whole world?

Develop the Habit of Courage

Fortunately, the habit of courage can be learned just as any other habit is learned, through repetition. We need to constantly face and overcome our fears to build up the kind of courage that will enable us to deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life unafraid. The starting point in overcoming fear and developing courage is to look at the factors that predispose us toward being afraid. The root source of most fear is childhood conditioning, usually associated with destructive criticism. This causes us to develop two major types of fear. These are the fear of failure, which causes us to think “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” and the fear of rejection, which causes us to think “I have to, I have to, I have to.” Our fears can paralyze us, keeping us from taking constructive action in the direction of our dreams and goals.

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The More You Know, the Less You Fear

Fear is also caused by ignorance. When we have limited information, our doubts dominate us. We become tense and insecure about the outcome of our actions. Ignorance causes us to fear change, to fear the unknown, and to avoid trying anything new or different. But the reverse is also true. The very act of gathering more and better information about a particular subject increases our courage and confidence in that area. You can see this in the parts of your life where you have no fear at all because you know what you are doing. You feel competent and completely capable of handling whatever happens.

Analyze Your Fears

Once you have identified the major factors that cause you to feel afraid, the next step is to objectively define and analyze your personal fears. At the top of a clean sheet of paper, write, “What am I afraid of?” Remember, all intelligent people are afraid of something. It is normal and natural to be concerned about your physical, emotional, and financial safety and that of the people you care about. A courageous person is not a person who is unafraid. As Mark Twain said, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”

Action Exercise

Begin your list of fears by writing down everything, major and minor, that causes fear, stress, or anxiety. Think about the parts of your work or personal life where your fears might be holding you back or forcing you to stay in a job or relationship in which you are not happy. Once you have written down your fears, arrange them in order of importance, and then pick them apart one by one.