While you’re reading this, I’m off to another speaking engagement this weekend.  This time it’s for the National Tractor Parts Association from Texas.  They’re having their annual leadership meeting and I’m giving a closing inspirational keynote on Saturday morning.

Tomorrow night (Friday), the association is having a birthday party for one of their leaders and I’ve been invited.  It’ll be a great opportunity to mingle with the same people who will be in the audience the following morning.  Let’s hope they don’t have a hangover!  Dress will be black but casual.  Got plenty of black shirts so no problem there.  I’ll get some pictures taken and post them here when I get back.

Ah, the weekly gratitude post is upon us again.  Let me start off with a quote - I got this from Phil’s Make it Great! site:

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. - Albert Schweitzer

Top 50 Women Bloggers

One of the advantages of using Twitter (you can follow me there at http://twitter.com/sjhopson) is that I come across information I might not have otherwise seen.  Despite frequent server problems (they’ve been down a lot), there are many other benefits of using Twitter like getting to know those you choose to “follow” and developing relationships with them.

One of the messages I found on Twitter this morning was the release of a list of 50 Most Influential Women Bloggers.    I was excited to find some familiar names there:

• Christine O’Kelly of Self Made Chick
• Liz Strauss of Successful Blog
• Tina Su of Think Simple Now
• Wendy Piersall of Sparkplugging
• Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress

Out of 50 influential women bloggers listed, 4 of them have participated in the Stephen Hopson Interviews!  Liz is the only one I haven’t interviewed yet but she’s going to be invited soon.  Shhhh!  Don’t tell her yet.

Congratulations to Christine, Liz, Tina, Wendy and Lorelle for making this stupendous list!  I know all of us here at Adversity University are proud to have gotten to know these powerful women.  I’m grateful I had an opportunity to bring them here to be interviewed.  Aren’t you?

You girls rock!

Great Customer Service Still Exists But Barely

We’ve all heard customer service horror stories.  It’s sad that bad customer service has become the norm rather than the exception these days.  It’s gotten to the point where every time I am the recipient of outstanding customer service, I literally jump for joy.

You all remember the “fender bender” I mentioned last week.  The insurance company whose client hit my car processed the claim easily and effortlessly.  They even provided me with a rental car at their expense.  In fact, a Enterprise rental car rep was waiting for me when I dropped my car off at the body shop.  He was sitting in the waiting room dressed in a suit and tie - very professional.  No hassles, no haggling, no nothing.  It was the smoothest process I’ve ever experienced after a fender bender.  By the way, the name of the insurance company was Westfield Insurance.

The body shop (American Body Shop) did an excellent job replacing the front bumper and headlight, even giving me a lifetime warranty on their workmanship (as long as I am the original owner of my car).  A friend of mine told me shortly after she “inspected” the newly replaced bumper that another friend of hers had taken her car to a different shop only to find the work shoddy (mismatched colors, poor workmanship).  I was so grateful to have been led to American Body Shop.  If you’re from the Akron/Cleveland area in Ohio and you need body work done, take your car to them.  You’ll be very pleased you did.

What Are You Saying Between the Lines?

I read a very interesting post by Chris Garrett about how we all have an internal dialogue going on inside ourselves.  From time to time, Chris talks about personal development issues over at chrisg.com even though he is an internet market specialist.

What Are You Saying Between the Lines? was a great reminder to me (and now you) to be conscious of how you are processing your thoughts throughout the day.

Why is that important?

Because you can learn more about your hidden belief system(s) by just by watching how you  respond to outside information. For instance, Chris says, when someone compliments you, what is your first response/thought?  If someone says to you, “You look really nice today.”  What happens inside you?  How does your mind respond to that?

Do you say “Thank you” (and really mean it?) or do you say “But I need to lose another 29 pounds.”

Clearly, the first response indicates that you probably have self confidence (or at least self acceptance) while the other is a hint of low self esteem or perhaps a measure of self hatred.

Pretty interesting, isn’t it?  Thanks Chris for reminding me to watch my inner dialogue!

Newsletter from Chris Brogan

Does Chris’ name sound familiar to you?  Well, that’s because he was interviewed here in June 2008 (Stephen Hopson Interview with Chris Brogan, Part I and Part II).

I rarely subscribe to newsletters - in fact, there are only two I subscribe to and Chris Brogran’s is one of them.  After I read this morning’s newsletter and truly enjoying it, I simply had to give it a big shout here.

I’ll let Chris explain why you’ll benefit from his newsletter:

My background: I’m a technologist and creative type who communicates well, and has an uncanny ability to be able to talk business to geeks and talk tech to executives such that both groups feel understood, get what I’m saying, and finish the conversation feeling better for it. My education is all over the map, and doesn’t exactly fit neatly in a package. And this is the plus:

Do you know who I write this newsletter and my blog for? PEOPLE. Not for marketers, not for HR, not for salespeople, not for nonprofits, not for book publishers. Not for engineers. You’re all here. But I’m writing to ALL of you. Because to me, social media isn’t marketing. It’s a tool marketers can use. It’s not enterprise collaboration; it’s a tool enterprises can use.

Okay, so what does this mean for you?  Even if you don’t have a blog, chances are pretty good that you belong to some variation of social media like Facebook or MySpace.   You may or may not be in business for yourself and therefore you might not be looking for ways to market yourself.  But the reality is you ARE there for a reason.  Probably to make new connections or at least tell the world about yourself.  You’ve heard of Facebook, right?  Maybe you’ve given some thought about joining.

Well, you can believe it when he says he has the ability to communicate in plain language for those of us who are not geeks (like me).  Chris has an absolutely engaging writing style that matches his personality (remember, I met him at SOBCon08 in Chicago earlier this year).

Why am I promoting him?  The answer is because I love the guy.  He genuinely likes people and wants to help them.  Chris is the classical example of someone who follows (whether consciously or not) famous motivational speaker Zig Ziglar’s advice:  “Help enough people get what they want and you’ll get what you want.”

Chris has NOT asked me to plug his newsletter.  I get no compensation for recommending this to you (OMG, why not?!?!? Just kidding, just KIDDING).   Simply put, I am so grateful to know someone like Chris, the real deal, that I couldn’t help myself but tell you about his newsletter.

It’s free.  If you find you don’t like it, well, heck, you can easily unsubscribe by clicking on a link at the bottom of the newsletter.  No feelings will be hurt.  He won’t even know you unsubscribed.  If you belong to (or are thinking about joining) one of those social media programs like MySpace, StumbleUpon, Facebook or Twitter, you’ll benefit from his insights.

Go to Chris Brogan’s newsletter sign up page - you won’t regret it.   I did!  And I love it because he writes for non-geeks like myself who happens to have profiles at Facebook,  Twitter, and StumbleUpon.

P.S.  A reminder - one of the subscribers to Adversity University created a “Stephen Hopson Fanclub” at Facebook.  You can become a member of that exclusive group simply signing in (or signing up) there.  I would greatly appreciate it if you could help me grow my fan club to 1,000 true fans by December 31, 2008.

If you want to see whether you qualify as a “true fan,” check out Kevin Kelly’s definition of 1,000 True Fans.  (I’m excited to say that Chris Brogan is one of them.  Hooray!).

Food for thought:  Are you genuinely grateful or do you just go through the motions?

If you liked this post and you want to be notified of the next one, subscribe via Email or Full Text RSS Feed. I would love to have you as part of the community!

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