The Importance of Social Skills in Our Overall Social Competencies

In our last blog, we had an overview of the different aspects related to Empathy as part of Social Competence; we will now cover aspects related to Social Skills

Social Competence relates to your ability to handle relationships in a positive way, and your ability to get along with other people. Social Skill is a part of your Social Competence personality.  

While Social competence, in general, relates to your ability to handle relationships properly, Social Skills relates to your effectiveness at inducing desirable responses in others.

People who have this competence usually:

• Have influence
• Good communication skills
• Manage conflicts with great success
• Bring leadership
• Are catalysts of change
• Build bonds
• Collaborate and cooperate
• Have team capabilities

We’ll be covering each of these eight aspects in details later on.

Success is Not the Key to Happiness, This is..

Your happiness is your success. These days, a booming business is available to anyone, even you. Gary Vaynerchuck, author of crush it!, says not to measure your success by the wealth and grandeur of your business, but to measure it in happiness.

The secret to success is only made up of three simple rules: love your family, work super hard, and live your passion. If you are measuring your success in happiness, that first rule is crucial. Second to that, working hard may be on obvious rule for achievement. However, it is one of those things that are easier said than done. Finally, the key to your true happiness is living your passion: “Are you living, or just earning a living?” (Vaynerchuck, 3). 

We as a society have shifted in the way we do things. With the invention of the Internet, we’ve been flocking towards the web to socialize, shop, find entertainment, and more. This is a gigantic opportunity for businesses to harness and take advantage of. With the global audience that has moved to the Internet, it is clear that businesses, too, must move to the Internet.

Now, personal branding has never been easier, and advertisements are found (these days, personalized advertisements) everywhere in the online world. The Internet is a moneymaking machine just waiting for you to learn how to use it. Using the Internet as a tool will boost the speed of your success, and minimize the money you would need to put in to make it flourish. Keep in mind that, “[these tools] are only as good as the person who uses them” (Vaynerchuck, 12).

You have to have passion and an excellent work ethic to make things happen. If you have the drive, you have the power and everything you need to start making money. However, this isn’t all about the money, this about taking your passion and finding a way for you to live from it. Remember, we’re measuring success in happiness. 

Written by Natalie Mansilla,
Growth Hacker

Choose Your Clients Wisely to Build a Strong Foundation

To be booked solid requires that you have a solid foundation.

As part of a solid foundation you need the following:

• Know who are your ideal clients

• Understand why people would buy what you are selling

• Develop a personal and unique brand

• Communicate what you do in a concise, clear and positive manner

A solid foundation will support all of your business development and marketing. The first step in building your foundation is to choose your clients.

In order to figure out who your ideal clients are, choose your clients as carefully as you choose your friends – the type of individuals or businesses with whom you do your best work.

The purpose here is to identify the specific characteristics of the individuals or organizations that would make them ideal to work with. By doing so, it will allow you to develop a rigorous screening process.

Most businesses work with anybody that has a check book and as much as it might seem to be the right approach on the long run, the benefits of this strategy are very limited. Instead, choosing your ideal clients will empower your business and yourself – it will allow you to increase productivity, do your best work and have more clients and more referrals. Joy, prosperity and abundance happens when you perform optimally, when you are with people who inspire you and energize you.

In order to start the process, you have to begin to identify the types of clients you have. Ask yourself which are the current clients which give you strength, energize you, empower you, make you creative, provide you with confidence and which ones are the ones who drain you, turn you off or shut your down. Ask yourself, would you rather spend your days working with incredibly amazing, exciting, cool, awesome people or spend your time with barely tolerable people who suck the life out of you?

Be honest with yourself, identify your ideal clients and the ones who are not and take action.

Taking a Booked Solid Action Step is a bold action which requires courage – start by removing the type of clients that zap your time and energy - even if you take one step at a time by replacing them with your ideal clients. This process will not only benefit you but also benefit those same clients you will not work with anymore - since, if you are working with people with whom you do not do your best work, you are out of integrity – refer them to someone who can.

There is nothing wrong with the no-ideal clients. They are just not right for you as you are not right for them.

Whenever you take the step, be tactful, diplomatic, loving and keep it simple: “I’m not the best person to serve you”.  

Remember, in life you cannot please everyone, to even try is futile.

Choose the best balance and strategy for you, your business and your clients. You can choose to loosen or tighten at will the type of clients you consider ideal. If you are new in the business you will not want to turn away you first clients even if they are not ideal but as your business permits you should be focusing only on working with and looking for clients which are the ideal clients.

Define and list clearly which benefits ideal clients will provide you with such as energy, strength, confidence, successful, alive, etc. Which qualities do they have such as positive attitude, collaborative, resilient, value-oriented, outgoing, creative, etc.?  

Which clients do you look forward to seeing? Whom do you love to be around? With which clients do you work the best?

Create a list of filters which will help you to define them clearly. What filters do you want to run your perfect clients through?

Once you attract more and more ideal clients you will discover that you are happier, more vibrant, more energetic, more productive and you will give your clients the best of yourself and your services and it turn you will gain even more additional business referrals.

Written by John Krumbach,
VP of Finance