February 2015 - Page 2 of 2 - Strange & Charmed

Month: February 2015

7 Lessons Learned from #GIRLBOSS!

Last spring the book #GIRLBOSS debuted on bookshelves in a marketing whirlwind. All of a sudden this book I hadn’t heard of was everywhere from blogs to the news and if you could judge a book by its cover, it looked seriously awesome! It was also written by a seriously awesome woman, Sophia Amoruso, the twenty something CEO of the wildly successful Nasty Gal online (and now brick & mortar) clothing retailer! Being a twenty something entrepreneur myself, I jumped on the bandwagon with the book and ordered it, read a bit of the book and then, like many books that had come before it, I shelved it and forgot to finish reading it!

Fast forward to the beginning of January when I spontaneously joined a book club organized and ran by my friend Lisamarie, of the blog and YouTube channel Paper & Glam! Her January book was #GIRLBOSS and I thought this would be the perfect time to pick the book back up and finish it, so I did! Now, you can read many a review of this book all over the internet, so I am not going to add one more opinion about the book out there, however, I did find that while I was reading the book, there were passages that really resonated with me that I wanted to share. Love it or hate it, this book did have more than a few insightful moments and so I wanted to share those with you in a post! So, here are the 7 Lessons Learned from #GIRLBOSS!

1. It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.

In the book, Sophia briefly explains the “business model” she used that brought her success with Nasty Gal when she was first starting off with her eBay vintage shop. Although there were many shops that sold the types of items she sold, hers was more successful for one reason, she put a lot of hard work, effort and thought into each and every item she listed for sale. From finding and styling models to wear the clothes, a good photographer to take the thumbnail shots, to using her knowledge of fashion and style to write awesome listings filled with styling tips, Sophia put effort into each and every aspect of her sale. This is a great lesson to learn because it really doesn’t matter what your job is, or what your business is, if you think about and put real effort into what you do, it will pay off! There is no substitution for hard work, even on the internet!

2. You don’t get what you don’t ask for.

This is a powerful one, especially for women to learn and really understand. I think ladies have a tendency to shy away from asking for things because we don’t want to come off one way or another, but when you boil it down for your business you won’t make any money or get any customers if you don’t ask for the sale or ask for the business. Sophia seemed to get everything she asked for, and while that may not be a fool proof strategy for your business, sometimes asking is the first step to getting what you want.

3. Never live above your means.

As someone who lives in a capitalist society, I witness commercialism and marketing all day every day! Things from food to luxury goods are thrown in your face and to be honest, I often find myself wanting everything I see, but that is no way to live. Sophia really does a nice job explaining that while she was building her business, she was very frugal and almost refused to spend money. Although she doesn’t really analyse this decision much, I believe it had something to do with her previous freegan lifestyle, mixed with a sense of apprehension that at any moment the rug could be pulled from under her and her business could fall apart. At any rate, this is a great lesson for young women (all women, and men too) to learn! You can’t spend money you don’t have, and you shouldn’t spend all the money you earn either. It’s common sense, but I think coming from a nation in massive debt, it’s apparently an important tip we are consistently missing!

4. Find ways to keep your goals in your face so that you’re manifesting magic!

This lesson is one I employ and believe in, whole-heartedly! I do believe in magic, and I believe that magic is something you make for yourself. How? Well, by keeping your goals front in center in your face, as well as hidden strategically within your daily life, you begin to ingrain them into your psyche and over time that results in you actually taking steps and actions to make those goals real. For example, in the book, Sophia talks about making specific goals into short phrases that she would use as her passwords for her computer. Unconsciously, everyday, she would be reaffirming those goals whenever she typed her password. Eventually, those goals in password form became one with her mind and her mind started acting accordingly so that she could achieve the goals. Now, none of this is science of course, that’s what makes it “magic” because it’s unknown. But boy does it work! Give it a try in your own life and see what benefits you reap by making your own dreams come true!

5. Don’t waste your time obsessing over people and things you can’t control.

This is another one of those difficult life lessons to learn, especially for women, whether you run your own business or not! The world is a really big place and there are billions of us living on it. Of course, from time to time, we are going to come across people and things we don’t like, and unfortunately, sometimes these things are unavoidable, as much as we wish we could just run away from them. They may be people or problems right in front of us that we can’t escape, and it’s so easy to fall into the trap of obsessing over them, wasting our own precious time thinking and worrying and guessing about outcomes we aren’t a part of. If we stopped focusing on the things we can’t control and started minding our own business and focusing on our own lives and the things we can control, we could do so much more. I know this is hard, I struggle with it too, but keeping your nose down and focused on your own work and your own life will really yield you so many benefits!

6. Define failure and success on your own terms.

In the book Sophia explains that failure is a concept of our own design. To fail means something different to each person and that definition is something you have established for yourself. When you go into a situation open-minded with the intent to learn and grow and experience something new, there is no failing at that. Letting go of expectations and results that are weighing us down really help us to lighten the load and soar higher. Likewise, success is also something we define for ourselves. If I asked each and every one of you to give me the name of a successful person in the world, I bet I would get more than one name. Why? Because what success looks like and means to each of us is different, so define your own success and redefine failure to something that doesn’t exist!

7. You can’t take back your actions, so be smart about what you do!

My favorite quote from the book was when Sophia wrote “There is no AutoCorrect in life— think before texting the universe.” This was a very powerful message in my opinion because in our digital day and age I think many of us do and say things online and forget that our words and our actions have meaning in the real world. In life, there is no going back, the only option is forward, so it is so important to make sure you are thinking before taking action. Sophia documents some unsavory parts of her history within the book, things she’s done that she isn’t proud of, and these are things she has to live with. We all have things in our past that we wish we hadn’t done, and hopefully if we are lucky, these things didn’t have permanent or ongoing repercussions. Life isn’t easy, it just wasn’t designed to be, so it is very important that if you want to be happy in life and achieve all your goals that you stay focused, learn from your mistakes and try to make as few as possible of the bad kinds as you go along.

For those of you who have read #GIRLBOSS and even for those of you who have not, I hope you enjoyed this post and that it gave you some more perspective on the book overall! If this post has piqued your interest in giving the book a try, here is a link to where you can purchase it online! Let me know what you thought of the book in the comments below and if you didn’t read the book, let me know how you feel about the life lessons in this post. Did they give you any insight, or do you too struggle with any of them, like me! I’d love to hear your thoughts!

xoxo,

Blogging

{Bloggers Gonna Blog} The Do’s & Don’ts of Finding Inspiration Online

A good blogger has to stay constantly inspired in order to keep a steady stream of posts and content up on their blog. So, it’s important to take in a lot of various content, much of which comes in via the web and other blogs and bloggers! It is my firm belief that a majority of content when it comes to online and offline sources isn’t wholly original. It really isn’t uncommon for bloggers to get inspiration from each other and from other sources around the web or things they have seen or experienced in real life. That being said, it is important to properly credit sources and give credit where credit is due if you are borrowing ideas from other people or drawing significant inspiration from another source. Why is it important to credit? Well, honestly it’s important for a few reasons.

First of all you cannot expect to grow and develop your own brand based on the work of others, especially if you are consistently borrowing from the same or similar sources and not giving credit. I’l discuss more about consistent borrowing later on, but when it comes to the act of borrowing an idea from another online source, the web is a large place, but it can also be extremely small, and people will come to recognize if you are taking things constantly from one place or another and avoid your site. Secondly, if you become a blogger that borrows too heavily from one or more places, you will get a negative reputation, specifically if you are “ripping off” ideas. Now, I want to emphasize some delicacy when I say “ripping off” because there are definitely people on the internet that straight up take full blog posts and images from sites and repost them without permission and that is totally not okay, but there are also a lot of places where you see someone taking something seemingly innocent like the title or concept for a blog post and then writing their own version without asking the permission of the blogger who originally created the content or even linking back to the original post, and there is a real difference between the two situations. In the first example, it is full on plagiarism, but the second can seem almost innocent and can sometimes be done without even the blogger realizing what they are doing. The problem is, whether you are doing it consciously or unconsciously, borrowing without sourcing creates a bad reputation for your blog. Finally, when you borrow ideas from other sites and blogs without sourcing or asking permission, other bloggers and especially brands and companies, will start to avoid you, and blogging is all about community building. So without that lifeline, your blog could just die off!

Now, the interesting thing is, that if you actually do source your blog posts properly, you will actually find that you will get many benefits you may not have expected. When you properly link to a blog post and give credit where it’s due, you will find that other blogs and bloggers will be excited that you shared their content, more than happy that you borrowed an idea and it will cause a community to build around you where bloggers and brands will want to seek you out! So remember, borrowing ideas isn’t a bad thing, but there is a right and wrong way to do it and I am going to explain some of those differences to you today!

Photography

When it comes to photography for your blog, images are very important but using other peoples images is risky business. I always suggest using your own original photography whenever possible! Of course, sometimes it’s not possible for you to get a certain shot, and it becomes necessary for you to go to the internet to find an image. When this happens you do have a few solid options. First of all I suggest using creative commons images whenever you can so that you don’t get yourself or your blog into trouble! Photosharing sites like Flickr actually have dedicated sections for creative commons images that makes it easy for bloggers to find an image that is up for grabs. Now there are some rules associated with creative commons images sometimes, and those will be outlined at the image source so make sure to pay attention for those guides to know when and how you need to cite the image, and also whether or not you can use them for commercial, non-commercial or derivative purposes! Now, what happens if you find an image online that you want to use that may belong to a photographer or blogger on another site? Well, first and foremost, if you want to use an image that is not yours, I highly suggest contacting the owner of the image to ask permission to use the picture. If an image is on a blog, message the blogger and ask if you can use the image and make sure they have the right to give you permission. Just because the image is on someone’s website doesn’t mean they took it or have permission to use it or share it with you, so make sure to do your due diligence! If you find an image on a site like Pinterest and aren’t sure who it belongs to, you can do a reverse image search in Google to try to track it down and contact the copyright holder for permission to use it. Finally, if you really need images for your blog posts consistently and you want a quick and easy way to find them legally, try signing up for stock image sites that give you access to thousands of high quality images, but of course, this is at a price!

Design Elements

As a blogger, it seems that trends with website design are ever changing and we often want to make sure our blog is keeping up with the Jones’ in a matter of speaking. It’s definitely okay for you to look around the blogging neighborhood and see what your peers are doing design wise on their sites and draw some inspiration from different design and structural elements you see on their site. However, you need to make sure you are not borrowing too heavily from a sites design when applying new features to your own, after all you don’t want your blog to look like a carbon copy of someone else’s (it’s just not going to make your blog unique and stand out)! So when gathering inspiration from other sites and their designs, there is an unofficial rule of thumb you can use to make sure you are taking the essence of the design you like, while also making it your own and that is to change the design up 80% from the original. Now, that means you should make changes to align the design to your own branding so that only a small essence of the original remains, just about 20%. I know this may seem difficult to gauge, but think of things like font, color schemes, sizes, shapes, textures, alignment and spacing. If you change most of those items up, you will come out with something that is your own creation instead of a copy of another persons design! Remember, good artists copy, great artists steal (Picasso), which means to be great you need to find what is at the heart of the design, keep that true to form and then change all the rest until it becomes something completely new and all yours!

Now, that being said, if you do happen to find a design element from another site that is totally unique and you want to use it as is, you need to get in touch with the designer and get their permission. Don’t be surprised if they ask you to pay for use of the design, that is not uncommon, but if you are really interested in it and want to use it as is, you need to have their permission. Some designers may let you borrow one small element without charge, but then may ask to be credited, it really just depends on the person and the element in question, but you need to ask before you take it so that you don’t get yourself into legal trouble!

Content

Content is obviously one of the most important parts of a blog and as a blogger it is important that although you may find inspiration for yours around the web, that you aren’t taking people’s ideas without permission or reference. For the most part I believe this has a lot to do with common sense and the Golden Rule, which states to treat others how you would like to be treated. If you read a blog post on someone’s site and then decide to write the same post in your own point of view, always source the original post that gave you the inspiration. You don’t necessarily need to ask permission to use someone’s blog post if you are just writing your own version, however, I do think it is polite to give the original author a heads up and share the link to the post with them. A simple email that states something like “I read x post and I was so inspired I wanted to share my own ideas about it on my blog but I made sure to mention and link to your original post as my source” can go a long way. You may even find that the original blogger will want to share or even link to your blog post as well, which will help you get more views! If you do happen to write your own version of someone else’s post, one thing you want to watch out for is to make sure you are of course making different points and using your own point of view. It is not okay to write the same post just in your own words, using the same or very similar points as per the original. Even if you link back and ask permission, this is still a shady practice! Also, at all costs, avoid borrowing content or finding too much inspiration from one specific source. Even if you are properly sourcing, if you find that many of your posts are inspired by the same blogs and bloggers, it may be time for an intervention. You really don’t want anymore than 20% of your content to be directly inspired by other bloggers because you need to come up with your own unique content in order to help build your blogs brand!

Now, if you are reading a blog post and you see a line or point in the post that gives you inspiration for a completely different type of post on that one little topic, this is one of those examples where you don’t necessarily have to give credit, but if you do, I bet it would be appreciated. In truth, I think this is the best way to find inspiration and borrow ideas online, where you are finding something small that resonates with you and extrapolating on it in your own post. Taking this very post for example, you could read the passage above relating to the Golden Rule and decide that you would like to write an entire post about how to apply the Golden Rule to your interactions online with blogs and social media and call it “The Golden Rule 2.0”! That post would be a completely unique offshoot of this one that really wouldn’t require a link back to mine unless you just wanted to give credit and build a relationship. Also that blog post would be awesome and now I think I am going to add that to my TBW (to be written) list! Feel free to email me if you would also like to try your hand at writing that post and maybe we can do a little link up!

Proper linking and sourcing doesn’t just have positive karmic benefits, but it also has real SEO benefits as well. SEO meaning Search Engine Optimization, which is basically the method by which you can positively affect your rankings in search results by creating good content (aka get more views on your blog)! When you link and credit an alternate source like a blog that may be more popular than yours, when people go to search for that topic, your post may rank higher in search results because you are affiliating your blog post with someone else’s! So really, it just benefits you and your blog to create interesting content and to source whenever you find inspiration elsewhere on the blogosphere!

So what do you do if you’re a blogger and you believe that your content is being borrowed without your permission or a link back to your original content? Well the long and the short of it is that if a single blog happens to be taking ideas, content or other intellectual property (photographs or design) from you and you are seeing a pattern enough to be asking yourself this question, the best thing to do is to politely contact the blog author and let them know you came across their blog and you have found a number of similarities between your posts and let them know that if they have been borrowing, you would truly appreciate a link back to your original post. Also, feel free to reference or even link them to this blog post of mine that explains the do’s and don’ts for them because they may not have been informed enough to know how or when to cite an outside source for their content! Of course, if someone is blatantly plagiarizing or using copyrighted images of yours, you do have legal options available to you, however, I would strongly council that unless the wrong doer is using your work for obvious monetary gain, to simply send them an email and let them know they didn’t have permission to use it and ask that it be removed if that is what you want them to do! Talk softly and carry a big stick is a great motto to use in these situations because I find that you can often resolve these issues simply by asking nicely and being reasonable first. If that doesn’t work, call in the big dogs!

Now, if you would like to get a little more perspective on dealing with someone who may be copying your work or content, I absolutely love this post and video from the incomparable Marie Forleo! It’s called How to Deal with Copycats and Marie brings up a few more points that I absolutely agree with so head on over to her site to find out more about those!

I sincerely hope this post has been helpful for you if you are a blogger looking for the best way to find inspiration online or if you are someone who is dealing with content klepto’s! Let me know your thoughts on this subject down in the comments and if this post was helpful I would love it if you tweeted it out or posted it to your Facebook feed!

Hope you all are staying productive and inspired!

xoxo,

Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor: Love is in the Air!

Hello my Strange & Charmed Ones and welcome to the start of February! If you haven’t noticed, February is really setting itself up to be the perfect month. With its 28 days, it may be the shortest month of the year, but when you take a look at your calendar, it starts on a Sunday, and ends four complete weeks later on a Saturday, making it literally a perfect calendar month! I don’t know about you, but I’m taking that as a sign! I plan to make the most of this little month and fill it with love and laughter and I hope you join me.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I just released my February FREE Filofax printable task list entitled “28 Ways to Love Yourself!” I hope you will go and check it out and use it in your planner to add some extra meaning to the month. I know we all get wrapped up in Valentine’s Day and spreading love to our friends and partners, but we can’t forget about ourselves and this February I am going to be making myself a priority. I know that may sound a little funny, but I sincerely hope you do as well! One of my Instagram followers who downloaded the insert made a very good suggestion that we should start a hashtag and tag photos of our progress with the tasks to IG! So, if you would like to play along, tag your photos with the hashtag #28waystoloveyourself and of course make sure to also tag me @MissTrenchcoat so I can see your IG photos, comment and like them! Other than my free printable, I currently have another great piece of planner related content out for you, my latest YouTube video which is all about making reusable to do lists for your Filofax or planner! This video outlines a technique I use to create and utilize these awesome planner additions, and I even give you a peak into how I use mine!

So, you may be wondering what I have in store for you this month on the blog? Well, glad you asked! This month I am going to be doing a few very informative posts pertaining to blogging and youtube! You will be getting a very rare book post from me as well coming up soon that I hope you enjoy. I’m very excited about this months Picture Perfect post, which is going to be some helpful tips for you fashion bloggers & amateur photographers, so make sure to keep an eye out for that! We’re going to talk about love a little more this month (can’t help it, it is February after all!) and I even have a fun and delicious recipe to share for any of you who LOVE eating cooking dough!

Well, I think that is enough of a monthly preview for you! I don’t want to spoil all the fun, and there are even a few surprises I didn’t mention, so I hope that keeps you on the edge of your seat! One major thing I did want to say, however before I leave you, is how overwhelmed I am with the amount of love and support you all have been showing to my Instagram account! I work so hard to create interesting and beautiful images for you all and apparently you noticed because suddenly I am over 6,000 followers on Instagram! So THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, from the bottom of my heart! I feel so lucky to have a wonderful group of friends as supportive and encouraging as each and every one of you! Well, that will be it for now, so make sure you stay tuned for all of the great content I have in store for you this month!