Tip #1: Simple Stretching

If you’re like most people you probably spend a good portion of your day behind a computer.  A few times a day take two minutes to try a handful of these exercises: loosen up your neck by rolling your head in slow circles, do the same with your shoulders, lift your hands above your head and cross them like an olympic swimmer diving into the pool, to stretch your forearm place your arm straight in front of you and pull your hand back towards your body.  This should get all those areas that tend to lock up during a long days work nice and loose.

Tip #2: Take 10 Deep Slow Breaths

Although this isn’t quite the same as an hour long meditation session, doing some controlled breathing can really help reduce stress levels by increasing oxygen to the brain and the release of endorphins (happy hormones) into your body.  Simply take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds, then release it and hold that breathless state for a few moments before inhaling again.  Repeat this a few times and you will instantaneously feel the difference.

Tip #3: Tea Please

Caffeinated coffee has been linked to increasing the perception of stress in our bodies by increasing the output of cortisol the “stress hormone” that regulates our blood pressure and blood sugar levels.  All that to say, if your experiencing high levels of stress you probably don’t want to go the local coffee shop and stock up on high levels of caffeine during your lunch break.  Tea (especially ginseng tea) on the other hand has been shown to bring hormonal balance and reduce stress level, so skip the coffee and make yourself a steaming mug of ginseng tea next time your circumstances are getting the best of you.

Tip #4: Keep The Multi-Vitamins Handy

High stress levels tax your body and deplete it of vitamins essential to your health.  Although you will get some of these nutrients in the food you eat (assuming you have a healthy diet) even the best eaters among us still don’t get enough nutrients naturally.  To counteract this keep a bottle of multivitamins by your desk and remember to take one each day.  Vitamin C will keep your immune system strong, Vitamin B will raise your energy levels, and Vitamin E has some great antioxidant powers.

Tip #5: Relaxing Tunes

Music has an amazing ability to help us regulate our moods and emotions.  Multiple studies have shown that listening to mellow or relaxing music lowers our blood pressure and eases the stress and tension in our bodies.  Of course, most of us don’t need scientific studies to tell us that music helps us relax!  Next time your feeling the strain put on a little Clair de lune or Ray Lamontagne and feel that tension slip into oblivion.

Post image shot by Michael Prince

“What’s in store for the future” you ask?  Our immediate focus will be on increasing the number of tastes you have to choose from. If your not completely thrilled with the tastes we currently have check back in a few weeks because we’ll have designs rolling hot off the press all the time.  One thing to keep mind is that we’re limiting the sale of each taste to 250.  The positive side to this is that out of the 1.4 billion people online only a few hundred will ever have your look.  The downside is that we can sell out of a particular taste.  We’d never want you to miss out on a taste you love because you waited too long, so recognize that it can happen!

I know I speak for the entire team when I say “Welcome to the Nectar Family!”  We promise to do everything in our power to help you strengthen your personal brand and we’re looking forward to some wonderful years together.

Below are a few links and screenshots to some press Nectar has been getting lately.

8 Personal Branding Leaders

Dan Schawbel

• Personal branding expert and author of Me 2.0
• Blog: Personal Branding Blog
• Twitter: @danschawbel

Luke Harvey Palmer

• Executive personal branding consultant in Australia & Founder of Buzzle
• Blog: The Chief Brand Officer
• Twitter: @lukefrombuzzle

Chris Brogan

• Advises businesses, organizations, and individuals how to use social media to build relationships and deliver value
• Blog: Chris Brogan
• Twitter: @chrisbrogan

Gary Vaynerchuk

• Owner of the Wine Library and wildly popular blogger/speaker
• Blog: Gary Vaynerchuk
• Twitter: @garyvee

3 Personal Branding Resources

• TweetTrak - Use this free service to track keywords on Twitter. Very helpful to track your own Twitter @ name to keep track of any replies or notes about you.
• Google Alerts - Similar to TweetTrak but in a broader sense. Google Alerts can track virtually anything said on the web or blogs and email them to you as they happen or in daily/weekly doses. You might use this to track your own name or general topics such as “personal branding”.
• Google Reader - A great tool to assemble and organize your favorite blogs. Google Reader lets you categorize your RSS feeds with tags which makes it easy to quickly get updates on a particular topic or category of information.

What Is Relational Capacity?

When I say relational capacity I’m talking about the level of relationship you have with the other team members.  If your team is an engine then relational capacity is the grease.  It’s there in every interaction: smoothing over sharp-edged personalities, lubricating every disappointing moment, and easing the friction of hard conversations.  A team can function for a while without this ingredient but eventually without the grease the engine will break down.  Commonplace comments like the following show where many leaders mindsets are when it comes to team leadership, “Oh come on” they say, “I’m not here to be friends with these people, I’m here to lead them.  This is business, it’s not personal.”  The problem with this thinking is that it assumes people will follow you because of your position or title, when the reality is that leadership is influence, and your ability to influence people is largely dependent on your level of relationship with them. The question you should be asking yourself is “How can I get people to want to follow me?”  Imagine if you were the team leader or boss that people actually wanted to work with.  Imagine if people genuinely enjoyed team meetings?  Imagine if your team kept improving as the months and years went by. A utopian dream?  I don’t think so.  

New Hope 

Before joining the business world I worked as a youth pastor for over four years at a large suburban church nestled in the suburbs north of Dallas.  As you may know churches are notorious for their nasty infighting and splits and it seems some churches can’t go five years without some major meltdown among the leadership team. But what I witnessed among the leadership team of New Hope was a beautiful thing.  Here were a handful of people from all sorts of different socioeconomic backgrounds, serving side by side, taking a church from 100 people to 1,000 in just a few short years, genuinely enjoying the journey together, and after ten years they still like each other!  It’s not unusual to show up at our local Starbucks and see a handful of them hanging out, not strategizing about the next outreach event, just talking, laughing, and enjoying one another’s friendship.  

Just take a minute and think back to a team that you absolutely loved being apart of.  Did that have anything to do with the relational capacity of the team?  Of course it did!  You trusted each other, you had productive meetings because people could be honest, you enjoyed being with those people because you felt accepted and valued, you weren’t watching your back, you weren’t struggling to fit in, you had the “it” factor, chemistry, or whatever you want to call it because you had relational capacity.  I’ll end with a few action points to get your team building more relational capacity in no time.

Relational Capacity Action Points

Spend Time (Outside of Work).  This doesn’t have to happen every day but should be happening regularly.  You need to facilitate shared experiences because these experiences are part of the relational foundation your laying.  Have coffee, grab a beer, invite a team member’s family over for that Christmas party your throwing.  You can’t ever miss by being too kind, thoughtful, and relational.

Speak Life.  Who wants to be on a team where the only way your recognized is when you screw up?  It’s okay to be honest about shortcomings but make sure you communicate the victories and strengths of your team members.  As the leader you are setting the tone for everyone else, so unless you want a discouraging and critical atmosphere, be lavish in your praise of others and watch them flourish.

Be authentic.  It’s easy to get all this relational talk confused with schmoozing.  We’re not talking about manipulating people or getting team members to only “think” you like them.  You really have to give a damn about them.  A wise person once said, “I don’t care how much you know, until I know how much you care.”  Your team will see through fake gestures in the blink of an eye- so do us all a favor and stay authentic.

Good luck on your journey to strengthen your personal brand by forming great teams.

In the following video I discuss the concepts of introvert and extrovert, why I believe that extroverted caricature I just described above is complete B.S., and why I think introverts have a place at the entrepreneurial table.

Public speaking can strike fear into the heart of the bravest among us.  There we are – singled out, with all eyes on us, our palms are sweaty, butterflies dip and soar in our stomach, and our heart is beating so hard we’re sure everyone can see our shirt palpitating to the rhythm in our chest.  Good God it’s terrifying! So how do the pro’s do it?  They thank their host, dive passionately into their subject matter, make a few jokes, wrap it up, and stride off the stage.  How can they walk up there seemingly calm, cool, and collected?  

Becoming an excellent public speaker (like anything) takes a lifetime to master so don’t expect standing ovations by tomorrow.  However, by implementing a few of these principles you’ll be building a foundation of excellence in your public speaking that will aid you for years to come.

Principle 1: Center Around One Big Idea.

Believe it or not, most people don’t have too little to say, but rather too much; this is especially true if you’re someone who doesn’t get to speak in public very often.  As you sit down to prepare you’ll find that all these various ideas, stories, directions, connections, and keen insights are popping into your brain and you might be tempted to say them all.  ”How could I possibly leave that stunning insight out?” you exclaim.  Here’s why, if you try to say everything you’ll end up communicating nothing.  Remember, there’s something beautiful about simplicity and clarity.  It’s a breath of fresh air when someone walks to the stage and says “Here’s the one thing I want you to walk away with”.  Right off the bat you’ve communicated to people why in the they should listen to you and assured them that your’re not about to waste their valuable time.  As you prepare for this speech the mantra rolling around your head should be “What EXACTLY am I trying to say?”.  That will help everything in your presentation, from the introduction to the conclusion, have a laser-like focus.  It’s sort of the difference between hitting a home run and laying down 5 or 6 bunts.  

Principle 2: Speak With Passion.

If you don’t care about the topic at hand why on earth would anyone else?  If you’re speaking out of a sense of duty or obligation it only communicates to your audience “honestly, this doesn’t really matter to me and it shouldn’t to you…feel free to tune me out because I’m wasting your time anyway.”  The greatest speeches in history resonated and became catalyst’s for change because those delivering them did so with extreme passion and conviction.  Just watch the “I Have A Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr.   Is there any question he has a passion for this subject?  Of course not, it’s like he feels this down to his toes, he believes what he’s saying is important and that those in attendance need to listen.  

Of course you may say, “Well I would be passionate if I were speaking about eliminating racism, global poverty, or the aids crisis, but I’m not, I’m just an accountant presenting the latest financials to the execs at Corporation ‘X’.  My topic is boring and uninteresting and I can’t change it.”  I sympathize with you, but it’s no excuse.  You absolutely must find the reason it matters.  Why are you being given twenty minutes of valuable time?

If you already have a passion for your subject that’s great!  Don’t hold back.  Feel it down to your toes, let it light up your eyes, and give a sense of urgency to your voice.

Principle 3: Get Your “PING” On.

In her book RenGen author Patricia Martin discusses the theory of where original ideas come from.  She writes the following.

Scientists have studied the changes that take place in brain function when subjects are presented with something unexpected… What if I put an object in front of you that you have never seen before? In that case you will search your memory and ask it: ‘Where have I seen something like this?’ No answer. You will keep searching your brain, checking the nooks and crannies of your cortex.  All the while you are rapidly forming an assessment of whether this thing could harm you.  Unsure, you may begin to invent a way of classifying or understanding the object.  You might refine it by fusing it with a known object, thus inventing something original.  This is how we generate new ideas. We search for what I term potential inspiration for new ground- or P.I.N.G.  The richer our storehouses of images and memories we have to PING against, the more combinations of answers and solutions we can conjure.

I believe that as you craft a presentation you are doing some major ‘PING-ing’, so to speak.  You are pulling from the storehouse of experiences you’ve had, books you’ve ready, blogs you frequent, weird places you’ve been, interesting conversations you’ve had, etc.  If you haven’t interacted with other people’s ideas very broadly then it’s quite possible that your ability to PING is pretty limited.  If you took the time to watch the “I Have A Dream” speech above you may have noticed that Martin Luther King Jr. had seriously interacted with the Old Testament of the Bible and the ideas of pacifists like Leo Tolstoy and Ghandi.  In other words, his speech wasn’t created in a vacuum, but was profoundly enriched by thinkers that had gone before him.  The lesson for all of us here is that we need to experience broadly, read widely, and think deeply to create speeches that stir people.

Wrap Up

To listen to some of the world’s greatest communicators head on over to TED.com.  For a wonderful book on preparing and delivering dynamic speeches check out Ken Davis’ book “Secret of Dynamic Communication“.

I’ve long been a strong proponent of owning a personal web domain but many friends and family haven’t understood the reasoning behind it.  As a result, I’ve compiled a list of the key reasons I feel it’s absolutely vital to your personal brand that you have your own web domain (yourname.com):

1. Permanence

Whether you’re running a blog on Wordpress.com or Blogspot, or rely on the any number of the wildly successful social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, ask yourself this one question: can I count on these sites to be around 5, 10, or even 20 years from now? The social networking internet as we know it is less than five years old and continues to grow at an exponential rate, while the underlying technology is progressing even faster. The popular sites of today may evolve into something completely different down the road or even shut down altogether. However, when you purchase your own domain, there is an inherent permanence involved. Web domains will remain in your possession forever, provided you continue to pay the associated renewal fees and don’t blatantly infringe on a copyright. Note: I’m not at all advocating the need to eliminate participation in social networks but rather pointing out the unique benefits of owning your own domain.

2. Brand Equity

The concept of permanence described in #1 leads me right into the second key benefit of owning your own web domain which is brand equity. Whenever your blog or personal content rides on top of another web domain (as in the case of my fictional Leftist Elite blog example above) you miss any chance of committing your web address to your visitor’s memory.  Worse yet, you risk tripping up your guests with these lengthy and complex web addresses.  By launching your own domain, you begin to build traffic, awareness, and equity in a web property that you own – and therefore control.  This gives you the freedom to design the site 100% in your favor rather than sharing premium real estate on your web pages with another brand.

3. Flexibility

The beauty of the domain system is its incredible flexibility.  Think of a domain as a set of pointers that can be modified at any time by its owner.  For example, you may decide initially to have yourdomain.com point to a blog that is hosted by Wordpress.com but if you change your mind down the road, you can just as easily redirect this pointer to Blogger.com or even to a web server of your own.  The beauty of this process is that there’s no need to alert people to the change. Visitors will continue to access the same web address even if you alter the destination.

But the power doesn’t end there. Owning your own domain also means you have the ability to utilize custom email addresses such as me@yourdomain.com.  Again, just like the Wordpress/Blogger example, you can elect to have these email addresses function as pointers which simply redirect email to another location. So if you’re a fan of Gmail like me, you don’t have to eliminate your @gmail.com email address but instead just point the inbound mail for me@yourdomain.com to your @gmail.com mailbox and no one will be the wiser.

4. Professionalism

It’s undeniable that ownership of a web domain establishes us (at least for the time-being) in a class by ourselves on the internet. Owning a personal domain creates distinction and presents us in a much more professional manner, but even beyond this it tells others that you’re proud of your identity and are working hard to promote your personal brand.

Do you already own your own domain? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject and any additional reasons for domain ownership.