Each Friday, I open the Brag Basket for the weekend. It’s designed as a fun place for you to share your projects and accomplishments. But you can also cheer for other people, give shout outs, congratulate, and even give someone a well-deserved pat on the back.
The Brag Basket is open for everyone, whether from a small town, a big city, or anywhere in the world. (But it’s true that I love small town brags!)
Will you put something in the Brag Basket this week? You can brag on a friend, your own project, yourself, others, anything! You don’t need special permission, and you don’t have to be from a small town. Just leave a comment right here. There’s no deadline, so you can brag anytime during the weekend, and I’ll open a fresh Brag Basket each Friday.
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The rural small business blog. We talk about small town business, with how-to articles, especially on social media marketing and making your community a better place. We use this “author” for announcements and other things you’ll want to know.
Are we allowed to brag EVERY Friday?! :-) Our first event is next Thursday which means I will be bragging about an extremely successful event next week! :-) But today! Today we snagged our first official sponsor! It felt like – if we could just get one – more will come! Oh – and someone told me they saw an ad of mine on Facebook and before they even realized it was my company – they thought it looked like a professional – legitimate company! :-) That meant a lot. Fake it till you make it! Thank you again Becky – our short conversation really helped me refocus my vision and where I wanted this company to go – what a huge difference!
Sammi, of course you may brag every Friday! It’s a way to make sure you are reviewing your progress each week. Congrats on the first sponsor! Look forward to hearing about your awesome event next week. :)
I want to brag today, too. Opened my email to find another new client sitting in there. I’m starting to feel like we’ve hit critical mass! Hooray!
Hey there! I heard about this on Twitter – this is a great idea!
Way to go Sammi on your 1st official sponsor! And getting a new client is the BEST Becky!
So to brag myself – I had a great presentation the other day. I met some great new people and you never know what will come of it!
Becky –
Congrats to you on your new client! This week has also been busy for us – things are turning around for the economy hopefully.
Cheers
Marco
Congrats, Brooke! Here’s hoping something great will come of it.
Marco, thanks for dropping in. Love to hear that you’re having a busy week, too.
A delight to meet you in Austin, Becky.
And HEY! I presented at SxSW! With Sheila S! It was an amazing opportunity and I think it did not suck. :)
Pam, not only did you not suck, you two ROCKED your presentation! Looking forward to getting to know you better, too.
I want to brag about the great friends I’ve made through Rotary. I serve on the Camp Haccamo Board. This is a camp for disabled children. We volunteer together and it’s oh, so rewarding.
Saw your post on Twitter!
Robyn, what a terrific thing to brag on! You’re making a difference in the world. Good for you!
Congratulations on the new client Becky! I truely hope you have reached critical mass – that’s what all the hard work is for. :)
I’ve got to add to the brag basket today. This week was a huge week for some speaking gigs and making huge connections in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Wednesday we hosted both Social Media Breakfast – Twin Cities (our 13th straight event) where Connie Bensen and I talked about Social Media and it’s relationship to Community Managers.
Wednesday night we had a huge crowd (over 350) at the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) panel discussion on Community Managers and their role in a Recession Economy. The rest of the panel consisted of Gary Koelling, founder of Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation, Connie Bensen, Community Stategist with Techrigy.com, Paula Berg, Community Manager of Southwest Airlines, myself, and Albert Maruggi, President of Provident Partners who moderated the event.
Was a great time with good reviews. Now I’m hungry for more.
I’m looking forward to chatting next week.
Congrats, on the new client! Great to see you for just a few minutes at SxSW. Never enough time to chat! Can we have overs?
I’m dropping a brag in the basket about my communications consultancy being acquired by New Media Lab, a startup here in Austin. I’m really excited about working with them. http://pitch.pe/6265
And then, to keep me humble, Marcus Brown skewered me today as the “Mother Nature of Twitter” in one of his bathroom readings. LOL stuff. http://cli.gs/2Lt5b2
Rick, congratulations on your work with the super exciting Minneapolis/St. Paul scene!
Connie, a huge round of applause! So excited to see what great things you do with New Media Lab! And, yes, we needed more time to just sit down and talk. That is so hard to do at SXSW.
I’ll brag. I actually met Becky in person and talked to her for, oh, what…an hour? SXSW rocked. Love what you’re doing to help bring small town business into the 21.1st century.
Actually, I think I will brag on someone else… my son is a compassionate genius. He wrote an amazing essay about Sierra Leone: People Used to Stand for Something. He’s also started a new social media meme: Change It. Please take a look and help spread it.
Yeah, I’m a proud papa. :-)
Wow, Scott! You have every reason to be a proud papa! I *love* the Change It meme, and I hope everyone will take time to participate.
It was great to talk to you, too. Love to get a chance to talk to another entrepreneur in the middle of all the geekiness at SXSW.
I’d simply like to brag about my webtop that keeps me organized and on top of things these days. This is an amazing little productivity tool that everyone living online (like us) should take a peek at.
Allows you to manage everything, from any computer in the world, with one password. Now what’s not to brag about with that?
GoEverywhere Team, thanks for dropping in. Feel free to come back, and to share a little more of your self. We love to hear from you as a person. :)
I would like to share a project–to ‘give back’ with a proven practice, taught by a Mentor, to engage everyone by involving them with heart and mind. This project is a Workbook (5-Steps for a Group Leader to Engage Everyone) which any group leader, present or future, can freely print/download from my online Publisher. Not even a registration is required although if you are registered the Workbook can be accessed at the site anytime from any computer.
This set of web pages provides more information about the tools of this process/recipe for engagement. The Workbook is uder-centered and created specifically for the leaders of any group on the frontlines of daily operations.
May copy and paste url: http://sites.google.com/site/propelfrontlineleaders/
Howdy, George! Thanks for sharing your project. Would love to hear more about how you came to create it.
Wow, Becky! This is my first visit to your BragBag weekends. I just learned of them late this Sunday eve through the Austin Texas twittterers.
I’m surprised to learn all through this month I’ve become a Top Inviter aboard Facebook.
All of Social Media, including Facebook is SOooo fun, and at 69 yrs I’ve lived long enough to know for sure much of life IS about the people.
Having been mostly virtual in my own business now for over 16 years, live and online”face-time” for me are equally valuable and rewarding.
Now it’s my turn to tell friends, colleagues and family about THIS! More rewarding communication I can’t imagine and I’ll start tonight! ;)
Be well…and remember — this crazy economic and political turbulence will pass. We’ve not quite been HERE before — AND we’re quick studies and resourceful folk — and no other period in time had technology on its side like we have now to coordinate together.
Sherry, I’ll bet I know just which Austin Twitterers were talking about it, too. Welcome to the Brag Basket. You have an terrific story, and I hope you’ll be back soon!
Thanks Becky, love to tell the story with links to other stories to explain the “how”?
I share it because of the frustrations some four decades ago when, after becoming an entrepreneur, getting people to bring their hearts and minds to work was a challenge which even business school had not prepared me for. Some of the steps of this practice I had imagined but remember thinking it was too simple! A Mentor helped me learn by doing the practice which he had been using in the Hospitality industry since the mid-1940’s–by doing it.
Back then, most of what you taught by doing was not written down into steps, certainly was not called employee engagement, and frankly most industries’ intentions was only to ‘tell people what to do’! About a decade ago, many industries decided they needed hearts and minds (my Mentor had passed away) and I started putting the practice into actionable steps which a frontline leader could use to solve those same frustrations I had experienced.
“What” the steps were not too hard (Thank, Invite, Ask, Feedback, and Share then practice by repeating the steps) but “why” did it work? After some research it became apparent that it worked because the group was participating in asking the critical questions for “How are we doing?” both individually and collectively. This was a missing-link because asking these questions had left the frontlines after WWII, when the United States became supplier for rebuilding the free world. Asking these questions went to the top of the hierarchy (C levels) as organizations went vertical to manage human and production capital.
Thought I had a solution but still could not explain “how” the practice involved people with their hearts and minds! Help came with recent developments in positive psychology and brain science but more specifically works to combine the two in neuro-leadership. The insight came in realizing that “the activity itself must provide feedback” for anyone to reach full engagement and self-engagement (which they will bring with them to any other group). This feedback from the activity itself allows the activity to become the framework for which a cycle of engagement occurs whereby the colleagues engage the customers and are in turn reengaged by the customers.
Links to other’s stories:
Positive Psychology – http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html and http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.html
Brain Science – http://www.brainbasedbusiness.com/2006/07/the_opposite_of_reflection_is.html
NeuroLeadership – http://www.totalpicture.com/content/view/477/191/ and http://www.strategy-business.com/press/freearticle/06207?gko=498f4-12656449-15832258
In an earlier interview David discusses, more specifically, his book “Quiet Leadership” at http://www.totalpicture.com/content/view/334/191/
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Wow, George! Thanks for sharing your story. Hope everyone who is interested will take a look at your workbooks, and improve their abilities.