After going through the The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Signature Course, there were so many great nuggets or quotes from either the course or in conversations at the course that I wanted to share them all.

Below you’ll find a selection of the quotes that made my all star quote team.  After you read them all, I am sure you’ll have a favorite.  So when you pick your favorite quote, leave a comment so we can chat about it in the comments!

“I am free to choose and am responsible for my choices.”  - Covey

“Right to pause and own [the space where you choose your response to a situation].”  - The Presenter

“See every problem as an opportunity to exersize creative energy.” - Covey

“We detect rather than invent our missions in life.” - Viktor Frankl

“Urgent things have the appearance of importance.” - Covey

“Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you are saying.”  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The key to the family culture is how you treat the child that tests you the most.” - A video we watched

“You cant talk yourself out of problems you behave yourself into.” - Covey

The quote that best sums up the program:

“Your life is a result of your own decisions - not your conditions.” - Covey

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about social media and Joe can be found at his blog.

Awesome Quotes from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Training

Almost three months ago, I started a new role at Beta Theta Pi Fraternity and Foundation as the Assistant Controller.  This change has been exciting for me in many ways, but bittersweet others.  My time at NCR Corporation was an excellent way to start my working life.  NCR provided me with so many opportunities, especially amazing travel.  I was able to attend an awkward birthday party in India, examine how college impacted my work day in Budapest as I saw ATMs being built.

So leaving the global company behind, I began a new phase at a Non-Profit.  It has been amazing to move from having 30,000 co-workers to just 30.  In my first few weeks at Beta, one of my new coworkers facilitated Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Signature Program for a group of the newest employees.  It was a great program and enabled me to spend some time thinking about how to define success and plan to achieve it.

So in the spirit of sharing, I am starting a series of posts about some of the concepts taught in the seven habits program.

As a start, check out the seven habits diagram, and lets begin our journey from dependence to interdependence!

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about social media and Joe can be found at his blog.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Program

A classmate of mine from Miami University, Blake Samic, posted a video of hope and optimism that goes along with my first video post.  It is empowering to know that a single person, yes thats you and I!, is able to see opportunities and make changes and improvements.  How are we choosing to handle the opportunities that are placed in front of us?  How are we making a difference?

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about social media and Joe can be found at his blog.

We Can Make a Difference but Will We?

Four weeks ago my wife and I spent a week in London and Paris seeing the sites and enjoying an awesome vacation.  There is nothing better than a Seine river dinner cruise!

But wait there might be!  The first ever JoeBuddeJr.com video post!  But wait!  Just like shamwow, THERE IS MORE!

You’ve gotta be kidding, you are saying?  Nope, no jokes from me today.

So what is the more?  Well, the first ever video post is my first take ever, and its all the way from the Champs de Elysee in Paris!  Where you ask?  Well right here a gentlemen was selling his skill.  He would free hand cut out a profile picture of a person.  Sure he could spend 10 minutes drawing it out and then cutting it, but when he can free hand it, it’s amazing.  Why is that a big deal?  Because this guy’s effort could have been to just to finish a neat cut out profile in 30 minutes time, but he took it one step further and left us in awe by doing it in two.

Check it out:

Giving 100% is not Enough 

Rebecca happened to be a bit late with her video blog advice so the video is not great by her standards (or mine), but its fun none the less.

What do you think of this artist and his skills? and… What do you think of the video post?   Do you think video blogging is my new blogging identity?

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about social media and Joe can be found at his blog.

Giving 100% is Not Enough: A Video Post

We could all go out and follow some generic advice (generic = terrible) about how to throw a birthday party for a co-worker.  Or we could break every etiquette rule about how to buy a gift for a co-worker.  But I am not into that.

I want to help you make the most of your office birthday party, because if yours are like mine have been, they really need some work.  And for something that happens at least once a month like in my office, its just too often to ignore.

How Do I fix an Office Birthday Party Fiasco?

1. It’s only awkward if you make it awkward:  If you are in a situation, or approach one thinking it will be awkward then it will be.  Its time to change your attitude.
2. In lieu of standing around waiting for someone to be the first one to go pick a cookie or a piece of cake off the table, pick up the cookies/cake and pass them out.  It’ll help change everyone else’s attitude since I have changed mine after step number one!
3. Have an action plan for the dreaded song:  I look at people in the eyes when singing happy birthday - even if  I’m the birthday boy.  It lets everyone know that I am appreciative of their less than stellar vocal abilities.

So those are a few things I do to end the terribleness that is an office birthday party.  If you are still a debbie downer on office birthdays I suggest that you celebrate all your office birthdays on one day a year.  Think about it. Way less calories, and way less of the awkward effort you put towards choosing what to do while people sing happy birthday to you.

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about social media and Joe can be found at his blog.

How to Improve your Office Birthday Party

Boy am I glad I am no longer writing about social media.

Plus, I am even more glad that what I want to write about today is not about “social media” per se.   Its about how reputation risk management is on the rise.  My friend matt sent it along with this note:   “For your blog that is no longer about social media.”

Perfect.

So everyone out there needs to know the stats from the article:

More than 82% of major companies are making a substantial effort to manage reputation risk, and 81% have increased their efforts over the past three years, according to a survey of 148 risk management executives at U.S. and European corporations.

Though social media are gaining influence among consumers and investors evaluating companies, only 34% of the executives surveyed said they regularly monitor social networking sites for information about their companies, and only 10% participate in them.

All of the social media topics I spoke on until my fall out with the subject are important places to manage reputation risk, so we all better be engaging that because we all have to take care of our personal brands using online tools… right?

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about social media and Joe can be found at his blog.

An Article That Isn’t About Social Media

After I first started struggling through my blog identity crisis an old coworker of mine @robpederson, sent me a tweet:

“@joebuddejr This might help with your blog identity crisis http://tinyurl.com/d8p8s3“

Obviously, I’ll try anything to figure out this blogging identity crisis…

After arriving at the link the title of the site caught my eye, “The Art of Nonconformity: Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work and Travel” a blog written by Chris Guillebeau.

In his manifesto, a very well crafted e-book, Chris explains how you can change your life to become a full time blogger.  He says we will learn the following things:

• How I Became a Full-Time Writer in 279 Days
• The Complete Revenue Estimate for my Personal Site in 2009
• The World Domination Strategy for Establishing Your Brand
• Avoiding the Vampires who Want You to Fail
• Why Adsense (and most other Web Advertising) Sucks
• How to Stay Off the Digg Home Page and Still Get All the Traffic You Need

Now, sure some of these topics apply to my blog, but at this point, I am not a full time blogger - shocking I know.  Anyways, the valuable thing in this book is to understand the questions he asked himself to write this.  So reading it, I have been asking myself, what questions has he asked to get the results he desired.

The power of introspection is at work. I sure hope I can find my blog’s identity through this e-book!

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about social media and Joe can be found at his blog.

An Unconventional Path to Blog Identity: Nonconformity

A couple weekends ago I was able to hang out with my whole family to celebrate my moms birthday!  We were all sitting around chatting and mentioned my blog’s identity crisis and wondered what my deal was.  My sister hannah who just bounced back from a blogging break, decided we should ask ChaCha if it knew my blog’s identity. I thought that was a great idea, text a question to ChaCha and get a reponse.  You’d think there wouldn’t be a more appropriate way to find my blogs identity.  And so, we set off to see if ChaCha knows whats up.

The Test

To start we thought we should compare ChaCha’s responses by asking  ChaCha who my siblings were.

Who is “my brother’s name”? ChaCha replied: “He is from the class of 2006 at Dublin Coffman High School. He is 6′4″ 180 lb. and played forward in basketball. ChaCha!”  Nice work ChaCha right on.  He might be bigger now tho, he is starting to scare me.

Who is “my sister’s name”?  ChaCha again on the money replied: “is a professor for Teach for America. Before that he Was a researcher for The Ohio state University. Keep on Chaing”  Again, ChaCha is right on - she did some awesome reserach at OSU.

So ChaCha knew my siblings, so I thought this was going to be the end of my blog’s idenity crisis because ChaCha would tell me!

The Moment of Truth

We asked ChaCha - “Who is Joe Budde Jr.?”   Frankly, I thought they would have just copy pasted from my about page.  But did ChaCha?

ChaCha responded with:  “No results were found for Joe Budde Jr. in the United States. Can we look up another person for you? ChaCha!”

Blog idenity crisis status: Blog Identity - Still Lost.

I feel like I am running around asking, Are you my mother?

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about social media and Joe can be found at his blog.

Can ChaCha Find my Blog’s Identity?

Although I am in the middle of an blog idenity crisis, I am now struggling to cope with some disrespectful comments on an old post of mine.

To a blogger, comments are like Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumbs, they give us bloggers confidence to keep going.   I love comments and I’m not one for censorship.   So I left these nasty comments up for a few days, but I realized that leaving the offensive, defamatory and outright mean comments on my blog did not promote conversation and reflected poorly on me and this blog.

Classyness is something that I am not in an identity crisis about, so from here on out I will have a comment policy, published below.

Joe Budde Jr.com Comment Policy

I hate to do it, but after several nasty comments on my blog, I had to outline a few things that will not be tolerated in the comments.

1.  General Classlessness - I consider my blog a classy place: classy like wine, tuxedos and table cloths.  Please leave the personal attacks (on me or others) at the door.

2. ADD Comments - I enjoy talking about subjects that people are passionate about, but if I take the time to write a post, the comments should match the content and subjects outlined in the post.  Oh, but you wanted to chat about something else?  GREAT!  Send me an email or a tweet, we can chat about it that way.

3. Disrespect - Differences are welcomed here.  Hatred is not.  We are all humans, we all have hearts, and because of that we must respect one another.  Thoughts and opinions change through respectful discourse.  Leave the trash talk on the field/court/ice/floor/pitch.

These are the rules, and I reserve the right to change them at any moment.  If you don’t like it:  Don’t comment.  It’ll save you from having your feelings hurt when I delete your classless, off topic, and disrespectful comment.

Update: Because of a recent comment, a number 4 has been added:

4. Non-Full Disclosure - Any comment made without disclosing your relationship to the content of the post will be subject to removal or a public disclosure of the association by yours truly. Let’s leave the anonymous commenting to the creepers and uncivilized.

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about social media and Joe can be found at his blog.

Comment Policy

So, I have known it for a while, but I had a come to jesus moment today.  Its time I stopped writing about social media.

What!? Joe? You? Mr. ilovebeingonlineandallthesecrazythingsyoudoetal? 

Yes.  Its over.  Its time to move along. 

Ok, well, I’ll still write about some cool stuff I find, because I like cool stuff.  But from here on out I am done trying to be Shannon Paul and Chris Brogan or even the esteemed Guy.  I am clearing out my feeds and I am starting to clean out who I follow on twitter.

I am offically declaring my blog and me, to be in an idenity crisis.   Ok, I do know who I am, but I dont know what I write.

So, I am on the hunt.  What is it that I do?? 

You are what you eat, so I think that means I am I what I write.  Big changes to come…

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about social media and Joe can be found at his blog.

I am Finished Writing about Social Media