Big Is The New Small

In this fast paced busy world, it’s very easy to waste time, energy and focus on things that don’t matter.  We should consistently take inventory of our lives and make sure that we are focusing on the things that matter. God, Family and all of the other stuff… in that order.

We must evaluate our lives and decide whether or not the right things are getting the right focus.  Is God getting your focus?  Is your spouse getting your focus?  Are your kids getting your focus?  The big question is whether or not your job and worrying about what people think getting too much focus.

In the words of Gandhi, “Live as if you were to die tomorrow, Learn as if you were to live forever.”

Make the most of your today’s and tomorrow’s and learn how to Focus On The Things That Matter.

Thoughts?

It always surprises me to see leaders who hold onto their staff with The Employee Death Grip, which happens to be a distant cousin of the iPhone 4 death grip.   The iPhone 4 receives bad frequency, bad performance and drops calls altogether if you hold it with the death grip.  Similarly, death grip employees will have bad performance, a bad connection and will leave altogether.  This grip is a feature of leaders who are unwilling to let their employees out of their grips for fear of losing the employee or losing control.

When I was a young Warden, my mentor and boss would frequently tell me this regarding my staff members. “Scott, hold onto your team loosely, because ultimately they are not yours to hold onto.” That statement has always stuck with me!

If we hold onto our employees loosely, they feel the freedom of the open hands which ultimately increases productivity and develops leaders.  Encouraging your employees to “grow and go” will result in you losing some great ones from time to time.  The harvest of the open hand abundance mentality will always be replenished.  On the other hand The Employee Death Grip scarcity harvest will quickly dry up. My team has lost a harvest of amazing team members in the last year and that harvest has been replenished with some equally amazing team members without missing a beat.

Scarcity Mentality – Not enough good to go around vs. Abundance Mentality – There is more than enough great to go around.

If you are in an Employee Death Grip situation encourage the leader to get a grip and open their hands.

Let Go! dream BIG. think BIGGER.

Share your thoughts and experiences about The Employee Death Grip.

Do you remember the days that MySpace was actually cool?  I mean seriously there was a time when you were not cool if you didn’t have a MySpace.  Somewhere in the “time-frame of cool,” MySpace began to loose it’s steam, relevance and unique visitors were eclipsed my a new Sheriff in town by the name of Facebook.

The actual date the unofficial Sheriff takeover was in December of 2008.   It was this date that MySpace’s steady unique visitor number was eclipsed by Facebook’s rising number.  According to Compete Facebook passed MySpace’s monthly unique visitor number with 60 million and rising in December 2008.  MySpace has since floundered around for a few years peaking out not much very much higher than that December 2008 unique visitors number.  The harsh reality is that as of last month, Facebook had 128 million unique visitors and MySpace had 64 million unique visitors.

Twitter’s 30 million monthly unique visitor number may not totally appear to support my hypothesis; however I still believe that Twitter Is The New Facebook Is The New MySpace. What I mean by that is Facebook is such a money making machine that they may be loosing sight of the other side of the hill.  Similarly to people getting annoyed by all of the ridiculous graphics, adds, designs and ghetto-fabulous stuff on MySpace… the same thing can happen to Facebook.

Eventually people will get turned off by the annoying poke feature, useless applications, farmville stuff, endless event application, invites, tagging, petsville and annoying adds.  Not to mention the fact the middle school kids are in the early stages of taking over by simply adjusting their birthday to allow them to sign-up.  Facebook is an excellent platform, I think it should stay with a more minimalistic approach, but what do I know I’m writing a blogpost that I will use Facebook to help promote it.

Twitter’s success is not all about unique visitors.  It has a much broader effectiveness which includes being streamlined, consistent and more about keeping “The Main Thing, The Main Thing.”   According to Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone stated, “We’re not a social network–that’s been a myth since the beginning.  We’re much more like an information network or a source of news.”

Twitter has the numbers to back up the information network statement.  According to the Fast Company Article Twitter is currently the fastest growing search engine.   If you want to know the scoop on anything, you don’t have to google and you definitely don’t go to Facebook… you go to Twitter.  Twitter is currently handling 800 million search queries per day.  That’s over 24 billion searches per month, which ends up being more than Bing (4.1 billion) and Yahoo (9.4 billion) combined.

I had written a previous post entitled Twitter vs. Facebook and one of the responders @GodsMac hit the nail on the head by stating, “Twitter for sure. Facebook is like a shopping mall, and Twitter is the Apple store. Chaos vs. productivity and progress.” Twitter Is The New Facebook Is The New MySpace.

I know it may seem hard to believe that Facebook is on the front-side of the backside of their success.  I mean seriously they have a new blockbuster that’s coming to the big screen and they are growing like wild flowers.  It’s not about growth it’s about staying power, reinvention and focus. There are plenty of other big name company’s that didn’t see the end in the rear-view mirror: Circuit City, TG&Y and MySpace to name a few.   That’s why I love Chick-fil-A, they do chicken and they do chicken really well…  that’s it, just a good ol’ chicken sandwich with a butter toasted bun and a couple pickle slices.

I guess only time will tell, but one of 500+ million Facebook users thinks that Twitter Is The New Facebook Is The New MySpace. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand all of the unnecessary Facebook madness.  KISS Keep it Simple Stupid.

What do you think?  Is Twitter The New Facebook Is The New Myspace?

Over the years I have done several versions of Promote Your blog aka BIG Pimpin’. The concept is simple, you get the opportunity to do some BIG Time Blog or Website Promotion.

Remember, we only promote positive and wholesome stuff, so promote your blog, business, website, music site, book site, friend’s site, pastor’s site… (you get the picture).  This handy dandy linking software will add the links to this post for others to easily check them out.  The bonus is that nice people can connect with nice people while promoting their business, product or site all free of charge.

It’s as easy as 1-2-3

• 1. Fill out your info. in this format-  Let me repeat that, Fill out your info. in this format. Your Name: Scott Williams – BigIsTheNewSmall  Your URL: http://bigisthenewsmall.com
• 2. Leave a comment in the comment section and tell us about yourself or what you’re Promoting.
• 3. Share BIG Promote Your Blog Post w/ others via Twitter & Facebook use hashtag #BIGP  This can represent BIG Pimpin’ or BIG Promotion for the more conservative folks.

We’ll roll this through the weekend, so be sure to check back and find some new peeps to connect with.  Go ahead, get your pimp on!  I’ll go first! I tried to go first, you guys beat me to it. LOL.

“Do You” It’s a Statement, Not a Question.  That’s the phrase I’ve used for many years to describe the importance of “being yourself.”  Many times we go through life and try to imitate the likes of other people.  You know what I’m talking about, you find some attributes that you admire in a boss, friend, public figure, family member, mentor… and attempt to replicate those things and literally try to become that person.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t acknowledge and learn from others strengths; I’m simply saying you need to “Do You,” in other-words find your own voice/identity in those attributes instead of being an Imitation.

Nearly five years ago, I was called into full-time vocational ministry at my home church LifeChurch.tv.  I was immediately surrounded by a lot of gifted leaders with some serious “skilz.”  It would have been easy for me to gravitate towards their style, ways of thinking and particular cultural elements.   I could have easily lost my own identity and originality.  I had to recognize the tension of who I as created to be, while at the same time embracing the culture, DNA, values and mores of the organization.  If handled correctly, that’s an appropriate tension to have.

In life you must learn to embrace the values, DNA, culture, expectations, traditions… of an organization, relationship or system.  While embracing these things you must find Your Voice, ”Do You” and Don’t Be An Imitation.   Leaders should encourage their staff to be themselves, leverage their gifts, find their voice and keep it real.

Seriously, who wants a bunch of Mini-Me’s running around?

“Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide.”~Marva Collins

Imitate Jesus!

Why do so many people struggle with being an imitation?  How can organizations foster a healthy “Do You” culture?

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27 So if we are created in the image and likeness of God we have an amazing potential for success.

Our Success Depends On This…

We must believe that we will be successful. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:13 We should embrace the beautiful reality that we are made in the image of God and we can do all things through Christ who gives us the strength to do so.  We can and will be successful if we truly BELIEVE.

Success is the journey, it’s never the destination.  We must keep running, fighting, trying, clawing, scratching, loving, caring and BELIEVING.  We must never let the “Nouns” (person, places & things) get in the way of our success journey.

Our success depends upon our belief and our actions help us realize what we believe.

You were made for more — Go Get It, Go Do It, Go Be It…  Go BIG!

dream BIG. think BIGGER.

Today is your Lucky Day!  I’m giving you the opportunity to win 1 of 3 Advance Reading copies of Steven Furtick’s new book Sun Stand Still. This book is scheduled to be released September 21st, however you can have one by the end of this week and it’s as easy as 1-2-3.

Pastor Steven Furtick, is the Lead Pastor of Elevation Church and one of my favorite Christian Leaders.  He epitomizes this new generation of audacious world changers that God is raising up at a time like this.  I know Steven personally and let me tell you he’s the real deal and so is the team around him.  His new book Sun Stand Still is about having Audacious Faith and activating that Audacious Faith inside of you.  If anyone can write about Audacious Faith it’s a twenty-something year old young man who planted a church in Charlotte, North Carolina that ignited a revolution.

I recently received my Sun Stand Still package in the mail.  It was one of the classiest Advance Reading packages that I’ve received.  It had some cool stuff in it, including previews of the short film that goes along with the book and 5 Copies of the yet to be released Sun Stand Still. Here is the deal — I’m keeping one copy for myself, one copy for my staff to read (I’ll buy my entire team a copy, once it releases) and I have three copies for my BigIsTheNewSmall.com readers.

Winning is as easy as 1-2-3:

• 1. Leave  comment stating that you would like to win a copy, in your own words of course.
• 2. Re-Tweet my tweet about winning a copy, or simply copy and paste this tweet info. to your Facebook status if your aren’t on Twitter.  If you don’t have Twitter or Facebook, simply leave a comment an we will pray for you to move into the new media generation.  :-)  Seriously leave a comment and let me know that you don’t have either Facebook or Twitter.  Here is the tweet or you can simply find @scottwilliams on twitter and re-tweet it. Win It B4 U can Buy It — Win a FREE copy of @stevenfurtick ‘s new book Sun Stand Still http://bit.ly/SFsunss
• 3. Go browse around the Sun Stand Still website and check out the cool stuff including some of the short films.

I will randomly choose 3 Names with the help of random.org, from those who complete steps   1-2-3 by 11:59 pm central time today 8/10/10.  Good luck and share this info. with your friends.

Sun Stand Still… Ready, Set, Go!

Winner Update: Thanks so much for all of the interest in this book, it’s definitely going to be worth getting your hands on.

And The Winner Is… And the winners are… (selected by the random.org’s Random Integer Generator)

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random integers, generated without replacement:

142
  7
126

Timestamp: 2010-08-11 12:03:20 UTC

• #142 – Wendy Dexter
• #7 Chase Layman
• #126 Mo

I will contact you guys by e-mail to get your mailing info.  I will get your copy to you this week…

Thanks Again!

Simple Question: What did you learn this weekend? At church, vacationing, from your kids, reading, working, hanging with friends…

I’ll Go First!

I learned that “A little poop goes a long way.”  Be sensitive to the things that you consume and watch your toxic influences.

Now it’s your turn…  What did you learn?

The fam. and I went to see Step Up 3D tonight, as it was just released today.  My two boys 7 and 11 years old absolutely love these types of movies.  They enjoy watching “So You Think You Can Dance” and like “America’s Next Best Dance Crew” even better.  Any time they watch these type of shows you can count on our living room turning into their own street dance studio.  Suburban studio that is!

I really didn’t know what to expect with a dance movie in 3D, so I thought I would share my impressions of the movie overall.  Here are my bullet point impressions of Step Up 3D:

• Family friendly in my opinion and was on the more appropriate end of a PG-13.
• Predictable but still captured your attention throughout the movie.
• Love story intertwined with understanding for the passion for dance.
• 3D experience was well done, smooth, not over the top and effective.
• Featured several all-stars from “So You Think You Can Dance.”
• Best Quote - “To travel is better than to arrive.”
• The closing credit experience definitely is worth staying for.
• Overall good movie and worth the price of admission. Not amazing, but really good.

We had a good time at the movies and be warned your kids will come out of the movies wanting to do flips and dance moves.  My youngest son was flipping, spinning and jumping on the concrete in the shopping mall parking lot.  Not to mention trying out some of his new moves as soon as we got on the elevator.

My wife would have preferred to not see in 3D, however the rest of us definitely think 3D is the way to go.  My boys said it was better than The Karate Kid, however I believe that is the result of the “What have you done for me lately” syndrome.  Nonetheless, it gets a positive review form the Williams’ Family.

Are you planning on going to see Step Up 3D? If you have seen the movie, or plan on seeing it, please share your thoughts on my review or your personal thoughts on the movie.

Everyone has a different opinion about the sequence of numbers 666.  Often times people will change their hotel room, phone number or a host of other things if the number 666 is anywhere within.  As a matter of fact just recently I had a family in my church that had to ask me to write a letter to the Social Security Administration on behalf of their young child who was issued a Social Security number ending in 666.

Here is the context from scripture in the book of Revelation.  “This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.” Revelation 13:18

Again, there are some people who are not bothered at all by the number…  I have a pastor friend whose mobile number ends in 666.  On the other hand there are people who are really bothered and the thought of the number causes them mental discomfort.

Where do you fall?  Are you bothered by the number 666.  Are you the person who will change your numbers and such or do you simply say no big deal?

Share your thoughts!