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TDZ Blog

Strategy Is Changing; What Does That Mean for You?

By Tracy Diziere | October 1, 2019

A recent Forbes article covered how marketing strategy in mature organizations is “moving from communications leadership to growth accelerant.” That might sound like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo to some of you. And like some pie-in-the-sky idea to others. So let’s break it down for the entrepreneurial-minded leader, shall we? As a small service-based business leader, you’ve […]

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Channel and Global Marketing Teams: Better Together and with a Creative Partner

By Tracy Diziere | August 13, 2019

As technology service offerings grow, channel partners’ opportunity to step in, cultivate custom solutions, and offer managed services has skyrocketed. In tandem, revenue from indirect channels has soared. While stats vary, a Forrester study commissioned by Mediafly reports that almost half (49%) of a company’s overall revenue comes from the channel. Or as Principal Analyst […]

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Success Is an Inside Job

By Tracy Diziere | December 19, 2018

Part of my message at today’s Conscious Connections panel “Insight from Women of Influence, Impact + Profit” was “Success is an inside job.” This was/is a hard learned lesson and speaks to the need for personalized attention when growing as an entrepreneurial-minded leader. I/we need this kind of help. That’s why I fill the role of […]

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Why We Take a Holistic Approach to Service

By Tracy Diziere | November 6, 2018

Why do we take a holistic approach to service? Why does service experience design start with a broad view? David Clarke in an Adweek article says it best: Experience isn’t just one thing. It’s comprised of sales, customer service, order entry, human resources, quality assurance, shipping, billing, collections, maintenance—a hundred parts of an enterprise. Therefore, […]

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Nothing Is Created Alone

By Tracy Diziere | January 9, 2018

I’m putting a stake in the ground: Nothing is created alone. This is what came from my Root Session with the fabulous team at Root + River. I’ll write more here later. The important thing is to know that it does take other people to create. We need each other. Despite our ideas about rugged […]

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How Are You Responding to Uncertainty

By Tracy Diziere | September 23, 2016

Not Much Is for Certain. How Are You Responding to Uncertainty? Spoiler alert: I don’t have it all figured out but I do have one tool you can use related to strengths which I’ll address at the end. There seems to be a lot of buzz and advice around being comfortable with–accepting?— instead of responding to […]

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Creating Your Own Vocabulary – Tracyisms

By Tracy Diziere | August 15, 2016

As you learn new things, identify trends, or solidify your own ideas about your industry or your world, it’s often useful to create your own vocabulary. I’ve created this post as a running tab of the words I’ve created or picked up on and made my own. I call them Tracyisms. Do you have words […]

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How to Develop a Plan to Update Your Website Content

By Tracy Diziere | July 16, 2016

How to Develop a Plan to Update Your Website Content for Solopreneurs Looking to develop a plan to update your website content–either on your own or with some outside help? Most of us know there’s dated content on our sites. If we look at updating our content, we’ll be able to re-post, re-promote and ultimately add […]

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Change Starts with You (and 3 Steps to Start)

By Tracy Diziere | May 17, 2016

“Stuckness” sucks. The way out? Realizing that nothing is keeping you glued in place but you. That you don’t need to wait for something to happen to loosen you from the grip of whatever’s got you. And the big realization: That change starts with you. What do you mean, “Change Starts With You?” It starts […]

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Knowing Yourself – The Start of Your Success Journey

By Tracy Diziere | April 26, 2016

I believe that success starts with knowing yourself–and defining your version of the word.  When we begin tapping into our authentic selves, we start to uncover what is unique to us. We begin to notice where we have deviated or fallen away from the path that is of our own design. And while perhaps different […]

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Guest Blog Posts

In addition to our own posts by title below, check out the following guest posts:

Focusing on Successes and Strengths vs. Failures and Weaknesses

The Best Place to Spend Your Marketing Time & Money

Customer Expectations: Mind the Gap

Key Topics

Finding Your Strengths: My Journey and Purpose

By Tracy Diziere | Comments Off on Finding Your Strengths: My Journey and Purpose

Today I am in San Francisco for the first day of the Gallup Successful Strengths Coaching Program and it is the last day of #30DaysofQ2. (Confession: I am late in posting but I drafted this on Day 30.) Looking Inward and Finding Your Strengths It’s not often we spend the time to take stock and find […]

Building an Authentic Business as a Solopreneur

By Tracy Diziere | Comments Off on Building an Authentic Business as a Solopreneur

  As a one-person business, it can be challenging to define your brand if you haven’t tapped into your strengths, your purpose, your ideal clients, and your value proposition. Even if you did this foundational work in the beginning, if any one of these is “off” or changes, it can be hard to achieve alignment […]

Gaining Client Insight

By Tracy Diziere | Comments Off on Gaining Client Insight

If you are a coach or a consultant–and especially if you have “productized” your solution by creating a program or are looking into doing so–you want to see success in your clients’ development and in your relationships. But sometimes, unless clients blatantly express dissatisfaction during our engagements or begin “bad appling,” we can’t really be sure what […]

What Do You Want? Developing Your Litmus Test for Better Decisions

By Tracy Diziere | Comments Off on What Do You Want? Developing Your Litmus Test for Better Decisions

How Do We Make Better Decisions? If we take the time to identify what we want, at the BIG PICTURE level, making decisions becomes easy. When we know OUR own pH, everything that comes our way can be tested against it. If it doesn’t match, we can politely walk away. I imagine we waste a lot […]

Uncovering Expectations, Not Just Managing Expectations

By Tracy Diziere | Comments Off on Uncovering Expectations, Not Just Managing Expectations

It seems everyone talks about managing expectations but it’s just as important to do the work of uncovering them. I say “uncovering” because sometimes they can be buried. Even from the people who have them. And ourselves. Too often, service providers will assume what the expectations are and cater to those assumptions. In fairness, sometimes […]

Learning While Teaching (or Presenting)

By Tracy Diziere | Comments Off on Learning While Teaching (or Presenting)

Somewhere along the way I got the idea that I had to know everything about a particular topic to “teach” or “present on” it. And I never considered myself an expert on anything because my definition of expert meant “someone who knows everything.” Logically, I know it is impossible to know everything. That I should not […]

Communications Planning

By Tracy Diziere | Comments Off on Communications Planning

At Arthur Andersen, communications planning was part of my day-to-day activities. And I was trained to plan communications. Our marketing department had a distinct way of doing this. (In fact, it was at Arthur Andersen that I received training on The 7 Habits.) To this day, I apply communications planning to strategic communications for service-based clients. […]

Giving Others a Vote of Confidence

By Tracy Diziere | Comments Off on Giving Others a Vote of Confidence

Taking the time to let those in your professional network know that you support them is an important but not urgent activity.  An easy way to do this is to endorse them on LinkedIn. Endorsements are those opportunities you see to “check off” that a connection knows her stuff.  As opposed to recommendations, which are another […]

Designing the Client Experience

By Tracy Diziere | 1 Comment

Yesterday at Conscious Connections, Kristin Slice of Empowered Lab Communications presented on personal leadership.  The room was filled with conscious women business owners–and many of them one-woman shops. For those of us who have a background in marketing, we relied on our knowledge of product development and brand when starting our business. We (ideally) spent a […]

Offering to Help Others

By Tracy Diziere | Comments Off on Offering to Help Others

Bringing our strengths and skills to the forefront and offering to help others is one of the greatest win-wins. Unfortunately, with all the busy-ness, we can forget to reach out. Or think we don’t have enough time to help. Or think they wouldn’t value or need our help. You never know! We don’t have crystal balls. […]