How important is your message to your life goals? We’ve talked about many interesting topics over the last 12 months in Developing Serving Leaders. We talked about your values, your life goals, and some of the people who have influenced our lives and our society. I was putting together our editorial calendar for 2014 and in reviewing what we shared in 2013, discovered that we stayed on our planned topics over 65% of the time. We wrote about current news events 25% and pop culture the remaining 10%. We’ve added new 15,000 readers over the past year. Not that any of you readers are regular. No insult intended. The men and women who read this blog our some of the most fascinating people I know. They are all active in their communities and, in many cases, serve in leadership roles in their organizations. If my analytics are correct, many are involved not only in a job that they excel at, but they also give back to their communities by being involved in nonprofits as well.
When I get notes from readers, they are personal and heartfelt. They share with me their hearts and their dreams. They tell me about their challenges, but also about their triumphs. In the coming year, I will introduce you to many of these people. I feel their stories are our stories. We all need an opportunity to share our message with the world. If not the world, then with a community of people who are committed to serving others through leadership.
I would love to hear from you if you might be interested in contributing a blog or a story at Developing Serving Leaders. If you would like to share your mission, vision, and values, we can provide the platform here. We are planning to grow to over 100,000 readers in the next 18 months. To achieve this goal, we need great stories and great causes to support. We need to become better at sharing the stories you may not find on others blogs. For many of you, I plan to actively recruit you to share your heart and your passion with our community.
Now what’s your message? How do you find people who want to make a difference in the world? I hope you start here. Our community here has over 37,000 readers every month. It’s a very diverse group of readers, but they have one thing in common. They all care for others and all strive to serve others with not just words, but more importantly, their actions.
When I started this blog, it was called Extraordinary Partnerships. It was dedicated to helping my nonprofit clients learn about sharing their messages using any way possible. Over time, we helped our partners become more visible and more comfortable sharing their messages. I learned the many challenges they face to keep their organizations funded. I decided to take a page out of my own playbook and went back to using my own strengths more. People tell me my greatest strength is connecting with others and helping them connect to the right people that can help make a difference in the world.
As we move into the coming year, I plan to focus on bringing you the tools you need to build the life of your dreams. We focus our efforts on two key topics: leadership and building stronger serving organizations. Our sister publication, Market Leadership Journal, is focusing on marketing and how to take your organizations to the next level. Don’t worry, we’ll make sure that we keep sharing stories that inspire and provide you with the tools to make you a great leader. This coming week I’m spending time in first responder training and it should provide me with some great stories to share over the coming months.
If you’re looking to increase your leadership skills this week you might enjoy reading Do You Have the Qualities of Skillful Leadership? by one of my earliest mentors, Jim Rohn.
We look forward to serving you in the coming year.
See you here next week.