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In response to my blog post on Monday, the brilliant and creative Denise DiGrigoli, owner of Troy Fine Art Services, Inc., came rushing into my Remarkable Women’s Network event Tuesday evening exclaiming, “I’ve got something to show you!” Denise had written me a heartfelt response to my entry on self-promotion the day before. Last night she handed me this page from Martha Stewart which elaborately pinpoints exactly where you can find Martha–on television, on twitter (or The Twitter as Betty White so adorably calls it), at events, on the radio, on her blog and The Daily Wag which catalogs her pooches’ comings and goings. That’s how Martha is staying connected and letting her fans know where she is.
Marketing is not a passive activity. Build a website and they will come? Not anymore.
In response to Martha’s powerful example, Denise who is nothing if not a consummate go-getter created her own self-promotional version.
I challenge you to cut and paste your own version of Where To Find __________ and understand that a one-time postcard mailing or monthly newsletter is not going to get the big results. Today’s market requires multiple channels of visibility. Martha has laid them out well on her page. Borrow her example and use her variety and breadth of reach as a target.
I’ve been enjoying listening to podcasts of National Public Radio’s (NPR) This American Life via mp3 downloads. On my walk this morning I heard a recent program called Million Dollar Ideas. During one segment there was a discussion about the good old elevator pitch. They talked about venture capitalists meeting with students at MIT who are learning this important communications skill.
I’ve learned and taught several variations of the elevator pitch, aka 30-second commercial. One of my favorite renditions is by Mark LeBlanc who refers to this as a defining statement for your business. One of the elements for success, according to Mark, is that it should be in language that an 8th grader would understand.
While listening to the NPR podcast, this was slightly altered. What the university advised the students pitching the investors was that it be in language that your grandparents would understand.
Anybody else taken aback by that?
It works every time. What’s the first piece of mail you open, should you receive any, in your snail mail box? If there’s something there that is thick and bulky with a first class stamp and a valued name on the return address, my money says that’s what gets ripped open before you reach your front door.
I received such a mailing last week from trusted client and colleague Brooke Feder. It included a beautifully written note thanking me for my part in her Joy Project launch and a cool-looking white plastic container (in photo).
I slid open the top of the device to reveal a stack of colorful cards, each with a phrase such as: seeing an old friend, a local farm stand, as well as the ones you see here. Each of these cards stated a shared joy which is Brooke’s mission: to spread and share joy.
To learn more about what Brooke is up to and to participate, visit her website: www.3minutestojoy.com. Her mailing to me, and I presume several others, is her living her purpose. It certainly brightened my day.
In addition to spreading joy and closing the loop on her goals from when Brooke participated in my Mastermind sessions, this mailing set me in motion. The neat gadget that Brooke sent is from Moo. I had ordered cards from them when I first began my blog. I’ll be attending the BlogHer Conference in NYC next month and realized I needed to re-order for that event. Brooke’s well-timed mailing was just the reminder I needed.
There’s another trick I want to share in this post. It’s called letting go of perfectionism. I know that the image I took of the cards is ‘blown out’ in photography lingo. The flash was too bright on the cards. I could have spent time and effort making it better, but have learned to focus (no pun intended) on what was more important here: Brooke’s genius mailing, and to let go of getting the image just so. Done is better than perfect.
I received an email this morning from a colleague I admire asking advice about speaking. It triggered my radar noting that this request for information about speaking comes my way weekly.
So, I’m going to share with you what I shared with her. Most people who approach me to find out the best way to get into speaking (whether professionally or otherwise) have a great story to tell. That’s a perfect beginning.
The two elements required to get in front of an audience are:
1. Get your story into shape for sharing it.
2. Find an audience.
We’ll talk about getting paid another time.
The best way I know to get your story audience-ready is to join Toastmasters and sign up for the Icebreaker speech: the first manual presentation where you introduce yourself to this friendly group of strangers. I’ve always maintained that if you can captivate and amuse this disparate gathering of men and women of all ages and backgrounds, you’ve got a good chance for success.
This is a two-for-one situation, because practicing in front of the Toastmasters audience gives you a receptive crowd and a deadline to begin. When you’re planning to move into any new arena, you need a forcing mechanism. The ongoing meetings (usually every two weeks) of your local Toastmasters club will give you the opportunity not only to get started, but to commit to building your repertoire of topics and talks.
That’s my advice. Go to Toastmasters, work through their manual, and call me in the morning after you’ve completed this assignment.
Two-hundred and fifty women received a postcard mailing from me last week announcing my upcoming summer Remarkable Women’s Network events. It had the image you see here on the face of it taken at my March 15 event held at Boardroom in Stamford, CT. Only women who have attended one of my events received a card. Everyone else will get email blasts starting next week.
Colleague and friend Karen Hodges, who received over-sized postcard, emailed me saying, “You just AMAZE me in how you have your marketing machine so oiled, even using ‘old school’ marketing to catch people’s attention during summer vacation time of year when the focus might be off networking and business building.”
Now, I will take credit for using the ‘old school’ marketing and for catching people when they’re not expecting it, but the well-oiled marketing machine made me laugh. My process looks more like one of those old Rube Goldberg contraptions:
This was reinforced for me at a Mastermind Group session I led on Wednesday night. One member, a professional organizer, embarrassedly admitted that her desk was a disaster area. She said she’d be horrified if her clients could see. Another organizer chimed in, ashamedly, “You should see my files! A total wreck!”
Of course, I brought up the shoemaker, but everyone was laughing too hard to hear me. I say “here’s to keeping up the illusion” and don’t beat yourself up if it’s messy getting it out there, as long as you do get it out there.
Heather Habelka told me that when she used to play with dolls, she didn’t cast them as family members like mother, father, sister and brother. Nor did she pretend that they were students and she the teacher. When she was growing up, she told me recently, her dolls were customers. “I always knew I wanted to own my own business.”
Heather has been on my radar for about a year now since we met at a networking event. I think it was Ladies Who Launch. I remembered meeting her when I saw her again at another event a month or so later. Over the year I watched and listened, noticed and became inspired.
One colleague hired her for a project after meeting her at my Remarkable Women’s Network event and was very pleased with Heather’s work. I sat in on a roundtable when Heather was speaking and heard her wisdom voiced to the participants. Recently Heather sent me a note letting me know the impact of my groups on her business.
The point is, and I want to make this very clear, marketing is NOT sending out an e-mail blast. Look at the arc of my relationship with Heather as an example of how many hits and drips it’s taken for me to make the phone call to hire Heather. This goes for being hired as well as hiring. There are few silver bullets, so much of the work of entrepreneurship is staying mentally, professionally and emotionally fit for the long run, the marathon of success.
The impetus to pick up the phone, finally, came when I received an offer from Heather in the EWN goody bag at the Grand Networking Event. It was a beautifully presented card with a well-stated message that fit my time frame and pocketbook. Marketing is not a) attending networking events, b) being a great ambassador for what you do, c) sending out mailings, d) acknowledging others and forwarding relationships, but e) all of the above; rinse and repeat.
P.S. At lunch today I sat next to Sherrie Norton, a creative designer and construction manager. I asked her if she knew early on that she had this interest in shaping space. She told me that, as a kid, when she shoveled snow or raked leaves, she always made it into a floor plan. Some lucky people, like Heather and Sherrie, were born to their businesses. And, they still have to market.
My dear friend, Cookie (aka Marisabina Russo) turned the big 6-0 last month. At a gala surprise party organized by her devoted husband Whitney, about that many friends gathered including several Artsy Girls pictured here.
To personally celebrate Cookie, I invited her to come to Kripalu with me, a first time visit for this good friend. We were in the Berkshires for a couple of days on their R&R program, hiking, doing yoga, resting and renewing.
In addition to the wonderful activities this yoga center provides, there are exceptional evening workshops too. While Cookie got her massage one of the evenings we were there, I attended a session entitled Power of Word presented by Danny Arguetty. Understandably, he talked about how much more there is to expression than simply the words that we use. In one exercise he rated emotions on a scale–the highest levels being joy, empowerment, love, appreciation and freedom; the lowest – fear, grief, despair and powerlessness. He pointed out that having the vocabulary helps us access where we are on the scale and allows us to articulate our way up from, say, boredom to hopefulness once we see the continuum of the emotional scale.
I wrote down two things Danny said. One was about how so many of us are around tough topics. He made a gesture with one hand as though lifting something off the floor and said, “Hello, Little Rug.” Then he gestured with the other hand–a brushing kind of motion and said, “Sweep! Sweep!” The point being how often we sweep things under the proverbial rug, only to have them then go down the emotional scale because feelings can’t be ignored. They will have their way!
The other saying I jotted down was a quote from the Swami Kripalu who asked, “Is what you have to say an improvement on silence?” I’ve heard, “think before you speak” but this took it to a whole new level.
Friday morning Cookie and I walked the labyrinth on the grounds of this gorgeous property. Then lunch and departure. We got someone to take a shot of us before we left–two busy entrepreneurs taking two days together to celebrate a life passage.
Thank God Sam Horn wrote the book POP because owning it saved me from having to write down every word she spoke at the conference I attended last week in Waltham, MA. I knew that I would be able to look up the gems she shared and spend time mulling them long after she finished her talk.
One phrase that particularly resonated for me, Sam dubbed the ‘empathy telescope.’ She related a story about a sinking ship where the crew was rescued, but shortly after the sound of barking reminded the now-saved sailors that a dog had been left on-board. Long story short, the world rallied to save this one animal. “Why,” asked so many, “is so much energy being focused on this one dog when there are strays filling pet shelters all over the country?” The answer, according to Sam, is that we are not able to stand in the shoes of thousands, but when the predicament of one is brought to our attention, our ‘empathy telescope’ zooms into action.
How does this apply to you? She immediately went into the self-introduction that everyone dreads–the elevator speech–and how to make it relevant to your prospects. By telescoping in on exactly what you do, your message is more powerfully communicated. I jotted down one of my client’s names to use in my future 30-second commercials. Let me try it out on you; then you can hear it right from Kate’s lips in her longer version.
Prospect: “So, what do you do, Jane?”
Jane: You know how people have dreams or visions of where they want to take their business? Well, what I do is hold that vision, like Kate Eisemann’s for a photography studio outside her home, and coach her to take specific and scary actions towards having her dream, which she did. Within 4 months was in her own dream studio (in the video below) with her work hanging on the walls.
If you don’t believe me, here’s Kate telling that story:
I’m just back from a stimulating conference in Waltham, MA put on by the National Speakers Association-New England Chapter. The opening keynote speaker was David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR. His talk emphasized doing things in “real time” rather than pontificating on the ins-and-outs of running a business. Deal with what’s right in front of you and call attention to it.
David played an hysterical youtube video to illustrate his point. A disgruntled passenger was unhappy with the luggage department’s treatment of his instrument, which he’d checked. He dealt with the poor customer service he received in a 2010 – new rules – kind of way. Watch at your convenience and have a tissue ready, you’ll be laughing so hard.
This prompts me to write about an annoying interchange I just had trying to change the hosting of my web domain. Network Solutions, with whom janepollak.com has resided for ages, sent me a renewal form. I began the process of renewing my subscription for what looked like a nominal amount until I got to the checkout page and I noticed a figure in the hundreds of dollars. I immediately wanted out as I know godaddy.com will host you for under $10 a year.
In order to get my domain out of their clutches, Network Solutions kept me (actually, my faithful assistant) busy for hours. Because I’m no longer accessible on janepollak@earthlink.net, they needed about a dozen forms of identification including a copy of my driver’s license, a call on my home telephone line and a long questionnaire to validate that I was indeed the person who signed on years ago. This required enormous dedicated time and attention (i.e. money-making time). Finally, when we’d crossed every “t” and dotted every “i”, the customer service rep asked why I wanted to change services. “Pricing,” I said.
“Oh, if we offered you the same service for $8.50 per year, would that make a difference?”
Of course it would! I immediately signed back on for 3 more years. But why didn’t she tell me that in the first place?
The news here, and I may be late to the party to really get this, is that companies want to hold onto customers. It’s a good time to negotiate, especially if the competition is knocking at your door.
BTW, I asked the customer rep if she’d mind if I blogged about our interchange. “Not at all,” she said. So I did.
Now that the print edition of Soul Proprietor has been published, I am working to update the audio version as well. Yesterday I was so happy to have my daughter Lindsey come to CT to record the foreword she wrote for me. Foreward_Lindsey.mp3.
She’s such a pro! As a consultant to LinkedIn, she regularly gives webinars for them and is used to working with recording equipment. Walt Graham, my go-to sound person, was duly impressed.
We extended our time in the studio a bit, discussing the project with Walt and snapping some candids of the process.
A funny thing happened on the way to Lindsey’s arrival from NYC. In order to entice her to get on MetroNorth for this favor, I offered to treat her to a pedicure with my favorite practitioner. Lindsey was happy with the prospect of being pampered, so I was a tad disappointed when Monica, my pedicurist, texted me to let me know she would not be able to give the treatment as her mother required unexpected care in NJ. She canceled Lindsey’s appointment. Not an hour later Lindsey called to say she had a request. “Would it be okay with you if I don’t get the pedicure today? I really need to get back into the city.”
Sometimes things just work out so well.
After we left Walt’s place, Lindsey and I had time for a relaxing iced coffee at Starbucks near the train station. I hope you’ll take 3 minutes to relax and listen to Lindsey’s reading. If you’d then like a copy of the new edition of Soul Proprietor, click the title to order your copy.
