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Christina Frei and Me
I’ve just returned to my office after a networking coffee date with Christina Frei, and rather than being exhausted on a Friday afternoon following a busy week, I’m exhilarated.
I’m still marveling at how this whole afternoon materialized. I’d received an email from Christina a week or so ago with a perfectly articulated invitation to join her for coffee at 3:30pm on Friday at Coco Michelle–a coffee and chocolate boutique opposite the Westport train station.
I often advise my clients, and particularly my webinar participants, to reach out to their sphere of influence and meet regularly with people in that community for marketing their new ideas. Today, I was on the receiving end of exactly that kind of an invitation.
Christina and I go back a few years, having been matched up by a mutual friend who thought our interests aligned, which they did. Anyway, I wasn’t sure what Christina had in mind today, but her invitation for a coffee treat was irresistible.
When we met, and after we had ordered delicious coffee beverages, Christina asked if she might tell me about what she’s been up to since we’d last seen each other. I couldn’t wait to hear. She then began to tell me in a most entertaining and informative way about the book she’s written and how this will impact her career, not to mention education in this country.
I was breathless after hearing her story. She announced how ‘on fire’ she is because what she’s doing is a manifestation of what most inspires her–teaching young kids (middle school aged specifically) about our Founding Fathers–not your typical woman business owner’s profile. Her enthusiasm ignited mine, and we began brainstorming and sharing resources and next connections.
This is a powerful example of how to let people know about what you’re up to. Christina took a chance in reaching out and extending herself to me. She sent an attractive offer with a clear plan. She had an agenda which she stuck to. I was honored by the preparation she’d done and was excited to be in her presence.
She is speaking her idea and getting feedback. I’m one of many to whom she’ll repeat this exercise. She is a living example of how to do this right. The key ingredient is was something she expressed during our conversation–that she knows how on track she is because she is fueled by her own excitement.
Christina Frei is a role model of someone who has found her passion, is discovering how to make it marketable and is getting out into the world with her message. I know she’s going to find great success, and I couldn’t be happier to be a witness to her process.
Christina’s target market is middle schools in the US. If you know anyone who is as passionate as she is about educating this segment of our population, particularly around American history, please be in touch with me or Christina.
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One of the most telling comments I’ve remembered over the years regarding ‘the voices’ we (all) hear in our heads was the speaker who suggested to skeptics, “You know…the voices. Like the one speaking to you right now saying you don’t have any voices in your head. Those voices.”
I have yet to meet anyone who’s swimming solo out there.
But the voices disguise themselves very well. We believe them, that they’re actually our thoughts and some form of higher wisdom. I don’t know about you, but my voices never reinforce the powerful intuitions I receive, the hits of creativity and originality, the inspired thoughts that come my way. In fact, they’re each about one car-length behind those more generous thoughts with their specially crafted brand of negativity and advice.
On Monday night, April 2, my Remarkable Women’s Network theme is a Gremlin Tea Party. I’m inviting those critters in, along with 30+ remarkable women, to duke it out. As a longtime coach, I know how to deal with these saboteurs. My coach calls them con artists. Whatever name they go by in your vocabulary, they’re dream killers, and I want to exact revenge.
During the evening I’ll offer several strategies for confronting these voices. Five women business owners will be offered the chance to coach with me on how to deal with statements like these that come out of the mouths of those creatures:
- “Who do you think you are?”
- “No one will pay for that!”
- “You call yourself an expert?!”
Everyone there will benefit from the strategies and tools I use to deal with these impostors. I’ve done it before at my goal setting retreats, and the transformation is palpable. Like throwing water on the Wicked Witch of the West. These mean-spirited entities dissolve and disappear when they’re called out in public.
I hope you can join me next week (register here for one of the few remaining spots) or send a comment and let me know your familiar voice’s ‘advice’ to you.
While on the Holistic Holiday at Sea a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of hearing many experts speak. One of the most compelling classes I attended was titled The 5 Essentials of Health given by Christina Pirello. Her own personal journey to health is amazing. Click the link on her name for a short version. As I enumerate Christina’s ‘levels of health,’ see if you agree with me that these are vital qualities for any business owner to be aware of and strive towards. This list is from my note-taking and may not be word-for-word how Christina describes them.
- Clarity of thought – results in decisive action
- Appetite for life – cannot wait to start your day
- Good sleep – This can be highly underrated
- Good memory – This piggy-backs on good sleep where everything regenerates
- Energy – Stamina and endurance
I’d be curious to hear how you’re doing with these essentials and if you think she’s missed anything. Personally, I think she’s covered the bases very well.
Before going into the levels of health, Christina helped us understand the levels of illness. What surprised me was that the #1 issue is fatigue. I hear so many people say, when asked how their health is, “I’m fine.” But if you probe a little deeper, exhaustion often comes up. “I’m fine. I’m just tired.” We tend to overlook this as a health concern, so I perked up when she listed that first as it’s quite an attention-getter.
I’m not a health coach, but this level of self-awareness is a key component in my client’s success. Is it time to take another look at your own energy level, memory, etc?
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Mary's Privacy Curtain
“Unless you’re bleeding, don’t come in for the next hour,” I would tell my daughter Laura back in my home office/egg decorating days. That was my inelegant way of establishing privacy and quiet time for my work. I didn’t have better tools back then and blush at how crudely I stated my need.
When my client Mary called last week and spoke about a similar issue, I understood her pain. As moms working at home, establishing a quiet zone that will not be trespassed is a frequent concern. And it’s not only children who have trouble staying away. Mary’s lovable spouse likes to talk and is currently between work opportunities with time and feelings to spare.
Mary has set up an attractive, well-lit and neatly organized space for herself in the basement of their home. But there was no door on it to shut out the world when she’s working. Mary has all of the qualities of a great coach, so her husband saw her irresistible presence at home, albeit in this space, as an invitation to hang out. She adores him, too, but as a professional starting this at-home business, enough was enough.
Most of the time when I’m coaching, I ask powerful questions of my clients knowing that they already have their own answers. In this case, I simply asked, “Could you put up a door?”
Mary laughed out loud because that had not occurred to her. Because of the architecture of the space, a door wasn’t going to work. But within 3 hours of our conversation I received this image with her already implemented solution. I could feel her joy in the execution and the gentle, but clear boundary she established. BTW, names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Colin Campbell + Caldwell Esselstyn - The stars of Forks Over Knives
I’m back from 7 glorious days on the MSC Poesia attending the Holistic Holiday at Sea cruise to the Caribbean. It would be hard to isolate a highlight of this experience, because it was day after day of education, meeting fascinating people, eating exquisitely prepared vegetarian meals, and touring the islands of St. John’s, Puerto Rico and Nassau.
But if you absolutely insisted on the quintessential takeaway, I would have to say it was the inspiration I got from hearing the two amazing men pictured here talk about their experiences.
With the documentary film entitled Forks Over Knives, Colin Campbell and Caldwell Esselstyn are changing the way Americans eat. Both transformed themselves from early childhoods on dairy farms into becoming experts on plant-based nutrition through research (Campbell) and medical practice (Esselstyn). Their independent efforts via The China Study (Campbell) and the Cleveland Clinic (Esselstyn) prove with thousands of case studies and statistics that heart disease and cancer can be reversed through diet. Which, they both acknowledge, won’t get most people to make the necessary changes in their eating habits, but it has helped significant numbers improve and extend their lives after severe diagnoses.
It was Dr. Esselstyn’s personal story particularly that I found powerful. He shared his struggle of getting the invaluable information he’d been studying for years out to a very resistant public, including seven calls to a doctor at Harvard he wanted to reach.
“Never get upset with the secretary,” he advised us, even though his frustration level had clearly escalated during his period of prospecting this person.
Dr. Esselstyn and his wife Ann (who was on board throughout the cruise) personally taught his patients how to cook and eat a healing diet. They took an interest in each individual in their study, called them regularly. One memorable segment depicted a woman who shared a journal entry from the day she was in WalMart, determined to indulge in a meatball grinder when her cell phone rang, and it was Ann Esselstyn calling–at that very moment– to see how she was doing. Needless to say, she never had that sandwich and was strongly converted by the level of concern and interest shown by the Esselstyns.)
The China Study has garnered great media attention for these men, decades after the hard work they put in (and continue to put in). The bigger message I got from their talks and their presence was that when you’re living your passion and making a contribution to society, the material rewards may or may not come, but the lives you are changing will be gratifying beyond words.
In today’s NYTimes obituaries, the man who helped us understand the danger of aerosol sprays to our environment is remembered:
F. Sherwood Rowland, whose discovery in 1974 of the danger that aerosols posed to the ozone layer was initially met with disdain but who was ultimately vindicated with the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, died on Saturday at his home in Corona del Mar, Calif. He was 84.
I believe that Campbell and Esselstyn also deserve the Nobel Prize for their heroic work in proving that these human and economy killing diseases can be reversed through diet. Disdain–they’ve already confronted that. Vindication is occurring daily. They have my vote.
I love watching a conversion.
In the first module of my webinar series I talk about creating a vision for your business/life. I offer two methods for doing that–a vision board or a written statement. This week I had the opportunity to review visions with one of my webinar participants, Sandy Lovell.
Sandy has been very successful in her career and was in a transitional phase when she signed on for my class. I could tell from our conversations that she was holding herself back, not dreaming big enough. During this week’s Q+A session, she admitted to having begun, but not completed, the vision board assignment. I counter-offered, and Sandy said she was willing to write a vision statement instead which included outrageous, stretch goals and desires.
As we talked on the phone, I suggested a weekly massage as part of her self-care regimen in her vision. She simply laughed at the preposterousness of the idea. Although it felt too indulgent, she promised to add it to her written vision.
Sandy joined in again on the next Q+A call and immediately opened the conversation with, “You won’t believe this! I did what you said. Wrote the vision statement, and in today’s email, I received a groupon deal for a massage. I signed up. How did that happen?!”
It’s The Secret in action, the law of attraction. That you bring into your life what you think about. Writing it down and cutting and pasting pictures of your desires hastens the process and directs the universe–and your attention–towards your particular longings.
Tomorrow I leave for an envisioned vacation. I’m traveling to the Caribbean for a cruise – Holistic Holiday at Sea. Years ago my table mate at EWN told me that every six weeks she takes a week off. I made a mental note of that ambitious and luxurious goal and am beginning my own manifestation of it. I was a guest presenter at a spa in Mexico in December, now vacationing in the tropics in March. Not quite six weeks, but wonderfully in the right direction.
I’ll be out to sea for a week. No phone. No email. Nothing but the ocean, nature and R+R. I highly recommend your following my lead as often as possible.
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I know I’m late to the party, but I’ve arrived. In one of my webinar modules I quoted David Pogue talking about his conversion to twitter three years ago. After hearing all the fuss, he still didn’t ‘get’ what was so great. Until he was on a selection committee for the MacArthur grant and one of the proposed projects had a vaguely familiar ring to it. Committee members looked at each other blankly. Had this been done before? Then one committed tweeter in their group posted the question to his followers and had a response and a link within 30 seconds. The proposed project had been done, and Pogue saw the brilliance of the medium in real time.
That happened for me via Facebook this weekend. I was flattened by the stomach bug. All I could do was lie in bed and suck ice chips. With all that down time, it occurred to me to reach out via Facebook as a possible source of sympathy and help. I entered my status and asked for advice on how others got through the virus and what I might do to entertain myself in the interim.
Very quickly I had all the help I needed. Good help too. I got food recommendations as well as a link to an inspiring documentary (tomorrow’s post) on Charles and Ray Eames.
Facebook didn’t make my sickness go away, but I believe that following my friends’ advice and feeling so heartened by their love and concern made me better.
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You don’t have to be a college student or grad to benefit from the advice in this revised edition of Lindsey’s book. Lindsey, for those of you who don’t know, is my daughter.
She used to come to me for career advice, but the tables have turned. She’s my go-to person for all things electronic and social media related when it comes to business. When I was considering linking sites with a particular organization recently, and I sought her wisdom, I told her I wasn’t sure I understood exactly what was required of me or what the benefits would be. But it sounded kind of good from the pitch I received. “Mom, if you don’t understand it and aren’t highly motivated to participate, say no.” I followed that advice with no regrets.
Please, buy a copy of her book for yourself or someone you love who’s looking for work. She’s a trustworthy guide and will be truly grateful for your purchase.
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At last night’s mastermind group, during the first round of sharing successes, photographer Katie Settel took her turn with pride and delight. Her goal had been to photograph Beyonce’s new baby. We all supported the dream she had laid out in session 1 (this was our 5th) and have witnessed her transformation as Katie developed her marketing materials in that pursuit.
At our third session, Katie arrived with an elegantly designed package of her photographs, which demonstrate her talent, plus her freshly written cover letter…and a huge smile. She had put together an exquisite pitch package which she sent to Beyonce’s agent in NYC. Even getting that far was a win. Katie also designed the concept of a photo shoot with purpose (i.e. not winning a million dollar contract from People, say) which she proposed as a differentiator from all the other photographers in pursuit of that opportunity.
The baby has been born. I haven’t found any photos on the internet yet (correct me if I’m wrong), but as Katie put it last night when giving her report, “I didn’t get the shot, but I gave it a shot.”
While not everyone would claim not getting the sought after opportunity as a success, I surely do. How many people scheme and dream and don’t even take the first step in the direction of their own success? Katie moved several paces in that direction by not only following through on her own vision, but also by ratcheting up her skills, materials and courage level by giving it a go.
Success is the journey toward a worthy goal, so chalk up miles of advancement for Katie’s career.
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You’re probably thinking, what does this subject line have to do with entrepreneurship? But, the essence of this question arose yesterday when I received an email from one of my webinar participants inquiring why I’d combined my two groups in one private Facebook page. That is, the ones who’ve been in the program for 5 sessions with the newer students who are only up to Session 2.
In 1997, while attending my first ever NSA annual meeting in California, I attended a workshop where the speaker talked about his career development in terms I’d never heard. He knew that he was using high level language and explained, unapologetically, that his job as a motivational (and I use that term thoughtfully) speaker was “to keep the Toastmasters running after the caravan.”
That image became seared in my mind. Here were the paid professionals holding forth and allowing us newbies to press our faces up to the glass, to mix metaphors, and see what being a pro looked like. It felt aspirational. These NSA’ers had what I wanted, and by joining them and attending their meetings, I was going to learn what they knew.
It had me breathless in anticipation and effort to keep up with and master the arenas they were all playing in. I loved that I got to rub shoulders, listen in and ask questions of the pros. I’d much rather play in a tennis game with someone better than I am than someone not as good. Don’t we all want to up our game?
So it is with intention that I combined the two groups who are participating in my webinar. One group has had four more sessions than the other, are deeply engaged in comparing notes, sharing successes, products and resources with each other. It may be a stretch for those who are newer, but my objective is that it become an invitation as well as a temptation to grow and join the conversation.
