As seen at Dr. Honig’s Office

What do difficult clients and getting root canal have to do with each other?

Well, actually, as I re-read that question, it makes  sense to compare the two. They can both be extremely painful, and you probably wouldn’t look forward to either.

But that wasn’t the original connection I was going for. As I was leaving my root canalist’s office last week I glimpsed this jar on his counter. Of course, it made me laugh out loud because as you may remember from a previous blog entry, the dentist’s chair is my least favorite place to be. His decorative urn made me pause to consider what constituted a ‘problem patient’ and if I would be so designated.

As a patient, I never thought of myself as a client, but of course, it’s just another designation for one who pays for your services. I never considered my behavior from the dentist’s point of view, which is how all trying clients must think–not from the perspective of whom they’re impacting, right?

Difficult Clients is the topic of discussion at my upcoming Remarkable Women’s Network session on June 28. I will invite attendees to share their challenges with me as I coach them through scenarios they are facing. Should be a fun night to participate in and also to observe.

I inquired from my gentle and capable dentist, Dr. Honig, if I were a candidate for the jar. “Not you,” he generously replied. He then took a pad of small Post-It notes, held it up and said, “HIPAA prevents me from writing down real names, so I just put their initials on these pieces of paper and put them in the jar.” Evidently lateness and lack of payment are far worse offenses than fear and trepidation.

He’s very patient with me. I spend the first 10-15 minutes of our time together numbing out, then getting my iPod cued up for listening to music while he drills, followed by clutching the arms of the dental chair till my knuckles turn white. The first song to come on that morning was from my Jersey Boys album and it was “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” How ironic.

Carlette Cormier holding her Savannah Toile handbag.

I spent the early part of this week visiting my good friend Meredith Gray at her new bungalow in Savannah. We invited a fellow Savannah-ite to join us for breakfast Tuesday morning at the Sentient Bean.

Carlette Cormier and I had met in 2003–I as a speaker, Carlette as an award-winning designer. She recently took my webinar, so our friendship was re-kindled and visiting her in GA was a must. Her focus now is in developing her Savannah Toile business, which she’s doing with great success.

Carlette is a born story-teller. She was describing a big job she’d installed a few years ago at an elegant restaurant in town called Ele. As a designer, she was tasked with creating upholstered walls for one of the dining rooms. I asked her how she had received that opportunity. Carlette’s next door neighbor is a masseuse and the owner of Ele regularly received massages from her. Carlette’s neighbor happily made the referral. As Carlette so succinctly put it:

“You never know where your next referral is coming from.”

Carlette’s upholstered wall panels for Ele

I attended a stellar event last night at the Westport Library, the first in a two-part series called “Creating and Growing Businesses that Thrive.” Doug Bernstein, of Melissa and Doug fame, was interviewed by NPR reporter Alison Freeland in front of a packed house of business owners. The 90 minutes flew by as Alison tossed out questions to Doug and he shared his vast expertise.

Here’s some of the wisdom I heard (interviewer’s or audience’s questions in italics):

• What’s a typical day? Every day is different. Every day you get thrown a lot of pitches. You decide which ones you want to hit. There are always more than you can get done.
• If you’re not failing a lot, you’re not testing yourself hard enough.
• What is your definition of entrepreneurship? Wanting something to be different; wanting to effect change; making something different or better
• We begged our first customers (toy store owners) to watch our video [their first product]. It’s ALL about the customer!
• What advice would you give people who are starting a business? I’ll go out on a limb here and say, this Internet thing is going to stick.
• While the NYTimes recently wrote that toy companies are going techno, we love being contrarians.
• How do you manage the PR for your company? “We don’t. We’ve spent $1.87 on marketing in 23 years. Our customers do the marketing for us. The best marketing you can do is taking care of your customers.
• We stay intimately involved with our customers. It is always ALL about the customers.
• Our culture is unique in its lack of meetings. I’m not a big fan of meetings.
• Rejection is the best thing that can happen. It fuels your success. Mistakes are the best part. There’s a hunger you get from them.
• Are you worried about imitators? No, we realized that while they can copy a product, it’s the combination of our product, our interest in our customers and our innovative style–the culture and soul of our business–that can’t be duplicated.

During the Q+A session following the interview, I asked for confirmation on something I thought I heard him say while being interviewed. I asked, “Just to be clear, did you say that you left your job at MCA (Marketing Corporation of America) without a business plan or a product?”

He did. Without a plan, a product or a safety net, he quit his job. He then explained how he and Melissa went to their parents (they were in their late 20′s and not yet married), sat them down and told them, “We’re going to have a… business.” The rest is history.

Alison Freeland Interviewing Doug Bernstein at the Westport Library “Insights from Entrepreneurs” Event

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.

I’m truly looking forward to my JV (Joint Venture) call tomorrow evening with Gail Doby. I was referred to Gail by Victoria Lyon who I met at a SHE-E-O luncheon created by Carolina Fernandez, who I met as a referral through Gene D’Agostino many years ago. Have I hit six degrees of separation yet? This name by name analysis is to demonstrate what it takes to become successful. One of my mantras is: Follow All Leads.

Each of the relationships along the way has been gratifying and productive, and now I’m here, sponsoring a call by Gail this Tuesday at 5:30pm EDT.

Gail is a business role model for me for where I’d like to be in a year or two. While I’ve created, offered and completed my first webinar series, Gail already has multiple webinars in her inventory. She also has recorded interviews with industry experts to add to her clients’ knowledge base . Her mailing list is at least quadruple mine. She has a partner who understands the technical back end of her business. This serves as a complement to Gail who excels at the creative and front end for the team. I admire what she’s accomplished and believe that she is ahead of me on the path I’m pursuing.

Her talk tomorrow night is about setting fees and avoiding the disasters that can come up for business owners who aren’t comfortable in this arena. Who doesn’t need that? Gail has been in the interior design industry for years and has created strategies and content that address this issue, along with multiple other issues, that soul proprietors like you and me face daily.

From my conversations with Gail to date, I see that we approach business from different perspectives. I’m particularly excited to hear hers on this subject. I hope you’ll join me. There’s still room. (Click here to register.)

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.

Professionals!

Please, someone, anyone, remind me that I’m a smart person. Because I’m surely not feeling it lately. There’s something about tax time that raises my self-doubt to the tipping point. (Or maybe it was the addition of a rough stomach virus that had me considering retirement yesterday…)

I just called Lauren at my payroll company because I received something from the Department of Labor declaring 1.90% as the minimum contribution rate for 2012 followed by the number 73. Huh? I brought this sheet to my accountant yesterday who referred me to the payroll people. I have no idea what this means. But when I called my payroll processor, she said, “Oh, no problem. Fax it over and we’ll make that change.”

There’s a high level of trust here, because I’m truly in the dark and don’t even want to ask the first question. Do you EVER feel like that?

My meeting with my accountant went well. Until I got tripped up on the part where he said that the charitable contributions I’d made aren’t business expenses, but are deductible in another way. What’s the difference?

If you’re reading this and thinking, “But, Jane, everyone knows this stuff,” please give me a call and really dumb it down for me.

What I’m really curious to hear about from you is: what puts you over the edge? We’re all operating at such a high level in so many areas of our lives. When I’m tripped up by my lack of knowledge, I don’t want to minimize my brilliance, as I am wont to do. I’ve got good recovery skills, but would love to prevent the deep dive.

What I’m truly grateful for is that there are professionals out there who can guide me through…and not judge me. I don’t have to understand it all, so long as I have good people in place who do.

Geri Stengel

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of meeting Geri Stengel, founder and owner of Ventureneer. Marc Halpert served as our connector. I love how these things happen.

I saw Marc at the New York Times Crossword Puzzle Contest at the Westport Library on February 3. I actually knew that he’d be there because of his LinkedIn tongue-in-cheek bragging about how well he was going to do at the event. I teased him about that, which started a conversation, which led to his bringing up Geri.

The next day he sent both Geri, a colleague of his he thought I should meet, and me a detailed email about each others strengths and what we had in common. From there, Geri and I communicated back and forth and set a date for coffee and a brainstorming session.

We clicked immediately and found common ground in presenting webinars and contributing critical information to small business owners. Sparks were flying in the back of the cafe where we sat over capuccino and tea.

It’s so much easier to connect and find a pathway when someone else plays matchmaker to your talents. I’m grateful to Marc for paving the way for what I believe will be a valuable joint venture relationship with Geri. That’s how networking thrives–when an interested third party identifies your skill sets and goes through his/her mental Rolodex to make the match. It’s basic networking which, when done well, benefits all involved. I’m now extra grateful to Marc for being so forthcoming with his contacts. I’d like to return the favor. And so it grows…

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.

One of my business gurus, Brian Tracy, uses the figure 5% of income as the target number of dollars to spend on education. If you grossed $100,000 spending $5K on education would be prudent, for example.

With a decent budget to work from I thought about where I’d like to study and with whom. I considered trade shows, conferences, courses and cruises as I began planning for the upcoming year. I’d also recently heard from three different colleagues about a program offered at Harvard called Immunity to Change. Those kinds of signs have reliably pointed me in the direction of my vision. I’ve enrolled in that three-day course in Cambridge, a week-long holistic cruise where I’ll be able to study lifestyle practices and network with practitioners in March, and a few other well-timed, choice learning experiences to expand my knowledge and community.

I’m also offering others a way to expand their business skills in 2012. My webinar Soul Proprietor’s Formula for Building Your Business has been a great success. The 20+ women currently enrolled are taking strides in their businesses, meeting other remarkable women through our private Facebook group and actively pursuing their visions. A new session is beginning next Monday, January 9 at noon. I’ve got a very special offer (scroll down for the great pricing) on right now for those who enroll by midnight January 6.

One of the best features of webinars in general is that you don’t have to be physically present to receive the information. All of my sessions are recorded along with the visual materials that accompany the talks. You get to learn at your own pace, according to your own calendar and style. Even the twice-weekly question and answer sessions will be recorded so you won’t miss a word of advice.

I invite you to join me this year and start investing in your own learning. Who knows? With my help, next year’s education budget can exceed your wildest dreams.