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Kim DeYoung and I drove down to Bronxville last week to attend an event where our mutual friend Mary van der Wiel was speaking on branding. During the ride, Kim excitedly told me about her upcoming tele-seminar series called Think It, Create It, Sell It, which I enrolled in on the spot. It begins today, Monday, April 19th at 1pm EDT. If you’re lucky enough to have seen this, determined it’s for you, and gotten a place on the call, I’ll ‘see’ you there.
Kim feels light years ahead of me on the technology front which enables her to provide so many learning opportunities. For example, she has her website set up so that I already have ‘met’ the other people in the class via the profiles we each created. Through her expert level of technology, Kim has pre-qualified her participants in the same way I like to pre-qualify my clients. There are hurdles to be leapt and knowledge presumed which makes the experience that much richer for everyone–teacher and students–involved. I like it that way.
What I hope to learn from this multi-week course, is how to take my existing content and re-purpose it into tele-seminars like Kim’s, as well as podcasts, videos and other learning tools my community has been seeking from me. It’s not for lack of information, but more “how do I do that?” that has stalled my product progress.
Kim’s downloadble handouts have set the stage for the questions I want answered. I can’t wait for our first session. I’m ready to take notes, make a commitment to this group and be held accountable for my actions. I know that the excitement and creativity of the other entrepreneurs on the line will be a driving force. More to come…
Okay, okay. I know I’m going to convert, but first, as is my way, I need to kick and scream, whine and complain. Forgive me. (I’d be interested in how you take on challenges that are daunting.)
I have committed to becoming savvy about twitter and facebook (LinkedIn can wait–sorry, Linds) and socializing via blog comments. Ugh. Here’s what distresses me. Maybe if I write down all these things, I’ll move on.
Visually I hate the way it all looks. Remember, I spent 30 years coloring in between the lines. (How could I pass up showing my art form on Good Friday?)
I loved the precision of my artwork, how beautifully contained the colors were, and how nicely things lined up and fit together. When I go to comment on someone’s blog, all I see is MESS. Too many options. Too much distraction. No central focal point. Didn’t anyone teach these techies about composition?
Then, I think, how will I ever get noticed, get heard above the noise? If there are already 112 comments in the queue, what possible difference is mine going to make?
I understand that using twitter poorly is frowned upon in the twittersphere. I promise to learn the etiquette and behave appropriately. But, when I tried tweetdeck there was so much noise and constant beeping that I unplugged it in frustration. Plus, all those #’s and bit.ly addresses make me crazy. I don’t know who to follow or why. There’s just too much of everything to sort through. Plus, it seems that anytime I want to find out a piece of information, I’m being sent someplace else. I’ve already forgotten where I was and how I ended up six degrees away.
Because my grown children are using these media effortlessly, I know it’s not genetic. But then, my son Robert was always able to do his homework while sitting in the living room with the TV at full blast and family activity all around. I grew up and studied by finding the most remote carrel in the library. When Macon Leary, the protagonist in Anne Tyler’s Accidental Tourist, got into his car he would turn off the radio and say to himself, ‘They’re playing my song.’ I still adhere to the adage, Silence is Golden.
The survival of the fittest rules, and I will survive by adapting, even though it’s duly challenging the concrete sequential soul inside of me. I’m too committed to running a successful business to not pay attention to social media. I’ve already taken several classes and attended talks as a way to get my feet wet. There was a highly regarded child-rearing book out when my kids were growing up called How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. I want a version called How to Teach Baby Boomers to Tweet So They Will Want To. Anyone?
What I know I will do, as I did with starting this blog nearly two years ago, is continue to moan and groan as I sloooooowly put the puzzle pieces together in a way that makes sense to me. I will keep up my self-talk (“Jane, you’re smart and persistent. You will get this and be successful at it.”) I will take more classes and try and fail a few hundred more times on my own until I get it. Until it’s in my bones. And I will quit complaining. Promise!
I was looking forward to meeting Susan this morning for an hour-long walk/talk at the old Norwalk High School track. We’ve previously met and walked on downtown streets, but knowing how deeply intense and focused our conversations are, I suggested that we just walk in an endless loop and move our legs along with our mouths without concern for cars and curbs.
I was not disappointed. We covered at least 10 categories in depth during our time together, never breaking stride. Business issues, household stuff and relationships were the first order of business, but where we covered the most territory was technology. We both attend the classes at the Apple Store (their $99 for unlimited 1:1 instruction) is unbeatable.
“Are you using two fingers to scroll?”
“Have you discovered control T?”
“What about the anagram slide transition in Keynote?”
“What are you doing about converting from ACT?”
I gave my “21 Results Driven Strategies” (aka Things I’d Wished I’d Known When I Started My Business) talk for the South Shore Women’s Business Network yesterday. In it I recommend that business owners embrace technology and stretch themselves quarterly or more often to keep up with the trends–adding a blog, getting on facebook or LinkedIn for example.
After our inspirational walk this morning, I am committing to moving all of my contacts over to my MacBook. I’ve got 3000 in my database now along with complete histories and groupings. Give me till March to fully transition. Then, I’ll get one of those cool iPhones and be PC-free.
Anyone out there want to commit?
P.S. My greatest technological achievement, with a big nod to the help received from the guys at the Stamford Apple Store, is the website I created for my upcoming program with Brad Isaacs. Please take a look. I’d also love it if you’d come…and bring a friend.
For those of you reading comments to my blog on Macs, the problem of them getting cut off has been solved by my illustrious blogmaster, Lena West of xynoMedia. Thank you, Lena!
Kate Eisemann of Kate Eisemann Pictures, the talent behind my headshot selections, is busily de-mottling #4–a favorite among many of the voters on Monday. It’s a horse race between #1 and #4, so we’ll see if that makes a difference.
I’m taking the day off today to attend the Macrobiotic Conference put on by the Kushi Institute. I’ve been adhering to a mostly macrobiotic diet for two years now and feel healthier, more energetic and thinner. I will have some face time with Michio Kushi, the founder of the Institute, this afternoon when he meets with a group and offers his wisdom regarding their best health practices.
There’s a theme in this post–asking for help. It’s one of the hardest thing for us independent women to do. However, it has been so rewarding to me when I drum up the courage to ask that it’s become part of my daily practice to humble myself and admit I don’t know it all. What a relief!
I took my second one-on-one Mac class at the Stamford Town Center Apple Store last Friday at 8am, before the mall even opened. I love that! I didn’t get caught in the middle of rush hour traffic, I didn’t have to hunt for a parking space and there wasn’t much activity in the store. I could concentrate on my lesson better than the afternoon session I’d gone to two weeks before when it was noisy and crowded.
I learned two very cool things that I hadn’t figured out on my own–how to download a photo without going into my picturetrail.com collection (6 steps) and how to download video into i-movie, edit it, bring it into youtube.com and upload it onto my blog. Years ago, this would have been a semester-long course.
I had a staff member click this image of my hair stylist, Donna Lysobey of Noble Salon, and me before Donna fixed me up for my new headshot. You’ll see the afters as soon as I get the proofs back from Kate Eisemann. Deryll, my one-to-one instructor walked me through the uploading steps. Voila!
One thing I know for sure is that I want to work with professionals when it comes to my image. I’ve got Scarlett Debease of Scarlett New York styling my wardrobe and Donna to do my hair and makeup for the photo shoot. That helped me to relax and look my best when smiling for the camera.
Last month I received the NEWBO Woman of Distinction Award. Right before the awards presentation portion of the meeting, I handed my digital camera to Don, my client Jill’s significant other, and said, “Could you record this?” I didn’t even know how to instruct him to zoom in, but he did a valiant job. Deryll taught me how to zoom in while uploading this to youtube, so the quality isn’t perfect. I’m most pleased with the audience’s reaction. I’d love you to watch this first minute and let me know if it translates.
My kids are tweeting their hearts out. They were born to this technological age. In nursery school, Laura was in the dress-up corner playing grocery store and scanning bananas over the toy cash register. I didn’t understand why she was waving the fruit over the keys in that particular way rather than just punching in the dollars and cents amounts. Our next trip to Stew Leonard’s revealed the answer as the check-out clerk there used the same motion. “Smart kid, my daughter” I thought.
I’m trying! We of the Baby Boomers have adapted to answering machines, computers, cell phones and the like, each time protesting, “Who needs that?” before adapting and proclaiming their benefits.
I know I will master this new technology. I know that it’s important. I know I will make great connections and learn lots. But right now, I still don’t get it and am whiny and annoyed. However, I recognize that that’s my style and move forward anyway. I had a wonderfully generous twitter lesson on Friday from Miraim Salpeter who introduced me to tweetdeck. Now there’s a chirping sound coming from my laptop every few seconds as tweets come through along with notification of new followers and those I’m following.
This morning’s reading in Courage to Change, a daily inspirational book, ends with a quote by Confucius: It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.
Unstoppable is my middle name.
My workhorse road-use-only laptop Averatec computer lost its ability to get an Internet connection a couple of weeks ago. I dialed the 24/7 800 number for assistance and got a “no longer in service” message and no forwarding number to call. Averatec.com has disappeared from cyberspace, so I am on my own here.
My brother and two of my children, not to mention an ardent group of friends and colleauges have been swearing by their MacBooks forever (over a year). Not only are they gorgeous to look at (the Apple computers, that is) but have battery life I’ve been yearning for since my earliest Dell laptops konked out after 45 minutes playing a movie rental during a flight.
So today, my daughter Laura, my husband Buddy and I will trek to the Apple Store at the Stamford Town Center to pick out a MacBook (not Pro) for me. Our second computer ever, after the dos-based IBM hunker died, was a Mac, and I loved it. Now that they interface with PC’s so elegantly I’m able to make the switch.
If you notice a big improvement in my graphics or increasing use of audio-visual components, you’ll know the genesis. I’m going to sign up for their weekly training program and up my tech-savvyness.
How are you spending your Memorial Day? (Not reading blogs, most likely!)
That title’s a little misleading. I actually learned a lesson last week and had it reinforced by hearing a story about Lauren Bacall this week.
I was invited to be included as part of a new web presence, which shall remain nameless, if I acted quickly and got in on a pre-launch opportunity. The publicist for the project asked if I would provide content in exchange for crossing links, having banners and buttons that connected our sites. It was going to be the next big thing.
I’m making it seem less inviting than it originally sounded to me. I was immediately gung-ho, but had a lot of questions. I wasn’t clear on exactly who these people were and what it would look like to join forces. The publicist for the organization was my contact person. She made it all seem most important and urgent. I had big questions marks swirling between me and the opportunity.
I called in help. Two of my most net savvy colleagues were willing to spend time with me investigating and tracking this organization on the Web. I also called my daughter Lindsey for whom I have the utmost respect. She gave me great advice:
“Mom, if you don’t really understand it and aren’t really excited to link up with them, don’t do it.”
Oh. I had thought if someone pursued you and made it sound really, really exciting, you should jump in. But it didn’t feel right, and Lindsey nailed it. I passed on the offer.
Then on Monday night at our mastermind group meeting, Mary Ellroy shared a Harvard Business School case study she remembered from the late 70′s. They reported that Ford Motors had hired Lauren Bacall to enhance the image of one of their models, the Ford Fairlane. It did raise the public’s image of the car, but had the opposite effect on Bacall’s reputation which was diminished by the association.
I’ll wait for google or amazon to make me an offer…
My husband, a retired English Department Chair, and my kids used to do the ‘happy dance’ (even before it was named that) when the prediction and nature supplied a snowstorm worthy of closing schools. There’s still that jubilant feeling in the air today when Mother Nature takes over and plans get changed. I’ve already canceled two meetings that were going to take place this morning and required me to be somewhere out of my home office.
Fortunately, my afternoon appointments are virtual and therefore secure. One is for a follow-up call after a Dream Peek Experience last month. Within 30 days of our initial conversation, my client will check in with her progress, successes, challenges and evaluation. It’s always an exciting call because everything shifts when you get into action mode.
My other meeting will be via Skype.com. I joked with this new client that I’d have to wash my hair since we’ll be using our video cameras during the call. (If you don’t yet know Skype, check it out! It’s a free service that allows communication with crisper sound than the phone. We used it these past four years to have regular contact with our daughter who was in Japan. It was as though she were right next to me–her voice was that clear.)
Today I’m happy to re-group. I gave myself the weekend to play and enjoy life. I’ll use this newfound time to debrief my systems/relationships coaching notes from last weekend’s course, summarize a client meeting held on the 26th and catch up on my correspondence.
Then, to reward myself, I’ll put on my boots, hat, scarf and gloves and get out for a walk to my PO box a mile away (or go for a manicure–a mile in the other direction).
While I’m not an advocate of doing business 24/7 or bringing your Blackberry to the lunch table, I do believe that you can operate from anywhere these days. The reason I mention this is that good friends of mine have been planning a trip to Florida this week. One of them just lost his job and thought that he may need to stay home in CT to make phone calls, follow up on leads and suffer.
A wise colleague of mine has a penchant for saying, “I carry my office with me in my pocket,” meaning that wherever he is, he’s open for business. It could be the car, an evening at home or actually at his desk with file folders in hand. He is 100% reachable, if he wants to be.
Another associate suggested that it would be a great opportunity for our mutual friend to learn how to do business on the beach as she has done in the past. I say, “Ditto!” A well-planned and pre-paid (!) vacation is essential to our well-being. It would be deprivation to deny yourself this opportunity.
I do want to advocate for the flip side of the availability issue, too. And that is to choose occasions where you are consciously unavailable, like dinnertime. I just got back from a weekend Relationships Coaching program where I intentionally turned off my phone throughout the day. I’ve taken week-long vacations where my outgoing messages–both email and phone–said I would respond when I got back.
The important piece here is that you get to decide. What are your priorities? What’s most important? Is there room for both? You run the office. Don’t let the office run you.
