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When I spoke for the Women’s Council of Realtors in September, I gave out three copies of my CD How I Got on the Today Show to winners of the Networking Bingo game we played.
One of the recipients, Birgit Anich, took the time to send me not only a beautifully composed thank you note, but also an attractively packaged gift of cookies. I’d met her several times at EWN events, but her generous gratitude for the CD has now made her indelibly sealed in my positive memory bank.
She wrote:
In particular I wanted to thank you and express my gratitude for your CD. I cannot stop listening to it over and over again. I have been featured a few times on local TV, newspaper, online communities. However, my goal is to get on HGTV and I know that getting on national TV is a completely different ball game and persistence. Your CD give me great ideas on how to get further prepared for this. Thank you!!!!
Want someone to remember you? Take a moment today to say ‘thanks’ in a meaningful way.
It’ll really feel like the school year has started when I attend the EWN Luncheon tomorrow featuring Fabienne Fredrickson. Fabienne is an excellent speaker and role model for walking your talk. She is one of the most successful people I know.
I hear tomorrow’s event is a sell-out which makes it very exciting. The energy of over 100 women entrepreneurs is intoxicating to me. And the new location–Dolce Norwalk–makes it even more attractive.
I hired Fabienne as my coach in 2004 and credit her with helping me get my coaching business flourishing. She’s no longer coaching 1:1 and instead runs huge events in California with hundreds of attendees. I am in awe of what she’s accomplished and admire her drive.
She provides quite a different map than this Soul Proprietor. I find it endlessly fascinating to watch a master at work and look forward to learning something new.
On my way home from a look-see in NJ on Monday, I experienced a profound sense of joy. It was a combination of moments that added up to a burst of feeling in my body that I wanted to embrace and explore.
Here are the elements that composed that exquisite awareness:
- It was a glorious June day.
- I hit NO traffic on my round-trip to New Jersey.
- I needed to see a space for an event I’m facilitating, and it was perfect and inspiring.
- I had gotten a virus on my Mac laptop and made a convenient appointment at the Apple store Genius Bar en route to have it removed. (Sidebar – My curiosity got the better of me, and I clicked on a link to see the infamous boxer shorts and paid the price. Ugh!)
- When checking messages on my voicemail I heard one from Barbara Bigford whom I had recently blogged about and consider a rock star. Another thrill.
- That night was EWN’s Grand Networking Event which is an annual high point where I get to hang out with my entrepreneurial clients, friends and colleagues.
When I talk about success, I say that it’s being in the present moment with your desired outcomes and acknowledging that you’re there. Otherwise, it’s always about striving. Monday was a really successful day.
My friend and colleague Lynne Marino (in the bright red jacket–her signature color) recently shared an article that had inspired her–a copy of a lecture by William Deresiewicz, a Yale professor, given to a West Point plebe class last March. It was entitled Solitude and Leadership.
Lynne had just heard me tell an audience of EWN members that spending quiet time, especially in meditation, is essential to being a successful entrepreneur.
I was eager to see the connection. Lynne warned me that the download was lengthy, but worth the read. I printed out the 8 pages and found a quiet time during the recent snowstorm to sit by the fire and read it. (I include this level of detail, because I’m always curious how others find reading time in their lives.) Here are my take-aways:
- That solitude, “the ability to be alone with your thoughts…is one of the most important necessities of true leadership.”
- That these amazingly gifted students (at Yale and West Point) “had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers…i.e. ‘excellent sheep.’”
- “My first thought is never my best thought.”
- The answers “can only be found within–without distractions, without peer pressure, in solitude.”
- And my favorite quote from the entire article: “Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person.”
I often don’t know what I’m truly thinking until I’m in conversation with someone else and the words come out of my mouth. Solitude is critical. I practice it twice daily in my meditation practice. It’s how I’ve created so much clarity in my life. Voicing it out loud to another seals the knowing in my mind, and it becomes part of my DNA.
Who needs solitude? You do. Are you getting as much as you need?
I’m honored and thrilled to be the EWN keynote speaker next Wednesday at the Norwalk Inn. I’ve been a member of the organization for 20 years. This is my first time ever speaking at a lunch event. Today, with so many things shut down due to snow, is the perfect day–a week in advance–to get everything in order. I can let it marinate over the next several days before going live.
My topic, a good one for the month of January, is It’s 2011: Do You Know Where Your Goals Are? Like I do for most projects I undertake, I created a mind-map for what I want to accomplish today. This visual allows me to see the multiple areas I need to spend time on, then designate the minutes or hours on my calendar for each item. My handwriting has become less legible, so here is the bulleted list seen in the spokes below:
- Finalize script- decide on illustrations
- Practice one hour
- Create packing list
- Figure out staffing for book sales
- Create handout
Here’s the take-away for anyone attending next week–You will participate in an exercise to identify a life or business-changing opportunity and create the accountability to take one step towards that vision.
I dare you to attend!
And I invite you to share this posting so others can take the dare too.
Sharon Leichsenring, artist extraordinaire, paints murals in people’s homes and workspaces. She doesn’t depend upon people spelling her name correctly to find her at SharonPaintsMurals.com–a wise move when you have a challenging last name to remember, pronounce and spell. Make it easy for people to find you.
Sharon and I met a few years ago through EWN – the Entrepreneurial Woman’s Network. I’ve been enjoying Sharon’s newsletters and seeing her at my Remarkable Women’s Network events since we met.
Last week Sharon attended my talk to the Working Women’s Forum in Sandy Hook, CT where I shared my top strategies for business success. One sorely overlooked tip I included was saying “thank you” as part of your sales cycle as well as everyday courtesy. While email and phone thank you’s are fine, the hand-written thank you note stands out now more than ever. Sharon added the cherry on top to my suggestion.
“One of my clients was so pleased with the mural I painted for them that they had a stamp made of the painting. As a thank you, they sent me a sheet of these precious images. I now get to decide who is ‘stamp-worthy’ when I write my thank you’s!”
Sign up to receive Sharon’s newsletters and find out more about her offerings here.
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.
What I love about events like the EWN Holiday Expo this past Monday night is that I can set up my display then stand still while the crowds move around me. It ran from 6 – 9 pm, and I had nothing to do but (wo)man my booth.
I enjoy meeting business owners who are new to EWN. I also like having the opportunity for a longer discussion with a colleague I’ve known, but had only brief exchanges at previous events. One particularly juicy take-away from that event was a conversation with Jeanne Gnuse of HTG Investment Advisors Inc. We all know what a tough year+ it’s been for that industry. Jeanne has a great track record, but no company went unscathed by this country’s financial debacle.
What delighted me, though, was hearing about a partnership Jeanne forged this year with another EWN member, Barbara Heffernan, a licensed Social Worker. Jeanne invited Barbara into her elegant office space in New Canaan to conduct a series of lunch and learn programs. This was an opportunity for HTG employees to learn how to meditate, how to listen and how to practice more self-care in order to ride out these challenging times.
Because Barbara was so successful in helping Jeanne’s staff in a profound and meaningful way, the company offered sessions with Barbara to her clients as well. It helped the clients to better articulate their feelings about the historic experience they’re involved in currently.
What a brilliant use of our network! You never know who you’re going to be seated next to or how such disparate industries could find a meeting ground so mutually beneficial. How’s that for creativity?
That was the message that stayed with me after hearing Pamela Slim speak yesterday at the EWN meeting–the season opener attended by nearly 100 women (a few guys, too) business owners. She is the author of Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur. Her message on branding came down to a succinct mantra: Amplify who you really are. And let people know who that is.
Hearing how she went from 3 blog readers to over 20,000 in a period of four years was riveting. One night, she said, she wrote a diatribe to America’s CEOs airing her thoughts about everything that’s wrong with corporate America, then forwarded it to Guy Kawasaki. He asked her to edit her rant to a bulleted list of 10 items, which she did. Guy posted her article on his site and overnight, her readership zoomed to 20,000. Opportunities came pouring in.
So here’s my opinion: Anyone who wants to should work for him/herself. And my top ten reasons to be an entrepreneur:
- It’s one of the greatest freedoms you have in this country
- You have the opportunity to create your own future.
- You get to make as much or as little money as you want/can.
- You have the prospect of bringing the gifts you’ve received to market in whatever form they take.
- You are rewarded for your ingenuity, hard work, conscientiousness, creativity, uniqueness.
- You can change course swiftly and respond to the market conditions.
- You determine with and for whom you want to do business.
- You can become as big as you wish or stay as small as you like.
- You get to choose which 8-18 hours a day you work!
- Your relationship with your boss can be the most gratifying experience in your life.
Guy, are you listening?
I attended a spectacular EWN event last month with over 150 women business owners. The keynote speaker was Beth Schoenfeldt, co-founder of Ladies Who Launch.
One of the cool things about this Grand Networking Event is that in addition to an hour of mingling time before the dinner, each attendee sits at 3 different tables and meets the 7 other women business owners at her table. There is a round-robin of self-intros so it’s more than just a card swap.
The question is, what do you do with all those cards, information and notes? Here’s my method:
I sort through the cards and immediately toss (sorry!) the ones selling products/services that aren’t of interest.
I put dates on my calendar to initiate calls with the women I want to spend more time with.
I sent a thank you and a gift to the speaker.
I enter information from business cards and notes I’d taken into my database increasing the resource base I’ve already established.
I look up everyone’s website and assess the maturity of the business: under construction or fully functioning with rich content.
I plan time on my calendar to write thank you notes to the committee chairs for their incredible service to this organization.
And, when those dates appear on my calendar, I honor the commitment I made to myself and dial the number or write the note.
