I'll bet you thought that today's post would be all about what A and I saw when we climbed the stairs to the attic floor of the farm house. I thought so too. And then I started thinking about some of the people I'd met this past week - it's eight days after our day-trip to MacKenzie-Childs - and it seemed to me that it was time to bring the larger focus of what I do into play here.
The genius of what I do is to "connect the dots". And, I am very good at this.
Sometimes, it starts with a seemingly black-and-white idea. This time, the idea was to take a day-trip: to get out of Dodge (so to speak) and have a mini-adventure, just A and me.
MacKenzie-Childs as the destination was a deliberate choice. I've been a longtime admirer of the designs and as Grossman's Nursery - a mere 10 minute drive from where I live - has been carrying some of the products for quite some time now - each time I visited Grossman's, my desire to make the longer trip down to Aurora, New York grew stronger.
I'd been poking around the MacKenzie-Childs web site and knew that as a business model, the company had reached some remarkable benchmarks. They have stores in Manhattan and in Palm Beach, an extensive online shopping catalog, a bridal registry and a corporate gift program.
They got their start (literally) deep in the Finger Lakes region of New York state, surrounded by rolling hills and farm country.
This is not the MacKenzie-Childs story. They do that very well as you'll find out when you explore their web site and take your own day-trip to emerse yourself in "all things MacKenzie-Childs". (Disclaimer: I receive no monetary "embellishments" about MacKenzie-Childs. I am, however, a "raving fan" and that, my friends, is priceless!)
This is about having genuine conversations with people (absolutely NO hidden agendas), listening more than talking and remembering what was said.
Listening more than talking.
As A and I followed our tour guide from room to room in the farm house, our conversation with her was as much a ramble as the tour itself. During the just-over-an-hour tour, we learned quite a bit about how MacKenzie-Childs got started, who the several owners of the company had been, style and design changes over the years, some of the farm house history, the names of some of the decorative pieces in each of the rooms and their creative stories; some of the local history of Aurora, NY and some of our tour guide's own personal story - how she came to be an employee of MacKenzie-Childs and then we talked about her own family: how many kids (six or seven) and what they were all doing.
Everyone does have a story and stories are powerful.
We talked about color - especially it's affect on mood. Our tour guide grinned and confessed that when she was having a bad day, she might come over to the farm house, pick a room and just sit for a while. It's hard to feel gloomy when you're surrounded by such eye-popping colors.
Color was definitely on my mind. Over the next six to eight days, there would be this lovely spill-over from the MacKenzie-Childs road trip onto everything else that happened.
One of my friends was preparing for a women's event coming up in another six days. Interestingly enough, her business, A New Hue, is all about color. She and I had been talking about women and color - women's perceptions of themselves and how they use color or their lack of understanding how to correctly choose colors that work to their advantage. "It's almost as if," Julie surmised, "some women are afraid of color."
On a similar theme, I've been having on-going conversations with my direct sale team about the use of color in decorative accessories; how women gravitate towards certain colors (and scents) and what that means for developing a color-play home decor party theme.
And, to keep my own level of energy upbeat, I would find myself coming back to the photos that A had taken when we were visiting MacKenzie-Childs, marveling at the connection between mood and color.
These are not brand new concepts. But. They are bullet points for what happens next.
The day of the women's event I set aside a few hours to stop by to be supportive of Julie - she was a vendor - and to satisfy my curiosity. I''m nosey and this was too much too good of an opportunity to meet new people and have another mini-adventure.
So, off I went to the Burgundy Basin Inn. The place was packed. The parking lot was filled to almost capacity -- and -- stepping inside the lobby, it looked to be standing room only... with good crowd control.
Lots of give-away raffle baskets, lots of women standing, sitting, milling around, greeting friends and taking a moment before plunging into the open doorways leading to the event itself.
Taking a moment for my glasses to unfog (it was 6 degrees outside), I wandered over to the coat check place, bought a few raffle tickets and went up the steps, then through the doorway where it looked like things were happening.
As I reached the last step, immediately to my left was a colorful display for the SHEN YUN Performing Arts.
As I stood in front of this display, I caught the eye of one of the women standing nearby. She was beautifully dressed in a richly tailored, ceremonial gown. She smiled. I smiled back. She stepped towards me and we began to talk about this performance that's coming to the Rochester Auditorium Theatre on February 19th.
As she described how different audiences had been responding to the performance, she mentioned that when the show played in NYC, what delighted several members of the fashion industry - who came up afterwards to talk with the performers - was the use of color: the costumes and the staging.
Color. (That triggered my MacKenzie-Childs day trip and I immediately started filtering all of what I'd listened to when A and I were touring the farm house.)
When the conversation moved to what I did, I looked this lovely person in the eye, and said, "If you and I were meeting at a networking event, I'd tell you that you should be sure to give me your business card because if there was someone you were looking to meet - someone that you wanted to get in front of - I might be able to make that introduction."
Her eyes lit up and she scurried behind the table display and came back with one of her business cards. "Can I give this to you now?"
During the next five minutes, we talked about her role as a volunteer with this performance group and the kinds of people she wanted to meet - people who might want to support the continued success of this talented organization. I thought back to everything that the MaKenzie-Childs tour guide had told me and was able to pull one or two names out of that conversation into the conversation I now found myself having.
Later, after I'd wandered around and found out where Julie's table was located, I brought Julie around to meet this woman and Julie was able to add to the short list of people who might be good contacts -- good connections -- for her.
Sometimes, everything is about how well you remember to ask questions so that later you can connect the dots between what you've learned and what someone else is looking for.
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