If you find yourself on my blog, you need to know that I've not been active here in over a year. But. I decided to leave Mrs Biz Whiz up because "she" (really me) was my very first blog. Some of what's here may be helpful to you.
You can find me over at Healing Rescue Dogs, and I hope you'll stop by to see what I'm doing.
Books. Piles of books. Three sit on my desk, one waiting to be reviewed; two I'm reading with another three or four stacked in my bedroom waiting their turn.
Books are my crack, my hopeless addiction; my therapy, my pure entertainment, my inspiration; my feel good, safe escape when escape is called for. When I am stalled in other areas of my life, you can bet that the one thing I'm still doing is reading books, ordering books, going to libraries, prowling the aisles of Barnes & Noble, ordering books from Amazon, and hunting out the smaller, independent book stores when I can.
Launch - How To Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond The Competition, by Michael A Stelzner.
Doc, by Mary Doria Russell.
Life from Scratch, by Melissa Ford.
Going Home - Finding Peace When Pets Die, by Jon Katz.
There are stories behind all of these books. Two of them, Stelzner's and Ford's books, were ordered off of Amzaon's web site. Read Launch over a month ago and just got Life from Scratch in the mail yesterday.
Interestingly enough, the first of these two books is a "how to" tutorial - proof that anyone can harness what they're passionate about and build a sustainable business online using online and offline systems to first build brand awareness and then to roll out a product.
The second book, Life From Scratch, is an illustration of what Stelzner writes about, regardless of whether Ford was even aware of Stelzner's book.
Doc literally fell into my hands last week as I cruised the new fiction shelf in the library. As I posted on Facebook two days ago, it is meticulously researched and beautifully written. For a language - lover (that would be me), this book is like a glass of aged malt scotch. It goes down with a richness that needs to be s-l-o-w-l-y savored.
Going Home is in "pre-launch." It's official sell date in September 27 or September 29th. Yesterday, I called the Battenkill Bookstore and placed my order. Like Launch and Life From Scratch, Katz's latest book is an example of how some books are coming to the attention of readers using Social Media.
Using his blog, YouTube channel and Facebook presence, Katz has created awareness for his latest book with an audience already familiar with his books. And, as a supporter of independent book stores, he started talking about this book to his fans by suggesting that they consider ordering it through the Battenkill Bookstore.
More than 300 of us have taken him up on this. So far.
I'd like to think that there's room enough for all of this. For ordering books online, for public libraries, for Barnes & Noble and for independent book stores.
I need them all.
For simple convenience when the ease of online ordering fits into my day, for the physical pleasure of browsing the stacks, talking to librarians about books, or losing myself in the commercial aisles of a Barnes & Noble, and for the intimacies that smaller book stores provide.
I'd like to think that the rest of the world feels the same.
Dear ______ dot com:
First of all, I have to say I am a bit flattered that you chose to hunker yourself down in front of my blog for two nights in a row to post this one line on 32 of my posts:
They hoped the climber would be able to hold on until rescuers reached him.
Thank you for not leaving porn. Rather, you've left a sentence that leaves the door open for wondering if 1) you're a frustrated writer trying to write your first best seller 2) you're writing your memoirs in the third person and, in a fit of "getting stuck," you decided to write this one sentence over and over and over AND over again until your writer's block became unstuck.
I can appreciate that. I find myself doing this very same thing ... In. A. Word. Doc. That. No. One. Else. Sees.
In fact, after deleting your comment for the 10th time (two days ago), I found myself making up the rest of the story about this "climber" holding on until rescuers reached him.
Who are "they" and who is "the climber?"
Perhaps "they" are the rest of the adventurers on this ...on this what? Did they go on a peace-keeping mission to a third world country? Did they go on a mountain climbing expedition that took two years to plan out down to the smallest detail, including the life-saving techniques that they would have to employ if one of "them" met with an accident?
Are" they" smugglers taking their ill-gotten gains down the narrow trail that leads to their next rondevous spot when one of "them" fell off the side of the trail, landing on a narrow ledge, where he now lays clinging to life and cursing God that he ever got involved with this motely collection of thugs?
Are "they" and "him" all male?
And, what about "the climber?" Who's the hero (or idiot, depending on your point of view) who got picked to be the rescuer?
As you can see, there's a lot you're leaving out here. But, please. Don't feel obligated to add to this one sentence in any way, ever again, because what you need to take note of is that no one (except me and whoever monitors spam where this blog is hosted) will ever see it.
Here's what happens immediately after you post a comment on my blog.
Well, not immediately, but fairly soon after.
Your comment is put into an email notification that TypePad sends to me. I get:
1. Your commenter name
2. Your commenter email address
3. Your commenter URL
4. Your IP address
And, I also get the comment that you thought you were leaving on my post(s).
What happens next is completely up to me. I get to decide if your post gets published, deleted or marked as spam. And, I wonder if you can figure out what happens next?
So. I hope I've helped to clear some things up for you. Just in case you happen to visit my blog again tonight.
Why is it that this simple directive "Follow Your Hear" gets way-laid, side-stepped, misplaced, trampled on, deliberately kicked or carelessly tossed aside?
Did we become complacent? Forgetfull? Lazy?
Did we just forget to pay attention as we got caught up in the daily minutia of making meals, getting laundry done, walking dogs, getting kids off to school and ourselves off to work; juggling mowing the lawn with grocery shopping, getting together with girlfriends, going to the gym three days a week, and checking that homework assignments get done?
Did we start with one plan and forget to factor in that some things change with time?
Jobs become obsolete. Kids grow up. We get old ...er. If we've been paying attention all along, we manage to stay close to what we fell in love with such a long time ago. Not just "what" but "who."
The "what we love" is the easy part. Books. The ocean. Twilight. Being physically fit. Road trips. Camp fires. The Adirondacks in August.
The "who," family and friends, husbands, wives, lovers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, grandparents, neighbors ... is what makes our hearts sing and sometimes splinters it into so many pieces that we despair of ever breathing normally again.
Sometimes, those broken pieces can be reconfigured into a banadaged heart that beats just a little stronger. And, in time, when we take those bandages off, we can smile at the scar because it's healed the hurt places.
So, to all my blogger friends who have slammed into unimaginable sorrow and hold the pieces of their hearts in paint-spattered hands, hold fast to what you know and follow your heart.
It's not a coincidence that as I put the final, finishing touches on a house project, that the shell of a special interest blog is almost done. Somehow, the house project: stripping 40-plus year old wallpaper off of bedroom walls before painting them and the design and initial content for my dog web site, just happened to take place almost simultaneously.
Start stripping wall paper. Get free report re-configured into a PDF format and hooked into aweber. Strip some more wall paper. Think about what's going on the sidebar. Strip more wallpaper. Spend some time getting familiar with a different dashboard.
Strip more paper. Try to keep calm and centered when some technical issues come up. Take breaks. Clean up. Get the dogs out.
The actual wall paper stripping took 3-4 days including one long weekend. The prep work to the walls before we painted took another 2-3 days.
Milestones were easy to see on the house project. Every day's different and still the same. What I temporarily lost was the discipline of creating regualar blogging time. It's a different kind of writing than writing articles or chapters for books. The same but different.
The bedroom is a rich kind of peach color with subtle pink tones. Kind of like a light terra cotta. White - a bright white - trim. Clean open space. Now, the challenge becomes keeping that space open - no clutter. No junk. Thirty-six boxes of books went out to the second floor of the garage. Some of them will come back. But. Some of them will not.
Creativity has a hard time finding itself when it's falling over clutter. Time to get my head back in the game.
This is the second in a 4-5 part series that examines how I (finally) decide to start a business that I will be marketing online. You can read the first post here. And, please leave your comments at the end of this post if anything I write resonates with you.
If I look back on my career path, I see a definite pattern. Every 8-10 years, I switched jobs. For many reasons, all perfectly valid at the time I made them. Suffice it to say that I've never been afraid of sticking my neck out and trying something else.
What might be fair to say is that one of my deliberate career choices was the one that took me back into the classroom as a high school English teacher. And from there, off to graduate school to earn my Master's degree.
The wall that I kept smacking into during those years was the wall of "there are no permanent fulltime teaching positions available unless one of our staff drops dead or gets pregnant and takes a six month maternity leave." Fortunately, there were a few of those six month leaves of absence so that I got a taste of having my own classroom. My own students. And I loved every minute of it.
I would have taught for free.
That's passion.
Remember that because "passion" - passion for something - is going to be one of the emotional drivers that I keep coming back to.
Fastforward to 1997 and I had come to the realization that I was not going to be hired fulltime. Seems that there was another hiring freeze on in the one district that I had racked up a 16 year track record with as a per diem sub. It would take me another three years to sever my ties with this school district, but that year marked a critical turning point for me.
That year, I made the second deliberate career choice in my life. I signed up as a distributor with a company in the direct sale/network marketing field. During the seven years I was with that first company, I built a consumer network of 200-plus individuals that would generate over $10,000.00 in monthly sales volume at its most productive period. I attended eight company conventions and embarked on a program of self-development that is largely responsible for who I am today. For that, I will be eternally grateful.
The company was Arbonne International. Back in 1997, there were approximately 30,000 distributors. And, the internet was in its infancy.
While some people were trying to figure out how to harness the vague perameters of the online world to develop what would ultimately be "internet marketing business models," I was wrapping my brain around how to develop residual income using a network marketing business model.
For several reasons (none of which are important here), I resigned as a distributor with Arbonne in 2004-05 and went on to explore a few other network marketing companies. I also began to reach out to small business owners and solo practioners in my community. This is when I began to build my professional brand as a "consummate networker."
All this time, I'd been poking around the internet, trying to figure out the business models that would let someone make a sustainable income online. Nobody was stepping up and volunteering that kind of information. But they were out there and some of them were becoming very successful.
I kept poking around and over time, found myself following a couple of people whose online messages resonated with me. This was long before Twitter, so "following" someone online had a slightly different meaning back then.
I continued my online research. And, as luck would have it, signed up with another network marketing company. This company was a bit different than the companies I'd worked with in the past. Most of the experienced field leaders were building their organizations using systems that internet marketers have been using for years. Systems?
Systems. How about: autoresponders. Squeeze pages. Opt in boxes. Personal web pages. I learned about pay-per-click ad campaigns, got my first peek at the behind-the-scenes preparations for Webinar broadcasts and was a regular participant on some of them.
It was fascinating to understand how these systems knit together to create an automated process with a series of predicatable actions that would lead to a series of predictable results.
Systems. Imagine what I could do on my own with these systems working for me.
Those of us who live in parts of the country where we don't see the sun on a regular basis during the winter (in my world, that would be from early November - March) work really hard to keep our inner spirits focused on positive energy.
We swear that we won't sucumb to the bleak drizzle of a two-five day stretch where 7AM looks exactly like 4PM looks exactly like 7PM: grey, grey, and more grey.
For my friends who are avid skiiers, grey days can mean good days on the ski slopes. For my friends who aren't real thrilled about skiing (it's cold out there), too many grey days pile up.
We constantly talk to ourselves (and to each other) about not letting those grey days smother our spirits. And, for the most part, we get ourselves over that yawning chasm between winter-to-spring. We find ways to celebrate each day's gifts so that we can honestly say that we're not wasting a day.
Sometimes, it's hard.
Sometimes we get derailed because life throws us a curve ball that takes us completely unawares. And, before we know it, we're floundering. Not moving forward in the direction we were originally going. Not moving anywhere. Just stuck.
That "life thing" can be pretty scary. I was talking with my niece last night about all of the horrific aftermath of the tsunami that wiped out so much of Japan; anything that I've been dealing with given the magnitude of that destruction pales in signifcance.
How do we place ourselves in the larger context of what is a catastrophic global disaster? Which is a very huge place of being stuck. How do we get unstuck from this?
If we live a life of genuine purpose, that spirit of being genuine pushes out positive energy into the universe that will eventually circle back to us. For those times when we're stuck.
For those times when the world truly is a scary place.
As our reward for understanding that each day is a gift that should be celebrated. Even those grey, bleak, drizzle days.
When that positive energy cirlces back, it can manifest itself in something as mundane as an unexpected phone call from a friend. A friend who has a new job with a not-for-profit organization that identifies and works with inner-city kids at risk.
The conversation that follows sparks even more positive energy that spirals outward as those two friends talk about the importance of programs that can be safety nets for some kids whose lives need to get "unstuck".
"I may not be able to save the kids a world away from where I live," he explained. "But. Maybe I can save the lives of kids in my own backyard."
And, suddenly, look where we are. We've moved from our own "inertia" - that place of "stucked-ness" to a place of possibility. We are outside of ourselve trying to figure out how we can help someone else.
When that desire to help someone else becomes a genuine feeling, we're back to that place of unselfishness where energy flows outward in positive spirals. And, sometimes, this is enough of a spark to re-ignite our own spirits.
No doubt about it, the internet is a vast cavern of information that can easily swallow your time and play havoc with your ability to focus. Especially if you are at the very beginning of trying to figure out what kind of home-based (work at home) business you'd like to have.
Imagine how much easier your search for the perfect work at home business would be if there was a "one stop shopping place" where you could start your research before commiting yourself. A place where you could meet other like-minded women who 1) just like you, are at the beginning of their research or 2) have already surmounted those first entreprenurial hurdles of getting their businesses launched.
Better yet, what if you could rub shoulders with women who have achieved success and are available to share their areas of expertise with you?
And (here's the best part), what if there was a wealth of information about the different types of "work at home" business models presented in an easy-to-acceess directory for you to explore along with a detailed resource directory?
Stop imagining. Here is that online community celebrating every step it takes to be that Work at Home Woman.
Now. Be honest. How much time did you spend checking out Holly's web site before coming back here? Did your jaw drop when you looked at how much material she has brought to one place?
Did you breathe a sigh of relief when you realized that the sky is the limit when it comes to what you can do? And, did that yawning cavern of the internet become just a bit smaller and friendlier?
As I find myself listening to some of my girlfriends talk about their "professional challenges" - the frustrations of a three year job search in a city (Rochester, NY) that was recently ranked one of the five worst cities in the US for employment opportunities - I feel grateful that one places I can direct them to is Holly's web site.
At first glance, there is a LOT of information here. Take a second look at how neatly organized everything is.
There are two tabs at the top of the home page that you'll want to explore in depth. The "Woman Owned" and "WAH" Jobs tabs will keep you busy. Note the presence of direct sale woman-owned businesses mixed into a variety of other "woman-owned" businesses.
Let your eye scroll down the "Menu" options to the left of your computer screen. Lots of options for those of you who are attracted to the flexibility that "direct sale" offers but want a different business model.
As I found myself explaining to one of my girlfriends, if you like the concept of "leverage" - the kind of leverage that results in residual income, there are viable business models to explore outside of direct sale. Check out the information under the "Affiliate" tab in the menu section as an example.
Don't skip the "Job Board Sites".
There are 21 blog categories with all kinds of helpful material. And, if you want an overview, there's the "Week In Review" section that will summarize everything that's transpired in a specific time frame.
If you're at the very beginning of your search for something other than that 9-5 job, you'll find lots of support and the company of like-minded women in this online community.
If your offline search for a job has become exhausting and left you feeling like you'vee reached a dead end, I promise that Holly's web site will be an invigorating blast of energy for you.
There is, as I've long maintained, more than one way to achieve success. Holly's web site is proof of this.
The Work at Home Woman is a rich mine of material, resources, practical "how to's" and so much more. Bookmark this site and visit often.
And, be sure and tell Holly that Mrs. BizWhiz sent you!
I don't cook, bake, grill, saute, or stir fry. Hell. I don't even shop.
Wait. I take that back. I do go along with my husband when HE shops. I like to watch. I like to wander the food aisles and take note of all of the mini-dramas that play out under the guise of grocery shopping.
The dad with his toddler son in line at the deli-counter. You think they're picking out cold cuts. What's really taking place is a careful game of catch as the dad carefully lobs packaged cheese and smoked turkey into the waving hands of his pint-size, wanna be basball star.
There are always mother-daughter combinations that tug at my heartstrings because I used to be one half of this shopping expedition with my mom, later with my grandmother and, later still, with my mother-in-law. The brand new mom with the month old baby snuggly wrapped in one of those baby-wraps that winds around the mom like a grown-up python squeezing its dinner, the baby-boomer daughter solitiously attending to her silver-haired mom as the two of them painsakingly discuss the merits of one kind of pasta over another.
Then there are the solo shoppers. Some of them are stylishly dressed - never mind that it's 50 below outside and every normal person is outfitted in Nanook-of-the-north layers - they're tottering around on skinny, pipe-stem heels showing off sparkling, manicured toes and swishing down the aisles looking as good coming as they look going.
There's the tall, athletic-looking guy with the pre-occupied look on his face, a cart filled with organic vegetables, bottled water, and generic cat litter. No wedding ring. Is he single? Does he have an international sales job that takes him to Europe every other month? Could he be divorced, kids are in college, the ex-wife is back in Chicago and he's in town for six months as an adjunct professor at the Simon School of Business? And a cat lover too?
Be still my heart.
There are families with young kids in tow. Some of the kids have lovely manners and others pitch screaming fits; still others laugh hysterically or watch the world pass by as they scrounche down in the wire grocery baskets. Some of them shop alongside of their parents.
Some of them wouldn't be caught dead shopping with their parents and rightfully so, they are at home.
If I'm feeling frisky, I will approach my husband like he's a complete stranger and grab his butt.
One elderly woman watched me do this one time and as she gracefully pushed her cart past us, she winked at me.
It's never about the food for me. It's always about the pagentry. The intimacies of relationships that play out in the universal stage that we all come to: the grocery store. In this town, that would be Wegmans.
And, part of Wegmans charm is that it "gets" this aspect of being a celebratory stage. Their employees know to engage with us - the customers - and, the various "staging areas" where food is prepared for us to sample are scattered throughout the store, encourgaging us to linger, taste different foods, chat with strangers about what we're sampling before we head back into the food aisles or we turn into the magazine-book section at which point, the lure of the glossy magazine cover takes over...and, I am completely undone.
Sharon Grace fights back against one of the most horrific, unspeakable acts forced upon children too young to fight back for themselves in her book, When The Trust Is Broken. Ultimately, her message distills itself down to five powerful words: help prevent child sexual abuse.
She pulls us into the heart of her own family, describing the precise moment when their world shatters with the knowledge that her four year old granddaughter has been a victim of sexual abuse.
Her success in telling this many-layered, true story, while preserving the privacy of her family, is evident in the clarity of her prose: her writing style is calm yet purposeful; her message both intimate and far-reaching. Sharon Grace's goal is to call attention to and forever stop this dispicable activity.
We can help her by starting with one simple act: reading her book.
Grace's opening remarks, placed opposite the first page of the prologue, take us inside a court room in the early summer of 2007. Without any details, we understand that "what was done" to a little girl has reached a very public conclusion. Regardless of whatever else we are told, what Sharon says to Michael Bennett and what lies behind her statement will relentlessly echo throughout her book.
I will never forget the look on my granddaughter's face when she told me about the 'bad man' and what you did to her. - Sharon Grace to Michael Bennett, Monroe County Court, June 13, 2007.
And, then, she backs up to the night in September, to "That single moment (that) changed our lives forever." (Prologue, Pg 2.)
We sit in the living room with Sharon and her family, watching televison with them, sharing that surreal moment of knowing, followed by disbelief.
Details of what happened are deliberately withheld. What we know is that a man has been arrested following allegations of not just one instance of sexual molestation, but of multiple instances of sexual abuse. His victims? Young children attending the Pepper Hill Day Care Center, in Penfield, NY.
"When I turned to look at my four-year-old granddaughter Chloe, I realized she was paralyzed with fear. She seemed terrified by what she had seen on TV. The expression on her face told me immediately that something was terribly wrong. Instantly, all of the signs from the past months made sense to me." (Pg. 2)
In a split second, not only does Sharon realize that her granddaughter is one of the victims, but she recognizes that if she (Chloe's nana) had known just a few of the behavioral clues that present in very young children of abuse, she might have been able to stop what court records would later reveal had been a pattern of sexual abuse.
It is this powerful message - that we need to know what child behaviors to look for that red flag child sexual abuse - that spurs Sharon to be proactive in the days, months and years to follow.
As we try to make sense of what Sharon has just revealed, she shifts gears. Stepping back from the incident itself, Sharon begins Chapter One writing about the issue of trust, reminding us that it is the glue in the fabric of life; without it " ...our society would fall apart." (Pg. 3)
The story she leads with is her own. Chapters one - four weave Sharon's own personal history into the larger themes of her book. She says, "Every family struggles with some type of dysfunction. I believe that no matter who you are, where you live, or what you have, at some point in your life, everyone is challenged by the unexpected." (pg. 4)
Everyone is challenged by the unexpected.
This becomes a story that unfolds on two levels. The first and more obvious is the sexual victimization of Sharon's granddaughter. The second and equally compelling message is that we are all victims of tragedy at some point in our lives. By deliberately turning the spotlight on herself, Sharon opens a conversational doorway that she can walk through with her granddaughter when the time is right. And, on a larger scale, she gives her readers that same opening to initiate similar conversations with their loved ones.
What Sharon reveals is that despite growing up in a household "plagued by alcohol issues," (pg 9), her own belief that she could find happiness as a wife and mother never wavered. From a very young age, Sharon recognized her deep love for children and her desire to have her own family.
Does she "get it right" when she marries at the age of nineteen?
No. But, she doesn' quit. She describes herself as " ... a single mom with two small children and a fractured fairy tale for a life." (Pg. 9) Despite feeling guilty and ashamed and worried about what other people would think, she moves on.
She creates a fulfilling yet challenging life for herself and for her children; marrying for the second time, having a third child. An accidental fire destroys the family home. Before Sharon finds herself at a place in her life where family and career stabilize, she will divorce her second husband, overcome serious health issues, and close the doors on the hair salon business that she operated for 13 years.
Ultimately, when it seems as if she's lost everything, Sharon finds herself again in the voice of her youngest child, Blake. "Mommy, you are so sad. If you don't go back to work, I can't go to school, and I will never see my friends again." (Pg. 25)
Although there have been many moments of truth in Sharon's story up to now, this is her watershed moment. "I couldn't change what had already happened in our lives, but I now know how much I needed to change my attitude." (Pg. 26)
Although there are no miraculous (instantaneous) changes in her life, Sharon and her three children move forward with their lives. The kids grow up, Sharon carves out a career as a national educator for an international company in the beauty industry, and, by her own admission, meets and marries "her soul mate." (Pg. 33)
Just when you think your children are safe, think again.
Time passes. Sharon watches as her own children marry and have children of their own. She takes on the role of grandmother (nana) with heartfelt joy.
And then, it happens.
Two seemingly disparate events explode simultaneously, shattering the core of Sharon's family. A local television news broadcast spools out in words and pictures the story of a man arrested for suspected sexual abuse of children. Something in this broadcast triggers an immediate emotional outburst from Sharon's four year old granddaughter.
In that split second, knowledge is both a crushing blow and a source of strength.
As Sharon tries to absorb the magnitude of this moment, it dawns on her that some of her granddaughter's recent, unexplicable behavior, now makes chilling sense.
Moving away from the details of what happens next, this awareness will be the galvanizing push that Sharon uses to re-direct her life's purpose. The questions that bombard her as she sits in front of the television, fiercely holding her granddaughter, are just the beginning.
What could we have done to prevent this?
Where was the supervision?
Why had we not recognized any of the signs that were right in front of us? (Pg. 64)
Sharon describes what she and her family will experience from this point forward as an exercise in "connecting the dots" (Pg. 64). Together, they learn to naviagate the legal system as they seek out protection for this child and prosecution for her attacker.
Quite simply, Sharon's message is: no more. Not another child. Her platform is awareness which leads to knowledge, education which leads to empowerment, and listening, as a means to begin the healing process.
All of this said, be forever warned. Don't think it can't happen to you.
Because it can.
Please note: a portion of profits from the sales of When The Trust is Broken, by Sharon Grace will benefit Habitat For Humanity, The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and The Bivona Child Advocacy Center.
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